The Man Who Died Twice Read online

  This proprietary interest bothered Jim a little as he followed Barbara. He was to be bothered again a little later, not by Tenney but by the man who came presently to complete the gathering. An unexpected guest, it seemed, because when they heard the car Leonard Osborne said: “I wonder who that can be.”

  He walked over to the doorway and Alma followed him. They stood there peering out and then a door slammed and the girl said:

  “It’s Mike Fabyan.… Hi, Mike,” she called. “Come on in.”

  The man who came in out of the darkness set up a reaction in Jim that was swiftly disturbing. It was not the easy familiarity with which Alma greeted him, for it seemed now that she was friendly with everyone; what Jim realized was that the newcomer was a very good-looking guy.

  He stood about six feet two and might have been thirty-five years old, with a deeply tanned look of sinewy toughness about him that suggested his bones were covered entirely with solid meat and gristle. He wore white flannels and a blue blazer, white buckskin shoes. The yachtsman’s cap had a jaunty but authentic tilt and when he took it off and tossed it on the window sill his hair was dark and curly. His small neat mustache looked as if it had been inherited at birth and his teeth were a startling white when he smiled.

  “I didn’t know there was a party,” he said with all the assurance in the world. “I hope you’ll forgive me for barging in like this.”

  “You’re not barging in,” they said.

  “You come in a taxi?” Tenney said. “Dismiss it. I can give you a lift to town. That is if you can cram yourself into my town car. Barbara has given me up.”

  Fabyan had been looking the room over, his glance lingering on MacQuade. Now he stepped forward to meet Jim.

  “How are you?” he said in distinctly American tones. “Heard a lot about you.… As a matter of fact,” he added, turning back to MacQuade, “I planned this as sort of a business call. It shouldn’t take long,” he added hopefully.

  MacQuade shook his head. “Not tonight, Mike.”

  “It’s important.”

  “I can imagine. Tomorrow maybe—no, not tomorrow either. Tomorrow Alma and I are showing Jim the island. After that, business. All right with you, Jim?” he said.

  “Why—yes,” Jim said, not knowing what the other meant.

  “I want you to go over everything—everything.”

  Jim forced a laugh. “All right, but why me?”

  “You’re an accountant, aren’t you?”

  “Oh—well, yes. Yes.”

  “Exactly. That’s another reason why I’m glad you came. It’s been a while since the estate has had a thorough checking. I want to get things in perfect shape while there’s still time.” He nodded to Fabyan. “So—no business tonight, Mike. Just pour yourself a drink and relax.”

  The big man hesitated, his glance troubled. Then he shrugged, smiled thinly and went out to dismiss his driver.…

  The next hour was a wearing one for Jim. He had to be constantly alert about the things he said and the questions he asked, and at the same time he had to present an affable and pleasant manner to those he talked with. There were a lot of things he wanted to know but he was careful to keep moving and not get tied up for too long with anyone.

  He sat for a while with MacQuade and that gave him a chance to inquire about a man he had expected to meet but whose name had not been mentioned.

  “I thought your stepson would be here,” he said. “What’s his name?”

  “Dunham. Gordon Dunham.” MacQuade paused, his mouth tightening. “The Dunhams—his wife’s name is Judith—had a prior engagement,” he said dryly. “You’ll meet them tomorrow.”

  He went on to say that Dunham was a teller in a local bank in which he, MacQuade, was a shareholder. He explained that Leonard Osborne’s job was to handle the business end of the sugar mill while Kate Royce persisted in overseeing the actual fields and labor.

  Later, talking to Osborne and Barbara Connant, Jim learned that there was also a distillery on the estate and that Barbara was an American girl who had married an Englishman. He also became increasingly aware that she knew how to use her artfully shadowed brown eyes with their arched and penciled brows. Her small red mouth was mobile, her voice was pleasantly husky, her laugh was genuine, and he got the idea that one could have an interesting time with her, as long as she got her own way most of the time.

  He was not sure just when he realized that Fabyan and Alma were missing, but having made the discovery he took time to glance about, to see how things were going. The impression that came to him then was that the group as a whole was somewhat less convivial than one might have expected. Somehow the atmosphere had changed, as though an air of tension had grown unnoticed where none had been before.

  Kate Royce was sitting at one end of the divan, smoking a cigarette and contemplating the ceiling. At the opposite end, MacQuade had slumped back in his corner, an almost petulant expression warping his mouth. He looked tired and disgruntled as he gazed fixedly at the blond Tenney, who was sucking a pipe and fixing a fresh drink, and had at no time moved very far from the source of supply.

  During that interval no one paid any attention to Jim, so he moved towards the front of the room and stepped out, not yet admitting to himself the motive which prompted him to explore the veranda. He could see very little at first, and sauntered to the right, towards the guest house. He saw no one, heard nothing but the occasionally muted babble of small talk in the drawing-room. He was not sure just how long he stood there and, when finally he started back, he saw Kate Royce come out and turn towards him.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Johnny’d like to see you before he goes to bed if you don’t mind.… We can go this way,” she said, and led him back around the corner of the house to the hall which bisected that wing. As they walked along it he could see a large, unlighted room in the front, and the stairs ahead leading to the second floor. Then she stopped opposite a door on the right, knocked on it, and entered.

  4

  JOHN MACQUADE was sitting in a canvas-backed planter’s chair, one leg elevated and resting on the extension arm. He had discarded his jacket and tie and substituted slippers for shoes and socks; his cane lay on the floor beside him.

  “Thanks, Kate,” he said, squinting up past the rays of a floor lamp. “Come in, Jim. Sit down.”

  Jim glanced about as the door closed and found himself in a squarish room furnished like an office, except for the red studio-couch on which a sheet had been spread. A silken cover had been tucked in at one side and turned down, and there was a pillow at the head. Three other pillows, tufted and held with four geometrically spaced buttons, had been piled in a near-by chair. Other than this there was a flat-topped desk, a table, three other chairs, a filing cabinet. Built-in shelves filled one wall and underneath were cabinets. A door on the right led to a dimly lighted bedroom.

  “I sleep out here about half the time,” MacQuade said when he saw Jim inspecting the couch. “The bed in there’s too soft.” He grunted softly. “Mostly with my clothes on. It’s not easy, dressing and undressing with a half-useless arm and leg, and I’m damned if I’m going to let anyone do it for me until I have to.… I thought I’d like to talk to you a little before I went to sleep,” he said. “Haven’t hardly had a chance yet. Get comfortable. You want another drink?”

  Jim said no thanks. He sat down in the desk chair and put his mind on the things he was supposed to know.

  “I’ve got a couple things on my mind,” MacQuade said. “First off I never thought you’d make it. When you didn’t come down two years ago when I had that first stroke I figured it was no use asking any more.”

  “You still sent the cards and the checks.”

  MacQuade did not seem to hear. His gaze had shifted and his tone was speculative. “Were you bitter because I wouldn’t help your father out with that loan back in ’41 or ’42?”

  “Not any more.”

  “I know now I was wrong about that. I could have let h
im have the money then. I don’t know how I got so hard about money matters and obligations; I guess I was always that way. Still am.”

  He paused and said: “I wasn’t so fussy myself when I was young. I cut corners when I could, was as sharp as I had to be, worried some about the law but never too much about scruples if they worked out for me. I guess I got tired of being poor; I made up my mind about that years ago when we left St. Vincent. I guess your father has told you about that.”

  When Jim made no reply, MacQuade continued. “We had this plantation and it was a pretty poor one, and back in the twenties no one was doing too well in the islands. When your grandmother died I decided we should sell and I was quite a bit older and so we did. Your father and your Aunt Alice—Alma’s mother—went off to Canada to some uncle we’d never seen and I hit out on my own with my share.”

  His laugh was humorless and remote. “I tried a lot of things. Gold and diamonds on the upper Essequibo, and the same thing out of Paramaribo. Lumber in Central America and a bit of smuggling on the Venezuelan border and back to a sugar plantation in Demerara. When I hit this place in ’33 I was no better off than when I started and when you came to visit me in ’35 I was just getting my second wind.”

  “You’ve done a lot,” Jim said.

  “Since your time.”

  “I understand you even have a distillery.”

  “But not the drinking rum.” MacQuade grinned. “The white, overproof kind. I sell it that way and let somebody else age it.… Also a bottling works,” he said. “Agent for some of the shipping people.”

  “The house is—er—different.”

  “I should hope it was.” MacQuade looked pleased and then he said: “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.” He put his head back, and studied the ceiling. “Something happened last night that scared me.”

  He spoke slowly, in a voice that Jim could hardly hear, and suddenly Jim found himself glancing about the room, at the closed door to the walk, at the two windows set deeply in the thick wall, their curtains partly drawn against the night. Because in his mind John MacQuade was a man who had never been afraid of anything; now the mere statement was in itself alarming. It seemed almost as if the room had grown smaller, drawing them close while some intuitive process inside him set up a warning. For some reason he could not express, he had the strange feeling that whatever threatened the older man threatened him.

  “According to medical science I should be dead.” MacQuade sat as he was, nothing moving but his lips. “I should have passed out for good on the next to last day of February. Somehow I didn’t. The doctor tells me I might have a couple of years if I stay in bed. The way I am now—taking it easy, no sudden straining—I’m promised nothing. Maybe two weeks, maybe two months. I’ve no quarrel with that, my boy, but whatever time I have left has become important. I don’t want to be robbed of it.”

  He moved his head, half pointing at a table which stood against the wall beside one of the windows.

  “Until tonight a jug of warm milk and a glass were put there for me every evening. Generally I’d drink some before I went to bed. Last night I didn’t. I slept in the bedroom. I’m up pretty early most mornings and this morning when I came in here the jug and glass were gone. A little later I thought I heard someone sobbing. I went over to the window and looked out, and hunched there against the wall was a little colored boy named Vernon whose mother works on the place. He had a cat cradled in his arms. A dead cat, very stiff. Said he’d found it under the veranda where the animal had crawled to die.”

  He turned his head, his narrowed gaze focusing, his voice the same quiet monotone.

  “Cat’s name was Teddy. A brute. Good with rats. Had the run of the place. Popped in and out of here through the windows when he felt like it.” He hesitated and said: “Teddy was here last night. I poured some milk in the tray for him before I went into the bedroom.”

  MacQuade returned to his contemplation of the ceiling. Jim shifted his weight and found his body stiff from sitting too long in one position. He wet his lips and swallowed.

  “Poison?” he asked finally.

  “Strychnine, I think.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Gave Vernon a florin to bury the cat. Told him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Who brought the milk?”

  “Kate. She usually did after it was prepared in the kitchen.”

  “What about mornings?”

  “The girl who made up the room took it away. This morning I made casual inquiries. The jug and glass were in the kitchen, already rinsed out, when the cook came.”

  For a moment the silence settled about them and then a car started up outside. A woman’s laugh was a distant sound soon lost in the roar of the accelerating motor. Jim stood up, one part of his mind listening until he decided it was not Tenney’s rattletrap. He paced across the room and back, his lean face grim, his blue eyes darkly intent and deeply troubled.

  “Why should it happen last night instead of last week or next week or some other time?” He stopped abruptly. “Did my cable come yesterday? … Maybe somebody didn’t like the idea,” he said when MacQuade nodded. He half turned, stopped again. “Well, who’d do a thing like that?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You must have some idea.” He spoke with vehement sharpness and instantly regretted it when he heard the soft reply.

  “Teddy could have come across the strychnine somewhere else.”

  “If he did,” Jim said steadily, “we’re wasting our breath. If he didn’t—”

  “If he didn’t then it has to be someone who was here tonight. They’re the only ones who’d know about the milk habit.”

  “The Dunhams would know too, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yes, they’d know.”

  “Have you talked to anyone?”

  “I waited for you.”

  Jim came back to the desk and leaned stiff-armed on it. He tried to put down his own fears about this thing he had heard, to think logically.

  “Who would gain by your death? I suppose you have a will.”

  “Certainly I have a will. Everybody’d gain something.”

  “I mean who’d be better off if you died before I came? Just how is it worded?”

  “Well, first off, ever since your father died I figured you were to share in my estate after I’d gone.”

  “When I didn’t even bother to come to see you?”

  “I’ve thought about that, don’t think I haven’t. Maybe part of it’s just some silly idea that started when you were twelve. Maybe it’s because you’re the only man left in the family or because I wanted to leave it to someone I liked.”

  “What about Alma?”

  “Alma’s the best. She’ll never know what her staying on here has meant to me. I was thinking of the men. Gordon Dunham and Len Osborne.”

  “Suppose I hadn’t come at all?”

  “You’d have been cut off without a shilling.”

  “And now?”

  “You get half.”

  Jim regarded the end of his cigarette to keep his glance averted. He noticed that his hands were sweaty and a new nervousness began working on him. For he had come here believing that MacQuade’s estate was of no great importance. A small, run-down plantation worth perhaps a few thousand pounds. Some personal effects. Perhaps a little cash but more likely a mortgage. But this—

  “What about the others?”

  “After a few minor bequests Len gets five thousand pounds. You get half. Alma and Gordon get a quarter each. If you hadn’t come they’d have split your share.”

  “And Miss Royce?”

  MacQuade looked at him sharply. “Miss Royce has already been provided for,” he said quickly.

  Jim walked round the desk and sat down. “To fool with poison a person would have to have a motive. If you had died last night Gordon Dunham would have been a lot better off. He stands to lose plenty by my coming.… Could you tell me a little about him?” he said when he
had thought things over.

  MacQuade swung his leg down from the extension and asked for a cigarette. “Not supposed to smoke,” he said when he had a light, “but sometimes I need one.… Gordon?” he said, settling back in the chair. “Well the most important thing about Gordon is that I loved his mother.”

  “I remember.”

  “Personally I never really liked him much, not because of anything in particular but just because he’s not my kind of man. I think he’s lazy. I put him in the bank and let him act as treasurer of the bottling works and built him a house. He’s a satisfied, complacent man at thirty-two and I say that’s bad. Even his marriage isn’t working out if I know the signs. When I’m out of the picture and he gets his share I’ll gamble he’ll want a divorce so he can get Barbara Connant.”

  “And Osborne,” Jim said. “He’s not related to you, is he? He wasn’t here when I visited you.”

  “He came the next year. After his mother and father were lost when a schooner went down in a blow off Bequia. There was a little money and I was named guardian.”

  “You sent him to Princeton.”

  “For four years. I think he’s always resented it because I wouldn’t keep on supporting him in the States, but I needed him here after the war. He’s sort of man Friday around the mill and distillery, like Alma is my girl Friday. That’s why he’s getting the five thousand, which he can spend or go to the States or do what he likes.”

  “He knows about the five thousand? … Would it make any difference whether I came or not?”

  “None. That bequest stands either way.”

  Jim considered his own impressions of the man in question, deciding that Osborne was a good enough guy, a bit brassy perhaps but not offensively so. Then he thought of another man who had left a more positive impression, a man whose attitude and manner suggested he would do what he had to do to get what he wanted, the sort who would lay odds and, one way or another, eventually pick up the chips.