Another Woman's House (29 page)

Authors: Mignon G. Eberhart

BOOK: Another Woman's House

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It suddenly stopped. Alice, panting, stood quite still in Sam's grasp.

She drew herself up. She lifted a piteous, beautiful face toward Sam. She said in her own high and musical voice, “Sam, you are my friend.”

Sam's hand dropped. He stepped back, staring at her. Richard said warningly, “Look out â¦”

And Alice, with heartbreak in her beautiful face and in her voice said, “They are both against me, Sam. My husband and Myraâthey want to get rid of me. They've planned and plotted â¦ Oh, Sam â¦” Richard caught her arms and with a sudden twist she escaped Richard's hold and ran to Sam and put her arms up toward him. “Sam, you've always loved me. Haven't you, Sam? I've seen it in your face, in yours eyes. I need you now. I need you.”

Her arms went up around his neck and he pulled them down and held her rigidly away from him. Slowly, with sad and desolate conviction in his voice, he said, “I don't love you. Nobody could love you. Not as you really are â¦”

The figure in the doorway was utterly still. Myra realized in some remote awareness that it had stood immobile for some time, listening. Alice cried piteously, “Don't desert me, Sam, don't â¦”

Her blank brown eyes sought his and found, perhaps, adamant judgment. She looked around and saw the gun where Sam had left it on the table. Her eyes fastened for an instant upon it.

Her hair had become disheveled. She put up her hand to smooth back the golden flying strands. Her pink, lacy dressing gown was in disorder. She pulled it about her, adjusted the belt. She was beautiful in that instant. Sam started forward. Richard cried, “
Alice, don't!
”

Alice said in that sad and broken voice, “If Richard does not love me, if you, Sam, have no faith in me, I cannot liveâthere's nothing left in life for me. â¦”

She pointed the gun at her heart, and Myra thought swiftly, she's too cool, too sure. She knows exactly what she's doing. There's some motive.

Then she knew it for what it was, an appeal for Sam's sympathy, a frantic and clumsy pretense with an empty gun, designed to frighten Sam and Richard.

Sam swayed forward and stopped. The figure in the doorway dashed into the room and a strange voice shouted, “For God's sake, take it away from her â¦ !” And Alice pulled the trigger.

But the gun was not empty. A crash of sound broke over them like a wave. It filled the air with chaos, with a choking smell of powder.

For a second Alice did not move. A look of dazed bewilderment, of disbelief, was on her face. Then she lowered her hand very slowly. She said, “But I unloaded itâI took out the shellsâI put them in the red chair. â¦”

Still with that stunned, sleepwalking look she turned. She dropped the gun which fell, hard and heavy, upon the floor. She moved past the man, the strange man, the newcomer in overcoat and hat who had stood there watching. She went into the hall very slowly, tentatively, somehow, one step after the other. She reached the room where Mildred died and where her own portrait hung.

Richard and Sam ran after her. The tall man, the stranger, said, “But she killed Manders. She must have killed that woman tonight. She murdered them both. â¦”

He too, ran, into the hall.

Something of the spell of horror held Myra. She could not breathe; the air choked her. She went to the French door. She opened it with awkward, fumbling hands. The fresh cold air of dawn swept into the room and carried away the smell of smoke fumes. Myra leaned against the casing of the door and let the chill, clean air touch her face.

After a long time Richard came back into the room. He stood in silence for a moment, an older Richard, white and drawn. Then he went to the ruby-red chair and lifted the cushion. She watched him draw out the shells that lay there.

“Three,” he said, counting, “four, five.” His hand sought all around the chair again. He replaced the cushion. “Only five â¦ She didn't mean to kill herself. She used to threaten it; she never meant it. I thought tonight it was only another pretense. I thought the gun was empty. So did she. But she left one shell.”

Sam came to the door. “The district attorney heard almost the whole thing, Dick. He'll do everything that's necessary. And Iâso will I â¦”

He came to Richard and put his hand for a moment on his shoulder. Silently, Richard showed him the shells. Sam said, “Fiveâshe thought the gun wasn't loaded. She thought she'd got them all out.”

The strange man came into the doorway again. He had taken off his hat. He said heavily, “Putnam, I'll have to have some statementsâthe whole story.”

“All right,” said Sam. “We'll tell you everything. But can you give us a few minutes?”

The district attorney's eyes were understanding. “Certainly, certainly â¦ I heard her confess, you know. I'd have had to get a death sentence. Believe me, it is better this way. Better for her â¦”

“Yes,” said Sam. “Yes â¦”

The district attorney went back into the hall. Someone was running down the stairs. Tim swung around the newel post and ran across the hall. “I head
a shot!
what â¦ ?” His voice stopped.

Sam said, “I'll tell him. â¦”

Richard said, “I was afraid she'd killed him. I was afraid she had killed Mildred. But I went to see the doctor. I asked him if it could be murder. He convinced meâagainst my instinct.”

“Perhaps you wanted to believe she didn't do it. God knows, I didn't want to believe. â¦” Sam took the shells from Richard's hand and went slowly away, solemnly, his head bent, thinking perhaps of the sentence he, himself, had pronounced.

Low voices in the ivory-and-gold room seemed very remote, far away, in another world.

Richard stood for a moment quite still, then he came slowly toward Myra and stopped beside her in the doorway, looking out across the terrace.

The rain had gone, the sky was lightening, a lemon-colored rim upon the horizon promised coming dawn. The Sound was like a silver ribbon, very still, very tranquil below them, but a morning breeze drifted gently upward across rain-wet lawns. It, too, was clean, washed and fresh. It, too, held a promise.

They stood without speaking, while the day began.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Heidi North

978-1-4532-5734-0

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