The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
to my knees and pulled out a bundle of papers.
Except as to year, the issues of the Crockford Blade were not chronologically arranged. I desired reports for two months only. February 1920, June 1920. These eight weeks covered the disappearance and search, the sad conclusion of the mystery.
The task I set myself was dull and tedious. Beside me mounted a discard pile. I paused once to read the society notes of January 2, 1920. On January 2, fifteen years before, Jane Coatesnash had entertained at luncheon. She received her “many friends in the lovely Coatesnash drawing-room”; she presided at a table “bedecked in larkspur and delphinium”; she wore a “Paris frock, taffeta in the new apple green.” With my knowledge of her death falling like a shadow across the printed page, Jane Coatesnash clothed herself in vividness and life. I saw her in the apple green; I saw the Coatesnash drawing-room in a different light; I grasped at and dimly understood an old woman’s overwhelming, uncomprehending grief.
I resumed my labors. Perhaps fifteen minutes later I paused, listened. Someone had come into the attic. I was quite sure of it. Someone had quietly climbed the stairs and stood now, watching me. I turned.
Annabelle Bayne and I stared at each other from opposite corners of the dusky room. A smile curved her lips. I spoke first.
“Good heavens! How you startled me. Why didn’t you speak?”
Her hand sketched an airy gesture. “I hated to interrupt. You were so intensely occupied.” Her bright, quick glance included me, the papers on my lap, the papers on the floor. “What on earth are you doing?”
I didn’t propose to say. Her smile deepened, and she passed the silence negligently. “Never mind, Mrs. Storm. I can guess what you’re hunting and you’re simply wasting time. Those months are gone.”
“What months?”
“February and June of 1920. The months that carried Jane’s story. They’ve disappeared. I know. I looked this morning.”
Too taken aback to question her sudden interest in the fifteen-year-old tragedy, I heard her question mine.
“What did you expect to find in the stories? What put them in your mind?” I said nothing. She paused. “Did you decide to come here after you learned Laura Twining hadn’t returned the high-school annual?”
“So you knew that, too!”
She nodded, crossed the room. Planting an elbow on the adjoining stack, she leaned there, languid and yet alert, in her way. “Are we friends or aren’t we? Didn’t we agree to work together, you and I? How can we, if you make a mystery out of everything?”
Incomprehensible, that woman with her calm assumption that she and I were allies. How like her to demand my confidence, when as recently as yesterday she had fobbed me off with unblushing lies! She was waiting—a reply was indicated.
I said coldly, “There’s no mystery. I’ve heard a lot about Jane Coatesnash and I was curious.”
“Which means you refuse to say why you wanted to read the papers.”
“Will you say why you did?”
“I didn’t want to read them,” was the provoking answer. “I only wanted to see if they were here, I thought they might not be”
“Why should you think that?” I demanded irritably. “If you are sick of mysteries, so am I! How could you possibly suspect newspapers fifteen years old had disappeared?”
Annabelle shifted the elbow. “My reason wasn’t logical; it was just a hunch I had. After learning yesterday about the high-school annual, I remembered the articles in the Blade. I thought Laura might have carried off the newspapers; so this morning I dropped by to see. I’m convinced now she took them. They’re gone.”
“Laura! But why?”
“She took the annual.”
“Where did you find out? From Miss McCall?”
She shook her head. Again she smiled, and dropped a bombshell in my lap. “The high-school annual isn’t really missing. I have it.”
“You have it! Where?”
“At home.”
I was amazed and silent. Also I daresay I looked skeptical. She studied my face. “You don’t believe me, do you? Why don’t you come to the house and see for yourself? I’ll gladly show the thing.”
“How does it happen to be there?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain at lunch.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s past twelve. Suppose you postpone your researches and lunch with me. Then we can talk.”
I recalled an old saw to the effect that one should beware the Greeks bearing gifts. Annabelle Bayne was an opportunist, a born trader, a glib and talented liar. Obviously there was a joker in the invitation. In some unknown fashion, what I knew or what she suspected that I knew must be important to her. On the other hand, she knew certain things I needed to know. Facts important to me. I badly wanted an explanation of the high-school annual. Unless I went, it was evident she would not explain.
I accepted.
The Bayne home, a spacious colonial dwelling which I had viewed only from the beach, bore throughout its interior the imprint of Annabelle’s personality. She lived there alone, and she had made restless and like herself a serene landmark of the past. Pine-paneled walls were hung with startling black and whites, and garish lithographs. Copies of Spur and The New Yorker spilled from a Sheraton table; a square cushion-like contraption, more comfortable to look at than to sit on, unfolded beside a Chippendale sofa; a smart portable typewriter, painted red, struck an anachronistic note on a seventeenth-century desk. Bakelite bowls of flowers, oddly shaped, mingled the deep blue of bachelor buttons with the raw disturbing orange of marigolds.
Annabelle flung off her hat, sank to the cushion-like contraption, rang for lunch. Rummaging in an open bookcase partially hidden by the cushion back, she selected a volume, tossed it to me. “Here’s the annual. Are you convinced?”
“Won’t you tell me where you got it?”
A stout-waisted village girl, absurd in a frilly cap and apron, entered and began to set the table. Annabelle nodded at her.
“Velva turned it up.” To the girl she said, “What became of the wrappings?”
Velva produced a square of thick brown wrapping paper, creased in the shape of a book, and a length of cotton string. She gave me a dully curious look. Her mistress spoke.
“Now about your finding the book. Tell it just as you told me.”
The girl assembled labored phrases. “I was dusting yesterday around ten o’clock, or maybe earlier. I took out the books. This one had been pushed behind the others, stuck against the wall. It was wrapped—I thought it was a package, a box of stockings maybe. Soon as I seen it, I gave it to you.”
“You don’t,” said Annabelle, “dust half enough, my girl. Else you would have come upon it weeks ago.”
Velva shuffled her feet. “The book wasn’t hurting no one, the dust neither. They was out of sight.”
Annabelle laughed. “A new definition of successful housekeeping, not a bad one either. Now run along. Tell Mary we will have sweetbreads and ham—and fresh peas, if she ordered them.”
The kitchen swallowed Velva. I glanced at Annabelle. “But how came the annual to be in your bookcase?”
“‘Laura Twining forgot and left it there. On top, of course, but it slipped behind. Nearly two months ago—the day she sailed. February 17th, wasn’t it? That’s the only time she has been here.”
“She called on you?”
“Dear me, no.” The brown eyes twinkled. “Laura and I are chronic enemies. She thinks I’m fast; I think she’s a bore. She got out of the car with Mrs. Coatesnash