Something blue (4 page)

"Oh, twice he was involved with an escape attempt. At least sympathetically—'

"I don't get it."

"Not that he meant to escape. But that stops parole, you know. Things happen to—well, keep him here. You might say he has given up the world," the chaplain went on gently.

"Then he's not normal," snapped Johnny. "He's nuts or something. And you can't believe a word he says."

"It is hard to imagine," the chaplain said slowly, "what way a man can be changed in his soul if he has had to bear justice. Perhaps McCauley has made prison his home, confinement his cross. He assists me, you know."

"He's become something like a monk?" said Johnny. "That's what you are sa>dng?"

The chaplain nodded.

"What about Bartee? What do you think? Is he guilty?"

"I don't know," the chaplain said, "That's why I suggested that you try to find out."

"What makes you think I can find out, after seventeen years? And tell me this, while you're at it. Wliy should / mix in this anyway?" Johnny felt wild.

"That I don't know either," the chaplain said. "I don't know why Miss Emily chose to send you, you see. If you could find out, of course, it would save this Httle girl heartbreak." ^

Johnny looked into die chaplain's eyes and thought he was in a dream, a romantic dream of innocence and mercy.

"The police will haidly try," the chaplain said gently. "And there's no money to hire^ a detective. It would have to be a friend."

"A woman got killed," Johnny said harshly, himting for something logical and hard and reliably true. "I suppose it wasn't suicide?"

"No."

"Now either her husband did it, or this Bartee did it, or a thiid party did it. Right?"

"Right." They were eye to eye.

"Since the husband was tried and convicted by law, this would seem the most probable. Only we don't like it much, do we? This makes the httle girl's father a killer and that's unpleasant. Nicer to think of him as a saint." The chaplain's gaze did not falter. "But Bartee," Johnny went on, "now it seems we don't like him for the part either. Nan's in love

with him. It would break her heart. The really nice way for this to come out would be to find a third party. Somebody Nan doesn't give a whoop about. All right." Johnny made a furious gesture. "I don't want Nan's heart broken either, but can't you see how silly—?" Johnny felt stormy. "You can't rearrange what happened" he said, "to make it nicer for a sweet young girl."

"McCauley has no proof that Bartee did the killing," the chaplain said gravely and steadily. "Suppose you found proof that Bartee did not? Then, when we tell Nan the story of her father and mother, as I agree we should, she will at least have the strength and the refuge of the man she loves."

Courtesy of }. Sims, thought Johimy to himself wryly.

"As for McCauley," the chaplain went on, "you find it incredible that he wishes he needn't break her heart? But I can conceive that McCauley not only wishes this but also would rather be rid of the prejudice of an old hatred, of a possible injustice in his thoughts. I can imagine that Clinton McCauley wants to be good. That is a motive that does exist, in some human beings."

Johnny felt himself flushing. He thought, O.K. I guess I'll have to see if I can prove her darling dear's an upright man. He felt very strange, hghtheaded, a little empty. He must have nodded or something because the chaplain opened the door to his oflSce.

The small man sat where they had left him, his head bowed, his lips moving.

". . . from evil. . ." Johnny thought he heard him say.

CHAPTER 5

Johnny vtent over to him. "I wish you would tell me about this whole case," Johnny said to him crisply, with neither sympathy nor hostility.

"Yes, I will do that," said McCauley.

The little lame man with the saint's face looked at the wall. "I went to the Spanish War," he began. "If you can remember it—we fought for an ideal. That's the kind of young man I was. I got hit in my right heel. Not important. Makes me limp. When I came home, Christy and the baby were living with the Baitees in the big old house in Hestia. The old lady was Christy's own grandmother by her first husband. The old lady married old man Bartee about 1917, I think. He'd had a wife before. Nathaniel was the first wife's son and Dick is Nathaniel's son. So Dick is the old man's grandson. Yet he and Christy shared no blood. Bart, Junior, now, he was in the middle. Half brother to Nathaniel, and half brother to Christy's mother. I don't know if that's clear."

"I think so," said Johnny. "His child. Her child. Their child."

"That's right. Well, they all made a big fuss over Christy and she liked it there. She hked the prestige of being a Bar-tee connection, you know, and the comfort. Christy couldn't understand why I wanted her to come away and live in poverty."

"I could have had a job up north, but it would have meant scraping along on a small income, Christy confined, taking care of tfee baby all alone.

"I can see Christy's point of view so clearly, now. Then I was a young man with a limp, a hero returned, ignored. I was frustrated and bitter. 1 wanted to be the head of my family. In that house, the old man was head, and the old lady ran the house and Nathaniel, pussyfooting around with his art and his elegant manners, was the Crown Prince. Or the old lady thought so."

McCauley's voice had changed. It was crisper and harsher. The face was harder. Young McCauley, Johnny perceived, had been no saint.

"The young boys, of course, were in and out," McCauley continued. "Young Bart had gone into the service. I couldn't, because of my foot. Or I think I would have gone. Young Dick they got rid of as best they could by sending him to a military school, not far away. He was hard to handle. His mother was dead. Nathaniel, his father, couldn't do a thing. The old man w.as the only one who could handle ; him at all.

"So, in that household Christy was everybody's pet. She was only twenty-two, pretty and gay. The place was full of servants, fussing over Christy's clothes and Christy's baby. My baby.

"I couldn't persuade Christy to leave there. She had such reasonable reasons why not. I couldn't say, 'Look, it's my pride for which you must give up all this.' Although it was true. So I took to drinking too much. Going out on the town. It's a small town. The whole town watched me. Sometimes I had to be carried home. I took to one particular bar, run by a woman whose reputation was not what the Bartees thought it should have been.

"She meant to be my friend," the prisoner said. "Kate had a kind heart. She'd listen to me curse the Bartees, complain of Christy, and pity myself."

"Then, the next morning, Christy would look at me with her clear sober eyes and I'd be ashamed and everything would be worse than before." He sighed deeply and clasped his hands.

"All right. That night, I had been with Kate. Alone. In her room. I'd had too much. I didn't want anybody called to come fetch me, and Kate understood my pride. So Kate was trying to sober me. I wasn't actually so very late getting back to the Bartee house. It was about midnight. I got off the bus and wobbled up the drive. Long drive. I had my key, opened the front door. Old-fashioned double doors. Night light in the hall. Old-fashioned wood-paneled hall."

The man was describing a vision now and Johnny began to see it too.

"I saw, right away, as soon as I was inside, that the light burned in the old man's study. A square little room across from the bottom of the stairs, about half-way back. I started down the hall and I saw a big iron candlestick lying on the red hall rug. This was strange. So I picked it up. "I held it in my hand. I got opposite the study door. The candlestick belonged in there. I turned into the room and then I saw Christy. Lying on the floor. Her head was bloody. She was dead. I knew that, right away. There was paper money fallen all around her.

"I was numb and sick and I hoped it was a drunken nightmare. I stood there until I heard the old man saying, 'Don't move.' He was on the stairs and he had a gun.

"Christy was dead. The candlestick was the weapon. It was covered with her blood and I had it in my hand."

"Circumstantial," Johnny said. His mouth felt dry.

"That wasn't all," McCauley said. "The wall safe was open. That's where the money had come from. And now I must try to tell you about those pins." He sighed deeply once more. "The old lady had given Christy a jeweled pin on Christy's birthday. It was only about an inch in diameter, flat, made in the shape of a flower. Six petals. Covered with pearls. A diamond in the center. It was worth, I suppose, about two hundred dollars. Christy had asked the old man to keep it in the safe. Now, Kate . . ."

The little man wiped his forehead with his MTist. "Kate also had such a pin." He looked straight into Johnny's eyes with a curious compassion as if to say, T know, I know, you cannot believe this.'

"I was mooning over a glass, to Kate one night. 'Now we could sell my wife's valuable jeweled pin,' I said, 'and get the money to move us north.' Still she wouldn't go. Kate asked me to describe the pin and, when I did, she fetched one exactly like it from a box of trinkets she had. Kate told me that Nathaniel Bartee had given her this pin, years ago. Kate tr«#ted me not to spread this around for a scandal. Kate was just surprised that Christy's pin was supposed to be valuable. If hers was its twin, perhaps hers was valuable too. So I took Kate's pin home with me. I showed it to Christy. She got hers from the safe one day. We compared them. They toere twins. So we' believed what K^ate had said. Christy knew about Kate, you see, and she understood, in a way. But Christy didn't altogether understand." The man shook ghosts out of his head, and pain out of his eyes.

"The old lady told Christy that her first husband had bought the pin. We guessed he must have bought a pair. The old lady must have given the other one to Nathaniel, or Josephine, his wife that died—a long time ago. Anyway, it was, we thought, amusing. Because Nathaniel was such a pussycat. His father, the old man, was disappointed in him and harsh with him. The old lady was always on his side." McCauley brooded.

"Go on," the chaplain said.

"Yes. Well, Christy's pin was back in the safe that night. I had Kate's pin in my pocket to return to her. I'd had it

there for a week. That night, you see, Td drunk too much again. I'd forgotten it again.

"So, that night, when the police came—the old man made Nathaniel call them—why, they searched me and they found Kate's pin. Then they found that Christy's pin wasn't in the safe. So they thought that proved I had opened the safe." McCauley's voice had gone flat and despairing.

"I see," said Johimy. "But are you positive your wife's pin was in there?"

"Oh, yes. She asked the old man to put it there just after dinner. And he was reading in the study all evening. He wouldn't lie."

Johnny frowned. "Was there money missing too?" "I don't know," McCauley said. "If so, not much. Sometimes the old man hadn't counted." "Why did Christy go downstairs?"

"Possibly something for the baby." McCauley looked desolated. "We couldn't know." "Go on."

"Yes. Now, the old lady said she had heard angry voices, which was what made her wake the old man. Nathaniel said he'd been awake, he'd heard them too. So the theory was that I had opened the safe to get the pin—to sell it for the money in it. Chiisty had discovered me. We'd quarreled. And I'd hit her.

''They conceded that I may not have meant to hit so hard. But I was drunk. I was opening a safe that was not my safe. You see?" "I guess so," Johnny said. "That was all the case there ever was." "But what about this Kate?"

"The testimony on my side wasn't believed," said McCauley patiently. "Oh, Kate went on the stand and told about her pin. That Nathaniel had given it to her. But there was nobody who remembered seeing it in Kate's old box. And then Nathaniel swore that he'd given no pin. He produced the pin." Johnny bhnked. The prisoner talked on. "So they said this was all a preposterous lie to save me. Nathaniel Bartee wouldn't have had any truck with a woman hke Kate, they said. Well, nobody took the word of a 'woman like Kate' against the Bartees. Nobody took the word of a man

like me, either, who had been drunk and with another woman, when he had a wife and child. And Christy,^ who could have told them I had one pin, Christy was dead."

"I see," said Johnny. He thought he saw. This man was crazy. The story had no k)gic. "Where does Dick Bartee come into it?"

"He was supposed to be locked up for the night in that mihtary school. But he could get out. I'd seen him in the Baitee kitchen getting food after many a midnight." Johnny lifted an eyebrow.

"The safe wasn't forced, Mr. Sims. It was opened by someone who knew how. One of the family." Johnny just waited.

"Christy wouldn't have quarreled with a stranger or a burglar. She'd have screamed. So Christy knew whoever it was she found in there, by the open safe." Johnny conceded a thoughtful nod.

"But Cluisty wouldn't have quarreled with Nathaniel, who was fort>'-one years old and the Crown Prince in that house. No more than she would have quarreled with the old man himself. But she certainly would have questioned fifteen-year-old Dick Bartee if she'd found him in his grandfather's stud^ at midnight and the safe open. She'd' have threatened to call out.. He was rough and tough, that kid. He'd have hit her. I've thought about it all so long," said McCauley, "I can't tell you the feel—the fitting down—the choking in."

"And how did Nathaniel get the pin?" snapped Johimy. "Christy^'s pin?" said McCauley. "Dick gave it to him." Johnny found himself shaking his head. "What is this alibi?" he asked, turning to something else for kindness' sake. "Yes. Well the school—that's tlie Brownleaf School—says nobody leaves after lights out. Dick's roommate was a boy named George Rush, who said Dick was there. Edith-Emily tried to talk to him years ago, but he was just a kid and scared and she couldn't approach him in any way that would get him to tell her the truth."

"He lives in Oakland now," said the chaplain, "He has a radio-TV repair shop. If you could get this George Rush to say, without fear or pressure, whether Dick Bartee was really there in his room at the school that night . . ."