Escape the Night (12 page)

The scratches on her hand were healing but were still red and deep. She doused her hand with rubbing alcohol, found a package of Bandaids in the bathroom and applied one over the deepest scratch.

She put on a navy-blue flannel suit and a white blouse and a red tie that matched the red on her lips. She rolled her smooth dark hair in a pompadour and a knot on top of her head and then put a small red bow there too, a little defiantly. She gave the girl in the mirror, with the level blue eyes, a nod, which was an admonition and went downstairs. The railing of the stairs was slippery and wet. The flagstones in the patio glistened. It was chilly, rather than cold, but it was pleasant to find an open fire in the long living room and Amanda and Sutton having breakfast on a small table drawn up before the fire.

Amanda looked tired, and again somehow rather pinched, and did not mention the bracelet. Sutton, in bagging tweeds with a yellow scarf at his throat, and small hollows around his eyes as if he hadn’t slept, got the war news on the radio, and said briefly that the body hadn’t been found and there couldn’t be an inquest until it was found, so it might be days or even weeks before the inquest or funeral could be held.

“Or never,” said Amanda shortly, looking at her husband over the rim of her coffee cup.

“Or never,” agreed Sutton. “In that case it’ll be years before her will can be probated. Unless, of course, Serena, here, can swear that she was dead.” He gave Serena a quick and rather kindly glance as if she had visibly winced. “I’m sorry, Serena,” he added. “Perhaps it won’t be necessary to drag you into it.”

However, the police had asked him and Amanda to come to the station that morning, for questioning, he supposed. Later they wanted to get an exact record, too, of Serena’s story.

Amanda said abruptly: “What are we going to do about the will, Sutton? I mean if the body isn’t found. Shouldn’t we ask Johnny? He’s a lawyer, he’d know. We can’t wait …”

“We’ll have to wait,” said Sutton, avoiding Amanda’s eyes.

They left about noon in Sutton’s big car, which by daylight Serena suddenly realized was big and polished and impressive at first glance, and actually of an ancient and worn vintage. Amanda, however, looked smart and beautiful in a sleek beige suit and a coral sweater. “Answer the phone, will you, Sissy,” she said, drawing on her brown gloves. “Everyone will be phoning as soon as the news gets around. Tell them that the police are investigating the accident because Luisa had told them she thought somebody was trying to murder her; tell them at the same time—be sure you say exactly this, Sissy—that we had no reason to think she was mentally unbalanced; and that we are doing everything we can to assist the police.”

It was, of course, the proper attitude. And one almost certain to suggest to any friendly inquirer that Luisa
had
been temporarily unbalanced.

“Did you find the bracelet?” asked Serena—feeling unpleasantly conspiratorial because she had not asked about it openly and frankly before Sutton went to get out the car.

Amanda’s face tightened. “No. Sissy, don’t say anything about it, will you?” There was sharp anxiety in her eyes.

“But if it’s valuable …”

“I tell you it’s not,” snapped Amanda, and went out to the arched doorway. As she reached it she whirled around and came back, tall and strong and beautiful, but her eyes angry. “Don’t ask me so many questions, Sissy! I’ve told you my affairs don’t concern you!”

She had asked questions; she had sounded inquisitive, and prying and preachy, Serena thought suddenly. Yet … “Amanda, something is wrong,” she said impulsively. “If you’re in trouble …”

“Nonsense!” said Amanda. “I tell you that bracelet’s of no value.” This time she did not return.

The big car drove carefully away as if feeling its way through the fog.

Serena went slowly into the house, put another log on the fire, lighted the lamp on the long table with its bowls of stock and the two bronze horses, and hunted out some new magazines. It was better not to think, much better.

She didn’t, however, really like being left alone again in the house with only Modeste, the old cook (part Portuguese, part Spanish paesano) in the kitchen, and Ramon, her husband, floating silently about with a dustcloth, his sad, wrinkled face looking rather green and uneasy. Both of them must know that the police had been there the previous night and why.

Nobody came. There were several telephone calls expressing sympathy—and questions to which Serena replied as Amanda had asked her to do. Most of them were from people she knew and remembered more or less intimately. All of them asked when she had got back and why. Oh, a vacation. Well, was it true that she had actually been out on the rocks with Luisa when it happened? How horrible!

There were, indeed, a series of telephone calls, each of which in its way was to be of some importance. And there was one from a San Francisco newspaper with which she coped successfully, she thought, by saying that the family were out. “It was Miss Serena March who was with the woman—that is, Luisa Condit—when it happened, wasn’t it?” inquired the voice at the other end. When she said, “Yes,” and the reporter, if reporter it was, at once asked to speak to Miss March, she lost her head a little and said Miss March wasn’t available either.

“You mean won’t talk?” said the reporter. And added unexpectedly, “Are you Miss March by any chance?”

“Sorry,” said Serena with as much dignity as she could muster. “But I’ll tell her you called,” and hung up, reflecting on the unexpected ways into which an ordinarily honest person can be trapped into trivial evasions. Obviously, if a statement was to be given the papers, it was Sutton’s place to do it, not hers. Yet she couldn’t say so, over the telephone, just like that.

The short conversation left her more shaken and troubled than its content seemed to warrant. But that was one of the things to reckon with if there was murder, or even a suspicion of murder. Newspapers, headlines, photographs, a certain amount of surveillance and extraordinarily disagreeable publicity.

Jem didn’t come and didn’t telephone.

And she wouldn’t think of him; she wouldn’t sit near the telephone, pretending to read, pretending not to listen and hope every time it rang that it would be Jem. She wouldn’t catch herself again, holding the magazine in her lap and staring out into the gray clouds over the mountains, thinking the same thoughts over and over again because there was nothing she hadn’t thought of, nothing she could add, no different or new view she could take.

Amanda and Sutton did not return. Dave Seabrooke called a little after three and asked if they’d had any news.

“None. That is, so far as I know. They say the body may never be found.”

“That’s right,” said Dave. “How’s everybody?”

“All right, thanks. Amanda and Sutton are in town.” She longed so for him to mention Jem that it was as if she had asked him to do so, aloud, for he said: “I’ve been trying to salvage something of my laboratory. I think I can have some of the equipment fixed up eventually, if I want to. I’m not sure I want to. Jem’s been out on the rocks most of the day with one of the police. Well—I just thought I’d call.”

“Thank you, Dave.”

Again, she wondered, putting down the telephone, if there could be any possible connection between the destruction of Dave’s laboratory and Luisa’s death. Yet, if she even considered the possibility of such a connection she must first accept the theory of murder. Besides, it was only the fact that the two events had happened at so nearly the same time that inclined one to seek a connection. Amanda had added Bill Lanier’s return to the equation. But that, again, was mere speculation.

Almost immediately after that, however, there were two more telephone calls. One was even more disturbing and disagreeable in its feeling of menace than the call from the newspaper had been, for it was Bill Lanier, and he thought at first that she was Amanda.

“I’m back,” he said. “I came back day before, yesterday. Did you know I was back?”

She didn’t recognize the voice for a moment. She stood holding the receiver tightly, taken aback by the abrupt words that came out of it. It was a heavy voice, flat and without inflection, a deep, sullen kind of voice. The man at the other end seemed to wait, too, for a moment and then said: “I said I’m back. I told you I’d come back. I told you some other things, too.”

It was Bill Lanier, of course. It could be no one else. She said quickly: “This is Serena March. Is that you, Bill?”

There was a short and startled silence. Then he said:
“Sissy!”

“Yes. Do you want to talk to Amanda or Sutton? They’re both in town.”

He gave a short laugh. “Tell Amanda I phoned, will you? Just tell her I phoned.” He hung up abruptly so it crashed in her ear.

She put down the telephone slowly. She wished, rather unreasonably, that she hadn’t let him know that she had recognized his voice. And the telephone below her hand rang again. This time it was Leda.

Her voice was excited, breathless, words falling over each other. “Sissy, is that you? I’ve been trying to get you; the line was busy. Sissy,
has Luisa’s body been found?”

“No. That is, I don’t think so. If so, I’ve not heard …”

“That’s what I thought!
Sissy, it won’t be either!”

“What
…!”

“I said it won’t be found. Ever. I know.… Sissy, can anyone hear me?”

There was no kitchen extension, and there was only Modeste and Ramon and herself in the house. “No. Leda, what do you mean?”

“Are you sure? Because … Listen, Sissy, I’ve got to talk low. I’m in a drugstore booth in Monterey. I don’t know whether I was followed or not!”

“Followed!”

“Yes, from Gregory’s. Sissy,
I know how Luisa
was murdered. She
was
murdered. And I know how, and it’s the only way it could have been done.”

“Leda!”

“It changes everything! You see, I thought … Well, I know that Luisa and Amanda had had a terrible quarrel. Over Jem, you know. Luisa thought Amanda ought to send him away, not keep him hanging around like this. So Luisa threatened to tell Sutton—not that Sutton couldn’t see, even if he were blind as an owl and Sutton isn’t blind. But Luisa would force him to take some notice, you see. And Jem …” She ran out of breath and cried: “Oh, but that’s not what I’ve got to tell you. I thought Amanda might have … Oh, I didn’t
really
think Amanda would push her over the rocks, and anyway you said nobody was there, but still I thought Amanda wouldn’t have
stopped it.
You see? If she saw it or knew of it. And of course I know how you feel about Amanda. You’d stick up for her and never tell the police, no matter what you knew.”

“Leda, what are you saying?”

“Don’t shout,” cried Leda in a rush. “You know perfectly well what I’m saying. I thought Amanda might have been what the police call involved. But now I know something else and I …”

“What?
If you’ll not talk so fast …”

“I want to tell you. I want you to meet me.”

“Nonsense. Leda, you can’t be serious.”

“Not nonsense at all. Sissy, you’ve got to listen …” Leda’s voice was almost a whisper. Serena had a quick impression that she was looking over her shoulder, shielding her mouth with her hand. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Leda, I think you’re out of your mind.”

“Will
you meet me?”

“If you really think you know anything, you ought to tell the police!”

“No, I can’t.”

“But …”

“And I
won’t.
I simply won’t, Sissy. I’ve got to talk to you. You were there when it happened. And I’m not sure. I don’t
want
to tell the police. Not when it’s … I want to know what you think. You’ve been away and you’ve got a …” Leda hesitated and said rather simply and childishly: “A better slant on us. Clearer. I’m all mixed up, Sissy. Johnny … Oh, I’m all mixed up. I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell the police. I won’t.”

The childish hesitancy and simplicity were more convincing and more persuasive, too, than anything else had been.

Go slowly, Serena. Go carefully. It was as if somebody else said it warningly. Serena said: “Where do you want me to meet you?”

“I’ve thought it all out. At your house. At the March house. At Casa Madrone. It’s about halfway between where you are and Monterey. You have the key. But anyway, it’s unlocked, if I get there sooner than you. You can take Sutton’s station wagon. It’s in the garage or somewhere. Come right along, Sissy. I’ll meet you at Casa Madrone. In, say twenty minutes.” With a breathless kind of dash she clicked the receiver, quickly so as not to give Serena a chance to refuse.

It was no use telling one’s self that Leda was a fluttering, excitable idiot. She was fluttering, she was excitable—but she had a certain shrewdness. She had a certain tenacity, too, when she knew what she wanted.

She had called it murder. She had really thought that Amanda had been “involved” in Luisa’s death, yet somehow in that fluttering, dangerous mind of hers she had evaded her own consequent responsibility in the matter.

Yes, Serena seemed to see quite suddenly that Leda was dangerous. And uncertain.

There was no question in Serena’s mind about meeting Leda. Somebody had to meet her, listen to her, talk her out of any false and dangerous notions. Leda hated Amanda.

And if by any chance there was a grain of truth below Leda’s excited talk then that, too, ought to be weighed and reckoned with. Even Leda, in a confused way, seemed to feel that.

It was, however, more than twenty minutes before Serena had pulled on a scarlet raincoat of Amanda’s that hung in the hall closet, and, in case the house actually was locked, found the key to Casa Madrone in a forgotten pocket of her own dressing case. More than that, by the time she had told Modeste merely that she was going out and had found the long, shed-like garage and backed out the station wagon. There was gasoline in it, and the key was in the ignition lock. But it was difficult driving down into the valley; the road was slippery and the edges of it had a tendency to disappear into foggy grayness. She turned on the parking lights which merely reflected themselves confusingly against the moving curtains of fog.