“The safe,” I said, watching Hilary, “is in Dave’s study. Bayard was actually killed there. There was blood on the rug by the desk. He was killed in Dave’s study. He was dead —” I looked at Evelyn — “when you saw him.”
Evelyn stared back at me. She was not a liar by inspiration; she had to be coached, and there was no time for that.
She nodded slowly.
Hilary sucked in his breath with a sort of groan and sat down as if his knees had weakened under him.
I heard Allen say under his breath, “Dave’s study.”
Adela’s face was granite. I met their eyes — all of them, it seemed to me, hating me. And perhaps fearing me.
“Janice,” said Adela, “call Dave. I think we must question him.”
The room was so still that Janice’s small heels made tap-taps of sound along the floor. She knocked on the door of the study. There was no answer, and she put her hand on the doorknob, opened the door, and stepped inside. No one spoke. There was no sound from the study.
It seemed a long time before she stood in the doorway again. She just stood there, her back to the room beyond, facing us, swaying a little. We were all standing. She said:
“You can’t question Dave. You can’t ask him anything — ever — again.”
CHAPTER XIV
From the first it was not so much a question of Dave’s having been murdered as it was a question of whether he had taken the veronal accidentally or intentionally. In other words, whether or not he was a suicide. And if he had committed suicide, was it a confession of guilt? Had he murdered Bayard?
For Dave was dead. And he died of an overdose of veronal. Dr. Bouligny established that fact within twenty minutes of Janice’s shocking announcement.
I do not remember much of the few moments immediately following her words as she stood there at the door of the little study, nor of how we crowded into that room, nor of what we said and did and how we looked. I do remember kneeling at the long couch where that silent body lay and making sure that Janice was not mistaken, that Dave was actually dead. And I remember how peaceful his face looked. It is true, of course, that most faces of the dead look peaceful, but there was a look about Dave’s face as of one who seeks his rest with the tranquillity of complete surrender.
Singularly enough, while we were all thinking of Adela and trying to spare her, it was Hilary who went to pieces and collapsed on a chair in the library where Allen led him and sat there shivering and shaking with his hands over his face trying to hide dreadful man hysteria. Adela was like a woman carved in stone. She stood at the foot of Dave’s couch and looked at him with a still hard face and told Evelyn to telephone for the doctor, and told Allen to take Hilary away and Janice to bring her a chair.
“I intend to stay here,” said Adela stiffly. “Thank you, Janice.”
Janice looked and moved as if she were in a daze. It was only when Adela reached out and took one of Dave’s hands that Janice sank down on the floor beside Adela and buried her head in her arms. The toe of her slim white slipper rested exactly over the spot on the Sarouk rug where I had discovered that damp crimson patch.
Evelyn turned away from the telephone.
“He will be here right away,” she said. “Don’t look like that, Adela. You know how sick Dave has been. For such a long time he has not been himself. Perhaps it is better.”
“Death,” said Adela, “is never better.”
And Janice lifted her dark head and looked at Evelyn as if she were a creature of a different world. I am sure that, then, Janice only felt a great pity for Dave and for Adela; she had not yet thought of her own freedom. There was nothing hypocritical about her grief; it was the sorrow of affection and pity. She might not have loved Dave, but she had not tried to escape any of the responsibilities of her marriage. And then, she must have loved him once. Even an unsentimental and an honest woman may weep at the end of a marriage which has failed or at the grave of a forgotten love. And Dave was much more than that: he was her husband, an integral part of her world, a vital and important factor in her life.
Dr. Bouligny came very soon: his thick black hair ruffled, his coat baggy, his face growing somber and troubled as he listened to what we said and looked at Dave. He took Adela’s pulse, I remember, and sent Evelyn for some wine, and got us all out of the study and into the library with the door closed between. Adela never resisted him, and she did not do so then; she put Dave’s poor limp hand carefully on the edge of the couch and obeyed Dr. Bouligny. At his request I closed the door and followed them. The examination had taken only a few quiet moments.
“You’d better,” he said to Adela, “go straight to bed and take a bromide. You can’t stand this.”
Adela was sipping the wine Evelyn had brought. I have always marveled at Adela’s fortitude at that dreadful time; but then all of them behaved rather well. All but Hilary, and perhaps Hilary had more for which to reproach himself; he must have drifted far from Dave during recent years.
“Why did Dave die?” asked Adela directly, brushing aside his suggestion as if it had not been made.
Dr. Bouligny looked worried. He ran his fingers through his thick hair, further disheveling it.
“We’d better all of us sit down and talk quietly. Here, Hilary — give him some wine, Miss Keate, please. If you are determined to thresh this thing out here and now —” He paused, looking anxiously at Adela. “Well, perhaps it is best. You are sure you can bear it all?”
“What do you mean, Daniel? Dave is dead — my little brother —” Adela’s mouth twisted a little over the words. They were her only audible expression of the turmoil of grief and pain and desolation in her heart. It was a moment before she could continue. Presently she said, her face gray and blank and set, and her eyes like a cold blue wall between us and her thoughts, and her voice rather harshly deliberate: “Why did Dave die? Tell me, Daniel.”
Dr. Bouligny sighed heavily. I gave the small glass to Hilary, who took it and gulped the wine in a dazed fashion. I don’t think he realized what he was doing or that I, whom he disliked so fervently, had given him the drink. He did seem to come to himself, however; he rose and approached the small tragic group and, I believe, began to consider the matter of Dave’s death in its possible relation to our dreadful problem.
“Dave died,” said Dr. Bouligny, “of an overdose of veronal.”
“Veronal,” said Hilary in a breathless way. He was still very pale and had none of his usual self-assurance. “How did Dave get veronal? Why did he take it?”
“I don’t know where he got it,” Dr. Bouligny said. “Janice, my dear, do you mind answering a few questions? You see, I’ve got to sign my coroner’s certificate.”
“What is it?” The girl was like a pale, still little statue in her white gown; her hands were clasped rather desperately together as if to restrain their trembling, but otherwise she held herself with amazing courage.
“About Dave,” he said. “How’s he been feeling lately?”
“About as usual, I think,” said Janice slowly.
“Has he been sleeping well?”
“I don’t know. He never sleeps well, but I’ve not heard him complain recently. You see, he spends so much of his time here in his study. And we never disturb him. I think, though, that he —” She stopped.
“That he’s been taking something to make him sleep?” asked Dr. Bouligny.
“Why, yes, I think so,” she said. “But he never told me, and I’ve seen nothing, though I’ve watched.”
“He hasn’t said anything about having any difficulty with his eyesight lately?”
“Yes,” said Janice, “a little. He didn’t care to read. And once or twice he said things blurred.”
“What about his speech? And his walk? Has he been a little slow of speech? Has he seemed to lack a certain exactness of movement?”
I longed to reply to Dr. Bouligny, as I saw what he meant and marveled that I had not seen it in Dave days earlier.
But Janice said hesitantly:
“Yes. A little. He — oh, he’s not been himself at all, Dr. Dan.”
Dr. Bouligny stared at the rug for a moment, running his fingers through his thick hair.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it,” he said slowly. “You should have told me — I didn’t realize —”
“What is it, Daniel?” said Adela.
He looked at her slowly.
“It’s going to go hard with you, Adela,” he said. “But I suppose you’ve got to know. You see Dave’s been — Dave was a drug addict.”
“Drug,” said Adela, as if she were merely repeating words without any comprehension at all of their meaning. “Addict.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Bouligny miserably. “He took veronal. He must have taken too much at last. Poor fellow. I could have cured him if I’d known it in time.”
Adela was on her feet. Her eyes were no longer blank and cold; they were blazing blue fire. There was a very fury in her eyes and in her broken voice as she said harshly:
“Veronal! Veronal! And you could have cured it!”
Dr. Bouligny, his eyes pitying, nodded his great head.
“I could have cured it, Adela,” he said gently. “But I didn’t know. Dave has been vaguely unwell for so long — I didn’t see it, and none of you knew. If it had been morphine or cocaine or any of those drugs, I wouldn’t have been at all sure of success. But veronal — I could have cured him of that habit.”
That was the second time I saw Adela falter. All that rocklike strength suddenly left her; she sagged down into her chair again, her thick body loose and old, her face flabby, her eyes closed.
“She’s fainting,” said Dr. Bouligny. “Evelyn, help me.”
Adela motioned them back with her blunt white hands.
“No. No. Let me alone.”
There was such vehement command in her gesture that Evelyn and Dr. Bouligny and I paused involuntarily. After watching Adela for a moment, Dr. Bouligny sat down again in his chair, and Evelyn went back to stand beside Janice. Allen, tall and brown and grave, stood a little in the background and scarcely took his eyes from Janice during the whole time.
“It’s always that way,” said Dr. Bouligny. “That is the danger of veronal. It is, in a manner of speaking, a perfectly harmless drug. But taken over a period of time it does not induce tolerance on the part of the patient, as, for instance, morphine does. At the same time veronal tends to lose something of its effect when taken habitually. Thus the patient is apt to increase the dose, and since his system has not grown tolerant any heavy increase is usually fatal. That is why we hear of so many deaths from veronal.” He was talking nervously, rubbing his heavy chin with his hand and watching Adela.
Hilary cleared his throat.
“It’s a peaceful death, isn’t it, Dan?”
“Why, yes, Hilary,” said Dr. Bouligny with a sigh. “Dave didn’t suffer. Don’t worry about that.”
“Peaceful,” said Hilary slowly. “That is why it is so often used for suicide.”
It was the first time the word had been spoken. Janice started to her feet, dreadfully white and horrified, and then sank slowly back again, her wide dark eyes on Dr. Bouligny; Evelyn put out her brown hands as if in reproach and denial, and Adela in her chair stiffened. Slowly her body became firm and erect. She lifted her face. It was no longer flabby and sunken and old; it was granite again, set with resolve. From that moment on to the last it was as if Adela were consumed with a white fever of energy and resolve; as if she could not rest, could not wait, could not even permit herself sorrow until she had cleared Dave’s memory of the dreadful imputation. That was the thing that kept her from collapse; that was the purpose that animated her every move. That was, of course, the driving reason for her insistence in continuing that extraordinary inquiry which Dave’s death had so unexpectedly and terribly interrupted. For she did just that, incredible though it is.
Now she turned her blue eyes upon Hilary and said rather hoarsely:
“Suicide. Did you say suicide? What do you mean?”
Hilary shrugged helplessly.
“I meant suicide, Adela.”
“Do you dare sit there before my very eyes and say that your own brother is a suicide?”
Hilary looked too unhappy to be further disconcerted by Adela’s scathing tone. He said:
“Suicide has been a confession of guilt before now.”
I heard Janice catch her breath as if it hurt her. Adela’s face did not alter.
“I knew that was in your mind,” said Adela with relentless scorn. “I knew when you said suicide exactly what you meant. You want us to believe, all of us, that Dave killed Bayard and then killed himself to escape the consequences. That’s what you want us to believe.” She leaned forward, terribly still, talking in a broken, cold way. “It is an easy way out for you. For all of us. But we are not going to take that way. Hilary, Hilary, how can you! And Dave — only just dead.”
“I’m sorry, Adela,” said Hilary. He was gradually reassuming the slightly pompous air that was natural with him, although he still looked shaken; his fat hands were unsteady, and his eyes had a tendency to dart about the room and avoid directly meeting other eyes. “I’m sorry. But I don’t see any other thing to believe. It is painfully evident. We have all known how Dave has brooded lately; especially since Bayard’s death. How depressed he has been. Why, we have scarcely seen him; he’s done nothing but sit in his study there and brood. I don’t want to think that he killed Bayard and then committed suicide. You may not think it, Adela, but I — I loved Dave, too. But I can’t escape the fact. I can’t close my eyes to it from sentiment. To me it is as good as proved. Dave killed Bayard.”
Dr. Bouligny, anxious eyes on Adela’s cold face, moved restlessly.
“That depression of Dave’s meant nothing, Hilary,” he said. “It is one of the symptoms of his condition. Veronal addicts are subject to periods of extreme mental depression. His depression was no sign that he was brooding over Bayard’s death. All those things we talked of were symptoms. I must have been blind not to see it. But it came very gradually.”
“It dated,” said Adela cruelly, “from his last illness. When you, Daniel, gave him things to make him sleep.”
Dr. Bouligny’s large fingers rubbed his chin worriedly.
“Adela,” he said, “you don’t mean that. I would never do a thing like that. I —”
“Forgive me,” said Adela more gently. “No, I didn’t mean that you contributed to this dreadful habit of Dave’s. To Dave’s death. No, I did not mean that, Daniel. Dave has always been weak. Has always needed help. And I failed him. I failed him, but I’ll prove he did not murder. I’ll prove —” Her eyes fell on me, and perhaps it was then that she remembered what Dave’s death had interrupted, and resolved to continue that inquiry. Only now there was a more pressing reason to prove her family’s innocence.
“You can’t prove that, Adela,” said Hilary wearily. “It is best to leave things as they are. We’ll bury Dave, and we’ll remember the things we loved him for. We’ll remember him as he was before his —” Hilary paused and then said rather sadly and kindly — “his illness. I’ll telephone to Frank Whiting now. We’d better say — what shall we say, Dan?”
“You’ll have to tell the truth,” said Dr. Bouligny.
“The truth,” repeated Adela quickly. “You mean that Dave died of an overdose of veronal? That he died right in the next room while we were all here talking? But people will say what Hilary says! Everyone will say he murdered Bayard and then killed himself. That it was a confession of his guilt. Can’t you say something else? Anything?”
“No, Adela. I’m sorry. That is all I can say.”
“But wasn’t it heart failure in the end? Couldn’t you say that?”
Dr. Bouligny smiled sadly.
“All deaths are heart failure in the end, Adela,” he said gently. “But I can say with honesty that it was a culmination of a lone period of illness. Everyone knows that he has not been wel
l in a long time. I’ll do what I can, I promise you.”
It struck me that Hilary was a little eager to shift the blame onto Dave’s defenseless shoulders and to close the matter of Bayard’s murder once and for all. Impulsively, and thereby, I have no doubt, incurring Hilary’s undying hatred, I said:
“If you left Bayard alive at ten minutes after four the afternoon of his death and your wife found him dead not more than ten minutes later at the most, it could not have been Dave who killed him. For Dave and Mr. Carick were together at that time.”
The shock of Dave’s death had apparently driven from Hilary’s thoughts the moments immediately preceding its discovery. I could almost see him grope about in his memory, while his face hardened suspiciously. He darted a swift look toward Evelyn.
“Bayard was alive when I left him,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t care what you have taken it in your head to say, Evelyn, he was alive when I left him.”
“Evelyn,” said Adela slowly, “why did you say what you did? Why did you say Bayard was alive when you left him? Did you really find him dead? There in the study?”
Evelyn’s dark blue eyes went from her husband’s worried, frightened face to Allen’s. I don’t know what she found there, some source of strength, I suppose, for she said bluntly:
“I didn’t tell the truth, Adela. You see, I knew that Hilary had just left Bayard. I never had liked Bayard, you all know that, so it wasn’t such a shock to find him dead as it might have been. Oh, it was terrible, of course, to find him like that, but it wasn’t as if it had been someone I loved. The dreadful part of it, to me, was the fact that Hilary, if he had kept his appointment with me, as I soon found he had, must have just left the house. I was afraid they had quarreled. I was afraid —” She stopped, looking in some anxiety at Hilary.
“Oh, go on,” said Hilary bitterly. “You are as good as accusing me of murder. Don’t stop on my account.”
Evelyn’s blue eyes looked troubled. But she was always impervious to even the broadest irony. To Evelyn people said what they meant. She continued at once and rather sensibly:
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