Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  He moved suddenly as if he’d made up his mind, and came to Sue; he dragged up a footstool and sat down beside her. “Nobody’s going to accuse you. Look at me, Sue. Why, darling, I won’t let them accuse you. Fitz has thought this up himself. He’s trying to frighten you! Why in the hell are you taking that line, Fitz? I don’t like it, I’ll tell you that.”

  Fitz said to Mamie, who had appeared in the doorway, “More tea please, Mamie.”

  Camilla, who had started to speak to the maid, closed her lips, hesitated and then moved back to the tea table.

  Jed said, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Sue. I looked for you when they announced the verdict; I thought you’d be there. I thought you’d want to be there.”

  “I took her away,” Fitz said dryly, standing before the fire again.

  Jed’s shining, sleek, black head jerked around; he stared up at Fitz. “What did you do that for?”

  “I thought she’d had enough.”

  “Enough—what?”

  Pillory, shot through Fitz’s mind. He bit back the word. “I thought she’d had enough of everything,” he said easily. “I knew there’d be all sorts of excitement whatever the verdict.”

  Camilla touched the high coronet her braided hair made; it struck Sue suddenly, and in a tangential, unimportant filament of thought, that Camilla had started to wear her hair like that only since Ernestine’s death; it had been Ernestine’s own, unique hair-dress, it had been on Ernestine like a crown. It was so, now, on Camilla; she touched it, withdrew a gold pin and replaced it again.

  “Oh, there was excitement! You never saw such a hubbub. Everybody crowding around, shaking Jed’s hand, hugging him, patting his back. Kissing him. Everybody in the county was there, I think. And pictures. I thought they’d never stop the flash bulbs. Asking him to pose this way, that way, with me …” She shook her head and smiled. Her voice was high and rather thin and although its lazy, elliptical accent was perfectly natural, it seemed then to Sue, whose ears after those years in New York had grown accustomed to northern tongues, exaggeratedly and almost affectedly southern.

  Camilla added rather regretfully: “Of course, I couldn’t, being Ernestine’s sister.”

  For a moment or two, the familiarity of Camilla’s voice, the way the scene had, with a click, dropped back to a natural and accustomed one, people she knew around her, firelight and dogs and tea tray, pushed back the black and confusing waters. How could anybody accuse her of murdering Ernestine!

  But they had so accused Jed.

  She glanced at Fitz, unconsciously seeking reassurance, but he was watching Camilla, his face without expression. Jed leaned toward her: “Sue, you haven’t said you’re glad! Everybody else has said so. And I looked first for you! It was you I wanted to be there.”

  Fitz said, “Here’s the tea.”

  “Oh, I expect Jed’ll want a highball,” Camilla said, all charm and grace. “Poor boy hasn’t had a drink since …” She caught herself and said smoothly, “Mamie, Mr. Jed would like a highball.”

  Mamie’s soft, intelligent eyes went to Fitz; she’d take orders from her employer, that glance said. Fitz nodded and she put down the fresh tea and went away. Camilla began to pour. “Have you had tea, Fitz? Oh, I see you have. Where were you when I phoned? We thought we’d stop and get you, Jed and I; the rest of them went on to the club. Of course, I do suppose it doesn’t sound quite right to celebrate like that, but it won’t be a real celebration, I mean not really gay, you know; just very quiet and among ourselves. Poor Jed! It’s as I’ve said all along, two wrongs don’t make a right. We can’t bring Ernestine back; and she wouldn’t want Jed to suffer for something so dreadful and terrible that he didn’t do.”

  The obvious fact that that was apparently exactly what Ernestine had wanted seemed to strike her; she stopped abruptly, but the impact was a slight one; it glanced off; she went on with scarcely more than a breath: “Poor dear Ernestine—but I always say what’s done is done. We have our lives to live; Jed, here is your highball.”

  Mamie came in with another glittering, tinkling tray and put it down on a table beside Fitz; he poured Jed a generous drink and one for himself. Jed took the glass, swirled it, and smiled and lifted his triumphant glance to Sue. “Here’s to my brave darling!”

  Fitz put his glass down with a click as unexpected and sharp as the click of a revolver. “Jed, stop thinking of yourself, think about Sue for a change.”

  Camilla’s blonde head went back in a startled way. Jed’s face darkened: “What’s the matter with you, Fitz? What are you trying to do! Spoil everything? I’ve been in prison for months; I’ve just been freed. I’m acquitted.… I—want to talk to Sue. I want to talk to her alone. I haven’t had a chance for a word alone with her for months. Not since the—for months! Come on home, Sue. I don’t want Fitz’s liquor and I don’t want any more of his company.…”

  “You are in my house, you know,” interposed Fitz suddenly with a half-amused, yet dry note. Jed paid no attention to it or the words. He didn’t get up; he took a hasty but hearty drink and said, “And I’ve got a right to be with Sue and I’m going to take her home so we can be alone.”

  “Exactly what right?” Fitz said.

  “Right!” Jed stared at him. “If you think that after all this publicity about her I’m not going to marry Sue, then you don’t know the rules of a gentleman.…”

  “Fitz, don’t!” cried Sue. The dogs scrambled up with interest. Camilla gave a faint scream. Fitz looked at Sue and suddenly, and with genuine although rather wry amusement, smiled. He lowered his arm. Jed looked astonished. “Why, Fitz, you were going to hit me!”

  “M’hm,” Fitz said. “I may yet.”

  “But Sue—what did I say you didn’t like? All I said was I’m going to marry Sue—right away if she wants to …”

  Fitz interrupted crisply. “You’ve overlooked something rather important. In fact two things. First, Sue may not want to marry you …”

  Camilla and Jed spoke at once.

  Camilla cried, “My goodness’ sake, Sue Poore, you better be glad he wants to marry you!”

  Jed said easily: “Oh, but she’ll almost have to. And you do want to, don’t you, Sue? You wouldn’t have done all that for me and besides …”

  “And second, you’ve got her into this terrible thing, Jed, and you’ve got to help get her out. The police mean business.”

  “Oh, now, Fitz, you’re exaggerating,” Camilla glanced at Sue. Her pale but extremely pretty blue eyes showed no alarm. “Tell him, so, Sue, or we won’t have any peace. Nobody’s going to bother you. It can’t bring Ernestine back. Investigation, pooh! You mark my words, they’ll drop the whole thing right off. Now you two men stop your quarrelling. Goodness me, we ought to be so thankful and …”

  Jed got up and came to Sue. “You’re not scared, are you, honey? Don’t let Fitz scare you. I’ll not let him.”

  “Who do you think killed your wife?” Fitz asked.

  His voice was extremely quiet; it was remarkable how it seemed to whip across the room. Jed’s dark eyebrows drew down angrily. Camilla gave a kind of smothered cry and broke off some more cinnamon toast.

  And another thing happened that was remarkable, at least to Sue, for Fitz’s question evoked a sudden presence of Ernestine, her blonde braid brighter than Camilla’s, her eyes lovelier and deeper, her lips redder—her will more decisive and sure. Then the image vanished; Camilla was there instead. Jed said with a heavy, thick voice of anger, “Ernestine killed herself. I’ve always said so. Nothing else could have happened.”

  There were cogent arguments against that; Sue, wearily and well, knew every one of them. Fitz appeared to consider and reject the litany of their enumeration and arrived at the most potent of all. “The police say it’s murder.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Fitz, do you have to keep talking like this? I’ve had a hellish winter, today’s the first release, the first …”

  “It hasn’t been an easy winter fo
r any of us.”

  “If you mean Sue—but I tell you I love her. She—I’ll make it up to her. I’ll marry her and …”

  Jason stopped in the doorway; he was an old, kind, black-faced, white-haired butler; he wore a raincoat and carried his hat. At one time, long ago, when Sue and Woody’s father had been alive and sent a regular apportionment of his Navy pay to Caroline for the care of his children, Jason had worked for the Poores; lately Caroline could not afford a butler, but he still regarded Sue and Caroline and Woody with a proprietory affection. He said now as Fitz’s look questioned him: “Miss Ca’line she want Miss Sue to come home. I brought the cyar.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Jed took Sue’s arm and started for the door.

  Camilla half rose, dismay in her face. “But, Jed, those people. They’re waiting at the club.”

  Jed’s handsomely curved lips set themselves stubbornly. “I want to go with Sue. We’ve not had one minute alone. Let ’em wait.”

  Fitz, Sue knew, was watching the little scene. The Kerry Blue got up courteously, although with roving black eyes toward the cake. But the door of escape had opened; Sue flung it wide. “No, no, Jed. They’re waiting for you and I—honestly, Jed, I want to be alone.”

  He looked hurt and surprised. “Don’t you want me to go with you?”

  Jason, however, fumbling with his hat, his old eyes troubled, ended it. “They two men there, Miss Sue. They want to see you. Miss Ca’line, she’s upset.”

  A spell of arrested motion laid itself abruptly upon the room; even the dogs stopped, struck by something paralyzing in the air. Fitz said then: “Two men?”

  And Jason, troubled, twisting his hat, replied: “Yes, Mr. Fitz. Police.”

  Camilla rose, dropping a spoon with a clatter. Fitz picked up Sue’s hat and put his hand under her elbow. Jed said: “But see here—I’m going with her—see here …” He took another hasty but generous drink and Fitz, already with Sue at the door, said easily, “Not at all, Jed. You must see that. Worst thing in the world both of you could do. I’ll take her—I’ll report later at the club or—Jason, see to Miss Camilla and Mr. Jed. This way, Sue, it’s stopped raining. No need to put your hat on.”

  The dogs galloped after them to the door; Jed followed, his glass in his hand, saying something. Camilla came too; then they were outside and down the steps. She was in Caroline’s car, Fitz was at the wheel. The house seemed to slide behind them; the wet, blue stone driveway glistened; it was not raining, Fitz was right, but a heavy mist lay over everything. He said: “Lean back, Sue,” and chuckled a little. “Jed didn’t quite see my argument but didn’t quite not see it. Don’t worry about him, honey. He’ll be all right. Pull down your window, will you, maybe we can clear off the windshield.”

  “The wiper doesn’t work,” Sue said, and rolled down the window. Later it struck her that Fitz’s swift, yet matter-of-fact action was far more restorative than heroics, drama or spirits of ammonia. “I didn’t think they’d come so soon …”

  “Well, I didn’t either. Old Benny must have got his dander up.”

  Old Benny was Robert Lee Benjamin, the county sheriff; he was a tall, spare man of about sixty, with white hair and faded blue eyes which nevertheless were piercing and honest; Sue liked him and respected him and he had known her since she wore two fat pigtails; she now feared him. He had held office peaceably for many years. He rarely had a murder case, never one such as this; he had called in state police, with all the scientific equipment at their disposal.

  The car was speeding and puffing. No one could take better care of a horse or a dog than Caroline, but she felt strongly that a machine once assembled and in working order should stay that way; by the time Sue had returned and got the laboring little car to the garage, it was too late to do much about it; it wheezed to a crossroad, a dirt road which again was a short cut. The country was interwoven and brought together by many criss-cross, wandering dirt roads, useful for people who spent a large portion of their lives in the saddle and who hated the concrete highways. There Fitz slowed the car. The concrete road went on down into Dobberly. “I’m debating,” he said. “Shall we go direct, or shall I go down into town and phone to Judge Shepson?”

  Judge Shepson was the lawyer who had defended Jed; twenty years ago he had been for a short time in politics; he had been Judge, in fact, of the circuit court. Times had changed and he had resumed private practice, yet he was still and always would be called Judge. Sue thought, “A lawyer—in my defense. My defense!”

  “Is it that bad? Already. Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Certainly not.” Fitz turned into the red dirt road. “You’ve told everything you know, anyway. You can’t add anything to it, so whatever you say can’t be incriminating.”

  She was confused and frightened. She did not see the warning until they had gone another mile or so, and indeed had turned between the gateposts, so heavily overgrown with ivy that their weathered stones were visible only in patches, that led to the winding, gradually ascending and rather badly repaired driveway of the Poore place—once called proudly “The Laurels,” once a plantation, now dwindled to two or three hundred acres of meadow and pine woods and rather sparse orchards. Then she said: “Why, yes, Fitz, yes! I can’t think of anything I haven’t told.”

  “That’s all right then. Just repeat it. In case of any—oh, questions they haven’t thought up till now, think twice. If they take a new tack, a new slant, you’ve got a right to refuse to answer, if you want to.”

  The house came into view as they rounded the great curving hedge of laurels whose trunks had already been matured and thick the year the guns had fired at Fort Sumter, whose blood-red flowers had blossomed long before the retreat and advance and retreat of Bull Run, not many miles away. The laurels were green now, the great red blossoms would come later. The white house was low and. rambling; there were long windows and a wide, covered veranda, shaded with glossy ivy and Virginia creeper and wistaria which was as yet a delicate brown tracery.

  She had been born in that house and, five years later, Woody, Sue’s brother, had been born there, in the same gabled room with the sprigged rose wallpaper and small white mantel and so had Caroline and all the Poores for a long time. Three chimneys, built in the days when chimneys were of practical use, wide and high, stood above the house.

  Behind it were the stables, where now only Caroline’s two hunters dwelt; the paddock fences and stables rather needed a new coat of paint. It was a scene so familiar to Sue that she did not actually see it then, yet its presence and nearness was comforting like the nearness of a person whose tried faithfulness is like a fortress. Two cars stood in the graveled circle before the steps.

  One was a police car; its radio aerial glistened with moisture. The other was easily distinguishable for reasons of its long and shining opulence; it was a foreign car, a Renault, with which Ruby had stunned the countryside. So Ruby and Wat Luddington were there, too.

  Fitz muttered something and brought Caroline’s shabby little car to a halt. Then Sue saw that Ruby and Wat were not in the house; they were sitting in the car in silence, apparently waiting, Wat at the wheel, Ruby huddled in a creamy, long cashmere coat, with a red scarf over her lovely head. Both got out and started toward them.

  Fitz turned off the engine. He said quickly, watching Wat and Ruby’s advance, “Jed and Camilla came before I’d said my say. Nothing has changed you; you are Sue Poore; you are fine and brave and—very dear to me,” Fitz said, “and you are going to be my wife.”

  He opened the car door. Sue could hear the gravel crunch under Ruby’s high-heeled red pumps. She could smell a faint whiff of wood smoke from one of the fireplaces. Wat Luddington was brushing his mustache rather nervously; his thin politician’s face was anxious.

  Fitz’s wife! The other woman? A marked woman in a murder trial, and now questioned as a suspect?

  Wat Luddington said: “We’ve been waiting for you. Pa’s in there, and the police.”

  As she got out
of the car truth unveiled itself; the jury for Jed’s trial had in all but fact judged her guilty. In another trial that judgment would not take the form of a recommendation; it would be a verdict. A strange and terrible thought assailed Sue. Suppose another trial did not end as Jed’s had done; suppose they found her guilty.

  4

  SHE STOOD on the damp gravel, holding her hat with suddenly cold hands, looking up at the house.

  Ruby was talking, Wat was talking. Ruby came up and linked her arm through Sue’s.

  Ruby had slipped off the red scarf; her beauty was as stunning as her newly and rather curiously acquired wealth and almost as surprising. She had been a lumpish, unattractive child, slow and phlegmatic but always in love with Wat, who in those days was more embarrassed than anything by her obstinate devotion. She was now a beauty; she must always have had beauty’s integrants, but Ruby herself, an independent Galatea, had extricated them. Her black hair was brushed and shining, smoothly parted and done in an enormous bun, her brown eyes were like two calm midnight pools, long lashes brushed the soft pink glow in her cheeks. She gave Sue a slow although rather troubled smile and said nothing.

  Wat, behind her, was talking quickly and nervously; Wat’s talent was articulateness. It was one of the reasons, everyone thought, that his ambitions had turned toward politics. That and, of course, his marriage to Ruby, who with her beauty, her county birth and her first husband’s money, was not exactly a handicap to a political career. Certainly he had given up the profession of medicine for which his father, old Dr. Luddington, had destined him; he had come home after his marriage to Ruby, for he had to start his career, naturally, from his native state. He was then trying to get himself elected to Congress.