Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “Oh, Wat said she was at home. Said she had a headache. He took me to Fitz’s and let me out at the door but he didn’t come in, I guess Fitz didn’t even see him. Wat said he was going back to see how Ruby was and give her a headache tablet so she could go on to the dinner. Nobody asked me how I got to Fitz’s house so I didn’t say. I went in and Fitz and I …” She gave a queer frank sigh. “I thought maybe Fitz would say something that night; Wat and Ruby didn’t come at all and we were alone and—but he didn’t. And afterward, at the club they phoned and—since then—things have been different. I thought he was waiting till the trial and everything was over. I didn’t dream …”

  The look of anger and resolution returned to her face. “I didn’t dream it was because of you! Not till last night the way he—the way you looked. I mean what I say, Sue. You tell Jed everything’s all right and of course you love him and are going to marry him, and you tell Fitz that, too. If you don’t—listen, Sue—we’ve known each other a long time. But I mean what I say. I’ve never told about you, and Ernestine; they’ve asked me, too, if you quarrelled with her. I never gave you away and I never will if you …” she stopped; she looked full at Sue and said, “I mean it. Fitz is mine.”

  She went down the steps and got into the car, sliding her riding crop beside her at the wheel; it was absurd and Camilla was perfectly unconscious of it. She started the car and without a word or a look drove rapidly away.

  And the trouble was that, quite simply and ruthlessly, she did mean it.

  Sue went back into the house; standing there in the doorway with the green mask of shrubbery, shining innocently in the sunlight, hiding the pine woods, she felt chilled and frightened. Camilla did mean it. And it would be exactly the convincing, the clinching, the new piece of evidence that the police were seeking in order to arrest her, Sue Poore.

  The gun cabinet, and the click of its door. The quarrel with Jed over her, Sue. Jed had never told her of that specific quarrel; he wouldn’t tell it now because it would give weight to the terrible arguments against her. And then she realized that Camilla’s groping, speculative look when Sue had asked her what Ernestine had planned and where she had intended to go, was like Jed’s look—the first morning after his acquittal, when they’d sat all four of them, Caroline and Fitz and Jed and herself, at Caroline’s breakfast table and tried to map a course that would save Sue herself from arrest. Jed had looked like that, half startled, half speculative, when they asked him about Ernestine. And then Fitz had grown impatient and Jed had grown stubborn. Was it then, the memory of that quarrel with Ernestine, which he would not admit? He had not believed Ernestine, Camilla had said; he had not believed Woody’s later story of Ernestine’s plan to leave, but had he begun to question his own disbelief?

  She would ask him; she would tell him of Camilla’s visit; she went back to the telephone. But Jed was not at home and neither was Miss Camilla, the maid who answered told her. Sue said on a queer and unexpected impulse, “By the way, has Sam Bronson come back?”

  The maid’s voice was unperturbed, uninterested, “Why, no, Miss Sue, I don’t think so. Miss Camilla she took the car. I don’t know when she’ll be back. And Mr. Jed, he woke up just a few minutes ago, I guess he didn’t sleep much last night and he wanted the car but Miss Camilla had it so he got on a horse and he went, I think, to the Luddington place. He didn’t say when he’d be back. Shall I tell him you phoned?”

  Sue said yes and thanked the maid; as she put down the telephone Caroline came in the side door and came to the study. “That looked like Camilla Duval driving away. What did she want?”

  The telephone rang as Sue debated rapidly how much she should tell Caroline. The whole truth would terrify her. Sue answered the telephone and it was Wat. “Is your aunt there? Let me talk to her please, Sue.”

  She handed the telephone to Caroline and listened, but thinking of Camilla. Caroline, she realized vaguely, seemed to be expostulating but being talked over by Wat and it was something about the end of the season hunt. Caroline hung up suddenly and turned around. “Did you ever!”

  “What did he want?”

  “Well!” Caroline pushed up her hair angrily; her blue eyes were snapping. “But at that,” she said, “I believe he’s right. About the hunt—the hunt ball. And Wat wants to be M.F.H.”

  Sue considered it. “That sounds like Wat.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Partly politics, it won’t hurt him, you know. Ours is an old and respected hunt. And it’s partly because he and Ruby both seem to feel that it’s—well, due them. Natives and—that great big place and—well, anyway, he wants us all to hunt tomorrow. It’s the last hunt of the year of course …” Caroline paused rather wistfully. Sue said, “You never miss the last one, or the hunt ball …”

  “No, well, I—I don’t know what to do exactly. Maybe he’s right. He says we all ought to go to show people that we—well, to show them. He said it was important psychologically—not that I think Wat Luddington knows a thing about it. But maybe we ought to show people that we’re not afraid of anything that the police—of anything,” finished Caroline, looking worriedly at Sue. “Maybe he’s right. Of course, he said, he wants my influence.” She gave the ghost of a chuckle, sighed and said: “And honestly—it doesn’t seem just right, Sue, for us not to go—I mean, there’s mourning and all that—Wat went into that—but he says It’ll make a better impression if we go and if he—not that I care about impression,” said Caroline suddenly snapping out the words. “But I’d rather fight than hide, any day. We haven’t got any reason to hide.”

  Woody coming, yawning, in the door agreed with her. Sue listened to their talk, their arguments, their final conclusion to join the meet the next day; she listened to Caroline when she telephoned to Wat and told him—much apparently to his approval; she listened when Caroline put down the telephone and told Woody that Wat had said that Ruby had sold her famous hunter.

  “Rocking Horse! What did she do that for?” asked Woody, amazed. “He was a terrific jumper; they could hardly build a paddock high enough to keep him in.”

  Caroline shrugged. “Ruby didn’t like him. Said she couldn’t trust him.”

  “I wonder what she got for him,” said Woody, diverted, and Sue listened while they talked of that, too, both unconsciously but deeply grateful for the boon of a normal, usual topic of conversation. But she wished they would go to another room. She wanted to talk to Fitz and she wanted to talk to him alone.

  They went from Ruby’s hunter to Wat’s wish to be M.F.H.—“her wish too,” Woody said, “if I know Ruby. Wat and his oriental beauty! M.F.H. and his beautiful wife! I wonder how he intends to reconcile that with his political career. Either is a full time chore.”

  They were going thoroughly into the politics of the Dobberly hunt, when Chrisy advised them that dinner was ready and Sue still had not had a chance to telephone to Fitz, yet she began to be certain that before night he would come, if only to see that, somehow, they had taken precaution against any unwelcome night visitor.

  It was full dark by the time they had coffee, lingeringly, in Caroline’s study and again beside the telephone. Woody by then had got out Caroline’s fixture card. Sue could ride Jeremy, he said; old Jeremy was safe and not nearly as lame as he pretended in order to get attention; Caroline, of course, would ride Geneva. He’d borrow a hunter from Wat; they would probably need no second horses. Unless, of course, they had a good run. The window beside him was open so all of them heard it when Jeremy began to kick.

  Sister Britches, under the couch, shot out and skidded into the hall.

  Woody gave a wild look at the windows. The screens were dark; they could see nothing. Sister Britches set up a clamor at the side door. Caroline started for the door; Woody cried, “Wait …” and ran upstairs. The thunder of Jeremy’s wild kicks was like a drum; Woody ran down again with his gun in his hand. “Stay there, Sue,” he shouted, “Don’t come out of the house,” and ran along the hall and out the side door. Caroline and
apparently Sister Britches went after him, Sister Britches in a frenzy.

  And then suddenly, the lashing of hooves against wood, the wild tattoo of that drum died away. Sister Britches stopped yelling. In the distance she could hear Woody’s voice; saying something about lights. She went to the window and beyond the thick shrubbery lights were glimmering distantly in the stables. And all at once there was silence except for the faint, remote tinkle of Chrisy washing dishes in the pantry.

  Things were, then, all right. The silence reassured her, but Caroline would stay there for some time, soothing Jeremy and trying to discover what had sent him into such a spasm of terror.

  But it wasn’t as it had been the previous night—or rather as they thought it might have been. Certainly if anyone had been in the stables or on the grounds, they would have found him; Sister Britches would not have quieted.

  She did not, nevertheless, follow them; she went to the telephone and called Fitz’s number.

  Jason answered. His voice was trembling and high. She started to say, “Jason, it’s Miss Sue.…” The trembling, shaken quality of the old man’s voice checked her; she said, “Jason, what’s wrong?”

  He knew her voice. “Miss Sue—Miss Sue …”

  “Yes, yes, Jason. What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  “Oh, Miss Sue—they’ve found him.”

  “Found …”

  “The stableman.”

  “The …”

  “Sam Bronson. The Duval stableman. He’s shot, Miss Sue. Right through the head. In the Luddington woods. Two, three days ago. He’s shot.”

  “Jason …” The room wavered around her; objects seemed to slide together; she cried, “Jason, is Mr. Fitz all right?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Sue. He’s at Luddingtons’.”

  She said, “Tell him I phoned.” She put down the telephone. She turned to the door.

  As she did so, very quietly someone standing in the hall moved aside, out of the doorway, quickly out of her range of vision.

  Away off in the pantry Chrisy dropped a glass; there was the tinkling sound of the crash. There was not a sound from the direction of the stables, not another sound anywhere in the soft, deep night, in the pine woods, in the house.

  19

  SHE WOULD scream. Caroline and Woody were in the stables; they could hear her in the deep quiet. Or would they? Were they actually in the stables at all? If so, they made no sound; would they hear?

  The telephone! That would take too much time.… Walk out then, and confront whoever was in the hall. Whoever had waited and watched in the pine woods.

  Why was he waiting in the hall?

  But Chrisy was in the house; she’d scream.… Chrisy wouldn’t hear.

  There was a feeling rather than a sound, of motion, small movements, in the hall. What was he doing?

  Then she heard a sound. It was a curious sound; it sounded as if something rather light had flipped tautly against the wall. It was like but it wasn’t like the whack of Camilla’s riding crop on her boot.

  She wouldn’t stay there like a hunted animal, frozen, hoping dumbly to be overlooked. He had seen her; he knew she was there. She thought of the windows; could she open a screen? Could she get herself—but quietly—oh, quietly—through the window and into the shrubbery below? There was cover there; and then her way was open to the stables—to Woody, to Caroline, anywhere.

  Chrisy opened the pantry door with a wide sweep that sent it banging against the wall and came into the dining room with a tray of tinkling silver. Was there the click of the old-fashioned switch for the lights? She’d have to turn on lights in order to put away the silver.

  But if she did—what about Chrisy? What would he do? Sue screamed.

  She didn’t know she was going to; the demand that she warn Chrisy dragged it from her throat. And Chrisy heard it and dropped the tray of flat silver.

  It clattered and clashed down upon the hardwood floor; the tray went with it with a crash like doomsday and Chrisy came, charging heavily across the dining room so her footsteps shook the house, and amid the clatter and crash and bang there was another softer sound. Sue could barely hear it; yet she was sure that the side door had closed, stealthily and hurriedly.

  “Chrisy—” she screamed, “look out. Don’t come. Somebody’s there.…”

  Chrisy shouted, “Help—murder—help …”

  Lights flared up in the hall. Somebody called from the stables; Chrisy charged through the doorway, searched for the telephone and shouted into it, “Police, help, murder—police …” She had snatched up, again, the fire shovel from the dining room fireplace.

  Outside Sister Britches was in a frenzy which came, wildly nearer.

  Woody, his gun in his hand, came running into the room; Caroline panting, followed him. Sister Britches thudded in beside her and dashed around the room, yelling frantically. Sue cried above the dog’s clamor, “He was in the hall—he went out the side door—Woody, don’t go.…” Woody had disappeared. Caroline tried to take the telephone away from Chrisy who wouldn’t relinquish it and shouted, “Police—murder—police …”

  The front door banged. If they heard the sound of his car none of them knew it; probably through the clamor and crash they had not heard it. Fitz, though, heard them; he came running along the hall.

  It was Fitz who restored a sort of order, who took the telephone from Chrisy, who gave Sister Britches a rather well deserved cuff which Caroline did not in the least resent and gave Sister Britches the shock of her life. She sat down and stared at Fitz and in her vast surprise stopped yelling.

  Someone had answered the telephone; his voice crackled excitedly. Fitz cut into it. “I know all about that! But the murderer was here—five minutes ago. Send out a radio. Get hold of somebody. I’m telling you the truth, and they’ll flay you alive if you make them miss this chance to get him.…” He put down the telephone. “The police are at Luddingtons’. I don’t know whether he’ll do anything or not. Where’s Woody?”

  Reveller, from away off near the stables, gave a deep bay. The side door banged and Woody came running again along the hall. “Fitz, I saw your car lights. Come on. He’s outside somewhere. Have you got a gun?”

  But Fitz did not answer; they were standing in the hall, he was staring at something on the floor. A leather strap, long and thin and tough lay there on the floor and it had been tied roughly into a sort of slip knot.

  Caroline gave a kind of whistling sigh and reached out for the wall behind her; Chrisy got her onto the couch.

  “Look out,” cried Woody as Fitz picked up the strap. “Fingerprints …”

  Fitz paid no attention; he rolled the strap together and put it in his pocket and from another pocket took out a gun which he gave to Chrisy. “It’s loaded. Hold it like this.” He put Chrisy’s black, strong finger carefully around it. Then he and Woody were running along the hall again.

  It was, of course, by then a futile search. Fitz knew it; Woody knew it, but they had to search just the same. Reveller joined them but was not in the faintest degree interested and returned presently to sit down at the side door, yawning and watching the flashlight. “What I need,” said Caroline once, looking at Sister Britches, “is a watch dog.” She said it with blue lips; but her eyes softened lovingly as Sister Britches came to her.

  They found no one; whoever had been there had slid away into the heavy shrubbery, before Woody and Caroline had more than reached the stable path. There were a dozen, a hundred ways to escape the place unobserved, to reach thicket after thicket of shrubs; to take refuge in the pine woods or make a furtive way across the fields.

  “Hundreds of ways,” Woody said. “If the police’d get here …”

  They hadn’t come; they hadn’t telephoned to inquire; it developed later that the man at the desk that night had decided, on his own, that it was simply another ruse, another trick to draw attention from Sue. Besides the sheriff and Captain Henley and all available troopers were in the Luddington woods.


  “It wouldn’t help if they did come,” Fitz said.

  Woody, angrily, agreed. “They wouldn’t believe us anyway. Chrisy, did you see anybody at all?”

  Chrisy shook her head. Except for the strap there was no visible proof of that presence. Woody held it to Sister Britches who sniffed it without interest, looked fondly at Fitz, the man who had cuffed her and gave an ingratiating wave of her stern. Reveller by then under the couch, sighed and stretched.

  “What do you keep those dogs for, Aunt Caroline …” began Woody in exasperation and even Caroline gave a reproving look at Sister Britches. “If it had been a rabbit,” she said weakly but stopped.

  “How about phoning the police again?” said Woody and Fitz said, “They’re at Luddingtons’. You didn’t know …” and told them what he knew of Sam Bronson.

  He had been found in the Luddington woods that afternoon late, by some troopers. He had been shot through the head. As far as Fitz knew they had not found the gun and had not extracted the bullet; perhaps it was not there to extract. He’d been dead, according to the coroner, for some days, it wasn’t definite. Wat had telephoned Fitz; he had gone at once to the Luddingtons’. Jed was there, had been there with Wat most of the afternoon. The police questioned Wat and Ruby and they knew nothing; they were beginning on the servants and stablemen when Fitz had left. The body might have remained there for years; it was not far from the stream which Sue had crossed on her way to see Dr. Luddington and where she had seen a rider. The troopers had been requested by the sheriff to try to find hoofprints in the clay along the bank; if so, to make a moulage of them. They had found no hoofprints that were sufficiently well defined for a comparison with anything (and the sheriff had said that the hoofprints in the pine woods had proved to be too blurred and confused to show identifying marks, too, Fitz told them parenthetically) but they had found Sam Bronson—still in riding breeches and a turtle-neck sweater, but his eyes were no longer alert. It was then nearly dusk.

  Chrisy was muttering, and rocking her vast blue chambray bulk to and fro.