Wolf in Man's Clothing (14 page)

“I was in the library as Nicky says,” she began.

“All right, Miss Cable, go on.”

“I did want to talk to Mr. Brent. So I waited until he returned from his walk, then I came to the library. We talked for some time. He had a heart attack then and …” She faltered, and I was sure she was going to tell about the hypodermic. I rustled warningly. A faint flush came into her face and her hand went up to her throat, almost as if to stop the words on her lips. “And—he died,” she said. “If such a large amount of digitalis was found, I don't know how he got it.”

Well, that was true enough and so far safe. But I wished I could be sure that she saw, as I saw, that the one thing they were after was an admission that she had given Conrad digitalis. It was the important material evidence; it was the clinching fact, it was the missing link in the chain they had forged. There was no possible way for her to prove, ever (to them, or to a jury), how much she had given him, and that it was not a lethal amount. Her instinct was for telling them the truth, I knew that; and the truth would have been, literally, the most horrible and fatal trap, as things stood then. Soper burst into question again.

“But this revolver, Miss Cable. You had a revolver. Why?”

She turned to face him. “I found that revolver in the garden,” she said steadily, “yesterday afternoon.”

“G—garden,” said the District Attorney.

“Where my—that is, where Craig was shot that night. It was hidden and I found it. In the burlap wrapping around one of the rose shrubs.”

Nugent's eyes had an odd expression. “Why did you look for it, Miss Cable?” he said. “Why did you bring it to your room?”

She turned back to him; there was less defiance in her manner when she spoke to Nugent, more confidence—which might be her undoing. She seemed to trust him and to want to tell him the whole story and Soper was ready and eager to pounce upon any unguarded admission. She said, “Because I didn't believe the story of an accident. I went to the garden just to have a look at the place where my”—again she corrected herself quickly—“where Craig had been hurt. I searched it and I found the gun. That's all. I brought it to my room because I intended to show it to Craig when he was better.”

“Why?” said Nugent rather softly.

“Because it proved someone shot at him,” she said.

“He says it was accident,” said Nugent, watching her closely. “He ought to know.”

“I wanted him to have that revolver,” she said with a kind of obliquity.

“You're saying that his accident was actually an attempted murder?” cried Soper.

Again she whirled around to face him, her chin high, her voice steady. “He wouldn't have shot himself like that! He wouldn't have been cleaning a gun in the garden at eleven o'clock at night!”

“Did you know that the revolver belonged to Conrad Brent?”

“I wasn't sure. I knew that he'd had a revolver.”

“Did he admit it belonged to him? When you took it to the library, I mean?”

“Yes. That is, by implication. He recognized it and asked where I'd found it.”

“See here, Miss Cable,” said Soper with a crafty look, “did you accuse him of trying to kill his son?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Why did you give him the revolver?”

“Because I wanted him to know of it, of course. I wanted him to know that I had found it in the garden, hidden. I wanted him to know.”

“Why?” said Soper again.

“Naturally because something ought to be done about it. It proved that Craig didn't shoot himself. He wouldn't have hidden it.”

“Exactly what did he say?”

Drue flushed. “He said I couldn't have found the revolver just there. He said I was—was trying to make trouble.”

“And you …”

“I saw then that he was ill. I told him he'd better lie down. I started to leave but he—he asked me to stay with him. And then he got worse. All at once. And—and died.”

After a moment Nugent said, “Who do you think shot Craig?”

Again the defiance went out of her. She shook her head. “I don't know. I don't know …”

“
Don't know
! Of course, you don't know! It's an obvious attempt to divert your inquiry, Lieutenant. I'm surprised that you can't see through this girl's story.” Soper came close to Drue, his face red and threatening, shaking a pudgy but forceful forefinger under her nose. “Now, you see here, Miss. We want the truth. You did quarrel with Conrad Brent, didn't you?”

“I didn't quarrel with him. I asked him to permit me to stay and take care of Craig.”

“You quarreled with him! You were heard yesterday afternoon when he tried to send you away. You blamed him for breaking up your marriage. You came here in the hope of getting young Brent back again. But his father wouldn't let you, so you killed him.”

Drue's face wasn't white any more; two scarlet flames were in her cheeks, her eyes flashed. “I came here to nurse Craig,” she said. “And he was my husband until his father …”

“Drue, Drue!” I cried, my hand on her arm.

And Soper said, “Arrest her, Nugent. I insist upon it. I'll make you responsible if she gets away. It's a murder charge, there's no use in prolonging this thing. Take her away. …”

“I don't think there's enough evidence—material evidence—to convict,” said Nugent softly but very coolly.

“Enough evidence!” snorted the District Attorney. “What more do you want? There's the hypodermic. …”

“We haven't made sure that she had one.”

“You will, you will! No use asking her, she'd only lie. Yes, and you”—he pounced on me, his eyes angry, bright slits in his red face—“you are putting her up to it. Well, we'll take care of you, too. Besides, there's the witness. …”

“Nicky Senour,” said Nugent again softly. “And he says he won't swear to it. Besides, he didn't see her kill him. He said only that she was in the library with Brent. …”

“He said they were having a row. That kind of thing goes a long way with a jury. Don't be a fool, Nugent. You'll get the evidence. But put the girl under arrest; make sure you've got her. All the evidence in the world won't do you any good later if you've let the girl who did it get away. Arrest her. …”

“I'll take her into custody,” said the Lieutenant slowly.

“Custody! What do you mean by that?”

“I'll keep her here, in her room. Under guard,” said Nugent.

And in the end, incredibly, that was exactly what he did. But first they questioned her again, and made me leave before they began. I would have stayed; but when a District Attorney, a Police Lieutenant and two remarkably stalwart and able-bodied troopers are lined up against one, there's nothing much to do. I retired as ungracefully as it lay in my power to do and sat on the bench in the hall watching the door. Never before in my whole nursing experience have I let anything come between me and my patient but frankly, while I sat there, eyes glued to the door of that room, trying and failing to hear anything but a rapid murmur of voices, I didn't care whether Craig Brent lived or died, except I hated him so, just then, for being the cause of Drue's presence in that ill-omened house that I'd a little rather he'd have died, preferably in boiling oil. If I could have made him come alive again. My own impulses to murder, while vehement in their way, are not very lasting.

Once I did go upstairs. The door to Craig's room was open and I peeked in cautiously. Peter Huber was sitting in a chair beside him, smoking. Anna was standing at the window, her back toward the room and her head bent with a handkerchief to her eyes, and Craig and Peter were talking in low voices. Craig looked all right, certainly the police were not hounding
him
from trap to trap, from admission to admission, from refuge to refuge. I went quickly back to the bench downstairs and they were still in the little morning room.

I was there when they emerged. Drue was white and drawn-looking; even her lips were chalky. She looked at me with great, haunted, dark eyes and I could read nothing in them, although I thought she was thankful I was there, waiting for her. And they took her straight upstairs, and put her in her room, under guard! I followed. Soper, giving me a suspicious look, had turned into the library.

Well. Nugent, if he had eyes in his head as he certainly did, couldn't have failed to see that my room connected with Drue's. But the trooper already on guard didn't stop me when I entered my own room. And of course I went straight through the bathroom to Drue.

She was standing in the middle of the room, facing the door, head up, hands clenched at her sides as if at bay. When she heard me she whirled and suddenly crumpled down on the bed. “Oh, Sarah, Sarah, what shall I do?”

I sat down on the bed beside her and took her hands. “What have you told them? What did they make you say? Quick, Drue. Tell me.”

In the end it wasn't too bad; which is to say it could have been worse but not much worse. They had questioned her at length about her interview with Conrad, about her reasons for coming to Balifold, about the hypodermic syringe they had not found among her other nursing tools, about the supply of digitalis they had found. Somehow (as if she saw now, clearly, her own danger) she had evaded them; she had not admitted that she had given Conrad a hypodermic, she had not admitted that he asked her for the medicine and that, when she went to look for it, it was not in the drawer.

She had indeed fought and evaded—especially about the box of medicine—in a way that was not like Drue; she was, as most of us are, naturally and innately truthful. If she had been fighting thus to protect somebody else (somebody she loved) it would have seemed to me more comprehensible and more like Drue. She had that kind of courage; I've seen her fight to save a patient with the courage and fury of a tigress. But I didn't stop then to think of that; I was only thankful that she had kept them from grinding any really convicting admission out of her.

“I kept saying I didn't know, I didn't know. I remembered what you said, and told them I wanted a lawyer. Sarah, when they asked me a direct question: did I give him a hypodermic of digitalis? Did he ask me for his medicine?—I—I squirmed and evaded and wriggled out of it.” She pressed her hands over her face. “Funny,” she said unevenly, “how hard it is to tell an outright lie, even when you've made up your mind to do it. Instead of lying, you—you evade, you weasel out of making a direct statement, you—oh, it's fantastic, really. You employ all the spirit of lying and yet you can't make yourself conquer the fact. Well,” she took her hands from her face and stared at the rug, “they don't know I gave him the hypodermic—not certainly. But—oh, Sarah, what
can
I
do
!”

Well, I said what I could, which was little enough. I told her we'd get a lawyer. I told her they had nothing but circumstantial evidence.

“But they convict people on circumstantial evidence. Don't they, Sarah?”

“Never,” I told her stoutly and falsely. “It isn't legal.” And made her lie down flat on the bed and fixed her some aromatic spirits of ammonia which she didn't drink. But before we could really talk or outline any kind of sensible course of action there was a knock on the door, and it was the trooper Wilkins, the man on guard. And they wanted us to come to Craig's room.

“Right away, please,” said the trooper.

Drue went to the mirror before we went, however. It gave me a kind of lift to see her put cold water on her eyes and powder her face and touch her lips with crimson. It was like a little, unconscious declaration of war.

But if Craig saw it, or was aware of anything but the bare fact of Drue's presence, there was no hint of it in his attitude when we entered his room. He gave us both a remote and impersonal look; Drue might have been the barest acquaintance, certainly anything but a woman who was once his wife.

Soper was there, suspicious the instant his eyes fell upon Drue again. Nugent was there and the ubiquitous trooper with the shorthand tablet. Anna was hovering in a corner but Peter had gone. After a closer glance at Craig I sent Anna away and took up my post at his side with my fingers on his pulse. I did feel a wave of compunction. There was a flare of color in his cheeks and his eyes were too bright.

“I sent for you, Miss Keate,” he said to me, “and for Drue. I thought this concerned both of you.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to be quick,” I said to Nugent. “Ten minutes …”

The District Attorney swelled up as if about to protest and at a look from Nugent went down again. Drue went quietly over to stand in the shadow of the window curtains; the light fell upon her white skirt and her face was in the shadow. But I think all of us, all the time, were poignantly aware of that slender, listening figure.

“We weren't going to question you, Brent, if we could help it, until you were better,” said Nugent. “However, we both wanted very much to see you. …”

“All right,” said Craig. “But first, exactly what is your case against Miss Cable? Facts, I mean. That you can substantiate.”

“I'll tell you,” said Lieutenant Nugent, and did, wasting no words and outlining their case against Drue in black and white. She had quarreled with Conrad Brent; she had held him responsible for her separation from her husband; (“that is,” said Nugent looking carefully past Drue's white figure and out the window, “from you, Mr. Brent …”) she had had digitalis; the medicine was missing from its customary place and there was the mark which might be that of a hypodermic needle on the body of Conrad Brent. He explained, still briefly but pungently, that since no one else knew anything of the missing box of pills there was only one construction that could be placed upon their absence, plus the hypodermic and the fatal amount of digitalis found in Conrad Brent's body. And that was that Drue had removed the medicine as a pretext to administer a fatal dose of digitalis.