Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  An hour later they were still waiting; nothing had happened except the Beaufort hunt, foiled, as Caroline had predicted they would be, of their original fox, had found again and had swept back across the ridge toward Dobberly. The eerie music of the hounds wailed closer; Caroline did not appear to hear it. Drearily it began to rain.

  The heavy sky, the rain, the walls of the house, closed in upon them. Caroline again tried to telephone Fitz and he had not returned. A few minutes later the telephone rang at last, but it was not Fitz. It was not as a matter of fact, Dr. Luddington, but it was a message from him. “It’s a patient,” Caroline said past the telephone to Sue, and listened and presently put it down. “He’s a patient; he says Dr. Luddington asked him to tell you that he was held up by an emergency and that you’re to come to his office right away; he’ll meet you there.” Caroline frowned. “He said you’re to come alone.”

  It was, for an instant, perplexing; Chrisy, who had remained with them in spite of its being Thursday, her day off, suggested an answer. “That man down there in the car, that policeman. Maybe the doctor knows he’s there; maybe he don’t want him to stop you, Miss Sue.”

  Was the waiting policeman, then, empowered to arrest her if she left the place? Caroline said, “I’ll take you in the car. I’ll drive and you can get down in the back seat and hide …”

  Chrisy was shaking her head. “Ain’t no good, Miss Caroline. He’ll see her.”

  It was a queer, small problem; their pent-up anxiety sharpened its urgency. It made imperative the need to obey Dr. Luddington to the letter. Caroline said, “Take old Jeremy! It’s easy; by the lane behind Wat’s place; nobody will even see you and if they do …” she frowned and said: “Of course, get into riding coat and hat; they’ll think you’re part of the hunt. The policeman will never think of stopping you if he sees you at a distance; he’ll never—hurry, Sue.”

  Chrisy was already puffing heavily up the stairs; Caroline went to get Jeremy saddled. It could have been little more than five minutes, ten at the most, before Sue, in coat and hurriedly tied stock, her hair and hat properly netted, ran across the gap in the driveway made in the laurels, to where Lij held Jeremy. She was sure that the policeman had not seen her.

  “Hurry,” said Caroline and thrust a crop into her hands, “You’ll need this for the gates.”

  Sue was in the saddle. The rain was a drizzle, cold on her face. Caroline said, “There’s only one fence, Sue, and two—no, three—gates. Give Jeremy his head at the Luddington lower pasture, it’s swampy. Take it easy.…”

  Jeremy shook his head and Sue gave him a looser rein. He set off contentedly, with long, easy strides, around the stables, out on the dirt lane and then into a zestful gallop. To Caroline, of course, this was the most practical form of transportation, but it added to Sue’s feeling of unreality. Sue Poore, galloping off across meadows she’d known all her life, to try to save herself from being charged with murder. They ought to have waited.

  It was a vague feeling, due probably to her slight sense of the theatrical. Jeremy pricked his ears forward. The Beaufort hunt could not be far away; the shrill music was clear and sounded near. She swerved Jeremy who showed (and had) every intention of joining the hunt, across a small stream which he jumped with pleasure and so eagerly that Sue did not manage quite to avoid the willows; her hat was knocked on one side, her thin but wiry veil torn, her cheek lashed by the sting. She righted her hat and took Jeremy more deliberately across grazing land of the adjoining farm, keeping to the lower ground in case of observation from the now distant main highway; she came out at the bridge over Dobberly Run, took Jeremy onto the country road, up the hill, and, then, beyond the great Wat Luddington place, she could see Dobberly village.

  It was a village of two or three main streets. Dr. Luddington’s red brick house was at its outskirts with perhaps forty acres or so of meadow and woodland behind it, a woodland which merged into the Wat Luddington woods.

  She went slowly along the road. The whole Luddington place was fenced—a post and rail, newly painted a gleaming white, built for a hunting country and easy for a rider as expert as Caroline. Sue never liked to jump. She had to cross the fence however, in order to reach the lane which wandered erratically behind the great show place—which Ruby had bought with her first husband’s money and Wat managed with the lavishness for which the place was well equipped—and on, following the lower ground, into the Luddington woods. At length she turned Jeremy, who was a born jumper, took one pleased look at the fence, gave himself a run, and sailed over it; Sue’s knees relaxed and her heart settled back down; for her always there was a moment of suspense just before she jumped. She took a long breath and looked around her; the grazing land there was firm but she turned Jeremy toward the lower, swampier meadow where it was slower going but less easily visible from the house and stables.

  They reached higher ground again behind the white stables, a gate which opened and closed readily, a short lane between paddock rails, another gate and at last the long lane which eventually wound through the woods where Dr. Luddington’s place and Wat’s and Ruby’s adjoined—one of the reasons for Ruby’s purchase of the place. Another, of course, was its magnificence. The lane here was not much used; it was wet and choppy, but it was a lane and she made better time. Better, at least, until she entered the woods.

  The drizzle had slackened to a rather bewildering mist. She was not too familiar with the woods; the gray-brown shapes of trees, the masses of laurels and pines were alike confusing. The lane eventually petered out; if she bore to the right she would go at least in the direction of Dr. Luddington’s house. She did so and came to the bank of a tiny stream heavily bordered with willows and green, glossy laurels, the Dobberly Run, which wound leisurely all through the woods. The Beaufort hunt had passed that way and not long before; the marks of horses’ hooves were sharp and deep in the red clay and the sound of the hounds seemed to linger in the air. The stream curved out of sight behind willows and laurels and it, too, had to be jumped.

  Fast at water; slow at woodland. This was not, even for Sue, a difficult jump; it had, however, apparently been difficult for a straggler from the Beaufort hunt, for in the very second that Jeremy jumped the narrow stream she caught a flashing glimpse of the red coat, the black and white staccato notes of collar and stock, of another rider. He was beyond the curve, barely visible through the screen of laurels and willows, getting onto his horse. Obviously he had taken a spill; she did not think he saw her. He disappeared instantly behind the laurels. She turned old Jeremy again and followed the course of the stream.

  She came out quite suddenly in view of the village and in view of the paddocks where Dr. Luddington’s old riding horse grazed peacefully in fair weather. The stables obscured her view of the house; she followed the paddock rail, reached a gate and, this time, dismounted to lead Jeremy through it. She led him the rest of the way; no one was in the stable, but Dr. Luddington’s car, a new and glistening car which Wat had insisted on presenting him, stood in the graveled drive behind the house. There was a light in his consulting room.

  She tied old Jeremy securely as Caroline had taught her to do and walked around the house, following the gravel drive. She came out for an instant on the street. The house was flush with the sidewalk, its brass knocker worn by the pressure through the years of many seeking hands; she rang, but then remembered it was Thursday, no one would answer, it was maid’s day out. Anyway, the door to the office wing of the house was always unlocked. She opened the door and slid quickly inside, feeling hunted as any fox, casting a glance over her shoulder to make sure no stray trooper had seen her. The street was deserted; the sky was heavy and dark. She closed the door.

  She was in a small square hall with an old-fashioned hat rack and below it an umbrella stand made of majolica ware; she knew them both as one knows old and familiar faces. A small waiting room was at the right and she went in quickly. The door across the room, the door which led to his consulting room, was closed.r />
  It meant that he was engaged with a patient. Probably, she thought, the same patient who had telephoned his message.

  That room, too, was familiar; it was extremely ugly, with its dark, mission-oak chairs and settee, its shiny brown linoleum, the great fern in its green pot. She knew every detail of it and loved it. There was no sound of voices from beyond the consulting-room door. She debated knocking, in order to let Dr. Luddington know that she had arrived but he knew that; the bell at the door rang also in the consulting room. He was still occupied with the emergency.

  Had she tied Jeremy securely? She was sure she had. She wondered if anyone had seen her. Suppose they had; it didn’t matter. Again she had a vague feeling that they had been too hurried, she and Caroline and Chrisy, too frightened. Probably she could have simply driven out in the car, straight to Dr. Luddington’s office. There was still no sound from behind the closed door. She walked nervously around the room.

  Magazines all but covered the table (of the mission-oak period, again) magazines which were, in this office, heavily interlarded with hunt and horse magazines; a picture of Ruby, lovely and calm, mounted on the fabulous hunter Rocking Horse which she had bought at a fabulous price, looked out from the front page of one of them.

  She put it down beside a stack of Chronicles with their familiar banner—Breeding, Farming, Hunting: Showing, Chacing, Racing. Dr. Luddington’s first diploma still hung on the wall where he’d placed it—how long ago, now? Near it was a faded picture of his young wife, who had been Sadie Carew, who had died shortly after Wat, their only son, was born. Wat had been destined to follow his father’s footsteps and then—because he met Ruby again (after her unexpected widowhood had lasted a year or so) in New York and married her, had come back to Virginia, to build the career Wat himself had chosen, with the money that actually had come to Ruby through the death of her first husband. Perhaps Ruby had engineered that meeting. Wat had come first with her, since the day when, a remote and orphaned connection of the Duvals, a child who showed little promise of the beauty she was to become, she had been sent to Dobberly and the care of Mrs. Duval (a faded and discontented edition of Ernestine and Camilla, who after Ernestine’s marriage had taken herself, a small annuity, and an obscure but convenient ailment to a sanitarium in Italy from which, comfortably, she refused to emerge).

  Wat, of course, in those days had had eyes for no one but Ernestine—glittering, charming Ernestine, who outshone everybody (especially fat little Ruby with her slow, dull ways) but who frankly intended to make a good match. There was, beside the picture of Wat’s mother, another picture, a snapshot of the four girls.

  It, too, was indescribably familiar to Sue, but she looked at it now with a feeling of poignant strangeness; four laughing, squinting girls with blown hair and tennis rackets, Ruby standing behind Ernestine so her fat little legs would not show. How inextricably their lives had been entangled even then!

  But it was Ruby who, unexpectedly, had made the astounding marriage, Ruby who resolutely had become the beauty, Ruby who had taken her small inheritance and a world cruise and there met Jacob DeJong, the extremely rich Hollander, much older than Ruby, who had fallen in love with her and with her beauty and eighteen months after their marriage had died. It still seemed surprising, too, that it was Ruby who had married twice in that short—yet very long—time, first Jacob DeJong and then Wat Luddington whom Sue—all of them—had known all their lives and whom Ruby had always frankly wanted to marry.

  Ernestine, smiling so complacently in the picture, was dead, and she, Sue Poore, was about to be charged with her murder.

  She moved away from the picture. Suddenly she felt that much time had passed since she entered the waiting room. The patient in the consulting room ought to be bandaged or splinted by now—splinted probably; most of Dr. Luddington’s emergency calls were on hunting days and, while he had brought many babies into the world, he had also set and wired an inordinate number of broken bones.

  She stood for a long time again staring at the door before she went to it and knocked. No one replied.

  He must be there; his car was outside. How long, really, could Sheriff Benjamin hold off her arrest? She knocked again and then suddenly, overcome by something that came out of that silence, flung open the door.

  There was no patient there. Dr. Luddington sat at his desk. He did not look up. There was a dark, wet looking patch on the back of his gray coat.

  The silence was like a cloth laid down upon her, upon the figure at the desk, upon the world. That cloth, however, was suddenly torn by the sound of a horse galloping off somewhere in the dusk outside, galloping wildly in furious haste as if he had a rider. Jeremy?

  She saw, at the same time, the revolver on the desk. It gave her a blinding sense of repetition; she had experienced this before. The only difference was the sound of those wildly galloping hooves which died away as she listened.

  This time she did not touch the revolver.

  10

  THERE WAS actually, however, another very important difference in the circumstances surrounding the murder of Ernestine Baily and the circumstances surrounding the murder of Dr. Thomas Luddington. Ernestine with her fingers pressed to her back, had moved; she had talked before she died.

  Dr. Luddington had died at once, before he could talk or move or summon help. The bullet had gone, this time, straight to the heart.

  Yet he could not be dead. Sue’s instinct was to deny it. A small mirrored surface, a box of some kind, stood on the desk amid shuffled papers; she held it near his lips. There was not the faintest misting on its bright surface.

  She straightened up; the black window panes winked at her, reflecting the bright overhead light, reflecting the doctor’s bowed, slumped-down figure—reflecting a girl in riding habit, dark coat and light breeches, with a stock that was no whiter than her face. And terror emerged from the silence and the dusk.

  She moved back, toward the waiting room, glancing from side to side. No one was there. No patient, no—her eyes glanced over the telephone, returned. Telephone, of course. She reached across his old typewriter; she lifted the telephone.

  Suddenly terror washed over her; she must get out of the house, out into the street, scream, shout for help. Her lips were shaking against the telephone.

  She did not hear the car stop outside the house, but she heard the sound of the front door as it opened and someone came into the waiting room. The footsteps were loud and candid; there was nothing furtive or stealthy about them; a man’s voice said, “Dr. Luddington? I came as soon as I could,” and Jed came to the door, saw her, stopped abruptly and then ran across; the whole room jarred; the instruments on the table tinkled. He bent over Dr. Luddington; he knelt on the floor.

  He had knelt like that beside Ernestine, when she sat on the couch and refused to die and then said that he had shot her.

  The dusky, foggy twilight, the revolver, the wound in the back—Jed and herself. The grim repetition struck her with a savage new terror, inexorable, as if once launched the insistent train of likeness could not be stopped. She cried wildly, “You must go! They’ll arrest you! This time they’ll never let you go. They’ll—Oh, Jed, why did you come like that.…”

  He was getting to his feet; he knocked against a chair that scraped backward with a screech so loud that it covered her words, too loud in that silent house which murder had entered. He caught her shaking hands. “Sue—what were you doing?—What …”

  “I was going to telephone. The operator—she’ll know what to do. The—the police. The police, Jed! You must get away first or they’ll …”

  “What about you?”

  The whirling dark waters had closed over her indeed; she stared at Jed.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “It’s you that—come on, Sue.” He turned with a jerk toward the door. “I’m going to get you out of here. You don’t realize. The whole county’ll be in arms.…”

  The telephone rang. It was sharp and shrill across the sodden figur
e of the man in the chair who would never lean forward to be summoned forth again upon an errand of mercy and of skill.

  Jed dropped her hands and went to pick up the telephone. “Hello.…”

  It was a woman; it was the operator. Jed said, “Why, yes—yes, someone did try to call from here. There’s been a serious accident—No, the doctor is—call the police. We want the police. This is Jed Baily, tell them—listen, don’t call the state troopers. Get Sheriff Benjamin over in Bedford first. It’s important—that’s right.”

  He put down the telephone; Sue moved blindly into the waiting room; she could not stay in the brightly lighted consulting room near that bowed figure, which was now so strangely different. Out of chaos emerged an age-old question—where has he gone? This is the face I knew, the hand I’ve touched, but where is he? She sat down in one of the mission-oak chairs; they must tell Caroline, they must tell Wat. Jed came to the door.

  “Sue, you must get out of here.…”

  “He was like a father to me, Jed. He—always—he was so dear to me.”

  “Yes, Sue, I know, but …”

  “We’ve got to let Wat know.”

  He came across to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you understand, Sue, how necessary …”

  Someone again came quickly into the hall, closing the outer door; there was no time to move or speak; heels tapped across the hall and Ruby Luddington came in, saw them and stopped abruptly. “Why, Sue! Jed—I—didn’t expect—I …” Ruby was never very quick on the uptake, but she caught an uneasy breath; her lovely dark eyes went from Sue to Jed. “Is anything wrong?” She started toward the consulting room as if she guessed; Jed tried to stop her. “No, Ruby, don’t—it’s too late.…”

  “Too late? Too—what’s happened? It’s the doctor—what …”

  Jed took her arm but she brushed past both of them. She was in riding clothes. They saw her stop in the doorway, her shoulders stiffening, her hands clenching at her sides. Then she went into the room, and out of sight. There was not a sound, not a breath of motion; Jed said, “Do you suppose she’s fainted? I’d better go …” he went into the room and said: “Ruby, I tried to tell you.…”