by Frances
It did keep coming back. Lois returned to the living room and found a chair (not in the corner) and sat in it. It was ten minutes of one. Any time, now, they would begin to flock.
Ralph Bourgelotti was blond and blue-eyed and wore a summer-weight suit and white shirt and dark tie, all suitable to a cashier—the cashier—of the Citizens’ National Bank. He raised blond eyebrows at the State Police sergeant who had come, in person, to lend Connecticut authority to New York inquisitiveness. Mr. Bourgelotti said that they had, he supposed, better go into the house. It was a house of appropriate dignity.
There, he considered the first question—made a steeple of his fingers and considered it over them. Finally, he saw no harm in that. Yes, he had checked Mrs. Montfort’s signature on her will, at the request of Howard Graham. He had already told Mr. Shapiro that. If Shapiro wanted it again—yes, he had no doubt of the authenticity of the signature.
It was not precisely that, this time. A—slightly different matter.
“I don’t want to prompt you,” Shapiro said. “Which makes it a little difficult.”
Bourgelotti waited, tips of fingers together.
“On the same page with Mrs. Montfort’s signature,” Shapiro said, “there were the signatures of Mrs. Lois Williams. Of Antonio Bourgelotti.”
“You want me to verify them, too? Can’t—didn’t look carefully. Mrs. Williams’ looked all right, at a glance. Tony hasn’t an account at the bank—or anywhere else, probably—so—”
“Not so much that,” Shapiro said. He looked at the ceiling, apparently for guidance. “Put it this way—the three signatures were written at the same time, or thereabouts. With the same pen. Same ink. So, they’d be the same color. Same brightness.”
“I’d think so,” Bourgelotti said, with caution, “Yes, I’d expect that.”
“Were they?”
“You mean, written at the same time. Is that what you’re getting at?”
Shapiro said, again, that he did not want to prompt.
“I can certainly tell you that one wasn’t written—oh, ten years ago and the others yesterday—that is, Monday night. If you mean—was there a difference of a few days, or a few weeks, I doubt that anybody could tell you that and make it stick. What’s all this—”
Shapiro sighed slightly.
“I take it,” he said, “that the three signatures didn’t differ in brightness, in color. I’d appreciate it if you’d try to visualize them, Mr. Bourgelotti.”
“As to that,” Bourgelotti said, “the document itself would be the best evidence, wouldn’t it? And Howdy’s probably got it in his office and—”
“Mr. Graham’s office is closed,” Shapiro said. “We haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”
Which was true, as far as it went.
“You did,” Shapiro said, ‘look at them carefully. At least at Mrs. Montfort’s. I’d imagine—”
Bourgelotti brushed the words aside, as interruptions of a train of thought. He reached a decision.
“So far as I can remember,” he said, “the three signatures looked pretty much alike, as to ink and that sort of thing. Brightness.”
“Pretty much?”
“All right. Exactly alike, as I remember them. As I said, it’s easy enough to be sure. Get hold of the will and—”
“Yes,” Shapiro said, “we’ll do that. Thank you for your trouble, Mr. Bourgelotti. What you’ve told us helps.”
Detective Shapiro and the sergeant went back to their car.
“Wouldn’t think he was one of the boys when he’s with the boys, would you?” the sergeant said. “At a clambake, say. Get what you wanted?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said.
“Now?”
“Now,” Shapiro said, “I’d like to know where Mr. Graham is. And what he’s up to.”
They poked things and lifted things and found things quaint. They opened the dutch oven and looked into it and wondered how people had ever managed. They moved the fireplace crane back and forth, to see whether it would move back and forth, and found that it would—and that it got their fingers dirty. “That’s just what I meant,” one pretty young woman told the young man with her, and turned on the electric range in a variety of places. (Including the timing buzzer, which buzzed and made everybody jump.) “It’s because the walls are so thick,” a man told another man, with an air of wisdom. “Isn’t that it, young lady?”
Lois, who had been asked many questions, and had given what answers she could, said she understood that the reason it was so much cooler inside the cannon-ball house was because the walls were so thick.
“All right,” a woman with yellow hair—and certainly not a local, or anywhere near it—said, with emphasis. “All right, where is this cannon ball?”
“It’s supposed to be in the front of the house,” Lois said. “Of course, it was patched afterward so nobody—”
“Hmm!” the woman with yellow hair said, not believing a word of it.
It was certainly being a great success. Both sides of Battle Street were lined with cars, as a result of which Battle Street suffered from arteriosclerosis. “Perfectly wonderful,” Mrs. Simpson said, passing through as a scout. “Eight hundred and fifty seven and more coming. If only the Rain Holds Off.” She went into the library, scouting her daughter, since she was there. “I don’t see why I have to spend the whole—’ Mary Simpson said and was looked at and said, “Oh, all right.”
He was tall and angular and had deep-set gray eyes and hair of no particular color—call it tow color. He said, “Hi.” He said, “What’s this about a dutch oven?” He said, “Don’t stay after they quit coming.” He said this last in a low voice, bending down toward her. (Almost close enough to kiss her, if there hadn’t been so many people.)
“If they ever do,” she said. “Mrs. Simpson says more than eight hundred and—”
“They won’t all go to all the houses, probably,” he said. “Also, there’s a cloud bank over in the west. And—Lois, you’ll do as you’re told.” He was stem. He spoiled it, a little. “Won’t you?” he said. “Leave when they quit coming and—”
“Of course, Bob,” she said. “Yes, this wing was built later than the center section. But only, they think, about fifty years later so it’s still very old…. Nobody knows, really, precisely where the cannon ball is but … I won’t stay beyond five anyway, dear—I mean Bob. No matter if they are still com … I doubt if it’s actually been used in recent years. Not to bake bread in. But I understand it could…. Yes, all these fireplaces must certainly have taken a lot of wood…. Hello, Mr. Shapiro. I didn’t realize you were interested in old houses.”
“Gloomy places,” Nathan Shapiro said in a voice of gloom. “Mr. Graham hasn’t been through, by any chance?”
“No,” Lois said. “That is—part of the time there was such a crowd he could have been. But—they come in bunches. I haven’t seen him…. Nobody knows precisely where it is. Probably somewhere in the front of the house, because the battle was there and in back, after the first field, there’s a swamp and…. I shouldn’t think Mr. Graham would need to make a tour of this house because…” But Shapiro was no longer there to listen.
“Everything going all right, Mrs. Williams?” John Keating said. “Anything I can do?”
There was not. Everything was going fine. Everything was being a great success.
“Then,” Keating said, “I think I’ll go up and see how Aunt Ella’s making out. If you’re sure there’s nothing I—?”
She was sure. She watched, through the open door to the central hall, and saw Keating—mild and pleasant, and probably (if they were really right) employer of murderers—step over the clothesline barrier and climb the steeply pitched, narrow stairs.
They came in bunches. It was as if, for no special reason, twenty of them said, on signal, “Now we’ll go see the Montfort house,” and, simultaneously, did so. Then twenty said, “We won’t go see the Montfort house. We’ll go see the Pruitt house,” and the Montfor
t house would, for a quarter of an hour, be a dry water-course—as dry as the creek beds around Glenville were, after a hot, dry August.
During one of the lulls, at a little before four o’clock, Lois went to the front door of the house, to look at sunshine and breathe fresher air—and to see if more were coming. More were—down Battle Street several cars were parking. A group of four, including children—the last child had swung back and forth on the fireplace crane for some time before being captured—was approaching. Also—
Lois smiled to herself, and turned back into the comparative dimness of the house, so as not to see.
Also, Miss Mary Simpson was going. She was going quickly toward a convertible parked up Battle Street. A tall boy in shorts and sports shirt was standing by the car, expectantly. Mary had shrugged Responsibility off her pretty shoulders. She was going for a swim.
If it didn’t storm. As Lois went back into the house, to prepare to receive, there was a muttering of thunder. It sounded a good way off.
It was another freshet; it was, all over again, that the dutch oven probably still could be used and probably was not still used; it was the location of the cannon ball (of which Lois was getting thoroughly tired); it was that all houses of that period had had thick walls and small windows, to keep in the heat derived from burning—yes, it must have taken a lot—wood in cavernous fireplaces. It was, “How many times do I have to tell you, Teddie?” to a small boy swinging on the fireplace crane. And, it grew darker. Lois lighted lamps in the living room; went into the library, deserted by youth in flight from Responsibility, and turned them on there.
The darkness was, of course, because of a bank of storm clouds in the west. Lois opened the heavy door and looked out. There was dusky yellow in the fading light and there was a hush everywhere. There had been no thunder for some little time and, when Lois stepped out onto the narrow porch and looked toward the west, there was a light edge in the sky. So—probably it was going to go around them.
The freshet ebbed. People went out into the August afternoon and looked at it and went for cars. A few more came, but they were hurried—came from duty, came to get their money’s worth, said “very interesting” and asked about the cannon ball and told each other they’d better be getting along before the storm hit.
Five o’clock—that was the official end of it. If at five there were no visitors in the house, and none approaching, Lois could call upstairs to say she was going now and, duty done, go. She hoped the rain would hold off, that the storm—
There was a shaft of sunlight coming, suddenly, through the small windows of the living room, which was on the west side of the house. So, there wasn’t going to be—
The sunlight went out; went off, as if somebody somewhere had turned a switch. With that, the gloom—the almost darkness; the yellow darkness—deepened abruptly. With that, also, there was a deep, somehow baleful, roll of thunder.
It was a quarter of five, then. Nobody would be coming now. She could fudge a little. She—she ought to close the windows, since she was there. She closed windows and looked at her watch, and shook it, because it seemed to have stopped.
There was a flicker of light and, almost simultaneously, another rumble of thunder. The flicker—of course, domesticated electricity grows jumpy in big storms. Lightning taunts electricity which has been captured, tamed.
She closed the last window. Now she could go; now, certainly, she was ready to go. The house was dark around her; dark like a cave. The lamps were small dim sentinels in the darkness; sentinels surrounded, outmatched. They flickered again, all at once, as if wincing from the storm. Time to go—high time to go.
“I’m going now,” she called up the steep staircase. “I’ve closed everything.”
She listened. She was not answered, but she heard someone moving—coming toward, she thought, the head of the stairs. So —she had been heard. That was all right. She went the length of the wide hall to the heavy front door and pulled it open and—
And it happened. It was as if the storm had waited, lain in wait for that.
A great wind came out of the calm and a few heavy splashes of rain fell. The first drops, striking dust, set up tiny volcanoes in it. And then there were no more drops—there was only water—water which seemed a solid wall, moving up Battle Street at tremendous speed. It was then the lightning really started.
The heavy door tore itself out of Lois Williams’s hand and slammed shut, slammed into its frame. I must have left something open somewhere to let the wind in, Lois thought, dimly, and backed away from the door. She couldn’t go out in that; nobody could go out in that. She—
The lights went out. It was to be expected; she had expected it. In such storms as this the electricity always failed. One got used to it. But—not here. Not in this dark cave of a house. Lightning tried the windows, and the driving rain tried them, and there was a tremendous clap of thunder and the house itself seemed to tremble.
After that clap—that explosion—of thunder there was a momentary lull in sound; there was the sound of rain hurled against small windows and, as if from a long way off—there was that to be said, too, for thick walls—the sound of the wind itself. And— another sound. The sound, first, of feet in the hallway above her —heavy feet, hurrying. And then—
“Mrs. Williams! Don’t—wait—oh—wait!”
Lois turned. She half ran, half stumbled, a few feet toward the foot of the staircase, looked up it.
The tall old woman stood there and seemed to be holding her hands out. Her voice had been a scream; there had been desperation in her scream.
But now, for an instant, she merely stood at the head of the steep staircase and held her hands out. In appeal? Or—to catch herself? Because, as Lois watched, Ella Harbrook began to fall forward. For an instant there was unreality in her falling; she fell too slowly for it to be real. But then the tall, heavy woman screamed once, and the scream ended at its highest note, broke there. She fell fast enough after that—fell headlong down the stairs and crumpled at the bottom of them, her body making a horrible soft sound.
And now at the head of the stairs, looking down into the gloom, a man was standing, holding something in his right hand. It was too dim to see—he was a shadow in the semi-darkness. And then the hall, the whole house, was instantaneously bright with glaring light and John Keating, a revolver in his right hand, was frozen in light—he frozen there, and the woman motionless at the foot of the stairs, and Lois, with hands raised and clenched in front of her body, frozen too. Then it was dark again, darker than before; darkness, torn by light, healed itself, implacably.
But it was not complete. In it, at the head of the stairs, Keating was a darker shape of darkness and—a moving shape! He came down the stairs.
And she ran, ran wildly, for an instant without plan. But the mind, like the muscles, has reflexes of its own. She ran toward the living room and through it, and down the narrow passageway to the kitchen. There’s no time to open the heavy front door, her mind’s reflex said. No time to tug against the wind rushing through the house.
In the kitchen the wind tore at her. From—a window half open—a window forgotten—a window next the door which was, itself, shaking in the wind; which seemed to struggle to free itself from the confining frame.
Released, the door leaped at her; then the roar of water and wind was incredible. Any sound of pursuit was brushed aside by it; the sound of the storm was imperious. But—there was pursuit. There had to be pursuit. She had seen murder, and murder could not let it go at that. Could not let her go with that.
A short flight of wooden steps led down from the small shelter of a little porch—no shelter now, no shelter against this. She went down the steps, holding to a rail and the wind and rain tried to tear her from the steps. On the ground she ran, staggering in the wind—ran straight on, away from the house.
And it was as if she had stepped, leaped, into a lake, not staggered down wooden steps to a gently sloping field, rough mowed. She could not ha
ve been wetter after such a dive than she was now, after seconds of the horizontally driven rain. And the rain was bitterly, freezingly, cold. The cold—more, the impact of the water itself—was bruising through the clinging thinness of a cotton dress. It was as if the rain whipped her naked body.
A hundred feet from the house an orchard began—an ancient, long-untended, orchard of gnarled apple trees. They stood, grotesquely shaped, straining in the wind, in wide-spaced rows; they seemed to reach fantastic arms toward her, to seize and hold.
But they provided some shelter from the wind; the wind, among them, checked itself to struggle with the trees. Let the girl go, the wind seemed to say; these are my old enemies. But then, as she was abreast one of the trees, the wind won its long fight and the tree tore apart and one of its branches leaped at her. She threw her hands up to protect her face and the branch slashed them and part of it tore at her dress, caught the fabric, as if with angry, dying fingers. She staggered and lost her balance and the fabric parted, so that the skirt of the dress was tattered about her legs.
She lay for an instant in rough grass. She twisted to her knees and looked at her arms and saw, numbly, that they were bleeding but she moved them, and her fingers, and there was not much pain. Or she did not feel pain.
Kneeling in the stubble, she looked back toward the house. It was not as dark outside as it had been in it; there was more yellow in the darkness. She could see him—could see the shape of him, coming toward her, running. He was still quite near the house. Something must have delayed him—something—
He would have had to step over the woman at the foot of the stairs. He might have had to pause to make sure that the woman was dead.
