CHAPTER XII
THE DECENCY NOT TO INQUIRE
WHEN Stimson had resumed his seat at the end of the library, Landis recalled the policeman from the reception-room and set him on guard over the Japanese bow and arrows and over the servants. He posted the sergeant by the fire, a position from which he could watch the body of Harrison and prevent conversation among the guests and members of the household after the detectives had talked to them. Landis proposed to question them in turn, sending them into the library one at a time.
With the sergeant at his new post, Landis mounted to the second floor wing and knocked on Graham’s door. Graham himself opened it to disclose his wife in the background. Landis looked at her with interest, in time to catch a fading glimpse of the intimate hilarity common to happy newlyweds.
“We’d like a few words with Mrs. Graham,” he explained. “Won’t keep her long.”
“Here she is,” said Graham. “Detective-Lieutenant Landis, Ethel. Want to question her here?” he asked Landis.
“Down in the drawing-room, if you please. Mr. Bernard is waiting for us there.”
She was a pretty and prettily rounded little person with soft brown hair, hazel eyes and more than a hint of character in her smooth young face.
“I’ll come at once,” she smiled. “Can Ray come, too?”
“Downstairs with us, of course! But I think we’ll demand an interview alone with you! We won’t bite. And you may be able to concentrate and remember little points better without—er—distracting influences.”
Mrs. Graham laughed without self-consciousness and blushed a little, as though ingenuous simplicity peeped through a social sophistication but lately acquired.
“All right—if you won’t bite,” she smiled. More soberly she added: “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about this awful tragedy.”
“Then we won’t keep you long!”
They dropped Graham at the library door and went on to the drawing-room. Bernard rose until their attractive young witness had settled herself in a chair. While Landis put the questions he sat watching her absently. Once or twice she smiled at him. Young things always took to Bernard because they like kindness, strength and simplicity of character and, above all, reserve.
She told them that she had not locked the door at the end of the wing and that she had been in her room from about half past six until after the gong rang. At a quarter past seven her husband had sent for Helen Stokes to help her dress.
“Just after the gong rang,” Bernard interjected, “you heard a scream, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. Bernard. We both heard it, Helen Stokes and I. It startled us.”
She went on to tell them how she had hurried downstairs with Helen and come up again to summon her husband. He was in the bathroom drying himself and had dressed quickly and gone down to take charge. She had waited and gone down with him. She had seen no one in the halls on her way back and forth.
Landis asked her about the library door. She was sure it had been open and back against the wall when she and her husband passed through the library on their way to their rooms. As to the Japanese bow she had never noticed it, either in the library or anywhere else in the house.
The rest of Mrs. Graham’s account merely verified that of the others. After dinner in the dining-room she had gone back to her room to wait for her husband who had joined her there a few minutes ago.
“Let’s go back a bit,” Bernard rumbled. “Didn’t you go for a ride and a sail with Harrison last Sunday?”
“Yes, I did,” she admitted in surprise.
“Was he nice to you?”
“Yes, very!”
“Not too nice, Mrs. Graham?”
She shook her head.
“Not at all! To tell you the truth I was a little afraid he might be. But he was just nice and very interesting about all sorts of things.”
“He didn’t tell you anything that might give us a clue to his murderer, did he?”
“He—he just talked about his early days—” she stammered, “—about pioneering and mining and newspaper work. What—what could he tell me?”
Bernard smiled.
“An enemy?”
“No. He didn’t say anything about having an enemy!”
“I suppose you have no idea who killed him?”
“Why, no, Mr. Bernard! How should I? It couldn’t have been anyone in the house, of course.”
“No?” Bernard inquired.
This time she looked frightened.
“You don’t mean you think it was somebody in the house!”
“No,” lied the old detective gallantly, “we don’t. We want to know what you think, d’you see? Did anyone telephone you here at the house yesterday or today?”
She shook her head in bewilderment.
“No one.”
“Then do you know of any middle-aged to elderly man who might try to telephone to you here?”
Ethel Graham laughed mischievously.
“I was on the stage for a while in New York,” she explained. “One way and another I met rather a lot of middle-aged to elderly men who might try to telephone me—if they knew my married name.”
“This was no tired business man,” interrupted Landis with a smile. “It was rather a ragged old fellow, I believe.”
“Ragged? Someone did try to telephone me—?”
From surprise her eyes widened to swift alarm.
“Goodness, it might have been my father!” she cried.
“What is his name and where does he live?”
“His name is Hiram Cuddy and he lives on a farm on Long Island, near Great Neck. But I don’t think he could have telephoned me! I don’t think he knows where I am!”
“You live in town, don’t you? Couldn’t he learn it from a servant at your home?”
“I—I don’t think he knows my address at all!”
Both detectives looked puzzled—and receptive.
Ethel Graham spread her small hands in a gesture individual and rather endearing.
“You see,” she explained diffidently, “I ran away from home! That was three years ago and I haven’t heard from either of my parents since.”
Bernard frowned.
“Why not?” he demanded. “Didn’t you write or go to see them?”
She shook her head.
“It sounds awful, I know. But I wasn’t a bit happy at home!”
“They were old-fashioned and you wanted gayety?”
“It wasn’t that! Home was sordid and terribly depressing. No matter what I did I couldn’t seem to make them really like me! That’s why I ran away at last!”
Ethel Graham’s eyes clouded and saddened with unhappy memories, a most convincing endorsement of her words.
“So your maiden name was Cuddy?” asked Landis.
“Yes. I changed it to Craig when I got to New York.”
“Thanks,” said Bernard gruffly. “Now, between the time you went to your room and the scream you heard, did you see anyone about the house at all?”
“I never left our rooms, Mr. Bernard! So I saw nobody except Ray and Helen Stokes.”
“Did you happen to overhear any quarrels between Mr. Harrison and anyone at all?”
“No, I didn’t. Sometimes he was pretty harsh to his brother at the table. They didn’t exactly quarrel because Mr. Joel Harrison always tried to laugh it off.”
Each detective waited for the other to go on with further questions. Finally Landis rose to his feet.
“That’s all, Mrs. Graham. Thanks a lot. I’ll take you back to your husband.”
With a smile at Bernard, a smile that held just a touch of wistfulness as though entreating his good opinion of her, she rose with graceful ease and preceded Landis into the hall. He followed her to the library and in the doorway beckoned to Graham.
In the drawing-room, Landis waved Graham to a chair.
“I’ve a couple of questions I forgot to ask you,” he said. “One of ’em is: have you seen that Japanese bow anywhere else about the house during the past week, or seen anyone near it?”
“No, I haven’t, Mr. Landis. I would have told you.”
Landis nodded.
“I just wanted to make sure. Well, do you know of anyone doing any shooting on the third floor since last Tuesday—anyone at all?”
“I don’t believe anyone has been shooting up there since Tuesday. You mean that hole in the target we found?”
“Yes. It was made since Tuesday, not before.”
“Then I don’t know who could have made it!”
“All right. Have you heard any rows between Harrison and anyone at all since you’ve been here? They may be just as important indirectly as directly.”
Graham sat in silence for a moment, thinking.
“Last Sunday night,” he told them suddenly, “Mr. Harrison called me into the library. While we were talking, Anita came in and said something to him in an undertone. I did not hear what she said but her father lashed out at her aloud: ‘I like him, all right,’ he shouted, ‘but he’s not for you, see?’”
“Did you gather who he meant?”
“Yes. They were talking about Allen. There wasn’t much reserve on either side and I was damned uncomfortable. Anita called her father a brute and he called her a fool and she flung out in a rage.”
“What did Harrison say about Allen?” asked Bernard.
Graham flinched a little.
“Good Lord, I don’t want to go into that, Mr. Bernard!”
“We’re not going to talk about it,” Landis smiled. “But we ought to know, I think.”
“He acted as if he thought Allen was a—well, a fortune hunter. Millionaires are apt to get that way,” answered Graham after a moment.
“Anita was defending Allen, of course. Did you gather that she is in love with him, Graham?”
“I really couldn’t say.” Graham’s voice had an edge.
“Come, come,” said Landis with an unruffled smile, “we’re not scandal-mongering. It may be important.”
“Well, Anita was—defending him—rather warmly.”
“Let it go at that, then! What did Harrison want to talk to you about?”
“A subject purely personal to me. I’ll tell you if you insist. But I’d a great deal rather not.”
Bernard uttered a faint snort.
“Another personal matter! Do you realize, Graham, that Harrison was murdered here tonight? This is no game of twenty questions, man!”
“I know it isn’t,” said Graham in sudden exasperation. “But our talk had nothing to do with the murder!” His tone changed. “Look here, I could have told you our talk was about business but I told you the truth. Now, if you insist on details, damn it, I’ll be strongly tempted to lie to you!” He laughed with a touch of appeal. “Nobody heard us and nobody would be any the wiser!”
“All right,” said Landis quickly, “let it go. Come on back to the library while we talk to the others.”
Leaving the young lawyer, ruffled and a bit nervous, under the watchful eye of Sergeant Forbes, Landis went to the billiard-room. Russell and Allen had abandoned their game and were sitting in front of the fire. He asked for a word with Russell and conducted him back to the drawing-room.
The young man sat down in a leisurely way and faced his two inquisitors with a lazy smile while they looked him over. He was a fine specimen of the Nordic physique, big, broad-shouldered, and muscular, with a head of light, half-tamed hair. Behind the lazy, deep-set blue eyes lurked intelligence and good humor, also a capacity for sudden anger.
He broke the brief silence with a question, his tone conveying a hint of lazy insolence. “Do I pass?”
“You’re a friend of the family?” inquired Landis.
“A particular friend, gentlemen.”
“Meaning—?”
“—that Isabelle and I are engaged.”
“What is your full name and where do you live?”
The suave courtesy with which Landis spoke, the grim amusement on Bernard’s face were having their effect. Russell answered with a shade less assurance.
“Hobart Clark Russell,” he told them and added his address in Westchester.
Landis repeated his usual questions without success. Russell had not locked the door at the end of the wing, nor closed the rear door of the library that evening. He had never noticed the bow in the library, seldom entered that room. Nor had he seen the Japanese bow away from its usual place.
He had overheard no quarrels between Harrison and anyone else in the house, though he said Harrison jumped on his brother at meals, the only time they saw each other. Finally, he had noticed no one and nothing suspicious about the house or grounds and had no idea who killed Harrison.
“Where were you and what were you doing after six o’clock tonight?” asked Landis.
“At six I was driving home in Anita’s car with Graham as well. We got back about half past and I went to my room—”
“You came in the house at the end of the wing, I think,” said Landis. “Did you go straight to your room or come through the billiard-room and turn back?”
“The latter. Allen and I followed the girls through to the hall before we went back to our rooms.”
“Was the library door closed at that time?”
“I didn’t notice. Don’t believe it was, though. But I think it was closed later, after the murder.”
“Go on, please,” Landis requested.
“Well, I stayed in my room, bathing and dressing until the gong rang. Then I heard a girl scream and I went through to the main building to see what was up.”
“You came through the billiard-room. Was there anyone there, Mr. Russell?”
“No. The room was deserted. In the hall beyond I saw that the library door was closed so I went through the swing door into the front hall and along that to the front room. I could hear a girl carrying on up there. It was Susan.”
“Did you hear anyone pass your door—pass along the hall of the wing—between six-thirty and seven-thirty?”
“No, don’t believe I did.”
“What did you find in the front room when you got there?” Landis continued.
“Well, let’s see. Miss Mount was there. Susan was in hysterics. Isabelle lay on the floor in a faint. And—Anita was there, too, staring down at her father. Then Mrs. Graham and Helen, the other maid, turned up, and Allen, I guess. The butler was back and we were trying to revive Isabelle by this time. Finally I carried her up to her room, came down to tell Graham I’d go and, when he insisted we wait for the police, I went across the hall for some dinner. Then Allen and I went to the billiard-room and here I am. That’s all.”
“Isabelle Harrison,” said Bernard suddenly, “will be a wealthy heiress—now. She’ll be a great catch, eh?”
“Just what did you mean by that?” Russell asked.
“It ought to be clear to you,” grunted Bernard.
Russell’s eyes were dangerous.
“Well, it isn’t!”
“I mean,” said Bernard, “that Harrison’s murder will make you a rich man! Is that clear enough for you?”
Landis gathered his muscles to leap between. But Russell controlled himself.
“It’s too damned clear,” he panted.
“And it’s true, eh?” inquired Bernard. “Cut out the play-acting and let’s have your answer!”
The formidable glare of his old eyes met the furious threat in those of Russell. Dominated in spite of himself, the younger man slowly leaned back in his chair.
“Isabelle and I are engaged,” he admitted huskily. “No doubt she will be well off now. I’ve had the decency not to inquire. If you’re accusing me of the murder, say so! Otherwise, keep your damned insinuations to yourself!”
Bernard smiled a little.
“If we do run you in you’d better learn to control your temper, young man. You can go.”
Russell got lithely to his feet.
“You’ve got gall enough,” he scowled, “for a dozen cheap detectives!”
“Step into the library,” said Landis patiently.
Russell hesitated, swung about and stalked into the other room, where he dropped into a chair near Mrs. Graham.