“Do you mean that you think Fiora really does have a gun and shot herself with it? And then she hid the gun somewhere?”

  “I don’t say that—”

  “I think you did.”

  “I’ll be honest. It did occur to me because I can’t help thinking that if anybody had entered the house surely we’d have known it. I only wish Fiora had talked to me about whatever is troubling her.”

  “You think that she did it intentionally. Why?”

  “I cannot possibly imagine why. Unless she had some foolish little quarrel with Peter and—oh, wanted to arouse his sympathy or—I really can’t say. But poor Peter does look stricken.”

  “If you mean he looks guilty or self-reproachful, he doesn’t.” He looks just as he always did, Jenny thought wistfully; just as attractive, just as strong and sure of himself.

  Blanche shrugged. “I also think that Fiora’s going to stick to her story of somebody shooting her. Once Fiora makes up her little mind nothing will move her. You should know that,” Blanche said, stabbing neatly where it hurt.

  She twisted the knife by saying quickly, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Jenny. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for anything.”

  Oh, wouldn’t you, Jenny thought. She said, “When the police get here they’ll find it—if Fiora really had a gun.” She picked up the crystal lighter absently and because it was a rabbit suddenly thought of Peter’s dog. She had gone to the kennels with Peter to buy him. During the past year she had been almost as homesick for the dog’s thudding feet as she had been homesick for the house. She said, “Where was Skipper when all this was going on?”

  For just a second Blanche looked a little blank. “Oh! You mean that great black dog.”

  “Not exactly black. He’s a Kerry Blue.”

  “Yes, I know. He stays with the servants. Fiora doesn’t care much for dogs. Jenny, it surprised me when Fiora said you were her friend.”

  “It surprised me, too,” Jenny said frankly.

  “Have you been seeing each other?”

  “No. I haven’t seen Fiora since—oh, two months before Peter and I were divorced. And then I didn’t know—” She stopped because she was not about to touch upon that ugly and heartbreaking time, not in her memory and certainly not for Blanche’s ears.

  “It was a funny thing for Fiora to say,” Blanche said thoughtfully. “I’ve been her closest friend since we were in our teens. But of course you know that. Actually we came to New York together. We had big dreams. Fiora was going to go on the stage and I was going to do something big and important, I didn’t know just what. I got a job as secretary. Fiora didn’t have any job for a while so we lived on my earnings, which were not then very big. Then—oh, you know all this.”

  “I know it very well,” Jenny said steadily. “You were working for Art Furby. He invited you to dinner and asked you to bring a girl because Peter was to have dinner with him, too, and I wasn’t in town, I was here. You brought Fiora.”

  “I suppose you’ve hated me ever since. How was I to know that Fiora—well, that things would happen as they did. I didn’t dream that Fiora—” She checked herself. She fingered a heavy charm bracelet she wore, her only jewelry save a small and ladylike string of pearls. “Of course it was none of my business. That’s all in the past. I expect you want to start back to town soon.”

  It was an abrupt transition. Jenny paused for a moment. Then she said, “I don’t think we’ll be going back to town tonight.”

  Blanche’s eyebrows drew together. “You say that as if you’re prepared to stay on here indefinitely. But of course that’s impossible!”

  “I’ll stay as long as Peter wants me,” Jenny said serenely.

  “But—you can’t! His first wife! I really think—”

  “I think that’s my business—and Peter’s,” Jenny said, and then added with reluctant truth, “and Fiora’s.”

  “Dear Jenny, I’m afraid that is exactly what I was about to say.”

  And that’s one up for you, Jenny thought. It did seem a little childish, however, for her and Blanche to be sitting there hurling not very veiled insults at each other. She said peaceably, “You at any rate achieved your ambition. Cal tells me you are Peter’s assistant.”

  “Fiora—” Blanche began and again checked herself, but Jenny caught the implication, which was that Fiora had achieved her ambition, too, by marrying Peter. Blanche said, “His executive assistant. It’s a great honor—” She stopped as they both heard the siren of a police car, swooping along the driveway up to the steps, and stopping.

  Cal came running down the stairs to open the door.

  It was a practiced, swift reconnaissance; they searched the house and Jenny heard their quick footsteps overhead; they examined the pantry and the back stairs which led up from beside the refrigerator where Fiora had been standing when she was shot. They talked to Peter and Cal. They searched the grounds; they must have roused the young couple, Victor and Rosa, in the cottage and questioned them, for Jenny heard Skipper barking wildly off in the distance. In less than an hour, it seemed to Jenny, they left and Cal came in.

  “Nobody,” he said. “They think he’s miles away by this time if he had a car or a motorcycle hidden somewhere. They’re getting out an alarm for any suspicious character but Fiora couldn’t give them a description.”

  Blanche said, “Did they find any other guns in the house? In Fiora’s room for instance?”

  Cal gave her a thoughtful look. “No.”

  “Did they look for another gun?” she insisted.

  “They looked at Peter’s gun. It hadn’t been fired. They gave it back to him. He said there were no other guns in the house.”

  “A gun,” Blanche said, “is a very small thing.”

  Jenny broke in. “Blanche thinks that Fiora had a gun and shot herself with it.”

  “Oh,” Cal said. Peter was coming into the room and heard it. He said flatly, “Fiora hasn’t got a gun. The doctor’s gone. Jenny, Fiora wants you to sit with her tonight.”

  Jenny could feel her mouth open in stunned surprise. “Fiora wants me?”

  Blanche’s bracelet jangled slightly. “I’ll sit with Fiora—if she needs anyone.”

  Peter could get a Vleedam look of thickness around his jaws and he did so now, rather like the various Vleedam portraits which had now been banished from the library but which Jenny remembered with their pale, shrewd blue eyes and adamant faces. “Fiora said Jenny.”

  Blanche said, “Really, Peter! I think that’s asking too much of Jenny. Fiora doesn’t realize—”

  “I will if she wants me to,” Jenny said.

  “You mean if Peter wants you to,” Blanche said pleasantly. But her clear gaze said, you really are a very silly woman. “I’ll get a dressing gown for you. You can wear my size.”

  “I brought my bag,” Jenny said. “Thank you.”

  Cal said shortly, “I’ll get your bag out of the car,” but he didn’t approve of Jenny’s decision; she knew that. He went out. Jenny and Peter followed him into the hall. Blanche was already going upstairs.

  Peter said, “It’s good of you, Jenny. Fiora insisted. I don’t think she’s in any pain. The doctor gave her a strong sedative.”

  The door banged after Cal; Blanche’s neat figure in black was halfway up the long flight of stairs, her bracelet hand paused on the wide oak balustrade. So Jenny was not really alone with Peter. This was not the kind of reunion with Peter she had dreamed of, but it was reunion. “Peter,” she began without knowing what she intended to say.

  Peter’s eyes met her own directly. After a second he smiled, the warm and intimate kind of smile that always had made Jenny’s heart turn over.

  “I do appreciate everything you’ve done,” he said.

  Jenny reminded herself swiftly that Peter’s words were likely to be almost formal: he meant more than he said.

  “I haven’t done anything,” she said and was then sharply aware of Blanche’s bracelet tinkling a little as if Blanche had turned to look down at them. At the same moment, Cal came in the open door carrying her small bag and another bigger one which must be his own.

  So Cal, too, had come prepared to stay if necessary.

  Peter took Jenny’s bag. “I’ll show you—that is, of course, you know the guest rooms.” He looked just slightly embarrassed but not very. “Fiora has changed things quite a lot. But the northwest corner room—”

  He went upstairs ahead of Jenny. Blanche had vanished when they reached the upper hall. Cal whistled with rather satiric blitheness as he followed them; Jenny recognized the song: “Lover, Come Back to Me.” She pretended not to hear and Peter ushered Jenny into what had been Peter’s mother’s room.

  “Fiora made a sort of suite for us of the southeast rooms,”’ Peter said. “I always liked this room for the view but Fiora liked the sunny corner.”

  There was one lucky thing, Jenny thought swiftly; it was not the room she had shared with Peter. In her time it had been still furnished as Peter’s mother had used it, a big, rather shabby, mahogany and chintz kind of room with a great black marble fireplace and faded chintz draperies over the windows.

  Peter put her bag down on a handsome luggage rack.

  “It’s very different,” Jenny said, glancing around at the wide bed with white corduroy covering and headboard, the turquoise carpet, the tangerine velvet chairs.

  “Yes, different,” Peter’s lips tightened. “All at once workmen and decorators and things arrived. I let Fiora have her way. I can’t say I like the result. You never changed anything.”

  And perhaps that’s one of the ways I went wrong, Jenny thought bleakly: I was too much in love, I was too meek and yielding, too eager to please.

  If Peter had gone back in his thoughts to the time of their marriage he did not say so. He said instead, “I’ll take you to Fiora as soon as you’re ready.”

  Cal spoke from the doorway, “I’ll be next door, Jenny. If you want me during the night just call.”

  “Fiora’s going to be all right,” Peter said and went out, closing the door behind him. After a moment Jenny sank down into one of the deep armchairs because her knees, which had been remarkably steady all through the nightmarish goings-on, now suddenly weakened.

  It was a perfectly preposterous situation and it was only the more preposterous because Peter made it seem so entirely natural. He had asked her to come, so she had come. But she couldn’t decide, there was no way to surmise, the depth of Peter’s feelings for Fiora. In any event it was perfectly sure now that nobody could possibly accuse Peter of trying to murder his wife.

  In spite of Blanche’s arguments she did not believe for a moment that Fiora had got hold of a gun, shot herself—very carefully and cautiously—and then managed to dispose of the weapon. It was all perfectly clear and Jenny might as well have stayed at home; left to himself Peter would have thought it over, deliberately as he did all problems, and then called the doctor and police himself. But he hadn’t. So Jenny was in the house, near Peter. And Peter was waiting for her to go to Fiora and sit with her the rest of the night.

  She extricated herself from the deep chair; all of the new chairs in the house seemed to be especially designed for trapping any unwary customer. She opened her dressing case and pulled out her dressing gown. She got out of her beige dress and put it on a scented, silk-padded hanger. Fiora had really spared no expense in refurnishing the house.

  She brushed her hair and put on more lipstick, eyed herself in the mirror and decided that the primrose yellow of her dressing gown was becoming. If she were actually going to start her program of trying to beguile Peter from Fiora she ought to begin at once.

  When she opened the hall door at last, Peter was leaning against the newel post waiting for her, but he was not alone. Cal was sitting in another of the monstrous chairs, his long legs stretched out, smoking. Cal the watchdog, Jenny thought with exasperation. He gave her a lazy smile and said with too much admiration, “How very lovely!” So he had guessed her purpose in that prolonged primping before the mirror.

  Peter said, “Fiora’s room is this way.”

  “Good night, Jenny,” Cal said, and added too sweetly, “Good luck, my dear.”

  She resisted an impulse to slap Cal and followed Peter past the stairwell. The upper hall was like a T, the short line of the T running across the width of the house, between two bedrooms on the west and another bedroom opposite, the stairwell and an alcove; the long line of the T ran back toward the sunny east end of the house where unexpectedly there was a divided door blocking off the corridor.

  Formerly the hall had run straight from the head of the stairs between more bedrooms through the length of the house. It had ended in cedar closets and the back stairway.

  Peter opened half of the door. “We’ve made some changes,” he said. “Threw these rooms together for one big suite. My room’s on the northeast. The hall goes on through to the back stairs. But Fiora thought that it was a nice idea to put in a door, shutting off this end of the house. More privacy when we have guests. It really was the decorator’s idea. Her room is here—”

  The door was open. Fiora lay on a vast bed, looking as sweet and inviting as a ripe peach. “Jenny,” she said in a husky, dreamy kind of voice, “Come in.”

  Peter said, “This is very kind of you. Call me if you want anything. Good night.” The door closed after him.

  Fiora said, “Come over here, Jenny. Sit by me.” She hoisted herself up on her elbow. Her lacy nightgown fell away from the plaster of bandages on her arm. “Don’t leave me for a moment. You are my only friend in this house.”

  Chapter 5

  HER PINK LIPS WERE dry because she had had a sedative. Her words really made no sense, perhaps for the same reason. “You’d better go to sleep,” Jenny said prosaically.

  She thought actually, I have hated you for a year but this isn’t the time to say so. Perhaps there never was, in life, the time to say I hate you.

  Fiora said, “Oh, I know what I did to you. You must hate me. But you wouldn’t shoot me.”

  A strong intuition assailed Jenny; something was coming which would disarm her, which might even undermine her resolution to fight for Peter. She said, “Better not talk,” and went to a small chair. There was a light on the table beside the chair. “Shall I turn this out so you can sleep?”

  “You listen to me!” Fiora said. “I know Blanche didn’t shoot me. I could hear her at the phone in the hall. I even remember what she was saying, something about this merger she and Peter had been talking about all evening. She was saying that Peter seemed favorable and—then there was this shot.”

  Curiosity got the better of Jenny’s feeling that talk with Fiora would be a mistake. “Didn’t you have any warning? Didn’t you hear anything—”

  Fiora interrupted her. “No. I was listening to Blanche and thinking how clearly you can hear everything that’s said over the hall phone and I held open the door of the refrigerator with my left hand, this one”—she indicated her bandaged arm—“and was standing behind it, you know, reaching for an ice tray. There was the shot. And a pain in my arm and blood on my dress.”

  “But the thief had to be there, close to you.”

  “How would I know! I screamed and dropped the ice tray, and the cubes went all over the place, and Peter and Blanche yelled at each other, and called me and came running and—why, how could I have seen anybody? Shot like that.”

  “Fiora, it wasn’t Peter and it wasn’t Blanche and the thief got away.”

  Fiora got herself up on her elbow, winced as she moved her arm and dropped back again. “How can I be sure?”

  “Because the police searched the house while the doctor was here with you.”

  “Oh, I knew that. They questioned me. But suppose there never was any thief.” Fiora looked at Jenny from under velvety eyelashes.

  There was no purpose in arguing with her. Jenny said, “There must have been. You’d better go to sleep.”

  “Blanche couldn’t have been lying about her phone call,” Fiora said. “I heard her. But suppose they were both lying about Peter.”

  “Fiora! You don’t mean that Peter shot you and then Blanche lied to protect him!” Jenny looked at Fiora with horror. “That’s a dreadful thing to say.”

  “It’s worse to think.”

  “Peter’s gun—”

  “Suppose there’s another gun somewhere. He threw away that bullet.”

  “Peter—” Jenny swallowed hard. “Peter was worried about you. He wasn’t thinking. Besides—why?”

  “Why would Peter shoot me?” Fiora was silent, her eyes closed for so long that Jenny thought she’d fallen asleep. She hadn’t for she said suddenly and loudly, “Somebody shot me.”

  “Fiora, listen to me! Peter wouldn’t have shot you. Peter wouldn’t have hurt you. Peter—”

  “Still in love with him, aren’t you,” Fiora said without opening her eyes.

  And here it was again, contrarily, a kind of intimation that something was going to nibble at the edges of Jenny’s hatred for Fiora.

  Fiora said, “I was glad he called you. I asked you to sit with me tonight and I don’t want you to leave me for a minute. That’s why I said you were a friend of mine. You see,” Fiora said with simplicity, “you were not here when I was shot. So I said you were my friend because I wanted you to come and I want you to stay here till I find out for sure just what happened.”

  “Fiora, it was a thief. You surprised him. He was scared and shot you and got away.”

  Fiora said drowsily, “Besides, you really are a friend of mine. You didn’t object a bit when Peter asked you for a divorce.”

  It seemed to Jenny a peculiar basis upon which to claim friendship. She said, “Peter didn’t ask me for a divorce. He told me he was in love with you so—”

  “So you flounced off, all pride and hurt feelings. Silly of you, Jenny, really. But you gave me—at least you let me have—everything a woman could want. An attractive husband, rich, a real catch. Of course sometimes it’s a little hard to pry Peter loose from money. It’s the Dutch in him, I expect.”

  Jenny said tartly, “And now you say he tried to kill you!”

 

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