Voice Out of Darkness

by Ursula Curtiss

  She said, “Yes. Everything’s here—even some ancient correspondence,” and sensed rather than heard a held breath go out somewhere around the table.

  15

  Eight o’clock.

  “Marvelous shrimp,” said Francesca.

  The two parties had not separated after all; they had slid somehow from cocktails to dinner still in a casual group. The snow-stiffened black suede bag was in Katy’s lap. She was as conscious of it as though it were a living thing. Francesca put down her fork and looked solicitously across the table. “Do you feel all right, Katy? You look a little—pale.”

  “Country wear and tear,” Katy said, and smiled. “You get out of the habit of walking in New York. I feel as though I’d run a cross-country race, even though I only went as far as the little pond. Where we used to skate. The shrimp is heavenly, isn’t it?”

  “There’s a message for you at the desk,” the bell-boy had said almost immediately after Lieutenant Hooper had taken his departure. Katy had gone out into the lobby, not startled at all to find the lieutenant beckoning from the stairs. In Katy’s room, standing with his back against the door, he had begun to talk.

  Katy listened. They had found the bag yesterday afternoon in the snow in front of the Poole house, where she had dropped it on the night Ilse Petersen died. A photostatic copy had been made of the letter—the last one Katy had received—that she had slipped by mistake into the wrong envelope. The photostat was on its way to New York to go under the powerful glass of the homicide squad’s handwriting experts; arrangements were being made to round up samples of the handwriting of all concerned. Hooper shrugged discontentedly. He said, “It’s slow, and it’s not infallible. I think we’ll have quicker results right here.”

  Katy stared. She said shakily, “What an unattractive proposition. You mean, don’t you, that someone’s going to try to get the letter back?”

  “Yes,” Lieutenant Hooper said neatly. “Now pay attention to me, Miss Meredith. I’ll be watching, and I’ll have someone else watching, but we can’t, naturally, be under your nose. Be very careful. Don’t let the bag out of your sight for a second, and don’t give the letter to anyone, for any reason. If it’s out of your hands, your manner will give you away—and I think it will be very interesting to find out who wants it back.”

  Katy stood up. She said, “They’ll know I’ve been talking to you just now.”

  “Yes,” said Lieutenant Hooper serenely, holding the door. “I certainly hope so. I’m counting on it rather heavily. Er—careful on the stairs.”

  And here she was, passionately admiring the shrimp.

  She had tried to give Michael a reassuring signal, but they were all too alert, too watchful. It was, in a way, like waiting for the sound of a gun, or the explosive pop of a champagne cork; you knew it was going to come and you screwed your nerves down tight, but in the end it was always just as much of a shock.

  They had steak and salad and, because of Michael’s and Katy’s announcement, wine from the Fenwick Inn’s doubtful cellar. Katy was lighting a cigarette, not looking at any of them, when it happened. There was a sharp crash of glass, a clatter of silver against china, a drench of wine; Katy didn’t realize what had spilled until she felt wetness soaking through her skirt. Pauline Trent said brusquely, “Oh, Lord. My fault. Here—”

  Katy jumped up. Her bag slid to the floor and Jeremy Taylor retrieved it. Francesca said helplessly, “Wine… hot water, or cold? It’s in all the cookbooks.”

  “Cold,” said Cassie.

  “Hot, I think,” said Pauline Trent. “I’m sorry, Katy. Let me—”

  Katy said quickly that it didn’t matter and it would only take her a minute to sponge it off and fled, gratefully, upstairs to the ladies’ room.

  It was nice to escape them all for a few minutes. She found a towel and began to scrub at the silky wool crepe. Her bag—had someone thought she might drop it without noticing when the wine came flooding over the edge of the table? Katy held the towel still. She hadn’t heard the door open—but, abruptly, Pauline Trent was standing against the darkness of the hall, looking at her in the mirror.

  Pauline closed the door. Katy brandished the towel and made a last flourish at her skirt. “That’ll do for the time being.”

  Pauline Trent took her shoulders away from the doorway and walked around until she was almost behind Katy. Her eyes met Katy’s in the mirror; they were still flat and dark and shining, but her face was almost casual. She said, “Better give it to me, Katy.”

  Katy was still holding the towel. Her fingers plunged deeper into it and tightened, her mind was suddenly very clear, as though she had been braced subconsciously for just this. The bag was on the makeup ledge, within reach of her other hand. The door—she didn’t take her eyes away from Pauline’s unmoving reflection—the door wasn’t more than four steps away from where she stood.

  But her muscles were locked, and she was off balance. She took a small shifting step and said carefully, “Give you—?” and Pauline Trent stirred impatiently and put out one strong, thick hand. “The towel. You’re still dripping, here, at the side.”

  Quarter of nine, and coffee.

  We must do this more often, Katy thought grimly, staring at her linked fingers. Shouldn’t you, with your wedding only a few days away, be able to think about what you would wear to be married in, and where you would go, and who would hand Michael the ring? Stan, she thought remotely. Stan ought to be maid of honor.

  It wasn’t any use. It was even rather foolish to count on there ever being a time when she and Michael would step out of the quagmire and think about things like wedding trips. Because he was in it now, too; a stray tendril of malevolence had reached out carelessly into his New York apartment. Probably to show them, thought Katy, that distance didn’t matter, that it could follow them wherever they went… “More coffee?” said Michael.

  Katy shook her head. Michael said in an outraged mutter, under laughter all around them, “Hooper’s out of his mind. What does he think you’re made of?”

  “Portland cement,” said Katy, and Francesca, who had caught it across the table, arched her eyebrows and said, “What did you say, Katy?”

  Nine-twenty.

  Michael went out to the lobby for cigarettes, Francesca looked in her compact mirror and made a face and vanished to the ladies’ room. Jeremy had gone up to the other end of the bar in response to a hail from a well cocktailed client and Pauline Trent had said vaguely that she would be right back. Katy and Cassie looked at each other, and Cassie drew a long, soundless breath. “That glove of mine,” she said. “I suppose Dad told you?”

  “No,” said Katy. She wished Michael would come back. She wished Cassie would stop looking at her with that soft, smoky stare. Was it Cassie she had almost known about, up there at the northern end of the pond? But Cassie was at the other end, the south end, with her and Monica, her mind said confusedly.

  “I’d dropped it at the police station when we went there after—when we went there,” Cassie said. “I suppose they must have been—talking to Dad later. Anyway, that’s where he found it.” She looked over Katy’s shoulder and slid her chair back and rose. “Jeremy’s waving… someone I’m supposed to meet, I gather.”

  And she was alone, in a little wilderness of crumpled napkins and silver and suspended motion.

  “Hello, Katy,” said Arnold Poole, dropping down beside her.

  Katy smiled and said hello and let one hand stray, casually, to the stiffened suede pouch. Arnold nodded sardonically at the now-vacant table where Harvey Pickering had sat. “I see our friend’s out-of-town business wasn’t as pressing as he thought.”

  “Apparently not.” Katy waited. Arnold Poole grinned and said, “What have you got in that bag of yours, Captain Kidd’s diary?”

  Katy felt shock, like a light and unexpected touch on her shoulder. She shook it off and laughed, and was startled to hear her voice come out hollow and gay. “Heavens, no. The usual chaos… why?”
/>   “Nothing,” said Arnold Poole. He rose lazily and stood looking down at her. “I saw Hooper—that his name?—hand it to you a while ago. It was down at the police station on Abbott’s desk this morning when I dropped in. You never saw a bag vanish into a bottom drawer so fast. Maybe he was just looking for beauty tips for Mrs. Abbott, though.” He leaned down and twisted out his half-smoked cigarette. He said suddenly and intently, “Take care of yourself, Katy,” and nodded briefly and strolled away.

  Take care of yourself… but people said that as automatically as “See you later,” or “So long.” But how alert he had been about her black suede bag. How observant, to have recognized it from halfway across the room.

  At close to ten o’clock Katy announced in a beautifully careless voice that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and was going upstairs to bed.

  They had all talked idly about getting home, but they had stood upon the order of their going—through more coffee and a highball. Under the fragile screen of light discussion and cigarette smoke, Katy had watched Pauline Trent, who was oddly, unmistakably, nervous, and as restlessly anxious to get away as a bored child at an elderly party. She didn’t go. She sat with the rest, not speaking and obviously only half-listening, her remote dark gaze on Katy’s face, on an ashtray, on Katy’s face again.

  Michael went to the stairs with Katy. He said grimly, “I hope we never have to do this again. I suppose Hooper knows what he’s about, and to hear him talk you’d think he had a detective under every rug, but it’s a hell of a way to spend an evening.”

  “But they’ll have to start going home soon,” Katy said practically. “Whoever doesn’t—”

  “I’ll count them as they go out,” Michael said. His smile was reassuring. It couldn’t, even in the dim light of the lobby, warm the anxiety out of his eyes.

  Lieutenant Hooper didn’t tell me the whole plan, Katy thought, Michael knows something I don’t know—and was too nervously weary to care. She said goodnight, had it smothered in Michael’s hard, quick kiss, and went on up the stairs to her room. Inside it, she locked the door, put the now frightening black purse on the bedside table, and lighted a cigarette.

  Silly to stand listening, knife-edgedly aware of the infinitesimal sounds implicit in silence—the tiny tick of her traveling clock, the cold little creak of a glass pane as the wind rushed against it, her own measured breathing. Because professional ears were listening for any sounds that would matter, and trained eyes were watching.

  A half hour slid by. The room had become a bright box of safety—with menace pressing against the keyhole, waiting outside the windows. Katy put off undressing, and was aware that it was partly because she didn’t want to make a single alien sound in the stillness that was security, somehow, because it was complete. But she couldn’t, obviously, sit on the edge of the bed all night. She stood up.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  Katy went over to it and asked the crack, “Who is it?”

  “Waiter, Miss. There’s a telephone call for you.”

  It’s a trick, Katy thought clearly. It’s a way of getting me out of my room. Anybody who’d call me is right here, at the Inn.

  Unless one of those people had had time to get home.

  There was Stan, in New York.

  She said, “Just a minute, please,” and turned the key and opened the door a sliver, with her weight braced against it. A white-coated waiter stood in the hall; she’d seen him often in the dining room. He looked back at her, politely puzzled, and Katy went and got the black bag. There were still eight dollars in it. She gave the waiter five and said carefully, “Will you wait here until I get back? And tell me if anyone comes while I’m gone. I won’t be long.”

  The staircase was empty. So was the lobby. She crossed its shadowy stretches to the booth in the corner. She lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?” and a man’s voice said briskly, “Pearl? Say, I just got a wire from Bill and Edith; they got there safe and they said thanks for the bottle.”

  Familiar? Katy didn’t think so; she couldn’t be sure. She thought gratefully of the waiter upstairs at her door and said, “I’m afraid you have the wrong person.”

  “Pearl? Isn’t this Fenwick 3599? I asked for Pearl Merriwell—”

  If it wasn’t genuine it was very well done, Katy thought, replacing the receiver. The voice had become aggrieved and a little suspicious; it had seemed to think, like most wrong-party callers, that the whole thing was a deliberate and malevolent conspiracy. It hadn’t sounded like a disguised voice—or had it been too loud and brash and cheerful?

  She went slowly upstairs. The waiter said that nobody had come by while he’d been there. Katy didn’t notice that his words were carefully chosen, or that one hand was curled lovingly in his jacket pocket. She thanked him and went into her room and turned the key in the lock and, this time, went determinedly about preparing to go to bed. She lingered for a few minutes in the warm steamy little bathroom, doing idle things with dusting powder and lemony face cream. She put on the quilted ivory robe and yellow sandals, and went back into the bedroom. She was brushing her hair when she heard the sounds in the hall.

  There was a faraway whisper of voices, a faint metallic click, a soft thump, then silence. When the sounds began again they were muffled and indescribable. Listening, brush suspended in mid-air, Katy tried to attach action to them, and couldn’t. Abruptly, the hall was again quiet.

  There had been no outcry, no crisp police voices. Katy found that her hands were shaking. She lighted a cigarette and kept on staring at the door. Nothing had happened, the hush said so. Then why was her heart beating like that, thickly and unevenly?

  Finish her cigarette and take an aspirin and turn out the light and try to sleep; Lieutenant Hooper had wanted her to behave as normally as possible and that was what, when your mind and body couldn’t stand any more, you normally did. But would Monica come into, the darkness with her tonight? Monica, the wet-haired, gray-lipped child who had uttered three words at the edge of the pond and unleashed a subtle and dreadful force?

  Katy’s mind backed away from the thought of Monica. She put out her cigarette—and stood stiff and still as knuckles brushed softly against her door. There was, again, someone in the hall outside, someone who wanted to come in.

  The door is locked, said Katy’s brain. Nobody can come in unless you turn the key. Unless someone forces the door.

  Slow, stumbling thoughts, out of a primer of fear.

  The windows—

  But the windows, at this end of the Inn, looked steeply down on rocks. She stared at the black suede bag on the writing table in the corner. In the hall, someone tapped again, guardedly.

  Who was at the door? And was Lieutenant Hooper watching?

  “Katy,” said Michael’s voice, close to the crack.

  Katy uncurled her fingers and drew breath through an aching throat. She went to the door and turned the key in the lock and opened it, and Michael stepped in. He wasn’t looking at her. He was half turned away, looking out into the hall. He said slowly, “Was the light on when you came up, Katy?”

  Katy looked over his shoulder at darkness that hadn’t been there when she had come back from the phone. “Yes. But I heard sounds a few minutes ago—”

  “Do you know what you heard, Katy?” Michael closed the door and looked at her with eyes that should have been exultant but were, instead, bleak and tired. “It’s over. Hooper’s plan worked, Katy, and it’s over.”

  “Then there was someone—”

  “—outside your door, in the hall,” Michael finished grimly. His face was white and strained. “Hoping to… God knows. They’re all in Hooper’s room now. He wants both of us, and the letter—think you can stand it?”

  Katy didn’t move. It was over. Over. Danger had crept along the blackened hall to her own door, and there had been a scuffle, a pouncing attack, and she was safe. She said, “Michael, who is it?”

  Michael looked away. He said, “I caught just a glimp
se—I can’t believe it. I wish you didn’t have to go through this on top of everything else… I suppose we’d better get it over with.”

  Katy didn’t ask again. She was numb, now that the time had come to look at the one dreadful face. She went over to the writing table and picked up the black suede bag with the letter that had been bait and now was evidence. And felt, again, that abnormal sharpening and heightening of all her senses.

  Wind whipping coldly at the dark windows. A frozen ribbon of snow on the sill, a gaunt black branch in a slow and eerie dance. Black and white and gray, like a winter charcoal.

  The charcoal sketches.

  The knowledge had come tantalizingly close to her earlier today, when she had revisited the little pond. It had hovered, and she had almost known who it was who had stood hidden among the screening pines, and why it had taken thirteen years to ripen a chance conjecture into deadly maturity. Now it was sliding as quixotically back, fumbling at the edges of logic and reason. Dimly, she heard Michael saying, “Are you all right, Katy?” and she turned, the bag in her hands, her face burning with panic, her voice jagged in her throat. “The sketches. The charcoals.”

  Michael was staring down at her, frowning. And all at once his eyes knew, too, and she heard his single harsh indrawn breath.

  Only one thing moved in the utterly still room. It was the knob of the closet door, turning with caution, letting a slice of blackness into the wall. The slice widened. There was a face in it, a shockingly familiar face, above a coiled and springing body. Katy screamed, and the screams took her rocketing upwards, crazy and crimson in sudden blackness.

  16

  They sat, the three of them, in the living room of Katy’s apartment on Tenth Street.

  Organdy in loops at the windows and lamplight lying warmly on the rugs; rain put silver basting-stitches on the polished black panes. Lieutenant Hooper, who had said modestly that he didn’t mind if he did, looked thoughtfully into his Scotch and water and said, “Oh, yes, I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that Mr. Blythe would have killed Miss Meredith.”