Hide in the Dark

by Frances Noyes Hart

  Lindy, scrutinizing the little face, wan and peaceful as a tired child’s under its tear stains, asked gently, “Ray, haven’t they told you what has happened?”

  “You mean that someone murdered Doug King? Oh, yes—they told me that. Was that why they were moving the sofa?”

  “Yes. He was murdered on the sofa. Where are the others?”

  Ray, standing with hands linked before her, docile and passive as a small schoolgirl, cast a speculative eye toward the hall. “I expect they’re looking for the knife. Joel went into a perfect passion because Trudi said that of course some of the people downstairs would probably say that I’d had plenty of time to hide anything while I was up there, and he said that she shouldn’t set her foot out of the room until she’d examined every square inch of it, and Trudi said not to be such an absolutely awful jackass, and my head started to ache again, so I came downstairs—”

  Lindy asked incredulously:

  “You mean they’re actually searching your room for a knife? Oh, good heavens, has everyone gone absolutely out of their minds? … Trudi! Trudi!”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you and Joel to come down here. We’re all waiting for you.”

  “Well, we’ll be down in a minute. Joel’s mixing me some aromatic spirits of ammonia—anyone down there want any?” Trudi’s voice was hoarse with exhaustion, but it came as steadily as ever.

  “No, no—just hurry, will you?”

  The rueful incredulity still edged Lindy’s lips and twisted her brows as she turned to the men coming slowly back through the narrow door.

  Gavin Dart glanced up from a fastidious inspection of something on his cuff, caught the look, and went beyond it to the now scattered group.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Oh, Gavin, according to poor little Ray they’re tearing her room to pieces looking for a knife. I do—I do wish that you or someone else would go up there and stop them.”

  “He can spare himself the trouble,” remarked Trudi from the hallway. “We’ve stopped ourselves. We’ve been sitting up there on the edge of the bed taking turns holding our heads and administering rounds of ammonia.” She surveyed the faces before her with a certain amount of grimness. “I don’t know anything about the etiquette of an occasion of this kind, but it doesn’t strike me that a good rousing dose of it would do some of you any harm. How about it, Sherry?”

  Sherry repelled the suggestion with a vigorous contortion of his now clay-coloured countenance.

  “Good God, no! Thanks just the same, though, of course. Lindy, do you think that it would be—oh, you know—disrespectful or—or callous or anything if I mixed up a drink? I’m damn near all in, and it doesn’t make much difference to me who knows it.”

  Lindy, the shadowed ghost of a smile touching her lips, murmured: “It doesn’t seem to me such a very dreadful thing to do.… Wait, and I’ll get more ice. Someone will have to come with me, won’t they? You, Trudi?”

  But Sherry was waiting for no ice. He drank in great gulps, the glass clicking against his teeth, and he put it down as though he were loath to relinquish it even for a moment.

  “Lord, I’ve been craving that! Only I didn’t want to do anything that didn’t look exactly respectful.… I’m shot to pieces, and that’s the truth. He was the best pal I ever expect to have.”

  Gavin Dart, inspecting the two inches that he had poured in the bottom of his glass with scrupulous accuracy, glanced up swiftly.

  “I hadn’t realized that—tough luck! I don’t believe that we’re going to need the ice, Lindy. Fix you up one, Larry?”

  “Thanks—there isn’t enough whiskey in the world to do me any good.” He pushed the bottle from him, and turned a grimly interrogatory face to the assembled company. “Well, where are we now?”

  Gavin Dart replied thoughtfully, “Just precisely where we were, as far as I personally am concerned. Still completely, totally, and absolutely in the dark.”

  Kit inquired equably, “Has anyone any particular objection to making at least a gesture toward the light? No? Then I have two or three suggestions, to which you’re all naturally at liberty to give short shrift. The first is that we turn out these abominable lights, sit down quietly, and try to forget for a few moments that the Furies are at our backs.”

  “My God,” said Trudi wearily, collapsing into the nearest chair with complete and unqualified abandon. “I was just beginning to think that anyone with a grain of sense in their make-ups must have died ten years before I was born. Kit, I’m your slave from now on! What’s the next move?”

  “The next move,” said the red-headed young man, kneeling purposefully on the hearth, “is that I make a fire, and that the rest of you pull up around it. I’ve noticed before this that the mind and the marrow are prone to become chilled at one and the same time. Suppose we start with thawing out the marrow! There are a lot of pillows about. You take the trivet, Ray, and here’s a chair waiting for Jill that’s almost in the cinders.”

  “Not near the fire,” said the dreadful, polite little voice. “I’d rather not come near the fire.”

  “Jill,” said the red-headed young man in a voice that would have once again lured the children from Hamelin, “there’s nothing near the fire but a lot of poor devils who love you and want to help you. Give us a chance, won’t you? Here’s Larry, and Lindy, and that chair all waiting. You aren’t going to keep us waiting?”

  She rose, slowly and mechanically, the eyes of a sleep-walker fixed on her goal, while the halting feet followed the compelling charm of that voice as though it were a cord stretched for her to walk across the abyss of madness itself. Past the winged chair, past the satinwood table, past the little flower-sprigged tabouret, past the dreadful gap that had been the sofa—she caught frantically at the outstretched hand, and felt it draw her, strongly and swiftly, to safety, and the shelter of Larry’s arms and Lindy’s eyes.

  “And that makes all of us,” said Kit. “Here’s a stool for your slippers, Jill, and a pillow for your curls. Lindy, if you’ll start that coffee pot again, I can guarantee you at least one client—no, two, because Jill’s going to have one with me.… Well, that brings us down to my last suggestion, doesn’t it? Rather the most important of the lot, so you’d better get rather more alert and agog before you either accept or decline it. Just suppose we try looking this thing in the face, instead of crawling all around it.… Within the last half hour a murder has been committed in this room. Naturally, each and every one of us is under suspicion. And equally naturally, the ordinary procedure would be to get in touch with the police, in order to establish the other fellow’s guilt and our own innocence. But as that happens to be impossible, it seems fairly essential to get at whatever facts are available in as decent and orderly fashion as possible—essential, that is, if some of us aren’t to wind up in a madhouse…. Dart, you profess to have a fairly extensive knowledge of police methods and the majestic process of the law, don’t you?”

  “It’s been my chief interest for some years—yes.”

  “Then my final suggestion is that for the time being you represent the forces of law and order, and that we all agree to abide by your decision as to the best way to get at the discovery of the guilty one amongst us.… Naturally this suggestion isn’t going to be particularly popular with one of us, but it should be enthusiastically received by the other eleven, unless an accomplice is involved. Suppose we put it to a vote?”

  “Oh, come, that’s hardly necessary, is it?” asked Tom Ross, his haggard face relaxing to something like a smile. “You’re actually serving notice on us, Kit, that a negative vote is tantamount to a confession, aren’t you? It seems to me that common prudence suggests that we elect Dart by acclaim! Well, as far as the Ross family is concerned he may consider himself elected.”

  “Do I hear any dissenting voices?” inquired the red-headed young man blandly. “Not a discordant note, apparently! Dart, from now on you may consider yourself law, order, science, pu
blic opinion, judge, jury, and everything but executioner. I doubt whether so much authority was ever vested in one man before!… We’re all at your service.”

  Gavin Dart said quietly, “Thanks, I’m entertaining no flattering illusions as to my status; I’m in exactly the same boat as the rest of you, naturally. But I’ll accept your proposition for one very excellent reason.” He leaned forward, the firelight carving grim shadows along the lean cheeks and lighting dark fires of prophecy in the narrowed eyes. “There have been very few important trials here, in England, or on the continent that I haven’t followed in the last twenty years.… I know precisely what it means to be involved in one—I know precisely what it means to be caught in the path of great machinery of the press and the law that in these days constitutes a murder trial. It makes no difference whatever how innocent of the crime itself you may be; if you stand in the path of juggernaut, you’re doomed.… If we can’t hand over the murderer of Douglas King to the police before they take this case in hand—if this case comes to trial without a confession—every last one of us here will be on trial for our lives as much as the prisoner at the bar.”

  Lindy, her dark eyes darker, said softly, “Gavin, I’m very stupid, but I simply don’t understand. How can a person who is perfectly innocent be subjected to that? How is it possible?”

  “It’s not possible. It’s certain. Have you ever followed a trial, Lindy? Have you seen what happens to the witness on the stand? We will be witnesses, every last one of us—material witnesses: and I’ll be willing to wager that precious few of us who crawl out from under the wheels will find much sweetness or savour left in life.”

  Kit eyed him with neatly tempered irony.

  “Surely you’re not suggesting that even the blameless and the stainless will find the witness chair a seat of judgment? Some of us must have lives that are an open book for any runner to read!”

  “Whose life, Baird?” There was steel in the voice that turned back the light shafts of irony. “Yours? Mine? Hardy’s wife? Larry’s sweetheart? Find me the book that has in it no pages better left unread, no pages too sacred or too terrible for the breakfast-table consumption of tens of millions in letters three inches high.… ‘Club Man Under Cross-examination Admits Youthful Escapade Ending in Expulsion from College.’ ‘Young Society Matron Under Merciless Grilling Confesses Unrequited Love for Murdered Man’ … I tell you that simply you don’t know what you’re in for; I do.”

  “You seem a bit down on the law and the press,” commented Kit drily.

  “Oh, I’m holding no brief for or against them. I’m telling you that the very essence of cross-examination is to disgrace and discredit the poor wretch on the stand, in order to make the damaging testimony wrested from him by due process of law seem false, worthless, and, if possible, perjured. Twelve men and the world are listening to it; the job of the cross-examiner is to make twelve men and the world believe they’re listening to a horse thief and a wife beater who certainly wouldn’t be averse to such a minor peccadillo as taking a false oath on a Bible.”

  Kit drawled, “You make it sound highly unattractive. All right, suppose we all endeavour to keep off the witness stand! I’ll promise to answer any and all of your questions promptly enough to please even the police, but of course I take it for granted that you hardly expect that even the most self-sacrificing of us is going to tie a noose around his neck in order to keep his friends and relatives away from the horrid rigours of cross-examination? I imagine that you’ll have to take our answers with a little more than the proverbial grain of salt. I doubt whether even you will be able to convince us that confession is good for the soul at this stage of the game.”

  “Thanks,” said Gavin Dart. “Neither optimism nor credulity is listed particularly high in my list of virtues—I’ll not expect more candour than you’d show the police. I’ll content myself with stating that all things being equal, it will simplify things immensely if you’ll all try to tell the truth.”

  “Then we’re off,” said the red-headed young man. “How would our enemies, the police, start in?”

  “In all probability, after the good old classic formula—the one that was invented by Cain’s pursuers, I imagine.” He smiled, but the tired eyes were grave. “They’d undoubtedly endeavour to equip at least one of us with the eternal triangle of the means, the motive, and the opportunity. If that attempt proved too idealistic, they’d make for the essential clue. Failing even that, they’d cast a regretful eye on the Spanish inquisition and get down to brass tacks.… Suppose we follow in their steps, and aim first for the ideal … The means.”

  He paused, scrutinizing the lifted circle of faces with a look that was suddenly terrifyingly impersonal.

  “Doug King was murdered with a knife. That knife must be somewhere in this house; it is entirely within the realms of possibility that it is in this room. It’s hardly likely, you see, that the murderer had time to conceal it very far afield; every second that passed with it in his possession was perilous to him, naturally, and I imagine that he must have disposed of it at the very first opportunity.… Trudi, how long a time should you say elapsed between the last gong and Jill’s scream?”

  Trudi knit her brows, and beneath them the cool eyes travelled back farther … farther still … back to that shattered moment of incredulous horror.

  “Three minutes—four, perhaps. I couldn’t swear.”

  “You agree with that, Tom?”

  “Approximately. It certainly wasn’t less than three.”

  “Any other estimates? Between three and four minutes, then. Now after the scream, how long should you say before the lights went on, Larry?”

  “Good Lord, I don’t know—about a minute and a half?”

  “Oh, not so long! Not more than a minute, surely,” said Lindy, her lip caught in her teeth in the effort to summon memory back from that dark nightmare of confusion.

  “Did it seem longer than a minute or so to anyone here?”

  Hanna, stirring again from that deep dream of hers, said without turning her head: “It seemed longer than that to me. It seemed … forever.”

  Gavin asked quietly, “Did it strike anyone else as over two minutes, let us say?”

  “I doubt whether it could possibly have been as much as that,” Kit remarked casually. “I happened to glance down at my wrist watch a second or so after the lights went on. It was exactly ten past twelve.”

  Gavin glanced swiftly in the direction of the careless voice and even more swiftly back to the interrupted study of his cuff.

  “Now that’s decidedly helpful, Baird. Well, let’s see how our calculations work out. Say that we allow two minutes after the clock struck twelve to get to the upper landing and strike the gong; three minutes between the strokes of the gong; four minutes between the starting gong and Jill’s scream, and a minute or so between her scream and the time that the lights went on. That would make it about right, wouldn’t it?”

  “Just about,” conceded Kit thoughtfully, “Just about exactly right, if you ask me…. Or was it me that you were asking, Gavin?”

  “You or anyone else, my dear fellow. It’s thanks to you that we’re able to check it so closely, of course. Then that means that the murderer had barely four minutes between the last gong and Jill’s scream. He’d hardly have dared to go blundering about in the darkness in constant danger of discovery with the knife still in his possession, should you think? No.… We’ll find it in the room, I imagine. By the way, how many of you have pocket knives?”

  “Guilty,” said Kit promptly. “Bloodstains and all—here, catch!”

  He tossed it with an easy turn of the wrist, and Gavin Dart raised inquiring brows at the ugly red stain on the neat gold handle.

  “Cutting off those violets of Lindy’s,” explained Kit obligingly. “There’s some good damning circumstantial evidence for you! Does that let me in and everyone else out, Gavin?”

  “Well, hardly. I may be wrong, of course, but this looks entirely too small a
nd inadequate to have made such a ghastly thorough job of it. And of course I was witness to the violet episode.… Any others?”

  Sherry unhooked a platinum object the length of his little finger and the thickness of a quarter from the end of a miraculous watch chain, and Tom Ross surrendered a more utilitarian object with a rough bone handle and a good competent girth. Dart flicked it open, and sat weighing it thoughtfully in his hand; the circle sat motionless, their eyes riveted on the immaculate expanse of shining blade.…

  “Does that exhaust the knives? Well, we’ll start in on a systematic search of the premises after we get a bit further with our questions. Naturally, if a knife doesn’t materialize, we’ll all be subject to a fairly rigorous search before we’re permitted to leave the room.” The circle of eyes met his, inscrutable and unflinching; if the thought of a rigorous search was a menacing one, the eyes at least were not traitors. “That’s agreed, then. By the way, Lindy, were there any other knives available around here?”

  “There are several in the kitchen, of course, and some in that lacquer cabinet in the corner. Oh, and the one that Doug—” Her voice stumbled a little over the name and resumed valiantly—“that Doug was whittling the stick with…. Were there any left in the pantry, Trudi?”

  “Not as far as I know. Chatty and I put ’em all back in the cabinet.”

  Kit, his eyes suddenly intent, demanded:

  “Here, how about that knife of Doug’s? It was on the card table over there when I went upstairs. Anyone notice it since the lights came on?”

  There was a swift, negative murmur, and he swung to his feet, crossing the room to the far corner where the table stood, pushed back against the wall.

  “It’s gone,” he said. For a moment he stood staring down at the table, with its gay, untidy trail of scattered cards, cigarette stubs, ash trays and half-empty glasses. Then he asked, not turning his head:

  “Anyone put it away after the game?”

  The silence answered for them. No one had put it away after the game.