The Frightened Fianc?e

by George Harmon Coxe

  “She’s through protecting you, Frances,” he said. “I told her why you killed George Vanning and Roger Drake. She knows that Tracy is alive only because—”

  “Tracy?” The shrill voice cut across his words. “What are you talking about?”

  Her glance darted beyond Holland, fixed there. When he turned he saw Lieutenant Pilgrim and a uniformed officer in the doorway. Pilgrim spoke to his companion, who withdrew, then came slowly into the room.

  There was never a definite explanation for what happened then. It may have been that Frances, faced with certain evidence she could not deny, felt that the odds had run out on her. Perhaps it was the sight of Pilgrim, who, to the guilty, could only represent arrest, prison, and eventual death at the hands of the law. It may have been a combination of things that shocked her into action and broke through the hard wall of her assurance and determination. Whatever the reason she reacted at once, her movements sure and decisive.

  She was at the mantelpiece before Holland could turn back, reaching upward toward the brass sconce. She had twisted it before he realized what she had in mind and then, as he started forward, she wheeled to face him.

  She eyed them defiantly, her face taut. There was nothing feminine or ladylike about her now, and the gun was steady in her hand.

  “Come in, Lieutenant,” she said tightly. “Come in and join the party.”

  twenty-three

  HOLLAND STOPPED right where he was, and again the room was still. For a space of five seconds no one moved, no one seemed to breathe. Holland eyed the gun and it did not bother him now because he knew it was empty; what did bother him was the bright, hot look in the woman’s eyes. He found he was holding his breath and let it out quietly. He felt the dampness in his palms and flexed his fingers, and now Pilgrim, who had paused a moment, began to move closer, though it was Fanny Allenby who spoke first.

  “Put the gun down, Frances,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Shut up, Nana,” Frances said, not looking at her.

  “Mrs. Allenby is right,” Pilgrim said. “I have a man out by the car and two others farther down the road. No one gets off the Point until we talk things over. Be a good girl and put the gun away.”

  “If I were you, Lieutenant,” Frances said, “I’d stop right where I was.”

  “Take it easy,” Holland said. “I found the gun last night. You must have seen me that first night when I put it in the drawer out there in the hall table after I came back from the guesthouse,” he said. “Did you sneak it out while I was up putting on some clothes?”

  “I could see you from my room when you came back to the house,” she said. “When you went to the table I watched you from the corner of the staircase. I had to hide the gun because it belonged to Father and I was afraid it could be traced. You very nearly caught me here after I’d hidden it.”

  Holland wondered why she had left the gun behind in the first place, but he did not say so. He said, “I’ve got news for you. The gun is empty.”

  “Is it?”

  “It had one bullet in it. I fired it this morning,” he said and went on to tell how he had recovered the slug.

  “You couldn’t have turned it over to me, huh?” Pilgrim said irritably.

  “I wanted to have the bullet checked in New York.” Holland started toward Frances. “Put it away,” he said. “It’s much too late for that.”

  He took one step, then stopped, held by something in that bright pitiless gaze. He saw her hand tighten. Then, incredulously, the gun hammered and bucked and the base of a china lamp three feet away dissolved, the shade and bulb toppling to the floor.

  Holland froze where he was, scared and stiff all over. He could not tear his eyes from the gun. He watched the muzzle move back to cover him while his heart turned slowly over and his throat closed.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Johnnie.” Frances’s voice was coldly contemptuous and nothing changed in her face. “I reloaded it this noon. The next time it may be you.”

  “Frances.” Tracy was sitting bolt upright on the edge of the divan, her eyes enormous. “Why, Frances?”

  “Because she hated you,” Holland said. “Even as a little girl she was jealous of you. She resented her father treating you as his own daughter. She hated it because he kept her back in school so you could be in the same classes. It was always you who got elected to the jobs she wanted. You were the popular one, the girl everyone liked—”

  Baldwin cut him off. He was leaning forward as if about to rise, his face haggard and tormented. “You killed Nadine,” he said. “You maniac. You vicious, cold-blooded—”

  “Stop it, Arthur!” Fanny Allenby pounded her fist against the chair arm and her voice was quick with fear. “Stop it, do you hear?”

  “Yes, Arthur,” Frances said. “You’re making a scene. Nadine saw me the night I shot Drake,” she said. “It was a bit of bad luck for both of us. I had just backed out of the screen door at the side of the guesthouse—it has a strong spring you know—and the edge of the door slammed against my arm and knocked the gun out of my hand. I couldn’t see it in the darkness and when I looked up there was Nadine staring at me from the bathroom door.”

  She hesitated and her voice grew quiet, as if she were reliving in her mind the details of that tragic moment.

  “If I hadn’t dropped the gun I suppose I would have shot her then and there. She stood there shaking, her mouth open, and I told her to get back to the house before someone saw her. Later, when I talked to her, I thought it might work out because it was easy enough to convince her that she could hardly expect to marry you, Arthur, unless she protected me. It wouldn’t do, would it, for your fiancée to turn your niece over to the police?” Her mouth twisted as she glanced at Holland. “It might have worked out if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Baldwin’s face was chalky and he had trouble breathing. “If only she had told me before,” he said hoarsely. “If only I’d been five minutes earlier last night.”

  “It’s lucky for you, you weren’t.”

  Holland watched the slim blond woman, hearing her words and knowing exactly what she meant. Yet for all of this it was a hard thing to accept. She had killed three times, coldbloodedly and without compunction, driven by an overwhelming jealousy which through the years had warped the hard core of her nature until what remained was neurotically twisted and hopelessly corrupt. He wondered if a psychiatrist, knowing the circumstances and observing the brittle, nervous, restlessness which typified her every move and gesture and drove her so relentlessly, could have diagnosed the neurosis before it was too late.

  He heard Baldwin talking again, but he could not yet assimilate the words; he could only think of Frances, knowing how easily she could have killed him minutes before, not understanding why she didn’t. Unless, he thought, it was because I have no part in her plans. Or was it because she was not ready?

  “Holland is right.” Baldwin was on his feet now, his voice shaking. “Even when you were a little girl you were always whining that Tracy got all the breaks. You were good at almost everything, but there was never a lay that Tracy couldn’t beat you at any game you named. Why, you—” He choked back the word, whatever it was. He took a breath and tried again.

  “She took your boy friend finally and that you never forgave. That flyer, whatever his name was. You tried to get Eric”—he glanced at Carver who sat hunched over on the divan, his dark face morose and unpleasant—“but Eric was still in love with Tracy. So you settled for Keith, and that didn’t work because you never gave him chance. And then while you were still bitter because you knew your marriage was a farce, Tracy fell in love with a real man—George Vanning.

  “You couldn’t stand it, could you? Tracy had everything you wanted. She had the prize again and you had nothing. And in that cold, shriveled, mixed-up brain of yours you saw a way to pay her back. You had nothing against Vanning. Only Tracy mattered, and it was through Vanning that you could hurt her most cruelly.”

  “A
ll right, Arthur.” Frances shifted the gun and put her shoulders back. “I agree with everything you say. I loved Jeff Travis and Tracy took him from me. Tracy killed him.”

  “No.” Tracy shook her head and her voice trembled. “No.”

  “If you had married him when he wanted you to he’d still be alive.” The pale lips twisted and grew thin. “I never forgot that. He was too good for you; so was George Vanning. And when the twenty-eight days were up—”

  She stopped, interrupted by some movement in the room. Someone sighed noisily, and Holland saw that the sound came from Carver, who came slowly to his feet.

  “If nobody minds too much,” he said, “I think I’ll take a fast fade. I’m getting a little sick to my stomach.”

  Frances gestured with the gun. “Stay with us, Eric. I wouldn’t want you to go somewhere and get a gun and then wait outside for me—or maybe try to sneak up behind me.”

  “Nobody’s going to sneak up on you, honey. Just keep your pretty little back to the fireplace.” Carver hesitated, his jaw hard and a look of loathing on his dark face. “Funny,” he said, “but in my own dumb way I figured out a long time ago that something about you wasn’t quite human, that you were never really a very nice person.”

  Lieutenant Pilgrim broke it up. “Why don’t you put the gun away, Mrs. Erskine?” He sounded quite calm and matter-of-fact. “There’s no point in making things worse, is there?”

  Holland was watching Frances. He did not like the look in her eyes. He did not know what came next, but it seemed best to keep her talking.

  “You were the one who dropped the landing-float on me,” he said. “You’d been in the kitchen getting a snack and when you finished you must have looked out the front windows and you saw your husband on the pier. You saw him throw something off and you must have seen me swimming out that way after he came into house.”

  “That’s exactly what I did,” she said in clipped accents. “How did you know?”

  “You came out on the pier while I was diving.” Holland hesitated and his mind went back to an earlier scene in the sunroom when he had talked to Fanny Allenby. He remembered the open windows, the smell of tobacco smoke. He recalled how he had walked to the windows and seen the cigarette butt smoldering on the lawn to indicate that someone had been listening.

  “You must have been the one who overheard the talk I had with your grandmother in the sunroom,” he said. “I talked big then. About finding out who killed Drake. I said I was going to marry Tracy if it was the last thing I did. Is that what you had in mind when you pulled the hook on the float? The sudden thought that here was an opportunity to remove another potential husband—accidentally?”

  He paused. When she made no reply he said, “You came back on the pier after the crash to see how you’d done. And that time you missed.” He shook his head, unable even now to understand the woman’s mind or her moods. “You helped me,” he said. “In the kitchen you never were nicer. I thought you were wonderful.”

  Frances was not listening any more, or even looking at him. Occupied with other thoughts, the restlessness had begun to work on her and she moved away from the hearth.

  “One thing,” she said, speaking to no one in particular. “What’s this about me shooting at Tracy tonight?”

  Fanny Allenby’s head came up. “Didn’t you? Out there in the path?”

  “If I had, I would have hit her. You should know that.” For a moment then she stopped moving and something glittered deep down in her eyes as they swiveled to Holland. “So that’s how you got Nana to talk. And you”—she glanced at Crombie—“kept me waiting in the guesthouse. Very clever of you,” she said, moving again and backing toward the French doors at the front.

  “I’m going out here,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Pilgrim warned her.

  She reached behind her and opened the glass door and the wind hit her, whipping her skirt wide and tugging at the ends of her blond hair.

  For a second or two she stood there, poised and ready, and it came to Holland that there was something rather magnificent in the way she handled herself. There was in her no feeling of guilt or remorse for what she had done. From a distance she looked lovely, and she had, he knew, about as much heart and compassion as a marble statue. Yet for all of this there was a certain finished perfection in the cold, calculating manner with which she defied them.

  “I’m really very good with this,” she said, indicating the gun. “Don’t crowd me, please.”

  She was gone then, the screen door banging behind her and nothing but the billowing curtains and the darkness beyond. For a moment longer they heard the hurried beat of her footsteps, and then there was only the wind.

  A second later the room was alive with movement and sound. Holland heard none of it. He found himself moving toward the open door, automatically and without purpose until a word from Pilgrim stopped him.

  “This is my job,” the lieutenant said. “She can’t get away.” He took a gun from his pocket and he was in no great hurry as he spoke to Crombie, asking him to tell the man at the car what had happened. “Tell him to warn the others and cover the road and beach at that end. I’ll go this way.”

  Then, even as Crombie started off, they heard it, the sudden snarling sound of a motor exploding into life and rising quickly in a powerful, deep-throated roar before it throttled down.

  Carver cursed. “She’s got the speedboat.”

  Pilgrim lost a second or two in sheer surprise. “Speedboat?” he echoed vacantly. Then, a rasp in his voice, he said, “It won’t last five minutes in these seas.”

  “She knows that.”

  Fanny Allenby sat stiff-backed and erect. Her voice was firm, defiant, and perhaps a little proud.

  “Frances knows what she’s doing,” she said.

  Pilgrim was moving then, and Holland kept pace with him, hearing the spasmodic accelerations of the motor so that he could almost visualize the girl’s frantic efforts to jockey the boat out of its slip and get clear of the pier.

  He did not remember crossing the porch or steps. He found himself running with Pilgrim across the sloping lawn, and now the throb of the motor rose again, steadied, and a wide, curving wake spread white across the black waters off the end of the pier.

  Pilgrim stopped running. He raised his service revolver but he did not fire. His arm swung down and he swore softly to himself. For perhaps a second or two longer Holland thought he could see the dark hull bouncing seaward, then there was only the white wake, and finally nothing but the swiftly fading, wind-torn throb of the motor.

  Pilgrim turned back, muttering something about calling the Coast Guard. Holland left him in the hall and walked toward Tracy, who stood with Carver beside Fanny Allenby. Tracy watched him come, lips parted and the shock of what had happened still lingering in her eyes. She did not speak but stood quite still, and when he put his arm about her waist he could feel her body tremble.

  “How long, Eric?” Fanny Allenby said. “You know the boar.”

  “Not long,” Carver said. “She must know that.”

  “Of course she knows it. That’s the way she wants it.”

  Carver turned away wearily and moved off. Fanny Allenby looked up at Holland and her blue-veined hands were at ease in the lap of her black dress. Her faded, yellow-white hair haloed her bloodless wrinkled face, but the dark eyes seemed strangely content.

  “You tricked me, Johnnie,” she said without bitterness.

  “I had to.”

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I guess you did.” She turned her head toward the front of the house, as if listening for something a long way off. “I’m a wicked old woman,” she said, “and I shall pay for what happened to Nadine. Frances was wicked, too. She must have suffered from some mental or emotional sickness that grew malignant over the years. And now she has chosen her way to pay—”

  Her voice trailed off, and then as Holland waited, she roused herself. “I’m glad she got away,” she s
aid. “It will be clean, and quick, and Frances never was afraid—It’s much better,” she said, half to herself. “Frances wouldn’t like prison.”

  Tracy moved under Holland’s arm, and when he looked down he could see the tears on her cheeks though her voice was controlled when she spoke.

  “You’re tired, Nana,” she said. “Try not to think about it any more tonight. Come, we’ll help you upstairs and John can make you a drink.”

  Fanny Allenby shook her head. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’ll sit here awhile.” She glanced up at Holland, speculating. “You’re the ones who need a drink. Well, Johnnie?”

  Holland turned away with Tracy, and in the hall when he started for the dining-room she took his arm. “Not just yet,” she said. “Please.”

  They went along the hall and into the library where a lamp burned on an end table. Holland sat on the leather divan and pulled Tracy down beside him, turning her toward him as he slid his arm about her shoulders. Then the barrier of her self-control cracked open and she put her head on his shoulder, burying her face and clinging to him while the sobs came.

  Holland held her close, his throat swelling and a fullness spreading through his chest as he felt her body shake. “It’s all right now, darling,” he said huskily. “Don’t try to talk. Just stay where you are.”

  Gradually the sobbing stopped. She grew still in his arms and now he breathed shallowly and with care, aware for the first time of his own great weariness. Strain and fatigue had left their imprint around his half-closed eyes and the corners of his mouth. He felt spent, and it was good to sit quietly with his mind and body relaxed and at ease.

  A long time later she stirred and he released her. She sat up, her cheeks tear-stained but her eyes dry. Then she smiled. “I’m all right now,” she said. “You were sweet to let me cry.”

  She leaned forward and gave him a quick, impulsive kiss and before he could hold her there was a sound in the hall, as if someone had trouble clearing his throat. When they looked round, the Falstaffian figure of Sam Crombie filled the doorway. He had a highball in his hand, a grin on his ruddy face.