The Oxford Book of American Det (42 page)

It was not, however, a comfortable chair. And neither were the moments that followed comfortable, for Jessica sat sternly erect in a chair opposite Susan, folded her hands firmly in her silk lap and said exactly nothing. Susan started to speak a time or two, thought better of it, and herself sat in rather rigid silence. And was suddenly aware that she was acutely receptive to sight and sound and feeling.

It was not a pleasant sensation.

For she felt queerly as if the lives that were living themselves out in that narrow old house were pressing in upon her—as if long-spoken words and long-stifled whispers were living yet in the heated air.

She stirred restively and tried not to think of Marie Wray. Queer how difficult it was, once having seen Marie and heard her speak, not to think of that brooding figure—

sitting in its web of shadows, waiting.

Three old women living in an old house. What were their relations to one another?

Two of them she had seen and had heard speak, and knew no more of them than she had known. What about Caroline—the one who was afraid? She stirred again and knew Jessica was watching her.

They heard the bell, although it rang in some back part of the house. Jessica looked satisfied and rose.

It’s David,” she said. At the door into the hall she added in a different tone: “And I suppose Caroline, too.”

Susan knew she was tense. Yet there was nothing in that house for her—Susan Dare—

to fear. It was Caroline who was afraid.

Then another woman stood in the doorway. Caroline, no doubt. A tall slender woman, a blonde who had faded into tremulous, wispy uncertainty. She did not speak. Her eyes were large and blue and feverish, and two bright pink spots fluttered in her thin cheeks, and her bare thin hands moved. Susan rose and went to her and took the two hands.

“But you’re so young,” said Caroline. Disappointment throbbed in her voice.

“I’m not really,” said Susan.

“And so little—“ breathed Caroline.

“But that doesn’t matter at all,” said Susan, speaking slowly, as one does to a nervous child. There were voices in the hall, but she was mainly aware of Caroline.

“No, I suppose not,” said Caroline, finally looking into Susan’s eyes. Terrified, Jim had said. Curious how right Jim managed to be.

Caroline’s eyes sought into Susan’s, and she was about to speak when there was a rustle in the doorway. Caroline’s uncertain lips closed in a kind of gasp, and Jessica swept into the room.

“But I must know what she’s afraid of,” thought Susan. “I must get her alone—away from Jessica.”

“Take off your coat, Caroline,” said Jessica. “Don’t stand there. I see you’ve spoken to Susan Dare. Put away your hat and coat and then come down again.”

“Yes, Jessica,” said Caroline. Her hands were moving again, and she looked away.

“Go on,” said Jessica. Her voice was not sharp, it was merely undefeatable.

“Yes, Jessica,” said Caroline.

“Marie is reading,” said Jessica. “You needn’t speak to her now unless you wish to do so. You may take Susan Dare in to see her later.”

“Yes, Jessica.”

Caroline disappeared and in her place stood a man, and Susan was murmuring words of acknowledgment to Jessica’s economical introduction.

David, too, was blond, and his eyes were darkly blue. He was slender and fairly tall; his mouth was fine and sensitive, and there was a look about his temples and around his eyes that was—Susan sought for the word and found it—wistful. He was young and strong and vibrant—the only young thing in the house—but he was not happy. Susan knew that at once. He said:

“How do you do, Miss Dare?”

“Don’t go upstairs yet, David,” said Jessica. Her voice was less harsh, she watched him avidly. “You ought to rest.”

“Not now, Aunt Jessica. I’ll see you again, Miss Dare.” He walked away. “Aunt Marie all right?” he called from the stairway.

“Perfectly,” said Jessica. Her voice was harsh again. “She’s reading...” Afterward Susan tried to remember whether she could actually hear David’s steps upon the padded stairs or whether she was only half consciously calculating the time it took to climb the stairs—the time it took, or might have taken to walk along the hall, to enter a room. She was sure that Jessica did not speak. She merely sat there.

Why did Jessica become rigid and harsh again when David spoke of Marie? Why did—

A loud, dreadful crash of sound forever shattered the silence in the house. It fell upon Susan and immersed her and shook the whole house and then receded in waves. Waves that left destruction and intolerable confusion.

Susan realised dimly that she was on her feet and trying to move toward the stairway, and that Jessica’s mouth was gray, and that Jessica’s hands were clutching her.

“Oh, my God—David—“ said Jessica intelligibly, and Susan pushed the woman away from her.

She reached the stairway, Jessica beside her, and at the top of the stairs two figures were locked together and struggling in the upper hall.

“Caroline,” screamed Jessica. “What are you doing? Where’s Marie—where—“

“Let me go, Caroline!” David was pulling Caroline’s thin clutching arms from around him. “Let me go, I tell you. Something terrible has happened. You must—“ Jessica brushed past them and then was at the door of Marie’s room.

“It’s Marie!”
she cried harshly.
“Who shot her?”
Susan was vaguely conscious of Caroline’s sobbing breaths and of David’s shoulder pressing against her own. Somehow they had all got to that open doorway and were crowding there together.

It was Marie.

She sat in the same chair in which she’d been sitting when Susan saw her so short a time ago. But her head had fallen forward, her whole body crumpled grotesquely into black-silk folds.

Jessica was the first to enter the room. Then David. Susan, feeling sick and shaken, followed. Only Caroline remained in the doorway, clinging to the casing with thin hands, her face like chalk and her lips blue.

“She’s been shot,” said Jessica. “Straight through the heart.” Then she looked at David. “Did Caroline kill her, David?”

“Caroline
kill Marie! Why, Caroline couldn’t kill anything!” he cried.

“Then who killed her?” said Jessica. “You realise, don’t you, that she’s dead?” Her dark gaze probed deeper and she said in a grating whisper: “Did you kill her, David?”

“No!” cried David.
“No!”

“She’s dead,” said Jessica.

Susan said as crisply as she could: “Why don’t you call a doctor?” Jessica’s silk rustled, and she turned to give Susan a long cold look, “There’s no need to call a doctor. Obviously she’s dead.”

“The police, then,” said Susan softly. “Obviously, too—she’s been murdered.”

“The police,” cried Jessica scornfully. “Turn over my own cousin—my own nephew—

to the police. Never.”

“I’ll call them,” Susan said crisply, and whirled and left them with their dead.

On the silent stairway her knees began to shake again. So this was what the house had been waiting for. Murder! And this was why Caroline had been afraid. What, then, had she known? Where was the revolver that had shot Marie? There was nothing of the kind to be seen in the room.

The air was hot—the house terribly still—and she, Susan Dare, was hunting for a telephone—calling a number—talking quite sensibly on the whole—and all the time it was entirely automatic action on her part. It was automatic, even, when she called and found Jim Byrne.

“I’m here,” she said. “At the Wrays’. Marie has been murdered—“

“My God!” said Jim and slammed up the receiver.

The house was so hot. Susan sat down weakly on the bottom step and huddled against the newel post and felt extremely ill. If she were really a detective, of course, she would go straight upstairs and wring admissions out of them while they were shaken and confused and before they’d had time to arrange their several defences. But she wasn’t a detective, and she had no wish to be, and all she wanted just then was to escape. Something moved in the shadows under the stairs—moved. Susan flung her hands to her throat to choke back a scream, and the little monkey whirled out, peered at her worriedly, then darted up the window curtain and sat nonchalantly on the heavy wooden rod.

Her coat and hat were upstairs. She couldn’t go out into the cold and fog without them—and Jim Byrne was on the way. If she could hold out till he got there—

David was coming down the stairs.

“She says it’s all right to call the police,” he said in a tight voice.

“I’ve called them.”

He looked down at her and suddenly sat on the bottom step beside her.

“It’s been hell,” he said quite simply. “But I didn’t think of—murder.” He stared at nothing, and Susan could not bear the look of horror on his young face.

“I understand,” she said, wishing she did understand.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Until—just lately. I knew—oh, since I was a child I’ve known I must—“

“Must what?” said Susan gravely.

He flushed quickly and was white again.

“Oh, it’s a beastly thing to say. I was the only—child, you know. And I grew up knowing that I dared have no—no favourite—you see? If there’d been more of us—or if the aunts had married and had their own children—but I didn’t understand how—

how violent—“ the word stopped in his throat, and he coughed and went on—“how strongly they felt—“

“Who?”

“Why, Aunt Jessica, of course. And Aunt Marie. And Aunt Caroline.”

“Too many aunts,” said Susan dryly. “What was it they were violent about?”

“The house. And each other. And—and other things. Oh, I’ve always known, but it was all—hidden, you know. The surface was—all right.” Susan groped through the fog. The surface was all right, he’d said. But the fog parted for a rather sickening instant and gave her an ugly glimpse of an abyss below.

“Why was Caroline afraid?” said Susan.

“Caroline?”
he said, staring at her.
“Afraid!”
His blue eyes were brilliant with anxiety and excitement. “See here,” he said, “if you think it was Caroline who killed Marie, it wasn’t. She couldn’t. She’d never have dared. I m—mean—“ he was stammering in his excitement—“I mean, Caroline wouldn’t hurt a fly. And Caroline wouldn’t have opposed Marie about anything. Marie—you don’t know what Marie was like.”

“Exactly what happened in the upstairs hall?”

“You mean—when the shot—“

“Yes.”

“Why, I—I was in my room—no, not quite—I was nearly at the door. And I heard the shot. And it’s queer, but I believe—I believe I knew right away that it was a revolver shot. It was as if I had expected—“ He checked himself. “But I hadn’t expected—I—

“ He stopped; dug his fists desperately into his pockets and was suddenly firm and controlled—“But I hadn’t actually expected it, you understand.”

“Then when you heard the shot you turned, I suppose, and looked.”

“Yes. Yes, I think so. Anyway, there was Caroline in the hall, too. I think she was screaming. We were both running. I thought of Marie—I don’t know why. But Caroline clutched at me and held me. She didn’t want me to go into Marie’s room. She was terrified. And then I think you were there and Jessica. Were you?”

“Yes. And there was no one else in the hall? No one came from Marie’s room?” His face was perplexed, terribly puzzled.

“Nobody.”

“Except—Caroline?”

“But I tell you it couldn’t have been Caroline.”

The doorbell began to ring—shrill sharp peals that stabbed the shadows and the thickness of the house.

“It’s the police,” thought Susan, catching her breath sharply. The boy beside her had straightened and was staring at the wide old door that must be opened.

Behind them on the padded stairway something rustled. “It’s the police,” said Jessica harshly. “Let them in.”

Susan had not realised that there would be so many of them. Or that they would do so much. Or that an inquiry could last so long. She had not realised either how amazingly thorough they were with their photographs and their fingerprinting and their practiced and rapid and incredibly searching investigation. She was a little shocked and more than a little awed, sheerly from witnessing at first hand and with her own eyes what police actually did when there was murder.

Yet her own interview with Lieutenant Mohrrv was not difficult. He was brisk, youthful, kind, and Jim Byrne was there to explain her presence. She had been very thankful to see Jim Byrne, who arrived on the heels of the police.

“Tell the police everything you know,” he had said.

“But I don’t know anything.”

And it was Lieutenant Mohrn who, oddly enough, brought Susan into the very centre and hub of the whole affair.

But that was later—much later. After endless inquiry, endless search, endless repetitions, endless conferences. Endless waiting in the gloomy dining room with portraits of dead and vanished Wrays staring fixedly down upon policemen. Upon Susan. Upon servants whose alibis had, Jim had informed her, been immediately and completely established.

It was close to one o’clock when Jim came to her again.

“See here,” he said. “You look like a ghost. Have you had anything to eat?”

“No,” said Susan.

A moment later she was in the kitchen, accepting provender that Jim Byrne brought from the icebox.

“You do manage to get things done,” she said. “I thought newspapermen wouldn’t even be permitted in the house.”

“Oh, the police are all right—they’ll give a statement to all of us—treat us right, you know. More cake? And don’t forget I’m in on this case. Have you found out yet what Caroline was afraid of?”

“No. I’ve not had a chance to talk to her. Jim, who did it?” He smiled mirthlessly.

“You’re asking me! They’ve established, mainly, three things: the servants are clear; there was no one in the house besides Jessica and David and Caroline.”

“And me,” said Susan with a small shudder. “And—Marie.”

“And you,” agreed Jim imperturbably. “And Marie. Third, they can’t find the gun.

Jessica and you alibi each other. That leaves David and Caroline. Well—which of them did it? And why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But, Jim, I’m frightened.”