Bring the Bride a Shroud

by Dolores Hitchens

  Bring the Bride a Shroud

  A Prof. A. Pennyfeather Mystery

  Dolores Hitchens

  Chapter One

  There came again, and in the midst of the same sense of apprehension and of suffocation, the hideous nightmare of the Eye.

  Mr. Pennyfeather struggled to come awake, for he knew that he was dreaming. Nowhere in life was there an eye like this one, probing and fiery, searching into his brain, etching rainbows under his closed lids. The day of giants and of Cyclopes was past—he doubted, in spite of the assurances of those old Greeks, that it had ever existed—and he didn’t believe in witchcraft. And so the Eye was false. It just didn’t exist.

  But its sparks went on exploding mercilessly in his brain.

  I’ll turn away, he thought; and tried to turn.

  A breath met his own, a pushing breath he didn’t like. He opened a dry mouth to protest, but in his dream words wouldn’t come. He was fixed here, pinned in place like one of his own assignment slips, between the fiery eye and a scorching wind, both monstrous. But both—he realized this vaguely—based on something that must be happening to him while he slept. There was reality to the dream, of a sort; too much reality for comfort.

  In the dream, he wondered feverishly where he was.

  He remembered getting Tick Burrell’s letter two days ago. He recalled the torn flap of the envelope, the creamy expensive paper, Tick’s horrible writing, and the way the wind in his garden had ruffled the page while he had tried to read. He recalled the shadow of a hollyhock across the paper, as clearly as though he saw it now. And he remembered Tick’s pleading: Gosh, Professor, I wish you’d help me.

  He hadn’t needed Tick’s signature at the bottom to tell him who had written the letter. Tick had made a career out of being the black sheep of the Burrells. And, incidentally, of spending the Burrell money.

  Mr. Pennyfeather turned restlessly from the hot envelopment of the breath to meet again the burning brightness of the Eye. The image of Tick, black-haired and devilish, danced in the midst of rainbows. His mind had clothed its memory of Tick in an Army uniform, which was correct. Tick was at Camp Frey. He was also in trouble. These things were orderly and real, and the dream allowed for them. But the Eye went on probing, the hot breath stayed on his cheek.

  I’m sixty-two this month, Mr. Pennyfeather thought suddenly. There was no relevance in this. Being sixty-two hadn’t anything to do with the Eye, with the hot breath, or with Tick. It was just a senseless fact thrown in to add to his confusion, like knowing that he hadn’t ever been able to learn to use an electric shaver. He wondered shakily in the dream whether he might have lost his mind.

  Was it dreamlike, being crazy? Did people see great red eyes out in space, feel a nameless warmth against their cheeks?

  Mr. Pennyfeather shuddered and sat up.

  He was, of course, exactly as he had been when he had fallen asleep: on the bus for Camp Frey, between a window which displayed the California desert and the aisle seat which held a fat woman.

  The fat woman’s name was Mrs. Andler. She was lying back as Mr. Pennyfeather had been, and she was asleep. She breathed deeply and sighingly in his direction. She had on a red coat trimmed with a great deal of white braid, her eyebrows met in a straight dark line above her nose, and there was a suggestion of a mustache on her upper lip. Mr. Pennyfeather remembered that when she was awake she had spoken coyly of her widowhood.

  He looked out at the Eye of his nightmare, the sun, going down redly behind the desert. The shapes of Joshua trees stood humped and dark against the purple sky line. Here and there the white spire of a yucca in bloom made a pale spot among the sage. The scene was wild and beautiful and a little frightening for Mr. Pennyfeather, who was used to the tree-bordered walks of his little college. He pulled up the collar of his windproof coat, and at that moment the bus driver switched on the interior lights.

  The bus driver had an air of authority and a red neck. He didn’t look back at his passengers as he shouted, “Coming into Little Creek. Fifteen-minute stop. Sandwiches and coffee if you want ’em.”

  A sigh and a stirring went through the bus. The girl in the seat ahead of Mr. Pennyfeather pulled a blue beret over curls as bright as taffy. The woman beside her, whom Mr. Pennyfeather supposed to be her mother, took off her rimless glasses to give them a thorough polishing—their fifth since leaving San Diego. She had a hawklike profile and a habit of looking back sharply at Mr. Pennyfeather once in a while. She was dressed in dark blue serge, and she was terrifically clean. So were the glasses. She kept them that way.

  Mr. Pennyfeather, still a trifle shaky from the terrors of his nightmare, reached for his hat on the rack above. Mrs. Andler, beside him, made a bubbling sound and opened her eyes. The bus had begun to slow, to swerve in the direction of a cluster of buildings up ahead, white stucco and red tile, a sign saying café giving a neon imitation of the sunset.

  “I’ve been asleep!” Mrs. Andler said, surprised.

  “So was I,” Mr. Pennyfeather admitted.

  “Were you?” She dimpled; the mustache smiled, and Mr. Pennyfeather found himself staring at it again in utter rudeness and fascination. “Bus trips are so tiring, aren’t they?”

  “Very,” stammered Mr. Pennyfeather.

  “Do you go often?”

  “Almost never.”

  “Sunset.” She gazed out reverently through the window at the wilderness of sage and cactus. “I can feel the deathly stillness even in here.”

  The driver honked his horn raucously, and a passing car snarled in return.

  “Are you going to El Centro?” she wondered.

  “I’m getting off at Superstition,” said Mr. Pennyfeather.

  She raised her single eyebrow at him. “Camp Frey?” “Yes.”

  “You’re visiting someone there? Your son, perhaps?”

  “I haven’t any son,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “I’m going to see a friend. Tick Burrell. He used to be a student of mine.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather wondered if his imagination had played a trick on him. It seemed to him that Mrs. Andler’s eyes got large very suddenly. The woman in blue serge, breathing on a lens, gave a strangled cough. The girl with the taffy-colored curls just sat, but it was a frozen and arrested sitting.

  “Well …” said Mrs. Andler. She took her eyes off Mr. Pennyfeather and stared at her handbag lying in her lap.

  The girl with the blue beret started to turn around; Mr. Pennyfeather was sure of this; but the woman beside her made a movement, a cautioning and surreptitious clutch at her sleeve, he thought, and the girl stayed as she was.

  “You’ll find things very crowded, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Andler, seeming to come out of her confusion. “Do you have a room reserved in town?”

  “I imagine that Tick will have something for me,” said Mr. Pennyfeather.

  The bus driver pulled in to a stop, got out of his seat, sur-veyed his load of passengers with a complete lack of interest. “Don’t try to get a full meal. You’ll hold us up. We get into Superstition in a couple of hours. There’s a restaurant there.” He flung open the door, and the smell of the desert seemed to rush in at them. “All out. Fifteen minutes only, please.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather filed out between Mrs. Andler and the large number of soldiers who filled the rear of the bus.

  The desert, the feeling of immense space and faraway skies and an empty land left scorched by the sun, held him on the porch of the café. The horizon was dying to purple. A few stars were visible in the east. Inside the windowpane he could see the soldiers, standing patiently at the soft-drink counter. Mrs. Andler was buying cigarettes. The girl with the taffy curls and the hawk-nosed woman were already sipping at sodas.

  A
car came roaring up over the road they had just traveled, a long blue coupé with a silver snout. It braked to a stop in the shadow beside a garage, and two women got out.

  The driver wore a nurse’s uniform under a blue cape. She was a big woman of about forty. She jumped from behind the wheel and ran toward the café. She paused at the window, studied Mr. Pennyfeather briefly, then turned her attention to the group inside. She must have spotted the driver almost at once. She plunged through the waiting soldiers and dragged him forth, still clutching an orange pop.

  All of this had happened quickly and with an air of excitement, so that Mr. Pennyfeather had had difficulty in taking in what the nurse did as well as study the second occupant of the coupé.

  She stood in the shadow of the garage, a small figure with her head wrapped in what Mr. Pennyfeather took at first to be a veil and realized at last was bandages. She held a pair of crutches in one hand and managed a cigarette with the other.

  The driver came out mumbling. “It’s irregular. Besides, the bus is full. Why can’t you go on in your car?”

  “For certain reasons,” said the nurse earnestly, “my patient wants to get there on a bus. It’s very important. Very.” She stared into the driver’s face as if to force his will into line by hypnotic methods.

  “What’s the matter with her?” The driver peered grudgingly through the dusk. “She crippled or something?”

  “She’s been in a very bad accident.”

  “We’re full up,” said the driver flatly.

  “Look. Wouldn’t a couple of your soldiers in there be willing to stand up for the next couple of hours for … say, ten dollars apiece?”

  The drive studied this idea in silence. “It seems so damned screwy,” he complained. “You’ve even got a car. A good car.”

  “She’s leaving it here. We telephoned ahead, and they’re going to look after it for her.” The nurse opened an ample handbag. “Go and bring out two of your soldiers. I’ll put it up to them.”

  “You say you’ve got tickets?” he asked, still unwilling.

  “We have tickets.”

  “There’s nothing in this deal that can get me into trouble?” “Nothing whatever. You’ll be giving two soldiers a chance to earn some easy money, and she won’t forget you, either.”

  He took a long, meditative gurgle on the pop bottle. Then he wiped his mouth with his shirt cuff. “O. K.,” he said suddenly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He went back inside the café, and the nurse watched him through the pane. Mr. Pennyfeather kept an eye on the other woman. He had now made out a brace in addition to the bandages, a sort of harness effect which appeared to keep her head rigid, so that when she turned to look toward the café, her whole body turned. She wore a red slack suit under a gray wool coat. The coat was thrown over her shoulders. An arm, bandaged and in a sling, showed from beneath it.

  The dusky light from the west shone in her face, a very lovely face, vivid and intelligent, in which the dark eyes moved restlessly. There was a sort of leashed look to her, of energy held in a hard check, of ruthless purpose thinly concealed.

  She was, Mr. Pennyfeather thought, somewhere close to twenty-five. He thought, too, that he must have seen her before. She was teasingly, though remotely, familiar.

  When the driver came out again she threw down the cigarette and put the crutches in place. She was at that moment, somehow, a great deal like a skillful actress getting ready for a part.

  The bus driver and the nurse walked away from the café, and the three of them held a long conversation in the shadow of the garage. Mr. Pennyfeather heard the snap of a purse and thought that he glimpsed the fugitive green of bills being handed over.

  The feeling of unease, of suspense, that had first come over him on receipt of Tick’s letter seemed to increase suddenly. He disliked, for no apparent reason, the fading light, the loneliness of this desert station, the queer business of the crippled girl buying her way into the bus. He pulled the windproof coat tighter across his chest, breathed into his hands to warm them. The twilight had brought a chilling wind.

  Inside the café the girl with the taffy curls and her companion were paying their check. Mrs. Andler was talking animatedly with a group of soldiers. Two soldiers stood apart near the door. From their expressions of curiosity and surprise Mr. Pennyfeather judged that they were the two who were due to receive the money.

  The driver and the nurse walked slowly toward the bus, with the girl in crutches between them. There was some awkwardness at the steps. At last the red slacks disappeared, the blue cape followed. The bus driver brought two suitcases from the car, then went into the bus and blew a short toot on his horn.

  Mr. Pennyfeather hung back. He wanted to see just how the arrangements were to be completed. Through the bus windows he made out the figure of the nurse and her patient; they were in the seats behind his and Mrs. Andler’s.

  The soldiers poured out through the door of the café, grumbling a little at being rushed. The three women followed more slowly, picking their way across the rough roadside to the bus. Mr. Pennyfeather brought up the rear.

  The bus coughed to life with a smell of hot oil and exhaust. Some of the lights went out inside the café. The driver said, “Here, bud.” He put something into each of the two soldiers’ hands which made them grin.

  The girl with the taffy-colored hair looked down the long aisle curiously. Then she turned to the woman in blue.

  “I don’t feel like getting on. She’s in there.”

  The woman in blue pushed at her quickly. Mr. Pennyfeather, standing in the dusk below, saw the uncertainty and indecision in the girl’s face, the sudden look of almost mutiny.

  “You got rid of her before,” said the woman in blue firmly. They went on in.

  Mrs. Andler seemed to be breathing even more heavily than usual. She was beside Mr. Pennyfeather in the road. He wondered if she had seen what he had seen.

  “Will you help me, please?” She put a hand in his, a soft hand with squeezing tendencies. Her odd little mustache seemed to twinkle in the light from the bus. “I think we’ve got company,” she whispered. Then she put a patent pump on the step and was gone.

  Mr. Pennyfeather stood alone. He felt very queer about getting on that bus. In the dust beside his shoe a drop of something gave a red reflection to the sky. On the second step, liquid against the brown composition flooring, was another drop exactly like the first.

  Mr. Pennyfeather knew what it was.

  It was blood.

  Chapter Two

  “Aren’t you going with us?” asked the bus driver, looking down; and added, with what Mr. Pennyfeather thought an unnecessary show of disinterest: “If you are, get in. I’ve got to get this thing rolling.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather looked longingly at the café, by now totally darkened as though the departure of the bus customers marked the end of its day, and shivered a little. The gray distances of twilight, the ghostly shine of the yuccas, the breeze with its taste of night, sent him scrambling up the steps. He crawled across Mrs. Andler’s knees with a muttered apology.

  She nodded to him. He thought that she looked a little white, more than a little frightened. He wondered if she, too, might not have glimpsed those drops of blood.

  He stole a look over his shoulder. The girl whose head was encased in bandages sat next the window, leaning forward, staring out at the passing road as though the miles ahead irked her. The nurse was relaxed against the seat, her eyes shut.

  He cast an eye over the other passengers, the soldiers in the rear of the bus, some talking together, some already trying to sleep; the girl and her companion ahead, unmoving, an air of tension between them.

  He shot a sidelong glance toward Mrs. Andler. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he stammered. She had grown quite pale.

  She returned his look without turning her head. “I scarcely know what to do. Look.” She pulled up the sleeve of the red coat and Mr. Pennyfeather blinked and trembled. On Mrs. Andler’s wris
t was a bleeding gash.

  “You’ve cut yourself!” he said, horrified, digging for a handkerchief automatically.

  “Hush,” she answered quietly. “No, I didn’t cut myself. I was slashed at. In the ladies’ room. I—I suppose I can trust you.” She searched his face. “You said that you are a friend of Tick Burrell’s.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather tied the handkerchief on her wrist tightly and inexpertly; she loosened it while he watched.

  “Tick was in my class in Chaucer,” he explained. “He’s come to see me every few months since. He says I’m a sane influence. From what he has told me, I would judge that he needs one.” He indicated the bound wrist. “But this––I don’t see why or how it happened.”

  “I am Tick’s aunt,” she said in a very low voice.

  “His aunt Martha?” Mr. Pennyfeather wondered.

  “That’s right. The one Tick calls his bottleneck.”

  “You’re his guardian,” Mr. Pennyfeather remembered. “He asks you for money and—things.”

  “For permission to marry, among other items,” said Mrs. Andler in a whisper. She suddenly nodded toward the girl ahead. “Don’t you know who she is?”

  “No,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “Should I?”

  “You should,” she said. “I can’t tell you now. Since this happened”—she tapped the bound wrist—“I’ve decided to keep quite still.”

  “But how on earth—”

  “Weren’t you looking in when I bought some cigarettes? Yes, I thought you were. I went back then to the ladies’ room. It was just a tiny place, no window in the anteroom and quite dark there. When I came out of the cubbyhole—you understand what I mean—someone rushed in at me and I felt the slash of something sharp. I wonder—did you notice anyone leave the soft-drink counter?”

  “So many soldiers …” Mr. Pennyfeather tried furiously to re-create the scene he had witnessed through the pane. “They were having a soda.” He glanced toward the two people ahead.

  “All of the time?”

  He crinkled his forehead. “I don’t remember. These other people arrived at about that moment.”