Voice Out of Darkness (9 page)

“Very soon,” she said, “almost immediately. How about you and Cassie?”

Jeremy was vague. “March. Cassie’s white satin-minded, and there are things—” He broke off, ground out his cigarette and stood up. “I’ll probably see you at dinner some time soon. Francesca said something about rounding us all up.”

He started to move away. Katy said gently, “But you haven’t found out about the compact yet, Jeremy.”

Jeremy stared down at her. For a second he was sharply, completely still and intent, so intent that Katy, who had meant to add probingly, “That’s what you came for, isn’t it?” didn’t dare speak. The dining room, except for themselves, was empty. So was the lobby beyond. A muscle jumped in Jeremy’s cheek, and the animal panic in Katy subsided. Jeremy said musingly, “Yes. She’ll want to know, won’t she? Thanks for—reminding me,” and was gone.

The blood was still pounding at her temples. The fingers that had been so steady only a moment ago shook uncontrollably as she gathered up cigarettes and matches. She looked at them with almost clinical detachment and thought, that’s right, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do: go limp and trembly, read murder in any and every pair of eyes, like a poor little laboratory rabbit.

Unfortunate, that. Laboratory rabbits were experimented with, gently but persistently, and died in their tiny wire worlds.

It was nearly nine o’clock. Too late to sit any longer with coffee, too early to wake Michael, who had had the good fortune to sleep through this windy purple morning. Katy went upstairs to her room, tiptoeing along the quiet hall. There had been two other envelopes with the letters in her trunk: a wedding invitation from a girl who had once worked at Paige’s, a bill from Saks—things she had taken with her with the vague intention of doing something about. On the empty envelope from Saks she wrote, “Gone into town for newspapers, back right away,” and changed her thin wool dress for a sweater and skirt. Michael’s room was at the other end of the hall, the last on the left, he had said; she slid the note under his door and went quickly down the stairs, through the lobby, out into the icy rush of air.

There was going to be more snow, it was in the pansy-dark sky, on the edge of the driving wind. Katy found the New York papers and a daily from a neighboring town at a news stand beyond the post office. She had come along here that first day in Fenwick—was it only three days ago?—with Francesca chatting carelessly beside her. Almost automatically, she started for Francesca’s shop.

Francesca herself was kneeling in the window, absorbed with a pile of brightly jacketed books, handfuls of white cotton batting for snow, a tiny, sprightly Christmas tree. Her back was to the street; she didn’t look up until the door opened under Katy’s mittened hand. “Just in time,” she said gaily. “There’s a box of that glittery stuff on the desk—could you hand it to me?”

Katy did. The shop was warm and bright and fragrant with pine, and there was the buoyant little thrill you always felt at the first sights and sounds of Christmas. Francesca said, “With you in a second,” and looked consideringly at a shiny red bulb in her hand. “Think that’s too much, or—?”

“There’s one of those lovely blue ones right behind you,” Katy said, and pulled off her mittens and found a cigarette. How could you be suspicious of a woman who knelt with a child’s grace and absorption in front of a miniature Christmas tree, who balanced shining red against burning blue as though it were a matter of life and death? And yet there had been, before, not Christmas bulbs but a black-on-white envelope in Francesca’s ungloved fingers.

“You’re right, the blue’s better,” Francesca said, head on one side. She fastened it to the top branch where it shimmered and shook as she climbed out of the window and sat down on the other end of the sofa. “A visit from Saint Nick,” she said, and laughed. “Fun, though.” The laughter vanished. She said softly, “Poor Miss Whiddy, last night. I heard about it.”

“Oh,” Katy said. “You weren’t there?”

“No,” Francesca said. “But the whole town is talking about it, of course. She was more or less of an institution in Fenwick.”

Katy nodded. Mr. Pickering’s smooth silver head had stood out in the lobby last night, but Francesca had not been there. Odd. She looked at Francesca and Francesca said carelessly, “Working women retire early, I’ve found that out. Saturday can look remarkably like Monday, if you’ve a shop to open. But there you are, the white man’s burden.”

They talked. Beneath the talk Katy thought, no letters. But there wouldn’t be, not lying around, not in that handwriting… if it was the same. Silly to expect it. She brought her attention guiltily back to Francesca’s voice. Francesca said directly, “Katy, do you think Cassie is happy?”

Cassie happy? Cassie with petals of blue shadow under her eyes, wetness on her delicate white cheeks? Francesca didn’t know, then. “She looks—thinner,” Katy said carefully. “But I suppose the flu—”

“Flu?” Francesca’s voice was sharp. “Cassie’s never had flu in her life. She’s stronger than she looks, you know. Did she say—?”

Katy didn’t have to answer. The door had opened and a red-cheeked messenger boy, a long white florist’s box under one arm, looked from one woman to the other. “Mrs. Poole?”

Francesca said, “Just a minute, please.” She dug change out of the depths of the black antelope bag. When the boy had gone, she began to untie ribbon, smiling. “Heavens. Like being a girl again, or practically.” She laid aside the long white lid and lifted out carnations, palest pink and white, crisp and fragile as starched lace.

Carnations. Katy tightened. She said slowly, “There’s a card.”

Francesca took the little oblong of white cardboard from its envelope. Took it and read it and changed color so swiftly that you couldn’t be sure of the retreat and rush of blood under the fine, taut skin. Head bent, shaking out the flowers, she said absently, “How sweet. By the way, Katy, could you and your Mr. Blythe come to dinner tonight? I know it’s dreadfully last-minute, but there’ll only be Cassie and Jeremy and Harvey and myself.” She lifted the devastatingly blue eyes and Katy, caught and bewildered, said, “We’d love to.”

Francesca laid the carnations gently back in the box. She said critically, “That window’s still a mess. Would you be a saint and smoke another cigarette while I arrange a slightly tidier snow-scene?” She climbed back into the window. “Of all times… I have a girl here, you know, a very fetching little thing who takes care of the knitting part, and jumps into the breach when customers drop a stitch. She’s sick now, and I hope to God they watch what they’re doing because I can read but I can’t knit.” She sat back on her heels and looked at the shining little tree in its drifts of cottony snow. “Of course—the star on the top, I knew there was something missing.”

“Can I get it for you?” Katy was on her feet, restless, abrupt, wanting not to look at the fragrant froth of flowers on the desk, unable to keep her eyes away.

Francesca sounded grateful. “If you would. I’m not the mountain goat I used to be. Past that curtain and to your right there’s a disgracefully untidy closet, and the star’s in a box on the top shelf straight ahead as you go in. I saw it the other day.”

Past the curtain. Katy fumbled her way into the dark, found the cord of an overhead light. Shelves on either side of her were piled with boxes of wool: Shetland, Ayrshire Fleece, Conant No. 3, with colors and code numbers stamped on the ends and here and there a looping strand of cyclamen or lemon or sharp olivey green. Below these were stacks of empty book cartons; straight ahead were shelves piled with what looked like record books, with a scattered miscellany fitted in wherever there was room: Francesca’s limp little toe-rubbers, a Mexican straw handbag, a tarnished silver compact, a tattered
Vogue,
an opened box of cheese wafers.

Katy pulled out a set of folding steps, mounted them, and stretched cautious fingers up to the top shelf. There was the box, she could just see the edge. She levered it closer, and with it came a heavy bronze ashtray. The box with the star tumbled into her arms. The ashtray hurtled past, struck something on a shelf below, and clattered noisily out of sight among the empty cartons.

Silence. Katy called reassuringly, “Nothing broken,” and began to descend from her shaky perch. Francesca’s voice came dimly from the front of the shop, saying something about the closet’s having to be cleaned. Katy wasn’t listening. She was on her knees, picking up the tumbled contents of the Mexican straw handbag—lipstick, handkerchief, old movie stub, matches, a tiny bottle of what looked like aspirin. And a letter, in a squarish white envelope, addressed in firm slanting black ink to Mrs. Arnold Poole.

Her fingers were quick. They paused only long enough for her to decipher the postmark: Short Hills, Buffalo, June 28th. Then the letter itself was in her hands, was flipped over to the signature side. Brows drawn incredulously, she read, “—am so sorry that you will not be able to join us for the holiday week-end, as I would like to have Cassie meet her cousin Mabel. In hopes of seeing you both before too long, Love, Aunt Beth.”

Aunt Beth. Cousin Mabel. It was like expecting a time bomb within a sinister and ticking package—and finding instead a lemon meringue pie.

In another instant Katy saw why. Upside down, as she had seen it for that flashing second in Francesca’s hands, the writing had looked, in its black slant, terrifyingly familiar. Right side up, it was merely the angular and slightly querulous penmanship of an elderly woman, of an Aunt Beth.

The excitement drained out of Katy. She tucked the letter into the straw handbag and began to replace the other articles. Her back was to the door. All at once, although there hadn’t been a sound, a whisper, she turned her head sharply.

Francesca stood in the doorway, watching her.

Francesca’s face was perfectly still. So was her body in its sheer, beautifully-cut black wool. Her eyes, the wide smoky eyes, were half-closed over shining rage.

How long had Francesca stood there? Why did she look like that, not breathing, with something leashed and ready to leap from behind that silent, frightening poise?

Beyond the curtain the door of the shop opened and closed; heels clicked forward in tentative steps. Katy unclenched stiff fingers from the little glass bottle she was holding and dropped it into the handbag and rose. She said, “You can imagine what I’m like in a china shop,” and smiled in double apology.

Francesca smiled back. Charmingly. “This place is an unholy mess anyway,” she said, and stirred with her peculiar liquid grace and was gone from the doorway and through the curtain. Beyond it, her voice lifted, “—for an invalid? You won’t want this, then, it’s frightfully depressing even if you’re in the best of health. Let’s see…”

The customer went. Katy laid the forgotten Christmas star on the desk and knotted her black-and-white scarf. Francesca, rearranging books on a shelf, said absently, “Why people read that ghastly Zinnia Smith I don’t know—oh, are you going, Katy? Can you and Mr. Blythe come at about seven tonight, or a quarter of? Don’t forget your papers—I suppose this one’s full of that awful thing last night. Poor Miss Whiddy.”

Then Katy was out in the windy dark-silver street. A lazy snowflake drifted gently toward her cheek, clung there, soft and chilly. She looked back. Beyond the window with its shimmering and spangled tree, Francesca had taken the carnations from their box and was holding them to her cool white face.

“And so,” said Katy flatly, “we’re right back where we started. Or no, not even that, because the letters are gone and I’ve been caught purse-snatching. Where do we go from here?”

Michael looked at her and then out at spinning snowflakes. He said slowly, “We could go back to New York, and get our tests and a license. Make a formal statement to the police and go away for a couple of weeks. Get this cleared up once and for all.”

Go away, put it all behind her, the whole tenuous terrifying thing. Stop thinking about the little pond, and Monica a dead so long ago, and the twisted brain that went so cunningly about its business. Think instead about things like dancing-sandals and re-doing Michael’s bachelor apartment and Michael’s mouth on hers, hard, with everything right again between them, the way it had been before the third letter came.

Make a formal statement to the police. All right, go ahead and make a formal statement to the police. The flowers on Monica’s grave: a trick, cruel and vicious like the letters, but nevertheless someone’s idea of a joke. The stolen letters: someone, whoever it was, frightened at having gone too far, anxious to end the senseless persecution. Miss Whiddy’s death: an elderly woman losing her footing on a steep unlighted staircase—another statistic on the domestic-accidents list. And all the other nuances, the little incongruities, the steady breath of fear—don’t you think, Miss Meredith, with the understandable strain you’ve been under, that it’s possible to imagine…?

“You’re right, of course,” Michael said. “We’d be running so fast we wouldn’t have time for each other.” The determined lightness dropped out of his voice for a moment. “But damn it, I can dream, can’t I?”

Katy put out her hand without speaking and Michael’s fingers were there to meet it. At the window beside their table the snow came steadily down, white and soundless. They watched it in silence until Michael said abruptly, “Did you search your room thoroughly last night, Katy?”

She shook her head. “I’ve nothing anyone would want, apart from the letters. And anyway, I’m sure nothing else is missing.”

“I don’t mean that,” Michael said. “There might be some trace left behind, some clue as to whether it was a man or a woman, something about the way your things were handled… I don’t suppose so, but it’s worth trying.”

Early that evening, with snow blotting steadily against the windows under the driving wind, Katy tried obediently. She looked in the top bureau drawer at gloves, a scarf, her perfume. She went through her trunk again, and put the bill from Saks and the wedding invitation in her handbag. She examined the worn and colorless carpet around the trunk, and glanced at creams and lotions in the bathroom. She had meant to be thorough and analytical, but her mind was busy with the incident in Francesca’s shop and her fingers were quick, her gaze automatic.