Читать книгу A Variety of Weapons - Rufus King - Страница 8

CHAPTER VI

Thunder aggravated the nervous and irritable edge of a night that had been divided between fitful sleep and hours of wakefulness in a house where murder and tragedy still left their bitter stamp.

Ann’s watch said half-past eight, but the windows were sullen oblongs of dark lead ripped at intervals by a blinding jag of lightning, with a resultant shatter of the roar. And so, she thought, it storms. A typical mountain storm graciously sporting about the encircling peaks. In fact, right in her lap.

She rang for Danning. Her awakening moments were never of the witless type, and Ann grasped at once the assurance that all planes would be grounded at Black Tor until this local performance ceased. A torrential rain was accompanying the general bravura and slashed the windowpanes with frustrated bullets of water. There could be no tactfully swift departure until it stopped, all of it, including its effectively startling noise.

Trapped.

Momentarily the thought amused her, and her smile still lingered when Danning came in.

“Good morning,” Danning said, and added, “What a day!”

“We could probably tell better if we could see it.”

“It’s because of the northern lights the night before last. They were all trailing and green, like loose fingers. They always mean one of these things within forty-eight hours.”

“How long does one of these things last?”

“Two days, three days, then the sun comes out again. We usually get a couple of them during a summer. What will you have for breakfast?”

“Orange juice, coffee, and toast, please.”

“That will never last you, Miss Ledrick. Have some creamed finnan haddock.”

“I will have some with pleasure. It’s difficult to break loose from the drugstore routine.”

“I’m sorry there are no papers this morning. We bring them in by plane from Albany, but of course everything is grounded.” A resounding thunderclap perioded the observation. “You can see what I mean.”

“Indeed I can. Are these storms always so clinging? Don’t they ever move over and pick out another peak?”

“Oh yes, they just circle around. Just about when you think they’ve gone for good they come back.”

Danning left, and Ann saw no sense in waiting to have breakfast either en negligé or in bed. There were too many sound effects and far too much gloom for any svelte dawdling. She bathed and dressed and, going into the living room, found a birch log fire brightly burning and breakfast being arranged by Danning on a coffee table before it.

“Miss Marlow suggests that you join her when you’ve finished,” Danning said. “Her rooms are at the end of the hallway. She thinks that if you brought your camera you might catch some interesting views of the ocelots because of the storm. She says it makes them atavistic.”

“I can imagine it would. A good thunderbolt, and away goes that house-pet look.”

“They’re dears, really, and just as cute as they can be.”

“How big are they?”

“Oh, about three feet long.”

“Merely good-sized kittens.”

Danning smiled and said they were like kittens in their own fashion, of course. Then she left, and Ann ate while briskly dissecting a resume of Bill’s telephoned catalogue of horrors. What it amounted to in the cold light (black) of day was that Marlow’s son Fred had been convicted of killing his wife and had been electrocuted.

All the rest was surmise and rumor. The shotgun could have gone off accidentally when Abbott tripped, and Lawrence’s Christmas basket of goodies could conceivably have contained a pâté jar riddled with ptomaine. As for the two drownings in the pretty local lake, such gemlike bodies of mountain water were famous for their icy coldness and their general tricks. A plunge, a gasp, a cramp, a tombstone. Dreiser, Ann thought, in a sentence.

She collected her camera, some flash bulbs, and some packs of 2 ¼ X 3 ¼ super-fast panchromatic film, the emulsion on which was so sensitive that she felt assured of stopping all and any atavistic snarls in the fraction of a flick.

It occurred to her as she walked along the long hallway that all of Bill’s horrors were not resolved. Appleby remained. Was he slated for lilies via the accident route too? Ann recalled Marlow’s odd greeting of Appleby last night before dinner: “Good evening, Ludwig. This pleasure is becoming increasingly frequent.”

Certainly barbs had lain in it. Of the most well-bred sort. An iron foot in a velvet shoe. But it hadn’t bothered Appleby, and it inferred that his visits had been both numerous and on the impromptu side. And Appleby still hadn’t broken his neck. Ann found it comforting.

She sensed a certain abstraction in Estelle Marlow’s good morning, an abstraction which Estelle immediately explained by saying: “Justin has just gone through one of his distressing nights. I suppose that the storm may have accented it. I sat with him for a while after Dr. Johnson left. You’ll forgive me if I seem somewhat blunted.”

“Of course. I’m terribly sorry about Mr. Marlow.”

“It isn’t unusual, although his attacks have been growing more frequent. It’s a wretched combination of neuritis and a pernicious anemia. Dr. Johnson is splendid. He stays here and has his own house on the grounds. He has brought in several of the best specialists for consultation, but I’m afraid—” Estelle’s voice trailed off, then her smile came quickly, as though to reassure herself against dark thought. “Everything is being done. It’s one of those lingering things.”

“He seemed so well last night.”

“He was well. But, as I say, the storm, and there are times when Ludwig Appleby upsets him.”

Estelle did not pursue this. Instead she led Ann through a living room and into a duplex arrangement that had been converted for the ocelots’ indoor use. A great skylight and an air-conditioning system made the place a conservatory suitable for the more modest of the Paraguayan trees up which the ocelots could climb and sit.

The cats were nervous and on edge. One was of tawny yellow ground color, while the other two were of reddish gray, and all were handsomely marked with black spots, streaks, and blotches. The tawny one paced irritably beneath a tree upon a limb of which his companions pressed in sullen plaques.

“I’d better stay until they get used to you, dear,” Estelle said. “Will it bother your work? I know how artists hate being observed.”

“No, I wish that you would.”

“That one slouching around on the floor is Herriot, dear, and the two in the trees are Clemençau and Madame de Staël.”

Ann put a film pack in the Graflex and took a few experimental shots. The flash bulbs, due to the competition of intermittent lightning-and-thunder effects, failed to impress the ocelots at all. She finished the pack with some close-ups and was removing it to exchange it for an unexposed one when Washburn came in rapidly and went at once to Estelle.

Later, when talking it over with Sergeant Hurlstone of the state police, Ann recalled in detail the things that she did with the exposed film pack just removed from the camera. She was replacing the protective covering about it and putting it back in its cardboard container while Washburn was saying to Estelle: “Mr. Marlow requests that you come at once, Miss Marlow.”

The urgency in Washburn’s voice was reflected by Estelle.

“He is worse?”

“Considerably, I’m afraid. He requests that you bring Miss Ledrick with you.”

(The film pack was now in its carton and the flap closed. Ann still held it in her hand. The camera was on the floor.)

Estelle said swiftly and with an intensity that made her voice vibrant, “Ann dear, come with me at once.”

She took Ann by the arm and all but impelled her toward the door. The exposed film pack, closed in its carton, was still in Ann’s hand.

“Quickly, Ann dear. Every moment may count.”