“When did she do it? What happened?”
“Search, please—” He stopped and then said quickly: “I don’t know. I found her like that. Only a few minutes ago when I reached the cottage. I’ll tell you everything later. You must go now.”
“Is she dead? Richard, is she dead?”
“I’m afraid so. Search, you’ve got to go.” He pulled her toward the door; they had almost reached it when a more distant flash of lightning illumined the doorway briefly, and Richard stopped and drew her back. “No—not that way. It’s better through the kitchen. Hurry, Search. Go out the kitchen door; follow the line of shrubs. Take the lake path. Go in the house by a side door. Hurry.”
They reached the kitchen; there was a pitch-black void around her; then a door squeaked a little as it opened. Richard said again, tensely: “Hurry.” He gave her a kind of thrust and his hand left her arm. There was hot sultry air on her face and a different blackness in the night around her.
The door closed. Follow the line of the shrubs; take the lake path.
Luckily she had reached the darker shadow that marked the shrubs when another flash of lightning came, a long one, so bright it dazzled her and lighted the whole scene eerily—the darkened cottage with its high peaked roof, the grass of the clearing, the trees and shrubs around it. And across the little grassy space, clear and sharp in the lightning, someone stood and watched the cottage.
She thought it was a man; she had a glimpse that lasted a fraction of an instant, and the light was gone.
Who was it—and why was he watching those darkened windows?
She hesitated, on the verge of going back to warn Richard.
She even moved uncertainly a few steps back toward the cottage. And lightning came again, and the figure across the cleared patch was gone as completely as if it had never been.
Thunder rolled over her head, and a great hot drop of rain struck her face.
She’d seen no one there, then; it was a tree trunk—a trick of shadow—an illusion. But she waited, there in the thick hot shadow, and when the next flash of lightning showed again a clear and empty space she went on toward the path. She knew the way and she moved like an automatic figure, wound up and set on its way.
Her eyes were adjusted now to the darkness; she could follow the heavy line of shrubs. A branch touched her face; there were more hot big drops of rain; her thin dress caught on something and she tore it away.
The cottage was close to and directly above the lake; she came out upon the lake path just as the storm broke with a great crash of lightning and thunder and a torrent of rain.
In an instant her thin dress was soaked, her hair wet. The lake stretched away into murmurous blackness at her right, and there were constant blinding flashes of lightning upon lake and woods. But it was better there than the path through the woods would have been.
She never knew how long it was before she reached the steps going upward from the pier. The house above was dark, but the electricity was off in the cottage and it was on the same line with the house.
Eventually—skirting the house, letting herself in the back door, groping in the darkness for the back stairway and along the narrow passage which entered the main hall (also dark, though there was a faint glow of light from the stair well)—she reached her own room. She stood still for a moment, trying to catch her breath, pushing wet strands of hair back from her face. Then she reached for the candle and matches with which (on account of the invariable effect of storms upon the village electrical supply) every room in the house was equipped. By its wavering light she changed completely.
She did not then examine the instinct that led her to put on a light summer evening gown—a white one, as near like the sodden thing that lay on the floor as she possessed.
She tried to dry her hair with towels and a brush. She even powdered her face and used lipstick on a mouth that looked taut and strange.
Then she blew out the candle and went into the hall. At the top of the stairs she paused. She wanted desperately to turn back.
There was a distant sound of voices. She went slowly down to the landing and turned. She could see then that there were lighted candles on the table below. She had reached the newel post when the library door opened; she was confusedly aware of people and voices, and Diana appeared in the doorway. She was very white and looked sick. She stopped and stared at her and said: “Search, where in the world have you been? Search, Eve’s dead! She committed suicide—an hour ago in the cottage …”
The hall, Diana’s white face, everything about Search seemed abnormally clear and sharp. She held tight to the newel post. And Diana cried: “It’s horrible. Richard found her. He’s in here now—telephoning the doctor. I’m going to get him something to drink.” She hurried back toward the butler’s pantry.
Richard was there; then he’d come by way of the short cut through the woods. There were voices in the library—Calvin’s, high and exited, talking over the telephone saying: “Yes, she’s dead. She was found just now. …What’s that? … Do you mean we have to call the sheriff? …Well, what’s the sheriff’s number, do you know?”
Then Richard came to the library door and saw her. His shirt and coat were soaked, his dark hair shining and wet. He came toward her and took her hands.
“Search,” he whispered, eyes intent and dark in his ashy face. “Listen. She’s dead; I couldn’t—do anything for her. She was dead when I found her. But”—he glanced over his shoulder toward the open library door—“but it wasn’t suicide. Search, you’ve got to lie; you’ve got to say you didn’t go to the cottage. Tell me quick, did you touch anything? They’ll look for fingerprints.”
But she had known really, from the beginning, that Eve wouldn’t have killed herself. She must have known it when she changed her dress.
“Search—think,” whispered Richard urgently, and she shook her head. Had she touched anything? Had she left fingerprints? But suppose she had; that didn’t mean that—that she had murdered Eve.
She whispered: “Who killed her? Why—”
“I don’t know. I found her like that. After you’d gone I— I took her down and tried to revive her, but it wasn’t any use. Search, you’ve got to tell them you were here—all the time. Do you understand—” He broke off abruptly as Calvin came hurrying to the door. He was in pajamas and a light dressing gown, and his hair was wet as if he’d been in the rain too.
“They are coming right out. They said not to touch anything; the coroner has to make a report and wants to find things just as you found them.” He caught Richard by the arm, shaking it; his sharp face was flushed with excitement. “Now, Dick, go and take a shower and get on some dry clothes.”
The door to the pantry opened and Diana came out with a tray on which were brandy and glasses. She went to the table, her long mauve dress trailing along the floor. There was a flash of lightning so vivid it blazed against the windows at the front, and thunder rolled and shook the old house.
“The storm is coming back,” she said. “Here, Richard.” She poured brandy with a steady hand and gave him the glass. “We’d all better have some. Whatever possessed Eve—I thought she was in her room, writing letters. That’s where she said she was going. She must have gone down the back stairs. And so to the cottage.”
“Drink it, Dick,” said Calvin. “It’ll do you good. There’s nothing we can do but wait. Was there a—a note or anything like that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“A note,” said Calvin rather thoughtfully, “would make things simple.”
Diana glanced at him quickly. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” said Calvin. “Go on now, Richard, and change. I’ll get some flashlights—they’ll be here in twenty minutes or so.”
“You’d better put some clothes on yourself,” said Diana. “I’ll get flashlights together. I think I saw a couple in the chest at the side door.”
Calvin turned quickly toward the narrow passage that ran, at rig
ht angles to the main hall, toward the side door, and Richard put down his empty glass. “Calvin, wait a minute. Don’t you think—well, how about getting Howland over? He—he’s a lawyer. He’ll know what to do.”
Calvin whirled abruptly. “Howland!” And Diana said in surprise:
“Howland? Is he here?”
“He came tonight,” said Richard, still looking at Calvin. “What do you think, Calvin?”
“I don’t know,” said Calvin slowly. “It might look—but I’ll telephone to him. You go and change.”
“I’ll telephone to him,” said Diana. She turned swiftly toward the telephone. Calvin went down the hall toward the side door, his bedroom slippers flapping on the matting, and Richard looked at Search.
“Remember,” he said and put his hand for an instant on her wrist. Then he turned swiftly toward the stairs, running up the steps with an easy grace, tearing off his coat as he ran. Some of Search’s heart went with him.
He whirled around the landing and was gone. Calvin returned with two flashlights, which he put down on the table beside the tray, and followed Richard. Diana had got Howland at once and was explaining, swiftly but coherently too. She hung up and turned to Search.
“He’s coming. He said to tell everybody not to talk at all. He’s got to dress; then he’ll be here.” Her eyes darted around the room and she went to the library door. “Aunt Ludmilla, you’d better go to bed. It’s going to be rather awful, I imagine.”
Ludmilla. Search followed Diana into the library. Candles stood on the table and lighted the big room dimly, and Ludmilla sat in the middle of the chintz-covered sofa, her face looking ghastly pale, her china-blue eyes wide and tragic. She saw Search and cried: “Oh, there you are, dear. I wondered—you’ve heard, of course. No, Diana, I’m not going to bed.”
“As you please,” said Diana, shrugging. “I’m going after flashlights.” She went into the hall again. Ludmilla leaned toward Search.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Perhaps they’d better not know—the coroner and the sheriff, I mean—about—about the arsenic.”
Search said with a kind of gasp: “But that has nothing to do—”
“I know. Eve committed suicide. But still—Pete Donny is a nosy old fellow; it’s just as well not to tell him too much. We’d better help Diana look up raincoats and flashlights.”
All three of them were in the hall ten minutes later when Howland arrived. He opened the front door unexpectedly. “Can I come in? Your bell doesn’t work. I rang but—”
“Howland!” cried Diana. “I’m so glad—come in.”
A wet raincoat was slung around his bulky shoulders; his short blunt face looked sallow in the dim light. He shook rain from his hat and glanced quickly around, and his soft brown eyes met Search’s. There was significance in his look, so it reminded her of their last meeting—yet there was something a little different about it too. She felt that difference only vaguely and gave it then no thought. “Hello, Search,” he said. “I meant to telephone you in the morning. I just got here—came out with Richard from town. How do you do, Aunt Ludmilla. Well, Diana, what about Eve? Who found her? Why did she do it?”
Richard came running down the stairs; he’d changed to gray slacks and a sweater and was knotting a scarf at his neck as he ran.
“Have they come? Oh, it’s you, Howie. Did Diana tell you—”
“About Eve, yes. That is, she said Eve had killed herself. Where is she?”
“At the cottage. I found her there. Look here, Howland, I want the women kept out of this. There’s no need to question anybody but me.”
“I see,” said Howland slowly, his blank gaze fixed on Richard. Calvin came running down the stairs. And Howland said: “That’s rather an odd request to make, Dick. You don’t have any doubt that it was suicide, do you?”
He had left the door behind him open. So they all heard the sudden tramping of feet, crossing the veranda. And they all turned to look as men—two men, three—appeared in the doorway, their raincoats glistening, their faces looking white and stern and somehow threatening in the light from the candles and against the wild night.
There was an instant’s sharp silence. Then Richard and Howland and Calvin moved together toward the door, explaining, telling them Eve Bohan had killed herself, telling them where and how long ago and who had found her.
Pete Donny was the sheriff; a big man, clumsy and awkward, with a big voice. It boomed out rather cheerfully and friendly over the other voices. “Well, it’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear this. We’d better go along and see her. You lead the way to the cottage, will you Bohan?”
Raincoats, flashlights, voices, feet tramping away again and down the steps to the lake path. And silence then in the big house—except for the storm.
They waited, Search and Ludmilla and Diana, in the library, with the rain sloshing the black and winking windowpanes. Diana was nervous, prowling like a cat from one window to another. Ludmilla stared at the Brussels carpet and said nothing.
Search sat beside her, thinking and trying not to.
If it wasn’t suicide it was murder. And there was nobody who would murder Eve. But, where there was murder there was a motive, and Search, herself, and Richard had a motive, for Eve had stood between them.
Once Diana turned from the window, said in an impatient voice: “It’s still pouring,” and glanced at Search, stopped, frowned, said in a puzzled but absent way: “That’s not the dress you wore at dinner,” and swerved: “Search, why do you suppose Eve killed herself? She was so—so happy all day. Almost triumphant, it seemed to me. Why did she do it?”
“I don’t know.”
It would be safest, thought Search suddenly, to say that later, when they asked questions. “I don’t know—I don’t know.” Swiftly, dreadfully, her imagination hurtled off into what might happen. Accusations, arrests, trial. Trial for murder.
Time must have passed, for all at once the men returned. There was again the tramping of feet, the muffled voices, the swish of raincoats. Sheriff Donny’s voice boomed out; he was apparently at the telephone, and his voice was no longer friendly.
“John? John, this is Sheriff Donny. I want you to swear in a couple of deputies and come up here to the old Abbott place as fast as you can. …No, it’s a murder; young Mrs. Bohan. Listen, John, you stop at the jail, and in my office, the right-hand drawer of the desk, is a bag with some stuff in it that I need. Bring it along. …No, she wasn’t shot. Doc says she was chloroformed and then strangled.”
Ludmilla’s plump little hand went slowly up to her throat. Diana went into the hall, and Ludmilla followed. As her fat little figure vanished Howland Stacy came to the door, saw Search and came to her quickly. The candles on the table beside him shone upward so the lower part of his face was in sharp relief and his eyes pocketed with shadows. He took her hands and said in a low voice:
“I was looking for you. Search, what really happened?”
She scarcely heard his question. “Howland, what are they going to do?”
“I’m afraid they are going to arrest Richard.”
“Richard!”
“Yes. He was a fool to let them know he found her; he ought to have gone away and let someone else find her. Unless he thought it would seem less suspicious.”
Her fingers dug into Howland’s hands. “Howland, he didn’t kill her. You’re his lawyer. He didn’t do it—”
A kind of stillness in his short dark face stopped her. There was a little pause. Then he said: “Oh, I see. So I was right. You are still in love with him.”
She didn’t answer; he must have seen the truth in her face. But unexpectedly his manner changed; his voice when he spoke was entirely different, almost coaxing. He said in the friendliest possible way: “Well, that’s all right. I won’t bother you about it now. And I’ll do my best for Richard. But you’d better tell me all about it. The whole story; you can confide in me. There’s a difference, you know, between premeditated murder and manslaughter.”
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Chapter 8
THE VOICES IN THE hall made a kind of tapestry of sound. Rain dashed against the windows, and the shining black windowpanes reflected a slender girl in white, her arms and throat bare, her head lifted. The candle flames lifted and lowered again. Search said stiffly: “He didn’t do it. I was—” and stopped as if a hand had placed itself upon her lips. If they knew she and Richard had arranged to meet at the cottage, if they knew why they had planned to meet, it would go that much harder with Richard. They would say that Eve refused to give Richard a divorce and that that was a motive. Something seemed to move and change back in Howland’s soft brown eyes. He said:
“You’d better tell me everything, Search. That’s the only way I can help you.”
And just then Ludmilla returned and was followed by the sheriff.
She came directly to them; it seemed to Search that the sheriff looked at her and at Howland sharply, but his eyes were so shielded by wrinkled and heavy eyelids and shadow from the glancing candlelight that she could not be sure of any expression in them or in his thick, heavy-featured face. Ludmilla said a little breathlessly: “Search, they are going to question us. They say she was murdered. They—they’ve got Richard in another room.”
The sheriff interrupted, turning back toward the door. “Will you come in here, Mr Peale? There’s plenty of chairs here. Al, bring those candles from the hall, will you? Put them on the table; that’s better.”
One of the men who had accompanied him, a slim, bald little man with anxious eyes, slid into the room with candles and immediately out again. To guard Richard? Search wondered. Calvin and Diana came in too, Calvin frowning worriedly; Diana’s thin face was ghastly white in the candlelight and her mouth set.
“Sit down, folks, sit down,” said the sheriff. “Now then, Miss Abbott, I’ve known you a long time and you’ve known me. I think you want the truth, and I’m going to give it to you. The girl was murdered; it wasn’t suicide.”
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