Wolf in Man's Clothing (17 page)

Yet there was no real evidence against Alexia. Nor, as to that, against Peter Huber or Maud Chivery. Maud had all but run the household during the long years of Conrad's widowerhood; it would not have been unnatural for her to feel a kind of jealousy for her young supplanter, Alexia. But that didn't mean that she had murdered Conrad! And certainly Maud fairly exuded an almost belligerent, tight-lipped respectability which did not go with whatever secret, horribly urgent emotion which, at last unbridled, finds its only relief in murder.

I stopped to think of that and then tried not to. It's a curious thing about murder, and I learned it during those days in the Brent house and among the low-lying Berkshire hills. Murder as a fact has a strangely insistent, wholly appalling quality; it is almost like a secret and terrible personality. At one instant you may be surrounding yourself with the commonplace, with reality, with everyday things—letting yourself think of the weather or what you had for lunch. And then all at once, the next instant, you get a kind of psychic nudge, as if that grim presence stood invisibly at your elbow and said, mutely, “
You may try to evade me, you may try to pretend I have gone, but I'm still here. You can't see me, you don't know really where I am, but nevertheless I am here. I have struck and I may strike again. How do you know I won't? And how do you know whose body is possessed of me and whose arm will do my will
?”

It brings your heart to your throat and your breath stinging in your lungs. That's queer, too, and primitive, I suppose. As is the way your neck muscles, of their own accord, keep wanting to pull your head around so as to look behind you.

Well, that's the way it is. I felt it then and looked behind me, but there was nothing but hills and gathering dusk and silence.

So I went on in my little list to Peter Huber. Here at last was evidence. He had appeared on the scene almost as soon as I had, with a story to explain it which might or might not be true. He had fumbled around about the telephone call to the doctor; he had run straight upstairs at the sound of something falling and had disappeared. And while he was no relation and so couldn't profit directly by Conrad Brent's death, as all of the others might conceivably do, even the Chiverys, he might have a motive, that is,
if
he were in love with Alexia. Yet certainly no man is going to murder a woman's husband without making sure that he's going to get the woman and, if I had eyes in my head, it wasn't Peter Alexia wanted; it was Craig, and Craig, whatever he admitted and refused to admit, knew it. Besides, Peter Huber was only a friend happening to be there as an innocent bystander does happen to be on the spot and probably wishing heartily he were anywhere else.

Dr. Claud Chivery remained. He had prescribed the famous medicine which might have some as yet unsuggested significance; and somewhere in the history of that long friendship between the Chiverys and the Brents might lie seeds for murder. But again there was no evidence.

It had grown dusk as I stood there, although the sky was still light, so I realized later that, on the little ridge and in my swirling cape and hood, I was silhouetted from below against the clear gray light. A lemon-colored star came out above the eastern hills. It was colder, too, so I pulled my cape more tightly around me and pulled the hood over my head. And it was just then that I heard somebody running heavily across the meadow toward me, through the dusk and the bramble.

And that wasn't all. Something sung sharply through the dusk over my head; I heard that before I heard the sound of the shot. I literally fell upon my hands and knees behind the stone wall just as both sounds came again. And whoever was running there in the meadow reached the rock wall a few feet away and began to scramble over it.

A
SINGULAR THING ABOUT
gun shots is this: no matter how little experience one has had at either the giving or receiving end, one recognizes the sound of a shot with really a peculiar facility and swiftness.

And just then another shot sung lower, over my head and over the stone wall. And I knew that that scrambling figure was at least thirty feet from me, but that the shots came from somewhere in the darkening, irregular meadow below, possibly from the wooded valley which seemed to outline the bed of a small stream.

I knew too that it wasn't the cat shooting at me. But that was about the extent of my knowledge.

Whoever had crawled over the stone wall had ducked; at least no figure emerged from the shadow of rock wall and shrubs.

I don't know what would have happened; perhaps in the end some car was bound to come along and rescue us. It takes a bold murderer to shoot anybody in cold blood on a public highway. But I was never to know because just then, with a loud whirring of the engine, a small automobile whirled around the bend in the road and began to climb the little ridge, its lights streaming ahead of it.

So I did what sounds dangerous and really wasn't. At least, I don't believe it was dangerous. I really remember very little of that moment or two during which I crept out, running low in the shelter of the rock wall and into those welcome lights and stopped the car. And it was Dr. Chivery.

He leaned out to look at me incredulously as, keeping the car between me and the dusky meadow, I approached him.

“
Miss Keate …
”

“Somebody's shooting at me! From the meadow! Somebody …”

And just then another figure loomed up from the shelter of the wall and it was the maid Anna. Her face was the color of an underdone muffin and her braids had slipped over one ear, giving her a rakish air which was belied by the terror in her eyes. She gasped, “Doctor—please, sir—someone's shooting—in the meadow. …”

Neither Claud Chivery nor I spoke; in the little glow from the dashlight his chin retreated still further and his slightly popped eyes seemed to take on a kind of reflection of the terror in the maid's face. Then the maid caught a long, rasping breath and said, still panting, “I mean—shooting rabbits, I suppose, sir. I—I was walking in the meadow, when I—I heard someone in the brush along—along the brook. It—it frightened me. I—I ran …” Her eyes shifted to me and back to the doctor. “And just then—as I got to the wall—the shots began. I don't know who it was, sir. But they—they often shoot rabbits in the meadow. People from town and—and …” She stopped again. And then said, “Doctor, would you mind taking me back to the house? I—I'm afraid I've taken more than my usual afternoon time off. Beevens …”

There was another little pause. Then without a word Dr. Chivery reached back, swung open the door to the rear seat of the car and I got in and so did Anna. Still in silence so far as speech went, he turned and reversed and started back for the Brent place. Nobody said anything. There was only the staccato sound of the engine waking echoes along the looming shadows of the hills all around us.

He took us all the way to the house, up the winding drive to the front door, where he deposited us. I thanked him and he drove off into the night again with, it seemed to me, that queer reflection of terror still in his eyes. Anna hurried to open the door for me.

“Anna …”

“Yes, Miss Keate.” She had caught her breath now and straightened the fat blonde braids around her head.

“Who was in the meadow?”

“I don't know, Miss,” she said flatly—and defiantly.

So I had to let her go.

But she knew as well as I did that unless the rabbit had jumped up in front of the gun and barked at him, our hunter wasn't shooting at rabbits. It was too dark to have taken a good potshot at anything smaller than a horse—or a human, silhouetted against the gray sky.

Well. I glanced in the morning room and Nicky was sitting there, reading. His back was toward me but his small head and vividly checked coat were unmistakable. His coats were always a little alarming, being made up in very large checks or plaids and in an amazing range of colors—that day I believe brown and maroon again predominated. But however I felt about Nicky, it couldn't have been Nicky shooting at rabbits or at me. Nobody else was around and, feeling a little shaken by my recent experience, I went to my room, took off my cape, and again cast my mind back over the few things I knew of the murder of Conrad Brent. But after a while I had to give up; if those shots had been, by any stretch of the imagination, intended to remove me and at the same time any clue in my possession, then I didn't know what that clue was. The only conclusion then was, in a word, rabbits.

And since I couldn't quite believe this, either, it was only natural that I was a little uneasy. Perhaps wary is more descriptive. But in any case, hunting in the meadow was a good excuse; it was not unusual, Anna had said. So it was within the realm of possibility that any would-be murderer might count on that.

I didn't go in just then to see Drue; for, a little belatedly, I bethought myself of my patient and the fact that he had been presumably alone, with Dr. Chivery dashing about the roads in his little car and Anna fleeing from gunmen in the meadow. But on the way to his room I stopped and told the trooper on guard in the hall what had happened. I don't think he believed me; or perhaps he favored the rabbit theory, for he gave me a rather pitying and indulgent smile. But he did promise to tell Nugent when he saw him.

So I went on to Craig's room where I found Peter Huber with him and both of them talking of Chivery. “Who does Chivery think did it?” said Peter, as I entered the room and Craig looked at me, said “Hello, Miss Keate,” and replied to Peter. “He says he doesn't know. He says it had to be somebody that knew about digitalis. How much to give and how. He says you've got to give enough to cause a heart block, as it does, right away. If you give too little there are all kinds of symptoms of poisoning—nausea and convulsions and—but that isn't what happened.” Craig took a quick breath and went on hurriedly, as if to hide the pain in his eyes—yes, and the grief, for no matter what had happened between Conrad Brent and Craig in their adult life they were still father and son. He said hurriedly, “Claud has been looking it up in his reference books.” He frowned. “He says he doesn't know who did it. But …”

“But what, Craig?”

“Oh. Nothing. …” He paused again, frowned into space and said, “If only I could get up and about! If I could even find out who it was that gave me this. …” His fingers touched the bandage on his temple. “I didn't see anybody—I didn't even hear anything. … Look, Pete, scout around a little, will you? Find out, if you can, exactly who was up and about till midnight or shortly before. Find out what happened at dinner. …”

“Nothing happened at dinner,” said Peter. “I was there.”

A touch of exasperation crossed Craig's face. “I don't mean did they throw things at each other or threaten anything. Just—oh, what did they say and how did they look and—oh, hell,” he gave a flounce, and I clutched the light eiderdown as it slid off.

“You'd better go now, Mr. Huber,” I said, eyeing the tinge of scarlet that was coming up in Craig's lean cheeks.

“Wait, not yet, Nurse,” said Craig quickly. “Listen, Pete, keep your eyes open and tell me if you see anything out of the way. And—and another thing,” Craig hesitated, shot me an oblique glance and said, “Look through the house and see if you can find some yellow gloves. Loose—biggish. Don't let anybody know and if you find them, bring them here.”

Peter nodded. “Okay,” he said. And then I sent him away. But Craig said no more of the mysterious yellow gloves and, still aware of that touch of red in his cheeks and the feverish brightness in his eyes, I didn't ask further questions.

Dinner for both of us was sent up on a tray; no one came but the cat again. He meowed hoarsely and when I let him in he went to Craig's bed, jumped on the foot of it, purred loudly and hoarsely, but eluded my hand and Craig's and went to sleep, with his slitted grape-green eyes opening now and then to look at the door into the hall. It was only a wary look, though, normal one to one of Delphine's pessimistic nature, nothing like the silent, listening stare of the previous night.

Eventually I folded up like an accordion on the couch again. I thought a little pensively of the bed in my room which looked very comfortable.

Nothing happened that night. Alexia and Maud disappeared directly after dinner. Peter and Nicky went for a long night walk, for I happened past the stairway as they left and had a glimpse of Nicky's dark head and Peter's broad shoulders and leather jacket just as they closed the front door behind them. Later, because the house was so still, I heard their return. Or rather, I heard Peter's return; Nicky apparently got tired and returned first. I saw him as he passed Craig's room, for the door was a little ajar, on his way apparently to Alexia's room, and a moment later I saw him return. He glanced in both times and smiled airily, and looked exactly like a beautiful inquisitive young leopard on the prowl. It was much later when I heard Peter's return and by that time I had closed the bedroom door.

There was no chance to talk to Drue. Once or twice during the night I glanced into the hall. Mr. Wilkins or his double sat in a chair just outside her door.

The next morning, too, was without untoward incident. The police were about, for I saw them from my window, prowling through the grounds, and later Nugent questioned me about the affair in the meadow, so the trooper was as good as his word and had reported the shooting to him. The Lieutenant questioned me, too, again as to what or whom I had seen in the hall just after the odd little bump on the door, £he night of the murder.

This time I thought he believed me when I told him again that I hadn't seen anyone. But something to my alarm he suggested a motive for the shots of the previous night.

“Perhaps someone believed that you had seen more than you were willing, publicly, to admit. You gave me that impression, too. The way you stopped in the middle of a sentence.”