Murder at Arroways Page 2

  He was attractive, an iconoclast, a rebel, very unlike what she had expected a rich man’s son to be. His ideas were bold, daring, and had little regard for ordinary conventions. She was young and impressionable, and after he had gone she had thought of him a good deal. She could afford to smile now at the tendresse of what had been an adolescent infatuation. It was a long while ago. She had seen Oliver Mont once since that, with the girl to whom he was engaged, in, of all places, the Mont apartment in New York.

  Maria Mont was dying and, astonishingly, Damien had been sent for. The Mont apartment was the last place in the world in which she ever expected to be. More than two years of silence had passed since she had rejected

  Maria Mont’s offer. She hadn't wanted to go to the apartment; it was a summons she felt she couldn’t ignore. A manservant had admitted her to the great duplex high above Fifth Avenue and the Park. She was evidently expected. “Miss Carey? Yes, miss.” The man had conducted her through a series of state apartments like a wing of the Metropolitan Museum to a small, darkish room where she was left alone to wait. She had waited, interminably, until her patience went. Then she had gone in search of someone, through halls and corridors and cold empty rich rooms until she opened a final door.

  It was the door of a sick room. The curtains were drawn, and there was an odor of drugs. There was a woman propped high on piled pillows in the great bed on a dais. Dark hair in braids framed a small parchment face. Two thin black snakes trailed from the nostrils of a high nose, lost themselves in shadow. The woman in the bed was her grandmother. Maria Mont’s eyes were closed. They opened. She looked at Damien, gave a cry, and moved. One of the black tubes fell to the white coverlet. She began to gasp.

  It wasn’t until afterward that Damien realized that the black tubes were attached to a tank of oxygen that kept Maria Mont alive. Another door had suddenly opened, and a nurse had rustled whitely in, staring outrage and demanding, “Who are you? What are you doing here? You might have killed her.” Damien could recall stammering something vague before she was dismissed, banished. Back in the small room a doctor had come to her, not Oliver, not one of the Mont family. She was Miss Carey? A pity. It was useless for her to remain. Maria Mont had fallen into a coma. It might be hours, days, before she regained consciousness.

  It was on her way out of the apartment that Damien saw Oliver and the girl to whom he was engaged. It was only a glimpse through the looped draperies of a room she went past. The girl was tall and slim and dark. Her arms were around Oliver’s neck, and he was holding her off a little and looking down into her face. Neither of them saw her. Damien had been amused and interested by her own tiny stab of pain. How persistent emotional illusions were even when you thought they were forgotten.

  Maria Mont died that night surrounded by her selfchosen family. Damien learned later that her adopted son Randall Mont had survived her by only a few hours. Hurrying to her bedside Oliver Mont’s father had succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

  Damien came back to the present. “Randall Mont’s sudden death must have been a shock, Bill. He was a comparatively young man, wasn’t he?”

  “Fifty-six, fifty-seven," Bill shrugged. “That was Maria Mont for you again. Even on her deathbed she managed to mess people up. If it hadn’t been for Maria, Randall Mont wouldn’t have died the way he did—perhaps not for years. She must have known he had a bad heart and yet she sent him up here over ninety miles of icy road to get something she wanted out of the house. He was in bed and asleep when the call came that Maria was dead. They hadn’t expected her to die so soon. It was after one o’clock 'in the morning and the storm was at its height. He got up and dressed and started for New York. Less than a mile from the house he collapsed at the wheel of the car he was driving. He was dead when the car crashed. They didn’t find him until morning."

  Damien frowned at a bank of purple sumac. “How dreadful, for all of them."

  “Yes-” Bill hesitated.

  “What is it?" Damien asked.

  “Oh—nothing,” he said. “Only I liked Randall Mont. You know the sort of talk that goes around. I never believed it. He was very handsome, and he was a convivial fellow. That was all there was to it. People said that he died in the nick of time, for his own and his family’s sake. That he’d been running around and having a whale of a time, and that if Maria had discovered it he would have found himself out in the cold."

  “I take it you didn’t like my grandmother."

  Bill negotiated a curve dexterously. “It wasn’t a question of liking or not liking. If you came within her orbit you either obeyed her or you didn’t. Her interest in things that didn’t concern her was enormous. First you got advice, and if you didn’t take it you got a rap over the knuckles. No one escaped. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, employes, even the servants. We're coming to the place where Randall Mont ran off the road.”

  He pointed it out to her. It was on the far side of a little bridge at the foot of a long hill. On the left a grass verge sloped down into a ravine. It wouldn’t ordinarily have been dangerous. But with a wheel out of control and a dead man behind it— The ravine into which the car had plunged was filled with maple saplings. Damien was gazing down when she sat sharply forward. Above the soft purr of the engine, from somewhere near by, some one cried out. The cry was harsh, piercing. Bill put his foot on the brake. Damien swiveled.

  There was a woman at the bottom of the ravine. Her back was toward the road. She was running away, doubled up as though she was in pain. Her green beret was dimly visible through the thinning leaves for just an instant, then she vanished.

  There was no further sound. But there had been a peculiar poignance to the woman's cry, her disordered plunge through the underbrush. Damien said, “Bill, oughtn’t we to—”

  “I’ll have a look.” He got out, went halfway down the bank, came back. “Whoever she was, she's gone. She seems to have been alone. Might be someone from the sanitarium. Occasionally they escape.”

  “The sanitarium?”

  “Yes. The Oaks. Half a mile from here. Good place, well-run. Drunks, mostly, some genuine psychos.” He stepped on the starter, and they drove on. Damien was going to spend the night at the Black Horse in the village, a pleasant inn famous since coaching days. Tomorrow she was to see the lawyer, Mr. Silver, and the property was to be turned over to her. Bill said, “The Black Horse first?”

  Damien said, “No, Arroways first. I think I'll get my visit over with,” and he swung left at the next fork.

  Eleanor Mont had written Damien a note asking her to come to the house that afternoon. The lacy wrought* iron gates were open. The house was on a rise five hundred feet back from the road. Damien studied it with somber eyes. Close up it was even more formidable than it had been from the valley below. It was immense, weighty, defeating in its solidity. You couldn’t argue an inch of it away. Brick walls covered with ivy towered to the blue slates of a heavy mansard roof, three stories above. The two enormous wings were only slightly recessed. A terrace on the left was partly obscured by blue spruces. There were people on the terrace.

  Bill brought the car to a stop and helped Damien out. All at once she felt nervous. “Come in with me, why don’t you, Bill?” she said. “You know the Monts."

  Bill hesitated, then shook his head. “I can’t. It's late and my aunt will be expecting me. I’ll drop your bag at the inn and call you later.”

  Damien said all right, and he got into the car and drove off. A flagged path between barberry bushes led to the ponderous front door. A great green mustache of wisteria above it fell down in trailing strands on either side to lose itself in ornamental planting. Damien rang the bell, annoyingly aware of trepidation, uncertainty. She said to the dour middle-aged woman in gray chambray and a large white apron who answered, “Miss Carey—Mrs. Mont?”

  The woman said unsmilingly, “Oh, yes, miss,” and Damien followed her inside, across a vast dim hall and into a library on the left.

  There were Venetian blinds a
t the tall windows. They gave a dim undersea light to the room. Books lining the walls were covered with newspapers. A huge desk was piled with miscellaneous objects. Deep leather chairs with huge footstools stood in the corners. The lampshades were shrouded in muslin. The house had evidently been closed since Maria Mont’s death.

  Damien looked around. Her mother, dead long since, had lived here thirty odd years ago, had walked through these rooms, come in and out of the doors, gazed through the windows; yet the house continued to be strange, alien, heavy with the *weight of other lives. She turned. Mrs. Mont was in the room.

  Oliver’s mother was a tall woman with a wasted appearance, as though she had recently lost flesh, plainish, but with a presence. There were shadows under her calm eyes, eyes that were contradicted by a high bold forehead beneath pale rust-red hair beginning to turn gray. Damien's first impression was one of serenity, her second of strength. Eleanor Mont’s manner was pleasant but not effusive. She shook hands with Damien, apologized for her worn tweed skirt and sweater. “I haven’t had time to change, what with trying to get things packed and people coming in all day to—welcome you."

  Scarcely to welcome her, Damien thought. The Monts’ friends and neighbors must regard her as an upstart, an interloper—to say nothing of the Monts themselves.

  “Linda St. George, the girl my son Oliver is engaged to, is here,” Mrs. Mont was saying. “I’d like you to meet Linda.”

  “I’d like to meet her.” Inanities embarrassed Damien —but what else were there? They went out into the hall. Its darkness and size were confusing. Things loomed vaguely in the purplish gloom, a tall ticking clock, chairs, the gleam of a table, the dull flash of mirrors buried in shadows, doors and more doors. Toward the back the hall widened. There grayness spilled down from a skylight that capped the well of the broad staircase three stories above. Everything in the house was massive, outsize. They traversed a short corridor, went into a vestibule, the sole furniture of which was, incongruously, a pinball machine, went past a powder room, and out on the terrace. It was long and wide, of brick, and roofed for half its length. Near the far end a small, fair-haired, extremely pretty girl was sitting on the wall, laughing up at someone, tennis racket in hand.

  Eleanor Mont said, “Linda, here’s Miss Carey," and . Linda St. George jumped to her feet.

  “Damien,” she cried, as if she had known the other girl all her life. “This is lovely. I’ve been dying to meet you.” She took Damien’s hands in hers. “Welcome to Arroways.”

  Damien hid sharp surprise. This wasn't the girl she had seen with Oliver Mont in Maria Mont's apartment in New York in the spring. She was being introduced to Linda’s father, Hiram St. George, a big man in his early sixties with a ruddily handsome face, iron-gray hair, and quick dark eyes, well-tailored, intelligent, and just not suave. His greeting was pleasant. She could feel herself being studied.

  Linda St. George was altogether charming. Dark-gold hair as soft as silk and naturally curly was pinned into a knot on top of her head. Her face, broad at the forehead, narrow at the chin, had the glow of a mezzotint. Her rosy mouth was eager, laughing. She gave an impression of delicacy, without being at all weak. Her figure, above and below a small waist, was rounded and firm. Her voice matched the rest of her. It was light, gay. She asked Damien eager questions. No, Damien said, she'd never been in this part of the country before, but it wasn’t very different from Middleboro, in Vermont, where she had grown up, “except that you have no mountains.”

  “Mountains? Miss Carey likes mountains? We’ll have to order some for her.”

  The remark came, not from anyone on the terrace, but from a man standing inside the screen door. He opened the door and came out, and Linda got up and ran to him, radiant and sparkling. “OliverI” She tucked a hand under his arm.

  Damien hadn't expected to encounter Oliver Mont at Arroways. The hazy sunlight took on a metallic luster. A bird lit on a pear tree, flew off. A huge sycamore lifted pale skeleton branches into the blue of the sky. Oliver was greeting his mother and St. George. They were surprised to see him. He said he had flown up from the Nashville

  office. Damien knew from Bill Heyward that Oliver was the only one of the family not in Mont Fabrics, that there had been a terrific blowup when, leaving the army, he had started a freight air line on faith and luppe and a shoestring. His defection had scandalized Maria.

  Linda said, “Come and meet Damien, Oliver.”

  “Miss Carey and I have already met, Cricket."

  Oliver was strolling toward Damien, tall and as fair as ever, in boots and breeches and a leather coat that accentuated his height. But he had changed a good deal, she decided. There was nothing boyish about him now. He was older, harder, more self-contained, the fire in him schooled. But the vigor was still there, beneath wraps.

  His hazel eyes under blond brows scrutinized her. Was there a flicker of surprise in them? He said in a friendly voice, a smile curving his wide mouth into lines of relaxation, “How are you, Miss Carey? It’s good to see you again." The words had an empty sound, as though he was thinking something else.

  Eleanor Mont was staring. She said, “You and Miss Carey have met? Where, Oliver?"

  He said carelessly, ‘It was quite a while ago," and turned.

  A woman was coming up the terrace steps between the blue spruces. She was tall and dark and strikingly handsome. She wore a severely tailored gray suit and a red cloche with a black nose-veil. An odd silver choker circled the throat of her black cashmere sweater.

  “Anne!" Eleanor Mont went toward the newcomer quickly. Oliver followed his mother, Hiram St. George was on his feet. Oliver took the pigskin bag and the brief case the woman was carrying. A confused babble; presently Oliver brought the visitor over to Damien.

  “The new owner of the old manse, Anne—Miss Carey, Miss Giles."

  Miss Giles was production manager of Mont Fabrics. She was also the woman who had been in Oliver Mont’s arms, and he in hers, that day in New York. He was already engaged to Linda St. George then, and Linda was intelligent and sweet. Damien realized with a touch ol shock, from the burn of indignation in her, that she had hopelessly overestimated Oliver Mont, had in fact, idealized him, on insufficient evidence.

  Anne Giles was addressing her with mannered vivacity. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Miss Carey. We’ve all been wondering what you’d be like. Linda, darling, hello—” She flattered the men almost simultaneously. “Oliver, dear, get me a drink, one of your nice ones. I had trouble with my car. Two flat shoes on the way up, believe it or not. Hi, please don’t grow any more, you get bigger every time I see you. Tennis every day, I suppose— you look disgustingly healthy.”

  Miss Giles had come up to Eastwalk on business. “Don’t scold me, Eleanor. I should have called you, but I only got back from St. Louis last night and I was up to here in confusion.” She touched a shapely ear and light flashed luminously from a black pearl on her fourth finger.

  The terrace had only begun to settle down again when there was a second interruption. The screen door was thrown violently open. Damien turned. A girl was standing on the threshold. She was very tall, as tall as Eleanor Mont. She looked rather like the older woman, except that she had the beauty that Eleanor Mont had never had. The coat and skirt of the tweed suit the girl had on were strewn with bits of leaf fragments. Her shoes were muddy, stained. Her small brown head, wound round with chestnut braids, was bare. A green beret swung from the fingers of one hand. There was something wild and free about her, as if she were a bacchante who had sprung miraculously from the depths of the great somber house.

  Mrs. Mont said, "Jancy!” on a staccato note.

  Damien’s interest quickened. The girl was Jancy, Oliver’s sister—and it was Jancy who had cried out in the ravine down the road half an hour earlier.

  Jancy said, “Hello, Mother—Oliver. Linda, dear—” Her voice was husky, faintly blurred. Her gaze lit on Anne Giles—and then the change.

  “What's that woman
doing here?”

  The demand was a whiplash cutting the quiet, deadly, venomous. Jancy took a blind step, stumbled, and fell flat on her face. As she did so a half-filled whisky flask dropped from her purse and smashed to pieces on the terrace floor.

  Chapter Three

  Midnight Search

  "Look, Damien, you can’t stay here. Let me drive you to my aunt's. She'll be delighted to have you. The Monts are in trouble—and it will be damned uncomfortable for you.”

  Damien and Bill Heyward were beside Bill’s car on the driveway at the front of the house. Arroways towered over them darkly. A dry whisper of wind rustled the ivy veiling the walls. Bill had brought Damien’s bag back. A sportsmen's club had taken over the Black Horse Inn for the week-end, and there wasn't so much as a broom closet to be had.

  More than half an hour had passed since that scene on the terrace, but Damien could still smell the reek of whisky lacing the air, could see Eleanor Mont, her face ashen, gripping the back of a chair and staring down at her daughter as though she had been struck by lightning. Oliver and Hiram St. George had picked Jancy up and carried her into the house, thickly protesting. Eleanor Mont had gone with them, a figure in stone, looking neither to the right nor the left. Coming back, Hiram St. George picked up pieces of glass in silence. Linda crouched against the wall, frightened and distressed, her lip caught between her teeth; Anne Giles was the only one untouched. She had said softly, fitting a cigarette into a long holder, and seeming to smile without actually doing so, ‘Poor, dear Eleanor,” with exaggerated pity.