Call After Midnight (17 page)

“Cal,” she said suddenly, “how long has Art had that house of his?”

“Why, I don’t know. Three—no, about four years, I should say. He bought it just after his wife had to go to the sanitarium.”

“Then she wasn’t ever there?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Why?”

She thought of all the marks of Cal’s sisters in his own house and felt ashamed again. “I expect he has a sister.”

“No, he hasn’t. What’s got into you, Jenny? Why this interest—Oh.” He gave her an amused look. “What did you see in his house?”

“Nothing. Go ahead, Skipper.”

“Come on, but with it. Who’s the woman?”

“I don’t know. It was—well, a kitchen apron.”

“A
what
?”

“I didn’t really look, the closet door was open—”

“Dear me. Blanche, do you think?”

“No! No, I really don’t.”

“Anything else?” Cal said ruthlessly.

“Well, if you must know, just a—just a pink dressing gown. It’s none of my business or yours either, Cal.”

“Oh don’t be so stuffy. I call it rather interesting. Shows Art’s human anyway. But I wonder—”

“Well, don’t!” Beyond the copper beeches the house loomed ahead of them, long and gray with only a few lights. “I wish we could go back to town tonight,” Jenny said suddenly.

“I do, too. Except I’m sure Parenti wants to keep us here until he proves or disproves that thing happened to you last night. He’s not sure but he’s not going to take any chances.”

Lights sprang up in the dining-room windows. Jenny said in a half-whisper, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of Blanche. I’m not afraid of Peter. I can’t believe—”

“But it happened,” Cal said.

“What can a policeman do? Sit outside my bedroom?”

“Better than nothing,” Cal said. “Come on, old boy.” He took Skipper’s collar in his hand. “We’ve got to shut you up again.”

Skipper went sadly into the pen and looked reproachfully over his shoulder at Jenny.

“This is a nightmare,” Jenny said unevenly. “Nobody could want to hurt me!”

Cal latched the gate and put his arm around her. She leaned her head against him for a moment. Skipper wailed and scrabbled at the gate. The back door of the cottage opened, outlining Victor against light. He had a pan in his hand. “Oh, you’ve brought him back, Mrs. Vleedam,” he said. “Here’s your dinner, Skipper.” He put the pan down.

Skipper hesitated between Jenny and dinner; dinner won. Jenny and Cal strolled slowly along the winding path between the silent shadows of shrubbery. They had almost reached the steps when Cal said, “What made you think I didn’t like you?”

“What—oh, why nothing really. Except you seemed so distant—pleasant and polite but distant. And then you wouldn’t come to the house, after the first few times, I mean after Peter and I were married. He’d invite you and invite you and I began to think that you were making up excuses to refuse. So naturally I thought I was the reason.”

“You were,” Cal said casually.

“But I liked
you
!”

Cal stopped, his hands in his pockets, looking musingly ahead into the dusk. “You wore a white dress, soft and thin with a kind of frill or ruffle or something at the neck. And a violet-colored coat. The first time I met you.”

She stared at him. “I remember that dress! I remember meeting you—”

“You were interested in me solely and entirely because I was Peter’s friend. That was natural. But I took one look and ran for cover.”

“Cal—”

“No sense in sticking my neck out.”

She opened her mouth and shut it again.

Cal laughed. “Nothing to say, is there?”

He turned to her, looked at her, took her suddenly in his arms, kissed her hard and long and released her. “There’s still nothing to say so don’t bother. Let’s go in.”

Jenny stood stock-still but she felt as if an unexpected sea had surged up over her, taking away her breath and her common sense, and she liked it.

“But Cal—but you—but Peter—”

“The funny thing is that I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.” Cal gave a low laugh.

But I liked it, Jenny thought again with dismay; I must be a trollop at heart.

“If you stay here another second I’m going to kiss you again.”

“Oh,” Jenny said in a small voice.

Cal laughed again. “I didn’t pine away and I’m not going to.” She felt him watching her closely. He said, “Peter’s waiting.”

“Oh yes,” Jenny said as they went up the steps and inside the house, and she thought, Cal didn’t mean what he seemed to mean. No, he couldn’t have meant it. Besides, she was Peter’s wife—not in fact but in her heart. When they entered the hall she gave one swift glance at Cal but he looked just the same, cool and unperturbed, although there was a little laughter in his eyes when he caught her glance. “Better fix up your lipstick.”

She said, “Oh,” again, as flustered as a young girl, and ran up the stairs.

Her lipstick was smudged; she repaired it; she brushed and smoothed her hair. Really, she thought. Have some sense. She went downstairs again.

Rosa was setting places in the dining room. Blanche and Peter were in the library. Mrs. Brown was there too, in a printed silk dress with a full skirt which billowed around her; she had a glass in her hand. Peter jumped up. “Where have you been? It’s been bedlam here! Newspapers, telephone calls, telegrams—”

“Never mind, Peter,” Blanche said. “I’ve got the list. I’ll see that everything is answered.”

“We were at Art’s place.” Cal went to the serving table, poured a drink for Jenny and one for himself. “By the way, Peter, do you know that secretary of Art’s?”

“Secretary?” Peter looked blank.

Blanche said, “You must mean Waldo Dodson.”

Cal nodded and settled himself in a chair. “He knew Fiora.”

“Oh,” Peter said, “I remember. Fiora recommended him, didn’t she?”

Blanche nodded. “He seems to be working out all right.”

“Didn’t he ever come to see Fiora?” Cal asked mildly.

Peter’s eyes widened. “Good heavens, no. He’s never been in this house. Why should he have come to see her?”

“Old friends.” Cal swished the ice in his glass.

Blanche sipped delicately at a tall glass which was barely tinged with whiskey. “Fiora wanted to help him.”

Cal said, “But, Blanche, you said you didn’t know any of Fiora’s former friends.”

“I forgot him,” Blanche said coolly. “Besides, I don’t think they were particularly good friends. I think they just happened to meet on the street. Fiora told me that he’d taken secretarial training when he had to give up and admit that he wasn’t going to get anywhere on the stage. He seemed discouraged and unhappy in the position he had then. Fiora liked to help old friends.”

Mrs. Brown unexpectedly uttered a loud and skeptical snort. Peter gave her a harried look. “Can I give you a drink, Mrs. Brown?”

She snorted again. This time, however, it seemed to mean assent. Peter took her glass, refilled it and brought it back to her. Mrs. Brown thanked him with great dignity, spilled some on her bosom, scrubbed it vigorously with a cocktail napkin and said that Fiora hadn’t troubled much to help her only relative.

Peter sighed, tightened his lips and went to stand before the hearth. Rosa wavered timidly in the doorway, looked at Blanche, at Peter, finally at Jenny, moistened her lips and couldn’t say a word. Peter said, “I believe dinner is served.”

It could not have been a pleasant meal and it was not. They served themselves and sat down at the long table and everybody seemed instinctively to avoid the place opposite Peter. Her own place once, Jenny thought, with a vague disbelief.

Mrs. Brown contrived to tuck away two more drinks without visible effect.

Halfway through supper the doorbell rang and Peter went to answer it, letting in a policeman who was heard to say that Captain Parenti had ordered him to stay in the house that night.

Peter didn’t like it. “Acts as if we’re all criminals,” he said coming back to the table.

“Routine,” Cal said and did not look at Jenny.

They lingered over coffee, which they had at the table. They drifted back to the library and Peter poured highballs, too early. Once the telephone rang, Blanche told Peter quickly that she’d answer it and went to the little panel at the end of the room and took the telephone. Mrs. Brown said rather indistinctly, “Well, think of that, a telephone right in the wall” and stared at it.

“It’s for you,” Blanche said to Cal.

Everyone listened as if thankful for something to listen to. Cal’s replies, however, were not very revealing. “Yes—yes—when? Certainly. That was right. Yes—”

He came back, was aware of the listening attention, and said it was his housekeeper in town. “My nephew’s there. Something about his dentist’s appointment.”

Jenny didn’t quite believe it; Cal’s face had its closed-in look, yet was rather satisfied, too. Mrs. Brown offered her only welcome contribution thus far by saying that she was going to bed. “No use sitting around here dumb as oysters. Looks to me as if none of you want to say a word. Yes, thank you, I’ll take a highball upstairs with me.” Suddenly she tittered. “Helps me get my beauty sleep,” she said and marched off.

“Whew,” Peter said. “Cal, what are they going to do at the inquest tomorrow? I mean what are they going to ask us?”

“How should I know! Don’t worry, Peter, just tell the truth.”

“It’ll be horrible,” Peter said and poured another drink.

“A hangover won’t help,” Cal said dryly. “Jenny, take a stroll on the terrace with me. I’ll get you a coat.” He spoke in a perfectly easy and natural way; there was not the slightest shade of difference in his manner. The little scene in the dusk before supper might never have happened. He only wanted to tell Jenny the real facts of the telephone call from Mrs. Cunningham and she knew it. She rose but Peter rose, too.

“I need a little fresh air, too,” Peter said. “Sleep better for it.”

Blanche came with them into the hall. The policeman, young and trim in his uniform, started up from a chair convulsively as if he’d been asleep. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “The Captain said nobody was to leave the house tonight.”

Peter’s chin set itself. Cal said mildly, “That’s all right. We understand. Quite all right.”

There seemed then nothing to do but go to bed. Blanche went to Jenny’s room with her. “I took some of Fiora’s things for our use. Mrs. Brown didn’t want to let me have them so I promised to return them. Rose found some new toothbrushes …I didn’t know that you and Cal were such close friends. How long has this been going on?”

Jenny replied almost too promptly. “Nothing has been going on.”

“Oh,” Blanche said. “Well, I’m very tired. I expect you are, too. I don’t look forward to tomorrow.”

“Neither do I,” Jenny said truthfully.

The room was like a remembered horror. There Peter had put her bag on the luggage rack. There she had sat and brushed her hair and admired herself. She shut the door firmly. She had lost her faith in keys and in any event there was no key for the door.

She looked at the frilly heap of pink chiffon nightgown on her bed and finally took it gingerly up and folded it away in a drawer. Better sleep in her own skin than in Fiora’s nightgown. A pink silk dressing gown laden with lace lay over a chair back.

Pink silk and lace!
Fiora
?

No, Arthur’s presumable lady-love could not have been Fiora. There was nothing identifiable about a choice of pink silk and lace dressing gowns. Thousands of women bought pink silk dressing gowns trimmed with lace.

Besides, Fiora would never have taken such a chance of losing Peter. Art would never have taken such a chance of losing Peter’s friendship. It was a fantastic speculation.

What a low mind I’m getting, Jenny thought crossly. She undressed quickly, opened the window above the terrace and turned off the light. She could hear Cal in the room next door, opening a window too, and the thump of bedsprings; it was comforting to know that someone was so near.

She remembered the dress Cal had remembered; it had been a favorite, white chiffon with a long coat of violet-colored taffeta; there’d been matching taffeta violets on the belt; he hadn’t remembered that. After a long time she decided that she was thinking too much about Cal and what he had said; Cal himself had ended the episode; he had briskly but naturally set the pattern for their continued friendship. It was of course the only pattern; she was in love with Peter, it was silly to indulge herself merely in gratified feminine vanity.

It was also silly—more than silly, downright foolish—to think anything at all about that unexpected moment in Cal’s arms. Cal—and she—would go on exactly along the friendly and natural terms which had established themselves during the past few days. Cal had made that clear and she hoped that she had made it clear, too.

The house was extremely still. Having threatened portentously all day, the rain came at last with merely a gentle murmur against the windowpanes. It was like the whisper of voices talking over things which couldn’t be spoken aloud.

Jenny awoke sharply, after how long a time she didn’t know, but knew only that she’d been asleep and that now the wind had risen and was driving the rain furiously against the windows and drumming down upon the terrace below. She also knew that there was someone in the room.

T
HE RAIN AND WIND
lashed at the windows. Yet she must have been conscious of some other sound, something different and something near which awakened her.

Turn on the light, she told herself. Reach out, find the lamp, turn on the light. She thought also, scream. There was nothing to scream about. No sound, no voice, nothing. Then she heard a little click as if something had been set down on a glass surface. It was followed instantly by a small rolling sound and then nothing. A gust of wind surged briskly through the room.

She waited a few seconds but the explanation was clear. The wind was gusty. Something on the dressing table had blown over and rolled off and that was all there was to it. It was hard though to force her arm to move, to find the lamp, turn on the light.

When she did, the room sprang to life and of course there was nobody there. The curtains were blowing. She got out of bed, partially closed the window, glanced around to discover whatever object it was which had been blown off the dressing table, saw nothing and went back to bed.