Danger in the Dark (28 page)

But none of them went into town. For they were due for a break, and they knew it, as you know when a storm is about to break. And Dutch John, secretly pleased, was taking bets. Would the thing break in time for the late edition of the evening papers? Or would it hold off until the early editions of the morning papers?

And back in the old house, sprawling among heavy, drooping shadows that were trees, they waited, there in the library, for what Wait intended to do.

The ghostly fingers beat drearily upon the sill. Gertrude moved, and her silk rustled thinly again.

Dennis put his hand upon Daphne’s wrist; she was so little, sitting in the armchair beside him; so tired and white; so dazed with disaster. He’d have given anything in the world to keep her out of the thing—anything? he thought. Well, it might come to that. For he couldn’t let her stand trial. He couldn’t let her be dragged through all the horror and ugliness and hideous suspense of it. He began to go over in his mind the things he must tell the lawyers; conjecturing up possible ways and means. Johnny had been right, he thought suddenly, to suggest confessing. He looked down at Daphne’s brown hair, and she looked up at him, her eyes oddly blank, as if she didn’t see him. But she did, for she tried to smile, a small, tremulous attempt. How long ago was it that they had stood on the hearthrug—not five feet from where he stood now? Daphne in his arms. Promising anything he wanted her to promise. With the fire making glancing, mellow lights against the soft dusk, and in the corner the glimmer of silver and crystal—the wedding gifts. Winking sardonically. As if they knew how dreadfully those plans were to go awry.

Wait brought his wrist up and looked at the watch on it. “Do any of you have anything at all to add?”

It was chance that his eyes lingered on Gertrude—chance or the fact that she was flourishing her handkerchief again, dispelling clouds of scent.

“Uh,” said Gertrude on a short breath. “Why—why, no! Certainly not. Nothing at all. I’ve told everything I know. And I have an alibi. Don’t forget that, Mr Wait. And as for Rowley, he wouldn’t have killed Archie. That’s nonsense. If you would just stick to business, Mr Wait, and not go off on tangents, you might get on a bit faster. After all, you know, it’s not pleasant—murders and hammers and—and even my nail polish gone. Everything in the house out of order. I think it’s—”

“What’s gone?”

“—preposterous,” said Gertrude, refusing to be caught up so shortly. “Preposterous. What are the police for if not—”

“What did you say about nail polish?”

“Dear me,” said Gertrude. “There’s nothing so important about nail polish—just a little bottle of enamel—”

“Keep the girl and young Haviland under arrest,” said Wait and walked out of the room.

There was, except for the murmur of the thaw, complete and utter silence following Wait’s departure. Dennis stared at the empty doorway. Keys—a bottle of nail polish. Keys—there had been no keys in Ben’s pockets—was that it? Was that why Wait had questioned them at length about what could have fallen or slipped or been taken from Ben’s pockets?

But there was nothing that Wait couldn’t have unlocked if he so pleased. Nothing except, perhaps, a safe-deposit box. And even that could be opened—if you were, as Wait could be, armed with proper credentials to unwind a bit of necessary red tape.

And nail polish. …

It was just then that a shadow filled the doorway, and Wait said, in a rich, deep voice, “Will you come with me, please, Mrs Shore? You, too, Shore.”

“The car’s at the door, sir,” said Braley quickly before the detective could vanish again. “Shall I take Miss Haviland and Dennis Haviland to the station?”

Light flashed on something he held in his hand, and Daphne’s gaze was suddenly riveted on it. It was a revolver, very big and clumsy, yet somehow he’d got it from its leather holster into his hand without any of them being aware of it. And it was inexpressibly real.

She didn’t know what Wait said, for Gertrude’s green silk was swishing angrily across the floor. And another policeman—a new one—had come into the room.

And Dennis had taken his hand away from her and was looking in the queerest way at the palm of it. As if he’d never seen it before.

“Oh, God,” said Dennis and turned wildly to the policeman. “You’ve got to let me go,” he said. “
Now
—”

T
HEY WOULDN’T LET HIM
go, and Wait did not return, although there were, during the hour or so that followed, several murmured conferences at the door between Braley and someone Dennis could not see, of which Dennis caught only a few totally unrevealing words.

Except for those few interruptions, the policemen hardly moved and kept them there, evidently at Wait’s order. They didn’t know why. They didn’t know whether or not Wait had considered their story of sufficient circumstance and weight to induce, at least, further investigation. And they couldn’t talk—not with the two policemen there in the room, watching, listening.

There was no use talking, anyway, thought Daphne once, listening to the heavy murmur of the thaw in a kind of spell, as if she were drugged with weariness. They had done everything they could: there was nothing more to do. Even her hands felt heavy and without impulse.

Dennis came to her once or twice and stood beside her, so near she could have touched him, and she was gratefully conscious of his presence.

But Dennis was uneasy, restless, smoking rapidly one cigarette after another. Obsessed by a notion; revolving it; testing it; rejecting it. Then adopting it again because their need was so great. Once Daphne saw him staring at the palm of his hand again, opening and closing his hand, frowning, doubtful.

Time passed, and still they waited and did not know why. It must have been after eight when, after another of those whispered conferences at the door and without a word of explanation, they were taken through deserted halls and up the stairway where the third step creaked and into the old playroom, where, still without explanation, they were left.

“I’ll send you something to eat,” said Braley shortly. “Orders are for you to stay here.”

He went away, the second policeman accompanying him, and a few minutes later Laing himself brought up a tray of sandwiches and coffee. He looked old and tired and could tell them nothing except that things were very quiet around the house.

“Surely the police haven’t gone,” cried Dennis.

“Oh no, sir,” said Laing. “Though a police car left here some time ago. Left in a hurry. Can I do something for Miss Daphne?”

But there was nothing he could do, and he went away.

“I suppose,” said Dennis, attacking the sandwiches, “we may as well make the best of it. Come along, Daph; eat something.” He poured coffee for her and took it to her and knelt beside her suddenly and put his face against her hand. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “it’s all my fault. But I’ll get you out of it. Somehow.”

The withdrawal of the police was a relief, even if, as Dennis believed, they were on guard in the hall. Even if there was no possible way for them to escape—and the effort alone would be damning evidence against them.

But Dennis would not talk much. He paced up and down the worn old rug, smoking, frowning, thinking.

“We’ll get a lawyer in the morning,” he said once. And again, “Try to rest, my dear. Put your head back and see if you can’t sleep a little.” He paused behind her chair and smoothed her hair back from her face. He looked taut and white, and his eyes were deeply withdrawn and remote under those peaked black eyebrows. “I love you,” he said unsteadily, shaken with love and with fear for her and for the thing his love had brought upon her. He must get her out of the sordid, filthy slime of the thing: he must save her from something else which he didn’t dare, just then, to think about.

All the blame for the thing was his: all the blunders, all the stupidity.

It was an inexpressibly bitter and cruel thought.

He turned abruptly away.

“You’re cold,” he said. “I’ll stir up the fire.”

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, letting that drugged feeling of weariness and lassitude possess her. She was only dimly conscious that he remained for a long time there at the mantel, staring rather oddly and intently at the old, battered coal scuttle with two limp cotton gloves for handling coal hanging across it.

Nobody came near the room. Only once did they hear any sound from below, and that was when the heavy front door closed with a dull, faraway thud.

The house had grown as silent as if it were deserted and forgotten in the moist darkness. Along the window sills those ghostly, chill fingers still beat steadily. Outside in the grounds the night was murmurous with the thaw and very dark.

It was late when there were footsteps along the hall and someone opened the door and came into the room. It was Johnny Haviland, and he stopped when he saw them and blinked and said, “What’s all this? They say you are under arrest. Good God, why?”

“There’s evidence enough,” said Dennis grimly and told him briefly while Johnny stared, chewed his mustache, and went to hover over the fire. He looked cold and said he’d been out on the grounds.

“It’s damn wet and cold. Police seem to have stopped everything. Wait’s nowhere to be seen. One of the policemen came for me awhile ago in a tearing hurry, said Wait wanted me; when we got to the house, Wait didn’t want me at all. Changed his mind or something. I said, ‘Any objections to my taking a walk?’ He said none at all, that an arrest had been made. But why aren’t you under guard if you’re arrested? There’s not a policeman in sight.”

“Fine chance we’d have of getting away!” said Dennis.

“Well,” said Johnny, rubbing his hands over the fire, “you see, it would have been a good thing if you had let me confess. Would have been much better all round.”

“It would have been all right for you to confess to the murder of Ben,” said Dennis, leaning against the mantel. “Gertrude gave you an alibi for the time Ben was killed.”

“Oh yes. Yes, of course,” said Johnny. “I counted on that.”

“You—”

“Certainly. I counted on it. If worst came to worst, that is. But I wasn’t going to let Wait know that you and Daphne were at the springhouse or that Ben knew of it. Good God, of course not. Certainly not. If I didn’t have to in self-defense. You don’t know how bitterly I’ve regretted telling

Gertrude. You don’t know—God, it’s cold.”

He was hovering closely over the fire. Daphne, still in the clutches of that strange lassitude, had leaned back again, her head on the cushions behind her, her eyes closed. There was nothing Johnny could do. Nothing anybody could do. The case was too strong.

Their voices hummed quietly and distantly, with now and then a word or phrase emerging. Lawyers—money—evidence—Archie—tongs—nail polish …

“What about nail polish?”

“It’s only an idea.”

The voices merged again, blurring together until she heard Dennis say clearly:

“… a nasty trick of pinching one’s hand.”

“Hand!”

“Why, yes. I was thinking that if so slight a pressure as one needed to grip a piece of coal made the handle pinch as it did, then so heavy a grasp as would be needed to—to kill a man must have left a mark of some kind on the murderer’s hand.”

“A—Oh, come, Dennis, that’s fantastic.”

“And you see, the nail polish acts a good deal as collodion might act. It’s a kind of lacquer or something, isn’t it, Daphne? …
Daphne!”

She brought herself back from a tremendous distance.

“Nail polish, Daphne. What’s it made of?”

“I—Why, I don’t know, Dennis. Lacquer, I think. Some thing that evaporates quickly—”

“My idea, you see,” said Dennis. “Oh, it may sound farfetched, but it struck me all at once, and I think it struck Wait, too. My idea is that whoever used the tongs and killed Archie had a badly pinched or perhaps cut hand. And that the murderer may have thought the nail polish would pull the edges of the cut together. Would it do that, Daph?”

“Yes.”

“And also serve to disguise the cut. It might not have worked—but the whole point is, the murderer might have thought it would work. Anyway, I’m sure there would be a cut. I’ve known those tongs long and well, and the damn things have given me many a pinch.”

“Oh, Dennis,” said Johnny deprecatingly, “it’s such a—such a slim chance. I hate to discourage you, but—”

“Yes. I suppose it is slim. But we are in a position to grasp at slim chances. After all, you know, Johnny, it’s—it’s our lives at stake. Murder—”

Johnny fidgeted.

“Something will happen to help you,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry too much. No need to talk of it so desperately.”

It was like Johnny.

“I’ve got to
make
something happen,” said Dennis. He was leaning on the mantel, staring down at the place where the tongs usually stood against the coal scuttle. Staring at the cotton gloves hanging limply across the coal scuttle. Daphne’s eyelids drooped and then flew open. For Dennis said in the strangest voice, “There were no fingerprints on the tongs.”

“Uh!” said Johnny in a startled way. “Fingerprints! What do you mean? Certainly there were no fingerprints.”

“No fingerprints,” repeated Dennis and stared down at the coal scuttle. Daphne was all at once rigid, except for her heart, which for no tangible reason was leaping and fluttering in her throat.

It was very still. So still that Johnny, who never liked silences, began to wriggle and murmur something about the dampness and chill, the slush outside.

The windows, black and glittering, reflected them knowingly. Reflected Daphne’s shining hair and the scarlet scarf she wore. Reflected Dennis’ long, easy figure, so curiously still. So alert in its stillness. As if—which was absurd—as if he were stalking something.

“Funny,” Johnny was saying all at once. “What’s happened to everybody? First time since the murder the house hasn’t been lousy with policemen. Where do you suppose they are?”

Dennis still said nothing. And still did not move, and there was no way for Daphne to know, as she did know, that every nerve in his long, lean body was strung tight and tense.