everybody knows that you and Mrs. Brent…”
“Can’t we leave Mrs. Brent out of this?”
“Not very well,” said Nugent. But after a moment’s thoughtful silence he said no more of Alexia and went on instead to Conrad Brent’s will, asking Craig if he knew its main provisions. Craig said he did. “My father told me.
“How did he make his money?”
Craig glanced at the Lieutenant with a little surprise. “It’s no secret. He inherited from his father, quite a lot; I don’t know how much. He invested it-oh, a long time ago. Before I was born. Anyway, everything he touched prospered. In the summer of 1929 he sold; everything was almost at its peak. Since then he’s done very little buying or selling of stocks.”
“He was a very rich man.”
“Yes,” said Craig, “he was. That is, it wasn’t anything fantastic. But more than enough.”
Nugent, hard and sinuous as a whip in his trim uniform, leaned over the railing at the foot of the bed. Lights touched his narrow high cheekbones and reflected in small points in his gray green eyes. “Brent, there was a queer codicil to your father’s will. I mean, he’d lived in America all his life…”
“Oh, that,” said Craig abruptly. “You mean he wanted to be buried in Germany. At Stuttgart. Yes, I know. It was an odd notion of his. When it struck him years ago, he had it written into his will; then, after his recent marriage, when his new will was written I suppose that was just carried over. I am sure that he’d changed his mind about it.”
“Why did he want it, in the first place?”
“You’d have to understand and know my father to understand that,” said Craig slowly. “I’ll try to explain. He once had a kind of hobby for family; he dug into his genealogy, oh, away back when. Unearthed a single direct line, and clung to it. Got hold of the coat of arms, all possible records and history, everything. He was of German descent; although I think his father came to America and made his fortune sometime before the Civil War. My father had time on his hands; the study of genealogy interested him.”
“A hobby,” said Nugent. “I see. He didn’t take it too seriously, did he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, did he consider going back to Germany to live, for instance?” said Nugent.
“Good God, no,” said Craig. “He was a little hipped about family, that was all. He thought a lot about pure Nordic blood…”
“Approved of some of Hitler’s ideas, in other words?”
“
“I see,” said Nugent. “Forgive me, Brent, but he did disapprove of your marriage, didn’t he?”
“He thought we hadn’t known each other long enough. That was all.”
“Oh,” said Nugent. “I had an idea that you had rather quarreled with him about your marriage. I mean when you married a girl he didn’t think was good enough to marry into his family.”
“That,” said Craig dangerously, “is enough of that. As a matter of fact, Miss Cable was too good for me and the Brent family. If that is all, Lieutenant…”
“No, it isn’t,” said Nugent. “It’s this way, Brent. Soper thinks the girl-your former wife-did it. I’m not sure. Until something clinching and material turns up I’d like to hold off an arrest. And I’ve tried to give her a fair break. But she’s not telling everything she knows.”
“Well?” said Craig, still with a dangerous look in his face.
“For one thing, she disclaims having taken the missing box of medicine. Yet her fingerprints were on the drawer of the desk where the medicine was kept; they were on the wooden handle and the panel across the front. She wouldn’t explain how they got there.”
My heart sunk, quite literally and heavily down toward my white oxfords; yet I’d been afraid of it. Craig said evenly, “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“And she got past my man late this afternoon and went outdoors. He…” Nugent stopped there and left us to conjecture what had happened to the trooper on guard in consequence. “It won’t happen again,” he said briefly. “But she was out of the house at the time Chivery was killed.”
“A woman couldn’t have killed him! Like that,” said Craig.
“Mrs. Brent told us Drue Cable had been out of the house,” said Nugent slowly, and looked at the ugly things that still lay there on the towel-the bright, sharp paring knife, the yellow glove.
And abruptly then, after a few more questions about Claud Chivery, they went away. As they left, Craig asked a question.
“Oh, by the way, Nugent…”
The Lieutenant turned. “Yes…?”
“Did you find only one glove?”
For an instant something very deep and intent stirred again away back in Lieutenant Nugent’s green gray eyes. “Only one. See you in the morning, Brent. The District Attorney may be here then, too. I’m leaving a man in the house tonight.”
They went away then, rolling up the towel and taking it and the things inside it along with them.
Craig lay in silence, his eyes closed, after their departure. And I can’t say that I felt exactly chipper and talkative myself.
And presently Beevens came; he’d stay with Mr. Brent he said, while I got some rest. “And the Lieutenant spoke to the trooper on guard in the hall. I heard him, Miss. He’s to let you enter and leave your room whenever you wish to.”
“They’re still holding Miss Cable, then,” said Craig.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid they are. Is there anything about medicine, Miss?”
I told him there wasn’t and went away quickly; there were things I had to do, for somehow, now, everything was different.
It was an ugly difference too, something in the air, in the stillness of the house, in the shadows in the corners and around the stairwell. In our meeting eyes.
There was no possibility of evasion this time; no way to deceive ourselves, no glossing of the grim and terrifying truth. Murder had been in that house, murder on the black and silent meadow. A thing that struck swiftly, out of nowhere and might strike again as swiftly, as silently.
An opened door, with the room unlighted beyond it, was a threat.
Well, I hurried along the corridor. The trooper, the same one who had stopped me earlier in the evening, let me enter my room, this time without a word. But I didn’t go straight on to Drue’s room, for the first thing I had to do was write a letter to the police.
I didn’t really think I had done any harm or obstructed their inquiry in the least by hiding the hypodermic syringe. But I also felt a responsibility about it, to say nothing of the empty medicine box. So light in my hand when I weighed it and looked at it, so heavy on my heart. Perhaps now that Claud Chivery was dead Drue would tell me what she knew of it.
But just now I had to write my letter.
Since the shooting episode, not unnaturally perhaps, I had felt a remarkably unpleasant sense of personal danger. This was now very much stronger. I had seen Claud Chivery with his throat cut, huddled like an empty sack. The only motive for murder so far attributable was that he’d known something that was a danger to the murderer of Conrad Brent, or to whoever it was that shot Craig. And I, accursed with the Keate nose and a mentality that would have startled and delighted any psychiatrist, was simply reeking with clues. I had been led astray by my affections and softening of the brain; it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that if I didn’t end as Claud Chivery had ended I’d be lucky.
True, I was none the wiser for any of my clues, if clues they were, for I didn’t know who had murdered Conrad or Claud. But still there they were, and suppose something happened to me. Not that I intended to let anything happen to me; but I did want a clear-or fairly clear conscience. Just in case.
And it was equally conceivable that the little I knew might later, in some way, clear Drue or another innocent
