Wolf in Man's Clothing (27 page)

I was thinking that myself, rather vehemently. He went on, “Conrad had to get the poison, somehow. It's the only way that hasn't been eliminated—so far as I can discover, at any rate. All that method needed were three things—the digitalis, a knowledge of the household and where to get more brandy, and opportunity to make the change after Conrad was dead.” He looked at me gravely; I think he felt sorry for me. I know he was almost as frantic as I was, and as Craig was, about Drue's disappearance; he only controlled himself better and went on about his job.

Constantly, every few moments, there would be a report from someone—somewhere—looking for Drue. Troopers mainly, tall and well built and military-looking in their dark, trim uniforms, in the way they snapped into the room, snapped to attention, took their orders, snapped out again. But still time went on and there was no news.

He stopped then to listen to a report of a girl picked up near Northampton. It wasn't Drue; this girl was five feet eight and had black hair and wore a lambskin coat. (She turned out, as a matter of fact, to be an innocent Smith College Senior out for a walk and was highly indignant.)

And then he went back to Maud. “Mrs. Chivery, I
must
ask you again. If you know you
must
tell me. Why was your husband killed?”

Maud shrank back, her eyes sunken deep in her face, her black dress like heavy mourning. “I tell you I don't know. I've told you that many times!”

And Craig, watching and listening, gray with anxiety, leaned forward. “Maud—Claud said you quarreled. Lately. About money. What was it?”

She whirled on him. “I didn't murder Claud,” she said.

“Why did you quarrel?”

She eyed him for a moment, her little face taking on a deep, queer flush. Then she told him. “It was an—an investment I wanted to make. He thought it unwise and refused to sell some bonds we owned together. That's all. It was nothing.”

“What investment?”

She refused to tell. “It's a secret,” she said. “It has nothing to do with this.”

I said, rather absently really, for I didn't think Maud or anybody in his senses was out to buy a Spanish castle just then. “Truckloads of jewels.”

Maud whirled around toward me then—silently as always—but there was alarm in her eyes. “I don't know what you mean!” she cried sharply.

I didn't either; but I could and did quote her words to me over the nickels, and quite explicitly.

“Nonsense,” said Maud flatly. “I said nothing of the kind—or if I did, it meant nothing.”

There was a silence—and again that look of concentration in Craig's eyes. And another trooper came in to say that the knife that had killed Chivery came from the Brent kitchen; Beevens, he said was willing to swear to it. But no one knew just when it disappeared.

It was all written down in shorthand.

Maud silently disappeared and I think it was just after that that Beevens himself made his not inconsiderable contribution to the thing.

“It's about the vase, sir,” he said to Nugent, his blue eyes worried. “Or rather, I mean about the noise—the sound of something falling, if you'll remember, the night Mr. Brent—died.”

“What do you mean?” said Nugent. Craig got up on his elbow to listen. I stood there, in my starched white uniform, at the foot of the bed. I couldn't seem to settle down and it did no good to prowl the corridors and look out the windows and keep going back to Drue's room.

“I think I know what it was, sir,” said Beevens and told his queer little story. He'd felt all along, and Mr. Craig had agreed with him, he said, with a side glance at Craig, that whatever that sound had been it had not indicated an intruder in the house and that therefore it must have some special significance. It was not, in other words, accident.

“So I took a look around,” said Beevens. “This morning I found it.”

“Found what?”

“The vase, sir, broken in fifteen or twenty pieces, all of them gathered up and wrapped in brown paper and shoved into the bottom of one of the ash barrels. The ash barrels,” said Beevens austerely, “are removed once a week by a truck from the village. There was also a large, thick twine—at least twenty feet long, and one end of it was tied around the lower part of the vase. The kind of twine that I keep in my pantry for tying up parcels; anybody could have taken it.”

He went on to elaborate, and he had a theory. It was a large vase, at least three feet high, he said, and heavy. Its rightful place was on a table in the second-floor corridor. He hadn't missed it because the household had been so upset that he hadn't really taken a look around the upper hall as he usually did (regularly) just to be sure it was all in order, but had left it entirely to the housemaid. And she had apparently assumed that he had removed the vase. But when he had missed it, he had looked for it with the result that he believed it had been placed at the top of, possibly, the back stairs.

“With the other end of the twine at the bottom of the stairs, perhaps,” said Beevens, and stopped significantly.

Nugent's green eyes were narrow. Craig said, “You mean somebody placed it there and hung the string down the stairway and then gave it a jerk at the right time from below.”

“It would fall, I believe,” said Beevens, “in a series of thuds upon the treads which would sound extremely loud at night. It broke, perhaps at the bottom of the service stairs—which accounts for the crash the nurse mentions and which I myself heard. However, the pieces of the vase must have been picked up at once and hidden,” He looked a little bleak. “I don't know who could have done it. But it was a very heavy vase.”

Craig turned to Nugent. “Why? Why would anyone …”

“To get Miss Cable—or Miss Keate or both of them out of the library, of course.” Nugent's green eyes were intent. “So whoever was waiting to dispose of the poisoned brandy could do so. But who picked up the pieces and hid them before we got here? There was nothing there when we looked, and whoever changed the brandy had to work fast. It's impossible for anybody to be in two places at once.”

“Yes, sir,” said Beevens respectfully and stubbornly. “You might look at the pieces of the vase for fingerprints, sir.”

“Well, naturally,” said Nugent. “The wrapping paper, too. Although I doubt … Where was the vase, as a rule?”

“On a table at the south end of the corridor, sir.”

“South. Then anyone carrying it to the back stairs would have to pass this door. H'm—the back stairs and the front stairs are not far from each other; both in the middle part of the house. Well,” Nugent looked at me. “You heard something bump against the door shortly before Drue Cable screamed. When, presumably, the murderer realized that there would have to be a sure-fire device to get her out of the library before anyone came in order to change the brandy. Was it the vase?”

“It could have been. Yes. It must have been an accident …”

“Naturally. But when you opened the door you really saw no one?”

“But I've told you that. There wasn't anyone.”

“Did you go to the door immediately?”

“Yes,” I said. “That is, no. I mean
I
was a little surprised. I waited for a few seconds and then went. …”

“You waited long enough for whoever was there to have time to get away?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

He didn't say “What a help you are” but he looked it. “No more rabbit hunting in your vicinity lately?”

“No,” I said. But thought nevertheless of the sense of threat that had crept like a live thing, like a wolf prowling and secretly waiting for prey, into every corner and every shadow and every empty room of that ill-fated house.

Well. Nugent sent for Nicky then and Peter. Peter came first and when he heard of the hypothesis of the broken vase, said he thought it very likely. I watched him closely, for by that time I suspected everybody, but his boyish, blunt face looked merely worried and sorry and perplexed.

“But I didn't see anyone,” he said. “I glanced down the back stairway, too, and all along the corridors in the back of the house. I thought a window had been broken, from the sound.”

“Did you see any pieces of the vase?” asked Nugent.

“No. But I wasn't looking for that. I was looking for a person.”

“Pete,” said Craig suddenly, “did you see Nicky anywhere? I mean, in the corridor, on the stairs—anywhere?”

“No. But I kept thinking there was a thief or some kind of intruder. I opened a couple of windows and hung out each one trying to see someone but didn't. It's the dark of the moon and was cloudy. Finally I heard voices and came back downstairs. Everybody was very upset. Maud was crying at the telephone. Nicky was in the library when I got downstairs again.”

Nicky, when questioned, again simply denied knowing anything of vase, stairway or twine. “Why would I do anything like that?” he said calmly. “I didn't murder Conrad. I know nothing about it. I didn't fix up anything like that to get Drue and Miss Keate out of the library. Why should I? I was sound asleep when the sound that you say was the vase rolling downstairs and breaking awakened me. Have you any news of Drue?”

And of course there was none.

I got up and made another fruitless trip around the house—to her room, up and down the stairs, into the library. I don't know what I was doing, really. When I got back Peter and Nicky were gone and Craig had given Nugent the Frederic Miller checks. I don't know why he hadn't given them to him sooner, unless it was because all that day Craig was fighting a queer kind of battle inside himself. He was like a man groping in the dark for a formless thing he had never seen, whose presence he could only surmise. And whose existence, even if he proved it, was still not evidence of murder.

But he told Nugent everything he dared to tell him.

“I didn't know this till last night,” he said, their heads close together over the endorsed, canceled checks made out to Frederic Miller. “But I think I know what they are. And I think it may have something to do with my father's death.”

Nugent's eyes glittered green fire. Craig said wearily, “I didn't at first connect it with my father's death. I can't really connect it now—except the checks ought not to have been found where they were found.”

“Where ought they to be?”

“In his desk, of course,” said Craig. “He kept all cancelled checks for five years. He kept them together, by the month and year, in one of the big drawers of his desk. Obviously they were removed. He may have removed them himself. Or Alexia may have done so. Certainly she must have known they were there, below the suede jewel case.”

Nugent looked at me. “Exactly how and where did you find them?” he asked, although Craig had already covered the main points of my discovery. I told him, however, in detail. When I'd finished he looked for a long time at the checks.

“Do you know the handwriting?” he asked Craig.

“No. So far as I know, I've never seen it before. Of course, one doesn't remember handwriting accurately. But I've been thinking of that, too.”

“We can investigate; we will.” He turned the checks over again to look at the cancellation. “They've been cashed at different banks.”

“Yes, I noticed that,” said Craig. “Two in New York City and one in Newark. Presumably this Frederic Miller was well enough known at each bank to cash the checks. Obviously he either had accounts in these banks or some other means of identification.”

“M'm,” said Nugent, which was not illuminating. With me the thought of time was uppermost. Time and Drue. I said, “By the time you investigate those checks and, if luck is with you, identify and locate Frederic Miller—well, anything could happen. You can't do it in a day.”

“No,” said Nugent slowly. “But almost in a day. The F.B.I. are always ready to help with anything like this, and they have a vast system of records.”

“What's in your mind, Nugent?” asked Craig suddenly.

“I'm not sure that anything is there,” said Nugent. His words were candid but his look evasive. Craig said, “Do you think this Miller has got involved with the law at some time?”

“It's always possible,” said Nugent.

“But …” began Craig and then stopped, and Nugent said, “What were you going to say, Brent?”

“Well, it's—it's nothing really. Except I've had all night to think about it, you see, and to wonder why those particular checks were removed from the others, yet not destroyed. And why they were found just there. If Alexia knows, she may tell and she may not tell. I don't see how she could help knowing that they were there; it's possible that she put them there. But why?”

“Exactly. Why? I'll talk to her. But in the meantime, there's something you want to say, Brent. Isn't there? Better get it out.”

“All right,” said Craig slowly. “It's not very pleasant. But it was only a—a prejudice on his part. It didn't last long. It's comprehensible. And I know that after the war began he had an abrupt change of heart. He still didn't—well, didn't really want me to go into the air force; that is, he used my wish to do so as a lever for something else he wanted. …”Craig glanced briefly at me, and Nugent said nothing. Craig went on, “But the fact is for—oh, for years he has been—or rather
had
been—well …”

“Germanic in sympathy,” said Nugent quietly.

“Yes,” said Craig as quietly. “How did you know?”

“Obvious,” said Nugent. “Coat of arms in his study was of early German origin. I looked it up in a history of Heraldry. There are numerous books about genealogy in his study, too. I questioned the servants in detail. He was very proud of his family line and of his descent.”

“Yes,” said Craig, “but it didn't mean anything, really. It was only a kind of hobby with him. He read German history, you know; loved it when some early robber baron, or later statesman, or title was connected with his family. He was always like that. During the First World War though, he swerved instantly around; he was all on the side of the Allies and against Germany. I knew he would do the same thing when this war came and he did.”