by Helen Reilly
“I had hoped that my lawyer, Dave Tomlinson, would be here. Dave would have explained things much better than I can, but no matter.” She made a brushing movement with a hand, “All that can be taken care of later. I will be forty tomorrow, or rather in less than two hours. Under the terms of my husband’s will if I married again before I was forty I would lose my right to any interest in his estate.”
Loretta Pilgrim interrupted. She had been brightly and amiably expectant. The brightness faded.
“That’s scarcely true, Elizabeth. I mean—you would have had your dower right.”
She spoke coldly. She didn’t like the faintest slur on her brother. Elizabeth looked at her and shook her head. “You’re wrong, Loretta. No. I wouldn’t have had my dower right. I would have had nothing. Humphrey—” she turned her head and threw a fleeting glance at the painting above the fireplace, turned back again, “—Humphrey saw to that. In those days I put my name to papers without reading what was on them. Before we were married, Humphrey had me sign what I believe they call a prenuptial agreement to the effect that each of us resigned any claim on the other, leaving all financial settlements to be made by will. I didn’t know what I was signing, I hadn’t the slightest idea. I wouldn’t have cared then. I did care afterwards. Humphrey taught me to care when he taught me to hate him.” She paused, studying the glowing tip of her cigarette. “If evil is the absence of good, the deliberate refusal of it, I’m afraid Humphrey was a bad man . .
An indrawn breath from Loretta was sharp in the stillness.
Elizabeth smiled. She said, “Oh, come, Loretta. Surely you’re not surprised at anything I’ve done, would do. And you should know, you kept a close enough watch. Let me see, there was Andrews the chauffeur, and there was that parlor maid in New York, and two or three others. I got rid of them, but you had a more permanent source of information in my household, a source you felt sure of. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your—secret agent— was suborned.”
Loretta Pilgrim was sitting up very straight. She was paper-white except for rounds of bright pink on each cheek. She opened her mouth to speak, didn’t get any words out. A crash made them all jump. Gertrude Belding had dropped her coffee cup. Gertrude didn’t say anything, didn’t look at anyone, didn’t pick up the pieces littering the rug, she just stood there, her face a foolish white mask.
Rose pressed the brandy glass tighter. Gertrude, bumblingly devoted Gertrude, was the spy Loretta had planted. Suborned—what did her cousin mean? Elizabeth was talking again in her cool lovely voice.
“That, too, that perpetual spying, was one of the factors . . . I was bitter, harassed, it was like being in a strait jacket. Hatred was new to me. I was well aware that all Humphrey’s people hated me, and I wanted to get the better of him through them. That was part of it, only a part.” She finished her cigarette, tossed it into the fire and linked her hands loosely on a crossed knee.
“Months before Humphrey died I fell in love, what I thought was love, for the first time. You never knew it, Loretta, you didn’t find out. We were extremely circumspect, used the greatest caution ... it didn’t last long. I was unfortunate in my choice. . . . Quite soon I discovered that the man I loved cared nothing for me. It was simply the money.”
She spoke musingly. There was no stress in her, no indignation, anger, pain. She might have been talking of someone else. Her eyes had been cast down. She raised them. She looked at Loretta Pilgrim, her dark ga/e brilliant. She said, “In less than a month I divorced my second husband. Yes, that’s right, my second husband. You see, six weeks after Humphrey died I married again.”
FIFTEEN
Complete silence. It filled the ear crashingly, a gigantic roll of drums. Figures in an irregular circle of soft light were stricken into immobility by it. Only the fire made an audible sound, a flutter, a purr.
Todhunter thought, So it nms a second marriage after all. . . . Did Davidson know, and put the bite on? Was that why Davidson had come out here in early June? No wonder Gertrude Belding had tried to keep Mrs. Questing from speaking. It meant her job and her husband’s. The coffee would have to be analyzed, he doubted whether it was lethally dosed. It was a stupid expedient, but then Gertrude Belding’s was not a scintillating intellect.
Rose thought, So that was why Elizabeth looked the way she did that year, shortly before Humphrey Questing died, she was in love and happy . . . Who was the man she had married? It didn’t matter, had been over and done with for years . . . What would Elizabeth do? She would be penniless. That was why she had asked about the farm that afternoon. Rose shifted her gaze.
Loretta Pilgrim had been taken by surprise. She hadn't expected it. What she had probably hoped for was money, reasoning that Elizabeth was older, mellower, and that her asking them out here had to have a meaning. She might be going to hand over a gift, a slice of the estate, not the whole, the complete and entire fortune. It dumbfounded her. It was too big. She couldn't manage it. Gradually the truth began to penetrate and Loretta came alive. She pushed the coffee table away from in front of her and stood up. She kept opening and closing her lips, moistening them with the tip of her tongue.
“So,” she exclaimed, “so!” Her voice was high, light, breathless. “This, all this—” she threwr her arms out, “—everything, all the money—you've been robbing us all these years.”
She gave her head a shake that sent the smoke gray curls dancing.
Her blue eyes were wide and bright with fury. She made no attempt to contain it, poured it out in a flood.
“Holier than thou,” she cried scathingly, “you’ve always been that, so upright, so noble, giving money away in handfuls—our money, my money . . . Mine. The audacity of it. The sheer audacity. And all the time you were nothing but a common, ordinary thief.”
No one interrupted. The Colonel stood behind Elizabeth’s chair, his arms grimly folded, Nils leaned against a window frame in dimness, Daniel in a corner of the couch, an unlighted cigarette in one hand, a match in the other, shocked into speechlessness like all of them. At the piano, George Langley watched absorbedly, his gaze narrow and intent. Rose couldn’t see the Beldings.
Elizabeth bore it without the slightest change of expression. She nodded.
“Yes, Loretta, it’s yours.”
She spoke quietly, almost indifferently. Her calmness maddened Loretta. Rage consumed her.
“Except for what you’ve squandered, thrown away, used up, for six years. Six. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. How are you going to return it, pay it back? Tell me that. Just tell me.”
Rose felt sick. The relentlessness in Loretta Pilgrim was frightening, and the greed. Elizabeth hadn’t squandered money. She had lived simply, on a fraction of her income. The estate should have been hers, she had earned it. And, if what she had done was legally wrong, she had had plenty of provocation. Humphrey Questing had cheated her out of her dower right, the portion that should have been rightfully hers, by a trick.
Loretta took another tack.
“My brother,” she cried, her mouth trembling. “My poor, poor Humphrey . . . you were carrying on an affair when he was alive—”
“No. That isn’t true.”
Loretta laughed. “You could scarcely wait until Humphrey was cold to buy yourself another husband, could you? Then you changed your mind and decided you liked the money better. There’s a name for women like you—”
It was Daniel who broke it up. He was on his feet. “Loretta!” he said sharply. “For God’s sake—”
Candy also rose, a slim graceful figure, her skirts rustling. She gave Daniel a glance iced with indignation, threw an arm around her mother’s shoulders. The touch of imperiousness with which she generally spoke to her was gone.
“Loretta darling, don’t. Don’t excite yourself. Mrs. Questing has confessed. She will make restitution. She will—”
Rose was savagely amused. Loretta was in the driver’s seat now, Loretta would have the money. She turned, and jumped up. Eden and Nils got
in ahead of her.
Elizabeth wasn’t as strong as she seemed. What she did was to fold quietly forward.
They got Elizabeth to her room and to bed. The doctor hadn’t gone. lie was waiting. He had fully expected Elizabeth to collapse, said he had taken the liberty of sending for a nurse. There was no danger, no immediate danger. Complete rest was what Mrs. Questing needed. If she got that—
The nurse arrived and took over. Rose was the last out of the room. When she left it Elizabeth was in an exhausted sleep. She had spoken a few words, was worried about Steve Tomkins. “As soon as I told Loretta, I was going to go to the hotel in Calgary, and have you and Mr. Gantry finish up here and join me. I like Nils Gantry. He’s—” Her lids fell in the middle of a sentence.
The rest of the night was a bad dream full of broken bits and pieces. There was a rather horrible scene with Gertrude Belding. Loretta Pilgrim and Candy and Daniel had gone, so had George Langley. Nils was in the living room, and the little New York detective, and the Beldings.
Gertrude Belding’s eyes were red and swollen. She first denied and then admitted having doped the thermos of coffee on Elizabeth’s tray with three of her sleeping pills, and burst into a storm of tears. The reason she gave was that Elizabeth was exhausted and on edge and needed rest. Actually, of course, it was to stop Elizabeth’s speaking. Her motive stood out a mile. It meant her husband’s livelihood, and hers, after fifteen years of security. Loretta Pilgrim would certainly not keep the Beldings on. Sacking them would be one of the first things she would do. That went without saying. Gertrude denied ever having spied for Loretta Pilgrim, who had originally gotten her her job as typist for Humphrey Questing.
“No, I didn’t. No. I just pretended to. She’d meet me every so often and give me lunch or dinner—and a pair of stockings or gloves or a bottle of cheap perfume.” She was contemptuous, laughed hysterically. From the first her allegiance had been to Elizabeth. “She’s been so good to me, to us.”
Todhunter said, “And the eggnog this afternoon, Mrs. Belding?”
She said yes sullenly, but not enough to do Elizabeth any harm. “Then that horrid little dog . . . Augustus . . . Tintex. They have to tintex him every two weeks—” She hiccupped and went into hysterics in earnest.
Rose couldn’t help but admire Harry Belding. He had received a heavy blow. $15,000 a year had gone up the flue in the twinkling of an eye. He had brains and Gertrude was not quite right. He was aghast at what she had done; he defended her manfully. Gertrude had been foolish, she meant no harm. He refused, quietly, to answer any more questions. Todhunter asked only one. Did the Beldings know Mrs. Questing’s second husband, the man she had married shortly after Humphrey Questing’s death, and divorced a short time later?
They both knew. Rose was sure of it. Gertrude Belding’s screams gathered volume. Harry Belding said, “I can’t and won’t discuss Mrs. Questing’s affairs without her permission,” and took Gertrude away.
Later, out on the terrace, there was thunder in the air and the night had turned warm. Colonel Eden talked. He did so reluctantly and only after the New York detective reminded him that two people had been killed. They had a tussle over that. The Colonel didn’t believe that Elizabeth’s affairs had anything to do with the death of Davidson and Madame Flavelle. Todhunter refused to agree. He said mildly, “We can’t be sure until we know more,” and won out.
Nils was there, sitting silent, lighting one cigarette from another. His presence was a comfort. On his right, Eden was a dark blocky figure, light from a distant lamp picking up random gleams from the gold on his tunic.
He said that Elizabeth’s discovery, within a few short weeks, that the man she had married hastily after Humphrey Questing’s death, and with whom she was very much in love, cared nothing for her and was interested only in her money, was completely devastating. It broke lier to picccs. She became a different person. She hated herself for the terrible mistake she had made, couldn’t bear the thought that anyone else should know about it. Her divorce had been as quiet as her second marriage. Nothing happened and no one appeared to know. She determined in her agony that no one should ever so much as guess, and picked up her outward life without a break.
Eden said that things had gone on like that for more than five years. Elizabeth was a frozen woman. She had no qualms about Loretta Pilgrim. Mrs. Pilgrim wasn’t in want, she had an adequate income, and Humphrey Questing’s disposition of his money had been cruel and unjust. Gradually, however, the wounds Elizabeth had suffered began to heal underneath. It was a gradual process, and took a long while. At first, she wasn’t aware of the change in herself, then her conscience began actively to trouble her. Humphrey Questing might have misused and mistreated her, but legally the estate was not hers. After that she knew she was going to have to speak. She decided to do so in her own time and in her own way. There was a great deal to arrange, she had made financial commitments that had to be terminated, and so on. Anyhow, she had definitely made up her mind to confess the truth before the first of the letters arrived.
Nils turned his head sharply. Todhunter sat up. He said, “The letters, Colonel?”
Eden said, “yes,” and shrugged heavy shoulders. There had been two of them, one in late May, and one in June. They were typewritten on a single sheet of cheap white paper. They were both the same. They weren’t threatening letters. There was no demand for money in them. Each one simply gave the date of Elizabeth’s second marriage, the time and place, and that was all. The letters had been posted in New York City. There wras of course no signature.
Eden said that Davidson had arrived at the lake on the heels of the second letter. The object of his visit was cash. He braced Elizabeth boldly as soon as he reached Amethyst. He wanted a loan of $10,000.
“Davidson wrote the letters?” asked Todhunter.
The Colonel ran a strong square hand impatiently through his dark hair. “Who else? If any of Humphrey Questing’s people had found out about Elizabeth’s second marriage they would have gone straight to the lawyers who would have been down on her like a ton of bricks. Davidson practically admitted writing the letters. He knew all about her second marriage. He said something like ‘There are things in all our lives we wouldn’t want dragged into the open. I’m a discreet man, you can rely on my discretion,’ and put his demand. Elizabeth was standing at the top of the terrace steps. She said, ‘I’m not going to give you a penny,’ turned away, and fell. That was when she injured her ankle . . . The filthy rat!” Eden conquered his rage, drew a deep breath, and went on. Davidson had been forced to leave without seeing Elizabeth again. She refused to see him. She had intended to return to New York, her ankle kept her here at the lake. As soon as she was sufficiently recovered she wrote to Loretta Pilgrim asking Loretta and the Fonts out. That it was the eve of her fortieth birthday meant nothing to her, it might just as well have been her thirty-ninth or her forty-first as far as she was concerned. Loretta Pilgrim’s interest in the date on which she would have been finally free to marry again without losing her inheritance, ironic under the circumstances, simply amused her.
There was a pause. The night was airless and very still. They sat in silence for a moment. The moon was hidden behind clouds. Rose was facing north. Lights in the guest house the Fonts and Loretta Pilgrim occupied shone brightly through an illuminated screen of trees and bushes. Loretta Pilgrim wrould be far too excited to sleep. And Candy. And Daniel. Corn in Egypt. Loretta’s cup had been filled up and running over. . . . Would money make the difference, would Candy be satisfied now, or would she throw Daniel to the wolves, divorce him and go on to greener fields?
Todhunter spoke out of the obscurity. “How long have you known the truth about Mrs. Questing, Colonel?”
“For almost a year.”
“She told you herself?”
“Yes. She told me when I asked her to marry me and she refused. “Did you know before you left New York that Davidson was coming out here, Colonel?”
“I did not.”
“Did you see him before you left New York?”
Eden’s chair creaked as he shifted his solid body. “Yes, I saw him—bv accident. My bank is the same as Elizabeth's. Davidson also banked there. He gave her as a reference when lie opened an account. I saw him leaving the bank and followed him, idly at first. I had half made up my mind to tackle him . . ."
"On what grounds, Colonel? What were you going to do?1'
"To tell vou the truth I don't quite know. There wasn't much I could do. The only desire I had was to paste his face in—which wasn’t going to do any of us any particular good. . . . Hefore I could make up my mind to do anything Davidson put himself out of my reach. He walked into the house the Fonts have an apartment in. I had been there once for Elizabeth with some mail belonging to Mrs. Pilgrim that had been misdirected."
‘‘This was on the afternoon of August the tenth, the day before you left New York?"
There on the long dark terrace, with nothing changed, there was a tightening, a new note of urgency. It didn't come from the detective. He remained casual. It was Nils. Nils was holding his cigarette motionless in mid air.
Eden said, "That's right."
“What time in the afternoon, Colonel?"
“It must have been about—oh, half-past three or so."
“What did you do after that?”
“I decided I'd have a talk with Davidson, and warn him to keep off Elizabeth. There's a little restaurant down the street, with a sidewalk terrace. I had a couple of beers there. When Davidson didn't show after a while, I got tired and went back to the hotel I always stay at, the Cornwallis, and took a room for the night.”
“I see . . ."
Todhunter looked out into darkness in that isolated and beautiful spot in the Canadian Rockies, with a cool breeze blowing and the lake a faint shimmer, and saw instead a summer afternoon street in New- York, hot and humid under a suffocating sky, with thunder threatening from the west as it did here now. The Hotel Cornwallis was a short distance north of the Font apartment and just south of the Questing house w’here a nameless, faceless woman had been killed in the early evening. Eden had now added himself to the list of people in the vicinity in the late afternoon. And it was in the late afternoon that the dead woman had been seen alive on the Questing steps. Three murders, same cast each time, with the exception of Rose O'Hara, Nils, and Elizabeth Questing . . .