The Oxford Book of American Det (54 page)

Farnsworth looked thoughtful.

“Maybe they would say she isn’t reasonable,” he pointed out. “Never mind the psychology. What you’ve got to get round are the physical facts. Here is the mysterious widow Topham entirely alone in the house; the only servant comes in by day. Here are one person’s footprints. Only that girl could have made the tracks; and, in fact, admits she did. It’s a physical impossibility for anybody else to have entered or left the house. How do you propose to get round that?”

“I don’t know,” said Jameson rather hopelessly. “But I want to hear her side of it first.

The only thing nobody seems to have heard, or even to be curious about, is what she thinks herself.”

Yet, when he met her at the cottage late that afternoon, she cut the ground from under his feet.

Twilight was coming down when he turned in at the gate, a bluish twilight in which the snow looked grey. Jameson stopped a moment at the gate, and stared across at the thin laurel-hedge dividing this property from Mrs. Topham’s. There was nothing remarkable about this hedge, which was some six feet high and cut through by a gateway like a Gothic arch. But in front of the arch, peering up at the snow-coated side of the hedge just above it, stood a large figure in cap and waterproof. Somehow he looked familiar. At his elbow another man, evidently the local Superintendent of Police, was holding up a camera; and a flash-bulb glared against the sky. Though he was too far away to hear anything, Jameson had a queer impression that the large man was laughing uproariously.

Harry Ventnor, whom he knew slightly, met Jameson at the door.

“She’s in there,” Harry explained, nodding towards the front room. “Er—don’t upset her, will you? Here, what the devil are they doing with that hedge?” He stared across the lawn.

“Upset her?” said Jameson with some asperity. “I’m here, if possible, to help her.

Won’t you or Mr. Brant give some assistance? Do you honestly think that Miss Brant in her rational senses could have done what they say she did?”

“In her rational senses?” repeated Harry. After looking at Jameson in a curious way, he said no more; he turned abruptly and hurried off across the lawn.

Yet Dorothy, when Jameson met her, gave no impression of being out of her rational senses. It was her straightforwardness he had always liked, the straightforwardness which warmed him now. They sat in the homely, firelit room, by the fireplace over which were the silver cups to denote Harry’s athletic and gymnastic prowess, and the trophies of John Brant’s earlier days at St. Moritz. Dorothy herself was an outdoor girl.

“To advise me?” she said. “You mean, to advise me what to say when they arrest me?”

“Well, they haven’t arrested you yet, Miss Brant.”

She smiled at him. “And yet I’ll bet that surprises you, doesn’t it? Oh, I know how deeply I’m in! I suppose they’re only poking about to get more evidence. And then there’s a new man here, a man named March, from Scotland Yard. I feel almost flattered.”

Jameson sat up. He knew now why that immense figure by the hedge had seemed familiar.

“Not Colonel March?”

“Yes. Rather a nice person, really,” answered Dorothy, shading her eyes with her hand.

Under her light tone he felt that her nerves were raw. “Then again, they’ve been all through my room. And they can’t find the watch and the brooch and the rings I’m supposed to have stolen from Aunt Renee Topham. Aunt Renée!”

“So I’ve heard. But that’s the point: what are they getting at? A watch and a brooch and a couple of rings! Why should you steal that from anybody, let alone her?”

“Because they weren’t hers,” said Dorothy, suddenly looking up with a white face, and speaking very fast. “They belonged to my mother.”

“Steady.”

“My mother is dead,” said Dorothy. “I suppose it wasn’t just the watch and the rings, really. That was the excuse, the breaking-point, the thing that brought it on. My mother was a great friend of Mrs. Topham. It was ‘Aunt Renée’ this and ‘Aunt Renée’ that, while my mother was alive to pamper her. But my mother wanted me to have those trinkets, such as they were. And Aunt Renée Topham coolly appropriated them, as she appropriates everything else she can. I never knew what had happened to them until yesterday.

“Do you know that kind of woman? Mrs. Topham is really charming, aristocratic and charming, with the cool charm that takes all it can get and expects to go on getting it. I know for a fact that she’s really got a lot of money, though what she does with it I can’t imagine: and the real reason why she buries herself in the country is that she’s too mean to risk spending it in town. I never could endure her. Then, when my mother died and I didn’t go on pampering Aunt Renée as she thought I should, it was a very different thing. How that woman loves to talk about us! Harry’s debts, and my father’s shaky business. And me.”

She checked herself again, smiling at him. “I’m sorry to inflict all this on you.”

“You’re not inflicting anything on me.”

“But it’s rather ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“’Ridiculous,’” said Jameson grimly, “is not the word I should apply to it. So you had a row with her?”

“Oh, a glorious row. A beautiful row. The grandmother of all rows.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. When I saw her wearing my mother’s watch.” She looked at the fire, over which the silver cups glimmered.

“Maybe I said more than I should have,” she went on. “But I got no support from my father or Harry. I don’t blame Dad: he’s so worried about business, and that bad arm of his troubles him so much sometimes, that all he wants is peace and quiet. As for Harry, he doesn’t really like her; but she took rather a fancy to him, and that flatters him. He’s a kind of male counterpart of Aunt Renée. Out of a job?—well, depend on somebody else. And I’m in the middle of all this. It’s ‘Dolly, do this,’ and ‘Dolly, do that,’ and ‘Good old Dolly; she won’t mind.’ But I do mind. When I saw that woman standing there wearing my mother’s watch, and saying commiserating things about the fact that we couldn’t afford a servant, I felt that something ought to be done about it.

So I suppose I must have done something about it.”

Jameson reached out and took her hands. “All right,” he said. “Did you do it?”

“I don’t know! That’s just the trouble.”

“But surely—“

“No. That was one of the things Mrs. Topham always had such sport with. You don’t know much about anything when you walk in your sleep.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” she went on, after another pause. “Utterly ludicrous. But not to me! Not a bit. Ever since I was a child, when I’ve been over-tired or nervously exhausted, it’s happened. Once I came downstairs and built and lit a fire in the dining-room, and set the table for a meal. I admit it doesn’t happen often, and never before with results like this.” She tried to laugh. “But why do you think my father and Harry looked at me like that? That’s the worst of it. I really don’t know whether I’m a near-murderer or not.”

This was bad.

Jameson admitted that to himself, even as his reason argued against it. He got up to prowl round the room, and her brown eyes never left him. He could not look away; he saw the tensity of her face in every corner.

“Look here,” he said quietly; “this is nonsense.”

“Oh, please. Don’t you say that. It’s not very original.”

“But do you seriously think you went for that woman and still don’t know anything about it now?”

“Would it be more difficult than building a fire?”

“I don’t ask you that.
Do
you think you did it?”

“No,” said Dorothy.

That question did it. She trusted him now. There was understanding and sympathy between them, a mental force and communication that could be felt as palpably as the body gives out heat.

“Deep down inside me, no, I don’t believe it. I think I should have waked up. And there was no—well, no blood on me, you know. But how are you going to get round the evidence?”

(The evidence. Always the evidence.)

“I did go across there. I can’t deny that I remember half waking up as I was coming back. I was standing in the middle of the lawn in the snow. I had on my fur coat over my pyjamas; I remember feeling snow on my face and my wet slippers under me. I was shivering. And I remember running back. That’s all. If I didn’t do it, how could anybody else have done it?”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed a new voice. “Do you mind if, both figuratively and literally, I turn on the light?”

Dennis Jameson knew the owner of that voice. There was the noise of someone fumbling after an electric switch; then, in homely light, Colonel March beamed and basked. Colonel March’s seventeen stone was swathed round in a waterproof as big as a tent. He wore a large tweed cap. Under this his speckled face glowed in the cold; and he was smoking, with gurgling relish, the large-bowled pipe which threatened to singe his sandy moustache.

“Ah, Jameson!” he said. He took the pipe out of his mouth and made a gesture with it.

“So it was you. I thought I saw you come in. I don’t want to intrude; but I think there are at least two things that Miss Brant ought to know.” Dorothy turned round quickly.

“First,” pursued Colonel March, “that Mrs. Topham is out of danger. She is at least able, like an after-dinner speaker, to say a few words; though with about as much coherence. Second, that out on your lawn there is one of the queerest objects I ever saw in my life.”

Jameson whistled.

“You’ve met this fellow?” he said to Dorothy. “He is the head of the Queer Complaints Department. When they come across something outlandish, which may be a hoax or a joke but, on the other hand, may be a serious crime, they shout for him.

His mind is so obvious that he hits it every time. To my certain knowledge he has investigated a disappearing room, chased a walking corpse, and found an invisible piece of furniture. If he goes so far as to admit that a thing is a bit unusual, you can look out for squalls.”

Colonel March nodded quite seriously.

“Yes.” he said. “That is why I am here, you see. They thought we might be interested in that footprint.”

“That footprint?” cried Dorothy. “You mean—?”

“No, no; not your footprint, Miss Brant. Another one. Let me explain. I want you, both of you, to look out of that window; I want you to take a look at the laurel-hedge between this cottage and the other. The light is almost gone, but study it.” Jameson went to the window and peered out.

“Well?” he demanded. “What about it? It’s a hedge.”

“As you so shrewdly note, it is a hedge. Now let me ask you a question. Do you think a person could walk along the top of that hedge?”

“Good lord, no!”

“No? Why not?”

“I don’t see the joke,” said Jameson, “but I’ll make the proper replies. Because the hedge is only an inch or two thick. It wouldn’t support a cat. If you tried to stand on it, you’d come through like a ton of bricks.”

“Quite true. Then what would you say if I told you that someone weighing at least twelve stone must have climbed up the side of it?”

Nobody answered him; the thing was so obviously unreasonable that nobody could answer. Dorothy Brant and Dennis Jameson looked at each other.

“For,” said Colonel March, “it would seem that somebody at least climbed up there.

Look at the hedge again. You see the arch cut in it for a gate? Just above that, in the snow along the side of the hedge, there are traces of a footprint. It is a large footprint.

I think it can be identified by the heel, though most of it is blurred and sketchy.” Walking quickly and heavily, Dorothy’s father came into the room. He started to speak, but seemed to change his mind at the sight of Colonel March. He went over to Dorothy, who took his arm.

“Then,” insisted Jameson, “somebody did climb up on the hedge?”

“I doubt it,” said Colonel March. “How could he?”

Jameson pulled himself together.

“Look here, sir,” he said quietly. ‘”How could he?’ is correct. I never knew you to go on like this without good reason. I know it must have some bearing on the case. But I don’t care if somebody climbed up on the hedge. I don’t care if he danced the Big Apple on it. The hedge leads nowhere. It doesn’t lead to Mrs. Topham’s; it only divides the two properties. The point is, how did somebody manage to get from here to that other cottage—across sixty feet of unbroken snow—without leaving a trace on it? I ask you that because I’m certain you don’t think Miss Brant is guilty.” Colonel March looked apologetic.

“I know she isn’t,” he answered.

In Dorothy Brant’s mind was again that vision of the heavy globed paper-weight inside which, as you shook it, a miniature snowstorm arose. She felt that her own wits were being shaken and clouded in the same way.

“I knew Dolly didn’t do it,” said John Brant, suddenly putting his arm round his daughter’s shoulder. “I knew that. I told them so. But—“ Colonel March silenced him.

“The real thief, Miss Brant, did not want your mother’s watch and brooch and chain and rings. It may interest you to know what he did want. He wanted about fifteen hundred pounds of notes and gold sovereigns, tucked away in that same shabby desk.

You seem to have wondered what Mrs. Topham did with her money. That is what she did with it. Mrs. Topham, by the first words she could get out in semi-consciousness, was merely a common or garden variety of miser. That dull-looking desk in her parlour was the last place any burglar would look for a hoard. Any burglar, that is, except one.”

“Except one?” repeated John Brant, and his eyes seemed to turn inwards.

A sudden ugly suspicion came to Jameson.

“Except one who knew, yes. You, Miss Brant, had the blame deliberately put on you.

There was no malice in it. It was simply the easiest way to avoid pain and trouble to the gentleman who did it.

“Now hear what you really did,” said Colonel March, his face darkening. “You did go out into the snow last night. But you did not go over to Mrs. Topham’s; and you did not make those two artistic sets of footprints in the snow. When you tell us in your own story that you felt snow sting on your face as well as underfoot, it requires no vast concentration, surely, to realise that the snow was still falling. You went out into it, like many sleep-walkers; you were shocked into semi-consciousness by the snow and the cold air; and you returned long before the end of the snowfall, which covered any real prints you may have made.