Wolf in Man's Clothing (18 page)

“But I saw nothing! Besides, no one last night could have known I would be just there, above the meadow.”

“Well. Can you suggest another motive?”

I couldn't, of course. “Rabbits,” I said weakly, and Nugent said, “No doubt. But I'd not go for a walk alone again.”

He went away, then, leaving me with mixed emotions. Chiefly it seemed a good idea to hang a placard on my back with the words on it, “I know nothing,” which seemed just then a redundancy.

Alexia telephoned that morning to Bergdof's for a full mourning outfit, and I believe Maud assisted the police in going through the papers in Conrad's desk and in the safe. It was that morning, too, that reporters arrived; Chivery and Nicky saw them. Later one of the papers had a picture of Dr. Chivery caught, apparently, as he was stepping into his car in front of his own white-picketed gate. His face, twisted over his shoulder, had a curious expression; there was a hunted, hag-ridden look about his eyes, taken unaware like that. Or it may have been the camera.

There was a picture of Drue, too, her graduating picture which someone had discovered. She looked very young and very lovely, her eyes steady and uncompromising above the stern severity of the Bishop collar our nurses have to wear on state occasions. Some of the papers made much of her brief marriage to Craig. “Nurse's Secret Romance” said one paper. But very few facts of evidence appeared, so I judged Nugent held his cards close to his belt, as a poker-playing patient of mine used to say.

None of the papers, however, reached us until after the next morning's train, which was just as well. And the reporters soon left.

Naturally, all that day I was like a hound on a leash about the hypodermic and still had to wait, what with the police there, to say nothing of Maud, Alexia and Nicky, and the maids cleaning the rooms.

Craig's condition was good, so far as the wound went; but there was a kind of nervous, fine-drawn look about his mouth and eyes. He said little but lay there, watching the door.

The police did not question Drue again that morning; she told me that when I went, about eleven, to her room. She was very pale and there were faint blue marks under her eyes. She wore a fresh white uniform like a signal of defiance and had touched her mouth with lipstick and brushed her soft, shining curls upward with a clean, childish sweep from her temples, but she could not hide the look in her dark gray eyes. We talked until I had to go back to Craig, but without any real or helpful conclusion.

She asked about Craig and some of the shadow in her eyes seemed to lessen when I told her he was better. She sent no message, however.

About one-thirty, Soper came to tell Craig there was to be an inquest that afternoon and to ask him if he knew a Frederic Miller.

“
Inquest
?” cried Craig. “Look here, Miss Cable ought to have a lawyer's advice before …”

“It's only a formality,” snapped Soper looking sulky. “She's not to be asked to testify now. The doctor's the only necessary witness just now. And Nugent. What I'd like you to tell me now is,
who
is Frederic Miller? Your father has given him checks totaling fifteen thousand dollars in the last two years. You must know …”

“But I don't! There's nobody … See here, I don't understand!”

“Never heard the name before?” The District Attorney's eyes were little and suspicious.

“Never! And I don't think my father knew anybody by that name!” Craig looked honestly perplexed. “Did you ask Alexia—Mrs. Brent?”

“Certainly. She knew nothing of it either. Haven't any idea who it was that struck you that night?” His eyes were on the bandage still on Craig's temple.

“No.”

“Are you sure it
was
anybody? You could have fallen.”

“But I didn't,” said Craig. “I was in the hall. Somebody hit me and dragged me into the linen room. So it must have been a man.”

“Not at all. A woman could have done it easily. Good morning,” said the District Attorney and went away looking remarkably like a stuffed frog.

And as he left Nicky came. I remained, in spite of the look Nicky gave me, which plainly invited me to leave. He was still limping a little.

“Hurt your foot, Nick?” said Craig and Nicky said, “Someone dropped a flashlight on it, in the rucku? the other night. Accidentally, I hope,” and glanced at me and lowered his silky eyelashes so there was only a half-hidden but definitely malicious gleam back of them. I looked blank, as if I'd never heard of a flashlight and Nicky said, “Craig, look here. Oughtn't we to do something?”

“Do something?”

“I mean—well, murder's murder. There's either a motive or it's a question of a—a homicidal maniac. I've given it a lot of thought, and that's my conclusion.”

“It's in the hands of the police,” said Craig. “They'll do everything they can.”

“But, Craig,” said Nicky, leaning forward suddenly, his pointed elegant face jutting into the light, “do you know who did it?”

“
No
,” said Craig. And added as bluntly, “Do you?”

“N-no,” said Nicky slowly. “That is—of course the police think it was Drue.”

“Thanks to your evidence against her.”

“I didn't tell them everything I could have told them,” said Nicky slowly and in a curiously tentative way.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh. Their conversation, for instance. Conrad's, I mean, and Drue's, just before he died.”

Craig's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? I suppose you listened.”

Nicky shrugged; it was again tentative, only half-assenting.

“Well,” said Craig, “what did you hear?”

If the library door had been closed, I didn't think he had heard anything, for it was extraordinarily thick and solid. Still, it might not have been quite closed. Certainly Nicky's handsome face looked extraordinarily disingenuous, almost, indeed, naive.

Naive like a rattlesnake, I thought abruptly. And listened.

Nicky hesitated then lifted his elegantly squared and tailored shoulders again. “Think it over, Craig,” he said.

“You didn't hear anything,” said Craig. “And if you did, it's nothing to me.”

“Drue is nothing to you?” said Nicky softly.

“You heard me.”

Nicky's bland face changed a little; his cruel lower lip protruded. He got up. “I see it's no use to talk to you, Craig. Oh, by the way, your divorce is still in good standing, I presume?”

Craig's straight, dark eyebrows made a line across his face. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Nicky airily. “Except Drue is in circulation again. Prettier than ever. I'd forgotten”—he stopped, laughed a little and said—“well, no—not quite forgotten. After all, she did leave you once and I daresay you remember why. So if she is absolutely free …”

Craig said shortly, “Drue is perfectly free. As you know, Nicky.
Now get out.
”

When he'd gone, somewhat hurriedly, Craig lay for a long time looking at nothing, with a very grim expression.

Late in the afternoon Alexia came. She looked very beautiful and not at all like a recently bereaved widow, in a handsome tea-gownish dress, emerald green and trailing. It seemed to me that Craig's jaw set itself a little rigidly when he looked at her, but he promptly sent me away, which I must say was rather disappointing.

Drue was sitting at the writing table when I reached her room but wasn't writing. Sir Francis lay like a little brown muff on the table beside her, his head on her arm.

“Sit down, Sarah. What happened? Did Dr. Chivery drive you away again?”

“Alexia, this time,” I said a little grimly.

“Oh, Alexia.” Her eyelids went down and she patted the little dog's vigilant head. And said suddenly, looking at the dog, her voice quite clear but completely without expression, “He's in love with her, you know. I suppose now—after a decent interval—they'll marry.”

Well, if Alexia had anything to say about it, it was more likely to be an indecent interval. I repressed my evil nature to the extent of not saying it, and she went on, “I was wrong about everything. I thought if I saw Craig again—but I was wrong.”

I said, energetically if ambiguously, “Nonsense.”

“No. It isn't nonsense. You see, I know. He's still in love with her, Sarah. Nicky says so. Besides I—know …” She took up a pen and traced a circle with it slowly. “I'd better tell you, Sarah. I think that's what started everything. Alexia and Craig, I mean. You see—Alexia was in the garden with Craig a few minutes before he was shot. Nicky told me. And I think”—mindful of the trooper outside her door, she whispered—“I think Conrad shot him.”

“Shot
Craig
!”

“Sh. He'll hear you.”

“But—you mean Conrad was jealous?”

“Conrad made a kind of fetish of being old-fashioned,” she said slowly. “And he was in love with Alexia.”

“If his father shot Craig in a fit of jealousy and Craig knew it, he wouldn't tell—that's true.” I was struck by a sudden memory. “Was that why you told Conrad you had found his revolver in the garden?”

“Yes. I knew it was his revolver; at least I knew he had one. And I knew him. I didn't know what had happened—I don't really know now. But I thought—you see, I was afraid. For Craig. If his father had shot him in a fit of jealousy, I wanted him to realize, the horrible thing he'd done. Everyone else, I knew—Craig himself, and Claud and anybody else who knew or guessed the truth,—would try to cover it. Conrad was defiant; he said I couldn't have found it where I did find it. He said I was trying to blackmail him into letting me stay. But I wasn't—I really wasn't, Sarah. I never thought of it.”

I knew that. And Conrad's defiance savored of guilt; it sounded as if he already knew of the revolver, for, if he didn't, his normal reaction ought to have been to start an immediate investigation.

Yet, again, I couldn't believe it.

“No, Drue, it's impossible! I can't think jealousy over Alexia would so blind Conrad. Don't believe Nicky. Don't believe anything he tells you. He's in love with you himself. …”

“Nicky in love with me!” She laughed shortly.

“But why then—Drue, he asked Craig if you were perfectly free. From your marriage to Craig, he meant.”

“He asked Craig that?”

“Yes.”

She didn't look at me. “What did Craig say?”

“Nothing,” I said hurriedly, perceiving shoals too late.

“What did he say?” she repeated.

So I said reluctantly, “He only said that your divorce was final. But, my dear …”

Her lips had closed tightly. “Quite right and correct of Craig.
And
Nicky.”

“You can't really think of marrying Nicky!”

“He hasn't asked me. But if he does, why not?” she said, and began making circles again, rapid ones now, jabbing the pen into the blotter.

“But …”

Her mouth and chin were set, there were two scarlet spots on her cheeks. I stopped and took another course.

“Drue, you said you intended to find out what really happened here. When Craig came back, I mean, at the time you left this house and went back to New York. And Conrad said Craig wanted a divorce. Did you?”

“It's too late for that.”

I was about to say tritely and not at all truly that it is never too late. But she flung down the pen. “It's too late, Sarah! I was a fool to try it. I …”

The abrupt motion of her hand had knocked over a little blue jar of pebbles intended to hold the pen that rolled across the desk. And we both looked just as a little pasteboard box fell out upon the desk amid a shower of colored pebbles. It was a medicine box; there was the prescription sign and Conrad's name and Dr. Chivery's and directions and it held digitalis. Rather it had held digitalis. It was empty now, for I picked it up and opened it.

D
RUE HAD MADE ONE
quick, stifled motion to snatch the box, but I had it in my hand.

“
Drue …
”

It was dreadful to see the color simply drain out of her face until she looked like a ghost.

“I found it,” she whispered. “Sarah, I can't tell you. I can't tell you any more. I've said too much now. Don't ask me—don't …” She stopped. And put her face down on her arms and against the little dog and began to sob. Dry, long, shuddering sobs, as if every one of them fought against her will. I think I put my hand on her shoulder. She said, in a stifled way, “Go away. It's all right, Sarah. Only go away.
Please.
”

Drue never cried; it wasn't her way of facing trouble.

After a moment I went. I took the medicine box with me; I had to. And I had to try to think, not that up to then I had got very far in that direction. But first I hid the little flat box in a handkerchief and pinned it inside the blouse of my uniform with a good, strong safety pin.

It turned me cold to think of the danger it had been to Drue. But there was only one explanation for her possession of the box, for her tears, for her refusal to explain it to me, and that was that she was protecting someone. There was a corollary to that, too; the only person she would protect was Craig.

Well, then, why hadn't she destroyed the box? And did she have some reason to believe that Craig had killed his father? As Soper had said, there is really no alibi for a poison murder. Craig could have done it by ingeniously (how, I didn't know) using his father's own medicine, fixing it (somehow) so he knew his father would take the poison that night, and at the same time (by faking an accident on the previous night, really shooting himself) arranging an alibi for himself that couldn't be shaken. An alibi that covered actually twenty-four hours (and might easily be made to cover much more than that) thus allowing a margin of time. So that if, say, he had put poison in the brandy (or in anything else his father was in the habit of taking) it didn't matter when Conrad voluntarily took the stuff, for Craig still had an alibi.