“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” I said crisply.
The shadow came back into his face. “Yes, but it’s Drue that’s in danger. If she gave him digitalis…”
“She tried to save his life. She didn’t give him enough digitalis to kill him. Unfortunately, though,” I added grimly, “there’s no way to prove that. That’s our whole trouble. Are you sure Alexia gave the syringe to the police? Perhaps it was only a threat.”
“I think she meant it. I was a fool. She knows I still love Drue. I tried not to let her see. I was afraid of what she would do to Drue. Sounds queer to say you’re-afraid of anybody. But Alexia’s not like other people.” He paused and then thoughtfully, quietly, as if he were explaining something to himself as well as to me, talked of Alexia. “We’ve known each other since we were children, you know: Nicky and Alexia and I. They used to come here for summers when their mother was alive; then she married again and went abroad to live. Nicky and Alexia were pushed around anyhow, schools in France and Italy, camps in Switzerland, hotels everywhere. After their mother died they were shipped back here. They hadn’t really much of a chance and never enough money. My father always liked Alexia.”
“Your father was in love with her.”
“Yes, later. Perhaps all along without realizing it. At any rate Alexia married him. She’s ruthless in a queer way, you know; she doesn’t seem to comprehend pain. If it doesn’t touch her it doesn’t exist. She-I can’t describe it exactly. She’s the same with animals. It’s like a kind of blindness.”
“She could murder anybody.”
He looked up at me quickly. There was a short silence. Then he said slowly, “Not unless she was so angry that she didn’t stop to think. But that’s why I’m afraid of what she might do to Drue.”
There was a sincerity in his voice that didn’t give my spirits what you could call a lift. But I did decide (provisionally) that Craig Brent had not murdered his father. And I must talk to Drue and among other things tell her that. Perhaps, then, she would explain about the medicine-box-that is, if her determined silence regarding it really was, as I thought it was, to protect Craig. Which meant obviously that at some time it had been in Craig’s possession and she knew it. And that reflection brought me around the full circle again and in spite of myself I wondered whether Craig’s continued and repeated statements of regret at not being able to get around were as sincere and frantically frustrated as he made them sound!
I was thinking that (and it was definitely not a happy thought) when he said abruptly, “That shooting in the meadow night before last; you remember?”
“How could I forget?” I demanded with some earnestness.
“Nugent thinks it was a kind of spur-of-the-moment attack on you.”
“Just an idle impulse, no doubt,” I said, bitterly. “Well, I didn’t like it just the same.”
“Anna was sure it was only a hunter. Hunting in the meadow is not uncommon, you know.”
“Besides being a fine alibi!”
“Yes. There’s that too. But are you sure he shot at you?”
“I’m sure two bullets whizzed over my head. Of course, he may have been aiming at Anna. Or he may have been just a little prankster, bent on having his fun and giving us both a scare.” I said it sarcastically, but he looked perfectly sober.
“Perhaps,” he said, and added, “Anna’s honest and loyal.” And before I could remark upon the curious way Anna, terrified, with a mysteriously black eye, kept obtruding herself at every turn (to say nothing of a masculine voice, hurriedly hushing, drifting out of the keyhole), he went on, “I suppose there’ll be traces of digitalis in the little-what do you call it, barrel?-of the hypodermic?”
“Yes. Unless it’s been cleaned. Did Alexia see me put it there?”
“She didn’t say.”
I thought back rapidly to the hurried moments following Conrad’s death. “She was walking up and down in the library, just behind the big desk. She must have seen me put it under the fern. Beevens was coming down the stairs just ahead of me. When I turned I saw no one. But-yes, the stair landing is visible from the library; she must have moved out of sight just as I turned. Then I suppose she took it-later, on her way upstairs, immediately after she left the library.”
“Miss Keate, who telephoned for the police?” It was of course a pointed and significant question and had been from the first. But it was still without an answer.
“I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”
“If we could find out who did that and why. If I could do anything-anything…”
I looked at him, decided to meddle, took a long breath and said, “Look here, you still love your wife.”
“She’s not my wife. You forget that.”
“Fiddlesticks. There’s no law against remarrying. If Nicky…”
“What about Nicky?” The question was like a pounce.
“I’d hate to see her marry him.”
“You’d hate…” he stopped. “Listen, Miss Keate, there’s something you don’t know. That’s why she left me. Because of Nicky.”
17
THE BREATH SIMPLY WENT out of my lungs, so I couldn’t say a word.
“Oh, yes, it’s perfectly true,” said Craig quietly. “She loved him. There’s no other explanation for it. I didn’t blame her. How could I? It’s nothing you can help or do anything about. Love, I mean. I knew Drue. No cheap emotion would have made her do it. It was the real thing.”
“But Nicky!” I gasped, incredulous.
He smiled a little. “That’s another thing about love; you don’t choose. If you’re in love and it’s the wrong man or the wrong woman, still you can’t help it.”
“N-nonsense,” I exclaimed, rallying a little. “Of course you can help it! You can nip it in the bud! You can-why, that’s a very immoral statement!”
He shook his head a little. “They went away together. Only a little while after she became my wife. It’s been Nicky all along; only he wouldn’t marry her because of the money. My father was grateful enough to Nicky for breaking up our-the marriage…” He said it swiftly. “He paid Nicky regularly for that, all this time. That is, I’m sure, the explanation of those checks to Nicky. But my father wouldn’t have given Nicky a cent if he’d married Drue.”
I wanted to shake him. Stupid, blind young idiot. I said, “She is in love with you. She always has been. She…”
He interrupted sharply, “There’s no use talking of that, Miss Keate. She went away with Nicky while I was in Washington, shortly after our marriage. She asked for a divorce through a lawyer. She never tried to communicate with me.”
“She wrote to you.”
“No.”
“Yes, she did. She told me.”
“She…” He looked slowly at me. “I never got it. Are you sure? My father wouldn’t have…”
“Your father would have tampered with St. Peter’s mail if he wanted to. But it’s too late now. What happened then?”
“But I can’t believe… Well, then I went into training. She had gone with Nicky; she didn’t even just go away and then meet him later; she actually left the house with him. My father told me. She didn’t write to me…”
“Look here,” I said in exasperation. “Five minutes talk with Drue would clear up everything.”
“No,” he said stubbornly. “All that’s in the past and done with. Drue wanted a divorce…”
“You wanted a divorce.”
“No, it was Drue…”
“Nonsense. She only wanted it so you could get into training.”