Hasty Wedding (17 page)

“It wouldn’t have hurt him,” said Wait morosely. “Look here, Locke, if you and your wife are innocent you can’t object to inquiry and you ought to be willing to do everything in your power to help.”

“I am,” said Jevan unexpectedly. “And I will.” He came into the room. He didn’t look at Dorcas; she wouldn’t have thought that he recognized her presence at all except for the fact that somehow he managed to stand between her and Wait.

“There are one or two things outside your inquiry that might affect it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what they are. This house has been entered twice, at night. We don’t know who entered it or why. Last night somebody telephoned here in the middle of the night; whoever it was telephoned from Marcus Pett’s house and Marcus said he didn’t. There was what I believe to be an attempt to steal some or all of the reports of Marcus’ trusteeship; we are going to have the reports examined by a certified accountant. But we’ll do it; not you. You can’t object to that. To the best of my knowledge Marcus was absolutely honest but I know he was short of money himself and—why I don’t know—tried to borrow some a few months ago. Ask me any questions you want to. But leave my wife out of this.”

“I can’t leave her out of it,” said Jacob Wait after a moment, speaking rather softly. “She’s in it and you’re in it, Locke. Up to your neck.”

There was a stir at the door, interrupting them. Someone said: “Here she is,” and Sophie, still in green satin, came slowly into the room, the policeman behind her. She didn’t wait for the detective to question her but began to speak immediately.

“Oh, it’s you that wants to know about the powder room,” she said to Wait. “Yes, I was in the room. And I was in it after the murder while your policemen were all over the house. Why not?”

“Did you wash bloodstains from a towel and hang it over a rod to dry?”

“No,” she said instantly. “Certainly not.”

Sophie was lying; Dorcas knew it as certainly as she had ever known anything in her life. She remembered Sophie’s pink hands, looking as if they had just been scrubbed in soap and water.

Dorcas could not tell whether Wait accepted it or not. He gave Sophie a brief, thoughtful look and went back to Jevan, as if there had been no interruption.

“Ill listen to anything you’ve got to say. What are your reasons for claiming the house has been entered at night?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” said Jevan and did it fully then and there except that he did not mention Ronald’s death or his own and Dorcas’ actions on the night of Ronald’s murder.

Wait stopped him occasionally to question.

“Pett said he would continue to manage your wife’s affairs?”

“For the time being, yes.”

“Would you say he leaped at the chance to postpone an inquiry into his reports?”

Jevan hedged. “Not that exactly. He did offer to take the reports away with him.”

Once the detective swerved unexpectedly to the woman in the checked coat.

“Do you know who this woman was?”

“I didn’t see her.”

“Is there anyone connected with either Pett or Drew who would answer the description your man gave us?”

“I couldn’t answer that either. Do you mean …” Jevan stopped.

Wait said: “If you were going to ask if there’s a connection between Drew’s murder and Pett’s, I would say it is fairly obvious. I don’t know yet who killed Drew and I don’t know yet who killed Pett. But there is certainly a link.” He was looking thoughtfully at Dorcas. He addressed her directly:

“About this business of the telephone call and your experience in the hall that night: did you actually see anyone?”

“No.”

“You only heard a sound?”

“Yes. As if the door to the laundry chute had closed.”

“I see,” said Wait.

It was after that that the detective questioned Cary.

He permitted Dorcas to be present. Dorcas and a man with a notebook who stood in the shadow of the gilded french screen beside the door. Cary lay in the middle of the great bed, with the bedlight shaded from her face, and looked at them.

There were bottles on the bed table and a glass or two and a carafe of water. Cary’s little face, surrounded by its soft halo of light hair, was white and still against the smooth pillow. She wore a delicate, lacy bed jacket and her little, slender hands with faint blue veins in them clutched at the edge of the white silk cover which otherwise was without a wrinkle, as if she had not moved since it was adjusted. She said gently, “Won’t you sit down, Mr Wait?”

He did so, in one of Pennyforth Whipple’s great, solid armchairs. Dorcas hoped he would see at once how small and gentle she was; how fragile and sweet. How utterly impossible it would be for Cary Whipple to hurt anything in the world.

She could discover, however, nothing of this comprehension in Wait’s face.

“You knew of the murder then?” he said.

Cary answered instantly. All her replies, indeed, were very prompt, almost taking the words from Wait’s mouth.

“Yes. My maid told me. I insisted on knowing what had happened.”

“Did you know of the circumstances of the murder?”

“My daughter found him. In the hall leading to the study. A knife …” said Cary on a quick breath and stopped.

“When did you first know of the murder?”

“It must have been about seven. A little after seven, for I had just finished dressing and was about to go down when Mamie came. I made her tell me the truth. She sent for my doctor.”

“You did not see Pett when he came?”

“Oh no. No. I was here—in my room; I’ve been here since shortly after five. I—I was resting and then about six I began to dress. I didn’t hear anything; I suppose the water was running in my bathroom. Mamie said my daughter screamed——”

“Did you expect Pett to dinner?”

Dorcas tried to take her mother’s hand but the little fingers would not relinquish their clutch on the bedcover.

“No, I did not expect him to dinner. I did—expect him, however. He had telephoned to me, you see; I took the call at my telephone here. It was about five o’clock. He—he just said that he was coming. That he wanted to see me.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s all.”

“What was it he wanted to talk to you about?”

“But I—I don’t know. He didn’t say. I have no idea what it was.”

“What would you say,” said Wait slowly, “if someone suggested that Pett had embezzled money? Your money?”

“You mean Dorcas’ money,” said Cary. “I would say that he had not. But if he had, he would have told me. He would have known that we would help him to replace it. He would have confessed it to me; I’m sure he would have confessed. Did he”—she turned her little head quickly toward Dorcas—“did he take money, Dorcas? Do they know he did that?”

“We shall know very soon,” said Wait at once and Cary’s lovely eyes swept back to him. “Mrs Whipple, did you leave the house on any errand at all last Wednesday night?”

“Wednesday night,” repeated Cary thoughtfully as if considering it.
“Wednesday night!
But that was the night before Dorcas’ wedding!”

“Yes.”

“And the night—the night Ronald was—why are you asking me such a question? What has that to do with Marcus?”

“So you did leave the house that night when everyone thought you were in bed?”

“Of course not. Certainly not! Ask anyone. What a question! Do you think
I
shot Ronald?”

The little phrases were as quick and soft as the beat of a bird’s wings and had the same tremulous quality. Dorcas could see the feverish beating of a pulse in her mother’s soft white throat. She turned rather desperately to the detective.

“Isn’t that enough?” she cried.

He did not even look at her. He did, however, rise and stand looking at Cary for a moment before he said quietly: “I wish I could persuade you to tell me whatever it is that you—don’t want to tell. Don’t make the mistake of trying to shield someone.”

For a moment Cary did not reply. Instead she shrank into her soft pillows, shrank into her lacy bed jacket, shrank into the heretofore protected haven of the great bed. Shrank like a terrified child with her great blue eyes fastened on Wait and unexpectedly, with her eyes wide open, began to cry.

“I’ve done nothing,” she sobbed in tremulous little gusts. “Dorcas has done nothing——”

“You’ve made her ill,” said Dorcas furiously, finding a lacy handkerchief on the table and thrusting it into Cary’s little fingers, unloosed at last.

“I’ve done nothing of the kind,” said Wait. “Will you come with me now, Mrs Locke? Ring for her maid if you don’t wish to leave her alone.”

“Go, Dorcas,” said Cary, crying. “Go, dear.”

At the door Wait looked at the uniformed policeman who stood, tablet in hand, in the shadow of the french screen.

“Did you get all that?”

“Oh yes, Mr Wait. Every word.”

At the stairway Wait stood aside politely, allowing Dorcas to precede him.

I
T WAS THEN NEARLY
midnight.

It was after two o’clock when he left the house.

Almost immediately the next morning it became apparent that with the murder of Marcus Pett the Drew-Pett murder case leaped to the status of a cause celebre. It was a natural, indeed an inevitable, development. For three days now the Drew murder had been simmering with constantly increasing ebullience and the murder of Marcus Pett had the effect of removing an already trembling lid.

There was an all too obvious connection between the two murders. Marcus Pett’s only orbit and one of Ronald Drew’s several orbits touched at one tangential point and that tangential point was Dorcas. Mrs Jevan Locke. The former Dorcas Whipple. Or, more frequently, the “Whipple Heiress.”

That was the view of the newspapers. The view, reluctant, stunned but inevitable, of the people she knew; the view, apparently, of thousands of people she would never know, who clamored for news and more news, who snatched extras as soon as they came on the street, who planned to attend the trial and made bets as to the outcome.

That night a siege of reporters began which did not for an instant relax. It was like a barrage around the house and grounds. If anyone came, if anyone went, if anyone so much as approached a window to raise or lower a shade there were reporters to see it; reporters to take pictures, reporters to pounce upon and make a news story of whatever material they could ferret out and to fill columns and columns of fine black print with it. It was their duty and they were acting under orders; they were never malicious and there was a detached, impersonal technique of strategy.

Yet the very next morning, Sunday morning, the
Call
said:
WHIPPLE HEIRESS CHARGED WITH MURDER.

“There’ll be grounds for enough libel suits to last the rest of your life,” said Jevan grimly. “Don’t read them, Dorcas. Here, Bench, take these papers and burn them.”

He took the paper out of her hand but not before she had seen the headline. And a picture of herself, an old picture in her debut gown of white silk. She’d carried scarlet camellias, she remembered, and her mother had been lovely and gracious in soft green lace and Marcus, beaming, had supplied the camellias.

That was the next morning, late, over breakfast in her own room, with Jevan striding up and down, smoking and saying very little. And church bells from the Midway, the carillon, tolling distantly.

They had said what there was to say the night before. Wait and his immediate cohorts had left about two. They had, in the end, made no arrest. There remained, however—exactly why Dorcas didn’t know, except that it seemed to be customary—a police guard in and around the house. It ought to have given them a feeling of security. Yet long after Dorcas had finally gone to sleep she roused again; dawn must have been at hand, for there was a grayish tinge at the windows and in the cold dawn Jevan was sleeping, stretched out in a bathrobe and an eiderdown on a chair near her with his long legs on another chair. He was sound asleep; she could tell it by his regular breathing. Yet he was solidly and firmly placed between her and the door. It gave her, in the stillness of that chill and desolate hour, the most extraordinary sense of comfort and she went straight back to sleep again. But later in the morning, much later, when she waked to find Mamie at her bedside with hot coffee, there were no signs of Jevan’s presence. The chairs had resumed their customary places, and the eiderdown and Jevan were gone. And when he came into the room, freshly shaven and dressed, he did not mention it. And she could not. As she could not say: “Jevan, did you kill Ronald? Jevan, did you
—could
you have killed Marcus?” But he couldn’t have done it; no matter what reasons he might have had,
he couldn’t have done it.
Not Jevan. She clung to that.

And she couldn’t say either: “Jevan, why did you marry me?”

He had already, early that morning, talked over the telephone to a friend who was a member of a firm of certified accountants and had given, sealed, into the hands of a Western Union messenger the whole bulk of Marcus’ reports. It would be, he supposed, another day before they could expect definite news of that.

Mamie knocked and came in. Mr Devany was downstairs, wanting to see Mr Locke.

Jevan went away. And Dorcas, her very muscles aching with fatigue, dragged herself through the motions of dressing and went to see her mother. Mamie was darning stockings in a chair just outside her mother’s door.

“I wouldn’t go in if I was you, Miss Dorcas. Your mother is asleep.” She stabbed a stocking heel viciously with her needle. Mamie looked old that morning. Her usually neat, grayish hair had wisps down the back of her neck and her round, Irish face seemed to have sagged. She sat with her chair against the wall and commanded a long view of the corridor.

“All right, Mamie,” said Dorcas and wandered back to her own room.

It was then late in the morning, nearly noon. A dark morning again and very cold, as if there were no such thing as spring and never would be.

Her face in the heavy mirror over the dressing table was pale as a ghost. Absently, automatically she reached for lipstick, selecting a shade at random. The stick of paste felt strange to her lips and she looked at it abruptly. It—and every other lipstick in the tray—had been neatly cut off. The used ends, instead of being smooth and tapering, were straight and blunt with fine edges, as if the cutting instrument, whatever it was, had been extremely thin and sharp.