Danger in the Dark (18 page)

He went to her and took her quietly in his arms. “I love you so,” he said. “Sometime, Daphne, soon—you’ll be my wife.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” he said, holding her more tightly against him.

“Of everything—of Wait—of the house—of all these things—”

“Nonsense!” He tried to laugh. But he thought of Wait, too.

“And the wedding ring,” she said suddenly. “It—it terrifies me, Dennis.”

He didn’t like it, either. But he smoothed her brown hair and told her he loved her and things would be all right and hoped it was the truth.

“Why should anyone take the wedding ring?”

He didn’t know. He looked over her head into the fire. In the drive below, cars were arriving—police cars, he supposed. Every now and then someone passed the door of the playroom; once he had thought someone paused in the hall outside, and he had listened for the creak that would tell of retreating footsteps. But Daphne hadn’t noticed it, and he hadn’t wanted her to; they couldn’t hear, he told himself, And forgot the thinness of the old walls; the remarkable ease and swiftness with which sounds in that echoing old house traveled.

For he was thinking of the wedding ring.

Why would the murderer of Ben Brewer take the wedding ring?

“Daphne,” he said suddenly, “don’t think I’ve gone out of my head, but did your father really want you to marry Ben?”

“MY FATHER!”

“Yes. Oh, I know Johnny. But that wedding ring—”

“If it hadn’t been for my father I wouldn’t have promised to marry Ben,” said Daphne wearily. “He didn’t urge me to; he wouldn’t have tried to make me marry Ben against my will. But he liked Ben; he thought he would be a good husband as he was a good business man.” She shook her head slowly. “My father wouldn’t have murdered Ben to keep me from marrying him. Even if—if he thought I’d be unhappy; if he’d made some—some dreadful discovery about Ben. Oh, he loves me—he loves me dearly. But he—”

“I know,” said Dennis. Johnny was innately selfish, hated trouble as a cat hates water and avoided it with the most affable determination. Of course, the most affable and social of persons might pluck up the desperate and momentary courage to do a murder. But there had to be a motive: Daphne herself profited by Ben’s death. Rowley would profit by it, if Gertrude could (but he wouldn’t let her) carry out her plans. But no one else. So far as money went, that is. “You’re sure both the aunts wanted you to marry him?”

“Perfectly. Oh, I don’t mean that they or my father brought—pressure to bear upon me. It was just that—somehow they made me see it was the thing to do. Made me do it—”

“And Rowley. Was he, too, in favor of it?”

“Why, I—I suppose so. I can’t think—”

“You see,” said Dennis, “Rowley may be in love with you, too.” He smiled a little as he said it, but his eyes searched her own deeply just the same.

“If Rowley’s in love with me,” said Daphne somewhat crisply, “he’s certainly done a good job of concealing it. Of course he’s not in love with me.”

“Oh, come, come, Daph. Don’t be so disgustingly modest. You’re kind of a nice girl. I’m in love with you. Why shouldn’t Rowley be?”

“Well, he isn’t,” said Daphne definitely. “Gertrude’s plan for us to marry is probably altogether news to him.”

“Oh yes,” said Dennis, looking thoughtful. “Gertrude.”

It was just then that, with somewhat grim appositeness, Rowley came to the door, rattled it and called out, “Dennis!” impatiently.

“It’s the police again,” he said when Dennis opened the door. “They want to fingerprint us. Oh, of course they have no right to do so. But Jacob Wait—the detective, you know—asked us if anyone wanted to make a formal objection. Naturally no one did. What have you two been talking about so long?”

“Suspects,” said Dennis. “And you.”

Rowley’s eyes narrowed a little, and he looked quickly at Daphne.

“See here,” he said. “Have either of you told the police? I mean—told them about the—the springhouse?”

“No,” said Dennis. “Have you?”

“Certainly not.” Rowley looked at Dennis and at Daphne and back again. “But why, then, do they keep asking me about what I did that night—whether I was out of the house—if I saw anybody—all sorts of questions?”

“Probably to find out whether you killed Ben or not,” observed Dennis.

For just an instant Rowley looked remarkably like his father. Then he smiled. “You
will
have your joke, Dennis,” he said. “But this isn’t really a joking matter.”

“You are perfectly right,” said Dennis. “Did you burn the shirt and waistcoat? I didn’t ask you yesterday, but was checking things we might have forgotten.”

“Why, I—Yes. That is, I tried to. They wouldn’t burn—too wet.” He glanced quickly at Daphne and said hurriedly, “That is, they wouldn’t burn.”

“Good God!” said Dennis and took a quick step nearer him, so that Rowley stepped backward involuntarily. “Well, what did you do with them?” said Dennis between his teeth.

“I took them out on the river; made a hole in the ice and stuffed them in. Nobody saw me. Best I could do, and it’s just as good as burning. Just as—”

“Oh, you fool!” said Dennis, his eyes blazing. “Oh, you fool!”

“Dennis!”

“What else have you done—or failed to do?”

“Nothing, Dennis. Nothing, I swear it.”

One never knew when Rowley was telling the truth. Dennis said, “Look here, Rowley, I was trying to remember exactly what was in his pockets.”

“I don’t know,” said Rowley sullenly. “I remember when we took his shirt and waistcoat there was a lot of blood. I don’t think we looked in his pockets. At least, I didn’t. Why?”

“There might have been some clue,” said Dennis slowly.

“You might inquire of the police,” suggested Rowley with a lifting of his upper lip which was very like his father, and Johnny stopped in the doorway and said, “Hello there, children. Morning, honey, how are you? They’re waiting for you downstairs.”

Dennis shot one warning look at Rowley and said, “Okay. Come on, Daph.” And Rowley stepped suddenly toward Daphne and put his arm around her waist.

“I don’t like your airs, Dennis,” he said coolly, his anger hidden suddenly and showing only in the extreme paleness of his face. “I think you’d better know that Daphne is to be my wife.”

All her life afterward Daphne was to remember that moment, although at the time it was only a kind of blur from which certain things floated. The sense of Rowley’s nearness, her body pressed against him and his arm tight around her. The crackle of the coal and the faint smell of coal smoke and breakfast. Another car driving up outside and the closing of its doors—one, two, three. More police, she thought vaguely. Her father’s face, gray, with wide blue eyes, and the nervous way he patted his tie and pulled down his waistcoat and tugged at his mustache and still did not speak. No, he was never violent; always wanted things to be smooth and polite and civilized.

And Dennis.

Dennis, white with something besides rage; something more than momentary and purely physical jealousy. Dennis, with his eyes blazing again from under those peaked eyebrows. Dennis, starting forward furiously and checking himself within a foot of Rowley. Checking himself obviously at the thought of Gertrude.

She’d told Rowley, then. And they’d joined in that ugly, devilishly ingenious compact.

Johnny was talking: “Daphne, is this true? Are you and Rowley—Dear me, wouldn’t it be best to wait a little? What will people say? What—”

Rowley’s voice cut through it, cool and malicious: “Congratulate me, Dennis—that is, if you have any—affection—for Daphne.”

“You damn cur!”

“Dennis—Rowley—good God, what’s the matter with you!” cried Johnny, pulling his mustache wildly, but cautiously refraining from getting between them. “See here, you two. Keep your quarrel till this thing is safely over. Good heavens, does it matter? Now? When there’s been a murder here and any of us are likely to hang for it? Good God! Dear me!” He twisted his mustache, ran his hands through his blond hair and turned in anguish to Daphne. “My dear, do tell them to stop. Tell them anything—tell them—”

“Daphne doesn’t need to speak,” said Dennis. He took her hand. “I’ll speak for her. She’ll do as she pleases and—”

It was then that Daphne saw him standing in the doorway. His hat over his face. His dark eyes somber.

“Dennis!”
she cried in a choked way. Both Dennis and Rowley saw him then, too, and stiffened.

“Don’t mind me,” said Jacob Wait, his dark eyes shining deeply. “Go right ahead. You were about to say?”

“We were just going down to be fingerprinted,” said Rowley coolly. “Coming, Daph?”

Somehow she moved. For an instant or two it looked as if the detective did not intend to permit them to go, but he moved aside then and followed them downstairs.

And they were fingerprinted.

Which was out of all order. But none of them refused.

It was the beginning of a queer and unpleasant day. A day that seemed long because such strange and unaccustomed things took place. And that yet passed swiftly.

In the first place no one knew what Archie Shore would or would not do, and it was an ever-present and immediate source of anxiety.

“But he’ll keep his mouth shut till tonight,” said Amelia once. “We can count on that.” But she would not discuss the thing at length; nor would she say more of her willingness to pay him.

Gertrude’s asthma was worse, and she was in and out of her room, wandering about with washcloths wrung out of steaming water and pressed over her face, which grew blotchy and red. After lunch the family doctor came and, meeting Daphne in the hall, stopped her and pulled her to a window and looked searchingly into her face.

“It’s a bad business,” he said. “Stick out your tongue.”

She did so, and he looked at it and at her throat quite as he had always done.

“It’s the damnedest cold house,” he said grumpily. “You’ll all likely get pneumonia. See here, Daphne, who did kill him?”

She shook her head hopelessly.

“Well, what about the Haviland Bridge Company? All my savings are in it, as you know. It’s all right, of course—don’t look so scared. But—” He paused and glanced down the hall. “You know this stockholders’ meeting scheduled for January first?”

She nodded. They had intended to be back for it; back from that strange honeymoon in Bermuda.

“Well,” said the doctor, “they do say there was a pretty strong movement on foot to oust Ben. Of course, they’ve always wanted him out—your aunts, I mean. Everybody knows that. But it looks as if they were doing things this time that—Yes, yes, Maggie. Tell Mrs Shore I’m coming.” Maggie vanished, and he said to Daphne, “Keep yourself wrapped up and take some soda. No sense getting down sick. Why Amelia insists on living in this drafty old barn—” He went away grumbling.

Other people came, too. The corporation lawyer with a clerk carrying a fat brief case. The family lawyer, flurried and carrying another brief case. Two or three stockholders to see Johnny and Amelia. A steady succession of Western Union boys with telegrams. And always the police.

Always that knowledge of them working secretly, constantly, with all the powers of crime detection at their service—hunting, seeking, questioning, discovering things of which one knew nothing. Drawing conclusions.

And there was no way to know what.

Jacob Wait did not question Daphne again that day; did not, indeed, as far as she knew, question any of the family at length. She had, however, a strong feeling that it was only because he was gathering evidence against them.

He was away from the house that day, too, for a long time—visiting Ben’s apartment in town, his office in the Loop and at the plant. Searching, always searching for evidence.

“It’s elimination,” he said shortly to Johnny and Rowley, who met him by appointment at the Loop office. “Do you have keys to his desk?”

They had not, but the senior member of a corps of secretaries had. And if Wait found anything that was evidence, he did not say so. He lingered with the secretary after Johnny and Rowley, accompanied by a plain-clothes man, started on the cold, long drive back to St Germain. Lingered and had the company safe opened and looked at the shelves and boxes, asked many and sundry questions.

“There are no secrets,” said the secretary. “Here are all the records. The auditors are working on the books. Everything is open to inspection. There are no secrets.”

No secrets. On the way back to St Germain, Wait stopped at police headquarters and looked again at the articles of clothing—the billfold, the penknife, the handkerchief, the small change which had been in the trouser pockets. Looked and did not find something that ought to have been there and went on, driving himself and skidding a little when he turned into the well-rutted drive leading up to Amelia Haviland’s house.

Later he interviewed the servants; a long interview from which Maggie emerged red-eyed and with her customary defiant air somewhat subdued. Laing spoke to Daphne of it.

“They want to know such—such strange things,” he told her worriedly. “Such as locks on the doors—how they open, who locks them. And—” He paused abruptly, dusted a table which ought to have been dusted that morning and said, “And other things.”

“What other things, Laing?”

“Well,”—he was reluctant, but below the reluctance was a suggestion that she ought to know—“well, about members of the family, Miss Daphne. Their private affairs. It did no good for me to tell them I didn’t know. They—especially the person called Wait—were very insistent. Kept at me, you know. Kept at me. They wanted to know, for instance—if you’ll excuse me, Miss Daphne”—he shot one worried look at her and went back absorbedly to dusting a chair which he had already dusted—“they wanted to know if there was ever anything between you and Mr Dennis. Anything of a romantic nature. They were very insistent.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I knew nothing of such matters. At least, I said that at first. When they insisted, asking what I’d seen or heard, I was obliged to answer directly. But I said”—he bent over so his face was hidden—“I said, no, Miss Daphne. Was that right?”