Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

“Oh, don’t do that!” she said quickly. “I’d rather you just let it drop. I mean, after all this time—”

“Look, Kate,” I said, tiring of the cat-and-mouse act. “Your story is even more moving than East Lynne, and if it weren’t for one thing you’d have had me weeping in my beer. The one thing is that I do know Police Chief Chester personally. He was executive officer of my battalion during the war. And there isn’t enough money in the world to make George Chester let the police department be used for a frame like that.”

The red started at her throat and crept upward until she was crimson to the hairline. She just stood there without saying anything.

“I told you I wouldn’t turn you in unless you were the particular murderer I’m looking for,” I said wearily. “Outside of the Lawson family, I don’t care who you killed or what other crimes you’ve committed. But I want a straight story.”

The tears started to flow again. “What I told you is straight, almost. I just changed it a little.”

I gave her a sour grin. “Just the part about it being a frame, eh?”

She gulped once, then nodded. “It happened a year before I met Don,” she said in a small voice. “The judge gave me a year suspended sentence and put me on parole. I broke parole and changed my name. My real name is Janet Whittier. Don’s father checked police records just in the hope that he’d find something on me to use as a weapon. They had my picture on file, so he had me cold. Everything happened like I said, except it was parole violation they could have sent me up for.”

I rose and walked around the desk. “All right, Kate. I’m going to check your record at headquarters, but I won’t turn you in. One more question. Why did you tell us the other night that you hadn’t definitely decided to marry Don?”

“Because I really hadn’t.” She frowned to herself. “I mean, I meant to marry him when I decided to come back, but after I got here—” She shrugged hopelessly. “I can’t explain it. I just decided I didn’t really love him.” Then she said candidly, “I probably would have married him though. A few million dollars can make up for not loving a guy too much.”

As I started out the door, I turned and asked as an afterthought, “Ever happen to notice a pad of typing-paper in Don’s desk?”

“Yes,” she said promptly. “He didn’t have a typewriter, but he always used that as letter paper.”

“Know what happened to it?”

“Sure. I gave it to Maggie for grocery lists.”

I had not expected her to know, and her answer caught me off center. She probably thought I had suddenly lost my mind, for I stood staring at her with a blank look on my face for nearly a minute, then spun around and ran from the room.

Maggie was peeling potatoes over the sink. She turned and frowned suspiciously when I burst into the kitchen.

“Maggie—” I started to say, then stopped when I saw the pad lying on the table.

“Kate give you this?” I asked, picking it up. A list of groceries covered about a quarter of the top page.

“Yes, sir,” she said stiffly. “Please be careful of it. It’s my grocery list.”

“Have you torn off any pages?”

“Pardon?”

“Have you torn off any pages,” I half yelled. “Since Kate gave you the pad, have you torn off any pages?”

She shook her head, a puzzled and alarmed look beginning to form in her eyes.

“Thanks,” I said, and started out with the pad.

“Hey! That’s my grocery list!” Maggie shouted.

“You’ll have to make another, Maggie,” I called back. “This is murder evidence.”

Professor Laurence Quisby’s last class had ended and he had gone home by the time I got back to the state teachers’ college. It was four p.m. before I finally tracked him down at home and delivered the pad.

“The pencil writing may obscure part of the message,” he said. “But I’ll do what I can. Phone me later in the evening, if you wish.”

I told him I so wished.

Tuesday is supposed to be Warren Day’s afternoon off, But he was just leaving the office when I arrived at four-thirty. When he saw me, he wearily removed his hat, dropped it on a hook of the clothes tree next to the door, and returned to his desk.

“I been off duty four hours,” he remarked sourly. “Next lifetime I’m going to be a private dick and take three two-month vacations every year. Where the devil’s that note?”

Assuming he meant Don Lawson’s suicide note, I tossed it across to him. He replaced it in the case file folder in his desk drawer, left the drawer open, and gazed down into it contemplatively. Finally he groped toward the back and brought out a whisky bottle three-fourths full.

“I never do this on duty,” he said, tipping the bottle and swallowing twice.

As he started to replace it without passing out any invitations, I remarked, “Those were the years.”

“What were the years?” he asked.

This spiked my intended pun. He was supposed to ask, “What years?” after which I would snap back, “Thanks. I’ll take bourbon.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Get that bottle out and stop being such a tightwad. Anyone would think you bought it yourself.”

Since he didn’t correct me, my guess was probably right. There must be tighter men than Warren Day, but so far I haven’t encountered them. You can generally bank on it that any liquor he has around has been a gift, for he likes to employ his money on more important things than luxuries, such as accumulating interest. Not too ungraciously he reproduced the bottle.

“It’s a little raw,” he said. “Better make it a small one.”

I told him I was willing to take a chance and matched his double swallow.

He nearly snatched the bottle from my hand when I lowered it. And when he replaced it, he locked the drawer and dropped the key in his pocket.

“All right, now,” he said. “Give with what you found out today, if anything.”

“First tell me if anyone recognized those pictures of Don and Tate.”

He nodded. “We hit the jackpot on every try. Don Lawson got off a bus at his gate at two-twenty a.m., and Tate was miles away on another bus at that time. So both Doctor Lawson and Tate are in the clear.”

I gave him a brief resumé of my activities since he had given me the introductory note that morning, mentioning first that there was nothing new insofar as the autopsy was concerned. When I got to the point about the suicide note being cut off with a pair of scissors, and Professor Quisby’s attempt to reincarnate the original text, he pricked up his ears.

“Maybe we finally got a break,” he said. “When will he know?”

“He told me to call him this evening. Did you ever get a copy of the Lawson will?”

“Yeah,” Day said glumly. He fished a dead cigar butt from his desk ash tray, blew the ashes from it, stuck it in his mouth, and actually lit it. “Our legal expert went over it, but there’s nothing there Mannering hadn’t told us about.”

I asked, “Did your college-boy cop dig up anything on our suspects’ financial statuses yet?”

The inspector rummaged through the rat’s nest he called an “in box,” found a blue memo slip, and adjusted his glasses to read it.

“The servants first,” he said. “Margaret Sullivan has a twenty-five-hundred-dollar savings account at Merchants’ Trust, and about six months ago purchased nine thousand dollars in savings bonds.” He paused and looked at me expectantly.

“Margaret Sullivan,” I said. “That’s Maggie, the housekeeper, isn’t it?”

Day nodded.

“She was left ten thousand by the will,” I reminded him. “Subtract a thousand for taxes, a new house dress, and a bottle of wine to celebrate the inheritance, and it’s all accounted for.”