“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.”