Escape the Night (20 page)

Fury burst out in Jem again. “For God’s sake, Amanda, tell them the truth. Don’t you understand that this is murder! Don’t you understand what you’re doing? They’re arresting her …”

Amanda at last looked away from Lossey. Her dark eyes went to Jem and again she shook her head slowly. “Jem dear,” she said in perfect tranquility, “I’m sorry. I am telling the truth. I expect Serena will deny it; she’ll have to. But don’t you see, I had to tell the truth whether I want to or not. I don’t think Serena murdered Luisa. Or Leda. But I have been giving her money ever since I was married. Sutton knows it. Johnny knew it—my lawyer.”

“That is not true.” Serena looked at Lossey and Anderson and met blank disbelief. Jem’s hand again pressed her arm hard. He said to Amanda: “Exactly what have you given Serena?”

Amanda’s dark eyelashes were standing straight out. Her voice, though, remained lovely—tranquil, yet apparently reluctant to give damning details. “Is it right for me to be questioned like this?” she said to Lossey appealingly.

“It is not,” snapped Lossey. “All this can come out in court. I’d advise you to make your arrest, Anderson, and be done with it. I’m through and I’ve got to hurry to make my train …”

“Wait a minute,” said Jem. “Suppose no records exist. Suppose Mrs. Condit can’t show a cancelled check made out to her sister. Suppose she can’t show a stock transaction—suppose she can’t show any scrap of a written record showing that she has transferred anything at all to her sister.”

Amanda bit her lip. “Suppose it was all in cash!” she flashed. “Suppose Serena wanted it that way! Suppose …”

Jem turned to Serena. “Serena, what about your bank books?”

“They can see my bank book. I’ve had my salary and something from my father’s estate; they can see everything.”

“Where’s your bank book?”

“In New York. I can send for it. They can telephone the bank.”

“I don’t like to say this,” said Amanda. “I hate it—but she could have several bank deposits.”

Jem looked at Serena. “Tell them …”

“I don’t have any other bank deposits. Only one. I—that can be proved. I’m sure of it. I’ve never taken a penny from Amanda.”

“She could have it under another name. Not in New York, even, perhaps, but somewhere else …” Amanda’s words came faster. It was the only evidence of discomposure on her part.

“Amanda,” blazed Jem, “you are lying. You’ve got to stop it.”

Amanda said slowly, and in a kind of gentle regret: “Oh, Jem, Jem, how Serena has tricked you!”

“I’ve had enough of this,” began Lossey turning toward the door. “We’re getting nowhere …”

“Oh, yes we are,” said Jem, so swiftly and peremptorily that Lossey paused. “How did Serena make her demands upon you, Amanda? You’ve not seen each other for four years.”

Amanda’s eyes widened a little.

“By letter?” demanded Jem. “By telephone?”

“Do I have to answer this?” asked Amanda, appealing again to Lossey.

Anderson, however, replied. He said slowly: “Well, now, Mrs. Condit, seeing that it’s so serious, I guess it won’t hurt to.”

Amanda bit her lips again. “Well, then—by letter. Sometimes. Sometimes by telephone.”

“Where are the letters, Amanda?” asked Jem rather softly.

“I never keep letters,” replied Amanda. “I doubt if I have any of them.”

“Amanda, you’ve never had a letter from me asking you for money!”

Again the pressure of Jem’s hand stopped Serena. He said: “But she also phoned to you, asking for money?”

“She—yes,” said Amanda.

“Then there ought to be records of those telephone calls. Have you frequently phoned Amanda, Serena? From New York.”

“No.”

“Have you ever phoned her?”

Serena thought desperately back, fumbling again through a nightmare. It made the nightmare worse to remember when and on what occasions she had telephoned across the continent to Amanda—glorying a little in having earned the money which enabled her to make those small, luxurious splurges. “Yes.”

A flash of disappointment crossed Jem’s face. “When?”

“On Christmas Eve as a rule. Every Christmas, I think. Once or twice through the year. Not often.”

“Often enough,” said Amanda.

Jem turned to Anderson. “I believe Miss March, and I think you believe her. You can have the telephone company look back to its records of any calls Miss March made to her sister, and check the truth of what she has said. If she has been making constant demands upon her sister for money, I don’t think she’d do it on Christmas. I think, too, that there would exist somewhere a tangible record of any such transactions. According to Mrs. Condit they were substantial transfers of cash. She would have had to withdraw them from her own bank. I personally don’t believe that she—or anybody—would send cash in an envelope across the continent. And if she did that she would certainly have registered the letters in which she sent money. The post office records are at your disposal too. I am convinced you’ll find no such records anywhere. All of Mrs. Condit’s claims about sending money to her sister are based on her word alone.”

“Serena’s denials,” said Amanda, “are based on her word alone, too. And, as you said, Mr. Lossey …” appealingly again she turned to Lossey, her voice low and regretful, her dark eyes soft. Lossey was on her side. Instinctively, as Amanda knew most things, she knew that. “As you said, Mr. Lossey—although understand me, I wouldn’t for an instant believe that my sister had murdered anybody—still you did have only her story for what Leda said over the telephone yesterday. If Leda was
not
in Gregory’s …”

“Amanda, for God’s sake, what kind of woman are you! Don’t you realize that you are practically accusing Serena of murder? Or do you,” said Jem, suddenly hard and cold. “Do you realize it only too well? And in that case, do you have a reason for it and what is the reason?”

That seemed to check Amanda. She looked at Jem thoughtfully. He said, more reasonably, as if trying to be cool: “Think a moment, Amanda. This is murder. There’ll be a trial. Everything that you claim or that anyone claims will have to stand the most searching examination. Don’t make any statements that won’t stand that. Don’t make any statements you can’t prove.”

Amanda looked at Lossey. “But it won’t be my place to prove anything, will it, Mr. Lossey? It’ll be Serena’s place to prove she didn’t accept money from me. And she can’t do that.”

Sutton from behind them said suddenly: “Look here, Anderson, false arrest is a very unpleasant thing. Can’t you let it—well, let it ride for a little? As long as there’s doubt about Serena’s guilt, and there certainly is doubt—I think you ought not to take her away. And I think you really agree with me.”

Anderson’s brown, sunwrinkled face didn’t change, but he turned to look at Sutton, consideringly. Lossey said: “But that’s what we came to do. It isn’t safe not to make an arrest. There’ve been two murders. We’ve got to take action. And we’ve got a plain case against this young woman.”

Jem’s arm went around Serena. He said: “Your main premise is based upon motive and there’s no evidence that can be substantiated about that. Mrs. Condit has admitted that there’s no evidence. She says she sent apparently large sums in cash to her sister—in a way that to most jurymen will seem very casual, to say the least. It’s one person’s word against another’s. Your chief didn’t know that, Anderson, when he sent you up here. Why don’t you tell him before you arrest anybody?”

Amanda said all at once: “I don’t want Serena to be arrested, of course! I only had to tell the truth.”

“There’s another thing,” Jem turned swiftly to Amanda again. “How much money do you say you’ve sent her? And what exactly did she use it for? What did she buy with it? You’ll have to prove all that, you know.”

“Nonsense,” said Amanda. “Nonsense. She—I sent her very large sums really. My husband and Johnny Blagden, our lawyer, know that. I sold the stock from my father’s estate and—and sent her that; some at a time; not all at once. I’ve sent her whatever Sutton gave me from time to time to send her.”

“How much, Amanda? Altogether,” asked Jem.

“You’ve no right …”

“How much? Hundreds? Thousands? If you’ve sent her all that money, Amanda, you surely know how much.”

“Jem! How can you doubt my word like this! As long as you’ve known me …”

“What did Serena do with all that money?” insisted Jem.

“Why, she …” Amanda faltered and then widened her eyes dangerously again. “How should I know, Jem? I didn’t inquire. I love her and if she needed it that was enough for me. My little sister, alone in New York …”

“Really, Amanda!” For a moment the seriousness of the situation was swamped by, to Serena, its sudden absurdity. It made her voice steadier and more convincing. “That’s complete nonsense, and you know it. Your little sister alone in New York had a perfectly good job ever since she got there and has supported herself all right. Please—Amanda, you’re not yourself. You must tell them the truth!”

To her incredulous horror, the blank considering faces of the two policemen, Anderson and the detective Lossey, did not change. Slader’s pencil flew. And Amanda, looking directly into Serena’s eyes, said: “It’s you who’s different, Serena. It’s you who’s not yourself. I’ve noticed it ever since you came back. It’s being away from home, alone in New York, I suppose. I knew you were changing all along from your letters and because you would never explain to me why you wanted money. But I didn’t know until—after I’d begged you to come home so many times and you finally came after four years away from me—I didn’t know until now how much you’ve changed. You …” Amanda paused and, still looking straight into Serena’s eyes, said in a, low and wistful voice: “You are like a stranger to me.”

It was so exactly what Serena had thought of Amanda that it was as if Amanda had seized and turned Serena’s own weapon against her. It was paradoxical, it was queerly baffling, and it added another nightmare to what was already to Serena an incredible situation.

Jem began quietly to swear. Sutton mumbled helplessly, “Now, Jem—now—now—now …” Lossey turned abruptly toward the doorway and said sharply, “I’d do what I was sent here to do, Anderson.” And Anderson slowly got out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Amanda continued to stand, tall and unmoving, and Serena cried, striving for something sane and true:
“Amanda, you mustn’t act! Not now.
Don’t you see …”

“My baby sister,” said Amanda musingly. “I suppose I might have expected that New York would change her. But I didn’t expect her to be a stranger to me.”

How could anybody who didn’t know her tell that it was acting! How could anybody who didn’t know understand that Amanda herself didn’t understand certain realities—that she could evade and act and even deceive herself! There was a reason for it, of course. Serena knew that and she didn’t know what reason Amanda had. She did know that Amanda couldn’t really understand how serious her statements were, and what serious consequences her acting might have.

She pulled away from Jem’s arm and went to Amanda and caught her by the shoulder, although Amanda would have jerked away. “Amanda, this is nonsense! You’re making it all up! You’ve got to stop it …” Her voice was shaken and uneven. Someone snatched her arm hard. Jem thrust himself quickly between her and Lossey. There was a scrambled movement, a chair slid across the room and banged hard on the floor and Anderson jumped between Jem and Lossey. “Now, now, Mr. Daly! Now stop that! You can’t resist an officer of the law, you know.”

Lossey was livid, his beady eyes furious. “You’d better arrest him too, Anderson! He tried to hit me …”

Sutton had run to grasp Jem’s arms. “Now let’s not have any trouble. Let’s not have any trouble …”

“Keep your hands off her then!” cried Jem furiously.

It had been Lossey then who had seized her. Amanda was standing a few feet away. Serena’s arm tingled from the clutch of Lossey’s shiny white hand.

Anderson was like a hard brown rock between Jem and the pale little detective. He said sternly: “Hitting an officer of the law isn’t going to get you anywhere, Mr. Daly!”

“Look here,” said Jem desperately. “Why don’t you call Quayle, Anderson, and put the thing up to him? If there’s any doubt about the motive your whole case falls apart.”

“That’s not the whole case,” snapped Lossey, glaring at Jem. “We’ve got concrete jury evidence. A button in the dead woman’s hand …”

“I heard you tell about that,” said Jem. “I came in the hall just as you began. I heard you. Obviously that’s a—a false clue. Put there to make you believe just what you did believe. The body was left alone for an hour or so after the murder. Anybody could have come into the house and done that.”

“But not everybody could have found the button, Mr. Daly,” said Anderson slowly. “Miss March claims that it dropped in the station wagon, and she doesn’t know what happened to it.”

A door banged and footsteps crossed the hall quickly and Dave came in. He paused in surprise, shaking the long black lock from his forehead, peering at them uncertainly and then taking off his glasses to wipe them as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw. Jem said: “Dave, they’re trying to arrest Serena. They say she killed Leda.” Sutton said: “Hello, Dave, come in.”

Anderson nodded at Dave as he came forward, and said to Jem: “And there’s other evidence, Mr. Daly. If you heard it, you know what it is. Leda Blagden had to get to the house some way. We figure Miss March picked her up and took her there.” It was then that he pulled a small map of the Monterey peninsula from his pocket. “We don’t need a map,” he said, but opened it anyway. “We know that whoever went to Casa Madrone and killed Leda Blagden, had to get there somehow and we know that about the only way to get there was by car. The Blagden house, as you all know, is inside the area guarded by the three lodge gates; Mr. Blagden and the servants both say that while they have two cars, one had no gasoline, and he had the other in Monterey—it was in the garage, as a matter of fact, having the oil changed and Mrs. Blagden, even if she’d managed to walk or get a lift the four miles or so to Monterey, definitely didn’t use that car. We’ve checked with the gatemen on duty during the afternoon; they know the Blagden cars.”