Yellow Room (26 page)

“You didn’t telephone your brother to meet you here?”

“He was never here at all.”

“Now look, Mrs. Hilliard,” he said patiently. “Part of the truth is not enough. Who carried her body up in the elevator and left it in the closet, so that it would not be found and you would have time to get away? Who took her clothing and buried it? And who later on set fire to the closet? I need those answers if I’m to save Greg.”

“I don’t know,” she said, despair in her voice. “I never buried her clothes. I never touched—her. And why would I try to burn her? It’s terrible. It’s sickening to think of.”

“You left her where she was?”

“Yes. I thought she was dead. I didn’t know. I hoped she was dead. She was dreadful, a common tart and after money, of course. I drove up that night, and I brought most of my valuables with me. I wanted to buy her off, to get a divorce, anything, and I couldn’t get my hands on much money without telling Howard.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all,” she said, and closed her eyes.

Dane felt a momentary pity for her. If she was telling the truth she was only innocently involved. But he had not finished.

“If that’s really all,” he said, “I wonder why you set fire to the hill? You must have known what was there.”

She shrugged slightly. He felt she was on guard once more.

“What else could I do?” she demanded, her former defiant self again. “Her clothes hadn’t been found, and you and Carol were searching the place. You believed they were there, and she had had that dreadful marriage certificate with her in her handbag. I didn’t want it found.”

“Does Greg know you did it?”

“I never told him. He still doesn’t know anything, except that she had written him she was coming east—to blow the lid off, she said.”

“You know he had no alibi.”

She lay back exhausted on her pillows.

“If you know Greg,” she said weakly, “you’d understand. He loathed her. He couldn’t even face her. When he got my telephone message that I had seen her he simply went on a binge. He didn’t even know she was dead until he saw the papers in New York. Even then he wasn’t sure it was the same girl. He didn’t really know anything until he got here.”

Her voice trailed off, and he got up hastily.

“I’ll get your nurse,” he said. “Maybe things aren’t so bad, Mrs. Hilliard. If you have anything more to tell me let me know.”

She did not open her eyes.

“Does all this have to come out?” she asked weakly.

“Perhaps not. I can’t promise, of course.”

But it was his final question that roused her to genuine surprise.

“Is Terry Ward concerned in all this?” he inquired.

“Terry! Good heavens, what has he got to do with it?”

He stood up, looking down at her. He had not liked her. To him she was the epitome of all grasping self-indulgent women. Now, however, she looked really exhausted.

“Just one thing more,” he said. “Your mother’s china tea set. How did it get to the tool house?”

She did not even move.

“I can’t imagine,” she said wearily. “It sounds like one of Mother’s better ideas. She hides things, you know. And who cares anyhow?”

He was only partially convinced as he drove home. He believed that she had told the truth, so far as she knew it. The girl had been dead when she got there on that futile frantic excursion of hers. But he still felt that she was holding something back; that if she did not know she at least suspected the identity of the man who killed the girl and frightened Lucy to death, and later shot her.

On the way out he met Dr. Harrison. He had come from the Wards’, and was trying desperately to get a nurse, for the night at least.

“I may have one tomorrow,” he said worriedly. “But I need one tonight. Mrs. Ward had a stroke this morning, and old Nat is useless. There’s only a maid with her.”

“Why not ask Marcia Dalton?” Dane said idly. “She’s had some training.”

And was only aware after he got into his car that he had had a really brilliant idea.

M
ARCIA ARRIVED AT THE
Ward house at nine o’clock that night, looking efficient and calm. Old Mr. Ward himself let her in, and took both her hands.

“My dear girl,” he said, “how kind of you. She is—she is quite helpless, you know.” To his own embarrassment his eyes filled with tears. He released her hands and got out a meticulously folded handkerchief. “After more than fifty years,” he said unsteadily. “It’s hard.”

“It won’t do her any good if you yourself get sick,” Marcia said practically. “I’ll take over now. You go to bed.”

He put the handkerchief away.

“She’s been a wonderful wife,” he said, still shakily. “I’ve wired Terry, but you know how it is these days. He may be anywhere. They come and go, these boys of ours—I think she was worried about him, although she was so brave. To say good-bye, and not know if it’s the last one or not…”

“I didn’t know he had been here.”

“Not here, my dear. The last time we saw him. That was some months ago. Now, if you care to go up—The housemaid, Alice, is with her, but she has never had any contact with illness. We have sent for nurses, of course, but they are very hard to find.”

In spite of her long talk with Dane that afternoon Marcia felt reassured as she followed him up the stairs. Everything looked normal, a quiet house, a little old man grieving for his wife. How could there by any danger in this staid establishment? Yet Dane’s last words were ringing in her ears.

“Watch everything,” he said. “Talk to the servants if you can. Find out if Terry was here this summer, even for a night. If you can find a way to do it, see if Mr. Ward gave a couple of blankets to an assistant gardener last fall. And look around for a rifle or a revolver. Only for God’s sake be careful.”

Mr. Ward left her at the top of the stairs. She went into the sickroom, to find Alice, the elderly housemaid, sitting beside the bed. She got up when she saw Marcia, looking greatly relieved.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “I’m no hand at this kind of thing. She can’t talk, you know.”

Marcia did not whisper. She had been taught never to whisper in a sickroom, and she saw, too, that the woman on the bed was not asleep. She was looking at her with intelligent, despairing eyes.

“What orders did the doctor leave?” she asked in her normal voice.

“Just to keep her quiet. As if she isn’t quiet, poor dear thing! He’s coming back tonight. She was took this morning. No warning, either. I think she’s been worried about Captain Spencer. She was a great friend of Mrs. Spencer’s. Then with all those men digging on the hill over there…”

When Marcia got rid of her she went over to the bed, where the small thin body of an old woman barely raised the covers.

“I’m going to stay here,” she said, looking down. “I won’t bother you, Mrs. Ward. I’ll just be here. Is that all right?”

The eyelids blinked, whether by accident or design she could not tell.

“I’m to stay until you get some nurses,” Marcia went on. “I’ll try to get Mr. Ward to go to bed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

There was no doubt now. The blinking was fast and definite.

“I’d better tell you about Greg Spencer, too, so you won’t worry. I know you’re fond of him. He isn’t guilty, Mrs. Ward. Major Dane has been working on the case. He knows a lot the police don’t know, so Greg’s all right.”

There was no blinking this time. The eyes gazed at her steadily and then abruptly closed. There was no expression at all on the wrinkled face, and Marcia found herself as deliberately cut off as though a door had been shut in her face. When Mr. Ward came in she was shading the lights, and his wife was apparently asleep.

She motioned him out into the hall and followed him.

“She’s conscious,” she said. “I suppose you know that.”

“I had thought so. I wasn’t certain.”

“She seemed pleased when I told her you were going to bed. So please do, Mr. Ward. Show me the linen closet, in case I have to change the bed, and then I’ll put on a dressing gown and take over.”

“Alice and I did change the bed once,” he said awkwardly. “There is a certain incontinence. I’m afraid we were clumsy. I’ll wait for the doctor, Marcia. Then I may lie down for a while. It’s been a bad day.”

He did not go to bed, however. He went into an upper sitting room, and as she moved around she could see him there not reading, just waiting, his hands on the arms of his chair and his eyes gazing at nothing, with all hope dimmed out of them.

After the doctor’s visit there was nothing left to do. She managed to get Mr. Ward to bed, and sat down by her patient, apparently still sleeping. The utter silence of the house bothered her. She had a suspicion, too, that her patient was not asleep; that when she moved around the room she was being watched. She was not a nervous woman, however. Even when at midnight the front doorbell rang it was only the wild blinking of the old lady’s eyelids that surprised her.

Marcia got up.

“Water?” she inquired, and picked up the cup.

Mrs. Ward refused it. She continued to signal with her lids, however, and when the bell rang a second time it was almost wildly so.

“What is it? The doorbell?”

“Yes,” the eyes signaled.

“Mr. Ward’s going down. I hear him moving about in his room.”

This was clearly wrong. With a look of complete despair the eyes closed, and Marcia went out into the hall. She was in time to see Mr. Ward in a dark dressing gown going down the stairs, and that he was holding a revolver in his hand as he did so.

She was prepared for anything by that time. If she had seen the old man level the gun and fire it she could hardly have been surprised. What she did not expect was to hear the friendly excited voice of Colonel Richardson, and to see Nathaniel quickly hide the gun in his pocket.

“I’ve just heard, Nat. Why in God’s name didn’t you send for me? You know I’d do anything I could.”

“I know that, Henry. There isn’t anything anyone can do. But come in. Marcia Dalton’s with her now, until we can locate a nurse. She offered to stay.”

“Sounds like her,” said Henry approvingly. “Good girl, Marcia. Sound as a bell.”

They went into a downstairs room and Marcia found herself still clutching the stair rail. Whom had Nathaniel Ward expected when the doorbell rang? Or before it rang? Why had Dane cautioned her? Did he suspect either of these elderly men of murder? The whole thing was preposterous. Yet she was not sure. Certainly Mrs. Ward had quieted, and not long after, Marcia heard the colonel leaving and old Nathaniel coming upstairs once more.

She dozed a little that night, and when at seven o’clock she heard Bertha, the cook, in her kitchen she let Alice relieve her and went down for some coffee. Bertha was red-eyed but talkative.

“Such a good woman, Miss Dalton,” she said as she put the percolator on the stove. “And now to have this happen to her! First Mr. Terry goes to war. That almost finished her. And now this. Alice says she can’t talk, or move herself around at all.”

“People get over these things,” Marcia said consolingly. “She may have some paralysis left, but she may live for quite a while.”

She drank her coffee, standing by the kitchen stove, while Bertha talked.

“It happened all at once yesterday morning,” she said. “She was watching those men digging up the hill. Then suddenly somebody over there yelled, and I heard Mr. Ward calling. When I got in there she was on the floor, and the poor old man bending over her and looking like death. You know,” she said, turning honest eyes on Marcia, “there’s been something funny going on lately. You know how honest this place is. Nobody locks anything up, or didn’t until that girl was murdered. Well, we lost a couple of old blankets not so long ago. The madam told Alice to air them before she sent them to the Red Cross in the village and Alice forgot them. The next day they were gone. First time that’s happened, and I’ve been coming here with the family for twenty years.”

That would interest Dane, Marcia thought, although she had no idea why. But before she left the kitchen she had learned that Terry had not been there at all that summer, or if he had, the servants did not know it.

She had learned one more thing to report before she left. She had carried her second cup of coffee into the living room, when the telephone rang. She picked it up and answered it. It was a long-distance call from San Francisco. A man’s voice speaking.

“Hello,” it said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Ward, please.”

“I’m sorry. He’s asleep, but I’ll get him. Is that you, Terry?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is that Terry? Terry Ward?”

“Lieutenant Ward is not here. I am simply giving a message from him. If Mr. Ward’s asleep don’t bother to wake him. Just tell him everything is all right. Got that? Everything is okay. He’s not to worry.”

“Everything is all right,” she repeated. “Is that message from Terry?”

“Sorry. Time’s up,” said a voice, and the connection was broken.

Nathaniel Ward was still asleep under the influence of the barbiturate the doctor had given him when the nurse arrived that morning. Marcia wrote the message and carried it into his dressing room, to find him on the couch there, the weight of the weapon in his pocket dragging his robe to the floor. Next door, in the big double bed they had shared for so long, Mrs. Ward seemed to sleep fitfully. The strained look had gone out of her face.

Marcia reported to Dane that morning on her way home, her own long face tired and rather bleak.

“For what it’s worth,” she said when she finished, “they’re both scared. She is, at least. She didn’t want him to answer the doorbell.”

She was rather surprised to find the emphasis Dane laid on the blankets, however.

“Did she say when this was?” he asked.

“Not long ago. That’s all.”

But it was his final question that left her in open-mouthed astonishment.

“How good are Mr. Ward’s eyes?” he asked. “You know him. Does he have to wear glasses all the time?”

“He’s practically blind without them.”

He did not explain further. He let her go after that, telling her she was the fine person he had always suspected, and that she had done more than her one good deed that night. What the rest was he did not say, but she drove away that morning in a glow of self-satisfaction slightly modified by bewilderment.