Hasty Wedding (20 page)

“But who was on the telephone? Before Willy, I mean. I—I couldn’t help hearing. You said something about me, Dorcas. What was it?”

“Nothing. It—it was only a silly question of the detective——”

She could feel her mother’s slender body stiffen.

“The detective! About me? What, Dorcas? You must tell me what——”

“I will. It was nothing, really, dear.” (What had she said? What had her mother heard?) “It’s only that Wait says he found a note that Ronald had written to—to Marcus, saying he was afraid of you. That’s how silly it was. As if anyone could be afraid of you.”

Cary did not smile. She put one lovely, fragile hand over her eyes and said after a moment: “Poor Ronald. Dorcas, there’s something I want you to promise me.”

“Of course, dear. Anything.”

Cary hesitated. “Wait until you hear.” Her lovely blue eyes had suddenly a kind of feverish light that reminded Dorcas fleetingly of Willy’s eyes when he had told her he loved her.

“If they—the police, I mean,” said Cary, “accuse you of the murder of Ronald——”

“But, Mother——”

“You are to tell me. At once. Before they make an arrest. Promise.” Gentle, stubborn. Helplessly Dorcas agreed and thought that the childish futility of it was like Cary.

“Thank you, dear,” said Cary.

That was all. Sophie came down presently with a cigarette in one hand and Sunday newspapers in the other. She put the papers down.

“When this thing is over,” she said, “we’ll have to start getting an entirely new set of servants. Cook gave notice too. I’ve been looking at the want ads. Wages are going up.”

Cary sighed. And it was only a few moments after that Jacob Wait came in. He asked for Dorcas and waited for her in the little front dining room and there was a man with him. A second taxi driver.

Who promptly, in a rather bored but positive enough way, told Wait that at a little after nine o’clock on the night of March eleventh he had taken her as a fare from the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Schumanze Court to the Whipple house.

“You are certain it’s the same woman?”

“Sure it’s the same woman. She was upset, looked as if she’d been running. All excited and flustered. Could hardly tell me the number of the house. Sure I remember.”

“Thank you,” said Wait. “That’s all.” The taxi driver was looking at the marble head and Wait said more sharply: “You can go now.”

Bench quickly opened the door and the taxi driver was gone. Wait said, his eyes looking very lustrous: “You see, Mrs Locke? They found him late this afternoon and had him waiting for me when I reached headquarters just after I telephoned you. It changes things. For now you are going to tell me the whole truth. You were the woman with Drew in his apartment.”

She was beaten and he knew it. She took a long breath and said yes.

Wait was brisk, businesslike and not unkind. But when she had finished that story there was nothing he did not know. Nothing, that is, of her own actions on the night of Ronald’s death. She did not mention Jevan.

It was difficult when he questioned her minutely about the glass she had taken in her hand.

“You say you drank from the glass?”

“Yes.”

“That was in the living room of the apartment?”

“Yes. I was in no other room.”

“Were you wearing gloves?”

“No.”

“There were no fingerprints. Did you wipe your fingerprints off the glass?”

“No. Ronald was alive when I went away, just as I’ve told you. There was no need for me to think of removing fingerprints.”

“Why did you go to the kitchen? You haven’t told me that. A cigarette end was in the kitchen and it was stained with lipstick. There was a glass there, too, with a little whisky remaining in it. And again no fingerprints.”

“But I wasn’t in the kitchen. And I’ve told you that I thought—thought someone else was there.”

“I’m going to put my cards on the table,” he said then. “I told you I had a note which Ronald had written to Marcus. I have and here it is.”

He took the note from a pocket and gave it to her to read. It was in Ronald’s ornate handwriting and on Ronald’s paper and read simply: “Dear Marcus: Things are okay except for the money. I must have more but I promise results.” It was signed “R” and below the signature was a scrawled postscript: “Am beginning to be afraid of Cary.”

“‘Am beginning to be afraid of Cary,’” quoted Wait slowly. “Did you have any reason ever to doubt the sincerity of Drew’s affection for you?”

“I—don’t understand.”

“Suppose I told you that we found canceled checks among Pett’s papers made out to bearer and corresponding exactly to the amounts and dates of the deposits entered in Drew’s bankbook. Would that mean anything to you?”

“N-no.”

“‘Promise results,’” quoted Wait again. “A girl with money—lots of money—is an invitation to fortune hunters. Surely it must have occurred to you. Surely you have wondered about men’s sincerity. Please for a moment consider what I am about to say. We know that Pett embezzled—stole from you—a very large sum of money. We know he tried and failed to replace it. We know that he seems to have supplied Drew with money and that Drew promised results! We know that you always expected simply to turn the care of your fortune over to your husband when you married and that—mistakenly, I think—you were not trained to see to the care of it yourself and thus would have been—were, in fact, very easily deceived. Now then, suppose Drew learned of Pett’s defalcation. Suppose he and Pett made up a scheme for their mutual benefit——”

“Not——”

“Yes. Suppose Pett agreed to furnish the money necessary for Drew’s—call it courtship. And Drew promised to supply the necessary charm to win you over and make you his wife. Whereupon Drew was to be well supplied with money for the rest of his life. And Pett’s embezzlement would never come to light, for Drew would, as Pett would advise you, take over the care of your money with, always, Pett’s approval and help. Pett’s reasoning would be that this would save him from exposure and that he would see to it that Drew would treat you well—or would try to. Pett’s was the type of man who could deceive himself almost as well as he could deceive others. And then——”

“But Marcus didn’t try to deceive us. He brought the reports and you said yourself that he had made no effort to hide the shortage.”

“He had to bring the reports. He was willing enough to take them away again. However …” Wait paused thoughtfully while his fingers traced the carved design on the arm of the gilded trench chair in which he sat. “However, I’ve a curious notion about Pett. I think, odd as it sounds, his conscience got the better of him. I don’t know exactly why or how, but it’s the only way to explain a kind of vacillation on his part. For instance that telephone call; he denied having made it but we investigated the thing and it certainly was a call from his house and no one else there would be at all likely to telephone to you in the dead of night. Well then, I think that was conscience getting at him,” said Wait slowly. “In the dark, cold hours, nagging him to a confession. He must have felt that, as your mother said, you and she would have forgiven him if he confessed his embezzlement and would have refused to prosecute. But when you answered the telephone he lost his courage again and would not answer. And when he came here the night he was murdered I think he came with the intention of telling your mother the truth. But someone stopped him. The logical surmise is that someone believed Pett knew something of Drew’s murder. Yes,” said Wait “It’s the only way to explain Pett’s actions. His scheme to marry you to Drew failed and Drew was subsequently murdered. Perhaps Pett was afraid, too, that someone knew of that scheme and that it was bound to come out sooner or later; he was the type of man, I think, who would make such a plan in a kind of cowardly desperation but would confess to embezzlement rather than run the risk of being mixed up in a murder case.”

“Marcus was our friend.”

“His own friend first. Once his scheme had worked and you were safely married to Drew he would be safe. Who, mainly, objected to your marrying Drew?”

“My mother.”

“It wasn’t Pett then?”

Dorcas did not reply. For all at once in a moment of revelation so clear that it was cruel she saw the truth of Jacob Wait’s hypothesis. Saw it so clearly that she cried with trembling lips: “Yes, it’s true. I was blind …” For she remembered with terrible clearness certain things. Ronald’s theatricalisms; her own insistent feeling, even that last night, of being forced to play an unrehearsed role in an unread play. How could she have failed to perceive the falsity of that last desperate scene he had actually staged! Desperate because of her money. She had felt that falsity but had not understood it. Had the attacks on Ronald stiffened her own defense of him and her own will to believe him, or had her self-conceit closed her eyes to his lack of sincerity? Neither perhaps, or both. And it didn’t matter, for the thing was done. But … She said it aloud: “But who killed Ronald?”

“And killed Marcus. The man who came to the apartment as you struggled with Drew. The man who loved you and wanted to protect you——”

“No—no! No one came.”

“Locke came.”

“You cannot—you are trying to frighten me. You have no proof——”

“I am as certain that he was there as I shall ever be certain of anything.”

“That isn’t proof.”

“There’ll be proof. Nothing—nothing in the world can happen and leave no trace of its happening. Locke came and shot him,” said Wait. “And in your heart you know it. I’m sorry, Mrs Locke. It won’t be the first time a man has killed another man because he loved a woman.”

“Not Jevan—no—no, I tell you, no one came. No one knew I was there. Ronald was alive when I left——”

“Where is Locke?”

“He—I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. He didn’t kill Ronald. He couldn’t——”

“I had men watching. If they’ve let him escape—but we’ll find him.”

“Not Jevan—”

She must have tried to cling to the detective’s arm, for she remembered after she heard the jar of the big door closing that he had thrust her away and then, kindly, had put her in a chair and said nothing. And had gone.

But Jevan hadn’t killed Ronald. Jevan couldn’t have killed him.

And if he had she still loved him. Loved him and knew, now, that she loved him and would love him as long as her breath came and her pulses beat.

After a while she began to be obsessed with the feeling that she must act. That she must find Jevan; must warn him; must do something to prevent his being caught in the inexorable trap that would be his arrest. She went into the hall and into the library. Her mother and Sophie were not there and Jevan had not returned and it was only chance that she sat down beside the table, trying desperately to discover a course of action and, after a long time, happened to look down at the newspaper below her ringed left hand. And it was open, as Sophie had left it, at the want ads and personals and the word “Elise” leaped at her out of the black forest of print.

Elise. It was a notice in the personal column and it was very short. It said simply: “Elise: Schumanze Court apartment nine Sunday night money. W.”

That was all. And she snatched at it instantly, almost frantically. The straw floating toward her. The match touched to that already laid charge which was her need to act.

Elise. Schumanze Court apartment: W must mean Willy, trying as always in his fumbling, inept way to be of help.

He had said Elise over the telephone; he’d been looking for the woman with the green scarf. Nine o’clock.

She was at the door looking at the hall clock, which said a quarter to nine. She must hurry.

In her room she was reminded eerily of another night when she had gone like that, into darkness, tiptoeing down the stairs. She pulled a fur coat over the little bright print dress she wore; snatched a hat;—any hat—gloves. This time, as if a cool, prepared voice had reminded her, she took her pocketbook and made sure there was money in it. She might, of course, be stopped by the police the moment she stepped out the door. Reporters might seize upon her. But she was going.

A white, taut face with a crimson mouth and great dark eyes that were frightened looked back at her instantaneously as she adjusted her small fur-trimmed hat. Did women always stop before a mirror, even before such an errand as hers?

No one, again, was in the hall; no one could have heard the little rustle of her skirt as she went down the stairs and across the wide length of the hall and let herself cautiously out the front door.

It was dark and very foggy. She saw no one at all. She waited a moment and listened for voices beyond the halo of light above the doorway, or for a footstep, and heard neither. Cautiously she ventured under the light and was not stopped. She reached the gate and welcome shadows of tall shrubs. She opened the gate carefully and still no one stopped her.

A few minutes later, three blocks away, along what seemed to be otherwise a completely empty street, she saw a taxi and hailed it.

She gave the driver a number that was not Ronald’s but was perhaps a half block away.

Nine.

The Chevrolet clock said nine-ten when they reached it. The bridge was up and delayed them and when they turned at last into Schumanze Court ten more minutes must have passed.

She paid and dismissed the driver, waiting until he had gone before she turned toward the apartment house where Ronald had lived. Schumanze Court was deserted; in the distance there might have been a vague figure or two of pedestrians; no one was near at hand. Rows of apartment houses, gleams of light from shaded windows. Lights from entrances, light streaming out thinly from a door she suddenly remembered.

If she could avoid the doorman! She did avoid him. He wasn’t in the small foyer and the elevator door was closed. She went quickly inside, then turned up the stairway.

The apartment house was very quiet. She had fled blindly down those very stairs. Afraid not only of Ronald—afraid, too, of the apartment itself, of the mirrors and the white divan and the blank white door. Afraid instinctively of something that—that had not yet happened and that yet had cast ahead of it a kind of foreshadowing.