Danger in the Dark

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  “Of course I’m sure. I don’t make mistakes. Sit down again, for heaven’s sake, Daphne. You’ll have the police in here.”

  Police. Daphne sat down and looked at Gertrude. It wasn’t possible that Ben had done that. He had said nothing to her of his intentions; no one had told her. No, it wasn’t possible.

  “Don’t act like a baby, Daphne,” said Gertrude. “He made the will about a week ago. Perfectly right and proper. Certainly, you’ll take it. Think what people would say if you didn’t. And it gives you—with Rowley—a controlling share of the company. That is, Rowley, of course, as president will have, sometime, my stock. The two of you—”

  Gertrude was all at once trying to be subtle. She was floundering a little, watching Daphne with those shining light eyes.

  But what was she trying to say? What on earth could she mean? Ben leaving her that stock because he had expected her to be his wife! And now she was not his wife, and there was that stock in the Haviland Bridge Company; a large block, a paying block. Well, there would be some way out of it; there must be. They couldn’t force her to accept it. She could give it away. She could—What was Gertrude saying? A word or two caught her confused thoughts and focused her attention sharply. An incredible word:

  “… the way clear for Rowley,” Gertrude was saying. “So you and he can marry.”

  She stopped and looked at Daphne, and Daphne stared back at her. Certainly Gertrude had been talking of Rowley. And she’d said something of marrying—but what it sounded as if she said was altogether impossible. She couldn’t have said that. Daphne pressed her hands to her temples confusedly.

  “Aunt Gertrude—I—I don’t think I heard you. Who is Rowley to marry?”

  “Who?” said Gertrude sharply. “Do pull yourself together, Daphne. You, of course.”

  Gertrude had gone out of her head. The excitement and the inquiry and Ben’s death and—She was talking irrationally, as she did sometimes when she was about to have one of her nervous headaches. She—

  “Don’t look like that, Daphne. There isn’t time for a lot of talk about it. But I want you to understand exactly how things stand.”

  Daphne shook her head helplessly.

  “But, Aunt Gertrude—”

  “Hush. Look here, Daphne. I see you don’t understand. Rowley has always had an—an affection for you.”

  That wasn’t true, either, thought Daphne. Besides, if he had had, Gertrude would have been jealous; would not have talked of it, granted it as a fact.

  “Always,” said Gertrude. “Of course, during your engagement to Ben he was obliged to say nothing of it. But now—it will be an ideal marriage. You and Rowley. Ideal. Of course, we can wait awhile. It wouldn’t do to be too abrupt about it. But eventually …”

  It was actually true. Her ears had not lied, and Gertrude was really saying all those things. Really meant her to marry Rowley.

  Daphne stood up quickly.

  “Look here, Aunt Gertrude,” she said, “if you mean that I’m to marry Rowley, you’d better know right now that I’m not going to.”

  “Daphne!”

  “I won’t marry Rowley. Never. It’s impossible. Besides, Rowley doesn’t want to marry me.”

  Gertrude stared glassily up at her a moment; then rose slowly and rather ponderously.

  “That,” she said, “has nothing to do with it. Your marriage with Rowley will practically insure the future of the company.”

  You mean, thought Daphne, suddenly given a moment of insight, it would insure your control of it. Gertrude liked power; half of her hatred for Ben had been because he would have no interference. Because she could not influence him; because he belittled her business acumen.

  She stood there facing Gertrude, so near that she could hear Gertrude’s short, panting breaths. So near that she saw again a curious little snap and flash in Gertrude’s eyes, as if something had opened and closed with the swiftness of the flash of a snake’s tongue.

  “But I’m not going to marry Rowley,” Daphne said again steadily, and Gertrude’s eyes snapped once and she said, “Oh, aren’t you?” and laughed.

  It was a queer, deep little laugh, as if she were really amused. Queer because Gertrude had no humor at all and laughed only when other people laughed.

  But she laughed now. Laughed and said, “I think you are, Daphne. You’ll make him a good wife once you are married to him. I’m sure of that. You see, my dear—I know something—” She stopped and leaned nearer Daphne and said in a kind of panting whisper, “I know something the police had better not know.”

  She came so close to Daphne that Daphne was pressed back against the chair. She said again, panting, “I know that you and Dennis planned to go away last night. To leave Ben. And I know that Ben knew it and tried to stop you. Who killed him, Daphne—you? Or Dennis?”

  “I—I—we didn’t—”

  Gertrude laughed again with a deep, jubilant note.

  “I don’t care who killed him,” she said. “It’s good riddance. But it would be much better if the police did not know what I know. So I think you’ll marry Rowley, my dear.”

  Chapter 9

  LATER DAPHNE COULD NOT remember what she said. She knew she tried to deny it; she knew she had a confused but strong feeling that she must not say too much, must admit nothing, give Gertrude no satisfaction. She did attempt to question her, but it was difficult to question without admitting.

  “I didn’t kill Ben,” she said once. “The police—”

  “The police,” said Gertrude, “are already doubtful as to there having been any burglar. I myself wasn’t taken in for a moment. Not after I remembered that someone had been walking about in Ben’s room—after Ben was dead. Was it Dennis? It doesn’t matter. I know that Ben tried to stop you. So Dennis killed him. Or you. But I think it was Dennis.”

  “That is not true,” said Daphne. (Had Ben come to the springhouse to stop that flight, not knowing that already she had realized it was impossible? And if so, how had he known? She had told him, in that last ugly interview, that she didn’t love him. He had known it was Dennis. But he hadn’t known what Dennis had persuaded her—momentarily—to do. Unless—unless it was Ben who had opened the library door.)

  “Oh, isn’t it?” said Gertrude unexpectedly. “Well, there’s no use in talking of this. I know what I know. Never mind how.”

  “Does Rowley know of this?” asked Daphne suddenly.

  “Rowley,” said Gertrude, “will do as I tell him. That’s all, Daphne. You are a sensible girl. And a bargain is a bargain. The police are out there now looking for evidence leading to the murderer of Ben Brewer. Murderer,” repeated Gertrude lingeringly, holding Daphne with her eyes. “But, of course, I shall tell them nothing of what I know of the matter—”

  It was just then that Amelia opened the door quietly, looked into the room, said: “Ah—Daphne!” and entered.

  “I was looking for you,” she said. “The house is full of policemen—really—” She crossed to Daphne, took her hands and kissed her cheek. It was rather a remote and cold kiss, very brief, but it was a kiss. “I’m extremely sorry for you, Daphne,” she said, keeping to the letter of the truth. “This is most distressing. What do you know of the matter, Gertrude, and what matter were you discussing?”

  She said it very quietly and turned and looked fully at Gertrude.

  There was, actually, a kind of family likeness between the two sisters, although Amelia was dark where Gertrude and Johnny were fair like their mother. But there was a smallness and neatness of bones, a kind of delicacy of feature which was very like Gertrude’s, except that Amelia was very slender and looked frail—though no one had ever known of a day’s illness on her part. Her eyebrows were dark and heavy and came to a peak like Dennis’ and like old Rowley Haviland’s, thus shadowing her eyes a little so they seemed withdrawn and incalculable. Her hair was gray and curled; her nose unexpectedly strong, with thin, delicate nostrils; she dressed with the utmost care and elegance and liked fineness
of material and cut and finish. Her voice was always very soft and very kind. It was particularly gentle and kind when she spoke to Gertrude then.

  Gertrude flushed and blinked rapidly.

  “About the murder,” she said.

  “Ben’s death,” said Amelia, veiling it so gently that the word “murder” immediately took on its full measure of ugliness and horror.

  But Gertrude was still triumphant. “Ben’s murder,” she said, “and also of Rowley’s marriage to Daphne,” and looked at Amelia.

  There was a sharp silence. Daphne said, “No—no, Aunt Amelia—” and stopped.

  For a moment Amelia and Gertrude faced each other without speaking: Amelia, delicate, frail, eyes withdrawn and thoughtful; Gertrude, flushed and oddly defiant. Then Amelia put out her small, lovely hand—soft and delicate in gesture as a butterfly’s wing—and touched Gertrude’s thick blue arm. And at the touch the strangest look came into Gertrude’s face, and she shrank back a little and said in a breathless way, “Amelia—”

  Amelia interrupted, so kindly it was not interruption.

  “It might be better,” she said, “to talk of Daphne’s marriage later. Just at present—well, it’s not in the best taste, is it, Gertrude?” Amelia smiled a little and took Daphne’s hand again. “Just now we are in a rather difficult position. For I’m quite sure the police do not think there was a burglary. They are asking,” said Amelia, “too many questions. Come, my dear, let’s join the others upstairs.”

  Too many questions.

  It was an observation that became increasingly apt as the day went on. As strange men came and went, as cars whirled up the long drive to the door, paused and whirled back down it to the highway again. As in a businesslike way that was remarkably thorough the police took over the house and grounds and all that was there.

  The telephone was in constant use, but none of them knew what were the results of the low-voiced conversations that took place from the small telephone closet under the stairway in the lower hall. Gertrude complained of it. “I tried to hear what they said,” she told them, unblushing, “but all I could hear was somebody talking about—well, it sounded like airplanes.”

  “Airplanes!” cried Johnny, jingling the keys in his pockets.

  “The eleven-o’clock plane, somebody said.”

  “Is that all you heard?”

  “Yes,” admitted Gertrude. “A man in a brown suit with a hat over his eyes came and took the telephone extension right out of my hands. Isn’t there anything we can do to stop them, Johnny? They are all over the house, looking at everything.”

  Johnny looked out the window.

  “I’m afraid not, Gertrude.”

  About one-thirty Laing and Maggie served a rather scattered lunch in the old playroom on the second floor to which the family had drifted, seeking refuge from the strangeness and the seething activity on the first floor. It was also, as Rowley observed, coolly attacking the chicken salad which had been intended for the wedding—it was also a vantage point.

  “An observation post,” he said. “We can see everything that goes on from these front windows. Did anybody remember to stop the caterers or are these wedding-baked meats?”

  “Laing telephoned them at once,” said Gertrude. “I wonder why they are questioning Dennis for so long a time. He’s been down there for an hour or so.”

  “They’ll probably take us in turn,” observed Rowley. “If you have any secrets, prepare to shed them now.”

  Amelia put down her teacup gently and said, “Rowley!” and waited till he looked at her. “It isn’t exactly a joking matter, my dear,” she said then kindly.

  A slow little flush crept up over Rowley’s sallow face. And Gertrude said suddenly, wheezing, “If you don’t stop jingling those things in your pockets, Johnny, I’ll scream.”

  She hadn’t seen Dennis since she had left the library, thought Daphne. Why were they keeping him there so long?

  She wondered, glancing at Rowley, if he knew of his mother’s incredible plan. Incredible, and yet thought out and determined upon in the coolest possible way, as if Gertrude felt—as certainly she did—that it was altogether right and just. Rowley to take his rightful place at last. Gertrude to be the power behind the throne—at last. And Ben Brewer, at last, ousted.

  Well, she had had every reason to think Daphne could do nothing but agree to her plan. There wasn’t, thought Daphne, staring at the plate Johnny had put in her lap, anything else to do. If Gertrude told the police what she knew, it would be horribly convincing evidence against Dennis. Dennis … stealing another man’s bride at the very moment, almost, of the wedding. Persuading her to go away with him. And Ben knowing it—going to the springhouse to stop them. And being found there murdered.

  That was, almost certainly, why he had come to the springhouse. But what had happened before she and Dennis came, too? What had taken place, who had followed Ben there and met him, in that black, mysterious interval before she herself had gone through the snow and darkness and had entered the springhouse?

  “Please, Miss Amelia,” said Maggie from the doorway.

  “Yes, Maggie.”

  “Those—those men. Policemen,” said Maggie, looking shaken. “They are looking in your desk, all through it. Drawers out and papers—”

  “I can’t help it, Maggie,” said Amelia kindly. “It’s their duty.”

  Maggie gave her a horrified look, said “Yes’m” dubiously and vanished.

  “Had Ben no relatives at all?” said Johnny suddenly, helping himself to more salad. “He never spoke of anyone—”

  “Only those Hartford cousins,” said Amelia. “I wired them some time ago.”

  Quite suddenly Daphne looked up and met Gertrude’s eyes. They were light and shining and secret. Altogether assured in their knowledge. Altogether certain of power.

  Daphne rose. Someone spoke to her as she left the room—Amelia, she thought, but she did not stop. In the narrow hall she came upon a man who was blowing faintly ochre powder upon a doorknob and then bending to look intently at the old brass knob. He glanced at her questioningly but stood aside to let her pass.

  In her own room again, she locked the door and sat there staring at nothing, thinking in weary, desperate circles.

  Once she remembered the dress. She ought to do something with it. And she must tell Dennis what Gertrude knew and what she had threatened. He must know it at once, although she didn’t know what he could do.

  It was cold in the little room; cold and dreary, and the sky dark gray above a gray, cold world. She pulled the green wool cover that lay folded on the foot of the chaise longue around her and out of sheer physical fatigue went suddenly to sleep.

  It was dark when she woke, and somebody was pounding at the door.

  Maggie, her face ghostly in the shadow of the little passage, said that the detective—“that Mr Wait,” said Maggie—wanted to see her.

  She stumbled to the little bathroom adjoining her room and washed her face in cold water and ran a comb through her hair so the gold in it shone. She powdered, too, and put on crimson lipstick with hands that shook a little. On the way through the bedroom the wedding veil, a soft white wraith in the semitwilight, brushed against her hands and clung softly to them.

  She pushed it away. And just then Dennis came to the door, glanced swiftly behind him and entered.

  “Daphne, my dear,” he said and pulled her away from the door so they could not be seen and took her in his arms.

  “Where have you been? What have they—”

  “Questions. Routine stuff. Getting—oh, identification. Nothing to worry about.” But he looked worried, she thought swiftly. Worried and tired, with a queer, wary look in his eyes. “Are you all right, Daphne? Have they—”

  “He sent for me just now. The detective.”

  His arms held her tighter, and there was a quick kind of tautness in his face.

  “Well, then,” he said, “it’ll be all right. But mind, Daphne, stick to the story. Y
ou know nothing of the murder. Nothing at all. Don’t worry about anybody else. Don’t let them trap you or frighten you into telling something. And look out for the unexpected—the thing you aren’t prepared for. Promise me you’ll do all this.”

  “I—I’ll try, Dennis.”

  He looked down into her eyes searchingly, as if testing and plumbing her strength. “Oh, my dear,” he said suddenly with something like a groan, “if I could have kept you altogether out of it! I love you so,” said Dennis and held her tight against him, his face against her hair. “I love you so.”

  It was a long, inexpressibly sustaining moment.

  She did not think of Gertrude until he put her away from him.

  “You’d better go now, Daphne. And remember—”

  “Oh, Dennis, Gertrude knows. She knows I promised to go away with you. She knows we were to meet at the springhouse. She says that Ben knew, too. She says he tried to stop us—and that we—that we murdered him,” finished Daphne in a jerky, incoherent whisper.

  “Gertrude!”

  “She says,” whispered Daphne stiffly—“she says she won’t tell. And that I’m to inherit Ben’s stock and marry Rowley and he’ll be president of the company.”

  “To marry—” Dennis’ eyes suddenly blazed in his white face. “God! So that’s Gertrude’s plan! How—” He stopped, thinking furiously. “It’s like Gertrude,” he said. “She’s just stupid enough and vicious enough to do it.”

  “What can we do, Dennis? How can we—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll try to think.” He stared at her for a moment, not seeing her, his eyes withdrawn under those peaked black eyebrows. “I’ll have to think,

  Daphne. We’ve got to shut her up somehow. We—Look here, you’d better go down. They’ll be sending for you again. Don’t be afraid, my dear. And don’t think of anybody but yourself. Remember!”

  “Yes, Dennis.”

  He kissed her then. Swiftly, but so hard and deep a kiss that it seemed to remain, there on her lips, long after she had gone.

  There was no longer the confusion of strange men and voices and cameras and smoke in the hall, although it had a disorderly look—and many and muddy feet had entered that wide door and trooped across the worn old rugs. Two men, plain-clothes men, were standing near the door, talking, and they stopped to turn and look at Daphne as she passed.