Which was, it seemed to me, an extremely good idea.
But being in my softer moments (fortunately rare) a little on the sentimental side, something tight got into my throat and I got up quietly and went to the window and looked out into the winter dusk.
I did rather wonder after a moment how his wound was making out. Still he had one good arm. And the main thing was that they had come together again and now the course of true love would run smoothly. It would be now only a question of a few words and possibly a number of kisses which do seem to have their place in life. I was sure of that.
But the next instant I wasn’t so sure. For the door opened again and I whirled around and Alexia came quickly into the room and stopped. Drue must have heard it too, for she sat up quickly, her face radiant and her eyes shining until she saw it was Alexia standing there.
Craig said, “Come in Alexia. What is it?”
Drue with a single sweeping motion so the cape fell about her like a shield rose from the bed and turned to face Alexia, her golden head high.
Alexia’s lovely face looked sharper and more pointed; her underlip was full and cruel; her eyes gleamed softly from between those drooping eyelashes. She paused only for a moment then she came straight to the bed. Her soft white throat was as white as her pearls. She stood as near to Craig as was possible, as if by her very physical presence she could separate Craig and Drue. She said, “Drue, you’d better know the truth now. Craig loves me. Not you. He belongs to me and I belong to him. It’s always been that way. You came between us once, but he didn’t love you even then.”
Drue’s eyes blazed. “I was his wife,” she cried. “We loved each other!”
Alexia’s voice, husky and vehement, rose over Drue’s. “No, he didn’t love you. I knew it then. He married you, yes. We’d had a misunderstanding; he did it to hurt me. As I, later, married Conrad to hurt Craig. But Craig never loved you.”
“I was his wife…”
Again Alexia laughed. “He never loved you. He told me so. He asked me and his father to help him get the divorce.”
Craig was as colorless as the pillow; his eyes were closed, his mouth a straight white line. And he didn’t say a word.
He didn’t tell Drue that Alexia lied, he didn’t defend Drue, he didn’t even look at either of them.
I said, my hand on Drue’s arm, “Go back to your room, Drue. I’ll come to you. Hurry.”
“I’m free now,” said Alexia. “And Craig is free and…” It was then that Alexia’s eyes fastened on Drue’s cape; a quick look of speculation changed to one of frank and glittering triumph. She cried, “So you weren’t in your room under guard when Claud was murdered! You were out of the house! You have no alibi! The police are going to hear of this…”
Craig opened his eyes then. “Drue,” he said, in a voice that was as cold and chill as if she were a stranger to him, “I’m sorry. Alexia is quite right about everything. You’d better go back to your room now.”
Drue stood perfectly still for a moment, terribly still and erect, in her long blue cape with her golden-brown hair shining, and the lining of her hood a scarlet banner over her shoulders. Craig met her eyes across barriers that now, I thought, could never be dissolved. Then Drue said clearly, “I’m going, Craig. And I’m never coming back.”
15
SHE TURNED SO SWIFTLY toward the door that I had to run to follow her.
No one was in the corridor. Drue swept along it like a queen with the folds of blue cape swirling around her, so the red lining was like her insignia of royalty. I didn’t speak to her; I took only one look at her blazing white face, her small lifted chin, the poise of her head upon her slender shoulders. At the stairway I hurried ahead to look down to the landing with some vague idea of stopping Drue so the trooper wouldn’t see her-although I could as easily, I fancy, have stopped a whirlwind. But he was gone, luckily; for Drue swept past without looking and on down the corridor and into her room. I followed her and said then, “Drue-Drue…”
“Sarah, don’t!”
The little dog was there and came quickly, his tail wagging furiously; I saw her take him into her arms as I turned away and press her white face down upon the wriggling, little brown thing.
I closed the door behind me. Funny how seldom you can really face anything with anybody you love, no matter how hard you try. It’s the everlasting loneliness of life; you are born alone, the alone, go up and down the winding road alone. Only in love you do ever really share, and I suppose that’s why it’s so important.
Well. I went back to Craig’s room. Alexia was sitting in a kind of sulky silence beside the bed, and Craig was lying there looking straight ahead; neither of them spoke when I came in, although Alexia’s eyes shifted toward me, measuring me again, I thought. Wondering, planning perhaps. And after a while she got up and walked out of the room. As she went Beevens came to the door; he still looked sick and his color was a pale blue-gray, but he said punctiliously enough: “The police are in the north meadow, sir; I thought you had better be informed of their arrival.”
Police in the north meadow.
But it was at least two hours before they came to Craig’s room and brought the things they brought.
It was a queer two hours which I remember in patches. Mostly we waited. Craig said nothing to me of Drue or of Alexia. Naturally, I said nothing of it to him and indeed made the few remarks I had to make as short and crisp as I could make them. He noticed it, for once I caught his eyes upon me in the oddest look; it had a kind of understanding, yes, and liking, and I don’t think I imagined it. If it was liking, however, I did not reciprocate; on the contrary, for I thought he had treated Drue abominably. Indeed, I thought a lot of things, none of them pleasant, and looked coldly back at him and asked him what he wanted for his dinner tray. My suggestion would have been, at that moment, a sprinkling of cyanide, but it isn’t really considered ethical for a nurse to poison her patient even though he richly deserves it. Which somewhat vigorous but merely fanciful line of thought brought me quickly back to unpleasant reality. Murder had actually happened in that house.
And on a dark and silent meadow.
It must have been about then, or earlier, that Peter Huber brought Maud back to the house. Alexia helped Maud to bed and later I gave her a sedative. Pills; nothing could have induced me to give her anything by way of a hypodermic. Maud said almost nothing; yet she seemed in a queer way to know everything we did, her eyes were so bright and knowing in her little sallow face. It may have been shock or brandy or sedative or all three-whatever it was, she went to bed docilely enough and then all at once to sleep. Alexia stayed with her for a while and, when she left, I think Nicky took her place.
We all had that curious feeling of haste that goes along with tragedy as if there’s a great deal to do (hurry, see to things!) and yet there’s really nothing you can find to do.
Every so often someone would bring a bulletin from the police in the north meadow and once Peter and Nicky and Beevens went to the back door and down into the meadow until they encountered a policeman who sent them back. There were by that time quite a number of police and cars; we could see lights (the long steady streams from the cars and searchlights, and the glancing, busy gleams from small flashlights going everywhere) like the lights of ushers in some darkened, dreadful theatre. Someone knew and told us when Chivery’s body was at last removed.
A trooper again was outside Drue’s door, and this time when I attempted to enter my own room and then go to Drue, he stopped me. “Orders, Miss,” he said. And when I said, “Orders nothing; it’s my room,” he removed my hand from the doorknob in a very muscular way and then put his hand on his revolver holster. So I had to give up; not that I thought he was going to shoot me, I just thought I’d wait a better chance.
Beevens gave us a kind of dinner, served from the buffet in the big elaborate dining room, with its crystal chandeliers and stiff, green and silver brocade draperies. It was an elegant room, too big and too cold. Anna didn’t help him serve; she was having hysterics in her room and I sent her some spirits of ammonia.
But before dinner Peter came to Craig’s room; I was there and remained so I heard everything they said. Peter told him of the inquest and of our visit to Balifold where we found Maud, and when and where he had left me.
“I’m horribly sorry, Miss Keate,” he said. “It must have been a terrible shock finding him like that. I ought to
