The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [36]
“I was worried about you,
Mrs. Chumley,” said Ben Agnier.
The tall man sat in an armchair in
Mrs. Chumley’s room. Gerhart
Malz was there, too. So was
Letitia Radford, and so were The
Three Investigators. They could
hear police moving about in the
cellar below, taking pictures,
gathering evidence. More officers
were busy across the road in the
Mosby house.
“What
has
become
of
Burroughs?”
Mrs.
Chumley
demanded. “And Mrs. Burroughs? Letitia, it’s time for dinner! And we never had our tea!”
“I’ll put a kettle on,” said Letitia. But she didn’t move. She had taken a small armchair near Ben Agnier, and she was staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and admiration.
“You were watching this house?” she said. “How terribly clever of you.”
Agnier’s face flushed.
“Not — not really,” he said. “I was just
worried about Mrs. Chumley.”
“That was extremely thoughtful of you,
Ben,” said Mrs. Chumley. “But why were you
worried about me?”
“Well, I didn’t like that Burroughs,” said Ben
Agnier. “Everything changed after he came.”
“Things did change,” admitted Mrs.
Chumley. “I thought they got better. It was a joy to have competent servants in the house
again. You can’t imagine, Letitia. I’ve had six or
seven couples since your mother died, and none
of them at all satisfactory —until Burroughs and
his wife.”
“Your precious couple were nothing but
thieves!” said Mr. Malz, and he told her about the tunnel.
“You mean to tell me that they were digging a tunnel the whole time they were here!” exclaimed Mrs. Chumley. “I don’t know when they could have done it. Really, I don’t!”
“Probably at night, Mrs. Chumley, when you were asleep,” said Jupiter.
“The very idea makes me tired,” said Mrs. Chumley. “When did they sleep, for goodness’ sake?”
“They didn’t always dig at night,” Agnier told her. “Sometimes they worked in the daytime. That’s how I got fired.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Chumley. “Burroughs told me that you were giving up your pool service — retiring — so we got that new young man.”
“Burroughs fired me,” Agnier declared. “I saw him coming out of the basement one morning wearing work clothes. He was wheeling a barrow loaded with dirt. Now, you don’t see a butler or a houseman pushing a wheelbarrow every day of the week. I asked him what was up, and he said that the cellar wall had given way in one place and dumped a pile of dirt on the floor.
“I didn’t believe him. I’ve been in the basement of this house, and the walls aren’t about to give way. When I told him that, he fired me!
“Well, I figured if I was going to be fired, you could fire me, Mrs. Chumley, not Burroughs. So I went around and rang the front doorbell. Only Mrs. Burroughs answered and she said you were sleeping and couldn’t be disturbed. Every time I tried to see you after that, Mrs. Burroughs got in the way. If I called, Burroughs answered the telephone. I wrote a couple of notes, but I don’t suppose you ever received them.”
Mrs. Chumley shook her head. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “I’ve practically been a prisoner of those two thieves! They might have killed me!”
“I didn’t think they’d do that,” said Ben Agnier, “but I was worried. I started watching this place from the old house on Rock Rim Drive. I’d stop there every day and stay until I saw you on the terrace. As long as you looked okay, I figured everything was really all right.
“Then that baldheaded guy came and planted that cornfield, and about that time old Jason Creel, who’d been head gardener here for more than twenty years — well, he got fired.”
“I fired Jason myself,’’ said Mrs. Chumley. “The poor man had gotten careless.
And he didn’t need the work.”
“I know that,” said Agnier. “He’d only been coming here out of loyalty. But he didn’t like Burroughs, either.
“And then Miss Letitia came home, and every day I could see her out on the terrace. And it came to me that you and Miss Letitia were awfully isolated. Nobody from outside ever came,