House of Storm, page 16
Nobody spoke for a moment. Finally Dr. Riordan said, still staring at his arms: “And there’s another question. Aurelia brought it up. I don’t like it; up to now I’ve been on Jim’s side. But now—suppose Jim has already got that slug? Suppose it came from his gun?”
Roy thrust back his chair and got up. He was angry and flushed, his dark eyes flashing. “For that matter, suppose you never had a slug! Suppose you got rid of it for purposes of your own! I’m not saying you shot Hermione. But I am saying that you’re in this thing the same as the rest of us who knew her, and that you were in the house tonight when Seabury was killed.”
“I had the slug,” the doctor said imperturbably. “It’s gone. If it had no significance it wouldn’t have been stolen from my bag.”
Dick moved restively and said in an uneasy voice, as if not quite certain of his authority: “Look here, Riordan, let’s try to sift the thing down a little. You’re sure you did have the slug with you? You didn’t leave it in your office?”
The doctor gave him a look of scorn. “Of course I’m sure; and I’ll tell you the rest of it. I extracted the thing, put it in an envelope and put it in my bag. I intended to give it to Major Wells. I paid another call or two and came here to see Miss Hovenden. Wells left sooner than I expected. We had some food after he left; you all know this. I left my bag in the hall while I ate. I left it there, exactly when I went upstairs to wash my hands before we ate and I came directly to the dining room. I took the bag then when I left. I still had it when I came back and it wasn’t out of my sight during that time. I left it in the hall for awhile again; I took it upstairs when I went to bed. All that doesn’t matter. The truth is that any of you here could easily have removed it.”
“Who knew you had it?” Dick asked.
“Probably everybody guessed it, or could have. Miss Hovenden knew I had it; she saw the envelope. Miss Beadon knew it”—he glanced at Aurelia, who lifted her great dark eyes and nodded heavily—“you, Dick, were in the hall when I came out after lunch. Lydia came from the library. Either of you had a chance then to take the slug.”
Lydia gave a stifled cry. “I didn’t take it! I know nothing about it! You can search my room, you can search …”
Aurelia gave a sudden jarring laugh, as if a latent violence banked up within her had all at once burst out. Her face, though, was somber and, like the doctor’s, rather scornful. “Search?” she cried. “In this house! For so small a thing as a bullet?”
“The important thing,” Dr. Riordan said dryly, “is that it’s gone.”
Jim turned abruptly toward the doctor. “You had two questions; what about all the other questions? What was it Seabury knew? When did he discover it? Did he tell anyone what he knew? And, if so, who was it?”
Roy interrupted. “In other words, who killed him?”
Jim nodded. “Right. I’ve been trying to remember exactly what Seabury did and said tonight. He must have known whatever he knew when we were talking together tonight. Well, then what was it? Who saw him last? Who talked to him last? If whatever evidence he had came later, how did it come? When? Who knew what Seabury knew?”
Roy pushed back his swivel chair and rose. “If anybody knows that, Jim, he’s not very likely to admit it.” He sighed and stared down at the desk for a moment and then turned to Dick. “I’m damned if I know what to do. I cannot believe that anybody here murdered Seabury. It … I simply cannot believe it, that’s all.”
“What about the slug?” Dr. Riordan asked.
Dick stirred uneasily. “Personally, I don’t think the disappearance of that bullet matters much one way or another,” he said. “As you say, if it is evidence in Jim’s favor it would be purely negative evidence. It’s no evidence at all, really, unless we know what gun it came from. But in the meantime I think we ought to be sure the house is safe.”
“It’s rather late for that,” Aurelia snapped. “Whoever killed Seabury isn’t waiting around to be caught. He’s taken to the palmettoes long ago. He’ll never be found.” She believed what she said; it was implicit in her statement. And subtly, the shadowy figure of that conveniently anonymous murderer was re-established.
There was an undeniable logic about it. Dick, his small, wrinkled face a mask of tight anxiety, put it into words. “At some time or other Hermione has quarreled with practically everybody on the island. We could run down any number of quarrels, possibly even threats, and still not find the fellow who killed her.”
Jim said slowly: “But maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a quarrel. Maybe it was revenge. Or maybe there was something that …” he stopped, frowning, puzzled, groping into his own thoughts and then said abruptly: “Something she was doing that had to be stopped. Somebody she injured, somebody she threatened.”
Dick’s cheeks flushed. “All right. I may as well say what you are all thinking. You mean me. Saving my reason! Saving my body! Saving my soul!” Dick cried suddenly, his voice high and shaking. “And there were times when I could have killed her, too. Times when I saw what I was becoming. Times when there wasn’t any way out, when there wasn’t anything I could do. When I could see myself going down …”
His hands, his shoulders, his whole body were trembling. Roy went to him and put a hand on his arm, and Dick cried in that high, nerve-racked voice: “I’ve wanted to kill her. She knew I was helpless. She liked her power. She was a devil and I wanted to kill her. But I didn’t.” He shook off Roy’s hand and gave a frantic, despairing glance around the room. “You do believe me, don’t you? You do believe me?”
Jim said quickly: “Take it easy, Dick. We know you didn’t kill her.”
Dick’s bright, tragic eyes went to Jim. “She’d have done it to you, too. It was a game with her; a contest that she had to win. She had the whip hand and she’d have driven you the way she drove everybody.”
Jim said, “You’ve got an alibi, Dick. Everybody knows that you didn’t kill her.…”
Dick cried shrilly: “How do you know I didn’t? Nobody saw me here, in the house. Oh, I was here, as I said. I had a drink or two from the decanter. But Jebe didn’t see me. Nonie didn’t see me. It’s not very far from here to Middle Road if you go across through the banana plantation—if you don’t follow the road. I could have got there and shot her and come back and pretended to be tight and nobody would have known the difference.” He darted that bright, tragic look around the room again. “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought of it, all of you.”
Jim turned to Roy. “We can’t do anything tonight.”
Dick took a long breath. Everybody probably was looking away from him, giving him a chance to steady himself. Jim was right, of course. Nerves were frayed, tempers vulnerable, fear was like a skeleton nightmare, plunging headlong over jagged rocks.
Roy started toward the door. “We’ll make sure at any rate that the house is safe for the rest of the night.”
But Dick had not finished. He went to the door and stood with his hand on the latch, facing them. His head was lifted and a certain dogged authority came into his voice. “The catch is that I know I didn’t kill her. And I’m the police. Seabury …” he swallowed hard and said, “It’s up to me now. I’ve got to do what I think is right.”
Aurelia rose and came to the door as if she could sweep him aside. “What exactly do you mean by that?” she demanded.
Dick gave one look at Jim and then stared at the carpet. “I’ve got to arrest Jim.”
17
JIM, OF COURSE. JIM who was the only suspect. Jim who was in the house, who could have talked to Seabury alone, without anyone knowing. Jim, whom Major Wells had failed to arrest only, Nonie thought, because Roy had successfully argued against it—because someone had walked with her behind a hedge and had left a machete to mark his presence and they believed her story, and granted Jim a tenuous sort of alibi—and also because Jim couldn’t have escaped; at any moment the commissioner could put out his hand and reach Jim. It would have been difficult enough to leave the island in good weather, for there were only certain seaports and airports from which one could depart and these were well known and available to the police. Nobody could easily slip through their clutches. In a storm it was impossible. A small boat might leave the island—it would never in that storm reach another island.
Dick’s lowered face was wrinkled up into a curious expression of contrition, and yet of determination. It was a new look in Dick’s face. There was a new air about the way he stood, his shoulders squared, his feet planted firmly in the doorway. He was suddenly a different man.
Because Hermione’s strangling influence was gone? Was this present Dick the man he once had been, before Hermione’s unrelenting thirst for power had sucked away his strength of will?
Yet Dick, this resolute and determined Dick, was now a menace.
She looked at Jim.
He too was aware of the change in Dick. He said, with a tone of liking and respect in his voice in spite of the threat that this new Dick offered: “Give me a break, Dick.”
Dick, staring miserably at the floor, shook his head. “The evidence is against you, Jim. I can’t do anything else.”
“You can give me some time.”
Roy thrust back his chair and rose and went to Dick, putting his hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Look here, Dick, I’m going to appeal to you as a friend. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Don’t arrest Jim. Not just now. You don’t really believe that Jim did this terrible thing. Well, then be guided by your instinct.”
Dick did not answer for a moment. Then he lifted troubled eyes to Roy’s. “Roy, this is murder. Right here in this house—murder. Seabury didn’t deserve anything like that!”
“I know, Dick. I know. But think a minute, it won’t undo what harm’s been done to let the wrong man hang for it, will it?”
Dick shook his head stubbornly.
“I’ve got to do what I swore to do. I let Hermione get the best of me, yes. I’ve been a weakling. I know that. But I’m still a man and I was once a soldier.”
“All right, all right, Dick. But wait. Wait …” Roy hesitated. Suddenly his face cleared. “I’ve got it! The gun! Hold everything, Dick, and give us a chance to find the gun that killed her.”
Dick shook his head again. Jim was watching him with an expression that struck Nonie suddenly as rather strange. There was a kind of tentativeness in it, a listening look. What had Roy said? What had Dick said, with his protestations which had been so damning in fact, yet which had actually, paradoxically, convinced them of his innocence? Had that been Dick’s intention?
If Dick murdered Hermione, how terribly easy it would be for him, as Chief of Police, to save himself by accusing another man! Suppose he charged him with murder …There was already so strong a case against Jim that the very slightest additional evidence might sway a jury. How easy it would be to arrange that additional evidence—falsely, treacherously, yet convincingly!
Aurelia said angrily: “Dick is right. It’s his duty. He’s right.…”
Roy’s voice rose about Aurelia’s. “I’ll make a deal with you, Dick. Give us twenty-four hours; give us twelve hours.”
“To do what?” Dick said.
“To find the gun.”
“That’s impossible! You can’t do it.”
“Then you’ll not lose.”
Aurelia was angry. The capacity for violence that for the first time Nonie knew lay smoldering back of those full dark eyes, burst out again. She cried in a heavy shaken voice: “You can arrest Jim whenever you want to. Arrest him now. But search the house! Whoever killed Seabury may still be here—waiting—hiding—wanting to kill again. Are you going to give him a chance to murder us in our beds?”
The unwelcome, nebulous figure, the stealthily terrible figure, was again invoked.
Roy said: “Suppose she’s right, Dick.”
Dick all at once yielded. “Okay, Roy. If Jim doesn’t try to get away, I’ll wait till I can talk to Wells. That’s a parole, Jim.…”
Aurelia interrupted with the shaken, deep vehemence which the night had unleashed in her, as it had unleashed the storm outside. “You’ll never find the gun! You’re making a mistake, Dick. You’ll regret it.” It was an inconsistence which did not seem to occur to her, but which emphasized her new hatred for Jim. She turned to Roy. “You said a door was open. I thought you locked the doors.”
Roy shrugged. “Half the keys were missing. We’ve never locked the house. It doesn’t matter. A big house like this! If anybody wants to get in, he can get in.”
Her eyes flashed. “Well, he’s got to be kept out. You’ve got to make the house safe. Bolt all the shutters, bolt the doors …” She swept across to the nearest French window and shook it and worked the bolt angrily.
The men searched the house. Making it safe, Aurelia said. Safe from the outside. Was it safe from the inside?
Nonie listened through the roar of the wind to the intermittent sound of feet tramping through the house, doors opening and closing, voices. It was still very dark; lights were on now everywhere; yet she had a sense of morning beginning.
Aurelia helped the men in their search. Lydia stood in the doorway, lounged in the hall, listened, and smoked and seemed lost in thought. They found no one. At Aurelia’s insistence all the doors, all the windows in the big house were locked or bolted or, even, nailed up—methodically, room by room. It took time, and the sound of a hammer in Roy’s hand echoed hollowly through the house like leaden footsteps, near and far away, muffled momentarily by the gusts of wind and the wild crash of the sea, only to resume when the crescendo of the storm passed, marching through the house. Like the tread of an inexorable presence, an avenger.
Had she been aware of the coming of that avenger before, in fact, it had arrived? Had the house been aware of it, too, listening and waiting?
That was fancy, Nonie told herself again; there had been then nothing to fear.
The heavy and revengeful sound of the hammer stopped. Roy came back into the hall, and Dr. Riordan, and then Jim and Dick Fenby.
Roy said firmly: “We’ve done everything we can do. The point now is to get some rest.”
Everyone tacitly and helplessly agreed. Nonie followed Aurelia and Lydia up the stairs, leaving the men in the hall below. Two of them would sit up for the rest of the night, they decided, and if the storm continued those two would rest during the day while the other two took over the chore of guarding the house and its occupants.
A strange chore; certainly an unnecessary one since the house had been searched and so heavily bolted and barred. Jim and Roy dragged out lounge chairs, into the hall.
“We may as well sit up,” Lydia said at the top of the stairs. “It’s nearly morning anyway. There’s not going to be much sleep in this house.”
Dr. Riordan heard her. “You’d better try to sleep,” he said, his lips thin and disapproving. “We’ve got to keep our heads. Steady nerves. Keep control.”
“My nerves are all right,” Lydia said, and went down the hall.
But Lydia was right about there being little sleep in the house during what was left of the night. Hours later, Nonie was still huddled on the long wicker chair, wrapped in an eiderdown which she pulled from the great old armoire, and which smelled of camphor.
The storm grew steadily worse. The winds increased in violence, the sea rose and roared in great tumbling breakers all around the island, hungrily, snatching at it with wild white fingers that curled out of the blackness. The bougainvillaea was torn in shreds from the balcony; the banana plantation was uprooted and lay flat and beaten; the palms strained at their roots as if they were endowed themselves with wild and frightened life; a branch of some tree crashed down upon the balcony so near that Nonie thought it must have struck its way into the house; a spreading damp patch grew in a corner of the ceiling from a broken tile somewhere along the corner of the roof. It was as if the whole of existence had joined in a secret league of destruction.
She did, however, drift into a half-sleep, for when she roused the room was dark, and Jim was knocking and calling her name. He came in as she sat up, frightened in the sudden, dreary twilight. He had a tray and a small silver candlestick.
“Okay?” he said. “The lights have gone off. Lines are down.” He put the tray on a table and lighted the candle, looking quickly into her face above the waving little flame. “I’ve brought you coffee.”
She rose, stumbling on the eiderdown. “Oh, Jim, what are we going to do?”
He caught her hands; his own were warm and steady. Keep our heads, the doctor had said; keep control. But Jim knew exactly how she had felt during those long, gray hours. He held her quietly for a moment and then put her back in the chair, wrapped the eiderdown around her and poured coffee. “Drink this,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Jim, who killed him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t. I didn’t. That leaves so few people in the house and not one of them—not one of them could be a homicidal …” She could feel her voice rising incoherently.
He heard it too. “Steady, Nonie. I’ve thought of that too. Everybody in the house is perfectly sane and accountable. That’s my belief and that’s Riordan’s. I asked him. I think he’d know. Besides, I know everybody here; they are all just as usual, except of course, scared. But perfectly sane. So dismiss that from your mind. Drink your coffee.”
The candle flame wavered and reflected itself in Jim’s eyes. She lifted the hot cup to her lips. He said: “Roy and I talked while we were waiting. He thinks the only thing we can do is wait until the storm is over. The telephone is out, too, and will be. We can’t even get the operator in the village now. The road along the coast will be impassable. The storm seems to be passing directly along the island, so he says there’ll be a kind of lull when the center reaches us; then more winds of probably stronger hurricane force.”
“The slug, Jim! What about the slug? Somebody in the house must have taken it.”
