The Girl at Central Part 7

Gilsey said, "Yes, two gentlemen to see you," and stepped to one side to let the Doctor and Mills enter.

When Reddy saw the Doctor he jumped to his feet and stood looking at him. He didn't say "Good morning" or any sort of greeting, but was silent, as if he was holding himself still, waiting to hear what the Doctor was going to say.

He hadn't to wait long. The Doctor, in the doorway, went right to the point.

"Mr. Reddy," said he, "where's my daughter?"

Reddy answered in a quiet, composed voice:

"I don't know, Dr. Fowler."

"You do!" shouted the Doctor. "You ran away with her last night. What have you done with her?"

Reddy said in the same dignified way:

"I haven't done anything. I know nothing about her. I haven't any more idea than you where she is."

At that the Doctor got beside himself. He shouted out furiously:

"You have, you d--d liar, and I'll get it out of you," and he made a lunge at Reddy to seize him. But Mills jumped in and grabbed his arm.

Holding it he said, trying to quiet down the Doctor:

"Just wait a minute, Dr. Fowler. Maybe when Mr. Reddy sees that we understand the situation, he'll be willing to explain." Then he turned to Reddy: "There's no good prevaricating. Your letter to Miss Hesketh has been found. Now we're all agreed that we don't want any talk or scandal about this. If you want to get out of the affair without trouble to yourself and others you'd better tell the truth. Where is she?"

"Who the devil are you?" Reddy cried out suddenly, as mad as the Doctor, and before Mills could answer, the branch telephone on the desk rang.

Reddy gave a loud exclamation and made a jump for it. But Mills got before him and caught him. He struggled to get away till the Doctor seized him on the other side. They fought for a moment, and then got him back against the door, all the time the telephone ringing like mad. As they wrestled with him Mills called over his shoulder to Gilsey:

"Answer that telephone, quick."

Gilsey, scared most out of his wits, ran to the phone and took down the receiver. Anne Hennessey was at the other end with her awful message.

When he got it Gilsey gave a cry like he was stabbed, and turned to Mr.

Reddy, pinioned against the door.

"Good Lord, have mercy, Mr. Jack," he gasped out. "Miss Hesketh's dead.

She's murdered-on the turnpike-murdered last night!"

The Doctor dropped Reddy, tore the instrument out of Gilsey's hand and took the rest of the message.

Reddy turned the color of ashes. There wasn't any need to hold him. He fell back against the door with his jaw dropped and his eyes staring like a man in a trance. Gilsey thought he was going to die and was for running to him, crying out, "Oh, Mr. Jack, don't look that way." But Mills caught the old servant by the arm and held him back, watching Reddy as sharp as a ferret.

The Doctor turned from the phone and said: "It's true. Miss Hesketh's been murdered."

There was a dead silence. The click of the receiver falling into its hook was the only sound. The three other men-the Doctor as white as death, too-stood staring at Reddy. And then, seeing those three faces, he burst out like he was crazy:

"No-she's not-she can't be! I was there; I went the moment I got her message. I was on the turnpike where she said she'd be. I was up and down there most of the night. And-and--" he stopped suddenly and put his hands over his face, groaning, "Oh, my G.o.d, Sylvia-why didn't you tell me?"

He lurched forward and dropped into a chair, his hands over his face, moaning like an animal in pain.

VI

Longwood was stunned. By noon everybody knew it and there was no more business that day. The people stood in groups, talking in whispers as if they were at a funeral. And in the afternoon it _was_ like a funeral, the body coming back by train and being taken from the depot to Mapleshade in one of the Doctor's farm wagons. It lay under a sheet and as the wagon pa.s.sed through the crowd you couldn't hear a sound, except for a woman crying here and there.

Then it was as if a spring that held the people dumb and still was loosed and the excitement burst up. I never saw anything like it. It seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets, the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were everywhere, as if they'd sprung out of the ground.

By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come knocking at Mrs. Galway's side door, demanding the telephone girl. But, believe me, I sat tight and said nothing-nothing to them. The police were after me mighty quick, and there was a seance over Corwin's Drug Store when I felt like I was being put to the third degree. I told them all I knew, job or no job, for I guessed right off that that talk I'd overheard on the phone might be an important clew. They kept it close.

It wasn't till after the inquest that the press got it.

Before the inquest every sort of rumor was flying about, and the papers were full of crazy stories, not half of them true. I'd read about places and people I knew as well as my own face in the mirror, and they'd sound like a dime novel, so colored up and twisted round the oldest inhabitant wouldn't have recognized them.

To get at the facts was a job, but, knowing who was reliable and who wasn't, I questioned and ferreted and, I guess, before I was done I had them pretty straight.

Sylvia had been killed by a blow on the side of her head-a terrible blow. A sheriff's deputy I know told me that in all his experience he had seen nothing worse. Her hat had evidently shielded the scalp. It was pulled well down over her head, the long pin bent but still thrust through it. Where she had been hit the plush was torn but not the thick interlining, and her hair, all loosened, was hanging down against her neck. There was a wound-not deep, more like a tearing of the skin, on the lower part of her cheek. It was agreed that she had been struck only once by some heavy implement that had a sharp or jagged edge. Though the woods and fields had been thoroughly searched nothing had been discovered that could have dealt the blow. Whatever he had used the murderer had either successfully hidden it or taken it away with him.

The deputy told me it looked to him as if it might have been some farming tool like a spade, or even a heavy branch broken from a tree.

The way the body was arranged, the coat drawn smoothly together, the branches completely covering her, showed that the murderer had taken time to conceal his crime, though why he had not drawn the body back into the thick growth of bushes was a point that puzzled everybody.

It was impossible to trace any footprints, as the automobile party and Hines had trodden the earth about her into a muddy ma.s.s, and the gra.s.s along the edge was too thick and springy to hold any impression.

Close behind the place where she lay twigs of the screening trees were snapped and bent as if her a.s.sailant had broken through them.

There were people who said Hines would have been arrested on the spot if robbery had been added to murder. But the jewelry was all on her, more than he said he had noticed when she was in the Wayside Arbor. The pearl necklace alone was worth twenty thousand dollars, and just below it, clasping her gown over the chest, was a diamond cross, an old ornament of her mother's, made of the finest Brazilian stones. In the pocket of her coat was a purse with forty-eight dollars in it. So right at the start the theory of robbery was abandoned.

Another inexplicable thing was the disappearance of the French maid, Virginia Dupont. Jack Reddy denied any knowledge of her. He said Sylvia had never mentioned bringing her with them and he didn't think intended to do so. The Mapleshade people thought differently, all declaring that Sylvia depended on her and took her wherever she went. One of the mysteries about the woman that was quickly cleared up was the walk she had taken to the village on Sunday morning. This was to meet Mr. Reddy and take from him the letter for Sylvia which had been found in the desk.

I know from what I heard that the police were keen to find her, but she had dropped out of sight without leaving a trace. No one at Mapleshade knew anything about her or her connections. She was not liked in the house or the village and had made no friends. On her free Sundays she'd go to town and when she returned say very little about where she'd been.

A search of her rooms showed nothing, except that she seemed to have left her clothes behind her. She was last seen at Mapleshade by Nora Magee, who, at half-past five on Sunday, met her on the third floor stairs. Nora was off for a walk to the village with Harper and was in a hurry. She asked Virginie if she was going out and Virginie said no, she felt sick and was going up to lie down till she'd be wanted to help Miss Sylvia dress for dinner.

If you ask me was anyone suspected at this stage I'd answer "yes," but people were afraid to say who. There was talk about Hines on the street and in the postoffice, but it was only when you were close shut in your own room or walking quiet up a side street that the person with you would whisper the Doctor's name. n.o.body dared say it aloud, but there wasn't a soul in Longwood who didn't know about the quarreling at Mapleshade, whose was the money that ran it, and the will that left everything to Mrs. Fowler if her daughter died.

But no arrests were made. Everything was waiting on the inquest, and we all heard that there were important facts-already known to the police-which would not be made public till then.

Wednesday afternoon they held the inquest at Mapleshade. The authorities had rounded up a bunch of witnesses, I among them. The work in the Exchange had piled up so we'd had to send a hurry call for help to headquarters and I left the office in charge of a new girl, Katie Reilly, Irish, a tall, gawky thing, who was going to work with us hereafter on split hours.

Going down Maple Lane it was like a target club outing or a political picnic, except for the solemn faces. I saw Hines and his party, and the railway men, and a lot of queer guys that I took to be the jury. Halfway there a gang of reporters pa.s.sed me, talking loud, and swinging along in their big overcoats. Near the black pine the toot of a horn made me stand back and Jack Reddy's roadster scudded by, he driving, with Casey beside him, and the two old Gilseys, pale and peaked in the back seat.

They held the inquest in the dining-room, with the coroner sitting at one end of the long shiny table and the jury grouped round the other.

Take it from me, it was a gloomy sight. The day outside was cold and cloudy, and through the French windows that looked out on the lawns, the light came still and gray, making the faces look paler than they already were. It was a grand, beautiful room with a carved stone fireplace where logs were burning. Back against the walls were sideboards with silver dishes on them and hand-painted portraits hung on the walls.

But the thing you couldn't help looking at-and that made all the splendor just nothing-were Sylvia's clothes hanging over the back of a chair, and on a little table near them her hat and veil, the one glove she had had on, and the heap of jewelry. All those fine garments and the precious stones worth a fortune seemed so pitiful and useless now.

We were awful silent at first, a crowd of people sitting along the walls, staring straight ahead or looking on the ground. Now and then someone would move uneasily and make a rustle, but there were moments so still you could hear the fire snapping and the scratching of the reporters' pencils. They were just behind me, bunched up at a table in front of the window. When the Doctor came in everyone was as quiet as death and the eyes on him were like the eyes of images, so fixed and steady. Mrs. Fowler was not present-they sent for her later-but Nora and Anne were there as pale as ghosts.

The Coroner opened up by telling about how and where the deceased had been found, the position, the surroundings, etc., etc., and then called Dr. Graham, who was the county physician and had made the autopsy.