“Send her my love,” murmured Mr. Queen.
The fairy princess, alias Cinderella, was unhappy. That was against all the rules, and Violet Day told her so emphatically. Vi was a tower of strength and comfort these days. Kerrie didn’t know what she would have done without her.
For one thing, there was Margo. Margo had begun to loom large in Kerrie’s life. She tried to dominate the house, even that part of it which was exclusively Kerrie’s. When she had her own suite redecorated in French provincial, she insisted the whole house be done over in the same style and period. Kerrie defended her maple and chintzes bitterly, challenging Margo’s authority. Margo said something in French which sounded unladylike, and Kerrie’s eyes flashed fire, and more than feelings would have been wounded had Beau not arrived at that critical moment. Of course, Kerrie instantly withdrew.
“Let her try,” said Kerrie passionately to Vi. “Just let her! I’ll punch her in the nose.”
Then there was Beau, or “Ellery,” as he was known to that turbulent household. He seemed always to be there. Kerrie tried hard to be polite to him, but her good resolutions broke down and she turned frigid. For he seemed to have become completely infatuated with Margo; he was with her constantly, flattering her, fetching things like a puppy, taking her out.
And Margo’s attitude, of course, was nearly impossible to endure. She was always glancing at Kerrie slyly, and then whispering to Beau, and the two of them would laugh as if they shared some secret, and Kerrie found them so hateful that when she saw Beau she would run away — to the stables for a furious canter, to swim in the big outdoor pool with Vi, to go sailing on the river in the little skiff she had bought, or for a tramp through the woods surrounding the estate.
“If I could only go somewhere,” she said fiercely to Vi. “Vi, she’s deliberately humiliating me! She takes every opportunity to wave him in my face, like a — like a flag!”
“Then why don’t you go away?” asked Vi practically.
“I can’t! I’ve asked Mr. Goossens, but uncle’s will calls for my remaining on the grounds a full year, and he says there’s nothing he can do about it. Vi!” Kerrie clutched her friend. “You don’t think she’s trying to... drive me away?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” said Vi grimly. “She’s the type. I s’pose if you lived somewhere else this year you’d be cut out of the will and she’d get your share?”
Kerrie’s eyes snapped. “So that’s what she’s up to! Isn’t satisfied with twenty-five hundred a week and wants mine, too!”
“Twenty-five hundred a week don’t go very far when you’re trying to corner the mink and sable markets, the way she’s doing.”
“Well, she won’t chase me away! I’ll fight her!”
“Atta girl,” said Vi enthusiastically. “Only let me get in a sock once in a while, will you, hon?”
After that, it was interesting. Kerrie no longer fled. She was careful to join them whenever they began to whisper. At other times she permitted herself to be cultivated by Mr. Edmund De Carlos, who had been quietly pursuing her ever since she had moved in. Mr. De Carlos began to glow with a hot, somehow sinister, light. He became insistent. She must go out with him — often. He had discovered New York. He would show it to her. They must be great friends. Once, she accepted — that was the night when Beau, squirming in tropical tails, escorted the beautiful Miss Cole to the summer theatre.
Everything went smoothly, and dully, until they were on their way home in De Carlos’s limousine. Then something happened. And after that Kerrie refused Mr. De Carlos’s invitations. In fact, she tried to ignore him, finding herself beginning to be terrified.
But Mr. De Carlos’s light glowed hotter and more sinister. His wild and reckless excursions into New York’s night life almost ceased. He spent most of his time on the estate — watching Kerrie. When she went riding, he followed. When she went boating, he followed. When she swam, there he was on the edge of the pool, a little tense. She stopped tramping in the woods.
Kerrie was thoroughly frightened. Vi suggested slipping poison into his soup, but Kerrie was not to be cheered by jests.
“Then why don’t you talk to Ellery about it?” asked Vi. “He’s a man, and a detective, besides.”
“I’d rather die! Oh, Vi, it isn’t just the way De Carlos looks at me. I’ve handled men with that kind of look before. It’s — something else.” She shivered. “I don’t quite know myself.”
“It’s your imagination. Why don’t you make a few friends? You’ve been here weeks and weeks and you don’t know a soul.”
Kerrie nodded miserably.
Vi sought out Beau. “Listen, you. I don’t like your taste in women, but I used to think you were a pretty decent guy once. If you’re any part a man, you’ll keep your eye on this bedbug De Carlos. He’s got what they call ‘designs’ on Kerrie, and I don’t mean the kind of designs they put on doilies.”
“Seems to me,” said Beau indifferently, “she’s sort of egged him on.”
“How quaint!” said Margo, slipping the strap of her bathing suit back over her magnificent shoulder.
“I wasn’t talking to you, grandma!”
“Well,” said Beau hastily, “I’ll keep my eye peeled.”
After that, Beau came even more frequently.
VI. The Knife and the Horseshoe
Someone struck by night.
Kerrie lay in her four-poster. It was warm, and she was covered only to the hips by a thin silk quilt. She was reading Emily Dickinson, absorbed in the lovely, piercing cries of ecstasy.
Kerrie’s suite lay in an ell of the mansion, one story above the terrace which encircled the house. There were strong vines and trellises of roses on the walls outside her windows.
The windows were open, and through the still curtains the gardens below sounded drowsy with the peaceful seething of crickets. There was an occasional river sound: a splash of oars, the stutter of an outboard motor, once the faint shouts of people being borne upstream by a Hudson River excursion boat.
It was quite late. Kerrie had heard Margo and Beau drive up two hours earlier, laughing intimately over some incident of their evening in town together. She had heard Margo invite Beau to stay the night, and Beau’s booming acceptance. They had settled down on the terrace below Kerrie’s windows with a portable bar, and after a clink of glasses there had been a silence.
Kerrie would have preferred noise. She had actually slipped out of bed and shut the windows to keep out that silence. But later, when she opened them again — it was so stuffy, she said to herself — and just happened to look down, the terrace was empty again.
Then she had heard De Carlos come home, lurching on the gravel driveway and cursing his chauffeur in a thick, liquorish voice. That was when she had got out of bed the third time and locked the door which led to the corridor.
But the house had settled into quiet since and Kerrie, intent upon the poet’s verse, almost forgot she was unhappy. Her lids began to droop; the lines swam. She yawned, saw that it was past three by her bed clock, flung the book aside, and turned off the bed-lamp.
And instantly things changed. Instantly.
Instantly she quivered with wakefulness.
It was as if the light had been a thick bright gate, and that turning it off had opened the gate to something that had lain in wait outside, in the thicker darkness.
Kerrie lay motionless, straining her ears. But there was nothing to be heard, unless it were the shrilling of the tireless crickets or that slight recurrent creak — like the creak of a slowly swinging shutter. The shutter! Of course.