CHAPTER XXVIII

“Vera! Vera! Vera!”

Shadows again were coming toward Alice Tribeau out of the corners of the room, meeting above her, and brooding heavily like a thick, dark cloud. If she opened her eyes she wouldn’t see anything, because everything was murk. Her head felt delightfully light and clear. There was some pressure that had been released inside of it, and everything was happily light and clear—very lucid—and her thoughts ran smoothly along unobstructed channels with the rippling ease of a machine that had been repaired and set in motion again.

“Vera!”

It was a pleasure to exercise her thoughts with ease. They played with the dinner there had been that night (rabbit stew with vegetables and a sprig of bay leaf, the onions just a mite burned where they had stuck at the bottom of the casserole, celery, rhubarb tarts, and coffee), then dressing in jade, the dance, and Harry—his arms like fluid metal catching her hard against the wall of his chest; dancing, dancing, dancing; Daylo fiddling, leading, smiling; heat drenching the dance hall and Harry smelling warm and earthy and pushing his stub nose into her hair so it rested against her scalp; breathing harder, pressing her tightly, dancing, dancing, dancing (music and laughter), swinging her right off her feet and waltzing her, holding her, clear around the room, and people applauding and Martha Heminway looking sick because it was Alice he was dancing, dancing, dancing…poison in a bottle in the sink and Vera turning brittle eyes, and the brittle sound of breaking glass…

“Vera! Vera!”

It wouldn’t do to stop and puzzle over why somebody was shouting for Vera. The little lost links must be fitted into the smoothly gathering chain—how easily they were coming back and slipping into their appointed places. The dining room was dark when Vera shut the kitchen door behind her, and in the darkness and the stillness, distantly sifting through the archway, sifting through the darkness, gently ruffling up the stillness, came a little cough—very dry. Just before the bullet struck her, it had come: Mr. Sturm’s gently hacking little cough. The chain snapped taut with strengthened links. Her eyes were open and she was out of bed. And in the hallway someone was shouting at the top of his lungs for Vera, who was dead, and—a link strained fragilely, precariously—who, yes, who had been killed by the same person that had shot her. No, that wasn’t it—yes, it was, it must be. A voice had told her so.

But that wasn’t everything. There was something else. She had to get out of here quickly and run to Harry with her desperate knowledge, and nothing but Harry’s strong arms would quiet her and make her safe. Where was her coat? Down in the kitchen. Her galoshes were there, too. A quarter of a mile it was to Harry’s farm along a drifted road. She wouldn’t scream until she was right outside his door, and then she’d pound with her fists against it and scream and scream…She started on exaggerated tiptoe from the room.

There was nobody in the hall, and whoever had been shouting for Vera had stopped it. Her slippers were weighted with nightmare. She reached the door of the bathroom and heard the sound of retching behind it. Her fingers touched and slid along the velvet-covered railing of the stair well. Her slippers sank into the deep pile of the stair treads, lowering her gently into a sea of darkness. She felt herself being immersed in darkness, and when she reached the bottom of the stairs it would close in over her head. Boards of the lower floor clicked beneath her heels… “Where are you going, child?”

She looked back up the curving stairs. Mr. Sturm was standing at the head of them. His fingers tapered whitely on the velvet railing as he started quietly walking down the stairs.

Her tongue was welded, and the sight of him shot through her like a pain. When he stepped she stepped—backward into the living room, its doorway shutting out the sight of him, itself a dim rectangle in the darkness. She could not turn and run. Backward she kept on going with her eyes unwinking, staring at the empty rectangle that was suddenly occupied in outline by Mr. Sturm.

“My dear child, let me take you back upstairs to your room.” His voice was gentle, carrying softly in ribbon-like steel. “If there is anything you want in the kitchen let me get it for you.” The knob of the kitchen door was cupped behind her in her hand. She turned it ever so gently and the door swung inward into the cold, lardlike smell of the kitchen.

“Your place is in bed, child.”

He was coming at her through the archway, never hurrying his deliberate steps or the calm monotony of his voice—just a slender blotch against blackness coming at her step by step.

She almost stumbled down the step into the kitchen and her hand shook as she closed the door and fumbled for a key. Her fingers slid across the smooth, empty metal of the lock. The key was on the other side of the door. The key was always kept on the other side of the door so that the kitchen could be locked off from the house at night. She must have light. Her fingers fluttered gently about a switch and found the strength to turn it. Her fur coat was across a chair where she had thrown it. It hung about her shoulders like a warm and heavy anchor. She brushed a hair impatiently from in front of an eye so that nothing would interfere with her staring at the dining-room door. Its knob was turning. It was opening, and there, preceded by a hacking cough, was Mr. Sturm. His expressionless eyes rested impassively upon her warm fur coat.

“What madness have you in your head, child?”

He stepped down onto the kitchen floor. The movement released a word that had been imprisoned in her mouth.

“Blood.”

He hesitated in his gentle advance.

“Blood?”

She nodded. “Blood.”

“Where, my dear?”

“In a pitcher of water.” It wasn’t her voice at all. No sound of it belonged to her. Her mouth was an empty box, and sounds just came out of it of their own accord. An edge of the kitchen table checked her retreat. She began to sidle along the edge of the table. She had to reach the shed door. She had to open it and leap out behind the merciful curtains of snow that were further obscuring the already impenetrable night.

“Then is some blood in a pitcher of water?”

“No. There’s water.”

“Then where is the blood, my dear?”

If her lower lip wouldn’t tremble so she could keep it shut and stop those words from coming out of her mouth. They were for Harry, those words, if God let her live until he could take her in his arms.

“Tell me where the blood is, child.”

She never could make it. Mr. Sturm was sidling along the table edge, too. The table’s other edge. And he would reach the shed door before her.

It was sort of hopeless, and she began to cry a little.

“I can’t tell you about the blood, Mr. Sturm, sir.”

“No, no, of course not, dear child. Let me take that coat off for you and make you a quieting drink. I shall make you a pot of tea.”

If she could hurry just a little more, but it was so difficult to walk backward. The table edge slid away from her like a dock. The latch of the shed door was cold iron in her fingers, and the feel of Mr. Sturm’s fingers was like ice as they slid between the fur collar and her neck. They started tugging gently at her coat, and his face was pale above her like a visiting moon. His cheek was smooth chill marble as she pushed it violently with the palm of her hand.

“My dear child!”

The shed was a black iced vault tenanted with exploring winds. Its sliding door was rocklike with banked snow, and a nail split as her fingers wrenched against it. Snow drifted in to fill the widening crack. Somebody was screaming and lunging desperately through knee-deep snow. She hadn’t waited until she got to Harry’s door, after all. She was lunging desperately and screaming, screaming, screaming through the knee-deep snow…