Danger in the Dark (3 page)

Dennis, too, had seen the question coming. Would he tell Rowley?

“We had a crazy notion for a walk in the snow. Sort of a farewell—you know. Daph getting married tomorrow—leaving, all that. A sentimental journey. Isn’t that right, Daphne?”

It was a demand. What? Agree, of course. She said quickly, “Yes—yes.”

He went on, “We thought we’d take a look at the springhouse—scene of old times. We came to the door, and it was open. We came in and”—he didn’t look now at the thing at his feet, but it was as if all of them were staring fixedly at it—“and there he was. Just like that. I had this flashlight and—” He put his cigarette to his mouth; it made a bright little glow of crimson, and he went on, “He was dead. I felt for a pulse. Wasn’t any. Then you came.”

“Oh,” said Rowley slowly, watching Dennis.

Dennis exhaled smoke and added, “We hadn’t got over the shock of it. We were stunned. I don’t think we’d even said anything.”

Rowley turned the flashlight suddenly so it swept in glancing rays about the springhouse, the eight colored windows, garish and old-fashioned in daylight, dull and meaningless at night; the peaked roof, the bench running around it; the spring at one side edged in concrete, with a wooden railing and, now, frozen. There were a few cobwebs from the previous summer; several steamer chairs folded flat. A damp cement floor. Obviously no one was concealed there.

“No one here?” he said.

“No one. And we didn’t hear the shot. It must have occurred before we left the house.”

Dennis’ voice was less strained. He was relieved because Rowley had accepted that explanation. Had Rowley failed to see the bag? She turned to look for it, and it wasn’t there. Where was it? He had had it in his hand—he’d left it outside, then. Had dropped it at the door of the springhouse. Instinctively she felt that Rowley must not know of it; must not be permitted to see it. Instinctively, and because of Dennis’ swift, false explanation of their presence there and his unspoken demand that she subscribe to it.

Later she wondered what they would have done had there been more time. More time to comprehend it, to realize that Ben Brewer was dead and what that death would mean. Rowley had come too soon.

“Where’s the weapon?” said Rowley suddenly. “He’s been shot, I suppose—no knife could make a wound like that.”

“I don’t know. I tell you we found him just like this.”

“There’s no gun anywhere. Unless it’s under him.”

There was a small silence. Then Dennis said in a flat voice, “We’d better look, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Rowley cleared his throat. “If it’s suicide—”

They looked, and there was no gun. No knife. Nothing but that purplish rosebud.

“He could have tossed the gun outside in the snow,” said Dennis.

“With a wound like that?”

“No, I suppose not. Well, we’d better call somebody. Rouse the house—get doctors, police. God, what a mess!”

Quite suddenly Daphne could see headlines: Dead Following Bridal Dinner. Benjamin Brewer, president of Haviland Bridge Company … The account of the wedding had already gone to the papers; a photograph of herself in her wedding gown and the veil that hung, ready, in her room. Horrible. Could they stop that account of it? she wondered crazily.

“But, good God,” said Rowley suddenly, “he couldn’t be murdered. There’s no one who would murder him. I mean, he—Well, after all. Murder,” said Rowley and stopped abruptly, so the word hung there in the chill silence of the little springhouse and echoed against its walls and seemed to pick itself up and repeat itself, whispering, in the shadows above their heads. Murder. Murder of a man. Murder of Ben Brewer. Murder and a black sodden bulk lay at their feet which had been—two hours, an hour, a few moments ago, perhaps—a man.

Daphne was trembling. Curious how gradual was the comprehension of anything so ugly—you saw the thing and recognized it but were not altogether conscious of it. Of all its significance. You grasped at this or that coherent thought, but everything was distorted. Murder there—where they’d played those years ago.

She stood suddenly. Dennis’ coat fell with a muffled little thud to the floor. She said unsteadily, looking from Dennis to Rowley and back again:

“It can’t be murder. There’s no one to kill him. No one who—It must be suicide. There’s no one but the family here—Aunt Amelia—your mother, Rowley. My father. We three. It isn’t murder.”

Again the word was left in the silence, hovering, repeating itself.

Then Dennis said slowly:

“Look here, Daph. This is going to be bad either way. I mean—I mean, with the wedding tomorrow. There’ll be an awful lot of publicity—talk—whether it’s murder or suicide or—”

“Good God,” said Rowley suddenly and violently again, “it can’t be suicide—we’re forgetting—” Again he stopped and stared at that bulk on the floor as if mesmerized by it, lost in some dark speculation.

“You mean Ben’s suicide the night before his marriage to me,” said Daphne. “You mean it would be—would be—”

That was horrible, too. That was incredible, really, in its potential ugliness. Newspapers, stories, talk—whispers at last, to follow her all her life. Suicide—the night before he was to be married to her. The questions: Why did he do it? Why?

Dennis’ hand was on her arm.

“Don’t look like that, honey. We’ll fix it. We’ll—”

“Hell,” said Rowley, “I wasn’t thinking of Daph. It’s the company. The business. Oh, my God!”

He tossed his cigarette into the little hollow around the frozen spring and turned vehemently toward them.

“We’ll have to—to do something. Murder’s bad. But suicide is worse—it’ll wreck things. Everybody knows about the famous will. Everybody knows about the rows; stockholders are all onto it and watching and scary. Some siding with him, some with us—oh, you know what it’s been. Well, you don’t, Dennis, because you’ve been away all year. But it’s been hell for everybody concerned. Now if he is a suicide they’ll say it’s on account of business.”

“That might let Daph out, anyway,” said Dennis slowly.

Rowley gave him a quick, dark look.

“Let Daph out, yes—only there’ll still be plenty of talk. But it ruins us all financially. Wrecks the business as surely as a—a bomb.” He looked again at the thing there on the floor and added, with a kind of thin anger, “I never liked Ben Brewer. I don’t give a good goddam what really happened to him. Johnny thought he was smart, but I could never see it. Mother figures he was going to ruin us anyway, given time. But no matter what other people say there’s just one explanation the stockholders will jump at, and that’s failure. Ben was first and foremost a business man, and they know it. The Haviland Bridge Company will vanish like a—a—Anyway, it’s murder,” he said conclusively. “No weapon.”

“So you’d prefer murder to suicide,” said Dennis, watching his cousin. “I suppose you have an idea about what murder brings with it? Inquiry, publicity, all of us grilled mercilessly, the worst possible motives attributed to everything we admit, and at the last somebody—”

Rowley glanced at him sharply and said, “Somebody a scapegoat, you mean?”

“I mean if he’s murdered somebody did it,” said Dennis. “That’s not a pleasant thought, either.”

Rowley’s sallow face looked faintly green.

“Give me another cigarette, Dennis.”

If only it weren’t so cold, thought Daphne; it was partly the cold that made her shiver so. She wrapped her coat more tightly around her. Below it the yellow folds of velvet dragged upon the floor.

“But—but we ought to do something,” she said. “We—There’s no use in standing here talking of it—I mean, well, it’s nothing we can change. We can’t make it suicide—or—or murder or anything. No matter how much we talk of it we can’t make it any different.”

“Here’s a light,” said Rowley and held it for Dennis’ cigarette. The little point of light wavered, and above it Dennis and Rowley looked at each other—a brief look, understanding.

Daphne recognized it.

“You can’t—” she cried again jerkily. “There’s no way—you can’t change it, hide it—make it any different. There’s no use in talking like this as if we could. He’s dead. He—he’s there. We’ve got to do something about it.” Her voice was high and unsteady, and Dennis said quickly:

“Now, Daphne—don’t, dear. Look—I’m going to take you to the house. Then Rowley and I will decide—”

“You can’t decide anything. It’s done. He’s dead. Nothing that you say will make any difference. Call the—the police.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll do all that. But give us a little time. After all, there are ways and ways—I mean, well, we ought to—to prepare the family. Perhaps we can figure some way out of it. That is, some way which won’t be so bad for us all. Rowley’s quite right about the business, Daphne. I’ve known something of what this year since Grandfather’s death has been. I know how nervous the stockholders have been with this grand quarrel going on in our midst. After all, we can’t exactly toss away the family fortune. Our only source of income. The thing Grandad spent his life building up.”

“I wonder,” said Rowley in a whisper, as if he did not want to hear his own voice making the monstrous proposal, “if we couldn’t just dispose of him somewhere. After all—if there’s no body, there’s neither murder nor suicide.”

“No. No!”
cried Daphne with sharp terror and vehemence. But Rowley and Dennis were both looking again at that black heap. The red had spread further on the gleaming white shirt front—or had it? And the three of them were in that springhouse again together, plotting—wrangling—but this time it wasn’t a game. It was truth and terror and death. Murder.

For, of course, it
was
murder. Otherwise there would have been a weapon. Murder—and someone had murdered him.

And there would be no wedding tomorrow.

There would be, instead, police, inquiry, unspeakable and hideous things through which they would be dragged.

Why were you in the springhouse? they would say. Oh, to meet Dennis Haviland. Why?

It was a suddenly lucid thought springing out of all that chaos of disaster.

It was the first time that, consciously, she saw their danger.

With a start she realized that Dennis was speaking. Speaking very thoughtfully and in a whisper, too.

“It might be done,” he said, looking downward.

A
ND IN THAT PACKED
moment of sheer horror Daphne considered it, too.

It would mean that Ben Brewer would simply disappear. There would be questions, comment, inquiry—perhaps they would say he’d been called away—he’d gone on a trip. And then didn’t come back. Perhaps they could fix up some explanation for it.

Dennis was resourceful and quick; Rowley slow but ingenious. Together they plotted well. They always had. And they always had made her agree; agree and even defend them later to the aunts. For in those days she could always stand up to the aunts, because they knew her father would side with Daphne; too indulgent, they called him—too fond of her because of her likeness to her young, dead mother. She felt a swift, frightened conviction that they were drawing her with them into a dark and hideous path; as if they were making her plan, too, how it could be done. She had always been helpless against their combined strength; they had always managed to win her over in the end. They were going to do so now.

Oh, it was fantastic—nightmarish—impossible.

But there was that mute and awful presence in the springhouse.

And Dennis and Rowley were going to do something with it. She knew it; she could tell by the way they looked at each other.

But she wouldn’t be drawn into it; not only that, she wouldn’t let them do it. After all, such a thing demanded secrecy, and she would tell the truth. She would tell her father and the aunts what really happened. And she would tell the police.

They were men now, Rowley and Dennis. And she a woman. Those childhood days were long past. This old springhouse was just an outdated and outmoded heap of wood and concrete and glass. Its feeling of continuity, of the immutability of time, had no truth and value. It belonged to the time of a slim little girl with yellow pigtails and wide blue eyes. It belonged to two boys—one of them brown and hard and unafraid; the other one a little sallow and thin and, always, prudent.

And those children were far away and distant. Lost. In their places were three adults with the same names but with thoughts and motives and secret lives of their own. Drawn together again in that place by murder—sharing that horrible dilemma, shocked and terrified by the thing Rowley had suggested. Hideously impressed by the doubtful solution it offered. But it was wrong: it was gruesomely askew.

No, she wouldn’t be drawn into it. And she wouldn’t let them do it.

“I’m going to cover him,” said Rowley abruptly. “I can’t stand looking at him and—and thinking about it. He’s—so damn big. Where’s your coat, Dennis?”

He turned toward the open steamer chair where Daphne had sat, but Dennis said something quickly and forestalled him and himself took up the coat and fumbled with it for a moment and then placed it across Ben Brewer’s body. It was a relief. A fold of the coat covered the flashlight for an instant before Rowley stooped and pulled it out with a quick, nervous gesture so there was again a fan of garish, diffuse light spreading upon them, leaving the springhouse half in light and half in shadow.

“So long as nobody sees this light,” said Dennis. “The windows must be visible through the trees, and there’s nothing but windows.”

“Everybody’s gone to bed hours ago,” said Rowley. “Any way, it’s snowing so hard that no one can see—”

“But you saw, Rowley; you saw the light. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, I—that is—Don’t look at me like that, Dennis.”

“Rowley, why did you come here? What were you doing?”

It didn’t sound like Dennis. And all at once it was as if the door had blown silently open and a chill, strange draft were whispering about them. Rowley was ghastly pale in the half-light. He glanced from Dennis to Daphne nervously and said quickly:

“I—I wasn’t sleeping. I happened to look down—my window’s on this side—and saw the light—”

“You’re lying, Rowley. I know your tone when you lie. Besides there wasn’t time. You couldn’t have seen this light and dressed and come down through the house—”