Even the rose-shaded lamps Isabel had placed there could not soften that tenseness. The windows were open, but it was hot and still. She brushed her soft brown hair back and away from her face and took off the sports dress she’d worn all day and put on thin white cotton pajamas and lounge coat and went to the window seat. She sat there for a long time, thinking of Richard and the things he had told her. Remembering Eve and her face and her voice and the way her golden curls fell forward.
She tried not to think of that.
Would Richard succeed in identifying the man who had been murdered—quietly, stealthily, with horrible efficiency—not more than twenty-four hours ago? Perhaps during the previous night which had seemed so quiet. Was it, really, Saul Gleason?—and if so, why was he murdered?
All at once it occurred to her that it might have been Saul Gleason (if that was he) who stood there, a silent enigmatic figure, watching the cottage. If so, that might be a motive for his murder; he might have seen who came before Richard, with Eve perhaps, and, his purpose accomplished, went away again. Leaving that horribly sluggish thing in the dark bedroom.
She tried to fit the figure of the murdered man into the outlines of that other figure, as she had tried so many times before to fit figures into that outline (Howland, Calvin, Jonas, the chauffeur, even the Stacy caretaker), and again failed. There was nothing clear and identifiable in that memory. There was only the impression of a man, perhaps tall, perhaps wearing a coat, standing perfectly still, facing the cottage. That was all. Yet the clue to Eve’s murder might lie in that baffling too-brief glimpse.
After a long time she went to the little desk and sat down and pulled a paper pad toward her and took a pencil.
But by one o’clock she had only a crisscrossed jumble of facts and hypotheses and no theory that fitted every fact. There were contradictions; there were questions impossible to answer.
She looked over the jumble of facts; the beginnings of solutions that almost at once proved themselves false.
Richard hadn’t murdered Eve and he hadn’t murdered Eve’s mysterious caller. That was her first and almost her one and only premise, and she couldn’t prove that. She was certain, then, that Ludmilla was perfectly sane. Yet if Ludmilla had gone quietly (horribly) out of her mind, if she had contrived the poison business as a smoke screen behind which she could carry on an ugly career of murder, it still did not explain the link that obviously (in Richard’s mind and in view of the clue he held) might connect Eve’s murder and the murder of the man whom Richard had said he hoped to intercept and whom Jonas had been set to watch for and had failed.
Howland had no conceivable motive and he had an alibi. Furthermore, there was nothing in Eve’s life which, so far as Search knew, linked her in any way with Howland.
She could not entirely dismiss the waitress’ story of Calvin carrying a rope and a raincoat. The raincoat was a convincing touch, as was the look in the girl’s eyes; yet she could have heard of the raincoat and added that item to give her story an air of truth. And if she had lied—why, that, too, would account for that look of terror. And Calvin’s attitude, apart from everything else, was convincing as well as Diana’s corroboration of his statement regarding it.
It was possible, of course, that Bea had actually seen someone come out of the tool shed and at a distance, in the near dusk (hadn’t she said it was just before dinner?) thought mistakenly that it was Calvin. Search thought of that for a long time and was inclined to favor it but for the fact that Calvin was not as tall even as Diana, and it would be difficult to mistake, say, Howland or Richard, or even Jonas, for Calvin. It was possible too, given enough hysteria on the waitress’ part, that she had actually seen a woman. A woman in a dark coat. If the girl had not had that look of genuine terror in her eyes she would have put her whole story down to hysterical fabrication, but the look was genuine enough. Yet, again, she would have been afraid if she had lied.
Calvin had promptly and energetically denied it. And Calvin, too, had no motive. He was not in any sense a lady’s man, so a farfetched theory that Eve had had a hold on him which had proved too onerous to endure was out.
Diana’s whole attitude was puzzling.
She had despised Eve; she had set out in a highhanded way to separate Richard and Search. So, in her own cold and unemotional yet absolutely determined and possessive way, she must be in love with Richard.
There was no sign of a rift with Calvin. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been even if Richard had been in love with Diana and had begged her to face an issue about it; Diana was as ambitious as she was possessive and had a fixed and resolute faith in Calvin’s future.
Diana had always had a strong sense of possession. Anything that was hers was sacrosanct; she had, even as a child, fought for the possession of a doll, a toy, a scrap of ribbon— even though she had scores of dolls and toys. As a child, too, she had had the rather unchildlike worldliness to make herself a favorite with John Abbott, so when he died everything he had came to Diana. But she was older too; as in many families there was, among the Abbotts, a strong feeling that the senior child was the heir and the head of the family. Search had never quarreled with that feeling on the part of John Abbott. Besides, Search’s father, Charles Abbott, had been the youngest of the three brothers; he had never been so close to John as Gerald, Diana’s father, had been. It had never seemed in any way unjust that Diana came into the Abbott money when John Abbott died. The only thing that seemed unjust was that Isabel’s money went with the Abbott money and not to Richard.
Search pushed the papers away and put her forehead down on her hands. And thought of the things Richard had told her. And went back in her mind again over every fact she knew, trying to find a key, a link, an ingredient that would bind the facts they knew into some orderly relationship to each other. And failing.
The house had grown quiet. Suddenly aware of a kind of listening, sentient quality in that silence, she thought that if she hadn’t seen Eve and the dead man under the willows she would still have known, by something intangible yet poignant and inescapable too, that murder had left its mark within that house.
The small lamp on the desk had attracted a myriad tiny black insects that circled and beat and lay on the white paper. She put out the light, and when her eyes were adjusted to it the moonlight brightened the room.
She rose and went restlessly to the window again, thinking again of Diana. Diana who alone had profited by John’s and by Isabel’s death—Isabel’s because if she had lived she, and not Diana, would have had John’s money.
But murder requires passion at white heat—an obsession and an urge which is so strong that it swamps all other emotions. Diana was confident of her own lightness; she was coldly determined; her strongest instinct was to hold anything that belonged to her. But she could not imagine Diana being so overwhelmed by hatred or jealousy—or fear or revenge—that she would do murder.
It was true that all along she had seemed thoughtful and definitely purposeful. Yet, so far as Search knew, she had done nothing—except try to cast suspicion upon Search. She thought of that, too, and came to the conclusion that if Diana had really set herself to involve Search she would have done so in a different and in a far more dangerous way. Her words of that afternoon had been merely superficial, a scratch rather than a dagger thrust.
Search put her face against the black screen.
But there was no way, really, to tell what was going on behind Diana’s eyes; what she might do or what she might say. Or what she had done. Except that if the waitress actually had seen anyone leaving the tool shed it had not been Diana, for she would have recognized her height and slenderness and smooth light hair.
The moon was out—later than it had been four, no, five nights ago; its light lay upon the lake, turning it to a quiet deep silver pool. The shadows of trees and shrubbery were black and sharp, and there were eerie white patches of lighted lawn between.
And as she looked downward upon that quiet black and silver world
a fringe of blackness below the hydrangeas wavered.
There was no wind.
It wavered again. And something, black as that shadow, moved and parted from it and scuttled swiftly, hunched over like a dog on four feet, across a white open area of lawn just below.
Chapter 20
IT DISAPPEARED INTO THE edge of shadow on the other side of the white moonlit patch.
She gave a little startled gasp. The eerie patch of whiteness was now perfectly clear, as if no sprawled black figure had pattered quickly and silently across it.
Her heart was pounding in her throat
It was an optical illusion. It was a man. It was neither man nor woman but a creature—padding softly and furtively across that patch of white lawn, disappearing swiftly into the shadow of shrubbery like that from which it came.
It was nothing.
She listened. And stared down at the intermingled shadows and light.
Nothing stirred. There was no sound anywhere.
It had vanished, whatever the thing was, as mysteriously and completely as the man she had seen silently watching the cottage the night of Eve’s murder had vanished.
It was that memory that roused her. She was sure that figure had been that of a man. It had been clear-cut, sharp, definite. And earthly. Not a fantastic creature of the night or of her own imagination or of—
A door somewhere closed very softly.
That, too, was definite. The thing she had seen was flesh and blood. A man—or a woman—hunched over, running swiftly on all fours like a dog.
There was a kind of horror about that. But a door somewhere had closed.
By the time she reached her own door and unlocked and opened it the hall was completely empty. There was no way to tell whether anyone had crept along it, whether the closing of that door had been a bedroom door—or a door to the hall below or the kitchen door. It was so still a night that the sound she had heard might even have come from the Stacy house, although it seemed nearer. That crouching figure had pattered cross the moonlit patch of whiteness in the direction of the lake, but it might have veered in either direction, toward the Abbott house or toward the Stacy house.
A night light was burning in the hall, and it was reassuring in its emptiness and its familiarity.
She thought of the two deputies guarding Richard. What could she tell them? That she had seen a man—only it might have been a woman—and it ran, apparently, on all fours hike a dog?
There was no sound at all from the sleeping house. Perhaps two or three minutes passed. Then she started slowly, looking nervously toward the stair well, toward Richard’s room. Nothing moved along the stairs; she paused and leaned over the railing, but the hall below was a dark, perfectly quiet cavern. As she reached Richard’s room that atavistic sense of danger and urgency which the sight of the crouching figure had roused clutched at her so strongly that it was like a hand reaching out from somewhere behind her. She turned quickly to look over her shoulder, but there was nothing there. She knocked softly on the door. No one answered, and rather than rouse the house she tried the door softly. It opened. The room was dark and quiet except, as she listened, she heard regular, heavy breathing.
It was odd that the room was dark; it was rather curious, too, that simply because the house was so silent and it was such a listening silence she did not want to call out and wake the sleeper but instead, without really thinking, she hunted for the electric-light switch on the inside of the door, found it, and with a little click the room was flooded with light.
It was a comfortable room; a little shabby, with school pictures and a crimson banner, faded, on the wall; there was a long study table with a green-shaded desk lamp on it and cards in a regular pattern for solitaire and a chair pushed away from the table. And then a man, sprawled at length on the old leather couch before the window, gave a startled kind of gurgle and sat up, rubbing his eyes with one hand and reaching a revolver on the floor beside him with the other. He stared and said, “What—”
She came into the room and closed the door. It was one of the deputies; he wore no coat, and his badge was pinned to his vest and glittered in the light. Richard was not there nor the second deputy who had been sent to guard him. The deputy’s puffy eyes sharpened. “Oh, it’s you! What are you doing here? You can’t see the prisoner. Sheriff gave orders—” He stopped again, stood up, gave a quick look at the door and said: “Say, how the hell did you get in here? That door was locked.”
“It—it wasn’t locked. I saw something Where is Richard?”
He went quickly to the door, opened it, glanced into the hall, closed it again and turned to look at her. “You oughtn’t to have come in here, miss. I had orders to keep everybody out. I must’ve made a mistake about locking the door “
“Where is Richard?”
He rubbed his head and scowled at her.
“Now don’t yell,” he said. “Hysterics won’t do you any good. …” He paused and looked at her and then said: “Okay, if you’re not going to give up till you know. He ain’t here.”
They had taken him away, then; secretly, so no one would know.
“Where is he?”
“I tell you nobody was to know. Sheriff gave orders—”
“Listen. Somebody is on the grounds. I saw him. Just now from the window.”
The sleepy look had quite gone from his face. “Who was it? What was he doing?”
“I don’t know who it was. It was just a—someone who ran across the lawn. He disappeared into the shadow. He—” She stopped and swallowed and watched him.
“Whoever it was was running on all fours.”
“On—” He stared at her, looked very sallow all at once and lifted the hand that held the revolver. “Where’d he go?”
“Into the shrubbery. I couldn’t see any more—then I heard a door somewhere close. So I came to tell you and Richard. I don’t know what door closed. I heard nothing more.”
His slack figure tautened; he took a long breath, said: “Stay here and listen—don’t let anybody in. Do that for me and I’ll tell you what you want to know.” She nodded. He opened the door, gave a quick look into the hall again and vanished, closing the door very softly behind him.
She listened but heard nothing at all, not even the deputy’s footsteps in the hall or in the stairway.
She looked around the room. The bed was turned down but otherwise undisturbed. She went to the window, and that side of the house, below, was all dense black shadow. She came back to the table. A little clock on the table pointed to twenty-three minutes after one.
It was a quarter to two when, without any preliminary sound, the door opened and the deputy returned. Search was sitting in one of the chairs and jumped up, her heart in her throat. He slid into the room and closed the door gently.
“Anybody been in here?”
“Nobody. Did you find—”
He shook his head. “Nothing doing anywhere except a light over in the Stacy house that went out while I looked at it. Somebody was up and around over there. But here—grounds, house, everywhere—it’s as still as a graveyard.” He seemed to consider it an unfortunate simile, for he caught himself up quickly, said, “All’s quiet, anyway,” and came to the table.
“Richard,” she said. He looked at her for a moment.
“All right,” he said. “You know he’s not here. I ought to have locked the door. But listen—I’m only telling you this because you—you like the guy, see? And I’ve got to tell you because you’ve got to see why nobody’s to know he ain’t here. I’m to—keep everybody away. Take in trays of food and act as if he’s here. That’s my orders from the sheriff.”
“I won’t tell.”
He nodded. “I believe you.” He sat down. The light from the desk lamp cast a greenish glow on his face and laid green shadow on the folds of her thin white robe.
He told it briefly, wasting no words. Dick Bohan told the sheriff something that he thought and the sheriff thought was a clue, and it necessitated
a trip upstate to some little town there. “Avion,” said the deputy, “that the name of it, Avion.” But the sheriff didn’t want anybody to know they had taken Richard there. So the second deputy and Richard had left the house quietly, after dark, walking in the shadows to the main entrance, where the sheriff’s car picked them up. And he was left to keep everyone out of the room and to foster the impression that Richard was held there, a prisoner. “I don’t know for how long,” he said. “It ain’t my business to know. But that’s the way it is.”
“Did he see Aunt Ludmilla before he went away?”
“No. Didn’t see anybody except—” He stopped quickly.
She said:
“Howland Stacy? Calvin?”
“Come along now, miss—”
“Bea? The maid. Did he see her?”
After a moment he sighed. “Okay, he did.”
“They questioned, her. Didn’t they?”
He gave her a weary look and sighed again.
“All right. They did.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she lied. She told that story about seeing Calvin Peale come out of the tool shed with a rope over his arm because she was paid to do it.”
“Who—”
“She wouldn’t tell. I guess she was scared. Now will you go? I—I swear to God, Miss Abbott, there’s not another damn thing I can tell you.”
He looked harassed and pleading. But she thought he was telling the truth.
He went with her, walking as quietly as a cat along the silent hall in spite of his loose-jointed, awkward look. No one was in her room. He looked before he left her there. And, remembering the thing she had seen, again she locked the door.
But hope was in her heart. If the sheriff had done all that—arranged the deception, taken Richard with him to Avion—then the sheriff must believe at least a part of whatever Richard had told him. Therefore he must have a doubt as to Richard’s guilt—a doubt that was strong enough to induce the sheriff at least to investigate that clue.
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