The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
jury overlooked the significance of her statement. Aggravated by her manner, Dr. Rand did not. His voice gained a quick, new interest.
“Will you please explain that?”
I thought the witness looked frightened. “Explain what? What is there to explain?”
“Were you acquainted with Darnley? Did you know him well?”
“I did not!”
“You have inferred you were more familiar with his character than Mrs. Coatesnash was. How does that happen?”
“Oh, I see.” She touched the handkerchief to her lips, glanced up brightly. “I see what you mean. Darnley visited Mrs. Coatesnash here in Crockford many years ago. I met him in a casual way, and took a strong dislike to him. Although Mrs. Coatesnash trusted him implicitly, I considered him stupid, for all his reputation as a brilliant lawyer.”
“Then you did know him!”
“If you choose to call it that. I saw him only twice.”
“When was this?”
Annabelle Bayne said slowly, “Many years ago. In June of nineteen-twenty. Jane Coatesnash was buried that month, you may remember. Mr. Darnley came to Crockford for the funeral.”
Suddenly Harkway, who was listening closely, walked to the coroner’s bench, leaned over and whispered something to Dr. Rand. The coroner started. He turned to Annabelle Bayne and said sharply, “Did you see Hiram Darnley’s body while it lay in the undertaking parlors here?”
She began a glib denial. Her clear brown eyes met my eyes—and then, I suppose, she remembered. She was, for a moment, shaken, definitely alarmed. Her voice faltered, recovered.
“Yes, I did see the body. It bad almost slipped my mind. I dropped into Brownlee’s Saturday afternoon on my way home from town.”
A dead silence fell. She appeared not to notice. Her restless hands lay still; her chin rose at its proud, usual tilt. The coroner spoke gravely.
“Hiram Darnley was not identified until Monday morning. Why didn’t you go to the police and identify him on Saturday?”
“I couldn’t identify him.”
“You couldn’t!”
“I didn’t recognize him,” she said rapidly. “I hadn’t seen the man in fifteen years. His appearance was not memorable or striking. I wouldn’t have known him from Adam if I had met him walking down the street.”
I knew she lied. Evidently Dr. Rand shared my opinion. He tried hard—quite without result—to shake the witness. Annabelle Bayne stuck stubbornly to her denials, until finally she left the stand and departed from the court room. With her went the material of drama.
The inquest developed nothing further. At five o’clock the members of the jury retired. Their deliberations were mercifully short. At twenty minutes past the hour Jack and I heard the only verdict which the evidence would allow. Hiram Darnley had met his death at the hands of a person or persons unknown.
What that stolid country jury really believed I cannot say. Probably most of the jurymen believed that Jack and I had murdered Hiram Darnley or knew who had. But there must have been a minority who like myself, thought Annabelle Bayne could tell more than she had told. For like all juries, the members of that secret panel talked, and it seemed to me that after the coroner’s inquest Jack’s and my position in the village became somewhat easier.
We met John Standish in the lower hall. He congratulated us bleakly on the verdict, and indicated that the “protective custody” was to be lifted, and that Harkway was to report in the morning at the station. The investigation evidently was to be tirelessly pursued, but where it was going and in what direction Standish didn’t say.
Harkway accompanied Jack and me to supper at the Tally-ho Inn, a guest this time and not a guard. We talked about the inquest. We talked about Annabelle Bayne.
“Why,” said Jack, “has she such a vigorous dislike of me, and why is she shouting so loudly in defense of Mrs. Coatesnash? Why, for that matter, should the two be friends? Offhand, I’d say they were poles apart.”
The policeman gave us a curious glance. “Haven’t you heard about Jane Coatesnash? Annabelle Bayne was her chum. After the girl’s death, she and the mother became very close. In a way, it’s an odd relationship.”
I thought personally that fifteen years would put a pretty severe strain on a sentimental loyalty. I said so. Harkway buttered a piece of bread.
“Then you don’t know about the girl?”
“Only that she’s dead. Why? Is there more?”
“I’m not a very good source.” The policeman reached absently for the coffee pot as I was about to pour, encountered my hand, flushed, permitted me to fill his cup. “Thank you, Mrs. Storm.
To get back to Jane Coatesnash—if you want the straight facts, it might be better to go to the newspaper files.”
“The newspapers!” I felt a prickling at the roots of my hair. “What do you mean? What happened to the girl?”
“Jane Coatesnash was drowned,” said Harkway.
I must have looked disappointed. At any rate, he smiled, then proceeded to tell us all he knew of the tragedy which had blasted Mrs. Coatesnash’s life. The story, still whispered about the village, was singular, to say the least.
Fifteen years before, Jane Coatesnash, then a student at Mather College for Women (located high in the Berkshires), had left the campus on a shopping trip. It was her nineteenth birthday. Wearing an expensive fur coat, a gift from her mother, she had started to town to buy a matching hat and gloves. Thereafter she had been seen no more.
“The girl vanished,” said Harkway. “She vanished like a puff of smoke.”
A cool salt breeze drifted into the dining room, stirred the cheerful draperies, blew lightly across the table. Jack’s eyes and mine met. Between sips of coffee Harkway continued the narration. After twenty-four hours of what he termed criminal delay, the college authorities telephoned Mrs. Coatesnash. She went immediately to Mather, accompanied by Annabelle Bayne. A frenzied private investigation followed; detectives buzzed up and down the streets of the sleepy little town; thousands of dollars poured into the search. Three days later the story of the missing heiress appeared in every newspaper in the United States. Police of 48 States were on the lookout for a brown-eyed girl in sables. Scores of amateur sleuths participated in the public hullabaloo, lured on by the hope of a $25,000 reward.
Harkway drained the dregs of his coffee. “No one ever collected the dough. It was posted for months.”
“You said the girl was drowned.”
“She was drowned. Jane Coatesnash disappeared in February. Five months later, in June, a couple of fishermen picked up her body in the Connecticut River.”
Jack said, “Murder? Suicide? Accident?”
Harkway spread his hands. “The body had been weeks in the water. You couldn’t tell what had happened. The police followed the usual routine, and wrote it off as accidental death.”
“In that case how could they be sure of the identification?”
“The local dentist identified the body from work he had done on the teeth. There was a bracelet too, as I recall it, a bracelet that had belonged to the Coatesnash girl. She was drowned, all right. Everyone was satisfied on that count—everyone except the mother.”
Jack looked a quick question.
“Hope dies hard,” said the policeman. “People are likely to believe what they want to believe. Also there was one queer angle. The fur coat wasn’t found. Mrs. Coatesnash did everything to trace the coat; you can find advertisements requesting information in newspapers a few years back. Nothing ever came of them; nothing could.