Call After Midnight (7 page)

One thing, however, made itself urgently clear. She could no longer make a doormat of herself, an old shoe to be put on or off as Peter wished. She said, “You can take the milk up to Fiora. I’ll ask Cal to take me back to town now. And Peter—don’t ever phone to me or try to see me again.”

Burning her bridges forever, she thought coldly, casting away her chance to get Peter back if there ever had been such a chance; there was nothing else to do and she should have done it long ago.

“Jenny!” Peter cried. “You can’t mean that—” He stopped, for a woman screamed.

It was a pulsing scream of utter terror. The terror communicated itself, holding Jenny and Peter both in frozen blankness. Then Peter sprang up. “Fiora,” he shouted and ran for the door. Jenny automatically thrust milk off the stove and ran, too.

The dining room seemed dark; there was only the dim light streaking through it from the hall. Jenny bumped into a chair, clutched for her balance, and a gunshot rocked the house. It was unmistakable; it could be nothing but a gunshot. There was at once another one. It was chaos, it was like the end of the world. Jenny had a fleeting but clear picture of Peter plunging for the stairs, turning out of sight.

Cal from above shouted, “Fiora—” There were two loud bangs as if Cal had flung both halves of the double door back against the wall.

When Jenny reached the stairs Peter was already at the top and turned out of sight again, toward Fiora’s room. It was very difficult to climb the stairs; it was like the struggle of a dream which seems to paralyze all movement. She looked up and Blanche stood directly above her, her green silk swirling around her, holding onto the newel post. Fiora screamed again.

Blanche’s green dressing gown seemed to drift downward, until it and she were huddled awkwardly against the newel post. She’s fainted, Jenny thought numbly.

She hadn’t entirely fainted; her eyes were half open, yet her legs were crumpled under her, her head was against the newel post. Jenny forced herself to move; she yanked Blanche down so she was flat on the floor and left her there.

She heard Peter cry, “But she can’t be dead! She can’t be—”

Cal said something, Jenny didn’t hear what. She sat down on the top step to anchor herself amid a kind of dark whirlpool. She put her head down between her knees; that was the thing to do. Don’t faint.

This time Fiora had been killed.

There seemed to be wads of cotton in her ears. Through them Jenny heard Cal. “It’s no use, Peter.”

“She can’t be dead!” Peter cried wildly. “She can’t be! Fiora—”

“Don’t, Peter. Look. One shot, that one hit high, this one must have got her heart. She lived just long enough to scream.”

“Call the doctor!”

“It’s no use, Peter.”

“Hurry—”

Through the wads of cotton Jenny heard Cal’s footsteps, running across, into Peter’s room.

She lifted her head cautiously. She twisted around on the step as Blanche struggled to sit up. Cal’s voice came from Peter’s room. “Operator—operator, this is emergency—”

Blanche dragged herself upright, holding the newel post. She started down the hall toward Fiora’s room. Jenny couldn’t follow her; she couldn’t move, she was weighed down. She put her head sickly against the wall.

She did know that Peter must have followed Cal to the telephone in Peter’s room. She heard Cal’s voice. “No, it’s not suicide. There’s no gun …Somebody was in the house. He can’t have had time to get away. He’s still here somewhere—A gun? Yes, we’ve got a gun.”

Somebody in the house, Jenny thought, somebody in the house.

Blanche’s green silk wavered out of Fiora’s room and into Peter’s room. Jenny followed her without any consciousness of moving. “Don’t go in there!” Blanche said hoarsely. “Don’t look—I shouldn’t have seen, I shouldn’t have gone—” She stumbled to the bed and dropped down into it, her face in the pillows, her hair a black mop against the white.

Cal put down the telephone. “They’ll be here in five minutes.”

Peter looked white and dazed as if he were drunk. “Cal, he’s in the house! We’ve got to find him!”

“Yes, I’ll get your gun.”

“It’s not loaded.” Peter thudded out the door, after Cal.

Jenny thought distinctly, and with horror, suppose it was Peter’s gun. This time it was murder.

Blanche dug her head into a pillow and gave a retching sob.

But it wasn’t Peter’s gun. The gun was still in the hall table; Peter loaded it and he and Cal began a useless search. There was nobody hidden in Fiora’s room, nobody hidden in the house. They had not really finished the search when the police arrived.

S
IRENS SHRIEKED AGAIN IN
the night but there were several police cars this time. Lights flared all over the house and grounds. There were the local police; there were state police. There were police everywhere and great floodlights upon the shrubbery.

When the technicians began to bring cameras and mysterious cases along the corridor to Fiora’s room Jenny pulled Blanche up. They inched along the wall past policemen who gave them abstracted glances, around the corner and into Jenny’s room.

Footsteps thudded in the attic over their heads. Somebody shouted, outside, down by the sea wall.

“I expect we’d better dress,” Jenny said after a while.

“Yes,” Blanche said.

Neither of them made a move.

Sometime or other, though, Jenny went to the window. A pallid light was streaking over the lawn and sea wall and the gray Sound.

Blanche sat and stared at nothing with eyes from which all the color seemed to have faded. At last a knock on the door brought Jenny’s pulses leaping in her ears. She said, “Come in.”

A young policeman entered, cleared his throat and said that the Captain would want to see them soon. He then stood in a soldierly posture in front of the door until Jenny told him, absently, to sit down. He hesitated and sat down. He looked wistfully at a package of cigarettes on the table. “Cigarette?” Jenny said.

But he was staunch. “No, thank you, miss.”

After another age someone knocked again; the young policeman sprang to the door, there was a murmured word or two, then he turned back, “Miss Fair, first, please.”

Blanche pulled herself up like an old woman and went out. The young policeman closed the door after her and with a polite murmur sat down again. It was like waiting in a dentist’s reception room, only worse. It was so much worse that Jenny didn’t think she could bear it and had to.

It wasn’t so bad when it actually happened, at least not at first. The pallid light was filling the room, dulling a lamp which Jenny had no recollection of having turned on, when a knock came at the door again. This time a man came in. He was swarthy, short and authoritative, with black eyebrows and heavy eyelids. He gave the young policeman some kind of signal, for the young policeman whipped out a notebook and pencil. “For the record,” said the swarthy policeman. “If you don’t mind.” He introduced himself. “I’m Captain Parenti. Now don’t be upset. Just take your time.” But he glanced at the watch on his thick brown wrist.

“The—she—” Jenny moistened her dry lips. “Where shall I begin?”

“At the beginning. When your former husband phoned to you and asked you to come here.”

That was the part of it which was not so bad. It was merely a recital of facts. When she reached the point where there had been some discussion over calling a doctor she paused and Captain Parenti said, “Go on,” and moved to a more comfortable position in one of the deep, velvet-covered chairs.

She went on, but carefully now, making it very clear that Fiora had not been seriously hurt that first time.

Captain Parenti said shortly, “So nobody called a doctor until after you and Calendar arrived. I know that. It was then reported to the police. A little late. Go on.”

Yes, they had reported it and the police came. Then Fiora had asked her to sit with her that night.

“Why?”

“Because—” It began to grow more and more difficult. The fact was that Fiora was not entirely sure in her mind that Peter hadn’t shot at her. Jenny had a notion that Captain Parenti noted her hesitation. “Because she wanted me,” she said, “so I did.”

She went on and now she was choosing her words with great caution. When it came to Peter entering the kitchen, telling her he had needed her and then abruptly taking her in his arms, it was as if a red light, far away but warning of danger, flashed. There must not be anything to suggest a quarrel between Fiora and Peter. Peter was safe; he could not have shot Fiora. Yet when a woman was murdered didn’t the police automatically suspect the husband? She skipped that part of it entirely. “Peter came in while I was heating the milk. Then Cal and Blanche, I mean—”

“Miss Fair, yes.”

“They came in, Blanche thought she’d, heard someone. Then they went back upstairs and Peter—”

“Picked up a stocking.” He had of course questioned Peter minutely. He had questioned Blanche and Cal. She was instinctively thankful that Peter had had the wisdom, and Cal and Blanche the friendliness, to omit describing the incident in the kitchen, of Jenny and Peter in each other’s arms.

She said, “Yes. Then we talked a moment and heard Fiora scream. We ran and there were two shots—”

“Where were you then?”

“In the dining room. Peter ran out into the hall, I could see him, the hall light was on—”

“After the shots?”

“Yes. I ran out, too. Cal must have reached Fiora’s room first. Peter ran down the hall and Blanche fainted, that is she sort of collapsed, and—I sat down on the stairs. Then Cal phoned—”

“Yes. Let’s go over it again, please. The whole thing. Try to remember every detail you can.”

This took longer. Again she skipped the moment in Peter’s arms. But this time she remembered the fact that she had found the back door with the bolt off and had put it on.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

He glanced at his watch. “Let’s go over it all again.”

I can’t, Jenny thought, but she did, carefully.

Her voice died away at last; Captain Parenti looked at his watch, rose and said in an offhand way, “You’ll be willing to swear to being with your former husband, in the dining room, when the shots were fired.”

Jenny instantly saw the purport of his statement; the red light of danger flashed near. “Yes! It’s the truth.”

“Thank you,” he said, gave another imperceptible signal to the young policeman and both of them walked out of the room.

It was then broad daylight, a chilly gray day. Jenny felt as if she had run a long and exhausting race. She went to the window and saw two policemen walking slowly, scrutinizing the lawn, the rocks beyond the sea wall, everything. Clearly they were looking for a gun or for any evidence of a murderer’s escape.

She went back and sat down on the bed; there was a great deal to think about. But the next thing she was really conscious of was that someone was leaning over her, very gently pulling a blanket over her. She half opened her eyes and saw Cal walking softly out and shutting the door.

She couldn’t shake off the paralyzing hold of sleep. But she knew vaguely that hours had passed when she awoke because someone was knocking at the door. She said, “Come in.”

It was a young woman, a girl really, with curly dark hair and dark eyes; she wore a blue uniform and a black sweater and carried a tray.

“Oh!” Jenny sat up.

“I’m Rosa.”

“Oh,” Jenny said again blankly.

“We work for Mr. Vleedam. Victor and me. He gave us the gardener’s cottage to live in.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. What’s happened? Have the police found the—the murderer?”

Rosa shook her head. “They’re still questioning everybody. They questioned me and they questioned Victor. We didn’t know a thing about it till all the police cars got here. It’s dreadful. Poor Mrs. Vleedam! Oh, Mr. Vleedam said to wake you. Captain Parenti wants to talk to you again.”

Sleep was only a temporary escape. “What time is it?”

“After two. Is there anything else, Miss—Mrs. Vleedam?”

“No, thank you.” The hot coffee smelled delicious.

Rosa pushed back a thick curl, waited a moment and then went away.

By two-thirty Jenny had eaten, dressed and felt better for her heavy sleep. But she went down the stairs very soberly. Art Furby sat in the hall, staring thoughtfully at the floor.

Art Furby was almost as truly an inheritance of Peter’s as the railroad or his house. Not only had his father been Peter’s father’s closest friend but there had been a time, when exactly Jenny didn’t know, during which the railroad had been in a state bordering upon bankruptcy. At that time Art’s father had stepped in, put every cent of money he could rake and scrape into the road and, Peter always said, had saved it. The money had never quite been paid back as money, but Art Furby still held a sizeable block of stock. He also held, and probably always would hold, a vice-presidency in the Sheraton Valley Railroad; he was head of the legal department, general counsel for the road. He would indeed, Jenny thought briefly, have had hurt feelings when Cal was moved up ahead of him to the presidency.

He was older than Peter but not much, in his middle forties. He said little and what he said was conventional and predictable. He wasn’t brilliant but he had to know his job and it seemed to Jenny that as some of the hardness and responsibility of railroad management had rubbed off on Peter, so had the requirements of Art’s profession rubbed off on him. Even his gray tweed jacket and gray slacks and sleek graying hair looked discreet and composed.

If he felt that he had never quite been granted the honor and authority which he deserved, he never showed it. If there were ever something slightly grudging, slightly critical in Art’s relation to Peter, it was so slight that Jenny was never sure it actually existed.

He was always correct; he had no need to explain his presence to Jenny but of course he did. He rose and put out his hand. “I came as soon as I heard. How do you do, Jenny?”

She took his hand.

“I’m glad to see you again,” he said politely. “Not of course in these circumstances.”