The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
Читать онлайн книгу.
“Can you spare me several minutes?”
We could. He took us through a waiting room, in its way as revealing of personality as Annabelle’s living room had been. It had glassed-in bookcases and graceful Windsor chairs. Bound volumes of The Stage and copies of Variety were mixed with medical journals and reports, and patients could take their choice. A reproduction of Rembrandt’s Consultation hung from one wall, but on the opposite wall an inscribed photograph of Lillian Russell showed a majestic bust and gleaming teeth. The actress had visited Crockford in 1901, and village gossips still reported that the physician had been her host at supper.
We entered the consultation room. Dr. Rand closed the door, sat down and looked at us. Then in a voice so impersonal I hardly recognized it, he said:
“Take chairs, you two. I think it’s time we had a talk.”
We sat down and waited. Swinging to his untidy desk, Dr. Rand selected a labeled envelope and shook from it a charred splinter of bone. “I perceive,” he began, “that my good advice met the usual fate of good advice. I deliver a spirited lecture on the evils of curiosity and today you bring me this. Not content with ordinary prying, Mr. Storm, you indulge in housebreaking—a serious crime—run violent hazards, expose your wife to the gravest danger. You’re fortunate you didn’t get her killed. And for what, I ask? For this!”
There was no adequate answer to his disgust and disapproval. We made none. He replaced the bone in its envelope. He continued to glare at Jack.
“Are you without reason? Without common sense? Does your life mean nothing to you? Your wife’s life? Must you satisfy your unwarranted curiosity at any cost? Haven’t you learned at your age to mind your own business? I say it’s time you should.”
Jack valued the other man’s opinion. He looked very young and taken aback as a guilty schoolboy, when he said defensively, “Probably last night’s performance was foolish and dangerous. I know I wouldn’t repeat it. But as things turned out, it was lucky we went up the hill.”
“Lucky!” The exclamation came in quieter tones. The physician was silent a moment before he spoke again. “Hiram Darnley is dead, murdered. Someone else may also be dead. We can’t bring them back to life. I grant a policeman’s right to concern himself in such affairs. It’s his business, just as it’s mine to heal the sick, and yours to paint, and your wife’s to write. It’s not your business and it isn’t mine, to go through the world as a Peeping Tom. You’ve heard of the Elwell mystery? The Hall-Mills case? Murderers, my dear young man, can go unhung and the world remain a pleasant place.” He looked out his office window to the garden underneath, where early jonquils were opening to the sun. He looked back at us. “What do you two kids know about people? About human trials and tribulations? What do you know about suffering? Only the young and callous would try so hard to trap an old, half-mad woman and get her hauled up for murder.”
“In other words,” Jack said slowly, “you believe Mrs. Coatesnash is a murderess?”
Dr. Rand drummed thin, white fingers on his desk. “You’ve got detective blood. Personally, I haven’t.”
“That’s hardly fair.”
“I suppose it isn’t.” The physician hesitated. “I would like to find in your heart, assuming you have a heart, a little honest sympathy. I’m half inclined to bargain. If I say what I think, will you promise to go back to painting? And keep what I say in confidence? The police will find out soon enough.”
Jack said gravely, “I’ll do only what I am required by law to do. Unless—” He, too, hesitated. “—unless I am positive that either Lola or myself is in actual danger. Of course, anything you say is between us two. Is that enough?”
After deliberation, Dr. Rand inclined his head. “Very well. Since the identification, I’ve believed that Mrs. Coatesnash was the moving force behind Hiram Darnley’s death.”
“She’s three thousand miles away in Paris.”
“She could leave confederates.”
“And her motive?”
Dr. Rand went into a long reverie. Finally he started off on a tangent. “Bachelors,” he said slowly, “often develop soft spots. Comes from no responsibilities, irregular hours and restaurant cooking. My own soft spot is families. Family life. I like seeing fathers with their sons, whooping it up at baseball games, like seeing mothers shopping with their daughters, like the vigor and noise of crowded households. Kids going off to school, rushing home to spend vacations.” He paused again. “If Luella Coatesnash conspired to murder Hiram Darnley, she had the best motive a grief-crazed mother ever had. Her only child. Her daughter Jane.”
I leaned forward. “Dr. Rand, has it ever occurred to you that Jane Coatesnash may be alive?”
“It never has,” said the doctor brusquely, “because it isn’t true. The identification was unquestionable. The girl is dead.” Again I interrupted. He ignored me. A second time he said harshly, “Jane Coatesnash is dead. I know. The poor child killed herself. She killed herself for love of a worthless scoundrel. I knew she would. I couldn’t stop her. She was just nineteen and the man was married.”
“The man was…”
Dr. Rand took the words from Jack’s mouth. “The man was Hiram Darnley.”
The cheeping of robins came loudly into the quiet office, and sun splashed the faded carpet. White hair rumpled, blue eyes lacking the usual gleaming light, Dr. Rand sat and looked at us.
“Aren’t you two willing to let up on the old lady? Wouldn’t you say she’s had her share of trouble?”
Jack stirred and sighed. “Why did Mrs. Coatesnash wait fifteen years?”
“Wait!” Dr. Rand expelled a breath. “You don’t imagine she knew the situation at the time! No one knew—no one except myself. I learned only because the girl appealed to me as a physician, an old family friend. She came to this office, sat in that very chair and calmly asked for poison. She wanted a deadly poison, quick, painless, not disfiguring. Poor heartbroken youngster, she favored a pretty death.” His eyes seemed to look down the corridor of the years. “We had a talk, Jane and I; she cried but I got the story out. A heartless, threadbare tale—conventional enough. Darnley was a thoroughgoing rascal, the type of man who feeds his vanity on conquest and on youth. Little Jane, just nineteen, was probably his easiest victim. I tried to talk iron into the girl, good hard sense; thought I’d succeeded, though obviously she still adored the man.”
“Then you didn’t tell the mother?”
“Certainly not! I didn’t guess I had failed until Jane disappeared from college. I knew then. It was too late. Three weeks too late. Three weeks after coming here she killed herself.”
“Then you were the only person who had an inkling of the truth?”
“Unquestionably I was. Jane was a reserved kid, no chatterbox.”
“Then how,” inquired Jack, “would Mrs. Coatesnash stumble on the facts after fifteen years? She trusted Hiram Darnley with the very search for Jane. Until two weeks ago he handled all her business.”
Scraps of information began to fit together in my mind like pieces in a jig-saw puzzle. Laura Twining had exhibited a surprising interest in the Coatesnash girl. Suppose she had discovered not that the girl was alive, but that she was a suicide. A forgotten letter might have put her on the right track, a diary—could Jane have kept a diary?—or a phrase of idle gossip. Such an impetus might clarify her visit to the library.
I jumped into the conversation. “Perhaps Laura Twining found out and told Mrs. Coatesnash.”
“Why should she?” said Jack. “She would have felt as the doctor did. That the dead past should stay dead.”
Unexpectedly Dr. Rand came to my assistance. “Don’t be so glib, young man. Human beings are the product of their brain cells, their hormones