Voice Out of Darkness (14 page)

He wore a plaid lumber jacket over hunting breeches and boots. His bearing was easy but not too easy; there was the natural concern of a man being questioned over the death of someone close to him. His eyes were very bloodshot. Chief Abbott said blandly, “Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Poole. But we have to have what facts we can get for the records, in a hit-and-run case like this. Now, if you’ll just make a short statement…”

Arnold Poole made his statement, and Sergeant Gilfoyle’s huge fingers were nimble with a pencil and shorthand symbols. Just routine questions, Mr. Poole—when he had seen Miss Petersen last, whether she had had any known plans for the evening, where he had been that night, what time he got home, why he hadn’t turned in an alarm when he found Miss Petersen missing in the middle of a blizzard, whether he could explain her presence on the road in front of his wife’s home on such a night. Arnold Poole answered quietly and without confusion, saying what he had said earlier that day. He had last seen Ilse Petersen shortly after noon, when she had said she was going into town to do some shopping. He had then gone into town to do some drinking. No, he knew of no particular plans for the evening on her part. He had had dinner out and a few drinks—“Make that quite a few,. Sergeant”—at the Hub Tavern, after which he had driven out to his wife’s house. When he got home and found Ilse Petersen missing he had thought that, piqued at his absence, she was spending the night with Miss Trent, whom he hadn’t called because of the late hour. As for Use’s presence on the road in front of Francesca’s house, he could only assume that she had followed him there, though he hadn’t the faintest idea why.

“Miss Petersen knew you had sold a book to the movies, Mr. Poole?”

Poole lighted a cigarette. Sergeant Gilfoyle looked briefly at the ashtray in which a half-smoked cigarette was still burning and returned to his notes. Poole said easily, “She may have. The letter came in the afternoon mail, after she’d left for town. It was in the desk where I keep all my correspondence.”

Chief Abbott, who had been playing idly with a letter-opener, dropped it to the desk with a clatter. “Why did you go out to your wife’s house last night, Mr. Poole?”

Poole laughed. If he were aware of the sharp and sudden change from routine questioning to pointed interrogation he didn’t show it. “Why, Chief? The blood leaves the brain—or is it the other way around? As a distressing number of people can tell you, I was blind as an owl.”

Abbott didn’t like that, nor did he care for his visitor’s general air of tolerant amusement. He leaned forward and shot another question. “Isn’t it true, Mr. Poole, that you were planning a reconciliation with your wife—with an olive branch of sixty thousand dollars—when you visited her last night?”

Poole stared. He was either genuinely bewildered or he portrayed bewilderment extremely well: the abrupt stillness, the slightly drawn eyebrows, the look of profound wonder. He said slowly, “Oh, so that’s on the local grapevine, is it? Too bad. My wife is a very charming woman, Chief, but we made up our mutual minds about all that five years ago. It’s hardly a question of reconciliation in any case, as there was no quarrel. It’s true that the money would have made it possible for me to give her a divorce whenever she wanted. But go back together again? Good Lord, no.”

Alice Elizabeth Whiddy
was buried at a few minutes after eleven o’clock on that crisp, snow-sparkled Monday morning. Katy awoke at seven-thirty, took a startled glance at the unfamiliar contours of her new room, thought drowsily of Lieutenant Hooper just down the hall, and slid lazily back to sleep. At nine o’clock she stood in the phone booth in the corner of the Inn lobby and said, “Mr. Farrow? This is Katy Meredith. I’d like flowers sent to Miss Whiddy’s grave—I hope it isn’t too late.”

Mr. Farrow said, guardedly, that it wasn’t. He was cautious. “It is you this time, Miss Meredith? I don’t want—”

“Oh yes,” said Katy. “I quite understand, Mr. Farrow. Suppose I drop in and pay for the flowers immediately after the funeral? I’d like carnations if you have them. Very pale pink and white.”

“Like those ones I did for Miss Meredith?” inquired Mr. Farrow timorously. “I could wire them different.”

“I’d like them just the same,” Katy said, and put the receiver down feeling bold and defiant and curious. She would attend Miss Whiddy’s funeral, accompanied by the observant Lieutenant Hooper. But would they be there, that handful of people who concealed a killer under casual cloaking charm? Would there be, at the edge of a yawning, fresh-dug hole, the person whose hands had sent Miss Whiddy there, whose voice or maneuvers had ordered an identical wreath of carnations for Monica’s grave, not far from the new one?

Katy doubted it. None of the people concerned had been close to Miss Whiddy; they were all part of the world which Miss Whiddy had watched and envied and censured, and chronicled with glee. Queer people, she would have said, people who drank constantly and were outlandishly gay and switched husbands at the drop of a wedding ring. If they were there it would be because Miss Whiddy had been as much a part of Fenwick as the circling hills or the crinkled gray Sound. Or because one of them could watch, with dreadful detachment, and feel safety at murder undetected.

Lieutenant Hooper came down for breakfast. He nodded interestedly when Katy told him of the wreath she had ordered for Miss Whiddy’s grave. He said, “They may come, you know. I’ve lived in small towns, Miss Meredith. Mark of respect—particularly if you have fish to fry with the public, like Mrs. Poole, with her shop, or Mr. Pickering, or Mr. Taylor, who stands a chance to be town prosecutor. For the rest, there’s curiosity—you’d be surprised at the number of people who go to strange funerals just to see what’s new in weeds, or whether the relatives faint.”

Ten-forty-five. Katy looked at burning candles in the church, at flowers banked on the coffin in the center aisle, at the granite-faced, heavily veiled relatives from New Hampshire. The church was crowded. Miss Whiddy would have been pleased and proud, would have been able to report, from memory, every hat and every shade of demeanor, would have sniffed with interest and tossed her whipped-cream head and told, to a name, who was there. Katy was crying. She took the huge snowy handkerchief Lieutenant Hooper extended and dried her wet cheeks with it and thought fiercely, Some-one killed her. Someone’ll die for it, and followed Lieutenant Hooper out of the pew.

Eleven-five. The snow was melting. It dripped from the headstones, glistened on the black iron railings, plopped gently off the drooping branches of the blue spruce. It was the only sound you could hear, except for the gentle and terrible phrases at the grave-side.

Katy held herself very tight and looked around her. After a moment of searching she found a smooth silver head—Harvey Pickering, just as he had looked in the lobby of the Inn when Miss Whiddy was freshly dead and blood-matted. Jeremy Taylor, too far away to read his face. Of course; you didn’t get to be town prosecutor by avoiding the public eye. Startlingly, there was Pauline Trent, wearing—Katy’s eyes widened—a red felt beret and a white woolly coat, and a look of sullen anger. Not funeral raiment, the clothes or the expression. Arnold Poole wasn’t there, or Cassie, or Francesca.

The group at the grave shifted. The New Hampshire relatives, who had been kneeling under a canopy, rose and walked, stone-faced, to the waiting limousine. Voices rose in a muted blur. Katy glanced over her shoulder and saw her carnations, a tumble of pink and white, lying on the snow.

Someone’s elbow brushed hers. Katy looked up into Jeremy Taylor’s expressionless greenish eyes. She remembered, unbidden, being in this cemetery with Jeremy before, shoulder a breath’s width from his. Lieutenant Hooper had gone on ahead. Jeremy said quietly, “Katy. I didn’t think I’d see you here.”

“Why?” said Katy. And then—she hadn’t meant to say it, hut it came out and hung icily clear among the gravestones, the result of incense and candlelight and the shocking thought of a woman so carelessly killed, “I didn’t push her.”

“Push her?” said Jeremy.

Silence, except for the whimper of the wind. The others had left them behind; motors began to start, cars to file slowly down the hill past the cemetery. Jeremy’s eyes were cold and unflickering. He lifted a hand, slowly, and Katy’s muscles gathered in panic. But you mustn’t show that you were frightened, mustn’t give reason for chase. She reminded herself that she had once been to the movies with Jeremy, had slid her own shy hot fingers into the hand that was coming forward, now, groping for her wrist.

Behind her Lieutenant Hooper said, “Oh, excuse me. Mr. Taylor, isn’t it?” and Katy, knees weakening, knew she had been mistaken. Because Jeremy’s eyes were bright and cool, Jeremy’s voice was casual and lowered a little, respectfully, Jeremy’s strong, thin-fingered hand was back in his pocket. And Jeremy was saying, “I was just telling Katy… we hardly expected to meet on an occasion like this. It was a shocking thing. Have you a car, or can I give you a lift?”

Lieutenant Hooper said gratefully that they would appreciate a lift, and Katy sat between the two men and, her eyes on slush and wet black branches and a soft, seraphic sky, looked at herself with scorn. How quickly you changed—from a careless, busy automaton of a copywriter, poised and competent and sure of yourself, into a trembling boneless creature as blindly afraid as a child in the dark. How quick you were to see violence in every pair of eyes, murderous intent in every lift of a wrist. One of them, yes, quite right and very wise to feel terror at the sight of one of them. But not all of them—not every glance, every voice, every gesture.

And not Jeremy. She had once held hands in the movies with Jeremy and he had oddly, warmingly remembered it. Francesca, then, elfishly young and charming and graceful as quicksilver? Harvey Pickering, pink and prominent, who had gone mauve and shaking when his rear wheels had rolled over Use Petersen’s body? Pauline Trent—no, ridiculous, because she lived remote from all these people, and led her own withdrawn, sequestered life. Cassie Poole, with her sculptor’s-model face, who hid in ladies’ rooms to quiver and cry? Arnold Poole, lean and dark and rakishly attractive, who might not have been as drunk as he seemed?

Katy became aware suddenly that they were in the Inn driveway, that Lieutenant Hooper was standing at the opened door of the car. She caught up her gloves and said confusedly, “Thank you for the ride, Jeremy,” and slid along the seat.

“Not at all,” Jeremy said gravely. “Glad I caught you. Are you busy tonight, Katy?”

Busy tonight. Katy’s eyes wavered to Lieutenant Hooper’s, found an interested flicker. She said, “No, I’m not busy,” and Jeremy ran a gloved hand along the wheel and said, “I thought we might have dinner at the White Hart Inn. The roads are clear. Get out of Fenwick for an hour or so.”

“It sounds nice,” Katy said, and drew a breath and smiled and waited. Jeremy flicked at the wheel with his fingers. “Cassie won’t appear with that cut on her forehead. She’s out of bed, but she had a bad shaking up. On top of that, she has to take care of Francesca.”

“Francesca?” said Katy. She was aware, remotely, of Lieutenant Hooper’s gently indrawn breath. “Nothing’s happened to—”

“Francesca heard somebody outside the house last night,” Jeremy said in as idle a tone as though he were talking about the weather. “She went along the path and called, and somebody knocked her out. She isn’t badly hurt. Though God only knows why she was fool enough to go investigating strange noises at that hour of the night.” He put the car in gear. “I’m on my way back there now. Six-thirty, Katy?”

Francesca struck down on her own grounds by someone prowling around the house. Who—and why? Katy nodded silently to Jeremy and followed Lieutenant Hooper into the Inn lobby. Her thoughts, scattered abruptly by the news of the attack on Francesca, halted at Mr. Farrow. She’d promised to drop in and pay for the wreath that morning. She told Lieutenant Hooper and he gave her an observant look out of startlingly shrewd eyes. “I think Mr. Farrow might wait until you’ve had some lunch and—if you don’t mind my suggesting it—a drink.”

Katy was amused and grateful. She said that she didn’t need a drink, that her momentary weakness in the cemetery had been due to the stuffiness of the church, but that she would like some lunch. “And then,” said Lieutenant Hooper, spreading his napkin scrupulously over his neat lap, “you might show me, on your way into town, where the police station is.”

Katy played with her silver. “I suppose you’ll have to tell them everything.”

“Oh yes, I think so,” said the lieutenant, momentarily severe. “Willfully withholding evidence is a charge in itself, as you probably know. And then, you see, the light bulb that was removed from the staircase will undoubtedly have been thrown out, and the shoes, Miss Whiddy’s shoes, will probably have been taken away with the other effects by the relatives. Unless, that is—” he paused delicately, “she was buried in them.”

It was a horribly fascinating thought. Miss Whiddy’s feet, so pointed and decorous—were they clad, this minute, in black calf with a modest touch of amber?

“And,” continued Lieutenant Hooper, gentle and ruthless, “someone obviously returned to Mrs. Poole’s home last night to retrieve something he or she didn’t want found there. Mrs. Poole may have interrupted the search too soon. On the other hand…”

There was a small, grim silence. They retired, mutely, to the blurry purple-ink menu. It was remarkably like every menu Katy had seen since her arrival. She asked the lieutenant if he would order a lamb chop for her and stood up. “Do you mind? I think I really ought to call and find out how Francesca is.”

Cassie answered the phone. She was cool and polite and, Katy thought, a little hostile. She said that she herself was fine except for a constant headache and assorted bruises, and that Francesca, who had been struck on the head, hadn’t been hit hard enough to break the skin. They had had the doctor and he had left a sedative; she was asleep now.

Cassie said remotely, “I suppose you couldn’t have helped telling them about Ilse.”