Nugent gave orders, however, that started a wideflung, hurried search by telephone, radio and police cars, with alarms sent to neighboring states and hurriedly reinforced squads of state troopers searching the hills.
Much of the inquiry itself took place in Craig’s room; he made Nugent stay there so he could hear everything. Soper telephoned frantically with a dozen different theories and directions; he believed that Drue had escaped. Very cleverly, he said; how, he didn’t know; there were no cars gone from the garage. But he suggested that she’d got a ride with a passing motorist. And he blamed Nugent for letting her get away.
I listened and watched and kept going back in my mind over and over again, seeking for any small thing Drue had said, any hint of an intention to leave, anything at all that would serve to show she had gone of her own accord, willingly. There was nothing. Yet she must have got past the trooper somehow.
I kept going back into her room, too-and looking and finding nothing, except for the little dog, Sir Francis, who was still there; he had been there when they knocked and called to her and opened the door at last and she was gone. He wouldn’t leave, but sat on the foot of her bed, bright eyes terribly watchful and worried. About noon, I think, I took him outdoors and tried to feed and pat him and he struggled away from me and took up his post in Drue’s room again, watching the door, listening. I thought she would have taken him with her if she had gone voluntarily. And she would have told me.
It was a horrible, nightmarish day. Yet things happened. The police inquiry, for instance. Nugent’s questions when I gave him the letter I had written about the hypodermic syringe; I was glad then that I’d written it, for I’d put down all the facts about the hypodermic syringe so it explained her fingerprints on the desk drawer; I’d said that Conrad begged her for his medicine and she looked for it but it was gone and it was only then that she’d remembered she had digitalis and had got it and the hypodermic syringe, and given it to him. But I still didn’t tell them about the medicine box; I didn’t want them to know she had so much as touched it.
Nugent did everything he could do short of sending for bloodhounds, and I’m not sure he wouldn’t have done that. And I was in the room when Craig told him that Beevens had seen Nicky going toward the meadow (or at least toward the garage) just before the discovery of Claud’s body.
Nicky, questioned, flatly denied it.
I heard that, too, for the Lieutenant had Nicky come to Craig’s room. And the curious thing was the flatness and boldness of Nicky’s denial. It sounded true; his eyes were bright and inquisitive, but he wasn’t frightened, even when Beevens, summoned also, said he couldn’t have been mistaken and seemed very nervous but certain. Nugent finally dismissed them both.
Sometime that morning, too (thinking of what I knew and what I only guessed of the attempt upon Craig’s life) it occurred to me that if the person who tried to kill Craig was not the same who had killed his father, then an alibi for the time Craig was shot did not automatically constitute an alibi for the time of his father’s or Claud Chivery’s murder. And once, when we were alone, I asked Craig again about that meeting with Alexia in the garden just before he was shot. After a moment’s thought he said, “It was an unintentional meeting. She was walking there too; she was there when I went down the steps. We walked up and down the paths for a little and then she went back to the house.”
“Was it your father who shot you?” I asked him again directly. And again he wouldn’t answer.
And Nugent came back into the room, shook his head to the anguished question in Craig’s eyes and, that time, sent for Maud. When she came, looking horrible with great dark pockets around her eyes and her face the color of wax, he asked her about the decanter of brandy that stood habitually on Conrad’s desk. For her fingerprints were on it, it developed, and so were mine.
I explained my fingerprints on the decanter quickly; I had touched it. I was shocked, I started to take a drink of brandy, and then didn’t. And Maud said in a tight, strained voice that was exactly what she’d done. “It was a shock to me; Conrad-dead like that. The brandy was on the tray and…”
“It was on the desk,” I said.
“No,” said Maud, “it was on the tray. I stood right beside it. I would have noticed if it had been on the desk; that decanter drips and alcohol ruins the desk top; I bought the tray for it myself.”
“How much brandy was in it when you touched it, Nurse Keate?”
“I’m not sure I remember-not very much-the rim of the brandy came to not more than an inch from the bottom of the decanter.”
Maud said, “You’re quite wrong, Nurse. It was more than half full…”
Nugent said, “Perhaps you are both right. If poison was in the brandy…”
“Did you find poison in it?” I cried. “Did you find digitalis in it?”
“No. Not in the brandy that was in the bottle when we arrived that night. But we can find no other way by which Conrad Brent might have, without knowing it, taken poison. He had a habit of drinking brandy at odd times; it’s why he kept it constantly on his desk. Poisoned brandy may have been put in that decanter while he was out for his walk. In that case, he returned, drank it and died. Then in the time during which the room was empty the poisoned brandy was removed from the decanter (there’s that little washroom on the other side of the panel; the poisoned brandy could easily have been poured down the drain and washed away with water from the faucet) and ordinary brandy put back in the decanter. It could have been done, like that. It’s a good thing you didn’t drink any, Miss Keate,” he said a little drily.
I was thinking that myself, rather vehemently. He went on, “Conrad had to get the poison, somehow. It’s the only way that hasn’t been eliminated-so far as I can discover, at any rate. All that method needed were three things-the digitalis, a knowledge of the household and where to get more brandy, and opportunity to make the change after Conrad was dead.” He looked at me gravely; I think he felt sorry for me. I know he was almost as frantic as I was, and as Craig was, about Drue’s disappearance; he only controlled himself better and went on about his job.
Constantly, every few moments, there would be a report from someone-somewhere-looking for Drue. Troopers mainly, tall and well built and military-looking in their dark, trim uniforms, in the way they snapped into the room, snapped to attention, took their orders, snapped out again. But still time went on and there was no news.
He stopped then to listen to a report of a girl picked up near Northampton. It wasn’t Drue; this girl was five feet eight and had black hair and wore a lambskin coat. (She turned out, as a matter of fact, to be an innocent Smith College Senior out for a walk and was highly indignant.)
And then he went back to Maud. “Mrs. Chivery, I must ask you again. If you know you must tell me. Why was your husband killed?”
Maud shrank back, her eyes sunken deep in her face, her black dress like heavy mourning. “I tell you I don’t know. I’ve told you that many times!”
And Craig, watching and listening, gray with anxiety, leaned forward. “Maud-Claud said you quarreled. Lately. About money. What was it?”
She whirled on him. “I didn’t murder Claud,” she said.
“Why did you quarrel?”
She eyed him for a moment, her little face taking on a deep, queer flush. Then she told him. “It was an-an investment I wanted to make. He thought it unwise and refused to sell some bonds we owned together. That’s all. It was nothing.”