The Hangman's Whip (11 page)

“Did—did someone tell you that?”

“Now listen, Miss Search; I wouldn’t say a thing like that unless I was sure of it. Never mind how I know. You went to meet him; you were to meet at ten. I know why you went to meet him: he wanted a divorce so he could marry you. Eve Bohan refused a divorce.”

“He wouldn’t have murdered her!”

“She stood in his way; besides, he was in trouble—he needed money—”

“But Eve had no money.”

“Hadn’t she?” said the sheriff after a pause. “Go on, Miss Search. I know you were at the cottage. What happened when you reached it? About ten o’clock?”

She stared at the flowers in the old Brussels carpet at her feet. She couldn’t make things worse for Richard by telling the truth; she might make things better. The sheriff said impatiently: “Was he already there? Was Eve Bohan alive then? Did you see him kill her? Do you know what it is to be an accessory to murder? It carries—”

She looked up then. “He didn’t kill her. He—he was as horrified and surprised as I was. I—”

The sheriff leaned back. “Go on. Tell it all.”

She did so—still torn in her mind as to whether it would help or hurt.

She told it quickly: the walk through the woods, the light in the cottage window, the emptiness of the living room, Eve in the bedroom.

“Then the—the lightning came again and the lights went out.”

“Where was Dick Bohan?”

“He—he was in the kitchen; he came and told me to come back here. He—he was trying to help her—he tried to revive her. He didn’t kill her.”

“But he made you leave?”

“Y-yes. He wanted to keep me out of any—talk of her suicide.”

“Anybody else at the cottage?”

“Yes,” said Search.

The sheriff stopped swinging his foot. “What’s that?”

“There was someone else there. A man. Watching the cottage. I saw him when I left; I was in the shadow of the shrubs, going down to the lake path. He didn’t see me. But there was a clear flash of lightning, and I saw him. He was standing still, watching.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d he look like?”

“I—I think he was tall; he seemed to be wearing a—a long coat.”

“Hat?”

“I don’t remember. I think he was bareheaded.”

“Who was it?”

“But I told you. I don’t know.”

“What’d he do?”

“I don’t know that, either. The lightning came again and he was—was gone.”

The sheriff got up, walked around the table, sat down again.

“You are absolutely sure you saw somebody?”

“Yes,” said Search, looking full into the sheriff’s eyes.

“Were you sure—then?”

“I thought I ought to go on toward the house. Whoever it was had disappeared. There was no use in my trying to find out who it was. Anyway, I didn’t know Eve had been murdered. I thought—and Richard thought—it was suicide. I still think—”

“You must have smelled the chloroform when you entered the cottage.”

She remembered that too; the sickish, sweetish odor she couldn’t quite identify. The sheriff saw the look of assent in her face; he said again: “Who was the man you saw outside?”

“I tell you, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know—or don’t want to tell?”

“I—I don’t know,” said Search. “But Richard didn’t murder her. He wouldn’t have telephoned to you if he had been guilty. He would have let someone else—”

“Then why did he run away? … I’m human, Miss Search. I hate this as much as anybody. But I’ve got my duty. And murder is murder. That woman there in the cottage—” He stopped and fumbled again, frowning, inside the long envelope. And pulled out a long lavender cord. “Do you recognize this?” he said.

She stared at it. Lavender—a bathrobe cord.

“It’s Miss Ludmilla Abbott’s, isn’t it?” he said and watched her. “Never mind answering.”

“What—”

“Eve Bohan was strangled. The rope that went up to the rafter came from the tool shed; Jonas recognized it. Do you remember how the rope was fastened?”

“No.”

“It was fastened actually to a rafter brace, not a rafter. And it wasn’t tied to the brace; it was tied to the eye of an iron hook—big enough to go over the two-by-four. Anybody, short or tall, could have flung that hook over the brace. Anybody could have stood on one of the chairs in the cottage, dragged Eve’s body up and knotted that rope around her neck. It wasn’t easy; her body was heavy. But anybody could have done it. The fatal mistake, in that moment of crazy relief when once it was done, was in removing the chair. Replacing it—in another room; instinctively trying to remove traces and removing the wrong thing. But that hook, Miss Search, came from the tool shed too. Jonas recognized it. And she was first strangled with something smaller and sharper than the rope, something that left marks. This?”

She had an impulse to cover her face with her hands. “I don’t know.”

He looked at the bathrobe cord thoughtfully, weighing the soft lavender folds in his big hand. It had been wet too.

“We found it,” he said, “in the woods. Hidden.” Someone came to the door, and the sheriff turned quickly. “Well, what is it, Jonas?”

Jonas came in. Cook followed him; she was a big fresh-faced woman, nervous so her eyes went from the sheriff to Search and back again swiftly. Her taffy-blond hair was screwed in a tight knot on her head; her pink clean fingers worked with a fold of her white apron.

“She says the scraps she gave Miss Search to feed the kitten came from Miss Abbott’s tray. Something she didn’t eat.”

“Steak,” said Cook nervously. “I took it right off the tray last night and put it in the refrigerator; she hadn’t touched it, so I didn’t throw it out. I—sometimes I can use up scraps like that.”

“Did you see Miss Search feed the kitten?”

“Well,” she hesitated, “no, I didn’t see it. She took the kitten to the back porch. But I’m sure she didn’t put poison in it.”

If Search had had doubts of Ludmilla’s story they vanished then. Someone had attempted to poison Ludmilla; Eve had been murdered. If there was a connection between the two, that might go toward clearing Richard. She turned quickly to the sheriff.

“I didn’t poison the kitten. There’s something—you must see Aunt Ludmilla; there’s something she can tell you.”

“I intend to see her as soon as she’s up,” said Pete Donny, glancing at the lavender bathrobe cord.

“But she knows—” Search stopped, thinking of Jonas and Cook. “It’s important.”

“All right,” said the sheriff. “That’s all now, Miss Search.”

On the way to the door she heard Jonas say: “The poison wasn’t intended, then, for the kitten. You ought to see that, Pete Donny. The cat hadn’t been in the house over twenty minutes—”

She would warn Ludmilla; she would tell her why she must tell the sheriff the truth. Besides, the dead kitten was not fancy. Ludmilla was really in danger.

But Howland came out of the small formal drawing room opposite.

“I was waiting for you,” he said quickly. “I tried to hear what was said in the library but I couldn’t. I hope you told the sheriff the truth.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. His eyes were smiling and warm; he looked tired, as all of them did after the night’s vigil, but his black hair was shining and smooth, his short dark face freshly shaven; he had on slacks and a yellow sweater under his loose-fitting tweed jacket. His eyes wavered briefly as she said nothing. Then he caught at her hands, still smiling.

“You’re not angry with me, Search? Richard did it; he as good as confessed it when he ran away. They’ll get him within forty-eight hours. Nobody can escape for long these days. You’d better tell them the truth.”

“Did you tell the sheriff that he came to the cottage to meet me? You told him the other things. You admitted he wanted a divorce; you told them Eve wouldn’t give it to him.”

“I did nothing of the kind. The sheriff drew his own conclusions.”

“He drew them from what you said. You—”

“Listen, darling, and believe me, I’m your friend and Richard’s friend too. It’s to his best interest to plead guilty. He’s guilty and—”

“You hate him, don’t you, Howie? I never knew that before.”

“I—” His opaque soft brown eyes did not move or change. He said, “I love you, Search.”

For a moment she did not speak. Voices, muffled, came from the library. In the dining room at the end of the hall a dish clattered thinly. Someone walked quickly along the up stairs hall and closed a door. If there had been any spark of feeling, any change of expression at all, in his eyes she would have appealed then to his generosity. But it was exactly as if she were looking into the turgid brown waters of a pool, so turgid and so still that there was no possible way of judging the depth.

“You are Richard’s lawyer,” she said, “and you pretended to be his friend. He trusted you.” She pulled her hands away from him. “I can’t.”

He kept on smiling, but his upper lip twitched a little backward. After a moment he said almost caressingly, it was so quiet: “You’ll regret this, Search.”

I
T WOULD BE BETTER
not to anger him further; she did realize that then. Besides, she must see Ludmilla at once. She turned abruptly away from him and went upstairs, but Howland, in the hall below, waited a moment and then crossed toward, she thought, the library.

A breakfast tray which looked untouched was on the table outside Ludmilla’s door. Ludmilla was at the window, staring out at the gray lake; she looked pale and old. Her china-blue eyes darkened when she heard of the kitten. But she said only. “You were quite right. I understand. I’ll tell the sheriff everything. Go now and eat your breakfast.”

Search went slowly downstairs again. She had reached the dining room when she remembered the lavender bathrobe cord. Calvin’s raincoat, Ludmilla’s bathrobe cord; there was only one certain fact, and that was that either was accessible not alone to Richard but to anyone in the house.

Breakfast was cold, but the coffee, in its electric heater, was still hot. She found some cereal and fruit.

She had finished when Calvin, whistling gently between his teeth, came quickly into the room. “Hello, Search,” he said. “God, I’ve got a headache. Is there coffee there?”

He poured himself some and came to sit opposite her.

“Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do,” he said.

“Calvin, is there any news of him?”

He shook his head. “None. But they’ll get him. I can’t imagine why he did it.”

“You were at the cottage last night with the sheriff and the others. What did they do?”

He swallowed a mouthful of coffee and made a grimace as its heat struck his throat.

“Looked at her. Looked around the cottage. Looked at everything. While Doc Jerym was looking at Eve the sheriff made a kind of round of the cottage and the grounds outside. Wouldn’t let the little fellow, Al, or me or Richard or Howie go with him. I don’t know what, if anything, he found outside, but he came back looking a little smug and asked Richard who’d been in the cottage besides Eve. Richard said nobody, but he never lies very well.”

“How did the sheriff know I was there?”

Calvin gulped more coffee and put his hand to his head. “I don’t know. Unless he saw something outside—heelprints maybe. Guessed it was a woman; popped on you because Ludmilla and Diana had alibis and you were the only woman left. I expect Dick’s anxiety to keep the women out of the thing suggested something to the sheriff; I don’t know.”

“Who told him Richard and I had planned to meet at the cottage?”

“That was true, then? I was afraid of it, the way you looked. I don’t know. Wait a minute—I think he walked part of the way back with Howland—at least Richard and I came on ahead then; Al and, I think, Howland and the sheriff came last. It was dark except for the flashlights—I’m not too sure. Doctor Jerym stayed in the cottage till the men came to take the—the body away. You …” He hesitated. “Can’t you think of something that’s proof that he didn’t do it—outside your feeling about it, I mean?”

“But that’s the convincing thing. He felt exactly as I felt, except he tried to do something for her and sent me away. Don’t you see?”

He nodded and stared at the table.

“He oughtn’t to have tried to escape, then. Well, we’ll hope for the best. The sheriff just went upstairs to talk to Ludmilla; the sheriff’s wonderful. I’m exhausted, and he’s sticking doggedly at it after having been up all night.”

He went to pour himself more coffee and, coming back, told her of the reporters and photographers.

“Howland says I mustn’t antagonize the press,” he said. “I told them what he said was safe to tell them.”

Howland. She remembered that when she saw how, in all the papers, Richard Bohan was blazoned forth as the prime suspect for the brutal, cunning murder of his wife, Eve Bohan.

That was, however, the following day. That day, Thursday, was mainly concerned with news of Richard. Or rather, as the hours went on, lack of news.

For he had apparently dropped completely out of sight. Richard and the old gray roadster. Yet an automobile—needing gas and oil, needing highways to travel upon—cannot be lost for long. Or a man.

Whenever the telephone rang (and that was frequent), whenever a police car came along the winding drive to the door, that was the first thing they thought. News of Richard?

Twice there were reports that he had been found, once in Milwaukee and once in Chicago; both were speedily proved false. Both, for the time being, were agonizing in their anxiety and suspense. Search wanted Richard to return and, somehow, prove his innocence—yet if he did return, or if he was found, he would be charged with murder. She began to see more and more clearly the weight of the evidence against him.

There were, however, in the course of the day certain occurrences. Shortly before lunch Dr Jerym telephoned and confirmed officially his first report. Eve had been “chloroformed; she had then been strangled by something thinner and sharper than the rope which, after her death, had been arranged to simulate suicide. A bathrobe cord? Yes, he said doubtfully, perhaps. They all knew of the lavender bathrobe cord, but Sheriff Donny kept his own counsel about whatever Ludmilla told him of the previous attempts to poison her.