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“Well, Marcia,” he said heavily. “I guess I was right. That maid of Juliette’s saw you cutting up the hat, and she says you dropped the scissors. She found them on the beach, and she’s got them in her room.”

He waited for a while, but there was nothing I could say. All my defenses had crumbled. When he left soon afterwards I went upstairs and took two bromides before I crawled into bed, and I did not get up the rest of the day. I lay there, too tired and too weak to move; as though the very foundation of my life had been taken from under me and a gesture would have meant collapse. But once I got up, and I saw a detective on the beach below the house, carefully searching it.

Arthur came back from Millbank that afternoon to get some fresh linen. Before he left to go back to Mary Lou, he told me about that journey of his to see Juliette. He had tried to keep the visit secret; but it had been Mary Lou he was worried about, not the police.

“She hated her,” he said, as if Juliette was already in the past tense. “I couldn’t tell her I was coming here to see Juliette.”

What he had done had seemed simple enough at the time. He still had the old sloop, weather-beaten but serviceable, and it had already been put in commission, so on Wednesday he had merely stuck a cap in his pocket and gone out to the yacht club. The boat was anchored well out from the shore, and after he and the man from the shipyard had gone over it he bought some provisions in the town and went aboard again. He left word at the club that he might be away for a couple of nights, and as these solitary trips of his were nothing unusual it excited no comment.

He ran under sail for an hour or so, and then started the engine. He did not go up the Sound, however. He turned toward a bay near one of the Long Island flying fields. He was trailing a dinghy, and after he had anchored he rowed himself ashore.

There he chartered a plane, and at dusk it had set him down neatly on the island emergency field. He had got a lift part of the way. The rest of the way he had come on foot.

“It was the hell of a walk,” was his comment.

He swore that he had not seen Juliette after that scene in the library.

“Not after she went up the stairs,” he said. “I didn’t want to see her. All I wanted was to forget her. I’ve built my life. Why should I let her destroy it?”

I was exhausted when he left me. What with excitement and loss of sleep I must have dozed off just after Maggie had put me to bed. But like most people under strain I slept deeply for an hour or two and then wakened. Chu-Chu was snoring loudly, but outside of that the house was silent. I lay there, wide awake in the darkness. The tide was making small regular sounds, a bit of splash, silence, then splash again. It was some time before I realized that it was not the tide at all.

Someone was rowing a boat just off the shore.

I sat up in bed and listened. The night was very still, and there was no mistaking the faint thud when the boat struck the float, or the muffled sound of someone landing and tying it up. I slid out of bed in my nightgown and went out onto the upper veranda; and it was not difficult to make out the dark outline of the boat, nor—as my eyes grew accustomed to the starlight—the figure of a man moving along on the dock below me.

He saw me too, for he stopped suddenly and looked up. But his next action was certainly unusual. He did not go back. Instead he stood still, turned on a flashlight and, leaning on the rail of the dock, seemed to be writing something. After that he went down on the shore, and a few minutes later I heard a sharp ping as something dropped beside me.

Chu-Chu was still sleeping as I went inside and turned on the light. What I held was a note wrapped around a bit of shell from the beach. “Please come down, I must talk to you.”

The signature was merely Pell.

It never occurred to me not to go. I remember how excited I was as I threw on some clothes, including a tennis dress and sneakers. That confidence of mine seems strange now, for I knew nothing whatever about him. For all I knew he might have been the man Arthur had followed. He might have been the man with the flashlight. But I never hesitated.

When, somewhat breathless, I finally crept down the stairs and out onto the front porch, I found him waiting there, where I had last seen him at daylight that morning. He was not much more than a shadow, but his first words were reassuring.

“Are you sure you’re warm enough?” he asked.

“Plenty.”

“Then where can we talk? Not in the house. This is a private call!”

I thought he was smiling.

“There’s a bench down by the pond. But what is it, Mr. Pell? What’s it all about?”

“What do you think it’s about?” he said, his voice altering. “Come along. Where is this bench?”

I led him down to it, and once there he lit a cigarette and gave me one. But those preliminaries over, it was some little time before he spoke again. Then:

“What do you actually know about Juliette Ransom?” he asked at last. “Why did she come back here? There must have been a reason. Did she tell you? She used to be pretty secretive; but after all—”

“You knew her?” I said, astonished.

“I knew her. Yes.” He turned and faced me. “Now listen, Miss Lloyd,” he said. “I’ve got some things I want to know, and I can’t keep you out here too long. In the first place, did she show any interest in the people here? Ask any questions, or see anybody? You know what I mean.”

I was too surprised to grasp all this at first. He had known Juliette! I had seen him twice since her disappearance, and not until now had he admitted it.

“Did you know her well?” I asked, in a thin voice.

“Well enough,” he said, almost roughly.

I was thinking fast.

“She knew a lot of the people here,” I told him finally. “I don’t think she saw them. They—well, they avoided her. But there may have been somebody. She came home one day looking frightened, I thought. At least she went to bed and stayed there. But she kept on with her riding. If she had been really afraid—”

“No,” he said slowly. “She wouldn’t be afraid. She wasn’t really afraid of man or devil. She wasn’t that kind. But what brought her back here? To this house?”

“She wanted money,” I said. “She wanted to live in Europe.”

“In Europe? Did she say why?”

“No. Except that it would be cheaper, and she liked it.”

“That’s all she said?”

“That’s all.”

I thought he seemed relieved. He leaned back against the bench and relaxed somewhat. I could see him faintly, and it is odd, everything considered, how completely at ease with him I felt.

“I see,” he said. “It didn’t matter that you were having a hard time getting along. That wouldn’t occur to her. Sometimes I think—”

He did not finish that. He threw away his cigarette and got up. But I sat still, looking at him.

“I suppose you don’t care to tell me how you knew her?” I asked.

He stood quite still.

“No,” he said. “That’s over, thank God. Let’s forget it. And forget I’ve been here tonight. Will you?”

But I could not let him go like that. It was not only that I liked him. It was all too mysterious. He himself was mysterious, clad as he was in an old sweat shirt and trousers, and with that queer background of tourist camp and trailer behind him.

“If you know anything I think you should tell it, Mr. Pell,” I said. “After all, if she is dead—”

“If she is dead, I didn’t kill her,” he replied grimly. “And the angels who keep the book ought to give me a good mark for that.”

Whatever that meant, he did not explain it.

He thanked me then rather formally for seeing him, hoped I had not taken cold, and explained that he had stolen the rowboat, as our gate was guarded, and would have to return it. But before he left he did a surprising thing, and did it almost automatically.

He took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped the top rail of the bench.

Back in bed again the entire episode had a quality of unreality. I listened to the sound of his oars die away, and tried to recall all that he had said. Only one thing stood out clearly. He had not killed her, and he thought he deserved credit for it!

He had known her, and known her well. Perhaps he had been in love with her. I thought probably he had. There had been some quarrel, or—after her fashion—she had thrown him over; and he was still bitter. She might be dead. It was almost certain that she was dead. Yet he was still bitter. I tried hard to reconcile the pleasant, rather humorous young man, painting his little picture of Loon Lake by the road, with my visitor that night; but it was difficult. The youth and humor had both gone. He had seemed older, older and very tired.

There was a second incident that night, and I record it for what it was worth. A storm was brewing, and I could not remember whether I had closed the window in the hospital room or not. Wide awake as I was by that time, the thing bothered me, and at last I got up and went to investigate.

I had unlocked the door at the top of the stairs and was about to turn on the light when the bell rang, close beside me. It was the bell from Mother’s room, and I stood there, paralyzed with terror.

Then I turned to escape and I fell on the stairs and twisted my ankle. I was in a dead faint when Maggie, aroused by the noise, discovered me.

I
WAS STILL IN BED
, with my foot bandaged, when they found Juliette’s body the next day. It was in a shallow grave some fifty feet back from Stony Creek, and a half mile or so below Loon Lake. She had been struck twice on the head with a heavy weapon of some sort, and she had been dead before she was thrown into the water.

For it was evident that she had been in the water for some time. Her boots were still soggy when she was found, her riding clothes saturated. Yet she had been buried. More than that, she had been buried with some care. Her hands were folded over her breast, and there was a covering of leaves over her face.

Whoever killed her, then, had suspected what had happened; had followed the creek, discovered her and hidden her in that wild spot, almost a mile above the road.

I had my first news of the discovery from Mike, who reported an ambulance on the main road at the foot of the path. He stood in the door of my room and reported in detail.

“I guess it’s her all right, miss,” he said. “Them police photographers have gone up the trail, and about three carloads of reporters. I expect they’ll be taking her to Jim Blake’s. Skull’s bashed in, they say.”

I found myself shivering violently. Jim Blake was the local undertaker, and his name brought with it the sheer horror of what had happened. Up to that time I had not fully accepted Juliette’s death. There was always the chance that she had only disappeared. Now she was dead, and was being taken to Jim Blake’s. She had loved to live. Now she was dead.

“I thought you’d better know,” said Mike. “I’m sorry I broke it to you like that. But what with her being buried and the lock of the toolshed being broken, seemed like I’d better tell you.”

“The toolshed!” I said. “What about it?”

“Somebody’s been in it,” he replied phlegmatically. “Smashed the lock. Two or three days ago, that was.”

“Is anything gone?” I asked, suddenly uneasy.

“I don’t miss anything as yet. Things is moved about some, but that’s all. Still and all, miss, it’s queer to break in and take nothing; and with the shed where it is—”

“Where it is?” I repeated, puzzled. “It’s where it always has been, isn’t it?”

“It’s up against the Hutchinson place. And if I was asked who hated Mrs. Ransom around here, I’d say—”

But this vision of Lucy killing Juliette and then finding and burying her body was too much for me. I burst into hysterical laughter, and it took Maggie and a bottle of aromatic ammonia to bring me around again.

In the end it was from Doctor Jamieson—come belatedly to examine my ankle and pronounce it not important—that I learned all I did learn that morning. For the authorities had not been able to get in touch with Arthur. Apparently he had taken Mary Lou and Junior for a drive, and was still out.

The doctor gave me the story in detail.

It appeared that the sheriff, having finished with the creek and the pond, had by no means finished with the murder.

“What I gather,” he said, “is that Shand came back to the office yesterday and held a conference. He said they’d lost a week or more on the lake and the creek, and while in his opinion she’d been in the lake, she wasn’t there now. Then where was she? What if whoever killed her had located the body later? He wouldn’t want her found at all. There’s no murder without a body. But she was a goodsized woman, and this time probably he didn’t have a horse. So what would he be likely to do?”

The upshot, according to the doctor, had been that shortly after daylight the sheriff had collected a dozen men, deputies, detectives, and so on, and they had commenced at the lake and worked down, searching the banks of Stony Creek and into the underbrush on both sides. Even then they might not have found her, but one of the detectives had stepped on a soft piece of ground and removed the leaves and pine needles which covered it. What he saw then was the outline of a grave.

They uncovered the body carefully, and the doctor had already examined it. It was in fair condition. There was no question of its identity. And the word got out quickly. They had had to station guards about before the examination was over; they were still there, until a thorough search of the vicinity could be made.

I felt rather sick, but I asked him to break the news to Jordan before he left. He did so, and he came back looking uncomfortable.

“She must have been fond of Juliette,” he said. “She’s taking the news pretty hard.”

“I thought she would. I’m sorry for her, doctor. But she has acted so queerly—”

He looked at me shrewdly.

“You don’t think she knows more than she cares to tell?”

“If she does she is keeping it to herself.”

“Well, what’s she afraid of, Marcia? She looks like a scared woman to me. Why should she keep her door locked, for one thing?”

“I wish I knew,” I said, and sighed.