The Glass Slipper (8 page)

“That’ll do, Murphy. You subscribe to all that, Mrs Hatterick?”

“Yes.” How small and faint her voice sounded; she must speak in a more assured, less frightened way.

“I understand Julie Garder was a friend of yours.”

“We trained as nurses together.”

“Yes, I know all about that. She was one of the nurses on the case when the first Mrs Hatterick died. You were the night nurse.”

He didn’t seem to expect a reply, but Rue heard herself saying yes. Guy was watching Murphy write, with as detached and unconcerned an air as if he’d been in a theater.

Angel leaned forward. “Mrs Hatterick, your husband says, and you agree that you told him Julie Garder was confused and said she’d had a cocktail. What else did she say?”

Rue swallowed hard, and Guy said nothing. Rue replied: “She was confused; she talked a little in a rambling way; nothing that made sense.”

“What’d she talk of?”

“She — she repeated my name and her own; she mumbled something abut a cocktail — pink; something about coming to see me — oh, there was nothing sensible and clear.”

“Had you invited her to come to see you? I mean to come today specifically? Had you an engagement with her?”

“No.”

“You were on sufficiently friendly terms for her to call without an invitation?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Did she come here often?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Julie was busy.” He seemed to wait for her to amplify it, but something very quiet about Guy seemed to warn her to say no more than was necessary.

“Then you and Miss Garder were still on good terms?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Can you think of anything else she said?”

Guy stirred. “She’s told you everything she knows. It’s been a shock for Mrs Hatterick. She’s doing well to let you question her at all. Later, if you find the girl’s been murdered, Mrs Hatterick can be questioned more at length.”

The lieutenant looked at Guy, and Guy looked blandly back at him.

“All right, Mrs Hatterick, I appreciate your willingness to be of help,” said Angel. “But there’s one or two points that I’d like to know more about right now. Whatever the autopsy proves, we’d like to know how she got in the house and how long she was here before she was announced. Your butler says he didn’t let her in. That he found her waiting in the drawing room, having evidently been admitted to the house some time previous. Who let her into the house and when?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know she was in the house. I heard nothing.”

“You didn’t see her downstairs?”

“No.”

“You didn’t know she was in the house at all?”

“No.”

“Think carefully, Mrs Hatterick. Did she take anything while in your room — any capsule or pill?”

“No. I’m sure of that,” said Rue and was instantly aware of Guy’s disapproval.

He stirred and said: “That all, Lieutenant? Mrs Hatterick’s told you all she knows; of course if the girl does prove to have been murdered Mrs Hatterick’s willing to be questioned at length.”

The lines in Angel’s thin long face deepened.

“There’s one more question just now, Cole.” He leaned back a little in his chair, holding Rue’s gaze with his chill blue own; all at once the room held only silence and watchfulness. This was the real question; this was the sum, the crux of the whole inquiry.

Guy shared Rue’s intuition, for he was suddenly as deadly still as a crouching animal. And the question came:

“Tell me this, Mrs Hatterick. What did Julie Garder know of the death of the first Mrs Hatterick?”

Guy got to his feet.

“She doesn’t need to reply to that, Lieutenant. She doesn’t —”

“Let the lady speak, Cole. How about it, Mrs Hatterick?”

Guy said: “She doesn’t have to reply; but I will for her. The girl told her nothing, of course. She told her absolutely nothing of the facts of Crystal Hatterick’s death.”

“Do you subscribe to that, Mrs Hatterick?”

“I —”

Guy answered again. “Look here. Angel; you’ve had your answer. Tell him, Rue, that I answered correctly. It may as well go on the record.”

“Y-yes,” faltered Rue, confused by Guy’s demand; clinging to the letter of the truth.

A telephone rang in the hall; Angel, disbelief in his cold eyes and another question on his tongue, stopped to listen. They heard the murmur of a voice from the telephone, which was in the recess near the dining room door. It was one of the detectives; he said yes, and no, and after a pause: “You don’t say!… Okay!”

He appeared at the doorway, eyes seeking Angel’s. “It’s the doc,” he said. “Says it’s poison all right. Lethal quantity of some synthetic poison, he doesn’t know what yet. Probably a barbituric acid derivative. Can’t tell till he runs some more tests. Says it looks to him like murder, all right. But he says there’s an awful funny thing. The girl’s hands have turned green, bright green on the —”

“
Cary! That’ll do
! All right, Cole, you and Mrs Hatterick can go. That’s all except hold yourself ready for further inquiry. Now then, Cary. Her hands — Close that door.”

The door closed behind them. Someone had hung up the telephone. Rue turned, bewildered, to Guy.

‘What do they mean?
Julie’s
hands?”

His eyes met her own; they were wide, blue, dewy-looking. “I don’t know what they meant,” he said slowly.

The door of the music room opened, and they both looked that way. Alicia and Brule appeared in the doorway, outlined clearly against the lighted long room behind them. Brule apparently had opened the door, and as he did so both appeared to pause for another word. They didn’t note the presence of Guy Cole and of Rue in the hall. For Alicia turned suddenly to face Brule, said something low and put her head in an affectionate gesture against Brule’s shoulder. It was a small gesture, barely sketched, so brief was it. But there was the most definite air of accustomedness about it.

Guy cleared his throat abruptly.

“Come along, Rue,” he said. “Green hands — want to know what Brule thinks.”

Andy was waiting in the library. Andy, who had said he loved her. She followed Guy toward the library, and the couple at the door of the music room saw them and came toward them.

“G
reen hands!” said Brule. “Did you say green?”

Guy shrugged his bulging shoulders. “That’s what the fellow said. Then Angel shushed him and put us out and had the door closed so we couldn’t hear any more. Green hands.”

“But that isn’t so,” said Brule. “When I looked at the girl there was nothing like that.” He turned to Andy. “Did you see anything of the kind?”

Andy shook his head.

“No. It sounds — fantastic. Is there any poison, Brule, that could have such an effect?”

“If an internal poison had the effect of color on the skin after death, it wouldn’t confine itself to the hands, the whole circulatory system would have been affected; and that certainly not after death, but before. Anyway…” Brule walked over to the mantel and stood with his back to it. “I’m inclined to think it’s something the fellows in the laboratory have done — accidentally, like as not; they are no more immune to mistakes than the rest of us. It does sound fantastic. But there are chemicals…” he left it at that.

And as always, they accepted Brule’s word as final.

Alicia rose and went to the telephone on the long desk.

“How much longer will it be, do you suppose?” she said to Brule. “I had promised the Sidneys —”

“Better telephone and tell them you can’t make it. Be careful though —”

“Good heavens, Brule, you needn’t tell me to be careful what I say! Do you suppose for one instant all this inquiry is going to be pleasant for me?” She took the telephone and dialed. A maid came into the room with a tray and was followed by the upstairs girl with another; the trays contained coffee and sandwiches, and both girls were pale, with excited eyes, and cast rapid, curious glances about them.

“That’s right,” said Brule. “No use trying to have dinner when everything’s so upset, but you’ve got to eat.” The maids, faces avid with curiosity, went away, and Brule poured coffee, and Andy brought a cup of it to Rue. Alicia was talking over the telephone, and Steven had asked Brule some question and Brule was replying. Andy spoke in a low voice, inaudible to the others.

“I’ve got to see you alone, Rue,” he said. His fingers touched her own as she took the cup. His eyes warmed. “I love you,” he whispered. “Remember…”

No one could possibly have heard. He turned away. It was several moments before Rue became conscious of Madge’s oddly fixed and thoughtful regard. She looked at Madge, and Madge stared back at her, steadily and inimically. But she couldn’t have heard what Andy said. And suppose she had, what of it? If there was no affection between Rue and Brule, there could, at least, be honesty. But nevertheless that cold stare in Madge’s dark eyes made her uneasy.

They could all hear Alicia’s silken excuses over the telephone. She put it down at last. “She’ll never believe me again,” she observed to no one but so they could all hear it. “I felt perfectly well when I left her house this afternoon — just before I came here — and Winifred Sidney knows it.”

It was said a little too carefully. Brule glanced at her quickly, and Andy said:

“Oh, you came straight on here from Sidneys’?”

Alicia nodded. “I arrived just at the time the thing occurred. I came to see Madge. She hadn’t got home yet, and as I settled down to wait for her I heard something like a scream. So naturally I went to see what had happened. The door to Rue’s room was open. Rue was bending over the nurse. I thought at first, of course, she’d only fainted.”

Andy looked at Rue, and Rue put down her cup. “Yes, I — I think I screamed. And Alicia came in just after Julie died. But I didn’t know Alicia was in the house —”

Alicia continued quite as if Rue had not spoken at all.

“I trust this interest in my doings doesn’t mean that I am suspected of having anything to do with the death of a girl I never even saw before.”

Steven looked up.

“You’ve seen her, Alicia,” he said mildly. “Lots of times. When Crystal was sick.”

The jet-and-white line of Alicia’s eyelids rose and fell once rapidly.

“Oh yes, I suppose I saw her then. But I wouldn’t have remembered the girl. I assure you I didn’t put poison in her tea, if that’s what you mean. Let me have some coffee, Brule.”

“I didn’t mean that, Alicia,” said Steven apologetically. “You know it wasn’t in my thoughts at all.”

“A synthetic poison,” said Brule thoughtfully, pouring coffee for Alicia. “That can mean anything.”

“How can they prove it’s murder?” said Andy hopefully. “They can’t.”

But Brule shook his head. “Those letters, Crystal’s death — now this nurse’s death the instant police inquiry opened about Crystal. No —”

Andy said: “You think yourself that it’s murder. Is that right, Brule?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Brule. “But I’d like to know exactly who wrote those letters to the police. I want to know because I’d like to ask why.” He said it on the whole rather mildly, looking at a sandwich in his hands. The mildness seemed out of place; then Rue understood it.

He meant that if anyone in that room had written letters to the police, telling them Crystal had been murdered, Brule was giving that person a chance to confess it, to tell him why he’d urged a police investigation.

And there appeared suddenly two corollaries to Brule’s meaning. One was that all the people close to Crystal and to Brule were in that room. And the second corollary was worse. That was, of course, that if Crystal was murdered, if Julie was murdered, then someone close to them all had murdered both women. It had to be someone close to them; casual acquaintances don’t walk up to you and give you poison. And besides, there was opportunity to take into consideration: opportunity and motive.

Murder has to rise from intensely personal and intensely important motives. It is a last and dreadful resort of urgent emergency. Who then had to get rid of Crystal? Who had to kill Julie before Julie could tell the thing that she’d said she knew? And had said that Rue knew also.

But Rue knew nothing: she’d searched her mind and her memory, and there was nothing that gave her the clue to Crystal’s death that Julie had expected Rue to know.

How could you tell a murderer from other people? How strange that there was no brand, no insignia of the barrier he has crossed which divides him forever from other people, which makes him a pariah, an outcast, a man who has experienced the unforgivable crime? Who has dipped into the dark and mysterious stream and whose hands will forever bear the stain of it.

Hands made her think of Julie’s hands, with a rather sickening twinge of horror. Horror — and below it a deep instinctive question, as if the thing held an obscure but important meaning.

Brule was speaking. He was talking again of the letters. “… Because whoever wrote them must have had some reason for believing Crystal was murdered. Therefore if we can discover what that reason was we might go a long way toward getting this thing satisfactorily settled.” He didn’t say, discovering who murdered Crystal.

It was an odd omission. But Rue did not then scrutinize it. For a detective, one who had not yet questioned them, appeared in the doorway and said they were ready now to take general statements from each person in the house, and they would then call it a day, and Miss Pelham and Dr Crittenden could go home.

The general statements were taken then and there. Rue listened — dull with a kind of emotional fatigue. Each was fairly brief, and there was no inquiry until they came to Madge, although every word was taken in shorthand by the stenographer who appeared on the threshold just as Steven, who was first, began to talk.

Steven said briefly that he’d been working all day in the studio; he didn’t know that Julie Garder had arrived at all; the first he knew of the murder was when Gross came to tell him; and that he knew nothing at all about it. Mrs Hatterick and Miss Pelham had been in the room when he reached it. The body had been on the rug before the hearth; a tea tray was on a small table. Yes, he remembered the dead girl but only vaguely. No, he knew of no reason for her suicide or murder.

Alicia’s statement was even briefer, she’d just reached the house and was waiting downstairs for Madge to return from school when she’d heard a scream upstairs; she went upstairs and found Mrs Hatterick bending over her friend (Guy cleared his throat just there, and Alicia flashed a look at him but amended it quickly). “I mean, Julie Garder.” She said nothing that openly cast suspicion upon Rue, however; except that her statement was so extremely brief and noncommittal that it could be amplified at any time and as she chose to amplify it later. She did not look at Rue once.

Andy, next, said he’d come at once when Gross told him over the telephone what had happened. The girl was dead when he and Dr Hatterick looked at her. Dr Hatterick had called the police.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the body?”

“Nothing,” said Andy. “Except that it seemed a case of violent death. So far as we knew the girl was in good health.”

The detective’s eyes retreated.

“Miss Madge Hatterick?” he said.

Madge, as if she had been waiting her turn, said instantly:

“I am Madge Hatterick. And I want to tell you something.”

She stood up as if to speak with more authority, her face seemed suddenly mature and very determined with its square jaws and bright dark eyes. She pushed her dark hair back and looked straight at the detective in a poised manner that belied her dark blue school uniform with its demure lines. Brule looked startled, he went to her and said to the detective:

“My daughter is barely fifteen. She knows nothing of this, and I would appreciate it if you — question her as little as possible. I cannot imagine her testimony being of any possible value; she’s only a child —”

“All right, all right, Doctor,” said the detective, watching Madge. “Let the young lady speak. She seems to have something on her chest.”

“But you don’t understand,” said Brule. “She’s really a child, she knows nothing of —” He looked at Guy, who strolled nearer.

“Now, now, Madge,” said Guy. “Don’t let yourself get hysterical.”

“I’ll say what I have to say,” said Madge; “you can’t stop me. I may be young, but I have eyes, and there’ve been things happening in this house. Things you ought to know —”

Brule was white. He put one hand on Madge’s shoulder and held it so tightly that Madge winced but stared defiantly back at him, his living counterpart. Except — hadn’t Steven said? — she was like Crystal inside.

“You’re in love with her,” she said to Brule in a furious voice. “You’re in love with Rue. You can’t see how wicked and cruel she is. Who killed my mother? Tell the police who murdered my mother. Tell them —”

“
Madge
!”

“I won’t listen to you. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them who was alone with my mother before she died. I’ll tell them everything I know —”

Guy was for the first time concerned. “Stop that, Madge. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re a silly child. Look at me, Madge, I’ve know you since you were a baby. I’m your godfather; have I ever been unkind to you, or have I ever lied to you? Answer me. Have I? No, look at me, don’t look at Rue or the detective or anyone else. Look at me.”

He pushed Brule aside and put one hand under Madge’s chin. Unwillingly she met his eyes. Guy smiled.

“There now, my dear. Listen to me; when you say anything you must be sure it is the truth; it must be something you could prove if you have to. You can’t accuse anyone of anything at all just because you don’t like that person. You —”

“All right, Cole, all right. I’ve got to have a statement. Now then, Miss Hatterick, go right on talking. What do you know about this? Did you know Miss Garder?”

Madge hesitated. Guy took her hand and linked her arm around his own in a sympathetic way. Madge started to speak, stopped, said sullenly: “Yes. She was my mother’s nurse. One of them. The other was Rue.”

“What time did you arrive home this afternoon?”

“About five-thirty. I was late; we were rehearsing at school.”

“In fact the police were here when you arrived?”

“Yes.”

“That’s enough,” said Brule. “Isn’t it? I mean, it’s evident that my daughter knows nothing of it. And she — she is under age; I mean you can’t accept —”

Guy interrupted quickly. “That’s a good girl, Madge. Anything that’s the truth, remember.” He looked at the detective. “You haven’t a statement from me yet. I was here before the police. Doctor Hatterick telephoned to me at once. I came in the side door and —”

“What side door?”

“The door into Steven’s studio; I crossed through the back yard from my own house.”

“Was that door unlocked?” asked the detective.

Guy blinked. “I — why, yes, as a matter of fact, it was.”

The detective looked at Brule.

“Is that door always unlocked?”

“Why, I don’t know. The room belongs really to my brother-in-law, Steven Hendrie. How about it, Steve?”

Steven, looking ill and tired and disheveled, still in his sweater with his hair rumpled, looked up wearily and said he didn’t know.

“It’s usually locked at night. I don’t know whether it was unlocked today or not.”

The detective looked thoughtful.

“There’s a back way into the place. Where were you, Mr Hendrie, when the girl died?”

“In my studio, I suppose. I’d been there all day. Certainly no one came into the house that way; I would have known it.”

“Mr Cole, here, came in that way.”

“That was afterward,” said Steven. “I’d gone upstairs.”

“Then while you were out of the room anyone could have left the house?”

Steven’s face brightened a little. “Yes. Yes, certainly. Yes, of course.”

“And anyone could have got in the same way,” said the detective. “However… Well, I guess that’s all for the moment, Doctor Hatterick.”

“You mean,” said Alicia suddenly, “I may now go home?”

The detective glanced at her, a glance that took in every detail from her beautifully done gray-streaked hair to her slender black suede pumps, and was apparently unaffected by the beauty of her face, which was unusual.

“If you want to,” he said briefly. “Leave your address and hold yourself ready for further inquiry. That goes for all of you and means you’re to let the police know exactly where you are and not leave town. That’s all,” he said and walked briskly out of the room, followed by the stenographer.