The velvet hand

by Helen Reilly

  “Oh, just a handsome boy who seems to have run off with this—with Miss Haven’s cousin, and they’re worried.” “Too bad,” the man said in a bored tone. “May I have some coffee?”

  “Of course, Sweetie.”

  Eleanor Oaks poured, added sugar and cream, and rose dismissingly, coldly formal. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cavanaugh. Best of luck. Is this young woman”—her eyes went over Kit from head to foot taking in the black suit, its cut and quality, the pumps and stockings, gloves, purse, face and hair —‘your cousin?”

  “No,” Hugo said, “and thanks. Don’t bother, we’ll let ourselves out.”

  Kit and Hugo didn’t speak in the hall or in the elevator. They quarreled under the canopy outside the revolving door while they waited for a cab. “Say it,” Kit said, “go on and say it, and stop trying to make me feel like a student called up before the dean for a tongue lashing.”

  Hugo lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the swirling gutter. “All right. What was the point of antagonizing that woman?”

  Kit already regretted her interruption in Eleanor Oaks’s living room. “All I could think of was Libby, and that you were taking too much time.”

  Hugo picked it up from there. “And that I was basking in the warmth of Miss Oaks’s passing interest in anything in trousers while you sat by attracting as much attention as yesterday’s Times”

  Kit was stung. “That will cover it, Hugo. It’s terribly nice to feel I’m understood, that I haven’t any secrets from you. I don’t believe that that beating around the bush you were doing would have gotten you anywhere.”

  He grinned fragmentarily. “You believe in using an ax. It’s a good weapon unless your eye is off, and then you’re liable to remove your foot. That’s not the way to handle women comfortably settled without portfolio in Park Avenue apartments—particularly,” his face sobered, “when they turn out to have criminal records.”

  At her sharp upward glance, her, “What?” he nodded. “Ex-actress. Not Broadway, Newark and Poughkeepsie. I remember it quite well; you’re a little too young. The wife of Eleanor Oaks’s leading man died under suspicious circumstances. I think it was sleeping pills. The husband was convicted and got life. She got off. We’ll have to. .

  He stopped talking. Park Avenue under the beating rain, cars going past, cars drawn to the curb . . . Hugo’s gaze was riveted on a car near the corner. It was a yellow convertible with a black top. He left Kit, went over to the doorman, talked to him for a moment, and came back.

  The yellow convertible with the black top belonged to Eleanor Oaks.

  They gazed at each other. Eleanor Oaks had lied about the degree of her intimacy with Tony Wilder, as she had lied about not knowing his address, which she had given to Kit earlier. She hadn’t lied to them, she had lied for the benefit of the man she called Sweetie who had come silently and suddenly into that room up there.

  The shadows into which Libby had disappeared were no longer completely impenetrable. They stirred. Ugly shapes moved in them. . . .

  “It would be interesting to know who Sweetie is,” Hugo murmured, a hand on Kit’s arm. The doorman was whistling up an oncoming cab.

  Kit didn’t answer. She was staring across the avenue. She said. “Over there, Hugo, near the church. I think— yes, I’m right. William is in that green taxi, the one parked behind the laundry truck.”

  V

  “Drink up, my lad, drink up, and I’ll buy you another.” “Oh, no,” William protested, “I couldn’t really, Mr. Cavanaugh, not two cocktails in the middle of the day.” “You, Kit?” Kit said please. Hugo signaled the barman. The little restaurant on Fifty-seventh Street wasn’t crowded. It was too early. They weren’t at the bar, they were in a booth; it was easier to talk there. They had joined William in his parked taxi across the street from Eleanor Oaks’s apartment and come straight here. William had been frightened at being discovered, and then defiant. Stammering, his plump cheeks ashen, his near-sighted dark eyes blinking nervously behind rimless glasses, he admitted having followed Kit to the Kelleston Street house and then uptown. “I waited in Grand Central until your train came in. I thought maybe you’d find Libby, that I could—could see her.”

  The way his face broke up at the mention of Libby was pitiful. Kit was astounded. William was in love with Libby, and he had actually had hopes, until the other night. She studied him incredulously. The liquor had loosened his tongue. He said that Libby had been sweet to him during the last few months, they had gone for walks on week-ends and she had let him take her places, to the movies in Den-field and to the women’s club dance. He had figured maybe that, in time, if he got a better job and made more money. . .

  The poor idiot, Kit thought compassionately, watching the slump of his round-shouldered body, his working mouth, the blind movements of his hands. And yet the vanity of men. William had about as much charm as a turnip, he had neither brains nor looks nor personality, and he certainly couldn’t support a wife. Libby had accepted his following her around like a faithful dog because he had done it ever since she was a child. It meant nothing to her.

  William had another confession to make. He had been in Denfield on the night Libby left with Tony Wilder. Libby had said she wanted to see the new musical hit Tell Me Tomorrow and he had managed to get tickets for it. “I wanted to tell her, I thought she’d be pleased.” He had stopped for a sandwich and a cup of coffee in the village and he must have just missed her. She was gone when he reached the house.

  “What time was that?” Hugo asked, and William said it was a little after half-past nine.

  “Your aunt said she took a sleeping pill and was dead to the world. How did you get in?”

  “The front door was open.”

  “Do you mean open or unlocked?”

  “It was partway open and the hghts were on in the hall and the living room but Libby wasn’t there.”

  Kit made circles with the foot of her glass on the red-and-white checked cloth. Easy to picture what had happened. Libby stealing down the stairs with Tony Wilder carrying her suitcase—she wouldn’t have wanted to rouse Miriam, had closed the front door softly and incompletely —you had to give the door a good strong pull to make it stay shut.

  Hugo went on interrogating William, but he had nothing more to tell them. He knew his aunt was asleep, he had heard her snoring. He left after a little while to catch his train back, turning off most of the lights and locking the front door behind him. No, he hadn’t seen anything of a yellow convertible on his way to the house.

  Kit finished her drink. If William hadn’t closed the front door and turned off most of the fights the alarm would have been raised much sooner. When Agnes came in the morning she would have at once known there was something wrong. William hadn’t meant any harm—or had he? . . . And what about Hugo? If a man is going to run off with a girl he wouldn’t leave notations on his intention lying around. Why had Hugo been searching Wilder’s bureau and for what? Darkness again. Fog. The sense of being loose from moorings, in a strange element with no horizon. . . .

  Hugo was at the phone. He came back. There was no news. Kit reached for her gloves and purse. “I’m going to my place and pnck a bag and go up to Denfield. When Libby does call, she’ll call there.” She parted from the two men on the pavement outside. William tramped off, his shoulders hunched, his head down. Hugo put Kit into a cab. He had to get to the office. “I’m going to have our friends, the divine Eleanor and Sweetie, looked into. I’ll ring you later.”

  “George,” Kit exclaimed, sitting forward on the edge of the seat. “George ought to know—he was a newspaperman for years before he went into publicity.”

  “Oh, George.”

  Hugo stared at her woodenly and shut the door.

  When Kit reached the Ninetieth Street apartment she found Anita Stewart just turning away from the door, small and graceful in a black silk suit and a smart hat. Anita had lived across from them in Denfield for five years and they were all fond of her. She knew about Li
bby, she had talked to Philip over the phone. “She’s a bad girl to worry him like this, Kit.” Anita gave her auburn head a shake.

  Kit had thought earlier that her uncle and Anita might marry. It would be an eminently suitable match, particularly now that Philip had money. A widow with one son, Anita had difficulty stretching her income, but apparently marriage hadn’t occurred to either of them.

  Anita had never heard of Tony Wilder. “But I knew there was someone,” she said. “Libby has changed in the last few months, she’s been different, unsettled, not happy like she used to be. You could see she had something on her mind. I suppose it was this man, Wilder. . . . Even if you’d known about him I don’t believe you could have done anything. Libby has a will of her own—very much a will of her own. Cheer up, the man may turn out much better than you expect.”

  Kit started throwing things into a suitcase. “If only she’d let us know where she is. It’s not hearing that’s the worst.

  Suppose she’s found out something terrible—perhaps that Wilder is already married, that he already has a wife . . . She might have left him in some strange place, might have . . .” Kit buried her face in her hands.

  Anita was dismayed. “Kit, stop torturing yourself.”

  “Yes,” Kit raised her head and blinked the tears from her eyes, “I know I’m being a fool. But. .

  George Corey came in then. He had been calling her all morning. George never got excited; he pooh-poohed Kit’s alarm. He remembered Wilder perfectly from Daisy Ballentine’s party. “But why the fuss, pet? He’s not your dish, or mine either—but we’re not Libby.” He opened his eyes at the mention of Eleanor Oaks. “You went to her apartment, Kit? You shouldn’t have.” To say that Eleanor Oaks was on the shady side was putting it mildly. He remembered the case very well. She had been acquitted. He didn’t know who Sweetie was, but he’d try to find out.

  Kit called Denfield then. Still no word. The next train wasn’t until three and George insisted on driving them up. “What’s the use of being your own boss if you can’t take an afternoon off? Get your things on, girls.”

  It was two when they left New York, twenty minutes of four when they reached Denfield. Kit dozed a good part of the way, her head against George’s shoulder. It was a surprisingly comfortable place to have it. Dropping Anita at her gate—she said she’d be over later—George drove on up the hill. The rain was over and the sky was patched with blue. A shaft of sunlight turned the house a dazzling white beyond the fresh green of the maples just coming into leaf. Everything was so usual, so orderly, it must be all right. Libby had phoned, or there had been a letter . . .

  Kit couldn’t wait to get inside. She jumped out of the car before George brought it to a full stop. Her uncle was in the hall. One glance at his face was enough. Libby hadn’t telephoned. There was no letter. There was nothing.

  Black anger engulfed Kit. If she could have gotten hold of Libby then she would have shaken, slapped her. She had no business to do this to them, she was a horrid, ungrateful, cold-hearted girl. She went upstairs and showered and changed into gray chambray and low heels, miserably aware that her anger was a defense mechanism, an outlet for stretched nerves.

  When she came down at five o’clock, Philip, looking better, was talking to Anita in the living room. Anita was good for him. To Kit’s surprise, William was there, busily emptying ash trays and trying to make himself small and useful. He said humbly, “I hope I’m not in the way, Kit, I got the afternoon off.”

  George came in from the pantry with cocktails; he knew his way around the house. “Line forms on the right. No shoving.” He was carefully cheerful, but he couldn’t budge the pall that hung over them. Voices were low and there were gaps in the talk on indifferent topics. They were all waiting for the phone to ring, listening for the sound of it, or for the front door to open and Libby to walk in.

  At a little before six the front door did open. But it wasn’t Libby, it was Hugo. Hugo had found out certain things. The yellow convertible belonging to Eleanor Oaks had been out of the garage all Monday night. She hadn’t used it herself. According to the door and elevator men she had been playing bridge in her apartment with guests. The convertible had been returned during the small hours; it was parked at the curb on Tuesday morning. Granting that Libby had driven off with Tony Wilder in the yellow convertible, as a means of tracing her present whereabouts it was a washout. So much for that. Hugo said that the name of the man who had appeared so silently in Eleanor Oaks’s living room while they were there was Samuel Pedrick.

  Anita was directly across the room from Kit, sitting in a corner of the couch, cocktail glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She had started to lean forward to deposit ash in the ash tray on the coffee table. As Hugo spoke Pedrick’s name her elbows and head went sharply back in an involuntary gesture of recoil and her face became absolutely still, as though her breathing had stopped.

  Anita knew Pedrick. Kit was convinced of it.

  Anita denied knowing him. In an instant she was herself again, gracious and self-contained, showing nothing but surprise that Kit should ask. “Know Mr. Pedrick, Kit?” she shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Kit would have thought she had dreamed Anita’s reaction, except for one thing. Miriam had come downstairs. She was standing in the doorway and Kit caught a glimpse of her face in a mirror. She was gazing at Anita with a hard, piercing stare. Undoubtedly Miriam had seen what she had seen. . . .

  It wasn’t Miriam who spoke, it was George. He let out a low whistle. “Pedrick, Samuel E. Pedrick—so he’s Eleanor’s boyfriend. Well, well.” He said that the police had had an eye on Pedrick for quite a while; he was suspected of being the power behind the throne in a number of rackets, gambling, crooked promotions, dope, but he was smart and so far they hadn’t been able to pin anything on him.

  Anita listened calmly, sipping her drink. Miriam had gone into the dining room. The breeze through the windows was mild and there was a handful of unnecessary fire on the hearth, but Kit felt cold. Through Pedrick to Eleanor Oaks to Tony Wilder, Wilder with Libby’s hand in his . . . There was a sudden loud commotion outside. Strange voices shouted. Kit stumbled to her feet.

  VI

  It wasn’t Libby. The commotion outside had nothing to do with Libby, or rather it had, but indirectly. Philip said wearily, “It’s those damn jackanapes. .

  Early in the day, in an attempt to put his worry about Libby into a separate part of his mind and turn the key on it, Philip had shut himself up in his study and tackled the fourth chapter of his new book. Ordinarily his closed door was an impassible barrier; there was a general impression in the household that he would shoot to kill anyone who attempted to disturb him when he was thundering on his typewriter. He hadn’t been proof against the incursion.

  The maid had come with a message that there was a man outside with a thousand bridal-wreath bushes, and that he wanted to plant them. Philip said, “Tell him to go away,” and the maid said, “I did, and he won’t.” She was right, the nurseryman was adamant. He produced a signed order from Libby, who had gotten as far as to have decided where the bridal wreaths would go; she wanted them at the edge of the woods beyond the apple orchard. As the bushes would have to be paid for in any case, Philip had shrugged his shoulders. Whereupon a small army of men had taken over with shovels and picks and tarpaulins and hoses.

  Philip said moodily, “They were supposed to be occupied some distance away; they seemed to be in and out of the house and immediately under the windows all afternoon, yodeling and shouting to each other.” He had finally hurled the five pages he had managed to ruin into the trash basket. He started to say, “We’ll be in the poor-house—” and didn’t complete the usual formula of “—if I can’t get my work done.” It was continually coming to him as a fresh surprise that his cousin’s money was in the bank and he was no longer dependent on his typewriter.

  Miriam had heard the men. She said in a shocked voice, “But a thousand bridal wreaths, and
potted at that— really.”

  “She could have ordered a hundred thousand if she’d wanted them,” Philip growled.

  “Of course,” Miriam murmured placatingly. “But Libby was always so careful.”

  Kit eyed her aunt coldly. Libby had run the house since she was eighteen and Libby had had to be careful. In the old days she had pored over the bills with a worried frown, deploring the luxuries Miriam insisted on having. “Uncle will have a fit when he sees these.” Philip invariably did have a fit, but he was hopelessly extravagant himself and after a stem lecture on stringent economy things would fall back into the same mt. It was Libby who had kept the house running. If it hadn’t been for her there wouldn’t have been any electric light or heat and Philip would probably have perished at his typewriter, croaking hoarsely just before the end that he couldn’t understand why dinner was late.

  Anita was getting up to go, slender and girlish in a jersey and skirt and flats, and as outwardly composed as when she had entered the house. Kit gazed at her with somber eyes. Why had she denied knowing Pedrick when she so obviously did—or if she didn’t actually know him his name most certainly meant something to her. What could her connection with Pedrick be? It was almost impossible to associate Anita, in any capacity, with that skull-like bird of the night. She was a fastidious creature. Philip was escorting her to the gate. Kit watched her slight figure disappear under the maples with a puzzled frown.

  George and Hugo stayed for dinner. It was a silent meal, except for Miriam. She was unexpectedly voluble, talked more than she usually did. “I don’t know when I’ve felt so well. A few days in bed always put me on my feet—and then, it’s odd, but when one’s called upon for strength it always seems forthcoming.”

  Sternly corseted and carefully made up she looked almost handsome. William smiled at her dutifully. It was a painful smile. A rejected William, Kit thought, and his vicariously rejected aunt. . . Beneath sanctimony it seemed to her that Miriam was finding a good deal of satisfaction in Libby’s strange runaway marriage. “Now if Libby had been sensible and chosen William . . she could almost hear her aunt saying it aloud.