Somewhere in This House Page 9

  Ice in the pitcher melted visibly beneath the stream of hot black coffee. Valcour shook the pitcher and the shrunken cubes clashed gently against its glass sides. “I imagine this is cold enough. Shall I put sugar in it?”

  “I don’t want any sugar.”

  He got and filled two glasses.

  “I’ll join you.”

  “That’s right. Well, here’s how,” she added automatically.

  He smiled affably and said, “How!”

  Vera sipped her coffee. The salve on her lip smeared greasily the glass’s rim. The cold of the glass felt good against the swelling and she kept it there.

  “I won’t be sorry to leave this house,” she said. “There’s nothing happy in it. It’s an unhappy house, Mr. Valcour.”

  “You have decided to leave, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “Yes. I’m going to pack up in the morning and leave. I can’t stand it any longer, Mr. Valcour. I’m going to call quits, and see if I can get me a new deal.”

  Valcour played quietly with his glass. “Mr. Sturm has consented to a divorce?” he said.

  “No, there isn’t going to be any divorce. I’m just going away. They can’t stop me from doing that, can they?”

  “No, Mrs. Sturm. No one can stop you from going away.”

  A flash of her old cunning returned briefly. “There’ll always be dower rights, you see,” she said. “And I’ll at least be living while I’m waiting to get them.”

  It was a perfectly flat, frank statement. He wanted to be rigidly impartial, and could not understand the curious insistence he felt to interest himself in her patently worthless affairs, to her advantage.

  “Won’t you be laying yourself open to an action for divorce on the grounds of desertion, Mrs. Sturm?”

  She took the glass from her swollen lip long enough to say, “There isn’t any difference between Will and his father. They’re both of them Sturms.” Her lip twisted hurtfully and she winced a little. “The Sturms don’t believe in divorce.”

  “I would advise your seeing a lawyer just the same, Mrs. Sturm.”

  Vera pictured momentarily one of the seven remaining letters from the batch that had filled the vermilion-lacquered box. “I’ve got a lawyer,” she said. “I guess I’ll take this glass of ice up with me to my room. It feels good against my lip.”

  She stood up and waited while Valcour switched off the lights.

  “Is the house all locked up, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Even if it weren’t, I’m sure no one could get in easily.” He nodded toward the four small-paned windows. “There’s a drift outside there that’s halfway up the panes. I imagine all the doors are pretty well blocked.”

  Vera stepped into the dining room and waited until he had followed her and closed the kitchen door. He snapped out lamps as they went along, and darkness dogged them in a gathering cloud. They started up the curving stairs toward the dim well of light in the hall above, and the darkness of the lower floor reached after them like a rising sea.

  “I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket, Mr. Valcour.”

  “Thank you.”

  Vera opened the door to the guest room and went inside. She took a pillow and a blanket from one of the room’s twin beds. She handed them to Valcour and then went to the door of her room. Westminster chimes rang melodiously, softly again, and her hand lingered on the knob until the hour chimes struck two.

  “Good-night, Mr. Valcour,” she said. “Good-night, Mrs. Sturm.”

  She went inside and closed the door. He heard the key turn in its lock. He caught the faint sound of a light-switch button being pressed into place. He heard her footsteps when they came in contact with the bare surfaces of the wooden floor.

  “Is everything quite all right, Mrs. Sturm?” he called quietly.

  Her voice came back at him through the panels. “Everything is quite all right, Mr. Valcour,” she said.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Vera unwrapped the long-fringed, heavily embroidered shawl from about her dress and threw it in the direction of a chair. It missed the chair and fell onto the floor. She let it lie there. It felt good to be alone in her own room, with the door shut and a lock keeping everybody out. Some embers still glowed in the fire she had lighted and used for burning letters. She sat down in the chair before them. She held the ice-filled glass in her hand and pressed it occasionally against her swollen lip. There was no uncertainty in her mind. In the morning she was going away.

  Two trunks ought to be enough. There wasn’t much, and that was mostly rags. A dress worn twice became automatically, in her opinion, a rag. Then there’d be the New York shops with their earliest possible showing of the new spring models. The question of money did not bother her. She had always been able to get money, plenty of money. Her eyes strayed thoughtfully toward the vermilion-lacquered Chinese box. Six of the seven letters she had saved were hidden in it. There would be, she assured herself, lots and lots of money as soon as she cared to start drawing upon what it pleased her to call her “reserves.”

  She might just as well be practical about it. She started to figure mentally. The seventh letter was the starting point. It wasn’t in the box with the others. It was too precious for that. She considered it the biggest egg among her golden seven. She looked at a framed etching on the wall. It hung unevenly, from the last time she had replaced the letter through the slit she had cut in the frame’s paper backing. She’d already shot off her opening guns about that. Her lip hurt her as she smiled at the picture offered by the man who had been their target. He was, she knew, a man of influence both politically and financially, with an estate at Great Neck and an apartment on Park Avenue. His letter ought to fetch around ten thousand dollars.

  He’d told her all about his home life—how misunderstood he was and what not, and (discounting that as so much tripe) she checked off the members of his family—a wife, two daughters, and a son. Swell pickings! One of the daughters would be coming out this year, too. She’d forgotten that, and recollecting it automatically shoved the ante up to twenty thousand dollars. She thought of him as a small, smart apartment, a maid, a car, and a chauffeur for a year. The others—well, say two—ten—seven—fifteen thousand. How much was that? She detested mental arithmetic and gave it up. There was probably a pencil and a piece of paper around some place, but why bother? The starting point was the important thing, and the banker with his family was a good starting point.

  Taking off her shawl had made her realize that it was chilly in the room. The iced glass was beginning to send feverish little chills all through her, and the embers on the hearth were drearily melancholy. She leaned forward and took a piece of wood from the wood basket and threw it on the embers. Its catching was like machine-gun fire in the enveloping, smothering stillness of the waiting house. That was it. She knew what the house had been trying to express to her. It was waiting for something that was going to happen. She was thoroughly aware that she had always been an irritation in its system, and supposed that her going was probably what it was waiting for.

  She could wear that beaded dress for evening (night clubs, grills) until new things would be ready. Yes, the beaded dress and that cream-colored lace one with the pannier effect. She supposed they were no longer smart, but at least they had the advantage that she had never worn them. She twisted her head and looked toward the cupboard door. It was a large and roomy cupboard, filled with shelves and racks. She rather thought that she had left its door standing wide open, but she couldn’t have, because the door was almost closed—just open about an inch.

  It might be a good idea to start packing right away. There was that morning train for the city on the D. & H. which left somewhere around eleven. That would save waiting for night and the crack Montreal-New York express. Maybe she would pack soon. But she did feel tired and her lip hurt her. She wondered idly where the salve was that Fred h
ad given her, and remembered that she had left it down in the kitchen. Fred. What a sap and washout he was. But all men were saps; saps and washouts.

  If she waited until morning to pack Alice could do it for her. Alice. Her eyes widened with terrific remembrance. Just how big a fool, she wondered, was Valcour? She got up impatiently from the chair and walked to the window. As always, unseeingly, she stared through its square black panes, touching upon the hot spots in her overheated brain, sorting and resorting its store of lurid facts, seeking no answer to any of them and wanting none, standing quite still, herself the stillest thing in the rooted hush of the great quiet house.

  Alice…something would have to be done, of course. She couldn’t very well go off abruptly and leave her without assurances—without something. She went to a desk and scribbled a note hurriedly. She put it in a plain envelope. She’d see that Alice got it in the morning just before the train. There was room behind the etching, she found, for the envelope for Alice, too. She slipped it in and the frame swung back against the wall more crookedly than ever. Her fingers reached to straighten it. They stopped before they had quite reached it.

  It was funny about that cupboard door. She never closed cupboard doors, nor drawers in bureaus. She wondered what had made her think about it again, and then realized it must have been because she had just heard it creak. She turned around and stared at it. The crack did seem a little wider, but it might look wider from here than it had from the chair. It shouldn’t, though.

  Vera started to unfasten her dress. Cripes, but she’d be glad to get out of this queer house and settled in a cheerful, warm apartment—something handy, say in the West Fifties between Fifth and Sixth avenues. She’d get one with an automatic electric lift, and no doorman or switchboard boy. They were bad for business. Maybe she could get back the same one she had had before she married Will. Pink-shaded lights—lace—satin—incense—heavy sweet smells of rich perfumes—night agreeably changing places with day—champagne—fun—a high old time—money, money, money—men and money.

  The dress slithered down about her ankles. She stepped out of it and left it there. A warm dressing gown would be enough for the night. She wouldn’t go to bed really. She started for the cupboard door.

  She opened it wide. The cupboard offered its usual disorder. A row of dresses swung untidily draped on hangers. She took a heavy satin dressing gown edged with marabou from a nearby hook and slipped it on. She kicked off her high-heeled slippers and stooped down. Her fingers felt around among the litter on the floor under the dresses. She wanted that pair of soft bedroom slippers with the felt soles. She wanted Alice.

  She really must set the cupboard to rights in the morning…but she was going away in the morning…Her fingers probed further and closed over something unyielding. It occurred to her that the object felt like a shoe with a foot in it.

  A muscular reaction left her standing. A paralysis of fear held her rigid. She wanted to call out: “Mr. Valcour! Mr. Valcour!” but her throat was too dry. She forced herself by a sheer physical effort to reach out and part the dresses. A phrase, unaccustomed since early childhood, escaped in a whisper from her lips: “Little Mother of Jesus!” Her eyes were dazzled by a slender, delicate arc of steel. “You!” Her mouth was twisted for a scream but there was no sound, and the wrench did not hurt her swollen lip. She was dead, and could no longer feel the pain of any hurt.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Lieutenant Valcour settled himself on the lounge with the sensations of an uneasy sheep dog. To the extent of his ability, his flock was safe in shelter for the night. He considered that Vera and Alice Tribeau were his flock. The vagueness, the distressing indefinableness of the situation irritated him. He couldn’t go charging about like an autocratic seeress, no matter how keenly he felt the strength of his own presentiments. He would have liked to put Mr. Sturm and Will Sturm under lock and key and sit up for the balance of the night with Dr. Harlan and the two women, playing bridge. He smiled at the absurdity, but the basic principles of the desire remained.

  He fixed the pillow so that he was half sitting up, his legs stretched out, and the blanket comfortably tucked in about them. The window was cold at his left, and through it there was nothing to see but snow falling so thickly that flakes seemed to crowd past each other in their eagerness to join the drifts.

  At his right was the large well of the curving stairs, and directly before him was the door to Vera’s room. He could trace her movements through the faint sound of her slippers when they crossed bare places on the floor. He heard the scrape of a chair, and then there was no further sound. He pictured Vera sitting down; sitting down with her climax. He wondered how many climaxes there had been in her young and stormy life, and how many infinitely more climaxes she had caused in the lives of others.

  The lights flickered an instant, sank low, then steadied to partial brightness. Wind from the south was increasing in unsteady gusts that belligerently hurried the already hurrying snow, that rushed with singing, ripping noises through fantastic, jerking branches of the dormant locusts on the lawn. A sharp crackling came from Vera’s room. It startled him into half rising before he realized what it was and sank back again. He could picture the flicker of flames snapping freshly on her hearth. Except for them, everything was very still.

  As to Vera’s going in the morning, that would depend a great deal on Alice Tribeau. Attempted murder was attempted murder, no matter how casually or indifferently one cared to treat it. There was no reason why Alice should care to be casual about it. She would certainly bring charges, either definite or indefinite, and probably sue heavily for damages. It was a great country for rushing pell-mell into suits on even slender provocations. Vera, if not as a principal, at least as an important witness, would have to be detained. Perhaps some arrangements could be made for her to return for the trial from wherever she might choose to take herself. He supposed it would be New York. The town was her natural Mecca, assuredly her happiest of hunting grounds.

  Vera was up again. He could hear her slippers tapping faintly for an instant…no further sound…she would be lying down, perhaps, and reviewing in a feverish jumble the intense unpleasantness of the past hour. He wondered why he hadn’t heard the bed creak. Old beds in ancient houses invariably creaked. He doubted whether there was a single exception, and the furnishings of this house were genuinely antique. But there had been no creak, no further sound of any nature after that faint short pat of slipper heels on wood several minutes ago.

  He felt uncommonly nervous and was unable to attribute it entirely to nerves. It was stupid to be nervous. All Vera had to do was to call out, if for some inconceivable reason she wanted something.

  He tried to interest his mind in several cases that were hanging fire down in the city while he was away. The Rosenblum shooting stepped forward preeminently. What a basket of eggs that was—its nerve centers reaching to heaven knows where—a squalid little shooting forming an ugly blot against a background dimly painted with “distinguished” men…It was no use. Vera, and only Vera, was he thinking of.

  And her slippers were clicking again. They stopped. Two sharp clicks, as if she had kicked her slippers off.

  He sat bolt upright. No voice had spoken. There wasn’t a single sound in the whole deathly hush of the night. He hadn’t heard it, but he had felt it. He had felt somebody calling him: “Mr. Valcour! Mr. Valcour!” He sat very stiff, very still, while the silence brooded heavily, undisturbed. He leaned back again uneasily upon the pillow, and the curious force that had invaded him ceased. It had been like a thread drawing him toward something or somebody, and the thread had snapped.

  Indigestion, he reflected, was the basis of most unpleasant emotions (probably a chronic state with most soothsayers), and for the next five minutes he exerted a determined effort to compose himself. He had partially succeeded in doing so when a sudden crash of breaking glass from downstairs brought him with a jerk to his feet.
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  Glass didn’t crash unless somebody broke it. There must be somebody downstairs, but there could be nobody downstairs. The sound had come from the entrance hall. A branch might have flung against a window pane, but there were no trees near enough for that, and the wind wasn’t strong enough to carry a broken branch as far as that. The sound of the little crash was swallowed up most quickly. He took his flashlight from one pocket and, from another, his gun. Suppose there should have been—still was—a stranger in the house! He rapped gently on the panels of Vera’s door and called softly, “Are you all right, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “Yes.” The word came stiltedly, but at once. He pictured, momentarily, her swollen lip.

  “Your door is fastened, Mrs. Sturm?”

  “Yes.”

  Valcour felt a little reassured. He switched on the flashlight and started to descend the curving stairs. With every step he sank deeper into darkness, the cone of his flashlight cutting it more incisively, more brightly. He reached the level of the entrance hall and flashed the light around. The furnishings stared back at him blankly. He illumined the windows with the light and, in the southeastern one, there was a broken pane. Pieces of glass glinted back from the floor at its base. He went over to it. He poked the flashlight through the jagged hole and played it in arcs upon the surrounding surface of snow. There weren’t any tracks. The beam penetrated the falling snow to a distance of at least twenty feet before marking off, and still there were no tracks.

  Nothing had been thrown to break the glass, because there was no missile lying on the floor. He raised the lower sash and carefully studied the snowdrift where it clung to the foundation of the house. There was no hole or any depression where a rock or missile might have dropped after striking and breaking the pane…and yet the glass had unquestionably been smashed by being struck from the outside.

  He closed the window and thought quite rapidly and clearly…Something must have been swung against the pane from above, from some window that had been opened up above—and the windows directly above were the windows to Vera’s room.