Something was terribly wrong. Like a dreamer who would wake at any moment, I stared at him.
“You bought the ammunition,” he repeated, “at ten past three on Wednesday afternoon. The bullets that fit the gun are of a rather uncommon type, not sold everywhere. You managed to purchase a supply at the local hardware store.”
I had half risen from my chair. I sank back again. With deadly shock I recalled an incident that had almost slipped my mind. I remembered the package I had picked up at the hardware store for my Great-aunt Amanda Silver. The package was small and square—and heavy.
For what seemed like a long time there was no sound in the cluttered little room. I was incapable of speech. Sheriff Glick was very patient.
“I wish you’d understand,” he said finally, and his voice was terrifying in its very gentleness, “that it’s not my job to railroad the innocent. If you’re in trouble now you’ve got yourself to blame. What am I to think when you deliberately withhold such vital information?”
“But I didn’t know the gun was loaded.”
“You bought the shells, Miss Hieronomo.”
“Not knowingly.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” said he, and frowned. “I’ve talked to Selby, the hardware clerk. He informs me . . .”
“Please let me finish,” I said, and attempted to marshal the phrases of what I myself considered a strange and unlikely story. “Until this moment, I had no idea of what was in that parcel. I picked it up for my Aunt Amanda at her express request. That part is true enough. We were shopping in the village. Aunt Amanda asked me to drop by the hardware store on this—this errand. The parcel—her parcel, remember . . .”
“But you paid for it.”
“Aunt Amanda spoke of her charge account,” I said, and felt terror grip me. I was wondering in a maze where every tiny fact—an instant of impulsive courtesy, a lack of interest and curiosity—conspired to work against me. “But I had money in my purse. I—I paid. Everything was over quickly. The parcel—Aunt Amanda’s parcel— was wrapped and waiting when I entered the store.”
“Wrapped and waiting?” I saw the green flecks in his eyes. “Didn’t that strike you as peculiar?”
“I don’t recall. I must have thought that Aunt Amanda had made arrangements in advance. Indeed I felt sure she had. Her name was written on the wrappings.”
I told him precisely what had happened in the grocery store; how Aunt Amanda had sent me on the errand with the excuse that she was busy with her shopping, and then, almost immediately had concluded it and hastened after me.
“She met me on the steps of the hardware store only a few minutes later. She took the parcel at once. I wondered a little at the time. Evidently,” I said, “her object was to prevent the hardware clerk from questioning her, and to keep me in ignorance of the contents of the parcel. She succeeded.”
Sheriff Glick was silent. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“Do you believe,” I asked in a rather desperate voice, “that I killed my Aunt Amanda with that gun? I assure you that I had no motive.”
“There’s such a thing,” he remarked, “as a hidden motive.”
“I had none whatever.”
He pulled up a chair, and sat down and faced me.
“Suppose,” he said slowly, “I accept your story. I’ll admit that certain things about Amanda Silver herself have me baffled. If what you say is true, it must have some meaning. Why, on Wednesday afternoon, should Amanda Silver decide to load her father’s gun? Is it possible that her decision is connected with that secret interview which she planned in her father’s bedroom? I suggest it is. I suggest that if Amanda Silver went to her appointment armed, she went prepared to meet not a friend—but an enemy.”
“An enemy?” I echoed faintly.
The Sheriff’s voice was very quiet.
“Dan Ayres has no alibi for Wednesday afternoon.”
“Dan . . .”
“Wasn’t Dan Ayres here in the house on Wednesday afternoon?” asked Sheriff Glick and leaned slightly forward, but didn’t raise his voice a particle. “Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t it true that you yourself saw him here? Isn’t that what lies behind your attitude? Your determination to protect Dan Ayres.”
Sheriff Glick got up from his chair. I shrank down in mine, but I could not escape his eyes, nor could I shut my ears to those soft-voiced, deadly questions that seemed to require no answer since already they were answered in the questioner’s mind.
“Did you see Ayres leave your great-grandfather’s room? Or am I wrong about the timing? Were you already outside on the grounds when he arrived? Did you glimpse him coming up the snowy walk as Mrs. Silver, standing on the balcony above, beckoned him toward that entrance on the side?”
“No, no,” I cried.
“Ayres was at Hieronomo House on Wednesday afternoon. I am convinced of it.”
“But you don’t know.”
“Sometimes facts will cry themselves aloud, speak from the very circumstances. Amanda Silver telephoned Dan Ayres at the bank and he got that call. Didn’t he admit as much to you? Don’t shake your head, Miss Hieronomo. I know,” said Sheriff Glick, “he got that call. I can guess the subject of the conversation. Amanda Silver asked him to come here to this house and he came. If that isn’t true, why won’t he tell me where he was on Wednesday afternoon?”
“Dan went walking Wednesday. He . . .”
I came to a dead halt as the Sheriff said, “I’ve heard his story, Miss Hieronomo. It won’t hold water, or yours won’t. You can take your choice. Ayres informed me that he went walking with his small white dog. The same dog that you say slipped underneath the fence and played ball with you. One of you must be wrong. The little dog could not be in two places simultaneously.”
What was I to say? That Skipper had been with me and thus trap Dan in a falsehood? Or was I to say that Skipper had not been with me, and destroy forever what small confidence Glick had in my own veracity?
The Sheriff waited a long, long time. At last, very slowly, he replaced my great-grandfather’s gun in his topcoat pocket, rose and walked toward the door. He hesitated there.
“We found the gun, Miss Hieronomo, at noon today, on an isolated, seldom-traveled road. Everybody in town, however, knows that Dan Ayres travels that road every Friday on business for the bank. Two hours before we found the gun, at ten o’clock this morning, Dan Ayres passed that way.”
I recalled then that Dan had asked me to accompany him on his weekly trip to Baltimore.
XIV
FOR SOME MINUTES AFTER THE SHERIFF left, I sat numbly in the little sewing room. I heard the foyer clock strike five, and a creaking in the hall informed me that Patience, encased in her most formal armor, was moving majestically toward her appointment.
It must have been shortly afterwards that I decided to make my attempt to see Dan. It seemed to me that I could no longer go on in ignorance and in suspense. If Dan had visited Hieronomo House on Wednesday afternoon, I had to know it. If on his drive to Baltimore that morning, he had tossed my great-grandfather’s gun from his car, I had to know that too. Dan and I had made a pact to track down Aunt Amanda’s killer, and yet I knew no more of his whereabouts on Wednesday afternoon than did Sheriff Glick. It was incredible, but it was true.
I can realize now that when I left the house that dismal winter afternoon, I wasn’t normal, that I was very nearly desperate. I think that had I encountered any of my relatives, that if anyone had tried to stop me, my nerves would have cracked entirely. By slipping down the back stairs and through the kitchen, I managed to avoid both the family and the press. By late afternoon, the reporters had complete possession of the front lawns and the cedar avenue, and they barred effectively any possible descent to the public road.
I achieved the safety of the winter gardens, and there I faced the maddening problem of the fence. I tried to scramble over, and discovered that I lacked Dan’s athletic prowess. My determination made up the lack. I walked al
ong the fence through slush and snow and ever farther from the house. I pushed through tangled briars that pressed against the marching boards. And always, in a kind of frenzy, I sought the weakest spot.
I found it where a rock outcropping had compelled the boards to swerve and be less strongly seamed together. Moisture that collected in the hollows of the rocks had there attacked the lower portions of the fence. The supporting nails were rusty.
I tried to jerk them loose and failed. I was without any sort of tool, but in my mood no delay was tolerable. I picked up a rock and used it as a sledge. In the stillness of the winter afternoon my blows rang loud and clear, and that made no impression on my mind. I think I no longer cared if I were discovered there.
The fence itself, the spite and hate it represented, became my enemy—just as ignorance was my enemy. In any other set of circumstances, or so I thought, Dan and I could be together. We would have each other’s confidence and trust. Well, we would have it yet. My hands were raw, my shoulders ached, and I was unaware of it. I meant to break through the dividing barrier and reach Dan Ayres. It was as though I hoped by one single act to destroy and reduce to nothingness a feud that had been fed by the accumulated bitterness of a quarter of a century.
Love comes in queer ways. Perhaps I knew then that the emotion behind my blows was the opposite of hate. I think I did. With fierce delight I heard the wheezing of the rusty nails, saw the tortured plank begin to give. The crack was widening; gray light gushed through; I could force my fingers to the other side. The nails held by a hairsbreadth.
I raised my rock to strike the final blow. From the other side I heard the rush of quick approaching footsteps, Skipper’s shrill, excited barking. My arm dropped. All strength drained from me. I simply stood and waited. I saw Dan’s fingers first, his slim brown hands. They seized the board, gave one tremendous jerk, and the job' was done. The plank fell over on the ground. With it, or so it seemed to me, a quarter of a century crashed.
There was an opening in the fence.
Dan didn’t speak, but on a gasping breath I said his name. And then I started to step through the opening.
“Please don’t,” said Dan Ayres, and put up one arm to close the aperture. “You’d best stay where you are.”
I couldn’t have heard those words. A second passed that was very long. At its end I knew that I had heard the words, that I had seen Dan raise his arm to bar the opening. The impossible “was fact.”
When I had first looked at Dan, in hysteria and in relief, I had seen the man who had dropped at my feet two short days before. Dan wore the same tweed coat, and aslant his yellow head was the same soft brown hat decorated with the two tiny crimson feathers. Skipper was beside his master, just as he had been before. But there the similarity ended.
The Dan I looked at was a stranger. His face was as white as the sweep of snowy lawn behind him, his eyes were the blue of ice. They were a stranger’s eyes.
“It won’t work,” said the new and unfamiliar Dan. “Maybe I don’t sound like Galahad, but it’s better for you and me to get things straight. After a lengthy, a most unpleasant interview with Sheriff Glick, I was reminded of what I should have remembered earlier. On this side of the fence belong the Ayres, on your side belong you and your people.”
The arm stretched between us didn’t quiver.
“I don’t mean to hang,” Dan said clearly, “if I can help it. Try as you may, you’ll find me adamant. You’ll have to find some other way to save your Great-aunt’s killer. You Hieronomos will have to find a more obliging victim.”
From the tumult of my emotions, from the blind confusion of my thoughts, I plucked bewildered words.
“Oh, no,” said Dan, “I’m not crazy. I’m very sane indeed. It’s just that I’m in trouble, and I gather that you put me there. I—I never thought you would . . .”
“I put you in trouble!”
“Didn’t I tell you,” inquired the stranger with the eyes of ice, “about my trip to Baltimore? Didn’t I ask. you to go along? You can’t have forgotten it so soon. I know I haven’t. But this is what I’d like to know. Just whose convenience did that trip of mine work to anyhow? Just who needed the information that I was driving to Baltimore? Was it your Great-uncle Richard? Your Cousin Hoy? Your Great-aunt Patience?”
Across the blackness of my mind shot a gleam of light. Dan’s weekly trip to Baltimore was no secret, it was generally known that he drove there each Friday, but it was I whom he had asked to accompany him. Dan believed that I had published to the family his morning plans and that one of the Hieronomos, thus advised, had decided quite deliberately to discard my great-grandfather’s gun along the route which he had traveled.
Glick, for his own reasons, must have suggested something: of the kind. Most of this I realized later.
At the time, in my own breast, began to stir feelings that I hadn’t known existed. I may have felt family loyalty, the first tug of the bonds of blood—perhaps that was it. The thoughts mirrored in Dan’s eyes were so dark and ugly. Suddenly I was seized with rage.
“Exactly what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting,” cried he, “that my trip worked to the advantage of someone who needed, and needed badly, to get rid of that gun. It was no coincidence that the gun turned up on the road I took to Baltimore.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” I said, and it was hurt and rage that put the words into my mouth. I would have recalled them but it was too late.
Dan went whiter still.
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much. Now we’ve got it clear that you believe I killed Amanda Silver we know where we stand at least. That’s something, isn’t it? That’s a great deal really. We’re forewarned against one another. You stick with the Hieronomos, where in your heart you’ve always been. I’ll look out for the Ayres.”
He bent over and snatched up the fallen plank and tilted it against the opening. His hands were trembling, and the plank at once fell over but he didn’t notice it. He was already striding off, and my final glimpse was of a tall retreating figure, shoulders hunched, bent head topped by a hat in which rode two jaunty little feathers.
For a moment, sick and shaken, I leaned against the fence. Finally I straightened and started to retrace my steps to the house. It was then that I saw Skipper. The Ayres-Hieronomo unpleasantness meant nothing to his canine mind. The scene between myself and Dan had left him undisturbed.
Skipper had crept through the opening in the fence, and raced across die lawns. He was capering in a happy mood around my great-grandfather’s barn as though he owned it.
I hesitated, and then I whistled. The terrier pretended not to hear me. Again I whistled. Skipper shot into the barn.
I went after him.
I moved automatically, and, as people often will, tried to lose myself and subdue my thoughts in the small task of the moment. The sun had long since disappeared behind thick and sullen clouds. The sky pressed close upon the winter world. Everything was a kind of steel-like gray. The interior of the barn was darker still, and I must confess the shadowy vistas made me hesitate again. Skipper was nowhere in evidence.
Patience and Hoy had run their cars inside to protect them from the weather, and characteristically enough, my Great-aunt had further protected her own by throwing across the hood one of her sister’s Hudson Bay blankets. I looked around. Then I picked my way past the cars and toward the stalls where Princess and Betsy stood waiting for their evening oats. Betsy was stirring restlessly.
To reach the stalls, I had to pass what used to be the groom’s room, when there had been a groom. The groom’s room wasn’t, in the ordinary sense, a room at all. One of the open stalls had been provided with a door and roofed over, and in a day when employers had had little regard for any servant, that was considered adequate. It was a dismal little place, long unoccupied. The door was closed, and I didn’t bother looking there. I already half regretted the impulse which had brought me to the barn, and was anxious only to get the t
errier started home.
I approached Betsy’s stall. Just as I supposed, Skipper had taken refuge there. He sat in the farthest corner, smugly confident that I would never dream of looking there. When I whistled, he came meekly forth and I seized his collar.
The dog was in my arms, when suddenly I heard something and whirled around. Princess and Betsy gazed at me with mild curiosity. I stared toward the groom’s room, every nerve alert. The door was opening cautiously. A moment later, to my intense astonishment, the same short, stocky woman I had seen two days earlier in the cupola, peered forth. She wore the same shabby coonskin coat, and beneath the outrageous hat spilled those waves of brassy hair.
“Miss Gay!” I gasped.
I thought at first that she looked frightened—or perhaps she was only startled. It ran through my mind that when she opened the door, she had expected to see someone else. The impression vanished as she came slowly forward. She laughed a little nervously.
“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing here. To tell the truth, I was afraid to run the gauntlet of the press, and so I cut across the fields in back. I’ve been considering a dash to the house.”
She had been a long time about it. There was a cot in the groom’s room which showed distinctly that she had been sitting there. Several lipstick-stained cigarettes lay around it.
“But, Miss Gay, Aunt Patience was expecting you at five o’clock!”
“Is—is it after five?”
“Considerably after,” I said, still perplexed and at a loss. “And I know that Aunt Patience is rather anxious to discuss the sale of the property. She must have told you so herself.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” said the woman breathlessly, but made no move to leave. “If you would only go and let her know that I am here . . .”
I had no intention of complying with this extraordinary request. So far as I was concerned, the real estate woman could transact her business for herself. In any event, I felt sure Aunt Patience would be unwilling to traipse to the barn to hold that particular conversation. I could envision her at that very moment, dressed and waiting in the drawing room, her temper shortening with every passing second. She was primed to go exhaustively into each detail; unless I was wrong, she meant to call Hoy and Richard into consultation and make quite sure that for Hieronomo House we were obtaining the best price available. Amanda’s elusiveness had already aroused her suspicions of the credit standing of the prospective buyers.
The Balcony Page 12