The Hangman's Whip (19 page)

“Yes—well …” Calvin looked disappointed, grinned and said wryly: “Well, all right. But you can’t blame me for making as much of an alibi of it as I could. And, good God, don’t you suppose if I’d started out to murder anybody I’d have fixed up a real alibi?”

“Alibis,” said the sheriff, “aren’t as easy to fix as are popularly supposed. I guess I’ll have to ask you what you and Eve talked about all that time out on the raft.”

“Eve wanted to borrow some money.”

“Of you? Why?”

Calvin shrugged. “I don’t know why. Eve was keen about money. I wasn’t surprised to know she had saved a little money; it was instinct with her. She’d do anything for money; she loved it. But she—she never returned anything she borrowed; she always had a hard-luck story.”

“How much did she want?” asked the sheriff.

“She didn’t say. I—guess she would have taken any amount she could get.”

“Did you give Eve the money?”

“Good gracious, no! It’s not mine to give. It’s Diana’s. I handle all her money; everybody knows that. She needs me to do it. But”—his sharp-featured face tightened; his nose and chin jutted sharply forward—“everything’s open and aboveboard. Make no mistake about that.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’ve already taken the liberty of investigating that, Mr Peale. Slightly but sufficiently. I hope you don’t mind.”

Calvin’s gray eyes widened. “Oh,” he said flatly, “you did, huh?”

“Your bank and your broker gave you an absolutely clean bill of health,” said the sheriff, grinning a little. “Sorry, but I had to do it. You see—well, it struck me, when we found that Eve Bohan had a sum of money put away, that she might have done a little in the way of blackmail.”

“Black—”said Calvin and gulped. “
Me
?”

The sheriff nodded. “In that case, whoever she blackmailed had to have money or access to it. And I know, too, you are interested in politics, which would make you fair game—”

Calvin swallowed, opened his mouth, shut it again and said rather shakenly: “Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Sheriff. There’s not a penny of Diana’s money that isn’t accounted for.”

“I know, I know,” said the sheriff hastily. “Besides, we got a statement of Eve Bohan’s savings account, and it was put away slowly, a little at a time; no large sums. So it wasn’t a matter of blackmail—she saved, apparently, every penny she could get her fingers on. And I’ll vote for you next election.”

Calvin went from a kind of shocked white to a vivid pink. “As a matter of fact, I am thinking of running for state senator,” he said. “Diana wants me to; she—Diana’s ambitious, you know. But look here—you’ve got to give me a chance to straighten out this story about the tool shed. One of the maids must have told you. There’s no one else; it was either Carter or Bea—” He glanced sharply from the sheriff to Search, hesitated, said, “Wait a minute, will you?” and hurried out of the room.

He was, as always, frank, energetic, talkative. Yet there was the look of fright in the girl’s eyes.

“Besides,” said the sheriff coolly, as if Search had spoken her thought, “besides, what earthly motive would the girl have had to tell such a story if it wasn’t true?”

Search cried: “Do you think she did see him?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Somebody went into that tool shed and got a coil of rope. I don’t say it was Calvin Peale.”

The door opened again and Diana came in, preceding Calvin. She was angry; her long thin face was flushed a little, her thick fair eyebrows frowning. She said at once: “Calvin has told me the most ridiculous story. He says the girl, Bea, says she saw him come out of the tool shed—Oh, it’s too silly. I suppose she did it because I gave her notice, as soon as she got back from the inquest. This is her idea of revenge. But if it must be answered, then you’d better know right now, Sheriff Donny, that it wasn’t Calvin. Whoever she saw, it wasn’t Calvin.” The sheriff started to interrupt, but she rode over whatever he’d intended to say.

“I know because Calvin was in his room, adjoining mine, dressing for dinner and looked at the papers for at least forty-five minutes before dinner. And we went downstairs together. He absolutely did not leave his room after he came upstairs in his swimming trunks and dressed until we went downstairs together. And another thing, Sheriff Donny …” She paused to take a breath. She was wearing again the cool light beige dress with the green belt which she had worn that hot morning before the storm, and it took Search back, as if across a measureless abyss, to the morning when Eve had faced her over the breakfast table and had flung down her decision and her defiance.

“And another thing,” said Diana. “I didn’t intend to tell you, but since we are having a general clearing of the slate I suppose I ought to tell you that—that I heard Eve and Search quarrel that morning too. The morning before Eve was murdered.” She glanced at Search levelly. “That’s one time when Bea told the truth. I only heard part of it—the tone of their voices and a word or two—and I didn’t intend to tell you. But—well—and also,” said Diana smoothly, “when I took the famous box of candy from Search’s room to Aunt Ludmilla the cellophane wrapper was broken. I saw it.” She met Search’s eyes for an instant; she flushed a little, but her own eyes were determined. Yet it sounded less a deliberate attack than a warning, a reminder of Diana’s confidence in herself and in her power to oppose Search.

“Diana!” cried Calvin. “Good God, are you trying to cast suspicion on Search?”

Search turned to the sheriff. “If the wrapper was loose when Diana took it, I didn’t notice. But I do know that the candy could have been—must have been removed the first night I was here and—and then replaced.”

Calvin said happily: “Then that isn’t attributable to me, Sheriff. I wasn’t here then. Now, Diana, you’d better retract “

“Retract!” flashed Diana. “What I said was true.”

The sheriff interrupted. “Look here, Miss Diana, while we are talking—exactly what time did the lights in the house go out? The night Eve Bohan was murdered, I mean.”

“The—the lights!” Diana looked startled. “Why, we told you that. At the same time they went out in the cottage. I don’t know exactly the moment.”

“Then you and Miss Ludmilla came into the house—before or after the lights went out?”

“At the same time. We told you that. We knew the rain was about to begin. We came into the house and hunted for candles.”

“How long did that take you?” said the sheriff softly.

“How—long?”

“It took you over twenty minutes to ‘find candles’ while Miss Ludmilla sat here alone in the library. It may have taken you half an hour; Miss Abbott is vague about time. But I got that much out of her. Your alibi and hers is no alibi at all.”

“But”—the flush died down from Diana’s face, leaving it pasty—“but the lights! I was with her until the lights went out. Eve was already murdered then; Search said she saw her, dead, before the lights went out.”

“The lights for the house and the lights for the cottage are not now on the same line,” said the sheriff. “I just found that out yesterday. Three years ago a new line was put in; the electrician in Kentigern told me yesterday and showed me the records.”

“But—but I didn’t kill her. It did take me a little longer perhaps to find candles than I—than I thought. I—let me see; I went in the dining room, groping my way in the dark; that took time, for I had to hunt through the buffet drawers in the dark. Then I went into the pantry; I finally found a flashlight there. I—oh yes”—her face cleared—“I remember. I opened a bottle of ginger ale and drank it. It was hot, you know, before the rain. I finally found candles and went back to the library but—but perhaps it was longer than it seemed. But it still was not time for me to go to the cottage. Besides, there was the rain; that proves neither of us was at the cottage. Our clothes would have been wet.”

“Not necessarily. The lights in the cottage went out about five to ten minutes before the rain began. The lights in the house may have gone out half an hour before the rain—plenty of time for anyone who knew the way and had a bit of luck. I’m not saying you did it—”

“You’d better not!” cried Diana, angry but very pale. “I didn’t go to the cottage. That’s absurd! Besides, why would I want to murder Eve? Oh, the whole thing is ridiculous! You can’t be serious.”

The sheriff got up, a huge, rather untidy bulk of a man. He scratched his nose thoughtfully and said: “I assure you, Miss Diana, I was never more serious in my life. Murder is not a joke.”

Calvin said quickly and nervously: “Now see here, Donny. Diana had nothing to do with this.” And Howland knocked lightly at the door, opened it, glanced in, smiling a little apologetically, and entered. His soft brown eyes traveled around the room.

“I do hope,” he said, addressing the sheriff, “that I’m not interrupting anything. You see, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. Or has Calvin told you?”

Calvin said: “Now, Howland, this isn’t necessary.”

Howland went on without waiting for the sheriff to speak. “I think you’d better know,” he said, “that Calvin and I were together—in the library of this house—when Eve must have been murdered. I—present him with this alibi, and I assure you it is the truth.” He said it with an effect of frankness; he said it almost lightly and smiled at Calvin and at the sheriff.

The sheriff said, “Exactly what do you mean?”

“He means—” began Calvin, and Howland interrupted.

“Let me tell it, Calvin. You see,” he said to the sheriff, “Calvin and I agreed not to tell it unless it became necessary. We didn’t think it would become necessary, but, well, the fact is, I came to see Calvin that night. We talked and then I went home. I didn’t particularly want anyone to know of our interview. And when the fact of the murder came out and we realized that there would be questions we—agreed to keep still about it unless we had to speak. Calvin didn’t tell you the truth?”

“He said nothing of you,” said the sheriff.

“Well, the fact is, our—the subject of our interview that night doesn’t reflect very creditably upon me, and I’ll thank you to keep it quiet.”

“Well—well—go on.”

Howland shrugged. “The truth is, Donny, I’m in need of some cash. I came to see Calvin in the hope he could stake me for six months. Some investments—two, in fact, I can show you—have gone wrong. With enough money I can be tided over until things improve. Calvin said he’d talk it over with Diana. I came at exactly a quarter to nine, letting myself in the side door. I left at ten. So you see, Calvin has an absolutely ironclad alibi.”

“M-m,” said the sheriff. “Well, I don’t suppose the fact has escaped you that that gives you an alibi too—if it’s true.”

Howland shrugged and smiled. “I don’t imagine I need one.”

Calvin said abruptly: “It’s true enough. I would have told you, Sheriff, if it had become necessary.”

The sheriff sighed. “Everywhere I turn somebody’s concerned about money! Did you loan him the money?” asked the sheriff as he had asked of Eve.

Calvin said: “No. But I intended to talk to Diana about it. I was in favor of it; Howland’s—honest. He’d have paid it back.”

“And,” said Howland softly, “I have a little influence in certain circles. Political,” he said and smiled at Diana.

Calvin flushed. “I wasn’t buying you, Howland,” he said.

“Oh, my dear fellow, I know that. Good heavens—doesn’t this prove that I’m really a friend?”

It was there that the interview ended, for someone called the sheriff to the telephone. Howland and Calvin strolled away together; Diana gave Search an angry look and followed them, and Search went into the hall and waited for the sheriff to conclude his talk over the telephone. And asked him then when she could see Richard.

“Better not go now,” said the sheriff in an abstracted but rather kind way. “It will do him no good, you know. Reporters are hanging around still. There’s been many a case tried in the newspapers—by public opinion.”

“But I—I must see him. There must be some way to prove he didn’t do it.”

The sheriff said: “Wait a bit, Miss Search. Don’t go till—say, morning.” And hurried away.

He left the house at once. The door banged behind him. Search stood for a moment in the doorway of the quiet drawing room. Ludmilla, looking curiously the same in the portrait as she did in the flesh, in spite of the years between, smiled down at her.

But Ludmilla, then, and Diana really had no alibi. And Calvin had one, in spite of the girl Bea’s story and the look in her face. And, incidentally, Howland had an alibi. But then Howland had no motive for murdering Eve or the man below the willows.

She outlined a faded rose in the old Brussels carpet with the toe of her white sports shoe.

The dreadful thing was that whoever the murderer was it had to be someone close to them. She had known that, in her heart, before. Now it was out in the open, inescapable. The hammer from the tool shed—as the rope had come from the tool shed. A stranger who had asked for Eve. No one about the place but themselves. Yet who among that terribly short list would do murder? Diana, Calvin, Howland—herself and Richard. Ludmilla was not the murderer; that was certain because Ludmilla herself was in the position of victim; there had been three attempts to poison her.

There was Jonas, too, of course, constantly about the place, so usual a sight that he was inconspicuous. But there was no motive in that case.

Arsenic, Eve’s murder and now the murder of the man found that morning under the willows. There must be some connection, she told herself rather desperately; and in that link might lie the truth that would free Richard.

She would see Richard; they would get detectives, private detectives; they would engage the best defense lawyer there was. Richard must be induced to tell anything he knew. She would have gone to him then had she not been afraid that what the sheriff had said was true. It would do Richard no good for her (the woman in the case; the woman, they had said, for whom he had murdered his wife) to come openly, then, to see him. She would have to wait till morning, as the sheriff had told her to do, and then go quietly, hoping to avoid reporters.

The house was so quiet, so strangely observant and knowledgeable, that a kind of spell of horror crept over her. She went upstairs to Ludmilla, who questioned her about the man found in the willows.