by Leslie Ford
I slipped quietly to the mantel, and then, with one eye in the mirror and both ears on the doors, I took down the priceless vase and thrust my hand inside . . . and stood there, my heart a frozen lump in the pit of my stomach. The key was gone.
21
Before I could do anything more than get the vase back on the mantel, my hands shaking violently, I heard a key in the latch. I got back to my chair and picked up my coffee cup, and was sipping the last of it when Philander Doyle came in. Roger was not with him. He stopped in the doorway, took a sort of sharp hold of himself and came in. He bent over the coffee tray, poured a cup of coffee and drained it, poured another and drained that. Then he sat down heavily, his great head dropped forward a little, the veins on his forehead swelling dangerously, his breath coming in stertorous waves.
When he looked over at me after an instant his eyes had lost their Irish twinkle. They were glazed with anxiety and . . . fear.
“I made two mistakes, Mrs. Latham,” he said heavily. “I didn’t know Jeremy was in love with my son. I didn’t know he was in love with her.”
“Both are bitterly true, Mr. Doyle,” I said.
He nodded, his big hands clasping and unclasping the arms of the chair.
“So . . . why don’t you call off your dogs?”
He got up abruptly, his massive form towering above the low table.
“Not now.”
His voice vibrated through the room, tinkling the Waterford lustres of their thin sudden music.
“Not now.”
He went out of the room down the hall. I heard the library door close sharply.
Miss Isabel came in from the dining room.
“Has my brother come?”
I nodded.
“Oh, dear!” she said. “I told them not to save his lunch. The laundryman’s eating it. I’ll go tell them to fry him an egg. Or do you think he’d rather have it poached?”
“Neither,” I said. But she was gone.
I hurried out the door, my galoshes in my hand. Just as I got down the steps I heard a heavy familiar tread. I turned around. Sergeant Buck was coming from the kitchen. I stopped abruptly.
“Nice day, ma’am,” he said stiffly, out of the corner of his mouth. He touched his hat and walked off toward Prince Street.
I pushed my hair back from my forehead with a trembling hand. His wide granite figure was even wider in the midriff than it normally was. From the bulging pockets of his dark overcoat I saw protruding the open mouths of a pair of empty milk bottles.
I fastened my coat collar around my throat, suddenly unbearably cold. Then I hurried across the street and up the Candlers’ steps.
We didn’t, fortunately, Jerry and I, have to go to the funeral. Or unfortunately, perhaps, for I think the only reason Judge Candler let his daughter off was that she might see Roger Doyle there. We sat, she and I, up in my room, saying nothing. I couldn’t tell her, not possibly, all or any of the things Philander Doyle had said to me, and she couldn’t—I imagined—tell me what Sandy had told her. So we just sat . . . or I did. She moved around the room, sitting first in the window overlooking Karen’s white lovely little house, and then moving as she became aware of it to the other window, and coming away from it quickly, seeing Roger’s house across the street.
At last, when I’d begun to think both of us would go mad if something didn’t happen, she stopped her aimless pacing and stood by the bed, her hand grasping the mahogany post.
“Grace,” she said.
I looked up. Her eyes were aching, as torn and anguished as her voice.
“Yes, Jerry,” I said.
“I . . . I gave Father my word . . . not to see Roger any more.”
I looked down into the fire. I didn’t know whether I was glad, or whether I was sorry, or whether actually I wasn’t too numb to feel at all.
“Oh, Grace!” she cried. “Can’t we go to your house? I can’t stay here. I can’t! I hate it! I’ll die!”
She collapsed in a sudden sobbing heap at my knees, her slim body shaking convulsively.
“Oh, of course you can’t!” I said, wondering why I hadn’t known it, seeing her face as her father and Sandy and William had gone out the door and closed it on the two of us, alone in the desolate old house. “Let’s go, now. I’ll leave a note for Sandy. Go get your things.”
Lilac let us in my door in Georgetown, her face, I think, the pleasantest thing I’d seen for ages. If she was glad to see me, however, I’d never have guessed it. She took my bags and Jerry’s and plodded up the stairs, and came down again, her old eyes following Jerry, angry and resentful. Finally she went off to her kitchen, muttering, and came back bringing her a glass of milk with an egg and sherry in it. She stood over her till she’d drunk half of it, and handed it back until she’d finished it to the last drop. Then she stoked up the fire and went out again, grumbling darkly to Sheila, my Irish setter, who’d more or less subsided after her first storm of welcome in the middle of the hall. I got up and closed the door, Jerry settled in the corner of the sofa and stared unseeing into the fire.
Even time passes. I sat there after we’d finished dinner, going over in my mind that extraordinary recitation of Philander Doyle’s and his extraordinary conduct when he learned about Roger. And I don’t know when it first seeped up through the morass that constituted my mind just then and leaped into sharp and clear form: what if Philander Doyle had killed Karen himself? What if his problem was a dual one now . . . protecting himself on the one hand, saving his son on the other? I shook my head. He hadn’t wanted Karen murdered. He very much wanted her alive, to bring suit against Judge Candler, so that in defending him he could do the worst in his very considerable power to ruin his name. The evidence that the Judge had sold him the stock and he’d sold it back would have to come from him. He could have found a hundred ways to distort a perfectly simple and honest act into a dreadfully unscrupulous act. And what if he found that by underestimating Jerry’s intelligence, or her intuition, he’d overstepped himself? What if he’d then got the idea of involving his old friend in a murder case . . . and again underestimated Jerry and Sandy’s deep suspicion of him, probably of much longer standing than I’d realized?
I stopped abruptly at that. In that case he’d never have set the chronometer to blow Karen’s carriage house to bits and all his plans with it. Unless, I thought . . .
The doorbell rang, and I heard Lilac going out to open it. I knew she wouldn’t let anyone in, having explained carefully to her that we weren’t at home, absolutely. “Not nobody,” she’d repeated firmly, for once in complete agreement with me on a subject. But I’d over or under-estimated her—I don’t know which—for the door into the living room burst open violently and there inside it stood Roger Doyle.
Jerry flashed into life at the end of the sofa, her eyes wide, lips parted, staring at him . . . but only for about a part of a split second. Then she was in his arms in the middle of the room, though I couldn’t for the life of me have told how either of them got there. She clung to him, and his arms were practically smothering her and his lips against hers.
I looked away. “What will the Judge say to me,” I thought ironically, “bringing her here where she can see him, to break her word?”
Then all of a sudden she struggled free. “Oh, I can’t, I mustn’t see you, darling!”
She tore loose and flew out the door and upstairs. He took a leap after her.
“Roger!” I said sharply. I needn’t have bothered; Lilac’s solid black form blocked the door. The Navy line couldn’t have gone through there without bloodshed.
He turned and looked at me.
“Sit down,” I said. “She promised her father she wouldn’t see you. It’ll make it hell for her if she breaks her word.”
“But what in God’s name, Grace . . .”
“Just sit down, darling,” I said. “And take it easy. I’ll be glad to explain.”
He sat down, or rather flung himself down on the ottoman in front of the
fire. “Let’s have it, fast.”
“It’s quite simple,” I said, with admirable composure. “Her father thinks you murdered Karen Lunt.”
“He’s not the only one, apparently,” he said. “Does she think so?”
“She doesn’t,” I replied. “But if she did—and if you did—she doesn’t care. She just doesn’t want them to hang you, is all.”
“Good God!” he groaned. He dropped his head in his hands and sat there literally tearing at his hair. Then he managed to pull himself together to the extent of being able to pace wildly about the room.
“I just got out of that damned police station,” he said. “I tried to call her up. William said he wasn’t allowed to tell anybody you’d taken her home with you.”
He grinned suddenly.
“William will be permanently in the dog house now,” I observed. “And so will the rest of us.”
“I don’t care if I can keep out of the White House.”—Which is what the colored people call Alexandria’s painted brick jail in St. Asaph’s Street.
“What happened?” I asked. “Did you see Colonel Primrose?”
He nodded.
“Fox, mostly. It seems my fingerprints are all over the place, and I was in love with her, and she was giving me the air for this McClure.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that why you did it?”
He nodded. “It’s what that human monolith with the lantern jaw calls a ‘cream pashunell.’ ”
“And what did you say?”
“What could I? I told them I’d been trying to see one or the other to tell them I went back after Jerry gave me the gate and talked to her. She was okay then and there wasn’t any gas that I could smell. But none of ’em had time to listen and I don’t have influence enough to rate an extra.”
“Judge Candler saw you through the blind,” I said.
He stared at me. “So that’s it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think he told them. It was the price of his keeping still on that and something else that Jerry promised not to see you.”
“What else?” he demanded blankly.
I was in it now, and there seemed no point in stopping.
“Karen,” I said. “She was afraid of you.”
He sat there speechless for a minute, staring stupidly at me.
“Afraid of . . . me? Well, for God’s sake.”
Then his eyes lighted suddenly. “Look—that’s the line she tried to wangle a dot out of the Judge with. What a girl!”
I watched him with more interest, I may say, than I’d ever done before. He sat there, shaking his head back and forth, completely flabbergasted. Then he looked up suddenly, a new alarm in his blue eyes. “Grace—Jerry didn’t fall for that, did she? If she did I’m going upstairs and beat the . . .”
“I don’t think she knows all,” I replied, sardonically.
“Look,” he said. “I’m going to tell you about this. Maybe it’ll sound phony to you, too, but it’s God’s truth. I went back to tell Karen if she’d lay off, I’d give her half of everything Dad left me. He’s . . . he’s got a rotten heart, and he drives himself like a bull. She was sitting on that little sofa, sort of half asleep. I tried to talk to her. She said, ‘You know about a bird in the hand, darling? Go get me a glass of milk, I’ve got to stay up till that damned cat comes in and tomorrow I’m going to send for the S.P.C.A.’
“I went out to the kitchen. There was a glass on the sink that had had milk in it. I got a bottle out of the icebox, poured some in the glass and took it in to her. She drank it and said, ‘Go away, Roger. I want to write a letter, and I’m sleepy.’ She rolled her head back and closed her eyes. I thought, of course, she was putting on an act—she always did. I took the glass, took it out to the sink, filled it with water and came back. She woke up and yawned and said, ‘Lord, I’m sleepy. I wish you’d go home, and if you see Mrs. Harris tell her to hurry.’
“I tried to make her talk sense. She just shook her head. She said, ‘Darling, if your father found out about it, he’d leave his money to the Salvation Army. Neither of us would get a thin dime. I’ll take my stock, thanks. Close the door quietly, dear.’ So I gave up and went home. I didn’t see the cat.”
“—And you stopped on your front steps,” I said, “looked back at her place, and looked at your watch. Judge Candler saw you.”
He looked blank for a minute. “Did I?” Then he said,
“Oh yeah, I know. I was wondering whether she’d go to sleep with the heat off and freeze. I had some idea of going back and making her go to bed. Actually I thought she was half-tight, though I hadn’t seen her take a drink.”
“Have you told Colonel Primrose this?” I asked.
“I tried to, but with a couple of invisible dicks watching me through that trick mirror Fox has got rigged up behind the first aid kit and that bird Buck with a couple of milk bottles sticking out of his pockets, it didn’t sound so hot even to me. I couldn’t tell ’em the reason I wasn’t in love with Karen was I’d never seen any girl but Jerry since we came back and she used to ride by with that red hair of hers on the tail end of that old spavined hack they had in the stall behind the carriage house.”
“They’d have been sure you killed her, then.”
He nodded.
“Well, anyway,” I said, “you go home. You know Jerry loves you, if that’s any comfort. And for heaven’s sake try to call off your father. He’s after Judge Candler’s blood, and you’re the only one can stop him.”
He looked at me with suddenly ageing eyes.
“It’s funny how he hates him,” he said. “I don’t suppose Jerry’d . . .”
He got up and stood looking down into the fire, not finishing the sentence. Then he turned to me.
“I don’t suppose you could give her a note, could you?”
“I couldn’t, but Lilac’s down in the kitchen,” I said.
His face brightened. He went over to the desk, pulled out a piece of paper and sat a minute chewing his pencil. Then he grinned and wrote like mad for a few minutes, got up, grabbed his hat and went out. I heard him a moment later shout “Goodbye!” up the stairs and heard the door slam. When I went up to bed Jerry was sleeping like an angel.
I woke up the next morning startled—as soon as I got consciousness—almost out of my wits. Lilac was tiptoeing about the room as quietly as a large black cat stalking a mouse, not a mutter or grumble to be heard out of her. When she ran up the Venetian blind with a positively velvet hand I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Lilac!” I said. “What is the matter?”
She peered around the bedpost at me, rolling her old eyes.
“Hush-sh-sh!” she whispered. “Don’ you wake up that chile, she’s sleepin’ lak a lamb.”
She tipped about, gathering my scattered belongings. “Look lak ’bout all she needin’ was a little sleep an’ su’thin in her stummick and Mist’ Roguh. Pore baby, Ah tol’ her ain’ nobody t’ look out for her ’cept herself.”
She put my tray on my lap and even poured me a cup of coffee, tiptoed back to the door and said, darkly and sotto voce, “Don’ let me hear yo’ bangin’ ’roun’ droppin’ things.”
She closed the door noiselessly, and I didn’t even hear her going down the stairs. It was wonderful . . . the first really peaceful morning I’d had since she and Julius, the man she calls her husband, got the last of their periodic so-called divorces. I sat there, lulled by the unaccustomed serenity to a leisurely roseate frame of mind I seldom face my breakfast with.
Perhaps that was my mistake. At any rate, I’d just unfolded the paper and glanced at the headlines when the telephone on the table beside my bed jangled. I picked it up with as little qualm as the people you read about who take a bite of watermelon at a church picnic and find too late that one black seed was a hornet. Although I should have known, I suppose, the minute I heard Colonel Primrose’s voice.
“Listen, my dear,” he said abruptly. “I’m calling you, so you can prepare Jerry
for a shock.—Philander Doyle has just been found in his library, shot through the head. Fox has arrested Roger . . . —Are you there?”
“I wish I weren’t,” I managed to say.
22
I’ve never been quite sure how I got through the ordeal of “preparing” Jerry . . . or rather the ordeal of preparing myself to prepare her. As I look back on it it seems to me that that was infinitely worse than what actually followed. She was sitting up in bed with a deep blue maribou jacket on that an aunt of the children’s had given me for a summer evening wrap. It was marvellous with her sleep-rumpled copper curls and pale good face and autumn eyes. The smile she raised to me as I came in faded so abruptly that I knew I must be more alarmed myself than I’d thought. She put down the cup of chocolate in her hand. I remembered noticing that the hardly-touched breakfast Lilac had managed to get on her tray would have kept a Welsh miner and family for a week.
“What’s . . . the matter, Grace?” she said softly. “Had Dad found out . . .”
I shook my head.
“Listen, Jerry,” I said. “Philander Doyle was shot dead last night. They’ve arrested Roger.”
She looked at me silently, her firm little Cavalier jaw relaxing a little under that blow. Then her eyes moved to the piece of my notepaper propped against the silver sugar basin on her tray. Without a word she reached out to the bedside table, took up a card of matches, struck one, picked up Roger’s note, held it while the flame licked it up, dropped it in her empty cereal dish, and watched it roll into a black crisp heap and die. Then she moved the tray down to the foot of the bed and slipped out.
“Let’s go down, as soon as we can. I’ve got to see him,” she said quickly. “Hurry, Grace.”
I looked at the mess of carbon in the dish. I could see Roger at the desk, grinning suddenly and writing like mad, and, I could guess that what had seemed funny when he wrote could easily be anything but funny now, and that Jerry was frightened . . . more frightened, I imagine, than she’d ever been in her life before.
