The hall below was dimly lighted, exactly, she thought, as they had left it an hour or two—or longer—before.
She gathered up the folds of her long red skirt and went down, a step at a time, nervous lest the little heels of her mules click upon the steps.
She reached the newel post.
The library was dark ahead of it; glow from the remaining embers made only a dim patch of twilight within that cavernous blackness. Her hand was on the newel post. She listened and still there was no sound anywhere, no sound at all.
She put both hands upon the carved top and lifted and pulled it upward. There was a faint small sound of the wedged and solidly fitted wood, rasping dully against wood. The pineapple came away, cold and smooth in the darkness, and she held it and groped in the hollow with the other hand.
The gun was not there.
Her hand explored the whole rough wood cavity; there was no gun; there was nothing.
She replaced the pineapple. Then she saw what she had not seen up to then. Along the hall on the terrace side of the house, opposite the stairway, there was a thin sharp line of light, the width of a door.
It was the door to the gold-and-ivory drawing room. It was blank and closed. There was only that thin, bright line below it.
Murder had once been in that house.
She moved down along the hall. She was some distance from the door but she could hear a sudden rustle of motion behind it; and the quick murmur of a voice. And then again complete silence.
Nothing moved in the dimly lighted hall. No current of air crept from the library or down the stairwell. Again she tried, in a tense, queer exasperation, to quiet her own heart so she could hear. Could she creep nearer? Could she open that door? Who was there—and why?
Then quite suddenly but very definitely it seemed to her that there was a peculiar, tense quality in that silence.
It lasted perhaps as long as she might have counted half a minute, thirty slow pulse beats.
It was broken in as peculiar a way as its own singularly tense quality of stillness. There was a sharp, clear click, like metal upon metal, and almost immediately a laugh.
A hysterical, loud and rather long laugh.
And that too ended abruptly. There was a sudden rush of motion, a high, rapid rush of words, another broken, thumping sound as if something falling—and the door quite suddenly flung itself open.
The room was lighted—there was a swift view of gilded, French arm chairs and ivory panels and a great gilded mirror at the other end, between the long windows. Then Mildred Wilkinson half stumbled, half fell through the doorway, and Alice, fair hair streaming down her back ran to kneel beside her. “Mildred—Mildred …” she screamed frantically. “Don’t …”
Alice looked up and saw Myra. She cried wildly, “Stop her—stop her—help me. She’s taken poison.”
Mildred had both hands at her throat and, as a matter of fact, died in the posture.
Alice cried, screaming, sobbing, “She said she would—I couldn’t stop her—Myra …” She lifted her hands from Mildred and flung them backward, horror on her face. “It’s too late! She’s already dead …”
Behind her a wandering small night breeze again stirred across the terrace and billowed the lace and silk curtains at the end of the room, at one side of the fireplace.
Someone was running along the corridor above and then plunging down the stairs.
“She killed him,” sobbed Alice. “She killed Jack. She said she killed him.”
CHAPTER 15
IT WAS RICHARD PLUNGING down the stairs, around the newel post, across the hall to kneel beside Mildred. Alice, incoherently, half-sobbing tried to tell him. “She killed herself. She took poison …”
He did not appear to hear her. But after a long moment he got up. “She’s dead.” He looked swiftly at Alice and at Myra. “How did it happen?” And as Myra turned dizzily from the sight of Mildred’s disheveled hair and dreadful hands, he took a quick step or two toward her and caught her in his arms and held her, so her face was upon his shoulder, her eyes hidden.
Alice cried, “I tried to stop her—I couldn’t—it was poison. Mildred killed Jack. Richard, Mildred killed him.”
“What do you mean? Tell me …”
Myra moved and lifted her head. His shielding arm released her.
Alice was standing flattened against the wall, her hands flat against it, on either side of her slight figure, as if they alone supported her. Her fair hair fell like a child’s, on either side of her face. She said, “Mildred was in love with him. He was tired of her. She killed him. She killed herself.”
Without speaking Richard went to kneel again beside Mildred.
His broad shoulders and dark bent head hid Mildred. The gray flannel folds of the dressing gown he had flung over his shoulders swept outward, like a merciful curtain. It seemed a long time before he rose slowly and started toward the telephone.
“Where are you going?” said Alice.
“To call the doctor.”
“She told me she was going to do it. She said it was cyanide.”
Richard went on, back past the stairway. He did not, however, stop at the telephone but instead turned into a passage that ran back, parallel with the dining room. He disappeared and Alice gave a sobbing, small moan, and flung her hands over her face. “Myra, get me something—anything—brandy! Hurry …”
“You’d better sit down, quick …”
“Yes … Yes …” There was a chair near the open door, just inside the ivory-and-gold room. Alice moved past Mildred and sank into the chair.
“I’ll get brandy,” cried Myra.
It was a long way to the dining-room door. The hall stretched endlessly ahead of her. Richard, hurrying along the small corridor, had reached a narrow coat and golf-club closet. As Myra passed the entrance to the corridor she caught a quick glimpse of his dark head and gray dressing gown. He entered the coat closet and she hurried on to the dining room and fumbled for lights. There was a cupboard near the pantry door where a supply of liquor was kept. She ran across and opened the doors and fumbled among the bottles. Aunt Cornelia’s sherry; port, which in a sedate and old-fashioned way was still served the gentlemen after dinner at Thorne House; brandy; she must have a glass! She ran into the butler’s pantry and turned on lights there, too. The gleaming expanse of chromium steel and glass shelves glittered. She snatched a glass and ran back through the long, stately dining room with its great hooded fireplace, its portraits of Thornes of other generations, its massive, old furniture. She came into the hall, and Richard, a coat over his arm, was at the telephone. He did not see her. His back was turned to the hall and he was talking. “Doctor, this is Dick Thorne. Can you come right away? No, it’s not Aunt Cornelia; it’s Mildred Wilkinson. She’s dead. …”
Alice had not collapsed. She had moved again into the hall and was listening to Richard at the telephone.
“Here is the brandy,” said Myra. “I’ll pour it.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” said Alice. She came to. She put up shaking small hands. Myra went to the table that held the lamp. As in a dream she uncorked the tall bottle and poured out brandy and gave it to Alice who clasped the glass as obediently as a child. Richard’s voice stopped abruptly. They heard him put down the telephone. He came back, and, kneeling down again, deliberately and gently, he spread a coat over Mildred. One of his own coats. Myra looked at it with minute attention, as if it mattered. He adjusted it very carefully, so it covered Mildred’s face, her hands, her hair. Then he stood.
“Now then,” he said, “Tell me exactly what happened, Alice.”
“She told me. She said she killed him. Then she took poison. She wrote a confession. It is in that room. … On the desk—the little French desk. She wrote it there …”
Richard settled the dressing gown around his shoulders and then began to put it on, shoving one arm through one sleeve and then the other. He went through the open door, past Mildred.
For a moment, to Myra, it was as if all th
e silences of the world had been rolled into one. Neither she nor Alice moved; there was no sound from upstairs. No one else apparently had heard—Sam, Tim, Aunt Cornelia, none of them. Richard probably had been awake, thinking, planning—listening, perhaps, as Myra was listening. He must have heard the sound of their voices.
He came to the door again. He paused to close it as far as it would go, moving a fold of his coat in order to do so. The door would not quite close but it sheltered the thing that lay under the coat. He had a white piece of paper in his hand.
“It’s a confession. This is what she says.” He held the paper under the light and read slowly:
“ ‘To the police: I wish to make a statement in order to clear anyone else who may be accused of murder. I shot Jack Manders. We had been in love for a long time. I killed him because he intended to leave me …’ ”
He stopped. “That’s all.”
Alice said, “She stopped there. She was so—so proud. I think she could not bear to go on. She stopped there, and took the poison.”
“Tell me everything. …”
“I will. Yes—Yes, I will.” Alice took a long breath. She put down the brandy and locked her hands together. “She came tonight, Richard. I was awake. She threw pebbles up against my window and I heard it and went to the window. She was on the terrace. She whispered—I could hear distinctly. She said she had something she must tell me. She said for me to come down. I came and she was here. She had come in through the terrace door, the library door; but then she led me into that room. She turned on the light and closed the door as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear.” She caught her breath unevenly.
“Go on, Alice.”
“She told me she had shot Jack. I—I didn’t believe her. I thought she’d got some sort of twist in her mind. She’d lived alone too long. She brooded. She was always—queer, you know, ingrown, like all the Wilkinsons. Moody and strange. Her eyes, though, looked—oh, Richard, they looked as if she meant it. And then—and then she showed me the poison.”
“What was it?”
“She said it was cyanide. She said it would take only a minute. She had a little evening bag with her. She took out the poison and showed me. It was in a pill. She had brought her own pen. …”
Richard glanced back toward the half-closed door. “Yes, I saw it, on the desk, beside this.”
“She’d brought the paper, too, her own paper. She sat down at the desk and started to write and I could not stop her. I told her she didn’t realize what she was saying. I told her she couldn’t have killed him. And she said—she said—that she’d been in love with him. …”
“Mildred! I can’t believe it. …”
“I asked her why she shot him. And then she said that he was tired of her. He told her it was over. She couldn’t bear it. She was beside herself, desperate, so she did not know what she was doing. She didn’t say how or when she got the gun or how long she had planned it. She followed him here. She didn’t know that I was in the room when she shot him. She didn’t realize it. She must have been beside herself—mad. She said that and I believe it. And then she said, with the sound of the shots she seemed to—to come to herself, and realize what she had done. She said she was going to kill herself, too, then, but she lost her courage. And then later Webb accused me and she could not make herself confess. Until—now.”
“She was afraid of the new investigation.”
“Yes—yes … But she wanted to clear you and me before she took the poison. She …” Alice’s voice broke. “She asked me to forgive her. And she wrote those few lines and then could not go on. She reached for the poison. She said, ‘It’s cyanide; it won’t hurt.’ I hadn’t really believed her until then. I ran to her but she put it in her mouth and pushed me away. I tried to get it out of her mouth and she got to the door and pushed me back and then—then she …”
She flung her hands up over her face and sobbed. “I couldn’t stop her, Richard! I couldn’t do anything! There wasn’t time!”
Richard looked again at the paper in his hand. He read the few words over and over and then looked up at Myra, “You were here, too?”
Myra shook her head. “I heard Mildred on the terrace. That is, I did not know that it was Mildred. But I came down …”
Alice said, “Richard, do you doubt me? Are you asking an outsider, Myra, whether or not I am telling you the truth?”
“Myra is not an outsider,” began Richard, and Alice said suddenly, “No. I realize that. She is in love with you. Isn’t she, Richard?”
Richard’s dark head jerked upward. He gave Alice a long, straight look. “We’ll talk about that later, Alice. Just now …”
“No,” said Alice. “Now. If you love each other, I won’t stand between you. I promise you that.”
Richard’s face had no expression. Alice turned to Myra. “I was wrong when I talked to you before. I hadn’t had time to think. It was a blow to discover that the thing I had feared was true …” She looked at Richard, who stood, watching her, his face still unfathomable and quiet. “I told Myra I had guessed you were in love. I talked to her. I asked her to give me a chance to … But now I see—after I’ve had time to think—that I was wrong.” She came to Myra, and stood so near that a faint fragrance of perfume rose in a small cloud between them. She said, “I was wrong, Myra. I had no right to come between you. I see it now.”
Her brown eyes were soft and shining with earnestness; her beautiful face was like a flower rising from the lacy folds of her pink dressing gown.
The great, paneled hall seemed suddenly cold and the huddle below Richard’s coat too near them. Myra shivered a little and Richard saw it and said abruptly, “It’s cold here. We’ll go into the library. I’ll build up the fire.”
He went on ahead of them and turned on lights. It was warmer there as if, Myra thought suddenly, the chill in the hall had a center, an uncomfortable focus from which they had removed themselves.
Richard put Mildred’s letter on the table, laying an ashtray upon it for a paper weight, and went to the fireplace, and put on logs and kindling. He stirred the embers until the kindling began to smoke and then to blaze. The ash tray, green glass, enlarged Mildred’s desperate, sprawling handwriting. Myra, staring down at it, could make out through the wavering glass, certain words—“killed Jack. He intended …”
The handwriting was big and sprawling, and looked hurriedly, wildly written. She turned away from it, appalled by the vision of Mildred it induced—hagridden by conscience, by remembered heartbreak and frenzy, and now by fear.
Alice was standing beside the ruby-red chair, her hands linked, her face pale and determined. Richard stood and looked down at the fire, and then turned and Alice said unexpectedly, “I meant what I said, Richard. If you want a divorce …”
Richard said directly, “Yes, I do, Alice. I meant to tell you later. But perhaps it is as well for us to understand each other.”
“Yes,” said Alice. “Yes …”
“About Jack Manders, I mean,” said Richard.
“Jack! But Mildred confessed …”
“That isn’t what I meant,” said Richard slowly. “I didn’t believe that you killed him. Wait—let me tell you, Alice. Whether or not you had killed him, I’d still have done everything I could to help you. If you shot him—I’m only saying if …”
“Go on,” said Alice. “Go on …”
“Well, then, if you killed him there had to be a motive. I never really liked Jack Manders. I never knew quite why. Certainly with other men he behaved as—they did. But there was a phoniness about him; it always seemed to me that he was on the make. I knew that he liked and wanted money. And I thought he had the capacity for being both stupid and ruthless.”
“You invited him here. You were his friend …”
“You invited him here, Alice,” said Richard slowly. “Often.”
Her small, beautiful face was white, she leaned forward. “Are you trying to tell me that you thought that I was having an—an a
ffair with him?”
Richard said flatly: “I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. I’d never known you to lose your head over any man.”
“Richard, how can you take that tone! It was always you I loved. From the time we met. I was so young …”
“We were both young. We won’t go into that. I did not know whether or not you were having an affair with Manders. …”
“I was not …” whispered Alice.
“… but if you were, and he had angered you, then I was afraid that you might have shot him …”
“No, no,” moaned Alice in a distraught way. “No …”
He looked at her for a moment, rather curiously, as if she were a stranger to him. Then he said gently, “You are now cleared, Alice. Mildred’s confession will close the case. It will stop the new investigation. It will close the thing forever. From now on, Alice, nobody will think of you with anything but pity for your terrible and unjust conviction, and with respect for the way you have borne it. You do not need me any longer.”
The kindling crackled; flames shot upward. Alice’s fingers dug into the red-satin upholstery. Her face was white and stony, like a perfectly chiseled marble mask. Her brown eyes went to Mildred’s letter on the table below the green glass ash tray and then to Myra and her gaze had the stoniness, the frightening blankness that was in her small face. She looked back at Richard who was watching her, who had not moved. She said, “There are two of you. You are stronger than I. Is that why you built up the fire?”
“Alice … !” cried Myra.
She went on swiftly, panting. “One move from either of you and that letter would be gone in flames. Either of you can do it. I can’t stop you. That—or a divorce. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? You can both say I murdered Mildred. You can say anything you like; everybody will believe you. They believed Webb …”
Myra, horrified, cried, “Alice, no! I’ll tell the truth. I’ll tell them exactly what I heard …” She turned to Richard. “I heard voices—I could not hear words. Mildred was hysterical—I heard her laugh. I heard them at the door, and it came open and I saw Alice trying to help her, trying to stop her … I saw it!”
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