The Hangman's Whip (21 page)

“Whoever it was,” said Richard, “could easily have got away into the darkness—even Calvin or Diana or Ludmilla, so far as that goes, could have escaped. Or Howland. The only requisites were a moment or two of time and a knowledge of the house.”

“The crash of the vase alarmed whoever it was?”

He nodded. “That or the knowledge that you were awake. Or both.”

“There was no sound. There was no rustle or footstep. And all of them seemed honestly alarmed. And then Howland came when Diana telephoned and helped Calvin search the house.”

“I know,” said Richard. “Jonas says he didn’t realize anyone was about. He just ran when he knocked over the vase; he didn’t even tell me of it until I questioned him.”

“I suppose,” said Search hesitantly, “that it couldn’t be Jonas?”

“Jonas,” said Richard and laughed. “Why?”

There was no reason, certainly. And Richard went on: “There’s another thing though. If whoever murdered Eve deliberately planned the murder that way—at that time and place, I mean, so as to throw suspicion upon me—then it has to be somebody who knew we were to meet just then. Howland guessed it. And we—you and I—talked over the telephone, and there are several house extensions. Where did you take my telephone call?”

“In the hall downstairs. Ludmilla, I think, was on the porch, talking to Eve. Calvin and Diana were upstairs, and there’s an extension in Calvin’s room.”

“Who called you to the telephone?”

“Diana. She said Carter was trying to find me.”

“Then she knew of it. And there’s the kitchen extension.”

“Only Cook or one of the maids—well, and Jonas, perhaps—could have listened. There would have been no motive—”

“Ludmilla was on the porch. You’re sure?”

“Yes. I think she was talking to Eve.”

Richard said slowly: “I suppose we’d better have a look at that cupboard. Search, Ludmilla told you about the poison. What did she say?”

“She wrote to me first—in Chicago—and asked me to come. Then she telephoned, and her voice seemed so—so troubled that I came right away. It was the night I got here that she told me, and I—I couldn’t believe her. But before I could persuade her to do anything about it—”

“I know. I suppose she wouldn’t mention the poison over the telephone, but what did she say in her letter?”

Search sought back in her memory. “She didn’t say a word about the poison. She didn’t say she had been sick or anything like that.”

“Did she—oh, mention any names?”

“Y-yes—yes, I think she did. But only casually. She didn’t say you and Eve were here. She said Diana and Calvin were well. I think she made some little reference to Diana’s being so ambitious for Calvin; she said ‘if he’s not careful she’ll send him to the White House someday’—something like that. But her letter sounded on the whole a little sad, so I thought she was homesick for the old days when we were children—her three orphans. She said she’d been looking over some old keepsakes—something of mine, a doll, I think, something of Isabel’s, and she mentioned you then. But—that’s all. Except, of course, she urged me to come; she said she wanted to see me. But I thought it was only because she missed me.”

“Where is the letter?”

“In my apartment. On the dressing table.” She remembered that hot afternoon and Howland looking out over the view and saying the window ledge was not safe.

Richard leaned back against the window casing and clasped his hands around his knee.

“If she knows anything,” he said, “she doesn’t know that she knows it. The sheriff has questioned her at length; everything he could think of, he said. It—it doesn’t seem to hook up with this thing at Avion. Yet whether she was poisoned or whether she’s doing it herself, either way it’s a stumbling block.” He stopped and looked out into the dusk and said slowly: “You see, Search, I—took her down; Eve, I mean. There wasn’t any way for anyone to”—his face looked white and strained and his mouth was tight, but he went on steadily—“to pull the body up by means of the rope. She—she had to be lifted. And I don’t think either Ludmilla or Diana could have lifted her. Besides, half an hour at the most doesn’t give much time.”

Search said slowly, “I don’t think Ludmilla could have done it. But she—there is a possible motive, Richard. She loves you dearly.”

“She didn’t murder Eve to end an unhappy marriage for me,” said Richard sharply. “She’s far too sensible to attempt that.”

In her heart Search agreed. Yet she remembered the look in Ludmilla’s face when she told her Eve had returned. And when she’d said—wistfully, sadly: “I’m an old woman—there’s nothing I can do for you now.” Had Ludmilla found (horribly yet with dreadful ruthless directness) a thing she could do?

Again she rejected it. Richard was not defenseless against Eve except in the matter of a divorce; certainly Ludmilla would not feel justified in removing Eve.

“Howland says he and Calvin were together,” she began, and he said:

“Yes, I know. The sheriff told me that. He told me about the story the waitress told, too, of seeing Calvin leave the tool shed with a rope. He says you heard it all. What did you think?”

“Of Bea’s story? I don’t know. Calvin was furious but he—he didn’t seem frightened about it. Yet there was a look in Bea’s eyes that was real. It was terror, Richard. Nothing else.”

“It was that girl that told about you and Eve—”

“Yes. And Ludmilla made Diana fire her, and Diana said she—Bea—told that story of Calvin to get even.”

“There’s—one thing I want you to know, Search.” He took her hand then and held it, examining the little lines on the palm as if he were reading it; he said: “I won’t let them—no matter what happens—accuse you of being an accessory. It was my fault that you were at the cottage; it was my fault that Howland knew we were to meet there, for he must have guessed from something I said. It’s all my fault from the beginning. Things aren’t going to go wrong—if I can help it, but—but in any case, that’s settled. I know how to prevent their—accusing you.”

“Richard, I won’t let you take the blame—confess—anything like that. I won’t—”

“That’s all.” He put down her hand briskly and closed the subject abruptly and definitely. “Now then—listen, Search. Eve said that morning when she talked to you that she’d gone to a lawyer, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She said there was no way for you to get a divorce from her and that she had already gone to a lawyer.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say—” She stopped short. “Was it Howland?”

He shook his head abruptly. “I don’t know. If Eve had already gone to him he had no right, naturally, to listen to my side of it without telling me Eve had already gone to him. And even if she did she may have told him nothing, of course, of this Avion thing she was on the trail of. Well, maybe I can find out. If they’ll let me—”

It had seemed for those moments as if he was free again, she’d forgotten the sheriff and the deputies, waiting. After all, it was a slender clue he had followed; only their conjectures, eager and hopeful, gave it a substance which might well be false. There was so little, really, to base his hope for freedom upon—so frail and tenuous a thread as a little clipping, a quarter of an inch high, from a country newspaper.

“Got a cigarette, Search?” asked Richard.

She went to the table and brought a box to him and matches and watched while he lighted a cigarette. It had grown almost dark while they talked, so a soft twilight filled the room, with only the sky outside the window still faintly gray. The flame of the match made a little golden flare so she could see his face clearly—slender, so like the boy she’d loved without knowing how she loved him—and yet matured now and subtly different. She could almost catalogue the differences. Decision where there had been merely assuredness and a touch of arrogance in the lift of his dark head. Strength where the boy Richard had not known the need of it. A look of hard-won patience and tenacity which, as a boy (swift of action, gay, a little audacious), he would have scorned.

Mainly, she realized suddenly that she would have cared for the boy; she would have indulged and excused and tried to smooth the way for him. The man was different. Whatever the past three years had done to him, he had emerged with something hard and firm that had not been there before, and yet there was a deep tenderness and understanding too. She could cling to the man and rejoice and take refuge in his strength and in his love as she could never have done with the boy.

He had put out the match. In the gentle silence he said again: “Come here, Search.”

She took a cushion from the window seat and put it on the floor and sat there, her head against his knee.

Outside in the summer night a cricket rasped. The moon would be late that night. Later than the night when it had seemed to make a path to the stars for them to walk along together.

How many times in the past she and Richard had sat in the window seat and planned the things they would do in the distant golden future when they would both be grown-up.

The future, now, was here. But it was not golden. It was, instead, so full of danger that the very thought of it clutched at her heart as if it had fingers.

The little silence lengthened. Then she felt Richard’s hand on her head.

“Dear,” he said.

They were sitting like that, quietly, treasuring that short space of time, when Howland came.

He came too soon. There were still things to be said. He knocked and opened the door and saw them sitting there outlined against the open window.

Richard said: “Come in, Howland. Turn on the light.”

He came in. Rather elaborately he closed the door behind him and then turned on the light.

“Donny’s waiting for you,” he said. “I thought I’d better have a talk with you, Dick, before they lock you up.”

“All right,” said Richard. Search didn’t move. Howland’s short dark face was entirely without expression; only his eyes had a lambent spark when he came to the dressing-table bench and sat down and linked his hands around his knee.

“You’d better tell me the truth, Dick. I’m not going to waste any words. They’ve got enough evidence to convict you. I’m only telling you these things for your own good.”

“I didn’t murder Eve. I don’t intend to plead guilty.”

Howland waited a moment. “All right,” he said finally. He rose. “There’s no use in our talking if you’re going to take this tone.”

Search said: “Howland, did Eve come to you? About a divorce, I mean.”

He looked at her slowly. When he rose his back was turned toward the light, and she could not see the expression on his face but she had a swift, almost untraceable impression of discomposure. He said: “Certainly not. Whatever made you think that! Richard’s my client—and whatever you think to the contrary, I’m doing my best for him. I didn’t tip off the sheriff’s deputy this morning. I—” He looked at Richard.

“You’d better know, Dick, unless you know already, that Search, not quite a week ago, did me the honor to promise to marry me.”

“I didn’t promise you—Howland, you know I didn’t.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It was as good as a promise. She meant it like that and I took it like that. Then she saw you again and decided—I don’t know what she decided. Except she thinks she’s in love with you now. I’m only telling you this because I want you to know what the situation is. Whatever she does does not in the least affect my feelings toward you. We”—suddenly he put out his hand toward Richard—“we’re old friends, Dick. You can trust me to defend your interests. Our friendship is too strong, I hope, to let anything like this affect us. All I can say is, when this thing is over, may the best man win.”

There was a little pause. Then Richard said shortly: “All right, Howland.”

Howland insisted on shaking hands—briefly. Then he looked down at Search. “Donny’s waiting,” he said. “I told him I’d tell Richard.”

“All right,” said Richard again. He stood and put down his hands and lifted Search to her feet. And then, under Howland’s eyes, he took her into his arms again—deliberately, gravely. He kissed her gravely too, as if that kiss might be a farewell. She thought of that and quickly, with a cold little sense of fright, rejected it.

Richard released her and turned toward the door. And Howland said: “Wait, Search. I want to talk to you a little.”

The sheriff knocked, opened the door, gave them all one swift glance and said: “Oh—coming, Bohan? This way, please.”

She watched Richard and the sheriff walk down the hall. They were going to Richard’s old room; two men waiting at the door entered the room with Richard. He didn’t turn, and the door closed. And Howland behind her said: “Come for a little stroll with me, Search. It’s stifling in the house tonight. And I want to talk to you.”

She looked at him slowly, as if from a long distance. “There’s nothing to talk about, Howland.”

He smiled. “Oh yes, there is,” he said softly. “Do you really understand what is going to happen, Search?”

“Happen?”

“About Richard, I mean. He’ll be held for the grand jury, you know; there’ll be a true bill; there can’t be anything else.” He went on deliberately, his eyes observant yet blank too, as if veiled. “After the grand jury indictment there’ll be the trial. As the evidence now stands, there’s no possible chance of his getting off.”

He said it simply and with an air of truth that, in spite of herself, was convincing.

“That’s—that’s only your opinion.”

He smiled again. “You’ll see. If Richard pleads guilty he’ll stand a better chance. If he doesn’t—” He shrugged. And came to her and took her hands. “Listen, Search, it’s no good, you know, your sticking to Richard. Besides—” He paused and then said slowly: “Suppose I were to tell you that I could—help you and him.”

“Howland, if you—” She stopped abruptly and turned swiftly toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he said quickly, taking her arm.

She pulled away from him.

“To the sheriff. To tell him you know something that is evidence.”

“Oh, I see. So you won’t beg, is that it?” he said softly. “Won’t beg and won’t bargain. Then—I suppose there’s nothing I can do for you or for Richard.”