False to Any Man

by Leslie Ford

  She looked about the room, explaining all of it to us quite simply.

  “I told him that. He said he knew it, but that if I tried to say it on the stand he would have me put away until it was over, because everyone thought I was crazy anyway. I was desperate, I really was. I told him I couldn’t allow it, not possibly. I said I would even kill him to stop it, just as I had her . . . though I really didn’t know how I could do it.”

  She hesitated for an instant and went on.

  “He laughed. He said I wouldn’t dare. Then he opened a drawer in front of him and took out the revolver he’d taken away from a man who’d come to shoot him once. He looked at it to see if it was loaded, snapped it shut and pushed it across the table to me. He said, ‘All right, I dare you to shoot, my dear.’

  “I picked it up, and I shot him.

  “Then I shot the Gazette out of the frame, and laid his revolver down, and tore off the sheet he’d read with the case against Judge Candler on it, and burned it, and put the others in the fire too. Then I locked the library door and threw the key outside.”

  Miss Isabel paused. Roger Doyle reached over without a word, took her hand and held it in both his own, not looking at her, his eyes closed.

  “You see, Judge Candler had been there,” she went on softly. “My brother told me that, but I didn’t think anyone else would know it. I went out for a walk, leaving the door open. When I came back I waked the maid and we looked under all the beds. Then I went to my room. I didn’t know till she told me that Roger had been in and that he and my brother had quarrelled. You see, I didn’t mean to point the guilt to anyone else.”

  Colonel Primrose looked at her for a long time, the same expression in his black eyes.

  “How long have you had those letters, Miss Doyle?” he asked gently.

  “Oh, I found them last fall, when we were housecleaning.—And I’d begged him not to come down here! But he said I needn’t worry. He said, ‘Surely, my dear, you don’t remember that, do you?’ He thought it was rather amusing. He said, ‘Don’t go making a fool of yourself, Isabel, Peyton’s forgotten all that a long, long time ago. He’s been a widower for years, he’s known for years it wasn’t you that jilted him. He could have come for you if he’d wanted you. But you’re such a scarecrow he wouldn’t even recognize you if he saw you.’

  “And of course I knew men forget, and women—if they don’t marry—don’t forget. I was afraid I would make a fool of myself. That’s why I didn’t ever see him, it wasn’t till Roger began to think Jerry was old enough to marry that I put my pride in my pocket and began coming here. And it wasn’t till the other day, when I first taxed him with being behind Karen, that he admitted Peyton had never known.—And even if it was too late, and I was an old scarecrow, I still . . . wanted him to know. It was very foolish of me.”

  When she got up I saw the tears in her eyes for the first time.

  “You see, I only wanted to save Peyton . . . and his children. The rest didn’t matter. And knowing my brother, I knew there wasn’t any other way. And I’m really very sorry!”

  She smiled in that vague way of hers, only rather as if she was tired, desperately tired, now it was all over.

  “Only, you see, Colonel Primrose, if you arrested me now, everything would have to come out, everything I did it for would be lost.”

  Her voice was not pleading in the least, only casual and charming and matter-of-fact.

  “So, I think, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go home for a few moments.”

  I suppose we all knew there was one more step she’d known from the beginning she would have to take . . . and yet it seemed as if no one in the room could move, that all of us were just frozen where we were. Then Roger Doyle sprang to his feet and caught her in his arms, trying desperately to speak. She raised her lips and kissed him.

  “Forgive me, Roger,” she whispered, trying to release his hold.

  “Please!” Her voice caught ever so little. “Please make him let me go!”

  Then abruptly she wrenched herself loose and with a quick motion brought her hand to her mouth. She turned back to all of us. “I’m so sorry, I preferred going home!” she said.

  Judge Candler had pushed back his chair and was across the room. She smiled as he caught her in his arms, and she died.

  I have no clear idea of much that happened after that, nor do I want to have one, except that I don’t know what any of us would have done if it hadn’t been for Sergeant Buck and Mr. Pepperday, and William, and Colonel Primrose. I know that a little later, when Sandy and Jerry and I were still in the shabby lovely drawing room, with the library door closed, we were still too stunned to talk. The door opened as we just sat there, and Roger came in. He closed it behind him, and he stood there, with Jerry across the room by me, the two of them just looking at each other. Then Sandy got to his feet and crossed the room to him, and held out his hand.

  “I’m sorry!” he mumbled awkwardly.

  Roger gripped it silently.

  Then Sandy said, with a sort of twisted attempt to be himself again, “I guess I was fifty kinds of a damn fool. If it’ll help any, you can have her . . . if you’ll take her away in a plain van.”

  He nodded toward his sister. And I looked out the window. I couldn’t bear the way those two met and clung to each other.

  Sandy came over beside me and stood, his back to them too. A cardinal sitting on a dead branch of the lilac tree opened his throat and sang.

  “That means a change of weather, according to William,” he said, a little shakily. “And that being the case, Mrs. Latham—what about you and me having a colossal drink?”

  Colonel John Primrose pressed the trigger of the syphon and shot his glass full of soda, and came back and sat down in the wing chair by the fire in my garden sitting room in Georgetown.

  “It’s just as well it broke when it did,” he said. “I hear the Judge’s name is being sent to the Senate this week. She left a note, and since everybody has always thought she was half-cracked anyway, nobody seems to have been surprised.”

  “—Do you think she was?” I asked.

  “By no means. She was the sanest person I ever knew,” he said. “A lot saner than her brother, whose sanity nobody ever questioned. She had too mordant a sense of humor to be otherwise. Oddly, the thing that worried her was that Roger and Jerry would sell the house and furniture, feeling they couldn’t live there.”

  “But they’ve decided to close it for a few years and go back if they can,” I said. “That’s what she asked them to do.”

  We sat there for a few moments. Then I said, “What made you think it was her?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Not for some time. I thought it was the Judge. I thought he’d finally seen through Miss Karen and simply decided to execute her—judicially. When I learned, then, that Roger was the only Doyle to show across the street—having climbed out of a window—before six o’clock, and inasmuch as Karen’s death was the last thing in the world that Doyle wanted, everything pointed at once to his sister. The half-pint bottle was from a dairy that both the Candlers and Doyles used, by the way. It was very simple, and exactly the kind of thing a woman would think of, not a man.

  “And where did you get Judge Candler’s letters?” I demanded.

  He chuckled.

  “I’m . . . not quite sure,” he said. “I remember Buck was greatly interested in Mr. Pepperday’s clocklike routine. Of course, I’d reprimand him severely if I had to think he made an unlawful entry.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you would,” I said.

  “And by the way,” he went on, “how did that key get over to the Doyles’?”

  “I haven’t an idea,” I said, unblushingly. “How did it get back to the office?”

  “I suspect Mr. Doyle just left it in the back door the night he had a look around,” he answered. “William found it.”

  “Dear me,” I said. I didn’t see any point in telling him-what I’d realized that night, that Philander Doyle had he
ard that key hit against the chair, in my coat pocket, and must have guessed. After all, the center vase in a garniture mantel is a pretty obvious place to hide an embarrassing object. I must really have been very transparent indeed to Mr. Doyle.

  “If it had been found in the Doyle house,” he said, with the faintest smile, “it could easily have hanged Roger. Except of course for Miss Doyle.”

  I skipped it. “I wonder,” I said, “what might have happened if I hadn’t called you in?”

  He shrugged. “Who can tell, Mrs. Latham? I wouldn’t have seen the water color of the Isabel D. I mightn’t have healed an old wound in Judge Candler’s heart that may make the ones Karen and his old friend dealt him less hard to bear. Roger and Jerry mightn’t be on their way south. I mightn’t ever have found out that you thought of me the minute you were scared out of your wits. You know, my dear——”

  A black object that was my Lilac appeared in the door.

  “Th’ Sergeant, he down stairs, ma’am. He want to know, is th’ Cunnel comin’, or is he not?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is, immediately,” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, Lilac,” Colonel Primrose said, blandly, “you may present my compliments to the Sergeant, and tell him that I say he can go to hell.—And sweeten this up a little, please.”

  “Yas, suh,” Lilac said. “Ah sho’ will—an’ with pleasure.”