Voice Out of Darkness (10 page)

She looked down carelessly, once, at the thing for which they were searching.

Then she dressed for dinner at Francesca’s.

Surprisingly,
Lieutenant Hooper had called.

In the cab inching cautiously through snow and darkness on the way to Francesca’s, Michael told her about it. Lieutenant Hooper was spending the week-end in Bridgeport at the home of a brother-in-law. He had seen an account of Miss Whiddy’s death at the Fenwick Inn in the local papers and had connected the Inn with his visit to Katy’s apartment. He might, he said, drive over to Fenwick on Sunday just to see how things were going.

Katy said, “Did he ask if Miss—?” and Michael gave her a warning pressure with his shoulder and nodded toward the driver. “No. I couldn’t say much. We’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

Snow swayed in moving curtains before the headlights. The driver volunteered with gloomy satisfaction that it had looked just like this in the blizzard of thirty-three, a-aayup, and then the tires slithered around a curve and they were at the Poole house. Two other cars were drawn off the road in front of it—Harvey Pickering’s, probably, and Jeremy’s.

Katy had always loved the little house. It stood close to the road with Japanese pines leaning protectively over its brick chimneys, its shutters faded to a soft blue-green, its white-webbed fanlight arched and flawless. Inside there would be low-ceilinged rooms filled with warm yellow light, black iron strap-hinges, Persian rugs worn thin as shadows but still subtly jeweled. Flowers, perhaps, and dim charming old mirrors on the walls, and here and there a frosty pen-and-ink.

Michael’s hand was under her elbow. He said, laughing, “You look like a snow-man,” and then the white-paneled door swung open and they were inside. Francesca, slender and lovely in black, was saying, “Are you frozen, the two of you? It’s penguin weather… you can leave your things right in there if you’d like.” She waved towards a tiny room, not much bigger than a large closet, with a mirror, a diminutive chair, an old-fashioned coat-stand. Katy flicked melting snow from her hair, inspected her lipstick, and joined Michael and Francesca in the doorway of the living room.

More greetings; the little group in the firelit living room shifted and broke as cocktails were handed, cigarettes lighted, tentative conversations established. Katy sat on the end of a couch out of the lamplight and beyond the flickering range of the fire. The room was exactly as she had remembered it, even to the cool pen-and-inks in the recesses on either side of the mantel. The people, too, the faces, were exactly as they should be.

It was as though they had joined forces to make the evening gay and civilized and a success, had made up their minds to behave beautifully and without undercurrents of conflict. Jeremy balanced easily on the arm of Cassie’s chair, his fingers just touching her red wool shoulder. Francesca gathered in threads of various conversations around her and braided them, wittily and skillfully. Mr. Pickering told a lengthy legal joke utterly without point, and they all threw in a generous contribution of light, polished laughter.”

“Saving that as a souvenir of the evening?” asked someone beside Katy. She looked up and Jeremy nodded at her empty glass and came back in a moment with a full one. Michael, meanwhile, had drifted over to the fire and was saying something to Cassie.

Jeremy sat down beside Katy. He gave her a cigarette and held a match. His eyes were mocking. “Aren’t we nice this evening, Katy?” His glance left her face and swept the room and came back again, searchingly. So he had noticed. Katy caught her breath and said shortly, “Yes. Don’t spoil it.”

“I won’t,” said Jeremy equably. Faint emphasis on the “I” or not? She couldn’t tell, and his eyes were hidden; he was staring into his cocktail as though, Katy thought idiotically, he expected to find a goldfish there. He said, “You were frightened this morning.”

A pulse jumped in Katy’s throat. Was it falling apart so soon, the fabric of normality they’d all managed to weave just for this one evening? She said flatly, “You’re spilling your drink.” Jeremy looked at his glass, at drops on his dark blue knee. “So I am.” An immaculate handkerchief, a few efficient dabs. Would Michael never look her way?

“Going back to New York with—” Jeremy gestured with his head, “Michael tomorrow?”

“I don’t… no.”

Michael had caught her eye at last. Jeremy rose, and gave her a long deliberate look. He said pleasantly, “I think you’d better,” and moved away without haste.

Katy sat very still, tingling with irritation. She wasn’t frightened. You didn’t warn the very person you intended to harm, not over cocktails in a close little gathering, not where other eyes and other ears could read a glance, a tone. But if he knew something she didn’t, if he were aware of a definite danger of which he had no part, would he leave it at that—a cool and idle insinuation?

Michael had dropped down beside her. He said quietly, “Trouble, Katy?” and security came flooding back to her at the fleeting touch of his hand on hers. She turned her head to speak. She didn’t speak, because just then, beyond the closed door that separated the living room from the tiny hall, the front knocker fell resoundingly.

They all stopped talking at once Someone’s laughter—Francesca’s?—ended on mid-note. Glances met and looked quickly away again. Francesca put her cocktail down and said, brows arched at no one in particular, “Who in the world—?” and Cassie was on her feet and moving, startlingly beautiful in the red wool, saying carelessly, “I’ll go… probably someone stuck in the snow, who wants to use the phone.” The intervening door latched behind her, they heard the front door open, distantly.

Voices in the living room blurred together again. Francesca said, “Mr. Taylor, dear, we’ve time for one more cocktail if you’ll mix it.” Mr. Pickering pounced on Michael and began a brisk discussion of Chicago hotels; Francesca, listening, said, “Oh, but if you think that’s peculiar…” At a little table near Katy, Jeremy clicked ice cubes and splashed liquor. Out in the blackness beyond the shining small-paned windows the wind rose sharply and snow hissed against the glass. Katy turned her head and saw it piling up, white and furry, on the sill.

The living room was all at once unbearably hot. Katy’s temples began to throb. She put her hands up to cheeks that felt flushed and burning, and reached for the bag beside her between the arm of the couch and the cushion. Francesca, catching her eye, said, “Upstairs and straight ahead of you,” and Katy smiled gratefully and started up the narrow staircase.

The house was old; this part, the original structure, was pre-Revolutionary, and in places gave the effect of a sounding board. That was why she heard the voices—drifting, apparently, from a darkened bedroom at the top of the stairs. The voices weren’t in the bedroom. They were, Katy realized, coming from the tiny coat-room directly under it.

She stood still, staring into blackness, and listened involuntarily. Below her Cassie said, “I know, but I can’t talk to you now.”

A voice with a shrug in it. “Very well. It was you who—”

“I didn’t know then that we were having people in tonight. I’m sorry if you…” Cassie was apologetic, conciliatory. “I’m still prepared to—” Whatever she was prepared to do didn’t become apparent; her tone lowered and Katy heard only an undecipherable murmur. Cracks between the wide floor-boards at her feet showed a faint glimmer of light that was suddenly blotted out; someone in the room below her had moved. Cassie’s voice came back, “—but you’ll have to wait. It’ll be worth your while.”

The other voice changed subtly, became casual, cold, triumphant. “I came to tell you something else, Miss Poole.”

Who was it? Where, before, had Katy heard that oddly detached, dispassionate tone? All at once she was back in a dim, stuffy room by the little pond, was hearing that remote voice say, “We have a very fine view from here, Miss Meredith.”

Ilse. Ilse Petersen was here in Francesca’s house, with an air of careless command over Arnold Poole’s daughter. It was queerly shocking, even appalling, when Katy remembered the sudden defenseless pain in Francesca’s eyes, the look that completely denied her poised amusement over Arnold and his sculptress.

Cassie’s voice was different too. Bitter, edged with scorn. “Oh. You were spying on my father, I suppose?”

“Under the circumstances, I’d call it rather—justified interest, wouldn’t you, Miss Poole? But what I saw and heard at the Inn was infinitely more interesting…” Their voices died again to a meaningless mumble. Seconds later a door below Katy opened softly, then another door. It latched. The interview was over.

Katy moved numbly out of the darkness. In the bathroom she splashed cold water against her cheeks, used a feathery powder puff, drew a controlled red mouth with her lipstick. Remember, she thought warningly, remember the letter you thought you recognized, the letter from Aunt Beth in Buffalo. And knew, as she went down the staircase, that this was something very different indeed. In one of the audible intervals, when the blurred voices had sharpened to clarity, she had caught, unmistakably, the sound of her own name.

There were carnations on the table, pale and spicy. They had once reminded Katy of the cool dim rock-garden under mulberry trees behind the Meredith house. They reminded her now of Monica’s snowy grave under the gaunt blue spruce in the cemetery. Mr. Pickering touched fringed petals with a surprisingly gentle finger. “Pretty things,” he said.

A girl Francesca had lured away from a friend for the evening served clear soup, chicken with something cunning and winy to the sauce, tiny, tender brown mushrooms, salad. Katy took only one careful glance at Cassie. Her delicate face was pale, the shadows more definite, but she was serene above the brilliance of her dress.

They had coffee in the living room, were lighting cigarettes when the second interruption came. Someone said, “Is it letting up any?” and Michael opened a window near him. Snowflakes spun into the room, eddied over the sill. Michael said, “It’s a gale,” and started to close the window. But not before they heard it—the rattle of tire chains grinding around the curve, the slam of a car door a moment later.

Cassie grimaced becomingly. She said, “Another lost driver?” and half-rose from the slipper chair by the fire. The iron knocker fell once. Then the front door opened and closed again, a voice shouted blithely, “Hi! Francesca? Cassie?” and the living room door was flung wide and Arnold Poole stood there, snowy and swaying.

“Arnold.” Francesca, on her feet, her back to the fire, her face, in the instant before she composed it, blind with shock. Then she took a step forward and, incredibly, set the pace for all of them. “We’re—just having coffee. You’ll have some, won’t you?”

Drawing-room drama at its most uncomfortable. Somehow, they rallied from the stiff, appalled silence. Harvey Pickering rose. He looked from Arnold Poole to Francesca and back again, and contrived to remain pink and jovial. He said, “Er—nasty night. Better dry off, Arnold,” and waved at the fire. Cassie gave her father one trapped and terrified glance and went rapidly off in the direction of the kitchen. Jeremy smiled his aloof and amiable smile and continued to lean against the mantel, smoking. Katy, her own face guarded, watched them all in mute fascination.

“Hell of a night,” Arnold Poole said, striding to the fireplace. “Man needs a drink on a night like this, but I suppose I have t’have one of those damn nonsensical little cups of coffee first to satisfy the neighbors.”

He was, amazingly, complacent. The man of the house straddling his own hearth, looking placidly at guests in his home. He seemed completely unaware of the fact that he had left little splashes of melted snow on the rug, that he had lost his hat en route, that he had plunged a roomful of people into prickling embarrassment. His eye lighted on Michael. Katy said, “This is Michael Blythe, Arnold, my fiancé.”

Arnold repeated, “Blythe.” He drew himself up. He looked at Michael with the thoughtful dignity of the very drunk. He said, “Well, well, Mr. Blythe, what are you doing back in Fenwick?”

Pause. Faces turned alertly toward Michael. Katy looked with the rest, trying to keep her blank astonishment to herself, and saw Michael go very red and then dead white, muscles locking his face into a kind of polite fury. He said in a hard voice, “I think, Mr. Poole, that you mean my brother. Gerald Blythe.”

Cassie came back with an extra cup. Francesca poured coffee. Mr. Pickering, in what was obviously a dim fumble at tactfulness, said, “Er—blond fellow.”

“No,” said Michael savagely. “Dark fellow. But there, I think, the resemblance between us ends.”

Katy could see, they could all see, that he was trying for control behind the bleak stillness with which he held himself. She pushed back wonder and lifted her voice and said clearly, “He used to come here summers, didn’t he, darling?” and Michael’s eyes swerved to hers and he said, “Yes. Years ago.” The little break was bridged.

It was a little after ten-thirty when Jeremy stirred abruptly and looked at his watch. “My God. The cars—we’ll have our work cut out for us.” He got reluctantly to his feet.

Michael said, “I’ll give you a hand,” but Jeremy shook his head. “We may be okay. I’ll give a yell,” he said, and opened the living room door and was gone.

“Drinks,” Francesca murmured absently. “You’ll need nourishment if you’re going to dig yourselves out. I’ve some Scotch, somewhere in the depths of the house, saved for just such an occasion.” She rose. Cassie made a quick motion and Francesca said, “Stay where you are, darling, nobody but me knows my mad hiding-places.”

She was triumphant when she reappeared. “There. It’s always touch and go when I file anything away, I’m just as apt never to see it again.”

Arnold Poole had scarcely moved from his station on the hearth. The sobering-up process had evidently begun; his gay amiability had been replaced by a brooding quietness. He had, Katy noticed, watched and listened to them all, saying almost nothing, missing nothing, dark eyes secret and speculative.

Michael, at the window, was stiff-backed and remote, staring out into the dark. He had given Katy one look of pleading and then had withdrawn into himself, emerging occasionally to be polite and conversational, retreating again to some miles-away place in his mind.