Hunt in the Dark

by Q. Patrick

  The girl drew him into the apartment and shut the door. She looked up at him brightly, tossing back her hair.

  “Steve, you don’t remember me. Have I grown that much?”

  He remembered Dennie, of course. Although Celia’s kid sister had been a gawky fifteen-year-old when he left, he’d recognized her after that first haunted moment.

  “Hi, Dennie, baby.”

  He kept his hands on her arms, looking at her. It hadn’t been all imagination. She was staggeringly like Celia. It threw him further off balance that she could have changed so much.

  “Steve, this is wonderful. I never dreamed you’d come.” She flushed slightly. “How long a leave is it?”

  “Not a leave, Dennie. Discharge.”

  Steve hadn’t planned on Dennie being there. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle her. He glanced around the room. It was lovely. Celia had a way with rooms. Soft colors, soft lights. There were freesias too in a tall white vase.

  Trying to sound casual, he asked “Celia around?”

  Dennie wasn’t looking at him now. “No, she’s out,” Impulsively she added, “Steve, do you think you ought to see her?”

  His sense of danger was growing by the minute. You never could tell in New York. Tony’s body already might have been found.

  “She’s different, Steve. She … Oh, I don’t know how to say it. It won’t do any good seeing her.”

  Her young eyes were watching him earnestly. She was pitying him and that was one thing he wouldn’t take from anyone.

  “What do you think I’m going to do when I see Celia—faint?”

  “Steve.” She ran to him and clutched his hand in her warm, soft fingers. “Don’t be bitter, Steve, please. Oh, it’s been the most ghastly thing that’s ever happened. Tony was a terrible mistake. You and Celia … It was so right. The two of you … You’ll never know what the two of you meant to me. Steve, don’t make it hurt you more than it has already.”

  Steve tugged his hand out of hers. “If I want advice for the lovelorn, I’ll buy me a newspaper. Where’s Celia? That’s quite a simple question, isn’t it?”

  Her lips were trembling as if he’d struck her. He felt suddenly ashamed.

  “Sorry, baby.” He patted her arm. “Army life’s hard on manners. Give me a little time.”

  “It’s all right, Steve.” Very softly, she added, “Celia’s at the Topaz Club with Goody Taylor.”

  “Goody Taylor? I thought he’d been embalmed years ago.

  When did she leave?”

  “Around eight.”

  He felt a tingle of hope. Tony had been killed between eight and eight-thirty. Celia had been with Goody Taylor since eight.

  “Steve.” Dennie’s voice was husky with anxiety. “Promise me you won’t do anything. Promise.”

  But Steve was halfway to the door.

  The scent of the freesias seemed to follow him all the way down the street.

  IV

  Steve pushed his way through the evening crowd on the sidewalk to the entrance of the Topaz Club. A liveried doorman, conscious of the social importance of the door he guarded, loomed in front of him.

  Steve had never been here before. In the old days Celia had hated smart places. Dumps with lugs, she’d called them. He passed the doorman into a lush foyer.

  He gave his garrison hat to the check girl. The manager was talking to a woman in low-cut evening gown and a colonel plastered with gold braid. When he saw Steve, he left them and drifted inquiringly forward.

  “It’s okay,” said Steve. “I’ll find my party.”

  He moved down a short flight of steps into the club. White baroque mirrors gleamed on burgundy walls, throwing back a kaleidoscopic reflection of faces, dresses, hands holding drinks. It was a small room with a pocket handkerchief of a dance floor. A discreet orchestra was playing as if it was afraid of being heard.

  A dump with lugs. Celia was right. The Topaz Club was just the Clover Bar with a penn’orth of interior decoration.

  Waiters were hovering near him. Steve paid them no attention. His brown eyes studied the crowded room, searching for Celia. He hadn’t planned on meeting Celia in a place like this where there was less privacy than at a Turkish bath. He had pictured them alone together in her room. It would have been possible then.

  Celia, he thought, I know you’ve killed Tony. But I’ve covered your tracks. Tell me everything. We’ll figure out some way. I’ll swear you were with me all evening.

  Suddenly he heard Celia’s laugh. It sounded clear, spontaneous above the babble. No one who’d heard Celia’s laugh could ever mistake it. Steve looked in the direction from which the laugh had come, and he saw Celia. She was at a table in a corner across from a plump black and white man with a red carnation in his buttonhole. “Goody” Taylor.

  He’d known it would be bad seeing her, but it was worse than he’d expected. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. It was because Celia looked exactly the same. Celia, who was so changed, shouldn’t look the same. But there she was, her silver blonde hair swept up, the skin of her bare shoulders dusky cream above the smoky blue of her gown. Her profile was exactly as he remembered it, delicate, magical, her white throat curved slightly backward as she laughed.

  Something in him exulted. She couldn’t possibly be sitting here laughing if she’d murdered Tony less than two hours ago.

  The intensity of his gaze must have reached her, for abruptly she turned from Goody and was staring straight at him.

  For a moment her face was blank. Then it broke into a radiant smile. She rose. She drifted through the tables. She came straight to Steve. She put her bare arms around him and kissed him.

  There was no awkwardness in her, no embarrassment at the interested glances thrown at them. In the past Celia’s utter lack of self-consciousness had been one of the things he loved. Now, with all that had happened between them, it seemed jarring, almost exhibitionistic.

  “Steve, darling!” she cried. “It’s great to see you.”

  She was different. He could see it now that she was close to him. She was just as beautiful, but there was a shadow. There was something strained, haunted in her gaiety. She’s been through hell, too, he thought.

  “Hullo, Celia,” he said.

  For so many months he’d struggled with what he’d say to Celia when he met her. This was how it had turned out.

  Still smiling, she slipped her hand into his and started to draw him through the tables. Her voice chattered on, fashionable, meaningless.

  “Steve, what is it? A leave? Why didn’t you write me?”

  They reached the corner table. A magnum of champagne, in a silver ice bucket, stood between two glasses. Goody Taylor, plump, florid, like a cynical baby, stared up at Steve from small, bored eyes.

  “Goody,” said Celia, “you know Steve.”

  Goody stretched out a pudgy hand. “H’yah, Sergeant. Any friend of Celia’s is no friend of mine.”

  Celia laughed. “Goody, don’t be clever. This is Steve, my ex-husband.”

  “Oh,” said Goody. “People in uniform always look so depressingly alike.”

  Celia said, “Sit down, Steve, and tell me about the Pacific.”

  “Maybe you’d like to hear about the Pacific—alone,” Steve suggested.

  Goody darted him a quick, suspicious glance.

  Celia said, “Of course, darling.” She patted Goody’s arm. “Be a baby. Go flirt with some of those dismal models of yours. Just for a little while. Steve and I—we haven’t seen each other for a long time.”

  Sulky, but obedient, Goody rose from the table and waddled away. There was some champagne in Celia’s glass. She titled the glass to her lips. Steve noticed her hand was unsteady. She was feeling then. In spite of the brittle front, it did mean something to her, seeing him.

  He said, “How about moving on to some place less infested with Society?”

  “No, Steve.” She shook her head almo
st violently. “I like it here.”

  “You used to hate these places.”

  She didn’t reply. An awkward silence fell between them. Desperately Steve groped to find a way to cope with this almost impossible situation. Suddenly Celia laughed.

  “There must be something for an ex-husband and wife to talk above. Do you still like your eggs soft boiled at breakfast?”

  She poured more champagne. A little splashed over the rim of the glass.

  Steve said, “Do we have to talk about eggs? Or us, for that matter?”

  “Why not?” Celia’s smile was studiedly casual. “After all, we don’t have to be tragic about it. Other people get divorces, too.”

  “Do they? Nobody told me.”

  “All right, darling” Celia shrugged her exquisite bare shoulder. “I was a heel. If that’s the way you want it. I walked out on you. I made a mess of my life. So what?”

  “Celia!” “I’m sorry if it caused you grief and pain in the Lesser Hebrides or wherever you were. But I’m not sorry for myself. I was born to make a mess of my life. I enjoy it. It’s fun.”

  “You’ve changed,” Steve murmured quietly.

  “Oh, no, darling, it’s just that you never really knew me. I’ve always been a—what’s the polite word for it? Butterfly, isn’t it?” She fluttered her hand through the air, imitating a butterfly.

  A man at an adjoining table thought she was waving at him. He smiled. She smiled back. She was deliberately trying to hurt Steve. He could tell that. Maybe it was easier for her that way. Just as the champagne made it easier. If it did, it was okay with him. He was watching her hand, half-hypnotized.

  Could that slender hand, so familiar to him, possibly have fired a gun at Tony and killed him?

  V

  he silence had come again. Because he could bear it and the suspense no longer, he tugged the compact out of his pocket. “Remember this, Celia?”

  T

  His eyes never left her face. The change in her expression that he had dreaded did not come. She looked town at the compact and then up at him questioningly.

  “Of course I remember it, Steve. Where on earth did you find it?”

  “At Tony’s.”

  “Steve!” For a second her eyes were off their guard. “You weren’t difficult with Tony?”

  “I wasn’t difficult.”

  “I mean you mustn’t blame Tony. This isn’t a Victorian set piece with a black-mustached villain. If he hadn’t double crossed me first, I’d have double crossed him.”

  Steve was still watching her. “Yeah. I understood you were through.”

  She laughed. “You make it sound so portentous. Tony was just a thing, darling. There have been plenty of other things since Tony.”

  She had wrecked their marriage for a “thing.” Something as frivolous as a meringue. That’s what she was saying. She knew how to turn the knife in the wound, all right.

  He said, “Then you haven’t seen Tony lately?”

  “Oh, here and there, maybe at parties and things. But no, I haven’t really seen Tony in weeks. Why should I? Darling, why do you keep harping on Tony?”

  “A guy’s got a right to harp on something that lost him a wife, hasn’t he? Besides, I was wondering. If you haven’t seen him in weeks, how come your compact was in his apartment?”

  This was the moment. She twirled her empty glass languidly. “That’s easy, darling. I gave it to him.”

  Steve’s fingers closed tightly around the compact. He remembered his abraded knuckles and hid his hand quickly under the table.

  “Months ago, Tony was in one of his periodical jams with his wife,” Celia went on. “You know Virginia. He had to think up a present for her in a hurry. I gave him the compact.”

  She had given Tony the compact which had been the symbol of Steve’s love. Instead of it hurting, that news brought Steve a wild exhilaration. Celia had given Tony the compact months ago. It wasn’t hers any more. Then it wasn’t she who had left it at Tony’s apartment.

  “Maybe I was a heel about that, too.” Once again her voice was challenging, daring him to find a weak spot in her cynical armor. “But I can’t abide sentiment. When a thing’s smashed, it’s smashed. You can’t tie it together with little pink ribbons.”

  “Then Virginia must have left it at Tony’s apartment?”

  “I suppose so,” Celia laughed. “If you’ve snitched it Virginia will think Tony’s given it to one of his current girlfriends.”

  So she didn’t do it, Steve thought. She didn’t kill Tony. “Celia, if you were in trouble—real trouble—you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” he asked impulsively.

  “Trouble?” Her creamy forehead wrinkled. “Yes, dear, I think I would. You’re a wonderful guy in trouble. But then I don’t trouble easy.”

  “No prospect of trouble at the moment?”

  Her red lips parted in a smile. “The rent’s paid, if that’s what you mean.”

  He wondered why she was trying to make him hate her. Probably because she had more than enough men in love with her already. But he was seeing himself very clearly then, and he knew he would have gone on loving her even if she had killed Tony. Now he’d go on loving her anyway. There wasn’t anything he or she could do about it. The magic was still there.

  “Darling.” He felt Celia’s hand on his arm. “Don’t let’s be stuffy anymore. It’s our tune. Remember?”

  He realized the subdued little orchestra was playing “Night and Day.”

  Celia rose. “Let’s dance, baby.”

  Steve shook his head. He didn’t want her to know the wound in his leg had left him clumsy.

  “Oh, Steve, don’t be a bore.” Celia looked petulant. “Sorry,” said Steve. “So I’m a bore.”

  An unknown young man was moving through the tables towards them.

  “Hello, Celia.”

  Celia smiled at him ravishingly, “Hello, Don.”

  “Like to dance?”

  “Sure. I’d love it.” She waved her hand absently at Steve. “Bye darling. Look me up again sometime.”

  She drifted away on the young man’s arm. Soon he caught a glimpse of them among the crowded dancers. Celia was clinging to the young man tightly, her cheek tilted up to his.

  Almost immediately Goody Taylor came back to the table. He settled into a chair opposite Steve.

  “So she’s given you the air again, ex-husband.”

  Steve was watching Celia. He didn’t bother to reply. Goody Taylor leaned forward and tapped him the arm.

  “Listen to me. Soldiers coming back from the war don’t come back to girls like Celia. Forget her. Celia, find yourself a nice little number with a gingham gown and a light hand for blueberry muffins.”

  Steve’s brown eyes moved to Goody’s face then. It would have been so easy to knock him down.

  “Yeah. Competing with you would be kind of rough, wouldn’t it?”

  “Me!” Goody’s laugh was light and half-mocking. “Don’t be unkind. I’m just an old fat guy with a ready hand for paying a check—and no gingham gown. It’s Tony. Celia can kid herself, but she’s never going to get Tony out of her blood. Not till he’s neatly tucked away in a long, plain box.”

  Steve wasn’t really listening. All he was thinking was: So Goody’s in love with her, too. He felt tired. He got up. Giving Goody a vague glance of farewell, he headed toward the door. What to do now?

  As he glanced back at the dance floor, he saw Celia. She was still dancing with Don. He was holding her very close.

  Steve bought his hat back from the hat check girl. He headed for the door to the street. Behind him a voice called:

  “Steve!”

  He turned, hoping absurdly it would be Celia. But it was Dennie. She was wearing a low-cut black evening gown with a single gardenia, attached to a black choker ribbon, gleaming against the bare skin of her throat. He had never seen her in evening dress. Somehow it touched him. She looked so very yo
ung. “Hi, Dennie.” He smiled at her gently. “So you chased me

  with the smelling salts after all.”

  “Steve, I had to see you again.”

  He fingered the gardenia at her throat. “Pretty snazzy, aren’t you?”

  “Roy Chappell bought it.” She put her hand on his sleeve. “I was scared to come alone. So I called Roy. He’ll do anything for Celia, even tote her kid sister to the Topaz Room.” She hesitated. “I had to come because I’ve got something important to tell you.” He thought, Maybe the police have found the body. Maybe

  Celia’s name was in a phone book or someone told them. “Okay. But let’s move out of here. I’ve had enough glamour.

  There’s a milk bar across the street.” He smiled again to keep her from guessing he was anxious. “An orange drink. That’s more your speed anyway, fifteen-year-old.”

  “Eighteen, Steve.” She returned his smile uncertainly. “One minute. I’ll tell Roy where we’re going.”

  VI

  When Dennie rejoined Steve they crossed the street to the milk bar. It was bare, white and clean. A taxi driver was dunking a cruller in a cup of coffee at the far end of the counter. Steve chose seats near the door and ordered two orange drinks.

  The counterman brought them and strolled off to talk to the taxi driver.

  Steve was thinking of the murder. The compact belonged to Virginia Dort now. He tried to visualize Tony’s cool, impersonal wife shooting him.

  Another thought sneaked into his mind. What if Celia had been lying? What if she hadn’t given Tony the compact to give to Virginia?

  In a tight little voice, Dennie said, “Was she—very awful?”

  “Celia?” He shrugged. “She was having a good time, I guess.”

  “She’s not really that way,” Dennie blurted. “She’s deliberately doing it, deliberately making herself as cheap and horrible as she can so you’ll hate her.”

  “Psychology?” queried Steve quietly.

  “Oh, Steve, she loved you. You know she did. This thing with Tony was something mad, something outside of herself. She never really stopped loving you. She always keeps your photograph in her room.” Dennie was twisting her fingers together. “Listen to me, Steve. Things could be the way they used to be between you again. I’m sure. It’s just that she thinks she’s no good. She thinks she’s poison for you.”