The clerk discovered that a Saturday two summers ago had come on July nineteenth. Under Delivery Stop Orders on that date he found one for a Raymond Maxwell, 12 February Lane, Brookfield.
Under the M file in the regular account book, the clerk found the house on February Lane was owned by a Charles G. Jameson, Brookfield real-estate operator.
Bills had been paid by postal money orders, but there was a letter from Mrs Maxwell, opening the account. Ann s heart jumped when she caught sight of purple ink and Delia s large handwriting.
The clay road to Brookfield was so thickly lined with trees it seemed as though the sedan was going through a long tunnel. Crane brooded over the lecture he had just been given on the evils of strong drink. A warm afternoon sun sent saffron rays angling through elms and oaks and maples, spotlighted bright masses of party-colored leaves. In the air there was a smell of smoke.
He had to admit, though, Ann had done a neat piece of detection in tracing Delia through the dairy. 'I guess I owe you a bottle of milk,' he said.
'Champagne,' Ann said.
'All right. What kind of champagne do you like?'
'Demi-sec, in magnums.'
'You ll get it,' he said, and added, 'I hope it makes you very sec.'
This terrible pun made him feel better and he told her what he d heard in the taproom.
He told her about the discovery of Richard s body, of the lipstick on his face, and of the smell of gardenia on his coat. They wondered why Talmadge March had tried to trap Carmel. Or had it been his idea of a joke?
'I m beginning to think Richard was having an affair with Carmel,' Crane said.
'In addition to our Delia?'
'Richard was a gay dog.'
'Do you think Carmel d deceive her husband with his first cousin?' Ann asked. 'I don t know.'
A break in the tunnel of trees brought them out into bright sunlight. On the right was a black field, stacked evenly with Indian tepees of cornstalks, and dotted with plump, bright pumpkins. A black-and-white calf, chained to a fence post, grazed in the ditch beside the road.
Crane added, 'Look at Peter, too. She s quite friendly with him.'
'Peter told me this afternoon he wanted to get Richard s letters to protect a lady,' Ann said. 'From hints he dropped I got the idea the lady is Carmel, and that the letters were important.' She glanced at his face. 'And that gave me an idea.'
The road curved to the right, crossed a small stone bridge and entered a valley. Apple orchards, fruit trees and cornfields lay on either side of them. They passed a wagon loaded with yellow feed corn.
'I think you re wonderful,' Crane said.
'Be serious. If Carmel was your wife and was having an affair with Richard, what would you do?'
'I d lock her up in the coalbin.'
'Please be serious.'
'I d be angry with Richard.'
'Exactly '
'My God!' Crane blinked at her. 'You don t think John killed him?'
'He could have discovered Carmel in the car with Richard (that fits in with the gardenia), sent her into the club, then killed Richard.'
'How?'
Ann smiled. 'That s as far as I ve gone.'
'I ve got an idea.' Crane lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth. 'I ll tell you if you re not mad at me.'
'I ve never been mad at you.'
'No?'
'Well, I wish you wouldn t drink so much.'
Crane was about to tell her of his plan to make people think he was a drunkard so they d disregard him, but it didn t sound so convincing sober.
'All right, I won t,' he said. 'Here s the idea.'
He reconstructed the murder (if it had been a murder) for her. Richard, he said, had passed out. Then John, or someone else, had fastened a rubber hose to the exhaust of his sedan, run the free end through a partially open window, and started the engine. Then, when Richard was dead, he removed the hose.
'I think that s very clever,' Ann declared.
The road came to a good cement highway, and Ann turned to the left and increased the sedan s speed. The sun was barely above a long ridge ahead of them, and the air was cooler. Haze hung like muslin over the distant countryside.
Crane was frowning. 'Only then I don t see who killed John,' he admitted.
Ann held her cigarette out the window to let the wind remove the ash. 'John killed himself. Remorse.'
Crane looked at her smiling face with respect. 'That makes it pretty neat.' He pulled the tan camel s hair around him. 'But the old man is certain Carmel did the murdering.'
Ann said, 'That s a good theory, too.'
Crane had another thought. 'Maybe Carmel signed her notes to Richard with the name Delia.'
'She didn t. Her handwriting s different.'
'You ve been busy, haven t you?'
'One of us has to work.'
Crane retired into high dudgeon. He had begun to be a little alarmed about Ann Fortune. It would be an awful thing if she solved the case singlehanded. He would never live it down. He had a dreadful feeling he might have to go to work.
'I need a drink,' he said, and then, as Ann looked at him, added, 'of nice warm tea.'
Presently he saw they were entering Brookfield. Middle-sized houses, many with fine lawns, sat under great oak and chestnut trees. There were gardens, filled with the yellow and white and orange flowers of late fall, around the houses and barbered hedges around them. Twice the clear stream forced the road to arch its back with stone bridges.
The village had a double main street with a partition of young trees in the middle. The stores had evidently been influenced by Tudor England. Their dark, exposed beams and red bricks contrasted with clean sidewalks and Paris-green grass. A one-story building had two display windows: one read, Daphne Gray, Beautician; the other, Charles G. Jameson, Real Estate.
Ann parked the sedan at an angle to the curb, and they went into the office and found an old man in a pair of slippers tinkering with a radio. He wore a coat and trousers and a shirt, buttoned at the collar, but no tie.
'Fix one o these?' he demanded.
Crane said he couldn t. He showed the old man a card from the American Insurance Company, said he was an investigator, and asked him about the Maxwells. He didn t know very much about them.
'I recollect they paid Chuck in advance for two years,' he said in a reedy voice.
'Then the lease hasn t expired?' Ann asked.
'No, ma am. They got until next May.' He looked curiously at Crane. 'What you investigatin, Mr Maxwell s death?'
Crane asked, 'How d you know he d died?'
'The house ain t been used this summer. And besides, another feller was inquirin about him last January. I suspicioned he was dead then.'
Crane and Ann exchanged glances. Both were thinking Richard March had died soon after the man s inquiries, in February.
'What d the man want to know?' Crane asked.
There was a sly look about the old man s bright eyes, as though he shared some secret with Crane. 'Wanted to know what Mrs Maxwell looked like.'
'Did you tell him?'
'We couldn t. Me and Chuck never laid eyes on her.'
'Did he want to know anything else?'
The old man chuckled. 'Wanted to know how much they used the house.' He didn t make any noise, just
