Escape the Night (8 page)

“Okay,” said Anderson agreeably. “You want to come too, Mr. Daly? It’s nearly dark, we’d better get along.”

It was colder, too. Jem opened the door and closed it quickly on Pooky who, wearily, would have followed. The air was cold and moist, and it was much darker. The gray sky and gray sea when they came out above them again merged in the near distance with twilight. It was still light enough though to see the swirling white foam and the ugly rocks below. Along that treacherous path Jem again took her hand firmly in his own.

Again she pointed and explained in full detail. The other policeman, waiting with Dave, had few questions but both listened. The sea pounded and roared and when they left the ledge of rock and started back it was so nearly dark that one of them took out a small flashlight, holding it carefully so there would be not even a pinpoint of light showing out to sea, but so they could follow that narrow path.

They got back to the cottage. Amanda and Sutton, and Leda and Johnny Blagden were there—pale-faced, questioning, horrified. Somebody from the coast patrol had telephoned too. There was no hope of reclaiming the body that night, or even in several days.

“Sometimes it’s a week or two,” said Sutton, his kind, rather weak face very white. “Sissy, did it happen very suddenly? I hope Luisa didn’t have time to—know.”

She didn’t remember answering. The police were talking to Dave Seabrooke; they had spoken to Sutton sympathetically. As Johnny Blagden said, shaking his round, bald head, there was nothing anybody could do. Leda stood by the fire, wrapped in a fur coat, listening and exclaiming, her blue eyes round and shocked. They’d better eat, Amanda said, finally and decisively. Leda and Johnny had been coming to dinner anyway; there was food enough for Jem and Dave, too. Everyone fell in gratefully with her matter-of-fact suggestion and filed out to the two cars, the Blagden coupe and Sutton’s car, that choked the little drive.

“I’ll go along with Leda and Johnny,” said Dave, and put his hand on Serena’s arm, detaining her momentarily. In the eerie twilight his thin face looked tired and strained. “That business of the laboratory—do you mind not telling them? Not tonight, at least. They’d
talk
so much,” he said wearily.

“I’ll not tell them. Dave, I’m so sorry.” It sounded and was inadequate. Jem said: “We’re riding with Amanda, Sissy.” They got into the back seat together, and Jem had brought Pooky, a warm, panting little load which he put on the seat between them.

Serena wondered what had happened to the two policemen. They had quietly disappeared but their motor bicycles were still at the edge of the drive.

Jem answered her unspoken thought. He lighted a cigarette, and presently, when they were on the highway, leaned forward. “Anderson said they’d be up after awhile,” he said to Sutton and Amanda on the front seat. “Is that all right? They want to talk to you.”

“Who—oh, the police?” asked Amanda. She was still in riding breeches and shirt, and had pulled a heavy polo coat around her. Her face was without make-up, except for her mouth, and looked drawn and tired and without her usual vitality. She’d heard the news, Serena remembered her saying, when she returned to the house and hadn’t stopped for anything but to get Sutton and the car.

“Yes,” said Sutton. “I know Anderson. Why do they want to question us?”

There was a short pause in the darkness of the car. Then Jem said in an extraordinarily quiet voice: “Hang onto the wheel, Sutton. This is going to be kind of a shock. The fact is Luisa seems to have had some kind of bug about—well, about being murdered.”

The car gave a lurch, Amanda gave a queer little scream; Sutton got the car back on the road.
“What on earth
…!” he began.

“It seems she phoned them yesterday. Said somebody was trying to murder her. Wouldn’t say who or why she thought so, but asked for police protection.”

“My God! Nobody wanted to murder her! What did she mean? She—what’d they do?” That was Sutton. Amanda said nothing.

Jem said: “Well, that’s what they told us. They thought she was having a—well, brainstorm, Anderson said. Didn’t believe it. Then she called up in a little while and said she was mistaken.”

Sutton drove on in silence. Amanda still said nothing. Serena, with the cold and the horror, was again shivering a little. Pooky was cold too and crept onto her lap.

They went on slowly, feeling their way through the night, with the small parking lights making only a faint glow ahead. Nobody spoke while they climbed through darkness and fog. They turned onto the level road leading to the house before Sutton spoke. “That’s not like Luisa,” he said suddenly and rather harshly. They stopped at the gate. The lights of the following car crept feebly out of the gloom behind them.

“We’ll have something to drink,” said Amanda, leading the way across the patio. “Come along!” Her voice, too, sounded harsh and unlovely.

How long ago it had been, thought Serena, since she and Luisa had crossed the patio together. Only a few hours really; yet within that limit of time lay the difference between life and death. But Luisa couldn’t have been murdered!

It was what everybody said.

They discussed it at length. They—Sutton and Amanda between them—told Leda and Johnny and Dave at once. Luisa had talked of murder. Wasn’t it fantastic! There were more and incredulous exclamations. Dave, shrunken-looking, somehow, from his own private tragedy, retired behind a pipe and his glasses, and didn’t say much. Serena could see why he didn’t want to be present when those people, who knew each other so well, who said anything they felt like saying, frankly and repeatedly, learned of the destruction of his laboratory. Their very kindness would rub nerves already raw and exposed, almost past bearing. She was beginning to hold hard to her own nerves. It would be horrible if, again, somebody asked her how it could have happened, and she screamed! If only they’d stop
talking
of it, she thought desperately.

They didn’t.

Sutton poured the drinks and did so generously. He was shaken and still pale, but his pleasant face grew gradually less shocked and sick-looking. To all of them, in fact, the normal little routine of cocktails and a warm fire and talk, seemed gradually restorative. Even Serena was conscious of a kind of physical reassurance and comfort. She wouldn’t think of angry, gray waters and a sickening flash of bright green.

None of them, however, could account for what they began to assume was a temporary aberration on Luisa’s part.

“Why did she phone to the police? What happened to her?” demanded Johnny. “What got into her?”

Nobody seemed to know. “As Sutton says, it wasn’t like her,” said Jem. “But apparently that’s what she did. And then told them to forget it.”

Amanda said abruptly: “It may not have been like her to get nervous over nothing; it wasn’t. She was a very cool and phlegmatic person. Oh, don’t look at me reproachfully, Sutton. I meant nothing against her. What I was going to say was that while it wasn’t like her to be nervous, still you know as well as I do how stubborn she was about things?”

Sutton, sitting in an armchair before the fire, his legs still in riding boots, stretched out toward it, nodded slowly.

“So,” pursued Amanda, “if she got some notion of the kind, Heaven knows why or what, she would do exactly that.”

Johnny Blagden, on the sofa beside her, his round, red face looking distressed and puzzled, nodded vigorously. “You mean she’d dash to the telephone without thinking it over. Yes, you’re right, Amanda. But what do you suppose made her get the wind up?”

Amanda blinked. “I haven’t any idea,” she said flatly.

“Let me see.” Sutton frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t remember a thing yesterday that was unusual. Except, of course, Sissy’s coming home, and that was at night. Luisa was alone a large part of the day. I was out and so were you, Amanda, weren’t you? But she seemed quite herself. She wouldn’t go to dinner with us last night, but she never would join us when it was a party. I mean just our little crowd. She didn’t say a word to me about anybody trying to murder her.” He laughed nervously and without mirth. “Did she tell you anything, Amanda?”

“Certainly not,” said Amanda. “Not a word.”

“It’s queer she didn’t.” Sutton pushed his slender hand over his thin, fair hair. “If she got such a terrible idea as that and was so convinced of it that she called the police, I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell you or me, Amanda. Unless …” He sat up suddenly. “Unless she thought it was one of us!”

Amanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Oh, you never knew what she was thinking or why until she was ready to tell you. Don’t be so silly, Sutton. She didn’t think you were trying to murder her! Or that I was! She only wanted attention, probably!” She caught herself abruptly and pushed back her loosened dark hair. “I don’t mean to sound callous. I can’t tell you how sorry I feel about it. It’s horrible, but Luisa was unpredictable.”

Sutton’s eyes were rather like Luisa’s. They were pale blue and observant but with such light eyelashes and eyebrows that his whole face seemed merely kind and rather negative, where Luisa’s had been full of purpose. His glance slid quietly and rather surreptitiously to Amanda and then back to the fire. He said, “What are you suggesting, Amanda? Suicide?”

Leda gave a kind of gasp. She was the only one of them who had changed for dinner. They had arrived, she and Johnny, just as Amanda and Sutton were starting down to the cottage. She was wearing a long black dress, with a deep slit in the skirt. Her fair hair was in curls, very carefully arranged. Her dress was just too tight, so she seemed stuffed into it and slightly lumpy, but her pretty face was carefully made up. Bracelets jingled on her plump wrists and jewels flashed on her white hands. She crossed her knees, displaying rather thick legs. “Suicide!” she cried. “That would be terrible! Of course we all know you and Sutton wouldn’t murder her! Why do you suppose she would commit suicide?”

Amanda seemed irritated. “I didn’t suggest suicide,” she said tersely. “I didn’t even think of it. I just think it’s ridiculous for the police to talk about murder.”

“Unless,” said Dave Seabrooke, “she really was of unsound mind.”

“Wacky, you mean,” said Johnny Blagden, as if it needed translating. “Well, she could have been. Frankly, she always scared me a little. Seemed a bit odd, you know. Way she looked at a feller. Hope you don’t mind, Sutton. I mean, well, of course, she was your aunt, but still could have been wacky, you know. Seems to fit the case, if you ask me,” he went on cheerfully. “Candidly, I don’t think she could have fallen just like that. Said so to myself soon as I heard the news. Said so to Leda, soon as we got into the car again and started to follow you, Sutton, down to Dave’s. Said, ‘I don’t understand how she could have fallen.’ Didn’t I, Leda? Old lady was as sure-footed as a mountain goat.” He stopped in rather awed silence, brooded and seemed to feel his reference was unchivalrous. “Sure-footed as a cat,” he said, tilting his glass, and got up to refill it.

“Well, that’s true,” said Sutton rather vaguely. “Still—there it is. We know this coast-line. Accidents like that have happened. Too many times. I wish the police would come.”

“Why?” asked Leda.

Sutton opened his blue eyes, and stroked his small, light mustache. “Why, to get it over with, of course,” he said. “Stop all this nonsensical talk of murder. It’s silly.”

Amanda stirred and murmured: “I look frightful. I’m going to wash. I told Modeste just to put some food on the dining room table and we can help ourselves. She’s upset.” She got up, tall and lovely in spite of her disheveled hair and wrinkled white shirt, and left the room.

Leda put down her glass, struggled ungracefully out of the depths of the upholstered chair in which she’d been sitting, and followed Amanda. Serena, suddenly aware of her own tousled hair, moved too. She felt Jem’s eyes upon her as she got up. He went quietly to open the door for her and followed her into the hall.

“All right, Sissy?” he said in a low voice. She looked up at him despairingly.

“It’s so horrible, Jem. If they’d only stop talking. I keep thinking of her scarf. And …”

He put his hand on her shoulder and looked down into her eyes. His own were very dark and somehow comforting. “Don’t, my dear. I’ll talk to the police again, when they come. Don’t worry about their idea of murder. They have your story. Nobody’s going to blame you for anything. And there was nothing—absolutely nothing, Sissy, that you could have done to save her. You know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, Jem, if I could only have done something.”

“Sissy, dear …” he put his arm around her quickly and drew her closer so her head leaned against his shoulder. It was a small, brief caress, yet immeasurably comforting; as if he had said, I’ll see to everything; leave things to me; I’m strong and will take care of you.

Not that he said anything at all like that. He merely held her for a moment and patted her shoulder, and then said: “Run along. Wash your face. You’ll feel better.”

She smiled a little weakly. She didn’t want to leave the shelter of his presence. It was queer, though, that she seemed to need shelter. She said, “Thanks, Jem,” and went out into the patio.

It was very dark out there. He’d closed the door immediately so the light wouldn’t stream out upon the night and the darkness was momentarily bewildering. The stairs up to her own room were on the left. She started toward them. But she didn’t know that Leda and Amanda were somewhere in the patio—behind one of the heavily vined pillars, perhaps, certainly where they had not seen the door open and Serena’s figure against the brief gleam of light, for certainly they thought there was no one to hear them. Leda said, passionately, her voice low and shaken: “I don’t say you did it, Amanda. I don’t really see how anybody could have done it. But it was very convenient for you. Luisa would have told Sutton everything. She said she would.”

There was a pause and then Amanda said in a voice that was as cold as the sea: “Exactly what do you think you’re going to accomplish?”

Leda’s voice, replying, had risen, so she sounded excited and shrill with triumph too. “You needn’t try to scare me, Amanda Condit. I know too much. But from now on you’re going to let Johnny alone. You’ve had the upper hand for a long time. I’ve got it now.”