The Hangman's Whip (22 page)

“You can tell the sheriff anything you know that will help free Richard. You’ve got to tell him.”

“Oh, nonsense, Search.” He was quite at ease, his hands thrust in his pockets, the little smile on his face that always meant that Howland was angry. “It’s my word against yours. Whatever made you think that I know anything that would go to prove that Richard didn’t murder Eve?”

The door behind her opened quietly. So quietly she did not know it had opened until Calvin spoke. He said, “Howland, I was looking for you. I just brought Dick up a drink and some cigarettes. He said you were here.”

He came into the room and closed the door and stood there, his sharp-featured face wrinkled up in an expression of anxiety as poignant and worried as the look in a monkey’s face. “I wanted to talk to you, Howie,” he said. “This business of bringing Dick out here—saying there might be a mob and the mob might do damage to the sheriff’s house or even might get hold of Dick—all that. Well, didn’t it strike you as being pretty phony? I mean—well, good Lord, there’s plenty of louts around any little town that are plenty ready to make trouble. At a moment’s notice and just for the hell of it. But if that’s really the case why didn’t Donny take him to another jail? I wonder—”

He stopped. Howland said, smiling: “You wonder what, Calvin?”

“I wonder what the sheriff’s after.”

Afterward she thought that it was again an evil fate that brought Calvin to the door just then.

H
OWLAND SAID CALMLY
: “You’re nervous, Calvin. Don’t let this thing get you down. Come on, let’s have a walk and a smoke.”

“All right.” Calvin hesitated and looked at Search. “Listen, Search,” he said. “Richard’ll be here, and two deputies are staying with him. I—I don’t want to alarm you, but things have been so—so different lately; I mean it’s as if it isn’t the same house. It’s as if—Well, never mind that. What I started to say is, lock your door again tonight. Sounds crazy but—”

Howland laughed again softly. “Come along, Calvin,” he said. “Good night, Search darling.”

They went away together. And there was one thing she could settle then and there. She waited until Calvin and Howland had gone and then went to Ludmilla.

As she went along the hall she heard Diana talking to some one over the telephone in the hall below: “—but, darling, it’s too terrible. Police everywhere—reporters—”

Ludmilla was on the chaise longue. She wore her reading glasses, and there were newspapers on the floor beside her. She looked up quickly—too quickly, thought Search. But murder is no pleasant thing. And murder invisible, silent, treacherous, had walked among them now for four days and nights.

“Oh! It’s you, Search dear. Come in. Have you seen Richard?”

She went, and as Ludmilla moved her little gaily slippered feet to one side she sat down as she had done the night she arrived at Lake Kentigern to hear Ludmilla’s story.

“Yes, I’ve seen him.”

Ludmilla’s china-blue eyes were wide and bright. She looked tired and hot although she wore a thin lavender chiffon negligee and had twisted her hair into a kind of bathroom knot on top of her head. Little curls strayed disconsolately down her plump neck.

“Search, why did they bring him here?”

“I don’t know. Unless it’s true that the sheriff thought it better to get him away from the village.”

“But Richard has done nothing to rouse people like that.”

“I know. But—things like that do happen.”

Ludmilla said thoughtfully: “Well, it’s nice to have him under the same roof, anyway. What will happen now? A—a grand jury—”

“So Howland says.”

“Howie?” Ludmilla eyed the pink bows on her satin slippers. And said, “Search,” and glanced at the open door and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Search, suppose Howie murdered her?”

“Murdered Eve?”

Ludmilla nodded quickly, still looking at her slippers.

“But there’s no motive for that, Aunt Ludmilla. Why do you say Howie did it?”

“Because there’s nobody else. And whoever murdered her and—and that man last night—must be somebody close to us. Don’t you see?”

“Is that the only reason you suggest Howland?”

“Mm—yes,” said Ludmilla. “That is, I’d rather it would be Howland. If it’s got to be somebody—”

“Was he here? Any of the times when you were given arsenic?”

Ludmilla replied promptly: “No, he wasn’t. I’ve thought of that too. That is, he was here the afternoon before the first attack but that’s all, and I don’t see how he could possibly have put poison in the food on my dinner tray. I remember I had it on a tray—I was tired that night; I’d watched them play tennis. But—are they sure, Search, that it’s the same—well, crime? I mean that it’s the same person that tried to poison me and did murder Eve and that—that poor man in the willows?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course it’s not very nice to think there may be two murderers walking around,” said Ludmilla, her voice suddenly quite childish and helpless. “But on the other hand I cannot think of any possible motive for anybody to—to try to do away with me and—and Eve. I’ve tried and tried to think.” She pushed the wisps of fine hair away from her forehead and sighed. Search said slowly: “You told me you had some—way to protect yourself. Against the poison, I mean.”

“What?” she looked puzzled, then brightened. “Oh yes, I have,” she said calmly. “I couldn’t starve, you know. And for a while I was really afraid to eat anything that came up to me on a tray and I wasn’t too sure of myself even in the dining room. You know—things that were served in portions. Do you want to see?” She motioned to Search to close the door and swung her little feet around and got out of the cushioned depths of the chaise longue, with the swift agility of a child.

Promptly and cheerfully she unlocked a cupboard built in upon the opposite wall. She looked a little apologetic and said: “It’s locked because I didn’t want anyone to know, and several times lately I’ve—thought someone had been in my room—nothing definite, nothing ever taken—” Search remembered the cupboard; formerly Ludmilla had kept odds and ends of papers and a few medicines in it. Now the little cupboard held a small store of canned food, a tiny electric plate, cups and saucers and a bright saucepan or two. “I’m afraid Carter suspects,” said Ludmilla. “And this morning Cook came to my room for something and I think got a peek at it.”

She said it blandly, in an unconcerned way; and then Search caught sight of a white paper sack and looked at it, and it held granulated sugar. She couldn’t bring herself to taste it, not with Ludmilla’s blue eyes watching her so closely. Yet she was certain it was sugar.

Ludmilla closed the cupboard and locked it again. And as soon as she could do so Search said good night and went away, convinced that Ludmilla was as sane as she had ever been and that Cook, nervously, had leaped oversoon to conclusions.

There were voices in the hall below; she thought she heard Calvin speak and Diana and Howland, so she did not go downstairs.

Once in her own small room again, she locked the door, struck as she did so by the strangeness of the small act. And catching a glimpse of her own face in the mirror, unexpectedly and without preparation, it seemed strange to her too. Pale and tense-looking with eyes that seemed to hold, as the girl Bea’s eyes had held, a shadow of fear.

Even the rose-shaded lamps Isabel had placed there could not soften that tenseness. The windows were open, but it was hot and still. She brushed her soft brown hair back and away from her face and took off the sports dress she’d worn all day and put on thin white cotton pajamas and lounge coat and went to the window seat. She sat there for a long time, thinking of Richard and the things he had told her. Remembering Eve and her face and her voice and the way her golden curls fell forward.

She tried not to think of that.

Would Richard succeed in identifying the man who had been murdered—quietly, stealthily, with horrible efficiency—not more than twenty-four hours ago? Perhaps during the previous night which had seemed so quiet. Was it, really, Saul Gleason?—and if so, why was he murdered?

All at once it occurred to her that it might have been Saul Gleason (if that was he) who stood there, a silent enigmatic figure, watching the cottage. If so, that might be a motive for his murder; he might have seen who came before Richard, with Eve perhaps, and, his purpose accomplished, went away again. Leaving that horribly sluggish thing in the dark bedroom.

She tried to fit the figure of the murdered man into the outlines of that other figure, as she had tried so many times before to fit figures into that outline (Howland, Calvin, Jonas, the chauffeur, even the Stacy caretaker), and again failed. There was nothing clear and identifiable in that memory. There was only the impression of a man, perhaps tall, perhaps wearing a coat, standing perfectly still, facing the cottage. That was all. Yet the clue to Eve’s murder might lie in that baffling too-brief glimpse.

After a long time she went to the little desk and sat down and pulled a paper pad toward her and took a pencil.

But by one o’clock she had only a crisscrossed jumble of facts and hypotheses and no theory that fitted every fact. There were contradictions; there were questions impossible to answer.

She looked over the jumble of facts; the beginnings of solutions that almost at once proved themselves false.

Richard hadn’t murdered Eve and he hadn’t murdered Eve’s mysterious caller. That was her first and almost her one and only premise, and she couldn’t prove that. She was certain, then, that Ludmilla was perfectly sane. Yet if Ludmilla had gone quietly (horribly) out of her mind, if she had contrived the poison business as a smoke screen behind which she could carry on an ugly career of murder, it still did not explain the link that obviously (in Richard’s mind and in view of the clue he held) might connect Eve’s murder and the murder of the man whom Richard had said he hoped to intercept and whom Jonas had been set to watch for and had failed.

Howland had no conceivable motive and he had an alibi. Furthermore, there was nothing in Eve’s life which, so far as Search knew, linked her in any way with Howland.

She could not entirely dismiss the waitress’ story of Calvin carrying a rope and a raincoat. The raincoat was a convincing touch, as was the look in the girl’s eyes; yet she could have heard of the raincoat and added that item to give her story an air of truth. And if she had lied—why, that, too, would account for that look of terror. And Calvin’s attitude, apart from everything else, was convincing as well as Diana’s corroboration of his statement regarding it.

It was possible, of course, that Bea had actually seen someone come out of the tool shed and at a distance, in the near dusk (hadn’t she said it was just before dinner?) thought mistakenly that it was Calvin. Search thought of that for a long time and was inclined to favor it but for the fact that Calvin was not as tall even as Diana, and it would be difficult to mistake, say, Howland or Richard, or even Jonas, for Calvin. It was possible too, given enough hysteria on the waitress’ part, that she had actually seen a woman. A woman in a dark coat. If the girl had not had that look of genuine terror in her eyes she would have put her whole story down to hysterical fabrication, but the look was genuine enough. Yet, again, she would have been afraid if she had lied.

Calvin had promptly and energetically denied it. And Calvin, too, had no motive. He was not in any sense a lady’s man, so a farfetched theory that Eve had had a hold on him which had proved too onerous to endure was out.

Diana’s whole attitude was puzzling.

She had despised Eve; she had set out in a highhanded way to separate Richard and Search. So, in her own cold and unemotional yet absolutely determined and possessive way, she must be in love with Richard.

There was no sign of a rift with Calvin. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been even if Richard had been in love with Diana and had begged her to face an issue about it; Diana was as ambitious as she was possessive and had a fixed and resolute faith in Calvin’s future.

Diana had always had a strong sense of possession. Anything that was hers was sacrosanct; she had, even as a child, fought for the possession of a doll, a toy, a scrap of ribbon— even though she had scores of dolls and toys. As a child, too, she had had the rather unchildlike worldliness to make herself a favorite with John Abbott, so when he died everything he had came to Diana. But she was older too; as in many families there was, among the Abbotts, a strong feeling that the senior child was the heir and the head of the family. Search had never quarreled with that feeling on the part of John Abbott. Besides, Search’s father, Charles Abbott, had been the youngest of the three brothers; he had never been so close to John as Gerald, Diana’s father, had been. It had never seemed in any way unjust that Diana came into the Abbott money when John Abbott died. The only thing that seemed unjust was that Isabel’s money went with the Abbott money and not to Richard.

Search pushed the papers away and put her forehead down on her hands. And thought of the things Richard had told her. And went back in her mind again over every fact she knew, trying to find a key, a link, an ingredient that would bind the facts they knew into some orderly relationship to each other. And failing.

The house had grown quiet. Suddenly aware of a kind of listening, sentient quality in that silence, she thought that if she hadn’t seen Eve and the dead man under the willows she would still have known, by something intangible yet poignant and inescapable too, that murder had left its mark within that house.

The small lamp on the desk had attracted a myriad tiny black insects that circled and beat and lay on the white paper. She put out the light, and when her eyes were adjusted to it the moonlight brightened the room.

She rose and went restlessly to the window again, thinking again of Diana. Diana who alone had profited by John’s and by Isabel’s death—Isabel’s because if she had lived she, and not Diana, would have had John’s money.

But murder requires passion at white heat—an obsession and an urge which is so strong that it swamps all other emotions. Diana was confident of her own lightness; she was coldly determined; her strongest instinct was to hold anything that belonged to her. But she could not imagine Diana being so overwhelmed by hatred or jealousy—or fear or revenge—that she would do murder.