The Hangman's Whip (26 page)

So she opened the door very quietly but quickly.

Howland Stacy stood there. He stood between her and the door to the corridor. His tall figure, blocky and strong, was a complete barrier.

“
Search
,” he said.

He was very pale; she noticed that. His eyes were opaque, as always, but a white rim showed around them. Howland, then. Howland who had pretended he loved her; who had, perhaps, loved her after his own fashion. But who now (why?) had to save himself. She glanced swiftly, involuntarily, toward the window. It was wide open as she had left it; the low ledge gave directly upon space. The note was gone from the little desk. She met Howland’s eyes, and he was panting a little, watching her, a queerly calculating look on his face.

“Howland, you can’t do this. I heard you at the telephone. You don’t dare—they’ll see through it. You won’t have a chance “

He stared levelly back at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You—you’re alone, aren’t you, Search? Yes, of course, I know you are. I’m at the end of things. I can’t help any of this. I didn’t know it would turn out this way. I never meant, in the beginning—” He took out his handkerchief, still watching her, and wiped his forehead slowly, with an effect of calm except that his hand shook. “I never meant—” he said again. “Search, I tell you I’m at the end of it. It’s got beyond me—”

She thought suddenly, sharply, he wants to talk. He’s frightened; he’s afraid and a little uncertain; he wants to talk. If I can ask questions, if I can get a little nearer the door, if I can play for time, I may have a chance. She said: “How did you happen to come, Howland? Just now …” and measured her distance to the door.

“I”—his eyes shifted toward the window and back again—“I had an appointment. Search, I—you see,
I was the man watching the cottage.
You knew that all the time, didn’t you? I thought you knew at first; then when Richard was arrested I knew you’d have told if you really did recognize me. But—but something’s gone wrong. They’ve taken Richard away; he’s not at the house. Calvin told me that. So—you’re going to tell them, aren’t you?”

She must keep him talking. She said: “Did you see me?”

“I saw you come. I didn’t see you leave. I saw everything. I—Search, I tell you I’m half crazy. It’s all been a horrible mistake. I never meant it to be like this. I followed Richard, you see, that night. He went along the lake path and I missed him, so I thought of the cottage. I went there and hid in the edge of the woods. It was dark but not too dark to recognize you in your white dress. And Richard and—and I saw everything. I saw Eve come.”

Search scarcely listened. Every nerve and every drop of blood in her body had one purpose and that was escape. Very cautiously she moved an inch—two inches nearer the door. But it was also nearer Howland. He did not seem to note that cautious movement. He was wiping his glistening forehead again, staring at her with eyes that had a look of remembered horror—as if he was seeing Eve again, golden-haired, smiling, sure of herself, entering the little cottage to keep her last appointment.

“But I didn’t do it!” he cried. “I didn’t do it. I saw her come and I saw who came with her. They went into the cottage and turned on the light. I waited; I heard her scream—only a little—choked off. How was I to know it was murder! I waited and I saw, after a while—” He broke off. A look of craft came into his face. “I’m telling you all this to—to save you, Search. To help you; that’s what I want. To help you. You won’t forget that, will you? You’ll—”

He edged nearer her; his tall shambling body looked strong, huge, in the little room. The motion toward her brought her heart pounding in her throat. She mustn’t show fear. She must listen, since he wanted to talk. She must question. Time

“Of course, Howland. I won’t forget. I’ll—I’ll tell the sheriff you came to help—” If he came a step nearer, one sweep of his arms could reach her. She moved, only a little, to one side. But Howland moved too, so he stood almost squarely before the door.

“I didn’t murder her, you know,” he said. “You’re looking at me as if you thought—but I didn’t! I didn’t do anything except—except I told Bea I’d pay her to tell that story of seeing Calvin come out of the tool shed. I did do that. I had to.”

How could he still pretend when she had heard him over the telephone only a few moments before? Why did he insist upon talking? Was it a vagary of nerves strained to the breaking point? Or was it actually to catch her off guard? All that flashed through her mind as she snatched at a question. “Eve,” she said. “Eve came to you, didn’t she? For advice, I mean, when she decided not to get a divorce from Richard?”

He blinked, as if wrenched from something else in his mind.

“Oh yes. Yes, she did. I told her he couldn’t get a divorce. Then I asked her why she’d changed her mind.”

“And she told you?” She pretended to be about to sit down on a chair that was a good sixteen inches nearer the door and at one side so she was not nearer Howland. He watched her move, and something like recognition flickered in his eyes. But he said in a rush:

“Yes, certainly. She’d just been to Avion. She’d found out the truth. So naturally she wasn’t going to give up Richard when he had all that money coming to him.”

Instead of sitting down she edged around the back of the chair. It was dangerous; it brought her into a corner. But the chair was a kind of barrier. … She realized Howland had stopped talking and was watching her and she grasped for his last words, half heard. “Money? What money?”

“Why, the Abbott money, of course. Isabel and John’s. The money that came to Diana. That’s it, you see. That’s the whole thing. Eve saw something—some keepsake—that Ludmilla has; Ludmilla told her it was sent to her at Isabel’s dying request. A fellow came along just after the accident, you see, and Isabel asked him to send this thing to Ludmilla; almost with her dying breath. Eve went up to Avion and found this fellow and got the whole truth from him.”

“Avion—yes?” How much longer would, he talk? How much longer would it take him to nerve himself up to the thing he intended to do? “So Ludmilla knew too?”

“Good lord, no. Ludmilla never saw what it meant. But Eve did see. It meant all the difference.”

“All the difference. Yes.”

“Don’t you see? It meant that Isabel outlived John. He was killed instantly. By the time the ambulance got there they were both dead. Everybody assumed they were killed at the same time. According to law in such cases the man is presumed to live the longer—failing definite proof that he did not. Consequently all that money went straight to John’s heir, Diana, when it ought to have gone to Richard. Legally it all belongs to Richard; he is Isabel’s next of kin.” He was hurling it all out so furiously that his words were almost indistinguishable. He went on: “So Eve hurried home, first to make her marriage with Richard good and solid; second to have this fellow—name was Gleason—meet her there and back her up when she exploded her bombshell. She told me the whole thing and I—there’s where I made my first mistake. I saw that if I helped her uphold her marriage to Richard I’d be doing her a needed favor. And I also—well, it struck me that there might be one or two ways of making what I knew pay. I needed the money. It’s perfectly true that I’m in a tight spot just at the moment. But I never meant all this. Good God, if they get me—you will intercede with the sheriff, Search—”

He was talking feverishly, words tumbling over each other, eyes darting now and then around the room—toward the desk where the note was gone, toward the open window. It was almost dark; the sky beyond the open window was purple. She said quickly, aware of an abrupt silence, so his eyes darted back, suspiciously, toward her, “Yes, certainly, Howland. I’ll tell him.”

And just then with horrible suddenness he came toward her. His long arms hung down, empty-handed, at his side. His blunt dark face was thrust forward. He said quickly, unevenly: “I’ve got to talk. I’ve got to tell somebody. I tell you I’m at the end. It was a crazy scheme from the beginning.” He stopped scarcely two feet away, so his big body seemed to hover above her. And he said, his voice all at once coaxing but still full of a dreadful anxiety: “Come over to the divan, Search. Come over here with me—I—I’m ready to talk. I’ll tell you everything.”

She thought, he doesn’t quite know how to do it. He has to nerve himself up to it. But he’s in no hurry. He knows the police won’t come. Yet—yet he can’t delay too long. There mustn’t be too long a space between the time of his call to the police and the time when—

She wouldn’t think of that.
She clutched at the back of the chair and said: “Ludmilla knew. That’s why she was poisoned—”

“Oh no. She didn’t know; that was the point. She had this thing of Isabel’s but she never stopped to think what it meant. She got it out and showed it to Eve and to—to somebody else—early in the summer, and that started everything. Ludmilla didn’t know what it meant, but she might realize it at any moment. That was the trouble. That’s why the poison attempts began—right away. But they’ll never be able to fasten down and fix the blame for that. It was too easy to do—and yet it was botched so she wasn’t killed. But anybody had the opportunity to do it. There’s no possible evidence they can fix about that. Eve didn’t tumble to the meaning of it until just before she went to Avion.”

Something—some small discrepancy—barely stirred in Search’s mind and was thrust aside. She didn’t dare to look at the door; she moved a little toward it, along the wall, her eyes on Howland. “Then—then your alibi—the one you gave Calvin—wasn’t true?”

“No. No, of course not.” He was so near she could see the queerly dull pupils of his eyes; she could hear his short hard breathing. “I tell you I was there at the edge of the woods. I didn’t leave until after you did. I left when it began to rain and Richard was still in the cottage. I saw him come too. I saw everything. That’s why that thing happened last night—that attempted attack upon me. I knew then I’d reached the end. I can’t go on. I’m—I’m armed now. In my pocket—”

He patted the sagging pocket of his dark flannel coat.

And as she tensed herself for another cautious move toward the door he sensed it, and one hot strong hand shot out to clutch her wrist.

She was no match for him. And she was afraid that a struggle would end the thing; it would be like a match touching off a powder magazine.

Time—it was all she could think of; time and escape. She forced herself not to withdraw her wrist. She realized dimly that he had not actually confessed to murdering Eve—Eve with her golden hair over her face; the man in the willows who’d stared at the sky with eyes that did not see!

So she must play up to him. She must do anything in the world to gain a few more seconds of time.

‘Then—then the man under the willows was this Gleason?”

“They’ll never fix the blame for that either,” said Howland thickly. He darted another quick glance around the living room as if he had to assure himself again that no one was there, no one was watching. She pulled a little away from him but his hand instantly tightened. “Come, Search—come over here—”

“How was that done? Gleason, I mean. How was he murdered?”

Howland’s wide shoulders lifted a little. “Nobody will ever know. It was easy—waylaying him on the path, a quick blow with the hammer, nothing else. It’s Eve’s murder that left evidence. It’s for that they’ll get—him. And—get me, Search, unless you tell them I came to help you. I came to—”

Him? Who, then? … But nothing mattered but escape.
Woman—suicide—window.
It must have been Howland’s voice; there was no one else. Humor him, then. Anything to gain time. Anything to escape.

“Who did it, Howland? Who killed her?”

He hesitated. Then he said slowly, eyes fixed upon her own: “Calvin did it, of course. I saw him come to the cottage with Eve. I saw him leave alone. It was dark but not too dark to recognize him—and Eve and you and Dick. Did you—did you think I did it? … Listen, Search, I’ll write it all out. You come over to the desk and I’ll—I’ll dictate a statement and you write it and I’ll sign it. That’ll show you my good faith. Come …”

She couldn’t move while he held her wrist like that. Could she jerk away from him and make a dash for it? Now? She would have to try. There was no other way.

And exactly then the bell at the door buzzed sharply.

It buzzed and buzzed again, cutting the sudden heavy silence in the room like a knife.

Then Howland’s hand left her wrist and went to his pocket; Search barely stopped a scream and flung the door open.

Calvin stood there. He was bareheaded; he wore a gray worsted town suit. His face was pale and his gray eyes shone.

“Calvin!” cried Search.

He entered quickly and closed the door behind him.

Howland’s face was yellow. He tried to speak and stopped, and Calvin said: “What are you doing here, Howland?”

He did not seem to see Search. One hand was in his pocket, and as Howland started backward, still fumbling for the sagging pocket of his coat, Calvin said: “I am armed. I wouldn’t have come here to meet you, Howland, otherwise.”

“You—you—” Howland’s face was a mask of fear. He cried: “You said eight-thirty. Twice you said to meet you here at eight-thirty. I got to thinking of how you managed with Eve—so when Richard came a little later he found her. So I thought you were trying to do that to me. I came early. You said you only wanted to talk to me, here in Search’s apartment. But I—I was sure it was something else. I can’t go along with you any more. You’ve gone crazy.” He paused to catch an unsteady breath. Calvin, his face fixed and still, did not move or speak, and Howland went on, jerkily, almost incoherently, as if he couldn’t stop. “You are out of your mind! There’s no telling what you’ll do next, what crazy risk you’ll take. I knew that last night when you came into my house. After me. Because I knew. I had to threaten you with the story Bea told; you refused to split Diana’s money with me. I had to scare you, to convince you that I was in earnest, and right away you left the sheriff waiting and you agreed to divide with me. In a word—there in the hall; I was waiting. You can’t go back on that. You got Diana and went back to the sheriff, and I came in then and gave you an alibi—to show my good faith. I’ve been square with you. I only put Bea up to that story to scare you. I knew that sometime that day before Eve was killed you had to get the rope from the tool shed. I guessed wrong when I told Bea to say it was just before dinner. But the fact was right, anyway. You must have gone after your swim—after Eve sat there on the raft and told you the whole story of Avion. Eve thought she was smart in going to you; she was afraid she couldn’t force Richard to stick to their marriage, and her next best bet was to tell you what she knew. You knew you’d have to go on paying for the rest of your life.” Howland’s voice was high-pitched and unnatural, his words breathless. He whirled to Search.