Danger in the Dark

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  No one replied. They stood there, looking at the thing at their feet.

  Chapter 2

  THE FLASHLIGHT IN DENNIS’ hand made a bright fan of light which touched the tips of Daphne’s wet gold slippers and centered on the crumpled, gleaming white patch which was shirt front. In the shadow above the fan of light each could see the others’ faces, white and strange. Rowley had left the door open a few inches, so there was a slit of blackness behind him through which cold and snow sifted. Daphne was trembling violently. Dennis shot a swift glance at her over the flashlight and said: “Shut the door, Rowley.”

  Still without taking his eyes from the thing at their feet, Rowley put out his hand and closed the door. Then he knelt again beside the sodden hump of blackness. In the middle of that white, shining shirt front was a spreading red patch. Neither Daphne nor Dennis moved or seemed to breathe as Rowley’s thin hands hovered above it, somehow avoiding the wet redness while he searched for a heartbeat. Rowley wore no topcoat and no hat, and his black hair was like a tight satin cap outlining his narrow head; his sallow, sharply aquiline face was pasty white. He groped along a thick out-flung arm, pushed up the white edge of a cuff and hunted on that strong wrist for a pulse.

  Dennis suddenly shifted the flashlight so it centered now upon the face of the thing at their feet. Its eyes were half open. At the edge of the light lay a large, red rosebud, a little withered now, with its petals showing a purple tinge. A rose from the bridal dinner.

  Daphne felt herself swaying. Dennis noted it and said sharply, “There’s a chair over there.” But she couldn’t move and, indeed, did not hear it, for Rowley was rising. He dusted his knees and looked at Dennis. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for him.”

  “A—doctor—” Daphne thought she was speaking aloud, but the words came out in a stifled whisper.

  “No use,” said Rowley. “He’s dead. Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

  Dennis started to speak and stopped, with a suddenly rigid look about his mouth. He did not look at Rowley but still, fixedly, at the dead man. His brown face was less brown in that light, his eyes dark and shining. He still wore evening clothes, too, but he had on a topcoat and had had a hat. It was somewhere in the shadows behind him. It and—and the bag. Rowley would see the bag, thought Daphne, only half aware of the thought. He would inquire about it—or make his own conclusion. But it didn’t matter now. It didn’t matter because Ben Brewer was dead.

  It was only then that she comprehended the thing Rowley had said. Ben Brewer was dead—and Rowley had said, “Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

  But Ben couldn’t be dead. Not in that short time—not anyone so strong. Not anyone with so furious and powerful a hold on life and on things. And on people. Not Ben. She must have made some sound, for Dennis said, “Take the flash, Rowley” and handed it to him and put his arm around Daphne.

  “You’d better sit down over here. Don’t look at it. We’ll get you back into the house in a moment.”

  She let Dennis put her in a chair and wrap his coat around her, tucking it under her slippered feet to keep them from the cold dampness of the cement floor.

  “Now don’t look at him. Don’t think.” He put his hand under her chin and turned her face up so he could look compellingly into her eyes.

  “We’ll fix things somehow. Don’t—don’t go to pieces, darling.”

  “Dennis!”

  He bent over her, taking her wholly into his arms and putting his cheek against hers.

  “Daphne, Daphne, trust me.”

  “She’s all right,” said Rowley. “She’s got more guts than either of us. Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

  “He didn’t!” cried Daphne. “He didn’t! He was—here. Ben—like that.” The first moment of shocked stillness that was like a dreadful kind of paralysis had passed, and she was beginning to feel again. She made herself look at the well—at the colored glass, dim and gray now, in the window that faced her. They’d had stories about every window in the little springhouse when they were children. She and Dennis and Rowley. And the springhouse itself had assumed many roles. Swiss Family Robinson’s home in the trees. A beleaguered castle—herself alternately the maiden in distress and the army to be ordered about by the two generals. There, just before her, was the concrete shelf around the spring, and the corner against which Dennis had fallen the day he and Rowley had climbed to the little ledge that ran around the conelike roof of the tiny house. The scar was still there probably, hidden by his dark hair. And now they were there again—she and Dennis and Rowley. Only this time it was no game.

  She forced herself to stop trembling; Dennis’ coat over her own fur coat was warm, and she could hold herself steadier. But she wouldn’t look at Ben—Ben Brewer. It couldn’t be Ben Brewer—she was going to marry him the next day—that day, for it was after midnight. It couldn’t be Ben Brewer.

  “I didn’t kill Ben,” Dennis was saying coolly. He fumbled in his pocket and took out cigarettes. “Cigarette? Daphne?”

  Rowley had matches. He wasn’t as calm as he’d pretended, for his hand was unsteady when he held a light for Daphne.

  It gave them a moment of recovery.

  Rowley said through smoke, “I suppose we could cover him—but there’s nothing here. Yes, he’s dead all right. Not a chance to do anything for him. If you didn’t kill him, Dennis, who—”

  He was going to believe Dennis, then. Rowley was sometimes curiously like his mother in disposition, though so unlike her in looks, slow to perceive and convince, tenacious about inquiries.

  “I don’t know who killed him,” said Dennis. “We found him like this.” He was quicker than Rowley always; and Daphne could tell by a kind of certainty in his voice that he had made up his mind about something. If he had hesitated before, it had been due to perplexity or to the shock of the thing.

  “God!” said Rowley suddenly. “He looks awful. I can’t—old Ben—” He took a long breath of smoke, exhaled slowly and said again in a collected way, “We’ve got to do something about it. We—What do you mean, you found him like this?”

  “Just that. Daphne and I found him here. Like that. Just before you came. We hadn’t had time to call anyone—had just realized that he was dead when we heard your steps on the path and—”

  She looked away from the window and at Rowley, and she saw the question coming.

  “How did you happen to be here?”

  Dennis, too, had seen the question coming. Would he tell Rowley?

  “We had a crazy notion for a walk in the snow. Sort of a farewell—you know. Daph getting married tomorrow—leaving, all that. A sentimental journey. Isn’t that right, Daphne?”

  It was a demand. What? Agree, of course. She said quickly, “Yes—yes.”

  He went on, “We thought we’d take a look at the springhouse—scene of old times. We came to the door, and it was open. We came in and”—he didn’t look now at the thing at his feet, but it was as if all of them were staring fixedly at it—“and there he was. Just like that. I had this flashlight and—” He put his cigarette to his mouth; it made a bright little glow of crimson, and he went on, “He was dead. I felt for a pulse. Wasn’t any. Then you came.”

  “Oh,” said Rowley slowly, watching Dennis.

  Dennis exhaled smoke and added, “We hadn’t got over the shock of it. We were stunned. I don’t think we’d even said anything.”

  Rowley turned the flashlight suddenly so it swept in glancing rays about the springhouse, the eight colored windows, garish and old-fashioned in daylight, dull and meaningless at night; the peaked roof, the bench running around it; the spring at one side edged in concrete, with a wooden railing and, now, frozen. There were a few cobwebs from the previous summer; several steamer chairs folded flat. A damp cement floor. Obviously no one was concealed there.

  “No one here?” he said.

  “No one. And we didn’t hear the shot. It must have occurred before we left the house.”

  Dennis’ voice was less stra
ined. He was relieved because Rowley had accepted that explanation. Had Rowley failed to see the bag? She turned to look for it, and it wasn’t there. Where was it? He had had it in his hand—he’d left it outside, then. Had dropped it at the door of the springhouse. Instinctively she felt that Rowley must not know of it; must not be permitted to see it. Instinctively, and because of Dennis’ swift, false explanation of their presence there and his unspoken demand that she subscribe to it.

  Later she wondered what they would have done had there been more time. More time to comprehend it, to realize that Ben Brewer was dead and what that death would mean. Rowley had come too soon.

  “Where’s the weapon?” said Rowley suddenly. “He’s been shot, I suppose—no knife could make a wound like that.”

  “I don’t know. I tell you we found him just like this.”

  “There’s no gun anywhere. Unless it’s under him.”

  There was a small silence. Then Dennis said in a flat voice, “We’d better look, I suppose.”

  “Yes.” Rowley cleared his throat. “If it’s suicide—”

  They looked, and there was no gun. No knife. Nothing but that purplish rosebud.

  “He could have tossed the gun outside in the snow,” said Dennis.

  “With a wound like that?”

  “No, I suppose not. Well, we’d better call somebody. Rouse the house—get doctors, police. God, what a mess!”

  Quite suddenly Daphne could see headlines: Dead Following Bridal Dinner. Benjamin Brewer, president of Haviland Bridge Company … The account of the wedding had already gone to the papers; a photograph of herself in her wedding gown and the veil that hung, ready, in her room. Horrible. Could they stop that account of it? she wondered crazily.

  “But, good God,” said Rowley suddenly, “he couldn’t be murdered. There’s no one who would murder him. I mean, he—Well, after all. Murder,” said Rowley and stopped abruptly, so the word hung there in the chill silence of the little springhouse and echoed against its walls and seemed to pick itself up and repeat itself, whispering, in the shadows above their heads. Murder. Murder of a man. Murder of Ben Brewer. Murder and a black sodden bulk lay at their feet which had been—two hours, an hour, a few moments ago, perhaps—a man.

  Daphne was trembling. Curious how gradual was the comprehension of anything so ugly—you saw the thing and recognized it but were not altogether conscious of it. Of all its significance. You grasped at this or that coherent thought, but everything was distorted. Murder there—where they’d played those years ago.

  She stood suddenly. Dennis’ coat fell with a muffled little thud to the floor. She said unsteadily, looking from Dennis to Rowley and back again:

  “It can’t be murder. There’s no one to kill him. No one who—It must be suicide. There’s no one but the family here—Aunt Amelia—your mother, Rowley. My father. We three. It isn’t murder.”

  Again the word was left in the silence, hovering, repeating itself.

  Then Dennis said slowly:

  “Look here, Daph. This is going to be bad either way. I mean—I mean, with the wedding tomorrow. There’ll be an awful lot of publicity—talk—whether it’s murder or suicide or—”

  “Good God,” said Rowley suddenly and violently again, “it can’t be suicide—we’re forgetting—” Again he stopped and stared at that bulk on the floor as if mesmerized by it, lost in some dark speculation.

  “You mean Ben’s suicide the night before his marriage to me,” said Daphne. “You mean it would be—would be—”

  That was horrible, too. That was incredible, really, in its potential ugliness. Newspapers, stories, talk—whispers at last, to follow her all her life. Suicide—the night before he was to be married to her. The questions: Why did he do it? Why?

  Dennis’ hand was on her arm.

  “Don’t look like that, honey. We’ll fix it. We’ll—”

  “Hell,” said Rowley, “I wasn’t thinking of Daph. It’s the company. The business. Oh, my God!”

  He tossed his cigarette into the little hollow around the frozen spring and turned vehemently toward them.

  “We’ll have to—to do something. Murder’s bad. But suicide is worse—it’ll wreck things. Everybody knows about the famous will. Everybody knows about the rows; stockholders are all onto it and watching and scary. Some siding with him, some with us—oh, you know what it’s been. Well, you don’t, Dennis, because you’ve been away all year. But it’s been hell for everybody concerned. Now if he is a suicide they’ll say it’s on account of business.”

  “That might let Daph out, anyway,” said Dennis slowly.

  Rowley gave him a quick, dark look.

  “Let Daph out, yes—only there’ll still be plenty of talk. But it ruins us all financially. Wrecks the business as surely as a—a bomb.” He looked again at the thing there on the floor and added, with a kind of thin anger, “I never liked Ben Brewer. I don’t give a good goddam what really happened to him. Johnny thought he was smart, but I could never see it. Mother figures he was going to ruin us anyway, given time. But no matter what other people say there’s just one explanation the stockholders will jump at, and that’s failure. Ben was first and foremost a business man, and they know it. The Haviland Bridge Company will vanish like a—a—Anyway, it’s murder,” he said conclusively. “No weapon.”

  “So you’d prefer murder to suicide,” said Dennis, watching his cousin. “I suppose you have an idea about what murder brings with it? Inquiry, publicity, all of us grilled mercilessly, the worst possible motives attributed to everything we admit, and at the last somebody—”

  Rowley glanced at him sharply and said, “Somebody a scapegoat, you mean?”

  “I mean if he’s murdered somebody did it,” said Dennis. “That’s not a pleasant thought, either.”

  Rowley’s sallow face looked faintly green.

  “Give me another cigarette, Dennis.”

  If only it weren’t so cold, thought Daphne; it was partly the cold that made her shiver so. She wrapped her coat more tightly around her. Below it the yellow folds of velvet dragged upon the floor.

  “But—but we ought to do something,” she said. “We—There’s no use in standing here talking of it—I mean, well, it’s nothing we can change. We can’t make it suicide—or—or murder or anything. No matter how much we talk of it we can’t make it any different.”

  “Here’s a light,” said Rowley and held it for Dennis’ cigarette. The little point of light wavered, and above it Dennis and Rowley looked at each other—a brief look, understanding.

  Daphne recognized it.

  “You can’t—” she cried again jerkily. “There’s no way—you can’t change it, hide it—make it any different. There’s no use in talking like this as if we could. He’s dead. He—he’s there. We’ve got to do something about it.” Her voice was high and unsteady, and Dennis said quickly:

  “Now, Daphne—don’t, dear. Look—I’m going to take you to the house. Then Rowley and I will decide—”

  “You can’t decide anything. It’s done. He’s dead. Nothing that you say will make any difference. Call the—the police.”

  “Yes, yes, we’ll do all that. But give us a little time. After all, there are ways and ways—I mean, well, we ought to—to prepare the family. Perhaps we can figure some way out of it. That is, some way which won’t be so bad for us all. Rowley’s quite right about the business, Daphne. I’ve known something of what this year since Grandfather’s death has been. I know how nervous the stockholders have been with this grand quarrel going on in our midst. After all, we can’t exactly toss away the family fortune. Our only source of income. The thing Grandad spent his life building up.”

  “I wonder,” said Rowley in a whisper, as if he did not want to hear his own voice making the monstrous proposal, “if we couldn’t just dispose of him somewhere. After all—if there’s no body, there’s neither murder nor suicide.”

  “No. No!” cried Daphne with sharp terror and vehemence. But Rowley
and Dennis were both looking again at that black heap. The red had spread further on the gleaming white shirt front—or had it? And the three of them were in that springhouse again together, plotting—wrangling—but this time it wasn’t a game. It was truth and terror and death. Murder.

  For, of course, it was murder. Otherwise there would have been a weapon. Murder—and someone had murdered him.

  And there would be no wedding tomorrow.

  There would be, instead, police, inquiry, unspeakable and hideous things through which they would be dragged.

  Why were you in the springhouse? they would say. Oh, to meet Dennis Haviland. Why?

  It was a suddenly lucid thought springing out of all that chaos of disaster.

  It was the first time that, consciously, she saw their danger.

  With a start she realized that Dennis was speaking. Speaking very thoughtfully and in a whisper, too.

  “It might be done,” he said, looking downward.

  Chapter 3

  AND IN THAT PACKED moment of sheer horror Daphne considered it, too.

  It would mean that Ben Brewer would simply disappear. There would be questions, comment, inquiry—perhaps they would say he’d been called away—he’d gone on a trip. And then didn’t come back. Perhaps they could fix up some explanation for it.

  Dennis was resourceful and quick; Rowley slow but ingenious. Together they plotted well. They always had. And they always had made her agree; agree and even defend them later to the aunts. For in those days she could always stand up to the aunts, because they knew her father would side with Daphne; too indulgent, they called him—too fond of her because of her likeness to her young, dead mother. She felt a swift, frightened conviction that they were drawing her with them into a dark and hideous path; as if they were making her plan, too, how it could be done. She had always been helpless against their combined strength; they had always managed to win her over in the end. They were going to do so now.

  Oh, it was fantastic—nightmarish—impossible.