The Deep Lake Mystery

“There was no quarrelling on other subjects?”

“No, sir, except now and then about Mrs. Dallas.”

“And what about her?”

“Well, Mr. Ames didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry her.”

“Did Mr. Ames favour the lady himself?”

“Oh, no, sir. He’s a woman hater. Or at least he says so. No, but he didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry anybody for fear he might cut him, Mr. Ames, out of his will.”

“How do you know all these things?”

“Well, I drive the car, you see, and they talk these matters over, and I can’t help hearing them. They make no bones of it, they talk right out. I never repeat anything I hear, in an ordinary way, but as you ask me, sir – ”

“Yes, Louis, tell all you know. So Mr. Ames would suffer financially if Mr. Tracy married?”

“I don’t know that, sir, but I know he thought he would. And I suppose he knew.”

“It seems to me,” Farrell said, “we ought to know the terms of Mr. Tracy’s will as it might help us to get at the truth.”

“We can’t do that at the moment,” Hart said, “and anyway, this is merely a preliminary inquiry to get the main facts of the situation.”

But the other servants had no more information to impart than those hitherto questioned. A chambermaid, one Sally Bray, convinced us that all the queer decorations spread on the bed had been already in the room and were, therefore, not brought in by the murderer.

The red feather duster belonged in a small cupboard that held polishing cloths and dusters. The larkspur flowers had been in a vase on a side table, and the whole bunch had been removed from the vase and laid around the dead man. The orange and crackers had been on a plate on the bedside table, but where the plate was, Sally had no idea. The crucifix was Mr. Tracy’s property and belonged on a small hook above the head of his bed.

“And the scarf,” suggested Hart. “The red chiffon scarf, where did that come from?”

Sally blushed and looked down, but finally being urged to tell, said that she knew it to be a scarf belonging to Mrs. Dallas, and the lady had left it there one evening not long ago, when she had been there to dinner.

“Why had it not been returned to her?” Hart wanted to know.

“Because Mr. Tracy took a notion to it. It was a sort of keepsake of the lady, sir, and, too, Mr. Tracy was that fond of beautiful things. Any pretty piece of silk or brocade would please him tremenjous.”

“Then, whoever arranged all those decorations round him knew of his love for beautiful things, and that would explain the flowers and the scarf. Is there anything missing from his room, Sally?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve not been allowed in there this morning.”

“Well, go up there now. Tell the guard he’s to let you in. Here’s the key.”

“Oh, sir, I – I daren’t! Don’t make me go in there!”

The girl shivered with real fear, but Hart had to know.

“You must go,” he said, not unkindly. “Get Griscom to go with you, or Mrs. Fenn, if you like. But it is important for me to know if anything has been taken away that you know of. I don’t mean papers or letters from his desk. I mean any of his appointments or small belongings.”

The girl went off, still shuddering, and Hart finished up the rest of the servants in short order.

Next he interviewed Charlie Everett. I had taken a fancy to Everett, and somehow, from the way Kee looked at him, I thought he liked him, too.

He was not a distinguished-looking man, but he seemed a well-balanced sort, and his eyes were alert and showed a sense of humour. Not that the occasion called for humour, but you can always tell by a man’s eyes if he has that desirable trait.

Very quiet and self-possessed was Everett, his manner polite but a little detached. He was quite ready to answer questions but he gave only the answer, no additional information.

Yes, he said, he had spent an hour or so with Mr. Tracy the night before. They had played a game of billiards and had then sat for a short time over a cigar and a whisky and soda. Then, perhaps about ten o’clock, he had said good night to his employer and had gone to his own room. No, he could form no idea whatever as to who could have killed Sampson Tracy, or how he could have got into the room.

“That is,” he amended his speech, “he could get in easy enough, but I don’t see how he could get out and leave the door locked behind him.”

“It is one of those cases,” Hart said, a little sententiously, “where there has been a murder committed in a sealed room.”

Keeley Moore spoke up then.

“A murder cannot be committed in a sealed room,” he said, “unless the murderer stays there. If the murderer left the room, the room was not a sealed room.”

“How did he get out?” demanded Hart.

“That we have yet to learn. But he did get out, not through the door to the hall. Remains the possibility of a secret passage and the windows.”

“I’m sure there is no secret passage,” Everett said, with an unusual burst of unasked information. “I’ve been here three years and if there was such a thing I’m sure I’d know of it.”

“You might and you might not,” said Moore, looking at him. “If Mr. Tracy wanted a private entrance to his suite for any reason, he would have had it built and kept the matter quiet.”

“Not Sampson Tracy,” exclaimed Everett. “He was not a secretive man. I think I may say I knew all about his affairs, both business matters and private dealings, and he trusted me absolutely.”

“Even so,” Moore told him. “But in the lives of most men there is some secret, something that they don’t talk over with anybody.”

“Not Mr. Tracy,” Everett reiterated. “Even his engagement to Mrs. Dallas was freely talked over with me, both before it occurred and since. I know all about his habits and his fads and whims. And in no case was there ever an occasion for a secret passage to or from his rooms.”

“Yet it may be there,” Kee insisted. “But if none can be found, then the murderer either escaped by the windows or – ”

“Or what?” asked Hart.

“Or he had a steel wire contraption to turn the key from the outside. But this I don’t think likely, for the door has a rather complicated lock, and is far from being an easy thing to manipulate.”

“You know the terms of his will, then?” the Coroner inquired.

“Oh, yes,” Everett said. “At present his niece, Miss Remsen, is his principal heir. There are many bequests to friends and to servants, but the bulk of the estate goes to Miss Remsen. Mr. Tracy knew that his marriage would invalidate this will, which was why he had not changed it. He said that after his wedding with Mrs. Dallas, he would revise the will to suite his changed estate.”

“Then, under his existing will, Mrs. Dallas has no legacy?”

“Not unless Mr. Tracy made a change without telling me. He may have done that, but I think it very unlikely.”

“You know of no one then, who had sufficient enmity toward Mr. Tracy to desire his death?”

“Absolutely no one. So far as I am aware, he hadn’t an acquaintance in the world who was anything but friendly toward him.”

Everett was dismissed and Billy Dean was called in.

He was a pleasant-faced chap of twenty-three or thereabouts. His work was far from being as important as Everett’s. In fact he was really a high-class stenographer and office boy.

He was good looking with big brown eyes and a curly mop of brown hair. He too, scoffed at the idea of a secret passage in the house.

“Pleasure Dome has all the modern improvements,” he said, “but nothing like that. If there was such a thing, I’d have been through it in no time. I can ferret out anything queer of that sort by instinct, and there’s nothing doing. There’s no way in and out of Mr. Tracy’s suite but by that one hall door. I know that. And it has a special lock. He had that put on about six months ago.”

“Why? Was he afraid of intruders?”

“Don’t think so. But there had been some robberies down in the village and he said it was as well to be on the safe side.”

“Then, Mr. Dean, in your opinion, how did the man who killed Mr. Tracy get out of his rooms?”

“That’s where you get me. I’m positively kerflummixed. I can’t see anybody twisting that peculiar key with a bit of wire. Though that’s easier to swallow than to imagine any one jumping out of the window.”

“Why? The windows are not so very high.”

“No. But the lake there is mighty deep and dangerous.”

“Why specially dangerous?”

“Because there are swirling undercurrents, you see, it’s almost like a caldron. That Sunless Sea, as Mr. Tracy named it, is in a cove and the winds make the water eddy about, and – well, I’m a pretty fair diver, but I wouldn’t dive out of a second story window into that cove!”

“Then, we have to look for either a clever mechanician or an expert diver,” said Keeley Moore. “How about the chauffeur?”

“He’s an expert mechanician all right, but he wouldn’t harm a hair of Mr. Tracy’s head. He loved him, as, indeed, we all did. Nobody could help loving that man. He was always genial, courteous and kindly to everybody.”

“And his niece, Miss Remsen?” asked the Coroner. “She, too, is gentle and lovely?”

Young Dean blushed fiery red.

“Yes, she is,” was all he said, but no clairvoyance was needed to read his thoughts of her.

“Is she here?” asked Moore, knowing we had seen her arrive.

“Yes,” Billy Dean said. “We telephoned her so soon as we knew what had happened, and she came right over.”

“You may go now,” said the Coroner, “and please send Miss Remsen in here.”

CHAPTER V

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

“And so,” I thought to myself, “I shall see again the Lady of the Lake.”

As Alma Remsen entered the room, I realized the aptness of Kee’s term, high-handed. Without any effect of strong-mindedness, the girl showed in face and demeanour a certain self-reliance, an air of determination, that made even a casual observer feel sure she could hold her own against all comers.

Yet she was a gentle sort. Slender, of medium height, with appealing brown eyes, she nodded a sort of greeting that included us all, and addressed herself to the coroner.

“You sent for me, Doctor Hart?” she said, in a low, musical voice.

“Yes, Miss Remsen. Will you answer a few direct questions?”

“Certainly. To the best of my ability.”

“First of all, then, when did you last see your uncle alive?”

“I was over here day before yesterday, Tuesday, that would be. I have not been here since, until this morning.”

My heart almost stopped beating. I had seen her come in her canoe – but stay, that was at one-thirty or thereabouts. Perhaps she salved her conscience for the lie by telling herself that was this morning.

“You mean, when you came over here perhaps half an hour ago?”

“Yes.” Alma looked at him in some surprise. “What else could I mean?”

A finished actress, surely. I was amazed at her coolness and her pretty air of inquiry.

“Who summoned you?”

“Mrs. Fenn. She had been asked to do so by Mr. Ames.”

“What was her message?”

“That Uncle Sampson had died of apoplexy and I’d better come right over.”

“So you came?”

“Yes, as soon as I could get here.”

“Have you seen – er – Mr. Tracy?”

“No; Mr. Ames advised against it.”

“Well, Miss Remsen, I think we want no information from you, except a formal statement of your relationship to the dead man and your standing with him.”

“Standing?”

“Yes. Were you good friends?”

“The best. I loved Uncle Sampson and he loved me, I know. I am his only living relative, except some distant cousins. I am the daughter of his sister, of whom he was very fond.”

The girl was a bit of an enigma. She seemed straightforward and sincere, yet I was somehow conscious of a reservation in her talk, a glibness of speech that carried the idea of a prearranged story.

Why I should mistrust her I couldn’t say, at first. Then I remembered that I had seen her canoeing over to Pleasure Dome in the night, and now she was saying she had not done so.

“Are you his heiress?” The question came sharply.

“So far as I know,” she replied with perfect equanimity. “My uncle has told me that his will leaves the bulk of his estate to me, but he also told me that when he married Mrs. Dallas, he would revise that will, and make different arrangements.”

“Did you resent this?”

“Not at all. I knew my uncle would leave me a proper portion of his wealth, and that as long as he lived he would take care of his sister’s child.”

“You are an only child of your parents?”

“I had a twin sister. She died fourteen years ago.”

“And she is buried on this estate?”

“Her grave is in a small cemetery which also contains the graves of my parents and five or six other relatives of my uncle’s family.”

“How did it come about that the cemetery is on the grounds of the estate? It is, I believe, a New England custom.”

“It was my mother’s wish. She was devoted to the little girl who died and wanted to have the grave where she could visit it often. My uncle humoured her and also had the remains of my father sent here to be buried beside the child. Then, when my mother died, about a year ago, naturally she was buried there, too.”

“I see. What did your sister die of?”

“Scarlet fever. There was an epidemic of it. We both had it, but I pulled through, though it left me with a slight deafness in one ear.”

“Then, after your mother’s death, you went to live by yourself on the island. Why did you do this?”

“Because my uncle was to marry Mrs. Dallas.”

“And you don’t like Mrs. Dallas?”

“I don’t dislike her at all, but I am not of an easy-going disposition. I felt sure there would be clashes, and I told uncle I’d rather live by myself. He understood and agreed. So after some looking about, we decided on the island of Whistling Reeds as the most attractive site for a home.”

“And he built a house for you there?”

“Oh, no, the house was already there. He bought the whole island, house and all.”

“You like it as a home?”

“I love it. I am happier there than I could be anywhere else.”

“Are you not lonely?”

“No more than I would be anywhere. I have capable and devoted servants, and I have tennis courts and an archery field and I have many boats and can get any place I wish to go in them. No, I am not so lonely as I sometimes was here in this great house. Of course, since my mother’s death, I haven’t gone much in society but I am thinking of going out more in the future.”

Keeley Moore listened to the girl with the deepest interest. I wondered what he would say if he knew what I knew of her midnight canoe trip!

But I vowed to myself then and there that I should never tell of that. I knew I might be doing wrong, withholding such an important bit of information, but I was determined to keep my secret.

I tried to make myself think it was some other girl I had seen, but the alert figure before me and the white costume said plainly that I was making no mistake in recognizing the girl of the canoe.

From beneath her little white felt hat strayed a few golden curls, and I well remembered the bare head that had looked silvery in the moonlight.

I said to myself, by way of placating my conscience, that when the time came I would tell Kee about it, but I certainly did not propose to give the Coroner a chance to suspect this lovely girl of crime.

Apparently, the Coroner had no slightest suspicion of Alma, but you can’t tell. He may have been drawing her out in order to prove her complete innocence or he may have felt that she had motive and must be closely questioned.

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