CHAPTER X
DISCUSSION
IF Whistling Reeds had seemed desolate and sinister, Variable Winds was just the opposite. Clean, wind-swept, cheerful with flowers and only pleasantly shaded by the waving trees, the place was like sanctuary after the forbidding aspect of the island home.
Luncheon was ready and the two women who awaited our coming were not at all reproachful, but welcomed us with smiles.
“Dust up a bit and then come along,” admonished Lora, and we obeyed.
At the table, though the subject of the tragedy was not entirely taboo, there was no real discussion, until we were, later, seated in the lounge, comfortably smoking and resting from our strenuous morning.
“The keynote is the missing waistcoats,” Kee announced, oracularly.
“You said the keynote was the watch in the water pitcher,” I reminded him.
“They are part of the same note,” he informed me. “The work of the same hand and equally illuminating as signboards.”
“Oh, if you’re going to be mysterious”
“I’m not, Gray, but I can’t announce decisions that are not yet entirely clear in my own mind. I’m sorry Doctor Rogers went away—he could read the message of the watch at once. But I don’t want to put it up to any other doctor.”
“Well, of course I can’t help you, as you are so close-minded”
“Nonsense, Gray,” said Lora, “of course we can help. The watch may or may not be of such great importance, but it surely isn’t all there is of it. Nor the waistcoats, either. To me, those things seem merely adjuncts of the rest of the queer performance, the flowers and feather duster and all that.”
“But the waistcoats are in contradictory stories,” I argued. “Miss Remsen said she took them home Tuesday afternoon, and left them in the boathouse where they were found. Griscom says they were in their place on Wednesday. Then Everett came along and said Mr. Tracy wore one of them, the blue one, Wednesday night at dinner.”
“Well, then,” and Lora looked at me keenly, “what point are you making, Gray? These stories seem to stultify Miss Remsen’s statement.”
“I’m making the point,” I declared, “that the girl isn’t quite responsible for her own statements; she doubtless told her uncle she would like the satin for her patchwork and he probably said she could have it. But she didn’t carry the waistcoats away with her, Tuesday afternoon—that we know. So, what conclusion is there, but that, as the old nurse said, it is all a plant? Somebody came in the night, killed Mr. Tracy, and then, after fixing up all that jiggery-pokery, went off carrying the waistcoats and Totem Pole, and carefully planted them in Alma Remsen’s boathouse. I can’t see anything incriminating to the girl in all that.”
“Gray, dearie,” Lora said, with a queer, affectionate little smile, “you couldn’t see anything incriminating to Miss Remsen with a Lick telescope! Now, that’s all right, and I’m not cavilling, but unless you can approach this matter with an unbiassed mind, maybe you’d better keep out of it.”
“Keep out of it nothing!” I exclaimed. “I admit I admire Miss Remsen, but that’s all the more reason to see things clearly and stay in the discussion.”
“Right!” said Maud, “and I vote that Gray be in it all, and that we pay especial attention to his opinions.”
I looked at her quickly, to see if she was guying me, but she was not, and I at once recovered my balance, my self-respect and an added cocksure air that caused the Moores, both of them, great amusement.
But I was not at all daunted by their smiles and I went on.
“My opinion is this,” I stated, “the man who killed Sampson Tracy is as clever as they come. He fixed up all the rubbishy evidence to mislead the investigators. But, perhaps on purpose, perhaps accidentally, he led directly to Miss Remsen in the matter of the waistcoats and the Totem Pole. And so”
“Now, Graysie, dear,” and Kee threw the stub of his cigar into the ash tray, “I’m ready to talk. So, call a halt on the waistcoat-totem matter, and let’s get down to cases.”
“It’s a case, all right,” said Lora, whose fine eyes were gazing directly at her husband, as she concentrated on the subject. “Kee, you’ve got your chance!”
“Chance!” Moore echoed. “I’m no Sherlock, I’m ready to say right out that I’m all afloat, absolutely at sea, in this thing.”
Somehow this comforted me. I feared he would jump at once to a conclusion that somehow incriminated Alma Remsen, and I was greatly relieved that he didn’t.
Wanting to be helpful, I volunteered: “How about the weapon? There’s the nail, of course, but what about the hammer or mallet? I can’t see that nail driven without a heavy implement.”
Kee looked at me.
“No,” he said, “I can’t either. How about a croquet mallet?”
“That would fit,” I responded. “Know of any hereabouts?”
“Not precisely. But the tennis court at Whistling Reeds used to be a croquet ground.”
I quailed, but I hoped I didn’t show it.
“And that proves?” I said, jauntily.
“Nothing but possibility.”
“Which isn’t much.”
“No, it isn’t much.” Kee looked harassed. “But a lot of little bits of evidence, added together, make a”
“Make a muckle,” I jibed. “All right, what’s your muckle?”
“That Alma Remsen knows more about this matter than she’s telling.”
Moore’s deadly still tone, more than his words, struck a chill of terror to my heart.
For a moment, knowing his great wisdom as well as I did, I was tempted to tell him everything, but caution held me back, and I only said, “it may be.”
Lora looked at me, curiously.
“Gray,” she said, “you don’t know anything, do you?” I was glad she put it like this.
“No, Lora,” I replied, “I don’t know anything. If I did, I’d speak out. But I do believe that there is a deep, dark, underlying mystery that none of us understands, and I wish I could see into it.”
“Kee will see into it,” she said, confidently, and I could only respond: “I hope to Heaven he will.”
Kee sat without speaking for a moment or two, and then said:
“Gray, what was the reason for Miss Remsen’s sudden change of base while we were talking to her?”
“Change of base?” I said, stupidly.
“Yes. Don’t be an imbecile. I know you noticed it. It was just after I told her the police would come to interview her. That seemed to spur her or stir her up in some way, for she at once became a different being. More alert and alive, more determined.”
“Yes, I noticed it,” I told him. “I can’t explain it except to say that she was startled at the idea of a police interview, and it brought out her natural bravery and courage. She rose to the occasion and I’ve no doubt she will meet Hart with proper dignity and poise.”
“It won’t be Hart, it will be March. March is a good man, but I doubt if he can swing this case.”
“Of course he can’t,” I declared. “But you’re going to do the swinging, yourself.”
“Then I’d better begin. Now let’s marshal our facts. First of all, we have the collection of properties found on the bed. Was that all the work of one hand?”
“Yes,” I said, “but not necessarily the hand of the murderer.”
“That’s right,” and Moore nodded assent. “I’m inclined to think a waggish-minded visitor followed up the murderer and arranged that scenery.”
“Why?” asked Lora, very thoughtfully.
“I can think of no reason,” Kee returned, “except in an effort to direct suspicion away from the real criminal.”
“Who would do that?”
“Only a clever and watchful person, determined to shield the murderer.”
“Set up a hypothetical case,” suggested Maud. “Say, Mrs. Dallas was the murderer”
“How absurd,” cried Lora, “why should she kill the man she expected to marry?”
“That we don’t know,” Maud went on in her calm way. “But there may have been reasons. Suppose Mr. Tracy had learned some secret in Mrs. Dallas’s past”
“Go on,” Kee said, briefly, as Maud looked at him questioningly.
“I know it sounds melodramatic, but the whole affair is melodramatic, and those clues don’t seem to lead anywhere. Well, suppose Mrs. Dallas did it—killed him, I mean—and suppose somebody saw her who cared for her, Mr. Ames or Mr. Everett, or—or anybody. Mightn’t he trump up all that funny business to make it seem as if she could not have done it?”
“I don’t think you’ve struck it quite right, Maud,” Keeley said, “but I will say there’s a germ of thought in your theory. Granting two people concerned, there’s no reason to think them accomplices, it’s far more likely one is covering up the deeds of the other.”
“All of which is fantastic and not founded on fact,” Lora put in. “It’s only imagination, and one can imagine anything.”
“You have no use for imagination?” I asked her, smiling.
“Yes, when it is admittedly imagination, as in a fairy story or a romance. But imagination must not be used as a basis for argument.”
“She’s right,” Keeley said, slowly. “Lora’s usually right. Now what facts have we, outside the feather-duster lot?”
“The people themselves,” I offered. “The relationships between the people and the motives of the people.”
“That’s more like it,” and Kee gave me a glance of approval. “Take the household first. Who’s the most likely suspect?”
“Mrs. Dallas,” I said, promptly.
“She isn’t in the household.”
“Same as. She has a latchkey, so that makes her practically one of them.”
“Then Alma Remsen is in the same case.”
“Same case,” I agreed, knowing better than to combat him.
“All right, go on. What’s the widow’s motive?”
I knew Moore’s methods. He liked to have us make suggestions that he could accept or discard, thereby giving his mind something to work on.
“We can’t get at her motive,” I told him, “because we know too little about her. A personal interview with her is needed, and then she would probably, or at least perhaps, let slip some hint of why she wanted Sampson Tracy out of her way.”
“She’d have to hate him,” said Maud, doubtfully.
“Whoever killed him must have hated him,” Kee declared. “It was a brutal murder”
“Don’t over-stress the brutality,” Lora put in. “It was horrible, of course, but to my mind it was less dreadful than shooting or stabbing.”
“Where did the murderer get his nail?” mused Kee.
“The nail and the hammer,” Lora said, “inclines me to the servants, or the secretaries. I can’t see Mrs. Dallas or Alma Remsen coming to the house armed with a hammer and nail! They might bring a pistol or a dagger, but the implement used must have been picked up impulsively or impetuously, in the Tracy pantries or offices.”
“Unless the murderer acted on the story Maud told of, the Spanish story of The Nail,” I observed.
“Rather far-fetched,” Kee returned. “I’d have to see a copy of that book in a suspect’s possession before I’d take much stock in that theory.”
“I rather fancy it,” Maud insisted. “Any of our suspects, and I suppose they include all who were questioned by the coroner, may have read that book.”
“The servants?” I asked.
“Yes, often servants read books that they run across, though they’d never dream of buying them.”
“Then Griscom for choice,” Moore said. “Say his motive is a desire to get his legacy at once. Say his friendship for his master is not so great as he pretends, and there’s no question of his opportunity. Say he read that gruesome tale, and concluded it would be a fine way to get his money quickly. Then, after his deed is accomplished, he has imagination enough, or ingenuity enough to fix up all those tricks on the bed, and in his zeal he rather overdid it.”
“Your own imagination is running away with you,” I declared. “It may all be true, but you’ve no atom of proof, nor even an atom of evidence against Griscom more than any other servant. Sally Bray”
“Sally Bray may have been Griscom’s accomplice. Isn’t she in love with him?”
“Is she?” I inquired. “There’s the trouble, Kee, we don’t know enough facts. Is Sally in love with the butler? Is Mrs. Dallas in love with the secretary? Is Harper Ames in love with Mrs. Dallas? Get these things settled for certain, and then try to fit in your theories.”
“That’s so, Gray,” Moore agreed. “And I see Mr. Police Detective March coming our way. I hate to acknowledge it, but he may know more, in his ordinary police way, than we hifalutin, transcendent detectives have, so far, been able to ferret out.”
I glanced out of the window to see the stolid-looking man tramping along toward our door.
Although he showed little alertness or eagerness, there was a sort of power in the way he carried himself that gave me a feeling of confidence.
He came in as Kee rose to greet him, spoke to the ladies in a preoccupied way, and seated himself comfortably in a big easy chair.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been to see the Remsen girl.”
“What about her?” Kee asked.
“Nothing, so far. She’s rattled to death, and all upset, of course, but though I think she’s trying to hide something, I’m sure it’s nothing of real importance. I mean, she thinks she knows something about somebody that seems to her of evidential value, but it isn’t.”
“How do you know it isn’t?”
“This way, Mr. Moore. She gets embarrassed at the wrong places.”
“Go on, say more about it.”
“It’s hard to explain so as to make it plausible. But when I ask her about her doings that night, or about her relations with her uncle, or her feeling towards Mrs. Dallas, she’s as unconcerned and un-self-conscious as a child. But when I refer to those waistcoats or that painted pole, she gets queer-like all in a minute.”
“And you gather from that?”
“That she is worried to death about the waistcoats because somebody must have put them in her boathouse to incriminate her, and that scares her. While any talk of the actual murder seems not to disturb her nearly so much.”
“You have imagination, Mr. March,” Moore said, looking at him with a sort of admiration. “Or you couldn’t see all that.”
“No, Mr. Moore,” the policeman looked earnest, “that’s only seeing things as they are. I saw all that in Miss Remsen’s face and attitude. It isn’t imagination a detective needs, it’s ability to read the facts right. It’s the criminal who has to have imagination.”
“This present murderer surely had it,” Moore said.
“Yes, if he is the one who fixed up the doodads around the dead man. Sometimes I think he was, and then again, I don’t see how he could have been.”
“Why?”
“Well, the murder, even though a cruel stroke, was the work of an intelligent mind. A less imaginative brain would have chosen shooting or stabbing as a method. But granting a mentality that could think of and carry out a killing like that nail business, I can’t reconcile it with a personality that would collect those gewgaws and scatter them around.”
“Why wasn’t that done with intent to mislead”
“Oh, mislead, yes. But why so much of it? That’s the point. A few flowers, now, even the crucifix—all right. But the exaggeration. The superfluity. The piling on of the orange and crackers, the lady’s scarf, the watch in the water pitcher”
“The missing waistcoats, Totem Pole, and fruit plate,” Keeley broke in, as if unable longer to keep still. “What do you make of all these things, March?”
“What I said. Exaggeration, overdoing. So, we must hunt for a nature, a temperament, that is extravagant and over generous, rather than a well-balanced mind.”
“Good work,” Keeley Moore exclaimed, for he was always ready to acclaim merit, and he thought the detective showed real insight. “And you didn’t discover this extravagant spirit in Miss Remsen?”
“Not a bit of it. She’s a lovely lady, and she may know something she’s keeping quiet about, but she had no hand in the crime. She had no hand in the decoration of the deathbed in that fantastic manner. Motive she had, opportunity she had, but after all they’re not everything.”
I blessed the man in my heart for this whole-souled acquittal of Alma, and I began to feel more interest in the matter.
“Then, who’s your pet suspect?” Kee was asking.
“I have four,” the detective answered, frankly. “Mr. Ames, Mrs. Dallas and the two secretaries.”
“Quite a net full,” Keeley smiled. “Do you care to detail your reasons? Or do you think I ought to do my own investigating?”
“No,” said March, ponderously. He was a big man, heavy of voice as of body, and he seemed to weigh his words as he spoke them. “No, Mr. Moore, I’m only too glad to tell you all I know, to give you all I get, for I know you are the one to make the deductions from my facts.”
“All right, then, go ahead. Motives first, for all four. What about the will?”
“It will be read to-morrow afternoon, after the funeral. But I will tell you the gist of it. It’s really no secret, but better not mention its terms until after they’re made public.”
Moore nodded, and March went on:
“The bulk of the fortune and estate goes to Miss Remsen, as she is Tracy’s only natural heir. There is a gift of fifty thousand dollars to Mrs. Dallas and twenty-five thousand each to the two secretaries. Oh, yes, and fifty thousand dollars to Mr. Ames.”
“This still leaves a big fortune for Miss Remsen?” Lora asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Old Tracy had between two and three millions, I’m told. So with the servants’ bequests and charities included, that only runs to, say, two or three hundred thousand, and the young lady is left very nicely fixed.”
“Servants get much?”
“Griscom, ten thousand, and some stocks besides. Mrs. Fenn about the same. The other servants in proportion, according as to how long they’ve been employed.”
“Well,” Keeley mused, “that’s enough about the conditions of the will to work on. Now, granting greed as the motive, we have your four suspects and Griscom and the cook all possibly guilty.”
“Yes, and you needn’t exclude the other servants. I mean they all had equal motive and the same opportunity. But it never was a servant’s job. Never.”
March looked so positive that Moore asked him to say why.
“No clues,” came the answer. “You see, granting some one of the servants had the ingenuity, the imagination, to cook up this way of doing the killing, he would have taken a hammer and nail from the house stores.”
“Didn’t he?”
“He did not. I’ve combed over the whole kitchen outfit, pantries, offices, storerooms, cellars, garage and every such place, and I know every nail and hammer in the whole place. And there’s no such nail as that one used to end Sampson Tracy’s life in the whole layout.”
“And the hammer?” Moore looked quizzical.
“I grant the hammer is less easily identifiable. But I’ve hunted for fingerprints on the hammers and mallets around the premises, and there are no prints on them except the ones legitimately there. This isn’t proof positive, but it’s fairly so, when you take it in connection with the absence of any such nails as we’re searching for, and the unlikelihood of any of the under servants being able to get access to Mr. Tracy’s apartments. Except for Griscom, none of them is allowed in the living rooms at night, and I don’t suspect Griscom—yet.”
“Now Ames and the two secretaries were inside the house, but Mrs. Dallas was not,” Moore prompted further disclosures.
“Well, like Miss Remsen, Mrs. Dallas’s having a latchkey puts her on an even footing with the people in the house. And I can tell you, anybody with a latchkey could get into that house unheard. I’ve tried it, and the door latch and lock are so slick and so well oiled that they move with absolute silence. Then the thick, soft rugs in the hall and on the stairs are soundproof, and there’s no creaking step anywhere. Of course, all the appointments of that house are perfect, but it’s especially true of the precautions taken to eliminate noise.”
“Purposely so?”
“I daresay. It may be old Tracy had a special objection to noise and so guarded against it. But that doesn’t matter; the fact remains, anybody could go all over that house without making a sound, if careful enough.”
“Then, whether the murderer was a member of the household, or a silent intruder from outside, how did he get away from Mr. Tracy’s suite of rooms, leaving the outer door of the suite locked behind him?”
March looked Keeley Moore squarely in the face.
“Have you no idea?” he said.
“Have you?” countered Moore.
“Oh, yes, I have. He went out the window.”
“Into the lake?”
“Into the lake.”