The Hangman's Whip (6 page)

“Yet I’m his wife,” said Eve again. “I am Mrs Richard Bohan. He can’t divorce me—unless I agree to it. Not so long as I live.”

She paused again, watching Search with a curiously still and, it struck Search, calculating look in her blue eyes, and in that little silence Diana came suddenly into the room.

“Hello, Search,” she said. “Good morning, Eve.” She went to the buffet and began to lift the dish covers. Eve turned in a leisurely way and joined her.

“Hot, isn’t it?” said Diana, selecting toast and melon and coming to the long table. “Where’s Richard?”

Diana had never liked Eve; there was chill and barely polite dislike in her voice. Eve said sweetly: “I don’t know.”

Diana’s thick light eyebrows lifted. She looked cool; she wore a thin honey-colored dress, tailored perfectly and exactly the color of her straight, neatly arranged hair, and a green belt and scarf. She said: “I thought I heard someone leave last night. Was that Richard?”

Eve turned from the buffet and came to the table. She said: “If you must know, he went to the hotel.”

“Oh.” said Diana. After a perceptible pause she added: “Sorry.”

“He’ll be back soon. Tonight. I expect. But if not”—she glanced fully at Diana—“I hope you don’t mind if I stay until he does come. You see,” she said with a wistful little smile, “I’ve no place to go.”

Diana put down her cup, looked at it an instant or two and said in the friendliest possible fashion, with only the look in her eyes betraying her dislike for Eve: “Why, my dear, of course. That is, there’ll be some company later on; I’m afraid I’ve invited rather a lot of people for August. But until then—”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Eve and laughed. It was again a laugh that was curiously unexpected, as if Eve herself had not meant to laugh just like that; it was frankly mirthful and delighted. Search looked up sharply and so did Diana, and after a moment Diana said rather crisply: “What’s so funny, Eve?”

“Nothing,” said Eve gently. “Except—Richard and I are not going to be divorced; didn’t I tell you?” She glanced along the dining room. “Why on earth didn’t you redecorate the house, Diana dear? All this Victorian junk! I would change it if I—if I were you. It would take a lot of money. But then you”—was it possible, thought Search, that there was again an unexpected and malicious mirth in her blue eyes as she smiled at Diana?—“you have so much money. Haven’t you?”

Diana said stiffly that she preferred the house as it was, and Search rose to leave. The voices of the two women floated out into the hall after her.

“I really am surprised about your change of plans,” said Diana. “I thought you were going to Reno.”

“Oh no,” said Eve’s voice airily. “I only went up to Avion for a few days. Will you give me the cream?”

Search went out to the wide veranda; there at the railing she had stood with Richard the night before. She walked over to the railing again; it was so hot that water and sky had a faintly misty look and the willows down at the edge of the lake, directly below, seemed to droop heavily. It was very still; not a leaf moved, and the lake was as still as a painted lake, sluggish and motionless with heat.

How certain Eve must be of the strength of her own position; the very directness of her attack and of the statements she had made emphasized that strength. And if their marriage had failed a hundred times, Eve was still Richard’s wife and she, Search, was still the other woman. That was the truth, and it had its bitterness. But Eve had left Richard once; she didn’t even pretend to love him.

Richard must come back to the house soon; she must see him. And there was, too, Ludmilla.

She went upstairs and, before going to Ludmilla, searched her room again in the full light of day for the package of toffee and again did not find it.

And coming along the hall again, intending to inquire about the package of toffee before she saw Ludmilla (a word to the maid Carter would be enough), she met Calvin Peale. Diana’s husband.

He was at the top of the stairs, a bag in each hand and his white straw hat on the back of his head. He was a small man, wiry and energetic, with a sharp-featured pink face and wrinkles around shrewd gray eyes. Basically astute, he had a hearty, overcordial manner of which, Search had felt, Diana disapproved (for she was very ambitious for him and wanted no flaw) yet which did not seem to be altogether assumed. He dropped the bags when he saw Search and shoved his hat still further back on his almost bald head.

“Hello, Search. It’s swell to see you. How are you?” He shook hands and kissed her cheek briefly. “God, it’s hot. Chicago was terrible last night; people sleeping on the roofs and in the parks.”

“Well, it’s not exactly cool here.”

“Going to storm. I looked at the barometer. Well, glad to see you, Search. Make yourself at home; it is home to you, you know. Or would be if you’d stay. I’m going swimming soon as I can get in the lake. Better come along. See you later.”

He took up the bags again and went, whistling softly as was his habit, along the hall toward the big masters suite. Search turned to Ludmilla’s door and hesitated. Whether the thing Ludmilla had told her was accident or delusion, she had to do something about it. In the sane light of day attempted murder was out of the question.

As she stood there Diana came up the stairs.

“Oh, Search. Did Calvin come up this way? He’s brought home a wretched kitten he picked up in town, and I simply won’t keep it; it’s half starved and full of fleas and I—oh, I forgot, Carter’s looking for you. Somebody wants you on the telephone.”

The nearest extension was in the hall on the first floor. Search went downstairs as Diana, looking angry and exasperated, hurried along the upper hall. And it was Richard on the telephone.

“Search …”

“Yes. Richard—where are you?”

“Search, listen.” His voice sounded far away, incalculably remote. “I’m in Chicago; I’ll be back tonight but I—listen, Search, will you meet me—say about ten tonight? At the—oh, at the cottage, I guess. I’ve got to talk to you. Alone. Will you?”

At ten that night, at the cottage. “Yes. Yes, I’ll come.”

The telephone clicked. She put down the receiver slowly. And was presently aware of voices on the veranda outside and that Ludmilla was there, talking in her soft voice to Eve. And just then Diana came downstairs again with Calvin in swimming trunks and a towel and looking rather sheepish.

A battle, it appeared, was raging about the kitten. Search followed them out to the veranda. She went to Ludmilla and sat on the broad arm of her lounge chair, and Ludmilla gave her a lingering, half-apologetic, wholly loving look. The apology meant that she intended to avoid another talk until, as she had said, Search had had time to adjust herself. To consider and accept the hypothesis that someone was trying to murder Ludmilla Abbott with arsenic.

Search thought of that and listened to the others talk. Calvin went down the steps, hurrying for his dip in the lake. Eve lounged, one round leg crossed over the other, in the long couch that hung like a swing at the end of the veranda. On the step stood a half-grown kitten, very thin and dejected.

“Men are so stupid. I hate animals and I won’t have them about,” said Diana crossly.

“Well, in any case,” said Search, looking at the kitten, “it’d better be fed. Do you mind?”

“Oh, all right,” said Diana. “But I won’t keep it, just the same.”

“It’s a waste of time and food,” said Eve negligently. “How horribly thin it is! Diana’s going to have it drowned or poisoned or something. There’s no sense in feeding it.”

“Tell Cook to give you some scraps,” said Diana, and Search took up the surprisingly light kitten and went to the kitchen and gave it some milk and some steak scraps the cook gave her. It ate and lapped hungrily and, in a corner of the back porch, gave itself a thorough washing, as if to claim respectability, and then slept exhaustedly.

Search left it there and went back to the veranda. It was, as a matter of fact, quite late in the afternoon when the cook, going to the back porch, found that the kitten was dead and had died apparently in some pain, for it had clawed its way between the railings and died actually on the grass below the porch.

Cook stood looking at it. If put in words, her thoughts would have gone something like this: “Poor little thing. Ate too much; the steak came from Miss Ludmilla’s tray; she didn’t touch it; she eats almost nothing lately. Poor little thing. Well, perhaps it’s just as well; Madam doesn’t like animals. But I’ll not tell the young lady that fed it. There’s Jonas down in the garden; I’ll tell him to take it away and bury it.”

T
HE DAY WAS LONG
, oppressively hot, and nothing happened—except the death of a stray half-starved kitten, and no one but the cook and Jonas knew about that.

There must have been decisions arrived at, preparations made, but there was no hint of either. It was not, however, a pleasant day; there was an unreal and nightmarish quality about the stillness and the heat.

It seemed to Search that all that long day her mind ran along two grooves and that the two grooves were parallel, so when she was thinking of one she was still perfectly and strongly conscious of the other. Richard and Eve. Ludmilla.

The trouble was that there was nothing she could do but wait. Wait until she could persuade Ludmilla. Wait until she saw Richard that night. At ten. At the old unused gardener’s cottage not quite a quarter of a mile through the woods that stretched along the shore toward the south. The Stacy house lay at the north within its own spacious grounds; swimming late in the afternoon, she looked up toward bulky red brick and ivy-hung outlines, half hidden by trees and shrubs, and thought of Howland Stacy.

She would tell Howland the truth; he would understand it.

Ludmilla, sweetly, stubbornly, quietly evaded her all that day. She remained on the veranda with the others; she lunched with them at the long table in the dining room, eating blandly and, so far as Search could see, without hesitation or qualm. Certainly it wasn’t very likely that arsenic had been introduced in a wholesale way into the food all of them were eating; but then, thought Search, undergoing one of her periodic rejections of the whole story, it wasn’t likely that Ludmilla had been intentionally poisoned either.

For the conditions of the attempts to poison Ludmilla (if attempts they were) were irreconcilable with the act. There were only Diana and Calvin, Richard and Eve and now herself in the house. There had been, she discovered from the conversation, no guests so far that summer. Eve had been there for a few weeks and had gone again. But there was no one who could conceivably have given Ludmilla Abbott arsenic, and there was certainly no one who could profit by it.

Delusions of persecution. Didn’t mental quirks, like that, take strange and unexpected forms?

About five, with the air as heavy as a blanket and the water taking on a languid oily look, they went (Eve, Diana, Calvin and Search) for a swim. Ludmilla remained on the veranda, rocking and watching placidly and giving evidence of a talent for acting Search hadn’t known she possessed.

The line of willows was as lifeless as stage scenery. When she slid into the lake from the pier the water felt warm and sluggish around her, and the sky seen from the water was pale gray and looked thick.

There was not much talking among them, for even Calvin seemed oppressed by the heat. After a few moments’ swimming about the pier he and Eve, both strong swimmers, headed for the raft which was anchored perhaps two hundred feet from the shore, and Diana, looking very thin in her white bathing suit, drew herself up again on the pier, where she pulled off her white cap and sat at ease, dangling her long legs in the water.

“It’s going to storm,” she said to Search as Search swam about in the water below Diana. “Was that Richard on the telephone this morning?”

Search said yes and turned over on her back, floating and looking up at the fleecy thick sky which seemed to press down upon them.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much,” said Search slowly. “Just that he was in town.”

“Funny he didn’t talk to me,” said Diana, watching her. And added: “I wonder if he went to see a lawyer. About Eve, I mean.”

She waited again, and as Search didn’t speak her gaze shifted to the two out on the raft and she said suddenly and rather jerkily: “I hate that woman! She’s like a vampire; he ought to murder her if he can’t get rid of her any other way.”

There was a vehemence in Diana’s voice that actually startled Search for an instant. She said: “Diana! You don’t mean that!”

Diana laughed, a silvery light little peal. “Of course I don’t mean it. But she’s made his life miserable—especially about money.” She stopped, swung her legs and said thoughtfully: “Did you find out what’s wrong with Ludmilla?”

Search turned over and swam a few strokes.

“Not exactly. She’s—worried about something.”

“She won’t talk to me either,” said Diana and switched abruptly. “Did Eve tell you at breakfast exactly—well, exactly why she’s come back?”

“She said she—had changed her mind about the divorce,” said Search slowly.

“Yes, I know, but …” Diana paused, her light eyes thoughtful, and then went on. “She came here early in June, you know; followed Richard here from New York; stayed until she got Richard to agree to some kind of money arrangement. Then she went away, presumably, to get the divorce. He oughtn’t to have married her. He was infatuated, I suppose; he was always an idealist, and she did have the face of a saint. Remember how she looked in her wedding veil?”

“Yes.”

“She never loved him; from the moment she found she’d have to live on his salary the marriage was a failure. And now she’s decided to stick to him. There’s something back of it. She’s got a motive—and if I know Eve, it’s not a pretty one. Where are you going?”

“Out to the raft,” said Search, “if I can make it.”

It seemed a longish swim; she wasn’t, she decided, in condition. Halfway out she turned and swam slowly back toward the pier. Eve and Calvin were still on the raft, Eve’s blue silk suit a vivid spot of color, when she and Diana went up to the house. The sky by that time was darker but still thick and fleecy looking.