Читать книгу The Wall - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 6

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Juliette had arrived on Friday, and it was a week before that strange disappearance of hers.

It was a nerve-racking week at that. Juliette herself seemed calm enough, although she reverted more than once to the lump sum idea. Part of the time she spent in bed or in what sounded like long discussions with the Jordan woman; and to add to the general confusion the house bells were actually ringing, as Mrs. Curtis had said. There was a perfect bedlam in the pantry where they registered, so that periods when the servants were rushing over the house to answer them were varied by others when no one answered them at all. As when, after three false alarms one morning a day or two after her arrival, Juliette rang at ten o’clock for her breakfast tray, and was finally discovered in the upper hall in a chiffon nightgown, shouting furiously to an embarrassed William in the hall below.

“What the devil’s the matter with you down there?” she called. “I can hear the bell myself.”

“Sorry, madam,” said William, red to his collar. “We thought it was the ghost again.”

Which was against orders, but by that time I suspected my entire household of an attempt to get rid of both Juliette and Jordan. Indeed that day Juliette herself accused us of that very thing. She came out later to where I was sitting on the upper porch, my book in my lap and my eyes on the bay, blue in the morning sunlight. Already the seals had disappeared, and far away a mahogany speedboat was tracing a line of white across the water. I looked up to see her staring down at me.

“What’s this about a ghost?” she demanded.

“Some superstitious nonsense in the kitchen. The bells have been ringing for some reason or other. I’ll have the wiring looked over tomorrow.”

She looked amused.

“No idea of scaring me off, of course,” she said.

“Certainly not.”

She laughed, not pleasantly.

“I’m not easy to scare,” she said. “You might tell the kitchen that. And may I have the car? I’ve ordered a horse. I’m fed up with loafing. No word from Arthur, I suppose?”

“He’s barely had time to get my letter.”

She was in full riding kit that day, breeches, boots and a well-tailored coat. One of her curious developments had been that she had become a good horsewoman, first here at Sunset when we still kept our own horses, and later after her divorce, when she had cultivated the hunting set on Long Island.

“I suppose Ed Smith still has some horses fit to ride,” she said.

“I ride them,” I told her coolly. But that seemed to amuse her.

“How hath the mighty fallen!” she said, and laughed.

I had meant to go out myself, but with the car gone I was helpless. Ed Smith’s riding academy is on the other side of town, not far from the golf course, and too far to walk in boots. Anyway I didn’t want to ride with Juliette. But I was rather resentful when I heard her driving away. I took a swim instead, and although the water was like ice, felt the better for it.

I had just finished dressing afterwards when Arthur called me from New York, and his voice sounded tired and strained.

“Is she there, Marcia?”

“She’s out riding.”

“What’s it all about, anyhow? I can’t raise that money. She knows damned well I can’t.”

“I’ve told her that, but she’s pretty insistent, Arthur. She wants me to sell Sunset.”

“I’ll see her in hell first.”

He was quieter after that. He had no idea what trouble she was in, if any. He would be glad to get the damned alimony out of the way, of course. It was bleeding him white. But the whole proposition was absurd. He couldn’t touch the trust fund, and he wouldn’t if he could.

“That’s for Mary Lou and the boy,” he said with finality.

He was furious about her presence at Sunset too. It had spoiled Mary Lou’s visit, and Junior’s too, and before he rang off he said that they were taking a cottage at Millbank, a small town on the mainland shore about twenty miles from us, and that as soon as Juliette had gone Mary Lou would come to Sunset.

“When is she going?” he asked.

“I haven’t any idea. She looks settled for life.”

“Well, don’t be a fool,” were his parting words. “Get her out of there as soon as you can. She’s poison.”

He hung up, and I was certain that I heard another receiver stealthily replaced somewhere in the house. In the pantry, however, William in his shirt sleeves was reading the newspaper, and Lizzie was working at the range. Maggie and Ellen were in the laundry.

It was then that I remembered Jordan and went upstairs. There was a telephone on my bedside table, but she was not there; and I finally found her in her own room, pressing a dress of Juliette’s with what was obviously a cold iron. She gave me a frigid glance.

“Did you want me for something, miss?” she asked, with a mock humility not unlike Juliette’s at times.

“I wondered where you were,” I said dryly. “And now I think of it, I want to ask you something. Were you by any chance in the hospital suite the day you came?”

“The hospital suite, miss? Where is it?”

“Up the staircase at the end of the hall.”

She pursed her lips primly.

“Then I haven’t seen it,” she said. “I don’t go where I don’t belong.”

I felt beaten. Not only beaten but dismissed. I went to the porch and lay back in my steamer chair, but peace had gone out of the world and even out of the bay. There were other boats there now, a sloop, a yawl with a black hull and spreading sails, a speed boat, a small cabin cruiser. The summer colony was arriving at last, and well I knew how fast the news would spread.

“Juliette at Marcia’s? Juliette!”

“So I hear. What do you suppose she’s after?”

Knowing Juliette, they would know quite well that she was after something.

It was lunchtime that day when Juliette returned from her ride. I heard the car, followed by her voice in her room and later by the shower in her bathroom. She had never had any sense of time, and I went down nervously to postpone the meal until she appeared. To my surprise, Jordan was already in the kitchen.

“Madam is tired,” she was saying. “She will have some tea and toast in her room.”

Lizzie turned a red and angry face to her.

“All right,” she said. “I heard you. And you can tell madam that this is my afternoon out and she’ll get a cold supper. I cook no other meals this day.”

But it seemed to me that Jordan looked disturbed, and when later on I met her carrying down Juliette’s tray, it was apparently untouched. I thought at the time that the woman had reported Arthur’s conversation over the telephone, and that it had upset her; but I know now that something had happened on that ride. Juliette had seen someone, and she was frightened.

I had a number of elderly callers that afternoon. Evidently the news had got about. Old Mrs. Pendexter was the first, her Queen Mary hat higher and more trimmed than ever in deference to the occasion, more than the usual chains around her neck, and her black eyes snapping with curiosity.

“Well, Marcia,” she said. “Where’s that hussy?”

“Juliette? She’s resting. She took a ride this morning.”

“What on earth is she doing here?” she demanded. “Has she no decency?”

“Well,” I said, smiling as best I could, “you know her. She seems to be settled for a few days anyhow. But she came on business.”

“Business! More alimony, I suppose. And that wretched Arthur paying her with blood and sweat. See here, Marcia, you’re a lady, whatever that means nowadays. She isn’t. She never was, for all her fine feathers. Why don’t you kick her out?”

I suppose I was tired and worried. My eyes filled, and she leaned over and patted me on the arm.

“Don’t mind me, child,” she said. “I’m a bitter old woman. But I’ve seen you fighting to keep going, with four servants in a house that used to have ten and needs a dozen, and I’m no fool. You’re helping Arthur, of course.”

She changed the subject then. It looked like a good season. The Burtons were in Europe but had rented their house to a family named Dean; some Lake Forest people, she’d heard. Her own daughter Marjorie was on the way, and the Hutchinsons were due at any time at The Lodge, the next estate to Sunset.

She was followed by others, and sitting where Mother had always sat in the drawing room, pouring China tea and watching William passing English muffins and cake, I was aware of a certain tension.

I finally realized what it was. They were waiting for Juliette. They did not like her. They never had liked her. But she represented a new, defiant, reckless and probably immoral social order about which they were curious. When she did not appear they were disappointed.

“I understood Mrs.—er—Ransom is staying with you.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. She’s resting just now.”

There was a silence. Then someone said that there was a story about a ghost in the house, and I tried to tell them that it was a matter only of crossed wires. But one of the shades, due to some defect in the catch, chose that moment to shoot to the top of the window, and Mrs. Pendexter spilled her tea in her lap!

I was thoroughly shaken and annoyed when they all finally left. Juliette was still shut in her room, and so I had a tray supper in bed that night. And it was that night that I got the first glimpse of the mystery which later on was to puzzle the whole country, and drive me almost to despair. It was a warm evening, and I slipped on a dressing gown and went out onto the porch.

There was a man below, on the beach. He had been looking up at the house, but when he saw me he pulled his soft hat down over his eyes and moved away.

I was puzzled as well as uneasy, but he did not come back.

The next day was fairly normal. Juliette appeared after breakfast in a sports outfit and topcoat, and asked me if I would walk around the pond with her. Whatever had happened she had got herself in hand, and she had lost much of the mocking contempt of her arrival. When we were out of earshot of the house she asked if I had heard from Arthur.

“I have,” I said. “He called up yesterday while you were out. It’s just as I told you. He can’t manage it, Juliette.”

She was silent. We walked down the path, with Chu-Chu ahead of us, and I saw that she was pale under her rouge.

“See here, Juliette,” I said, “if you are in trouble, why not tell me about it? We can’t help you with money, but after all Arthur is a lawyer. He may be able to do something. Nobody wants you to suffer.”

“Why not?” she said. “You both hate me. I suppose there are plenty of reasons, but you do.”

“You’ve cost us a good deal—not only in money. There’s no reason for hatred, however. If I can help—”

“Help how?”

I was tired of fencing. I stopped in the path and faced her.

“Stop it,” I said. “What is the matter, anyhow? Do you want to get married again, and is this money your price? Or are you in a real jam, as you put it?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “That’s the hell of it, Marcia. I don’t know.”

I remember that she said very little after that. For a time she stood idly throwing pebbles into the pond and watching the circles widen and spread.

“Like life,” she said. “A little pebble and look what it starts. The damned things go on and on.”

Then she turned abruptly and went back to the house, alone.

I don’t know why she stayed on after that. We know now that she had had her warning the day before. Perhaps she had convinced herself that there was nothing in it. Perhaps, too, she still hoped to hear from Arthur or was sure that she could protect herself. Also, there was a certain recklessness in her character. She had weathered too many storms to fear this one.

I think now that she merely conformed to her pattern, and that it was a normal one for her. Probably all of us conformed to a normal pattern, even those of us who were later to be involved. There was no criminal type among us. Desperation and despair in plenty, but with reason behind them; even if that reason was distorted. There was murder, irrational as is all murder, but it resorted to no mysterious poisons or strange weapons; it planted no misleading clues. It arose inevitably, out of an inevitable chain of events.

And so she stayed on, to her death.

Two or three days later Mary Lou and Junior arrived at Millbank, and I drove over to see them.

Mary Lou was unpacking, and she looked hot and resentful.

“Of all things, Marcia!” she said. “To be kept away by that woman! How dare she do such a thing?”

“You don’t know her or you would know she dares to do anything she wants to do.”

“And you put up with it!”

“What am I to do?” I inquired, taking off my gloves. “This looks comfortable, Mary Lou. You can manage for a week or two. Where’s Junior?”

“On the beach with the nurse.”

I finally induced her to sit down and take a cigarette, but she was still like an angry child. She is almost my own age, but in many ways she has never grown up.

“I don’t trust her, Marcia,” she said. “And Arthur is in a terrible state. I hated to leave him. She’s always wanted him back,” she added inconsequentially.

“Nonsense. He bored her to tears.”

“I’m not so sure of that; and I’d like to bet she never bored him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her,” I said lightly. “Don’t join the army, Mary Lou.”

“What army?” she asked suspiciously.

“The army of wives who are afraid of her.”

She did not smile, however.

“I wish something would happen to her,” she said somberly. “I suppose that’s dreadful, but it’s true. What good is she to anybody? She’s a pure parasite. She takes all she can and gives nothing; and that ridiculous alimony—”

Fortunately the nurse brought Junior then, and we played with a toy cannon until it was time for me to go.

“I’ve had the measles,” he said proudly. “I was all over spots.”

I felt better when I left. The cottage was attractive, and Mary Lou had her car to get about in. It was arranged that on Juliette’s departure they would come to stay with me, and in the interval Arthur was putting his small sloop into commission and might sail it up later on.

I motored home in a happier mood. The sea was still and blue, and when I crossed the bridge to the island I saw the head of one of my seals, sleek and dog-like. The farmhouses I passed were neat and white, with porch boxes and borders filled with flowers, and the aromatic scent of the pines was familiar and very dear. I took the short cut across through the hills, and looking down saw Loon Lake, small and exquisite in its green setting.

A young man was painting it from beside the road, with the red of the sunset in it, and I stopped the car to look. He was a big young man, in a pair of gray slacks and a sweater, rather shabby. And he gave me a nice smile and asked if I thought he was catching it.

“I like it,” I said. “Do you mind if I watch?”

“Not a bit. I was fed up with myself.”

How casual it all seems as I write it! Loon Lake below us, the painter working with broad vigorous strokes, his soft hat shading his eyes, and just around the corner sheer tragedy waiting to involve us both.

I sat down on the running board of the car to let the peace of late afternoon relax me. After a time he put down his brush and taking a package of cigarettes from his pocket offered me one and took one himself. Thus seen, he was older than I had thought at first. In his thirties, probably. But he was certainly attractive and undeniably amused.

“One of the summer crowd, I suppose?” he said, idly scrutinizing me. “New York fall and spring and Palm Beach in winter. Is that a good guess?”

I was somewhat annoyed.

“Not any more,” I said briefly.

“Dear, dear! Don’t tell me the depression has hit the island. That’s bad for my business, isn’t it?”

“How can I tell? What is your business?” I inquired.

He looked extremely hurt.

“Great Scott,” he said. “Why do you think I spend hours on that outrageous camp stool, painting rotten water colors? Because I like it?”

“I thought that might be the general idea,” I said meekly.

He grinned.

“Sorry. The human animal has to be fed, you know. That’s not quite true,” he added quickly. “It amuses me, and most people don’t know painting when they see it anyhow. I don’t myself,” he added, in a burst of candor.

He interested me. He was even bigger than I had thought, with broad shoulders and long muscular hands. But looking at him closely I thought he had probably been ill. When he whipped off his hat his forehead was pale, and his clothes hung on him loosely. But he was cheerful, even gay. It turned out that he was stopping at the tourist camp on Pine Hill, not far away, and that he lived, of all unexpected things, in a trailer.

“Ever try one?” he inquired. “Rather fun, when you get used to it; and it has its advantages. No taxes, no permanent domicile, and no neighbors to let their chickens into your garden. Plenty of democracy too, only you probably wouldn’t like that. Pretty decent lot, on the whole.”

In the end I learned that he had not been well, and that open air had been recommended. He traveled and painted. “Pretty bad pictures, but I don’t pretend they’re good.” And he liked being outdoors. I suspected that he was the usual depression victim, but he was certainly asking for no sympathy.

I summoned enough courage at last to ask if I might buy the Loon Lake picture when it was finished.

“I really like it,” I said. “It’s not—”

“Not charity,” he finished for me, grinning. “Well, I rather hoped you would, as a matter of fact. It’s bad, but it’s the best I’ve done yet. I’d like you to have it. If you’ll give me your name—”

I did, and I thought he looked at me quickly. But he was quite composed as he wrote it down.

“Let’s see,” he said. “I think I know your house. Big one on the sea wall, isn’t it?”

“That sounds like it.”

“And you live there all alone?”

“Usually. I have a guest now.”

He shot another glance at me, but he made no comment. Soon after that—and with some reluctance—I went away.

He helped me into the car, and I had an odd idea that there was something he wanted to say. He did not, though, and I left him there, standing bareheaded in the sunlight and looking strangely undecided.

It was some time before I remembered that I did not know his name.

I felt excited as I drove home. Never had the hills looked so green or the farmhouses so white and neat. As a matter of fact I was so abstracted that I drove half a mile past Sunset before I realized it, and had to turn back. I kept on seeing my unknown painter, with his attractive smile, and remembering the idiotic impulse I had had when he took off his hat, of wanting to smooth down his hair where it was ruffled at the back!

I even dreamed of him that night, as I remembered sheepishly in the clear light of the next morning. But in the dream he was not smiling. His face looked strained and hard, and I realized with some perturbation that it probably could look just like that.

One thing that episode did for me. It made Juliette easier to endure that day. For she was not easy to live with by that time. She had been there six days, and the insolent composure of her manner the day she came was entirely gone. She was irritable and worried. I noticed, too, that she avoided the town. When she rode it was into the hills, and her infrequent walks were in the opposite direction, toward the golf club.

“You might as well know that I am staying until something is settled,” she said nastily.

“That’s up to you,” I said. “You are my guest. I can’t very well turn you out.”

“Always the pattern of all the virtues, including hospitality!” she said, and left me.