Joel tried twice before he found enough voice to ask the question that hammered through that clamorous silence.
“Who was it then?”
“Don’t you know, Joel? Oh, I should have thought that you at least would have known. You love him, too, don’t you? … It’s Kit.”
The red-headed young man did not move. He stood looking down at her, the broken fragments of pencil still in his hand. After an interminable moment he said in a voice that he did not lift a fraction of a tone, but that was as warning and challenging as a tocsin: “Lindy …”
She met it, gentle and unflinching.
“You didn’t want me to tell them that, did you, Kit? You didn’t want me to tell even you that … I know. But how else would they understand? I’m sorry, but truly, I had to make them understand.” She turned back to Gavin Dart, a little smile edging the blanched lips. “You see, Gavin, he doesn’t love me at all, so it makes all this a good deal worse for him.… I’ve loved Kit for twelve years—frightfully. He didn’t know it until to-night, when I told him that I didn’t want to live without him any longer. It isn’t supposed to be a thing that nice girls do, but I believe they do it rather oftener than they’re supposed to. And I imagine that almost any man reacts just as Kit reacted—a little annoyed, a little disturbed—and a little—oh, just a little—touched.… But I don’t think that most girls mean by love what I mean. When I hear all of you talking about love, it’s as though you were speaking a strange language. You talk about something all compounded of ambitions and standards and exigencies and desires—something as mysterious to me as integral calculus or double-entry book-keeping.… When I say love, I mean thunder behind my ears, and lightning behind my eyes, and the stars in my hands …” She unclenched the small slim hands slowly, staring down into them as though in their cupped palms the invisible star still shone, terrible and beautiful. For a moment the terror and the beauty shone across the pallor of the small bent face—and was gone before those who watched it could draw breath. “If you ask Kit, he’ll tell you what he told me … that he’s worthless, and worse than worthless; that he’s a rotter and a dead-beat and a card sharp. I don’t believe any one of those things; but if every one of them were Heaven’s truth—if every one of them were proved ten times over—if every one of them were blazoned on banners in the market place, it wouldn’t make a feather’s weight of difference tome. He’s Kit; nothing else matters … nothing else matters in the whole world. He is the whole world.”
The red-headed young man who was her whole world made no sign that he even heard her; only his eyes rested on her, unswerving and inscrutable.
“Don’t you want to know how I killed Doug, Gavin? Or should I wait and tell that to the police?”
Gavin was not looking at her; he was looking at the broken pencil in Kit Baird’s fingers. After a moment he said quietly:
“You had better tell us first, I think. Then we can decide just how much to tell the police later.”
“Oh, I think that I’d better tell them everything—don’t you?” asked the crystal voice. “If I start telling some bits and leaving out others, I’m apt to get badly mixed up, and I don’t want to do that. They mightn’t understand at all why I did it, you see, and that seems to me rather important.”
“I am afraid that it may not seem so important to them.” His voice was heavy as lead—his eyes were heavy, too, as though it were an intolerable effort to keep them open, fixed on the violets and pearls and the white glimmer that were Lindy.
“Won’t it, Gavin? I should have thought—but of course you know so much more about them than I do; you’re probably quite right.… Still, I think that I’ll take the King of Heart’s advice: you know, begin at the beginning, go on till you’re through, and then stop. The beginning—” She paused for a moment, as though she were listening, and her eyes went past the huddled group about the fire to the dark hall. “The beginning was when Doug King called to me from the head of those stairs.… I was considerably annoyed at his calling me in that way; he’d been worrying me a good deal all evening, partly because he’d been rather insolent, but principally because I could see that he was doing his level best to start a quarrel with Kit, and I was desperately anxious not to have that happen. You see, Kit had come back to us, after such a long, long time—and I didn’t want him to be forced by any ugly brawling or scandal into going away again—I mean really away, out of our reach, out of our lives, into that strange land where he thinks that he belongs, leaving us as much shut out as though we weren’t really alive at all. I didn’t want that. I was willing to go to any lengths of compromise and conciliation to prevent it. So that was why I went up to him when he called as though he were the landlord of this inn and I were a little barmaid, docile and eager. I went to him just as eagerly and docilely as that barmaid—and with no more sinister intentions.… Doug was waiting at the head of the stairs. He said, ‘Come to my room, will you? There’s something I want to show you.’ I said, ‘But, Doug, what is it? Can’t you bring it here?’ He put his hand on my wrist, and said, ‘No. I didn’t get you up here to argue with you. I got you here to tell you a few things.’ His voice was as hard and coarse as a—as a mule driver’s, and his face was hard and coarse, too—it was as though someone had drawn a sponge, dipped in filth and venom, across it, wiping out the old Doug, and leaving only this ugly stranger. I said, ‘Very well—I’ll come. But take your hand off my wrist, please.’ He didn’t take it off; he clamped it down a little harder, and pulled me after him down the corridor to his room.… It’s the farthest room down the north corridor, and for a moment I thought that there must have been a window left open in it—it looked blown to pieces. One of the muslin window curtains was down, and there was a chair tipped over, with a lot of clothes sprawling away from it, and one end of the dressing table was swept quite clear; I could see the little leather boxes, and an empty glass and some brushes and collar buttons scattered almost to the door. After a second or so I realized that it couldn’t have been rain or wind; there wasn’t even a spatter of rain anywhere, and there was another glass and a tall flask on a little candlestick table almost under the window; it hadn’t even been touched…. I tried to pull my wrist away, and I asked, ‘What happened here, Doug?’ He said, ‘Oh, nothing. Your precious Kit tried to break my neck, that’s all. If he tries it again, I’ll break his—with a rope.’ I said, ‘Is that what you called me up here to tell me?’ And he said, ‘No. Come over here.’ … I knew exactly what they meant, the first time that I saw them; there were four of them, lying there on the desk, and the one nearest me—the ace of spades—had a little shower of red drops spraying across its face. They were the four aces from Kit’s pack of cards that we’d been playing with—the four aces that you have there beside you, Gavin. And before I could turn my eyes away, I knew why Doug had brought me to his room to see them. He turned them over, and I stood there looking down at the backs; they were red, too—red and black, like little Turkish carpets. After a minute he took my finger and drew it down across the back of the nearest one. In the centre of the carpet I could feel something small and rough, like—like a fairy nutmeg grater. It made me—it made me feel deathly sick, and I tried to pull my finger away, but he wouldn’t let me. He stood there pressing it down, and smiling at me … dreadfully. After a minute he said, ‘These belong to that precious blackguard of yours. If you’re a very, very good child, I’m going to give them to you for a wedding present.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And Doug said, ‘What I say. I have proof right here that he’s a swindler and a card sharp, and if we don’t strike a bargain in the next five minutes, I’m going to light a fuse that will blow him straight from here to hell. It’ll take me just about ten minutes to ring up every paper in Washington and tell them that that well-known sportsman, Mr. Christopher Baird, has been caught out cold, cheating an exclusive little group of his best friends at poker. And just for good luck I’ll call the police in on it, too, and lodge a charge of criminal assault. He damn near ki
lled me trying to get these cards away, and someone on the other side of that door knew it, too.’ I asked, ‘What is it that you want me to do?’ Doug laughed, and let go of my finger. He said, ‘It’s five minutes to twelve. I want to give you plenty of time to think things over. Big-hearted, that’s what I am! But if you haven’t been able by the end of the first round of Hide in the Dark to make up your mind to invite your guests to another of these delightful little reunions about Saturday, to celebrate the wedding of young Mrs. Marsden to young Mr. King, I’m very much afraid that I’ll have to use the phone to Washington.’ You know, Gavin, the funny part is that when he said that I didn’t feel anything at all—not anything. My head felt suddenly quite light and empty and peaceful … you know, the way it does after the second breath of ether. I thought, ‘This isn’t real. This is a dream; nothing matters in dreams.’ I went by him to the door, and opened it. Doug said, ‘That’s your answer, is it? I’m to turn your lover over to the well-known mercies of the law and the press?’ I said, ‘No, no—my answer’s yes, of course. I’ll ask them for Saturday just as soon as the game’s over. May I have the cards?’ He picked them up and put them in his pocket, and when he got close enough to put his hand on my shoulder he said, ‘My dear girl, do I look like that particular brand of jackass? If you’re a good, obedient little wife and do just exactly what Doug says, you shall have one whole one a year—and just to show you what a lucky girl you are, I’ll start you off next Saturday with the ace of spades.’… One a year—that’s four years…. I said, ‘Very well. Then that’s all, isn’t it? Let’s go down.’ He kept his hand on my shoulder all the way down the stairs, but when we got to the bottom he took it away and gave me a little pat, and went on into the room ahead of me. My head still had that heavenly light feeling, but it felt a little giddy, too, and I reached for the edge of the card table, and stood leaning against it. I could hear you all talking, and I could hear my voice answering, but if you were to tear me into pieces, Gavin, I couldn’t tell you what we said. Because there, right under my fingers, lying on top of those scattered cards and poker chips, was that knife—that little knife that Doug had said was so sharp.… I was still staring at it when the lights went out—and when Doug crossed over to Jill by the window I could feel how cold the blade was, and I wondered whether it was as sharp as Doug said.… I wasn’t paying much attention to what they were whispering, but suddenly I heard something about the purloined letter—and then Doug said quite clearly, ‘How about the big sofa—the one by the fire?’—and I knew—I knew perfectly what he meant. I had that chiffon handkerchief knotted around my wrist; I unknotted it and wrapped it round the knife, and started for the hall. Everyone was running and calling by then, and I called to them to wait for me, and ran on after them, up the stairs…. I came straight down them again after the gong sounded.” She paused, staring down at the twisted pearls between her fingers—twisted tight, tight like a rope.… After a long moment she said softly, “That’s really all, isn’t it? … He must have thought it was Jill when I came up behind him, because he didn’t move or make a sound.… I dried my hands on the chiffon handkerchief after I threw the knife away, but I must have got the blood on the violets when I bent over to get the cards out of his pocket. I slipped them into the front of my dress and walked out into the hall just a second or so before Jill screamed. That scream—that scream nearly rocked the earth out from under me. I didn’t know that Jill was anywhere near, and for one ghastly moment I thought that I’d gone mad, and that I was making that hideous noise myself. And then I heard you all running, and shouting, and falling over things in the dark, and I knew that I wasn’t mad at all—that nothing, nothing, no matter how dreadful it is, can drive you mad. When the lights went on I held my hand out to see whether it was steady.… Gavin, it was steadier than yours.”
The man whose hand was not steady put down his glass very carefully. He asked: “And it was you who put the cards under the record?”
“Yes. My bracelet caught, just when I slipped the last one in. I was coming back to get them and the handkerchief to-morrow.”
“Where is this handkerchief, Lindy?”
“It’s over there, stuck down in the corner of the big wing chair by the window. Kit, will you get it, please? I don’t—I don’t want to touch it.”
The red-headed young man laid the two scraps of pencil neatly on the mantel and crossed the room without a glance at the fragile loveliness deep in the green chair.
“There s one more thing that I want to tell you before you do—whatever you ought to do with me,” she said, her eyes still on the rope. “I didn’t realize for one moment, for one second, how hideously this was going to involve all the rest of you.… I thought that my mind was working beautifully, but I don’t believe that it could have been, because I was absolutely sure that if they couldn’t prove that any one of us did it, we’d all be immune. I didn’t realize at all that it actually made every person here vulnerable. I want you to know that. … I don’t know whether I’d have been brave enough to confess everything if you hadn’t found the cards, but I didn’t—I didn’t want to hurt you. I only wanted—dreadfully—to be happy. I still want to be. That’s what makes me so wicked.”
Kit Baird said from the corner by the window: “There’s no handkerchief here, Lindy.”
And Lindy flashed by the group of figures, lighter than wind.
“There is—there is—down here in the corner.” She raised a white face above empty hands, and said in a strange little voice, “Oh—you took it. Give it back to me, Kit.”
The red-headed young man said equably:
“I haven’t laid eyes on that handkerchief since midnight. And I strongly suspect, my child, that you know precisely where it is at the present moment.” He removed his hands from his pockets, and circled her wrist with two of his fingers, lightly and inflexibly. “Cold, aren’t you? Come back to the fire for a minute, then, and let me present the leading tragedienne of the age to the assembled company.” She followed him silently, her unwavering eyes fixed on his, something watchful and guarded in their depths, as though far, far below, a bell had struck a distant warning.
When he reached the centre of the firelit circle, he halted, turning her so that the light fell full on the still, upturned face. “Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel and Duse and Siddons herself must have died again of envy under their laurel wreaths this last half hour. I’ve seen some fairly good ones myself in my day, but never anything that could remotely touch this.” His fingers closed faster about the slim wrist as he swung her toward him. “Look at me, Lindy.”
She raised once more the velvet eyes, dark and inscrutable.
“I’m just a little displeased with you. I evidently overdid it a bit this evening. I didn’t mean you to get the idea that I was the particular type of blackguard that would dangle a noose around a lady’s neck to save his own.… Did you honestly think that I was going to play this little game?”
She said in a voice that was no more than a breath: “Kit, I do think you’ve gone mad.”
“Mad, have I?” He yielded briefly and noiselessly to mirth. “I’ll swear you’re magnificent. Stand right here like a good child, will you, until I get through with this. I like you around.… Well, Gavin, what’s the next move? Do you hunt up some handcuffs for me?”
“Is this your method of announcing that you killed Doug King?”
“I shouldn’t have thought that it was necessary to announce it—it’s simply transparent, isn’t it?”
“What did Lindy have to do with it?”
“Lindy? She had exactly as much to do with it as her black Persian kitten at home. You aren’t telling me that you succumbed to any of that superb nonsense?”
Gavin Dart rose slowly, the unlit cigarette that he had been staring at for a good fifteen minutes between his fingers.
“Give me a light, will you? I said at the outset of Lindy’s story that I believed her utterly incapable of such a thing. Before she finished it, I’d entirely
reversed my opinion. That may, as you say, be a tribute to her histrionic abilities. On the other hand, it may be ability on my part to recognize the truth when I hear it. I’m ready to listen to your version, naturally.”
Kit’s eyes, careless and mocking, met the cool appraisal more coolly still.
“Good Lord, do we have to prove that we’re murderers around this place? Well, get a notary public and swear me in; I have a much more orthodox version than Lindy’s, I give you my word.”
“Baird, I may be totally wrong, but I should say it would be difficult for any human being to invent on the spur of the moment the wealth of circumstantial detail that Lindy has produced for us here.”
“My dear fellow, she hasn’t produced one atom of circumstantial detail! You handed her this murder on a silver platter, and she handed it back to you. You told her where she was to stand to overhear the sofa business, where she was to find the knife, what she was to do with it, where she was to put it when she was through. You even gave her the cards under the record, as well as a shrewd analysis of how they got there, and I myself was obliging enough to present her with the blood on the violets. That leaves as Lindy’s sole contribution a blood-soaked but undiscoverable handkerchief—which I’m willing to wager is neatly tucked away in some corner, in as immaculate a state as when it emerged this evening. Still, I’ll grant that was a masterly touch, Lindy! For a good three minutes you almost managed to persuade even me that by some miracle you’d managed to plant one there, bloodstains and all.”
She cried passionately:
“Oh, and you said that you never lied! You can’t do this to me—you can’t—I won’t let you.… Give me back that handkerchief.”
He asked, half laughing, half compassionate:
“Lindy, don’t you know when the game’s up? You know as well as I do that I haven’t touched the handkerchief.”
Hide in the Dark Page 27
