Another Woman's House

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “You’d better rest now, Alice,” he said very quietly.

  “Yes. I’m just going.” She hesitated, looking at Myra. “You’ve been so good to us, Myra.” Her voice broke a little. She held the handkerchief tighter in her hand. “You came to a house with a pall upon it. You stayed here, all this time for Aunt Cornelia—and for Richard. None of us can thank you enough but I am more deeply indebted to you, Myra, than anyone else. You’ve been—wonderful.”

  I’ve fallen in love with your husband, thought Myra. If you had been one hour—one minute—later in coming home, I’d have consented to take your place. I’d have fought to take your place. And still in my heart I want it and I want your husband, and I’ve got to fight, all my life perhaps, against that longing.

  Richard’s face was white. She glanced at him and, with anguish in her heart, away again. He knew what she was thinking. He said, “Myra has been more than loyal; so has Aunt Cornelia. You must go, Alice. You can talk tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Alice, “in my own home. Every tomorrow—yes, yes, I’m going. But I can’t sleep. I told Francine to have Barton serve dinner in my room for both of us. You’ll come up then, Richard?”

  Richard’s lips tightened. “Yes, Alice.”

  She smiled and gave a little, childish wave with the crumpled handkerchief and went away. The soft rustle of her silken robe, the light sound of her footsteps diminished. Richard stood, watching her. Myra watched as she reached the stairway and started upward, so small, so slight and delicate a figure against the dark panels and the solid steps. Neither of them spoke until Alice had disappeared up the wide steps and around the turn of the broad landing.

  Then Myra turned and looked up at Richard and he was looking at her.

  “Richard, you heard her!”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanking me!”

  There was pain in his eyes and something else, something queerly like anger. Even through her own complex and mingled pain and self-reproach she saw that and was touched with question and a resultant small dismay because she did not and now never would know and understand his every look and every word with the dear accustomedness of marriage.

  He said in a strained, almost angry voice, “You must not reproach yourself or me. Nothing has happened that could possibly be prevented.”

  “We had no right …”

  “Stop!” He interrupted her with a harsh note in his voice as if the anger in his eyes had flared into a spark. But then immediately, if that was true, he controlled it. He said very quietly, but with great earnestness, “Listen, and remember this always. We do not require justification, either of us. That is not specious reasoning; it is fact.”

  But her own pain drove her on too quickly. “People always say that!” she cried. “It is always possible to justify some way a mean and shoddy …”

  He came to her and took her by the shoulders hard. “You are not to say that! There is nothing mean and nothing shoddy between us.”

  As suddenly as it had come the self-anger and wave of bitter self-reproach left her. “I was wrong to lash out at you like that, Richard.”

  His hold on her shoulders relaxed. She wondered briefly whether or not he had stopped what amounted to hysteria on her part. He said, “Yes. But I knew why.”

  “I felt ashamed and angry with myself. Until I saw her, I did not realize she was just the same. It was as if—the murder and the trial made a difference in her, as if it put her in another world, as if she wasn’t Alice. I never knew her well. We’d met a few times before I went to England with Aunt Cornelia. Somehow she had become—removed, a name. Not Alice.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  It had to be said, before the courage to say it was quite gone. “Richard …”

  His eyes quickened at the change and gravity in her voice. He waited, and she said, “Everything is different now.”

  “Nothing between you and me is different.”

  “She is your wife.”

  “She is no more my wife than she was an hour ago! No more my wife than …” he stopped, released her quickly, and turned toward the mantel. He said in a different, quieter tone, “I really mean that exactly as it sounds. You are right of course, Myra. She is my wife and—this—does change things. Outwardly, that is; there are different things to consider. But she has been proved innocent, pardoned. Therefore,” he paused but went on, “therefore divorce …”

  How could they have been so blind! “We were wrong! We didn’t realize what a divorce would mean to her. We can’t do that. Not now …”

  He was looking into the fire. She could only see his dark head, bent. He said slowly, obliquely, “I love you. Nothing real has changed between you and me; nothing can change.”

  Tears suddenly threatened her. She said, unsteadily, thankfully, longing to go to him, touch him, feel his arms holding her, shielding her, and knowing that she must not move toward him, “I’ll remember that. Always.”

  He whirled around. “What do you mean by that? Listen, Myra! I don’t know what’s going to happen right now, or how it’s going to happen. I wasn’t expecting this. There are—angles, things to think of. But you and I cannot change …”

  She stood, holding the chair, to look directly into his face. “I can’t argue, Richard. Both of us knew that anything between us had to be forgotten, as soon as we saw Alice. It’s so—different,” she cried. “Now that she’s home. We cannot add to the cruelty she’s already unjustly—so horribly unjustly—suffered.”

  She went to him then and put her hands upward, against his shoulders.

  “Richard, dear Richard—we will forget …”

  He did not reply, only looked at her with pain and again something like anger (With fate? With the way life arranged itself?) in his eyes and presently she put her head lightly against his shoulder, her face turned away from him so she looked at the ruby-red chair and the tall mahogany secretary. The Capo di Monte cupid smiled placidly at her.

  She said, slowly, pausing between the scattered words, aware of his nearness, too, and that, never again perhaps could she stand like that, leaning upon his strength and tenderness almost as truly as she leaned against his shoulder and felt the warmth of his arms holding her, “There is no other way. Alice is like a person who’s been sick and must have care. Like someone shipwrecked who must have safe harbor. We’ll forget, Richard, because we have to. I’ll go to stay with Tim. Perhaps—some time—the friendship we had in the beginning, Richard, will come back, without the—the other …” Her voice died away as she faced, in her mind, a bleak and arid space that lay ahead.

  Richard said nothing and gradually she became aware of his silence. She turned in his arms.

  His face was as blank as a wall; it was as if he had retreated behind that wall.

  He said, from an incredibly remote distance, “It would be better for you to stay here for awhile, Myra. Until things are more settled. Until, well, somebody murdered Jack Manders and they’re going to try to find out exactly who it was. And they have three suspects. Webb. Tim. And me.”

  CHAPTER 8

  IT WAS, AS A matter of fact, salutary, like cold water in the face of a distraught and half-hysterical person. It drew her instantly from the future to the urgency, and indeed the threat, of the present. “You!”

  “Well—yes. I’m sorry, Myra. I thought you knew that.”

  “Not about you! Not … Is that why the Governor looked so—so …” Hard? Implacable? “Suspicious!” she cried.

  “I thought you knew,” said Richard again.

  “No, no. I only thought of Tim. Oh, Richard, they can’t suspect you!”

  “I wish I hadn’t told you. But then you’d know tomorrow when the D. A. gets around to us. Or as soon as you had a chance to think. And you must believe me there’s no real evidence; they have to have suspects, that’s all, and …”

  She cried sharply, “But they never questioned you.”

  “Oh, yes. They questioned.”

  “But why?
Because they thought Jack and Alice … ?”

  “That was the theory. My wife, my house—my gun. But I didn’t kill him, Myra, and neither did Tim. So I promise you I’ll not let either Tim or me be railroaded …” Again she brushed away his attempt to reassure her. “You were not here! You were away! You didn’t come home until after the murder. The police were already here. You had an alibi. …”

  “I had an alibi of sorts. The conductor on the late train I took out from New York thought—rather vaguely—that he remembered having taken my ticket. I got here to the house after twelve. Jack was shot about ten-thirty. I could have come home about then, shot him from the hall or the terrace without Alice’s seeing me, escaped through the woods, and later returned home again, arriving this time openly and boldly at the front door. To find the police already here. It could have been done.”

  “Did they say that? Did they accuse you of it?”

  “It was suggested and I was questioned. But you see then Webb told his story. He said he had seen Alice kill him. That was the big, the important factor. Nobody after that was really suspected by the police.”

  “Nobody could believe that if you had killed him you’d let Alice go to prison.”

  “You heard everything the Governor said. I think that the verdict was a surprise in an odd way to everybody because they had expected her to be let off, whether or not she did it. I might have reasoned, you see, the same way. That I, in a trial, wouldn’t have a chance, but that she, a woman, young, beautiful, would never be convicted.” Suddenly he smiled. “But I didn’t. So put all this out of your mind.”

  She said somberly, “Is it—horrible? The investigation, questions …”

  “It isn’t nice, but they’ll not question you.”

  “But you had no motive, no …”

  “There was no provable motive for Alice to have killed him. If there had been anything in the nature of an affair between him and Alice, why, then I’d have had a motive, according to them.”

  It was merely hypothetical; it wasn’t fact; but even as a motive it had been strongly enough supported by the existing circumstances (and mainly by Webb Manders’ fraudulent testimony) that in a trial, in a court of justice, the jury had considered it so likely and substantial in its claims that they had accepted it, and had sent a woman to prison for life.

  Richard said abruptly, “But believe me, Myra, it was not a theoretical motive that convicted her. It was Webb’s lie. That was the keystone to the whole arch of evidence against her. I could have come home, leaped to conclusions that because Jack was here she’d been having an affair with him, and shot him and got away with it. But I think any prosecuting attorney would have a hard time proving it.” He looked at her soberly. “I think anybody would have an even harder time proving that Tim was implicated.”

  Tim! “Tim could not have shot him, Richard. I don’t know why he has done this. It does seem improbable that he could forget anything so important but …”

  “We’ll ask him,” said Richard. “He may not have realized the importance of the curtain. He may have forgotten. Or—well, we’ll ask him. But whatever he says or doesn’t say, he’s doing what he thinks is right. Believe that too, Myra.” He took both her hands. “Wait till you talk to him.”

  His face had suddenly a close resemblance to the portrait of his father that hung in the long, formal dining room—a fighting face, stubborn and a little arrogant, square-jawed, with deep-set eyes. “I don’t like Webb Manders; but I don’t think he killed his own brother. I don’t think Tim killed him. I am certain about myself. So far we are the only suspects. But a fourth suspect—unknown, unseen, but a suspect would be a great help.”

  She said half-puzzled, half-credulous, “Was there such a person?”

  He waited for a moment again, looking down at her. “Why not?” he said. And suddenly put his hands around her face and, holding it, said, “Wait, Myra. Don’t think, don’t try to make decisions, don’t do anything. …”

  “I’ve got to go away, Richard. I can’t stay here.”

  Again for an instant his face looked like his father’s, stubborn, implacable. He said: “All right. But you can’t leave this minute.” He took his hands from her face and turned and started for the hall. She said, “What are you going to do? Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to phone for Sam. We’ll have to get hold of Tim, too. Where is he?”

  Tim—of course. She told him the number quickly and then rose and followed him to the library door. “Let me talk to him, Richard, when you get him.”

  “All right. I’ll phone Sam first. He may be hard to find.”

  Along the hall, just under the great stairway was the niche where the telephone, an extension, stood on its table. She could not see Richard, but she could hear his voice. She stood there waiting, while he tried one or two numbers and then apparently at the third was told to wait. No one was in the hall. On some surface level of her mind she wondered where Barton was, what the servants were doing about dinner, and then remembered that Alice, rightful mistress of the house, had already given orders about dinner—her dinner and Richard’s, shared together over a small table, alone, in Alice’s wide, beautiful room with its silk and lace cushions and its scent of lilac sachet.

  She moved sharply. She turned back quickly into the library as if by sheer physical movement she could escape thought.

  Someone, of course, would have to tell Aunt Cornelia. Or had they already told her? Had Alice already gone to her to be welcomed with all of Aunt Cornelia’s staunch loyalty and feeling for family?

  It was darker. The window above the bookshelves, where the Governor had swept back the red curtains, glittered against the darkness. She started automatically to close the curtain and, as she did so, someone tapped quickly at the terrace door and opened it.

  It was Mildred Wilkinson. Her elaborately curled and coiffed hair looked disheveled. Her long, thin face was pale and her light eyes had bright, wide black pupils. She was wearing a dinner dress, a long, pale green chiffon with a light tweed topcoat slung around her shoulders. “Myra,” she cried, and came into the room quickly, closing the door behind her. “Myra, is it true? Is Alice home?” She saw the answer in Myra’s face. She cried excitedly, “I saw the car! I was sure it was Alice sitting in the back. But I couldn’t believe it. I simply couldn’t. I was just at the entrance of my own drive. … I’d stopped to see Dottie Campbell after I left here and I was turning into my own drive when the car passed me, and it looked so like Alice, somehow; veil and all. I watched and it turned in here, but I still couldn’t believe it. I went on to my house and changed for dinner and kept thinking, could it have been Alice and what happened! Finally I had to come! What happened? Is she ill? What has happened?” She was panting, her words and movements jerky and rapid. She stopped to catch a quick breath and Richard came back along the hall.

  “I’ve got Sam,” he said. “He’s coming straight out. But Tim …” He saw Mildred and stopped, and Mildred cried shrilly, “Is it true? Is Alice home?”

  For an instant Richard did not reply. He was thinking quickly, Myra knew, trying to cover all the contingencies that Mildred’s unexpected appearance and knowledge might evoke. He said then, directly and very gravely, “Yes. It’s true. But I must ask you not to tell anyone yet, Mildred. The statement has not been given to the newspapers yet and won’t be until tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I’ll not tell a soul,” promised Mildred hurriedly. “But what happened? Is she sick? What’s happened?”

  Again Richard seemed to think hard and quickly for an instant. “She has been pardoned. She’d want you to know.”

  “Pardoned!” Mildred’s face was a queer blue-white. She caught, her breath with a rasping sigh. She stuck her head forward greedily, so the cords of her thin neck showed up sharply. She’s older, thought Myra suddenly and queerly, than I knew. Mildred cried, “Pardoned! What has happened? Why …”

  “Webb Manders has confessed to perjury.”

  �
�Webb! But he saw her kill him. …”

  “He says he did not see it. He says he lied. It was all a lie. He has signed a confession to that effect.”

  “Confession! Of murder? Webb …”

  “No, no. Of perjury. Webb is to be charged with perjury. They’ll open a new investigation.”

  Mildred’s drooping, rather limp green chiffons seemed to waver limply, too, for a moment, as if deprived of support. She said, “Investigation …”

  “Yes.”

  “All that? All over again?”

  “I suppose so. Mildred, you must keep this to yourself for the moment. We depend on you.”

  “Oh, of course, of course!” Mildred stared at him unblinking for a long moment, then she cried, “I must see her.”

  “She’s very tired, Mildred. She’s resting. …”

  “Oh, of course.” Two red spots had come into her ashy face. She cried, clutching tremulously at her chiffons and her beige tweed coat with her long, thin fingers, “I can’t wait to see her. I’m her best friend. I only want to tell her how glad I am. But I mustn’t tire her. I’ll go now and come back when she’s rested.”

  “I know she’ll want to see you then.”

  “Yes, yes. How wonderful it is! I’ll go now.” She wavered toward the door, waved excitedly and hurried out. Her green skirts and flat-heeled gold sandals flashed along the terrace and disappeared. Richard said, “She was always crazy about Alice. Well, I got Sam, Myra. He’ll be here as soon as he can make it. Tim’s out somewhere. At least I couldn’t get him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll turn up. Don’t be frightened, Myra. He’s all right. And he’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

  “Why would he do it, Richard?” she cried again. “He couldn’t have really forgotten. He must have understood how important it was!”

  “You saw him in England, didn’t you? Later?”