She wondered what, if anything, Sloane had discovered. She was soon to find out. For on the heels of Dorothy’s disappointingly firm recollection Sloane and Averill and Jim walked into the room.
Eden looked up and straight at Jim.
She was aware of P. H. Sloane, fresh and brown as if the night had held its usual rest for him, newly shaven and clad again in faded khaki riding breeches and boots, and a blue shirt open at the throat. She was sharply aware of Averill, too, as trim and poised as a catbird in a pale gray linen dress. She wore green beads at the base of her slender neck and a lovely square emerald on her right hand, and there was not a hair out of place on her small dark head.
But Eden looked straight into Jim’s eyes. And experienced a shock. For Jim Cady was looking directly at her and his look was as distant, as remote, as impersonal as if he had never seen her before.
Chapter 14
LUCKILY THERE WAS A little commotion of voices and movement and it covered any change of expression; but her hands made a small involuntary clutch at the edge of the table as if to brace herself against an unexpected precipice looming under her feet.
She hadn’t believed Averill; she hadn’t really had in her heart any doubt at all about Jim.
She told herself a little frantically that Jim looked like that because others were there. Because he was not alone with her. Because he did not want others to have any hint of how things stood with them until—well, until his engagement to Averill was officially at an end.
Sloane had said “Good morning,” and she supposed she had replied along with Dorothy and Noel. They were all talking and Sloane and Averill seated themselves at the table and somebody rang for Chango. She permitted herself to glance at Averill, and Averill was smug and demure and was looking at her with again a faint, secret smile in her shallow eyes and touching the corners of her mouth.
They were again talking of alibis and of Pace, and Eden listened.
For Major Pace did have an alibi. An airtight, waterproof, hard and fast alibi, to which P. H. Sloane himself subscribed as well as Dorothy Woolen and, with a rueful look, Noel.
“It’s like this,” said Sloane and took a pencil and drew a diagram on the tablecloth. Chango glanced over Sloane’s shoulder, stopped smiling instantly so his face was an impassive yellow mask with slitted eyes, and put down the coffee he was carrying with a clatter. Sloane glanced up and said: “Oh. Never mind, Chango, it’ll wash off,” and resumed his drawing as Chango, disapproving, pattered sulkily away.
“Here’s the lounge; here’s the piano along the wall opposite the fireplace. When I began to play the piano, Miss Shore,” he looked briefly at Eden, “had just left her chair by the fireplace and walked out onto the porch. And in a moment or two Jim followed her; he tells me he met you, Miss Shore, on the porch and that you talked a little and strolled down the path where Miss Blaine, who left the lounge ten or fifteen minutes later, came also. Is that right?”
“Yes,” said Eden huskily. Jim was looking straight at the detective, his face a little grim, altogether enigmatic. He must be thinking of that moment in the shadow of the pines; he couldn’t fail to be thinking of it. But if so his expression gave no hint of it and he did not look at her. The detective went on slowly, drawing as he talked a little outline of the long lounge; a triangle showed the location of the piano on the west wall, with the player facing the wide door along the north wall, which went into the hall. Along the eastern wall, opposite the piano, was the fireplace with a long divan before it, its back to the piano but fully visible to anyone seated at the piano. There were chairs before the fireplace, too; chairs in the deep window embrasures opposite the hall door. Pace had been sitting in one of those chairs, facing the room, his back to the deep, curtained window, a table with an ash tray on it at his elbow. He was in the shadow, said Sloane, but Dorothy and Noel had been constantly aware of his presence.
“I’d have known it if he left the room for a moment,” said Dorothy with the utmost matter-of-factness.
But the detective had not finished. Eden realized suddenly that it was not only Pace’s alibi he was concerning himself with. It had been almost a foregone conclusion with her, and she thought, with the others, that Pace was the only logical suspect. But to the detective it was not perhaps so instantly evident that none of them (except Pace) were the kind of people to do murder.
She caught herself on that; what kind of people did murder? And she thought of Averill’s astonishing burst of fury of the previous night. Well, then, perhaps there were among them other hidden capacities for cruelty; hidden fears perhaps; desperation so deep and so harrying that the only recourse was murder. No matter how civilized, no matter how well known people were to you, still underneath ran universal human passions and needs that might result in the undertaking of desperate expediencies.
Averill; but Averill couldn’t murder. She couldn’t have killed Creda. Yet she must have been the last to see Creda. She had been wearing that yellow coat shortly before Creda, wrapped in the coat, was found dead.
The detective was talking again.
“This left Miss Woolen, Pace, Carreaux, Creda Blaine herself and me in the lounge. After a few moments Mrs. Blaine got up and went out; I believe it was just as Jim returned—”
“That’s right,” said Jim. “It’s as I told you. I met her on the steps, we talked a moment or two, then she went down the steps toward the path and I came back into the lounge. I sat down. … I think on the sofa opposite Dorothy.” Dorothy nodded slowly. Jim went on: “Pace was here when I came in and I didn’t leave the lounge again until we heard Noel call us.”
“Time is always difficult,” said Sloane. “If we could know exactly when she died—”
Noel was leaning forward: “Mr. Sloane, exactly what killed her? Was it my revolver? Because I swear to you—”
“I don’t know. My opinion is that she actually died of strangulation. But there were knife wounds, a number of them. Made by a small and I would say single-edged blade. We haven’t yet found the knife. And it’s barely possible that among the wounds there is a bullet wound; there were several wounds at her throat; and it’s difficult to tell without more detailed examination than I was able to give. The coroner is going to do a post-mortem; Miss Blaine has given her per mission. If we find a bullet—”
Noel was looking drawn, his brilliant eyes no longer gay.
“But, Sloane, I swear I didn’t shoot her—”
“No one said you did. Anyway there were fingerprints.”
“Whose?”
Sloane did not reply directly. He said: “Arrangements have been made for you to stay here until—well, until we feel justified in permitting you to leave. I’m sorry; but Miss Blaine at last agrees with me that it can’t be helped. The murder was committed in this county and in this state and the simplest, indeed, the only thing we can do is to request you to stay here for, I hope, only a few days. That, however, remains to be seen. I do want to emphasize again that your cooperation will help more than I can say.”
“Sloane, do you really mean that you believe Jim’s cock-and-bull story about the plane crash?” asked Noel.
P. H. Sloane rose and stood looking down at them from his lanky height. Tall, brown, self-contained, with a suggestion of dry humor in the wrinkles around his eyes, he looked a typical rancher. His eyes had grown so keen, anybody might think, from years of seeing such clear and far horizons.
“It’s worth investigating,” he said. “Pace is worth investigating; all of you, when I’ve inquired, have in one way or another indicated your willingness to blame him for what may amount to three murders.”
“Three—” repeated Dorothy, barely moving her pale lips.
Averill said: “Mr. Sloane—”
“Yes, Miss Blaine.”
“I only want you to say that—that I want to correct something I told you last night. I—the story Miss Shore told you is true so far as I know. That is about my having actually entered her cabin with her. That’s q
uite right. I entered her room with her exactly as she said, talked to her for a few moments and then went away.”
There was a little silence. Jim stared into space with completely expressionless gray eyes; Noel made a quickly checked movement, his peaked black eyebrows surging upward in astonishment; Dorothy silently and passively seemed to record every look on the faces around the table—even Chango’s yellow face peering inquisitively through the pantry door.
“Do you mean that you completely retract your former statement saying that you did not enter the cabin as Miss Shore said you did?”
“Obviously,” said Averill neatly. “I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I do subscribe to it; every word of it—”
“Averill,” said Jim sharply, turning suddenly toward her. He said only that, and Averill smiled slowly.
“You do understand, don’t you, Mr. Sloane? I entered the cabin with Eden and we talked awhile, then I left it.”
“When did you meet Mrs. Blaine and give her your coat?”
“Afterward—I think,” said Averill sweetly. She turned to Eden. “That’s right, isn’t it, Eden?” she asked in the friendliest and most agreeable way in the world.
She had again outplayed Eden; her whole retraction, true though it was, sounded false; sounded too friendly and agreeable; sounded as if she were merely backing up Eden’s testimony, in order to help Eden. Sounded obviously, flagrantly, a lie.
Eden said: “I don’t know when you met Creda, Averill. I know you came to my room with me and when you left me there you were still wearing your yellow coat.”
Averill, slender eyebrows lifted, patience and forbearance in her smile, turned again to Sloane.
“Then that is exactly what happened,” she said. “Do forgive me for—for not telling the truth at first.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Sloane simply.
Averill waited a moment before replying, her faint smile undisturbed. Then she said: “It doesn’t matter, does it, Mr. Sloane? So long as I subscribe to Eden’s story now.”
P. H. Sloane turned to Eden. “When you’ve quite finished your breakfast, Miss Shore, I’d like to question you. In the meantime—Jim, will you see if you can find Pace and bring him in here.”
“But, Sloane, you haven’t answered my question,” said Noel. “Whose fingerprints were on my revolver?”
“Oh yes,” said Sloane. “I want to talk to you about that, too, later. Whose fingerprints? I don’t know yet. That’s one of the things I want you to do if you don’t mind. That is, go into my study and let Charlie take your fingerprints. All of you.”
“But we—” began Averill sharply, and Sloane went on without looking at her: “He’s taken mine, too, and those of the cowboys. Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to do it.”
Jim got up and went into the hall. As he did so a cowboy entered from the kitchen, his sombrero in his hand, and approached P. H. Sloane.
He was tall, lean, brown, like Sloane; laconic, easily graceful and just then his eyes were snapping electrically.
“Just thought I’d let you know I’d got back from Rocky Gap,” he said. “Coroner said he’d phone you tonight and tell you whether he got any bullets or not. And—say, P.H.—”
“Well?”
“Didn’t know whether you knew it or not but Curly (that is the little blond fellow—the steward, I guess you’d call him, on the plane)—well, he’s disappeared. Can’t be found, high, low or level. And—well, Chango says—”
Chango mysteriously appeared at his elbow and nodded his head vigorously, his beady eyes like bright shoe buttons. The cowboy said apologetically: “I know it sounds kinda silly, P. H., but Chango says there’s a hatchet gone, too. I think myself Curly is kinda young to do any murders. But he’s sure as hell run away. With Chango’s hatchet.”
There was a strange little silence. P. H. and the cowboy looked steadily at each other. Dorothy Woolen sat like a figure carved in soap, and Noel’s blue eyes went swiftly from the cowboy to Sloane and back again. Then all at once Averill pushed out her chair with a blundering, scraping sound and got to her feet and cried shrilly: “But you’ve got to find him. He must have killed her. You’ve got to find him—this is horrible—”
“He can’t have disappeared. There’s no place to go,” said P. H. Sloane.
And the cowboy nodded and said: “He’s gone just the same.”
Eden rose, too. P. H. asked how long the steward had been gone and where they had searched for him, and Eden went out of the room. The steward—Roy Wilson; she could barely remember his name and pale face and curly yellow hair—where had he gone? Why?
The obvious answer was guilt on his part and fear of detection. Yet the young, curly-haired steward with his girlish mouth and mildly pleasant manner certainly could have had no possible motive for brutally murdering Creda Blaine. A hatchet had gone, too? Probably it had been lost days ago and Chango had just discovered its loss.
Why hadn’t Creda screamed for help? Why had she pulled the little chest of drawers a few inches from the wall and left it there? Why had she written that strange, scarcely intelligible note to Jim?
She must find Jim. She must tell him immediately about the letter that was lost, and she must ask him a certain question. But in the hall she was stopped pleasantly but firmly and fingerprinted. It gave her the strangest feeling of uneasiness to see her own small prints set down in ink and labeled.
Jim was on the porch when she found him; Pace was nowhere in sight nor so far as she could see anyone else. She went swiftly to Jim, who hearing her approach turned toward her.
Was it the sun or were his eyes exactly as cold and impersonal as they had been there in view of all the others in the dining room? She said rather timidly: “Jim—”
“Do you want me?”
“Yes, I—Jim—” It had to come out. She was too certain, still, to take refuge in silence herself; in pride. She said, fumbling and awkward as a child: “Jim—Averill said you asked her to tell me it was over—between us, I mean.” She put her hands on his arm and he moved his arm deliberately away, and still she could not believe it, but had to go on: “I didn’t believe her. I don’t … I couldn’t. She said you—you wanted to end—” Words stopped in her throat and she couldn’t say any more. She had already said far too much.
For Jim, looking stiffly out toward the mountains, replied quite clearly and deliberately: “Averill was quite right. I’m sorry, Eden. We were both mistaken.”
Chapter 15
THIS, THOUGHT EDEN, CANNOT be happening to me.
Not like this; not Jim.
She put both her hands upon the railing of the porch and looked out toward the blue mountain peaks and did not see them. And she forgot the letter in Creda’s writing—blurred with ink, broken off so abruptly.
Jim said, still watching the rim of mountains and speaking in a brisk and businesslike voice: “Averill and I are to be married as it was planned. The only thing I can hope from you is forgiveness.”
She still couldn’t speak. It was quite literally impossible. And besides, what could she say? She began to hope only that she could get away without having to speak at all for talking was dangerous.
And she had already said too much; why hadn’t she let that stirring instinct of warning guide her? Why hadn’t she approached the thing more cautiously—giving herself a chance to see ahead, to draw conclusions from what Jim himself said, or conspicuously failed to say? Why need she invite the direct cruelty of the thing?
Averill had been right. Well, she had recognized Averill’s certainty; her smile as much as the unmistakable air of authority and assuredness in her tone and manner had been convincing. But Eden hadn’t permitted herself to accept it because of her faith in Jim.
So—again—she’d been wrong.
“Will you—forgive me, Eden?”
He was waiting for her to reply. She was poignantly aware of that but she was still shaken, as if the ground under her feet had rocked. Later she supposed she would
feel emotion; hurt pride, anger, loss. May as well face that now, for it would be loss. There might be—there would be jealousy, too. That wouldn’t be pleasant either. She didn’t really, she told herself, feel anything now except regret for her own rash and impulsive directness. Well, probably she was not the only woman in the world to which the inconceivable had happened.
The curious thing was even now that she seemed to have known Jim so long; it was still as if all her life he had been a constant, important, deeply familiar force in that life. It was as if old foundations, tried and true, had suddenly gone out from under her; as if a hand always extended when she needed it had suddenly failed her. It wasn’t sensible; in point of fact it had been an incredibly short time since she’d known him at all. But it didn’t seem so; deep in her heart there remained that indestructible, strong sense of understanding, of sharing, of being instantly and forever one with the man beside her.
Well, it wasn’t true. Women’s hearts had made crazy mistakes then. At least she’d had the thing from Jim’s own lips; certainly he had hated to tell her. She said: “All right, Jim.”
Surprisingly, her voice was fairly steady but she wouldn’t look at him. For that matter he wouldn’t look at her. She knew he continued to stare, as she did, at that distant blue rim of mountain. She’d looked at them last night, above the warm pressure of Jim’s arms, and felt indescribably at peace. She broke off the thought at once.
“All right,” she repeated quickly. “You are forgiven. Forget it all as I shall.” She turned away quickly, intending to escape while this incredible calm supported her. But Jim made a swift motion and caught her by the wrist and whirled her around to meet his eyes. For a moment his eyes sought with a kind of desperation into her own. Then he said abruptly:
“No, it isn’t all. There’s something else.”
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