The Glass Slipper (11 page)

“Steven had an alibi,” said Rue unexpectedly. “I heard him at the piano. I know he was there in his studio the whole time.”

“I’m going to question Gross. May I?”

Gross came instantly.

“Madam rang?” His blank eyes took in every detail of the little scene, the two of them talking earnestly, stopping abruptly when he opened the door.

“Gross, Mrs Hatterick wants to know some things about yesterday. Close the door, please.”

“Yes sir.” He closed the door quietly and advanced. He looked as always stolidly respectable with his pin-striped trousers neatly brushed, and his black coat just a bit too rotund over his black vest, and his eyes blank and extremely observant below that blank surface. He’d been gray with fright the previous day; gray and shattered and all but jibbering. He was now himself again, correctly imperturbable; correctly and remotely helpful.

“Now then, Gross, we understand that when the young lady arrived yesterday you did not open the door for her?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Andy got up, moved to take a cigarette from the desk and sat down in another chair. Rue watched, and all at once, sharply, Steven’s playing in the studio broke off. It left a blank pit of silence. Andy said:

“You told the police that?”

“Yes sir. They asked. I don’t know who let the young lady in; neither of the maids admit to it, sir, and it was the cook’s rest period.”

“Well, my God, Gross, how did she get in the house then?”

“I don’t know, sir. I made sure the front door was locked as usual.”

“You made sure?” Andy watched the butler for a moment and then said: “Are you really quite sure of that. Gross?”

“Well…” Gross’s eyes wavered, went around the room and came back to Andy. “Reasonably so, sir. It is almost always locked. I mean with the night latch. Naturally there was a little confusion following the arrival of the police and all; I can’t exactly swear that the front door was locked. But in any case the young lady wouldn’t simply have opened the door and walked in.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Andy. “Although if she were confused, a little muddled in her mind, she might have done just that. Opened the door, failed altogether to ring and simply walked into the house and sat down in the nearest chair. According to Mrs Hatterick, the girl wasn’t exactly sensible of what she was doing. You got that impression, too, I imagine, Gross.”

“Well, yes sir. Now that you ask me I confess that I thought she was…” He coughed delicately with a side glance at Rue and said: “A little under the influence. I — was obliged to tell the police that too.”

“Good for you,” said Andy. “That helps clear Mrs Hatterick, you see. Stick to your story.” Gross gave Rue a somewhat surprised and wondering glance; he hadn’t, it was obvious, realized that such a statement had its value as indicating that Julie had been poisoned before she saw Rue. Andy went on: “And be sure you stick to it, up and down, no matter how much the police question you. Don’t waver for an instant. She was poisoned already — before she saw Mrs Hatterick?”

“Well, I — I wouldn’t go so far —”

“Of course she was. No doubt of that, Gross. She had already been poisoned; entered the house probably without remembering to ring; just had a vague notion of getting inside the house and seeing Mrs Hatterick. How long had she been in the drawing room when you came upon her?”

“I — I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, how long do you think? You were the only person who saw her there, weren’t you?”

“I — oh, I couldn’t be sure of that, sir. Anyone might have seen her there. I don’t know, you see, how long she was in the house. I don’t —”

Andy frowned. “Is that what you told the police?”

“I told them everything they asked — that I knew, of course, sir. They questioned the maids too. Exhaustively, I might add, sir.”

“Well now, look here, Gross. If anyone had been with the girl when she arrived or if — say if Mrs Hatterick herself had let the girl into the house, as she didn’t — but at any rate if anyone had been with the girl and had talked to her, you would have known it, wouldn’t you?”

“I…”He looked confused. “I don’t know. You mean —”

“I mean if there were voices in the drawing room, you’d have known it?”

“I — well, I don’t know, sir. Unless the bell goes, I’m usually in the back of the house during the midafternoon.”

“Well, at any rate when you discovered the girl —”

“When I came to turn on the lights, sir, and pull the curtains and bring in the evening paper —”

“Exactly, when you discovered her sitting there, what did she say?”

“Just that she — she wished to see Mrs Hatterick. It gave me rather a turn finding her just sitting there in the shadow of the curtain. The room was unlighted, and if you’ll remember, it was a dark day.”

“Yes, of course. There was no glass, no cup, nothing like that —”

“Oh, no sir.”

“All right. Now listen. Gross. When you let Miss Pelham into the house —”

Gross looked blanker than ever and rather pale.

“I didn’t open the door for Miss Pelham either.”

Andy jumped to his feet. “What’s that, Gross?”

“No sir. Miss Pelham has a key — has had ever since Mrs Hatterick — that is the late Mrs Hatterick’s illness. The — the late Mrs Hatterick gave it to her. So she could come and go at will. They were, as you know very well, sir, the most intimate friends.”

Silence again in the library. Rue could not now keep from looking at Crystal’s portrait, and the shadowy, half-contemptuous, painted eyes seemed to look at Rue. Andy said at last, slowly: “Then you don’t know exactly when Miss Pelham arrived. Do you?”

“No sir.”

“Good.” Andy had an air of triumph. “That’s all, thank you, Gross; be sure to stick to your story when the police return to question further. That’s all. Oh yes; wait, there’s something else. You remember during Mrs Hatterick’s illness a chart the nurses kept, that is, that Miss Garder and —” Gross was already nodding.

“Oh yes, sir. I remember it very well. The chart showing the progress of Madam’s — I mean the late Mrs Hatterick’s illness. It was kept on the small table by the door along with her medicines.”

“Exactly. You’ve a good memory, Gross. Well then, after Mrs Hatterick died, I expect you removed the chart yourself; when the room was cleaned, I mean.”

Doubt was again in Gross’s face; doubt and a touch of bewilderment. “I — I can’t say I remember seeing it, sir.”

“Think hard.”

“Yes sir. But unless one of the maids took it… No, I’m quite sure I didn’t put it away, sir.”

“I see. All right, Gross. I don’t suppose it’s important anyway. Thank you — that’s all.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Gross and vanished quietly.

The door closed again and Rue said: “The chart. The police asked about it too.”

“Yes. That’s why I wondered. Funny, where it’s got to. If Julie had it —”

“I don’t think she had. She wasn’t here after Crystal’s death. And I haven’t got it. Why, Andy?”

“I don’t know,” said Andy. “It’s just that the police want it — so I’d rather get hold of it first.”

“It’s probably been destroyed long ago.”

“Yes. I suppose so. I’ll warn Brule. Yet suppose Brule himself —” He gave the oddest little sound that was like a groan. “I can’t face that, Rue, I’ve got to go on the theory that it isn’t Brule. He — he couldn’t have done this! I know his brilliance, I know he could have conceived and carried out such a plan coolly and as brilliantly as he operates — and as daringly. He’s strong and he’s ruthless; he’s cruel when he has to be cruel — but he couldn’t have done this. He couldn’t — he didn’t — but…” He swung desperately toward Rue. “But nevertheless… Oh, Rue, my dear, haven’t you seen and heard enough to convince you?”

Someone was in the hall. It was Brule, for they heard his quick footsteps and his voice speaking, apparently, to Gross. He opened the door and came into the room.

“Oh, hello there, Andy. Glad you’re here; something rather — shocking has happened.”

Brule walked with his usual assured air of possession across the room and took a cigarette, pausing while he lighted it. The little flame was perfectly steady in his fine skilled fingers; it touched his cheeks, pink from the cold outside, and reflected itself in tiny points in his brilliant dark eyes. His presence filled the room as it always did.

Rue looked at the man who had married her. Married her because he’d quarreled with the woman he really loved. The beautiful, sophisticated woman who had loved him for years before Rue’s timid feet had ever crossed the threshold of the place that was now her home — the only home she’d had for so long. My home? thought Rue and suddenly hated Alicia.

Brule settled himself abruptly in a chair.

“Don’t go, Andy. The office girl said she thought you were here. I want you to hear what’s happened. We’ve found some stuff in a glass —”

“I told him,” said Rue stiffly.

Brule shot her one dark glance that was instantly arrested and speculative as if the very tones of her voice betrayed something of the thing Andy had told her.

If so, however, he didn’t explore then and there but continued:

“Oh. Very well. Then you know the whole thing, Andy. Well, the thing is, it — really was poison. I got a chemical report on it — privately, without letting the police know. It’s an amazing combination of a hypnotic drug, some barbituric acid derivative, and morphine. Enough to kill a horse.”

A
nd no symptoms,” muttered Andy after a moment. “Not a damn symptom. You’d just die.”

“As Crystal died. As the nurse died,” said Brule coolly. “Yes, and it’s only a question of time until the police isolate and identify the poison in Crystal’s body and in Julie Garder’s.”

“Time,” said Andy. “Time — that’s what we need, Brule. Time —”

“For what?” said Brule. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“There might be,” said Andy. “It may take them weeks to find exactly what the girl died of; it often takes two or three weeks when the laboratory fellows don’t know what they’re looking for. And in this case there are a hundred harmless sedatives that are hypnotics. Well, in the length of time it will take to pin down the exact drugs anything can happen. I call it a godsend if you ask me. Arsenic now, or — oh, strychnine or any of a dozen other poisons, would have been so easily detected.”

“There’d have been symptoms if it’d been arsenic or strychnine. Or as you say, any of a dozen other drugs in lethal quantity. The beauty of this particular combination — to the murderer’s mind — is that an overdose of it would certainly induce just what it did induce: a confused heavy drowsiness growing into a coma and presently death. The hypnotic might check the almost instantaneous action of the morphine — although it might not; they might work simultaneously. And they may have been in a capsule which would delay their action. In Crystal’s case, however, the thing was exactly what the murderer wanted. She fell into a heavy sleep and died without showing signs of typical morphine poisoning, which would have given us a clue and allowed us to administer what antidote we could have administered at that stage. With the nurse’s case it’s different; from what you’ve told me. Rue, and from what Gross told me, it sounds as if something went wrong. Either the quantities were not as they had been with Crystal, or the nurse reacted altogether differently. She was, at least, able to get upstairs and walk and try to speak and then just all at once died. The question is time; when was she given the poison? Morphine takes effect right away; it’s a matter of moments. The other is slower. How long could she have remained sensible enough to walk and speak? A capsule would have added to the time margin by twenty minutes. There’s no way of knowing until we know exactly what she died of. And the approximate amounts of each drug. In either case it’s the overdose given that caused death; both are really beneficent drugs. At any rate that’s for the police to worry about. But I’m going to tell them what to look for.”

“You mean — give them that chemist’s report? And tell them what happened last night?”

“Yes, certainly. The sooner they know it, now, the better. I didn’t want anything said of it until I knew just what it was. Now I — know,” said Brule.

Andy cleared his throat and said slowly:

“It didn’t take your chemist long to analyze the stuff.”

“I told him what to look for,” said Brule promptly.

“You — how did you know?”

Brule’s eyebrows made a quick, straight line across his face.

“Because that’s what I thought it might be, Andy. Any other questions?”

“N-no. Except — are you sure it’s a good thing to tell it to the police? You know as well as I how few people could have put that stuff in Rue’s room.”

“I know. Very few people could have given poison to Crystal too. Any number of people, I suppose, could have murdered the nurse, but who did? Who had motive plus opportunity?”

“But, Brule, you — you were all in favor of keeping the thing quiet,” said Rue. “I mean, you said that you thought at the time that Crystal’s death was not natural but that you thought it wiser to accept it. You said it was better to think of Madge and of Steven and —”

“And of myself and of Andy. And of you, Rue. Yes, I did think so. Things have changed.”

“You — you’re going over to the side of the police? Do you mean that, Brule?” said Andy.

“I mean we’ve got to wade through it now. We can’t dodge around it.”

“But still there’s no use in telling the police all you know. Unless… What’s your idea of it, Brule? Who — who killed her?”

“I don’t know. But I do know — Listen, Andy, do you know why I’m at home at this hour of the day? Well, guess. It’s because there’s nothing to do. My calendar had a busy day marked. I got there, and old man Gillette had canceled his operation; three patients had telephoned to say they were better and were not coming in to the office; the only telephone calls were cancellations of appointments, and the only thing in the world I had to do was make my sick rounds at the hospital. Until this thing is settled it’ll be that way. Look at your own desk calendar, Andy, if you don’t believe me. We can’t dodge this thing. We’re in it up to our necks. We’ve got to go through it and emerge scoured clean. You’re ambitious, Andy; sometimes I’ve thought too ambitious, but I —”

Brule looked at his cigarette and said with a curious tinge of sadness, “I’m the last who ought to complain of ambition. I only know what — too much of it makes of your life. Well, that’s beside the point. You’re ambitious and you’ve got a brilliant start on what’s likely to be a brilliant career. Well, you’re in this thing along with the rest of us. You can’t help yourself. The only thing to do if we want to save anything of our work is to emerge from it as clean as a whistle.”

Andy glanced at Rue.

“That sounds fine and heroic, Brule,” he said. “Exactly what does it mean?”

“What does it mean!” Brule’s eyes flashed dangerously. “It means what I’ve said. Put our cards on the table. Give the police every possible help.”

“I see,” said Andy slowly. “Then — you wouldn’t say that, Brule, unless you see a way through. Unless you know who murdered her and are willing for whoever did it to be charged with murder — or you know who murdered her and know also how to cover it.”

Brule’s face turned hard; it was a look Rue knew well; she’d seen that momentary stiffening at crucial moments over an operating table. It was like a mask. He looked at Andy for a moment, eyes bright and hard and scrutinizing. Someone walked along the hall and spoke to someone else who answered — women’s voices, Madge and Alicia. There was no mistaking Alicia’s clear contralto.

Brule said:

“There is another consideration, Andy. In fact there are two other considerations, one of which is that an attack on Rue’s life indicates Rue’s — innocence; therefore I want the police to know of it. But I assure you now that I do not know who murdered Julie, and if I did I would go straight to the police with the knowledge. However, whatever my motives are or whatever motives you ascribe to me, this is the course we are going to take. Understand?”

It was like the crack of a whip.

“Yes,” said Andy.

“Good. Guy’s coming this afternoon. I told him about this stuff in the glass in Rue’s room when I talked to him over the telephone, and he agrees with me absolutely about telling the police. Also I rather imagine police will be here. I gathered from a — short conversation I had with Angel this morning that they feel they’ve been pretty careful and cautious and altogether lenient. So we’re in for some bad times now that they’ve come out with the official statement that it is murder… Staying to lunch?”

“No. Thanks, Brule. I’ve got a couple of sick calls…”

He looked at Rue and said: “Brule may be right. But I think it’s a mistake to talk too much. However…”

Brule went to the door with him and closed it after him and came back to stand before the hearth
—-
just below Crystal’s portrait. His face still wore the mask which Rue recognized but had never penetrated.

“Andy hasn’t much regard for any ethical consideration on my part,” he said. “The curious and rather alarming thing about it is that he’s a product of my own teaching. Except — except Andy has no basic strength.”

She thought of Alicia and of Crystal and of Andy caught between Brule’s own selfishness and Crystal’s vanity.

“Some people,” said Rue, “might call it ruthlessness.”

Again he shot her a quick, oddly discerning look.

“Ruthlessness?” he repeated. “Well, perhaps. His strongest characteristic is ambition; you’ve seen that. And I’ve taught him that there are times when splitting hairs does nobody any good; yes, I suppose I’ve taught him that. And that there are times when what some people would consider cruelty is actually mercy. As at the moment.”

She fumbled for his meaning and was confused by the hard, knowing brilliance of his gaze.

“I mean,” he said coolly, “it may appear cruelty to deliberately help the police discover the identity of whoever murdered Crystal and Julie; cruel only because we all know in our hearts that it means some very public washing of any soiled linen, and — naturally, inevitably, in the end a tragedy.” His face for an instant lost its hardness and certainty. If she had not known his innate indestructibility she would have said it became sad and yet strangely compassionate — foreboding yet deeply perplexed. But she couldn’t be sure of any of that strangely blended emotion except that it was emotion. And it was like getting the briefest glimpse into sentient, moving depths below the frozen surface of a lake.

He put out his cigarette and looked at her coolly and said, “But I do not consider it a cruelty to stop any further attempts upon your life… Has Andy been making love to you?”

“Andy —” She felt the crimson wave creeping upward over her face. But how dare he ask when Alicia was actually in the house? Rue’s house, for she was his wife. He was smiling a little.

“Perhaps I’ve not much right to ask, considering our agreement. But if he has been — stop it.”

Cold rage swept like a wind upon her. She tried to speak, tried to cry out against him and against Alicia, and he said: “Don’t let him. Andy’s good at love-making. I don’t intend to give reasons, however, Rue. That’s an order.”

“Because you’ve given me orders for years? Because you —”

“Never mind why. But understand that I mean it… Yes, Gross?”

The butler opened the door wider and entered:

“Lunch is served, madam.”

It was, as somehow circumstances so often managed to be, to Brule’s advantage to be interrupted just at that point. There was nothing she could say or do; she was obliged to bottle up her fury, to control it and the things she wanted to say, to acknowledge the butler’s words, to go to the dining room, to face Alicia with rage and something very like hatred in her heart. Rue, who had never hated anybody before and didn’t know the sears and scars that hatred can leave. For an instant flight appealed to her; she could go upstairs, plead — oh, plead anything — refuse to sit at the table along with the others — with an unbidden ghastly presence hovering there, too, and that was murder.

Brule, watching her, said with infuriating amiability: “Ready, my dear? If you don’t feel like having lunch Alicia can take your place.”

“Thank you, I feel perfectly well,” she said icily and preceded Brule along the hall. She was unfolding her napkin when it occurred to her that Brule had bested her again, that there had been a knowledgeable gleam in his eyes that foretold Rue’s instant decision.

It was the first but not the last meal they had together in the isolation of those days. For it was, in the most positive way, isolation, and all of them were sensible of it; it was as if they were shut off from the rest of the world, held somewhere in captivity and with invisible but strong bonds. Other people were going about their usual routine, were living their normal contented lives, but not they. It was an isolation which strongly pointed up (as tragedy or misfortune does) the happiness of other times, the great joy of the average, commonplace day and event.

That first meal was none too pleasant; Alicia and Brule talked, for Steven was silent, eating absently as if unconscious of what he did, and Madge was sullen, staring at Rue only to lower her thick eyelashes instantly if Rue returned her look. But Brule talked without hesitancy of the police inquiry, of the inquest next day, and of what line Guy would probably advise them to take. Alicia addressed her remarks altogether to Brule, Madge and Steven, pointedly and markedly ignoring Rue with the cool precision of one who has learned how to snub along with other more felicitous accomplishments.

There was never with Alicia any sense of guest and hostess relation: Rue was always quite subtly but definitely placed in the position of interloper, of intruder. So far, that is, as Alicia was able, with only Madge’s sympathy and backing, to indicate such a position.

Alicia’s accusation of the previous day had merely marked their relative positions. She had not repeated it in the presence of the police. Brule had said no word of it. Steven, lost in his own abstraction, appeared to have forgotten it.

Rue had not forgotten. Yet was obliged in that rather horrible emergency to accept Alicia’s presence. If only she were not so beautiful, thought Rue, and so sure of herself. The older woman’s worldly poise was, just then, a weapon. For Rue, too strongly aware of Alicia, had not the experience of dissembling Alicia had had; a word or a look would have betrayed her feelings to Alicia and to the others.

Pride is a hard taskmaster. But it was pride alone that kept Rue, more poised and certain of herself outwardly than she knew, in her rightful place that day at the table. Signaling to Gross and the waitress, giving low orders, replying now and then to Brule. Replies which Alicia apparently never heard. It was a relief when Guy came in, looking as always shiny and scrubbed and pink.

He was, however, too cheerful, so there was a meretricious air about it, as if his sympathy were all on the outside, and actually inside, he was congratulating himself on being definitely and completely an outsider. Or so it seemed to Rue. Brule greeted him with an air of anxiety and relief as if, in spite of Brule’s strength and indestructibility, he wanted Guy’s help.

“Thanks, yes; I’ve had lunch, but I’ll have coffee,” said Guy.

They went into the library for coffee. It was from the first word curiously like a council of state, except that it was so brief. For it lasted only half an hour or so, and the burden of Guy’s warnings was simply, silence.