‘Sawyer! Oh, I say, Sawyer!’ came the half-suppressed shout, and Quincy’s eyes, flashing sharply over the street, instantly picked out the source of the call.
Slowly bearing down on him, through the press of market wagons, trucks and other early morning vehicles, came a handsome touring car. At the wheel sat an impassive French chauffeur and in the tonneau a fat, puffy little man danced frantically about for all the world like a huge bullfrog in a net. Quincy recognized the man as Herbert Lamson, prominent clubman, first-nighter, and society leader in general, and wondered vaguely what unseemly occurrence could have brought Lamson out at that early hour of the morning. He halted and stood smiling interrogatively as the machine drew up at the curb.
‘Oh, I say, Sawyer!’ Lamson puffed, as soon as the car had been brought to a halt. ‘It’s lucky I found you, you know. I want you to come right out to my house without a moment’s delay. We’ve had a frightful occurrence there. Frightful!’
‘Which house?’ Quincy inquired, ignoring the door which Lamson held invitingly open.
‘My country house, Sawyer. The one at Beverly. Come right away, won’t you? It’s an awful thing and I simply must have help!’
‘But, what is it? What has happened?’ Quincy questioned, not relishing the idea of being dragged down to Beverly to discover who had thrown a pebble through one of Lamson’s plate glass windows, which possibility, knowing Lamson as well as he did, Quincy deemed not improbable.
‘It’s murder, Sawyer, murder!’ Lamson spluttered, spitting out the word as though it choked him and gazing helplessly at Quincy through his round, sheep-like eyes. ‘Somebody brutally murdered my cook last night and she could cook the best fish dinners I ever tasted.’
Quincy barely suppressed a desire to laugh at the incongruity of the two statements, knowing well that the only method of endearing oneself to Lamson was through the medium of the latter’s digestive system. For a moment only he hesitated, then, swinging into the car beside Lamson, he settled back for the ride to Beverly.
‘Now, Lamson,’ he said, when the car had drawn away from the mid-city tumult, ‘give me some of the details of this case so that I may be prepared to act when we arrive. Just when, so far as you can tell, did the murder take place?’
‘I can’t say just when,’ Lamson informed him. ‘I was away from the house from five o’clock in the afternoon until late last night. It might have been done while I was away, or after I returned, because she was not discovered until early this morning. One of the maids, according to custom, went to call her in time to prepare breakfast, and found her dead. I was immediately notified and, not knowing what else to do, I hurried up after you. I’ll catch that murderer, Sawyer, if it costs me my entire fortune,’ he broke off savagely. ‘That woman was a downright shrew, but she could cook. Lord bless you! she could cook! And now I must spend a year or two hunting another cook, and I shall probably be obliged to live on all manner of horrible dishes during my search. I know I can never find another who will be able to cook fish the way she could! ‘He seemed saddened, almost to the point of breaking down, at the last thought.
‘I understand, Lamson,’ said Quincy, after a protracted coughing fit behind his hand. ‘But I want to get the facts of the case itself, the murder. How was she murdered, and do you suspect anybody? Now, give me something of that sort to work on. First, what was her name, where did she come from, and how long had she been with you?’
‘Her name,’ said Lamson in a saddened voice, apparently engendered by the thought of the fish dinners which were to be his no more, ‘was Mrs Elizabeth Buck. She had been with me as cook for about twelve years, but I have no idea where she came from originally. You see, I was obliged to hire her rather hastily at a time when I was giving a dinner and my other cook –’
‘Yes, yes,’ Quincy hurriedly interrupted, ‘but had she any relatives or friends who wrote to her, or with whom she visited?’
‘Nobody of whom I ever heard. In fact, from the time when I first engaged her, I do not believe she has been away from my house a single day. Her sharp temper would rather preclude the possibility of her having any friends, and I doubt if there was a person in the world, outside myself, in whom she felt the slightest interest.’
‘Now,’ said Quincy approvingly, ‘you are started right. Give me all the details you can up to the time when the body was discovered.’
‘Well, she was a woman who, as I said, apparently had neither friends nor acquaintances. Therefore, I do not think that the affair occurred because of some old grudge a previous associate may have owed her. Since I have been talking with you a possibility, which hitherto had not occurred to me, has come into my mind. I paid her well, very well, and, as I never knew of her spending much money at a time, she must have been able to lay by quite a bit in the last twelve years. Of course she may have kept her money in a savings bank, but it is equally possible that her distrustful nature led her to hide it somewhere about her house. She did not room in my house, but in a little cottage which stood on the grounds, living by herself. Now the possibility I mentioned, and
