Death Lights a Candle Read online

  “What car have you?” I asked.

  “The Monster, an’ her windows is all up. Miss Fible’ll be all right.”

  “The sixteen cylinder?”

  Asey nodded. “Bill give her to me. She’s good, but does she keep me poor! Four miles to a gallon of gas!”

  “He,” Denny said, after they had gone, “is one of the finer people. Does he always talk like that?”

  “In the Cape dialect? Without any g’s and s and r’s? Always. When he chews tobacco, you’ll get one syllable in six instead of one in three. But he’s got a brain like a steel trap. He’s been everywhere and seen every one and done everything. Only, as Bill says, he’s never been done.”

  “I love the way he treats us,” June said. “Not as though he really approved, but more as though he accepted us because we were your friends.”

  “If you expected him to throw a fit at your names and your money,” I retorted, “you’re sadly mistaken. Ask John if the Mayos—they used to spell it Mayhew—have as many skeletons in the family closet as the Blakes.”

  “They’re just as good,” John said, “and maybe better.”

  “How old is Asey?” Blake asked with a chuckle. “About sixty,” I said. “But he’s so tanned and lank that you’d take him for less.”

  Rowena and Asey returned. “Got that stove over,” Asey said proudly, “an’ never hurt it a mite. Well, I’ll be gettin’ along. I’m goin’ to have trouble gettin’, too. Roads is all driftin’ over an’——”

  From up-stairs somewhere there was a dull thud, then a series of small explosions.

  “What——” John began.

  “Stove,” Asey said. “Dum fools! I told ’em how to light it.” And he raced off up-stairs with the rest of us straggling after.

  Lewis, the cook, had lost his eyebrows and some of his hair. But that was not the worst. His sleeves had been rolled up, and his arms were burned badly from the tips of his fingers to his elbows. Asey took, command of the situation, put baking soda on the burns and directed William in putting out the small blaze.

  “I’m goin’ for the doctor,” he announced. “You do what you can an’ I’ll get the doc here as soon as poss’ble. I may have trouble gettin’ back, but you bear up, Lewis!”

  It was almost an hour before he got back with a doctor whom I’d never seen before.

  “Doctor Walker,” Asey explained to me. “Taken Reynold’s place. Likely young feller an’ knows his business. Did we have a time gettin’ over here! It’s all drifts from the Golf Club up an’ my lights wasn’t no use. If it hadn’t been for the Monster we’d be stuck back there right now.”

  “It’s out of the question for you to go back,” John said. “And we have more than enough room here. We can put the two of you up very comfortably. I wonder, though, what we’re going to have to eat?”

  Asey grinned. “Guess I can sing for my supper,” he announced. “I’ll get your food for you. Oil stove’s gone, but I brought another from my house back in the car, an’ I cal’late I’ve used one often enough t’be able to cook a dinner ’thout explodin’.”

  John looked faintly amused. “I didn’t know you could cook, Asey.”

  “ ’Member Porter’s yacht, the Roll Go? I cooked on her for half the big-bugs on this coast. I’ll show you.”

  And he did. We ate our dinner around the ping-pong table in the game-room, before the fire,—for the rest of the house was now freezing cold. It seemed that the oil heater worked by an electric attachment.

  William served, and I noticed that he was not the only one to look on Asey with new respect. Even Cary Hobart was forced to admit that it was the best food he’d ever eaten. Up-stairs, Lewis was better. Even Ginger and the Pekinese sat before the fire in comfortable amity. And outside, the blizzard roared.

  Suddenly Asey cocked his ear. “Some one come in your front door then,” he said.

  “Probably William shutting things up,” John told him, but Asey shook his head.

  “Some one come in,” he insisted as he turned around and watched the door.

  And down into the game-room walked Adelbert Stires, covered with snow and oozing water with every step.

  For a moment no one spoke. Then John rushed forward and helped him take off his coat. The doctor picked up his bag.

  “Man alive, how’d you get here?” Asey asked.

  “I walked,” Stires said. “Er——” He caught sight of Rowena and me, gulped, recovered himself and went on. “The battery gave out beyond the Golf Club. I followed the boundary fences from there. Prue, Rowena, I’m glad you could join us on such short notice.”

  I looked at Rowena. Her chin drooped.

  “You hoofed it from there?” Asey said. “God A’mighty! In this storm! Doc, give him some whisky quick! I’ll go up an’ heat him some water an’ get him some food. Mr. James, you’re more his size. You take a candle an’ get him some dry clothes. He’s soaked through.”

  In the bustle I leaned over to Rowena. “What price revenge?” I whispered.

  “After that sporting effort?” she whispered back. “Never. Doesn’t the poor dear look like Winnie-the-Pooh? And think of him going all that distance in a derby!”

  It occurred to me—afterward, of course—that not one of us asked him why he had been delayed. For over twenty-four hours we had expected him, waited for him and worried. And now that he had come, we were too surprised to see him to think of asking questions. He was so casual that no one gave it a thought. He might have been a guest dropping in for an evening of bridge.

  After Adelbert had eaten and been dosed and dried out, and given a full account of all that had happened to Lewis and the various household systems, Walker and Asey propelled him off to bed, and Rowena and Desire and I followed.

  Outside his door, Bert stopped. “I forgot,” he said, “I wanted a word with Cary. Would one of you be so kind as to ask him to come up? Thank you, Asey. Er—I’m sorry,” he said to Rowena and me, “that all this has happened. I—er—I didn’t anticipate so much trouble.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Rowena answered. “You’re not accountable for the vagaries of a Cape blizzard. And, Bert, I’m truly sorry about those teeth. I always have been.”

  Adelbert smiled. I’d never seen him smile before and it made him look rather like a sleepy cherub. “It was my fault, Rena, as much as yours. I—er— I’m glad to have the opportunity of telling you I’m sorry for my part, too. I’ve wanted to tell you before, but, really, I never thought you’d care to see me after what I said.”

  Rowena laughed and they shook hands. Shivering, we took our candles and went to bed.

  It was still dark when Asey roused me the next morning.

  “Put on somethin’,” he said softly, “an’ come out into the hall, will you?”

  I slipped on my fur coat and went out to find Walker and Asey waiting.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked sleepily.

  “Stires,” the doctor said briefly. “I—are you awake? Sure? Well, there’s no use trying to break it to you gently, and I know you won’t get too upset. But——”

  “What’s the matter?” I repeated, now fully awake.

  “Mr. Stires is dead.”

  “Dead? What—how did it happen? Did that walk through the storm exhaust him?”

  Walker shook his head slowly. “No. As a matter of fact, Miss Whitsby, Stires has been killed. Poisoned.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ASEY GETS TO WORK

  ORDINARILY I am not easily upset. I was brought up to believe that in this world almost anything may happen—and usually does—and that it is wiser to accept events calmly than to get excited over them.

  But the doctor’s calm statement was a sledgehammer blow. I was more than upset. I was, in the phraseology of my niece, in a jittering state. And somehow the absurd notion flashed through my mind that if I had bought my spool of orange silk and never bothered with Rowena Fible and her insane notions, none of this would have happened.

  Asey
and the doctor both had flash-lights and their long beams cast an uncanny light through the long corridor. I drew my fur coat more closely about me; it was bitterly cold. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly seven, though for all the light it might well have been two in the morning. Outside the wind howled around the corners of the house and somewhere a loose shutter banged.

  They led me into Stires’s room and Asey plumped me down in a chair, but not before I had a glimpse of a covered figure on the floor behind me.

  “Tell me everything,” I said, when I was finally able to speak. “Everything. When did it happen? And how?”

  “It was near two hours ago that I thought I heard a noise—sort of a thump-like, down here,” Asey said. “My room’s just above this an’ I couldn’t git to sleep somehow. I was colder’n Greenlands an’ the bed was too soft. Anyhows, I wondered if Stires was all right; I’d been awful uneasy about that feller, an’ so I routed the doc out, thinkin’ he might be feelin’ sick, an’ we come down here. The door was locked, an’ I had to go down cellar an’ find some tools an’ force the lock. Thought I’d have to bang in a panel of the door, but I finally got it open. We found him there on the floor. Maybe the noise I thought I heard was him tumblin’ out of bed.”

  “But are you sure he was killed? Couldn’t it have been that he tired himself out getting here, or weakened his heart, or something like that?”

  Walker shook his head. “I went over him thoroughly last night, Miss Whitsby. His heart was all right. He was well, perfectly well. He wasn’t sick. He was tired, of course, and after he struck the heat downstairs he got sleepy. He might have got a cold, but there wasn’t a chance in the world of his dying. Not last night, anyway.”

  “But—but poisoned! How could he have been?”

  “Well, I’ve examined him as well as I could. I’m medical examiner, you see, and I carry a lot of truck around with me as I never know just when I’ll be needed on a case. I made the Marsh test, and there is some arsenic in his vomit. But I’m puzzled about the situation. It was arsenic that killed him, beyond any shadow of a doubt. It wasn’t any eccentric or bizarre poison. Just plain arsenic. But I don’t know how he was given it.”

  “But arsenic works slowly, doesn’t it? And if he was poisoned, wasn’t it in food?”

  “Can’t tell. You see, Miss Whitsby, there are any number of ways of conveying arsenic into the system. It can be given directly, in food, or it can be given through the skin—through clothes. There are any number of ways. If he’d been given a large dose directly in food, he might have died in a few hours. If it were a small dose, it would have taken longer. If he’d been poisoned through the skin, only I’m convinced that he wasn’t, it would have taken days. Now, he was all right when we left him around ten last night. And I think he died shortly before we broke in, say, around five-thirty. But I’m not at all sure he was given the arsenic in food. Different individuals vary considerably in their reactions to poisons. It would seem that he’d have to have been given a large dose to have died in seven or eight hours. Yet from what examinations I’ve been able to make, he wasn’t given a large dose. Not directly, anyway.”

  “An’ I give him that food myself,” Asey said mournfully. “But I give him the same food as the rest of us had. I don’t see how it could of been anything he et, on account of what the rest of us would of died, too. Yessir, he had what the rest of us had. I fixed it myself an’ put it on the tray an’ brought it down an’ watched him eat it. Even took a mouthful or two myself to see if things was plenty hot. Don’t see why I shouldn’t of died if they’d been anything wrong.”

  “Couldn’t he have been poisoned before he came?” I asked.

  “No.” Walker was very emphatic. “No, I don’t think so. I’m sure of it, in fact. I’d have found or noticed some symptoms last night. Or he would have felt sick.”

  “Couldn’t it have been suicide?”

  “I hardly think so. He didn’t look like a man who was getting ready to kill himself when we saw him last night. He—well, he didn’t appear to me to be the type that commits suicide.” Walker thrust his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. Restlessly he paced back and forth across the floor. “This is fishy. It’s just as fishy as it can be. Listen, Asey, I’ve been thinking it over. Whoever did this didn’t expect it to be found out.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Just this. If you hadn’t called me yesterday, but had phoned this morning and told me Stires was dead, that he’d been out in the storm, I shouldn’t have looked for poison. I’d have rather been inclined to think that he’d died from a bad cold or exposure.”

  “But there’d have been an examination, wouldn’t there?” I asked.

  “Yes, and as I said I’m the medical examiner. But I wouldn’t have been looking for poison. The outward signs—mottled skin, bloodshot eyes, vomiting and all that—they’re not different from what you’d find in a case of death from a bad cold. I think, though I’m giving my personal opinion and I don’t know whether another doctor would agree or not, I think that there would have been more than an even chance that under ordinary circumstances, this might have passed for a natural death.”

  “What made you think it wasn’t?”

  “Because I knew he was perfectly all right last night. I knew he was well; I knew that it couldn’t be a natural death. I’ll amend that: I felt sure that it wasn’t. It could have been. Anything is possible, I suppose. But it wasn’t natural and I’ve proved it. Then, too, he’d tried to get help. He got himself out of bed, you see, and collapsed completely on the way to that bell over there. Ironically enough, it wouldn’t have helped him if he’d reached it and pushed the button, for the electricity’s still off and it wouldn’t have sounded. He made a superhuman effort to get help, but he was licked from the start. I wonder that he could move, even. I don’t see how he managed to push himself off the bed.”

  “But are you sure,” I asked pleadingly, “that he wasn’t poisoned before he came? I mean, if he wasn’t——”

  “I know. If he wasn’t poisoned before he came, he was poisoned after he got here. And if he was poisoned after he got here, that means that some one in this house did it. I’m afraid, Miss Whitsby, that there isn’t any possibility of his being poisoned before he got here. I’m sure of it. He wolfed down Asey’s meal, too, as though he hadn’t eaten for a good long while, long enough so that if he had been, there’d have been some signs.”

  “But if Asey says his food was all right, how did it happen?”

  Asey shrugged. “You got us there. The door was locked on the inside. There ain’t no transom so that any one could of locked the door after cornin’ in an’ then tossed the key back into the room. The key was in the lock anyway. An’ that door’s the only way to get into the room ’cept the windows, an’ they was all shut an’ locked from the inside, so that no one could of come in ’em, even if they was fools enough to go out in this storm an’ try to scale up the front of the house. He didn’t have no bags. They ain’t even a tooth-brush in the bathroom. No medicine there, nothin’. Wasn’t even a glass of water by his bed.”

  “It’s awful. I can’t see who—— Asey, shouldn’t you wake up the rest and tell them?”

  “What for? Wouldn’t do no good. Ain’t no use to wake ’em. I tried to open the front door an’ the snow’s drifted so that I couldn’t. I flashed the light around an’ we’re pretty much drifted in. It’s a cinch we can’t get to town, an’ no one’s goin’ to come out here to see how we be. The lights is off, the phone won’t work, an’ I’ll wager we won’t have lights or current until a good long while after the rest do, on account of prob’ly all the wires is down from town out here. Ain’t no point in gettin’ them folks up, Miss Prue. They’ll have time ’nough to hear about it. We may get in touch with the rest of the world to-day, an’ again we may not for two or three days.”

  “You mean, Asey Mayo, d’you mean we’re marooned out here?”

  “Yup. But there’s one good t
hing about it. Whoever done this can’t get away. He’s goin’ to be stuck right here with the rest of us. He can’t do no runnin’ anywheres.”

  My chin slumped. It had never occurred to me when I joked with June the day before that we might actually be snowed up. I had lived in the city so long that I had almost forgotten that such things happened. It might have been amusing, possibly, to be snowed up—if we had had heat and light and a telephone, and if Adelbert Stires were not lying dead on the floor beyond. But to be marooned in this great freezing barrack of a house with a murderer running loose, well, that was a different matter! My teeth began to chatter, and it was not from the cold. I remembered the time I’d visited near Danvers and a homicidal maniac escaped from the sanitarium. For one whole evening we had jumped every time the floor creaked. And it was possible that we were to be cooped up with this murderer for three days, and possibly longer! I began to shiver.

  “But I called you,” Asey continued, apparently oblivious of the fact that I was frightened out of my wits, “because, Miss Prue, I want you to help.”

  “You want me to what?”

  “I know it won’t be very pleasant-like, but you will, won’t you?”

  “But why? And whatever makes you think that I’ll be able to help?”

  “Because for one thing, you know these people better’n we do. The doc’s the medical examiner an’ he’s done his duty. An’ I’m sheriff of this town, an’ till I can get hold of the county people an’ till they can send some one here, well, it’s my place to find out who done this. We got to run the guy down. Don’t know’s I figgered on havin’ to turn detective when I took this job, but I guess I got to. Now, I know you, an’ you’re the only person in this place the doc an’ I can trust. You could help us a lot, if you would.”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “I’m not sure that I’ll be of any great assistance, but I’ll help if I can.”

  “Good. Now, doc, s’pose we sort of begin. Far’s we know, Stires got poisoned by arsenic, given him we don’t know how, an’ by person or persons unknown, as they say, some time after he got to this house. That right?”