“But that,” said Evelyn in a bewildered way, “would keep her from —” she shivered a little and said — “murder,” in a muffled voice.
“No.” Hilary shook his head. “No. It has often occurred to me that Emmeline’s religion has a strongly hysterical flavor. You know yourself how emotional she is.”
“Emmeline,” said Janice incredulously, “emotional!”
“Certainly,” said Hilary. There was just the faintest air of a savant, instructing. “Certainly. Don’t you remember the old-time revival meetings, Adela? How regularly Emmeline was converted? How she wept? How she sang? How she went around for days in a trance? There haven’t been any real old-time revivals for years now; probably she’s missed them —”
“Hilary,” interrupted Adela, “you are preposterous. Are you seriously intimating that Emmeline killed Bayard because she didn’t get to go to a revival meeting this winter?”
“Certainly not, Adela. You just don’t understand these things. Isn’t what I’ve suggested possible, Dan?”
Dr. Bouligny looked up slowly and shook his great head rather sadly.
“Hilary,” he said, “I’ve doctored Thatcher county for thirty years. I’ve brought over eight hundred babies into the world. I’ve waited at practically every deathbed in the county. I’ve dosed my people and I’ve listened to their troubles as if they were so many children. I am old-fashioned, I know. But I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Look here, Dan, you’ll admit that you remember Emmeline’s fervent love for revivals?”
The doctor smiled faintly.
“Yes. Nobody could get a stroke of work out of Emmeline while one of them was going on. And then she’d turn around and threaten us all with hell-fire and tell us we were lost. Remember, Adela?”
“It was very trying,” admitted Adela, “but nothing to do with this.”
“Wait, Adela. It proves that Emmeline has a very fervid emotional nature, doesn’t it?”
“It proves she was a fool,” said Adela. “But go on.”
“Well, all that emotionalism, tangled up with religion and duty and hell-fire, has been denied any outlet for years. Now then, suppose Emmeline gets it into her head that Bayard was threatening the peace and welfare of this family. Her family. Not only the welfare but the family itself. Suppose she gets it into her head that she ought to remove him. Those religiously and emotionally warped natures get crazy notions and —”
“You are talking as if you thought Emmeline was crazy,” said Adela tartly. “You sound nearer it yourself, Hilary Thatcher.”
“Perhaps she knew that Dave had already shot Bayard once and had wounded his —” Hilary stopped so suddenly he nearly choked himself and looked at me.
“Go right ahead,” I said coolly. “I’ve known that Dave fired the shot that wounded Bayard’s shoulder for some time.”
Hilary’s look sharpened to suspicion, but he did not stop to discover the source of my information. Which was just as well. He went on:
“She was always devoted to Dave. Loved him more than the rest of the family put together. Like you, Adela. If Emmeline thought Dave was determined to kill Bayard, don’t you think she’d rather do the murder herself than let Dave do it? She would far rather martyr herself than let Dave kill him. She —” Another thought seemed to strike Hilary. He stopped, considered it, and added thoughtfully and in a meditative tone far different to the pompous voice in which he’d been addressing us, “For that matter, if Emmeline saw Dave coming into the house that afternoon she’d die before she’d tell he was here.”
“There you go again, Hilary, accusing your brother of murder. Dave — so recently dead — you might at least wait —” Adela’s thick white hands clenched tightly about the shining blue beads. “Your theory that Higby might have been bribed is your only contribution to our problem. I think that quite possible. He will never admit it, but it is quite possible that that is the way the thief got into the house. And there was a thief, of course; all this talk of Emmeline and Dave and Hilary is absurd. There was a thief. And he stole our diamonds. And he killed Bayard.”
I had heard enough talk of the thief and the diamonds. Enough and too much. I said wearily:
“There was no thief. Nobody stole the diamonds. They are in the house. Hidden.”
CHAPTER XVI
The long room held only silence and eyes looking at me. Everyone was looking at me, and no one spoke. The silence grew until it was actually thick and tangible, as if it were some entangling, impenetrable blanket laid fold on fold all about me.
As it deepened and prolonged itself, as I met that combined gaze, I began to regret my rash words. After all, what business was it of mine? Why hadn’t I continued to keep a discreet silence on that delicate point? Why had I ever come to that house? And above all, once having got there, why had I remained? Why had I not taken to my heels, willy-nilly? In what moment of mental aberration had I permitted myself to be persuaded to remain?
Even Janice’s dark eyes were unfriendly; unfriendly and frightened. And Evelyn gave me a long and singularly cold and penetrating look before her eyes went in a significant and communicative way to Adela, who returned the glance.
But it was Hilary who burst into speech, who finally broke that sinister silence. His words, however, were not calculated to make me easier in my mind. For he shouted:
“Arrest that woman for murder!”
And as no one moved, he repeated furiously:
“Arrest her. Call Strove. She knows where the diamonds are. She was here with no one to watch her the afternoon Bayard was killed. She killed him herself. She took the diamonds. And now she’s trying to blackmail us. She thinks she’ll have an income for life from us. Arrest her —”
By this time Dr. Bouligny had got heavily to his feet.
“Hilary, stop shouting like that. You are out of your head. Stop telling us to arrest her. For one thing we can’t. And Jim Strove isn’t here to do it. And for another thing,” concluded Dr. Bouligny a little wearily, “she didn’t murder Bayard. You are making a fool of yourself.”
Hilary, quite purple, whirled to Allen.
“She’s guilty. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. She killed Bayard. She —”
Allen had risen and had taken Hilary by the arm. He said something, I don’t know what, in Hilary’s agitated ear. Hilary lapsed rather suddenly into a red and volcanic silence from which one felt he might erupt at any moment, and Allen turned to me.
“What, exactly, do you mean, Miss Keate? That is an extraordinary statement to make.”
“I mean,” I said, wishing I had bitten out my tongue long before it had behaved with such alarming indiscretion, “I mean that the diamonds were never stolen. They are upstairs.”
“Where are they hidden? How long have you known this?”
Well, I told them. I told them just as Florrie had told it to me. I added rather lamely, my eyes on Janice’s suddenly stricken face, that it may have been merely servant’s gossip.
But it wasn’t. The diamonds were still in that jar of green bath salts in Janice’s shining little bathroom with its water lilies and pale green frogs.
Evelyn and Allen and Janice went to see, and returned after only a few moments of silent waiting on the part of the rest of us. Someone spread a newspaper on the table and pushed the rose bowl aside, and I think we all held our breath while Evelyn’s firm brown hands pulled the stopper from the large crystal jar and let the shower of green rattle softly on the paper. All of us, clustered around that table, saw the first jewel come out — it was the sunburst brooch Adela had talked of — and I think we all gasped as it caught a light from the window and glittered and shone like a live thing. The others came out, too. Hilary counted in a husky whisper and reached for each one avidly, as if someone might snatch it from him.
It had grown late during that feverish talk, but no one realized that it was dusk in the long, old room until Allen reached out to the shaded table lamp and snapped on th
e electric light in order to see the diamonds more distinctly. In my memory his turning on the light is the period to that strange and terrible afternoon; not Hilary’s excited comments about the diamonds, nor Frank Whiting’s arrival, nor Janice’s slow turning toward the door of the study as if, for the moment, her thought had been driven away from Dave’s death and that now she must return to sorrow and regret and tragedy.
For Hilary had scarcely said in a relieved way, “Well, they are all here, every one of them,” when Emmeline, followed by Frank Whiting — intense curiosity back of the tactfully sober look in his face — appeared in the doorway.
And I gave the faces about that table, all thrown into bright relief by the table lamp, a last searching look. No one had admitted hiding the diamonds. And not one face revealed any previous knowledge of the whereabouts of the jewels; I could not point to anyone there and say: This face shows guilt; this one shows no surprise; this one shows fear lest it be detected.
Then Emmeline was advancing, horrified question in her face, and Adela was turning bleak blue eyes rather helplessly to Evelyn.
“Emmeline doesn’t know,” she said to Evelyn. “She doesn’t know why Frank Whiting is here.” She looked puzzled, as if it seemed strange to her that all the world did not know of Dave’s death. “Emmeline doesn’t know. I must tell her —”
“Go on up to your room, Adela,” said Dr. Bouligny, stepping forward. “I’ll see to things. This way, Frank.”
I followed Evelyn and Adela. At the door I glanced back to see Hilary carefully recounting and sorting the diamonds which made bright sparkles of iridescent light in his fingers. Dr. Bouligny and Frank Whiting disappeared into Dave’s study. Janice had dropped into a chair near the window, and Allen was standing beside her, looking at the bent dark head as if he longed to take her into his arms and comfort her sadness.
The patch of pale green crystals on the table sparkled softly in the light. Outside, the shadows had grown long, and the soft summer night was on the way.
Then Emmeline came swiftly from the study. Her face was stiff and unnatural, and she stared straight ahead as if she saw nothing but perhaps a memory of Dave’s face. It might be true, what Hilary had said. It might be true that Emmeline had loved Dave more than any of them. I felt an impulse of pity for the gaunt dark woman, and I stepped toward her, about to speak, although I don’t know what I could have said. But she brushed past as if she didn’t see me.
Bayard’s death had been, as far as possible, ignored. Dave’s death disrupted the household.
It did more than that. It brought things to their climax. It could not be ignored. It could not be thrust for one moment out of our consciousness. Hilary, so determined to prove it was a suicide, Adela, equally determined to prove it was no suicide, between them pushed things on to that strange and unexpected end. If either had been content to let things rest it might have been different.
I remember that I stood there at the foot of the stairway for a moment, looking up its polished length — rather dark since no one had thought to turn on the hall light — striving to reorient myself, so to speak. So much had happened since I had come down those stairs at Adela’s request to meet her in the library. Was it only a few hours ago that Mrs. Steadway had called? That Adela had begun her amazing inquiry? That I had left Florrie sitting up in her ugly silk dressing-gown?
Since then Dave had died.
Evelyn had admitted that she had found Bayard dead, Hilary had been all too ready to say that Dave had killed him, Dave had been discovered to be a veronal addict and had at last died of the drug — and I was no nearer knowing who had actually murdered Bayard than I ever was.
And death and tragedy and the horror of suspicion had again visited that shadowed, spacious old house.
Florrie was still sitting up. Her boasted second sight must have failed her, for she said nothing of the stirring events that had been taking place downstairs and, I’m sure, knew nothing of them. I stayed with her only a moment, to be sure she was all right, and then returned slowly to the lower hall. I reached it in time to see the ambulance, gray and ghostly in the dusk, drive carefully away. Hilary and Allen and Dr. Bouligny had apparently helped carry the stretcher, and they turned toward the house again, walking slowly across the smooth lawn. Hilary was brushing the back of his hand across his eyes, and Allen had thrown one arm over Hilary’s shoulders, and Dr. Bouligny, a little behind, walked slowly and heavily, his head bent wearily and his body sagging as if the Thatcher burdens were too heavy for him.
Well, somehow we got through the dreadful night.
It was that night that I had my momentous talk with Janice: a weary, ineffably saddened Janice who was only a slender shape with a pale face and dusky hair in the shadows of the rose garden. I had gone quietly out of the house about ten, as much to escape the horror and death and fear that lurked in every shadow of the silent house, as to seek my ostensible objective, fresh air and exercise. Adela and Evelyn had disappeared; Hilary and Allen and Dr. Bouligny were in the library, smoking innumerable cigarettes and, in the glimpse I had from the hall, talking not at all.
I did not know that Janice, too, had taken refuge in the friendly, fragrant shadows of the rose garden until I met her face to face when I rounded a curve in the silent, dark path. The moon was barely touching the trees, and the shadows were still dense, and I think we were both startled — indeed, rather frightened just for an instant — until we recognized each other. Then she said, “Oh, it’s you, Miss Keate,” with a kind of sob in her throat.
I have never known exactly how we began to talk or why she confided so freely in me. Perhaps she had to talk to someone. But I remember very well how we sat on the curved stone bench just in front of a rose tree that hung out and over our heads and made the soft dusk sweet with its fragrance, how white her dress and face looked, and how her hair seemed to blend imperceptibly with the shadows, and how, presently, the moonlight began to stretch gently along the path before us and then gradually to touch the tips of her white slippers.
I believe she began to speak of Dave, for I remember that she asked me a number of questions about veronal and the effects of the drug when taken as a habit. I answered as far as I could.
“His death, then, was peaceful,” she said at last. And when I told her yes, that he had died in his sleep, she seemed a little relieved.
“He looked peaceful,” she said, as if to herself. “So peaceful that one might almost envy him.” And as I made some startled expostulatory comment, she said, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that, of course. One never really means that. But it has been a dreadful, dreadful time, Miss Keate. I should never want to live these days over again. I wonder if ever in my life I shall be able to forget them. Forget any of it” — she paused and added in a low voice which held a note of horror which gave me suddenly a measure of the nightmare her days and nights had been since Bayard’s death — “forget Bayard’s blood on my hand.”
She lifted her hand as if to see whether, even in the shadows, the stain still was visible, and I reached out and took the slim white blur in my own clasp. Her fingers were cold and clung to mine as those of a child caught in some bad dream might cling. And all at once she was telling me what happened.
“I moved Bayard. I moved him. He was in the study, you see, there on the small Sarouk rug by the desk. I didn’t know what to do. All I thought was that he must not be found there in Dave’s study. We all knew that Dave had tried once before to kill him; had actually shot at him and Bayard’s shoulder was wounded. That’s when you came. I knew, too, that I had no time; that Adela would be coming into the house in just a moment or two. I had glanced into the library as I was about to pass the door; I saw the study door open and went to look to see if Dave was there, and there was Bayard. Dead, on the rug.”
She took a long tremulous breath and almost visibly steadied herself.
“It took only a second to be sure he was dead. And I thought, ‘He must not be found here in Dave’s study. The room th
at is Dave’s. He must not be found here.’ So I — I set the baskets down, and I bent over, and I had to drag him — drag him, hold him by the arms and drag him out of the study and into the library. It was terribly difficult. And I had to hurry. I got as far as that table, and I left him there on the floor, and I ran back and straightened the rugs that had been pulled up and took the baskets and ran to the kitchen and left them there. I didn’t know what was on my hand until I had reached my own room. I don’t remember why I took off my hat; habit, I suppose. But I looked at it and saw the stain. And just then Emmeline, downstairs, began to scream, and I knew she had found Bayard. I hid the hat and washed my hand and ran down the front stairs. And there you all were in the library.”
She shuddered and stopped.
“You’ll feel better now,” I said. “It is a good thing to talk of it to someone. I suppose Dave must have returned and got into the house somehow and — shot Bayard.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“Didn’t you say Bayard was downstairs when you left the house early in the afternoon and that you spoke to him?”
“Yes. He was downstairs. I had gone to the kitchen to get the baskets for the eggs and butter, and I thought I would take Mrs. Steadway some flowers. I stopped in the library to get some scissors I had accidentally left there that morning, and Bayard was there.”
“Did Dave keep the door to his study locked?”
“Not as a rule. It was a set rule in the household, you see, that he was not to be disturbed. There was no need to lock the door.”
“And you spoke to Bayard?”
“Yes. But only a word or two. Not,” said Janice, “a pleasant conversation. He said he would give us till night to decide what we would do about the letter. My letter. I took the scissors and put them in my basket and left. I was nearly frantic, but there was nothing I could do. Bayard thought that in the end Allen would give him the money he wanted in order to protect me, and I suppose Allen would have done just that, but I so hoped we could discover a way out of it without that.”
Murder by an Aristocrat Page 19