She jerked the door open, but the closet was empty. The shoe bag still hung on the door, the safe was closed, and the sounds had ceased. Save for the low remote voice of Carlton and Susie from the library below the house was silent.
Out in the hall she felt better. The noise, whatever it was, had not been what she had heard before, and turning briskly she opened the door of Carlton’s room and went in. She stopped abruptly.
There was a man in the closet. He was standing with his back to her, and fumbling among the clothes hanging there.
She felt for the light switch and turned it on, to see William emerging, blinking.
“Is anything wrong, miss?” he asked.
She was surprised to discover that she was trembling.
“No. I was in Mrs. Fairbanks’s room and I heard a noise. I thought—”
He smiled, showing his excellent set of false teeth.
“It was me in the closet,” he explained. “I look after Mr. Carl’s clothes. He wants a suit pressed, and he’s got paint on the toes of these shoes this morning. I’m sorry if I scared you. I am afraid we are all in a bad state of nerves. If you’ll excuse me—”
She felt exceedingly foolish as he passed her with his usual impeccable dignity, but in doing so he dropped one of the shoes. She picked it up and looked at it. It was an old tan one, with a smear of white paint across the toe, and the ones Carlton had worn that morning had been black. There could be no doubt of it. She could see him now, his black shoes, his morning coat and striped trousers, as he moved from room to room, carrying his cigar box and hammer, and later the small can of white paint.
William had not noticed. He thanked her and went out, and she turned off the light behind him. She did not go out, however. She stood still until she heard him going down the back stairs. Then she closed the door, fumbled for a box of matches and getting down on her knees, began systematically to examine the row of neatly treed shoes on the closet floor.
She did not hear the door opening behind her. Only when the light went on did she realize that Carlton had come into the room. She turned, still on her knees, the smoldering match in her hand, to see him coming at her, his face contorted, the veins on his forehead swollen with fury.
For a moment she thought he was going to attack her. She got up quickly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was in your mother’s room, and I heard a noise in here. I thought it might be another rat.”
He did not believe her. She saw that. He took a step or two toward her and stopped.
“Aren’t you through here? In this house?” he said, his voice thick with anger. “My mother doesn’t need you anymore. Eileen Garrison has gone. Are you supposed to stay indefinitely, snooping around about what doesn’t concern you?”
“Are you so sure it doesn’t concern me?” she inquired. “The police sent me here, at your mother’s request. And they haven’t released me yet. I assure you I am more than willing to go.”
He got himself under control with difficulty. He walked past her and closed the closet door. When he faced her again his voice was more normal.
“At least I can ask you to keep out of the family rooms,” he said. “There are no rats in the house, and if anything of this sort happens again I advise you to notify the servants.”
She left with such dignity as she could muster. As she opened the door of her room she heard again the soft slithering sound she had heard before, but she was too shaken to investigate it. She stood at her window for some time, trying to think. It was very black outside. With the disappearance of the crowd the guards had evidently been removed, for by the light of the lamp on Huston Street she could see no one there. The stable was dark, as though Amos was either out or asleep.
She was astonished when the luminous dial of her watch showed only ten o’clock.
She was still there a few minutes later when Marian rapped at her door and slipped inside.
“Don’t turn on the light,” she said. “It’s too hot. Miss Adams, you were here. You saw it all. Who did it? Who killed my mother?”
Hilda could not see her. She was only a vague figure in the room, but her voice was hard and strained.
“I wish I knew, Mrs. Garrison.”
“That woman—why did she come here?”
“I think Mrs. Fairbanks had told her—”
“Nonsense,” Marian said sharply. “She had some purpose of her own. That statement that Frank was with me! I suppose she was after money. Did Mother give her any?”
“I wasn’t in the room. She may have.”
Marian took a case from the pocket of her housecoat and lit a cigarette. In the light from the match she looked more haggard than ever, but it was Jan’s eyes, dark and tragic, that looked out from her raddled face.
“I don’t understand anything,” she said. “Why did they put her in my room? The whole third floor was empty. And why have the police taken the screen from one of my windows? They have it, haven’t they?”
“There is a chance somebody got into the house last night through that window,” Hilda said guardedly. “I found it open. It could have been done from the roof of the porte-cochere. It was only a hook, and the blade of a knife—Or, of course, it might have been opened from within, by someone in the room.”
Marian dropped her cigarette.
“Oh, God!” she said. “Frank, of course. They think it was Frank, and she let him in! Have they arrested him yet?”
“No. They’ve talked to him. That’s all.”
“They will arrest him,” she said in a flat voice. “Jan says he was outside. They will arrest him, and what defense has he? He could have climbed to the roof. He’s very strong. I’ve seen him do it, on a bet. They’ll say she let him into her room and hid him there. But he didn’t do it, Miss Adams. He cared for my mother. He was the kindest man on earth. He’s had the patience of God himself, and I ruined his life. I was a jealous fool. I let him go. I made him go. So now—”
Hilda let her talk. Mentally she was back at the window of Marian’s room the night before, and something was whipping about in the wind outside. She looked at Marian.
“When I closed the screen in your room last night, before I found your mother, there was a light rope fastened to one of the outside shutters. Do you know anything about it?”
“A rope? Something that could be climbed? Good heavens, are you trying to say that Frank—”
“It wasn’t strong enough for that. Or long enough. I just wondered about it.”
But Marian was vague.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “It might have been there for years. I don’t remember it.”
Hilda went back with her to her room. It had changed, she thought, since Eileen was in it. The bed had a silk cover and small bright-colored pillows. The dressing-table where Eileen had so defiantly made up her face only a few hours ago still had the gold toilet set, but it was crowded now with creams and perfumes. A silver fox scarf had been tossed on a chair, and sheer undergarments, unpacked but not put away, lay on the chaise longue.
“Ida wasn’t well,” Marian said indifferently. “I sent her to bed.”
She had apparently forgotten the rope. But Hilda looked for it, raising the window to do so. It was gone. Marian shrugged when she told her.
“Maybe you only imagined it.”
“I didn’t imagine it,” said Hilda dryly.
Back in her room she tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, but she got nowhere. The rope had been there. Now it was gone. It must be important, must mean something. Had Eileen taken it away, and if so why? Or had someone in the house removed it? Not Carlton. He had been away after Eileen left and Marian arrived. Not Jan. She had gone to see Eileen and had not come back. Susie? She was quite capable of it, if it was important. She would have no scruples, Susie. But why would it be important? A rope and a bit of white paint on a tan shoe. They must fit somehow. Or did they?
She felt the need of action. For days, she thought, things had been going on around her. Not only the murder; small stealthy movements, doors opening and closing, people talking and saying nothing, going out and coming in, and always she had been merely the watcher, seeing but not comprehending. The night Carlton had carried the bundle from the stable, the figure at the top of the stairs, the open screen in Eileen’s room, and now—of all silly things—a missing rope.
She looked across. Susie’s light was on. It showed over the transom, and she went over and knocked lightly at the door. But she did not go into the room. Standing there she could hear Susie crying, childish sobs that were as unrestrained as everything else about her.
She got her flashlight from her suitcase and went down the stairs. The doctor’s car had just driven in. There was no mistaking its rattle, or the cough of its ancient engine. Young Brooke did not come into the house, however. Jan opened the door and stood there, her voice cool.
“I don’t understand you. That’s all,” she said.
“I’ve told you. I’m not living off any woman. You’re going to have money now, and I’m peculiar about money.” His voice was stubborn. “I’ll support my own wife, or I won’t have one.”
“I wouldn’t use the money, Court.”
“There’s where you’re wrong, my darling. You think you wouldn’t. You think you’d go hungry and without shoes. You wouldn’t. I watched you this afternoon and tonight, cleaning up the mess at your stepmother’s. You didn’t like it, did you? And that’s luxury, my child. One week of boiled beef and cabbage—”
“You can’t see anything but your perfectly sickening pride, can you?” said Jan, and closed the door on him.
Hilda went back to the kitchen. Unless the police had taken the rope it must be somewhere in the house, or in the yard. She tried the trash cans and the garbage pails outside without result. Then rather reluctantly she went down to the basement. It was enormous. She did not like to turn on the lights, and her flash made only a small pool of illumination in the darkness. There was rope there, a large coil of it for some reason in a preserve closet, but it was thick and heavy.
When she did find it it was in the furnace. A small fire had been built around it at some time, but it was only charred, not consumed. She pulled it out and turned the light on it, some eight feet of thin blackened rope, which must be important since someone had attempted to destroy it. She went back over the night before when she had seen it, Eileen asleep in her bed, the pouring rain, the slapping screen. And Susie in the hall, drenched to the skin.
She felt the ashes in the furnace. They were still faintly warm. Quite recently, then—within two or three hours—someone had tried to destroy it. She tried to think what it meant, but she was tired. She had slept a little that afternoon and since then she had been going around in circles.
Nobody saw her as she carried it upstairs. She wrapped it in a piece of newspaper and laid it in the top of her suitcase. Maybe tomorrow her mind would be clearer, or the inspector would fit it into his puzzle. All she wanted now was to go to bed.
She undressed by the open window, for the sake of the breeze. That was how she happened to see Jan when she left the house. Even in the darkness there was no mistaking her slim figure, the easy grace with which she moved. On her way to Courtney Brooke, she thought comfortably. To make it up, to say she was sorry, to effect a compromise between his pride and her own. Then she stared. Jan was not crossing Huston Street. There was no sign of her under the street light. She had gone into the stable.
Hilda never quite understood the fear which made her snatch up a dressing-gown and her flashlight and follow her. The lights were out in the lower hall, but the door to the porte-cochere was open. She was in her bare feet as she ran across the grass. Once at the stable, however, she began to feel foolish. The doors to the garage were closed and Amos’s windows overhead were dark. There was no sound to be heard, and it was not until she turned on her light that she saw the door to the staircase standing open. She stepped inside and looked up. It seemed to her that there was a small flickering light above in the loft.
Then it came, a crash from overhead that sounded as though the roof had fallen in. She was too shocked to move at first. She stood still, staring up. Her voice when it came sounded thin and cracked.
“Jan!” she called. “Jan! Are you there?”
There was no answer, and she ran up the stairs. At the top she turned the flashlight into the loft.
Jan was lying without moving on the floor, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead, and the heavy ladder was lying beside her.