Wolf in Man's Clothing (16 page)

“No.” He moved restively. “I hope they get the inquest over satisfactorily and everything settled before I go.”

“Yes, naturally. Does Drue know you are leaving so soon?”

“No,” he said, and eyed me with sudden sharpness. “And you are not to tell her, either.”

“But …”

“I mean that. Understand?”

“All right. If you don't want her to know, but I think …”

“I'm doing the thinking about this,” he said, and then added with a touch of apology, “I'm sorry.”

I eased him back onto the pillow. The wound was doing all right; but the pain of even the slight motion brought moisture to his forehead and around his mouth. Well, it was just luck that the bullet had missed his heart.

I said, “Have you been at home long?”

“Only a few days. There, that's better.” He relaxed against the pillow and sighed and grinned a little. “The brave soldier!” he said, deriding his weakness.

“You're lucky to be alive,” I said. And, as the shadow of perplexity and horror and sorrow came over his young face again, I said impulsively, “Mr. Brent, what do
you
think happened last night? This is your home. You know these people. What's your theory?”

He closed his eyes. Weakly? Or was it, I thought suddenly, to shut me out, so I would read no expression in his eyes that might reveal his thoughts. He said, “Theory? I haven't any. I don't know what to think.”

“Do you think it was accident?” I persisted. “Or do you think the police are right?”

“Murder,” he said thoughtfully after a moment. “No, I don't think it was murder. My father had no …” He had been about to say, I thought, that his father had no enemies. He stopped and changed it. “No one would murder my father.” He paused again for a moment and then went on, his eyes still closed, “My father and I had our differences. Yet we loved each other. The differences we had didn't separate us in that way. I'm sure that he felt that. I'm sure he did.”

“One knows things like that without words,” I said. “I'm sure he felt as you do. I'm sure he was proud of you, too. And that he …”

“No,” said Craig rather quickly. “No, he wasn't proud of me. Not that I've ever done anything to make anybody proud of me, or anything to be exactly ashamed of either—that is, I'm an ordinary fellow. But he wasn't proud …”

“I meant, about your getting into the air force. Having a son going to fight for his country.” It's queer how the true things can sometimes sound trite. But Craig laughed a little, on an unsteady note, so he caught himself up quickly.

He said, “You don't understand. That was one of our differences. He wasn't afraid; it isn't that. He just didn't want me to go to war.”

“Why not?”

“Because he—because …” He moved a little again. “Oh, it's nothing, Miss Keate.”

He said it easily enough; yet something in his tone caught my ear and my interest. I waited, thinking of it and of what he had said—or rather had failed to say. And he added all at once, “It was nothing my father could help. He'd felt that way for years. And, anyway, he changed lately. I know that he changed. Since December seventh, I mean. Since we entered the war. Yes, he'd changed, I'm sure.”

“But …” I began, wanting to get whatever it was he was trying to say clear in my mind.

He didn't want it clear for me, however; he said rather brusquely, pushing the subject away, “Pete will be going too, you know. Soon. He thinks in another few weeks.”

“Pete? Oh, Peter Huber. What's he doing here, by the way? Did he come to see you?”

Naturally, it wasn't my business to know; still, I have seldom if ever scrupled to ask questions, particularly when I wanted to know. As in this case. Craig said, moving his shoulder a little and wincing again, “No, he's been here several weeks. Came on from the coast to try to get into some branch of the service. He's waiting now to hear; remembered we lived here and came up to Balifold and was staying at the inn when my father discovered him and made him come here. Ouch …” he said, moving his shoulder experimentally. “What makes it hurt like that?”

“It's doing all right. No infection. Did Mrs. Brent know Pete in school, too?”

“Mrs. Brent? No.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Pete's more or less susceptible.”

“Susceptible! Oh, you mean …” There wasn't anybody to mean except Alexia. Craig said quickly, “Oh, it's only Pete. Alexia's so—beautiful,” he finished rather dryly.

“But then …” I was struck by a sudden and rather far-fetched speculation. If Peter Huber had fallen madly in love with Alexia, there existed a motive for Conrad's murder.

Not however a very sound motive; certainly not a very pleasant one—but then a motive for murder is not likely to be pleasant. Mainly, though, there was little if any evidence to back it up. So I caught back my own words.

But Craig guessed my unuttered thought.

“He didn't murder my father to get Alexia! Peter's a good egg. Besides, Alexia doesn't go for him.”

Which was true enough. Alexia had certainly wasted no time in making her intentions clear and they obviously had nothing to do with Peter Huber.

The trouble was however that Conrad Brent had been murdered; the police don't make mistakes about things like that.

It's very difficult, and I discovered it then, really to face and accept the fact of murder; yet it's inescapable too—like an ugly, invisible presence. Murder in that house. Murder in the night just past.

I put away my instrument case in silence. After I had made Craig comfortable and was sure he was warm, I pushed aside the heavy curtains and opened the windows and aired the room.

It was cold, much colder than it had been the day before, with the lowering kind of still gray sky that threatens snow. I could see then, as I couldn't the day before, something of the rolling landscape. Hills, everywhere, thickly wooded, rose gently up to the gray sky. Roads twisted here and there over and among the hills; and stone walls traced old boundaries. Near at hand, running along just outside the wall and appearing to pass the garden, a path wound downward and out of sight. It led, as a matter of fact, from the Brent house directly to the Chivery cottage about a mile away and was a short cut.

The hills and the trees gave an effect of isolation. As I looked, a snowflake, very white against the gray sky, fluttered past my eyes and then another. Shivering a little, I closed the windows.

The day went on quietly. Soper, I think, went away shortly after the talk with Craig. Nugent vanished, too, but I believe busied himself for some time, quietly, about the house. Once a policeman came to the door with an ink pad and slide and took my fingerprints; I must say I didn't relish the little attention but did not intentionally smudge one hand as he seemed to think. The glass slipped.

He would have taken Craig's fingerprints, too, but Craig looked convincingly asleep, and I wouldn't permit rousing him. The policeman went away, and I caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Nugent down by the stairs, listening but not talking to Beevens. We were to become well accustomed to Lieutenant Nugent's spare, silent figure, unobtrusive, yet ubiquitous. He did, indeed, a very good job of lurking.

There were, of course, things I wanted to do and just then couldn't. The thing that worried me more than anything else was the hypodermic or rather its whereabouts. Who had it and why—and above all else what did he intend to do with it? I use “he” in a general sense; it seemed to me most likely that Maud's bright little eyes had ferreted it out. And I could do nothing; to search the place for so small an object would be at best difficult. With the police about it was impossible.

Yet if found, it would be the District Attorney's triumph and vindication.

I had begun to wonder if Chivery had forgotten that he still had a patient in the Brent house when he did finally arrive, late in the afternoon, looking very gray and drawn, and at least ten years older. After I had watched him examine Craig's wound and taken a few orders he told me to go. “Get some fresh air,” he said, with a kind of glassy heartiness, looking at the corner of my cap. “You needn't come back for at least an hour. I'll stay with Craig.” As I hesitated, he added, “I want to talk to him.”

So I had to leave.

My room was orderly and quiet. I went through the bathroom between our rooms and knocked softly on Drue's door and, as she didn't answer, I opened it cautiously. She was sleeping; she looked very young and childish lying there with one hand pushed under her pillow and the shadow of her eyelashes dark along her soft cheek. The little dog, Sir Francis, lying on the foot of the bed, watched me intently and growled in a kind of formal way. It was a tiny growl, of course, yet as full of intention and sincerity as a police dog's growl. It didn't wake Drue and I retired quietly. It suddenly occurred to me that if I'd married and if I'd had a daughter she might have been something like Drue. But while I'm an old maid and make no bones of it I'm not a sentimental, dithering idiot; so I thought no more of that, changed to a fresh uniform, took my cape, passed Wilkins in the hall again and went for a walk.

No one was in the hall below, so we weren't then, all of us, under close guard. The front door closed heavily behind me and I walked along the driveway toward the public road. It was still gray and cold and the air felt moist, but it was not snowing. Dusk was coming on and it was very quiet. Twenty-four hours ago I had had my first indication of smoldering tragedy and terror in that house that lay behind me.

The drive went down a long curve among clumps of evergreens. When I reached the huge stone gate-posts I stepped out briskly along the public road which wound north and west with many curves and a little bridge or two.

Somewhere along the way Delphine, the cat, picked me up and I looked down at his battle-scarred ears and wondered what had roused him so suddenly in the night. A footstep? Clothing brushing against the door? Or had it been something more tenuous even than that; an awareness of movement outside that door that was denied to my own, merely human, ears? And I wondered, too, what had struck the door so sharply and so hard. Like a hammer.

Gradually, as I walked along, the Brent wall gave way to a low field rock wall beyond which an irregular, partially wooded meadow stretched away into the dusk.

And presently, having skirted two sides of the meadow and reached a little ridge, I could see the village of Balifold about a mile or two away. It was a cluster of white houses, narrow and irregular but pleasant streets, and a church or two, for I could see the white steeples rising among bare trees and against the dull gray sky. There were many trees, beautiful, strongly symmetrical maples and oaks, and again evergreens.

From there too, spreading casually away from the town, I could see here and there what appeared to be large country estates hiding behind trees and in valleys, like the Brent place. There was about all of it—village and wooded hills and the soft dusk—a stillness and repose that would have been pleasant, except that there was a definite chill and loneliness in the air. Delphine decided to leave and did so, on secret feline business into the meadow, where his gray body slid into the shadowy growth near at hand and vanished. Leaving me alone.

Murder by poison. Standing on that hill, leaning against the low stone wall, looking down at the village and across those silent hills and valleys, I began to think again of the means of Conrad Brent's death. The use of poison presupposed a murderer with some knowledge of drugs, accessibility to digitalis, and a certain amount of ingenuity in inducing Conrad Brent to take it. And to take it
before
Drue had returned with her unlucky hypodermic dose.

And that, of course, led me back again, irresistibly, to the circles my thoughts had traveled so many times during the day. Who had murdered Conrad?

Craig Brent had by no means told all he knew; there was that business of the yellow gloves; and he had merely, unconvincingly, denied words that were suspiciously prophetic. Against this he had told a story to account for the bruise on his temple which not only sounded true but indicated, in my opinion, a line of inquiry the police would do well to follow. And while there may be few real alibis for a poison murder, still he had been under my observation at the time Conrad was induced to take poison. He was also in a drugged state, which would have prohibited clear thinking or quick action. And he had been shot, himself, the previous night. It was not likely, as he had said, that two potential murderers existed in their immediate circle—both with the evident intention of cutting off the Brents, root and branch, so to speak.

Furthermore, he had so narrowly escaped with his life the night before that there was no doubt at all but that the shooting had been a real attempt at murder. Therefore, someone else had shot him; he had certainly not shot himself in any fantastic effort to induce just such a theory on the part of the police, and thus clear himself beforehand, so to speak, of his father's murder.

No, I didn't think that Craig had murdered Conrad Brent. And it was true that he had done his best to divert suspicion from Drue; I had to give him credit for that.

Nicky practically invited suspicion, but I had no evidence to back up any suspicions in that direction. Alexia was, of course, an obvious suspect; she was young, she was beautiful, she was married to a man she flatly declared she had never loved and that man was the father of a man to whom she had been all but engaged and for whom, apparently, she still cherished what appeared to be far from a purely stepmotherly regard. I thought of her kneeling beside Craig, and the things she had said. “You knew—you always knew I never loved Conrad.” And then “… all that is ended now for us both, my darling.” Craig hadn't exactly said, “Oh, isn't that fine, hurrah, my father's dead and you are free!” Still, he hadn't said, “Don't be a fool, Alexia,” or even looked it.