Yesterday's Murder

by Craig Rice

  And always, the sense of time passing, the fear that it would be gone and he could never call it back again; the remembrance that a day spent was vanished and would never return again, like a bird passed beyond the horizon on its southbound flight; with it the restlessness, the watching of the little gold clock in its shining bell glass; the desire to deaden his mind that he might not know of the long, slow hours; the wish that morning might be gone, that luncheon might be over, that the afternoon might be through, that sherry before the carved marble fireplace, dinner in the paneled dining room, the little niceties of after-dinner in the small parlor were done. Yet even as he wished the day were over he knew that nothing lay at the end of it but night, and he dreaded the coming of night as it seemed to him he had never dreaded it, or anything else, in all his life.

  Until this day it had never seemed curious to David that Edris seldom appeared about the house, save at dinner, and not always then. This day, at breakfast, he wondered where she could be, if she were still sleeping in her immense carved bed; when luncheon was announced he found himself watching for her, somehow surprised that she did not appear. Through the day he looked for her about the corridors of the old house, dreading to meet her and prepared for flight at the first glimpse of her white dress at the dim end of some passageway, yet at the same time searching for her, feeling that in the next instant she would appear in a shadowy doorway.

  When evening came and he stood before the fireplace with Philip Telefair before dinner, it seemed to him that the day had scarcely existed at all, he could recall so little of it, and it had seemed to pass so quickly. As he stood there, only dimly hearing the talk that went on in the room, waiting for Edris, he had a strange thought that she was still asleep in her bed; though the colors of sunset patterned the carpet on the floor, he felt that in Edris’ room the moonlight still came in through the window, spangling and rippling her hair.

  Yet even as he stood there, half-dreaming, his sharpened ears caught the very tiniest sound of a footstep in the hall, and he felt her presence in the room even before he turned and saw her, like some small, pale wraith in the shadows of the farthest corner.

  He was glad of the presence of Edmund, Doctor von Berger, and old Philip Telefair, and at the same time he wished that they were gone. He longed to speak to her, yet he knew of nothing that he wished to say, and could find no words to use.

  She wore white—she always wore white—some delicate muslin, made simply and without ornament as all her frocks were made. Her soft, pale hair came down loosely over her shoulders, like a little silver cascade, almost extinguished in the shadows. She was white like the moon, David thought, her skin milky, all but transparent, her small fragile hands showing a tracery of tiny blue veins.

  He was conscious now of a tautness of all his muscles so that he stood rigid, as though paralyzed. The flesh in his cheeks and around his mouth had become stiff and cold; he heard himself speaking in answer to some remark of Philip Telefair, and wondered how his frozen lips had formed the sound. Could Edris know of his visit to her room in the dead of night? No, surely not. She had not waked, had scarcely stirred. Yet he felt the breath swelling in his lungs at the thought of speaking to her; he hesitated to look up and meet her eyes and he longed only to escape from the room.

  It was Edris who spoke first, in some triviality of before-dinner talk. He did not hear what she said, but he heard her voice, silvery and gentle, like the sound of whispering drops of water slipping into some quiet pool.

  He did hear that she addressed him as “Cousin David,” and, hearing it, looked up from the firelight for a startled instant. But no, she had always called him Cousin in the past, even as she called Edmund Cousin. Had there been, though, a new, a different note in her voice, warm, friendly, almost affectionate? Had it been his imagination in the past that she had always seemed to speak coldly, almost with dislike, on those rare times when she spoke to him at all?

  He lifted his eyes and saw that she was looking at him.

  It was impossible. It could not be so. She knew nothing of his visit to her room, and of the long hours when he had watched her in her sleep. It was only his wild imagining, yet at the same time he told himself that it was not all imagining, that his eyes had really caught the faint smile that played about her mouth and the unexpected light of recognition in her eyes, the light that passes only between some two who share a secret that must be forever kept.

  The night sky was black as the bottom of a great pit. David leaned out of his window and stared into a darkness that might have been Telefair Island, or the coast of Madagascar, or might have been a descent into the very bowels of the earth.

  The world was still, yet the silence itself was more oppressive than any sound could have been, and there was a tightness in the air, almost a breathlessness, as though even the flowers in the unseen gardens beneath his window gasped and choked, as though the tall Italian cypress in the grove had been frightened motionless. In that taut silence the sound of the little fountain was a thin tremulous whisper, alone in the night, pale, and cold, and very small.

  He had been watching there for hours, his arms cramped and sore from leaning on the sill. As soon as he had been able to excuse himself after dinner he had fled to his room, while the last violet glow of twilight hung in the clouded sky, and knelt by his window, watching the strange shadowy shapes of the trees as they darkened and hid themselves, searching out the gathering dusk across the inlet for the lights of the Reverend Arthur Stone’s house, wishing that his straining eyes might catch one glimpse of Laurel’s dress as she moved about her garden (though why, he did not know, he only knew that he wished it), while night crept up slowly from the inlet and hid the gray water, the flowers and the fountain, the shape of the trees and the roundness of the sky. Now there was nothing left but the dark itself, too deep to be mysterious, immeasurable and impenetrable.

  Suddenly one flash lighted the far sky, and was gone again. So quickly did it come and go that David found himself wondering if he had momentarily closed his eyes and been dazzled by one of those strange flashes of fight seen only under the eyelids, sprung from some secret place of the brain. Yet in the next instant his tense ears caught a faint, rumbling, almost inaudible sound, from just over the horizon’s rim. Then he was plunged once more into the darkness and the silence.

  Was it the sound of rainfall that he heard, soft and whispering, as though it fell on clouds and not on the earth, or was it the little fountain? It was a small sound, not altogether liquid, more like the rustling of old fingers over some stiff silk; he would, indeed, have mistaken it for some mild agitation among the leaves of the vines outside his window had he not felt the deathlike stillness of the air. He held his breath, listening, and suddenly another pale flash broke in the sky, this time outlining the dark bulk of the mainland, and lighting up the steel-gray surface of the inlet. The rumble of thunder was louder now, and then at once he felt the air against his cheek grow colder; there was a faint, almost imperceptible, yet excited movement in the leaves. The sound of the fountain changed, ever so little, yet he caught the difference as the falling water, touched lightly by the first delicate motion of the wind, dripped into another part of the pool. Then all at once a great sighing arose from the trees in the grove and in the gardens, as their leaves and branches were shaken by a sudden wind sweeping up from the cold salt waters of the bay.

  Did Edris sleep? Was she awake, and alone, and frightened by the oncoming storm? It was a fearful thing to be awakened in the night by the sound of thunder and winds. From the garden he could hear the agitated murmuring of the little fountain, as the rising winds swept its falling spray this way and the other, ceasing altogether now and then as the waters were carried beyond the reach of the pool, and then beginning again, a plaintive, lonely, tremulous sound.

  David rose from his place by the window and tiptoed into the corridor, closing his door noiselessly behind him. Dim as it was, the light at the end of the hall all but dazzled him for an instan
t, after the utter darkness of the Island and the sky, seen from his window. In all Telefair, no one stirred but himself. Was it that he alone was aware of the coming storm? Or was it that all in the old house had been carried away by an enchantment, and he was the only human being left on the Island?

  At the door to Edris’ room, he paused. There was no sound. Surely she slept, one arm curved above her head, the pale light of the moon whitening her skin and hair. Yet as he stood there listening he heard the faint murmur of distant thunder, low and ominous; he remembered and imagined he could feel the sudden, deathly chill of the first gust of wind against his face.

  His hand went involuntarily to his cheek, as though to feel there for the moisture of the first spray of rain. His eyes searched out the shadowed hall as though the pallid and far-off flickering of the lightning might penetrate its walls and roof.

  Within Edris’ room there was only darkness, and one wan, cerulescent glimmer. David stood leaning against the door after he had closed it, resting all his weight against it, his eyes absorbing the murky gloom, assimilating it, inviting it to penetrate his body and his mind. The skin on his face felt tight and dry, shrunken; the air that came in through his tense lungs had become hot and arid, painful to breathe; his throat and lungs were parched and scorching. The pulsation of his blood in his ears was a continual, maddening rhythm, like the beating of a muffled drum.

  Slowly his eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he saw that the flickering blue glow came from a small night candle by her bed, the faint little flame encased in a heavy, indigo-colored glass. Its pale light led him across the room, slowly, one step at a time, as though he moved against his will, his feet lingering on the thick, soft carpeting.

  Her face, even when he stood close beside her bed, was only an indistinct and pallid gleam in the darkness. It was the sound of her soft, steady breathing that told him that she was there at all. Slowly, noiselessly, he sank down by her bed, listening, catching the tiny gasp of the indrawn breath, the answering gentle, exhaled sigh. It seemed to David, though he knew it could not be so, that he could feel the warmth of it on his face; he found himself instinctively trying to breathe in the same, slow, regular rhythm. It was like the very moment of going to sleep, though he had never been wider awake in all his life; the same sense of drifting out into some warm, dark, and pulsating sea where one could see neither the water nor the shore.

  Then, without warning, the room was filled with a blue-white flash, seen quickly then gone, as though the darkness had closed again like a trap. In that instant he saw her, so clearly that her image remained on his eyeballs long after the lightning had vanished: her face a frosty white; the eyelids pale, thin shells; one delicate spray of hair falling over her cheek.

  The air that came in through the window was cold and penetrating. The rumble of thunder from across the inlet was like a long, deep moan, and, echoing it, the trees on the Island picked up the sound as the wind bent them and twisted them, a drumming, reverberating, ominous sound. At the window the stiff silk flapped wildly for a moment against the glass, a great, gasping sigh came up from the gardens; David felt a sudden rush of icy wind against his face, and in the same gust the small blue night light flickered fitfully, failed, and went out, leaving him in total, unfathomable darkness.

  There was a little, pitiable outcry from the girl in the bed, a sound that was part gasp, part whimper, as though in her sleep she knew that her night light had been blown out by the rising storm. Her arms moved suddenly as though to shield her face.

  Not knowing if she still slept or had wakened, unable to tell if she had been frightened by the storm or by some dream, David threw himself to his knees beside the bed and half lifted her into his arms, holding her head against his breast. She trembled there for an instant, like a young bird held in the hand, and then was still again. The soft, sobbing whimper ceased; he could picture her pale face calm and quiet once more, the delicate lids still closed. After that momentary interruption her steady breathing went on as before, rhythmic and undisturbed.

  Her skin, wherever his hands or face touched it, was silky and cold, but it was a living, almost fluid cold; her hair, where it brushed against his throat, was like a fine spray of moisture, cool as only falling water is cool. He could feel her small, brittle bones through the delicate flesh—it seemed almost that she had no weight at all, as though he held a shadow in his arms.

  She slept, undisturbed. Over the garden and the grove, over all the Island and the ruffled waters of the inlet, the storm passed; the rising thunder and the spaces of silence between, against which it moved; the flickering lightning that was the color of moonlight; the wind shaking the trees and moaning over the water; and at last a sound half heard, the rustling of the rain.

  His arms and the muscles of his back became stiff and painful from holding them so still; his lungs ached from the effort to quiet his breath. He knew when the wind rose, and when the first rain fell, his ears caught the swelling detonations of the thunder, and he saw the lightning as it whitened the walls of the room, yet the storm might have been in another land, as far from Telefair as the moon. It seemed to David that even in the spaces of utter darkness he could see the delicate pallor of Edris’ small face, her frail, colorless hands; in the half-seconds of the lightning flashes her soft, flowing hair turned luminous, and after the darkness had closed again, it still seemed to hold a faint, opalescent afterglow.

  Was it possible, he wondered, that his thought could penetrate her dreaming? Yet he was not thinking of her—indeed it did not seem to him that he was thinking at all. But could he speak to her now, with his thought, while he held her in her sleep, protecting her against an awakening in the storm?—and then tomorrow would she, awake, speak to him?—would she answer, remembering what he had said to her, without knowledge of how and why she remembered?

  But he had nothing to say to her, whether she was sleeping or waking.

  The rain kept on falling long after the storm itself had ceased, continually and mournfully, a gentle little rhythm on the trees, a soft, sibilant whisper on the windowpane. To David it seemed that now the Island was swimming in water, drowning in it; surely if one lay now by the surface of the inlet, it would be impossible to tell where the rain-filled air ended, and the deep, flowing waters began. Or was this only the rain? Was this the hour when Telefair sank deep below the sea, far below the cloudy and translucent water; were those strange strands of seaweed even now entangled among the branches of the Italian cypress; did the enormous and unearthly blooms appear now on the bushes in the garden? The faint glow that came in through the window seemed like the hazy twilight of that mysterious, submarine world; the movement of water against the window-pane seemed not to be rainfall, but the moving of some continual underwater current.

  He hardly knew when the rain stopped. Indeed he went on listening for it till long after it was gone, while the little fountain picked up the sound and continued it. David knew only that he listened to the falling of water. But slowly the gray light came up to the window, filling the room and outlining the walls and corners, until at last something woke in his mind and he lifted his head, listening with a new intenseness, and knew that he only heard the fountain singing.

  Edris stirred faintly, an almost imperceptible movement, and for an instant his muscles froze, his breath all but choked him. Then quietly, carefully, he laid her fragile body back in its bed, and drew the soft, thin muslin sheet gently over her. It seemed to him that for a moment she smiled in her sleep.

  As he paused one last time at the door, he could see, through the window, that already the clouds were breaking. The day, he knew, was going to be clear.

  12

  When David entered his room again, moving slowly and noiselessly, he saw that the sky was already a thinly misted gray. A faint light had gathered in the clear space before his window, not yet hardy enough to penetrate into any of the corners. He sat down by the window, staring out, unconscious of any weariness or the lack of sleep, ind
eed, even exhilarated by the fatigue itself.

  Outside, the storm had passed, the rain had ceased, and the sky was emptying itself of clouds. Even as he watched, patches of them broke one from another; pale vistas of sky, still more gray than blue, showed between. Beyond the inlet, across the mainland, the first soft color appeared, growing wider and brighter as he watched it; the surface of the inlet changed from leaden gray to the paler color of steel; deep greens began to emerge from the black of the trees in the grove.

  Yet even as the sky cleared, he could hear the sound of rainfall, as the accumulation of water in the trees dripped from one leaf to another below, or plashed down onto the garden walks, as the faintest breath of wind shook the collected raindrops from twigs and branches. The sky had cleared, but rain still fell from the trees.

  He was waiting, now. In a few hours a small bright fire would be glowing in the morning room, the breakfast table would be decorated with silver, glassware, and brilliant fruit. Philip Telefair, always the first one to appear in the morning, would be standing there before the fireplace when David came downstairs. (Did he always wake so early, the old man? Perhaps he was awake even now, and watching the dawn.) Then would come little Doctor von Berger, faintly drowsy, a rich, musty odor of dust and tobacco and old upholstery clinging to his clothing. Edmund would have spent the night out on his boat, the Dark Lady, keeping her secure against the storm, but perhaps he would return in time for breakfast, his hair falling limply on his forehead, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep, a sardonic, twisted half-smile on his lean, brown, saturnine face. Then Zenobie would appear to make sure that everything was in good order, the white collar at the neck of her black woolen dress stiffly starched, her big-knuckled, masculine hands arranging and rearranging the silver on the table, her small, beady, black eyes looking everywhere. Perhaps, too, this morning Edris would be there.