by Helen Reilly
“I’ll go if you like, you know. Just say the word and I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”
Rose was startled. All day on the train he had behaved as though last night had never been. Why the change now that he had actually arrived at Amethyst Lake? Why hadn’t he gone back to New York from Calgary, as she had half expected him to do?
She looked past him through a window at pine trunks and jade water. He was very big suddenly, and threatening. He had accused her of still being in love with Daniel. He ought to know it wasn’t true without having to be told. If she said, “Yes, Nils, I’d like you to go," which was what she wanted to do, he would take that as the answer she had been too angry to give him. He could be a good friend, he could be a bad enemy. At that point she couldn’t risk it. When Davidson’s murderer had been caught, she would be independent and could have it out with him, but not yet.
She said tiredly: “Don’t be stupid, Nils. Of course I don’t want you to go. What would Elizabeth think? What would everyone think? I see no reason why our own personal business should become public property. We were going to be married, we’re not now. That’s our affair, no one else’s. . . . Also, I don’t see why we should behave like children because we changed our minds, do you?”
It was a tentative peace offering. Nils made no protest, he accepted it coolly.
“Friends? I see . . . suits me, if that’s the way you want it. Come on out and drink to it—talking makes me dry.”
“I’d love a drink.”
A door on the far side of the room led to the porch outside. Rose was picking up her purse from the dressing table when there was a tap on the glass and the door opened and Daniel walked in.
SEVEN
The way Daniel came in was the worst part of it. He came in hurriedly, surreptitiously, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t been seen. The light and shadow in the room were confusing. There were areas of dimness. He said, “Rose—” half turned, saw Nils, and stood still. Dull redness flooded his smooth skin.
Daniel had come for the jacket, to relieve her of it. Nils would of course put another interpretation on such a visit, within minutes of their arrival. . . . Fury exploded inside Rose, insensate, raging.
Daniel only made things worse. Seldom guilty of awkwardness, he was awkward then, embarrassed, uncertain, upset. He fumbled for words that were obviously hollow. A child wouldn’t have been deceived.
“I came to—to ask you to join us in a drink, Rose.”
Nils showed no emotion of any kind. He said, “That makes it unanimous. Let’s go,” and swung around. Rose didn’t even glance at Daniel, she was too angry. They left the room and joined the others on the terrace. Colonel Eden, Candy and Harry Belding in one group; Gertrude and Elizabeth and Loretta Pilgrim in another; Elizabeth was talking about Gil Davidson. Rose sat down on the fringe. Nils brought her a drink and she sipped it and smoked and listened.
Davidson hadn’t been anywhere near as intimate w'ith Elizabeth as he had implied. She was puzzled about his announced intention of coming to Amethyst Lake without letting her know. He had been there earlier in the summer. The relationship between them was distant, he was a ninth or tenth cousin or something.
Loretta Pilgrim said pensively that she had liked him very much. He was sympathetic, interested in other people, not wrapped up in himself. And his manners were charming.
“He was younger than you are, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth said, “Oh, yes, by almost eight years.”
Davidson had been thirty-two. That would make Elizabeth forty on her next birthday, which was two days away. She didn’t look it. And then she turned and the low sun, striking through pine boughs shone full on her face and Rose got a shock. She thought, something has happened to Elizabeth. It wasn’t so much that she had aged as that she looked—different. The aloofness, remoteness, were gone. There was tautness in her, and the beautiful lines of jaw and chin were too prominent, and oddly fixed. Could it be the mention of her birthday that made her look like that? Forty w*as a sort of Rubicon for some women. . . . She put up a hand to shield her eyes and moved into shadow, but Rose’s impression of some deep alteration in her cousin remained.
Elizabeth seemed to be answering a question Loretta Pilgrim didn’t ask when she added, “I’ll be forty this week.”
The statement was casual in itself. It might have been a signal of some sort they had all been waiting for. Colonel Eden was on his feet, announcing that he was going out on the lake. Candy and Loretta wrere rising, they were also in a guest cottage. Nils said that he was going to do a bit of exploring. “Want to join me, Rose?”
She said, “Later perhaps, not now, I’m lazy. I'm going to get a book and sit here and pretend to read,” and hoped that Daniel, talking to Harry Belding at the far end of the porch, heard her. She wanted no more hole and corner business with Daniel, no more secret meetings. Whatever talking they did would be out in the open—and they had nothing to talk about but the disposal of Daniel’s jacket. Once that was taken care of she would give him a wide berth for the remainder of her stay, which she might be able to cut short.
Daniel had heard her. Nils was gone. Gertrude was collecting glasses, Harry Belding had accounts he wanted Elizabeth to look at. Elizabeth got up, leaning on her cane, and all three of them went inside. Daniel strolled towards Rose. There was no one in sight. He paused near her chair. He said stiflly, in a low voice, “I’m sorry about barging into you room like that, but I didn’t know Gantry was there. I want to get that coat of mine. You’ve had enough trouble with it. The sooner it’s out of your possession, the better.”
His eves were worried.
Rose said reasonably, “Not now, Daniel, I can’t get it for you now. There are too many people around, we might be seen.” Shields of green on every side of the lodge except in front—a person could be close by, below the terrace wall within a couple of yards, able to see and hear—and remain invisible. They finally arranged that Daniel was to get the coat himself after dark, and Rose opened her purse and gave him the key.
“Leave it in the dressing table drawer when you go and I’ll know that it’s all right. I won’t need anything in that bag tonight.”
Daniel dropped the key in his pocket absently and stood looking down at her. “I’ll never forget how good you’ve been—” His voice was quiet. He broke off short.
Rose didn’t want to hear any more. Before he could go on she pushed back her chair and stood. She said lightly, “Don't give it a thought, Daniel. It just happened. . . . I’ve got to go and change,” and walked away.
When she looked out from the depths of the house Daniel was still there, leaning against the wall, staring moodily at the door through which she had passed. Anyone could tell that he was worried about something, he was a wretched conspirator. But so was she. She didn’t discover how wretched until later on that night.
The beginning of the evening was usual enough. A wealthy woman, and Elizabeth was very wealthy, entertaining a party of house guests that included both friends and relatives at a luxurious summer resort in the mountains of British Columbia; it was even more disagreeable than Rose had expected it to be—over and above the split between herself and Nils.
As far as Nils went, she needn’t have worried about him. He didn’t come near her. He devoted the attention he didn’t give to Elizabeth, exclusively to Candy Font, exquisite in a severely plain pink linen dress. It didn’t take Rose long to decide that her optimism of the afternoon had been premature, that there was something subtly wrong with the entire gathering. There were undertones she couldn’t evaluate, nuances she couldn’t put a firm finger on, that dissolved at a touch.
They had cocktails first in the living room at the lodge, then dinner at the Chalet at a round table close to a big window filled with moonlight, the lake, a snow-capped mountain, pines and a piece of starry sky. Elizabeth in grey chiffon and no jewels was serene—the shell of Elizabeth. The real Elizabeth as Rose knew her wasn’t there. It
was frightening. She was a different woman, stone-hard and braced and watchful under composure. What could have happened to produce such a change in her? Davidson’s murder? Scarcely. She had spoken of him almost with indifference and as far as anything further went she had been here at the lake and Davidson had been shot on a speeding train hundreds of miles away. And yet undoubtedly there was some sort of dread in her. . . . The only other person who seemed aware of it was Colonel Eden. The Colonel glanced at her keenly more than once, his kind eyes troubled.
Then there was Loretta Pilgrim, talking in her light pretty voice, laughing her pretty laugh but underneath it all a suggestion of expectancy, excitement, that had nothing to do with words or gestures. And what was Candy Font so starry-eyed about, as if all the world were new and she was waiting for the nearest male companion to enjoy it with her. Beside her, Nils threw himself into the part with gusto.
Daniel, on Elizabeth’s other side, devoted most of his attention to his dinner when he wasn’t talking to her. Once he turned in his chair and looked at Candy. Suppose he had killed Davidson out of jealousy? ... No, there was no anger in his look. It was puzzled. He, too, had noticed Candy’s unusual animation.
The Beldings were the only perfectly normal people at the table,
Gertrude burbling on, rimless glasses flashing, dropping a fork, exclaiming, “I am so clumsy,” wiping a spot on her dress with a napkin dipped in water. Harry Belding, handsome in a while jacket that accentuated his thin dark good looks, kept a quiet eye on the service and made himself generally agreeable.
It was, really, the incident of the package, trivial as it was, that pointed up the edged atmosphere. Opening her purse for cigarettes, Rose saw it and gave it to her cousin.
“Before I forget, here you are, Elizabeth.”
“You had no trouble?”
“Not the slightest, you’ve got a methodical mind. I can never find anything.”
Elizabeth dropped the small paper-wrapped parcel into her own purse. The snap of the catch was audible in a sort of hush that had fallen over the table.
Elizabeth had given Rose a simple errand to do and she had done it, she had no idea what the box, it felt like a box, contained. It seemed suddenly important. Everyone stared. It was as though they were all passengers in a foreign railroad station waiting for a signal and unsure of the shape it would take and ready to leap at any manifestation.
The tiny furor died away and conversation was resumed, but it was a relief when dinner was over.
The big dining room was full to capacity when they left it. Several of the passengers from the train were there; the Frenchwoman, seated alone, was studying a menu with care, and the small gray man who had taken notes for Constable Duvette was near the door. The Frenchwoman nodded and smiled at Rose as she went past. After dinner they all played shuffleboard on one of the flood-lit open air courts on top of the hill. It was twenty minutes of ten before Daniel finally succeeded in slipping away by himself.
Rose watched him go from her chair on a grass verge so green that it looked false. He sauntered away idly, crossed a broad cement path and disappeared under the pines in the direction of the lake. She looked around and counted noses. Candy and Nils, matched against Loretta Pilgrim and Harry Bending, were on the court. Off on the left Gertrude Belding watched them. To the right, with four or five empty chairs intervening, Elizabeth and Colonel Eden were sitting side by side talking. No one appeared to notice that Daniel had gone. It wouldn’t take him long to go to her room at the lodge, unlock the bag, get the jacket, and throw it into the lake. In plenty of places the water was deep close to the shore and trees overhung it.
Rose started to light a cigarette, and stopped abruptly. To her horror Elizabeth and Eden were rising. They went through the gate and out on the path. Were they going for a stroll in the moonlight, or were they going down to the lodge? Rose got up and followed. She lost them in the mingled light and shadow beyond the floodlights. A small crowd of people moving towards the Chalet and the game rooms intervened. When they passed there was no sign of either Elizabeth or the Colonel. The ridge, the Chalet, the courts, the broad paths were bright with moonlight before the woods began on either side.
Elizabeth and the Colonel had probably gone back to the lodge. If so they might easily catch Daniel red-handed. Naturally he would turn on a light in her room. He couldn’t find the bag in the dark and, not knowing they were there, he wouldn’t use any caution. Rose started down under the pines. Patches of blackness, patches of silver light; the slope was steep. Occasionally she had to make a detour around underbrush. She didn’t know quite where the fence between the public Chalet grounds and Elizabeth’s was. The waters of the lake now, shining through dark tree trunks—she paused to get a bearing, took a step, and stood still. He had all but blundered into Elizabeth and the Colonel. They were below her, less than ten feet below, side by side on a small rustic bridge, leaning on the railing, their heads and shoulders blocked against the brightness of the lake.
Colonel Eden was talking earnestly. “—I implore you, Elizabeth, not to do anything yet. Wait. Wait a week or two . . .”
Elizabeth turned her head and looked at him. “Why? What difference will a week make? Surely enough time has passed. They ought to know—”
Rose began to retreat backwards step by step, her eyes on the two figures, silhouettes without detail.
Eden was facing Elizabeth. His hands were on her shoulders. “Can’t you do what I ask, Elizabeth? What will it cost you?”
Rose didn’t hear Elizabeth's answer, she was far enough above now to move more quickly. She didn’t want to hear it. ‘They ought to know.’—did ‘they’ mean the police? . . . Was what they ought to know something about Davidson? . . . One thing was certain. Elizabeth hadn’t done anything wrong. She wouldn't. Her conscience wouldn’t let her, her code of ethics was too stern, she was deeply, fundamentally upright. Even while Rose was telling herself this she recognized that there were other qualities in her cousin, a strength that sometimes verged on imperiousness, a will that could be ruthless. . . . Was Eden in love with Elizabeth? Was she in love with him? They had known each other a long while, since before Humphrey Questing died.
Rose went on climbing the steep slope, slippery with pine needles, her hands out to keep from running into things. It was very dark. There was no sign of anyone or anything except the pines which she felt rather than saw, and far above mingled moon and floodlights. How long had Daniel been gone? Ten minutes, twenty? She couldn’t tell. A thought struck her suddenly. She and Daniel both missing—the Colonel and Elizabeth were, too, but they might rejoin the others—the assumption would be that she and Daniel were together. ... It wouldn’t do. There had been too much of it. She climbed on faster, her lungs laboring. When she reached the top with a bruised shin, Nils, Candy, Harry Belding and Loretta Pilgrim were still on the court. She propped an elbow on the enclosing fence, removed a briar from her hair and got her breath. She was only just in time. She watched a disk spinning to a stop to win the game.
Meanwhile Todhunter was having much the same experience as Rose. He had also lost a quarry under much the same circumstances she had encountered, the trees and the darkness in under them. The quarry he had been trailing was the Frenchwoman of the train, Madame Flavelle. His interest in Madame had sharply increased. Wherever the lady had come from it wasn’t from her daughter’s home in Trois-Rivieres. Her daughter, if she had a daughter, didn't live there under the name or at the address she had given the conductor on board the Commonwealth. He had talked to the Trois-Rivieres magistrate over the phone as soon as he reached the Chalet. Less than half an hour later Madame Flavelle turned up at the Amethyst Chalet. She left the train at Lake Louise —she hadn’t stayed there.
The woman was smart, but not quite smart enough. Her original destination was Calgary, where Davidson was to have gotten off. Before they reached it she had changed her mind and decided to come up into the mountains. Todhunter and Nils Gantry were together late in th
e afternoon when the bus from Lake Louise mounted the winding road through the pines and the Frenchwoman climbed out of it. Instead of joining the tourists giving Amethyst Lake the once-over during the scheduled half hour stop she entered the Chalet and booked a room in one of the cottages. Nils Gantry more than shared Todhunter’s interest in her.
“My friend,” Gantry exclaimed softly, looking after her plump shapely figure. “Well, well. If you want my opinion that woman’s a phony. She lays it on much too thick. Dollars to doughnuts she’s been in this country a lot more than two months. I wonder what she’s after, what her game is?”
So did Todhunter. The Beldings were anchored and under his hand should he want them. Duvette was checking on the passenger who had startled Loretta Pilgrim and her daughter at Calgary; Todhunter decided to devote his attention to Madame.
After dinner he had trailed her to the lounge, a separate building beyond the tennis courts, where coffee was served and people played cards or sat and talked. Movies were going to be shown that evening. The immense room was darkened. Madame Flavelle departed unobtrusively a few minutes after the film started. She joined the loose scattering of guests watching the Questing party on the court, then crossed the cement walk and started down towards the lake. It was dark in under the pines and the Frenchwoman wore a black suit. Todhunter promptly lost her.
Twenty minutes later, by chance, and his excellent eyesight, he was casting around aimlessly when he unexpectedly caught sight of her again, on the Questing grounds. She was below him and to the right, walking briskly across a small cleared space ringed by trees. There was a peculiar determination to her upright figure. She was perhaps a hundred yards away. He cut down the distance between them as fast as he could.
In under the pines once more there was no sign of her. The path they were both following that twisted and turned on itself was narrow and hemmed in by underbrush. The ground rose on one side, fell on the other. Presently, brilliant moonlight on water showed up ahead. Todhunter emerged on a hank above the lake, a loop ol it that curved round and behind the hill on which the Chalet and the cottages were scattered.