“Fox! Come here a minute!”
He altered his course. The same voice, which was that of Harlan McElroy, the hollow-cheeked multiple director, resumed:
“This is Mr. Fuller, of Mr. Thorpe’s counsel. Tilden, this is Tecumseh Fox.”
Fox shook hands with the lawyer, who looked nondescript except for his bitter sensitive mouth and hard noncommittal eyes. Then he glanced at Nancy Grant and Jeffrey Thorpe and asked casually, “Having a conference?”
“Oh, no,” Fuller said, “I’m just getting a picture of what happened before I see the district attorney. This is a frightful business. Frightful. Miss Grant informs me that you are acting in her interest.”
“I’m not doing much in anyone’s interest, I’m afraid,” Fox admitted. “I was engaged by her for her uncle in connection with the murder of Arnold, Sunday night.” He looked at Jeffrey. “How did you get along with the colonel? No blows struck?”
Jeffrey grunted. “I behaved myself pretty well. He was sore at me to start with because I told him to go to hell the other day. He kept going over and over where I was, and why and why not, when I heard the shot fired that killed my father.”
“Where were you, by the way?”
“I was out behind the rose trellis, going over my past. I could see Miss Grant sitting on the terrace, but she couldn’t see me. When she darted off towards the swimming pool I started to run after her, but then someone in the house let out a yell and I turned and headed for that.”
Fox nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about that yell, but I don’t know yet who yelled it.”
“Vaughn did. Kester. He was the first one in there. The other thing the colonel kept harping on, they’ve learned from some kind friend that I had been trying to get a stake from my father and hadn’t been able—”
Fuller interposed, “I don’t think it’s necessary to go into that, Jeffrey—”
“Nuts. You mean in front of Fox? They took it down in shorthand, didn’t they?” He returned to Fox. “Mr. Fuller is a lawyer. He sends for Miss Grant to speak to her, and what he wants is to ask her to lie and say she saw me standing behind the rose trellis at the time the shot was fired, so I can’t be charged with murdering my father! That’s the kind of—”
Fuller started to sputter. McElroy put a restraining hand on him. “Take it easy, Clint, the boy’s upset.”
“Yes,” said Jeffrey truculently, “I’ll tell the world I’m upset!”
Nancy put in, in a thin voice, “He didn’t ask me to lie, Mr. Thorpe.”
“Of course I didn’t!” Fuller declared. “I merely wanted to establish definitely whether you had seen him or not.”
“Well, she didn’t,” said Jeffrey. “Are you my lawyer? That’s fine. I’ve got no alibi and the cops know I didn’t like my father, and I’ll inherit a pile from him, and I wanted money and he wouldn’t give it to me. Work on that.” He turned precipitately and tramped off across the terrace, unheeding Fuller’s calclass="underline"
“Jeffrey! I want to ask—”
“Let him alone,” McElroy said. “He’s upset. We can find him when we’re through with Miss Grant and Fox.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone me too,” said Fox. “I have to find Mrs. Pemberton and arrange not to get thrown off the place. Do you know where she is?”
Nancy nodded. “Over there on the lawn. I saw her when I passed about ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll see you later,” Fox promised and deserted them.
He found her, seated on the grass in the shade of trees which had prevented his seeing her when he had looked out from the side hall entrance. He frowned when he saw that Vaughn Kester was with her, but had it erased by the time he came up to them. Kester arose as he approached and Miranda said:
“Stow the etiquette, Vaughn. Only the British dress for dinner when the ship’s sinking.”
“Then I won’t apologize for interrupting,” said Fox. “Are you British, Mr. Kester?”
“No,” Kester replied curtly, without vouchsafing any vital statistics. “Did you want to ask me something?”
“Nothing in particular. I just wandered down to tell Mrs. Pemberton that when she is disengaged I’d like to have a few words with her in private.”
“If it’s urgent,” said Miranda, “I’m sure Vaughn will disengage me immediately.”
“Certainly,” Kester declared stiffly.
“Well,” said Fox, “I’m afraid it’s urgent. If I don’t say it now, I’m afraid I won’t get to say it at all. Derwin says I talk too much and I have to get out of here.”
Kester bowed, said, “I’ll see that it’s done the way you want it, Miranda,” turned on his heel and marched off across the turf.
Fox sat down on the grass, cross-legged, three feet from Miranda, facing her. Her handsome features were not now impeccably arranged; the corners of her mouth were down, her sleepy lids looked flabby and there was grey in her skin.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well,” said Fox with his eyes on her, “there are several things I want to say, but first I have to ask a question. What time did you go to the bungalow Sunday night, how long did you stay, and what did you see and do while you were there? I mean your father’s bungalow where Corey Arnold was killed.”
“Oh.” Miranda had blinked and blinked again, but had done nothing else. “You mean that bungalow.”
“Yes. You have admirable control of your nerves. Under the circumstances, extraordinary. You may stall for a couple of minutes if you want to, to get your head working, but it won’t do you any good. I have the gloves. The ones for the left hand.”
“You have?”
“Yes. Your maid, Miss Knudsen, gave them to a little girl named Helen Gustava Flanders and I got them from her. I was starting for the house to ask you about it when the shot was fired that killed your father.”
“Do you mean you have them or Mr. Derwin has them?”
“Neither one. I was afraid the colonel might overdo it and search us, and I hid them in the piano.”
Miranda took a breath. It was her first since he had asked his question and it was half gasp and half sigh.
“I’m disinclined to think that you killed either Arnold or your father,” said Fox. “If you did, I get a black mark, because I sized you up wrong. But you’d better go ahead and tell me about it.”
Miranda suddenly moved. He thought she was arising, but she only got up to her knees, went close to him on them and said, “Lift your head up, I want to kiss you.”
He raised his face to her, and she bent to it and kissed him competently and thoroughly on the lips. Then she dropped to her former position.
“That,” she said, “was a feeble expression of gratitude for your not telling the police,” she shivered. “Lord, that would have been awful! Now I’ll tell you about it. It was around half-past eleven when I got there Sunday night. A car was parked on the road near the gate—”
“Excuse me. I want the whole works. There must have been quite a build-up. Just the essentials, because we may be interrupted and if I’m to rescue those gloves from the piano—”
“All right.” Miranda was crisp. “You already know that Jeff and I had dinner at the Green Meadow Club with Vaughn, Sunday evening.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Five months ago Jeff decided that he wanted a quarter of a million dollars to start a publishing business. He had determined he wanted to make a man of himself. Why he thought being a publisher would do that, I don’t know. I didn’t know then even why he wanted to be a man, but of course it was Nancy Grant. When he found her he wanted to be able to stick his chest out. Father was displeased with him, because he hadn’t stayed in the office when he was started there, and he wouldn’t even discuss it with him. I tried a couple of times to talk Father into it, but it was next to impossible—”