Gallows in My Garden Read online

  “How come she didn’t call the police?”

  I shrugged. “Afraid of publicity. Her fiancé, Arnold Tate, and her Uncle Doug—that’s Doctor Douglas Lawson—were the only two knew of it, aside from the girl. They figured it had to be someone in the house and decided to keep it quiet. Uncle Doug has been making like a detective, but he hasn’t gotten anywhere.”

  “How you know about all this?”

  “Grace Lawson hired me to guard her body earlier today.”

  “Then why didn’t you inform the police?” the inspector snapped.

  “I am, aren’t I?”

  “Haw!” he snorted, and turned to walk toward the house.

  “That isn’t all,” I said, falling in beside him. “Whoever wants Grace dead has hired a couple of professional killers to tail her.” Briefly I recounted the scene at my apartment with the English lord and his squat companion.

  He stopped and absent-mindedly shined his flash in my face as he regarded me thoughtfully. “How do you figure them in the thing?” he asked.

  “I can’t so that it makes much sense,” I admitted. “But it’s possible the murderer was having Grace tailed to see if she went to the police and the tails reported in by phone periodically. When they reported her visit to me, he either knew who I was or found out in a hurry, and decided a bodyguard would put a crimp in his plans. So he told the boys either to induce me to leave town, or rub me out.”

  “You sure they were connected with this affair? Maybe it was just someone with an old grudge sicked them on you.”

  “To offer me ten thousand bucks?” I asked. “Some grudge, that would be. Besides, they recognized the girl, which is the reason they let me go.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” the inspector said. “If they were after the girl, why didn’t they grab her right there?”

  “That’s the question that’s been bothering me,” I told him.

  V

  APPARENTLY THE GROUP in the drawing-room had not found the inscrutable Hannegan’s presence conducive to conversation, for there was dead silence as we re-entered the house.

  Warren Day scowled ferociously at Abigail Stoltz and asked, “You Mrs. Lawson?”

  “Why, no,” she said in a startled voice.

  “I am, Inspector,” Ann said quietly.

  Day blinked at her, tried to maintain his scowl, but let it deteriorate into what was nearly a simper. Almost politely he said, “I want to interview everyone privately, including the servants. Got a place I can do it?”

  “Certainly.” She rose and led us back to the study from which I had phoned.

  As Ann walked ahead of us, every line of her soft body was outlined by what little there was to her gown. Just inside the door she stopped and turned to face us. The inspector, who was following immediately behind her, slammed on the brakes so hard I nearly walked up his back. Quickly he sidled around her until the big desk separated them, and seated himself in the chair. With a desk in front of him he seemed to feel more at home, but even in that secure position he was momentarily unable to conquer his psychotic fear of beautiful women.

  “Long as you’re already here, Mrs. Lawson—” he started to mutter, then left the phrase dangling while he absent-mindedly produced a cigar which was beginning to peel, bit off the end, and stuck it in his mouth.

  Around the cigar he suddenly boomed, “Send in your stepdaughter first.”

  As Ann closed the door behind herself, Day barked at me, “Got a match?”

  I tossed him a folder, he lit a match, scowled at the door Ann had just passed through, and shook out the flame without lighting his cigar.

  When Grace Lawson entered, I was impressed again by her cool loveliness. But whereas at our first meeting it had been the bubbling beauty of champagne, the shock of her brother’s death had subdued it to the sparkle of still wine. She was too young to upset the inspector with her femininity, but even in his cynical eyes there was a flicker of admiration.

  “Sit down, young lady,” he said with unusual gentleness.

  Grace perched herself on a straight-backed chair in front of the desk and folded her hands in her lap.

  “Moon, here, tells me somebody’s trying to kill you. When was the first attempt?”

  “Four weeks ago,” she said quietly. “On a Sunday. Arnold and I were going riding—“

  “Who’s Arnold?” the inspector interrupted.

  Her eyes widened just as they had when I asked that question. I supposed eventually she would get used to the idea that everyone in the world was not intimately aware of Arnold’s existence.

  “Arnold Tate,” she said. “My fiancé. That good-looking fellow you saw in the drawing-room. He’s wearing a brown sport coat.”

  “Good-looking?” Day repeated puzzledly. “I must have missed him. Unless you mean that young guy whose hair wasn’t combed.”

  Grace straightened herself indignantly.

  “Get on with it,” the inspector said with mild impatience. “You were going riding.”

  She sniffed disdainfully and said in a tight voice, “When I started to swing up into the saddle, the girth broke as my full weight rested on the stirrup. Arnold and I examined it and found it had been cut so far only a thread or two had been holding it.”

  “Who saddled the horse?”

  “Karl.”

  “Who’s Karl?”

  “Karl Thomas. The boy who—the boy who found Don. He’s sort of general handyman. Grooms the horses, services the cars, does minor repairs around the place, helps Jason, and so on.”

  “Who’s Jason?”

  “Jason Henry, the outside man. Takes care of the grounds.”

  “Listen,” the inspector said. “All these people you mention are probably old stuff to you, but I never heard of them before. Would you mind explaining who everybody is as you go along?”

  “All right,” she said contritely.

  “Now where were we? Oh, yeah. Karl saddled the horse. How’d he explain the cut girth?”

  “He didn’t. He left the horses alone in the stable to come tell us they were ready. I hadn’t changed to riding-clothes yet, so it was fifteen minutes before we got to the stable. Almost anyone could have slipped out there in the meantime. Uncle Doug—he’s Doctor Douglas Lawson—had been out in the skiff fishing, and he happened to come up the stairs from the beach just as Arnold and I went in the stable. He came over to say hello just as the cut in the girth had been discovered by Arnold, and we all three discussed what to do about it. At first we all thought it was just a rather stupid practical joke. Arnold was all for going up to the house and raising Cain with everyone, when Uncle Doug said in a sort of funny, shocked voice, ‘Grace, I think someone tried to kill you.’ It was after that we decided to keep it quiet and give Uncle Doug a chance to make a secret investigation.”

  Warren Day asked, “Who was here that Sunday?”

  “Everybody. Generally we have the same group on week-ends. There was Arnold. He’s my fiancé. And Uncle Doug. That’s Doctor Douglas Lawson—“

  “Hold it!” the inspector said. He took the cigar from his mouth and examined it frustratedly before putting it back again. “Let’s go back to your first method. You just rattle off names, and I’ll stop you when I want identification.”

  By dint of long and dogged questioning, during which the inspector gradually assumed a more martyred expression, he finally satisfied himself that as far as Grace knew, all of the servants, household members, or guests had opportunity, even Arnold, whom she had left alone in the drawing-room while she changed to riding-clothes.

  The same situation obtained for the incident of the following Saturday night, or rather Sunday a.m. Arnold and Grace had been to a dance and returned about midnight. After both had retired to their rooms, Grace began to wonder if she had turned off the radio in the car. She went outside to the garage again to check, finding she had switched it off, after all. But as she reached the front door again, a heavy earthenware flowerpot which usually adorned a shelf
immediately inside the upper hall window, had sailed past her head and burst on the ground a few feet away.

  “How come you went clear around the house to get in, instead of using the back door?” Day asked.

  “Oh, we never use the back door,” Grace explained. “That’s Maggie’s and Kate’s. And the side door Maggie locks at night and keeps the key.”

  “Who are Maggie and Kate?” the inspector asked wearily.

  “Our combination housekeeper-cook and the maid. The three male servants have rooms over the garage, you see, but Maggie and Kate each have a room off the kitchen. Kate’s only been here about six months, but Maggie was Daddy’s housekeeper even in the old house downtown, since right after I was born. She sort of regards the back of the house as hers, and gets mad if anyone uses the kitchen door without her permission.” “I see. And the same guests were here as the week before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right,” Day said. “How about the third incident?”

  This, it developed, left the suspects as numerous as before, which seemed to indicate the would-be killer deliberately planned his attempts at times when everyone could share equal suspicion. The previous Sunday afternoon Grace and Arnold had been playing tennis while Ann, the now deceased Don, Dr. Lawson, Abigail Stoltz, Gerald Cushing, and Jonathan Mannering sat around a lawn table at the edge of the swimming-pool sipping drinks and watching the game. Edmund, the Negro houseboy, had been bringing drinks for the group from the house, and Grace had called to him to bring her some iced milk.

  According to Edmund’s later explanation to Dr. Lawson, he had passed on the request to Kate while he mixed at the bar the other drinks ordered. The milk was poured by Maggie, delivered by Kate to Edmund, who carried it out to the lawn table and set it down.

  The tennis set finished in a blaze of action which brought all those seated at the table to their feet, and finally over to the court. With everyone’s attention on the game, any one of them might have dropped poison in the milk unobserved. And since Jason and Karl had been trimming the grass around the edge of the pool, both of them had opportunity, also.

  When the set ended, Arnold ran over to the table and brought back the milk and the Tom Collins he had ordered for himself. In the meantime Grace had joined the group at the edge of the court.

  As Arnold handed the milk to Grace, Dr. Lawson had sniffed and asked, “What’s that funny smell?”

  Everyone tested the air, and Ann said, “I smell something, too.”

  Grace had also become conscious of a peculiar odor. Suddenly she raised the milk glass and sniffed at it, thereby foiling the poisoning attempt. The quick-thinking Dr. Lawson, realizing this might be another attempt on Grace’s life, had said, “That milk’s sour. I’ll get you some more,” and carried the glass off to the house. Later he had had it analyzed.

  “Sounds like an awfully dumb killer,” Day remarked. “Cuts the saddle girth too far to do any good, misses with a weapon big enough to flatten an ox, and picks a poison that stinks. Seems to be a kind of expert at inefficiency. Got any suspicions?”

  “No, except it couldn’t be Arnold, Ann, Uncle Doug, or Maggie.”

  Day regarded her sourly. “Because they’re all incapable of sin, I suppose?”

  Grace flushed, but nodded determinedly.

  “For the moment we won’t rule anyone out,” the inspector said. “Now tell me about your brother’s disappearance.”

  “He just left a note saying he was leaving and disappeared. Sunday night we all went to bed, and Monday he was gone. We all thought he’d just run away, though no one knew why he should have. Of course we reported it to the police, though no one was really very upset because we had no idea—” The little creases appeared in the flesh between her eyes, and she went on more hesitantly. “Don is—was a rather odd boy. We were never as close as some brothers and sisters, not that we weren’t fond of each other, but he always seemed so withdrawn somehow, I don’t think I ever really understood Don. Arnold, Uncle Doug, and I talked it over and decided possibly someone had been trying to kill him, too, and he ran away because he was scared. We supposed he’d be back in a day or two, for he hadn’t taken any clothes with him except what he had on, as nearly as we could decide from examining his closet.”

  “Where’s the note he left?” Day asked.

  “I don’t know. It was addressed to Ann, so I suppose she has it.”

  “Was the same group of guests here overnight?”

  “All but Arnold,” she said. “He has an eight-o’clock on Monday, and my first class isn’t till ten. So he always takes the bus back to school Sunday night. I drove him to the depot in time to catch the seven-fifteen.”

  Grace paused for a moment, thinking. “Uncle Doug was gone part of the night. He was called out to deliver a baby.”

  “How long was he gone?” Day asked.

  “I don’t know. He has a private phone in his room for emergency calls, so the rest of the house won’t be disturbed when he is called late at night. We all retired about ten-thirty, so it must have been after that.”

  The inspector seemed to have obtained everything he wanted from Grace. “Send Mrs. Lawson in,” he told her in dismissal.

  At Ann Lawson’s entrance Inspector Day tried what he seemed to think was an ingratiating smile, with the same horrible result that had occurred in the drawing-room. I felt sorry for him. Every line of her body rippled when she walked, and at every ripple Day blinked. Nor did she have to employ the deliberately sensual sway some women use to emphasize voluptuousness. Even without artificial mannerisms she was overpoweringly feminine.

  “Please have a chair, Mrs. Lawson,” the inspector said. It was the first time in our acquaintance I ever heard him use the word please.

  Seating herself in the same chair Grace had occupied, she turned her calm, luminous eyes on the inspector and waited for him to proceed.

  Day cleared his throat. “Were you aware someone was trying to kill your stepdaughter, Mrs. Lawson?”

  “Not until this evening, when Arnold Tate made the disclosure.”

  Carefully, but with visible discomfort, Day went over Grace’s testimony concerning the poisoned milk, and Ann’s version of the incident was substantially the same as her stepdaughter’s.

  “Of course, at the time I had no idea it was poisoned,” she explained. “I simply accepted Douglas’s statement that it was sour, and never thought about it again. I was unaware that Douglas had it analyzed, or that he had questioned the servants to learn who had handled the glass.”

  “But you agree with your stepdaughter that anyone at all had opportunity to drop poison in the milk?”

  “I suppose I have to. Even myself.”

  Ignoring the pointed lead, the inspector switched the subject. “Do you have the note your stepson, Don, left for you?”

  “No. We all read it. I believe Aunt Abigail had it last. She’s the gray-haired woman with the boyish bob.”

  Day frowned. “What did the note say?” “Just that he was leaving.” “I mean the exact words.”

  Ann’s smooth brow furrowed in concentration. “It was very short,” she said slowly. “It read, ‘Dear Ann, I hate going off this way, because no doubt it will make unpleasant publicity for you, but I think it the wisest course. Explain things to Grace arid Uncle Doug.’ I may not have the exact wording, but that’s the sense of it.”

  For the first time Day took his eyes from her face and looked over at me. “What’s that sound like to you, Moon?”

  “A red herring,” I said promptly. He corrugated his forehead. “What you mean?” “You expected me to say it sounds like a suicide note, didn’t you?”

  “Why, it does!” Ann exclaimed incredulously. “That never occurred to any of us, but it could very well be, couldn’t it?” She paused, then said softly, “I should have known all along.”

  “Why?” Day asked.

  Ann’s expression indicated she wished she had not made the remark. “I didn’t really mean that,�
�� she said reluctantly. “There is no reason Don should have committed suicide. It’s just that he was such a moody boy—” Her voice trailed off, then renewed its strength. “It isn’t fair of me to say such things, for it would never have occurred to me Don might commit suicide. He was a strange boy, and somewhat withdrawn, but certainly not pathological.”

  “How about that red-herring crack?” Day said to me.

  I said, “When two kids are heirs to as much green stuff as Don and Grace, and you know someone is trying to knock off one, you can almost bet when the other dies violently, it was murder. Any suicide notes left lying around were probably planted by the murderer. Bet you never find that note, now that it’s fulfilled its purpose.”

  The inspector regarded me glumly. “Never in my life have I known a guy who can be as wrong as you are sometimes, when you jump way ahead of the evidence and make a wild guess. But this time I think you got something.” He turned back to Ann. “You say the note ended, ‘Explain things to Grace and Uncle Doug.’ What did that mean?”

  “I have no idea,” Ann said. “We all puzzled over it, but the best answer we could arrive at was that he meant for me to break the news gently to them that he had run away from home.”

  “Humph,” Day remarked. Then he said abruptly, “Send in your Aunt Abigail when you go out, will you please?”

  VI

  THE INSPECTOR’S TREATMENT of Abigail Stoltz was more in line with his usual manner. I suspect he was never quite comfortable with any woman, and hid his inferiority under a bullying manner. With beautiful women he was simply too floored to operate properly, but his courage mounted in direct proportion to the haggishness of his female opponent. Abigail got the works.

  “Sit down!” he barked, as soon as she entered the door, and when she frightenedly hurried to comply, he shot at her, “Your name?”

  “Abigail Stoltz,” she whispered.

  “Speak up so I can hear you! Miss or Mrs.?”