Three Bright Pebbles

by Zenith Brown

  She crossed the drive with that, went down the brick path and disappeared behind the tall green screen of arbor vitae.

  For a moment Mr. Dunthorne stood stock still, watching her. Then he bent down and examined the thick distinctive tread of his handsome white tires. He straightened up and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, still looking at them.

  That jettisoning of Mr. Dunthorne by Dan, Yarborough and Mara was not the only reason for my leaving my room to go back downstairs with a definite sense of relief. It was, I think, chiefly because Mara, giggling behind old Yarborough’s impressive posterior, and then coming down the stone stairs like a young chatelaine to put Mr. Dunthorne neatly and permanently in his place, seemed, all of a sudden, like a girl again—not like some dark tragic little wraith moving in mortal fear. And that was why the next shock I was to get was worse than it would have been before.

  Downstairs the house was drowsy and cool, the Venetian blinds drawn against the hot glaring sun. Irene and Dan had gone in to Port Tobacco with Mr. Purcell and Major Tillyard. Natalie Lane was lying, protected with white-rimmed sun glasses, in a chaise longue with white and green cushions under a mimosa tree down by the river, her magazine face down on the grass beside her. Cheryl was nowhere in sight. Mr. Dunthorne, in bathing trunks and also with white-rimmed sun glasses, was sprawled out on the end of the float. Dr. Birdsong, Yarborough said, had gone to Washington to take some things to be analyzed, and Mr. Sam Dorsey the sheriff had returned to his office. I went through the hyphen that leads to the library. Romney is, of course, a typical tidewater five-unit house. The library used to be the plantation office, in the old days, just as the present dining room was the kitchen once; the hyphen that was merely a passage way then was now a card room, as the dining room hyphen was now a breakfast and lounging terrace with its brick sides converted into long French windows.

  I opened the pine door with its broken pediment cornice and narrow fluted pilasters, and stepped down into the cool book-lined room, with its eighteenth century prints and the Lazlo Orpen portrait of Mr. Winthrop set in the elaborate baroque overmantel. I stood for a moment looking up at his strong, not handsome but very human face, wondering what he’d think of the mess things were in at Romney. Mara had been his favorite . . . and what would he think, I wondered, if he could know how his will had managed to exclude and thwart her?

  Then I thought how much he would have liked Cheryl, and then I pulled a deep leather chair with its linen slip cover over between a couple of bookcases jutting out at right angles to make a nook in a corner overlooking the river, and sank down in it, watching Natalie under the mimosa tree and Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne sun-bathing on the float, not bothering to open the book I’d picked up from the old taproom table with the pewter trough on it full of scarlet roses. I don’t know how long I sat there, except that Mr. Dunthorne had turned over five times and anointed himself with sun tan oil twice, when I realized that somebody had come stealthily into the room, not from the house but from one of the doors that balances the fireplace.

  I glanced around. Through the angle of the bookcases I saw a man in a crumpled white linen suit, his eyes haggard, his hands holding a match to his cigarette trembling as he kept watching the opposite door.

  Suddenly I saw him start, and stiffen his shoulders, waiting. Then his face was so instantly transformed that I hardly recognized it. I heard the door close softly, and a little cry; and Mara flew across the room and into his arms.

  They clung together there like two lost creatures, for hours, it seemed to me as I sat there. I thought I’d saunter out, as soon as they’d released each other, and say “Don’t mind me,” and retire as gracefully as I could under the circumstances. But that’s only what I thought I’d do . . . for almost instantly I saw it was the one thing in the world I couldn’t do, really—not and ever look at the spring, or the sickle moon, or anything young again. For I realized in one startled intuitive flash, and even before Alan Keane had loosed his passionate hold around her slim body and stood, her dark radiant little face cupped in his hands, gazing down into it rapt and hungry, kissing her lips and eyes so gently it was almost heartbreaking, that this wasn’t any longer just an idyllic summer romance.

  I realized that instantly, and somehow without nearly as much surprise or shock—shocking as that may sound—as when Mara drew away from him at last and whispered: “I’m so scared, Alan! What if Rick told Mother we were married? He said he would, last night—that’s why Cheryl came back. Oh, if he did, what can we do?”

  She buried her face in his arms.

  While I have the sketchiest notion of what a jailbird’s voice sounds like, I’m very sure it doesn’t sound like Alan Keane’s then.

  “You’ll come with me the way I want you to now, sweet—and we’ll get away, somewhere, anywhere away from here . . . Oh, why don’t we now, Mara? I love you so much! Let your mother keep her money—we don’t need it.”

  She raised her head and stood looking up at him, straight as a young fern, her arms clasped loosely about his neck.

  “You promised you wouldn’t say that again . . . don’t you see it would just be telling all of them we can’t take it? And you couldn’t go anyway, the parole board wouldn’t let you, and anyway, it’s not . . . it’s not right! Oh, Alan, tell me again you didn’t . . . No—don’t! I know you didn’t . . . only they’re so—”

  “I know it, dearest. Sometimes I even wonder about it myself.”

  “No!” Mara cried. “You mustn’t say that, ever, ever!”

  They sat down on the deep sofa in front of the fireplace.

  “Listen,” she said, her voice urgent and frightened suddenly. “Alan—you didn’t see Rick, last night, did you? I mean, they mustn’t be able to say you . . .”

  “Killed your brother?”

  Alan’s voice was bitter and disillusioned.

  “Is that what you mean? Go on, say it. God knows there’s enough without brooding over something you’re afraid to say.”

  “Then—where were you last night? I tried to phone you a little after one—Cheryl wanted you to take her to Washington. I . . . I couldn’t get you. Oh, Alan, forgive me—but where were you?”

  “I was helping my father get his stuff together,” he said steadily. “And I did see Rick. Dad made me promise I wouldn’t tell anybody. Rick came down to the house. I’m telling you, because I’ve never told you anything but the truth. You’ve got to know that, Mara, no matter what happens.”

  “I do know it!”

  “But I’m not telling anybody else, because of . . . my father. Rick’s the only thing he ever hated in his life.”

  They sat there silently for a moment, Alan bent forward, his hands clasped between his knees, staring into the empty hearth, and Mara a little away from him, her body taut and rigid. Something—doubt, or resentment, or just accumulated strain—had crept between them, separating them as wide as the poles. Suddenly Mara looked quickly around, and sat there poised and intent, listening, her eyes wide with alarm. I heard a chair in the hyphen move as if something had bumped into it, and shuffling steps near the door. My heart sank as I heard the door open, and stopped dead for an instant, until I heard Yarborough’s voice, low and smooth.

  “Miss Mara, yo’ mother’s cah comin’. Yo’ bettah hurry, honey.”

  “Thanks, Yarborough.”

  Alan got up as the door closed softly.

  “We can’t go on like this, Mara.”

  His voice was almost unrecognizable with torment.

  “Wouldn’t it be better—”

  “You don’t know Mother. No—please go, quickly! It isn’t only us! No, don’t touch me—please! Just go!”

  I heard a car outside. Alan must have heard it too. He went over to the door, hesitated, and slipped out. For a moment the room was as still as death, and then I heard Mara throw herself on the sofa, in a storm of sobbing too infinitely bitter and lost for anyone as young as she.

  13

  Out of the window I saw Yarb
orough crossing the lawn with a tray of tall frosted mint juleps and put them down on the white wrought iron table under the huge green and white umbrella. Natalie Lane under the mimosa tree stirred herself, and Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne on the float sat up, touched his red legs and redder shoulders experimentally, as one does a cake to see if it’s done, got up, straightened his back tentatively and bent over, and for the next few moments went through a lovely pantomime of a man who’d lain not wisely but much too well in the sun. I realized without shame that I was grinning like an ape. Nothing that I know of makes a guest—male or female—quite as unpopular in any country house as a severe case of sunburn . . . except possibly getting, and giving everybody else, the whooping cough.

  As I turned back from the window it flashed through my mind with the most startling clarity that neither Mara nor Alan had once asked, actually, what would seem under the circumstances a natural and even obligatory question. Was it, I thought, because they already—by some awful chance—knew who had killed Rick Winthrop? Was it that knowledge that had come between them there, or was it that each of them was afraid to ask it?—Or Mara, anyway: was she afraid to ask it of Alan?

  I felt a strange coldness settle on my heart, like going from a warm hall into an unused room where there’d been no heat all winter. I heard Mara get up, and saw her cross the bare old pine floor quickly and take a large red book from a shelf in the open corner cupboard. I don’t know what I expected her to take from behind it, but I had a definite sense of relief when I saw it was only a vanity and a comb. She dabbed quickly at her nose and her reddened eyes and ran the amber teeth through her short dusky hair. I saw her bend down and pick something from the floor near the door Alan had gone out of, raise her head, listening, and slip quietly out that door and into the garden path, just as the hyphen door opened and I heard her mother’s voice. It was even sharper than it had been that morning.

  “Are you sure Alan Keane hasn’t been here this afternoon?”

  “ ’Deed an’ Ah ain’ seen him aroun’, Miss Irene, an’ that’s gospel, an’ Ah was talkin’ to Miss Mara right in this room.”

  No one could have failed to hear the ring of truth in the old darky’s voice.

  “No, ma’am. Ah ain’ seen him no where. You said he ain’ to come in this house, an Ah ain’ lettin’ him in.”

  And, of course, he wasn’t. Alan had let himself in, and out. I thought of Dr. Birdsong, saying Mara could do with a friend, and wondered what he would think of this one. I was still thinking of it a few moments later, when I’d escaped out of my corner and slipped upstairs. As I reached the top landing I saw Dan stop at my door and rap softly. When I came up to him he turned with a grin.

  “You’re under arrest,” he said.

  “What for?” I asked. “Eavesdropping?”

  It popped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  His blue eyes sharpened. Then he grinned again. “No—I just wanted to try my hand.”

  He held his white linen jacket open. I blinked. A nickel-plated badge was pinned to his inside pocket.

  “I persuaded Dorsey to appoint me a deputy sheriff. So next time I run into somebody prowling around the house, I shoot him—in my official capacity.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Dorsey didn’t think it was a very good idea. Birdsong’s his deputy already.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said.

  “Dorsey said it would be awkward if he had to arrest me. You know, it’s not a bad idea, Grace. I mean, if you’ve got something you want to cover up.”

  “You, or Dr. Birdsong?” I asked.

  “I was speaking generally. Look—come in here. See what you make of this.”

  I followed him along the corridor to Rick’s room.

  “You know, it’s my idea this bird Dunthorne’s a phoney,” he said, closing the door.

  “Why?”

  “Just look at him, the big heel.”

  “You’re not implying he’s not a friend of Rick’s, are you?” I asked. “Because I’ve seen them together, at Twenty-One. They seemed pretty intimate.

  “Rick’s finances were always so rotten he couldn’t pick his friends.”

  He crossed the big room with its handsome Empire day bed and green leather upholstered chairs. It was the kind of room a very smart decorator would do for a very smart bachelor about town—one with no place for a woman in it . . . except casually. He picked up the tooled leather desk pad on the open Sheraton secretary and pointed to a sheet of buff paper lying on the polished wood. It had Romney’s crest at the top and was dated two days before, and in Rick’s heavy undisciplined scrawl was written:

  “Dear Dunthorne,—You’d better put off your visit. I don’t think it’ll sit very well at the moment. If I can keep Mother from marrying Tillyard, you won’t have a ghost of a chance. If I can’t, I can probably raise enough stink to pry loose sufficient cash to take up those damned notes. It isn’t that I personally wouldn’t be tickled to put you up here, but as—”

  The writing broke off there. I read it again, and looked at Dan, rather more bewildered than ever.

  “Dunthorne was going through the pigeon holes when I happened along. Maybe he’s responsible for this too.”

  He nodded toward the fireplace. All I could see was a couple of logs lying across the polished andirons. Dan bent down and pointed behind them, and I bent down too and saw a charred sheet of paper, one tiny corner of it untouched by the flames. It was the buff paper that had meant Romney on my breakfast tray as long as I could remember.

  “You mean you think Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne was doing a little light housecleaning before the sheriff got around to it?” I asked. “—But what could possibly be the point?”

  “That’s what I wouldn’t know,” Dan said—rather grimly. “But I’m going to find out.”

  “It would also be interesting to know,” I advanced tentatively, “what was behind Rick’s opposition to your mother’s marriage.”

  He was about to speak when we heard a car come in the drive. I looked out. The door of the light roadster out there opened, and that huge absurd dog got out, like one of Cinderella’s sisters, and stood grinning up at the house.

  “It’s Dr. Birdsong,” I said. “Are you going to show this to him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I might not want him to know it.”

  He picked up a snapshot lying on the mantel and put it down again as if it burned his fingers. It was Cheryl in shorts with a bow drawn just ready to shoot. She was laughing, the sun on her golden hair.

  I went to the door. He started after me, then went back. I saw him pick up the snapshot again and put it in his pocket.

  “Another clue you don’t want Dr. Birdsong to have?” I asked.

  He grinned very cheerfully.

  “One I don’t want anybody to have,” he said.

  A couple of straw hats were lying on the horsehair sofa in the hall. I recognized one of them as Mr. Purcell’s. The other, apparently, was Major Tillyard’s. The two of them were in the living room, with Irene and Dr. Birdsong, when Dan and I came in. They were standing around the center table. On it was lying a large manila envelope, and beside it an odd assortment of things: a sodden cigarette, a blood-stained arrow with a long shaped steel head, its edges, I noted with a little thrill of revulsion, freshly sharpened, so that where the blood hadn’t dried on it I could see the bright marks of the file. Also lying there, a little apart from the other members of this grisly exhibit, all neatly labeled, was a very handsome gold cigarette lighter.

  Dr. Birdsong turned as we came in, his blue eyes resting on us momentarily with a slightly amused glint in them, and went on talking.

  “I had these at the Department of Justice this afternoon. There’s no doubt Rick was killed by that arrow; and the arrow was filed to a sharper point than hunting arrows normally are even when they’re new—which this isn’t. It’s at least ten years old. We can find out if necessary. I’m not sure th
at’s important. The important point is, there’s no doubt that the intention behind it was to kill. Furthermore, it was no spur of the moment business: it was premeditated, planned and arranged. And after it was done, the arrow was wiped off very carefully, so that it shows no fingerprints whatsoever.”

  He looked around at us, and went on slowly.

  “It was wiped off with a yellow string glove—if you happen to be interested.”

  He didn’t actually look at Dan, but he might as well have, I thought.

  “And there’s something more important than the arrow and the bit of yellow string caught on it. Namely, this.”

  He pointed down to the gold cigarette lighter on the polished surface of the old mahogany table.

  “We found this, you remember, under Rick’s body. There was a scorched smudge on his shirt front. That cigarette had been lighted, and dropped on the grass. The assumption was that Rick was lighting it as the arrow struck him, the flame of the lighter acting as a target for the archer.”

  He glanced from Irene and Major Tillyard, who was standing beside her, his arm steadying and protective about her slim shoulders, to Dan, and then to Mr. Purcell the State’s Attorney.

  “The curious thing about the lighter, however, is that—like the arrow—it has no trace of fingerprints on it. Not anybody else’s . . . and above all, not Rick’s. Which would seem to indicate, very clearly, that Rick was not holding that lighter in his hand when he was shot. He was not holding a target for his own destruction.”

  We couldn’t, the lot of us, have looked more stupid or bewildered if Houdini himself had been lecturing us. The look of bewilderment on the State’s Attorney’s face particularly was too good not to be true.

  “What do you mean, Tom?”

  A cold gleam crackled like fire in Dr. Birdsong’s frostbitten eyes.

  “I mean that since Rick didn’t hold this lighter to that cigarette, he couldn’t have dropped it as he fell. It was put under him after he fell—to create an illusion. Moreover, it was put there by someone who took it from Rick’s pocket after he was dead . . . or of course, conceivably, who already had it in his possession.”