The Widening Stain Read online

  “Did you ever hear of her being in financial difficulties?”

  “Never. That would seem to me most unlikely.”

  “You don’t know of any—ah—private or emotional troubles?”

  “N-no.”

  “Thank you. You will understand that suicide is a painful possibility which must at least be considered. That is all, Miss Gorham.”

  Dr. Sandys and Dr. Churchill were then briefly examined. The Coroner retired, to consider the evidence. On entering his office, he picked up the morning paper, and read contentedly for fifteen minutes. He looked at the cross-word puzzle with a certain hankering, but resolutely laid the paper down. He returned to his small court and announced that after due deliberation he found that Miss Coindreau had come to her death as the result of an accident.

  So that was that, thought Gilda. It was an accident. The Law had spoken. It was an accident, and thank God for that. Now she could stop thinking about it.

  She went home to lunch, thinking about it.

  After lunch she went to the Library and resumed the normal course of existence. The girls had got rather out of hand during her absence. She was obliged to put her foot down several times. An important auction catalogue had come in. Dr. Sandys wanted her opinion about an inter-library loan problem. Hillsville College, which had borrowed forty-seven books during the year, was making a fantastic fuss when asked to lend its one treasure, a first edition of Moby Dick.

  About four in the afternoon the catalogue room fell into a sort of lull.

  Gilda picked up her hand-bag and walked idly out of the room. But instead of turning left to the lobby and the women’s rest room, she turned right to the stacks. She entered the Wilmerding Library, went up two flights of stairs to the upper gallery, and walked along it to the north bay, over the entrance door, over the display-case upon which Lucie Coindreau had fallen. She looked over the edge. There was no one in sight. It was a nasty drop; twenty-one feet from the gallery rail to the floor, she calculated.

  Near by she found the portable steps which had apparently stood against the railing on the tragic evening. She carried the steps to the position they had then occupied. She mounted the bottom step and reached for the key of the hanging light. She was two or three inches taller than Lucie Coindreau. She touched the light-key and turned it without effort.

  In imagination she was seized by a dizzy fit. She saw herself falling. . . .

  She slumped down gently, well within the protection of the rail.

  She tried it again, this time standing on the upper step. She dared to shut her eyes and sway a little She slipped down, inside the railing.

  Of course this didn’t prove anything. Naturally she wasn’t going to fall over the railing just out of curiosity. And of course it was possible that, as had been suggested, Lucie had caught her high heel in her evening gown. Still—

  Still, Lucie Coindreau didn’t seem the type that had dizzy fits. She had boasted of climbing the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn in Switzerland. Women who are used to evening gowns and high heels don’t often get them tangled up. Otherwise they would be tumbling down all over the place. Look at the way they walk up and down stairs without ever glancing down at their feet.

  Gilda stood again on the step, trying to imagine that she was wearing a long gown and high heels, trying to imagine what would happen.

  “Want a push, Miss Gorham?”

  It was Cameron, who had come silently along the gallery.

  Gilda attempted a freezing look. “Don’t be impertinent, Cameron.”

  “Fresh is what the girls used to call me. I was watching you, Miss Gorham. You settled a point for me.”

  “You seem to be very much interested in this unfortunate accident.”

  “I was a detective once. Were you ever a detective?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Well, you act like one. You’re reconstructing the accident.” Cameron paused and surveyed the scene with a careful eye. “What’s more, you’re showing it’s just like I thought. Anybody standing on that step and losing his balance would most likely fall inside the rail. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless they were pushed.”

  “But who would want to push Miss Coindreau?”

  “That’s just what I was wondering. Just like you.”

  “It seems to me, Cameron, that if you have any good reason to believe that Mademoiselle Coindreau’s death was not due to an accident, but to—well, to being pushed, it’s your duty to report it to the police.”

  “Maybe it is, but I ain’t going to do it.”

  “It seems to me—”

  “And I’ll tell you why. In the first place, the police have got the case all nicely closed up, and they aren’t going to open it up again just because I think maybe there was some funny business. After all, she could have tripped and fallen over, just like they said. But if they have to investigate a suspected murder, they’ve got to go poking their noses into the private affairs of half the people on this campus. They’ll raise a stink you can smell from here to Chicago. Folks in Chicago will be saying: ‘My, what’s got into the stockyards today? They must be canning skunks today.’ Well, that’s the kind of stink they’ll raise, but they probably won’t find out who did the pushing.

  “Then in the second place I won’t say anything because I never did think much of Miss Coindreau, and if some guy pushed her over she probably deserved it, and I don’t see it’s going to help anything to have him go to the big house for the rest of his life, where they tell me the library is terrible.”

  “You don’t seem to have much sense of your duty as a citizen.”

  “Maybe not. I never did like the cops much.”

  “But apparently you are trying to find out something about this—matter.”

  Cameron grinned. “I kind of like to know what’s going on. Now, Miss Gorham, I know just what you’re going to say.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to say: ‘You and me both, kid!’ ”

  Gilda laughed, in spite of herself. Cameron walked away, showing his self-satisfaction in his jaunty manner.

  After taking a few steps he turned around and came back.

  “If you’re going to be a detective, Miss Gorham, I’ll tell you something. Maybe it’s a clue. You know, Monday night the President told me to watch the door to the Wilmerding. Well, that Prof Casti came out, and he sure did look as though he’d been kicked in the belly. I watched him go down the stairs, but he didn’t go out toward the lobby. He turned the other way. And I was just curious enough to follow him. I used to be a pretty good tail. Well, he went down to the French Seminary, and he went to the big table with the drawers in it assigned to the profs and grad students, and he took out a knife and pried away at one of the drawers. But he couldn’t get it open, and after a while he left. I went down again later, and I saw the drawer had a label on it: ‘Asst. Prof. Coindreau.’ ”

  “You haven’t opened the drawer since?”

  “It wouldn’t be right for me to open a private drawer,” said Cameron, with an air of simpering virtue. “Anyhow, I would have had to make a false key.”

  “I think I had better have a look at that.”

  The two descended to the French Seminary. The room was empty. Cameron pointed out the drawer to Gilda. The lock was a cheap and simple one; its bolt extended upward, engaging with the solid framework of the table. The bolt was clearly visible in the gap of nearly an eighth of an inch between the top of the drawer and the table’s frame. Around the bolt were fresh and jagged marks, such as a sharp knife-blade might have made.

  “Umm,” said Gilda. “This drawer should be reassigned to someone else.”

  “It is our duty to open it, isn’t it, Miss Gorham?”

  “Cameron, suppose you go up and ask Miss McDougal at the delivery desk if she hasn’t a duplicate key to this drawer. It’s number 14.”

  “Whatever you think is right, Miss Gorham,” grinned Cameron.

>   In a few minutes he had returned with the duplicate key. The drawer was readily opened. In it Gilda found a lipstick, a photograph of a handsome young man in a pullover sweater, inscribed: “Toujours—Armand,” half a dozen notes on “L’Amour chez les poètes romantiques,” a pad of thesis slips, two pencils, and a chocolate covered with a fuzzy gray deposit.

  “I can’t imagine what Mr. Casti would be wanting here,” said Gilda.

  “Maybe this Armand boy has got something to do with it. You would be surprised at some of the stories I could tell you.”

  “I don’t think I could stand such surprises. I think I’ll just keep this collection until something is done about the settlement of Mademoiselle Coindreau’s estate. Then I’ll turn them over to the proper person, of course.”

  “Even the chocolate?”

  “You can have the chocolate. Here.” She pushed the chocolate toward Cameron with a ruler.

  “I never accept presents from ladies,” said Cameron primly, pushing the object on into the waste-basket.

  Chapter VII

  GILDA RETURNED to the catalogue room at about half past four and attempted to resume her unfinished tasks. After making three outrageous mistakes in three minutes, she gave up the effort. She made a negligent barricade of books on her desk, took out her pen, and tried to give the appearance of writing busily. She covered the sheet of paper with a series of comic faces in profile, all looking to the left.

  Behind her defenses she meditated.

  Just suppose that someone had, in fact, pushed Lucie. Who could possibly have done such a thing?

  Under one of the grotesque faces she wrote the name: Casti. After a pause, she wrote another name: Hyett.

  Motive and opportunity were what mystery-story detectives required. Better not go into motive at this point. Only a mind-reader could know the motive. Better restrict herself to opportunity. Who had opportunity?

  She wrote down: Sandys. She thought a moment, and wrote: Cameron.

  Anyone else? She had noticed Lucie talking earnestly to Mr. Belknap at the President’s reception. Of course, that didn’t prove much, but still—

  She wrote down: Belknap.

  Then, as if she were idly making marks on the paper, in a kind of automatic writing, she set down: Parry. She looked at the name and drew a firm line through it. And then she wrote again, with determination: Parry.

  Then there was always the unknown. X, they called him. Gilda had absorbed a good deal of scholarly priggishness in the University. She would call him Ignotus. Under a horrible profile she wrote: Ignotus.

  And then, half smiling, she wrote: Gilda Gorham.

  Now what did she know about the opportunity of these people?

  Perhaps it would be a good thing to make a time-table.

  Where should she begin? What could she take as a starting-point, a terminus a quo, as Hyett liked to say? Perhaps the time when she and Francis had gone out on the terrace of the Presidential Mansion. As she tried to live again that moment, she seemed to hear the tolling of the Library clock. That was convenient. She wrote:

  “10 p.m. Gilda and F. P. go out on terrace.”

  How long had they talked? Five minutes? It seemed like more than five minutes. Ten minutes? Less than ten minutes. She had smoked a cigarette. Once, in some sort of parlor game, she had been timed smoking a cigarette. She had thrown it away at the end of eight minutes. She wrote down:

  “10.08. G. asks for wrap. F. P. leaves.”

  From then on, things were pretty clear.

  “10.09. Lucie appears.

  “10.10. Casti appears. G. follows L.”

  How long did it take to get from the Presidential Mansion to the Library? A fast walker could do it in two or three minutes. But she was sidling along through the dark garden, following Lucie, who had seemed to be hurrying, without making very high speed in her high heels and evening gown. Five minutes. She had looked at her watch in the rest room, and it had been a quarter past. It all fitted nicely.

  “10.15. L. enters Library. G. goes to rest room.”

  She must have been there about five minutes when Casti and Sandys had entered.

  “10.20. C. and S. enter. G. goes to catalogue room.

  “10.25. Exit bell.

  “10.25. Tragedy.

  “10.26. G. arrives on scene. Then Sandys.”

  She had then been sent to the catalogue room. And she passed Cameron on the way.

  “10.28. Cameron arrives.”

  How long had she spent telephoning? Perhaps three minutes. And Francis had been present when she returned to the Wilmerding.

  “10.28-10.30. Parry arrives.

  “10.31. G. returns to Wilmerding.

  “10.31. Casti arrives.

  “10.33. Churchill arrives.

  “10.34. Pres. Temple arrives.

  “10.37. G. and F. P. leave.”

  That was about it. Probably some small errors here and there, but pretty close. Now what did it show, if anything?

  She looked back at her list of names.

  Casti. Gossip said that Casti had had an affair with Lucie, and that they were now on the outs, and rivals for advancement. Casti was grimly ambitious, a scholastic go-getter. Perhaps he would be unscrupulous in attaining his ends, though Gilda admitted she had never heard any such specific accusation. Would he be capable, in a fit of anger, of giving his inconvenient rival just a little push? It wouldn’t be a very sensible thing to do, for, after all, the chances were that Lucie would survive her fall, at least long enough to denounce her assailant. But no one said it was sensible.

  Casti’s actions on the fatal evening had been very peculiar. He had been talking with Lucie at the reception; he had come out on the terrace at 10.10, evidently looking for her. But she had left secretly at 10.09. Why? Was she escaping from him? Did she plan to meet someone in the Library? Whom? (Even in her thoughts Gilda said “whom.”) Perhaps she planned to meet Casti there and had preferred to walk over alone, in order not to be seen with him.

  Casti, on entering the Library, had gone in the direction of the French Seminary. Cameron had hinted that Casti was trying to get something out of Lucie’s drawer. Was he working at the drawer before the tragedy as well as after? What was he hunting for? One of the miscellaneous objects she had found in the drawer? Or had he succeeded in prying out whatever it was he was after?

  Then there was the very curious remark he had made on entering the Wilmerding. “Is it Lucie?” he had said. How did he know that anything had happened? He could have heard the scream if he had been near the Wilmerding, but not if he had been in the French Seminary. If he had heard the scream, why had it taken him—let’s see—six minutes to reach the Wilmerding?

  All very mysterious. Could he have been in the Occulta with Lucie at 10.25?

  She looked at her time-table. Casti had gone to the French Seminary at 10.20. There was small chance that anyone else would be there at that hour. He could have gone into the stacks and followed a devious course to the Wilmerding without being seen. And then, after perhaps a brief quarrel, terminating in one fatal push, he could have gone back the same way, easily avoiding herself and Cameron. Certainly it was possible.

  Except that it just didn’t seem likely. Well, probably no murder seemed likely. In fact, it probably wasn’t likely. Still—

  Hyett. There was a pretty funny one. Sex-obsessed. A mental rake. But the campus agreed that the mental rake was harmless. You might as well expect to be struck by heat-lightning as by Old Harmless. Nevertheless, it is notorious that when men get to be about sixty, they sometimes go suddenly wild. The glands, probably. Mr. Hyett knew all about sadism and things like that. It might be possible that he had just boiled over, terribly.

  But this was all speculation. Where was he at 10.25? At the President’s reception?

  Gilda made a mental note to ask when Mr. Hyett had left the President’s house. Come to think of it, she was to have dinner with the Nobles this very evening. And Mr. Hyett was deputed to call for h
er. Maybe she could bring up the matter. Adroitly, if possible.

  She looked at the sheet before her.

  Sandys. Dear good Dr. Sandys! Why, that was just ridiculous!

  She started to draw a line through his name, but held her pen poised. How about opportunity?

  Dr. Sandys had gone to his office at 10.20, and there he had certainly been alone. A door opened from his office to the stacks. By that course he could get to the Occulta in about thirty seconds. Just supposing—. He could have committed the—thing at 10.25, and then have run down to his office through the stacks, and run back by way of the outer corridor and stairs, and entered the main door of the Wilmerding just after Gilda had arrived. Yes, it was possible.

  With a guilty feeling, she raised her pen, leaving the name untouched.

  Cameron.

  He was a strange fellow, with a mysterious past. He didn’t like the police. He said he had been a detective; but detectives work with the police, don’t they? He was a good deal of a cynic, and was always completely self-assured. He was the sort of person who would not break down, and show weakness or remorse. If he had done something evil, he would be rather pleased with himself than otherwise. But why should he do something evil, something so frightfully evil? Well, men did do funny things sometimes. You couldn’t read the books in a great library without knowing that.

  Gilda shuddered. She thought of Francis’s remark that Lucie was the sort that roused the beast in men.

  And she recalled a recent report that had disturbed the campus. A young student and a co-ed, sitting on a stone bench late in the evening, perfectly innocently, or so they alleged, had been attacked from the rear by a man with a stick. Could that have been Cameron?

  How did his actions appear on her time-table?

  When Cameron was on duty in the evenings, as he had been on Monday, he made the round of the stacks, beginning at about ten o’clock, shutting the fire-doors that separated the various sections. He could have been in the Wilmerding at 10.25. When Gilda came running in through the door to the Wilmerding, he could have concealed himself, and then he could have merely gone out through the same door and waited, and then hurried in again after a proper interval. She remembered that he had brushed against her when she was rushing out to the catalogue room to telephone. That was 10.28, wasn’t it? Yes, 10.28.