Читать книгу The Dead Can Tell - Helen Inc. Reilly - Страница 8

File on Sara Hazard

George Morris, a paper salesman of Pelham, New York, was an eye witness of what took place. He gave the police an accurate account of it later. Morris was proceeding north along the East River Drive after a somewhat hilarious night at Barney Gallant’s when the accident happened. Conscious that he wasn’t in the best possible shape, Morris was driving slowly, a fact for which he was to thank his lucky stars forever after. Otherwise he would have been a gone goose.

The gray convertible with a woman in it cut directly across his path less than ten feet away. The crash, the leap into the air, the sickening dive, jarred every tooth in Morris’s head.

He managed to bring his own car to a stop. He was shaking. Sweat covered him from head to foot. He wasn’t the only one who raced for that jagged gap in the iron railing above the river. Running feet pounded the pavement, there were shouts, cries. They gathered volume. There! Where? The fence. God—look!

A few minutes earlier the Drive had been deserted. People began springing up out of the darkness. A policeman arrived. A radio car appeared. The crowd thickened. Someone must have telephoned because an ambulance pulled up in short order just after the police emergency squad rolled up and took over.

The throng of spectators, dense by this time, was ordered back. A space was cleared. A wrecking truck eased its way to the broken fence above the river. Spotlights were trained on the sluggish black water. Two or three big policemen, stripping hastily, had already dived in. They were swimming around in circles and calling to each other.

The crane with chains suspended from it went down slowly. They had to try twice before the men in the water could dive down and fasten the chains securely round the car lying in the mud eighteen feet below. When it was almost up, the car slipped. A groan went up from the crowds. The whole process had to be repeated.

Pale light that was the precursor of dawn was coming up in the east when the hood of the submerged car at last broke the surface. Voices were raised. Someone moaned. The gray convertible belonging to Steven Hazard had gone into the river with a woman at the wheel. There was no woman in it now.

The car was empty.

Sara Hazard’s gloves, her purse, her keys were in the tangled wreckage of the car that had been fished up out of the East River. Her body wasn’t recovered for twenty-two days.

They were twenty-two days of unmitigated hell for Steven Hazard. Interviews with the police, with the searchers, with the detectives of the Missing Persons Bureau; it was the uncertainty that was the worst. August went by and September came and the days mounted into weeks. There was no news of any kind. Where Sara Hazard had been there was simply a void.

Steven Hazard’s friends rallied around him, did what they could, Mary Dodd and Kit Blaketon, Pat Somers, his chief in the office and two or three others. He saw Cristie only once during that terrible interval. They met like strangers.

Steven showed no desire to be alone with Cristie. He was silent, remote, wrapped in a shroud of doubt and fear and torturing suspense. The South American trip was off. National Motors had sent another man to the Argentine.

For once anticipation of the dreadful ordeal that lay somewhere ahead lagged behind actuality when it finally came.

Sara Hazard’s body was discovered floating in the waters off the North Beach airport by the boat patroling the seaplane lanes. It was taken to the morgue and subjected to extensive examination and various tests. Steven Hazard was summoned. The clothes had already been identified as the missing woman’s, black silk suit, underwear with her monogram on it. Toeless sandals still clasped the once pretty feet, now shapeless and swollen. The hat was gone and the hair that had been bright gold was no longer bright. It was bleached and stained and bedraggled from long immersion in the shifting tides of the river.

The brown eyes were mercifully closed. But the body itself was a bloated and hideous caricature of the beautiful Sara Hazard. Not nice, not easy to take.

Steven Hazard looked at her under the watchful gaze of a group of officials. Assistant District Attorney Dorrens said, “You must allow for—certain differences. The—er— water, you know, and the length of time…”

Steven Hazard said, “Yes.” The captain of the detective district raised an eyelid carefully. He indicated the clothing, the hair, what was left of the teeth, a bracelet embedded in the flesh. Hazard stood beside the drawer looking down. An iron rein held his emotion, his outraged sensibilities in check. He identified the body.

After a long moment he said huskily, “Yes. That’s— my wife. That’s—Sara.” He turned away.

An autopsy was duly performed. Sara Hazard had been neither shot, strangled, poisoned nor stabbed. The lungs were full of water. She had been alive when she went into the river. She had been drowned as a result of the crash.

What had happened was clear. A late party, a projected excursion elsewhere. The Hazard convertible with the top down had been parked in its usual place when it wasn’t in the garage, at the top of the sharply inclined street around the corner from the apartment hotel. Sara Hazard had lost control. The car had turned over when it hit the fence before diving into the river. She had fallen out, to be battered back and forth for all those days in the swiftly moving currents until her body turned up off the airport.

It was on the twenty-fifth of August that the fatal crash occurred. It was on September sixteenth that the body was found. Two days later Sara Hazard’s body was buried in the little cemetery a couple of miles away from the Hazard farmhouse in lower Dutchess County. A cold September rain beat down on the handful of mourners. Cristie Lansing wasn’t there. Mary Dodd and Kit Blaketon were, and Pat and Cliff Somers and Steven’s chief.

That was on Wednesday. On the succeeding Monday, Steven Hazard returned to the office. Work was good for him, took him out of himself. His friends encouraged him. He began to look more normal. He went to the World’s Series with Pat, spent an occasional evening at the Dodd house. Mary Dodd was very kind to him, very gentle. So was Kit Blaketon.

Steven was too much wrapped up in himself to notice the change in Kit or that Cliff Somers no longer dropped in at all hours. Mary didn’t say anything. She talked of his work, of the future, made him talk.

Steven had closed the apartment on Franklin Place. He put the things in storage and moved to his club. He called Cristie once or twice, but it wasn’t until after the first of October when a refreshing tingle of frost was turning the leaves, that he began seeing her regularly again. The first meeting was awkward, they were stiff and shy with each other.

The stiffness began to wear off. Steven would call Cristie from the office and they would meet for a quiet dinner and a play. They didn’t do much talking. There were so many things that had to be left unsaid.

The shadow of Sara persisted. Cristie began to wonder with a dull ache at her heart what was going to happen and whether Steven would ever speak to her again as he had spoken that day in the little cafe around the corner from Margot’s.

Late one afternoon in the middle of the month, Margot St. Vrain called Steven at his office and asked him to the penthouse for dinner and the evening. Steven thanked her, but said he had an engagement to dine with Mary Dodd and Kit Blaketon. Margot suggested that he bring the two women over after dinner. She said Harry Woods, the song writer, was going to be there, that he was going to try out a new number for them.

Steven spoke of Margot St. Vrain’s invitation to Mary Dodd during dinner and Kit was enthusiastic about the idea. She hummed, “When the red red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along” with a touch of her old gayety and said, “Let’s, Mary, I’d adore meeting Harry Woods. He’s marvelous, absolutely grade A.”

Mary was agreeable. While Kit was getting her hat, Mary told Steven she had been a little worried about the girl but didn’t tell him why.

When they arrived at the penthouse, Margot received them cordially. Her fiancé, Euen Firth, her cousin Johnny St. Vrain and Harry Woods were there. Woods was a lean gaunt fellow with an attractive smile.

Steven introduced Mary and Kit. Woods resumed his place at the piano. Cristie came in during the middle of the new song. She slipped quietly into a chair near the door, a slim snow-white and rose-red figure in dark crimson wool that brought out the cherry-blossom texture of her skin, the dark cloudiness of her hair. She didn’t single Steven out particularly. She gave him a smiling nod, accepted Kit Blaketon’s sizing-up stare, returned Mary Dodd’s pleasant half-smile and waved a hand to Johnny, leaning over the piano.

The song over, they all congratulated Woods. Euen Firth reappeared, followed by a colored maid wheeling a small bar. Drinks were served. Conversation became general.

As usual Euen helped himself to the liquid refreshment, his weak, good-natured face outfitted with a placating and permanent smile.

Cristie was waiting for a chance to talk to Steven, but to her annoyance Euen devoted himself to her. Her attention wandered. Toward what she hoped was the end of a long story about a Mexican and a goat, she glanced up. To her surprise, Euen wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at Steven who was talking to Margot and Miss Dodd on the other side of the room. There was no vacuity in Euen. His eyes were owlish, intent. As she watched, his aimlessness returned. He put a hand on her shoulder and finished his tale, echoing Cristie’s polite mirth with a cheerful guffaw.

Cristie was puzzled. It was no more than that, then. Another man and woman came in, and, later, Pat Somers arrived. He was accompanied by his brother Cliff. Cristie hadn’t seen either of them since the night of the party. That was what she called it herself, the only thing she permitted herself to call it. She averted her mind swiftly, pulled down a shutter. The act was automatic. She was getting used to it. Pat greeted Margot and Johnny, turned to Mary Dodd. He seemed glad to see her.

“I called the house and they told me you’d be here,” he said.

A look of understanding passed between them.

Kit Blaketon joined Johnny on the other side of Woods. The girl had been laughing and talking a moment before, red hair tossing vivid fire around the pretty, pointed face. It changed as Cliff Somers neared the piano. There was a beseeching air about him as he said, “Hello, Kit.”

Kit Blaketon stared back at him stonily. “ ’Lo, Cliff.”

It was the merest scrap of a greeting, indifferent, curt, uninterested. She turned back to the song writer, threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Go on, Harry,” she urged, “don’t stop playing.”

Woods looked up at her with a grin. “All right, baby, what’ll you have?”

Kit Blaketon’s voice, clear, metallic, rode the room as she answered, “Play ‘Get out of Town,’ darling. That’s the only tune I can think of at the moment.”

Cristie watched the good-looking young politician flush and pale. How cruel girls could be when they wanted to! Then she stopped thinking about the curious incident.

Steven was crossing the room. Beside her he said in a low voice, “I want to talk to you, Cristie.” He looked different. There was an air of purpose about him somehow.

She said, “My room, down the hall.”

She was standing at one of the tall windows beyond her drawing board when Steven joined her. He paused just inside the door, his tall broad-shouldered figure, his dark head, outlined against the white paneling. He was thinner and older but the light was back in his face, the light Sara had almost succeeded in crushing out.

“Cristie!” His voice had a ring to it.

“Yes, Steven.” Her own was none too steady, her own small dark head was lifted. She was shaking inwardly. “You—wanted me for something?”

Steven was holding a cigarette in his lean brown fingers. He ground it out in an ash tray. He said, “That’s just it. Yes, Cristie. I do want you. It’s time now. All the other is gone. It’s finished, done with, over.”

Cristie’s hands were clasped in front of her. Her fingers tightened. The dark pool at the bottom of her mind stirred a little. Was anything ever over completely? Did the past ever really bury its dead? Or were they just tucked away conveniently out of sight? She turned to the window, looked out into the clear, star-spangled autumn night, said on an uneven breath, “Oh, Steven, Steven—I don’t know. Can we ever…?”

Steven was close to her. He put strong gentle hands on her shoulders, swung her round until she faced him. His eyes dove deeply into hers. She couldn’t get away—realized, a thin glow of rapture beginning to pervade her, that she didn’t want to.

Steven continued, his eyes holding hers, “Yes, Cristie. We can. We can and we will.”

The core of darkness within her refused to dissipate, continued to send out creeping tentacles. “Are you sure, Steven?” she whispered.

Steven held her away. She looked at the dancing specks in his steel-bright eyes. The irises were ringed with black.

He said steadily, “Yes, Cristie, I’m sure! I let you go once. I’m not going to let you go again. Cristie, Cristie.” His grip tightened. “Don’t you understand? I love you. We have a right to each other. And by guess or by God, anyone who tries to stop us now—well, it’s going to be just too bad. Cristie, tell me what I want to hear, tell me, darling, tell me!”

Cristie didn’t answer at once. She was deeply moved. But that inner weight was difficult to throw off. Steven’s hands fell from her shoulders. His eyes searched the small white face she lifted to his. Her lips parted. Her lashes opened wide and glory blossomed in the violet eyes set at a tilt under the delicate brows.

“Steven,” she cried in a low radiant voice. “Oh, Steven, Steven.”

Her arms were around his neck. He strained her to him. Their lips met and the room, the penthouse, the whole sorry world were left behind.

They clung passionately to that moment, a moment in which they were in another atmosphere beyond time and beyond space with only themselves and a thin strain of music that was Harry Woods in the distant living room playing, magically, Begin the Beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor

Except when the tune clutches my heart;

Yet there we are, swearing to love forever,

And promising never, never to part.

Cristie withdrew her lips from Steven’s, burrowed her forehead in the hollow of his shoulder. “Never, Steven,” she murmured. “Never?”

Drawing her closer, Steven said, “Never, darling, never. Sara’s gone. Don’t worry about her any more. You mustn’t. It isn’t necessary. I know things about Sara that…Listen, sweet, on the night Sara died…”

Something warned Cristie. She realized afterward that it was the music. It had become imperceptibly louder. She raised her held. Steven had his back to the door. His bulk obscured her view. She twisted sideways, looked past him.

The door leading into the hall was settling noiselessly into its frame.

Someone standing outside in the corridor had opened and closed the door a moment earlier. Steven had been speaking of Sara and the night of Sara’s death.…The fear was back in Cristie, a new fear that added itself to the other and thrust her down again into swirling eddies of uncertainty and terror.

That night Christopher McKee returned to New York from Rio de Janeiro. He was back at his desk in the Homicide Squad before morning. It wasn’t until five o’clock on the following afternoon that he got the letter, a letter addressed to the Commissioner and sent up by messenger from Headquarters. The Inspector read it once and then again. He pressed the buzzer on his desk. When the door opened and Lieutenant Sheerer stuck in his head, McKee said without looking up from the sheet of paper he held in his hand:

“Get me the file on the drowning of Sara Hazard of 66 Franklin Place on August twenty-fifth.”