The Girl at Central/Chapter 8

FTER the inquest there was no more question about who was suspected. It was as if every finger in Longwood was raised and pointed to Mapleshade. The cautious people didn't say it plain—especially the shop-keepers who were afraid of losing custom—but those who had nothing to gain by keeping still came out with it flatfooted.

It wasn't only that nobody liked the Doctor, or believed his story, it was because the people were wild at what had been done. They wanted to find the murderer and put him behind bars and seeing that things pointed more clearly to Dr. Fowler than to anybody else they pitched on him. All the gossip about the quarreling came out blacker than ever. The papers were full of it and the other worse stories, about Sylvia's allowance and the will of her father. There wasn't a bit of dirty linen in the Fowler household that wasn't washed and hung out on the line for the public to gape at, and some of it was dirtier when they'd got through washing than it had been before.

There were those who didn't scruple to say that the whole tragedy was a frame-up between Virginie Dupont and the Doctor. If you talked sensible to them and asked them how Virginie could have got word to him that Sylvia was running away, they'd just push that to one side, saying it could be explained some way, everything wasn't known yet—but one thing you could be sure of—the one person who knew the whereabouts of that French woman was Dr. Daniel Fowler.

I believe there were some days after the inquest when, if there'd been an anarchist or agitator to stand on the postoffice steps and yell that Dr. Fowler ought to be jailed, a crowd would have gathered, gone down to Mapleshade, and demanded him.

Fortunately there was no one of that kind around, and he stayed quiet in his home, not even coming to the village. Two days after the inquest I saw Anne and she said he and Mrs. Fowler hadn't been out of the house—that they were in a state of siege what with reporters and the police and morbid cranks who hung round the grounds looking up at the windows.

That same evening I stayed over time in the Exchange, lending a hand. The work was something awful, and Katie Reilly, the new girl, was most snowed under and on the way to lose her head. I wanted to see her through and I wanted the credit of the office kept up, but it's also true that I wanted to be on the job myself and hear all that was passing. Believe me, it was hard to quiet down in my bedroom at night after eight hours at the switchboard right in the thick of the excitement. Besides, I'd got to know the reporters pretty well and it was fun making them think I could give them leads and then guying them.

I liked Babbitts the best, but there were three others that weren't bad as men go. One was Jones, a tall thin chap like an actor, with long black hair hanging down to his collar, and Freddy Jasper, who was English and talked with an awful swell dialect, and a sallow-skinned, consumpted-looking guy called Yerrington who belonged on a paper as yellow as his face and always went round with a cigarette hanging from his lip like it was stuck on with glue.

It was nearly eight and work was slacking off when I started to go home. What with the jump I'd been on and listening to the gabbing round the door I'd forgotten my supper. It wasn't till I saw the Gilt Edge window with a nice pile of apples stacked up round a pumpkin, that I remembered I was hungry and walked over. There were only three people in the place, Florrie Stein, the waitress, and a woman with a kid in the corner.

I was just finishing my corn beef hash with a cup of coffee at my elbow and stewed prunes on the line of promotion when Soapy and Jones and Jasper came in and asked me if they could sit at my table. "Please yourself," said I, "and you'll please me," for politeness is one of the things I was bred up to, and they sat down, calling out their orders to Florrie Stein.

They naturally began talking about "the case"—it was all anybody talked about just then—and for all I knew so much about it, I generally picked up some new bits from them. So I went to the extravagance of three cents worth of jelly roll, not because I wanted it, but because I could crumb it up and eat it slow and not give away I was sitting on to listen.

"We can talk before you, Miss Morganthau," said Babbitts, "because while we all agree you're the belle of Longwood, we've found out by sad experience you're a belle without a tongue."

Florrie Stein, bringing the food then, they were silent till she'd set it out, and when she'd drawn off to the cashier's desk, they started in again. They were, so to speak, looking over Hines as a suspect.

"No, Hines won't fit," said Babbitts. "The presence of the jewelry on the body eliminates him. They've dug up his record and though the place he ran wasn't to be recommended for Sunday school picnics, the man himself seems to have been fairly decent."

"It's odd about the bag—the fitted bag and the jewelry gone from the room," said Jasper.

"The police have an idea that Virginie Dupont could tell something of them."

"Theft?"

"Theft on the side."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Jones, "what's the good of complicating things? If theft was committed it was a frame-up, part of a plot."

"You believe in this idea they've got in the village that Fowler and the French woman worked together?"

"I do—to my mind the murderer's marked as plain as Cain after he was branded on the brow or wherever it was."

Then Jasper spoke up. He's a nice quiet chap, not as fresh as the others. "Let's hear what you base that assertion on."

Jones forgot his supper and twisted round sideways in his chair, looking thoughtful up at the cornice:

"As I understand it, in a murder two things are necessary—a crime and a corpse; and in a murderer one, a motive. Now we have all three—the motive especially strong. If Miss Hesketh married, her stepfather lost his home and the money he had been living on, so he tried to stop her from marrying. Saturday night he heard that his efforts had failed. I fancy that on Sunday morning when he went for that auto drive he stopped at some village—not as yet located—and communicated with Virginie Dupont, who was in his pay. She, too, went out that morning, you may remember."

"There's a good deal of surmise about this," said Babbitts.

Jones gave him a scornful look.

"If the links in the chain were perfect Dr. Fowler'd be eating his dinner to-night in Bloomington Jail."

"How do you account for Miss Hesketh—presupposing it was she—being on the train instead of the turnpike?" said Jasper.

"A change of plans," Jones answered calmly, "also not yet satisfactorily cleared up. To continue: Sometime on Sunday the Doctor conceived the plan of ridding himself of all his cares—his troublesome stepdaughter, the disturbance of his home and his financial distress. How," he turned and looked solemnly at us, "fate played so well into his hands I can't yet explain—the main point is that it did. He met Miss Hesketh at the Junction, either by threats, persuasion or coercion made her enter his auto and carried her up the road to the turnpike.

"And now," said Babbitts, leaning his arms on the table, "we come to her appearance in the Wayside Arbor."

"We do," Jones replied, nodding his head. "You may remember that both Hines and his servant said there were twigs and leaves on the edge of her skirt and that her boots were muddy. Traces of this were still visible in her clothes when they found her body. She did get out of the automobile, but not so far from the turnpike as he said. Either he and she had some fierce quarrel and she ran from him in rage or terror, or he may have told the truth and she slipped out at the turn from the Riven Rock Road without his knowledge. Anyway she got away from him and ran for the only light she saw. There she telephoned Reddy, withholding the main facts from him, perhaps merely to save time, but cautioning him against letting anyone know of the message. That, as I see it, was a natural feminine desire to guard against gossip. When she thought Reddy was due she started out to meet him—and instead met the Doctor."

"Who'd been hanging about for a half-hour on the roadside?"

"Precisely. He killed her, concealed the body, and went home."

"Just a minute," said Yerrington—"what did he kill her with? The weapon used is a disputed point. Many think it was a farm implement. Did he go across lots to Cresset's and arm himself with a convenient spade or rake for the fatherly purpose of slaying his stepdaughter?"

But you couldn't phase Jones, he said as calm as a May morning:

"He could have done that. But I don't think he did. He didn't need it. The tool box of the car was nearer to hand. A large-sized auto wrench is a pretty formidable weapon, and a tire wrench—did you ever see one? One well-aimed blow of that would crush in the head of a negro."

"Gentlemen, the evidence is all in," said Babbitts.

"Your case might hold water," said Jasper, "if it wasn't as full of holes as a sieve. Why, you can make out as good a one for almost anybody."

"Who, for example?" Jones asked.

"Well—take Reddy."

"Jack Reddy?" I said that, sitting up suddenly and staring at them with a piece of jelly roll halfway to my mouth.

"He's as good as another," said Jasper, and then he added sort of dreamy: "I believe I could work up quite a convincing case against Reddy, allowing for a hole here and there. But our illustrious friend here admits holes at this stage."

"Fire away," said Babbitts. "Give it to us, holes and all."

"Well—off the bat here it is. You may remember that no one saw him coming back from Maple Lane that night. There is no one, therefore, to deny that he may have had Miss Hesketh in the car with him. Instead of going back to Firehill, as he says he did, he followed his original plan of taking her by the turnpike."

"Right at the start I challenge that," said Babbitts. "She appeared at the Wayside Arbor at nine-thirty. The date in Maple Lane was for seven. Supposing she kept it and was on time—which is a stretch of the imagination—he would have had to travel one hundred and eighteen miles in two hours and a half."

"He could have done it."

"On a black, dark night? nearly forty-eight miles an hour?"

"You forget he knew the road and was driving a high-powered racing car. It's improbable but not impossible."

"I count that as a hole, but go on."

"Now in this hypothetical case we'll suppose that as that car flew over the miles the man and the woman in it had high words?"

"Hold on," said Jones, holding out his fork—"that's too big a hole. They were lovers eloping, not an old married couple."

"I'll explain that later. The high words inflamed and enraged the man to the point of murder and he conceived a horrible plan. As they neared the Wayside Arbor he told the woman something was wrong with the car and sent her to the place ostensibly to telephone, really to establish her presence there at a time when, had she been with him, she could hardly have got that far."

I jumped in there. I knew it was only fooling, but even so I didn't like hearing Mr. Reddy talked about that way.

"Who did he send her to telephone to, Mr. Jasper—himself?"

Babbitts laughed and jerked his head toward me.

"Listen to our little belle sounding the curfew on Jasper."

But Mr. Jasper was ready.

"He could have done that, knowing his house was empty. Hines, you remember, said she wasn't five minutes in the booth. We've only Reddy's word for that message. We don't even know if she got a connection. I telephoned out to the Corona operator Saturday and she answered that there was no record of the message and she herself remembered nothing about it."

"But Sylvia," I said—"she told Hines she was expecting someone to come for her."

"Sylvia was eloping. Mightn't she have told Hines—who was curious and intrusive—what wasn't true?"

A sort of hush fell on us all. Babbitts's face and Jones's, from being just amused, were intent and interested.

"Go ahead, Jasper," said Babbitts, "if this isn't buying the baby a frock it's good yarning."

Jasper went on.

"Her story of the broken automobile she believed to be true. But she didn't want Hines to know who she was or what she was up to, so she invented the person coming to take her home. Why she sat so long there talking is—I'll admit—a hole, but I said in the beginning there would be some. The end is just like the end of Jones's case. She went back to Reddy and he killed her with, as our friend has suggested, one of the auto tools. Very soon after it would have been as that Bohemian—what's her name?—heard the scream at ten-ten."

"That's all very well," said Jones, "but before we go further I'd like you to furnish us with a motive."

"Nothing easier—jealousy."

"Jealousy!" I said, sudden and sharp.

"Jealousy in its most violent form. The lady in this case was a peculiar type—a natural born siren. She had made the man jealous, furiously jealous. That was the reason of the high words in the motor."

"Who was he jealous of?" It was I again who asked that.

Jasper turned round and looked at me with a smile. "Why, Miss Morganthau," he said, "you gave us the clue to that. He was jealous of the man who made the date you heard on the phone. Don't you see," he said, turning to the others, "that man kept his date and Reddy came and found him there."

I can't tell what it was that fell on us and made us sit so still for a minute. All of us knew it was just a joke, but—for me, anyway—it was as if a cloud had settled on the room. Babbitts sat smoking a cigarette and staring at the rings he was making with his eyes screwed up. Presently, when Jones spoke, his voice had a sound like his pride was taken down.

"A great deal better than I expected, but it's simply riddled with holes."

Before Jasper could answer the door opened and Yerrington came in. The cigarette was hanging off his lip and as he said "Good evening" to me it wobbled but clung on. Then he pulled out a chair, sat down and, looking at the other three with a gleam in his eye, said:

"A little while ago Dr. Fowler's chauffeur in dusting out his car found the gold mesh purse squeezed down between the back and the cushion."