Wolf in Man's Clothing (21 page)

And then I thought of Craig. Alexia hadn't been with him, she'd been downstairs and in the library. So he was alone.

When I came back into the library Beevens was gone, and Alexia and Nicky were talking.

“Beevens said Maud walked into town about three-thirty this afternoon; she said she would wait in town and come home with Claud after the inquest. The inquest took place in the hotel,” Alexia was saying.

“But she must have missed him,” said Nicky. “Otherwise she and Claud would have come home together.” He turned to me. “You said, didn't you, that Peter took her home in the car?”

“Yes.” I went to the couch to gather up my cape. “I rode into town with Mr. Huber; we went into the bar and Mrs. Chivery was there.”

“
Maud
?” cried Alexia.

“Claud must have walked from town,” said Nicky. “He often does. And he must have intended to stop here; everybody takes the short cut through the meadow.”

Alexia said, “Somebody's got to tell Maud. I'll telephone.” She started briskly for the telephone, quite cool and unperturbed.

I said, “It's going to be a shock,” and looked at her trailing green tea gown—not a costume for walking in the meadow. Yet Chivery had been dead for some time when I found him, so she or anybody else would have had time to get home and change. And just at that moment I suspected anybody and everybody in the house, even Anna and Beevens and Craig.

But Drue had an alibi; she'd been under police guard.
And now they'd release her, for this proved, didn't it, that she hadn't murdered Conrad!
For, as Craig had said, simply on the basis of averages and logic, there weren't likely to be two murderers, mysteriously converging in our midst.

At that thought and its implications I took a long and thankful breath.

Alexia had reached the door when Nicky said, “You'd better let me do it. I'll have Peter bring her here. …”

As Alexia paused, I walked past them quickly toward the stairway. The trooper let me pass; he didn't speak or try to stop me; it was his presence there (uniformed, armed, waiting because he had to, alert as a coiled spring with only the excitement in his eyes betraying the man) that was a threat of power to come. Investigation, evidence, accusation. One attempt at murder: Craig. One murder by poison: difficult to prove. One murder by stabbing. Outright, cold-blooded, horribly feral. Wolfish.

Drue's door was unguarded and I wanted to go to her, but that would have to come later. I hurried to Craig's room; the door was open and he was sitting bolt upright, wrapped in a dressing gown, in the chair near the fireplace. His eyes blazed at me; his face was stiff and white. And I knew by the look on it, that he already knew. He said, “Shut the door.”

I did. “What are you doing out of bed? Who helped you … ?”

“Come here. Put down your cape. Sit down—no, over here on the couch. Tell me about Claud. I heard the trooper at the telephone, and you when you came in the door. I know Claud was murdered.”

“But you …”

“Listen,” he said savagely. “I'm up. It didn't hurt me to get up. Nobody let me; it was my own idea. And as soon as you tell me everything about Claud I'll go back to bed. Not an instant sooner.”

Well, there was no use struggling over it; I was still shaky and my knees were unsteady. I just sat there looking at him and wishing I could smack him and above everything else not really caring much about anything, I was so tired. And he said suddenly, in a less hard and terse way, “You'd better lie down a minute, Miss Keate. What about some brandy?”

The brandy made me think of Maud and her violet sachet and what had happened afterward and I refused it with a shudder. But I told him about Claud Chivery. Told him the whole story, and watched the gray, drawn look tighten around his mouth.

“Now then,” I added wearily, “you'd better get back to bed. I thought Mrs. Brent was going to stay with you; I wouldn't have left you alone so long.”

He was looking at the rug with narrowed, intent eyes that didn't see it. “I thought you ought to have some rest. That's why I didn't send for you. Alexia went away only a moment or two after you left. Miss Keate …” he looked at me then. “Do you have any idea who did it? Tell me what you saw, everything. I'm tied here. I have to depend on Pete to get around for me. And you. If I could only get out of here …” He started impatiently to rise, turned a blue-white, and I sprang forward just as he sat down again on the edge of the chair, clinging to the arms of it rather desperately.

“Well, you can't,” I said.

“I've got to. I know I could do something.”

“What?” I asked. It was a pungent question.

He said, “I don't know. But something. There must be clues. There must be something the police have missed. There must be—well, somebody. Somebody we don't know about …”

It was not a nice suggestion. It conjured up a lurking, homicidal figure hidden in some forgotten room or out-building, waiting to pounce. Something seemed to crawl along the back of my neck, and I shot a rather nervous glance toward the door, which was closed, and into the corners of the big room where there were only empty shadows, and said rather sharply, “
Who
?”

He stared at the fire. “Nobody,” he said finally. “It's just that murder—is so unaccountable. So—well, so hideously erratic. You can't hook it up with anybody you know.”

There was another little silence. I agreed with him altogether too heartily. At last I said, “If you were able to get around, what would you do? Where would you look for what you call clues?”

“I don't know,” he said slowly, his eyes somber and brooding, watching the fire. “I don't know. Pete is doing what he can. But I—if only I could be sure that Drue is safe!” he burst out all at once and looked at me with a sudden appeal in his glance that was boyish and direct and touched with anguish.

“She's all right,” I said quickly. “That's one advantage of being practically under arrest. She is protected by being guarded.”

His eyes clouded again. “Yes,” he said. “And that's another danger. If they arrest her—Miss Keate, I can't move. I couldn't get as far as the door without collapsing. Don't you see you
must
help me? Be my
eyes,
my—my
ears.
If I could only get out of here!” He struck the arms of the chair and gave a kind of groan. And said, “Tell me everything you saw or heard. Everything. You can trust me.”

Which, for no reason at all, made me wonder if I could. Indeed, after seeing Claud Chivery as I had seen him I would have had a mental reservation about trusting my own image in the mirror.

Still Craig was the one person (besides Drue) who couldn't have killed Chivery. He might be able to get out of bed by himself and reach the chair; he might even—the night his father was killed—have walked as far as the linen room and collapsed. But he couldn't (at least I was fairly sure he couldn't) have waylaid Chivery at the brook; and he couldn't have hurried up that slope back of the house, along the rest of the path (the short way I had not dared attempt), reached the house before me and got back to his room unobserved.

Although someone could have done just that, and it didn't improve my state of mind to realize it. The path was a short cut; there would have been time. And certainly whoever it was in that shadowy brush had gone somewhere.

But I didn't know who it was nor why he was lingering there so long after Chivery must have died. I had no idea who, and telling Craig that, I almost said
what
as if the thing in the meadow had only horrible being and not humanity. Which in a dreadful sense was very near the truth.

Well, I answered his appeal as fully as I could answer it by simply repeating, in detail, the events that had taken place since I had left him with Alexia in the late afternoon. Or rather, since I had left him alone, for he'd said that Alexia stayed in the room only a moment or two. He listened intently but asked only a few questions. And eventually I got him back to bed; he didn't resist; he seemed indeed scarcely aware of me. But he spoke of Drue, and he thought the same thing I thought. “They can't prove anything against her now,” he said suddenly looking up at me. “They had her under guard at the time Claud was murdered.”

“Thank Heaven for that,” I said, meaning it. And just then, with the ironic neatness of life's little coincidences, Drue herself opened the door and walked in.

Rather she hurried in, closing the door quickly behind her. She was breathing rapidly; there was scarlet in her cheeks and lips and her eyes were bright. She wore her long cape with the hood over her head. She slipped the hood back; the light shone on her short, brown curls, catching gold highlights; her hair was disheveled and she'd been running. She came quickly toward us and Craig cried, “
Drue! For God's sake, where have you been
?”

“Is it true?” she asked breathlessly. “About Claud Chivery? Is it true? I heard them in the servants' living room. I came up the back stairs. What happened?”

I couldn't answer; I really couldn't; disappointment was like a vise on my throat, for I had so counted on her alibi. Craig said heavily, “Oh, it's true enough. He's been murdered; in the meadow, north of the house, by that little brook. Drue …” She was very near us and Craig caught her hand, pulling her down to sit on the bed so he could look in her face. “Drue, where were you?”

“I was out, Craig. I had to get out …”

“How did you do it? There was a trooper. You were under guard.”

“It was easy—he thought I was Sarah. Oh, it doesn't matter …”

“It does matter. Tell me exactly what you did. Hurry …” His tone was as savage in a queer way as the tight, hard grip of his hands, and as demanding. She said, “Wilkins, the other trooper, was relieved. I heard him tell the man who took his place that there were two nurses and not to stop the other one—he told him which door entered your room, Sarah. And from the way he spoke I was pretty sure that the new guard got the idea we were both in our rooms. I had to get outdoors. I was stifled and sick with thinking and myself and—oh, I had to get out of this horrible house. It's brought nothing but unhapp—” She checked herself abruptly and her eyes met Craig's fully. There was a fractional instant when a small flame seemed to leap between them and pause tentatively as if waiting for breath to live.

Then Drue looked away. She said stiffly, “So I tricked him. It was very easy. I simply wrapped myself in my cape and pulled the hood over my head, walked out Sarah's door and along the hall. He saw me, but he didn't see my face—(he may not have been here with the others; he may not have seen either Sarah or me before)—but anyway whatever it was, he didn't stop me.”

The little flame was gone. Drue looked at her hands. Craig's eyes were veiled. He said, as stiffly as Drue but quickly and urgently, too. “Where did you go, Drue? Did anyone see you?”

“I walked along the little path toward the Chivery cottage. I don't think anyone saw me. I … Suddenly her voice broke and she cried, terrified and despairing, “Craig, Craig, what is it? Who is it? What dreadful thing is happening here?”

The stiffness that had been like a wall between them broke down with that. Yet probably neither of them was aware of it. She leaned forward simply and swiftly and his arm went around her and drew her down close to him so her face was against his, and he cried softly and shakenly, “Oh, my darling, don't be afraid …”

And then, in the queerest little hush as if everything in the world had stopped for an instant, waiting for that very thing to happen, she turned her face and their lips met and clung and he held her there against him.

Which was, it seemed to me, an extremely good idea.

But being in my softer moments (fortunately rare) a little on the sentimental side, something tight got into my throat and I got up quietly and went to the window and looked out into the winter dusk.

I did rather wonder after a moment how his wound was making out. Still he had one good arm. And the main thing was that they had come together again and now the course of true love would run smoothly. It would be now only a question of a few words and possibly a number of kisses which do seem to have their place in life. I was sure of that.

But the next instant I wasn't so sure. For the door opened again and I whirled around and Alexia came quickly into the room and stopped. Drue must have heard it too, for she sat up quickly, her face radiant and her eyes shining until she saw it was Alexia standing there.

Craig said, “Come in Alexia. What is it?”

Drue with a single sweeping motion so the cape fell about her like a shield rose from the bed and turned to face Alexia, her golden head high.

Alexia's lovely face looked sharper and more pointed; her underlip was full and cruel; her eyes gleamed softly from between those drooping eyelashes. She paused only for a moment then she came straight to the bed. Her soft white throat was as white as her pearls. She stood as near to Craig as was possible, as if by her very physical presence she could separate Craig and Drue. She said, “Drue, you'd better know the truth now. Craig loves me. Not you. He belongs to me and I belong to him. It's always been that way. You came between us once, but he didn't love you even then.”

Drue's eyes blazed. “I was his wife,” she cried. “We loved each other!”

Alexia's voice, husky and vehement, rose over Drue's. “No, he didn't love you. I knew it then. He married you, yes. We'd had a misunderstanding; he did it to hurt me. As I, later, married Conrad to hurt Craig. But Craig never loved you.”

“I was his wife. …”

Again Alexia laughed. “He never loved you. He told me so. He asked me and his father to help him get the divorce.”

Craig was as colorless as the pillow; his eyes were closed, his mouth a straight white line. And he didn't say a word.