The Deep Lake Mystery
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Then Louis waxed confidential and declared that Mr. Ames and Mr. Tracy were deadly enemies.
I thought the man was exaggerating, and that he had some grudge of his own against Ames. But Hart listened avidly to the chauffeur’s arraignment, and I was forced to the conclusion that Louis knew a lot.
Yet it was all hints and innuendoes. He stated that the two men were continually quarrelling. Asked what about, he replied “Money matters.”
“What sort of money matters?” Hart asked him.
“Stocks and bonds and mortgages. I think Mr. Ames owed Mr. Tracy a great deal of money and he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay it, and so they wrangled over it.”
“There was no quarrelling on other subjects?”
“No, sir, except now and then about Mrs. Dallas.”
“And what about her?”
“Well, Mr. Ames didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry her.”
“Did Mr. Ames favour the lady himself?”
“Oh, no, sir. He’s a woman hater. Or at least he says so. No, but he didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry anybody for fear he might cut him, Mr. Ames, out of his will.”
“How do you know all these things?”
“Well, I drive the car, you see, and they talk these matters over, and I can’t help hearing them. They make no bones of it, they talk right out. I never repeat anything I hear, in an ordinary way, but as you ask me, sir – ”
“Yes, Louis, tell all you know. So Mr. Ames would suffer financially if Mr. Tracy married?”
“I don’t know that, sir, but I know he thought he would. And I suppose he knew.”
“It seems to me,” Farrell said, “we ought to know the terms of Mr. Tracy’s will as it might help us to get at the truth.”
“We can’t do that at the moment,” Hart said, “and anyway, this is merely a preliminary inquiry to get the main facts of the situation.”
But the other servants had no more information to impart than those hitherto questioned. A chambermaid, one Sally Bray, convinced us that all the queer decorations spread on the bed had been already in the room and were, therefore, not brought in by the murderer.
The red feather duster belonged in a small cupboard that held polishing cloths and dusters. The larkspur flowers had been in a vase on a side table, and the whole bunch had been removed from the vase and laid around the dead man. The orange and crackers had been on a plate on the bedside table, but where the plate was, Sally had no idea. The crucifix was Mr. Tracy’s property and belonged on a small hook above the head of his bed.
“And the scarf,” suggested Hart. “The red chiffon scarf, where did that come from?”
Sally blushed and looked down, but finally being urged to tell, said that she knew it to be a scarf belonging to Mrs. Dallas, and the lady had left it there one evening not long ago, when she had been there to dinner.
“Why had it not been returned to her?” Hart wanted to know.
“Because Mr. Tracy took a notion to it. It was a sort of keepsake of the lady, sir, and, too, Mr. Tracy was that fond of beautiful things. Any pretty piece of silk or brocade would please him tremenjous.”
“Then, whoever arranged all those decorations round him knew of his love for beautiful things, and that would explain the flowers and the scarf. Is there anything missing from his room, Sally?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve not been allowed in there this morning.”
“Well, go up there now. Tell the guard he’s to let you in. Here’s the key.”
“Oh, sir, I – I daren’t! Don’t make me go in there!”
The girl shivered with real fear, but Hart had to know.
“You must go,” he said, not unkindly. “Get Griscom to go with you, or Mrs. Fenn, if you like. But it is important for me to know if anything has been taken away that you know of. I don’t mean papers or letters from his desk. I mean any of his appointments or small belongings.”
The girl went off, still shuddering, and Hart finished up the rest of the servants in short order.
Next he interviewed Charlie Everett. I had taken a fancy to Everett, and somehow, from the way Kee looked at him, I thought he liked him, too.
He was not a distinguished-looking man, but he seemed a well-balanced sort, and his eyes were alert and showed a sense of humour. Not that the occasion called for humour, but you can always tell by a man’s eyes if he has that desirable trait.
Very quiet and self-possessed was Everett, his manner polite but a little detached. He was quite ready to answer questions but he gave only the answer, no additional information.
Yes, he said, he had spent an hour or so with Mr. Tracy the night before. They had played a game of billiards and had then sat for a short time over a cigar and a whisky and soda. Then, perhaps about ten o’clock, he had said good night to his employer and had gone to his own room. No, he could form no idea whatever as to who could have killed Sampson Tracy, or how he could have got into the room.
“That is,” he amended his speech, “he could get in easy enough, but I don’t see how he could get out and leave the door locked behind him.”
“It is one of those cases,” Hart said, a little sententiously, “where there has been a murder committed in a sealed room.”
Keeley Moore spoke up then.
“A murder cannot be committed in a sealed room,” he said, “unless the murderer stays there. If the murderer left the room, the room was not a sealed room.”
“How did he get out?” demanded Hart.
“That we have yet to learn. But he did get out, not through the door to the hall. Remains the possibility of a secret passage and the windows.”
“I’m sure there is no secret passage,” Everett said, with an unusual burst of unasked information. “I’ve been here three years and if there was such a thing I’m sure I’d know of it.”
“You might and you might not,” said Moore, looking at him. “If Mr. Tracy wanted a private entrance to his suite for any reason, he would have had it built and kept the matter quiet.”
“Not Sampson Tracy,” exclaimed Everett. “He was not a secretive man. I think I may say I knew all about his affairs, both business matters and private dealings, and he trusted me absolutely.”
“Even so,” Moore told him. “But in the lives of most men there is some secret, something that they don’t talk over with anybody.”
“Not Mr. Tracy,” Everett reiterated. “Even his engagement to Mrs. Dallas was freely talked over with me, both before it occurred and since. I know all about his habits and his fads and whims. And in no case was there ever an occasion for a secret passage to or from his rooms.”
“Yet it may be there,” Kee insisted. “But if none can be found, then the murderer either escaped by the windows or – ”
“Or what?” asked Hart.
“Or he had a steel wire contraption to turn the key from the outside. But this I don’t think likely, for the door has a rather complicated lock, and is far from being an easy thing to manipulate.”
“You know the terms of his will, then?” the Coroner inquired.
“Oh, yes,” Everett said. “At present his niece, Miss Remsen, is his principal heir. There are many bequests to friends and to servants, but the bulk of the estate goes to Miss Remsen. Mr. Tracy knew that his marriage would invalidate this will, which was why he had not changed it. He said that after his wedding with Mrs. Dallas, he would revise the will to suite his changed estate.”
“Then, under his existing will, Mrs. Dallas has no legacy?”
“Not unless Mr. Tracy made a change without telling me. He may have done that, but I think it very unlikely.”
“You know of no one then, who had sufficient enmity toward Mr. Tracy to desire his death?”
“Absolutely no one. So far as I am aware, he hadn’t an acquaintance in the world who was anything but friendly toward him.”
Everett was dismissed and Billy Dean was called in.
He was a pleasant-faced chap of twenty-three or thereabouts. His work was far from being as important as Everett’s. In fact he was really a high-class stenographer and office boy.
He was good looking with big brown eyes and a curly mop of brown hair. He too, scoffed at the idea of a secret passage in the house.
“Pleasure Dome has all the modern improvements,” he said, “but nothing like that. If there was such a thing, I’d have been through it in no time. I can ferret out anything queer of that sort by instinct, and there’s nothing doing. There’s no way in and out of Mr. Tracy’s suite but by that one hall door. I know that. And it has a special lock. He had that put on about six months ago.”
“Why? Was he afraid of intruders?”
“Don’t think so. But there had been some robberies down in the village and he said it was as well to be on the safe side.”
“Then, Mr. Dean, in your opinion, how did the man who killed Mr. Tracy get out of his rooms?”
“That’s where you get me. I’m positively kerflummixed. I can’t see anybody twisting that peculiar key with a bit of wire. Though that’s easier to swallow than to imagine any one jumping out of the window.”
“Why? The windows are not so very high.”
“No. But the lake there is mighty deep and dangerous.”
“Why specially dangerous?”
“Because there are swirling undercurrents, you see, it’s almost like a caldron. That Sunless Sea, as Mr. Tracy named it, is in a cove and the winds make the water eddy about, and – well, I’m a pretty fair diver, but I wouldn’t dive out of a second story window into that cove!”
“Then, we have to look for either a clever mechanician or an expert diver,” said Keeley Moore. “How about the chauffeur?”
“He’s an expert mechanician all right, but he wouldn’t harm a hair of Mr. Tracy’s head. He loved him, as, indeed, we all did. Nobody could help loving that man. He was always genial, courteous and kindly to everybody.”
“And his niece, Miss Remsen?” asked the Coroner. “She, too, is gentle and lovely?”
Young Dean blushed fiery red.
“Yes, she is,” was all he said, but no clairvoyance was needed to read his thoughts of her.
“Is she here?” asked Moore, knowing we had seen her arrive.
“Yes,” Billy Dean said. “We telephoned her so soon as we knew what had happened, and she came right over.”
“You may go now,” said the Coroner, “and please send Miss Remsen in here.”
CHAPTER V
THE LADY OF THE LAKE
“And so,” I thought to myself, “I shall see again the Lady of the Lake.”
As Alma Remsen entered the room, I realized the aptness of Kee’s term, high-handed. Without any effect of strong-mindedness, the girl showed in face and demeanour a certain self-reliance, an air of determination, that made even a casual observer feel sure she could hold her own against all comers.
Yet she was a gentle sort. Slender, of medium height, with appealing brown eyes, she nodded a sort of greeting that included us all, and addressed herself to the coroner.
“You sent for me, Doctor Hart?” she said, in a low, musical voice.
“Yes, Miss Remsen. Will you answer a few direct questions?”
“Certainly. To the best of my ability.”
“First of all, then, when did you last see your uncle alive?”
“I was over here day before yesterday, Tuesday, that would be. I have not been here since, until this morning.”
My heart almost stopped beating. I had seen her come in her canoe – but stay, that was at one-thirty or thereabouts. Perhaps she salved her conscience for the lie by telling herself that was this morning.
“You mean, when you came over here perhaps half an hour ago?”
“Yes.” Alma looked at him in some surprise. “What else could I mean?”
A finished actress, surely. I was amazed at her coolness and her pretty air of inquiry.
“Who summoned you?”
“Mrs. Fenn. She had been asked to do so by Mr. Ames.”
“What was her message?”
“That Uncle Sampson had died of apoplexy and I’d better come right over.”
“So you came?”
“Yes, as soon as I could get here.”
“Have you seen – er – Mr. Tracy?”
“No; Mr. Ames advised against it.”
“Well, Miss Remsen, I think we want no information from you, except a formal statement of your relationship to the dead man and your standing with him.”
“Standing?”
“Yes. Were you good friends?”
“The best. I loved Uncle Sampson and he loved me, I know. I am his only living relative, except some distant cousins. I am the daughter of his sister, of whom he was very fond.”
The girl was a bit of an enigma. She seemed straightforward and sincere, yet I was somehow conscious of a reservation in her talk, a glibness of speech that carried the idea of a prearranged story.
Why I should mistrust her I couldn’t say, at first. Then I remembered that I had seen her canoeing over to Pleasure Dome in the night, and now she was saying she had not done so.
“Are you his heiress?” The question came sharply.
“So far as I know,” she replied with perfect equanimity. “My uncle has told me that his will leaves the bulk of his estate to me, but he also told me that when he married Mrs. Dallas, he would revise that will, and make different arrangements.”
“Did you resent this?”
“Not at all. I knew my uncle would leave me a proper portion of his wealth, and that as long as he lived he would take care of his sister’s child.”
“You are an only child of your parents?”
“I had a twin sister. She died fourteen years ago.”
“And she is buried on this estate?”
“Her grave is in a small cemetery which also contains the graves of my parents and five or six other relatives of my uncle’s family.”
“How did it come about that the cemetery is on the grounds of the estate? It is, I believe, a New England custom.”
“It was my mother’s wish. She was devoted to the little girl who died and wanted to have the grave where she could visit it often. My uncle humoured her and also had the remains of my father sent here to be buried beside the child. Then, when my mother died, about a year ago, naturally she was buried there, too.”
“I see. What did your sister die of?”
“Scarlet fever. There was an epidemic of it. We both had it, but I pulled through, though it left me with a slight deafness in one ear.”
“Then, after your mother’s death, you went to live by yourself on the island. Why did you do this?”
“Because my uncle was to marry Mrs. Dallas.”
“And you don’t like Mrs. Dallas?”
“I don’t dislike her at all, but I am not of an easy-going disposition. I felt sure there would be clashes, and I told uncle I’d rather live by myself. He understood and agreed. So after some looking about, we decided on the island of Whistling Reeds as the most attractive site for a home.”
“And he built a house for you there?”
“Oh, no, the house was already there. He bought the whole island, house and all.”
“You like it as a home?”
“I love it. I am happier there than I could be anywhere else.”
“Are you not lonely?”
“No more than I would be anywhere. I have capable and devoted servants, and I have tennis courts and an archery field and I have many boats and can get any place I wish to go in them. No, I am not so lonely as I sometimes was here in this great house. Of course, since my mother’s death, I haven’t gone much in society but I am thinking of going out more in the future.”
Keeley Moore listened to the girl with the deepest interest. I wondered what he would say if he knew what I knew of her midnight canoe trip!
But I vowed to myself then and there that I should never tell of that. I knew I might be doing wrong, withholding such an important bit of information, but I was determined to keep my secret.
I tried to make myself think it was some other girl I had seen, but the alert figure before me and the white costume said plainly that I was making no mistake in recognizing the girl of the canoe.
From beneath her little white felt hat strayed a few golden curls, and I well remembered the bare head that had looked silvery in the moonlight.
I said to myself, by way of placating my conscience, that when the time came I would tell Kee about it, but I certainly did not propose to give the Coroner a chance to suspect this lovely girl of crime.
Apparently, the Coroner had no slightest suspicion of Alma, but you can’t tell. He may have been drawing her out in order to prove her complete innocence or he may have felt that she had motive and must be closely questioned.
“Were you at home last evening?” Hart said, in a casual tone.
“Yes, I was.”
“You didn’t go out all the evening or night?”
“No. I didn’t leave the island.”
“Whew!” I exclaimed to myself, “it’s lucky she doesn’t know that I know!”
I gazed at her in admiration. I didn’t, I couldn’t think that she had killed her uncle, but knowing, as I did, that she had visited Pleasure Dome, I could only think that she had come on some secret errand.
“Maybe,” I puzzled over it, “she came to see her uncle on some private business, and saw the murderer at his work. Maybe she knew the criminal, and is shielding him.”
For I had already made up my mind that some one in the house had killed Sampson Tracy. I didn’t believe in any burglar or intruder. I thought a member of the family or household had done the deed, and, presumably, for the sake of inheritance. I had heard there were large bequests to the servants in Tracy’s will, and there were several men to suspect.
I longed for a talk alone with Kee, but I saw this could not occur very soon.
“How did you occupy your evening?” pursued Hart, and I listened eagerly for the answer.
“I had an interesting book I was reading and after dinner I sat in my living room with the book until I finished the story. Then I played on the piano a little, as I often do in the evening, and about half-past ten I went to bed.”
All of this was stated in a calm, even voice, and with the most clear and unflinching gaze of the brown eyes.
I realized then what beautiful eyes they were. Deep brown, with long, curling black lashes, and an expression of wistful appeal that would go straight to any man’s heart.
Once for all, I was committed to the cause of Alma Remsen, and never, to Kee Moore or to anybody else, would I divulge any word that might make trouble for her.
I wasn’t exactly in love with the girl then, or if I was I didn’t know it. But I felt like a guardian toward her, and surely my first duty was to guard the secret of her canoe trip that night.
“You come over here often?” Moore asked, in his pleasant way, and she replied without hesitation.
“Oh, yes, I come over in my canoe or my motor boat nearly every day. Uncle gives me vegetables and fruit from the garden, and flowers, too.”
“You say you haven’t seen your uncle since his death,” Kee went on. “Have you been told of the peculiar details of his deathbed?”
“Yes,” Alma said, her brown eyes clouding with perplexity. “But I can’t understand the meaning of such conditions. Who do you suppose would do such absurd things?”
“Doctor Rogers thinks it was the work of some small girl – ”
“Ridiculous!” cried Alma. “Does he think a small girl killed my uncle?”
“No, apparently the deed was done by a strong man. But he thinks the flowers and those things were put where they were found by some mischievous child. Do you know of any ten- or twelve-year-old girl near by?”
“No, I don’t,” and she looked about wonderingly. “Of course, there are lots of them in the village, but I know of none among the servants’ families or in the neighbourhood at all. I don’t agree with Doctor Rogers. It’s too fantastic to think of a child coming along here at that time of night and getting into the house – Oh, the very idea is ridiculous.”
“I agree to that,” said Hart. “But how can we explain the feather duster and the food and all that?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Alma declared, “but any man who was diabolically minded enough to drive a nail into the head of a sleeping victim would have a distorted brain, and might have done all those queer things. But cannot you detectives and policemen find out the truth?”
Her tone was appealing, she seemed to be asking their help, and I marvelled afresh at her poise and calm.
“You and Mrs. Dallas are friendly?” Coroner Hart broke out, abruptly.
“Oh, yes. We are not intimates, she is older than I am. But we have never had anything but the pleasantest of interviews.”
“You are friendly with Mr. Ames?”
“In a general way, yes. He too, is so much older than I am that I have never given him a thought save as a friend of my uncle’s. I don’t know Mr. Ames very well, but I’ve certainly no unfriendly feelings toward him.”
I wondered at myself. Why did I so admire this girl, so respect her, and yet have an undercurrent of fear for her? She was utterly frank, perfectly straightforward, to all appearances, yet – probably influenced by what I knew – I couldn’t believe in her.
She was so self-possessed, so unafraid in her attitude and expression of face, that I had no real reason to doubt her good faith.
But I did, and I determined to watch Alma Remsen carefully and to the exclusion of everybody else connected with the mystery.
Moreover, I determined to keep my knowledge to myself. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell Moore eventually or not, but at any rate, I wasn’t ready to tell him yet.
After a few questions, which seemed to me of no real importance, Alma was excused and Mrs. Dallas was summoned.
What a different type of woman!
She was, as I learned later, about thirty, but her hair had turned prematurely gray, almost white. She wore it short, a soft, curly bob, that framed her young-looking face with a sort of halo.
Her eyes were gray, too, with dark lashes, and her complexion was perfect. That lovely creamy flesh, with a soft sheen on it that needed, I felt sure, no aid of cosmetics.
Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow, and her smile was that of a siren.
I gazed at her, because I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
True, I had seen her the night before at the Moores’ dinner party, but she hadn’t looked like this then. At the dinner she had seemed out of sorts, and unsmiling.
Now, she was animated and fascinating.
A strange idea came to me. Suppose she had killed Sampson Tracy, wouldn’t she adopt this attitude of charm to wheedle the Coroner?
Then I laughed at my own foolishness. Why, of all people, would Katherine Dallas kill the man she was about to marry? The wealthy, powerful magnate, who was ready to dower her with everything heart could wish and put her at the head of his great establishment. Of course not. She had no motive, nor had she opportunity. Even if she possessed a latchkey, which might well be, she couldn’t come to the house in the dead of night, and get away again, without being seen by somebody.
Although, I was forced to admit, whoever killed the man had gone to his room in the dead of night, and had got away again, unseen, so far as we could learn. How had he got away? Well, that question was as yet unanswered.
Even now, I realized, Coroner Hart was asking Mrs. Dallas her opinion on this very matter.
“I can’t imagine,” she said, and I was angry with myself to realize that her voice had in it no ring of a false note, no hint of insincerity.
“It is too impossible,” she went on, her lovely face alight with interest, “whoever killed Mr. Tracy had to get out of that room and leave the door locked behind him, but how could he do it?”
“Dived out of the window,” suggested Keeley, to hear what she would say.
“Then he was a master diver,” she told him. “Deep Lake, or as they call it here, the Sunless Sea, is not only very deep, but it is full of hidden rocks and there are strong eddies and currents, – oh, it is a dangerous hole!”
“There’s the alternative of a secret passage,” Moore went on. “Did you ever hear of one?”
“No, and I doubt there being such. I mean, the house, though of complicated structure, is modern and I’m quite sure it hasn’t any concealed or subterranean passages. If it had, I think Mr. Tracy would have spoken of them to me.”
“Why do you feel so sure of that?”
“Only because he told me everything. I mean he was confidential by nature and I’ve never known him to have a secret from me.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Tracy attend the dinner last night at which you were a guest?”
She coloured a little, but answered frankly: “We had had a little tiff, and he was, while not really angry at me, just enough annoyed to stay home from the party. I think he regretted having declined the invitation, but then it was too late to change his mind.”
“What was your disagreement about?”