“Oh, Roger,” I said. I couldn’t help it. “That detective spotted it last night. Carol kept trying to defend you. He got it right away.”
Roger was stubborn again.
“Well, he can’t prove anything, so...”
“How did you make the date with Carol?” Patrick asked.
“I phoned her at her hospital. She was doing her nurse’s aide and I called and was able to reach her.”
“You used a private phone? You dialed her?”
“No. I had the operator at the hospital get her....Good Lord!” Roger looked horrified as he realized what that telephone call would mean. “There was another operator at her end, and I could hear her ringing all over the place, asking here and there for Miss Graham. Good God!”
There was nothing to say. I got up, and almost knocked over the chair with the book on it, in order to get the Silex and give Roger fresh coffee.
Roger continued then, in a gentler voice. “You asked me if I was in love with my wife. We were deeply in love when we married. She had no money then. She had inherited the family house and a plantation that went with it, which was then a lot of half-cultivated cypress land that nobody would buy for love or money. We had to borrow a few weeks after the wedding to pay the taxes. I wouldn’t’ve done it, except that Helen felt so sad at the thought of losing the place, and frankly I couldn’t imagine how it would end, because I had only a country practice, and in the Cajon-French country, at that, where the pay like as not was in pigs and chickens and all too often in fish. Then Helen fell ill with a peculiar inflammation of the brain, and that was all that really mattered to me for a long while. I hardly paid any attention to the oil they found on her place and which was to make her a rich woman. I was grateful that it could provide her ample nursing and fine doctors, but I didn’t care anything for it myself. I shall use it to build and endow a mental hospital, where diseases such as hers can be properly studied....It never occurred to me that I would ever care for anyone again, till—lately. It just happened—It’s since you’ve lived here—all at once—well, I don’t understand it myself.”
“How long have you known Carol?”
“Off and on for ten years! Ever since Aunt Rita took the girls when their parents died. Before that they lived in Louisville, Kentucky. But I only saw them now and then and very briefly. They were just kids. I would drop in to see Aunt Rita. They might be around and might not. If I had had any premonition...Why, do you think in that case I would ever have come here to live? And fetched Helen, here? Just what kind of a heel do you think I am?”
Well, people aren’t going to understand that part, either, I was thinking, and I went on thinking about how people will suddenly fall in love with somebody they’ve known for ages and how people don’t understand it at all, though everybody understands love at first sight, which doesn’t happen half so often as the other kind. Or, at least, so I think. It was first sight with me, needless to say.
“Did you suspect curare poisoning when you found your wife in the garden?” Patrick was asking.
“No. I’ve had no experience with it myself.”
“What did you think was wrong?”
“Frankly, I didn’t know. You get a low pulse and faint breathing with a lot of things—shock, for one. I thought she had fallen down the steps and was shocked from fright, since she couldn’t reason things out, as you know. I could have started artificial respiration sooner had I known what was wrong. I might have saved her.”
“Would you have saved her, if you could?”
“But of course!” Roger rasped. “What a question!”
I said quickly, “After she was up here last night she went down that dangerous curving staircase without holding onto the railing. So maybe she did only have a fall. Maybe...”
Patrick’s eyes stabbed at me. “She was up here?”
“I was going to tell you, dear. There was so much else, though....”
Patrick barked, “What time?”
“It was twelve-thirty. I heard the clock.”
Roger jumped up, gave the table a push which forced it against the chair with the book on it, and the book shot into full view on the floor at his feet. He stared hard at the book. He gave us an inexplicably hostile look and without another word he rushed out of the apartment.
VIII
PATRICK PICKED up the book and dropped it in a drawer in the kitchenette cupboard. Before I could tell him more about Helen Clary’s visit last night, Sergeant Callahan came up. Captain Jonas had arrived and would like to see everybody, he said, in the parlor. I hurried off to dress. I put on my yellow linen which isn’t so naked as a lot of dresses this summer, and which therefore seemed more appropriate for being interviewed by the police.
Captain Jonas called Patrick aside as we crossed the courtyard.
I walked on and waited near the carriageway entrance to the main wing.
The library, on the second floor, made an overhead bridge across this carriageway between the drawing room and the shut-off second floor of Toby Wicks duplex. I stood in its shade. Even so the flagstones felt hot through my shoes. It was going to be a terrific day. In the white still light the house looked a very faded pink, and on the double galleries the leaves of the wisteria and honeysuckle which were in the sun were already starting to wilt. I decided to go on and wait for Patrick in the shuttered coolness inside the house.
The main hall was larger, and finer in detail, than the one in our wing, and the spiral staircase even more airy and delicate. I went slowly upstairs to the drawing room. It was in this long room with its four tall handsome windows opening on the balcony over the side-walk that Aunt Rita had received us when we came to look at the apartment. She had given us coffee and delicious little cakes and had talked lovingly about her house. She had wanted to show us over the house that afternoon but there was for some reason no time. I remembered now as I entered the room that the clock and its matching urns on the white-marble mantelpiece were antique Sèvres china in a blue Aunt Rita called bleu celeste. They had been a wedding present to her grandparents Clary. The delicate pieces in mahogany and satinwood which furnished this room had all come from France, and many were signed by the famous cabinet makers of early nineteenth-century Paris. Aunt Dollie had put in, and impatiently, that these were priceless. Aunt Rita’s black eyes had danced when Patrick asked if the Clary silver had been successfully hidden during the War between the States, the way it always is in novels about that period. Yes, indeed, she had replied. The house was no doubt full of secret rooms, panels, and so on, Patrick suggested, smilingly, and Aunt Rita, pouring more coffee, had declared gaily that the Clarys had been more original than that. There was a garnet-red carpet, now worn thin, and garnet-satin draperies that showed their age less than the carpet. There were portraits of Clarys all over this room and in the library adjoining and in the hall and dining room.
Ava Graham was alone in the room when I went in. She sat on one of the sofas at the fireplace. She was smoking a cigarette with her habitual calm detachment.
She had a great perfection of looks, a slim, elegant body, a pure oval face, a magnolia complexion, intensely black eyes, and fair hair. She was wearing a blue-crepe dress and cherry-colored slippers. She said hello in a lazy, attractive voice and said wasn’t this getting to be fun.
“Is your boy friend still chumming with the enemy?”
“I’m afraid he is,” I said.
As I sat down near Ava, Uncle George Sears entered and after greeting me in his usual gallant fashion skimmed blithely to a divan built for two, which nicely accommodated him. “N-now what?” he stammered. No matter what it was, however, his blue eyes sparkled. For it was at least something.
“It seems they still can’t find Victorine,” Ava said. “Even if they could, what difference would it make? Do you think Roger killed her, Uncle George?”
“S-shush!” purred Uncle George. But he looked surprised and delighted. “Be careful, d-dear.” He was leaning forward, all bright looks.
“You mean killed Victorine, Ava?”
Ava laid an ash languidly on the nearest ash tray.
“You kill me, Uncle George. You know perfectly well I don’t mean Victorine.”
“Be c-careful, Ava, child.”
“Well, why shouldn’t he? The insane are dead already. Helen could never have been anything, except a nuisance.”
Uncle George kept one ear on the door. “You’re right enough in theory, A-Ava, but it doesn’t work out that way in real I-life, I b-believe.”
“You would merely have to be clever, Uncle George. You would have to plan each little detail. If you were a doctor it would be easier because you would know exactly how to do it.”
Uncle George smiled cheerfully. “The odds are too much against you in m-murder, my child.” He spread out his long hands. “I remember a very celebrated case in Dijon. It was when I first went to live in France....”
“Darling,” Ava interrupted, yawning, “do lay off France! You make me miserable. Don’t you know I want passionately to go?”
“Well, you’ll go. It won’t be long now, A-Ava.”
“Takes dough,” Ava said. She laid another ash on the tray and looked up idly as Toby Wick strolled in.
Toby was very fine in a white sports suit of a rough linenlike material. His shoes were brown suede. He looked cross and sleepy and very bored. He didn’t bother to turn on the lure.
He jerked his head at us collectively and sauntered to the other sofa and threw himself into one corner. He’d be awful to be married to, I thought, and then I thought how queer it was, when you were perfectly happily married, like me, that every time you saw Toby Wick you’d have notions like that. My goodness, he was straight, undiluted poison for any woman. Somebody ought to tell Ava.
All at once I discovered something interesting.
The single flaw in Ava’s perfection had been her doglike infatuation for Toby Wick. A spaniel look had always come into her beautiful eyes the minute he appeared. Now it was gone! Those black-velvet eyes rested on him without the slightest change.
She’s sure of him now, I thought suddenly. Since when?
Uncle George spoke up. “I asked Roger how the autopsy thing came out. It didn’t prove anything at a-all. That f-fellow Postgate gave his certificate and the funeral will be tomorrow. I hope Roger will forgive me for not attending. I won’t feel like going all the way out to St. Martin Parish myself, in this h-heat.”
“Why should anybody attend?” Toby grunted.
“My dear b-boy!” said Uncle George.
Ava Graham said to Toby Wick, “I’m glad you’ve come, darling.” And she used the darling in the smart way, as if it meant nothing. “I’m alone in a roomful of moralists. Jean and Uncle George think it’s a sin to do away with the unfit.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” I said, “but I do.”
“I say?” Uncle George sputtered. “I never...”
“Unfit?” Toby interrupted him.
“We were discussing Helen’s mysterious death,” Ava said, smiling.
Toby moved his shoulders indifferently and fished out a cigarette.
“N-now, Ava! You misunderstood me. I referred to the danger of getting c-caught,” Uncle George said. “The l-law is against you, dear.”
Toby said to Uncle George, “You said the autopsy was no soap. You mean the curare didn’t show up in the post mortem?”
“That’s right,” Uncle George lowered his reedy voice. “By the way, that curare extract isn’t so easy to get, either. I telephoned a-around,” he confided. “Few drugstores keep it in stock. It gets s-stale, they said. Some offered to order it. They didn’t even ask if I was a d-doctor.”
“How macabre of you, Uncle George!” Ava said.
Uncle George beamed. “I did it for Roger,” he said. “I used his phone while he was out this morning and telephoned everywhere. I wanted to see how easy it is to get. It isn’t easy, which explains why the nurse stole it from old Postgate. It’s all perfectly c-clear now. I suppose they’ll g-give her the d-death sentence.”
Ava said, “Your mind wanders, Uncle George. The nurse? I don’t think the nurse had anything to do with it. I think she was told to fade. She faded, and there you are. She was very obedient, that nurse. Roger always said so.”
She stopped speaking as Aunt Rita and Aunt Dollie came in together.
The two old sisters were a marked contrast. They couldn’t have been many years apart in age, but in looks and actions they were decidedly different. There was a resemblance around the tilted eyes and an occasional voice tone or movement, but that was about all.
Small, straight-backed, white-haired Aunt Rita wore a white-lawn dress in which lilacs and loops of ribbons made a cool-looking pattern. Her shoes were sensible white oxfords. She carried her hands neatly and even her brief good morning had style and elegance. When Toby uncoiled and rose to seat the ladies, it was Aunt Rita he attended on first.
Aunt Dollie, bigger, noisier, long-legged, wore a printed-jersey dress, high-heeled red pumps, and had a flower in her pulled-up dyed red hair. Her make-up included eye-shadow, which gave her old eyes a sunken look. She was smoking a cigarette in a long ebony holder.
“I do wonder,” Aunt Rita said, after she had said good morning to each of us, and had commented on the weather, “what that policeman needs to say to us?”
“They haven’t found Victorine, Aunt Rita,” Ava said. “They’re going to ask us all where we saw her last and things like that, and carefully write down notes about any looks of guilt on all our faces.”
“Guilt?” Aunt Dollie exploded, around her cigarette holder, “Good Lord! You don’t think they think...”
“Of course they don’t think!” giggled Uncle George. But nobody except Aunt Dollie laughed at his joke.
Toby Wick drawled, “I suppose it’s what they call routine. They’ve got to put up a sort of sham search, having started it, or they lose face. But since Postgate asked for an investigation you’d think he’d stop it now that the autopsy didn’t prove anything.”
“I daresay the police want to show off,” Aunt Dollie said. She brandished the cigarette holder. “You know how they are.”
Aunt Rita said, “Well, I do hope they find Victorine quickly and get the whole thing straightened out, both for her own sake and for Roger’s. That inspector plans also to question Hugo and Marie and Paulette. I have urged them to be very careful to speak the exact truth. Hugo and Marie haven’t the least notion what Victorine is really like. They’ve hardly paid any attention to her. And Paulette dislikes her beyond reason. I do hope she doesn’t pass along her feeling to the inspector because, really, Paulette is the one who is wrong. The girls quarreled over the southernwood.” That was a grayish, sweet-scented bush in the herb garden. “Paulette uses it, you know, to freshen up our linen cupboards. Victorine repeatedly took some of it to make love charms, it seems, and Paulette resented it and they went after each other in no uncertain manner. And afterward Paulette accused Victorine of practicing what she calls voodoo.”
“These women,” Toby groaned, beginning to get in his stride.
Aunt Rita continued.
“I spoke very sharply to Paulette. Plenty of young girls in my own sphere of life have tucked southern-wood under their pillows and in their pockets, secretly hoping it would bring them luck in love. It’s a very innocent little superstition, in my opinion, and I warned Paulette not to accuse Victorine of that so-called voodoo practice just because she takes the basil and the southernwood for love charms.”
“Aunt Rita, you are quaint!” Ava said.
“Quaint?” Aunt Rita’s voice was politely inquiring.
“I mean, why bother?”
“Because Paulette has been unfair,” Aunt Rita replied. “The quarrel may not seem serious to you, Ava, but it’s deadly serious to them. Voodoo is quite a different thing from love charms under one’s pillow.”
“Voodoo is a lot of niggers with too much corn liquor,” Toby said.
Uncle George slapped one round knee, and laughed heartily.
“When I was a young man...” he began.
“Now, George, don’t tell that awful story!” Aunt Dollie said, but amiably. “Besides, nobody believes it. Nobody believes that any white person ever sees the honest-to-goodness voodoo....”
“I beg your pardon, Dollie,” Miss Rita said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the inspector will be coming upstairs any minute now and I must repeat that I do hope no one will say anything that will cast suspicion on that poor girl.”
“She wears voodoo beads,” Ava said.
“Ava, child, are you sure? They look like an ordinary string of blue-glass beads to me. I must urge you—please do be careful. I am going to do everything I can for Victorine myself. When she comes back I shall offer her service in this house. I have told Paulette so. Victorine is an excellent servant. She speaks quite pure French, not the best, but really good, so I am sure she had her training in a good family on the island she came from. Her manners are even better than her French accent. And I feel badly that our servants have treated her unkindly, merely because she was different.”
“Well, why did the g-girl bolt?” Uncle George asked.
“Naturally, I don’t know. But you don’t find out the truth with suspicion and oppression. There must have been some good reason. Roger insists that she never did anything of the sort before. He trusts her, and therefore so should we.”
“All I ask,” Aunt Dollie said importantly, “is that she hurries up and comes back so that we can have a little peace. Such a hot day, too. Do you suppose the police will go with us to the funeral tomorrow? I suppose we’ll have to go, won’t we, Rita? I dread the long trip. Well, I do think it’s too weird to drag us in on this police business just because a black girl is—well, I mean, after all!” An ash fell off her cigarette and scattered over the printed purple irises on her jersey dress.
All at once a look of horror and suspicion came over Aunt Dollie’s big painted face. “Now, Rita, you’re, not going to get stuffy and make us go into mourning, I hope? After all, they’re cousins so very far removed, even though Roger does call us aunt...”
The Indigo Necklace Page 8
