Danger in the Dark (27 page)

Wait moved a step nearer, and Gertrude stopped abruptly. He said, “So you wanted your nice to marry Brewer?”

“Oh,” said Gertrude. “Yes and no.”

“You didn’t want anything to happen to stop the wedding?”

“Well, I couldn’t stand Ben Brewer. Never could. But, after all, we’d invited people to the wedding. You can’t do things like that—I mean not have a wedding after—”

Rowley said savagely, “For God’s sake, Mother—”

Wait said, “So you told Brewer—just what did you tell him?”

“Why, I told him that Daphne was in love with Dennis and was going to elope with him. He didn’t seem to like it. In fact he went absolutely scarlet, and I thought he was going to—have a stroke or something. I told him not to worry, that girls often felt like that just before a wedding—reluctant, you know. But that I thought he ought to do something about it. He seemed to think so, too,” said Gertrude. “At least, he swore quite a lot and went to the springhouse.”

“Where were you at the time?”

“When I told him, you mean? Why, I went to his room After we’d all gone upstairs that night. He—well, really he all but pushed me out of the way and went right downstairs. Didn’t even stop for a coat, and it was snowing. However, I still think I was right.”

“But you admitted you were glad he died.”

“Certainly I was glad. Thankful he was out of the way. And as to the wedding, well, you can’t have a wedding if anybody dies, everybody understands that. But an elopement is different. Besides,” said Gertrude with an effect of candor, “if Daphne was going to marry one of the two men, I thought it was better to marry Ben, much as I hated him. At least, we would keep him in the family—him and the company.”

“I see. Now, Mrs Shore, how did you know about this—elopement?”

“She saw us,” said Dennis. “She listened at the library door. She—”

“I did no such thing,” said Gertrude. “Johnny told me.”

“Johnny!”

“Certainly. My brother.”

Wait turned to Dennis slowly. “So that’s why whoever it was that opened the library door didn’t tell me. It had to be someone who wouldn’t put that evidence against you in my hands. It—” He stopped short as if he’d been thinking aloud. “Get Haviland—John Haviland—down here,” he said shortly to Schmidt, who went to the door, spoke to a policeman and came back into the room. Wait had turned again to Gertrude. “Johnny told you. Why?”

“Why!” cried Gertrude. “Because he was terribly upset, and who wouldn’t be! Do you realize what Ben Brewer could have done to us if Daphne had done that to him?”

“But I—I wasn’t going away. I knew when I’d had time to think that I couldn’t—I couldn’t—” Daphne’s small voice stopped, and no one seemed to have heard it. Gertrude was talking on: “… what retaliation—what revenge he could have taken upon us. Not that Johnny talked much of that. Johnny isn’t farsighted as I am. Johnny isn’t at all like his father—he simply doesn’t see a crisis when it’s under his nose. He—”

“Suppose you tell me just what happened. From the beginning. When did your brother tell you this?”

“Oh, after we’d gone upstairs. The men came up only a little later, and Johnny came to me, and I saw at once that he was worried. Somehow I can always see these things. So I asked what was wrong. He didn’t want to tell me, but I insisted and got it out of him. He said finally that he’d opened the library door, not knowing even that Dennis had come back, and that there was Dennis holding Daphne in his arms and that Dennis was saying—oh, I don’t know what exactly; a lot of love-making, I suppose.” Her eyes snapped once viciously at Dennis and went back to the detective. “Anyway, that he said, ‘We’ll meet at the springhouse, then, at eleven-thirty. We’ll go away together’ and that she needn’t marry Ben, that he wouldn’t let her—all that. Johnny was very upset, didn’t know what to do, and just closed the door quietly and went away. Of course, I was horrified. I said, ‘But you ought to stop it, Johnny. This is dreadful. All the wedding presents have come. They can’t elope.’ He said he knew he ought to. But he wouldn’t go and just sat there and said finally that he wished he had the force that Ben had. And of course I saw that the thing to do was to go to Ben. So I did. Right away.”

“That was about what time?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Gertrude helpfully. “But Ben hadn’t started to undress yet. I told him and, as I told you, he was really quite enraged and just flung himself past me and down the stairs. I decided perhaps it was best and went back to my room.”

“Was Johnny there waiting for you?”

“Yes,” said Gertrude. “Sitting there looking sort of sick and chewing his mustache. Johnny’s always been a baby about things. I told him what I’d done and that Ben had gone out to the springhouse. He was very upset—I think, really, he’d had too much to drink, and he’s never had a head for liquor. Anyway, he walked up and down in my room for an hour or so.”

“An hour?”

“Well, he didn’t leave till after the clock struck twelve-thirty. I remember that. We kept talking. I thought I had taken the wisest course, and I thought things would be perfectly all right. Ben would meet them, bring Daphne back and kick Dennis out. Which I thought he richly deserved. Johnny kept saying he ought to go down, he didn’t want Daphne to be worried. I kept telling him not to go—that it was best to let them settle things themselves. Of course,” said Gertrude, “I never thought of Dennis’ murdering Ben. But I must say it didn’t seem a bad idea.”

“Mother!” said Rowley. “You’ll talk yourself into the electric chair yet.”

“Oh no, I won’t,” said Gertrude. “I have an alibi. Johnny was there with me the whole time Ben was being murdered. Ben went down the stairway, and I went straight into my room, and Johnny was there and we talked at least an hour. I figured it out later. I didn’t tell you,” she said blandly to Jacob Wait, quite forgetting her rage in the satisfaction of taking the center of the stage, “because I’m naturally close-mouthed about things. Like my father.”

“You didn’t tell because you’d thought of a way to use what you knew,” said Wait. “You may have an alibi, Mrs Shore, but you have deliberately obstructed the progress of the law, and I’m not sure you are not in the position of an accessory after the fact.”

“A what?” said Gertrude.

Wait turned to Rowley. He said, “All right, now, Shore. Let’s hear your story.”

“You’ve heard it,” began Rowley.

“I mean the real one. You came to the springhouse—helped Haviland move the body—let’s have it in your own words.”

“Oh,” said Rowley, giving Daphne an ugly look, “so they’ve told! Well, did they tell that I found them actually leaning over the body of the man they’d just killed?”

“Yes,” said Wait. “Why did you go to the springhouse?”

“To investigate the shot.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Miss Haviland, you say it was close to twelve when you let yourself out the front door?”

“Yes.”

“You would have heard the shot if it had been fired when you were outside?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Then, say, it was a little before twelve. You, Mrs Shore, sent Brewer to the springhouse at about—”

“
Sent
him to the springhouse!” cried Gertrude. “I did not. I merely told him—”

“You say he went downstairs a little before eleven-thirty?”

“I didn’t say it,” said Gertrude. “But I suppose it was about that time.”

“It must have been about a quarter after twelve, even a little later, when you arrived at the springhouse, Shore. What were you doing in the meantime?”

Rowley hesitated. He rubbed a hand over the bruise on his chin, looked at the rug at his feet thoughtfully and finally said, “I thought my father had done it.”

“Why?”

“Because he said he was going to see Ben. Because—
”

“Don’t say anything, Rowley,” said his mother shrilly. “Be careful.”

“Well,” said Rowley sullenly, “it looks as if I’ll be better off to tell the truth. I didn’t kill Ben.”

“You mean you are going to retract your story altogether?”

“Yes,” said Rowley calmly. “Up to the point where I found Daphne and Dennis there in the springhouse. Yes.”

And retract he did. With the utmost coolness.

The trouble was, it offered no loophole.

His father had been in his room when he came upstairs after dinner, he told Wait. That was true. It was also true that he had said he had come to see Ben. He, Rowley, had tried to dissuade him, but Archie had laughed and said he had business with Ben.

“What kind of business?” asked Wait.

Rowley didn’t know. But Archie had seemed pretty certain of himself and sort of—well, said Rowley, excited. He did say, added Rowley coolly, that he expected to have all the money he needed very soon.

“I got the impression that he had something on Ben,” observed Rowley. “But he was worried, too. He told me things would be all right and went away. I offered to go down stairs with him—I wanted to see that he got out of the house without causing any trouble. But he wouldn’t let me. He went away—”

“When?”

“Oh, as soon as he thought everybody had got safely out of the way—about eleven—” Rowley stopped as if it had begun to have a sinister sound, but said it, “Eleven-thirty. Perhaps ten minutes earlier. I don’t just know.”

“You didn’t see him at all?” said Wait, turning to Gertrude.

She bridled. “Certainly not.”

He went back to Rowley. “Then what?”

Well then, said Rowley, he had been sort of worried about it. Kept thinking of it and wondering what his father meant and if he would actually try to see Ben after all.

“Did he go to Brewer’s room when he left your room?”

“No. I watched him go to the stairway. Anyway, Mother would have seen him if he’d gone to Ben’s room.”

“Do you think he had given up his plan to see Brewer?”

“I don’t know. I thought so when he left, because he didn’t stop at Ben’s door, but instead went downstairs and I supposed out of the house. But after what happened I wasn’t sure.”

“Go on.”

“Well, finally, I decided it was nothing I could help. The room was thick with smoke, and I put up a window and leaned out.”

“Did you hear the shot?”

“Yes,” said Rowley.

Wait’s eyes glowed. His voice was suddenly rich and deep and vibrant. Yet he was angry, too; an anger which mingled in the strangest way with the pulse of excitement that swept hotly along his veins. But people never told; not when they knew themselves in danger. Not unless they were made to tell.

“What time was it?”

“I don’t know. But it was before twelve. I know that. I didn’t go down at once. I waited and listened. I—well, I thought my father had met Ben and—” He stopped and shrugged. “You can understand I wouldn’t care to get mixed up in it.”

“Didn’t you want to know if—”

“If my father ‘d been shot?” A curious kind of glaze came over Rowley’s eyes. “Oh—yes. That is, I wondered what had happened. But my father was never exactly a credit to the family. Oh, of course, I finally decided I’d better go down, and did, and went to the springhouse because—”

“Why?”

“Because the shot seemed to come from that direction. And that’s all. I saw nobody along the way. There was a light inside the springhouse, and Dennis and Daphne were there. I didn’t know who’d killed Ben, but I did know that my father had said he was to see him—”

“So you—”

“So I thought we’d better cover things up if possible. I never liked Ben and didn’t much care who killed him. But, after all, if my father had killed him—” He stopped and shrugged. “It would have been a mess,” observed Rowley with a certain detachment.

“So when he came back you subscribed to his story?”

“Oh yes. It was a good story. He told it at the dinner table before I’d had a chance to talk to him alone, but also before your—equerries had got hold of me and questioned me.”

Schmidt was heard to mutter resentfully at this point, and Wait said, “That’s your third story, Shore. Why should we believe it?”

“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said Rowley. “But I didn’t kill Ben.”

“You had the chance to do it.”

“You forget the—second murder,” said Rowley. “There wasn’t much love lost between my father and me, but I wouldn’t murder him.”

Father and son, thought Jacob Wait broodingly. He had a strong, instinctive regard for a blood tie; he gave it meaning and weight. Particularly the tie between a father and a son. Well, here it had no such weight. He need not allow for it, but it was with a deep reluctance that he put it aside. Father and son: a phrase from the Old Testament stirred deep down in his mind, “… his blood be upon him,” and was replaced by another command about murder. He said abruptly to Braley, “You’ve searched his room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t find them?”

“No, sir. I’d have told you at once—”

“Yes, I know. Where’s Haviland?”

“Kellogg went to get him. Shall I go—”

“Yes. No. Wait.” He walked to the door and turned there and looked deliberately at them—shifting his somber dark eyes from one to the other as if considering them, objectively and soberly. Weighing what they had said and had failed to say and had been driven to say. Fitting them into a new set of circumstances as he would fit chessmen into a new combination. And considering the next move in exactly the same way. Except that he didn’t hate chessmen.

It was one of those moments which seem to pluck themselves out of time and space and remain suspended, unrelated to any dimension and thus mysterious and obscurely terrifying.

Gertrude’s green silk rustled a little, and her florid face had gone pasty and flat. The regular little thud and beat of the melting snow falling on the window sill became louder and took on significance. As if it had a fateful and ominous meaning.

Ghostly fingers beating at a window sill.

And all around the house those invisible fingers beat their uneasy tattoo. Around the house and along a driveway where, by that time, the trees along it veiled themselves in mist and darkness. And beat, too, insistently around the shadowed springhouse where a man had died.

Policemen, wading ankle deep in slush, looked for what they didn’t expect to find. Some mysterious word went around to the hovering group of newspaper men. Two or three at a time, smoking and splattering through the slush, they went across the drive and got themselves into cars and went into the village, slithering and skidding, with headlights making eerie lanes of light through the wet dark, and not talking much. Only one or two made telephone calls to city editors. The rest of them straggled into Dutch John’s and sat on high stools before the counter drinking hot coffee and listening to the blare of a radio and cursing the weather, the thaw, the case, themselves.