“Look here,” he said, “can I kick him out, Aunt Amelia?” Archie slid to his feet and got behind a chair, his grin changing to a kind of snarl, and Amelia said hurriedly: “No, no! It’s a bargain, then, Archie. Until tomorrow night. If in the meantime you say one word to the police which involves any of us, I pay you nothing.” She rose. Johnny sat as if transfixed, staring at the tablecloth, and Dennis opened the door. “That’s all,” said Amelia and then added with a characteristic touch, “But remember, Archie—I—none of us—are as rich as we once were. That’s why your allowance had to lapse. The Haviland Bridge Company, though you may not know it, has had a very lean year under Ben Brewer’s management.”
Archie, still standing, reached coolly down for cake but kept the chair between himself and Dennis.
“The Haviland Bridge Company,” he said, “ought not to have suffered. It was well prepared for emergency.”
Johnny pushed back his chair abruptly and went to Amelia.
“Good night, Amelia,” he said. “You are perfectly right, of course. Archie, will you take one of the guest rooms? I’ll loan you pajamas.”
“Thank you, Johnny. I could do with a shirt or two.”
“You can have mine,” said Rowley.
“Good God,” said Dennis violently, “are we going to let this man—”
Amelia put her hand on his arm. “Will you take me upstairs, Dennis?” she said gently.
He shot one look at Daphne and turned to Amelia.
“I think you are making a mistake, Aunt Amelia. You are simply playing into Shore’s hands. Let him tell them anything he likes. He can’t—”
“Come,” said Amelia.
At the door he looked back at Daphne, and she followed them. Up the stairs, hearing the rustle of a taffeta petticoat under Amelia’s handsome black crepe gown, pausing when Amelia paused to call to Laing to be sure that all the windows and doors were securely bolted.
“There’s a policeman in the kitchen,” said Laing, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. What did he think of it all? Daphne wondered, looking down at his long pale face and bald head. “A policeman in the kitchen,” he repeated. “And two in the library. They wish to stay here all night, ma’am.”
Amelia hesitated. Gertrude, coming into the hall, said, wheezing, “Of all the nerve!”
“I suppose they are obliged to,” said Amelia. “Very well, Laing. Tell cook to put out sandwiches for them. And coffee.”
They went on up the stairs, a queer, trailing little procession, its fortitude and its assurance shaken. Shaken by Archie Shore’s return and the bargain he had driven with them—a sinister bargain, with the ugliest of implications. Shaken by the day’s inquiry. Shaken by the unwonted things that had been happening to them.
And by night dropping down so coldly, and with such impenetrable blackness, upon the house. Isolating them in very fact as the thing that had happened the night before had in another sense isolated them. And in the same way binding them together.
Daphne had no chance to talk further to Dennis. Later, however, Amelia came to her door and knocked and came in. She wore a purple flannel bathrobe, had her hair in a net cap and carried an eiderdown.
“I thought you might need this,” she said and put down the eiderdown. “Oh, and—by the way, you might lock the door tonight.” She hesitated, looked at Daphne with eyes that had receded until they were mere shadowed sparks, said tensely, “With that man in the house—” and went away.
Daphne locked the door.
And after lying in bed staring at the black ceiling for what seemed an hour or two, she got up, shivering in the cold, and tried the latch to be sure.
Twenty-four hours, she thought once incredulously. All that had happened in twenty-four hours.
And she must talk to Dennis. She remembered and sought refuge in the memory of the long look he had given her there at the head of the stairs. Gertrude was beside her, and Rowley was coming up the stairs. Dennis said something casual, meant for their ears, but his look, guarded though it was, both reassured and warned her.
In the morning she would see him. Tell him—ask him—map some defense before the detective pounded at her again.
It was still in the house. Still and cold. She supposed she slept, but she was haunted by dreams and a persistent feeling of consciousness. In the middle of the night she remembered the yellow dress and got up, shivering, and found it and tried to burn it, but the last ember had burned out and there were no matches. She returned, shivering with cold, to bed. And once she was sure she heard footsteps in the dark passage outside the door and sat upright to listen over the sudden pounding of her heart. But if there had been footsteps there was then nothing.
Probably there was not much sleep anywhere in the place that night, yet there was no sound of motion. Except that after midnight, when things grew quiet, the house itself came alive and creaked and moaned a little with the cold and whispered along the narrow corridors—so that the policemen were restless and could not settle into sleep themselves and sought each other’s company as they’d been ordered not to do and finally cleared off one end of the table in the library and started a game of poker. It was a desultory game, however, subject to interruptions. The third time one of them got up, swearing, and opened the door to look along the corridor, it came to an end.
“It’s cold in here,” he said. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”
“Oke,” said another, and the third stopped watching a window curtain, which certainly seemed to move now and then, and agreed with some promptness.
In the kitchen they found the coffee and sandwiches and ate them but were not greatly cheered, for the house continued its secret rustling, and it was extremely cold.
It wasn’t, they agreed, that anything was likely to happen; it never did right after a murder. But Wait had left them there to see that none of the suspects got away. So every hour or so two of them took flashlights and saw their revolvers were on their hips and made a somewhat sketchy round of the lower floor.
But if, during those cold, black hours, anything alive found its secret way in and out the twisting old corridors, no one knew it. And indeed, in view of later occurrences, it is probable there was only the wind and the creaking of old wood.
Morning was dark and cold. Breakfast trays duly arrived according to custom, with Maggie uncommunicative, owing to a cold in her head.
Except that she had a message for Daphne.
“Mr Dennis,” she said, pulling the curtains apart and letting cold morning light into the little room, “Mr. Dennis is in the old playroom and wants to see you. He wanted to bring you your breakfast, but I told him you were a young lady now and he couldn’t. The idea!” She put the tray in Daphne’s lap and handed her a wool bathrobe. “Better put this on, miss. It’s cold as Blixen.”
It was Maggie’s swear word. She went away, growling about the cold and sneezing with a kind of martyred emphasis.
It was still early, and though there were sounds of showers running and coal fires crackling from behind closed doors, no one was in the corridor. Daphne, clad hastily in her warmest sweater and tweed skirt, found Dennis again pacing and smoking.
“There you are, honey,” he said and took her in his arms for a hungry moment and shut the door. “Now then—wait till I put some coals on the fire.”
He did so, swearing a little as the battered old tongs pinched his hand as they had always done if you gripped them too fervently.
“Nothing ever changes here,” he said. “The stairway still creaks. The tongs still pinch.” Flames shot up and crackled, and he put down the tongs and pushed aside the old brass coal scuttle with the loose, coal-blackened cotton gloves hanging over the rim, and stood with his elbow on the mantel. Daphne sat on a cretonne-covered stool she had pulled close to the fire. He looked around the room, remembering. “Same old couch. Same old pictures—Stag at Bay and Sir Galahad. I was terribly upset to discover a woman posed for that. Same old rug—remember the time we burnt that hole
in it? Gertrude half killed us. You were a little girl, Daph. Yellow pigtails—steady blue eyes. I was always terribly proud of you.” He knelt down suddenly and took her again in his arms. “I think I was in love with you always, Daphne,” he said shakily and kissed her face and mouth as if he would never stop kissing her. “And I’m going to marry you, and not all of them can stop it. I nearly lost you once. But now—”
“Gertrude,” said Daphne. “Rowley—”
His arms tightened.
“Gertrude can go to hell. And her precious son with her. Just what did she say, Daph?”
She repeated it. In the warmth and security of Dennis’ arms it had lost much of its threat. Yet as she spoke she could see suddenly Gertrude’s flushed face, her blank, bright blue eyes. Gertrude, she realized, was dangerous because of her lack of common sense; because in her mad rages there was no balance, no caution.
“She said, then,” said Dennis thoughtfully, “that she knew we had planned to leave that night. That she knew we were to meet at the springhouse, and that Ben knew it.”
“And that he intended to stop us.”
“That means, then, that whoever saw us in the library told Ben.”
“Or that Ben himself opened the door and listened.”
“If it was Ben, he wasn’t likely to tell Gertrude. And he—I was about to say he would have taken steps about it—I mean, when you talked to him, Daphne, did you think that he knew anything of our—our plan? Anything definite, that is?”
Daphne thought back to Ben’s cool acquiescence when she told him she hadn’t loved him—he’d known it all along, he’d said. But it didn’t matter.
“No. No, I’m sure of it, Dennis. He didn’t know it then.”
“I think he knew it later,” said Dennis, frowning into the fire. “It explains his presence there in the springhouse. But someone else knew it, too. Suppose the murderer knew we were to meet there, told Ben in order to get him out of the house where the shot would not be heard, and followed him there. If that’s the way of it, the murderer is likely to be the person who opened the library door and saw us and heard our plan. And certainly Gertrude knew—”
“Gertrude!”
“Well,” said Dennis thoughtfully, “you know what she’s like when she gets in a nervous state. She always hated Ben. No matter how fully she seemed to approve your wedding to Ben, she still hated him. And with him out of the way, it leaves the coast clear for Rowley. The coast clear for Rowley and us actually playing into her hands. For if she once tells the police what she knows, it provides the—”
“The only thing they need. I know. A motive for you. It fits so—so horribly. Our meeting at the springhouse; Ben finding us there. Stopping us—and—” Her voice shook a little, and Dennis took her hands.
“And my revolver,” he finished. “It was my revolver, Daphne. But I don’t know how it happened. You see, I had the revolver all right when I came home Monday night. I’d taken it out of my bags when we went through customs and put it in my pocket. I’d never used the thing; don’t know why I ever bought it. I’ve had it for—oh, three or four years. Got it here in Chicago, and it’s registered—”
“Oh!”
“So there was no use in my not admitting ownership. But—but I didn’t shoot Ben!”
“Where was it?”
He told her briefly. In the springhouse. He’d taken it absently from his pocket; had put it down to light a cigarette. Had quite simply forgotten it.
“Bright, wasn’t it? But how was I to know what was going to happen in the place that night?”
And it had been used to kill Ben Brewer. He had seen it at once; recognized it.
“I picked it up when I bent over Ben to see if he was still alive. Put it in my coat pocket. Then—that moment when I turned off the flashlight—”
“I remember. And your voice seemed to come from the doorway instead of from where I thought you were standing.”
“Did it? Funny Rowley didn’t notice. I did go to the door. Went to the door and buried the thing in snow outside the door. I expected to have a chance to get hold of it again before the police did. But I—had no chance. They found it. Somehow—they—they do things so much more thoroughly than you think they will. With all that snow—none of it melting—Oh well, the point is they found it.”
“What did you tell the police?”
“Told them the truth,” said Dennis, staring into the flames. “There was nothing else to do. Besides, I might have made up some more plausible explanation, but even if one has little if any regard for the truth there’s always the matter of perjury.”
“Perjury! But that’s when there’s a trial.”
“Exactly,” said Dennis. He turned and added quickly, “Don’t look like that, Daphne! They haven’t arrested me yet. And if they had a good tight case against me they’d make a murder charge pretty tout suite. There must be evidence we know nothing about which tends to clear me.”
There was an alternative which he did not tell her; conflicting evidence, or the detective wanted such conclusive evidence against him, Dennis Haviland, that the murder charge would hold before the grand jury; that it would be tantamount to a conviction later on. The newspapers had hinted at it. But there was no use talking of it to Daphne.
“So far,” he went on, “they know only about the revolver. They’ve not proved any motive, and they won’t if Gertrude keeps still.”
“And,” said Daphne. “If Archie Shore—”
He nodded swiftly. “Of course, there’s Archie. I was talking to your father about him. He said Archie was gone from the company before Ben ever came. He said Archie and Ben didn’t really know each other; oh, they may have met, we can’t be sure. Archie has no feeling about the company as Gertrude and Amelia have. He wouldn’t be actuated by what’s almost an obsession on the part of the aunts to get rid of Ben. The only possible motive Archie could have would be Rowley.”
“Rowley?”
“I mean, he might feel, as Gertrude makes no bones of feeling, that with Ben out of the way Rowley would have more chance. It occurred to your father and to me, but it doesn’t seem very reasonable. Archie Shore doesn’t impress me with having any particular affection for Rowley; at least, certainly not a crazy devotion that would lead him to commit—murder. Gertrude, of course—”
He stopped, and Daphne said, without being quite aware of what she said, “Gertrude—does such queer things.”
Dennis glanced at her quickly.
“Yes. Yes, she’s always been like that. Doesn’t seem to weigh things properly. Her bargaining with you—trying to force you to marry Rowley—is exactly like Gertrude. Get her in a rage, and God knows what she might do. And certainly she knew of our meeting in the springhouse; and she knew that Ben knew. I always come back to Gertrude, somehow. It’s so—so like her.” He rose and stirred up the fire again and absently went to the door and made sure it was closed before he came back to stand there at the mantel, tall and brown, with his peaked eyebrows thoughtful. “It’s impulsive—as if somehow she—well, suppose she met Ben there—sent him there really by telling him we were planning to go away together—suppose she saw the revolver, picked it up, shot him. I mean, it’s an impulsive sort of murder; as if it hadn’t been planned at all. We know it hadn’t been planned, because no one could have known my revolver would be there—so readily at hand. And that’s like Gertrude, somehow; oh, everything about it—she’s horribly impulsive, scarcely knows what she’s doing when she’s in a rage, and she has no sense at all. Never has had. Of course—” He paused thoughtfully. “Of course, if somebody sent Ben to the springhouse with the intention of following him and murdering him, the murderer must have known my revolver was there. That would argue he had gone to the springhouse earlier for some reason—had seen my revolver—had planned. Or that he saw my revolver before Ben saw it, snatched it up and fired.”
“Or,” said Daphne, “whoever murdered Ben might have planned to shoot him and arranged to get him to the sprin
ghouse and followed him out there with his own gun—”
“Whereupon he saw my gun and thought, What a lucky break! I’ll use that gun and they can’t trace me,” finished Dennis. “Lucky for him. Everything handed to him on a platter. We provide an excuse to get Ben to go to the springhouse, and then, just to do it up right, I leave a gun for him. Yes, it might have happened that way, too.”
“Gertrude knew about us,” said Daphne again.
They always came back to that.
“She’s hated him from the beginning,” said Dennis. “She’s been certain he was mismanaging the company. Perhaps he was. Dividends have been almost nonexistent. But it isn’t entirely Ben’s fault. It’s the times. At least, so Johnny thinks. And even Rowley admits his mother’s feeling about Ben was mostly sheer jealousy. Her sun rises and sets in the company and in Rowley.”
It was a long talk, and they were conscious of the house, of the sounds of movement now and then in the corridors, and kept their voices low instinctively, as if someone passing through that narrow corridor might pause at the door and listen. It was not nice, that feeling of surreptitiousness.
It was not nice, either, to realize that at the end they had arrived at no conclusion—no conclusion, that is, other than to continue the course they had been obliged to undertake.
“However,” said Dennis, “if worst comes to worst, I do have an out.” And showed her the thumbprint and told her all he knew of it. The gruesome little lines in reddish brown, fine and small, affected Daphne, as they had Dennis, with a frightening sense of their sinister potentiality. So small, so fine and faint to mean, perhaps, so much.
And she did not like the memory of the moment on the stairway when she had turned and whispered into the cavernous darkness below and then fled from whatever stood there on the third step.
“I’ve tried twice,” said Dennis, “to take it into a crime-detection laboratory in town. A private one where I can get a print of it without the knowledge of the police. Once I got as far as the gate before they stopped me.”
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