Escape the Night (28 page)

There was a long silence. “Put that down!” Amanda had said to someone in the room while Serena was talking to her on the phone from San Francisco. She’d meant a gun then. In Luisa’s hand.

“Mr. Condit,” said Anderson suddenly, “did you and your wife come to any—any conclusion after your talk yesterday?”

“Well, no,” said Sutton. “She told me everything. We quarreled, of course. She locked herself in her room. That’s why I was sleeping over there—in a guest room on the first floor.” He jerked his head toward the door across the patio that had let out a path of light the night before. “But she knew that really I’d have forgiven her. I couldn’t have not forgiven her. She promised to put the money she had in a joint bank account; she said she was sorry.” Sutton swallowed. “That—really, that’s all.”

There was another silence—a queer silence this time, as if it were packed with unsaid things. That then, thought Serena, was the reason for Amanda’s claim to have given her money. Amanda had had to have some excuse, some way to account for the money that she had taken from Sutton. Yet, Amanda-like, she had counted on Sutton to back up her claim.

Jem said suddenly to Johnny: “How much of this did you know?” And Johnny looking very red said: “I knew she had a—a nest egg for herself. But she knew I wouldn’t tell.”

And Sutton got up suddenly and asked to be arrested.

“Arrested!” Lossey’s voice rose excitedly in the quiet courtyard. “Did you kill her?”

“No! But I know that’s what you are all thinking. You’re thinking I’d quarreled with her. You’re thinking I’d got enough of it at last. Enough of—of flirtations with other men and trouble about money and—and everything. You’re thinking the worm turned at last …”

Jem had gone to him. He put an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t—don’t …” And Johnny said quickly: “Stop that, Sutton. I’m your lawyer. If you still want me. Stop that …”

“Is this a confession?” asked Quayle very gravely.

“No! I didn’t kill her!”

They didn’t arrest him. And someone—a ranch hand in blue jeans who remembered Serena and came and shook hands with her and muttered something kind and sympathetic—came from the house just then and called Quayle to the telephone, saying that the medical examiner wanted to speak to him. Quayle took the bracelet in his hand. “I’ll return this—later,” he said to Sutton and went into the house. Lossey followed him. Anderson said: “Guess that’s all for now, Mr. Condit.”

Jem came to Serena’s side. “You’d better try to rest, Serena. Alice will stay with you.” He walked over to the stairway with her. Alice was standing on the veranda at the top of the steps.

“I heard it all,” she said. “Come on, Sissy. I’ll stay with you.”

She stayed almost all afternoon. She made Serena lie down; she had Modeste bring lunch—sandwiches and hot milk. She wouldn’t talk and wouldn’t let Serena talk; beneath her air of languor Alice had always had a wiry strength and she showed it then. Her red hair flamed; her lips were set firmly; her eyes were almost black and bright with excitement like a cat’s, but only once did she speak of Amanda’s death. “Bill didn’t do it,” she said. “It was Sutton. See if you can sleep, Sissy.”

And eventually Serena did sleep. For all at once she awakened and Alice had gone. The sun had set and a star shone in a blue sky outside the window. She lay for a long time looking at it and was gradually aware that it reminded her of something. Not Amanda, dead in her beauty in the starlight, but something else, something threatening, but something that was also beautiful and promising. Then she remembered her glimpse of the valley, coming down on the train from San Francisco—the black clouds and the dark valley and beyond it the golden sun. There was blackness now and threat—yet up there, clear in the sky was a star that seemed to promise.

She got up at last. The house was quiet. She felt much more like herself. The horror was still there; but the terrifying and numbing sense of blankness was gone. She washed her face and the cold water was refreshing. She walked out on the veranda and Jem was sitting just below her in the patio smoking. He jumped up as he heard her footsteps and sprang up the stairway.

“Serena.” He took her hands, his eyes anxious. “All right? Alice said she’d got you to sleep.”

“Yes.”

He studied her for a moment. “I’ll have Modeste bring you something to eat. And then I—Serena, I’d like to talk to you.”

“What have they done? Do they know who …?”

“No. I’ll tell Modeste you’re awake.” He ran down the stairway. It was twilight; more stars were beginning to show. There were lights in the guest room on the ground floor across the patio. Sutton must be there. She looked out toward the hazy, dark blue Pacific. The blackout was on already. There were no lights twinkling from the village; no lights anywhere, in fact—it was all a misty, darkening blue. Suddenly Jem was back again, springing up the stairs. He drew her into her room again.

“Jem, who could have done it?”

He answered her literally. “I don’t know, Serena. When a group of people know each other as well as Amanda’s little circle of friends knew her—and each other—many possible motives could exist. Their lives—and my life, too, through Amanda—are interwoven. It’s queer, but it’s as if Amanda had held us all together. They—we”—he corrected himself rather sadly, without bitterness—“lived so close to each other. There could be so many motives.” He got up at some sound from the veranda and went to the door. “Oh, it’s you, Modeste,” he said. “Thanks.” He closed the door and came back with a tray and—as he had done another time—made her eat. But he talked this time. Hurriedly, as if talking against time.

“Sutton, as you know, had gone to sleep in the guest room on the first floor. Somebody apparently tied Pooky … You know all this, too. Sutton says he heard the dog crying for some time and finally got up to see what it was. Amanda must have heard it first; and the police say that whoever killed her, probably, tied the dog in the hope that Amanda would hear it before anyone else did, and come to investigate. And—if that was the intention—it worked. Without much time to spare before you and Sutton came, too, but”—Jem’s face looked very grim and tired—“but enough. Well, as I see it, there are a lot of motives.” He pulled from his pocket a picture that Serena remembered—as if, again, from another world, for it was one of the pictures Bill Lanier had shown them the night before. While Amanda was still alive. It was the group at a picnic, with everyone in it except Alice Lanier and Serena herself.

“You see,” said Jem looking at the picture, “almost everybody there could conceivably have done this. Killed Amanda, I mean. I don’t know why Luisa was killed unless …” He seemed to check himself there so abruptly that Serena had an impulse to question him: unless what? Before she could speak, he went on swiftly: “You see—first, Amanda may have been killed because she knew who killed Leda. I doubt that, because I believe Amanda, if she’d known or guessed, would have told the police; particularly if she had any reason to suspect that the murderer
knew
she knew something. Johnny, of course, could have killed Leda because he was in love with Amanda, and Leda was determined to put a stop to it; but then would he have killed Amanda? Yes, if she threatened him, perhaps. But again, why would he kill Luisa? Bill hated Amanda and blamed her—blamed her twice actually, once for himself, and once for Alice—for breaking up his marriage with Alice. But why would Bill kill Leda? And why would he kill Luisa?” He dropped the small picture on the table with an impatient gesture as if it could have told him something but obstinately refused to do so, and went to the window.

“That’s been one of the blocks to the thing all along,” he said over his shoulder. “Why should anyone kill Luisa? What possible motive was there? It must be either for her money (which would suggest Sutton or Amanda) or because she threatened somebody (us—according to Lossey) or because somehow—somewhere she had aroused a very terrible hatred. But if actually all this were aimed at Amanda—not Luisa and not Leda, but Amanda—then there’s a different slant to the whole thing.”

He turned swiftly and came back. He picked up the picture again. “Alice conceivably could have killed Amanda from jealousy—except that Bill stated so publicly that he hated Amanda. And why would Alice kill Leda? Also she does seem to have an alibi for the time when Leda must have been killed. Although, as Lossey says, an alibi isn’t always an alibi. Dave—if he thought it was Leda who wrecked his laboratory—could have killed her from revenge. I could have killed her for—well, revenge, too, I suppose. From the police’s viewpoint, at any rate. Sutton …”

“Jem, do they suspect you? Did they question you this afternoon?”

He didn’t look up from the picture; his mouth was a straight line. “Of course they questioned me. Of course they suspect me. They suspect everyone. But so far have made no arrests. Finish your dinner. I’ve got to go.…”

“I’ve finished. Jem, where are you going?”

He took her hand and looked at it for a long moment, as if scrutinizing the shape and line of her fingers. And finally said, “God knows whether I’m right or wrong but—I talked to Johnny this afternoon, Serena. And I saw something—last night, as we came out of the tack room with Bill Lanier. It made me remember …”

“What, Jem?”

He put down her hand gently. “It’s a chance. It may be too much of a chance. If I’m wrong—but it’s the only way I see it. There’s—well, there’s a reason why I don’t want to tell you, now, what I—what I
think.
I don’t
know.
It’s merely a—a guess. And I …” he gave a wry, half-smile. “I’m like Leda. I don’t want to tell the police. I really don’t. There’s a reason for that, too.”

From somewhere, impalpable but urgent there had come a sense of the pressure of time. She felt it then. “What are you going to do? I’m coming with you.”

He caught her suddenly in his arms as she got up. They stood for a moment holding each other. For a warm inexpressibly grateful moment sustaining each other against the world. Then Jem said unevenly: “You’re to stay here. I can’t let you go …”

“Where, Jem? To Monterey? To—to Casa Madrone?”

“You must wait here.…”

It was Casa Madrone, then. Where Leda had gone; where someone had crept stealthily down the stairway and missed the fifth step. Her heart was throbbing hard in her throat. “I’m going with you.”

“Serena …”

“I’ll follow you to the car, I’ll scream, I’ll telephone the police …”

He laughed, holding her tight. “No …”

“I am going with you.…”

“But you can’t,” began Jem. And looked down into her face for a moment and said: “All right; but only …”

“Only what?”

“Never mind. Get your coat.”

No one stopped them. Sutton’s station wagon was standing in the driveway and they got in. The sound of the engine was loud in the quiet, darkening night. The dimmed lights made a ghostly lane ahead of them. They started slowly down the mountain road. “Bill was right,” said Jem. “They know that with the military and naval guard as heavy as it is now none of us would have a chance to escape. They can take their time. They said, though, that they’d keep a policeman out here tonight; he should come soon. It’s just as a precautionary measure, I imagine. There’s a terrific lot of detail—the checking of alibis, questioning everybody, fingerprints, photographs, a thousand details like that. The medical examiner gave them a report about Leda. She was perfectly well, apparently. They’re still trying to find Luisa’s body. They thought they had during the afternoon. It’s the first clear day since Luisa was drowned and somebody in the blimp radioed when they went over that there was something caught on some rocks below the surface of water, near the point where Luisa fell. But it was …” Jem leaned forward to scrutinize the road ahead; they had reached the village, gray and ghostly in the blackout. “It was something else,” he finished.

“Did you find out anything last night?” she asked him.

“From the clerks at Gregory’s?” There was something grim in his voice. She glanced at him, but he was leaning forward over the wheel again, his profile straight and unrevealing. The road curved and curved again. They left the village behind and started to climb toward Casa Madrone. It was darker now; clouds were sweeping rapidly over the sky. But the star—her star that had promised and beckoned—was still visible and shining. She looked at it gratefully.

Jem said: “One of the clerks—the new one—recognized Leda’s picture. Or partially recognized it. She said she thought Leda came in for a moment and went right out again. She was hurrying to attend to another customer in order to wait on Leda and when she finished Leda was gone. I told Anderson and Captain Quayle. It does a lot to substantiate your story.”

But not enough, thought Serena suddenly, struck again by that grim note in his voice. She said: “Was there anyone else in the pictures—I mean, did any of the clerks recognize anyone else?”

After a moment Jem said: “No. Is this the turn, Serena?”

She leaned forward to look and recognized the bent cypress trees and said, “Yes, turn left, then right again,” and then realized that probably Jem had known and merely wanted to divert her questions. They were almost at Casa Madrone. As she thought, Jem turned suddenly, making a wrong turn, under some trees. “I’m going to leave the station wagon here,” he said.
“And you.”
He stopped behind some thickly growing broom and turned off the engine. It was extraordinarily still and extraordinarily dark; clouds now covered almost the entire sky.

“But I’m going to the house …”

“I can’t let you go to the house with me. That’s final.” He held his watch so he could see the illuminated dial.

“Jem, why …?”

He was fumbling for something in his pocket. “I got Gregory’s to let me look at the bills for the day Leda was killed and I—found one. There wasn’t any name. It was a cash purchase. Here, keep this.”

She was scarcely aware of the revolver he put in her hand. “Jem, what do you mean? What are you going to do?”

He turned. His face was scarcely perceptible in the gloom of the night and in the car. “I don’t really know,” he said slowly. “But you’ll be safe here.” He reached across her and locked the door beside her. He locked the back doors. And put his hand lightly against her cheek. “Stay here. It’s nothing dangerous. I promise you. I’ll be back …”