And I might say now that I had succeeded rather too well but not in the direction I intended. I didn’t want to think of why Drue had gone, or why she stayed away without telephoning or letting us know anything of her whereabouts, but I didn’t intend to let something important, a small thing but terribly important, go straight past my ears quite as if I hadn’t heard it. That was carrying the ostrich act too far. Nugent went toward the door but Craig stopped him.
“Have you got the details of my father’s-death, pretty well established?” he asked.
“The general set-up, yes,” said Nugent. “There are two alternatives. One is that whoever killed him could have poisoned the brandy with digitalis taken from the medicine box which was then-oh, thrown away, I suppose. We’ve searched for it and not found it; we were in the hope of getting some fingerprints.”
My hand went to my pocket. But I waited-somewhat nervously, I might add. Nugent went on crisply, “In that case, your father could have taken the poisoned brandy shortly before his interview with Miss Cable…”
“Then you don’t think Drue killed him!” cried Craig, his whole face suddenly alight and eager.
“I didn’t say that,” said Nugent, but still in a kind and quiet voice which again seemed to me too kind, as if he felt sorry for Craig, below his mask of officialdom. And that meant that Nugent feared, too, for Drue. And if he feared for her, that was why he had begun to believe that she was not guilty of murder. It completed a disastrous and terrifying little circle of logic. Nugent went on, “I said there were two alternatives. The other, of course, is that Miss Cable killed him deliberately with a hypodermic syringe containing too large a dose of digitalis. But let me finish my first hypothesis. If then, your father drank the poisoned brandy and then collapsed just as Miss Cable was talking to him, she could have been-I say could have been-under the impression that he was having a heart attack, or he could have asked her to help him, according to her story. At which she gave him merely a medicinal amount of digitalis, and he died from the effects of the other.”
“There was no poisoned brandy in the decanter,” said Craig slowly. “But…”
“Exactly. The noise made by the falling vase, as it was probably intended to do, drew attention away from the study for a long enough time to permit the murderer to re-enter the room, pour the poisoned brandy down the drain of the little washroom adjoining the study, refill it quickly from a decanter brought from the dining room, return both decanters to their original position and leave the room again unobserved. I say that could have happened. But it still means that someone else had to pick up the fragments of the vase and the twine and conceal them in the trash barrel. That indicates a conspirator. Yet it is difficult to believe that a murderer would take anybody in the world into his confidence to that dangerous degree. And there’s another thing that seems to hook up somehow and yet that obscures the issue; that’s the mysterious telephone call to the police. Who called it murder before anyone else even thought of murder-except the murderer? What woman went to the telephone and called the police? If I knew that,” he said slowly, “and if I knew why Drue Cable left the house without her shoes…”
The light and eagerness vanished from Craig’s face. He looked at the clock again, and it marked only a few moments further along its inexorable course, but every moment, now, counted. All of us knew it.
But especially Craig. For Nugent went away almost immediately and after he’d gone Craig, staring at the clock again, told Peter and me the thing Claud Chivery had told him.
It was, he believed and said he believed, the motive for Claud’s murder. The trouble was that he didn’t dare tell the police because it might prove to be a boomerang.
Claud had said “she” in talking; he had named no names, he had used only the pronoun and it was a dangerously inclusive pronoun for Claud might have meant Drue.
Craig made me shut the door before he told us.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Craig. “It’s only what Claud told me. And the way he looked. He wouldn’t tell the police and he made me promise not to; after he was murdered I would have told them but-but I don’t know what the paper is that he found there. You see?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“Go on,” said Peter. “Maybe we can find it. What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Craig, “that I don’t know what is written on it, and I don’t know who Claud suspected because of it, but I do know it was a woman. He said she.”
“Oh! If it should be Drue…”
“Yes,” said Craig bleakly. “We’ve got to be sure it isn’t Drue before we tell the police.”
He told us then, briefly. Claud Chivery had told Craig that someone had been looking up digitalis in one of his books. The book had been put back in the wrong place on the shelves and Claud, a stickler for a kind of finicky order, had seen it at once. Then (he’d told Craig) he found a paper, marking the place where the information about digitalis began.
And when Craig asked him what paper, and if he could tell who’d been looking up that particular subject, Claud had frozen up, looked scared and terribly worried, referred to the person (and without realizing it, Craig thought) as “she” and had told Craig he had to think it all over and come to a conclusion about it before telling the police or letting Craig tell them. He’d been afraid of setting them on the wrong person.
“And the way he told me, the way he looked, I was afraid, too,” said Craig. “But now that Drue-where are you going, Miss Keate?”
“To my room,” I said. “I’ll be back presently.” I didn’t hurry until I was out of the room. I didn’t want him or Peter to stop me. For I had to do something-anything. Night was coming on; it was already nearly dusk and there was still no word of Drue. I kept thinking of all the little wooded valleys and hedges and clumps of shrubs among the low-lying hills.
I took my cape. No one was in the upstairs hall; the door to Craig’s room was closed as I had closed it when I left the two men together. I crept down the stairway.
But Beevens was in the hall below.
And he had something in his hand.
I suppose it was curious, the way the kaleidoscope had already and all at once started to fall together, so the frantically whirling pieces-some big and making links like bridges, some small and unimportant but still essential-began to make a complete and coherent picture. Beevens made his contribution then for he had the famous clipping.
It was in his large hand and he gave it to me.
“I had removed it that evening, Miss, when I emptied the ash trays. The night Mr. Brent was murdered, I mean. And someone had crumpled it up and dropped it in an ash tray. I emptied them, as I always do when I remove the coffee tray. It was in the rubbish barrel and I found it and ironed it out and, well, here it is. I thought I’d better give it to you.”
I didn’t ask him why; perhaps because in an odd, unspoken way Beevens and I had been allies from the first. Indeed, he was the only one (except for Drue) whom I had not at one time or another suspected of murder, and I think he may have felt the same way about me. At any rate, he did trust the clipping to me to do with it as I saw fit. And I thrust it into my pocket quickly and went out the door.
Beevens didn’t question, naturally; he didn’t even look an inquiry as he held the door for me.
But only Beevens saw me go. On the way to the garden and the little path that started there and wound its way up and down, beside a rock wall or two, across a wooded strip, and low, rolling and dusky meadows toward the Chivery house I did glance at the clipping. It was only a few paragraphs about the arrest of some Bund members; the date line was some five weeks earlier; rather to my disappointment there was no mention of Frederic Miller. There was, in fact, no mention of any names. I looked at it quickly, hurrying toward the garden and the path, glanced at the other side which was equally short and clueless, being an account of a submarine sinking somewhere off the New England coast and part of an advertisement for stirrup pumps in case of
incendiary bombs. So I thrust it into my pocket and encountered the medicine box and wished I’d given it to Craig.
As a matter of fact, however, the medicine box was one of the unimportant details in the picture; part of it, but unimportant. So nothing was changed because the little box remained in my capacious pocket. And I passed the garden where Craig had been shot (mistakenly, he’d said, by his father) and started along the winding path. It was latish by that time; still light enough to see but late enough to remind me of the dusk of the previous night and the body of Claud Chivery there in the trees. I walked faster. And realized suddenly that I was straining my eyes to watch the hedges and the clumps of shrubbery along the way, and listening with all my ears for sounds from behind me. Yet it was a relief to act; even if it meant scurrying along the uneven little path, wishing my long blue cape and my starchy white uniform wouldn’t make swishing sounds in the quiet which might obscure other sounds.
Naturally, I looked behind me now and then, too. But there wasn’t anything, and the police were busy then at the little lake in the hills beyond the north meadow.
Eventually I reached the Chivery cottage. I couldn’t have missed it, for the path led directly to the road that came out from town (going along east of the meadow where Claud Chivery had died). I crossed the road and there was the white picket fence and gate where Claud Chivery had been photographed stepping into his car, that strange look (of premonition?) in his haggard face.
The cottage had a deserted look and it was deserted. The one general maid Maud kept lived out and didn’t come to work when Maud was away. It was an odd little instance of Maud’s parsimony, but I didn’t know that until later.
The steps weren’t swept and the shreds of vines clinging to the trellis around the little porch looked dreary and unkempt. The door, however, was unlocked. I hadn’t thought of that till I got there; it seemed to me a stroke of luck.
So I opened it and went in; the hall was dreary, too, and dark and looked overfurnished with mahogany and chintz and a gleaming, heavily framed mirror that gave me back a dark and shadowy glimpse of myself. The first thing I saw, however, was the knife-a plain, bone-handled carving knife, lying on the table beside a silver card tray and a vase of withered chrysanthemums. I must admit I stopped rather short and listened, and looked at the knife.
But it was only a knife, inanimate and clean, and I didn’t hear a sound, unless the dry leaves on the little porch outside scraped softly against the trellis. The cottage was breathless, undusted, unaired, with the furniture taking over the place a little inimically the way it only does in an empty house.
That perhaps as much as anything convinced me there was no one in the cottage; but I looked anyway around the first floor, treading very lightly and holding my cape close to me so it wouldn’t brush against anything, pausing to listen as a cat does in strange territory, hearing nothing.
On my right hand, opening from the narrow hall was a living room, very precise, but dark with its curtains drawn and more withered flowers on a table. This led back to a small dining room so neat and yet so deserted that you couldn’t imagine a meal being served on that glistening table with its silver cockatoo ornament and candlesticks; beyond this was a kitchen; from here you went to a kind of passage with narrow back stairs leading upward, a store closet or two and then (by a door which I opened very cautiously) into what was evidently Dr. Chivery’s consulting room-all white enamel and glistening instrument cabinets. From here, in turn, I went on into his study, or perhaps his reception room which led again to the front hall; this made a complete circuit of the first floor of the house. Nothing had moved, nothing had breathed and all the chairs and bookshelves watched me with cold, alien eyes. Out in the tiny hall again, I glanced up the front stairs, a narrow carpeted flight broken by a landing.
There again I looked at the knife.
It was just a knife; somebody had left it there casually, I decided, in the pursuit of household duties, and forgotten it. Perhaps it had been used to open mail or to cut the strings of a package.
I did have, though, a strong aversion to touching it; after I’d seen Claud Chivery. So I listened again and, as nothing anywhere in that silent little house moved, I went back to the doctor’s study.
His books were ranged neatly along bookshelves. I didn’t turn on the light. It was still light enough to see, and I set myself to look for the book-a book about toxicology, Craig had said; if Chivery had a fairly large library that would cover a wide field.
As a matter of fact, it didn’t; I ran hastily through the shelves, selected I believe four or five books which I thought might bear fruit, shook them upside down vigorously with the leaves open, over the big roll-top desk, and, unexpectedly, one of them did. An odd piece of fruit it proved to be, too. For a paper fluttered out, I seized it-incredulously, really not quite believing that I might actually have at last, in my hand, a tangible clue. It was a piece of thin white stationery, like that I had seen on writing tables here and there in the Brent house, and there were hurried, pencilled notes upon it.
I went quickly to a window at the west which was built into a little niche with heavy, linen draperies over it. I thrust the curtains aside and held the letter so I could catch the last of the rapidly fading daylight.
I understood the necessity for Claud’s decision to keep the thing a secret. For horrible things were written lightly, in pencil, on that piece of paper.
“Toxicity of digitalis varies-each lot tested before sold as drug-symptoms vary-may be nausea, convulsion, rapid pulse-single massive dose may cause instant complete heart block-both sides of heart try to beat at once causing stop-fatal dose anywhere from-grains to-. Soluble in alcohol.”
All that was scribbled hurriedly, in pencil; and below it was added a grisly, jaunty little statement: “Entire box of pills ought to be enough.”
That was all. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. But whoever had written it had murdered Conrad.
Claud Chivery knew that! He couldn’t tell because-why because he must have thought that Maud had written it. There could be no other reason. “She” he’d said, not meaning to, when talking to Craig. Yes, he must have had some reason for believing the notes had been made by Maud. If it was not because it was her handwriting and he recognized it, it was because there was some other identifying clue in that piece of paper which led to Maud. So much was obvious. It explained his fear, his haunted eyes. It explained, if Craig was right, his murder.
But had Maud murdered him? Maud with her sweeping skirts and violet sachet?
It was just then that the cottage door opened quietly. A breath of air from outside rustled the withered chrysanthemums. Someone entered the house.
21
I SHRANK BACK, SWIFTLY as an animal, into the shadow of the heavy linen drapery, and looked to make sure my long blue cape didn’t show. I was perfectly still, crushing that note against me.
I couldn’t see much of the hall from the window, only a strip of carpet before the stairs and some wall and half an oil painting. But I could hear. Although I couldn’t have moved if it had been Gabriel with his trumpet.
After a long moment someone spoke, softly but clearly; that surprised me, somehow, but not as much as when unexpectedly there was an answer.
So I realized there were two people in that little hall, and that they had entered together very quietly, very softly.
“You followed me,” said a voice, and someone else said, “Certainly. So, this is the way of it.”
“Get out of here! Go back! Go home!”
“I guessed as much. When Claud was murdered… Why have you come here?”
“Because I don’t think the police have searched here. They wouldn’t have known it was empty.”
“You came to look for Drue. But she isn’t here, is she?”
It was Nicky and Alexia. Their voices were curiously alike in quality, soft, vehement, hushed, and suddenly clearer, so I realized that they must be almost at the door of the study. Otherwise, of c
ourse, I couldn’t have heard them. I shrank still further behind the curtains, at least instinct bade me do so; I was actually quite completely paralyzed and doubt if I so much as breathed.
Alexia said, “Never mind that. You’ve spied on me.”
“My darling sister, I had to know the truth. I want some of your money, my pet. You’ll have to provide for me, you know.”
“You needn’t try to blackmail me. I’m not afraid of you, Nicky.”
“No? You’re afraid of the police though, darling.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“Oh, wouldn’t I! I want half of Conrad’s money.”
“Half!” she said scornfully.
“All right,” said Nicky. “If you won’t play, you can take what comes.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said again. “You tricked Conrad. He gave you money all year because you made him think you had induced Drue to go away with you.”
“Why not?” said Nicky softly and with the greatest good-humor. “Conrad wanted to get rid of Drue and he did. I’m always willing to be of service.”
“How exactly did you do that? I never asked; it seemed better not to know. But Drue hated you; I watched you trying to lure her away with your charm, Nicky dear; and I knew it when you failed.”
Nicky’s voice was less pleasant. “Oh, really? I tried to make love to her only to please you and Conrad. I wasn’t serious. Yes, she turned me down; she was furious, but I didn’t care. I”-a kind of complacence returned to his gentle voice-“I turned around and worked it a different way; I pretended to be her friend, sorry for her, loved her hopelessly, would do anything for her. When she left the house I took her to the train; I went in to New York with her. It worked; at least, it convinced Conrad that he had reason to be grateful to me. He could honestly tell Craig that Drue had gone away with me; and he did. That was all he wanted. Drue got in a taxi at the Grand Central station and I never saw her again till she came here. But I was of service to Conrad, and he knew it. I’ll be of service to you, too, if you pay me.”
Wolf in Man’s Clothing Page 24