Yellow Room (10 page)

“Maybe George liked them!”

“You don’t understand.” She was fairly drugged with amazement. “They were all in the house last fall. I don’t understand. George wouldn’t touch them, or Lucy. It looks as though someone meant to save them.”

She reached up for the china, and Dane slapped her hands smartly.

“Don’t touch,” he said. “You’ve got to learn this game, my girl, and it isn’t a pretty one.”

She was still bewildered.

“I wonder,” she said. “Freda says she saw a man in the grounds last night. Do you think he was after these? It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

He did not think it sounded silly. He thought it sounded rather sinister, in fact. But he said nothing. He found a battered tin tray and using his handkerchief to move them he placed the china, the photograph, and the framed sampler on it. Then, tucking the spade under his arm and remarking that he felt like a moving van, he left her, taking a short cut through the trees to the Burton house and grinning when he saw Alex’s face. He put the tray down on the living-room table and eyed it lovingly.

“What’s Tim Murphy doing these days?” he inquired.

Alex rallied.

“Not so much, sir. You know the private detective business. It’s kind of up and down.”

“Good,” Dane said cheerfully. “Let’s hope it’s down. I think we need him here, Alex. Better see if you can locate him. And don’t call from the village. I have an idea Floyd has the telephones pretty well tied up.”

Alex looked rebellious, but Dane ignored it.

“Tell him to take the night train from Boston if he can make it,” he said. “You can meet him tomorrow morning with the car. And have him bring a camera. I want the prints on this stuff.”

“Isn’t that Floyd’s business?”

Dane’s strong thin face hardened.

“Listen,” he said harshly. “I’m making it my business, and I’m working fast. There’s a girl over there who may not be safe, and I can’t bother with small-town police just now. Get that, and keep your mouth shut. Tell Tim to bring some old clothes too, the worse the better. He may have to do some gardening.”

This idea cheered Alex so enormously that he made an excellent imitation of an omelet for lunch, singing over his frying pan as he did so.

Carol did not tell Maggie about her discovery in the tool house. She felt tired and discouraged. The mystery was deepening, and a second attempt to see Lucy brought no results. The hospital reported over the telephone that she was still not allowed visitors.

Because she was weary she did something she had not done since she came. She used the elevator to go upstairs, and it was in the elevator that she found something. She had not turned on the light, but she felt something under her foot as it slowly climbed, and reaching down felt for it. It was only a bobby pin, so she held it indifferently until she reached her room.

There she glanced at it. It was a pale color, and there was a long hair caught in it. She felt rather sick as she looked at it, for the hair was blond, and she was certain it had belonged to the murdered girl.

She put it on her toilet table, and lay down on the chaise longue. She did not realize that it had any significance, except that the girl had at one time or another been in the elevator. And she had not much time to think about it. Nora reported a message that the inquest would be held on Thursday, and that she was to attend. But there was a second message, which filled her with dread. Colonel Richardson hoped she would dine with him that night.

She had known it must happen. Ever since Don’s plane had crashed into the sea she had had these solitary meals with his father, here in Maine last summer, once or twice in New York when he was on his way to Florida or coming back from there. Always she dreaded them, his obstinate refusal to accept his son’s death, his determined cheerfulness and plans for her future—and Don’s.

Nevertheless, she sent word that she would go, and getting up drearily hunted out a dinner dress and sent it down to be pressed. She did not lie down again. She pulled a chair to the window and sat there looking out.

Could Elinor have been in Bayside when Marcia claimed to have seen her? And if so, why? She went over Elinor’s conduct at Newport. She had certainly been unlike herself. She did not often have headaches, yet she had spent one whole afternoon and evening shut away with one. And there was the time when Carol had found her at the safe in her bedroom. She had been surprised, not too pleasantly.

She knew Elinor through and through. Behind her lovely face was determination and a certain hardness. If she cared for anyone it was for Greg. But if Howard was threatening her position and security she might go to any length to preserve them. Still, Elinor and murder!

She tried to think clearly. If the girl had come deliberately to the house it had been to see someone. Not Lucy. Surely not Lucy. Then it was either her mother or herself, or both. But what story had she told, that Lucy Norton had put her in the yellow room? It must have been good, for Lucy to accept a stranger. For a moment she wondered about Greg, then she dismissed him. He had been away for a year, and he was deeply in love with Virginia. Turn things about as she would she came back to Elinor, Elinor who would have known how her mother valued the tea set and the other things now in the tool house.

Having reached that point she picked up the telephone and called long-distance; and Bessie at her switchboard in the village pricked up her ears.

She got Elinor without trouble.

“I want you to come up here,” she said without preamble. “I’m not taking this thing alone, and the inquest is on Thursday.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Elinor’s voice was sharp. “Why on earth should I come? Anyhow, we’re giving a dinner that night. I couldn’t possibly get away.”

“A dinner? Who for? Greg?”

“Greg’s in New York, and Mother’s having a fit. But he has no idea of going to Maine. I know that. Why don’t you close the house and go back home? Mother won’t go to Crestview now, and she loathes it here.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Carol said tartly. “We’ve had a murder here. I can’t leave. You’d better come, Elinor. Your name may be dragged into this yet.”

“If you mean that story of Marcia’s, don’t be a fool. You know Marcia.”

“I do. And I know you could have been here. You’d better bring your alibi with you.”

Elinor laughed, without mirth.

“I suppose you know that that girl was asking for you in New York. The doorman reported it to the police this morning. That leaves us all involved, doesn’t it?”

“The more reason for you to come.”

There was a brief silence. Carol could almost see Elinor, her active mind weighing the pros and cons of the situation. When she spoke again she had evidently decided.

“I dare say the telephone operator will testify, if Marcia doesn’t,” she said. “You’ve certainly given her plenty to think about. I suppose I’ll have to come. It’s absurd, of course. I can take the train Wednesday night. You’d better meet me.”

“I’ll send a taxi,” Carol said shortly. “And listen, Elinor. Don’t bring your maid. I can’t take care of her, and it’s quiet here anyhow. She’d be bored to death.”

“Quiet!” said Elinor. “You don’t sound quiet.” She rang off, and Carol went back to her chair. Her room usually quieted her, with its picture window looking out over the water, its dusty rose walls, its French blue furniture and white rug. It had been an oasis of peace, too, after the shock of Don’s death. Now she glanced at his picture. Incredible that he was gone, she thought, and that she was here alone. He had been so alive; he and Terry Ward tramping in and out of the house, raiding the kitchen together, golfing and swimming together, with her tagging along. They had all been too young for Greg and Elinor, of course. And Don had never liked Greg. She didn’t know why, unless he was jealous of him, his plane, his good looks, the big house and the money.

Greg had only laughed about her engagement.

Nevertheless, she felt better now that Elinor was coming. They were not particularly congenial, but Elinor had brains. She was far more intelligent than Greg, who was in some ways still the little boy who never grew up. And Elinor’s hard common sense was what she needed now. She had put her head back and closed her eyes when Dane found her there, late in the afternoon.

He had had a busy time. He had called Floyd at the police station, but he was out, and Jim Mason innocently gave him a piece of news; that the doorman at the Spencer apartment house had notified his precinct station house that somebody answering the dead girl’s description had called there last Thursday morning.

“They’d gone,” Jim said. “She must have followed them.”

“Not here,” Dane said shortly. “They weren’t here. Who did she ask for?”

“Carol Spencer, he says. Wait a minute. It’s here somewhere.”

Dane could hear shuffling among some papers. When he spoke again he was evidently reading.

“Stated that she asked for Miss Spencer, and that he told her the Spencer family had left for the summer,” he read. “Did not say where they had gone.”

“Thanks, Mason.”

He rang off. It was another thread, he thought, pointing in the same direction. The dead girl had known where to find Carol Spencer. But that had been on Thursday, and she had reached the village Friday morning. She had evidently not known about the Newport visit.

Out on the porch he wondered why the case was interesting him so much. He had had worse ones, many of them. And he knew he was not helping his leg any. Alex’s disapproval followed him wherever he went. He sat there for some time, feeling tired and uncertain. The breeze was ruffling the surface of the bay, and a great sea eagle was drifting with the wind. A navy dirigible was moving oceanward, and he watched it, scowling. For the climb up the hill had told him something. He was not ready to go back to his work. If he did, they would put him on a desk job. He had missed so much, he thought savagely, and now here he sat like an old dog, licking his wounds.

His inertia did not last long. When he heard Alex snoring after the lunch dishes had been washed he tackled the hillside once more.

This time he did not go by way of Crestview. He went up through the woods from the Burton place and, concealed by the trees and heavy undergrowth, began to work down the slope. The air was cooler by that time, although the light was not so good, and it was by pure chance that he stumbled on something which proved his theory correct.

He had thrown away his cigarette and ground it out with his heel. Within five inches of his foot something partly hidden by dead leaves was shining. He stooped and picked it up.

After dropping it in his pocket he turned and retraced his steps, taking a line from the tool house to where he had found it and going on from there. The growth was particularly heavy. There were times when he had to crawl, and other times when an outcropping of rock forced him to detour. But he found nothing more, and at last, dirty and discouraged, he went down to the Spencer house and to follow an astounded Nora up the stairs.

“That Major Dane is here, miss,” she said. “I told him you were resting, but he said it was important. He said not to get up. He’ll take only a minute.”

“I’ll go down. Ask him to wait.”

Dane was behind Nora, however, and he came without ceremony into the room. Distracted as she was, Carol smiled when she saw him. His slacks were stained, his sweater was snagged, and there was a long scratch along one cheek. He grinned sheepishly.

“You’d never guess they’re after me for the movies, would you?” he said. He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Sorry to barge in like this. You look as though you needed a rest. Delayed shock, probably.”

She turned wide candid eyes on him.

“Not delayed shock. Just one shock after another. I don’t believe that girl was killed in the house, Major Dane. I think she was brought in later. That’s why the front door was open.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow. Who opened it in the first place?”

“Perhaps she did it herself.” She got up and going to her toilet table picked up the bobby pin.

“I found it in the elevator,” she told him. “It’s a bobby pin, if you know what that is.”

He took it and went to the window with it.

“In the elevator?” he said, after a minute. “Where’s that? I haven’t seen an elevator.”

“You can’t tell it’s there unless you know about it. The doors are solid. There are two large closets, one on each floor, and Mother had it put there.”

“Where is it?”

“The upper door opens next to the linen closet. I just happened to use it today. I was tired.”

“It hasn’t been used since you came?”

“I suppose the bags were brought up in it. They usually are. But that pin is for light hair, and the hair in it is blond. None of us here is a blond, and—she was, wasn’t she?”

He nodded absently. Of course the elevator had been used, he thought. If there had been any prints they would be gone now. Like the linen closet. Probably like the spade handle. Probably like everything in the whole damned case. But if the elevator was concealed it meant that someone who knew about it had used it to carry the girl’s body to where it had been found.

“I suppose it was well known? The elevator, I mean?”

“Mother always used it. It wasn’t any secret.”

He said nothing. He folded the bobby pin in a clean handkerchief and put it back into his pocket. Then he opened his hand and placed something on the chaise longue beside her. She raised up to see it better. It was a large metal initial, such as is fastened on a woman’s handbag. It was an
M,
and she looked from it to his impassive face.

“Where did you find it?” she asked.

“I went up the hill again this afternoon. It wasn’t far from the top.”

“Anyone could have lost it, couldn’t they?”

“Not where I found it,” he said grimly. “No woman ever carried a handbag through that brush. It hadn’t been there long either. It’s not even tarnished.”

She began to feel frightened. It had nothing to do with the metal initial on the couch. It concerned the man beside her. Elinor could laugh at Marcia. She could and probably would wrap Floyd and the district attorney and all the rest of them around her delicate finger tips. But this man was different. He had a bulldog tenacity, an unsmiling determination that began to alarm her. He must have seen it in her face, for he got up impatiently.