Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

She looked at me blankly.

“I mean,” I suggested in a cautious tone, prepared to retreat if the question angered her, “did his love precede your husband’s death?”

Instead of becoming angry, it seemed to strike her as funny, for her lips spread in a smile which was almost a grin. “Douglas and I have always been fond of each other, but in an entirely different way when Donald was alive. It simply would never have occurred to Douglas to covet Donald’s wife. Donald was his big brother, his father, and his boyhood hero all rolled into one. I doubt that he ever really took a good look at me until he finally began to realize Donald was gone forever and I was a widow. And that was at least six months after the accident, for he took Donald’s death pretty hard.

“If you think Douglas in some miraculous manner staged the accident which killed my husband — incidentally putting himself in the hospital — then murdered Don Junior and tried to kill Grace so I’d inherit the money and he could marry me for it, I’m afraid you’d never be able to convince me. In the first place he has plenty of money of his own. I’d estimate his practice brings in at least twenty-five thousand a year, and deducting the four years he was a Medical Corps major, he’s had eleven years of practice. In the second place you yourself said he was no longer a suspect insofar as Grace is concerned, because he was the one who rescued her from the pool. In the third place, while he was never overfond of Don Junior, Douglas wouldn’t hurt Grace for all the money in the world. He’s fully as deranged about that girl as her father was, and that was almost a psychotic attachment.”

She smiled in reminiscence. “I recall when Grace was fifteen she got mad at Douglas about something — some boy she had been forbidden to see, I believe it was. She confided to Douglas that she was seeing him anyway, and Douglas told her father. Grace declared Douglas was a snitch, refused to speak to him for two weeks, and said she’d never speak to him again as long as she lived. Of course she got over it, but until she did Douglas was literally sick. All the humor and mockery went out of him as though cut off by a switch. He actually lost weight, and I believe he’d have ended up sick in bed if Grace hadn’t decided he was punished enough and forgiven him.”

I said, “He snitched again when she and Arnold got married.”

“Only to me,” Ann said quickly. “And that doesn’t count. Douglas knows I wouldn’t hurt Grace any more than he would.”

“There is something I don’t understand about you,” I said. “Here you have a perfectly legal right to twenty million dollars, yet you withheld what you knew simply to avoid hurting Grace’s feelings. I’m afraid for that amount I’d be willing to hurt nearly anyone’s feelings.”

“Probably it’s hard for other people to understand,” she said quietly, “but I already have all the material comforts the Lawson millions could bring me. All the inheritance means to me is a pile of paper certificates to hold in a safe-deposit box, for I have no interest in operating the business. But the main reason is I feel I have no moral right to the money. Donald intended it to be Grace’s, and I’m sure he would have approved of Arnold and given his blessing had he known him. What it boils down to is the loss of Grace’s friendship isn’t worth twenty million dollars to me.”

“Think you’ll lose it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not now. But had I disclosed the secret rather than Arnold, I’m afraid I would have. Grace would regard that as cheating, which, of course, it would have been.”

“Will she be mad at Arnold?”

“Probably. But since he did it through the unselfish motive of saving her life, no doubt she’ll get over it.”

“Does the money mean so much to Grace?” I asked. “The day I met her she seemed to think it unfair of her father not to have left it to you.”

“It isn’t the money so much,” Ann explained. “It evolves more about Grace’s code of behavior. In many respects she’s still a little girl. She loves an intrigue such as her secret marriage, with millions the forfeit if she was caught. Since she regards me as her family, I doubt that she really cares whose name the money is in, but if she suspected I wanted to get it away from her by trickery, she’d fight like a tiger.”

“Will you accept the inheritance now that everything is open and aboveboard?”

“I suppose I’ll have to. No, that isn’t being honest. I suppose if I wanted I could sign everything back to Grace. But if Donald had left everything to me in the first place, of course I would have accepted it, so there’s no reason for me not to now. Of course I’ll give Grace everything she wants, and I’ll make her my sole heir.” She smiled slightly. “Jonathan’s going to grow tired of my changing my will.”

“Let’s go on to Arnold Tate,” I said.

Arnold, it developed, had cropped up about a month after Ann became a widow. Aside from what I already knew about him, I learned he was from Kansas City, his father was a high-school teacher, and he had one younger brother, who was in the Navy. Ann had never met his folks.

About the servants Ann knew practically nothing. None of the five were married, and all lived in, but aside from that she knew nothing of their various backgrounds or private lives, since Maggie did all the hiring. Maggie and Jason had been working when she married Donald Lawson. When they moved to the present house five years before, Edmund, a maid, and a helper for Jason had been added. The latter two positions had had several turnovers, and Kate and Karl had both been working only about six months. Karl, she believed, had graduated from high school in an orphanage just before coming to work here. Kate had been a maid somewhere else, but Ann did not know where.

Deciding I had gleaned all the information I could from her, I closed the interview by suggesting we go up to check on the conditions of Grace and Fausta. She rose with an air of relief and preceded me up the stairs.

Grace Lawson’s room was the third to the right from the stair head. The door just before it stood open, and as Ann reached it she stopped without warning. Not many people know I have a false leg, and sometimes I almost forget it myself. But at this moment I was reminded of it suddenly, for when Ann stopped, my good leg was swinging forward and my entire weight rested on an aluminum foot. With a false leg, once you start to take a step, you can’t stop. I finished the step and crashed 190 pounds into Ann’s soft body.

As she stumbled away from me, I grabbed her to keep her from falling, and she clawed at my shoulders in an endeavor to prevent the same thing. After a couple of erratic waltz steps, we ended in the middle of the hall with my hands locked behind her back and her arms circling my neck. For a surprised moment we remained in that position, staring at each other.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said a cold voice.

Without uncoupling, both of us glanced at Doctor Lawson, who frowned at us from the door of the room in front of which Ann had started to halt. At the same moment Fausta appeared in the doorway of Grace’s bedroom. Her eyes drooped half shut and she weaved drunkenly, regaining her balance by planting a hand on either side of the doorway.

“Manny Moon,” she said in a dull, hang-over laden voice, “you turn loose that Jezebel.”

By dinnertime Grace was also awake and up, though neither she nor Fausta was in any mood for dinner. Neither had any idea of what had happened to her, remembering nothing after finishing her drink at the pool.

By the time Grace awakened, Doctor Lawson had recovered from his peeve at finding his fiancée in my arms, and tended to consider the incident rather funny. Fausta, however, continued to regard her hostess with belligerent suspicion and to maintain a cold hauteur toward me. Actually I think she was too sick to care particularly whether another woman stole me or not, but reflex action made her go through the motions of jealousy.