Wolf in Man's Clothing (22 page)

He didn't tell Drue that Alexia lied, he didn't defend Drue, he didn't even look at either of them.

I said, my hand on Drue's arm, “Go back to your room, Drue. I'll come to you. Hurry.”

“I'm free now,” said Alexia. “And Craig is free and …” It was then that Alexia's eyes fastened on Drue's cape; a quick look of speculation changed to one of frank and glittering triumph. She cried, “So you weren't in your room under guard when Claud was murdered! You were out of the house! You have no alibi! The police are going to hear of this. …”

Craig opened his eyes then. “Drue,” he said, in a voice that was as cold and chill as if she were a stranger to him, “I'm sorry. Alexia is quite right about everything. You'd better go back to your room now.”

Drue stood perfectly still for a moment, terribly still and erect, in her long blue cape with her golden-brown hair shining, and the lining of her hood a scarlet banner over her shoulders. Craig met her eyes across barriers that now, I thought, could never be dissolved. Then Drue said clearly, “I'm going, Craig. And I'm never coming back.”

S
HE TURNED SO SWIFTLY
toward the door that I had to run to follow her.

No one was in the corridor. Drue swept along it like a queen with the folds of blue cape swirling around her, so the red lining was like her insignia of royalty. I didn't speak to her; I took only one look at her blazing white face, her small lifted chin, the poise of her head upon her slender shoulders. At the stairway I hurried ahead to look down to the landing with some vague idea of stopping Drue so the trooper wouldn't see her—although I could as easily, I fancy, have stopped a whirlwind. But he was gone, luckily; for Drue swept past without looking and on down the corridor and into her room. I followed her and said then, “Drue—Drue …”

“Sarah, don't!”

The little dog was there and came quickly, his tail wagging furiously; I saw her take him into her arms as I turned away and press her white face down upon the wriggling, little brown thing.

I closed the door behind me. Funny how seldom you can really face anything with anybody you love, no matter how hard you try. It's the everlasting loneliness of life; you are born alone, the alone, go up and down the winding road alone. Only in love you do ever really share, and I suppose that's why it's so important.

Well. I went back to Craig's room. Alexia was sitting in a kind of sulky silence beside the bed, and Craig was lying there looking straight ahead; neither of them spoke when I came in, although Alexia's eyes shifted toward me, measuring me again, I thought. Wondering, planning perhaps. And after a while she got up and walked out of the room. As she went Beevens came to the door; he still looked sick and his color was a pale blue-gray, but he said punctiliously enough: “The police are in the north meadow, sir; I thought you had better be informed of their arrival.”

Police in the north meadow.

But it was at least two hours before they came to Craig's room and brought the things they brought.

It was a queer two hours which I remember in patches. Mostly we waited. Craig said nothing to me of Drue or of Alexia. Naturally, I said nothing of it to him and indeed made the few remarks I had to make as short and crisp as I could make them. He noticed it, for once I caught his eyes upon me in the oddest look; it had a kind of understanding, yes, and liking, and I don't think I imagined it. If it was liking, however, I did not reciprocate; on the contrary, for I thought he had treated Drue abominably. Indeed, I thought a lot of things, none of them pleasant, and looked coldly back at him and asked him what he wanted for his dinner tray. My suggestion would have been, at that moment, a sprinkling of cyanide, but it isn't really considered ethical for a nurse to poison her patient even though he richly deserves it. Which somewhat vigorous but merely fanciful line of thought brought me quickly back to unpleasant reality. Murder had actually happened in that house.

And on a dark and silent meadow.

It must have been about then, or earlier, that Peter Huber brought Maud back to the house. Alexia helped Maud to bed and later I gave her a sedative. Pills; nothing could have induced me to give her anything by way of a hypodermic. Maud said almost nothing; yet she seemed in a queer way to know everything we did, her eyes were so bright and knowing in her little sallow face. It may have been shock or brandy or sedative or all three—whatever it was, she went to bed docilely enough and then all at once to sleep. Alexia stayed with her for a while and, when she left, I think Nicky took her place.

We all had that curious feeling of haste that goes along with tragedy as if there's a great deal to do (hurry, see to things!) and yet there's really nothing you can find to do.

Every so often someone would bring a bulletin from the police in the north meadow and once Peter and Nicky and Beevens went to the back door and down into the meadow until they encountered a policeman who sent them back. There were by that time quite a number of police and cars; we could see lights (the long steady streams from the cars and searchlights, and the glancing, busy gleams from small flashlights going everywhere) like the lights of ushers in some darkened, dreadful theatre. Someone knew and told us when Chivery's body was at last removed.

A trooper again was outside Drue's door, and this time when I attempted to enter my own room and then go to Drue, he stopped me. “Orders, Miss,” he said. And when I said, “Orders nothing; it's my room,” he removed my hand from the doorknob in a very muscular way and then put his hand on his revolver holster. So I had to give up; not that I thought he was going to shoot me, I just thought I'd wait a better chance.

Beevens gave us a kind of dinner, served from the buffet in the big elaborate dining room, with its crystal chandeliers and stiff, green and silver brocade draperies. It was an elegant room, too big and too cold. Anna didn't help him serve; she was having hysterics in her room and I sent her some spirits of ammonia.

But before dinner Peter came to Craig's room; I was there and remained so I heard everything they said. Peter told him of the inquest and of our visit to Balifold where we found Maud, and when and where he had left me.

“I'm horribly sorry, Miss Keate,” he said. “It must have been a terrible shock finding him like that. I ought to have taken you to the house. Craig, what's your idea of this? Why do you think he was murdered? If it was because he knew something that was a danger to whoever it was that killed your father, then what was it?”

It was the only motive for his murder that had as yet occurred to any of us; I suppose because it was so obvious. But I thought Craig hesitated. If so, however, it was barely perceptible. He said, “It's hard to say; Claud was very secretive. Pete, what about these checks to Nicky? It does look like blackmail, but there was nothing anybody could blackmail my father about.
Nothing
!”

Peter shrugged. “The police found the canceled checks. That's all I know.”

Craig said suddenly, “I knew about the will, of course; Maud inherits now from Claud.”

And she would inherit fifty thousand dollars; I'd forgotten that. I remembered Maud sitting quietly in the bar while we talked, drinking steadily. And an ugly picture presented itself in my mind: Maud in her dark cloak waiting for Claud in the meadow—and then afterward walking in to Balifold, trying to establish a kind of fumbling alibi, and drinking because she had to, to steady herself for the discovery. She had told me to take the short cut which was the path through the meadow and led inevitably to the discovery of the murder; was that, again, to give herself a semblance of an alibi? Or had it merely happened; everyone knew of and used the path.

And what of the time? Claud had left the inquest fifteen minutes before it adjourned, which would have given him just about enough time to reach the meadow. So what of Maud? How long actually had she been in the bar? And how long had Chivery been dead? Everything would depend upon that, and I didn't believe that anyone could fix the time of his death with real exactness.

Craig and Peter were probably thinking very much the same thoughts for, after a longish silence Peter said suddenly, “I don't think she did it, Craig. A woman …”

Nicky came in just then to say there was a dinner of sorts in the dining room. A little to my surprise, Craig tackled him then and there about the checks.

“What were those checks for, Nicky?” he said. “It couldn't have been an allowance. My father wouldn't have given you or me or anybody an allowance.”

Nicky answered instantly, promptly, smilingly. “He would have, if Alexia asked him to. As she did for me.”

A slow flush came up into Craig's face, but his voice was quite level and steady. “Do you know Frederic Miller?” he asked.

This time Nicky didn't answer promptly; he seemed to stop and think, cautiously. Then he said, “No. What about him? Are there canceled checks to him, too?” There was an eager light in his eyes that baffled me; it was as if he really wanted an answer. But Craig shook his head and made us all go to dinner. Gertrude, the little waitress, popeyed with excitement, stayed with Craig while I ate hurriedly with the others.

I was alone with Craig when the police finally came. Lieutenant Nugent and two other officers. And asked me to bring a towel from the bathroom.

When I spread it out on the foot of the bed so Craig could see, they put down upon it two objects. Neither was exactly pleasant to look at. Quite the reverse, in fact, for one was a small knife, a kitchen paring knife, quite ordinary except its blade was sharpened razor-thin and bright, and it was spotted, especially about the wooden handle, with a dark, dried substance, now turning brown.

The other was a yellow string glove and it, too, was stained in thick reddish brown patches, dry now and stiff.

Both had been found near Claud Chivery's body, but not near enough for him to have used and dropped, so it did not indicate suicide.

And there were no other clues, except my own white cap and some nickels, which they returned a little ceremoniously to me, Peter already having explained them.

They let me stay; in fact, they requested me to stay, for they wanted to question me, and thus I heard the whole thing. And beyond the fact that they had found no one yet who had seen Claud Chivery after he left the inquest, I knew no more than I had already known.

Except, of course, about the matter of alibis. For it was developing even then that there was a troublesome lack of alibis for that hour or so during which the murder had taken place. They couldn't, or at least they hadn't yet been able to fix the time very definitely. They asked me about rigor mortis, I remember, and the temperature of the body when I found it and I could tell them simply nothing. I'd had a kind of impression that he'd been dead for a time when I'd found him; but had no way of giving them a really accurate answer.

They asked me too, for I told them of it, about the rustle I had heard in the brush. I'm not sure, however, that they believed the little I could tell them; it was too tenuous, too unsubstantial a thing.

Nugent told Craig again, briefly, of the inquest, except he didn't mention the checks Conrad Brent had given Nicky. Mainly they asked Craig about Dr. Chivery: when had he seen him last, what had Chivery said, could he suggest a motive for the murder?

“Did he know anything—any clue or any evidence, about your father's death?”

“Claud didn't tell everything he knew,” said Craig obliquely.

Nugent's green eyes sharpened. “Why do you think he was killed, Brent?”

“I don't know. But I'd stick to the knife if I were you—for a clue, I mean. The glove …”

“What about the glove?”

“Oh, nothing. It doesn't seem to mean anything.”

“You're not being very frank, Brent.”

“I can't do anything to help you like this. In bed.”

Nugent said slowly, “I'd better tell you that it would help if you had an alibi for this afternoon.”

“
I
!” Craig lifted himself abruptly on his elbow, winced and lay cautiously back again.

“An alibi always helps,” said Nugent. “But the fact is people are saying—that is—well, it's like this, Brent. Everyone knows now that you and Mrs. Brent inherit practically all of your father's money. And everyone knows that you and Mrs. Brent …”

A slow flush was creeping up over Craig's face; his eyes narrowed. “Well? Say it.”

“You know as well as I do what I mean,” said Nugent. “Everyone thought you and Mrs. Brent were to be married over a year ago; then you married the little nurse and Alexia Senour married your father. Now they're saying …”

“Listen! I didn't kill my father! Get that into your head! I didn't kill Claud, either,” said Craig bleakly. “I've no alibi for this afternoon, unless you consider it an alibi not to be able to walk without getting dizzy.”

Nugent leaned forward. “Are you sure of that, Brent?” he said quietly.

An angry flush came over Craig's face. “My God, do you think I'd stay here if I could help it?” he cried angrily. “Don't you think I'd get out and do something! Don't you …”

“What would you do?” broke in Nugent softly.

Craig stopped abruptly. “I don't know,” he said wearily, after a moment. “I don't know.”

I said, merely in the line of duty and not to defend Craig, “He couldn't have murdered Dr. Chivery. He couldn't have walked that far and back again. I'm sure of that, Lieutenant.”

Nugent's gray-green gaze plunged at me. “Are you, Miss Keate?”

“Yes. And as to that, Mr. Brent had an alibi the night Mr. Brent—that is, his father—died. I was with him.

“I know,” said Nugent without any expression at all in his face. “Still, sick people have been known to walk incredible distances. And there really is no alibi in the case of murder by poison.”