Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  It was humanity; it was also intelligence.

  Jed thrust his hands in his pockets and went to stand at the white railing and look down at the laurels and the green lawns. Woody cleared his throat, got out a cigarette and made rather an ado about lighting it. He said then, stiffly, “Well, that was all it was. I was going away the next day.”

  “I see,” Henley said. “I see. Sort of a farewell.”

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Well, go on.… You’d arranged to leave the hunt and meet at the tavern? Right?”

  “Yes. About five. So we did. We had a drink or two. Then she—well, we knew we’d meet at the dinner that night but we might not be alone again. So she—we said good-bye and she said, she said we might never see each other again, or at least not for a long time and she said …” he swallowed. He lifted his cigarette with a hand that shook. “She said good-bye. She said I’d meet some girl but not to forget her. But she …” his voice became harder, “but that’s how I knew she was leaving Jed. She’d had enough; she couldn’t take any more. I said I’d be home on other leaves; I asked her to write to me. And she said she wouldn’t be here.”

  There was another instant of silence; then Jed swung around. “Wouldn’t be here!”

  Woody’s chin was stubborn. “That’s what she said.”

  “But she …” Jed stared at him incredulously. “Where on earth was she going?”

  “Well.” Some of Woody’s certainty evaporated. “She didn’t say. I asked her. I supposed, of course, she was leaving you. What else could I think? She’d told me she was unhappy, she …”

  “But now see here, kid, I mean, Ensign …” Henley was taken aback too, but his eyes were sharp. “Didn’t she say where she was going? Or why she wouldn’t be here? Think now. Try to remember.”

  Woody took a long breath of smoke; Jed stared incredulously again at Woody. And out of the silence a memory of Caroline’s voice floated to Sue’s ears: “What do you suppose Ernestine was up to? What did she want?”

  Jed said suddenly, “You must be wrong, Woody. Where could she have gone? She’d have told me; she’d have—well, she’d have asked me for money, you know. She …” A thought seemed to strike him; he said, “Camilla didn’t say anything about any such plan of Ernestine’s. She’d have told Camilla.”

  But Woody was still stubborn. “That’s what she said.”

  “Is that—all?” Henley asked.

  Woody nodded. “That’s all. Except I think she had some—some plan.”

  “What plan?”

  But Woody didn’t know; he wouldn’t say any more. Probably, thought Sue, there was no more to say.

  “And you still think Baily shot her?” said Henley at last.

  Again the little flush crept up into Woody’s face. “Well,” he said. “I think Sue lied to try to save him.”

  “That’s perjury,” interjected Henley, watching him.

  “Yes, I—I mean she would lie if she thought it would save him. But …”

  Sue said, “I was telling the truth, Woody. You’ll have to believe me.”

  He wouldn’t look at her. “Well, but if Jed didn’t kill her, who did?”

  It was an unanswerable question. It was the question they always came back to; Henley, however, was sure he had the answer. He heaved himself up, with a look at Sue. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” he said, and turned to Jed. “Can you remember anything—anything at all that your wife did or said that bears out what young Poore here has told us?”

  Jed suddenly was flushed and angry; he looked almost as young as Woody with his dark hair ruffled and hands thrust in his pockets, facing Henley with a rather despairing defiance. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? Don’t you think I’d tell you anything that would help get Sue and me out of this?”

  “Well, yes,” Henley said. “I guess you would.” He thought for a moment, hitched up his belt and started for the steps. The two troopers were instantly on their feet.

  The car shot smartly down the drive. Jed, watching it, said, “I wonder where they’re going.” It disappeared along the road below and he turned to Sue. “Don’t worry, Sue. Woody’s in the clear about this. Ernestine—well, she didn’t mean anything, you know. She liked admiration; who doesn’t? Woody—every young fellow some time or other has had a sort of infatuation for an older woman. She was lovely and—he’ll get over it.”

  “It wasn’t that, I tell you!” Woody said. “I—I meant it.”

  Sue linked her arm through Woody’s; he was trembling a little for all his stiff, white arrogance. Jed gave Woody a troubled look. “Woody, I didn’t mean to—belittle or—I do see how it happened. That’s all. See you later, Sue.”

  He, too, went away. Sue watched his car disappear along the road before she said at last, with difficulty, “Woody, I had no idea.”

  “It’s all right.” He stared out beyond the laurels and the sloping lawn toward the rim of blue hills. “But I don’t think she was simply—having fun, you know; laughing at me. I think she meant it, too.”

  “Darling, darling,” thought Sue, “you didn’t know Ernestine; she never meant anything that wouldn’t have been a gain for Ernestine. What could a boy with no position, no money, nothing—what could you have done for her except, in your admiration, feed her vanity?” She pressed his arm gently, “I’m sorry, Woody.”

  “It’s all right now. I’ve got used to it. It was hell then—for a long time. But—Sue, she was going away somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Well—I don’t know.”

  “Do you know—why?”

  “Only because of Jed. Because they were unhappy and …”

  “Did she say they were unhappy, Woody?”

  “Well. Not in so many words. I guessed.…”

  “Did she say he didn’t understand her?”

  “Yes. And she—she needed me, Sue. She said so.”

  Often when they were children Sue had felt a gusty, quick anger with Ernestine, never since she became an adult. She had for awhile (frankly in her heart) envied Ernestine. Ernestine had everything—she had Jed, she had Duval Hall—but Sue had never until that moment felt the wave of fury that she felt then. Her own baby brother! How dared Ernestine! How dared she bring surreptitious meetings, false and cheap emotions into Woody’s life? And how dared she let any move of the tawdry little game become a real and wounding thing for Woody?

  She couldn’t hate a dead woman, but she saw, for a moment, why someone might have hated Ernestine with a blind, destroying rage.

  Woody said suddenly, “I—I guess I’ll see how Jeremy’s leg is making out. We’re putting compresses on it.… Thanks, Sue.”

  He went away. She was still standing there at the railing looking out over the thick hedges when Fitz came.

  This time no one was with him and this time he had news. Old Lissy Jenkins, who had cooked and cleaned and answered the telephone for Dr. Luddington for many years had, at last, told the police of a telephone call Dr. Luddington had made during that mysterious hour or so preceding his death.

  “She wouldn’t tell it before. She’s got a dread of the police and everything about them. Say nothing and stay out of trouble. It’s a sort of fixed policy of her age and color. You can’t blame them really,” he sighed and looked at her and said on a tangent, “I like that yellow sweater. You look more like yourself.”

  They hadn’t been alone together since the day of Dr. Luddington’s murder. Always someone had been with them. She found herself tingling under the look in the gray eyes of the man opposite her, feeling conscious of herself and of him. He said, “You’ve been going around as if you were in a dream.”

  “A terrible dream, Fitz.”

  “I know. Grief and shock—that’s part of it. But the rest—it is terrible, yes; it’s more than that. I think …” he lighted a cigarette and leaned back with a kind of sigh and said, “I’d better tell you, Sue, that I think somebody has stacked the cards against you.” />
  “Stacked …”

  “Whoever murdered Dr. Luddington deliberately tried to get you into it. Entangle you. Make it look as though you did it.”

  After a moment she whispered, “Who …”

  “I don’t know who; and I don’t want to scare you. But I do want to—warn you. Only I don’t know exactly why.” He smoked for a moment thoughtfully, his eyes seeming far away. He looked tired and as if he hadn’t been sleeping; there were sharp fine lines around his eyes and mouth and his gestures were quick and nervous. But then he glanced up and caught her eyes and smiled, “We’ll get over the hill, somehow, Sue. We’ll get through the woods. Now then, I want to tell you about old Lissy; this is her story—belated, but here it is. She took down the phone to telephone for a taxi. It was her day off and she went to the movie at Bedford. The telephone was in Dr. Luddington’s consulting room but there’s a kitchen extension; she answered his sick calls when he was out. When she took down the telephone he was talking. And he said, as nearly as she can remember—‘I swore to false testimony; I perjured myself. I was never going to tell the truth but now I’ve got to.’ She remembers those phrases fairly clearly—so she says—and I think she’s telling the truth.”

  Sue was sitting upright, staring at Fitz. “But—who …”

  “That’s what Lissy doesn’t know. She swears up and down that she doesn’t know who was on the other end of the conversation. Then he said something about you; she’s not so sure about that; she said—and I believe her there too—that she started to hang up; she thought she’d get on her hat and then make another call when Dr. Luddington had finished; she says it didn’t strike her that it was important—that I doubt—but in any case her set policy of keeping her mouth shut would have operated. At any rate as she hung up she thinks the doctor said, ‘Now that it’s Sue I’ve got to tell the truth.’”

  “But that—what …”

  Fitz got up, walked restlessly to the railing, tossed his cigarette over into the laurels and turned around. “Obviously he meant that he perjured himself to get Jed free. It seems fairly clear too that he felt that, if you were to be arrested, he had to tell whatever it was that he knew. That it would free you. Therefore he may have been warning someone—someone who—well …” Fitz’s brown face was hard, too, like Woody’s. “It sounds as if he knew who murdered Ernestine and it was someone whom he wouldn’t sacrifice for Jed and would sacrifice for you. That’s what it looks like on the face of it.… Of course, it could mean other things too. And if it was that somebody that killed him, there’s a queer sort of discrepancy about the way he died.” He did not explain what; he stood still, his shoulders sagging wearily.

  “Fitz, it was because of me. He was trying to help me out …”

  “Nonsense,” Fitz said roughly, “Don’t get that into your head. There are several things he may have meant; we’ll never know exactly perhaps. The police tried to check on the telephone calls he made. There was only one that they’re sure of and that was to Ruby and the maid there talked to him and Dr. Luddington didn’t say that to her. Then—listen, Sue, that shiny thing, the mirror, whatever it was that you picked up, can you remember what you did with it?”

  “No, Fitz! It could have been anything! I—what about Jed and Ruby?”

  “They still say they don’t remember seeing it. Well, sometime you’ll just think of it all at once. There’s another thing I want to know. Are you sure you tied up Jeremy? I mean securely, so he couldn’t possibly have got loose himself?”

  She was sure of that and said so.

  “Henley insists that you didn’t. I think you did; I think it’d be second nature for you to tie him up so he couldn’t work himself loose. No matter how worried you were. And if you did—well then who rode him away? Or did anybody ride him?”

  He moved. “I’m going over to tell Shepson about this latest thing. The sheriff told me; he’s been damned decent, Sue. But I don’t know whether …” he stopped. She said, “Whether he can hold out against Henley much longer?”

  He turned abruptly to look at her. He said, “We’ll make him hold out,” as if he were swearing a solemn oath. And all at once he took her in his arms.

  He held her and kissed her. And then let her go and looked down at her with a kind of smile. “You look more like yourself. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” But then his face sobered again. “Listen, Sue—I’m not an old woman and I’m not fanciful or—but has Woody got a gun?”

  “Why—why, yes, I suppose so.”

  “Not that that would help. The fact is, I’m not easy in my mind about—well, about this place.”

  The tight, stifled feeling came around her throat. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s a nasty situation, Sue. Dangerous …” said Fitz. “Well—tell Woody what I said.”

  After he’d gone, she thought of what Woody had told of Ernestine. Probably there was nothing in it, yet if Ernestine had had some plan—if, as Caroline had said Ernestine had been up to something—then it could conceivably have had something to do with her murder. She would tell Fitz. She would not tell Caroline, unless Woody did so himself; it would only trouble and anger her unnecessarily. Yet it suggested again the question Caroline herself had asked.… “We’ll get over the hill,” Fitz had said. “We’ll get through the woods.”

  The soft spring breeze was cool on her face. The shadows were lengthening around the house, under the tall thickets of evergreen, below the great hedges of laurel. The pine woods beyond, along the south side of the house, were darkening; blue shadows blended with green. Somewhere a honeysuckle was blooming early; a ghost of its fragrance drifted across the porch and touched Sue’s face like a faint, small promise.

  The tranquil evening light, the deep blue shadows under the pines, the distant rim of purple hills denied the thing that had walked through those very shadows.

  She thought that; from the stables at the other side of the house, she heard Jeremy moving about in his loose box, his hooves like soft distant thunder. She turned to enter the house.

  As she turned a shot came from one of the thickets of evergreens. The bullet missed her. Tiny splinters of wood flew from the pillar nearest her.

  There was a second shot, rocking the evening air. Some birds flew, screeching, from the thick clump of pines at the edge of the woods.

  Then there was complete silence until Woody came, running from the door behind her.

  15

  IT WAS a bold attack, it was direct and easy and if its intent was murder, it was very nearly successful.

  The clump of evergreens stood about fifty yards from the house at the very edge of the lawn; a wide strip of woodland, mainly pines, covering some thirty acres, lay on the Poore property, dividing it from the hilly Jameson farm beyond. The wood was irregular, with patches of thick undergrowth and thickets of laurel beyond whose broad and glossy leaves a man might easily conceal himself, with gullies and overhanging banks. It offered an easy refuge and an easy approach to the house. Sue, standing so still on the steps in her yellow sweater, had been a perfect target. They debated, later, the power of the gun which had been used; Woody believed it was a revolver, a forty-five. There was, however, no way of proving it. The first bullet had scraped the pillar beside her, knocking out splinters but had then dropped somewhere amid the shrubbery. They could not find any traces of the second.

  And they could find no traces of whoever had stood there in the pines, stalking and waiting his chance. The troopers who had been ordered to keep an eye on the house had been withdrawn that day, not because Captain Henley’s belief in Sue’s guilt had weakened, but because he needed the men. Murder was murder, the county was aroused and complaining, his job depended on results—but at the same time there were all the usual chores of the daily routine.

  It was also a quiet hour of the day, when there was little traffic anywhere. So whoever had come and gone had done so with ease and, as far as could be discovered, without observation.

  Further, whoeve
r was in the pines had time to escape, not much time but enough while Woody ran back into the house for his own gun. Woody searched the thicket—aided by Chrisy, willingly, black rage in her face and a fire shovel in her hand, and by Lij unwillingly, showing a disposition to hide behind his grandmother’s ample skirts, and bellowing loudly when Woody fired once at what he took to be a man and was not. Caroline came hurrying from the stables; she went into the house and came back with an old, long-barreled army revolver, a Civil War revolver which had not seen service since. Sue took it from her.

  “It’s loaded,” Caroline said. “It’s loaded. I always keep it loaded.”

  Sue turned it prudently downward and started after Woody and was hauled back by Caroline. “If he fired at you,” cried Caroline, “if he fired at you—Sue, stay here. Go in the house, Sue …”

  By that time Woody was running back toward the house with Chrisy plowing angrily after him. “Phone for the police,” he called out. “Hurry, Sue. They can block the roads.”

  Caroline, however, hurried after Sue into the house, along the hall with Sister Britches, caught by the excitement, shrieking and leaping and getting under their feet and when the operator did not answer at once, Caroline snatched the telephone from Sue and jiggled it up and down and cried, “Operator—police—operator …” until the girl answered.

  It could have been only about ten minutes before the first police car arrived; they heard it screaming along the highway from the village. They went to the steps to meet it; they were like the inhabitants of a beleaguered fortress. The trooper who got out first gave them a look of rather wild inquiry—Chrisy with her fire shovel, Sue with her Civil War revolver, Caroline armed with furious, terrified dignity. Only Woody’s weapon drew a glance of respect.

  Both of them looked also at the splintered nick on the pillar, listened briefly and searched the thickets of pines. Woody went with them. By that time another police car had arrived. The two troopers it brought had received the radio call; they joined the first contingent.