Crime is Murder (3 page)

“Forgive me if I’ve bored you, Miss Bancroft, but I had heard that you were planning a book on Martin Cornish. I was quite enthusiastic about the idea. As a writer you would be free to make certain inquiries I cannot make. There’s one thing about Marta’s two former suitors that bothers me, you see. They’re both dead now.”

Both dead now. The professor’s last words kept echoing in Lisa’s mind like three small gongs. There’d been no opportunity to demand an explanation. It was almost as if his abrupt departure was a kind of punishment for her failure to be properly aroused by his story sooner.

“Or a gimmick,” Johnny suggested. “You know, a come-on. The old boy’s a teacher of literature, isn’t he? He must know a few tricks of the trade.”

Johnny had been aroused immediately. Lisa had gotten no farther than the fire-in-the-studio bit before she was scowling over the top of the steering wheel and bearing down on the accelerator in a way that made the curves of the Pineview Road reminiscent of a carnival ride.

“I should have known there was a reason for taking that house,” she moaned. “A book on Cornish could take all year!”

“Or longer,” Lisa agreed, “if I intended doing any such book. No, Johnny, it’s the girl that interests me. I wish you could have seen her when she walked into the shop. That first moment, that long hush. If I were an artist—”

“You’d still fall for any line a smart operator handed you. Can’t you see, Lisa, this Professor What’s-his-name—”

“Dawes. Curran Dawes.”

“—is deliberately trying to sell you on a yarn. The first thing you know he’ll be up here with a manuscript wanting you to collaborate—”

“No,” Lisa said. “He’s not that kind. The man’s quite sincere. I’m sure of that.”

“Then he’s an old busybody trying to break up a romance.”

“And the two dead suitors?”

“Maybe they died of mosquito-bite poisoning.”

The road continued to wind upward, twisting, turning, reversing itself, and occasionally emerging from the dense pines to give a brief view of the town below. A few lights were showing now in a dusk that made the lowering sky indistinguishable from the gray lake. All about them arose the scent of wet earth and pine, and it seemed, in the midst of this clean, fresh scent, that the story Curran Dawes had partially told was as fictional as Johnny implied.

“I almost forgot to tell you,” Johnny added brightly, “Before I went shopping I stopped by the newspaper office and asked if anyone ever advertised for work as a housekeeper. They made a few calls and said some woman would be up this evening.”

“That’s nice,” Lisa murmured.

“Nice? I think it’s terrific! I nearly cut off my fingers getting dinner last night. It was a simple case of getting a cook or a new can opener. And, Lisa, here’s a precious bit for you. The housekeeper’s name is Hokum. Carrie Hokum. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Lisa wasn’t listening. The clean, fresh scent of pine, and yet the professor’s story persisted. Was this the reason she’d come to Bellville after all? Was this the thought behind the impulse?
“As a writer you would be free to make certain inquiries …”

Suddenly they reached a place where the road forked off in several directions. One fork was a private road with tall stone pillars marking the entry and a pair of bronze plates that were barely readable in the fading light.

“Bell Mansion,” Lisa read aloud. “That’s where she lives.”

“Carrie Hokum?” Johnny asked.

“Of course not. Marta Cornish, the girl in the tea-shop.”

The station wagon swung off on another fork, leaving the pillars and the bronze plates behind, but Lisa was still brooding over the matter when they turned up the long gravel drive leading to Masterson House. “The Mausoleum” Johnny had named it, and it did look grim in the fading light. It would take a lot of gardening to trim back those hedges and cut away the vines over the front-door trellis, and a few warm lights of welcome showing would have helped a lot on a damp, chilly evening. And it was much too large. Even Lisa knew that. Two women—three with the prospective housekeeper—would be lost in that huge house. Yet here they were, transplanted, bag and baggage, from a comfortable, modern apartment into a dripping, gray world filled with half-finished tales.

“Never mind the box—I’ll manage,” Johnny insisted at the door. And she would manage. A box of supplies nearly half her own size was nothing to Johnny. Lisa followed after her, her walking stick finding the cement steps that led up to the doorway and then probing the way down the hall to a large half-furnished room that she’d claimed at first sight for her study.

It needed doing, of course. Just now a fire in the marble-faced fireplace would work wonders for the gloom. But there was nothing wrong with the massive desk that stood near the French windows, or with the leather chair behind it, or the huge lounge chairs flanking the fireplace. It would be a good spot for supper—there before the fire, if only there were a fire.

The French windows opened with just a few kicks and a rattle. The hinges needed oiling, but the catch was all right. But noise traveled far in an almost empty house.

“Where are you off to?” Johnny called from the hall as Lisa stepped through the windows. “Lisa, you’re not going out again in this weather!”

“It’s stopped raining,” Lisa called back. “There may be some sticks for a fire out here.”

“They’ll be wet.”

Lisa didn’t hear the rest of Johnny’s protestations. There were times when the girl took her job too seriously; she was a secretary, not a nursemaid. Outside, the grounds became interesting. First a small patio, the flagstones half lost under moss and fallen leaves, and then a path that beckoned off through the trees. The footing was wet and treacherous. Brown needles of winters past mingled with fresh green droppings, and old brown leaves of the oak and the elm fell apart at the touch of her walking stick. A few sticks for the fire? Lisa saw nothing but the path, and yet she followed it farther only half-knowing why. After a time she came to an old wooden gate that hung on hinges rusted by time and weather. It opened, protestingly, and she found herself in what seemed to be a meadow. The grass was long, matted down by rain and wind. There were only a few trees now, but the path, still visible through the grass, led on. Lisa continued to follow it; by this time she had forgotten the firewood.

She came upon it suddenly. The studio. First the fire-stripped studdings stretched like broken, black fingers against the darkening sky; then a fragment of wall, a charred doorframe, a rotted threshold. She needed no guide book to tell her the history of this desolate ruin. And she had to go on. She stepped through the doorway, her eyes automatically climbing to meet the flannel-gray sky striped with the few black rafters that still remained; then following the rafters downward, down to the broken walls, down to the blackened stones of a fireplace, down to the floor, charred and blistered and rotted from time and weather. The place was death itself, a horribly fascinating death, and everywhere the possessive grass reached up to claim what tragedy had left.

“To this day no one really knows how that fire was started.”

The professor again. Lisa tried to shrug off mentally what she already knew had drawn her to this scene. Martin Cornish. To see the place where he had died was to remember many things. The professor was right. His music was wild, erratic. To be here was to see him as he must have been that tragic night. The piano—where? Not too near the fireplace, surely. There, across the room. That was the place. Martin Cornish, alive, so terribly alive, poised on the threshold of greatness, and then Stella Larkin, the maid, coming down that long path to bear an innocent message. What had happened? What was the truth?

“… let Martin Cornish rest in his ashes.”

Lisa’s mind answered the professor again, but it was herself who needed the advice now. She forced her mind back to reality. That sky overhead might break out in a fresh deluge at any moment, and she was a long way from shelter. She was a long way from home. She turned back toward the charred doorway. This was no time to dream like a schoolgirl of things the wisdom of time had covered with obscurity. In this mood, she’d very likely be seeing spirits at any moment.

And then Lisa stopped in her tracks, fascinated by what seemed to be the sudden materialization of her thought. Beyond the doorway something was moving. A dark form was rising up from the ground …

“Mushrooms,” the woman said. “Best spot for mushrooms in these parts. Used to sneak down here all the time when I was workin’ for Mis’ Cornish. She never knew. She eats them terrible foods out of cans and packages. Terrible! Ruin your health that way. Look at me—sixty-three and never sick a day in my life! Don’t eat a thing but what nature provides: mushrooms, dandelion greens, berries, nuts—”

The verbal deluge stopped abruptly. The woman cocked her head sideways like a foraging hen contemplating possible competition.

“You’re new in these parts,” she said.

Lisa was almost speechless after that culinary autobiography. The view alone would have brought on that condition. This unexpected visitor was all of six feet tall. She wore a shapeless coat of some shabby material not recognizable in the fading light and a battered felt hat that seemed to be a man’s discarded fedora; and beneath the brim of this headgear was a face that had never known the touch of a cosmetic. Her eyes were dark and unwavering, and her hands, red and work-worn, were stained with the damp earth. Over her shoulder hung a long canvas bag into which she’d been stuffing the mushrooms.

And between them hung the unanswered question.

“Yes, I am new,” Lisa said. “I’m Lisa Bancroft. I’ve just taken the Masterson House.”

“So you’re the one. I just been up there. Nobody was home. Folks call for help an’ then traipse off—”

The unfinished sentence was left dangling while the woman ducked out of sight momentarily. She appeared again with another mushroom in her hand, and by this time Lisa understood.

“You must be Carrie Hokum!” she said.

“That’s right. Anybody ‘round here’d tell you that. Guess I’ve worked in ‘most every house on The Bluffs one time or other.”

Lisa wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare. She was thinking of Johnny and that can opener. “I hope you cook food out of cans and packages,” she suggested.

“Cook anything,” Carrie said, “so long as I don’t have to eat it. Too much cookin’ spoils food, just like cans. Nobody eats right nowadays. That’s what’s wrong with the world. Don’t eat right and your brain shrinks. Well, you’ll be wanting your supper now, I guess.”

Carrie didn’t wait for an answer. She started back down the path with gigantic strides. Now Lisa could see the heavy walking shoes and thick-ribbed stockings underneath the long skirt of the coat. She started to follow; her own strides quite a bit shorter, and then, when it seemed Carrie would completely outdistance her, the woman stopped quite suddenly and turned about.

“You didn’t come down here lookin’ for mushrooms,” she said.

It was a fact. Lisa couldn’t deny it.

“No, I didn’t,” she said.

“Then why did you come?”

Why? To look for firewood? That answer would have sounded preposterous even to Carrie Hokum. She was the kind of person who would make one tell the truth even if it had to be discovered on the spot.

“Someone told me about the old ruins,” Lisa said. “I wanted to see them. It was Martin Cornish’s studio, you know.”

“That one!”

Carrie’s face was outraged, even the dusk couldn’t hide that. “Got what he deserved there, too. Him carryin’ on with that no good woman and his legal-wedded wife up yonder with a tot to mind!”

She stared off across the meadow in such a fixed way that Lisa’s gaze was bound to follow. She saw then what preoccupation with following the path had kept her from seeing before: a house, a huge, dark shadow of a house perched high on a knoll above the meadow. Bell Mansion, Lisa knew. There was no need to ask. And then, as if on cue to the distant prompters, a sound of music began to drift across the meadow.

“What’s that—?” Lisa began, and then fell silent. The music had a stronger voice. A piano. Someone in that dark house on the hill was playing a piano. Hauntingly, pleadingly—a theme so tender that for a time the very wind seemed to be listening. And then the music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Stopped unfinished so that the ears strained for the next chord.

But the chord that came was a crash of dissonance. Then silence. Angry silence that would not sing again. Moments later the lights came on in the house.

“And there’s another one just like him,” Carrie muttered. “Same wild blood, same wild ways. Any house on The Bluffs I’ll work in, but not that one. Not any more. That’s an evil house. A house of death.”

Twice in one day an allusion to death had been made in connection with Marta Cornish, but Lisa had no more chance to question Carrie further that evening than she’d had to question Professor Dawes. Once her eerie pronouncement had been made, the housekeeper took off down the path at a striding gait that left Lisa far behind; and by the time she did reach the house Carrie was already busy in the kitchen. The results were gratifying. There was no need for Johnny to go after that can opener.

By morning the mood had passed. The sun came out and Marta Cornish was forgotten in a flurry of cleaning, unpacking and airing. But underneath that flurry, or perhaps even at the root of it, the professor’s seed was growing.

“Forget it,” Johnny advised, after hearing of Carrie’s outburst. “The woman’s a weirdo, anyone can see that. Mrs. Cornish probably offered her a lamb chop and she thought it was attempted murder.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Lisa didn’t sound at all convinced. She didn’t feel convinced. “But if you’d seen that house—”

“I’ve seen the house. This morning, by broad daylight. I went down to the ruins and saw a blackened mess that should be torn down before it falls on someone; and I saw a perfectly ordinary architectural monstrosity sitting up on a hill.”

“Did you hear anyone playing a piano?”

“I did not. And I didn’t hear anyone scream, or see any spirits, pixies, or people chasing each other around with bloody axes in their hands. Lisa, let’s not!”

Johnny was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her legs clad in corduroys and her hands clutching the handle of an oversized claw hammer. She’d been pulling nails out of the crate over a half-liberated console radio, and for a moment Lisa thought the protest had something to do with the job at hand. It didn’t.

“Let’s not do Martin Cornish,” Johnny added. “I don’t like him already.”

Lisa didn’t answer.

Johnny sighed. “Oh, I know I’m wasting my breath. I was sure of it as soon as I saw
that
this morning.” The claw hammer pointed accusingly toward the wire recorder on Lisa’s desk.

“I thought I might dictate a few letters,” Lisa said.

“Sure, you did. All right, then.” The hammer ripped out the last nail in the crate and was tossed to the floor in a gesture of resignation. Johnny came to her feet. “If we must do Cornish, let’s do him right. Let’s get all the dirt. I think I know someone with a great big shovel who’d just love to help. Mrs. Graham.”

“Mrs. Graham?”

“Mrs. Tod Graham, you know, the butter-and-egg-man’s spouse.”

“Oh, you mean the realty agent.”

“Among other things. Remember that card he gave you? ‘Tod Graham, Attorney at Law,’ and then, in big letters, ‘Boost Bellville.’ I met his wife in the market yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”

“Oh—” Lisa was half-interested now. “What’s she like?”

“The perfect mate, I’d say, for Brother Graham. Not so obvious, of course. Quite proper, in fact. The social leader of Bellville, at least, of the smart, modern set.”

Lisa smiled. “No wrought-iron fences?”

“Definitely not. There’s a new section, she told me, down near the yacht club. That’s where the Grahams live, very lush and very modern from the sound of it. We’re invited for cocktails—”

“Oh, Johnny, you didn’t accept!”

Johnny sighed from deep, deep down. “‘Miss Brancroft,’” she intoned officiously, “‘rarely accepts social engagements. She’s come to Bellville seeking seclusion for rest and relaxation.’ Oh, I lied, Lisa. I lied dutifully, but my heart wasn’t in it. Frankly, I’d like to go. We’ve been cooped up in this—this barn for over a week with nothing but rain, cobwebs, and packing crates for company.”

“And now Carrie,” Lisa said.

“Yes, we mustn’t forget Nature Girl. Is that what you want to become of me? A root-eater?”

“Heaven forbid!” Lisa laughed. “We’ll have to do something before it comes to that. But I loathe cocktail parties.” She’d wandered over to the desk beside the French windows. Her fingers found the recording disc and began to wind it aimlessly. “We might invite the Grahams for tea.”

“And ask Mrs. Graham to bring that shovel?”

“Do you think that’s necessary?”

“Not at all. She’s the Girl Scout type, always prepared. Well—” Johnny glanced at her wrist watch. “I’d better run upstairs and get cleaned up. Tea time is at four, and it’s almost three-thirty.”

She was almost to the doorway before Lisa realized what had been said.

“Four?” she echoed. “Johnny, you didn’t—”

“That’s the other thing I forgot to tell you. Tod Graham wants to see you about something. His wife didn’t say what it was, but it seemed important. I was curious so I asked them up today. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Johnny was grinning wickedly from the doorway. The change in weather seemed to have done wonders for her humor.

“One of these days,” Lisa threatened, “you’re going to go too far—”

“I’ve been considering that,” Johnny said, “but I doubt if it happens in Bellville.”

Tod Graham was a man of civic conscience, and financial investments. He was about forty, sun-bronzed and healthy, with only a slight thickness under the middle button of his shadow-plaid suit, and an even slighter thinness of the rusty-blond waves that broke into view like a smile when he doffed his straw hat. It took a man with a gambling spirit to wear a straw hat in Bellville. It might be reduced to a dripping pulp by nightfall. But there was nothing sporty about Mrs. Graham. Smart, trim, and carefully groomed, she was the perfect model of a cut-rate-house version of Christian Dior. She was also about as taut as a hawser in an ice storm.

It took the advent of Johnny with the teatray to break the ice.

“You’ll have to make allowances for the service,” she said. “We’re still in the throes of unpacking, and the place is a shambles. It’s all I can do to find my way back and forth to the kitchen.”

“Oh, I know how that is,” Mrs. Graham responded. “Before Tod and I built the new house, we lived in one of these old terrors—” She stopped suddenly, flushed and flustered. “I mean, it was entirely too big for us.”

“I know what you mean,” Johnny murmured.

“But I’ve always loved this house. We were so sorry to lose the Mastersons when they decided to live in Europe. They were always so charming—”

“And cooperative,” Tod added. “You could always count on Will and Lois to pitch in on any community affair.”

Lisa poured the tea carefully. She didn’t ask questions. A man like Tod Graham would get to the purpose of his visit soon enough.

“And Freddie, too, before he went into the Army.”

“Freddie?”

Lisa did ask a question, almost before she realized it was done.

“The son,” Tod explained. “Only child. Darling of his mother’s eye. That’s why they’ve decided to live abroad now that Freddie’s married a Fraulein.”

“So that’s what happened to Freddie,” Lisa mused. Then she looked up from the teapot, smiling. “I’ve been poking around the house. There’s an old playroom upstairs.”

“And we do love family histories,” Johnny urged, “particularly families with big old houses, like that one that sits up on the hill.”

“Bell Mansion?”

There was no ice on Tod’s wife now. Her eyes sparkled. The spadework was about to begin, and Johnny took the first spadeful.

“The house of death,” she said ominously.

“Then you’ve heard—”

“We have a wonderful housekeeper who eats nothing but roots and berries.”

“Not Carrie! Why, she’s practically an institution in Bellville.”

“An institution for the dissemination of baseless gossip,” Tod remarked. But with the big thaw now in progress, Tod was superfluous.

“Oh, I don’t know that it’s so baseless. Some of the things that have happened in that house! Really, Miss Bancroft, you could write a book!”

“I’m sure Miss Bancroft is capable of choosing her own fictional subjects. Besides, she’s come to Bellville for rest and relaxation.”

This time Tod wasn’t superfluous; he was adamant. Apparently gossip about Bell Mansion didn’t come under the heading of “Boost Bellville.” There was no mistaking the silencing glare he gave his wife. And then the smile returned, the nice, shiny, pearly-teeth smile that went so nicely with the waves in his hair.

“And we didn’t come to disturb that rest,” he added, “but to make it more pleasurable. We like to welcome our distinguished residents, Miss Bancroft. We like to make them feel right at home.”

“Oh, I feel quite at home,” Lisa said.

“And we like to include them in our activities, make them a part of things. The very day you came by the office for the key and I took you up to this house, I got a marvellous idea. Told my wife about it that very night, didn’t I, honey? ‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘that Lisa Bancroft’s a woman of culture and taste. She’s just the one to fill out our committee for the award this year.”

Lisa was following as well as she could, but some things needed clarification.

“Award?” she echoed.

“The Martin Cornish Memorial Award.”

“Tod is chairman of the planning committee,” Ruth explained.

“And maybe you don’t think that’s a job!” Tod added. “Last year we had over 15,000 visitors during Memorial Week. Had to turn them away in droves the night of the award performance.”

“Fifteen thousand visitors in Bellville?” Johnny echoed incredulously.

“In Bellville. Every hotel, motel, and rooming house was filled to capacity. Every restaurant and sandwich stand had line-ups three times a day.”

“I’ll bet the people even heard a little music,” Johnny suggested, but Tod was too deep in his subject to get the point.

“Had the high school athletic field filled to capacity every night it didn’t rain, and that field holds nearly 10,000. Bellville Township embraces a good deal more than what you see here on The Bluffs and downtown, you know. We have one of the largest high schools in the state, and three consecutive conference championships for football.”

Boost Bellville. Tod Graham’s tea was getting cold, but not his enthusiasm. Lisa rather enjoyed it except for one important detail.

“I’m very flattered,” she said, “but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of much use to you. I know very little about music.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know anything.” Tod paused to temper his words with a little discretion. “About music,” he added. “That’s all taken care of. We’re getting Sir Anthony Sutton to do the judging. You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

Lisa smiled. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him.”

“And that means a lot more people than last year. We need people on the committee who realize the importance of these things and will go along with progress. Our leading citizens are already on it: Dr. Hazlitt, Stanley Watts, the banker—you’ve probably met Stanley, by the way.”

“Briefly,” Lisa acknowledged.

“Curran Dawes—”

“Professor Dawes?” Suddenly Lisa was interested. Across the room she caught Johnny’s eye.

“—and, of course, Nydia.”

Lisa was still thinking of the professor. It required a few seconds to assimilate this last bit of information.

“Nydia Cornish? Is she on the committee, too?”

Ruth Graham smiled tightly. “Nydia Bell Cornish
is
the committee,” she said.

“Now, Ruth.” Tod looked unhappy again. “Nydia’s not so difficult if you know how to handle her. After all, she is Cornish’s widow. Her position’s purely honorary, Miss Bancroft.”

“As mine would be?” Lisa suggested.

“Well, no—”

“Purely honorary!” Ruth Graham had little hands. They placed an empty teacup down on the serving table and then folded primly in her lap. She didn’t pursue the subject, but there was an obvious difference of opinion between her and Tod on the matter of Nydia Cornish’s position.

“And Marta Cornish is preparing an entry for the award,” Lisa said thoughtfully.

Tod seemed interested. “You’ve met Miss Cornish?”

“Very briefly. We met down in town yesterday.”

“A talented girl. It’ll be a great thing for the festival if she takes that award this year. Just imagine—Martin Cornish’s daughter following in her father’s footsteps.”

Tod Graham might have been reading a news photo caption. His wife had other ideas.

“In more ways than one,” she muttered. “And she’ll never do it, Tod. You know that as well as I do. This is the third year she’s been going to try for that award, but she never does. She just never finishes anything.”

“Never finishes?”

Lisa fell silent. Wasn’t that what had happened last night? A fragment of a theme, hauntingly beautiful, and then nothing more but discord and silence.

“Too many irons in the fire, probably,” Ruth added. “It’s the Cornish curse.”

“Ruth!”

Tod Graham came to his feet. For a moment he stood there holding a teacup rather foolishly before him. Johnny came to the rescue and left his hands free. But he didn’t use them. Only his eyes threatened his wife into silence. And then the silence had to be covered up, like putting a napkin over a soiled spot on the dinner cloth.

“You’ll think we’re a colony of superstitious fools, Miss Bancroft. Cornish curse! Just because there’ve been a few unfortunate incidents.” Ruth’s mouth started to open, but she thought better of it. Tod still looked a bit white about the mouth. “I’ll give you an example of what Carrie means when she calls Bell Mansion a house of death,” he added. “Ten years ago when I took over Nydia’s legal affairs—or was it eleven?”