The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
saw a friendly face. Dr. Rand, whose office overlooked the square, spied us through his windows, hurried forth to scold Jack for getting out of bed, and finally dragged him off for an X-ray. “It only takes a minute, and you can’t grow another head.” Jack returned in a more cheerful frame of mind.
Unfortunately, as was again impressed on us, Dr. Rand was not the whole of Crockford. An incident in the grocery store was more typical of village sentiment. Elsie Crampton—who represented the woman’s club opinion and didn’t care who knew it—was at the vegetable counter when we went in. She saw us, started, and then instantly swept out the door, leaving three pounds of cabbage swinging on the scale. Hahneman’s, it was plain, could not contain the three of us.
A few minutes later there was a traffic jam at the post office. Half of Crockford found it needed stamps at the moment we stopped for mail. Jack pushed through the crowd, unlocked our box. The postmistress—as the village had it, a widow woman—leaned from her window to wag a humorous finger.
“You’ve got one letter, Mr. Storm, that I been wishing was written on a postcard.”
Along with a dozen of the interested, I glimpsed a thin French envelope, a foreign stamp, Luella Coatesnash’s cramped, old-fashioned script. I felt an edged surprise. Luella had never written to us before. Why now? The widow woman chuckled at her ancient joke; the crowd gawped. Jack stalked outside.
Safe in the car, we read Luella Coatesnash’s note. Mailed ten days before, chatty, diffuse, dwelling on the beauties of Paris, it told us none of the things we desperately needed to know. That was a friendly letter. Nothing else.
“It’s too damned friendly.” Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Why should Luella take it in her head to write us?”
I, too, was puzzled. Our relations with our landlady, as I have said, had not been social. For the two months we lived within a stone’s throw of her home she had not troubled to call. Yet now we were blushlessly addressed as “Dear young friends.” Neither Jack nor I could fathom the apparent change in attitude.
We put away the letter and forgot it.
That was a mistake. I believe now if we had considered the small mystery more important, if we had speculated more earnestly upon the motives which might have caused Luella Coatesnash to write the letter, if we had recalled her character with more exactness, we might have saved ourselves and others from grief, worry and disaster.
The road home went past Brownlee’s undertaking parlors, a dusty establishment bedecked with leather furniture and extravagant Boston ferns. The night before, Alfred Brownlee, the sad-eyed proprietor, had taken mournful charge of the mortal remains of Elmer Lewis. Today the body lay on display in a rear room on the chance that identification might be had. A knot of people was collected on the sidewalk, peering through the glass windows.
“There’s Harkway,” Jack said, suddenly.
Just then quitting the undertaking parlors, the traffic cop hailed us. Jack stopped the car.
“Any news?”
“None yet.” After glancing around, Harkway added in a low voice, “Unless you call it news that I’ve been put on the case.” Although he offered the expected congratulations, Jack looked perturbed. “You’re to represent the State?”
Harkway nodded. “I was detached from traffic duty today Standish and I are going to work it out together.”
He spoke cheerfully, and seemed much set-up over the promotion. Good news for him, it sounded like bad news to me. In Connecticut before State police enter a homicide case, the local police must either request their aid or show themselves helpless and in the dark. I felt sure Standish had not requested aid. Harkway’s promotion then meant two things. It meant that twenty-tour hours after the event the local investigation had got nowhere. It meant also, despite Harkway’s lip service to cooperation, that Jack and I would be under the observation of two rival police organizations.
Flushed slightly with new authority, Harkway asked a few brisk questions about the attack upon Jack. He had received a report from Standish, but wanted to view for himself the closet, the broken window, the footprints in the field. When he proposed to accompany us to the cottage, we could not, of course, refuse.
As the policeman climbed into the car, a woman emerged from Brownlee’s, came swiftly down the steps. The Harris Tweed suit, the modish hat seemed familiar. The woman passed the car closely, cast one look at us, passed on. The Storms had received the cut direct. The woman was Annabelle Bayne.
“It’s a well-known fact,” Jack said cheerfully, “that those big, brown eyes are often myopic. Strange, too. I wouldn’t have dreamed that Annabelle Bayne was quite as near-sighted as she seems to be.”
I smiled, but I was shaken. So shaken that it didn’t occur to me to wonder what Annabelle Bayne had been doing at the Brownlee funeral parlors. Or why she had gone there.
Twilight was gray in the west when we started down the bumpy back road which wound to the cottage. At the Olmstead farmhouse, shuttered and melancholy, bearing the depressing aspect of a summer place in early spring, we saw John Standish poking about the yard. He came over to the car to speak. The meeting between him and Harkway confirmed me in my belief that he had not welcomed outside assistance. Their greetings were polite, but not effusive.
Harkway spoke a shade too jovially. “Found anything here, Chief?”
“Nothing.” Standish peered gloomily at the porch of the cottage, ankle deep in dead brown leaves. “I thought maybe the house had been entered last night. Apparently not. I’ve gone over the doors and windows.”
“Then you’ve come to a dead end?”
“Looks that way.” The failure to discover evidence of an unlawful entry into the farmhouse discouraged Standish. For the time being he discarded an idea he had entertained, quite without realizing that he had brushed upon a part of the truth. The man who had hidden in our closet had been running toward the Olmsteads’. Also he had run in that direction with a purpose.
Harkway, Jack and I drove on. Daylight was fading rapidly. The two men would have gone at once into the field, but first I insisted upon a thorough tour of the house. With some little show of male superiority, they looked under beds and examined the closets until I was satisfied. Then they went outside.
The house seemed very quiet. I began to pare potatoes for an early supper. Following the footprints, Jack and Harkway moved slowly toward the woods. Pan on my lap, I watched at the kitchen window. When they had progressed some yards the telephone rang. Four shrill rings, twice repeated.
I ran to answer. In response to my voice came another voice, dreadfully familiar. The voice of the afternoon before! For an instant I was stunned, too appalled literally to speak or move. Then I stammered: “Wait a minute. I can’t hear you.”
The telephone was located near a window overlooking the field. Covering the mouthpiece I pounded the glass until Jack turned, saw me understood. He started running toward the cottage, Harkway close behind.
The voice said, “You can hear this. I have other business for you and your husband, and I don’t want the law messing in it. Keep your mouths shut, both of you. That goes for the cop you brought out from Crockford this afternoon.”
Jack and Harkway burst into the cottage. I beckoned them toward me. As I handed the receiver to Harkway, I said into the mouthpiece, “What other business? I don’t understand.”
My ruse failed. Very stealthily, as the exchange took place the caller hung up. Harkway heard nothing, and the line was dead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Identity of a Corpse
For some thirty seconds, in an attitude of tense suspense, Harkway, Jack and I clustered around the telephone. Then Harkway said, “There’s no one on the line, Mrs. Storm. Who was calling? What’s the shooting for?”
“It was the same voice that phoned yesterday!”
At once the