Murder in Stained Glass. Armstrong Margaret
or four. My—my father and I each have one, of course, and Clarence, and Jake Murphy—he’s our head man. That’s all, I think.”
“Seems sort of careless to me. However, upstairs don’t matter now. Sam, you go get a couple of stout boards and nail ’em across the front door and tomorrow we’ll see about a key. That all right with you, Mr. Leo?”
“Yes. You’ll let me know what the doctor says?”
“Of course. What say we all meet here ‘bout eight tomorrow, and get things sort of straightened out in our minds before the Banbury folks comes nosing in?”
“All right.”
“Sam, you be here too, and Clarence. And tell any of Mr. Ullathorne’s men, and anybody else seems like they’d know anything, to come along. Better bring a boy to keep snoopers out. You get me? Well, guess that’s all for tonight. Supper time, folks. Let’s go.”
III
Follow faster! All together!
Search, inquire of every one.
Speak, inform us, have you seen him?
Whither is the rascal gone?
ARISTOPHANES.
BREAKFAST was pretty sketchy next morning. Phyllis and I were too excited for second cups. But Minnie hovered around, asking questions—luckily, we didn’t have to contend with Charlotte, who was still in seclusion—and it seemed as if we’d never get away.
But at last we did, and although it wasn’t yet eight o’clock we found quite a lot of people in the road outside the glass shop where Clarence and another boy stood on guard, watching Sam Beers and Leo prying off the boards that had protected the door during the night. Sam had made a thorough job of it, and the nails drew out with horrible protesting squeaks. But at last the door was free. Sam flung it open. The crowd moved forward and would have come surging up the path if Clarence had not held them back. He let Phyllis and me through, and Mr. Merritt and Mrs. Flack, the postmistress—it seemed she was Mr. Ullathorne’s landlady—and the Ullathorne workmen. We all went in and Sam shut the door.
The place looked surprisingly different by day, not in the least theatrical. That horrible kiln was still there, of course, and ashes were still scattered about; but the sun shining in through the windows seemed to suck out all the mystery. The room looked what it was, a furnace cellar, as dirty and commonplace as any other furnace cellar. Except for one thing. The door at the top of the stairs leading to the workroom was open and a blaze of color from the rose window came pouring down into our faces, as brilliant and dazzling as the light of an autumn sunset.
I stood looking up—and wondering. Had the door been open when that awful thing happened down here, right here where I stood now? If it had been open, those red and blue and gold stained glass angels and saints would have been spectators of the tragedy!
They had looked on while some poor creature was murdered, a fire was kindled, evil smelling smoke went up the chimney. They wouldn’t have cared, of course. Just kept on smiling. Life and death don’t exist in the stained glass world.
But would the murderer, I asked myself, have been equally indifferent? Suppose, as the first ray of dawn shone down upon him through that window, he happened to look up and saw those watching faces? Suppose—
Phyllis touched my arm.
“Did you hear?” she whispered. “Mr. Merritt says the bones really are human bones! Isn’t that dreadful!”
Mr. Merritt was reading aloud from a paper, Dr. Greely’s report. Mr. Merritt’s expression was decorous, but you felt an underlying satisfaction as he finished:
“No doubt about it, I’m afraid. We got a murder on our hands. Doctor says the bones is human. Microscope told him that. But he can’t tell whether they’s a man’s bones or a woman’s, with so little to go on, no flesh or skin or hair, you know.”
Phyllis shuddered, walked over to a window and stood looking out.
“That fire must of been awful hot,” Mr. Merritt went on. “Burn a person, clothes and all, and not leave so much’s a scrap of shoe leather!”
“And it must have burned for some time,” I said. “You’d think the neighbors would have noticed the smoke and—and the smell.”
“Too far off from any other house, I guess. And it was night. No one would have seen anything.”
“Unless someone happened to be up. Who lives nearest? Have they got a baby?”
“Mrs. Podsnap is nearest,” Mrs. Flack put in, “and she’s got a six-weeks-old baby cries most all night. You want I should call her up? Telephone’s upstairs, ain’t it, Mr. Leo?”
He nodded. Mrs. Flack went up and returned in a moment, triumphant.
“Now what do you think of that!” she panted. “Mrs. Podsnap she says she looked out her window Saturday night just before sun-up—she was heating the young one’s bottle and he was yelling fit to beat the band—and she saw smoke coming up behind the trees, and she thought the glass shop might be afire and she was just going to call her husband—he sleeps pretty sound—but the milk boiled over, and she never gave the smoke another thought till the baby had his breakfast, and then she looked again and the smoke was most gone and anyway she saw now it was coming from the chimly, and she forgot all about it till I asked her had she noticed anything.”
“That’s fine, Mrs. Flack. That’s very helpful,” Mr. Merritt beamed. “We’re getting on, getting on fine. Any more suggestions, Miss Trumbull?”
“Suppose we try to reconstruct the crime,” I said. “How do you think the man was killed, Mr. Merritt?”
“Why—why, he was shoved in and burned up, I guess. No; that couldn’t be. The furnace door ain’t wide enough.”
We all stared at the furnace.
“It is not,” I agreed. “So the man must have been killed, shot, in all probability, and then—cut up.”
“Cut up?” Mr. Merritt gulped. “You mean cut up with a knife, like a butcher would?”
“Or with an axe,” Mrs. Flack put in gloatingly.
“Look!” Clarence pointed with a trembling hand. “My axe—laying there just as handy!”
“My Lord!” Mr. Merritt groaned. “Then maybe the poor fellow got chopped to bits right here in this cellar! But that would have made an awful mess.”
“Blood is easily washed away if there is plenty of water,” I said. “There’s a stand-pipe over there in the corner—used for washing cars, I suppose, when this place was a garage—and the floor slopes down to that drain near the door. The murderer could have flushed the floor clean in five minutes.”
“Wouldn’t everything have got pretty wet?”
“It did get wet,” I said. “Last evening when I was sitting on that pile of boards and excelsior I noticed it was damp.”
I crossed the floor, and pulled out a tuft of excelsior. “It still is,” I said.
“Well, well!” Mr. Merritt said admiringly. “You certainly got a good headpiece, Miss Trumbull. But you said just now you thought the victim was shot. What makes you think so?”
“Because of the hole in that windowpane.” I pointed. “To me it looks as if it had been made by a bullet. What about it, Clarence? Was that window all right on Saturday?”
“It sure was,” Clarence said. “Not a crack in it, or I’d of noticed it. But a gun would make a noise, Miss Trumbull. Someone would of heard the shot.”
“Not if he fired when a train was going by.”
“That’s so!” Mr. Merritt rubbed