Dan turned around and carefully closed the door. I remember that.
“Sometimes,” said he, “the straight line is the shortest between two points. I thought of that this morning. This morning”—his even voice trembled slightly— “I decided to start doing my own thinking. Yesterday . . .”
“Yesterday,” I repeated, and faltered.
“I won’t apologize,” said Dan. “An apology would be useless, wouldn’t it? I hate apologies, anyway. Explanations usually have more sense in them. Yesterday, Anne, Sheriff Glick was doing my thinking for me. The voice you heard was mine, the words were Ayres all right, but the brain behind them was pure Glick.”
“The Sheriff . . .”
“It’s an old policeman’s trick,” said Dan, “to convince a simple-minded soul—myself in this especial instance— that his—his friends are his enemies. Particularly when he’s scared to death, and in a hideous mess, and in need of friends. Curious, but that’s the way a policeman works. But this morning I woke up to something.”
“Yes, Dan?”
“If we can’t get things straight between each other,” said Dan, “nothing matters anyway. Or not much.” He grinned a little twisted grin. “I still don’t want to hang.”
The light touch was beyond me; my first exhilaration, the sense of buoyancy, was fading. Dan himself was whistling in the dark. The little grin was not convincing; there was strain in the way he talked and moved. But his descent upon Hieronomo House had indeed been calculated to prove his theorem: that a straight line is the shortest between two points.
Dan’s car was parked arrogantly and openly in the circular entrance to Hieronomo House. In the car, hatted, veiled and gloved, waited Hermine Ayres. That was more than I had bargained on. I hesitated, but Dan pushed me ahead.
“Mother, this is Anne,” said he.
“Anne Hieronomo,” said I.
“Anne is quite enough,” said Hermine Ayres, and somehow I knew at once that I would like and trust her. No more unlikely person could possibly have been selected to be a figure in a notorious feud than Hermine Ayres. She was vaguely reminiscent of Great-aunt Lucy, small and frail and faded in appearance, and with a gentle manner. “Get in, child. Sit here beside me. Dan will do the driving. I’m afraid I’m old-fashioned. I’ve never learned to drive a car.”
She was old-fashioned in other ways. I didn’t doubt that the family was lined up solidly at the windows, but Hermine Ayres remained brightly unaware of anything unusual in the situation. Her gentle and insistent pretence that this was an ordinary occasion belonged, like herself, to another day. She had been brought up to be a lady, had been trained to the solid comfort of convention. Her valiant efforts cost her something—her face was pale beneath the carefully adjusted veil—but as we whirled down the cedar avenue and left Hieronomo House behind she clung firmly to convention and to trivialities. She didn’t inquire into my family’s health, but she almost did.
“I’m so glad to have this opportunity to meet you, dear.” And then as we pulled up before the colonial cottage, “You’ll stay to lunch, of course.”
We went into the cottage. My hostess—and it was plain that she was hostess—led the way into a living room, cheerful in pine and chintz and with a blazing fire. She saw that I selected the chair beside the fire.
“You’ll find the Windsor uncomfortable, I’m afraid. The Chesapeake chair is better. Now if you children will forgive me, I’ll see to lunch.”
The door closed and we two were alone. I had an instant of pure panic. Dan may have felt it, too, for he turned toward the closing door and then very slowly turned back to me. In the silence of the sunlit room, it came to me suddenly that ignorance might be preferable to the truth, that a straight and direct line might be unendurable. I thought of so many things—of the little feather in my pocket, of the small cloth bag of gold, even of Dan’s trip to Baltimore.
“You didn’t tell the Sheriff, did you,” Dan asked quietly, “that I’d invited you to go with me to Baltimore? Or that I was going there?”
“No,” said I.
“That’s what I woke up to this morning, Anne,” said he in an even voice, “how Glick was using us—one against the other. Twisting circumstances—when it suited him—driving me half nuts, showing me black was white, and white was black. He even made me think, temporarily, that my instincts were wrong when my instincts alone were right. I should warn you about the Sheriff, Anne—Sheriff Glick with his smiling face and friendly ways. Like others in this complicated, dreary situation, the Sheriff isn’t telling half he knows, and half he tells is false.”
The room was very warm, but Dan shivered slightly and walked toward the fire. He paused beside my chair. Perhaps his own vitality had begun to drain away. His voice sounded tired.
“But that’s not my point. Glick’s a policeman and a skilful—shall we say—prevaricator. I’m neither. If I can’t tell the truth to you, Anne, and get back the truth from you, I guess I’m finished.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I’ve done a good job, haven’t I, of convincing you I killed your aunt? Tell me, Anne. Haven’t I?” I looked back at him. I didn’t say a word. I reached into my pocket. Bright as Christmas holly the little crimson feather bloomed against my palm.
“Isn’t this yours, Dan?”
“Mine?”
“Isn’t it from your hat, Dan? The soft brown hat . . .”
“I don’t know,” said he, and seemed bewildered and perplexed. “The hat’s in the hall. I’ll see.”
“No, wait!” I cried, and got up from my chair. I dare say I loomed like an avenging justice. “I’m sure the feather’s from your hat. I found it near the bird house.” Dan went only a little pale.
“Then probably you’re right. I was on your grounds last night. I fell at the currant bushes.”
“You fell!”
“Headlong,” said Dan. “Amos was hard at my heels, but when I fell he ceased to follow. Stopped short and waited with that lantern swinging to and fro. I may have frightened him, or, on the other hand . . .”
“He may not have wanted to catch you,” said I.
Dan nodded. “That occurred to me. But I was in no position to inquire. I was too grateful for his attitude. Perplexed, but grateful. Because of my own business I was anxious to escape undiscovered.”
“Your business, Dan?”
“I wanted,” said Dan, “to leave that gold in some spot where Sheriff Glick would be sure to find it. In that gold, my dear, in some way I have yet to fathom, lies the answer to your great-aunt’s murder.”
“But Dan . . .”
“You’re wondering why I didn’t simply hand it over to the Sheriff. You’re wondering where I got it.”
I nodded.
“I got it,” said Dan very clearly, “from your Great-aunt Amanda on the afternoon of her murder. I met Amanda Silver on Wednesday afternoon at half past four in John Hieronomo’s bedroom. It was then I got the gold.”
I caught my breath. Dan had shivered earlier in the sunlit room, warmed by the crackling fire. Now it was I who felt in my blood a creeping chill.
“This isn’t a confession, Anne,” said Dan. “I didn’t kill Amanda Silver.”
For an instant that was enough. I needed and desired no details. Dan had brought me to his home to hear the truth, and I knew that I had heard it. In an instant—and as though they had never been—my doubts and fears were gone. My instincts, too, had been right from the beginning.
“Anne, you’re crying!”
“Am I?”
“Copiously,” said Dan, and leaned to drop his handkerchief in my lap. His hand brushed mine, and was trembling. His fingers clung a moment, and then withdrew. Dan slowly straightened up.
“My activities,” he said presently, “are going to be difficult to discuss. I hate the job before I begin it.”
“Then don’t begin,” said I, and meant it.
Dan shook his head. “No, Anne. You’re going to hear me out. You’re going to hear exactly how an
d why I went last Wednesday afternoon to Hieronomo House.”
Hermine Ayres entered on that remark. She would have retreated instantly but her son intervened.
“You, too, Mother. Please stay. I’m about to launch into the odyssey of a man who’s made a general mess of things. I’m about to tell the story that I’ve refrained from confiding to Sheriff Glick.”
Convention does have its own place. Hermine Ayres recognized the supercharged atmosphere, and she dispelled it.
“We’ll all feel better,” said she, “for our lunch. And lunch is ready.”
In consequence Dan began his story at the luncheon table. His blond hair was rumpled, but his eyes were steady. His decision, I think, must have brought him some of the weary peace I felt in my own heart. Everything was normal, commonplace and comforting—from the flowers that nodded in a pottery bowl to the plate of turkey sandwiches. Our hostess, in her own gentle person, was a comfort.
“I’m sure, son,” said she, “if you went to Hieronomo House and saw Amanda Silver, you had a good, and honest and aboveboard reason.”
“I went,” Dan replied, “because Amanda Silver telephoned the bank and asked me to come. It was in connection with her reopening that account of hers. It seemed to me—even in my first surprise and, believe me, I was astonished by the call—that Amanda Silver could show up at the cashier’s window like any other patron. But she insisted, said she desired to discuss the transaction with me personally. I gave in finally because . . .”
He hesitated.
“You agreed to go to Hieronomo House,” I said quietly, “because of me. Because I was there. You hoped I’d spoken to Aunt Amanda about our—our being friends . . .”
He flushed. “I thought you’d talked to your aunt—yes. Otherwise I couldn’t understand that sudden dramatic softening of a heart that had been very flinty in the past. But I had another reason, too. I had a hunch something was wrong at Hieronomo House.”
“Wrong? In what way, Dan?”
He frowned, and remembered. “Your great-aunt’s insistence was peculiar, her voice and her manner. She wasn’t the sort who begged for anything, and yet she almost begged me to do her ‘this small favor.’ It wasn’t like her to ask a favor of anyone. Particularly of an Ayres!” Dan’s face darkened. “I wondered why Amanda Silver was so exercised over a minute matter—it’s not unusual for us to pick up money for a depositor. Frequently as an accommodation on large accounts we pick up deposits, and I had gathered that was what she wanted. Eventually I agreed. If anything was wrong at Hieronomo House, I had my own reasons for wanting to find out what it was.”
He sent me a long and sober look, and hurried on.
“Amanda Silver told me to come to the house at four-thirty on Wednesday afternoon. And she particularly asked me not to mention the appointment. That didn’t seem so odd. She hated village gossip, and I don’t like it either. That piece of news—her reopening her account and tacitly ending the feud—would have set Mount Hope by the ears.”
“Did she ask you to meet her in Great-grandfather’s bedroom?”
“Lord, no! I’d have balked if there’d been any hocus-pocus about the arrangements,” said Dan. “I was unenthusiastic anyway. But when I walked up the cypress avenue on Wednesday afternoon Amanda Silver was. standing on the balcony. She called and suggested I walk around the house and enter by the side and join her. It didn’t occur to me to refuse. She beckoned me, and. around the house I went and inside and up the stairs.”
The picture, as he talked, became very real. The foyer had been dark and dusky, quiet on that Wednesday afternoon. From the drawing room floated voices, the muted clink of glasses, but the angle of the stairs cut off the group collected over a champagne bottle around a dying fire, and Dan had mounted quickly.
“Amanda Silver was waiting at the stairway head. She drew me into her father’s room. I can’t emphasize too much,” said Dan, and frowned again, “how cordial she was in a nervous kind of way. With her first breath she invited me to drop in on Thanksgiving afternoon. She asked you, too, Mother—just as though it were an ordinary invitation.”
“The copy books,” said Hermine Ayres in a biting little voice, “apparently are wrong. The leopard does change his spots. But why?”
“Exactly,” said Dan. “Tact is not my own long suit. When I could get in a word—it was difficult because Amanda Silver kept walking up and down, chattering incessantly all the while—I reminded her that we hadn’t always been the best of friends.”
Dan hesitated. In his mind’s eye I had no doubt of what he saw. I myself could envision a tall, slim woman clad in riding clothes against the backdrop of a vast and gloomy bedroom. A tall, slim woman who strolled restlessly up and down and talked and talked, and finally was interrupted.
“She turned around,” said Dan, “and spoke. This was her phrase exactly: ‘Life isn’t static—nor is the past itself. I mean to amend the past today, and make the present bearable.’ And then from the pocket of her riding habit she produced that bag of gold.”
Dan didn’t describe his own sensations, but mirrored on his face were some of the emotions he had felt. “She tossed the gold to me,” he said, “and asked that I reopen her account at the Mount Hope Bank in that amount—precisely as though she were handing me an ordinary check. When I saw the date—1913—on the coins . . .”
“You noticed the date!”
“Of course I noticed. The instant I sat down to make the necessary count I noticed.”
Dan had known then, of course—known that in the small cloth bag, still stamped with the faded numerals, was a part of my great-grandfather’s vanished fortune. Amanda Silver had read the knowledge in his eyes, and had remained calm and unperturbed. She had ceased her restless pacing of the room, and had stopped directly beneath the heroic portrait of John S. Hieronomo.
“Sometimes,” she had said to Dan, “the truth is long in coming, but always it must come. I am asking you to wait until tomorrow—until Thanksgiving Day—to hear what it has taken me more than twenty years to learn. Believe me, I am acting only to right a dreadful wrong—a wrong that has affected many lives besides your own. Surely you can wait until tomorrow for the answer to your questions.”
“My choice was small,” said Dan. “It was obvious she had some plan, and I was only one small part of it. I fitted somehow into that scheme of hers to amend the past. She intended from the first that I recognize the significance of the gold, realize its origin . . .”
“But, Dan!”
“She did indeed!” said he. “Else she wouldn’t have handed over that particular bag of coins to reopen her account, nor would she have been so urgent and determined. The gold stood in her mind as a kind of symbol. I pointed out that I couldn’t make a deposit at the bank until Friday morning—Thursday was a holiday. But she insisted that I take charge of the gold in the meantime, and I agreed. Long before I could reach the bank, Amanda Silver was—was dead. I did the best thing I could think of—I put the gold where Sheriff Glick was bound to find it.”
He hesitated. “I suppose it was stupid of me ever to accept the gold when I had to delay depositing it. I didn’t think so at the time. My own past dealings with Amanda Silver made me more than anxious to receive any concrete token of good faith. If it turned out to be necessary, I could use the gold as a kind of lever. If Amanda Silver changed her mind about giving me an explanation, I still had physical evidence that my Dad . . .”
His voice broke a little. Hermine Ayres spoke, and she spoke through tears.
“What Amanda Silver was telling you,” said she, “was that your father never touched her father’s money. That Stanley was not responsible for whatever happened to it.”
So much was clear. When Aunt Amanda entrusted Dan with the small cloth bag, she had indicated that not only was she finished with the feud but that she and the elder Hieronomos had been grievously mistaken. I myself had never believed Dan’s father to be implicated in the loss of the family fortune. Other questions c
lamored in my mind. What had happened to my greatgrandfather’s money? Was it missing, or wasn’t it? I had no chance to ask.
Hermine Ayres rose from the table.
“I think, son,” said she, “that you should go to the Sheriff with your story. Now. At once.”
Dan didn’t move.
“You haven’t heard me through,” he said. “I’ve left the worst until last.”
Her hand was lifted in the air. It hovered, dropped. I felt my heart drop, like the little fluttering hand.
“The gun,” Dan said. “The damn silver-handled gun that killed Amanda Silver was in the bedroom.”
“You saw the gun!”
“Saw it! I wish I had only seen the thing. I showed Amanda Silver how to load the gun that was used to murder her.”
“You what!”
“I showed her how to load the gun,” Dan repeated dully. “No sheriff who walks the earth would believe that a man could be so used to firearms that a woman’s request for help in loading a weapon would not surprise him. I had the build-up—Amanda’s strangeness and all the rest of it—but still I didn’t think of violent death, of—of murder. One doesn’t think of murder ever, I suppose—until it occurs.”
"What happened exactly, Dan?”
“Something that takes much longer to tell than it did to happen. This blunderbuss, this anachronism, was lying on the bureau when I first went into the bedroom. As I was leaving, Amanda asked very casually if I’d show her how to load it—said Amos had been complaining of the crows.”
“You believed her?”
“Certainly not,” said Dan. “She’d just given into my keeping more than a thousand dollars in gold. My impression was that she had more gold in the house, and was concerned on that account. I didn’t think that gun would offer much protection. The thing was so old-fashioned it hardly struck me as a dangerous weapon, but that was her affair.”
“Then,” I said, “you handled the gun.”
“Naturally, I handled it. The thing was quite a trick to load—it badly needed cleaning—the chambers had filled up with lint and dust. I cleaned it as best I could, and managed to insert the bullets. I remember telling Amanda Silver she’d better get it oiled . . .”
The Balcony Page 18
