“No,” he said. “It isn’t that. Suppose they did. It still comes to this. For it to mean anything she would have had to die naturally. But she didn’t. She was poisoned—with a very quick poison. She could have been poisoned any time—she was poisoned before you could have got here, even if there had been no delay. You see? It doesn’t make any sense. Why try to delay you when the time could be fixed—when it could be any time convenient?”
“I don’t know,” she said, in the same dull voice.
“No,” he said. “Naturally you don’t know. Because it doesn’t make sense. They left you with money to get here, you see. That would have been the easiest way. Or, if somebody didn’t want you to get here—really didn’t—there would have been a more final way. Naturally.” He paused and closed his eyes, and she thought he sighed. “There was plenty of chance,” he said. “In Kansas City, for example. As you tell it.”
It was the first time he had spoken his disbelief.
“It happened that way,” she said. She tried to think. “Maybe they didn’t want to go that far,” she said. “Killing me, if that’s what you mean. Or taking my money and not killing me. Because I would have gone to the police. Maybe they didn’t want it to go that far.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her, and closed them before he spoke. His voice sounded tired.
“They killed your aunt,” he said. “They went that far.”
“I don’t know,” she said, again. She tried to force something into her voice, into the situation. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “You don’t think it happened.”
“Now Mrs. Phillips,” he said, without opening his eyes. “Now Mrs. Phillips.”
“Why?” she said. “Why would I make it up?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“You can’t think?” he said. He went so far as to shake his head. “Now Mrs. Phillips,” he said. His voice was patient. She shook her head. “Naturally,” he said. “Why should you?” He leaned his head back again and closed his eyes. He did not say anything for a considerable time; he merely looked comfortable, and resting. Again, because a pain was forming behind her eyes, going deep into her mind, she reached up to move the lamp. This time he did not stop her. The fact that he did not flickered momentarily in her mind as a hope, and then went out. He did not stop her because it did not matter any more.
But the movement of the light did seem to arouse him.
“I think that’s all for the moment,” he said. “You’ll stay here. There’s a room for you. I’ll want to talk to you again, later.”
She stood up. She held onto the back of the chair so she could stand up.
“By the way,” he said. “You say you thought your aunt might have cut you out of her will. You didn’t know she had?”
“No.”
“You just thought she had? She’d—suggested she might? That was all?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” he said. “Thank you, Mrs. Phillips.”
She started toward the door. It was as if she were pushing her way through something at once heavy and unstable. But it was only the air in the room. She reached for the door and he spoke again. He was still sitting in the chair.
“She didn’t entirely,” he said. “In a sense she did. You’ll find the will interesting, Mrs. Phillips. Since it will be new to you. I find it interesting.” He paused. “Naturally,” he said. He did not seem to be talking to her, but she thought he merely wanted her to think he was not talking to her. “So many combinations.”
He was done with her, then. He let her go.
She went out into the hall, and then she had no place to go. The trooper who had let her in was still there and he looked at her without saying anything, waiting for her to do something. He was standing in front of a chair near the door, as if he had got out of it when he heard the door from the study opening. He did not smile, or frown, but merely looked at her, with the expression of a man who is waiting for something. She came into the hall, which was square, which was the center hall of the old house, and took a few steps and stopped. There was nowhere left to go.
She had come across the country to come home and, particularly toward the last, home had become a place to which she was running for safety. When she got home danger would end. Home would protect her; she would run through a door into a lighted place and it would be as if home had put its arms around her. That was the way it was to have been.
But this was only a house, empty of warmth and of light. It was only a place, and it did not welcome her. It was a place which listened and did nothing. She could cry out in the hall and the house would listen and judge and do nothing; it would listen and not care, not believe. It would listen and wait. Home—home was something which had lived in the house, giving warmth to the house, and had died; home had been life in the house, not the house, and it was dead. It had died when Aunt Susan died, but not only because she had died. The house was empty and listening because Aunt Susan had been murdered. Now Jane Phillips wanted to run from this place, as she had run toward it, but she did not need to be told that she could not. The house had let her come in and had shut itself behind her, so that she could not go out—until she was judged.
It was a warm night and even here, inside the heavy walls, it was not cold. But Jane was cold. She trembled with the cold, standing in the square hall. The house listened.
After a little time she could not stand there any longer, and she went on across the hall to the door which led to the living room. The door was closed and she opened it, expecting the trooper to say something. But he did not; she could feel that he was merely still looking at her, watching her. She went into the living room and found that the lights were on there and she felt that there had been people there and that they had just left. Somebody had been smoking in the room. In an ash tray there was a cigarette which had been crushed out, but which was still smouldering a little, and Jane thought that someone had heard her at the door—someone who was listening—and had crushed out the cigarette and gone out through the doors which led to the dining room.
She went down the long living room and, although the shape of the room was familiar to her, the feeling of the room was not because only a few of the things in the room were things she remembered. The colors were different and, although she realized that this was to be expected after years, she felt anew that the house was rejecting her; that the house had changed, and withdrawn from her. She went into the dining room and it was empty, too. She crossed it diagonally and came out again into the center hall, this time beyond the stairs. She walked forward in the hall, toward the stairs, and reached the foot of the stairs just as Alice Meredith came down them. Alice stopped a few stairs up and looked down at her.
Alice had changed very little. She hardly seemed to have grown older. She had the same lightness and delicacy she had always had, and the same quickness. Her voice was light and quick.
“Dear Jane,” Alice Meredith said, looking down at her. “Dear Jane. Poor, dear Susan.”
“I know,” Jane said.
“So sad you weren’t here,” Alice said. “So—disappointing. After you came so far. Everything is so difficult, Jane. Dear Jane.”
Nothing is right, Jane thought. Alice isn’t right. She seems to go so straight away from the point. And yet, as always, Alice gave the impression of knowing that the point was there. As always, Jane thought—that was it. It was wrong that Alice should be as always. It didn’t add. Alice came down another step and stopped again.
“The others are here?” Jane said.
“Oh yes, dear,” Alice said. “Oh yes. Everyone, dear. Frederick, dear John. Poor dear Elliott. And the children, of course. Dear Susan was so ill, you know.”
“I didn’t,” Jane said.
Alice Meredith did not appear to hear her.
“So old, dear Susan,” she said. “So—weak. And then her mind. Dear Frederick. It upset him so, of course. She was always so alert, dear. So—bright.”
&nb
sp; Jane could see Aunt Susan’s sharp black eyes, wise black eyes, and hear her voice.
“I know,” she said. “Not at—not lately?”
“Delusions, dear,” Alice said. “So painful. To everyone, you know. She thought somebody was trying to poison her. So dreadful, dear.”
It was incongruous, unbelievable.
“But,” Jane said, and waved backward toward the study door. “The police, Alice. She was poisoned. I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the same thing, dear,” Alice said. “Not the same at all. Because then she wasn’t. And it would have had to be a different poison, if it had been poison at all. The doctor says that. Dear Dr. Hardy. So competent, dear. He checked, you know, and it was only in her mind.”
“Alice!” Jane said. “She was poisoned. Today.”
“Of course, dear,” Alice said. “I know that. We all know that, dear. So—so unexpected. We all felt that.”
She continued to look down at Jane. There was something odd in her eyes. It was as if she were studying Jane’s face very carefully. Then her expression changed and she looked beyond Jane into the hall.
“Your things, dear?” she said. “Your bags? Did someone take care of them?”
“I haven’t anything,” Jane said. “I—the things got lost, Alice.” She looked at Alice, who was on the lower step, now. “I’ll have to stay, I think,” Jane said. Again she gestured toward the study. “I think they want me to stay.”
“Oh yes,” Alice said. “I know that. Such a strange man, dear. So—waiting. He told Frederick you were to stay—when you came. We all thought you’d come back much earlier, dear.”
Come back? Jane thought. Oh, back home.
“I know,” she said. “I explained all that. To them.” Once again she indicated the closed study door. Then she looked at Alice. “Do you understand this, Alice?” she said. “Any of this?”
“Dear Jane,” Alice said. “How could I, dear? Poor dear Susan. You’ll want to see her, dear. Of course.”
Alice moved aside, her movement inviting Jane to go up the stairs. Jane hesitated; she felt that she could not make up her mind about anything. She did not want to see Aunt Susan’s body, to look at what was not Aunt Susan, at a thing without protection which had been so alive. But at the same time she felt that she had to see Aunt Susan again; that it was something required, imperative.
She went up the stairs, and knew that Alice Meredith was standing at the foot of the stairs and watching her. Jane did not look back, but went on up the stairs and then, in the second floor hall, toward the front of the house and into the big bedroom which had been Susan Meredith’s. There was a nurse sitting near the bed and a man was standing, with his back to the door, looking out the window. He turned as Jane came in, and became John Lockwood. The light, coming now from behind him, shadowed and emphasized the hard, flat planes of his face. For a moment it seemed that he did not recognize Jane. Then he did.
“Well, Jane,” he said. “You got here too late. I’m afraid.” He waved toward the bed. “Much too late,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, John.”
She went over to the bed. They had closed the lids over the black eyes, of course. Jane looked down at the old, dead face. It was not, really, the face of anyone she could remember.
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, very softly, looking at the face she could not remember, because what she had remembered had been the life in the face. “I’m so sorry.”
Then she turned away. The nurse, sitting by the bed, waiting, had looked at her and then looked away.
“Was she—did she suffer a great deal?” Jane said, turning to John Lockwood who was watching her, who was waiting for her to turn toward him.
Lockwood shook his head. He said he didn’t think so; that the doctor said it had been very quick.
“Almost as quick as cyanide,” he said. “Nicotine is, you know.”
She had not known. John Lockwood spoke as if he had always known. Probably because he was a criminal lawyer, she thought, vaguely. That made her think of something else.
“Why is she still here?” Jane said. “I thought, when it was poison, there was always a—what is it?—post mortem? Autopsy?”
“There will be,” Lockwood said. “They’re waiting for some reason. Taking their time. I don’t know why.” He looked at the slim, blond woman as if he were studying her—he looked at her as Alice Meredith had looked. “Possibly they were waiting for you,” he said. “I’m not in their confidence, of course. None of us is.”
“They think—one of the family?” she said, knowing what the answer would have to be.
“My dear girl,” he said. “Of course. For her money. What would they think?”
He was impatient. He continued to look at her.
“You were late getting here,” he said. “What held you up, Jane?”
“Somebody tried to make me late,” she said. “It’s a long story, John.”
He continued to look at her. His expression did not change.
“You told the police that?” he said. “This—long story?”
She nodded.
“Do you think they believed you?” he said. He said it flatly.
She shook her head and looked at him. And she could not read anything in his eyes. He seemed to be looking at her as if he had never seen her before. He was impersonal, measuring. She had no idea what he was thinking, except that there was no friendliness, no warmth, in his thoughts.
And then, almost as if somebody had spoken the words, the thought: “He’s against me.”
There were some kind of sides and this tall man who looked down at her was on the other side. She did not understand why this was, or what the sides were. She was only certain that she was lonely, as one is lonely in a dream—and frightened, as one is frightened in a dream.
“Well?” Heimrich said.
Sergeant Forniss jerked a thumb toward the ceiling.
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “I supposed she would. Who did she see?”
“Meredith’s wife,” Forniss said. “I suppose she’ll run into the rest of them upstairs.”
“Good,” Heimrich said. “The boys can take it away, now.” He gestured upward, as Forniss had done. “What do you make of it, sergeant?”
“Well,” Forniss said. “We’ve got a witness. You believe that?”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “I believe everything—as long as I can. You know that, sergeant. Of course it can be difficult. The girl now—this Mrs. Phillips. People bothered her clear from Los Angeles, she says. Tried to make her miss trains, kidnaped her and turned her loose. Just to delay her, apparently. And it all came to just a few hours, and she wouldn’t have got here in time anyway. That’s a little hard to make sense of, sergeant. Naturally.”
“Check?” Forniss said.
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. He was sitting down. He looked at Forniss. “Sit down, for God’s sake,” he said. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He patted the telephone near him, without looking at it. “Chicago,” he said. “Kansas City. I imagine we’ll find she got off the train in Kay-See all right. Naturally. I think we can check that, and that she’d know we could check it. As a matter of fact, she’d have had to, you know. If our witness is right.”
“Then the rest of it’s lies,” Forniss said.
“Now sergeant,” Heimrich said. “Now sergeant. No point in jumping, is there? In view of what the cook says? And the handy man who does the gardening? And the younger Lockwood? The one with the cold?”
Forniss looked at Captain Heimrich, and waited, but Heimrich seemed to have gone to sleep while he was talking. He opened his eyes slightly when a trooper, after knocking, opened the door.
“The boys are here, captain,” he said. “For it.” He jerked a thumb toward the ceiling.
Heimrich closed his eyes again, and spoke.
“Take care of it, will you, sergeant?” he said. “And, afterward, get them down in the living room.” He o
pened his eyes. “Let them sit around a while, sergeant,” he said. “Sit around and think it over.” He opened his eyes. “And talk,” he said. “Naturally.” He closed his eyes again.
It was scattered around him in pieces. He had been finding the pieces since, hours before, the telephone had summoned him to the Meredith house. He had picked up the pieces, looked at them, and put them down again. Eventually he would have to try to build something out of them, but there was no use building until he was sure he had them all. Now, evidently, he did not. Out of the pieces he had he could not, so far as he could see, build anything which would have a shape. There was no discernible logic in what he knew. If it had not been so patently untrue, he would have thought that old Mrs. Meredith had been poisoned by accident. It was difficult to believe that things had been worked out, according to a plan. Yet he was almost certain there had been a plan, thoughtfully matured, intricate. It was, of course, conceivable that at some stage the plan had simply got out of hand.
They were her family, but she had no feeling that she had come home to a family. In the long living room she was waiting with strangers. They were strangers she knew, strangers she could name. She could hear them speak, and speak to them. But they were not in any real sense with her. It was as if there were some film, transparent, permeable to sound, yet toughly unbreakable, between her and the others. She thought they looked at her as if through this film, impersonally, with curiosity. She had a strange uneasiness. If they should all look at her at the same time, it would be somehow unbearable.
And yet they were, rationally, not greatly changed. They were older, as she was older. But years had made no perceptible difference in Frederick Meredith, heavy, sun-burned, with heavy, tired eyelids shielding his eyes, curtaining his eyes. If he looked at her, he looked at her from under the lids, leaning his head against the back of the chair. She had forgotten how strange his eyes were. And Alice did not look older; her fragility seemed indestructible. Their son—Arthur, that would be—had changed more, of course. He had almost grown up, and yet he had not grown up. His face seemed amorphous, and now he had no expression. He looked at her from across the room and she smiled faintly, doubtfully. He did not smile in return.
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