Alex did not sit down, but Guy Adriance did go out, saying good night quickly, but with manners, even to Rob Murray. And Alexis Murray, with a furious frown at her father, her blue eyes piercing and her black cap of hair bobbing angrily, followed him out on the porch.
Rob started to get up.
“Hold your horses, Rob,” Faye said.
“That so-and-so …”
“You’ll only egg them on. Stop it quick! They’ll run away or something.” Faye added in a quiet tone, “Seems funny my advising you, Rob. It’s often been the other way round. But anyway I don’t hold grievances. I get over things and they’re gone for good.”
Rob shrugged and sat down and started drinking his coffee.
At any rate, Guy was doing as he was told. His car started up, its motor catching suavely, and went purring around the drive. The front door slammed and Alex shot past the hall door and up the stairs.
Stephen Banning, who had said nothing, and had spent this little interval eyeing the carpet, got up and said he’d be getting along. He’d be over first thing in the morning, he said, and if there was anything he could do would Rob call him, please.
“Not on that party line,” Rob said. Then he thanked Steve and apologized to everybody for losing his temper. Steve said a so-long and went out. His car started noisily and chugged off.
Rob and Patrick drank their coffee and went back to the barn. That left me alone with Faye Murray.
It was twenty-five minutes past twelve, and a little over two hours ago we had sat in this big serene house and imagined they hadn’t a serious trouble in the world. Plenty of money, interesting work, a heavenly place to live. Alex was stepping out with a boy they didn’t care for, but there was no feeling then that it was really very serious. And now?
“Like a cognac, Jean?” Faye asked.
“Love it,” I said.
She fetched the bottle and three snifters. She brought only three because Rob never drank anything but bourbon, she said, the third being for Patrick. I knew she need not have bothered for Patrick, either. Patrick drank Scotch, when anything, and in Kentucky he had been loyally settling for bourbon. This kind of twaddle continued only until we were nursing the brandy glasses in our hands and smoking our cigarettes.
“It was the ring,” I said, then.
Faye smiled. “You keep your eyes open, Jean.”
“I suppose it was his mother’s,” I said. “Those old-fashioned mountings are sometimes so ugly, don’t you think?”
She nodded.
“How we do change! Our tastes, I mean. I once thought that ring—that kind of ring—the most beautiful thing in all the world.”
“Faye, you said that ring.”
“Darling, you’re very persistent.” She smiled and said, “Oh, hell. Why be coy? Sure it was that ring. I’m surprised Kitty took the chance, the way she wants that house back. She gave the ring to Guy, of course. She probably didn’t think Rob would recognize it. I suppose Guy wanted to get the poor child promised and hurried the ring business a bit. It’s not his style at all. Maybe he thought the sentiment would help. Maybe it did, too.”
“Poor child? Do you mean Alex? She’s a perfect little demon, Faye!”
“Not really. Alex will listen to reason.”
“He won’t,” I said. “There’s something about him. I don’t blame Rob for being uneasy.”
Faye said, “It’s what’s about him that will straighten Alex out. She merely needs to be told and I’ll do that telling and that will be all there is to it.”
“Told what?”
“That he’s no good. Period. She’s a little dazzled. She’s young and Guy’s been around. But Rob has only himself to blame. He wouldn’t let them get married.”
“Who?”
“Alex and Steve, of course. I thought you knew that. They had been engaged two years before Guy showed up. They both finish the university this June. Steve’s twenty-five. So is Guy. Alex will be twenty in June, but Steve lost three years in the war so they’re getting out of school together. It will come out all right. It has to.”
“It doesn’t always, Faye.”
“It does with Rob. You don’t think he’s going to let his one-and-only marry Guy Adriance, do you? He’ll stop that, or else.”
“What ails Guy exactly?”
“I won’t tell you,” Faye said. “I always let bygones be bygones unless there is something to be gained by dragging one up. I’ll tell Alex what I have to, but I’ll never tell her about the ring.” She laughed again and said, “Maybe everything always works out fine. If I had married John Adriance I’d be stuck with son Guy.”
I said, “It was your ring and then it was Kitty’s.”
“Snooper,” Faye said. She laughed again. She was light of heart, or at least she sounded so. “Dammit, Kitty did me a favor. I almost died of a broken heart. I was seventeen. Within one year I was in love again, and then out, and in, and out, and then … Steve’s a fine-looking lad, don’t you think?”
“Very. Wonderful gray eyes.”
“Rob shouldn’t take all the blame, Jean. Steve Banning put the wedding off too. He had to get a G. I. loan to clear a mortgage off his farm, and what with a shambles for a house, and his schooling, and this and that he didn’t want to marry yet. But they should have got married. It shouldn’t’ve been put off. It’s always a mistake—nearly always.”
“What about Kitty’s house? I mean, why is she fussing?”
“Oh. Rob bought the place from her several years ago. Then she said she couldn’t find a place to live. With his permission she remained there while he remodeled it beautifully, or rather reconditioned it, and then she wanted it back. Now she says she has the money. But Rob never has intended to let her stay there, and she knows it. He’s been nice, but he wouldn’t have been had he anticipated this Guy situation.”
“How is she related?”
“She isn’t. Do you think I’d be talking like this if she was kin?”
“Alex called her Aunt Kitty.”
“Courtesy handle, that’s all. I hope she marries the doctor. He’s said to have pots of money and Kitty can use all she can get. She worries because he’s from the wrong side of the tracks. He knows it and feels humble about it, poor thing. But he worships her and always will.”
“His intentions certainly appear honorable.”
Faye smiled the quick gay smile.
“But definitely,” she said. “Kitty demands that. And, indeed, so would he. Didn’t you notice the little glimmer behind his bifocals when he was talking about what he called the Boston young lady? He thought her a tramp. Dr. Gusdorf would be titillated somewhat by her trampiness, but he was letting everybody know, and in particular Kitty, that he did not approve of her. The doc might want to jump in bed with his intended but he would never marry her if she permitted it before the wedding. By the way, who was the Boston gal?”
“Nobody we knew, Faye. We thought her British, not Bostonian. But the doctor put her down on his card as from Boston and she let it ride. Don’t you know her? When you phoned and I told Patrick it was you she gave me a special kind of look which made me think she must know you.”
“You haven’t told me her name.”
“Oh. Daphne Benson.” Faye shook her head. I said, “She was tall, angular, and not at all attractive, even though she had an apple-blossom skin and heavenly blue eyes and the most gorgeous daffodil-yellow hair.”
“Daffodil? Real?”
“Yes. Real. You can always tell.”
“Women can,” Faye said. “Maybe it’s because we look, zealously and jealously. Daphne Benson—no. I’ve never known anybody named Daphne Benson. I suppose the doctor could be right in being suspicious. But it’s such a bother. Think of the trouble it takes just to be suspicious. Waste of good time.”
The talk wandered’ round for a while and came back to Kitty again.
“Is John Adriance dead?”
“Nobody knows. One day he wasn’t around and the farm was deeded to Kitty and she had money in the bank. Enough, if she weren’t so extravagant. He never wrote back. She spent her cash and mortgaged the farm and finally sold it to Rob. It’s right over there.”
Faye waved her cigarette vaguely to the southeast and then said, “She thought she would get Rob in the deal and she would have, no doubt, if he could have forgotten what she did to me. I mean what Rob thinks she did to me. We don’t see eye to eye on my having been jilted in the remote past. Rob is such an old dear. But there are some things he never forgives. As a rule he thinks all women are wonderful, so nothing short of a wrong to Alex or me would ever have set him against Kitty. He loathes her. But he couldn’t put even Kitty out on the street during the housing shortage. He ought to have booted her out of that house long ago. He’ll have trouble now. Another cognac?”
“No, thank you. Tell me more.”
“There isn’t any more.”
“There’s a great deal. And you’re worried.”
“Rob’s worried. Not me. Rob’s tough, but he can’t deal with slickers like Guy and he knows it. He made his money the hard way and he hasn’t any use for s.o.b.’s like Guy Adriance. But Alex will be all right unless Rob does something foolish. Alex has a temper like all the Murrays, but she’s got sense. Casey’s death has upset Rob awfully. He’s the one I’m concerned about tonight.”
“For his sake, I hope it is murder,” I said.
Faye’s glance was peculiar. “That’s a funny thing to say.”
“I know it,” I said. “I don’t think I made sense. I hope it’s suicide then and that there is something to prove it wasn’t Rob’s fault.”
“That’s better,” Faye said.
I said, “Do you like Dr. Gusdorf?”
“As a doctor, yes.”
“Is Kitty divorced?”
“Yes. She finally brought herself to get one,” Faye said.
On leaving the Murrays we turned right on the main pike a short distance, then left again onto a narrower black-top, or pike, as they call them in Kentucky. Here the trees along the fences interlaced across the road, making what would be a bower when the leaves were fully out. The moonlight made the branches lacy and romantic.
My husband was in no mood for romance. He pulled up short suddenly and tooled the car over to the side of the road. Then he hoisted himself onto the back of the seat to examine something which had attracted his notice, a sort of lane between two parallel fences close together, a lane wide enough for a car but not used apparently for that purpose. There were gates, two gates, for the lane continued to the left and right of the pike.
“It’s that same bridle path, Pat. There’s Casey’s cabin, even closer to this road than to the Murrays’. And the house across the field on our left must be the Adriance house. The bridle path goes past it, too.”
“It circulates all over the fifteen-hundred-odd Murray acres,” Patrick said. “It’s used to move the horses and machinery from one part of the farm to another.”
“And by anyone on horseback, I suppose?”
“Yes. I’ve got to go back to Casey’s cabin. You come, too. I don’t want you sitting here alone.”
“Pat, I must tell you what Faye said while you and Rob went back to the barn. For one thing, Kitty did her wrong. Kitty took Guy’s father away from Faye. But Faye got over it.”
“Good thing, if he was anything like his son,” Patrick said.
We had left the car and had opened the gate and were walking along the bridle path toward the cabin.
“Faye’s a queer woman, Pat. Very attractive, don’t you think? But she’s not telling everything, I bet.”
Patrick gave me a small spank.
“Have you been probing?”
“Yes, but I didn’t get very far. She talked a good deal but it doesn’t add up to much. I said I hoped Casey had been murdered and she said that was a funny thing to say, and I agreed and said that I hoped it was suicide but that we would find out that Rob was in no way to blame.”
“God, yes,” Patrick said. He caught my hand to make me walk faster. Having heels on I moved beside him in a sort of lame dog-trot, but talked on, lowering my voice.
“I think from what Faye says Rob acts quickly, too quickly, and sometimes regrets it.”
“‘You’ve got something there.”.
“Faye says she is more worried on his account than for Alex. I mean, about Guy Adriance. She says Alex has a lot of sense and all she will have to do is tell Alex how Guy ticks and that will fix things.”
“Rob does not agree,” Patrick said. “He thinks Guy has to be got rid of. Got out of town, I mean. He thinks Guy has an irresistible way with the girls and that Alex is in danger of ruining her whole life.”
“Whole lives don’t always ruin that way.”
“They sometimes do,” Patrick said. “All depends on your capacity for getting over things. Look, don’t talk. Here’s the cabin and we’re going in and we haven’t any right to. Strangely enough when the coroner said it was suicide Rob waited a while and then he decided I should lay off. We’re trespassing, and both Faye and Rob are reputed to be crack shots. I didn’t bring you to Kentucky to be a fatality, dear.”
“But why are we going back, Pat?”
“I want that Esquire calendar.”
“That? It’s old as the hills. And Faye gave it to Casey as a joke because his house was so sort of dull and respectable. Not a very good joke at that, and she says so, It’s …”
“Shut up,” Pat said.
He had left a door off the latch when he and Rob had returned to the cabin with the sheriff and his men and he now entered easily and, while I watched the door, went on in and after a while came out with the calendar.
It was two o’clock when we got back to the hotel.