Voice Out of Darkness

by Ursula Curtiss

  “No,” Michael said slowly, “I don’t think he’s stuck. I think-”

  He was out of the car. With a curt, “Stay where you are, Katy,” Jeremy was after him. Mechanically, fingers clenched against the cold, Katy followed them that short dark distance. She didn’t go very close to the puddle of brilliance from the headlights of Jeremy’s car. She didn’t have to. Mr. Pickering’s car was heavy, but you could still see that the crushed and snowy thing it had passed over was Ilse Petersen.

  Francesca’s front door opened as Katy turned blindly into the darkness, wondering how she would manage to reach the car. Francesca stood in the yellow-peach oblong of light, Cassie at her shoulder. She called, “What is it, Jeremy? Harvey, what—?”

  Cassie brushed by her, a red bird against the snow. She reached the edge of the light and looked down. She made a sound that wasn’t quite a scream and, before anyone could reach her, crashed face forward into the snow.

  8

  The police had been called. And a doctor.

  Cassie had struck her forehead on a rock when she fell; there was a cut and a swelling that would be an ugly bruise. She had been gaspingly sick when they got her to her feet and she lay, now, in an upstairs bedroom, still and staring under apple green satin.

  Harvey Pickering was like a man who had had a stroke. Gray-faced, mauve-mouthed, his air of prosperous serenity crumpled, he kept repeating, over and over again, “She was there all the time, under the back wheels of the car, and I didn’t see her. It felt like driving over a log, it didn’t feel like… One of the wheels must have gone over her—head. She was there, all the time…”

  Katy didn’t think she could stand it. She couldn’t sit still. She paced the living room, tall and too stiff inside smart black moire, long fingers curled tightly into her palms. When Michael said gently, “Katy, darling…” and Francesca, coolly, “You might as well sit down, Katy,” she said, “it’s this waiting. I’ll see if Cassie wants anything.”

  This was the bedroom at the door of which she had stood listening to broken threads of conversation between Cassie and Ilse Petersen. White organdy crisscrossing at the windows, with dark-cherry roses on heavy linen at either side, a dressing-table skirted with roses, a small fat armchair, scatter rugs, soft and woolly and deep green. Katy closed the door carefully behind her. For the second time that night it came to her with a little jolting shock that the girl in the wide low bed was a stranger, immaculately polite—and utterly unknown. She had thought she knew Cassie because they had grown up in the same town, and because there had been that moment of shared and unforgettable crisis at the pond with Monica. But that was thirteen years ago, and now the measuring-stick of familiarity was gone.

  Cassie took her blue gaze away from the ceiling and smiled palely up at her. “The police ought to be here soon, oughtn’t they?”

  Katy nodded. She sat down in the little armchair across the room and looked at iodine and gauze and adhesive on Cassie’s forehead. It was brutal to ask searching questions of someone who had just had a shock and a bad fall. It had been infinitely more brutal to place a dead or unconscious woman in the snow under the wheels of a car. She said slowly, “They’re going to want to know what Ilse was doing on the road in front of the house tonight, in the middle of a snowstorm.”

  Cassie widened her eyes. “But how would any of us know that?”

  Cruel to trick her; Katy didn’t try. “She was in the house tonight, Cassie. You talked to her.”

  Cassie didn’t ask how Katy knew. She turned her face away and began quietly and dreadfully to cry, and Katy looked deliberately away and reminded herself of the letters and the wreath and Miss Whiddy tumbling down to death. It hardened her enough to say, “Why did you ask Ilse to come here tonight, Cassie?”

  Cassie stopped crying. She said tonelessly, “It’s Mother,” and began to talk. She had known for some time that Francesca Poole was still desperately in love with her father, had gathered, from chance glimpses, from scraps of gossip, from flowers that Arnold had sent Francesca on their anniversary six weeks ago, that her father was growing bored with his inamorata. She had thought that if Ilse Petersen could be persuaded to leave Fenwick, even for a month or two, her parents could resume their interrupted marriage and Francesca would be happy again for the first time since Arnold had left her five years ago.

  She said, “I’ve been helping Mrs. Vail in the real estate business since the summer, one or two days a week. I gave Ilse money, not much, but she said she’d have to start saving if she were to go away for a while.”

  “And you promised her more,” Katy said. She felt miserably sorry for the white-faced girl in the bed, but she had to go on.

  “Yes,” Cassie said, “I thought I might be able to sell something, borrow from somewhere… Ilse said she’d think it over.”

  And that was where the truth ended, and the bland and impenetrable deception took over. Ilse Petersen hadn’t been talking to Cassie in the little coat-room below about an impending separation from Arnold Poole.

  She had said with cold triumph, “I came to tell you something else, Miss Poole” and then, later on—Katy looked through the dark window at whirling whiteness—her own name had been mentioned. She drew a long breath.

  Outside in the icy snow-driven night, car doors slammed. Cassie said, “It was an accident. I’m not sorry—how could I be?—but it was an accident. Another car must have hit Ilse when she went out, must have thrown her under Mr. Pickering’s car… or maybe she crawled under it after she was hit—”

  The iron knocker fell.

  Katy stood up. She said, “Did she leave, Cassie?”

  The smoky, three-cornered blue eyes were steady. “Yes. She did.” A clock ticked somewhere in the pretty cherry and green and white bedroom. An odd expression, almost of cunning, slid over Cassie’s white, beautifully-articulated face. She drew green satin closer under her chin and said, “You won’t mention it, will you, Katy? You won’t tell anyone she was here?”

  Katy’s hand was on the knob. She couldn’t promise. She said, “They may find out anyway. But don’t worry, and try to sleep,” and opened the door and closed it behind her and went down the stairs.

  Ilse Petersen had either been struck by a passing car or had slipped and fallen in the blinding snow, after which the last shreds of life and semi-consciousness had sent her crawling under the wheels of Harvey Pickering’s car; that was how they finally reasoned it out at close to two A.M. on that Sunday morning.

  Chief Abbott was there, and a Sergeant Gilfoyle, a mountainous man with small, thick-lidded, very shrewd eyes. The coroner had come—glumly, because, as he pointed out, it wasn’t a fit night for man nor beast—and gone. He said bluntly that it was difficult to tell the ex-act nature of the injuries, because the head and face had been almost completely crushed by the right rear wheel of the Buick. It was also impossible to say when the accident and death had occurred; rigor would have set in very quickly in the icy air and the snow.

  Chief Abbott said he supposed they hadn’t heard anything—a cry, brakes squealing, anything like that? Francesca gestured regretfully. “But then there were six of us for cocktails and dinner—I suppose we did a good deal of chattering, and naturally we weren’t listening for sounds outside.”

  Chief Abbott understood. He was embarrassed because the dead woman had been living with Mrs. Poole’s husband; he wasn’t looking for motive or opportunity because there had been casualties and fatalities all over the state that stormy night. It was Sergeant Gilfoyle who said thoughtfully, “Peculiar night to be taking a walk. She lives over a mile from here. Wonder where she was going, in all this snow?”

  Katy went on looking intently at the fire, at an edge of white-hot ash along a blackened log. Incredible that the blatantly obvious question hadn’t been asked before. She turned her head the merest trifle in time to see Francesca’s lashes sweep reticently down as she said in a low voice, “I think I can help you there, Sergeant. My husband came here tonight, although
I hadn’t expected him. I think Miss Petersen suspected where he had gone, and followed him.”

  Chief Abbott cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You think she was—”

  “Jealous,” Francesca said with a wry smile. “Odd as it may seem, Mr. Abbott. It—happened once before.”

  Chief Abbott looked at the clock and closed the notebook in which he had entered his report. The fire gave a dying snap. Sergeant Gilfoyle looked at Francesca with shrewd bright eyes and said, “Funny Mr. Poole hasn’t sent in an alarm. He should have been home by now. He must have missed Miss Petersen.”

  Chief Abbott stirred restively. “Maybe he has. We’ve been gone well over an hour, Bill.” Someone else remarked that Arnold Poole might have had trouble getting home over the snowy roads. Abbott nodded, anxious to be gone from the small-hours inquiry into what was palpably a tragic but understandable accident. Blinding snow, a slippery curve, a car fumbling its way through the stormy darkness—there would be other people, luckier than Miss Petersen, ending up in hospitals all that night. He said, “We’ll have to talk to Mr. Poole in the morning anyway,” and, respectfully, “We may have to call on you again, Mr. Pickering.”

  The firm pinkness was returning to Harvey Pickering’s face. He was surer of his ground, now; he had, after all, helped put Frank Abbott into office. He said, “Anything, anything, Chief. It’s a dreadful thing. I can’t help feeling partly responsible…”

  The police left, then. Bur, thought Katy, they would almost certainly be back. Frank Abbott was not a stupid man, nor was huge, quiet Sergeant Gilfoyle, whose lazy half-closed eyes had been brightly full of unasked questions. It would occur to them, it must occur to them, that there had been two violently accidental deaths in Fenwick within the space of a little more than twenty-four hours, and that the same group of people had been on hand at both times. Fatal, among those people, to be too observing. Miss Whiddy had seen something she shouldn’t have seen, and unfortunately Miss Whiddy had lost her footing on a steep dark staircase. Ilse Petersen had also seen and heard something at the Inn, and Ilse Petersen had been struck down by a car on a wild and snowy night, as thousands of people had been before and thousands undoubtedly would be again. No weapon, either time, any more than the bathtub in which you slipped and broke your neck was a weapon.

  Bathtubs… Katy’s fingers curled and tightened in her lap. Weren’t they another favorite on the domestic carelessness list? You slipped, getting in. Your head went back and under, so that you were momentarily stunned. They found you with your hair floating lazily over your face, and water eddying gently into your mouth and eyes and nose… But her bathtub at the Inn was small and pinched, you couldn’t stretch out full length in it and it would be very uncomfortable, doubled up like that—

  “Coffee, anyone? Or a drink?” Francesca was standing in the doorway, white and weary, one shoulder against the wood frame. Katy’s eyes came completely open. She’d been almost asleep for a moment, she’d been dreaming—She said, “Not for me, thanks,” and stretched. Jeremy, standing at the hearth and looking down at her, frowned a little and said, “Katy. Feeling all right?”

  “Yes,” Katy said violently. In this room, with these people, it seemed important all at once to make that very clear. She said loudly and crisply, “I feel perfectly all right,” and stood up, aware that they were all staring at her. Michael said flatly, “You look frightful. We all do. The sooner we get some sleep—”

  They were at the door again, re-enacting the hats-coats-and-gloves scene; it was as though they had been through a ghastly rehearsal for their final departure. Francesca, mouth twisted, said, “I’m sorry the—evening had to end like this, it wasn’t intended to be a police party, really,” and Katy realized, for the first time and with compunction, how frightful it must have been for her. The woman for whom her husband had left her, crushed to death in front of her house—the papers would touch on that, slyly, even though Fenwick had been long accustomed to the Poole-Petersen situation. She said gently, “I hope Cassie will be all right in the morning,” and followed Jeremy out to the car.

  It was still snowing, but the wind had dropped. Ahead of them, Mr. Pickering climbed into his car. He didn’t wave this time. The Buick’s back wheels spun and Whipped snow churningly aside and the car pulled slidingly into the road and started away. They followed its taillights until Jeremy turned off for the road back to the town.

  They were in the dim, sleeping lobby before Katy discovered the loss of her bag. She tried, and failed, to remember whether she had had the black suede pouch in the car. She could have left it at Francesca’s, might have dropped it somewhere in the snow. Never mind; she would ask in the morning. She said, “Oh, Lord. My key,” and Michael pressed the buzzer on the counter in front of the office and they waited for the slumbering bell-boy to rouse.

  It was ten minutes before he came and they stood, quiet and exhausted, in the shadowy silence of the deserted lobby. The dark mouth of the bar, the wider blackness of the dining-room door, the staircase sloping grayly up behind them; the light at the top burned faithfully, making a small island of radiance at the turn of the hall. Katy said idly, “My bag might be in Jeremy’s car,” but Michael didn’t answer. He was staring ahead of him, eyes intent on nothing at all, a tired look stamped around his mouth. He said abruptly, “I’m sorry about tonight, Katy. I should have told you about Gerald months ago, as soon as you mentioned Fenwick. I don’t know why I kept putting it off, except that it doesn’t make very pleasant telling—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Katy said. “Whatever it is, Michael, it doesn’t matter at all.”

  Michael gave her a quick glance. “It does, in a way,” he said, “I’ll cut it short, but I want you to know. Gerald’s four years older than I am. He has brains, plenty of them. We all worshipped him, Mother and Dad and I… he was the kind of guy you looked up to, when you were playing high-school football and he was getting his letters at college—”

  He paused. Katy wanted to say something, to touch his hand, but she stayed very still. Michael said carefully, “As soon as Gerald got out of college—he did very well—Dad took him into the business. Blythe and Belvedere, Architects. You can find the trimmings in any 1930 Chicago newspaper, but what it amounts to is that Gerald took everything and skipped out. Before that, while he was still at college, he used to come here to Fenwick for vacations. He had a lot of charm, and the golden touch—his college friends were always the ones with money. There was a family here, I don’t remember their name, with an estate on the Sound and a yacht-and a couple of Irish hunters. Natural set-up for Gerald.”

  Katy said with quick, soft pity, “Oh, Michael—”

  “It got hushed up,” Michael said, “very prettily. No loose ends, just Dad bankrupt and Mother with twenty years on her age and a few dirty headlines in the papers. Belvedere wanted to prosecute, naturally, but he was the lesser partner and from somewhere or other Dad got enough together to pay him back. So—Gerald went abroad for a couple of years, and that was that. I don’t know when he came back. We found out about five years ago that he was in Florida, with a wife, I think, and a couple of kids.”

  “But it’s all over with,” Katy said gently. “It must have been horrible for your father, for all of you, but it’s over and done with, Michael, and it was years ago.”

  “Katy,” said Michael. He looked at her slowly and deliberately, as though he were memorizing her face. The back door of the shadowy little office opened and feet shuffled, but his eyes didn’t flicker. “That day when Monica went through the ice. A car stopped, you said. There was a man—”

  “Middle-aged,” said Katy, giddy with relief. “A good fifty at least, darling. I don’t remember at all what he looked like, but I do know that. Have you been thinking-?”

  The bell-boy emerged, blinking. “Not really,” Michael said, and then laughed. “My God. I guess I was. It’s the kind of thing Gerald might be involved in, if he scented money in the offing… Sorry to wake you, but the lady’
s lost her key. Can you let her into two-sixteen?”

  With the light out and the luminous hands of the traveling-clock pointing at close to 3:30, Katy thought suddenly of the key in her missing bag. In the midst of the storm, and with only a few hours until dawn, it was scarcely likely that the key would be used tonight. Nevertheless, dizzy with fatigue as she was, Katy got shiveringly out of bed, propped a chair inexpertly under the doorknob, looked at it dubiously, thought, “I’m too tired,” crept back under the blankets and was immediately, blessedly, druggedly asleep.

  The snow stopped sometime during the night. Katy woke once to a glare of white-gold sunlight and the snort of snow-ploughs and closed her eyes determinedly again. At close to noon she and Michael had something that was more lunch than breakfast and compared notes on the evening before. Michael agreed that Ilse Petersen’s death was not the bad-weather accident it seemed to be; his gaze narrowed alertly when Katy told him about the conversation she had overheard, standing in Cassie’s bedroom before dinner.

  “If only you’d heard a little more… you’re sure Ilse Petersen didn’t give any hint at all of what she saw here at the Inn?”

  “None,” Katy said. “She only said it was something ‘infinitely more interesting’—more interesting, I suppose, than Cassie’s proposition of a short trip. In fact, it sounded rather like the beginnings of blackmail.”

  Michael frowned. “But not of Cassie herself, because Cassie isn’t apparently very fruitful monetary ground. Or maybe she’s going to be. Is Taylor a wealthy man?”