Arrow Pointing Nowhere (28 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Daly

“But the specialists had said that Alden Fenway would never possess an adult brain. The inevitable question presented itself; was this young man Alden Fenway?

“If he wasn't, who could he be? A son of Mrs. Fenway's? If so an elder son, because though he might be more than twenty-five years old, he certainly couldn't be less. Mrs. Fenway's devotion to him and anxiety on his account were obvious; I thought he might be a son.

“Why should she perpetrate such a fraud? I remembered having been told that Cort Fenway had a life interest in half the Fenway property, and that after his death the principal would descend to his heirs. But if he died leaving no heirs? I supposed the principal would almost certainly not go to his widow, but would return to the family. That was the usual disposition of so large an estate, and to make it more probable in this case was my information that the elder Fenways had never much approved of their son's marriage.

“Mrs. Fenway's interest in the fraud, if fraud there had been, amounted to the difference between the income on several millions and whatever the family might allow her, or whatever her husband might have earned and saved. I did not think from what I had been told about Cort Fenway that the latter sum would be great.

“What had her opportunity been to commit this crime? She and Alden had been in Europe, Cort Fenway in this country when he died. If the boy had died first? I could only assume that he had died first, that his death had been concealed, and that a substitution had been made. Afterwards the history of this mother and son was buried in obscurity; they travelled, they were said to have consulted great specialists and stayed in sanatoria. But where were those specialists and sanatoria, where were their records now? And since his return to this country the supposed Alden had seen no specialists, no doctor but the family physician who had not laid eyes on Alden Fenway after that afflicted child was four years old.

“If I were right about the substitution, my client was in duress to two unscrupulous persons, one of them a strong and probably ruthless man. But in what kind of duress? Was she restrained by fear of immediate physical violence?

“I could not think that was all that restrained her. There were often many other persons in the sitting room, including a masseuse and a doctor; many opportunities to get a word to them and escape death. But what other kind of restraint could there be? The first arrow decided me on that point; Hilda Grove was at the other end of the telephone, in a lonely house, and although she was not of Mrs. Grove's own blood, Mrs. Grove had cared enough about her to spend money on her education and maintenance; and Mrs. Grove's income, I gathered, had not been large. She might have been actuated solely by a sense of duty towards her husband's niece, but her dry reticence was no proof to me that she could not feel affection also.

“By the time she got her first message through to me there had been a deadlock between her and the others for almost ten days; they must keep her alive until she told them where the picture of Fenbrook was; she must keep
silence, orâas she thoughtâHilda would die. Meanwhile Bargrave hunted for the picture through the small hours of many nights, and Mrs. Fenway tried to soften her old school friend's obdurate heart. But the situation couldn't last forever; it must crumble whenever Hilda should be summoned away from Fenbrook. They had, as you know, planned for that desperate contingency; but they were not alone in having made a deadly planâMrs. Grove had got through to me.

“Not much good to her? That's what I thought when I looked at her there in the sitting room after she was dead. But she wouldn't speak before me, and I was waiting to lend a hand if necessary after Blake Fenway had the news. The trouble was that the heroic little creature had no fear for herself.” He glanced at Harold. “It was thanks to you, Sergeant, that she had her moment of triumph and liberation at the end.”

Harold said: “I wish I'd known this afternoon that Hilda wasn't meant to go down that shaft. I wasted a lot of sympathy. I wasted a lot of brainwork, too, wondering how and when the floors would be put back again afterwards without incriminating somebody.”

“Incriminating Craddock,” said Arline.

Harold ignored her. “The shaft was going to be left the way it was, with the knitting bag on the hook, to prove whatever they were going to say about Mrs. Grove?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder there was something about the whole thing that made me feel sick.”

Arline said: “You ought to have seen his face when he opened the front door up there. I thought first he was going to jump out at me and choke me to death.”

“I thought you were somebody coming to ask Hilda to go look for that knitting bag.”

Clara's face wore a slight frown. “Henry,” she said, “when Mrs. Grove threw that first paper ball out of the window she didn't know a thing about you. The Fenways didn't expect you to call, they can't have talked about you much.”

“No, my angel, they can't.”

“Then how could she know that you'd understand her message, and somehow get into the house? How did she know you'd care?”

Gamadge smiled at her. “Blake Fenway said he had my books. Perhaps she'd read them.”

“They wouldn't tell her all that!”

“Something of an author is supposed to get into his books, though. Perhaps mine told her that I always answer my letters.”

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

ARROW POINTING NOWHERE

A Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” mystery

PUBLISHING HISTORY

First U.S. print edition (Farrar & Rinehart): 1944

Felony & Mayhem print edition: 2009

Felony & Mayhem electronic edition: 2012

Boylan, Elizabeth T. Daly, and Wilfrid Augustin Daly, Jr.

E-book ISBN: 978-1-937384-24-1

You're reading a book in the Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” category. These books were originally published prior to about 1965, and feature the kind of twisty, ingenious puzzles beloved by fans of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. If you enjoy this book, you may well like other “Vintage” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press.

“Vintage” titles available as e-books:

The Poisoned Chocolates Case
, by Anthony Berkeley

The “Henry Gamadge” series, by Elizabeth Daly

The “Roderick Alleyn” series, by Ngaio Marsh

“Vintage” titles available as print books:

The “Albert Campion” series, by Margery Allingham

The “Gervase Fen” series, by Edmund Crispin

For more about these books, and other Felony & Mayhem titles, please visit our website:

FelonyAndMayhem.com