A BIT OF SILK
I must admit that when Worth and Barbara walked up and found me talking
to Ina Vandeman, I felt caught dead to rights. The girl gave me one
long, steady look. I was afraid of Barbara Wallace's eyes. Then and
there I relinquished all idea of having her help in this inquiry. She
could have done it much better than I, attracted less attention--but no
matter. The awkward moment went by, however; I heaved a sigh of relief
as they carried their ferns on into the clubhouse, and Mrs. Vandeman
left me with gracious good-bys.
I had the luck to cover my first inquiry by getting a lift into town
from Mrs. Ormsby, young wife of the president of the First National.
Alone with me in her little electric, she answered every question I
cared to put, and said she would be careful to speak to no one of the
matter. Three others I caught on the wing, as it were, busy at blossom
festival affairs; the fête only one day off now, things were moving
fast. I glimpsed Dr. Bowman down town and thought he rather carefully
avoided seeing me. His wife was taking no part; the word went that she
was not able; but when I called at what had been the Wallace and was now
the Bowman home, I found the front door open and two ladies in the hall.
One of them, Laura Bowman herself, came flying out to meet me--or
rather, it seemed, to stop me, with a face of dismay.
"My mother's here, Mr. Boyne!" Her hand was clammy cold; she'd been
warned of me and my errand. "I don't want to take you through that way."
I stood passive, and let her do the saying.
"Around here," she faltered. "We can go in at the side door."
We skirted the house by a narrow walk; she was leading the way by this
other entrance, when, spread out over its low step, blocking our
progress, I saw a small Japanese woman ripping up a satin dress.
"Let us pass, Oomie."
"Wait. We can talk as well here," I checked her. We moved on a few
paces, out of earshot of the girl; but before I could put my questions,
she began with a sort of shattered vehemence to protest that Thomas
Gilbert's death was suicide.
"It was, Mr. Boyne. Anybody who knew the scourge Thomas had been to
those he must have loved in his queer, distorted way, and any one who
loved them, could believe he might take his own life."
"You speak freely, Mrs. Bowman," I said. "Then you hated the man?"
"Oh, I did! For years past I've never heard of a death without wondering
that God took other human beings and let him live. Now that he's killed
himself, it seems dreadful to me that suspicion should be cast on--"
"Mrs. Bowman," I interrupted. "Thomas Gilbert's death was murder. All
persons who could have had motive or might have had opportunity to kill
him will be under suspicion till the investigation clears them of it.
I'm now ascertaining the whereabouts of Ina Vandeman that evening."
A shudder went through her; she looked at me feelingly, twisting her
hands together in the way I remembered. Despite her distress, she was
very simple and accessible. She gave me no resistance, admitted her
absence from the Thornhill house at about the time the party was ready
to start for San Francisco--Edwards, of course. I got nothing new here.
She seemed thankful enough to go into the house when I released her.
I lingered a moment to have a word with the little Japanese woman on the
step.
"How long you work this place?"
"Two hours af-noon, every day," ducking and giggling like a mechanical
toy.
Just a piece-worker, not a regular servant.
"Pretty dress," I touched the satin on the step. "Whose?"
"Mine." Grinning, she spread a breadth out over her knees. "Lady no like
any more. Mine." It was a peculiar shade of peacock blue; unless I was
mistaken, the one Mrs. Bowman had worn that night at Tait's.
"Hello--what's this?" I bent to examine a small hole in the hem of that
breadth Oomie was so delightedly smoothing.
"O-o-o-o! I think may-may burn'm. Not like any more."
There was a small round hole. Just so a cigarette might have seared--or
a bullet.
"Not can use," I said to Oomie, indicating the injured bit. "Cut that
off. Give me." And I laid a silver dollar on the step.
Giggling, the little brown woman snipped out the bit of hem and handed
it to me. I glanced up from tucking it into my pocket, and saw Laura
Bowman's white face staring at me through the glass of that side entry
door.
A suggestive lead, certainly; but it's my way to follow one lead at a
time: I went on to the Thornhill place.
Everybody there would know my errand; for though, with taste I could but
admire, Ina had put no name of any member of the family on her list, she
of course expected me to call on them, and would never have let her
sisters leave the country club without a warning.
The three were just taking their hats off in the hall when I arrived. I
did my questioning there, not troubling to take them separately. Cora
and Ernestine, a well bred pair of Inas, without her pep, perhaps a
shade less good looking, made their replies with none of the usual
flutter of feminine curiosity and excitement, then went on in the living
room. Skeet of course was as practical and brief as a sensible boy.
"I don't know whether she's fit to see you," she said when I spoke of
her mother. And on the instant, Ina Vandeman's clear, high voice called
down the stair,
"Bring Mr. Boyne up--now."
Skeet stepped aside for me to pass. I suppose I looked as startled as I
felt, for on my way to the house, I had seen Mrs. Vandeman drive past
toward town. I stood there at a loss, and finally said aimlessly,
"Your sister thinks it's all right?"
"My sister?" Skeet wrinkled her brows at me, and glanced to where the
twins were in sight in the living room. "That was mother herself who
called you."
All the way up the stairs, Skeet following, I was trying to swing my
rather heavy wits around to take advantage of this new development. So
far, Ina Vandeman's voice, imitated by Barbara Wallace, and recognized
by Chung and Jim Edwards, possibly by Worth, had been my lead in this
direction. If more than one woman spoke in that voice--where would it
take me?
I'd got no adjustment before I was ushered into a large dim room, and
confronted by a figure in a reclining chair by the window. Here, in
spite of years and illness, were the same good looks and thoroughbred
courage that seemed to characterize the women of this family. Mrs.
Thornhill greeted me in Ina Vandeman's very tones, a little high-pitched
for real sweetness, full of a dominating quality, and she showed a
composure I had not expected. To Skeet, standing by, watching to see
that her mother didn't overdo in talking to me, she said,
"Dear, go down stairs. Jane's left her dinner on the range and gone to
the grocery. You look after it while she's away."
When we were alone, she lay back in her chair, eyes closed, or seemingly
so, and made her statement. She'd been in her daughter's room only twice
between the reception and that daughter's going away.
"But the room was full of other people," a glimmer between lashes. "I
could give you the names of those others."
"Thank you," I said. "Mrs. Vandeman has already done that. I've seen
them all."
"You've seen them--all?" a long, furtively drawn breath. Then her eyes
flashed open and fixed themselves on me. Relief was there, yet something
stricken, as they traveled over me from my gray thatch to my big feet.
"Now, Mrs. Thornhill," I said, "aside from those two visits to your
daughter's room, where were you that evening?"
A slow flush crept into her thin cheeks. The unreadable eyes that were
traveling over Jerry Boyne stopped suddenly and held him with a quiet
stare.
"I understood it was my daughter's movements on that evening you wished
to trace, Mr. Boyne," she said slowly. "It would be difficult to trace
mine. Really, I had so much on my hands with the reception and
inefficient help--" She broke off, her eyes never leaving my own, even
as she added smoothly, "It would be very, very difficult."
There is an effect in class almost like the distinction of race. These
women spoke a baffling language; their psychology was hard for me. If
there was something hid up amongst them that ought to be uncovered by
diplomacy and delicate indirection, it would take a smarter man than the
one who stood in my number tens to do it.
"Mrs. Thornhill," I said, "you did leave the house. You went to Mr.
Gilbert's study. The shot that killed him left you a nervous wreck, so
that you can't hear a tire blow-out without reënacting in your mind the
scene of that murder. You'll talk now."
"You think I will? Talk to you?" very low and quiet, eyes once more
closed.
"Why not? It's got to come; here in your own home, with me--or I'll have
to put you where you'll be forced to answer questions."
"Oh, you threaten me, do you?" Her eyes flashed open, and looked at me,
hard as flint. "Very well. I'll answer no questions as to what happened
on the evening of Thomas Gilbert's death, except in the presence of
Worth Gilbert, his son."
My retirement down the Thornhill stairs, made with such dignity as I
could muster, was in fact, a panic flight. Halfway, Cora Thornhill all
but finished me by looking out from the living room, and calling in Ina
Vandeman's voice,
"Erne, show Mr. Boyne out, won't you?"
Ernestine completed the job when she answered--in Ina Vandeman's voice,
also--
"Yes, dear; I will." It was only the scraps of me that she swept out
through the front door.
I stood on the porch and mopped my brow. Across, there at the Gilbert
place was Worth himself, charging around the grounds with Vandeman and a
lot of other decorators, pruning shears in hand, going for a thicket of
bamboos that shut off the vegetable garden. At one side Barbara stood
alone, looking, it seemed to me, rather depressed. I made for her. She
met me with,
"I know what you've been doing. Skeet came to me about it while Ina was
phoning home from the country club."
"Well--she should worry! I've just finished with her list. Got an
unbreakable alibi."
"She would have," Barbara said listlessly. "She wasn't at the study that
evening."
"Huh! I worked on your tip that she was."
Barbara had pulled off the little stitched hat she wore; yet the deep
flush on her cheeks was neither from sun nor an afternoon's hard work.
It, and the quick straightening of her figure, the lift of her chin, had
to do with me and my activities.
"Mr. Boyne," the black eyes came around to me with a flash, "do you
suspect me of trying to pay off a spite on Ina Vandeman?"
"Good Lord--no!" I exploded. "And anyhow, I've just found that what you
imitated and Chung recognized, might as well have been the mother's
voice as the daughter's."
"Yes," she assented. "Any one of the family--under stress of emotion."
Then suddenly, "And why do I tell you that? You'll not get from it what
I do. I ought never to have mixed up my kind of mental work with other
people's. I'd promised my own soul that I would never make another
deduction. Then Worth came and asked me--that night at Tait's. I might
say now that I never will any more...." She broke off, storm in her eyes
and in her voice as she finished, "But I suppose if he wanted me to
again--I'd make a little fool of myself for his amusement just as I did
this time and have done all these other times!"
"I'll not ask anything more of you, Barbara," I said to her hastily,
confused and abashed before the glimpse she'd given me of her heart.
"Except that I beg you to stay good friends with Cummings. That man
hates Worth. If you turned him down now--say, for the ball, or anything
like that--he'd be twice as hard for us to handle. Keep him a passive
enemy instead of an active one, as long as he seems to find it necessary
to hang around Santa Ysobel."
"You know what's holding Mr. Cummings here, don't you?" She glanced
somberly past the bamboo gatherers to where we saw a gray corner of the
study with its pink ivy geranium blossoms atop. "Mr. Cummings is held
here by two steel bolts--the bolts on those study doors. Until he finds
how they can be moved through an inch of planking--he'll not leave Santa
Ysobel."
She'd put it in a nutshell. And I couldn't let him beat me to it. I'd
got to get the jump on him.