Читать книгу Name Your Poison - Helen Inc. Reilly - Страница 3

A WEDDING GUEST DOES NOT TARRY

There were no police at the wedding on the afternoon when Julie’s cousin, Mouse Tilden, was married in the tall narrow house on Twenty-second Street. There should have been phalanxes of them, Julie thought later, and more at the Hotel Sandringham. But no one knew then, neither the people involved, nor Inspector McKee, who was to conduct the investigation that ranged over three states, or even the twisted and devious mentality that was so soon to commit the most final of all crimes.

It was a moot point with Julie afterward as to whether murder didn’t cast its shadow before it with a thousand signs and portents, dark signs, terrible portents, in the disguise of small oddities, irrelevancies, deviations from the normal that were so slight and so scattered that one didn’t pay any attention to them at the time.

But they were there. Mouse cried in the night, cried dreadfully in the wretched little room at the end of the second-floor corridor that had been hers for most of her thirty-three years.

“Mouse, Mouse, dear…”

Julie got up, a slim, white-faced figure, her eyes large and dark with sleep, wrapped a robe around herself and went to her cousin’s door. “What is it, Mouse? Let me in.” Mouse didn’t let her in. She said mumblingly that it was nothing, and Julie went back to bed.

The next day the flowers arrived. Before that the clock was smashed and feet raced on the stairs when Julie spoke of her own impending marriage to Brian. Then there was the rain, a cold sleety rain, and, above all, there was the house itself, the old, dim, airless house crammed with furniture and the accumulated possessions of too many lives.

Dressing on the morning of the wedding, doing her lips before the pier glass on a bureau as big as a pocket battleship, Julie reflected that she had been lucky to escape. Mouse hadn’t, but she could now. Julie’s mother and hers had been sisters. They had taken flight from the ancestral tomb when they married, only Mouse’s parents had died when she was little, so Mouse had come back to live here with Aunt Sarah, the third of the Jennings sisters. All that was over now. Sarah was dead. She had died five months earlier, and she had left her entire estate to “My dear niece and companion, Margery Innis Tilden.”

Julie went downstairs at seven to get some coffee. Mouse’s telegram saying that she was going to be married had only reached her the day before, and there were a million things to do. She found Mrs. Racker, the elderly housekeeper, bumbling around in the enormous kitchen-basement. Mrs. Racker sipped her tea out of a saucer and looked gloomily through the small, barred window.

“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,” she said in a sepulchral voice. “I don’t like it, Miss Julie. Look at that rain. Miss Mouse deserves better than this, she does. Why couldn’t she wait? Why did she have to do things in such a hurry?”

Julie explained, patiently, that Lieutenant Westing, the man Mouse was going to marry, had got his furlough sooner than he had expected. “They couldn’t put it off, Mrs. Racker, they’ve only got two weeks. They’ve waited almost five years; isn’t that long enough?”

Five years, she thought. Would she wait that long to marry Brian? Of course she would, if she had to. But it wasn’t going to be necessary. The impediment between them would be removed in less than two weeks.

“Mr. Joe’s been real steady,” Mrs. Racker conceded. “Every Saturday night as regular as the clock he’d turn up at the front door with his box of candy. It had roses on the lid and a pink ribbon around it. How Miss Mouse’s face would shine when I’d tell her he was here! Up the stairs he’d go to chat with Miss Sarah before they could have a word alone together. She was a great one for news. But what a shame that with Old Miss dead, and his own mother that he had to support dying, too, he had to be took off to the army I don’t like that sister of his, either. She’s a limbful of mischief, and Miss Mouse is going to have trouble with her, you mark my words…Scat!”

This last objurgation was addressed to a small battalion of black beetles exploring the iron sink at which Mrs. Racker was rinsing her cup. Julie shuddered and escaped. But not before the old woman said darkly, “I suppose she’ll be here?”

“She” was Frances Ashe, Julie’s friend and a relation of both Mouse’s and hers by marriage. It was through Frances, who lived there, that she had gone to Hoydens Hill where she met Brian. They had met before, of course; Brian had known the family for years, but only casually and at widely spaced intervals.

Frances arrived as she reached the first floor. She was forty, but didn’t look it. Small and slight, her soft mop of blue-white curls would have made any other woman’s skin bilious, but hers was clear biscuit color and, in contrast with her delicate features, her hair gave her a distinction that made mere beauty seem dull.

She had had a telegram, too. Mouse was a little afraid of Frances, of her sophistication and smartness and of her gay-edged tongue, but she knew she could depend on her.

Frances wasn’t alone. She came in accompanied by a carpenter, a caterer’s assistant, two cleaning women and three handy men. She gave Julie’s scarlet slacks and sweater an approving glance. “The bed at the hotel was frightful,” she said, “but softer than it would have been here, probably. Put a kerchief round your head, darling, or your hair will be a mess.” Stripping off her gloves and divesting herself of her mink coat, she asked about Mouse and began giving swift and competent orders.

Both she and Julie had worked hard the day before. They worked equally hard that day. They were very fond of the big, square, grave girl who had been a slave to Sarah’s whims for so many drab years and who was coming into her own at long last, and they wanted her wedding to be a success. There were various interruptions. The bridegroom’s young sister was one of them.

Rosetta Westing was a plump, pretty girl of twenty who looked sixteen and behaved on occasion as though she were six—a spoiled six. She resented her mother’s death, resented Joe’s marrying, resented Mouse. “Is there any way I can help?” She stifled tears in a doorway and looked at Julie and Frances. In the middle of the morning, Frances said, “You can take that expression off your face, child, and go to work. This isn’t a funeral; it’s a wedding.”

The rain kept on falling and Mrs. Racker sulked. People came and went. The house was at sixes and sevens. At last it was done.

Mouse was married at three o’clock on the dot that afternoon, in green. She had refused to wear white in spite of Frances’s pleading. “We can have you fixed up in no time. Do, Mouse dear,” Frances had urged. “It will be your only chance, we’ll hope.”

But Mouse was adamant. “I don’t like white, Frances: White is for young girls, and I like green.”

She could be gently and immovably obstinate when she wanted to. At a quarter of four she went up to change and a few minutes later Julie drifted out into the dim hall and sat down on a bench against the staircase to wait for her.

Julie was tired, and it was a relief to unfasten her smile. She eased a slender foot out of a tight slipper and lit a cigarette. Voices were a steady hum beyond the doorway. Most of the guests were elderly friends of Sarah’s or of Joe Westing’s family, and Helen Hokinson hats, mustaches and bald heads predominated.

It seemed ironic to Julie afterward—until irony vanished before the realization of hard, cold, terrible fact—that she should have chosen that precise moment for congratulation, but she did. Mouse was safely married, and there had been no hitch, no minor catastrophes. Rosetta hadn’t broken down or made a scene, and no one had been late. Frances had done wonders with the first floor. The general effect of the big old-fashioned room wasn’t half bad, she decided. The furniture was frightful, of course, and the carpets and pictures were something to dream about. You couldn’t eradicate the odor of dust and dry rot with all the vacuum cleaning in the world, but with the lamps lit, the fires burning and the flowers, it was almost festive. Moreover, it had dignity of a sort, the harsh grim dignity of tradition and stability.

Mouse had cried a little that morning when she came downstairs and saw what Frances and Julie had done. The hat rack, some of the cabinets and the worst of the vases, gigantic things you could hide a body in, were gone together with the antimacassars and scarves and the waxed flowers from all the family graves blooming falsely under glass. “If Sarah could see it,” Mouse had breathed.

“Well, she can’t,” Frances said crisply, “unless she can see through nine feet of earth and across twenty miles of space after a lapse of five months. You’re supposed to be resting. Go upstairs at once, your hair woman’s come.” She had added as Mouse moved off obediently, “Poor child! Out of providence by pneumonia at the age of seventy-one—if I’d been in Mouse’s shoes I wouldn’t have waited. I’d have put a pinch of arsenic in Sarah’s soup long, long ago. Either that or walked out, possibly both.”

It was all very well for Frances to talk, Julie thought, looking abstractedly at an immense bird in a Mrs. Burnett’s hat. Frances had money, security and a husband who idolized her. If Mouse had gone she would have had no place to walk to. Joe and she had loved each other for a long while, but until recently Joe hadn’t been in a position to support a wife, and Mouse couldn’t leave Sarah. All things considered, it was lucky she hadn’t. Under the provisions of Sarah’s will, Mouse was to inherit only if she was unmarried and living with Sarah as her companion when the old lady died. Sarah had had an almost fanatical fear of being left alone and helpless in the care of paid attendants. Her own father had been a paralytic for years before his death.

Julie frowned at an obese cupid gazing fondly at her out of a monstrous gilt frame. The clause had probably been inserted because of Bill Conroy, the man with whom Mouse had been terribly in love when she was seven or eight years younger. Sarah had quashed that affair very effectively. It had seemed cruel at the time, but it wasn’t really. Bill Conroy was a louse. It wasn’t Mouse he wanted; it was Sarah’s money. When Sarah told him he’d never touch a penny of it whether she was dead or alive he had done a fast vanishing act. Poor Mouse—but things had finally broken for her. She and Joe were man and wife, and it wasn’t too late. Mouse was only thirty-three, and she still could have all the children she wanted. If her skin had a few lines in it and her thick fair hair was beginning to fade, Joe didn’t care.

Julie looked through the doorway at him. He was in front of the buffet in the dining-room talking to a group of men from his old office. His uniform didn’t fit well and his sandy hair was disordered, but his plain, gaunt, likable face had lost its air of strain and he looked awfully happy.

The rector who had performed the ceremony had an eye for a pretty woman. He strolled toward Julie and she roused herself with an effort to chat.

“The bride is your cousin, Miss Bishop?” Dr. Fox was new at St. Martin’s.

Julie said yes and explained that she and Mouse were daughters of the late Sarah Jennings’s sisters and that Mouse’s mother and father had died when she was a child and she had lived with Sarah practically all her life.

“A wonderful old lady, wonderful.” The rector chose a sandwich with deliberation. “I had the privilege of meeting the late Miss Jennings once before her death,” he said, munching. “So tiny and so sweet, with that wonderful head of hair. I’ve heard from my parishioners of her devotion to her father, the Rear Admiral, of how she nursed him through his long years of illness, putting aside all thought of self. Marvelous character, marvelous.” He paused portentously and added, “They don’t build them like that nowadays.”

Julie thought, No, thank God. Sarah had been as hard as iron and as inflexible. She battened on grievances and never forgot a fancied slight or an imagined wrong. She had never forgiven her brothers and sisters for marrying. She might have forgiven Mouse but not her, Julie, for being born. And how she had gloried in her martyrdom to “your dear grandfather, the Admiral.”

Frances was talking to a group of elderly women near the black marble mantelpiece in the living-room. She looked lovely in spite of the fact that she had been up almost all night and had worked like a dog. But then she always did. The rector’s glance at Frances was appreciative. “Mrs. Ashe is also a niece of the late Miss Jennings?”

Julie said, “Oh, no. She was Sarah’s sister-in-law. She married Sarah’s young brother David, who was the baby of the family. After David’s death she married her present husband, Sam Ashe.” Julie didn’t add that while Sarah had hated all of them the rest were just ordinary hates, but that Frances was special. To become David’s wife had been her unforgivable sin, to remarry after his death was still more unforgivable. She was thirty years younger than Sarah—charming and attractive, and, above all, independent, on David’s money. It wasn’t to be borne. Frances had been in the house when Sarah died. She told Julie later, “No, I didn’t go into the room. I was afraid the sight of me might revive her.”

A champagne cork popped somewhere and the rector moved off. As soon as he was gone Sam Ashe lounged over to Julie, his hands in his pockets, his big body putting creases into the black cutaway that had grown too small. Sam was big all over. Thinning auburn hair receded from a high broad forehead above a Roman nose and a massive sweep of jaw. Jove among the lesser gods. He looked glum. Ten years earlier Sam had been one of America’s foremost illustrators. New men and new fashions had come up and he had lost most of his markets, but he could still paint like nobody’s business.

“Move over, lady.” He parked himself on the bench beside Julie. “I’ve been waiting till that guy went. Can’t stand clergymen,” he said gloomily. “They remind me of black beetles. I had an uncle was one. He used to come round on Sunday afternoons and tell us about his morning sermons.”

Julie laughed. “You’re mad because you were dragged into town.”

“Nonsense. How was I?”

At Frances’s insistence Sam had given Mouse away. He had done more than that; he had thrown a party for Joe Westing the night before.

“You were wonderful,” Julie assured him. “How did it go last night?”

Sam rubbed his long nose with the stem of the pipe he was cradling. “It went off all right. Trouble with Joe is he doesn’t drink enough. A couple of good benders would put him straight. Nothing like the conviction of sin for making a fellow human. I like Mouse. She’s a good egg. I hope everything’s going to be all right.”

Julie sat up indignantly. “Don’t be so narrow, Sam. Because a man doesn’t drink a lot, it doesn’t make him a sissy. Joe’s grand—and he’s had a hard row to hoe. He had his mother and sister to support, and did you know Sarah loaned his mother money and he had to pay that back too? He—”

Sam interrupted her quietly. “When I said I hoped Mouse would be happy, I didn’t mean Joe.”

“Well, then, what did you mean?”

Sam grinned at Julie’s challenging tone. His grin faded. “Well, for one thing, there’s Rosetta. That kid’s a prize brat. I wouldn’t want to be saddled with her. And, for another, I’ve sometimes wondered if Mouse ever really got over Bill Conroy.”

Julie said crossly, “Don’t be an idiot. Of course she did. That’s ancient history—and she’s crazy about Joe.”

Nevertheless Sam had voiced a question she had asked herself last night, when she heard Mouse crying. It was hard to forget the way Mouse had dragged around for months after Bill Conroy’s abrupt exit.

It was then that Mrs. Racker, sulkily trim in a uniform that Frances had selected, opened the front door, and a man walked in bringing a gust of cold rain with him. He was big and fair and handsome and in his late thirties. He gave his hat and stick to Mrs. Racker, kept his coat on and retained the parcel he was carrying. It was small and shaped like a miniature hatbox.

Sam said explosively under his breath, “Good God! Speak of the devil—where did he blow from?”

Julie didn’t answer. She stared at the uninvited guest in silent consternation. It was Bill Conroy, the man of whom they had been talking.

The years hadn’t changed Conroy much. In spite of an increase in poundage, there had always been and still was a faint irradicable suggestion of the musical-comedy lead about him. No matter what he wore he always seemed to have a topper pushed back on his fair head above impeccable evening clothes and to be about to break into an intricate dance step to the fanfare of hidden trumpets.

Julie thrust her toes into the slipper she had kicked off and stood up. The hall was long and dim. Bill Conroy couldn’t see them, but they could see him. Whether or not Mouse remembered this man with anything but loathing, they mustn’t meet. Nothing must spoil Mouse’s day. She would be down in a few minutes. Julie said, “Sam, go and talk to him, get rid of him somehow or other, as fast as you can. I’ll go up and keep Mouse until he’s gone.”

They were too late. Before either of them could make a move it happened. Bill Conroy had seen them and was starting forward. He stopped in his tracks. Julie turned. Mouse was coming down the stairs.

Frances had picked out Mouse’s going-away dress. It was a powder-blue wool, very straight and simple, that slimmed her figure and brought out the pink in her skin and her pleasant soap-and-water freshness. A small hat of a darker shade of blue hid the gray in her hair, and she looked surprisingly young and almost pretty.

She saw Bill when she was halfway down the stairs. She couldn’t help seeing him. There was no barrier in the way, no one between them. Her coat was thrown over her arm. She held her gloves and purse in her right hand, her left was on the railing of the bannister. It tightened, and the diamonds in her wedding ring gave off a little flash. She halted for the merest fraction of a second when she looked at the man watching her from below. Then she continued her descent, evenly and without hurry.

Julie said Bravo to herself. She was enormously relieved. Bill Conroy had gone forward to meet Mouse. By common consent she and Sam crossed to the two standing near the foot of the staircase.

“Hello, Conroy.” Sam’s greeting was indifferent, offhand.

“How are you, Ashe? Miss Bishop.” Conroy was wise enough not to do more than bow to Julie. His glance at her was cool, appraising. It was the glance he automatically gave every female over fifteen and under fifty. More champagne corks popped, and Sam said, “You’ve got to come and have your health drunk, Mouse. It’s getting on.”

Bill Conroy’s impudence was sublime. “I saw her first,” he said lightly. “As an old friend I claim my privilege. Mouse, I’d like to talk to you for a moment, somewhere, if I may? I promise not to keep you.”

To Julie’s startled surprise Mouse didn’t snub him. She said to Sam and Julie, “With you in a minute,” and to Conroy, “Of course, Bill, in here.” She walked to the door of Sarah’s little study. Bill Conroy followed her in and the door closed.

Sam was flabbergasted. His big, clever face flushed, and a vein stood out bluely on one temple. He didn’t often get angry but when he did he was formidable. Julie laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Go and talk to Joe and keep him occupied,” she said quickly. “I don’t know whether he knows about Bill Conroy or not. But we don’t want any trouble. Joe’s got a quick temper.”

Sam kept on swearing softly under his breath. “The nerve of him—the damned monumental nerve, coming here at all. But maybe you’re right—”

To Julie’s relief Frances joined them. She had seen Bill and Mouse enter Sarah’s study and had taken in the situation at a glance. She said, “Julie is right. Get going, Sam,” and gave him a push. Her eyes sparkled narrowly in her delicate face. She looked tired and very angry. “How did Mouse take it?” she asked.

“Splendidly,” Julie said. “She scarcely batted an eye. What do you suppose brought Conroy here to this house, today, of all days?”

“Vanity,” Frances said thinly. “Perhaps curiosity, and a desire to cause a little mischief, if possible. Conroy’s the sort of man who can’t believe that a woman who was fortunate enough to have taken his fancy, even his passing fancy, could ever care for anyone else. Well, he can have five minutes.”

Bill Conroy didn’t use up five minutes. Not more than one, Julie thought, trying to compute it later, could have passed before the door opened and he came out. A minute in time—so much in destiny. He came out alone. He was no longer carrying the little box. His expression was sulky, and at the same time there was a queer sort of satisfaction in it. He didn’t look at either Julie or Frances. He closed the door behind him, went directly to Mrs. Racker, got his hat and stick and left the house.

The study door stayed closed. Mouse didn’t appear. In the big rooms on the other side of the hall people kept on talking. A woman laughed tinklingly and Julie jumped. “Come on,” Frances said briefly. She led the way to the study and opened the door. Julie was just behind her. She was taller than Frances and could look over her shoulder.

Mouse was there, standing to the left of Sarah’s old roll-topped desk, in front of the Baltimore heater. The box that Bill Conroy had brought was on the desk. It had been opened, the lid was propped against the inkwell and the box itself was empty. It had contained flowers. The flowers were a small knot of orange blossoms. Mouse was tearing the orange blossoms to pieces, steadily and methodically, grinding the petals between her busy fingers and letting them drift fragment by fragment to the floor.

There was paper on the floor among the torn petals, scraps of what looked like a card with writing on it.

Frances said “Mouse,” sharply, and Mouse raised her head. Her nostrils were pinched and her face was white, wooden. Color came back into it and life. She passed a hand across her eyes. Julie was relieved when she saw the tears on her sandy lashes. Frances said comfortingly, patting her shoulders, “Look, honey, Bill Conroy’s a heel, forget about him. It’s Joe you must think of.”

Mouse took her face out of her hands. She said, “Joe…Yes, of course,” and smiled a rather dreary little smile, “I’m just being silly.” Getting down on one knee, she ignored the flowers and began picking up the bits of pasteboard. There weren’t many. She rose, put them into an ash tray on the mantel and struck a match. Her movements were slow and deliberate. They had an air of ritual about them. She touched the match to the little pile and it went up in flame.

The door was open. Julie felt rather than saw movement beyond in dimness. She looked around with an odd little gasp of apprehension, but there was no one in sight. When the flame died and the card that had accompanied Bill Conroy’s gift of flowers was completely consumed—not until then—Mouse turned and walked out of the study. Neither Frances nor Julie said anything. There wasn’t anything to say, but Frances’s brows slanted crookedly as she and Julie followed in Mouse’s wake.

Three quarters of an hour later Julie went back into the little room that had been Sarah’s study. She was by herself. Mouse and Joe were gone. The cake had been cut and a final toast drunk and a chorus of good-bys called. Rice and an old slipper had been flung after the car in which the bridal couple drove away through the dark November afternoon. The reception was still in progress, but the guests were beginning to go.

It would have been hard for Julie to have explained why it seemed important to her that every vestige of Bill Conroy’s visit should be destroyed, except that someone might see the torn flowers and might talk. If Rosetta hovered in the back of her mind she didn’t consciously name her. The real reason went much deeper. Mouse Tilden, Mouse Westing now, was one of the best and most patient and enduring people that Julie had ever known. She had borne Sarah like an angel fur uncounted years, not only without complaint or reviling, but with courage and fortitude and even, which was much more difficult, with affection. A new Mouse had been revealed that day, a Mouse with something fierce and mute and almost savage in her. The revelation had been a shock. Julie wanted to bury the evidence of Mouse’s attack of nerves. She wanted to wipe the slate clean and forget that the disturbing little incident had ever occurred.

The room, Sarah’s room, was dim. It was dusk out. Rain fell steadily beyond the single window and objects loomed vaguely in reflected light from the hall—the old sofa on which Sarah used to lie, a cashmere shawl thrown over her, the desk at which she had sat, her tiny feet on a footstool. She had been inordinately proud of her feet. The very air seemed stale and impregnated with the odor of Sarah herself, an odor compounded of the peppermint drops she used to suck, camphor, heliotrope and age—a scent thrown off by the failing body (she had always been delicate) that had resisted death so fiercely.

Rain drummed at the dark panes, behind their stiff lace curtains, pattered unevenly on the flagstones in the court below. The flower petals littered the carpet in front of the Baltimore heater whitely. The satin ribbon that tied the festive little box trailed across the blotter on the desk. Julie stared. The box was no longer there.

She looked for it, casually at first, and then with an increasing sense of urgency. It wasn’t anywhere in the study. At the end of her brief and futile search she stood still in the middle of the floor, coldness striking hard between her shoulder blades. The removal of so innocuous an object couldn’t and shouldn’t have meant anything to Julie then. But it did. Shakily and a little blindly, afraid but not knowing what it was she feared, she turned and fled out of the room in the direction of lights and people. She slammed the door behind her as she went. It made a loud noise.