Call After Midnight (8 page)

She glanced down toward the library from which came the rumble of voices.

Art said, “Peter is in the library. The police are talking to him. I believe they want to see you again. Yes, as soon as I heard of this dreadful thing, I came of course, in the event Peter needs me. Not that I can be of much help as a lawyer. I’ve never had anything to do with criminal law. But then Peter isn’t at all likely to need a lawyer. I haven’t seen Peter yet. I came out last night to my house. Blanche phoned to me about eleven-thirty last night. She rang off rather abruptly but I didn’t dream of anything serious. Cal told me that it was just then that the first attempt to kill Fiora was made.”

“You’ve seen Cal?”

“Oh yes. And Blanche briefly. That’s all. However, I understand that they’ve not got the murderer yet. Terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Shocking.”

“Yes.” She wondered when he would run out of adjectives.

“Dreadful.”

“Dreadful for Fiora,” Jenny said with something cold and pitiful in her heart. Poor Fiora, with her rich husband and her three fur coats.

Art was getting out a snowy handkerchief; he paused to look at her with extremely acute—and discreet—gray eyes. “Oh yes, yes. That’s the frightful thing. Somehow I never felt that you—well, I wouldn’t have expected you to feel any particular affection for Fiora.”

There it was, the tiny barb which seemed to come out of Art even when he didn’t intend it. He said, “But of course disliking Fiora, as naturally you would, and wanting her to die are two different things.”

“I didn’t want her to die!”

“I was a little surprised to learn that Peter had asked you to come out here.”

“So was I,” Jenny said.

“Why was that?”

It was not the only time that Jenny was to be asked that question but there was only one answer. “Peter was shocked, upset. He wanted Cal to come and he wanted me.”

“Forgive me, Jenny, but that—well, as I said, it surprised me.”

“I don’t see why,” she said boldly. “People can be friends even after a divorce.”

“But I shouldn’t have thought—well, there it’s none of my business. Peter should have called me.”

“There wasn’t anything anybody could do. Fiora wasn’t seriously hurt.”

“That first time,” he said. “It would have been better to have taken that first attempt on her life more seriously.”

Hindsight is easy. Jenny didn’t say that. She said, “Yes.”

The library door opened and Blanche came out. Her blue-black hair swept in a full curve around her face, not a hair was out of place; she was chic and elegant in a tweed suit; she wore her bangle bracelet and small string of pearls and she looked like a hag.

Her brilliant coloring had faded to nothing; her face was sallow as a candle; even her green eyes seemed to have faded and her lipstick stood out in queer disharmony. Her chin seemed to have tucked itself inward; there were small pouches under her eyes; her nose was pinched. She said, “Oh, are you still here, Art?”

Art eyed Blanche rather narrowly and a faint impression of Jenny’s was suddenly erased. Somehow, sometime she had got a notion that Art Furby and Blanche were very good friends indeed; also she knew that Art had had a wife somewhere, an invalid in some sanitarium; she was never mentioned but Jenny had rather felt that her existence accounted for the fact that Blanche and Art remained only very good friends. Not, she thought oddly, that she could possibly conceive of Blanche flinging herself into a reckless and hot-blooded love affair with anybody! But that formless impression must have been wrong, for there was now a definite sense of something guarded, polite but coldly reserved, between Art and Blanche. Art said, “I want to see Peter, of course.”

Blanche turned to Jenny. “They want you now. In the library. Jenny, I’m afraid I did a very troublesome kind of thing. But I really couldn’t help myself.”

The tiny red light of danger flickered. “What did you do?”

Blanche rubbed one hand across her eyes. “I’m not myself. I couldn’t think. They kept after me—Captain Parenti and—he kept asking about everything, details, everything.” She took her hand away and said, “I’m afraid—that is, I know I told him how Cal and I found you and Peter in each other’s arms a few minutes before Fiora was shot.”

It was like having a bucket of cold water dashed in her face. Jenny caught her breath.

“I didn’t mean to.” Blanche rubbed her puffy eyes again. “He said he had questioned Peter and you and Cal. He said I must try to remember everything, every smallest thing. Then he kept on and on about your going to get hot milk for Fiora and why had Cal and I gone to the kitchen at all. I said I’d heard somebody on the stairs—it must have been you or Peter. Whoever shot Fiora must have used the back stairs and I couldn’t have heard that. I was uneasy so I called Cal. But then—oh well,” Blanche said wearily, “Captain Parenti wouldn’t give up. He seemed to know so much. I thought Cal or Peter—or even you must have told him—”

Art Furby said, “Told him what?”

“Peter and Jenny—that is—”

“We were hugging each other,” Jenny said bluntly.

“But really it helped you both more than it could hurt. I mean it’s almost like an alibi for you both, you see, only a few minutes before she was shot—”

“Yes. But there was nothing—” Jenny stopped, for of course in the eyes of the police there might be a great deal. First wife in the arms of the husband; second wife murdered a few moments later. “All right,” she said and walked back to the library feeling as if she were about to mount the scaffold.

But she
had
been with Peter when they heard the shots. Peter knew that she was only a few feet from him. Blanche and Cal must have seen them running up the stairs after the shots.

But she had something to explain and didn’t know exactly what the explanation was. In a hurry to get the ordeal over with she didn’t knock but opened the library door. Cal was standing in the middle of the room, looking white and very angry. Peter was standing at the window, his back turned to the room, his fists jammed into his pockets. Captain Parenti sat, his thick figure slumped, in a deep chair. “Come in,” he said to her. “You can go now, Mr. Vleedam—Mr. Calendar.”

Peter didn’t move. Cal said, “I’ll stay, if you please—”

“Are you Mrs. Vleedam’s lawyer?” Captain Parenti said with an edge in his voice.

Clearly he expected no answer and got none. Cal’s hand doubled up as if he wanted to hit Parenti, to hit anything, and he had to yield. “I’m sorry, Jenny,” he said tersely, went to Peter and touched his arm. Peter turned, gave her a blank look and followed Cal out of the room.

“Sit down, Mrs. Vleedam,” Captain Parenti said. “Now then, what about this love scene with your former husband, a few moments before his wife was killed?” He eyed her for a moment. “You might as well tell me the truth. Your former husband admits it. Miss Fair saw you.”

“It was nothing. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time. He was fond of me—”

“So he got a divorce.”

“We were still friends.”

“So you fell into each other’s arms.”

“It was only—impulse. Nothing—”

“Did your former husband tell you to say that?”

So that must have been Peter’s reply. “No.”

Captain Parenti rubbed his fleshy nose. “Why then does John Calendar deny it?”

“Deny—”

“He says there wasn’t any love scene at all. He walked out in the kitchen; Miss Fair had thought she heard someone on the front stairs and aroused him. He says he didn’t see anything of the kind.”

But he had seen. He was trying to protect Peter. She said nothing.

Captain Parenti said, “Is he protecting your former husband, or protecting you?”

“It meant nothing.”

“Then why did you come here when Mr. Vleedam asked you to come?”

“Because he was upset, shocked. Frightened about Fiora.”

Captain Parenti’s eyelids lifted a little. “It seems very clear that that was a first attempt at murder which wasn’t successful.”

“Peter didn’t know that. Nobody thought of that. Peter only wanted Cal and me to come. Naturally.”

Captain Parenti was silent for a moment. Then he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think that’s so natural.”

“Well, it was.”

“No, it doesn’t seem so natural to me,” he said as if communing with himself. “There’s a divorce. He marries another woman. Then the instant he sends for you, you come back. Only one reason I can see for that. You and he wanted to get together again. The easiest way could be to get rid of the second wife.”

She shot up from her chair. “No! It wasn’t that way at all. No!”

“Sit down. Well, then, if that’s not so, does your conduct seem sensible to you?”

“No,” she said shortly, “I wish I hadn’t come.”

She, the discarded wife, in the house at Peter’s request when the new, the victorious wife was killed. The danger lights were flickering now, bright and dead ahead.

She sat down; she summoned all the composure of which she was capable and looked straight at Captain Parenti who was looking at the crystal rabbit lighter. He picked it up, turned it around, seemed to satisfy himself that it was a lighter and said, “Were you on the back stairs last night at all?”

“Those stairs that go up beside the pantry refrigerator? No.”

“Whoever shot the second Mrs. Vleedam could have stood on those stairs, hidden by the door and by the refrigerator door. The powder burns on her sleeve indicated a fairly close shot. Poor shot,” Captain Parenti put down the rabbit, “but a close one. Was your former husband on those back stairs just before Mrs. Vleedam was killed?”

“No! I’ve told you. We were together in the dining room when the shots were fired.”

He eyed a green jade ashtray. “There is a popular misconception, Mrs. Vleedam, that a wife cannot testify against her husband. The fact is that she cannot be forced to testify against her husband.”

“
Testify
?”

“In the event of a trial. But don’t think that this consideration is likely to be accorded a former wife, one who is legally not a wife at all. Fact is, I don’t know that I’ve heard of such a case. Still it has probably occurred.”

Trial, Jenny thought with horror; trial.

“And in a trial it seems to me that the prosecuting attorney would certainly suggest collusion.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and looked at her directly. “Collusion. You claim an alibi for your former husband. He claims an alibi for you. Thus it might be said that you’ve both agreed to lie and protect each other.”

“But that is not true—”

“Mr. Calendar didn’t see you come up the stairs. He had heard Mrs. Vleedam scream. He had roused. He then heard the shots and ran to her room. Miss Fair heard the shots, came out into the hall. Neither of them remember seeing you or your former husband on the stairway.”

“We were there. Blanche collapsed, it was like a faint Cal was—I suppose he was in Fiora’s room by then.”

“How would another person, the murderer have got into the house?”

“Anybody can get into a house if he really wants to,” she said, quoting Cal.

“And anybody can get out of a house if he really wants to? Is that what you mean? How?”

“How—why, the back door—”

“You said you had bolted the back door.”

“I did but the murderer could have opened it from the inside.”

“You want me to believe that someone came secretly into the house and was here, hiding, when you went to the kitchen?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t sound very reasonable, does it? Somebody in the house, waiting for a chance to murder. Waiting for you to leave Mrs. Vleedam. That would be quite a chance for anybody to take.”

“I don’t
know
how it happened! But he must have entered the house and got away—” She leaned forward. “Was the back door still bolted when you—the police came?”

“I’m asking the questions. How do you suggest this murderer got away?”

“The—well, a window. The French doors, there. He could have gone out the front door, for that matter, and none of us would have known it. It was so horrible, confusing. I can’t tell you—”

“How could anyone have escaped Mrs. Vleedam’s room without being seen by one of you?”

She stared at him. “I don’t know. I—why, yes, I do know. There’s a double door across the corridor.”

He nodded. She went on quickly. “I’m sure it was closed at the time of the shots for when Cal ran toward Fiora’s room I heard both sides of it bang back against the walls. So whoever shot her had time—I’m sure he had time to run on around the corner in the back hall and down the back stairs.” She took a long breath and thought it over. “Yes, it must have been like that.”

“Is this the first time you have considered ways and means of escape for an intruder?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Haven’t you talked to anybody about it?”

“No. Was the back door still bolted when you came?”

He picked up the crystal rabbit again, flicked its flame off and on a few times and said, “No. The bolt was off—”

“You see!”

“You had plenty of time to unlock that door to make it look as if somebody had escaped that way.”

“I didn’t!”

“You say this invisible and remarkably silent person took the gun away with him.”

“He had to if you haven’t found the gun. That’s how we knew it was murder. Peter and Cal looked and there wasn’t any gun.”

“Why did your former husband get rid of the slug from that first shot that wounded Mrs. Vleedam?”

“Because he thought she had shot herself with his gun and that—that—”

“He would be accused of attempted murder? Why?”

He must have questioned Peter about that. She leaned forward: “You don’t understand. It was a dreadful shock. He didn’t even think of looking to see if his revolver had been fired. He lost his head, he said so. I understand that.”

“Then you understand more than I do,” he said shortly. His eyelids opened enough to permit her to catch a gleam of bright eyes. “You all tell exactly the same story.”

“It’s the truth,” she said wearily again.

“Exactly the same story. There’s got to be a motive for murder. There was no robbery. Now if, say, you and your former husband had decided to marry again—”