Wolf in Man's Clothing (34 page)

For a long moment there was no sound at all; gradually I became convinced that she'd gone and that, except for Drue and me, the house was empty again. In any case we had to get away. Hurriedly I whispered to Drue, “Where's your cape?”

“Over there. On the chair. Are we going?”

“Get it. We'd better try the back stairs and go out through the kitchen and back door. It's safer. I think Alexia's gone; if she's not, we can manage her.”

“Alexia!”

“She's wearing clothes like Nicky's; they're so much alike. We can't talk now! I'll explain later.”

She swept up her cape and put it around her shoulders.

“Now then,” I said, my hand on the doorknob.

I took a long breath and opened the door quietly. Nothing happened. After a moment, my revolver well in advance, I poked my head out into the hall. It was darker, but still I could have seen a moving figure. When I was sure it was empty, I motioned to Drue to follow me. We tiptoed toward the back stairs and still no one made any sound at all anywhere, except for the tiny whisper of our clothing.

It was sensible and safer for us simply to leave and let the police wrestle with all the problems my visit to the cottage had stirred up. The police—it was just then that I realized that I didn't have the piece of paper with those betraying, perhaps convicting notes about digitalis written upon it. I hadn't even thought of it since I'd seen Alexia standing there in the doorway of the study with the knife in her hand.

I had to have it. Everything, even to Drue's life, might depend upon that scrap of paper. It was, I felt sure and Craig had agreed, the reason for Dr. Chivery's murder; he had told Craig of it, guardedly. But someone else had known it, too; had remembered it perhaps, and the fatal carelessness of the instant when it had been left, forgotten in that book. And somehow had discovered that Claud had found it, as he naturally would do if he had doubts about Conrad's death and turned to his books in order to refresh his memory about digitalis and its effects. I didn't know how Claud had given away his secret, but obviously he had done so. And what really did I know and what could I prove without those notes? How could Drue be cleared without them?

I must have dropped the paper in the little study. Again there was no time for thinking. I said, whispering, to Drue, “I've got to get something,” and went quickly toward the front stairs, leaving her in the upper hall.

No one was in the hall below; it was shadowy but still it was unearthly quiet. I went down a step at a time, pausing to look and listen, and wishing the treads wouldn't creak. Halfway down I wished I'd given Drue the revolver; I'd forgotten I had it.

But I didn't go back, for it would take only a moment, I thought, to slip into the study, look behind the curtains, clutch the paper where I was sure, now, I'd dropped it, then go through the consulting room to the back stairs and call to Drue—if indeed she wasn't by that time in the kitchen.

The continued silence in the house reassured me.

At the bottom of the stairs I paused again and heard nothing. I turned into the study, my eyes intent on the strip of fast-fading gray daylight between the long linen draperies.

Somehow it was too silent in the house and in the little room; the silence had a quality of breathlessness, of hushed waiting. As if from somewhere eyes were watching me. Yet the room was undisturbed, quite as it had been and no one sat at Dr. Chivery's deserted desk, or stood there in the niche of the windows where I had stood. I reached it and pulled back the curtain. And on the floor lay a flat piece of paper.

I stooped and got the thing in my hand before I drew a breath. And it was only then that I saw that there was a letter—a note rather, only a few lines—written on one side of the paper. It was so short a note that I read it instantly, there in the growing dusk, holding it so the last light fell through the window upon it. The handwriting was as black and neat as printing. “I don't like being put off like this. I know what I'm doing. I don't want anyone's advice. I have the money, and am ready to give it to you to use as you see fit. M. Chivery.”

Maud. It confirmed my feeling that Dr. Chivery had connected the notes about digitalis with Maud; so he had kept it a secret; he had replaced the paper in the book on toxicology; he had told Craig something of his indecision; he had referred to Maud by the use of a feminine pronoun and Craig had thought that he might have referred to Drue. “I've got to be sure,” Craig had said, “before I tell the police about it.”

Who else then had known? And had killed Chivery to keep him quiet. I turned over the paper and the notes on digitalis were on the other side of it.

And all at once four things leaped out from the chaos of seemingly unrelated fact and surmise. They strung themselves together like beads on a chain. Knots on a rope might have been a more fitting simile.

But it had to be that way. For a fifth thing suddenly added itself and that was motive. A motive for Conrad's shooting Craig by mistake and in self-defense. A motive for Conrad's murder. And, because of that a motive for Dr. Chivery's murder which was the paper in my hand.

It wasn't all clear in detail. In fact it was like a blaze of light in a dark room.

And it was just then as I stood there, stunned by that sudden coherence and understanding, unable to believe it and yet unable to do anything but believe it, that someone laughed softly somewhere near me.

I whirled around. I crushed the paper in my hand; I shoved it under my cape into my pocket. Along with a medicine box and a clipping. Alexia was standing in the doorway of the consulting room, watching me quietly, her face a pale triangle in the dusk.

I had the revolver. I had only to call to Drue for help. Then I saw that Alexia had put down the knife somewhere, for her hands were empty. Nevertheless my heart was in my throat.

She said suddenly, in a low, rather lazy voice, “So it's you. Meddling again.”

I wanted that letter. And Drue was safe so long as I had my eyes on Alexia. I held the revolver so she couldn't fail to see it, even in the dusk that filled the room. But I really didn't know what to do. In what must have been a kind of stupefied attempt at reason I said, “Let's talk this over quietly, Mrs. Brent.”

It had the quality of a delirious understatement. I plunged on, a little berserk myself and still unable to think. “I'm glad you put the knife down. That would only make things worse …”

“Oh, would it?” she said, half smiling. There was a little silence. And in the silence I heard the stairway creak again.

It was not Drue. I believe it was the smile on Alexia's face that convinced me.

Someone was creeping up those stairs. And Drue was alone up there, and I had to deal somehow with Alexia …

Alexia?
Suddenly in a stab of uncertainty, I wasn't sure. The pointed, smiling face was only a pale triangle among shadows. Was it Alexia or Nicky? If Nicky—why, then Nicky had never had the knife! It was Alexia who had that. So if this was Nicky standing there smiling at me, it must be Alexia creeping softly up the stairs, with the knife still in her hand.

It was not.

For all at once, clear in the little house Drue's voice floated down the stairway, through the dusk. She said on a note of question: “Craig? Oh, Peter! Peter Huber! What are you … ?” Her voice stopped uncertainly. Seemed to hang there in the silence and dusk.

Then suddenly she screamed.

I
T WAS HIGH AND
thin and terrible. And stopped as if choked off by hands.

The figure in the doorway sprang forward toward me just as I lifted Chivery's revolver and fired blindly in that direction. Claud Chivery being Claud Chivery, the thing wasn't loaded; it clicked emptily and I flung it full at that pale, triangular face just as Alexia reached for me. It was Alexia, not Nicky. In that split second of nearness I was sure of that. She swerved and ducked to avoid the revolver and I twisted past her; she snatched at my cape and it came off my shoulders and I had reached the door to the hall.

The outside door was open and someone was running up the stairs; someone who must have entered as I evaded Alexia, for he was only on the lower step when I saw him first. It was a man in slacks and a sweater and there were sounds in the dark little hall upstairs and I ran up the stairs after that figure leaping ahead of me into the dusk.

I think I knew that it was Craig. I think I knew that Alexia was not following me. I think I had a fleeting thought of Anna, and a desperate hope that she had gone to the police as I had told her to do. Then the figure ahead of me—Craig—vanished into the dusk above and I fumbled for the bannister still running, panting, my heart pounding in my throat. And I too came out into the upper hall.

It was so dark that I could only see motion and hear it; feet shuffling frantically, a struggle somewhere in that narrow little passage, for there was the sound of fists, a thud against a wall, a panting voice saying nothing, and then Drue's voice, “Craig …” she cried. “Craig—look out. …”

I think she said that. It was all swift, incoherent, veiled in shadows. And then I stumbled on a chair. And at the same time got a clearer view of figures, silhouetted against the gray windows at the front, struggling.

So I took up the chair. It was quite light. But sturdy.

Aside from an unexpected and sudden swirl around on the part of the interlocked and struggling figures just as I was about to strike which very nearly resulted in my braining Craig instead of the murderer, I executed my little maneuver with considerable verve. As I say, the chair was sturdy.

It made quite a resounding crack. I struck again just in the interest of thoroughness but it wasn't really necessary. One of the dark figures paused, swayed a little, and just sagged down quietly on the floor and lay there.

The humiliating thing was, of course, that I took one look at the figure on the floor, one look at Craig leaning against the bannister, panting heavily, staring downward too, one look at Drue who was running toward Craig, and I put down the chair deliberately. And then sat down in it as deliberately. And leaned back my head.

However, I have never fainted in my life, with the exception of the time when I first went on duty in the operating room and that was more years ago than I care to mention. There were noises from downstairs; women's voices came shrilly and jerkily to my ears. I knew dimly that Alexia's was one of them.

But I wasn't prepared for what I saw when, suddenly aware that I had closed my eyes at something and that now a light from somewhere was beating upon my eyelids, I made a determined and curiously difficult effort and opened them again.

And I wasn't in the upstairs hall at all. I was stretched out at full length on the table in Dr. Chivery's examining room. Something cold and wet was on my forehead.

I don't know how they got me there. Drue insisted that I walked but didn't seem to know where I was going and that I relaxed, as docile as a child, upon the table which was the nearest thing to a couch in sight.

I couldn't say about that, but I do know that the sliced-off view I had through the door into Dr. Chivery's study both cleared my head and brought me to a sitting position.

For Alexia lay on the floor of the study, her legs in Nicky's slacks threshing angrily but futilely, for Anna sat like a lump on Alexia and she had the revolver I had thrown at Alexia in her hand and every time Alexia would give a violent writhe Anna would shake the revolver in her face. Anna was sobbing.

I managed to get to my feet. Just as I did so Drue came from somewhere out of my range of vision, took the revolver from Anna and said, “Get up. The police are here.”

When I reached the study, just as Anna stood up and Alexia, eyes like daggers in her white face, sprang gracefully to her feet, Nugent ran across the porch and into the hall. He was followed by two state troopers. Drue said, “Upstairs. Quick.”

It was then, as the men's feet pounded heavily on the stairs, that Alexia gave up. She listened, her hands clenched. Drue listened too, her face as white as her uniform. But after a long moment Alexia turned and looked at Drue. Lights were on now in the study, blazing upon us. Anna, in a corner, was sobbing again, and listening, too. Alexia didn't speak to Drue, however. Her eyes shifted finally to Anna, and she said with scorn, “Shut up. Crying won't help. I love him, too. Or,” said Alexia suddenly, “I thought I did. I'm not so sure now.”

I don't think Drue heard it; her face was lifted, all her being intent upon what was going on upstairs, where Craig was. Anna heard it, though; she said, still sobbing, “You knew he killed Mr. Brent. You knew—oh, how could you help him! How could you!”

“Help him,” said Alexia. “I didn't help him. I didn't know anything.”

“You did, you did,” cried Anna. “He told me you were helping him. He said you thought he was in love with you. He said you would do anything he told you to do.”

“
What did you say
?” said Alexia in a strange kind of whispering. “What did you say?” She walked slowly, gracefully as a stalking panther, toward Anna. Anna sobbed and looked terrified but stood her ground. “Yes,” she cried. “He said he'd told you to get hold of the Frederic Miller checks. He said if he had the checks Mr. Brent wouldn't dare tell the police who he was and where he'd come from. He said Mr. Brent wouldn't dare do anything because if he had the checks …”

“Was he Frederic Miller?” demanded Alexia, still in that strange, still voice.

“No, no. He only knew about the checks. He'd lived here—oh, for years. He belonged to the Bund; he knew that Mr. Brent liked German ideas. He knew that he had given money to the German cause. He knew—he knew …”

“And he said I'd do anything for him?” said Alexia.

“Yes, yes. He's always known when women liked him. He knew that you did …”