Mignon Eberhart - Wolf in Man’s Clothing

Her hands went out to grip mine, hard.

“Sarah, do they know I…”

“No. I hid the hypodermic. I didn’t tell them that you were there before me. I-oh, my dear child, don’t look like that. You didn’t mean it…”

“I gave him digitalis. Sarah, I had to. He was sick. His medicine was gone. I thought he was dying. I hurried to my room and I had some digitalis. I had it left over from old Mrs. Jamieson-remember, we nursed her together…”

I nodded. A nurse either destroys or hoards for an emergency drugs that are left over from a case and I had nursed old Mrs. Jamieson with her. Every nurse, I imagine (at least I always had done so) accumulates slowly a kind of first-aid, emergency kit of her own. I had then in my bag enough sedatives to bring upon me the highly unfavorable attention of any policeman who happened to discover it.

“So you gave it to him?”

“Yes.” There was horror in her eyes. “You see, I’d been talking to him. Then he… I saw he was really sick. He said to get his medicine; he gasped horribly. He told me where it was, but I remembered. He’s always kept it there in the right-hand drawer of his desk. But I looked and it wasn’t there so I…”

“You opened the drawer?”

“Yes, of course.” (I thought, then, of fingerprints; yet Drue’s fingerprints on the drawer couldn’t be made to prove anything. Or could they?) She went on quickly: “But there was no box of pills. Then he begged me for something; said even if I hated him I’d have to help him, and I-I got my syringe from the bag in my room. I sterilized it quickly with alcohol and prepared the hypodermic and hurried back to the library. He rolled up his sleeve himself and told me to hurry. So I did. I gave him what I thought was the right amount…”

“How much?”

She told me. I nodded. Conrad hadn’t taken any of the pills he had ready for emergency during the few moments that he was alone while Drue was preparing the hypodermic. That was obvious, for if he had done so he wouldn’t have permitted her to give him the additional medicine. “Go on,” I said.

“That’s all, Sarah. He…” She took her hands from my wrists and put them to her throat. “He died. Then. Just-just died and I couldn’t stop it.”

She was shivering; I took her hands again and held them tightly. And thought hard.

“You’re not to tell about the hypodermic. Not tell anyone. Lie if you have to.”

Her hands clung to mine. Her eyes, dark with horror, searched my face. “They’ll say I murdered him,” she whispered. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

I had to tell her, then. “Listen, Drue. I lost the syringe. That is, I didn’t lose it. I hid it and someone found it and took it away.”

There was a little sharp silence. In the next room Craig slept heavily. Outside, rain and sleet whispered against the windows. Drue whispered stiffly, “ Who… ?”

“ I don’t know. I hid it in the fern; I guessed what you had done; I didn’t want them to know. It’s gone now, so someone must have seen me hide it. I don’t know who. But it’s gone, and your fingerprints are on it. They can easily prove it was yours; there will be traces of digitalis in it.”

AFTER A LONG MOMENT she said with a kind of incredulous horror, “He wasn’t murdered, Sarah! I saw him die. If I killed him, it was some terrible, unforgivable mistake on my part, but I didn’t murder him. I didn’t…”

“You didn’t kill him. Listen, Drue; you can’t tell them what you did. You must not. I’ve seen something of police investigation; circumstantial evidence has hanged many a man. No, no, I didn’t mean to say that! I only meant you must promise me not to tell. Not yet. Not until-well, until we see what’s going to happen.”

“But if I’m wrong, if it should be murder I’ve got to tell them, don’t you see? If the police are right, if he was murdered, they ought to know what I gave him and how much.” She stopped, caught her breath and said again, fighting it, “But he couldn’t have been murdered!”

“No. Yet who called the police then and why? Who shot Craig? And why? What did Craig mean when he said there would be murder done?”

“But he didn’t mean-he couldn’t have meant- this !” She stared at me with a kind of terror for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I’d better tell them exactly what I did.”

It frightened me, but more than anything it exasperated me. “All right,” I snapped. “Go ahead and tell them you murdered him! That’s exactly what it will amount to. Or shall I tell them? Craig may come to see you in jail but I doubt it.”

“Sarah…”

“There’s a time for nobility, Drue Cable, but this isn’t the time. However, if you’re bent on making a martyr of yourself I won’t stop you. Heaven knows it’s nothing to me. You make me come here; I didn’t know I was walking into anything like this. I hate shooting and I hate murder and I hate the police. I’m going home. Unless they stop me. You can do exactly as you please. Just go ahead and tell them you killed him and I don’t care, for I won’t be here.”

“Sarah…” She caught my arms. “Sarah, I’m not that kind of fool.”

“Oh, yes, you are. I can see it…”

“No. No.” Her hands dropped away from my arms. She stared down at the dressing table with its rosy little lamp and crystal bottles. “I won’t tell them. I cannot believe that he was murdered. I saw him. Yet if-oh, you’re right, of course.”

“Certainly, I’m right.” I paused thoughtfully. There was only one thing we could do and it had its dangers. Yet they had already mentioned digitalis; and it was a piece of material evidence really leading to Drue.

“Did you use all the supply of digitalis you had, Drue?”

“No. Only enough…”

“We ought to get rid of the rest of it.”

“But Sarah, when-if I eventually tell them about it, as I may have to do…”

“I know. It might look guilty. But I think it’s better to get rid of the rest of the digitalis now in the hope it needn’t ever come out-about the hypodermic, I mean. Some blundering fool” (which was exactly the opposite of what I meant) “of a policeman might get his hands on the digitalis; Chivery may see the hypodermic mark. No, no, Drue, it’s better to dispose of the rest of the digitalis now. I’ll do it…”

“No,” she said quickly and sharply and then caught herself as quickly. “I’d better do it myself,” she said. “I know exactly where it is. I’ll go. Now.”

So she went, leaving me oddly perplexed by the look of sudden and sharp anxiety in her face. It was as if she had remembered something she didn’t want me to know about-which was nonsense, of course. What could there be in her room, in the little nursing bag, anywhere in the house, which she wanted to keep a secret? When presently she came back, slipping quietly into the room while I was sitting beside Craig, I had decided it was nothing.

“Did you get it?” I whispered.

Her face looked very white and her breath was coming quickly; her hand was in her pocket. She shook her head. “They were already there. They… Sarah-they’ve got your little black bag-you know; and mine. I saw a policeman go downstairs with them. Oh, Sarah…”

We stared at each other across Craig’s bed, and rain whispered against the windows. Finally, I said-I had to say, “Never mind. It doesn’t prove anything. Don’t worry.”

After that there was really nothing we could do. We didn’t even talk much. The rain beat and murmured against the windows and all we could do was wait.

Digitalis. And they had thought of us, nurses, and had taken the little instrument and medicine bags to search even before they could possibly have got results from the autopsy. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t tell Drue (although she knew it, naturally), and Craig slept and the rain beat down and there was no way of knowing what the police were doing. What Alexia was doing and Nicky, or Maud. Waiting, too, I imagined, as we were waiting.