Escape the Night

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  He didn’t say, “But she was wrong about Luisa and Amanda having a quarrel.” He drove on and turned the last curve down into the village. The little street was by that time so dark with fog and coming night that lights shone in gray haloes from the shops. Blackout time was sunset. They turned again and stopped before the neat, ivied building that was the police station. Jem then turned to her, and took her hands.

  “Listen, Serena. Did anybody else—anybody at all—suggest your coming home? Did anybody write or wire or—or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did Leda tell you that anybody wanted you to come home?”

  “No. We’d better go in, hadn’t we?” Two small lights shone dully, flanking the doorway.

  “Yes. But first—see here, there’s no time to talk or consider. I don’t know how much of this you’d better tell. I wish I knew but I—well, I don’t.”

  “You mean of what Leda said this afternoon?”

  “Yes. And what she said in New York.”

  He wanted her to protect Amanda, of course. She’d have done that anyway. She turned to meet his eyes. “I wouldn’t have told them what she said about Amanda and Luisa—their having a quarrel I mean, and why. There can’t be anything in that that would lead to murder. Amanda’s my sister.”

  Again a kind of mask seemed to settle over his face. Amanda’s name alone was like a wall between them. He said: “I didn’t …” and stopped and said: “You may have to tell the whole story. I don’t know. Shall we go in?”

  But as she got out of the station wagon he came around the car through the fog and put his hand out to help her, and the mask slipped from his face for an instant. He said, his eyes direct and urgent, “Serena, we’re going to get through this—all right, you know. I don’t know just how. But trust me.”

  For a moment the wall that Amanda’s name made between them was gone as if it had never existed, and as if there could be nothing but complete and unswerving honesty between her and Jem.

  “I do,” she said slowly. “I can’t help it, Jem. I did even this afternoon. After Leda told me—what she told me.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. She’d been wrong to feel that they had to meet on terms that permitted such honesty for the mask slipped over his face again. He said: “It hasn’t been as long as it seems really since we found Leda. They’ll want to know the exact time. This seems to be the way …”

  At the door with the two lights on either side of it and the glass pane dripping with moisture Serena thought, sharply and rather horribly, that now it was too late to back out. In another second or two they would let loose the ugly stream of investigation into murder.

  Up to then there had still been a sense of unreality, which was in its way protective. But now the police would take over —police and newspapers and talk, and investigation into all their lives.

  Leda had been so close to them. Leda’s murder was so close to them. Every circumstance of it which she and Jem so far knew was wound up into the lives of a little group of people—herself and Jem and Johnny Blagden, of course; Amanda and perhaps Alice Lanier. And Sutton Condit.

  Leda had said that Luisa’s death was murder and that she knew something about it. Something she’d learned in Gregory’s—a hardware store in Monterey.

  She couldn’t enter that door and loose the avalanche. She couldn’t. Jem said suddenly: “Chin up, Serena. We’ve got to.” He opened the door and she walked ahead of him into a small hall which opened into a room with a large desk in the middle of it and a switchboard, and a radio. The desk was railed off from the rest of the room and a uniformed man sitting at the desk looked up inquiringly and said: “Hello? Oh, it’s you. Mr. Daly. Any news about Miss Condit’s body?”

  “That isn’t,” began Jem, “what we’ve come to report.”

  An hour or more later Serena was still sitting at Sade’s, staring at the untasted glass of Coca-Cola on the table before her.

  Sade’s is an institution: a small, low-ceilinged bar-and-soft-drink gathering place; everybody sooner or later stops at Sade’s to idle on the cushioned benches along the wall, smoke, drink a little, exchange news items. A small bar runs along the far wall; a stairway winds upward and out of sight behind the wide, raised fireplace; pictures of old-time theatrical celebrities line the walls; it has the small, intimate and aged and very comfortable air that seems to come, over the years, of itself. Wait at Sade’s, Jem had said.

  For Jem had gone with the police back to Casa Madrone and to that forever still and waiting figure.

  It hadn’t seemed long, waiting there. She was grateful for the silence and the accustomedness of the place. A few people had strayed in from time to time; as it happened, no one she knew. The Filipino bartender brought her a new package of cigarettes and matches with Sade written on their maroon cover, but did not even look curiously at her full glass. She glanced at her watch again. Although she wasn’t sure just what time it had been when the police and Jem had left, hurling off into the fog again, this time in two cars, the Condit station wagon and a police car, she thought she’d been waiting for well over an hour.

  She had walked quietly up the street and around the corner and down the familiar steps and into the familiar doorway. All just as it had been years ago, when Amanda and Leda and Alice Lanier used to gather there, and sometimes herself, younger, but still one of them. Sutton would come too; always rather gentle and kind to her, the little sister. Johnny Blagden would come in from golfing, good-natured, joking, his bald head gleaming above his rosy round face. Johnny had been almost completely bald even then. It had been one of their old and standing jokes. Dave Seabrooke would stroll in, too, and Bill Lanier. The place seemed alive now as it grew dusk with their younger, happier ghosts. Was the seed of murder beginning even then to grow somewhere among them?

  She stirred uneasily at the thought. To admit it even to her mind was tantamount to admitting that one of that small group might have killed Leda. Tightened some sort of noose around her pretty soft throat with relentless and merciless strength.

  Yet all the things Leda had said wove a kind of pattern about her death.

  When there was a murder, there was always the theory that some tramp, some outsider, even some homicidal maniac might have done it. Wasn’t there?

  But there was Luisa’s death (how could it have been murder?) and Leda’s telephone call, and Leda’s death—they strung themselves together like a chain, making deliberate, planned murder.

  She shook her head; it was much better not to think.

  But she’d told herself that before. When was it? Oh, yes, she’d been thinking of Luisa and the accident. And of the many puzzles about Amanda.

  Had something grown up among those people, planted perhaps years ago, perhaps in that very room, along that very bench—and had grown and grown while she, Serena, was gone? And then had blossomed evilly so Luisa died. And Leda.

  The fact that Luisa had gone to the police—or rather, had telephoned to them and asked for help, saying she thought somebody intended to murder her now had terrifying importance and significance. It was as if a mere whisper had been suddenly emblazoned in lights.

  Had Leda thought herself in danger? Serena had had an impression that Leda was looking over her shoulder, guarding her voice and the telephone with her hand as a shield. Leda who would never, now, tell what she had known. Was that why she’d been murdered?

  Again Serena told herself to wait; not think; wait. Jem would come soon.

  The police hadn’t questioned her at all; probably because there hadn’t been time. After Jem told them the bare fact there hadn’t been time for anything. He could tell them on the way to Casa Madrone, they said, hurrying, telephoning, marshalling policemen, cars, equipment. She wondered what the police were then doing at Casa Madrone—and then tried to put that thought out of her mind, too.

  But it wasn’t possible not to think, so she went over and over and over the same futile circle of events. Had they notified Johnny, she wondered o
nce. Who would tell him? Again a kind of miasma of horror caught her; it was like the dark fog outside and pressing against the high windows except it was full of question.

  More time passed. She was still lost in that dark swamp of speculation, unable to extract herself, staring at the table, crumbling an unlighted cigarette in her fingers when the door opened again.

  But it wasn’t Jem that time, either. It was Bill Lanier.

  He came in hurriedly, his raincoat collar turned up around his face, his wet cap pulled low, his face white below it so the black thick line of his eyebrows and the straight brutal line of his mouth looked unusually marked. He saw her at once.

  “Sissy. I thought you were here.” He came rapidly toward her, pulling off his wet cap and glistening raincoat, and tossing them down on a bench. “Hey, there,” he called to the little brown-faced bartender. “Bring me a Scotch. Now then, Sissy, what’s all this? Is she really dead?”

  His black vigorous hair was thick and curly. He looked well in the beige and brown of his army uniform; he had the build for it. The light glittered on his shoulder and lapel insignia. Everything about him was extravagantly well-tailored and pressed and immaculate as he had always been dressed in civilian life. Yet the very immaculacy of his dress, the perfection of his tailoring emphasized in a curious way the latent savagery that seemed to hold itself barely in leash in his tall, graceful body and behind those yellowish, heavily lashed eyes.

  Thinking that, she didn’t answer for a moment, and he said impatiently: “Well? They said you found her. What about it? What happened? Who killed her?”

  “How did you know …?”

  He interrupted impatiently again, with a queer flash in his yellow-brown eyes. “Heard it over at the police station. They said you found her. At your house. Casa Madrone. Just now. For God’s sake, what happened?”

  “I don’t know.” She felt all at once unutterably tired. Bill seemed like a stranger to her, as none of the others had seemed, except perhaps Amanda. But Bill had always been passively, sullenly aloof somehow from the others, never quite frank and open and comprehensible.

  He frowned and called to the little Filipino to hurry up with his drink. “Pull yourself together, Sissy,” he said. “I expect it was a shock, but after all … Fellow at the desk at the police station said you and Jem Daly just came in and said Leda was murdered and you’d found her up at your old place. Said Anderson and the rest went up there with Jem. Said they thought whoever murdered her might still be around the place. Want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Do you good.” The little brown bartender put down a glass and Bill seized it. “I don’t mind telling you it was a shock to me. Leda …” He thought for a moment. “Tell me about it, Sissy. How’d it happen?”

  “I don’t know. I just found her there. We came back and told the police.”

  “Fellow said she was strangled.”

  Serena thought that she must accustom herself to talking of it. Everybody would want to know—especially the police. That was a part of it. Investigation into murder, police inquiry, an inquest, newspapers. “Yes. Yes, she was strangled.”

  “What with?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. There wasn’t anything there.”

  His yellow-brown eyes seemed to brood for awhile. Then he said abruptly: “Suicide?”

  “Jem didn’t think so.”

  “How’d it happen Jem was there, too? Did he come with you?”

  “No. He thought I was there and followed me.”

  He drank again. “God! I tell you it’s a shock. Who would murder Leda? Must have been some maniac …” He saw her cigarettes and shook one out for himself and lighted it. “Leda! If it wasn’t a maniac I can’t see who—or why … Does Johnny know it?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose they’ve let him know.”

  “Wonder where he is. Somebody’d better be with him.” He put down his empty glass, got up with one lithe movement of his long powerful body and went quickly back to the telephone. The Filipino who had heard it all was leaning over the bar, his eyes fixed and bright, listening. Bill said with simple brutality as he passed him: “Want to know what’s happened? Mrs. Blagden’s been murdered. Give me the telephone book.”

  The Filipino looked shocked and ashy colored and pawed under the counter for the book without removing his bright gaze from Bill. She watched and listened while Bill tried first Johnny’s office in Monterey, then the Blagden house. A servant apparently answered. Bill came back. “He’s gone. The police phoned him at the office. He drove over to Casa Madrone to meet them. I’d better go too. I’ve got a car. That’s why I stopped at the police station. I’m staying at the hotel, you know. Alice let me have one of the cars this morning. She’d put it up for the duration so I had to get a temporary permit. Another Scotch, you!”

  His hands were trembling, which was queer. As he put down that glass the door opened again and this time it was Dave Seabrooke. He too looked pale and shocked. “Serena,” he said, “I came for you. Jem sent me.” His glasses had steamed so he didn’t see Bill at the little bar until Bill said: “Hi, Dave.”

  Dave took off his glasses and started to wipe them on his handkerchief. “Hello, Bill. Heard you were back,” he said.

  Bill came toward them. The two men shook hands. “You’ve heard about Leda,” said Bill Lanier.

  Dave nodded. He looked at Serena. “Jem phoned to me,” he said. “He told me you were waiting here and to come for you.”

  “Where’s Jem?” asked Bill.

  “He and Anderson, the police lieutenant, were in Monterey when he phoned to us. It seems it got too dark to do anything more at Casa Madrone. They took photographs and fingerprints and all that with their camera bulbs, but the lights in the house had been turned off so they couldn’t do much more. Jem and Anderson are driving to the Condit ranch after awhile. He told me to get you, Sissy, and take you home.”

  There was a short silence. Then Bill said: “What’d they do with the body?”

  It was as Bill so often was, abrupt and rather shocking.

  Dave said, after a moment: “I believe they took her to Monterey. There’ll have to be a post-mortem. I think that’s why Jem and Anderson went. To be with Johnny.”

  “Oh. Johnny got there then.”

  “So Jem said.” Dave turned to Sissy. “Shall we go? I talked to Amanda and Sutton. They’re at home. I didn’t have a car. Jem had used mine this afternoon, so Sutton came down and got me, and then I took him up to the ranch and came for you. They’d already heard. Sutton said Amanda was taking it pretty hard. Ready, Sissy?”

  Serena nodded and started toward the door and, in the little silence, Bill Lanier suddenly gave one of his long, loud, strangely raucous and brutal laughs.

  “So,” he said. “Amanda’s taking it pretty hard! My God! If murder was on the cards, I know who ought to have been murdered. That’s Amanda!” He laughed and laughed. “Amanda! Not Leda!”

  “For God’s sake, shut up.” Dave spoke in a low voice, as if aware of the little bartender, but not looking at him. “You’d better come too, Bill.”

  “Sure, I’ll come,” said Bill raucously. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything. I’ve no idea why Leda Blagden was murdered. Or who did it. But if it’d been Amanda everybody I know had a motive. It ought to’ve been Amanda.”

  “Bill, you’re drunk.”

  “No, I’m not. Say, wait a minute! Maybe Amanda did it.” r

  “Bill, shut up!”

  “Maybe she did it. I can’t think of anybody else in our crowd that’d have the nerve.” He snatched up his raincoat and cap and stopped laughing as abruptly as one would turn off a tap. “I guess they’ll question all of us.”

  Dave nodded and held open the door. As they went out into the mist and darkness, leaving the little Filipino leaning over the bar in his white jacket, his eyes bright and speculative, Bill said: “It’s not going to be much fun, you know. They’ll question you first, Sissy. You found the
body. Say!” He paused as if struck by a sudden thought: “Say, you reported Luisa’s murder, too! You’re a regular Murder Mary, Sissy. You ought’ve stayed in New York!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEY PAUSED FOR AN instant on the dark and suddenly bewildering street. A few lights were reflected from the slits around closed blinds in little glittering streaks on the black, wet sidewalk. Dave said seriously: “Don’t talk like that, Bill. Sissy’s got nothing to do with all this.”

  Bill laughed again, so it filled the quiet street. “Why not? She’s Amanda’s sister, isn’t she?”

  “That’s another reason for keeping your mouth shut. The car’s this way.”

  “Listen,” said Bill, “if Amanda’s ever strung to the nearest lamp post, look no further for the fellow that did it. That’s me.” He opened the door of Sutton’s big car which was dimly perceptible in the darkness now that their eyes were growing accustomed to it. Serena got in beside Dave, and Bill sat in the back and lighted a cigarette. Dave, leaning over the wheel and turning on the dimmers, backed cautiously away from the curb.

  “Besides,” said Dave, as they started along the main street—by day so busy and pleasant and bright, by night, and especially that night, a dark and mysterious lane—“Besides, things were quiet enough around here until you turned up.”

  Bill had heard about Luisa and he had also heard about the laboratory, for he leaned over toward the front seat. “I was damned sorry about your lab, Dave. Can you save any of the stuff?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Who do you think did it? I heard it was some boys just prowling and looking for deviltry. Cigarette, Sissy?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dave wearily. “I’m trying to rescue what I can. There’s not much hope for it. Maybe I was wrong anyway.”

  “Wrong? How? In your experiments?”

  “No. I meant maybe I was wrong in thinking I could be a …” Dave hesitated, seeking the turn through the fog. Bill finished for him: “A Pasteur? Don’t be so modest. Anyway, who wants to be a Pasteur? And you were always damn good, Dave. Everybody says so.”