by Helen Reilly
It could so easily have been nothing. Charlotte was naturally secretive. She could spend hours of brooding, of mysterious comings and goings, of complicated figuring with paper and pencil, to announce triumphantly that she’d found a new way of circumventing an upholsterer’s estimate or of how Natalie could fit in a round of social visits.
Eve had tried to tell herself this in the shop, holding cold hands to the fire or walking up and down the floor, watching the clock and waiting for the telephone to ring, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. If everything was really all right, Bruce would go to the house and get Natalie and they would drive away together. She would know when she saw him. A glance from a distance as they came out would be enough. She wouldn’t be seen; the darkness would hide her.
So she had gone down to the Square.
But she hadn’t taken the fog and the crawling traffic into consideration, and it was twenty minutes of eight by the time she got there. There was no sign of Bruce or of Natalie; there was nothing but blackness and fog and the sickness of agonizing uncertainty. That was why she had gone into the house, opening the door quietly with her key. She had determined to see her aunt and find out whether Charlotte had seen Bruce and herself before the fire that afternoon and, if so, what she meant to do. She hadn’t seen Charlotte, or anyone else. Her adventures in the house had been exactly as she described them to the Inspector.
All during the dreadful day she had told herself wearily that whatever was lost, Natalie at least had been saved. Now she listened to the echo of Sergeant Jabowski’s words and the inner darkness rose in poisonous clouds, filling her eyes, pressing against her ear drums, stopping the breath in her throat. “No” she whispered again.
Charlotte had been killed with a rifle—and Bruce’s rifle was in his apartment.
She had seen the tip of the barrel that morning, where it rested against the wall behind the golf bag. The other guns, Hugh’s and Natalie’s, her own little .22 with the kick to it, Gerald and Alicia’s Remingtons, were up in the house in Eastport. But Bruce’s was here, in New York.
Eve knew little or nothing about the science of ballistics. She had never been interested in hunting and shooting, as the others were, had had a tendency to fire the pretty little rifle Natalie had given her with her eyes shut. She had a vague notion that you could tell if a certain bullet was fired from a certain revolver but no idea whether this held true of other weapons. She did know that the finding of a rifle in Bruce’s apartment would be a catastrophe.
It would bring everything out into the open; Bruce’s telephone call to her after he got Charlotte’s message, the reason for it, and the real reason for her journey to the Square the previous night.
The rifle mustn’t be found.
She lit a cigarette and turned round slowly. Firelight, subdued voices, the tinkle of a spoon, the dull bloom of the silver pot in Alicia’s hand; tea had been brought in a few minutes earlier. The scene was almost exactly as it had been twenty-four hours ago, except that Charlotte’s solid unbending presence had been replaced by Susan’s easy grace. The red wing in her hat flashed. Hugh was looking at her and saying something and smiling. On the other side of the hearth Alicia and Bruce and Natalie were talking. Natalie’s arm was through Bruce’s and her smooth young head was tawny against his uniform.
How, Eve wondered, was she going to warn Bruce, so he could go and get his rifle and put it in a safe place until the one that killed Charlotte was discovered? She couldn’t warn him without attracting the attention of the others. Yet the rifle had to be taken away.
Bruce’s trench coat was across a bench in the hall. Perhaps his keys were in one of the pockets. She went through the archway. The hall was empty. Its big shadowy emptiness was frightening. Where had the detectives gone? Were they on their way to 11th Street now? She must hurry. She put on her things, went in to the fire and said to the assembled group. “I’ve got to go. Clara Long will be wild; she’s got Christmas shopping to do and I promised to be back early.”
Bruce didn’t say anything; he didn’t look at her. Natalie said, “Oh, Eve dear, can’t you stay?” She seemed to feel the need of people around her.
Eve thought with a stab of pain, She has Bruce, isn’t that enough?—and was appalled by the fierce quick thrust of jealousy. Bruce was Natalie’s. As much as one person could belong to another he belonged to her. She looked down into her half-sister’s narrow sensitive face. Natalie’s eyes were swollen with crying. Suddenly Eve saw her, not as she was, but as a long-legged child with two thick fair braids, running into the house with her school books under her arm, or coming in from a ride in her first hard hat on her first pony, and declaring that Eve, home from college, should have one too. “She’s got to or I won’t. I won’t!” She was the most generous, the most open-hearted person in the world. Remorse and tenderness swooped over Eve.
She stooped and put a hand on Natalie’s shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. “I’ll be back later, Nat dear. And do stop worrying and thinking about things. There’s nothing you can do, and if you go on like this you’ll make yourself ill.”
Outside the front door she glanced along the quiet street bounding the Square on the west. A soldier and a girl, a woman with a pom, an elderly nurse with two children, a man in a polo coat with his back to her, looking through the railings into the hidden park. Eve shivered. There were no policemen in sight.
The light was gray under a pressed-down, heavy sky. The air was cold. Without any particular reason, as she descended the steps and turned left, Eve thought of the man with whom she had collided in the fog when she left the night before. What was he doing there, idling in front of the house? He hadn’t stopped to light a cigarette, or anything. He was just standing still.
She gave herself an impatient shake. What did it matter? He wasn’t anyone she knew. The Square behind her, she walked rapidly south and then east. Would Mr. Graham be in Bruce’s apartment? If so, he would admit her. Suppose the police were already there? Worry about that and about how she was going to get hold of the rifle, what she was going to do with it, when she got there. If Mr. Graham wasn’t in...
She refused to think further. Turning into Eldon Place she slowed, approaching the brownstone house in which Bruce was staying, warily. Light traffic was going by in the street, trucks and private cars spaced the curb sparsely at intervals, a scattering of pedestrians with bundles, a street cleaner with a cart, a plumber’s van, McCracken’s Plumbing Shop At Your Service—Any Time, Any Place; there was no one who looked remotely like a detective or a policeman anywhere in the vicinity.
If Eve had turned then, she might have recognized the man in the polo coat who had been peering through the railings in Henderson Square looking into a florist window at the other end of the block. She didn’t turn; she mounted the steps and pressed the third-floor bell. The latch chattered noisily and her heart gave a great leap of thanksgiving. She ran quickly up the stairs, raking each hall with an exploring and fearful glance. They were all empty, innocuous. Graham opened the door of the apartment.
Eve smiled at him. “Again, Mr. Graham. We are making nuisances of ourselves, aren’t we? I lost an earring this morning. I wonder if I could have dropped it here. May I come in and have a look?”
Graham was charmed. They searched the living room together. Eve rose from beside a chair with the missing silver trinket in her hand, where it had been all the time. “I wonder, now that I’m here—the police are simply infesting the house on the Square, my shop—whether I could sit down quietly and rest for a little while. I know you’re busy with a story and I don’t want to keep you. I think if I just close my eyes...”
Graham threw his work away. There was no rush about it. He fussed, fetching a footstool, a cushion for Eve’s head. How was she going to get rid of him? Graham himself helped her. Would she have a Scotch, or he could shake up a cocktail? No, she wouldn’t have either, but she would like a cup of tea...there wasn’t a pinch in the house? Oh, then it didn’t matter.
As soon as the outside door closed, she locked it and re-entered the living room. Bruce’s rifle was there, behind the golf bags, invisible except for the tip of the barrel. She picked it up, thrust it down in among the sticks, threw the cover over the top, fastened it and slipped the catch into the lock. If she was stopped, if she met Graham when she was going down the stairs, she could invent an excuse for her hasty departure and explain the bag by saying she was going into the country and was borrowing the sticks.
But first, before she left, call Bruce. It would only take a second and if she didn’t call him and the police asked about the rifle he might say it was here. She carried the golf bag into the hall with her, propped it against the wall, took the receiver off the hood and dialed the Henderson Square house.
If Natalie or her father or Alicia answered, what should she say? Her calling Bruce would look decidedly queer. Could she disguise her voice? The idea was both ludicrous and distasteful. She didn’t have to put it into operation.
One of the maids said distantly, “Mr. Flavell’s residence,” and Eve asked for Lieutenant Cunningham. Bruce came on at the end of a long minute. By that time Eve was on fire with impatience. Words tumbled out of her. “Bruce, I’m at your apartment. Charlotte was killed with a rifle. I heard a detective say so. I couldn’t talk to you in the house...I didn’t want the police to find your rifle, not yet, not till they discover who killed Charlotte.”
At the other end of the line Bruce laughed. “Eve, you idiot,” he said softly. “Look, my pet, you’re playing with dynamite. Don’t be so ambitious. Leave the rifle where it is. I didn’t kill Charlotte. If you’ve got any such notion in your head—get rid of it.”
He seemed maddeningly unaware of the danger he was in. Eve said desperately, “Bruce, I’m going to take the gun to the shop with me. Then if...”
She paused. The hall was warm, dim; coldness washed along her arms, down her spine. A sound that wasn’t Bruce had come along the wire. It was small and fragmentary, a tiny almost imperceptible click. It was, or could be, someone putting one of the extensions in the house in the Square back into place.
Bruce must have heard it too, for he said in a hard curt voice. “All right, my dear, I’ll get in touch with you later,” and hung up.
Eve dropped the instrument into its cradle shakily and got to her feet. Fear was around her again, a huge net into which she blundered at every step. She told herself that she might have imagined the click; it might have been made by the operator, by someone calling the apartment. The fear didn’t leave her...She had to get out of here at once. She picked up the golf bag and started for the door. She was at it, with the knob in her hand, when she heard the footsteps, and the voices. Men, two or three of them, were coming up the stairs.
Eve had locked the door behind Phil Graham. The shrill ringing of the bell, the knuckles rapping briskly against the panels thudded against her with a physical impact. The police were in the hall outside. They had come to search the apartment for a rifle.
She backed away from the door, clinging to the bag. She had to get out of here. Her shoulder hit the wall—she couldn’t get out. There was no rear exit, no other door....In a moment Graham would come back. And then....
Graham did come back. He bounded up the stairs. Voices in the hall were a jumble. They moved closer. Eve stood motionless. There was a roaring in her ears. The sound of the key in the lock pierced the clamor. It was tiny and final. This was the end. She ran her tongue over dry lips and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eve’s inertia, her passive acceptance of the inevitable, didn’t last for more than a fraction of a second.
Outside the door of the apartment a detective said, “What’s the matter, Mr. Graham? Haven’t you got the right key?” and Philip Graham said, “It isn’t the key—the key’s all right—that damn night latch has slipped again...This is about the fifth time.”
Inside the door the poison of lethargy drained out of Eve. She understood what was happening. Graham had guessed that she didn’t want to see the police and was trying to help her. Without being aware that she had moved she was at the door, had her fingers on the brass latch. It fell softly into place.
If the sound was audible to the men outside in the hall there was no immediate reaction. Eve didn’t wait for one. The respite was only temporary. The police would be in the apartment in a matter of minutes, one way or another. Her brain was functioning again, coldly and clearly. She had to get out of here. There was no rear door, no other ordinary entrance or exit—but there was a fire escape. She had looked at the black veranda stretching across the living-room windows that morning.
She tightened her grip on the golf bag, sped into the living room and threw one of the windows up. Out, now. It was almost dark. She knelt on the fire escape, drew the unwieldy bag after her, put it down on black iron bars and lowered the window. There was no clamor from inside the apartment. Evidently the door still held. Sooner or later the police would get it open. She would have to hurry, and she mustn’t be seen.
Lighted windows in the backs of other apartment houses hung the darkness with squares and oblongs of green and lemon yellow and apricot beyond clothes lines and acanthus trees and a wildness of poles. An iron ladder led upward. Eve climbed it, her right hand on the railing, her left arm holding the golf bag to her. It was heavy and unwieldy and it bumped enragingly against the treads. She reached the fourth landing. There were milk bottles on it and a row of empty flower pots. The end of the bag hit something and there was a harsh rattle of breakage. A silhouette moved across the shade of the lighted room inside and a hand reached out. Eve didn’t wait. She leaped up the next ladder. It seemed to her that the bag was alive, that it had a monstrous existence of its own. She struggled with it pantingly. She was on the top fire escape. Nothing remained but four rungs going straight up in the air. Could she make it? She had to. Gritting her teeth and leaning perilously backwards above purple depth she kept on doggedly climbing, and was up and over the parapet at last and on solid flatness. She blundered on a little way, trying to be quiet and putting distance between herself and the route by which she had come. She halted near a vent pipe to get her bearings and her breath.
The last of the daylight was almost gone, except for a handful of sullen light in the west. Vague shapes rose threateningly on every side, but they were motionless, and didn’t converge on her. Gradually she was able to distinguish outlines. Number 2, the house she was on top of, was one of three brownstone houses in a row. Off on the left the sheer wall of an apartment house rose toweringly. There was no escape in that direction. She turned right. If she could find the staircase leading down into the third house, the farthest one along, she might be able to get away. Unless the police were lying in wait for her cunningly, ready to spring out from behind the first door she opened.
She did find the staircase and there were no police. She descended in dimness, listening at every step, holding the heavy golf bag high and clinging to the banister rail. Voices talked behind closed doors, someone hummed a tune, a child cried, a radio blared “Oh Promise Me.” Dust rose in little clouds under her pressing feet. If only she didn’t meet anyone...She collided with a man on the second-floor landing.
He wasn’t a policeman. He made no attempt to stop her, stood aside courteously. She didn’t look at him as she went past. She averted her face, horribly conscious of her burden. A golf bag was scarcely the sort of thing one carted about with one in early December. The first floor, the door, outer darkness. Eve stood still in the gloomy vestibule and glanced quickly along the street.
The plumbing truck was still in front of Number 2. Two men were beside it. They weren’t looking in her direction. She went down the three remaining steps, turned west and began to walk rapidly alo
ng the pavement, refusing to glance back, fearful at any moment of a hand on her shoulder, a voice calling to her to stop. Ten yards, twenty, there was no hue and cry; she drew a long breath, let air out of her lungs in a tearing sigh of relief and quickened her pace.
Behind her, on the other side of the street a man in polo coat detached himself from the shadow of a high brown-stone stoop and drifted along in Eve’s wake. Two blocks to the north she signaled a cab. She noticed the man in the polo coat then, standing on the corner below, without thinking anything of him.
She drove straight home, ignorant of pursuit, of the eyes fastened curiously on her peculiar burden from the interior of another cab near the garage. Inside the shop, with the batten door closed securely behind her, she put the bag down unobtrusively and walked forward.
Clara Long was seated at the desk at the back, making out bills. She greeted Eve with quiet sympathy. “Poor dear, you look all in.” She didn’t appear to have seen the golf bag. At any rate, she didn’t ask any questions. She knew about Charlotte. Jim had told her before he left that morning. She said the police had been there. They had poked around the shop and had gone upstairs.
When she saw that Eve didn’t want to talk about her aunt she added briskly that there had been a half dozen calls, from Mr. Holland, and Mrs. De Sange, from customers and one from Natalie. There were no messages. They said they’d call back.
Pulling off her gloves and hat, hanging up her coat, putting coal on the fire, Eve reflected wryly that she had left herself wide open. She said she was coming straight back here from the Henderson Square house and Susan and Natalie knew she hadn’t. Philip Graham must know there was something wrong, too, but he was Bruce’s friend. Bruce could take care of him. To be a good conspirator was an art, she reflected. She had no natural aptitude for it; she would have to learn. The first thing to do was to hide the rifle.
