Danger in the Dark

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  Oh, God, the latch on the drawing-room door! He’d forgotten about fingerprints. They’d used handkerchiefs continually, hadn’t they? They’d been very careful about fingerprints. Now he’d smeared his own all over that old latch and the broad iron handle of it. He hesitated and went back. Better wipe it clean; no fingerprints would be bad, but his own found there would be worse. Besides, other people entering the room—as many other people would shortly be entering it—would leave diverse and blurring marks upon it. The police would not find it suspiciously free of fingerprints. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the latch on both sides and closed the door. As he did so a swift, devastating thought flashed over him.

  What a grim irony it would be if, in destroying clues to the murderer of Ben Brewer, he managed to leave clues involving himself! A fine net of evidence hopelessly entangling him, so that no explanation, no final truth could possibly extricate him.

  There was no way to gauge the potential power of the police; they did things, found things, reasoned from bits of evidence which the layman did not even know existed. Suppose, without knowing it, he had left evidence against himself; evidence that they would link, if they discovered it, with his love for Daphne, her promise to go away with him; with her final decision that she could not go, which would furnish so strong and urgent a motive for the murder of the man who stood between them. Whom she was to marry in so short a time.

  It was not a pleasant thought. Neither was the recollection of that other evidence, that ugly, mysterious bit of direct evidence which he had so far concealed.

  Well, his only insurance against it was to have made no mistakes. He had thought there was none. But the closed window had shaken him.

  He hesitated, wanting to go back again into that room, to look again carefully at every smallest link in that false chain. He fought down the impulse and turned toward the stairway.

  But he realized the seriousness of the thing they had done; had realized it from the beginning. It made them technically—didn’t it?—accessories after the fact. That was at the best. At the worst—well, he wouldn’t think of that. At the best they had hindered the police; had obstructed the cause of justice; had completely destroyed any evidence left by the real murderer.

  Yet there had been no choice in the matter. He had realized that, too, almost the instant when Rowley had stepped into the springhouse. If Rowley had been only a few moments later! If Rowley hadn’t come at all!

  It was unfortunate that Rowley had turned up just at that point. And that he, Dennis, had lied fluently but not too well. But then he had had to lie—tell the only thing he could think of at the moment which would explain his presence there with Daphne and in a small measure protect Daphne.

  And Rowley’s tale of finding them there bending over the murdered man would carry a far greater weight of suspicion with the police than their own tale of Rowley’s coming so aptly on the scene.

  Who had killed Ben Brewer?

  Well, that would come later. Just now there was so much to think of, so much to be prepared for. In only an hour or two now the police would be there. Himself, Daphne, all of them facing inquiry.

  Oh yes, the third step.

  He checked himself on the very verge of putting his weight upon it and grasped the banister so as not to lose his balance.

  The hall was lighter, too; thus it was that he saw the reddish smudge on the ivory spindle just below his hand.

  He saw and bent to look at it, and every nerve in his body tightened.

  It was certainly blood.

  Blood, now dried, and faintly smudged. But still—he measured with his own hand—still it was just about the place that someone, grasping the banister—arrested by the creaking of that step as he, Dennis, had been arrested at the recollection of that creaking—would have placed his thumb.

  Someone, arrested in his stealthy advance up those steps by the creak of the third step—by Daphne’s pausing ahead of him and her whisper in the darkness, “Dennis—Dennis. Here I am.”

  He stood there, staring at that small reddish smudge as if it epitomized—as in a rather horrible way it did—all the ugliness and horror of the night. As if it set a grisly seal upon the thing.

  And at the same time it crystallized in the most dreadful way something that had been formless, a nebulous kind of shadow which had not, till then, taken definite shape and form. And that was, of course, that whoever had left that bloody thumbprint on the spindle had been someone in and of the house, familiar with its ways.

  He steadied himself; he’d known that all along—at least it had been there in the back of his mind.

  There was a sound of some kind from the kitchen wing, and he lifted his head sharply to listen. Laing would be coming into the house soon; if he hadn’t just then. He must not be seen there—still dressed and in that dangerous vicinity.

  Well, then—there was a bloody thumbprint probably belonging to the real murderer. What to do with it? Probably belonging to the real murderer. For there was also another possibility, and that was that Rowley or he himself had left that thumbprint on the old ivory spindle.

  If it was Rowley’s the whole truth of the thing would immediately come out and would be far more damaging to himself and to Daphne than it could possibly be to Rowley. And if it was his own, added at last to all that other evidence that existed, it would be horribly convincing. Convictions had been made by twelve good men and true on less evidence.

  And there was no way to tell certainly which it was. No way to tell even the size of the thing, for it was smudged. Yet there were clear enough lines, too. The police could tell—could identify it swiftly and with dreadful certainty.

  There was another faraway sound from the kitchen wing—as if a door had closed and someone had spoken. He must hurry.

  Again that devastating thought flashed through his mind.

  Suppose he had left somewhere and somehow evidence that would enclose upon him like a net—suppose he had left such evidence, and this bloody thumbprint was the only real clue that existed. That he and Rowley between them had not destroyed. Their only testimony to the truth.

  The only clue leading to the real murderer. What irony, again, it would be if he had destroyed that one saving clue with his own hands!

  Chapter 6

  THE TROUBLE WAS THAT someone was moving about in the kitchen or somewhere in the back part of the house.

  There was not time to think, to follow the several possibilities involved to their logical and several ends.

  Dennis himself had never been adverse to risks, although he had, too, a solid strain of shrewd common sense, so he was not really a gambler.

  But it wasn’t Rowley, it wasn’t himself; it was Daphne who made it important. Daphne who made it impossible for him to take the risk.

  And he must hurry.

  So he took out his handkerchief and was about to rub out that smudged thumbprint when he thought of the thing to do. It would be noticed, of course, but no one could say when or how it happened. And there would be no possible way, Dennis thought, of tracing it to him.

  His knife was in his pocket and the wood was soft below successive layers of paint. The noise it made seemed horribly loud, but it was not a difficult thing to do except that his hands shook a little with the need for haste. But in a moment he had it; a small slice of the wood with the bloody thumbprint intact. It left, to be sure, a jagged, unpainted scar on the soft ivory spindle just below the banister. But he assured himself that, although they would be certain to notice it at once, still there was no way at all to trace it to him. And he had the fingerprint.

  It was with a strong sense of again having averted a catastrophe that he put the thing in his pocket. If it was his own or Rowley’s thumbprint, then the truth that so horribly involved Daphne would not be brought out by its discovery.

  But if it was a clue leading to the murderer, then he had it. Preserved; intact; at hand in case of later need.

  He saw no one and heard nothing on the way t
hrough the twisting upper hall to his room. He undressed, disarranged the bed to look as if it had been slept in and flung himself down upon it. The possession of that one bit of real and material evidence—always providing it was evidence, and he thought it was—gave him an increasing sense of safety. Of holdings in reserve.

  But it held its own significance, too.

  It was rather horrible to realize that those small reddish lines could be translated into—good God, into a murderer. Suppose, eventually, they looked at it and said, “This is Gertrude’s thumbprint,” or “This is Johnny’s,” or “This is Amelia’s.”

  He had again a wave of incredulity and of revulsion. And again a wish to destroy it.

  But he didn’t, although he didn’t know exactly what he would do with it.

  And he didn’t, then, give full thought to the extreme and dangerous importance that thumbmark might possess.

  He was groggy with fatigue. Well, in an hour or two now, it would begin. He went to sleep and dreamed that the thumbprint turned out to be Daphne’s and Rowley was telling someone about it.

  At seven, as it came out later during the inquiry, Laing, and Mrs Laing, the cook, and Maggie, the middle-aged housemaid who was Mrs Laing’s niece, crossed from the garage to the house through unbroken snow, opened the back door with Laing’s key, entered the house and went direct to the kitchen.

  Breakfast was to be at eight, and because the wedding was set for twelve and there was not much time for all that was to be done before the caterers arrived at ten, a family breakfast was to be served in the dining room. This was contrary to Amelia’s usual custom, for she was a sensible woman and a firm believer in breakfast trays as contributing to family amenity. But that morning only Daphne was permitted a tray and Maggie, a stolid soul, preoccupied with an obscure liver complaint, brought it to Daphne, lighted a fire and opened the curtains and did not give the white-faced girl a second look.

  It was a family breakfast, but it was not promptly attended. In fact, only Gertrude, Amelia herself and Johnny Haviland turned up.

  At eight-thirty Laing and Maggie went to dust the small library which had been left to the last. All the other rooms were in a state of incredible neatness and shininess and—even to the flowers which had been arranged just after dinner the previous night—ready for the wedding. But the library had been used all along as an informal sitting room and workroom, and in it all the confusion of last-minute arrangements had accumulated. Belated wedding gifts, boxes, tissue paper, lists—a long table littered with odds and ends. On it, among other things, three long boxes of thick white envelopes, already addressed and stamped and ready to be put in the mail that day.

  Laing opened the door. The curtains were still drawn, and there was a lingering odor of stale smoke from the night before and on one small table a forgotten and sticky liqueur glass. Maggie went to open the curtains; Laing himself approached the long table where wedding presents stood and winked and glittered. First he saw that, curiously, some silver candlesticks, a silver tray or two, and several other objects he could not remember but which impressed him even then as being the most valuable of the lot, were heaped together on the floor. Then curtains rattled lightly on their rings, and a path of light went across the floor and struck upon a sort of huddle that lay half in the doorway that led into the drawing room and half in the drawing room.

  Laing didn’t know exactly what happened next, or when he recognized it as being the body of a man. But all at once he was bending over it, and it was Benjamin Brewer, and Maggie was screaming.

  It was that scream that brought them in from the dining room. It was that scream that brought Dennis Haviland awake and to his senses and hurrying down the stairs in a bathrobe. It brought Rowley at last out of his own room—fully clothed, precise, remarkably cool in the face of the almost unbelievable confusion downstairs.

  Daphne, desperately drinking black coffee upstairs, seeing herself in the mirror opposite—white and taut, with black marks under altogether sleepless eyes—did not hear Maggie’s scream because her room was at the very end of the south L.

  All night, in that ceaseless, stabbing whirl of questions there had been one that was immediate, that was something to be faced. It was: When would they tell her? When would they discover that there was to be no wedding? All those other seething questions were to have their hours of urgency, too. But just then, forcing herself to drink hot black coffee, it was, When?

  And she must face it so they would not guess. Dennis had had his way; he’d made the decision for her. She knew of no better course than to follow the one he had laid out for her. She didn’t know exactly what Dennis and Rowley had done except that Dennis seemed assured and satisfied that it was right and best. But during those night hours she had seen the force of Rowley’s argument. And she had seen other things.

  Ben had been murdered. There was no weapon. Then who had murdered him?

  She poured more coffee, spilling it.

  And they sent, at last, Johnny Haviland to tell her.

  At first view of his face she knew why he had come. He stood in the doorway hesitating, looking at her with his light blue eyes anything but jolly, his fair, handsome face no longer pink, his wavy, light hair disheveled—looking, for the first time in his life, perhaps, his full fifty-five years. He did not seem to see that there was already something amiss. He closed the door and walked toward her heavily—not gracefully and youthfully as usual. He sat down on the bed and looked at her and jingled keys in his pocket nervously.

  “Daph,” he said, “there’s something—something very bad. I mean—it’s about Ben.”

  Seeing his distress, she had a quick impulse to tell him she already knew—to put her head on his shoulder and sob out the story of the night. Last night, as he had dealt out cocktails and jokes and compliments, Rowley had looked at him and smiled and said, “Johnny was born to be the father of the bride.”

  The father of the bride. Escorting her on his sleekly tailored arm to that altar of flowers.

  “Daph,” he said, his mouth trembling a little below that small trim blond mustache. “Daph—did you love Ben? Because he—well, there was a robbery last night. That is, an attempted one. It—well, it seems that Ben heard the noise or something and—and went downstairs and they—”

  “Ben!” said Daphne.

  “He’s hurt,” said her father, watching her. “He’s dead, Daphne. They’ve sent for the police.”

  She couldn’t look into his eyes. He knew her too well: he would see too much. Her gaze fixed itself on a corner of the yellow satin eiderdown; a round braid binding turned itself in an S curve, and she was always to remember it. It and the sharp little ticks of the old Seth Thomas clock with the yellow face that stood on the mantel. Outside, the snow had stopped falling at last. On the little slipper chair was the yellow dress, its train draggled and still damp. She must hide the dress, she thought suddenly: Dennis had said there must be nothing to show that she had been out in the snow during the night. A night when, he had also said, every single event would have a significance.

  Johnny looked at her, cleared his throat huskily and rose and went to the window, where he stood staring out upon the dreary, gray morning and jingling the keys in his pocket.

  “The police are on the way now,” he said. “They will be here any time. Gertrude thinks there is likely to be quite a lot of inquiry. Though the thing seems clear enough—I mean, the robbery. All that. But she thinks the police will question us all.”

  “Yes,” said Daphne, tracing the yellow curve of braid with her finger.

  “It’s hell downstairs,” said Johnny worriedly. “You’d better stay up here, Daph. Maybe the police won’t ask for you at all. We’ll tell them it’s been a shock to you.” He stopped and mused and said, “Gertrude’s wild. Telephoning—she said to tell you she’d stopped the account of the wedding in everything but one edition of the papers. She got hold of Mrs Beely in town and gave her the list of guests, and she’s doing all the telephoni
ng she can. God, what a mess!” He checked himself abruptly, said, “You’re taking it well, my dear. I’m proud of you,” but didn’t look at her.

  He knew, though; he must have known in his heart that she’d never loved Ben. But he hadn’t known any more than that; and she must talk, say something, ask questions. “What happened?” she said. “I mean, when did they discover it—how…”

  He told her. “… And do you know what Gertrude said when she heard Ben was dead?” he finished. “Well, she just stood there and looked at Laing, with her eyes popping out and her face sort of purple, and she said, ‘Thank God.’ Just like that. ‘Thank God.’ I was pretty upset myself; couldn’t believe Laing—shock, you know. And then Gertrude said, ‘Thank God.’ Meant it, too—in spite of all the complications of the wedding. Well, he’s out of the company now.”

  He got out a cigarette and lighted it, his perfectly tailored shoulders a graceful silhouette against the window. “It’s hell downstairs,” he repeated. “Nobody knows what to do. Dennis phoned for the police finally. Funny,” said Johnny reflectively, looking out the window. “Funny nobody else heard anything. Not even the shot.”

  Someone knocked purposefully. Johnny gave a convulsive little start and said “Gertrude” under his breath, and Gertrude entered.

  “My dear!” she said. “So Johnny’s told you. Well, there’s nothing I can say, I’m sure. You know how I felt about Ben—although heaven knows I wouldn’t have had this happen. Today of all days,” said Gertrude, wheezing; and closed the door sharply behind her. She was a thick, robust, authoritative woman, younger than Johnny by perhaps two years and with his blond hair and light blue eyes, but altogether without his grace and vivacity. She wore a bright blue knitted dress, and the excitement had brought on her asthma, so her large, tightly restrained bosom heaved and she pressed both wide hands upon it. Her fine light hair was askew under its net, and her eyes, usually slow and blank, were shining like glass.