And at that instant the trooper, Wilkins, knocked on the door. He looked apologetic when I opened it. But Drue had to go with him all the same.
When the door closed behind her, Craig closed his eyes and lay there, very quiet, with a gray look around his mouth for a long time.
Well, after that the day settled into a smoldering kind of quiet. Eventually I bestirred myself to my duties. Craig was really on the mend, in spite of occurrences which, certainly, were not exactly conducive to convalescence. He must have been thinking hard, for he was unexpectedly docile, while I gave him a quick sponge bath and an alcohol rub, got him into fresh pajamas and took a look at the dressing on his wound.
“Such a fuss about nothing,” he said, but winced nevertheless as I worked. “If it had been a Jap bullet I’d feel as if I deserved some of this fuss.”
“You’ll be dodging Jap bullets soon enough,” I said tartly. “Hold still.”
“So long as I dodge them,” he said, and grinned. While I thought of youth and war and the hideous waste of it.
I said, “When do you go?”
“I don’t know. The end of this week sometime.”
“With this? Nonsense!”
“I feel fine. I’d get up now if you’d let me.”
“Certainly. Just try it. And start your wound bleeding.”
“Would it?”
“Listen, young man, you just escaped with your life. Do you want to get well enough to leave or do you want to be an invalid for several weeks?”
“Okay, okay,” he said but looked rebellious, so I realized I’d have to watch him. I said, “If you want to spend the spring at home or in a hospital, all right, get up. If you want to fight, do as I tell you. Stay in bed. I’ll get you well.”
For the first time he looked rather approving and pleased. “In time to leave when the orders come through?”
“It depends. I’ll try. Do you know where you will be sent?”
“No.” He moved restively. “I hope they get the inquest over satisfactorily and everything settled before I go.”
“Yes, naturally. Does Drue know you are leaving so soon?”
“No,” he said, and eyed me with sudden sharpness. “And you are not to tell her, either.”
“But…”
“I mean that. Understand?”
“All right. If you don’t want her to know, but I think…”
“I’m doing the thinking about this,” he said, and then added with a touch of apology, “I’m sorry.”
I eased him back onto the pillow. The wound was doing all right; but the pain of even the slight motion brought moisture to his forehead and around his mouth. Well, it was just luck that the bullet had missed his heart.
I said, “Have you been at home long?”
“Only a few days. There, that’s better.” He relaxed against the pillow and sighed and grinned a little. “The brave soldier!” he said, deriding his weakness.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I said. And, as the shadow of perplexity and horror and sorrow came over his young face again, I said impulsively, “Mr. Brent, what do you think happened last night? This is your home. You know these people. What’s your theory?”
He closed his eyes. Weakly? Or was it, I thought suddenly, to shut me out, so I would read no expression in his eyes that might reveal his thoughts. He said, “Theory? I haven’t any. I don’t know what to think.”
“Do you think it was accident?” I persisted. “Or do you think the police are right?”
“Murder,” he said thoughtfully after a moment. “No, I don’t think it was murder. My father had no…” He had been about to say, I thought, that his father had no enemies. He stopped and changed it. “No one would murder my father.” He paused again for a moment and then went on, his eyes still closed, “My father and I had our differences. Yet we loved each other. The differences we had didn’t separate us in that way. I’m sure that he felt that. I’m sure he did.”
“One knows things like that without words,” I said. “I’m sure he felt as you do. I’m sure he was proud of you, too. And that he…”
“No,” said Craig rather quickly. “No, he wasn’t proud of me. Not that I’ve ever done anything to make anybody proud of me, or anything to be exactly ashamed of either-that is, I’m an ordinary fellow. But he wasn’t proud…”
“I meant, about your getting into the air force. Having a son going to fight for his country.” It’s queer how the true things can sometimes sound trite. But Craig laughed a little, on an unsteady note, so he caught himself up quickly.
He said, “You don’t understand. That was one of our differences. He wasn’t afraid; it isn’t that. He just didn’t want me to go to war.”
“Why not?”
“Because he-because…” He moved a little again. “Oh, it’s nothing, Miss Keate.”
He said it easily enough; yet something in his tone caught my ear and my interest. I waited, thinking of it and of what he had said-or rather had failed to say. And he added all at once, “It was nothing my father could help. He’d felt that way for years. And, anyway, he changed lately. I know that he changed. Since December seventh, I mean. Since we entered the war. Yes, he’d changed, I’m sure.”
“But…” I began, wanting to get whatever it was he was trying to say clear in my mind.
He didn’t want it clear for me, however; he said rather brusquely, pushing the subject away, “Pete will be going too, you know. Soon. He thinks in another few weeks.”
“Pete? Oh, Peter Huber. What’s he doing here, by the way? Did he come to see you?”
Naturally, it wasn’t my business to know; still, I have seldom if ever scrupled to ask questions, particularly when I wanted to know. As in this case. Craig said, moving his shoulder a little and wincing again, “No, he’s been here several weeks. Came on from the coast to try to get into some branch of the service. He’s waiting now to hear; remembered we lived here and came up to Balifold and was staying at the inn when my father discovered him and made him come here. Ouch…” he said, moving his shoulder experimentally. “What makes it hurt like that?”
“It’s doing all right. No infection. Did Mrs. Brent know Pete in school, too?”
“Mrs. Brent? No.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Pete’s more or less susceptible.”
“Susceptible! Oh, you mean…” There wasn’t anybody to mean except Alexia. Craig said quickly, “Oh, it’s only Pete. Alexia’s so-beautiful,” he finished rather dryly.
“But then…” I was struck by a sudden and rather far-fetched speculation. If Peter Huber had fallen madly in love with Alexia, there existed a motive for Conrad’s murder.
Not however a very sound motive; certainly not a very pleasant one-but then a motive for murder is not likely to be pleasant. Mainly, though, there was little if any evidence to back it up. So I caught back my own words.
But Craig guessed my unuttered thought.
“He didn’t murder my father to get Alexia! Peter’s a good egg. Besides, Alexia doesn’t go for him.”
Which was true enough. Alexia had certainly wasted no time in making her intentions clear and they obviously had nothing to do with Peter Huber.
The trouble was however that Conrad Brent had been murdered; the police don’t make mistakes about things like that.
It’s very difficult, and I discovered it then, really to face and accept the fact of murder; yet it’s inescapable too-like an ugly, invisible presence. Murder in that house. Murder in the night just past.
I put away my instrument case in silence. After I had made Craig comfortable and was sure he was warm, I pushed aside the heavy curtains and opened the windows and aired the room.
It was cold, much colder than it had been the day before, with the lowering kind of still gray sky that threatens snow. I could see then, as I couldn’t the day before, something of the rolling landscape. Hills, everywhere, thickly wooded, rose gently up to the gray sky. Roads twisted here and there over and among the hills; and stone walls traced old boundaries. Near at hand, running along just outside the wall and appearing to pass the garden, a path wound downward and out of sight. It led, as a matter of fact, from the Brent house directly to the Chivery cottage about a mile away and was a short cut.