Alice leaned forward very slowly. She put down the lighter and stood up with an almost lethargic deliberation. She gathered the soft, pink-satin folds of her dressing gown around her. Myra wished to draw back, to escape, and she would not move. She clung to Richard’s chair and faced Alice.
Alice said, “So I was right. You sneaked around and spied and tried to blackmail me.”
Her voice was different, too—curiously vulgar and coarse in its tone, careless, too, of every possible restraint.
It was repelling. Myra’s hands dug into the chair. She must stay there, she must fight. She must not yield to an almost overwhelming wave of physical repulsion.
But Alice was thinking. She said, “Tell me, Myra, what did you hear?”
And she had heard nothing—a click, a laugh, fumbling motions, nothing else.
She had to answer. Alice’s wide blank eyes had still somewhere in them a shrewd and seeking gleam.
But Myra knew what had happened. She knew it as clearly as if she had seen it, as if she had overheard everything. It was like a picture flashed upon her memory, complete in almost every detail.
Myra braced herself against the chair and flung out those facts which must be, had to be, facts.
“Mildred knew that you murdered Jack. She knew it when she saw that locket. Jack had given it to you. She—she took it. It was in her evening bag. Webb recognized it. You got her to write the confession. You said—you said that you would sign it. You had the gun. …”
She was winning. In the fraction of a heart-beat she was winning. The spark left Alice’s eyes; there was only blankness there. Myra held to the chair and leaned over it and cried, “… You had the gun. And when she reached the place in the confession where it could not be thought to refer to Mildred, where it must mean you and only you, you pointed the gun at her and tried to shoot her and—and make it look like a suicide. But the gun clicked—it was empty—so the poison was there and you …”
The picture clarified still further. It was as if a spotlight had been turned upon it so brilliant that it was bewildering. “You snatched the poison. You held it in her mouth. It had only to touch the inside of her mouth for a few seconds. And you said you were trying to stop her—when you saw me. …”
She stopped because Alice was going to say something. A kind of ripple went over that fixed and terrible regard. Then Alice said slowly, “That damned locket.”
An old-fashioned locket—black enamel and pearls. Nothing that Alice, streamlined and modern, would buy for herself but something an old woman might hand on to her nephew. Something Webb would recognize.
Alice looked at Myra for a moment with blank wide eyes; she moved slowly, lethargically toward the table, toward the bookshelves. Her body had lost its grace. She looked thicker somehow, lumpish. She looked over her shoulder at Myra and moved aimlessly in another direction. She tossed slurred, half-articulate words over her shoulder. “She’d never have guessed I shot him if she hadn’t seen the locket. He’d told her about it; he’d boasted. He told her he had given it to a woman he was trying to get rid of. In order to marry her—Mildred! He had no intention of marrying her! But he dared to tell me that. He stood there, on the rug. Laughing, but angry too. All he wanted then was to end the scene. Oh, I was making a scene—yes! He hated it. He liked his women to give up gracefully, heartbrokenly. Not me! He met his match in me,” she said and gave a low chuckle.
She wandered in that fumbling, graceless way across the room and back again. All her motions seemed slurred as did her words. She said, “So I shot him. He saw the gun and laughed. He didn’t think I’d do it. He was so sure.”
There was an indescribable tone of gluttony and satisfaction in it. She folded her arms across her body. “Said he preferred Mildred. He said that to me. With my beauty!”
As if the word beauty still had a power, as if it were a wire tightening her consciousness, stirring it to the effort of thought, she straightened. She looked directly at Myra. Her arms dropped. Her lumpish, slurred lethargy disappeared. She said more clearly, “Mildred laughed too, when the gun clicked. The poison was on the table. She had bought it in order to give it to me, if I got the death sentence. I asked her to get it for me. That’s funny! She never believed that I had shot him—until she saw the locket and then she accused me. She cried. She hurried away. But I didn’t think she’d really do anything about it. She hated publicity of any kind. She’d kept her little affair with Jack a secret—I suppose until she could announce an engagement. I didn’t think she’d ever do a thing about it. But then she came back and made me come down to see her. I took the gun. It was here, in my sleeve—you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to hold it there without her seeing it. But what a gullible fool she always was! She said I had to write the confession and then she’d let me take poison because it was more merciful; that was why she was crying. So I pretended to agree. I said I would atone.” She stopped suddenly, with a kind of sullen suspicion, eyeing Myra.
For an instant Myra was afraid that her face, her eyes, some intangible thing in the air between them admitted that she had not heard the terrible talk between the two women.
And Alice said jerkily, “I’m very intelligent, you know. Everybody has always said so. I think very quickly. She wrote the confession. I slumped down in a chair and watched her, behind my hand. I said to write this and write that—but I couldn’t keep it up long. I got the gun out, I intended to put her fingerprints on it. She laughed. The pill was on the table. I shoved it down her throat and held on. She struggled, we both fell against the door.”
She paused and looked at Myra and said suddenly in a suffocated way, “You were there. But I knew that you would bargain, too. So I gave you your price, quickly. I told you I’d give Richard a divorce. Well, I’m not going to. And I’m not going to be sent back to prison for Jack’s murder, or for Mildred’s.”
The momentary look of the Alice Myra had known, the momentary grace and clearness of speech were gone again, suffused and blurred. But one clear thing looked out of the stranger’s eyes and that was murder.
That was the way she looked when she shot Jack.
That was the way she looked when she murdered Mildred.
“Alice,” said Myra with a queer numbed gravity, “You need not have murdered Mildred.”
“Mildred knew I killed him. She accused me; she saw the locket and she said this time I’d get the death sentence …”
“You don’t understand. It is the law. You have been tried once and pardoned. You cannot be tried ever again for Jack’s murder. …”
There was a long silence. Then Alice whispered, “That is the law?”
“Yes.”
Comprehension came into her blank eyes. “You knew it?”
“Yes.”
“Who told you?”
“The Governor.”
“Not even Mildred, not anything, could have made them try me again for killing him?”
“Nothing could have done that. No matter what Mildred said or believed or told. Nothing. You did not need to kill Mildred. You were safe until you killed her.”
“Safe,” said Alice consideringly. “Safe. I’m still safe!”
She was only a few feet from the door into the hall. She whirled around and charged across to the stairway like a clumsy, low-running, but very swift animal. She had the top off the newel post before Myra reached the doorway.
“It’s gone. …” said Myra.
And Alice lifted the gun.
Standing on the steps she looked down at Myra.
That is the way she looked when she killed Jack, thought Myra. That is the way she looked when she killed Mildred.
And that is the way she’ll look when she kills me.
“You’d better go back in the library,” said Alice. “Out on the terrace would be better, really, away from the house.”
Again a physical repulsion touched Myra. She moved backward, away from Alice, because of that really, rather than because of the gun in Alice’s
hand. She reached Richard’s chair again, and it was again like a bulwark. The table light shone on the gun.
As it had on the shell she had removed from it!
She caught her breath and cried, “That gun is not loaded.”
“Oh, yes,” said Alice. “It’s loaded. I loaded it.”
“I don’t believe you! You tried to shoot Mildred and …”
“You are as gullible as she was,” said Alice. “All right. If you want to know: I sent you for brandy, Richard was in the coat room—the gun was in that room in there—behind the door where it fell. I took it and ran across and put it in the newel post. I had to hurry. I had to take the chance, but if Richard saw me I intended to say Mildred had brought it. The trouble was that my own fingerprints were on it, none of Mildred’s. But I had to take the chance and I did.”
“It was not loaded. …”
“… and then I came down, after Richard had said he was determined to divorce me. Remember?” Her mouth twitched but she did not laugh. She came a step nearer. The gun looked enormous in her small hand. “I took the gun out of the post. I took it upstairs. The box of shells was in Richard’s room. I loaded it. I brought it down and put it back in the post, while you were there at the door with Richard. But it doesn’t matter …” She started toward Myra again. All the slurred effect of her motion and speech had gone. She was sharply, precisely articulate.
Talk, thought Myra, talk! Maybe Richard will come back. Maybe somebody will come downstairs. Maybe …
She said, “You’d be a fool to shoot me, Alice. Everybody will hear you. Everybody will know …”
“I intend to put your fingerprints on it. You have cause for suicide. You’re in love with Richard and now I’ve come back. Oh, it’s a chance,” she said. “But otherwise I have no chance at all. You’ll tell them …”
“You’d have been safe if you hadn’t killed Mildred. Nobody can try you for killing Jack. All that you told me, all that I know, can’t make them try you again …”
Alice’s quiet, precise advance stopped. She looked at Myra. She looked at the gun.
And the creature of fury that possessed her, the blind and lethal obsession of rage, disappeared, vanished, dropped back like a primeval beast into its native slime.
Alice herself looked up brightly. Her beauty was back, her loveliness, her grace—if memory had not stamped another visage there.
She said in her normal, high and musical voice, “Why, I’m still safe!” She laughed. She turned the gun and looked at it. “I’m still safe! Nobody can touch me. You least of all.”
She gave a kind of shrug. She straightened up again, slim and graceful. She touched her hair, put the gun down beside her on the table and adjusted the belt of her dressing gown.
“Mildred,” she said, “is a suicide. There’s absolute proof of it—the letter, the poison, your own first and original corroboration of what I told them. You can tell them anything you want to, now, but they’ll never believe it. You see, I had no motive for killing Mildred.”
“You had a motive. You didn’t know that you could not be tried again for Jack’s murder. …”
“So you say,” said Alice lightly and pleasantly. “But look at the thing reasonably, Myra. Who will believe you? They will only say that you want Richard, that you are trying to discredit me, that you are accusing me as Webb once accused me. … Why, Myra, you haven’t got a thing against me that anybody in the world will believe!”
She smoothed her golden hair and pulled up her lovely slender body so its graceful lines were firm and triumphant.
Myra said slowly, “Alice, if you think for a second that I’ll not tell them the truth …”
“You can’t do a thing to me. If you accuse me, you will only turn Richard against you. Richard, Sam, Tim—everybody. Not one of them will believe you.”
“Do you really think I’ll let you go? You … Why, you’re like a snake! You’re horrible. You’ve killed two people … !”
“Go ahead. Accuse me. You’ll only lose Richard! And you’ll lose him anyway. I’ll see to that. Look at me …” said Alice and preened.
Myra said, “I’ve got to tell him. How would I dare not to tell him? It would be like letting a tiger loose to prey …”
“Tell him, if you like. I’m safe.” She glanced at the gun and said, “I’m not going to hurt you, Myra. Because you can’t hurt me.”
As if to prove the truth of her words she walked across the room, still preening, still conscious of her body and its beauty. Myra thought, I’ll take the gun. I’ll tell her she must confess.
But Alice was watchful of the gun, too, surreptitiously, pretending not to be aware of it. Myra could not have reached it before Alice.
Alice said airily, “Why don’t you threaten me with the gun, Myra? Haven’t you got the courage? You’d shoot a snake, couldn’t you? You’d shoot a tiger—that’s what you called me! They’d say you shot me from jealousy. You’d be tried for murder.”
“No, I’m not going to do that,” said Myra, “but there’s law, there’s …” She stopped as she remembered someone who was there, someone who knew the law, someone who was Richard’s friend. “I’m going to call Sam. He’ll know what to do.”
For an instant a small spark of anxiety came into Alice’s eyes, then it cleared. “I’m safe. Nobody can do anything to me. Call him. Tell him!”
“Yes,” said Myra, “I’m going to.”
She moved from the chair which had been like a brace and a shield and walked across the room. Alice moved nearer to the table. She watched half incredulously. But she did not touch the gun.
Myra turned; the slight motionless figure in pink did not seem to move. Another step and another and there was still no sound of motion from the library. And suddenly she reached the hall above. She followed it around the turn; she stopped at Sam’s door. But there a protecting sense of unreality left her; her voice was like a sob, her hands flung the door wide.
Sam was awake. The light in the hall outlined her. He cried softly, “Myra! What is it? Has the district attorney come?”
“Sam, come downstairs. Hurry …”
“What … ?”
“Alice killed Mildred. She killed Jack.”
“What are you saying?”
“It is the truth, Sam. She told me.”
He was out of bed, a dim, thin figure in pajamas. He caught her wrist. “Where is she? Where is Alice?”
“In the library. Sam, she killed them both. She’ll hurt Richard. She’s different, she’s terrible … Sam, help me …” Her voice was shaking; she was incoherent. Sam released her wrist. He snatched up a coat and flung it around him. He took her by the arm and they were in the hall. They were hurrying, running. Her breath stung her throat.
He went down the stairs first. He ran into the library and then brought up short.
Alice was sitting again in the ruby-red chair. She was composed and quiet.
There was no faint resemblance to the woman Myra had seen in her. She looked up quietly at Sam.
He leaned suddenly against the table. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He gave a shaky laugh. “Thank God, you’re all right, Alice,” he said. “I didn’t know what had happened!”
Alice said, “I’m so glad you are here, Sam. Myra is hysterical. She’s saying terrible things. I’m sorry for her. For her own sake, Sam, please try to quiet her.”
Sam wiped his forehead again. “I’m sorry for Myra too,” he said. “But I’m not going to let her hurt you.”
CHAPTER 21
AND THERE WAS NOT one scrap of proof.
Not one written word, not one shred of evidence. No one besides herself had heard Alice’s words and Alice would not have uttered those words if she had not already believed that Myra knew the truth; if Alice had not thought at once, when she discovered Myra so near in the very moment when Mildred died. Danger! Danger from Myra; Myra has heard; Myra knows the truth! And if, with swift and ugly shrewdness, Alice had not put herself in M
yra’s place and reasoned what she would have done with a weapon so conveniently placed in her hands.
She had offered instantly the price she would have exacted had she been Myra. She had broken into Myra’s own brief story of the few things she had really heard and seen, to offer that price, to say quickly, instantly, almost in so many words, I’ll give you a divorce—only keep quiet. Don’t tell. It’s easier that way, quicker that way, less likely to turn Richard against you than to accuse his wife of two murders. Much less trouble all the way around! It seemed incredible to Myra now that she had not recognized that offer. Instead, she had only thought, bewildered, how out of place and wrong such a talk was at that moment.
And then later, when the police had gone, with an almost equally outré insistence upon discussion of a divorce, Alice had flatly and finally retracted her offer because she felt safe. Because she began to believe that Myra, really, knew nothing. And then the account of the brief little meeting Myra had had with Mildred (Mildred who was heartbroken by the discovery of Alice’s imperfection, distraught at the realization that the woman she loved best in the world had killed the man she loved), the brief account of that meeting had frightened Alice again, had shaken her out of her assuredness. “You didn’t tell me,” she’d said, and Myra, unaware of the significance that Alice might read into her words, distracted by Richard’s return and the sound of his entrance, had answered, “I’ve not told anyone.”
So, later: “You threatened me,” said Alice.
It was a clearly marked path. So clear that Sam must recognize it, must see the truth as truth. She would tell him. She would show him. She would need no other proof, thought Myra swiftly.
He had wrapped his coat around him and was sitting on the arm of a chair, lighting a cigarette, his face still angry and intent.
But Alice had observed the growing confidence in Myra’s face. It was as if she had followed Myra’s thought and waited for the exact instant of attack. She took a quick breath and said, “Sam, Myra says that I killed Jack. She says that she’s going to tell everyone that she listened to everything Mildred said to me. She’s going to say that I made Mildred write that letter and then I made her take the poison.” She lifted her shoulders in a kind of helpless shrug and said, “I know how it sounds. Nobody could have made Mildred do that. But—I’ve suffered so from the terrible accusation that Webb made …”
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