Escape the Night (23 page)

Sometime later, in her own room, Serena saw them from the window. They were standing in the fog down near the hedge that separated the grounds near the house from the corrals and barns. Sutton was talking. Even at that distance Serena could see the set, angry look of Amanda’s red mouth. And as she looked, Sutton caught Amanda’s arm and jerked her toward him. The violence of the gesture was unlike Sutton. Serena watched for a moment. Was there, under Sutton’s pleasant and lazy exterior another man, one capable of anger and violence?

They turned and moved slowly out of sight. Sutton was still talking—and once, when Amanda would have made a move toward the house, he caught her arm again and forced her to walk along beside him.

Serena saw that and moved away from the window. She wondered again if Sutton had heard any or all of the things she and Amanda had said. When Amanda had appealed to him he had not failed her. He had said that she’d given money to Serena. But was that merely blind loyalty to Amanda, or did he really believe that Amanda was telling the truth? “It was a mistake,” Amanda had said coolly, “but now I’ve got to stick to it.”

Perhaps Sutton would succeed where Serena had failed. Perhaps Sutton would make Amanda say why she had made that preposterous claim. The reason must be an important one—to Amanda at least. Yet it was possible too that, whatever it was, it had no connection with the ugly thing that had caught them all like some peculiarly horrible octopus striking out of turgid depths, ever tightening its hold.

Herself as a suspect was still too incredible and too fantastic to be seriously considered; yet in another way it was altogether too real.

There was nothing she could do. Time seemed to stand still. Lunch time came, and Amanda, and then Sutton returned to the house. Amanda looked angry, but if she had told Sutton anything, he did not tell Serena and she did not ask him. Jem would come back. Jem would know what to do. She could not question Sutton then. She could not say: your wife—my sister —is lying to both of us. Why?

There were, that afternoon, things to do; queerly matter-of-fact things. Sutton undertook them. He made a statement to the newspapers about Luisa’s death. He telephoned to Johnny Blagden and talked to him, asking if there were anything they could do. He hung up, looking withered, somehow again, and older. His eyes were bloodshot. He said: “He says the police have put him over the jumps. They’ve searched the house and questioned him and the servants, but so far as he knows didn’t discover any evidence leading to the murderer.”

“Does he have any idea as to how Leda got to Casa Madrone?” asked Amanda.

“No. He says she didn’t take the car because he had it in Monterey. He doesn’t know how she got to Monterey, nor how she got from Monterey to Casa Madrone.” Sutton’s eyes shifted momentarily to Serena. “You remember, Sissy. They live inside the lodge-gate area. She couldn’t have walked to Monterey and then back to Casa Madrone. At least she wouldn’t have.”

“Someone picked her up, obviously,” said Amanda. She paused and thought and said: “Sissy
could
have done it. Not that I’m saying she did.”

Sutton suddenly lifted one of the small bronze horses and put it down with a bang. “Amanda! For God’s sake …!” He caught himself with an effort.

“What else did Johnny say?” asked Amanda unperturbed.

“If you want to know, something not very pleasant,” said Sutton rather savagely. “He says the police seem to think the murderer had to be somebody who knew her very well; somebody she’d come to Casa Madrone with, and somebody who knew the back door was unlocked. And he says—he says he thinks so, too.”

There was a silence. Then Amanda cried incredulously:
“Johnny
thinks that?”

“Johnny thinks that,” repeated Sutton, watching his beautiful wife.

And Serena remembered something the police had asked her. “Do you have a key to Casa Madrone?” she asked Amanda.

“Why, I—yes, I think so. Somewhere. I haven’t seen it for ages.”

Sutton said slowly: “Leda seemed to think that you knew the back door was unlocked.”

“Well, I did know it.” Amanda looked defiant. “I stop there once in a while just to take a look at the place. I imagine Pedro left it open. I don’t know. I—bolted it once or twice. And then left it open. I meant to speak to him about it. Perhaps he lost his key.”

It was not like Amanda to explain so fully and fluently. Sutton said very quietly: “They’ll ask Pedro, you know.”

Amanda shrugged: “He’ll say whatever he wants to say.”

“How did Leda know it was frequently unlocked?”

“Why, I don’t know. I suppose I may have told her! I don’t remember. Does it matter?”

“How long has it been since you were there?”

“Really, Sutton, you sound like a policeman!”

“I’m only asking questions the police will ask when they come back.”

“Nonsense.” Amanda’s voice and face were sulky. “I have no idea when I was last there!”

The afternoon wore on and there was no news from Jem, nothing from Dave or the police. Once Alice telephoned and talked to Amanda. .

“She’s upset,” said Amanda coolly, putting down the telephone. “She says the police have been questioning her. She thinks it’s preposterous to question us. She says there must be a homicidal maniac somewhere in the vicinity and the police ought to find him.”

Later Slader and another policeman came, asked for Sutton and spent some time in the garage. They had brought molds (“Moulage, they call it,” said Sutton after they’d gone.) of the tire tracks found here and there about Casa Madrone and wanted to look at the tires on the two Condit cars.

Before the policemen went away they came into the house and, rather apologetically, took not only Serena’s and Sutton’s and Amanda’s fingerprints, but also those of Modeste and Ramon. It was a rather grim but businesslike ceremony, with Slader breathing very earnestly as he worked and Sutton standing by with a towel and cleaning fluid.

After they’d gone Amanda disappeared and spent some time, apparently in her room, changing and doing her hair and nails for she came down about five dressed in the red, long house-gown again, her dark hair in perfect order, her face beautifully made up, her crimson fingernails shining—her wrist again without the bracelet. Sutton looked up at her for a moment over his pipe.

Serena too, restless and uneasy, made one or two trips through the patio to her room, and down again. Once she looked at the blue jacket. There were the broken threads and the little torn place in the fabric. She looked at the remaining blue buttons—like that one in Leda’s hand.

Someone must have put it there. Why, then? Who would try to incriminate her, Serena? Who hated her that much?

She made herself change, too, as Amanda had done. She put on a white, thin-wool dress with a scarlet coat and again pinned a scarlet bow on top her head—and then almost hurriedly, her heart thumping, ran down the wet stairs to the patio. She’d been gone, it seemed to her suddenly, for a long time; perhaps something had happened. Perhaps someone had telephoned with news.

Perhaps Jem had come.

Jem hadn’t come. But it was as she crossed the patio and approached the door to the hall and the central part of the house that she discovered the bullet-hole.

It happened because Pooky, whom she’d almost forgotten, gave a small whimper from the upper veranda. It was from the middle section of the house, probably where Luisa’s room had been. She heard the whimper and remembered the little elderly dog and, happening to be near the right-hand flight of narrow wooden stairs, she turned toward it and called him, “Pooky—come here, Pooky.” He appeared instantly at the top, his red tongue hanging out, his eyes sad and worried. She started up the stairway, her hand on the railing, and then paused to call him again. And was aware of a very faint roughness under her hand—small but sharp enough so she lifted her hand and looked at a round hole in the damp wood, which looked like the hole made by a bullet.

There were tiny splinters around it. And it was new because the wood where those splinters had been made was unweathered and unpainted.

Her first thought was that someone had been rabbit hunting. But people don’t hunt rabbits in a California patio surrounded on three sides by windows.

Pooky had tumbled down the steps and was nudging at her ankles. Presently, staring at that small round hole in the wooden railing, she stopped and gathered Pooky up in her arms where he snuggled down sadly and very wearily.

After a while she turned and went slowly down the two steps again—across the wet flagstones and in through the hall door. Amanda and Sutton were in the long living room. She didn’t tell them of the curious thing she had discovered. Suddenly Sutton was as strange to her as Amanda.

When Jem came she would tell him.

He came at about six o’clock, Dave with him, and they had news.

First, Jem said, with a quick look around the room until he found Serena, as if to assure himself of her presence and that she was all right—first, Captain Quayle was going to hold up any possible arrest for a—Jem hesitated there and said, “for a day or two.”

Sutton, in his usual hospitable way, was passing cigarettes, pouring Scotch and sodas. “Then they’re not going to arrest Serena?”

“No,” said Jem.

It was more a declaration however than a statement. Serena glanced at Dave, and he replied to the question in her look. “Honestly, Serena, I think they’ve decided not to make such an important move without more to back them up. Believe me. Besides, there’ve been some new developments.”

Amanda asked sharply: “What’s happened? Where were you? What were you doing?”

Sutton brought a glass to Jem and one to Dave. Dave sank down into a deep chair and Jem remained standing before the fire. He looked tired and rather white, but there was as always a solidity and strength about him. It went to Serena’s heart like a warm and comforting wine. Whatever happened in that suddenly chaotic and terrible world, Jem was there, unchanged and unchanging. That was faith, she thought suddenly. You didn’t know where it came from or why you felt it, only that it was there.

Dave set down the glass Sutton gave him to remove and wipe the mist from his glasses and to push back the black lock of hair across his high forehead. “Well, plenty, really. We talked to Quayle, explained about the laboratory and Leda. Anderson talked to him, too.” He paused and lifted his glass, and Amanda said sharply: “I suppose he told him everything that was said here.”

“Well, yes,” said Dave. “Slader had a record of it; he typed it up and gave it to Quayle.”

Sutton came back to stand beside Jem. “What are the new developments?”

Dave replied: “Bill Lanier took Leda out the Hill Gate about two-thirty. Between two-thirty and three …”

“Bill!”
Amanda started up excitedly.
“Bill!
I knew it! Does he admit it? Have they arrested him? How did they find out?”

Jem took a long drink. Dave explained. “One of the gate-men identified him. It was at about the time Leda must have gone, we think, to Monterey. All the gatekeepers knew Leda but none of them remembered seeing her. The one that identified Bill though (he drove through the Hill Gate about two-thirty or so, the gateman said) said somebody, a woman, was in the car with him. But he didn’t look to see who it was. He just spoke to Bill, who leaned out of the car, and went to open the gate. And when Bill admitted driving through the Hill Gate at about that time, Quayle asked if Leda was with him, and Bill, thinking the gateman
had
seen her, I suppose, admitted it. But he says he didn’t kill her.”

“But he must have done it!” Amanda’s face was scornful. “I knew it all along! What’s his story?”

Jem still did not reply. Dave went on slowly: “He says she was walking along the road and he picked her up. She said she wanted to go to Monterey and hoped she’d get a lift. She said she’d ride back with Johnny. So Bill took her into Monterey and left her, he says, at a corner.”

“Two blocks from Gregory’s,” interrupted Jem, with a glance at Serena. “So that helps …”

“Why was she going to Monterey?” asked Amanda.

“Bill said he didn’t know. He said he didn’t have anything to do. He went down to the wharfs and watched the fishing boats and eventually drove around for a while; took the Seventeen Mile Drive, stopped at Cypress Point and sat in the car and smoked, came back to the hotel and then—later—dropped into the police station to get a permit to drive, thinking he’d better, since his license had lapsed and he was to be here two weeks. And heard the news.”

“Why didn’t he tell them all that in the first place?” Sutton asked.

Dave shrugged. “Didn’t want to get mixed up in it. You know Bill. Said so frankly. I thought he was telling the truth. Anyway, why should he murder Leda? There’s no motive. However,” he glanced at Jem, who looked at his glass, “well, they’ve been checking on tire marks …”

“Yes, I know. They were here,” said Sutton.

“There weren’t many marks on account of the gravel. They found the marks of your station-wagon tires, just at the turn into the drive. And the place on the road where Jem had parked my car. And of course marks made by the police cars and the doctor’s car. But the only tire mark that they didn’t already know about matched the tires on a Lanier car. It was found on a muddy patch of the driveway, where the gravel had worn thin. Somehow none of the other cars had eradicated it.”

“But that proves it!” cried Amanda.

“No,” said Dave. “It wasn’t the car that Bill is using. It was the car that Alice kept for her own use. And she says she left it out in front of the hospital yesterday afternoon; that she didn’t drive it, with or without Leda, to Casa Madrone; that she was on duty all afternoon and can prove it; and that the car was still there at the curb when she left the hospital and drove home late in the afternoon; then you phoned to her about Leda, she said.” Dave turned to Amanda. “And she says she took the car again and drove up here to talk to you and to hear about Leda’s murder.”

There was a little silence. Then Amanda said: “Bill had the keys! There must have been a duplicate set. He still had them—maybe kept them around somewhere among his things. He picked up Leda, drove to Monterey in the car he’d borrowed from Alice the day before, had the keys, left his own car and took Alice’s car from in front of the hospital; then took Leda in that car to Casa Madrone …”