Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  Fitz was there, too, standing near them and Jed and Camilla—also swathed in black. They drove back, all of them, to Fitz’s place for supper—a quiet and also rather unreal hour or two, with Jason plying them with food like an anxious mothering old hen, with Jed in Fitz’s red armchair, his legs stretched out, gradually acquiring an almost equally red flush in his cheeks from Fitz’s bourbon, with the Kerry Blue remembering Sue and coming, after a serious moment of thought to put his black head on her knee. With Sue herself remembering too well the afternoon when she had fed cake to the Kerry Blue.

  For a moment, there in the wood-paneled library, with the beat of the rain outside and the warmth and flicker of the fire inside, she had let herself look at that room and that house as it might have been for her, always. A gracious and dignified house, sheltering her and Fitz and a life together. She’d had a glimpse of what she’d known then was only a picture. The other woman in a murder trial had, even then, no place in it.

  She had still less a claim to such a place now. She had not even the right to sit there, touching the Kerry Blue’s black head, looking into the fire, letting herself dream.

  She and Caroline and Woody left early; nobody said much of the murder; there was not a moment alone with Fitz but perhaps, Sue thought, doubting her own courage, it was just as well. As they drove away Camilla’s blonde head showed in the lighted doorway beside Fitz.

  The police, however, were busy.

  There were at least two lines of inquiry that required much time and patience; one was the continued and rigorous check of the Beaufort hunt; the entire field of twenty-odd was interviewed, painstakingly and repeatedly. And Dr. Luddington’s entire list of patients, his account books, finally the entire neighborhood, was canvassed for a person who had presumably been an emergency case, who had been in Dr. Luddington’s office, who had been requested by Dr. Luddington to telephone to Caroline and ask for Sue to come; who had telephoned, too, to Jed and asked for him.

  Jed hadn’t known the voice; Caroline had not known it. Perhaps at that moment, even if there had been a tone of familiarity she would not have realized it, but certainly she had not recognized it. The telephone operators, two of them, interviewed at length, could tell them nothing; it was a fairly busy hour; the doctor’s line was always in frequent use; there was nothing they remembered that was of any value.

  There was a minute search of Dr. Luddington’s office and cabinets of instruments. Jed and particularly Ruby, since Ruby had been alone in the consulting room for a moment or two, were questioned, without success, about the flat and shiny object, a mirror, a box, which had apparently disappeared. The only point of question was its disappearance; the police might have doubted its existence had its disappearance been of any possible aid to Sue. It remained a small unanswered question among many more important problems. Gradually, however, the motive the police had first ascribed to his murder began to gain in strength, as one after another possibility was ruled out. Certainly he had been alone with Ernestine for some time before her death; certainly she might have told him the true facts of what proved to be her murder. Certainly if that had happened, he had kept that terrible secret inviolate.

  And certainly during that winter he had changed. They had attributed it to age, to the strain of the trial. Was it, instead, the sapping burden of that knowledge?

  There was the detailed and deliberate laboratory procedure of cataloging the fingerprints on every available surface. The gun and the extracted bullet were taken to Captain Wilkins. All of this was a long and deadly patient process. There was, too, a long and tedious search through Dr. Luddington’s account books; he had never kept a file. That was sometime Monday afternoon and Jed drove to Bedford and to the sheriff’s office late in the afternoon. He came from there to Sue.

  “The sheriff likes you. I thought he might be willing to tell us whether they’d found out who telephoned to us, or how things were going, or—or something!” Jed said. “He was friendly enough, but if there’s any real dope he didn’t tell me. All he said was they’d found enough unpaid bills to set anybody up for life if they were collected.”

  “Wat wouldn’t want them collected.”

  “Not if he’s going to run for Congress,” Woody said crossly. He looked even younger in a white shirt with the collar open, faded blue jeans and moccasins than he had in his tailored, slim Navy blues; he’d been in the stables most of the day, puttering around with Caroline, criticizing the arrangement of the tack room, putting young Lij right (or wrong) about the proper way to give a rubdown, examining Jeremy’s leg with an air of omniscience.

  Woody now ruffled his streaked, fair hair and stared morosely at Jed and Jed said suddenly, “What’s on your mind, youngster?”

  “Unhh,” said Woody startled.

  “The way you keep looking at me. If you’ve got anything on your mind, spit it out.”

  But Woody balked. His face closed; he had nothing on his mind, nothing special, he said, and rose and sauntered away, softly as a red Indian in the leather moccasins, his hands in his pockets.

  He had said no more of his feelings about Jed; if he had relinquished, or more probably merely shelved, his suspicions, he had not relinquished his dislike; it was in his silent and grudging withdrawal. Jed saw it, too, and guessed the reason.

  “He doesn’t like me,” he said watching Woody go. “I can’t blame him. I’m the one who’s dragged you into this, Sue. Because I let myself love you. I couldn’t help it, I’ve dragged you into this.”

  He came to stand beside her near the railing of the wide porch, with the wistaria along it beginning to show purplish, fuzzy buds amid its bare brown branches.

  The day was overcast again but warm. It was one of the Dobberly hunt days; a Dobberly pack was out twice a week up to the first week in April; it was, as a matter of fact, one of the last few hunts of the season; the Hunt Ball, by tradition, was to take place the last of the week. But that day again Caroline and Sue, Jed and the Luddingtons and some of the other regulars did not join the meet. There had been, Wat told Caroline, an offer to cancel the meet in deference to Dr. Luddington. He had refused to permit it; his father would not have wanted it; Caroline had agreed.

  Hounds were somewhere now on the far side of Hollow Hill; they could hear the faint, distant music.

  Jed stood for a moment, his hands on the railing. And then he said abruptly, “Let’s get married now, Sue.”

  She turned quickly, surprised and troubled. His dark eyes sought eagerly into her own. “You’re on the spot. I want you to marry me.”

  Fitz had offered that too; it was the fullest protection a man can give a woman. She was frightened and lonely; it moved her deeply. She couldn’t speak for a moment; she put her hand out, on Jed’s arm.

  He took it for consent. He covered it with his other hand. “When, Sue? Right away?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no? We’re engaged …”

  “No, no. I’ve told you. Things are different. You must believe me.”

  “But you—but we …” Suddenly his face flushed; he caught both her hands, his eyes demanding yet still not believing. “You can’t have changed. You stuck with me after Ernestine. All through the winter, all though the trial, you were loyal. You’d never have done that if you hadn’t loved me. You still love me. You can’t desert me now. Besides we’re in it together. Whoever phoned to you and said he was a patient, and Dr. Luddington wanted you to come, phoned to me, too; he planned to have the police find us both. He—but we’ll get out of it. What’s past is past. We love each other and …”

  She was shaking her head. “I don’t love you.”

  For the first time he began to believe her; she could see belief—and incredulity and opposition—in his eyes. “Jed, I mean it. We’re not going to marry.”

  “Do you mean—not ever, Sue?”

  “Not ever. I’m sorry, Jed.”

  He did believe her then; she was sure of it, but he fought that belief too. “But S
ue—you can’t decide so—so quickly. You can’t be sure, you …” He held her hands and cried, “Promise me to wait and think about it and …”

  A car was coming up the driveway, between the laurel hedges. They both heard and saw it; Jed dropped her hands. “It’s the police.”

  It was the police. But they had come this time to talk to Woody. It was Captain Henley and two troopers, one who drove the car and one who was a stenographer and made a record of every word Woody said. And they questioned him, this time, about the night when Ernestine had been murdered.

  They let Jed remain. They let Sue listen. Henley was spruce and tightly belted but looked tired; there were deep hollows below his bright, shrewd eyes and his fat cheeks and chin seemed to have sagged; he walked as if his glistening black boots were too small for him. But his resolution was unwearied; he made it clear in every word that, if he had his way, he’d have been armed with a warrant for Sue’s arrest.

  He was, however, punctiliously, dreadfully, coldly polite.

  Sue called Woody. He came instantly, as if he’d been watching from the tack room, with Reveller walking stifflegged at his heels. They sat in the wicker chairs whose very creak was familiar. It was warm, yet Sue hugged her yellow sweater around her as she listened, for they began at once with Ernestine’s murder. They had got out the files, the whole record, question-and-answer, of that investigation; they were trying to find some loophole, some flaw, some small up-to-then unperceived fact which might provide a clue to Dr. Luddington’s murder, to Ernestine’s. Sue had forgotten, if she had ever known, that they had questioned Woody the morning after Ernestine’s death before he took the plane back to San Diego; merely, probably, because he and Caroline had come instantly when they heard of the murder to Duval Hall and Sue and were there shortly after the police arrived.

  Captain Henley put on eyeglasses, pince-nez which looked odd and old-fashioned amid his general air of dandyism, leafed through a notebook and read Woody’s testimony of that day.

  It was brief and as far as Sue could see, valueless; yet she remembered her feeling in the sheriff’s office the night she was questioned there that Woody was withholding something. Captain Henley had sensed that, too; again she was aware of his acumen and intelligence. Captain Henley was reading, “… and was at the hunt dinner. Sue had gone on ahead; she said she was stopping to see Ernestine. She had the car and when she didn’t come back, I phoned the Bascoms and they stopped for Aunt Caroline and me.… No, we didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t come back for us. Why should we?… Yes, we expected she’d come with Ernestine, but I thought they’d turn up; maybe they’d stopped somewhere for cocktails.… I was dancing when somebody came in and said that Ernestine had been shot. I thought it was an accident. But I knew Sue was there. I borrowed a car and I drove with Aunt Caroline to the Baily place. The policemen were there and wouldn’t let us in.” Captain Henley’s eyeglasses flashed as he went on down the page. “Oh, yes; and here’s your dancing partners and the lady you sat by during the dinner. All that seems to be clear.”

  “All that is clear,” Woody said.

  “All very clear,” Captain Henley said, handing the tablet back to the stenographer. “Except you didn’t say that you and Mrs. Baily left the hunt that afternoon and met at the Hunting Horn Tavern. You left the hunt early and separately. But you met there by prearrangement, didn’t you?”

  The thin line of Woody’s jaw looked like stone; his eyes were bright and fixed. Jed said something and got up. Captain Henley said, “A barmaid at the Hunting Horn left that evening to go to another job; apparently she didn’t like it and returned to her old job last week. She saw the papers; she recognized Mrs. Baily’s picture and your picture. The reporters knew, of course, that you had been picked up in Dobberly following your visit to Dr. Luddington’s house and questioned. Now then, I’d like to hear all about this—this secret meeting with Ernestine Baily—only a couple of hours before her murder.”

  Captain Henley nodded at the stenographer who opened a tablet to a fresh page. Woody said, “Don’t worry, Sue! We were at the Hunting Horn. But I didn’t kill her.”

  14

  HENLEY SEEMED rather taken aback; his bright, sharp eyes were fixed on Woody with a kind of surprise as if he had not expected Woody to capitulate so soon. If so, however, he recovered himself quickly; he said, “Do you know who did kill her?”

  “Woody,” whispered Sue and put out her hand toward him. “Don’t …” She didn’t know what she meant; don’t say too much, perhaps. Henley’s bright gaze observed it and her. Woody’s face looked dirty but was really only very pale under his tan. He said, “I thought Jed did it. And I still think Jed did it.”

  “Woody!” Jed stared at Woody in angry bewilderment. “Woody, what do you mean? What …”

  Captain Henley took control. “Wait a minute, Mr. Baily. Now then, youngster, that is, Ensign, just why did you think that? Did Mrs. Baily lead you to believe that she was—say, afraid of her husband? Had he threatened her?”

  Woody blinked; the line of his thin jaw was bony and hard but he had lost some of his composure. “Well,” he said finally, “no.”

  Jed started forward toward Woody, not angrily but in a helpless and bewildered way; Henley made an imperative motion that stopped him and said, “Exactly why, then, are you accusing Baily?”

  Woody’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Because I don’t see what else could have happened. He—Jed—he and Ernestine didn’t get along; she told me that. And Jed was …” a little flush crept into his cheeks, “… Jed liked my sister; he was always around, wherever she was; he—everybody was talking about it. Sue was new here; she’d just come home, she was away when Jed came here and Ernestine and he were married and he bought the Duval place and settled down, only he didn’t settle down. Just the minute he saw Sue, he was after her and …”

  “Woody,” cried Sue.

  “I thought she’d see through it; I thought she’d see she was getting into deep water and make an end to it. But she—she’s awfully young in a lot of ways,” said Woody looking very young himself, “and Jed’s—well, I suppose she got to liking him too. And then he—anyway when Ernestine was shot and I think Sue was afraid they’d turn in a guilty verdict for Jed and I think she got to thinking that if he did quarrel with Ernestine and lose his head and shoot her, like that, I think that Sue got to thinking she was responsible. So I think she made up that alibi to save him and I don’t think she’d care about herself, I mean I don’t think she thought about the kind of place it was putting her in, and even if she had she would have gone straight ahead and alibied him, she’s like that. You don’t know her,” said Woody and stopped.

  There was a silence except for the frenzied pencil of the stenographer; he finished and sighed and gave Woody a wary look as if the well of Woody’s articulacy might burst out again. Henley then said, “Well,” and took a breath himself. “Well. You did considerable thinking, didn’t you?”

  Jed unexpectedly went to Woody. “Look here, Woody, I had no idea you felt like that. I—the fact is, Woody, I want you to know, I meant it; you are young; you don’t understand. It was the—the real thing with me and with Sue. I wasn’t just making a play for her. And I—everything, Woody, was honest and—it wasn’t till that very night, that evening when I met Sue, by accident there at the gate, that I even so much as told her how I felt and then I said, everybody knows it, you know it, I told her I’d ask Ernestine for a divorce. Sue refused; she said she wouldn’t let me. It all happened exactly the way …”

  Woody said, a white rim around his mouth: “Ernestine was through with you, you know.”

  Henley made some kind of murmur which sounded startled. Jed, apparently holding hard to his patience, waited a moment before he said quietly, “No, I didn’t know. What are you talking about, Woody?”

  “You weren’t kind to her,” said Woody. “She told me. She was unhappy. She told me that; she didn’t mean to, but I could see she was unhappy and it—it
came out. Ernestine …” his voice suddenly was uneven; he tried to steady it; “Ernestine was wonderful. You didn’t understand her, you didn’t try to understand her. She said so.”

  Ernestine! Sue thought, Ernestine! Eight—no, nine years older than Woody, knowing him since he was a tousled, blond baby—then suddenly playing the enchantress, playing on the sympathy and the admiration of a grown-up Woody, who was attractive and more adult-appearing in his naval uniform, than in fact he was. She sought back desperately into her memory of Woody’s last short leave, ending the day after Ernestine’s murder. Why hadn’t she watched him more closely? Well, there was a reason for that, she’d been absorbed with her own problem, with her own obsessing notion that she was falling in love with Jed and that she must stop it. (And she hadn’t known what love was, she thought in a quick little stab of new knowledge. She had fled from a shadow.)

  Where had Woody seen Ernestine? Everywhere, of course. He’d hunted; they had all hunted furiously and happily, almost every day; they had been in the same small group that gathered afterward for long post-mortems and dinner. If he had been often with Ernestine then she’d only have thought that Ernestine was being kind to a boy, Sue’s brother, whom she had known since his romper days and for whom Sue would have expected Ernestine to have a grown-up, adult affection. Not—Henley suddenly stirred and supplied the word, “Quite a little flirtation,” he said.

  Jed whirled around. “Nonsense. My wife had known Woody always; naturally she was fond of him. So’s Camilla. So’s Ruby.”

  The adult look had gone from Woody’s face leaving it rather lost and miserable. He said: “It wasn’t a—a flirtation. Not the way you say it. She—I—meant it.”

  “Oh, now look here, sonny,” began Henley and unexpectedly showed a grain of humanity at the dumb misery in Woody’s eyes, for he amended his voice and his words. “Suppose you tell us just how it happened. I mean how you happened to meet her at the Hunting Horn and what she said and all that.”