Call After Midnight, page 14
“Cal—”
“No sense in sticking my neck out.”
She opened her mouth and shut it again.
Cal laughed. “Nothing to say, is there?”
He turned to her, looked at her, took her suddenly in his arms, kissed her hard and long and released her. “There’s still nothing to say so don’t bother. Let’s go in.”
Jenny stood stock-still but she felt as if an unexpected sea had surged up over her, taking away her breath and her common sense, and she liked it.
“But Cal—but you—but Peter—”
“The funny thing is that I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.” Cal gave a low laugh.
But I liked it, Jenny thought again with dismay; I must be a trollop at heart.
“If you stay here another second I’m going to kiss you again.”
“Oh,” Jenny said in a small voice.
Cal laughed again. “I didn’t pine away and I’m not going to.” She felt him watching her closely. He said, “Peter’s waiting.”
“Oh yes,” Jenny said as they went up the steps and inside the house, and she thought, Cal didn’t mean what he seemed to mean. No, he couldn’t have meant it. Besides, she was Peter’s wife—not in fact but in her heart. When they entered the hall she gave one swift glance at Cal but he looked just the same, cool and unperturbed, although there was a little laughter in his eyes when he caught her glance. “Better fix up your lipstick.”
She said, “Oh,” again, as flustered as a young girl, and ran up the stairs.
Her lipstick was smudged; she repaired it; she brushed and smoothed her hair. Really, she thought. Have some sense. She went downstairs again.
Rosa was setting places in the dining room. Blanche and Peter were in the library. Mrs. Brown was there too, in a printed silk dress with a full skirt which billowed around her; she had a glass in her hand. Peter jumped up. “Where have you been? It’s been bedlam here! Newspapers, telephone calls, telegrams—”
“Never mind, Peter,” Blanche said. “I’ve got the list. I’ll see that everything is answered.”
“We were at Art’s place.” Cal went to the serving table, poured a drink for Jenny and one for himself. “By the way, Peter, do you know that secretary of Art’s?”
“Secretary?” Peter looked blank.
Blanche said, “You must mean Waldo Dodson.”
Cal nodded and settled himself in a chair. “He knew Fiora.”
“Oh,” Peter said, “I remember. Fiora recommended him, didn’t she?”
Blanche nodded. “He seems to be working out all right.”
“Didn’t he ever come to see Fiora?” Cal asked mildly.
Peter’s eyes widened. “Good heavens, no. He’s never been in this house. Why should he have come to see her?”
“Old friends.” Cal swished the ice in his glass.
Blanche sipped delicately at a tall glass which was barely tinged with whiskey. “Fiora wanted to help him.”
Cal said, “But, Blanche, you said you didn’t know any of Fiora’s former friends.”
“I forgot him,” Blanche said coolly. “Besides, I don’t think they were particularly good friends. I think they just happened to meet on the street. Fiora told me that he’d taken secretarial training when he had to give up and admit that he wasn’t going to get anywhere on the stage. He seemed discouraged and unhappy in the position he had then. Fiora liked to help old friends.”
Mrs. Brown unexpectedly uttered a loud and skeptical snort. Peter gave her a harried look. “Can I give you a drink, Mrs. Brown?”
She snorted again. This time, however, it seemed to mean assent. Peter took her glass, refilled it and brought it back to her. Mrs. Brown thanked him with great dignity, spilled some on her bosom, scrubbed it vigorously with a cocktail napkin and said that Fiora hadn’t troubled much to help her only relative.
Peter sighed, tightened his lips and went to stand before the hearth. Rosa wavered timidly in the doorway, looked at Blanche, at Peter, finally at Jenny, moistened her lips and couldn’t say a word. Peter said, “I believe dinner is served.”
It could not have been a pleasant meal and it was not. They served themselves and sat down at the long table and everybody seemed instinctively to avoid the place opposite Peter. Her own place once, Jenny thought, with a vague disbelief.
Mrs. Brown contrived to tuck away two more drinks without visible effect.
Halfway through supper the doorbell rang and Peter went to answer it, letting in a policeman who was heard to say that Captain Parenti had ordered him to stay in the house that night.
Peter didn’t like it. “Acts as if we’re all criminals,” he said coming back to the table.
“Routine,” Cal said and did not look at Jenny.
They lingered over coffee, which they had at the table. They drifted back to the library and Peter poured highballs, too early. Once the telephone rang, Blanche told Peter quickly that she’d answer it and went to the little panel at the end of the room and took the telephone. Mrs. Brown said rather indistinctly, “Well, think of that, a telephone right in the wall” and stared at it.
“It’s for you,” Blanche said to Cal.
Everyone listened as if thankful for something to listen to. Cal’s replies, however, were not very revealing. “Yes—yes—when? Certainly. That was right. Yes—”
He came back, was aware of the listening attention, and said it was his housekeeper in town. “My nephew’s there. Something about his dentist’s appointment.”
Jenny didn’t quite believe it; Cal’s face had its closed-in look, yet was rather satisfied, too. Mrs. Brown offered her only welcome contribution thus far by saying that she was going to bed. “No use sitting around here dumb as oysters. Looks to me as if none of you want to say a word. Yes, thank you, I’ll take a highball upstairs with me.” Suddenly she tittered. “Helps me get my beauty sleep,” she said and marched off.
“Whew,” Peter said. “Cal, what are they going to do at the inquest tomorrow? I mean what are they going to ask us?”
“How should I know! Don’t worry, Peter, just tell the truth.”
“It’ll be horrible,” Peter said and poured another drink.
“A hangover won’t help,” Cal said dryly. “Jenny, take a stroll on the terrace with me. I’ll get you a coat.” He spoke in a perfectly easy and natural way; there was not the slightest shade of difference in his manner. The little scene in the dusk before supper might never have happened. He only wanted to tell Jenny the real facts of the telephone call from Mrs. Cunningham and she knew it. She rose but Peter rose, too.
“I need a little fresh air, too,” Peter said. “Sleep better for it.”
Blanche came with them into the hall. The policeman, young and trim in his uniform, started up from a chair convulsively as if he’d been asleep. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “The Captain said nobody was to leave the house tonight.”
Peter’s chin set itself. Cal said mildly, “That’s all right. We understand. Quite all right.”
There seemed then nothing to do but go to bed. Blanche went to Jenny’s room with her. “I took some of Fiora’s things for our use. Mrs. Brown didn’t want to let me have them so I promised to return them. Rose found some new toothbrushes …I didn’t know that you and Cal were such close friends. How long has this been going on?”
Jenny replied almost too promptly. “Nothing has been going on.”
“Oh,” Blanche said. “Well, I’m very tired. I expect you are, too. I don’t look forward to tomorrow.”
“Neither do I,” Jenny said truthfully.
The room was like a remembered horror. There Peter had put her bag on the luggage rack. There she had sat and brushed her hair and admired herself. She shut the door firmly. She had lost her faith in keys and in any event there was no key for the door.
She looked at the frilly heap of pink chiffon nightgown on her bed and finally took it gingerly up and folded it away in a drawer. Better sleep in her own skin than in Fiora’s nightgown. A pink silk dressing gown laden with lace lay over a chair back.
Pink silk and lace! Fiora?
No, Arthur’s presumable lady-love could not have been Fiora. There was nothing identifiable about a choice of pink silk and lace dressing gowns. Thousands of women bought pink silk dressing gowns trimmed with lace.
Besides, Fiora would never have taken such a chance of losing Peter. Art would never have taken such a chance of losing Peter’s friendship. It was a fantastic speculation.
What a low mind I’m getting, Jenny thought crossly. She undressed quickly, opened the window above the terrace and turned off the light. She could hear Cal in the room next door, opening a window too, and the thump of bedsprings; it was comforting to know that someone was so near.
She remembered the dress Cal had remembered; it had been a favorite, white chiffon with a long coat of violet-colored taffeta; there’d been matching taffeta violets on the belt; he hadn’t remembered that. After a long time she decided that she was thinking too much about Cal and what he had said; Cal himself had ended the episode; he had briskly but naturally set the pattern for their continued friendship. It was of course the only pattern; she was in love with Peter, it was silly to indulge herself merely in gratified feminine vanity.
It was also silly—more than silly, downright foolish—to think anything at all about that unexpected moment in Cal’s arms. Cal—and she—would go on exactly along the friendly and natural terms which had established themselves during the past few days. Cal had made that clear and she hoped that she had made it clear, too.
The house was extremely still. Having threatened portentously all day, the rain came at last with merely a gentle murmur against the windowpanes. It was like the whisper of voices talking over things which couldn’t be spoken aloud.
Jenny awoke sharply, after how long a time she didn’t know, but knew only that she’d been asleep and that now the wind had risen and was driving the rain furiously against the windows and drumming down upon the terrace below. She also knew that there was someone in the room.
Chapter 14
THE RAIN AND WIND lashed at the windows. Yet she must have been conscious of some other sound, something different and something near which awakened her.
Turn on the light, she told herself. Reach out, find the lamp, turn on the light. She thought also, scream. There was nothing to scream about. No sound, no voice, nothing. Then she heard a little click as if something had been set down on a glass surface. It was followed instantly by a small rolling sound and then nothing. A gust of wind surged briskly through the room.
She waited a few seconds but the explanation was clear. The wind was gusty. Something on the dressing table had blown over and rolled off and that was all there was to it. It was hard though to force her arm to move, to find the lamp, turn on the light.
When she did, the room sprang to life and of course there was nobody there. The curtains were blowing. She got out of bed, partially closed the window, glanced around to discover whatever object it was which had been blown off the dressing table, saw nothing and went back to bed.
She left the light turned on though, half ashamed but indulging herself nevertheless. Once she thought of going to Cal’s room, rousing him, telling him that she was afraid—but of what? A gust of wind through the room, some noise, wind and rain certainly, which had awakened her? Some small object which had been blown off some table?
If the door had opened and then closed very quietly, there would have been that momentary, stronger gust of wind through the room! That was logical. It was also illogical; she decided quickly that she was making up fancies to frighten herself.
It was a long time, however, before she fell asleep again and then slept so late that when she went down to breakfast everybody had already eaten.
Peter and Blanche came in as she was finishing her coffee. Peter was wearing a gray business suit and dark tie as a concession to the formal occasion ahead of them. Already a black band, which must have survived some other Vleedam period of mourning, was properly in place on his sleeve. He said, “Good morning, Jenny,” and looked very sober.
Blanche said, “Well, you finally woke up. Surely you don’t take sleeping pills, Jenny.”
Sleeping pills, Jenny thought with an inward shudder. “Never,” she said firmly.
“Oh?” Blanche said. “Well, I don’t see how you can sleep so late. Are you ready to go? The police said the inquest is at eleven.”
“Don’t hurry,” Peter said. “Time enough.”
Jenny did hurry though, back upstairs to find her coat. The wind had died down, the rain dwindled to a drizzle. She glanced out the window and could not see the line where the gray water met the gray sky. She did see Mrs. Brown and Cal walking along the path by the breakwater. Mrs. Brown’s plaid coat made a brilliant patch of color and she seemed to be talking. Probably she was always talking, Jenny thought, and admired Cal for what seemed to be courteously close attention.
She looked for her coat, remembered that it was in the coat closet downstairs, went to the mirror to make sure her hair was smooth and saw an empty little bottle, lying on its side, just below the turquoise blue flounce of the dressing table.
She knew what it was before she picked it up, another little empty bottle which had once held sleeping pills. There was the same label and the same directions: “Mrs. Vleedam, two for sleep.”
She was instantly and perfectly sure that it was that bottle which had seemed to click upon the glass top of the dressing table and rolled—and then dropped to the carpet, half below the dressing-table flounce so she hadn’t seen it the night before.
Had someone then very quietly entered her room? Had someone stood there in the darkness? Had someone put that empty bottle on the table—and in the darkness had not set it down evenly, so it fell over with that tiny click and rolled and dropped?
Blanche had said, not five minutes ago, surely you don’t take sleeping pills. Blanche could have entered her room, put down the empty bottle and left—why? No reason. Anybody in the house could have done it. Why?
She felt sick and frightened more by the unknown than the known. The known was that she was uninjured, unharmed, and threatened nobody in the world. The known was that her death would benefit nobody in the world.
Peter called, “Jenny” from downstairs. She put the empty bottle in her handbag and went down. The door was open and Peter’s big town car stood at the foot of the steps. There was no chance to talk to Cal alone and tell him that another bottle had turned up and when and how. He spoke to her though as they were getting into the car, very low, touching her arm. “Take it easy. It’ll soon be over.”
She must have looked stricken and pale. Nobody looked quite normal. Even Mrs. Brown, whose presence was not necessary but who was obviously going to go anyway, had a mauve cast to her fleshy face.
The inquest, however, was much worse in anticipation than in fact. As it progressed Jenny saw the reason for its routine brevity: there was no question but that Fiora had been murdered, the inquest was merely a required process of law. It was clear, too, that the investigation of the murder was to be left to the police. At first this quiet and businesslike procedure was rather comforting; presently Jenny began to feel a little too strongly for comfort that the police had already arrived at a working hypothesis as to their investigation.
Almost before she realized it the inquest was over; the fact of murder had been formally established and a verdict given, which was murder by a person or persons unknown.
There was then a stir in the room. Jenny got numbly out of her golden oak chair and for the first time noted that Mrs. Brown was sitting riveted to the edge of her chair, her mouth slightly open, and that Art Furby sat beside Peter as if Peter might need his services as an attorney or merely as a friendly support, that the room was rather small and stuffy and smelled strongly of sweeping compound and that the coroner wore an unabashed toupee of jet black hair.
The young doctor, shaven now and neat, hurried away. Captain Parenti quietly disappeared as if there were no need to stay for the verdict, as indeed there was not. There were a few townspeople but only a few; several came forward, spoke to Peter and shook hands gravely. There were little knots of photographers in the hall and around the car; Jenny thought that they came mainly from nearby towns, perhaps one or two from New York. There were town police and state troopers. It was entirely orderly and quiet and Jenny’s respect for Captain Parenti increased. He had almost certainly taken measures to insure that orderliness. Not unnaturally her fear of the swarthy, tenacious little man increased, too.
Peter drove them home a little too fast; the drizzle had turned into heavy fog. As they turned into the driveway, Blanche said, “Well, that’s over.” Cal, sitting up beside Peter, said, “It’s just begun.”
A police car stood in the driveway. Peter’s careful self-control snapped; he slammed on the brakes so hard they were all jerked forward and Mrs. Brown squealed.
Captain Parenti crawled in a leisurely way out of the police car and came to Peter. He said something which Jenny didn’t hear but its purport was clear for Peter gave an angry kind of grunt and said, “Oh, all right.” He glanced back at the others. “You’d better have lunch; Parenti wants to talk to me.”
Cal touched Jenny’s arm as she got out of the car and drew her away from the little group now on the steps; Jenny went beside him as he strolled in a casual way along the path around the end of the house. She glanced back as the path curved. Peter was preceding Parenti up the steps, across the lower terrace, indignation in every line of his soberly clad figure. Parenti was hunched over, his head sticking out like a slow but determined turtle. Mrs. Brown and Blanche came along behind, Blanche’s head up as she watched Peter and Parenti. Another car came zooming around the curve, a sports car with the top up. “It’s Art,” Cal said. “Looks like that secretary of his with him. It was decent of him to turn up and rally around Peter this morning.”
They had walked out of sight of the driveway and steps when Cal said thoughtfully, “It struck me last night that perhaps Fiora was Art’s lady of the pink silk dressing gown. But I don’t think Art—or Fiora for that matter—could possibly have taken such a risk of Peter’s discovery. And I really don’t see why Art should have shot her.”
