The Glass Slipper (12 page)

“Don’t tell anything you don’t have to tell,” said Guy as he had said the night before. He looked at Madge over his cup, and his bland eyes had an extraordinarily cold look, and he said: “And that goes for you, too, young lady, and don’t forget it. There’ll be no more hysterical outbursts such as the one last night.”

Alicia permitted herself, then, to look at Rue. Alicia was as always perfectly turned out. Rue felt herself pale and hollow-eyed. Alicia was flawless, except if you looked very closely you might have noted that the fine small lines around her eyes were a little sharper. But Alicia knew things about light and shadows and when they enhance and when they betray. She had chosen a chair removed from the light on the table but facing it so there were no downward rays to discover shadows and hollows and lines. Yet her astounding beauty could have emerged from anything, without detection of flaw. She was wearing green, a moss-green wool which was a marvel of fitting and above which her pale skin was like a gardenia, and her frosted black hair shone, and her eyes were as bright and gleaming as any jewels. Alicia had been wearing black the night before; that meant then — why, it meant she’d sent for clothes! That she intended to stay; that Madge wanted her and would insist upon it.

Brule said, “You were going to talk about alibis, Guy. You said if we all had alibis it would simplify things.”

“Well, naturally,” said Guy cheerily. “And I think you have. According to your statements at any rate, it seemed to me as I listened last night that you wouldn’t be hard put to find alibis. Let me see.” He looked at them consideringly; Steven was the nearest, standing at arm’s length from Guy before the hearth, drinking his coffee meditatively, and he began with Steven.

“You, now,” he said, “were in your studio all day, weren’t you?”

Steven swallowed and said, “Yes. Working.”

“At the piano, I suppose?”

“Yes. Mostly. I transcribed some notes early in the morning.”

Steven showed the effects of nerve strain. There were great dark pockets around his deep-set eyes, and his fine, musician’s hand was noticeably unsteady; but then Steven was never particularly well, never had the lean, hard look of good health and iron nerves that Brule had. That day, in deference Rue supposed to Alicia’s presence, Steven had discarded his usual sweater for a handsome smoking jacket and looked unwontedly dressed up; his hair (also rather unusual in the daytime) was brushed smoothly back from his narrow, high forehead so the gray at the temples showed clearly and would have charmed his matinee hearers had he been giving that afternoon, as he often did, a concert. His deep brown eyes had as always a tendency to follow Alicia.

“But in the afternoon you were constantly at the piano?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“I heard him,” said Rue abruptly. “He was playing when Julie came and when Gross brought the tea tray and when — when Alicia came into the room just after Julie — died. It was the same piece. I know it well.”

“Exactly,” said Guy in a congratulatory way. “There you are. A perfect alibi. How about you, Alicia?”

“You know mine,” said Alicia smoothly. “I’ve already told you. I was at the Sidneys’; I came directly here from there. Any of them — Mrs Sidney or the maid who let me out the door — will back up my statement.”

“You came directly here? That is, you didn’t stop to shop or do any errands?”

Alicia’s slender eyebrows went up in two black arches.

“Perhaps. I walked from Banks Street. I remember looking in a florist’s window; oh yes, and I stopped at a little place near Shubert Street and ordered some handkerchiefs — rather intended to order them, but the girl I always order from was out, so I didn’t. I believe I stopped for a moment in a bookstore.”

Guy was looking worried.

“Anybody see you who knew you?”

“Why, I — don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Well, my dear Alicia, it’s not an alibi, so far.”

“I don’t suppose it is. But after all, I’m not accused of murdering the girl.”

“No one is accused yet,” said Guy. “Madge? Oh, you were in school.”

Rue made a motion to speak, and Guy saw and said quickly: “What is it, Rue?”

“There’s some question of how Alicia managed to enter the house,” said Rue, holding her fingers tight together on her lap. “Gross says he didn’t know Alicia was in the house, either.”

Alicia’s eyes were lambent. “Rue seems to have been consulting with the servants,” she said. “However, if anyone wants to know how I got into the house —”

“I’m afraid we do want to know just that,” said Guy. “Or rather the police will ask it.”

“Well then,” said Alicia, moving her small head contemptuously, “I simply walked in. I’ve had a key for a long time; Crystal gave it to me. I came into the house and realized Madge wasn’t home yet and — waited. But it was only a moment or two before I heard Rue scream. I saw no one while I waited. I think the police will understand my — being as I’ve been for so long free to come and go in this house; I don’t suppose they will take me to be an intruder.” She looked at Brule, who said nothing.

Guy cleared his throat and said: “Oh dear me, no, Alicia. Certainly not. Now then, Brule, what’s your alibi?”

Brule did not reply at once but seemed intent on the ashes of his cigarette. Finally he said: “I don’t have one, Guy. I was in my car at the time the murder seems to have occurred — driving to the hospital as a matter of fact, but I had stopped along the way. Due to the dark day there was a traffic mix-up — trolley car went off there at the bridge, held up a lot of cars for twenty minutes or so. I saw what was happening, managed to park the car and leave it and went into some little bar near there for a drink. I don’t know exactly what the place was called but imagine I can find it — if necessary,” he added with his eyes on Guy.

Guy wriggled very slightly.

“I’m afraid it will be necessary, Brule,” he said. “You know how the police are when they get the bit in their teeth.”

If they hadn’t known before, thought Rue later, they were soon to know. At two o’clock exactly police arrived again. If they had been lenient the night before when there was a question of whether or not the girl had actually been murdered, then they regretted that leniency. For they were like locusts devouring; no room, no cupboard, no shelf was too insignificant to receive scrutiny; no person above suspicion; no questions too trivial to be asked.

And they did not leave.

They were still there at nine that night when Rue had that unexpected interview with Alicia.

Each witness, that day, had been questioned separately and at length. Rue herself was just emerging from two long hours spent, again, in the dining room with light beating down in her face and a constant bombardment of questions hurled at her. Guy was there, too, mouthing unlighted cigarettes, flashing her warning glances now and then but unable to stem that flood of inquiry. She was trembling when they let her go at last, unutterably tired, her very knees unsteady, her head and eyes aching. But they had not arrested her. They had only shown her the teacup with her own fingerprints on it; had only demanded over and over again what she knew of poisons, what Julie had known of Crystal’s death, why Julie had come to see her. How long she had known Brule, and why they had married so soon after Crystal’s death, and how long they had planned that marriage. And, again and again, details of Crystal’s death. What had Julie told her: had Julie told her anything they hadn’t known about Crystal’s death?

She didn’t tell what Julie had said: didn’t say to them: She told me there was something I knew of Crystal’s death —
but I don’t know: Julie was wrong
.

If only she knew what Julie had meant and could tell them!

The little man called Funk, who had first come to question her, was present too. Skulking behind other and broader shoulders, examining the silver on buffet and serving table. And apparently obsessed with only one thing and that was the green on what he called the “deceased” hands. He kept popping out of obscurity to inquire, Had the deceased worn gloves? No? Well, had there been any kind of stain — not necessarily green but any color on the hands of the deceased? No? Well, did Mrs Hatterick know what caused the green on the deceased hands? Oh, Mrs Hatterick didn’t.

The thought of it was as always a little bizarre, a little frightening.

They had questioned no one else so long and so persistently. Yet in all that questioning they made only one or two perfunctory inquiries about the powder in the glass: Brule had told them, as he said he was going to do. Could they consider it a ruse to suggest her own innocence?

But if so, they still did not arrest her.

She encountered Alicia at the door of the small guest room, beside Brule’s study.

Alicia was at the door of that study, her lovely hand on the doorknob as if she were just leaving it. She paused and looked at Rue. Below were police, all around them was a fabric of continuous movement and sound. But in the upper hall just then there was no one.

Alicia’s bright gray eyes flickered once down the length of the narrow hall and toward the empty stairway and came back to Rue.

“Wait, Rue,” she said. “Have they arrested you?”

“No,” said Rue and opened the door to the guest room.

“Look here,” said Alicia suddenly. “Why don’t you confess and have done with it?”

I can’t talk to her, thought Rue and entered her room. Alicia’s white hand shot out, amazingly strong and wiry, and gripped her wrist.

“So you won’t reply,” she said. “Very well. But understand this. I’m staying here, you know. It’s my right to stay here. It’s my right,” said Alicia slowly. “Because Brule really wanted me to marry him. He asked me to marry him. He only married you because he knew Crystal had been murdered. He knew that sooner or later the truth would come out. He thought if he married you it would divert any possible suspicion from me. Now” — she relinquished Rue’s wrist and stood looking at her with bright, watchful triumph in her eyes — “so now do you understand just what your place is here? Just how much you can expect in the way of protection from Brule?”

T
he really dreadful thing about it was that Rue knew Alicia’s statement to have elements of truth.

It coincided in the most perfect way with what she knew and with what Andy had told her. It dovetailed completely with her own understanding with Brule; with the whole circumstance of their marriage. It fitted perfectly, even, Brule’s own admission about Crystal’s death.

After a moment she said deliberately:

“Why would you have been suspected — if you had been Brule’s wife when Crystal’s murder was discovered?”

Alicia blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and said:

“I don’t — Because there would be talk —”

“Do you mean that you knew when she died that it was murder? How did you know?”

Alicia had recovered: her eyes had a bright hard glaze.

“How could we fail to suspect it? You see now,” repeated Alicia with cool brutality, “that you can’t count on Brule’s protection.”

Rue said slowly: “Nevertheless I am Brule’s wife.” She closed the door.

It gave her the last word, and there was a small element of satisfaction in that.

Except that what Alicia had said sounded true. It explained Brule’s course; it explained her own marriage as nothing else had done. Andy hadn’t been right in his own surmise, that is, that a quarrel with Alicia, regretted too late, had accounted for Brule’s marriage to Rue. But in all probability that had been the answer Alicia or Brule himself had given Andy; if it had been a question of Crystal’s murder, and Alicia and Brule both hoping to keep it a secret, taking so drastic a step to protect Alicia in case the truth came out, then they would have told Andy (if they had to tell him anything) some such story.

But why was it necessary to protect Alicia?

And why had they been so certain Crystal was murdered?

After a long time she went to the telephone. She didn’t know just where Andy would be at that hour so she called the physicians’ exchange which gave her his club, the Town Club; the porter, however, assured her that Andy was not there and hadn’t been there since noon of the previous day. She hung up without leaving her name. Perhaps it was better not to talk to him just then.

That night she locked the door. It was when she was trying to sleep that she remembered a curious feeling of something being not quite right about the telephone; something a little different in the listening quality — and thought quite suddenly, Why, of course; the wire leading from the house is tapped.

It was a customary thing, she supposed; but it gave her a somewhat chilling glimpse into the police activity which surrounded them.

That night the house was completely silent except for a quiet, very much subdued game of poker that went on in Crystal’s gilt and satin drawing room with the silk curtains pulled; a game that was regularly interrupted for quiet rounds of the house, flashlights piercing the gloom of the butler’s pantry and the studio and second-floor stairway.

“I don’t like that studio,” said one of the policemen, returning to the drawing room. “Looks like a cave under that big piano.”

“You mean you don’t like murder… It’s your deal.”

“A machine-gun murder don’t bother me.” He unstrapped his heavy revolver holster and put it down. “It’s these fancy killings that get under my skin. You can’t figure ahead.” He indulged in a flight of fancy. “An amateur killer’s sort of like a lunatic. You don’t know where he’s going to break out next.”

“Go ahead and deal.”

Morning came slowly. Morning and the inquest.

It was, however, extraordinarily brief; all the witnesses were there, pale and uneasy in the cold morning light, in that official, barren room, laden with the mingled scents of stale tobacco and sweeping compound.

And almost all the witnesses were asked, briefly, to testify. It was not as difficult as Rue had feared it would be because of that briefness. Mainly it was a résumé of the circumstances surrounding Julie’s death. Rue sat in her turn in the witness’s chair and faced the jury and the coroner, who had a cold in his head and questioned her sadly between sneezes. There were other witnesses, but the most important one seemed to be Lieutenant Angel himself, for at the end of his testimony he read a letter.

“Miss Garder’s death immediately followed the opening of police inquiry into the death of another person about a year ago,” he said.

“Whose death?” said the coroner, knowing full well and sneezing loudly.

“That of Mrs Crystal Hatterick. The first wife of Doctor Hatterick, who is present.”

“What brought about this inquiry?”

“A series of typewritten letters addressed to the police and to the district attorney.”

“Do you have those letters?”

“Yes.”

“Will you read one and show it to the jury?”

He unfolded a sheet of paper and read while the coroner blew his nose.

“This one,” he said, “was addressed to the chief of police. It reads as follows: ‘This is to call your attention to the death a year ago of Mrs Brule Hatterick; the writer suggests police inquiry into the circumstances of her death.’ ” He folded up the paper, handed it to a clerk who gave it to the jury.

Angel looked down his nose. “There were a number of other letters,” he added thoughtfully. “Some openly stating that the woman was murdered. We have them all. The one I have read is typical.”

“How many were there altogether?”

“About eleven or twelve altogether. That is, that we know about. There may have been others to people in authority of which we were not informed.”

“Do you know who wrote the letters?”

“So far we have been unable to discover the writer.”

“And you have undertaken police inquiry into the death of Mrs Crystal Hatterick?”

“Yes.”

“And the results were what?”

“After securing an order for exhumation an autopsy was performed which revealed the presence of a poisonous drug in lethal quantity.”

“Your conclusion is that it was a violent death?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“You performed an autopsy also upon the body of Juliet Garder?”

“Yes.”

“And the results in that case were what?”

“The presence of a poisonous drug in lethal quantity was also discovered.”

“Has the laboratory completed its findings?”

“Not yet; tests to determine the exact analysis of the specimens are in progress.”

“But you have definitely determined that there was poison found in both bodies?”

“Yes.”

“That is all.”

The conclusion was foregone. There were a few questions designed to show that suicide was not a likely theory; this was readily accomplished by the coroner’s emphasizing of the fact that Julie’s death had almost immediately followed the opening of police inquiry into Crystal’s death.

Rue was brought briefly to the stand again in this connection.

“Mrs Hatterick — before your marriage to Doctor Brule Hatterick you were a nurse?”

“Yes.”

“You were one of the nurses who took care of the first Mrs Hatterick during her illness?”

“Yes.”

“You were, in fact, with her at the time of her death?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything unusual about her death?”

“No. That is, it was unexpected.”

“How was it unexpected?”

Rue, feeling Guy’s blue, humid gaze, said it was because they had thought she was better.

“But there were no symptoms of anything but a natural death,” she said firmly.

“I see. Is there any possibility, Mrs Hatterick, that your close friend Juliet Garder, who also nursed Mrs Crystal Hatterick, had any knowledge of her death that suggested it was murder?”

Rue hesitated. “Will you repeat that, please?”

The coroner sneezed, gave Guy a baleful glance and said:

“I’ll put it another way. Did you talk to Miss Garder at any time about Mrs Crystal Hatterick’s death?”

“I — I suppose we did in a general way.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“Not the exact words; I’m sure we must have talked of it.”

“Mrs Hatterick, did you ever say it was murder?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell Miss Garder you thought it was murder?”

“No.”

“Why did she come to see you the day she died?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t expect her?”

“No.”

“Mrs Hatterick, think; did Juliet Garder tell you that Crystal Hatterick was murdered?”

Rue was on oath; and the question permitted an honest answer.

“No,” she said clearly but held her breath for the next question.

Guy was purple and, at that stage, could do nothing. An inquest is not a trial, and there are leniencies.

“Did she tell you who murdered Crystal Hatterick?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it possible, judging from your knowledge of the situation, that Juliet Garder had some evidence bearing importantly upon the murder, if it was murder, of Crystal Hatterick?”

Guy got up and sat down again.

Rue said: “I don’t know.”

But the point had been made.

Rue was dismissed. A nurse from the hospital, trim and scrubbed-looking in tailored street clothes, gave Rue a recognizing little nod as she passed her, and went to the witness chair. She told of seeing Julie at lunch the day of her death and that she was in good spirits and that there had been nothing that she knew of to suggest suicide.

“You talked with her at lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Did she mention the police inquiry into the death of Mrs Crystal Hatterick?”

“No.”

“Did she — did you have reason to believe that she believed Mrs Hatterick had been murdered?”

“No,” said the nurse, Elizabeth Donney, after a moment.

The coroner frowned. “But she did seem to be in good spirits?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing at all to suggest suicide?”

“No.”

She, too, was dismissed.

After that there were only a few witnesses; the police who had first arrived at the Hatterick house, a man from the laboratory, the medical examiner and a porter who swore that the body upon which the medical examiners had done the autopsy was the body of Juliet Garder and had been brought from the police ambulance directly to the autopsy laboratory.

It was not quite noon when the verdict was returned, and it was that Juliet Garder was the victim of murder at the hands of a person or persons unknown. In the verdict, naturally, nothing was said of Crystal Hatterick. That inquest would come later; that they believed her murdered was an open inference.

That noon the papers made official statements. Both women had been murdered.

But there were as yet no arrests.

Guy talked of it in a matter-of-fact way.

“They don’t want to make an arrest until they have absolute jury proof of guilt. In fact they don’t dare; not with anybody as well known as Brule. When they do make an arrest it will be when they are willing to gamble on their murder charge holding. And their case has got to be so tight they can resist every possible pressure you can bring to bear upon them.” He watched Kendal negotiate a State Street crossing, and leaned to take the automatic lighter in his pink, manicured fingers.

Rue, sitting in the back seat, furs pulled tight against the cold, wondered what Alicia was saying to Brule, following the big car in Brule’s coupé. She wondered just how Alicia had managed to ride with Brule, while she and Madge and Steven and Guy rode in the Cadillac — Crystal’s car with the scent of roses, clear and sweet below Guy’s cigarette. He puffed smoke and watched uneasily, sitting on the jump seat with his head bent to peer through the windows, while Kendal crept along Randolph, threading his way among the noon-hour crowds and turned, slowly, northward on Michigan. The most beautiful boulevard in the world.

It was again gray and cold with the raw, desolate weather that is typical of late November. The lake was slate gray and met in the near distance a heavy gray sky. Pedestrians were scurrying against the wind; policemen at the traffic lights wore heavy winter uniforms. They passed the great Chrysler clock and the advertisement for a popular public ballroom, a bright facsimile of a ballroom with mechanical figures, looking immensely cheerful, dancing. They went on across the bridge with cold gray water flowing beneath, and lapping the fringe of barges and street abutments; they passed the Drake and were on Lake Shore Drive with the lake, now, beside them. There were waves and small white caps presaging a storm. Guy said at last:

“The point is they’ve got you exactly where they want you. As good as under arrest right now. Every one of you. Servants included.”

Madge stirred at that and said: “I’m missing the school play. But I can’t go back to school. That school. Ever. People will never, never forget…”

Rue put her hand lightly on Madge’s, and Madge withdrew her own hand instantly.