“But-but it wasn’t Craig that died. It’s Conrad…”
“Exactly,” said Lieutenant Nugent, cutting off Chivery’s fluttering expostulation. “Could Craig Brent have walked down here to the library, poisoned his father and walked back upstairs and collapsed there in the storeroom…”
“Linen room,” I said.
“… where he was found?”
“Poisoned!” cried Chivery shrilly, his uneasy face turning gray. “That’s horrible! I tell you Conrad died a perfectly natural death. I’ll do an autopsy. And your medical examiner can help me. But mark my words we’ll find he died of a heart attack-and anyway…” his nervous eyes darted about the library, toward the desk, toward the sofa, anywhere but at the Lieutenant. “Anyway, Craig shot himself! Accidentally. Why-even you cannot believe that there are two murderers here in this house…”
“Unless Craig shot himself for that very reason,” said Lieutenant Nugent watching Chivery’s frightened, uneasy face.
“Shot himself-oh, I see! To make it look as if somebody else tried to kill him and then succeeded in killing his father? To establish a kind of alibi before the deed? Why, that’s preposterous, Lieutenant! That’s absurd! Ha, ha, ha,” again it was meant to be a laugh and sounded like anything else in the world.
And I said, “But he does have an alibi. Craig, I mean. I am it.” Both men looked at me. “I was in the room. I would have known if he had moved. He didn’t.”
There was a moment of silence. Chivery hadn’t looked quite at me, just at my left ear. Nugent jerked his head toward one of the two waiting-and intently listening-policemen. “Telephone Dr. Marrow,” he said. “Get him over here at once.” One of the troopers vanished.
Claud Chivery said slowly, “Conrad must have just got back from his walk. He went for a walk every night. About eleven. Said it made him sleep. Walked very slowly…”
Nugent said abruptly, “That’s all now, Nurse.” He was bending over Conrad again when I left-trying not to run.
No one was in the hall. Claud Chivery, I think, closed the door behind me. At the stair landing I stopped, looked quickly around, saw no one and plunged my hand under the ferns. The syringe was not there.
I looked and looked and still it wasn’t there. The only possible conclusion was that someone had seen me hide it and had taken it away.
There’s no use in trying to describe my feelings. Naturally, it wasn’t myself I cared about; it was Drue, whom I had delivered into the hands of her enemies-if, that is, Alexia or Nicky had taken the syringe. Or even Maud; there was a look in her dark eyes that suggested depths and no way to tell what kind of depths-true or false, as the radio programs put it.
All three of them-Alexia, Nicky and Maud-had passed that fern on their way upstairs; Peter Huber also could have taken it. Or Beevens, presupposing eyes in the back of his head, for he certainly had not turned while I hid it.
The library door was visible from the landing, and it had been open when I came downstairs; but I had seen no one, for I had looked.
Eventually, hearing steps coming from the end of the hall beyond the stairs (where there proved to be a tiny telephone room, and a hall going to the back stairs and kitchen regions) and guessing correctly that it was a trooper, I had to give up. I trudged up the remaining stairs with a heavy and a troubled heart. Murder is no pleasant thing, and I kept seeing Drue’s face-so young and so lovely, with the childish, honest curve of her young mouth, and the look in her eyes when she’d lifted them to mine and said, “I’ve only tonight.”
And I had to tell her what I had done.
She was sitting by the bed when I entered Craig’s room; her eyes leaped to mine. Craig was unconscious, asleep, I thought; his pulse was all right; the wound hadn’t opened and she had sterilized and dressed the bloody bruise on his temple so a neat patch of surgical dressing and adhesive adorned it. I beckoned Drue into the dressing room and told her everything, except that the syringe was gone-quickly whispering, hating to see the color drain out of her lips when I told her the police were there.
Her hands went out to grip mine, hard.
“Sarah, do they know I…”
“No. I hid the hypodermic. I didn’t tell them that you were there before me. I-oh, my dear child, don’t look like that. You didn’t mean it…”
“I gave him digitalis. Sarah, I had to. He was sick. His medicine was gone. I thought he was dying. I hurried to my room and I had some digitalis. I had it left over from old Mrs. Jamieson-remember, we nursed her together…”
I nodded. A nurse either destroys or hoards for an emergency drugs that are left over from a case and I had nursed old Mrs. Jamieson with her. Every nurse, I imagine (at least I always had done so) accumulates slowly a kind of first-aid, emergency kit of her own. I had then in my bag enough sedatives to bring upon me the highly unfavorable attention of any policeman who happened to discover it.
“So you gave it to him?”
“Yes.” There was horror in her eyes. “You see, I’d been talking to him. Then he… I saw he was really sick. He said to get his medicine; he gasped horribly. He told me where it was, but I remembered. He’s always kept it there in the right-hand drawer of his desk. But I looked and it wasn’t there so I…”
“You opened the drawer?”
“Yes, of course.” (I thought, then, of fingerprints; yet Drue’s fingerprints on the drawer couldn’t be made to prove anything. Or could they?) She went on quickly: “But there was no box of pills. Then he begged me for something; said even if I hated him I’d have to help him, and I-I got my syringe from the bag in my room. I sterilized it quickly with alcohol and prepared the hypodermic and hurried back to the library. He rolled up his sleeve himself and told me to hurry. So I did. I gave him what I thought was the right amount…”
“How much?”
She told me. I nodded. Conrad hadn’t taken any of the pills he had ready for emergency during the few moments that he was alone while Drue was preparing the hypodermic. That was obvious, for if he had done so he wouldn’t have permitted her to give him the additional medicine. “Go on,” I said.
“That’s all, Sarah. He…” She took her hands from my wrists and put them to her throat. “He died. Then. Just-just died and I couldn’t stop it.”
She was shivering; I took her hands again and held them tightly. And thought hard.
“You’re not to tell about the hypodermic. Not tell anyone. Lie if you have to.”
Her hands clung to mine. Her eyes, dark with horror, searched my face. “They’ll say I murdered him,” she whispered. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”
I had to tell her, then. “Listen, Drue. I lost the syringe. That is, I didn’t lose it. I hid it and someone found it and took it away.”
There was a little sharp silence. In the next room Craig slept heavily. Outside, rain and sleet whispered against the windows. Drue whispered stiffly, “Who…?”
“I don’t know. I hid it in the fern; I guessed what you had done; I didn’t want them to know. It’s gone now, so someone must have seen me hide it. I don’t know who. But it’s gone, and your fingerprints are on it. They can easily prove it was yours; there will be traces of digitalis in it.”
8
AFTER A LONG MOMENT she said with a kind of incredulous horror, “He wasn’t murdered, Sarah! I saw him die. If I killed him, it was some terrible, unforgivable mistake on my part, but I didn’t murder him. I didn’t…”
“You didn’t kill him. Listen, Drue; you can’t tell them what you did. You must not. I’ve seen something of police investigation; circumstantial evidence has hanged many a man. No, no, I didn’t mean to say that! I only meant you must promise me not to tell. Not yet. Not until-well, until we see what’s going to happen.”
“But if I’m wrong, if it should be murder I’ve got to tell them, don’t you see? If the police are right, if he was murdered, they ought to know what I gave him and how much.” She stopped, caught her breath and said again, fighting it, “But he couldn
’t have been murdered!”
“No. Yet who called the police then and why? Who shot Craig? And why? What did Craig mean when he said there would be murder done?”
“But he didn’t mean-he couldn’t have meant-this!” She stared at me with a kind of terror for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I’d better tell them exactly what I did.”
It frightened me, but more than anything it exasperated me. “All right,” I snapped. “Go ahead and tell them you murdered him! That’s exactly what it will amount to. Or shall I tell them? Craig may come to see you in jail but I doubt it.”
“Sarah…”
“There’s a time for nobility, Drue Cable, but this isn’t the time. However, if you’re bent on making a martyr of yourself I won’t stop you. Heaven knows it’s nothing to me. You make me come here; I didn’t know I was walking into anything like this. I hate shooting and I hate murder and I hate the police. I’m going home. Unless they stop me. You can do exactly as you please. Just go ahead and tell them you killed him and I don’t care, for I won’t be here.”
“Sarah…” She caught my arms. “Sarah, I’m not that kind of fool.”
“Oh, yes, you are. I can see it…”
“No. No.” Her hands dropped away from my arms. She stared down at the dressing table with its rosy little lamp and crystal bottles. “I won’t tell them. I cannot believe that he was murdered. I saw him. Yet if-oh, you’re right, of course.”
“Certainly, I’m right.” I paused thoughtfully. There was only one thing we could do and it had its dangers. Yet they had already mentioned digitalis; and it was a piece of material evidence really leading to Drue.
“Did you use all the supply of digitalis you had, Drue?”
“No. Only enough…”
“We ought to get rid of the rest of it.”
“But Sarah, when-if I eventually tell them about it, as I may have to do…”
“I know. It might look guilty. But I think it’s better to get rid of the rest of the digitalis now in the hope it needn’t ever come out-about the hypodermic, I mean. Some blundering fool” (which was exactly the opposite of what I meant) “of a policeman might get his hands on the digitalis; Chivery may see the hypodermic mark. No, no, Drue, it’s better to dispose of the rest of the digitalis now. I’ll do it…”
“No,” she said quickly and sharply and then caught herself as quickly. “I’d better do it myself,” she said. “I know exactly where it is. I’ll go. Now.”
So she went, leaving me oddly perplexed by the look of sudden and sharp anxiety in her face. It was as if she had remembered something she didn’t want me to know about-which was nonsense, of course. What could there be in her room, in the little nursing bag, anywhere in the house, which she wanted to keep a secret? When presently she came back, slipping quietly into the room while I was sitting beside Craig, I had decided it was nothing.
“Did you get it?” I whispered.
Her face looked very white and her breath was coming quickly; her hand was in her pocket. She shook her head. “They were already there. They… Sarah-they’ve got your little black bag-you know; and mine. I saw a policeman go downstairs with them. Oh, Sarah…”
We stared at each other across Craig’s bed, and rain whispered against the windows. Finally, I said-I had to say, “Never mind. It doesn’t prove anything. Don’t worry.”
After that there was really nothing we could do. We didn’t even talk much. The rain beat and murmured against the windows and all we could do was wait.
Digitalis. And they had thought of us, nurses, and had taken the little instrument and medicine bags to search even before they could possibly have got results from the autopsy. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t tell Drue (although she knew it, naturally), and Craig slept and the rain beat down and there was no way of knowing what the police were doing. What Alexia was doing and Nicky, or Maud. Waiting, too, I imagined, as we were waiting.
I couldn’t then, even, try to discover the syringe. If the person who had found it in the fern (who must have seen me place it there) had taken it to the police then we were already lost. But if not there might be some chance.
If it was murder, then who? Who had shot Craig? Who had killed his father?
I had ensconced myself on the couch in front of the fire by that time, feeling that since we could accomplish nothing by further talk, Drue and I, I might as well try to get some sleep. I remember their names kept going around and around in my head like a nightmarish kind of merry-go-round-Alexia, Nicky, Maud, Peter Huber, Dr. Chivery (for he was not in the house, but he was fairly near presumably, and could have returned somehow without anyone’s knowledge), Beevens, Anna-the other servants.
Just as I was about to catch the tail of a nap I began to think again of the telephone call to the police. Who had called them? And more important-tremendously important-why? In that answer, I thought suddenly, with that queerly elusive clarity one discovers on the edge of sleep, might lie the answer to the whole ugly problem.
After that I was wide awake for what was left of the night. Craig slept heavily and seemed none the worse for his mysterious peregrinations; Drue sat in an armchair near the bed with her starched cap off and her hair a little rumpled from pressing her head back against the cushions of the chair-her face pale, her eyes very dark, watching Craig’s sleeping face broodingly. It rained all that night, rain and sleet and rain again. We could hear nothing of what was going on in the house. Twice I got up and tiptoed into the hall, once going down the stairs, pausing again at the fern. But the syringe was really gone.
The hall below was deserted, but Nicky Senour and Peter Huber were sitting in the morning room in front of the fire, smoking. There were state troopers in the library; I went down into the hall and as far as the library door. No one stopped me and I wanted to see what they were doing. I was little wiser for my pains but convinced, if I had not been before, that they were in earnest about an investigation. For they had been taking fingerprints from smooth surfaces in the room; they had been using a tiny hand vacuum on furniture and rugs; the decanter of brandy had been removed; there were chalked crosses on the sofa and on the rug indicating, I thought, the position of Conrad Brent’s body. Pictures had been taken, then. But the body of Conrad Brent had been removed.
Two troopers were still there, one of them writing shorthand notes rapidly in a little tablet; the other blowing a small cloud of yellowish powder from a contrivance that looked like a tiny bellows upon one of the wooden panels across the room on the right side of the fireplace-a panel that I saw then, was actually a swinging door leading into a tiny washroom, for I could see walls tiled in shining, pale green beyond. He turned to look at me and the trooper with the tablet stopped writing to look at me, too, and there being, to say the least, no welcome in either look but rather the contrary, I retreated; anyway I had seen all I wanted to see. Nicky looked up as I passed through the hall but did not stop me. Peter however came out.
“Have you told Craig?” he asked me.
“No.”
“Better not for a while.”
“What was that noise, Mr. Huber? You remember-while you were calling the doctor. Did you find out about it?”
He frowned; his face looked tired and worried. “I didn’t find anybody,” he said. “I guess I’m not much of a detective. From the sound I thought a window had been broken somewhere, but I was wrong. I looked all along the hall leading toward the back of the house. But I found just nothing to account for it.”
“Could there have been some-some intruder? A thief, perhaps?”
Peter Huber shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll tell the police about it. I take it Craig is all right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“They took him away-Conrad Brent, I mean. I suppose they are doing an autopsy now.”
Nicky watched, bright eyes intensely curious, as I took my way upstairs again. That must have been about four or five o’clock-a cold, still, gusty February dawn. By six o’clock Craig hadn’t wake
ned. At about seven Beevens, clothed in his right mind as well as trousers and dark sack coat, brought Drue and me some coffee and toast. Breakfast would be along soon, he said; in the meantime he thought we might enjoy the coffee. He spoke to me and looked at Drue with a kind of sympathy and kindliness; naturally all the servants knew of her position in that household. Perhaps the romance of it appealed to them, but I think they liked her, too.
Beevens could tell us nothing, though, of what the police were doing and, looking very haggard himself with great puffs under his eyes, went away. After we drank the coffee and Drue nibbled at some toast because I made her, I sent her to her room. Sometime that day she would have to face the police and she’d had no sleep at all that night. So I made her rest; and thus I was alone with Craig when he awoke.
He awoke rather suddenly; in full possession of his senses. He looked white and tired, but his pulse was good. He had no temperature and the wound in his shoulder, while stiff and sore, seemed to be healing with normal rapidity.
He said almost at once, “Where is Drue?”
“In her room, resting.”
He looked at me, frowning a little. He was very sober, and there was a kind of authority about him. All at once I seemed to see a very faint likeness to his father-his nose, perhaps, and brown, decided chin: His eyes, however, were darker and had spirit and luminousness. His father’s eyes had been very cold and chill. He said, “You’re the other nurse. Yes, I remember you.”
“I’m Sarah Keate. I’ll ring for some breakfast. I think you can manage something light…”
He interrupted me. “Listen, Nurse, something happened last night-something-I can’t remember…”
I did not hesitate. “Nothing happened, except that you got out of bed once when I was out of the room and got a bump…”
He put his hand to his bandaged temple. “Why, yes,” he said. “I remember that! But something had happened downstairs. Somebody screamed. You left and I-I got up to see what it was. I put on slippers and a robe and…” he stopped. There was a sudden and clear recollection in his eyes.
Wolf in Man’s Clothing Page 8
