Yellow Room (8 page)

“It’s absurd, Marcia. You saw a car. You didn’t see Elinor in it, and she wasn’t in it. She couldn’t have been.”

But she was not so sure. She knew the deadly sharpness of Marcia’s eyes. She knew, too, how the story would grow if Marcia told it. It was Marcia herself who reassured her.

“I suppose I was mistaken,” she said. “Anyhow no use starting talk. You know this place. Any summer colony, for that matter. I’m not telling it, Carol. You can count on me.”

It was some time after she left before Carol could control her hands sufficiently to light a cigarette.

S
HE CALLED ELINOR THAT
evening, shutting herself in the library to do it. There was something reassuring in Elinor’s matter-of-fact voice.

“Hello, Carol,” she said. “I hear you’ve had some trouble there.”

“You know about it?”

“The gentlemen of the press,” Elinor said lightly. “I’ve been trying to get you for some time, but you know what long-distance is nowadays. I hope it hasn’t been too bad.”

“It’s been bad enough. Does Mother know?”

“Not yet. Of course when the papers get it—Have they any idea who it is?”

“Not yet.”

“Her clothes ought to tell them something.”

“They haven’t found her clothes. Look here, Elinor. I called you up to tell you something. Marcia Dalton says she saw your car here last Friday night, or Saturday morning. She’s just told me.”

There was a brief pause. Then Elinor laughed.

“Marcia’s seeing things,” she said. “Tell her I have a perfect alibi, and that I don’t go around murdering people in the middle of the night.”

“You did go to New York?”

“I hope the telephone operators along the line are enjoying this,” Elinor said coldly. “For their benefit I’ll tell you that I left my car in Providence on Friday, took a train to New York, stayed in our apartment that night, shopped all day Saturday, had dinner with my husband that evening and went to the theater afterwards.”

“You stayed in your apartment?”

“Why not? The club was jammed. So was every hotel. What’s the matter with you anyhow? Do I have to have an alibi?”

Carol felt foolish as Elinor rang off with her customary abruptness. Of course Marcia had been mistaken. What possible connection could Elinor in New York have with a murder on the Maine coast? Or, granting there was one, would she possibly have risked everything she prized so highly on such an excursion? Yet there remained the puzzling question of why the dead girl had come to Crestview, and why Lucy—if she knew about it—had let her stay.

Elinor
could
have made it. She could have come by car, arriving that night, gone back to Providence the same way, left her car there, and taken an early morning train to New York. Only why? Had the girl been Howard’s mistress? His money laid him open to that sort of thing. But even then she could see Elinor’s sheer disdain of a dirty business. She might leave him, demanding an enormous settlement, or she might choose to stay on and ignore the situation. But to connect her with a crime of passion was impossible.

Carol was still in the library when Jerry Dane tapped at the terrace door. She admitted him, and he looked down at her gravely.

“I’m afraid I was rude to you today,” he said. “My leg was hurting damnably, and—well, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“It’s all right,” she told him. “I don’t blame you for calling me one of the cumberers of the earth. I just can’t help it, that’s all. I have to look after my mother.”

“Don’t make me more abject than I am. I came to tell you I couldn’t see Mrs. Norton. Did you?”

“No.” She recited her day while he listened, about being compelled to look at the body and the things on Floyd’s desk, and the fact that by the time her car was ready she could not go to the hospital. He had taken out a pipe and filled it, and as she talked she watched him. He was hard, she thought, the sort of man who in a war killed without scruple. But he was honest too. Honest and dependable, and she had to talk to someone or go mad.

“There’s something else I ought to tell you,” she said. “It happened here this afternoon, and it has bothered me a lot. There’s no truth in it, of course, but it could cause trouble. Marcia Dalton claims to have seen my sister’s car here the night Lucy was hurt and this girl was murdered.”

“Have you called your sister?”

“Of course. She has an alibi. She was in New York that night. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“Naturally.” His face remained impassive. “Is there anything else? Might as well clear the slate, you know.”

“Well,” she said, her voice doubtful. “I suppose I should have told the police before this, but I couldn’t see Lucy, and the place has been full of people this afternoon.” She looked at him apologetically. “I don’t even like telling you, but I suppose I must.”

“I see,” he said patiently. “Just what is all this about?”

“It’s about the yellow room, the room over this. Somebody had been staying there, and taken a bath.”

His voice sharpened.

“Didn’t the police look over the house?”

“I suppose they glanced in. They were looking for her clothes, weren’t they? They wouldn’t notice anything else. They probably thought Lucy Norton slept there. But the bed’s been used, there’s powder on the toilet table, and there are cigarette ashes on the floor. Lucy doesn’t smoke, of course, and she slept in the service wing.”

“And her clothes?”

“There were no clothes there when I saw it.”

There was a longish pause. His pipe was dead, and he did not relight it.

“They didn’t find her clothes,” he said at last. “I was here, you know. Mason came back empty-handed. But if she slept here she undressed here. The simplest answer is that whoever killed her took her clothes away so she wouldn’t be identified. That and the fire—See here, Miss Spencer, do you still maintain that you have no idea who she was? Or why she was here?”

She shook her head.

“No to both,” she said. “So far as I know I’ve never seen her before, or heard of her.”

“Well, let’s put it another way. Who knew you were coming back, and when?”

“Quite a lot of people. It was no secret.”

“Isn’t is possible she was waiting here to see you?”

“Why on earth would she? There’s a hotel in town. Lots of people rent rooms, too. To come here, with the house cold and empty—”

“She did come, you see,” he said, still patiently. “She came, or she was brought here after her death. What you say about the yellow room seems to indicate that she came. When she came is another matter. If she slipped in at night after Mrs. Norton had gone to bed it might explain some things.”

“Explain what?”

“Explain why Mrs. Norton apparently knew nothing about her being here.” He got up. “Mind if I look at the yellow room? Unless you’ve had it cleaned.”

“It’s the way I found it. The door’s locked.”

He nodded his approval, and they went up the stairs together.

The yellow room was as she had left it. She noticed that he touched nothing when he went in. He inspected the bed, where a spot of lipstick showed on one of the sheets. He bent over and looked at the cigarette ash on the floor. And he stood for some time at the bathroom door.

“Was this left as it is?” he asked rather sharply. “Soap and towels, and so on, when you left last year?”

“Soap? I hadn’t noticed. I suppose Lucy puts such things away when she closes the house.”

“Then this girl seems to have known her way around pretty well,” he said grimly. “Either that, or Mrs. Norton knew she was here. What about these towels? Are they from the servants’ rooms?”

“They’re guest towels. That’s queer. Lucy must have given them to her.”

He turned to a window and stood there, looking out. There was still some light, and a breeze was covering the bay with small white-capped waves. Except for a few fishing boats the harbor was empty, and overhead an army plane was making its way to some inland field. He was not thinking of the harbor, however, or even of the war at that moment.

“Floyd is going to trace her further, if he can,” he said, without turning. “Whether anyone in the town saw her. Whether she made any inquiries to find this place. He’s a small-town policeman, but he’s nobody’s fool.”

He was still at the window when they heard a car chugging up the hill. He put out the light quickly.

“Sounds like his car,” he said. “Better get downstairs. And let me do the talking if you can.”

They were in the library and Dane was filling his pipe when Nora announced the callers. They came in rather portentously, Floyd, Dr. Harrison, the state trooper, and still another man in plain clothes. Floyd was carrying a bundle under his arm.

The chief introduced the strangers, Lieutenant Wylie and Mr. Campbell.

“Mr. Campbell is the district attorney,” he said impressively. “Seems like we’re getting famous all at once.”

“That’s hardly the word,” said Mr. Campbell dryly, as Floyd placed his package on the center table. “We don’t like to disturb you, Miss Spencer, but we’re trying to identify the—this woman. It seems likely that she had a reason for coming here. After all”—he cleared his throat—“there are a good many houses here not being opened for the summer. It seems strange her body was found in this one.”

It was Dane who answered that. He was standing by the fire, looking interested but nothing more.

“Probably most of them are boarded up,” he said. “This one happened to be open.”

“With a caretaker in it,” said Mr. Campbell. “Why take a chance on a thing like that?”

Carol asked them to sit down, and offered them cigarettes. Lieutenant Wylie produced a pipe and asked if she objected. Then Mr. Campbell cleared his throat.

“I need not stress the need of identification of this woman, Miss Spencer,” he said. “I believe you have said you don’t know her.”

“I didn’t say that,” she protested. “How can I tell? I hardly saw her, and when I did—I can’t think of anyone who would come here, or why they would be killed here. All I know is that she
was
here.”

Her voice sounded strained, and the doctor smiled at her.

“No need to worry, Carol,” he said. “It’s only a matter of identification. She may have been killed outside and her body brought here.”

“But it wasn’t,” she said, half hysterically. “She had slept here. Go up and see for yourselves. She had slept in the yellow room.”

If she had tossed a bomb into the room, the reaction could hardly have been greater. They poured out into the hall and up the stairs, and Carol found Dane’s hand on her arm.

“Better not say I’ve been up there,” he said cautiously. “Let them look for themselves.”

She nodded. Dr. Harrison knew the yellow room, and the others were already inside when they got there. The place spoke for itself, the bed, the toilet table, the tub in the bathroom, and the district attorney looked at Floyd.

“Missed this this morning, didn’t you?” he said unpleasantly.

“How the hell could I know Jim Mason hasn’t the sense of a louse?” Floyd said. “I had my hands full as it was.” He turned to Carol. “When did you find out she’d slept here?”

“One of the maids saw it.”

“When was that?” he asked.

“Around noon, I think.”

“And you didn’t report it?”

“I thought someone would be back. I had no telephone, and the house was full of people all afternoon. I locked the door so it wouldn’t be disturbed.”

He eyed her suspiciously.

“It wasn’t locked just now, Miss Spencer.”

The lieutenant had opened the closet door.

“Nothing here,” he said laconically. “Unless—”

He was a tall man. He ran an exploratory hand over the closet shelf, and when he brought it out it was holding a small white hat. It was a gay little hat, crisp and new, and all the eyes in the room were turned on Carol.

“Belong to you?” the lieutenant inquired.

“No,” she said faintly. “I never saw it before.”

She sat down on a chair inside the door. More than anything else the little hat had brought the real tragedy of the murder home to her. She felt dizzy and her heart was pounding furiously. She did not realize that Floyd was standing over her until he spoke.

“You missed it, didn’t you, Miss Spencer?”

“Missed it? I never saw it.”

He looked triumphantly around the room.

“I’m wondering,” he said, “just what became of the rest of her clothes. She came here in a black dress and a pair of pumps, and she had a purse and an overnight bag. She undressed in this room. Look at that hat. Now what I want to know is who disposed of them, and how?”

Carol stared at him.

“Why would I do it? When she was killed I was at my sister’s in Newport. I didn’t come into this room until Freda reported it to me. And I didn’t even need to tell you about it. I did. Isn’t that enough?”

“Somebody got those clothes,” he said doggedly.

Sheer indignation brought her to her feet.

“Why don’t you go down and look in the furnace?” she said indignantly. “That’s where I would burn them, isn’t it? Go on down, all of you, sift the ashes—that’s what you do, isn’t it? And I hope you get good and dirty!”

“Don’t you worry about me getting dirty,” Floyd said grimly, and after locking the door led the way downstairs again.

In the library once more the state trooper placed the hat beside the package on the table, and Floyd went over what he had so far discovered. The girl had got off the bus at half past six or thereabouts on Friday morning, June the sixteenth. She had asked the driver for the drugstore, but he had told her it would not be open yet. After that nobody saw her in the town that early morning until at seven-thirty or so Mr. Allison, who owned the local Five-&-Ten, saw a girl in a white hat, a fur jacket and a black dress sitting in a public park near the bandstand. When he looked again, she was gone.

After that the trail picked up somewhat. She had had a cup of coffee at Sam’s hamburger stand when it opened at eight, and asked for a telephone book. Apparently she did not find what she wanted, and Sam had told her half the telephones in town had been taken out. She had not seemed worried, however. She had merely said a walk would do her good, and asked the direction of Shore Drive, which led to Crestview.