Murder at Arroways Read online

  Damien had gone only a few hundred yards from the gates when she heard a car coming- along behind her. She stepped off the road and half turned, and the house was there, towering and massive and closer than she had thought, as though it didn't want to let her go, had moved up on her imperceptibly. Oliver Mont was in the approaching car.

  “Out for a walk?” he asked, pulling up, “or can I take you somewhere?” He had no hat on. Above the turned-up coat collar his sharply-angled face was tight, absent, and his enigmatic eyes, veiled by the blond lashes, gazed at her with a perpetual question in them.

  Because Damien felt curiously shy with him, awkward, ill at ease, because she wanted to say no, felt, without analysis, that she ought to say no, she said yes and got in. At once she was almost painfully conscious of him beside her, of his high fair head, of his elbow brushing hers. She plunged into talk of his air line. After a quick sideways glance that had a flicker of irony in it, he explained how it had begun, saying that he had been interested in flying since he was a kid. Suddenly, with no change in his sure, pleasant voice, he said, “You’re positive that you never saw Anne Giles before you came up here, never heard of tier?”

  “Never,” Damien said. All at once it occurred to her that that wasn't the strict truth. She added, “Unless Miss Giles was the woman with you in the Mont apartment in New York on the afternoon of the day my grandmother died.”

  “You in Maria's apartment!” Oliver’s hands tightened on the wheel. There was immense surprise in him.

  “Yes.” Damien gazed at a grassy hillside. “Someone, some man, telephoned asking me to go there to see my grandmother.”

  “You don’t know who it was?”

  “No, I didn’t take the call.” She told him briefly what had happened.

  When she had finished he said slowly, “So you have no idea why Maria sent for you?”

  His catechizing was becoming monotonous, and he hadn’t replied to her original question. She let it go. They were nearing the village. Houses were beginning to appear, and the spire of a church rose beyond clumped elms. Damien asked Oliver to drop her at the drugstore, and he said yes vaguely, and pulled into the curb beyond the bridge. She thanked him and got out.

  In the drugstore she got change and put through the call to Jane. But Jane wasn’t any help. “Anne Giles? No, Damien, I never heard of an Anne Giles. Why?”

  Jane was a sick woman and not to be uselessly bothered. Damien said, “Oh, something came up. It’s not important.” When she left the drugstore, Oliver’s Cadillac was still parked at the curb. He was standing beside it smoking a cigarette. Someone said, “Damien,” and she turned her head. It was Bill Heyward. Bill greeted them both amiably. “Hello, Oliver. How are you, Damien?” There was nothing left of his mood of the day before. Bill was his usual unruffled, pleasant self. Damien had been furious with him yesterday for what he had said, but her anger had died away. After all, Bill was a good friend and if he

  had lost his head for a moment he didn’t often do it.

  He said he had been up at Arroways looking for her. His aunt was anxious to see her. “Frances is all stirred up about that remodeling idea, she’s had half a dozen people on the phone. My car’s parked around the^conier.”

  “Sorry, Bill, but Miss Carey’s having a drink with me at the Black Horse.” Oliver snapped his cigarette into the gutter, put a hand on Damien’s elbow.

  Damien glanced from one man to the other through her lashes. Bill was angry, Oliver coolly determined. She was annoyed at finding herself a bone of contention. Bill had no claim on her—but in view of his allegations about Oliver Mont, there was no percentage in adding fuel to the flame of a situation that didn’t exist. She detached herself gently from Oliver’s touch. “Sorry,” she said, smiling at him, “let’s have that drink some otheK time, shall we?” and moved off with Bill.

  When they were alone together in the car Bill apologized for his conduct of the day before. “I’m sorry, Damien. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what got into me.” She laughed at his expression, said, “Forget it, Bill,” and he relaxed and asked whether there was anything new, whether she had been able to find out what time Roger Hammond got to Arroways on Friday night.

  Damien said no. It was scarcely a question she could put. Before she could tell him about the missing key to the room Anne Giles had occupied, or her own near accident, or about the material Anne Giles had accumulated concerning her, they were at Miss Kendleton’s.

  Damien was glad to get into the house. The air had a real bite to it, and she was chilled. The chill had nothing to do with Oliver Mont’s withdrawn expression when she left him in front of the drugstore. If he chose to be put out because she had come with Bill instead of accepting his suddenly proffered invitation, that was his privilege, but certainly she was under no obligation to keep him in a good humor. Taking off her coat and sitting down before the living-room fire, Damien listened absently to Frances Kendleton describe a friend’s experience with a finance corporation and the arrangements the friend had made with a local carpenter. It was all quite simple and easy.

  Bill was holding a match to Damien's cigarette. When she had a light, she said hesitantly, “I don’t know, now, I'm not so sure now about what I’ll do, haven't made up my mind to anything definite. You see—Mrs. Mont wants to buy Arroways.”

  Bill stared intently, his brown eyes alert. “When did that come up? What—” He paused.

  The knocker on the front door rose and fell sharply. Frances Kendleton opened the door, and Luttrell and a state policeman walked in.

  Damien's heart missed a beat, went on pounding. She could feel the blood draining out of her face. The scar on Bill's fqrefinger! In spite of his denial, was Bill the man who had followed Anne Giles into her cottage on Friday night? Had Luttrell and the policeman come to tax him with having been there, perhaps to arrest him?

  Frances Kendleton, surprised, said, “Yes, Mr. Luttrell? What can I do for you?” And Luttrell said, his face and voice expressionless, “I want to talk to you, or rather to Mr. Heyward.”

  There was a roaring in Damien’s ears. She glanced quickly at Bill’s hand, but the tip of his right forefinger wasn't visible. The door was closed. The door of a trap? She held herself tightly, staring into the flames, and waited for the onslaught. When it came it took an odd shape.

  Bill stood waiting easily, his hand palm down along the mantel, his other hand holding a cigarette. Luttrell faced him across the hearth, waving aside the chair Miss Kendleton indicated. Luttrell said, “Mr. Heyward, you’re a close friend of Mike Jones’s, about the closest friend Jones has. We know that Mike Jones was at the Giles cottage on the night Anne Giles was killed. Jones took Joe Lawrence’s rowboat and rowed himself over there. He left his footprints in the mud on the bank at the foot of the lawn. We found the muddy shoes he had on, in his rooms over the factory. We didn’t find Mike Jones. Where is he, Mr. Heyward?”

  Bill returned Luttrell’s fixed glance with equal steadiness. He was neither angry nor frightened. “Going a bit fast, aren’t you, Luttrell? In the first place, I don’t know where Mike is.”

  “No?” Luttrell said. “I think you do. You and Jones were seen in your car last night, driving out of town at around eight o’clock.”

  Heyward said gently, “I deny that. Now let me ask you a question. Anne Giles was killed at between eleven p.m. on Friday night and one a.m. Saturday morning—right?”' And when Luttrell nodded, he went on in the same unhurried tone, “Then you’re way off base—in fact, you’re wasting your time. Mike Jones was here in this house with me from a little after half past ten on Friday night until almost two a.m. on Saturday morning. If you want corroboration”—he turned—“you tell them, Frances.”

  Damien looked at Bill’s aunt. Frances Kendleton was square and honest and truthful. She had already said, had said to her, Damien, yesterday afternoon that she and Bill were both in bed by eleven o’clock on Friday night. What was she going to say now? She had picked up her knitting
. She dropped it into her lap and looked at the prosecutor over it.

  “Bill’s right about the time, Mr. Luttrell,” she said. “Mike was here Friday night. I finally chased him home when I looked at the clock and saw the hour it was, but not in time to save the last of my bottle of liqueur Scotch.”

  It was late, for Eastwalk, when Damien got back to Arroways that evening—well past ten. If Bill had asked her to marry him then, when he helped her out of the car and they stood together on the dark, driveway in front of the towering and all but invisible ivy-hung walls, she might have said yes. She had been deeply moved by what he and his aunt had told her after Luttrell’s discomfited departure with his policeman in tow. As to whether Bill had been wise or not was another question. But wisdom of that sort, cool, calculating, self-seeking wisdom, was not an attractive quality. Frances Kendleton had enlarged and explained Bill's bald narrative, filling in the chinks and crannies.

  He and Mike Jones, the man the police were looking for, had been friends since they were boys. They had been through the war in the same outfit, and Mike had saved Bill’s life in Sicily. The bond between them was strong. Mike Jones had seen Anne Giles arrive in Eastwalk on Friday afternoon. He knew that Jancy was already there, knew she was at the sanitarium. “It broke him up,'' Bill said. Mike blamed everything that had happened on Anne Giles. Rightly. At any rate, Mike had started talking about the Giles woman in no uncertain tefms that evening in the Main Street tavern. He was a dangerous man when he was angry, and his temper was steadily mounting. Bill had been afraid of what he might do—and Mike finally did it. Late that night he eluded Bill and made for Anne Giles's cottage, he didn't know she was staying at the Monts’, thought she was there. Bill had been in time to see him take Lawrence's rowboat but not in time to stop him.

  Bill had admitted that the fingerprints on Anne Giles's doorknob were his. “Yes,” he said. “I was at her place Friday night.” Because of the boat Mike had rowed off in, he knew where Mike was making for. Bill had gotten his car from the town lot on the far side of the bridge and had driven over to the cottage. There couldn’t, he said, have been more than five minutes between the time Mike got there and the time he caught up with him, to see Mike crashing away through the bushes in the direction of the river. The lights were on inside the house. Bill rapped. When there was no answer he opened the door. Anne Giles was lying on the floor in front of the hearth. She was dead. But, Bill said, she had been dead for some time. He had touched her hand and she was stone-cold. He had seen plenty of dead people in Italy. “Mike and I didn't get to the cottage until about a quarter past one. I’d say she’d been dead a good hour, at the least. So Mike couldn't have killed her.” He insisted on that.

  It was Mike Jones who had come to the Kendleton house when Damien was there the afternoon before. Bill said that Mike had no more idea of self-preservation than a week-old baby, and was a perfect suspect for the police. The only thing to do, and Bill had done it, was to get him out of circulation for a while, until the police cooled off, until they found the real killer.

  Damien looked up at Bill in the all but complete darkness in front of the big house. The reserve had gone from between them. What had happened explained a lot of things, among them, Bill’s dislike of Maria Mont, who had broken up what apparently could have been a happy marriage between Jancy and his friend, and his open detestation of Anne Giles who had been Maria’s staff sergeant. “You won’t,” he said pleadingly, “tell anyone what I’ve told you, Damien? It would be as good as the chair for Mike.”

  He was completely wrapped up in thoughts of his friend. Damien put her hands on the shoulders of his camel’s-hair coat, a coat that wasn’t in its first youth. “I won’t, Bill. I promise you.”

  Bill started to speak, and stopped. Light suddenly engulfed them both, a long bright shaft of it. The front door had opened. Oliver Mont stood looking out at them. Damien dropped her hands and stepped back. She said good night to Bill, and Bill drove off, and she went into the house. In the hall, his eyes going probingly over her' face, Oliver asked whether she wouldn’t come into the living-room and have a highball, he was just fixing one for himself. But Damien, anxious to get out from under that singularly penetrating gaze, said no and went directly upstairs.

  As she went she wondered what there was about Oliver Mont that had such an effect on people. What was the power he wielded? He wasn’t self-assertive, didactic. But there was an obscure force in him, an inner decisiveness, vitality, that drew you under his influence, against your will.

  She didn’t feel sleepy. She undressed, put on a robe and slippers, and went to the window and leaned there looking out. The night was very black. There were no stars. The wind had switched, was blowing from the northeast. It wailed around the house like ten banshees in full chorus. Arroways was on a high ridge. A breeze in the valley below was a gale here. Darkness outside the big dark house, darkness within, darkness and stillness and closed doors— What secrets was the house hiding, what traps was it setting, persistently, clumsily, with an inexorable and concealed purpose? Should she take Eleanor Mont’s offer and get rid of it, throw off the great octopus winding thick tentacles around her? All at once the tentacles closed, and she was caught. Above the shriek of the wind glass crashed resoundingly, and then someone screamed.

  Chapter Nine

  Blue Room Mystery

  The scream had come from far away. It died. So did the sound of breaking glass. It was almost a full minute before Damien stopped shaking and was able to move. Where had the dreadful sounds come from? What, she thought with sick weariness, had happened now? She pulled her door open and ran out into the hall. Instead of the single lamp that had been on when she came upstairs the lights were all lit and the others were there, in a huddle near the top of the staircase. White faces, staring eyes blank above robes thrown hastily on; it Was getting to be a familiar pattern. Eleanor Mont was holding onto the newel post. Oliver was beside her. Roger Hammond struggled into an elaborate brocaded robe. Below its folds his bare feet and spindly shanks looked faintly shocking, a blot on the physical perfection he presented when fully dressed. Jancy was a little apart, her stance careless, as though the wild alarm of the others left her untouched.

  A confusion of tongues in conflict. No one seemed to know what had happened. At least they were all present. The nurse was the last to appear. Her robe was a modest dark-blue flannel. She had taken time to button all eight buttons and pull dark-blue felt boots neatly up around her ankles, so that the cuffs were straight, unwrinkled. Damien madly expected to see a white cap perched on her thick red hair and a thermometer in her fingers.

  Oliver was talking. “I’ll go and see. That glass broke somewhere on this floor, at the back. You people stay here.”

  But Eleanor Mont wouldn't. “There may be someone—" Her lips shook, and she caught at his arm.

  He said gently, “We've got to look, Mother.”

  They did it in a body, following Oliver like a huddle of sheep. The search didn't take long. Ahead, Oliver threw the door of the blue room open, the room Anne Giles had occupied for so little time. The explanation was there. There was a moment of dead silence. In the middle of it Roger Hammond hiccuped. Oliver said, “Well, well —the return of the native.” Damien looked past the nurse’s shoulder.

  The blue room was in wild disorder. The bureau stood away from the wall, the drawers pulled out. One of the Silver candlesticks on top of it had fallen, knocking over the box of powder and spilling it to the floor. The closet door yawned. Anne Giles’s bags had been removed from the closet and were lying on the bed, the contents tossed every which way. Under things and a rose-colored chiffon-velvet negligee she had never had a chance to wear, a sleek black broadcloth skirt in a heap, a white gilet under it. Papers from the slashed brief case, the locked zipper still held, lay in disordered sheaves. The big palladium window in the west wall was partially open. Most of the great sheet of glass was gone. Jagged edges framed the night outside. Wind rushed through the g
aping hole.

  They all started for the window with Oliver in the lead. Damien wanted to cry out, stop them. They were walking through the spilled powder and there were marks on it, marks that were instantly obliterated. Peering out into the blackness, Oliver called back in a voice that had something queer in it, “A ladder! The ladder’s down there!” He pulled back into the room, charged through them and down the stairs.

  For some reason or other, Eleanor Mont’s extreme nervousness had left her. She took command with quiet capability. “Never mind now, Roger,” she told her son-in-law who was pouring forth outraged questions. “Someone broke in, and the ladder fell. I’ll lock this room, leave it for the police. Go down and build a fire in the library, dear—I think we could all do with a hot drink.”

  They straggled back untidily into the main hall where Jancy said, “If you'll excuse me, Mother, I’m going to bed.” She strolled off, lighting a cigarette. Cool, Damien thought. She, too, like the nurse, had taken time, after the uproar, time to arm herself with cigarettes and matches.

  Oliver came back from his search empty-handed. There was no sign of the thief outside. He rang the town police. Before they came Damien went to bed.

  At ten o'clock on the following morning Luttrell stood on the library hearth at Arroways listening to Sergeant Tobey, ranking officer of Eastwalk’s five-man police force, Tobey had come out to the Mont house last night in response to Oliver Mont’s call. There was no doubt that someone had broken into the dead woman's room the night before, entering it by means of a ladder. The ladder wasn’t heavy. The thief had carried it from the pear tree beyond the stables, against which it was propped, to the wall outside the blue room. There was no telling what the thief had gotten away with. Neither Miss Stewart nor Eleanor Mont knew what Anne Giles’s rifled bags had originally contained. The nurse hadn’t been able to open them. The keys, in all probability, were in Anne Giles’s missing purse. It must have been something of intrinsic value or something the thief badly wanted. Both brief case and bag had been slashed with a razor blade or a very sharp knife.