Hunt with the Hounds Page 4

  “… waited at the club—then Miss Caroline phoned to Pa; so we brought him over. He’s inside—I don’t know, Fitz, do you think we need to stay? It’s not that I mind, or Ruby. Except—well, you know how the newspapers are. But if there’s anything in the world we can do—although I do hope this is nothing. It can’t be anything serious, can it?” There was real anxiety in his sharp eyes, peering at Fitz but he raced on, “The police have to do something, since the jury recommended it. Can’t just let it go by. Maybe the whole thing will die down, blow over. Tough on Sue, of course, but …” Wat’s thin, rather nasal voice, slicing through the misty air stopped; there was the effect of a deletion, a slight embarrassment with a quick recovery. “Not that Sue brought it on herself, I didn’t mean that. Everybody knows Jed’s been crazy about her ever since she came home; Sue didn’t encourage it …” again there was a slight gap and Wat said, “… intentionally. But mark my words …”

  Fitz said crisply, “Why don’t you and Ruby go home!”

  “Well, but—that’s what I’m saying but—why, Fitz Wilson, you sound as if you want to get rid of us! There’s no call to get mad. I didn’t say anything against Sue.”

  Ruby pressed Sue’s arm. Suddenly Sue realized that there was real anxiety hidden under Ruby’s placid exterior, too; the hand on her arm was trembling. But Ruby said, calmly enough, “I think Wat’s right. You’ll see that the doctor gets home. We’ll go now.”

  She turned in slow and stately fashion toward the car. Wat sprang to open the door. “But now you two come along to the club as soon as you can. We’ll expect you, do you hear?”

  Fitz walked up the steps with Sue. The car door banged. At the top of the steps he turned around and said mildly, “You can go to the club, Wat, or you can go right to hell for all I care.”

  “Why, Fitz Wilson!” cried Wat, startled, from the driver’s seat. He’d had his hand on the starter; the engine whirled over smoothly and they could see Wat’s protesting face, his mouth moving, but could not hear his voice above the sound of the engine. Fitz smiled in a pleased way. “We’ve got to keep Wat down. He’s going to be the county’s stuffedest stuffed shirt, if we don’t.”

  She looked up at him rather sadly. “You’re going to have plenty of fights on your hands, Fitz, if you try to fight everybody that says or thinks what Wat …”

  “There’s nothing the matter with a fight! And you’ve got a fine long line of fighters back of you. Come on. Keep your head …” He opened the door with the eagle on the knocker—a one-eyed eagle whose head was turned and who had watched out of that one eye blue and gray lines, trudging, limping, straggling along the road below. The hall was lighted; the stairway down which Woody had once fallen and nearly cracked his skull, whose steps were faintly hollowed by the years, glimmered—white banisters and mahogany railing. There was the familiar blended scent of pot-pourri and floor wax, old rugs and camphor from the head of a deer over the mirror; there was also a faint ghost of pipe tobacco and always, permeating everything, wood smoke. Light came from a door down the hall, beyond the old-fashioned, delicately formal and sentimentally cluttered drawing room; it was the door to the so-called library which indeed had once been a library but was now Caroline’s special refuge—Caroline’s and her dogs. Two dogs tumbled out now—Sister Britches, the old, indulged beagle bitch in the lead, Reveller, stiff and rather bored, following. Sister Britches started a shrill tongue and was silenced by Caroline’s voice from the library. She then came to the door.

  Caroline Poore, fifty-odd, with a goodness and kindness that shone around her like a halo, was now distraught and trying not to show it. She stood there, pushing up the untidy mass of her gray hair, her blue eyes distressed, obviously at a loss for exactly what to say.

  In the saddle that hair was neatly netted, her hat severely and smartly adjusted, her sometimes shabby skirt always brushed. She rode so well that her thick little body took on grace and flexibility. Out of the saddle she never looked quite assembled. She wore now the suit she had worn to the trial, but she had removed the jacket. Her white blouse was rumpled mysteriously, her black skirt was rumpled mysteriously, her hair looked as if it had not been brushed for a week and she had in the meantime lost her hairpins.

  The dogs pattered around them. A waiting, listening silence seemed to emanate from the library. As they came nearer Caroline finally achieved utterance. She said: “I got out your Uncle Willie’s port.”

  In the Poore family code this was, of course, perfectly clear; it meant an occasion of the first magnitude—funerals, weddings, births, Woody’s passing his examinations. It must have rather puzzled those invisible listening ears in the library.

  And now Uncle Willie’s port was got out for an investigation into murder. There was a catch at Sue’s throat, like the quaver of a half-hysterical laugh. Fitz looked at her sharply and said, “Steady,” and Caroline made a kind of helpless gesture with her hands and preceded them into the library.

  The dogs crowded in with them and then bounded onto the old, hollowed couch. Three men were standing in the library.

  They had risen as Caroline had risen; they were standing in tentative attitudes, expecting to resume their chairs. They were Dr. Luddington and two men in the uniform of the state police. One of them was a Captain Henley whom Sue knew from the repeated series of questionings during the months preceding Jed’s trial; the other had appeared briefly the first day of the trial to testify. Dr. Luddington, of course, had stood almost in the place of a father to her more than once in times of need, when Sue’s and Woody’s own parents had been at the far side of the world and Caroline, alone and perplexed, had sought his help. He had aged that winter; his once ruddy cheeks had sagged, his eyes were shadowed. But he came to Sue and took her hand.

  “My child, these gentlemen wish to question you. You have told everything you know of Ernestine’s death so many times that I cannot possibly imagine what more you can tell, but here they are. Hello, Fitz.”

  Captain Henley said briskly: “Miss Poore, this is Captain Wilkins of Richmond. You heard him testify at the trial.”

  Sue had expected Sheriff Benny; her heart sank. She did not like Captain Wilkins. He was thin, dark and saturnine in his expression, with thick black eyebrows that met over his nose and an expression that was at once probing and cynical, as if he intended to dissect with zeal and yet already knew in advance what he should discover. His nod was offhand, subtly disparaging; yet he clearly believed himself to be polite, reserving his conclusions.

  Actually his saturnine expression was due to a bad digestion. It was true, however, that he did not feel that anybody should be let off the penalty for murder because she was young, pretty and a native of the county and likely to be judged by a jury of her countrymen who might confuse chivalry with justice.

  Captain Henley explained, “As you’ll remember, Captain Wilkins testified about the gun. He’s the head of the laboratory. I asked him to come with me. We wish to question you. Alone, if you please.” He looked pointedly at Caroline and Fitz and Dr. Luddington.

  Dr. Luddington relinquished Sue’s hand. She rather expected him to fire up in what Woody called his Kentuckycolonel manner, polite but coldly and furiously outraged. Instead he lifted his glass of port with a rather shaky hand, put it down and said: “I—we’d like to be present.”

  “Alone,” Captain Henley said and sat down, filling his chair tightly in spite of the spruce way he carried himself; he had a fat face, and thin, hawk-like nose.

  Fitz said: “Look here, I want to suggest that your position be made clear, Captain Henley. If there is any reason why Miss Poore might require the presence of her lawyer, then you’ll have to give her time and permission to get him here.”

  Captain Henley looked at Fitz. “I haven’t got a warrant in my pocket, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Warrant!” whispered Caroline. The dogs lifted their heads and looked at her anxiously. Captain Henley said: “You know what the situation is: Jed Baily was acqu
itted. We can’t let it drop at that. The woman’s dead. She was murdered …” At this point Captain Wilkins defined his position more positively than Captain Henley had defined it; he gave a brief and very certain nod.

  Captain Henley went on: “… there was the recommendation of the jury. We’ve got to resume the investigation and we are—there is a certain pressure of—er …” he floundered and Captain Wilkins said: “public opinion.”

  “Exactly. Public opinion. A question of our sworn duty. It’s true that I have talked to Miss Poore many times before, but from another angle, another viewpoint; that was when Baily was charged and waiting trial. I want to go over the ground again.”

  Captain Wilkins’ eyes, almost hidden under the bushy cover of his eyebrows, sparkled deeply and rather scornfully as he glanced at his colleague. Dr. Luddington said: “But—surely you have no new evidence. And if not what can you ask her that you’ve not already …”

  Captain Henley had exhausted his patience. “I’ll leave if you insist, but I’ll have to ask Miss Poore to come with me to the sheriff’s office.”

  Caroline was on her feet. “Come, Tom,” she begged. “Come, Fitz.”

  Fitz said, “Sue, if there is any question which you do not wish to answer, remember that you can refuse. Don’t let them try to trip or trap you.”

  “I’m not trying to trip or trap anybody,” Captain Henley said.

  Caroline drew Dr. Luddington toward the door; she put her hand beseechingly upon Fitz’s arm, too. Henley’s threat of arrest had thoroughly routed her. Sue sat down suddenly in Caroline’s chair; her knees were shaking.

  Captain Henley rose and in a sort of martial step that showed off his spruce and tightly fitting uniform, crossed the room and closed the door to the hall.

  Captain Wilkins said, “It’s rather late.”

  “I know. I’ll see that you get your train.” Captain Henley sat down again. “Now, Miss Poore, you’ve told your story of the murder many times, I realize. I want you to tell it again.”

  “Not—all of it surely.”

  “All of it.”

  “But I—you heard it, all of it, in court, here, you have records.”

  “We have not much time, Miss Poore.”

  Sue was still carrying her small gray hat; she put it down on the table. “Where shall I begin?”

  “With the evening Ernestine Baily was murdered, when she telephoned to you, you said, asking you to come to her house.”

  “Yes.… Yes, she did. You know …”

  “Please go on as if I didn’t know. Captain Wilkins has not heard it in full. If there is any detail that you now remember that you may have forgotten or omitted from your previous statements, please do not omit it now.” Captain Henley looked at her rather worriedly and got up and took a turn up and down the worn old Turkey rug. “I’m going to be frank with you. You heard the jury’s recommendation?”

  “Yes …”

  “You know what it means?”

  “I—yes, that is, I was there, at Duval Hall, but I …”

  Captain Wilkins said, “It was as close as they could come to recommending your arrest. Surely you know that.”

  “But I—I didn’t, there wasn’t …”

  “Just a minute, Captain Wilkins. I’d like to explain the situation.” Captain Wilkins leaned back again with a rather scornful look; Captain Henley took another turn across the room and went on, “When we questioned you before we were frankly trying to find corroborative evidence to support the arrest of Jed Baily. The situation is now completely changed. If he did not murder her then obviously someone did. You were at the house; you were present. Anything that you may be able to remember may now be very important to you. I don’t wish to frighten you …” Captain Wilkins stirred; Captain Henley went stubbornly on. “You may have, without knowing it, some clue or indication to the identity of the murderer. Put everything else out of your mind.”

  It was a fair speech even with its reservations; Sue felt that Captain Wilkins disapproved of it. She said, “Thank you, Captain Henley. I do understand.”

  “Very well then,” he sat down, crossing his knees in their handsomely, if tightly, tailored breeches, and waited.

  Sue took a long breath. “Well, then … Ernestine phoned to me early in the evening.”

  “It was foggy,” Captain Henley addressed Wilkins, yet certainly he knew her story so well that he could prompt.

  “It was very foggy.” She had told it so often that it had fallen into set phrases, like the remarks of a habitual after-dinner speaker. “It was Wednesday, the day of the Dobberly meet.”

  “You’d been hunting.”

  “Yes. Ernestine …” She knew exactly what the next question would be so she answered it before it was asked. “Ernestine was there; I don’t remember speaking to her, anything special. I mean, I don’t remember that she seemed any different. We’d had one or two runs, but no kill.” (Except Ernestine; Ruby had said that, hadn’t she? Sue would not let herself remember that. She went on.) “Late in the afternoon hounds found in the hollow below the Dobberly schoolhouse; we had about a thirty-minute run and then the fox started for the ridge above Hollow Hill. I was tailing the field, really; I was never a very good horsewoman and I’ve been away …”

  Captain Henley interrupted: “She’s been living in New York. Early this fall she came back to live with her aunt here.”

  Captain Wilkins’ look indicated that she might better have stayed in New York. He said nothing. Sue took up the familiar lines, as familiar as lines in a repeated drama, except there were no footlights and police for audience. “I was tired and it began to drizzle; I thought the fox was going to earth there behind Hollow Hill but if he didn’t, I didn’t want to be in at the death anyway. I came home. I’d been here some time, over an hour; I was dressing when Ernestine phoned and she said she wanted me to stop at Duval Hall on my way to the hunt dinner.”

  “Hunt ball?” asked Captain Wilkins in a sepulchral voice.

  “Not exactly, but there was going to be dancing.”

  She thought fleetingly of herself, in emerald green taffeta and a short fur cape (which looked rather like, but wasn’t, mink) going to be introduced to murder.

  Captain Wilkins knew more of the outlines of the story than he or Captain Henley pretended; he said, watching Sue, “Did Mrs. Baily say why she wanted to see you?”

  They had asked that many times. “No.”

  “Did you guess?”

  “No.”

  “How did she seem over the phone?”

  Judge Shepson had warned her about that, yet the reply he had rehearsed her in was the truth. “She sounded hurried and brusque; it was a very short conversation, only a few words.”

  Wilkins’ face was frankly skeptical. Captain Henley said, “Well—and then …”

  “I went to Duval Hall as soon as I had finished dressing; I drove Aunt Caroline’s car, intending to come back and pick her up after I’d seen Ernestine. I parked the car at the gate.…”

  “Now why did you do that?” asked Captain Wilkins.

  Both men knew that. It was still a difficult story to tell. “Because Jed came along the driveway from the house. His car was there at the gate, too. He saw me. He said he wanted to talk to me.”

  Her lips were dry. Captain Henley said, “You went then with Baily to the cabaña.”

  She nodded.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to me. I wanted to talk to him.”

  Wilkins said, “Cabaña? Where is this cabaña? With relation to the house, I mean.”

  It had been pointed out at the trial; a map, a diagram had been drawn and shown the jury. Sue knew the measurements now as she had never known them before. “It’s about a hundred yards from the house; there’s a small pool there; the people from whom Jed bought the place had it built; the cabaña is about twenty feet from the side of the pool, toward the house.”

  Henley said, “There are shrubs all around it an
d a mass of evergreens; there are heavy shrubs all around the house, too, and the house is not visible from the cabaña or vice versa. The driveway, though, goes straight from the house to the gate; the gate is perfectly visible even on a foggy evening.”

  Captain Wilkins said, “So you went with Baily to the cabaña; naturally you didn’t want to be seen. It was lonely there, I take it, deserted. What happened in this convenient cabaña?”

  5

  IT WAS the cabaña that had been so significantly emphasized during the trial, vividly and brightly spotlighted, photographed, written about in the newspapers. It was small and ordinary, with summer terrace furniture stacked in ghostly angular shapes; Jed had taken her in his arms there, briefly, for the first, and as it happened, the last time. When the prosecution finished with the cabaña it was a sinister and ugly rendezvous; nobody would have believed that Sue and Jed had met there only once and that mainly because of the cold fog and the nearness of the cabaña. Yet it was true, too, that she wanted to say the thing she had decided she must say to Jed, apart from any other listening ears. She had not hesitated; she had not given his suggestion a second thought. The wet shrubs had brushed her green taffeta skirt and she drew it aside; the door of the cabaña stuck and Jed thrust against it with his shoulder to open it. How was she to know that every moment of that short meeting was to be probed and pictured, exposed relentlessly, but in distorted lines and colors that did not exist?

  “Well,” said Wilkins in sharp impatience, “well?”

  Her statement was on record, not once but many times; stick to it then, word for word. It could not be unsaid. Anything added might turn itself into a snare. “Jed told me that he had—had fallen in love with me.”

  Captain Henley said, hurrying her to the point, “He said he wished to divorce Ernestine and marry you.”