Читать книгу Murder is Grim - Samuel Rogers - Страница 4
ОглавлениеChapter One
KATE ARCHER studied the strange note she had just been reading, wrinkled her forehead, and stooped to rescue the envelope from the basket beside her desk. She realized now that the stiff handwriting was actually printing, though this was not so obvious in black as it was in the red crayon of the enclosed message:
DON’T GO TO MR. GLADSTONE’S, YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU DO.
What she felt, after her first moment of sheer surprise, was more than anything annoyance at the unreasonableness of her correspondent: here she was to be called for within the next hour; even if she wanted to, there would be no time now to change her plans. Then the next instant she was ashamed at having considered any change. ‘If he thinks a childish trick like this will have the slightest effect on what I do,’ she muttered to herself, ‘he’s very much mistaken.’
But who was ‘He’? Even an anonymous letter must be written by someone with a name. Who would not want her to go to Mr. Gladstone’s? Of course Mother was disappointed; she had hoped that Kate would come East now, to spend the whole summer at Matunuck, instead of staying out here for another month, to visit in the Middle West; but it was absurd to think of Mother’s writing this; Mother would never try to scare her, even in fun.
She caught herself up sharply and glanced about the quiet room. Whatever she felt it was not fear; she would not give ‘Him’ that satisfaction! The envelope, she now noticed, was postmarked Woodside, and was dated June 14th; to-day was Thursday, the 15th; it had been mailed here in town yesterday afternoon.
Could it be one of the young men who had asked her to marry him during this last year at the university? She thought of her fellow-students, of her lab instructors. Rejected suitors, she had discovered were apt to feel that in a way she had deceived them – not by any definite action but just by the fact of her own nature: each one had told her that at first she had seemed so ‘sweet’, so gentle; they could not understand her growing bored, or even impatient, at their persistence. She never pretended – certainly she never tried – to be ‘sweet’. If they thought she was, it was largely because of her appearance: her dark golden hair, her blue eyes, her fine skin and softly ‘classic’ features; and for some reason boys seemed to think that that combination went with sweetness of nature; but it was also because she did hate to make people unhappy, because she couldn’t help being kind and pleasant to them at first – and then suddenly they would be in love with her, and she had to make them understand that she was not in love with them. But surely none of these boys would stoop to such a petty revenge, even if in some way they had learned of her visit.
Kate continued to frown. She would have hated to think that someone she knew, someone she liked, had written this letter; and yet it would have been comforting to be able to place it, to lift it out of the realm of the mysterious. She looked once more around the small room, so intensely silent, where she had studied for so many hours during the past winter. All her things that had not been sent off earlier were now packed in the two big suitcases standing side by side near the door. The room looked unnaturally neat and stripped. There was nothing on the bureau, nothing on the table; the framed photographs, the brilliant van Gogh print, had gone from the walls. Afternoon sunlight streaming across the threadbare blue carpet seemed to touch it with strangeness, as if it were the carpet in some huge impersonal second-hand store: this silent place had withdrawn into itself; it was waiting for her to get out.
She glanced at her watch. It was quarter to three and Mr. Gladstone had written that she would be called for at three; but she walked over to the window and looked down through the box-elder boughs. Perhaps the car might be early. The short street was empty except for some boys playing ball in front of the apartment house at the corner. Kate wondered from which direction the car would appear, what kind of car it would be. Would Mr. Gladstone be driving it himself? And what would Mr. Gladstone be like?
DON’T GO TO MR. GLADSTONE’S.
For an instant she could see a pale fixed face that stared straight ahead at the road from under its hatbrim, that would not look at her until suddenly in a lonely place the car stopped, the driver raised his hands to the back of his head and she could see that his face was a mask. He was taking it off, he was going to stare at her now, but he had no eyes, no features. She could not bear to look.
YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU DO.
This was absurd, she thought angrily. How pleased the writer of the letter would be! But she could form so little idea of her month at Mr. Gladstone’s that it was impossible to imagine its beginning, to picture a car turning one of these corners, to the left or to the right, and stopping there below in front of the house; just as sometimes when you wait at the telephone for a long-distance call, you can’t believe that the voice you are expecting will actually break that silence.
Might the warning have been sent by anyone in the Gladstone household? But who could it be, when June, the only one she knew, was so terribly eager for her to come? She took June’s letter, the first she had received from her in more than two years, out of her purse, and read it slowly once again:
Dear Katey,
It’s crazy that you’ve been at Woodside for a whole year and I live only twenty miles away and we haven’t seen each other. You bad girl, why didn’t you write me you were there? I just found out by chance from a girl at school who says she knows your brother. Of course I’ve been away at school except for holidays so we wouldn’t have had much chance to get together. But now I’m home for the summer and I want you to come and visit me for at least a month. Father says why should someone that’s really grown up and finishing college want to bury herself out here with a schoolgirl like me, but he doesn’t know about you and me, does he? I guess no one could understand that.
I bet all sorts of things have been happening to you since the old days at Miss Barstow’s. Nothing at all has happened to me, at least nothing nice, just two other schools, after Miss Barstow’s, and I hated them both just as much. I really hated them more because you weren’t there, and I never found anyone else to be really nice to me the way you were. There’s something wrong with me, Katey. You used to say there wasn’t but I know there is, because I try to be nice to people but nobody likes me. It may be just because I’m so damn ugly and clumsy. I can hear you scolding me now for that ‘damn’. It just slipped out. If you come I give you permission to scold me as much as you like, and I promise not to get mad the way I used to.
Honestly, Katey, I can’t tell you how much I want you to come. I’ll be watching the mail every day for your answer, so be quick, won’t you? I can’t bear having to wait for things I want.
With loads of love,
Your bad ‘little* June’
* Only I’m not little any more. I wish I was.
Kate had replied affectionately but had said that she could not come. She had not seen June Gladstone in four years, and remembered her as a dumpy girl whom everyone ignored and who had seemed to go her way in rather morose indifference until the afternoon when Kate discovered her lying on the grass behind the summerhouse, her body shaken with sobs. It was because she was lonely, June explained, after Kate had coaxed her to talk, because everyone despised her. Kate had put her arm around her, had quieted her at last, and got permission from Miss Spencer to take her to Johnson’s for a chocolate sundae.
After that, for the rest of the year, June had dogged her footsteps to an almost embarrassing extent, never talking much, never making any demands, but glaring like some fierce dark little animal at any girl to whom Kate paid much attention. Just before the end of the spring term she had been mysteriously expelled, and when Kate, who had come to feel rather responsible for her, had questioned the headmistress, Miss Barstow had explained that some ‘bad books’ had been found in her bureau drawer. ‘To do June justice,’ she had gone on, ‘her family background, from what I can gather, isn’t at all what it should be. I feel very sorry for her. I’m quite sure her parents are more to blame than she is, but there was nothing else to do, for the sake of the school.’
Kate had smiled to herself, with some indignation, at the thought of poor little June’s corrupting her so much more sophisticated schoolmates. She had thought at the time, and she still suspected, that the books, whatever they were, had been planted in June’s drawer by one of the girls who disliked her, who were jealous of the way that Kate had taken her under her wing; but June had already gone, there would be no way of proving such a plot; and in the letters Kate and she had exchanged for the next two years, letters which had grown more and more scarce, neither one had ever alluded to the affair.
Kate had refused this summer’s invitation chiefly because she was so eager to get home, to see Mother, to bask in the sun on the long white beach; but she had felt a little guilty and more than a little curious. June had never spoken a word to her of any sort about her family. During Kate’s year in Woodside she had heard rumours of the Gladstone estate out by the river, and the ‘things that went on’ there. A week after June’s letter, she had received one from Mr. Gladstone himself, urging her to come; she had accepted then, though without committing herself as to how long she would stay, because she knew that if she refused, her conscience would bother her all summer.
She folded June’s letter now, put it back in her purse, and took out Mr. Gladstone’s, frowning a little as she tried to decipher once more the bold careless-looking script.
Dear Miss Archer,
God knows I detest people who interfere with other people’s business, and I think my record is pretty clear on that score. My excuse for writing you now is that you can tear this up, if you like, and not give it another thought. I’d be the first to sympathize with you.
The fact is, June is so desperately disappointed that you won’t visit us that I said I’d see what I could do. Let me give you an idea of the general set-up. We live in what might be described as the deep country, out by the river. There is no suitable person approaching June’s age in the neighbourhood, and she is terribly lonely and restless. I should mention, perhaps, if she hasn’t, that she has an older sister, about your age. If June were different and if Clotilde were different, that might fix things up – but you know what families are. Or perhaps you don’t. If not, you’ll learn when you have one of your own.
I can quite understand that a month’s tête-à-tête with a girl like June may not seem too exciting for a girl four years (so June tells me) older than she. Let me reassure you that in the first place it will not be a tête-à-tête. We’re quite a little group out here, and if we’re too old to suit a girl of sixteen, I’m sure that some of us won’t seem too senile for a young woman of twenty.
But if what June says about you is true, the inducements to dangle before you are not the things you may receive but the things you may be able to give. You can give June, I believe, a period of really intense happiness, which she will appreciate all the more because that is something, I’m afraid, that on the whole she hasn’t known very much of. One of my reasons for urging you is no doubt that, as a father, I haven’t been a startling success. Naturally the easiest way to quiet my paternal conscience is to find a friend of hers who might to some extent compensate for my shortcomings. Since you have known June, you don’t have to be told that when she wants something she wants it very much indeed, and I can truthfully say I’ve never known her to want anything so much as to have you visit her.
Sincerely (and hopefully) yours,
Norman Gladstone
It was a queer letter. She did not like it very well, but certainly Mr. Gladstone was eager for her to come. It would be wholly unreasonable to send her such a letter as this, and then follow it up with an anonymous warning to keep away.
A knock at the door startled her so that she dropped her letter on the rug. After she had picked it up, she glanced once more out of the window. An empty car was parked in front of the house, a magnificent grass-green convertible than which nothing could be less sinister. ‘I’m afraid I’m not meant to live alone’, she thought.
She walked quickly to the door, opened it, and smiled at the man who stood in the doorway. He had a real face, there was no doubt of that; he was medium-sized, about forty, with blunt features, thin hair, and a neat brown moustache. As a matter of fact, everything about him looked exceptionally neat – his dark blue suit, his black necktie, the very way he stood, easy and erect and somehow shipshape. His brown eyes looked softly and brightly into hers.
‘Is this Miss Archer?’ he asked, and his voice seemed to fit his appearance – gentle, firm and efficient.
‘Yes, it is,’ she said, ‘and I suppose you’re Mr. Gladstone.’
He smiled. ‘Far from it’, he exclaimed. ‘I’m just the chauffeur, the gardener, the man of all work. My name is Felix Brownell.’
Kate noticed now that his dark suit, his tie, had the suggestion of a uniform or livery. She felt embarrassed. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘Mr. Brownell.’
‘Don’t apologize’, he told her. ‘It’s a compliment. As a matter of fact, I’ve been with the family so long I almost feel as if I was part of it. And by the way, of course you must call me Felix.’
‘Oh, well – yes, I will’, Kate said, still rather self-conscious. She suspected that for some time at least she would call him only ‘you’.
‘I assume these are your bags, miss?’ He stepped into the room and picked them up easily. She was sure that he had added the ‘miss’ simply to put her at her ease.
‘I’m afraid they’re very heavy.’
‘You should feel Mr. Gladstone’s, or for that matter, Miss Clotilde’s. I’ll be taking them down. If you have anyone to say good-bye to —’
‘No, there’s no one’, she said. She took a last glance at the room, shut the door quickly, as if she were shutting her nervousness inside, and followed him down the stairs.
It gave her a luxurious feeling to step into the big shiny car. As she settled back on the dark green leather cushions it seemed to her that she could not imagine a more comfortable seat.
‘If you’d prefer to sit in the back,’ Felix said, ‘I can put up the top, but otherwise, I’m afraid, it would be too windy.’
‘I’d much rather sit here’, she said. ‘That is, if you don’t mind.’
‘Personally, I always prefer company when I’m driving’, he said in a courtly tone. ‘Which reminds me: June said be sure and tell you she’d have driven in with me, except that I left this morning right after breakfast. I’ve been doing the week’s marketing, and selling stuff from the farm.’
He started the car so smoothly and the motor was so silent that Kate was surprised to see that they were already moving. In ten minutes they were out of town, had skirted the end of the lake, and were driving westward through the rolling fields, the patches of oak forest, that surrounded Woodside. It was a lovely afternoon, with a few clouds softly brushing the treetops and the telephone wires. The air smelled of white clover and as the breeze touched her face she felt that it had still kept something of the remoteness of the farthest hills.
She was trying to think up a friendly remark to make to Felix, when he spoke himself.
‘You know,’ he said, with his eyes fixed on the road, ‘I’m glad you’re going to be visiting us at Valley Farms. June needs someone, some nice pleasant young lady like you, to keep her company. I hope that doesn’t sound impertinent.’
‘Not at all’, Kate said. ‘I’m glad you think I’ll be of some use. Of course June does have a sister, doesn’t she?’
For a moment he merely pursed his lips. ‘Clotilde is very attractive’, he said at last, and Kate noticed that he had dropped the ‘Miss’ before her name. ‘She’s the beauty of the family, you know. But between ourselves, I don’t think she’s much of a help to June. You’ll see soon enough. Of course they are only half-sisters. You probably know all about that.’
‘No, I didn’t know it’, Kate said. ‘I never even knew June had a sister until I got Mr. Gladstone’s letter. And who else is at the farm? I don’t know anything about the family really. I haven’t even met Mr. Gladstone.’
‘Well, there’s Mrs. Gladstone, June’s mother – everyone calls her Mavis, even the girls. And just now there’s Mr. Green; he’s Clotilde’s fiancé. They’re going to be married in a few weeks, I guess. I shouldn’t be surprised if they ran off any time. And there’s Jo, or I should say Mr. Martinez. He’s Spanish.’
‘But who is he?’ she asked. ‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a violinist. They say he’s very good.’
‘But I mean is he a relation? Is he connected with the family?’
Felix hesitated again and again pursed his lips; Kate could see that he disapproved of Jo.
‘No – he’s not a relation’, he said slowly, ‘You might say he’s just a kind of – special friend.’
For a long time neither spoke. It seemed as if the thought of Jo had dried up Felix’s sociability; and Kate found that the breeze as it lapped around the side of the windshield, the monotony of woodland and meadow, were lulling her into a pleasant drowsiness. She did notice, however, that the hills were growing higher, the farmhouses somewhat less frequent. Now and then a spur of rock jutted out from the end of a wooded ridge like the prow of a gigantic ship. She noticed, too, how Felix always kept the car at exactly thirty-five miles, whether they were going up hill or down; she could imagine that she was floating through the sky, a summer sky endlessly blue and soft, floating above a region of green silent waves.
Then, without warning, the car stopped.
In a flash she recalled her imaginings in her room a little while ago, and glanced at Felix. But Felix was leaning out of the car and talking to a thickset middle-aged man, with sharp features and bright bird-like eyes, who was sitting on a bank, with a bicycle leaning against the turf beside him. They were near the top of the highest hill so far, and he had evidently stopped to rest.
‘Well, Professor,’ Felix asked, ‘can I give you a lift? You look just about all in. Men our age oughtn’t to attempt long bicycle rides in summer – especially with these hills.’
Kate smiled at Felix’s tact: this stranger must be ten years older than he.
‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ the man replied in a precise voice, ‘with your boss getting gas for two cars, and then wangling a C card out of his ration board. I should think he’d be ashamed of himself.’
Felix shrugged his shoulders and his flickering smile became for a moment almost a grin. ‘Well, there are no trains around here; there are no buses. And we have to get our produce to market. When I drove to town to-day the trunk was full of fresh vegetables. Mostly lettuce.’
The man with the bicycle stood up and slowly shook one leg, then the other. ‘Well, if he can get away with it, who am I to object? There are worse things than that the matter with the Roosevelt régime. But as far as buses and trains go, they don’t come any nearer me than they do you. And I’m farther from the main road.’
‘Perhaps they don’t think your work out here is essential to the war effort’, Felix suggested. Then turning to Kate, he explained: ‘Professor Hatfield spends his vacations by the river looking for birds.’
‘Wherever the gas comes from, I’d gladly accept a lift’, Professor Hatfield went on. ‘But what about the bicycle?’
‘We can fix that in behind’, Felix said; and the next moment he was in the road and, rather to Kate’s alarm, because the car looked so spotless, he was lifting the bicycle into the back seat. In a couple of minutes he had arranged it so that it rested firmly propped, without a scratch to the paint or the rich green leather.
‘But I haven’t introduced you, have I?’ he went on to Kate. ‘You must think I’m very rude. Professor, I take pleasure in presenting you to Miss Katherine Archer. Since she goes to the university, she’s probably heard of you. She’s coming out to visit June, and I hope she won’t think me fresh if I say I can’t imagine a more charming visitor.’
Kate recalled Professor Hatfield’s name, and thought now that she remembered having seen him about the campus. His eyes were fixed intently upon her; he cocked his head so as to get a clearer view, and for that moment he reminded her of a smooth, alert, but rather dusty parrot.
‘June is very lucky,’ he said, ‘to have such a friend. I hope I won’t crowd you, Miss Archer. At any rate I’m several pounds thinner than when I started out after lunch.’
Kate was thoroughly enjoying herself; she was growing quite fond of Felix, now that he no longer surprised her, and thought she would like this friendly sharp-eyed gentleman.
‘Are you an ornithologist?’ she asked as the car slipped smoothly over the crest of the hill. ‘I always thought you were in the chemistry department.’
‘I earn my living teaching chemistry,’ he said, ‘and just now I’m doing research for our government. Birds are my vice. When I get a few days off, or better still a few weeks, I’m apt to sneak away from town and leave my good wife to her various social engagements. The bottom lands and the river bluffs are the best places in the state for bird life. Up here I see no one but birds and the unique Valley Farms household.’
‘You have a house near Mr. Gladstone’s?’ she asked. ‘How nice! Then perhaps I’ll be seeing you.’
‘You’ll be seeing me tonight at dinner,’ he said, ‘than which for me nothing could be nicer. But one can hardly call my little hide-out a house, especially when you compare it with Valley Farms which is almost a feudal estate. All I possess is a one-room shack near the top of a small bluff, overlooking the river. But there is a fine view, so perhaps you’ll drop in on me sometime. I’m not more than a mile from the big house.’
‘I’d love to!’ she exclaimed. ‘Perhaps I could bring June along.’
‘June too, of course,’ he said, ‘if she would care to come. She has never done me that honour so far. June’s a rather queer child, I think Felix will agree, but I have never found her dull. I think your visit may be interesting, Miss Archer. I hope it may be happy – or at any rate profitable. Of course out here we’re very remote; it’s a little world of its own. I’m sure at any rate that it will be a new kind of experience for you.’
‘Now, Professor,’ Felix exclaimed, ‘you’re talking as if Miss Archer was about to bury herself in the African jungle. Don’t let him scare you, Miss Archer. He’s got quite an imagination, the professor has.’
And suddenly Kate remembered the strange note that was in her purse. The nervousness, the doubt she had felt alone in her bedroom swept over her again with a qualm as of seasickness. Because in her room there was still time to retreat: she need not, after all, have answered the knock on the door; she could have written Mr. Gladstone that she had changed her mind; but now that she had started it was too late. She felt as if she were in one of the little cars on a roller coaster. It was slowly pulling her up the long slant to the dizzying take-off; at any moment the plunge would begin, and she could not get out; she could not stop the car; she could only draw in her breath and close her eyes tight, and swear never to get trapped in such a thing again.
Then she was glad this feeling had come back, because obviously the way to strip the note of its mystery was to tell Mr. Hatfield about it, Mr. Hatfield and Felix: it would be no longer a secret, no longer something buried in her mind, but a trivial objective fact of common knowledge.
‘I’ve had a new experience already’, she said. ‘Not very important but it sort of worried me a little. You’ll probably think I’m foolish.’
Professor Hatfield cocked his eye at her, and leaned forward as a robin might do if he thought he saw a worm. ‘I’m sure not’, he said. ‘What is it?’
Kate opened her purse, took out the note and handed it to him. He stared at it for a long minute with his lashes drawn together. ‘Hmmm-hmmm’ he muttered at last, in a tone that reminded her of Dr. Medway whenever he examined her teeth. ‘Have you told Felix about this?’
‘I’ve told nobody. It arrived in the two o’clock mail this afternoon.’
The reassuring laugh she had expected did not come; Professor Hatfield’s expression remained thoughtful, and the beauty of these wild hills seemed all at once faintly poisonous, as if the region were enchanted.
‘May I tell him about it?’ the professor asked.
She tried to laugh. ‘Of course. Why not? You don’t think it means anything?’
‘Listen, Felix’, Professor Hatfield said. ‘What do you think of this? DON’T GO TO MR. GLADSTONE’S. YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU DO. Sort of an ominous start for poor Miss Archer’s visit, isn’t it?’
‘It looks to me,’ Felix said, ‘like some kind of a joke; but if it is, it’s a damn poor one. You’ll excuse my language, I hope.’
‘A joke? Hmmm . . .’ The professor squinted as if he were peering into the future. ‘Well, very possibly. And now, Felix, if you’ll let me out at the top of the next hill, I’ll coast down the lane to the foot of my bluff.’
In a minute the car stopped again and Felix was lifting out the bicycle as neatly as he had lifted it in.
‘There’s Valley Farms’, Professor Hatfield said, pointing down the long steep hill ahead of them. ‘You get the best view of the estate from here. I’m over there to the left, beyond those woods.’
‘How perfectly lovely!’ Kate exclaimed, and for a moment she forgot everything in the charm of the view.
Directly below them was a huge green bowl, chequered with woods and fields, and cut in two by the white line of the highway. To the left of the road there clustered a group of red-roofed buildings, surrounded by shrubberies, by gardens and lawns – the whole thing shining in the mid-afternoon light with a strange liquid clearness as if you were staring down at it through still water.
Professor Hatfield got out of the car and shook Kate’s hand.
‘I’ll be seeing you tonight then’, he said.
He took his bicycle from Felix, swung his foot over the bar, and turned back to give her one more of his shrewd glances. ‘Perhaps I should explain,’ he added, ‘that it wasn’t just the wording of your note that interested me. Had it occurred to you that the red crayon might be meant to suggest the idea of blood?’
