The Girl at Central Part 12

Florrie Stein, bringing the food then, they were silent till she'd set it out, and when she'd drawn off to the cas.h.i.+er's desk, they started in again. They were, so to speak, looking over Hines as a suspect.

"No, Hines won't fit," said Babbitts. "The presence of the jewelry on the body eliminates him. They've dug up his record and though the place he ran wasn't to be recommended for Sunday school picnics, the man himself seems to have been fairly decent."

"It's odd about the bag-the fitted bag and the jewelry gone from the room," said Jasper.

"The police have an idea that Virginie Dupont could tell something of them."

"Theft?"

"Theft on the side."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Jones, "what's the good of complicating things? If theft was committed it was a frame-up, part of a plot."

"You believe in this idea they've got in the village that Fowler and the French woman worked together?"

"I do-to my mind the murderer's marked as plain as Cain after he was branded on the brow or wherever it was."

Then Jasper spoke up. He's a nice quiet chap, not as fresh as the others. "Let's hear what you base that a.s.sertion on."

Jones forgot his supper and twisted round sideways in his chair, looking thoughtful up at the cornice:

"As I understand it, in a murder two things are necessary-a crime and a corpse; and in a murderer one, a motive. Now we have all three-the motive especially strong. If Miss Hesketh married, her stepfather lost his home and the money he had been living on, so he tried to stop her from marrying. Sat.u.r.day night he heard that his efforts had failed. I fancy that on Sunday morning when he went for that auto drive he stopped at some village-not as yet located-and communicated with Virginie Dupont, who was in his pay. She, too, went out that morning, you may remember."

"There's a good deal of surmise about this," said Babbitts.

Jones gave him a scornful look.

"If the links in the chain were perfect Dr. Fowler'd be eating his dinner to-night in Bloomington Jail."

"How do you account for Miss Hesketh-presupposing it was she-being on the train instead of the turnpike?" said Jasper.

"A change of plans," Jones answered calmly, "also not yet satisfactorily cleared up. To continue: Sometime on Sunday the Doctor conceived the plan of ridding himself of all his cares-his troublesome stepdaughter, the disturbance of his home and his financial distress. _How_," he turned and looked solemnly at us, fate played so well into his hands I can't yet explain-the main point is that it did. He met Miss Hesketh at the Junction, either by threats, persuasion or coercion made her enter his auto and carried her up the road to the turnpike.

"And now," said Babbitts, leaning his arms on the table, "we come to her appearance in the Wayside Arbor."

"We do," Jones replied, nodding his head. "You may remember that both Hines and his servant said there were twigs and leaves on the edge of her skirt and that her boots were muddy. Traces of this were still visible in her clothes when they found her body. She _did_ get out of the automobile, but not so far from the turnpike as he said. Either he and she had some fierce quarrel and she ran from him in rage or terror, or he may have told the truth and she slipped out at the turn from the Riven Rock Road without his knowledge. Anyway she got away from him and ran for the only light she saw. There she telephoned Reddy, withholding the main facts from him, perhaps merely to save time, but cautioning him against letting anyone know of the message. That, as I see it, was a natural feminine desire to guard against gossip. When she thought Reddy was due she started out to meet him-and instead met the Doctor."

"Who'd been hanging about for a half-hour on the roadside?"

"Precisely. He killed her, concealed the body, and went home."

"Just a minute," said Yerrington-"what did he kill her with? The weapon used is a disputed point. Many think it was a farm implement. Did he go across lots to Cresset's and arm himself with a convenient spade or rake for the fatherly purpose of slaying his stepdaughter?"

But you couldn't phase Jones, he said as calm as a May morning:

"He _could_ have done that. But I don't think he did. He didn't need it.

The tool box of the car was nearer to hand. A large-sized auto wrench is a pretty formidable weapon, and a tire wrench-did you ever see one? One well-aimed blow of that would crush in the head of a negro."

"Gentlemen, the evidence is all in," said Babbitts.

"Your case might hold water," said Jasper, "if it wasn't as full of holes as a sieve. Why, you can make out as good a one for almost anybody."

"Who, for example?" Jones asked.

"Well-take Reddy."

"Jack Reddy?" I said that, sitting up suddenly and staring at them with a piece of jelly roll halfway to my mouth.

"He's as good as another," said Jasper, and then he added sort of dreamy: "I believe I could work up quite a convincing case against Reddy, allowing for a hole here and there. But our ill.u.s.trious friend here admits holes at this stage."

"Fire away," said Babbitts. "Give it to us, holes and all."

"Well-off the bat here it is. You may remember that no one saw him coming back from Maple Lane that night. There is no one, therefore, to deny that he may have had Miss Hesketh in the car with him. Instead of going back to Firehill, as he says he did, he followed his original plan of taking her by the turnpike."

"Right at the start I challenge that," said Babbitts. "She appeared at the Wayside Arbor at nine-thirty. The date in Maple Lane was for seven.

Supposing she kept it and was on time-which is a stretch of the imagination-he would have had to travel one hundred and eighteen miles in two hours and a half."

"He could have done it."

"On a black, dark night? nearly forty-eight miles an hour?"

"You forget he knew the road and was driving a high-powered racing car.

It's improbable but not impossible."

"I count that as a hole, but go on."

"Now in this hypothetical case we'll suppose that as that car flew over the miles the man and the woman in it had high words?"

"Hold on," said Jones, holding out his fork-"that's too big a hole. They were lovers eloping, not an old married couple."

"I'll explain that later. The high words inflamed and enraged the man to the point of murder and he conceived a horrible plan. As they neared the Wayside Arbor he told the woman something was wrong with the car and sent her to the place ostensibly to telephone, really to establish her presence there at a time when, had she been with him, she could hardly have got that far."

I jumped in there. I knew it was only fooling, but even so I didn't like hearing Mr. Reddy talked about that way.

"Who did he send her to telephone to, Mr. Jasper-himself?"

Babbitts laughed and jerked his head toward me.

"Listen to our little belle sounding the curfew on Jasper."

But Mr. Jasper was ready.

"He could have done that, knowing his house was empty. Hines, you remember, said she wasn't five minutes in the booth. We've only Reddy's word for that message. We don't even know if she got a connection. I telephoned out to the Corona operator Sat.u.r.day and she answered that there was no record of the message and she herself remembered nothing about it."

"But Sylvia," I said-"she told Hines she was expecting someone to come for her."

"Sylvia was eloping. Mightn't she have told Hines-who was curious and intrusive-what wasn't true?"