“No, thanks. Vi’s going with me.”
“But there must be things you aren’t able to do at such short notice — arrangements about your belongings, your bank—”
“They can wait. Goodbye, Margo.”
“Goodbye.”
They eyed each other inscrutably.
Then Edmund De Carlos stumbled in, drunk as usual.
“What’s this I hear?” he shouted jovially. “Getting married to Queen, or some such nonsense, Kerrie?”
“But it’s true, Mr. De Carlos.”
“True!” He gaped at her. “But that means—”
“I know,” snapped Kerrie. “It means I’m giving up twenty-five hundred a week for life in exchange for a big lug who’ll probably beat me up for exercise on Saturday nights. Now that that’s clear — goodbye, everybody.”
And they drove off, leaving De Carlos goggling after them, and Margo on the drive in a long white gown which shimmered in the dying sunlight, smiling faintly.
Kerrie found herself thinking about her cousin’s smile as Beau’s car rattled toward Connecticut. It was a strange quarter-smile, a delicate and subtle exhibition of amusement, and it had persisted throughout their farewells to the silent household staff, the packing of Kerrie’s and Vi’s bags into Beau’s runabout, throughout the exchange with De Carlos.
That smile of Margo’s seemed to have cast a pall over all three of them. Beau drove in a shut-in silence, and in the back seat Vi was a mouse.
What’s the matter with us? thought Kerrie in despair. This isn’t an elopement; it’s a funeral. Why is he so quiet? And Vi?
It was that woman back there, dominating the driveway, mistress of all she surveyed — ex-clothes-horse! Gloating over the fine rolling lawns, the big house, the view of the Hudson — visibly gloating over her triumph.
That was it — triumph. Why was she so triumphant? Did complete possession of the estate mean so much to her? Or was there something darker and deeper and more hateful in the secret pleasure of that smile?
Kerrie leaned on Beau’s shoulder and touched the lobe of his ear with her lips. He grunted something.
“Give the gal a break, Mister,” said Vi suddenly from the back seat. “You owe her something for making her lose that twenty-five hundred per.”
“Vi!” said Kerrie angrily.
But Beau did not take his eyes from the unwinding tape of the road, and both women fell silent, and no other word was spoken until they crossed from Port Chester into Connecticut.
Kerrie burst out at last: “If you’d rather forget the whole thing, this is the time to say so!”
He started at that, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Kerrie! What makes you say a fool thing like that?”
“You don’t seem very happy over the prospect of marrying me,” retorted Kerrie in a small voice.
“Oh.” He looked straight ahead again. “Maybe it’s because I know what it means to you, Kerrie. What have I got to offer you to take the place of all that dough?”
“If you feel that way about it, then you don’t know what getting married means to me!”
“I’m seven different kinds of heel,” he said quietly.
“You’re marrying me to keep me from being killed!” cried Kerrie. “Oh, I see it all now! You’re not in love with me. You never have been! That’s what she was smiling—”
“She?”
Kerrie bit her lip. “Never mind.”
“Kerrie—”
“Oh, you’re being fine and heroic!” said Kerrie scornfully. “Well, thanks, but I want a husband, not a lifeguard. Please turn the car around and take me back to Tarrytown.”
And she crouched in her corner, her face turned away.
He drove onto the grass shoulder beside the road, stopped the car, said over his shoulder to Vi, “This woman takes a lot of convincing. Excuse us,” and, seizing Kerrie by the waist, yanked her to him.
She gasped. After a moment she put her arms about him.
When he released her he said: “Any doubts now?”
Kerrie was breathing hard; her eyes were shining. She twisted about and said in confusion: “Never a dull moment, that’s us. I think I am wacky. Oh, Vi, this is awful. Can you ever forgive us?”
But Vi was — or was pretending to be — asleep.
They pulled up in the yard of a disreputable clapboard house near Greenwich, on the sagging porch of which a mean sign announced:
A board was missing from the second step of the wooden stairs leading to the front porch, the plot before the house was a miniature wilderness of weeds and rubbish, and the once-white walls were encrusted with the dirt of decades.
“Cheerful little place to tie the knot,” remarked Vi. “So elegant, so refined! What is this, Queen — a haunted house?”
“Johnston isn’t very strong on soap and water. Ready, Miss Shawn?”
“Y-yes,” said Kerrie.
“She’s a little gun-shy,” said Vi. “Buck up, darlin’. This is one form of execution that isn’t permanent. You can rise from the grave any time you like, if you know the right judge.”
“You’re... you’re sure you’ve got the license, Ellery?” stammered Kerrie, ignoring Vi’s prattle.
“Right in my pocket.”
“It’s all right? I mean, I always thought the woman had to sign on the license, too, when it’s taken out. But—”
“Pull,” grinned Beau. “After all, my old man’s a somebody in New York, isn’t he?”
“Oh, Inspector Queen. And I haven’t even met him!” Kerrie looked anxious. “But this is Connecticut, darling, not New York!”
“You find more things to worry about,” grunted Beau, and he scooped Kerrie from the walk and carried her over the broken step, and Kerrie giggled something about Isn’t that premature? and Beau set her down and set off a bell that jangled rustily.
A tall gaunt man wearing thick glasses and an ancient morning coat peered out through the dirty pane at the side of the front door. When he saw Beau his thin features cracked into smiles and he hastened to admit them.
“Come in!” he said heartily. “All ready for you, sir!”
“Mr. Johnston — Miss Shawn — Miss Day.”
“So this is the blushing bride.” The man beamed down on Kerrie. “This way, please!”
There was something fantastic about the thin, stooped figure that made Kerrie suppress another giggle. What a way to be married, in what a place, by what an agent of the State! The Justice had a head of bristly gray hair, and he wore a mustache of the untrimmed, thicket variety; he looked like a vaudeville comedian. And the house! The front hall was bare, and the parlor he led them into was a cold, dark, sparsely furnished room so full of dust that Kerrie began to sneeze.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Vi’s nose wrinkle with disgust, and laughed aloud. Then Vi laughed, too, and they began to whisper together.
It certainly is a “different” sort of wedding! thought Kerrie as Beau conferred with the Justice at a desk in a corner over the marriage license. He would pick a place like this, and a funny man like that to marry them! Always doing the unexpected. “Never a dull moment,” she had said to Vi in the car. No, there never would be with him. Perhaps that was why she loved him so much. It would be like being married to a ball of lightning.
Vi whispered: “Scared?”
“I should say not.”
“How does it feel to be taking the fatal step, liar?”
“S-simply s-swell.”