Wolf in Man’s Clothing

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  There was all at once a small note of fear in Alexia’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “What are you going to do, Nicky?”

  “I’m not going to do anything unless I have to.”

  “So it is blackmail. Why don’t you try Craig? He’s got as much money as I have.”

  “I already have,” said Nicky almost naively. “I thought (since we’re being frank) that I could invent a bit of evidence against Drue in the matter of Conrad’s murder. His murder, Alexia; people hang for murder…”

  “Nicky-” she said in a sharp whisper. Nicky went on cheerily, “I knew Drue had been with Conrad the night he was killed; I’d heard part of the row they had. I decided I could make what I’d heard sound pretty bad to the police…”

  “That’s why you were so mysterious about not swearing to evidence against her?”

  “Well, naturally. I didn’t know yet exactly what I intended to swear to. She doesn’t have any money. But I thought if Craig was still in love with her he’d pay to keep me still.”

  “And is he?”

  “No,” said Nicky ruefully. “He didn’t turn a hair. Even when I hinted that I was ready now to make an honest woman of her.”

  Unexpectedly, Alexia laughed; there was the strangest note of pleasure and pride and, mainly, understanding. Nicky laughed, too, so for a moment they seemed to be congratulating each other’s cleverness, complacently, understanding each other.

  Then the little musical, wicked laughter stopped. I could imagine them, wary again, mutually on guard, watching each other like two reflections of the same face. Nicky said, “So, my dear. I’ve got to feather my own nest, you know. As soon as I knew Conrad was dead and that source of supply was shut off I realized I had to…”

  “To find out who killed him, and bleed him for the rest of his life,” broke in Alexia in sudden, low vehemence.

  “Oh, now, dear! Only to turn an honest penny for myself. By bleeding her. You, darling.”

  “Nicky, you wouldn’t dare! Your own sister.”

  Nicky laughed a little, but this time Alexia didn’t join him. He said, “Don’t be difficult. You oblige me to put the screws on, so to speak.” His soft voice had an ugly undertone. “First, Conrad’s own medicine, all of it, a fatal quantity was put into the brandy. Digitalis is soluble in alcohol.”

  “How much you know, Nicky!” There was a jeering note in her voice. “Too much, if you ask me. Be careful I don’t set the police on you.”

  “Then later, after a vase, dear, had been pulled down a stairway and broken…”

  Alexia interjected jeeringly again. “You really do know too much, Nicky. Did you murder him?”

  “… the brandy was changed. Poisoned brandy poured out, good brandy poured in. I figured it all out. What did you do with the medicine box? Burn it?”

  Alexia was still perfectly possessed and unafraid. “It may have been planted,” she said coolly. “To turn suspicion one way or another. I’m sure I wouldn’t know about that, however.”

  “Planted?” said Nicky. “Where? Craig?”

  “Perhaps,” said Alexia with a little laugh.

  Nicky said, “It was you, of course, in the meadow, when Chivery was killed.”

  “Beevens says it was you,” she said, still sure of herself “Of course, we do resemble each other.”

  The ugly undertone in Nicky’s voice was more marked “Listen, Alexia, you can’t get away with that. You had time to get back to the house and put on that long green dress over the clothes you were wearing. My clothes! And don’t tell the police I killed either of them! That would be very foolish. I know too much about you.”

  “I didn’t kill Conrad,” said Alexia rather slowly.

  Nicky gave a soft little laugh but said nothing. Alexia said, after a moment, “I had no motive.”

  “Oh, dear me, no,” said Nicky. “Rich and attractive widow marries…”

  “Nicky, you killed him. You had just as much motive as I had. Money.”

  “It won’t go, Alexia. I tell you that I know things.”

  “But I didn’t…”

  “What of the Frederic Miller checks?”

  There was another silence. Then Alexia said in a kind of stifled way, “All right. But if you say a word…”

  “You took them out of his desk yourself, didn’t you? So you’ve been in on the thing from the beginning.”

  “Nicky, is this a guess or do you know…?”

  “I know enough,” said Nicky. “Part of it is guess work but extremely effective guess work. I think I know the whole story.”

  “You don’t,” said Alexia. “You can’t possibly. But if you’ll keep still…”

  “I knew you’d see the light.”

  “You little selfish beast,” said Alexia suddenly and low. “All you’ve ever wanted is money. Money from anyone you think you can blackmail.”

  “Blackmail,” said Nicky. “It was blackmail, wasn’t it?

  Never mind. It’s an agreement. It’s a good thing for you that you believe me and are a sensible girl…”

  “Will you go?” demanded Alexia in a voice that trembled with anger.

  “Right,” said Nicky.

  There was another silence, then the sound of the front door opening and closing and somebody crossed the porch on tiptoe, softly. I looked out the window, but there was only the hedge and the white picket fence, growing dimmer in the dusk.

  So Nicky knew, or effectively pretended to know the “whole story.” Whatever it was, it was so damning that Alexia would promise anything to silence him.

  But if Maud had murdered Conrad, and Claud Chivery, why was Alexia willing to bargain with Nicky? And did Nicky really know as much as he pretended to know?

  After a long time of utter silence in the cottage, I moved, stiffly, very cautiously, so I could see through the little crack between curtain and window casing.

  Then I wished I hadn’t looked. For Nicky stood in the doorway; he was looking slowly around the study, and he held the long carving knife in one hand.

  Only it wasn’t Nicky.

  I looked closer, scrutinizing. It was Alexia in Nicky’s clothes-Nicky’s checked jacket, Nicky’s brown slacks, Nicky’s maroon scarf. It must be Alexia; Nicky had gone. All at once I understood many things. Mainly, Nugent's suggestion was right: Alexia could and obviously had worn Nicky’s clothes whenever it was convenient to do so.

  But there was something else-something terribly important. Oh, yes. Is Drue here? Nicky had asked.

  If Drue was in that gloomy silent cottage she was upstairs, where I hadn’t looked. If she was alive, why hadn’t she come down, or telephoned the house or let me know somehow?

  Perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps they had her locked up in some upstairs room so she couldn’t telephone. Yes, I thought; it had to be that. And Nicky (no, Alexia) had come to the Chivery cottage. Yet she hadn’t seemed to be sure of Drue’s presence; she’d replied obliquely to Nicky, saying only that the police hadn’t thought of the Chivery cottage. As I hadn’t; as Craig hadn’t, for there was no reason to think for an instant that Drue was there.

  I didn’t then consider why and especially how anyone could have got Drue out of the house (an able-bodied and supple young woman with a good pair of lungs), for I was watching Alexia, and afraid to watch her at the same time for fear she would feel my eyes upon her. But she didn’t, for she was looking at the books I had left on the desk. No: that was wrong. She was actually looking at the telephone.

  The telephone! I’d forgotten it. I could telephone, the instant Alexia started upstairs to Drue!

  Well, I couldn’t. I shall never forget my feelings as before I could move Alexia took one swift step to the telephone, and slashed through its wire with the knife, swiftly, as if she had wiry, feral strength in those white wrists. Then she glanced quickly around the study again and I shut my eyes to keep from attracting her gaze and when I opened them an instant later she was gone. Quietly as a cat, stalking.

  There were bac
k stairs. I remembered that. I crept out from behind the draperies and Alexia didn’t come back. The big roll-top desk was beside the door which led back toward the little hall and the back stairway, and, as I passed it, a very queer little thing happened. It was an instance, I suppose, of the instinct of self-preservation, for it flashed through my mind that nobody would live like that, isolated in the country, without a revolver, and my hand went out to the desk drawer and opened it cautiously and there was actually a revolver, big and serviceable-looking, lying on top of some papers. It didn’t seem at all strange; I snatched it up as if I’d known it would be there, and went on with scarcely a pause, through the little consulting room and into the tiny hall beyond.

  But it was much darker than it had been. The hall was in blackness and I groped with my free hand for the stairs. Something took a kind of quivering breath out of that darkness before me just as my hand encountered hair.

  Human hair.

  I drew back somewhat quickly. I would have fired the revolver if I had been able to find the trigger.

  Then luckily for us both, perhaps, I realized that the hair I touched was a braid. So it was Anna, and she was alive.

  In fact, she was shrinking over the bannisters, away from me. Fortunately, she was simply petrified with fright, and I got my hand over her mouth before she even whimpered. I whispered sternly, “Anna, it’s only me. The nurse, Miss Keate.

  “Oo-woo-woo-” she observed with vehemence. I held my hand harder over her teeth and was horrified to realize that she was heaving wildly up and down in an effort either to scream or sob; so I dragged her nearer and put my mouth where I thought her ear ought to be.

  “Anna, listen! It’s Nurse Keate. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She heard that. A gigantic heave caught her amidship, and I thought she was going to burst or strangle and didn’t care which, but she did neither.

  Instead all at once she caught herself away from me, sucked in a great gulp of air while I sought desperately for her mouth again in the darkness, and then said quite clearly, but whispering, “Turn me over to the police. It’s all my fault. I began it. I knew… Oh, Nurse, Nurse, will they put me in the electric chair, too?”

  “Not if I get you first,” I said between my teeth, but whispering too. “Is Miss Cable here?”

  “Oh, yes, yes.” I thought she was wringing her hands. “She’s not hurt. She’s upstairs, in a bedroom. I swear I didn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t have hurt her, not really. I had to keep her quiet, that’s all. I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do. All day; I didn’t mean anything.”

  It wasn’t the time to cut through her maunderings and get at any sense that, problematically, lay behind them. “You’ve got to go for the police! Quick! Out the back door!”

  “Police?”

  “They won’t hurt you. Be quiet. Hurry.”

  “No, no! I lied to them! I said I didn’t telephone the night Mr. Brent was killed. But I did. I knew it was murder. I was afraid something terrible would happen. And it did.”

  “You telephoned the police!”

  “Yes. Yes. Oh, Nurse, I’ve been so wicked. I picked up the vase. I had to; I was made to do it; I didn’t want to.”

  “Anna, you did that!”

  “Yes, yes. But I didn’t want to. So I hurried to the telephone. I told the police it was murder.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Anna! What are you saying? Who made you pick up the broken vase? Why did you know it was murder? Anna…”

  But I was too vehement. I had her by the shoulders and I clutched too hard. I only frightened her into a gibbering, quaking, sobbing jelly with about as much intelligence. I couldn’t get another sensible or coherent two words out of her. And Drue was alone and Alexia somewhere in the house. So finally I shoved the revolver against Anna’s neck where she could feel the cold steel-hoping it wouldn’t go off but not caring very much just then. “Go out the back door,” I said despairingly. “Go through the kitchen. Don’t make a sound. And if you don’t bring the police back here as soon as you can I’ll shoot you with this. I’m a good shot,” I said, having held a revolver in my hand only once before in my life.

  But I must have impressed her with sincerity; at any rate, something penetrated the fog of terror and self-blame around her. “I will-oh, I will-I started everything. It’s all my fault. But don’t shoot…” she quavered out of the darkness.

  I had to let her go. She groped her way around me and I could hear the soft patter of her feet for a few steps; I waited, listening with all my ears.

  I couldn’t then explore, even in my thoughts, the incoherent, terrified flood of self-reproach I had unleashed.

  I couldn’t explore the conversation between Nicky and Alexia, either. Nicky’s accusations, Alexia’s denials and half-admissions and her final surrender to his demand were both enlightening and baffling. And there were those ugly scribbled notes about digitalis which Claud Chivery must have attributed to Maud.

  But just then there was no time to grope my way through the contradictions and the half-admissions. It is queer though to remember now that I had had the key to the thing, the link in the chain actually in my hands and had not had the wit to see it. Just then my main preoccupation was Drue.

  I couldn’t hear anything at all from upstairs or from the front of the house, but presently I did hear the soft opening and closing of a door near by and I was reasonably sure it was Anna. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at all sure she would go for the police.

  There was no other sound at all anywhere. I took a harder grip on the revolver, wished I knew more of its habits, and, holding it well away from me, started up the narrow little flight of stairs; I came out into a kind of landing, barely lighted by a window. I listened there and poked my head cautiously around the corner and there was a narrow hall, going toward the front of the house, with doors opening from it.

  There was no sound of Alexia anywhere and no figure moved against the faint gray light from the front windows. But I didn’t know either where Drue was, so there was nothing for it but to try the bedrooms. So I advanced very cautiously across the hall and Drue was in the first bedroom I entered.

  I didn’t see her at first; she had heard or sensed my approach and had shrunk back behind the door. As I turned she caught a glimpse of me. “Sarah…”

  Then I saw her and caught her. “Sh-sh,” I reached out and closed the door softly. Her face was a white oval in the dusk; her hands gripped my arms as if she would never let me go. “Sarah…” she whispered.

  “Be still. Alexia’s here. Nicky was here, but I think he’s gone. Drue, are you all right? Did they hurt…?”

  “No, no. Only I couldn’t telephone! I couldn’t do anything. She wouldn’t let me…”

  “She…”

  “Anna. She’s gone down now to fix us something to eat. I was listening, thinking I could reach the telephone when somebody came. A few minutes ago. I thought I heard Nicky’s voice.”

  “You did.” I was sure she was all right; and the certainty, the relief, actually surged along my nerves and muscles like an intoxication; I felt superhuman, able to do anything-only just at the moment I couldn’t think of exactly what. Except get Drue out of there. And the notes about digitalis into the hands of the police. And Anna’s words and Alexia’s into their ears!

  How, was a different matter. I wasn’t really afraid of Alexia; not with Drue, to say nothing of the revolver, to back me up. Neither Drue nor myself was exactly frail and, moreover, as nurses we’d had a certain amount of training, so to speak, in self-defense. Even if Alexia had the knife, as she did, there’s a way of grasping the arms and twisting them backward; at the worst there’d be only a moment of struggle.

  Yes, I thought we could together manage Alexia and without recourse to the revolver, unless it became necessary. It gave me great moral support, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength of mind actually to point it at Alexia and shoot-unless, of course, circumstances seemed to require it.

  Drue was sti
ll clinging to me. “Craig…” she whispered. “Is he…?”

  “Nearly crazy,” I said, listening for Alexia and trying to think and failing. “He-listen, Drue, when you left the Brent house (I mean when you were married to Craig and he was in Washington) did Nicky go with you?”

  “Why-why, yes. He drove me to the station. Then he took the same train to New York; he said he had some business in town. Why?”

  So that settled that, I thought rather grimly. All that I could hope was that both Drue and Craig would in the future try to develop a modicum, a bare modicum, of reason. Still the cards, as my poker-playing patient used to say, had been stacked against them; it really was true and I had to make allowances for it. I said wearily, “Tell Craig that.”

  “Tell Craig! But Nicky-that was nothing!”

  “Sh-sh,” I said quickly, certain I heard some motion outside and not intending to let Alexia catch me unprepared. Drue saw me advance the revolver steadily toward the door and froze, too, to listen.

  But the door did not open and there was no further sound. After a moment I said, whispering, “Anna went for the police. At least, I sent her to get them. But I’m not sure she’ll make it.”

  “Anna!” Drue shuddered. I said, “She made you come here. What did she tell you?”

  “She said she knew something. Last night she came to me…”

  “I know. The guard told us enough so we thought that must have happened.”

  “She was crazy with fear and with self-reproach. Really, Sarah, she was afraid of everything. She was nearly out of her mind. I tried to get her to talk and she-oh, in the end she promised to tell me what she knew if I’d help her get away from the house. She was afraid to talk there, in the house. Terrified. As if something might jump out of the walls. I couldn’t do anything with her. She was hysterical. But she kept saying she knew something.”

  “So you came here?”

  “In the night. I was going to find out the thing she knew, Sarah. She said this house was empty and no one would look for us here. I wasn’t afraid, not at first. I gave her some sedative to put in some coffee for the boy on guard…”