by Q. Patrick
Someone was moving quietly in my direction along the path behind the rhododendrons.
I told myself it was crazy to be afraid. It might so easily have been anyone—any student from Broome coming late for the dance. And yet I felt certain that someone had been there listening to what Norma was telling Marcia—someone who had now become conscious of my presence so close in the darkness of the bushes.
The footsteps were barely three feet away from me now. Through the thick branches I caught a glimpse of a tall, lean figure in black with a white shadowy shirt-front.
Then, very noiselessly, a man stepped around the bushes. He came right up to me without hesitation. He took both my hands.
He said: “Darling, this is the second time we’ve met around a rhododendron.”
For a moment surprise took my breath away.
“Steve! So you’re back!”
And it was Steve Carteris standing there in front of me, immaculate in white tie and tails, with that slow, nonchalant smile in his dark eyes—exactly as if he had never been away—exactly as if nothing had ever happened.
I had forgotten Norma and Marcia. I was thinking only of Steve, uneasy questions tumbling over each other in my mind.
I said shakily: “Steve, but where have you been? What have you been doing? You must tell me.”
He was still smiling. It was amazing how that bleak, hunted look had gone from his face.
“Where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing are matters of the most extreme unimportance. There’s only one thing to think about now. I invited you to the ball.” He gave a small, slightly ironic bow. “And here I am—late but very limber.”
Steve had come back to take me to the ball. And I was there with Jerry. Before I had time to explain, he had taken my arm and was leading me very purposefully back toward the gym and the jagged rhythm of the dance orchestra.
I tried to stop him. “You’ve got to be sensible, Steve. You can’t go in there. Dean Appel will see you. He’ll tell the police.” Then, suddenly I remembered. “And Trant is going to be here any minute.”
“That’s swell. It’ll save me a trip to the police station.” Steve grinned down at me. “I’m no longer a fugitive from justice, Lee. Just a guy with a story for the police—but it’s a story that’s damn well going to wait until I’ve had a dance with you.”
There it was. I couldn’t do a thing. He had drawn me away from the formal garden and was opening the little back door to the gym before I realized that I had never seen whether or not Marcia had taken that special delivery letter from Norma.
And I had completely neglected my real object in coming to the formal garden. I had done nothing to warn Norma of her danger.
I danced with Steve. It was a weird sensation, as if we were snatching a few minutes back out of the past, as if this were any other Senior Ball and Steve was just Steve and I was just Lee Lovering—two kids who hadn’t even heard of murder.
I don’t know how long that queerly suspended moment lasted. The orchestra ended in a clash of cymbals; there was a sputtering of applause and then the rhythm broke out again. We were somewhere in the center of the floor when I saw a large male hand settle on Steve’s shoulder and I looked up to find Dean Appel staring at us with a mixture of astonishment and indignation.
Steve smiled his slow smile and said: “I’m afraid I’ll have to relinquish you to Dean Appel, Lee. He wants to cut in.”
“I do not wish to cut in,” said Dean Appel coldly. “I want an explanation of your behavior, Carteris.”
“Okay. I’ll be right with you.” Steve gave a shrug, then turned to me, a new, almost tender look in his dark mocking eyes. “Thanks, Lee. Thanks so much. That was one of the nicest things that ever happened.”
He went away, following Dean Appel’s determined progress through the dancers.
And he took with him the queer spell that he had cast on me. Suddenly I was back again in the tangled problems of the moment. I realized how hopelessly I had reneged on my duty to Norma. I began to feel desperately anxious to find her—to convince myself that nothing had happened. But I was even more anxious to get back to Jerry.
It was strange how, once again, I had been left alone in the very middle of the dance floor. Always that night, at the most crucial moments, I was destined to be cut off in that bright, impersonal throng of people.
It was like one of those nightmares where it is desperately important to get somewhere and always there is a barrier between you and your goal. This time it was a barrier of smiling faces, swirling dresses, dark dinner jackets, and girls’ bare arms.
I started away from the orchestra, back to the corner where I had left Jerry. I passed the Captain of Football dancing with his arm round the waist of a girl. That girl was not Norma.
I thought I caught a glimpse of Robert Hudnutt somewhere. Then there was the flash of a silver, backless dress and an arm, waving vigorously. It was Elaine pressed against Nick Dodd’s shirt-front.
“Lee, darling, why on earth are you buzzing about like a lost bee? Jerry’s looking for you.”
“I’m looking for Jerry,” I said.
I tried to ease my way past them, but Elaine grabbed me round the waist and the three of us were caught up in the stream of dancers and swept on.
Once again I felt that absurd sensation of panic, that I was being deliberately held back from Jerry. Elaine went rattling on about her back; didn’t I think she beat Norma when it came to backs, even if Norma won on all points from the front view. Nick was making a bet, she said, that he could get twelve people in the room to say that she had the prettiest back in Wentworth. Couldn’t they rope me in?
It all seemed completely crazy, dancing a threesome like that and talking about Elaine’s back.
“If you’ll let me go, darling,” I said at last, “you can have my vote for your back or any other part of you.”
At last, I did manage to slip away and continued on my tortuous pilgrimage. I was almost clear again when I saw Marcia Parrish. She was ahead of me, hovering on the edge of the floor. Her arms hung straight down at her sides, her lovely face was white as the white satin of her dress. She must have come in from the garden, I thought. But why did she look as though she had seen a ghost? And where was Norma?
I struggled toward her and was almost by her side when a quiet voice behind me asked:
“Might I have the pleasure, Miss Lovering?”
I spun round. Robert Hudnutt was standing behind me, a slight, forced smile on his lips. For one second, while I hesitated, I saw his eyes move over my shoulder and I knew he was looking at Marcia. Then his arm was around my waist and he was drawing me back on to the floor, back into that whirlpool of dancers from which I had tried so hard and so fruitlessly to escape.
He did not speak at all, and when I looked up at his face I saw that it was set in an expression of mechanical courtesy, as though he were just doing his duty by a student.
That dance seemed endless. I was praying for someone to cut in, but apparently nobody had the nerve to cut in on a faculty member. Around again … again … surely it was more than an hour since I had come to the gym. Why hadn’t Lieutenant Trant arrived? If only I could see those level gray eyes and know that the responsibility of Norma’s safety was no longer on my shoulders.
And then—at last—the music stopped. That interminable rhythmic pulse of dancing was broken. The crowd which had been a relentless, elemental force was now just a lot of college students again, laughing, talking, strolling away from the floor. Dr. Hudnutt and I went with them. He led me to one of the chairs around the wall, gave me a stiff little nod and murmured:
“Delightful, Miss Lovering. Thank you.”
He moved away, and immediately I forgot everything, for Jerry was there, limping anxiously toward me.
“Lee, where on earth have you been?”
“Everywhere. I’ve been trying to find you.”
“And I’ve been trying to find you. Did you talk to Norma?”
“No. I couldn’t get near her. Where is she now?”
“I haven’t seen her. I’ve been looking around, but I haven’t seen her.”
He stopped suddenly, staring away from me, his blue eyes wide and blank.
“You, Steve! I never knew you were back.”
Steve Carteris was at our side, watching the two of us with that quiet, slightly mocking smile still in his eyes. Jerry gazed back at him, stubbornly. Incongruously I remembered that this was the first time I had been with the two of them since their quarrel about Grace.
“Yes, I’m back. I’ve been hauled over the red-hot coals by the Big Appel. But I’m in circulation again on sufferance.”
That was the last I heard. With a whole-hearted sense of relief, I saw Penelope Hudnutt threading her way toward us, accompanied by a tall, slim young man in a very stylish New York dress suit.
I might have guessed that Lieutenant Trant would have had the tact to dress for the occasion.
The two of them came straight up to us; Penelope’s handsome face was set and rather grim, but Trant’s was cool and detached. His eyes, settling for an instant on Steve, showed not the slightest surprise at seeing him. He nodded at Jerry and then turned to me.
“Where’s your friend Norma Sayler?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I glanced at Jerry, then at Penelope. “We’ve been trying to find her but we haven’t seen her. That is …”
“Looking for Norma?” broke in Steve casually. “I saw her just now up in the gallery with a lot of stags.” He turned. “Yes, she’s still there.”
We all turned, following the direction of Steve’s eyes which were fixed on the high, illuminated gallery. It was crowded now with students, tired of dancing, standing around in groups with plates or glasses of punch in their hands. At that distance it was like a bright stage massed with smartly dressed extras for the finale of a modern opera. And it was dominated by one figure—a girl with her back turned to us, surrounded by a thick cluster of men. Her dress gleamed golden and metallic as the gold-blonde hair.
The prima donna with her flock of swains. There was no need to worry about Norma Sayler. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Lieutenant Trant seemed to feel the same, for he had turned away from the balcony and was looking at Steve again. “Since Miss Sayler seems quite adequately protected, we might leave her to enjoy herself for a while. You probably want to see me, Mr. Carteris.”
“The sooner the better,” Steve murmured.
They went off together. Penelope had disappeared too. At last Jerry and I were alone—without responsibilities.
We moved together to the downstairs supper tables, partly because it was bad for Jerry’s newly healed ankle to climb to the gallery, partly, I felt, because we both of us wanted to avoid running into Norma who had become a symbol of all the things that neither of us wanted to think about.
Jerry brought glasses of punch and plates of lobster salad. That should have been festive. But it wasn’t. Other students, trying to be sympathetic with Jerry, made a point of coming over and talking about nothing. For almost half an hour we were in the middle of a cheerful crowd.
At last Jerry took my arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he breathed.
We left the gym, found the little back door, made our way through the shrubbery and out to the formal garden.
The moon had come now, a new moon, thin and clean, tilted in the placid spring sky. With its coming, Nick’s spot had been switched off, like a candle fading before the moon. The garden was darker but lovelier with its blacks, its soft pearl grays and the faint cream of the forsythia.
No one was there. At least there was no movement or shadow in the quiet walks around the fountain. Jerry and I moved to the stone bench which for me had been the symbol of so much that was uneasy and fearful, but which now was just a stone bench by a fountain—for Jerry and me.
Jerry slipped his rough, warm fingers over mine. “I didn’t know Nick was going to turn off this spot.”
I said: “I’m glad he did. It’s lovelier this way.”
“As lovely as anything can be—now.” He turned so that he was looking straight at me. “I guess it’s all over, Lee. Trant will get that special delivery letter from Norma. He’ll know who wrote it, probably know who killed Grace. Then everything’s supposed to break even. A tooth for a tooth.”
I thought of it that way, too. Even now perhaps the police had that damning evidence against someone. Someone!
He said suddenly: “Lee, have you any idea who did it?”
“Ideas—sometimes. But they’re ideas I don’t want to have. So many people might have done it, but they couldn’t because they’re people who just couldn’t do anything so brutal and ghastly.” I gave a little shiver. “And then I realize that one of them must be different from the way I think. And it makes me afraid.”
His hand slid from mine moving over the cold back of the bench so that his arm was around me. There was a slight, husky catch in his voice: “I was terribly fond of Grace, as fond of her as I could be of anyone because—well, we’d been through such a lot together. But sometimes I wish this ghastly business wouldn’t ever get any further. Someone killed Grace. Hound that person, catch him, kill him. And then what?” In the dim light I could see his mouth set hard. “Sometimes I think it would have been so much easier to take if Grace had committed suicide.”
The dance music was always there, a steady throb in the still spring darkness. I said bleakly: “But she didn’t commit suicide.”
“So everyone says—everyone except the insurance people.” He laughed a quiet dry laugh. “They saw me again today. They’re still harping on that letter Grace wrote me from the theater, the letter Norma tore up.”
“She tore it up in the infirmary, Jerry. Maybe she never did burn it. Maybe the pieces are somewhere. Have you asked her what she did with them?”
“I’d rather not get a cent of insurance money than ask Norma for anything.” Then the stubborn, grating tone left his voice and he added: “No, she got rid of those letters all right. Norma wouldn’t give anyone else a chance to read them. They hit too near home.” He hesitated. “You see, there was that other letter she tore up, the one I told you about that Grace wrote me several days before it all happened. That one said pretty slighting things about Norma too.”
“You never told me what Grace did say in it, Jerry.”
“I know. I wasn’t ever going to tell.” He was gazing down at his hand which gleamed broad and pale, on his knees. “I can hardly tell you now. You see, Grace said so much that was true and that I hadn’t realized. It made me such a hell of a fool.”
The pressure of his fingers on my shoulder tightened.
“She wrote about you, Lee. She said I was crazy to bother about Norma. She said you were the swellest person at Wentworth and that if I had any sense I’d see that you—you might like me.” He paused: “God, Lee, I’ve made such a mess of myself. I’ve tried so hard to get what I don’t want and I’ve bungled so terribly trying to find out what I do want. And now when Grace’s dead and everything’s gone—”
He stopped suddenly as if it hurt just to say some of the things that were in his mind. It hurt me, too, to feel all his trouble and uncertainty, but it was a hurt that couldn’t really matter, because I was happy, happier than I ever dreamed I could be, there on the threshold of something which I had thought could never be more than—a threshold.
Jerry got up, pulling me with him so that we stood together at the brink of the fountain. Some of the delicate spray veered in a tiny breeze, spattering my hair.
“Lee, I’m nothing any more. Probably I won’t have a cent. No prospects for the future. Ghastly things to look back to—Dad’s death, Grace’s murder … But the way I feel for you, it’s been inside me all these years. I didn’t recognize it, but I do now. It’s about the only decent, permanent thing in my life. I need you so damn badly. Is there any chance, after so long…?”
“Jerry, darling, is there a c
hance! Has there ever been anything else—ever?”
His arms found their way around me; his lips moved, stumbling across my cheek to my mouth.
With the touch of his warm, hard lips on mine, the years fell away like a pack of cards. And I was back again at the most thrilling of all moments, at my sixteenth birthday party, when he had led me out into the scented summer darkness, taken me in his angular boy’s arms. That first clumsy kiss that had tasted so sweet. And now this—the second.
Gradually his lips softened their pressure against mine, his arms, tense and trembling, slackened around me. I drew away.
I was looking at the fountain.
I saw the lily pads, dark, faintly gleaming with the bubbles of water on them, catching the moonlight—silver. But something surely was missing. The little manikin, the iron dwarf with the beard and the pointed cap—where was he? I looked again, peering through the veil of water. Vaguely I could make out one small red-toed shoe thrusting up pathetically from among the lilies in the pool.
Someone must have knocked him over.
Jerry’s hand found mine and gripped it tightly. I stretched out my other hand, letting the soft spray cool it. And I saw the silver glints again in the water. Silver and, deeper under the surface, gold.
“Look, Jerry,” I whispered, “how the moonlight turns the water to gold.”
It was all so lovely. I felt a queer little stab of pity for the painted dwarf which had once seemed so sinister but which was now nothing but a forlorn shoe thrusting upward. I leaned forward, trying to reach him, to put him back on his stand by the pool’s edge. My fingers slipped into the water, past the cool leaves of the lilies, feeling downward … downward. Then I touched something smooth and soft, something that shouldn’t have been there in the pool. I bent so that I could see down into the dark water, see down to that vague undersurface of gleaming gold.
And I saw. I saw the thing that was there.
For one terrible second, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t see. There was nothing in me but one vast, overwhelming horror.
