Escape the Night

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  Of course no one was there. There’d been time for whoever it was to get away. In all that confusion of sound it would have been easy, or perhaps light, furtive footsteps, running, had been a part of those sounds. The hall was almost dark. Jem was running upstairs, one of the steps creaked loudly and she could see his light raincoat swing into the shadows up at the curve in the stairway. The railing caught a dull and subdued highlight from somewhere. Then she trod on something that crackled and looked down. The lamp that had stood on the chest in the corner lay in chunks and pieces on the floor. The shade had rolled off and was battered-looking, caved in along one side. The lamp cord, detached four years ago when she’d closed the house, clung to a part of the base of the lamp almost at her feet.

  So that was what had broken. Whoever had been on the stairway hadn’t stopped there but had actually come quietly on, down into the hall, and had been near enough the chest to knock over the lamp. He could have gone then, very quietly out the front door and into the wet shrubs and madrone trees. Or he could have run lightly down the narrow hall, and out the back door, if it was open. As it must be; Leda must have known it and entered the house by that door. It had been Leda, she remembered suddenly, who had said the Casa Madrone was not locked. There was, of course, a large bolt on the inside of the door just off the kitchen, and no key. There had never been a key. In the days when the house was built, people didn’t use keys for the back entrance. There was always somebody around the kitchens, a horde of servants—Indians, Portuguese, Mexicans; a new and modern lock had been put on the great front door, but they’d used the same worn but solid bolt for the back door that three or four generations of Marchs had already used. Sometime, someone (the caretaker probably) had opened that door and forgotten to bolt it again. So whoever was there could have escaped that way.

  Who was there? Leda’s murderer? It was murder, wasn’t it? Murder—a strange and incomprehensible word—a dreadful word. It meant Leda there behind her. In the quiet, empty house, among the wet and dripping madrone trees.

  She would follow Jem upstairs.

  She could hear him, for his footsteps were heavy and quick, muffled by the thick walls but audible. Obviously he was searching; a door banged, a chair or some heavy article of furniture was pushed aside. She didn’t follow him; she just stood there, hands tight on the railing, refusing with all her will to look back toward the door into the drawing room. Leda.

  Jem was coming down by way of the back stairs, a narrow twisting little flight of steps, that came out in the kitchen hall and were dark and smelled of old wood. The whole house had an indescribably familiar, yet half-forgotten smell of old plaster and old wood and old chimneys—and lingering traces of lavender and the potpourri her grandmother had made of the roses from the garden. It seemed very clear in the dusk. There’d been tobacco scent, too. She’d noticed it when she entered, she remembered suddenly, and had thought that someone must have been smoking there quite recently.

  And thought sharply, someone? Leda? Or Leda’s murderer?

  Who might still be in the house.

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  It took awhile to get a fact like murder into one’s mind. It took awhile to drag one’s self out of that dreadful pit of confusion and darkness and horror. She must steady herself, think, do something.

  Well, then, what?

  A door off in the distance opened and a faint chill draft crept along the hall. It was the back door. Jem had gone outside then, searching. But one man alone couldn’t search the close-pressing shrubs, and the trees and the hedges. There were a hundred ways for anybody who wanted to, to escape. If whoever had stood there on the stairway had murdered Leda, then it was dangerous, too. Dangerous to search, dangerous to know, dangerous …

  Moments must have passed and she was still clinging to the railing as if frozen to the spot when there were sounds again in the back and Jem appeared suddenly at the end of the hall, running toward her. “Serena?” He came again from the gloom at the end of the hall as he had emerged from the darkness at the end of the long drawing room. “Are you all right? I shouldn’t have left you alone. I didn’t think. I …”

  “Nobody was there?”

  “No. Unless I missed him. It’s no good trying to search the grounds. Nobody’s in the house. I tried to turn on lights. It’s dark back there. We’ve got to get the police. Where’s the telephone?”

  “There in the study—no! It’s been disconnected. And the lights, too.”

  “Serena.” His face was very white against the growing dusk in the hall. He put his warm, strong hand upon her own still clutching the stair railing. “Tell me exactly what happened. Quick. How long have you been here? What was that noise?”

  She answered the second question first. “The lamp—it stood on the chest. Whoever was here knocked it over. So somebody was here, Jem.”

  He looked, removed his hand and went over toward the broken pieces, examining them slowly, moving one piece meditatively with his foot. “Where were you? Here or in there …?”

  “In there. I had just found—her.”

  “You don’t know who it was—here, I mean?”

  “No. I couldn’t see. I—well, I couldn’t move. I only heard someone coming downstairs. Very softly. Then everything stopped. Until you spoke and then, right away, just as you spoke, there was the crash of the lamp.”

  “I thought my voice startled you and you made some quick move and knocked over a vase or something. I had just come in. The back door was open. I thought you were Amanda. I just saw you standing there against the light and your red raincoat. Amanda’s got one like it …”

  “This is Amanda’s.”

  “Then something crashed, and I thought you’d knocked something over. I got closer then and saw it was you.”

  “I came to meet Leda.” Her voice sounded queer and faraway.

  He looked at her hard. “You’d better get out of here. You look … Come on. This way. Don’t faint, for God’s sake, Sissy.”

  He swung open the wide front door and gray twilight and moist fresh air rushed upon her face. He put his arm around her and led her past the broken pieces of the lamp and out onto the veranda. He closed the door, leaving Leda forever silent in the silent house.

  The gray-green madrone trees and the soaked heather and broom pressed closely around the driveway and the veranda and seemed to listen. It was perceptibly darker than it had been when she entered the house. It hadn’t been long, however, even though she felt as if immeasurable time had passed. The station wagon, of course, was still there, exactly as she’d left it, its sides glistening with moisture. “Take a long breath,” said Jem. “That’s your station wagon, isn’t it? I mean Sutton’s; the one you drove?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mine is parked outside the gate. I wasn’t sure you’d be here. I’d stopped at the ranch and Modeste told me you’d taken the station wagon and gone. She didn’t know where.”

  “You came to find me?”

  “I guessed you might come here, just to take a look at your house. Now tell me. What about Leda?”

  Serena took another gulp of the fresh, cold air. “She phoned.”

  “Leda?”

  “Yes. She said to meet her here. I came. I came in the door, I had the key, and nobody was there. I went into the room where she is. I thought it was a roll of rugs.…”

  She stopped because all the wet green shrubs and madrone trees were wavering around, moving from place to place, circling in a hazy kind of dance. All she wanted to do was sink into the peaceful gray-green swirl; but Jem put his arm tight around her again. There was the sound of gravel under their feet and she was aware of heavy and reluctant motion on her part. Jem opened the station wagon door and got her into the seat. “Put your head down,” said Jem’s voice. “Quick. Bend over, Serena …”

  She bent over against him; her head began to clear and things stopped their disconcerting motion. She opened her eyes and Jem’s face was very close to her own and ve
ry white and intent. “All right now?”

  “Yes.”

  He was frowning. “We’ve got to get the police. And a doctor, I suppose, although … Where’s the nearest neighbor?”

  She couldn’t think: He meant to telephone from there, of course. There were houses among those fog-covered valleys and hills. She said slowly: “I think the Murrays are gone. That’s nearest. And the Brewsters … I don’t know. The village would be quicker.”

  “All right. Can you drive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure. You look pretty white.”

  “Shall I go for the police?”

  “I’ll stay here,” he said, but his eyes still questioned her and, as she tried to make her leaden muscles function and move her over into the driver’s seat, he said abruptly: “No. I’ll drive. We’ll both go. After all, there isn’t anything either of us can do for her. And only whoever killed her knows she’s there and he’s getting away as fast as he can.” He closed the door beside her, ran around the front of the car and got in the driver’s seat. The sound of the engine was frantically loud against the listening, gray-green shrubbery. Anyone in the house must have heard it—except Leda who would never hear anything again.

  The station wagon backed, shot ahead, backed—all of it seeming strangely loud, as if its loudness were out of place. Then they started back along the narrow driveway, with the small wet fingers of shrubs moving softly against the windows. They reached the gates, turned and passed another station wagon parked at the side of the road.

  “There’s my car,” said Jem. “Or rather, Dave’s. If there’s a short cut to the village, show me.”

  Afterward she remembered that ride down into the little town very clearly. She watched for the curves and the misty outlines of the clumps of eucalyptus trees and told him when and where to turn. Her consciousness seemed to reach out almost gratefully for familiar things; things that had nothing to do with the incredible word, murder. Even the swish of the windshield wiper, making angular short vistas into the fog held for her the utmost interest. Jem’s profile was straight and hard against the gray windows. He was frowning, watching the road, driving carefully because of the fog but thinking hard.

  “Jem,” she cried all at once as if it hadn’t been put into words before. “She’s dead. And if she was strangled …”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean—of course it’s murder.”

  “She couldn’t have taken—well, whatever strangled her, away from her own throat.” He glanced quickly at her. “Don’t talk if you don’t want to.”

  “Jem, that’s what they said about Luisa!”

  He’d thought of that. He said briefly: “Yes. There’re cigarettes in my raincoat pocket. Get them out, will you?”

  He was leaning over the wheel, peering into the fog ahead. The small ordinary business of fumbling into a pocket for an ordinary package of cigarettes was oddly comforting, as if in its small way it affirmed the existence of an ordinary world where murder didn’t exist. She shook out two cigarettes, lighted them and gave one to Jem. The cigarette was comforting too, matter-of-fact, and real.

  But Leda was real, too, back in that silent, waiting house among the wet madrone trees.

  “Jem, who did it?”

  Jem did not answer for a moment, although he slowed down a little; he’d been driving as fast as he could, guiding the car by instinct apparently around all but invisible curves. Finally he said: “I don’t know. She must have been murdered. That is—well, somebody removed whatever it was that strangled her. I suppose that whatever was used might have identified in some way whoever it was that did it. And so it was removed. I haven’t had time to think. I’m not a detective. But Luisa’s death—only yesterday. The thing for us to do is to go straight to the police.”

  “I talked to Leda. She asked me to meet her there. She said in twenty minutes. But it was more than that. Enough for …”

  “You’re sure it was Leda you talked to?”

  “Oh, yes. I know her voice.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “She said I must meet her. She said—oh, Jem, she said she knew something about Luisa’s death! She said she knew how it was done. She said she was in a drugstore at Monterey. She said she thought she might have been followed—from Gregory’s. She said …” She stopped. Leda had said that Luisa and Amanda had quarreled over Jem!

  Leda had been excited. Leda had always had some sort of fanciful and more or less hysterical story up her sleeve. It was the same kind of half-candid, half-secretive accusation which she had poured into Serena’s unwilling ears in New York, when they met there.

  But she’d said that Luisa would force Sutton to “take some notice.”

  And she’d said, in her rapid, hysterical way, that if Luisa had been murdered, if Amanda had known of that murder in advance, which was inconceivable, Amanda “wouldn’t have stopped it.”

  Jem was going to make her repeat that conversation. Jem was stopping the car abruptly. He put on the brake and turned in the seat to face her. “Tell me exactly, everything you can remember, that she said. Hurry, Serena. But don’t leave out anything.”

  Well, it wasn’t going to be easy. What would Jem say? She told him, staring into the fog, and trying not to listen for a quick, denying word. Jem smoked and listened, his face withdrawn and rather rigid-looking, like a mask, his eyes narrow. She made herself tell exactly what Leda had said. And stopped with a quick glance at him which told her nothing. His mouth was tight and he, now, was looking with narrowed eyes into the fog.

  Her heart was pounding so hard she thought he must hear it. Surely he’d say something. He would tell her that Leda was mistaken. Everybody knew that Leda’s tongue ran away with her.

  Perhaps that was why Leda lay, distorted and unbeautiful, back in the quiet house! It was an unwelcome thought that had its own peculiar horror. Jem spoke at last: “But what did she know?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She said she couldn’t tell the police.”

  “Yes. I know. I meant, what could she have known! Gregory’s is a hardware store in Monterey. But who—or what—did she see there? That’s all she said?”

  “It’s everything I can remember.” Now he’d speak. Now he’d say, “That’s all nonsense about Amanda, you know. I liked her a long time ago. But that’s not why I’m here now. There’s nothing now between me and Amanda. She wouldn’t have quarreled with Luisa about me. Sutton’s my friend; he knows that everything’s all right. I’m not in love with Amanda.”

  He turned and met her eyes. His own were narrow and dark and unfathomable. He did speak but he said: “Serena, why did you come home?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WINDSHIELD WIPER SWISHED back and forth, back and forth; but it was as if Serena heard too, faint and far away, the murmur of voices and the subdued, musical little clatter of glasses in the Plaza bar. Leda, of course, had begged her to come.

  She hadn’t actually come because of Leda’s plea. She had come because Leda, inadvertently it had seemed, had mentioned Jem, and had said that he was there.

  Time was passing; they must get the police. She was aware of that too. She said with a kind of weariness: “I saw Leda in New York.”

  “Did she ask you to come home?”

  “Yes. But that isn’t why …”

  Jem interrupted. “I’d better drive on while we talk.” He started the car into the faintly dissolving tunnel of gray ahead. Leaning over the wheel again he questioned her. “Why did she want you to come?”

  “She …” Serena stopped at the sudden and sharp realization that everything she said seemed to attack Amanda. Amanda who was her sister. Amanda, who needed, she’d felt, protection; and Amanda who had been and, according to Leda’s story which Jem had not denied, still was her rival. And her successful rival.

  One didn’t attack one’s rivals, like that. It wasn’t only, she suddenly then discovered, because of the rules of good sportsmanship and decency. It was be
cause if Jem still loved Amanda anything that attacked Amanda would hurt him.

  And that struck her as being rather queer. Jem said: “Go on …”

  “She begged me to come,” said Serena slowly. “She was worried about—well, you know how Leda was. She got silly ideas.”

  “Not always. What was she worried about?”

  “I didn’t give it any weight. But I got to—thinking about home and …”

  “I suppose it was Johnny,” said Jem dryly. “And Amanda.”

  “Leda was mistaken.”

  “Well,” said Jem still in that dry tone, “as a matter of fact, she was. If she thought Amanda was going to break up her marriage anyway.”

  “There was nothing to it, Jem.”

  After a moment Jem said: “Amanda’s very attractive. But Leda needn’t have worried. What did she tell you?”

  “Only that,” said Serena uncomfortably. “She said she was in love with Johnny, and—oh, just that Johnny liked Amanda. She asked me to come home. I told her, of course, it was nonsense: that she was making mountains out of molehills. And there was nothing I could do about it anyway. But she insisted and then all at once stopped and we separated. That was in New York. But then last night she tried to make something of Johnny’s little gallantry—you know … She got me aside for a moment and said—oh, Jem, she said something was going to happen!”

  “Something …” Jem’s face jerked briefly toward her. “Did she say what?”

  “No.”

  “Did you guess anything?”

  “No. You know how Leda talks. Talked, I mean. She … Oh, she was excitable. Not hysterical exactly, but …”

  “I know. Still,” his face had a certain grimness. “Still she seems to have been right this time.”