The Hangman's Whip (9 page)

“Why’d you do that?”

“I—I wanted Howland to know. He’s like one of the family.”

“M-m,” said the sheriff. “He’s a lawyer too. Any doubt in your mind then, Mrs Peale, as to whether Eve Bohan was really a suicide or not? Did you think maybe it was murder?”

“No,” cried Diana. “Certainly not. It was Richard who suggested—” She stopped, biting her underlip, and the sheriff said:

“Richard told you to call Howie? That right?”

Calvin said quickly: “We all thought it would be a good idea. On account of the women. We knew it wasn’t going to be very pleasant; there’s always—comment.”

“So you thought you’d have your lawyer here. Well, that’s all right. I’m not blaming you. But look here,” he said with a kind of surprise, whether real or pretended Search could not tell, but there was almost a marked naïveté about it. “But look here,” he said, “I’m not going at this the right way at all. I’ve got to find out first about where you all were tonight and when Eve Bohan went to the cottage and why she went there. Anybody know why she went there? Did she go to meet anybody?”

There was another silence. The sheriff smoked a little and said: “Nobody knows who she went to meet? Nobody knows why? Well, then, when did she go?”

Calvin replied: “I don’t know when she went; I don’t think anybody knows, except it must have been just after dinner. She went straight upstairs and said she was going to write letters. That—I imagine, that’s the last any of us saw of her.”

“That’s right,” said Diana quickly. “Aunt Ludmilla and I went out on the porch and sat there until—oh, until the storm began. And the lights, went out and we came inside to find candles and light them. Then it was raining, so we stayed here.”

“What about you, Mr Peale?” said the sheriff.

“I came here right after dinner; here, in the library. I’d put in a long-distance telephone call and was waiting for it. Then I read a while and went upstairs and had just had a shower and was getting into my pajamas when Diana called me.”

“Richard had come back,” said Diana. “Aunt Ludmilla and I were here in the library then, trying to read by candlelight. He came through the side door. We saw right away that some terrible thing had happened. He told us he’d found her, there, dead; she’d hung herself. He said he’d taken her down and tried to revive her but couldn’t.”

“What did you do then?”

“I called my husband. He came down, and he and Richard telephoned to you. And the coroner. That’s all.”

“None of you saw her leave the house?” said the sheriff.

Diana shook her head; no one spoke.

“Where do you keep your raincoat as a rule?” inquired the sheriff, addressing Calvin.

“I don’t know; hall closet, I guess.”

Diana frowned. “Raincoat?”

Calvin uneasily explained. “She had on my raincoat, pulled on over her dress.”

“Your raincoat!” said Diana.

Ludmilla said quickly: “It’s been in the closet ever since last summer.” She leaned forward. “Mr Donny, how can you be so sure Eve was murdered? If Richard found her as—as he did find her—”

“She didn’t do it herself, Miss Abbott. You see, there wasn’t anything near her in the room that was high enough for her to stand on.”

No one spoke. Search remembered a small room, dark, and a figure; she’d thought it was standing on something until there was the flash of lightning and she could see the rope going up to the rafter. But the sheriff was right; the scene was sharp and clear in her mind, and there had been no chair or bench near Eve.

Ludmilla looked blue around the mouth.

Calvin said: “You see, Aunt Ludmilla, whoever put her—up there, with a rope, you know, so as to look like suicide, forgot to put something for her to stand on. She couldn’t have knotted the rope around her neck unless she’d had a chair or a bench to stand on when she—”

“
Don’t
,” said Ludmilla.

“Well, I’m only explaining. The point is, she couldn’t have done it—without that.”

Ludmilla’s mouth opened a little and closed mutely.

The sheriff said: “Then there was the smell of chloroform; not much. If she hadn’t been found till morning it might’ve been gone entirely. The doc was sure she’d been chloroformed, when he looked at her; he can prove it, he says, when he does an autopsy. And after she was chloroformed she was strangled; at least so he thinks. And put up there after she was already dead. It might’ve worked too—except for Richard Bohan finding her there.”

Richard had reported it at once. Surely that went to prove that he hadn’t done it. Then it struck Search again, swiftly, that there was a frank tone in the sheriff’s voice which was a little too frank.

Calvin said abruptly: “That goes to show he didn’t do it, then.”

“Maybe,” said the sheriff. “Well, now, Miss Abbott and Mrs Peale was together the whole time when the murder must have been done, so that gives them a good sound alibi. Mr Peale, here, ain’t got such a good alibi; ain’t got any, have you, Mr Peale?”

Calvin looked uneasy and said he guessed he hadn’t. And Howland said: “Well, if you’re questioning me, Donny, I guess I haven’t either. Unless one of the servants saw me. I spent the evening reading on the porch until it was dark. Then I sat there for a while, watching the lightning. I’d gone to bed when they telephoned to me. But I’m out of this; I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Oh,” said the sheriff. “Well, now, I thought maybe young Bohan had come to see you in the city today professionally.”

“I—I never talk about my client’s affairs,” said Howland after a moment.

“What’d he come to see you about?”

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“Afraid I’ll have to be judge of that, Howie. Was it, say—a divorce?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“M-m. I suppose Eve was set against it. That right? What’d he want a divorce for? Did he want to marry another woman?”

Search’s fingernails were digging into her palms. Howland’s dark face was completely without expression.

The rain against the windowpanes was less noisy; without their noticing it the storm had rolled away. The room seemed very quiet for a long second or two before Howland said: “Well, yes, he did, Sheriff. But—”

“Who?”

Howland looked at his cigarette. Ludmilla’s hand went up again toward her throat.

Diana said sharply, her long fingers gripping the edge of the table as she leaned across it toward the sheriff: “Richard didn’t want to marry—anyone. There isn’t any other woman.”

Quite slowly and deliberately the sheriff stood, so he looked as tall and bulkier than Howland. He sighed and for the first time addressed Search.

“I’m—sorry, Miss Search,” he said, rather heavily, “but I guess you’ll have to tell me what happened at the cottage tonight.”

Search’s body turned to stone. She knew that Ludmilla gave a thin, frightened little scream. She knew that Diana had whirled around toward her and she heard Diana’s voice, sharp and high so it sounded angry.

“Search! But she—she’s not the other woman. Richard’s not in love with her. He doesn’t want to marry Search.”

“Will you come with me, Miss Search?” said the sheriff. “I—I’m sorry about this; I really am. A nice young couple like you and Dick Bohan. But the way I look at it is this: you and Bohan were to meet at the cottage tonight, and she found out about it and she came there too. And I—I guess young Bohan lost his head.” He glanced at Howland. “I guess you’d better explain to her, Howie, that that makes her an accessory after the fact—unless she tells what she knows now.”

There was another sharp silence; the rain had entirely ceased, and the candle flames stood straight and unwavering. Howland didn’t look at Search; he said promptly enough: “He’s right, Search. I’m Richard’s friend and his lawyer but I’m going to advise him to plead guilty. If you’ll turn state’s evidence I think they’ll let you off.” He came to her then and took both her hands in his and smiled warmly down at her. Only his eyes remained blank and without expression. “You’d better tell them, my dear,” he said again, almost coaxingly, “exactly how he killed her.”

Diana said, whispering, “That’s why you changed your dress. That’s why—” Someone else started to speak; the sheriff moved a step toward her; Ludmilla stood and stretched out her hands as if she, too, intended to say something. Then all sound and motion was cut off, transfixed by a shattering crash of sound. It was a revolver shot—two shots, three—others in rapid succession. The sounds rocked and shook the house and thundered in their ears. The sheriff whirled toward the door, his hand tugging and pulling at the revolver in the leather holster strapped around his waist. There were running footsteps across the hall, and the little bald-headed man, Al, reached the doorway.

His eyes were bulging; he shouted shrilly: “Bohan got away! He’s escaped! I fired at him but I think I missed him—”

He jumped to one side as the sheriff, tugging at his revolver, ran heavily toward the door.

I
T ENDED, FOR THE
time being, the sheriff’s inquiry. And at five o’clock in the morning, with a cold gray dawn creeping over a rain-drenched world, they had still not found Richard nor had any news of him or of the car—an old gray roadster belonging to Calvin—in which he’d made his escape.

Howland and Calvin went with the sheriff and the sheriff’s men. There were two cars roaring along the dark and slippery roads, for the sheriff’s assistant, whom he had telephoned to, arrived just as Richard made his escape, bringing the two deputies who had been hurriedly aroused and sworn in.

The second car, indeed, arrived fortuitously for Richard; it was an odd circumstance which aided him in getting away, for it had reached the steps to the veranda a moment before Richard tripped the sheriff’s aid, Al, with a chair flung at him, and plunged out of the window into the shelter of darkness and the heavy shrubbery. The second car thus blocked the drive; by the time it could be turned around and headed toward the entrance Richard had reached the garage, backed out the old roadster and started for the highway. Somewhere along the way, since he knew all the turns and twists and bypaths, he managed to elude his pursuers.

There was again nothing for the three women to do but wait. Ludmilla went to bed, leaving her light on and her door open. Search sat huddled on the bottom of the stairs. Diana prowled from one window to another; she said very little; her great light eyes reflected lights like a cat’s, and wisps of fine light hair had slipped from her usually smooth coiffure. A man’s sweater flung hastily around her bare white shoulders added to a look of dishevelment which was strangely unusual with Diana.

The sounds of the shots had aroused the servants; till then they had known nothing of Eve’s murder. Half dressed, pale with excitement, they had to be reassured. Diana, wasting no words, told them the truth. Cook very sensibly went away and made coffee for all of them, strong and black.

Eventually Search drifted up to Ludmilla’s room and was followed by Diana, and they were there when the men began to return and they could hear their voices and the orders going out over the telephone.

Police calls were sent out. A gray roadster, year, license number, description of Richard. Once one of the deputies came to the door, and Ludmilla, tears rolling quietly down her cheeks, one little hand clutching a woolly lavender bathrobe around her, had had to rummage in her bulging desk for a picture of Richard to be used for identification. Later, on printed handbills—if he wasn’t found that night.

The telephone was busy. Phrases, roared in the sheriff’s voice, came up the stair well to the three listening women. “Escaped murderer—stop him before he reaches the state line—stop him anyway—shoot if you have to—gray roadster—1936 license number follows—”

Neither Diana nor Ludmilla questioned Search, although Diana kept watching her, thoughtfully, her eyes glittering in the candlelight.

The sheriff did not question her again that night either; obviously he would do so later. At present there were other things.

At five Calvin came upstairs to report. He looked pale and tired; there was a smear of mud across his chin and across his knee. They had not found Richard and there was no news of him.

“Calvin!” cried Ludmilla. “He didn’t do it! Not Richard!”

“He was a fool, then, to run away.”

“Is the sheriff still here?”

“Yes. He’s waiting for light to search the cottage and the grounds again. He won’t want to question any of us now. You’d better get some rest. All of you.”

They had separated then.

Search’s room was cold, and the windows were gray with the reluctant, chill light of dawn. Shapes of furniture that ought to be familiar looked different in the gray light, as if catastrophe had power over dimension and perspective so both were changed and awry, at once sharpened and blurred.

It had power over thought too. She ought to be able to think clearly, to find evidence that would clear Richard. He couldn’t have murdered his wife and then run away.

But Eve was dead, and Richard was gone.

And Howland’s evidence—apparently reluctant, dragged out of him—had provided motive. Howland, who never forgot a slight.

Sullen gray dawn crept over an equally sullen and gray lake, and Search watched its coming. But sometime, from exhaustion, she slept.

Before it was fully light the sheriff and four men were at the cottage. The coroner, tubby old Dr Jerym, had gone back to the village after men came to the cottage with flashlights and a stretcher and went away again, walking slowly and heavily along the wet path.

Cook resignedly gave the sheriff and his men an early breakfast. She never thought of the dead kitten, but when Jonas arrived at six she told him the story of the night.

On the early morning train reporters and photographers arrived from Chicago in such numbers that they commandeered the entire village taxi supply.

They swept upon the house and took photographs of the grounds and of the cottage, and later Calvin, at Howland’s advice, made them a cautious statement. School yearbooks and the files of old sport sections, for Richard had played football, provided them with photographs of him.