Danger in the Dark (16 page)

“You knew of the murder,” said Dennis grimly. “You were afraid—”

“You go too fast,” said Archie. “I’m telling you what I told the police. What I might have told them is another matter. As I told the police, I saw no one and no one saw me. And”—Archie’s mocking, railing tone changed suddenly and became again edged and thin—“and I have told the police nothing further, so far.”

“So far,” said Johnny slowly and stopped.

For there it was. Out into the open—if it had ever been concealed.

“You’ve told them,” said Dennis, “anything you thought would keep you in the clear.”

“Do you mean,” said Archie imperturbably, “to imply that I’m lying?”

“I know damn well you are,” said Dennis. “You knew of the murder when you went away. And you have—or think you have—evidence involving the family in—in unpleasantness, or you wouldn’t be here now. What is it?”

“That,” said Archie, “is for the police. Unless—”

He stopped short, with an air of purpose and definite meaning.

“Archie, Archie!” cried Johnny suddenly with a kind of groan. “What have you done!” And then he, too, stopped short and with a queerly desperate gesture put his face in his hands.

Rowley looked at his plate, and Dennis, thoughtfully, looked at Archie. The pantry door squeaked a little. Laing, probably, listening.

Amelia took a long breath.

“Really, Archie,” she said calmly, “that sounds like a threat. Or a confession. I might almost prefer it to be the latter, but you wouldn’t have returned if you had feared arrest.”

“Make him tell what he knows,” muttered Gertrude. “Make him tell, Amelia. He can’t sit there looking as if he knows something—as if he’s already told the police—as if—”

“Hush, Gertrude,” said Amelia gently. “Just what will you take, Archie?”

“Amelia, you wound me!”

“Wound—” burst out Gertrude, and Amelia silenced her again.

“I don’t know whether you have happened upon something that you think would be injurious to one of us in our present trouble or not,” she said. “I do know that you’re quite evidently here to do us any possible harm you can do. Well, then, we are in no position to haggle. And we are ready to act, as always, as a family. You may,” said Amelia simply, “name your price.”

Johnny lifted his face and cleared his throat.

“I suppose you are right, Amelia,” he said. “Still—”

He hesitated and turned to Archie. “You wouldn’t tell the police anything that would—would harm any of us, would you, Archie? After all—”

Archie grinned. It was again a wolfish tightening of the corners of his thin mouth so it showed narrow, yellowed teeth.

“Oh, wouldn’t I!” he said. “Wouldn’t I! My dear brother, I have what it takes. You are in my hands,” said Archie and put out his hands, which were in all truth ugly and grasping and predatory as claws.

I
T WAS ACTUALLY THE
unsatisfactory and wholly indeterminate end of the thing for that night.

Archie kept on grinning and ate grapes voraciously. Amelia repeated in so many words her offer to pay him for silence. Gertrude stared and wheezed. Rowley said nothing at all, and Johnny was for once a handsome frozen image of despair.

Dennis felt and said that the sooner Archie Shore left the better for all concerned.

Archie kept on eating grapes.

“You are perfectly right, Dennis,” he said, favoring Dennis with an extremely ugly look above that rapacious smile. “But, you see, you don’t know the thing I could tell the police if I chose. You don’t know the things I could do to the company if I chose. The rumors—the doubts—how circumstantial I could make stories of, say, embezzlement, of failure, of imminent bankruptcy. What reasons I could hint at for Ben’s murder—if I chose. So far I have not chosen to do so. I’ll tell you what, Amelia, I’ll think it over. Give me two days.”

“Two days!”

“One day, then. Say, till—” He paused to remove seeds with the utmost deliberation. “Say, till tomorrow night. Twenty-four hours.”

“So you can frighten us—terrifying us into giving you anything you want,” cried Gertrude. “It’s your one chance to get back at us. What is it you think you know? Nothing!” She turned to the others. “Don’t you see he’s only bleeding us for every cent he can get? And we are going to let him. I’m not afraid of anything he thinks he knows. I didn’t kill Ben. Why, we are as good as admitting that we are afraid of something when we let him—”

“Gertrude,” said Amelia, “stop that! Certainly you didn’t kill Ben. I didn’t kill him. None of us killed him. I’m not offering to pay Archie because he has any real evidence against any of us: I know that he has none,” lied Amelia blandly. “I’m paying him because he is obviously here to make trouble. Most unfortunately,”—she looked coldly at Rowley—”he was here at the time of the murder. If he tells the police he saw this or that—any made-up story he wants to tell—they are likely to credit it at least until it is disproved. According to my notion, it is much simpler to pay him to keep his mouth shut. I am not at all afraid of him or of what he may say. Not, that is, concerning the murderer. He might damage the company. And I do wish to keep this dreadful affair as quiet as possible, to wind it up as quickly as possible.”

“And quite right you are, Amelia,” said Archie imperturbably. “Except that you somewhat underestimate my capacity for observation.” Dennis got up.

“Look here,” he said, “can I kick him out, Aunt Amelia?” Archie slid to his feet and got behind a chair, his grin changing to a kind of snarl, and Amelia said hurriedly: “No, no! It’s a bargain, then, Archie. Until tomorrow night. If in the meantime you say one word to the police which involves any of us, I pay you nothing.” She rose. Johnny sat as if transfixed, staring at the tablecloth, and Dennis opened the door. “That’s all,” said Amelia and then added with a characteristic touch, “But remember, Archie—I—none of us—are as rich as we once were. That’s why your allowance had to lapse. The Haviland Bridge Company, though you may not know it, has had a very lean year under Ben Brewer’s management.”

Archie, still standing, reached coolly down for cake but kept the chair between himself and Dennis.

“The Haviland Bridge Company,” he said, “ought not to have suffered. It was well prepared for emergency.”

Johnny pushed back his chair abruptly and went to Amelia.

“Good night, Amelia,” he said. “You are perfectly right, of course. Archie, will you take one of the guest rooms? I’ll loan you pajamas.”

“Thank you, Johnny. I could do with a shirt or two.”

“You can have mine,” said Rowley.

“Good God,” said Dennis violently, “are we going to let this man—”

Amelia put her hand on his arm. “Will you take me upstairs, Dennis?” she said gently.

He shot one look at Daphne and turned to Amelia.

“I think you are making a mistake, Aunt Amelia. You are simply playing into Shore’s hands. Let him tell them anything he likes. He can’t—”

“Come,” said Amelia.

At the door he looked back at Daphne, and she followed them. Up the stairs, hearing the rustle of a taffeta petticoat under Amelia’s handsome black crepe gown, pausing when Amelia paused to call to Laing to be sure that all the windows and doors were securely bolted.

“There’s a policeman in the kitchen,” said Laing, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. What did he think of it all? Daphne wondered, looking down at his long pale face and bald head. “A policeman in the kitchen,” he repeated. “And two in the library. They wish to stay here all night, ma’am.”

Amelia hesitated. Gertrude, coming into the hall, said, wheezing, “Of all the nerve!”

“I suppose they are obliged to,” said Amelia. “Very well, Laing. Tell cook to put out sandwiches for them. And coffee.”

They went on up the stairs, a queer, trailing little procession, its fortitude and its assurance shaken. Shaken by Archie Shore’s return and the bargain he had driven with them—a sinister bargain, with the ugliest of implications. Shaken by the day’s inquiry. Shaken by the unwonted things that had been happening to them.

And by night dropping down so coldly, and with such impenetrable blackness, upon the house. Isolating them in very fact as the thing that had happened the night before had in another sense isolated them. And in the same way binding them together.

Daphne had no chance to talk further to Dennis. Later, however, Amelia came to her door and knocked and came in. She wore a purple flannel bathrobe, had her hair in a net cap and carried an eiderdown.

“I thought you might need this,” she said and put down the eiderdown. “Oh, and—by the way, you might lock the door tonight.” She hesitated, looked at Daphne with eyes that had receded until they were mere shadowed sparks, said tensely, “With that man in the house—” and went away.

Daphne locked the door.

And after lying in bed staring at the black ceiling for what seemed an hour or two, she got up, shivering in the cold, and tried the latch to be sure.

Twenty-four hours, she thought once incredulously. All that had happened in twenty-four hours.

And she must talk to Dennis. She remembered and sought refuge in the memory of the long look he had given her there at the head of the stairs. Gertrude was beside her, and Rowley was coming up the stairs. Dennis said something casual, meant for their ears, but his look, guarded though it was, both reassured and warned her.

In the morning she would see him. Tell him—ask him—map some defense before the detective pounded at her again.

It was still in the house. Still and cold. She supposed she slept, but she was haunted by dreams and a persistent feeling of consciousness. In the middle of the night she remembered the yellow dress and got up, shivering, and found it and tried to burn it, but the last ember had burned out and there were no matches. She returned, shivering with cold, to bed. And once she was sure she heard footsteps in the dark passage outside the door and sat upright to listen over the sudden pounding of her heart. But if there had been footsteps there was then nothing.

Probably there was not much sleep anywhere in the place that night, yet there was no sound of motion. Except that after midnight, when things grew quiet, the house itself came alive and creaked and moaned a little with the cold and whispered along the narrow corridors—so that the policemen were restless and could not settle into sleep themselves and sought each other’s company as they’d been ordered not to do and finally cleared off one end of the table in the library and started a game of poker. It was a desultory game, however, subject to interruptions. The third time one of them got up, swearing, and opened the door to look along the corridor, it came to an end.

“It’s cold in here,” he said. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

“Oke,” said another, and the third stopped watching a window curtain, which certainly seemed to move now and then, and agreed with some promptness.

In the kitchen they found the coffee and sandwiches and ate them but were not greatly cheered, for the house continued its secret rustling, and it was extremely cold.

It wasn’t, they agreed, that anything was likely to happen; it never did right after a murder. But Wait had left them there to see that none of the suspects got away. So every hour or so two of them took flashlights and saw their revolvers were on their hips and made a somewhat sketchy round of the lower floor.

But if, during those cold, black hours, anything alive found its secret way in and out the twisting old corridors, no one knew it. And indeed, in view of later occurrences, it is probable there was only the wind and the creaking of old wood.

Morning was dark and cold. Breakfast trays duly arrived according to custom, with Maggie uncommunicative, owing to a cold in her head.

Except that she had a message for Daphne.

“Mr Dennis,” she said, pulling the curtains apart and letting cold morning light into the little room, “Mr. Dennis is in the old playroom and wants to see you. He wanted to bring you your breakfast, but I told him you were a young lady now and he couldn’t. The idea!” She put the tray in Daphne’s lap and handed her a wool bathrobe. “Better put this on, miss. It’s cold as Blixen.”

It was Maggie’s swear word. She went away, growling about the cold and sneezing with a kind of martyred emphasis.

It was still early, and though there were sounds of showers running and coal fires crackling from behind closed doors, no one was in the corridor. Daphne, clad hastily in her warmest sweater and tweed skirt, found Dennis again pacing and smoking.

“There you are, honey,” he said and took her in his arms for a hungry moment and shut the door. “Now then—wait till I put some coals on the fire.”

He did so, swearing a little as the battered old tongs pinched his hand as they had always done if you gripped them too fervently.

“Nothing ever changes here,” he said. “The stairway still creaks. The tongs still pinch.” Flames shot up and crackled, and he put down the tongs and pushed aside the old brass coal scuttle with the loose, coal-blackened cotton gloves hanging over the rim, and stood with his elbow on the mantel. Daphne sat on a cretonne-covered stool she had pulled close to the fire. He looked around the room, remembering. “Same old couch. Same old pictures—Stag at Bay and Sir Galahad. I was terribly upset to discover a woman posed for that. Same old rug—remember the time we burnt that hole in it? Gertrude half killed us. You were a little girl, Daph. Yellow pigtails—steady blue eyes. I was always terribly proud of you.” He knelt down suddenly and took her again in his arms. “I think I was in love with you always, Daphne,” he said shakily and kissed her face and mouth as if he would never stop kissing her. “And I’m going to marry you, and not all of them can stop it. I nearly lost you once. But now—”

“Gertrude,” said Daphne. “Rowley—”

His arms tightened.

“Gertrude can go to hell. And her precious son with her. Just what did she say, Daph?”

She repeated it. In the warmth and security of Dennis’ arms it had lost much of its threat. Yet as she spoke she could see suddenly Gertrude’s flushed face, her blank, bright blue eyes. Gertrude, she realized, was dangerous because of her lack of common sense; because in her mad rages there was no balance, no caution.