Wolf in Man’s Clothing

19

AND THEY COULD GET nothing else out of her. Anybody in the house, she said, could have known of the little cupboard. She gave me a long, bright look when she was told that I had found the checks and there was something in her look that actually started a kind of chill up my back. Anybody could have put the checks there, just as anybody-again she looked at me fixedly and brightly-could have taken them. Conrad’s desk was never locked. And when questioned about Conrad’s former sympathy for the German cause she said that, of course, everyone knew where his sympathies had lain.

“Had he ever been interested in the various Bund organizations?” asked Nugent.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the clipping you said you took from his desk? At the time you said you saw the box of medicine.”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“Did you read it?”

“Yes. I read it aloud. He asked me to.”

“Can you remember what it was about?”

“I told you. It concerned the arrest of some members of the Bund.”

“Their names were given, I suppose.”

She hesitated but only briefly. “No, I believe not. I really don’t remember. So much has happened since then. And it was not important.”

“What did you do with it?”

“With the clipping? Why, I-really I don’t know. My husband asked me to read it and I did. I believe I gave it to him then. Or perhaps I put it on a table. We were having coffee in the library. I don’t remember. Why are you asking me about it?”

“Who was in the room at the time?”

Her slender black eyebrows drew together. “I’m not sure that I remember that, exactly, either. My husband and I, of course. It was immediately after dinner. Mrs. Chivery was there. I suppose my brother and Peter Huber were there, too.”

“Can’t you remember definitely?”

She gave a little shrug. “That is as I remember it. I don’t believe I’d be able to swear to any one of them except, of course, my husband. But I think the other three were in the room.”

“Mrs. Brent, try to remember this. Was it your impression that anyone in the room had a special interest in hearing the clipping read?”

I could read nothing in her beautiful, delicate face. She said very promptly, “No one but my husband. And I’ve no idea why he was interested,” and looked at Nugent with a touch of silken and adroit defiance.

It did not, naturally, satisfy Nugent. He waited a moment and then said directly, “What about your brother?”

“My brother?” asked Alexia.

“It’s much better, Mrs. Brent, to answer me truthfully and as fully as you can. Much better for everybody, believe me.”

“But really…” Her voice was cool and polite; her eyebrows arched in delicate question. “But really, Lieutenant, my brother had nothing to do with the arrest of any members of any Bund. He has never had any sympathy for Germany. He is not interested in politics.”

“How old is your brother?”

Her voice was still cool, and polite. “My age, of course. Twenty-five.”

“He’s registered for the draft?”

“Certainly. I’ve forgotten his class. He can tell you.”

“You and your brother lived abroad for some time, didn’t you?”

“When we were children, yes. I don’t understand your question, Lieutenant.”

I was under a slight and I trusted erroneous impression that the Lieutenant didn’t know exactly what he was getting at either; he only kept digging in the hope of unearthing something. He said, “What of Peter Huber?”

Craig started to speak, but Alexia replied, “You know everything I know of him, Lieutenant. He’s been here about a month. He’s waiting for his call to the army.”

“Let me see. According to his story he went to school in Southern California.”

“I believe so,” said Alexia. “Didn’t you check his statements? I understood that was part of your job.”

“You are quite right,” said Nugent, unruffled. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his home. I mean the name of the town. What was it, Brent?”

“Pete’s home?” said Craig. “I don’t know. I know where he went to school. I think he lived somewhere near Monterey. I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

“Do you remember his most recent address?” asked Nugent.

“Well, he had to come from somewhere,” said Craig. “I think he said Hollywood. He was trying to get a job in the movies. I do remember that. I suppose a Hollywood address is the logical surmise in that case. Besides that’s where he knew Bill Sheridan.”

“Bill Sheridan!” said Nugent. “Who’s he?”

“Fellow Pete knows. And I know. Went to school with Pete; that is, university. He-Bill, I mean-was in my class at prep school. Yes, I’m sure Pete came from Hollywood here.”

“Is that your impression, Mrs. Brent?”

“Really,” said Alexia. “If you’ve forgotten, I’d suggest your asking him. Peter is nothing to me, you know. I never saw him before Conrad met him at the inn, in the village, and brought him here.”

“That was about a month ago.”

“Yes,” said Alexia. “Lieutenant, why are you asking me about Peter? I was under an impression that you had not omitted him in your general inquiry. I can’t confirm anything about him, if that is what you want.”

Nugent got out a little black notebook and turned a few pages. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, you were both right. It was a Hollywood address he gave us.” I was sure somehow, in spite of his quiet voice that he had remembered all along and thus had only been testing Craig and Alexia-but testing them for what (aside from their knowledge of Peter and of Nicky) I didn’t know. He said, “Yes, of course, how could I have forgotten! And Nicky”-he turned another leaf. “Nicholas Senour, brother-in-law to deceased. M-m-m. Apartment on East Fifty-sixth street in New York. Lives mainly at Brent home. Traveled extensively in Europe as a child; last trip made in…” He squinted hard at the writing, although from where I stood it looked perfectly neat and legible and said, “Can’t make this out. When was his last trip abroad, Mrs. Brent, and where did he go?”

“It was in 1937,” said Alexia, “and he went to Italy.”

“I don’t seem to have his occupation down here either. What does he do for a living?”

Alexia bit her full underlip. “He doesn’t do anything,” she said.

“Oh. You inherited money, I presume. You and your brother.”

She hesitated and then said, “A little. Not much.”

“I see.” He closed the book suddenly and leaned forward. “Mrs. Brent, what about those checks made out to your brother? Were they for any specific service? Please answer.”

She waited a few seconds, her eyes shadowed again by her dark eyelashes, then she looked up. “Lieutenant, that has nothing to do with my husband’s death, or with the murder of Dr. Chivery. Nicky needed some money, of course; he’s young and has no source of income. My husband knew that it would please me if he saw to it that Nicky had a little money, that’s all.”

“And Nicky lives here, mainly?”

“Yes. Since my marriage, at any rate. Before that we shared his apartment in New York.”

“So you know most of his friends?”

“Why, I-yes, I should think so,” said Alexia.

“Did he know Peter Huber?”

“No, of course not. None of us knew him.”

“Were any of your friends at all interested in politics?”

“Why, I-really, I don’t remember.” There was a tinge of uncertainty in her voice, yet it was nothing that seemed exactly significant. It was more as if she could not discover the trend of Nugent’s questions.

If so, she was soon enlightened however. For Nugent leaned forward, his lean face suddenly as sharp as a hatchet. “Who is Frederic Miller?” he asked again, abruptly.

But he got the same answer. “I don’t know,” said Alexia. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

And again looked white and intent.

In the end, Nugent seemed to accept her denial. He said. “Try to think back, Mrs. Brent; try to remember.” And added, “You told me that you had not seen Drue Cable since last night when you saw her going from this room to her own room. You are sure you didn’t see her at any later time?”'

“Perfectly sure,” said Alexia.

“You don’t know where she is?”

“Certainly not. She wouldn’t have taken me into her confidence before she escaped, I assure you.”

“Did you send her a message of any sort?”

“No,” said Alexia, and rose. “If that is all, Lieutenant…”

He nodded. “Send Mrs. Chivery in here, will you please?”

Alexia went away rather abruptly. She looked a little shaken, it seemed to me, but by no means ready to break down and tell all. If, that is, there was anything for her to tell. It was entirely possible that the habitually secretive look in her small, beautiful face was merely a look and nothing else. Still, it seemed to me that she must have known something of the Frederic Miller checks. After all, they had been found in the cupboard in her own room. That was not, however, proof and I realized it.

Maud must have been in the hall, for Alexia had scarcely gone when Maud appeared silently in the doorway and, at Nugent’s gesture, came in. She was preceded by a wave of violet sachet; her taffeta petticoat rustled sibilantly and her little dark eyes had brown pockets around them.

“May I ask a few more questions, Mrs. Chivery?” began Nugent and, as she gave a brief, birdlike little nod, he asked her pointblank, as he had asked Alexia, if she knew anything of a man named Frederic Miller. And when she thought for a moment, fixing her bright eyes upon him and tilting her black pompadour to one side, and then finally said that she didn’t, he told her of the checks and showed them to her.

She looked at them for a long time and very thoughtfully; studying the dates, the endorsements, the cancellations. She looked at them indeed for so long a time and with such an intent and thoughtful expression in her whitely powdered face that I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was watching and listening intently for her reply. And so were Nugent and Craig. I glanced at them and they were watching her as intently as she was examining the checks. But when she looked up she said flatly, “No, I don’t know anything about them.”

Nugent said slowly, “Mrs. Chivery, is there anything those checks, or anything about those checks, reminded you of? Just now when you first saw them?”

“N-no,” she said, and handed him the checks.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. That is…” she hesitated. And then said with a kind of plunge, “That is, for a moment I thought-but I was quite mistaken.”

“What did you think?” said Nugent very gently.

“I was mistaken,” said Maud. “The dates are wrong.”

“Wrong for what?” asked Nugent.

“Wrong for-well,” said Maud again with a kind of burst, “wrong for the kind of investment I thought he might have been making.”

Nugent leaned back in his chair. “You’d better tell me exactly what you mean, Mrs. Chivery.”

“But it-it has nothing to do with the murder. I can’t tell you. I…”

“What investment?” said Nugent. And I remembered Maud’s fuzzy phrases about Spain and jewels and said suddenly, surprising myself, “Spanish jewels?”

At which she shot me a dark, intent look. And said simply, “Yes.”

Which further surprised me.

And before anyone could question or say anything she got up. “I can’t tell you the whole story,” she said. “But I do know that I was approached about an investment, and I believe that Conrad might have been approached, too. But these dates are all wrong. The Spanish jewels-well, never mind that…”

Nugent got up, too. Craig watched intently, yet with no expression whatever in his face. Nugent said, “You’ll have to explain what you mean, Mrs. Chivery. At once.”

“No,” said Maud. “I don’t have to. That’s enough. I don’t know anything about your Frederic Miller checks. Have you heard from the girl?”

“Miss Cable? No,” said Nugent, and looked quickly at Craig and said, “That is, not yet.”

Maud said, “Look here, Lieutenant. I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure that I’ve been on the right side of the-of this affair. I’ve thought from the beginning that the girl, Drue Cable, killed Conrad. But somehow I-well, I don’t think she killed Claud. I don’t know what to do. That is, I have no knowledge that is a clue. I don’t know who killed Conrad or who killed Claud. The only thing that I know of and haven’t wanted to tell you is the matter of the investment I spoke of just now. But I did not make the investment; obviously these checks were not connected with that, either. I’ll tell you all about that, if you want to know. I’ll tell you tomorrow. But not…”

“Why tomorrow?”

“No reason,” said Maud after a moment. “I-no reason. You’ll have to believe me, for I”-she thought for another second or two and then said firmly, “I merely prefer it that way. And it really has nothing to do with the murder of Conrad or the murder of Claud. And it has nothing to do with Drue’s disappearance.” Her lips set tightly together.

And Nugent could not shake her. She merely shook her head obstinately with its high black pompadour and refused to tell him, even when he brought all the force of law and argument against her.

Craig said wearily, “You can’t withhold information, you know, Maud.”

And Maud said, “Can’t I?” And did.

So in the end, only to save time, I imagine, Nugent let the thing rest and asked her what she knew of Drue’s disappearance, and she said and insisted that she knew nothing and had not seen or talked to Drue for at least twenty-four hours.

Finally they let her go. Nugent looked baffled and Craig angry.

“There are points,” said Nugent, “to the earlier forms of medieval torture.”

Craig said slowly, “But Maud is honest, as a rule. And I think Claud’s death has changed her view of the whole thing. I think what she was trying to say was that now she was on the side of-of…”

“Law and order,” suggested Nugent.

“Yes. In a sense.”

“Well, she’s not doing a very good job of cooperating. Whose Spanish jewels? And where are they?”

“Probably in Spain,” said Craig. “Maud was made for a sucker’s list. The point is to find Drue. All these other things can wait, can’t they?”

“Unless they can be made to point the way to Drue,” said Nugent. “I’ll do what I can with these checks.”

“For God’s sake, do it quickly,” said Craig with a kind of groan.

It was, I believe, just then that the trooper who’d been on guard in the hall the night before came to Nugent. I hadn’t realized until I saw him in the direct gray light from the windows how young he was. A boy, really, bony and tall with a thin, angular face which wore just then a look of desperation. But he had the courage to tell Nugent the truth-and then stand there biting his lip, but with his young eyes direct, waiting what came. I don’t know what his punishment was; even then I felt sorry for him. But the point was that Anna had gone to Drue’s room about eleven (to turn down the beds, she’d told the boy who’d believed her); she’d stayed with Drue, talking, for a while. Then she’d gone away but later-very much later, perhaps two in the morning-had brought him some coffee. He drank it, of course; and presently remembered sitting in a chair which faced Drue’s door.

And that was all he’d remembered until he awoke, with a queer taste in his mouth, about six in the morning.

Nobody knew what Anna had put in the coffee; until I went and looked in my little instrument bag and some sedative I’d had-harmless in itself-wasn’t there.

And when they sent for Anna, she was gone, too.

They found then-something after noon it was, I think-the bloodstained, yellow string glove-the mate to the one found near Claud Chivery; it was hidden under her flat, narrow little mattress.

But they didn’t find Anna.

Oddly enough no one had missed her-oddly, but still comprehensibly. She had been ill and hysterical the day before; Beevens had told her to take that day off, to stay in her room and rest; Gertrude was to do Anna’s work for her. In searching for Drue they had not (consequently informed of Anna’s illness by Gertrude) entered Anna’s room. It was an oversight, which only went to prove that such things (homely, trivial, perfectly understandable things like that) do happen and do complicate any police inquiry.

Nugent was furious and so were the troopers responsible for the omission, especially when they found the glove, which certainly ought to prove something and didn’t, except it pointed suspicion toward Anna in a definite, material way that all my own odd encounters with the maid had never suggested.

Certainly, however, Anna’s disappearance completed our demoralization.

Craig said, “They went together. They must have gone together. So Drue’s-not alone…” and something like hope quickened in his eyes.

But I was afraid. So I told Nugent in detail all I knew of Anna-footsteps running from the meadow in the dusk-a black eye-an impression that someone was in her room with her and that she was frightened.

It was too little, however, and too tenuous a story.

Nugent looked at the small, black notebook again. “We’ve questioned the servants,” he said, “over and over. Anna was nervous but she seemed to know nothing…” he stopped, frowning, and then read aloud: “William Fanshawe Beevens-British birth, age fifty-four; Gertrude Schieffel, American birth. Mrs. Lydia Deithaler-that’s the cook; here we are-Anna Haub, German birth, age thirty-six, came to America from Bavaria fourteen years ago, in employ of Conrad Brent since 1929, no former police record. That’s all.” His lean dark face was so concentrated with thought it made me think again of a dark, sharp hatchet with glowing green eyes-which I realize however would be more or less in the nature of a phenomenon. “No former police record. No suspicious facts. She lived a quiet, hard-working life, apparently perfectly honest and devoted to the Brent family. Devoted…” he said thoughtfully, and looked at Craig who shook his head.

“I don’t think she had any interest whatever in Germany or in the Bund. She must have left some kind of family in Germany-but if so I can’t remember ever hearing of any of them. No, I don’t think Anna would be likely to know anything of the Frederic Miller checks. Even if our surmise should turn out to be the answer, and Frederic Miller actually was somebody interested in the Bund. Anna wasn’t smart enough, in just that way, I mean. She was shrewd but not-not scheming. Not clever.”

“What do you think has happened to her?”

“God knows,” said Craig. “If they’re together though, she and Drue, there’s some hope…”

I had let him get up again and sit in a chair, wrapped in a long camel’s hair dressing-gown; he put his face then in his hands with a kind of desperate gesture.

It was after he knew about Anna that he redoubled his efforts to do something that, he was convinced, only he could do.

Twice already, that day (when I was out of the room) he’d tried to walk-once getting as far as the linen room again and the second time halfway down the stairs where he was found sitting, dizzily clinging to the bannisters, by one of the troopers and brought back.

The third time, late in the afternoon, with still no news, he sent me on a pretext to the kitchen, and this time he got as far as trousers and a sweater, and the fireplace bench of the lower hall. I found him there myself grimly upright, clinging to the bench with his eyes shut as if the room was going around him.

Peter helped me get him back to his room. And it was then that we had our long and curiously illuminating, and at the same time curiously baffling talk. It was long, that is, in content, not in time. All of us, I know, were strongly aware of the passage of time. It was growing dusk in the room, I remember, although it was still light outside with the clear, cold light of a late winter’s afternoon. And Drue’s disappearance was still unexplained.

Peter eased Craig down into a chair and then stood there looking rather ruefully down at him.

“You’d better go back to bed,” I said, but Craig shook his head obstinately.

“Well, then,” said Peter, “let me be your leg man. Just tell me whatever you want me to do and I’ll do it. If I can.”

“Find Drue, of course,” said Craig, his head back against the cushion and his face white. I got some spirits of ammonia and in my agitation held the bottle too close to his nose. He sat up abruptly, gasping, and Peter said soberly, “I wish I could. I’ve helped look, you know. She’s not in the house. She’s not in the barns or the greenhouse. I looked myself and the police looked, too, of course. My opinion is, Craig, that she went away of her own will. Voluntarily. She must have gone like that because otherwise she would have been heard in the house. Even if the guard was drugged he would have roused, I should think, if she’d screamed or made some kind of struggle. I would have heard it. All of us would have heard it. She went of her own will. I feel sure of that.”

“But what happened afterward?” said Craig. “Why did she go like that? Why is Anna with her?”

“Are you sure that Anna went with her?” asked Peter. “Or do we just feel that they must be together because they are both gone?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” said Craig, and pushed away the bottle of ammonia. “For God’s sake, get that thing out of the way! If Chivery was murdered because he knew too much of my father’s death, then maybe Drue knew the same thing. Maybe she…” He stopped as if unable to say it. And Peter said quickly, “Craig, if anything had happened to her, they’d have found-well, found her by now.”

“Then why doesn’t she telephone? Why doesn’t she let me know where she is? Why doesn’t she…” Craig stopped again and put his hand over his face.

I said, “Why didn’t you tell her how you felt about her? Then she wouldn’t have gone away without telling you.”

“She doesn’t love me,” said Craig from behind the hand that shaded his eyes. “It’s Nicky she was in love with. She feels sorry for me now; and she feels it her duty to take care of me.”

I started to expostulate and then stopped. What was the use! The more desperately I worked to get the two blind young idiots together the farther they swung apart. Everything, it seemed to me, combined to separate them. Even though they were actually in the same house, Drue had been made to stay in her room, and Craig couldn’t move ten feet under his own steam, so to speak, without collapsing. And now they were in truth separated and there was no way of telling where Drue was, nor why (if Peter was right and she had gone of her own volition) she had gone. I felt as Craig did, however; if she could have telephoned to me I was sure she would have done so.

It didn’t lift my spirits to reflect on that. I said waspishly to Craig, “You ought to have told her you wanted her to stay. Instead, you asked Alexia to marry you.”

Peter lifted his eyebrows. “I thought it was Drue you liked,” he said.

“Alexia said no,” said Craig after a pause.

“Oh,” said Peter.

“Do you want Alexia to marry you?” I asked directly, and Craig said after another pause, “No.”

“Good God,” said Peter. “What’s the idea?”

“I wanted to see if she would,” said Craig simply.

Which got me nowhere. I was staring at Craig in furious exasperation, and Peter was staring rather blankly at him, too, and Craig just sat there with his hand over his eyes when someone knocked and came in and it was Nugent.

“I got a report on the Frederic Miller checks,” he said abruptly. “Do you want to hear?”

Did we want to hear! Peter’s rather large ears stretched another fraction of an inch and Craig snapped, “Go on. What’d you find out?”

“Frederic Miller,” said Nugent, “was a member of the New Jersey Bund. He lived in Newark at least for a time. He appears to have lived in New York, too. Sometime during the fall of 1938 he disappeared. Probably got wind of the fact that the activities of the Bund members were being watched pretty closely by the F.B.I. At any rate he disappeared and covered his tracks pretty thoroughly. The checks however were credited to his account at the Newark bank-the bank whose stamp appears on the back of one of the checks. The account was closed before he left the country, which is what they believe he did. That’s as far as they could tell me at a moment’s notice. They will investigate further.”

Craig said quickly, “Were there any pictures of Miller?”

“I asked that, too,” said Nugent. “No. But they said they’d be able to find somebody who could identify him.”

“Then Mr. Brent was helping the Bund,” said Peter.

“Presumably. Unless Miller used the money himself. However, that end of it comes under the jurisdiction of the F.B.I. They’ll run the thing down if anybody can. As a matter of fact, this angle interests them in the whole case and I don’t mind telling you it’ll be a help. The trouble is it’ll take time.”

“But don’t they know anything else about Frederic Miller?” asked Craig.

“No,” said Nugent. “He was just one of the Bund; all of the ringleaders were kept under pretty close scrutiny. They knew of him mainly through the records. They didn’t know whether he was young or old; born in Germany or in America; anything in fact about him except what I’ve told you. The point is that it could have been an assumed name.”

“Frederic Miller,” said Craig thoughtfully. “The trouble is too that there’s nobody around here who could be Frederic Miller.”

“And if there were,” said Peter, “why should he murder Mr. Brent? And Dr. Chivery?”

“The checks bring him into it,” said Nugent. “If I knew how, the case might be ended here and now. And again,” he added, “it might not be. But if it was an assumed name it could be anyone. You, Brent. Or you, Huber. Or Nicky. Or even a woman.

“It’s not me,” said Craig, and Peter said, “Gosh,” in a heartfelt manner. And Nugent said, “It might even be you, Miss Keate.”

“Well, it isn’t,” I snapped. “You can check back over my whole history if you want to.”

“Thank you,” said Nugent coolly. “I have.”

“But it couldn’t be a woman,” cried Peter, looking a little stunned.

“Remember,” said Nugent, “there’s only the name and the checks to go on. Women have managed to assume a man’s name before now. As to that, it has often struck me that Mrs. Brent and her brother could easily exchange identities. Especially considering the way she wears her hair.”

There was another silence and then Peter said again in a rather stunned way, “Gosh,” and stared at Nugent as if he’d pulled a rattlesnake out of his hat. And Craig said wearily, “But what of Drue, Lieutenant? All the rest of this will take time. You may be on the right track and you may be on the wrong track. Certainly there’s nobody around here whose whole past isn’t known.”

“I’ve checked on everybody,” said Nugent. “Insofar as I could. But Frederic Miller could have had a quiet and infrequent existence in name only, so to speak, for some time. However, there’s another thing that has just come out; nothing to do with the checks. The gloves that were found, one beside Chivery and the other in Anna’s room, were sold to your father. He bought them at the little shop in the village the day of the attack upon you, Brent.”

“Oh,” said Craig. And looked at Nugent. And said suddenly, “I suppose you want me to tell you why he shot me.”