“But I don’t understand…”
“Perhaps you won’t be able to believe it when you hear the story. You wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t know Ivor.” Gilbert’s strong fingers intertwined around the dice box. “It happened back in Pittsburgh, when I was in the hospital and almost all our available money had gone. I was very ill, paralyzed. At one time they had all but given up hope for my recovery. But there was a series of treatments which the doctors thought might save my life.” He hesitated. “They were very expensive treatments, absolutely beyond our means.”
The words came spasmodically as if it were a great effort for him to force them out. “It was all my own fault. I had put my entire savings in that stock purchase I told you about. I had sunk Maud’s capital in it too. Maud didn’t know, of course, because she’s so very vague about money. But the children knew. They knew we had nothing—and that the treatments were the one chance to save me.”
He paused. “Ivor was there at the time, living at his estate outside the city. We had seen quite a lot of him. He’d become interested in Elaine even then, I think—although we didn’t realize it. In their—their desperation, the children thought of him. He was rich. Surely he would lend something. Terry went to him. He told him the story, begged for a loan to save me.”
Gilbert’s eyes were very bright now, bright with the remembrance of anger. He hesitated, almost choked by an inner fury.
“This is where I said you couldn’t believe me if you didn’t know Ivor. He couldn’t resist his almost insane desire for power over people. Terry had always disliked him, despised him, the way the very young and prudish can despise a man who lived a life like Ivor’s. Ivor knew perfectly well how Terry felt and it galled him. He hated Terry for not having fallen for his charm. And then—Terry had come to him to beg for me.”
Gilbert said quickly: “Ivor could have written a check for the full amount without turning a hair. What he did was infinitely worse than a refusal, psychopathically cruel. He raised Terry’s hopes, promised him a check. He wrote it and brought it to Terry. He was smiling and he said: ‘Perhaps this will teach you not to disapprove of people and try to exploit them at the same time.’ ” Gilbert hesitated. “The check was for one dollar.”
His voice was soft now, husky. “What Terry did was crazy, stupid. But I can understand. He was desperate, he hated Ivor with every fiber of his body, he probably didn’t care much about anything. He thought of nothing but me. He didn’t tell a soul. He… he changed the figures. One dollar to a thousand dollars. He forged the check, Kay.”
He stared at her bleakly. Impulsively she leaned across the card table, laying her hand on his arm.
“And the miracle is that the check was cashed without comment at the bank. None of us knew a thing.” He laughed. “Only that Ivor, with his characteristic generosity, had saved the day. I took the treatments. They made it possible for me to—to be here today. And Terry never told us. We never guessed a thing. We all thanked Ivor profusely. And he never said a word, either.”
He looked down at his hands. “You see, the money meant nothing to him in comparison with the power the thing had given him over Terry. The check came back to him from the bank, of course. He called for Terry. He forced him to write a signed confession of what he had done. He kept it and the check. From then on Terry, the boy who had dared to despise him, was entirely in his power. He had a constant weapon against him. Whenever he wanted to, he could turn the whole thing over to the police and Terry would be put in jail.”
Kay felt the reflection of Gilbert’s anger. Of all the subtle atrocities that Ivor had committed, this seemed the most wanton—worse even than what he had done to Rosemary. Because it had been directed against a nineteen-year-old boy, a boy who had meant nothing to him and who was so pitifully defenseless.
Gilbert watched her. “Later, Ivor invited us all to Bermuda. We came, of course, being grateful, thinking of him as our patron saint. And Terry had to come too, hating him but not being able to say a word because he knew how important Bermuda was for my health. And all these months he had been keeping it to himself—until yesterday morning.”
Gilbert looked older than his years now, old and very frail. “Yesterday Terry came to me and told me the whole story. He’d been hoping I’d never need to know, of course. But Ivor was not going to spare him that final humiliation. Before he left for New York this last trip, Ivor had told him that, as a peace offering, he was planning after the wedding to return the forged check and Terry’s signed statement to the family. He was not going to give them to Terry himself, though. He was going to give them to me. You see, he wanted to deliver that final stab wound to Terry.” He laughed. “That was going to be the first act of his life as Elaine’s husband.”
His fingers slid up and down the arm of the wheel chair. “I couldn’t believe it when Terry confessed to me. It went so fantastically against my opinion of Ivor. But last night I knew he was telling the truth. After that scene with Terry at dinner, Ivor came to me. He was in a dangerous mood. For the first time he didn’t even care about keeping up the pretense with me. He was very brutal and to the point. He told me that if ever there was any more insolence from Terry, he’d have him thrown in jail. He gave me the whole story, and in those few moments I saw the real Ivor whom I’d never even imagined before. And I saw that he meant what he said. He’d kept the check and the confession for evidence, he told me. He had them always with him in that folder. He was so angry because Terry had really won, you see. In spite of everything, he’d kept his integrity, he’d never fawned on Ivor. I realized then that Ivor wouldn’t think twice about having him arrested, ruining his life—just to bring him to his knees.” His face was a grim mask. “I realized then also that Ivor’s never really been kind to us. He just enjoyed having us dependent on him like— like a cageful of experimental animals.”
He paused and in the heavy silence, made even more engulfing by the eerie stillness outside which heralded the first deluge of the storm, Kay felt as if Ivor’s ghost was hovering very close, malicious and evil, watching triumphantly the drama of these people whose destiny his death had distorted as cruelly as his life.
“I hated him then,” said Gilbert quietly. “Hated him enough to have killed him myself. But that doesn’t matter now. It’s Terry who matters.” His lips were pale and tight. “You see what I mean. Elaine seems to have proved that Ivor was killed at the island or on the way to the island. Terry was out sailing— alone. He had no witnesses, no sort of alibi. If ever the police found the evidence of the forged check, the confession…”
“They’re in the folder with the securities, are they?” put in Kay quickly.
“That’s what I gathered from Ivor. Now you see why I want you to get that folder—whatever happens.”
“Of course.” Kay gave a little shiver as she thought of what would happen to Terry if ever the proofs of his pathetic forgery got into the hands of Major Clifford. She felt a bitter determination to cheat Ivor’s ghost and to retrieve the evidence at all costs.
But she felt frustration too as she remembered Constable Masters pacing the dock and that other man outside in the bay in a rowboat.
“I’ll get them, Gilbert,” she said. “Somehow I’ll find a way.”
Gilbert smiled palely. “Thank you, my dear. Perhaps I should have been franker with you this morning. But for Terry’s sake I didn’t want anyone to know this unless they had to.”
“I understand. I only wish…” Then, in a tight little voice, because she couldn’t keep the words in, she blurted: “Gilbert, do you think he did it? Do you think Terry killed him?”
Gilbert leaned across the table and took her hand in his own warm, steady one.
“We mustn’t think that way, Kay. We mustn’t start wondering. If we do, we’ll go mad. We…”
He broke off. Kay started too and looked up as the door burst open and Elaine ran in. Her small, pointed face was white as parchment. Her eyes, moving swiftly to her father’s, were sha
dowed with dread.
Gilbert asked sharply: “Elaine, what’s the matter?”
“It’s Alice.” Elaine came toward them, her hands fluttering out helplessly. “You’ve got to come— quickly. You’ve got to stop her. She’s just told us all that she knows who killed Ivor. She’s got evidence, she says. And she’s going to Major Clifford right away.”
Chapter Sixteen
THIS, HAPPENING ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, seemed to Kay like the final blow. Gilbert swung the wheel chair around and was staring at his daughter. Kay asked: “But who is it, Elaine? Whom is she accusing?”
“She didn’t give any name.”
Gilbert, his voice very calm, said: “Then it’s probably just another of her theatrical scenes.”
“No, no. It’s the truth all right. We were all there in the living room and she burst in and told us. She has evidence, she said, evidence she couldn’t tell the Major about over the phone, evidence she had to take to him personally. She—she was gloating about it.” Elaine threw back her dark hair. “Somehow we’ve got to stop her. You’ve got to come and help.”
Fantastically Kay never for a moment stopped to reflect that, in taking evidence to the police, Alice Lumsden was merely doing what any decent, law-abiding person would do under the circumstances. Her reaction was as unashamedly realistic as Elaine’s. Alice Lumsden was a menace to them all. Somehow she must be stopped.
“Father, Kay, come please.”
Elaine had turned back impatiently to the door. Kay hurried after her. Behind she could hear the cumbersome roll of Gilbert’s wheel chair as he followed them down the corridor into the living room.
Lights had been turned on here too. Outside their small pallid circles, the room was caught up in a weird dusk. The French windows were shut, but the whole gray weight of the gathering storm seemed to be leaning against the panes like some huge invisible beast of prey, pushing to get into the house. Little things took on pointless significance—a low bowl of scarlet hibiscus burning like petrified flames, a tray of glasses, a bottle of whisky, and squat Bermuda soda-water bottles with little glass marbles in their thick necks, gleaming evilly in the undersea light.
Maud turned from the window and moved toward them. Her face was pale and set, but its intrinsic tranquility was still undisturbed. She looked at Gilbert.
“Elaine told you?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t bluff. She really does think she knows who killed Ivor and she intends to go to Major Clifford right away.”
“But, Mother, we’ve got to stop her,” cried Elaine.
“We will do our best, dear.” Maud’s hand moved to her daughter’s arm in an instinctively protective gesture. “I tried to make her wait at least till the storm was over, but she refused. She’s upstairs now putting on a raincoat. She’s going to cycle to the police station.”
They stared at each other bleakly. Elaine said: “She hates us all. She’d do anything she could to hurt us.”
“You can hardly blame her for wishing to bring a murderer to justice.” A ghost of a smile played around Gilbert’s lips. “It’s quite reasonable of her.”
“Reasonable or not, we mustn’t let her go off like this without telling us anything.” Maud said that as if it were a simple, irrefutable fact. “I shall talk to her once more. I sent the others away because they were only making her more determined. Gilbert, there’s no need for you to be in this. You go back to the library. And Elaine, she resents yon most of all. You go upstairs to your room. Kay and I will handle this alone.”
Maud was in command gain, as she had been last night on the dock. She was obeyed without question. Elaine slipped away upstairs. As Maud and Kay moved together toward the French windows, Gilbert, skirting tables and chairs, wheeled himself away back to the library.
The two sisters were alone.
Kay’s nerves were keyed up almost to snapping point as they stood there in silence, waiting for a step on the cedar stairs that would herald Alice Lumsden. It was a strange, frightening feeling, knowing that someone in the house had possibly found the real solution to the crime, knowing that, although they were still as mystified as ever, the case might really be over—and was utterly out of their control.
Kay found herself identifying their own personal disaster with the lowering storm clouds outside. Ivor’s death had been like a cloud, banking up, steadily growing bigger and bigger and darker and darker until the moment had come for it to burst in a storm of destructive thunder and lightning.
That moment must be very close now.
Uncannily the storm chose that moment to break.
A blinding fork of lightning sprayed down the ink-blue sky and almost immediately, like a roll on a gigantic drum, an uproarious peal of thunder followed. For a breathless moment after it, the whole world seemed nothing but silence. All sound had been sucked up and away into the echo of the thunder. Then the silence was engulfed in a hissing, a hissing that swelled into a roar, and a pall of rain, thick as a tidal wave, blotted the view from the window like a wet rag wiping a slate clean.
Maud turned away from the window. Kay turned too. There was another flash of lightning; then a second cacophonous thunderclap.
Maud said: “I’ve never seen…” And then stopped because Alice Lumsden had appeared at the head of the stairs.
She would have been a grotesque figure at any time. Now, in this melodramatic setting, there was something sinister about her angular, bony figure. She stood there, halfway down the stairs, glaring at them. An old brown felt hat was jammed on her head. Her body was sheathed in a scarlet, shiny slicker. Gripped under one arm was a brown-paper package tied with string.
She came to them slowly and stopped on the first step. In the queer light her expression of exultant spite was rather horrible.
There was another thunderclap. Maud, very cold and stiff, said: “It’s absurd to go out in this weather, Alice. Wait till the rain stops.”
“Why should I wait?” said Alice icily. “Getting wet isn’t very terrible, is it?”
“But the lightning—it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Do you suppose it’s any more dangerous than this house?” Alice Lumsden’s teeth, sharp and uneven, showed as she smiled. “I know who killed Ivor.” She patted the package under her arm. “And I’ve got evidence here to prove it. Under the circumstances, I’d say that any storm was safer for me than Hurricane House.”
“Really, Alice, there’s no need to be ludicrous.” Maud’s voice was shaded with exasperation. Outside the storm seethed on, as if the falling water had reached boiling point. Thunder rolled around the house, an immense wheel chair. “Don’t you think you could be a little fair? If you know something, surely we have a right to know it too before you go to the Major.”
Alice Lumsden was scornfully unmoved. “Why should I tell you anything, Mrs. Chiltern, when you know so much already? Don’t think you’ve fooled me.” Her glance slid sideways to Kay. “And don’t think you’ve fooled me either, Miss Winyard. And don’t think you can destroy any evidence. If you do destroy it, it’d more damning than leaving it where it is.”
She made that cryptic remark emphatically as if she took it for granted that Kay knew what she meant. Then she turned back to Maud who was standing directly in front of her.
“This is really a waste of time, Mrs. Chiltern. Let me pass.”
For a moment, as the storm howled outside, the two women stood there facing each other in a silent battle of wills.
It was Alice Lumsden who won. Pale and impassive, Maud moved aside and said softly: “You’ve made your decision. I only hope you won’t regret it.”
Her head held triumphantly high, Alice Lumsden moved forward. Her hand was still clutched tightly around the brown-paper package.
“I’m a very good bicycle rider, Mrs. Chiltern. You don’t have to worry about me. I’d hate to have you do that when there’s so much other worrying to occupy your mind.”
Her scarlet sl
icker rustled past them toward the door. She glanced back over her shoulder, maliciously.
“When I return it will be with Major Clifford. Major Clifford and—a warrant.”
She was gone then. And there was nothing but the pounding of the rain, the thunder, and the queer light which, flickering over Maud’s face, made it look gray, spectral.
Kay said flatly: “Well, that’s that.”
Maud didn’t seem to hear her. She was gazing up the stairs. Suddenly she said: “I should go to Elaine. Poor child, this is worst of all for her.”
Before Kay realized it, her sister had disappeared up the stairs. For a moment Kay stood there alone. She lit a cigarette to steady her. It didn’t do much good. The room, boxed in by the storm, was constricting like—like a coffin.
Because she had to talk to someone, she hurried back to the library. Gilbert, in his wheel chair, was by the fireplace. He looked up at her quickly.
“Well?”
“It’s no good. She’s gone. She’s out in the shed getting her bicycle.” Kay shrugged. “And she said something about my not destroying evidence because that would only make it worse—as if I knew something. You don’t think she meant the forged check, Terry’s—Terry’s confession? She couldn’t know about that, could she?”
“I wouldn’t know, dear.”
“If only I could get to the island now. Soon she’ll be back with Major Clifford and there’ll never be a chance.” And then, because things seemed so hopeless, she added: “Gilbert, what are we going to do?”
“Try to keep our heads, my dear.” With a faint little smile Gilbert brought a hand out from under the blanket which covered his legs and wheeled the chair toward her. “How about finishing our game of backgammon. That’s a neutral enough occupation.” He swung the chair round to the window. Kay turned. That was the first time she noticed that the rain was splashing in through the screen like a pin shower, drenching the card table.
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