The pajamas did not take up much room when folded so he took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and slid the garment around under one arm where it would be out of the way. Then he went downstairs and waited by the coupé until Crombie came back from Carver’s cottage.
“Let’s go eat,” he said.
“Huh?” Crombie said, surprised.
“I don’t want to get involved here,” Holland explained. “We can’t do anything more until it’s almost dark and I’d just as soon not sit around trying to be polite.”
They ate at a diner on the Post Road and when they came back daylight was giving away to darkness. The wind was still strong but the sky had begun to clear as the dusk deepened, though the visibility was still bad except along the western horizon.
Apparently dinner was just over, for Baldwin and Frances were standing by the front door looking out at the whitecaps. Crombie said, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” under his breath and moved toward them. Holland went into the living-room where Tracy sat beside Mrs. Allenby.
“Where’d you go?” the old lady said. “Thought you’d be here for dinner.”
“We weren’t invited.”
“Bosh.”
Holland saw Crombie move along the hall with Frances and Arthur. Then he walked over to Tracy who, after her first surprised glance, had kept her eyes averted. He took her hand and pulled gently upward.
“I’d like to talk to you a minute,” he said, “if Mrs. Allenby will excuse us.”
“Run along,” the woman said. “Run along.”
Tracy came to her feet hesitantly, and Holland kept the pressure on her arm, steering her into the hall, across the front porch, and down onto the windswept lawn. When he let go of her arm she stood quietly a moment.
Then, not looking at him, her voice wooden, she said, “Why did you have to come back, John?”
“Because I found out you’re not a jinx,” he said. “I’m going to prove it, and you’re going to help.”
She took a long, slow breath, the fabric of her dress tightening across the curve of her breast. Resignation and weariness settled across the pale smoothness of her face and her dark-blue eyes were dull and passive. There was a suggestion of stubbornness, too, in the line of her chin, like a person whose mind is made up and deliberately closed to any argument.
The look annoyed Holland. This was not what he wanted. He had a sudden desire to shake her, to shout, to tell her to stop being a fool. Then, because he was afraid he might spoil everything he thought of something else and pulled Crombie’s gun from his hip pocket.
That did it. That wiped off the sullen look. Her eyes widened as they fastened on the gun and her lips parted.
“Johnnie,” she said, her voice a whisper. “What—what is that for?”
“I found out today why George Vanning was killed—and Drake. Vanning wasn’t shot accidentally, he was murdered. He was murdered to prevent you from marrying him. So was Drake. If you had been engaged to me instead of Drake the same thing would have happened to me.”
“Oh, no!”
“I say yes. I’m going to prove it and you’re going to help.” He held up the gun before she could interrupt. “Do you know how to shoot this?”
“Y-e-s.” She stared at it, fascinated, her questions forgotten.
“All right. Give me two minutes. Walk around the right side of the house toward the path to the guesthouse. When the time is up, scream! Then fire twice in the air.”
He could almost see her recoil and he took her arm again. “Scream, do you hear? Run toward the front of the house after you shoot. I’ll be out there to meet you. Throw the gun into the bushes and remember where so you’ll be able to find it. It’s Crombie’s—Listen to me!” he said. “You’ve got to act out a part.”
And then he went on, his tone low, urgent, driving. He told her what he wanted her to do, how she must act, what she must say when he took her into the house. He forced the gun into her hand and when he was finished he waited, giving her a chance to speak.
She looked up at him, the gun hanging limply in her hand. It was too dark now for him to see her eyes, but the hushed, almost frantic cadence of her words told him he had not yet convinced her.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t know how to—”
“You’re going to,” he said, quietly savage. “You’re going to do this for me—and for yourself.” His hand slid to her shoulder and he was shaking her a little without knowing it. “I love you, dammit. You’re not going to spend the rest of your life being afraid to marry. Three people have been killed. Who can say there won’t be a fourth? We can stop it. We’re going to stop it—tonight.”
When Holland talked like that it was difficult not to believe him and when he saw how she looked up at him he stepped close and cupped her rounded shoulders in his hands. He drew her closer, bending down but not kissing her, his voice thick.
“Promise me you’ll try. Give me this chance, darling.”
He saw her mouth quiver and grow still. Her glance dropped and for the first time she really became aware of the gun she held. Then, because she had a very real courage all her own, she looked back at him.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“Of course you’re afraid. But you will try?”
“I’ll try.”
Holland exhaled noisily, and now that he had won his point a new anxiety began to gnaw at him and he was no longer sure his plan would work. He put down his uncertainty with an effort. He gave her shoulders a quick squeeze and stepped back.
“Good girl,” he said. “Two minutes. I’ll come for you here.”
He watched her turn and start away and the thickness was still in his throat when he saw how small and alone she looked, when he truly realized how hard a thing this was for her to do. Yet he had never been more proud of her and this feeling gave him the confidence he needed as he started for the house.
Fanny Allenby sat in her chair and watched Holland cross the room. She had no knitting, no crossword puzzle to occupy her. She sat there alone, no longer the indomitable autocrat he had once known; she looked tired and subdued and very old.
“Did you have any luck?” she asked listlessly.
“No. She went for a little walk.” He sat down close to her. “I told her that I learned today that George Vanning had been deliberately murdered. Just as Drake was, and for the same reason.”
He paused, watching her intently, and there was no reply, no change in the wrinkled face, nothing to see except the unspoken fear deep down in her shadowed eyes.
“I don’t need to tell you the reason, do I?” he said. “You know, don’t you?”
“How would I know?” she asked in a voice he could hardly hear.
“Perhaps I should have said guess. You couldn’t know the truth about Vanning until it happened to Drake. Twenty-nine days instead of twenty-eight. That was the only difference.”
He took a breath and said, “You’re a shrewd, intelligent woman. You have a lot of time to think. If you had talked in time Nadine would be alive, you know that, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Johnnie,” she said, and sighed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to follow you tonight.”
“I think you do. I think I understand why you kept silent, too. But because you did you have it on your conscience; you’ll always have it on your conscience.”
The scream came to punctuate the sentence, abrupt, high-pitched, and as quickly still. The two shots came almost at once, wind-whipped and close.
Holland was on his feet instantly. The woman’s hands clenched on the chair arms and her eyes were horrified.
“Tracy!” she cried. “That was Tracy’s voice.”
Holland railed at her for two seconds. “You wouldn’t believe me,” he said, his tones savage. “If anything has happened to Tracy—”
He broke off and spun toward the doorway. He went out on a dead run, an odd fear of his own driving him. He took off from the top step, caught his balance in
a stride. Then he saw her coming toward him in the darkness and his heart again began its beating.
He got his arm about her and hurried her up the steps. “A couple of minutes more,” he said. “You’ve had a shock. You don’t have to say much.”
Tracy buried her face in her hands as they entered the drawing-room and the sounds she made were choked and spasmodic. Holland led her to one of the divans, not looking at Mrs. Allenby.
“Who was it, Tracy?” he said. “What happened?”
She told him, talking through her hands, her shoulders shaking. She was walking in the path on her way back to the house. She looked up and saw this figure crouching ahead of her.
“I don’t know who it was,” she Said brokenly. “I saw something gleam in the darkness. I don’t know why I thought it was a gun. I just did. I screamed. Then I was running and the shots came and something hit a tree—”
“All right, all right.” Holland’s tone was soothing, controlled. “It’s all right, baby. You’re safe here.” He kept his arm about her. He patted her shoulder. “It won’t happen again. I think we know who did it.”
He turned slowly and looked right at Mrs. Allenby. He spoke deliberately. “Tracy was lucky. So were you. But for that you would be responsible for one more death.”
She did not look at him. She was staring straight ahead, slumped back in her chair, her face a white, rigid mask. As he watched her, twin tears rolled down from the corner of each eye, glistening briefly before they were lost in the deep lines which marked the skin.
He stood up, his determination marred by the compassion he felt for the woman and the guilt his trickery entailed. “I think I’d better call the police,” he said, and quickly left the room.
Arthur Baldwin came in first just as Holland finished telephoning. There was nothing precise about the man now, or even very neat. His hair was windblown, his face slack about the cheeks and mouth, his eyes bloodshot.
“Who screamed?” he said. “Who was shooting?”
“Tracy,” Holland said. “Where were you?”
“Down the beach.”
Frances came in as Baldwin spoke. Her eyes swept the room in one quick glance, fastening on Tracy, who sat on the divan, her head back and eyelids closed.
“Did I hear someone shooting?” Frances looked around as Eric Carver entered from the door toward the rear. He made roughly the same comment, and Holland knew the time had come to take the floor lest too much be said before he was ready.
“It was Tracy,” he said. “Somebody nearly cornered her in the path out here. The same one who shot Drake and Nadine. The same one,” he said, “that murdered George Vanning two years ago.”
They looked at him and each other, but there was no obvious revelation other than the surprise and doubt and uncertainty that might be expected under the circumstances. Carver’s dark face was scowling and truculent as he shrugged and sank into a corner of the divan.
“Have you called the police?” he asked in his quiet voice.
Holland said yes. He watched Baldwin sit down in a club chair and reach for a cigarette with trembling fingers. Frances paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, the restless energy which was so much a part of her denying her the privilege of sitting down.
“But who on earth would want to kill Tracy?” she asked flatly. “What does she have to do with those other murders?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Holland said.
Frances shook her blond head in a gesture of impatience. She strode manlike to a cigarette box and helped herself. She snatched up a table lighter, her tanned, angular face intent as she put flame to the cigarette.
“Who’s going to tell us about it?” she said to Holland. “You?”
“I’m going to try,” Holland said and wondered how far he could go and whether, now that he had a chance, he could really place the guilt where it belonged and make it stick. He stole a glance at Mrs. Allenby who seemed not to have moved at all. She looked at no one; she merely sat, motionless, waiting.
“You went to New York today, Mr. Baldwin,” he said. “Did you tell the police that you were in town when Nadine was killed last night?”
Baldwin sat up, his face working. “No,” he said. “Why should I? I was in New Haven yesterday.”
Holland said, “You were in New York,” and went on to explain how he had waited for Baldwin in the station and watched him get into a cab. The man’s face stopped working and went slack again. Without moving he seemed to sink deeper in the chair, a gray pallor seeping into his cheeks.
“I would have told the police last night if they had asked me,” Holland said. “They didn’t. I thought I’d ask you.”
Baldwin put his head back and wet his lips. “She was dead,” he said weakly. “Dead when I got there.”
Crombie cleared his throat. “Why did you run out?”
“She was so warm. So lifelike except for her pulse. I knew it must have just happened and I ran down the stairs. Maybe it was panic or just the shock of finding her like that. I guess I thought I might even find the one who had done it.”
“But you didn’t,” Crombie said.
“I didn’t. I ran around the block. I guess I was a little mad. Then I was sick. There at the curb.” He swallowed and went on, his voice like death. “A policeman tried o help me. He thought I was drunk but I got up and told him I was all right. I found a telephone booth and called the police.”
“So that’s how they got there so quickly,” Holland said, recalling his amazement when he had seen the two plain-clothes men walk into the bedroom the night before. “You called them, but you didn’t go back.”
“And that is something I will never forget.” Baldwin spoke laboriously now, as if each word was an effort. “When I got back to the house the police cars were there. An ambulance came. There was a crowd gathering outside and policemen trying to keep them moving. It was a cowardly, despicable thing, and I knew it, but I walked on.”
“What good would it have done if you had gone back?” Frances stood spread-legged on the hearth, her poise unshaken, her gaze level as she surveyed her uncle.
“I loved her,” Baldwin said. “I ran away.”
Holland’s lips tightened. Somehow he found the whole business repugnant to him, and because he resented the blond woman’s callousness it was easier for him to concentrate on the job at hand. He unbuttoned his coat.
“Do you always wear men’s pajamas, Frances?”
“Always.” She glanced at him, a half-smile on her mouth. “When I wear anything at all. I find them much more comfortable.”
Holland got his shirt open and pulled out the black silk garments. “I think these are yours. At least I found them in your bureau.”
“Really?” She eyed him narrowly. “And may I ask—”
He gave her no chance to finish but spoke quickly of the figure he had seen climb the vines to the second-floor porch the night Drake was murdered.
“It was a figure in black,” he said. “Someone who was afraid to risk being seen in the lighted hall or on the stairs and who came and went by way of the vines. These pajamas would do it,” he said. “But there was still your blond hair, and the figure I saw had none that I could see.”
He put his hand into the pocket in the pajama top and took out a cap which had been made from the open end of a nylon stocking.’
“This would do it, wouldn’t it? Tie a knot a few inches below the top and then snip off the rest of the stocking. A skullcap in black—for your blond hair. In case anyone should happen to see you as I did.” He shook his head slowly. “Was it carelessness or confidence that made you stuff the cap into the pocket before you folded the pajamas away?”
Frances tossed her cigarette into the fireplace without shifting her narrowed gaze. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t think so.” Holland stared right back at her, seeing the tightness come around her mouth as her color faded, knowing he had to keep going, knowing he must make no mist
akes.
“Somehow Nadine saw you,” he said. “And for some reason she kept your secret. Until yesterday.” He explained how he had seen Nadine that first night and how he had threatened her the day before. “She was afraid to keep silent any longer, but she wanted to talk to Baldwin first. She called here and you overheard her on one of the extensions.”
He continued, “Baldwin waited for the train, the four thirty-six, but you whipped up a story for your grandmother and drove in ahead of him. When you found out what Nadine intended to do, you shot her as you shot Drake. About six forty-five, wasn’t it? And drove back here. Your grandmother lied for you. She said you were back by seven-thirty—because she was afraid.”
“What utter rot.” Frances’s voice was brusque and contemptuous.
“No,” Holland said. “Because your grandmother saw you that first night when you sneaked through her room on the way to the porch. It was the only way you could get there without going clear down the hall to your husband’s room. You thought she’d be asleep, didn’t you?” he said. “Maybe she was when you first went through. Maybe the shot woke her and she saw you come back, or maybe it was because she asked for less whisky that night than she usually took.”
He glanced at the old woman in the chair and she had not moved; she might indeed have been dead for all he could tell.
“Your grandmother knew who killed Drake. She protected you then and later.”
“She was my granddaughter.” Fanny Allenby stirred. Her head moved slowly but her eyes seemed dull and sightless. “My granddaughter,” she said.
They looked at her, all of them. No one said a word until Holland swallowed hard and forced his mind to function.
The Frightened Fianc?e Page 19