“No,” said Ellery, “that’s quite true.”
“Big Train couldn’t have done it!”
“No,” said Ellery, “I don’t believe Mr. Johnson could.”
“The Diz couldn’t do it!”
“Nor Mr. Dean. You know,” said Ellery, frowning, “this demonstration proves something.”
“Yeah,” said Terry sarcastically, clamping on his hat. “It proves the rock had nothing to do with the murder. I knew that Monday afternoon.”
14
Venetia was waiting for the MacClures with a set table and drawn tubs; and the doctor fled the black woman’s affectionate advances to wallow in a steaming bath. There were pages of notes in Venetia’s laborious hand in the message book on the telephone table in the foyer, a stack of telegrams and letters, and boxes and sheaves of flowers.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Eva. “I suppose we’ll have to answer all these people. I didn’t know Karen had so many friends.”
“It ain’t her,” sniffed Venetia. “It’s Dr. John. They’s been mo’ doctors!”
“Hasn’t Dr. Scott called?”
“No, honey, he ain’t. Now look-a here. You go take off your clo’es an’ soak in that tub, you hear me?”
“Yes, Venetia,” said Eva submissively, and went to her room. Venetia glared at the telephone and returned, muttering, to her kitchen.
The telephone rang four times while Eva was bathing, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything any more. As she used the big puff on her body in the black-tiled bathroom, looking at herself in the full-length mirror, she wondered what it must feel like to die. If you died like Karen there was a bite, a pain, and then... what? What had Karen been thinking of as she lay on the dais before the oriel windows, unable to move, unable to open her eyes, dying, knowing she was dying — perhaps even hearing everything Terry Ring and Eva had said? Oh, if only she’d had the courage, thought Eva, to feel Karen’s heart! Karen might have talked. Karen might have said something in that last gasping moment which would have solved everything... That glare in Karen’s eyes when she gurgled in her torn throat and they saw she was still alive. The brown man thought — Eva knew he had — that Karen was accusing Eva with her eyes. But Eva knew how impossible that was. Eva knew that the glare was only the last glare before death, when Karen saw the light fail and felt her heart stop beating...
Eva dashed the puff over her eyes angrily. Then she sat down before the vanity to cold-cream her face.
All those telephone messages, letters, flowers. People must have been puzzled and uneasy. They didn’t quite know what to do. When a person died decently you telephoned and wrote notes of condolence and sent flowers, all very sad and gracious and beautiful, and everyone felt that it was good to be alive, even the mourners who saw the dead one in every dark nook and cranny. But when a person was murdered! The book of etiquette didn’t say anything about that. Especially when the victim had been murdered under mysterious circumstances and no one knew who might have done it. You might send flowers to the murderer!
It was so absurd and tragic that Eva put her head on the vanity and wept through the cold-cream. If people only knew! If people only knew that she was the only one who could have murdered Karen Leith — she, Eva MacClure, herself, the girl, the woman. If Dick only knew...
“Eva,” called Dr. Scott from the other side of the bathroom door.
He’d come!
Eva scrubbed off the cold-cream, dashed cold water over her face, dried and powdered it, used her newest shade of lipstick in three dabs — peach-coral to match her nails and the glints in her hair — wriggled into her Turkish-towel robe, flung open the door, and fell into Dr. Scott’s arms.
Venetia, hovering in the bedroom doorway, was shocked.
“Eva! You... that ain’t decent!”
“Go away,” said Dr. Scott.
“Now you listen to me, suh! I’m goin’ right in an’ tell Dr. John—”
“Venetia,” said Eva through her teeth, “go away.”
“But yo’ hair — it’s all mussed, and you’s in bare feet!”
“I don’t care,” said Eva, and kissed Dr. Scott for the third time. He felt her body tremble under the woolly toweling.
“You’ll catch yo’ death of cold on that floor!”
Dr. Scott detached himself from Eva’s arms, went to the bedroom door, and firmly closed it in Venetia’s outraged face. Then he came back and picked Eva up and sat down with her in the Cape Cod rocker.
“Oh, Dick,” moaned Eva.
“Don’t talk, darling.”
He held her very tightly, and Eva through the warmth of his arms and her own distress began dimly to wonder. There was something bothering him. That was it. He was comforting her, but it was really himself he was trying to comfort. And his unwillingness to talk showed that he didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to think about anything. He just wanted to sit there holding her in his arms and feeling her closeness.
She pushed away from him and flung her hair back from her eyes. “What’s the matter, Dick?”
“Matter? Why do you ask that? Nothing at all.” He tried to pull her down again. “Let’s not talk, Eva. Let’s just sit.”
“But there is something wrong. I know it.”
He tried to smile. “What makes you so intuitive all of a sudden? It’s been a bad day, that’s all.”
“The hospital? You poor lamb!”
“I lost a confinement case. Caesarian. She’d have been all right if she’d taken care of herself.”
“Oh,” said Eva, and she snuggled down again.
But now, perversely, he seemed to want to talk, as if defending himself was important. “She lied to me. I’d put her on a rigid diet. I couldn’t watch her like a dog, could I? Now I find out she’d been stuffing herself with ice-cream and whipped cream and fatty meats and God knows what else.” He said bitterly: “If a woman can’t tell the truth to her doctor, what chance does a mere husband stand?”
So that was it. Eva lay still in his arms. Now she understood. It was his way of asking questions. She could feel the slightly unsteady beating of his heart. Those puzzled looks he had been giving her since Monday evening!
“And then I’ve been hounded by those damned reporters all day.” It was coming out now, Eva thought, in a gush. “What the devil do they want of me? I haven’t done anything! One filthy sheet had my picture this afternoon. Young Society Doctor Denies. Denies what? My God! I don’t know anything!”
“Dick,” said Eva quietly, sitting up.
“I felt like slamming into the lot of ‘em! What’s the low-down, Doc? Who bumped Karen Leith? What’s your angle? Where do you fit in? Is it true she was a cardiac? Did you tell your fiancée not to talk? Why? Where? When? How?” He snapped his jaws shut, glowering. “They’ve been infesting my office, pestering my patients, hounding me at the hospital, cross-questioning my nurses — and they want to know when we’re going to be married!”
“Dick. Listen to me, dear.” She took his flushed face in her hands. “I want to tell you something.”
The tip of his handsome nose, that Eva had so often kissed, grew faintly pale. He said: “Yes?” in a hoarse voice. Scared. He was scared. Eva could see it written all over him. She almost asked him what he was scared of. But she knew.
“The police don’t know everything about Karen’s death. There’s one important thing they don’t know.”
He sat very still, not looking at her. “Yes?” he said again, and this time he didn’t even try to keep from showing how scared he was.