by Helen Reilly
The interchange was short and sharp. Kit said unhappily, breaking off a spray of lilac, “Libby, I want to talk to you seriously about Tony Wilder.”
“What’s the matter with Tony?” The demand was abrupt.
“Well, the Inspector says. . .”
Libby didn’t often display violent emotion. She was a mediator, a peacemaker, listening thoughtfully to others and then giving a considered judgment. But now, after staring at Kit hostilely, she flew into a royal rage. “The Inspector—who made the Inspector my mentor, gave him the right to choose my friends? I wish I’d never seen your Inspector. It’s all his fault. If he hadn’t come here nothing would have happened. That man on the phone told me not to talk to the police, and I did. Now William is dead. I’m sorry I ever said a word, a single word. It’s all horrible.” On that she flashed into the house and upstairs to her room. She was safe there in broad daylight. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock. Five minutes later Kit started for Anita’s. It was time to stop pussyfooting. William was dead and Kit was convinced that his death was murder. Pedrick had been in Denfield last night, or could have been, and there was a connection between Pedrick and Anita. It couldn’t be allowed to remain hidden any longer. Concealment was not only wrong, it was dangerous. Warn Anita, Kit thought, and if she won’t tell the Inspector about Pedrick, I will.
She was forced to go the long way, through the orchard. The news of William’s death was evidently already public property. Cars parked beyond the maples, the hum of excited voices; it was dreadful. Entering the ranch-house hall hurriedly she heard movement somewhere and called Anita’s name. Anita didn’t appear. It was the Inspector who came out of the living room. He closed the door behind him, but not before a stifled sob came through it. Kit didn’t have to tell McKee anything; he told her, with stark brevity.
Pedrick was Anita Stewart’s husband. Anita had married him in California in 1944, a year or so after her first husband’s death.
So that was it. Kit was rocked back on her heels. But it explained it all, Anita’s agitation when Pedrick was first mentioned, her continuing nervousness, Pedrick’s visit to her here. Poor Anita. Kit closed her eyes, opened them to look at Oliver Stewart’s portrait visible in sunlight above the mantel. “Then Bobby. . .”
“Is Pedrick’s son,” McKee said. “Mrs. Stewart left Pedrick before the boy was bom but apparently he tracked her here. I’m afraid the truth will have to come out, but for the present you might keep it to yourself, Miss Haven.” She nodded mutely. McKee was impatient to get back to Anita. Kit walked out of the house in a daze.
Recrossing the road she gazed sideways at the conjunction of cars at the top of the hill in front of the maples where William had lain sprawled on the grass. Death in the night, swift, sudden—and final. In spite of the warmth of the sun she felt cold. Her thoughts reverted to Anita— and Miriam. Miriam knew about Anita and Pedrick; that was the hold Miriam had over Anita. Kit brushed apple blossom petals from her hair with a savage hand. Her dislike of her aunt by marriage—thank God she was no blood relation—was dangerously close to hatred. She started up the path, and stared.
Tony Wilder was strolling towards her from the house. He raised his hat. “Good afternoon, Miss Haven.” A mechanical smile touched the carved lips.
Wilder was in a bad temper. The only place it showed was in his large eyes. They were dull, clouded. Studying her, the shadow in them lifted and he smiled. It was an insolent smile. Had he seen Libby and had Libby told him about their quarrel over him?
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Wilder took a gold cigarette case from his pocket, snapped it open. “Have one?”
He was trying to bait her. Kit looked at the cigarette case and then up into his face. She said evenly, “What a handsome thing I It wasn’t by any chance given to you by a woman named Margery Adams, was it?”
Lightning flashed in the orbs—you couldn’t call them anything else—fastened on her. Kit had a sensation of physical danger. The man looked as though he might strike her. He conquered his rage. Dropping the case into a pocket he lit a cigarette and drawled, “No, I imagine poor Madge Adams reserved her favors for a friend of yours— or so I’ve heard it whispered.” On that he walked past her and through the gate.
Margery Adams and a friend of hers. What did Wilder mean? What was he implying? Nothing. He was simply trying to make her angry, get back at her. When she went in Libby was drearily playing solitaire in a comer of the living room. Her eyes were a blue glitter in a pale face. She looked forlorn, miserable. Had Wilder asked her to marry him and had she turned him down? Apparently not. She looked a little better, but not much. She said to Kit, taking a rush at it, "I’m sorry about making a fool of myself a little while ago. I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. Tony was just here. He’s really a nice guy. Because he’s so good-looking people think he’s a stuffed shirt but he isn’t.”
Her glance was appealing. Kit couldn’t possibly have agreed with her less; it wasn’t the time to say so. George had called while she was out. He had to go to New York but he’d try to get back later on. Both he and Wilder had been questioned by the police about William. "As though they could have had anything to do with it,” Libby said scornfully, sweeping up the cards. But there was no real certainty in her voice. There was no certainty anywhere, Kit thought grayly. The whole foundation of existence seemed to be crumbling. William, and his brutal smashing of the little red hat, his theft of the tissue and glove, his violent death—and now Anita married to that terrible man and keeping it secret. . . . She didn’t mention it to Libby, it would come out soon enough.
Miriam had gone into town to buy a black hat and black gloves. She came back.
McKee arrived five minutes later.
They were all in the living room, Philip, Kit, Libby and Miriam. It was Miriam the Inspector had come to see. He didn’t waste any time. The question he put to her was stunning. Miriam was the only one who didn’t move or stir, for a long moment. She went on looking at the Inspector, her face stone. Then the tip of her tongue flicked over her lips. She lowered her head, raised it, and said slowly, as though each word was being forced out of her, “Yes, Samuel Pedrick is my brother. Anita told you, I suppose.”
XVI
Kit had never expected to feel sorry for her aunt; she did then. Miriam fell apart. It was like watching someone being skinned alive. Miriam was proud. Her pride was in ribbons; she talked jerkily, in short bald sentences.
Samuel Pedrick’s real name was Samuel Pedrick Waterford and he was the youngest, and the most promising and brilliant, of the four Waterford children. He had begun to go wrong in his teens. Trouble at preparatory school —he had stolen from his tutor—was only the beginning. He went from bad to worse. Again and again his family had come to the rescue, making restitution, covering things up, and finally impoverishing themselves. “It killed my father and my mother.”
After that Pedrick had dropped out of sight for years and the family came to the not unreluctant conclusion that he was dead. He wasn’t dead. In 1944 Miriam had run across him in California. Pedrick—he had dropped the Waterford and called himself by his middle name—was then a major in the army. He appeared to be going straight, and had just married Anita Stewart. There Miriam’s lips firmed and for an instant she was almost her old self. “I’ve
always thought that if Anita had been more tolerant, if she’d tried harder, things would have been different.”
It was through Miriam that Anita had come to Denfield. “I kept in touch with her on account of Bobby.” For a long while Pedrick didn’t know he had a son, or where Anita was. Then he found out. “I didn’t tell him,” Miriam declared. “I don’t know how he traced her, but he did.”
McKee said dryly, “Your brother knew she had money from her first husband, Oliver Stewart.”
Miriam’s family pride, what was left of it, roused. She didn’t think it was only the money. Anita had abandoned her brother and he didn’t like it—after all, she was still his wife. Ani
ta had tried to get a divorce in the beginning and then had dropped the idea, afraid of the publicity. Miriam ended up by saying that Pedrick had had nothing to do with what had happened to Libby. He didn’t even know she was missing until Kit and Hugo Cavanaugh went to Eleanor Oaks’s apartment two days after Libby vanished. Miriam was very definite about that.
It agreed with McKee’s own findings; he wondered what Miriam VanKreef was so taut about, as though she were waiting for a trap to spring. . . . He dropped his notebook into his pocket. Someone, a man, had entered the hall. He appeared between the glass doors, paused there.
It was Pedrick himself, tall and elegant and as unruffled as though he were waiting at the entrance to a dining room for the head waiter to come forward and show him to a table, a good one. Heads swung. They all stared. Miriam gazed at her brother across the length of the room. Fear, and then anger; she got her breath. “Sam! How dare you come here? How dare you?”
Pedrick surveyed her, and waved an airy hand. “Dear Mim,” he murmured in his soft voice. “Don’t get excited. This is not a social call.” He turned to McKee. “I understand you’ve been inquiring for me, Inspector, and one of your minions told me you were here.”
McKee nodded. Pedrick was looking the room over. His gaze dwelt on Kit with appreciation, moved to Libby with open pleasure. “Won’t you introduce me, Miriam?”
Philip was on his feet. He was white. He spoke to McKee. “I can’t very well call the police, Inspector, as you’re already here. Would you be kind enough to—eh—remove this gentleman and conduct your business with him elsewhere?”
Pedrick laughed.
The sound was one of pure amusement. Watching him a slow shiver went through Kit. It was as though the man had come here to do something—find out something, just by looking at them. Or had he said something to Miriam without words? . . . After a long glance at her he turned indifferently with another wave of his hand, and then he and the Inspector were both gone.
Philip sat down. He looked at Miriam compassionately and started to speak. She said, “No,” in a dead monotone and got up like a zombie and walked out of the room and up the stairs.
Gazing after her Libby said in a low voice, “That horrible, horrible man! Think of his being Miriam’s brother and Anita’s husband. I’m afraid of him. He hates us, you can see he does.”
So Libby had felt it too; Kit said curtly out of her own nervous dread, “Don’t be an idiot, Libby. What can Pedrick do, now that we know him, know who he is? The Inspector will take care of him. He can’t possibly do anything to hurt us.” But the suggestion of evil, active evil, that Pedrick had brought into the house with him remained there elusively, and refused to go away.
McKee hadn’t failed to notice the air of satisfaction, of complacency, in Pedrick inside the Haven house. He considered the man thoughtfully as they crossed the terrace together. It was as though Pedrick had come here to put something to the test, and was satisfied with the result. There was gold in them thar hills—and gold was Mr. Pedrick’s lodestar. Haven was, at the moment anyhow, a rich man. Was Pedrick planning to move in and take over where the original extortioners left off? He had certainly questioned Anita Stewart about the Havens, in detail, she had admitted that—and idle curiosity was not a failing of his. Yes, Mr. Pedrick was very definitely up to something.
Eleanor Oaks was in the yellow convertible parked beyond the maples. She sat stiffly erect, her shoulders front, her head sideways, watching their advance. The woman was afraid. McKee paused outside the gate. He said to Pedrick, “You were up here in Denfield last night. You called Tony Wilder at the inn over a local phone, using a disguised voice.”
Pedrick eyed him. His glance was faintly humorous.
“Sorry, Inspector. Mr. Wilder is not—eh—a favorite of mine, as you may have gathered. I was up here in Denfield, all right. I wanted to talk to my wife again about—our boy. I didn’t call Wilder at the inn or anywhere else. And I didn’t kill William Grant.”
Next question; Pedrick waited for it easily. McKee continued to study him. As far as Grant was concerned there was no proof one way or the other. Pedrick had been in the vicinity, but so had a lot of others. The Scotsman turned on his heel. It disconcerted Pedrick. "Inspector. .
“Yes?” McKee paused.
“As I said, I may have to leave town on business, so if there is anything else. . . ?”
The man was trying it on, he wanted to see whether he was under active suspicion or whether he had a free foot. Let him think he had and then, perhaps . . . “Go ahead, Mr. Pedrick. There is nothing else.” McKee got into his own car and trailed the convertible left and down the hill past the ranch house. Pedrick didn’t attempt to stop there.
The Scotsman thought about Anita Stewart. He wasn’t, at that point, prepared to give her a clean bill of health. Her income from her first husband was barely adequate and she was a woman who liked to live well. Twenty-five thousand dollars, even five thousand, would be a big help. In addition she certainly knew the Haven household and everything that went on there. McKee didn’t go as far as Kit’s velvet hand, touching them, nudging them, maneuvering them into desired positions, and last night pulling the trigger of the gun that killed Grant—but someone who
knew the house very well indeed was intimately involved.
Pedrick was swinging into the Merritt Parkway. McKee held him in sight until he went through the next tollgate. Stopping there himself, he got the highway patrol and then his own office. Carter answered. McKee said he wanted an around-the-clock on Pedrick. Put Brown and Trebough on him, have one of them pick him up at the city line. “Anything for me?”
Carter said, “Sure is, Inspector. Get a load of this.” He began to read a detailed report. At his first words McKee whistled softly, and went on listening. That was at 11:30 A.M.
In the house the Inspector had left the hours of what seemed like an endless day ground slowly on. More than once Kit looked at the clock to see if it had stopped. Miriam upstairs in her room, Philip in his study; the two girls could settle to nothing. People kept calling, friends who had heard about William; their kindness was a scald. Finally Kit took the receiver off the hook.
Lunch was a part of the desperate pretense of normality they were all trying to hold onto. No one talked and no one could eat. Except Miriam. She had a tray sent up. It came down empty. Glancing at it as the maid carried it through the hall Kit said, “Age cannot wither, or custom stale Aunts appetite.” It was an idle and an irritable remark. She said it for something to say, because the silences were too long, and because her nerves were on edge. Libby started to laugh, and couldn’t stop. The laughter degenerated into helpless tears. Philip had gone upstairs to rest. Kit made Libby go too. “You look frightful. All this has been too much, coming on top of last week. It’s going to be no help if you crack now.”
Left alone, Kit wandered around restlessly. It was no wonder Libby was terrified, she thought. The very formlessness of the menace with which they were confronted was what was so defeating, it could come from so many different directions, and in a familiar guise. Had it come to William that way last night? The rooms seemed extraordinarily large and empty.
Kit went outside. Two state policemen patrolling now, one in back, one in front; the sight of them was comforting and at the same time sent a chill through her. Was the Inspector looking for another attack on them, trying to ward it off? . . . For something to do she got the hose. She was watering the oriental poppies along the terrace wall when Hugo arrived. He drove the car in fast, got out and came striding across the lawn. He pulled up beside her. “Kit, is everything all right?”
By everything he meant Libby. She said caustically, watching crystal spray descend in an arc, “Everything’s fine, except that William was killed last night.”
“I know all about that,” Hugo said slowly. “I ought to. I’ve answered enough questions to sink a battleship. I have half a notion the police are trying to pin it on me. How can I prove I got back to New York at
around one last night? Hell, I can’t prove it. But you can bet your boots that if I did kill William I’d have a decent alibi. Yes.”
He went off abruptly on another tack. “Is Wilder still in Denfield? Here, give me that,” he took the hose from her. “Are you trying to make your feet grow?”
Her moccasins were full of water and the hem of her skirt was wet. The June afternoon was filled with bird songs and the smell of lilacs, the white ones were the strongest. Couldn’t Hugo think of anything but Libby and Wilder? Kit turned away.
He said sharply, "Don’t go. I want to talk to you.” Kit didn’t want to talk to him. She no longer had any feeling for Hugo Cavanaugh as a man. He was simply a sharp cutting instrument that had struck her a crippling blow. Be thankful for small mercies; it was good not to be able to feel too deeply, this way you didn’t suffer so much.
Hugo threw the hose to the ground and grasped one of her wrists. She tried to wrench clear. “Oh no, you don’t,” he said in a savage voice. “You did that last January and you’re not going to do it again. This time you’re going to listen to me.” Now he had both her wrists; Kit didn’t struggle, she tried to make herself into stone, not there, some place else. He had her backed against barberry bushes. Thoms pricked her shoulder blades. Short of stopping her ears she couldn’t escape his voice. It stopped of its own accord.
The Inspector was there, a few feet away, looking at them. He hadn’t made any noise crossing the grass. He spoke, and the sky darkened for Kit, and the sun went out.
