Escape the Night (21 page)

“But Anderson,” said Jem, “if Miss March had come to Mrs. Blagden’s house in the station wagon she’d have had to pass one of the gates—and the gateman would have stopped her. And …”

“We considered that, Mr. Daly. And none of them had seen Mr. Condit’s station wagon; but that only goes to prove the station wagon didn’t pass inside the lodge area.” Anderson tapped the map. “Mrs. Blagden could easily have walked along one of the bridle paths, and reached the public highway, where Miss March could have met her. By prearrangement.”

“She was in Monterey when she telephoned to me,” began Serena. Lossey interrupted: “So you say, Miss March. But nobody saw her there!”

Anderson folded up the map. There was a slight apology in his voice but he went on firmly, “We do have only Miss March’s word for her talk over the telephone with Mrs. Blagden and nobody in Gregory’s remembers having seen Mrs. Blagden yesterday. Or anybody else connected with the case. Then there’s the matter of the house being unlocked—the back door, that is—and only a few people knowing. Miss March among them. Miss March did see Mrs. Blagden in New York, or so Mr. Blagden says, and Miss March doesn’t deny it. There is the bracelet that Mrs. Blagden bought …”

The bracelet!

“I didn’t give Leda money to buy a bracelet,” cried Serena, caught again by the nightmare, fighting against its enfolding tentacles. “That isn’t true! It’s absurd. It’s …”

“She bought a bracelet at Cartier’s the afternoon she talked to you in New York. We know what day that was because Mr. Blagden told us. It was the day she started home. There was a receipt in her desk from Cartier’s; we long-distanced them and checked on it. She gave them twelve thousand dollars for the bracelet.”

“I never had twelve thousand dollars to give anybody to buy a bracelet,” said Serena. “If I had I’d have bought the bracelet myself. I wouldn’t have asked Leda to …”

“Oh, we don’t think she bought it for you. She only got the money from you.”

“But I didn’t … I couldn’t have … I …”

Jem cut into her incoherent words. “Exactly why would Miss March give Leda Blagden or anybody twelve thousand dollars?”

“That,” said Lossey, “is the point. It’s one of the things we’ve got to find out. Why would Miss March make such demands upon Mrs. Condit? What’s she been doing with all the money Mrs. Condit has given her? If she paid blackmail to Leda Blagden, what was it for? Johnny Blagden didn’t give his wife the money for that bracelet. She bought it the very day she talked to Serena March.”

“But that proves nothing!”
shouted Jem.

And Serena remembered Amanda’s voice speaking to Leda in the patio. “What a cool little blackmailer you are, Leda!” And Amanda’s bracelet which Leda had said was new. Amanda’s bracelet—set with diamonds and several small but valuable emeralds. Real stones, she had been sure—easily worth that amount of money.

“What was the description of the Cartier bracelet?” she asked Anderson, and he replied, as she knew he must reply: “It was a wide, ornamental gold band, set with diamonds and five small emeralds.”

There was a short silence. Then Jem addressed Lossey quietly: “Was such a bracelet found among Leda’s things?”

Lossey answered, “No.” His eyes were suddenly very bright.

And Serena turned desperately to Amanda. “Tell them about your bracelet. Tell them what happened to it. If you don’t, Amanda, I’ve got to tell everything I know about it. And everything I …” She stopped on the very verge of saying “everything else I know.” Tell them that Amanda had quarreled with Luisa about Jem’s presence there, and that Leda had known it? Tell them that Luisa had objected to Jem’s presence and had threatened to make Sutton do something about it? Tell them that Jem had been in love with Amanda—not now; not now—but once and so short a time ago?

So they would say that Jem had a motive for killing Luisa? So they would say that Jem had had a motive for stopping Leda’s talk?

It was a dizzying flash of percipience. It was as if a cliff had riven itself open at her feet and she had stopped at the very edge of a terrible abyss. Anderson was looking at her oddly. What had she said? How could she cover it?

As she thought that, Dave said suddenly: “I’m sorry, Anderson, but I—I’ve got something to say. Will you—well, it’s about my laboratory. The destruction of it, I mean. I don’t think you’ve given it enough consideration. That is, of course, I didn’t tell you.… I ought to have done it before now but—you see, Jem, when you asked me about the records, I said there was nothing anybody would want to keep a secret. Well,” he swallowed hard and pushed his hair back, “the fact is, there was something. It was about—well, it was about Leda.”

T
HE LONG ROOM, WITH
its windows, its blue and red rugs, its bright, chintz-covered chairs, was so still that they could hear for a moment the far-away whinny of a horse, away off somewhere among the corrals. It was an eerie, distant sound muffled by the fog. The small fire cracked sharply. Amanda whispered:
“Leda! What was wrong?”

And Anderson said slowly: “But it was Mrs. Blagden that was murdered.”

“I know. Yes, I’ve thought of that. I mean, she couldn’t have—well, got low in her mind and killed herself, I suppose …”

“No,” said Lossey definitely. His ratlike eyes were fixed and beady upon Dave. “Go on, Doctor, tell us the story.”

“Well, I can see why she might have killed herself. And why she might have destroyed my laboratory in order to destroy my records. She might not have known, you see, just which were my records and which my working notes about other things. Or she may have done it—destroyed the whole thing as thoroughly as she could, not just written records but equipment and all that, breaking it and doing all that damage—in order to throw us off the scent. I mean …”

“I understand,” interrupted Lossey impatiently. “To make it look as if wholesale wanton destruction was the purpose, not just the destruction of the records of one case. Go on.”

Dave swallowed again and sat down nervously peering up at them rather apologetically. “I don’t like to do this. But Johnny will understand. And it’s no disgrace, Heaven knows, although Leda must have felt that it was …”

Amanda said with a sharp kind of gasp: “Dave, what do you mean?”

“Take your time, Doctor,” said Anderson quietly.

“I don’t like—but I think the destruction of my laboratory may have some bearing upon the murder and I don’t think—I heard you, you know, as I came in—I don’t think it’s right for you to arrest Serena if …”

Jem crossed to Dave and put his hand on his shoulder. “You can’t hurt the dead and you may help the living. Johnny will understand.”

“Yes. But I—well, you don’t know much about my work. It’s not very interesting to anybody but—oh, that’s not the point. I’ll make it brief. I’ve been working on some of the rarer types of blood diseases, particularly tropical parasites. Oh, I haven’t done anything very remarkable, not enough to deserve …”

“You will,” said Sutton. “You will, Dave. After the war. When things have quieted down.”

“Well—yes, perhaps. If I come back. Thanks, Sutton. I think that in the end I might have … However, that’s not the point either …”

“What did Leda have?” demanded Amanda sharply.
“Dave, was it contagious?”

Sutton said, “For God’s sake, Amanda!”

Dave gave Amanda a weary look. “No, Amanda, what she had was not contagious. She didn’t have anything.”

“What
…” began Jem and stopped.

“But you just said …” Sutton stopped too. Dave went on: “Unless you call a fine case of hypochondria contagious. Leda didn’t have anything, but every so often she thought she had and came to me. She knew in a general way what my work was—and practically every time she read or heard of any allusion to any disease she was likely to think for a day or two that she had it. She was inclined to be hysterical. She—didn’t do a great amount of thinking, really. Oh, you all knew Leda; she meant no harm. She came to me several times, thinking she had this or that, and I’d put her straight and she’d go away, happy and content again. I would always tell her to go to her own doctor, and she would insist and eventually persuade me to do a test or two. I would, only to humor her; there was never
anything
the matter with Leda. As far as I know, she was perfectly well. But she got these notions.” Dave took off his glasses and wiped them again.

Nobody spoke. Dave put on his glasses again and stared at the rug as if he’d said everything there was to say.

“But Dave,” cried Amanda finally. “What did she
think
she had?”

“Oh, everything.” He shrugged. “It’d be easier to name what she didn’t think she had, at one time or another.”

“But she must have had some symptoms,” insisted Amanda. “What were they?”

“There was never any question of her really having anything! That’s what I’m telling you. If there ever had been I’d have seen to it that Johnny knew, and that she was taken care of. Lately she stopped coming to me. So I thought that she’d stopped being such a fool about symptoms and about herself. But now I—well, now I wonder if by any chance she still believed that she had something …” He shrugged again,
“anything!
You could almost take your choice of a disease—and if she wanted the record destroyed. I’m going away and she may have thought it a dangerous thing to have about.”

“You had made records of everything?” asked Anderson.

“Of course. They didn’t mean anything. I did it to impress Leda with the seriousness of my tests. So she’d believe me and feel settled in her mind. She’d get so scared she’d be really half sick from fright. She always got very upset and—but she needn’t have destroyed the laboratory,” said Dave. “I’d have given the records to her to destroy if she’d asked for them. I was going to go through my files and papers before I leave anyway—just in case. I’d probably have destroyed everything myself. I’d have done so long ago if I’d thought twice about it.”

“Maybe she
did
have something terrible—something she’d hate to have anyone know about!” cried Amanda suddenly, her eyes glittering. “Maybe somebody knew of it and thought she actually had it and wanted to destroy your record of it to keep it a secret. Maybe—maybe whoever killed her did it because she was growing worse, or he thought she was growing worse and …”

Sutton said: “Amanda. Stop that.” Dave said: “Believe me, Amanda. I’m right about it. But they can check with the findings of the post-mortem if there’s any doubt of it. It was always a mountain out of a molehill on Leda’s part.”

“Or,” went on Amanda swiftly, “somebody thought she had something but was getting better; and that you were curing her. So your means of curing her was destroyed and the record of her illness and then Leda was murdered …”

Sutton said quickly: “Amanda, that’s horrible! Think what you’re saying.”

“Well, she was murdered, wasn’t she?” demanded Amanda. “I don’t see what’s so terrible about what I’ve just said.
Somebody
murdered her …”

“I don’t know whether or not there’s any significance in what I’ve just told you, Anderson,” said Dave. “But it seemed to me that you might want to give it some consideration before you take any”—he hesitated and said—“any drastic steps.”

“Exactly what significance do you think it has?” asked Lossey.

“I don’t know that it has any. There are only those facts to go on—the laboratory was destroyed the night before Luisa Condit’s death; then Leda was murdered.”

“You feel then that Luisa Condit’s death was murder. Why do you feel that?” asked Lossey quickly, his beady eyes very bright.

Dave looked badgered. “I don’t know. But it happened as if it were a sequence—as if one thing led to another. Beginning with my laboratory.”

“Did you try sending her to another doctor?” asked Anderson.

“Lord, yes,” said Dave. “They’ve got a family doctor. Cadwell, in the village. But when she was really scared she’d come to me.”

“More confidence,” said Sutton.

“Nonsense.” Amanda gave a little laugh. “Dave didn’t charge her. Did you, Dave?”

“She never had anything wrong. Besides, I’m not practicing medicine, really. No, the reason she came to me was simply fear. Talking to me was easier than going to anybody else. It satisfied her and still wasn’t like going to a practicing physician.”

Jem was looking anxiously at Anderson. “What about it, Anderson? Don’t you think there’s enough new evidence in all this to warrant calling Quayle?”

Lossey suddenly—and rather unexpectedly from Serena’s viewpoint—proved himself without the personal vanity which obliges some men to cling to a formed conviction, right or wrong. He said: “It’s new evidence, yes. It’s not particularly conclusive evidence in any sense. It’s worth considering; anything is worth considering.” He turned to Serena: “You had just spoken to your sister about a bracelet, Miss March. As Dr. Seabrooke came in. You asked her to tell about it. What bracelet did you refer to—Mrs. Blagden’s?”

That, thought Serena, had been a mistake. Perplexing and ugly, and terribly dangerous to her, Serena, though Amanda’s lies had become, they were inexplicable lies—so inexplicable that there must be some important reason for them; something so important that Amanda did not hesitate, even, to place Serena in jeopardy. She must talk to Amanda alone. She wished swiftly that she had not spoken of the bracelet in the detective’s hearing. But before she could say anything Amanda moved forward and said composedly: “Oh, I’ll tell you about that, Mr. Lossey. It’s nothing really. I had a bracelet—set with a lot of stones, some green ones were among them. It wasn’t real. It was fake. But I liked it and I liked to wear it. Then …” she hesitated for the merest breath and plunged ahead with a dependence upon Serena’s silence that struck Serena as fantastic—and yet exactly like Amanda. “I lost it. I told Serena that I thought somebody must have taken it. But I didn’t really think that; it wasn’t valuable enough for anybody to steal. Anyway there’d be nobody to steal it. But that must have been what she meant.”

There was another brief silence. Lossey and Anderson rather ostentatiously didn’t look at each other. A small log fell in the fireplace and Dave got out cigarettes and lighted one, and absently passed them to Lossey who stood beside him. Jem’s face was a mask. Sutton fidgeted with his yellow scarf. And finally Lossey said: “You saw the bracelet, Miss March?”