Invitation to Murder

by Zenith Brown

  She snatched the photograph up savagely, her eyes blazing at it for an instant before they went suddenly gray and sick as she dropped it on the floor. “It’s his wife, a photo of a portrait . . . and she’s wearing my rubies. Oh, Nikki couldn’t have done that! He wouldn’t have let me buy his own family jewels. . . .”

  She flung the papers down. “. . . Unless it’s true, he was in debt to that man and . . . afraid to tell me!”

  Her lips were dry again. “Get me some water, Fish. Water with ice. I’m burning up! Oh, I hate my father! I’ve always hated him! I know now! He was the one who called up the Customs people!”

  He went out to the kitchen, got a tray of ice and a glass from the cupboard, raised his head sharply then and went quickly back into the living-room. She was standing in front of the fireplace, her eyes as hot as the flames licking the sheaf of papers on the hearth behind her.

  “There!” she cried. “My father said they were mine to do as I liked with. I’ve done it. And don’t you try to—”

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Dodo. Here’s your water. Or don’t you want it now?”

  “No.” She took the poker and stirred the charred papers savagely.

  He put it on the table. “Just one thing. Your father wouldn’t have given you that, Dodo, if he’d known what happened tonight. He wouldn’t have put Jenny’s life in your hands. You’re perfectly safe, for the moment—thanks to her. But when you burned that report—”

  “I don’t know what you mean, thanks to her,” she said sharply. “She promised me she’d not tell about the Trust and she gets one martini. . . . But she did me an enormous favor even if she didn’t mean to. Nikki was divine about it. If I trusted him as he trusted me—”

  “All right, Dodo. I’ve heard all that. Here.”

  Under the charred mass there was still a part of the picture. He pulled it out and knocked off the ash. The head was gone, but the necklace was there and the hand holding the basket of carnations. He handed it to her.

  “The original of this has been hanging in Washington. She was having herself painted in the rubies as a surprise birthday present for him . . . she’d just got them from him two weeks before she died. You can see they’re the ones you bought. When she died the portrait wasn’t finished and Nikki refused the commission. He never saw it and didn’t know she was being painted with the rubies. The painter finished it and called it ‘The Lady with the Carnations.’ ”

  “Carnations?” She looked at him white-faced. “Nikki hates carnations. . . .”

  “Since when?” Fish Finlay asked quietly. “But I’m not arguing with you, Dodo. Take that home and think it over. He’s planning on a quiet day at home with you tomorrow. Ask him.”

  He went to the door and opened it. “Would you like me to walk you home?”

  “No.” Her voice was curt. “But I would like you to find another place to stay. Nikki doesn’t like you any better than you like him and I’m wondering why I ever thought I did. And I’ve changed my mind about your marrying my daughter.”

  “I didn’t know the point had ever come up, and I’ll move the first thing in the morning. Good night.”

  She still had the fragment of the portrait print in her hand as she went out . . . whether because she wanted it or had been too angry to throw it away he didn’t know. When she got it home, if she did, to look at in the silence of the empty night. . . . He shook his head, went over to the telephone and called Dr. McNair.

  “I’ve been waiting,” McNair said. “De Gradoff and I got there together. He was badly shaken for a few minutes. There was a small bottle on the table by her bed in the front room, but she wasn’t there. I was afraid something had already happened when he insisted she was all right. But she was okay. When I came back to the front bedroom, the bottle on the table was gone. I’d heard the toilet flush. That’s all I can tell you. But I hear the Maloney Trust goes to Jennifer. Somebody called my wife half an hour ago. News travels fast, doesn’t it.”

  “It seems to,” Fish said. “Thanks a lot.”

  He put the phone down, turned off the lights and saw that Dodo was back in her own room across the courtyard, not Jenny’s. Half an hour earlier he would have drawn some confident conclusion from that. Sitting there now gazing into the fireplace where lay the fine ash of his most persistent assumption, he hesitated to draw any at all. How wrong could you be? If Caxson Reeves hadn’t known it was James V. Maloney who had hired the French detective, he must have guessed it from the first. And no doubt he’d known for the last seven years that Maloney was quietly and happily there in the gardens of Enniskerry. He remembered Dodo coming out of the kitchen looking as if she’d seen a ghost, as indeed she had. He’d at least been right in assuming that was the only place from which she’d ever see the greenhouses, and see a figure that would have a kind of inner familiarity before the external appearance put her off and she took it for granted that she was overwrought . . . as indeed she had also been. Was her father only carrying on his educational theory that Dodo should be allowed to cut her own throat in her own way if she wanted to, and Jennifer, if she survived, would be the better for it?

  His room was abruptly dark then, Dodo had turned off her light. He got up and looked out of the window. There was still light in Jenny’s room. He could see it at the end of the porch. Whether Dodo had gone back there or merely left the light on when she came out of it he had no way of knowing. He reached for a cigarette, lighted it and held the flame to his watch. It wasn’t twelve. The dance wasn’t over til two, and what time Peter—and, no doubt, Alla Emlyn—would bring her home was something else again. At least she was safe. Until she got home? He didn’t know. There seemed no reason for him not to go to bed. One thing was sure . . . she wouldn’t come to the loft again.

  Nevertheless he turned on the reading lamp behind the sofa and settled down, his feet up, his head on his arm, and closed his eyes for a minute.

  CHAPTER : 20

  When he opened them the clock was striking three and the rain was beating on the shingles. It was neither sound that had waked him, but the door opening.

  He took one startled glance. “Miss Linton, I thought I——”He broke off and got quickly to his feet, seeing her face, her dripping raincoat and the sodden tennis shoes on her feet. “Jenny!”

  She ran to him, buried her head against him, clinging to him, her body trembling as he’d felt it trembling beside him in the cab of the battered truck, her heart pounding. He could feel it through the clammy wet raincoat as he bent his head down to hers in a moment of exquisite warmth before he shook himself out of its intoxicating loveliness and tried to release the grip of her arms around him.

  “Jenny, what is it?”

  “Oh, don’t . . . don’t let me go, Fish! Hold me tight! Please, don’t ever let me go! I’m afraid, Fish! He’s . . . out there. . . .”

  He held her tighter a moment longer.

  “Stop it, Jenny. Stop it and tell me what’s happened. Let’s get this thing off.”

  She was shivering under the raincoat. When he unbuttoned it, he saw that all she had on was her evening dress.

  “Hold on a minute.” He started to his bedroom, but she tagged along like a frightened puppy while he got his wool bathrobe and put it on her. She came back with him into the living-room and sat huddled in a corner of the sofa, watching him while he closed the windows and drew the blinds and turned up the thermostat to warm the place a little for her. When he came back and sat down by her, she was quieter but still pale, her eyes wide open and bright. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know really.” She shook her head. “They were home when Peter and I got here—Nikki and Mrs. Emlyn. I don’t know when they left the dance. Peter and I went for something to eat and they were gone when we got back.

  “And my mother was in my room, waiting for me. Nikki was with her. I thought she was going to be terribly angry, because I’d promised not to tell about the Trust, and I . . . I hated to do it, she’s been so nice to me.
But I had to. I changed cocktails with her and I didn’t drink all of hers but there was something in it. I’m just like she was last night, and I’m not sleepy at all. And I didn’t just run out with Peter, from the restaurant. I called up from the drugstore, and Elsa said my mother was fast asleep. But tonight, with the Benzedrine I got instead, I thought she wasn’t supposed to sleep?”

  “Or to sleep forever. The Benzedrine would make her so desperate she’d take whatever anyone suggested. Dr. McNair saw a small bottle on her table. It was gone when he looked for it again.”

  She was silent for a moment, her face paler. “Nikki never took his eyes off me at the dance, or when I got home. And over there, he was telling my mother she mustn’t scold me, and she said it wasn’t my fault, it was yours, you were the one leading me on. And . . . that you’re leaving here tomorrow, and I wasn’t to see you any more.”

  She pulled the bathrobe tighter around her. “And he said they . . . they’d take me abroad with them next week and tomorrow I was to go with Mrs. Emlyn and Peter somewhere. I just felt . . . trapped. He thinks you put the carnations in his room, but he wasn’t scared this time, the way he was before. So, my mother said I should go to bed and Nikki said I wasn’t to make any . . . visits over here, because he’d be watching me. He said it as a joke but it wasn’t one. Then Mrs. Emlyn came in, after Nikki took mother into his room.”

  She stopped for an instant.

  “Mrs. Emlyn said . . . I’d better sleep in her room with her. She made it sound like a joke too, but it wasn’t. So . . . she’s afraid something’s going to happen to me. And she said, why didn’t I marry Peter and . . . and get out of the way.”

  She put her head down in her hands for an instant. “I’m just so dead tired I don’t know what to do. So . . . I lay down till everything got quiet, because I had to see you, and then I sneaked out. I was just at the end of the porch when I heard him coming. I ducked down into the rose gardens. That’s how I got so wet. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him. He was coming over here, looking for me. I hid in the garden. It seemed just ages. He had a flashlight, I could see it in the garage sort of off and on, and once he came out the gardeners’ door and I was afraid he’d see me then, but he went back and I heard him in front again. And that’s when I came in, and if he comes back he’ll see my wet prints on the stairs.”

  She looked over at the door. “Lock it, Fish. Please.”

  He went across the room and opened it. The hall was empty and there was no sound but the beating rain, sharp on the windows, hollow on the shingled tower. He closed it again and turned the key in the lock. Then he went into the bedrooms and looked at the smooth dry surface of the floors before he locked the door there and came back to the living-room.

  “Fish.” She raised her eyes to his for an instant, the color seeping into her cheeks as she looked down then at her hands pleating the fold of his bathrobe around her knees. “It’s . . . it’s a horrible thing for me to . . . to ask you, but . . . would you marry me . . . and take me with you when you go tomorrow? Because I really love you, Fish. I don’t want to marry anybody else but you. That’s what I came over for . . . to ask you if you would.”

  The wind tore in sharp gusts, whipping the white sea horses bounding up the cliff. The rain beat on the windows and on the shingled roof. Fish Finlay sat quietly, his hands folded between his knees, hearing none of it in the maelstrom of his own heart.

  “You . . . do like me, a little bit, don’t you?” Jenny asked.

  “I like you very much, Jenny.”

  He could hear his voice, not believing it was his own.

  “I love you very much, Jenny. But I couldn’t marry you. it . . . it wouldn’t be fair, Jenny. You’re too young, you’ve got a lot of time—”

  “I won’t have any time, unless I get away from here,” she said quietly. “And that’s not the real reason, is it? It’s because of your leg, isn’t it. And what some other girl did. Mr. Reeves told me. But that doesn’t make any difference—except to you. You’re just afraid, that’s all. The other night at the Randolphs’, you were limping when you came in with Polly . . . out you weren’t limping when you ran down the steps to the fishing platform. You could do all sorts of things if you’d just forget yourself a minute. And I know very well the way I feel. I don’t want anybody else, Fish. I want somebody just like you. And there isn’t any use of my having to hunt him when I’ve already found him, is there? We both know all that. There’s no use arguing about it.”

  “My dear child,” Finlay said. “You—”

  He broke off, listening. They both turned their heads sharply. It was a sound scarcely audible in the beating rain.

  “It’s the garage door,” Jenny whispered. “Peter and I closed it.”

  They heard a motor starting. Fish got to his feet, but she put her hand out.

  “That’s Peter.” She reached and turned off the light, and ran to the window. A faint streak of blue showed under the parking lights that cast a gray rain-slanted film bright enough to point up the white shell drive as Jenny’s car crept quietly out toward the purple beaches.

  She turned back. “That’s Peter,” she said again. “He took it last night. It’s some girl. She’s got reddish hair, because there were bronze bobby pins between the seats. But it’s all right, I’ve decided I don’t care. Let him use it.”

  The tail lights crept into the purple blackness, a misty glow filtered through as the head lights came on, out of sight of the house.

  Jenny came back to the sofa, turned the reading lamp back on and looked at Fish. “I feel sort of sorry for him,” she said. “He’d have been all right if it hadn’t been for his Aunt Alla. She’s babied him so. He asked me to marry him tonight. He was very nice about it. He didn’t pretend he was in love with me. Just that we could have a lot of fun together, tennis and dancing and all that stuff. He swims like a dolphin. But that isn’t what I want to marry for. I want a family and a home . . . and somebody who doesn’t go chasing redheads.”

  Our kind of fun. The words repeated themselves in Fish Finlay’s mind, their false spell gone, like the ritual of a god whose clay feet had crumbled to meaningless dust, a form remaining in the mind long after the substance of belief was gone. The bitter shrine was empty. He looked at the place where it had been, and that was gone too. The scar was healed. He moved abruptly, dizzy with the knowledge of release.

  “Fish,” Jenny said. “I’m not going back there tonight.”

  He looked at her, still dazed.

  “If you wouldn’t let me stay here in one of your rooms, I was going to Mr. Reeves’s sister’s house, except it would be all over Newport by morning. But I can’t go there now, because I haven’t got my car. Or I can go to Mr. Vranek’s.” She reached for her sodden shoes. “Except that my grandfather—”

  “Your—” He stared at her.

  “You didn’t know?” she said simply. “I’m sure Mr. Reeves does. And I remember Mr. Vranek and Mr. MacTaggert. Mr. MacTaggert was tall and quite stooped. And Mr. Vranek would never have thought to send me the orchids. That was my grandfather. And if you’ll look at him, you’ll see how much my mother looks like him around the eyes when he smiles, and he smiled at me when I went over and told Mr. Vranek I was sorry my car had chewed the turf. He didn’t know I saw him. And if he doesn’t want us to disturb him, I don’t think we should, but it’s just nice to know he’s here, doing the sort of thing he loves to do. And he’s not crazy. It’s my mother who’s crazy . . . and I’d be crazy if I went back home tonight. So, if you’ll lend me a pair of pajamas, I’ve got a toothbrush in my raincoat pocket, and if I could have some warm milk, maybe I could go to sleep. If we can turn this light off so nobody’ll see me through the windows, I’ll go make me a bed. You can call Mr. Reeves and tell him I’m here, if you want to.”

  She reached for the light and turned it off herself.

  “And maybe you’d just kiss me good night. . . .”

  “I would not,” Fish Finlay said firmly. �
�Look—”

  “You’re afraid to, that’s all. You can lock the door on your side. I promise I’ll never stir till morning.”

  She picked up her raincoat and padded into the kitchen. He heard her get out the milk and a pan to heat it in. She smiled at him as he came through the passage to go to his room and get her the pajamas.

  “I’m just terribly sorry to be such a problem. But the Maloneys have a strong sense of personal survival. I’ve heard my father say Mr. Reeves said so. And I know this isn’t fair, because if it gets out you’ll have to marry me, won’t you.”

  “Miss Linton,” Fish began, and stopped again as he saw the tears spring into her eyes and her chin tighten to keep from trembling.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he said. He smiled at the youngest Maloney, with a saucepan in her hand and an outsize bathrobe hitched up around her middle, runs in her nylon stockings, no lipstick left and the rain curling her hair in tight ringlets. “As an officer of the Maloney Trust, I’m honored to have you sleep in your own stable.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I . . . I just don’t want to be dead tomorrow morning.”

  She poured the milk into a glass and padded on into the room next to his. “I’ll stay put till you call me.”

  He remembered that with sharp relief at a quarter to nine the next morning, when he heard a car stop in front of the clock tower and feet on the clock tower stairs. He was up and dressed, the alarm clock under his pillow waking him after he’d finally given up listening for Peter’s return, and moving around quietly, making coffee. He heard the knock on the living-room door. The door into the bedroom passage was closed, but he looked to make sure before he went out, carefully closing the kitchen door behind him. As he opened the living-room door, his heart took a downward jolt at the sight of the first man standing there and hit solid rock bottom at the second. He stood staring into the sleepy eyes of the lean sandy-haired reporter B. Meggs and the tired black eyes of Lieutenant Arturo Bestoso.

  “We come in?”