Wolf in Man's Clothing (29 page)

“It was in 1937,” said Alexia, “and he went to Italy.”

“I don't seem to have his occupation down here either. What does he do for a living?”

Alexia bit her full underlip. “He doesn't do anything,” she said.

“Oh. You inherited money, I presume. You and your brother.”

She hesitated and then said, “A little. Not much.”

“I see.” He closed the book suddenly and leaned forward. “Mrs. Brent, what about those checks made out to your brother? Were they for any specific service? Please answer.”

She waited a few seconds, her eyes shadowed again by her dark eyelashes, then she looked up. “Lieutenant, that has nothing to do with my husband's death, or with the murder of Dr. Chivery. Nicky needed some money, of course; he's young and has no source of income. My husband knew that it would please me if he saw to it that Nicky had a little money, that's all.”

“And Nicky lives here, mainly?”

“Yes. Since my marriage, at any rate. Before that we shared his apartment in New York.”

“So you know most of his friends?”

“Why, I—yes, I should think so,” said Alexia.

“Did he know Peter Huber?”

“No, of course not. None of us knew him.”

“Were any of your friends at all interested in politics?”

“Why, I—really, I don't remember.” There was a tinge of uncertainty in her voice, yet it was nothing that seemed exactly significant. It was more as if she could not discover the trend of Nugent's questions.

If so, she was soon enlightened however. For Nugent leaned forward, his lean face suddenly as sharp as a hatchet. “Who is Frederic Miller?” he asked again, abruptly.

But he got the same answer. “I don't know,” said Alexia. “I don't have the faintest idea.”

And again looked white and intent.

In the end, Nugent seemed to accept her denial. He said. “Try to think back, Mrs. Brent; try to remember.” And added, “You told me that you had not seen Drue Cable since last night when you saw her going from this room to her own room. You are sure you didn't see her at any later time?”'

“Perfectly sure,” said Alexia.

“You don't know where she is?”

“Certainly not. She wouldn't have taken me into her confidence before she escaped, I assure you.”

“Did you send her a message of any sort?”

“No,” said Alexia, and rose. “If that is all, Lieutenant …”

He nodded. “Send Mrs. Chivery in here, will you please?”

Alexia went away rather abruptly. She looked a little shaken, it seemed to me, but by no means ready to break down and tell all. If, that is, there was anything for her to tell. It was entirely possible that the habitually secretive look in her small, beautiful face was merely a look and nothing else. Still, it seemed to me that she must have known something of the Frederic Miller checks. After all, they had been found in the cupboard in her own room. That was not, however, proof and I realized it.

Maud must have been in the hall, for Alexia had scarcely gone when Maud appeared silently in the doorway and, at Nugent's gesture, came in. She was preceded by a wave of violet sachet; her taffeta petticoat rustled sibilantly and her little dark eyes had brown pockets around them.

“May I ask a few more questions, Mrs. Chivery?” began Nugent and, as she gave a brief, birdlike little nod, he asked her pointblank, as he had asked Alexia, if she knew anything of a man named Frederic Miller. And when she thought for a moment, fixing her bright eyes upon him and tilting her black pompadour to one side, and then finally said that she didn't, he told her of the checks and showed them to her.

She looked at them for a long time and very thoughtfully; studying the dates, the endorsements, the cancellations. She looked at them indeed for so long a time and with such an intent and thoughtful expression in her whitely powdered face that I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was watching and listening intently for her reply. And so were Nugent and Craig. I glanced at them and they were watching her as intently as she was examining the checks. But when she looked up she said flatly, “No, I don't know anything about them.”

Nugent said slowly, “Mrs. Chivery, is there anything those checks, or anything about those checks, reminded you of? Just now when you first saw them?”

“N-no,” she said, and handed him the checks.

“You're sure?”

“Yes. That is …” she hesitated. And then said with a kind of plunge, “That is, for a moment I thought—but I was quite mistaken.”

“What did you think?” said Nugent very gently.

“I was mistaken,” said Maud. “The dates are wrong.”

“Wrong for what?” asked Nugent.

“Wrong for—well,” said Maud again with a kind of burst, “wrong for the kind of investment I thought he might have been making.”

Nugent leaned back in his chair. “You'd better tell me exactly what you mean, Mrs. Chivery.”

“But it—it has nothing to do with the murder. I can't tell you. I …”

“What investment?” said Nugent. And I remembered Maud's fuzzy phrases about Spain and jewels and said suddenly, surprising myself, “Spanish jewels?”

At which she shot me a dark, intent look. And said simply, “Yes.”

Which further surprised me.

And before anyone could question or say anything she got up. “I can't tell you the whole story,” she said. “But I do know that I was approached about an investment, and I believe that Conrad might have been approached, too. But these dates are all wrong. The Spanish jewels—well, never mind that …”

Nugent got up, too. Craig watched intently, yet with no expression whatever in his face. Nugent said, “You'll have to explain what you mean, Mrs. Chivery. At once.”

“No,” said Maud. “I don't have to. That's enough. I don't know anything about your Frederic Miller checks. Have you heard from the girl?”

“Miss Cable? No,” said Nugent, and looked quickly at Craig and said, “That is, not yet.”

Maud said, “Look here, Lieutenant. I've been thinking. I'm not sure that I've been on the right side of the—of this affair. I've thought from the beginning that the girl, Drue Cable, killed Conrad. But somehow I—well, I don't think she killed Claud. I don't know what to do. That is, I have no knowledge that is a clue. I don't know who killed Conrad or who killed Claud. The only thing that I know of and haven't wanted to tell you is the matter of the investment I spoke of just now. But I did not make the investment; obviously these checks were not connected with that, either. I'll tell you all about that, if you want to know. I'll tell you tomorrow. But not …”

“Why tomorrow?”

“No reason,” said Maud after a moment. “I—no reason. You'll have to believe me, for I”—she thought for another second or two and then said firmly, “I merely prefer it that way. And it really has nothing to do with the murder of Conrad or the murder of Claud. And it has nothing to do with Drue's disappearance.” Her lips set tightly together.

And Nugent could not shake her. She merely shook her head obstinately with its high black pompadour and refused to tell him, even when he brought all the force of law and argument against her.

Craig said wearily, “You can't withhold information, you know, Maud.”

And Maud said, “Can't I?” And did.

So in the end, only to save time, I imagine, Nugent let the thing rest and asked her what she knew of Drue's disappearance, and she said and insisted that she knew nothing and had not seen or talked to Drue for at least twenty-four hours.

Finally they let her go. Nugent looked baffled and Craig angry.

“There are points,” said Nugent, “to the earlier forms of medieval torture.”

Craig said slowly, “But Maud is honest, as a rule. And I think Claud's death has changed her view of the whole thing. I think what she was trying to say was that now she was on the side of—of …”

“Law and order,” suggested Nugent.

“Yes. In a sense.”

“Well, she's not doing a very good job of cooperating. Whose Spanish jewels? And where are they?”

“Probably in Spain,” said Craig. “Maud was made for a sucker's list. The point is to find Drue. All these other things can wait, can't they?”

“Unless they can be made to point the way to Drue,” said Nugent. “I'll do what I can with these checks.”

“For God's sake, do it quickly,” said Craig with a kind of groan.

It was, I believe, just then that the trooper who'd been on guard in the hall the night before came to Nugent. I hadn't realized until I saw him in the direct gray light from the windows how young he was. A boy, really, bony and tall with a thin, angular face which wore just then a look of desperation. But he had the courage to tell Nugent the truth—and then stand there biting his lip, but with his young eyes direct, waiting what came. I don't know what his punishment was; even then I felt sorry for him. But the point was that Anna had gone to Drue's room about eleven (to turn down the beds, she'd told the boy who'd believed her); she'd stayed with Drue, talking, for a while. Then she'd gone away but later—very much later, perhaps two in the morning—had brought him some coffee. He drank it, of course; and presently remembered sitting in a chair which faced Drue's door.

And that was all he'd remembered until he awoke, with a queer taste in his mouth, about six in the morning.

Nobody knew what Anna had put in the coffee; until I went and looked in my little instrument bag and some sedative I'd had—harmless in itself—wasn't there.

And when they sent for Anna, she was gone, too.

They found then—something after noon it was, I think—the bloodstained, yellow string glove—the mate to the one found near Claud Chivery; it was hidden under her flat, narrow little mattress.

But they didn't find Anna.

Oddly enough no one had missed her—oddly, but still comprehensibly. She had been ill and hysterical the day before; Beevens had told her to take that day off, to stay in her room and rest; Gertrude was to do Anna's work for her. In searching for Drue they had not (consequently informed of Anna's illness by Gertrude) entered Anna's room. It was an oversight, which only went to prove that such things (homely, trivial, perfectly understandable things like that) do happen and do complicate any police inquiry.

Nugent was furious and so were the troopers responsible for the omission, especially when they found the glove, which certainly ought to prove something and didn't, except it pointed suspicion toward Anna in a definite, material way that all my own odd encounters with the maid had never suggested.

Certainly, however, Anna's disappearance completed our demoralization.

Craig said, “They went together. They must have gone together. So Drue's—not alone …” and something like hope quickened in his eyes.

But I was afraid. So I told Nugent in detail all I knew of Anna—footsteps running from the meadow in the dusk—a black eye—an impression that someone was in her room with her and that she was frightened.

It was too little, however, and too tenuous a story.

Nugent looked at the small, black notebook again. “We've questioned the servants,” he said, “over and over. Anna was nervous but she seemed to know nothing …” he stopped, frowning, and then read aloud: “William Fanshawe Beevens—British birth, age fifty-four; Gertrude Schieffel, American birth. Mrs. Lydia Deithaler—that's the cook; here we are—Anna Haub, German birth, age thirty-six, came to America from Bavaria fourteen years ago, in employ of Conrad Brent since 1929, no former police record. That's all.” His lean dark face was so concentrated with thought it made me think again of a dark, sharp hatchet with glowing green eyes—which I realize however would be more or less in the nature of a phenomenon. “No former police record. No suspicious facts. She lived a quiet, hard-working life, apparently perfectly honest and devoted to the Brent family. Devoted …” he said thoughtfully, and looked at Craig who shook his head.

“I don't think she had any interest whatever in Germany or in the Bund. She must have left some kind of family in Germany—but if so I can't remember ever hearing of any of them. No, I don't think Anna would be likely to know anything of the Frederic Miller checks. Even if our surmise should turn out to be the answer, and Frederic Miller actually was somebody interested in the Bund. Anna wasn't smart enough, in just that way, I mean. She was shrewd but not—not scheming. Not clever.”

“What do you think has happened to her?”

“God knows,” said Craig. “If they're together though, she and Drue, there's some hope …”

I had let him get up again and sit in a chair, wrapped in a long camel's hair dressing-gown; he put his face then in his hands with a kind of desperate gesture.

It was after he knew about Anna that he redoubled his efforts to do something that, he was convinced, only he could do.

Twice already, that day (when I was out of the room) he'd tried to walk—once getting as far as the linen room again and the second time halfway down the stairs where he was found sitting, dizzily clinging to the bannisters, by one of the troopers and brought back.

The third time, late in the afternoon, with still no news, he sent me on a pretext to the kitchen, and this time he got as far as trousers and a sweater, and the fireplace bench of the lower hall. I found him there myself grimly upright, clinging to the bench with his eyes shut as if the room was going around him.

Peter helped me get him back to his room. And it was then that we had our long and curiously illuminating, and at the same time curiously baffling talk. It was long, that is, in content, not in time. All of us, I know, were strongly aware of the passage of time. It was growing dusk in the room, I remember, although it was still light outside with the clear, cold light of a late winter's afternoon. And Drue's disappearance was still unexplained.