Murder at Arroways Read online

  The only fingerprints in the room were those of Anne Giles, Mrs. Mont, and the maid. The powder-sprinkled floor had been all messed up by the Monts themselves. There were no marks on the ground underneath the window except for broken bushes into which the ladder had fallen. It was scarcely likely that the thief was on the ladder when it blew down, smashing the window as it went. His weight would have kept it anchored. None of the people in the house had been in that wing during the evening, none of them had heard anything suspicious, so that it was impossible to tell what time the robbery had actually taken place.

  Luttrell rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “And you say an attempt was made, let’s see, on Saturday afternoon, to unlock the door of the blue room from inside the house, that a key was stolen from the keyboard in the basement? And is still missing?”

  “That’s right,” Tobey said. “Oliver Mont told me about it, and I talked to Miss Carey, too. She was up there in the vicinity of that particular room Saturday afternoon and she evidently scared off the thief. The key was in the lock when she ran to get someone, but by the time she got hold of the others the door had been relocked, and the key was gone.”

  “Why didn't the Monts report it at the time?”

  Tobey shrugged. “I don’t know. Guess they didn't think it was too important. What do you make of this, Mr. Luttrell? How does it tie in with the murder?” He looked hopefully at the prosecutor.

  Luttrell remained silent, gazing absently at the portrait of Maria Mont over the mantel. Anne Giles. Anne Giles had been in Eastwalk on the night Randall Mont’s car crashed into the ravine. His eyes were thoughtful. There was a tap on the window. It was Officer Hanson. Hanson beckoned, and Luttrell and Tobey joined him outside.

  “Find something?” Tobey said, and Hanson nodded. “Come over here.” He led them past the gardens in which a few chrysanthemums still bloomed, past the tennis court, to a big oak on its southeastern rim. Rounding the immense trunk, Hanson pointed down.

  A dozen cigarette butts and burned matches littered the ground behind the tree. The turf was cropped short. Luttrell and Tobey studied the down-bent blades of dry grass. Tobey said, “Someone stood here last night for quite a while casing the house, watching the lights, looking for a chance to get in. Yes.” Luttrell picked up one of the cigarette stubs. It was a brand smoked by hundreds of thousands of people. Hanson began gathering the rest of the stubs and the matches, and Luttrell and the sergeant walked back toward the house.

  The town prosecutor was unusually silent. He paused in the shadow of the high terrace wall. “Whoever broke into Anne Giles’s room last night had to know what room her things were in.”

  “I asked Mrs. Mont about that," Tobey said. “When old lady Mont was alive and Miss Giles stayed here at Arroways, when she didn’t go to her cottage, she generally had that blue room.”

  “So that it could have- been a matter of common knowledge.” Tobey nodded, and Luttrell went on. “And when Maria Mont was alive, before she discovered what was going on between Jancy Mont and Mike Jones, Jones was in the house a* lot, knew his way around.” Luttrell straightened suddenly, his face hard. “Come on, Sergeant. I’m going over to talk to Bill Heyward. Heyward is hiding Mike Jones, or he knows where Jones is—and Heyward’s going to tell me or he’s going to jail.”

  On the terrace above, leaning against the cold stones —how cold the day was, how cold everything—Damien listened to the two men walk briskly away. Warn Bill, she thought, although she didn't know what particular good it was going to do. She crossed the terrace and opened the door, went past the powder room and the pinball machine, toward the hall, her mind heavy with scraps and tatters of knowledge that added up to nothing recognizable, Eleanor Mont’s lightning change of heart about the house, Jancy’s hatred of it, Oliver’s surprise that a ladder had been used to gain entrance to the room Anne Giles had occupied when, with the doors locked, there was no other way for a thief to get in, the letter postmarked Paris that had been such a blow to Eleanor Mont.

  What was in the letter? Who was J. Castle? Castle, Castle— Didn’t the name rouse an echo? Hadn’t she heard it somewhere? Never mind that. She thought instead of Bill Heyward—and Mike Jones, whom Maria had crushed, driving the tractor of her wicked will over and through other people’s lives. Bill had intended to go back to New York last night, was staying in Eastwalk only to help his friend. Bill would go to jail, Luttrell had said so. It might mean his whole future now that things were looking up for him, with this new process of his—

  Opening the door at the end of the little corridor she went into the main hall. It was warm and dim and vast.

  She stood still with the knob in her hand, a large filigreed knob. Handsome. The road to the library was blocked. She was in one of the cross arms of the T, couldn’t see around the turn. There were people between herself and the library. Oliver was there, for one, and a strange man.

  Oliver was saying . . knock me over with a feather. But I’m glad to see you, Castle. We thought you were thousands of miles away.”

  “I was,” the stranger said genially. “I flew over from Paris. Got in yesterday.”

  Damien stared fixedly at the denuded newel post. Oliver had had all the wooden balls removed as unsafe. Castle. The man who had just arrived was the J. Castle whose letter postmarked Paris had stunned Eleanor Mont.

  Mr. Castle said, “I’m anxious to see Eleanor, Oliver— and Damien Carey. I’ve always felt a little guilty about that girl.”

  Guilty about her? Guilty? Damien moved. She took her hand from the doorknob and walked slowly forward to meet the man whose news, not from across the sea but out of an excellent memory, was to supply the answer to why she had been summoned to her grandmother’s apartment on that day more than six months ago, news that was ultimately to resolve not only the smaller dissonances, but the reason why Anne Giles had been ruthlessly killed —and by whom.

  Chapter Ten

  A New Motive for Murder

  “So you’re Damien Carey.”

  Jerome Castle shook hands warmly with Damien. He was a slight man in his early sixties with a vigorous hawknosed face and receding grizzled hair.

  “You’re rather like your mother." He studied her with a pair of shrewd dark eyes. “I knew Susan when she was younger than you are now. The last time I saw you you were being spoon-fed in a high chair and you had a handsome green beard. Spinach. Tell me, I’ve always been curious, did you ever get to like it?"

  Damien placed Jerome Castle then. She had heard her father speak of him. He was an anthropologist of note who had done something remarkable, discovered some famous bones or fossils or something. He had been fond of her mother, was apparently the only former friend who had ignored Maria’s ban and kept up a relationship with the guilty pair.

  Damien answered as lightly as she could. It was too late to call Bill. Luttrell had probably already arrived at the Kendleton house. Why did Mr. Castle feel guilty about her? What had he meant by that? He was asking questions, where she lived, what she did, how Jane was, as they followed Oliver into the living-room.

  Oliver had sent the maid for his mother. Eleanor Mont came down almost at once. She went to Mr. Castle, her hands out. “Jerome, dear—what good wind blows you to Eastwalk? It’s wonderful to see you—wonderful. Oliver, call Hi and tell him; he’ll be delighted."

  She looked younger, brighter, a tall, plain woman with charm and dignity and presence and an underlying force behind her quietude. No one could ever make Eleanor tfont do anything she didn’t feel like. She was her own udge and jury. Watching, Damien saw that she was very ond of Jerome Castle. Then why had his letter been such l blow?

  Mr. Castle spoke of it immediately. “You got my letter, Eleanor?”

  Eleanor Mont was seating herself on a sofa at right mgles to the hearth, tucking in her skirts, putting a rushion at her back as though she were cold. She looked rp at Castle, standing on the hearth, her brows raised. ‘Letter, Jerome? I thought you never wrote letters. No,
I rad no letter from you.”

  Face, voice, manner were perfect. And yet it was a lie >ut of the whole cloth. “I must,” Mr. Castle said, erroneously, “have beaten it over. I wrote you because last week at the Louvre I got to thinking about this young woman tiere,” he patted Damien’s arm, smiled down at her. “There was a portrait there, I forget whose it was, that reminded me of Susan. Anyhow, I got to thinking about this child, Eleanor, and about Maria—” He went into it then in detail.

  Castle was a very old friend of Maria's, and she had sent for him on the afternoon of the day she died. “I tried to soften her up before, you know.” He shook his head. “No good. But then, near the end, she saw the light. Only a very little bit of it, I’m afraid—but something. My dear,” he looked at Damien, “I'm glad she wanted you to have her rings.”

  Jerome -Castle spoke gently. For all that the impact of what he had said was tremendous. The air in the room seemed to vibrate. Damien was aware of Oliver at the end of the sofa, of the start he gave, slight and instantly suppressed, of Eleanor Mont’s openly astounded gaze.

  “Rings?” Damien said blankly.

  Castle stared. “Yes, of course. Maria’s rings.” He frowned. “You did get them?”

  “I don’t— No, I didn’t get any rings of my grandmother’s.”

  Castle was thunderstruck. “But—good heavens—I don’t

  Oliver said, “No, Mother. The rings were not on Father —or in the car.”

  “Wait a minute," Castle interposed. “Maria might have been mistaken, might have thought she had left the rings up here at Arroways, while all the time they might have been in one of her safe-deposit boxes, or somewhere in the New York apartment. Grey will know.”

  Simeon Grey was the lawyer who had taken charge of Maria’s affairs, settled her estate. Oliver went to call Grey.

  Eleanor Mont rose and began to walk restlessly up and down the floor. “It’s my fault, in a way, for not checking. If only I’d been on my feet, if only I hadn’t been ill—” Jerome Castle was deeply troubled by the turn events had taken. He said, rousing himself, “Nonsense, Eleanor, Grey has the rings, you can depend upon it.”

  He was wrong. Oliver came back. The rings weren’t in any of Maria’s safe-deposit boxes, they were not in the New York apartment, they were not at Arroways. All Maria’s personal property had been carefully assembled and appraised for tax purposes shortly after her death. Simeon Grey said very positively that the rings had never come under his hands. They were definitely not among Maria’s effects.

  The rings left to Damien by her grandmother had vanished. The conclusion was obvious. Randall Mont must have had the rings with him when he left Arroways at shortly after midnight on April the second. He had come up to get the rings at Maria’s request, would have been scrupulous about carrying out her wishes, in spite of the fact that she was dead—and over and above that he wasn’t the sort of man who would have left valuable property in an empty house. Death had overtaken him when he was less than a mile from Arroways. His body hadn’t been found until almost eight o’clock in the morning. During that interval, while he had lain dead in the smashed car at the bottom of the ravine, someone had removed the rich cargo he carried.

  It was Jerome Castle who pointed this out. Eleanor Mont agreed. “That’s what must have happened. Yes." Oliver was thoughtful.

  Castle said, “We'd better get the police," and Oliver nodded and returned to the phone.

  The police came. Oliver and Jerome Castle gave them the facts. Eleanor Mont described the missing rings as well as she could, a square emerald of about five karats, flawed, a large oval ruby set in heavy red gold, diamonds, sapphires— There were about ten rings in all. They were valuable, but not as valuable as Maria had considered them, because of flaws and, in some cases, bad color. They were worth, she thought, approximately twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars.

  Such a sum might be inconsiderable to the Monts, Damien reflected Wryly, it was a fortune to her. Was? Would have been. The rings had been stolen in early April, and this was October. If their loss had been discovered at the time there might have been a chance of recovering them. But not now.

  Luttrell arrived. Damien eyed him apprehensively. He said nothing about Bill. The missing rings appeared to engross him. He gave them a new twist. He remarked thoughtfully that Anne Giles had been in Eastwalk on the night Randall Mont died, and proceeded to elaborate on it. Six months later Anne Giles had been murdered. It was the search of her room at Arroways, the savage slashing open of her locked bags, that was suggestive, to Luttrell. Randall Mont had come up to Arroways for Maria Mont's rings, had started back with them to New York— according to the lawyer they were not in the house later on. Mr. Mont most emphatically didn’t have them when he was found. They were neither on his person nor in the car. Anne Giles, who had been in Eastwalk on the night he died, had in her possession something of considerable value, for which her murderer was looking—

  Jancy Hammond's response to Luttrell's groping was curious. By that time the others had all been informed of what had happened. Hiram St. George and Linda had come over, and Roger Hammond was there, neat and handsome and frowningly intent. Jancy strolled into the living-room while Luttrell was talking. She listened, freezing. The maid had just brought in sherry. When Luttrell finished, without a word and with a face as blank as though she were asleep, she crossed to the tray, picked up the decanter, and emptied three glasses of sherry in quick succession. An agonized glance from Eleanor Mont; it was Linda who acted. Smiling, pleasant, she took the decanter from Jancy. “Don’t be a pig, Jancy, darling. Leave some for us.”

  Damien went on thinking her own thoughts. The letter Jerome Castle had written to Eleanor Mont was about the rings, he had said so. Had there been anything else in the letter? If not, and apparently there wasn’t, why had Eleanor Mont been so overcome at hearing that Maria had left her rings to her granddaughter? It wasn’t greed. Eleanor Mont wasn’t a greedy woman, or at least didn’t appear to be. Was there a mystery attached to the missing rings, some secret meaning? There was no doubt that over and above their loss, their disappearance was a subject of general and deep concern, not only to Eleanor Mont but to Jancy and Oliver and Roger Hammond and Hiram St. George.

  After a while the state troopers went. Luttrell was on the point of going. He had glanced several times at his watch, when an unexpected visitor appeared, a large handsome woman with a lot of white hair like a wig. It was the Monts’ neighbor, Mrs. Cambell.

  Mrs. Cambell was one of the people who had established the time of Randall Mont’s departure for New York on the night he died. Luttrell requestioned her about that evening more than six months ago. Mr. Mont had arrived at Arroways at around six, had left the house at between half past twelve and a quarter of one? Yes; now during the evening, had Mrs. Cambell noticed whether Mr. Mont had had any visitors?

  The question startled Mrs. Cambell. She flushed, blinked several times, and stood turning her head uneasily from side to side without looking at anyone. They were all staring at her. There was a held-breath atmosphere in the room.

  Ida Cambell moistened her lips. She was upset, embarrassed.

  “I didn’t want to— I don’t think it meant anything. But, well—”

  Anne Giles had not only been in Eastwalk on the night Randall Mont died, she had been at Arroways early that same evening. She had walked up the driveway some five or ten minutes after Randall Mont reached the house.

  Silence. It was broken by a cry from Jancy. She jumped up, knocking over a small table as she did so, and rushed out of the room. Continued silence from the others; an odd persistent silence that Jancy’s eruption didn’t touch. Damien gazed at waxed floor boards beyond the edge of a creamy rug. Fissures, crevices, opened up in the icy air. According to Bill there had been gossip about Randall Mont, that he liked a good time, got around. Bill had said that it didn’t amount to anything, that he was a handsome fellow and convivial by nature, that that was all there was to it. Could
Bill have been wrong?

  Luttrell said expressionlessly, “You say, Mrs. Cambell, that Miss Giles got here at shortly after six that night? At what time did she leave?”

  But Mrs. Cambell was through. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her go. She was still here when I left for the PTA supper at six-fifteen. But she wasn’t here when I got back. Mr. Mont was alone. I could see him moving about in the library, and he was alone when he left the house at a little after half past twelve that night.”

  The avalanche then, sweeping away preconceived and fallacious ideas. Anne Giles had been at Arroways while Randall Mont was alive and could have been aware of his errand, what he came for. The rings had disappeared from Randall Mont’s body, which had lain for more than seven hours at the bottom of the ravine down the road. It was the road that Anne Giles had to travel to get back to the turnpike that led to the parkway and New York, which was what she had done, very early the following morning.

  Anne Giles was a woman who liked money, needed it. Over and above their intrinsic value the rings could have attracted her. She had a taste for magnificence. Seven months later, after Randall Mont’s death, when the Mont estate had been settled, when no questions had arisen about the rings, no suspicion as to their loss aroused, Anne Giles had been killed. From the evidence, her killer hadn’t found what he sought in the cottage on the river. The room Anne Giles had occupied at Arroways had been broken into later and her bags ransacked. A man had telephoned to Anne Giles at around ten o’clock on the night she died. She had left the house at a little after half past twelve that same night and had gone over to her cottage. The only theory that fitted all the facts was that the man who telephoned to her had seen her take the rings from Randall Mont’s body, had bided his time, and had then pounced. Anne Giles had refused to deal, and she had been killed.