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RETURN OF THE TIGRESS

Meanwhile the people who were finally to become the other participants in that tragedy of errors and of deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded murder, with two exceptions, had all assembled at Hoydens Hill in Connecticut.

Hoydens Hill was in the high country back from and above the Sound in one of the few unexploited spots of the Nutmeg State still within reach of the metropolis. Its inaccessibility—the station was five miles to the east—and the nest of factories, quiet places ringing the Hill’s base, were responsible for the colony’s isolation. The people who had settled on the Hill’s rolling, wooded slopes were fond of their fastness. There weren’t many of them; they all valued privacy and the freedom it gave.

At that time, Julie Bishop and Julie alone was without previous knowledge of any kind on any single facet of the peculiar set of crimes which already had engaged inspector McKee’s attention in New York and whose fine flowering had reached neither its ultimate objective nor its peak.

On the afternoon of December the fourth, shortly before McKee was summoned to Grand Central, Julie was dressing for dinner in her cottage in the little settlement sixty-odd miles to the northeast. The shadow that had fallen over her on the day of Mouse Tilden’s wedding had never completely retreated. She had tried to make herself believe that it had and she had succeeded to a certain extent. She hadn’t spoken to anyone of Bill Conroy’s appearance at the Biltmore on the afternoon of Mouse’s wedding. When she examined her fear in the light of normal surroundings, it had seemed more than a little absurd. And her anger at Brian, at his abrupt change of plan without consulting her, had dissipated. He had said to her, coming up on the train, “Julie, don’t mind me, I’m jittery these days,” and had kissed her quickly and satisfactorily in the darkness of the platform to which they had repaired for a cigarette.

Under other circumstances she might have lingered over certain irrelevancies and discrepancies that remained unsolved, but on the ninth of December, as soon as Brian got his divorce, they were going to be married and she had hordes of things to do. The marriage was to take place at a little church at Westhaven under the auspices of Brian’s aunt, Eleanor Yates, a shrewd, forthright woman who was very fond of her only nephew and who had relievingly taken a fancy to Julie.

The only other guests were to have been Sam and Frances Ashe and Mouse and Joe Westing, who had reached the Hill two days earlier. The Prendergasts, friends of the Ashes who were spending the winter in Florida, had loaned their house at Hoydens Hill to the newlywedded Westings for their brief honeymoon. They were only just settled when Joe’s sister, Rosetta, arrived unexpectedly and plunked herself down bag and baggage on the bride and groom.

“Why,” Brian had demanded, “do we have to have little pussy whose claws are so long?” Julie had laughed, but Rosetta was rather a problem. The people on the hill were older, all busy about their own concerns, and there was nothing for Rosetta to do. Mouse and Joe had arrived sooner than they were expected. A short sojourn in Atlantic City—“Wouldn’t you know?” Frances said with a little crow of delight—had been enough for the two shy and reserved people who wanted quiet and peace in modest surroundings. Rosetta explained her appearance with what Frances said was a cock and bull story about being made to feel an interloper in the home of the relatives in Jersey with whom she had been staying and with whom she was to have remained until the honeymoon was over.

Frances and Julie had both offered to have Rosetta till Joe’s leave was up, but Mouse had refused. She had said in her calm steady way, “I don’t mind her, really. She gets on Joe’s nerves a little because she plays on him, but there’s no harm in her. It’s just that she’s young. Anyhow, she and I have to learn to get on with each other and we might as well begin now.”

Julie had agreed with Mouse. Rosetta was awkward and shy, and it was her shyness that made her blunder. You couldn’t come into a close little corporation such as Hoydens Hill was and not make mistakes. It wasn’t her fault that she accented the wrong things. Frances’s money, for instance. Sam’s income had been cut down drastically in the last five years, and though he worked harder than ever he earned only a fraction of what he had formerly made. It was Frances now who bore the burden of their expenditures. Sam never said much about it, but he obviously didn’t like the state to which he had had to learn to become accustomed. Rosetta kept calling attention to it innocently enough, saying how wonderful Frances was and what taste she had. “She chooses your ties, doesn’t she, Sam? They’re lovely. I wish Joe wore ties like that. I wish I had money.”

In Julie’s and Brian’s case it had been Brian’s first wife, Rikki, upon whom Rosetta’s curiosity had lighted. Julie had never met the woman who had been Rikki Moore, Brian never spoke of her, and she hadn’t liked to ask questions. Frances had once described Rikki with what was, for her, unusual violence, in a terse five-letter word. All Julie knew was that Brian and his first wife had been unhappy together during a marriage that had endured for a little more than three years. It was Rosetta, prowling around in Brian’s cellar, who found Rikki’s trunk, a big costly outmoded affair, and a bag of shoes. They were expensive shoes, most of them scarcely worn. Rosetta had exclaimed over their elegance, bursting into a shower of questions. “Did she live here with you, Mr. Moore?” Brian said no, patiently, that he had had the things sent up from New York one winter when he rented the house in Morton Street to a friend. Was she pretty, was she nice, what a lovely name she had. Rikki. Rosetta played with the name like a kitten with a ball.

Julie would have smiled, only that Brian had been annoyed. She wasn’t in the least jealous. There had probably been plenty of women in Brian’s life, as there had been other men in her own. The past meant nothing. It was the future that concerned them both, the lovely, lovely future. Julie opened a drawer, took out a pair of stockings and began to pull them on.

She and Brian were coming straight back to Hoydens Hill after they were married. He had to go on with the work on his carburetor, so that there would be no time for a trip anywhere. It couldn’t be helped and nothing mattered as long as they were together.

They were all, she, Sam and Frances Ashe, Mouse and Joe Westing and Rosetta, going up to supper with Brian that night. Julie slid a simple dinner dress over her head. It was a sea-green piqué with a white ruffle at the V neck and tiny white ruffles edging the bracelet sleeves. She shook crisp folds into place and started doing her lips. Her mouth smiled warmly at her out of the mirror and her gray-blue eyes, long and liquid, were steady and shining. What was marriage with Brian going to be like? The answer was instant. It was going to be gorgeous. They would have their quarrels, of course, and plenty of differences, but the unity between them, the matching tempo, was so complete that nothing could break it. She stood up with a sudden movement. Her skirts swished and a little shiver went through her. Don’t be too happy, a small voice whispered. Surety in an uncertain world invites disaster. What was it George Eliot had said, something about prophecy’s being man’s most gratuitous form of mistake?

Julie refused to give ground to the tiny handful of doubt that lifted itself. There was nothing wrong. Everything was just as it had been, ought to be. Any difference in the colony, in Brian or Sam or Frances, in Mouse or Joe Westing, was a reflection of her own mood. It was natural that she should be edgy and unsettled in the face of the change that was coming. She got her tan polo coat. One of the white pearl buttons was loose. She had no needles, she would have to borrow one from Frances. She put cigarettes in her pocket, turned off the dressing-table lamps and went into the living-room.

Its simplicity was a continual pleasure. It was long and narrow and held all she needed: her drawing board and worktable, filing cabinet for swipes, a comfortable shabby chair, books, lamps and a lovely battered baroque sofa upholstered in tattered silk the colors of a dream, grays and lavenders and pinks and delicate blues and purples. Sam had bought it at an auction, but Frances had refused to give it house room so Julie had snatched at it. One set of windows at one end of the room looked down the hill on the valley and the river, the other up into the rock garden that separated her from Brian’s house in which she was going to live. This was larger, having been made over out of an older house.

No one ever locked a door at Hoydens Hill. Julie closed hers behind her and ran down the three steep steps. It was dark out and colder than she had expected. There was no wind. Bushes at the edge of the driveway rustled and she turned and peered through the blackness. There was a scratchy sound, like a heel on gravel. She called out, “Is there—anyone there?” No answer. She must have imagined the footstep. The rustle in the bushes might have been Horrible Albert, Sam’s cat, or a stray dog. She wasn’t afraid. She drew her coat tightly around her and went with a quick step up the winding path through the rock garden. She didn’t look back. She was glad when she reached the top.

It was early, and she and Brian would have a few minutes in front of the fire before the others came. Walter, Brian’s man of all work, had gone on a tear, so they were going to have a buffet supper with one hot dish, a turkey she had helped Frances’s maid prepare that afternoon. Julie decided to have a look at the turkey on the way in, so instead of going around to the front she went up the kitchen steps. The kitchen was a big, square, sunny room at the back. It had blue walls with yellow curtains and geraniums on the five window sills. Having been on his own for so long had made Brian quite an efficient housekeeper, but he wasn’t the world’s best cook.

The kitchen was empty when she went in. The turkey was doing nicely. She threw her coat over a chair and went out into the hall. The glass doors of the living-room up a step on the right were ajar. Had she come in the front way she would have been visible crossing the hall. Coming from the kitchen she wasn’t. Brian was in the living-room, but he wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him. Listening absently, Julie’s brows rose. The woman was Brian’s aunt, Eleanor Yates.

What on earth had brought Eleanor Yates to Hoydens Hill? Fifteen years earlier she had been an actress of note and a great beauty. Her husband’s failure and death in. 1929 had put an end to all that. An estate near Westhaven was the only thing the lawyers had managed to, salvage. Without money or experience she had turned the estate into a farm out of the products of which she had built up a substantial New Haven trade. She was as closely wedded to her poultry and cattle, her fields and gardens as though she were fastened to them with a ball and chain. The life that had formerly engrossed her was dead, and she never went anywhere. That was one of the reasons why Julie and Brian were going to be married in Westhaven. Eleanor had said, “I’d like to dance at your wedding, old boy, but I simply can’t get away. If I’m gone for more than a couple of hours a barn is struck by lightning or my cream curdles or a cow miscarries. Why not have the wedding up here? Anywhere in the state’s all right.”

Julie frowned at one of Bone’s etchings on the wall near the foot of the stairs. It was like Eleanor, strong and forthright. Inside the living-room Eleanor spoke. She said, “I thought you ought to know.” Brian said, “Yes.” He added, “I’ve been—afraid of it.”

Afraid? What was it that Brian was afraid of? Julie’s heartbeat accelerated. Instinctively her mind flew to Bill Conroy. But that large, handsome bird of evil omen who had already frightened her obscurely twice had no connection whatever with Hoydens Hill or with Brian. The two men knew each other simply as casual acquaintances, through Mouse and Sarah.

She couldn’t stand there listening. She called “Hello” on a bright note and followed her call through the glass doors.

The sight of the big, warm, comfortable book-lined room and its two occupants quieted her flash of alarm. Brian was standing on the hearth, tall, wide-shouldered and at ease, an elbow propped on the mantel, smoke curling bluely from his cigarette. Eleanor was in a corner of the long red-leather sofa at right angles to the stone fireplace. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the glamour that had once invested her. Her body was square and hard, her skin was weather-beaten and her thick iron-gray hair was cut short and brushed Straight back from a strong, lined faces devoid of make-up. Her clothes were the clothes she habitually wore and that made Frances moan—stout shoes and woolen stockings, tweed skirt and tailored flannel shirt. Her expression was serene. She smiled at Julie.

“Come and let me look at you, young woman. Ah, she’s lovely, isn’t she, Brian?”

Julie said, “You might as well ask the fish man ‘Are your fish fresh?’ He wouldn’t dare say no, even if he prefers blondes.”

Brian said, “I do prefer blondes, and I think she’s a fright.” Julie sat down in the other corner of the couch. She evidently wasn’t going to be told what it was they had been talking about when she interrupted them. She agreed that her dress was pretty and put the question it would have been unnatural not to put. “What tore you from Westhaven, Eleanor? What brought you to Hoydens Hill?”

Was there a pause? Did Eleanor fill it before Brian could speak? “Business,” she said in her rich full voice, and put a match to a Mexican cigarette that looked like a small cigar in its brown wrapping. “I’ve got to see a lawyer,” she continued, “and Brian’s attorney here is as good as anyone else. You’ve got to explain to him that I’m broke, Brian, and that I won’t pay any extravagant fees. If Sinclair Lewis was right about doctors, if tonsils were put into the human system to provide physicians with closed motor cars, the income-tax forms do as much or more for our legal brethren. How about a cocktail all hands around? You two go and make it and let me toast my shins. The cold is vile, and I’ve got a whole brood of hens with roup.”

In the kitchen Brian took Julie in his arms, suddenly and without warning. She felt the tenseness in him as he held her close, resting his chin on her hair. “I wish we could get away from here tonight, you and I,” he said in a muffled voice. “This last-minute business is the devil. Red tape, red tape, red tape.”

Julie shivered involuntarily. The dark impetuosity in him, the way his arms tightened around her, brought the shadow a step closer. He to as worried about something; it wasn’t her imagination. “What is it, Brian?” she asked again, as she had asked almost a week earlier in the Biltmore lounge.

Brian Moore might have told Julie then, if it hadn’t been for the interruption. The face lifted to his was very lovely. It wasn’t a child’s face, it was a woman’s, with strength and endurance, courage and resolution in its delicate contours, its play of light, and shade.

Julie felt the hesitation in him. The opportunity passed. The door opened and Sam and Frances came in, Frances mistily lovely in taupe chiffon with topazes in her ears and a string of them around her slender throat. Sam hadn’t bothered to dress. Frances said despairingly, “What can you do with a husband who spends his entire life in a potting-shed? I had difficulty making him wash his hands. He should have married an onion.”

She was as surprised to find Eleanor there as Julie had been. She didn’t ask any questions. Julie watched that swift glance flow, from Sam to Brian to Eleanor, from Frances to Eleanor to Brian. They left the ball in the air, in play, continued with their surface chatter of this and that. Hot color stung Julie’s cheeks. Whatever had brought Eleanor to Hoydens Hill, and it wasn’t to see Brian’s lawyer about business of her own, Frances and Sam knew about it. It was the same thing that had hit Brian when he was paged in the Biltmore. Her hurt was back again and with it that nagging uncertainty as to how much of Brian she actually possessed. He was eight years older than she was, and his life had settled into a definite pattern, hardened into a definite mold, before they met.

The others were discussing the arrangements for the wedding. Brian had to go to New York on business and was going straight to Westhaven from there. Sam and Frances were going to drive Julie. Mouse and Joe Westing with Rosetta were going in Mouse’s new car. Brian and Julie were to be married at eleven and have breakfast at Eleanor’s lovely old farmhouse. After that a week in the city in the little house off Morton Street, then back here to work.

Presently Rosetta arrived. She looked very pretty in a full-skirted blue taffeta dress, her round cheeks red and her big black eyes bright. Julie wished Frances wouldn’t keep examining Rosetta through her lorgnette as though she were an inanimate object, a pair of curtains or a view she couldn’t quite make up her mind about. It was a relief to find someone to whom Eleanor’s presence meant nothing, but Rosetta had to blunder even there. She stared open-mouthed when she was introduced to the thick-set, weather-beaten woman in the corner of the couch. She knew who Brian’s aunt was, and she had evidently expected something sumptuous and seductive.

Frances laughed openly at her expression, and Eleanor chuckled. “So have the mighty fallen. I’m only a fat old farm woman, child. Where’s that sister-in-law of yours? I want to have a look at her.”

Rosetta stammered that Mouse and Joe would be up in a few minutes Joe had gone to the village for the mail. She was flustered and embarrassed. Sam said kindly, “to the kitchen, men,” and put his arm around her waist to waltz her out of the room.

More than a few minutes passed, but Mouse and Joe didn’t appear. Everything was ready. Brian’s long trestle table he had made himself had been cleared of its books and papers and was set with china and cutlery, mounds of sandwiches, hors d’oeuvres and a great bowl of salad that Frances’s cook had prepared. Brian was in the kitchen mixing fresh cocktails, Rosetta was helping Sam with the turkey and Frances and Eleanor were talking on the couch. Julie went through the glass door, across the hall, and out on the little sun deck from which Brian claimed you could look down on all the kingdoms of the world.

The house was set into the hill near its peak and the sun deck was level with the top to the west and south. The porch was glassed in for the winter. Julie walked to the end of it and peered down through blackness. What could be keeping Mouse? She was usually punctual. Living with Sarah had done that; the house on Twenty-second Street with its hour for this and minute for that had been run on a schedule whose rigidity would have made the Medes and Persians pale.

There was a glowworm coming up the weaving path through the young birches. It was Joe with a torch, holding Mouse’s arm. They went past the glass panes toward the door at the inner end of the sun deck. The door opened and Julie started forward and stood still. They didn’t see her. Their backs were partially turned. Joe’s face in profile was illuminated by light from the hall. It wasn’t cheerful. It was gaunt and strained and tired, with triangles of shadow under the high cheekbones. He was talking to Mouse hurriedly. His voice was low and there was urgency in it and tenderness. “Pull yourself together, honey, keep a stiff upper lip. I only saw him from a distance—and I could have been mistaken. Don’t worry until there’s something to worry about ” He kissed her and they passed across the porch and went inside.

Julie followed them, slowly. Him…“I only saw him from a distance…I could have been mistaken.” To whom was Joe referring? It couldn’t be Bill Conroy who had no connection with Hoydens Hill. She thought of the footsteps she had heard on the driveway in front of her cottage earlier that evening, and gave herself an impatient shake. There might have been no one there at all. She had Bill Conroy on the brain.

A glance at Mouse through the glass doors was comforting. She looked perfectly all right, fresh and comely and composed, standing in front of the couch, her arm through Joe’s, talking sedately to Eleanor. Julie went into the living-room and they both greeted her. Joe said, “Hello, Julie,” with his usual cheerful grin. Mouse said, “Oh, Julie, what a pretty dress!” Her tone was faintly wistful. She had on the blue tailored wool in which she had gone away. She had plenty of money, but she couldn’t seem to get used to the idea of spending it on herself. Frances had lectured her roundly about her wardrobe, telling her that she ought to get herself some decent clothes.

Sam was serving the turkey and Rosetta was helping him with the plates. Fresh cocktails were poured. Mouse protested at the glass Sam put into her hand. “I don’t drink,” she said, “and I don’t think…” She looked anxiously past him at Rosetta, who was also holding a glass. Sam said firmly, “You’re going to drink tonight. You’re going to drink to Brian and Julie.” He raised his glass.

Firelight and candles, Brian’s Christmas greens, idle talk—it was all very gay. Eleanor and Frances were discussing Brian’s man, Walter, and his periodic sprees, also the changes in the house that Brian was going to have to make. “There ought to be another room…They could throw out a wing…”

Julie was sitting on the arm of the couch and Brian was standing behind her. “Four days…” he said quietly. She leaned back and looked up at him. “…will quickly turn themselves to night. Four nights…”

Neither of them heard the doors open. They didn’t hear anything unexpected at all. The fire was the natural center of the room, and the entire group was clustered loosely around it. Their own voices and a laugh from Sam were cut across sharply. Another voice, a strange voice, said, “Good evening.”

They swung in a united movement. A woman was standing between the partially opened glass doors. She had on a leopard coat, and a small leopard toque was tipped sideways over her black hair. It was the woman who had been with Bill Conroy in the Biltmore. She was smiling a little. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Her eyes were making a circle. They rested on Julie, moved to Brian.

Julie knew then what it was that Brian and Eleanor and perhaps Sam and Frances had been concealing from her. The lights didn’t dim or the walls fade. Instead a fierce brilliance beat whitely on the room and all the people in it, on Mouse crushed into the curve of the grand piano, as wooden as she had been when Bill Conroy had left her in Sarah’s little study, on Joe, his plain gaunt face knobby and mottled, on Sam’s carved immobility. Frances’s thin ringed hand was a balled fist on a crossed knee. As for Brian, something deep inside Julie twisted.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor is home from the sea. The woman in the doorway was Brian’s wife. She spoke, and her words fell like little stones into the well of paralyzed silence her appearance had produced. Her voice was husky. It had a faintly foreign inflection. She said, “I’m back, Brian—for good. I should never have left you—never. Let’s kiss and make up, shall we? Brian—oh, my dear!” Her purse and gloves, tan suede gloves and a long brown alligator purse, fell from her fingers and she started across the floor, her arms out.