Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “Yes. But—we—it wasn’t going to happen that way. I’ve told all this …”

  Captain Wilkins glanced curiously at Henley. “How did you extract—I mean—how did you know this, Henley? Did she admit it at once or Baily or …”

  “We had an idea from this and that, a few allusions, that Baily had been paying her attentions. We inquired; Baily had to admit it. When we had Miss Poore on oath and asked why she’d gone to the cabaña with him, she admitted, at least she claimed, that it was because she wanted to tell him they were seeing each other too often, that there was nothing doing and that she was going away; she claimed that she wouldn’t hear to a divorce.”

  Claims is an invidious word. Sue looked up. “That is true. I told Jed that I was going away.”

  Henley said, “The fact is Ernestine—that is, Mrs. Baily, knew that her husband had been attentive to Miss Poore. Her accusation may have been a matter of revenge, but she did know that.”

  “Everybody seems to have known that,” Wilkins said dryly. “Does Baily admit a quarrel with his wife?”

  “No. But he had the advice of counsel. It would have been a dangerous admission. Yet a quarrel with his wife, whether he admitted it or not, wouldn’t prove he shot her. You’d better hear it as it happened. Please go on, Miss Poore.”

  Her cheeks were hot with anger at Wilkins’ tone. There was nothing she could do. She said, “We talked for perhaps twenty minutes. He was going to the club; Camilla—that’s Ernestine’s sister—was going to Fitz Wilson’s for cocktails. Jed was taking his car; he had to go early for a committee meeting, so Fitz and Camilla were going to pick up Ernestine later. Oh, yes, and the servants were out; they’d been given a night out, except the stableman.”

  “So the house was empty except for Ernestine,” Wilkins said, “and you knew it.”

  “Why, I—yes, I suppose I did. I didn’t think of it until I tried to get help and nobody was there and I …”

  Henley interrupted; “Let’s keep to the events as they happened.”

  “Well—well, then, I had said—what I’d planned to say to Jed. I didn’t want to talk any longer. I …”

  “Did he yield to this high-minded entreaty of yours?” Wilkins asked. “Did he agree to let you go?”

  Again her face grew hot with anger and humiliation; she said, “Everything that I can remember of our conversation is on record, Captain Wilkins. You can read it if you like.… He did not agree but there was no point in prolonging our talk. Besides, there was no time. We left the cabaña; he went on to the driveway. I stopped; there’s a little porch, so it was dry, and smoked a cigarette.”

  They had stressed the element of time. She told them now painstakingly, “I stayed there perhaps ten minutes; I’m not sure. I wasn’t thinking of time. Then I put out my cigarette and started for the house. As I walked to the house, I mean as I reached the house and could see the driveway from the front steps, I could see Jed, sitting in his car. He had a cigarette, too.”

  “You said it was very foggy.”

  “Yes, it was, but I could see the whole length of the drive; Jed’s pink coat—”

  “Pink!” said Wilkins. “Oh—I’m from the west myself.” He paused and added thoughtfully: “We’ve got a lot of coyotes but the only kind of foxes we have are the two-legged kind.”

  He looked as if, in his opinion, the west and the east were not so different in that respect and Henley said, “Well, scarlet, really. Easily visible. I may as well tell you, Wilkins, I thought Baily was guilty at first; I thought Miss Poore …” he looked at Sue with a kind of bright objectivity as if she were a specimen to be analyzed. “I thought the young lady here was—mistakenly but from loyalty to Baily—well, frankly, cooking up her story. But I have to say that, during the trial, I became convinced as the jury that we were barking up the wrong tree. In any case we’d have to accept their decision. And their recommendations. Usually …” He stopped, his lips closed tightly. A glint of cynical knowledge flashed from under Wilkins’ bushy eyebrows. Usually, obviously, when the police brought in a suspect whom the jury acquitted, the police were of the same opinion still and the case lapsed; this time it was different.

  Henley resumed: “I know Baily would have been visible from the doorway. I experimented … but—go on, Miss Poore.”

  “I—then I heard the shot.”

  Wilkins sat up. “You heard it!”

  Henley looked faintly smug; he had at last surprised the visiting expert. “Please continue, Miss Poore.”

  These words were, like a well learned lesson, quick and automatic. “It came from inside the house. I was standing at the door, about to ring. Jed was in the car. I could see him. He dropped his cigarette and I could see it. I was looking at him when I heard the shot.”

  Wilkins thought for a moment and said, “It must have been an emotional meeting there in the cabaña … both of you taking time out to smoke. However—so you heard the shot and then what did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything for a minute. I thought—I never thought of anything like …” anything like Ernestine, her hand at her back, anything like Ernestine, her fair head rigid, staring at the red on her withdrawn fingers. Sue’s mouth was dry. “I thought that someone was cleaning or looking at a gun, accidentally shooting it. I—but then I heard a scream and I—I opened the door and ran inside. She was in the garden room at the back of the house and she …”

  Even now, even after so many repetitions, even after the courtroom and the listening silence and the scribbling fingers of the reporters, she had to force out the words. “Ernestine was standing there, with her hands at her back and she pulled one of them away and looked at it and it—I saw then—it was red and she said, ‘I’ve been shot.’ I ran to her.”

  Wilkins was sitting up. The coldness and cynicism about him was gone. He looked still and shocked, touched with murder; it was as if he, too, with Sue, had been transported to that room, that charming room with all the great baskets of hanging ferns and the gay yellow chairs and sofas and the French door open upon the misty, walled garden—and Ernestine, in her yellow dress and the Duval garnets and her hand redder than the garnets, brighter. “I’ve been shot,” she had said in astounded, accusing fury. There was no fear, then, only anger; she did not intend to die; she had not. thought of death.

  “What,” said Wilkins after a moment, “did you do?”

  “I tried to help her; I didn’t know what—I tried to get her to a chair—she wouldn’t lie down or move; she put her hand to her back again and said to get help, to get somebody. I ran to the bell. She said the servants were out; I thought of Jed and ran to call him and the stableman—”

  “Sam Bronson,” interjected Henley.

  “He had heard the shot, too; he was coming to the house but from the stables. I called to him and told him and then Jed had seen me and the stableman. He guessed something was wrong. He was coming, running back along the driveway to the house. I told him and he ran to the garden room. The stableman was already there and Ernestine, of course, and she said to get the doctor.”

  “Dr. Luddington,” interjected Henley again.

  “So I phoned for him. He was at home. He came right away.”

  There was a pause. All of them seemed to see, superimposed upon Caroline’s library, another picture—the garden room and its green ferns; Ernestine in her long, silken dinner dress, her eyes sunken and deep with anger and astonishment—and the blood on her hand.

  Wilkins said suddenly, “The gun.”

  “Oh, yes.” Sue swallowed. Her fingers were working, pleating a fold of her gray tweed skirt. “It was by the door—it was on the floor. I picked it up.”

  “Why?”

  Why? Everybody had asked that; she didn’t know why. The gun was there, glimmering wickedly, on the red tiled floor. She saw it; Jed and the stableman were trying to get Ernestine to lie down and Ernestine was in frozen, stony silence. She would not speak or move her hand. Sue went around to the door and there was the gun. S
he picked it up and put it on the table with its glittering ornaments and the great red mass of carnations. “I don’t know why.”

  Wilkins looked at her and looked at Henley; they exchanged a long glance.

  “Well, look here,” began Wilkins and Henley said, “We asked her that, of course; go on, Miss Poore. Did you recognize the gun?”

  “No. I supposed it belonged in the house; I thought still that it was an accident. At least—I didn’t think, I suppose; Ernestine had said that she was shot but I couldn’t …” She sought for a word and said “… couldn’t comprehend it. It was all very quick and shocking and …”

  “Did you know it was Baily’s gun?”

  “No. I didn’t know anything about it. I don’t know much about guns”

  Wilkins said shortly, “Somebody knew enough.”

  He was, of course, the expert; he had testified about the gun and why Ernestine could not have shot herself. He had also testified as to the fingerprints on the gun. “But you didn’t try to rub out any fingerprints?”

  “No. I didn’t even think of fingerprints.”

  Wilkins sat forward again. “Oh, come now, Miss Poore, you can’t have been as innocent as all that. Any child knows about fingerprints. Any …”

  “It’s a point in her favor,” Henley said as if Sue were not there.

  “Remember she’d have rubbed off other fingerprints at the same time.”

  Henley scratched his nose. “You mean she’d have thought of that?”

  Wilkins said shortly: “Henley, I checked the fingerprints myself. There were Baily’s, Mrs. Baily’s, her sister’s, the Duval woman’s. One or two other smudges which so far you don’t seem able to identify …”

  “We can’t check every fingerprint in the county,” Henley said in a wave of rebellion.

  Wilkins shrugged, “… and this girl’s. Normally we’d expect to find somebody’s prints—anybody’s who lived in the house. I say that the girl would have thought quickly enough to realize that the presence of fingerprints on that gun would strengthen her story. However—it’s a debatable point both ways, I’ll grant you. Let’s get on with this. I’ve got to make my train.”

  Captain Henley’s thin lips tightened; he said to Sue, “When did the doctor get there?”

  “It was only a few minutes. Jed had got towels and I was getting ice from the pantry when he came. I ran to tell him she was in the garden room. We went in and then—and then …”

  “And then Ernestine said …”

  “She said that—Jed had shot her.”

  “Wait a minute.” Wilkins crossed one hand over the other, regarded it minutely and said, “I take it that no one else was seen in the—what you call the garden room or—you said the French doors were open—on the steps or garden or whatever is immediately outside the room?”

  “There’s a terrace and then two or three steps down to the garden,” offered Henley. “The garden is small with a high stone wall on three sides. Anybody could get over it of course but—there’s a gate from it into a paddock that’s beyond it; the paddock’s got a high fence, too—rails—it runs around two sides of the garden. The house is along the third side and the lawn is beyond the fourth. The only point is that the garden is not easily accessible.”

  “Except from the house or paddocks.”

  Henley nodded. Wilkins said, “Well, then, Miss Poore, was there anything to suggest that anybody else had been there?”

  She knew the only answer. “I didn’t look; Ernestine—I never thought to look. But of course it would have been too late. And then when the doctor had got there and Ernestine was—was saying …” Her voice caught.

  Henley said suddenly, “Would you like some of the—er—port your aunt brought?”

  Uncle Willie’s port in the best decanter was at Henley’s elbow. “No, thank you. She—well, the doctor was dressing the wound, you see; or rather, I realized later, examining it. The bullet he said—but that was afterward, too—was still in the wound. And Ernestine …”

  Wilkins was learning forward. “Was it then that she made her accusation?”

  If it had not been for Ernestine’s accusation, Jed would not have been arrested and charged with murder. She said, “Mrs. Baily said that Jed had shot her. She said they had quarreled about …” She could feel a flush mount like a flame to her face. “… about me.”

  Captain Henley said, turning his foot this way and that, appearing to admire his beautiful boots, “The stableman heard it; Baily and the doctor heard her. The words of their sworn testimony almost exactly coincide. She—the murdered woman said, ‘Oh, Doctor Luddington, he shot me, Jed shot me. He’s in love with Sue—he wants to get rid of me. We quarreled. He shot me …’ That’s almost exactly what she said, isn’t it, Miss Poore?”

  “Yes,” Sue said.

  “Well, well. But you saw him with your own eyes at the time the shot was fired.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he,” said Captain Wilkins in a purring way, “see you?”

  6

  THIS WAS a divergence; this was new and treacherous ground. If they had ever asked that before, Sue did not remember it. Perhaps they had, it was a reasonable and a likely question; but now it was important. She had given Jed a full, complete and certain alibi. But could Jed give her such an alibi? Had he turned in that moment when she entered the house? And even if Jed could give her an alibi, would they now believe it?

  Captain Henley said, “Can you answer that, Miss Poore? Did Baily see you at the same time when you say that you saw him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wilkins said, “There’s another question I’d like to ask. Do you intend to marry Baily now that he is acquitted?”

  Sue knotted her fingers together. “I—no, we have no such plan.”

  “What!” exclaimed Wilkins. “But that was the whole purpose of the famous talk in the cabaña, wasn’t it?”

  “I told you the purpose of that. I explained to him then that I was going to go away …”

  “Ah, yes. You were running away. You didn’t expect him to pursue you, of course. You didn’t expect that he would, under such a threat on your part take some kind of action. You didn’t …”

  Sue got up. “I did not. I have told you the truth only because you are an officer of the law. But it is the truth.” Her hands were shaking—her voice, to her horror, shook, too—her cheeks were flaming and hot. Captain Henley got up, too. “Now, now, Miss Poore. This is our duty—we have to inquire.”

  Wilkins remained seated, not quite smiling. “And you didn’t, since your lover took no action at all, take matters into your own hands? I should say, literally a gun …”

  She turned and started for the door.

  Captain Henley sprang forward, his face red and flustered. “Where are you going? See here …”

  “I am going to telephone to a lawyer.” She was shaking inwardly. She managed to control her voice; anger helped her. Later, of course, cold fear would creep in and nibble at her defenses.

  Captain Henley passed a hand across his balding forehead, took a deep breath and got control of the situation and of himself adroitly; he stood up as if at salute, his rather pigeon-like chest thrust out. “Miss Poore, if you refuse to continue the story I shall be obliged to take you to Bedford and question you further.”

  It was as efficacious a threat as when he first made it; Sue could see Caroline’s face. Her niece, Sue Poore, detained by the police. Besides she thought again, it was, all of it, already a matter of record.

  She said, “There is not much more to tell. They took Ernestine upstairs—Jed and the stableman carried her—Dr. Luddington went with them. I turned down the bed and brought what he wanted, towels, ice, a big bulb for the bed lamp. That was because he—when she was quiet—he said he’d have to probe for the bullet. But then—we waited outside, Jed and the stableman and I. In the hall. Dr. Luddington said one of us would have to help him give her ether, but then she—died. While we waited.”

/>   She remembered the wide hall upstairs, the closed door into Ernestine’s room and the way its ivory painted panels had caught the light. The cigarettes Jed had smoked. The stableman in whipcord breeches and gray, turtle-neck sweater, thin, scraggy, his small dark eyes alert, smoking, too. And then Dr. Luddington came out and closed the door behind him and his face and the way he closed the door told them.

  “Wasn’t there any question of taking her to a hospital?” asked Wilkins suddenly.

  “No. That is, I think Dr. Luddington knew how serious it was. I think he was afraid to move her. The rest of us didn’t know. Ernestine didn’t know. He said so; he said that was why she accused Jed. I mean—she didn’t realize that she was dying; Dr. Luddington didn’t tell her and he hoped to save her.”

  Captain Wilkins began, “But why would she accuse Baily if …”

  “The motive offered was spite. Sheer spite,” Captain Henley looked at his boots.

  “Spite? But then she must have hated him.”

  Captain Henley still examined his handsome boots. “Ernestine was older than her husband; may have been jealous, may have been …” he stopped, brooded, and said, “May have been anything. But that was the doctor’s testimony. He said she didn’t know she was going to die. He said she wasn’t in a condition to speak or think rationally. He said she had a quick temper. Obviously she knew nothing of Baily’s infatuation for Miss Poore. He said it was in his opinion entirely a matter of personal vengeance and spite and an accusation which, if she lived, she’d have retracted.”

  Wilkins said, scornfully again, but after a thoughtful moment, “Opinion! Opinions don’t carry much weight.”

  “Dr. Luddington’s does,” Henley said briefly and conclusively.

  The outcome of the trial had proved that. Wilkins had to accept it; he turned in a disgruntled way to Sue. “Well—what then?”

  “We—Dr. Luddington that is, called the police. Sheriff Benjamin came. Some state troopers got there first.” She remembered all of it, as clearly as if she were seeing it, like a colored scene on a small television screen, played before her eyes. Jed, sunk in a deep chair, staring at the floor; Sam, the stableman, hovering on the outskirts, his small eyes bright; Dr. Luddington looking gray and drawn, going about his duty. Herself—and then the police.