Miss Withers Regrets (7 page)

But it was a girl who stood in the doorway, a girl in a white blouse over riotous tropical slacks. Her face was pale and striking, almost stark in fact, without color except for the lips. “Her mother must have been frightened by a Martha Graham dance group,” the schoolteacher decided.

“I’m Lawn Abbott,” the girl announced in a low, husky contralto. “I must see you.”

Miss Withers suddenly became very wide awake indeed. “You may come in, child,” she said. “But I tell you in advance that I won’t be able to help you.”

The girl came into the room, sat down on the edge of the chair Miss Withers had indicated, and then immediately rose and started pacing up and down. She was acting rather like a cat in a strange place. There was something else of the cat about her too—a rather attractive something. She was no silky Persian, no alley cat on the defensive, but rather a Siamese or Burmese, thin and feminine and strong.

Finally she spoke. “I didn’t come here to ask for your help. I came here to help you—to set you straight about something. You see, Jed Nicolet called up last night and told me all about being here and everything. Helen is completely prostrated, of course, and Father is no use at a time like this. I tried to see Pat, but they wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t even let me talk to him on the phone. I suppose you know that Sheriff Vinge booked him for murder because of what you told the police. Miss Withers, have you seen the Sunday morning papers?”

“Naturally not, my dear. You awakened me.”

“Well, it’s time that somebody woke you up!” Lawn’s voice did not rise, but there was a thin, metallic ring to it now. “Because you don’t know that there was a ragged tear in the shorts that Huntley was wearing when he died! The police at first thought it must have been made by the rake which, according to their theory, held him under when he was drowning—”

“I’m really not very interested.”

“But you’ve got to be interested! Pat is innocent as a newborn babe; anybody with half an eye could see that. I knew it when I found him in that bathhouse. If I can prove it to you will you help me convince the police so they’ll let him go?”

Miss Withers sniffed. “Unless my memory is failing, Pat Montague was supposed to have been an old beau of your sister’s. Just why are you entering the picture?”

“Because …” Lawn bit her lip. “Never mind why. I’m mixed up in it too. The police were very nasty about my unlocking that door until good old Jed pointed out that I couldn’t have known who was inside. Naturally I want to prove Pat innocent. Will you help?”

“I’m afraid it would take a good deal to convince the police that Pat Montague isn’t their man.”

“Oh, nonsense and stuff! Only last night that fool of a sheriff was positive that he had it all pinned on poor old Searles. Tomorrow it may be somebody else—Jed, or father, or me. I just want Pat out of jail, that’s all.”

“There would have to be some new evidence,” Miss Withers said.

“How about this?” Lawn dramatically held up her right hand, showing that the fleshy part of the index finger had been covered with adhesive tape. Underneath was a deep, ragged cut. “They’re draining the pool this morning,” the girl continued. “But I didn’t wait for that. I sneaked out and went for a swim before daylight, and I dived down into the corner where they found Huntley’s body. I felt around down there until I caught my finger on a jagged bit of metal—part of the circular cap that goes around the outlet. It must have been damaged in putting it in. Anyway, what I’m trying to point out is this. If Huntley’s shorts were caught on that hook, wouldn’t his body have stayed at the bottom until somebody pulled it loose?”

Miss Withers didn’t say anything.

“It’s your move,” Lawn challenged. “You got Pat where he is. You can get him out.”

“Come and sit down while I make a cup of coffee,” the schoolteacher conceded. “I’m afraid that it is possible, as you indicate, that I drew my conclusions on insufficient evidence.” She started to measure the coffee into the pot. “But I think what you really want isn’t just to get Pat Montague out of jail. You want him completely cleared, and that can’t happen until we find the real murderer. Are you sure that will make you happy?”

Lawn hesitated.

“These family affairs can be very difficult. You and your father have lived with your sister Helen ever since she married Cairns, haven’t you? Forgive my frankness, but he must have been very much in love with Helen to take on her whole family too.”

“Or impressed with father. Father used to be famous, you know. He was on Broadway in
The Red Mill
and
Graustark
and
The Chocolate Soldier,
things like that.”

“And was Helen very much in love with her husband?”

“You’d better ask her that.”

“I would, but she wouldn’t answer. Look, child, I’m only trying to get the background. I’m not just prying.”

“Well, then,” Lawn admitted, “I’d say that Helen isn’t emotionally mature enough to love anybody except herself. The love affair between Helen and Helen should go down in history, like
Romeo and Juliet.
Oh, I’ll admit that she had a sort of crush on Pat long ago, just boy-and-girl stuff, but she was a good wife to Huntley. Helen was cut out to be a rich man’s wife, designed perfectly for the life he could give her. They fitted like—like a picture and a frame.”

“You wanted your sister to marry Cairns, didn’t you? Was it because he had money?”

Lawn looked puzzled. “I certainly wasn’t opposed to it, not knowing Helen as I did, and do.”

“According to what I have heard, you did your best to break up Pat’s romance with your sister so that she would fall into Huntley Cairns’s waiting arms.”

The girl’s pale, mask-like face showed no expression. “Did Pat say that?”

Miss Withers didn’t answer. “It must have been Pat,” Lawn decided. “Jed Nicolet wouldn’t have—he’s a good friend of mine.”

“It is true, isn’t it?”

Lawn suddenly put down the cup of coffee, which she had barely tasted. “Truth!” she exploded. Then she rose and turned towards the other room. She was not walking catlike now, but heavily and dully, as if all the starch and spring had gone out of her. “Please forget that I came here,” she said. “Just forget the whole thing.” And she went out, leaving the door open.

“Well!” murmured Miss Hildegarde Withers. She closed the door, bringing back with her the New York morning papers. She could not resist turning to the somewhat meager stories about the Shoreham murder while she sipped her coffee. It would certainly do no harm to see what the papers said, especially since the choice had been made so easy for her. She wasn’t going to get mixed up in the case; everybody, including herself, seemed determined about that.

There was a photograph of Huntley Cairns, evidently taken some years ago when he had been on a Defense Bond committee. He looked placid and pleased with himself. There was also a picture of what this particular paper at least had decided upon as the murder weapon, a garden rake held firmly in the hand of Officer Ray Lunney, in a somewhat smeary flashlight photo taken beside the Cairns swimming pool. There was another photograph of the strange, torn garment which the dead man had been wearing.

That was all the press had been able to uncover, or else the Sunday edition had been put to bed too early for any more of the gory details.

Miss Withers pushed aside the newspapers without even reading the comics. Not even Dick Tracy or Barnaby’s fairy godfather could inspire her now. But she had given up detecting, she reminded herself, and by a determined effort set her mind back upon the proper track. Crossing the room, she turned on the light over the aquarium. Gabriel, the angelfish, was fine and well this morning. She dumped some powdered food into the feeding triangle, watched it cascade down as the fish wildly gobbled at it. There was still only one neon tetra in evidence, and try as she might, Miss Withers could nowhere catch a glimpse of the flash of glowing, living light which should have been in its mate. Perhaps it was sulking.

Then with a start of horror she caught sight of a spot of grisly activity in the rear of the tank behind the red rock. A midget skeleton moved erratically on the sand, whirling end over end.

Two busy Japanese snails and a spotted eel-like king dojo were fulfilling their ghoulish task of cleaning up the tank. The dead fish was disposed of, all except skull and spine. As Miss Withers turned away, feeling faintly ill, the doorbell summoned her once more.

“Botheration!” muttered the schoolteacher. She thought that she might just let it go on ringing. But curiosity was her besetting sin, and she could no more have refrained from seeing who this visitor was than she could have stopped breathing.

This time a womanish girl in black stood in the doorway, a full-bosomed girl with soft brown hair and deep aquamarine eyes, soot-bordered now from sleeplessness. Behind her, fidgeting slightly and out of breath, was a much older man. He reminded Miss Withers of the “men of distinction” in the whiskey advertisements, and smelled as she imagined they would smell.

“Are you Miss Hildegarde Withers?” Thurlow Abbott began, his voice a harsh, croaking whisper.

“That is I,” answered the schoolteacher.

“We owe you an apology for breaking in on you like this—”

“Oh, stop it, Father!” The girl in black was coldly angry. “We want to know what my sister has been saying to you! What lies has she been telling now? Don’t try to deny it; we know that Lawn was just here.” She subsided, on the verge of hysteria.

“You must be Helen Cairns,” Miss Withers said. “Please come in and sit down.”

Helen shook her head. “My father and I can’t stop. We have to get back. But we want to know what Lawn said to you.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cairns, but—”

“As if we didn’t know already!” Helen exploded. “She wanted to make my husband’s death look like murder, didn’t she? She’s got the idea that you have some sort of connection with the police, and she’s trying to frame poor Pat, who never hurt any one in his whole life! Can’t you see?”

“You don’t know me, Mrs. Cairns,” Miss Withers said, with a sniff, “but I am not a person easily used. Tell me, why should your sister Lawn try to do all these things?”

Father and daughter exchanged a long look. “My daughter Lawn’s motives have always been a complete mystery to me,” Thurlow Abbott said hoarsely. “This will sound strange to you, coming from a father, but sometimes I have thought that, just as some girls have a vocation for the Church, Lawn has a vocation for
evil
!”

The schoolteacher’s eyebrows went up. Then she turned back to Helen. “Mrs. Cairns, did you know that Pat Montague telephoned you twice last week from the separation center at Camp Nivens?”

Helen shook her head slowly. “I didn’t know until last night that Pat was within two thousand miles of here. Lawn must have answered the phone, because Beulah would have taken a message or at least told me that someone called.”

“But couldn’t Mr. Montague have told the difference between the maid’s voice and your sister’s?”

Helen shook her head wearily. “Not if Lawn answered the phone in a stage colored accent, the way she does sometimes, with a ‘Mistah Cyains’s res’dence.’ ”

“Lawn has a most peculiar sense of humor at times,” Thurlow Abbott explained.

Miss Withers frowned. “Suppose we leave, just for a moment, the subject of the Wicked Sister,” she said. “Just who, Mrs. Cairns, do you think killed your husband—if it wasn’t Pat Montague?”

There was nothing but silence in answer to that shot, so the schoolteacher went blithely on: “You’re not, of course, trying to suggest that Lawn herself might have done it?”

Helen Cairns suddenly broke into laughter, thin, clear, mirthless laughter.
“Lawn?
Lawn murder Huntley? Don’t be ridiculous. She never liked him much, though she enjoyed the allowance he gave her and the nice soft life she had with us. But do you imagine for a minute that she would kill him—and leave
me
free, with Pat coming back?”

“You see,” Abbott put in, “my daughter has a theory that Lawn has been secretly in love with Pat Montague since she was sixteen.”

“She used to tag around after Pat and me like a—like a shadow,” Helen went on. “She had a schoolgirl crush on Pat, and she clung for years to a silly toy monkey that he’d bought her when we were all at a night club. She’s been waiting like a harpy to pounce on him when he got back out of the Army, because she thought that with me married and out of the way she’d have clear sailing.”

Miss Withers thought that over. “Well, eliminating Mr. Montague, and your sister, and the gardener, and everybody else—then who did kill Huntley Cairns? Am I correct in supposing that you are here to ask me to try to find out?”

“Why, yes,” Thurlow Abbott began. “In a way I mean—because they say you have had experience in such affairs—”

“But on second thought,” Helen said very firmly, with a look at her father, “it might be better after all to let the regular police handle it. Now that you understand about my sister and all—”

“I don’t understand,” Miss Withers said shortly. “With one breath you accuse her of trying to frame Pat Montague, and with the next you say that she is in love with him.”

Helen was silent, confused.

“Perhaps my daughter was simply suggesting that ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ ” Abbott pronounced. “Lawn is a very strange girl.”

“I said more than I meant to say,” Helen chimed in suddenly. “Besides, there can’t be much doubt but that Huntley was swimming in the pool and got caught on a bit of metal so that he drowned accidentally.” She turned to go.

“Can’t there, though!” murmured Miss Withers as she leaned from her front window and watched them drive away in a long, sleek sedan. “This is murder, if I ever saw it. I’m very much afraid that in spite of all my good resolutions and my promises I am going to have to exercise a woman’s privilege and change my mind.” But first there was something to get straight. She put in a long-distance call to Inspector Oscar Piper at his home but found that he was not in. He had been called down to Centre Street a little while ago. Mrs. McFeeters, his fumbling elderly housekeeper, wanted to know if there was any message.