I had reached the window. I pressed against the ledge, took a deep breath, and said crisply, though a bit jerkily:
“Now, Florrie, stop talking like that. I shall be obliged to tell Miss Thatcher, if you keep this up. You are hysterical. You are letting your imagination run away with you. Stop it at once and get back to your work.”
She was not at all affected. Her face did not alter its still look, but she went back to the bed.
“It’s coming,” she said, pulling a sheet straight. “You’ll see. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid where murder is going to strike next.”
“That’s enough,” I said sharply.
“Very well, ma’am. But my mother’s always warned me. She sees clearer than I do. She’s had more experience. And she says I’ve got to guard against being murdered in my sleep.”
“M-murdered —”
The girl nodded.
“In my sleep. It’s got to be a full moon and something out of a box. I always lock my door when it’s a full moon. But there’s never till now been the third thing.”
“The — third thing —”
“Yes. Mother says when all three things are there I’ve got to protect myself. Or I’ll be murdered in my sleep. The trouble is to come from the third thing, and that is —” she tucked the counterpane deftly over the pillows — “a red-headed woman. Your hair’s red, ain’t it, ma’am?”
“Florrie! You are out of your senses. What do you mean! Do you think I’m going to murder you?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “But your hair’s red, ain’t it?”
“It is auburn. And if you keep on talking like this, my girl —”
“It looks red to me. And I’m just telling you. I suppose it sounds silly to you. Maybe it is. But Mother’s never yet been wrong. What kind of soap do you want, ma’am?”
“Your mother likely knew from what you’d said that Mr. Bayard had been wounded by a revolver shot and that I’d come to nurse him,” I said, although I couldn’t have told why I chose to explain the absurd affair. “Of course, she would say there was trouble coming.”
“H’mm,” said Florrie. She gave me a long and singularly discerning look. “H’mm. So you knew it was no accident, too.”
CHAPTER VIII
After a moment I said:
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” she repeated with a sort of scorn. “I mean, I’ve got eyes in my head. And ears. If you’d heard what I heard —”
She glanced nervously at the door and leaned toward me.
“I heard them quarreling, Bayard and Allen Carick. They was right outside the kitchen window, there on the path. I was wiping dishes. I heard Allen Carick say, ‘I’ll kill you for this.’ And Bayard laughed. And that very night he was shot. Accidentally! Accidentally on purpose, I say.”
“But — did Allen Carick shoot him?”
She frowned suspiciously at me, as if I were trying to trap her. She had colorless eyebrows over light greenish eyes, and a broad, clean-looking face; her absurdly primitive superstitions went badly with her prim green uniform.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t know who else would. And didn’t I hear him threaten to? Bayard and Dave was thick as thieves. That is, most of the time they was. But they had their quarrels. The Thatchers are like that. To look at them you’d think there never was such a loving family. It’s different when you know them like I know them.”
“You must not talk like this, Florrie.”
“You won’t tell,” said the girl easily. “And I’m kind of nervous. Seems like I can’t settle down. It’s your hair, ma’am, that’s got me upset. Right after the murder, too. To think of me being in the house where there’s been a murder.” Her green eyes looked strange and trancelike again, and she said, “I think things would be better, ma’am, if you was to leave.”
I thought so myself. But not for the same reason.
“Why don’t you leave if you’re afraid of — more trouble?”
She shrugged her thick shoulders.
“It’s a good job,” she said. “And I’ll keep my door locked nights.”
I did not like the way she looked at me.
I said, “My box from the hospital hasn’t come yet. I think I’ll telephone again,” and walked toward the door.
“There’s a telephone in Miss Adela’s morning room. You’ll use that, I suppose, ma’am?”
“Why — yes. Or the telephone in the study off the library.”
“Oh, don’t use that one, ma’am. That’s in Dave’s room. Mr. Dave’s room, I mean. You see, we all went to grade school together, and I can’t remember to say Mr. Dave, like Miss Adela says to.”
“But why shouldn’t I use that telephone?” I asked. “There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?”
“Oh, we never go into Mr. Dave’s room. It’s his study, you know. He writes. Poetry or something. At least, everyone says he writes. I’ve never seen a scrap of it, myself. But nobody goes near that room. He keeps it locked most of the time.”
“It wasn’t locked yesterday afternoon.”
“Oh, wasn’t it! Well, it usually is. I suppose he forgot. Miss Adela says we mustn’t ever bother him. Not even to dust. She says some day we’ll be proud of him. I don’t think so myself. I think it’s silly. Look at all the books there are already. What do they want more books for?
“But there’s one good thing,” she continued rather resentfully. “Since he’s got that soundproof stuff in the walls and door she doesn’t go around shushing everybody for fear we’ll bother —”
I was at her side, seizing her by the shoulders.
“What did you say? What do you mean?”
She backed away, writhing out of my clasp, her eyes glaring like a frightened cat’s.
“Don’t you touch me,” she cried. “You keep away from me. I can protect myself, I can. You stay away.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be such an idiot. Tell me what you mean. Where is there soundproofing? Is it in Dave’s study? When you’re in that room, can you hear anything that goes on outside — in another room? Is the study really soundproof?”
My eager questions confused and frightened her. She backed steadily toward the door.
“I mean he — Dave — fixed it so when the door is closed and you are in the study you might as well be a hundred miles away from the rest of the house so far as hearing anything’s concerned. You can’t hear a sound. But don’t you go grabbing me like that again, ma’am. I don’t like it. Not in anybody with hair like yours. Not after what my mother told me. You let me alone.”
“You are an out-and-out fool,” I snapped. “Get out of my sight before I do something to you!”
It was an unfortunate choice of words. She turned a faint green, scooped up the stack of linen, and vanished, all but slamming the door behind her, and leaving me in a turmoil of conflicting emotions. I longed to shake the girl until her silly teeth rattled. I felt uneasy and very unhappy in that suddenly quiet room, and more than anything I was excited by my discovery. A soundproof room. That would explain why I had heard no sound of the revolver shot that killed Bayard. And it would explain the blood on the rug in the study. Bayard Thatcher had actually been killed in that little study. I was morally certain of it.
But the wound was such that he could not possibly have walked from the study to the library in which he was found. And the door to that little study was as a rule locked. And no one entered it but Dave. It was definitely Dave’s room. Why had Bayard been moved to the library after his death? Who had moved him? Who had closed his eyes?
Dave was fishing, though, all the afternoon of the murder, with Allen Carick.
With Allen Carick. Why had Allen Carick and Bayard quarreled so bitterly that Allen had threatened to kill Bayard? Had Allen actually attempted to do so? Was that the explanation of that first attack upon Bayard?
And there was Janice — Janice of the still face and the unfatho
mable dark eyes. Had she shot Bayard Thatcher in the quiet little study — opened the door, then, and dragged that shattered, dying body across the library?
The thought chilled me. I could see her slender body bending to the effort, her white hands avoiding stain. I stirred impatiently, trying to escape the ugly thought. Her letter: I must find some way to return it. The letter being what it was, I could scarcely walk up to her and say, “Here’s your letter. I found it and read it, and here it is.”
Lunch that day was a strange meal which, in spite of the grave and dreadful circumstances, assumed an almost festive air, owing to the guests — for Dr. Bouligny was present, also, besides Hilary and Evelyn and Allen Carick — and the arrival of numerous telegrams which began to flow in as Evelyn’s messages of the morning reached their various destinations and were answered. Adela presided. She looked unutterably weary, but she was serene, less cold and severe now that the danger of the inquest was passed; her gray hair was smooth, her eyeglasses shining, and she had taken the pains, even, to change into a soft gray chiffon gown with flowing sleeves, and was wearing her amethysts.
Janice and Evelyn, thoroughbreds too, played up to Adela.
It was more difficult for the men. Dr. Bouligny was frankly nervous and unable, apparently, to get his mind off the inquest. He was, I think, a little trying to Adela. At any rate, she gave him a very cold look after he’d said something to the effect that he was glad it was safely over, and pointedly turned the conversation to the weather. Hilary didn’t speak at all, but looked very pink and worried, and once, when he looked up from his salad suddenly and caught me watching him — I was thinking, as a matter of fact, that it wouldn’t hurt him to diet — he flushed angrily and returned my look with one of positive malevolence.
Already I had grown accustomed to Dave’s silence. He had never a good appetite, and how well I remember him sitting morosely beside Evelyn and unheeding Adela’s continual looks. Allen, of course, was there too; also quiet and having difficulty keeping his eyes from Janice. And Emmeline and Florrie in the background. Along toward dessert I caught Florrie’s eyes and was a little disturbed by the look in them, and she served me in such a wary and distant manner that I was quite obliged to snatch for what I wanted.
It seems to me, looking back, that I recall those meals with particular clarity; perhaps it is because at those times the whole family was present, seated around that long gracious table with its ever sparkling crystal and gleaming silver and lovely old china. There were always flowers from the gardens, heavy crimson roses or tall gladioluses. And there was always excellent food, well served.
But the significant thing, the thing that caught my imagination, was the presence of the Thatchers. Adela, determined, poised, resolute; Hilary, frightened; Evelyn, cool and practical; Dave, always a puzzle, and Janice and Allen deep in their own urgent problem — and all of them, even Dr. Bouligny and Emmeline and Florrie, contributing in some measure to that tragic mystery.
It is a rather curious tribute to the Thatchers that I could not — I simply could not feel that I was sitting at the same table with a murderer. One who is forever cut off from his fellow man by reason of that dark and dreadful experience he has had.
At the thought I began to feel a little faint and sick, and I put down my fork. But just then Emmeline brought another telegram, and Adela opened it in a leisurely way, adjusted her eyeglasses, read it slowly to herself, and then deliberately and blandly, as if she were reading a newspaper, read it aloud.
“It’s from Cousin Helen,” she said. “She says, ‘Received telegram shocked and grieved Tommy down with measles love.’” Carefully Adela folded up the telegram and replaced it in its envelope. “Exactly ten words,” she remarked blandly. “Helen Thatcher was never one to waste money.”
“She’s not coming to the funeral, then,” said Evelyn. “I doubt if anyone comes. She is the nearest. There isn’t quite time enough for anyone else to get here.”
“You told everyone what time it would be?” asked Adela.
“Oh, yes. I said in my telegrams nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“That’s right. Oh, by the way, Hilary, you might ask Dr. Lyman to call this afternoon to make arrangements about the services.”
“You are going to hold it here? In the house?” asked Dr. Bouligny.
Again that touch of granite was in Adela’s face. But she said calmly:
“Why, yes. I think that’s best. Don’t you, Hilary?”
“I don’t care where it is,” said Hilary, pink and agitated. “Only, for God’s sake, get it over as soon as you can —”
Evelyn interrupted hurriedly.
“So Tommy’s got measles. Actually that child has everything.”
And Janice continued at once:
“This time he’s got something twice. He had measles last winter, too.”
“Probably,” said Adela, “it’s just a rash. Children are so apt to get a rash in the summer time. Hilary, now, always broke out after he’d had strawberries.”
By that time I had returned to my lunch and was eating quite heartily.
The afternoon was long and warm and, save for the coming and going of various callers and messengers, quiet. Adela rested for some time, although she came downstairs when Dr. Lyman called about four, and I sat in the little morning room with Evelyn and Janice, helping them write notes, receive telephone calls and telegrams, and dispose of a number of tremulous female visitors.
Around six a Mrs. Whiting arrived; she, I had no doubt, of the cod-liver-oil notoriety, an indomitable woman with a chin. She had all the air of an intimate of the household and talked steadily and with not a great amount of tact. I think it was when she said she had just been in her husband’s place of business and that Bayard was going to look very well that Janice gave a little gasp and rose, looking rather white, and asked me somewhat incoherently if I didn’t want a walk.
I followed her at once. Behind us I heard Mrs. Whiting boom, “Janice looks bad, Evelyn. She doesn’t look well at all. She hasn’t looked well all summer. She isn’t worried about anything, is she? How is Dave?”
We didn’t hear the reply.
“She is a dreadful woman,” said Janice in a low voice. “I feel guilty leaving poor Evelyn to her, but I — I simply can’t stay there and listen to her. Let’s slip out to the garden for a moment. It will be such a rest after this terrible day. Oh —” she caught her breath — “oh, I didn’t see you, Allen.”
Allen rose from a chair and crossed the porch.
“I’ll go along, if you don’t mind,” he said.
Janice slipped her hand under my arm. Her fingers were rather tight upon it. It was almost as if she’d said, “Stay with me.” But she actually said:
“Why, of course, Allen.” And the three of us walked across that smooth green lawn to where the flowers spread their masses of gorgeous summer color amid green paths.
It was a lovely place; a serene and happy place and a beautiful one. But I looked up and saw the vine-twined balcony that led to what had been Bayard Thatcher’s room, and recalled the midnight visitor on that balcony, and things were not so lovely or so peaceful.
I was conscious, too, of the effort Janice and Allen were making to talk in an easy and natural way for my ears. I felt a sort of pity as I watched the two — Janice so lovely, now, her whole face animate with beauty, and Allen so carefully restrained, so determinedly quiet, his firm mouth rather tight, but his blue eyes vivid and almost vehement as he watched Janice.
Yet, as if it had been a living thing, I was aware of the feeling that existed between them. I think that even if I had not known what I knew — and what they did not dream of my knowing — I should have been aware of the thing that bound them to each other whether they liked or not; the thing that was like a current flowing through them and drawing them irresistibly together. But only once was there any outward evidence of it.
That was when we reached the rose garden, which was just below the balcony I knew
so well and rioted in beauty and extravagant color and fragrance. Janice stopped before one of the bushes, looked at the flowers for a moment, and then bent, graceful and lovely in her soft green gown, and picked one of the heavy crimson roses and held it against her soft cheek. I don’t think she knew exactly what she was doing or how the sweetness of that little caress must affect the man who watched her. I’m sure she did not know how beautiful she looked with the slanting sunlight gently warm on her hair, her body slim and yet round under her thin frock, whose delicate green was outlined against the deeper greens of the foliage, and her white arm lifted with that deep crimson rose against her face. And her face all flamed into beauty.
We had paused to wait for her. I suppose we both stared at her, marveling — Allen until he could bear it no longer. I heard him take a quick breath, and he stepped suddenly to her side and took the hand with the rose in it and looked down at her face, and then as abruptly released her hand and turned away, rather white, and said a little breathlessly:
“Beautiful roses. Fragrant. Those roses below the balcony. They are nice.”
“Yes,” said Janice. “Yes, they are lovely things. Did you ever see such heavy clusters as we have this year?”
“Those roses below the balcony” — “Those roses below the balcony.” I did not enjoy the rest of the walk; my mind was too busy with the fragrance of the roses when drenched with summer rain. And the memory of a shadow on that balcony. What had Florrie said about Allen quarreling with Bayard? — but I could recall all too clearly her every word.
It was a chance remark of Janice’s that aroused me.
“… must get Aunt Ella’s address so as to get her letter off in tonight’s post. Her address is in my desk upstairs, and if I go through the hall Pearl Whiting will clutch me. Do you suppose the woman intends to stay forever? Poor Evelyn — I shouldn’t have run away.”
“Oh, Evelyn can take care of herself,” said her brother carelessly.
And then I remembered the letter. I would be able to slip into Janice’s room and leave the thing on her desk where she could not fail to find it. She would have to get the address almost immediately if she wanted to catch the evening post, and that being the case, I ran little risk of the letter being found by someone else.
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