The Amber Eyes Read online

  The Amber Eyes

  A Pat and Jean Abbott Mystery

  Frances Crane

  One

  Caroline Alby, the middle daughter, and I were in the third-floor hall outside the child’s room. Inside were Martin Kent, medical student engaged to Caroline, a Dr. Evans, Inspector Sam Bradish and Patrick Abbott. Bradish held a bottle on a sheet of tissue on one palm and said in his big booming voice, “The best you can call it is criminal negligence, Dr. Evans.”

  “Oh, no,” the doctor said. “It’s an accident. A tragic accident.”

  Sam said, “Well, she’s dead. We know that all right. We don’t know how much of the stuff she drank. But maybe you do know, if you prescribed it.”

  Dr. Evans, an eminent heart specialist, said, coldly, “I didn’t—don’t prescribe it for children. Read the label. It has codeine in it. The prescription was filled in Denver, Colorado. Not here in San Francisco. Look, it was prescribed by Dr. Alby himself, the child’s father.”

  Sam said, “I don’t care where it was prescribed, Doctor. The stuff shouldn’t’ve been left where the little girl could get hold of it. It tastes too good. This calls for an autopsy. Maybe she was murdered. Maybe she drank enough to go into a stupor and then somebody held her head face-down till she was dead.”

  “No, no,” Dr. Evans said.

  “Why wouldn’t a child that size know better than to take the stuff?”

  The doctor said, “Lisa, this child, was ten years old. Her mentality was that of a three-year-old. Polio crippled her brain, not her body. She drank the cough medicine, which brought on a stupor, as you say, buried her face in her pillow, and smothered herself. I’ve known adults to do the same thing. Get dead drunk and asphyxiate themselves in their own beds, just as this child has done.”

  Bradish was unmoved. He said, “No sign of a struggle. That’s suspicious. You’d think she’d try to save herself, Doctor. Is there anybody who might want her dead?”

  Dr. Evans’s silence lasted too long. I could imagine Sam Bradish’s dark eyes sharpening as they eyed the specialist, and Patrick’s long blue eyes taking on that green look, when otherwise he’d seem indifferent.

  “I don’t know anything about the family affairs, Inspector. There are three daughters, counting this one. Their mother died of cancer last year in Denver. Their father, Dr. William Alby, is seriously ill with a heart condition. That’s why I was called here tonight. Dr. Alby had an attack. He came to San Francisco to get away from the altitude. Denver is a mile high. Dr. Alby had a fine practice in Denver for many years but, as I said, I know nothing about his personal affairs.”

  Sam said, impatiently, “We don’t have to have that kind of information yet, Doctor. Will you please get Dr. Alby’s consent to an autopsy.”

  Dr. Evans argued against it, and then gave in, reluctantly.

  “He was very fond of this little girl, Inspector,” he said. “I’ll ask him. I’ve given orders that he was not to be told about her death … very well, I’ll tell him now.”

  Beside me, Caroline Alby gave a dry sob. It was she who had come to us when she found her young sister dead. And it was Patrick who took a look at the dead child and said they must call the police, to which Dr. Evans had also reluctantly agreed.

  This happened several nights after we first met some of the members of the Alby family.

  We live at the top of a steep street on Russian Hill, in San Francisco. It was July, the month of cold fogs and mists, and the beautiful flowers they engender. We had sent the children to sunshine camps near Russian River and our son had even taken the dog, so our place was lonely. It had seemed a good time to keep busy revamping the back garden, so I was outdoors a good deal, especially after the sunshine turned out to be so exceptional in the city itself. Fine weather in July is news in San Francisco.

  It was four o’clock or so one afternoon and I was sitting at a garden table near the back gate looking down at our new and charming arrangements in grass, flagstones, and new and old fuchsias, when a thrilling but harsh voice asked, “Are you Mrs. Abbott?” I smelled a scent loaded with chypre. I learned later the perfume was called Jungle Gardens. The first thing I saw was the woman’s beautiful eyes, the color of old amber, made slumberous by heavy black lashes. Her thick eyebrows were black. Her hair was auburn. Her mouth was a blazing orange-red. She was tall, shapely, and carelessly dressed. I guessed her to be about thirty-five. She didn’t look quite clean. She said, “The folks we took the house from said we could ask you about anything that wasn’t right when we moved in. Can I use your phone?”

  “You’ve taken Redwood House?” I asked. Well, people just moving into a new place don’t always look too clean. I felt overcritical.

  She said, “That’s right. I’m Mrs. Doctor Alby. He’s poorly and they haven’t connected up the telephones. So I’ve got to call up the phone company. Sophy should have seen to it, since she took it on herself to get out here first. Thanks to use the phone, Miss.”

  She fairly spat out the name “Sophy.” I was soon to learn why.

  I showed her inside to a telephone. She called the business office and told the telephone company off, saying she would sue if anything happened to Doctor. Step on it now, she said then. She came out. I was on the back terrace, but I had heard her penetrating, and exciting, voice. She said, “Say, you’ve got a nice place here. We had too, back in Denver. I guess I’ll get used to this town in time but just now I’m real homesick for Denver.”

  She was about my height, which is tall. She had broad strong-looking shoulders, big competent hands, and long feet in socks and flat-heeled shoes. She wore a red blouse and Capri pants. Her rear was too wide for trousers, but her waist was small. She had one of those thirty-eight or forty busts that the movies go for now. She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her blouse pocket, lit one, and then said, “Thanks for the phone.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Do you like Redwood House?” I asked.

  She shrugged it off. “Oh, it’ll do. You can’t have everything. There’s an elevator for Doctor, which is the important thing. He has heart trouble. It’s a big house, but no house is big enough for both me and Sophy. Well, thanks. Come and see us when we’re settled, why don’t you?”

  She strode along the walk, opened the gate, let it bang shut, and without looking back, headed toward Redwood House half a block down on our side of the street.

  I sat down at the same table and for a little while just sat thinking about that house. It is big, with a basement, a main floor, a second floor, and a third, front stairs and back stairs, and ample grounds, too ample the way household help is in this day and age. The rooms are large. There are all sorts of closets and cupboards. The people who owned it had gone on a long cruise. They hadn’t expected to rent it, it was too big, and probably these tenants had indeed taken it because “Doctor” had that heart trouble and there was an elevator between the main and second floors.

  After a while, it being too early for a drink, I made some tea and fetched a tray with the pot and one cup out to the garden table. It was a fragrant Chinese tea, a pale greenish-gold in the white porcelain cup. I sat sipping and looking across the new part of the garden at the fuchsias. The old ones are as tall as lilacs back East. They were dripping with bloom in white, purple, red, pink, and their mixtures. They were so tall and so thick that we couldn’t even see the roof of the next house below. On the street side a tall boxwood hedge gave the garden that same hidden-awayness, and on the other side, shrubs of various kinds divided the back of our place from the front. In our part of the city, areas are seldom large, like the grounds at Redwood House. Ours is just well arranged.

  There is a brass bell on the inside of the back gatepost. It rang, delicately, and I twisted my head again, and then I
got up to speak to the woman at the gate. My husband says you must never underestimate the power of a small woman. This one was small and gray, with gray eyes, gray hair, a gray jersey suit, gray gloves, glasses with sparkling stones in the grayish frames, and a round gray face full of little soft marshmallow-like cushions of flesh. Her nose was short. Her little mouth was faintly pink.

  “I beg your pardon. Are you Mrs. Abbott?” She spoke in an elegant not-gray voice. The voice went with her hat, which was made of pink and purple violets, and her perfume, which was delicately flowery. “I’m Mrs. Quayle, Dr. Alby’s sister. We’ve taken a house which belongs to friends of yours and I would have telephoned, but we have no phones yet. I’m most anxious to have the name of a doctor in this neighborhood. My brother isn’t well, and the trip from Denver in a car has quite exhausted him.”

  “Won’t you come in and have some tea?”

  She smiled and the flesh cushions stretched slightly. She looked like a gray cat when its ears are stroked. “Oh, thank you. But I mustn’t impose …”

  Curiosity made me insist. “Please come in. I’ll fetch another cup.”

  Her bag and her sensible but stylish shoes were grayish lizard. She used no make-up but the pale lipstick. I poured a cup and offered sugar and lemon, which I had sensed she would use, and she did. She had rolled her gloves back on her wrists. Her plump little hands were well taken care of. Her nail enamel was natural. She was immaculate. Somehow I couldn’t associate her in my mind with the Mrs. Doctor Alby who had come to use the phone. I thought of the assertive chypre in Mrs. Doctor Alby’s perfume. This woman’s flowery scent, so clean-smelling, was hardly strong enough to flout the seductive scent of the Chinese tea. How old was she? Sixtyish, I thought.

  “Rona drove my brother, Dr. Alby, out. I told her she shouldn’t do it. It worried me frightfully, so I flew out ahead to be here when they arrived. My son lives in San Francisco. My brother’s two oldest daughters, Audrey and Caroline, also live here. They went to Mills College and afterwards they preferred to live in San Francisco, which attracts young people, don’t you agree? Yet Denver is so very lovely. Do you know Denver?”

  Not well, I said, but I thought of it as a city with wonderful lawns and trees and a hotel we liked called the Brown Palace. Her gray eyes sparkled like the brilliants in her spectacle frames. She said, “Ah, yes. Dr. Alby has a very beautiful house near Cheesman Park. I live nearby. But there is the altitude and his wife died not too long ago and as I said he is not well … but, please do give me the name of a doctor. He knows a specialist here, an old friend, a Dr. Evans. Dr. Evans’s office is near Union Square but he lives far out. In case of emergency we may have to get in touch with another doctor nearby.”

  I gave her the name of our doctor, a general practitioner, who lives just across the street. She repeated his name twice and also his telephone number.

  She set down her cup and rolled down her kid gloves and wriggled her hands into them. She had small diamonds in her ears and on her left hand a gold wedding band and a rather large diamond ring, Tiffany-mounted, the engagement kind so many women of her age wear. She thanked me again, rose, and I went with her as far as the gate. I saw her start off down the hill and then went back to the table. She was the kind who would think it rude if I glanced after her, or if I had asked who the hell was Rona and also who was the woman who called herself Mrs. Doctor Alby? However, I knew that sooner or later I would sort out the relationships of these new people.

  A few days later Patrick was with me when we first saw Dr. Alby. We had just parked in front when we saw this slender man, white-haired and blue-eyed, walking up the hill. A little girl hung onto one of his hands. In her other arm she hugged a honey-colored stuffed bear. The man was breathing hard. Too hard. Pat jumped out and hurried to take his arm. The man muttered, “Water.” I ran into the house for water and Pat helped the man to a chair at the garden table. He sank down and popped a couple of pills under his tongue and then sipped a little water. The beautiful little girl had hitched up on the edge of another chair. She stared at him and at us with round lovely dark-blue eyes. She had heavy dark-brown hair in a pony tail.

  Suddenly she jumped up and ran down the steps and began whirling around and around with the stuffed bear on the new flagstones.

  The man said, when he could speak, “I asked for this. I’ve been feeling so well lately that I thought I could climb this hill. I know better now. Thank you. I’m Dr. William Alby. We’ve taken a house on down the street from people who told us you lived here and gave us your names.”

  “Oh yes,” I said.

  “You know the house?”

  “Yes. We knew you were here.”

  “Yes, of course. Rona spoke of you. You have a beautiful place here, Mrs. Abbott.”

  Patrick said, “My wife will bless you for that after the tinkering she has been doing with this place. Take care, Dr. Alby. Japanese gardeners come very high.”

  “My husband is miserly, Dr. Alby,” I said. “You should have seen this part of the yard before the children went to camp. It was a wreck. By the way, our little girl is about the age of your little girl, and when she comes home …”

  Dr. Alby shook his head and his long gentle face became sad.

  “Every man wants a little girl who never grows up,” he said. Then he said, “But I’m lucky. I have two other daughters. This little one, Lisa, is ten and twelve years younger than Caroline, and Carrie is three years younger than Audrey, the eldest. Both are living here now. They are my other reason for coming to San Francisco at this time.”

  Two

  It was Caroline Alby who came running to us the night the child died. Her fiancé, a hospital intern named Martin Kent, was at the house and had told her Lisa was dead. She wouldn’t accept it. Her aunt, Mrs. Quayle, got upset and couldn’t remember the doctor’s name I’d given her, and since Dr. Alby was suffering from a slight heart attack, Martin had called Dr. Evans and was staying with Dr. Alby till Evans got there. So Caroline rushed up to us. Our own doctor was not available and Pat went back with Caroline and I went, too, because I dreaded being alone with such trouble close by. Dr. Evans arrived shortly after we did.

  There were some people we didn’t know about the main floor as we went in but we ran straight up to the third floor with Caroline. Then Martin Kent came up, and then Dr. Evans came and said Mrs. Alby was with the doctor and that he would be all right.

  There followed that talk which I set down at the beginning of this report. It stayed vividly in mind.

  Lisa’s room was one of two large bedrooms on the third floor. Between them was a connecting bath. Originally there had been four small bedrooms here, but our friends had had two daughters and they had joined the four into this pleasant arrangement.

  The stairs, both front and back, between the second and third floors, were steep. Those between the main and second floors were easy and spacious. The back stairs all the way up and down were arranged so that the household help, which formerly lived in, could go up and down to their part of the house in privacy. The family could do the same by way of the front stairs.

  The back stairs led up from a back hall with a door into the kitchen and another door leading outside to a short stone flight down to the drive. A third door opened to an enclosed sunroom, which also connected with the living room.

  There was no privacy to speak of in the front of the house on the main floor, except in a small den. The living room, hall and dining room were wide open to each other. The elevator mentioned had been installed in a former hall closet at the foot of the main stairs. It ended in what had been another closet on the second floor near the door to the master bedroom, now occupied by Dr. Alby.

  Outside, the squarish house was wide, with big windows, a red tile roof, and the main entrance in the center of a wide terrace.

  When Dr. Evans came back to Lisa’s bedroom, after having informed Dr. Alby of the child’s death, and receiving his permission for the autopsy, Sam asked for the nearest teleph
one. There was one in Rona’s room, Martin said. That was the room which shared the bath on this floor with the child’s room. So Rona was the child’s nurse. That figured, as Sam Bradish would say. He made the call and in what seemed a short time a police ambulance slipped into the drive and the body was carried down the back stairs. Before that, I had taken Caroline’s arm and we went down the front stairs. She was a lovely girl. Indeed, as it turned out, the only one of the Alby family one could like, except the doctor himself.

  In the living room sat Mrs. Quayle, wringing her plump little hands, a very handsome man about thirty or a little older, and a tall, skinny stylish girl. She was the oldest Alby daughter, Audrey. I had a glimpse of them but went straight along to wait by the front door with Caroline. In a couple of minutes Patrick and Inspector Sam Bradish, who had locked the child’s room and the door into the connecting bath, came down together. We said good night to Caroline. Outside, I said, “There were several people in that house during the time Caroline left it to come for us. During all that time Martin Kent was with Dr. Alby. An intern is practically a doctor. He would know that an overdose of that cough medicine might cause a child to smother herself.”

  I got no reply from either man for speaking the obvious.

  Sam got into his police car and made the longish drive around several blocks to bring him in front of our house. Pat and I walked up the hill. There was brilliant moonlight. It was ten forty-five when we got home. Sam came one minute later. I put on coffee and we all sat down on the back terrace.

  Sam had ordered what he calls a stake-out, in this case another police car parked at a point where the front of the house could be watched. There was no other way out, unless somebody wanted to climb over a few hedges and emerge finally down on Lombard Street, which was hardly likely.

  Patrick passed cigarettes.

  “Kind of case I hate,” Sam grumbled. “Somebody left that stuff where the kid could get it. She drank it. She’s dead. Gross negligence. Culpable negligence. Big child with not much sense, so it happened. There ought to be a law.”