The Woman in Black, page 17
He smiled reassuringly at all of us, in case we were worried about the little woman.
“Well, well!” He got up with new enthusiasm. “How are you, Ted? Good to see you, boy!”
Both Dorothy and I started a little. In the life of man, nobody had called Theodore “Ted” before, or “boy” for a long, long time.
“I want a little talk with you, if the ladies will excuse us. I belong to the old school—don’t mix women and politics.”
I had some idea that that was not quite the correct way to put it, but he meant all right, I’m sure, and Theodore, who’d been so wilted and discouraged when we came in, looked cheerful and pleased at the Great American’s condescension.
“You talk to the ladies, Ellery,” Mr. Stubblefield said. “Ted and I’ll go in the library.”
When they’d gone there was a pleasant quiet where we sat, for a moment, until Dorothy broke it.
“Ellery,” she said abruptly, “—does Mr. Stubblefield want to be President? Or is he just letting Theodore make background for him on this deal you’re putting over now? I really want to know. Theodore’s such an innocent, in lots of ways.”
Ellery Seymour put his cigarette in the jade ashtray beside him and pressed it out calmly, in no particular hurry to answer her. Then he said, “I think he does, Dorothy. In fact, I can say confidently that I know he does.”
“And what about you, Ellery? Do you want him to be?”
He looked at her for a moment, and smiled. “I think that’s a strange question to ask me, Dorothy.”
“I suppose it is. Of course you would.”
If Captain Lamb hadn’t warned me about intuitions, I’d have had the impression that that wasn’t the way he meant it, exactly. But Dorothy knew him far better than I did.
“I think E. B.’s more disturbed by today’s events than he’s letting on,” Seymour said. “As I am, frankly. I can’t make head or tail of any of what’s happened. It seems fantastic, the whole thing, without rhyme or reason.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dorothy said. “That gun—I’ve told Grace about your getting it for me. Last night—you remember when we were going in to dinner—Joe Kramer didn’t unload it. I know, because I took it off the mantel. And I put it over there just under that cushion.”
She pointed to the yellow Chinese brocade love seat by the hall door.
“Somebody took it from there. And it seems to me there must be some kind of a pattern to all these things.”
Ellery Seymour looked at her quietly while she was speaking . . . very quietly, it seemed to me, as if he’d suspended the general processes of life for a brief time.
“He didn’t unload it?”
“No, he didn’t.”
He looked at her very thoughtfully for another instant. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. He got up, looking around the room. “Has the afternoon paper come yet?”
“No.” Dorothy looked at her watch. “Try the radio. There ought to be some news about now.”
He went over to the Chinese cabinet, opened it and switched on the dial. As the voice of the broadcaster rose he turned it down.
“. . . connected the two cases this afternoon. The hotel room where the former football star and ex-Marine met a violent death was occupied Friday night by the blonde former show girl killed last night at a boarding house on I Street. Property belonging to her and known to have been in the I Street room was found in the dead man’s hands when the police entered the hotel room.”
“That’s the wig and dress,” I said to Dorothy.
“The police have identified certain articles the nature of which they are keeping secret for the time being. It has been revealed, however, that the murder gun has been traced. The police refused to give the name of the woman known to have been picked up while attempting to throw it in the Potomac River at an early hour this morning.”
Dorothy looked quickly at me. I moved my head toward the redecorated stables.
“The investigation is still in its preliminary stages, Captain Albert Lamb of the District Homicide Bureau told reporters at a press conference at Police Headquarters a few minutes ago. Keep tuned in to this station for latest developments and other news from the only Washington newspaper that gives you up to the minute——”
Elley Seymour switched off the dial, stood in front of the radio for a moment, and came back to his chair. He sat there without speaking, looking at a spot on the floor midway between my feet and Dorothy’s.
“I still don’t understand it,” he said. “It——”
Adams appeared in the doorway, and Captain Lamb immediately behind him. Dorothy got up.
“Come in. We were just listening to the radio report. You know Mr. Seymour. Mr. Stubblefield is in the library with my husband. Do you——”
“It’s Mr. Seymour I want,” Lamb looked, however, at me. “I thought you were going home?”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
“You can stay here, now.”
He turned back to Ellery Seymour.
“Why should Kramer have had a private detective following you, Mr. Seymour?”
21
New England as it is and not in the remotest degree what you would call mobile, Ellery Seymour’s face still went through a curious kaleidoscope of emotions, beginning with the most definite surprise and passing through shocked annoyance back to plain ordinary disbelief. It was on the last note that he became articulate.
“It’s absolutely absurd, Captain Lamb,” he said curtly. “It’s——”
“Then you’ll be interested to know that that’s exactly what he was doing,” Captain Lamb said coolly. He was neither official nor abrupt. “You thought you were being followed by one of my men. We had the fellow who was following you picked up shortly after eleven o’clock this morning. He wouldn’t talk, at first. When he heard what had happened to Kramer, he talked plenty. He’s been tailing you, off and on, for two months.”
Seymour stared at him silently, his expression changing from incredulity to something grimly close to anger. His lips tightened, and he glanced, I thought quite involuntarily, at the library door.
“There’s no necessity to jump at conclusions, Mr. Seymour,” Lamb said soberly. “There seems to be some possibility, from what the fellow says, that Kramer was working on the side, let’s say, for what you might call some of your competitors. It looks like Kramer was trying to find out what you were doing in this rubber deal you people are reported to have on. Kramer hired this man, who calls himself an industrial investigator, because he couldn’t be in Washington and Chicago himself at the same time.”
I thought the emotions on Ellery Seymour’s face were a more curious mixture than before.
“That’s . . . fine,” he said, dryly. “I hope he earned his pay. Did he say what I’d been doing?”
“He seems more confused than anything else,” Lamb said. “We turned him loose. I’ve got his name if you want to talk to him.”
Ellery Seymour’s smile was mirthless.
“I don’t see much point in it, Captain . . . I know what I’ve been doing. I was interested in what he may have told you. It’s important at the present time to keep a little secrecy, at least. But I’ll talk to him.”
He gave Lamb another wintry smile. “It may even be worth our while to hire him ourselves.”
“He seems to think you’ve got something pretty hot.”
Seymour’s eyebrows rose.
“I hope he hasn’t got the idea that we suspected what Kramer was up to, and used this method of silencing him.”
“That’s not indicated,” Captain Lamb said. “Not . . . exactly, anyway. He was badly scared. He was afraid the tie-up might get him involved. He was in jail when Kramer was killed, but he didn’t know that at the time.”
“I see,” Ellery Seymour said. He looked down at the spot on the floor again.
“Well, I don’t, Mr. Seymour. I’d be glad if you’d explain.”
Seymour got up. “I think you’d better come and discuss this with Mr. Stubblefield,” he said coolly. “Kramer was his personal employee. I had nothing to do with him. I deal with the brains, not the brawn, of the organization. Will you come in with me?”
Captain Lamb followed him across the room. Seymour tapped on the door, and they went in. Tradition was being followed in the library, apparently. The air was blue and the fragrant odor of cigar smoke got to us after the door closed on the two of them.
“I don’t know why Ellery should be so pleased about it, do you?” Dorothy remarked calmly.
“I didn’t think he was. I thought he was sore as blazes.”
“He was, at first. Not when they went in there he wasn’t. You can tell by the little quirk at the left end of his mouth. At least I can tell. He was quite pleased.”
She got up. “Come on out here, and tell me for Heaven’s sake what’s happening.”
“Suppose you tell me first, dear,” I said. “Where were you this morning? Captain Lamb thinks you were home, but I called you, and Theodore called you, and it seems you weren’t. Kramer was killed around noon. They’re checking on everybody. You’re all right until Adams tells them different. Mrs. Stubblefield seems in doubt, he’s okay. Bill Kent’s really on the spot—he gave Kramer a black eye this morning and they think he may have decided to finish the job. Freddie Mollinson’s home in bed. Ellery was at the hotel with Stubblefield. Theodore was at General Headquarters with detectives sitting outside his office—police as well as the private ones he hired. Milton Minor’s not interesting enough to be kept tab on, apparently. So you see it’s narrowed down. So, where were you, dear?”
Dorothy drummed her fingers silently on the balcony rail for a moment. “Me . . . where was I?” she said then. “At what time?”
She didn’t look at me. She kept her eyes straight out across the valley of the Park, fixed on the trees on the other side below the Cathedral.
“Around noon,” I repeated. “I don’t know the exact time. Say from twelve to one, Dorothy. That ought to do it.”
“I have no idea, Grace,” she said after a silence that began all right but got oppressive, as heavy as lead, it seemed to me, before she broke it. She was very still. Her whole body was still. “At the time I have no idea where I was. I . . . I’ll have to think. You’re sure I wasn’t home, Grace?”
“I’m not sure at all. I just asked you. Adams said you weren’t, when I called you, and Theodore said you weren’t when he did. He wanted you to think of some way to turn the crowds milling over the Stubblefield Headquarters into favorable publicity.”
She laughed, but it ended in something startlingly like a sob.
“I wish I could,” she said quickly. “I can’t, I’m afraid.”
She went into the drawing room and pressed the bell by the marble fireplace. She waited there until Adams was in the doorway and came back out, nodding to him to follow her.
“You can bring cocktails out here for all of us.” As he turned to go she said, “Adams, what time did Mrs. Latham call me this morning—do you remember?”
“No, ma’am. Not exactly. It was before lunch.” He looked at me, puzzled that I didn’t know myself.
“What time did Mr. Hallet call?”
“When I was eating my own lunch, ma’am. ’Bout a quarter after twelve.”
“Then when did I leave the house? I seem all confused about this morning.”
“You left just a few minutes before Mrs. Latham came next door to see Mrs. Kent, ma’am. I thought she was coming here, and was just getting ready to tell her if she hurried she could catch you going down to the Park.”
“Thank you, Adams.”
“And you came back round three o’clock, ma’am.”
Dorothy smiled at him. “I remember that. You may bring cocktails now.”
She waited for him to go.
“I guess I wasn’t home, was I?” She looked at me calmly.
“Apparently not,” I said.
“I guess I was lots of places. I sent some groceries and liquor home. I took Theodore’s dinner coat to the tailor’s. I got some flowers, and I ate lunch alone. I’ll try to think where.” She caught her lower lip in her teeth and held it a moment. “I’ll have to think very carefully. I should have gone out the front way and let that stupid man out there follow me, and then I’d have known.”
She put her hand on my arm. “But I didn’t kill Kramer, Grace dear—believe that, won’t you, lamb. I’d hate to think I needed to say that to you. I’m just saying it because I’m a little confused. I’m very confused, in fact.”
She moved a couple of reed chairs closer to the low glass cocktail table and brushed some ash from the edge of it. Her face was as flat and motionless as a mask, her eyes grave.
“Why is Bill Kent on the spot?” she asked quietly, after a moment.
“He was out last night at some awkward hour,” I said. “The murder gun—as they call it—was in the stable front hall this morning. He hasn’t been at his office since he gave Joe Kramer a black eye. Outside of that there seems nothing against him. Except that when he came up and threw Freddie into that state at dinner, he came upstairs to get Susan’s bag, which was right over there.”
I nodded at the inside yellow brocade love seat. I hadn’t been looking at her until then, so I don’t know when it was, in the course of what I’d been saying to her, that she’d frozen into the rigid golden marble statue she was now. Her lips were parted a little, her eyes blank but a sort of appalled blank. Her hand had reached out to the cigarette box and stopped motionless halfway there.
“—Dorothy!” I said sharply.
She put her hand on out to the crystal box, lifted the lid and took a cigarette. She went unsteadily to a chair and sat down.
“What is the matter, Dorothy!”
“Bill,” she said quickly. “That’s what’s the matter. I don’t believe it. I mean . . . oh, I don’t know what I mean! But Bill had nothing to do with it—it’s crazy to think he had. They can’t do that to him!”
“That’s what I said. And Captain Lamb said I’d be surprised—or something to that effect.”
Her cheeks were flushed. She started to speak and stopped. Instead she went over to the Chinese cabinet in the drawing room that matched the radio on the other side of the balcony window. She opened it and took up the house phone. She came back to the balcony, holding it close to her lips and keeping her eyes on the library door.
“Adams—is Mr. Kent at home, do you know?”
I took it Adams said, “No,” because she said, “When he does, tell him I want to talk to him, right away. It’s important.”
She put the phone back, closed the cabinet door and came out to me again.
“I don’t understand it, Grace.”
“He’s not coming until late, Dorothy,” I said. “Susan’s over at my house.”
“That little idiot,” she said hotly. She started to say something else and stopped herself abruptly. She seemed to crumple all of a sudden, and reached out for the balcony rail to support herself.
“Oh, my God, Grace, I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it. Bill didn’t have anything to do with it! I know he didn’t!”
Maybe I’m easily shocked—I don’t think so—but I was really shocked then. I know Dorothy Hallet doesn’t look more than thirty-two or -three, but she’s the same age I am. We used to celebrate our birthdays together when we were children. I’ve never thought she was ice-cold, as most people do . . . in fact, I’ve always known she was a genuinely warm and even passionate person. But I never for the farthest instant in infinity would have believed she could forget every article of whatever creed any of us believe in and go into the kind of tailspin she was in at this moment. It was incredible. Bill Kent might be thirty—he couldn’t be a great deal older if he was even that. I knew Dorothy liked him and he liked her. I would never have dreamed she could have any other feeling about him.
“Bill’s got to be kept out of this, Grace. It isn’t fair. He’s too wonderful a guy—he really is. It doesn’t matter about the rest of them, they can take care of themselves. It doesn’t even matter about Betty Livingstone and Kramer. Bill does matter.”
“Look, Dorothy,” I said. “Have you gone crazy?”
“Yes—I have! I’m completely crazy . . . I’m out of my mind!”
It was the closest to hysterics I’ve ever seen Dorothy Hallet in the forty years I’ve known her. She took hold of my arm. Her brown fingers that look so fragile were like bands of steel.
“Grace—he didn’t do it. No matter how it looks, he didn’t do it! You’ve got to see that nobody thinks he did. If you never did anything in all your life, you’ve got to do that. He’s being framed . . . don’t you see that’s what’s happening to him?”
I stared at her. “By who, Dorothy? Who is framing him?”
I should no doubt have said “By whom,” but what I said was “By who,” and that’s precisely what I meant.
“I can’t tell you.”
I could hardly hear her, even standing as close to her as I was.
“Do you know?”
She nodded quickly. She was pale amber and trembling. “I think I do. I’m not absolutely sure. I think I do know.”
“Then listen, quickly,” I said. “Before they come back.”
That’s when I told her what Captain Lamb had told me and told me to tell her.
“—Whoever it was was in the closet, and saw us both.”
She moistened her lips. Mine were almost as dry as hers. Then she stiffened abruptly. The library door was opening.
“Ah, Adams—juleps. They look superb.” Mr. Stubblefield’s voice boomed heartily through the open windows. “You’ll stay, Captain, and join us, won’t you?”
Apparently he already owned the house, by virtue of some extraordinary Eminent Domain.
“I wish you would, Captain,” Theodore said.
“Thanks—I’ve got business still tonight.”
We held our breath, or I know I held mine. I wanted a little time to get reassorted before I had to talk to Captain Lamb.
