Escape the Night

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  Dave turned to him. “She’s all right. Shock, of course. But she’s all right, really; pulse okay.”

  Jem stood looking down at Serena. “She can’t see the police.”

  “She’s all right, but they can’t put her through that now. I’ll tell them.”

  “Don’t let them question her …”

  “I’ll see to it.” Dave put his hand for a moment on Serena’s shoulder and went away again.

  Jem said: “Finish the coffee.”

  She whispered: “Have they found …?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody. They’ve searched everywhere. Everything … Nobody was around and, so far as I know, no clues …”

  “The—knife …”

  He knew that she had to know. “It was a kitchen knife. The kitchen door was unlocked. Anybody could have entered and taken it.”

  Pooky turned over on his back and sighed and snored again. She glanced at him and said to Jem: “Pooky—was crying …”

  He nodded. “He was tied. To one of the pillars. Quayle figures that’s why she came down into the patio. That it was a trap. The murderer thought she would hear the dog and come to investigate and it would give him”—Jem paused and seemed to draw a breath before he said—“his chance …”

  Jem too had once loved the Amanda they both had known. She put up her hand toward him and he took it.

  He was still there when Alice Lanier arrived. She came in quietly, her red hair pulled up high, faint purple marks below her eyes.

  “I’ll stay with her,” she said to Jem. He went away and Alice sat in Sutton’s desk chair. Pretending to smoke, pretending not to listen for sounds from the patio.

  Once she put her red head down in her hands. “I was furious with Amanda about Bill. I love him. But I had to divorce him … I was furious at him, too. But I wouldn’t have had Amanda”—her voice died to a whisper—“murdered!” Her head jerked upward. “Sissy, who killed her? Who could have done it?”

  She didn’t expect an answer. Her green eyes were feverishly bright. She said: “Bill loves me. Really. Do you remember when he came into the room last night and came to me and kissed me? Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Shut up. Don’t say a word about Leda.’ Just like that. He loves me.” She lighted another cigarette with shaking white hands. “Not that I had anything to tell anybody! I don’t know who killed Leda.”

  A door banged somewhere; the telephone rang and was answered. Alice got up, left the room, came back. She looked at Serena doubtfully. “Do you feel like getting dressed? They’ve—taken her away, you know. The police are in the living room.…”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  Alice walked beside her, her high heels clicking.

  The patio was blazing with sunlight. A car outside cut off the view from the arched doorway and men’s voices came from the other side of the wall. Nothing now lay at the foot of the stairway that led to her room.

  Alice went into the bathroom and turned on the water. The scent of rose geranium wafted out of it, and Alice’s voice: “Leda and Amanda had had a row, you know. Did Amanda tell you? Leda thought Amanda was leading Johnny on. She—well, she would listen at the extension and follow Johnny and all that …” Alice came to the door and stood there, her hair flaming against the whiteness of the bathroom beyond. “I told Leda not to be silly; by that time I knew just how much Amanda meant. She’d done that with Bill. But Leda …” she paused, green eyes bright and excited in her paper-white face. “Leda told me that they met—Johnny and Amanda—at Casa Madrone. I suppose that’s how she knew that the back door was unlocked. Probably they didn’t meet there more than once or twice, and then it wasn’t anything for Leda to get upset about. But you know how Leda” was. And Amanda”—she paused and thought and said—“Amanda was very childish in some ways. She was so—so indiscreet and daring and yet—well, childish. She couldn’t seem to see that other people took her flirtations seriously. I did. Until I knew better; and by that time I’d divorced Bill. And Leda did.”

  Serena said slowly: “Yet they were friends.”

  Alice shrugged: “Of course! We—why, we’ve always been friends! All of us!” It was as if that settled it. She disappeared, turned off the water and came back. “But Leda telephoned to me the morning after Luisa Condit was killed. She was very pleased and said she’d finally got the upper hand of Amanda. She didn’t tell me how; and Leda was always getting excited about something so I didn’t ask. Bill told me yesterday about the bracelet. I knew that it was new when I saw Amanda wear it. It must be the Cartier bracelet. I wonder what happened to it. It’s queer too, Sissy … Amanda never really liked jewelry very much. I don’t think she’d ever buy a bracelet for herself, even if she had the money. And I can’t think of anybody who’d buy it for her. Least of all Leda. The bath water’s ready.”

  When Serena came out, Alice was standing at the window, her slender figure tense. “Johnny Blagden’s just come,” she said over her shoulder. “Somebody came with him. It looked like that detective—Lossey. They went into the house. A whole car full of reporters, I think, came while you were in the bathroom. Anderson went and talked to them and they finally went away.” She dropped the curtain and came back. She’d put out clothes for Serena—a white skirt and sweater and blue jacket. She made Serena sit down, and she brushed her hair and helped her dress.

  “Leda said ‘something’ was going to happen,” said Serena.

  Alice looked at her sharply. “Yes, she said that to me, too. But I don’t think she meant anything—like this, I mean. I think she was only letting herself go about Johnny. You know—threatening.” Alice’s lips tightened. “Neither of us could really cope with Amanda. We both took it too hard; we ought to have laughed. Powder your face, Sissy. Put on some lipstick. You’ll feel better.”

  It was Alice, too, who went to the door when Captain Quayle and Lieutenant Anderson came.

  “I’m sorry,” said Captain Quayle. He looked tired and very grave; his blue eyes were direct and intelligent. “I’m afraid we’ll have to question you now, Miss March.” He glanced past her, saw Alice and added: “Suppose we go down into the patio.”

  There was a bench there, in the bright, warm sunlight. Quayle sat beside her, Anderson stood. Quayle said quietly: “Just tell me everything that happened last night, Miss March. You can make an official statement later.”

  She wondered suddenly if there were a trap of some kind in that; and that led her to another thought which until then had not occurred to her. Did they think she had killed Amanda? For the first time she remembered what Sutton had cried into the shocked horror of the night. “Serena, what have you done!”

  She said in a flat, queer tone: “I didn’t do it.”

  “Now, now, Miss March …”

  “Oh, I’m not going to—be hysterical. But I didn’t …”

  Quayle interrupted: “Now just tell me what happened. Take your time.”

  She thought for what seemed a very long time and really thought nothing except that the small shadows in the patio were blue and sharp. “Pooky cried,” she began then, slowly. Somehow she told it; the starlight, Amanda, the knife and the wet, dark patch on her light silk negligee. Sutton and the stream of light. The telephone.

  Quayle questioned her. “Did you touch the knife?”

  “No.”

  “Had you heard anything besides the dog? The sound of a car—anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Condit says when he opened the door you were bending over the body.”

  “Yes, I—I must have been.”

  “You and your sister, Miss March, had a very sharp difference of opinion yesterday. About money. Did you quarrel—later, I mean, after I had gone?”

  “We talked. We didn’t exactly quarrel.”

  “Tell me, as nearly as you can remember, what was said.”

  She did; slowly yet automatically, like a machine set in motion.

  It was not easy; and somehow she remembered not to tell
him of what Amanda had said of Jem. She couldn’t, then, think and analyze; she could only skirt around anything that instinct labeled dangerous.

  There was a long silence. Somewhere in the house a man’s voice rose and abruptly subsided to a mumble of several voices. Quayle said finally: “Will you tell me, please, the circumstances under which you found the bullet hole—over there …” His bare head jerked toward the flight of steps behind them.

  Jem must have told him. She explained that, too, remembering it across an abyss, a dark and dreadful gap between yesterday and today. When she’d finished, Quayle glanced at Anderson. “Get Condit,” he said, “and Blagden.”

  She watched Anderson cross the patio. He went into the house and in a moment reappeared. Johnny, all color gone from his round face and great hollows under his eyes, followed him. “Hello, Serena,” he said, and passed his hand nervously over his bald head. “Hello, Quayle.”

  Jem came, too, and Sutton. Jem crossed the patio quickly. “Do you mind …” he said to Quayle.

  “That’s all right, Daly. You can stay.” Slader appeared in the doorway too and Quayle beckoned to him. Johnny pulled up one of the ornamental, wrought-iron chairs and sat down. Sutton did likewise; he glanced at her as he did so but said nothing. He was very pale and his eyes were red-rimmed and hollow. He had dressed too—in brown slacks and tweed jacket and, again, a yellow scarf. He got out a cigarette, blinking nervously in the sun. And Quayle said quietly: “Mr. Blagden, you were Mrs. Condit’s lawyer.”

  Johnny passed his hand over his bald head again, nervously. “Yes. You know that.”

  “You were on—very good terms with Mrs. Condit.”

  Sutton stared at the path and did not move.

  Johnny said: “Well—yes.”

  Quayle’s blue eyes were very direct. “Did she take you into her confidence about financial matters?”

  “I—well, yes. I suppose so.”

  “Mr. Blagden,” Quayle’s manner did not accuse; it was merely honest and direct. He said: “Your acquaintance with Mrs. Condit was something more than the usual client and lawyer relation, wasn’t it?”

  Johnny’s round face did not change. “I don’t like your word relation. I—was a very good friend of Amanda’s, but that was all there was to it. Sutton knows this; we’ve been talking. He knows all about it. I was a fool. My wife—Leda—objected. But I—I did meet Amanda occasionally; once or twice at Sissy’s house. That was why Amanda left the door unlocked. Or, before gas rationing, at some place along the coast. Amanda was—was daring. She liked the adventure of it. But that was all.”

  There was a short silence. Then Quayle said quietly: “I believe you, Mr. Blagden. But I wish you had told …” he checked himself and glanced at Anderson. And nodded once. Anderson pulled something from his pocket. With a rather awkward gesture he laid it on the white bench beside Serena, where it blazed like a live thing in the sunlight, for it was Amanda’s bracelet.

  The sight of it was as sharp and stinging as iodine in a wound. Quayle said: “Guess you’d better tell us, Mr. Condit.”

  Sutton, staring at the glittering bracelet, swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “We found it hidden in the radio in your room. You did take it, didn’t you?”

  “I—yes.”

  “Why?”

  Sutton twisted his hands together. “To find out if it was real. She’d said it was just junk, you see. And that she’d had it for some time. But Leda insisted it was new. I saw her—Amanda, I mean, get it out of a drawer in her room and wrap paper around it. That was in the morning—the morning of the day when Luisa was killed. So I waited in my study, there in the house. Amanda thought I’d already gone up to the farmhouse, but I hadn’t. After Sissy came downstairs I went up to her room—you see, I’d watched and Amanda had gone to Sissy’s room and I thought she might have left the bracelet there. Well, I looked and it was in a drawer. And I—took it.”

  The sun was hot. The patio and everyone in it was perfectly still. Quayle said finally: “You may as well tell us the whole story, Mr. Condit. What did you want to prove to yourself?”

  “Why, whether or not it was real! Of course! And it—is.”

  “It corresponds to the description of the bracelet Leda Blagden bought at Cartier’s,” said Quayle rather gently. “Doesn’t it, Mr. Condit?”

  “I suppose so. Yes.” Sutton glanced at the bracelet and then turned quickly back to Quayle. “Yes, it does.”

  Quayle looked at Johnny. And Johnny said: “I didn’t give Leda the money to buy a present for Amanda, if that’s what you mean!”

  “Then how …”

  Johnny looked at Sutton. “I didn’t know about the bracelet, Sutton,” he said. “I suppose Amanda asked Leda to bring it back with her. But I did know about …” he stopped. Sutton stared at the path.

  Quayle said: “I thought probably you did, Mr. Blagden. I ought to say that Lossey gave me a report on your wife’s scarf this morning, Mr. Condit. According to laboratory tests, it does not appear to have been used as a lethal weapon. There are no sharp wrinkles, as would appear in the threads in that case, and no traces of Mrs. Blagden’s powder or perfume. It does seem to have been a false clue, left there deliberately by the murderer. But in the process of investigation Lossey discovered that Mrs. Condit had ordered the scarf herself …”

  “She said someone gave it to her,” mumbled Sutton, staring at the path.

  “She ordered it herself. It was an expensive trifle for anyone who was hard up for money to order. That occurred to Lossey and to us. Also, it began to seem that, if Mrs. Condit had not sent money to her sister, a rather large sum of money had disappeared somewhere.”

  Jem had said that, too. Again no one spoke for a moment. And then Quayle asked very quietly: “Were you on good terms with your wife, Mr. Condit?”

  Sutton seemed to control himself but with an effort. “Yes. I suppose so. Other people could tell you that.” He paused and added grimly. “Other people doubtless will.”

  “Mr. Condit,” Quayle was very grave, “there’s a bullet hole in the railing of that stairway.… We’ve found a gun in your room and a gun that Ramon says belongs to you in the room Miss Luisa Condit used. I dug out a bullet from that railing. We haven’t had a chance yet to have a ballistics report on it, but it could have been fired, by the looks, from either of those guns, which are alike. And we did some telephoning just now. We found three bank deposit books in your wife’s desk. You’d better tell us the truth, Mr. Condit.”

  Lossey opened the door of the house. His beady eyes took in the scene and he added himself to it quietly and unobtrusively, so they were scarcely aware of it. And Sutton put his head in his hands. The sun shone on his thinning blond hair. He said between his fingers: “Oh, all right, all right. I took the bracelet. They’ll tell you—somebody—that I quarreled with her yesterday. And I did. But I didn’t kill her. And that bullet was fired at Luisa the day Sissy came home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IT WAS A QUEER story that Sutton told, queer and distorted, sad, and in one way illuminating, for it explained much of Amanda that had been till then inexplicable. It did not, however, explain enough. For when he had finished they still did not know who had murdered her, or why.

  He talked in snatches, his head in his hands. It was a long story as he told it and as it had happened; actually in substance it was brief.

  Amanda had had money. She had taken from him, she had pressed him for more; she had saved and saved. She had spent for expensive clothing, but that was all. Sutton, never a business man, seemed bewildered as he talked. But to Serena, coupled with Amanda’s own statements, it was appallingly clear. So clear that, behind the disjointed, sometimes rambling fabric of Sutton’s words the main design, made by Amanda, could be seen in full broad strokes. Amanda was beautiful; Amanda was ambitious; her whole aim was to escape; to establish herself in a life which, she had thought, would provide more scope, more glamour, more power. Everything she had
done was a means to that end. Money, because she must have money in order to give herself a setting; Jem, because she believed in his future. Her motive in buying the bracelet was more complex, yet Amanda-like and feminine; she loved jewelry, certainly, and the mere possession of it must have given her a great and real, if secret, satisfaction. But probably that satisfaction, however real it was, was strongly mixed with a purely practical desire to have a substantial sum of money done up, so to speak in one package—easily transportable, easily sold, if necessary. She couldn’t admit that the jewels were real. She had to claim they were false to protect herself. Yet below that pretense had been a secret glow and pleasure. Beautiful women were enhanced with real and beautiful jewels out in the great world where she, Amanda, intended to take her place, weren’t they? Well, then, she was so enhanced.

  Beautiful, childish, play-acting Amanda; with her ruthlessness that was not childish. Her fear, her frantic efforts to save herself and the secret hoard she had assembled; her selfishness, her complete inability to see anything in the world except in its relationship to her were all tragically, fatally, typical of Amanda.

  Sutton was talking bewilderedly and in confused phrases: “She took over the financial details of the ranch. I wasn’t good at that. She said that and it’s true. I had no sense of money; there’d always been enough—I’d do anything I wanted to do, loan, give it away, anything. She stopped all that. But we—we kept getting into debt and had less and less money. I never dreamed …” he gave Quayle a quick, nervous glance. “She’s borrowed, too,” he blurted. “From Luisa and …” he glanced at Jem. “And other people. I made her tell me everything yesterday. When I was sure the bracelet was real and that either she bought it or somebody gave it to her and I—I was pretty sure she bought it. I’d heard her talking to Serena and listened and—I made her tell me the truth. Amanda gave Leda the money to buy the bracelet. Told her to bring it home with her. You can check on cash withdrawals from Amanda’s account. It was like Amanda. Leda was furious with Amanda just then. She thought Amanda was—was leading Johnny on. But she brought Amanda the bracelet all the same. We—I know that seems odd; but we all …” he swallowed uncomfortably. “We know each other so well.”