Leave Her to Heaven (32 page)

Quinton proposed that they make the journey in his car. A sedan, it would accommodate five people readily enough. But this seemed to Harland intolerable. ‘I'll take my car,' he insisted. ‘Mrs. Harland and I will go in that. You can follow us. We'll not try to get away.'

Quinton said reasonably: ‘I don't know as I can stand for that, Mr. Harland. If you did make a break for it, we'd have to do some shooting. No, I'll have to keep my eye on Mrs. Harland.'

Ruth would have submitted. ‘He must do what he thinks is his duty, Dick,' she pointed out; but Harland said furiously:

‘To hell with that! We're making it easy for him! If we fight we can hold him up here for weeks.'

‘We're not going to,' she reminded him.

‘Not if he's reasonable,' Harland agreed; and he told Quinton strongly: ‘But if you're not, we'll start fighting right now. Either Mrs. Harland and I travel in my car, and alone, or you'll have to drag us.'

Deputy Hatch roused himself. ‘If there's any dragging to do, I guess't I can handle it,' he said heavily; but Quinton intervened.

‘Let it go, Joe. We'll trail them.' He told Ruth: ‘I don't want to make this any harder for you than I have to.'

‘I'm sure you don't,' Ruth assented. She smiled. ‘I'm sure, for instance, that you'll let me pack a bag,' she said.

‘Sophy can go up with you?' he agreed.

So Ruth and Mrs. Parkins, Ruth calling Mrs. Huston to help her, went upstairs. Harland's own bag was ready — he had not unpacked it since their return that afternoon — so he took this opportunity to telephone Roger Pryde, who handled his legal business, and enlist his aid. Roger did no criminal work, but he promised to locate the best legal talent available, to join Harland in Maine tomorrow.

It was not yet eleven o'clock when they set out, Harland and Ruth in his car, Quinton and Hatch and Mrs. Parkins following close behind. Harland drove slowly, as much because his senses were still confused as out of any consideration for Quinton; and there was in him a stifled, futile rage so that his hands were tight on the wheel, his jaw set, his cheeks hot and stiff. Ruth beside him linked her hands through his arm, and for a while they did not speak at all, till he drew from her a measure of her composure and she felt the hard muscles in his arm relax.

‘There, darling,' she said at last. ‘You're all right now.'

‘This isn't real, is it?' he demanded. ‘Isn't it just some sort of nightmare?'

She said, with only a faint break in her voice: ‘I feel ever so important, being indicted!'

‘That doesn't mean anything,' he assured her. ‘Quinton has probably always hated me for marrying Ellen, and of course he could tell the grand jury anything he chose. We'll straighten it out damned quick tomorrow.'

Ruth asked after a moment: ‘Even if the sugar did have arsenic mixed in it — how can he know, Dick?'

Harland had had no time for such considerations. ‘I don't know. How could he?'

She considered. ‘What became of the lunch hamper?'

‘I think we left it on the beach. I don't remember anything about it.'

‘Leick probably has it.'

‘He didn't go home at all after he came to Boston with us, when we brought. Ellen. He went off to the woods, left me in Bangor.'

‘I expect he went down to the beach and got it, and his wash boiler, that night Ellen died. He had plenty of time, after he brought the doctor.'

Harland thought long before he spoke again. ‘If Leick has it, he wouldn't give it to Quinton. But even if he did — didn't Ellen use all the sugar?'

‘I suppose not. I put in plenty. It was in an envelope. She tore the corner off and poured some into her cup.'

‘She must have put the envelope in the hamper, and Quinton's got hold of it somehow.' Harland added bitterly: ‘Or else he's lying. Maybe he planted it.'

‘He wouldn't do that.'

He said slowly: ‘You know — I believe Ellen killed herself, Ruth.'

She looked at him wonderingly. ‘Why, Dick? Why do you think so?'

He hesitated. Upon his tongue he had set a seal so long, but now he was weary of silence. ‘I had told her we'd have to separate,' he admitted. ‘We'd been discussing it for a long time; and that morning I decided finally to leave her, and told her so.'

She waited, and he was conscious of the white blur of her face upturned to his. He kept his eyes upon the road till her hand at last pressed his arm.

‘Why, Dick?' she asked again. ‘If you want to tell me.'

So he told her what he had thought he would never tell anyone. He told her how Danny died; and he heard her low murmur of pitying grief. She asked no questions; but his tongue, once loosed, went on, omitting nothing. ‘She didn't know, not for a long time, that I knew,' he said at last. ‘You see, that day — while I was trying to revive Danny — she said we were going to have a baby. So I couldn't tell anyone the truth, couldn't even let Ellen herself know that I knew. And I tried to — keep our love alive, tried to make life together possible for us. Perhaps if our baby had lived, I could have done it. But it died.

‘Then one day we quarrelled. She accused me of loving you,
and — I can see now that I did love you then, because the accusation made me furious. So I told her I knew she had — killed Danny.'

Still Ruth did not speak; and he said at last: ‘And after that she tried to win me back, and when she saw she couldn't, she killed herself.'

She lifted his right hand from the wheel with both hers an pressed it against her cheek and kissed it over and over. ‘Darling, darling, darling,' she whispered. ‘How wretched you've been.'

‘Not since I've known you love me.'

‘I want to be so good to you.'

‘You have been. You are.'

‘And now this!' She said miserably: ‘I don't mind for myself, but it's terrible for you.'

They drove a while without speech, and she pressed close to him, and the headlights of Quinton's car behind them shone through the rear window, so that sometimes when he turned his head he could see her eyes, deep and steady, and when she met his eyes, she smiled. He said at last:

‘What started Quinton digging into this now, I wonder?' She did not answer. ‘Maybe he's been at it right along,' he hazarded. ‘Or — maybe he just waited till we were happiest, so he could hurt us most.'

‘Sh-h! Don't, darling,' she urged. ‘Let's stop thinking till we know more about it. Please!'

‘You're a wonderful woman!'

‘You're a wonderful man!'

‘You don't seem to think of yourself at all,' he protested. ‘But — it's you he's after! You're the one he's had indicted.'

‘You're the one I'm thinking about, darling. I just wish there were some way you needn't have to — suffer so.'

He laughed in a sudden lifting strength. ‘Suffer? Me?' he cried. ‘Why, Lord love you, Ruth, this gives me a chance to fight for you, to do something for you! Quinton's done me a favor, really. He's giving me a chance to show how much I love you!'

She smiled with him. ‘You don't have to show me, darling. I already know!'

‘Then I'll show the world,' he declared, and they came to Portsmouth and crossed into Maine.

Just beyond the bridge, the car behind suddenly drew alongside and passed and cut in front of them and stopped. Harland jammed his brakes, and Quinton on one side, the deputy on the other, came back to them.

Harland asked sharply: ‘What's wrong?'

Quinton's smile was like a gleeful shout. ‘We're in Maine now!' he said. ‘Mrs. Harland, you're under arrest. I've an indictment warrant charging you with murder. Harland, the deputy sheriff will ride with you from now on. You're held as a material witness. Mrs. Harland, shift into my car. You'll go the rest of the way with me.'

Perry's Harbor is a town — or a city — of two or three thousand people, lying along a steep hillside above the water, most of the houses strung on roughly parallel streets which eventually angle together to form the Square. This is a tree-shaded triangle set with maples and tall elms. Cross streets ascend the hillside, and the county jail is on top of the hill. The courthouse is a block beyond the Square.

Harland — the rotund deputy noisily asleep beside him, Quinton's car ahead showing the way — drove into town toward ten o'clock next morning. He followed Quinton's car to the jail where Ruth must be lodged, and he went in with her and Quinton and stood with her during the brief formalities. They had only a moment together. ‘All right?' he asked.

‘Fine, darling! I slept till daylight.' She added smilingly: ‘But I'm starved! I hope the food's good here.'

‘I'll have you out before night,' he promised; and she touched his hand.

‘Don't lose your head, Dick. We'll need to be patient. It
will take time.' Then Quinton spoke to her, and she kissed Harland, and they parted. She followed the jailor through the heavy door, and Quinton and Harland were left together. Harland said harshly:

‘I suppose you'll lock me up too.'

‘You're on your own recognizance,' Quinton explained. ‘I guess you'll not run away.'

There was something so sleek and sure in the man's bland countenance that Harland choked with helpless rage, but he held his tone steady. ‘I'll be at the hotel. How can I arrange bail for her?'

Quinton said calmly. ‘You can't. This is a murder charge.'

‘Damn it, Quinton, you know that's nonsense!'

‘The grand jurors took it seriously, Mr. Harland.'

‘What started you on this now? Ellen's been dead almost two years.'

Quinton said mildly: ‘The evidence has only just become available. The news of your marriage led me to make an investigation — and the facts came to light.'

‘What facts?'

‘A motive, for one thing,' Quinton told him. ‘I mean the fact that Ruth loved you. And I found proof that Ellen died of arsenic poisoning, found arsenic mixed with the sugar in the envelope in the hamper.'

‘Where'd you get the hamper?'

‘I got it; that's enough.'

‘The arsenic could have been put there since.'

The other shook his head. ‘It wasn't,' he said. ‘You'll have to accept the fact, Mr. Harland. Arsenic was mixed with the sugar which Ellen put in her coffee that day.'

Harland insisted: ‘Then Ellen put it there.'

‘Ruth put the sugar in the envelope, gave the sealed envelope to Ellen at the picnic.' Quinton moved toward the door. ‘Now I've business, Mr. Harland. You can find me at my office. I may see you at the hotel.'

Harland followed him out to the street. Mrs. Parkins was
waiting in Quinton's car. Deputy Hatch had disappeared, and Harland drove to the Perry House and registered. When he signed his name, the little old man behind the marble-topped desk looked at him curiously; but he said no word, took a key, picked up Harland's bag and led the way to a room on the second floor. The room overlooked an area on which backed garages and stores, and Harland could see the waters of the narrow Bay beyond. The Perry House was an old hotel, its days of glory past. The wallpaper was stained, the carpet worn, the brass double bed sagged in the middle as though it had wearily surrendered to the burdens it was forced to bear. The pictures on the wall were familiar, of the sort that were sold by the gross in the years before the turn of the century, their gold frames permanently spotted by generations of flies. There was a stale smell of dust and coal smoke and disinfectant; and Harland opened the windows, fighting them when they stuck, pounding at the sashes till his hands were bruised.

Then he threw himself on the bed, his arm across his eyes, and for a while he lay there unmoving, his thoughts chaos. His closed eyes burned with weariness, and he wished to sleep but could not, and discovered wonderingly that he was hungry; so he splashed his face in the basin and went down to the lobby. The dining room was closed, but a lunch counter a block away gave him orange juice, two boiled eggs which should have been scrambled, and a cup of coffee so bad that though he preferred coffee black, he added thin milk and much sugar to make it drinkable. He returned to the hotel, to his room; and almost at once there was a knock on the door.

He thought this would be Roger Pryde and called a summons, but instead of Roger a woman appeared; a little old woman, extraordinarily little and extraordinarily old, her face covered with fine wrinkles like a jockey's, her eyes big behind thick lenses, her wispy hair straggling under a ridiculous hat. Harland stared at her, and after a moment he asked:

‘Who are you?'

‘I'm Miss Batten,' she told him, in a friendly, thin voice.
‘I work on the paper here, and send dispatches to the Boston papers.'

Harland had forgotten till now the newspapers, and he had a sudden mental picture of a thousand headlines which the world would read this afternoon and tomorrow morning. His successful books had made his name news, and scores of newspaper men and women had in the past, because he was a novelist, sought to interview him. Recognizing the commercial value of publicity, he had always welcomed them cheerfully and cordially, had done his best to give them usable material, had sympathized with their problems — he remembered his own months on the
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when he too had been sent out, on more than one occasion, to ‘interview' persons of whom he had never heard before — and had appreciated the fact that they were as bored with the necessity of talking to him as he was at talking to them. He had never feared them.

But now this frail old woman woke in him a sudden tremor of alarm; for behind her were legions of editors, reporters, desk men, linotype operators — waiting to spread his story before their readers, to winnow him fine in a fierce blast of nationwide publicity. ‘Novelist's Wife Held For Murder.' ‘Mrs. Richard Harland Accused of Poisoning.' ‘Novelist in Love Triangle.' His racing thoughts formed a hundred scalding phrases. On the front page of every daily in the country, his tragedy today and tomorrow and for days to come would be spread large.

So Miss Batten, for all she was so weak and small, must not be antagonized, for there was a mighty army at her back. ‘Sit down,' he told her. ‘Please sit down.'

She did so, with the fussy, settling movements of a hen. ‘Mr. Quinton has given out the news of Mrs. Harland's arrest and of the indictment,' she explained. ‘I've wired Boston a story on that.' She added apologetically: ‘I had to, you know. I'm sorry, but that's my business.'

‘Of course. I know.'

She hesitated, and then — Harland saw that she was giving
him time to think, felt a sudden lonely liking for her — she spoke about herself. ‘Whatever money I get for outside stories, I never spend, you see. It goes into a special fund in the savings bank; and when I've enough, I'm planning a year's vacation; a trip around the world.' There was an amazing youthfulness in her. ‘I'll have enough in another year or two, I think,' she said. ‘Of course not many news stories break here, but my fund has been growing for twenty years.'

Harland said with wry humor: ‘You ought to get quite a lot of space on this story.'

‘Oh, the city papers will send their own reporters,' she reminded him. ‘There'll be a dozen of them here tonight; so I have to get what I can today.' She seemed, incredibly, to blush. ‘That's my excuse for bothering you,' she confessed. ‘I hated doing it, knowing how distressed you must be; but I thought you might just possibly have something to say.'

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘I have,' he agreed. ‘I could talk for a week steady.' ,

She uttered a little mirthful chirrup. ‘Oh, I won't ask you to do that. But if you're sure you want to say something . . .'

‘I say it's a damned ridiculous outrage!'

She shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn't say that. Do you mind if I don't let you say tactless things? “Outrage” suggests persecution, you see. It's — you don't mind my being frank — it's a cry-baby word! Mr. Quinton and the grand jury — they're only doing what it's their job to do, you know.'

He looked at her in sudden respect. 'I used to be a reporter,' he said. ‘We were taught to get our — subjects — mad, because then they'd say things they shouldn't. That's not the way you work.'

‘Oh no,' she assured him. ‘If people are already in trouble, I don't want to make things worse for them.'

‘Thanks,' he said. ‘Well — what do you think I should say?'

‘Well,' she reflected. ‘Mr. Quinton gave out a statement. I'm sorry I haven't a copy, but I put it on the wire. He told about your first wife's death, and he said new evidence proves
she died of arsenic poisoning, and he said the present Mrs. Harland gave her some sugar for her coffee and that the sugar had arsenic in it.'

‘Trying his case in the newspapers?'

‘I'll tell you a secret,' she said. ‘I think — you see the Attorney General's away just now on his vacation — I think Mr. Quinton wants to get as much personal publicity as possible.'

He smiled drily. ‘Is that part of his duty?'

‘Don't be unfair,' she warned him. ‘His duty is to prosecute criminals; but he's entitled to credit for what he does. And — I think you might try your case in the newspapers too. For instance, do you think Mrs. Harland died of arsenic poisoning?'

‘I don't know anything about it.'

‘Were you with her when she died?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Did you suspect anything of the kind?'

‘No. She was subject to severe attacks of indigestion. This seemed like the others, only worse.'

‘Mr. Quinton says there's no doubt what caused her death.'

‘That's for the jury to decide, isn't t?'

‘Yes, of course. But if she did die of poison — what do you think about that?' He hesitated, wondering whether he should suggest that Ellen had taken her own life; and he foresaw the questions that would follow and which he could not bring himself to answer. But before he could speak, little Miss Batten said: ‘I'll take back that question, Mr. Harland. I don't think you should answer it. I think you'd better just say this is all a complete surprise to you, that you can't believe it's true, that you can't even speculate about it, something like that. Don't you think so?'

Harland said gratefully: ‘You're right, of course. I can't say anything because I don't know anything. Except of course I know that Ruth, my wife, is completely innocent.'

‘Of course.'

‘I'll trust you to make me say the right things. Write something
tactful.' He smiled. ‘And string it out, Miss Batten. Get as much space as you can.'

‘You're so nice. I'll be careful. Would you like to see it before I file it?'

‘If you think I should.'

She rose. ‘I'll see how it sounds after I write it. I don't want to bother you more than I must. Thank you for being so kind.' And she said solicitously: ‘You know, I think you'd be wise to go to bed, get some sleep. Just take off your clothes and go right to bed. I'll bring you some pills if you like. I have some at home that I've used for years.'

‘Thanks,' Harland told her. ‘I'll be able to sleep all right, I'm sure.'

At the door she said: ‘Oh, by the way, if anything comes up so that you could give me a story all for myself, it would be ever so nice for me.'

‘I will if I can,' Harland promised. When she was gone he was surprised to discover that he was no longer so depressed. She had given him somehow a measure of serenity. He took her advice, removed his clothes and drew the shades and went to bed; and almost at once he was asleep like a man drugged.