Alexia looked down at me. “Do you know who did it?”
“No. No…”
Nicky said, almost dreamily, “Claud-well, he must have got in somebody’s way.”
“Suicide,” said Alexia, all at once. “It must have been suicide!” And Nicky said sharply, leaning over me, “What’s she got on her hands?”
“I fell-I told you. He was on the path…” I began jerkily. Alexia and Nicky drew a little together and just looked at me, so their faces, so alike, and the eyes shining from behind those long silky eyelashes, were almost like one face, seen in duplicate, with one expression.
It was Beevens who came forward, clucked disapprovingly and exactly like a hen when he saw my hands and said, “This way, Nurse. You’ll want to wash them.” I followed Beevens through the library and into the narrow little washroom adjoining it. There was soap there and I scrubbed my hands and then saw a small stain on the hem of my white skirt and I took that out with cold water too and shook myself and felt better. Although I’d lost my cap somewhere. Probably in the woodland and the police would find it and say I killed him.
And then I thought of Craig. Alexia hadn’t been with him, she’d been downstairs and in the library. So he was alone.
When I came back into the library Beevens was gone, and Alexia and Nicky were talking.
“Beevens said Maud walked into town about three-thirty this afternoon; she said she would wait in town and come home with Claud after the inquest. The inquest took place in the hotel,” Alexia was saying.
“But she must have missed him,” said Nicky. “Otherwise she and Claud would have come home together.” He turned to me. “You said, didn’t you, that Peter took her home in the car?”
“Yes.” I went to the couch to gather up my cape. “I rode into town with Mr. Huber; we went into the bar and Mrs. Chivery was there.”
“Maud?” cried Alexia.
“Claud must have walked from town,” said Nicky. “He often does. And he must have intended to stop here; everybody takes the short cut through the meadow.”
Alexia said, “Somebody’s got to tell Maud. I’ll telephone.” She started briskly for the telephone, quite cool and unperturbed.
I said, “It’s going to be a shock,” and looked at her trailing green tea gown-not a costume for walking in the meadow. Yet Chivery had been dead for some time when I found him, so she or anybody else would have had time to get home and change. And just at that moment I suspected anybody and everybody in the house, even Anna and Beevens and Craig.
But Drue had an alibi; she’d been under police guard. And now they’d release her, for this proved, didn’t it, that she hadn’t murdered Conrad! For, as Craig had said, simply on the basis of averages and logic, there weren’t likely to be two murderers, mysteriously converging in our midst.
At that thought and its implications I took a long and thankful breath.
Alexia had reached the door when Nicky said, “You’d better let me do it. I’ll have Peter bring her here…”
As Alexia paused, I walked past them quickly toward the stairway. The trooper let me pass; he didn’t speak or try to stop me; it was his presence there (uniformed, armed, waiting because he had to, alert as a coiled spring with only the excitement in his eyes betraying the man) that was a threat of power to come. Investigation, evidence, accusation. One attempt at murder: Craig. One murder by poison: difficult to prove. One murder by stabbing. Outright, cold-blooded, horribly feral. Wolfish.
Drue’s door was unguarded and I wanted to go to her, but that would have to come later. I hurried to Craig’s room; the door was open and he was sitting bolt upright, wrapped in a dressing gown, in the chair near the fireplace. His eyes blazed at me; his face was stiff and white. And I knew by the look on it, that he already knew. He said, “Shut the door.”
I did. “What are you doing out of bed? Who helped you…?”
“Come here. Put down your cape. Sit down-no, over here on the couch. Tell me about Claud. I heard the trooper at the telephone, and you when you came in the door. I know Claud was murdered.”
“But you…”
“Listen,” he said savagely. “I’m up. It didn’t hurt me to get up. Nobody let me; it was my own idea. And as soon as you tell me everything about Claud I’ll go back to bed. Not an instant sooner.”
Well, there was no use struggling over it; I was still shaky and my knees were unsteady. I just sat there looking at him and wishing I could smack him and above everything else not really caring much about anything, I was so tired. And he said suddenly, in a less hard and terse way, “You’d better lie down a minute, Miss Keate. What about some brandy?”
The brandy made me think of Maud and her violet sachet and what had happened afterward and I refused it with a shudder. But I told him about Claud Chivery. Told him the whole story, and watched the gray, drawn look tighten around his mouth.
“Now then,” I added wearily, “you’d better get back to bed. I thought Mrs. Brent was going to stay with you; I wouldn’t have left you alone so long.”
He was looking at the rug with narrowed, intent eyes that didn’t see it. “I thought you ought to have some rest. That’s why I didn’t send for you. Alexia went away only a moment or two after you left. Miss Keate…” he looked at me then. “Do you have any idea who did it? Tell me what you saw, everything. I’m tied here. I have to depend on Pete to get around for me. And you. If I could only get out of here…” He started impatiently to rise, turned a blue-white, and I sprang forward just as he sat down again on the edge of the chair, clinging to the arms of it rather desperately.
“Well, you can’t,” I said.
“I’ve got to. I know I could do something.”
“What?” I asked. It was a pungent question.
He said, “I don’t know. But something. There must be clues. There must be something the police have missed. There must be-well, somebody. Somebody we don’t know about…”
It was not a nice suggestion. It conjured up a lurking, homicidal figure hidden in some forgotten room or out-building, waiting to pounce. Something seemed to crawl along the back of my neck, and I shot a rather nervous glance toward the door, which was closed, and into the corners of the big room where there were only empty shadows, and said rather sharply, “Who?”
He stared at the fire. “Nobody,” he said finally. “It’s just that murder-is so unaccountable. So-well, so hideously erratic. You can’t hook it up with anybody you know.”
There was another little silence. I agreed with him altogether too heartily. At last I said, “If you were able to get around, what would you do? Where would you look for what you call clues?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, his eyes somber and brooding, watching the fire. “I don’t know. Pete is doing what he can. But I-if only I could be sure that Drue is safe!” he burst out all at once and looked at me with a sudden appeal in his glance that was boyish and direct and touched with anguish.
“She’s all right,” I said quickly. “That’s one advantage of being practically under arrest. She is protected by being guarded.”
His eyes clouded again. “Yes,” he said. “And that’s another danger. If they arrest her-Miss Keate, I can’t move. I couldn’t get as far as the door without collapsing. Don’t you see you must help me? Be my eyes, my-my ears. If I could only get out of here!” He struck the arms of the chair and gave a kind of groan. And said, “Tell me everything you saw or heard. Everything. You can trust me.”
Which, for no reason at all, made me wonder if I could. Indeed, after seeing Claud Chivery as I had seen him I would have had a mental reservation about trusting my own image in the mirror.