The Opening Door

by Helen Reilly

  She pulled up short, her heart leaping treacherously. Bruce was standing less than twenty feet away leaning indolently against a headstone looking at her. The brown of his big Army overcoat melted into muted tones of privet behind him. His light eyes probed hers under down-drawn brows that were dark bands in the strong angularity of a face from which the tan of tropic suns was beginning to fade.

  Eve stood still. She would have escaped him if she could. There was nothing now between Bruce and herself, there could be nothing—ever—and these casual contacts were incredibly hard to bear. The grave was beyond Bruce. He blocked her path to it. Outside the gates, the others were getting out of the cars. Eve hugged soft gray kidskin tighter to her, smiled briefly at Bruce and said, fumbling for lightness, “Hello, what are you doing here? Aren’t you out of bounds or breaking training or something?”

  Bruce continued to stare at her. The lights in his hazel eyes were bright, burning. He said, “Natalie wanted me to come and McKee arranged things so that I could leave the jurisdiction. I have no doubt that there’s a gentleman in a purple derby hiding behind the bushes somewhere.”

  The voices and the footsteps were coming nearer. Bruce glanced past Eve and then straight into her eyes. “Are you going to marry Jim Holland? Are you going through with it?” He didn’t move. His tone sent the blood flying into her cheeks.

  She listened to winter birds chirping. The bars on his shoulder weren’t silver, she thought, they were a steel gray. There was a faded wreath lying crookedly on a long narrow mound between them. The roses in the wreath were withered, colorless. She raised her head. The tailored collar of her coat brushed her hair in back. Her scarlet mouth steadied. She said, “I don’t think I understand you. Am I going through with what—?” and gathered herself together and went on lying slowly and carefully and deliberately. “Of course I’m going to marry Jim. What has happened has taught me a good deal. I realize now that I can make Jim happy and that he can make me happy. Even if there was no question of Natalie it wouldn’t make any difference. I loved Jim all the time...”

  Bruce kept on staring at her. She couldn’t tell whether the light in his narrowed eyes was derision or not. A pulse in her throat fluttered. “So that’s that,” he murmured and took himself away from the headstone and walked past her as though she were a stranger, as though he had no further interest in her...

  Natalie was coming through the gates. Bruce went to her and took her arm. She was beginning to shake. Gerald said, “Steady, old girl,” and the three of them walked forward. Jim had already gone on with Hugh and Susan and Alicia.

  Eve didn’t follow. Her heart was full. She turned into a gravel path that ran gently down between headstone and an occasional weathered mausoleum. Fifty feet from the silent crowd on the hill above she paused beside a marble angel, stepped off the path, put her shoulders against the pediment, felt in her pocket for a cigarette and let the pain come. After a few moments it began to dull.

  A crow cawed harshly somewhere and the wind blew. Beyond and below, to the east, hills and fields rolled to the Sound visible at only one point, a gray triangle threaded with white under the pressed-down lowering sky. The wind was icy but Eve didn’t mind its searching chill. It was good to be alone for a moment, not to have to school her eyes and lips, not even to have to think. She looked absently at gravestones. Some of them were old. Lichen-stained writing on one said: Jeremiah Couch, aged fourteen, lost at sea 1812, in latitude 44, longitude 36. Her eye was caught by the name De Sange on a stone that wasn’t old. Of course, Susan’s husband was buried here; Eve read the inscription. It was short and unrevealing. Lucien De Sange, born February 11,1882; died June 17, 1921. Near it, in the same plot, there was a tiny marble shaft. On that was lettered Lucy, daughter of Susan and Lucien De Sange, aged 2 months and 4 days and the date June 4, 1921.

  Poor Susan, Eve thought, she had lost her husband and her only child within a few days of each other in the same year. That was the year Natalie’s mother died, making Hugh a widower for the second time. With his propensity for marrying, it was a wonder he hadn’t cast an eye on Susan...or perhaps he had, and that explained Charlotte’s dislike of her. Why had she never married again, Eve wondered. She was extremely attractive and there must have been men since Lucien De Sange. Was Susan like the woman in some book or other who said “I will have no more husbands”?

  Snowflakes were twisting down lazily. Eve lit a cigarette and drew smoke deeply into her lungs. The minister was praying. The prayer, sonorous and unintelligible, came faintly through the bitter air. There was no other sound. Then, close to Eve somewhere, a man spoke. He was on the far side of the marble angel, and invisible to her, but his voice was vaguely familiar. She recorded his words idly at first, without consciously listening. “...surprised?” the man on the other side of the monument was saying. “But surely you knew I’d be—interested.” It was a cultured voice, smooth and almost caressing, yet with an undertone of irony in it. His companion, whoever it was, made no reply and he continued, “We’ll have to have a talk, my friend, a really serious talk. Yes?...Good. Suppose I call you later this afternoon...”

  It was then that Eve came wide awake, suddenly. She had recognized the voice. Her throat was tight and there was coldness all through her. The man on the other side of the marble angel was the man with whom she had collided outside the house on Henderson Square on the night Charlotte died.

  For a moment she was too stunned to move. In spite of her own theories about the loiterer at the foot of the steps that night, she hadn’t really believed that he had had an important part in Charlotte’s fate. Now it was different. Now there was a connection—or why was he here, in this cemetery, miles from New York, at Charlotte’s funeral? She had to find out who he was. The angel blocked her path. She turned quickly, started round yews banking the outspread marble wings, tripped over a sunken headstone and fell heavily to her knees. Her ankle hurt. She didn’t pay any attention. She got to her feet somehow and ran on. The man was there, thirty feet from her, walking rapidly up the path. His back was turned. She stared at it, at the hat he had on and the coat, an expensive light tan polo coat, and caught her breath. This man had not only been watching the house the night Charlotte was killed, he had been in the Square the following afternoon, standing on the pavement across the street, and he had followed her to Bruce’s apartment, because when she hailed a cab a block above Eldon Place after her escape with the rifle, he had been standing on the opposite corner.

  The services were over and people were beginning to go. The man in the polo coat had reached the fringe of the crowd, was in it. All she could see was his hat. Sheer astonishment had brought her to a momentary halt. She mustn’t lose him. She had to find out who he was. She was starting on again when there was a sound behind her, in the direction from which she had come. She looked back—and froze. Susan De Sange was there. She was coming toward her up the hill. It was to Susan that the man in the polo coat had been talking and Susan wasn’t going to acknowledge the meeting that had just taken place until she was sure Eve knew about it.

  Her handsome face was calm under a small black hat tilted over the shining waves of her hair. There was a white bird on the hat. She smiled at Eve. She said, lightly and too casually, “My dear, where did you spring from?”

  Eve looked at her and then away. She brushed grass and a barberry twig from her skirt and stood erect and straightened her shoulders. She had interrupted a talk between the man in the polo coat and Susan De Sange. The conversation was going to be resumed; he had said so. When it was, she meant to be there to hear and see.

  She said aloud, marveling at her own mendacity, “I....Where did you spring from? I was wandering around, looking at headstones. You should have come with me, Sue dear, some of them are really quaint...

  Her glance shifted and she stiffened in dismay. Bruce was standing beyond Susan. He wasn’t looking at Susan. He was looking at her. Had he heard Susan and the man in the polo coat talking? Eve wasn’t sure. She
was sure of only one thing. He distrusted her. She might have deceived Susan, she hadn’t deceived him. He knew there was something wrong.

  She turned a shoulder on him. They rejoined the others then. When they got into cars at the gate there was no sign of the man in the polo coat. They started across to the house on Red Fox Road, where, Alicia said, tea was waiting.

  Bruce didn’t go with them.

  That was at a quarter of four.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “But I can’t stay, Jim dear, I’ve got to get back to the shop tonight,” Eve said. “There isn’t another train until ten, and that would bring me in much too late.”

  Jim frowned down at her. He didn’t like it. Now that the funeral was over he was much more cheerful, more himself. They were in the hall of the Flavell house at the end of Red Fox Road in which Eve had been born and to which she had returned every year for uncounted summers. Originally it had been small, a white colonial house on a knoll among trees in a curve of the river. Now with the wings Virginia had added at the time of her marriage and the nursery and playroom that had been built on for Natalie when she was a child, it was big and rambling. The front of the house was fairly close to the road, while in back and at the sides orchards and gardens ran down to the wide bay of the river and across the brook to the east. The place belonged to Hugh but he would never have been able to keep it up without Natalie’s help, Eve realized, looking in a beautiful old mirror, at the reflected vista of a section of the long lovely drawing room where they had had tea when they arrived at four o’clock.

  Alicia had seen to everything. The rooms had been opened and aired and the oil furnace turned on. She had even had Mrs. Eddey, who lived in the house in winter, make the scones Hugh liked. Lights and fires and warmth after coldness, drawn curtains shutting out the gray December afternoon, should have produced a brighter atmosphere. They didn’t for Eve. Afterwards she was always to remember that interval as a species of nightmare with a horror all its own.

  The original plan had been that they were to take the five-thirty-seven train back to New York. But when Susan announced, stretching shapely hands toward the flaming logs, that she was going to spend the weekend at her little cottage at the foot of the lawn, the others decided that they would stay on.

  Hugh was beside Susan on the couch, firelight modeling his handsome high-nosed face against shadows. He said he thought it an excellent idea. Then Alicia spoke. It hadn’t escaped Eve that if she was watching Susan closely herself, Alicia was doing so too. The latter had been upset when she found that Susan was returning to the house with them. At the cemetery gates she had said, holding out her hand, “Nice of you, darling, to take so much trouble for Aunt Charlotte, particularly when you weren’t exactly fond of each other. “...You’re coming with us? Oh...Splendid!”

  That was part of the nightmare, Alicia’s sub-acid sweetness, her narrow-eyed vigilance, the significant glances she exchanged with Gerald at their father’s little attentions to Susan. Why should either of them care if Hugh and Susan were to marry? How would it affect their interests? It evidently did. Alicia wasn’t going to leave Hugh and Susan alone together. She said brightly, “You’re right, Dad, it does seem stupid to go back to town and those dreadful policemen, when we can have a little peace and quiet here.”

  Bruce wasn’t there then. He had come in for a few minutes, had walked with Natalie in the grounds and then into the village, alone. Gerald was standing on the hearth cleaning his pipe. He blew through the stem and grinned mockingly. “You don’t mean to say you didn’t spot the gent in the iron derby at the funeral, my pet? He came up with us in the train. I’ll bet you anything you like that he’s parked outside the gates right now.”

  Alicia looked at him and her color faded. She said sharply, “What?” Susan dropped the sugar tongs and they hit the tray with a little crack. She didn’t seem to notice. Hugh flushed angrily and sat up. The retort that although Bruce was out on bail on a technicality he was really under arrest for murder and that there was no need to look further was on his lips. It didn’t come out in quite that shape, but the implication was there. He said, controlling himself with an effort, “Under the circumstances this—watch on us is an outrage.”

  It was impossible to mistake his meaning. Natalie got it. She was sitting on a hassock near Eve’s chair, her tea untouched on a table beside her, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her clasped hands. She was in one of the dark brooding moods that used to make Pussy, their old nurse, so nervous. Her shoulder was toward the room but she seemed far away, in a world of her own with no pleasure in it. Their father should have known better, Eve thought as she turned and looked at him. Her narrow face went stone white inside the frame of her pale softly shining hair. She sat like that for a moment and then leaped to her feet. She stood there, tall and straight and formidable, her eyes no longer opaque brown discs but black and brilliant with anger.

  “I won’t stand this,” she said in a hard dry voice, her hands clenched at her sides, her head thrown back, “I won’t.

  ...You think Bruce killed Charlotte, Papa. Don’t try to deny it. I know you do. You all think so—all of you except Eve. Oh—how can you be so stupid, so cruel?” She swept the circle of appalled faces accusingly. “I’m not going to stay here any more. I’m going away. I’m going to—going to...”

  She had been a young Valkyrie riding the dark wind of outrage and revolt. The weight of her emotion was too much for her. Her voice broke and her chin quivered. Tears began to stream down her cheeks and she buried her face in her hands with a quick movement and started to cry as though she would never stop.

  The others were up and out of their chairs. Gerald got to her first. They put their arms around her. They said she was wrong, that they didn’t think Bruce was guilty, that she was exhausted because of what she had been through. They said that she must rest and get some sleep and stop worrying, that Bruce was going to be all right, everything was going to be all right...

  Susan was the only one who didn’t stir. She remained where she was, in a corner of the needle-point sofa, staring at the floor vacantly, almost stupidly—and she wasn’t stupid...

  Alicia and Gerald and Hugh and Jim made their peace with Natalie. She sat down and drank the tea Alicia poured out for her, obediently. But she didn’t retreat. She said quietly, “It’s harder for you than it is for me, I realize that. But I know Bruce, you see, I know he could never kill anyone, like that, for any reason. I don’t care how much proof there is...”

  Things calmed down after that. Natalie had telephoned to Bruce and he was going to stay at the inn in Eastport for the night. He said he’d be over later. Eve was glad she was going to miss him. She said goodbye to the others. Only Jim remained to be disposed of. Susan was still in the house but she was going down to her cottage soon and Eve was anxious to get away, alone, before she left.

  Jim had protested her departure vigorously. He had to stay on because he was due in Bridgeport early the next morning to receive added instructions about the job he was to begin Monday. He said, leaning against a newel post and looking at her discontentedly, “I don’t see why you can’t wait until tomorrow—I won’t be in Bridgeport long.”

  Eve used guile then, and hated herself for it, apathetically, as she did everything. “Don’t be an idiot, Jim. If we’re to be married early in the week there are millions of things I’ll have to see to...” It was true, she thought bitterly, she had to spy on Susan, had to crouch and creep and eavesdrop on the woman who had been her friend....

  Jim evidently took her averted glance, with pain behind it, for shyness. His Victorianism was ridiculous and rather touching. He was naive in lots of ways. The bride must blush, she must be hesitant and a little fearful, so that she could be reassured and comforted—and loved. Icy fingers ran up Eve’s spine, touched the base of her neck. She shivered, and lifted her face resolutely and after the necessary moment drew herself out of Jim’s arms.

  “At least I can go to the station with
you?”

  “No you can’t,” Eve said firmly. “I want you to keep an eye on Natalie—and, besides, that engineer is going to call you back.” A horn honked beyond the front door. She picked up her gloves and purse. “There’s my taxi now.”

  It was dark out and cold. Snow was spitting intermittently, but the body of the storm held off. Jim put Eve into the cab, kissed her tenderly, told her to take care of herself, the door slammed and the car went down the short driveway into the road. Just beyond the gates the car lamps picked up a man’s big dark figure. Captain Pierson of the Manhattan Homicide Squad leaped back into shadow, but not before Eve caught sight of him. Perhaps she would need a policeman soon, she thought, when she had found out more. All she knew now was that the man in the polo coat who had been hanging around the house on Henderson Square on the night Charlotte died was a friend, or an acquaintance, of Susan’s. If she went to the police with that they’d say, “Uh-huh—so what?” The man himself would probably deny everything and declare that she was crazy. His word would be as good as hers and she had no proof. No, she would have to go through with what she had in mind.

  The first part was simple enough. At the foot of the lane, when the car swung into Imperial Avenue, she got out, paid the man off, said she had changed her mind and gave him a generous tip. She refused his offer to drive her back to the house. “Thanks, but it’s only a step and I’ll be glad of some exercise.”

  As soon as the car was out of sight she turned and started back, not by the route she had come but by a longer and more roundabout way. She didn’t intend to re-enter the grounds by the front gates but through the fields to the north and across a little bridge buried in trees that ran through the property on that side. The police would never think of posting anyone there. No one who wasn’t familiar with the terrain would know of that way of getting in and out.