House Of Storm (25 page)

A swift conviction came out of the dusk between them; she cried: “Jim, do you know who killed her?”

He did not reply and she put her hands out toward him, catching at his arms, feeling the rough wet texture of his coat. “You do know!”

“I think I know why she was killed,” he said. “I think I know—but I can’t prove it unless …” He stopped and thought and the wind surged against the French windows and rattled and creaked and pummeled the vines. He said almost in a whisper, as if to himself: “Unless Dick has got back from Middle Road. Unless …” He took her hands in his own. “Do as I say, lock the door. I’ll be back.”

A blinding flash of light and the opening of the door came at once. It was a flashlight directed full into their eyes, dazzling them, pointing up the objects in the room so sharply they were bewildering and strange. Her eyes blinked in the light. Jim said: “Is that you, Dick?”

It was Dick and he came into the room, holding the flashlight. There was a faint reflected light upward into his lined face and bright, too bright eyes. He said roughly, his voice strained and panting, “Sorry, Nonie. I thought Jim would be here. Jim, I’ve come to put you under arrest.…”

Jim said: “I know about the gun, Dick.”

The flashlight wavered slightly; there was a short pause. Jim said, “The house boy knew that she’d borrowed it. There wasn’t any gun anywhere in the house at Middle Road. You took the slug. She was shot with your gun, Dick.”

There was another long silence; this time the flashlight remained steady and blinding in their eyes. Jim said: “It was incriminating evidence, Dick. I can’t say I blame you for getting away with the slug. But you can’t arrest me …”

“Can’t I?” Dick said. “You shot her. I didn’t. Maybe my gun killed her, maybe not. But I’ve got another gun here—Wells gave it to me to use if I had to arrest you. He gave me orders. He ordered me to arrest you if anything happened—anything at all. Seabury was murdered and then this afternoon you went to Middle Road and God knows what you did there in the way of concealing evidence. He gave me orders,” Dick repeated in that rough uneven voice, “and he gave me a gun. Come on, Jim.”

Jim said: “Who else knew she had your gun? Why did she borrow it? Whom was she afraid of?”

Dick replied, “If she was afraid of anybody she didn’t tell me. If she told anybody she had the gun, I don’t know that, either. But you could have known it, Jim. You lived in the house. You could have seen it many times.”

Jim said: “Where is Riordan?”

“I don’t know. Come on, Jim …”

All at once Jim yielded. Quietly, and rather quickly, he went to the door. Dick whirled jerkily so as to keep the light trained full on Jim, but Jim’s hands were at ease, he made no attempt to take the torch or the gun. At the door with the full glare of the light in his face, reflecting in his eyes, shining on his wet, black hair, he said to Nonie: “Remember what I told you. I’ll be back.…”

Dick Fenby, incredibly, did have a gun. She saw it as Jim turned ahead of Dick and went into the hall. It gleamed darkly, it was short and square and utterly preposterous held like that, in Dick Fenby’s hand.

His shoulders blocked off the light and Jim; she reached out in that half light and caught the door and, as Jim had told her to do, scarcely thinking, bolted it. And turned and leaned, spent, against the door.

She stood for a long time not moving. It was as if her whole body and mind joined together, refusing to accept the thing she had heard and seen—Jim going quietly away with Dick Fenby. Under arrest. A gun in Dick’s hand.

He must have told the truth about Major Wells’ orders; she did think that after awhile. The gun must have been, as he said, loaned to him by Major Wells because he had said he had none; because he had not told them he had loaned his gun to Hermione.

Why was Hermione frightened? The question touched the outer circle of her thoughts and darted away again.

If it was Dick’s own gun in his hand, it could have been identified. His whole story of Major Wells’ orders, Major Wells’ gun, could be checked and proved. No, it was true as Dick had told it.

What would Jim do? How could he do anything if Dick with his new—and self-saving—determination actually kept Jim under guard, locked him in some room. While Dick himself, knowing now what Jim knew of the gun that had killed Hermione, made his escape?

Dick knew the island. If anyone could escape in that wild and devastating hurricane, Dick could. But that would admit his guilt. No, Dick wouldn’t escape. He would stay; he would fasten the guilt upon Jim.

The shutters rattled, some tree had fallen half across the balcony and seemed to creak and shudder. The room was darker; that early, storm-burdened night had come closer. Jim had said something about candles.

She moved and made a little round of the room, hunting over table tops for matches. The broken branches of the tree creaked again; wind pushed at the shutters savagely. She found a pack of matches and lighted one and saw with a queer cold dismay, that there were only three matches left.

She shielded the flame while she searched drawers and writing table, and was obliged to light another match before she had satisfied herself that there were no candles in the room. But, of course, there was the adjoining bathroom. She went into it—a big old-fashioned room with no other door save the one into her own room. She used up another match while she glanced quickly through the medicine cabinet, huge and old-fashioned, fastened to the wall. There were no candles in the room; there was no other place to search for them. She went back into the bedroom and suddenly remembered that she had not bolted the French windows after Jim had come in from the balcony. Had he bolted them? She crossed the room hurriedly, caught by a sudden kind of panic. Halfway across she stopped and listened and did not know why she listened. There was one match remaining and she lighted it with a sharp, quick gesture and on an impulse lifted it high, looking around the room.

There was nothing different; nothing changed. She turned again to the French windows and put her hand on the bolt.

She never knew whether it was already bolted or not for the tree creaked again. But it was not on the balcony; it was nearer, close, within the room.

That could not be.

She turned as the match flared and it was the door of the great, tall armoire that creaked.

It creaked and it was barely open, a dark inch or two showed—which, as she watched, slowly, almost imperceptibly, widened. The match in her hand flared and went out.

“DON’T MOVE!”

The shutters rattled, the tree—
no, the door
—that was what had creaked—the door of the old armoire! There in the room, across dark space!

It creaked again and there was a light, lithe sound of motion. How curious it should be light and stealthy like that!

She did move and did not know she had done so until she was backed up against the wall and could go no farther.

“
Don’t move, I tell you.
”

Had she started sliding along the wall, moving toward the door?

She heard her own voice like the wind, rasping and tearing from her throat. “
Why—why …
”

There was no answer and she slid along the wall again and suddenly, unexpectedly, not knowing she was going to do it, she tried to scream.

A hand came out of the blackness and caught her hard across the mouth, hurling her like a doll against a chair. She reached wildly and a table went over with a crash. She could hear nothing; everything was whirling blackness—and then she did hear.

“I’ve got Dick’s gun. They’ll say he did it. It would have been so different, if you hadn’t cheated me like that. If you’d had the money you ought to have had! So different; a will, a slip on the rocks, an accident with the boat. Easier than this way. How was I to know your father had thrown away all that money! How was I to know you’d bring no money to Beadon Gates! But I’ll still be all right. I’ll still have my home, my position—If I can keep Jim from hanging, I’ll save everything. I’ll retrieve everything. I’ve got to have Jim—and if it hadn’t been for you he’d be safe. He’d have been on the plane, in New York—safe. But I’ll still get him out of it, and me. You are my only danger, you and your damned little cache of money. You …”

She screamed again: “
Roy—Roy—don’t
… !”

And that dark strain of violence, of unchained savagery surged out in a black tide of terror, overwhelming her. She moved, blindly, trying to escape. The shutters were rattling and pounding.
No, that was the door—the door to the hall; someone was shaking it!

But the tide of terror was still there, flooding the darkness, suffocating, numbing her pulses.

“I’ll shoot to kill. Not you—but Jim. Even Jim, if I have to. The first move you make, the first word you say to warn them, I’ll shoot.”

The door to the armoire moved and was still. There were voices outside in the hall calling her, repeating her name. She had not heard them until then and she obeyed blindly, getting somehow to the door; her hands groped along it and could not find what they must have—something terribly important, something as sweet as life, something—oh, yes. A bolt! A lock! A small cold piece of metal.

“Nonie, for God’s sake open the door!” Jim’s voice was so imperative a demand that her fingers found the bolt and slid it and the door burst open and Jim and Dr. Riordan and dazzling lights came in a rush into the room. A huge candelabra, lighted and wavering, was in Dr. Riordan’s hand. He held it up high so that shadows fled from the room. She didn’t dare look to see if there was a strip of blackness along the door of the great armoire. She mustn’t let Jim go there, she must keep him out of range. She’d maneuver them out of the room.

But they were inside the room, taking over, there was no way to get them out of the room, for Jim had gone to the French windows. Her heart turned over. He was directly opposite the armoire. Oh, Jim, she cried in every nerve of her body, come back, come back!

She could not think; she must invent some excuse. It would be heard; any excuse would be heard. She must get Jim away from the armoire first, then think—think—think …

Dr. Riordan was looking at her curiously. His thin face was haggard and drawn in the wavering, dancing brilliance of the candles. He said: “This will be a shock. You’d better be prepared …”

She moved her lips to say: “I know—I know …” and then was horrified at what she’d been about to say with Jim standing there, so solid, so dear, so firm and unyielding a target. But she hadn’t actually spoken; her throat was numb and her lips like ice. Jim was watching her—curiously, too, it struck her; his eyes very narrow, his face rigid as a piece of brown marble. He looked angry! Dr. Riordan said in a thin metallic voice that cut through the terror, cut through the sound of the storm: “I’ll be the main witness. I saw the gun removed from where it was hidden—it was under a shrub in the garden. Before he went to Middle Road this afternoon Jim told me to watch. He told me Hermione’s murderer had to have the gun that killed her. I watched but then he hurried into the house. I couldn’t find him …”

He’s here
, she thought.
He’s in this room!

“… it’s absolute proof, so you must believe me. It will be a shock, but there is no question of doubt. Only the person that murdered Hermione would have known where the gun that killed her was hidden. Only …”

Jim said suddenly, queerly—still with a strange and terrible look of anger: “Tell her, Riordan. Tell her what happened.” But Jim wouldn’t move. He stood perfectly still. She put out cold hands pleadingly toward him and he didn’t seem to see them. Riordan said: “All right. I’ll tell it as it happened …”

She scarcely heard Dr. Riordan. He was talking about money, money that the boy had taken from Hermione; but she knew that. Jim said sharply: “Sit down, Nonie. You look so—white; sit down on that chair by the doctor.”

Dr. Riordan took her hand; then she was sitting in a deep chair. She could see the door of the armoire; had that dark small space widened? She risked another look and was not sure. Dr. Riordan said: “You may as well know—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—Roy killed her.”

But she knew that. She knew Roy Beadon of Beadon Gates with that dark strain of violence, that deep, strong savagery, who had intended to marry a rich wife. Who had planned a will. And a slip off the rocks, an accident in a boat. Money.

Her money—that no longer existed. Her lips moved again and no sound came out. Jim was talking in a very quick but detached way. His words began to float toward her along streams of terror. Why was he talking like that, almost idly, almost casually, getting out facts as if they had nothing to do with her or with him.
She must get him away from the door.

If she moved, if she went into the hall, if she pretended to faint perhaps—no, no. I’ll shoot, he’d said. And he had already murdered twice.

Jim’s rapid words, such impersonal, detached words, went on: “ … and he must have promised Hermione he’d get money from you. To keep her quiet, I expect he took your money, your twelve hundred dollars. She guessed he’d loaned me money for plane fare, he’d probably told her he wouldn’t have any money till he’d married you. Almost certainly there was a bitter quarrel after we’d gone to Elbow Beach. As a promise, I expect, of more to come as soon as he’d actually married his rich wife, he must have given the bills he’d already taken from your billfold to Hermione. And the only reason he’d taken them is because he had no cash and Hermione had her claws into him. Everything happened at once: he discovered you had no money, he discovered I was leaving, and Hermione came in a rage and demanded her money. He had to temporize, put her off, satisfy her. That afternoon—the afternoon we went to Elbow Beach, Roy discovered that you had no money; that was the day the letter from the lawyers came. That was how later—when he told you about the letter, Nonie, that was when I
knew
that Roy—that something was wrong. He’d opened it, you see. It was addressed to you. He might, if questioned, have invented some reason for opening it; but the point was he had opened it. So I knew he was waiting and watching for definite news about what he’d expected would be a very large inheritance from your father.”