Keeban (Little, Brown and Company)/Chapter 7
When I arrived at the big gaudy house, where I had watched Shirley singing last evening, the coroner's men were filing out; they'd completed their examination. Police were all about the doors, keeping back a crowd; the officers passed me and Fred came down almost immediately and took me into the long, gay room where Shirley had played and sung.
The shades were drawn to-day but as they were white they let in plenty of light; the glass doors to the hall were closed and so, though we could talk without being heard, we could be seen from the hall and we could see most of the lower part of the house and also the stairs.
Fred pointed first to a French window, which opened on the lawn upon the lake side; it had been forced open and now was braced shut, with the catch torn out, the screws hanging.
"Here's where he came in," Fred told me.
"Who?" I said.
"Jerry."
"He was alone?"
"Nobody else was seen. Apparently he went first to the sideboard in the dining room." Fred gazed across the hall. "He made a noise there."
When Fred stopped, I commented, "The papers say he made it intentionally."
Fred nodded. "He wasn't after silver. That was simply a bluff. He brought a bag with him and emptied two drawers into it. There it is."
A canvas sack, like a mail pouch, lay in the corner and bulged half full. I didn't bother to examine it. I was trying to figure out Fred's attitude towards me: he wasn't expressing much but keeping hold of himself pretty firm.
"Jerry made the rattle with the silver," Fred went on, "to draw father downstairs. He did it.
"As father appeared on the landing, Jerry fired from here—from beside this silk hanging. He fired twice; and neither before the shots nor between them nor afterwards did Jerry make any attempt to hide, in spite of the portière right there; and the light was on. He hit father both times; and father's pistol went off in his hand as he was falling; father fired wild, undoubtedly, but in Jerry's general direction." Fred showed the bullet hole near the door. "Jerry wasn't hit; but he did a complete job with his gun. He hit father first"
I stopped Fred. "I know from the papers," I said.
"Well, they had that right. Father lived about five minutes. He fell on the landing and was dead before they carried him up."
Fred's voice cracked; and I put my hand on his arm without saying anything. Old Win, if he had played the fool towards the end of his life, at least had showed good nerve at the finish; and when everything else was said, he was Fred's father. When Fred was a boy, Winton Scofield had been a good father; no one called him a fool then. Every one knows the thousand touches of memories of fondness from a father; and Fred was thinking of them.
He went on telling: "Shirley ran down to him as soon as he fell; she must have been nearly behind him when he got the second bullet. She wasn't hurt but she certainly took a big chance to help father. Rowan reached him maybe a minute later."
"Rowan, the butler?" I said.
"That's right."
"How long has he been in your family?"
"I can't remember when he hasn't been."
"He saw the actual shooting, as the papers say?"
"Not the firing of the shots. Father was down when Rowan arrived at the top of the stairs; but Jerry wasn't gone. Rowan saw him plainly. That's one of the surest things."
"What is?"
"That Jerry showed himself; he made no effort either to hide when father came down or to get away immediately afterwards."
"Where was Thurston when he saw Jerry?"
"He'd just come in from the wing through that door."
"He shot at Jerry, they say."
"Yes; and missed. Jerry fired once at him and grazed him. Then Jerry got out."
Fred and I looked each other over thinking, "Jerry didn't do that but it is no use telling you so."
Fred said to me, "You ran into Shirley last night."
I admitted it.
He went on. "After you'd had me to lunch to talk over father's affairs, Steve. I've not mentioned that to the reporters or even to the police yet; but of course I've been thinking about it."
"Mentioning it?" I said.
"I wanted this talk with you first, Steve. Why did you call me yesterday and afterwards smash Shirley's car? What did you know?"
I stared at him and shook my head.
"Yesterday at lunch," Fred kept at me, "you asked me particularly about father's engagements for last night; you asked whether Shirley would drive down to meet him. I told you she would."
I had nothing to do but to nod at this.
Fred asked directly, "You smashed into her car to stop her?"
I stared at him and kept thinking of Jerry's "Not a word to any one" and the message Klangenberg brought me from "Kidnapped" and "Westward Ho" which begged me "to stick." Yet I had to say something here or I might as well, since my actions already had spoken for me,
"Yes, Fred; I smashed into her to stop her from meeting your father."
"I was sure of it. You had reason to think, yesterday, that something was going to happen to him?"
There was nothing for it but another nod at this.
"Where did you get your reason?"
I might as well have told him; he told me that he knew I got it from Jerry. He held the police theory with this variation; I had been having some sort of communication with Jerry through which I had stumbled upon the idea that something was going to happen to Winton Scofield. I had got the notion that it was going to happen through his wife, and so, in my stupid way, I'd driven up to the house deliberately to smash into her car and scare her out of whatever plan she had in her mind.
Fred was emotionally worked up, of course, he believed that I meant well by what I tried to do; he didn't doubt I meant well now. He didn't blame me for having supposed when I found something was planned against his father that Shirley was in it.
"That's what I thought," he told me, when Rowan 'phoned me this morning and got me out of bed to tell me, 'Mr. Fred, your father's shot.'
"The family—Kenyon and I—always figured, naturally, that money was what Shirley was after. That's why we fixed his affairs so she could never get much, even if father had wanted to give it to her. He didn't have it to give; we had him on an allowance. The only big sum she could get in a lump was his life insurance, which he made over to her. He carried it from the old days, nearly half a million."
Here was some of the stuff I'd come for. All morning my mind had been reaching for a motive, you see,—why old Win Scofield had found a place on Keeban's board and why his number had come to the top just now. Fred talked on and made it perfectly plain to me.
While he talked, I put myself in Keeban's place for a while and tried to take things from his point of view. I went back a bit to do this—back a few months to the time when old Win, divorced once more and rejuvenated, had arrived again at the cabarets and resumed beauing about with the girls. I thought that when Shirley—or Christina—had met him, she talked him over with Keeban and they'd marked him down between them for easy meat. She married him to get away with the big money old Win was supposed to have but hadn't; for Fred and Kenyon had seen to that, as I've mentioned. Win took her to Paris and brought her back to live with him on an allowance.
Maybe from the first she had had her eyes on the old man's insurance; but I didn't think so. I thought, "She got into this marriage with an idea of an easy get-away with a pile; and when Ken and Fred fooled her, she decided to fool them; she saw Keeban again and they decided to get that insurance money. But they had a big difficulty with that; they had to do more than merely 'croak' old Win; they had to do it so Shirley would not possibly be connected and so the insurance money would be paid over to her and she could get away with it."
There, surely, was a job for them when the family and friends thought what they did of Shirley.
Fred was saying to me, "Ken and I got bothered about that insurance. In the first place, we didn't want Shirley to have the money, half a million for marrying father; then it was costing us over thirty thousand a year to pay the premiums; and, also, we figured it might be dangerous as a temptation.
"Not that we thought Shirley'd kill father directly, Steve; but there's many a way to shorten a man's life, indirectly. Father played he was young again. Well, all she'd have to do would be to over-encourage him with her eye on that half million. Anyway, Ken and I decided to stop paying the premiums on that insurance—save ourselves about thirty thousand a year and make father a little safer."
Of course, this told me why old Win's number had jumped to the top of the board just now; the sons were stopping his insurance. Fred continued:
"But since the insurance was still in force, I couldn't help thinking of that when Rowan called me; I couldn't help thinking Shirley was mixed up in that murder. Then Rowan told me it was Jerry Fanneal who'd shot father and I knew Shirley couldn't have anything to do with it."
Fred talked on; but I didn't pay much attention for a few minutes; for now I could see through the rest of Keeban's scheme; I could see not only why he had shot Win Scofield, but why he had done it himself and why he had shown himself in the doing, making no attempt to hide.
For he wanted to be seen; he wanted to be identified, particularly by Rowan. For Rowan would identify him, as Rowan did, for Jerry Fanneal; and, so identified, no one would connect Shirley with the murder. Who was Jerry Fanneal, in these days? A wild, irresponsible criminal, a man from nowhere who had betrayed the breeding bestowed upon him and had "reverted." As he had attacked and robbed Dorothy Crewe, now he had entered Win Scofield's house and shot him either wantonly or for some old, brooded-over pique; that was what the newspapers assumed and the police and even Win Scofield's sons who had most hated and doubted Shirley.
Fred was feeling badly over how he'd ridiculed his father the last time he'd talked with me and how he'd mistaken Shirley. "She was right there beside father and she never thought of herself, Rowan says," Fred repeated to me. "She held him while he died and"
"How's she now?" I asked.
"Nearly collapsed. She gave her evidence to the police and afterwards to the coroner. She's in bed now."
"Can I see her?"
"You?" said Fred. "Why?"
"She's accused Jerry."
"So has Rowan; why don't you talk to him?"
"I will," I said, "afterwards. Do you mind asking her if she'll see me?"
He went up himself and came down with her excuses. But I had expected them and I'd written on one of my cards "Bulls and Beefers"; just that and I'd put it in an envelope unsealed. I knew Fred wouldn't look in it when he took it up to her.
"She'll see you," said Fred when he came down again.