Miss Withers Regrets (6 page)

“Don’t be so sure,” the schoolteacher snapped. “Believe it or not, but I’ve had my chances. Go on.”

“It seemed like fate,” Pat said. “I read in the paper that Helen was living out here in Shoreham and that she was giving a housewarming. I thought maybe I’d crash the party. At least I could see her and find out if she was happy and hear it from her own lips if it had to be good-bye.” He talked on and on and finally stopped.

Miss Withers sighed. “It is one of the saddest things in this life,” she said, “that two people rarely fall out of love at the same time.”

Pat insisted doggedly that he didn’t believe Helen had ever fallen out of love with him. Her father and especially her sister had been after her to marry Cairns, that fat, hairy little kewpie of a man. He’d been away in camp, and something went wrong with the letters and telegrams he sent, but that must have been Lawn Abbott’s work.

“The Wicked Sister, eh?” Miss Withers smiled faintly. “All the rest of it seems like an unfortunate coincidence, with the gardener leaping to an erroneous but very natural conclusion. I don’t see that you have very much to worry about. Contrary to public opinion, the police do not want to pin crimes on innocent bystanders.” Then suddenly she was silent. “Just a minute, young man. Did I understand you to say that Huntley Cairns was
fat
?”

Both Pat and Nicolet admitted that Cairns was a tub of a man, not over five feet six and weighing around two hundred pounds. Miss Withers nodded. “And when you saw the body it was at the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool?”

Pat Montague nodded.

“Excuse me just a minute,” said the schoolteacher. “I must make a telephone call.” She went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and then for a few moments busied herself by fluttering the pages of a number of extremely thick and solid volumes. She found what she wanted, nodded slowly, and then picked up the phone.

In the living room Jed Nicolet was reassuring his client. “It’s going over big. She’s on our side, and the police won’t be so quick to try to hang a murder rap on you—”

Then the door opened and Miss Withers appeared. “Before we go any further, gentleman, there is something you ought to know.”

The two young men looked up at her wonderingly. “It’s only this,” the schoolteacher announced. “I just called up the Shoreham police and reported your presence here.”

J
ERKED TO THEIR FEET,
both Montague and Jed Nicolet goggled at her. “Oh, you’re quite free to escape,” Miss Withers advised them. “If the police arrive and find you gone they will understand that one poor weak woman couldn’t hold anybody by force. But honestly, I don’t think you’d get very far if you made a run for it, Mr. Montague. The police may have their limitations, but they are very efficient about such things as dragnets and manhunts.”

There was no compassion in her. “It serves you right, of course,” she told Pat Montague, “for trying to take me in with a cock-and-bull story like that.”

“What’s wrong with the story?” Nicolet found his voice first, and his tone indicated to Miss Withers that he was willing and anxious to have his client change or amend his testimony in any possible way if only she would tell him how.

“The flaw is something that cannot be repaired,” she continued almost chattily. “You see, I happen to have read that a fat man has considerably less specific gravity than a thin man—and even a thin man will usually float well above the bottom of any body of water when first drowned. So you see? Huntley Cairns couldn’t have been dead at the bottom of his own swimming pool, not unless you were holding him down. He would probably have been floating almost halfway to the surface, as a matter of fact.”

“But wait a minute,” Nicolet began to argue. “The man had drowned, and his lungs were full of water—”

“Not necessarily. In many cases of drowning—of which, according to your account of the doctor’s preliminary investigation, this is one—death comes by asphyxia almost immediately, and little or no water enters the respiratory tract. Look it up for yourself in Webster, or Sydney Smith, or Glaister, or Witthaus and Becker. Smith also points out that in the case of a newborn child, where there is an excess of fat, the body will usually refuse to sink at all!”

Pat Montague, dazed but dogged, shook his head. “I don’t care what it says in the books, I’ve told you the truth. He was at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. His eyes were wide open and staring, and the water rippled a little, so that he seemed to be making faces and grinning at me.”

“It all sounds very convincing,” Miss Withers snapped. “But you stick to your story and I’ll stick with Sydney Smith.”

“If my client wanted to lie,” Nicolet objected, “I’m sure he could make up a better lie than that. After all—”

“Just how and when did I get to be your client, anyhow?” Pat Montague finally exploded. “I don’t remember asking you to come barging into this mess. I was doing all right by myself. I could have been halfway to the Canadian border by now. But, oh, no, you had to drag me here so I could meet this wonderful mastermind amateur sleuth who right away runs and screams for the police!”

“Take it easy,” Nicolet snapped. “Wait a minute—”

“A minute is about all the free time I’ve got. Personally, I think you’ve been bucking for a pop in the face, and—”

“Gentlemen, please!” cried Miss Hildegarde Withers nervously. Then there came a heavy knock at the door, and both the embattled warriors froze in position, fists cocked, as if they were acting out some old Currier and Ives print.

The schoolteacher hastily flung the door open, to look into the faces of two young patrolmen from the radio car. “You’re just in time to referee!” she greeted them.

“Evening, ma’am. Thanks for calling us. All right, Montague, you’re coming with us.”

“Just one minute,” interposed the schoolteacher.

The officer stiffened. “Now it won’t do any good to change your mind and ask us to let him go, because the sheriff give us strict orders.”

“It’s only this,” she explained gently. “You’re arresting the wrong man. That is Mr. Nicolet. This is Mr. Montague here.”

“My mistake,” the officer cheerily admitted. “Come to think of it, this one does fit the description a little better. Sorry, Mr. Nicolet. Come on, you. Let’s get going.”

So it was that Pat Montague went out of the cottage handcuffed to the thick wrist of a policeman who was whistling “It Might as Well Be Spring” considerably off key. The other officer followed after thanking Miss Withers again.

Jed Nicolet lingered for a moment in the doorway. “I’ve only one thing to say, Miss Withers. Maybe I was a little rough on you in court, but, lady, we’re even now!” Then he went out, almost but not quite slamming the door.

“And that,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers to herself, “is that.” She had nobly resisted temptation and kept her promise to the inspector. “I ought to get a gold star, or at least an E for effort,” she added.

There was nothing whatever to worry about. And she still had her tropical fish. She turned back gratefully to the aquarium, where everything was serene. She had found it very soothing of late to lose herself in that lambent green fairyland, to sit for hours staring into the water world, until she felt as if she herself belonged there. “I must be a mermaid at heart,” she decided.

The neon tetras were glowing with their eerie brilliance; the head-and-tail lights had their signals all turned on, fore and aft. The blue moons were shining; the hatchet fish skipped about on the surface, threatening to take off at any moment, and the common ordinary run-of-the-mill guppies and mollies circulated in the background like extra people on a moving picture set.

Even the dojos and catfish and snails, at the very bottom of this social structure, went about their scavenging peacefully, stirring up muddy sand with their busy noses. It was a peace not entirely shared by Miss Withers, whose conscience was of the New England variety. Even though, as she kept assuring herself, she had done what was obviously the right and proper thing.

However, she jerked to the alert like an old fire horse as the doorbell sounded. It turned out to be Jed Nicolet again, his sharp face smiling quizzically through the crack in the open door.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I know how you feel, and all that. I don’t exactly blame you. But, anyway, I had to come back to tell you. Don’t forget to take that sick
scalare
out of the salt water or he’ll fold up again. Half an hour is plenty.”

Surprised, Miss Withers turned back to the saucepan, where Gabriel was now swimming easily, his color restored. Nicolet watched as she dumped the tiny fish back into the tank, where it at once took up its place beside its cruising mate.

“Good as new, isn’t he?” Nicolet observed. “Remember that trick if you have any more trouble, which you probably won’t, because most of your fish are hardy types.” Then he scowled suddenly as a magnificently iridescent fish swam out of the plant forest, trailing long blue-green plumes like some sort of marine peacock. Behind him, at a respectful distance, tagged a paler, more streamlined female. “Oh-oh! Lady, you may have trouble with those
bettas
in a community tank. That female—”

“Nonsense!” Miss Withers shook her head firmly. “She’s the best-behaved fish in the aquarium. As a matter of fact, nobody but the angel fish ever chase the smaller fry.”

“Female
bettas
have a bad name,” Jed Nicolet insisted. “I never had any trouble with them, but—”

“Now, look here, young man,” the schoolteacher challenged. “You didn’t come back here to talk about fish. There’s something else on your mind. I suppose you think it was reasonable of me to call the police, don’t you? It was my obvious duty as a citizen, you know.”

“I suppose so,” he agreed absently. “Otherwise you would have been technically an accessory after the fact, or at least guilty of harboring a fugitive from justice.” He looked up at her suddenly. “You really think that Montague is guilty, then?”

“Why else would he tell such a whopping big lie?”

Nicolet shrugged his shoulders. “I only met the fellow tonight, so I can’t say. He didn’t seem the type—”

“The type to murder, or the type to lie? In my opinion, he is just a smart young man who realizes that if you look a person straight in the eye and have a firm handclasp you’ll get by with any story.” Miss Withers firmly replaced the cover on the fish tank. “And now I’m going to ask you something. Why have you taken such a great interest in helping him?”

“Why, I was asked to.” Nicolet was looking at the wall, where there was nothing of interest except a framed portrait of the graduating class of 1916 at Teachers College.

“You were asked by Mrs. Cairns or her sister?”

He nodded. “But that isn’t quite all. I was pretty sure that somebody else killed Huntley Cairns.”

“Who?” demanded the schoolteacher. “Not that it makes the slightest difference to me, you understand.”

Nicolet hesitated, his face puzzled and thoughtful. There was a trace of some other emotion, perhaps it was relief. “Oh, nobody in particular,” he finally sidestepped. “It’s just that there didn’t seem motive enough for Pat to kill Cairns. I wouldn’t kill a man just because I was in love with his wife.”

“Then just what,” queried Miss Withers grimly, “would you kill for?”

If she had expected that to set him back on his heels she was sadly disappointed. “People kill,” he said, “to pay somebody back when things can’t be evened up any other way. Or to save their necks. Or for gain—
cui bono,
as we say.”

“ ‘For whose advantage.’ ” The schoolteacher nodded.

“That’s it. You saw Pat Montague. Could you honestly believe that he’d murder a man in a particularly cold-blooded manner five minutes after he’d met him?”

“I can believe anything,” Miss Withers said firmly. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, like the White Queen.”

“Then all I can say is, I hope you’re not on the jury,” Jed Nicolet told her. “I guess I’ve been talking too much. Sorry I tried to drag you into this thing, but it seemed to be right up your alley.” The door closed behind him, very softly this time.

Feeling strangely nettled for a lady who has just had her own way, scored a success and proved a point, Miss Hildegarde Withers went mechanically around the room emptying ashtrays and turning out lights. She paused before turning out the long fluorescent tube over the aquarium, watching for a moment the graceful parading of the angelfish, the florid strutting of the male
betta
back and forth before the little mirror she had fastened outside the tank to make him think he had a rival.

“Men!” said Miss Withers. Behind the
Betta splendens
swam the worshipping female, her eyes filled with pride and admiration, seeing nothing in all the universe except her mate. All was serene in that little world. The fat black mollies nibbled at the fronds of the trailing plants like grazing sheep, the guppies circled and scattered and gathered again like sparrows in a barnyard, and the neon tetras—

No, there was but one neon on display. The other had no doubt gone to bed somewhere in the shadows of the plant jungle. “Setting me an excellent example,” declared Miss Withers, and snapped the switch. Instantly the fairyland became only a big glass box full of water and weeds, and the jeweled fish were dull minnows.

The schoolteacher brushed her hair the usual one hundred times and then sought her couch, but something—perhaps pride in her mild triumph of the evening—kept her tossing. She finally gave in and took a bromide, sinking after a while into a semi-slumber in which one nightmare followed another, overlapping like a montage.

She was under the surface of the water in all of them, swimming frantically, with something vague and implacable following wherever she went.

Then she woke up suddenly to hear her doorbell buzzing its angry, intermittent summons. According to the little red leather traveling clock which the inspector had given her once for Christmas—quite possibly as a hint she was getting into his hair—it was not quite ten in the morning. She climbed wearily into bathrobe and slippers. If this was that young lawyer again, she would send him off with his ears burning.