The Deep Lake Mystery

Yet it was all hints and innuendoes. He stated that the two men were continually quarrelling. Asked what about, he replied “Money matters.”

“What sort of money matters?” Hart asked him.

“Stocks and bonds and mortgages. I think Mr. Ames owed Mr. Tracy a great deal of money and he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay it, and so they wrangled over it.”

“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.”