The Glass Slipper (10 page)

The poison was named in garbled general terms; there’s a well-founded prejudice on the part of the police against announcing to the general public any particularly efficient but not well and familiarly known manner of doing away with your fellow beings.

And an inquest would be held the next day.

Inquest. Rue’s breath caught; that meant she would have to attend as a witness. That meant — or might mean anything.

Andy came about noon; he had news, he told her at once, and closed the door of the library so no one would hear. But Steven had taken refuge in his studio, and Madge and Alicia (whom Rue had not seen that morning) were with him. Madge had refused to speak that morning, childishly but rather dreadfully, if Rue were in the room. Rue had tried to talk to her; had tried, seeing the child’s obvious distress, to make at least a friendly gesture. It was instantly, coldly repulsed with the brutal rudeness which only a child can show.

Yet Madge in her very rudeness was pathetic. Steven again had understood.

“Come into the studio, Madge. We’ll talk.”

“Alone?” said Madge. “Except for Alicia, of course.”

“Yes — if you must have it.”

“I’ll call Alicia. She was tired and slept late.” She went away, and Steven gave Rue an apologetic, troubled look. Steven had slept no better than anyone; his eyes had dark pockets around them, and he couldn’t eat.

And then Andy came.

And talked to her for a long time while Crystal watched from above the mantel. Watched and listened coldly with the chill, remote smile on her painted face.

“You’ve read the papers?”

“Yes.”

“You read what they say is the reason for Julie’s murder? That it was because of the inquiry opened into Crystal’s death?”

“Yes, yes, Andy. But —”

“Listen, Rue. I’ve been at the hospital this morning. Do you know who I saw the moment I got out of my car? A detective. Standing at the door. There were others inside. They’d been at the nurses’ dormitory; they’d gone through all of Julie’s things; they’d taken letters and papers from her room to be examined. The nurses told me they’d been questioning, questioning… They’ve been at my place already this morning; they’ve been at the office talking to the office girl, talking to the office nurse, talking to the elevator boys and doorman. They — God, Rue, it’s like a trap — hundreds of traps everywhere. But the whole, horrible meaning is that they’re going to arrest you.”

“Andy —”

“Yes. They’ll have to, there’s nothing else to do. It’s — why, they’ve questioned the nurses all about you. It’s all over the hospital. They’ve asked about you and Brule. How well you’d known each other before Crystal’s death, about your sudden marriage; they’ve looked up your record at the hospital from the time you entered it eight years ago. They’ve pried and questioned and tried to induce people to say damaging things, and, Rue — Rue, my darling, let’s leave. Before you’re arrested. It’s a matter of hours, and I can’t stand to see you —” He stopped.

She was standing facing him, sickened by the pictures his words put before her. He took her in his arms and pleaded with her. “Come with me, dear. What does any of it matter if we have each other safe? You don’t know, Rue, how horrible it’ll be for you. The things people will say, the newspapers, the accusations. They’ll say — they are saying now that it was because you and Brule wanted to marry that — Crystal was killed.”

“Andy. You know that isn’t true.” Her voice was harsh and strained.

“Good God, of course I know it isn’t true! I’ve known all along.”

He pushed his hands worriedly through his hair, it was a boyish gesture. So was the impatient movement with which he flung away from her and then back toward her again. As if torn with inner conflict and indecision, he cried:

“I’ve got to tell you the whole truth, Rue. For your own sake.” His mouth trembled a little as if he hated the thing he was going to do. “You’d have to know sometime. And I’ve been loyal long enough. It’s you, now, I’m going to put first. Listen, Rue, last night — no, night before last when I came to take you to the opera — well, Brule sent me.”

“Yes?”

“Well, he used to send me to take his place with Crystal too. To take her to parties and to the opera and —”

All at once the room seemed unbearably hot, and the dark day spread confusing shadows in the corners. Andy went on jerkily:

“And do you remember when we waited for the car we saw a coupé like Brule’s, and a woman —”

“A — woman —”

“He sent me to be with you so as to leave him free to go to her. Exactly as it used to be when Crystal was alive.”

“Alicia…” whispered Rue.

“Alicia. It’s been going on for years.”

A
lways conscious of Crystal’s portrait, it seemed to Rue that she had never been so strongly aware of it and aware of Crystal’s painted look, her enigmatic, knowing eyes and the half smile on her thin lips. The library was quiet for a moment, but it was a charged silence full of meanings and unuttered words. From the studio came a soft tinkling sound of Steven’s piano; Steven playing for Alicia while Madge sat and listened and brooded — sullenly, hating Rue.

The dull gray daylight pressed foggily against the windows; the light upon Brule’s big desk spread a downward glow which left the corners of the book-lined room in shadow. She knew Andy was waiting for her to speak. She had turned abruptly away from him and walked to the desk where she stood, forcing herself not to look at Crystal’s portrait, to overcome that strong awareness of it. She said at last while Andy, with a kind of compunction in his silence, waited:

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true,” he said gravely.

“But Crystal —”

“I know.” She turned again to look at him. “I know, Rue — that was the ugly thing about it. I would do anything for Brule; he’s done so much for me. I didn’t question him; I’ve never questioned him about anything. The first few times he sent me to take Crystal somewhere she’d set her heart on going I thought nothing of it. It seemed so — so perfectly comprehensible. Brule is terrifically busy; he’s great. He’s…” He hesitated and said boyishly, “He’s not like other men. I’ve always done what he told me to do; I didn’t quite realize — perhaps I didn’t want to realize — how things were drifting along and where we were all headed. It wasn’t fair to Crystal; it wasn’t fair to anybody —”

“Steven,” said Rue. “Alicia’s engaged to Steven; he’s in love with her.”

“I know. Look here, Rue. I know I was at fault about Crystal, but what could I do? It all came about so gradually; Crystal was so much older than I that I — it didn’t occur to me that she would — oh hell, Rue, I can’t say it. Do you understand?”

An older and fading and very vain woman’s infatuation for a young and attractive man. And that woman the wife of the man who, of all other people in the world, had his guiding hand upon Andy’s career, who, as Andy freely and frankly said, had done “everything” for him.

“Yes,” said Rue slowly. “I suppose I understand. You — ought to have had more courage, Andy.”

“God, Rue, don’t you suppose I know that now? Don’t you suppose I tried every way to — to escape the thing when I saw what Brule — I mean what I had let myself in for? I wasn’t in love with Crystal; I was tremendously fond of her; we were good friends for a while. Then — well, there’s no good talking about it. I had my loyalty to Brule; I had a kind of loyalty to Crystal — she’d been so damn good to me, Rue. I couldn’t go to Brule and say, ‘See here, I can’t take your wife out as you insist on my doing because I think she’s — well, fallen in love with me.’ I couldn’t —”

“What did you expect to do? Eventually, I mean?”

Andy looked tired and white.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I kept hoping something would break. Alicia… Steven… It seemed to me that when they married Brule would go back to Crystal, and I would be — set free. I know it sounds crazy, Rue, but think of my obligation to Brule.”

“How long has Alicia been engaged to Steven? Two years or so, isn’t it?”

“About that. Alicia keeps putting him off. And Steven’s really in love with her. He worships beauty, and she’s so beautiful.”

So beautiful, thought Rue with a queer little stab in her heart, that Brule is in love with her too; for years, Andy had said. Years…

She avoided Andy’s anxious, troubled blue eyes; she took up a paper knife on the desk and turned it in her fingers and forced herself to ask the question she must ask.

“When Crystal died, then, and Brule was free to marry, why didn’t he marry Alicia?”

Again the library was very still; the music from Steven’s studio rose in a crescendo; “Arabesque of Night,” he called it, fancifully. It was the thing he’d been playing at the very moment Julie died. Rue recognized its insistent, almost hypnotic rhythmic bass emphasized by the muffling of distance and doors which shut out the treble notes. Andy was finding it difficult to reply, she thought; poor Andy. She’d been unjust. That was because she’d seen the look in Crystal’s eyes when Andy entered the room.

At last he said: “Rue, I can’t answer that without hurting you. I’ve got to know first — do you love Brule? Or is it just hero worship? Why did you marry him? I know it gave you money and position and security. I know that almost any woman would have jumped at the chance because of Brule’s face as well as because he’s such a swell fellow. But you — I — I can’t see you marrying anybody for any of those reasons. And yet I don’t think you love him.”

She turned the paper knife in her fingers, noting with exactness its carved ivory handle. The insistent beat of Steven’s playing was the only sound in the room, and it was as ever confusingly hypnotic, dulling thoughts and rationalization, drawing out emotion alone. Why had she married Brule — Brule who was in love with Alicia and had been in love with her for years?

Yet the knowledge wasn’t exactly a shock. Or rather the shock was there, but there’d been a faint disturbing warning of the thing. She remembered the night before when she and Guy had seen Alicia brush her cheek affectionately and with that unmistakable air of accustomedness against Brule’s shoulder. Guy’s expression hadn’t changed. He’d said something and attracted the attention of the two in the doorway, but he hadn’t looked surprised or in any way affected by the brief little scene. But then Guy must have known. Everyone must have known except herself and Steven. Steven so wrapped in his music and in his dreams of beauty that a flaw in his beloved had never even been suspected. Exactly what, Rue wondered, was the status of the affair? Andy’s words had obviously been chosen to give her, Rue, the least possible pain. Andy was waiting now for her reply. Why had she married Brule?

He moved nearer her; she felt his presence and would not, again, turn to meet his eyes. He said: “Won’t you look at me, Rue? Won’t you answer? You see — I thought, the night we went to the opera, that you loved me. As I love you.”

“Don’t, Andy.”

“If it’s because you don’t want to hear what I have to say, all right. I’ll not harass you. I — I love you too much. But if it’s loyalty to Brule, surely you see that that loyalty is a mistaken one.”

“You haven’t told me why he — married me and not Alicia.” If only Steven would stop playing; it would be somehow so much easier to talk coolly and clearly, so there’d be no more mistakes.

“You haven’t answered me,” said Andy, “or — or perhaps you have. Have you, Rue?”

“No, no, Andy. I…” She moved away from him toward the end of the desk. “Don’t you see I’ve got to know!”

“All right,” said Andy. “I warned you I didn’t want you to be hurt. But if it’s only your pride —”

“Whatever it is, tell me.”

“He married you because he and Alicia quarreled. After Crystal’s death. Now will you go away with me, dear? Before it’s too late. I hate telling you this, but it is because I love you so. Rue — they’re going to charge you with Crystal’s murder and with Julie’s.”

She said dully: “I didn’t kill her.”

So that was why Brule had come to her and asked her to marry him; had told her — so frankly, she thought — that it would be a marriage of mutual convenience, a sensible, companionable kind of thing. He’d said no word of loving her or of wanting her to love him. He’d been honest so far as that, at any rate. And if she thought in her heart that sometime, somehow he’d come to love her — well, she’d been foolish to think it. Mad, really. But she hadn’t known that Alicia was her rival — Alicia with the kind of beauty that Helen must have had.

“Rue,” said Andy impatiently. “Snap out of it. Forget Brule; I had to tell you for your own protection. So you’d realize you were morally free from him. Under no obligation. But forget him. Forget Alicia. Put the whole thing in the past. Let me take you away before — well,” he said grimly, “before they fix it so that I can’t take you away.”

The grim truth of the thing tore through her preoccupation; it was in its way salutary.

“They can’t arrest me!”

“But they’re going to, Rue. I know you didn’t murder Julie. But you see, you gave her the tea. You were the one she came to see. If you come with me now it will give them time to discover the real murderer. At this moment you are the obvious suspect.”

She walked around the desk and sat down. She wore a yellow sweater and a blue skirt and looked just then very young and defenseless. She was pale; her hair under the glow of the lamp looked burnished and soft; the night had left smudges around her eyes.

“Obvious suspect,” repeated Andy and laughed shortly. “You!”

“Andy,” she said slowly. “You said — that first night when you told me about Crystal and the letters to the police — that you thought she was murdered. You said you thought the police were right. Why did you think so?”

“Because of Alicia,” said Andy. “There’s no sense in beating about the bush any longer. I tried once to tell you some of what I knew without telling too much, and it only made things worse for you. I thought Alicia — well, after all, Alicia was here the afternoon of Crystal’s death. And Alicia stood to gain by her death. It would leave Brule free to marry Alicia with no trouble about a divorce and no hint of talk. It was for Alicia the easy way out, and Alicia — somehow I’ve never thought that Alicia had any scruples in particular when it was something she wanted.”

“But Crystal — Crystal practically supported Alicia, didn’t she?”

Andy shrugged. “Yes — with Brule’s approval. Perhaps at his instigation. Remember the situation between Alicia and Brule is — is a curious kind of thing. Both of them are conventional at heart; both of them hate anything that appears vulgar, common — blatant. And yet they are frantically in love. It was a dreadful thing — Brule marrying you to hurt Alicia. I don’t know what it was they quarreled about; I don’t know when and how they made up their quarrel except that when they did it was too late. Brule and you were already married. And Brule — to do him justice, Rue, I think he tried to break the thing off; I think as soon as he realized what he’d done (you know his temper; you know how furiously and quickly he reacts to anything), well, I think when he realized what he’d done to you and to Alicia he really tried to break away from Alicia. But it was too strong for him. It —”

“Don’t make me talk of it, Andy. The point is, now, Alicia is too civilized, too sophisticated to think of murder.”

“What a baby you are, Rue! Alicia is a polite and polished and beautiful savage. When did she turn up yesterday afternoon?”

“Just after Julie died. She — Alicia came into my room.”

“Exactly. Had you known she was in the house?”

“N-no. She said she had come to see Madge. You heard what she said.”

“Is there any reason why she shouldn’t have given Julie the cocktail? While Julie waited. Or she could have met Julie outside and taken her someplace and tried to persuade the girl not to talk. And perhaps — perhaps Julie wouldn’t be persuaded: perhaps Alicia realized she’d have to poison again, and simply, neatly, did so. Called Julie’s attention to somebody passing and popped a capsule in the cocktail.”

“Don’t! Andy — it makes it sound so real!”

“It was real,” said Andy. “Perhaps not just as I’ve described it, but something like that must have happened. It could have been Alicia. Why not?” Andy rubbed his hands through his hair and replied to himself. “Why not? Because we can’t prove it. She could have done it. But somebody else could have done it, too. Proof is the thing we’ve got to have to clear you, and the thing we can’t get.”

“Alicia could have come to my room last night,” said Rue. “But she couldn’t have called Brule away. Well, yes, she could have done that. But she —”

“Your room!” Andy stared at her and leaned his hands on the table to look closely into her face, his eyes were alert and frightened. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure it was anything, really,” said Rue slowly, but told him.

“First time that has happened to Brule,” said Andy. “I mean the phony call. It’s one of those things doctors are on their guard against. Brule doesn’t know yet what the powder in the glass is?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve not seen him since early morning.”

“It means,” said Andy slowly, “that whoever did it thinks Julie managed to tell you something before she died. It means — good God, Rue, it means somebody free to come and go in this house! Somebody who knew just how to get Brule (and the policeman who was left here last night) to leave the house. Somebody — See here, Rue. There’s no use dodging unpleasant facts. It’s occurred to you as it has to me and to everybody concerned in this case that there’s — there’s damn few suspects.”

He stopped abruptly. The strangest, still look came upon his face. “Rue — are you sure Brule actually left the house?”

And as she stared back at him, half afraid, half caught, testing the speculation that hovered almost tangibly in the air between them, he said slowly and strangely: “He’s so strong, Rue. And so — so ruthless. You’ve seen it as I have. But God, Rue — he couldn’t have done this. Not to Crystal —”

She wanted to remind him of the things Brule had done; she didn’t. She said gropingly:

“There are other people who were in the house or who could have got into the house last night. There’s Madge and Alicia and Steven; Guy Cole comes and goes at will and always has. I don’t know whether or not the house was locked last night…” She searched her mind for others, and there were none except servants.

Andy said: “Madge is incalculable; she’s like Crystal except she’s got her father’s strength, I think; his own queer ruthlessness. And she’s — a child really; she wouldn’t realize what she did.”

“She didn’t poison Crystal. She couldn’t have poisoned Julie, for there’d be no motive for it, and anyway — Andy, let’s stick to facts.”

“All right. Facts, then,” said Andy. “Who had an alibi for the time poison must have been given Julie? How did she get into the house? How long had she been here when Gross found her and brought her to you? Whom had she seen here? What did she know?”