The Deep Lake Mystery

The shortcake materialized and proved worthy of all praise, and Kee refused to talk about the tragedy at all until the meal was over and we gathered in the lounge afterward.

Lora and Maud had heard only scraps of information from neighbours and tradesmen, but they had not been inquisitive, preferring to wait until we returned to tell them all about it.

And so the four of us sat down for a real confab.

I listened while Keeley told his wife all the information he had so far accumulated, and I couldn’t help admiring the straightforward, clean-cut story he told. He might have been a skilled reporter, giving the known facts to the public.

Of course my conscience pricked me because I was holding back the very important bit of evidence that I seemed the only one to know. Apparently no one but myself had seen Alma Remsen go in her canoe to Pleasure Dome the night before at about half past one o’clock.

I might be accessory after the fact. I might be aiding and abetting a criminal, but, shameless that I was, I didn’t care, and had no intention of telling my secret.

My justification, adequate in my own mind, was that I didn’t for a minute believe Alma Remsen had killed her uncle. It was too incredible, too impossible. Go to his house, she did. Stay there about an hour, she did. But kill him, no! Perhaps she saw the deed committed, perhaps she arrived later, and saw the dead victim, perhaps – a very doubtful perhaps – she arranged the bizarre decorations, but strike the deadly blow – never!

So, I felt I had a right to keep still about the matter, for why drag the girl into detestable prominence, and have her wrongly suspected of crime, when all I had to do was to keep silence?

Lora listened quietly, with sundry intelligent nods of her head, and Maud Merrill was no less interested. I had great respect for the intelligence of both these women, and listened eagerly for their comments.

“Too many suspects,” said Lora, as Kee finished his recital.

“Yes,” agreed Maud, “there’s positively nobody in the house outside suspicion.”

“Then we must eliminate,” said Kee.

“We can’t exactly eliminate,” Lora told him, “but we can guess who had the strongest motive.”

“Guess!”

“That’s all we can do. I can’t see that there are any clues that mean anything. All those flowers and things were already in the room. As clues, they all go for nothing. The murderer was not necessarily a man of fantastic tastes or a child of playful tendencies, he only cut up those tricks so we would think he was.”

“That’s right,” Kee said. “It wasn’t even specially clever. He just picked up anything he saw about and laid it on the bed to fog things up. So what about motive? I can’t imagine any one wanting to kill Tracy for anything except a sordid reason. Money, I am sure, is the only motive.”

“Love?” I said. “Was no one else enamoured of the beautiful Mrs. Dallas, and wanted Tracy out of the way?”

“Of course, Charlie Everett adored her,” Lora said, “but he wouldn’t commit murder to get her. And if he did, he wouldn’t choose such a horrible, brutal method. He’d shoot his victim, not assassinate him with a hammer and nail!”

“I think that, too,” Kee declared. “To my mind, that nail business indicates a low type of personality. A servant seems the most likely. Griscom, for choice.”

Now I knew Keeley Moore well enough to know that if he suggested Griscom, Griscom was not the man he suspected. He had a way of drawing out other people, by hints and allusions, in hope of getting a side light on his own suspect.

“If the motive was to achieve at once the legacy from the Tracy estate, then every inmate of that house is suspect. Farrell told me that Mr. Tracy’s will left a substantial bequest to each of the servants, to the secretary and to Mr. Ames,” I told my audience.

“All right,” exclaimed Moore, “let’s begin at the top. What have we got against Harper Ames?”

“His immediate need for money, his hateful, belligerent disposition, his love for Mrs. Dallas and his unhampered opportunity,” I declared, promptly.

“I thought he was a woman hater,” cried Maud Merrill. “Why do you say he was in love with her?”

“I may not be a detective,” I said, “but I am not entirely a nincompoop. When I saw those two people here last evening, I realized that whatever he calls himself, he’s no woman hater where Mrs. Dallas is concerned. He adores her; in the language of the poet, he worships the ground she walks on.”

“Norris is right about that,” Keeley conceded. “I’ve seen it for some time. And when these avowed woman haters fall for a siren, they fall hard. Yes, Ames is head over ears in love with the lady, and for that very reason, he’s out of the running. A man isn’t going to commit murder to win a lady’s hand. It’s too dangerous a proceeding. If Ames were not in love with her, I might suspect him.”

“But, hold on, Kee. There might be circumstances,” I said, “in which Ames lost his head, or his temper, or both, and let fly at Tracy in an ungovernable fit of rage – ”

“That murder wasn’t done in an ungovernable fit of rage, it was a premeditated affair. Whoever did it, came prepared with that nail and a hammer – ”

“Why a hammer?” I demanded. “The nail could have been driven in with any heavy object.”

“Such as what?”

I ruminated over the appointments of the room as I remember them, and said, a little lamely, “Well, one could take off his shoe to drive the nail.”

“Yes, one could,” Kee assented, “but it doesn’t sound likely – ”

“The whole affair doesn’t sound likely,” I countered, “and anyway, it doesn’t matter. Somebody did drive that nail, and what it was driven with is unimportant. As far as I can learn, they’ve found nothing conclusive in the way of fingerprints. I’m not keen on those things myself, but in New York they would have been fingerprinting the whole crowd of us.”

“Of course, there are no available fingerprints on the nail,” Kee said, “and that’s the only thing that matters. I don’t give a fig for all the feather dusters, flowers, oranges and such things.”

“Not even the watch in the water pitcher?” I asked.

“Well, yes, I do consider the watch in the water pitcher. In fact, I think that’s the key note of the whole performance.”

“You’ve got to tell us why,” I told him. “You can’t say that and leave it unexplained.”

“Indeed I can. A real detective never explains his cryptic utterances.”

“You’re not a real detective,” I declared, solemnly.

“Why not?” and he glowered at me.

“Because you look like a detective. You’re tall, and dark and hawk-eyed or hawk-nosed, or hawk-somethinged. Now, a real detective must always look utterly unlike the detective of fiction, and you’re the very image of Sherlock Holmes.”

“And I glory in it. But if you flatter yourself you’re my Watson, you must cultivate the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.”

“I thought we were eliminating,” put in Maud. “Who have we eliminated so far?”

“Your English is deplorable,” Kee told her, “but I can deduce your meaning. Well, how about eliminating Ames?”

“No,” I cried, “he’s the one not to eliminate. There are too many counts against him. I say, let’s begin at the other end of the line. The lesser servants.”

“Cut out Sally Bray, then,” Moore advised. “That girl never had the nerve to go a-murdering all by herself.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “Though she may have gone with some companion.”

“No, it isn’t plausible. As to the servants, all we can say is that they could have had opportunity. The house servants, at any rate, could have had a duplicate key made to the Tracy suite – ”

“But that wasn’t needed. So far as we know the door wasn’t locked when the murderer went in. But he left it locked when he came out.”

“That’s the point of the whole thing,” Lora said, confidently. “You can’t do this elimination you talk about, for every servant had a motive, if you count greed a motive, and every servant had a chance to get into the room unnoticed. Now it all comes back to the explanation of the intruder leaving the door locked behind him. Give me a possible explanation, Kee.”