The Hangman's Whip (7 page)

By dinnertime the sense of tenseness, waiting for the storm to break, was like a weight. It was very hot even at dusk, and the birds were quiet, as if waiting too. Dressing for dinner in cool thin white, Search found the package of toffee put neatly away in a bureau drawer, and its discovery relieved her in an obscure but very definite way, so she didn’t stop to examine the cellophane wrapper.

Ludmilla, still evasive, came to dinner.

It was a long meal and, in spite of Calvin’s energetic hospitality, a rather unpleasant one. All the windows were open, and now and then a hot gust of air would push out the curtains and make the candle flames waver. Diana, perfectly groomed and dignified at the head of the table, was coolly polite to Eve. Ludmilla chatted with Calvin, her china-blue eyes meeting Search’s occasionally (rather pleadingly) across the table. Eve was demure; all gentle, smiling affability. Search was uneasy; conscious of the sticky warmth of the thinnest and coolest dinner gown she possessed; conscious of Ludmilla’s occasional glance; conscious of Diana’s dignity with Eve. Conscious of Eve too; Richard’s wife, secure and certain in her position as his wife. Beautiful with her soft blue eyes and golden hair; laughing gently, although there was a faint excitement in the note of her laughter, as if the coming storm plucked at her nerves too.

At ten, only a little while now, Search would meet Richard. Then she would know.

Search had never hated anybody in her life; she thought suddenly, watching Eve, that she could hate her. Her heart beat heavily; a hot breath of air stirred the candle flames again, and she watched the little flutter and dip and told herself that the tension and breathlessness in the still night were attributable to the coming storm.

Dinner was over at eight-thirty.

Eve went straight upstairs after dinner, without waiting for coffee.

“I’ve some letters to write,” she said, pausing in the hall at the foot of the stairway, her golden hair gleaming in the light from above. Her eyes met Search’s and she smiled and turned to Ludmilla. “Did you hear the good news?” she said sweetly. “Richard and I aren’t going to be divorced after all. Aren’t you pleased?”

Ludmilla’s face showed no expression.

“I’m afraid that’s your business and Richard’s,” she said.

For a moment Eve’s smile wavered. Diana watched coldly; Calvin cleared his throat. Then Eve leaned forward, all appeal. “Try to like me, dear Aunt Ludmilla,” she said—very gently, very wistfully. And went upstairs, arms white against the old wood paneling, blue chiffon trailing softly behind her.

“Shall we have coffee on the veranda?” said Diana in a strangled voice.

At a quarter to ten Search left the house.

She left it quietly by the side door.

No one saw her go; she thought that Diana and Ludmilla were still sitting on the veranda watching the distant play of heat lightning on the opposite shore of the lake, and Calvin was waiting in the library for a long-distance call he’d put in during dinner.

She let herself quietly out the door; the night was dark and warm and the clouds so heavy and low that there was no faint gleam of moonlight from behind them.

She groped her way along the narrow flagged walk.

There were two ways to reach the cottage: a path through the woods, wandering but a short cut, or the well-marked path along the shore. Because it was easier of access from the flagged walk, she chose the path through the woods.

She regretted it almost instantly; it was very dark under the trees, the path twisted constantly, leaves touched her face and seemed to move away; once a bird, disturbed, fluttered alarmingly in some near-by thicket.

She knew the path well even at night, but she lost her way twice and had to fumble through undergrowth and only by a sense of direction found the path again. It must have been actually something after ten when she reached the small clearing about the cottage and saw the light in the window.

Richard was there, then; he’d reached the cottage ahead of her.

She came out of the path. A small flash of lightning, still far away, illumined the cottage with its high peaked roof and the grass of the clearing briefly and faintly as she hurried across it.

The lightning vanished; there was only a distant murmur of thunder, and her foot on the tiny porch of the cottage sounded loud and abrupt. She half expected Richard to hear it and open the door for her, but he didn’t. She called softly, “Richard,” and opened the door.

It opened directly upon the living room. It was small and sparsely furnished, and no one was there. There was a sweet, rather sickish odor somewhere; something she seemed to know but could not quite identify. And someone had been there for, besides the light, there were two glasses on the table beside it and something else that looked like a toy—a thin green silk cord with a green celluloid ball and tassel on one end of it.

She only glanced at the table and around the room.

Thunder came again, this time much nearer, rolling long and loud. There were two doors opening from the living room: one leading to the tiny kitchen at the back, one to a bedroom. Both were open; she went to the nearer, the bedroom door, and said, “Richard …” and stopped.

The room was dark, but someone was there; a figure, barely discernible in the light from behind her, stood still across the room. Seemed, in fact, to be standing on something—a chair, a bench? Yet there was something oddly sluggish and motionless about the figure. Something wrong about its stillness and silence.

Her breath caught in her throat so she couldn’t speak.

She must reach for the light. But before she could move there was another flash of lightning, tremendously bright and sharp and clear. Simultaneously, with a crackling sound, the light in the room behind her went out.

She wasn’t aware of it. For in the lightning flash she had a clear glimpse of the figure across the room. It was not standing on a chair or a bench; it was supported, horribly limp, by a rope that went up toward the bare rafter and out of sight. And it was Eve Bohan, blue chiffon dress showing between folds of a dark raincoat, golden hair gleaming. She was dead. Nothing alive could look like that. And then the bright greenish light was gone, and thunder fell upon the cottage, shaking it.

It surged and rolled and died away, yet still there was a kind of rushing sound in Search’s ears.

Through it, however, she heard the sound of footsteps in the kitchen.

S
HE SHRANK BACK AGAINST
the door casing and whirled around so she was staring into the darkness of the little living room. Someone was coming from the kitchen into the living room; there was a crash, as if whoever it was had blundered into a chair in the dark, and she cried: “Richard!”

It was Richard. There was a sudden cessation of footsteps and then his voice, sounding unnatural through the darkness: “Search, is it you? Where are you?”

“Here—in the doorway.”

“Stay there. Don’t move. The lights have gone—”

There was another but not so brilliant flash of lightning. She caught only a glimpse of him—tall, his white shirt open at the throat, his face a pale blotch. He caught her arms. “When did you get here?”

“Just now. Eve—in there—”

Thunder rolled again over the cottage. He cried above it: “You’ve seen her? I didn’t mean you to! I—Search, you’ve got to go back. Quick.”

“What happened? Why did she—”

Abruptly the noise of the thunder rolled away and died, and Richard said, his voice hoarse and urgent: “You’ve got to do what I tell you to do. Now. Hurry. Go back by the lake path—it’s safer. Don’t tell anyone you’ve been here.”

“When did she do it? What happened?”

“Search, please—” He stopped and then said quickly: “I don’t know. I found her like that. Only a few minutes ago when I reached the cottage. I’ll tell you everything later. You
must
go now.”

“Is she dead? Richard, is she dead?”

“I’m afraid so. Search, you’ve got to go.” He pulled her toward the door; they had almost reached it when a more distant flash of lightning illumined the doorway briefly, and Richard stopped and drew her back. “No—not that way. It’s better through the kitchen. Hurry, Search. Go out the kitchen door; follow the line of shrubs. Take the lake path. Go in the house by a side door.
Hurry
.”

They reached the kitchen; there was a pitch-black void around her; then a door squeaked a little as it opened. Richard said again, tensely: “
Hurry
.” He gave her a kind of thrust and his hand left her arm. There was hot sultry air on her face and a different blackness in the night around her.

The door closed. Follow the line of the shrubs; take the lake path.

Luckily she had reached the darker shadow that marked the shrubs when another flash of lightning came, a long one, so bright it dazzled her and lighted the whole scene eerily—the darkened cottage with its high peaked roof, the grass of the clearing, the trees and shrubs around it. And across the little grassy space, clear and sharp in the lightning, someone stood and watched the cottage.

She thought it was a man; she had a glimpse that lasted a fraction of an instant, and the light was gone.

Who was it—and why was he watching those darkened windows?

She hesitated, on the verge of going back to warn Richard.

She even moved uncertainly a few steps back toward the cottage. And lightning came again, and the figure across the cleared patch was gone as completely as if it had never been.

Thunder rolled over her head, and a great hot drop of rain struck her face.

She’d seen no one there, then; it was a tree trunk—a trick of shadow—an illusion. But she waited, there in the thick hot shadow, and when the next flash of lightning showed again a clear and empty space she went on toward the path. She knew the way and she moved like an automatic figure, wound up and set on its way.

Her eyes were adjusted now to the darkness; she could follow the heavy line of shrubs. A branch touched her face; there were more hot big drops of rain; her thin dress caught on something and she tore it away.

The cottage was close to and directly above the lake; she came out upon the lake path just as the storm broke with a great crash of lightning and thunder and a torrent of rain.

In an instant her thin dress was soaked, her hair wet. The lake stretched away into murmurous blackness at her right, and there were constant blinding flashes of lightning upon lake and woods. But it was better there than the path through the woods would have been.

She never knew how long it was before she reached the steps going upward from the pier. The house above was dark, but the electricity was off in the cottage and it was on the same line with the house.

Eventually—skirting the house, letting herself in the back door, groping in the darkness for the back stairway and along the narrow passage which entered the main hall (also dark, though there was a faint glow of light from the stair well)—she reached her own room. She stood still for a moment, trying to catch her breath, pushing wet strands of hair back from her face. Then she reached for the candle and matches with which (on account of the invariable effect of storms upon the village electrical supply) every room in the house was equipped. By its wavering light she changed completely.

She did not then examine the instinct that led her to put on a light summer evening gown—a white one, as near like the sodden thing that lay on the floor as she possessed.

She tried to dry her hair with towels and a brush. She even powdered her face and used lipstick on a mouth that looked taut and strange.

Then she blew out the candle and went into the hall. At the top of the stairs she paused. She wanted desperately to turn back.

There was a distant sound of voices. She went slowly down to the landing and turned. She could see then that there were lighted candles on the table below. She had reached the newel post when the library door opened; she was confusedly aware of people and voices, and Diana appeared in the doorway. She was very white and looked sick. She stopped and stared at her and said: “Search, where in the world have you been? Search, Eve’s dead! She committed suicide—an hour ago in the cottage …”

The hall, Diana’s white face, everything about Search seemed abnormally clear and sharp. She held tight to the newel post. And Diana cried: “It’s horrible. Richard found her. He’s in here now—telephoning the doctor. I’m going to get him something to drink.” She hurried back toward the butler’s pantry.

Richard was there; then he’d come by way of the short cut through the woods. There were voices in the library—Calvin’s, high and exited, talking over the telephone saying: “Yes, she’s dead. She was found just now. …What’s that? … Do you mean we have to call the sheriff? …Well, what’s the sheriff’s number, do you know?”

Then Richard came to the library door and saw her. His shirt and coat were soaked, his dark hair shining and wet. He came toward her and took her hands.

“Search,” he whispered, eyes intent and dark in his ashy face. “Listen. She’s dead; I couldn’t—do anything for her. She was dead when I found her. But”—he glanced over his shoulder toward the open library door—“but it wasn’t suicide. Search, you’ve got to lie; you’ve got to say you didn’t go to the cottage. Tell me quick, did you touch anything? They’ll look for fingerprints.”

But she had known really, from the beginning, that Eve wouldn’t have killed herself. She must have known it when she changed her dress.

“Search—think,” whispered Richard urgently, and she shook her head. Had she touched anything? Had she left fingerprints? But suppose she had; that didn’t mean that—that she had murdered Eve.

She whispered: “Who killed her? Why—”

“I don’t know. I found her like that. After you’d gone I— I took her down and tried to revive her, but it wasn’t any use. Search, you’ve got to tell them you were here—all the time. Do you understand—” He broke off abruptly as Calvin came hurrying to the door. He was in pajamas and a light dressing gown, and his hair was wet as if he’d been in the rain too.

“They are coming right out. They said not to touch anything; the coroner has to make a report and wants to find things just as you found them.” He caught Richard by the arm, shaking it; his sharp face was flushed with excitement. “Now, Dick, go and take a shower and get on some dry clothes.”