Another Woman's House (23 page)

“I know,” she said. “I understand. If he had asked me for a divorce while I was in prison—for life, Sam, for life …” Her voice broke but she finished. “If he'd asked me then, I'd have agreed. Oh, I thought about it. I knew it would come some time. Yet I dreaded it too—my husband and my home, the bare fact of their existence, even if I could never come here again, was like a rock for me to cling to.”

“Well, that's in the past,” said Sam firmly.

Richard said, “Sam will see to it that the divorce is arranged simply and quickly. You'll have, of course, any money settlement that you want. …”

“Richard,” cried Alice brokenly.

Sam said, “Now, look here, Dick. Things are very different now.”

“They will never be any different between Alice and me,” said Richard quietly.

“Listen, Dick.” Sam released Alice's hand and went to Richard. “Just think for a minute. I know Myra and I think she's swell. She knows that and …” He turned directly to Myra. “My dear, I hope you'll forgive me for what I've got to say. I've got to say it for everybody's happiness. Yours and Dick's and Alice's. Believe me, marriage is marriage and this is a happy marriage. I'm in a devil of a position,” burst out Sam suddenly. “I hate to say this. But—you and Dick have been thrown together a lot. Don't you honestly think, Myra, that if you leave, if you withdraw, Dick and Alice will eventually resume the really happy marriage that they had?”

It was Alice's argument, in almost the same words. Myra tried to speak and Richard would not let her. He said definitely, “There's no use in talking, Sam. It's all settled. Alice agreed once to a divorce …”

Sam did not appear to hear. Alice sat in silence; only her eyes moved, watching. Sam said to Myra, gently, “It's tough. But you are too nice a person to want to break up a marriage. Nobody blames you or Dick for what happened before Alice was pardoned. You had every right then, both of you, to let yourselves”—he hesitated and said—“to let yourself believe that you were falling in love.”

“We do love each other,” said Myra suddenly and, to her own ears, unexpectedly.

Richard turned then and looked at her and, across the room, across the lilies Mildred had brought, through the warring, subtle elements of strife in the room, their eyes met. Richard smiled a little. His look said, It's all right, I'm in control, I love you.

Sam started to speak, saw their look and stopped.

Alice got up with a soft swish of motion. She walked quickly across the room, between Myra and Richard, her face white again as a piece of stone. Sam said, “Wait, Alice! They'll understand …”

But Alice turned in the doorway. She looked at Myra and she looked at Richard, and said, “You can't divorce me, Richard. And I won't divorce you. That is final.”

She stood for an instant, a small, childish figure in the demure, pale-blue dress, her hand on the door casing, her fair head lifted. Then she moved again, and, without another glance at any of them, up the stairs and out of sight.

Sam said, “She's right, Dick. In time, only a little time, you'll see that she was right. You couldn't put her out of the house right away, anyhow. You can't treat her so cruelly.” He paused and thought for a moment, rubbing his hand nervously over his bald spot. He said then, brightening, “That's it, of course. Take time. Give yourself time. Give Myra time to think. Give Alice time …”

Time. That of course was what Alice wanted; time to win Richard back.

Richard said slowly, “I'll not put her out of the house. You know better than that, Sam. I'll give her all the time she wants.”

Sam's worried face lightened further. “Fine,” he said. “That's the thing to do. Wait a bit. Give yourselves time to think and …”

Richard whirled around. “It will make no difference, Sam. I won't change—neither will Myra.”

“Okay,” said Sam agreeably—too agreeably, since he had won his point. “Okay. But don't be in a hurry. Alice has had a hellish break. She's got to have time to get over it, time to get her bearings again …”

Time, thought Myra again; time to win Richard back again, to entrench herself again in her own house. Time …

Obviously Sam was thinking the same thing. With time, everything would settle, itself. He came to Myra and his very solicitude betrayed his certainty. He said, with real compunction and real sympathy, “I'm sorry, Myra. But after you've had a chance to think, you'll see that there's only one thing to do that's fair to Dick and Alice and to yourself …”

He was on Alice's side, as he had frankly said.

Richard said again, quickly, “Believe me, Sam, I love Myra and she loves me and nothing will change that.”

“But you'll wait? You'll not do anything in a hurry?”

“We'll wait,” said Richard. “Naturally. That's reasonable.”

Sam's face brightened again. His look almost said that he—and Alice—had won. He put his hand on Myra's arm. “Everybody, Myra, some time, has a spot of rough weather. I'm sorry about all this. But I think Alice is in the right. And I think that you think so, too.” He turned abruptly to Richard. “I'll go up now. If the D. A. does come around, call me.”

“All right.” Sam went away quickly, and up the stairs. Richard said, with a queer, half smile, “He's too good a lawyer to stay when he thinks he's won. But he hasn't won, Myra.”

Richard didn't know. Alice's and Sam's plea for time seemed to him only reasonable. And it was reasonable. Fatally reasonable.

Richard said thoughtfully, “Alice will agree. I can't force her to divorce me, but she'll see that it's the only thing to do. I'll give her time. …” As if time to him had a very different and specific meaning, he looked quickly then at the clock and came to Myra and put his arms around her.

“The district attorney is on his way here—that is, to the police station. He's driving. There's something I want to see about before he gets here. Wait here for me,” he said. “I'll be back. …” And suddenly he was gone, running along the hall, stopping to snatch his coat. The front door closed again.

The room seemed very empty after he had gone, and yet, in a curious, indefinable way, inhabited. The rosy cupid smiled at her complacently—and rather slyly. Everything about her suddenly seemed sentient, aware of her—the intruder, in Alice's house, and inimical, arrayed stealthily against her.

She went to Richard's deep lounge chair and sat down and stared into the dying fire. Rain dripped unevenly on the terrace like recurrent whispered steps.

Where had Richard gone? What was it he had to do before the district attorney arrived? But it didn't matter, she thought again. Nothing connected with Jack Manders' murder mattered now, except that Richard was no longer in danger. Even if they found Richard's gun, it didn't matter.

But they hadn't found the gun.

Why not?

The house was very quiet. Nothing moved or breathed except the whisper of the rain, the hushed sigh of the fire. Yet it was as if the rain, the fire—the motionless red curtains, the walls themselves repeated it: Why not?

Murder had walked in that house and the house remembered it. Almost at her feet a man had died.

But Mildred had shot him—and Mildred had died. So the house should, now, forget. The walls, the silence, the air itself should no longer send out danger warnings.

Danger?
But that was absurd; that was fancy.

Nevertheless, she sat up abruptly. She listened almost in spite of herself. She looked around the room, trying to search out an invisible enemy, to identify and conquer an inaudible voice. There was nothing there, of course.

But all at once the intangible sense of danger became tangible for it focused sharply upon the gun.

A gun was dangerous.

A gun had fired five bullets into the man who had died in that room.

Suddenly it seemed to Myra that murder itself, once summoned into being, still dwelt with stubborn furtive purpose, within that house. She rose and went to the room where Mildred had died and looked for the gun.

S
HE ARGUED TO HERSELF.
She told herself there was no danger. She went into the hall and the door to the ivory-and-gold drawing room was open and lights were still on, reflecting themselves brilliantly in the long mirror. Aside from a certain disorder, a mute and indefinable atmosphere of recent disturbance, there was nothing to testify to the horror and the dreadful disorder that had obtained in that dignified and gracious room. She walked past the place where Mildred had died and into the room. She closed the door into the hall and began her search.

Chairs were pushed a little awry. Someone had spilled cigarette ashes on the thin, garlanded old Aubusson carpet. Alice's portrait looked down upon it all, her brown eyes soft, her luminous and tender beauty untouched by the thing that had happened there.

The gun was not there and it had to be there. Only Mildred could have taken it from the newel post. Only Mildred could have hidden it, probably not on that terrible June night, nearly two years ago, for there wasn't enough time, but later. After Alice was charged with murder, in the hope the police would find it? In the hope that it would seal the case against Alice? So that, if any question ever arose, there was the gun, hidden in the house, mutely testifying against Alice?

Or against Richard.

But not (if she were suspected) against Mildred. The police would believe (obviously Mildred had reasoned) that Mildred herself would have had a chance to get rid of the gun forever and would have done so. But that Alice, in prison, could not have removed it. And that Richard, living in the house, able to dispose of it at a moment's notice, believed it safe. Perhaps Mildred had reasoned all of that and more; perhaps she had not reasoned at all but had acted merely at the erratic biddings of an erratic, terrified mind.

Myra looked everywhere—in the cushioned sofas, in the drawers of the small desk where Mildred had written her last words. She searched the elaborate tortoise-shell and Buhl commode against the further wall. She went to the long windows at either side of the fireplace and searched behind the stiff draperies. One window was still open and rain had blown in so there was a damp, dark patch upon the silk. Rain on the terrace murmured; the glass glittered as if eyes beyond it, in the night, watched her. She closed the window. She searched in places where she'd looked before, almost feverishly, driven by a kind of nervous tension within her, as if merely physical exertion could prevent her from thinking of herself—and Richard and Alice. She looked again among the ivory velvet cushions of a delicate French sofa and there was no gun. She looked for a third time within the depths of the same arm chair and stopped.

The gun was gone. And she didn't know and could not imagine what Mildred had done with it. She might, of course, have hidden it outside. There was probably time for her to do so before Alice came downstairs (since Mildred had entered the house either by the long window Myra had just closed, or by the unlocked French door in the library), or she might even have removed the gun earlier, before she roused Alice. In that case it could be anywhere.

Or, and in spite of Richard's and Tim's belief, the police might have it and have taken it away without telling any of them—intentionally, perhaps to test it secretly.

She went to the door and turned out the lights as she went into the hall. Richard had not returned. No one was in the library. She returned to it slowly. The night was really over—or would soon be. The clock struck a brisk half hour. It was still dark; morning would be stormy and late and dreary.

She thought vaguely of turning the lock in the French door. It was not a custom of the house but she started toward it. And then saw that while no one was now in the room, someone had been there.

The small Capo di Monte cupid lay smashed and shattered as if flung by wanton, evil hands against the hearth. The cupid Alice loved.

Small rosy pieces, a blue sash, the tiny slivered fingers of a hand, picked themselves out rather horribly upon the hearthstone at her feet.

She took a step or two toward it and stopped.

The room, otherwise, was exactly the same.

But the shattered pieces at her feet seemed to confirm her obstinate sense of danger, as if murder chose deliberately to leave a token of its presence.

Murder.

She wanted to hurry from the room—from the drone of the rain on the flagstones outside, the wavering curtains, the cupid. She made herself sit down again in Richard's chair. She would think and reason out—and then dismiss this intrusive, stubborn uneasiness which nudged at her as if it had hands, pointing, a voice saying in a breathless whisper, look, look, here I am: Murder.

She caught herself sharply. She made herself take a cigarette and light it. She made herself try to analyze. Jack had been murdered, yes. But Mildred had shot him, and now, nearly two years later, had confessed and taken poison and died. Therefore murder as a presence, as a continuing force did not exist. It had begun with Mildred's hatred; it had ended with Mildred's death.

So put that on one side, jot it down on the ledger; that was fact.

On the other side, the debit side, the danger side, were two things where there had been one—the gun, the shattered cupid.

And the shattered cupid carried with it another implication, another and perhaps more significant focal point of danger than the gun, and that was a hatred of Alice. And not only a hatred of Alice but a blind, insensate rage which had its outlet in sheer wanton destruction.

She forced herself, methodically, to consider how it could have been done. Obviously while she was in the gold-and-ivory drawing room, someone had entered the library and broken the cupid. She had heard no one on the stairs or along the hall. The French door was unlocked. Someone could have entered from the terrace. Who?