Margaret Millar - The Devil Loves Me

The afternoon dragged, and the minutes moved across his mind as if they had club feet. An old man’s afternoon, Sands thought.

It’s all over but the hanging. The hangings my job and I’m not up to it. I don’t want to hang anybody.

Depression crept over him like viscous oil, making his limbs slow and heavy. Only his mind moved, in quick, futile circles like a moth.

You can’t swim in oil.

There are certain types of insanity, he thought, where you’re so depressed you can’t move at all. You sit all hunched up like a foetus, or like Sammy—

Thinking of Sammy made him think of the sheets. They were burned, of course. You could bum almost anything in a furnace that size, even the weapons perhaps, and the empty bottle of eyedrops and the contents of Sammy’s pockets. If you were smart and in a tight corner you could burn the money too, you could burn up your own motive. It would mean that you’d murdered three people for nothing, though.

That would be a hell of a feeling, Sands thought.

The telephone rang. He moved his hands through the oil, slowly, and picked up the receiver. It was the call he’d been waiting for and it might mean a hanging.

“Sands? Horton speaking.”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, it’s no go. I’ve been talking to the Crown attorney and he says you’d be a damn fool to risk a case on the evidence of a graphologist.”

“There are other things.”

“Circumstantial,” Horton said.

“All right.”

“Of course I’m positive and you’re positive. Can’t you get one single witness, say at the Royal York?”

“I can try again.”

“Try yourself. Darcy’s not too bright.”

“I’ll try,” Sands said, and hung up.

He picked up his hat from the desk, exchanged a few words with the policeman in the hall, and went out to his car.

From the windows of the drawing room Prye saw him leave. He turned to the others at the card table.

“The inspector is leaving.”

Jane looked up from her intense study of her cards. “Oh, do be quiet, Paul. I’m trying to play this wretched hand you gave me and I don’t know whether to play the king of—”

“My God,” Dinah said. “Will you stop telling me what cards you’re holding?”

“You really shouldn’t,” Nora said as mildly as possible.

“Well, you shouldn’t listen,” Jane said, “if you don’t want to know. Besides, I don’t want to play any more. It’s so dull!”

The cards were thrown in without argument. Dinah went over to the table and poured herself a drink.

“So the inspector is gone,” she said softly. “I rather like having him around, don’t you, Jane?”

“No,” Jane said.

“It reminds you of everything, I’ll bet. Jane, you have a lovely nature, a heart as soft as thistledown, and a head no harder.”

“Shut up,” Jane said. “I don’t like you and I don’t like your voice. If I ever told you what I really thought of you—”

“Go on. You tell me and I’ll tell you. Everything goes.”

Jane sniffed. “I couldn’t be bothered. I’m not malicious.”

Dinah was looking at her curiously. “No. No, I don’t believe you are malicious. But you’re something I don’t like.”

“Quite an exchange of pleasantries,” Prye said easily. “May I play too?”

Dinah said, “Keep out of this, Paul.”

“I’m in it,” Prye said. “I’ve been in it for some time. It would be a pleasant change for you and Jane to take a crack at me instead of each other. One at a time, girls.”

Jane said, “You’re too carefree.”

“Carefree like the old man of the mountain,” Prye said. “Your turn, Dinah.”

“I don’t like people who know too much about other people.”

“I don’t,” Prye said.

Jane was looking at him very seriously. “Do you know all about people?”

“No. I know a little about some, nothing at all about others.”

“About me?” She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on him.

“Nuts,” Dinah said, coming over quickly and placing her hand on Jane’s shoulder. “If you want to know about yourself, you ask me.”

Jane frowned at her and shook her hand from her shoulder. “Go away. I want to talk to Paul. I’m serious. I’m tired of you interfering in everything I do, Dinah. Even Ja—”

“Even Jackson, you were going to say? And Dennis?”

“You struck me,” Jane said. “You struck me because Dennis was paying me some perfectly normal attention!”

Dinah gave a brief laugh that sounded like a bark.

“Normal? I shudder at the company you keep. And the company that keeps you.”

Jane jumped to her feet, her face livid with rage. “Who keeps me? You take that back, you... you trollop!”

“Trollop!” Dinah sank into a chair and roared with laughter. “I haven’t heard that word since Grandma.”

Jane started to walk to the door but Dinah sprang up and stood in the doorway, her arms outspread.

“Going anywhere, Jane?”

“Up to my room. Let me past, please.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t want you to come.”

“I will though,” Dinah said.

“No! You’ll bully me.” Jane turned and looked appealingly at Nora. “Make her stay here, please.”

Nora said, “Dinah, you’d better stay with me. You’re behaving very oddly.”

“There’s nothing more interesting,” Prye said, “than a lady-fight. If I thought either of you ladies knew the rules I’d let you go to it. But I’m afraid you don’t. So I’ll escort Jane up to her room—”

“I’m not afraid of that trollop,” Jane said. “I don’t need any escort.”

Dinah laughed, rather self-consciously, and moved aside to let her go past. Jane went out and slammed the door.

By the time she reached her room her show of defiance was over and she collapsed into a small damp, trembling bundle and sobbed. Aspasia heard her and came to the door.

“My dear!” she cried, starting to cry instantly at the sight of Jane’s tears.

Jane told the whole story, her head crammed against Aspasia’s shoulder.

“That Dinah,” Aspasia said furiously. “She’s a bad woman.”

“A trollop,” Jane sobbed.

“Yes, a trollop,” Aspasia said. “And Worse.”

This was a comforting thought. They both stopped crying.

“It’s a guilty conscience that makes her act like that,” Aspasia said.

“Do you think Dinah did it? With George helping her, I mean?”

“Yes.” Aspasia’s voice was firm. “Oh dear, yes. She’s the only possible one, isn’t she? Outside of Jackson.”

“Jackson didn’t do it!”

“No, I hardly thought so. He seems a very nice boy.”

“Will they — hang Dinah?”

“Oh dear, yes,” Aspasia said. “We hang everybody in Canada, I mean everybody who does something you get hanged for. And George too, of course.”

“Oh, they couldn’t hang George,” Jane cried. “He’s just been used by her—”

“They say it doesn’t hurt much. Your neck breaks before you get a chance to strangle.”

Jane gasped and covered her face.

“You mustn’t be sentimental about these things, Jane. The law is wiser than we are. Besides, Dinah has been very — peculiar lately, so it’s all for the best. I would rather have her dead than insane. Are you feeling better now, Jane?”

“Yes, thank you.”

They were both unconscious of the irony. Jane rubbed her face with witch hazel and powdered her nose, and Aspasia went back to her room to change for dinner.

She hung up the lavender afternoon dress in the clothes closet. It was heavy silk, and when she placed it on the hanger it swung back and forth like a corpse swinging at the end of a rope. Aspasia watched it, shivering slightly, until it was still again. Then she removed from the clothes closet the black crepe dress she usually wore for dinner and pulled it over her head.