Another Woman's House (9 page)

Richard said slowly, “What about Webb?”

“What does the district attorney intend to do, you mean? Well, he's to be charged for perjury, of course. He's to have until tomorrow to get his affairs in order. I promised him that. What happens later depends upon the progress of the investigation, upon Webb himself, the district attorney, the jury.”

Richard tossed the shredded white ball of the cigarette into the fire. The Governor sighed and sat down in the red chair again and said, “Now Tim is a different problem. It is difficult to believe that he forgot, until now, so important a fact. Yet, if he did not forget, if he intentionally withheld it until now, why?” He turned directly to Myra. “I cannot believe that he'd wish to hurt Mrs. Thorne. I think, on the contrary, he would have lied to save her if he had been able to do so. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know the boy. But he impressed me as the kind of youngster who'd act impulsively—and perhaps more chivalrously than truthfully. But in this case it's reversed. If he'd told the bare truth in the first place, including this very important detail he claims to have forgotten until now, Webb could not have gotten anywhere in accusing Mrs. Thorne.”

Richard said, “Tim wouldn't knowingly have injured Alice or me.”

“But he did substantiate Webb's story. He has now recanted. His claim that he forgot Webb's opening of that curtain is very difficult to believe. And if it is not the real reason for his inconsistency, what is the reason?” A kindness which rang sincere and regretful crept into his voice. “I've been thinking about this all the way over here, trying to get every angle on it. I don't want to be too hard on the boy—nobody, does. And there's been a cruel injustice already in this case. I cannot have that repeated in any sense. I like the boy; he seemed to me honest. But if there's something there that he's not told me, what is it?”

He paused as if Myra already knew or could guess what that something was. And she would not guess. She would not follow the path of his reasoning. She would not look ahead to the precipice to which it led.

Yet she knew its nature.

Richard knew it, too. He moved over to stand beside her.

The Governor said, “I said that there are only a few suspects. I cannot overlook the fact that Tim
might
have come to the house sooner than anyone knows; that he certainly had countless opportunities to take the gun. I cannot suggest a motive. But conscience,” said the big man slowly, “is a very powerful force. As irresistible and almost as explosive as gun powder.”

“Tim Lane didn't kill Jack,” said Richard.

The Governor said, “No. I don't think he did. But I don't think Webb killed his own brother, either. And if by any chance—mind you, I'm only saying
if
—young Lane did kill him, it would explain a lie in the first place. It would explain his coming to me now, in remorse, trying to get Mrs. Thorne released without actually making a confession to murder himself. Certainly the murder was unpremeditated; certainly it was the result of a quick and unexpected impulse; all the circumstances point to that. If Tim did it, if he seized the first story that came into his head to clear himself, if he felt then he had to stick to it, if even—I'm only saying if—he felt that no jury would convict a woman of Mrs. Thorne's position, beauty, wealth and all that, therefore, she was in no real danger, if indeed that aspect of the case, that is, the possibility of Mrs. Thorne's being accused, did not so much as occur to him at that moment and, as I say, later he was afraid to retract his first statement …” he shrugged. “If some or any of these suppositions are correct, it would explain everything. Manders was murdered. The only three people we know to have been on the spot are Mrs. Thorne, Webb Manders and”—he looked at Myra again—“and your brother, Miss Lane.”

S
O THAT WAS THE
precipice at her feet, unhidden. Myra said, “Tim couldn't have done that,” and knew that her words to the big man watching her were mere words, what he had expected.

Richard said, quickly and forcefully, “Look here, sir. I know that boy. I've known him since he was really a kid. He's been coming to this house for school vacations, weekends, since he was thirteen or so. This was like home; he had no other home. My aunt, years ago, took both Myra and Tim under her wing. She took Myra to London with her; she put Tim in school here …”

“I know,” said the Governor nodding gravely. “Miss Lane told me.”

“Oh. Well, the point is, I really know Tim. He's incapable of murder. And even,” cried Richard hotly, “if Tim could murder, as he couldn't, he would never knowingly give evidence involving Alice.” He checked himself abruptly as if he realized that reason was of more force than angry denial. He went on more quietly and very seriously. “I wish you could know Tim as I know him, sir. There's not a mean or a cowardly shred in him. The thing you've suggested is simply all out of line with his character. I tell you, I know him.”

“You are also prejudiced, Thorne,” said the Governor. “I liked the boy myself, but at the same time—well, in war things happened. People react very differently and very—unexpectedly. Nerve strain does odd things, especially to a youngster. It's one of the ugliest parts of war that our youngsters take so much of the rap. But that's beside the point, just now, too, except that—well, say a boy of Tim's nature, rather nervous, I should say, high strung, his whole present and future swept up by something he doesn't Wholly understand, his entire outlook and thoughts turned from—well, football and tennis to war and killing. It seems to me, frankly, that almost anything in the way of unexpected reactions might occur.”

Richard shook his head. “Not murder. Not lying to save himself at the expense of my wife. Not Tim.”

The Governor's heavy shoulders lifted. “In that case, Webb Manders would be, so far, an alternate suspect. Do you really believe that he did it?”

Richard said slowly, “I'd be far readier to believe him capable of it than Tim.”

“Capable of killing his own brother? That's a very terrible thing to believe, Thorne.”

“Murder is terrible,” said Richard. He stood for a moment, deep in thought, and then turned to Myra. “Look here,” he said, “shall I ring up Sam Putnam?”

Sam Putnam, of course, was the lawyer who had defended Alice. If Richard wanted to call him, then it was really serious, really true, Myra thought with a kind of inner gasp of horror. The Governor said, “That's a good idea. I'd advise that—if you don't mind my saying so. I've got to get started back home. It's been a long day.” He got up, shaking his trouser legs down and sighing wearily. He said, “Miss Lane—Thorne—I do want you to understand that I am not accusing young Lane. Or anyone …” A rather curious look came into his face, something shrewd and hard and implacable. “… or anyone,” he said, looking at Richard, “just now. I don't intend to have another miscarriage of justice. Certainly I don't want anybody charged merely to present the public with a murderer. But I do want the investigation to discover whoever it was that shot him. I've been frank with you about the entire situation; I owe that to you.” He came to Myra and took her hand. His shrewd eyes were suddenly very kind, but also very direct and determined. “Prove that your brother didn't do it, Miss Lane. Sam Putnam is a very able man. He'd have got Mrs. Thorne acquitted if it hadn't been for Webb Manders' point-blank, eye-witness testimony. It is now—or will be tomorrow, out of my hands. I don't know what the district attorney will do, or what angles he intends to explore. But I don't want this boy to be accused if he's not guilty.”

A just and righteous enemy has more power than an unjust and unrighteous one; the Governor was not an enemy, he was fair and he pitied her and he pitied Tim, but he was the opposition, he was actually just now an enemy. His eyes, set so shrewdly in his wide face were kind and honest—they were also in a sense implacable.

“Thank you …”

The Governor patted her hand lightly and put it down. Richard said suddenly, “This means that there'll be police again. Questions, reporters, all that.”

“I'm afraid it does, Thorne.”

“Beginning tomorrow?” said Richard.

“Beginning tomorrow. Now then, I think my coat is in the hall.” He turned in that direction and said with a start, “Oh! Mrs. Thorne! I didn't know you were there.”

Myra leaned forward to follow his look. Alice was standing at the foot of the stairs, her hand on the balustrade, the long flowing lines of her flimsy pink dressing-gown clinging to her graceful body; her face was pale and tired, her dark eyes enormous, her fair hair was hanging over her shoulders like a child's. Richard had whirled around, too. He said suddenly and rather harshly, “I thought you were resting, Alice.”

“I wanted to say good-bye to the Governor.” Alice came forward across the strip of hall and through the wide door into the library. She put out her hands to the Governor and said with a catch in her high, musical voice, “I can't thank you—I thought I'd try to—I can't.”

“I only did what was right,” said the Governor. He took her hands, though, in his big powerful clasp. He said to her, “It seemed the more urgently my duty, because in a way I owe my election to office to the fact that you were convicted.”

“Oh, no …” said Alice.

“That intention was not in my mind,” said the Governor. “It was later that I decided to run for the governorship. But because of the wide publicity of the case and perhaps because many people expected you to be acquitted owing to your youth and”—he smiled briefly—“your beauty and wealth, rather than the legal angles of the case, I was on the crest of a wave of public approval. I had prosecuted, I had secured a conviction. It was a triumph for American democracy and justice and I was the focal point of it. In a sense the hero of it. It proved in their minds that I was above bribery and coercion. Not that so far as I know you attempted to bribe anybody, Thorne. …”

“No,” said Richard. “We did not.”

“But in a rather definite sense I went to Albany because Mrs. Thorne went to Auburn. Consequently, it was the more urgently my duty, as I said, to act as I have done.”

And it would increase his determination to push the investigation, thought Myra. Clearly he would have to supply the people who had put him in office with the reasons for this pardon; clearly he needed to present them with a new and this time a true conviction. And as clearly, and somehow ominously, he was obviously an honest man, almost a zealot for the law and the correct interpretation of it, and rigid in adhering to the responsibilities vested in him.

She could not but respect him and she could not but fear him, for he threatened Tim—Tim who had been, as the Governor so truly said, snatched from normal boyish interests and put to the grimly precocious business of killing. But millions of other men, young and old, had been forced by Germany and Japan, two bloody-minded nations, to undertake the same bloody business, the more merciful in direct proportion to its apparent mercilessness. It would be no just excuse for Tim. But Tim, she thought again with that quick sharp inward horror, had not murdered Jack Manders. Tim could not have placed Alice in such horrible jeopardy with a flat and cowardly lie.

Richard was talking, the Governor was talking, Alice was talking. She had not heard their words. And the Governor was on his way toward the hall. Richard was walking along beside him. Alice stood, watching them, small and defenseless, a handkerchief crumpled up tightly in one hand. Alice who had come home, whose place in that house Myra had wished to take.

In the very moment before Richard looked up and saw all the lights blazing in the house he had with a kind of passionate truth rejected all their reasons for denying their love for each other; had dismissed the whole fabric of logic by which she had refused to supplant Alice and he had agreed to it. In another moment the entire situation would have reversed itself—in another second, she would have surrendered to what seemed now the inevitable truth. She loved Richard, and he loved her and that was of far greater importance to them than anything else.

But now Alice was proved to be innocent; Alice was pardoned; Alice had come home.

So it wasn't true, after all, that Myra's love for Richard and his love for her was the most important fact in their lives.

There was only one thing for her to do. Myra saw it then with pitiless clearness.

The men's voices and footsteps were receding along the hall, past the great stairway with its tall carved pineapple newel post and shining mahogany balustrade, along the floor toward the great front door which was set into an angle at the very end of the long, wide hall.

Alice said in a wondering murmur, as if to herself, “Nothing is changed. Everything's the same.” She looked lingeringly all around the room and then went slowly to the bowl of lilies of the valley that Mildred Wilkinson had brought.

“Lilies,” she said, half whispering.

The word and the gesture shook Myra inexpressibly. Both disclosed a vista of Alice's life during those months of unjust and horrible imprisonment. Pity made her voice unsteady. “Mildred brought them this afternoon.”

Alice's fingers, almost as soft and white and fragrant-looking as the lilies, paused for a second. “Mildred …”

“Mildred Wilkinson.”

Her profile was as delicate and fine as if it had been done in porcelain; only her long soft eyelashes moved. “Oh, yes,” she said then. “Of course. Mildred.” She left the lilies and went toward the daffodils as if drawn by flowers. Again the gesture was revealing in a way that made Myra's throat ache with pity.

Yet it was strange too, to feel pity for Alice—Richard's wife. For the first time, perhaps, in Myra's life she recognized the fact that a complex and contradictory blend of emotions may exist at the same moment, fighting each other, in the human heart. In the deepest sense Alice was her rival, her successful rival, returned after what amounted to martyrdom to her rightful position as Richard's wife. Myra knew that, and recognized its whole significance to herself—and at the same time Alice's gesture toward the lilies wrenched her heart with pity.