Wolf in Man’s Clothing

AFTER A LONG MOMENT she said with a kind of incredulous horror, “He wasn’t murdered, Sarah! I saw him die. If I killed him, it was some terrible, unforgivable mistake on my part, but I didn’t murder him. I didn’t…”

“You didn’t kill him. Listen, Drue; you can’t tell them what you did. You must not. I’ve seen something of police investigation; circumstantial evidence has hanged many a man. No, no, I didn’t mean to say that! I only meant you must promise me not to tell. Not yet. Not until-well, until we see what’s going to happen.”

“But if I’m wrong, if it should be murder I’ve got to tell them, don’t you see? If the police are right, if he was murdered, they ought to know what I gave him and how much.” She stopped, caught her breath and said again, fighting it, “But he couldn’t have been murdered!”

“No. Yet who called the police then and why? Who shot Craig? And why? What did Craig mean when he said there would be murder done?”

“But he didn’t mean-he couldn’t have meant-this!” She stared at me with a kind of terror for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I’d better tell them exactly what I did.”

It frightened me, but more than anything it exasperated me. “All right,” I snapped. “Go ahead and tell them you murdered him! That’s exactly what it will amount to. Or shall I tell them? Craig may come to see you in jail but I doubt it.”

“Sarah…”

“There’s a time for nobility, Drue Cable, but this isn’t the time. However, if you’re bent on making a martyr of yourself I won’t stop you. Heaven knows it’s nothing to me. You make me come here; I didn’t know I was walking into anything like this. I hate shooting and I hate murder and I hate the police. I’m going home. Unless they stop me. You can do exactly as you please. Just go ahead and tell them you killed him and I don’t care, for I won’t be here.”

“Sarah…” She caught my arms. “Sarah, I’m not that kind of fool.”

“Oh, yes, you are. I can see it…”

“No. No.” Her hands dropped away from my arms. She stared down at the dressing table with its rosy little lamp and crystal bottles. “I won’t tell them. I cannot believe that he was murdered. I saw him. Yet if-oh, you’re right, of course.”

“Certainly, I’m right.” I paused thoughtfully. There was only one thing we could do and it had its dangers. Yet they had already mentioned digitalis; and it was a piece of material evidence really leading to Drue.

“Did you use all the supply of digitalis you had, Drue?”

“No. Only enough…”

“We ought to get rid of the rest of it.”

“But Sarah, when-if I eventually tell them about it, as I may have to do…”

“I know. It might look guilty. But I think it’s better to get rid of the rest of the digitalis now in the hope it needn’t ever come out-about the hypodermic, I mean. Some blundering fool” (which was exactly the opposite of what I meant) “of a policeman might get his hands on the digitalis; Chivery may see the hypodermic mark. No, no, Drue, it’s better to dispose of the rest of the digitalis now. I’ll do it…”

“No,” she said quickly and sharply and then caught herself as quickly. “I’d better do it myself,” she said. “I know exactly where it is. I’ll go. Now.”

So she went, leaving me oddly perplexed by the look of sudden and sharp anxiety in her face. It was as if she had remembered something she didn’t want me to know about-which was nonsense, of course. What could there be in her room, in the little nursing bag, anywhere in the house, which she wanted to keep a secret? When presently she came back, slipping quietly into the room while I was sitting beside Craig, I had decided it was nothing.

“Did you get it?” I whispered.

Her face looked very white and her breath was coming quickly; her hand was in her pocket. She shook her head. “They were already there. They… Sarah-they’ve got your little black bag-you know; and mine. I saw a policeman go downstairs with them. Oh, Sarah…”

We stared at each other across Craig’s bed, and rain whispered against the windows. Finally, I said-I had to say, “Never mind. It doesn’t prove anything. Don’t worry.”

After that there was really nothing we could do. We didn’t even talk much. The rain beat and murmured against the windows and all we could do was wait.

Digitalis. And they had thought of us, nurses, and had taken the little instrument and medicine bags to search even before they could possibly have got results from the autopsy. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t tell Drue (although she knew it, naturally), and Craig slept and the rain beat down and there was no way of knowing what the police were doing. What Alexia was doing and Nicky, or Maud. Waiting, too, I imagined, as we were waiting.

I couldn’t then, even, try to discover the syringe. If the person who had found it in the fern (who must have seen me place it there) had taken it to the police then we were already lost. But if not there might be some chance.

If it was murder, then who? Who had shot Craig? Who had killed his father?

I had ensconced myself on the couch in front of the fire by that time, feeling that since we could accomplish nothing by further talk, Drue and I, I might as well try to get some sleep. I remember their names kept going around and around in my head like a nightmarish kind of merry-go-round-Alexia, Nicky, Maud, Peter Huber, Dr. Chivery (for he was not in the house, but he was fairly near presumably, and could have returned somehow without anyone’s knowledge), Beevens, Anna-the other servants.

Just as I was about to catch the tail of a nap I began to think again of the telephone call to the police. Who had called them? And more important-tremendously important-why? In that answer, I thought suddenly, with that queerly elusive clarity one discovers on the edge of sleep, might lie the answer to the whole ugly problem.

After that I was wide awake for what was left of the night. Craig slept heavily and seemed none the worse for his mysterious peregrinations; Drue sat in an armchair near the bed with her starched cap off and her hair a little rumpled from pressing her head back against the cushions of the chair-her face pale, her eyes very dark, watching Craig’s sleeping face broodingly. It rained all that night, rain and sleet and rain again. We could hear nothing of what was going on in the house. Twice I got up and tiptoed into the hall, once going down the stairs, pausing again at the fern. But the syringe was really gone.

The hall below was deserted, but Nicky Senour and Peter Huber were sitting in the morning room in front of the fire, smoking. There were state troopers in the library; I went down into the hall and as far as the library door. No one stopped me and I wanted to see what they were doing. I was little wiser for my pains but convinced, if I had not been before, that they were in earnest about an investigation. For they had been taking fingerprints from smooth surfaces in the room; they had been using a tiny hand vacuum on furniture and rugs; the decanter of brandy had been removed; there were chalked crosses on the sofa and on the rug indicating, I thought, the position of Conrad Brent’s body. Pictures had been taken, then. But the body of Conrad Brent had been removed.

Two troopers were still there, one of them writing shorthand notes rapidly in a little tablet; the other blowing a small cloud of yellowish powder from a contrivance that looked like a tiny bellows upon one of the wooden panels across the room on the right side of the fireplace-a panel that I saw then, was actually a swinging door leading into a tiny washroom, for I could see walls tiled in shining, pale green beyond. He turned to look at me and the trooper with the tablet stopped writing to look at me, too, and there being, to say the least, no welcome in either look but rather the contrary, I retreated; anyway I had seen all I wanted to see. Nicky looked up as I passed through the hall but did not stop me. Peter however came out.

“Have you told Craig?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Better not for a while.”

“What was that noise, Mr. Huber? You remember-while you were calling the doctor. Did you find out about it?”

He frowned; his face looked tired and worried. “I didn’t find anybody,” he said. “I guess I’m not much of a detective. From the sound I thought a window had been broken somewhere, but I was wrong. I looked all along the hall leading toward the back of the house. But I found just nothing to account for it.”

“Could there have been some-some intruder? A thief, perhaps?”