The Deep Lake Mystery

“Then Heaven help Alma,” I groaned. “For they say they are her fingerprints and her footprints and she admits that she had that Totem thing in her mind. But it’s too clear! It’s too obvious! She never killed her uncle, fixed up all that gimcrack business and then went in the sitting room and jumped out of the window!”

“Stick to the things she evidently did do,” put in Maud. “She must have stood on the sill and dived out of the window – ”

“Not necessarily,” I stormed. “Even if she stepped up on the sill, say, to open a window that stuck, that doesn’t say she jumped, nor does it prove she killed her uncle.”

“Certainly not – hush, somebody is coming up the steps.”

The somebody proved to be Posy May, the pretty youngster whom I had seen a few times already.

“Well, how goes it?” she demanded, dropping into a chair and curling her feet under her, while I accommodated her with a cigarette and a light.

“How goes what?” asked Maud, who was not entirely in favour of the young lady, being herself of the type that can’t quite understand the flapper motif.

“Oh, the detective business in general. It intrigues me, you know. I sometimes think I’ll take a correspondence course in Sherlocking.”

“What are you doing to-day?” Lora said, pleasantly. “Why aren’t you at the McClellan’s tea?”

“Nixie on the switch! I like the subject I started better. And you needn’t scorn me so. I could a tale unfold…”

Annoyed beyond measure by this impudent minx, I rose and sauntered toward the house door.

But Lora had evidently caught a note of reality in the girl’s voice, for she said, almost sharply, “What do you know, Posy? If you know anything concerning the matter, it is your duty to tell of it.”

“I’d rather tell Mr. Moore,” she put on an air of importance. “He is at the head of the investigation, I assume.”

Lora smiled, in spite of herself, at the chit’s manner, but she only said, suavely:

“As a good wife, I am my husband’s helpmeet in all his business. And I assure you it will be better to tell me and let me pass it on to him, for he’s gone out, and I don’t know when he’ll get home again.”

“Do tell us,” Maud urged, helpfully. “We are all intrigued, as you say, with the case, and your assistance might prove invaluable.”

The flattering glance that accompanied this speech seemed to win the day, and Posy settled back in the big chair, sticking her feet out straight in front of her.

“Well,” she said, smoothing down her brief and scant skirt, “you see, our house is on down the lake, next below Whistling Reeds.”

Recognizing there was or might be something coming, I turned back, and sat down again.

“So, of course, I can’t help seeing them about now and then, though I don’t really rubber much – I don’t get time, as I’m busy on my own. And, after all, there’s nothing to see, and if there was, you can’t see much with all that wall of evergreens all round about.”

“If this is idle gossip, my dear – ” Lora began.

“No, it’s – it’s information.”

Thoroughly enjoying the attention she was receiving, Posy prolonged the situation by selecting and lighting a fresh cigarette. Having drawn one puff, she turned it round and critically surveyed the lighted end, as is the absurd habit of some people.

But each one of her hearers knew better than to interrupt by word or look the possible continuance of her revelations.

“Now, what I have to tell, I’ve never breathed to a soul. I’m not sure now that I ought to breathe it.”

She looked questioningly about, but we gave no aid or hindrance, knowing the best plan was to let her alone.

Then she drew a long sigh, and let the whole story pour forth in a mad rush of words.

“And it’s only one thing I saw, and one thing I heard. And I saw Alma Remsen, out on the tennis court, in a perfectly fiendish rage, and she was striking that old nurse person of hers and calling her the most terrible names, and the man who takes care of the place came and carried her into the house.”

“Carried the nurse?”

“No, of course not! Carried Alma into the house, and she was kicking and fighting like mad. And the other time was when I was out on the lake and I could see just the same sort of row going on, but I was too far to hear what she said. But this time the man wasn’t about and the nurse managed by herself to drag Alma into the house.”

“You’re sure what you are saying is true, Posy?” asked Lora, very gravely and with an intent look at the girl.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Moore, I’m sure, and the reason I’m telling you is because I think that Alma isn’t – you know – isn’t quite right, sometimes. She isn’t – exactly, all there. And then, except on these occasions, she is all right, her own sweet, lovely self.”

“Do you know Alma well, Miss Posy?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. We come up here every summer, I’ve known her for five or six years. She’s older than I am, we don’t go in the same set, but we meet at fairs and tournaments and she’s always most chummy with me. Now, I know you all think I’m telling this just to make a sensation and all that, but it isn’t at all. I’ve thought it over a lot, and it seemed to be my duty. You see, I’ve doped it out that she has spells – you know, epileptic, or whatever they call it, and that they don’t come on often, but when they do, she has no control over her passions. She becomes – oh, somebody else, like – and she fights like a mad person. If you’d seen her go for Mr. Merivale – wow! I don’t want to see it again!”

“I can’t help thinking you’re mistaken in your diagnosis, Miss May,” I said, speaking indulgently, for I didn’t want her to flare up. “But I think it’s far more likely the two occasions you speak of were just fits of anger, unladylike, perhaps, even unjustifiable, but not the result of a diseased mind or body.”

She looked at me with earnest eyes.

“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen her, Mr. Norris. She was mad – I mean mad, in the sense of demented – I don’t mean just angry. Well, anyway, I’ve told my story, now you can take it up. But I know, if you go there and face that nurse down, she’ll have to admit there’s some such state of things as I tell you of. She’d deny it to me, or to these ladies, but if a man went there and made her tell the truth, you’d soon find out! That’s why she had to be put out of her uncle’s house, when he decided to get a wife in there. He couldn’t bring a wife to a home with a girl like that in it. If it had not been for his approaching wedding, Mr. Tracy never would have put Alma out.”

“Posy,” Lora spoke gently, “are you willing to keep this secret a while longer? Are you willing to promise not to tell anybody about it until Mr. Moore says you may? If you will do this, you may feel that you have been of real help to us, but if you’re going to spread the story you will do incalculable harm.”

“No, I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.”

“That’s a good girl and we certainly don’t want you to. Don’t even tell Dick Hardy, will you?”

“Oh, gosh, no! He wouldn’t listen, anyway. He’s just my sheik, you know. He and I don’t talk about anything serious.”

“You’re a funny youngster, Posy,” and Lora smiled kindly at her, “but I’m going to trust your word in this thing. If you say you won’t tell, you won’t, will you?”

“No, ma’am, I sure won’t. And, I don’t s’pose you can get me, but I seemed to think the ends of justice couldn’t be served unless I coughed up my yarn.”

“Oh, Posy, you funny kid!” said Maud, laughing outright.

But Posy didn’t smile, nor, indeed, did I.

After a few more words she went off, and as she ran round the corner of the hedge I felt that doubtless she had dismissed the subject from her addle-pated head.

For a few moments we sat, silently thinking over the story we had heard.

I broke the silence finally by saying, “It’s too circumstantial not to be true.”

“Yes,” Lora agreed, “it’s true, right enough, but I can’t quite understand.”

“Nothing hard to understand,” I argued. “Alma has a more uncontrollable temper than I had any idea of. This doesn’t make me think she went so far as to kill her uncle in one of her angry fits but I will say that the matter must be looked into.”