| Show murder masquerade BY inez haynes irwin copyright inex ines haynes irwin irwia service SYNOPSIS mary av cry a widow who lives in the harbor barbor town 0 of I 1 mass with two negro maids aid sarah darbe and bessie williams writes a manuscript describing the famous second read head murder which occurred on her estate next to mary live mr and mrs reter peter stow who every year give a ummer summer ade party one of the guests of this function la is murdered nearby live dr and ties mr geary aad a n d their married daughter edith and her hus bus b band nd alfred bray doctor myron marden and his hii step granddaughter cro caro prentiss a beautiful t young girl who was born bom in france next live paul and lora eames and their daughter molly holly molly was engaged to the murdered man A ace Bli blaikie tiki she had been engaged to walter treadway who had been the murdered mansi mans secretary but the engagement was suddenly broken and he had let left town other oilier neighbors are the fairweather sis sisters terii flora a hopeless invalid and margaret all but the latter two attended the masquerade marys marya eight year rear old niece sylvia seed sard is V visiting ri her for the summer the wooded part of f marys estate is called the spinney in it is a tiny log cabin near a a stone atone wall is a tiny circular pond called caled the merry mere this is ii the day of the masquerade and excitement is high mary decides decide to take sylvia who is an unusually observant child caro prentiss end and molly eames drop in ia during the afternoon soon blaikle blaikie doctor marden and bruce He feirson irson a friend of 0 aces arrive molly is impatient to leave and they all excuse themselves at the he party sylvia identifies each of the masked guests as they arrive ace comes garbed as julius caesar nolly molly eames appears as a snow queen accompanied compa nied by a man to in armor whom sylvia identifies as walter waller treadway they dance together continuously cars caro prentiss and marden arrive dressed in revolutionary costumes costume the doctor wearing jeweled shoe buckles when the guests unmask ace walter and molly have disappeared when mary avery leaves the party a little after two neither molly and walter or ace blaikie had returned sarah darbe confides to mary that someone apparently parent ly had bad spent the night eight in the little house sylvia finds a shoe buckle in the spinney and mary drops it into a jewel box and forgets it sarah walks down to the little house and returns screaming she has found ace batkie stabbed to death io in the spinney mary summons patrick obrien chief of police who had been a schoolmate of hers here and aces SATURDAY continued 6 ace looked strangely beautiful and strangely dignified in death as though his body had been carefully laid out as indeed ultimately we learned that it had his tunic lay straight and close about his figure his helmet lay at his side his tiny black velvet mask lay beside it suddenly I 1 seemed to see for the first time the slit in that tunic a slit surrounded by a rust colored stain over the heart Stab stabbed bedl 1 patrick dropped tersely he too melt knelt yes joe assented there it is it was the weapon that had killed ace it was his own sword the short sword of the roman officer which had stuck upright on the left of his belt the blade was unstained smooth and shining A second wave of faintness came over me As I 1 went into it I 1 heard patrick say not suicide and somebody that he trusted killed him whoever it was he wiped the blade clean As I 1 came out of ito it I 1 saw patricks stern eyes examining the ground about aces body fingerprints finger prints joe geary suggested sternly patrick drew something shining from his pocket and put it to his lips on the blast of his whistle the four policemen appeared at the entrance of the spinney its a murder all right he informed them briefly mike you call the coroners coro coroner nerl then get doctor Blai kies house and tell them there what has happened then get the station and tell them to put a r nan man at the crossroads nobody but the people who live here or deliver here are to come over to the head until I 1 say so the rest of you spread about and guard this wood nobody is to set foot here unless I 1 0 K X it I 1 lay awake almost all night long thinking of ace blaikie considering si poignantly certain half forgotten scenes which seemed of their own volition to drift from out of the past into my mind recalling with careful deliberation a succession of pictures of our long vivid friendship all these the very warp and woof of my childhood and girlhood the period which I 1 might describe as late babyhood provides me with no picture of ace although it Is possible that I 1 did see him then at sunday school or on the beach already the boys had shortened his old new england name of asa to ace I 1 little knew how appropriate that nickname was to become I 1 was exactly eight when I 1 first became conscious of his existence I 1 remember perfectly how he looked the first time I 1 laid observant eyes on him the Blai kies had spent that summer in europe ace was their only child and naturally their pride and joy well he might be that there was no period in his life when whatever the occasion he the most handsome male creature present lh hf most striking ind nd Iphon nir it was typical ot ace that not only did he appear the first day of school wearing a scottish costume which his mother had bought in edinburgh it was typical of him that he carried it off with distinction and complete unconsciousness I 1 suppose that every other girl in the class fell dead in love with ace that day I 1 did not however already yes even then mark avery and I 1 were meeting at the crossroads cross roads to go to school together ace broke hearts left and right in his cocksure pilgrimage through life I 1 am glad he did not break mine he never caused me even a suspicion of heartache I 1 saw more and more of ace however we became great friends he always entertained and interested me he was fascinating ace patrick obrien and I 1 were the leading spirits in our class patrick as I 1 have said beat me in the race for scholarship and was 9 graduated radiated at the head however although he was salutatorian I 1 was valedictorian ace n never C ver studied he was nevel in danger of reaching the head of the class but not once did he fall below the middle how he remained so far above it was a miracle he had a good mind an instant and retentive memory anything he could r read ead in fifteen minutes before class opened he could remember the rest was a winning audacity and a charming impudence he was beyond discipline yet the teachers all adored him ace might have gone tar far but he was not ambitious except for his one splendid adventure all he wanted out of life was easy money for lavish entertaining the Blai kies had always been important people in plymouth county their hou houe e is without doubt the most beautiful in the gardens are the pride of the countryside inside are gathered the I 1 inherited family treasure in furniture pictures books of nearly two centuries the Blai kies had always had money and very soon ace began to entertain at first it was childrens parties candy pulls and the like later it was dances and plenty of them ace went to harvard harvard was a tradition in the blaikie family he went to harvard medical instead of finishing off in germany as most doctors did in those days he chose to study in paris he was there when the world war broke in the autumn he jo joined ined the foreign legion he was wound ow J 1 11 X ovll t 0 bruce rented the camp from ace ed that winter when he recovered he volunteered for aviation he flew with the french army until we entered the war then he joined our army he became an ace strange how life fulfilled the prophecy of his nickname he had five enemy planes on his record he believed himself that he had brought down two or three more but that he could not prove when he be came back from france the town gave him a party no one in missed it we asked him to come in uniform wearing all his decorations the french and belgian g ian croix de guerre the militaire Mili taire the legion ahon neur and the I 1 thought him that night the handsomest male creature I 1 ever laid eyes on then ace settled down to a practice in of course he could not make money in so small a place but instantly he became a great success personality helped here his own tremendous strength his robust vitality for with aces entrance to a sickroom sick room came a gust of he health alth giving air but perhaps his greatest asset was that sympathy with the sick the old the weary and the discouraged it even helped that he liked girl ba bies so much however fathers felt mothers always knew an infinite pride when they pleased doctor blaikie by bringing forth a girl but for other reasons the coun adored ace one was liis his reckless generosity anybody who wanted to sell tickets or to get up a fund for charitable purposes made a beeline bee line for ace nothing illustrates ace more perfectly than the story of his treatment of tom boylan tom was the village drunk ace was always alway having to take care of him free of course tom had no money for alcoholism once he brought tom through delirium tremens cremens tr emens yet yel when tom got well ace always alway gave him his first drink after toro tora had bad begged long enough i for it and yet and yet something had happened to ace I 1 dont mean to his body something had happened to his soul in the meantime I 1 had married mark avery I 1 used to talk ace over with him my husband who was a nerve specialist like doctor geary with an office in boston had served as a physician in the world war he had great wisdom ile he said to me once mary the strange thing about war is that it frequently ruins good men and rehabilitates bad ones men are returning to this country on every transport who lf if they had not been caught at the right moment by the discipline of an army would have spent most of their lives in jail on the other hand war frequently ruins able men its rigid discipline its inherent immorality war must have been bad medicine for ace it must have un loosed something in him that he had always held in abeyance before at any rate from the time he came back he seemed to me to disintegrate not physic physically 1 to the very end he kept his magnificent body in condition he was always inheriting money yet no matter how much company filled the huge blaikie house ace was always leaving on sudden calls how often when I 1 have been there he has returned with a wearied but triumphant A big eleven pound boyl or A nice little birli once and this was the apex of his medical pride girl twins the countryside always surged with gossip about ace he was had always been would always be a terrific I 1 use the word of my generation flirt I 1 will not say that he desired all women but I 1 will say that any pretty woman seemed to serve as a challenge to him why when mark first began regularly to specialize on me ace looked upon that as a challenge I 1 laughed his tentative wooing out of existence along with this tremendous susceptibility let me call it although it exactly that came an equally tremendous fickleness As I 1 have hinted to see a pretty woman meant at once on aces part a desire to conquer her and to conquer her was at once to begin to tire of her rumors of his conquests both at home and abroad choked our tia tea talk for the last few years other rumors had spread reports au ag his patrimony and his various h inheritances that each year increasingly crea singly he spent more than he earned and then occurred the strange complication to which I 1 have already twice referred molly eames came back from a year in europe the most beautiful girl that had ever produced in three months she was engaged to walter treadway aces secretary it seemed to everybody that they were passionately in love and yet after six months molly broke her engagement to walter six months later she became engaged to ace no one of us who had known ace no one of us who loved molly felt happy over this turn of events but one thing ace brought to us from the war which meant more to as a whole than all his decorations and that was his friend bruce bexson bruce bexson was a lawyer he was in in paris when the war broke and volunteered immediately to drive an ambulance for the french army he met ace in the hospital when we entered the war he volunteered ered for aviation the two men served in the same squadron long before the armistice they had become inseparable pals bruce too was a man of private fortune he lived in pennsylvania he came regularly every summer to and visited ace for two months at a time and then suddenly an unexpected thing happened to him to use the old pat phrase bruce got religion but not somehow in the usual sense ace always avoided talking about his friends spiritual seizure but he told me once that he attributed braces f frenzy ren to the long strain of the war if he had been wounded once he said to me it would have been better for him aviators often went haywire the officers watched us like doctors the instant any one of us showed the first sign of psychological ch strain they gave him a long leave in paris if a man were slightly wounded the change to the hospital helped bruce never got a pip he never showed any signs of nerve breakage my explanation whatever the reason the result was definite and permanent bruce Hex sons whole life changed he came to every year but now for the whole summer he did not as formerly live with ace ace owned a little camp on the indian river like everything ace touched it was charming and convenient bruce rented the camp from ace lived there with his two colored servants adah and berry vale bruce bexson had become a social fixture in summer nowadays he never came to our parties but always broodingly tender we felt him there TO BE CONTINUED |
