Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (17 page)

“Oh, yes. He liked to drive fast,” Ronnie said. “ ‘Let’s see if she’ll do thirty-five,’ he’d say. Scared the pants off us sometimes. The number of narrow squeaks we had on country roads, coming around a corner and meeting a horse and cart.”

“So you weren’t completely surprised to find that he’d crashed the auto into a tree?” Daniel asked.

“He shouldn’t have been driving at all that night,” Bertie said. “The roads were devilish icy. I told him he was crazy but he burbled on about Myrtle being sure-footed. He talked about her as if she was alive, you know.”

“So what do you think has happened to him?” I asked.

Bertie glanced at Ronnie again. “I think he crashed the auto, wandered off to get help, got lost, and perished in the snow,” he said. “That’s the only thing that I can believe.”

TWENTY-THREE

“So what did we learn from that?” Daniel said as we came out of the building and started to walk back toward the center of town. “Not much, did we?”

“Only confirmation of what we had suspected,” I said. “He wouldn’t have robbed a friend’s house. He wouldn’t have shot anybody. He probably didn’t need money.”

“We now know he was planning to go to a theater,” Daniel said. “Too bad it’s Sunday. They’ll all be closed. We’ll have to come back again when they are operating.”

I frowned as we crossed the green. “If he was planning to take a girl to the theater, then why did he go to the Silvertons’ house? You don’t usually take a young lady to meet your pals. And what was he doing out of town with her late at night?”

“She may not have been entirely respectable,” Daniel said. “Not all young men have honorable intentions, you know.”

“But if he didn’t have honorable intentions, he wouldn’t have been interested in driving out into the countryside, would he? I’m sure the girl must have had a room in town.”

“You’re not supposed to know about such things,” Daniel said.

“Me? I’ve met my fair share of prostitutes, you know. Shared a jail cell with them once.”

Daniel just shook his head.

“Anyway, it doesn’t add up if he met the girl. On the other hand, if he was hoping to meet a girl and she jilted him or never turned up, he might have decided to drive out to visit a pal, just so that he didn’t have to go home early and lose face with his friends.”

“Possible.” Daniel nodded. “Either way the next step is to get ourselves out to the Silverton place and find out what really happened that night. I’d also like to hear the New Haven police’s side of the story, but I don’t know if I should speak to them, given my current circumstances.”

“I can speak to them,” I said.

Daniel snorted. “I hardly think they will divulge the key elements of their investigation to a private investigator.”

“Did you never think that I might wheedle it out of them with my feminine charms?”

“I think that highly unlikely. We’re trained to resist feminine charms.”

“You fell for mine,” I said with a satisfied little smile. “At the very moment when you were supposed to be prosecuting me.”

“Be that as it may, I think it may be better if I have a quiet word with one of my fellow officers in New York. He’ll be able to find out all the details of the case for me.”

“So how are we going to get out to the Silverton place?” I asked. “I understood it was on the road between New Haven and Bridgeport.”

“Go back to the station and see if there is a cab willing to take us that far.”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Don’t police officers ever eat?”

“Not when we’re on a case,” Daniel said. “But in deference to the weaker sex . . .”

“Fine. If you can hold out, so can I. I don’t see anywhere open in any case.”

“Maybe the Silvertons will invite us to tea,” Daniel said. “And it may not be such a grand idea to go out there today. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

While we had been inside the dormitory building a great bank of clouds had been building to the east. They looked as if they were heavy with the promise of more snow. I was tempted to agree that we should head back to New York, but a small voice inside my head whispered that I’d have no time to come up here again and I didn’t want to leave my investigation in Daniel’s hands. “Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” I said. “As long as we find ourselves a covered cab. I remember getting drenched by a downpour in Ireland. I don’t wish to repeat that.”

There were several cabs lined up outside the station, the horses with their faces stuck in a nosebag and the cabbies sitting under a shelter out of the cold wind. One of them rose to his feet reluctantly as he saw us.

“You need a cab, sir?”

“We need to go out to the Silverton Mansion,” Daniel said. “It’s out toward Bridgeport, I gather. Do you know of it?”

“I know more or less where it is, yes,” the man said. He was thin and pinched and his cheeks were bright red with the cold. “Quite a ways out. I don’t know if I want to put my horse through that, in this cold wind.”

“Fine. If your horse isn’t up to it,” I said, “maybe you can direct us to a livery stable where we can rent a buggy of our own.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t up to it,” the cabby said hastily. “He’s a good enough horse, but it’s a long ride. Won’t be cheap.”

“It doesn’t look as if you have much demand for your services apart from us,” I said. “Name your price and we’ll decide if it’s fair.”

The old man glanced shiftily from me to Daniel. “I’ll do it for two dollars, sir,” he said.

“Two dollars—,” I began but Daniel put a hand on my arm. “Fine. We accept. Now let’s get going before that snow starts to come down.”

The cabby helped me up and draped a rug over my knees. Daniel climbed in beside me. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

“I’m glad you’re finally realizing that I’m no blushing violet,” I said. “I’m a businesswoman, on my own in a big city. I’ve had to learn to survive.”

The horse set off at a good pace, the sound of the hoofbeats echoing through empty streets. The squares at the center of town gave way to narrow streets of row houses, poor working-class neighborhoods where stiff laundry hung out on washing lines and hardy children played in the dirty remains of snow. Then gradually the town came to an end. We crossed a frozen river by a bridge. Some boys had made a slide on the ice and were taking turns at it. There was now snow on the road and the paved surface had given way to rutted track so that we bumped along, the icy puddles crunching under our wheels. If the road to New York is like this all the way, I thought, what on earth had made John Jacob Halsted drive his precious motor car as far as the Bronx? And he certainly wouldn’t have done so with a girl in the seat beside him. She’d have been shaken up like a sack of potatoes.

About a mile or so out of town the cabby stopped to ask directions at a tavern.

“It’s just around the next bend,” he said with relief showing on his face. We passed a row of stately trees—elms, I believe, although it was hard to tell from bare wintry branches—and then came to a fine brick gateway. The wrought-iron gates were closed. Through them we could see a semicircular driveway in front of an impressive gray stone house, rising three stories high with a turret in one corner. The cabby stopped his horse on the street outside.

“Here it is. Silverton Mansion,” he said. “You want to go in there?”

“Of course. That’s why we came,” Daniel said shortly.

“They expecting you?”

“No, but we’re friends of the family,” Daniel answered.

“I hope so. I hear they don’t take kindly to curiosity seekers, not after what happened. You did hear what happened, didn’t you? How the young fellow robbed them of all their silver and jewelry and shot the butler who had been with them for twenty years or more?”

“Yes, we heard,” I said.

Daniel started to climb down and then offered me a hand.

“You want me to wait?” the cabby asked.

I could tell that Daniel was getting quite annoyed with him. “We certainly don’t want to walk back into town,” he snapped.

“I don’t expect we’ll be more than half an hour,” I said. “Why don’t you go back and get yourself a hot drink at the tavern, then meet us outside here.”

“All right, ma’am,” he said, touching his cap to me. “I’ll do just that.”

We left him turning the horse in a driveway across the street and I stepped through the gate as Daniel held it open for me.

“There’s no lack of money here, is there?” I muttered as I took in the size of the edifice and the land surrounding it. “What do you know about the Silvertons? How did they make their money?”

“Armaments,” Daniel said. “Supplied both sides in the Civil War and the U.S. Army ever since.”

We hadn’t reached the house when the front door opened and a young man came out, pointing a shotgun at us.

“If you’re more damned reporters, you’d better make yourselves scarce before I shoot,” he shouted.

“Are you Harry Silverton?” Daniel called back to him. “Would you please lower that thing? We’ve been sent by John Jacob Halsted’s family.”

“You don’t think any connection to that rat would be welcome at our house, do you?” Harry said, but he did lower the gun.

“We are just trying to unearth the truth,” I said, stepping in front of Daniel in the belief that I’d appear less threatening. “This is Captain Sullivan of the New York police and I am Miss Murphy. Mr. Halsted’s family is naturally worried sick about what might have happened to him. There has been no sign of him since his motor car was found almost a week ago.”

“Isn’t it obvious what happened to him? He’s made off with the loot. Probably on a ship to South America by now.”

“Might we come in for a few minutes and hear your side of this story?” I asked. “All we have heard so far is bits and pieces and most of that is rumor and hearsay.”

“I suppose so.” Harry Silverton ushered us into a wide marble hallway, decorated with Roman statues and potted palms. “You’d better come into the morning room. Mama is in the drawing room and I don’t want to make her more upset than she already is.”

He opened a door to his left and we found ourselves in a corner room that was part of that turret. It was octagonal with windows looking out over the garden and was decorated with wicker furniture and Chinese wallpaper. In the summer, with the sun streaming in, I suspected it would be delightful, but not today. There was no fire in the grate and the room was cold. Silverton indicated a wicker armchair for me to be seated.

“We’ll only take a few minutes of your time,” Daniel said, refusing the offer to sit himself. “How well did you know Mr. Halsted?”

“I considered we were good pals,” Harry Silverton said in a clenched voice. “I met him in my final year at Yale. He joined our polo club. Damned fine horse man. I brought him home to meals. We stayed in touch after I graduated and went to work in the family firm. We went out riding together and to the occasional horse race.”

He paused, scowling out of the window at the snowy scene beyond.

“We would just like to hear exactly what happened that night,” I said. “We’ve interviewed John Jacob’s friends, and according to them, he was bound for the theater. Could you tell us whether he changed his mind?”

“No, he went to the theater all right. He telephoned me about ten thirty, I suppose it was, or maybe a little closer to eleven. How would I like to make up a party and go out for a late supper with him, he asked. At first I refused. It was a beastly cold night and I was tired. I’d been at the factory all day, working on a rush order that had to go out. I told him it was dashed late for supper and on a weeknight, too. But JJ wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t come with him and he’d already booked at table at Angelico’s and I’d be in for a pleasant surprise.”

“Did he say what that surprise was?”

“I rather took it that he had a young lady set up for me. He said we’d be a jolly party. He even offered to drive out in his new automobile and pick me up. So I relented and went upstairs to change into my black tie and tails.”

Harry Silverton perched on the chair opposite me and talked on, looking down at his hands. “I finished changing and he didn’t show up so I was feeling seriously miffed, I can tell you. Then I heard the sound of an automobile engine revving up outside. I went to my bedroom window. It was dark out there but I recognized JJ’s vehicle—well, that wasn’t hard considering he’d splashed out on a spanking new job called a Cadillac, and had it painted bright red. And the strange thing was that it was driving out of our gates and took off like a bat out of hell, heading away from town toward Bridgeport.

“Well, I damned him soundly to hell for putting me through all that trouble and then not even bothering to wait for me. I got undressed and went to bed. The next thing I knew it was morning and someone was screaming. I rushed downstairs to find one of our maids in hysterics. She had gotten up to light the fires and had discovered our butler, Cranson, sprawled on the floor in the servants’ quarters, outside the butler’s pantry. Naturally we thought he’d had a heart attack or a stroke. But when we turned him over we saw a dashed great pool of blood under him. And then we realized that he had been shot.”

He looked up at me and I nodded sympathetically. “It must have been a horrible shock for you.”

“It was, I can tell you. Poor old chap. Never done anybody harm in his entire life and some cad goes and shoots him.”

“But you didn’t hear a shot?” Daniel asked.

“The servants are below stairs and the butler’s pantry is right at the back of the house, away from any rooms that we are currently using. I suppose one might have heard a pop and thought of an auto backfiring, but as it was, I heard nothing. I could have been in the shower, getting ready to go out.”

“Or it could have been after you’d fallen asleep.”

“That could have been possible,” Harry said slowly, “except we now know what happened that night. When we checked the silver cabinet, the silver had all been taken. And my mother’s jewels. The burglar had only taken the good stuff.”

“How come none of the servants heard anything?” I asked.

Harry shook his head. “They had all gone to bed long before and their bedrooms are all at the top of the house. Cranson used to sit in his pantry and have a late glass of whiskey before he locked up. He must have surprised the burglar and paid for it with his life.”

“So you believe that this burglar was JJ Halsted?” I asked.

“I have no other choice,” he replied in a clipped voice. “His vehicle was seen driving away at a great rate and later when it was discovered wrecked on the road to New York City, one of our pieces of silver was found under the seat.”

“Did anyone else see the motor car leaving your house or parked in your driveway?”

“No, just me. We’re a lot of country bumpkins when it comes to bedtime. Father is always up at crack of dawn to be at factory early and so we are in the habit of retiring before ten. The servants earlier than that since they are expected to be up before us.”