Hunt with the Hounds

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “A rendezvous,” she thought. Ernestine had met Woody here. Fitz saw the look in her face; he said gently, “It wasn’t Woody Ernestine came here to meet. At least—not more than once. Come on, Sue.”

  A boy ran out to take their horses; clearly the Hunting Horn catered to just such chance visitors. They went through a low door into a taproom, mellow, low-ceilinged, paneled in wood, with hunting prints on the walls, low tables and chairs and a well polished bar behind which a barmaid stood and smiled. “Why, good morning, Mr. Wilson. I didn’t expect you so soon.” She smiled at Sue. “What will you have?”

  “We’ll have lunch in a minute, but just now …” Fitz pulled a newspaper—a Bedford newspaper, Sue saw the familiar masthead—from a pocket. He unfolded it; he handed it to the barmaid and the barmaid stopped smiling.

  “Is that the man?” Fitz asked.

  She said slowly, all the beaming smile gone from her round face. “That’s the man—I suppose I’ll have to swear to it. It does seem terrible. But that’s the man.”

  Sue craned her neck; there was a photograph, upside down. Fitz said, “It’s Wat. He and Ernestine used to meet here.”

  “I—can’t …” Sue took a breath. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You will, when you hear what she’s got to tell.”

  Two hours later when they rode slowly away she did believe it. No one else had drifted in to lunch; they had the small room entirely to themselves. The barmaid’s story was lengthy, prolonged by exclamations, regrets and inquiries of Fitz as to whether or not the police were going to be unpleasant because she hadn’t told it sooner. “Why didn’t you tell them, when you told about Woody—that is, the young man she met here the afternoon before she was killed?” Sue asked curiously.

  The girl flushed and her eyes sparkled defiantly. “Because I didn’t like that man.”

  “What man …”

  “Henley,” supplied Fitz with a twinkle.

  “He wasn’t nice to me,” the girl said indignantly. “He acted as if I wasn’t telling the truth. I’d read about the murder but I was in California; I was working in a store in a little town there and the papers I saw didn’t have any photograph and I didn’t know her name, that is, Mrs. Baily’s. I was interested but that’s all. But then I got homesick and came back here and the very day I got here Mr. Baily was acquitted and then right away the newspapers had all those stories and pictures and I saw that it was Mrs. Baily, I mean she’d come here often. And then I recognized the young man—Woody?—his picture was there, too, and I knew that I ought to tell the police that they were here that very afternoon. But that was the only time I remember that she’d met him here. All the other times it was”—she motioned to the newspaper Fitz had brought and said—“him. I was going to tell the police about him, but I started with the afternoon before she was murdered, because I thought that was most important and then …” her eyes snapped angrily, “he made me so mad, that police captain, that I wouldn’t say another word. But it was sort of on my conscience, too. I was glad when Mr. Wilson came yesterday and asked me if Mrs. Baily had been here other times and with anybody else besides the young man. And …” she finished with an air of triumph, “I just hope it shows that Henley.”

  Without its voluble trimmings the story was short and simple. Ernestine and Wat Luddington had been meeting at the Hunting Horn for some time—not often but often enough; they had come sometimes together, as a rule separately. “And,” said the girl, “she was after him. I could tell; it’s the way they looked and sometimes I’d hear something.”

  The only thing, however, that she’d heard that was of real significance had been said by Ernestine, two or three days before her murder. The barmaid, bringing them a second drink, had heard it clearly and remembered it so perfectly that there was not much doubt as to its accuracy. Ernestine had said ‘… and when we get to Washington, the world will be ours. Nothing can stop you. With me to help you.’

  “She was leaning over the table; she didn’t see me coming. She was sort of—I don’t know—anyway I knew that she was the one that wanted whatever it was she was talking about. Except I think she was beginning to make him think he wanted it too.”

  What a chance listener thinks of what he hears is, of course, not evidence. To Sue and Fitz it was utterly convincing.

  “Wat!” cried Sue.

  Fitz nodded. “And a glittering career.”

  The girl looked at them inquiringly. Sue said, “But money …”

  “Ruby had money. Tons of it.”

  “She wouldn’t give it to Wat so he could divorce her and marry Ernestine and get into politics and go from triumph to triumph as Ernestine probably was determined he should—her will power and Ruby’s money …”

  “I don’t know,” Fitz said. “I don’t know …”

  It was past the middle of the afternoon when they went away, Fitz promising to do what he could to intercede with Henley. “Not that I really care,” the girl said. “It serves him right!”

  Again though, as they hacked homeward, Fitz said very little and when Sue asked him what he was going to do he said that he didn’t know.

  “But if Ruby was at home with a headache …” began Sue, after a long silence broken only by the jogging of the horses and the creak of the saddles, “even if she’d found out about Ernestine somehow and …”

  “Ernestine was expecting somebody and somebody she expected a bitter quarrel with. Although honestly I think she meant the gun for some kind of bluff.”

  He took her home across the Luddington pastures and then by way of the dirt lane. Woody and Caroline had not come home yet. Chrisy welcomed them with sputtering anger. “Them policemen have been here again! All afternoon they’ve been here. All over the place, house, barn, tack room, everywhere. And I couldn’t do a thing about it. It was that Captain Henley and the other one. With the mean face—the one that was here before and went away.”

  Sue’s heart sank. Fitz gave her a quick look and said to Chrisy, “Captain Wilkins?”

  It was Captain Wilkins; Chrisy nodded angrily.

  22

  THERE WAS nothing they could do. As far as Chrisy knew the police had found nothing; she did not even know why they had been searching.

  Fitz at last went away. “Go to the hunt ball as if nothing had happened. If you have a chance, you might try to muzzle Camilla. I don’t want her coming out with all that just now.” He turned to Chrisy, “I don’t think Miss Caroline needs to know that the police have been here.”

  Chrisy, relieved, agreed. “No sense in worrying her.… Now, Miss Sue, what dress you want to wear tonight?”

  Fitz rode away. Sue got out a dress for Chrisy to press. Fitz would either question Wat himself or tell the police. Somehow she didn’t think that he would approach the police first. But the presence of Captain Wilkins, the evidence of renewed investigation, was ominous.

  Caroline and Woody returned late; they were tired, happy and full of talk. They remained in the stables, seeing to every detail of the scraping of feet, the cooling, the rubdowns, even the feed of their horses before they came happily into the house where, by then, there was barely time for them to change. The house was full of commotion with Woody shouting the story of the hunt from his bathroom, Chrisy forgetting Wilkins for the moment and thundering happily up and downstairs, hurrying Woody, helping Caroline—and at last seeing them all into Caroline’s car. She was beaming by that time and proud. Woody was resplendent in uniform and black tie; Caroline looked like a duchess in black lace and her only jewels, pearls and a brooch set with diamonds, rose cut and small but brilliant, that had belonged to her mother, Sue wore white, a dress she had bought—and saved for—in New York, a soft white with a tight bodice and full billowing skirt; a long red cape that swirled to the floor went with it. Woody whistled when she came down the stairs and gave her and then Caroline his arm with exaggerated courtesy but pride in his eyes just the same; his womenfolk were doing him credit. All the way to the club he and Car
oline talked only of that day’s run, endlessly and happily. They had missed Sue but thought nothing of it; Sue was never an enthusiastic hunter. They had lost the original fox after a stiff run; found again and after various checks and numerous stirrup cups, had at last had a really fine run.

  Sue was listening and not hearing much of it; they reached the club, brilliantly lighted and festive; already an orchestra was playing inside. Dance music floated out to them; as gay as if so dark a thing as murder—and fear of murder—could not exist.

  And, again, inside, it was at once evident that a special kind of gaiety, something warm and friendly, surrounded the hunt ball as it had hovered over the hunt. The pall of the winter was vanquished; friends greeted friends with an extra cordiality and all of them greeted Caroline and Sue and Woody as if they’d been away on a long and dangerous journey. And indeed, in a queer way they had been.

  Usually the Dobberly hunt ball was preceded by a dinner or dinners; this time an elaborate buffet was in the long, low-ceilinged dining room and an elaborate bar was set up at one end. It was not an imposing clubhouse. It was supported mainly by a handful of residents, but its very unpretentiousness was both dignified and endearing. Caroline was whisked away on the arm of the present M.F.H.; Woody, however, remained rather closely at Sue’s side—closely, she suspected, until he made sure that in this, her first party appearance since Ernestine’s murder (since the trial, since she had become in a horrible sense, notorious, the other woman), she would meet with kindliness and a welcome. She was sure of it when Jed came, his head high, handsome and arrogant in his scarlet coat, smiling and triumphant, for Woody would not let her dance with him. “No use reminding everybody.”

  Jed’s eyes flashed. “They’ll think it’s queer if we don’t!”

  “They’ll think it queerer if you do!”

  Jed unexpectedly gave in. “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve not had a chance to talk to you alone, Sue, since they found Bronson. Can’t we get out of this mob?”

  Woody was shaking his head. “Everybody in the place will see.”

  “Just out on the porch.”

  Woody was firm. “Not a step. Besides, I think Camilla wants you.” Jed turned and Sue followed his look. Camilla was crossing the floor toward them, in yellow which had been Ernestine’s favorite color, which she’d worn the night she died; the deep red gleam of the old-fashioned Duval garnets encircled her throat and her wrists.

  ‘Muzzle her,’ Fitz had said. But how?

  Yet hadn’t the announced fact that Sam Bronson was the murderer, that he was consequently a suicide, muzzled Camilla by removing the threat she had been able to wield like a weapon over Sue’s head? In fact it was still valid, but Camilla did not know that.

  There was, however, a deep, cold sparkle in Camilla’s eyes; she said directly to Sue, “Have you seen Fitz?”

  Woody replied, “Yes, he’s come. He came into the hall a minute ago but then somebody called him.”

  “Oh,” said Camilla. “Oh.” And swiftly attacked. “You’ll want to dance with Jed, Sue. I’ll wait for Fitz.”

  Jed said sulkily, “Woody doesn’t want her to dance with me.”

  Someone touched Woody’s shoulder; it was a waiter. “Please, Mr. Woody—Mr. Wilson asked you to bring your sister—I’ll show you. There’s some—some gentlemen with him.”

  There was a short queer stillness in the little group; the orchestra swung softly and gayly into a rumba. Then Jed said, “Gentlemen …” and the waiter, looking troubled, said, “Police …”

  Camilla was marble white; Jed took the waiter roughly by the arm, “What do you mean?”

  “Wait, Jed—if Fitz wants me …” Woody was white, too; he looked at Sue and Sue said—yet somehow could not hear her own voice; she was vaguely surprised when the others apparently did hear it—“We’ll come. Thank you,” and moved to follow the waiter. Camilla said, “I’m coming too,” and Woody said in a savage whisper, “Stay where you are, both of you. Come along later if you want to. People are already looking.”

  Camilla hesitated, bit her lip and turned to Jed; they moved off in a dance step. Woody said in Sue’s ear, “Smile—talk to me …”

  She must have obeyed; someone in the hall stopped her and spoke to her and she replied and did not know how she extricated herself. The waiter led them back along the wide central hall to the steward’s office.

  Fitz was there and was at the door to meet her. He looked very gay and festive in his scarlet coat and white tie; there was strength in his figure and his arm around her, but what could he do? For Captain Henley was there, standing beside Fitz, and Captain Wilkins, lean and saturnine and suspicious, arose reluctantly from a chair. The sheriff was not there. As Fitz said something to her, Woody moved aside and Wat and Ruby came into the room.

  The sound of the rumba was everywhere. Ruby in pale blue and diamonds stood like a beautiful statue done in stone. Fitz reached behind her and closed the door.

  It shut out the sound of the dancers. The music continued to drift in from the long windows across the room that gave upon the encircling veranda. Fitz said, “Sue, these gentlemen came to your place shortly after you’d left; they came on here. Meantime Chrisy telephoned to me here and I met them as they arrived; they do not wish to do whatever they are going to do in a public way. They seem to feel that they have some—new evidence.”

  Henley seemed about to speak; Fitz went on quickly, “I’ve told them, just now, one or two facts that I happened upon and they were kind enough to listen. Now then …”

  Captain Wilkins said: “In my opinion that strap you showed us was like the famous shot. You’d better tell the girl, Henley.”

  Captain Henley cleared his throat and would not look at Sue; he stared at the window, he stared in an embarrassed way at his boots and said, “I have a warrant for your arrest, Miss Poore. I really am sorry that it happened just like this but …”

  “Sorry!” snorted Wilkins. “The girl’s guilty …”

  Fitz said: “That isn’t quite all, Wilkins. I—Ruby …” He took the mirrored little box from a pocket and put it on the table so the light winked upon it. The distant music changed to a faster rhythm. Ruby sat down and began to cry and said, sobbing, vehement, “I told you we ought to tell the truth, Wat! I told you—I told you—and I’m going to tell it now.”

  Wat’s hatchet face was white, too, and shrunken; he went to her after a moment. He put his hand kindly on her lovely bare shoulder. Then he lifted his head. “I’ll tell them Ruby. The fact is …” he cleared his throat huskily. “The fact is, gentlemen, I was a fool. I—let myself—I was a fool. And Ruby discovered it and …”

  Ruby cried, wiping her eyes, “No, no, I’ll tell it. It was all Ernestine’s fault. She wanted him—Wat. She wouldn’t let him alone; she roped him in. She—wanted him; she got him to talk of divorce—a divorce from me!” cried Ruby suddenly wailing again. “And he’s my husband and I love him.”

  Wilkins, looking startled, got up. Henley and Woody and Wat were talking all at once. Fitz said imperatively, “Wait, please—Ruby,” his tone was gentle. “Ruby, you told Ernestine you’d had enough of it, didn’t you? You told her you were coming to see her? You were upset—you said things …”

  “I was wild,” cried Ruby, her great eyes flashing. “I don’t know what I said. I telephoned, I said I was coming straight to Duval Hall. I threatened her, I told her I’d kill her …” she caught her breath and shot a terrified look at the policemen and cried, “But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t kill her. She had the gun.”

  Wat moaned: “Ruby—Ruby …”

  Fitz said, “Of course you didn’t mean it. But you were furious; you were going to stop any plan Ernestine had …”

  “That was another thing.” Ruby was vehement and outraged. “She was going to do everything—go to Washington to live, or all over the world if she wanted to, push Wat along in his career—and she had him half believing she could, too—and she was going to do it with my money. My mone
y!” cried Ruby clutching the table with angry, jeweled hands.

  “How?” asked Fitz softly.

  And when it came it was utterly simple, utterly ruthless and profoundly in character with Ernestine and with Ruby and all that had gone before in their long rivalry. It was also, thought Sue, utterly fiendish. For Ruby looked up, her face streaming with tears, like a child; she cried, “By letting me divorce Wat.”

  Fitz did not understand. Perhaps none of the men understood. Ruby wailed, “Letting me divorce him! And making me pay for it. She knew I’d just die if he divorced me and everybody said she’d taken him away from me.”

  It was the truth. It might not have succeeded; it had not; but it was what Ernestine had offered. Probably no one in the room except Sue quite believed it. Wat came the nearest to comprehension; he said to Ruby, “I wasn’t going to—I wouldn’t have—I never loved her, Ruby, the way Ilove you. I was a fool but I wouldn’t have divorced you—Besides,” he added, suddenly practical, “I couldn’t have. You never gave me any grounds …”

  Ruby’s eyes flashed. “If you’d ever asked me it would have broken my heart. You know that, Wat. And so did Ernestine. And she didn’t care; that’s what she wanted. I’d have been so heartbroken—and so humiliated—yes, I’d have given her anything—if you’d done that to me—just anything she wanted so people wouldn’t know that she’d taken you away from me. And Ernestine knew it.”

  Wilkins, off guard, gave his head a bewildered shake as if he was coming out of water. Henley’s mouth was open. Woody felt sorry for Ruby and said, “Now, Ruby, Wat wouldn’t have left you, he loves you …”

  Ruby flashed around. “Don’t you dare to talk, Woody Poore. She had you in her clutches, too. Ernestine …”

  Fitz said, “You rode over to see Ernestine. You told her you were coming. You told her you’d kill her if she …”

  “I didn’t mean it,” said Ruby and took a breath and added, “except maybe I did, when I said it.”

  “Ruby!” Wat tried to intervene.