Wolf in Man’s Clothing

“And is he?”

“No,” said Nicky ruefully. “He didn’t turn a hair. Even when I hinted that I was ready now to make an honest woman of her.”

Unexpectedly, Alexia laughed; there was the strangest note of pleasure and pride and, mainly, understanding. Nicky laughed, too, so for a moment they seemed to be congratulating each other’s cleverness, complacently, understanding each other.

Then the little musical, wicked laughter stopped. I could imagine them, wary again, mutually on guard, watching each other like two reflections of the same face. Nicky said, “So, my dear. I’ve got to feather my own nest, you know. As soon as I knew Conrad was dead and that source of supply was shut off I realized I had to…”

“To find out who killed him, and bleed him for the rest of his life,” broke in Alexia in sudden, low vehemence.

“Oh, now, dear! Only to turn an honest penny for myself. By bleeding her. You, darling.”

“Nicky, you wouldn’t dare! Your own sister.”

Nicky laughed a little, but this time Alexia didn’t join him. He said, “Don’t be difficult. You oblige me to put the screws on, so to speak.” His soft voice had an ugly undertone. “First, Conrad’s own medicine, all of it, a fatal quantity was put into the brandy. Digitalis is soluble in alcohol.”

“How much you know, Nicky!” There was a jeering note in her voice. “Too much, if you ask me. Be careful I don’t set the police on you.”

“Then later, after a vase, dear, had been pulled down a stairway and broken…”

Alexia interjected jeeringly again. “You really do know too much, Nicky. Did you murder him?”

“… the brandy was changed. Poisoned brandy poured out, good brandy poured in. I figured it all out. What did you do with the medicine box? Burn it?”

Alexia was still perfectly possessed and unafraid. “It may have been planted,” she said coolly. “To turn suspicion one way or another. I’m sure I wouldn’t know about that, however.”

“Planted?” said Nicky. “Where? Craig?”

“Perhaps,” said Alexia with a little laugh.

Nicky said, “It was you, of course, in the meadow, when Chivery was killed.”

“Beevens says it was you,” she said, still sure of herself “Of course, we do resemble each other.”

The ugly undertone in Nicky’s voice was more marked “Listen, Alexia, you can’t get away with that. You had time to get back to the house and put on that long green dress over the clothes you were wearing. My clothes! And don’t tell the police I killed either of them! That would be very foolish. I know too much about you.”

“I didn’t kill Conrad,” said Alexia rather slowly.

Nicky gave a soft little laugh but said nothing. Alexia said, after a moment, “I had no motive.”

“Oh, dear me, no,” said Nicky. “Rich and attractive widow marries…”

“Nicky, you killed him. You had just as much motive as I had. Money.”

“It won’t go, Alexia. I tell you that I know things.”

“But I didn’t…”

“What of the Frederic Miller checks?”

There was another silence. Then Alexia said in a kind of stifled way, “All right. But if you say a word…”

“You took them out of his desk yourself, didn’t you? So you’ve been in on the thing from the beginning.”

“Nicky, is this a guess or do you know…?”

“I know enough,” said Nicky. “Part of it is guess work but extremely effective guess work. I think I know the whole story.”

“You don’t,” said Alexia. “You can’t possibly. But if you’ll keep still…”

“I knew you’d see the light.”

“You little selfish beast,” said Alexia suddenly and low. “All you’ve ever wanted is money. Money from anyone you think you can blackmail.”

“Blackmail,” said Nicky. “It was blackmail, wasn’t it?

Never mind. It’s an agreement. It’s a good thing for you that you believe me and are a sensible girl…”

“Will you go?” demanded Alexia in a voice that trembled with anger.

“Right,” said Nicky.

There was another silence, then the sound of the front door opening and closing and somebody crossed the porch on tiptoe, softly. I looked out the window, but there was only the hedge and the white picket fence, growing dimmer in the dusk.

So Nicky knew, or effectively pretended to know the “whole story.” Whatever it was, it was so damning that Alexia would promise anything to silence him.

But if Maud had murdered Conrad, and Claud Chivery, why was Alexia willing to bargain with Nicky? And did Nicky really know as much as he pretended to know?

After a long time of utter silence in the cottage, I moved, stiffly, very cautiously, so I could see through the little crack between curtain and window casing.

Then I wished I hadn’t looked. For Nicky stood in the doorway; he was looking slowly around the study, and he held the long carving knife in one hand.

Only it wasn’t Nicky.

I looked closer, scrutinizing. It was Alexia in Nicky’s clothes-Nicky’s checked jacket, Nicky’s brown slacks, Nicky’s maroon scarf. It must be Alexia; Nicky had gone. All at once I understood many things. Mainly, Nugent's suggestion was right: Alexia could and obviously had worn Nicky’s clothes whenever it was convenient to do so.

But there was something else-something terribly important. Oh, yes. Is Drue here? Nicky had asked.

If Drue was in that gloomy silent cottage she was upstairs, where I hadn’t looked. If she was alive, why hadn’t she come down, or telephoned the house or let me know somehow?

Perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps they had her locked up in some upstairs room so she couldn’t telephone. Yes, I thought; it had to be that. And Nicky (no, Alexia) had come to the Chivery cottage. Yet she hadn’t seemed to be sure of Drue’s presence; she’d replied obliquely to Nicky, saying only that the police hadn’t thought of the Chivery cottage. As I hadn’t; as Craig hadn’t, for there was no reason to think for an instant that Drue was there.

I didn’t then consider why and especially how anyone could have got Drue out of the house (an able-bodied and supple young woman with a good pair of lungs), for I was watching Alexia, and afraid to watch her at the same time for fear she would feel my eyes upon her. But she didn’t, for she was looking at the books I had left on the desk. No: that was wrong. She was actually looking at the telephone.

The telephone! I’d forgotten it. I could telephone, the instant Alexia started upstairs to Drue!

Well, I couldn’t. I shall never forget my feelings as before I could move Alexia took one swift step to the telephone, and slashed through its wire with the knife, swiftly, as if she had wiry, feral strength in those white wrists. Then she glanced quickly around the study again and I shut my eyes to keep from attracting her gaze and when I opened them an instant later she was gone. Quietly as a cat, stalking.

There were back stairs. I remembered that. I crept out from behind the draperies and Alexia didn’t come back. The big roll-top desk was beside the door which led back toward the little hall and the back stairway, and, as I passed it, a very queer little thing happened. It was an instance, I suppose, of the instinct of self-preservation, for it flashed through my mind that nobody would live like that, isolated in the country, without a revolver, and my hand went out to the desk drawer and opened it cautiously and there was actually a revolver, big and serviceable-looking, lying on top of some papers. It didn’t seem at all strange; I snatched it up as if I’d known it would be there, and went on with scarcely a pause, through the little consulting room and into the tiny hall beyond.

But it was much darker than it had been. The hall was in blackness and I groped with my free hand for the stairs. Something took a kind of quivering breath out of that darkness before me just as my hand encountered hair.

Human hair.

I drew back somewhat quickly. I would have fired the revolver if I had been able to find the trigger.

Then luckily for us both, perhaps, I realized that the hair I touched was a braid. So it was Anna, and she was