“That’s, what made Myra think of it,” said Sam and turned toward Myra. “Listen, Myra. You’re only hurting yourself …”
“It is the truth,” cried Myra. “Alice admitted it. She told everything …”
“You’re having a brainstorm! If you’ll just forget this and …”
“You’ve got to believe me. She’s dangerous. She has murdered two people …”
“Myra!” He got up and came toward her. “Stop that!”
“Alice was in love with Jack. He was going to leave her. She dictated Mildred’s confession. Mildred brought the poison for Alice to take and Alice put it in her mouth. …”
“Mildred took the poison herself,” said Alice.
Sam cried, “This is fantastic! Alice couldn’t have made Mildred take poison. …”
“Mildred knew Alice had killed Jack. Oh, you must listen, Sam! She told Alice she had to atone, she had to take poison, or go to trial. Alice believed her. She didn’t know that she couldn’t be tried! She promised to sign a confession if Mildred would write it.”
Sam seized her hands and she wrenched them away from him. And knew with a kind of sickening quake that of the two, it was she who seemed hysterical and irresponsible, wild and erratic in her look and her words, and that Alice was composed and quiet and utterly convincing in that composure.
And safe.
Sam said sternly, “You’ve got to stop that, Myra.”
“But she admitted it. She told me everything. …”
“Myra, be reasonable.” Alice’s high lovely voice was sad but unperturbed. “If I had done such terrible things would I have told you? Would I have told anybody? Myra, try to pull yourself together. Everybody loses some time. I know it sounds trite, I know that just now you think you’ll never forget Richard, but try to be a good loser. Try to be game. Sam and I won’t tell Richard any of this. Let him remember you as he knew you. Not …”
“I haven’t lost,” said Myra, suddenly cool. For there was the gun on the table, gleaming in the light.
Sam had not yet seen it. It lay behind the lilies Mildred had brought. Myra avoided Sam, who would have stopped her as if she intended to do Alice some physical injury, and went to the table. “There’s the gun. Alice hid it in the newel post. She hid it the night she shot Jack.”
Sam had come to her side. He stared at the gun, his face a white, sharp mask of concentration. “It is the gun! At least it looks like it!” he cried.
A flicker of something like credulity touched his face. Myra said swiftly, “She put it in the newel post. The top is loose. She—she must have hidden it, held it so Webb did not see it. Yes, yes, that’s what you did.” She turned to Alice. “You had on a long, full white skirt. You knew the top was loose; you held the gun so Webb could not see it. You ran into the hall when he told you to phone for the police. He went to the curtains at the other end of the room. He could not see you. You lifted the top of the post, dropped the gun there then ran to the phone. And nobody ever knew until …”
Alice said, “Myra, where did you get the gun? Did Mildred leave it in that room? Did you take it and hide it, so as to accuse me? Even then—in the very moment when a woman was dying—did you think of that?” The faint, half-dawning credulity in Sam’s face flickered out. He picked up the gun.
“It’s loaded,” said Myra quickly. “Alice loaded it …” She looked at Alice and saw by the unperturbed and calm look in her brown eyes that it was not loaded. What had she done with the shells? Thrown them out, across the terrace, into the rain and darkness while Myra went to summon Sam?
Sam said, “Where did this gun come from, Myra?”
“It was in the post. I found it. I …”
Alice said, “First you accuse me, now you say that you found it. Oh, Myra, Myra—you’ve lost! But lose with dignity, my dear. Lose with courage. Don’t make it impossible for us ever to want to see you again. Don’t destroy the friendship and the memory Richard and—and I too, would want to hold for you. Sam, make her go to bed. Give her a sedative. Keep this from Richard. …”
Myra turned desperately to Sam. “You must listen. Even if you think I’m hysterical and wild, listen to me. Listen to the whole story. …”
“You’ve lost your head,” said Sam. “I’ll take care of this gun and …”
“Her fingerprints are on it. They must be on it,” cried Myra suddenly.
He held the gun in his hand, nevertheless. He said, “You must not talk like this, Myra. It is a criminal act. You are making a completely baseless and very terrible accusation.”
“But it is true …”
He turned to Alice. “I’m sorry you’ve had this to go through, Alice. But don’t let it worry you. Nobody for a moment will believe Myra. The facts of Manders’ murder are now too well established. She’ll see that when she’s had time to think …”
Richard opened the front door and came quickly and happily along the hall. He was whistling, and the gay, clear sound seemed to belong to another world. With a surge of returning confidence, Myra started toward him. And this time Sam caught her wrist and held it as if his own hand were made of steel. He cried: “You’re a fool if you try this with Dick. For God’s sake, Myra, think! For your own pride, don’t let him see you like this.”
Richard came to the door. “Has the district attorney got here?” he asked.
“No …” said Sam and tightened his hold on Myra. Richard, too full of his own news to sense immediately anything strange in their attitudes, anything wrong in the room, went on hurriedly, “Everything’s over! The district attorney got to the police station just as I did. He’s coming here to take a look but the case is closed. All they wanted me for was to ask me about the gun.” He looked at Myra and explained, “Webb did know something of it. You were right. He found the shell that you buried. Willie apparently followed you and dug it up and Webb happened upon it in the path. He said his foot struck it and he looked at it and knew it had no business there, and that somebody had very recently buried it. So he leaped to the right conclusion that somebody had had that gun and …” He glanced around and said, “Golly, it’s cold in here. Why don’t you build up the fire?”
He went to the fireplace and stooped over to take the tongs.
Alice said softly, “The gun is here. Myra had it …”
Sam said, holding her, “Myra, for your own sake …”
Richard had heard neither of them. Richard had not reached for the tongs. Richard, in fact, was suddenly and curiously immobile, as if frozen, staring downward.
All of them perhaps were aware of that sudden fixed stillness.
And then he straightened.
He turned around and faced them.
His face was as changed as if a different man stood before them, an older man, at once saddened and fearful. He looked swiftly around the room. There was a terrible apprehension in his eyes. He looked at Alice and said, “What have you done now?”
He came to her and cried in white, grim anger and fear, “What have you done? Tell me.”
She moved back in the chair as if it were a lair. Her eyes were blank and sullen.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Don’t lie! When did you smash the cupid? Before”—he stopped and seemed to brace himself against the impact of his own words and said—“before Mildred’s death? Or after … ?”
“No, no! Afterward—I didn’t hurt her—I didn’t touch her. …”
“Alice, tell me the truth. I know you when you are like this. …”
She moved her head slowly, sluggishly, from side to side. He turned to Sam. His face was drawn and white with the fear he had not spoken until then. His eyes had still that look of horror, of grim and terrible apprehension. “Has she hurt anybody, Sam? She’ll do anything when she’s like this. She’s like a woman possessed. But I thought she’d learned to control it. I thought … Did she kill Mildred? Tell me the truth.”
Sam did not reply. His hand on Myra’s wrist relaxed. It became complete
ly slack and nerveless and dropped away. Myra looked at him, and he was looking at Alice with utter, stunned revulsion in his face.
She saw that and knew.
She knew what she would see when she looked at Alice. She knew that Alice was powerless then to check or conceal her own devouring fury.
Richard saw it too. He said, “For God’s sake, Alice …”
Myra looked at Alice then and that other creature had come into possession again.
There was a strange, deep pause as if the room held its breath.
And Sam said in a numb and icy voice, “I always wondered about that. The five slugs. Five slugs into him where one would have been enough. I wondered who could have been capable of such rage, such a passion of vindictive fury.” He paused and said as gravely as a judge pronouncing a death sentence, “You killed Manders. You shot him. You looked like that when you did it.”
There was complete conviction in his voice. There was the full power and recognition of truth.
Alice got up clumsily, humped and sluggish. She cried in that slurred and coarsened voice, “I’m glad I killed him!” She whirled upon Richard, “You did this to me! You made them see the truth! I’ll kill you, too!” she cried in blind and obsessed anger and flung herself upon him. He caught her. Sam ran toward them and she twisted out of Richard’s grasp and clawed at Sam.
“Hold her hands,” cried Richard. “Catch her hands …”
Someone had entered the hall, had come along it toward the library, had stopped in the doorway. Myra was distinctly aware of it, but she could not look, could not take her sickened gaze from that terrible searing instant of struggle.
It suddenly stopped. Alice, panting, stood quite still in Sam’s grasp.
She drew herself up. She lifted a piteous, beautiful face toward Sam. She said in her own high and musical voice, “Sam, you are my friend.”
Sam’s hand dropped. He stepped back, staring at her. Richard said warningly, “Look out …”
And Alice, with heartbreak in her beautiful face and in her voice said, “They are both against me, Sam. My husband and Myra—they want to get rid of me. They’ve planned and plotted … Oh, Sam …” Richard caught her arms and with a sudden twist she escaped Richard’s hold and ran to Sam and put her arms up toward him. “Sam, you’ve always loved me. Haven’t you, Sam? I’ve seen it in your face, in yours eyes. I need you now. I need you.”
Her arms went up around his neck and he pulled them down and held her rigidly away from him. Slowly, with sad and desolate conviction in his voice, he said, “I don’t love you. Nobody could love you. Not as you really are …”
The figure in the doorway was utterly still. Myra realized in some remote awareness that it had stood immobile for some time, listening. Alice cried piteously, “Don’t desert me, Sam, don’t …”
Her blank brown eyes sought his and found, perhaps, adamant judgment. She looked around and saw the gun where Sam had left it on the table. Her eyes fastened for an instant upon it.
Her hair had become disheveled. She put up her hand to smooth back the golden flying strands. Her pink, lacy dressing gown was in disorder. She pulled it about her, adjusted the belt. She was beautiful in that instant. Sam started forward. Richard cried, “Alice, don’t!”
Alice said in that sad and broken voice, “If Richard does not love me, if you, Sam, have no faith in me, I cannot live—there’s nothing left in life for me. …”
She pointed the gun at her heart, and Myra thought swiftly, she’s too cool, too sure. She knows exactly what she’s doing. There’s some motive.
Then she knew it for what it was, an appeal for Sam’s sympathy, a frantic and clumsy pretense with an empty gun, designed to frighten Sam and Richard.
Sam swayed forward and stopped. The figure in the doorway dashed into the room and a strange voice shouted, “For God’s sake, take it away from her … !” And Alice pulled the trigger.
But the gun was not empty. A crash of sound broke over them like a wave. It filled the air with chaos, with a choking smell of powder.
For a second Alice did not move. A look of dazed bewilderment, of disbelief, was on her face. Then she lowered her hand very slowly. She said, “But I unloaded it—I took out the shells—I put them in the red chair. …”
Still with that stunned, sleepwalking look she turned. She dropped the gun which fell, hard and heavy, upon the floor. She moved past the man, the strange man, the newcomer in overcoat and hat who had stood there watching. She went into the hall very slowly, tentatively, somehow, one step after the other. She reached the room where Mildred died and where her own portrait hung.
Richard and Sam ran after her. The tall man, the stranger, said, “But she killed Manders. She must have killed that woman tonight. She murdered them both. …”
He too, ran, into the hall.
Something of the spell of horror held Myra. She could not breathe; the air choked her. She went to the French door. She opened it with awkward, fumbling hands. The fresh cold air of dawn swept into the room and carried away the smell of smoke fumes. Myra leaned against the casing of the door and let the chill, clean air touch her face.
After a long time Richard came back into the room. He stood in silence for a moment, an older Richard, white and drawn. Then he went to the ruby-red chair and lifted the cushion. She watched him draw out the shells that lay there.
“Three,” he said, counting, “four, five.” His hand sought all around the chair again. He replaced the cushion. “Only five … She didn’t mean to kill herself. She used to threaten it; she never meant it. I thought tonight it was only another pretense. I thought the gun was empty. So did she. But she left one shell.”
Sam came to the door. “The district attorney heard almost the whole thing, Dick. He’ll do everything that’s necessary. And I—so will I …”
He came to Richard and put his hand for a moment on his shoulder. Silently, Richard showed him the shells. Sam said, “Five—she thought the gun wasn’t loaded. She thought she’d got them all out.”
The strange man came into the doorway again. He had taken off his hat. He said heavily, “Putnam, I’ll have to have some statements—the whole story.”
“All right,” said Sam. “We’ll tell you everything. But can you give us a few minutes?”
The district attorney’s eyes were understanding. “Certainly, certainly … I heard her confess, you know. I’d have had to get a death sentence. Believe me, it is better this way. Better for her …”
“Yes,” said Sam. “Yes …”
The district attorney went back into the hall. Someone was running down the stairs. Tim swung around the newel post and ran across the hall. “I head a shot! what … ?” His voice stopped.
Sam said, “I’ll tell him. …”
Richard said, “I was afraid she’d killed him. I was afraid she had killed Mildred. But I went to see the doctor. I asked him if it could be murder. He convinced me—against my instinct.”
“Perhaps you wanted to believe she didn’t do it. God knows, I didn’t want to believe. …” Sam took the shells from Richard’s hand and went slowly away, solemnly, his head bent, thinking perhaps of the sentence he, himself, had pronounced.
Low voices in the ivory-and-gold room seemed very remote, far away, in another world.
Richard stood for a moment quite still, then he came slowly toward Myra and stopped beside her in the doorway, looking out across the terrace.
The rain had gone, the sky was lightening, a lemon-colored rim upon the horizon promised coming dawn. The Sound was like a silver ribbon, very still, very tranquil below them, but a morning breeze drifted gently upward across rain-wet lawns. It, too, was clean, washed and fresh. It, too, held a promise.
They stood without speaking, while the day began.
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copyright © 1946 by The Curtis Publishing Company
copyright © 1947 by Mignon G. Eberhart
copyright in Canada, 1947 by Mignon G. Eberhart
cover design by Heidi North
978-1-4532-5734-0
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Another Woman's House Page 22