The Great Fog (2 page)

He stared at the hard smooth floor onto which the woman had death-dived, as though some dent might be visible in it and give a clue.

“Who's in the house now?” Dr. Wendover roused him.

“Of course, the maid who let us in.”

“Well, she comes next. Call her in, will you.”

Mary Holster was a good witness; Dr. Wendover, was a good examiner. His manner changed as soon as she came in. He knew how to make a witness easy and open. He hardly looked at the questionee but spoke as though they were bent on a puzzle together. “Having made an incision,” he used to remark to Skillin, “the task is to prevent the mental flow clotting. Nearly everyone wants to talk and can remember if they are not frightened.”

“I feel sure it was quite an accident,” Mary volunteered at once.

“Why?”

“Because, though I wasn't present at the actual accident, I saw exactly why it happened.”

“How?”

“It was the very afternoon before the dinner party. The garlands were all here, coiled up on the floor, as they'd been delivered. And at lunch.…”

“Did they have any wine at lunch?” interjected the sergeant.

“No,” and she ran on, “Doctor said, ‘Let's see if we can get the studio decorated this afternoon.' I remember it so well, because he turned to me—I was by the sideboard—and said, ‘Mary, will you give us a hand after lunch?' As soon as I'd finished clearing up, I came down here. They'd not put up the small pieces. They had hold of that big one. Dr. Smirke was halfway up the big trestle ladder at that end”—she pointed down the room—“with one end of the garland in his hand. Mrs. Smirke was just starting up the ladder at this end. I said, ‘Shall I hold the ladder?' But she replied, ‘It's quite firm. Will you go into the middle of the room and raise the big garland in your hands? It will make it easier for us to draw it up.' I raised it; it was quite light, as you'll see, but, of course, very awkward to handle. Mrs. Smirke couldn't quite get it to come up with her. They asked me to raise my part as high as I could. I did, and then heard Mrs. Smirke say, ‘I can't quite bring it up far enough.' Then he said, ‘Look, Marion, if you bend down, now you're near the top, bring your head down till it's just by the top step, as I'm doing, you'll be able to keep your balance and stretch a little further. But keep your head close in to the ladder.' I could see her, through the swath of leaves I was holding shoulder-high, bend over easily in the way he told her and stretch out. I stood on tiptoe. But it was no use. She couldn't make the cord come any further. I suppose the whole long garland was heavier than it looked, and she hadn't an overfirm position. But she wasn't nervous; quite sure of herself. She called out, ‘Either it's caught at your end, or Mary can't raise it high enough.' ‘It's not caught here,' he called back. ‘It must need more raising in the middle. We'll have to wait. I expect the guests tonight won't mind helping us. ‘Thank you, Mary,' they both said, and I waited until they were down; we let the big garland rest on the ground, and I followed them back into the house.”

“Well, thank you, Mary,” both the men repeated. She smiled and went out.

“Nothing premeditated there,” remarked the Sergeant as the door closed. “You see, they were going to have raised that garland themselves that afternoon, with Mary to help. I'd thought possibly he might have planned the fall as an after-dinner effort. They had quite a little wine at the meal. But in the afternoon they'd had nothing, and it was only when they couldn't get it fixed themselves that they thought of trying to do it after dinner with the guests' help.”

“That is one line,” said the Doctor.

“Do you mean that you see another?”

“Perhaps, but I own I can't pull on it yet. Who else in the house?”

“There's the furnace man.”

“Let's have him up.”

The Sergeant was back in a moment with a quiet, elderly man. “Can you, Mr. Calkin,” the Sergeant said when they had seated him, “help us in forming a picture of what led up to the accident?”

The man reflected for a while. The only sound was his calloused hand passing over a day's strong gray stubble on his chin. Then he cleared his throat.

“Of course, you gentlemen mean they weren't getting on. I suppose most people in the know knew that. No, they weren't. But you don't want my opinions.” He rose and went toward the studio door.

“Here!” exclaimed the Sergeant.

“No, out here,” came the reply.

“A good witness,” said Dr. Wendover, following Calkin. The Sergeant brought up the rear, first looking carefully around the room. That was part of his routine when anyone asked him to “change venue.”

When he reached the doorway, Wendover and Calkin were already across the small yard toward the house. But they were not going into it, but under it.

Catching up, he heard Calkin saying, “I often sit down here a bit when I've set the furnace. It's warm and quiet—quieter than at home. I sit here and smoke by myself. The smoke goes up the flue. You don't hear any noises, not even from the house. There's nothing above here but a little lean-to place. Believe Dr. Smirke used it to do some of his dispensing and test work there before the big new lab in his new office uptown took care of all that for him. I suppose, because I knew it wasn't used, that I pricked up my ears one day, hearing someone moving overhead in it. Whoever was there, was there some time. For at last it was time for me to go back home after giving the old stove a final trim. As I turned around, letting myself out by that back gate, 'longside the studio, sure enough, I saw Dr. Smirke working away at what looked like a little tank near the window. Next day, as I went down these stairs, I glanced up at the window. Standing on the ledge—he shifted it after—there was a sort of little aquarium with a big shrimp or two in it. I got used to the doctor being in there. Don't know that I thought about it. Have heard a man may like to do a bit of research without others knowing of it till he's ready to publish.”

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Wendover, “men have had their discoveries stolen.”

“But one day I heard a second person come in, after he'd been working there quietly by himself some time. It was Mrs. Smirke. I heard her voice.”

He rose and hit the plank roof. “You see, you couldn't fail. I didn't want to eavesdrop, but the storm broke straight away. Her ‘What are you doing?' might have made a quieter man than Smirke ask her to mind her business. He didn't, though, break out of a sudden. Said something, as far as I could catch, about a piece of natural history research. She was silent a bit. I could hear her step coming across the room. She was evidently going closer, to see what he was up to. Then she practically broke out right over my head here. ‘You're torturing the poor thing!' He growled back, ‘Don't be a fool, Marion.' ‘But look, it's lying on its side. It's dying.' ‘Well, you're not a vegetarian!' She was very fond of her food, true enough, and a big eater. ‘You've no right to torture a dumb beast for your beastly science.' ‘I'm not torturing it,' he shouted back.

“By that time, as I couldn't get out and couldn't help hearing, I felt I couldn't do much harm if I saw as well as heard. I couldn't think what it was they were making all this row over.” Calkin got up and moved to a further corner of the furnace catacomb.

“You see, if you stand on this step—it's the first of an old flight which used to lead into the house—you're raised up just where the floor above is raised too. Up there is the step which leads from the lean-to to the main house.”

They followed him onto the stair and, through a crack in the joining, they saw straight onto the window ledge of the room above.

“That was just where the little tank was.”

“Let's go up and have a close-up,” said Dr. Wendover. In a minute the three of them were in the lean-to. The Sergeant and the Doctor turned at once to the window.

“Look, a small tank was fitted to here.”

“Right enough,” followed up the Sergeant, “there are the screw holes for the two brackets and the stains made by the water.”

“There's been some other fitting here, though.”

“Maybe, but one can't say what it was.”

Just under the window frame it was difficult to see, but the Doctor, taking out a flashlight, threw a small circle of light on the wall.

“An electric wire was brought up this wall, just behind the tank.”

“How do you know?”

“Look, do you see those two parallel dark bands like faint stains of soot? Well, they are the precipitation of dust and grime made by the induced current.”

“And what does that show?”

“It means one more thread. But, as I've said, I don't want to pull on the string before it's woven.”

Then, turning from Skillin to Calkin, “What else did you witness?”

“I own I was surprised. There they were quarreling over a shrimp. The light from the window shone into the glass tank. They were standing each side of it, looking at it, and quite obviously at a big shrimp that was floating in it. ‘It's only a little upset,' he remarked. Then I did notice that the shrimp was on its side, like fishes go when they're going to die. ‘It's dying,' she cried. She was an excitable creature—that was the main reason that they couldn't get on. ‘I tell you it's not; it's only a little upset and will be right in a jiffy.' With that, he put his hand behind the tank. There was a click and, by gum, I saw the queer little creature come right away onto an even keel. ‘There,' he said, ‘didn't I tell you you were wrong! Now, perhaps, in future you'll mind your own business.'”

“A fine piece of reporting, Mr. Calkin and, I believe, an illuminating bit of dialogue,” remarked Dr. Wendover.

“Well, it only throws light on what we know already,” joined in the Sergeant, “that they'd reached the point when they'd quarrel over anything.”

“No,” answered the Doctor, “no. I believe it shows that the crisis had gone further than that.”

Then, turning to Calkin, “Did she say anything more?”

“Yes, she burst out again: ‘You've hypnotized the poor creature.'

“He seemed caught between humor and rage. ‘Marion,' he shouted, actually stamping the floor and sending a whiff of dust into my eyes. ‘Don't be such a damned fool. You'll be thinking next that someone has been hexing you and that
you
can't walk straight.' ‘I wouldn't put it past you. God, why didn't I marry a quiet straight fellow—?' She broke off, and he added, ‘Like Gray?' And that suddenly calmed it. Some women are like dogs that way. There's a frightful roll-over of a fight, and you think there must be murder, and the puff-pastry flops.”

“Thank you, Mr. Calkin, I think we have that situation plain.”

When the furnaceman had gone and the two had returned to the studio, Dr. Wendover added, “A woman may forget, but a man remembers. Hell hath a worse fury than a woman scorned, and that's the cold rage of a man who wants a home and rest and understanding, and finds home is only an enclosure where fighting is without gloves or any rules of the game. Well, we certainly have a
casus belli
. Now, to make quite clear the plan of attack. Sergeant, would you send again for Mary the maid? I've got one more small investigation to do here.”

The Sergeant was some time in fetching Mary. She had gone up to her room, to change before going out. When she and the Sergeant reached the studio, they found Dr. Wend-over looking at the right-hand ladder. It lay like a Goliath at the feet of the small David who had brought it down and was closely examining its head.

“You're pretty nimble to heel over a temporary staircase like that,” laughed Skillin.

“Oh, it's strong enough, but not really heavy. But it will rest for the moment. We mustn't keep you waiting, Mary. I see you were going out. I've only three or four questions more and then, I promise you, I've finished. We've been going back a bit, trying to think how this painful accident could have happened. Was your late mistress getting more—nervous?”

“Well, Doctor, you realize she was always irritable, quite excitable, you might say.”

“Yes, but had it grown?”

“No, I'm sure it hadn't.”

“But they had had—quarrels?”

“Oh, yes, but you know, Mrs. Smirke was that kind of lady that just can't help herself, and who says then that quarrels clear the air. They do with some people, and I believe she had a little sort of nerve irritation which made it worse. Anyhow, I'm sure they'd been better friends for some time. They'd had a bad break out in that little back room. I heard it. They made quite a noise, and I was washing up the table glasses in the back pantry. But after that they were on better terms. There's nothing like a little trouble for making one make up after a quarrel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it's not a very nice subject, but I think it may have had something to do with her temper, as I've said.…” She paused. “I hardly like to say.…”

“You are hardly likely to shock Sergeant Skillin or myself.”

“Well, she had, poor lady, that kind of skin that needs a lot of care—too rich a skin. My face masseuse tells me the other little trouble goes with it.…” Then, with an effort of real relevation, “she had wax in the ears.”

“We all have,” replied Dr. Wendover reassuringly. “It's a very necessary protection for an organ which is very delicate, delicate enough to be shocked by a sound wave, and yet must be always open to dust and germs.”

“Well,” reasserted Miss Holster, “it's hardly nice, and she was naturally very sensitive about it, and it did annoy her, vex her. I'd see her struggle not to put her little finger in her ear.”

“An ancient trouble, so ancient that that finger is called the ear finger.”