The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
Minnie Gray yawned, gathered her notebooks, dropped into a handbag those neat, accurate, damning reports, and slipped away. Outside a wagon clattered across the cobblestones. Milk bottles clinked and a sleepy driver shouted at his horse.
I reached for my coat. Standish intervened. “You must put up with us a little longer, Mrs. Storm.”
I paused, confused. Jack laid down his hat, turned slowly. “Then we aren’t going home? Is that what you mean? Are we under arrest?”
The police chief was falsely jovial. “We have to make sure you two will stick around. So far you are the backbone of our case!”
He made a phone call. In silent sympathy Dr. Rand offered Jack his whisky flask and took a drink himself. The three policemen declined, though I thought Harkway looked rather wistful. As the wait lengthened, he stepped out to the hotdog wagon and brought back greasy paper bags. A constrained group, we were drinking coffee and eating sandwiches when old Judge Calkins waddled in. He was a portly gentleman with a prejudice against Italians, Middle Europeans, and New Yorkers. He had been summoned from bed and was eager to return to it. He decided at once that Jack and I should be held as material witnesses, and promptly set a prohibitive bond to guarantee that we would remain in Crockford. We couldn’t have raised a quarter of the sum, and I was wondering where I was to lay my head that night when Dr. Rand unexpectedly came to our aid.
“That figure is ridiculous,” he informed the judge, “but I think these kids are unlucky and honest. I’ll go bail for them.”
“With what?”
“With my expensive, well-appointed and completely modern house. I exclude my library, of course.”
The judge and the doctor were friends. They argued amiably over the value of the house, which the judge insisted was papered with mortgages, and the upshot of this bickering was that Jack and I went free. I guessed that Standish wasn’t pleased by the physician’s kindly interference; the pompous little Blair plainly was not; and even Harkway seemed doubtful.
Frowning then, Standish added a few last instructions. We were to go straight to the cottage; we were to remain there, awaiting a call from headquarters; we were not to discuss the case with outsiders. The policemen went into a huddle, and Jack and I departed. Dr. Rand, who accompanied us to the street, wouldn’t listen to our fervent thanks.
“I was glad to help out. If your conscience is clear—and I think it is—you have nothing to worry about.”
“Then we won’t worry.”
“That house,” said the physician meditatively, “is all I own in the world. I’ve lived there a long time and it suits me perfectly.”
He was gone. Jack and I looked at each other. The village was dead as Pompeii, the stores closed and barred, the echoing sidewalks empty. The street lights, all six of them, had glimmered out at midnight. I felt light-headed from strain and exhaustion. Jack took my arm.
“Standish didn’t believe a single word I said.”
“Anyhow we’re not in jail. I wonder if both of us could have wedged into it. I could have kissed the doctor.”
“It’s preposterous,” said Jack bitterly, “we should need bail. Standish knows damn well we won’t light out. Where have we got to go?”
“New York.”
“New York, hell! We would be arrested at the first station. That’s exactly the sort of break they’re waiting for. That bag of money looked bad. Very bad. It provided a motive.”
“A motive for whom?” My voice shrilled. “For you? It’s nonsense to suppose you would murder a man you didn’t know for money you didn’t know he had!”
“Where’s proof I didn’t know him? Where’s proof I didn’t know he had the money?”
Our car detained by the police, was to be examined for fingerprints and searched for further evidence. We walked to Crockford garage to hire a taxi. The news of the murder had preceded us. Two sleepy-eyed drivers drifted out of the office to stare. Al Loomis, owner of the three taxis that served the village, personally drove us to the cottage.
It was after two o’clock when we reached home. The rain was long since over. A thin, clear breeze stirred the tree tops, and the rank meadow grass bent sibilantly before it. A high moon shone whitely upon the open field beyond the cottage, over a stone fence to the left, and etched in sharp relief the black woods that separated us from the next house on the road. Throughout the dreadful evening my mind had been pulling toward this spot. As I alighted to experience the impact of deep, country silence I regretted that we had not stayed in town. Dark and quiet, forlorn and lonely, our home had never seemed so alien, or less a place of comfort and of rest. Until the taxi disappeared, Jack and I stood in the driveway, watching. Then, “Let’s not talk tonight,” said he. “I’m dead.”
I shivered, loath to proceed. “I wish we had left the lights burning.”
Jack was tired and querulous. “We’re home, Lola. You’ve been a good girl. Try not to go to pieces now.”
He guided me across the muddy drive, past the well to the kitchen door. Like most country people, except on rare occasions, we used the back entrance. Jack produced his key, preceded me into the house. I stepped reluctantly into the inky blackness, paused and waited for him to find the light. Suddenly from the darkness came the sound of a collision followed by a cry of rage and pain.
“What was it, Jack?”
“That damned cellar door just knocked me cuckoo.” Immediately he switched on the light, glared at the door which led to the cellar, transferred the glare to me.
“You should know better than to leave it open.”
“I didn’t leave it open, Jack.”
Our nerves were on the ragged edge. In the yard I had wanted sympathy and had received none. Now I myself declined to offer solace. Promptly we found ourselves engaged in a pointless, bitter, matrimonial wrangle.
“You left the door open, Lola, as you habitually do. There’s no sense denying it. You went down to bank the furnace.”
“I closed the door when I came up. I remember closing it. You must have gone down later on.”
“I haven’t been in the cellar since morning.”
“You must have been.”
“I say I wasn’t!”
Kicking shut the disputed door, Jack stamped off, nursing his head and muttering darkly. When I entered the bedroom, he was already half undressed. Without speaking further, he climbed into bed. A few minutes later I joined him, put a timid hand on his averted shoulder.
“Jack, I’m positive I closed the door.”
“You win, dear. You closed it, and the little people opened it.”
“I’m serious, Jack. Really serious. Are you certain you didn’t go to the cellar after I did?”
“Is this another cross-examination? I’ve said repeatedly I was certain.”
“Then how did the door get open?”
“For God’s sake, Lola, let me get some sleep.”
Almost at once I heard his heavy breathing. Moonlight poured into the bedroom; the night was quiet. I desperately wanted to sleep, but I was in that condition of exhaustion when sleep becomes impossible. I turned and turned again, unable even to close my eyes. My nerves were taut, my senses preternaturally acute. I felt a thin chill breeze although the window curtain stood motionless; I smelled the salt of the Sound and the damp, earthy odor of the fields; I heard the subdued rustle of mice in the attic.
I couldn’t rid my mind of that door. Again and again I went over my trip to the cellar. Again and again I saw myself shutting the door. My certainty became an obsession. I longed to compel Jack to admit he had been mistaken.
“Jack,”