The Opening Door

by Helen Reilly

  Hugh Flavell stepped on her mounting hope, cried it down. “Natalie, my poor darling,” he said, “stop and think—You lost your key ages ago and Charlotte had been with us here in this house for more than ten days. If someone wanted to kill her with Bruce’s rifle—why wait that long?”

  Natalie flashed back at him with an accuracy the Scotsman couldn’t have bettered. “If Bruce’s rifle was used deliberately, Papa, and that’s what it looks like, then—the murderer couldn’t have used it while Bruce was in Washington. That’s why he waited. That’s why it was done on last Wednesday night. Because Bruce was home and because—“ Yes, she had hold of it. She continued steadily, “Because someone heard Charlotte telephone to Bruce and ask him to meet her that night at a quarter past seven in the Park across the street.”

  Hugh Flavell was startled, outraged. “Natalie—what are you saying? Think. That would mean that it was someone in this house who...”

  The girl refused to retreat. “Yes,” she said drearily, “I know. But...” She dashed tears from her lashes and turned on her father, “You don’t believe Bruce did kill Aunt Charlotte, do you?”

  Flavell hadn’t the courage to say yes. He threw up his hands. “Certainly not.”

  “All right then,” Natalie answered, and drove him into a corner with remorseless logic. “Whoever did it had to know where Charlotte was going to be—and how could anyone know who didn’t hear her telephone to Bruce?”

  McKee interposed. He said, “Someone could have followed Miss Foy when she left here that night.”

  Flavell seized on the suggestion. “That’s it, Inspector, you’ve hit on it, I believe. The telephone call had nothing to do with it. Perhaps Nat is right, perhaps someone did want to make Bruce look guilty. Very well, the idea would seem to be that there was someone hanging around outside the house...”

  It was a possibility the Scotsman had already considered. He returned to the subject of the key to the Eldon Place apartment. Natalie said that Bruce Cunningham had left a key with her when he went to camp in June. She had used it in July, and in the beginning of August, to send him things he wanted, some books and a heavy sweater and, later, some addresses. Then she had lost it. She couldn’t say when. All she knew was that when Bruce came home in November he had asked her for the key and she had looked in the compartment in her purse where she kept it and it wasn’t there.

  McKee quirked mental eyebrows when she told him, her forehead furrowed with concentration, “It’s hard to think back, but Father and Susan were with me once, weren’t you, Papa? And I think Jim Holland went with me the second time. I met him in the Park; he was on his way here.”

  “The third time, Miss Flavell?” McKee asked and Natalie said, “I was alone...No, I wasn’t. That’s right, Alicia was with me. Yes, she loved the woodwork in the window and door frames....”

  So they were back to it again, McKee reflected wryly, back to the same people who, if you excluded Bruce Cunningham, could have discarded the box of morphine capsules in the restaurant on 52nd Street. And they were all at large and there was no proof...He took the thought away with him and didn’t like it.

  Earlier that afternoon Dwyer had gone to see Eve Flavell in the shop on 19th Street. It was unfortunate that he got to her before the Scotsman did. Eve was still weak from the aftereffects of the morphine poisoning. Dwyer didn’t know her and he attributed the stricken stillness with which she received the announcement of Bruce Cunningham’s arrest, seated in a chair in front of the fire against propped pillows, to physical weakness and to concern for her young half-sister. He was completely deceived by her lovely expressionless face, turned a little away from him, and by her averted, eyes and monosyllabic answers.

  “You wouldn’t want your sister to marry a man like that, come now, would you, Miss Flavell?”

  “No. Oh, no.”

  “You went to the Eldon Place apartment and took Bruce Cunningham’s rifle in order to shield your sister, because you didn’t want her to suffer—but you didn’t know at that time the purpose for which the gun had been used?”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  Inside herself Eve was summoning every ounce of her strength to ward off collapse. Dwyer was gentle with her. He said that Charlotte had discovered something about Bruce that made him unfit to be Natalie’s husband. She had confessed as much to Natalie’s lawyer, Spencer Gorham, over the phone on the afternoon of the day she died. “Your poor aunt signed her death warrant when she went to meet Cunningham that night, probably to tax him with what she knew. She played right into his hands. It was a perfect setup for murder. It was dark, and there was a heavy fog and the streets were deserted...Think of his callousness, Miss Flavell. He shot your aunt down, returned the rifle, temporarily, to the living room on Eldon Place and then took your half-sister out to dinner as though nothing had happened. That was brutal. That was shocking. Have you any idea, any inkling, of what Miss Foy had on Cunningham that made it necessary for him to kill her?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. No, I haven’t.” That was it, Eve thought numbly, sitting very still and trying to rise above the tumultuous black seas that threatened to overwhelm her. That was the very heart of it. Charlotte had seen Bruce talking to her in front of the fire in the house on the Square that day and that brief glance had undone all that she had accomplished by the announcement of her engagement to Jim. Yes, Charlotte knew the truth. But Charlotte was dead. The police must never find out—never.

  Dwyer went on putting the framework of motive into words. “Your sister Natalie is a very wealthy young woman. Cunningham wanted to marry her money. Miss Foy threatened the marriage, so she had to die.”

  It hung together horribly. Eve knew it wasn’t true. But terror filled her at the completeness of the State’s case. She mustn’t let it show. She fought for control fiercely. “Don’t move,” she told herself “don’t speak. Don’t give way. Don’t let this man guess...”

  It began then perhaps, the bitterest part of the anguish that covered her like flame, devouring her entity, eating the marrow of her bones—and the bitterness consisted in her aloneness. Natalie could grieve openly for Bruce, hers was the right; she, Eve, could show nothing except solicitude for her sister and a vicarious anxiety. But there were certain positive things she could do so that no one should ever guess the truth. She must go through with her marriage to Jim as soon as possible. That was absolutely necessary. Let one hint of the feeling between herself and Bruce come to the surface and he was lost. She made a little prayer than, and swore an oath: if Bruce were saved she would never think of him again in that way, never, never, as long as she lived.

  Dwyer left after asking a great many questions and without having obtained anything of real importance. He was only just gone when Jim arrived at the shop. He was overjoyed to see Eve out of bed. He knelt beside her chair and took her into his arms. “I was afraid last night that I would never see you like this again, sitting up and talking,” he said huskily, his cheek against hers.

  His bigness, his solidity, his goodness were comforting. He was so unselfish, made so few demands. But almost at once they were quarreling. Jim knew of Bruce’s arrest and what had led to it. He scolded Eve for taking the rifle and trying to hide it. “It was all very well to think of Natalie—but look what happened to you.”

  He refused to admit that Bruce’s arrest was an absurd mistake. He said soberly, “It doesn’t seem possible that Cunningham did it, but after all, someone killed Charlotte, and the police don’t make an arrest on a charge of murder, or in connection with a murder, unless they’ve got pretty good grounds...All right, all right, darling—if it will make you feel better I’ll swear that Bruce Cunningham is whiter than snow.”

  Jim’s tone was indulgent. But his glance at her was puzzled and—was there a question in it? Eve said quickly, “It will break Natalie’s heart, Jim. Oh, she won’t say anything—but it will kill her.” A cold little tongue of warning was curling round her own sick heart and she told herself that she wou
ld have to school her eyes and her voice, even her thoughts.

  To the consternation of the trained nurse left in charge by the Chief Medical Examiner, Eve announced a little later on that she was going out. Jim understood her better than the strange woman. “She wants to see her sister,” he said. “Better let her have her way or she’ll drive herself mad sitting there and brooding. I’ll be responsible for her. I don’t see how it can do any harm. I’ll see that she doesn’t tire herself out and I won’t let her stay long.”

  He got a cab and helped the nurse put her into it and they drove to the house on the Square. When they arrived, Alicia and Gerald and Susan were there. It was dusk. The curtains were drawn and the lamps lit. Natalie’s skin was paper white and her bones seemed to have sharpened. When she saw Eve she jumped up and went to her and took her two hands. “Are you all right? Ought you to be making this effort?” she asked anxiously.

  “I’m not too hot but I can totter about,” Eve said and smiled into Natalie’s eyes affectionately. “I wanted to see you.” They exchanged a wordless look. The conviction of Bruce’s innocence was strong in both of them, and in them alone, Eve thought bitterly. It didn’t matter. Natalie’s calm surety gave her renewed strength. Tea was brought in and Natalie poured with an air of proud self-possession that was oddly touching.

  Eve sat beside her, facing the others, in a loose semicircle around the hearth, with the width of more than space dividing them. It was evident to Eve that while Hugh and Alicia and Susan, as well as Jim, paid lip service to Bruce’s innocence, they didn’t really believe it.

  Natalie was talking to her in a low voice about Anthony Burchall, Bruce’s lawyer, and what he was doing when the front door opened and footsteps crossed the hall. Natalie was facing the archway. She broke off in the middle of a sentence, gave a glad cry and jumped up and started across the floor. Eve was on her feet too. So were the others.

  Bruce was coming down the steps and Natalie was in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. He disentangled himself presently and Natalie threw back her hair and they came over to the fire. Voices were a high babble congratulating Bruce.

  He nodded pleasantly, perfunctorily, turned to Eve, looked at her level-eyed. He said, his voice brusque, “I thought you were in bed. Ought you to be on your feet?”

  “I’m getting off them now,” Eve said, and dropped into the chair she had vacated, her knees wobbly. Seeing him like this, out of jail and free, made her weak, breathless.

  Bruce didn’t turn away from her. He stood there beside the tea tray, tall and straight in his uniform, light glinting on the wings over the pocket of his breast. He said slowly, “You shouldn’t have gone to Eldon Place and taken that gun. Look what happened to you. You might have been killed.”

  You could hear the clock tick. Outside, a cab went by in the street. Eve put her cup carefully on an end table, grayness swirling up around her. What were the others, what was Natalie thinking? Why had Bruce mentioned the rifle here, now, before them? They had to know, she told herself confusedly. But what explanation was she going to give that would sound even faintly plausible.

  She didn’t have to give any. Natalie did. She thrust her left arm through Bruce’s and reached for Eve’s with her right. Drawing Eve close, she looked up into Bruce’s face and said in clear ringing tones, “She did it for us, darling. Thank God, she’s safe.”

  Tears rushed to Eve’s eyes. The bitter irony of the situation, of Natalie’s generosity, her lack of knowledge of the real truth, were burning arrows plunged into her breast. The pain was frightful. She felt she couldn’t bear it, and knew it had to be borne. She didn’t glance at Bruce. She needn’t have been afraid. When she did, he was looking away from both her and Natalie, into the fire.

  Listening to Alicia’s vivacious babble, to her father’s measured tones, to a quip from Gerald, Eve resolved fiercely that there was only one thing for her to do. Natalie’s happiness was bound up in Bruce. He had to be cleared and she must help....It was then, standing there, that she thought of the man who had been lurking outside the house the night Charlotte died.

  She began to talk in a quick excited voice. She described her collision with him at the foot of the steps in the fog. She said, “He must have been there for some reason. He wasn’t just passing by.”

  Natalie took fire from her tone. “What did he look like, Eve?”

  But Eve didn’t know. He was a voice in the dark, nothing more.

  She realized afterwards that if she had been keener at the time she would have had an inkling then. One voice was missing from the chorus of questions, one face was averted in the loose circle around the hearth. It didn’t really matter.

  On the following day, on a windswept hill sixty miles to the northeast, under a bleak sky from which snow was beginning to fall, she saw the man who had been lurking outside the house on the Square the night Charlotte died, saw him and heard him, and was beset by pain from a new quarter and as a result of what she saw and heard she came close to death for the second time within forty-eight hours.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Susan De Sange’s hostess gown of a dark shade of American Beauty emphasized her height and grace and the frankly mature richness of her undoubted charm. She shook hands with McKee pleasantly and waved him to a chair in the living room of her suite on the ninth floor of the Hotel Trianon. It was eleven o’clock on Saturday morning.

  It was an ordinary hotel suite, but Susan De Sange had done something to it. She was a woman who would leave her imprint on her surroundings wherever they might happen to be. Magazines and books were scattered about, there were violets in a low green bowl and a frost of jonquils in front of a mirror perfumed the air.

  She was grave but not unduly cast down by Bruce Cunningham’s arrest in connection with Charlotte’s murder. She said, “I can speak freely to you, Inspector. I’ve grown very fond of Natalie Flavell....If he—is that sort of man, how much better that Natalie should discover it now, than after her marriage to him. Poor child, it’s terrible for her—but she’ll get over it eventually. Everything passes...”

  The flowers were from Hugh Flavell. His card was lying on the mantel. McKee said, “Mrs. De Sange, the other night, in the Cedars there was a man at a table beyond you, a man to whom you bowed on the way out. Who was he?”

  They were both on their feet. Susan De Sange was standing at a table taking a cigarette out of a sandalwood box. She turned slowly. A frown put vertical lines between arched brows on her broad low forehead. She was a handsome woman and she had lived a full life; wonder touched the Scotsman, not for the first time, that she should be emotionally interested in Hugh Flavell. Flavell was all right. At fifty-odd he was good-looking and intelligent enough and his manners were agreeable, but he was narrow, self-centered, set in his ways and a terrific egotist. He was also, McKee reminded himself, the father of an extremely wealthy daughter. And Natalie was generous....As Eve had said, she loved to give, and no one connected with her would ever want. He made a mental note to look up this woman’s financial situation.

  Susan De Sange was watching him covertly through her eyelashes. She said musingly, “A man at the Cedars...Oh, now I remember. That was Edgar—Edgar Bently. Of course I know him. He’s a cousin of my husband’s. But—why do you ask, Inspector?”

  McKee told her. “He was watching the Flavell table closely on Thursday night, Mrs. De Sange, when, as you know, the morphine capsules with which Eve Flavell was poisoned were thrown to the floor. It’s just possible that Mr. Bently saw something, some slight movement that would give us a clue as to who disposed of the morphine. You were more or less occupied with yourselves, but this Mr. Bently, from the position he was in, had you all more or less under observation. And by the way, there must have been a reason for his—interest.”

  Susan De Sange shrugged. There was weariness and a flavor of resignation in her faint smile. Amusement left her. She ruffled the pages of a book with a shapely hand and sighed. “Poor Edgar. I’m afraid Hugh wa
s the reason. Yes. You see, Edgar’s been wanting me to marry him for years and he—well, he doesn’t like my interest in the Flavells. I suppose it’s a perfectly natural reaction but it’s annoying and a bore. As far as the other night goes, I’m sure Edgar didn’t see anything important, Inspector. He was here this morning and if he had seen anything he would have told me. In fact, to be frank, he would have been glad to.”

  She explained that Bently was an architect by profession and lived in Norwalk, Connecticut, and that he was in New York on a visit, but she didn’t know, so she said, where he was staying. “If I see him again, Inspector, I’ll find out and let you know.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. De Sange.”

  He reflected that she might, or might not, be telling the truth. Voice, expression, carriage, bearing were all they should have been. As with those others, it meant nothing, McKee reflected. Of all the cases he had ever encountered this was the most truly Jekyll-Hyde. Behind one of these innocuous facades lay the will and the ability to kill ruthlessly, cleverly, and with the bland face of innocence. Evaluated in general terms, Susan De Sange was no more and no less suspicious than anyone so far involved. She was an old friend of whom Hugh Flavell had become enamored when he met her again in maturity. Eve was very fond of her; Alicia Flavell disliked her intensely. Alicia’s dislike was understandable. She was working the same side of the street; she was a favorite of Hugh’s and made a fuss over him and over Natalie, and she would resent the intrusion of another woman into that circle of—eight millions.

  McKee told himself impatiently not to keep coming back to that. The money was not Hugh Flavell’s; it was his daughter’s, and Natalie was very much alive. The only concrete thing that singled Susan De Sange out for special notice was the photograph that had been tom during her curious interview in private with Charlotte Foy three hours before Charlotte died. These rooms, as well as the Flavell house, had already been searched in vain for the photograph with a corner missing.