Danger in the Dark (25 page)

There was a moment of rather abruptly arrested activity. Jacob Wait looked at them.

And Gertrude pulled the pink satin jacket modestly about her throat and reached a peak in a long career of inanities.

“Boys,” said Gertrude, “will be boys. Do close the door, Amelia, there’s a draft.”

Amelia glanced at Rowley and said gently, “Hadn’t you better do something about him?”

Wait came into the room and crossed to the chair. He gave Rowley one brief look and said, “He’ll be all right. Anybody got anything to say?”

“What do you mean?” began Gertrude with false indignation. He cut her short.

“Oh, all right,” he said. “I’ll draw my own conclusions. Haviland, you can go downstairs. This young lady, too. You’re both wanted.”

He turned around and walked out of the room.

Amelia said, “See here, Gertrude, why have you called Dr Lonergan? It’s possible you need spiritual admonition, but not at all like you, dear, to realize it.”

“Rowley’s hurt. Why don’t you do something? He may be dying—he—”

Dennis said to Daphne, “I suppose we’d better go down. What were they doing to you?”

They left Amelia very scornfully bathing Rowley’s face with cold water, and Gertrude scrambling out of bed to see to him herself.

Daphne told him briefly.

“Gertrude,” said Dennis, “has the mind of a two-year-old. If you can call it mind.” He frowned, though, and added, “Next time I’ll kill Rowley. Well, come on, my sweet, and face the music. I think the band approaches.”

“But all the same,” said Daphne, “they can do just what they said they’d do. Gertrude and Rowley, I mean. Perhaps—”

He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders so hard it hurt and turned her around to face him. “Don’t say it. Listen: granted Gertrude is screwy. At the same time it would have worked; I mean it really would have been a legal marriage. Well, we can’t have that, my lamb. And what I say is, Rowley can go to hell. And I think he will,” he concluded cheerfully. “Come along to the slaughter.” He pulled her arm through his and stopped to salute the newel post. “We who are about to die—” he said flippantly.

“Dennis, don’t—”

“Now, look here, Daph, you’ll have to pull yourself together. Do you think I want to take a wife out into the wilds who’s going to have hysterics every time she gets a little scared?” He wouldn’t, however, meet her eyes directly. And he kept on chattering until they saw people—men, smoking, watching their descent from the hall below. He stopped talking then but walked her briskly along to the library. The door was closed, and he stopped and whispered, “Remember, if it comes to arrest I still have the thumbprint. The murderer’s thumbprint—Oh, my God!” said Dennis. “All we lack is a couple of false beards. Smile, my girl!”

“I—can’t, Dennis.”

“Well, then, don’t smile,” he said. “But for God’s sake don’t walk into this room looking as if you’d the guilt of the world on your shoulders. Honest, Daph, anybody looking at you right now would say, ‘There’s the murderer,’ and call the case done. Now then,” said Dennis. “Here we go!” and opened the door.

Jacob Wait was standing, leaning on a tall chair. Two plain-clothes men were with him, the man called Tillie and the one called Schmidt. A little in the background the policeman, Braley, waited with a thick look of expectancy on his face.

“There you are,” said Wait. “You can make the arrest, Braley. The young lady.”

Dennis’ hand on Daphne’s arm tightened as if an open electric current had touched him.

“Oh, look here,” cried Dennis. “You’re wrong. It isn’t Miss Haviland you want.”

“It’s Miss Haviland we are arresting,” said Wait wearily. “Daphne Haviland. On a murder charge.”

Dennis was as white as the paper in Jacob Wait’s hand.

“You’re wrong,” he said again. “What are your grounds? What—”

Wait put up one mobile hand and pointed to the table. “Turn on that light, Schmidt,” he said. It was a dark day, growing darker. The little pool of light from the lamp fell directly on the table, and in the center of it were two slippers. Two small gold kid slippers, with high heels and little jeweled buckles. Two gold slippers that were stained and brown and had been very wet and a little muddy.

“Don’t bother to deny them,” said Wait. “You wore them the night Brewer was murdered. You were at the springhouse. We found the heelprints on the cement floor. Matched. We know when you wore the slippers. We know—”

“Stop! I’ll tell you the truth. I was there, too. I—”

That was Dennis.

Wait looked at his watch.

“All right,” he said. “But hurry up. The inquest is set for tomorrow. The boys out there are waiting for news of the arrest. Want it for the night edition. However, you can say all you want to if you don’t take too long.”

“Dennis, don’t talk. They can’t arrest me for murder just because my slippers—”

“Oh,” said Wait. “Go ahead, Braley.”

Braley advanced toward Daphne.

Dennis cried, “I was with her, I tell you. We went to the springhouse together.”

“You were not together then,” said Wait. “She left the house alone.”

Was it a guess? Or did he know? Had someone seen her? There was no way to know.

“Didn’t you, Miss Haviland?” said Wait.

“I—Yes,” whispered Daphne. “I was alone.”

“Why did you go to the springhouse?”

“Look here, Wait, do I understand that you are making a formal charge of murder?”

“You do.”

“Then she has a right to a lawyer. And a right to refuse to talk.”

“Certainly,” said Wait. “Send her lawyer to the Wrexe County jail. We’ll hold her there for the night. Call that maid, Schmidt, and tell her to get a coat and hat for the girl.”

“All right,” said Dennis. “You win. I was there at the springhouse. I was with Daphne. Ben Brewer was lying there dead. We didn’t kill him.”

“But you were going to leave together?”

“No, no,” cried Daphne. “I came to tell him we couldn’t. I—”

“So you killed Ben Brewer. And then dragged his body—”

“We didn’t. Rowley Shore came, too. As we were standing there—he said, ‘Let’s move the body. People mustn’t know it was murder—or suicide—’”

“Why?”

“On account of the company. Dennis didn’t kill Ben—I was there first—I—”

“Daphne! Stop!” Dennis gave her a blazing look. “I’ll tell you anything I know,” he said, again turning to the detective.

“So Rowley Shore was in the thing, too?”

The detective looked somberly at Daphne. “Will he corroborate your story? … I thought not.”

Dennis was fumbling in his pocket.

“Look here,” he said. “It’s true just as we’ve told you. I’ll give all the details you want. But I do have some evidence leading to the real murderer. I do have—”

“We’ve all the evidence we need,” said Jacob Wait. “And at every turn it leads to you. Has led to you, Mr Haviland, from the beginning. Don’t misunderstand me. Daphne Haviland is under arrest. She had plenty of motives: Brewer’s fortune willed to her as Daphne Haviland—not as his wife; her quarrel with him; her affair with you. Her slippers—Oh, yes, she’s under arrest. And so are you. They’ll call it conspiracy. Collusion. You’ll both appear before the coroner’s inquest and later, for I know what the verdict will be, before the grand jury. I know what that verdict will be, too,” said Jacob Wait softly.

“All right,” said Dennis. “I’ll confess, and you know it, before I’ll let Daphne be—be taken away. But I do have a piece of real evidence.”

“What is it?”

He was going to give him the little piece of wood, of course. The brownish red lines of that thumbprint which he had counted on as a last resort. A life line.

She saw him, searching again through the same pockets. She saw the queer white look of doubt come over his face. She heard him say in a tight, flat voice, “It—it must be here. It—”

“Is it this thing you’re looking for, Haviland?” said Wait. He put his hand out toward him. It held a small, ivory-colored piece of wood. “Because if it is, it’s your own thumbprint. Either one of you, of course, can turn state’s evidence. Later.”

It was just about then that the thaw began. That unexpected, sudden thaw which set the eaves and window sills dripping. The eaves around the dark little springhouse dripped, too, stealthily, steadily in the darkness.

I
T WAS TRUE, AND
Wait convinced him of it.

“It is your thumbprint. We already had a fingerprint record. This was immediately identified.”

“It can’t be.”

“It is,” said Wait simply and put the sliver of wood in his pocket.

“How did you get it?” Dennis was still trying not to believe—fighting a conviction of its truth—thinking of that gray dawn when he might have destroyed it. Realizing it was possible—that he could have left that bloody thumbprint without knowing it. Remembering how—later—he had scrubbed his hands. Cursing his own blunder. “How did you get it?”

“I got it,” said the plain-clothes man they called Tillie, with something like a smirk on his large face, “this morning. You were in the shower, I could hear it running. Your coat was over a chair in your room.”

“The door was locked.”

Tillinghouse looked faintly but honestly surprised, and Wait said:

“Never mind that. What about the bloodstain? If you’ve anything to say, say it.”

“And you ought to be thankful for the chance he’s giving you,” said the plain-clothes man. “This is certainly blood. Why and how—”

“You don’t suppose I’d have kept it if I had had reason to think it was mine!”

Wait made a small, impatient gesture. “I’m giving you a chance to talk, Haviland. The case is pretty strong against you and Miss Haviland. You called a taxi, telling it to wait. You and she met at the springhouse. The taxi alone is enough to suggest that you had planned to go away. Together, perhaps, which gives a motive for murdering Brewer. There’s the revolver—the wedding ring—the thumbprint. I can see you don’t want to talk,” said Jacob Wait simply. “But you can’t make it much worse for yourselves, short of confessing. And you might make it better.” His look said he didn’t expect the latter. “As it is, I’ve got practically a jury-proof case against you—circumstantial, but sound. If, between you, you murdered Ben Brewer, there’s no occasion for you to speak. You can save it for your defense. If you actually didn’t murder him, you’ll better your chances by telling anything you know about it. Everything.”

Dennis strove to remember what points of law he knew.

“I’ll tell you anything I know if I can talk to you alone,” he said. “Will you send these men out of the room?”

“You mean you might make statements which would be difficult later to reconcile with whatever defense your lawyer undertakes.”

“Will you send them away?”

“No.” Wait leaned back in his chair and glanced at his watch. “After all, Haviland, the girl’s already arrested. There’s already an airtight case against her; you can’t make it much more incriminating, and you might make it less so. That is, if she actually didn’t murder him,” finished Wait in a voice that did not conceal innate skepticism. A pretty woman—trouble—murder.

“She did not murder Brewer,” said Dennis and told him their story. Everything. As it happened.

It didn’t take long. The room grew duskier with heavier shadows in the corners. Once the man called Tillie went to the window and pulled the curtain across it, for in spite of the sudden thaw the air was damp and chill. Good pneumonia weather, thought Tillie, and returned to sit with his elbows spread upon the table and to listen and watch.

Dennis talked swiftly. So long as he was telling it, he must make it convincing by telling the whole truth. Telling it all. There is nothing, after all, so powerful as the truth, and it was their only hope.

But unfortunately the truth was damning. As she listened, Daphne was overcome by a horrible sense of futility, for it sounded so hopelessly false and weak.

Dennis, she thought, felt it, too, as he neared the end.

The two plain-clothes men and the policeman watched and listened, with blank, altogether expressionless faces and eyes that revealed nothing. Wait did not even look at Dennis or at her, but, instead, broodingly at the slippers on the table.

He listened, however.

And he checked Dennis now and then to ask a few questions.

“What time did you go to the springhouse?”

“About twelve. I don’t know exactly.”

“And Miss Haviland reached the springhouse before you and waited there for you?”

“Yes,” said Daphne.

“She didn’t know he—Ben—was there at all,” said Dennis hurriedly and went on.

Wait asked, too, about the taxi.

“You ordered it before you went upstairs?”

“Yes. At the little telephone closet under the stairs. No one could have heard me. I told the taxi driver to come to the gate about twelve and wait.”

“You didn’t hear the taxi leave about one o’clock when Shore left?”

“No. We were trying to arrange the body—getting it down the slope, I suppose, at about that time. It was a—job.”

“And you and Miss Haviland were not going away together?”

“I had gone to tell him I couldn’t,” said Daphne. “When I talked to—to Ben—after dinner, while the others were in the drawing room seeing to the flowers, I—I realized I couldn’t do it. I had come to tell Dennis. And to say good-by to him.”

“Did you tell Brewer you planned to meet Haviland that night?”

“No.”

“Did he know it?”

Dennis replied, “Gertrude—Mrs Shore—says he knew. Certainly someone knew.”

He had not omitted telling Wait of the door which had closed silently while he and Daphne made that mad plan.

“Yes, yes,” said Wait. “Someone. And someone who saw fit to keep that knowledge from me. Go on.”

There was not much more to tell. The locked door when they returned to the house, the open window, the step which creaked on the stairway. He shot one liquid, dark glance at Daphne when Dennis told it.

And Daphne cried, “Oh, Dennis, it was Archie.”

“Archie! How do you know?”

“Shore!” said Wait. “Did you see him?”

“No—no, he told me. Last night. He came to my room.”