by Rufus King
“Certainly it was.” The words buzzed swiftly, like angry wasps. “With the bottle smashed…”
“Oh, then you dropped the bottle, Mrs. Sturm.”
He asserted it lightly and his smile conveyed to her that, in that case, everything was all right, that the curious little puzzle had been cleared up. Vera felt heady. Even her immense harborage for varying emotions had its limits, and they were rapidly being reached. She knew she was a fool to let her tongue run away with her. More care…a guard…
“It’s very simple,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Yes. You see, I’d bought a little bottle of it because Hector—Hector’s the druggist, you know, Hector Lentway—Hector said it would kill rats; just a few drops on a piece of salt pork.”
“What sort of poison was it, Mrs. Sturm?”
“I don’t know.” Her widening eyes seemed to ask: “Are there many kinds?” She smiled at him brightly and said, “That’s what I was doing.”
“What, Mrs. Sturm?”
Vera’s smile hardened into semi-permanency. It was harder even than her eyes, which were cold and speculative and very wary. “Putting drops of poison on a piece of pork,” she said distinctly.
Valcour was absorbed. She was dominantly magnetic and had grown, as her story progressed, tremendously assured.
“But why did you break the bottle?”
“I didn’t break it.”
“And yet the bottle was smashed.”
“It slipped from my fingers.”
“Why, Mrs. Sturm?”
Her eyes became colder and deeper, her smile unbelievably rigid. She said, because she couldn’t help saying it: “It’s one of the very few things that have ever slipped from my fingers.”
Valcour was pleasantly amused. “Was the poison in powder or liquid form, Mrs. Sturm?”
“Powder; a white powder.”
“Then when you put some drops of it on the piece of pork you”—his smile was very friendly—“first dissolved it?”
Anger made cold pin points of Vera’s eyes. Only the urgent necessity of keeping complete control over her body and her tongue kept her from flaring out.
“Everyone says ‘drops’ when speaking about medicine,” she said.
“Medicine? I didn’t think we were…”
Her voice was almost driven back into her throat by its tenseness. “Oh, well—poison—medicine. They’re both the same thing.” She permitted one flash to escape. “Are you trying to catch me up on something, Mr. Valcour?”
“Why no, Mrs. Sturm. I’m just a little confused. I like clear pictures.” He offered her a cigarette, which she refused. He took one himself and lighted it. “When you poisoned that bit of pork, where did you put it?”
There was a single flicker of her eyes before she said, “I always put the pieces in a trap for rats.”
Valcour’s smile was successfully ingenuous. “But isn’t that painting the lily?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” The words tumbled out. “Alice startled me and the bottle smashed. I didn’t hear her coming, and the door opening like that—sudden, and no warning. Why—”
The word drifted into stillness. Vera had felt somebody looking at her. It wasn’t Lieutenant Valcour. It was somebody at her right. She turned and looked. Will was out of the chair and coming slowly toward her, very slowly toward her down the length of the room. Will’s face was sweaty and had the putty pallor of frozen flesh. His hair was disarranged frowzily, and his footing was a little uncertain. He should have been funny-looking, but he wasn’t funny; not at all. Her hard, tight body pressed more tensely into the velvet cushions. She couldn’t go on speaking because her throat felt too dry, and parts of it seemed to stick together when she swallowed.
Will was coming right toward the lounge, very directly for all his slowness, for all his uncertain footing coming like something moved by clockwork and which would soon be in need of winding. She forgot her story, forgot Valcour, she forgot everything except the knowledge that Will was coming over and was going to stand quite still and close, so she couldn’t move, and look at her…
“Vera.”
“Yes, Will?”
“I’m going to bed.”
“Yes, Will.”
“Come upstairs with me, Vera, and help me get to bed.”
“Yes, Will.”
She stood up and started with Will for the stairs. Halfway up them Will turned and stood for a moment looking down into the library. “Good-night, Mr. Valcour,” he said. “Good-night, Mr. Sturm.”
They went on up. They went along the dim, quiet hall. Will held the door to his room open, and Vera went inside. Then Will went in and closed the door.
CHAPTER XIII
Lieutenant Valcour walked thoughtfully to the front of the curving stairs. He hesitated about mounting them. He could see (its white paneling was obscurely pale) the upper half of Will’s closed door. He felt that he ought to do something. He wanted to interfere in some fashion, but there was nothing he could do, and he couldn’t very well intrude. Custom, habit, the rules established by civilization forced one pretty rigidly to live on the surface of things in one’s relationships with other people. What went on beneath that surface was their private business, if it fell within the walls built by law. And the present surface was only too commonplace: a drunken husband wanted his wife to put him to bed. He was glad to see Dr. Harlan going along the hall and toward the head of the stairs. He stood looking up at him.
Dr. Harlan saw Valcour when he was halfway down.
“Oh, hello,” he said. “I’m getting groggy and came down to make some coffee. If this is going to be an all-night session I’ll need it to keep me awake.”
There was something animal and unimaginative about Dr. Harlan. Valcour found him quite bluntly direct in his outlook on life and on people, and he felt the need very strenuously of contact with just such a personality to restore his sense of balance. Dr. Harlan was very compact, very physical. There would be few, if any, veils obscuring Dr. Harlan.
“I’ll have some with you, Doctor,” he said. “Do you know how to make it?”
“I’ve had practice enough.”
Dr. Harlan joined him at the foot of the stairs and they started together for the kitchen.
“How’s Alice Tribeau, Doctor?”
“She’s all right.”
“Still sleeping?”
“Oh, yes. She probably will for several hours.”
“Here’s where she fell.”
They had reached the archway that separated the dining room from the living room.
“Here?” Dr. Harlan stared in bewilderment at the spot Valcour indicated. “I thought Vera said she found her at the foot of the stairs.”
“Well, Mrs. Sturm is somewhat of a liar, Doctor. Look out for this step.”
“Oh, I’m used to this house. I almost broke my neck on this step once.” They entered the kitchen. “Of course Vera’s a liar. It’s chronic. She’ll lie even when she doesn’t have to. Cold in here, isn’t it?”
“Nearly down to forty, I guess. I’ll shake up the fire while you fix this pot.”
Valcour opened the chimney and ovendrafts, found the shaker handle, and shook the stove until the coals were a live red. Except for himself and Dr. Harlan the whole house seemed strangely empty, an empty house with four people in it who did nothing to efface its sense of emptiness. He scattered a shovelful of coal on the fire’s bed, and the round lid clashed gently as it slipped from the holder. He shoved it into place.
A tablespoon with which Dr. Harlan was measuring the coffee dropped to the floor. He grinned apologetically at Valcour as he picked it up. “Never thought I’d get nerves,” he said. “But there’s something about this house…
“I think it’s the people in it,” said Valcour.
“We
ll, it’s the house, too.”
“Oh, the house is all right. What it needs is an emotional airing.”
“That’s a funny idea.”
“I think there are two atmospheres in every house—the air, and the other one which is caused by the temperament of the people who live in it. Both can get stuffy. Let me take the pot.”
He took the coffee pot from Dr. Harlan and set it on the stove. He opened the oven door wide so that its heat would hasten the warming of the room. He drew a rush-seat chair to the stove and sat down, his feet braced on the oven’s lip.
Dr. Harlan walked. Up and down the length of the kitchen, his compact, athletic body made the journey several times. He hovered near the four small-paned windows and looked out. Snow was falling thickly, blotting the windbreak of spruce, blotting everything but one lonesome tree and its own interminable curtains of fat, heavy flakes.
“I guess we’re stuck here until the plow gets through,” he said.
“Snowing again?”
“It’s a blizzard. If my car goes to seed beneath it there’ll be a crop of them in the spring.” He indulged, unaccompanied, in a short, full laugh at the antique jest. “It’s like one of the old-timers, the kind they tell about with relish (it’s retrospection that makes the relish) when they had to leave the house by its second-story windows. That’s a lot of hooey.” He cupped strong, firm hands against the glass and stared out more intently. “Pretty good drifts, though, at that. There’s one right here now that’s already up to the lower edge of the window. I bet every door in the house is blocked and we’ll have to shovel our way out.”
The idea was mildly exciting, as are all ideas which promise any strange experience that offers novelty and no special hardship.
Valcour, who was toasting his hands, smiled comfortably. “At least we have snowshoes,” he said, and nodded toward two sets of them that were hanging from the blackened ceiling beams. “It’s a bad place to keep them. The gut’s liable to dry out. I imagine they’re mainly for ornament.”
Dr. Harlan dragged his eyes from the heavy flakes, from the stripped, uneasy branches of the dimly silhouetted tree—dim, naked branches jerking stiff and uncouth under uneven winds sweeping the hundred-mile surface of ice-sheeted Champlain from the south.
“Have you determined anything?” he said.
He pulled a chair up close to Valcour. It creaked alarmingly beneath his muscular bulk.
“I’d be glad to tell you how things stand, Doctor. They’re very confused.”
“Do you still think the shot was meant for Vera? You did, didn’t you?”
“It’s about the only rational thing to think.”
Valcour faced Dr. Harlan directly. “Have you ever noticed Will Sturm professionally, Doctor?”
“Will?”
Valcour felt that the idea of connecting Will definitely with the shooting came to the doctor as a distinct shock.
“Yes. I imagine you’re familiar with the situation here—how Mrs. Sturm stands, the attitude of her husband and of her father-in-law?” Dr. Harlan nodded. He seemed only to be giving half of his attention to Valcour, the other half being very busy with secret and suddenly upsetting twistings. “Well,” Valcour went on, “Will Sturm seems obsessed with the idea that his wife is killing his father.”
“What?” Dr. Harlan was genuinely astonished.
“Oh, not physically, Doctor, but by preying upon him mentally and emotionally, a sort of sapping-the-life-out-of-him idea. It’s probably all nonsense. But the fact that Will Sturm believes it isn’t nonsense. It’s dangerous.”
Dr. Harlan remained bewildered. He was trying to readjust any number of things into different and curious niches. “Dangerous?”
“Why, yes, Doctor. All obsessions are dangerous. Don’t you agree with me it’s possible for Will Sturm to decide to kill his wife in order to save his father?”
“But you’re making him out a lunatic.”
Valcour shrugged. “Only in so far as his obsession controls him. I think he’s been screwing up his courage for something. Mrs. Sturm says he’s been drinking pretty heavily for the past month, and he started in right after dinner tonight. He’s pretty far gone now.”
“But would he pick out such a fool place to pull anything—right here in the house?”
“Not normally. I’ve just pointed out he was very drunk. I’m not saying he did; I’m just realizing, audibly, that he could have and that he might have wanted to.”
The fragrance of hot, fresh coffee spread pleasantly from the stove. Dr. Harlan jumped up and took off the pot. “We mustn’t let it boil,” he said. Valcour stood up, too. He closed the stove drafts and then got cups and saucers from a shelf for china and set them on a table.
“I like mine black,” he said. “How about you, Doctor?”
“Just sugar. There ought to be a bowl of it in here.”
Dr. Harlan opened a cupboard door. He took a bowl of sugar and a tray of spoons from one of its shelves. Steam and fragrance rose from hot black coffee in the cups. They pulled chairs up to the table and sat down.
“Who is treating Mr. Sturm, Doctor?”
“I am.”
“Would you mind giving me an idea of what’s the matter with him, if it hasn’t anything that would strike you as unethical?”
“Not at all.” Dr. Harlan enjoyed his coffee tremendously and a bit loudly. “It’s his heart. Nothing immediately serious, but—oh, well, no one can forecast such matters. He’s getting on, and hasn’t the resistance he used to have. Half of his troubles are in his imagination. He thinks I’m keeping a lot back from him. Why, there are times when he thinks I know he’s got a time limit—you know, that rubbish about only ‘six more months to live’ and so on. I humor him a little. I have to.”
Valcour managed a sip of black, scalding heat. “Does he take any medicine regularly?”
“Yes. It’s half tonic, really. Has it in a hot toddy every night.” Dr. Harlan put down his cup. He stared deliberately at Valcour. “Why?”
“There’s probably nothing in it.” Valcour seared his lips with another sip. Then he said, “Mrs. Sturm dropped a bottle of poison in the sink tonight. The bottle broke.”
Dr. Harlan’s eyelids narrowed noticeably. “Vera had some poison? What kind?”
“She says she doesn’t know. She says it’s something the druggist in the village gave her to put on pieces of pork, thus rendering them fatal”—Valcour smiled faintly—“to rats.”
Dr. Harlan’s voice was strained. “She told you that?”
“Yes; but you see the possible inference, don’t you?”
“See it?” Red mottled Dr. Harlan’s heavy face in a gust of rage. “Of course I see it. It would have been my medicine poisoned by her that turned the trick, and she knows”—he pounded the table with a clenched fist—“that the old boy put me down in his will for a good fat sum.”
“I wouldn’t get too carried away with the idea, Doctor. As I said before, there may be nothing in it.”
“There’s everything in it. You don’t know her as intimately as I do. That woman”—Dr. Harlan lashed out after the most objectionable epithet he could strike—“is a cesspool. She’s rotten right through. She came up here to this community and was a pest spot. Dirt—evil dribbled into everything she touched—every house—every home.” Dr. Harlan’s indignation gave him a slightly apoplectic look. He became speechless. He gestured helplessly. He recaptured his breath. “Of course Will tried to kill her. He probably saw her with the poison in one hand and the old boy’s toddy in the other.”
Lieutenant Valcour was annoyed. His voice was quietly sharp and incisive. “Doctor, you have got to control yourself. I regret giving you my confidence. I should have realized that you wouldn’t look at this thing dispassionately. I insist that you make an effort to forget everything I’ve said. You don’t want to make a fool o
f yourself. Your position as a professional man in the community would suffer irremediably. Remember that, until we can prove otherwise, the poison was intended for rats.”
Dr. Harlan finished his cup of coffee. His color was more normal. He grew quite calm. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. His eyes strayed blankly toward the coffee pot. The reaction from his fit of rage left him flaccid. “What are you going to do?”
Valcour shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see what Alice Tribeau has to say. She may have seen who shot her. Maybe not.”
“Well, suppose she didn’t? You never could drag your theory into court.”
“Never.”
“And you couldn’t arrest either the old boy or Will without the most definite sort of evidence.”
“No.”
“Well, then?”
“Just so.”
“Deadlock, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“This night, Doctor, is still a little young.”
Dr. Harlan’s voice was a whisper. “There might be another…”
“Doctor, I am no more psychic than any normal man, but I feel that in such a house, in such a situation, in such a vague and yet almost tangible atmosphere of crime, anything might…Did you hear that?”
“Yes.”
They were both up, listening.
“Something fell.”
Dr. Harlan nodded.
“That was it,” he said. “Something fell.”
CHAPTER XIV
They went hurriedly through the dining room, the living room, into the entrance hall, and up the curving stairs. Lieutenant Valcour was a little in the lead—not running; neither he nor Dr. Harlan was running—but stepping with jerky emphasis in a swift walk. They went up the curving stairs and along the upper hall, unerringly and without any question, to the door of Will’s room (still shut), its white panels still dim in the baffling and uncertain light.
“Will!” Dr. Harlan’s voice was quite tense. “What fell?”
Footsteps were coming unsteadily toward the door. They stopped. The door swung open and Vera was standing there and saying, “Come in.” Blood on her chin, trickling thinly from a cut lower lip, was brilliant red against white skin, and edged with coral color where it blended into powder.