Black cypress, p.14
Black Cypress, page 14
“She couldn’t have made a habit of gulping this stuff,” Patrick said, “or Saito would have kept it under lock and key.”
“If you swallow dose after dose of nicotine do you develop an immunity?” I asked.
Patrick’s grin was upside down.
“Depends on the size of the dose, I should think. They say two drops of pure nicotine will kill a dog. A chain smoker, like West, might require a larger dose than Enid.” He stopped suddenly, started to say something, and stopped, and then said, “I wouldn’t say offhand that Hiram is incapable of … murdering his wife … but it’s hard to understand what his motive would be. He would gain nothing himself except freedom. He doesn’t care enough about his son to want to set him free from this tyrannical woman. He doesn’t care that much about his niece either—I doubt if he would have spoken up for her as he did there at the tennis court if guests hadn’t been present—for Hiram does have a keen sense of the proprieties, just as he said. As for the various thises and thats in Ponsonby’s disposal of his property, we have only their word for it. Hiram himself, acting by proxy for his wife, has probably behaved honestly, because he could be checked on easily. He’s a calculating devil and very likely a cold one. But he’s got his wife under control and I doubt if he would want to dispose of her—if he is really penniless, as he says—because he would risk his own security when her property becomes their son’s. From what they all say, Ronald is a stickler for honesty. He might not approve of anything his father does or has done about Enid’s estate. He might then deprive him of his comfortable job of managing Enid’s property. At his age, and with his temperament, Hiram likes his comfort.”
“Then why would Ronald marry Molly, if he’s so honest …”
Someone was coming downstairs. Patrick lowered his voice. “My darling Jean, the kid is possessed. First, by his mother. Enid is quite right. If she holds him until she can marry him to some nice girl it won’t be long until Clarinda is no longer a problem. Essentially he is a good kid. But his home life hasn’t been what you’d call normal. Then there’s been the war.”
“They’re a slick bunch, Pat. Including your cousin Molly. Especially Molly. She is either dumb, or selfish, or just plain nuts.”
“Molly is all right, darling. Give her a little time.” Lulu Murphy walked in. Patrick for once showed astonishment, and a touch of anger.
Lulu explained, “I know I shouldn’t’ve come here, Pat. But everything is okay at the county seat. I thought you should know. She’s older than you thought, she’s fifty-five. The doctor who brought her into this world is still alive. He’s in his eighties, but hail and hearty. And he remembers the case distinctly, because he delivered the baby here in this house and because the nurse was Hawaiian. You remember your early cases better than the later ones, he says.” She took a breath. “Now what do I do?”
Patrick said, “You ought not to have come here, Murphy. It’s risky, for you. And it lets these people know you’re down here working for me. Well, it’s done now. So I suppose you’d better go back to the hotel and sit on the phone. Find out anything you can about any of this crowd. I wrote down all their names on that list Jean phoned you. You might concentrate first on Kenneth West. I don’t suppose you can learn much about their bank accounts, but get anything you can. And everything you can learn about Frederick Eberle is very important. By the way, there’s been a murder right here in the house. The house man, Paul Saito. They call it suicide. He married a Japanese woman before the war. She was arrested—find out what you can about her, too. This Saito was more loyal, or so it seems, to this Stryker family than to his wife. Like Eberle, I suspect Saito died because he knew so much he was very uncomfortable to have around.”
“Okay. You don’t really mind my coming here, do you, Patrick?”
“It’s at your own risk, Murphy. Beat it. And be careful.”
Bill Jonas walked in, with Timothy Ryan in tow.
“So here you are!” His pale eyes took in everything, the room, ourselves, Murphy, the Scotch and the champagne. “Looks festive?”
“I’ll be seeing you, Pat,” Murphy said. “Oh, I almost forgot something,” she said then. She handed Patrick a folded slip of paper. She went out.
“What’s she doing here?” Bill asked. He walked over to the sink and checked the brand and vintage of the champagne.
“The glasses are in the cupboard on the right,” Patrick said. Bill found a champagne glass and helped himself.
Tim sat down at the table opposite me. He looked bushed. He refused a drink, but lit a cigarette.
Patrick said, “Lulu Murphy came here to report that Enid Stryker was born in this house under highly respectable circumstances. Murphy shouldn’t’ve come here, of course. I had her come down to Corona in order to keep Jean from running around sticking her neck out, and now Murphy’s doing the same thing.”
“Well, they haven’t enough police here to detail special protection for all your women, Pat.” Bill hooked a thumb at Tim. “I’ve had to take him on, myself,” he said, disgustedly.
“I’m glad he’s here,” Pat said. “Tim, what about that pin-sticking?”
Tim turned red. He eyed me with hostility. “I guess I talk too much.”
“Not at all. You can’t blame Hiram, though. After all, he wanted to know if she was pretending, didn’t he, Tim?”
“What is all this?” Bill asked.
“Nothing for your innocent ears, Bill. How’s the champagne?”
“Fine,” Bill said. “But why the celebration?”
“I think Hiram Stryker wanted to lift his spirits, maybe. My guess is that one of the things Hiram dreads most is feeling depressed. Nothing like the bubbly to lift you fast. What goes on upstairs, Bill?”
“She’s coming along,” Bill said. “There weren’t any prints on that knife-handle except the Jap’s. He seems to have been a queer character. Over-educated, for one thing. That’s a mistake. Chances are he stabbed himself. One thing sure,” Bill said, jerking his head at Tim, “this kid didn’t do this one, because he wasn’t here at the time, but he hasn’t explained to our satisfaction why he tried to scram this morning with that stuff in his bag.”
Timothy said nothing. Patrick said, “If he was trying to scram, why didn’t he go ahead and scram? He could have been halfway across the country by now. But he came back. You know why, Bill?”
“Why?” Bill asked gruffly.
I thought, “He came back for Molly’s sake.” Patrick, however, said, “Because of that pin-sticking, Bill.”
“What are you talking about, Pat?”
“There’s a sadist in this house, Bill.”
“Cut that stuff. There are five basic motives for murder. Jealousy, revenge, profit, insanity, fear. Nothing clicks in the Jap’s death except insanity. Somebody went crazy.”
“In my humble opinion, there’s really an insane person in this house,” Timothy said. “You said insanity, didn’t you, Captain Jonas?”
“Meaning Hiram?” I asked Tim, finally getting a word in.
“Yes, I do,” Tim agreed.
“Then Hiram Stryker killed Chuck Sieger last night and put Molly Reynolds’ coat in your bag?” Bill asked.
“Look, Captain Jonas, Molly hung her coat in the hall closet last night. When we came in. She’s a tall girl and the coat is about six sizes too big for her, the way they are just now, so even a man could have worn it. And since it is white, the only reason somebody would use it would be to put suspicion on Molly. Suppose Molly was proved to be a murderess? The rest of the family could then keep her property in trust or even inherit it, if she were given the death penalty. Anybody who put on a white coat to commit a murder in would certainly do it because he or she wanted to be seen. So the way I figure it, that proves Molly didn’t do it.”
“Well,” Bill said, eyeing Tim. “That’s quite a lot of information from you, son. Not that it proves anything. But why didn’t you speak up sooner?”
“I told them that at the police station. You know that—you weren’t there but they took it down in their notes. You’ve seen their notes, I bet.”
Bill was very cynical.
“You’re trying to protect that girl, Tim. You probably didn’t kill that guy last night and since you have been constantly under police surveillance this afternoon you couldn’t’ve possibly murdered the Jap. What I object to is your concealing evidence. That’s a criminal offense. What’s all this about pins?”
Patrick said, almost as if deliberately preventing a reply, “Bill, why don’t the police get their hooks into Hiram Stryker? Put the heat on him and maybe you’ll learn something.”
“Have you? If so, it’s your duty—”
“Look, I haven’t got a thing from Hiram. But it’s different with you. The police department in Honolulu can pry into bank accounts and things like that, and right there I guess you’ll learn all you need to know about Hiram. He’s as slippery as they come, but it all has its roots in money. Hiram is not sticking his neck out for any other reason, Bill. This whole mess stinks of money. Ron and Molly are marrying, because of the money. Eberle took a powder, for money. Clarinda Eberle wants Ron Stryker, for money, even though she is West’s mistress …”
“What?” Bill said. “I’ll be damned,” he said then.
“Why?”
“A lot of rich people haven’t an ounce of morality,” Bill said primly. “Makes me sick.”
“There are three very determined women in this house,” Patrick said, quietly. “Enid, Clarinda, and Molly. It will be interesting to see which one wins.”
19
Upstairs in the living room somebody put on a record. It was Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Infanta,” exquisitely played upon a piano with a tone like a silver bell. I rose and went over to the open door to listen.
At the table the men went on talking, their voices low and intent. Bill Jonas said that Lieutenant Beckmann was a good detective. A little abrupt, maybe, but that was all right. Nothing would get by him, he said. Then he asked what Murphy had handed Patrick on that slip of paper, and Patrick handed it over.
I kept my mind half on their conversation, but the music upstairs was almost irresistible. Cool and very elegant, the record played on.
“I’ll be damned,” Jonas said. Because of something he had read on Murphy’s notes to Patrick.
“And he calls himself a pauper, Bill.”
“Yeah. We would have picked this up pretty soon, of course, but it’s a handy piece of evidence.”
“You might go ahead from here, Bill. It’s usually easy enough for the police to find out where money comes from. Hard for me, unless I’m right on the spot.”
“Blackmail, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“In that case it’s not at all easy to get at the truth, Pat.”
Upstairs the music stopped, and then started again. The same record was being repeated. Risking missing something, but maybe not much, since neither Bill nor Patrick would come out in the open so long as Timothy Ryan was present, I slipped out of the kitchen and up the stairs to see who was playing the record. Kenneth West was my bet. It was the sort of thing he would do, at a time like this.
He fascinated me. He had the macaber lure of a den of vice, but he was much less obvious. His long, carefully tended hands, his agreeable voice, his look of careful grooming, his ready tongue, all these and more offset the homeliness of his bony face and angular body.
At the door of the living room I stopped still, because of the change in the weather presented through the many windows and doors from the terrace. All these had been closed, which explained the clarity with which the music had carried down the stairs to the kitchen. But through the undraped glass I could see the fog blowing in, stalking across the lawn in ragged graceful patches. It walked upon the grass and through the cypresses like a procession of ghosts.
Ronald Stryker sat alone on one of the sofas. The record-player, was finishing up the “Pavane” for the second time as I crossed the threshold and saw the slender dark-eyed boy slumped against the cushions.
He looked up, smiled, and nodded.
The “Pavane” again ended and Ron let it repeat.
“I hope you don’t mind?” Then he said, “I suppose I might find something livelier. My mother likes this tune, though, and I thought—well, they haven’t come in to tell me to turn it off, and I thought—I thought it might somehow—help her.”
Bring her back, he means, I thought. Even when dying she imposed on people. Took too long at it.
I said I loved the tune, and who was playing. He said he’d no idea. And now it was playing again and sounding clean and elegant and stately.
He offered-me a cigarette, ga.ve me a light, and when I sat down on the opposite couch he went back to where he’d been sitting and folded himself against the cushions. We sat without speaking until the record finished again.
Ron shut it off and told me the name of the pianist. He was Spanish and his name was one I had never heard before.
“I think we’d best not play anything else,” he said. “My mother likes this, but not everything, of course.”
I said, “See how the fog has come in.”
“I like it, like that,” he said, as the sketchy ragged shapes traveled past on the wind. “I mean, when it keeps moving.”
“I hope it doesn’t settle, though,” I said.
“So do I. Have they—have they told you anything about Mother?”
I said, “I think your father is quite hopeful.”
Ron’s starry eyes dulled slightly and he spoke with a touch of hostility. “Why do they let him go in there, but not me?”
I improvised and said, “Your mother is pretty crazy about you, Ron. Perhaps your going there would excite her too much.” He didn’t say anything, and I said, “If there were no hope I’m pretty sure you’d be in there. That’s the way doctors usually believe, or so I think.” Since I hadn’t been present too often when lives hung in the balance I could hardly call myself an authority.
His face brightened. “You may be right. Of course, I keep thinking I might do something to help. I saw a lot of fellows get it in the war and—well, I think I helped save some of them.” He said then, “When a person tries suicide three or four times you get so you think it won’t work somehow, ever. That sounds callous, but it’s so. I just can’t believe she will die.”
“She won’t,” Patrick said, coming in from the hall. He closed the door. “She’s doing fine, Ron. Gosh, look at the weather!”
“It’s dramatic,” I said. “Otherwise I reserve comment, dear.”
“You know I like it,” Patrick said. He sat down beside me. “Do you agree with the police that Saito killed himself, Ron?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. No one on this earth would harm Saito.”
“Then you agree with your father that your mother attempted suicide and Saito killed himself when he thought she’d got away with it?”
“Yes, I do,” Ron said.
“What I don’t understand is why Saito made no effort to save her, Ron.”
“I think that’s queer, too. Still, he may not have known what to do, or something. He must have acted on the impulse, before he thought, I mean. When he stabbed himself, I mean.”
“He must have gone to the kitchen to get that knife?”
“Yes.”
“What I can’t understand is how your mother got the poison. Do you think she had a lucid interval and went down to the kitchen and got it herself? Or did Saito fetch it up to her?”
Ron shook his head. “The police asked me that, too. We all knew where the stuff is kept, of course. In the kitchen, in a cupboard—there is no lock on the garden house where the tools and sprays are kept, but Saito kept all the insect killers in a cupboard in the kitchen because he said it wasn’t safe to leave them around outside. But the cupboard was not locked.”
“And your mother knew that?”
“Why, yes, I expect she did. When she—feels all right—she goes around looking into everything. She’s terrific about having a clean house, you know. Especially the kitchen.”
“Where are Mrs. Eberle and Mr. West?”
“Clare is in Mother’s room. Ken went up to his bedroom. Mother asked for Clare, they said. Didn’t you see her in there?”
“I haven’t been in your mother’s room lately,” Patrick said. “What do you think of West, Ron?”
Ron said, surprised, “He’s tops. Why?”
“Please be more explicit.”
“What do you mean?” Ron asked. Patrick said nothing, and Ron said, “Oh, I know that people are suspicious of Ken West. He seems to take things so easy and all that. But he’s a swell guy. He’s like a brother to me, an older brother. I love him like one, too. You see, I can’t give you any sort of slant on Ken because I’m too fond of him.”
Patrick said, “I hear he’s pretty well fixed.”
Ron said, “Ken? Well, that I doubt. Money doesn’t mean a thing to the guy, Pat.”
“I thought maybe it was like that,” Patrick said. “And I figured maybe your cousin Clarinda would have married him long before this, if he was really well off.”
Ron’s face tightened. He looked sullen. I felt unhappy, wondering how far Pat would go in this quiz. “You are mistaken,” Ronald said quietly.
“Well, I only judge from hearsay …”
“Clare is always talked about. Confidentially, we have been engaged for years, Pat.”
“How could that be? She was still married.”
“But we didn’t know that. Till today when Beckmann blurted it out. Of course, ours has had to be a secret understanding, but everybody concerned has known the facts, Pat. For ages. Molly knows and so does Tim. Ken knows. We just keep up a sort of public pretense, on account of my mother. She is bitterly opposed to Clare, but—well, when she is able, she will have to face the truth. I talked with her psychiatrist in Honolulu and he said to wait a decent length of time and then to go ahead and do what we want to. It will be a shock, but it just might be what she needs. A lot of her trouble is that she has been fighting for something she subconsciously knows she can’t win.”
