Somewhere in This House Page 4

  “Oh, that part is always accepted as symbolical.”

  “All my friendships have always been Platonic and symbolical.”

  “And your husband hasn’t quite understood?”

  “Will?” Vera laughed metallically.

  “Of course it is only natural he should be jealous.”

  Vera became quite serious. Her voice was very cold, very hard. “I wouldn’t mind that,” she said. “I’d like it if he was jealous. He isn’t jealous. He hasn’t any feelings. He acts as if I hadn’t any feelings. He despises me.”

  Valcour felt a fleeting sense of pity for her. No matter how bad anybody was, that person could be hurt and could be made unhappy. And there was, he felt, a limit to the amount of unhappiness that should be visited upon anybody.

  “I am sorry if you feel like that.”

  “He wasn’t a minor when I married him,” Vera said with a peculiarly bitter emphasis. “He was thirty, in his right mind, and I didn’t force him to do it at the point of a gun. I didn’t have to,” she added almost negligently.

  “Naturally not, Mrs. Sturm.”

  She looked at him sharply and said, “He loved me.”

  “But with marriage…” Valcour’s gesture suggested any number of eye openings.

  Vera clung to her point. “It wasn’t marriage that made him stop loving me. It was living up here in this dead place. That’s what did it. We’d have been all right if we’d stayed in the city, as I said.”

  “You and your husband met in the city?”

  “No; we met up here. At a camp.” Vera became vague. “I was up this way on a trip,” she said.

  “A whirlwind courtship?”

  “Call it that.”

  “And one that you now regret.”

  “Regret? Say, if I could clear out with a stake…I mean by that…you mustn’t take me serious, Mr.—”

  “Nonsense, Mrs. Sturm. You and I are both of us people of the world.”

  Vera leaped for the loophole.

  “And we look at things like people of the world, don’t we, Mr. Valcour?”

  “Of course we do, Mrs. Sturm. It is only natural that you should want some understanding—some settlement, let us say—before relinquishing the not unenviable post of mistress of this household. You wish,” he ended succinctly, “to stay entrenched until the articles of surrender have been signed.”

  Vera tapped Lieutenant Valcour emphatically upon the knee. “And you can believe me that until they are signed this baby is going to watch her step. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Well, almost yesterday.”

  Vera giggled. “I like you,” she said.

  “I know you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have confided in me the way you have.”

  “We’re going to be friends.”

  Valcour gently amended the prophecy.

  “We are going,” he said, “to know each other very well indeed.”

  “You understand me much better than Fred does. I’m sick of Fred.”

  “Fred?”

  “Yes—Dr. Harlan. Of course there was nothing between us—not even Platonic. It was just professional. You know, patients always confide in their doctors.”

  “You have been ill, Mrs. Sturm?”

  Vera became impatient. “Not sick, as you mean. It’s my nerves. Fred’s been treating my nerves, and naturally I’ve had to tell him all that’s been bothering me. I’d tell him everything, even my dreams.”

  “And, as you suggested, he didn’t understand?”

  “He did. It’s his wife who didn’t. Don’t you think that doctors’ wives are naturally suspicious?”

  Valcour thought of Mrs. Harlan, of the brief knowledge he had of her—a woman without a background, but a woman who formed one for others. She had always struck him as looking prematurely old, her black bobbed hair an ungainly anachronism. He had a healthy respect for that type of negatively silent woman. They were, in crises, capable of anything. He could easily picture Mrs. Harlan as coming to Will Sturm, or even to the elder Mr. Sturm, and demanding that he stop Vera from alienating her husband.

  “Has Mrs. Harlan said anything?” he said.

  “Heavens, no! We’re the best of friends. But I know. A woman always knows,” she ended sententiously.

  “Intuition,” said Valcour politely.

  “A woman’s intuition.”

  “Well, I wish your intuition would pick a more likely person than Harry Beaudrez for having shot Miss Tribeau. Than Harry Beaudrez,” Valcour ended thoughtfully, “or your husband.”

  “I’d forgotten all about that.” Vera looked at him obliquely. “About Alice being shot.” Her hand reached out again. This time it lingered on his knee. “Couldn’t we drop it?” she said. “Couldn’t it stay unexplained—just unexplained and accidental?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Sturm. And certainly not while the slightest chance remains that the person for whom the shot was intended is you.” Her fingers tightened on his knee cap. The idea was revolutionary. She had always pictured the obverse side of things, with their reverse a negligible blank. That there should also be a design on the back…

  “Why that?” she said.

  Valcour shrugged. “The mechanics themselves suggest it. Alice Tribeau wore your dress—one that had only been given to her during the afternoon. Did anyone know you had given it to her?” Vera’s “no” was mechanical. She was stepping carefully through sudden and intricate marshes.

  “There you are,” said Valcour. “She is of similar build to you, there was little light—barely enough, in all probability, for the person with the gun to take his aim. What shall we think, Mrs. Sturm? Is there no one of whom you know who would be eager to have you dead?”

  The fingers contracted like a vise, her “yes” was more a sharp intaking of breath than a word, and Valcour smiled grimly in the darkness. Mrs. Sturm was beginning to be afraid.

  CHAPTER VII

  Vera’s fingers continued to cling in the darkness as if, in Valcour’s knee, they found a makeshift anchorage against the force of unexpected and menacing winds. Her mind, in sickening circles, revolved about the feeling of lead ripping into flesh; into her flesh. Will—Mr. Sturm. They stood before her mentally; she imagined them looking up at her with distorted and unfamiliar features from the dim doorway at the foot of the steep dark stairs. The picture was incomplete. In the hand of one of them there should be a gun. Vera could not visualize the gun—which hand should hold it. Her voice was ineffective, dry.

  “In the morning,” she said, “I’m going away.”

  “That may not be necessary, Mrs. Sturm.”

  “I don’t want to be shot. You said I’d be shot.”

  “I outlined a possible theory, Mrs. Sturm. By morning I hope we will be in possession of facts. Remember, I am accusing no one. My viewpoint is that of the most impartial of observers. It is simply that we must be on the alert for any eventualities until a definite solution is reached.”

  “But you said,” Vera repeated almost automatically, “I’d be shot.”

  Valcour made no comment for a moment. He felt her growing uneasiness and impatience. She wanted to get away from this dark and muffled place. The mood for any dalliance had passed, and he doubted whether it would return. The contact that had been established between them was evaporating. She was drawing away from him into some private and special retreat where she could arrange the scattered forces of her mind and concentrate them upon a new and disturbing chance.

  “I could also say that an equal possibility exists that you fired the shot at Alice Tribeau yourself,” he said quietly.

  Vera came back to him with a rush. Her voice was like a cold hard battlement raised between them.

  “Why should I?”

  “Jealousy, Mrs. Sturm.”

  “Of Will?”

  He wa
ited until the last sound of her unpleasant laugh had sunk into the stillness.

  “Not of your husband, Mrs. Sturm; of Harry Beaudrez.”

  He sensed the sudden stiffening of her body and waited curiously to see what manner of expression her reaction would take. She would probably slap his face and order him out of the house. Well, he’d let her slap him, but he wouldn’t leave the house. The slap didn’t come at once, so he knew it wouldn’t come at all. She stood up and looked down at him, a slim black shadow almost lost in dusk. He could not see her eyes but he knew they were staring at him beneath lowered lashes.

  “Who told you about that?”

  “You did, Mrs. Sturm.”

  “You lie.”

  Valcour stood up so that his eyes were on a level with Vera’s. He was punctiliously impersonal.

  “You told me when you refused to state the cause of the quarrel between Alice Tribeau and young Beaudrez. You were the cause of that quarrel, Mrs. Sturm.”

  “You heard—” Vera stopped abruptly. “You couldn’t have heard. You weren’t there.” She conceded his point almost with indifference. “Well, what of it? I can’t be held responsible for the emotions of the milk man.”

  “No one is holding you responsible, Mrs. Sturm. Remember, please, that we are still only dealing in theory.”

  Vera’s voice grew momentarily shrill. “You’re just like everybody else. You want to insult me because you’ve heard a lot of nasty gossip and think you can get away with it.”

  “I don’t see why you feel insulted,” Valcour said pleasantly. “If you’ve dazzled the milk man you ought to feel flattered. I’ve always thought it took a remarkably early bird to dazzle one. They’re reputed to be doing their jobs while beauty sleeps.”

  Vera removed a few guns from her defensive armament.

  “Well,” she said, “he’s naturally seen me about.”

  From the hallway below a set of Westminster chimes began to announce with carefully hesitant tones that the hour was midnight. They stood quite still, listening to the chimes and staring down at the dim, empty doorway, peopling it as a stage with casts from their private dreams. Valcour saw Will and a mental projection of the woman beside him. Between Will and Vera was a gap, strangely filled with a personality rather than with a figure. It was left vacant for the man whom he had still to meet—for Mr. Sturm. And Vera, too, saw many things: a succession of bitter faces of embittered men, with here and there the raw, almost indecent, misery of disillusioned youth; but most decisively of all she saw a small vermilion-lacquered box. There was an odd barrel-shaped lock on the box, and for the lock there was a curious double key. For a startlingly disagreeable moment she saw a hand fitting the double key into the lock and opening the box. The hand belonged to Lieutenant Valcour. The chimes were over and the hours, as if impatient at the long delay, raced through one to twelve.

  “Are we going to stay here all night?” she said.

  Valcour sensed a definite purpose behind her impatience.

  “Let us continue searching the house,” he said.

  “I’ll wait in my room.”

  He looked at her curiously. “You’ve lost interest in the chase?”

  “Have you any objections to my going to my room?”

  “Of course not, Mrs. Sturm.”

  She preceded him down the stairs and into the half-light of the hall. It was empty, but Valcour had the definite impression that someone had just left it.

  “They light this place like a tomb,” Vera said. “I suppose it’s art, but it’s really nothing but a cheap trick to save electricity.”

  “There are no servants in the house other than Alice Tribeau, are there, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “No. A man comes during the day for the furnace and odd jobs, and a woman comes in to cook. There’s a laundress comes once a week. They all live nearby.”

  They had reached the door of her room. Vera stood with her back to it, one hand on its knob. She made no effort to conceal her impatience for Valcour to go. Her irritation was mounting out of all control.

  “Is this the only door to your room, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “There’s one that opens into my bathroom.”

  “Is there any other exit from the bathroom except into your room?”

  “No.”

  “Can you secure this hall door?”

  “Secure it?”

  “Lock or bolt it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do.”

  He could not quite understand her smile.

  “I always do,” she said.

  Vera opened the door and went inside. She closed the door and her fingers, shaking with impatience, turned the large old-fashioned key. It normally worked smoothly, but her haste made it stick a little. Finally the bolt shot home and she gave the key a forceful jerk. The key came out of the lock and she threw it viciously down on the floor. The metal, as it struck the painted boards, made an emphatic sound in the night’s stillness.

  There was nothing unnatural about the stillness. It was always there, but Vera had never got used to it, and always remained conscious of it. The wind had risen and its steady drone through the leafless branches of nearby locusts penetrated faintly through night-blackened glass of the small square-paned windows. The monotonous puffing of an engine on the tracks one mile to westward played irritably on her nerves, and she felt that if the dreadful harrowing lonesomeness of its whistle were added she would scream.

  Vera went to the lamps and turned them on. The room blazed garishly and harshly white as she added a cluster of ceiling lights to the glow.

  She stood for a moment quite still in the center of the room. Her eyes were fastened speculatively on the small vermilion-lacquered Chinese box standing on the bureau. It was too obvious, she decided—much. And detectives nowadays always looked in obvious places first because (her reading had told her) they weren’t expected to. She couldn’t very well keep the letters hidden in her dress. There were too many.

  Her eyes strayed toward the fireplace where logs and kindling were ready laid on the hearth. She could burn the letters; but she didn’t want to burn them. Maybe she could burn some that weren’t worth much. Maybe if she only kept a dozen of them it would be enough.

  She opened one of the bureau drawers and took the curious double key from under some slips. She unlocked the lacquered box and carried it to a chair drawn up before the fireplace. She scratched a match and lighted the kindling, and the sharp crackle of the flames sounded distinct and clear in the absolute hush of the house.

  Vera took several packages of letters from the lacquered box. Each package was tied with thin white string. She selected one at random. The snap of the breaking string was as clear, almost, as a shot.

  Her eyes brooded sullenly on a letter in her hand. It wasn’t so much a letter as it was a face: a weakly pugnacious face with heavy-lidded, dissipated eyes that had always been a bit bloodshot, and with a conspicuous use of pungent talcum powder always apparent on a bluish chin. Pete—what was the last name? She looked for the signature, but it just read Pete—Pete Hammers, of course. Hammers—the name had always interested her and made her think of murder. Of murder…

  That detective was nuts. Some men whom she had known might commit murder, but they were thugs and thought nothing about it. This was different. Gentlemen didn’t commit murder. Gentlemen, she decided, as she crumpled up the letter from Pete and slammed it into the flames, hadn’t the guts to commit murder.

  She was instantly sorry about burning the letter. Its touch, reading it again (it had been several years since the last time she had read it), had thrilled her mildly, vicariously. There hadn’t been any money in Pete. As a commercial venture he had been a total flop, but there had been a desultory sort of happiness, as she understood the meaning of the word “happiness,” a humid, stale beer sort of happiness. She would have liked to keep th
e letter as a memento.

  The rest of the weeding didn’t bother her so much, but the whole business made her faintly resentful. Her life had been too impermanent for the collecting of treasured things, and all her souvenirs of sentiment had had to be strictly portable.

  Seven letters were winnowed from the chaff: seven men who had grown inconceivably tiresome and dull, and the repulsiveness of whose physical qualities had increased in perfect ratio with their dulling; seven rich and, mostly, fat, elderly men having, on average, pig eyes emphasized with glasses. One of them wasn’t—her smile was brittle. One of them wasn’t fat, and he hadn’t pig eyes, and he didn’t wear glasses.

  That was a funny idea about somebody’s wanting to kill her. She began to mull it over again as she stuffed the seven letters into a stocking. They felt messily uncomfortable and she fished them out. Even if Valcour did snoop there were lots of places he’d never bother about. And after all—her eyes became coldly calculating—why should he snoop concerning her or her things?

  There were lots of good places to hide the letters, now that their bulk had diminished so appreciably. She stood up and went over to the window. It was an automatic gesture that she indulged in frequently. She never really wanted to look out and she was rarely conscious of seeing anything, but there was something symbolic in a window—a physical ticket to certain obscure and unphysical things, like mental release, like an emotional projection into distant places.

  She noted mechanically that it was snowing again; thick ripe flakes that fell lazily in their irresponsible journeying from sky to earth, as beautiful in their lack of purpose as rain was ugly in its usefulness. The wind had gone down and an engine in the west still puffed fitfully. The dreadful, irritating stillness of the night clung to her nerves with the drag of chains, acutely painful. Even the long-dead timbers of the house were creaking a little complainingly. The earth was a corpse in a thick white shroud foolishly revolving through limbos of silence. And she, from a personally appointed and distant vantage point, was watching it.

  Her fingers tightened on the letters in her hand. Now that the bulk of them were gone…her eyes again were resting on the brilliant vermilion lacquer of the Chinese box.