Vincent Starrett: The Blue Door

“That’s all right,” nodded the detective; and with that we swung around a curve in the road and halted our progress to leave the machine. A few minutes’ walk followed, and we debouched upon a wide beach, sprinkled here and there with a few morning bathers and boatmen, and gleaming under a dim but climbing sun. On the low bluffs above the beach sat the cottages of the resorters, deserted by all but a few hardy vacationists who, like Coolbrith, had elected to enjoy a coolish autumn holiday. The tide was nearly in, and there was no difficulty about a boat. Our voyage, indeed, was made in the same craft that had carried Coolbrith on his frantic pilgrimage of the day before.

In a little while, we had reached the island anchorage, beside which for some time had been standing a burly figure in uniform, watching our approach—obviously Sergeant Hovey of the Grantford police.

Lavender was the first to leave the boat, but Coolbrith followed him quickly, and I happened to moor the little craft to the dock.

“Thought it was you, Mr. Coolbrith,” cried the policeman heartily. “Glad to see you, sir; but I’m sorry I haven’t any news for you.”

“I’m sorry, too,” replied Robert Coolbrith; and he made the necessary introductions that informed the sergeant of our names and our mission.

The boatman was sent about his own affairs when it was established that there was a police boat ready for use, and we turned at once toward the house, the Grantford policeman leading the way across the narrow stretch of beach that remained above water.

“Any trouble with visitors, Sergeant?” asked Lavender, as we trod across the lower rocks and began to climb the ascending road.

“A few,” laconically replied the police sergeant, “but I soon sent ’em about their own business.”

“Strangers?”

“Some of ’em; but some of ’em I knew. They live round here, or in Grantford. No harm in ’em.”

“Probably not,” agreed Lavender amiably, “but just keep the strangers in mind. I may want to ask you about them. The others, too, for that matter. Just a minute, Mr. Coolbrith. I want to have a look at the house, and this seems as good a place as any.”

He stopped, and we all halted while he turned his eyes upward to the now plainly visible house from which Marian Coolbrith had vanished on the night of the storm. It was an attractive picture with its background of gleaming sky and open water.

“Old Georgian place,” commented the detective after a moment. “Erroneously called Colonial,” he added, to the surprise of the architect, “and quite ancient as such things go in America.”

He removed his eyes from the house and turned them for a few moments to the surrounding landscape, then back to the water. Finally, he mounted a high rock of peculiar shape, and from its summit surveyed the stretch of beach and the farther reaches of the island.

“The whole place would seem to be honeycombed with hiding places,” he observed. “I suppose it’s less than a quarter of a mile in length, and considerably less across; yet it offers innumerable retreats among the rocks and trees. Very pretty indeed.”

He descended from his perch, and we pushed on in silence to the house. Hovey had been deeply amused, it occurred to me, by my friend’s aesthetic consideration of the island’s attractions. At the house, Lavender would not enter until he had made a similar survey of island and dwelling from the other side, and even then he held off and prowled for a time around the outer walls, peering into windows, and closely examining the ground around the foundations.

At length he climbed the veranda steps and consented to enter, but his examination of the rooms was almost casual, it seemed to me, and his comments unusually obvious.

“Dishes and cooking utensils all in place, and no signs of a meal,” he observed. “Mrs. Mumford left, I believe, a little before six o’clock. Still, Miss Coolbrith may have eaten her dinner and then washed up.”

He poked about in the fireplace, looked into several closets, and called our attention to the tracks of muddy feet, here and there on the mats and boards. One small ball of clay he picked up and pocketed. Then he ascended to the upper story and looked into the bedrooms.

“Beds all made up, and apparently none of them slept in,” was his next quite obvious deduction. “I fancy the poor girl didn’t get to bed at all on Sunday night. This is her room, you say? The counterpane is very slightly rumpled at its edges, as they hang down here, but that could be explained by someone brushing against it. I suppose nothing has been touched about the house, Hovey?”

“Not since I’ve been here, sir!” asserted the sergeant grimly.

“You touched nothing, Mr. Coolbrith, on your first visit?”

“I must have touched a great many things,” responded Coolbrith frankly. “But I didn’t actually move anything; of that I’m quite sure. I just stood and called, for the most part, but I was in every room and in the cellar.”

The detective called our attention to a small picture that hung awry on its hook.

“You didn’t do that, Mr. Coolbrith?”

“Positively not!”

Lavender nodded, as if the matter were of no importance, and then electrified us by dragging the bed from its place against the wall and pointing to a key that had lain under it, on the floor.

“Of course, it wasn’t certain that there was a key,” he observed deprecatingly. “Often there isn’t in cottage bedrooms.” He tried his find in the lock, however, found that it fitted, and dropped it into his pocket.

In the cellar he gave us another start.

“You didn’t carry a stick when you were down here, Mr. Coolbrith?” he asked suddenly, after a casual glance at the earthen floor. “Nor you, Hovey? The earth you see, is curiously pocked, all over the place.”

It was true. There were dozens of little holes, such as the ferule of a stick might have made; and many of them proved to be quite deep.

“Quite fresh, too,” commented the detective, “but there are no signs whatever of excavation.”

He turned back to the door, framed in a tangle of weeds and grasses, and for a few moments stood gazing out into the sunshine.

“Do you know,” he said, “I have a feeling that we are conducting our investigation in the wrong place. There are undoubted indications, all over the house, of what occurred on Sunday night; but what do they tell us? Only what we already know: that Miss Coolbrith was set upon and carried off. But the important question is what has become of Miss Coolbrith, and the island itself may tell us something about that.”

Robert Coolbrith cried out in alarm. There was horror in his eyes. But Lavender’s gesture stopped him.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he continued quickly. “I’m not suggesting, yet, that Miss Coolbrith has been—has been injured. Indeed, my feeling is that she has not—if that will help you, Mr. Coolbrith. But the island must be searched thoroughly, nonetheless, for traces. Traces of her going, traces of their coming and going, traces of Andrew Prior and the dog. It’s all part and parcel of the case, and what I suggest is that you, Mr. Coolbrith, and you, Hovey, remain here at the house while Gilruth and I explore the island. You’ve both had your turn at that, and it’s as well not to have too many feet trampling about.”

“I’ll stay,” cried Coolbrith eagerly, “and thank you for your assurance. But what about Andrew Prior, Mr. Lavender?”

“What is your own opinion?”

“I think—what else can I think? I think he went away because he knew what was going to happen. He must have known; he must have been part of the conspiracy. I’ve thought so from the first, hard as it is to believe. Andy was always faithful—I told you that in the train—but unless he knew something, why did he go away just before it happened?”