The Glass Slipper (18 page)

As she tried to conquer the conviction of truth in what Alicia had said of Brule and of Steven. “Brule loves me,” Alicia had said. And she’d also said, “Brule murdered Crystal.” Once Alicia had accused Rue openly of having murdered Crystal; was that to shield Brule — and thus herself?

The trouble was Brule could have murdered Crystal.

It was after that fateful interview with Alicia that Rue saw Andy. And the memory of Alicia’s words was stronger than even the thing she found hidden so carefully, with such diabolic simplicity and shrewdness, in her room. Although it was that that, actually, terrified her and reduced any lingering sense of unreality to sharp and poignant reality.

For it was a knife; a sharp, surgical knife, wiped free of fingerprints, rolled neatly in a red-and-white scarf belonging to Rue and tucked down into the cushions of the chaise longue in her room.

The room hadn’t yet been searched by the police. If they had searched it, it would have been the first thing they found. Rue, returning to her room after seeing Alicia, going absently to the chaise longue, happened to lean back upon her hand so her fingers came in contact with the little roll.

She pulled it out and looked with utter, chill horror at the thing disclosed. The deliberate malevolence of it shook her as nothing else would have done.

“Conclusive evidence,” Alicia had said.

It was then that Andy came. Came and asked to see her, and (this time) was permitted to do so. She put on a suede jacket with deep pockets and hid the knife in a pocket. Andy, familiar with the house, was waiting for her in Brule’s little study on the second floor.

He, too, closed the door before he spoke.

“Rue, have you seen the chart for the day of Crystal’s death?” he asked at once.

“Yes.”

He didn’t ask what entries there were. His face was white and strained, his eyes brilliant, and he was nervous, watching the door.

“Rue, you are not safe in this house. You can’t stay here. I won’t let you stay. Not another night.”

“I can’t leave.”

“Yes, you can. I’ll fix things. Listen, there’s a woman, a dear old lady who’s a patient of mine. She’s — fond of me. She’ll take you in and take care of you. It’ll be safe there… I’ll fix it so we can get away without anyone knowing it; the police will stop us if they know. But once you are safe we can phone and tell them where you are. They can put a guard in her house for you; anything. But they can’t compel you to stay in this house. It” — his voice broke a little — “it isn’t safe here. Don’t you understand that?”

Understand it? She understood too well.

He caught assent in her silence.

“Rue — will you come?”

She closed her eyes. The knife was like a weight in her pocket.

“Yes,” she said. “Tell me how — and where.”

A
ndy knew exactly where and how. It was simple, he said.

“If it works,” said Rue after listening.

“It will work,” said Andy. “Listen, I’ll repeat it ”

“If they think I’m trying to escape,” said Rue, feeling as if she were talking of someone else, “they’ll arrest me. I mean, it — seems to prove guilt.”

“Not at all. You’ll be no worse off than you are now if they do stop you. But they aren’t going to discover you’ve gone until you are safely there and telephone to them. They can’t accuse you of attempting an escape if you tell them exactly where you are and your reasons for going. You can’t be compelled to stay in this house.”

Andy didn’t know the most important reason. She put her hand in her pocket. He was watching her anxiously, yet listening, too, for the muffled murmur of voices in the dining room.

She said in a small voice: “Look, Andy,” and showed him the knife.

“
Rue
! What —”

She told him; briefly.

“That settles it,” said Andy. “Now you’ve got to go… What a devil that woman is!”

“Alicia?”

“She hates you, Rue. But I didn’t think she’d go so far as this. Well, give me the knife; I’ll get rid of it somewhere. And I’ll go right now and telephone to Mrs Brown. Don’t bring any clothes; a bag would attract attention, and you’d never shake the police. You can have them send over anything you want after you’re safely at her house.”

He took her hands, held them briefly, said: “Don’t fail me. I love you so, Rue. I can’t let you stay here another night.”

But after he’d gone his plan didn’t sound so easy as when he told her of it. Yet escape from that house was just then for her the only sensible course. It was too dangerous to remain — where traps lay waiting for her. Traps like that knife.

And if she told the police, what would they do? As they had done about the powder in the glass in her room; which was, so far as Rue could see, exactly nothing.

She looked at the scarf she still held in her hand. It was like Alicia to select a scarf Rue had worn often enough for it to be promptly identified. And a knife that could have been the knife whose short wicked thrust had ended Rachel’s life. And stopped her lips forever: so they could not reveal who had waited for her in the library, who had sent her for the charts, who, after that murderous, efficient thrust, had taken the charts (not knowing, yet, that the important chart was missing) and gone away so quietly that only a small current of air betrayed the passing.

It could have been that knife, keen because it was a surgical instrument, short, sharp — efficient as the murderous thrust had been efficient. Whether it was actually the knife the murderer had used, or a knife Alicia had discovered and selected, with that devilish simplicity, because it suited her purpose — in either case it ought to be given to the police.

And she didn’t dare do that.

At any rate it was out of her possession now. But the sheer malevolence of the attempt chilled her. Well, Andy had offered her a refuge from more of such threats. She started upstairs, paused irresolutely to give the room, with its books, its smoldering coal fire, its deep, comfortable chairs, a look that lingered like a farewell. She might have been happy in that room. How happy she didn’t dare permit herself to discover even in her too ready imagination.

Instinct told her that in all probability she would never return to the room and that house to live. When she left it now, it was almost certainly forever.

Alicia had won. Or was it that there had never been a contest; Alicia simply remained in the place she had always had.

There was no need to see Brule before she went away; it would be better not to see him. She looked at her watch; four o’clock. It was growing dark, and the rain that had threatened all that day was drawing nearer. There is nothing, she thought, looking out into the back lawn where soon she must venture, nothing so dreary, nothing so desolate as a cold November rain, with the sky black with smoke and fog.

No, she wouldn’t see Brule again.

Besides every other reason there was one of concealment. Somehow, some way, uncannily, he would read in her eyes if in no other way her plan to leave his house.

Fifteen minutes more and she would get under way the little train of things Andy had told her to do. It was beginning to rain. A rain that would further his fatally simple plan. If it had been more difficult she would have refused.

She put one hand on the curtain beside her and leaned her face against the glass of the window to peer down into the rectangle of brown, wet lawn, hedged by the wall. She could barely see the door of the small conservatory, built onto Guy Cole’s house and opening upon that same scrap of lawn.

She wondered when and under what circumstances she would see Brule again; whatever it was, it wouldn’t be as his wife.

She thought rather dispassionately, now, of Alicia. Her acceptance of Alicia’s story had nothing to do with Alicia’s integrity or lack of it. Alicia would lie if it suited her purpose; Rue knew that. It was the truth that had convinced Rue. It stood out like peaks, recognizable, clear and sharp. Something that couldn’t be avoided.

Yet, out of the rain, out of the silence of the room, a small, strange thought came and laid its hand on her heart. If Brule had made one small gesture of love — a word, even, or a look — the truth in what Alicia had said wouldn’t have mattered. Would have lost its power. Would have been blunted on the shield that Rue would have possessed.

But Brule hadn’t.

Then why are you waiting? she asked herself sharply. It’s no good lingering here, hoping, waiting — wanting to see him again, when you know it’s best not to.

She took a long breath and turned and went to the door. And at that moment the dining-room door opened, a wave of voices and motion came from it, and Lieutenant Angel, Brule, the little Funk and one or two other detectives came into the hall.

Brule saw her and came toward her.

“They want to talk to you again,” he said.

Something intangible yet well marked, too, in their attitude, in their directness, perhaps, and in Brule’s intent face, hinted that there was news. And there was.

They began first — Angel and one of the detectives (and, a little timidly, Funk, who peered out now and then from the shadow of Angel’s shoulder) — to ask her again about the letters. Did she know anything at all of them?

“But I’ve told you I don’t. So many times —”

“Yet, Mrs Hatterick, all those letters, according to the dates on the postmarks were written within the two months’ time of your marriage. None before that marriage took place. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you? Or anyone?”

It suggested Alicia, but Alicia would have been afraid to write the letters and thus call attention to herself — the woman Brule had been in love with and the woman who, though Rue had forgotten it for a little, was actually one of Crystal’s legatees.

So Alicia wouldn’t have written those letters.

“No,” said Rue.

Angel gave her a sad look and cleared his throat.

“There’s no one — who might have had jealousy as a motive?” he inquired.

“Jealousy?” said Rue, still thinking of Alicia.

“I mean of you — on account of your marriage.”

“A disappointed suitor,” said Funk, popping out from the shadow to make things clear.

“Oh. No. No one.”

“Rue —” began Brule, but Angel went on rather quickly as if not to give Brule a chance to tell Rue whatever it was that he wanted to tell her.

“You see,” said Angel, “whoever wrote those letters — or at least whoever wrote seven of them — had access to the Town Club. Your husband is a member. And Doctor Crittenden is a member.”

“But —”

This time Brule wouldn’t be cut off.

“It’s this way, Rue,” he said swiftly. “The letters were typewritten, and the police have been searching for the typewriter on which they were written. I gather it’s taken a lot of time and persistence, for they’ve even taken samples from the typewriters in Madge’s school. However —”

“By great good luck,” said Funk.

“This Mr — er — Funk was sent to the Town Club on another errand —”

“Investigating cloakroom thefts,” said Funk.

“And while there discovered I was a member, and Andy, too, and got samples of the typing from the typewriters in the writing room. One of them corresponded to the typing of these letters.”

“Exactly,” said Funk with a note of dreamy satisfaction.

“But unfortunately,” said Brule, “it rather limits the possibilities. I mean, visitors are seldom in the writing rooms — at least ladies never are. I didn’t write the letters.”

“We never said you did, Doctor Hatterick,” said Angel.

“Andy wouldn’t have written them for exactly the same reasons. Either of us stood to lose more, or at least as much, as anyone else.”

“Does this fact suggest anything to you, Mrs Hatterick?” asked Angel.

It didn’t. Twenty minutes later, with rain now slanting against the windows and the consciousness of a darkening gray sky and of Andy, perhaps, waiting, she still had no further replies to make to their repeated questions.

Brule came back to her after the others left.

“They’ve gone,” he said, coming back into the library. “I watched Angel leave.”

She paused, conscious of the things she ought to be doing. The interview with the police had made her late. It was important to Andy’s plan for her to leave before it was dark.

Besides, face to face with him, she realized that there was after all, nothing she could say. Nothing that wouldn’t seem reproachful; nothing that wouldn’t appear to make demands she had no right to make.

She couldn’t, even, tell him she was leaving.

“What’s the matter?” said Brule. “You’re worried about something.”

She crumpled the red-and-white scarf in her hand and said a little crisply: “That’s rather in the category of an understatement, isn’t it, Brule?”

And just then Steven’s studio door banged, and Steven himself came into the library.

He was disheveled and excited. He said, “There you are,” glanced up and down the hall and closed the door after him.

“Look here,” he said. “I — I’m in a spot. I — don’t know why or — but I don’t know what to do —”

“What’s wrong with you, Steven? You look sick. What —”

“I am sick,” said Steven and sat down in a chair and put his face in his hands and groaned.

There was a sharp instant of silence. Rue always thought that Brule guessed what was coming, for he put down his cigarette and went quickly to Steven and put his hand urgently, yet with the gentleness that had always characterized his treatment of Steven, on Steven’s bent shoulder.

“Tell me, Steve,” he said. “Is it the police?”

“It’s the letters,” said Steven. He dropped his hands and looked up. And said wretchedly: “I wrote them.”

“Steven!” cried Rue in a smothered little gasp and stopped.

Brule didn’t say anything for a moment. And Steven cried:

“And I think they’re onto it. I wrote some of them at the Town Club. Times I’d be there waiting to lunch with you, I used a typewriter. Brule — what shall I do?”

Brule took a long breath then. He kept his hand on Steven’s shoulder and said quietly:

“Why did you write them, Steve?”

“I — Brule, I was out of my head. I — I don’t know why I did it. If I’d thought — if I’d had the sense to see what would be the result of it all… But I didn’t. I only knew that I — I had got to know the truth.”

Again there was a moment of silence while Brule looked at Steven and Steven at Brule. Brule said:

“You mean Alicia?”

Steven nodded.

“I thought you might have done it, Steve. Well — you know, now?”

Steven said after a moment, speaking more quietly: “Look here, Brule. I’ve done you — and Rue — an irreparable injury. I know that now. But then, you see — I’d better tell you the truth.”

“I think I understand,” said Brule slowly.

“I’d better say it, though. Rue — ought to know.” He turned to her, his eyes excited but pleading. “Rue, you see, after Crystal’s death — well, it was only after that that I began to wonder if Alicia really loved me. If I hadn’t been, in a way, a kind of cat’s-paw for her. She — was so different after Crystal died. Well — little by little you see, I began to perceive that she was in love with Brule. That she had been in love with him for a long time; little things I hadn’t noticed at the time began to — to take on color and significance. Then one day, here in this house, I heard her talking to Brule. She said —” He stopped and then went on, his manner grown simple and direct. “She said, Rue, that Crystal had been murdered and that she was afraid to marry Brule because sometime that — murder — would come out. And then where would she be? she said. I — there was more, but that was enough. It — opened my eyes, you see. And I — while it wasn’t the shock it might have been, still it was a — a kind of shock. It — well, I didn’t do anything about it; perhaps I was afraid to. But I kept thinking about it and wondering and trying to find a clear way out of it. And Brule had married you, Rue, and Alicia seemed to want things to go on with me just as before. She kept putting off marriage, yet keeping me —”

He pushed aside Brule’s steadying hand and got up and began to walk about the room, jerkily, stopping now and then to look anxiously at Rue and at Brule, as if there were something he had to convince them about.

Again the thought of time nudged at Rue. But she had to hear what Steven was saying. She had to know what Brule would say, after he’d listened.

Steven went on:

“That was the hellish thing about it. I mean, if she’d said she wanted our engagement to end, that she never intended to marry me — I could have taken that all right. Oh, I know you’re both thinking, Why didn’t he have it out with her, tell her he knew, tell her — Brule would have done it, but I — I couldn’t. You see,” said Steven, pausing in that restless walk to give them each that desperately troubled look, anxious of their belief in his words. “You see,” said Steven simply, “I love her. I — that’s the whole trouble, you see. I love her.”

Brule’s voice was still quiet.