Murder at Arroways Read online

  That had infuriated Linda. She had challenged Miss Giles. “What do you mean?” she had cried, her pale cheeks suffused with rose, her eyes sparkling angrily. “Eleanor’s not an object of pity. Jancy's swell.” She stamped her sandaled foot. “If everybody was as decent, as nice, if other people were half as—”

  St. George had intervened with quiet authority. “Linda, go and see if you can help Jancy.” Linda had looked as though she were going to rebel, engage Miss Giles further, then she had flashed across the terrace and into the house. St. George had explained, mildly. “She won’t hear a word against Jancy. They’ve always been close friends. The truth is, Jancy’s not well.”

  Eleanor Mont had struck the same note when she came down, pale but composed and holding herself very erect, apologizing to Anne Giles and to the rest of them indirectly. “Jancy’s just a child. It’s that stomach of hers— she should never touch liquor. It goes straight to her head, poor baby, and she gets the most peculiar ideas, wants to quarrel with everyone. I hope you didn’t take her seriously, Anne.”

  It was a valiant effort. There was something hard at the core of Miss Giles's smiling acceptance. “Eleanor, darling, don't be silly. I’ve got a young cousin like that—one drink and she’s climbing walls.” They all knew it wasn't one drink, or two, or three.

  Damien had already told Bill about it. “Jancy was the girl we heard in that ravine down the road on the way here. What does it mean, Bill?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jancy seems to hate Miss Giles.”

  “Definitely. And Anne hates her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jancy is shrewder than the others. Because Anne Giles is—sorry, Damien—a bitch of the first water.” His expression was bleak. “She was a pet of Maria's in Mont Fabrics, and Maria wasn’t easy to get along with. Other heads might roll—did roll—but never Anne's. People said that she was the old girl’s official spy. I’m not crazy about Eleanor Mont, but I hope that now she's in the driver’s seat she gives Giles the boot, fast.” He kicked gravel explosively. “Come on, get your things. I don't like the setup.”

  Damien didn’t like it any better than he did, but she shook her head. “I can’t go, Bill. Mrs. Mont knows about the inn. She asked me to stay here. If I left now she’d think it was because of Jancy, of what happened. It will only be for tonight—but do something for me, will you? Call Jane and tell her where I am and that I’ll call her myself tomorrow.”

  Bill said he would, and when he saw he couldn’t persuade her, drove off. Damien picked up her bag and went into the house. In the room on the second floor to which she had already been shown, a large handsome room with most of the furniture shrouded, she unpacked only what she would need, a toothbrush and pajamas and a robe. She had kept her thoughts from Oliver Mont, but he was there at the back of her mind, persistently. Was there anything between Oliver and Anne Giles? Was that why Jancy had blown up? The woman was older than he was by a good five years—well, perhaps two or three. But anyhow older, and hard and greedy and—smug. That was it, that was what she was, a big cat purring with sheathed claws. Pushing a drawer shut, she thought, Not my affair —but what horrible taste he has—engaged to Linda St. George, and fooling around with a woman of Anne Giles’s caliber.

  Cool off, she told herself dryly, standing at a window. Don't get mixed up in other people's troubles. You've got your own. Outside, the autumn day was fading, but there was still some light. She lit a cigarette and wandered restlessly around. At Eleanor Mont’s suggestion Hiram St. George had offered to show her over the house, but she had refused, almost curtly. It would have been a little too much like examining your pound of flesh in advance to see that it was in prime condition. But she could explore the grounds. She put on her coat. Halls and corridors were filled with a smoky gloom in which the few lamps were isolated islands. The lack of detail made the house unreal, theatrical, as though the walls were made of pasteboard with emptiness on the other side. The clock near the library ticked somnolently. There was no other sound and no one in sight.

  Damien let herself out. She already had an idea of what the terrain was like in front of the house. In back the ground fell gradually so that the house was four stories tall there. Long perennial borders in which a few chrysanthemums still bloomed, colorless in the dusk; a tennis court, tree-scattered lawns; she went past the bulk of brick stables off on the right, over level stretches of grass. Another pair of lacy iron gates in the brick wall bounding the estate to the east led to a narrow country road. Damien turned left inside the wall. More buildings, a decorative tool shed, a ladder propped against a pear tree that was being pruned, the branches lay on the ground. She skirted them. Farther along a little house like a doll’s house with a stone terrace in front of it overlooked the tennis court.

  There was someone in the little house. The lights were on. When Damien was some twenty yards away the door opened, and Eleanor Mont came out. She closed the door behind her and started across the terrace. Damien remained where she was. Something in Eleanor Mont’s bearing, carriage, kept her from speaking. The older woman’s square shoulders sagged under the fur cape thrown around her, her head was bent, and she walked stiffly and yet aimlessly, like a person who didn’t know or care where she was going. A sundial stood directly in her path. Reaching it she paused, then suddenly stooped, threw her arms along the marble, and put her head down on her arms as though she was incapable of further movement.

  Damien was alarmed. Was Mrs. Mont ill? She would have spoken then, gone to her— The thought of Jancy held her back. Eleanor Mont was a proud woman. She had tried to carry off the revelation of Jancy’s condition be fore outsiders as though it were an aberration of no importance, now that she was alone she was giving way to her pain and grief.

  After a moment she straightened, and walked slowly on, down some steps and across the tennis court. The drag of her slow footsteps receded. There was no other sound. The twilit stillness was absolute until bushes crackled and snapped somewhere. The noise came from behind the little house. Damien stared through the dusk. Had someone left it by a rear door? The lights were still on; they shone on folds of her cherry wool coat, but no one appeared.

  Her thirst for exploration quenched, Damien started back the way she had come, thinking of Eleanor Mont and of what it meant to such a woman to have a daughter of twenty-three who was an alcoholic, or who seemed to be one, and what could have brought Jancy’s condition about. An unhappy marriage? It wasn't that. Oliver Mont told her what it was some five minutes later.

  He was in the hall when she went in, near the foot of the stairs. His face was dark, strained, under his fair hair. The strain went out of it when he saw her. “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Carey. Come and have a cocktail.’* He led the way into the library.

  The newspapers had been removed from the books, the dust covers from the lampshades, and the desk cleared. Oliver’s manner was pleasantly casual, but she could feel his eyes appraising her as they had earlier in the afternoon. She sat down in one of the leather chairs and he gave her a drink and began to talk about his sister. “Mother’s making too much of Jancy's little exhibition. Jancy’s going to be all right. You see, she discovered my father. She adored him and she’d never been told about his heart, that he was likely to go at any moment. It was pretty rough for her. She’s been at the sanitarium up here for the last few days under Doctor Marsh’s care. Marsh is a good man. He advises a complete change—that’s why Mother’s taking Jancy South.”

  Poor Jancy. Damien felt easier with Oliver after that. She made the appropriate replies. Should she tell him about having seen Jancy in the ravine where Randall Mont had been found dead? Better. It might help. She described the incident briefly. Oliver was standing on the hearth lighting a cigarette. The flame made a rose-and-black pattern of his strong long-fingered hands. He turned from her, threw the match into the fire, and said over his shoulder, “Jancy blames herself, blames all of us, that
it happened the way it did—” and paused.

  “Oliver, darling.”

  Anne Giles stood in the doorway. She couldn't see Damien in the far corner. Her voice was low, intimate, caressing. Oliver swung around.

  “Hello,” he said quickly. “Miss Carey and I are having a cocktail. Care for one? Your conference with Mother over?”

  Miss Giles wasn’t at all disturbed by Damien’s presence. “Yes, Oliver, we thrashed out the Western branches— How do you like your heritage, Miss Carey? The white elephant to end all white elephants, in my humble opinion. Why they put so much waste space into halls and corridors I’ll never know. Thanks, darling.” She took the glass Oliver handed her. The second “darling” was almost exactly like the first, but not quite.

  Damien put down her drink. She could hardly breathe. The room seemed suffocatingly hot. She wanted passionately to get out of it. If there was anything between Oliver and this woman, why didn’t he come out with it like a man, tell Linda the truth, and ask her to release him? An engagement wasn’t a marriage. It might hurt Linda badly, but it wouldn’t kill her. Or did he prefer this hole-and-corner business? Someone else’s wife in every port; He didn’t look like that. He looked honest and straightforward and courageous—but the proof of the pudding was in the eating. She warned herself coldly, It's nothing to you. These people are strangers. After tonight you won't see them again.

  Eleanor Mont came in. She had changed into a smart black wool dress and done things to her hair and face. There was no trace in her manner of her semi-prostration in the dark garden half an hour ago, but her eyes were deep in her head under the commanding forehead, and there was a stony expression in them as though she had gone blind.

  Veils of nightmare wreathed themselves around Damien. Tragedy appeared to stalk Eleanor Mont. You could feel it. An invisible guillotine reared itself against the rich background of books and lamplight and heavy, handsome furniture and inconsequential talk—which was absurd. Eleanor was worried about her daughter, quite naturally, and that was all. She said that dinner would probably be frightful. “Agnes is an excellent maid, but she’s no cook.” She had asked Hiram St. George but he had refused with a shudder. Linda was spending the night with Jancy. She told Damien in an aside, “Linda can always manage her even when she’s in one of her moods,” smiling at a temperamental daughter’s amusing vagaries. If only the woman would let go about Jancy, Damien thought, but she wasn’t a woman who would ever let go, not with that forehead and chin.

  Joining them, Linda didn:t echo Eleanor Mont’s lightness. The blue dress she wore was perfect for her coloring. It made her look very young and vulnerable. She was intent on Jancy, who was asleep. “But I mustn’t stay long.”

  “Nonsense,” Oliver told her. “What do you suppose I flew up here for? Jancy will sleep till morning. Stop worrying, Cricket, and devote a little of your attention to me.” He ruffled her soft hair.

  Damien was genuinely puzzled. Linda St. George was deeply in love with Oliver, and he loved her dearly. Was she imagining a situation that didn’t exist? Had the house cast a spell over her? It continued to do so. Dinner in the large, ponderous dining-room, coffee and liqueurs afterward in the huge drawing-room; sofas and chairs were draped in dust covers, sheeted statuary assumed strange shapes. Lusters on either side of the fireplace were fat and silvery and unrestful. There was no fire on the hearth, nothing to suggest permanency, comfort.

  Damien’s discomfort increased. There was a malign flavor to the air within the walls, dark, distorting. Animate and inanimate objects were all faintly wrong. Eleanor Mont was too quiet for the suggestion of driving inner activity she conveyed. There was something almost furious in her tall, composed stillness. Oliver appeared to feel it, to watch his mother covertly, with a certain hardness in his sideway glances. Even Linda’s sparkle was diminished. She sat with a cheek resting on her palm, an elbow propped on the sofa arm, her head down-bent. Anne Giles was the only one in good spirits, keeping a conversation of sorts going, smoking cigarettes in a long onyx holder, the pearl on her hand gleaming, every hair in place, her almond eyes brownly bright. The black cashmere sweater she wore brought out the warmth of her tawny skin, the silver circlet around her throat made drama of it, gave her the air of an exotic fencer resting between bouts. Linda, rather noticeably, didn’t pay any attention to the older woman. Could those pretty hands grasp as well as flutter and stroke? Why not?

  Eleanor Mont had asked "Damien to the house for the express purpose of discussing furniture that had belonged to Maria Mont and didn’t come under the terms of the bequest, yet she seemed to have forgotten about it. It was as though they were all waiting for an important; a momentous thing, to happen—and nothing did.

  At around ten Anne Giles was called to the phone. The silence in the room when she left it clamped down more closely. A clock began to strike sonorously. Damien started. It was another tall clock hidden in a recess.

  Oliver said, rousing himself from absorbed contemplation of a matchbox, “Plenty of them, aren't there? Maria had a passion for clocks. There are hordes at the Biloxi place. Joe Greening, a farmer down the road, has been keeping the ones here wound.”

  Anne Giles came back. Crossing beautiful legs with a display of shadowy stocking, she said, “You've heard the tale, haven’t you? No? Well, I did, when I was closing my cottage in September. The people up here say that Maria herself comes to wind them, wanders around the house' until it’s time—”

  Linda stared round-eyed. Oliver laid a hand over hers. “What rot,” he said, laughing. “Pay no attention, Linda. You either, Miss Carey. Anne, don’t tell me you believe in ghosts?"

  “I didn’t say I did, darling.”

  There it was again. There was something almost insolent in the way she used the appellation, a twinkle of malevolence combined with a suggestion of hidden intimacy. Had anger replaced Linda’s momentary fright-stiffened her posture? Damien put out her cigarette. She had fulfilled her obligations as a guest. Eleanor Mont wasn’t going to discuss furniture or anything else with her tonight. She was engrossed in thoughts of her own, about Jancy probably, about the house. Damien rose. Good nights; five minutes later she was in her bedroom with the door closed.

  Kicking off her shoes, pulling her dress over her head, she wondered why Anne Giles had been so assiduous when they parted. “You’ll be in Eastwalk tomorrow, Miss Carey? Perhaps we can meet—if I don’t go back to New York. It’s been a pleasure.” Was Oliver Mont in love with this woman or wasn’t he?

  Damien gripped the back of a chair with tight fingers, loosened her grip, and let her hands fall. Was the anger that shook her due wholly to consideration for Linda, or had it other roots? In plain words, was she herself jealous of Oliver Mont’s absorption, in Anne Giles? Ridiculous. She threw the thought from her and got ready for bed.

  She was used to reading until she felt drowsy but there wasn’t a book or a magazine in the room, and sleep refused to come. She heard eleven strike and then half past. Her feet twitched, and she was alternately hot and cold. She was rapidly getting into the state where she would lie awake all night. Finally she threw the covers aside and went into the bathroom to get an aspirin. There were none in the cabinet, but there were some in her bag. She couldn’t find her bag, remembered that she had left it downstairs in the library when dinner was announced by the disagreeable-looking maid.

  She put on her housecoat, opened her door, and went along the corridor and out into the main hall. There were lights burning there. As she rounded the turn she bumped into someone.

  It was Linda St. George, in a woolly blue robe that made her look sixteen. But there was something the matter with her. Her eyes were enormous in her small white face. She said, “What is it, Damien? Did you see her?"

  “See who?” Damien asked, and then knew. “Do you mean Jancy?”

  Linda nodded.

  “I woke up. She,” a hesitation, “she’s gone. She’s not in her room.”

  The liquor cabinet sprang to
Damien’s mind. It was evidently in Linda’s. “She may be downstairs.” They hurried toward the great gloomy cavern of the staircase. There was a single lamp lit in the lower hall. It was empty. So was the dining-room. But the liquor cabinet was open.

  The two girls looked at each other. Linda was shaking. “Where can she be?” she whispered.

  Damien said practically that there were any number of places Jancy could be. “We’d better search down here first.”

  But there was no Jancy and no sign of her in the huge kitchen, the servants’ dining-room, the pantries, the living-room, the library. Retrieving her bag there, Damien said, “What about downstairs—or she may be on one of the upper floors.”

  “Yes.” Colder air stirred around them as they returned to the hall. The shadows were thick. Linda eyed the front door. “You can never tell what she might do. Eleanor mustn’t know; she’d worry and she needs rest. It’s probably nothing—nothing at all. Maybe Jancy’s hiding to tease us.” She threw a thick braid over her shoulder with a movement of decision. “I’m going to wake Oliver. He’ll find her.”

  Damien nodded. It was the best thing to do. The situation wasn’t one in which the intrusion of a stranger would be welcome; she parted with Linda at the head of the stairs, listened to a man cough somewhere, and frowned. The cough didn’t suggest Oliver, and he was the only man in the house. She went back to her own room more wideawake than ever.

  After swallowing two aspirins she sat down on the window seat to have a cigarette. The moon rode in and out of a cloud-strewn sky. She couldn't hear anything. There was no sound beyond her door. There wouldn’t be. Oliver wouldn’t want to alarm his mother, wake the house. He would search for his sister quietly. Damien had been sitting there for perhaps twenty minutes when she saw the car, in a sudden burst of moonlight. It was a dark convertible with a light top, drawn up at the side of the house near a tall pine. Then she saw Oliver. He had found Jancy. He was putting her into the car, tucking in her skirt. He closed the door and turned and looked up at the house.