Miss Withers Regrets (5 page)

I
T WAS A BAD NIGHT
for young men in blue suits and for first lieutenants. All over the metropolitan area of New York, unhappy youths were swept into the police dragnet and charged with being Pat Montague. Those without dog tags, drivers’ licenses, or a pocketful of unpaid bills to identify themselves denied it in vain, and half a hundred were locked up on suspicion.

Meanwhile Pat himself perched glumly and alone on a bar stool less than two blocks from the Shoreham police station, wearing no disguise except a dazed expression and a highball glass which he held most of the time before his face. He stared into the murky depths as if the drink were a crystal ball in which his future might be expected to reveal itself. But he saw nothing more than a dingy ice cube, though all the same he had a presentiment of what he was going to be in for.

He went straight up in the air as a heavy hand descended upon his shoulder. His left arm cocked itself, and he was about to let it go when he realized that the police do not go around wearing tropical gabardine suits with a carnation in the buttonhole. The stranger had a pleasant, slightly apologetic smile on his sharp, foxlike face.

“Uk!” gulped Pat Montague.

“Why, I don’t mind if I do,” Jed Nicolet accepted blandly as he climbed on to the next stool. When the barman had brought him a bottle of ale and a glass, had been paid off and had retired to his hillbilly radio program at the other end of the bar, Jed leaned closer.

“Relax,” he advised. “I know who you are from the description. I’m a friend of Helen’s.”

Pat froze. “So?”

“So they tipped me off to look for you around the bars, and there are only three in town. If you don’t mind my saying so, it looks as if you need some legal advice.” Nicolet produced a business card.

Pat took it. He didn’t exactly like this man who looked like a tame, friendly coyote, and yet he had to talk to somebody. “Did Helen send you?”

Nicolet nodded. “Only it was her sister who spoke to me when the police finally let me leave. Helen herself wasn’t free to do anything, with the house full of police and the reporters hammering on the door.” He took a deep swig of his ale. “You may as well trust me, fellow. What can you lose? Why not break down and tell me just how you fit into all the hell that broke loose up on the hill this afternoon?”

Pat said quickly, “I didn’t kill him!” Then he stopped. It wouldn’t be any use.

“Start with the moment you got there,” Nicolet prompted. “You hadn’t been invited, but you knew there was a party. Did Helen know you were in town?”

Pat shook his head. “I called up twice earlier in the week because I wanted to hear her voice. But some maid answered the phone. So I started to walk up there; I can’t explain why—”

All the same, he tried explaining through fifteen minutes and two more highballs. Nicolet nodded judicially when it was all finished. “So that’s it. It isn’t easy to advise you. You could, of course, walk into Sheriff Vinge’s office and tell him the story. You could say that you went up to the Cairnses’ house uninvited because you wanted just one look at the girl who didn’t wait for you while you were overseas. You thought you had a glimpse of her down by the pool, so you climbed down, keeping out of sight of the house. When you got there you happened to look down into the water, and it wasn’t Helen, it was Huntley Cairns, and he was dead.”

“As a lawyer, give me your opinion.”

“As a lawyer, and as a specialist in criminal law and trial cases, I must confess that I don’t believe it myself.”

Pat flushed and started to slide down off the stool, but the other man caught him by the arm. His muscles, Pat thought, were a lot harder than they looked. “Sit down,” Nicolet said firmly. “I don’t tell all I know, and this is a privileged communication anyhow. Personally, I think that any one who killed Huntley Cairns ought to be given a gold medal and a key to the city.”

“Why?” Pat demanded. “I thought you were a friend of his.”

“I put up with him for Helen’s sake. But nobody in town liked the man. I’ve only lived out here a couple of years, but I’ve seen him racing around burning gasoline in three cars when the rest of us were sweating it out on an A card. He bought a half-interest in the Star Market in town when rationing was tough so he’d have plenty of meat and butter and sugar. And he got a new sedan in February, the only 1946 model in this part of the country. The man made his own rules. Nobody will miss him, not even Helen, if what they say is true.”

“Maybe,” Pat said slowly. “I wouldn’t know about that. But I didn’t kill him. Not that I didn’t threaten to knock his ears down if we ever met. I already did it once, the night he met Helen. He was on the make then, over three years ago. He didn’t have as much dough then, but he was still a louse.”

Jed Nicolet nodded. “He had a bad case of Little Man’s Disease. He had to keep proving to himself, over and over, that he was better than taller men. Lots of guys have gone to the top through that sort of drive. Anyway, he’s dead, and
de mortuis
—”

“I didn’t hold him under water until he drowned,” Pat insisted. “You’ve got to accept that or we don’t go on talking.”

“Okay, you’re lily-white. I’ve had clients who were innocent, now and then. Anyway, I’ll see what can be done, for Helen’s sake. And because you seem like a nice Joe. Speaking of Helen, you didn’t even get to see her, did you?”

“I haven’t seen her in three years. Her kid sister gummed up the works—I’ve always blamed her for it, anyway. I’ve had a hunch that somebody intercepted my letters and switched telegrams and things. Lawn used to be a little vixen. But she did let me out of that trap today.”

Nicolet was calmly sympathetic. “I’m afraid that was no favor. It was bad break number two. If you hadn’t run away we’d be in a much sounder position. Never mind that now. What we need is a smoke-screen. Circumstantial evidence is all against you. You had the motive, the means, and the opportunity to kill Huntley Cairns. You are admittedly in love with his wife, and you were on the premises without an invitation. I figure that the police will grab you and tuck you away and mark the case closed, unless—”

“Unless what?”

Jed Nicolet didn’t answer for a moment but took a final swig at his glass. “I was just thinking that this is an unusual situation and calls for unusual measures. Suppose it got out to the newspapers and everybody that you had called in a mastermind private detective, a big-time expert in murder cases, to get to the bottom of this whole affair.”

Pat said glumly that he didn’t see it.

“Listen. If we do that, the police won’t dare to let the case drop. They’ll realize that they have to keep investigating every possible lead because they don’t want to risk being shown up. The chances are that they’ll be smart enough to call in outside help and eventually turn in the real killer. And in the meantime we’re planting a wedge of doubt that I can hammer home to the jury when you’re on trial.”

“On trial for murder,” Pat said slowly. “Thanks, but I’m not having any. All that sort of thing costs big money, too, and I haven’t got it.”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, it’s time somebody else did your thinking. Come on, I’ll drive you down to the hotel. This detective I was telling you about is staying there in one of the cottages on a hideaway vacation.”

Pat suffered himself to be led outside, and they got into an open convertible and went rolling through the village almost down to the shore, turning in past the Shoreham House, a rambling Victorian firetrap moldering among its bright flower gardens. “The angle to take,” Jed Nicolet warned him, “is strictly Young Love. Whenever you can, strike up ‘Hearts and Flowers,’ see?”

“What the hell kind of detective is this?” Pat demanded, but Nicolet only led him on, around the main building of the hotel and along a little pebbled walk bordered with clamshells which led to a row of little whitewashed cottages.

“Here we are,” Nicolet said cheerfully. He took a deep breath and leaned on the bell. A moment later a woman faced them; in fact, she looked right through them as though they didn’t exist. She was a lean and angular person who would never see fifty again and whose face seemed vaguely to resemble someone Pat had known or seen in the papers. After a moment he realized it was Man o’ War.

Jed Nicolet held out his hand. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Hildegarde Withers! Glad to find you home. I hope you don’t mind our bursting in on you like this, but I want you to meet my friend Pat Montague, who’s just out of the Army and into a mess of trouble.”

She snorted. “And just who are you, young man?” She might have closed the door, but Jed had his foot in it.

“Nicolet is the name—surely you remember me? We met in court.”

The blue-gray eyes spat fire. “We most certainly did! How could I forget the able counsel for the defense in the bridle-path case! Your client was found guilty, too, although in the meantime you gave me four hours of unadulterated torture on the witness stand. And now you have the colossal, unmitigated gall to—”

“Come on, Nicolet, let’s blow,” said Pat dully.

But the young lawyer shook his head. “Miss Withers isn’t one to hold a grudge. After all, it was my first case, and I was only trying to do my best for my client.” He grinned engagingly. “This is another tough one, ma’am, and I’m hoping to get you on our side. My friend Montague has gone and stuck his head into a noose.”

“And you have stuck your foot into my door,” the maiden schoolteacher reminded him tartly. “Look, young man! All this won’t do you a bit of good. I’ve retired. I’ve reformed. I’m through making a nuisance of myself in police matters. Can’t you understand that and go away?”

Pat pulled at his sleeve, but the lawyer stood firm. “Miss Withers, I can’t believe that you’ve retired, not with your record of successes.”

“My successes, as you call them, were mostly beginner’s luck. I was younger and more impetuous in those days. As Emerson, a very fine poet you have no doubt never read, once said, ‘It is time to be old, to take in sail.’ ”

Jed Nicolet smiled. “That’s from
Terminus.
I’ll give you a topper—the same poet wrote something about life never being so short but that there is time for courtesy. And he said,‘ ’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die!’ ”

The spinster seemed to soften just a little, and then she shook her head again. “I’ve still retired. There’s an excellent precedent. Even Sherlock Holmes retired, you know. He went off to keep bees in the country. Well, I’ve taken a leaf out of his book, only not to keep bees because I hate the nasty, stinging things.”

“You chose tropical fish instead!” interrupted Nicolet, looking past the schoolteacher towards the big glass tank in the front window. “I got into that once. Lots of fun. But is it exciting enough for a person like yourself, with your capacity for mystery and adventure?”

She hardened her heart. “Besides, gentlemen, I have problems of my own at the moment. I have a
scalare,
an angelfish, which is in worse trouble than you are. If you’ll excuse me—”

Jed Nicolet winked at Pat and turned back to the schoolma’am. “That is a shame,” he said. “I suppose you found him leaning sideways, and then after a while he floated up to the top of the tank?”

Miss Withers stared at him blankly, and then her face cracked into something of a smile. “So you do know fish! Yes, it was like that. Yet I did everything they said. It’s a twenty-gallon tank, with indirect lighting and water that was ripened for two whole weeks, and there’s an aerator and two heaters and umpteen varieties of aquarium plants. I’ve kept the temperature at seventy-seven degrees, I’ve—”

“Salt water is the only thing,” Nicolet advised her. “Put the fish into a panful of warm water with half a cup of salt. I’ll show you, if I may.”

Miss Withers hesitated and was lost. A moment later Nicolet was fishing the dying
scalare
from the marine wonderland, the miniature world of bright yellow sand and softly plumed Paris-green plants, through which a score or so of tiny jeweled fishes floated, like Disney drawings come to life.

“Swinburne,” Jed Nicolet said, “wasn’t kidding when he wrote so much about our mother the sea. The blood in our veins is almost identical with sea water, less the corpuscles, of course. It’s that way with fish too. Dying salmon carried out to sea at the mouth of a river usually survive.” He dumped the limp angelfish into the saline solution, where it floated helplessly at the surface. Not even its gill fins were moving, and the broad bands of velvety black which normally striped its body were faded to a dull brownish-gray.

Pat Montague, all this while, stood by the door, waiting for a chance to make an exit. But nobody was paying him the slightest attention. He could, he reflected, go to the chair for all they cared.

The lawyer and Miss Withers bent over the lifeless fish. “Too late, I’m afraid,” she was saying. “It’s the end of poor Gabriel.”

“And it looks like the end of me!” Pat put in. “If you—”

“Hush!” said Jed Nicolet. He was gently swishing the water around in the saucepan. Suddenly he gave a sharp exclamation as there came a faint flicker of the transparent gill fins, a movement of the goggled mouth. And then the angelfish Gabriel miraculously wriggled, fought drunkenly back to an even keel.

“So what does it all prove?” Pat demanded. “I suppose if we’d put the body of Huntley Cairns into warm salt water he’d have—”

Jed Nicolet waved at him to shut up.

“I do believe he’s coming round,” Miss Withers admitted. “I’m grateful to you, Mr. Nicolet, although of course I understand perfectly why you did it. All the same, I’ll have to listen to your friend’s story.”

Suddenly given the floor, Pat couldn’t think of anything to say. How was he going to tell his tale to this acidulous old maid? How could he explain to her about Helen and everything?

“The last time I saw her,” he said, “we had been out dancing somewhere, and she wore a white dress or maybe it was a suit. It was daylight when I brought her home, and she came out on the little balcony outside her father’s apartment to wave down at me. Somehow she’s still waving at me—time stopped still that night—and she’ll go on waving until I see her again. But I guess you wouldn’t understand.”