Another Woman's House (26 page)

“Richard, Webb Manders was here and …”

“Webb!”

“Oh, Richard, he knows something about the gun. I'm sure he knows. It was here. I found it and …”

“The gun!
My gun?
”

“… and now it's gone. It was in the newel post. It was there all the time. …”

“
Wait a minute!
” Richard set his glass down and took her hands in his own. “Take it easy. Now what exactly are you talking about?”

It was of course a brief enough story. She told him everything, even of her stealthy little expedition to bury the shell.

He went, after she'd finished, and looked at the newel post. He lifted up the top, cautiously, and put his hand in the hollow as if measuring it. After a moment he replaced it and came back.

“Well,” he said. “Well …”

He gave her a long look, reached for his glass and said, “If I didn't need a drink before, I certainly do now. Did you think I'd hidden the gun?”

“N—no …”

He eyed her speculatively, but with a rather rueful twinkle.

“But you thought I might have had a brainstorm and taken a potshot—or rather five potshots—at Jack.”

“No—but they were building a case against you. Sam said so. And it
was
your gun and …” she stopped.

He drank, put down the glass and looked at her for a moment and laughed. He came and put his arms around her. “So wild horses, or the village constabulary, wouldn't have dragged it out of you.” He put his face down against her own. He was shaken with quiet laughter. He said, “You're a nice girl! Prepared to defend me whether I shot a guy or not? Don't you know that that is not done in the better circles?”

She said soberly, “Webb knows something about it.”

“Did he say so?”

“No. But I knew … I saw …” Her voice died away as she saw the still half-amused skepticism in his face. Richard, like Tim, saw no ghost of murder.

He said gently, “Webb couldn't have the gun, dear. He didn't kill Jack.”

“Then where is it? It was there this evening, before dinner.”

“Mildred must have taken it. Perhaps she considered using the gun instead of poison and then decided poison would be easier. It will turn up somewhere. It doesn't matter now anyway. As soon as the district attorney gets here the case will be officially closed. I went to talk to the doctor about it and …”

“The doctor who came to see Mildred? Why?”

“I—well, I wanted him to underline facts, I suppose. Like—touching wood, I had to make absolutely certain that the—miracle had occurred and the whole horrible business really is in the past. He'll be called on to testify at the inquest. He said that cyanide works right away; that she took the poison and died and he will testify to that and in his opinion the case is as good as closed. He said, as a matter of fact, to forget it. To write it off. So—that's that. It's finished. And a new life is ahead of us.”

He looked around the room and gave a kind of salute with his glass and finished his drink. “A new life in this house, for you and me.” He looked at her squarely. “It'll be the kind of life I've always wanted in this house, Myra. People, and fires going, children and Christmas trees and Easter. We'll go on trips, we'll see everything we want to see all over the world, but we'll always want to come back here to peace and home and—and happiness, Myra.”

For an enchanted moment it seemed within her grasp, all of it, ready to take. It was such a bewildering glimpse that she forgot everything else and went to him and he held her warm and close in his arms. “The house always lighted,” he said. “Warm and welcoming, with laughter and tenderness and you.” He paused and said, “I'll talk to Sam about the divorce.”

Divorce. And Alice. The enchanted moment had not been a true enchantment; already its spell dissolved. She moved in his arms, away from him. He understood it. He said, “I'm sorry we'll have all that to wade through first. But it's only a little time …”

She said suddenly, unexpectedly, “That is what Alice wants. Time!” Her voice was strained and harsh. She heard its tone with dismay and could not change it.

There was a puzzled, troubled look in his eyes. He said, however, directly and honestly, “It
is
better that way, Myra. I don't want a day of separation from you, but—Sam was right about that. I couldn't help seeing it while he talked.”

Reason suddenly no longer counted; decisions made by reason had no validity. She cried, “No, no, Richard! I am afraid. …” and clung to him, as if he could stand strongly against any storm that threatened.

“There's nothing to be afraid of.” He held her and kissed her and touched her head gently as one would soothe a child. “I love you,” he said. “Look at me, Myra. It's really going to be all right.” He held her so he could look into her eyes and said quietly, “I've got to be just and fair to Alice. I can't insist on an immediate divorce.”

“No, I wouldn't want that.”

“She loves this place. She has no other home.”

“Yes. Yes …” She moved out of his arms. She walked blindly toward the narrow, fateful windows above the bookshelves and stopped, looking at the rows of books without seeing them. She felt him watching her, waiting for her to say something natural and reassuring, in her own voice, not this dry, harsh voice of a stranger.

Tim had said she was licked; he was right. Alice was right. Richard and Sam and all of them were right. The end of her story and Richard's had happened actually when Alice came home. It was inevitable. She wished for the courage to face it, then, and to say what some time she would have to say. Before Richard himself wished her to say it.

And Richard said, “I love you, Myra. Nothing can ever change that.”

She turned quickly to face him, wishing to grasp reassurance at any price. The telephone rang. He waited a moment, listened, said, “I suppose I'll have to answer,” and went out into the hall.

She watched him go. Some time he would go, like that, and never come back. Was this the way a farewell happened? So it wasn't at the moment a farewell—not that anybody knew about, not that anybody recognized. But years later, you knew it for what it was: the dividing line between what had gone before and what was to come after. The moment when love crossed the peak of its existence and started down the other side.

For a long time Richard would not see that its course had changed. She looked slowly around the room, fixing it in her mind: the red curtains; the lamps; the scent of lilies; and the concealed, the brief and almost casual moment which might have been farewell.

Richard came back. There was an odd expression of incredulity on his face. “That was Webb!”

“About the gun?”

“No.” He gave a short, dry laugh. “He wanted to apologize! For having accused Alice. Seems inadequate, somehow. He says he's very sorry that he caused Alice or me trouble, but that he acted sincerely and that now he knows he was wrong. He went to the police station; he saw Mildred's letter and the stuff in her evening bag and there was something or other that belonged to Jack and Webb recognized it. Some piece of jewelry some aunt of theirs had given Jack. So he wants to make a full apology to Alice and me. He says there is no doubt that Mildred shot him. Says he'll tell the newspapers, everybody. He'll testify at the inquest. He says he can't do anything to undo the damage he did but he'll make every possible reparation.”

“He accused Alice,” Myra said slowly. “Now he's accusing Mildred.”

“But Mildred confessed,” said Richard. He caught her hand and added, “Darling, believe me, it's over! As soon as the district attorney gets here …”

The telephone rang again. “Hell,” he said, “now what?” And ran to the telephone.

This time she followed. And it was the police.

“They want me to come to the station,” said Richard, putting down the telephone. “I don't know why.” He looked puzzled and obviously tried to hide it. “Nothing at all, probably. Some formality.”

She went with him to the door. “While I'm there,” he said, “I'll tell them about the gun. I'll try to keep them from bothering you.” He kissed her gently. “It's really all over, Myra—a few formalities, a few talks with the police. And that's all.” He opened the door.

The rain had stopped, leaving a cool fresh dampness in the air. It was still cloudy and dark, although a faintly brighter rim along the horizon suggested a late and laggard dawn. It was a cold hour. The shapes of shrubbery and trees loomed black beyond the area of light from above the steps. His car still stood out in the driveway where Mildred's car had stood earlier in the night.

He ran down the steps and toward the waiting car. The door banged and he turned on the lights. She had an odd sensation of repeated experience when the car backed out and turned as Mildred's had done, its lights glancing upon the glossy banks of the laurels. Then it vanished.

She closed the door and the house seemed emptier, colder, very silent. What would he tell them about the gun? Probably the simple truth—that she had found it and had been afraid to tell of it for fear it might be construed as evidence against Richard himself.

Another fool woman, they would say, cluttering up a clean-cut case. Another fool woman. She walked slowly back along the hall, scarcely aware of her own footsteps, to the door into the room where Mildred died, the stairway stretching up into dusk, the newel post.

When she reached the newel post she saw that Alice had come down again! She was in the library, sitting in the ruby-red chair with her hands clasped again around the arms, her fair head up. The woman in possession. Every line of her figure, and her attitude, her lifted, beautiful face, proclaimed it. “Come in, Myra,” she said, “I was waiting for you.”

Myra stopped beside Richard's lounge chair. “I didn't know you were here.”

“You were at the door with Richard. I'd better tell you that I overheard your talk with Richard. Here, I mean, before the phone rang. I was on the stairway and I listened. I couldn't help it,” she said quietly. “You came out into the hall to answer the telephone and neither of you saw me. I went back upstairs. I felt like a spying child, in my own house. My own house,” repeated Alice sadly and thoughtfully. And said then, taking a long breath, directly, “You threatened me, Myra. What exactly did you mean?”

“
Threatened?
”

In spite of Alice's apparent composure she was nervous. She picked up the cigarette lighter from the table beside her. She toyed with it, watching Myra, her exquisite hands sliding the lighter back and forth as if it were a piece of jewelry. As her hands had toyed with her glittering heaps of jewelry. But the picture of Alice and her jewelry only flickered across Myra's mind. Actually she was in a kind of queer, blank suspension of all conscious thought. Threatened?

Alice's brown eyes were soft and fixed; she snapped the lighter open with a little sharp click.

A click. Something flickered again like a spark in Myra's memory.

Alice could not bear the silence. She leaned forward, clicking the lighter nervously so it made a sharp punctuation to her words. “You refused to make any promises; you defied me; you said that you had talked to Mildred alone, about me. You said that we—you and I—understood each other and there was no need for us to talk further. You said …”

Myra, her lips feeling stiff and numb, whispered, “Threatened …”

Alice heard it. “Yes, you threatened me. You as good as said that I killed Mildred! That you would trade your silence for a divorce, for Richard and my house. But what you really hope to do is send me back to prison—for killing Jack, for killing Mildred—either charge would satisfy you. …”

Myra's hands went out to hold to the back of the chair.

“You did kill Mildred,” she said.

S
OMETHING VERY STRANGE WAS
happening in the room. An invisible change came over it which yet was almost visible, so everything in it seemed to waver and shake and then resume its place; yet nothing quite fit, everything was a little distorted, a little awry.

It was like a jig-saw puzzle that had been shaken apart and almost, but not quite, put back so the pieces do not quite fit. Or as if a swift tremor of some rock fault, thousands of miles below, had communicated itself upward, briefly, jarring, rattling, passing on, but leaving everything a little wrong and off center.

Yet nothing was changed actually except Alice's face, and Myra was only distantly aware of that change, for a deep instinctive force had taken full possession of her, excluding everything else. It made her speak, holding to the chair, very clearly, “I was near the door. I heard everything you and Mildred said to each other. I know you killed her and I know why.” Her own voice seemed to throb and stop in a throbbing silence.

It was then that she perceived that a stranger sat in the ruby-red chair. Another person had come to dwell in Alice's body. The room had not changed. The little French clock, the books, the red curtains, the fire, none of that had changed. It was only Alice who had undergone that strong distortion.

And in the change her beauty had been swept away as if it had been a veil.

The white stoniness was there, but it was now alive, actuated by a fixed and terrible purpose. It sharpened her features, it flattened her head so it lifted now like a snake's head, preparing to strike. Her mouth, drained of blood so the rose lipstick stood out, had a different, an appalling look of evil and merciless knowledge. The obsessed and terrible woman who now inhabited Alice's body could do anything. She had no restraints, no inhibitions, no bonds of right or wrong. Myra said, whispering, “You killed her. You killed Jack. You murdered both of them.”

Alice leaned forward very slowly. She put down the lighter and stood up with an almost lethargic deliberation. She gathered the soft, pink-satin folds of her dressing gown around her. Myra wished to draw back, to escape, and she would not move. She clung to Richard's chair and faced Alice.