Five Fatal Words (11 page)

He was so frank and emphatic that she liked him and she liked also his blond head and blue eyes so accusing of her.

"He's been telling me," Melicent replied, "about his aunt, to whom we're going, and her family. She's a widow--her husband was English--she has children."

"I know all that," said Granger, impatiently. "Then there's no more family--news."

"No news," assured Melicent honestly. After all, Donald's noticing of a possible peculiar arrangement of the family names was not news. "What news were you expecting?" she demanded of Granger.

"News of the next," said Granger, staring out at sea.

"Next what?"

"Next Cornwall to go."

"You mean you're expecting a next?"

"Aren't you?" rejoined Granger with his characteristic bluntness. "Aren't they all?

Now that it's started, do you suppose it's stopping with Daniel and Everitt when there's four more left?"

"What do you mean by 'it'?"

"Murder," said Granger. "You know it and so do I. That Cornwall will always was a perfect setup--a perfect motivation, if you prefer--for murder. It was only a question of time for some one to get around to it. The wonder is that it waited so long-forty years. . . I wish you could get it straight in your head that I'm on this job with you, Miss Waring. I'm playing the game with you all. Do you suppose I think it was an accident that Everitt Cornwall was killed when he stepped into the tub? Do you suppose I swallowed 'defective wiring' for that fire? But I kept still; I played the game. That's why I'm here now. I wanted to stick with you. Do you mind my telling you that ever since I saw you I haven't been able to get you off my mind?"

She flushed. "Why--"

"Never mind. Forget it. I have eyes; I see you with Donald Cornwall. But I haven't always been a pilot and at times a chauffeur--and I won't always be. I'm glad I'm along. Remember, if you ever get into trouble, give me a chance to help you."

"That's terribly kind of you, but I don't expect trouble for myself. Do you?"

"Who can tell," he returned, looking at her again instead of the sea, "what we're walking into?"

The ship docked at Havre and Melicent had her first glimpse of a foreign land.

From the rail, she stared at the unfamiliar shores as if they were enchanted. She tried to discover precisely what made them so strange and was only partially able to do so. No particular thing was very much different from America and yet every single house and tree and street and stone was faintly different. The net result was a complete divergence from the familiar scheme of things.

"Like it?"

She turned to see Donald Cornwall standing beside her.

"Very much."

"I like it, and I'll like land better than ever now."

"But you were never seasick."

"No, neither were you, but you were altogether too much with my aunt in the staterooms. I've missed you. I thought--ah, well. My thoughts are like feathers. They'd rest my head if I had enough of them--but I have only one and the wind can blow that away."

"Which means?"

He laughed. "Nothing. It means nothing. When a member of my generation of the Cornwall family says something that means something, it will be twelve o'clock on doomsday. I've been thinking over the decidedly suggestive arrangement of the family names which I mentioned to you the first day out. Forget it, will you?"

"Gladly," agreed Melicent, "if I could."

"Same here. Well, we'll soon enough know what--if anything--it means. We're driving from here to my Aunt Alice's--we've the Rolls aboard, you know. We ought to arrive to-morrow evening. Wait till you see my cousins. You'll enjoy motoring across northern France."

"Any news?" asked Melicent.

"News? No, no news, except that Aunt Alice has wired that she is delighted that we're arriving and she is ready for us. That's all the news just now."

Melicent did enjoy the ride across northern France. Granger drove at a rapid rate and had no trouble in finding the way. She was astonished to discover that he spoke French. She found her own brand of the language almost useless--certainly two years of school French could not cope with excitable townsmen who interspersed their words with sly compliments.

When they approached the home of Alice Cornwall, however, the respite of five days at sea seemed to Melicent automatically to come to a close. She tried to put out of her mind the idea that here the next Cornwall was to "go" and that the one would be the mistress of the mansion, Alice.

Perhaps Melicent's expectations were vaguely disappointed because the house in Belgium was not a chateau with towers and pointed peaks, with stone walls and dungeons, with a bloodcurdling and yet faintly absurd history. The house on the Domrey River was not far from the French border; it was situated deep in the valley of the river and had been built by a mill-owner who had prospered in the years after Waterloo and it had been expanded by a later owner in the days of Napoleon second. More recent additions had been made by an English proprietor and they were square and ugly. Around it was a conventional garden, but the lateness of the season had destroyed its beauty.

There were no other houses near it, although at a distance of a mile or more, along the slow meandering river, there was a small town which, judging from the pall of smoke that hung above it, was the site of numerous factories.

It was nearly dark when they reached the house and they were welcomed at the door by Alice Cornwall. She was plump and she had bobbed gray hair. Her nose was long and sharp like Hannah Cornwall's nose, but her eyes were bland and almost dull. With her at the door to greet them was a short flabby young man in his middle twenties who spoke with a broad Oxford accent. Alice Cornwall seemed to be delighted to see her sister Hannah and in spite of her years--Melicent thought she must be nearly sixty-five--she gushed.

"Why, my dear Hannah! This is too good to be true. I am simply delighted to see you. We have lived over here so long that we are veritable natives. I am beginning to think of myself as a Belgian woman. You don't look a day older than when I saw you last. And this is your secretary, Miss Watling--oh, yes-Miss Waring. Pierre will take care of her. I have put her in a room next to yours, just as you asked me to do."

She addressed Donald next. "My dear boy! It's so good of you to bring your aunt, and I am sure you will find relief from the--sorrow you must feel for the loss of your father. Dear Daniel. He was such a gentleman and so devoted to his studies. Even when he was a little boy he used to have a passion for doing things for people. His death is a loss to the whole world. To the tropics, anyway. And Everitt gone, too, and right in your house! Think of it! Only four of us left. Every year I run up to Paris for my clothes and a little whirl and try to forget that I am sixty-three. Isn't it horrid the way time flies? You know Lester, don't you? You remember you used to play together when you were children. Lester, this is Donald."

The young man with the Oxford accent held out his hand to Donald Cornwall. "Glad to know you."

Melicent caught a glint of amusement in Donald's eyes as he regarded his cousin.

Pierre, who was evidently major domo, spoke quietly to her. "If madamoiselle will follow me to her room--?"

As Melicent walked away with him she heard the continual sound of Alice Cornwall's voice. "Yes, it's been a long time. Nine years. Ever since my poor husband died. But I've been a contented widow, a very contented widow."

The rooms which had been set aside for Melicent and Miss Hannah Cornwall were garishly papered and furnished with too many chairs, too many little tables, too many gilt-edged mirrors, and too many glass pendants. They were a rococo effort to recapture a period of French decoration long since departed. And the small windows opening from them overlooked the turgid water of the Domrey.

In the room next to hers, where supposedly Miss Cornwall would sleep, a maid was unpacking luggage. Melicent opened her brand new suitcase and commenced to hang up her equally new clothes. It was almost dark and she turned on the electric lights, only to find that they were small and dim, casting huge shadows on the floor and walls from every piece of furniture. She had hoped that Alice Cornwall might prove to be a member of the family in whom she could have immediate confidence, but she feared that the woman was silly and empty-headed. She was sure that nothing underlay her babble of thoughtless conversation. She had been told that in this household it was the custom to dress for dinner and before she changed she looked out of her window. She saw Granger and the Rolls Royce disappear in the direction of the town and some time later she heard him return and park the car in the garage. A wind began to blow outside, whistling through the ugly structure of the old house and ruffling the river. Presently she dressed and went downstairs. Donald Cornwall was already there in a tuxedo, with a glass in his hand.

"An aperitif," he said. "You better have one. This house is damp and cold. How do you like my Aunt Alice?"

"She was very pleasant."

"That's a brave effort." He poured a drink and handed it to her. She swallowed some of it. It was sweet and warming. A moment later Lester joined them. "Oh! Hello, Miss Waring."

"Good-evening, Mr. Wilbur." She had had a momentary struggle to remember the family name of Hannah's sister.

The young man with the English accent nodded icily at his American cousin.

"Charming old place mother has here, don't you think?"

"It's very nice."

"Exactly. Precisely. Extraordinarly nice."

There was a long pause and he said nothing else. Donald Cornwall spoke ironically. "Very nice, indeed."

"Eh?" Lester regarded his cousin. "Oh, yes--nice--what?"

Donald nodded and the sparkle in his eye increased. "Yes. About the nicest little place in the world."

Lester thought about that for a while. Finally he started as if he had been slightly frightened, walked to the tray where the decanters were, poured a drink for himself, looked at his cousin, drank the entire contents of the glass at once, and said, "Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice," very rapidly.

There was another long pause. Donald appeared to consider his cousin's remark and then nodded his head sagaciously. "The very word. Nice."

Lester was pouring another drink for himself. He looked up.

Mrs. Wilbur came into the room. She said: "Well, children, dinner will be ready almost immediately. Have you had your second drink, Lester?" She explained that to the others. "Lester is never really comfortable unless he has had his second drink."

"I can understand that," Donald Cornwall said solemnly.

Melicent looked out of the window and bit her lip. She thought that she had never seen anyone quite as stupid as Donald's cousin, Lester.

"He's down at Oxford," Mrs. Wilbur continued.

Lester cleared his throat. He did it with an expression of mild satisfaction on his face, as if the sound might be interpreted as conversation. Hannah Cornwall was last to join them and they went into the dining room.

Throughout the meal Mrs. Wilbur carried the burden of conversation. What she said was an expansion of what she had already said upon their arrival. She repeated long and meaningless anecdotes about both the two deceased members of the family in a glib manner, which suggested that she had no real feeling about their death. For the most part, Melicent looked steadily at the plates, which were changed frequently, and she remained silent. It developed during the meal that Mrs. Wilbur's two other children were away-a boy at Eton and a girl in school in Switzerland.

"I came to the continent for my children. I realized the commonness of American schools and I decided I would sacrifice myself for my own. There was nothing to do but come over here and live while they had their schooling, and here I've been ever since. Of course, I really hate the Belgians and the French. Anyone with any sense would hate them. They're stupid and stubborn, and unless you watch them like a hawk they take advantage." There was much more in the same vein and Melicent wondered what the servants thought if they could understand Mrs. Wilbur's words.

When the meal was ended, Lester made his only contribution to the family gathering. "Now we'll all go down in the cellar for billiards--what--what?"

Miss Cornwall made her excuses by saying that she would like to go to bed at once. That meant necessarily that Melicent would also retire. Donald Cornwall, however, took up the challenge.

"I'll shoot a game with you, Lester, old kid."

"Old kid?" Lester repeated in a puzzled manner.

"Old kid," Donald affirmed.

"Old kid," Lester repeated. He frowned for an interval and then brightened. He turned a cheery face toward his cousin and said, "What!"

Melicent was already accustomed to the exchange of rooms which she secretly made every night with Miss Cornwall and after she had retired in the dark she realized that she was quite tired. For a little while she thought about the strange new household into which she had come. The surroundings were as somber as those of Blackcroft and the people were plainly apprehensive. Had they noticed the possible arrangement of the family names and that D and E already were dead and that, therefore, A might be the member of the family most immediately in danger?

Ten days passed. They were full and uneventful. Melicent wandered the ground around the old house, went down to the river, listened to the meaningless monosyllabic words of Lester and talked occasionally both with Donald Cornwall and Granger. Miss Cornwall gave her a few letters to write so that it would not seem she had brought a secretary to Europe with her for nothing.

Finally Mrs. Wilbur invited her to go with her to attend to the marketing. Melicent accepted gratefully. Any interruption of the routine was acceptable. Mrs. Wilbur's chauffeur drove them into town and they spent two hours going from one market to another. Although Mrs. Wilbur's French was bad, she was able to make herself understood and her reaction to everything Belgian was typical of her.

"It's a foolish country, a perfectly idiotic country. For instance, take that shop over there. Vins, Huilles, Savons. Imagine that. Wines, oils, soaps. That's the way these people are around here. Open up a store and sell wine, oil, and soap for no reason at all. It isn't logical and it doesn't make sense."