The hills and the trees gave an effect of isolation. As I looked, a snowflake, very white against the gray sky, fluttered past my eyes and then another. Shivering a little, I closed the windows.
The day went on quietly. Soper, I think, went away shortly after the talk with Craig. Nugent vanished, too, but I believe busied himself for some time, quietly, about the house. Once a policeman came to the door with an ink pad and slide and took my fingerprints; I must say I didn’t relish the little attention but did not intentionally smudge one hand as he seemed to think. The glass slipped.
He would have taken Craig’s fingerprints, too, but Craig looked convincingly asleep, and I wouldn’t permit rousing him. The policeman went away, and I caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Nugent down by the stairs, listening but not talking to Beevens. We were to become well accustomed to Lieutenant Nugent’s spare, silent figure, unobtrusive, yet ubiquitous. He did, indeed, a very good job of lurking.
There were, of course, things I wanted to do and just then couldn’t. The thing that worried me more than anything else was the hypodermic or rather its whereabouts. Who had it and why-and above all else what did he intend to do with it? I use “he” in a general sense; it seemed to me most likely that Maud’s bright little eyes had ferreted it out. And I could do nothing; to search the place for so small an object would be at best difficult. With the police about it was impossible.
Yet if found, it would be the District Attorney’s triumph and vindication.
I had begun to wonder if Chivery had forgotten that he still had a patient in the Brent house when he did finally arrive, late in the afternoon, looking very gray and drawn, and at least ten years older. After I had watched him examine Craig’s wound and taken a few orders he told me to go. “Get some fresh air,” he said, with a kind of glassy heartiness, looking at the corner of my cap. “You needn’t come back for at least an hour. I’ll stay with Craig.” As I hesitated, he added, “I want to talk to him.”
So I had to leave.
My room was orderly and quiet. I went through the bathroom between our rooms and knocked softly on Drue’s door and, as she didn’t answer, I opened it cautiously. She was sleeping; she looked very young and childish lying there with one hand pushed under her pillow and the shadow of her eyelashes dark along her soft cheek. The little dog, Sir Francis, lying on the foot of the bed, watched me intently and growled in a kind of formal way. It was a tiny growl, of course, yet as full of intention and sincerity as a police dog’s growl. It didn’t wake Drue and I retired quietly. It suddenly occurred to me that if I’d married and if I’d had a daughter she might have been something like Drue. But while I’m an old maid and make no bones of it I’m not a sentimental, dithering idiot; so I thought no more of that, changed to a fresh uniform, took my cape, passed Wilkins in the hall again and went for a walk.
No one was in the hall below, so we weren’t then, all of us, under close guard. The front door closed heavily behind me and I walked along the driveway toward the public road. It was still gray and cold and the air felt moist, but it was not snowing. Dusk was coming on and it was very quiet. Twenty-four hours ago I had had my first indication of smoldering tragedy and terror in that house that lay behind me.
The drive went down a long curve among clumps of evergreens. When I reached the huge stone gate-posts I stepped out briskly along the public road which wound north and west with many curves and a little bridge or two.
Somewhere along the way Delphine, the cat, picked me up and I looked down at his battle-scarred ears and wondered what had roused him so suddenly in the night. A footstep? Clothing brushing against the door? Or had it been something more tenuous even than that; an awareness of movement outside that door that was denied to my own, merely human, ears? And I wondered, too, what had struck the door so sharply and so hard. Like a hammer.
Gradually, as I walked along, the Brent wall gave way to a low field rock wall beyond which an irregular, partially wooded meadow stretched away into the dusk.
And presently, having skirted two sides of the meadow and reached a little ridge, I could see the village of Balifold about a mile or two away. It was a cluster of white houses, narrow and irregular but pleasant streets, and a church or two, for I could see the white steeples rising among bare trees and against the dull gray sky. There were many trees, beautiful, strongly symmetrical maples and oaks, and again evergreens.
From there too, spreading casually away from the town, I could see here and there what appeared to be large country estates hiding behind trees and in valleys, like the Brent place. There was about all of it-village and wooded hills and the soft dusk-a stillness and repose that would have been pleasant, except that there was a definite chill and loneliness in the air. Delphine decided to leave and did so, on secret feline business into the meadow, where his gray body slid into the shadowy growth near at hand and vanished. Leaving me alone.
Murder by poison. Standing on that hill, leaning against the low stone wall, looking down at the village and across those silent hills and valleys, I began to think again of the means of Conrad Brent’s death. The use of poison presupposed a murderer with some knowledge of drugs, accessibility to digitalis, and a certain amount of ingenuity in inducing Conrad Brent to take it. And to take it before Drue had returned with her unlucky hypodermic dose.
And that, of course, led me back again, irresistibly, to the circles my thoughts had traveled so many times during the day. Who had murdered Conrad?
Craig Brent had by no means told all he knew; there was that business of the yellow gloves; and he had merely, unconvincingly, denied words that were suspiciously prophetic. Against this he had told a story to account for the bruise on his temple which not only sounded true but indicated, in my opinion, a line of inquiry the police would do well to follow. And while there may be few real alibis for a poison murder, still he had been under my observation at the time Conrad was induced to take poison. He was also in a drugged state, which would have prohibited clear thinking or quick action. And he had been shot, himself, the previous night. It was not likely, as he had said, that two potential murderers existed in their immediate circle-both with the evident intention of cutting off the Brents, root and branch, so to speak.
Furthermore, he had so narrowly escaped with his life the night before that there was no doubt at all but that the shooting had been a real attempt at murder. Therefore, someone else had shot him; he had certainly not shot himself in any fantastic effort to induce just such a theory on the part of the police, and thus clear himself beforehand, so to speak, of his father’s murder.
No, I didn’t think that Craig had murdered Conrad Brent. And it was true that he had done his best to divert suspicion from Drue; I had to give him credit for that.
Nicky practically invited suspicion, but I had no evidence to back up any suspicions in that direction. Alexia was, of course, an obvious suspect; she was young, she was beautiful, she was married to a man she flatly declared she had never loved and that man was the father of a man to whom she had been all but engaged and for whom, apparently, she still cherished what appeared to be far from a purely stepmotherly regard. I thought of her kneeling beside Craig, and the things she had said. “You knew-you always knew I never loved Conrad.” And then “… all that is ended now for us both, my darling.” Craig hadn’t exactly said, “Oh, isn’t that fine, hurrah, my father’s dead and you are free!” Still, he hadn’t said, “Don’t be a fool, Alexia,” or even looked it.