The Glass Slipper (6 page)

“Miss Garder,” said Gross and disappeared.

“Juliet.”

“Hello, Rue.”

She shook hands. She was as spare, as plain as ever, with the lines on her thin face as sharply carved. Her brown topcoat was a little shabby, her hat at an unfashionable angle, her pale friendly brown eyes looked tired and were rimmed in pink. She looked at Rue and blinked slowly and said again: “Hello — Rue —”

“Why, Juliet! What’s the matter?”

“N-nothing,” said Juliet and went to a chair. She sat down a little unsteadily, fumbling for the arms of the chair.

“Let me take your coat.”

“Coat’s — all right,” said Juliet, staring straight at Rue and making an obvious effort to speak.

“Julie —” Rue checked herself. She went to the girl and took her gloves and the worn purse which seemed about to drop from Julie’s shiny, bony fingers. Julie lifted one hand and pushed her hat back on her head and stared glassily at Rue, and Rue caught a whiff of alcohol and cried: “Julie, you’re drunk!”

Julie never drank; she was a militant teetotaller, and Rue knew it.

“Just a cocktail,” said Juliet, her thin lips pulled apart in a grin that was like a grimace. “Just a little tiny cocktail. Pink. Say, Rue — there was something I came to see you about. This — you know…” She turned and waved a hand at the bed. “Crystal Hatterick. You know — murdered — I know — I know something about that. You know it too. I came to tell you, but now I’m not going to tell. Understand, Julie — I mean, Rue. You’re not to tell a thing. Besides, memory is always false. Remember that, Julie — I mean Rue. Rue Hatterick, married to Brule Hatterick. Crystal Hatterick murdered. Memory always false. Tricks you. I was here — in this very room. Remember that screen,” said Juliet and closed her eyes; her head fell forward sleepily.

“Remember — what do you mean? Julie. What do I know? Juliet, wake up. Tell me —”

“Sleepy,” muttered Julie. “Changed my mind. Don’t trust… memory…”

“Julie!”

Rue hesitated, went across the room and touched the bell twice. Tea would be up. Strong black tea was what Julie needed.

It came almost at once. Gross carried the tray, and Rue, not wanting him to see Juliet, took the tray at the door herself and brought it to the low table before the fireplace. Julie did not look up or rouse, and Rue went back to the door behind the screen and closed it, shutting out the distant sound of the piano — a phrase had reached her ears and she recognized it; it was from the piano score of a modern piece of Steven’s own composition, full of violent dissonance. She returned. She didn’t know she was excited until she lifted the teapot and tried to pour the tea and her hand shook so she spilled it. It was hot and strong, and she waited for it to cool a little, stirring it, watching the nurse.

At last she took the cup to Julie and lifted her head.

“Listen. Listen, Julie. Wake up. Drink this.”

Julie opened her eyes. “Had cocktail,” she said fuzzily and with great effort. “Don’t want tea…”

“Drink it,” said Rue and held it to her lips. The girl gulped but did not wince at the hot liquid, and drank as if she did not know what she was doing.

Perhaps she drank half a cup before she choked and slumped sidewise in her chair. Her plain little hat dropped off; her hair was flat and not very tidy and gave her a defenseless look. Rue got a cushion and tried to prop Julie’s head comfortably with it.

But something was wrong. She couldn’t make Julie’s head stay on the pillow. She couldn’t hold Julie upright. Something was terribly wrong in that rose-scented room where Crystal Hatterick had died.

From habit her fingers went to Julie’s pulse. Went and sought along the white, thin wrist and sought feverishly, terrified, for a flutter that was not there.

“Julie… Julie…”

It wasn’t a scream, for her voice had gone. And Julie’s shabby, thin little body slid slowly out of the chair, hesitated in a queer kneeling position for a grisly instant and then went down on the rug.

Rue couldn’t kneel beside her. She couldn’t get down on that French rug and try to find Julie’s strangely quiet pulse. She couldn’t.

She did.

Oddly her muscles obeyed her will. But there was no pulse on Julie’s bony wrist; no heart beat below her worn sweater. No life in her eyes when Rue made her fingers remember their training and pull those thin eyelids upward.

There was a sound somewhere, but Rue did not hear it.

She did not know Alicia Pelham was in the room until a voice spoke to her and said coolly: “Why really — what’s all this? One of your friends, Rue? She looks as if you’ve given her too much to drink.”

Rue looked up then. Alicia, coated and hatted and furred, was smiling down at her and at Julie as if amused. Rue heard herself say: “She’s dead. Julie… dead…”

It did not seem strange to her that Alicia was there. Nothing would have seemed strange to her at that moment because all her consciousness was stunned by the one enormous strangeness of Julie’s death. She said again with crazy, jerky loudness: “She’s dead. She’s been murdered. Alicia, what shall we do?”

It was completely still. All the house around them was quiet except for the sound of Steven’s piano, distant, still crashing out dissonant chords. Going on, uninterrupted, with that music just as if Julie had not died tragically, in all the pathos of a starved, meager little life — at Rue’s feet.

They must do something. Call doctors. What did one do? Julie was dead; Rue recognized death.

Alicia, beautiful in her trim black street suit, suave and elegant with her sable scarf flung around her shoulders and her small black hat set expertly upon the black and silver waves of her hair, was bending over the shabby little heap on the rug. She pulled a loose beige glove from one hand and touched Julie’s cheek with long white fingers, rosy-tipped and flashing with a huge emerald. Her fingers shrank and hovered. Then she rose and looked at Rue.

Alicia was no longer beautiful, her face was drawn and gray, and her lips had drawn back from her shining teeth. She cried shrilly and pointed at the rug and the limp thing upon it:

“She — the nurse — she’s dead! Dead! So — you’ve done it again!”

T
here was no mistaking her meaning. It cut as sharply clear through the fog of horror and bewilderment as the thrust of a knife. But Alicia repeated it:

“You’ve done it again. It’s the way Crystal died. Poison. I suppose the nurse knew and threatened you. She knew it and came here and — Where are you going?”

Rue’s feet were taking her across the room; she felt disembodied and light and had no consciousness of moving.

“Stop. What are you doing?” Alicia was following her, her small face thrust forward, her eyes so bright and hard they were feral; the savagery of her attack was at sharp variance to her civilized, sophisticated appearance.

“I’m sending for the police,” said Rue, too bewildered to reason. She rang the bell.

Alicia cried: “The police! Are you going to give yourself up?”

“I didn’t murder her. I didn’t murder Crystal.”

Alicia’s eyes were very bright and watchful: Rue had an untraceable impression that there was a suggestion of triumph and eager certainty — as if chance had put some weapon in Alicia’s lovely white hands.

Alicia said, more thoughtfully, watching Rue:

“You were here when Crystal died. She was better; she ought not to have died. She was in your care when her — extremely unexpected death took place. And you married Brule.”

“If Brule were here —”

“If Brule were here he’d know.”

“Yes, madam,” said Gross, opening the door. “You rang —” he began and saw Julie.

Alicia was breathing quickly, thin red lips drawn back a little from perfect teeth; in the sudden silence Rue could hear that and could hear the way Gross’s breathing seemed to stop short and then suck inward sharply. He turned quite gray and became instantly helpless, turning blank pale eyes to Alicia for direction.

“What…” he wavered, and Alicia said quickly:

“The lady is dead. She’s been murdered. In this room.”

How Alicia must hate her, thought Rue swiftly. And how well, up to now, she had hidden that hatred. There was no time to think of that; not with Julie lying dead.

Yet, if Alicia had been a dozen Alicias, Rue was still Mrs Hatterick.

“Gross. Look at me.”

“Y-yes, madam.” He did so with reluctance. Obviously he preferred to take orders from Alicia. Rue said stiffly:

“Get Doctor Hatterick on the phone. He should be in the office now. I’ll talk to him.”

He blinked, and she said sharply: “Gross, do you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, madam.”

He took the telephone on the bed table. Both she and Alicia could hear in that quiet room the vibration of the office girl’s voice.

“He’s not in, madam,” said Gross helplessly, looking over the ivory telephone at the little heap on the rug. “He’s not in —”

“Ask where he can be found.”

“She says try the hospital —”

Rue had remembered Steven.

“Very well. Do so. But first call Mr Steven.”

“Yes, madam.” He put down the telephone quickly, with obvious relief, and vanished.

“Steven?” said Alicia. “Why not the police?”

Rug did not reply; she went to Julie again. It wasn’t possible Julie was really dead. She’d been excited, she told herself; frightened. She forced herself for a second time to bend over Julie.

But there was nothing she could do.

She was again conscious of Alicia’s bright, oddly triumphant eyes watching her. She must pull herself together, think clearly, make no mistakes. If they couldn’t find Brule, then she herself must act; not Alicia, not Steven. It had been a mistake to say they would call the police; there was no reason — no real reason — to believe that Julie had been murdered. First they must have a doctor; it would be his place to say why Julie had died. And if he said murder, then the police.

Julie. Rapidly Rue went back to the years of their acquaintance. Julie never drank — yet she’d been drinking then. And Julie, inexperienced, would have been so easy to poison in that way because she wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the taste of the poison. A strong hypnotic, say, with no nausea.

“Well,” said Alicia coolly, leaning against the back of the chair, “I thought you were going to call the police. Why don’t you do it?”

Again Rue refused to reply to the taunt in Alicia’s voice; that suddenly unveiled enmity mattered, it seemed to Rue then, so little.

And Steven Hendrie, taking three steps at a time, reached the top of the stairway and flung himself through the doorway.

“Gross said —” began Steven and saw Julie and stopped as Gross had done. “Good God! Is she really — dead? What happened? Rue, tell me —”

“We’ve got to have a doctor. If we can’t find Brule, then someone else,” said Rue.

Alicia smiled the faintest, thinnest little smile and said: “Why not get Andy? He’ll say anything you want him to say. He did before.”

Steven flashed a troubled look at Alicia. He was kneeling beside Rue, his face pale and his eyes two bright sharp pin points.

“Andy,” he said, failing to perceive or at least to give attention to Alicia’s implication. “Certainly. If we can’t find Brule we’ll call Andy. Though if the girl is dead… Gross —”

The butler was in the doorway. “I’ve already taken the liberty, sir,” he said. “Doctor Hatterick was not at the hospital. So I left word at the hospital and then telephoned for Doctor Crittenden. He’ll be here in a few moments. Is there — anything else?”

“Wait,” said Steven. “You’re sure she’s dead. Rue?”

“Yes. There’s nothing we can do.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. She — just drank her tea and — and died.”

“Her tea,” said Gross from the doorway in a strangled way. Alicia looked at him and back at Rue.

“Steven,” she said, “thank God you are here. Look, Steven. There’s the tea tray. There’s the cup the poor girl drank from — half emptied. Look carefully, so you’ll remember.”

“What do you mean, Alicia? Surely you aren’t trying to say that —”

Alicia’s eyes flashed impatiently.

“Have you forgotten how Crystal died?”

There was a gurgle from the doorway where Gross stood as if transfixed.

Steven got up.

“Look here, Alicia. You can’t go around saying things like that. Crystal wasn’t murdered. What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see for yourself, Steven? Have you never questioned Crystal’s death? Or the circumstances of it? Because if you haven’t, you may as well know right now that the police have. They think she was murdered.”

“Alicia, what are you saying! You are mad. Nobody thinks Crystal was murdered. Who would have murdered her?”

Alicia’s clear voice went on; she was still altogether collected and, obscurely, triumphant. Her cheeks were not flushed; she stood in a quiet and graceful pose. Not a hair was out of place, and her white fingers were gentle and detached-looking against the huge black bag she carried.

“Ask yourself questions, Steven. Who was with Crystal when she died? Who knew how to give her poison so you wouldn’t think of it being poison? So Crystal would die like that — in a coma without active symptoms of having been poisoned. Who profited by Crystal’s death? Who — Good God, Steven, are you as blind as Brule?”

“Do you mean — Rue?” said Steven slowly.

Alicia smiled, a little scornfully as a teacher might with a backward pupil.

“The nurse, Julie Garder, must have asked those questions too,” she said with a curious effect of lightness. “Now she’s dead. As Crystal died.”

There was a slight, muffled motion from the doorway, and some surface sense of Rue’s discovered that Gross had forsaken all training and dissolved dazedly into a sitting position on the edge of a chair as if his hitherto rigid knees had failed him. This, said Gross’s attitude, was catastrophe.

“Rue, you hear what Alicia said. Of course it isn’t true.” Steven’s deep-set eyes, though, questioned her, begged for reassurance.

“No, Steven. It isn’t true. I don’t know why she accuses me.”

Alicia caught it up neatly and replied with an adroit touch of wistfulness. “I was Crystal’s best friend. And I’m engaged to marry you, Steven; I love you. How can I remain quiet and see you taken in by —” She checked herself too obviously. “I make no accusation at all.”

Steven rubbed his hands through his hair, already disheveled. He wore a brown sweater instead of a coat and his tie and collar were loosened, and he had on soft wooden slippers.

“I don’t know what to do.” He turned. “Gross.”

The butler jerked himself upward but could not resume his usual rigid exterior. He looked slack and old and said waveringly: “Yes sir.”

“Did you let in this — Miss Garder?” His hand indicated Julie, and Gross said, understanding him:

“No sir. If you mean to say did I let the young lady into the house, I didn’t.”

“But you announced her,” said Rue. “You told me she had come to see me.”

“And so she said, madam. But she was — already in the house. It — I — I hope it wasn’t wrong. I hope the police… I didn’t mean any harm. It was unusual, but I saw no reason to tell Madam —”

“What do you mean?” asked Steven.

“I mean, sir, the nurse was already in the house. I came into the drawing room to turn on lights and she was there. Sitting in the dark. She — she seemed to be waiting. She said she’d come to see Mrs Hatterick and would I please let Madam know. So I — I did,” said Gross helplessly.

Alicia was listening intently, her small, classically beautiful face like porcelain and as brittle. She said: “Who let her in, then? She couldn’t have entered unless someone opened the door.”

“I don’t know, miss. She — I was taken aback as it were. I didn’t ask. But I — I know nothing of this. If it is murder —”

Julie in that silent house; waiting in that shadowy French drawing room. Rue thought back to the silence of the day; the quiet and apparently empty house. She’d heard no sound of Julie’s arrival. She’d heard no one moving about.

But then, the house hadn’t been empty. Had Julie had that cocktail in the French drawing room while she waited? Then if so, who had given it to her? Only Rue and Steven were at home. Only she and Steven and… How had Alicia got there? When had she come? Who had let her into the house?

Rue said: “Gross, when did Miss Alicia arrive?”

The butler opened his mouth to speak, but Alicia quickly interrupted.

“Why really, Rue,” she said, “what a question. I came to see Madge, of course. After all, Rue, this house is almost my home and has been for years. I’ve always come and gone as I chose. I have always been like a member of the family.” Her look said, You are the interloper here; you are the stranger; your time is short. She continued in silky, cool reproof: “At any rate, Rue, this is scarcely the time and place to attempt to quarrel with me.”

Steven did not appear to note what she said or what Rue had said; he was staring downward at the little heap on the rug. He said: “Can’t we move her to the bed? Or — or cover her. Or wait in another room. If we can’t do anything for her…”

Again a small voice in Rue spoke almost without Rue’s own volition.

“You can’t move her; if she was murdered —”

“You see,” said Alicia to Steven, “how well informed she is! She’s trying to tell us that the body ought not to be moved until the police have come! Oh, Steven.” She crossed to him suddenly, beautiful and svelte and slender with her lovely face close to Steven and her lovely hands on his arm. “Oh, Steven, I realize I ought not to have let my feelings get the better of me just now! But how could I help it! I’ve stood by so long, telling myself that my suspicions must have been wrong. I’ve told myself that over and over; I’ve forced myself to be as friendly as I could be with Rue. I’ve tried to help her. I’ve felt it was due my friendship to Brule and my love for you to conquer my doubts, to help so that life will go as smoothly as possible for both of you. I’ve made friends for Rue; I’ve given hints to the servants, I’ve tried to help Madge; I’ve done everything possible. Truly I have, Steven. But this — this proves how futile it’s been. It’s no use, Steven, I can’t keep quiet any longer. How do I know that you are safe? Or Brule! Or Madge! You are my only family; the only people I love in the world. Don’t you understand, Steven?”

How beautiful she is, thought Rue with a kind of stab; how can any man resist her beauty? Steven, white, perplexed, was looking down into Alicia’s perfect small face. He put his hand upon Alicia’s hand.

“I know how you feel, dear,” he said. “I suppose it’s only natural to resent Crystal’s place being filled. But you mustn’t let your feelings —” He broke off abruptly.

Brule and Andy were in the doorway. Rue didn’t know how long they’d been there, but she thought it had been long enough for them to hear Alicia’s words — that or her distinct clear voice had met them on the stairway and in the hall.

“Where is she?” said Brule and looked past Alicia and Steven and saw.

Brule would know what to do. He didn’t look at Rue as he went to Julie. Andy followed him.

The room was so still you could hear a faint small hissing in the old-fashioned radiators, concealed below the windows. Neither Andy nor Brule spoke for a moment. Then Brule said in a preoccupied voice:

“No chance.”

“She’d been drinking,” said Andy.

“Yes, I know. But — I’d say a strong hypnotic; look at her eyes.”

“Yes, I see.”

Andy rose and his eyes sought out Rue anxiously. Brule got up, too, and looked deliberately at all of them, but his glance when it met Rue’s eyes held no special message for her. His eyes were bright and dark and preoccupied. He took off his overcoat and dropped it on a chair.

“Gross.”

“Yes sir.” The butler sprang forward from the doorway.

“Get a sheet. What happened, Rue? Tell me exactly —”

“Brule,” said Alicia. “It’s the way Crystal —”

“Wait, Alicia, please. Tell me, Rue.”

“She came to see me,” said Rue. “She said she’d had a cocktail, and I thought she was drunk. Julie never drank. I ordered tea and gave her some hot tea and — then she died.”

“How did she die?”

Rue swallowed heavily. Her hands were pressed against her throat, though she didn’t know it; her figure, slim and taut under her green wool frock, was pressed against the chair before her. “She — seemed to become unconscious; it was as if she’d been drinking a lot; she talked some —”