By the Watchman's Clock Read online

“And Miss Thorn was with you?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And it was about three o’clock.”

  “Yes. I’m quite sure of that because the clock struck three a very few minutes later when Thorn and I were going up stairs.”

  He wrote something on a piece of paper and studied it thoughtfully.

  “Mrs. Niles, when you came in the house who let you in?”

  “We walked in. The front door was open.”

  “Was there a light in the hall?”

  “Yes, a dim one.”

  “What did you do, Mrs. Niles, when you came in?”

  I figured a few seconds too without the aid of a piece of paper or pencil.

  “We came in,” I said at last. “We heard Mr. Sutton moving about in the library. The door was slightly ajar. I could just see there was a light in there.”

  “Just a moment. Had you seen that light when you came up the drive? The library corresponds to this room, does it not, with two long windows opening on little balconies on the York Road side?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then didn’t you see the light as you came up the drive?”

  “No, I didn’t. You know how heavy these hangings are.”

  I pointed to the gold damask at the drawing room windows.

  “In the library the drapes are heavy lined velvet, and Mr. Sutton not only has them drawn at night but the inside shutters closed too. If the room was lighted with thousand candle power lamps you wouldn’t see it from outside.”

  Mr. Sullivan wrote again. Then he polished his spectacles deliberately with a big green handkerchief.

  “And you saw no light from the outside.”

  “No.”

  “Go on, please.”

  “Where was I?”

  “You came in the hall and saw a light in the library.”

  “We heard Mr. Sutton moving about. I suggested to Thorn that she say good night to him, or something.”

  “Did she?”

  “She didn’t care to disturb him. I suppose if a man stays up until three he has some reason for it and wouldn’t care to be disturbed.”

  “Was that the reason Miss Thorn gave?”

  “I don’t think she gave any reason. She was tired and I suggested she go to bed.”

  “Why did you also suggest she go in and see him?”

  “No particular reason.”

  “Mrs. Niles, she came to you very much disturbed about something, did she not?”

  I nodded.

  “And you were sufficiently concerned to come back here with her at three o’clock in the morning.”

  “It wasn’t that particularly. She was uneasy and didn’t care to come back alone.”

  “And didn’t care to say good night to her uncle in that room over across the hall?”

  Mr. Sullivan leaned forward. I caught the District Attorney’s gaze again.

  “No, apparently she didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t care to go in.”

  “My dear Mr. Sullivan, why should I? I had on a tweed coat over my night dress, a pair of tennis shoes on, and my nose wasn’t powdered. I not only didn’t care to go in to see Mr. Sutton, I positively wanted not to see him.”

  “Yet you did go in—didn’t you?”

  I looked up in surprise.

  “You did go in the library, only half an hour later, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t go in to see Mr. Sutton. I was coming down the stairs. I heard somebody or something in the back drawing room, and I was frightened. I knew Mr. Sutton was in the library because we’d heard him, and my first impulse was to get to somebody at once.”

  “Why didn’t you go back upstairs?”

  “It was easier to go down. Thorn was the only person awake upstairs anyway. I suppose I felt that a man would be safer to be with.”

  “In other words, you weren’t concerned about your clothes at that time.”

  “Good Lord, no. I’d completely forgotten them.”

  He nodded sagely, and to my intense annoyance wrote something down.

  “Mrs. Niles, when you got down, was the library door open?”

  “No, it was closed.”

  “When was it closed?”

  “Obviously some time within the half hour I was upstairs with Thorn Carter.”

  Mr. Sullivan gazed absently out of the window for a moment.

  “Mrs. Niles, what sort of a noise was it you heard from the stairway?”

  “It was somebody moving very cautiously, I thought towards the hall where I was. At least it seemed to come closer while I stood there.”

  “You know the house very well, don’t you, Mrs. Niles?”

  I agreed again that I knew the house. He apparently thought better of the question he was going to ask, for quite suddenly he changed his manner to a neighborly confidential one, which, I may say, didn’t in the least deceive me.

  “Mrs. Niles, do you know anyone who would want Mr. Sutton out of the way?”

  “I know just the same number that you do, Mr. Sullivan,” I replied affably. I remembered a conversation that he and I had had last Christmas at an egg-nogg party at the Tavenners, in which he said that if Daniel Sutton were found dead some frosty morning they could hang everybody in town and not be far wrong. And Mr. Sullivan remembered it too, and smiled a little in answer to my smile. But he recovered himself quickly.

  “Seriously, Mrs. Niles. You know these people better than I do; but I know at least three people who have possible motive; You know more than that.”

  I shook my head.

  “Mrs. Niles, I’ll put my cards on the table.” That’s a favorite Landover cliché. In a few minutes he’d have his shoulder to the wheel and his nose to the grindstone.

  “There’s Reverdy Hawkins’s crowd who thought they had their hands on real money. There’s young Dan—I suppose you know Joan Frazier’s back in town?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded my head.

  “Then there’s young Knox and Miss Thorn Carter.”

  I looked up inquiringly.

  “You know what I mean, Mrs. Stiles. My wife told me yesterday that Sutton had threatened to disinherit his niece if she saw young Knox again. Last night Terry saw young Knox go in the side door of the President’s House at two o’clock.”

  Terry is the college watchman.

  “You’re wrong about Thorn and Franklin, Mr. Sullivan,” I said. “You ought to know that town gossip isn’t reliable, especially about the people here at Seaton Hall. Mr. Sutton didn’t want Thorn to marry Franklin; that’s all. He didn’t forbid her to see him again. Anyway, if Franklin went in his house at two o’clock, that would seem to let him out, wouldn’t it? Tim let us in here at three, and we heard Mr. Sutton in the library.”

  Again the strange glance that I had noticed before.

  “Mrs. Niles, did you hear the shot that killed Mr. Sutton while you were upstairs?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “No, Mrs. Niles,” he repeated, with heavy emphasis. “You didn’t hear it—for the very adequate reason that Sutton was shot at half-past one. And Tim Healy died at half-past one, Mrs. Niles. Tim Healy didn’t let you in that gate. You didn’t hear Mr. Sutton moving about in the library. When you came in through the front door into the hall, at three o’clock, Tim Healy was lying in the laurel bushes under the library windows, and Daniel Sutton was sitting in the library in the wing chair. And they were both dead, Mrs. Niles.”

  CHAPTER XV

  Mr. Sullivan gave me time to take that in. More time, in fact, than I needed. It struck me as being ludicrously like a caption on the screen—you have time to read it and forget it a dozen times before the film goes on. I suppose that like the movies Mr. Sullivan was designed for people who don’t get things very quickly. Perhaps he was waiting for me to commit myself in some way. When I said nothing he got up and came around the table in front of me.

  “Mrs. Niles! What did you hear in the library?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “
I thought it was Mr. Sutton.”

  “And who let you and Thorn Carter in the gate?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it was Tim Healy.”

  “Mrs. Niles,” he began again. I writhed at last at the terrible repetition of my name. I think he saw he was annoying me, for he stopped and began again.

  “Mrs. Niles, are you sure you and Miss Thorn did not look in the library?”

  “Positive,” I replied.

  “Now then. You heard the buzz of the telephone. And you suggested to Miss Thorn that she go in and say good night to her uncle.”

  “I did.”

  Mr. Sullivan began a slow pacing up and down in front of me, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Mrs. Niles, think this over carefully. How did you know it was the telephone in the library that you heard?”

  “Because I’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s a direct inner connection between the library and the lodge and the servants’ pantry, put there so that Tim could announce visitors either to Mr. Sutton or to Lafayette. But I’d never heard it late at night, and that’s why I didn’t recognize it as the lodge phone, I suppose.”

  “But Miss Thorn did?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Mrs. Niles, when Miss Thorn said she didn’t care to see her uncle, you weren’t surprised?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Doesn’t it seem to you now that Miss Thorn may have had a reason for not wishing to see her uncle?”

  “I suppose she did have a reason for it.”

  He smiled grimly.

  “What do you suppose it was?”

  “Simply that no one, to my knowledge, ever intruded on Mr. Sutton when he was in the library, without being sent for. Then in the second place Thorn and her uncle had . . .”

  Mr. Sullivan caught me up almost before I had realized that I was going too far.

  “Yes, Mrs. Niles. Miss Thorn and her uncle had quarreled before she left the house. Now then: doesn’t it occur to you that one of the reasons Miss Thorn didn’t want to go in that library was that she knew, at that time, mark you me, Mrs. Niles, that her uncle was dead?”

  I don’t think that Mr. Sullivan realized how keenly I felt a sudden sick feeling inside of me.

  “Not in a thousand years,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders, went back behind the table and sat down, looking reflectively at me.

  Finally he got up and put a book on his papers.

  “Mrs. Niles, I want you to come with me, if you don’t mind, and show me just where you stood when you heard what you thought was Mr. Sutton in the library.”

  I did mind intensely. But I said “Certainly,” and followed him out into the hall.

  His objectionable assistant was still talking there to Matthew and Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe. The Englishman shot me an encouraging but I thought also slightly derisive smile. Mr. Sullivan, ignoring all of them in a matter-of-fact way, proceeded to the front door and turned around, with a glance at me.

  “We came in here and stopped,” I said. “It was perfectly still. Then we heard someone move about. We realized that it was Mr. Sutton and came on into the hall until we got about here where we could see that door.”

  I pointed to the library door, open a little.

  “We couldn’t see it from back there, if you’ll notice, because it’s set back in the thick wall.”

  “How much open was it, Mrs. Niles.”

  “About six inches.”

  “All right. Now then, Mrs. Niles, go up the stairs and stop where you did when you came down.”

  I went up about eight steps and turned around.

  “I was about here. I had my right hand on the bannister like this. I could see the drawing room door here, open, and I’d already seen from upstairs that the library door had been closed.”

  “You hadn’t heard anyone come up?”

  “No.”

  “Did it occur to you, Mrs. Niles, that the person you heard in the parlor here was the person you’d heard in the library?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Go on, Mrs. Niles.”

  “All of a sudden I got panicky, but I couldn’t call out or . . . do anything. So I suppose I just made a dash for the library where Mr. Sutton was. When I opened the door it was dark. It seemed ages before I got to the switch and turned on the lights. I turned around facing the hall, and I must have just stood there waiting for something to come, until I . . . my hand . . . touched Mr. Sutton.”

  Mr. Sullivan nodded his comprehension.

  “Would you mind coming into the library, Mrs. Niles?”

  I didn’t want to go in the library; in fact I definitely wanted not to go in. I happened to look at Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe. He shook his head.

  “Do you mind if I come along?” he said to Mr. Sullivan, with an encouraging glance at me.

  Mr. Sullivan agreed promptly. The more the merrier seemed to be the idea. Of course there wasn’t any very good reason for my not wanting to go in the library. I’d been in it thousands of times before last night. And I found when I stepped over the threshold that the night before already seemed very unreal. It was like something I’d seen in a dream, and only vaguely remembered as a dream. But Mr. Sullivan saw to it that that didn’t last long.

  “You were standing here?”

  He pointed to the spot where I had stood behind the high back of the Chippendale wing chair. I nodded.

  “What did you see?”

  “I didn’t see anything, until my hand slipped down the wing here. I was watching the hall.”

  Mr. Sullivan turned to Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe.

  “You were the first in the room, I understand.”

  The Englishman nodded gravely.

  “What did you see?”

  He smiled a little grimly.

  “I saw Mrs. Niles’s hand with blood on it, and I saw Mr. Sutton with a bullet wound in his head. I didn’t see a gun. I looked for one at once, that is as soon as I got Mrs. Niles to a chair. I saw the window at the side open a little. The safe in the corner was also standing open. Otherwise there was no disorder in the room.”

  I looked around first at the safe, then at the window, then back at the two men who were watching me with very different expressions. Mr. Sullivan it seemed had scored a minor triumph, and was not a little pleased with it. But Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe came to my rescue.

  “It’s perfectly natural, of course, Mr. Sullivan,” he said, lighting a cigarette and putting the burnt match carefully back in the box, “that Mrs. Niles should not see any of those things. She was expecting to see something in the hall, and when she quite accidentally was forced to look at Mr. Sutton she was too shocked to notice anything else. I noticed her particularly later when the others came. She was sitting in that chair, still looking towards the hall. She glanced at the two young Suttons when they came in, and at Miss Atwood when she stood in the hall. At no time did she look towards the safe or the window.”

  Mr. Sullivan pursed his lips.

  “I should say,” the Englishman went on, “that it would have been rather surprising under the circumstances if Mrs. Niles had seen the room in detail.”

  “You did, of course,” I said. I was a little annoyed by the assumption that you can’t expect intelligent conduct from women in an emergency.

  He smiled.

  “I’ve had experience enough to know what to look for.”

  “There’s one other thing, Mrs. Niles,” said Mr. Sullivan. “Will you step over here to the window, please.”

  The library at Seaton Hall is a long room, half the length of the house, with two long windows in front and one at the side. The elaborately carved fireplace is on the right side next to the hall. It is flanked by two doors, one of which is blind, the other the one we saw ajar the night before. The side windows open out onto a little balcony, and overlook the small brick-paved area in front of the hyphen that connects the kitchen wing to the house. The dining room is directly back of the library and opens into
the hyphen, where the pantries are. There is therefore only one door into the library. The front windows are always locked, and in the evening tightly shuttered.

  It is a beautiful room. The walls are completely lined with books except on the sides of the fireplace. Here there are several portraits of old-fashioned gentlemen that Mr. Sutton bought at Christie’s. In the center of the room is a long table, and at the end nearest the windows is another table at right angles to it. This is Mr. Sutton’s work table. His secretary has a desk between the windows.

  I followed Mr. Sullivan between the desk and the table to the window. It was still open. He stepped aside and I looked out. In the broken crushed laurel bushes below I read the fall of Tim Healy. Poor good Tim Healy.

  “Do you think Tim shot him?” I asked before I knew what I was saying.

  “He was shot from a close range, Mrs. Niles. Probably not more than three feet.”

  “Then what about Tim?”

  “Tim died of heart failure. Dr. McPherson has treated him for five years. There’s no doubt of that, he died of pure shock.”

  Mr. Sullivan led the way back towards the hall. He looked tired and not nearly as sure of himself.

  “I figure that this is what happened, Mrs. Niles,” he said. “For some reason Healy came up this way around half-past one. Maybe he saw the light you and Miss Thorn Carter didn’t see. He came to see what was the matter. It would seem that he suspected something wrong, since he didn’t come through the front door. And just as he looked in, before he could speak, he saw someone he knew shoot Mr. Sutton dead. You could still read the surprise and the horror on the face when I saw him. He staggered backwards and fell; his heart stopped beating.”

  The French clock on the mantel ticked hastily along towards eleven o’clock in the dead silence of the room. Mr. Sullivan continued.

  “Tim’s watch struck the railing of the basement window when he fell, and broke, and the hands stopped at 1.32. The window was open when I came at ten minutes after four. Now, Mrs. Niles, I want you to think again whether or not you saw a light in this room.”

  “I positively did not,” I replied quietly.

  “Then that’s all this morning, Mrs. Niles. The photographers have been here from Baltimore and they’ve taken the finger prints on the telephone. We’ll know this evening who called from the lodge and who answered here.”