The Cradle Will Fall

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Smiling, Katie closed the door. A memory raced through her mind. She was five years old, joyously playing in the muddy backyard in her Easter dress. Her mother’s outraged cry. Her father’s amused voice doing his Gerald O’Hara imitation: “It’s the land, Katie Scarlett”—then, in a wheedling voice, to her mother: “Don’t get mad at her. All good Micks love the land.”

  The clock chimed musically. After Richard’s bear-warm presence, the room seemed hollow. Quickly she turned out the light and went upstairs.

  The phone rang just as she got into bed. Molly has probably been trying to get me, she thought as she lifted the receiver. But it was a man’s voice who responded when she said hello.

  “Mrs. DeMaio?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Highley. I hope I’m not calling too late, but I’ve tried several times to reach you this evening. The fact that you were in an accident and were in our hospital overnight has come to my attention. How are you feeling?”

  “Quite well, Doctor. How nice of you to call.”

  “How is the bleeding problem? According to your records you had a transfusion here last night.”

  “I’m afraid it’s about the same. I thought I was over my period, but it started again yesterday. I honestly think I may have been a bit light-headed when I lost control of the car.”

  “Well, as you know, you should have taken care of this condition at least a year ago. Never mind. It will all be behind you by this time next week. But I do want you to have another transfusion to build you up for the surgery, and I also want you to start in on some pills. Can you come to the hospital tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, there was a chance I was coming anyhow. You’ve heard about Mrs. Lewis?”

  “I have. A terrible and sad situation. Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Call in the morning and well arrange a definite time.”

  “Yes, Doctor. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Katie hung up. As she turned out the light, she reflected that Dr. Highley hadn’t really appealed to her on her first visit. Was it because of his reserved, even aloof attitude?

  It shows how you can misjudge people, she decided. It’s very nice of him to personally keep trying to get in touch with me tonight.

  ♦13♦

  Bill Kennedy rang the bell of the Lewis house. An orthopedic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital, he had been operating all day and did not hear about Vangie Lewis’ death until he returned home. Tall, prematurely white, scholarly and somewhat shy in his professional life, Bill became a different person when he entered the warm haven of the home Molly created for him.

  Her bustling presence made it possible for him to leave behind the problems of his patients and relax. But tonight the atmosphere had been different. Molly had already fed the children and given them strict orders to stay out of the way. Briefly she told him about Vangie. “I called and asked Chris to come to dinner and to sleep in the den tonight rather than be alone over there. He doesn’t want to, but you go drag him here. I’m sure he’ll at least come to dinner.”

  As he walked between the houses, Bill considered the shock it would be to come home and find he had lost Molly. But it wouldn’t be the same for Chris Lewis. No one in his right mind could think that that marriage had been anything like his and Molly’s. Bill had never told Molly that one morning when he was having coffee at a drugstore near the hospital he’d seen Chris in a booth with a very pretty girl in her early twenties. It was written all over the two of them that they were involved with each other.

  Had Vangie known about the girl? Was that why she’d committed suicide? But so violently! His mind flashed back to the summer. Vangie and Chris had been over for a barbecue. Vangie had started to roast a marshmallow and gotten her hand too near the heat. Her finger had blistered and she’d carried on as though she’d been covered with third-degree burns. She’d gone shrieking to Chris, who had tried to calm her down. Embarrassed for her, Chris had explained, “Vangie has a low pain tolerance.” By the time Bill got salve and applied it, the blister was practically nonexistent.

  Where would a person of Vangie’s emotional makeup get the courage to take cyanide? Anyone who’d read anything about that poison would know that even though death was almost instantaneous, one died in agony.

  No. Bill would have sworn that Vangie Lewis committing suicide would have swallowed sleeping pills and fallen asleep. Showed how little anyone knew about the human mind . . . even someone like himself who was supposed to be a pretty good judge of people.

  Chris Lewis opened the door. Ever since he’d spotted him with the girl, Bill had been somewhat reserved with Chris. He just didn’t cotton to men who ran around when their wives were pregnant. But now the sight of Chris’s drawn face and the genuine sadness in his eyes called up Bill’s compassion. He gripped the younger man’s arms. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  Chris nodded woodenly. It seemed to him that like an onion peeling layer by layer, the meaning of the day was sinking in on him. Vangie was dead. Had their quarrel driven her to kill herself? He couldn’t believe it, and yet he felt lonely, frightened and guilty. He allowed Bill to persuade him to come to dinner. He had to get out of the house—he couldn’t think clearly there. Molly and Bill were good people. Could he trust them with what he knew? Could he trust anyone? Numbly reaching for a jacket, he followed Bill down the street.

  Bill poured a double Scotch for him. Chris gulped it. When the glass was half-empty he forced himself to slow down. The whiskey burned his throat and chest, making a passage through the tension. Calm down, he thought, calm down. Be careful.

  The Kennedy kids came into the den to say good night. Well-behaved kids, all of them. Good-looking too. The oldest boy, Billy, resembled his father. Jennifer was a dark-haired beauty. The younger girls, Dina and Moira, were fair like Molly. The twins. Chris almost smiled. The twins looked like each other. Chris had always wanted children. Now his unborn child had died with Vangie. Another guilt. He had resented her pregnancy. His child, and he hadn’t wanted it, not for one single second. And Vangie had known it. What had, who had driven her to kill herself? Who? That was the question. Because Vangie hadn’t been alone last night.

  He hadn’t told the police. It would be opening up a can of worms, begging them to start an investigation. And where would that lead? To Joan. The other woman. To him.

  The clerk had seen him leave the motel last night. He’d started to come home, to have it out with Vangie. He’d even jotted down figures to discuss with her. She could have the house. He’d give her twenty thousand a year, at least until the baby was eighteen. He’d carry a large insurance policy on his life for her. He’d educate the baby. She could keep on going to that Japanese psychiatrist she was so crazy about. Only let me go, Vangie. Please let me go. I can’t spend any more of my life with you. It’s destroying both of us . . . .

  He’d gotten as far as the house. Somewhere around midnight he’d arrived. He’d driven in and the minute the garage door opened, knew something was up. Because he’d almost rammed the Lincoln. She’d parked in his space. No, someone else parked her car in his space. Because no way would Vangie ever try to drive that wide car into the area between the posts and the right wall. The garage was an oversized one. One side could hold two cars. That was the side Vangie always used. And she needed every inch. She was a lousy driver, and her peripheral vision probably wasn’t that great either. She simply couldn’t judge space well. Chris always parked his Corvette in the narrower side. But last night the Lincoln had been expertly parked there.

  He’d gone in and found the house empty. Vangie’s handbag was on the chaise in their room. He’d been puzzled but not alarmed. Obviously she’d gone off with someone to stay overnight. He’d even been pleased that maybe she had a girlfriend to confide in. He’d always tried to make her develop friends. And Vangie could be secretive. He wondered if she’d forgotten her handbag. Vangie was forgetful, or maybe she’d packed an overnight bag and didn’t want to bother with the
heavy purse.

  The house depressed Chris. He decided to go back to the motel. He hadn’t told Joan about coming home. He was careful to say as little as possible to Joan about Vangie. To Joan, any mention of Vangie was a continuing reminder of what she saw to be her own position as an interloper. If he’d told Joan this morning that he and Vangie had quarreled and Vangie had obviously been so upset she’d gone to stay with someone rather than be alone, Joan would have been heartsick.

  But then this morning he’d found Vangie dead. Somebody had parked the car for her before midnight. Somebody had driven her home after midnight. And those shoes. The one day she’d worn them she’d complained endlessly about them. That was around Christmas when he’d taken her to New York, trying to give her some fun. Fun! God, what a miserable day. She hadn’t liked the play. The restaurant didn’t serve veal piccata and she’d set her heart on it. And she’d talked incessantly about how the shoe dug into her right ankle.

  For weeks now she’d worn nothing but those dirty moccasins. He’d asked her to please get some decent shoes, but she’d said these were the only comfortable ones. Where were they? Chris had searched the house thoroughly. Whoever drove her home might know.

  He hadn’t told the police any of this. He hadn’t wanted to involve Joan. “I checked into a motel because my wife and I had quarreled. I wanted a divorce. I decided to come home and try to reason with her. She wasn’t here and I left.” It hadn’t seemed necessary to drag all this in. Even the shoes really weren’t that important. Vangie might have wanted to be fully dressed when she was found. That swollen leg embarrassed her. She was vain.

  But he should have told the cops about his being here, about the way the car was parked.

  “Chris, come into the dining room. You’ll feel better if you eat something.” Molly’s voice was gentle.

  Wearily, Chris looked up. The soft hallway light silhouetted Molly’s face, and for the first time he could see a family resemblance between her and Katie DeMaio.

  Katie DeMaio. Her sister. He couldn’t discuss this with Bill and Molly. It would put Molly in the middle. How could she honestly advise him whether or not to keep quiet about his coming home last night when her own sister was in the Prosecutor’s office? No. He’d have to decide this on his own.

  He brushed a hand over burning eyes. “I would like to have something, Molly,” he said. “Whatever it is, sure smells good. But I’ll have to leave pretty quickly. The funeral director is coming to the house for Vangie’s clothes. Her mother and father want to be able to see her before the interment.”

  “Where will it be?” Bill asked.

  “The coffin will be flown to Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be on that plane too. The service will be the next day. The Medical Examiner released her body late this afternoon.” The words hammered in his ears . . . Coffin . . . Body . . . Funeral . . . Oh, God, he thought, this had to be a nightmare. I wanted to be free of you, Vangie, but I didn’t want you to die. I drove you to suicide. Joan’s right. I should have stood by you.

  At eight he went back to his house. At eight thirty, when the funeral director came, he had a suitcase with underwear and the flowing caftan Vangie’s parents had sent her for Christmas.

  The funeral director, Paul Halsey, was quietly sympathetic. He requested the necessary information quickly. Born April 15. He jotted down the year. Died February 15—just two months short of her thirty-first birthday, he commented.

  Chris rubbed the ache between his eyes. Something was wrong. Even in this unreal situation where everything was wrong, there was something specific. “No,” he said, “today’s the sixteenth, not the fifteenth.”

  “The death certificate clearly states that Mrs. Lewis died between eight and ten P.M. last night, February fifteenth,” Halsey said. “You’re thinking the sixteenth because you found her this morning. But the medical examiner who performed the autopsy can pinpoint the time of death accurately.”

  Chris stared at him. Waves of shock dissolved his sense of exhaustion and unreality. He had been home at midnight and the car and Vangie’s purse had been here. He’d waited around for about half an hour before he drove back to the motel in New York. When he’d come home this morning, he’d assumed that Vangie had come in sometime after he left and killed herself.

  But at midnight she’d already been dead three or four hours. That meant that sometime after midnight, after he left, someone had brought her body here, put it on her bed and laid the empty glass beside her.

  Someone had wanted to make it seem that Vangie had committed suicide.

  Had she killed herself somewhere else? Had someone brought her back who simply didn’t want to be involved? Of course not. Vangie had never inflicted the pain of cyanide poisoning on herself. Her murderer had staged the suicide.

  “Oh, Christ,” Chris whispered. “Oh, Christ.” Vangie’s face filled his vision. The wide, thickly lashed, petulant eyes; the short, straight nose; the honey-colored hair that fell over her forehead; the small, perfectly formed lips. At the last moment she must have known. Someone had held her, forced that poison into her, viciously killed her and the baby she was carrying. She must have been so frightened. A tearing wrench of pity brought tears to his eyes. No one, no husband, could be silent and let those deaths go unpunished.

  But if he told the police; if he started an investigation, there was one person they would inevitably accuse. As the funeral director stared at him, Chris said aloud, “I have to tell them, and they’re going to blame it on me.”

  ♦14♦

  He hung up the phone slowly. Katie DeMaio suspected nothing. Even when she mentioned Vangie Lewis’ name there hadn’t been any hint that her office wanted anything more than to discuss Vangie’s emotional state with him.

  But Katie’s accident had happened barely twenty-four hours ago. She was probably still experiencing a certain amount of shock reaction.

  Her blood count was already low. Tomorrow when the cumadin was introduced into her system, the clotting mechanism would begin to collapse, and with the further hemorrhaging she’d begin to feel disoriented, light-headed. Certainly she would not be analytical enough to separate a supposed nightmare from an actual event.

  Unless, of course, there were too many questions about the suicide. Unless the possibility of Vangie’s body’s having been moved was introduced and discussed in her office.

  The danger was still so great.

  He was in the library of the Westlake home—his home now. The house was a manorlike Tudor. It had archways and built-in bookcases and marble fireplaces and hand-blocked antique wallpaper and Tiffany stained-glass windows: the kind of home impossible to duplicate today at any price. The craftsmanship wasn’t available.

  The Westlake House. The Westlake Hospital. The Westlake Maternity Concept. The name had served him well, given him immediate entrée, socially and professionally. He was the distinguished obstetrician who had met Winifred Westlake on a transatlantic sailing, married her and relocated in America to carry on her father’s work.

  The perfect excuse for having left England. No one, including Winifred, knew about the years before Liverpool at Christ Hospital in Devon.

  Toward the end she had started to ask questions.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock and he hadn’t had dinner yet. Knowing what he was going to do to Edna had robbed him of the desire to eat.

  But now that it was over, the release had come. Now the need for food had become a craving. He went into the kitchen. Hilda had left dinner for him in the microwave oven: a small Cornish hen with wild rice. He just needed to heat it up for a few minutes. When he had time he preferred to cook his own meals. Hilda’s food was without imagination, even though it was well enough prepared.

  She was a good housekeeper, too. He liked coming home to the elegant orderliness of this place, to sip a drink, to eat when he chose, to spend hours working on his notes in the library, unthreatened by the possibility of someone’s dropping in, as occasionally happened at his hospit
al laboratory.

  He needed the freedom of the house. He’d gotten rid of the live-in housekeeper Winifred and her father had had. Hostile bitch, looking at him with sour, sullen eyes, swollen with weeping. “Miss Winifred was almost never sick until . . .”

  He’d stared at her and she hadn’t finished. What she was going to say was “until she married you.”

  Winifred’s cousin resented him bitterly, had tried to make trouble after Winifred’s death. But he couldn’t prove anything. There hadn’t been one shred of tangible evidence. They’d dismissed the cousin as a disgruntled ex-heir.

  Of course, there hadn’t been that much money at all. Winifred had sunk so much into purchasing the hospital. Now his research was taking staggering amounts, and most of it had to come directly from the practice. He couldn’t apply for a grant, of course. But even so, he could manage. Women were willing to pay anything to conceive.

  Hilda had set the table for him in the small dining room off the pantry—the morning room it used to be called. He would not eat any meal in the kitchen, but the twenty-by-thirty-foot dining room was ostentatious and ridiculous for a solitary diner. This room with its round pedestal table, Queen Anne cabinet and view of the tree-filled side lawn was far more appealing.

  Selecting a chilled bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé from the refrigerator, he sat down to eat.

  He finished dinner thoughtfully, his mind running over the exact dosage he would give Katie DeMaio. The cumadin would not be suspected in her bloodstream after death. Failure of coagulation would be attributed to the transfusions. If he had to administer the heparin, traces of it and the cumadin might show if there was a thorough autopsy. But he had an idea of what he could do to circumvent that.

  Before going to bed, he went out to the foyer closet. He’d get those moccasins safely in his bag now, not risk a recurrence of this morning’s annoyance. Reaching back into the closet, he put his hand in one pocket of the Burberry and pulled out a misshapen shoe. Expectantly he put his free hand in the other pocket—first matter-of-factly, then urgently. Finally he grabbed the coat and rummaged frantically all over it. Then he sank to his knees and pawed through the overshoes neatly stacked on the closet floor.