Invitation to Murder

by Zenith Brown

  “I thought you’d both deserted us,” she remarked, moving lazily up the steps. “Dodo has, and Peter’s being perfectly horrid to Jenny. He says her driving’s a menace to—”

  “It’s not either, Mr. Finlay,” Jenny said hotly. Fish looked at her. There was a martini glass in her hand. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed. “Peter thinks I’m afraid to drive over forty, but I was just waiting for my one-thousand mile check-up. I had it made while we were at the Casino playing tennis, and tomorrow I can drive seventy. I’ll prove it to you if you don’t believe me.”

  “It’s a deal.” Peter grinned at her and pulled himself up out of the wicker chaise. “Anybody want a drink? Jenny?”

  “No, thanks. Mother and I have had our quota. I think mine’s gone to my head.” Fish looked at her again as she laughed. “But Mrs. Emlyn needs one. You look cold, Mrs. Emlyn.”

  “Cold. . . .”

  Fish heard Alla Emlyn repeat the word slowly. Nikki had moved over to the bar and was pouring himself a drink. Alla was standing where she and Fish had stopped, Fish to look at Jenny Linton and Alla, because she seemed to need to steady herself a moment, her hand on the back of a chair.

  When she spoke then her voice was so low, the quality of it so extraordinary, that Fish glanced around at her, not knowing if she meant him to hear her.

  “Cold. . . ? My God, I’m horribly horribly cold. . . .”

  He felt more than saw the shudder that went through her before she moved on and sat down, composed again. “Thanks, darling. I think Peter can get me a small spot of Scotch. On the rocks, no water.”

  Then, before Fish could unravel any of the odd confusion in his mind, Dodo came out onto the porch.

  “Look, all of you,” she said abruptly. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes bright, but with a glitter of anger, not the hectic glitter of yesterday. “My cook’s walked out. She says she’s psychic and the place is haunted. That’s for you and your damned carnations, Nikki, dear. But never mind, angels. I’ve called Peel’s and they’ve got a table. I’ve ordered you cocktails and a lovely meal, so put your glasses down and scoot.”

  “But, my darling—”

  “Listen, Nikki.” Dodo’s voice was nearer the cutting edge than Fish, and certainly Nikki, had ever heard it. “You can’t speak to servants in America the way you can abroad. They leave. The cook’s left. Now I’d like to keep the rest of them. So you people kindly get the hell out, for my sake, as well as theirs. I’m at the end of my rope too, and if you don’t get out I’ll scream. And don’t come back, any of you. I’m going to bed and I’m going to sleep. Now get out, please!”

  Her voice was like a piece of wet silk ripped apart.

  “Certainly, darling.” Alla’s voice was lazy, but she rose at once. “Come along, everybody. Fish, you go with Peter and Jenny, and see she doesn’t drive any seventy, will you? Nikki and I’ll come along after you. I know exactly how you feel, Dodo, dear.”

  Fish Finlay hesitated, the warning click of a switch in some cold dark room of his mind, until Jenny stopped close beside him.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered quickly. “Elsa’s staying with her in my room. She’s going to lock it, and I’ve got the key. And tonight . . . I’m going to tell him.”

  Then it was a sharper fear dragging him along, not knowing what she was going to tell, until abruptly halfway through dinner he heard her across the table in the crowded room of the lobster palace on the pier.

  “But Nikki, dear. . . .” Her voice sounded so like her mother’s that Fish Finlay put his lobster fork down on the blue-and-white checked tablecloth. “. . . she can’t get the rubies back. She doesn’t have that much money. It would have to come out of capital . . . and surely she’s told you that doesn’t belong to her? The Maloney Trust belongs to me. She only has the income while she’s alive, and not for too long at that. It’s a couple of years or so. You can ask Mr. Finlay how many, I’ve forgotten whether it’s one or two. It’s just the way the Trust is written. Isn’t it, Mr. Finlay?”

  She was looking across at him, her eyes too bright, her cheeks flushed. He stared back at her, too stunned to speak. Beside him he could feel Alla Emlyn’s cold taut body relaxing very slowly, and see her breast rise and fall as she drew in a long deep quiet breath and let it softly out, her eyes closed, opening then and going across to Peter de Gradoff, the faint shadow of a smile creeping into the corner of her scarlet mouth. And he saw Peter’s head move, barely perceptible, in understanding and affirmation.

  Jenny Linton was looking at Fish, Alla and Peter looking down at the lobsters on their plates. None of them looked at Nikki de Gradoff, frozen in complete silence, until they heard his chair move sharply back.

  “You people stay. I must go.”

  For an instant Fish Finlay saw his face, gray and ghastly, and he was moving swiftly through the tables. Fish pushed his own chair back. He was in the telephone booth when he heard de Gradoff’s car leap to the spark and roar out of the parking lot.

  Dr. McNair’s wife said, “He’s at dinner.”

  “Get him, quick. Tell him it’s Finlay. Tell him to get over to Enniskerry. It’s life or death. For God’s sake, tell him fast.”

  He put down the phone. Only then did he remember Dodo was in Jenny’s room and the door was locked and Jenny had the key. He went back as swiftly as he could.

  “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Oh, darling,” Alla Emlyn said, “I’ve sent them to get me some aspirin. But I don’t really expect them back, and Peter knows it. Do sit down, Fish.” She smiled up at him. “You told me a story, didn’t you. It’s only the grace of heaven that saved me. Do relax. At least till you pay the bill. We can get a taxi then.”

  CHAPTER : 19

  The headlights of Fish Finlay’s taxi caught the blue-and-white insignia on the back of the car turning down Nantucket Avenue as the taxi turned into it at the other end of the serpentine wall. Dr. McNair had been to Enniskerry and was leaving it. The tension holding Fish forward on the seat broke with a relief so intense that he could taste the sudden gall-bitter irony of the fact that an equal tension had broken in the silent woman beside him. Alla Emlyn stirred in the seat. The movement of her body, the sound of her breath quieting, as she relaxed, had a quality of resignation so tangible and so extraordinary that it had a macabre humor. If she had not actually and overtly hoped for what he’d feared, she’d been waiting for it and could have borne it with fortitude, as an act of God or the devil clearing a way that wasn’t clear.

  De Gradoff was on the porch. The taxi lights picked him up for a moment, stretched comfortably out on one of the bamboo chaises, smoking a cigar, a glass beside him. With the taxi gone, the blur of his dinner coat and the round red tip of his cigar were still visible in the shadows made by the dim lights in the balcony hall. The rest of the house was dark.

  Mrs. Emlyn was the first up the steps.

  “We’d have been here sooner, darling,” she said lightly, “but we had a perfectly foul time getting a taxi. Saturday night with the Navy on the town. Dodo’s all right, I take it. Was that a doctor we saw leaving?”

  “It was,” de Gradoff said calmly. “Finlay called him. For what reason I’ve no idea, except I’m sure it was kindly meant. It was very awkward, as a matter of fact. He insisted on seeing her and she was sound asleep in Jennifer’s room . . . much quieter of course than the front of the house. But he was pleased she was sleeping without any of his drugs. So, why don’t you run powder your nose, Alla, darling, and let’s you and I go along to the dance.”

  “I won’t be a moment.” She moved gracefully on into the hall.

  “As I say, Finlay,” de Gradoff went on evenly, “I’ve no idea what you had in mind. Under ordinary circumstances I certainly shouldn’t bother to explain any conduct of mine to you. But I did leave the table rather abruptly, under circumstances that can hardly be called ordinary.”

  The dull end of his cigar glowed, the fragrant smoke came so directly to Fish that he re
alized de Gradoff must have blown it at him.

  “Of course I’m astounded I hadn’t been told. The impression is offensive to a degree. However. . . .”

  Fish could hear the returning arrogance in his voice.

  “The appalling thing that hit me there was that I knew, when Jennifer said that, what’s been wrong with Dodo these last two months—the horrible anxiety she’s been under. You know as well as I do that her relations with Jennifer haven’t been too cordial, and money means a great deal to her. It means nothing to me. I’ve been used to great poverty and great wealth. I prefer wealth, but I can take poverty. You Americans find that hard to understand, but you’ve been very spoiled, of course.”

  Fish waited, with a controlled coolness that took some effort. De Gradoff sat up and put his feet on the floor. “My one thought, when I heard the truth, was to get home to my wife and tell her for God’s sake to stop worrying herself to death. I found out, fortunately, that Jennifer has promised not to cut her off with that shilling the English talk about . . . which explains, along with a good many martinis, I’m afraid, why she was sleeping quietly at last. It’s unfortunate she didn’t have more confidence in me.”

  He turned to Alla coming back onto the porch.

  “I’ve been having a needed chat with Finlay, darling, before we go. The whole atmosphere needed clearing. Tomorrow, I’d like a quiet day alone with my wife. Why don’t you and Peter and Jennifer take the day and go somewhere, the Cape or some place amusing. I’m sure Finlay can occupy himself.”

  “Oh, that’s a divine idea.”

  “Because I think we’ll all go back to France next week and take Jennifer with us. It’s a lot less expensive . . . now that I understand our financial situation.” He put his cigar down in the ash tray. “Do stay and have a drink, Finlay.” He passed Fish and went down the steps. “Coming, darling?”

  Alla Emlyn moved gracefully across the porch and held her hand out to Fish. “Good night,” she said. When she took her hand away from his there was a piece of paper in it.

  “Good night,” Fish said. He waited until the sleek black car had roared away from the porch, took out his cigarette lighter and held it to read the hasty ink-blurred scrawl.

  “Don’t worry about J.,” it said. “Believe me, dear, she couldn’t be safer. Both Peter and I will see to that.”

  “I’ll bet,” Fish Finlay thought.

  He held the paper for the flame to eat, dropped it into an ash tray and crumbled it to carbon dust. He went over to the bar, poured himself a Scotch and soda and sat down to give McNair a chance to get home before calling him to find out what else had gone on at Enniskerry, knowing already that nothing had and that de Gradoff had won another round. A romantic tomorrow alone with Dodo would only consolidate his gain. And if he took her and Jennifer abroad. . . .

  He sat there in the dark listening to the roar of the sea, the swirling maelstrom of the Chasm imprinted on his inward eye, and beside it on the same stuffless negative, the fishing platform and the rock and the sandal caught in the black shag of mussels. Getting out of the country was the shrewd move of a superb opportunist turning every checkmate into victory with the ease of a magician at a birthday party for the blind. He put his head back against the cushions, closed his eyes, trying to think, and raised his head abruptly, hearing a new sound out in the drive.

  He bent forward, listening more intently. It was somebody walking, feet softly scrunching over the scallop-shell surface. He turned his head and looked out. It was too dark to see beyond the hazy rim of the verandah. The steps were coming closer, pausing, coming on again, curiously stealthy and, at the same time, direct. Fish put his glass carefully down on the table, gooseflesh creeping out along his spine as the steps reached the turf and were silent, moving closer or not moving, he couldn’t tell. Then he heard them again, very close, just at the corner of the porte-cochere, scrunching very softly on the shell again. His eyes peering into the dark created forms that had no substance, his listening ears created sound that was not sound, until he heard the soft pad of a foot on the wooden steps. He turned his head toward it, and saw a dark shadow emerge to take form deeper than the shadows around it, and saw then, picked out in the frail sifted tendril of light from the hallway, a moon-pale patch that riveted his eyes, as his nostrils quivered with the sharp spicy fragrance of carnations and the goose-flesh was colder than lumps of ice on his spine. He dragged his eyes up, holding his breath, as a shadowy figure moved onto the porch and across toward the door and he saw the small sad-eyed gardener with the faded brown hat move quietly into the hall and disappear, the odor of the carnations lingering in the salt-damp air behind him on the porch.

  Fish let his breath out quietly and waited, motionless, hardly breathing again, until he heard the soft padding steps return and the little man cross the porch, empty-handed. He went down the steps, his feet scrunching across the drive to the turf, and the only sound was imagined sound.

  Fish Finlay picked up his Scotch and soda and took a drink he badly needed. He started to take another, and stopped short as a light flashed on in the three high windows of the clock tower. He put the glass down, watching. In a moment he saw the dusty blue figure reach the tower balcony and disappear, and a faint light show in the windows of the loft living-room, dissolving the sea of darkness over the courtyard.

  He sat up, his first impulse to go over and see what the little gardener was doing in his rooms, his second to stay where he was and watch. He stayed, his eyes fixed on the windows. Once he saw the brown hat or the shadow of it move across in front of the lighted lamp. He looked over at the hall door behind him. If he could get upstairs, he could look directly into his room. He hesitated, and was glad he had. He could hear a phone ringing distantly. A moment later he heard a stirring around inside the house. The lights in the stable were still as they had been. He waited, bewildered in some curiously expectant sense that he felt without knowing how or why. A door opened upstairs in the house and a light came on in the hall, making the porch brighter too. Then he heard the movement of feet on the stairs, not sharp or distinct but more like feet that were feeling their way uncertainly down an unaccustomed path.

  He stood up. It was too light for concealment, too dark for him not to be frightening, seen unexpectedly there.

  The steps were steadier now, clear on the polished floor, dulled again as they reached the Aubusson carpet, and the light threw the shadow of a woman out onto the porch before she stepped out herself. He saw Dodo. For a moment he thought she was walking in her sleep, until he saw her eyes open, staring out of a face that was whiter than the robe she wore, her hands clutching jerkily to tie the belt around her waist. She saw him and stopped, again almost like a sleepwalker disturbed for a moment on her way. He saw her lips move without hearing any sound, until she moistened her dust-dry lips and stepped closer to him on her way to the steps, her eyes fixed, wide open, not a sleepwalker but a walker in some frightening kind of hypnotic trance.

  “My father. . . .” Her voice was like sandpaper on polished wood. “He’s . . . sent for me. I must go. He’s waiting . . . out there.”

  She raised one hand as though brushing something off into the night, and Fish stared at her, a sharp chill along his spine again as he saw her hand go out toward the rose garden and the cliff above the sea and the Rock, and felt a sudden doubt of his own sanity as well as hers.

  “I must go alone,” she whispered “Don’t come.”

  She went down the steps. He moved after her quietly and stood there, tense, until she passed by the opening in the balustrade, going on like a white ghost in the light filtered down from the stable windows, and he saw her open and close the clock tower door. He saw her reach the balcony and stop, her hand on the rail, for several moments, before she moved on toward the living-room door and out of his sight. He stood there staring up at the windows, for how long he could not have told, before he made up his mind, went down the steps, across the courtyard to the tower door and up the stairs, maki
ng no attempt to deaden his footsteps.

  He opened the living-room door and went in. The gardener was gone. Dodo was there alone, on the sofa, a sheaf of thin blue papers in her lap, staring at a photograph in her hand, her lips parted. If her face had been white in the frail light on the porch, it was dead-white now, blank, too dazed to hear him enter, her eyes dazed, resting on the photograph. She looked up as Fish shut the door.

  “I . . . don’t believe it,” she whispered. “It’s a lie.”

  She moistened her lips and turned the page of the sheaf of papers, her hand trembling, her eyes darting over the lines. “It’s all a lie.”

  “What’s a lie, Dodo?” he asked quietly.

  She sat staring down for a moment. “That was . . . my father,” she said then. Her voice was suddenly sharp. “He’s been here, every winter. Right here at Enniskerry. Right here with Vranek. I knew it, the other day—I saw him in the greenhouse, from your kitchen window. But I didn’t believe it, I thought I was mad. But now . . . I’ve seen him, I know it’s him. He stayed this summer . . . to watch me. He hired the detective in Paris. This is his—”

  She broke off, holding up the sheaf of papers. “This is . . . oh, it’s just lies! And he gives it to me!”

  The pitch of her voice rose. ‘I’m to do what I like with it. I’m to accuse my husband of murder! My own father . . . he’s had my husband watched, like a common criminal! It’s horrible, Fish . . . and it’s all a lie!”

  He went over to her. “Will you let me see it, Dodo?”

  She flashed to her feet, her eyes blazing.

  “No! They haven’t proved anything. They admit they haven’t proved anything. There was a maid but the maid is dead. There was a letter that woman wrote the night she died but they haven’t got the letter. They say the family gave him the letter in return for his interest in the estate. That’s a lie. The whole thing’s a lie. They exhumed the body to prove he poisoned her but there was nothing. And they call their suspicions facts! And this—”