Mignon Eberhart - Wolf in Man’s Clothing

I didn’t mention the police or Drue or the digitalis.

When I had told him I went to the window and stood there, my back to the room, looking out at the gray daylight. After a long time he called me.

“Yes?”

“Thanks…”

“It-it wasn’t unexpected,” I said again. “And it was mercifully quick.”

“Yes; yes-I’ll see the doctor when he comes, Nurse.”

“Certainly.” He hadn’t asked again about Drue’s scream, and I was thankful for it. He let me wash his face and ring to order breakfast. Anna answered the bell. “I’m sorry, Mr. Craig,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

“I-yes, Anna. Don’t cry.” He patted her hand a little, kindly, and she went quickly away. Almost at once Alexia came.

I was straightening the bed and thought it was Anna. Alexia was in the room before I realized it was not. She had dressed and wore a sleek black dress with white lace at her throat and small wrists. She came quickly to the bed and knelt there.

“Craig, they’ve told you…”

He looked at her for a moment without replying. There was a queer look on his face-a kind of grimness all at once that, again, made me think of his father yet was totally unlike, too, for it held sensibility, or concealed it, where his father’s look was only obstinate and a little cruel.

Alexia put one arm across him so her hand on the bed supported her and leaned very close to him. Her mouth was lightly lipsticked that morning and looked very tender and tremulous in spite of that full, cruel underlip; her misty, short, dark hair was a soft frame for her creamy, small face with its delicate features. She said, “I’m sorry, Craig. He was your father.”

Craig’s eyes narrowed. “He was your husband, Alexia.”

Her face didn’t change, unless her eyelids lowered a little; but I could see the curving lines of her body stiffen slightly. She said rather slowly, very musically, looking into Craig’s eyes, “I never needed to be reminded of that. You know that, Craig, better than anyone.”

There was a short silence. I prepared to remove the top blanket and thus oust Alexia, but as I moved to do so she said, “It’s horrible-the police and all, I mean! They found the revolver in Drue’s room.”

“ Drue ! What do you mean ? What about the police ? What revolver ?”

“Really, Mrs. Brent, I’ll have to ask you to leave! My patient isn’t…” I was hurrying forward, my starchy uniform rattling.

Alexia silenced both of us. “Don’t try to think, my darling,” she said, putting her face against Craig’s. “Oh, Craig, you knew-you always knew I never loved Conrad. And now all that is ended for us both, my darling.”

Over her shoulder Craig’s eyes plunged into mine. “For God’s sake, what does she mean? What revolver?” he cried urgently.

WELL, I COULDN’T HAVE told him even if I’d known, I was so livid and gibbering with rage. I put my hand on Alexia’s shoulder and may have taken a tighter grip even than I intended, for she wrenched herself away from me with a rather startled look and got quickly to her feet, clasping her shoulder with her other hand. “Nurse, you forget yourself! How dare you touch…”

“What revolver, Alexia?” demanded Craig again. “ What revolver ?”

Her eyes had retreated behind those soft, satiny eyelids. She said breathlessly, “Conrad’s revolver. It was in Drue’s room. The police found it.”

Craig was as white as the pillow, and I intended to put Alexia out of the room by sheer physical force if nothing else sufficed. He said, “But he wasn’t shot!”

“No! He wasn’t shot,” I said quickly. “He died of a heart attack, just as I told you. Now then, Mrs. Brent…”

“But the police,” said Craig. “Why are they here?”

“Someone called them.” Alexia answered him. “No one knows who. But someone got on the telephone just after Conrad died and told the police your father had been murdered. So they came, and they are going to investigate his death…”

“ Murder !” said Craig. “ But that’s impossible !” He made a motion to get up, winced as he moved his shoulder and turned even whiter. Peter Huber knocked, entered quickly, stopped as quickly as he seemed to sense something electric in the atmosphere and then said, “It’s only-well, they want you downstairs, Alexia. Right away. They are waiting. You too, Nurse Keate.” His eyes went past us to Craig, and he said, “You’ve told him?”

Behind him on the threshold Anna appeared with the tray. “I’m not going,” I said. “I’m on duty.”

“Is it the police, Peter?” asked Craig.

Peter Huber nodded. “Craig, I’m sorry about your father…”

Craig closed his eyes as if to shut out talk of that. “Yes, Pete,” he said. There was a little silence while Anna went to the bed with the tray and I followed her. Craig looked up at me. “Go on down,” he said. “Anna will stay with me. Don’t you see, I’ve got to know…”

“I’ll tell you, Craig. I’ll tell you everything the police do.” Alexia started toward the bed, stopped as I straightened up rather abruptly from adjusting the pillows and looked hard at her, said softly to Craig, “Don’t think, darling. Don’t try to think now. I’ll be back,” and went out the doör. Peter came to the bed and Craig said again to me, “Please go downstairs, Miss Keate. I want you to tell me everything they do…”

So in the end I went; not because of the police, but merely to keep Craig’s temperature down. Anna stayed with him and Peter Huber, too, for a while, although they sent for him also before that morning’s long inquiry was over.

It lasted nearly three hours. Three hours of steady questions and answers-statements, repetitions, explanations, and probably a few lies, spoken or implied. But there was no way of identifying those.

It was already under way when I entered the little morning room, with its ivory woodwork, green and rose chintz, and blazing wood fire.

Everyone except Craig, and for the moment, Peter, was there: Lieutenant Nugent and two troopers, very lean, and silent as their chief; a man in gray, fat and rosy-cheeked with winking eyeglasses who proved to be the District Attorney (so I knew, then, that they were sure it was murder); Nicky; and Alexia who was, subtly, a broken reed. Their two faces were so much alike, so secretive, so delicate and beautiful that it was as if one was the mirror of the other; as if some deep affinity joined their very thoughts. Which, as a matter of fact, was very far from the truth.

Maud was there, too, little and indomitable in sweeping black with her pompadour rising high above her narrow, sallow, little forehead, her collar of boned white net lifting her little dark chin in the air, and her eyes brooding and angry, watching the police, watching Nicky and Alexia-watching even me, fixedly. I don’t think a move or a look or a quickened pulse escaped her eager, antlike eyes. Claud Chivery wasn’t there.

Then I saw Drue; she was sitting in a tall armchair, her hands around the arm of it, her white cap like a crown upon her shining hair. She was very pale; her dark gray eyes had a kind of terrified stillness. I thought she tried to communicate with me, mutely, with her look, and I tried, mutely, to remind her of danger, and in the same fractional glance that I was on her side. So it was a rather complicated glance, I daresay; certainly it didn’t seem to accomplish anything in the way of improving the situation.

Then I felt that somebody was watching us and turned. It was Lieutenant Nugent, his eyes narrow and thoughtful, more green than gray-which was, as a matter of fact, a bad sign. All through that interview he was as laconic as ever and when he was forced to say more than a few words did so with an air of positively grudging distaste and terseness.