The Silver Leopard

by Helen Reilly

  She crushed the longing impulse toward escape savagely. There could be no escape for her, either from Nicky or murder. There would probably be police at the wedding. Perhaps they’d act as witnesses.

  Wasn’t there something about “anyone knowing any just cause or impediment to the joining together in the bonds of matrimony of this man or woman come forward now or forever hold your peace”? Perhaps a charge of homicide in the first degree would be a cause, perhaps they’d step forward and arrest her before the ceremony could be concluded.

  Lights twinkled in some of the rooms of the huge ugly house looming up gloomily. It was Victorianism at its worst and there was so much of it. She went past a chicken run where a lone rooster strayed petulantly, mounted the back steps, passed through a gray pantry and on into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was empty. A door beside a cabinet that could have been part of the Ark led to a rear staircase. The others, some of them, were in the adjoining dining room. China rattled and people spoke. Angela said, “—quite well, Tom, because of your pill.” Francine said, “My bed was very comfortable. I slept like a top. May I have the sugar?”

  Angela, Francine. Catherine was suddenly tired of her aunt’s virtue and dignity, of the ceremonious and careful handling that surrounded her as though she were a precious piece of fragile porcelain that might shatter at a breath. It wasn’t so. She was tired of Francine’s smooth social manner that covered hardness and greed and a shrewd self-interest. Why not be truthful for once?

  Her feet were wet, she had a run in one stocking, and her skirt was frayed by brambles. Leaves and flowers died, but the thorns were ever blooming. She made for the rear staircase, climbed its dark well. The second-floor corridor was dim, deserted. She walked along it quickly and lightly to her own room and opened the door.

  There was nothing to warn her in advance. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular, certainly had no comprehensive glimpse of the room as a whole. She closed the door, started to turn, and stood very still.

  She heard the echo of a step, felt a rush of air. Catherine whirled too late.

  Chapter Twelve - A Telltale Green Scarf

  THE ROOM WAS EMPTY. But someone had been there a second before. There was no wind, and the faded green rep draperies at the floor-length window to the left were swaying. Someone had gone through the window and out onto the veranda as she came in. The emptiness of the big stark ugly room with its pale saffron walls and heavy furniture was almost as terrifying as a physical presentation would have been. Who had come in here—and why? To do what?

  Catherine went to the window. She pushed one of the leaves open and looked out. The veranda was broad. It circled the house. Drifted snow lay at the outer edge. The inner boards, in need of a coat of deck paint, were bare. There were no revealing footprints. There was no one in sight.

  She turned back into the room, searched it with her eyes. Bureau, chiffonier, dressing-table, huge bed, the covers disordered, a straight chair and a rocker, a square table with tortured legs holding a lamp and a sea shell ash tray, a trash basket, her two scarves and a comb lying on the bureau, pictures on the walls, mirrors throwing back the leaden light, the shadows made by the furniture, the jutting closet—nothing had been touched, disarranged. Yet, whoever had been in here had come for a purpose.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor, more than one pair of them. Voices were a rising blur. Knuckles rapped on the door. Mrs. Muir called, “Miss Lister?”

  Catherine didn’t answer. She was looking at the floor near the head of the bed. Her purse was lying there, on the carpet. She had left it, she remembered clearly, on the dressing-table, had noticed the loop the strap made on the embroidered white linen cover when she got a handkerchief and laid the purse down before going out. If she had needed proof that someone had been in here, there it was—

  Before she could pick her purse up, Mrs. Muir said again, loudly, “Miss Lister, it’s the sheriff,” and the knob turned and the door was thrown open.

  Mrs. Muir went away. Two men came in. The sheriff was in plain-clothes, a cast-iron brown suit with a badge on the lapel. He was big and florid, with gray hair. The man with him was a trooper in the uniform of the state police. The state policeman was short and dark and looked intelligent.

  The sheriff named himself and the state policeman. “Sheriff Terry, Miss Lister. This is Officer Cuchinello. We had a call from Inspector McKee in New York early this morning. I’m afraid,” he was uncomfortable, “we’ll have to search this room.”

  Catherine stared at him. Did lie think there was someone in the closet, under the bed? She shrugged. “I don’t know why you should, but it’s all right with me. Go ahead.” She sat down in the rocker near the window at which the draperies now hung motionless.

  The sheriff didn’t give her any information. He said, “Thanks,” hung his hat on one of the bedposts, and addressed himself to the state trooper. “You take that side and I’ll take this, Cuchinello.” Cuchinello said “Okay.”

  Catherine’s purse lay in Cuchinello’s division.

  She didn’t look at it. They looked at her. Their covert glances gave them nothing but a slender girl in a tweed coat, her gray eyes steady between black lashes, her dark head bare, tendrils of soft hair curling at her white temples and at the nape of her neck.

  Catherine’s heart was beating uncomfortably. My purse, she thought, someone’s been at it—

  Cuchinello picked it up, unsnapped the clasp, opened it. He put the things he removed down on the dressing-table, one by one: compact, two packages of cigarettes, a lipstick, a handkerchief, a gas and electric light bill, a rent receipt, her social security card, and the key to her apartment. He looked into the purse, shook it, turned it upside down and felt the lining. Catherine’s lungs flattened themselves gently. She was wrong. There was nothing in her purse that shouldn’t be there. Neither had anything been removed. Then what had the intruder in her room done? The man or woman who had come and gone secretly and silently, while she was out for a walk. She lighted a cigarette bemusedly.

  Cuchinello put her things back into her purse, laid it down. Both men went on with their work. Bed, chiffonier, closet, bathroom, they took the things out of the cabinet there, looked behind it, they looked behind all the furniture and the pictures and under the rug.

  They replaced the rug, a brave affair in which orange and green met in angry discord, and looked at each other. Then they looked at Catherine and back at each other again. What was it they expected to find here? She knew what they wanted. She got up. She said, “You’d like to search me, wouldn’t you? I have no objection.” The sheriff flushed and shuffled his feet. “That’s nice of you, Miss. It would be a—a help.”

  “Don’t mention it.” A thin hilarity seized her at their masculine efforts to be polite and thorough at the same time. She handed the sheriff her coat, stepped forward and stood stock still under the movement of Cuchinello’s deft hands. They went over her competently. She bent and took off her brogues and extended them to him with an ironical smile.

  Satisfied that whatever they were searching for wasn’t on her person, they started in all over again on the room.

  The sheriff was rolling the mattress over and Cuchinello was down on his knees peering under a gap in the baseboard behind the dressing-table when there was a light tap on the door and Francine walked in.

  She came to an amazed halt just over the threshold. Her mouth opened, closed. Her eyes began to sparkle. “What’s going on here?” Her voice was ice. She crossed to Catherine, ranged herself beside her and faced the two men, who had paused in their labors.

  The sheriff stammered something ineffectual. Francine swept him aside. She was quietly furious. She lit into the representatives of the law with a few well-chosen phrases. Fascism was mixed up in it and the erstwhile Gestapo. Her tall figure, erect in beautifully cut tweeds, the mink coat falling from her shoulders, her lacquered hair gleaming in the gray light, her mouth scornful, she had never been more effective. Every c
itizen had his rights, as they very well knew—No doubt they had a warrant for this outrageous proceeding—although how they could have obtained one at that hour of the morning, and on what grounds—

  The sheriff was cowed. Not so Officer Cuchinello. Cuchinello was provoked to anger. They had plenty of grounds. But plenty. “Maybe you’d like to take a look at this.”

  He produced a snow-soaked ball of paper from his pocket. He straightened the ball out with dexterous fingers and the folds of a handkerchief. It was an oversize envelope, crumpled and stained with smears of blood.

  Catherine looked at it, and her breath caught. Francine looked at the envelope and then at Catherine. Catherine nodded. She couldn’t speak. She was back in the dreadful stillness of Mike’s living-room in the apartment on Fifty-ninth Street, with Mike slumped across the desk and bands of wet redness spreading over the heavy cap of his silver hair. Wet redness in crisscrosses and bands that had trickled sluggishly to the envelope on the desk at his elbow, the envelope in Cuchinello’s hands. The stains on it, fading now, were Mike’s lifeblood. The envelope had bulged then. It was empty now.

  Even Francine was stopped. She gazed at the envelope fascinatedly. Her skin had a greenish tinge to it. “Where was that found, Officer?”

  “Down there.” Cuchinello was gratified at the effect he had produced. He waved toward the windows. “It was lying in the snow near some bushes below the windows of this room.”

  He went on to explain that the crumpled ball of paper had been found by another officer on a patrol of the grounds earlier that morning. “Maybe,” Cuchinello conceded handsomely, “Miss Lister didn’t throw it there. Anyone on this floor could have done it. A door from the hall leads out to the veranda and a lot of these rooms open on it. We were talking to Inspector McKee in New York and he gave us the setup, so we came here first.” Francine’s pallor didn’t get any better. Her throat seemed to be dry. She had to clear it before she said, helplessly, “I don’t see, with two or three bathrooms available—and plenty of matches and ash trays, why anyone would have disposed of the envelope in that fashion, by simply throwing it away—”

  Cuchinello shrugged. “People with the jitters do funny things sometimes. That’s how they get caught.”

  Attracted by the open door, the sound of voices, the others began to come into the room then. Tom came first. He listened to Francine and stared at the envelope spread out on the table, his big handsome face dark, his gaze disordered. He ran a hand through his hair, pulled at his tie. His fashionable patients and adoring nurses wouldn’t have recognized his ordinarily mellifluous voice. “Good God, the bonds!” he exclaimed harshly.

  “Where are they? If it’s true they were in that envelope, someone in this place has them. They’ve got to be found.”

  Nicky came in on Tom’s heels. He was equally startled. His concern was for Catherine. “To hell with the bonds! Why are they picking on you?” He put an arm around her shoulders, eyed the sheriff and Officer Cuchinello with angry disdain. Like Francine, he could be cutting. Catherine’s heart warmed at his championship. Then Hat and Stephen Darrell sauntered along the hall, paused, and came in.

  Everyone talked at once. Innocence was implicit in their questions, their shrugs, their cries and exclamations. “I know nothing about the envelope or the bonds it contained.” They all said that without saying it in words.

  There was something else. Another emotion had been added. It was new—and ugly. They were suspicious of one another. Up until then they had stood shoulder to shoulder. The envelope exploded their solidarity, made them turn and peer at each other fearfully, exploringly. You could feel the mutual suspicion like water rising in the bottom of a boat, slow, heavy, menacing. They were no longer a family, brother and sister, husband or wife, friend and friend; they were antagonists, fighting for survival. It was Mike’s murderer who had removed the bonds from his desk in the apartment on Fifty-ninth Street. “Was it you? Was it you? Was it you?” The unspoken demand, the voiceless conjecture, the sidelong glances darkened the light and poisoned the air.

  Only by the finding of the bonds could they be individually released. Cuchinello pointed that out. He was capable and downright. The bonds had been carried up here from New York. It wasn’t likely that anyone would tote an incriminating empty envelope around. They were from New York. The bonds were missing. Every one of them would have to be searched. Their rooms and the cars they came in would have to be searched.

  They agreed in concert, with no perceptible hesitation. The sheriff and Cuchinello discussed ways and means. If the men would proceed to an empty bedroom in the other wing, and the ladies—with the exception of Catherine, whose room and person had been given a clean bill of health—would go to a vacant bedroom in this wing? Mrs. Muir would be pressed into service to search the ladies, if they were willing? Of course, Cuchinello said, they could stand on their rights. But in their own interests—

  “Yes.” Tom slapped a balled fist sharply into an open palm. “I demand a search.”

  On the far side of the room, holding a match to Fran-cine’s cigarette, to Hat’s, Stephen Darrell said quietly, “We all want one, old man—and the sooner we begin—”

  He had looked at Catherine, once, when he first came in. She had glanced away, but there wasn’t a moment when she wasn’t conscious of him, moving about on the fringe of various groups, aloof, almost disinterested, his head bent, his hands in his pockets, pausing to toe the carpet, to listen to the two officials.

  Angela was the only one who hadn’t put in an appearance. Tom and Francine and Hat were apprehensive about the effect this new development would have on her. Accompanied by the sheriff, no one was going, to-be permitted to be alone for a minute until the search had been made, they went to tell Angela what had happened.

  Nicky was on the floor beside Catherine, his shoulder against her knee. Stephen and Cuchinello were waiting for him. He got up reluctantly. He didn’t want to go. “I hate to leave you, Catherine. You look all in.” He stooped and put his lips to her forehead. “I won’t be long. Wait for me here.”

  She said she’d wait downstairs, and he said, “All right, then well go someplace where we can talk,” and followed the other two men out of the room.

  To talk was the last thing in the world Catherine wanted. What would be the use of it? She sat on in the little rocker, tight hands clasping a crossed knee. Obviously Mrs. Muir and her few boarders had nothing to do with the appearance of the bloodstained envelope the state trooper had carried tenderly off with him. No, there was no getting away from it. The man or woman hiding behind the blue brocade curtains in Mike’s studio when she went in and found him dead had brought the envelope and the bonds up here. They were hidden somewhere in the boardinghouse. They would be found. Would it be on one of them? She brought her palms together softly, let them fall, and jumped to her feet. Not one of them—it was impossible. There had to be some other explanation.

  Repeating that firmly gave her a sort of fugitive strength. She went into the bathroom and threw cold water on her hot face. Francine and Tom’s room was on the other side. Someone was in the room. A policeman? It was. She heard Francine say dryly, “Would you mind being careful with that perfume bottle? You won’t find anything in it, and it’s the last of my Number 7.” A door closed.

  Catherine wandered back into her bedroom and busied herself, brushing her skirt, straightening it, pulling out loose threads. Her stockings were hopeless. She redid her lips, ran a comb through her hair, laid the comb down, and looked into the greenish depths of the mirror. Her face looked back at her, a little white and with faint bluish stains under the eyes—but that was all. It was just like anyone else’s. Uninformative. There was no use scrutinizing people’s faces; they wouldn’t tell you anything.

  Where among them, those six others, lay the will, the capacity, for murder? She tried to survey them objectively. Tom, Doctor Thomas La Mott, rising young surgeon, successful but not as successful as he wanted to be, whom she had known
since he was a boy, always beautifully brushed and combed, with his face washed and his clothes and his emotions equally in order—except for one tiling. When pushed far enough he exploded. It was a sort of spontaneous combustion. His fits of rage were rare. When they came, they were frightening. At one moment he would be his handsome, somewhat stolid little Lord Fauntleroy self, at the next, his face would be convulsed, crimson, and he would be shouting.

  Gould Tom have killed Mike in one of his fits of rage? He could, but there was no evidence of it. He was nervous and upset and his amiability had curdled. But wasn’t that natural enough?

  Like Angela, Tom was deeply conventional, in the best sense of the word. He wanted things to go smoothly, decorously, in an ordered course. He was probably hating this involvement in a murder case with all his soul. The requirements of Caesar’s wife were as nothing compared to those of a rising young gynecologist.

  Then there was Francine. Could Francine kill? Or Hat? How could you answer a question like that? Francine was cool, levelheaded and matter-of-fact. The dynamo that drove her was self-interest. If her interests, or Tom’s, were deeply enough involved—who could say? As for Hat, she wasn’t encumbered with scruples—and she was undisciplined. She had had too much too often, too soon, had never since infancy wanted for anything that money could buy—and it could buy a great deal. All three of them had disliked the idea of Angela’s marriage to Mike. Catherine shook her head. It wasn’t good enough. Mike was a rich man. Angela’s marrying him wouldn’t have deprived them of anything important enough to kill for.

  The bonds were at the root of it. Mike had discovered who had the bonds. Even that wasn’t conclusive. Say Mike had discovered that Tom, or Francine or Hat, had appropriated the missing $20,000 worth of negotiable securities. He would simply have got them back and returned them to the estate without making a fuss.