The Iron Gates

Chapter 11

“Mr. Sands?”

“Yes. Sit down, Miss Morrow.”

“Mr. Sands, is this the end of it? It must be the end of it. She’s dead now — the inquest is over — she’s going to be buried this afternoon...”

“Why not sit down?” Sands said and waited while Polly let herself drop into a chair.

She wore a black dress and a dark fur coat and the brim of her black hat shaded her eyes. She looked thinner than he remembered her, and more vulnerable. She kept her head down when she talked as if she was trying to hide behind her hat.

“I don’t know why I came here. To get away from the family, I guess, and the smell of those damned flowers. Calla lilies. I feel as if they’re sprouting out of my ears.”

“They aren’t.”

She gave a tight little smile. “Nice to know. Anyway, I haven’t any reason for being here, I haven’t anything to tell you. I guess — well, I wanted someone to talk to.”

“Normal.”

“It is? Most people would say it’s very abnormal to be dashing around town on the morning of your stepmother’s funeral. Especially after the way she died. Dr. Goodrich said it’s humanly impossible for anyone to scale that fence. Yet she did it.” She bit her underlip. “Isn’t that just like Lucille? A surprise to the very end. Not one of us really knew a damn thing about her because she didn’t talk about herself. How can you know anything about a person without the evidence of her own words? And even then...”

“Yes, even then,” Sands said.

“What a mess.” She stared moodily at a corner of the desk. “What a filthy mess.”

“You sound as if you’re about to say, what have I done to deserve all this?”

“Well, I do say it. What have I?”

“I wouldn’t know. But if you’re looking for any system of logic in this world, in terms of human justice, you’re younger than I thought.”

“Twenty-five. But I’ve never been young.”

“Women are notoriously fond of that cliché,” Sands said. “Possibly there’s some truth in it. Girls are usually held more responsible for their behavior than boys, and any sort of responsibility is aging.”

Perhaps mine most of all, he thought. The collection of an eye for an eye. A mind for a mind.

She raised her head and looked at him. “You’ve changed quite a bit since I saw you years ago.”

“So have you. And what have we done to deserve all this?”

He smiled but she continued to regard him soberly. “I really meant that.”

“I know you did. Charming.”

She began to put on her gloves. “I guess I’m just wasting your time, I’d better be going. You don’t take me seriously.”

“I don’t take you seriously?” He raised his eyebrows. “Four people dead and I don’t take you seriously? It’s four now. The grand total. As you say, this must be the end of it. The finale — the climbing of a fence that can’t be climbed, smash, bang, zowie.”

“You needn’t...”

“No, I needn’t, but I will. She died a hideous death and one of you is responsible. You, or your father, or your brother, or your aunt. It’s that simple, and that complicated. She wasn’t killed cleanly, she was hounded to death. As by-products, there were two other deaths.”

“You make us out a lovely family,” she said dully. “Perfectly lovely. I’ll be going now. Thanks for cheering me up, you and the calla lilies.”

“It’s not my business to cheer you up. Lieutenant Frome is at the Ford Hotel.”

“What of it?”

“He seems a pleasant young man, though a little distraught. Having girl trouble. Once he’s overseas I expect he’ll forget about it.”

She rose, drawing her coat close around her. “I’ve sent him back his ring. It would be useless to drag him into this mess. As you were kind enough to point out, it’s a family, matter and we’ll keep it in the family.”

“Why not let him decide that?”

“I make my own decisions and always have.”

“Oh, sure. You have what is known as a lot of character, meaning you can be wrong at the top of your lungs.” He got up and held out his hand to her across the desk. “Well, good-bye. It was nice seeing you.”

She ignored his hand, recognizing the gesture as ironic. “Good-bye.” ’

“See you at the funeral.”

She paused on the way to the door and turned around. “Must you come?”

“Hell, I like funerals. I like to give my clients a good send-off. I’m having a wreath made: Happy Landing, Lucille.”

Her face began to crumple and she put out one hand as if to balance herself. “I have never — met — a more inhuman man.”

“Inhuman?” He walked toward her slowly. “Do you realize that not one of you has given me a scrap of information to help me solve these murders? I might have saved Cora Green and your stepmother, and Eddy Greeley.”

“Two insane people,” she said in a bitter voice. “And a dope fiend. It was practically euthanasia. They were all old and hopeless. It’s the young ones, Martin and me, who have to live on and suffer and never be able to forget or lead happy normal lives. It was Martin and me who had to live without a real mother. It was I who had to give up the only person I’ve ever really loved because I couldn’t bear to have him disgraced too. Officers in the army can’t afford to get mixed up in a scandal.”

“That’s his business.”

“No, it’s mine. If he lost his commission, all through our marriage every time we quarreled he would fling it up to me.”

“If he’s the flinging-up type he won’t need any excuse.”

“I didn’t say he was that type! He isn’t!”

“What you’re saying is, that’s what you’d do if you were he. Well, I’m not Dorothy Dix, I don’t give a damn what you do as long as it doesn’t come under homicide.”

He thought she was on the verge of walking out and slamming the door. Instead she went back and sat down and took off her gloves again.

“All right,” she said calmly. “What can I do to help you find out the truth?”

“Talk.”

“About what?”

“It was on a Sunday, wasn’t it, that you and your father and brother went to get Lieutenant Frome. And on Monday your stepmother ran away. Tell me everything that happened on those two days, what was said and who said it, even the most trivial things.”

“I don’t see how that will help.”

“I do. Up to that point you were a fairly normal family group. You had made the adjustments to your real mother’s death, and were living along with the normal trivial quarrels and jokes and affection...”

“That’s not true. Not for me, anyway. I never adjusted to my mother’s death and I had no affection for Lucille. I have never forgiven my father for marrying again.”

“In any case you managed to live with her, like the rest, and even found her useful and competent sometimes, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“What I’m getting at is that something must have happened on that Sunday to precipitate matters. It doesn’t look to me as if someone had been brooding for years about sending Lucille an amputated finger and waiting for a convenient train wreck. No, I think that on Sunday someone received a revelation, and the wreck itself suggested a means of getting back at Lucille.”

“That leaves Edith out. She was at home.”

“Yes.”

“And that Sunday was just the same as other Sundays. I got up the same time as I always do and was the first one down for breakfast. Is that the sort of thing you want to hear?”

“Yes.”

“Annie gave me orange juice and toast and coffee. The other maid, Della, was at church. Then Edith came down. She was a little fluttery about Giles coming and I remember she kept saying ‘today of all days,’ which annoyed me. I don’t like fusses.”

She paused, frowning thoughtfully down at her hands. “Oh, yes. Then father couldn’t find something, as usual, and I heard Lucille talking up the stairs to him in the way she had — as if the rest of us were a bunch of children and she the well-trained nursemaid. She said something about trying the cedar closet and then she came in and had breakfast, and she and Edith talked. I expect Edith said the usual things to me, about my manners and my posture — she always did. After that Edith went up to get Martin and he came down and began to kid me about Giles. As soon as Martin came in Lucille left. I remember that because it was so pointed.”

“Pointed?”

“Yes. Now that father and Edith weren’t there she didn’t have to put up with us and our chatter, she could get up and leave. When father was there she was all sweet and silky. No, I’m not being imaginative, either. You should have seen her face when I told her I was getting married. She positively beamed. One out, two to go, see? Perhaps Martin would get married too, and Edith might die, and then she could be alone with father. That’s what she wanted. She never fooled Martin and me for an instant — even before...”

She stopped.

“Even before your mother died?” Sands said.

“Yes. Even then. She could hide it in front of grownups but not in front of us. Not that we were so perceptive and subtle, but because adults are so stupid about hiding things from children. They overdo it and you can smell the corn miles away. Well, that’s why we didn’t like her — because she was in love with my father. And she — stayed that way.”

“And he?”

“Oh, he loved her,” she said grudgingly. “Not in the same way that he loved my mother — Lucille was so different from her. Father always had to look after Mildred, but when he married Lucille she was the one who looked after him. She and Edith. Poor Father.”

“Why poor?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because — well, I guess not many people understand my father. He’s a very good doctor, there’s no better gynecologist in the city. All day and half the night he’d be at his office or one of the hospitals or making his calls — very skillful and authoritative and all that — and then he’d come home and be gently and unobtrusively forced into taking aspirins and lying down for a rest and eating the right food. Sort of a schizophrenic existence. And all through it he’s remained good-natured and kind and... well, a good egg. A couple of years ago Edith and Lucille pressed him into retiring from full practice. Maybe they were right, I don’t know. He’s never had very good health and a doctor’s life is a hard one. Still — it’s a thing for a man to settle by himself.”

“Like marriage.”

She flushed and said coldly, “That’s different.”

“All domineering women resent domineering women.”

“A directly domineering woman is one thing, a sly managing female is another.”

“Very feministic.”

“And I didn’t come here to argue.”

“Then back to Sunday.”

“I’ve told you everything. It was the most ordinary day in the world until we ran into the train wreck. From then on it became very confused. We all worked steadily until late that night. I hardly saw any of the others. I helped undress and wash the wounded and make beds and things like that. I haven’t had much real hospital training, that’s all I could do. I took time off to phone home because I knew Edith would be worried.” Again the grudging note in her voice. “Lucille, too, I suppose, though not about us. That’s really all I can tell you.”

She got up, a stocky, healthy-looking girl with a direct and somewhat defiant gaze.

“I’ve talked too much,” she said curtly, pulling on her gloves.

“You’ve been very helpful.”

“I... I’d rather you didn’t tell the others I came here this morning. They wouldn’t like it.” She raised her head proudly. “Not that I’m in the least frightened.”

“It might be wise to be a little frightened.”

“If I admitted, in words, that I was even a little frightened, I’d never go home again.”

She went out, the echo of her own words ringing in her ears: never go home again, never go home again.

But she could not resist a challenge, especially one that she presented to herself. And so she drove straight home.

She let herself in with her own key. As soon as the door opened she could smell the flowers, the heavy cloying calla lilies and the poisonously sweet carnations. Funeral flowers.

With Deepest Condolences — With Sincerest Sorrow.

Please omit flowers, the notice in the paper had read. But some of their friends thought a funeral just wasn’t a funeral without flowers. And so they kept arriving by personal messengers and florist vans, to be unwrapped by Annie, and stacked up haphazardly in the living room by a distraught and red-eyed Edith.

“Idiots,” Polly said through clenched teeth. “Idiots, idiots.”

Edith came out of the living room. She looked old and tragic and she kept pressing one hand to her head as if to press away the pain.

“I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do with all these flowers.”

“Throw them out.”

“It wouldn’t look right. Someone might see us. It seems so silly, sending flowers when she isn’t even here.” Her words ended in a sob. “I have this blinding headache, I can’t seem to think.”

“Ask Father to give you something.”

“No, I can’t bother him. He didn’t sleep all night.” The front door opened and Martin came in. A blast of cold air swept down the hall.

“Hello,” Martin said cheerfully. “You’ve been out, Polly?”

Edith turned away and went quickly up the stairs without speaking to him.

Martin frowned at her back. “What’s the matter with her lately? As soon as I come she goes.”

“You get on her nerves, which doesn’t surprise me. Give me a cigarette.”

He tossed a package of cigarettes toward her. “Well, why do I get on her nerves?”

“Respect for the dead. That sort of thing.”

“She’s been doing this for two weeks. Lucille wasn’t dead two weeks ago.”

“If you’re worried, why not ask her?”

“No, thanks. My policy is to stay away from the rest of the family as much as I can.”

“Mine too,” Polly said dryly. “And isn’t that a coincidence?”

Martin looked at her with detachment. “Pretty long in the tooth and claw this morning, aren’t you? Where have you been?”

“Here and there.”

“Well, well.” He looked amused but she could tell from the way his eyes narrowed that he was angry. “I don’t seem to be much of a success with the ladies today. One walks out, the other shuts up.”

“It’s just pure envy. We’d like to be able to bury ourselves in books too.”

“My work has to be done.”

“Come hell or high water. You’ve made that clear.”

“Oh, Lord.” He put his hand out and caught her arm and smiled suddenly. “Look, there’s no sense in the two of us fighting. We’re the ones that have to stick together — aren’t we?”

For a minute she couldn’t speak. She felt the tenseness in his voice and in his eyes, crinkled at the corners with smiling lines, yet cold because they were always turned in upon himself.

“Oh, sure,” she said calmly, and shrugged away his hand. “We’ll all stick together. There’s not much else we can do.”

“I’ll be away this afternoon,” Janet Green told her secretary. “See that these are ready for me in the morning and that Miss Lance gets the samples, and...” Her eyes settled vacantly on the desk. “Oh, that’s all.” The secretary picked up the samples, frowning. Miss Green had been very absent-minded for the past few days. She was always forgetting things and breaking off sentences in the middle. In the secretary’s opinion, Miss Green had been working too hard and should have had a holiday after the death of her sister.

As she passed across the front of the desk she gave Miss Green a sharp glance. Janet caught it.

“Damn,” she muttered when the door closed. “I’ll have to keep my mind on business. I shouldn’t go there this afternoon. It’s not my affair.”

But it is, she answered herself silently. I have every right to go to her funeral; Cora died because of her.

Since she had read of Lucille’s suicide in the paper, Janet’s conscience had been troubling her. She felt that she had not done enough to help Lucille and that she was, in a sense, responsible for what happened. Twice she had begun to call Sands on the telephone seeking reassurance and explanations, but each time she had hung up again. Then the urge had seized her to go and see the Morrow family. She felt vaguely that once she had seen them, things would be clearer and the whole “business less mysterious and frightening.

Since she did not want an actual encounter with the family she decided to go to the cemetery where Lucille was to be buried. There would be a crowd of curiosity-seekers there; no one would notice her.

But Janet’s hope of remaining unnoticed was dispelled almost as soon as she arrived. Bad weather had kept most of the curiosity-seekers away; and to make it worse, she arrived late and the first person she saw was Sands.

He was standing apart from the little group of people clustered around the open grave. He had his hat off and the driving snow had whitened his hair. She began to walk around to the other side, conscious of the crunching noise her feet made in the snow.

He heard it, and looked up and nodded at her.

Janet hesitated and stood still. What bad taste to come here, she thought, what idiocy. If I could only get away quietly...

But it was too late, she couldn’t get away. The minister was praying, and one of the group around the grave had turned around and was looking at her. It was an older woman, heavily draped in black, with a pale pinched face and dark tired eyes which said, without anger, without bitterness: What are you doing here? Leave us alone.

Ashes to ashes.

“Edith Morrow,” Sands’ voice said in her ear. Janet jumped. She hadn’t heard him approaching and there was something sinister in the way he said, “Edith Morrow.”

Dust to dust.

“Dr. Morrow’s sister,” Sands said. “Why did you come?”

“I wanted to see the Morrows.”

“Well, there they are. Standing together, as usual. They do it well.”

As if to disprove his statement, Edith Morrow turned and began walking toward them.

“You have no right to be here,” she said to Sands in her high desperate voice. “Trailing us even to the grave — despicable...” She made a nervous gesture with one black-gloved hand. “And these others — why did they come? Why can’t they leave us alone?”

“This is Miss Green,” Sands said quietly. “Cora Green’s sister.”

“C... Cora Green...?”

Janet flushed. “I agree, I shouldn’t have come. I’ll leave immediately.”

“It’s all over anyway,” Edith said harshly.

“I’m sorry. I thought of calling on you — but then I’m a stranger to you.”

“Why did you want to call?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought I could help, perhaps.

I met Mrs. Morrow at the hospital...” She knew she was saying all the wrong things and turned to Sands for help. But he had slipped away. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

She turned back and met Edith’s gaze.

“I was rude,” Edith said. “The apology should be mine.”

“No, not at all.”

“It was your sister who died?”

“Yes.”

“We — one of us...”

“Oh, I don’t look at it like that at all,” Janet said in embarrassment. “I just thought I’d — like to see you all.”

“To judge us?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“You’ve seen us now.” Edith leaned closer and her voice was a whisper. “Tell me, which one of us? Look at us and tell me, which one of us?”

There was a silence. Then Janet said, with warm deep sympathy, “You poor woman. It must be terrible for you!”

She no longer felt uncomfortable herself because here was someone who needed comforting.

“Mr. Sands could be wrong, you know,” she said in her rich voice. “Policemen often are. Very likely it’ll turn out that he’s been far too imaginative, and some day perhaps you’ll all be laughing about how suspicious you were of each other.”

“If I could think that...”

“Well, I do think it. We’re all inclined to take things too seriously, all except Cora. She was a great laugher. Sometimes when I’m alone at night and feeling mopey I remember some of the jokes she made and get to laughing myself. I haven’t any real friends, you know, there was just Cora.”

“Nor have I.”

“I’ve always been too busy to make friends, and now when I could use some I don’t know how to go about it.”

“I wouldn’t know either,” Edith said. She was astonished to find herself talking so personally and at such an odd time to a total stranger. The wind had whipped a little color to her cheeks, and she felt her rigid neck relaxing and the hard dry lump in her throat dissolving. She had stepped temporarily outside the walls of her own world and was reluctant to go back. They were waiting for her, she knew, but she kept her eyes fixed deliberately on Janet, a stranger, and so one who could be trusted.

“What do you do?” Edith said. “I mean, suppose you want to have a — a good time, what do you do?”

“Oh, I dress all up and take myself to dinner,” Janet said, smiling. “And then to a concert or a movie, perhaps.”

“I’d like that.”

“There’s no reason why we couldn’t go together some time.”

“You wouldn’t mind having me along?”

“I’d like it very much. We could get really silly and buy a bottle of champagne.”

“Do you ever do that?”

“Once. I felt very frivolous and giggled through a whole performance of Aida.”

Champagne, Edith thought, a gay giddy drink, for weddings, for youth, not for two lonely aging women...

“Yes, I’d like that,” she said, without hope. “I guess — they’re waiting for me. I’d better go.”

“No, wait. I really mean it, about having dinner together. We’ll make it a definite day.”

“Any day. They’re all the same.”

“How about next Tuesday?”

“Tuesday. That would be fine.”

“I could meet you in the Arcadian Court and we’ll go to see The Doughgirls if you like.”

She had the uncomfortable feeling that Edith was no longer listening to her, that the two of them had, in a few minutes, gone through the emotional experience of months or years — from antagonism through friendship to mutual boredom.

“See you Tuesday then,” she said with extra heartiness to compensate for her thoughts. “In the meantime don’t worry too much. We and our troubles aren’t so important as we think.” She laid her hands for an instant on Edith’s arm. “Good-bye and good luck.”

“Good-bye,” Edith said, and turned and stepped back into her own world.

Janet’s eyes followed her, full of pity and understanding. The little group beside the grave was waiting for her. When Edith had almost reached them she stumbled and the younger man put out his hand to steady her. Edith shrank away from him and pulled the black veil down over her face.

It was only a gesture, yet Janet felt ashamed to have witnessed it. She walked quickly back to her car.

On the way home she began to make further plans for Tuesday. Perhaps the Arcadian Court was too stuffy. They might try Angelo’s if Edith liked spaghetti — or some place down in the village where you saw such queer people, sometimes...

By the time she got home she had everything planned, but she never saw Edith again.

Chapter 12

“Who was that?” Martin said.

“A friend of mine,” Edith replied, pressing her lips together tightly behind the veil. “Someone you don’t know.”

“In brief, none of my business?”

“Exactly.”

“All right. I was just trying to be pleasant.”

He opened the car door and she got in the back seat. She was breathing fast, as if she was excited.

“You should take it easier, Edith,” Andrew said, and sat down beside her and shut the door. “There’s no hurry. Is there?”

“No.”

He raised his voice. “Martin, you might stop and pick up some cigarettes some place.” He spoke easily and naturally, as master of the house setting the tone and pace for a new set of circumstances.

Edith looked at him gratefully and covered his hand with hers. “That was kind of you, Andrew.”

He professed not to understand. “What was?”

“Oh, you know, just being ordinary.”

He closed his eyes wearily. “I’m always ordinary.”

“No, I mean...”

“Now don’t be silly, Edith.”

They fell into a companionable silence while in the front seat Polly and Martin discussed a book he was reviewing.

At the first drugstore Martin stopped the car and got out to buy the cigarettes. When he came out of the store he was whistling, but as soon as he saw the car he became silent and adjusted his face self-consciously as if he’d just caught sight of himself in a mirror, wearing the wrong expression.

It was a small thing and no one noticed it but Edith. Behind the veil her eyes glittered. Martin flung her a mocking glance and slid behind the wheel.

We watch each other, she thought.

The phrase echoed in her mind. We watch each other. Someone had said that recently. Who was it?

She remembered with a shock that she herself had written it to Lucille. It was the first time she’d thought of the letter since she’d sent it, and she flushed with shame at her own stupidity. She should never have written it. Where was it now? Destroyed, surely. But suppose it wasn’t destroyed? Suppose it was in the bundle of clothes and things that the hospital had sent back this morning?

Her mind set up a wild clamor: I must get the letter, Andrew mustn’t see it — no one...

As soon as they arrived home she excused herself with a headache and went upstairs. She had intended to go straight to Lucille’s room to look for the bundle and make sure the letter had been destroyed. But Annie was in the hall, vacuuming the rug.

When Annie saw her she shut off the motor and the vacuum bag deflated with a drawn-out whine.

“This isn’t the time to be doing the rugs, is it?” Edith said.

“Annie looked surprised, and a little sulky. “Maybe not, but I figured I might as well be doing something if you wouldn’t let me go to the funeral.” She was gratified to note that her subtle counter-attack made Edith ill at ease, and she pressed her advantage. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Miss Morrow, I figured you’d look at the food grinder in the kitchen. It’s not working and Della accuses me of losing one of the parts which I never did.”

“Some other time — not now.”

“Well, I just thought, I was just thinking I needed it to make the stuffing for the veal.”

I’ll teach you, her eyes said, for keeping me away from the funeral of someone who had more class than all the rest of you put together.

“I just thought it’d be nice,” she said blankly. “You can’t buy food grinders any more.”

“All right, I’ll see it,” Edith said.

She passed the door of Lucille’s room without looking at it, and went down the stairs again with Annie following her. She had a sudden wild notion that Annie had opened the bundle from the hospital and seen the letter, that she must be placated.

“About Mrs. Morrow’s clothes,” she said, and tried to keep the agitation out of her voice.

“I put them in Dr. Morrow’s room,” Annie said. “Naturally he’ll want to look over it, I figured. I didn’t touch a thing.”

“I didn’t say you had.”

“Over here’s the grinder. See? Here’s where the screw’s missing.”

Edith bent over it. Her body drooped with weariness, it seemed that it would never have the strength to right itself again.

“It’s so... so complicated,” she whispered.

“If Mrs. Morrow was here, she’d know about it. She was real handy around the house.”

“I’m sorry, I...”

“You look real bad, Miss Morrow. Maybe you’d like a cup of tea? You go up and lie down and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. I don’t really have to stuff the veal.”

Then why didn’t you say so? Edith screamed silently, why didn’t you say so?

“It’s just as nice not stuffed,” Annie said. “The tea’ll be up in a jiffy.”

“Thank you,” Edith said, and turned, and dragged herself back up the stairs. There was no use arguing with Annie, and no use getting excited. The letter wasn’t important. It was probably not there anyway, and even if it was, there was nothing in it except a record of her own fears and her own folly.

I’ll see about it later on, she thought, and lay down on her bed, with one arm shielding her eyes from the light.

Annie brought the tea in and left again. Edith lay without moving. She could feel her migraine coming on, the beat of the blood on one side of her neck and up along the artery behind the ear. Pretty soon the actual pain would be there, and after that the nausea. She began to massage the side of her neck gently, the way Andrew had told her to do when she felt the first symptom.

But it was no use. By dinnertime the pain was intense, and immediately after dinner she came back to her room and lay listening to the sounds that filtered through the house, Annie and Della washing up in the kitchen and then going up to their rooms on the third floor. A little later they came down again, whispering, and the back door opened and closed.

They’re going to a movie, Edith thought and remembered Janet Green and Tuesday, and the funeral, and then the letter again.

In the darkness she got off the bed and crept to the door and out into the hall. She could hear people talking down in the living room, and she waited until she could distinguish all their voices, Polly’s and Martin’s and Andrew’s, so she would know she was alone upstairs.

She hesitated, suddenly appalled by her own secretiveness. Why, they were her own family, down there. And she, herself, had every right to go into Andrew’s room and sort out Lucille’s clothes — every right, it was her duty, in fact, she must spare Andrew — there was no need to be afraid.

But in silence and in secret her slippered feet crossed the hall. It was only when she had switched on a lamp in Andrew’s room that some of her fear left her. For the room was like Andrew himself, it was familiar and comfortable and getting old, but it had worn well. Even the smell was reassuring — polished leather and books and tobacco.

She glanced toward the smoking stand beside the leather chair and saw that Andrew had left the lid of the humidor off. Automatically she walked over and replaced it. His pipe lay across the ash tray, and an open book straddled one arm of the chair.

He must have been up all night, she thought. Walking around and smoking and trying to read and then pacing the room again. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with pity for him and her knees sagged against the chair.

The book slid limply to the floor. It made only a faint noise, yet she went rigid, and a trickle of ice water seemed to ooze down her spine. Her ears moved a little, like an animal’s, waiting for some sound, some signal...

But there was no sound. Hurriedly she bent to pick up the book. It was a diary.

Funny, I didn’t know Andrew kept a diary, she thought. No, it can’t be his. The writing’s different, very round and big, and the ink’s faded. I mustn’t look at it... None of my business... I must find my letter...

She closed the book and put it on the arm of the chair again. She had already turned to walk away before the name on the cover penetrated to her mind.

Then she became aware that someone was walking along the hall outside. The blood pounded against her ears, and unconsciously she began to rub her neck.

“What are you doing in here, Edith?” Andrew said, and the door clicked in place behind him.

Her hand paused. “I... I was looking for Lucille’s clothes.”

“They’re in the closet. We thought you were asleep.”

“No... no... I... couldn’t sleep.”

She saw his eyes go toward the chair and falter.

“I didn’t read it,” she said. “It fell, I just picked it up. But I didn’t read it.”

“Don’t talk like a child. What difference would it make if you had read it?” He closed his eyes-for a second. “Mildred never wrote anything that other people couldn’t see.”

“You read it — last night?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve kept it all these years?”

“All these years, yes.”

Her hand began to move again up and down the cord of her neck. “But I thought — wasn’t it missing after she died? Didn’t the policeman...?”

“Yes, it was missing. I had it. I didn’t feel justified in handing my wife’s diary over to a policeman. You were the one who told the police that the only things missing after she died were the jewels she had on and her diary?”

“Yes, I told them, I was the one.”

“Silly of you, Edith,” he said gently. “Did you think there might be a clue in it?”

“Perhaps — for a while...”

He picked up the book and handed it to her. “Take it with you,”

“No, no, I wouldn’t want to read it! It will just upset me... I have this headache.”

“It won’t upset you. It’s a very ordinary diary, just the little things that happened to her day by day, about, the children, and us.”

He was still holding the book out to her and now she took it, almost without volition.

“Don’t show it to the children,” he said. “They’re not old enough yet to get any comfort from the past.”

“You look tired,” Edith said with a return of her old crispness. “You’d better go to bed.”

“I’ll sit up and smoke for awhile.”

“You have to take better care of yourself, Andrew, keep more regular hours. I noticed you didn’t touch your salad tonight.”

“Don’t nag, Edith.”

“I wasn’t nagging.”

“Go to bed yourself.”

“I would, if I could sleep,” she said gratingly. “You’ll never give me anything to make me sleep.”

“It’s a bad habit.”

“It can’t be a habit if you do it once!” She knew that she was getting shrill and tried to stop herself, but too many things had happened to her today — the funeral, Janet, the diary, the migraine — she felt her control slipping away. “Other doctors give sleeping prescriptions! I’m your own sister and I have to lie awake night after night...”

“You’re the type who forms habits too easily,” he said quietly. “But rather than see you hysterical like this I will set aside my better judgment.”

Even though she was getting her own way she couldn’t stop talking at him. Her voice pursued him into the closet where he kept his medical supplies locked up, and into the bedroom where he poured out a glass of water.

“Here. Take this. It will begin to work in an hour or so. Now go to bed.”

He half-pushed her toward the door, glad to be rid of her finally, to be able to enjoy the peace and darkness of his own room.

At ten o’clock the maids came home, and went, twittering, up to the third floor. Shortly afterward Martin came to bed, and last of all, Polly. She had locked the house and put out the lights, and now she paused in front of Edith’s door and rapped softly.

“Who is it?”

“Me. Polly.”

“Oh. I’m in bed.”

“I saw your light on.”

“Well, come in. Don’t shout at me through the door!”

Edith was sitting up in bed. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes had a glaring sightless look. She wore a bed-jacket.

“I was just sitting here a moment before turning off the light,” she said.

One of her arms jerked nervously and the sleeve of the bed-jacket slid back and showed an inch or so of the black dress she’d been wearing. She covered it again quickly, but Polly had already seen.

“Well, I didn’t have anything special to say,” she said, her voice carefully blank. “Guess I’ll turn in. How’s your headache?”

“Headache? Oh, it’s all right.”

“Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

Their eyes met for an instant and passed on, like strangers on a dark street.

The door closed and Edith got out of bed and tore the bed-jacket from her shoulders. She put on a coat and tied a black scarf over her head and picked up the diary from underneath the bedclothes.

Then, a black shadow, she moved through the house, and went out into the street.

Chapter 13

“Good morning, Mr. Bascombe,” D’arcy said. “Mr: Sands has just come in. I was terribly sorry to hear you’re leaving us.”

Bascombe stopped, looked him up and down. “Yeah, I know.”

“We were all thrilled to hear you got a commission. I bet you’ll look swell in your uniform.”

“Ask me to take it off for you some time and see where it gets you.”

D’arcy looked pained. “That’s no way to talk. I thought you’d be nice to me at least on your last day.”

Smiling grimly, Bascombe strode into Sands’ office.

Sands looked up and said, “Good morning. How’s the Military Intelligence this morning?”

Bascombe saluted smartly. “I beg to report, sir, that A-56 of the Division of Lawns and Gardens, that is, myself, has discovered the existence of a pansy in your own office. A-56 recommends fertilization of the roots or complete extermination.”

Sands laughed. “Sit down. When do you leave?”

“It’s a military secret, even from me.”

“Ellen back?”

“Yeah. She’s pulling the gag about how-can-I-live-without-you-my-hero. I’ve signed the papers for her allotment, now I’m forgetting the whole thing.” He sat on the edge of the desk, swinging one foot. “I hope.”

“Got the jitters?”

“Some. Afraid I’ll pull a boner. What I’ve been doing around here seems like kid stuff compared to what’s in store for me.”

“I don’t think you have to be afraid. D’arcy says you have a truly great brain.”

“What the hell!” Bascombe swung himself off the desk, embarrassed. “Well, good-bye.” He held out his hand. “It’s been damn nice having a decent guy in this dump.”

Sands, too, was embarrassed. He got up, and they shook hands across the desk. “Good-bye and good hunting.”

“Thanks.”

Bascombe went out. In the outer office he saw D’arcy talking to a middle-aged woman. He noticed the woman especially because she was carrying an enormous leather handbag.

Well — what the hell — women, to hell with them...

“There now,” D’arcy said to the woman. “Now you can go in.”

She seemed distraught. “Thank you. I... it’s really urgent.”

“Just step in.” D’arcy opened the door of Sands’ office with a flourish. “Miss Green to see you, sir.”

“Good morning, Miss Green,” Sands said, and was surprised to see how agitated she looked. “What brings you here?”

“I can’t make head nor tail of it. Look.” She opened the big handbag and drew out a paper bag.

“Shut that door, D’arcy.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Janet Green put the paper bag on the desk. It had been stamped and postmarked, and Janet Green’s name and address had been written shakily in pen and ink.

“I just don’t know what to make of it,” she said. “This came this morning, a while ago. It’s a diary, and why anyone should send me a diary...”

Sands took the book carefully from the bag. The cover was tooled leather and across it, in gold letters, was printed “Mildred Scott Morrow.” He opened it. The ink was faded but still legible. “July 3, 1928. Today is my birthday and Edith has given me this lovely diary. I told her, what would I put in a diary, I never have anything interesting to say...”

“Why to me?” Janet cried in exasperation. “I thought, of course, as soon as I saw the name Morrow that Edith Morrow herself must have sent it. I don’t know any of the others at all. And yet I only met her yesterday.”

“Perhaps that’s why.”

“What is?”

“She could trust you because you have no ax to grind.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing in the book that I can see! And why not keep it herself? The strange thing is that someone has marked passages in it here and there. They’re mostly about Lucille.”

“Go on.”

“Well, as soon as I looked into the book I rang up Edith Morrow. At least I rang the house and whoever answered the phone sounded very peculiar. They said that Miss Morrow couldn’t come to the phone. Then they hung up, just like that.”

Before she had finished speaking Sands had risen. “Thanks for coming. I’ll keep this. I’m in a hurry.”

“You can’t leave me...”

“Sorry. D’arcy will see you out. I’ve got to leave.”

He went to the coat rack and slipped the diary into the pocket of his overcoat. Then with the coat over his arm he walked out.

When he reached the Morrow house the doorbell was answered by Annie.

She recognized him and said, “Oh!” and put her hand over her mouth.

“I’d like to speak to Miss Edith Morrow,” he said.

“Well, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s dead. And it’s none of your business this time. It happened natural. She died in her sleep.”

She opened the door a little wider, not wide enough for him to walk in comfortably, but just enough so that he could squeeze through the opening if he really had the nerve to come calling on people at a time like this...

“I’m very sorry,” he said, and Annie was impressed by his sincerity. Her face lost its guarded look.

“I’ve been real miserable about it,” she said. “I wasn’t very nice to her yesterday and now I’ll never have a chance to make it up to her. That’s the first thing I thought of when I found her this morning. There she was lying on the bed, all stiff and peaceful, and I thought, now it’s too late, now I’ll never have a chance to make it up to her.”

“Where is the family?”

“They’re up there with her.”

“I don’t want to intrude on them.” Too late now. Edith was stiff and peaceful, at home with her family. “I’ll wait some place. Don’t bother telling them I’m here. I’ll just wait.”

“They wouldn’t like it if I didn’t tell them. They don’t like having a policeman around. There’s a fire in Dr. Morrow’s den, you can go in there, I guess, but I don’t really think they’ll like it.”

“I’ll take a chance.”

She left him then, and when he heard her go upstairs he took the diary from his coat pocket and began to read.

In the first few pages there was nothing marked, no reference to Lucille. Mildred Morrow had been chiefly concerned with her family and the details of the home. He read at random:

August 4.

Raining today and Polly is pestering me to let her get her curls cut off. I suppose I’m old-fashioned, I don’t really want her to do it. But if I say no she’ll just go~to Andrew and twist him around her little finger. What a Daddy’s girl she is! I told Andrew, it’s a shame he can’t see more of the children. But then he is doing so much good for the world I feel selfish.

August 31.

Edith looks so pretty today! She’s got on a new dress, so I told her; we must do something special. So we had a picnic in the park! Lucille came along.

I think Lucille could be very beautiful if she would only have some vitality. (Like Edith) She is still far too young to go on grieving for her husband. He was a lot older than she, and what we saw of him, not a nice person like her. The children came on the picnic too but they don’t seem to like Lucille. She is too shy.

The last sentence was underlined in fresh ink.

September 6.

Well, I finally got Lucille and Andrew together! Andrew had a whole evening off, and though we’ve been Lucille’s neighbors for ages, why, Andrew hardly knows her he’s away so much! We played cards (not bridge!) and I told Andrew, here you are with three women, after seeing women all day you must be tired of them. He said no, they whetted his appetite, and we all laughed.

In the entries for the next two months there were various short references to Lucille.

We went shopping today. Lucille doesn’t buy much, which puzzles me, because she certainly needs clothes.

I am getting very fond of Lucille. Once you know her she is really delightful, though Andrew and Edith don’t believe me! Martin is getting to that smart-alecky stage and he calls Lucille “the blondy.” Martin is very hard to handle. Though he’s awfully good in his studies I think he’s very sensitive about not being able to join in games and things since he had his back broken. Lucille says he is “compensating,” whatever that means. She is much cleverer than I am.

Much cleverer, Sands thought. Far too clever for you, Mildred. He felt a strange pity for this woman who had been dead for sixteen years and had come to life again on paper, in all her guilelessness and sweet stupidity.

November 12.

I started my Christmas shopping today and tonight Edith went to her club and Andrew is working, of course. So I am sitting in Lucille’s living room writing this while she knits. She knits with her eyes shut, imagine! I asked her what she was thinking and she told me that she was thinking she wasn’t going to celebrate Christmas this year. Not celebrate Christmas! I told her, why not? She was very annoyed for a minute. She told me, look around you, look at my house and my clothes, can’t you figure it out by yourself? Well, of course, I could then. It was very embarrassing and I asked her if she wanted some money, a loan or a gift or anything. But she refused. I think she refused on account of Andrew, she knows he doesn’t much like her.

December 2.

Polly found out today (isn’t that just like her! She is a minx!) that Lucille’s car, which we all thought was stored in her garage, has really been sold.

December 4.

I took my portrait down to Morison’s for a good cleaning today. Lucille came along and afterward we went to a movie and then to Child’s for a cup of chocolate (which I should not drink). She is so quiet and patient, it’s nice to go places with her. Edith is always in so much of a hurry!

Quiet and patient, Sands thought. Biding her time, thinking out the plan that was, in the end, to destroy not only Mildred and herself, but three others. How did the plan start? At what particular moment did she begin to covet Mildred’s husband and Mildred’s money?

December 5.

Well, here I am over at Lucille’s again tonight. I told her, this is getting to be practically a tradition! But it is nice (and I mean it!) to have someone to drop in on after the children are in bed and when Andrew is on a case and Edith is out. Edith is having quite a rush from this George Mackenzie, but Lucille says she doesn’t think Edith will marry him because she’s too wrapped up in Andrew. I was quite surprised at this! I mean, I know Edith adores Andrew and harries the life out of him, but I always thought it’s because she hasn’t a man of her own.

I told Lucille this and she just smiled. But I still think I’m right! You don’t know everything, I told her, just in fun, of course!

Sands had nearly reached the end now, and with each page he turned, the picture of Mildred became clearer. Mildred, smiling and secure, never questioning, never looking behind her to see the inexorable fate that was creeping up on her. Happy Mildred, proud of her husband and his work, secure in the knowledge that her life was to be a series of repetitions, of Andrew and Edith, and the children and new dresses and cups of chocolate; and, like a child herself, never tiring of repetitions.

December 7.

Lucille and I took a walk through the park this afternoon. We talked about marriage. I guess it started when I said, something about how attractive Andrew was to women. My goodness, every once in a while one of them makes a big scene at his office and poor Andrew is so completely bewildered by the whole thing. He considers himself an old fogy. At thirty-four! Anyway, I told Lucille this and for some reason she lost her reserve and began to talk about her own marriage. Both her parents died in a hotel fire when she was seventeen, and quite soon afterward she married one of her father’s friends, years older than she was. She said she hated him from the very first day. (And the way she said it! I couldn’t believe it was really my own friend talking!) Imagine living in hate for ten years! No wonder it’s left its mark on her. I do wish she would let me help her in some way. You really should get married again, I told her.

December 10.

I bought Lucille’s Christmas present today, a gorgeous rawhide dressing case, and of course now Polly wants one too. Andrew phoned to say he won’t be home until late tonight because Mrs. Peterson’s time is up and she absolutely refuses to go to a hospital. So I guess I’ll drop over to Lucille’s for a while. I want to show her the new earrings Andrew bought me. Later. Well, here I am. Lucille has the living room beautifully decorated for Christmas with clusters of pine tied with ribbon. I was quite envious. I asked her where she got it and she said she’d simply gone out into the park and cut it, and we both laughed. I think I’ll try it too! The pine smells so fresh and clean, and think of the fun cutting it for oneself!

It was the last entry. The pictures kept forming in Sands’ mind, though there were no more words to hang them on.

Mildred, pink and pretty against the pine.

“Oh, I love it! It smells so fresh and clean.”

“Yes, doesn’t it. I cut it myself.”

“How exciting!”

“We could go out and cut some for you. It’s snowing, the night is dark, and I have an ax.”

“An ax? Oh, goody!”

“Yes, an ax...”

Had the details of the plan occurred to her suddenly at that point? Or had she plotted ft carefully beforehand, using the pine as the bait for Mildred to swallow, more innocent than any trout? No one would ever know now. Lucille’s secrets had been buried with her in a closed coffin.

They went, laughing, out into the snow.

“Oh, this is fun! Wait’ll I tell Andrew.”

“Here, let me cut it for you. I’m bigger than you are.”

“Do be careful. It’s rather frightening out here alone, isn’t it?”

“I’m not frightened.”

“I just meant, the dark. I can hardly see you, Lucille! Lucille! Where are you? Lucille!”

“Why I’m right here. Behind you. With an ax.”

The ax swung and whistled. The snow fell soundlessly and covered Mildred and the tracks.

What had Lucille done with the ax? Put it in the furnace, Sands thought. The handle would burn, and if the fire was high enough the blade itself might be distorted beyond recognition. And Mildred’s jewels — had she put them in the furnace with the ax, or did she hide them, hoping to sell them later? Perhaps she had never intended to sell them and had taken them only in the hope that Mildred’s death would be construed as a robbery.

As it was, Sands thought grimly. Thanks to Inspector Hannegan’s precious bungling.

He returned to Lucille. He could see her destroying the ax, and hiding the jewels and then coming, suddenly, upon the diary Mildred had left behind in the sitting room. If she hadn’t been pressed for time she might have read the diary then and there and realized that it would have to be destroyed. But she didn’t have time to read it and she was cautious enough not to want to destroy it if it should prove harmless to her.

Where has it been all these years? Sands thought.

At one o’clock Andrew Morrow had come home. “Edith! Edith, wake up! Mildred isn’t home yet. Something must have happened to her.”

“Why, she was just over at Lucille’s.”

“I’m going over to get her.”

They had gone over to Lucille’s hut they didn’t get Mildred.

“She left here ages ago, before eleven o’clock. I thought she was going straight home.”

“She’s not there.”

“She may have decided to go for a walk, and stumbled and fell.”

“Come on, Edith, we’ll look for her.”

“Wait and I’ll get dressed and help you look.”

She had helped them look, guiding them firmly away from the tree that sheltered Mildred.

Hers had remained the guiding hand. She soothed Edith and nursed Andrew through his illness and got the children off to school; and when she had become indispensable, he married her.

Sands closed the diary and put it in his pocket. He thought of Edith creeping downstairs with the diary, finding only a paper bag to wrap it in, and sending it not to him, Sands, but to her new friend, Janet Green.

To send it to me would have been too final and definite an act, he thought. She wasn’t sure, she wanted only to get the diary in some safe place outside the house until she could decide what to do about it.

He felt a sudden terrible pity for Edith, not because she was dead but because in her childish impulsiveness and indecision she had sent the diary to Janet Green.

Polly came in and found Sands slumped in the chair, holding his head with one hand.

He rose when he saw her, but for a minute neither of them spoke. He noticed that she had not been crying but her face had the strained set look that told of deep and bitter tears inside.

“I was — we were just going to phone you. My father will be down in a minute. He thinks... he thinks Edith killed herself.”

“Why?” Sands said, and had to repeat it. “Why?”

“It wasn’t natural.” She turned her face and gazed stonily out of the window. “My father thinks it was morphine.”

“Why morphine?”

“I don’t know. He just thinks so. She was in his room last night, half-hysterical, begging him to give her something to make her sleep. He unlocked his cupboard and then went into the bathroom to mix her a bromide. It must have been then when it happened.”

“What did?”

“When she — took the morphine.”

“Why?”

She turned and looked at him. “You keep asking why and I don’t know.”

“Can you take advice?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Get out of this house right away. Walk out the door and don’t look back.”

“Are you — crazy?”

“Go to your lieutenant. Don’t stop to pack or think. Pick up your coat and get out.”

“I... can’t.”

“Don’t argue.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t understand you. You’re frightening me. I can’t leave my father. And there’s no reason — no reason...”

He reached out and grasped her shoulder savagely.

“Get out of this house. Run. Don’t let anything stop you.”

Neither of them had heard Andrew approaching. He spoke from the doorway. “Mr. Sands is right. I advise you to go.”

He sounded tired but perfectly under control. “Lieutenant Frome’s leave is up Sunday, isn’t it? Today is Thursday, you haven’t much time.”

She looked from one man to the other, her mouth open in bewilderment.

“I don’t understand. You know I can’t leave you here alone, Father.”

“Why not? Has it occurred to you that I might prefer to be alone?”

Sands stepped back and watched the two of them. It might have been an ordinary family argument except that the girl’s eyes had too much fear in them, and there was too much acid in the man’s voice.

“I think I’m old enough to be allowed some freedom, Polly. Edith is dead now, the whole business is ended. Do you know what that means to me, in plain realistic terms? It means I’m no longer phone-ridden.”

The girl’s face moved, and it seemed for an instant as if she was going to cry or laugh at the ridiculous word.

“It means,” he said, “that wherever I choose to go, at whatever time, I won’t be required to phone home and give my exact location, the nature of my companions, and the state of my health. I am now a free agent, an emancipated man. I’ve had to suffer to get to this point, but I’m here now. Nothing whatever is expected of me.”

“I’m not the type who interferes,” Polly said. She tried to sound cold and scornful but her voice trembled. “I don’t require ten-minute reports, you wouldn’t have to be phone-ridden. I’m not... I’m not Edith.”

“No. But Edith wasn’t always Edith either. Years ago Edith too was engaged to a young man. But when Mildred died she broke her engagement, she said it was her duty to stay with me. The fact was that she didn’t love the young man enough to take a chance on marriage, so she eased herself out of it by that word duty. As the years passed Edith closed her mind to the real facts. She blamed me for ‘her frustrated love affair. She took it out on me, not overtly, but by kind and gentle and loving nagging.”

She looked at him, stubborn and mute.

“I’m wasting my time pointing out analogies. I’ll have to give you a direct order, Polly. Leave this house.”

“I won’t. This is ridiculous.”

“Leave this house immediately, do you hear?”

“You might at least keep your voice down. The maids...”

He saw that she had no intention of going. Even though she might have wanted to, her own obstinacy was in the way.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and struck her on the cheek with the flat of his hand.

Her face seemed to break apart under the blow. With a sudden whimper she turned and ran out of the room holding her hand to her cheek.

The two men stood in silence. They heard the front door open and slam shut, a car engine racing, the blast of a horn, and then just quiet again.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew repeated. “I... I don’t really believe in violence.”

“No,” Sands said. “It boomerangs.”

“The poor child, she was frightened to death.”

“She’ll get over it. Edith won’t.”

“Edith — yes. You want to see Edith, of course?”

“Yes.”

“Very peaceful. Morphine is a peaceful death. You go to sleep, you dream, you never know where the dream ends.”

Where the dream ends — for Greeley in an alley and Edith in her soft bed.

Chapter 14

She had not undressed. She lay on the bed, a blanket covering her to the waist, her head resting easily on two pillows.

“She didn’t go to bed,” Andrew said softly, as if she might wake at any minute and be displeased to find him in her bedroom talking about her. “She wouldn’t have liked to be found in a nightgown.”

“You think that’s it?”

“Perhaps. I’m only guessing. It’s all we can do now.” Sands moved closer to the bed. Edith’s hands were folded and he saw that one of her fingers had a smudge of ink on it. His eyes strayed to the night table beside the bed. It held a glass of water and a pitcher and a lamp. At the base of the lamp lay a fountain pen with the top jammed carelessly on.

Sands thought, she sat here marking the passages in the diary. She worked quickly — why? Was she fighting against time, or was she in a hurry to go to sleep, to dream, to die?

“Why?” he said aloud. Why go to all the trouble of marking the diary and seeing that it got in neutral and therefore safe hands?

“Why kill herself?” Andrew said, quietly. “Because she’d written a letter. When I came upstairs last night she was in my room trying to find it. It was in the bundle of Lucille’s clothes that came from the hospital. She was afraid that I might read it and find out that she had driven Lucille to suicide.”

“I see.”

“Here it is. I read it last night.”

He brought the letter from his pocket and handed it to Sands.

Sands read the agitated scrawl:

“Dear Lucille: I hope you received the chocolates and pillow rest I sent day before yesterday. It is very difficult to get chocolates these days, one has to stand in line, We all miss you a great deal, though I feel so hopeless saying it because I know you won’t believe it. Everything is such a mess. The policeman Sands was here again, talking about the train wreck. You remember that afternoon? I don’t know what he was getting at, but whoever did anything to you, Lucille, it wasn’t me, Lucille, it was not me! I don’t know, I can’t figure anything out any more. I have this sick headache nearly all the time and Martin is driving me crazy. They have always seemed like my own children to me, the two of them, and now, I don’t know, I look at them and they’re like strangers. Meals are the worst time. We watch each other. That doesn’t sound like much but it’s terrible — we watch each other. I know Andrew wouldn’t like me to be writing a letter like this. But, Lucille, you’re the only one I can talk to now. I feel I’d rather be there with you, I’ve always liked and trusted you. Everything is so mixed up. Do you remember the night Giles came and I said, God help me, that we were a happy family? I feel this is a judgment on me for my smugness and wickedness. I don’t know how it will all end. Edith.”

It had all ended now, for both of them. Edith’s calm cold face denied all knowledge. Whoever did anything to you, Lucille, it wasn’t me, Lucille, it was not me! The words rang clear and true in Sands’ mind.

“She had to get the letter back,” Andrew said. “She knew that Lucille killed herself soon after it was read to her, and she realized that if other people read it they would know the letter was mainly responsible for Lucille’s death.”

Sands barely heard him. He was looking at Edith, seeing the cold denial on her face. The diary felt large and heavy in his pocket, as if it had grown since he’d put it there.

He turned suddenly and walked back to the door. The diary swung against his side, and when he passed Andrew he saw Andrew’s eyes on his coat pocket.

“Do you carry a gun?” Andrew said.

“No.”

“What’s that?”

“A book.”

“If you don’t carry a gun, what do you do In an emergency?”

“I plan for emergencies. Then they are no longer emergencies.” He smiled, very faintly. “Do you carry a gun?”

“No.”

“You are against violence, I had forgotten. Excuse me, I have to phone in a report. Your sister — must be attended to.”

“Yes, of course. You know where the phone is.”

Sands was gone for ten minutes. When he came back Andrew was standing in the hall outside Edith’s room, waiting for him.

“That book in your pocket,” he said, “that’s my wife’s diary, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it would be. I couldn’t find it. I gave it to Edith last night to read.”

“Why?”

“She found it in my room when she came to look for her letter. I thought it was the natural, thing to do, to let her read it.”

“Natural,” Sands repeated. “Everything’s been pretty natural all down the line, hasn’t it? Everything has more or less just happened “

“I’m glad you see that. I feel it very strongly myself.”

“Yes, I know.”

“The only really unnatural thing is where you got my wife’s diary.”

“Your sister wrapped it in a paper bag and mailed it to Janet Green last night before she died.” Seeing Andrew’s frown he added, “She was at the funeral yesterday. Cora Green’s sister.”

“Oh, yes. The little old woman who ate the grapes.” He flung a quick uncertain glance at Sands. “Well, at least nobody could claim that was anything but an accident.”

“Nobody has.”

“And Lucille herself, and the Greeley fellow, and now Edith — all accidents.”

“If you plan accidents,” Sands said grimly, “then they are no longer accidents.”

Andrew laughed. “Ah, yes. Like the emergency.” He sobered at the look on Sands’ face. He felt that he must somehow deflect that cold direct gaze. “What were we talking about?”

“Accidents.”

“And the diary, yes. I didn’t imagine Edith would do anything so preposterous as sending it to Janet Green.”

“Why did you give her the diary to read?”

“I told you, she found it in my room, I thought she would be interested in it.”

“No. I think you were making one of your experiments. On Edith’s mind, this time. When you first read the diary it threw you completely. You wanted to see what it would do to Edith.”

“When I first read the diary?” Andrew repeated. “Why, I’ve had it for years, as I told Edith.”

“But once she’d read it she didn’t believe you. Any more than I do. I think you found the diary two weeks ago last Sunday.”

They were both silent. The words spun between them — two weeks ago last Sunday — and Sands could picture Polly sitting in his office yesterday morning, saying blankly: “It was the most ordinary Sunday... Father couldn’t find something, as usual, his scarf, I think it was...”

“You couldn’t have had the diary all this time,” Sands said, “without knowing that Lucille had killed your first wife. And having that knowledge you could never have lived with her for fifteen years. It is humanly impossible.”

A door opened at the end of the hall and Martin came out. Though he walked slowly Sands had the impression that he was holding himself back, that if he thought no one was looking he would bound along the hall, as buoyant and unfeeling as an animal.

“Oh, there you are, Father,” Martin said, and his voice too gave the impression of carefully imposed restraint. His eyes strayed to Edith’s door and then back to his father. “Conference in the hall?”

“Mr. Sands and I are talking,” Andrew said.

Martin raised his brows. “Not by any chance about me? You’re looking very guilty.”

“Guilty?” Andrew laughed, but one of his hands crept up toward his face as if to smooth away the lines of guilt. “It’s difficult for you to believe, Martin, but people frequently talk about other things than you.”

“Granted.”

“I... Polly is not here. She’s gone down to meet Lieutenant Frome. I expect they’ll be married this, afternoon.”

Martin flicked another glance toward Edith’s door. “Nice day for it.”

“My suggestion entirely,” Sands said.

“Don’t bother with explanations,” Andrew told him curtly, and turned back to Martin. “I want you to go down there now — where is it? — the Ford Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Go down there now. I... well, I forgot to give Polly some money. I’ll write a check and you can take it down to her and — and wish her luck. Wish her luck for me, Martin.”

“This is a damn funny time to ask me to go traipsing around with checks and touching messages.”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Come downstairs and I’ll write the check.”

He went to the staircase, and after a moment’s hesitation Martin followed him, frowning at Sands as he passed him. If Sands had not been there he would have made an issue of it and insisted on an explanation from his father. But Sands was there and in some strange way allied with Andrew, and together the two men had a personal ascendancy that Martin would not defy.

Besides, he was a sophisticated young man and dared not show surprise. In the study he accepted the check from Andrew docilely, but with a quirk of his mouth to show that he was not in any way impressed.

“Wish her luck,” Andrew said again.

“Sure,” Martin said, and departed with a debonair wave of his hand.

The sophisticate, Sands thought, the man about town, the babe swaddled by Brooks Brothers.

“Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Mr. Sands,” Andrew said. “We have quite a lot to talk about. Cigarette?”

“Thanks.”

“Do you mind if I close this door?”

“Not at all.”

“I wouldn’t want the maids to hear me talking about my murders. It might destroy their faith in doctors.” He closed the door. “Murders, I don’t know how many, or how many causes... Faulty diagnosis, too much pressure on the scalpel, bad timing, sheer ignorance and lack of experience... Every time I lost a case I used to brood about it. Then I began to believe that some time between now and the end of time everything would be put right again. In the forever-ever land the dead baby lifted by Caesarean section would have its second chance, would breathe again, and live, and grow beautiful. Mildred called it having faith.”

The smoke from his cigarette slid up his face. “You used the phrase, humanly impossible. Practically nothing is that. A man can endure anything if he believes in ultimate justice, if he believes that somewhere dangling in space is justice and the wicked shall be punished and the good shall be rewarded. That is the working principle of the religion of the people I know. Revenge and reward.”

He leaned forward. “Think of it! Somewhere dangling in space justice, great impartial justice built like a monstrous man straddling the universe. A big fellow, a strong fellow, a kind fellow, but still like us, with sixteen bones in each wrist and his pubic hair modestly covered with a bit of cloth.”

Sands thought, another fallen idealist, the man who expects too much and loses his faith not all at once but gradually and with suspense and bitter doubts.

“Don’t be boyish,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “My friends will be here in five minutes.”

“And then?”

“And then,” Sands said carefully, “I will try to prove that you arc a murderer.”

“You have no proof?”

“Circumstantial evidence only. Quite a bit of it in Greeley’s case. You had the means of committing the murder and you were around at the crucial time.”

“So were a lot of other people.”

“True. Then Miss Green’s death offers no problem to you. You can only be charged there with moral guilt, moral irresponsibility. Evil and fear grow like cancer cells, inexorably, aimlessly, destroying whatever they touch. Cora Green was one of its victims.” He blinked his eyes, dreamily. “Circumstantial evidence only,” he repeated. “Perhaps we’ll have to wait for that big fellow straddling the universe to get you.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

“What?” Sands said in an exaggerated drawl. “And him so big and full of vitamins?”

They both smiled but there was a glint of rage in Andrew’s eyes and he crushed out his cigarette with a gesture that was almost savage.

“You are making me out a fool and a villain. I am neither. I am an ordinary man, and if out-of-the-ordinary things occurred to me, they occurred naturally. You understand? They just happened. You said it yourself. I was not looking for that diary when I found it, I had forgotten there was such a thing. I was looking for the scarf Lucille gave me last Christmas, a black scarf with little gray designs on it.”

“Black? With little gray designs? It sounds terribly cute.”

He leaned back, watching Andrew lazily as if the whole episode was a mildly amusing joke.

A flush of anger rose slowly up Andrew’s face. He knew that Sands was baiting him, that he must control himself. But he felt too that he must impress the man and make him realize that he was not a child to be laughed aside.

“The scarf was not in the cedar closet where Lucille said it was. I looked in my own room and then in hers. The diary was in one of her bureau drawers. It wasn’t even hidden properly, it was just there. As if she took it out now and then to read...” He stopped, sucking in his breath. “Think of it! She murdered my wife. And all these years she’s kept the evidence to convict her, casually, in a bureau drawer.”

“It may not have been there all the time,” Sands said. “Perhaps she’d hidden it well, and came across it and wanted to read it again.” Why? To re-live it, and by reliving it to lay the ghost that haunted her mind?

“I think you’re right. She’d been thinking of Mildred that day, Sunday. Martin and I found the sketches she made of Mildred. She had burned out the eyes with a cigarette.” He paused again, shaking his head half in sorrow, half in bewildered rage. “The systematic illogic of women. A man cannot believe it. When they are angry they are cold and merciless. When they have a grievance they tuck it up their sleeve and it comes out at some inexplicable and unconnected moment as tears. They can live, almost happily, with a man they hate, and harry a man they love to death.”

“Like yourself?”

“Like myself, yes. All my life I’ve been fair prey for any woman, because I value peace. I gave up my independence for the sake of peace. I’ve hired myself out to a series of managers — my mother, Edith, Lucille. A man has no redress against the soft lilting command, no refuge at all from the voices of the women who love him and are doing everything ‘for his own good.’ ”

He was no longer angry. He even seemed bored with his own words, as if he had said them to himself a great many times and was now reciting a piece of memory work.

“I killed Edith,” he said.

Sands did not reply.

“I killed her because she started to nag at me. She wanted a sleeping prescription, so I gave her one. I hadn’t planned anything, hadn’t thought of it. But suddenly there she was, wanting to be put to sleep. You understand? It was so simple, so predestined. She asked for it.”

“Yes.”

“I went in after she was dead, to find the diary and destroy it. But it wasn’t there. I didn’t worry about it, however.”

“You should. It might help to hang you.”

“No, it won’t. This talk is confidential between the two of us. And the evidence against Edith is top strong. Your friends will find morphine in Edith’s glass, and I will supply the letter she wrote to Lucille at Penwood.”

“Edith was the only one who couldn’t possibly have sent the amputated finger to Lucille.”

“You can’t fool me like that,” Andrew said. “You will have to bring me to trial one case at a time. You can’t try to prove that perhaps I killed Greeley, and perhaps I killed Edith, and have the two perhaps make a certainty.”

“That’s right.”

“Why do you want to hang me, anyway? Revenge? Punishment? To teach me a lesson or teach other people a lesson?”

“It’s my job,” Sands said wryly.

“Purely impersonal?”

“No, not quite.”

“Why, then?”

“I think you might do it again.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Andrew said. “I have no reason to kill anyone else.”

“Perhaps you had no reason to kill Greeley?”

“He was interfering, getting in my way. I hadn’t planned on killing him or anyone else. I hadn’t really planned anything. I was pretty dazed after reading the diary, I hardly remember driving out to meet Giles. All I could think of was Lucille’s two faces — the one she showed to me and the one I saw in Mildred’s diary. I thought I would keep quiet until after Polly was married and then I would confront Lucille with the diary. But what then? Would she confess? Would she lie? Would she even try to kill me perhaps, to save herself? Then we came upon the train wreck and the situation solved itself. I knew how I could test Lucille. I saw the finger in a slop pail and I picked it up and wrapped it in my handkerchief.”

The grotesque picture formed in Sands’ mind. The man bending furtively over a slop pail, wrapping the finger carefully in his handkerchief, like a jewel.

“You know how it makes you feel when you do something like that?” Andrew said. “It makes you feel a little crazy.”

“It would.”

“It was only a test for her, you understand. I had to know whether she was guilty. I didn’t foresee the actual results — it wasn’t even her own guilt that drove her crazy, it was the knowledge that someone else knew of her guilt, and was pointing it out, that someone had tracked her down. She, who had lived a placid, happy life for sixteen years now found herself a criminal.” He paused. “I keep thinking of what she did when she opened the box. She screamed, we know that, and then she must have run to the bureau drawer to find the diary. When she saw it was gone, she knew one of us must have taken it.”

“A pretty symbol, that finger.”

Andrew shrugged away the implications.

“I carried it in my pocket for the rest of the night. In the morning I bought a box in the dime store on my way to the office, and wrapped it. I thought of sending it through the mail, but then I saw this shabby-looking little man standing beside the newsstand. I asked him if he’d deliver a parcel for two dollars and he said he would.”

“You could have saved yourself trouble by lowering it to fifty cents. A parcel worth a two-dollar delivery is worth opening. Childish of you.”

“I... it just didn’t occur to me not to trust him. I’ve had no experience with such things.”

“The first thing he did, of course, was take it to a washroom and open it. Maybe he was a little surprised by it, but I don’t think so. Greeley had seen a lot of things in his life. What interested him was the smell of money, and he got a big whiff when he opened that parcel. He delivered it, all right. Then he waited around to see what would happen. He followed Lucille down to Sunnyside and waited outside while she was in the beauty parlor. When she came out he confronted her. She gave him a fifty-dollar bill to keep him quiet. She took a room at the Lakeside Hotel, and when he was pretty sure she was going to stay there for a while he went out and had what for Greeley was a big evening. Life was all right for Greeley that night. He had champagne, even if it was in a third-rate joint; he had a girl, no matter how many other people had had her; he danced, though his legs must have hurt him; he had a shot of morphine for a cheap dream, but most of all he had a future.

“Lucille must have promised him more money, for he told the girl he was with that he had a date, and then he returned to the Lakeside. He got there about the same time as Inspector Bascombe and I did. Men like Greeley have a sharp nose for two things — money and cops, and he probably recognized us right away. He didn’t know what we were there for. Maybe it was Lucille, maybe not. He hung around the alley for a while, and then you came along. He recognized you immediately.”

“It was a shock,” Andrew said, “it was a terrible shock to me to meet him again. I’d almost forgotten about him. Then I saw what I should have seen the preceding afternoon if I. hadn’t been intent on my plan — he was a morphine addict. I could see his eyes clearly in the light of the hotel sign, they were pupil-less, blind-looking. The tragedy of it was that I was carrying my instrument bag in case I’d have to give Lucille a sedative.”

“Tragedy?”

“He saw I was a doctor.”

“I see.”

“Yes, a doctor means only one thing to an addict — a chance for more dope. We’re all pestered by them at one time or another. The first thing the man said was, “A sawbones, eh?” I told him I wasn’t, but he didn’t believe me. He seemed to be burning up with triumph. I could see then what I had let myself in for. I had committed no crime, but I had done what most people would consider a revolting thing — and I wanted it kept secret. But Greeley, you understand, thought I had committed a crime.”

“ ‘Some parcel,’ he said. ‘Where’s the rest of the guy?’ I didn’t answer him. Then he asked me for some morphine. He told me he had a hard time getting any and what he did get was diluted. ‘I haven’t got any extra,’ I told him. ‘Just a quarter grain, not enough for you.’

“The crazy part of it is that if I hadn’t refused to give it to him at first, he would have been suspicious. But because I refused, he said, ‘What do you know about me? That’ll do — for now.’

“He didn’t need it then, he was pretty full of the stuff already. But he couldn’t pass up the chance, you see. They all have that same senseless greed because they know what it’s like to be without it. Anyway he led me around to the alley. It was dark and intensely cold. I put my bag on the ground and opened it. Greeley lit a match and cupped it in his hands, and then we both squatted down beside the bag. Bizarre, isn’t it, and somehow obscene?

“I could tell you it was then that I decided to kill him, but I couldn’t tell you why. There was no one reason, perhaps there never is for a murder. Perhaps I killed him because I was afraid of him, and because he hadn’t long to live and would be better off dead anyway, and because he had betrayed my trust, and because of the very ugliness of the scene itself.

“It was no trick to kill him. He had no way of knowing how much I was giving him. Besides, he kept watching the end of the alley and urging me to hurry up. I prepared the syringe and told him to take off his coat. He said, ‘What the hell, nothing fancy for me,’ and shoved out his arm.

“I gave him two grains. The whole incident didn’t take ten minutes.”

Two grains, ten minutes, the end of Greeley, Sands thought.

“Simple,” he said. “Natural. Practically an accident.”

“I told you that.”

“Sure. Any logical sequence of events ends in murder just as the logical sequel to life is death.”

“Irony doesn’t affect me,” Andrew said. “I was trying to present my story sincerely and honestly. I feel that you are a civilized man and can understand it.”

“It’s easy enough to be civilized in a vacuum. The mouse in an airless bell jar can’t be compared to ordinary mice. In the first place he’s dead.”

“Quite so.”

The doorbell began to ring.

“Your friends are here,” Andrew said politely.

While the policemen were there Andrew remained in his study with the door shut. Overhead, the men worked very quietly, and only by straining his ears could he hear them moving about.

What are they doing up there?

Nothing. Don’t listen.

What have I overlooked?

Nothing. It is all arranged. Poor Edith killed herself in remorse.

Poor Edith, how like Greeley she’d acted after all, both so greedy for a little death and so surprised at getting the real thing.

He didn’t worry about either of them. About Greeley he had no feelings at all, and while he felt sorry for Edith because she had made her own death necessary, he did not wish her back. He had turned a corner in his life. Looking back he could see only the sharp gray angle of a nameless building, and ahead of him the road was a nebula of mist swirling with forms and shapes, faces that were not yet faces, sounds that were not yet sounds. As he walked along the mist would clear. But right now it was frightening. It stung his eyes and muffled his ears and curled down deep into his lungs and made him cough. He could taste it in his mouth, fresh like the snow he had eaten when he was a child.

I don’t feel very well.

Andrew dear, have you been eating Snow?

I don’t feel very well.

The child is Ill. Call the doctor Immediately.

Calling Dr. Morrow. Calling Dr. Morrow. Dr. Morrow is wanted in...

Andrew my Dear. Snow is full of Germs. It may look pretty but it is not to Eat because it is full of Germs. I’ll buy you a microscope for your birthday so you can see for Yourself how many Germs there are Everywhere.

Many many many many Germs. Everywhere.

He became aware, suddenly, that the noises overhead had ceased. The house was empty. Mildred had gone, with the children, Edith was gone, and Lucille — only the maids were left and they must go too. He had to be alone, to think.

He rose painfully. His legs were cramped, he had been sitting too tensely. He must learn not to look back or look ahead. Where, then, could you look? At yourself. Turn your eyes in, like two little dentist’s mirrors, until you saw yourself larger than life, in great detail, each single hair, each pore of skin a new revelation, wondrously crawling with germs.

But the silence, the appalling silence of the man in the mirrors; the brittle limbs, the face mobile but cold like glass...

He crossed the hall, quickly, to escape his own image. He found the maids in the kitchen. They had been quarreling. Della’s eyes were swollen from weeping and Annie’s mouth had a set stubborn look. She didn’t change her expression when she saw Andrew.

“I say we’re leaving,” she said. “I say there’s too much going on around this place that don’t look right.”

“Of course,” Andrew said. “If you feel like that.”

“She don’t want to go. Afraid she won’t get another job. Why, in times like these they get down on their knees and beg you to take a job. She’s too dumb to see that.”

“It’s different with you!” Della cried. “I got to send money home every month!”

“Don’t I got to live too? And am I scared?”

“I’ll give you both a month’s wages,” Andrew said quietly. “You may leave today if you like.”

Della only wept harder, and Annie had to do the talking for both of them. It was real kind of Dr. Morrow, really generous. Not that they couldn’t use the money. Not that they wanted to leave him in the lurch like this. But what future was there in housework?

“What future indeed?” Andrew said. “You may leave at once. I’ll make out your checks.”

They went upstairs and began to pack.

“Remember the emeralds?” Della said wistfully. “What emeralds?”

“You remember. The parcel.”

“Oh, hell,” Annie said and jerked open the closet door savagely. “We’re too old to play games like that. You’re eighteen and you talk like you were ten. Imagine us with an emerald.”

“Maybe — some day we’ll find something. Money or something. Or maybe radium. They say if you find just a little bit of radium you get to be a millionaire.”

“Will you shut up?” Annie banged her fist against a suitcase. “Will — you — shut — up?”

They hadn’t many clothes to pack. Within half an hour they were on Bloor Street waiting for a streetcar, their purses tight beneath their arms. They were still quarreling, but there was a softer look on Annie’s face and now and then she scanned the sidewalk and the gutter. Just in case.

Andrew stood at the door, watching, long after they Were out of sight. They were gone, the last remnants of the old life, and now he must begin his new one. But he felt curiously tired, reluctant to move from the door, as if any movement at all might bring on a new situation, a new series of complications that he would have to deal with. He wanted to see and hear nothing, to feel nothing, to be alone in a vacuum, like the mouse in the bell jar.

But the mouse was dead. In the first place he’s dead.

He heard someone coming down the stairs behind him. He had thought the house was empty, but now that he found it wasn’t, he was too weary to feel surprise. He turned slowly, knowing before he turned that it was Sands.

“I thought you were gone.” He had to drag the words out of his mouth.

“I’m leaving in a minute. Everyone else has gone. You’ll be alone.”

Alone. The word had a solemn sonorous sound that struck his ears with a thud.

“That’s what you wanted,” Sands said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now you have it. You’ll be alone. And you’ll be lonely.”

“No, no, I... Martin... Martin will come back.”

“But he won’t stay. There’s nothing left for him here in this house.”

“He’ll stay if I ask him to, if I...”

“No, I don’t think so. You’ll be quite alone.”

Andrew closed his eyes. He saw the mist on the road ahead suddenly sweeping back toward him in gusts of fury.

“No... no...” he said, but how faint and suffocated his voice was, with the mist smothering his mouth. “I’m not... not afraid of being alone.”

“You’re afraid of the big fellow. You don’t want justice any more, you want mercy.”

Andrew bowed his head. Mercy. A terrible and piteous word that conjured up all the lost people wailing to their lost gods.

“I want nothing,” he said.

“But it’s too late now. You already have what you wanted. Don’t you recognize it?” Sands smiled. “This is it, Morrow.”

“Is this it?” He heard in his own voice the wailing of the lost men.

“The role of avenger is not for a little man like you. You dispensed justice to Lucille, now you must await it, in turn. You even asked the police to help you hunt her down. You couldn’t wait, could you?... You enjoyed seeing her suffer, didn’t you?”

“No... no... I’m sorry...”

“Too late, it’s all over.”

“And now?”

“Now, nothing.” He smiled again. “Doesn’t that amuse you? You’re like Lucille, after all. You have nothing left to live for.”

Andrew was propped up against the wall like a dummy waiting for someone to come along and move it into a new position.

Sands took out his watch, and in the silent house the ticking seemed extraordinarily important.

He put his watch back and began buttoning his overcoat. “I’ve got to leave now.”

“I am afraid,” Andrew said, but the door had already opened and closed again, softly, and he knew he must die alone.

Sands stepped out into the keen sparkling air.

He stood on the veranda for a moment and looked across the park where the phallic points of the pines were thrust toward the sun. He felt outside time, naked and frail and percipient. Evergreens and men were growing toward decay. Time was a mole moving under the roads of the city and imperceptibly buckling the asphalt. Time passed over his head in a thin gray rack of scudding clouds, as if the sky had fled away and its last remaining rags were blowing over the edge of the world.