Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

Suddenly the inspector came to life. “Send this Kate in,” he growled at Maggie.

She sniffed, ignoring him and continuing to look at me.

I said, “Thanks, Maggie. That’s all for now. Will you send in Kate?”

“Sure, and you’re welcome, Mr. Moon,” she said, rising. “But don’t you be harsh with Kate. She feels as bad about causing all this as the rest of us, and it’s not her fault any more than mine. Can’t expect a girl to marry a man she don’t love on the off chance he’ll commit suicide otherwise.”

“All right, Maggie,” I said. “We’ll be easy on her. Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Moon.” At the door she turned and grinned acidly at Warren Day. “Good night to you, too, Sergeant.”

The inspector merely stared at her speechlessly. As the door closed, he whispered, “Why, that old harridan!”

Kate’s expression was no longer sullen, but the change had not improved her appearance. She had the dazed look of a punch-drunk fighter, and her eyes were reddened from tears.

“Your name?” Day asked sourly.

“Kate Malone, sir.” I noticed she had developed the Sir habit since I last saw her. “Sit down, Miss Malone.”

The girl gingerly settled on the straight-backed chair in front of Day’s desk.

“What were your relations with the deceased?” the inspector asked abruptly.

Her eyes widened. “Why,” she said hesitantly, “I’m just a servant, and he was one of the family.”

The inspector waved this aside. “Let’s not beat about the bush, young lady. He got you your job here and has been chasing you fast and furious ever since you arrived. Were you lovers?”

She flushed crimson, and her eyes flashed fire. “I’m a nice girl, mister!”

Day seemed nonplused. His mouth opened; he closed it again, fished in the desk ash tray for the tattered cigar he had just dropped there, and clamped it between his teeth. When he raised his eyes again, they collided with Kate’s steady gaze, and he hastily averted them to me.

“You got any questions, Moon?” he mumbled.

I started to say, “No, Inspector,” on the principle that he ought to stew in his own juice, then thought better of it because the girl would have to stew along with him.

“The inspector didn’t mean that as it sounded, Kate. What he meant was were you and Don Lawson planning to be married?”

She gazed at me dumbly, shook her head negatively, changed her mind, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe sometime. He asked me.”

Suddenly, without any change in her expression, tears began streaming down her face. She made no attempt to mop them up, simply staring straight at me with numb eyes and letting salt water fall where it would.

Warren Day shot a piercing look at everything in the room except the girl’s face, growled like a trapped animal, and finally simply closed his eyes.

“Were you in love with him?” I asked gently.

“I don’t know. Sometimes. Sometimes not. If he hadn’t been such a weakling—” Her voice trailed off to nothing.

“Did he ever threaten suicide?”

As suddenly as they had begun, the tears stopped and her expression became uneasy. “Not since I’ve been here. Once a long time ago. I knew him before I came here, you see. We broke up once, and he said if we didn’t go back together, he’d kill himself, but we didn’t for a while and he never, so I thought it was just talk.”

“Did you know he’d been married?”

She nodded bitterly. “That’s why I say he was a weakling. He let his dad talk him out of that, and he’d of let his family talk him out of it this time, if I’d married him like he wanted.”

“Did he want you to elope?”

“Oh, no,” she said, surprised. “I don’t mean he wanted me to marry him right away. In two months he was twenty-one and got his half of the estate if he was still single. He wanted to get married right after that. But he’d of backed out as soon as his Uncle Doug and Miss Grace and Mrs. Lawson got at him about marrying beneath him — I knew him too well. And I wasn’t of a mind to get mixed up in that when there wasn’t a chance to win.”

I said, “Do you think he committed suicide?”

“Of course.”

“Over you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m awfully sorry, but I think he did.”

“Did you know someone was trying to kill Grace Lawson?”

“What?” she asked, and her head jerked up.

“Did you know someone has been trying to kill Grace Lawson?” I repeated.

She shook her head slowly, wide-eyed and troubled.

“Just one or two more questions, then, Kate. Doctor Lawson says he was called out the night Don disappeared, and got back about seven-thirty in the morning, after the servants were up. Did you happen to see him?”

“Yes, sir. He’d forgotten a key, and I let him in.”

“Did he go right back to bed?”

“No, sir. He had early breakfast, then went up just as the others were coming down. He didn’t get much sleep though, because about a half hour later they discovered the note from Don.”

“What time was that?”

“About eight-thirty. You see, we serve breakfast at eight-fifteen, and when Don didn’t come down, Mrs. Lawson sent me to wake him up. He wasn’t in his room, and when I told Mrs. Lawson, she went up herself and found the note. Then everybody got so excited and there was such an uproar, Doctor Lawson got up again to see what was the matter.”

“Okay, Kate,” I said. “Anything to add, Inspector?”

Warren Day opened his eyes again and moved his head negatively.

The interviews with Karl and Edmund proved to be wasted effort, for neither seemed to know anything at all about anything. Jason Henry, the gardener, was close to a washout, too, except for the interesting discovery that he was a staunch admirer of Kate Malone. He was a big man of about forty, thick through the body and equally thick through the head.

After he departed, the inspector and I toyed with the possibility that his admiration for Kate denoted secret love, and perhaps he pushed Don Lawson over the bluff in a jealous rage. But beside being a trifle farfetched, a forged suicide note seemed out of character for a simple, earthy individual such as Jason.

“With what little we have to go on,” I said finally, “my first guess is Doctor Douglas Lawson.”

“Why?” the inspector asked.

“Because next to Mrs. Lawson he has the best motive. Mrs. Lawson, of course, has the most obvious motive. But that’s just why I don’t like it. It’s so obvious, she’d be a sucker to try to get away with murder.”

“All right,” the inspector said. “What’s the doctor’s motive?”

I said, “Out of twenty million dollars, his brother left him only fifty thousand. Maybe he’s peeved enough to commit a couple of murders and get the rest.”

Warren Day snorted. “He couldn’t get the rest if he killed everyone in the house. Grace’s heir is Mrs. Lawson, and hers is Abigail Stoltz. Of course we don’t know who Abigail’s is, but I’ll bet my next vacation it’s not Doctor Lawson.”

“That’s why I like his motive,” I said. “It isn’t right out in the open for every policeman to pounce on. He could stop after two murders.” I paused, then announced, “He’s going to marry Ann Lawson.”

The inspector blinked. “How do you know?”

I told him about the bluff-edge conversation I had overheard between Ann and Doctor Lawson. Day regarded me disapprovingly as I unfolded the tale, but I got the impression his disapproval was not so much for my eavesdropping as it was for the news that Ann Lawson had been in the amiable doctor’s arms.

“Sounds like they aren’t definitely engaged,” he said with unconvincing assurance. “He’d hardly go to the trouble of killing two people just on the off-chance Mrs. Lawson might say yes.”