“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said abruptly. “Read a book of yours out on the islands. The Red something or other, wasn’t it?”
“The Red Urn,” I said, probably with a lilt in my voice.
“You slipped up in it, you know,” he said. “Why don’t you crime writers learn something about police work? And that heroine of yours was a dilly. No character. Nothing but looks. As for that woman detective of yours—Why for God’s sake a woman? Know what I think?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said coldly, and with the lilt certainly gone.
“This sister of yours,” he said. “She’s a beauty, and so probably you were brought up to believe she was God’s gift to the world. It doesn’t work out like that. Look at the ugly women some men marry! Not that you’re that, God knows,” he added magnanimously.
That made me laugh, and before long I was telling him of my childhood, of The Birches and our reasons for living there, to Phil and Helga and Jennie, and even to the rehabilitated swimming pool and the gatekeeper’s cottage I had done over and could not rent.
He said it all sounded very pleasant to a tired New Yorker. He was pretty much at a loose end himself. He’d thought of a farm, but he realized that a farm without a woman might be pretty lonely, and he had never married. “Been too busy,” he added.
Months later I was to think back over that talk of ours, and to wonder that I had not realized its undercurrents. Except for his helping me when Judith fainted in the train at Reno none of it was accidental. If I had not gone to the club car he would have managed to meet me somehow. Before I told him he knew perfectly well who Judith was, and almost certainly my own identity. And what is more, he knew what she was afraid of.
He had done, I thought resentfully, rather a professional bit of acting!
I had no suspicion of him then. When I finally said good night and went back to my compartment, the connecting door into Judith’s drawing-room was closed and locked on her side, so I hoped she was settled. At one o’clock in the morning, however, she shook me awake.
“I’m not going to New York at all,” she said. “We can take a train from the station as soon as we get there, can’t we? I’m going directly to The Birches.”
“Well, you can’t do it in the state of Illinois, or wherever we are now,” I said peevishly. “For goodness’ sake go back to bed and let me sleep.”
But I didn’t sleep much after that. Lying in my berth I could see Phil’s face when we arrived and Helga’s. I thought of the quiet days at my desk in Mother’s room, and the Bechstein underneath. I thought of the salad or sandwich that was my customary lunch, and Judith’s ideas on food. And I wondered how in heaven’s name we could lock up a great rambling place like that if Judith persisted in behaving as she was doing then.
It was daylight before I slept.
I did not see my policeman again. Apparently he had left the train somewhere, perhaps in Chicago. I missed him, for I could have used a little help. It was Judith, of course. She would not leave the car at Grand Central until the entire train was empty, and even then only the warning that it was going out to the yards finally evicted her. By that time there was not a redcap in sight, and had it not been for a benevolent conductor I might still have been there, surrounded by luggage.
Luckily there was a local ready, and as I had wired Phil, he met us at the station with our rattling old car. I expected Judith to make some comment on it, but she did not. She ducked in as though all the fiends of hell were after her, and kept looking behind all the way as though she expected to be followed.
Even Phil, resentful as I knew he was, finally noticed it.
“What the devil’s the matter with you, Jude?” he said. “Expecting your ex-husband to follow you?”
“Of course not,” she said sharply. “I thought I heard a state trooper behind us.”
“They know this heap,” Phil said dryly. “When they stop me it’s for obstructing traffic.” He turned around and eyed her as she sat in the backseat, surrounded by her handsome luggage. “Why don’t you relax, Jude? You’ll find The Birches a fine cure for the jitters. All we ever get there is an occasional scream in the night. Got any plans for the future?”
“Plans?” she said. “I’ll stay at The Birches for a while, anyhow. The house is as much mine as yours, isn’t it?”
“Such as it is,” he said. “The food, including Jell-O and bread pudding, both of which I detest, is paid for by Lois and me. So are the taxes, the light, the heat, the telephone, and the man who wanders in a few times a year to cut the grass. We count that and upkeep as rent. You’ll have to ask Lois if she wants to take a boarder.”
There was very nearly a row right then in the car. It ended, however, with her agreeing to pay a part of the expenses while she was there, but by her demanding Mother’s old room in return. I was furious.
“Sorry, Judith,” I said stiffly. “That’s mine now. Has been for years. I certainly don’t intend to move out.”
“If I’m to be a boarder I have a right to it. It’s the biggest. Anyhow I have my own reasons for wanting it.”
“What reasons?”
She declined to say, so it was a stalemate until we reached the house.
In spite of everything I was glad to be home. As I have said, spring at The Birches is wonderful, with the grass brilliantly green, the forsythia golden yellow, and the trees showing their new young leaves with pride. Like mothers with young babies, Father always said. As we drove in I saw the pool was finished and was slowly filling, and Judith looked at it with an odd expression.
“I thought you’d let it go,” she said.
“We did. It’s just been restored.”
I thought she shivered.
“I always hated it,” she said, and closed her eyes.
Then the house was sprawling before us. The white elephant, as Phil called it, was no longer white. Even the big pillars of the porch were now scaling and gray. It was still impressive, however: the center three stories high, with the top floor the large attic; and the two wings, one the service one with the pantry, kitchen, storeroom, and laundry in it and eight or ten servants’ rooms above; the other containing what had been the morning room and was now our living-room. In the ell on that side was the library, what had been Father’s gun room but was now empty, and beyond the drawing-room the unused conservatory, much of the glass gone and looking rather as though it had been bombed.
Judith had not been there for years, and she looked shocked when she saw it.
“What do you mean by upkeep?” she said indignantly. “The place is a ruin!”
“Guttering and spouting,” I told her. “New tiles on the roof so we don’t sleep under umbrellas. Toilets and bathtubs that work. What did you expect? Buckingham Palace?”
She said very little when she was inside, although her face was a study. The long hall that ran from the front to the rest of the house was carpetless, except for a rug or two, and some impulse on Jennie’s part had opened the door to the drawing-room, although it had been closed for years.
It stood there, naked and enormous, with what little furniture remained covered with sheets, including the piano, and the glass chandeliers and the mirrors similarly protected. She stood gazing in at it.
“Welcome home,” I said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Jude.”
“But it’s dreadful. Where’s Mother’s Aubusson carpet? And all the rest of her lovely stuff?”
“Sold,” I told her. “Sold long ago when Phil was getting a start. It went for food and doctor bills, and when Mother died it buried her.”
I think she hesitated, then. She looked as though she meant to turn and leave, but some second thought, some secret reason, decided her to stay. At that moment Helga and Jennie appeared, and I saw by Helga’s expression that there was going to be trouble.
“You’ll have to take us as we are, Miss Jude,” she said. “We live pretty plain. Not the way you’re used to.”
But Judith had pulle
d herself together by that time.
“I only want to rest,” she said plaintively. “I don’t expect a great deal, Helga. Just peace and quiet.”
“That’s all we’ve got,” Helga said her face grim, and decided to offer a gnarled old hand for Jude to shake. “This is Jennie. She’s not what you’re used to, either, but she can get about, which is more than I can.”
All in all it must have been an unpleasant home-coming—if you can call it that—but Judith had apparently made her decision. She may have had some qualms, however. She stood at the front door, gazing down the drive while Phil carried in her luggage.
“I don’t remember it like this,” she said. “It used to be so gay. And it’s frightfully lonely. Aren’t there any neighbors?”
Phil put down some bags and mopped his face.
“Quite a lot has happened to the world since your day,” he said. “Or perhaps that crowd of yours in town didn’t know it. No, there are no neighbors, Judith. Take it or leave it. And my own suggestion is to leave it.”
She only shrugged her shoulders, and I left her there to go back to the kitchen and Helga. She was standing by the stove stirring something and her old shoulders looked bent and depressed.
“I’m having lamb stew for dinner,” she said, her voice stubborn. “She can eat it or let it alone. I don’t want her here, Lois, and that’s flat. I’ve seen you and Mr. Phil struggling for years while she lived on the fat of the land, and not so much as a visit from her. Now when she’s in trouble she’s here.”
She sat down on the edge of the big kitchen table.
“What do you mean, trouble, Helga?” I said. “I wouldn’t call her divorce that.”
Helga eyed me dourly. “Maybe you haven’t really looked at her,” she said. “She’s in some sort of jam, and I don’t like it. She looks haunted-like. She’s thin, too. What’s she done? Killed somebody?”
“Don’t be an old fool,” I said, and put an arm around her. “She won’t stay long. We’ll have to make the best of it. That’s all.”
I found Judith already ensconced in Mother’s room, with an entranced Jennie opening bags and taking out the lace-trimmed underwear and nightgowns they contained. A country girl from the village, she had certainly never seen things like that before. Nor anyone like Judith, anxiously examining her face in the mirror of my toilet table. Already my typewriter and table had been moved into the hall, and I was almost speechless with fury.
“You always get your own way, don’t you, Jude?” I said, my voice shaking. “If you ask me, this is a pretty dirty trick. There are plenty of other rooms.”
“I won’t be here long. I’ve told you that.”
“Then why throw me out?”
“I have all my jewels with me. I need the safe, Lois. It’s still here, I see.”
I was appalled.
“Do you mean to say you took all that stuff to Reno?”
“Why not? I always carry it with me.”
“Is that why you locked yourself away in the train?”
She looked at me in the mirror.
“Of course. What do you think?”
I didn’t believe her for a moment. She was lying, and I knew it. She had it on the way west, and never bothered about it. But she followed it up cleverly.
“That’s why I want Phil to nail those windows shut over the porch,” she said. “The other two will do for ventilation.”
I stood staring at her.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “No one knows you have anything valuable with you. Anyhow you have the safe. And we never have burglars. They know we have nothing worth stealing except Mother’s Georgian tea set, and that’s been on the sideboard in the dining-room for twenty years.”
She looked stubborn.
“Anyone could climb those porch pillars,” she said. “I’m taking no chances.”
Jennie had gone out for something by that time, and I confronted Judith with what I daresay was not a particularly sisterly face.
“What are you afraid of?” I demanded. “Don’t pretend to me, Jude. You’re scared to death. You’ve done something, haven’t you? Something wrong. Maybe something terrible. What is it?”
She did not like it. I thought for a moment she was going to slap me. Then she thought better of it.
“Don’t be absurd, Lois,” she said. “What could I have done? And if I had do you think I could get away with it, as well-known as I am? That’s simply silly. I’m taking normal precautions, like any sensible person. You’re building up something that actually doesn’t exist.”
It was her round. I’ll grant you that. She had won Mother’s room and even Phil’s reluctant support. For the last thing I heard that night was the sound of a hammer as he nailed her two windows shut.
I was back in my old nursery by that time, still seething, but in spite of myself I had to smile, remembering dinner that night. Judith had come down to dinner in an exquisite negligee, had waited for the soup course, which did not arrive, and winced when Jennie slammed her plate of stew in front of her. Phil watched her without appearing to until the dessert appeared.
“I’m sorry, Judith,” he said, “but we’ve had to let the butler go. Got into the wine cellar and turned up plastered. But I can recommend this lemon gelatin. Not fattening but full of energy.”
Whereupon he ate the stuff, which I knew he detested.
Chapter 6
RIDGELY CALLED ME UP the next morning. He sounded irritable.
“I didn’t expect to have to learn from the papers that you were back,” he said. “When did you get in?”
“Late yesterday. She’s here at The Birches, Ridge. I don’t know why.”
“I suppose she has her reasons,” he said coldly. “I’ll mail you a check today.”
He hung up without so much as a good-by, and as I put down the receiver I wondered again why he had wanted me to go to Reno. It seemed singularly pointless. He was not even interested in why she was where she was.
I had my first chance to talk to Phil when I drove him to the station that morning. I told him the whole story, the fainting at Reno, and the way she had locked herself away on the train. But I did not mention O’Brien. It seemed unnecessary.
Phil was thoughtful, especially after I told him of Ridgely’s call.
“Suppose she’s afraid of him?” he asked.
“He wasn’t in Nevada,” I said. “Or on that train. And she’s not afraid of him. She never has been.”
It was true, of course, and Phil nodded.
“I suppose he’s out,” he said. “Certainly he’s behaved damned decently, but then as a Chandler he would. Think she got mixed up with some man out there?”
“Not seriously. No, Phil, it’s not Ridge, and it’s nobody else I can think of.”
He grunted.
“Well, I wish to God she’d take her troubles somewhere else,” he said heavily. “Just as we’re beginning to see daylight—”
I did some marketing in town after I left him at the station. Town is what we call the bustling small city where the station is situated. The village, a mile or so beyond our gate, is merely a huddle of houses. Thus I buy our food in town, shop for clothes in the city, and get our grass cut—so to speak—by the village. So I bought the groceries in town that morning, and then drove slowly home.
The Birches sits on a low hill, with higher ones behind it, and the drive slopes gradually from the cottage to the house, some five hundred feet or so. The Adrians’ neglected entrance was not far beyond ours, and as none of us had money to do any pruning, we were practically drowned in shrubbery. I had managed to clear a bit around the pool, which lay halfway to the house on the Adrian side.
I looked at the cottage as I turned in. It was still closed, and I decided to open and clean it soon. I had put it in the hands of an agent again. And I stopped the car by the pool and got out. It must have rained recently, for the water was slightly muddy. It looked cold too, and I wondered if after all it would ever justify its cost.
Maybe, when the weather got really warm—
I was startled to hear someone behind me, and turned to see a young man with a camera in the drive.
“Any chance of my getting a shot of Mrs. Chandler?” he asked cheerfully. “Famous beauty in bucolic surroundings. Resting after Reno. You know the sort of thing.”
“I haven’t an idea,” I told him. “She’s never objected before, so far as I know. You can try, anyhow.”
He went toward the house, and I walked up to what I called Father’s garden. The banks of the little stream—it was only a foot or two across—were still pretty bare, but here and there small green things were pushing their way up after their winter’s sleep. I could still see him there, holding my hand and calling me baby. And I could still remember the wilted lilies-of-the-valley from those very banks which I had carried to his grave, long after his death.
What would he think of us now? I wondered. Or of the bleak old house? Or of Judith and the mystery that apparently surrounded her? He would be patient, I thought. Patient and understanding. He was always understanding. It was he who had established the small cemetery under the birches where we buried our pets, the dead baby robin I had found and wept over, the kitten one of his hunting dogs had killed. In later years Phil and I still carried it on, and the green mounds were always neat.
As I walked to it I thought drearily how much of the family history was there: the early pets, my turtle, the little alligator Phil bought somewhere and kept in his bathtub, even the cats kept in the stable to catch the mice there. Then the long interval after Father’s death, with Mother at The Birches refusing, as she said, to turn the place into a zoo, without even a dog allowed. And after she was gone Phil’s terriers and my own series of Pekes with their small tragedies, usually traffic ones. After Chang died I had had enough heartbreak. I had no other dog but, as I say, we still kept the place in order, although the little wooden crosses had long lost the inscriptions on them.
I was pulling some weeds from one of the mounds when I heard footsteps again, and saw the photographer coming toward me.
The Swimming Pool Page 5