Murder in Stained Glass. Armstrong Margaret

       Third Printing

      COPYRIGHT, 1939, BY RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

       I

      There was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

      EZEKIEL.

      I SUPPOSE weather, bad and good, has often made a lot of difference in people’s lives. Battles have been won or lost; invalids died or recovered; promising engagements come to nothing because a rainy day kept the young couple well within the family circle. A truism, no doubt. Anyhow, when I think back and consider the part I played in the Ullathorne affair, I realize that if the sun had not been shining on one particular Monday morning last March, nothing that happened at Bassett’s Bridge would have happened in exactly the same way, and some of it would never have happened at all. For I shouldn’t have been there.

      It’s like the nursery rhyme about the old woman who milked the cow with the crumpled horn. If the weather hadn’t cleared I wouldn’t have gone to stay with Charlotte Blair; I shouldn’t have been on hand with my eyes wide open when things began to happen; I shouldn’t have been forced to play the part of innocent bystander—a dangerous part when bullets are flying about; and as I should have known nothing about the case, except what I read in the newspapers, I couldn’t have been of the smallest use to anybody concerned.

      But I did go. I saw what no one else saw. Or, rather, I saw it sooner. In fact, I am inclined to think that if Skinner had been less conceited, had been willing to let me untie some of the most puzzling knots in his problem. . . .

      But I’m getting ahead of my story. Let’s go back to that Monday morning in New York when the sun shone and I lay in bed trying to make up my mind whether or not to go to Bassett’s Bridge. You see I don’t enjoy visiting—most spinsters like their own homes better than other people’s, and I simply hate the country in winter. So I had gone to bed, glad of the rain beating on the window panes, and in my mind writing a telegram to Charlotte: “Slight cold so sorry must postpone visit till spring,” some such meaningless politeness. And there, when I woke, was the sun!

      I sighed and snuggled down again in my nice soft bed—spare room beds are either lumpy, or so springy that you think you’re going to bounce out any minute; sighed as I heard Bessie running my bath, boiling hot, of course—water is always lukewarm in old-fashioned country houses; and sighed for the third time as I thought of Charlotte. Why had I told Charlotte I would go? I didn’t really like Charlotte. I never had liked her. We hadn’t met for years, not since boarding school, and that’s a long time now, for we are both in our late forties. I remembered Charlotte as an immensely tall pale thin silent girl with frightened eyes, who took a fancy to me, I think, because I was plump and lively and never afraid of anything. That sums me up pretty well today, as a matter of fact. Time doesn’t change you, it only makes you more so. I have grown stouter and heavier and more talkative, I reflected; so Charlotte must be thinner and paler. As for her eyes, if they are any queerer than they used to be, God help us all!

      But at this point in my meditations I stopped struggling with fate. As I thought of that scared look in Charlotte’s eyes, I felt sorry for her, just as I had always felt sorry for her at Saint Timothy’s. Poor dear Charlotte. She would be disappointed if I didn’t turn up; the warmth of her invitation left me no doubt of that. I got grimly out of bed.

      In this unselfish mood I breakfasted, told Bessie to pack a hot water bottle and my woolliest socks, added three mystery stories and five pounds of chocolate, and in due time found myself in an overheated airless day coach bound for Bassett’s Bridge and poor Charlotte.

      Why poor Charlotte, I asked myself, as I sat looking out of the car window, watching the city disintegrate and New York fade into Connecticut. Why did I feel sorry for Charlotte? She lived in the country all the year round but she didn’t have to. She was comfortably off. She could have taken a nice Park Avenue apartment like mine, or gone abroad as I do every other winter. Her house, judging from the photograph I had seen, was rather gloomy, one of those Greek temples our great-grandfathers admired; tall white pillars in front and tall dark spruces crowding too close all around. But she was free to leave it if she chose.

      Free? No; not in spirit. As a girl Charlotte had been forever tying herself up in scruples and prejudices. She would, no doubt, be ten times worse by now. My spirits went down to zero.

      The landscape did nothing to cheer me up. The sky was gray. The sun, having made me do what I didn’t want to do, had gone under a cloud; the fields were dingy with rusty old snow, cut across by black roads streaked with ice.

      Goodness, I thought, I hope Charlotte has a heavy car and a good chauffeur. It would be just like her to stick to an old Ford with flapping curtains, driven by the village idiot, or worse yet, by Charlotte herself. Then with relief I remembered Phyllis Blair, a young cousin who was spending the winter with Charlotte, “to keep me company and drive the car,” Charlotte had said. The young always know how to drive and they drive well if they happen to be sober, and somehow I didn’t believe Charlotte’s establishment went in very heavily for cocktails.

      I was right. The car was a Ford, and Phyllis, darling Phyllis, was the chauffeur. I didn’t, of course, realize as she came running down the platform to meet me how very darling Phyllis was—and is! But I saw she was pretty and lively and slim, and a second glance told me she had bright red hair, bright blue eyes and bright pink cheeks, not enough lipstick to matter and, thank the Lord, eyebrows.

      “You’re Miss Trumbull,” she said, not a difficult guess as no one else had got off the train. “I’m so glad you’ve come.” Her voice, I discovered, was as pretty as all the rest of her. “I’m Phyllis—Phyllis Blair.”

      We shook hands. I would have liked to kiss her. I adore pretty young things, and this Phyllis was as near perfection as you’re likely to see this side of heaven. Competent too. She gathered up my luggage, stowed it away in the back of the Ford, helped me into the front seat, wrapped me up in a fur rug and took the wheel. The Ford started without a single groan, and we moved smoothly away from the station and turned into a wide elm-bordered village street.

      It was almost dark now, but I could see that the village, a very little one, was of the usual New England type: a dozen comfortable old white houses, tall trees, the commons, white church at one end, white post office at the other.

      “A pretty little place,” I remarked, peering out, “but not much going on in winter, I suppose. How do you amuse yourself?”

      “Oh, there’s skating and skiing and . . . .” Her voice trailed off; the car had slowed down and she was looking back at a long low building we had just passed. Then: “I beg your pardon, Miss Trumbull, you were saying . . . .”

      “Nothing of any consequence. What building is that we passed just now?”

      “The Ullathorne glass shop, where Mr. Ullathorne makes his stained glass windows.”

      “Really? I thought the studio was in New York.”

      “It was. But Mr. Ullathorne hates publicity—he’s frightfully temperamental—and when he got the order for a big rose window in the cathedral so many visitors and reporters came prowling in that he flew into a rage—he has a terrible temper—and he moved the whole show out here, bag and baggage.”

      “Very sensible.” I nodded. “There is a young Mr. Ullathorne, I believe, a son. Are they agreeable neighbors?”

      “Oh, yes.” She hesitated. “I don’t think Cousin Charlotte likes Mr. Ullathorne much, not as much as I do. But Cousin Charlotte and I don’t always like the same sort of people.”

      “What about me?” I laughed. “Charlotte likes me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have invited me to visit her.”

      Phyllis