The Glass Slipper (19 page)

“Had you — any definite evidence that Crystal was murdered?” he asked.

It brought Steven up short. He pushed his hands through his hair, stared at Brule and said: “Good God, no.”

“Then why —”

“Why did I write the letters to the police? Why, to bring things to a head, of course. To clear it all up. To” — his hands groped into the air — “to bring it all out in the open so we could see where we stood.”

Brule said a little grimly: “Well, if that was your intention, you succeeded.” Steven just looked at him blankly and helplessly, and Brule said, more gently again:

“You mean you thought this would be a good way to” — rather helplessly in his turn he used Steven’s word — “clear things up?” He stopped there, as if credulity had strained too far and Steven said eagerly:

“Yes! Yes, I did! I — when it occurred to me it seemed such a — a practical way to go about it —”

This was too much even for Brule, who said: “Practical? Good God!”

“Oh, I see now it wasn’t! I mean, I didn’t realize what it meant! I thought the police might just — oh, inquire a bit, stir things up. I couldn’t go on any longer as it was, and I —” He stopped and again shoved his hands through his hair and said with a touch of tragedy: “But I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t,” said Brule gravely. “Well, it’s done now, Steve. Forget it.”

“Forget it?”

“Certainly. Let the police go on worrying about it. That’s their trouble.”

“But, Brule, you don’t seem to understand. I’m a murderer.”

“You —” Brule strode to where Steven stood and caught him swiftly and savagely by the arm. “What do you mean, Steve? You can’t mean —”

“I mean I’ve caused two murders. Two. If I hadn’t written the letters,” said Steven with the simple reasonableness of a child, “neither of those murders would have occurred. So I’m going to tell the police. All about it. The whole truth —”

“About Alicia — too?”

Steven hesitated, his troubled, dark eyes seeking Brule’s.

“Alicia… But it’s the truth, Brule. Alicia and you…”

There was another moment of silence. Then Brule said heavily:

“Oh yes, it’s the truth all right. About — Alicia, I mean. And me.”

T
he truth.

Well, she’d already known it. She hadn’t needed confirmation. And Andy would be waiting, and she must leave that house — forever, it would be — before night. Before it was too dark to insure the success of Andy’s plan.

Steven had moved. He had taken a step nearer Brule and put his hand, now, on Brule’s shoulder. It was the last thing she would have expected Steven to do, yet it was like him, too.

For his hand was obviously a comforting one. He said, “Brule, I understand. Don’t worry. I — I’m all right about it now. I’ve come through the worst of it — the jealousy and all that. It’s all clear now. I — I’ve learned that you have to accept things. Alicia loves you. It’s just one of those things; one of us had to lose. And — all those months when I didn’t know — well, I understand that now, too. You’ve always been so good to me, Brule; you were always so strong and I was weak, and you — you understood everything. How could you have come to me and told me the truth when you knew how I loved her?”

Rue said brusquely: “I’m — going upstairs —”

“Wait, Rue,” said Brule. “I want you to hear —”

“I’ve heard enough.” She was at the door. The studio was empty, the side door unguarded.

But Brule caught her almost angrily by the wrist and whirled her back into the room.

“You will listen,” he said. “You owe me that much. You’ve asked for the truth and you’re going to get all of it.”

She wrenched her wrist from his grasp.

“I’ve had the truth,” she said and looked at him. His face wore its mask, but his eyes were dark and bright with anger. “I’m going,” she said and caught herself on the verge of saying, “… away from your house. I’ll never return. I’ll make things easy for you. You can have your divorce. You can marry Alicia —” She didn’t say any of it. She glanced at Steven, standing there so the light fell clearly upon his slender, haggard face, with its sensitive mouth, its high forehead, its look of introspection and the faint, intangible stamp of weakness.

It was only in his music that he had command; life itself and the emotions and problems engendered simply by living were too much for him. Yet was it that he comprehended too much rather than too little?

He said suddenly: “Rue, will you forgive me? It seemed the only way then. I — didn’t know what I was letting you in for — I didn’t know what I was doing.” He said it simply. That probably was true too. He honestly, really didn’t know what he was doing when he wrote the letters. And started the whole horrible train of events. As a pebble rolled out of place by the unthinking hands of a child may start a whole slide. But the slide has to be there, waiting, accumulated for some immediate, small release.

She put out her hand to him. It was a gesture of farewell, but neither of the men knew it. He took it in his own.

She said: “I know, Steven.” And had gone from the room and was halfway up the stairs before the little phrase proved its familiarity. It was what he had said to her. “I know, Rue.”

Meaning, I understand.

Poor Steven. But she wouldn’t think of Brule. Not now. There were things to do.

No one was in the upper hall.

Her decision to leave was made. It was the sensible, indeed the only course to take. She told herself that, selecting and quietly donning a dark tweed coat. She pulled on a small brown hat and over it all her bright green rain cape with its concealing hood. Remember fare for the elevated, she told herself; there was a little change in the pocket of her coat; that was all right, then. Hat, coat, thin green rain cape with its hood; money for el fare and — oh yes, gloves.

All ready now. She must hurry; already the windows in the bedroom beyond were long gray rectangles and the shadows increasing in the room itself.

She didn’t stop for a farewell look, but the room watched her leave — the room and the swan bed and the great gilded screen. The room where Crystal died and where Julie died and where the scent of roses was cloyingly sweet.

She was done with that room forever.

At the foot of the stairs the mail, just delivered, lay on a table, and her own name on a letter caught her glance. She took the letter, thrust it, too, in her pocket and went on without looking closely at it.

So far it had been easy; no one had looked at her, no one had stopped her. Perhaps it wouldn’t be difficult.

She didn’t know, and there was no way for her to know, then, of a conversation that was, perhaps, going on at that very moment. In a brightly lighted, official-looking room at police headquarters, over a table which was bare except for a stack of reports and a small brown bag.

“I’m going to make the arrest. She gave the woman poison in medicine likely; she gave it to the Garder girl in the tea. There’s drugs enough in this bag —”

“You haven’t questioned her about it; you’ve had it since —”

“Since you found it in the cupboard. I know. I didn’t need to question her about it; I already knew it belonged to her; I know what’s in it. Now the case is pretty complete, and I’m ready to make the arrest. I think it’ll stick, and she’ll break down when she sees this bag and knows we’ve had it all along. She’ll confess.”

Silence. Then, slowly:

“You may be right, Lieutenant. I’d feel better if the bartender would talk.”

“We’ll make him talk.”

Silence again. Then Angel’s voice sharp with impatience:

“What’s the matter? You’re still not satisfied, Funk?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You still think the bag of nurses’ supplies and drugs indicates her innocence?”

“Well, Lieutenant, I still feel if she’d taken poison from that bag she’d have got rid of the bag damn quick. Or at least the medicines in it. I still feel she’d have had the sense to get rid of such evidence… Look at the stuff, Lieutenant.” Dirty little fingers clawed into the little bag, pawing over small bottles, neatly labeled, little boxes with ℞ on them.

Silence again. Then a voice at the door: “Funk, you’re wanted at the Town Club. That cloakroom business again…”

By that time, probably, Rue was outside the house, safely through the hall and past the closed library door, and through Steven’s studio and out the side door.

Cold air and rain touched her face. Her bright green cape was like a flag. A policeman, in uniform with a heavy caped mackintosh over it, was standing at the back gate. He turned, saw her, and Rue, her heart pounding, walked along the brick walk toward him.

“Is it — all right,” she said, “if I walk up and down here?”

“Certainly, Mrs Hatterick,” he said at once. His heavy face looked cold and impassive; he watched her stolidly.

She was approaching the difficult part of it; well, she told herself, it would either work or it wouldn’t. She’d carry out the bit of acting Andy had suggested.

She walked up and down the strip of lawn, the second turn brought her near the hedge which divided their strip of lawn from Guy’s; she hesitated, went through the little opening, and the policeman did not stop her. She went up the walk toward the door of Guy’s conservatory, a small glassed room flung out from and adjoining his dining room. She hesitated there, too, perceptibly, as if in indecision, and that was the hardest thing to do because she felt perfectly certain it would give the policeman the time and a chance (if he needed it) to stop her.

But, incredibly, it worked as Andy had said it would work.

Apparently the policeman took it to mean, simply, that she’d had an impulse to enter that house (what would be more natural than to want to see their lawyer?), had paused to think again, and then had entered.

For she did so, and the door to the conservatory was not locked. That had been the second point of danger.

She closed the door behind her and peered through at the policeman. He was watching and had not moved, but she thought there was a kind of stiffness and alertness about that stolid figure. She removed the green cape swiftly and dropped it behind a bench. The air was moist and hot, laden with scent of wet earth and freesias.

Now hurry. Quick.

Hurry — because the policeman had moved. He was following her. No, he was going into the Hatterick house. To set another policeman on her trail? To get help? It didn’t matter. She knew what to do.

She also knew the general plan of Guy’s house. If anyone questioned her — but no one did. There were only a cook and butler on the premises; Guy was not yet at home from the office. The door leading to the dining room was not locked either. From that point on the coast was ridiculously clear. Through Guy’s dining room and through the hall and out the front door, and there was no policeman in sight, and the corner of the house shielded her from her own street.

Into the hurrying groups of pedestrians. With the bright green cape for which, at first, they would look among all those pedestrians, left in the conservatory. Take the first taxi you see — there was one, cruising. She got into it.

Now for the Evanston elevated. She told the driver to go to the nearest el station.

Afterward she remembered that ride, hurrying, dodging other hurrying cars and taxis and trucks and the homeward flow of Loop workers.

She never knew what station he took her to; but they arrived at a lighted corner with the el thundering and clattering overhead, and she paid him and joined the flow of people surging up those long steep flights of stairs. Kept with them, in a line to pay her fare; stood with them, only one of all those milling people, their faces looking oddly white, like the papers they carried folded longitudinally. Struggled with those nearest her to board the first train that clattered, lighted and noisy, out of the night, and jerked to a stop before her and said in bright letters “Evanston and North Shore Local.”

Soon she’d be with Andy — safe.

Rain slashed the windows.

It was still raining when she got out at the Anchor Street station (barely within the city limits); still raining steadily and drearily when, descending from the platform, she looked around and found, as Andy had predicted she would find somewhere near, a small, desolate-looking little drugstore. She went in. Sat at a table and ordered hot cocoa, and the shining white table reminded her of that other night, so short a time ago, when she’d sat in the bright din of another drugstore. With Andy.

When would he come?

Time passed and she finished the hot cocoa. Time passed and she heard newspapers hawked on the street outside and her own name, but wouldn’t buy one and read it.

Time passed and she didn’t once think of the letter in her pocket.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Andy finally came. Came hurriedly, his coat collar turned up about his face, with barely a word of greeting, taking her swiftly out of the shabby but lighted little drugstore, down the street into the shadow of the stark elevated pillars where his car waited. Only it wasn’t his car. It was one Rue had never seen — but it wasn’t a new car.

It was old and battered and even in the dim light looked as if it wouldn’t run for more than a mile or two. It might have come out of a junk heap.

Andy was holding the door open.

“Get in,” he said.

As she did so a curiously irrelevant thought came to her mind. She wondered what Andy had done with the knife she’d given him. It was irrelevant and she dismissed it.

Andy got in the car beside her.

T
he street stretched emptily ahead of them like a long tunnel, starkly outlined by the el columns which were shadow and substance intermixed, dotted bleakly at intervals with wavering, rain-blurred street lights.

Where there was light the steelwork of the elevated structure made an interlaced regular pattern of shadows. She thought of Steven’s music; “Arabesque at Night.”

And wondered, with again a curious irrelevancy, when she would see Steven again — if she would ever see Steven again.

She had no idea where she was. Warehouses seemed to line the sides of the tunnel. They turned and turned again, and she was completely at a loss. Even the guiding elevated columns were gone.

Andy said nothing; he was hunched forward peering into the rain ahead, trying to see through the wavering, dim light lane.

She could see only his white, strained-looking profile.

Well, it had all been as simple as he had told her it would be. No one knew she had gone, or if by this time they knew and had found the green cape, still she had completely escaped them. They couldn’t possibly find her.

And she could telephone as soon as she was safe.

Safe? She was safe now. With Andy.

“How — far is it?” she asked above the wheezy rattle of the engine.

“H’m?” Andy came out of his abstraction with a jerk, said: “Oh — you mean to Mrs Black’s. Not far. We’ll go the back way, and come in again on Dempster Road. It’s — safer that way.” He glanced at her once, smiled briefly as if to reassure her and went back to his anxious scrutiny of the road ahead.

Not far. She drew a long, weary breath. She’d escaped the Hatterick house and the threats it had held for her. The difficult part of it had been accomplished. She settled her chin down into the collar of her coat and felt in her pocket for cigarettes. Perhaps her fingers actually touched the letter that was there.

She had cigarettes but no matches.

And Andy handed her a small advertising folder of matches, and when she had lighted her cigarette she returned the pack of matches to him. There can scarcely be a smaller or a more inconsequential act.

Yet it was in fact the last small link in a chain.

Neither of them spoke. The rain was making it increasingly difficult to see the road, and Andy, after several attempts to make an antiquated windshield wiper function, gave it up and bent forward over the wheel. They were leaving the straggling outskirts of town; she could see nothing of houses except now and then a light flickering off somewhere in the rainy darkness. But apparently they were on one of the west and north highways, for now and then a lighted filling station or a deserted vegetable stand loomed up along the road and was passed.

She said presently, idly, “Did you say Mrs Black? I thought you called her Mrs Brown…”

Andy said abruptly: “Huh? Oh. Oh yes. I meant Mrs Brown… Gosh, it’s hard to see.” He hesitated at what appeared to be a crossroad, looked along the intersecting expanse of wet black pavement leading into nothingness so far as Rue could see, appeared to decide against it and went on.

Probably they were in the country now; Andy himself seemed a little uncertain.

“Where are we?” said Rue.

“I — don’t know exactly. That is, Morton Grove is over there somewhere. And Milwaukee ought to cross this road.”

She knew and did not know the vicinity; it was vaguely north and west of Chicago and of the north shore suburbs. But it was a great, half-deserted section with muddy flats and open spaces, and a bewildering lacing of highways crossed and recrossed it.

There were roadhouses; there were filling stations. There were, now and then, small suburbs. But for the most part it was to Rue a blank and uncharted territory, always bewildering and that night, oddly, a little frightening. It was so very dark. And Andy said nothing.

They passed a filling station which was lighted at the roadside, but the building itself was dark. Closed, thought Rue, and it added to the desolation of the spot.

And they’d gone only about a quarter of a mile farther on when the car ran out of gas.

It chugged, wheezed, made another effort to move and stopped dead still.

Andy tried the starter, tried it again, swore and said incredulously:

“We’re out of gas. We can’t be. I had it filled — it must have leaked.”

He got out of the car and went around to the tank and returned. He stood at the door, his face looking ghostly white and like the face of a stranger in the faint light from the dash.

“We are out of gas,” he said and stared at her.

“There was a filling station back there,” said Rue. “It was closed, but perhaps —”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I can break in.” He stared at her again and said: “Yes, of course. I must have gas. I’ve got to have gas…”

It was rainy and dark, and they hadn’t passed another car for a long time. She pulled her coat around her and said: “I’ll go back with you.”

He roused at that. He wouldn’t have it; she’d get wet.

“I won’t be long,” he said. He looked at her again, eyes deeply shadowed and fixed, then he closed the door and disappeared into the murmurous darkness.

Rain slashed against the windows of the car.

It was very quiet except for the rain and very lonely. She could see no lights in any direction.

She settled herself to wait. It would take Andy, she supposed, about twenty minutes to walk back to the filling station, rouse someone or, as he said, break into the place, get some gasoline and trudge back through the rain to the car.

Well, if no car came along in the meantime, then there was no one to molest her. Consequently the sense of uneasiness that nagged at her had no meaning.

She reached for another cigarette and again had no matches. But in reaching into her pocket her fingers encountered the letter, and, because she had nothing else to do, she pulled it out, opened it and read it by the small light on the dashboard.

Read it — and knew why she was afraid.

It was a letter from Elizabeth Donney. And it enclosed another letter. Both were brief. She read Elizabeth’s first.