“I didn’t say it,” said Gertrude. “But I suppose it was about that time.”
“It must have been about a quarter after twelve, even a little later, when you arrived at the springhouse, Shore. What were you doing in the meantime?”
Rowley hesitated. He rubbed a hand over the bruise on his chin, looked at the rug at his feet thoughtfully and finally said, “I thought my father had done it.”
“Why?”
“Because he said he was going to see Ben. Because—”
“Don’t say anything, Rowley,” said his mother shrilly. “Be careful.”
“Well,” said Rowley sullenly, “it looks as if I’ll be better off to tell the truth. I didn’t kill Ben.”
“You mean you are going to retract your story altogether?”
“Yes,” said Rowley calmly. “Up to the point where I found Daphne and Dennis there in the springhouse. Yes.”
And retract he did. With the utmost coolness.
The trouble was, it offered no loophole.
His father had been in his room when he came upstairs after dinner, he told Wait. That was true. It was also true that he had said he had come to see Ben. He, Rowley, had tried to dissuade him, but Archie had laughed and said he had business with Ben.
“What kind of business?” asked Wait.
Rowley didn’t know. But Archie had seemed pretty certain of himself and sort of—well, said Rowley, excited. He did say, added Rowley coolly, that he expected to have all the money he needed very soon.
“I got the impression that he had something on Ben,” observed Rowley. “But he was worried, too. He told me things would be all right and went away. I offered to go down stairs with him—I wanted to see that he got out of the house without causing any trouble. But he wouldn’t let me. He went away—”
“When?”
“Oh, as soon as he thought everybody had got safely out of the way—about eleven—” Rowley stopped as if it had begun to have a sinister sound, but said it, “Eleven-thirty. Perhaps ten minutes earlier. I don’t just know.”
“You didn’t see him at all?” said Wait, turning to Gertrude.
She bridled. “Certainly not.”
He went back to Rowley. “Then what?”
Well then, said Rowley, he had been sort of worried about it. Kept thinking of it and wondering what his father meant and if he would actually try to see Ben after all.
“Did he go to Brewer’s room when he left your room?”
“No. I watched him go to the stairway. Anyway, Mother would have seen him if he’d gone to Ben’s room.”
“Do you think he had given up his plan to see Brewer?”
“I don’t know. I thought so when he left, because he didn’t stop at Ben’s door, but instead went downstairs and I supposed out of the house. But after what happened I wasn’t sure.”
“Go on.”
“Well, finally, I decided it was nothing I could help. The room was thick with smoke, and I put up a window and leaned out.”
“Did you hear the shot?”
“Yes,” said Rowley.
Wait’s eyes glowed. His voice was suddenly rich and deep and vibrant. Yet he was angry, too; an anger which mingled in the strangest way with the pulse of excitement that swept hotly along his veins. But people never told; not when they knew themselves in danger. Not unless they were made to tell.
“What time was it?”
“I don’t know. But it was before twelve. I know that. I didn’t go down at once. I waited and listened. I—well, I thought my father had met Ben and—” He stopped and shrugged. “You can understand I wouldn’t care to get mixed up in it.”
“Didn’t you want to know if—”
“If my father ‘d been shot?” A curious kind of glaze came over Rowley’s eyes. “Oh—yes. That is, I wondered what had happened. But my father was never exactly a credit to the family. Oh, of course, I finally decided I’d better go down, and did, and went to the springhouse because—”
“Why?”
“Because the shot seemed to come from that direction. And that’s all. I saw nobody along the way. There was a light inside the springhouse, and Dennis and Daphne were there. I didn’t know who’d killed Ben, but I did know that my father had said he was to see him—”
“So you—”
“So I thought we’d better cover things up if possible. I never liked Ben and didn’t much care who killed him. But, after all, if my father had killed him—” He stopped and shrugged. “It would have been a mess,” observed Rowley with a certain detachment.
“So when he came back you subscribed to his story?”
“Oh yes. It was a good story. He told it at the dinner table before I’d had a chance to talk to him alone, but also before your—equerries had got hold of me and questioned me.”
Schmidt was heard to mutter resentfully at this point, and Wait said, “That’s your third story, Shore. Why should we believe it?”
“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said Rowley. “But I didn’t kill Ben.”
“You had the chance to do it.”
“You forget the—second murder,” said Rowley. “There wasn’t much love lost between my father and me, but I wouldn’t murder him.”
Father and son, thought Jacob Wait broodingly. He had a strong, instinctive regard for a blood tie; he gave it meaning and weight. Particularly the tie between a father and a son. Well, here it had no such weight. He need not allow for it, but it was with a deep reluctance that he put it aside. Father and son: a phrase from the Old Testament stirred deep down in his mind, “… his blood be upon him,” and was replaced by another command about murder. He said abruptly to Braley, “You’ve searched his room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t find them?”
“No, sir. I’d have told you at once—”
“Yes, I know. Where’s Haviland?”
“Kellogg went to get him. Shall I go—”
“Yes. No. Wait.” He walked to the door and turned there and looked deliberately at them—shifting his somber dark eyes from one to the other as if considering them, objectively and soberly. Weighing what they had said and had failed to say and had been driven to say. Fitting them into a new set of circumstances as he would fit chessmen into a new combination. And considering the next move in exactly the same way. Except that he didn’t hate chessmen.
It was one of those moments which seem to pluck themselves out of time and space and remain suspended, unrelated to any dimension and thus mysterious and obscurely terrifying.
Gertrude’s green silk rustled a little, and her florid face had gone pasty and flat. The regular little thud and beat of the melting snow falling on the window sill became louder and took on significance. As if it had a fateful and ominous meaning.
Ghostly fingers beating at a window sill.
And all around the house those invisible fingers beat their uneasy tattoo. Around the house and along a driveway where, by that time, the trees along it veiled themselves in mist and darkness. And beat, too, insistently around the shadowed springhouse where a man had died.
Policemen, wading ankle deep in slush, looked for what they didn’t expect to find. Some mysterious word went around to the hovering group of newspaper men. Two or three at a time, smoking and splattering through the slush, they went across the drive and got themselves into cars and went into the village, slithering and skidding, with headlights making eerie lanes of light through the wet dark, and not talking much. Only one or two made telephone calls to city editors. The rest of them straggled into Dutch John’s and sat on high stools before the counter drinking hot coffee and listening to the blare of a radio and cursing the weather, the thaw, the case, themselves.
But none of them went into town. For they were due for a break, and they knew it, as you know when a storm is about to break. And Dutch John, secretly pleased, was taking bets. Would the thing break in time for the late edition of the evening papers? Or would it hold off until the early edi
tions of the morning papers?
And back in the old house, sprawling among heavy, drooping shadows that were trees, they waited, there in the library, for what Wait intended to do.
The ghostly fingers beat drearily upon the sill. Gertrude moved, and her silk rustled thinly again.
Dennis put his hand upon Daphne’s wrist; she was so little, sitting in the armchair beside him; so tired and white; so dazed with disaster. He’d have given anything in the world to keep her out of the thing—anything? he thought. Well, it might come to that. For he couldn’t let her stand trial. He couldn’t let her be dragged through all the horror and ugliness and hideous suspense of it. He began to go over in his mind the things he must tell the lawyers; conjecturing up possible ways and means. Johnny had been right, he thought suddenly, to suggest confessing. He looked down at Daphne’s brown hair, and she looked up at him, her eyes oddly blank, as if she didn’t see him. But she did, for she tried to smile, a small, tremulous attempt. How long ago was it that they had stood on the hearthrug—not five feet from where he stood now? Daphne in his arms. Promising anything he wanted her to promise. With the fire making glancing, mellow lights against the soft dusk, and in the corner the glimmer of silver and crystal—the wedding gifts. Winking sardonically. As if they knew how dreadfully those plans were to go awry.
Wait brought his wrist up and looked at the watch on it. “Do any of you have anything at all to add?”
It was chance that his eyes lingered on Gertrude—chance or the fact that she was flourishing her handkerchief again, dispelling clouds of scent.
“Uh,” said Gertrude on a short breath. “Why—why, no! Certainly not. Nothing at all. I’ve told everything I know. And I have an alibi. Don’t forget that, Mr Wait. And as for Rowley, he wouldn’t have killed Archie. That’s nonsense. If you would just stick to business, Mr Wait, and not go off on tangents, you might get on a bit faster. After all, you know, it’s not pleasant—murders and hammers and—and even my nail polish gone. Everything in the house out of order. I think it’s—”
“What’s gone?”
“—preposterous,” said Gertrude, refusing to be caught up so shortly. “Preposterous. What are the police for if not—”
“What did you say about nail polish?”
“Dear me,” said Gertrude. “There’s nothing so important about nail polish—just a little bottle of enamel—”
“Keep the girl and young Haviland under arrest,” said Wait and walked out of the room.
There was, except for the murmur of the thaw, complete and utter silence following Wait’s departure. Dennis stared at the empty doorway. Keys—a bottle of nail polish. Keys—there had been no keys in Ben’s pockets—was that it? Was that why Wait had questioned them at length about what could have fallen or slipped or been taken from Ben’s pockets?
But there was nothing that Wait couldn’t have unlocked if he so pleased. Nothing except, perhaps, a safe-deposit box. And even that could be opened—if you were, as Wait could be, armed with proper credentials to unwind a bit of necessary red tape.
And nail polish. …
It was just then that a shadow filled the doorway, and Wait said, in a rich, deep voice, “Will you come with me, please, Mrs Shore? You, too, Shore.”
“The car’s at the door, sir,” said Braley quickly before the detective could vanish again. “Shall I take Miss Haviland and Dennis Haviland to the station?”
Light flashed on something he held in his hand, and Daphne’s gaze was suddenly riveted on it. It was a revolver, very big and clumsy, yet somehow he’d got it from its leather holster into his hand without any of them being aware of it. And it was inexpressibly real.
She didn’t know what Wait said, for Gertrude’s green silk was swishing angrily across the floor. And another policeman—a new one—had come into the room.
And Dennis had taken his hand away from her and was looking in the queerest way at the palm of it. As if he’d never seen it before.
“Oh, God,” said Dennis and turned wildly to the policeman. “You’ve got to let me go,” he said. “Now—”
Chapter 21
THEY WOULDN’T LET HIM go, and Wait did not return, although there were, during the hour or so that followed, several murmured conferences at the door between Braley and someone Dennis could not see, of which Dennis caught only a few totally unrevealing words.
Except for those few interruptions, the policemen hardly moved and kept them there, evidently at Wait’s order. They didn’t know why. They didn’t know whether or not Wait had considered their story of sufficient circumstance and weight to induce, at least, further investigation. And they couldn’t talk—not with the two policemen there in the room, watching, listening.
There was no use talking, anyway, thought Daphne once, listening to the heavy murmur of the thaw in a kind of spell, as if she were drugged with weariness. They had done everything they could: there was nothing more to do. Even her hands felt heavy and without impulse.
Dennis came to her once or twice and stood beside her, so near she could have touched him, and she was gratefully conscious of his presence.
But Dennis was uneasy, restless, smoking rapidly one cigarette after another. Obsessed by a notion; revolving it; testing it; rejecting it. Then adopting it again because their need was so great. Once Daphne saw him staring at the palm of his hand again, opening and closing his hand, frowning, doubtful.
Time passed, and still they waited and did not know why. It must have been after eight when, after another of those whispered conferences at the door and without a word of explanation, they were taken through deserted halls and up the stairway where the third step creaked and into the old playroom, where, still without explanation, they were left.
“I’ll send you something to eat,” said Braley shortly. “Orders are for you to stay here.”
He went away, the second policeman accompanying him, and a few minutes later Laing himself brought up a tray of sandwiches and coffee. He looked old and tired and could tell them nothing except that things were very quiet around the house.
“Surely the police haven’t gone,” cried Dennis.
“Oh no, sir,” said Laing. “Though a police car left here some time ago. Left in a hurry. Can I do something for Miss Daphne?”
But there was nothing he could do, and he went away.
“I suppose,” said Dennis, attacking the sandwiches, “we may as well make the best of it. Come along, Daph; eat something.” He poured coffee for her and took it to her and knelt beside her suddenly and put his face against her hand. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “it’s all my fault. But I’ll get you out of it. Somehow.”
The withdrawal of the police was a relief, even if, as Dennis believed, they were on guard in the hall. Even if there was no possible way for them to escape—and the effort alone would be damning evidence against them.
But Dennis would not talk much. He paced up and down the worn old rug, smoking, frowning, thinking.
“We’ll get a lawyer in the morning,” he said once. And again, “Try to rest, my dear. Put your head back and see if you can’t sleep a little.” He paused behind her chair and smoothed her hair back from her face. He looked taut and white, and his eyes were deeply withdrawn and remote under those peaked black eyebrows. “I love you,” he said unsteadily, shaken with love and with fear for her and for the thing his love had brought upon her. He must get her out of the sordid, filthy slime of the thing: he must save her from something else which he didn’t dare, just then, to think about.
All the blame for the thing was his: all the blunders, all the stupidity.
It was an inexpressibly bitter and cruel thought.
He turned abruptly away.
“You’re cold,” he said. “I’ll stir up the fire.”
She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, letting that drugged feeling of weariness and lassitude possess her. She was only dimly conscious that he remained for a long time there at the mantel, staring rather oddly and
intently at the old, battered coal scuttle with two limp cotton gloves for handling coal hanging across it.
Nobody came near the room. Only once did they hear any sound from below, and that was when the heavy front door closed with a dull, faraway thud.
The house had grown as silent as if it were deserted and forgotten in the moist darkness. Along the window sills those ghostly, chill fingers still beat steadily. Outside in the grounds the night was murmurous with the thaw and very dark.
It was late when there were footsteps along the hall and someone opened the door and came into the room. It was Johnny Haviland, and he stopped when he saw them and blinked and said, “What’s all this? They say you are under arrest. Good God, why?”
“There’s evidence enough,” said Dennis grimly and told him briefly while Johnny stared, chewed his mustache, and went to hover over the fire. He looked cold and said he’d been out on the grounds.
“It’s damn wet and cold. Police seem to have stopped everything. Wait’s nowhere to be seen. One of the policemen came for me awhile ago in a tearing hurry, said Wait wanted me; when we got to the house, Wait didn’t want me at all. Changed his mind or something. I said, ‘Any objections to my taking a walk?’ He said none at all, that an arrest had been made. But why aren’t you under guard if you’re arrested? There’s not a policeman in sight.”
“Fine chance we’d have of getting away!” said Dennis.
“Well,” said Johnny, rubbing his hands over the fire, “you see, it would have been a good thing if you had let me confess. Would have been much better all round.”
“It would have been all right for you to confess to the murder of Ben,” said Dennis, leaning against the mantel. “Gertrude gave you an alibi for the time Ben was killed.”
“Oh yes. Yes, of course,” said Johnny. “I counted on that.”
“You—”
“Certainly. I counted on it. If worst came to worst, that is. But I wasn’t going to let Wait know that you and Daphne were at the springhouse or that Ben knew of it. Good God, of course not. Certainly not. If I didn’t have to in self-defense. You don’t know how bitterly I’ve regretted telling
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