The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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attacked the bureau drawers, the dresser drawers, plowed methodically through the contents of a painted chest. He fingered yellowed linen, patchwork quilts, smelled lavender and musk. He closed the chest, crossed to close the shutters. A gleaming metal sliver buried in the carpet caught the sunshine and his eye. He stooped. His expression grew startled, incredulous. In his hand he held a broken hypodermic needle. Silas stood very still. I hardly breathed. Standish turned.
“Do you know what this is?”
“It belongs to Mrs. Coatesnash. She said it was for medicine—medicine for her heart.”
“Medicine, eh?”
“Yes, sir. I saw her use it once, stick it in her arm. She got mad at me, and made me promise not to talk about it. I never did.”
Like the genii in the bottle, Luella Coatesnash seemed to materialize in her dusty bedroom. Was the old lady a drug addict? Had she filled an empty life and soothed an ancient sorrow with cocaine dreams? Did the explanation for a ten years’ avoidance of society, a taste for being left alone, lie in this gleaming broken needle?
Standish was an experienced policeman. He had considerable knowledge of the psychology of the warped, drug-laden brain. He knew what drugs did to people, how they bred suspicions, sharpened dislikes into hatreds, magnified the petty slight into the unbearable injury. I watched him, and from his unhappy face could almost read the workings of his mind. If Mrs. Coatesnash were indeed a drug addict, then anything was possible. But he pocketed the tell-tale metal sliver without a word.
Silas preceded us into the storeroom. He gave me a malevolent glance, but since Standish made no objection I slid inside. The police chief worked patiently through the confusion and the clutter. He poked at chair cushions, shook the couch, opened the trunks, bringing forth ballroom dresses of the fifties and feathered hats. He had expected the evidences of wrongdoing to be vague, but here was nothing at all. Nothing except an old house, overrun with the debris of penny-pinching generations, shut up while its mistress was away.
Rubbing grime from his hands, Standish groaned and stood still. “I’m done.”
“There’s still the attic,” said Silas.
The attic was reached by a ladder at the foot of the corridor. Standish looked at the ladder, started to mount toward the trap door at the top, suddenly changed his mind. It was past seven o’clock; he had spent three exhausting hours in the house, and he was hungry. He decided to delay further investigation until he received a report from Dr. Rand. Did I fancy it? Or did Silas look disappointed? I myself had a queer desire that Standish complete the search and enter the attic, but of course could not suggest it. As later events were to prove, my desire was well founded. The decision of a hungry, discouraged man cost at least one other life.
Standish and I returned in silence to the cottage. Jack and Harkway had settled down to cocktails, and I invited both policemen to supper. As I was starting for the kitchen, Standish stepped to the telephone, requested the long-distance operator and put in a call to Paris, France. I stopped in my tracks, and I must confess my first thought was of our telephone bill. I suppose I showed my feelings, for Standish cupped his hand over the mouthpiece to say: “This one’s on the town, Mrs. Storm. I thought you young folks had earned the right to listen.”
In the end, however, the call was not completed. Luella Coatesnash could not be reached. She was, according to an exasperated operator, safely in the Hotel St. Clair but in bed, sleeping under the effects of sedatives prescribed by a French physician who refused to let her answer the phone. The operator relayed the information that Mrs. Coatesnash was suffering from a heavy cold.
“A heavy cold!” said Harkway with a short laugh. “Well, maybe. But my own guess is that there are nerves on more than one side of the Atlantic.”
“At that,” said Standish philosophically, “it will probably be as well to talk to Mrs. Coatesnash after Dr. Rand reports on the bone. Doc should complete his analysis some time this evening. Don’t look so disappointed, Mrs. Storm. You can sit in on the call when it’s finally made. Let’s say at the station, after we finish that meal you’ve promised us.”
“But,” I said, alarmed, “now you’ve warned her, Mrs. Coatesnash may awake, get up, walk out of the hotel and simply vanish.”
Said Standish with a somber look at me, “No. Mrs. Coatesnash won’t vanish. I haven’t been so stupid and prejudiced as you’ve imagined, young lady, though the Lord knows I’ve been plenty stupid. A guard is posted at the Hotel St. Clair. Mrs. Coatesnash may not realize it, but she has been under observation some days. Since the day,” he finished grimly, “I discovered Franklyn Elliott was staying here in Crockford.”
On this note we sat down to supper. The sun fell in the west and outside the windows darkness gathered. I drew the shades. No one had much to say. Standish, who had admired and respected Mrs. Coatesnash, continued in his melancholy mood. Even Harkway seemed subdued. After the hectic day, the inaction, the sense of waiting, was hard to bear. At length I broke the silence.
“It isn’t my place to make suggestions, but anyhow I’d like to ask a question.” I looked at Standish. “Don’t you believe it was Silas who filled in the hole in the rock garden, and changed the lock and swept out the furnace? Don’t you believe he knows exactly who was on the hill last night?”
“I’m convinced of it.”
“Then why,” Jack interposed, “don’t you take Silas down to jail?”
Standish smiled. “On the theory, I suppose, that jail would loosen the Scotchman’s tongue?” Jack nodded. I must admit the theory seemed sound to me, and Lester Harkway, I believe, was of the same opinion. He listened in marked dissatisfaction as the senior officer developed his own idea.
“Jail,” said Standish, “might make some men talk. But it would be a man of a different type from Silas. Intimidation won’t work with him. You, Mrs. Storm, saw how much he talked just now. I could trump up some charge to hold him—remember, we haven’t a particle of real evidence—but I won’t.” Standish hesitated. “If Lester feels he wants to take the responsibility for an arrest…” The sentence was ended with a shrug.
Harkway also hesitated. “You’re in charge of the case,” he said at last, a shade ungraciously. “The final decision is up to you.
“Then,” said Standish with vigor, “we’ll leave the situation as it is. Why, I believe Silas almost wants to go to jail. He practically suggested it himself.”
“But…”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it,” said Standish testily. “I’ve had enough experience to know something about human nature. I’ve known Silas for years, I can read him like a book. He’s scared now. You saw that, Mrs. Storm. Why make him mad, why bring out that stubborn streak in him? Once behind bars—mark my words—Silas would get and nurse a persecution complex, and rot before he’d speak. But out of jail,” the policeman went on soberly, “well, that hill’s a pretty lonesome place to sit, with nothing to keep you company but a guilty conscience. Let Silas’s own fears and nerves and worries work on him. They’re working now. Bringing him closer and closer to the breaking point—to that point when he must talk. When that time comes—and if I’m any judge, it’s coming soon—we’ll learn from Silas’s own lips who killed Hiram Darnley and why, and the why of everything that happened last night.”
“But Silas himself,” I said sharply, “might have killed Hiram Darnley. In that event…”
“No,” said Standish slowly. “No. It wasn’t Silas who shot Hiram Darnley in the back. He has an iron-clad alibi. Ordinarily I don’t put too much stock in alibis, but Silas has an alibi that can’t be cracked. He was at band practice the night that Darnley came to Crockford, Mrs. Storm. Silas was at Fred Tompkins’ barn from five o’clock until after nine. Eight members of the band swear he never left the place, and eight unimpeachable witnesses are enough for me.”
“Who, then,” I inquired, “do you think murdered Laura Twining?”