Wolf in Man’s Clothing

16

WELL, LUCKILY IN A way, I didn’t yet know about that. And I couldn’t break down the door to Anna’s room and I couldn’t see through hard pine.

I said, “Open the door, Anna. Beevens said you were ill. I’d like to get some medicine for you.”

“Thank you, Miss Keate. No, I’m all right now.” There was another slight pause, and she added, “I don’t need medicine, thank you. I don’t need anything.”

So in the end I was obliged to retire to the end of the hall, loudly, and return on tiptoe to the open door of a room opposite Anna’s. But after five minutes no one had emerged and there was no further sound of a (possibly) masculine voice from behind the closed door on which my eyes were glued. I was eyeing the keyhole thoughtfully and, indeed, had tiptoed nearer and was bending over (merely to see if a key was in it; as there was) when I heard footsteps behind me and straightened and whirled around and it was Beevens.

Who said “Ah” and coughed, giving me a chance to pull myself together. Not that I needed it; I said “Yes, Beevens?” as calmly as if keyhole investigation were my everyday and normal activity.

“Dear, dear, dear,” observed Beevens, and again coughed and choked and choked and coughed so wildly that I saw that he was agitatedly concerned with something else and possibly had scarcely noted my posture and pursuit. His eyes were bulging and his throat palpitated like a fish’s gills, quite noticeably, above the little white wings of his collar.

Craig wanted me-at once, quickly, he said.

Not even by a look did he question my presence just where I was and where I had no business to be. There was silence in Anna’s room. So I followed Beevens back to Craig’s room and Craig was waiting impatiently, watching the door, harassing the folds of blanket and coverlet across him with nervous fingers.

“There you are,” he said. “Come in. That’s all, Beevens. Shut the door.”

Beevens hesitated. “If you please, Mr. Craig…” He looked uneasy but determined-so determined that it checked Craig’s impatience.

“What is it, Beevens?”

The butler cleared his throat and came nearer the bed. “Two things, really, Mr. Craig. I’ve been in some doubt, but I-if you feel quite able…” He glanced anxiously at me as if for my permission and Craig said quickly, “Yes, of course. What is it?” Beevens swallowed. “A large blue vase has disappeared from the hall.”

Craig frowned, his eyes perplexed. Beevens said, “No one knows anything about its disappearance.”

After a moment Craig said: “What else?”

The other item Beevens had to relay was more serious. “It’s a question of alibis, sir,” he said. “Mr. Nicky told the police he spent two hours this afternoon in the morning room; he said he didn’t leave the room at all-during the time Dr. Chivery was killed. And Gertrude-the housemaid-saw him there twice.”

“Well, go on.”

“But he did leave, sir. I saw him.”

Craig sat up abruptly. “You saw him! When? Where?”

Beevens looked quickly over his shoulder and lowered his voice still further. “He went out the side door, sir. Walking toward the garage. I thought nothing of it, naturally. Until the police…”

“What time?”

Beevens swallowed hard. “Not more than half an hour before the nurse found Dr. Chivery and reached us with the news. Scarcely half an hour, as a matter of fact.”

There was another silence. Beevens’ intelligent blue eyes watched Craig and reserved conclusions. And I thought, was it Nicky then in the meadow? But Claud Chivery had been dead for some time when I found him. Then why, if it was Nicky, had he lingered? Or had he returned for something? The glove? The knife?

Craig said, “Are you sure it was Nicky?”

Beevens permitted himself a slight shrug. “I saw him walking toward the garage and thus toward the meadow. Besides, I couldn’t mistake his checked coat; I was looking out the pantry window. But I didn’t see him return. I was busy then in the dining room; he could have returned by the door just opposite the back stairs, gone upstairs and then down again by the front stairs. There’s no doubt he had returned by the time the nurse reached the house.” He paused. “Shall I tell the police, sir? I heard them question him and he definitely did not admit his absence from the house.”

“Yes…” said Craig, and changed his mind. “No! No-I’ll tell them. Is that all, Beevens?”

It was apparently all. But after Beevens had gone, closing the door carefully behind him, Craig lay for a moment in thoughtful silence; he looked perplexed-but there was something else in his eyes, as if Beevens’ story had given him the barest glimpse of some new idea. Well, Nicky had been one of my choice suspects all along. And there’s no doubt there was something queerly feral and inhuman in his very grace and lightness, as if behind his pointed face a graceful jungle beast might well inhabit.

Craig finally shook his head in an impatient and perplexed way and looked at me. “See here, Miss Keate, I’ve been thinking. You’re fond of Drue, aren’t you? Never mind answering, I’ve got eyes. Well, then…” He paused, his gaze plunging deeply into my own as if to test some quality within me. “Look here,” he said. “I’ve got to trust you. You’re pretty discreet-aren’t you?”

I lifted my eyebrows and nose and he said, “Oh, yes, I know, but this is murder…”

“My dear young man,” I said. “I have been a nurse since you were in rompers. The exigencies of my career have not failed to include a brush or two with the law.”

“Oh,” he said and looked at me speculatively for a moment. I did not see fit to explain, however, for one reason, the memories induced were a little unnerving, particularly just then and in that murder-ridden house. And for another reason, what is past is past and usually a good thing. So I merely waited in silence and presently he frowned and said, “I know. But it’s not me or you that’s in danger. It’s Drue.”

And at that, though it was not a new thought, I sat down on my patient’s bed for the first time in my professional career. “What do you mean? What new…?”

“Oh, it isn’t new! I guess I’ll have to tell you. You’re her friend. It-well, what I want you to undertake, Miss Keate, is a little second-story job.”

I digested that for an instant. “Exactly what do you want me to steal?”

His eyes were very intent; he put his hand tight and hard on mine as if to compel my understanding. “This is important, Miss Keate. It means everything to her. If they get hold of material evidence against her…”

“All right. Tell me quickly.”

He was still reluctant to share the thing with me. “If I could only do it myself. I’ll be up tomorrow. I must be. I tried to get up just now, while you were out of the room. Beevens helped me. It was no good.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said hotly. “Do you want to work up a fancy temperature?”

“I’ve got about as much strength as a kitten,” he said angrily. “It’s a hypodermic, Miss Keate. It’s Drue’s hypodermic syringe.”

“Oh…” I said a little weakly.

“You see, Alexia’s got it. She is sure it belongs to Drue. She found it somewhere…”

“Never mind-I know…”

“You know!”

“I put it there. In the fern.”

He started abruptly upright, clasped his free hand quickly over his wounded shoulder and cried, “You, for God’s sake! Why?”

“Never mind that either; I thought I was doing the right thing. Where does Alexia keep it?”

But he lay there staring at me. “She didn’t tell me you had put it there,” he said, and muttered something which sounded more or less profane. Then he said more sensibly, “Do you know what happened? Why did you hide it? Did Drue really give my father the hypodermic?”

“Yes, she did,” I said, sighing and very cross. “But she didn’t kill him with it. I’ll tell you anything I know later. But I think everybody but Maud is downstairs now. If I’m to search Alexia’s room I’d better do it quickly.”

He was still anxious and frowning but agreed with me at once. “Right. You’ll have to hurry. Look in her dressing room, and in the cupboard in her bathroom. Then also, there is a kind of cupboard built into the wall beside her bed. You’ll see. She says she puts jewelry and stuff in there when she doesn’t want to bother to put them in the safe. Look there. Look…” He moved restlessly and impatiently. “If only I could go! I suppose there’s not a chance of your finding it. There’s no telling where she’s put it and it’s so little…”

I was on my feet. “When did Alexia tell you this? How long have you known?”

A subtle change came over his face; his mouth tightened a little, his lean jaw hardened; his eyes went past me and looked very remote and uncommunicative. “Not very long,” he said. “She wouldn’t tell me where she kept it. You’d better go. It’s the second door to the left across the hall. I hate to ask you to do this…”

I didn’t tell him I only wanted the chance. I went at once to Alexia’s room and the trooper was the only person in the long, wide corridor and he was away down near Drue’s room with his back turned toward me and thus didn’t see me.

But I didn’t find the hypodermic. I found Alexia’s room with no trouble and I searched it, and her tiny, luxurious dressing room as quickly as I could; and, while I don’t happen to have the underworld training really requisite for such a task, still I do have a native aptitude for thoroughness. Indeed, the cool way I went through that glittering little dressing room confirmed a kind of impression I’ve had from time to time in a perfectly law-abiding life that I’d chosen the wrong era and sex to be born in and of. I mean, well, I wouldn’t have been a successful courtesan but, after all, there were pirates.

I felt it even more so when, giving up the dressing room and going back into the beige and rose bedroom with its deep rugs and great leopard-skin hassocks and huge sheets of mirrors, I went directly to the little bookshelf and found the cupboard. And found not the syringe but something else and that was a little cluster of checks made out to Frederic Miller.

There were three of them, for five thousand dollars each, signed by Conrad Brent, dated in July, September and October of 1938. They were canceled and endorsed “Frederic Miller” in an ornate and curly handwriting and pinned together with a little steel pin. They were lying flat, under a soft suede case, the kind you use for jewelry when traveling.

The multitudinous nurses reflected in the mirrors (all in white, all inclined toward embonpoint, all with great wads of red hair and white caps which were in every case a little crooked) gave a simultaneous and rather theatrical start.

There was no shadowy pirate forebear standing behind each one of them, but there might well have been for, after only a few seconds meditation, I took the checks, adding them to my already substantial little hoard of clues. I’d have to tell Nugent. But I’d tell Craig first.

I didn’t go then into the intricacies of explaining to Nugent how I’d got hold of the checks. And perhaps five minutes later I had to give up; it seemed more like an hour what with watching the door with one eye, looking for the syringe with the other, and listening with both ears in case someone came-which sounds involved but wasn’t and had no really permanent effect upon my eyesight.

When I heard voices somewhere in the distance I thought I’d better give up. I ducked out of Alexia’s room and into my patient’s room as Alexia emerged at the head of the stairs and was followed by Peter Huber.

Craig was watching for me eagerly but still looked a little startled at my possibly precipitous entrance. “Somebody chasing you?” he said.

I straightened my cap and caught my breath and he got up on his elbow. “Did you find it?”

“No.” I hated the disappointment in his eyes, the tenseness of sharpened anxiety, almost as much as the admission itself.

He lay back against the pillows. “Oh. All right, Miss Keate. Don’t look like that. You did your best. She’s given it to the police, then. She said she would. She hates Drue. It’s because of…” He stopped there, abruptly, his face a kind of mixture of anger and discomfort and, queerly, sadness. There was no embarrassment about it and no fatuous or flattered look. I said crisply, “Because of you, I suppose. She makes it clear enough.”

He wriggled his feet under the covers and scowled at them, but there was still a sad, altogether mature and grave look in his face.

“I hurt Alexia’s pride one time. I didn’t realize I was doing it; I was in love with Drue, you see. I was so in love that”-he paused and then said, simply-“so in love that there wasn’t any other woman in the world. There wasn’t anything but Drue.” He stopped again and then went on, “Alexia just didn’t exist for me. Nothing did really.”

There was another silence; I was wishing Drue could hear him and resolving to tell her. I also realized that this was the time to put in a word or two with a view to clearing the situation between them. That is, while I am neither meddlesome or sentimental, it did seem to me that interference was practically invited at that point.

However, just as I was preparing to come out with something really clinching, he moved suddenly and restively and said in a different tone, “I tried to humor Alexia. She has the whip-hand. And my father loved her-he did, you know. She married him and he loved her.”

“Don’t get excited,” I said, automatically rearranging the covers he had twisted around. “You’ll get a fever…”

“Oh, for God’s sake shut up,” shouted Craig suddenly, explosively, and gave a flounce which sent the eiderdown on the floor.

“Don’t talk to me like that, young man!” I picked up the eiderdown and put it over the foot of the bed.

“I’ve got to think! I’ve got to do something…”

“Well, it doesn’t help to shout.”

He glared at me and I glared back at him. My fingers itched to come into smart contact with his ears, but such a gesture seemed rather to exceed my nursing duties. And then just as we were staring at each other like two enraged cats looking for an opening, he grinned. The anger went out of his eyes and an odd, amused and, which was really remarkable, a rather affectionate look came into them. It really was that, and I couldn’t help seeing it. He said: “I’m sorry, Miss Keate. It’s only that it makes me savage, being helpless like this.”

“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” I said crisply.

The shadow came back into his face. “Yes, but it’s Drue that’s in danger. If she gave him digitalis…”

“She tried to save his life. She didn’t give him enough digitalis to kill him. Unfortunately, though,” I added grimly, “there’s no way to prove that. That’s our whole trouble. Are you sure Alexia gave the syringe to the police? Perhaps it was only a threat.”

“I think she meant it. I was a fool. She knows I still love Drue. I tried not to let her see. I was afraid of what she would do to Drue. Sounds queer to say you’re-afraid of anybody. But Alexia’s not like other people.” He paused and then thoughtfully, quietly, as if he were explaining something to himself as well as to me, talked of Alexia. “We’ve known each other since we were children, you know: Nicky and Alexia and I. They used to come here for summers when their mother was alive; then she married again and went abroad to live. Nicky and Alexia were pushed around anyhow, schools in France and Italy, camps in Switzerland, hotels everywhere. After their mother died they were shipped back here. They hadn’t really much of a chance and never enough money. My father always liked Alexia.”

“Your father was in love with her.”

“Yes, later. Perhaps all along without realizing it. At any rate Alexia married him. She’s ruthless in a queer way, you know; she doesn’t seem to comprehend pain. If it doesn’t touch her it doesn’t exist. She-I can’t describe it exactly. She’s the same with animals. It’s like a kind of blindness.”

“She could murder anybody.”

He looked up at me quickly. There was a short silence. Then he said slowly, “Not unless she was so angry that she didn’t stop to think. But that’s why I’m afraid of what she might do to Drue.”

There was a sincerity in his voice that didn’t give my spirits what you could call a lift. But I did decide (provisionally) that Craig Brent had not murdered his father. And I must talk to Drue and among other things tell her that. Perhaps, then, she would explain about the medicine-box-that is, if her determined silence regarding it really was, as I thought it was, to protect Craig. Which meant obviously that at some time it had been in Craig’s possession and she knew it. And that reflection brought me around the full circle again and in spite of myself I wondered whether Craig’s continued and repeated statements of regret at not being able to get around were as sincere and frantically frustrated as he made them sound!

I was thinking that (and it was definitely not a happy thought) when he said abruptly, “That shooting in the meadow night before last; you remember?”

“How could I forget?” I demanded with some earnestness.

“Nugent thinks it was a kind of spur-of-the-moment attack on you.”

“Just an idle impulse, no doubt,” I said, bitterly. “Well, I didn’t like it just the same.”

“Anna was sure it was only a hunter. Hunting in the meadow is not uncommon, you know.”

“Besides being a fine alibi!”

“Yes. There’s that too. But are you sure he shot at you?”

“I’m sure two bullets whizzed over my head. Of course, he may have been aiming at Anna. Or he may have been just a little prankster, bent on having his fun and giving us both a scare.” I said it sarcastically, but he looked perfectly sober.

“Perhaps,” he said, and added, “Anna’s honest and loyal.” And before I could remark upon the curious way Anna, terrified, with a mysteriously black eye, kept obtruding herself at every turn (to say nothing of a masculine voice, hurriedly hushing, drifting out of the keyhole), he went on, “I suppose there’ll be traces of digitalis in the little-what do you call it, barrel?-of the hypodermic?”

“Yes. Unless it’s been cleaned. Did Alexia see me put it there?”

“She didn’t say.”

I thought back rapidly to the hurried moments following Conrad’s death. “She was walking up and down in the library, just behind the big desk. She must have seen me put it under the fern. Beevens was coming down the stairs just ahead of me. When I turned I saw no one. But-yes, the stair landing is visible from the library; she must have moved out of sight just as I turned. Then I suppose she took it-later, on her way upstairs, immediately after she left the library.”

“Miss Keate, who telephoned for the police?” It was of course a pointed and significant question and had been from the first. But it was still without an answer.

“I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

“If we could find out who did that and why. If I could do anything-anything…”

I looked at him, decided to meddle, took a long breath and said, “Look here, you still love your wife.”

“She’s not my wife. You forget that.”

“Fiddlesticks. There’s no law against remarrying. If Nicky…”

“What about Nicky?” The question was like a pounce.

“I’d hate to see her marry him.”

“You’d hate…” he stopped. “Listen, Miss Keate, there’s something you don’t know. That’s why she left me. Because of Nicky.”