An old soft-voiced colored man in a black suit and a white shirt opened the door. He looked puzzled because he did not know me. I gave him my name and he smiled in a friendly way and said would I please step into the parlor.
“Miss Kitty say let anybody see him that wants but she taking a nap herself,” he said. “She beg to be excuse.”
He meant the body of Guy Adriance. The undertaker had done a bang-up job to get him back in such a hurry, I thought, and though I do not like to look at the dead, I had seen Guy Adriance when he wasn’t properly fixed up for burial and I decided to have another look at him.
He looked wonderful. The mantel had been made into a screen of lilacs from Kitty’s own garden. The long gray casket stood in front of these lilacs with masses of lilacs in baskets on the floor, at the ends and in front. Her handsome son was on view and handsomely mounted. He wore his dinner jacket and he rested on tufted white satin. He would like this, I thought.
And no wonder Kitty hadn’t wanted flowers. How beautiful this lilac color was for the occasion, and especially in a room with so much blue. The perfume of the lilacs was heavenly, and there was nothing untidy sent in by friends with bad taste, such as a spray of wilting red roses, say, or a basket of pallid snapdragons.
The old man said, “He looks nice, ma’am.”
“Very nice,” I said. “Please—but what is your name?”
“Gabriel, ma’am. Alta and me is the couple.”
“Gabriel, I must speak with Mrs. Adriance. It is extremely important that I see her at once.”
“Well, I don’ know, ma’am. She say she take a nap, and not disturb her for nobody. Right after Miss Faye went she say don’ disturb her at all, please, ma’am.”
“Miss Murray hasn’t been gone long, Gabriel.”
“No’m.”
“Maybe she’s still awake?”
“Yes’m.”
“Tell her it’s Mrs. Abbott and I have something of very great importance to tell her. Tell her it concerns her son.”
Another soft voice spoke up from the dining-room door in the back hall, “What is it, Gabe?”
“It’s a lady, Alta. She say she got see Miss Kitty.”
“I don’ think Miss Kitty see nobody, ma’am,” Alta said. She came toward me and she, too, was in a black uniform, with a white apron, and with a frilled white cap on her grizzled hair.
“She’ll see me,” I said. “You go tell her who I am. Right away, please.”
“She pretty mad,” Alta said. She dropped her voice to say it. “She and Miss Faye, they argued. They both mad. Miss Kitty go in her room. Miss Faye she go tearing home. Miss Kitty say let her alone, ma’am.”
“If you don’t tell her I’ll go in there myself, Alta.”
They looked at one another. They were frightened. They did not know what to do.
“Here I go,” I said.
“Please, Miss,” Alta said. “I reckon I better be the one that goes in. Miss Kitty maybe got her teeth out and she don’ ’low nobody see her with no teeth.”
I followed Alta along the hall. The old man Gabriel stood near the front door, watching us as if he were frightened.
So Kitty wore dentures, I thought. Her dentist certainly had done a beautiful job. I would never have guessed it.
Alta tapped very timidly on the door.
There was no answer.
“Knock harder,” I said, ruthlessly.
She knocked a little harder, but not much. There was no answer. I stepped forward and pounded on the old, beautiful white-painted door.
“I reckon she took one them pills, ma’am.”
There was still no answer. I turned the knob and the door was unlocked and I walked into the room.
“Oh, Miss!” Alta wailed. She wheeled and took to her heels.
I paused for a moment to stare after her. She was acting like a scared rabbit. Her dark face looked gray from fright. She was standing in the dining-room door. Her voice quavered as she said, “I go back kitchen to fix lunch for Miss Kitty and the doctor, I reckon. Gabe, you come help me, hear? Gabe, you come along straight to kitchen.”
She rushed into the dining room and the old man passed me in a dogtrot and followed her. Why were Kitty’s servants so afraid of her? And why hadn’t she answered when I knocked?
I turned away and walked on into the bedroom.
There was a path of light from the door I had opened from the hall. Otherwise the room was in a sort of twilight. The shades, which were double, dark outside and white inside, were drawn all the way down, and the chintz curtains were drawn, too, making, aside from the light from the hall, a darkness as complete as could be had at midday with windows in a room.
Then I saw her. Enough light came in that I saw plainly what was wrong. Kitty was dead.
Her mouth was open and her eyes were wide open so that you could see the white all around the hard china-blue like blue glass discs. Her lips were drained of any shapliness by the absence of her dentures. She looked a thousand years old. Yet her blue-white curls were all in place and she had put on a pink silk negligee before she lay down on the turned-back bed. Her head rested on a pillow. Her bed linen was blue, but the prevailing color in this room was pink.
She had done it herself, I thought, at once. She couldn’t take the talk, I thought. The disgrace.
I had a worse thought immediately, but before I had said it even to myself the telephone rang, three times. I reached for it and said hello.
A man’s voice said, “Has Steve got home yet, ma’am?” I did not answer, but a woman’s voice on the line said no. I had forgotten this was a party line. Kitty was not the party wanted. The man said cheerfully, “You tell him to ring up the state’s attorney’s office soon as he gets back, ma’am. And tell him for me,” he added chuckling, “that he’s about the worst liar we’ve met in a long time. We about died laughing from that confession he made. I reckon we all know Steve.”
I hung up. So they knew Steve didn’t do it, then. But what did that mean for Alexis?
And what about Kitty? Had she killed her own son and then herself?
No, she hadn’t killed herself. The answer to that one was right here for anybody to see.
I was reaching for the phone to call Patrick when the front door opened and there were short sturdy steps coming along the hall. Dr. Gusdorf appeared in the door. He glanced at me, cocked his head, and perhaps because of the way my face must have looked, he turned to look at Kitty. He brushed me aside. He stooped down and examined the body.
The next part was worse. He quickly drew a sheet over the dead horrible face and knelt beside the bed and began sobbing like a child.
Poor thing, I thought. He had loved the woman, after all.
I started to get out of the room. This was no place for me. Of all the bad ideas I had had in all my life this was positively the very worst. It had been haywire from the start. I should have stayed at the hotel. If I hadn’t barged in I would be there now. And I wouldn’t have it on my mind—if I had done what Patrick said to do—that Faye Murray had left this house a little while ago and that she and Kitty had argued. The servants knew that, too.
Faye might stand up and lie for Alexis, but Faye would never lie for Faye. ’
And the law had been onto her all the time, I thought. That cheerful voice from the prosecutor’s office said that Steve was the worst liar they had met in a long time. They had about died laughing over his confession. After he left, of course.
The telephone rang. One long important ring this time.
The doctor spoke up from the bedside and without looking at me said, “Please answer it.” His voice was hoarse and thick.
“Maybe I can take it on some other extension?” I said gently.
“There is no other extension. It is probably my office calling. I cancelled all appointments in order to be with Kitty, but my nurse might phone me here. Find out what it is please, and say I’ll call back presently. I’m sorry to trouble you.…”
“It’s no trouble, Dr. Gusdorf.”
The phone rang again. I said, “Hello?”
“Jean?” It was Patrick. “You damn fool! What the hell do…?”
“I’m coming right into town, dear. Everything’s all right.”
“What do you mean all right?”
“Well, I didn’t mean that exactly. I mean—well, Mrs. Adriance is …”
“Don’t say it!” the doctor cried. He jumped up. “Give me that phone, please.”
He seemed almost crazy from grief. He was frantic. I handed over the phone and, since he was now between me and the door into the hall, I decided to leave by way of the bathroom. Kitty had said that two bedrooms shared the bath, Guy’s being the front room which would be opposite the parlor. I stepped soundlessly on the rosy deep-piled carpet of the bedroom and went into the bathroom.
But the door into the other bedroom was locked on the other side. I could not go through that way. I had to wait, then.
The doctor had not yet spoken on the phone. He was blowing his nose. He was trying to pull himself together, I supposed. I waited and I looked around the pink bath. Kitty’s teeth were in a blue china dish on the pink wash-stand. Kitty’s blue towels, monogrammed, hung in graduated sizes on the towel racks. Anything soiled or even mussed went instantly into the hamper, I was thinking, as I heard Dr. Gusdorf start to talk.
“Mr. Abbott?” His voice still quavered but grew steadier as he went on. “This is Dr. Gusdorf. I just got here. Your wife is here, too…. She’s all right. Quite. Mr. Abbott, something terrible has happened here…. I don’t want to speak of it on the phone, please, but it was something I was afraid might happen. She felt herself utterly disgraced.… I cancelled everything and came here to prevent the possibility of what has happened happening. I was too late…. Never mind that now. Have you still got those electro-cardiograms? You haven’t? You destroyed them, you say? What a pity, but never mind that now. Look, get hold of the sheriff and have him throw a net out for that Benson woman. I’m pretty sure she killed Guy Adriance. Her car has been standing near here at night, but I didn’t recognize it till I saw it at Robison’s last night. Even then I wasn’t sure but when I went to check up on it this morning she had gone. I understand you paid her room rent. So maybe you know where she is. She was married to Guy Adriance. Yes, his mother told me this morning. It broke her heart…. Sure, the woman was faking that heart attack. She contacted you when she knew I was in the lobby and was almost sure to be called when she wanted a doctor. What?—She wanted to get acquainted with me in order to put some sort of pressure on Adriance, I suppose. He probably wasn’t giving her any money…. More about that later, when you get here, Mr. Abbott. I’ve talked too much as it is. This is a party line, but I’m pretty upset.… I hope you don’t think I was withholding evidence? I didn’t know anything definite till this morning, and poor Kitty did not know it herself until her son … You’re quite right. I’ll say no more till you’re here.”
He hung up and I came out of the bathroom.
I said, “But she didn’t ask for a doctor, Dr. Gusdorf.”
He looked at me, brushed his hand across his specs, and said, “Do you mean Kitty? Mrs. Adriance?” he amended it, instantly.
“No, I mean Miss Benson. She may have pulled that stunt to get into our room, all right. Pat suspected that at the time, because it was a trick the men sometimes tried at the front when they wanted to evade active service. But it was Pat’s idea to get a doctor. She didn’t want one, and said so.”
“It does not matter, Mrs. Abbott. Please, will you leave me alone with my—with Kitty?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Gusdorf. I’m so sorry.”
I went into the hall. I thought I would go to the kitchen. It would be better to stay back there, with Alta and Gabriel, till Patrick arrived. I tried the dining-room door. It opened and I crossed the dining-room to the door into what must be the butler’s pantry.
It was locked. The frightened servants had locked it when they left me there with Kitty, then. They were afraid of her, anyone could see that. Did they already know she was dead?
I decided then to go out and sit in the car.
I glanced across the hall. The bedroom door was still open and the doctor was coming from the bathroom, carrying the little round blue dish which held Kitty’s teeth. That was kind of him. Thoughtful. I would not mention her wearing dentures, except to Patrick, I decided. Probably nobody knew it except her servants and her doctor and her dentist. The doctor would close her eyes and her mouth and make her look pretty. She would like that. He would adjust the light so it became her, the way it must become older women consulting him in his private office.
I walked along the hall, glancing as I passed by into the blue living room, with its lilac-embowered coffin.
They were dead. Both Adriances were dead. And aside from the doctor, who would grieve? I was now going to walk out that front door. And unless Patrick said I had to, I was not coming back into this house. It felt creepy. It was horrible, this house. It was full of a cold horror which had been here all the time and I was just beginning to understand it.
That woman was a monster. She was the true mother of a monster like Guy Adriance.
The door was locked.
I looked around for the key.