“That’s kind of you,” he said. “How do you do, Gertrude.”
Gertrude, crimson and speechless, stared at him with stony blue eyes, and he lifted his eyebrows a little and turned to Daphne. “Daphne, I suppose it’s not out of place to offer condolences. I’m really sorry, my dear, that it happened to you.”
Daphne found her hand taken, pressed gently and somewhat damply, and released.
Rowley said coolly, “Do sit down, Father. How did they find you?”
Archie Shore shrugged, sat down and accepted soup. Daphne looked at him and remembered in a scattered way things she’d heard of him and tried to recall her childhood impressions of the man. It was too long ago, however; she could remember only dimly the turmoil in the house, long sessions of lawyers and of the adult members of the family, and Gertrude, a red-eyed, defiant and determined storm center. Then Uncle Archie had vanished, and the children had been instructed not to speak of him. What had he done? she wondered. Come into combat with Gertrude, certainly. And what had he done since then?
Gertrude, her flushed face set, was obviously torn and perplexed. Should she leave the table in a rage, or should she remain?
She decided to remain, and Johnny, in a low and placative voice, made the decision easier (so it became an act of graciousness) by coaxing her.
“Do sit down, my dear. We’ve got to make the very best of this horrible situation Ben’s—Ben’s death has brought upon us,” said Johnny, with his ringed hand on her arm. “Come, Gertrude.” He hesitated, swallowed and said desperately, “Be brave, Gertrude.”
Archie’s upper lip drew back a little, wolfishly.
“That’s noble of you, Gertrude,” he said, with a mocking edge in his voice. “Very kind of you all, I’m sure, to welcome me. However, I assure you it’s no easier for me than for you, Gertrude, except that I have better manners.”
“Now, Archie,” said Johnny despairingly, “don’t! Why did the police bring you here?”
“Of course,” said Amelia, “you are the woman in black.”
“Always astute, Amelia. I am the woman in black who departed in a taxicab which was fortunately standing at the gate when I needed it. I don’t understand the taxicab,” said Archie, almost gayly, except his eyes kept shifting from one face to another. “But there it was in time of need.”
There was a sudden, queer little silence. It was as if all at once and simultaneously everyone at the table had been recalled from the slight diversion of Archie Shore’s unexpected return and were thinking of its possible and extremely unpleasant significance.
Amelia voiced it:
“But, Archie, just why did you leave by this mysterious taxi? At midnight?”
“Anyway, why was he here?” burst out Gertrude, pointedly not speaking to Archie but to the others. “Why was he here in the first place? What did he come for? And—why did he leave so suddenly? Rowley said he came to see Ben. Well, then—”
Johnny got up nervously and went to the door, glanced into the hall and closed the door again. The wolfish smile vanished from Archie’s thin, rapacious face.
“How you would like to make me the scapegoat, Gertrude!” he said as softly as a snake swishing through grass. “But you can’t. I had no quarrel with Ben.”
Rowley reached nonchalantly for cake and said nothing. Johnny, obviously distressed, hovered near the door and said, “For heaven’s sake, don’t talk so loudly.” Dennis, an enigmatic look in his eyes, watched and listened, and Amelia said, “Leave the room, Laing. Now then, Archie, suppose you tell us just what you were doing here. I did not know you were here, and you certainly know, so there’s no reason to make any pretense to the contrary, that you are not welcome in my house.”
“I know nothing better,” said Archie. “I came, however, to see my son.”
Rowley opened his mouth, shut it again and looked at the cake on his plate. Gertrude wheezed and struggled to talk, and Johnny went around and patted her heaving back perfunctorily.
“I came to see my son and also to see Ben. I wanted to find out why I’d not been receiving my”—he lifted his eyebrows and said, “my usual check. I thought it best to come directly to the head of the company,” said Archie. “Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Who let you into the house?” asked Amelia succinctly.
“Rowley.”
Again Rowley looked as if he were about to speak, changed his mind and ate more cake appreciatively.
“Is that true?” said Amelia, observing his detachment.
Rowley shrugged. “Really, Aunt Amelia, I can’t do anything about it if my parents choose to quarrel. I have nothing to say.”
A glint came into Amelia’s deep-set eyes.
“You’ll talk to the police,” she said gently, and Gertrude gave her a startled look and turned to Rowley.
“Do tell us the truth, Rowley,” she said with a sort of gasp. “After all we—we can’t afford—we don’t know—It is murder.”
“Very well,” said Rowley. “I don’t know when he arrived. Sometime after or during dinner. I don’t know how he got in.”
“Walked in the back door,” said Archie, his eyes going rapidly here and there, as if continually testing the qualities of their tempers. “Am I going to have any further food, Amelia?”
Amelia put her beautiful hand on the bell. “Certainly, Archie. What then, Rowley?”
“Well, when I went up to my room about eleven, there he was. In my room, sitting in the armchair, smoking.”
“How did you get there?” demanded Gertrude savagely and directly.
“Walked,” said Archie. “Nobody saw me; everybody was busy, I suppose. I’m not in my dotage, you know, Gertrude. I remembered Rowley’s room.”
“Then what?” said Amelia, addressing Rowley.
“Well, he said he’d come to see Ben. That he was only waiting to see him alone. I didn’t think it would do any good for him to see Ben and tried to talk him out of it.”
“Did you see Ben?” Amelia asked Archie.
Rowley looked at his cake again, and Archie replied at once, “Certainly not. And a very good reason. I waited in Rowley’s room until he came up about eleven; we talked for a while, and then I left. Rowley convinced me it wasn’t a good time to approach Ben, and there was no point in my staying. I intended to walk into town, but this—taxi was there in the road, so I took it into town.”
“How did the police get you?” asked Dennis suddenly.
Archie gave him a quick, sharp look which was still not direct.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said.
He was lying, thought Daphne. Fluently, as if he had had long practice. For no good reason the fantastic notion came to her that he’d given himself up. Why? Because he would be perhaps a material witness; because it was a chance to edge into the family circle again—or, which was more likely, because for some reason he could get something out of them. Fantastic, she told herself, and horridly suspicious. But something about the man bred such suspicions. Something a little flashy, a little shifty, a little furtive.
But a witness—a material witness. That meant he had seen something, knew something of the murder. And he had been in the house during that mysterious hour preceding Ben’s death. He had left the house, by his own story, at shortly after midnight. She glanced at Dennis, to discover that he, too, had realized it and all its implications.
It was in his eyes; a look of wariness, of being on guard against another danger. Another and unexpected hurdle in that treacherous course. The more dangerous because Archie Shore was not a man even momentarily to be trusted. And because in all probability he knew something of the real story of Ben’s death; the real story, at least, of its discovery. For Rowley had told him of it; that was it. Rowley had told him, and he had seen the immediate necessity for his escape and had disguised himself by getting into a woman’s clothes—something taken from an attic or a store cupboard—and had gone.
But that didn’t work out, either. For Rowley had h
ad no chance to warn him. Rowley had come upon the murder as they (herself and Dennis) had come upon it; there had not been time, while Dennis took her to the house and returned to Rowley waiting in the springhouse, to permit Rowley himself to go to the house, reach the second floor, warn Archie and return to the springhouse.
But someone had been in the hall; someone on the stairway. Had it been Archie, then? Had he been, perhaps, on the grounds—leaving—when Rowley had seen the light in the springhouse and had gone to investigate? Had Archie followed and remained outside—peering in through that narrow dark slit at the door—listening and watching and drawing his own conclusions? Had he followed Dennis and herself to the house through those muffling veils of snow? Followed her up the stairway and forgotten, because he’d been away so long, that the third step creaked? Had he gone into a closet and taken a woman’s coat and hat, obsessed then only with a wish to escape now that murder had occurred and before the police came? At the gate the taxi Dennis had called was waiting. That was the taxi Archie had taken into town.
Well, then, why had he returned and given himself up to the police?
If he had returned of his own volition, there was only one motive. And that was because he knew something and intended to put it to his own use. And because he had had time, now, to think it over and to lay plans to do so.
She had had, always, a kind of feeling of sympathy for the underdog. The underdog, in this case, being Archie Shore. He had been literally pushed out of the Haviland family and from his job in the Haviland company. There had never been anything good said for Archie Shore, and instinctively and because of this she had felt that he might not be so bad after all. But she knew now that all they had said, those Havilands, had likely been true. All that and more. You could not look at the man and trust him. You could not hear the false timbre of his voice and credit, for one instant, any motives of decency and honesty.
And, besides, he had probably hated the Haviland family, part and parcel, for all those years. Probably a perfectly comprehensible desire for revenge had smoldered all that time. And now, quite suddenly, he had them in his hands.
A man to be feared.
And everyone there knew it. The knowledge was like a live thing, running on swift and furtive feet around that table, laying a still finger on everyone’s lips.
“How did the police discover you?” asked Dennis again. For if the police had found him, if he had not given himself up, there was still a hope.
But again the man was evasive.
“I don’t know,” he said, helping himself to potatoes. “I don’t know.”
That falseness in his voice. Well, then, what did he know?
Johnny said, leaning forward, “Archie, do you mean you didn’t see Ben? Not at all?”
“Certainly not,” said Archie, avoiding Johnny’s eyes and busying himself suddenly with his knife and fork. “I tell you Rowley talked me out of the interview with him.”
“When did you first know of the murder?” That was Amelia, eyes very deeply withdrawn.
“The afternoon papers,” said Archie. “They certainly gave it a spread. Pictures all over the back page. It’s the romance, I suppose—”
“Archie,” burst out Gertrude furiously, “you keep evading. What have you told the police? Why did you leave here in a woman’s clothes? What do you know? What have you—”
“One question at a time, Gertrude.” He waited pointedly for Laing to leave the room. As the pantry door squeaked, he continued coolly enough but with a touch of arrogant defiance: “Here it is in a nutshell. First, I did not see Ben. So you need not be grateful to me for providing another suspect for the police and thus further distributing the guilt—”
“Archie!”
“Second, I left here in woman’s clothes—they belonged to you, I believe, Amelia, and were hanging in the closet under the stairs. I’ll return them to you in good condition—with thanks. I left here in Amelia’s coat and hat, and a veil which was rolled up inside the hat, because I chose to do so. Because Rowley had impressed upon me the desirability of my absence and my not being seen and recognized. That is what I told the police. And I told them that I knew nothing of the murder. That my—disguise was merely in case anyone saw me as I was leaving. If you must have the truth, I did it because I didn’t care to be recognized by, say, anyone at the railway station. For, of course, I expected to take a train into town. I did not know a taxi would be waiting.”
“You knew of the murder,” said Dennis grimly. “You were afraid—”
“You go too fast,” said Archie. “I’m telling you what I told the police. What I might have told them is another matter. As I told the police, I saw no one and no one saw me. And”—Archie’s mocking, railing tone changed suddenly and became again edged and thin—“and I have told the police nothing further, so far.”
“So far,” said Johnny slowly and stopped.
For there it was. Out into the open—if it had ever been concealed.
“You’ve told them,” said Dennis, “anything you thought would keep you in the clear.”
“Do you mean,” said Archie imperturbably, “to imply that I’m lying?”
“I know damn well you are,” said Dennis. “You knew of the murder when you went away. And you have—or think you have—evidence involving the family in—in unpleasantness, or you wouldn’t be here now. What is it?”
“That,” said Archie, “is for the police. Unless—”
He stopped short, with an air of purpose and definite meaning.
“Archie, Archie!” cried Johnny suddenly with a kind of groan. “What have you done!” And then he, too, stopped short and with a queerly desperate gesture put his face in his hands.
Rowley looked at his plate, and Dennis, thoughtfully, looked at Archie. The pantry door squeaked a little. Laing, probably, listening.
Amelia took a long breath.
“Really, Archie,” she said calmly, “that sounds like a threat. Or a confession. I might almost prefer it to be the latter, but you wouldn’t have returned if you had feared arrest.”
“Make him tell what he knows,” muttered Gertrude. “Make him tell, Amelia. He can’t sit there looking as if he knows something—as if he’s already told the police—as if—”
“Hush, Gertrude,” said Amelia gently. “Just what will you take, Archie?”
“Amelia, you wound me!”
“Wound—” burst out Gertrude, and Amelia silenced her again.
“I don’t know whether you have happened upon something that you think would be injurious to one of us in our present trouble or not,” she said. “I do know that you’re quite evidently here to do us any possible harm you can do. Well, then, we are in no position to haggle. And we are ready to act, as always, as a family. You may,” said Amelia simply, “name your price.”
Johnny lifted his face and cleared his throat.
“I suppose you are right, Amelia,” he said. “Still—”
He hesitated and turned to Archie. “You wouldn’t tell the police anything that would—would harm any of us, would you, Archie? After all—”
Archie grinned. It was again a wolfish tightening of the corners of his thin mouth so it showed narrow, yellowed teeth.
“Oh, wouldn’t I!” he said. “Wouldn’t I! My dear brother, I have what it takes. You are in my hands,” said Archie and put out his hands, which were in all truth ugly and grasping and predatory as claws.
Chapter 13
IT WAS ACTUALLY THE unsatisfactory and wholly indeterminate end of the thing for that night.
Archie kept on grinning and ate grapes voraciously. Amelia repeated in so many words her offer to pay him for silence. Gertrude stared and wheezed. Rowley said nothing at all, and Johnny was for once a handsome frozen image of despair.
Dennis felt and said that the sooner Archie Shore left the better for all concerned.
Archie kept on eating grapes.
“You are perfectly right, Dennis,” he said, favoring Dennis with an
extremely ugly look above that rapacious smile. “But, you see, you don’t know the thing I could tell the police if I chose. You don’t know the things I could do to the company if I chose. The rumors—the doubts—how circumstantial I could make stories of, say, embezzlement, of failure, of imminent bankruptcy. What reasons I could hint at for Ben’s murder—if I chose. So far I have not chosen to do so. I’ll tell you what, Amelia, I’ll think it over. Give me two days.”
“Two days!”
“One day, then. Say, till—” He paused to remove seeds with the utmost deliberation. “Say, till tomorrow night. Twenty-four hours.”
“So you can frighten us—terrifying us into giving you anything you want,” cried Gertrude. “It’s your one chance to get back at us. What is it you think you know? Nothing!” She turned to the others. “Don’t you see he’s only bleeding us for every cent he can get? And we are going to let him. I’m not afraid of anything he thinks he knows. I didn’t kill Ben. Why, we are as good as admitting that we are afraid of something when we let him—”
“Gertrude,” said Amelia, “stop that! Certainly you didn’t kill Ben. I didn’t kill him. None of us killed him. I’m not offering to pay Archie because he has any real evidence against any of us: I know that he has none,” lied Amelia blandly. “I’m paying him because he is obviously here to make trouble. Most unfortunately,”—she looked coldly at Rowley—”he was here at the time of the murder. If he tells the police he saw this or that—any made-up story he wants to tell—they are likely to credit it at least until it is disproved. According to my notion, it is much simpler to pay him to keep his mouth shut. I am not at all afraid of him or of what he may say. Not, that is, concerning the murderer. He might damage the company. And I do wish to keep this dreadful affair as quiet as possible, to wind it up as quickly as possible.”
“And quite right you are, Amelia,” said Archie imperturbably. “Except that you somewhat underestimate my capacity for observation.” Dennis got up.
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