House Of Storm (14 page)

She took the receiver from Aurelia’s hand. “Yes, Roy.…”

“Nonie, my dear, are you sure you are all right?”

“Yes, yes …”

“Don’t go out of the house. I’m coming right away. Tell Aurelia to have Smithson search the whole place.”

“He’s loading canes.”

“The hell with canes. Darling, you aren’t hurt?”

“No. I didn’t really see anybody. I only heard …”

“But somebody was there, and we’ll smoke him out. I’m coming …”

Suppose it was her imagination? Suppose she had only thought she heard that furtive companion?

“Roy, could the knife have been left there by accident?”

His voice, firm and brisk over the wire, denied her uncertainties. “We’ll soon find out. Put Aurelia on again, will you?”

She did so. And thus watched Aurelia’s face as Roy’s voice, an indistinct yet forceful-sounding murmur, came over the wire. She could not understand his words, but when Aurelia presently put up the receiver she cried, “What is it, Aurelia, what has happened?”

Aurelia gave her a long troubled look. “They are going to arrest Jim.”

A giant hand squeezed down upon her heart. Not so soon. Not Jim!

Aurelia said slowly: “I’ve known Jim Shaw since he was a little boy. He wasn’t at Middle Road often but enough. If he shot Hermione it was because she drove him to it.”

“He couldn’t have killed her!”

Aurelia’s fine full eyes, so like Roy’s, gave her a long observing look. She said kindly: “My dear, you mustn’t let it distress you like this. Roy will do everything he can to help Jim. And believe me Roy has position and influence here. Now then, you were up before dawn; go on upstairs and try to get some rest. I’ll have Smithson send men to search the place.”

“Suppose they arrest Jim!” Nonie cried. “Suppose Roy can’t help him. Suppose …”

“Now, now,” Aurelia put a comforting arm around her and led her toward the hall. “No matter what happens we won’t let it interfere with the wedding. That is your day, and Roy’s. And, as I told you, a very happy day for me.”

Nonie went up the stairway quickly—wishing to escape the picture Aurelia’s words, meant to be comforting and reassuring, induced. Herself walking down the quiet aisle of the little church to marry Roy. While Jim somewhere away, somewhere on another island was under arrest, awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial for murder. Again she was touched by a feeling of helplessness as if already it was too late; as if nothing she could do could check or divert the course of her own life, as if she were a leaf on that rapid and destined millrace of events.

But it wasn’t true, she told herself defiantly and rather desperately. Even if they arrested Jim, even if they took him away; even if there was a trial for murder, she loved him and could wait for him. Suppose twelve good men and true decided he was guilty!

Thoughts are like beasts sometimes, to be fought away from the citadel of the heart. She fought that one but it was to lie, like a beast, in hiding under leafy coverts, waiting to pounce at any unwary moment.

The little maid had already put the room in order. Nonie went out onto the balcony and looked down toward the garden with its strange and tropical shapes and colors, toward the thick wide hedges between which she had walked. Who had walked with her—like a beast too, skulking, stealthy? That beast had left a man-made weapon when it fled.

Nothing now was unusual about the garden, except that it was strewn with leaves and small broken branches from the storm. The massed greens were brighter in that strange and pearly light; the reds and yellows and purples of all those tropical flowers were more brilliantly red and yellow and purple. The smoke from the sugar mill hung in a low black cloud, scarcely moving.

The knife could have been left by mistake, carelessly—by one of the boys who then, knowing of the murder, because he was afraid of punishment or for any of a hundred reasons which to him would seem valid, had been afraid to confess it.

There was no reason for anybody to attack her, no reason for anybody to creep stealthily along near her with a machete in his hand.

Voices were raised suddenly beyond the trees in the direction of the many sprawling outbuildings; and at almost the same time a car sped along the highway and turned in at the gates.

It brought Roy and Major Wells and one of the police sergeants. Roy came running up the stairs. “Nonie …”

Smithson’s men were coming to hunt through the garden. She could hear their shouts, see their running figures. She went quickly to meet Roy and he caught her in his arms. “Nonie, what happened? If anybody touches you I’ll string him up on the highest tree on the island.”

Roy’s arms were kind and reassuring and it was the warm and comforting embrace of a friend. How could she have thought that it was anything else? Major Wells, standing in the doorway, said: “May I question her, Mr. Beadon?”

Roy turned. “Yes, yes, certainly, Major. That is, if you don’t mind, Nonie?” He looked down at her. “No matter what it was, you’ve had a bad fright. If you don’t want to talk of it now it’s all right. He’ll wait.”

“I’m afraid I can’t promise to do that, Mr. Beadon,” Major Wells said, pleasantly but quickly. “You see if there really is anything to this … I beg your pardon, Miss Hovenden, but we must make due allowances for nerves, you know.…”

“See here, sir,” Roy said, “If Miss Hovenden says somebody was there, somebody was there!”

“Oh, yes, quite. I meant—well, perhaps you’ll tell me exactly what happened, if you don’t mind.…”

And of course there was nothing to tell—the echo of her footsteps, a machete.

Major Wells listened, his red face inscrutable, his bright small eyes seeming to bore into her face. When she finished he sat for a moment without speaking. The sounds of the searchers came in across the balcony. Roy waited too, listening and watching.

Finally Major Wells sighed. “Understand me, I don’t doubt your word,” he said. “And I don’t like that machete business. On the other hand, honestly, Miss Hovenden, don’t you think it possible that your imagination may have deceived you? After last night and the shock of finding Miss Shaw like that? Nerves are funny things, you know.”

She shook her head. He must have read the conviction in her eyes, for he sighed again and looked at Roy. “Even if someone was there—and we’ll assume for the sake of argument there was—it doesn’t mean that he intended to attack Miss Hovenden.”

“There was that damned machete,” Roy said. “I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I do.”

“That’s not going to help, Mr. Beadon. I understand your feelings, of course, but we’ve got to be reasonable about this. All we have to go on actually is a feeling of Miss Hovenden’s, an impression of danger which she herself admits was only an impression, the sound of someone walking, and a machete, which could easily have been left there by almost anyone.”

“On the other hand, suppose it wasn’t? Suppose—good God, Major, don’t you realize there’s murder loose on the island?”

Major Wells’ lips thinned. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m going to have to arrest young Jim Shaw.”

“But I tell you …”

“Mr. Beadon, I have to tell you that personal feeling, friendship, all that, cannot be allowed to weigh as proof of innocence. Young Shaw admits he quarreled with her; he told Jenkins last night; he admitted it to me just now. Obviously it was a violent quarrel. He admits he left the island only to return at night, when, if he were lucky, nobody was likely to see him. He can’t give a sound reason for returning. He was her heir; he inherits a large trust fund. He …”

“But look here, Major,” Roy cried. “Don’t you see? If Hermione’s murderer is loose on the island, if he’s skulking around in the brush, in the hills, if he tried to attack Nonie this morning with that machete, then it isn’t Jim Shaw. Jim was with you when it happened. You were questioning, him alone.”

Nonie’s heart gave a leap upward. Why hadn’t she thought of that? An alibi, or something so like one that it might help to clear him!

Then she realized that the shrewd bright eyes of Major Wells were shrewder and brighter, scrutinizing her face. “Perhaps that has already occurred to Miss Hovenden,” he said.

T
HOUGHTS ARE DANGEROUS. THOUGHTS
are words, and communicate themselves as clearly as if they were spoken. They are even more dangerous than spoken words because spoken words may be selected so as to deal with surfaces and façades, with subterfuge and evasion.

Thoughts are dangerous, but also they can be denied. She saw the advantage to Jim of a substantiated attempt to attack her while Jim was actually in the company of the commissioner. Nevertheless she had not invented a footstep and a machete for that purpose. She started to speak and then realized that Roy was red with anger.

“Do you mean to say, Major Wells, that you doubt Miss Hovenden’s word?” he demanded.

“Now, now, Mr. Beadon …”

“Do you dare suggest that she is lying to you?”

“Mr. Beadon, this is an inquiry into murder. I don’t accuse Miss Hovenden of lying. I only say that if this, this incident she has told us about can be proved to have been an attempt to injure her it would go far to clear Jim Shaw. Not perhaps as to the actual evidence or lack of evidence concerning Miss Shaw’s murder, but in the minds of the people of the island, in the minds of the police, so far as our real inner conviction goes, and that is not unimportant. So any friend of young Shaw’s might have arrived at the same conclusion and invented such an incident.”

“But I tell you—all right—take it on your own grounds. She’d have no interest in trying to clear Jim Shaw. She …”

Major Wells interrupted again. “How well do you know Jim Shaw?” he asked Nonie directly.

Well enough to love him all my life and believe in him. Well enough to lie for him if I knew how, if I’d thought of a way. The words almost spoke themselves. Roy again replied: “He’s been here at the house; we’ve been there to dinner. Of course she’d defend him if she could. All of us who know him would do that. But she has no further interest in him. Your suggestion is preposterous …”

“I understand that you took Shaw in the motor boat to Elbow Beach, Miss Hovenden. Did he say then that he intended to return?”

That question at least was safe. “No,” she replied.

Major Wells turned, frowning, to Roy. “That’s a question he’s got to answer. Why did he come back?”

“He could invent a reason, a hundred reasons, if he wanted to.”

“Maybe,” Major Wells said. “But, what about a girl? Shaw is young. There must be a girl somewhere. Suppose that was the real reason for his quarrel with his aunt! If he wanted to marry and support a wife and Hermione Shaw blocked him it would strengthen his motive …”

“It is not fair of you, Major, to build a case against Jim like this! Take my word for it, that’s out. And the only girl on the island is my fiancée.”

It seemed to Nonie that Major Wells’ pause before replying was a little too long, a little too deliberate. Had he plucked her own thoughts out of the air? But he said then coolly: “She needn’t be here on the island.”

Roy said: “There’s no girl. And don’t forget, Jim was with you this morning when somebody with a machete …” He broke off and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “Good God, Major, don’t you realize what this means!”

Major Wells nodded thoughtfully. “I do realize that. And I can’t overlook it, either. Well, how does this program strike you, Mr. Beadon? Have your men continue their search; have them questioned. If somebody came along the road, or slid through the palmettoes—if some stranger has been hiding here or at the Shaw plantation, somebody will have seen him.”

“How about fingerprints on the machete?”

Major Wells shrugged. “Probably everybody has handled it by now. Of course, the cold fact is that even if this was actually an attempt on Miss Hovenden’s life, it would still not clear Jim Shaw.”

Roy stared at him and laughed shortly. “Major Wells, I’ve lived on this island all my life. It’s a peaceable, God-fearing community. Hermione was shot, yes. Her murderer obviously escaped. But I don’t believe there are two murderers loose on the island. And no jury will believe it. It’s against the laws of probability and averages.”

“But it’s legally possible. However, that’s beside the point right now. And I must say, man to man, I’m inclined to agree with you. Miss Hovenden, I want to tell you something. When a man has murdered anybody, whether it was a sudden, angry, passionate impulse, or whether it was planned and premeditated, no matter what, he’s scared. He’s scared to his very backbone. He thinks and thinks of possible clues he has left, of being found out. He goes over and over in his mind every possible loophole in his armor of defense. He questions himself, wondering whether this or that was seen or heard by anybody at all; whether anybody guesses that he’s the murderer, whether anybody has knowledge leading to him. Sometimes he becomes so convinced that someone does know something, that someone does possess a clue that might lead to him, that he thinks he’s got to stop it. He thinks he’s got to kill again to save himself. This doesn’t happen often. But it has happened, and will again. Do you know who murdered Hermione Shaw?”

“No!” Nonie cried. “No!”

“Well, then think carefully—search your mind and memory. Do you know of anything at all that might conceivably be evidence?”

“No, no, there isn’t anything!”

“You see, if your continued life threatens somebody …”

Roy said: “But Major Wells, suppose there
is
no reason for Hermione’s murder or for this attempted attack upon Nonie. Suppose, it’s somebody gone berserk; suppose we’ve got a homicidal maniac to run down?”

“That’s an alternative, certainly,” Major Wells agreed. “We’ll have to cover that possibility.” He rose, but then stood for a moment in deep thought. “Mr. Beadon,” he said abruptly, “What is your opinion of Dick Fenby?”

“Oh, Dick’s all right. Honest as they come. He wouldn’t have murdered Hermione. Besides, he was here in my house. He has an alibi.”

“I mean, what about his capability as an officer of the police? I’m going to have to leave things in his hands. Can he take responsibility?”