The Hangman's Whip (12 page)

But he questioned them all again, thoroughly, each one alone. There was no way for Search to know what he asked the others except that there were many questions about Richard and about Eve. How had they lived, where, what were their present circumstances?—mainly, were there friends near by who might have given Richard a refuge? Well, then, were there any hunting shacks or cabins in the woods north of Lake Kentigern, or along any of the numerous small lakes of the region, where he might have gone?

They talked of those questions, Diana and Calvin and Ludmilla and even Howland, who was about the place all that day. But it seemed to Search, listening, that there were certain reservations in the things they told of those interviews. And it seemed to her, too, that there was a kind of growing uneasiness, a tendency to avoid each others eyes.

Yet obviously Richard, when found, would be charged with Eve’s murder.

Early in the afternoon they were all fingerprinted. The sheriff himself officiated at that rather unnerving little ceremony—using what looked like a hitherto unused outfit and following printed directions closely and conscientiously. He fingerprinted the servants, too, and Howland. None of them objected except Jonas, from principle.

It was after that that Search went with the sheriff to the cottage; went unwillingly, dreading it, retracing, because he made her do it, her steps of the night before. Through the wet woods again, with the sheriffs big boots slugging along the wet path behind her.

It was cold with blue-gray mists masking the distant vistas so the woods looked unreal, like a stage drop. But it was colder in the cottage. She pulled her raincoat closer around her and had to force herself to cross the ill-omened step into the little living room.

The electric line had been repaired early that morning; the sheriff turned on lights in the three tiny rooms.

Where had she stood? Here? Where was Richard then?

Oh, she didn’t know. Had he answered when she called him? No? What had she done then?

“Then I—I went to the bedroom door.”

“Show me.”

She had to cross the tiny sparsely furnished room; she stood again at the bedroom door: Seeing a dark sagging figure that was not there at all.

“You saw her then? Clearly?”

“No. The room was dark. And then—then there was lightning and I saw her. And the lights went out and—and Richard came from the kitchen.”

“Was he surprised to see you?”

“No. I’ve told you. He was expecting me.”

“So soon? Were you early?”

“No.” She said it quickly and eagerly. “I was late. I’d lost my way in the woods.”

“I see. Well, then what did you do? Show me.”

Again in the little living room, bright now with lights, for the day outside was so dark. Again in the kitchen which last night had been a black pit and now was a room with cupboards and a cooking stove.

“Is anything changed in the cottage? Is everything as you remember it?” the sheriff asked at last. She looked around, forcing herself to picture a scene she longed to forget forever.

“Everything is the same,” she said. “The light was on in the living room; there were those two glasses—the rope—”

“Nothing for her to stand on?”

“Nothing,” she said faintly and wished the ghostly odor of chloroform did not seem to linger sickeningly about the place.

Perhaps the sheriff saw something of that weariness in her face, for he pressed her then about Richard.

“You saw him do it, didn’t you?”

“No—”

“Did he tell you what he had done?”

“No. No—”

Eventually they left the cottage, going out the kitchen door again as she had done the night before, following the line of the shrubs.

“Where was the man you claim you saw?”

“There …” She pointed. The small cottage with its overhanging roof looked dark and quiet, as if it were keeping the secret it knew for some grim and secret reason of its own. The cleared space around it was grassy and wet; mist shrouded the line of woods opposite them.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I tell you I don’t know.”

But on the way to the lake path the sheriff vouchsafed one bit of information which was not really information. “Here’s where I found the shred of your dress,” he said, pointing to a barberry thicket. “Then Miss Diana told me, when I asked her, that you had changed your dress.” So it had been Diana, as she had guessed. “And there were heelprints here too,” he added. “I saw those last night. Careful here, it’s slippery.”

“Mr Donny, Richard wouldn’t have reported it if he had murdered her. Don’t you see … ?”

He paused to look at her from under the low brim of his hat. He was unshaven and haggard; he’d had little if any sleep during the past twenty-four hours, and he was indefatigable. He said: “Perhaps he didn’t intend to report it. Perhaps he intended to stop you before you reached the cottage. Perhaps if you hadn’t seen Eve, where and when you saw her, he wouldn’t have reported it.”

That, then, was what they believed.

After that she said no more.

When they reached the house again the sheriff went at once to Ludmilla’s room, where all that day she had remained —sitting on the chaise longue with the door open. Listening. Thinking. Knowing so much but not enough.

In a few moments he came down again, a small rectangular package wrapped in newspaper under his arm. And went away.

There was nothing more he could do there, he told Howland as he met him on the porch. Not just then.

But if Ludmilla had told him of the arsenic, then he must see, thought Search, that there was some ugly undercurrent, something more than the simple and plain case that had built itself up against Richard. Unless—unless he thought Richard had done that too.

Howland stayed to dinner; it was a quiet and a rather dreadful meal. Last night Eve had been there, smiling, with a queer look of triumph in her blue eyes.

She thought the others were thinking that too, for Diana hurried the meal, pressing the table bell as soon after each brief course as it was decently possible. There was little talk, but once when the telephone rang sharply it startled them all so they sat stiff and taut, waiting while Calvin hurried to answer it.

But it was nothing, he said, returning; someone wanting the sheriff. No news of Richard.

“It’s been nearly twenty-four hours,” said Calvin. “It can’t be much longer.”

“By the way,” said Howland, “how’d she happen to take your raincoat, Calvin? Eve, I mean?”

Calvin looked a little green around the mouth.

“I don’t know. It was in the hall closet; anybody could have taken it. But I—I wish I had an alibi just the same. You and Ludmilla are lucky,” he said to Diana.

None of them that day (except Diana) had questioned Search. Staring down at her unfinished dessert, she thought she ought to be grateful for that. And then she thought of the first dinner they’d had in that room; herself and Richard and Diana. And how, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, a feeling of change and strangeness had caught at her, as if a prophetic sense inherited from ages past had tried to warn her.

Twenty-four hours. But if they did find him would they give him a chance to prove he had not murdered Eve?

Fingerbowls came and they left the table, and Howland almost at once went away. He said nothing directly to Search before he left, but his eyes lingered upon her when he spoke to Diana.

“I still think Richard’s best move is to plead guilty; tell him that—if you happen to see him before I do.”

Search turned abruptly away. Diana and Calvin went to the door with him and Search went up to Ludmilla’s room.

But Ludmilla, already in bed, staring at nothing with bleak china-blue eyes, had little to say. She had told the sheriff about the poison, yes. He’d not said much of it although he had asked questions. What questions? Well, mainly about the people who had been in the house the times when she thought the attempts to poison her had occurred.

“I’m not sure he believed me,” she said. And added: “It was my bathrobe cord they found, you know. Hidden. I don’t know how it got there, but they think it was used to—to—” She stopped, her lips blue white. “Go to bed, Search. You look like a ghost.”

All of them probably were staggering from fatigue. It was only a little after nine when Search left Ludmilla and went to her own room, but Diana and Calvin had already come upstairs.

As she turned out her light she wondered, looking out into the black night, where Richard was. It seemed an age, literally, since the moonlight night, warm and balmy and clear, when she and Richard had sat down there on the pier and built their castle in the air. So soon and so ruthlessly demolished. Now it was so cloudy and overcast that there was only a dim line of blacker shadow down there to mark the willows.

She had not been alone all day; the silence and darkness of the little room were rather a relief to taut and overtired nerves. It must have been late when she began to dream about the cottage.

The cottage, in her dream, was amazingly clear; it was small and dark and she was again on its threshold; this time there was no light in the little living room, but she could feel its presence all around her. She knew there was something horrible and threatening somewhere near her, and there was again a sickish, sweetish smell—only sharper and clearer than it had been before. Sharp and clear and strong—and the cottage and her dream vanished except for the reeking odor of chloroform.

Struggling out of heavy sleep, away from the singularly real dream, she realized that she was in her own room. But there was still something horrible and menacing somewhere near.

And the odor of chloroform saturated the darkness around her.

S
HE DID NOT MOVE
. But instantly she was sharply aroused and conscious. And whoever was there in the darkness knew that she was awake. She knew that, without knowing how she knew it.

The odor of chloroform permeated everything. And whoever stood there waited as breathlessly as she waited.

Instinct told her that. As instinct held her tense, afraid to move, listening for a sound. Perhaps three or four seconds passed; it seemed an eternity of time but could have been no longer. Then two things happened. There was a barely perceptible motion somewhere in the room. And with shocking abruptness something went over with a loud crash in the hall outside.

She didn’t really hear her bedroom door close. Yet she knew that whoever had stood there was gone although the reeking odor of chloroform was still sharp and strong.

There was a lamp on her bed table; somehow she reached it and turned it on. The room leaped out of terrifying darkness into familiarity. No one was there. The door to the hall was closed. It took perhaps ten seconds for her to get to the door. Perhaps she couldn’t have opened it if she’d given herself time to think, but she didn’t.

The hall was completely dark. And it was just then, hesitating on the threshold, that she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Light footsteps, running, clear and distinct. Footsteps that reached the hall below, became less staccato, all at once dwindled into nothing. There was no sound of a door opening or closing. There was no sound at all from the cavern of blackness.

And she turned and saw, on the floor beside her bed, a small can on its side and a folded thick white square that looked like a man’s handkerchief.

The odor of chloroform all around her was sickening. That was the way Eve had died.

She must have, then, screamed.

Calvin was the first one to hear her and came running, turning on the hall lights, shouting. Diana followed him and then Ludmilla. She heard herself explaining, telling them.

She pointed, and Calvin knelt—his thin hair awry, his green pajamas very bright—beside the small can that lay on its side on the floor. Diana had her hand over her nose and looked sick. Ludmilla was white with her hair tousled, her eyes frightened. All of them were asking questions.

“But he’s downstairs,” Search tried to tell them. “I heard him go—there was a crash in the hall.”

That much at least was indisputable. A light table lay on its side, and a vase which had stood on it was broken on the floor—water spread from it in a puddle, and some zinnias sprawled in bright patches beside it.

The can was indisputable too, and the man’s handkerchief. But that was all.

“Get your revolver,” Diana told Calvin. “Wait, I’ll get it. You’d better telephone the sheriff.”

But Calvin didn’t telephone then. He looked at the can and the handkerchief, looked at Search and ran into the hall, following Diana. She had got his revolver from his room, and he took it from her hand and examined the loading swiftly and turned to the stairway.

“Be careful,” cried Ludmilla breathlessly.

They all huddled together, Diana leaning over the railing, her face as pale as her trailing white silk dressing gown. Calvin edged along the wall, the revolver in his hand, his bright pajamas looking incongruously gay. He reached the landing and an electric-light switch. The lower part of the stairway sprang into light and the hall below was empty, for Calvin glanced up at them, shouted: “Nobody here. Telephone Howland. Tell him to come over and we’ll search the place,” and plunged on down the stairs.

“I’ll telephone,” cried Diana and ran to her room.

From the upper hall they could follow Calvin’s progress through the lower floor by the snapping of the electric-light switches and the opening and closing of doors.

It took a long time for Diana to get Howland by telephone, but she came back into the hall as Calvin, having covered the front of the house, apparently was going back to the butler’s pantry.

“Howie’s coming as soon as he gets dressed. I think we ought to telephone the sheriff.” She went to lean over the railing above the stairs and listen. “I do hope Calvin’s careful. He ought to wait—”

“They’ll not find anyone,” said Ludmilla.

And they didn’t. Even when Howland Stacy arrived and he and Calvin together made a systematic search of the house, opening every closet and cupboard and searching the attic and the cellar with its rambling passages and old coal and fruit cellars.