House of Storm, page 17
A curious expression came into his eyes. “Well, honestly, I think Dick took it.”
She sat upright, staring at him. “Dick!”
He nodded. “I’m not sure. I only think so.”
“Why?”
“Because—well, he didn’t take any steps about finding it. He said it wasn’t important to anybody; he seemed too quick and eager to dismiss it, somehow. Yes,” Jim said, “I think Dick took it.” He got out cigarettes and lifted the candle for a light. The flame touched his tanned face with light. He was frowning a little, absently, his dark eyebrows straight, his mouth firm around the cigarette. He put down the candle and she said: “Why would Dick take the slug?” and already knew the answer.
“Because it came from his gun,” Jim replied.
Neither spoke for a moment, considering it. Then Jim said slowly: “They looked for guns, all around Middle Road. Not minutely: any number of guns could have been concealed of course, but there was no gun at all in Dick’s shack. Nobody knew whether or not he ever had a gun. I didn’t know, and Johnny the cook said he’d never seen a gun anywhere. Of course he was scared; still that’s what he said.”
“And Dick …”
“Dick said he didn’t have a gun.”
“He must have had!”
“It doesn’t seem to me likely that an ex-army man, living on a plantation, acting as a factor, wouldn’t have a gun. The disappearance of the slug certainly indicates that whoever took it wanted either to destroy the link to the gun that shot her, or to destroy the proof that the slug was not fired from my gun.”
“But if he had a gun, if she was shot with his gun …”
Jim interrupted. “Somebody could have got hold of it without Dick’s knowledge.”
“Then, even if the gun is found, it can’t help us.”
Jim’s face was suddenly rather guarded. “It might,” he said. “It might. Nonie, I want you to think back over the past day or two, or even before that. Try to remember if there was anything at all that seemed—oh, wrong. Not what you’d have expected. Different—and I’ve been trying to think, too, what it was that Seabury knew. I’m so sure that that was why he was killed that I think it can be taken as a working basis, so to speak. I’ve questioned; we’ve all questioned each other; so far as I can discover, Seabury came upstairs with the rest of us, said nothing in particular to anybody, and went to bed. If he talked to anybody later, then nobody knew it, or at least admits knowing it. I’ve gone over and over everything he said or did; I can’t find a loophole anywhere, can you? Yet there was something about Seabury that, looking back now, makes me feel that he knew who killed Hermione, perhaps had only then discovered it, and I don’t know what it is.” He stopped, lost in thought, trying as Nonie was trying to recall every detail, every small fact that Seabury had told him. He shook his head finally: “There was nothing about her will that was unexpected. He seemed to think that the cash in her possession didn’t quite square up with what she ought to have had, but on the other hand there was no evidence of theft.…”
Theft! “Oh, Jim, some money was taken from my billfold. You said to try to remember anything that was wrong, or unusual, or …”
His eyes were like sudden points of steel. “What do you mean?”
She told him quickly. She rose and went to the chest of drawers and, in the wavering candlelight, got out the alligator bag, showed him the billfold, told him the little she knew. He took the billfold in his hands and went to the candle, examining the narrow leather case closely, his brown face intent, highlighted in the mellow, wavering light.
The French windows from the balcony shivered as if giant hands pushed and fumbled blindly, seeking entry. Jim’s black hair was ruffled; he had put a coat over his sweater, and had shaved; he looked different, too, she thought. The lines of his jaw seemed clearer and somehow harder, and more mature. Dick had changed, but in another way. Perhaps it was not so much change as it was revealment of the real man that lay below the surface. Perhaps, indeed, murder snatched off the easy polite masks of everyday life. Certainly Nonie had not known until that morning that Lydia hated her; certainly until that morning she had not perceived Aurelia’s latent capacity for violence.
Jim said: “Is there anything else, Nonie? Anything?”
“No. Except …” She hesitated and he looked up at her quickly.
“Except what? Tell me …”
“It wasn’t anything. I was—homesick, perhaps, unused to the house … I was …”
“What, Nonie?”
“I was half-afraid. It was as if the house … well, watched me. And listened. It was absurd.” She hurried on, forestalling his questions. “There was no reason for it. No cause, nothing.”
But he didn’t question. He put the billfold back in her hand and as she returned it to the drawer, he said, unexpectedly: “I’d like to see that boy at Middle Road.”
“Boy! Do you mean Johnny …?”
“No, we questioned him. He said he knew nothing of the murder and I, for one, believed him. The other boy, the one with the concussion.”
The boy Dr. Riordan had gone to see, bringing Lydia from the village to Beadon Gates! Nonie remembered it as across a chasm of time and events. She said, puzzled: “Why, Jim?”
Jim’s face had suddenly a shut-in, remote look. “He just might know something. He had some sort of accident that afternoon. I asked Riordan about it. He said Hermione phoned for him and told him the boy had apparently fallen down the steps and knocked himself out. She found him. It happened while you were taking me to Elbow or returning—about that time, anyway. Riordan says he has a slight concussion. He didn’t want him to be questioned till he’s out of the woods, and since the boy was unconscious at the time Hermione was shot, there didn’t seem to be much point in questioning him then. But I …” He stopped, his face so deeply thoughtful that it had no expression she could read.
A picture of those curving white steps flashed across Nonie’s memory. Had Hermione found the boy, unconscious, at the foot of those steps only a few hours before Hermione herself was shot and fell at the top of that short stairway? She cried: “What possible connection, what …?”
“I want to see him,” Jim said and, as he spoke, without any warning at all, the door to the hall swung open, and Aurelia Beadon came into the room.
She had dressed in the beige shantung again with a green shawl over her shoulders. Her face was putty-colored with fatigue, and the anger, the trembling harsh vehemence which had been let go within her was still in control. She looked angrily at Jim. “I want to talk to you. I want to talk to Nonie.” Her full dark eyes went rapidly from Nonie to Jim and back again. “Nonie,” she said, “I’ve been your friend. I welcomed you into my home and I welcomed you as my brother’s promised wife. Listen to me. How long have you known Jim? Only since you came here. You’re a very rich girl. Do you think Jim doesn’t know that?”
Nonie laughed—unexpectedly and without intending it. She looked at Jim and he was looking at her, half-smiling. She started to reply and there was nothing to stay.
Aurelia’s hands worked in her lap. “You are wearing my brother’s ring. Nonie, I insist on this marriage. Even,” she paused and took another long breath and cried earnestly, “even if it were not for Roy, I could not let you, while under my care, become in any way involved with—with a man who is almost certain to be charged with murder.”
Her sincerity and her honesty, her distress, were disarming. Nonie replied as gravely and as honestly: “Aurelia, even if he is arrested for murder then I must be where I can help him. But he’ll be freed because he isn’t guilty.”
Aurelia made an impatient gesture. “You must be guided by me! I tell you—I say it before Jim, you must think of your money. Jim needed money; he has admitted it. He had no job; he’d have nothing if Hermione hadn’t been killed.”
Jim said quietly, as if he felt sorry for Aurelia: “But I do assure you that I don’t care whether Nonie’s rich or poor or—or anything. Anything, except that I love her,” he added, with a little flush coming up into his face.
“You love her!” Aurelia cried. “You—pretending to be Roy’s friend! If it hadn’t been for Roy you’d have been arrested by now!”
Roy said from the doorway: “May I come in?” Aurelia turned swiftly and he came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Aurelia, I heard what you said. Jim is not a fortune-hunter.”
“Nonie is very rich. Any young man would be glad to have all that money. Jim had nothing.…” Aurelia said sullenly, but Roy’s hand pressed harder and stopped her. He said, looking at Nonie: “My dear, this isn’t the time to tell you. I meant for you not to know until after our marriage.”
Someone moved in the hall at the door. Nonie was only vaguely aware of it, for she was looking at Roy. Jim put his hand on her arm. Nonie said slowly, “Roy, what do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to tell you. But you must know sometime. You see, Nonie dear, you’re not rich. There wasn’t anything left. Not anything at all.”
Aurelia caught her breath with a kind of cry. Roy said: “I’m sorry, Nonie. But it makes no difference to the people who really love you.”
Jim’s hand moved, his arm went around her protectively.
Aurelia lifted her head triumphantly. “You see, Nonie? The money makes no difference. Roy knew this. I didn’t, but …” She put her hand on Nonie’s arm and said affectionately and earnestly: “We don’t care about the money. It’s you Roy loves. Forget this infatuation for Jim. Believe me, it is only that. Roy has proved his love for you. Your marriage with him will be solid and enduring and happy.”
The slight fluttering motion in the doorway came forward. It was Lydia, who was laughing. She cried, “Oh, Aurelia, and you didn’t want Roy to marry me. You’ve hated me and fought me for years. But Nonie—oh, yes, Nonie was the perfect bride. Except she wants to marry somebody else. How do you feel now, Aurelia? Do you still hate me?” said Lydia, and laughed until she put her hand over her mouth as if aware of the hysterical strange sound in that house of storm and shadow.
18
THE WAVERING LIGHT OF the candle struck upward into their faces, changing them, making them strange to each other, glimmering whitely out of the shadows around them.
There was a sense of danger in the sound of Lydia’s high, strained laughter. Like shipwrecked voyagers in a frail and storm-tossed raft, it was as if a reckless motion within the raft might destroy its precarious balance. Aurelia made a quick step toward Lydia and stopped, for Lydia herself sensed that threat and pressed her white hand harder against her own red mouth. The broken sound in her throat died away. She drew herself up with a quiet and astonishing dignity. She put her hand, smudged with lipstick, to her red hair, touching it, patting it into place. But she turned to Nonie and said directly: “Is this true? Do you want to marry Jim?”
All at once the two women, Nonie and Lydia, seemed to be standing alone, removed from the others, aware only of the thing that was between them. “Yes,” Nonie said.
Lydia said, excluding the others by her very look, setting herself and Nonie apart, “I’ve loved Roy for a long time. That’s why I stayed on here. Always. But Aurelia hated me. I’ve no money except a small annuity. I … She hated me. She fought our marriage until—time works against a woman, Nonie. You’re too young to know that. But I’ve always loved Roy. I couldn’t bear to think of your marriage. I came here for the last time the night Hermione was murdered. I came to dinner. I was desperate and there was nothing I could do. Hermione knew it and taunted me. You didn’t understand, but I did. I …”
Roy tried to enter their suddenly isolated circle. “Lydia, stop … Lydia, my dear. You must not say these things.…”
Her brilliant green eyes did not waver. “Nonie, suppose they arrest Jim! Suppose they hang him.…”
“They can’t, they won’t …”
“They can, they can! If he’s innocent that’s murder, too. An innocent man hanged!”
Aurelia cried: “Don’t believe her, Nonie! Roy was never in love with her. He never wanted her.…”
Lydia said: “She’s jealous; she’s always been jealous. She never wanted me here at Beadon Gates as Roy’s wife. She knew I’d rule, not Aurelia. You are young; you’re a child. She’d have ruled you.…”
“That’s not true!” Aurelia cried. “How can you lie to her like that, Lydia? How can you …?”
Lydia’s green eyes still did not waver, yet she heard Aurelia and replied: “I’m not lying. Conscience—it’s a queer thing, conscience! What it lets you do and what it can’t let you do! Queer things—against your will …” The brightness had gone from her eyes; there was a blank, hazy look in them. Roy said gravely: “Lydia, you must not talk like this. If she wants to marry Jim, I’m not going to stand in their way.”
Nonie cried suddenly, knowing it for the truth: “Lydia, he loves you. He was sorry for me, he wanted to help me—he didn’t love me. It’s been you all along.…”
Aurelia interrupted with a sweeping, heavy defiance which carried all before it. “He loves you, Nonie. He could have married Lydia any time, all these years. She’s lying when she says I stopped it. I wouldn’t have stopped anything Roy wanted. I tell you it’s you he loves. You’ll be his wife. This is only another attempt of Lydia’s to get him back. He …”
Roy broke in: “Stop that, Aurelia! You and Lydia never got on together …”
“She hates me,” flashed Lydia.
Roy continued: “All this is beside the point just now.” He put out his hand gently, almost beseechingly toward Lydia. “Come, Lydia. We’ll talk, if you like, but it’s better not to now.”
She refused his hand. And with that astonishing dignity she turned and walked out of the room.
No one spoke until her lifted red head, her lovely, graceful figure, vanished into the hall. The candlelight wavered, sending changing shadows into the corners of the room. Aurelia looked at Nonie and said, also with a certain recovered and essential dignity: “Forget Lydia. The things she said have nothing to do with your life here as Roy’s wife. Believe me, my dear, and trust me.”
She, too, went away as quietly calm, as poised as Lydia.
Roy said again bluntly: “Lydia and Aurelia never got on together. Lydia—I’ll have to tell you the truth, Nonie. What she said is partly true, or rather it was partly true. But that’s past. Lydia …” he hesitated, a look of compunction and distress in his face, and Jim broke in with that new, grave maturity: “Nonie is to be my wife, Roy. She has no right to question you about anything.”
“Well,” Roy said bluntly again, “she can’t marry you unless we get you out of this thing. I don’t know what’s come over Dick. He’s like a different person. He hated Hermione. Yet he’s set on getting somebody hanged for murder.”
“Me,” Jim said shortly.
“Well, there’s one advantage of this storm; it gives us a respite, a chance to do something.” He began to search in his pockets absently, frowning. “I put the letter from the lawyers somewhere. The letter about Nonie’s money, I mean. You took it like a soldier, Nonie. I’m not rich; but your money or lack of money means nothing one way or the other to me, and I want you to know that. I thought—and I still think—I could make you happy.”
“Roy, I know. I thank you …” She couldn’t find words which said what was in her heart. But Roy understood and gave her a little smile and went on: “The fact seems to be simply that your father used his capital practically to the last cent. What’s salable in the estate—and I’m afraid your mother’s jewelry too, Nonie—will go to pay various debts. He was extravagant; but I don’t think anybody who knew him could find it in his heart to blame him.” He unfolded the letter he drew from his pocket.
“This came for you, Nonie,” he said, “that afternoon you took Jim in the boat—before Hermione … I took the liberty of opening it thinking that it might require an immediate cable in reply. Then this all started and I couldn’t bear to tell you.
“Here, you’d both better read it,” he continued. “It’s all I know about the thing. If there’s anything to be salvaged, they’ll do it. It’s a good firm, couldn’t be better.”
It was a communication from another world and almost in literal truth it seemed to carry no validity in the world into which they had been plunged. The paper rustled in Jim’s hand. The lawyer’s name at the top had long familiarity and no vestige of authority. The rustle of the paper was less real than the click of the shutters. Nonie told herself that she was an heiress dispossessed, and heard only phrases as Jim read the letter aloud.
But the phrases she heard were simple and conclusive, and actually the bare statement over the name of the firm of lawyers she had known all her life would have been enough. Brown and Hogarth did not make mistakes. They would have accounted for every penny of her father’s expenditures and of his estate before they wrote to her. Wind wrenched at the windows, shook the house and Jim’s voice lifted over the tumult: “ … estate left by your father—we were aware, for many years of the dwindling state of Mr. Hovenden’s capital investments and advised him on numerous occasions to curtail expenses. We very much regret—rigid and accurate accounting—no losses or bad investments—only what we regret to call extravagance—debts—notes at the bank—your mother’s jewelry—no stone unturned—sincere efforts to salvage anything possible. Yours faithfully …”
Jim folded up the letter.
Roy said: “It’s a changing world; he didn’t realize it.”
But when he was about to die, he’d thought of it, he’d worried; he’d wanted Nonie to be cared for; he’d sent for Roy. Nonie said: “He wanted you to marry me, Roy. I see that.…”
“He said nothing to me, if he did,” Roy said. “There’s only one reason why I asked you to marry me, Nonie.”
She said slowly: “I can see now where it went—he had a genius for spending.” Pictures of that gay—and fantastically extravagant—life flashed across her memory. The suites on boats, the chartered planes, the motor cars, the yachts, the summers in Bar Harbor or Scotland, the winters in Florida or Cannes, the gay, reckless course of spending money that had been her father’s life.
