The Glass Slipper (9 page)

Steven broke the little silence their departure left.

“Does that mean they think it really is murder?” he asked Guy.

“They’re darn certain of it,” said Guy and sighed and drew his thin, colorless eyebrows together. “One good thing, they’re not making any arrest tonight; that’ll give us time to see where we stand. They want to be pretty sure of themselves before they make it very hot for a man of your position, Brule. So far they’ve been pretty decent. Didn’t even separate you as witnesses; didn’t threaten arrest. Only room in the house they’ve really set off and searched is Rue’s room: they practically looted the medicine cupboard in your bathroom, Rue.”

Her room! They were looking for poison, of course, in the medicine chest; it wasn’t a nice thought. She reviewed rapidly in her mind the little stock of cold preventives and headache tablets that must have been in the cupboard, nothing that wasn’t in every medicine cupboard and, as a matter of fact, an extremely small and scant supply. Except — what had she done with her nurse’s bag containing a large supply of sedatives, left over from her nursing equipment — large and almost untouched and including almost every sedative procurable at the supply druggists‘? What
had
she done with it! She couldn’t remember, and Guy must have seen alarmed recollection in her eyes, for he said:

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Rue, and talk things over. I’ll see you all. But don’t worry too much,” he added with a cheeriness that rang false in Rue’s ears. “I’ve seen funny breaks before now when everything seemed to be sewed up tight. I gather you want to retain me, Brule!”

“My God, yes.”

“Okay. Now then, Alicia…”

Alicia rose and stood with her arm around Madge’s shoulders. “I’m going home,” she said. “They can’t stop me.”

“Please don’t go, Alicia. Stay with me,” cried Madge. “Please, Alicia.”

Something twisted in Rue’s heart, she’d have been so unutterably glad if Madge had turned to her. But Alicia was looking down into the child’s adoring face, smiling a little sadly.

“I can’t stay, dear; your father’s here, and Steven. You needn’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Madge, “but I — I just want you to stay; please, Alicia. You can sleep in my room, and I’ll sleep on the couch in my dressing room. Father, ask her to stay with me.”

Alicia looked at Brule, and Brule looked at Alicia: Alicia’s glance went almost instantly away again, but Brule’s remained steady and impenetrable.

Brule said, addressing Madge: “I’m sure she’d stay if you want her.”

And Alicia looked at Madge, hesitated, smiled and shrugged lightly. “If you need me,” she agreed. The manner of her agreement hinted that she, Alicia, was always at the beck and call of any of the Hattericks; the family friend, the present help in time of trouble. There was an odd little smile on Brule’s lips; Madge said quickly: “Come with me, Alicia. I’ll show you —”

It was in the little confusion of Madge and Alicia leaving the room, and of Brule being called to the dining room with Guy bouncing along beside him, and of Steven wearily and quietly disappearing somewhere, that Andy was for a moment alone with Rue. He had been upstairs to get his coat and came back into the room, hat in his hand and coat over his arm.

“Rue,” he said, and put down his coat and hat and came to her. “You’re alone? God, what a mess. Listen, Rue, tell me quickly; I thought I’d never get to see you alone. Exactly what did happen? Nobody can hear. Brule and Guy are talking to the police, and nobody’s in the hall. What did Julie tell you? What happened?”

Rue leaned her head wearily on the back of the chair and looked up at him. It seemed years since the previous night — when he had taken her in his arms and told her he loved her and had loved her for a long time. He was remembering it too; his eyes sought into her own deeply; he took her hand with a boyish, anxious gesture and said, low:

“Poor darling. Oh, my sweet, why didn’t you go with me last night? We’d have been far away by this time where none of this — this horrible sordid affair could so much as touch the hem of your skirt. I was afraid it would be bad; but I never thought of anything so bad as this. Rue —”

“Don’t, Andy. I’m so — tired.”

“I know, darling.” He glanced at the door. “Tell me about it; hurry, Rue. What did Julie know?”

“I don’t know, Andy. She — what she said was confused, as if she were drunk. I thought she was drunk. She tried to tell me something but kept saying she mustn’t, that she couldn’t trust her memory, that it was something I knew too. But I don’t — at least I can’t think, I can’t remember. It was something she expected me to know but I — I don’t, Andy. Who could have killed Crystal?”

“Do you think Julie knew?”

“I — I’m afraid so,” said Rue, almost whispering. “It’s — there’s no other reason for her death. Julie wasn’t the kind to commit suicide; she had too much sense.”

Andy pulled up a footstool and sat down near her. “Now, Rue, tell me exactly what she said: words, phrases, everything. Quick.”

She told him, wearily but in detail. It struck Rue as rather curious that when she’d finished he said almost what Brule had said.

“For God’s sake, Rue, don’t tell anyone what she said. You haven’t, have you? I mean, Julie was murdered. We can’t escape facts. And if anyone has reason to believe that you know what Julie knew —”

“That’s what Brule said. No, I didn’t tell the police. I —”

“Brule!” said Andy. The queerest look came into his face; he said after a moment, “You mean you told Brule all this?”

“Why, yes. Yes, of course.”

“He — asked you?”

“Yes, naturally. Why not?”

Andy stared at the floor. “No reason,” he said finally. “Only — only be careful, Rue. If Julie was murdered to keep her from telling anything she knew, you — Oh, my God, Rue!” He turned swiftly and impulsively and took her hands and held them to his face, caressing them as one would a child. “If I could only be with you. All the time. Every moment. You — you must be protected, Rue. You are so — so sweet,” said Andy and kissed her fingers.

It was just then that Brule came to the door. They heard his footsteps, and Andy released her hands but was still sitting at her feet when Brule entered.

He gave them a quick look; it was a look that revealed nothing. He said quietly: “Your taxi’s waiting, Andy. See you in the morning.”

“Right,” said Andy and rose. “Good night. Rue. ’Night, Brule.”

After he’d gone Brule turned to Rue.

“You’d better take the small guest room tonight, the one next to my study; I told Gross to have it made ready for you. Go to bed, Rue. If you want a sedative —”

She shuddered, remembering Julie. Brule said coolly:

“Better lock your door tonight, Rue. A thing like this — there’s no telling where it may end.”

T
he queer thing was that in the night she remembered what Brule had said. Quite clearly and sharply, as if he were saying it again, warning her.

The trouble was she hadn’t locked the door.

That was quite late, after Brule had been called away to see a patient.

It was the ringing of the telephone that awakened her out of a troubled, haunted sleep that wasn’t quite sleep nor was it quite sensible awareness, for all the faces and all the words and all the remembered scenes that kept nagging at her were grotesquely importunate and repetitious. But the telephone brought her instantly over the borderline into real sensibility; she could hear it plainly through the closed door between the small guest room and Brule’s own study; could hear the low murmur of Brule’s voice in reply.

She heard, too, for the house was quiet, the subsequent closing of the door from Brule’s suite into the hall in about the time it would have taken him to dress, and presently another low murmur of voices from somewhere in the hall. She sat up, listening; she didn’t know whether there were still policemen in the house or not; had they left a guard in the house to see that none of them tried to escape?

Whether or not that was the case, there was after a while a muffled closing of the heavy front door as if by a cautious hand. She didn’t hear — couldn’t have heard from that room — the sound of the car. But she knew after two months of marriage what the telephone in the night and the closing of the front door meant.

The house seemed extremely quiet after Brule had gone. Everyone was asleep — or if not asleep, then lying, as she was doing, staring into the dark, thinking and trying not to. Steven in his large room on the second floor; Madge in her front room above — or rather Alicia in the front room and Madge in the tiny dressing room. Queer how the thought of Alicia under that roof troubled her; yet Alicia was actually more familiar with Rue’s own home than was Rue. Whoever Brule spoke to in the hall outside might have gone with Brule for all the further sound he made. There was a feeling of emptiness and deep, complete silence.

Once she would have been at the hospital, scrubbing up; waiting for Brule in the bright, ordered hubbub of the operating rooms.

Julie would have been there, too, for Julie had gone back to the surgery after her one essay at private nursing which she’d undertaken only at Brule’s request.

Julie.

Lying there in the dark room she began again (as she was to do so many times) to go over in her mind the whole course of events as she knew them.

There wasn’t, as Andy had said and the attitude of the others and of the police made all too clear, much use in hoping that Julie’s death would prove to be suicide.

There was, of course, a line of specious reasoning they could take: that was that Julie had accidentally given Crystal the drug that killed her and then herself committed suicide when the police inquiry at last opened.

It was specious; Rue knew that Julie hadn’t committed suicide; there’d been confusion and bewilderment and fuzzy, fumbling attempts to talk to Rue, but no purpose and no knowledge of her own state. Besides, she knew Julie; Julie would have faced even so tragic a mistake rather than suicide. And Julie would not have come to her, Rue, if she’d intended to escape the consequences of any such mistake by suicide.

Furthermore, knowing Julie and knowing as she did the nursing routine for Crystal, a mistake that would have caused Crystal’s death simply wasn’t possible. She also knew that there was no drug used in treatment, there was no drug available, that could possibly have been substituted by accident for medicine; such a substitution would have had to be intentional.

But she thought from what she saw of Guy’s and Brule’s attitude that such a line of defense might be in their minds. Or perhaps in Guy’s mind alone. There was no surmising Brule’s intentions.

She wondered what time it was and turned to see her small bedside clock. Somebody — Rachel, the upstairs maid, probably — had brought into the guest room the things Rue would need for the night: pajamas and dressing gown and slippers, toothbrush and sponge and cigarettes and the little alligator-covered traveling clock which always stood on her bed table. It was a worn and shabby little clock, how long had she had it, and how many weary night hours had its luminous little face marked for her? She could see it now, a glowing halo across the room on the table by the door. It was too far away for her to discern the exact hour; about three, she thought, trying to see through the darkness.

She lay there watching it merely because its small face was luminous against the blackness all around her.

Watching it and thinking. Gradually becoming aware that her thinking was slower, hoping it meant sleep was approaching.

There wasn’t any sound. She was sure of that.

But all at once, quite suddenly the small luminous halo vanished.

She opened her eyes wider with a jerk; she’d slept of course. And closed her eyes and — but her eyes were open now, and the small spot of light wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere in that wall of blackness.

She didn’t move. Even her heart seemed to stop and wait and listen.

Queer that it seemed as if someone was in the room. Where no one could be.

But she hadn’t locked the door. Brule said to lock the door, and she hadn’t. And he’d said coolly: “A thing like this — there’s no telling…”

It was just then that, all at once, the little luminous halo of the clock became visible again. As if a hand had passed between her and the clock and blotted out its small light and then been removed.

A hand — or some other moving object. A man, say, passing as silently (literally) as a shadow between her and the clock.

There still wasn’t any sound.

But stronger than anything was the sudden conviction that now she was alone in the room.

Alone, yet there had been no tangible evidence of anything else in the room — except the clock.

After a while she forced herself to reach for the bed lamp. Light in the room proved its emptiness. It was a small room, its ceiling too high for its other dimensions, so it was like a little box done in sea-green chintz and a few old, comfortable, mahogany pieces: bed and small dressing table and a chair or two and the table — across the room because there was no space for it beside the bed. There were three doors actually in the room; one leading into a small washroom with a shower because it was too small for a tub, another leading to Brule’s study, closed, with a delicate Japanese panel concealing it, and the door into the hall.

A glance convinced her; she rose and locked the door into the hall and pushed aside the silk embroidered panel to try the door to Brule’s study which was locked.

She had slept and dreamed. That was the explanation. She turned off the light.

But she didn’t sleep again until objects in the room were beginning to have bulky shapes and she heard Brule return. There was again the sound of voices, prolonged this time as if in discussion. But after a while Brule’s study door closed softly.

It was when morning came, gray and cold, with Rachel bringing her breakfast tray and Rue hurrying to unlock the door, that the real threat the night had held came to light.

Rue, hair brushed and a warm, woolly bed jacket around her, looked wearily at the tray.

“The mail hasn’t come yet,” said Rachel. “Shall I throw this out, madam?”

This? thought Rue and looked.

Rachel was standing beside the small table near the door, holding a tray with a thermos and glass on it in her hands and looking dubiously at the empty glass.

Empty?

“What do you mean?”

“This,” said the girl. “The powder in the glass. Medicine, I suppose, madam.”

The breakfast tray clattered perilously as Rue pushed it aside and scrambled out of bed.

“Let me see.”

She took it in her fingers — as she ought not to have done. She looked incredulously at the small sifting of a kind of gray-white powder in the bottom of the glass.

“What — what is it, madam? You look so — I’d better call Doctor.” Rachel started for the door.

Rue was still standing there in white pajamas and white bed jacket like a frightened child when Brule came — hurriedly, half shaven, in his dressing gown. He took the glass and looked and said to the maid: “All right. You can go.”

Rachel went, reluctantly. Brule closed the door.

“Good God, Rue, what is this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know — except I couldn’t see the clock.”

She told him, stammering, not quite coherent. When she’d finished he said: “Get back into bed. You’re trembling with cold. Here.”

He put down the glass and held the tray while she clambered into bed again, and then put it across her lap. He adjusted her pillows and pulled an eiderdown up over her feet.

And went back to look at the glass.

“What is it, Brule?”

“I don’t know. But if it’s what I think it is… Well, we’ll soon know. I’ll take it to a place I know and find out exactly what’s in it. Meantime…” He frowned. “Rue, I’d better tell you.” He came back to stand beside her. It was cold in the little room; he pulled his dressing gown tighter around him; his hair was wet and ruffled, and the white soap was drying on his face.

“Tell me what?”

“About last night. I was called away on the first phony errand in my experience.”

“You — I thought you went to the hospital.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Brule grimly. “They — whoever telephoned said they were afraid to move the fellow; said I’d have to come out there; gave me an address out toward Cicero. I didn’t like the sound of it, but I — hell, I never thought of it being a plant. Nothing happened to me; I just found the street finally and went up and down hunting the number that had been given me.”

Quickening alarm must have shown in her face, for he interrupted himself to say reassuringly: “I wasn’t alone. I got Kendal up to take me; I’m not such a fool as to go to a new patient and an address I never heard before, in the middle of the night. And besides all that, the policeman somebody left here in the house (God knows why!) conceived it to be his duty to go along. Kendal had his revolver. So all three of us chased up and down the street awhile looking for the number with a flashlight, and cursing; finally routed out a cop on his neighborhood beat, and he said there was no such number. Woman on the telephone spoke with a foreign accent; I couldn’t understand her very well; talked as if she had mush in her mouth and a clothespin on her nose. May have been a man. Said the nonexistent patient had been hurt in an accident and was having a hemorrhage. Well, we live and learn.”

“Brule!” It was a wavering, breathless little sound composed of relief and terror.

He smiled and leaned over to pat her hand as it lay on the white silk-covered eiderdown.

“It’s okay. I’ll never do it again —” He stopped abruptly. Conjecture was in“ his eyes. ”Good God, Rue, I never thought of that. It was to get me away from the house — me and the cop downstairs. It was while I was gone —”

After a moment she said: “But I don’t know anything about Crystal’s murder. Julie didn’t tell me anything. There’s nothing —”

He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Listen, Rue. It’s occurred to you, of course, that you were not supposed to see Julie; if Gross had not happened into the front of the house just when he did, Julie would have died before she spoke to you. Somewhere there’s been a careful planning of time — time for the poison to take effect. Time to make sure Julie was definitely removed from whoever murdered her before the poison could kill her. Time to prevent her from reaching you — and she wouldn’t have reached you if Gross hadn’t found her.” He paused and said: “You must know something. Think. Think hard.”

“I can’t, Brule. There’s nothing. I told you exactly what Julie told me —” What was it Andy had said? Something about not telling anyone what Julie had said; something that warned her without warning her. Something that…

Had he meant Brule
? Had he tried to warn her against Brule, even while Andy himself was still too loyal and too faithful to Brule openly to express his doubts?

Brule had been in the house when Crystal died. Brule had frankly admitted (or was it so frank an admission as it had managed to sound?) that he’d doubted the publicity offered and publicly accepted reason for her death. Brule had coolly and calmly gone about covering up any possible query concerning it.

Brule said slowly:

“It would be an incredibly daring thing to do; and I don’t understand…” He didn’t finish that either. He rose and said instead, crisply: “We’ll not tell the police of this, Rue. Or anyone. Not yet. It may prove to be nothing; I’ll take the glass. All right, my dear. You’d better stay in the house today. I mean, don’t take any chances.”

He went away without another word. Half an hour later he knocked and put his head briefly in the doorway to say he was going to the hospital.

“Don’t look at the papers, Rue,” he said as if they were unimportant. “It’s just one of those things; a Roman holiday. I told Gross to throw them out.”

That was like Brule; to tell her not to look at the newspapers and in the next breath explain that she had no choice because they’d already been thrown out.

But one was on the hall table when she went downstairs, and she read it, slowly, with cringing recognition. It was a late edition, however, and stated baldly the decisions, such as they were, of the police department.

Juliet Garder had been murdered; they said it flatly, in black and white. And her murder had followed the opening of a police inquiry into the death, a year ago, of Crystal Hatterick. A third statement emerged from the welter of print, and that was that the theory held by the police was that both women had been murdered by the same person and by much the same means, and that by concentrating on the murder of Juliet Garder they would solve also the problem of the murder of Crystal Hatterick.

They gave no specific reason for the theory; they didn’t need to. It was almost fatally reasonable; Brule had foreseen it. It was the only workable, practicable, wholly tenable theory.