The Cases of Susan Dare (11 page)

Then, because she was shaking from cold and nerves and the strain of the past few moments, she took Felicia’s place on the bed. And waited.

And in the waiting, as always happens, she became uncertain. All the other possibilities crowded into her mind. She was mistaken. There was no proof. This attempt to trap the murderer would fail. She was wrong in thinking that the attack would be made that night.

She knew that Jim Byrne, and probably Lieutenant Mohrn and a number of extremely active and husky policemen, were at that very moment speeding along the road to Glenn Ash.

The thought of it was inexpressibly comforting. But it was also fraught with dangerous possibilities. They might easily arrive too soon. They couldn’t arrive too late, she thought, as, once she had proof, that was enough.

But there were so many ways the thing could go wrong, thought Susan rather desperately as the minutes ticked away on the little French clock on the mantel. And her own rapidly conceived plan was so weak, so full of loopholes, so dependent upon chance. Or was it?

After all, it had been intuitional, swift, certain. And intuition with her, Susan reminded herself firmly, was actually a matter of subconscious reasoning. And subconscious reasoning, she went on still firmly, was far better than conscious, rule-of-thumb reasoning. And anyway, the rule-of-thumb reasoning was clear too.

The attack upon Felicia must come. It had already been prepared and ready once, but then William, poor William, had come into it and interfered and had had to be murdered.

She was in the deep shadow, there on Felicia’s bed. But the door into the hall was in deep shadow, too. Would she hear it when it opened?

How long was it since she had telephoned to Jim? Where was he now? What would he do when he arrived?

She became more and more convinced that the police would arrive too soon.

Yet, unless she was entirely mistaken, the attack must come soon. Although planned perhaps for months, that night it would be in one way an impulsive act. She did not shift her eyes from the door. It was so quiet in the house—so terribly quiet and so cold. It was as if the Easter image downstairs had extended the realm of his possession. So cold—

It was then that Susan realized that the cold was coming from the window and that it was being opened, moving almost silently inward. Her eyes had jerked that way, and her heart gave a great leap of terror, but otherwise she had not moved.

She hadn’t thought of the window.

A figure, black in the shadow, was moving with infinite stealth over the sill.

“From the porch, of course,” thought one part of Susan’s mind. “There are stairs somewhere; there must be.” And then she realized coldly what a dangerous thing she had undertaken to do.

But it was done, and there she was in Felicia’s place. And she must get one clear glimpse of that figure’s face.

It was so dark in the shadows by the window. Susan realized she must close her eyes and did so, feigning sleep and listening with taut nerves.

A rustle and a pause.

It was more than flesh and blood could bear. Surely that figure was far enough away from the window by this time so that it could not escape before Susan had a look at its face.

She moved, and there was still silence. She flung one arm outward lazily and sat up as if sleepily and opened her eyes.

“Is that you, Mrs. Denisty?” she asked drowsily.

And looked at the figure and directly into a revolver.

There was to be no pretense then. Susan’s vague plan of talk, of excuses on both sides, collapsed.

“If you shoot,” she said in a clear low voice that miraculously did not tremble, “the whole house will be here before you can escape.”

“I know that.” The reply was equally low and clear. “But you know too much, my dear.”

The last thing Susan remembered before that pandemonium of struggle began was the revolver being placed quite deliberately upon the green satin eiderdown. Then all knowledge was lost, and she was fighting—fighting for balance, fighting for breath, fighting against blackness, against faintness, against death. If she could get the revolver—but she could not. She could not even gasp for breath, for there were iron hands upon her throat. She twisted and thrust and got free and had a great gasp of air and tried to scream, and then hands were there again, choking the scream.

She kept on pulling at those hands—pulling at something—pulling—but it was easy to drop into that encircling blackness—easy to become part of it—part of it …

Somewhere, somehow, in some curious, dim nether world very much time had passed. And someone was insisting that she return, forcing her to come back, making her open her eyes and listen and leave that dizzy place of blackness.

“She’s opened her eyes,” cried a voice with a curious break in it. Susan stirred, became curious, opened her eyes again, saw a confused circle of faces bending over her, remembered, and screamed:

“Let me go …
let me go …
”

“It’s all right—it’s all right, Susan. Look at me. See, I’m Jim. You are all right. Look at me.”

She opened her eyes again and knew that Jim was there, and Lieutenant Mohrn and a great many other people. And she knew she was being wrapped in the eiderdown, and that Lieutenant Mohrn and Jim made a sort of a chair with their arms and carried her out of the room and down the stairs. And then all at once she was in Jim’s car, warm and snug.

“I’ll get the story from her when she’s better,” said Jim shortly to Lieutenant Mohrn, who stood at the side of the car. Susan, in a very luxury of tears, was crying her heart out.

Jim let her cry and drove very swiftly. His profile looked remarkably grim. He said nothing even when they reached Susan’s house, beyond ordering Huldah to fix some hot milk.

The story of the Easter image ended, as, for Susan, it had begun, in her own small library with a fire blazing cheerfully and the dog at her feet.

“What happened?” she said abruptly.

“Don’t talk.”

“But I must talk.”

He looked at her.

“All right,” he said. “But don’t talk too much. We got in at the window. Saw the open window on the upper porch and heard—sounds. Got there just in time.” He looked back at the fire and was suddenly very grim again.

“Where is—
she
?” whispered Susan.

“Where she belongs. Look here, if you must talk, Sue, how did you know it was that woman? She confessed; had to. She had the gun, you know. The one that killed the butler.”

“It couldn’t be anyone else,” Susan said slowly. “But there wasn’t any evidence.”

“Huh?” said Jim, in a startled manner.

“I mean,” said Susan hurriedly, “there was only my own feeling, the things I saw and heard and felt about the people involved. It was all intangible, you see, until I put the things I knew on paper—chronologically, as they revealed themselves. Then all at once there was a tangible answer. But there weren’t ever any direct material clues. Except the gun, there at the last. And the attack upon Felicia.”

A paper rustled in Jim’s hand.

“Are those my notes?” asked Susan interestedly.

“Yes—Lieutenant Mohrn wanted you to explain them—”

“Very well,” she said. “But it’s rather like a—a—”

“Problem in algebra,” suggested Jim, smiling.

“No,” said Susan hastily. She had never been happy with algebraic terms. “It was more like a—a patchwork quilt. Just small unrelated scraps, you know, and a great many of them. And then you put them together in the only way they’ll all fit, and there you have a pattern.”

Jim read:

“ ‘Noise in night that must have been crash of Venetian glass and someone brushed my door; thus person breaking glass probably one of household.’
What on earth is that?”

“Part of the campaign against Felicia,” said Susan. “It was evident from the first that there was a deliberate and very cruel campaign in progress against Felicia. The glass broken, her flowers dying always (William had said, she told me, something about acid in the water), her kitten, the knitting—it was all part of the plot. Go on.”

“ ‘Why is Felicia the focus of attack?’
Obviously someone wanted her either to do something that she had to be forced to do, or wanted her out of the way entirely.”

“Both,” said Susan and shivered.

“ ‘Gladstone has a roving eye.’ ”

“Kisses maids,” said Susan. “Kisses anything feminine in a uniform.”

“Did he—” said Jim, threatening.

“Slightly,” said Susan, and added hurriedly: “The whole thing, though, was centered about the Easter devil.”

“The
what
!” said Jim.

She told him, then, the whole story.

“So you see,” she said finally. “It seemed to me that this was the situation. Mrs. Denisty ruled the household, controlled the purse strings, and was against divorce. Someone was deliberately playing on Felicia’s nerves by threatening her with the Easter devil and by contriving all sorts of subtle ways of persecution. In this campaign the murder of the butler began to look like nothing more than an incident, for evidently the campaign was continuing. Then, when I found that the bridge had been tampered with (you can see for yourself tomorrow)—there’s a place where it is quite evident; the nails holding the planks there in the middle have been taken out and then replaced. It would have been a very bad fall, for it’s just over the deepest point of the ravine—and I realized that owing to the French lessons Felicia would have been the first to cross the bridge in the morning, was, in fact, the only one in the household who crossed it daily and at a regular time. I knew thus that the campaign against Felicia had already reached its climax once, and yet had been, for some reason, interrupted.”

“Then you think William was murdered because he saw too much?”

“And because he would have told. And his necessary murder, of course, delayed the plot against Felicia. Delayed it until the murderer realized that it could be used as a tool.”

“Tool?”

“A reason for what was to appear to be Felicia’s suicide.”

Jim looked at the paper and read:
“‘Dorothy inquires about William; Dorothy seems sincere only when she talks of Mother Denisty ruling the house. Why? Dorothy hints that Mother Denisty knows something of William’s murder. Why? Is this smoke screen or sheer hatred of Mrs. Denisty? Dorothy nervous and quick-spoken until I lead her to spot where William was killed; is then poised and calm. Dorothy hints at Felicia becoming suicide. Why?’ ”

“Exactly,” said Susan. “Why, if not because she’s keenly interested in the police inquiry—because she resents Mrs. Denisty’s influence, and thus in some way Mrs. Denisty must have opposed Dorothy’s own purposes—because she knows too much of the murder herself to permit herself to be anything but extremely guarded and careful in speech and manner when the subject is brought up. When you add up everything, there’s just one answer. Just one pattern in which everything fits. And the knitting brought Dorothy directly into it again; that is, none of the family could have pulled out the knitting, the image didn’t do it, I felt sure Felicia hadn’t, and that left only Dorothy who was free to come and go in the house. But Gladstone pretended publicly that he wasn’t afraid of the image, and told Felicia privately that he
was
afraid of it. Believed in its power for evil. You see, Gladstone had to make an issue of something. So he chose the Easter image. It was at the same time a point of disagreement between him and Felicia and a medium through which to work upon Felicia—it’s nothing but a painted piece of wood—but I don’t like it myself,” said Susan. “He couldn’t have chosen a better tool. But it was Dorothy who murdered and was ready to murder again.”

“Then Gladstone—”

“Gladstone wanted a divorce, but wanted to drive Felicia to ask for it herself, owing to his mother’s feeling about divorce. Dorothy had to be in the conspiracy, for she was strongly and directly concerned. But there was this difference: Gladstone (who must have thought he had hit on an exceedingly ingenious plan) only wanted to induce Felicia to leave him.
But Dorothy had other plans.
It wasn’t fear that Felicia saw in her eyes: it was hate. I knew that when she talked to me of Felicia’s possible suicide. There was the strangest impression that she was paving the way, so to speak; it was then that I realized Felicia’s danger. Yet I had no proof. It was, as I said, altogether intangible. Nothing definite. Except, of course, the bridge. If I’d had only one real, material clue I shouldn’t have worried so. The footsteps on the bridge, though, were a help, because then I had a link between Dorothy and Gladstone, and I hadn’t had that—except intangibly—up till then. But I also realized then that he must have told Dorothy the things Felicia had said to me, that Dorothy would realize that it was dangerous to permit Felicia to talk and that Dorothy would probably act at once. Would carry out the plan that had once been interrupted.”

“But you were not sure of this. You had no proof.”

“Proof?” said Susan. “Why, no, there was no proof. And no evidence. But I would not have dared deny the evidence of my—intangibles.”

Jim grinned rather apologetically at her. “After all,” he said, “there’s plenty of proof now. They think Dorothy intended to kill Felicia and leave the gun with Felicia’s fingerprints on it, thus indicating suicide and also that Felicia had shot the butler herself—hence her possession of the gun, hence also the suicide. Remorse. Of course, there were a hundred ways for Dorothy to have secured the gun.”

He paused and looked thoughtfully and soberly into the fire.

“Intangibles,” he said presently. “But not so darned intangible after all. But all the same, young woman, you are going to get the worst scolding you ever had in all your life. The
chance
you took—” He stopped abruptly and looked away from Susan, and Susan smoothed back her hair.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But I’ve got to go back there.”

“Go back!” cried Jim Byrne explosively. “There?”

“Yes, I forgot to burn the Easter image,” said Susan Dare.

The dog grunted and stretched. The fire was warm, the house at peace, the woman at home where she ought to be, and she hadn’t seen the scratch on his nose after all.