Wolf in Man's Clothing: A Sarah Keate Mystery (21 page)

“Thank Heaven for that,” I said, meaning it. And just then, with the ironic neatness of life’s little coincidences, Drue herself opened the door and walked in.

Rather she hurried in, closing the door quickly behind her. She was breathing rapidly; there was scarlet in her cheeks and lips and her eyes were bright. She wore her long cape with the hood over her head. She slipped the hood back; the light shone on her short, brown curls, catching gold highlights; her hair was disheveled and she’d been running. She came quickly toward us and Craig cried, “
Drue! For God’s sake, where have you been
?”

“Is it true?” she asked breathlessly. “About Claud Chivery? Is it true? I heard them in the servants’ living room. I came up the back stairs. What happened?”

I couldn’t answer; I really couldn’t; disappointment was like a vise on my throat, for I had so counted on her alibi. Craig said heavily, “Oh, it’s true enough. He’s been murdered; in the meadow, north of the house, by that little brook. Drue …” She was very near us and Craig caught her hand, pulling her down to sit on the bed so he could look in her face. “Drue, where were you?”

“I was out, Craig. I had to get out …”

“How did you do it? There was a trooper. You were under guard.”

“It was easy—he thought I was Sarah. Oh, it doesn’t matter …”

“It does matter. Tell me exactly what you did. Hurry …” His tone was as savage in a queer way as the tight, hard grip of his hands, and as demanding. She said, “Wilkins, the other trooper, was relieved. I heard him tell the man who took his place that there were two nurses and not to stop the other one—he told him which door entered your room, Sarah. And from the way he spoke I was pretty sure that the new guard got the idea we were both in our rooms. I had to get outdoors. I was stifled and sick with thinking and myself and—oh, I had to get out of this horrible house. It’s brought nothing but unhapp—” She checked herself abruptly and her eyes met Craig’s fully. There was a fractional instant when a small flame seemed to leap between them and pause tentatively as if waiting for breath to live.

Then Drue looked away. She said stiffly, “So I tricked him. It was very easy. I simply wrapped myself in my cape and pulled the hood over my head, walked out Sarah’s door and along the hall. He saw me, but he didn’t see my face—(he may not have been here with the others; he may not have seen either Sarah or me before)—but anyway whatever it was, he didn’t stop me.”

The little flame was gone. Drue looked at her hands. Craig’s eyes were veiled. He said, as stiffly as Drue but quickly and urgently, too. “Where did you go, Drue? Did anyone see you?”

“I walked along the little path toward the Chivery cottage. I don’t think anyone saw me. I … Suddenly her voice broke and she cried, terrified and despairing, “Craig, Craig, what is it? Who is it? What dreadful thing is happening here?”

The stiffness that had been like a wall between them broke down with that. Yet probably neither of them was aware of it. She leaned forward simply and swiftly and his arm went around her and drew her down close to him so her face was against his, and he cried softly and shakenly, “Oh, my darling, don’t be afraid …”

And then, in the queerest little hush as if everything in the world had stopped for an instant, waiting for that very thing to happen, she turned her face and their lips met and clung and he held her there against him.

Which was, it seemed to me, an extremely good idea.

But being in my softer moments (fortunately rare) a little on the sentimental side, something tight got into my throat and I got up quietly and went to the window and looked out into the winter dusk.

I did rather wonder after a moment how his wound was making out. Still he had one good arm. And the main thing was that they had come together again and now the course of true love would run smoothly. It would be now only a question of a few words and possibly a number of kisses which do seem to have their place in life. I was sure of that.

But the next instant I wasn’t so sure. For the door opened again and I whirled around and Alexia came quickly into the room and stopped. Drue must have heard it too, for she sat up quickly, her face radiant and her eyes shining until she saw it was Alexia standing there.

Craig said, “Come in Alexia. What is it?”

Drue with a single sweeping motion so the cape fell about her like a shield rose from the bed and turned to face Alexia, her golden head high.

Alexia’s lovely face looked sharper and more pointed; her underlip was full and cruel; her eyes gleamed softly from between those drooping eyelashes. She paused only for a moment then she came straight to the bed. Her soft white throat was as white as her pearls. She stood as near to Craig as was possible, as if by her very physical presence she could separate Craig and Drue. She said, “Drue, you’d better know the truth now. Craig loves me. Not you. He belongs to me and I belong to him. It’s always been that way. You came between us once, but he didn’t love you even then.”

Drue’s eyes blazed. “I was his wife,” she cried. “We loved each other!”

Alexia’s voice, husky and vehement, rose over Drue’s. “No, he didn’t love you. I knew it then. He married you, yes. We’d had a misunderstanding; he did it to hurt me. As I, later, married Conrad to hurt Craig. But Craig never loved you.”

“I was his wife. …”

Again Alexia laughed. “He never loved you. He told me so. He asked me and his father to help him get the divorce.”

Craig was as colorless as the pillow; his eyes were closed, his mouth a straight white line. And he didn’t say a word.

He didn’t tell Drue that Alexia lied, he didn’t defend Drue, he didn’t even look at either of them.

I said, my hand on Drue’s arm, “Go back to your room, Drue. I’ll come to you. Hurry.”

“I’m free now,” said Alexia. “And Craig is free and …” It was then that Alexia’s eyes fastened on Drue’s cape; a quick look of speculation changed to one of frank and glittering triumph. She cried, “So you weren’t in your room under guard when Claud was murdered! You were out of the house! You have no alibi! The police are going to hear of this. …”

Craig opened his eyes then. “Drue,” he said, in a voice that was as cold and chill as if she were a stranger to him, “I’m sorry. Alexia is quite right about everything. You’d better go back to your room now.”

Drue stood perfectly still for a moment, terribly still and erect, in her long blue cape with her golden-brown hair shining, and the lining of her hood a scarlet banner over her shoulders. Craig met her eyes across barriers that now, I thought, could never be dissolved. Then Drue said clearly, “I’m going, Craig. And I’m never coming back.”

S
HE TURNED SO SWIFTLY
toward the door that I had to run to follow her.

No one was in the corridor. Drue swept along it like a queen with the folds of blue cape swirling around her, so the red lining was like her insignia of royalty. I didn’t speak to her; I took only one look at her blazing white face, her small lifted chin, the poise of her head upon her slender shoulders. At the stairway I hurried ahead to look down to the landing with some vague idea of stopping Drue so the trooper wouldn’t see her—although I could as easily, I fancy, have stopped a whirlwind. But he was gone, luckily; for Drue swept past without looking and on down the corridor and into her room. I followed her and said then, “Drue—Drue …”

“Sarah, don’t!”

The little dog was there and came quickly, his tail wagging furiously; I saw her take him into her arms as I turned away and press her white face down upon the wriggling, little brown thing.

I closed the door behind me. Funny how seldom you can really face anything with anybody you love, no matter how hard you try. It’s the everlasting loneliness of life; you are born alone, the alone, go up and down the winding road alone. Only in love you do ever really share, and I suppose that’s why it’s so important.

Well. I went back to Craig’s room. Alexia was sitting in a kind of sulky silence beside the bed, and Craig was lying there looking straight ahead; neither of them spoke when I came in, although Alexia’s eyes shifted toward me, measuring me again, I thought. Wondering, planning perhaps. And after a while she got up and walked out of the room. As she went Beevens came to the door; he still looked sick and his color was a pale blue-gray, but he said punctiliously enough: “The police are in the north meadow, sir; I thought you had better be informed of their arrival.”

Police in the north meadow.

But it was at least two hours before they came to Craig’s room and brought the things they brought.

It was a queer two hours which I remember in patches. Mostly we waited. Craig said nothing to me of Drue or of Alexia. Naturally, I said nothing of it to him and indeed made the few remarks I had to make as short and crisp as I could make them. He noticed it, for once I caught his eyes upon me in the oddest look; it had a kind of understanding, yes, and liking, and I don’t think I imagined it. If it was liking, however, I did not reciprocate; on the contrary, for I thought he had treated Drue abominably. Indeed, I thought a lot of things, none of them pleasant, and looked coldly back at him and asked him what he wanted for his dinner tray. My suggestion would have been, at that moment, a sprinkling of cyanide, but it isn’t really considered ethical for a nurse to poison her patient even though he richly deserves it. Which somewhat vigorous but merely fanciful line of thought brought me quickly back to unpleasant reality. Murder had actually happened in that house.

And on a dark and silent meadow.

It must have been about then, or earlier, that Peter Huber brought Maud back to the house. Alexia helped Maud to bed and later I gave her a sedative. Pills; nothing could have induced me to give her anything by way of a hypodermic. Maud said almost nothing; yet she seemed in a queer way to know everything we did, her eyes were so bright and knowing in her little sallow face. It may have been shock or brandy or sedative or all three—whatever it was, she went to bed docilely enough and then all at once to sleep. Alexia stayed with her for a while and, when she left, I think Nicky took her place.

We all had that curious feeling of haste that goes along with tragedy as if there’s a great deal to do (hurry, see to things!) and yet there’s really nothing you can find to do.

Every so often someone would bring a bulletin from the police in the north meadow and once Peter and Nicky and Beevens went to the back door and down into the meadow until they encountered a policeman who sent them back. There were by that time quite a number of police and cars; we could see lights (the long steady streams from the cars and searchlights, and the glancing, busy gleams from small flashlights going everywhere) like the lights of ushers in some darkened, dreadful theatre. Someone knew and told us when Chivery’s body was at last removed.

A trooper again was outside Drue’s door, and this time when I attempted to enter my own room and then go to Drue, he stopped me. “Orders, Miss,” he said. And when I said, “Orders nothing; it’s my room,” he removed my hand from the doorknob in a very muscular way and then put his hand on his revolver holster. So I had to give up; not that I thought he was going to shoot me, I just thought I’d wait a better chance.

Beevens gave us a kind of dinner, served from the buffet in the big elaborate dining room, with its crystal chandeliers and stiff, green and silver brocade draperies. It was an elegant room, too big and too cold. Anna didn’t help him serve; she was having hysterics in her room and I sent her some spirits of ammonia.

But before dinner Peter came to Craig’s room; I was there and remained so I heard everything they said. Peter told him of the inquest and of our visit to Balifold where we found Maud, and when and where he had left me.

“I’m horribly sorry, Miss Keate,” he said. “It must have been a terrible shock finding him like that. I ought to have taken you to the house. Craig, what’s your idea of this? Why do you think he was murdered? If it was because he knew something that was a danger to whoever it was that killed your father, then what was it?”

It was the only motive for his murder that had as yet occurred to any of us; I suppose because it was so obvious. But I thought Craig hesitated. If so, however, it was barely perceptible. He said, “It’s hard to say; Claud was very secretive. Pete, what about these checks to Nicky? It does look like blackmail, but there was nothing anybody could blackmail my father about.
Nothing
!”

Peter shrugged. “The police found the canceled checks. That’s all I know.”

Craig said suddenly, “I knew about the will, of course; Maud inherits now from Claud.”

And she would inherit fifty thousand dollars; I’d forgotten that. I remembered Maud sitting quietly in the bar while we talked, drinking steadily. And an ugly picture presented itself in my mind: Maud in her dark cloak waiting for Claud in the meadow—and then afterward walking in to Balifold, trying to establish a kind of fumbling alibi, and drinking because she had to, to steady herself for the discovery. She had told me to take the short cut which was the path through the meadow and led inevitably to the discovery of the murder; was that, again, to give herself a semblance of an alibi? Or had it merely happened; everyone knew of and used the path.

And what of the time? Claud had left the inquest fifteen minutes before it adjourned, which would have given him just about enough time to reach the meadow. So what of Maud? How long actually had she been in the bar? And how long had Chivery been dead? Everything would depend upon that, and I didn’t believe that anyone could fix the time of his death with real exactness.

Craig and Peter were probably thinking very much the same thoughts for, after a longish silence Peter said suddenly, “I don’t think she did it, Craig. A woman …”

Nicky came in just then to say there was a dinner of sorts in the dining room. A little to my surprise, Craig tackled him then and there about the checks.

“What were those checks for, Nicky?” he said. “It couldn’t have been an allowance. My father wouldn’t have given you or me or anybody an allowance.”