Hasty Wedding

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “You talked of her; you said she had been here at the house; you and Devany agreed she must be found. Now then, who——”

  Jevan’s jaw and eyes looked savagely stubborn. “I don’t know, I tell you.”

  Wait whirled to the banana plant and Willy’s anxious blue eyes blinked frantically. “I don’t know her,” he cried. “She’s nothing to me. It was only because we thought it was queer—her coming like that and then disappearing. We thought we ought to investigate it.”

  “What did you do after you left the drugstore? It was at least eight-thirty when you turned up here.”

  Willy shot a worried look at Jevan, bit his lips and said jerkily that they had sat in his car and talked.

  “For an hour and a half?”

  “Yes,” said Willy. “And I can swear to it and so can Jevan. Then we came back to the house and saw lights everywhere and police and naturally said we’d been together. Self-preservation,” said Willy breathlessly. “That’s all. I don’t know who in hell that woman is——”

  The detective turned back to Jevan.

  “I wonder,” he said simply and directly, “if you quite realize the motives which we feel might have led to the murder of Ronald Drew and subsequently to Pett’s death. Listen to me. Suppose your wife (who was not then your wife) was threatened by Drew. Wait, let me finish! Suppose he intended to throw a monkey wrench into the wedding plans and told her so; suppose she went to his apartment in the hope of inducing him to give up his plan—perhaps she meant to pay him off. Suppose you learned of it and followed her. Suppose you realized that he would go on demanding money and there was only one way to stop it. Certainly someone had already been paying him regularly for no apparent value received and there is only one person close to Drew who had the money to make such payments and conceivably the motive——”

  Dorcas’ heart was throbbing painfully in her throat. Jevan shot her a lightning look and said, evenly enough except for a deep undertone of fury: “It doesn’t happen to be true, Wait. It’s only a theory.”

  “But it does fit,” said Wait. “Especially if we suppose that Marcus Pett, in charge of your wife’s money, knew of these payments, knew of a motive for Drew’s murder and in fact knew so much that he, too, had to be murdered.”

  Jevan was white to the lips; he said, however, still evenly: “It’s still theory only.”

  “Theory? More than that, Locke.” He looked at his watch. “More than theory. The taxi driver ought to be here any moment now.”

  Dorcas felt queerly cold. How could she have gone so blindly with Ronald; how could she have done the thing that, now, was to tell so fatally against Jevan and against herself! She wished with the cruel futility with which people have so wished since time began that she could undo the thing she had done. That she could have that last instant of decision over again. But how could she have known how important that short ride with Ronald was to be!

  Jevan’s face was like a mask except for its tenseness; behind it, she knew, he was seeking desperately for a way out, conscious as she was of the danger of the taxi driver’s identification. Willy, still shrinking behind the banana plant, stared blankly at the detective. And Bench just then appeared in the doorway, and with him a man in uniform who could be no other than the taxi driver.

  He held his cap in his hand; that night she hadn’t seen his face; it had been shaded by his cap. She sought for and could find no familiar line. But he had seen her fully; there had been a light on her face from the street lights, and he had leaned toward her and stared a little, noting, she had been sure, her breathlessness and agitation.

  She realized that her fingers were digging into the wicker arms of the chair she sat in and that Wait saw it; she tried to look unconcerned, certain of herself, but her face felt stiff and marked with guilt. Jevan had not moved, nor Willy.

  Wait looked at the taxi driver and said: “Well?”

  He saluted Wait cheerfully: “Here I am, Mr Wait. On the dot. And this is the address all right.” He looked at Dorcas. Jevan started and stopped. Dorcas forced herself to meet the taxi driver’s eyes. He stared, tipped his head first on one side and then the other, gave Wait, Jevan and Willy a sweeping look, stared again at Dorcas and said cheerfully: “But that’s not the girl.”

  As if released, Dorcas’ heart began to thud furiously. She was only dimly aware that Wait, Jevan, the taxi driver and, incredibly, Willy were all talking at once. Out of the melee of voices suddenly one voice, rich and passionate, began to swear. It was Wait’s voice and it emerged from and drowned out other voices and grew, gathering strength as it waxed into a stream of Old Testament cursing that blasted them all root and branch.

  Willy shrank back behind the banana leaves and looked as if he expected them to begin to shrivel, and Jevan’s hand was on Dorcas’ arm and she realized he was telling her to go. But she couldn’t have moved if her life had depended upon it. She listened; they all listened as if fascinated until suddenly the taxi driver swallowed hard a few times and broke into that rich stream with the hardihood of his profession.

  “You ain’t got no call to do that,” he shouted. “I’d be ashamed if I was you. And on Sunday too.”

  Wait abruptly stopped. He looked at the taxi driver, looked at Dorcas, looked at Jevan. All at once he smiled; it was a remarkable smile which would have passed for a snarl anywhere.

  “You murdered Drew, Locke,” he said. “You’re guilty as hell.”

  And turned around and walked out. He passed within an inch of the taxi driver’s nose and vanished. The taxi driver said coolly: “And what a nice guy he is,” looked at Dorcas and winked deliberately and in the friendliest way. “I guess I’ll be going now,” he said.

  They didn’t have the forethought to question him. He disappeared, too, and Jevan belatedly caught the implication of the wink and cried: “Hey, there, wait a minute.”

  “No, don’t stop him,” said Dorcas. “I know it’s the man. He had a cap on but——”

  Willy came out from the banana plant.

  “He winked,” he said. “Well I’m damned. Chivalry.”

  “Jevan, Wait didn’t mean what he said,” began Dorcas. “He couldn’t have meant it. You didn’t kill Ronald. He can’t prove it. He——”

  Jevan said coolly, as if there had been no anguish and fear in her voice: “Of course not. Forget it. Willy, what did we say in the drugstore yesterday? What did that soda jerker hear?”

  “Just what Wait asked us about, I imagine,” said Willy worriedly. He wiped his pale forehead with a very handsome handkerchief and said: “We said we must find the—the woman. And if you’ll take my advice, Jevan, you’ll get yourself a lawyer. You know I won’t—tell—won’t tell anything,” said Willy. “But they keep questioning me. I might break down.”

  “You were there too,” said Dorcas, suddenly believing it. “You were at Ronald’s apartment——”

  Jevan interrupted brusquely.

  “Willy was not in Ronald’s apartment. But for heaven’s sake, Willy, can’t you—can’t you resist Wait? Don’t let him bluff you!”

  “Bluff? Oh, my God, Jevan,” cried Willy with the candor of an old friend. “Don’t be a plain damn fool. The man’s got something on you. You—you didn’t kill Ronald, did you? I mean—I mean it’s all right if you did. I don’t care. He needed killing and you were the man to do it but—you’d better tell me.”

  “Tell you,” began Jevan and stopped short and said: “Just what would you do?”

  Willy’s answer was simple. “Get a good defense lawyer of course. Herbert is the best criminal lawyer in the country. Shall I wire for him now?”

  “No,” said Jevan tersely. “And get this into your head. I——” He stopped again, looked at Willy with a kind of helplessness and said: “Oh, never mind. We’ve got to find that woman.”

  Willy blinked and said: “Oh yes, certainly but——”

  Dorcas thought, What woman? The one in the checked coat of course; yet her brief, almost chimerica
l appearance did not, surely, justify so deep an interest.

  “You see,” said Jevan, “it’s the cigarette. The cigarette that was smoking when I reached Ronald’s apartment. I just now, while Wait was talking, saw what I didn’t see before, and that is that it wasn’t your cigarette, Dorcas; it couldn’t have been, for you had been gone from the apartment for at least half an hour. And that cigarette, as well as two other ends I destroyed, had——”

  “Had lipstick on it,” cried Willy excitedly. “I’ll go! I’ll go at once, Jevan! Immediately!” He took a leaf from Wait’s book and was about to disappear promptly if abruptly through the door when he stopped, looked back at them, said mysteriously and still excitedly: “The end justifies the means,” and was gone.

  Dorcas tried to assort it intelligently: “You mean that another woman was in Ronald’s apartment after I had gone? And that the woman was the girl who came here yesterday…”

  “Perhaps. But I don’t know who she is,” said Jevan definitely. Too definitely. What was it that Willy and Jevan knew of this woman that they refused to tell her?

  Jevan gave her no chance to ask; he said without warning:

  “You have never asked me exactly why I came to Ronald’s apartment. After, that is, our first …” He hesitated and said: “…talk. I had as good a chance to murder Ronald as anyone had. For all you know I had as strong a motive. Have you considered whether or not I might have killed him? Tell me the truth, Dorcas.”

  There was a small deep silence in the little controversy.

  Dorcas said slowly, not knowing what her words were to be until she heard them: “Do you believe that I killed him?”

  His eyes narrowed a little but continued to look deeply into her own. “You know I thought so at first; what else could I think?”

  “And—now?”

  “Well, now I don’t think so.”

  “But, believing I had shot Ronald, you still were willing to marry——”

  “Marry you! I think willing is the wrong word. As I remember, I rather insisted upon it.” He had caught the words from her lips. Now he paused for an instant and replied, indirectly and brusquely: “Whatever else there is—or there is not—between us, you are my wife. And before the world I—well, I hold you as such.”

  She could not read his eyes. All at once the moment was tinged with portent and its meaning concerned only the two of them. The house and all its concerns were remote and inconceivably distant from them.

  Around her was the smell of the warm, earthy little conservatory. In the distance, blurred, was the mellow sound of an automobile horn; the light failing through wavy old glasses was faintly green and very clear upon Jevan’s face. It was as if the moment’s passage of time lifted itself out of that very passage and became transfixed and would remain so, clear and inviolate forever.

  “You haven’t answered my question. You haven’t told me why you’ve been loyal to me; why you’ve told no one that I was in the apartment and found him there? Why you’ve obeyed me when I’ve told you what to say and do? And you’ve——” Jevan broke off and his eyes searched her own and he said, half whispering: “Dorcas, if I killed Ronald—if I was driven then to kill Marcus—would you still trust me?”

  Queer how extraordinarily difficult it was to speak; it was as if she had to guard her tongue against saying too much and yet she had no words. And she must reply; he took her hands and compelled her to speak.

  “I—I have felt that we stood—together,” she said fumblingly, falteringly—stupidly, she thought, and ineptly.

  He held her hands for an instant longer and then dropped them.

  “Partners in crime?”

  “No. I am your wife.” She hadn’t intended to say that. She caught herself quickly but could not catch back the thing she’d said. He looked at her queerly and smiled.

  “My wife. And you want our marriage to be annulled at the first possible moment…Very well.” He turned toward the door. “It’s lunchtime, I suppose,” he said in a different voice, quite cool and detached. “We’d better go in.”

  He went to the french door and Dorcas followed. There was a shallow step leading upward into the library and as Jevan stepped upon it and put his hand on the latch of the door Dorcas said: “But I do trust you. It’s you that said our marriage must be annulled.” He whirled instantly toward her, eyes so bright that she faltered and added unsteadily: “If you killed Ronald——”

  He thrust the door shut and took a quick step toward her. “Well? If I killed Ronald …?”

  It was terribly important. She looked up at Jevan and tried to speak, though she did not know what she was about to say. And she did not ever say it, for without any warning at all he took her fiercely in his arms and her faltering words were muffled as he kissed her. Kissed her and held her so tight that her very body merged into his own strength and warmth; and kissed her again; and everything else in the world became nonexistent and immensely unimportant.

  Until all at once he was standing away from her, looking down at her. She was trembling and tried not to. But he knew it and was going to take her into his arms again and she swayed a little toward him in a faint, lovely gesture she learned at that very instant and did not know she learned.

  Yet he did not. Instead he said in an odd, rather harsh voice: “You are my wife, you know,” and walked again to the door. “Better come to lunch,” he said over his shoulder.

  The casualness of it was like cold water in her face. And at the same time she thought: When Ronald held me in his arms it was not like this. I hated that. I feared it. I wanted only to escape.

  He waited a moment at the door, without looking back toward her. And Dorcas, still shaken and confused, thought, But Ronald loved me. (Or did he?) And Jevan doesn’t. He wants our marriage to end. So then it’s—it’s only chemistry.

  “What’s that?” said Jevan abruptly as if she’d spoken and Dorcas, absently, still confused, said, “Chemistry,” and instantly could have bitten her tongue.

  For Jevan looked at her then, quickly, exclaimed, “Chemistry!” and she saw understanding come into his eyes and felt a hot wave start at her throat and surge upward.

  “Chemistry,” he said again and laughed shortly. “Call it that if you like but come on.”

  She went and he said no more. Did not, during lunch, so much as look at her. Yet she was absurdly aware of every word he spoke and every motion he made, as if there were fine strong wires between them.

  After lunch Jevan disappeared. She saw him in the hall with his coat on and Bench handing him a hat. He went out without seeing her on the stairway or at least without coming to speak to her, and she went on upstairs to her room—rather to the room she had come to after her marriage. With Jevan in the adjoining room.

  She closed the door. There were things she must think of; yet when she tried she could not, for those very things kept repeating themselves as experiences. Jevan’s mouth, hard and warm upon her own. His arms. “You are my wife,” he had said.

  Sunday. A quiet, dark afternoon with Cary silent in her room and Mamie sitting outside the door with the Sunday papers and a deep, growing perplexity in her Irish face. With the servants in the kitchen reading avidly all the papers they could get hold of and Ethel getting feverish little red streaks in her thin cheeks again as she saw her own name, Ethel Stone, actually in print.

  With Dorcas shutting herself in with thoughts that refused to be thought. Wandering restlessly about the room she had entered as Dorcas Locke. Going once into Jevan’s room, a little timidly picking up the brushes on the dressing table, marked J. L. in solid block initials, and putting them down again.

  But it was then that she found the green scarf. An edge of it, a bright green line, was showing in a book on the bed table and without at all meaning to she opened the book and pulled out the small scarf.

  Bright green, thin silk, exuding perfume. A heavy perfume, musky. It was a little wrinkled and untidy and there was the smudged mark of lipstick on it


  A woman in a checked coat, Bench had said, with a green hat and scarf. And Jevan had said he didn’t know her. And Willy had gone to find her.

  She still had the scarf in her hand when Bench came to call her to the telephone. He saw the scarf as she thrust it back into the book and his eyes leaped but he said nothing and she followed him to the telephone.

  It was dusk by that time and Bench had turned on all available lights but the little passage outside the telephone room was yet too dimly lighted. She wondered suddenly if Marcus could have been trying to reach the telephone when he was murdered. Or had there been, as was more likely, a ruse on the part of the murderer which led him into the little room so that, sitting, his hands at the telephone, he had been taken by surprise?

  She took up the waiting instrument. Her first thought had been that it was Jevan. But it was Wait.

  “Mrs Locke, ask your mother why Ronald Drew was afraid of her.”

  “My mother!”

  “Yes, of course. He said so, as I told you this morning, in a letter to Marcus Pett. I have the letter if you want to see it. I’ll be along in the morning to hear what your mother says.”

  “No. You are mistaken. This is preposterous——”

  He had hung up before she began. She put the telephone down and with grisly immediacy it rang again. This time she answered it herself and it was, to her great relief, Willy. He recognized her voice.

  “Oh, Dorcas—is Jevan back yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, when he comes tell him Elise is gone. Vamoosed. Nobody knows what happened to her.”

  “Elise!”

  “Completely gone,” said Willy’s voice thinly and at a great distance. “Checked coat, green scarf and all. Tell him, Dorcas.”

  He hung up too, quickly, as if he were in a great hurry.

  She stood at the telephone. And in the soft, deep dusk she heard from the corridor beyond the swish of a garment and the little stir of someone moving.

  CHAPTER 19

  SHE WAS A LITTLE frightened; and it was ridiculous because it was only Cary.