Rex Stout - Double for Death

Nancy nodded. “Over there on the lawn. I saw her when I passed about ten minutes ago.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll see you later,” Fox promised and deserted them.

He found her, seated on the grass in the shade of trees which had prevented his seeing her when he had looked out from the side hall entrance. He frowned when he saw that Vaughn Kester was with her, but had it erased by the time he came up to them. Kester arose as he approached and Miranda said:

“Stow the etiquette, Vaughn. Only the British dress for dinner when the ship’s sinking.”

“Then I won’t apologize for interrupting,” said Fox. “Are you British, Mr. Kester?”

“No,” Kester replied curtly, without vouchsafing any vital statistics. “Did you want to ask me something?”

“Nothing in particular. I just wandered down to tell Mrs. Pemberton that when she is disengaged I’d like to have a few words with her in private.”

“If it’s urgent,” said Miranda, “I’m sure Vaughn will disengage me immediately.”

“Certainly,” Kester declared stiffly.

“Well,” said Fox, “I’m afraid it’s urgent. If I don’t say it now, I’m afraid I won’t get to say it at all. Derwin says I talk too much and I have to get out of here.”

Kester bowed, said, “I’ll see that it’s done the way you want it, Miranda,” turned on his heel and marched off across the turf.

Fox sat down on the grass, cross-legged, three feet from Miranda, facing her. Her handsome features were not now impeccably arranged; the corners of her mouth were down, her sleepy lids looked flabby and there was grey in her skin.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well,” said Fox with his eyes on her, “there are several things I want to say, but first I have to ask a question. What time did you go to the bungalow Sunday night, how long did you stay, and what did you see and do while you were there? I mean your father’s bungalow where Corey Arnold was killed.”

“Oh.” Miranda had blinked and blinked again, but had done nothing else. “You mean that bungalow.”

“Yes. You have admirable control of your nerves. Under the circumstances, extraordinary. You may stall for a couple of minutes if you want to, to get your head working, but it won’t do you any good. I have the gloves. The ones for the left hand.”

“You have?”

“Yes. Your maid, Miss Knudsen, gave them to a little girl named Helen Gustava Flanders and I got them from her. I was starting for the house to ask you about it when the shot was fired that killed your father.”

“Do you mean you have them or Mr. Derwin has them?”

“Neither one. I was afraid the colonel might overdo it and search us, and I hid them in the piano.”

Miranda took a breath. It was her first since he had asked his question and it was half gasp and half sigh.

“I’m disinclined to think that you killed either Arnold or your father,” said Fox. “If you did, I get a black mark, because I sized you up wrong. But you’d better go ahead and tell me about it.”

Miranda suddenly moved. He thought she was arising, but she only got up to her knees, went close to him on them and said, “Lift your head up, I want to kiss you.”

He raised his face to her, and she bent to it and kissed him competently and thoroughly on the lips. Then she dropped to her former position.

“That,” she said, “was a feeble expression of gratitude for your not telling the police,” she shivered. “Lord, that would have been awful! Now I’ll tell you about it. It was around half-past eleven when I got there Sunday night. A car was parked on the road near the gate—”

“Excuse me. I want the whole works. There must have been quite a build-up. Just the essentials, because we may be interrupted and if I’m to rescue those gloves from the piano—”

“All right.” Miranda was crisp. “You already know that Jeff and I had dinner at the Green Meadow Club with Vaughn, Sunday evening.”

“Yes.”

“Well. Five months ago Jeff decided that he wanted a quarter of a million dollars to start a publishing business. He had determined he wanted to make a man of himself. Why he thought being a publisher would do that, I don’t know. I didn’t know then even why he wanted to be a man, but of course it was Nancy Grant. When he found her he wanted to be able to stick his chest out. Father was displeased with him, because he hadn’t stayed in the office when he was started there, and he wouldn’t even discuss it with him. I tried a couple of times to talk Father into it, but it was next to impossible—”

“Just the essentials. By the way, while you were kissing me I thought I heard you murmur that you would like me to stay to dinner and spend the night, and also that you wish to hire me to stay here and investigate. At a dollar a year. I annoy Derwin, but he can’t kick me out if you’ve hired me. Did I hear right?”

“Certainly.” Miranda nearly smiled. “But to avoid misunderstanding, that kiss was pure gratitude. I think I am going to marry Andrew Grant, but don’t tell him.”

“I won’t. Thank you very much. Go ahead.”

“I was saying it was next to impossible for me to get Father to discuss anything with me seriously. I didn’t like him on account of the way he had treated Mother and he knew it. Some day I’ll tell you about him; he was inhuman and fascinating. Jeffrey began to get sort of wild. I got a letter from him last Saturday that scared me a little and Sunday I flew down from the Adirondacks and found him, and arranged for us to meet Vaughn that evening and see what we could do about the quarter million. Vaughn was far from encouraging about the prospects. We left him around nine-thirty. Jeff went off to Long Island and I came on home, here, because I was tired. But I kept thinking about it and got pretty mad. I got in a car and drove to the bungalow. I had never been in it, but I knew exactly where it was, because Jeff and I drove around and found it one day a long time ago, out of curiosity. What I intended to do was blackmail my father. I fully expected to find that some woman was there with him and I thought under those circumstances I could make him talk sense. You would understand that if you knew how fearful he was that his reputation—”

“Let’s save that. Just what happened that night.”

“I’m paying you to listen. A dollar a year. When I got there I saw that car parked and the gate standing open, but I wasn’t stopping then for little things like that. I drove right in and on to the bungalow, easing along in high to keep my engine silent. When I got out and stood there I could hear a man’s voice that didn’t sound like either my father’s or Luke’s. That stumped me and instead of going to the door I sneaked around to the side where there was light shining from a window, and got behind a bush and looked in. A girl was sitting in a chair with her hands covering her face and a man I had never seen was talking on the telephone and I heard him saying that Ridley Thorpe had been killed. I stood there a minute pulling myself together enough to be able to move. I didn’t really decide not to go in or decide what to do, but the first thing I knew I was back in the car and on my way out. Then before I got to the road I stopped the car to think a minute and automatically, because I always wear them when I drive, I started to put on my gloves. I had one on and was looking for the other one before I remembered that I had come away with two right-hand ones. I thought I’d better find the other one, but I couldn’t; it wasn’t there. It had been tucked in a pocket of my jacket and it was obvious that if it wasn’t in the car it must have dropped out of my pocket at the bungalow. And like a perfect nitwit, I got panicky. Plain unadulterated funk. I sent the car down the driveway in second gear, roaring. At the gate I had a crazy impulse which seemed brilliant at the moment and I stopped alongside the parked car and threw the other glove in it through the window, only I couldn’t even do that properly. It dropped on to the running board instead of going in. I started to open my door to get out and do it right, but my hand was trembling so I actually—”