CHAPTER VI THE WATCH IN THE WATER PITCHER
“Well, Sally, is that all?”
“No, sir, not quite. Griscom found one more queer thing. He found Mr.Tracy’s watch in the water pitcher.”
“In the water pitcher!” Farrell exclaimed. “Was there water in thepitcher?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was nearly full. And down at the bottom of it was thewatch.”
“How extraordinary. Is the watch going?”
“I don’t know, sir. Griscom took it out of the pitcher, but I don’t knowwhat he did with it.”
“Well, we’ll see about it. If you’ve no more astonishing bits ofinformation, you can run along, Sally.”
The girl left the room, and we looked at one another, half smiling, halfappalled.
“It’s all so tawdry,” Keeley Moore said, with an impatient shrug of hisshoulders.
“Just what meaning do you attach to the word ‘tawdry’?” asked Hart. “Ican’t seem to make it apply at all.”
“Oh, I only mean these foolish clues that some practical joker hasarranged are tawdry of intent. I may be obliged to change my mind, butjust at present, I can’t think that the person who killed Sampson Tracyis the person who stuck the feather duster behind his head and droppedhis watch in the water pitcher. By the way, why did he have a waterpitcher, with an elaborate bathroom at hand?”
“Call Griscom, let’s find out a little more about it.”
So the butler came at a summons, and explained that the water pitcher wasa pitcher of drinking water that was placed on a table for him everynight.
“Mr. Tracy didn’t approve of thermos bottles,” Griscom informed us. “Hesaid they never seemed clean things to him. So he had a pitcher.”
“When you found the watch, was it running?”
“No, sir, it was not.”
“At what time had it stopped?”
Inspector Farrell awaited the answer with an air of one expecting a pieceof important information. But he was disappointed.
“I didn’t exactly notice, sir, but it isn’t the watch Mr. Tracy wascarrying. That is still under his pillow. This watch I found in thepitcher is an old one, and it was lying on his dressing table lastnight.”
“Why was it there?”
“Mr. Tracy had it out, looking at it a day or two ago. He thought hewould send it to a jeweller and have it put in order. The mainspring isbroken, you see. But he didn’t decide, and the watch lay there, in alittle tray, with some other odds and ends of jewellery.”
“Then, somebody took that watch and deliberately dropped it into thewater pitcher?”
“That must be the truth, sir.”
“Mr. Tracy never showed the slightest disposition toward any mentalaffection, did he?”
“Oh, no, indeed, sir. Nothing of that sort.”
“Who do you think killed Mr. Tracy, Griscom?”
Farrell shot this question so suddenly that I was not surprised to seethe butler turn pale and grasp at the chair in front of him to steadyhimself.
“I—I don’t know, sir.”
“Of course you don’t know. I’m asking you what you think.”
“Well, what can I think, but Mr. Ames.”
“Mr. Ames! Why would he do such a thing?”
“Well, sir, it had to be somebody with motive. Mr. Ames had that, andlikewise opportunity.”
“You’ve been reading detective stories. You’re very glib with your‘motive and opportunity’! How could Mr. Ames get in?”
“He carries a latchkey, sir.”
“I don’t mean into the house, I mean in the room, Mr. Tracy’s room.”
“Well, the door wasn’t always locked at night. About half the time it wasleft unlocked.”
“Then, how could he get out after the deed and leave the door locked onthe inside?”
“That’s more than I can tell you. I thought that’s what you detectiveswere going to explain. But kill my master somebody did, and get out ofthe room, he did, too. So there must be an explanation somewhere.”
“A secret passage, I suppose.”
“No, sir. I’m ready to swear there’s no secret passage in this house.”
“You may not know of it.”
“Well, sir, how could there be? That wing of Mr. Tracy’s is foursquare.It has no L’s or bays. You can measure it up and you’ll find there’s nobit of space unaccounted for. The rooms open into one another, andthere’s just the wall between, no room for a concealed staircase.”
“How are you so sure? You been examining around?”
“Just that, sir, meaning no harm. But I somehow feel I’ve got to find outthe truth of this whole thing, and so I’ve got to look into theconditions.”
Keeley Moore gave Griscom a stare of decided interest. It was evident hethought the man knew rather more than he had credited him with.
Farrell and Hart were not so well pleased, apparently. They frowned alittle, and the Inspector advised the butler not to exceed his orders oroverstep his privileges.
And then it was lunch time, and Keeley, remembering his wife’s hint ofblackberry shortcake, decided we must go home at once.
“I want to think matters over a bit,” he said to the police officers. “Ifyou want me here, I will come when summoned, but otherwise I’ll stay athome this afternoon. When will you have the inquest, Doctor Hart?”
“To-morrow,” said the Coroner. “Though it will probably have to beadjourned. I confess I’m in a quandary. I scarcely know which way tolook. You know I am relying on your help, Mr. Moore.”
“I’ll help all I can,” Kee said, gravely. “But I think you’ve got a hardnut to crack.”
“You mean the locked room——”
“No, I don’t mean the locked room. That will explain itself, once you getthe criminal.”
“Then you mean all these bizarre clues we have to deal with.”
“No, I don’t mean those, either. The finding of the criminal will wipethose out at once. It’s the hunt that is hard. The quarry is elusive andhard to track. Find the motive first; that’s always a sound plan.”
And with that Moore and I went off, leaving behind us a greatly perplexedpair of sleuths of the law.
A car belonging to the house conveyed us home, and by good luck we werenot late for luncheon.
The shortcake materialized and proved worthy of all praise, and Keerefused to talk about the tragedy at all until the meal was over and wegathered in the lounge afterward.
Lora and Maud had heard only scraps of information from neighbours andtradesmen, but they had not been inquisitive, preferring to wait until wereturned to tell them all about it.
And so the four of us sat down for a real confab.
I listened while Keeley told his wife all the information he had so faraccumulated, and I couldn’t help admiring the straightforward, clean-cutstory he told. He might have been a skilled reporter, giving the knownfacts to the public.
Of course my conscience pricked me because I was holding back the veryimportant bit of evidence that I seemed the only one to know. Apparentlyno one but myself had seen Alma Remsen go in her canoe to Pleasure Domethe night before at about half past one o’clock.
I might be accessory after the fact. I might be aiding and abetting acriminal, but, shameless that I was, I didn’t care, and had no intentionof telling my secret.
My justification, adequate in my own mind, was that I didn’t for a minutebelieve Alma Remsen had killed her uncle. It was too incredible, tooimpossible. Go to his house, she did. Stay there about an hour, she did.But kill him, no! Perhaps she saw the deed committed, perhaps she arrivedlater, and saw the dead victim, perhaps—a very doubtful perhaps—shearranged the bizarre decorations, but strike the deadly blow—never!
So, I felt I had a right to keep still about the matter, for why drag thegirl into detestable prominence, and have her wrongly suspected of crime,when all I had to do was to keep silence?
Lora listened quietly,
with sundry intelligent nods of her head, and MaudMerrill was no less interested. I had great respect for the intelligenceof both these women, and listened eagerly for their comments.
“Too many suspects,” said Lora, as Kee finished his recital.
“Yes,” agreed Maud, “there’s positively nobody in the house outsidesuspicion.”
“Then we must eliminate,” said Kee.
“We can’t exactly eliminate,” Lora told him, “but we can guess who hadthe strongest motive.”
“Guess!”
“That’s all we can do. I can’t see that there are any clues that meananything. All those flowers and things were already in the room. Asclues, they all go for nothing. The murderer was not necessarily a man offantastic tastes or a child of playful tendencies, he only cut up thosetricks so we would think he was.”
“That’s right,” Kee said. “It wasn’t even specially clever. He justpicked up anything he saw about and laid it on the bed to fog things up.So what about motive? I can’t imagine any one wanting to kill Tracy foranything except a sordid reason. Money, I am sure, is the only motive.”
“Love?” I said. “Was no one else enamoured of the beautiful Mrs. Dallas,and wanted Tracy out of the way?”
“Of course, Charlie Everett adored her,” Lora said, “but he wouldn’tcommit murder to get her. And if he did, he wouldn’t choose such ahorrible, brutal method. He’d shoot his victim, not assassinate him witha hammer and nail!”
“I think that, too,” Kee declared. “To my mind, that nail businessindicates a low type of personality. A servant seems the most likely.Griscom, for choice.”
Now I knew Keeley Moore well enough to know that if he suggested Griscom,Griscom was not the man he suspected. He had a way of drawing out otherpeople, by hints and allusions, in hope of getting a side light on hisown suspect.
“If the motive was to achieve at once the legacy from the Tracy estate,then every inmate of that house is suspect. Farrell told me that Mr.Tracy’s will left a substantial bequest to each of the servants, to thesecretary and to Mr. Ames,” I told my audience.
“All right,” exclaimed Moore, “let’s begin at the top. What have we gotagainst Harper Ames?”
“His immediate need for money, his hateful, belligerent disposition, hislove for Mrs. Dallas and his unhampered opportunity,” I declared,promptly.
“I thought he was a woman hater,” cried Maud Merrill. “Why do you say hewas in love with her?”
“I may not be a detective,” I said, “but I am not entirely a nincompoop.When I saw those two people here last evening, I realized that whateverhe calls himself, he’s no woman hater where Mrs. Dallas is concerned. Headores her; in the language of the poet, he worships the ground she walkson.”
“Norris is right about that,” Keeley conceded. “I’ve seen it for sometime. And when these avowed woman haters fall for a siren, they fallhard. Yes, Ames is head over ears in love with the lady, and for thatvery reason, he’s out of the running. A man isn’t going to commit murderto win a lady’s hand. It’s too dangerous a proceeding. If Ames were notin love with her, I might suspect him.”
“But, hold on, Kee. There might be circumstances,” I said, “in which Ameslost his head, or his temper, or both, and let fly at Tracy in anungovernable fit of rage——”
“That murder wasn’t done in an ungovernable fit of rage, it was apremeditated affair. Whoever did it, came prepared with that nail and ahammer——”
“Why a hammer?” I demanded. “The nail could have been driven in with anyheavy object.”
“Such as what?”
I ruminated over the appointments of the room as I remember them, andsaid, a little lamely, “Well, one could take off his shoe to drive thenail.”
“Yes, one could,” Kee assented, “but it doesn’t sound likely——”
“The whole affair doesn’t sound likely,” I countered, “and anyway, itdoesn’t matter. Somebody did drive that nail, and what it was driven withis unimportant. As far as I can learn, they’ve found nothing conclusivein the way of fingerprints. I’m not keen on those things myself, but inNew York they would have been fingerprinting the whole crowd of us.”
“Of course, there are no available fingerprints on the nail,” Kee said,“and that’s the only thing that matters. I don’t give a fig for all thefeather dusters, flowers, oranges and such things.”
“Not even the watch in the water pitcher?” I asked.
“Well, yes, I do consider the watch in the water pitcher. In fact, Ithink that’s the key note of the whole performance.”
“You’ve got to tell us why,” I told him. “You can’t say that and leave itunexplained.”
“Indeed I can. A real detective never explains his cryptic utterances.”
“You’re not a real detective,” I declared, solemnly.
“Why not?” and he glowered at me.
“Because you look like a detective. You’re tall, and dark and hawk-eyedor hawk-nosed, or hawk-somethinged. Now, a real detective must alwayslook utterly unlike the detective of fiction, and you’re the very imageof Sherlock Holmes.”
“And I glory in it. But if you flatter yourself you’re my Watson, youmust cultivate the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.”
“I thought we were eliminating,” put in Maud. “Who have we eliminated sofar?”
“Your English is deplorable,” Kee told her, “but I can deduce yourmeaning. Well, how about eliminating Ames?”
“No,” I cried, “he’s the one not to eliminate. There are too many countsagainst him. I say, let’s begin at the other end of the line. The lesserservants.”
“Cut out Sally Bray, then,” Moore advised. “That girl never had the nerveto go a-murdering all by herself.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “Though she may have gone with somecompanion.”
“No, it isn’t plausible. As to the servants, all we can say is that theycould have had opportunity. The house servants, at any rate, could havehad a duplicate key made to the Tracy suite——”
“But that wasn’t needed. So far as we know the door wasn’t locked whenthe murderer went in. But he left it locked when he came out.”
“That’s the point of the whole thing,” Lora said, confidently. “You can’tdo this elimination you talk about, for every servant had a motive, ifyou count greed a motive, and every servant had a chance to get into theroom unnoticed. Now it all comes back to the explanation of the intruderleaving the door locked behind him. Give me a possible explanation, Kee.”
“There are but two,” he said, thoughtfully. “I am sure there’s no secretpassage, for I measured and sounded the walls thoroughly. So it’s eitherthat the criminal had some clever mechanical contrivance with which heturned that key in the door behind him, or he jumped out of the window.”
“Into the lake!” cried Lora.
“Yes, into the lake. It implies an expert diver, and it is a mostdangerous proceeding, even then. But you asked for the possibilities.”
“Is Everett or Dean an expert diver?” I asked.
“Everett is. Dean not.”
“And Everett is in love with the Dallas, too. Well, we can hardlyeliminate him, then.”
“But I refuse to suspect a lover of murder,” Kee insisted. “He mustrealize he will be suspected, if not convicted, and where would he standwith the fair one then?”
“Murderers don’t always think ahead,” I said, sagely.
“This one did. He thought far enough ahead to bring that horrible nail.We’ve no reason to think there was a nail lying about among the flowersand crackers.”
“Isn’t there a story about somebody being killed with a nail?” I asked.
“There is,” Kee replied, “it’s in Holy Writ. Jael killed Sisera, orSisera killed Jael, I forget which, but the weapon was a nail driven inthe victim’s head.”
“Yes,” I returned, “I know, but I don’t mean that story. There’sanother—by a Frenchman——”
“No,” said Maud, in her qu
iet, confident way, “it’s a Spanish story, byPedro de Alarcón. The name of it is _The Nail_. It’s a horrible tale, butthe theme is a murder by a nail driven in a man’s head.”
“Then,” and Kee shook himself, as if roused to action, “then we must lookfor a man who has read that story. Nobody would think of a nail, unlesssomething had suggested it to him. I say that eliminates all theservants, unless, maybe, that chauffeur chap, Louis. I can’t see any ofthe others reading Spanish stories, even in translation. Item one. Searchthe Tracy library for a copy of that story. Is it a whole book, Maud?”
“No. A short story. I read it in a collection of Spanish and Italianmystery tales. I have it at home, but there’s no point to it inconnection with this matter, except the nail.”
“That association means something,” Kee persisted. “When we do find themurderer, we’ll find he got his notion from that story.”
“Or from the Bible,” I said.
“Maybe. But I think more likely Maud’s story. As I remember it, theScripture narrative is not very dramatic, and so, less likely to imbueour murderer’s mind with the plan than the Spanish yarn is.”
“Granting the Spanish story, then,” I said, “can’t we eliminate theservants? They’d surely not read such literature.”
“All right, eliminate them for the moment,” Kee agreed. “We can always goback to them if need be. That leaves us, in the house, Everett, BillyDean and Ames. Help yourself.”
“Ames,” I said decidedly. “He’s the very one to read morbid, sensationalliterature.”
“But everybody reads detective stories nowadays,” Lora said. “Especiallythe grave and reverend seigneurs who wouldn’t be suspected of suchtastes.”
“This wasn’t a detective story,” Maud informed us. “It was a thriller, ascare story.”
“All the same,” I said, “and more in line with Ames’s effects thanstraight detective yarns. I’m all for Ames. He wanted money, a lot ofmoney, and Tracy wouldn’t let him have it, so, as he would not only get alarge bequest at Tracy’s death, but, for all we know, could bury inoblivion his indebtedness to Tracy, of course he wanted Tracy out of theway. Moreover, if by the same token he could get the beautiful lady, thatwas an added inducement.”
“I’m ready to admit all that,” Kee was very thoughtful now; “and I canconceive of Ames in a murderer’s rôle. But I happen to know he is nodiver. He can swim a little, but not expertly, and he can scarcely diveat all.”
“Perhaps,” I offered, “he is a master-diver, and had kept it secret forthis very reason. What do you know of his past?”
“Nothing at all. And Norris, that was clever of you. If Harper Ames camehere to commit that murder and escape by the window, it would be inkeeping with his diabolical astuteness to pretend to be inexpert atswimming.”
“We’re building up a case instead of eliminating,” I said, secretlyelated at Moore’s word of praise. “But before we go on, what about thetwo secretaries? I mean, are they omnivorous readers?”
“Mr. Everett is,” Maud volunteered. “He was here one night and we talkedabout books. We didn’t talk very seriously, but I gathered he was widelyread, and had really good taste in literature.”
“And Everett is undoubtedly in love with Mrs. Dallas,” Kee went on, “andof course, he will have a bequest, and of course, he could get out of theroom as well as anybody else, and we know somebody did, so all thingsbeing equal, why not suspect Everett instead of Ames?”
“Because of the difference in the characters of the two men,” Lora said,with emphasis. “I’m ready to grant a murderer may masquerade as an angelof light, but all the same, we have to judge our fellow men more or lessby appearances, and I’ll pick Ames for a criminal long before I’ll chooseCharlie Everett.”
“And we’re leaving out Billy Dean entirely?”
“I am,” I said. “He’s a nice, decent chap, and he’s too young for amurderer, at least, with no motive other than a bit of money. He isn’t inlove with Mrs. Dallas, is he?”
“Lord, no. He’s in love with the Remsen girl.”
“Well, then,” I said, “if that nice boy is in love with that nice girl,he’s not going to commit a crime. I say, let’s eliminate him.”
“Then,” Kee summed up, “we’ve eliminated everybody but Ames and Everett.Griscom is the only servant we could possibly suspect, and he is said tobe devoted to his master, and too, I’m told he has a tidy sum laid by, soI don’t see him driving nails into people.”
“We can’t get away from the nail and the sort of character it connotes,”I said. “I stand by Ames until he’s definitely eliminated.”
“Well, I guess we’re all agreed, then,” and Keeley rose and stretched hislong arms. “Now, I’m for a swim. Who’ll go?”
We all went, and I found that the water of a sunny cove of Deep Lake wasan ideal bathtub, and I forgot for the time being the sinister depths ofthe Sunless Sea.