The Indigo Necklace Read online

  When Sergeant Callahan came back and reported that Dr. Postgate would come, Jonas gave him a look which plainly said he was to keep an eye on Roger Clary and then asked Aunt Dollie to step out in the hall. “You can come with her,” he said to me. To Carol he said, “You stay here, in case they need you.” He sent the servants to the kitchen. Thus he complied, in his own way, with doctor’s orders.

  In the hall the air was already cooler from the imminent rain. Jonas led the way onto the lower gallery.

  Aunt Dollie, encouraged by Roger’s hope that there still might be life in Uncle George, had pulled herself together. Her make-up gave her a clownish look, but she wasn’t funny anymore. Poor Aunt Dollie, whatever would she do without Uncle George?

  Jonas said, “I want to know about that five thousand dollars, Mrs. Sears.”

  “George won it, at the races,” said Aunt Dollie.

  “Races?”

  “Somewhere up north. Don’t ask me where,” Aunt Dollie said, with something of her stylish flair.

  “I see. He placed a bet through an agent?”

  “I daresay. I really don’t know.”

  “Then he must have had something to put up?”

  “Why, of course,” Aunt Dollie said, putting up her chin, and looking bored that anybody could be so silly even to ask such a question.

  “How much did he put up?” Jonas asked. His pale stare was unaffected by her antics.

  “Why, really,” Aunt Dollie said. “Really! How should I know?”

  “What’s the name of the agent?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Aunt Dollie said, and, out of lifelong habit, she said, “You’ll have to ask George.”

  Then she burst into fresh tears, and then said, between sobs, “The man rang up. That’s all I know. He said to tell George that his horse came in first and that the odds being ten to one George was five grand, as he called it, ahead.”

  He’d put up five hundred dollars, then. That’s what Roger gave him. He put it all on a horse, and he won five thousand dollars.

  “I took the call in the sitting room and went in to tell George. He was dressing, in fact he was dressed just as you see him now, and he sort of looked at me and said, ‘Dollie, we take the first boat they’ll let anybody take,’ and then he went over and sat down on the foot of the bed. He said we’d have a drink this afternoon at the Fountain Room. I went back to the sitting room where you had told us to wait. I was all set to tell Ava and my sister about the money, but they weren’t there when I got back.”

  “Where is your sister?”

  “I don’t know. She was complaining of feeling tired when I went to tell George about the money. I supposed you had let her go to her room to lie down.”

  Jonas pulled at an ear lobe thoughtfully.

  “I should have stayed with George,” Aunt Dollie sobbed. “Maybe I could have helped him. He always took digitalis when he had an attack, but maybe he didn’t have it in reach. And here I was, right here, or right in that sitting room right there, and in our room just yonder he was dying.”

  She wept.

  Jonas said, “How long ago was this?”

  “About a half hour. No, not that long. Twenty minutes, perhaps.”

  Jonas looked at the time, frowned, and then said, “I guess it’s nearer a half hour, Mrs. Sears. When you were in your room telling your husband about the phone call, Miss Clary went up to hers to lie down and I stood for a moment on this porch with Miss Ava, then she went to the Abbotts’ apartment and I went back to the dining room. I was questioning Miss Carol when—when you discovered your husband. I remember hearing the phone ring and thinking I must get one of the men to take all calls. There are other extensions, I suppose?”

  “One in my sister’s room. One in the kitchen for Hugo.”

  “You and your husband used this one?”

  “Always. This room is really our sitting room. No one else uses it at all.”

  Roger came out. Patrick was with him. Sergeant Callahan followed behind. Roger’s mouth was set, and contracted a little sideways up one cheek.

  He looked at that moment entirely what he was, a professional man of choice heritage and much sensitivity, and very distraught.

  Patrick was another type of American entirely, the plainsman type originally, long and lean and as completely self-controlled in a crisis as Roger with his Latin background was the opposite.

  But Roger was calm when he told Aunt Dollie that there was no hope. She ran to him and threw herself in his arms. She started talking about the money again and about how Uncle George had said they would take the first boat and how he had said also that when the police got out this afternoon they would go to the Fountain Room in the Roosevelt Hotel and have a cocktail. He never drank cocktails now, so it was to be a special treat. And now—and now...

  Carol came out. Roger said, “Take Aunt Dollie upstairs and have her lie down in your room, Carol. Have you any sort of sedative—an amytal or nembutal...?”

  Jonas cut in, “Callahan, find Dr. Postgate, and let him look after Mrs. Sears. You can take her wherever you want her to lie down, Miss Carol. I’ll send her the doctor. But let him give any sedatives, if sedatives are necessary.”

  Patrick gave Captain Jonas a brief, obscure look.

  Carol took Aunt Dollie away, the old woman protesting as she went that it was all her fault, that she shouldn’t have told George suddenly, like that, about the money.

  Jonas waited till she got inside the hall and was out of hearing, then asked, “How much did you give Sears, Major Clary?”

  Roger met the cold eyes evenly. “How much what?”

  Jonas shrugged. “Did you give him something else besides money?”

  Roger’s face was acrid.

  “A post mortem should disclose that.”

  “It didn’t the last time, Clary.”

  Roger did not speak.

  Suddenly, it rained. The rain came down in heavy sheets. It fell straight down and bounced up whitely from the flagstones. It was so thick that you could hardly see the opposite wing.

  We moved farther under the shelter of the gallery and watched it. It relieved the tension and the horror of the moment like some specially contrived balm.

  Ava came out from the hall.

  “Oh, Roger—there you are—come quick! It’s Aunt Rita—she’s—something is wrong.”

  Roger shot into the house. Sergeant Callahan looked to his chief for orders, raised his eyebrows, and shot after him.

  XVI

  CAPTAIN JONAS and Patrick followed the others up to Aunt Rita’s room and only Ava and I were left on the gallery.

  “We might as well sit down,” Ava said. “Have a cigarette?” She fished out her case and gave me one. She had no matches. She went into the sitting room behind where we sat and came out with a couple of folders which, after giving us a light, she tucked in her dress pocket with the cigarettes. She was upset, but covering up with her brand of bravado.

  When I asked her what was wrong with Aunt Rita she said she thought she had fainted. “Maybe it was a stroke,” she said then. “Don’t ask me. I’m helpless when people are ill. I keep just as far away as I can. I went upstairs to my room while everybody was in Uncle George’s room.” Her voice broke. “I just couldn’t go in there....And upstairs I decided to do my hair another way and wanted some extra bobby-pins from Carol’s room and went in—and from there I heard something funny in Aunt Rita’s room, which is next door, and the door was open—and I went in and found her there. She was lying on her bed and breathing funnily. Ugh!”

  Her hair-do was exactly as it had been when she was with us half an hour ago.

  “I’m sorry about Uncle George, Ava.”

  “Well, it had to happen sometime,” Ava said, and she blew smoke through her lovely nose, an unlovely gesture, and added, “I mean, he had that heart, and he was so fat and all, that everybody knew it might happen.”

  “Even so, it’s a shock.”

  “Oh, of course.” Ava p
ut on her show again. “But isn’t the money lovely for Aunt Dollie? Isn’t it grand?”

  I said, “Maybe she’ll bet it on horses and lose it?”

  “Oh, no. Not Aunt Dollie. There’s a lot of French in Aunt Dollie. She’ll be careful with the money. She’ll make it last. I hope she has some fun with it, too.”

  “Aunt Rita really is special, Ava.”

  Ava nodded promptly.

  “Yes. But that’s been tough in a way on Aunt Dollie, too.” Her voice went down. “I’m not going to tell Captain Jonas now about seeing Victorine come back. What difference would it make now? I was going to tell it only to stop them worrying Uncle George. But now it can’t help him, so what’s the use? I’d just make Aunt Rita cross because of slipping out like that at night, and, as I said, it can’t help Uncle George, and, after all, they already know she came back....”

  “They will think Uncle George lied. They will say that the nurse never left the house.”

  “Well, what difference? She’s dead. He’s dead. So what?”

  “It’s too bad to have the family thinking always that Uncle George lied.”

  “Darling, don’t preach! Don’t you see that it would involve Toby? We’re going to be married. I don’t want Aunt Rita to fuss. She never has known that I went to the Good Angel late at night. I slipped out every now and then and got back at all hours and she didn’t find out. So, what’s the use telling them about seeing Victorine and starting trouble for me and Toby? If you can’t see it my way, see it hers....I mean, why should Aunt Rita have that to worry about on top of all else?”

  Her concern was for herself, not Aunt Rita. I said, “How seriously ill does she seem?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t know a thing about things like that.”

  “Did she seem to be—dying?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you take her pulse or anything?”

  “My dear, what good would it do? Besides, Roger was right downstairs.”

  There was a padding footstep.

  Toby Wick had come back. He was dressed in a fresh blue tropical. His crisp fair hair was neatly brushed and gleamed in the rain-washed air. His face was lopsided from the blow Patrick had landed on his chin. He looked comic.

  Ava jumped up.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. She sounded like a spoiled wife. “Terrible things have happened here, Toby, and where were you?”

  “I shaved and took a bath and put on clean clothes,” Toby replied, just like a husband.

  “Toby! Uncle George is dead!”

  Toby did not take his eyes from Ava’s as he felt around for his cigarettes, located them, took the package out, extracted one, and fumbled for a match. He wasn’t being contemptuous and deliberately at ease in his usual fashion. He did not speak till he had lighted the cigarette and inhaled a couple of puffs. Toby was shocked.

  “Did his heart get him?” he asked, finally.

  Ava said, and kept on meeting his glance with one just like it—both earnest and wary, “Yes. It was his heart. He won some money. The shock killed him.”

  Toby said, “He asked me this afternoon about a betting agent.”

  Ava trembled.

  “Darling? He won five thousand dollars, and when Aunt Dollie went and told him, he died, like that.”

  Toby’s next question was low-pitched.

  “Was she there when it happened, Ava?”

  Ava waited.

  “No. She had come back to the sitting room, where Captain Jonas had ordered us to stay till he questioned us about that nurse. Uncle George didn’t come out as soon as Aunt Dollie expected, I guess, so she went in and he was lying on his bed, dead. When I was with the Abbotts drinking that Cuba Libre Uncle George was dying.”

  Ava actually wept a little.

  Toby said slowly, “Maybe he knew a lot more than he told.”

  “How could he, dear?”

  Toby grinned his feline grin. “Uncle George never missed a trick, Ava. You know that. He had a sharp eye and a sharp mind. Too bad he wasted his life...”

  Ava pitched right into him.

  “Wasted his life? You must be crazy. He and Aunt Dollie have had a wonderful life!”

  She dared to argue, even, and again it seemed clear why. She certainly had something on him!

  But why had Toby come back? Did he carry another little gun in a pocket of his fresh blue suit? I now feared for Patrick, who all along had been afraid for me.

  Every word Ava had said to him now seemed a sort of warning. Double talk, saying, take care.

  My eyes went to his shoes, immaculately brown and white, shoes which had not been out in some garden on a damp hazy night, carrying away the tell-tale grass. Not so easy to get grass on your shoes in the Quarter. Was my original idea right? Had he killed Helen Clary to involve Roger, so that he could have Carol? Was he taking Ava now because she knew the truth?

  Ava was saying, “Sit down, Toby darling. It was painless, I think—Uncle George’s dying.” Toby did not sit down and Ava, looking up at me, also standing, asked, “Jean, will Roger give Pat a lot of money if he gets him off?”

  It made me furious.

  “Money? Gets him off? Pat isn’t a lawyer, Ava.”

  “Well, you like money, don’t you, darling? You don’t let Pat work for nothing, do you, Jean?”

  I do like money. It’s my weakness, and of course she had sleuthed that out. But Patrick wasn’t after money in this case.

  “What do you expect to get out of Roger, Ava?” I said, insulting her as she had me, I hoped. But she fooled me.

  “I? Oh, a dowry, maybe. If there’s enough to go round.”

  “Ava!” Toby said.

  “It’s all right,” Ava said. “Jean won’t tell. She knows which side their own bread is buttered on, dear. You’ll see.”

  She had got into my hair to a point where in a minute I’d be clawing her, so I left them and went upstairs.

  There was no one in the drawing room. I went by a door like the one below onto the upper gallery. The first bedroom on my right was Ava’s. Patrick and Roger Clary were standing just inside. I went in.

  It was a smaller room than our bedroom and more daintily furnished, with a colonial four-poster and chairs and dresser of the same style. There was a ruffled white swiss spread and a matching canopy on the bed. There were dainty white swiss curtains. The wallpaper was pink. Ava was another untidy one. I detest over-tidiness, but it irritates me to see clothing and face powder and underthings left for some servant to take care of.

  Patrick linked an arm through mine, and said, with one ear for whatever Roger was saying, that he was just on his way to find me.

  He said to Roger, “I repeat that you’re holding out on me, Roger.”

  Roger’s black eyebrows were meeting.

  “I’ve told you all I know.”

  “You’ve told me what you wanted me to know, Roger.”

  “I told you that I let Uncle George have the money because if I didn’t he’d keep nagging till I did.”

  “That’s not reason enough, under the circumstances.”

  “It’s enough for me.”

  “The money was a shakedown, Roger. Why?”

  “Call it what you like. I wanted peace. I still want it, by the way.”

  Patrick’s voice was cold as ice.

  “You’ll get it when this business is cleared up to everybody’s satisfaction, and that includes mine.”

  “I don’t see why you have to be so damned interfering....”

  “You do see. You know perfectly well that except for the luck of having a blob of hair on top of her head Jean might have a fractured skull. We needn’t go over that again. After all, you’re a doctor. You showed a certain amount of concern, in the beginning. Now, all you want is to hush things up. Well, they’re not going to be hushed up, hear?” Roger had averted his eyes. Patrick said, “Was Uncle George in the habit of making a touch, Roger?”

  “Yes. That’s neit
her here nor there.”

  “Did you often give him five hundred dollars?”

  “God, no! Only...”

  “Only when you were about to come into a large inheritance?”

  Roger controlled himself. “I shall use Helen’s money for a hospital and its maintenance. I told you that.”

  “Would you have given Uncle George so much if you hadn’t looked forward to a fortune?”

  “For God’s sake!” Then he spoke quietly, “After all, Pat, they’re my job. Don’t you realize that? Aunt Rita has always looked after the whole kit and boodle and now it will be my turn. Don’t you see? If Uncle George won, I stood to win, too. It was worth the risk. Five thousand is a lot more money than five hundred, and if he had it, it was just that much better for me. I want them to be happy. I wanted him to be happy, to have money to go back to France, if that is what would make him happy. I expected to provide it. Five thousand won’t last very long, but it was something. I couldn’t know he would win, of course. I was worried and it annoyed me to have him ask me for the money today, of all days—but there you are.”

  “I suppose you gave him your personal check?”

  “Yes, of course. How else, on Sunday?”

  Patrick sighed a long sigh. “You do everything, Roger. Every damned thing you shouldn’t do. You meet Carol in the night. You make the date so that it can easily be checked. You get home just in time to be suspected of murdering your wife. You can’t explain the absence of the nurse.” Roger’s lips set. “You give Uncle George money which the police believe to have been hush-money to keep him from telling about seeing the nurse come back, and probably knowing other things, too. His death is a setback for the police, but they’ll work on you all till they find out what they think you were paying Uncle George to keep still about. They’ll say you killed Uncle George, gave him poisoned pills or something so you wouldn’t be directly involved.” There was a little silence, then Patrick asked, “Did you move that body from where it was hidden—that vault in the wall—to the chest?”

  Roger looked blank.

  “What are you talking about now, Pat?”

  “My God!” Patrick said.

  Footsteps sounded on the gallery and Dr. Postgate appeared and came in. He nodded cheerfully at me, and thrusting up his brown-and-gray beard, said, “The prostigmine did it. Your diagnosis was correct. Curare was what she’d had, Doctor.” Roger received this in complete silence. Patrick fidgeted. “Did you hear me, Doctor?” Postgate said brightly. “Miss Clary’s coming out of it fine. One remarkable thing about this curare extract is the complete and immediate recovery the patient usually makes. No sleepiness, no hangover. She’ll be bright as a dollar in no time at all. Carol is with her, and Mrs. Sears.”