Hilda was quite clear as to what followed. The doctor had hardly let himself out of the house when Carlton’s door banged open. He came into the hall, tying his dressing-gown around him, his hair rumpled and his face scowling.
“Good God!” he said. “Why don’t you turn that thing off?”
“Your mother likes it, when she can’t sleep.”
“Well, she might let the rest of us have a chance,” he said, and pushed savagely past her.
With the door open the noise in the hall was appalling, and he closed it all but an inch or so. He said, “Mother,” but Hilda heard no reply. The radio ceased abruptly, so that the silence was almost startling. But Carlton did not come out immediately. Later she was to be queried about that.
“How long did he stay? A minute? Two minutes?”
“Not more than two, at the most.”
“But more than long enough to go around the bed and shut off the radio?”
She was miserably uncomfortable.
“I don’t know. I heard something creak, and I thought he had opened the door to one of the closets. His mother’s safe was in it. The door always creaked.”
They timed her on that, too. One of the men walked into the room, turned the radio switch and came back.
“Longer than that?”
“Yes. I’m afraid—I think it was. I know I had time to uncork the Thermos jug and pour some coffee, and I had taken a sip or two before he came out.”
“How did he look?”
“I didn’t really look at him. He closed the door and said his mother was asleep. He must have gone to sleep himself soon after. I could hear him snoring.”
It had commenced to rain after Carlton went back to his room, a summer storm, with rolling thunder and sharp lightning. The rain was heavy. It poured down in solid sheets, and with it came gusts of wind which set the trees outside into violent motion. Somewhere, too, something was banging. Not a door. The sound was too light for that. Hilda decided to look for it and then abandoned the idea.
She ate her supper mechanically. The radio was still silent, and her watch said two o’clock when, having finished, she carried her tray to the back stairs landing to be picked up in the morning.
The sound was still going on when she went back to her post. It would stop just long enough for her to hope that it was over. Then with a fresh gust of wind it would start again.
She was listening for it when there was a crash from the back stairs, followed by a startled “Damnation” in what was unmistakably a feminine voice. When she reached the landing she opened the door to find Susie standing there, a Susie with soaking hair and in a wet raincoat over a bedraggled nightdress. She was standing on one foot and anxiously examining the other.
“Why the hell did you leave that thing there?” she demanded furiously. “I’ve damned near cut a toe off.”
In the light from the front hall Hilda grimly surveyed her, from her sodden blond hair to her slippers, one of which she held in her hands. One of her toes was bleeding, and a cup lay shattered on the tray.
“Better let me put some iodine on that,” Hilda said. “Where on earth have you been?”
“I went out to the garage. I’d left my cigarettes in the car.”
“It seems to be a family habit,” Hilda observed dryly. “Mr. Fairbanks did that a night or two ago. When you locked him out.”
Susie fixed a pair of sharp blue eyes on her.
“Oh,” she said. “So Carl said that, did he?” Suddenly she giggled. “Not very original, are we?”
She limped forward, and Hilda put her in a chair and dressed her foot, with its pink-painted toenails. But she did not go to bed at once. Nor did she produce any cigarettes. Later Hilda was to know that Susie had done a superb piece of acting that night; that she had been frightened almost out of her senses when she came racing up the stairs. Now, however, she was herself again.
She glanced at Eileen’s door and laughed.
“Good heavens,” she said, “when I think what would happen if Marian found her there, in her bed!”
Hilda deliberately picked up her knitting. She had an idea that camouflage was not necessary with Susie, but it did no harm to try.
“I don’t suppose she would like it,” she said absently, counting stitches.
“Like it! Don’t underestimate our Marian, Miss Adams. She’s a tigress when she’s roused. She’d do anything. What on earth is that noise?”
The slapping had started again. It seemed now to come from Eileen’s room, and while Susie watched her Hilda opened the door cautiously. Eileen was asleep, her face relaxed and quiet, but one of the screens, the one of the window she had opened over the roof of the porte-cochere, was unhooked. It swung out, hesitated, and then came back with a small, sharp bang. The rain was coming in, wetting the curtains, and Hilda, having hooked the screen, closed the window carefully.
Susie had not moved. She was examining her foot.
“What was it?” she inquired.
“A window screen.”
“That’s funny. Marian always keeps them hooked. She’s afraid of burglars. That roof outside—”
She stopped suddenly, as if she had just thought of something.
“What about Eileen? Is she asleep?”
“She’s had a hypodermic. She’s dead to the world.”
“She couldn’t have opened it herself?”
“Not for the last hour or so. Anyhow, why would she?”
But the open screen worried her. She took her flashlight and went back into Eileen’s room. It was as she had left it, Eileen’s suitcase on the floor, the window closed, and Eileen still sleeping. She went to the window and examined the screen. It could have been unhooked from the outside. A knife blade could have done it. But if there had been any marks on the roof beneath, the rain had washed them away. One thing struck her as curious, however. A thin light piece of rope was hanging down from one of the old-fashioned outside shutters. It swayed in the wind and one end of it now and then slapped against the window itself. But although it seemed to serve no useful purpose, it might have been there for years.
She left the window and opened the bathroom door. The bathroom was empty, and so, too, was Marian’s closet, save for the row of garments hanging there. When she went back into the hall Susie was still there.
“Find anything?”
“No. How long has that rope been fastened to the shutter over the porte-cochere?”
“Rope?” said Susie blankly. “What rope?”
Hilda was worried. Useless to tell herself that nobody could have entered Mrs. Fairbanks’s room that night. Useless to recall all the precautions she had taken. Her bland cherubic face was gone now. Instead she looked like an uneasy terrier.
“I’m going in to see Mrs. Fairbanks,” she said. “She can’t do any more than take my head off.”
She opened the door and went in. The room was cool and dark, but outside the wind had veered and the curtains were blowing out into the room. She put down the window and then turned and looked at the bed. She only remembered dimly afterward that Susie was standing in the doorway; that there was a brilliant flash of lightning, and that all at once Susie was pointing at the bed and screaming. Loud piercing shrieks that could be heard all over the house.
She herself was only conscious of the small old figure on the bed, with the handle of a common kitchen knife sticking up from the thin chest.
Carlton was the first to arrive. He bolted out of his room in pajamas, and stopped Susie by the simple expedient of holding his hand over her mouth.
“Shut up,” he said roughly. “Have you gone crazy? What’s the matter?”
Susie stopped yelling. She began to cry instead, and he looked helplessly at Hilda, standing rigid at the foot of the bed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fairbanks,” she said. “Your mother—”
“What’s happened to her?”
“I’m afraid,” she said, her voice sounding far away in her own ears. “I’m afraid she’s been killed.”
He shoved Susie aside, switched on the lights and went into the room. He did not say anything. He stood looking down at the bed, like a man paralyzed with horror. Not until he heard Jan’s voice outside did he move.
“Don’t let her in,” he said thickly. “Keep everybody out. Get the police.” And then suddenly: “Mother, Mother!”
He went down on his knees beside her bed and buried his face in the bed.
When he got up he was quieter. He looked what he was, an insignificant little man, looking shrunken in his pajamas, but capable, too, of dignity.
“I’d better look after my wife,” he said. “She has had a shock. Will you—do you mind calling the police? And the doctor? Although I suppose—”
He did not finish. He went out into the hall, leaving Hilda in the room alone.
She did not go downstairs at once. She went to the bed and touched the thin old arm and hand. They were already cool. An hour, she thought. Maybe more. She had sat outside and eaten her supper, and already death had been in this room, in this body.
Automatically she looked at her wrist watch. It showed a quarter after two. Then her eyes, still dazed, surveyed the room. Nothing was changed. The card table and rocking chair were by the empty hearth. The door to the closet with the safe was open only an inch or two, and when she went to it, being careful not to touch the knob, the safe itself was closed. Nothing had disturbed the window screens. They were fastened tight. And yet, into this closed and guarded room, someone had entered that night and murdered the old woman.
She was very pale when she went out into the hall. The household was still gathering. William and Maggie in hastily donned clothing were coming along the back hall. Ida was halfway down the stairs to the third floor, clutching the banisters and staring, her mouth open. Jan was standing in a dressing-gown over her nightdress, her eyes wide and horrified, and Susie was in a chair, with Carlton beside her and tears rolling down her cheeks.
Hilda surveyed them. Then she closed the door behind her and turning the key in the lock, took it out.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Nobody is to go in until the police get here. I’ll call them now.”
But she did not call them at once. Eileen, roused from her drugged sleep, had opened her door. She stood there swaying, one hand against the frame.
“What is it?” she said dazedly. “Has something happened?”
It was Carlton who answered, looking at her without feeling, as if he could no longer feel anything, pity or love or even anger.
“Mother is dead,” he said. “She has been murdered.”
Eileen stood very still, as if her reactions were dulled by the drug she had had. She did not look at Carlton. It was as though she saw none of them. Then her hold on the door relaxed and she slid in a dead faint to the floor.