Ill Met by Moonlight

by Zenith Brown

  I was listening—for the tickety-tick, tickety-tock, and I heard it . . . in the background, Jim’s voice urgent against it.

  “Tell Rosemary they’ve set the time at one o’clock—not twelve.”

  I could have wept.

  “She knows it already, Jim. And she’s told Colonel Primrose she was with you then.”

  There was a long silence in which I heard nothing but the odd ticking of that ghastly clock. Then Jim Gould groaned. “O God!” he said. I knew then for the first time since the dreadful thing happened that Jim was really feeling something besides shock and anger and humiliation.

  “And listen, Jim, carefully. Colonel Primrose told me to say that he’d gone on the night plane.”

  There was another pause. The clock beat its tiny rhythmic noise.

  “Yes?” Jim said “Good-by. I’ll be seeing you.”

  We hung up. I stood there a few seconds, wondering suddenly if Colonel Primrose had made all that up about the mysterious caller. It came to me then that I hadn’t seen Sergeant Buck, not since I’d come back from the Bishops’. I looked into the kitchen, thinking Lilac and Julius must be back from church. But they weren’t. The outside door was shut and probably locked. Nevertheless I went over and tried it. I had a vague uneasy feeling that wouldn’t down.

  I went back into the living room. Colonel Primrose was not there, and he had moved the exhibits of the prosecution. I remembered then that he hadn’t shown me either the petals of blue velvet or the second piece of paper, the one folded into a pleated spill, the sort of thing that an Englishman keeps in a jar on the mantel to light his pipe with.

  I don’t suppose, actually, that it would have made any difference if I’d known about it, but I’ve thought several times it might have. It certainly wouldn’t have made any difference in what happened that night, as it turned out.

  Sheila, my Irish setter, was lying on the cool stone hearth where she’d been asleep all evening. She got up while I stood hesitating in the middle of the room. I didn’t know whether to turn the lights out and go upstairs or not—having, as I said, little notion of the house habits of detectives. It was hot, and I was pretty miserable about all this.

  Sheila licked my hand and went over to the door, looking back, inviting me to come out with her. I went out on the porch. The stars were out, and the night perfectly still. I forgot Colonel Primrose’s repeated injunctions—at least I didn’t think of them as I opened the porch door and went down the brick walk to the cluster of white Gibson Island chairs stationed there like sentinel ghosts in the middle of the lawn under the big sycamore tree.

  Sheila sniffed and growled. I felt her long red body stiffen. I caught hold of her collar. She growled again. Then I heard someone moving very softly on the grass I couldn’t have told the direction that the sound came from except that Sheila was looking past the tree towards the Bishops’ place, but not towards their house.

  And then, as softly and undeniably as any sensory evidence can be felt, I knew that it was Paul Dikranov, somewhere in the line of shrubbery that divides my place from theirs. The faint unmistakable odor of Turkish tobacco came gently through the warm soft air. For a moment I thought of calling out, but Sheila’s deep bass growl seemed warning enough, probably, that I was not alone. I turned back to the house, and then I stopped as abruptly as I had ever stopped in my life.

  Somewhere behind me there was a sharp crack that split the air, and simultaneously a hot streak zip-whizzed past my ear. A sudden instinct, or maybe it was the Wild West tales I’d read to my children, made me first duck and then flatten myself out on the grass. Or maybe it was sheer blue funk Anyway, I did, and I was glad I had, because there was a second crack and another shot screamed through the air about where my shoulder blades had been. Sheila, who’s gun-shy, scuttled to the house whimpering.

  It all happened in an instant, and in another instant I heard heavy feet pounding across the grass, and saw Sergeant Buck coming with amazing speed. He took one look at me, still lying there on the grass in the starlight. At first I thought he said, “Thank God, you’re not hurt,” but he didn’t; he said, “Thank God, you’re not the Colonel,” and dashed off toward the direction of the shots.

  I sat up, took a trial breath—rather the way Goerge Barrol had done after he was nearly drowned—got up gingerly and made a bolt for it to the door.

  I don’t think I was ever so completely and utterly scared in my life. I didn’t wait for Buck to come back or for Colonel Primrose to appear from somewhere; I went upstairs and locked my door behind me. I should very much have liked to crawl under the bed with Sheila. I turned out my light and lay there pretty shaken, trying to figure out just why Paul Dikranov wanted to shoot me, of all people under the sun.

  The sudden jangle of the phone on my bedside table made me jump almost out of my skin.

  “Hello, Grace!”

  It was Alice Gould.

  “Are you all right? The Sergeant was here, looking for Jim He says you were shot at?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I was shot at, and missed Tell Jim—”

  “But, darling, that’s the point—Jim isn’t here”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “No. He’s not”

  I thought what that might mean to Sergeant Buck—and to the Colonel. “Oh, dear!” I said.

  And then for the first time I realized that I was not hearing the tickety-tick, tickety-tock of the unknown clock.

  “Alice,” I almost shouted into the phone, “where are you?”

  “Where am I?”

  The gentle worried voice was puzzled.

  “At home, of course, dear. We must find Jim, Grace, don’t you see?”

  I’m afraid I did see, clearly. In fact a number of things. One of them was that the clock that I’d heard when both Lucy Lee and Jim had spoken was not near the phone their mother was using. Which meant one of two things, of course. Either Alice Gould was not at her own phone, or whoever had been listening in on my two previous conversations had not been listening to this one. And that in turn implied enough to make me even more uneasy than I’d been before. For my own sake, now, I saw the genuine necessity for finding whose phone the clock was near.

  I turned out the light. Colonel Primrose’s remark that Sergeant Buck was a good man to have around in case of trouble went through my head, or I doubt if I’d have gone to sleep as promptly as I did. I turned out the light. But I didn’t go to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I could hear footsteps and creeping sounds—on the paths outside, in the hall, downstairs. My reason knew they were nonexistent, but my nerves didn’t. Nor was Colonel Primrose’s remark that Sergeant Buck was a good man to have around in case of trouble entirely reassuring. I couldn’t feel that he would take my removal as a great personal tragedy in any sense.

  If I were a logical person I suppose I should have quietly put every event of the last two days into a neat little category . . . and come to a perfectly erroneous conclusion. I certainly couldn’t have got anywhere near the truth, not without being a lot brighter than I am—though I must admit it was all there, even then, for anyone who was logical to see. However, I’m not; and furthermore I was a lot nervier than I like to admit even now. There’s something definitely upsetting about being shot at like a rabbit on your own front lawn.

  So I lay there, not thinking it out so much as just seeing it in a jumble of sudden vivid pictures, such as Sandra saying to Dikranov, “Just for old times’ sake, hein?” and Dikranov’s lean expressionless face. With that picture came the instant question, Why did he deny knowing her? And why was he in my garden? Why should he of all people shoot at me of all people? What connection did he really have with Sandra, what did he mean when he told Rosemary that the less they inquired into each other’s previous lives the better off they’d be?

  I thought of Lucy Lee then, with a sudden picture of her crouching miserably on the stone steps with the lightning flashing above her, and again in my house willing to hand over Jim’s head
on a charger to save her husband’s. And what about Andy? Why had he been in such a ghastly state at the inquest? What had he stowed away under the bank? Why had they kept him from going to New York? And I could see Jim Gould, with Sandra wilting against his arm, and then with his white set face in front of my fireplace, utterly silent. Why had he gone directly to his own car to find Sandra, instead of to Andy’s? Why had his mother still been dressed at half past three in the morning? Why had she insisted on going to the garage? Did she know Sandra was there, was she definitely preparing me, when she told me Sandra had tried to kill herself, for what she had decided I must find?

  And that note . . . What would Colonel Primrose say when he learned it really wasn’t a forgery?

  But above all, and the thing that was definitely terrifying, was the business of the telephone. Who could conceivably have phoned from the pay station in the village at 3:15 on the morning Sandra was killed, and what could he have wanted? And who was it whose clock sounded on the line with that sinister little tickety-tick, tickety-tock . . . and what did he want?

  I must have gone to sleep thinking of that, because I came to suddenly and sat bolt upright in bed. The clock on the table said 3:28. It was dark and perfectly still. For a moment I wasn’t quite sure what had waked me Then I reached for the phone.

  “Hello,” I said. I waited. Then I spoke again, and suddenly remembered. There was no sound at the other end of the wire—that is, no sound of a voice; only a steady ticking of a clock tickety-tick, tickety-tock; tickety-tick, tickety-tock.

  I had a strange panicky feeling, and I rattled the rod up and down frantically. The ticking went on. Tickety-tick, tickety-tock; tickety-tick, tickety-tock. For a fleeting moment I wondered if I couldn’t hear someone breathing Then I did hear a definite sound. It came from the telephone in my own guest room, and it came quite sharply.

  “Would you mind hanging up, Mrs. Latham? I’m trying to put a call through.”

  I gasped, but I hung up, the idea that I would certainly be glad when my guests had departed running through my mind I turned over to sleep again, not even trying to figure out what this was all about And when I woke up again it was the telephone that woke me, and I reached for it quite cheerfully. A thing that is a terror by night can be a diverting game in the broad light of day.

  But it was Alice Gould this time.

  “Grace,” she said, “would you come over as soon as you’re dressed? I’d like to see you a moment before I go to the village.”

  Her voice was cool and unhurried. A quick memory of the two shots the night before and the soft persistent tickety-tick, tickety-tock in my ear again were all that made the request seem an urgent one. I got up and was dressed when Lilac came in with my tray.

  The idea of Alice Gould creeping about, listening in on other people’s telephone conversations, seemed pretty absurd, I thought as I took a spoonful of fragrant yellow melon But when I came to think of it, anybody I knew doing it was equally absurd. Leaving out Elsie Carter, of course, who’s a born snooper, or Maggie Potter, who hasn’t anything else to do, but who, as it happens, isn’t on our line. I couldn’t have told why her name came to my mind just then. Perhaps it was because what George had said about Sandra and Dr. Potter had slipped into my mind the way things do without any apparent reason.

  Colonel Primrose and Sergeant Buck were not in sight when I came down, but Julius intercepted me as I was slipping out.

  “The Colonel, Mis’ Grace, he says he wants to see you as soon as it’s convenient.”

  “You tell him it’ll be convenient a little later, Julius.”

  “Yas’m. Ah’ll tell him that mahself.”

  I cut through the hedge to the Goulds’ and saw him. He and Sergeant Buck and Mr. Parran, with four or five other men, were standing in front of the garage, talking earnestly. Colonel Primrose was giving directions, or so it looked from the way he was pointing this way and that.

  I slipped back and went farther down towards the lane. I didn’t want to be seen just then, and there was another opening in the hedge, one that led directly into Andy and Lucy Lee’s side garden where the children’s swing and ladder set stands. It isn’t used much any more, not by grownups, and the children are too busy on the beach to play on their trapeze. I parted the branches of the crape myrtle and started to duck my head to go through when I saw something that made me hesitate.

  Someone else had been there quite recently. Twigs were broken off, and one spear of red blossom was purple and dead where it was hanging. I glanced back to see whether Colonel Primrose had seen me, but no one was in sight. I pushed the branches farther apart and looked at the ground. Heavy feet had gone through there. The longish grass was trampled noticeably in one spot, as if someone had stood there quite a long time. The cold sensation down my spine was enough to tell me that this was undoubtedly where the person had stood before he began taking pot shots at me the night before. I didn’t need the little brass case that I saw shining in the grass a yard or so away.

  I bent down to pick it up, and for some reason changed my mind. I had an odd notion that someone was watching me in spite of the fact that nobody was in sight.

  I felt a curious reluctance to going on through the hedge to the Goulds’. It seemed to me now that it couldn’t possibly have been Paul Dikranov shooting at me . . . if, indeed, I hadn’t simply imagined the whole business. The morning sun and a cup of coffee work wonders with the terrors of the night. But if I hadn’t imagined it, how could a strange person find one of the very special intimate spots in my hedge—one that, furthermore, a lot of other people knew quite well? And if it wasn’t Paul Dikranov, who was it, and why?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I went through the hedge nevertheless. The windows of Lucy Lee’s cottage were open, the brightly printed curtains showing dimly through the shining copper screens under the drawn shades. It seemed the most utter nonsense to think of anyone behind any of those windows peering out at me. I shook off the idea and went around in front. There was no sign of life about the house, no clatter of dishes and yelling children, no Lucy Lee singing as she banged her pots and pans about. The whole place was as quiet as the grave.

  Through the trees I could see Mrs. Gould’s house—large and white, with its wide lawn running down to the lane along the beach. I hurried along the flagstone walk and went in through the side door. Hawkins was there in his white coat with a coffee service balanced on one pink palm. He looked at me like a great black owl and said, “Mis’ Alice she’s in the dinin’ room, Mis’ Grace.”

  He held open the swinging door for me, muttering something perfectly unintelligible about the general goings-on.

  Alice Gould was at the head of a long table pretty well littered with the remains of children’s breakfasts. The children were gone, but Lucy Lee was there, looking ill and drawn and with more rouge on her face than had ever been there in all her life before.

  Alice raised one delicate purple-veined hand, heavy with the jewels she always wore, and smiled at her daughter. “If you don’t mind, Lucy Lee, I’d like to talk to Grace alone. If I were you, darling, I’d go get Andy and go down the beach for a swim. He oughtn’t to be over there by himself.”

  Lucy Lee shook her head as she got up.

  “I’ve got some things to do,” she said.

  Her mother watched her with a troubled face.

  “I wish you’d tell me what to do with those two,” she said. “When I was young, people didn’t just get up and walk out on their husbands—with or without their children—no matter how bad they were.”

  “I can’t blame Lucy Lee very much,” I said.

  “My dear, I’m not blaming her. Andy’s been a terrible fool. But I’m just old-fashioned enough, Grace, to believe that this sort of thing is largely the woman’s fault.”

  She smiled gently.

  “You see, I couldn’t be so frightfully sorry for Jim, if I didn’t think that.”

  She stirred her coffee and gazed a long time into the cup
before she looked up at me.

  “Grace, it’s about Jim that I want to talk to you,” she said quietly. “I gather from something he said that he and Rosemary were pretty indiscreet. He says it was his fault.

  She smiled again, faintly, and shook her head.

  “You think it was Rosemary’s?”

  “That’s the mother in me. I’m afraid I do. I think Jim would have died before he did anything dishonorable.”

  “Oh, my dear,” I said. “You don’t think one last meeting before she goes off to marry and live abroad is dishonorable?”

  “Perhaps not—unless you go into the whole dismal past, and realize that Jim still loves her, and that the whole Sandra business was just a ghastly tragic thing. Like a terrible illness—if you get away from it, or get over it, you forget it, and it has no meaning for you.”

  She looked away, her hands pleating the edge of her napkin.

  “I’ve seen Jim—so many times—leave in the morning, and the minute he was out of the house he was like himself again . . . and in the evening I could see it all back on him the minute he got in the house and saw her there. It almost broke my heart. I never knew how it all happened, Grace, until one of his classmates drank too much one night.”

  She laughed mirthlessly.

  “He insisted on talking about it. How Jim had a week’s leave —he got it because Rosemary was in Shanghai and they were going to be married. Then they had their quarrel. Heaven knows what about—they’ve probably forgotten themselves. Rosemary gave him back his ring and left him cold there, and he went out and got roaring drunk . . . at the place where Sandra danced. And then when he came to, days later, he was married to her. I suppose he did the decent thing. He got drunk again and they loaded him on board ship and the captain tried to do something about it. Jim’s a stubborn fool . . . if he couldn’t marry Rosemary he didn’t care whom he married.”

  She stirred her coffee monotonously.

  “You know the rest of it. He had to resign—the Navy can’t have that sort of thing, not the sort of person Sandra was I think she improved a lot. But they couldn’t wait for that, in the Service.”