Chapter 7

After the sun rose, there was another lull in the storm, and suddenly the sky was the color of blue tile and the snow sparkled in the brilliant light. The big house stood isolated, half drowned in an ocean of rolling whiteness. Every room glittered with sunlight, but every window was a sheet of ice and the only warmth could be found near the fireplaces.

“Pretty day,” Mrs. Daley remarked, as John Carr came into the kitchen, yawning wearily. “It’d be nice if any of us could appreciate it. And it’s the day before Christmas, too. Happy holiday.”

“It could be worse,” John told her. “How about giving me a cup of that hot chocolate to get the frost out of my bones?”

Mrs. Daley poured a cup for him, and he sat down at the kitchen table and looked about the warm and pleasant room. “I never did get over liking kitchens better than any other rooms in a house. That was because of my grandmother’s kitchen. All brick walls, and brick floor, and copper pans hanging on the walls, and big, leaded windows with window seats, and a fireplace an ox could stand up in, easily, and probably did at one time, and rocking chairs, and brick and iron stoves—two of them—always simmering with something.”

“Don’t sound like any kitchen I ever saw,” Mrs. Daley declared. “Don’t sound efficient, either.”

“It was in Ireland. The Irish prefer peace to efficiency. That’s why they live to be so old and remain chipper until they just dry up and blow away like ashes.”

“I thought you was a Southerner,” Edith said, turning from the sink to look at him.

“Well, I was born in Baltimore. By the way, is anyone up this early except me?”

“Early! Why, Mr. Carr, it’s almost eleven!”

“So it is. Well, where is everybody this fine morning?”

“Nobody’s been down yet. After last night.” Mrs. Daley lowered her voice. “We got everything to get ready today, and I could fall on my face and sleep for a week. Mr. Carr, I’m all shivery. Did—I mean, did Mrs. Frazier really get—”

“Poisoned? I’m afraid so, Mrs. Daley. But what the poison was Dr. Gates himself isn’t quite certain yet. There have to be some tests.”

“You think she took it, herself?”

John helped himself to a warm doughnut from a plate on the table. “Do you, Mrs. Daley?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No sir, I don’t! I’ve been thinking it over. I couldn’t sleep. Mrs. Frazier is very religious. She’d never even dream of such a thing, no matter what. She was alone three years after Miss Beame died, and drooped around and cried most of the time, but she never once ever talked of dying, herself. And after she met Mr. Frazier, and they got engaged and married, why it was all the sun out for her again.”

“That was quite a while for a young girl to be alone,” John said.

“Well, we wasn’t up here, except in the summer. We stayed in the house in New York. Then Mrs. Frazier met Mr. Frazier at a party Dr. Gates was giving for Mrs. Bulowe and Mr. Bulowe—she was Miss Gates then—and they had just got engaged. It was love at first sight.”

“Mrs. Bulowe is a very beautiful woman,” John stated, holding out his cup for more hot chocolate.

“I wasn’t talking about Mrs. Bulowe, I mean Miss Gates, then. I was talking about Mr. and Mrs. Frazier. They met at Dr. Gates’ party. That was just before he went to the Clinic, in Cleveland. It was a big offer. They’d heard of him. He’s mighty smart.”

“He is, indeed,” John said drily. “Very, very smart.”

“I like him.” Mrs. Daley was loyal. “He’s one fine young man. Never did see why Mrs. Frazier didn’t marry him. He was crazy about her.”

“Is that so? Well, we can’t always win, can we?”

“That don’t mean Mr. Frazier ain’t as good,” Mrs. Daley went on. “It was just that Dr. Gates and Mrs. Frazier seemed so suited. Dr. Gates wouldn’t let Mrs. Frazier, if she was his wife, mope around so much. But then nobody cared anything about her until Miss Beame brought her up here. Mr. Carr, are you going to make your breakfast out of those doughnuts, you’ve had three now, or do you want me to fix you some ham and eggs?”

“I’ll have the rest in half an hour, thank you. This is a warmup.”

“And you so thin, too. My, if I ate a warmup like that, and then a regular breakfast, I’d be as big as a house.”

“You are, already,” Edith giggled.

Mrs. Daley gave her a fierce look, and John reached for another doughnut. Apparently Mrs. Daley had the eyes of Hydra, for she turned swiftly and removed the plate from temptation. She hesitated. “Mr. Carr, if it was poison, then Mrs. Frazier either took it herself or—or—”

“Or somebody gave it to her,” John finished genially. “Excellent deduction. Have you any ideas who’d like to see Mrs. Frazier dead?”

There was a shocked silence in the kitchen. A big copper kettle sang on the stove. Then Mrs. Daley asked: “Why, what do you mean? Somebody try to kill Mrs. Frazier? Why, that’s crazy, Mr. Carr!”

“It’s always the husband,” Edith remarked, nodding her head. “I read all the murder mysteries Mrs. Frazier gets, and it’s always the husband or the nephew or the secretary.” Her aunt stood speechless, staring at John. “But all Mrs. Frazier’s got is the husband. Do you think he did it?” Edith added.

“Oh, shut up!” Mrs. Daley cried in a savage voice. But she did not take her eyes from John. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you think—that—that somebody wanted to kill that poor little thing?”

“It was poison,” John said reasonably. “She took it herself, or it was given her deliberately to kill her, or she swallowed it accidentally. Did she eat anything, or drink anything, before she came down to dinner?”

“Not a thing!” Mrs. Daley exclaimed. “She didn’t touch her breakfast. Edith brought down the tray.” She put her hand to her large bosom. “Mr. Carr! I don’t believe—”

Then she stopped. “And somebody tried to kill Mr. Frazier, shooting at him. I’d forgotten about that, after Mrs. Frazier got sick. Who’d want to kill them both?”

“Your ideas are as good as mine.” John rose and looked longingly at the distant doughnuts. “I don’t know any of these people very well. I met Mr. Frazier about two weeks ago; he’s my lawyer. I never saw Mrs. Frazier, Mrs. Bulowe or Dr. Gates before. You know them better than I do.”

“I know!” Edith burst out. “It’s Mrs. Bulowe!”

“Edith!” Mrs. Daley was aghast. “Don’t mind her, Mr. Carr. Why, those girls grew up together in this house. Like sisters. I was here.”

“But Mrs. Frazier got all her aunt’s money,” Edith pointed out.

“I told you to shut up, Edith! What if she did? Miss Beame used to say to me ‘Molly, Alice will always be able to take care of herself, but Laura won’t.’ It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mrs. Bulowe—”

“Well, what else, then?” John asked. “She could have divided the money, couldn’t she? Share and share alike, as the lawyers say. Why didn’t she?”

Mrs. Daley opened her mouth, then closed it primly. “I couldn’t say.”

“I can,” Edith said gleefully. “And you told me about it yourself, Aunt Molly. Miss Beame got so she couldn’t bear Mrs. Bulowe, and you know it. I bet that it’s Mrs. Bulowe all the time.”

“But Mrs. Bulowe isn’t one of Mrs. Frazier’s heirs, is she?” John asked.

“She sure is!” Edith reported happily. “Now, Aunt Molly, you slap me just once again and I walk out of this house, snow or no snow. Just before she went to New York last, I heard her call her lawyers and tell them she wanted a coddy or something, in her will.” She paused, basking in the attention she was receiving from the others.

“A codicil,” John corrected. “Go on.”

“It was to be a secret. Nobody was to know. Mrs. Bulowe was to get two hundred thousand dollars in the codi—codicil?”

“That’s right. Codicil. Please, Mrs. Daley, let the girl talk. How did you know about that call, Edith?”

“Well, I was just going to use the phone, myself, downstairs, and there was Mrs. Frazier on the upstairs extension, in her bedroom, and I heard it.”

“I thought you promised me not to listen in on people’s talk!” Mrs. Daley cried. “And now you done it again, always poking in other people’s business.”

John ignored her. He smiled winningly at Edith. “I like to know other people’s business, too; I’m a born gossip, though I won’t repeat what you’ve told me, Edith. You wouldn’t know, by the way, what Mr. Frazier said about that codicil, or did he suggest it, himself?”

Edith shook her head. “She said it was to be a secret, even from Mr. Frazier. She was afraid, she said on the phone, that he would be hurt, her not telling him first, but she wanted it to be quiet, from everybody. She kind of talked as if she didn’t know, herself, why she didn’t want nobody to know.”

“Then nobody knows, except Mrs. Frazier and you, Edith?”

“Nobody,” she declared emphatically. John grinned. “I think I’m ready now for my breakfast.” He went into the dining room where the little oil stove was burning, and sat down, staring before him thoughtfully. There were faint sounds of angry words in the kitchen, but they failed to bother his thoughts.

At six in the morning David had gone up to Laura’s room and ordered his sister to go to bed. Alice stood up, pallid with exhaustion, nodded, and left without a word. David wrapped himself in a quilt and watched the sleeping girl intently. She was pale, but she was breathing naturally. Very gently he felt her pulse. A little weak, but steady.

Candlelight flickered in the room, and the storm was beginning to abate. After a while David went into the adjoining bathroom, carrying a candle with him.

He opened the door of the medicine cabinet. The usual things were there: Henry’s electric razor and shaving lotions, a bottle of aspirin, a cough syrup, which he sampled delicately with his tongue, a jar of baking soda, another of boric acid, which he also tasted. There was also a bottle of the sedatives he had prescribed for Laura last summer. Five of the thirty capsules remained. His skillful physician’s fingers opened the capsules; he touched the contents of each with the tip of his tongue. Pure barbiturates. He put the capsules together again. There was, of course, no arsenic in the cabinet. He had not really expected to find any. He looked in the wastebaskets in the bathroom and in the bedroom, knowing it was useless. He carried the candle back to the table and put it down, and sat again in the big wing chair, thinking.

He had fallen asleep just as the sun rose, during a lull in the storm. He awoke suddenly, to find the room bright and Laura, awake, staring at him with wide eyes.

“David?” Her voice was weak.

“No one else,” he said, yawning. “How do you feel?”

“Awful. Weak. Where’s Henry?”

“Don’t be frightened,” he said in the professional voice which always soothed his patients. “I sent him to another bedroom in this mausoleum to get a little sleep. Laura, I’ve got to ask you a few questions. Did you eat anything or drink anything, anything at all, before going downstairs to dinner last night?”

“No.” Her voice seemed a little stronger. “Not a thing. You gave me a drink, David. Was there something wrong with it?”

“There might have been,” he answered evasively. “Something poisoned you.”

“Poison—?” David hardly heard her whisper the word.

“Ptomaine, probably,” he said. “A bad thing. It can kill, sometimes. Or am I thinking of botulism?” He yawned again, elaborately. “You didn’t have anything at dinner except what we had? No different wine? No separate side dish?”

“Nothing. Is anyone else sick?” she asked in alarm.

“I wouldn’t say anyone in this house is feeling exactly on top of the world this morning. Now, poisoned—food—doesn’t always have a revealing smell or taste. In fact, the deadliest poison can’t be detected that way at all. However, some people can take as much of one—poison—as another, and they might get a little queasy or have no reaction at all, and someone else, more susceptible, could die of it. It was probably that way with you.”

She nodded her head against the pillow. “I did think the water had a funny taste. You know how it tastes in New York and other places. Chlorine?”

“But you have your own well water, don’t you, Laura?”

“Yes. Artesian. Sometimes it does taste—off, you know.”

“But you don’t use chlorine in the water here, do you?”

“No.”

“And you tasted chlorine last night?”

“No.” She frowned, trying to remember. “It was a distinctly different taste. Like metal, I think. I’d slept in the afternoon, and somehow I’m always desperately thirsty when I wake up. So I drank the water the first thing at the table, and then Edith refilled the glass when she came in with the soup.”

“Like metal? Did the second glass taste the same?”

“It left a very unpleasant aftertaste,” Laura told him tiredly. “That’s why I drank another glass as soon as Edith brought it. The second glass was better.”

“Did your stomach bother you after dinner?”

“Yes.” Her voice was faintly uneasy. “I thought once, while I was reading, that I was going to be sick; I felt a little nauseated and very sleepy. But that was because of the sedative Henry gave me earlier. It was half a capsule of what you gave me, yourself, last summer.”

David nodded seriously. “You didn’t notice any particular symptoms after he gave you that half capsule?”

“No, just after I drank the water.”

“Did the water look clear to you?”

“Yes. I don’t know. There was only candlelight. I don’t think I noticed whether it was clear or not. David! I hope you’ve told Mrs. Daley not to use the well water!” She sat up, frightened.

“What do you suggest we use for water, then?”

“We get big cases of spring water, for use when the well isn’t tasting right and we are waiting for it to be tested. Please tell Mrs. Daley to use that!”

“I shall, indeed, though the water didn’t upset anyone as much as it did you. Now, stop getting so excited. You’ve got to rest. Have you forgotten this is the day before Christmas and tonight is Christmas Eve?”

Laura groaned. “Oh, what a mess I’ve caused! I had everything planned so wonderfully! David, do give me something, so that I can go down to dinner and join the celebration.”

“You won’t need anything. But you had a bad—attack. There was blood, Laura, which I could see clearly, even by the candlelight from the bedroom. Now, I want you to listen carefully. Don’t take any medicine, not even that soda in your bathroom, or anything else, until I’ve sampled it. I want to be sure that everything you eat and drink is all right. And keep under those covers. I can’t see for the life of me,” he said irritably, “why you didn’t install an auxiliary system in this outpost.”

“You’re so kind, David.” Laura smiled at him. “Poor Henry. Did he have a terrible scare? I don’t know what I’d have done without him during all that.”

“In what way?”

“Well, his holding me so tight, when I was being so sick, and whispering to me, and everything.” Her pale cheeks colored a little.

“Good for old Henry,” David said. He hesitated, then patted her hand. “I’ll bring up your breakfast tray, personally. Alice can take over later.”

He went into the freezing hall, and looked at Henry’s closed door, wondering if he were downstairs. Cautiously he turned the knob and looked inside. The room was empty. He heard water running in a bathroom, and closed the door. That could be the explanation. Shrugging his shoulders, he went downstairs, eager for a cup of coffee.

But Henry was not in the adjoining bathroom. He had made certain that John Carr was having his breakfast, and had listened to him joking with Mrs. Daley in the dining room. Then he had gone into John’s room, closing the door behind him. I’m not used to this sort of thing, he thought. He opened the clothes-closet door where John’s clothes were hanging neatly on the hangers, and felt one pair of trousers. They were wet. Bending down, he examined a pair of shoes, which were black and stained with moisture. He stood up, trembling violently. The suitcase was on its rack, but closed. He hardly expected it to be unlocked, but it was. He lifted the lid quickly. A gun lay on top of a couple of books and a robe which had not been taken out. The gun was heavy and smelled faintly of cordite. He examined the cylinder. There were five bullets; the sixth was missing. He ejected one of the bullets. It was a forty-five, and looked exactly like the one which had been fired at him.

He dropped the gun back into the suitcase and slipped out of the room. There was no doubt about it. John Carr had fired that gun at him; he had climbed out of the window of the room in the attic. Reaching the corner of the house, he had only to brace himself against the roof and half-turn to see the woodshed. Henry had made a perfect target. The bullet had missed him by a few inches. John Carr had tried to kill him!

But why? He had come to him, on business, three weeks ago by the purest accident. If old Mr. Bancroft had not been taken sick, Henry would not now be handling Carr’s affairs.

Henry had not been entirely satisfied at the glib and easy explanations offered so far. He was, by nature, a man who questioned everything. He had trusted no one in his life except Laura, and he trusted her absolutely. She sometimes did foolish and childish things, but never things inspired by malice. He had not even trusted the boyish Sam Bulowe, nor Alice, not even his partners, and he had especially, even from boyhood, mistrusted David Gates. David was one man whose motives seemed always in doubt, whose words invariably carried a double meaning.

Henry remembered reading, somewhere, that lawyers are born, not made, and they have built-in distrusts. He had smiled when reading that, for he knew it to be true. And now, what was going on around here? Who was John Carr? Men don’t come on social visits, as house guests, carrying guns. A man carries a gun for a reason.

What had Carr said yesterday? “Or, a warning.” Henry rubbed a little spot in the frozen window. The snow was much deeper. No one could walk to the main road. They were all prisoners in this house, until the plows could get to the private road. If only the phone were in order and he could call the police.

In the meantime, he had, as his house guest, a man who had tried to kill him.

Putting on a careful expression and a determined smile, he went into his wife’s room. She held out her arms to him, and he caught her slight body to him and held her tightly.

“Tell me you’re all right, darling.” He held her off a little. “What was wrong? What did you eat?”

“It was the water. David said everyone got a little sick from it.”

“The water?” Absently he smoothed her rumpled hair.

“I told him about the water, the taste. You know, like metal. Didn’t you notice it, Henry?”

“I believe I did, a little,” he answered vaguely.

“That’s all. Ptomaine. Or bot—I don’t know the word. Don’t worry, darling. You look awful, and you need a shave, and there isn’t any electricity.” She tried to be gay. “You’ll just have to use your old razor.”

He stood up, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Henry?” Laura asked. But his mind was engrossed, and he did not hear her. The door opened and David entered with a tray. “Here we are.” He stopped when he saw Henry.

“Well,” he said flatly, “and how are you this morning?”

“Feeling hellish,” Henry told him. “Do you think Laura should have food?”

“Why not? I want to see how it lies on that delicate stomach. Here you are. Coddled eggs, toast, tea. How does it look?”

“Very good,” she said, trying to please him, though her stomach lurched a bit. David placed the tray on her knees. “I’ve asked Laura not to drink anything, not even water, or eat anything at all, or take any medicine, until I’ve examined it.”

“Why?” Henry asked quickly.

“Why? I want to taste it. To see if it’s okay. Any objection?”

“Why should I object?” Henry retorted.

“Just don’t give her anything, yourself, not even water, no matter how thirsty she is. Until I’ve tasted it. You understand, don’t you?” David’s black eyes were serious.

“Well, if you put it that way.”

“I damned well do,” David replied. “How does breakfast taste, Laura?”

“Not too good.”

David said, very slowly, “Well, I can guarantee it won’t make you sick.”

“I’d like to talk to you a minute, alone,” Henry told him.

“Won’t you stay?” Laura asked.

“After all, I want breakfast, too, and that food smells good.” Henry ruffled her hair. He went to the door and looked back at David, who seemed to be absorbed in watching Laura eat. Then David turned to him, nodded, and they went out together.

Henry shut the door behind them and, when they were in his room, turned to David abruptly. “Look, don’t tell me any fairy stories. Laura was poisoned last night, wasn’t she?”

“She was.” David leaned against a chest of drawers.

“Then, what is all this about the water? She said you told her there was something wrong with it.”

“She must have gotten the poison in the water, before dinner.”

“How could it have gotten in the water she drank?”

David was silent for a moment. “Someone in this house knows. Someone put it there.”

“That’s ridiculous! The water was poured from the same pitcher we all used. It was on the sideboard.”

“The water glasses were filled before we went in.”

Henry sat heavily on the rumpled bed and stared at the floor.

“Why should anyone—? I don’t believe it!” he added furiously.

“Would you prefer a better explanation, such as Laura poisoning herself? You said something about her being depressed, you know.”

“I don’t know what I said last night. All right, she has been depressed. But not enough to try to kill herself. Why should she do that?”

“You don’t suspect that she might be neurotic or something, do you?”

Henry averted his head, and concentrated on his thoughts.

“You’d rather think that she tried to commit suicide than to suspect that someone wanted to kill her? Is that it?”

“For God’s sake, Dave. I can’t accept the fact that someone in this house—someone in this house!—tried to kill Laura. What for? What could be the motive?”

“An interesting question.”

Henry got to his feet and walked up and down the room slowly.

“All right,” he said, stopping with his back to David. “I’d prefer to think that Laura had a momentary aberration—than to accept the notion that you, or Carr, or Alice, or Mrs. Daley, or Edith, or even Evelyn, would want to kill her, for an unknown motive. Laura’s never hurt a soul in her life. She’d hurt herself first.”

“I think so, too,” David agreed.

Henry swung around to him. “All right, then. But you are absolutely certain it wasn’t some food poisoning, or that she took something accidentally?”

“I’m certain.”

“What was the poison?”

“Arsenic, I think. I’ll know for sure, later, when I can get the sample to the police laboratories.”

Henry was shocked. “The police! But there might be a scandal!”

“You’d rather someone who tried to kill your wife got away with it?”

“But—”

“Attempted murder carries a very large penalty, I’ve heard. The law doesn’t like it. As a lawyer, now, do you disagree with the law?”

Henry fumbled for his pipe, and could not find it. “Here, have a cigarette,” David offered. “Pretend you’re in your office where you do smoke cigarettes.”

“Oh, shut up,” Henry told him. “I don’t need your sarcastic remarks just now. I’m thinking.”

“Good. I hope you come up with something. As you said, who would have a motive to kill Laura; who would hate her enough to kill her?”

“Your sister, for one,” Henry said bitterly.

“You can see Alice killing your wife? Okay, she hates her. But only insane people kill those they hate. Do you think Alice is insane?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“The real motive, I’ve found out, for most murders is money. Alice won’t get Laura’s money if Laura dies. You will, I suppose.”

“Laura said she’d made me her heir, just as she will inherit anything I leave, and it’s a tidy sum, by the way. More than you’re worth, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. I’m on straight salary. You get bonuses. Are they taxable?”

“Go to hell,” Henry retorted. “We are each other’s heirs. I’ve never touched a cent of Laura’s money. I didn’t marry her for her money, just in case you think I did.”

“We’ll leave money out of it. The next motive is usually love. Getting an unwanted person out of the way.” David grinned. “You aren’t having an amour with anyone, are you?”

Henry gave him a withering look. David laughed a little. “All right, then. I’ve been giving my suggestions. You give yours.” Then he added seriously, “A murderer who fails always tries again. That’s why we’ve got to find him.”

Henry lowered his voice. “I must tell you something. I never did quite accept your and Carr’s suggestions about an intruder yesterday. I think the intruder is still right here in this house.”

“You do?” David asked. “But why? Where?”

Henry hesitated, then told David what he had found in John Carr’s room. “He tried to kill me,” he said quietly. “Why, I don’t know. I never saw the man until about two weeks ago. He was turned over to me by accident. Everything seemed on the level. I did a little investigating myself. Rogers and Belton have known him for some time, and are anxious to get him into their business. I know his whole financial picture, the whole setup. He’s authentic, as far as I can make out. Why should he want to kill me?”

David sat down slowly. “You can’t be sure it was Carr. He might have tried to take a walk in the snow. He’s a country boy, you know.”

“The gun,” Henry reminded him. “It had been fired very recently. The bullets are forty-fives, and it was a forty-five that nearly hit me.”

David thought for a moment. “Would you, as a lawyer, accept wet slacks and shoes, and a gun which had been fired—you don’t know exactly when—as evidence that Carr had tried to kill you?”

“I’d give it plenty of consideration; those things plus the other circumstances—the storm and no one else around, no footprints but mine and Evelyn’s, and the footprints on the roof, and the snow on the floor of the attic room.”

“And the motive?”

“I can’t find any. I hardly know the man.”

“So,” David said reflectively, “we have a stranger in the house, whose actions are somewhat suspicious, to say the least, but who comes to you in a perfectly bona fide way, well vouched-for, aboveboard, who never knew you before, never saw Laura until he came here—nothing mysterious about him. Yet, you are sure he tried to kill you, and Laura. The only explanation could be that he’s a homicidal maniac. Now, you’ve met homicidal maniacs in your career. Think about them. Does Carr resemble them in any way?”

“You never know a man is a homicidal maniac until he kills people,” Henry replied soberly. “I had a client only a year ago. Fine husband, fine father, excellent businessman, no financial worries, no family difficulties. But on Christmas Day, without showing any hostility to anyone before that, he shoots his wife, his son, and tries to kill his daughter and then himself. His wife died, and so did his son; his daughter lived. I talked with the girl. Daddy, she said, had always been ‘the loveliest daddy in the world’, and the poor girl couldn’t explain it at all. Berserk.”

“Let’s go into it a little further,” David suggested. “You got psychiatrists for him, didn’t you?”

Henry could not help smiling. “Three of them. My client could afford it. One said the client was completely sane and understood what he’d tried to do. So, we dismissed him. We got another in his place. The verdict was homicide while mentally incompetent’—in other words, ‘temporary insanity’. He’ll be out in another six months. He’s recovered.”

“Well,” David said thoughtfully, “that’s an entirely different proposition. Confidentially, why did your client try to wipe out the whole family community, including himself? Or did he try to eliminate himself, honestly? Or, are you trying to imply a parallel between your client and John Carr? After all, as we’ve so carefully noted, Carr never knew you before, and never saw Laura until a couple of nights ago. But your client had lived with his family, knew them intimately. Never mind the temporary insanity bit. You talked with the man. Why did he do it?”

Henry hesitated and then shrugged. “Frankly, I think he didn’t really intend to kill himself. He just grazed the side of his skull with a bullet; very precise. Enough to stun him and knock him out for a while. A real suicide does better than that; they usually stick the gun in their mouths or aim carefully at a temple. Of course,” he added meticulously, “he was in a state of mind, after the other killings, where his hand might not have been very steady.”

“Stop talking double talk,” David told him. “Why did he go on the rampage?”

“I think, though I’m not sure, that there was a woman involved, whom he wanted to marry. His wife could have refused him a divorce.”

“You know damn well that was behind it all. All right, let’s make it hypothetical. John Doe, impeccable in every way, kills his wife and son, tries to kill his daughter, then carefully shoots himself so he isn’t killed. Let’s say he has a perfectly reasonable motive in wanting to kill his wife, but why his children? They couldn’t have stood in the way of a second marriage.”

Henry was silent, staring at the floor.

“Were the children his own?” David asked.

Henry answered reluctantly, “Well, the son wasn’t. His wife was a widow when she married him; she had that boy by her first husband; he was twenty-three when the shooting took place. The girl was his own, nineteen.”

“And she lived. How badly was she hurt?”

“Flesh wound in the right arm.”

“So Daddy’s girl wasn’t in any danger. How much, by the way, did he get from his dead wife?”

“I told you he was all right financially, himself,” Henry said irritably.

“Nobody is,” David remarked placidly. “Money’s almost always the chief motive for murder. Well? How much?”

“About a million dollars.”

“A new love, and a million dollars.” David’s smile was infuriating. “Good enough. And as your unfortunate client was temporarily insane when he killed his wife and his stepson, he inherited. Who died first?”

“The wife.”

“So her son was one of her heirs. As he wasn’t married—he wasn’t, was he?—his sister would be his heir. So, the girl is provided for, no drain any longer on Daddy, and Daddy gets his wife’s loot. He’s free to marry again. Very neat and clean-cut.

“However, none of these things applies to John Carr. He isn’t a relative; he’s an absolute stranger. He has no hostility towards you, and certainly no hostility for Laura. He has no motive to be a homicidal maniac—as your client had. As a reasonable man, and a cynical lawyer, can you ascribe any motive to him for wanting to kill you and Laura?”

“I don’t know everything,” Henry told him. “There are reaches in the human mind and soul—”

“Let’s not get mystical. Carr’s not insane. You’re ready to admit that? Even insane people have a peculiar logic of their own when they commit murder, but logic, even insane logic, has to have a foundation. You don’t think he took a dislike to your pretty hazel eyes, do you?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Well, you’re trying very hard to be, Hank. Carr’s out, in spite of the hanky-panky with the gun, and climbing out of the attic window. Let’s say he’s whimsical, or just cute, trying to stir up excitement. He shot one shot. A man out to kill, who’s worked himself up to kill, doesn’t stop at one shot, unless he scored. He didn’t try again, though he could have. Maybe he’s hyperthyroid; they can’t stand prolonged periods of peace and quiet, I’ve heard. Anything for laughs, on a day when everything is snowbound. They have gallows humor, sometimes. If Carr had wanted to kill you, my friend, he would have.”

“Maybe that was a blind,” Henry suggested. “Maybe his real target was Laura.”

David made a sound of complete exasperation. “Why? He never saw her before.” He paused. “Or, did he?”

Henry raised his eyes and stared at David.

“I never thought of that.” He covered his face with his hands.

“Laura did insist she had seen him before,” David reminded him. “Would you, for instance, call that a ‘blind’?”

“I don’t know what to think!” Henry burst out.

“You think that it’s possible that Laura has been playing games behind your back, when she got bored up here all this time?”

“You can’t say that about Laura!” Henry cried. “I refuse to think it.”

“Good, loyal husband,” David commented. “Now, think again. You and Laura may have met him at that party. You aren’t sure that you remember him. But you are sure that you never saw him until a couple of weeks ago. Are you so sure now?”

There was a long silence. Then Henry lifted his head, and he looked ill. “I—I did think he looked familiar, perhaps too familiar, when Laura mentioned it a couple of nights ago. I had the strange feeling that I’d seen him around—a lot of times. But I can’t remember where or when.”

“Around here? In New York? In one of these bleak country clubs you have up here?”

Henry stood up and went to the frosted window. His fingernail scratched at the thick white deposit. He said, at last, “Yes. I’m pretty sure of it now.”

“Before you ever met him at that restaurant you told me about, and before he was your client?”

There was another silence. Then he spoke almost inaudibly. “Yes, somewhere, I know! Several times!”

He turned to David, and was shocked at the expression on the other man’s face. He moved back a step or two.

But David spoke easily. “Now, why should our little Laura, who always blurts out everything, try to hide from you, or anyone else, that she knew John Carr very well indeed? If it was all innocent, that is?”

Henry’s hand trembled as he rubbed his mouth. David went to him and touched his shoulder lightly. “Don’t go off the deep end. We’ve just been exploring—possibilities.”

Henry stared at him in anguish. “I know what you’re thinking. Laura’s poisoning was just a blind. I’m his real target.”

“It could be,” David said. “Just watch it, will you?”

“Then Laura’s really safe? Nothing will happen to her?”

David spoke with authority. “Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”

Henry sighed. “That’s all I care about. I’m exhausted! I must have been insane, myself, to let you say what you did about Laura.”

“Go down and eat your breakfast. Things might look different after you’ve eaten. I’ve already had my breakfast, and from the looks of the help they’re getting restive.”

Walking like an old and broken man, Henry left the room. David watched him go. When he heard his slow footsteps on the stairs, he went into Laura’s room.

She had eaten all the food, and was half asleep. When David came in she smiled at him and held out her hand. “Dear David. You are so good to me.”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I see you’ve eaten your breakfast. Stay down? Good.” He sat on the edge of her bed, and his smile disappeared. “Laura. I’ve told you before, but I want to mention it again: don’t eat or drink anything that I haven’t okayed. You’ll remember that?”

“Of course,” she promised.

Suddenly there was a loud thumping sound, and then a whirring.

“Oh, good!” Laura exclaimed. “The lines are up again!”

They both listened to the hum of the furnaces. “Now everything will be wonderful for tonight! No more freezing rooms. No more huddling around the fireplaces, no more smelly oil stoves—David, why are you looking at me so strangely?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Why, of course.”

“I was just thinking that you and Alice are the same age, chronologically, but you are a child in comparison with her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.” Laura laughed.

“It isn’t. When are you going to stop believing the world’s a lovely place, Laura, full of the kindest people, just teeming with affection and good will?”

Laura appeared startled.

“I don’t, honestly,” she said in a low voice. “I know what the world’s like.”

“Then why, in God’s name, do you give the impression that you are about sixteen years old?”

She hesitated. Without appearing to be conscious of the act, she reached out a slender white finger and began to trace a slow pattern over the back of David’s hand. He sat very still, watching her.

“I think it’s because I am—afraid. I’d like to think the world is good and decent and kind. I know better, really. But I had a lot of it the other way—loneliness, fear, desertion, cruelty. When I came here to be with Aunt Clara, it was like leaving a dark, cold place for sunshine, where someone saw me, not as a nuisance, but as a person who deserved to be cared for. It was strange about Aunt Clara,” she said, thinking back. “She was so sensible, so realistic. She had loved my mother, who found life joyous and amusing. I was surprised that Aunt Clara seemed to think, when Mama was here, that the world had—another face. I was so grateful to Aunt Clara, who was old and alone. I knew, even when I was ten, that she was exactly like me in so many ways. Mama had made her happy, had made her laugh, and cuddled up to her like a kitten. So, I tried to make it up to Aunt Clara, and pretended to be like Mama, so she would laugh again and enjoy some happiness. I—I often felt that Aunt Clara was the child, and not I. Sometimes I even thought it was Aunt Clara who had been lonely and afraid and abandoned, and not myself, and that she had come to me to be cared about; in other words, I almost felt that our positions were reversed. So I stayed with her all the time I could, being her guardian and taking my mother’s place, at the same time. I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that it’s all very complicated and complex. But that’s the best way I can explain it.”

“I think I understand,” David told her. “But, Laura, that doesn’t really explain why you persist in being childish at your age.”

Laura considered this without offense. Then she nodded. “Well, Henry expects it, I suppose, and I never had any friends to speak of. I discovered that people just don’t like you if you’re serious or sad or depressed. But if you pretend that you think everything is just lovely, they’re nice to you and want you around.”

David nodded gravely.

“But you don’t have many friends around here, do you?”

She laughed a little, and shook her head. “It’s awfully wearing to keep pretending all the time. So, when I just feel like being myself, which is almost always, I don’t go anywhere. Then Henry doesn’t get home until very late, and so we see little of the community except on summer weekends, at the club, and once or twice a week isn’t too much to be the life of the party, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s all I can stand, anyway, David.” She hesitated. “I met Henry when Alice became engaged to Sam, and he thought I was a fluffy helpless little thing, and he liked that. We’ve been married five years now, and I keep pretending—”

“That you’re a simple little girl who needs protection and pampering?” David’s tone was dry.

“I’m afraid so. Anyway, it makes him happy. I’m not a fool, really. It’s very tiring to be gay and gushing all the time. No one ever really cared about me except Henry and Aunt Clara and Mama, and so I have sort of—well, an inferiority complex, and I do try to please.”

David thought of his sister. “I suppose you antagonized Alice by your eagerness when you were kids here together?”

“Yes. I never did understand Alice. I felt, inside, just as lonely and insecure as she did, and I was always surprised that she didn’t understand.” The small white finger traced another pattern on David’s hand.

“People will only believe what they want to believe,” he suggested. “I’ve just been wondering when you’d give up the little girl bit, that’s all.”

“But Henry likes it. He expects it. He wants to be deceived. Sometimes I don’t know where the real me begins or ends. If I get serious with Henry, it makes him miserable. When he comes home he wants to find a never-never land, where everything is warm and beautiful.”

David’s face changed. He looked at her finger on his hand.

“If you had married me, Laura, you wouldn’t have had to pretend.”

She blushed. The afghan slipped from her shoulders. “You didn’t want to marry me, David! You always looked at me as if I amused you, and that frightened me.”

“You did amuse me,” he said. “I knew all about you.”

“You didn’t—” she murmured, and stopped.

He stood up. “I did,” he said flatly. He waited, and when she didn’t speak he went on. “Would it have made any difference, Laura? If you had known?”

Laura thought of the thin, dark, ‘older’ boy she had seen only a few times when she had been quite young. She had timidly thought him very handsome. But when he had looked at her coolly, she had told herself he probably thought her a silly child. Then she had seen him more often when Alice was working in New York, before she had married Sam Bulowe. And each time she had been aware of a kind of overwhelming excitement. However, she had needed to say only a few words to make him turn away, as if he were unutterably impatient with her. Then she had met Henry Frazier, who had accepted her for what, she saw now, was not herself at all. But she had suddenly loved him, when she had understood that he loved her. Her awareness of David, always too acute, had faded away.

“I’m very happy with Henry,” she told him. “We haven’t been married too long. We’ll understand each other, eventually. We’re reaching that point more and more, every day.”

“Good,” David said gently. He stood up, and went to the door, where he paused. “Don’t forget what I’ve told you. Eat or drink nothing unless I tell you you can.”

“All right,” she answered. The room was growing warm. “And I’ll get up very soon, David. We can’t have a really gay celebration tonight, because of Sam. But I will try to make it pleasant. I feel really well, thanks to you.”

He left without speaking again.