“Huh?”
“Somebody on foot? Going either way?”
“Nope.”
“But somebody could have come through on foot without your seeing him. Isn’t that so?”
“Listen, friend,” Peterson snarled, “this gatehouse is a joke. I got to sit down sometimes. I got to step into the bushes once in a while. I got to feed my face. There’s a hundred ways a guy can get onto this Island without being seen. Go look for your patsy some place else. I’m taking no fall but for nobody.”
“You know, Abe, Peterson’s right,” the old man murmured as they crossed the causeway. “Nair Island is accessible to anyone who wants to go to a little trouble. A rowboat to one of the private beaches at night... a sneak past the gate... a young fellow like Ron Frost could even have swum over from one of the Taugus beaches and got back the same way.”
His friend glanced at him. “You’re dead set that this is murder, Dick, aren’t you? And that the Frost kid pulled it?”
“I’m not dead set on anything. It’s just that I believe Jessie Sherwood saw something on that pillowslip. If it was a handprint she saw, murder is indicated. And if it was murder, young Frost is your hottest suspect.”
“Not any more he isn’t. The report came in while you were nosing around the beach for row-boat tracks. Frost can’t possibly have been on Nair Island last night.”
“Why not?”
“The baby died on the Island between 10.30 p.m. and around half-past midnight. In that two-hour period Ronald Frost was in Stamford, unconscious.”
“Unconscious?”
“He was rushed to Stamford Hospital in an ambulance from a friend’s house on Long Ridge Road about 9 p.m. He was operated on for an emergency appendectomy at 10.07 p.m., and he didn’t come out of the anesthetic till three o’clock this morning.” Abe Pearl grinned as he swung his car into the street of little beach houses. “What do you think of your Nurse Sherwood’s pillowslip yarn now?”
Richard Queen blinked.
His friend pulled up, turned off the motor, and clapped him on the back. “Cheer up, Dick! Do you have to see a murder to make time with the Sherwood number? Take her out like a man!” He sniffed mightily. “I can smell Becky’s bacon from here. Come on, Dick — hot breakfast — few hours’ shuteye—”
“I’m not hungry, Abe,” the old man said. “You go on in. I’ll sit here for a while.”
He sat there for a long time.
Jessie Sherwood braked up to the barrier and honked impatiently for Monty Burns, the day guard, to come out of the gatehouse and pass her through. It was a week after the tragedy, seven days that had dragged like years. The weekend had brought with it the first hurricane of the season; some Nair Island cellars were flooded, and fifteen-foot breakers had weakened the causeway — it was still under repair.
But it would have taken more than a hurricane to keep Nurse Sherwood on the Island that Thursday. The week had been hellish. A dozen times she had regretted giving in to Alton Humffrey’s stiffish request that she stay on to nurse his wife. The big house was too full of the dead baby, and Sarah Humffrey’s antics had Jessie’s nerves at the shrieking point. But what else could I have done? she thought. That Mrs. Humffrey was on the verge of a nervous breakdown Jessie’s professional eye told her quite without the necessity of Dr. Wicks’s warnings. Mea culpa... The inquest and funeral by themselves would have unnerved a healthy woman, let alone a guilt-ridden hysteric.
Her chief recollection of the inquest was of sweaty bodies, goggling eyes, and her own humiliation and anger. They had treated her as if she were some malicious trouble-maker, or a psychopath. By contrast Sarah Humffrey had got off lightly. Alton Humffrey, Jessie thought grimly, had seen to that.
The verdict had been death by inadvertence, an accident. Accident!
And the funeral...
The coffin had been white and woefully tiny. They had tried to keep the time and place secret, but of course there had been a leak, and the pushing, craning crowds... the shouting reporters... that hideous scene in the Taugus cemetery when Sarah Humffrey screamed like an animal and tried to jump into the grave after the little flower-covered coffin...
Jessie shuddered and leaned on the horn. Monty Burns came out of the gatehouse, hastily buttoning his tunic.
She got over the workman-cluttered causeway at last, and she was about to kick the gas pedal when a familiar gray-mustached figure stepped out from under a maple tree into the road, holding up his hand and smiling.
“Morning!”
“What are you doing here?” Jessie asked confusedly.
“Remembered it was your day off, and decided to walk off Beck Pearl’s breakfast in your direction. I’ve been waiting for you. Going anywhere in particular?”
“No.”
“How about going there together?”
“I’d love it.”
He’s got something on his mind, Jessie thought as he got in. She drove slowly north, conscious of the intentness under his smile.
Signs of hurricane damage were everywhere. Between Norwalk and Westport the shore road was still under water in places. Jessie had to detour.
“A sailboat would have been more practical!” Jessie said. “What have you been doing with yourself, Inspector Queen?”
“This and that. You know,” he said suddenly, “when you let your face relax, Jessie, you get pretty as a picture.”
“Do I, now,” Jessie laughed. She was laughing! She scaled her black straw behind her and threw her head back. “Isn’t this breeze scrumptious?”
“Lovely,” he agreed, looking at her.
“It’s making a mess of my hair, but I don’t care.”
“You have beautiful hair, Jessie. I’m glad you keep it long.”
“You like it that way?” Jessie said, pleased.
“My mother’s hair reached to her knees. Of course, in those days no women bobbed their hair but suffragettes and prostitutes. I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still prefer long hair in a woman.”
“I’m glad,” Jessie murmured. She was beginning to feel glad about everything today.
“How about lunch? I’m getting hungry.”
“So am I!” Jessie cried. “Where shall we go?”
They found an artfully bleached seafood place overlooking an inlet of the Sound. They sat behind glass and watched the spray from the still-agitated water trying to get up at them, hurtling from the pilings and dashing against the big storm window almost in their faces. They dipped steamed clams into hot butter, mounds of them, and did noble archeological work on broiled lobster, and Jessie was happy.
But with the mugs of black coffee he said abruptly, “You know, Jessie, I spent a whole day this week in Stamford. Part of it at the Stamford Hospital.”
“Stamford?”
“Part of it at the Stamford Hospital.”
“Oh.” Jessie sighed. “You saw Ronald Frost?”
“Also his hospital admission card, and the doctor who operated on him. Even talked to the people he was visiting when he got the appendix attack. I wanted to check Frost’s alibi for myself.”
“It stands up, of course.”
“Yes. It was a legitimate emergency appendectomy, and from the times involved, Frost couldn’t physically have been on Nair Island when the baby died.”
“Lucky emergency.” Jessie frowned out the window. “For him, I mean.”
“Very,” Richard Queen said dryly. “Because he was the one who made that first attempt on the night of July 4th.”
“He admitted it?” Jessie cried.
“Not in so many words — why should he? — but I’m convinced from what he said and how he said it that he was the man that night, all right. God knows what he thought he was trying to do — I don’t think he knew, or knows, himself. He was drunk as a lord. Anyway, Jessie, that’s that. As far as the murder is concerned, Frost is out.”