Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “What about the woman’s sister? The Duval woman? Didn’t you send for her? Didn’t you tell her her sister was shot? Dying?”

  Sue’s mouth and throat were dry again. “No, not at once. I mean—we didn’t realize that she was dying, you see. Dr. Luddington had told us to be quiet.”

  “But the woman’s own sister! Surely …”

  It annoyed Sue for him to refer to Ernestine as “the woman”—the dead woman, the murdered woman. “We did not realize Mrs. Baily was dying. We simply didn’t send for her sister. She came later.”

  She could remember Camilla’s voice and Fitz’s but that was later, after Ernestine had, inconceivably, died, when the police were there. After the alarm had gone out and all at once, immediately, the whole county had known it. She had had only a glimpse of Fitz that night; it seemed strange now.

  Captain Wilkins said suddenly, “What I don’t see is why you arrested the husband in the first place.”

  “Now see here, Wilkins, the woman accused him. The stableman heard it; everybody heard it …”

  “If it hadn’t been for the stableman you’d never have heard it,” observed Wilkins sardonically. He rose. “The woman was murdered. No question of it; that’s my opinion—you’ll grant it’s expert—that gun killed her. No human being could fire a gun into his own back at that angle. The girl was there; she had been summoned by Ernestine who in all likelihood was jealous, admittedly quarrelsome and determined to put an end to the thing, warn the girl off. The girl goes to the house after an admittedly emotional scene, in the cabaña, where no one could see them, a surreptitious meeting …”

  “No,” whispered Sue.

  “… during which the girl, as a last resort perhaps, threatened to leave, to go away. A dodge as old as the world, a lure as ancient as the stars. But Baily doesn’t fall for it; he goes away himself, ends the scene, perhaps angrily—how do we know?”

  “No,” cried Sue again. “It wasn’t that way.”

  “… He intends to go on, unperturbed, to the hunt dinner, the hunt ball. The girl goes to the house; she’s going to fight it out. The wife tackles her; they quarrel, the girl is desperate; she is in love with Baily—obviously frantically in love with him; she would never have testified in his behalf as she did if she had not been in love with him, had not still been hoping to save him and marry him. And maybe his money, who knows …”

  Henley interrupted, “Baily’s not a rich man.”

  “He bought that house for his wife. He doesn’t do anything.”

  Henley had informed himself. “The house is an old one, architecturally a prize, it’s famous for that. But in fact it didn’t cost him much and the land is poor. He’s got enough to live as he wants to live apparently, but he’s by no means rich.”

  “All right, all right. He’s got that much—And in the end, in the midst of a violent quarrel with Ernestine, the girl snatches up the gun …”

  “How’d she know where it was?” interjected Henley.

  Wilkins shrugged. “These people, the way they know each other, I’ll bet they could find their way around each other’s houses in the dark. Besides …” his low forehead wrinkled; his heavy eyebrows drew together. “Wasn’t there some mention of a gun cabinet?”

  There was, of course; it had been made much of, the gun cabinet in the hall, barely outside the door to the garden room. Nobody, though had remembered or at least admitted any helpful knowledge about the revolver.

  She heard Captain Henley explaining it. She heard Wilkins say, “Ernestine accused him all right. You arrested him because of that and the gun. But if now you dismiss that accusation as spite, I can’t see what you’re waiting for, why you dragged me over here, why …” he gave his coat a shrug, looked at his watch, and started for the door. “I’ll miss my train.”

  Sue was standing, holding the back of her chair; the door from the hall opened and Dr. Luddington came into the room. Again, however, where she would have expected fire and thunder, he seemed only beaten and tired. He said, “Gentlemen, you are making a grave mistake.”

  Caroline expected a storm too. “Now, Tom,” she pled from the doorway. Fitz came in, glanced at Sue and made the sketch of a wink, as if to belittle the monstrous things Wilkins had said, but he was sober, too.

  Wilkins said, “Will you answer a question or two, Dr. Luddington? You’ve been listening at the door so you know the course of the inquiry.”

  “I—it depends …”

  “Let’s not argue, doctor. For one thing I haven’t time. For another thing we hold the winning hand. You must realize that.”

  “He is perfectly willing to reply to any questions,” Fitz said.

  Henley said to Caroline, “Miss Poore, we have to do this. It’s our sworn duty. And there’s—” he touched his forehead where there was a glisten of sweat and said—“pressure.”

  Dr. Luddington said wearily, “Pressure! You arrested and tried an innocent man. Now you are threatening to put another victim through the same ordeal. Pressure!”

  “Somebody shot her,” Wilkins said. “You’re a doctor; you’ve seen a lot of wounds of one kind and another. You knew that she couldn’t have shot herself.”

  Dr. Luddington sighed, “I was afraid of it.”

  “You said then it was murder, didn’t you?”

  The record, typed out, sworn to; he must feel as Sue herself had felt, helpless and hemmed in by that record. “I said so, yes. I called the police. It was a violent death; a death by gunshot. But I had not time to consider whether or not it could possibly have been by her own hand.”

  “It couldn’t,” Wilkins said.

  “You don’t know …”

  “As it happens I do know. That’s my job.… You heard Mrs. Baily accuse her husband of killing her.”

  “Of shooting her. There’s a vast difference there, sir. As I testified. She accused Jed, yes, but she didn’t know she was dying. She didn’t know she was accusing him of murder. Ernestine, I’m sorry to say this, sir, but justice—I’m sorry to say that in my opinion Ernestine spoke out of spite. In actual fact she was in no condition to make any lucid statement.”

  “That seems lucid enough.”

  “It was not. I’ve stated that. I took my oath upon it.” The doctor’s face had a gray shadow; he said simply and rather drearily, “and that is no small matter to anybody.”

  Captain Henley looked up from his boots. “Dr. Luddington, please tell Captain Wilkins just why you thought it was spite on the part of the murdered woman.”

  “Because it was. Sue, here, saw Jed at the instant the shot was fired.”

  “She says she saw him,” interpolated Wilkins softly. Dr. Luddington looked up quickly, with a flash of old-time fire in his eyes. Henley said: “Do you think if Ernestine had had time she could have taken back her statement? Admitted that she had lied?”

  The flash of fire subsided. Again there was a gray shadow in the doctor’s face. He said, “I’m sure of it. If she remembered she’d made it. Her pulse was very weak by the time I got there. But the point is she didn’t know she was dying. She …”

  “Now look here, doctor, it seems to me an extraordinary kind of thing for a woman so shocked and wounded, dying indeed, to give way to revenge.”

  “Her mind was already wandering; she was dying even if she didn’t know it. No statement made like that can be depended upon for an instant. I am a man of experience; I think my neighbors will tell you that, also.” He passed a rather unsteady hand wearily over his eyes. “Also I have always been a man of—honesty and some standing.” He took a long breath, lifted his head and said, “Her accusation was not only false but it was made by a woman who at that moment was in no condition to speak with any degree of truth. Her testimony is entirely without value. Consider her wound …”

  “I saw the pictures; I—well, go on.”

  “Then you certainly will realize that a woman in such a condition is not an accurate witness.”

  He had so testified; his manner, his e
arnest, nearly fervid conviction and more than anything the way the county people knew and believed him had gone far to free Jed.

  Henley glanced at Wilkins. “Of course the fact is she may not have known who shot her—that was brought out—since she was shot in the back.…”

  Wilkins said shortly, “I can reason that, too. What did you do, Dr. Luddington, before you called the police? Didn’t you warn Miss Poore? I seem to have heard …”

  Sam, the stableman, again; he’d told it, of course, merely because it was a fact and the police had asked him about it. Dr. Luddington said, “I would have failed in my duty if I had not told Sue to go home before the police came.”

  “In fact you wanted to get her out of it. You wanted to keep her presence in the house at the time the woman, her rival, was murdered, a secret. You didn’t want people to know that she and her lover …”

  Once he would have blazed into wrath. Now his words were a tired gesture of wrath. “I object to that word. I may be old, sir, but a horsewhipping …”

  Fitz said, “Stick to facts that are proved, Wilkins.”

  Perhaps the word horsewhipping still hovered in the air; perhaps there was a harsher echo of it in Fitz’s voice, a younger man with a poised and able-looking body. Wilkins said rather rapidly, “It’s a criminal offense to assault an officer of the law. I’ll say what I please.”

  “But you might find that southern tempers are supposed to run high,” Fitz said with composure. “We’re an impulsive race. I’ll thank you to use language suitable to a lady’s ears.”

  Wilkins stood very straight, seeming to gather to himself the force and authority of his uniform. “She’ll hear worse language than mine, if she goes where, for my money, she ought to go,” he said flatly. “Henley, I’ve got to get to my train. You asked for my advice and I’ll give it. I’d arrest that girl, like that.” He snapped his fingers, walked toward the door and turned. “She’s guilty as hell and everybody in the county knows it.”

  He disappeared into the hall; Captain Henley wiped his face and hurried after him. Apparently he had an abrupt encounter with Chrisy in the hall. There was an explosive murmur; Chrisy, Caroline’s cook, came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron as if inadvertently she had touched poison in the shape of Captain Henley. She said, staring after them: “Would you like dinner now, Miss Caroline? I’ve got waffles, if the doctor and Mr. Wilson want to stay.”

  The telephone at Caroline’s elbow began to ring.

  7

  IT WAS Jed. Caroline handed the telephone to Sue and went into the hall, following the doctor and Fitz.

  “I waited and waited,” Jed said. “Why didn’t you phone me?”

  “They’re just leaving.”

  “Do you mean to say they’ve been there all this time? What on earth were they doing?”

  “Questioning.”

  “Sue, you sound—what’s the matter? What’d they want to know? I’ve got to talk to you. I’m coming.”

  “No …”

  “But I’ve got to hear. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Fitz came in. He took the telephone away from her. “Jed? She can’t talk to you now; she’s exhausted.… No, don’t come.… Well, I don’t think it’s advisable.… No, there was no new evidence. Dr. Luddington’s going to give her a sedative and put her to bed. Of course he’s here.…” He listened as Jed’s voice went on in insistent tones. He said to Sue, “Do you want him to come?”

  She shook her head. Fitz said into the telephone, “I’ll tell you why, when I see you!” He listened for a second or two and then, quietly, in the middle of something Jed was saying, hung up.

  “He’ll ring again,” Sue said unexpectedly.

  “Let him. Sue, there’s got to be a way out of this. You didn’t kill Ernestine; hold to that. And—hold to me if you can.” He leaned over and put his hands around her face, gently, like an embrace. “Caroline’s going to put you to bed. I’ll go now.”

  He went into the hall. There were voices; then Dr. Luddington and Caroline came in, the doctor with the shabby black leather bag, the same one probably, out of which he’d taken cough drops and thermometers and bottles of pink and white pills ever since Sue could remember.

  Night had come and the windows were black. Dr. Luddington’s tired face was ashy gray. He tried, however, to smile. “Now, my dear, remember that you didn’t murder Ernestine. Think of that and—trust me. Will you?”

  What could he do? And then his smile was so troubled, his eyes so anxious, pleading for her to believe in his omnipotence as she had as a child, that she smiled, too.

  “Now, that’s better. Here—take this now—and these later, one at a time if you can’t sleep. The first thing you’ve got to do is sleep; Caroline …”

  Caroline was there with a glass of water. Sue was far more docile than she had been as a child, grateful for their pretense that they could protect her. In her own gabled room, with the rosebuds on the wall, Caroline helped her out of the gray suit she had put on, it seemed to Sue, a million years ago. Chrisy came, puffing up the stairs with a tray in her kind hands, her dark face heavy with anger. Chrisy led Caroline away, downstairs. She made her eat and she came back to Sue, took the tray, gave her an admonishing look and reached for another pill. “Take this, Miss Sue. Mr. Fitz, he came with his car and took the doctor home. I just put your aunt to bed. She’s mighty done up. Now, take this.”

  It was comforting only to obey; Chrisy turned out the light but left the door into the hall open. Shortly after that it began to rain. She would think, now; there had to be a way out. Fitz had said, “Hold to the thought that you didn’t kill Ernestine.” Kill Ernestine! How could anybody think she could kill anybody?

  All at once, with the rain drumming softly on the roof of the porch below the windows, Sue went to sleep.

  She slept while it rained, a long, cold spring rain on the meadows, the blue hills, the red clay roads and the roof of the house where she was born. She slept while Fitz and Judge Shepson sat around a table in the lawyer’s study, far into the night. She slept while in another room, in the other direction, in the sheriff’s office in the Bedford courthouse with the clock in the tower sounding the hours, men sat far into the night, too. There was debate; there was a repetition of facts, while Captain Henley, his spruceness gone, his tunic over a chair, the hollows around his shrewd eyes growing deeper and grayer, went over and over the evidence. Captain Wilkins, who had got his train, might as well have been there in person; Henley quoted Wilkins who was the expert. The sheriff, looking old and troubled, listened.

  At two o’clock Woody, his flight delayed at Memphis by foggy, bad weather, sent a telegram to Sue, standing at the Western Union counter, a thin young figure in his blue uniform, the one gold stripe on his cuff shining as he scribbled and chewed the pencil and scribbled again.

  If there were other lights amid the rain and night, if there were other wakeful, debating minds, then there was no one to know; the party at Hollow Hill Club, however, had fizzled out, had ended early, was, in fact, no party at all.

  It rained all night. Sister Britches, outside Caroline’s door, was restless. She heard actually nothing but the rain; it sounded like footsteps but in truth that night, was not. But she listened to the patter of rain and the ticking of the clock in the hall. And out in the stable old Jeremy was uneasy too; he knew as well as Caroline that there had been a hunt that day and they had missed it. He was old and authoritative; the dull sound of his restless feet was like very soft thunder.

  It was still raining in the morning, but lightly, much as it had rained the night of Ernestine’s murder.

  Since almost the first month of Sue’s return home, there had been a kind of hurdle for her to take when she first awoke, a fact that had to be looked at and taken as she would take a jump. At first it had been Jed—all during the early fall with its lazy Indian summer days, with its crisp frosty mornings, with cubbing over and the hunt season opening and herself riding old Jeremy, avoiding�
�yet not quite avoiding—Jed; meeting him so much, so often, seeing him when, at the end of a hunt, they gathered, all of them, for those endless post mortems, those gay suppers.

  And then Ernestine was killed. And that was the hurdle of the winter, the long and dreadful winter, Ernestine’s death, Ernestine’s murder—and a coming trial which might mean Jed’s life.

  There was, of course, now, the most dangerous hurdle of all. But when she awoke that morning she thought first of Fitz.

  In the space of a few seconds the whole tapestry of a life may seem to present itself, its threads interwoven and their pictures clear and all but simultaneous. It was so with Sue that morning, for she thought of Fitz and wondered that she had not known before the thing that now was so clear in her heart. She wondered how she could have believed herself in love with Jed. Was it because she had only feared it, and had fought a shadow, without pausing to examine its substance? At the same time she thought, “But they can’t arrest me; they can’t charge me with Ernestine’s murder.” It was, in the morning, incomprehensible. They had been frightened; they had let the mere required formality of the police stampede them.

  So she argued, reasonably. She got into a white shirt and jodhpurs and went downstairs. There was coffee in the dining room; Chrisy heard her and came in from the kitchen with a plate of popovers. “You better, Miss Sue?”

  “Yes, I am, Chrisy. I was frightened last night—and tired—and …” She saw then that there was no morning paper in its usual place beside Caroline’s plate. “Oh,” she said and looked at Chrisy.

  “No sense reading truck like that. Now you eat breakfast. Miss Caroline, she’s out in the tack room working off her spleen. Oh, yes,” she paused at the door to the kitchen. “And there was a telegram from Woody early this morning. Came from Memphis. He’ll be here, he said, tonight. If you want to read it it’s in Miss Caroline’s study; I wrote it down. Now you mind you eat something. You just don’t look like nothing this morning, Miss Sue.”