Deadly Hall Read online

  Yes, rain. Beginning at breakfast time on Friday it had rained almost without interruption, sometimes lightly and sometimes in great whirling sheets that obscured all view. Less than half an hour before arrival at New Orleans, after the capricious fashion of this climate, the rain vanished. Under a placid blue sky breathing of evening, with the calliope playing first Waiting for the Robert E. Lee and then There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, they had made majestic approach to their mooring at the Grand Bayou Line’s wharf on the levee.

  Dave Hobart, now at Jeff’s left hand in the Packard limousine on the River Road, referred to this among other matters.

  “You’ll see the Hall soon enough,” he said. “But I’m glad you decided to accept our hospitality instead of going elsewhere. Up to this morning I couldn’t get a straight answer out of you.”

  “If it won’t be too much trouble …”

  “It won’t be any trouble at all. When we landed, Jeff, I wonder whether you saw something I saw?”

  “Well?”

  “The first person off that boat, as soon as they lowered the whatdyecallit on its chains, was your little friend Penny. Did you notice?”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  “There was the venerable Cadillac I swear they’ve had for years, almost as long as the venerable Pierce Arrow of yore. There was old Bertie Lynn,” thus did Dave describe Penny’s father, “waiting all agog. There was her Uncle Gordon, a host in himself. They whisked that gal away as though they thought somebody wanted to kidnap her.”

  “Maybe somebody did.”

  “In the general bustle of landing,” Dave pressed his hands over his eyes, “everything got sort of confused and mixed up. Where was Kate? I didn’t even see Kate. What happened to Kate?”

  “Kate,” Serena answered, “was with Chuck Saylor. Chuck’s been giving her quite a play for several days. He was to give her a lift in his taxi, or she was to give him a lift in hers: something of that sort, anyway.” She gestured towards the Negro chauffeur beyond the glass panel. “When I saw Isaac waiting on the levee, and knew he must have brought the car as I’d wired him from Cincinnati to do, I realized I couldn’t offer a lift to everybody! We might just have squeezed in the whole party, but we couldn’t possibly have accommodated the luggage. There’s enough of our own as it is. As for Chuck Saylor …”

  “Oh, Saylor! Forget Saylor, can’t you? Has it been established whether Kate was, or was not, making up to Captain Josh Galway?”

  “No, Dave, she certainly was not,” Serena assured him. “Captain Josh did have something on his mind and still has, but it wasn’t anything to do with Kate.”

  “How do you make that out?”

  “He wasn’t in the pilot-house when we landed, as we all observed. He didn’t oversee bringing the boat in; one of the pilots attended to that. You don’t often meet Captain Josh without a smile on his face. But this afternoon he stamped past me as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And he said something. He didn’t say it to me; he didn’t say it to anybody; he was a strong man in agony. He just muttered, ‘How many of ’em? Dear God in heaven, how many of ’em?’ and stamped on. I can’t think what on earth he meant.”

  “I can tell you that,” volunteered Jeff. “When I talked to Minnoch last night …”

  “Ah, Minnoch!” Dave said ecstatically. “Good Lieutenant Minnoch! Old Nemesis Minnoch, the Grand Bastard of the police force! All roads lead straight back in a circle to Minnoch. Suppose, Jeff, you just repeat every word he said to you?”

  Serena drew herself up in protest.

  “Really, Dave! Since breakfast this morning we’ve been over all that at least twenty times. Surely,” and she gave him a smile almost coquettish, “you don’t want Jeff to repeat it again?”

  “Yes, little sister, that’s just what I do want; and with very good reason for wanting it. If you don’t see how important that is and is likely to be, you’re not the bright gal I’ve always thought you. Well, Jeff?”

  Jeff looked at Serena.

  “Captain Josh’s attitude,” he said, “is hardly mysterious either. Remember what’s been happening. Early Monday morning, long before the boat leaves Cincinnati, Dave sneaks aboard with the idea of keeping his presence in Room 240 strictly secret all the way. He tackles Captain Josh, who doesn’t like it but finally agrees as a family friend.

  “Then Lieutenant Minnoch and his accompanying sergeant, one Fred Bull, waylay Captain Josh with much the same sort of request. Though they don’t want their presence kept a secret, they make sure nobody on board will breathe a word about the fact that they’re cops. They seem to have used threats of some kind. Dave changed his mind; they didn’t. Captain Josh has had enough, hasn’t he? He’s had almost as much of it as … as …”

  “Almost as much of it,” interposed Dave, “as you’ve had encounters with Penny when she’s been partially or completely undressed? But that’s not the point. Listen, old son! I don’t care two hoots whether they threatened Captain Josh with the law or bribed him with police funds or said they’d sink the boat in mid-channel if he refused to play ball. Minnoch didn’t hide his presence; he did hide his job. Why?”

  “Well …”

  “What was the last thing he said to you, before you two parted yesterday evening? The very last thing?”

  “He said, ‘I can’t stop you from telling your friends who I am, or anything else I’ve talked about. But we’re so close to home it can’t hurt much now.’”

  “‘It can’t hurt much now.’ And just before then, Jeff? What had Old Nemesis been going on about just before then?”

  Jeff reflected.

  “A few minutes ago, Dave, you said you couldn’t get a straight answer out of me until this morning. I could no more get a straight answer out of Minnoch than I can get one out of you or Serena. But I’ve already given you the gist of it. Some unnamed informant has been stirring up both the police and my uncle about an old case, years ago, their informant claims was a case of murder.”

  “What was this alleged murder, and when did it happen?”

  “Minnoch said he couldn’t tell me that unless Uncle Gil told me first. All he’d say was that it would be seventeen years ago in November.”

  Dave uttered an exclamation of triumph.

  “Seventeen years come November! Hear that, Serena? It’s the United States Mint to a plugged nickel Old Nemesis meant our own home-grown business of Thad Peters breaking his neck on the stairs.”

  “Dave, that’s silly!” Serena sounded outraged. “I’ll indulge these fancies if you insist, but it’s silly! A sheer accident that might have happened to anybody …”

  “Can you name any other case that’ll be seventeen years old in November? Yes, Iris March; we all know it was an accident. But if somebody wants to stir up trouble at the present time—” Dave broke off. “Didn’t it occur to you, Jeff?”

  “Oh, yes, it occurred to me. I said, ‘Whatever happened, Lieutenant, why should you be interested in shadowing any of us at so late a date? In 1910 Dave Hobart and I were only fifteen years old. Mrs. Keith couldn’t have been older; Serena Hobart was nine or ten at the outside, and Penny Lynn not as old. Why so much belated interest?’”

  “And Old Hawkshaw’s reply?”

  “You’ve heard that too. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what could any of you be up to now? You yourself, or the Hobart children, or even the dark-haired lady with the figure? I won’t include the other little lady with the figure. She’s all right; she’s like the daughter I never had. And I don’t say there’s anything to be interested in, mind. All the same, what could any of the rest of you be up to?’”

  “Leaving it at that?”

  “Leaving it at that.”

  “Really, Dave,” Serena lifted one shoulder, “unless you’re just trying to give us the creeps, in which you won’t succeed, I do wish you’d drop this subject for good and all! And you needn’t worry, Jeff.”

  “I needn’t worry?”

  “Abo
ut Penny. When Dave suggests Penny may have been deserting you by getting off the boat so soon …”

  “So help me, Serena,” Dave vowed, “I wasn’t suggesting any such damn thing! Nobody else has got a chance with her when this gangling lout’s around.”

  “You do appreciate it, then? Jeff, just before Penny’s father and her uncle ‘whisked her away,’ to quote Dave, you and I know she called out to you and asked you to phone soon.”

  Jeff bent forward, pondering.

  “There’s one other call I ought to make. In a letter last month Dave predicted that Uncle Gil would be in Baton Rouge for some political do. He really is there, according to Minnoch, and won’t be back until Monday. I meant to surprise him, but it doesn’t seem such a good idea now. All things considered, I’d better ring his apartment and report.”

  Dave waved towards the right-hand side of the River Road.

  “Our phone, old son, is at your disposal. And you’ll be able to use it at any minute. We’re almost there.”

  In England, perhaps, some sixteenth-century Delys had overseen the building of a wall to enclose the grounds of the Hall. No wall existed here, nor would anybody have thought of one.

  Set well back beyond live oaks carefully cleared of Spanish moss, Delys Hall faced south towards the river. Red brick and gray stone had darkened like the colors of an old painting. Though of only two main floors, with some few gable-end windows indicating smaller accommodation on an embryonic top floor, each main floor reared to good height, the lower one particularly high, above a flagged terrace with a stone balustrade. The gravel drive, which also enclosed a grass plot with stone pedestal and statue of Diana, divided into two branches before shallow steps leading up to the terrace.

  Despite gathering dusk, the sun’s afterglow caught a flash from ranked windows: diamond-paned, each window a panel of four lights separated by stone mullions. The lower parts could open out like little doors. Many on the ground floor were stained glass. Projecting from the brickwork between the panels of windows, upper floor as well as lower, stretched a row of ornamental iron brackets in fleur-de-lys shape.*

  Was there something else too? Antiquity, yes. What about decay?

  But Jeff had no time to speculate. Isaac, the young chauffeur, stopped the car beside the steps to the terrace. After holding open the door for his passengers to alight, he unstrapped suitcases from the grid and hauled down other luggage from the roof.

  Dave, whom Serena tried unavailingly to shush, pointed towards a Model T Ford parked in the drive where it turned past the right-hand or eastern side of the Hall.

  “Question for old residents!” Dave carolled. “In all New Orleans, what prosperous character alone still drives a Model T, and that particular Model T?

  “Speaking of cars, Jeff,” he added, “there are three of ’em in the garage out back: this royal coffin, for state occasions only; the touring car; and a Stutz Bearcat Serena and I use. You’re welcome to share the Stutz, if that’s agreeable?”

  “Very agreeable, thanks.”

  Dave danced up the steps to the flagged terrace. He had barely touched the doorbell when the massive, arched, iron-studded oak door was opened by old Cato, who had been major-domo for as long as Jeff could remember.

  The lofty lower hall, with its linenfold oak panelling, its famous staircase, and its smell of scrubbed stone, was now illumined only by the last light through stained-glass windows above the front door. Cato, unsurprised, greeted Jeff as though the latter had been calling there every day for years.

  Dave, amid heaped luggage, cleared his throat like a master of ceremonies.

  “There’s a question before the house,” he declared. “The room just over the door,” and he pointed upwards, “is Serena’s. It used to be the principal guest bedroom; but she bagged it in early adolescence and she’s been there ever since. Here’s the question, Serena: just where do we put this Caldwell fellow?”

  “The Tapestry Room, I think.” Serena became coolly practical. “Yes, the Tapestry Room; he’ll like that. You might see to it, please, Cato.”

  And yet a certain air of constraint held both Serena and Dave. This only increased, for some reason, when still another person joined them.

  To your right, as you stood in the lower hall, another massive door stood open on the drawing-room. Beyond lay the dining-room they called a refectory. Out of the drawing-room, tall, stooped, grizzled, cadaverous of both voice and appearance, wandered that esteemed family lawyer, Ira Rutledge.

  “Ah, Serena!” he said, adjusting his spectacles and blinking in the twilight. “You’ve returned, then?”

  “That should be fairly obvious, Mr. Rutledge. We took the steamboat at Cincinnati.”

  “So Cato informed me, when I telephoned about another matter. He informed me, to be exact, that you had taken the steamboat. I had not even been aware of Dave’s absence.”

  Then, faintly anxious, he addressed them both.

  “It has been necessary, for your own sake, to consult certain papers in the study. You don’t mind, I hope? Since you both were absent …”

  “For the love of Mike,” Dave said heartily, “of course we don’t mind! Consult anything; do anything! But your eyesight must be even worse than usual. Isn’t there anybody else here you’re acquainted with or have seen somewhere before?”

  “That gentleman there …”

  “You mean you don’t recognize Jeff Caldwell?”

  “Indeed!” exclaimed the lawyer, bustling forward and shaking hands formally. “It’s good to see you and welcome you, Jeff. Your uncle will be still more pleased, I know, when he returns from Baton Rouge. Is he expecting you?”

  “Not to my knowledge, at least. Your letter, Mr. Rutledge …”

  “Ah, yes. I wonder, Jeff, whether I can persuade you to call at my office tomorrow afternoon? Two o’clock, if that would be convenient? Saturday is a bad day, of course. But then lawyers, like doctors, may not study their own convenience. If it’s also a bad day for you …”

  “You may expect me, sir. At two on the dot.”

  “Good! Consequently, with the permission of you all, I had better get on home for dinner. The Ford is not what it used to be, one fears; and I mustn’t worry Mrs. Rutledge, now, must I? Before I take my leave, however …”

  Again he addressed Serena and Dave.

  “Without wishing to touch on any delicate subject,” he added, with a dry rasp in his throat, “may I ask whether you have come to some definite decision about May 1st?”

  “There’s no reason to call it a delicate subject,” Dave shot back. “Serena and I haven’t quite made up our minds; but the answer will probably be yes. Is that good enough?”

  “May 1st,” mused Mr. Rutledge, “will be a Sunday. If Saturday is a bad day, Sunday is a day so bad as to be downright awkward. But, having chosen the date yourselves, I daresay you should abide by it. At the same time, I was wondering …?”

  “Yes?”

  “Forgive me, my boy. I seem to detect in you both more than a shade of embarrassment or uncertainty. If the subject is not delicate …” Then, suddenly, he drew a breath of relief. “Come, this question should never have been raised! Perhaps I do see and do understand; no more of it. Whereupon, with best wishes for the future, permit me to bid you good evening.”

  Taking up his hat from a Jacobean table near the front door, he bowed to them and went his way, closing the door after him. There was a little space of silence in thickening dusk.

  “For heaven’s sake, Dave,” Serena began too loudly, “don’t call him an old mossback! He’s far more shrewd than most people ever think.”

  “You needn’t worry, little sister. He may be a mossback, but I’ve never taken him for a fool. And I like the old boy. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t thinking about Ira at all.”

  Dave surveyed the flagstones of the floor. During that interval Cato, assisted by a youth who may well have been his grandson, had been so industriously carrying luggage that no luggage now remained.
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  Turning sideways for a dramatic pose, Dave levelled his forefinger at the back of the hall.

  “There’s the damn thing!” he said. “There’s the staircase that seems to have caused all the trouble!”

  Serena and Jeff also turned to look. Very broad, a single solid affair with carved banisters and treads somewhat worn, it stretched up into near darkness on the floor above.

  “Haunt of ghouls and goblins, is it?” demanded Dave, still pointing. “On you, my sister, I would also urge a consideration. If I mustn’t underestimate Ira Rutledge, don’t you overestimate those stairs or their power to do harm. Don’t let ’em affect you, gal. Don’t be frightened or hypnotized.”

  “Dave, how many times must I tell you I’m not? The only ones who seem to be hypnotized are you and perhaps Chuck Saylor. Really, now … !”

  “There’s a precedent, Serena. Something was said, I seem to remember, by Marmion on the home ground of Douglas. Yes, got it!”

  Striking a pose still more dramatic, he soared into quotation:

  “‘Here in thy hold, thy vassals near, I tell thee thou’rt defied!

  And if thou said’st I am not peer

  To any lord in Scotland here,

  Lowland or Highland, far or near,

  Lord Angus, thou hast lied!’

  “But Marmion’s tirade hardly seems to the point, does it? Let’s try a tirade of my own.”

  Whereupon, as though completely carried away, Dave addressed the stairs.

  “Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties, every evil spirit that may hear, I tell thee thou’rt defied! Grab me, why don’t you?”

  And he darted towards the stairs, bounding up them.

  “Grab me, trip me, sling me down on my ear to die! Come on; that’s a dare!”

  “Dave,” Serena burst out, “what on earth are you up to? Do look out! It’s almost dark; you can’t see a thing; it would be easy to miss your step and—”

  At the very moment she spoke, Dave did seem to lose his footing. He flung up his arms, reeled round, and pitched down headforemost. Rolling over and over, though with comparatively little noise, he came to the foot of the stairs and lay there.