Author: Taylor Caldwell
Date: 1963-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Christmas; British Literature; Mystery
Description: Families can be haunted by the greed, hate, rivalry, and murder that lurk in the past. Four members of one family and one guest are trapped in a snowbound house as violence stalks and ghosts decide to visit.
Publisher: enet press

Table of Contents

The Late Clara Beame

Publishing Information

Author Page

Books by Taylor Caldwell

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Preview

The Late Clara Beame
by

Taylor Caldwell

Publishing Information

The Late Clara Beame
by Taylor Caldwell

Copyright © 1963 by Reback and Reback

Copyright renewed
mobi digital edition Copyright 2012 by eNet Press Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published by eNet Press Inc.

16580 Maple Circle, Lake Oswego OR 97034

Digitized in the United States of America in 2012

Revised 201208

www.enetpress.com

Cover designed by Eric Savage; www.savagecreative.com

ISBN 978-1-61886-436-9

Author Page

Taylor Caldwell, christened Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell, was born in Manchester, England on September 7, 1900, into a family of Scottish background. Her family descended from the Scottish clan of MacGregor of which the Taylors are a subsidiary clan. In 1907 she emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger brother. Her father died shortly after the move, and the family struggled. At the age of eight she started to write stories, and in fact wrote her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, at the age of twelve! (although it remained unpublished until 1975). She continued to write prolifically, however, despite ill health.

Taylor Caldwell was also known by the pen names of Marcus Holland and Max Reiner as well as her married name of J. Miriam Reback. Her works include Dear and Glorious Physician, a novel detailing the exploits of Saint Luke, The Listener, written about a mysterious altruistic individual who lends an ear where it is needed, and Dynasty of Death, a saga about a family of munitions makers.

In 1918-1919, she served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1919 she married William F. Combs. In 1920, they had a daughter, Mary (known as ‘Peggy’). From 1923 to 1924 she was a court reporter in New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo, New York. In 1924, she went to work for the United States Department of Justice, as a member of the Board of Special Inquiry (an immigration tribunal) in Buffalo. In 1931 she graduated from the University of Buffalo, and also was divorced from William Combs.

Caldwell then married her second husband, Marcus Reback, a fellow Justice employee. She had a second child with Reback, a daughter Judith, in 1932. They were married for 40 years, until his death in 1971.

In 1934, she began to work on the novel Dynasty of Death, which she and Reback completed in collaboration. It was published in 1938 and became a best-seller. ‘Taylor Caldwell’ was presumed to be a man, and there was some public stir when the author was revealed to be a woman. Over the next 43 years, she published 42 more novels, many of them best-sellers. For instance, This Side of Innocence was the biggest fiction seller of 1946. Her works sold an estimated 30 million copies. She became wealthy, traveling to Europe and elsewhere, though she still lived near Buffalo.

Her books were big sellers right up to the end of her career. In 1979, she signed a two-novel deal for $3.9 million. During her career as a writer, she received several awards: The National League of American Pen Women gold medal (1948); The Buffalo Evening News Award (1949); The Grand Prix Chatvain (1950).

She was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society’s monthly journal American Opinion. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough, appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion.

Around 1970, she became interested in reincarnation. She had become friends with well-known occultist author Jess Stearn, who suggested that the vivid detail in her many historical novels was actually subconscious recollection of previous lives. Supposedly, she agreed to be hypnotized and undergo ‘past-life regression’ to disprove reincarnation. According to Stearn’s book, The Search of a Soul - Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives (1973), Caldwell instead began to recall her own past lives - eleven in all, including one on the ‘lost continent’ of Lemuria.

In 1972, she married William Everett Stancell, a retired real estate developer, but divorced him in 1973. In 1978, she married William Robert Prestie, an eccentric Canadian 17 years her junior. This led to difficulties with her children. She had a long dispute with her daughter Judith over the estate of Judith’s father Marcus; in 1979, Judith committed suicide. Also in 1979, Caldwell suffered a stroke, which left her unable to speak, though she could still write. (She had been deaf since about 1965.) Her daughter Peggy accused Prestie of abusing and exploiting Caldwell, and there was a legal battle over her substantial assets.

She died of heart failure in Greenwich, Connecticut on August 30, 1985.

Books by Taylor Caldwell

1938 Dynasty of Death

1940 The Eagles Gather

1941 The Earth is the Lord’s: A Tale of the Rise of Genghis Khan

1941 Time No Longer

1942 The Strong City

1943 The Arm and the Darkness

1943 The Turnbulls

1944 The Final Hour

1945 The Wide House

1946 This Side of Innocence

1947 There Was a Time

1948 Melissa

1949 Let Love Come Last

1951 The Balance Wheel

1952 The Devil’s Advocate

1953 Maggie - Her Marriage

1954 Never Victorious, Never Defeated

1955 Your Sins and Mine

1956 Tender Victory

1957 The Sound of Thunder

1959 Dear and Glorious Physician

1960 The Listener

1961 A Prologue to Love

1963 Grandmother and the Priests

1963 The Late Clara Beame

1965 A Pillar of Iron

1965 Wicked Angel

1966 No One Hears But Him

1967 Dialogues With the Devil

1968 Testimony of Two Men

1970 Great Lion of God

1971 On Growing Up Tough

1972 Captains and the Kings

1973 To Look and Pass

1974 Glory and the Lightning

1975 Romance of Atlantis (with Jess Stearn)

1976 Ceremony of the Innocent

1977 I, Judas (with Jess Stearn)

1978 Bright Flows the River

1980 Answer as a Man

Chapter 1

Five days before Christmas Samuel Bulowe was found dead in his bed in Chicago.

An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was a virulent poison, the source of which was not known. The autopsy also revealed that he had been suffering from a smoldering malignancy. He had never confided in any friend about this, had never told his wife, nor his wife’s brother, Dr. David Gates.

A note had been found at his bedside. He had written: “I can’t see any way out of the situation but this. I’m terribly sorry. I know how you’ll feel. But I can’t think of any alternative. I know you will understand. — Affectionately — Sam.”

The verdict was suicide, the motivation despair over his condition. He was buried quietly in a small suburban cemetery near Chicago, a city in which he had lived for the past five years. Alice, his young wife, returned to New York to resume her work as a free-lance artist. Her brother, Dr. Gates, went back to Cleveland, to his practice as a heart specialist.

The Fraziers, Henry and Laura, had planned to spend the holidays with the Bulowes, for Henry had been a lifelong friend of Sam’s and Laura and Alice were related. After the funeral, however, they had returned sadly to their home in Connecticut, though they had wanted to stay with Alice for a longer time. But Alice had been adamant that they should leave. She had always felt animosity towards Laura which she had never bothered to hide.

Laura, on the other hand, was delighted when Alice returned to New York and established herself in the Village. Alice, however, did not return Laura’s affection, and rarely accepted an invitation to visit the Fraziers. Her last visit had been in August, and that had been only courtesy because Laura had broken her leg in a fall from a swing a few days before.

“Always trust dear little Laura to do something ridiculous,” Alice had told her brother. “Swinging like a child, and pregnant, too!”

On December 15, Laura wrote to Alice, inviting her to spend Christmas with them ‘in the country’. Alice had not as yet answered. She sat with the letter at her elbow, in her inexpensive but comfortable apartment. While her brother watched her, she glanced again at the letter, then flicked it aside contemptuously.

“Let me repeat,” David said, with an elaborate air of exasperated patience. He was very like his sister in that they both had somewhat irascible dispositions. “Hank’s dangerous, all around.”

“The police were satisfied, in Chicago,” Alice reminded him.

“They may have been convinced, all right,” David said.

“I helped. I thought there’d never be any more questioning. Now I’m not too sure — about anything. And now I think that Hank is becoming more and more dangerous. I want to know just how dangerous he is. It could be that he doesn’t know a thing, except what he read in the papers; I don’t believe it any longer. Besides, I found those doodlings and notes of Sam’s, and they’re definitely revealing. You’ve read them.”

Alice stared at her brother, her lovely, pale face expressionless, and then suddenly her eyes filled with fear. “Yes, I’ve read them. So did the police, didn’t they?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. They searched everything, and they probably looked in Sam’s private files. Police don’t let up on an unsolved murder. All right! They did finally believe it was suicide. You think I’m jumping at shadows. I’m not.”

“The police never traced the poison to you,” Alice pointed out. “Or your office.”

“No,” David said. “I had only one capsule of it.”

Alice clenched her hands in her lap. Her husband had once called her ‘the ice-blue lady’. David, watching her, pursed his lips and thought, ice-blue heart, too. Alice was capable of anything; he, David, ought to know. She affected blue almost exclusively, in all shades. She wore a blue wool dress tonight, and blue earrings. Her flawless skin glistened in the lamplight. “I refuse to let you frighten me,” she told him. “I don’t believe Hank Frazier knows anything at all. If he knew, I’d have guessed it before now.”

“Remember, he took you out a lot last summer, to shows and theatres, while Laura was nursing her broken leg in the wilds of Connecticut. He was feeling his way around, looking for something, trying to find out something. You admit that?”

“I’m not so sure, now,” Alice said. “You did put a lot of suspicions in my mind, and I watched him and listened to him, but there was nothing at all. If he had known something I’d have found it out. Men aren’t very subtle, and I had five years of dealing with Sam. None of you can keep secrets.” She paused. “When did you begin to suspect, anyway?”

“I suspected from the very beginning, though I only told you about it last spring. After I went through Sam’s papers. Then I began to have cold chills.”

Fear again brightened Alice’s eyes.

“And that’s why you’ve got to accept Laura’s invitation and go up to Connecticut and take me along.”

“You and Hank never liked each other,” Alice retorted, “though you were slum boys together, all three of you, which includes Sam.”

“You’d have been a slum girl, yourself, sweetie, if old Aunt Clara hadn’t rescued you,” her brother reminded her.

“She sent you through medical school. Have you forgotten?”

“To please you, dear. But she left you practically nothing, after all.”

“That was Laura’s little trick.” It was hard for Alice to look anything but composed, but she succeeded now. A dark shadow passed across her face. “Dear little Laura! Just like a snuggling kitten, looking for love, love, love! She got around Aunt Clara very nicely.”

“And got all three millions of Aunt Clara’s nice fat dollars, and the family home in Connecticut, not to mention the house on East 72nd Street, and real estate in Florida.”

David was goading her deliberately. Alice stared at her brother, not seeing him. He leaned against the old mantelpiece, feeling the heat from the gas logs along his side. He was a tall young man in his early thirties, black-eyed, black-haired, and slender, even elegant. There was little resemblance between him and his sister, except for the smooth tight hardness of his face and his graceful movements. David Gates was tough. He had had to be tough to survive, and he intended to survive in a world that was becoming daily more complex, and competitive. An excellent heart specialist, much admired by older colleagues, he knew that his contemporaries were struggling to be what he was, and to supplant him if possible.

“I could use some of Aunt Clara’s money,” he mused, watching his sister with a curiously intent look.

“There’s something else I never told you,” Alice confessed. “When Laura came into all that money on her twenty-first birthday she deposited one hundred thousand dollars to my account. That was just before I married Sam.”

“Oh?”

“I refused it,” Alice told him.

“But why?”

“I expected half of Aunt Clara’s estate,” Alice replied. “I thought Laura’s action was a nasty insult.”

David threw up his hands. “I’d like to be insulted that way! One hundred thousand dollars! And Sam Bulowe with only fifty thousand dollars in life insurance, and you only got five thousand of it because he was a — a suicide! Think what you could do now with that money! You’re a fool, Alice.”

She didn’t answer him. He moved closer. “How about killing two birds with one stone?”

“Sam left you two thousand dollars,” Alice reminded him. “There was six thousand dollars for me, besides the insurance money. Sam wasn’t very aggressive.” She spoke as if she had not heard her brother. Then she asked warily, “What do you mean, ‘killing two birds with one stone’?”

He pointed to the small table beside her. “Just do as I say. Call dear little Laura and say you’d love to spend the holidays with her and Hank, but I’ve suddenly come to town to ‘console’ you for being so alone, and you don’t want to leave me. So — she’ll invite me too. She’s got a soft heart.” He paused. “I want to find out what he knows. Do I have to repeat that again? He’s dangerous, I tell you, if he knows something.”

Alice stretched out her hand and took up the receiver, and her eyes, as she looked at her brother, were inscrutable. She gave the operator the number, and murmured under her breath, “Two birds with one stone.” Suddenly her face grew vivid with hatred.

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” David commented, but Alice was asking: “Laura?”

Chapter 2

The snow dappled the old leaded windows and the wind hummed in the great chimney. The fire on the hearth crackled merrily and the big room flickered with rosy light. A soft lamp was lit here and there, revealing Sheraton tables, books in oak cases, and Queen Anne sofas. The French cabinets along the wall were filled with Dresden figures and curios gathered over a period of two hundred years.

Laura Frazier was seated before a grand piano, her fingers moving through an intricate Mozart phrase. The delicate tinkling sound filled the room.

Henry Frazier sat near the fire, relaxed and content, smoking his pipe, a book open on his knee. He had a strong, quietly masculine face and steady hazel eyes. Thirty-five years old, he was ten years older than his wife, and a successful partner in the New York law firm of Bancroft, Edell, Frazier and Hunt.

As he listened to his wife play, he found his thoughts drifting back to his harsh childhood in a New York tenement district; he remembered how he and David Gates and Sam Bulowe had worked after school and on Saturdays delivering groceries and doing odd jobs to augment the family income. They had had, more than anything else, ambition. He had always wanted to be a lawyer and Dave a doctor. But Sam had never had a definite goal, for though he possessed the others’ drive, he had no particular talent; he would just say that when he was a man he would be ‘rich’. At the time of his death, one year before, at thirty-six, he had been sales manager for a wholesale appliance house in Chicago, earning twelve thousand dollars a year, with prospects of a partnership.

“It was just as well,” Henry said to himself. “If he’d lived, with that disease in him, he’d have had several months of misery and pain. Yes, it was just as well, after all.”

His thoughts moved on to Clara Beame, who had been born in this house. Good old Aunt Clara (or was she really only old Cousin Clara, a couple of times removed?). Not even Laura was quite certain of the relationship between them and Alice and David. The old lady had been fond of Laura’s father, but when he had remarried his first wife after Laura’s mother’s death Aunt Clara had refused to see him again. Funny old fat spinster, Henry reflected. He had only seen her photograph, but Clara Beame had borne a remarkable resemblance to Queen Victoria, with the same determined mouth and shrewd eyes.

Laura was no longer playing, and her young face was turned to her husband. “I was just thinking of Aunt Clara,” she said.

“So was I,” Henry told her, laughing. Laura smiled at him. There wasn’t a plane or contour of her face which didn’t seem gentle. She had shimmering dark eyes, large and innocent, and a full mouth. Her hair, the color of sunlight, always surprised people, for it was not in keeping with the darkness of her eyes. People referred to her fondly as ‘little Laura, though she was as tall as Alice Bulowe. But she had an artless, soft way of speaking and a certain shyness. She looked younger than her twenty-six years, and younger than Alice, who was the same age.

“What were you thinking about dear old Aunt Clara?” Henry asked lightly.

“I was just remembering how it was around Christmas, when she was alive,” Laura answered, her voice edged with sadness. “Not that she seemed lovable in any way, to others. But I loved her very much. And I can’t tell even you, darling, what it meant to me to discover, when I was about fourteen, that she loved me, too. I was more grateful for that than for all her money — the fact that she loved me.”

“Apparently she didn’t love Alice,” Henry observed, knocking his pipe against the fender.

Laura frowned. “No. I suppose not. I don’t know why, though, except that, even when we were children, Alice was always so independent and full of pride. And — difficult.” Laura touched a key, then hastily pulled her hand away as the piano gave out a discordant note.

“You still haven’t figured out your relationship to your aunt, if she was your aunt, and Alice and David?” Henry asked curiously.

“Oh, I’ve tried,” Laura admitted. “My father always called her Aunt Clara, but she may have been his grandfather’s niece. I’m almost sure, now, that that is the way it was. And Alice — I think she is really Aunt Clara’s third cousin. I never knew Alice’s parents.”

“You didn’t miss a thing,” her husband told her with fervor. “Her father was hardly ever around home, if you could call that cold-water flat a home. Even when he wasn’t on duty he’d still hang around the firehouse, playing poker and drinking beer. He was off duty when he fell from the roof of that tenement house, and there wasn’t much left for Alice and Dave and their mother. As for Mamma Gates, she hardly made a living in her cheap millinery shop. A fierce kind of woman. I can’t remember her being human.”

“She had to work so hard,” Laura said uneasily.

“My parents did too,” Henry pointed out. “But we managed to get a little fun out of living. And had something to share. We took Alice and Dave in when their mother died of tuberculosis. It was a good thing it wasn’t for long, for otherwise we’d all have starved. Wasn’t Alice about ten when Aunt Clara sent for her to live up here, with you?”

“Yes. We were both ten.” Laura looked absently at the tree, seeing the ghosts of other Christmases. “I always thought it was too bad that Aunt Clara wouldn’t take Dave in too, but he was older, and Aunt Clara never liked boys. Or men.”

And a good thing for all of us too, Henry thought, looking around the room with satisfaction.

“But she sent Dave to that school,” Laura added. “And then to college and medical school. She left him the same amount of money she left Alice, though she’d never let him come here, not once.”

Laura sighed. “Alice and I weren’t ever friends, really. I did admire her so much when we were young. She was always so assured. I used to try to imitate her. I couldn’t. The real reason why Aunt Clara sent us to different schools was because Alice didn’t want me around. But then, I was never as intelligent as she was, and didn’t make friends easily. I suppose she was ashamed of me.”

“Ashamed of you!” Henry said incredulously.

“I don’t know why I even told you,” Laura replied. “But Christmas seems to bring back memories, doesn’t it? I can remember the three of us here around the fire, Aunt Clara, Alice and I. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve. Even Alice laughed then, and she didn’t laugh often.”

“She doesn’t love you much more now,” Henry reminded her, “since she was practically disinherited.”

“I do wish you liked her more,” Laura said, her voice subdued.

“Well,” Henry stated matter of factly, “I can see how she begrudges you everything.”

To his surprise Laura shook her head. “But she doesn’t really, darling! I know. Aunt Clara died when we were nineteen, and Alice had already been working in New York for two months. Neither of us wanted to go on with college.” She stopped, but her dark eyes fixed themselves earnestly on her husband. “I was the ward of Aunt Clara’s bank and lawyers, and they persuaded me to continue my education, though I was an awful student, honestly. Then when I was twenty-one, and just a junior, I stopped.” She hesitated, but her eyes still remained on Henry. “And on the very day I was twenty-one I went to Alice and told her I was going to divide Aunt Clara’s money with her, equally.”

Henry sat up, his face flushed with interest. “Well?” he said, when his wife showed no signs of continuing.

“She absolutely refused,” Laura said in a small voice. “She was very bitter about Aunt Clara, because of the will. ‘If that’s the way she wanted it, that’s the way it’s going to be,’ she told me.”

“But that would have been a million and a half dollars!”

Henry was incredulous. “You actually mean the stupid girl rejected it?”

“Yes. But Alice wasn’t stupid, Henry. She’s just proud.”

Henry shook his head, marveling.

“And then I didn’t know what to do,” Laura went on. “So later I deposited one hundred thousand dollars in Alice’s name, in a bank, and let the bank notify her. She wouldn’t accept that, either. Somehow I thought she’d take the smaller amount. She wrote me a very cold letter, thanking me, and that’s all.”

Henry slapped his knee. “Think of what poor Sam could have done with that money! He’d have bought out that concern, and Alice would be rich now.”

“I don’t think Alice cares a thing about money,” Laura said.

Henry burst out laughing. “Everybody cares about money, Laura.”

“You don’t,” Laura replied tenderly. “You won’t even take any of mine. You let me pay Mrs. Daley and Edith, and buy myself extra clothes, that’s all.”

“I told you, before we were married, that we’d have to live on my salary.” He walked across the room to his wife and ruffled her hair.

Laura buried her face in his sleeve. “Oh, Henry, I can’t help thinking how wonderful it would have been, this Christmas, with the baby in his crib upstairs!” He held her tightly to him. “Now, now. There’s nothing we can do about it. Perhaps next Christmas it’ll be another story. Besides, you’re drawing the line pretty fine. If — if it hadn’t happened, the baby wouldn’t have been born until January or early February. It was bad enough, God knows, but there’s no use pretending that the baby would be upstairs in his crib.”

But Laura still mourned her dead child. “I hadn’t even told you,” she murmured. “I wanted to be absolutely sure. And then I had to play Peter Pan on that swing!”

“You were always swinging in the orchard,” Henry reminded her. “Who could know that the ropes were about to fall apart?”

“I was so excited, that day,” Laura recalled bitterly. “I just had to tell Dave to push me higher and higher! I was almost sure — about the baby. And I was delirious with happiness, but just think how terrible it would have been if you and Dave hadn’t been there then! It was a Sunday, remember.”

“I remember,” her husband said wearily.

“What if it hadn’t been a Sunday, and you had been in the city!”

“Let’s not be too dramatic, darling.”

“You forget,” Laura said quietly. “I was thrown against that tree and knocked unconscious. I could have died. Alone.”

Henry remembered that hot Sunday in August vividly, and David running back through the trees to the house to telephone for help. He remembered Laura in his arms, with the blood streaming through her fair hair.

He bent over her now, hugging her to him. “Let’s not go through all that again,” he pleaded. “You promised me you wouldn’t.”

“Oh darling, I didn’t mean to upset you. I promise never to mention it again. Besides, I’ve got something to tell you.” She hesitated. “I’ve been afraid to, before this.”

“What?” her husband asked.

“Now you’re frowning. Please don’t. Well, I’ve talked with my lawyers and executors and I’ve arranged for this house, which you love so much, to be deeded over to you. My Christmas present.”

Henry stepped back. “No!” he said angrily. “I refuse.

Do you hear me, Laura? I refuse. I’ve told you before I wouldn’t allow anything like that!”

“Henry! You really are angry!”

His face was flushed. “Of course I am! It’s bad enough that you have all that money, but I told you, even before we were married, that you weren’t to give me anything out of the ordinary. I thought I impressed you then.”

Laura put her hand on his arm placatingly. “Henry, I didn’t mean — it’s just that you’ve always loved the house. When I die you’ll have it anyway!”

“Oh Laura, for heaven’s sake! I’m ten years older than you are. Women always outlive men. Look at the insurance company statistics.”

“But you knew about my will,” she said, bewildered.

“A will is a different thing,” he told her, exasperated. “I have a will too, for what it’s worth. But I don’t want the deed to this house. If you refuse to understand, I can’t make you. But you must call those lawyers of yours tomorrow.”

“Very well,” she agreed reluctantly. “If you feel that way about it.”

“What a little idiot you are,” her husband told her as he kissed her.

The telephone rang on the table in the hall. Henry straightened up. “Who would be calling at ten o’clock at night?” he asked, as he went to answer it. Laura smiled as she listened to his strong voice speaking.

“It wasn’t Alice telling us she and Dave can’t come after all?” she asked when he returned.

“No. It was a new client, from Baltimore. John Carr. He wants to buy into an advertising concern. Rogers and Belton. I saw him last week and he left the partnership papers with me to go over and change, if necessary. I didn’t think there’d be any hurry about it, but now he’s in a big sweat. So, he’s coming to New York on the twenty-third and we’re to work on the stuff.”

“At Christmas?” Laura asked wonderingly. “What about his family in Baltimore?”

“He hasn’t any,” Henry said. “So he forgets holidays. I hope you won’t mind. I’ve invited him up here for Christmas.”

“A perfect stranger?” Laura was astonished. “At a family Christmas, with Alice and Dave?”

Henry sighed patiently. “I know. It’s ridiculous. He seemed confused when I reminded him it was Christmas. ‘Oh that,’ he said. His exact words. Then he said we must have everything in order so he can put through the partnership before the New Year. What could I do? I promise you we won’t spend all our time locked up in the study. You don’t really mind, do you?”

“Not really,” Laura answered, still surprised. “But I did hope you’d rest over the holidays. And now this.” She hesitated. “What kind of a man is he, and will he fit in with Alice and Dave?”

Henry rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “About my age. The Southern type. Has money; he wants to put seventy-five thousand dollars into the concern. A gentleman, if you’re worried about that.”

Laura brightened. “Is he good-looking?”

“Well, I didn’t look at him with a woman’s eye,” Henry teased. “I suppose so, if you like the lanky, hunt-with-the-hounds Harvard type. He’s all right. I checked with Rogers and Belton. What have you got in mind?”

“Alice,” Laura admitted honestly.

“Oh, no.”

“Why not? After all, it’s just a year. She can’t mourn Sam all the rest of her life, can she?” she asked reasonably.

Henry laughed, then lifted his wife from her seat and swung her up into his arms.

“What makes you think Alice mourns Sam?” he asked. “I think it was a blessing when he killed himself.”

Chapter 3

The snow had stopped during the night. But by ten o’clock the following morning it had begun again, this time with blizzard force growing wilder by the hour. The wind of the night before was now a whistling gale, slamming against the ancient walls of the big stone house. It howled in the chimneys and rushed across the frozen earth, bursting upwards into white, swirling fountains. It sounded to Laura as though endless freight trains were screaming overhead.

At noon she listened worriedly to the news and weather broadcasts. The announcer stated jovially that the East was definitely “in the grip of one of the worst blizzards.” A white Christmas was predicted, so he amusingly advised housewives to look over their supply of candles. Laura listened to the warm hum of the furnaces. What if the lines did go down? The furnaces would stop. Would Alice and David, and the new guest, John Carr, enjoy being isolated? Alice and David were certainly not the cozy type. Impatient and restless by nature, they would resent enforced seclusion. They liked to walk and explore. Laura looked gloomily at the windows shrouded with snow, her mind on the stranger from Baltimore. What would John Carr think of the white isolation of a really formidable storm? This, thought Laura, but without much hope, might be an interesting experience for him. On the other hand, what if he were a bore, and restless too? Advertising men, she had discovered, could be volatile.

Alice, of course, knew these storms. She had always hated them; they frightened her. Orderly and indifferent by nature, she preferred things to be smooth and under control.

The storm had darkened the day. Laura had had to turn on lights. At three o’clock their handyman, who doubled in everything, would have to drive to the station to pick up Alice and David. Would he forget the chains? He was both indifferent and incompetent and he usually did. She would have to check. As she listened to the wind she remembered that this was only the 22nd of December. John Carr was not due until tomorrow. Perhaps he would not be able to come. It was doubtful whether Henry would even be able to go to New York tomorrow to see him. Laura found herself wondering if Christmas would be bright or not. Alice and David rarely liked people. If they didn’t like John Carr, and showed it in a cruel way, then the whole holiday would be a disaster.

“I hope,” Laura was shocked to hear herself say, “that David and Alice can’t come either!” Why had she invited them? Pity for Alice, in her small apartment in New York? Hope that Alice might eventually come to like her and realize that she had had no part in influencing Aunt Clara’s will?

“You are too dependent on others,” Henry had often told her. “It’s all right to be dependent on me. That’s the way it should be. But others! Why should you care?” That was all very well for Henry, who knew everyone in the township and liked them and who was liked in return. But she was afraid of people, their frank way of looking her in the eye. She felt certain that they thought her weak. Sometimes it was agony for her to join her husband in New York for one of his business dinners and to meet strangers. She knew they thought her pretty — at first. But later they appeared to forget her very existence, and she would sit silently for the rest of the dreary hours, yearning for home. Often they even forgot to say goodbye to her, not out of malice but simply because they had entirely overlooked her. She often wished that she could make a good impression because it would be valuable for Henry.

When she had been a small child, after her father had remarried his first wife and had gone away with her and his first two children, she had languished in a miserable boarding school in New Jersey, where the tiny rooms were always cold and dank, the food almost unedible, the teachers poorly paid and listless. She had received only three letters from her father. She remembered him quite clearly, though as a silent, gray-colored man who had once been a successful lawyer like Henry. But that was when Mama had been alive, Mama who was lively and beautiful and bouncing with fun. Aunt Clara, the soul of propriety and severity, had, amazingly enough, loved the pretty Lucille, who had been a chorus girl in a nightclub. And she had insisted that the young dancer have the child in her home. And, Laura remembered fondly, Mama used to make Aunt Clara laugh, often by dancing some of her abandoned dances right in this house! It seemed incredible to Laura that she had watched her mother actually perform something perilously close to a strip tease — here in the huge, staid sitting room!

Bertram Beame had remained horrified and unforgiving. Was it because his wife had ‘made a spectacle of herself’ before Aunt Clara? Or was it because he had come to regret his incongruous marriage and to fail in his profession? There had been the large alimony payments to his first wife, and she had refused to divorce him unless she received nearly two thirds of his income. “A cold, mean stick of a woman. Always detested her,” Aunt Clara had once remarked. “Greedy. Like a starved harpy. No wonder Bertram finally got rid of her.”

Laura could remember her father’s misery, his lost look, his silence. What had made him give up a woman like his first wife, who was surely more suitable for him, to marry laughing, dancing Mama? Infatuation? “Middle-aged funk,” Aunt Clara had once said, abruptly. “Never blamed him.” Surely, by her very nature, Aunt Clara had been closer in character to the first wife. Yet, she had loved vivacious, radiant Mama. She had even given her some of her old but valuable jewelry. Where was it now? Sold for living expenses?

“First time I ever saw him act human, and warm up,” Aunt Clara had commented during the first few months of his marriage. He had been a fastidious man, very impeccable in his way, almost chilly. But the glamour, which had at first excited him, departed quickly, and finally. His natural character had reasserted itself. All that Mama was, all she represented with her grammatical errors and bad manners, warm and loving though they were, had finally revolted him.

He came to hate his wife, even to detest her. And Mama, in the very face of her indestructible exuberance, had suddenly realized this and died of a broken heart. Then came boarding school for Laura in New Jersey and Papa’s return to his first wife and children, and Aunt Clara’s offer. Papa was only too grateful; his spirit seemed broken, or perhaps his first wife, during the period of his second marriage, had defamed his name so thoroughly that his reputation was irretrievably lost. And that, Laura said to herself, as she watched the swirling snow blurring the windows, was a judgment on her.

She never saw her father again after the day he had abandoned her in New Jersey. She had not known he had died until Aunt Clara informed her of his funeral a month previous to her eleventh birthday. “Don’t cry,” Aunt Clara had told her, gruffly. “He doesn’t deserve it.” But Laura had really been crying for her dead young mother.

The first Mrs. Beame had promptly asked Aunt Clara “for adequate support for Bertram’s children. After all, they are related to you too.” Did Aunt Clara send any money? Laura never found out. She only knew that the children were not mentioned in the old woman’s will. She had never thought of her father’s other children as being her half brother and half sister, and therefore her own flesh and blood. She thought of herself as belonging only to Mama and then to Aunt Clara. Yet, those two still existed — somewhere? Was their mother still alive?

The wind howling outside broke Laura’s reveries, and she went to the kitchen to see if the handyman, who had the unlikely name of Evelyn, was putting the chains on her car. He was, Mrs. Daley informed her. The kitchen smelled of hot mincemeat and cherry jam. Mrs. Daley smiled at Laura and suggested coffee and a piece of her homemade pie.

“I think I’ll wait for Mrs. Bulowe and Mr. Gates, and have tea with them.” The delightful odors conjured up nostalgic memories of other Christmases, and suddenly the presence of Aunt Clara was so acute that she almost swung about to run into the living room with a cry of welcome.

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Daley asked. “You look awful pale, Mrs. Frazier.”

“No,” Laura told her. “I was just thinking of Aunt Clara. Christmas always reminds me. I felt, just now, that if I went into the living room I’d see her.”

Mrs. Daley stirred a huge pot of soup. Her face was hidden. “Funny,” she said, in an offhand voice, “I’ve been kind of feeling her around, myself, the last few days. Well, I’m Irish, and I get those feelings, and that’s supposed to be superstition, the priests say. But Father Gregory in the village isn’t Irish, so how would he know?”

Laura, who was highly superstitious, moved closer to the older woman. Absently she scooped up a spoonful of mincemeat and ate it. “If you feel my aunt, that is, if you have a sensation she’s here just now, what’s the reason?”

Mrs. Daley clattered the spoon. “Well,” she said, with elaborate carelessness, “she might be thinking of you and Christmas, but the souls don’t come back, they say. Sometimes, maybe, I think they’re wrong.” She still kept her head averted. “Maybe it was kind of a dream. But you remember how you were sort of sickly as a little girl, Mrs. Frazier, and Miss Beame always knew just when you’d be coming down with something. She’d get everything ready a couple of days before you came down, though she never let you know. ‘The child’s sickening, Mrs. Daley,’ she’d say to me. And sure enough, Mrs. Frazier, you’d be flat on your back a couple of days later.”

When Mrs. Daley became silent, Laura urged her to go on.

“And there was that time, you remember, when you were fourteen, and all the kids in the village were going on them toboggan rides, and you teased to go. Your aunt thought about it and said, ‘No’, and you cried. She said to me: ‘Mrs. Daley, I have a premonition.’ Now, you’re not supposed to listen to premonitions, but Miss Beame was a Protestant, so I suppose it don’t matter. And then, the very toboggan sled you were supposed to be on got out of control and ran into rocks and trees, and Sally Brewster was killed, and the other girls all had broken legs and arms. You remember.”

“Yes, I do.” Laura waited a moment or two, then asked: “Why do you suppose I feel Aunt Clara’s in the house just now?”

“Maybe something’s going to happen. Mrs. Frazier, you were the apple of her eye. Maybe she thinks you’re in danger or something.”

“From what?” Laura couldn’t help smiling.

“From who, that’s what,” Mrs. Daley said, giving her a serious look. “I don’t want to commit a sin, filling you with superstitions, Mrs. Frazier. There! Evelyn’s just turning out of the garage! Snow’s hubcap deep. Good thing he put on the chains or he’d never make it to the dee-pot.”

“Mrs. Daley, I forgot to tell you and Edith, that there’s a gentleman coming for Christmas too. John Carr. A client of Mr. Frazier’s.” She paused. “You don’t suppose, do you, that there’s something — well, wrong — with Mr. Carr?”

“Oh, I’ve got you all worried.” Mrs. Daley’s plump face flushed with embarrassment. “You mustn’t listen to me. Honest.” She struggled with herself, but lost. “It was the day before you fell off that broken swing, Mrs. Frazier. I’d gone into the living room to check up on that girl’s dusting, and I just felt Miss Beame there. I turned around and said right out loud: ‘Yes, ma’am?’ It was like she’d called me. And I got so blue and frightened that I couldn’t sleep that night. And the next day you had that accident.”

Laura was suddenly apprehensive. “You don’t suppose, with this storm, that Mr. Frazier might have an accident, driving home from the station tonight, and Aunt Clara — I mean, could she be warning me?”

“Miss Beame never cared for nobody but you and your mother,” Mrs. Daley pointed out in a dry tone. “She never met Mr. Frazier now, did she?”

Laura was relieved. So long as nothing threatened Henry all would be well. She went back to the living room, where firelight and lamplight waited for her. Her eyes were suddenly drawn to her aunt’s chair. “Aunt Clara?” she whispered. “Are you here?”

The sense of someone being in the room with her increased, and she shivered. “I wish you could tell me and I could hear,” she said, aloud. Then she started violently. Edith, Mrs. Daley’s niece, smiled at her a trifle derisively from the doorway. “You want the tea when the guests come, ma’am?” she asked.

“Yes.” Laura was annoyed at the girl’s smile. What a fool she must think I am. “That is, for me. Mrs. Bulowe likes very dry martinis. And Mr. Gates always prefers bourbon. They don’t care for tea.”

“Maybe sherry for you, ma’am?” Edith asked demurely. She was a tall, thin girl, and very plain.

“I don’t like sherry,” Laura told her, annoyed. “And I’ll wait for martinis, myself, until Mr. Frazier gets home.” Laura rarely used a peremptory tone with servants, as she respected them too much. Edith inclined her head with exaggeration and mock humility, and disappeared. Oh dear, Laura thought, I wonder what I’ve done to make that girl despise me so?

In the kitchen, Edith said to Mrs. Daley: “I told you she was crazy. I caught her talking to an empty chair, and asking it to tell her something.”

“You’re crazy, yourself!” Mrs. Daley said angrily. She shivered. If Edith had not been in the room she would have crossed herself. “Get out the glasses they’ll need, and keep your mouth shut. What you’ve got against Mrs. Frazier, and she always so good and kind to everybody, I don’t know.”

“She’s dumb,” Edith said.

“What do you mean?”

Edith giggled. “Oh, I got my way of finding out things. She couldn’t see anything if it came up and hit her in the face.” She refused to explain. If she weren’t kin, Mrs. Daley told herself, I’d discharge her on the spot.

Laura watched lights flicker ominously in the living room. She hoped Evelyn had stacked the woodshed high with logs, and not left the wood outside in the snow. There was no sound from the kitchen. The sky darkened steadily as the storm grew worse. Then the telephone rang, and Laura ran to it gratefully. She heard her husband’s cheerful voice.

“Darling, the storm’s bad in New York, and I can imagine what it’s doing up there. So, I’m taking the 3:30 home. You’d better send Evelyn with your car, with chains on it. I know I won’t be able to move mine from the station.”

“I’m so glad you’re coming home soon!” Laura told him.

“Why?” Henry asked good-naturedly.

She felt foolish. “Because — well, because of the storm, of course. Evelyn’s at the station now, picking up Alice and David. The plows ought to be out on the main road. I’m sorry about Mr. Carr. He won’t be able to come tomorrow, will he?”

“He’s here with me,” Henry said. “So I’m bringing him along. What’s the matter, sweet?”

Laura looked at the dark hall. She could hear the bass ticking of the grandfather’s clock. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just nervous, I guess.”

“Well, don’t be. I’ll be there soon. Lights all right?”

“They’re flickering.”

Then he said, as he always did, in a low, warm voice: “Love me?”

“Always,” Laura answered, in the ritualistic reply. Then she repeated, “Always!”

She was smiling when she turned on the lamp in the hall. The dark mahogany of the clock beamed in the lamplight. When the lights of a car swung through the glass door in the hall, Laura knew that Alice and David had arrived.

While Evelyn got out of the car and opened the doors with a flourish, David muttered to his sister: “You have it all down now, don’t you? You know exactly what to say and do?”

“Yes,” Alice assured him. “I still don’t think he knows anything.”

“I think he does. That’s why he kept seeing you all last summer. He was trying to find out if you knew.”

Huddling together, Alice and David walked up the three wide stairs to a door already opening. Laura stood on the threshold, smiling. “I’m so glad you got here safely. Hurry in!”

Alice thought: “As usual, she looks about eighteen, in that pink wool dress. And a pink ribbon in her hair, too, for God’s sake! Why doesn’t she grow up?”

As they sat around the fire with their drinks, Alice was thinking, All this, by rights, should be mine. Laura knew on which side her bread was buttered. Playing up to the old woman. How could Aunt Clara have been so stupid not to have seen? I was rather stupid, myself. I should have contested the will.

Laura’s smile was almost too bright, as she poured martinis for her guests. She could feel the hatred in the room like a malignant danger. As she gave David his glass her fingers touched his and they were cold and stiff. Startled, she looked up into his black eyes. They were studying her with an odd expression, one she could not fathom. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel that David shared his sister’s hatred. She remembered how concerned he had been last summer, after her accident. He had stayed on for two weeks, in spite of his appointments in Cleveland, not leaving until she was out of danger. In many ways he had shown kindness, apparently feeling that the accident was in some way his own fault.

On the twelfth night after the accident he had stayed up all night with her, giving her injections because the nurse had accidentally given her an overdose of sedatives. “If it happens again,” he had warned the nurse in a hard voice, “I’ll call the police. Mrs. Frazier might have died. It’s lucky that I missed my train and came back.”

The nurse, grave and frightened, had nodded dumbly. Later, Laura had implored David sleepily: “Please don’t report her. It was an accident, and she’s very young.”

David had also given Henry a sedative that night. And he had stayed two days longer. Before leaving he had given instructions to Henry: “Just keep an eye on that nurse, and check on the dosages.” Henry, white-faced and gaunt, had promised.

Remembering, Laura smiled up at David. “Are the martinis strong enough?” she asked. She wished she knew him better. She had never before noticed that he was quite handsome in an intense sort of way.

“Strong enough,” he replied curtly, and as she turned she could feel Alice’s eyes on her. There was no one but Alice who hated her in this relentless way. She felt trapped among enemies, alone and vulnerable.

“Oh, David,” she suddenly remembered, “you drink bourbon, and here I am, giving you martinis!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered indifferently. She saw him give his sister a peculiar look. As usual, Alice looked lovely, in a starkly tailored dark-blue suit and blue blouse. There were large turquoise clusters at her ears and throat, and a broad band of turquoises set in silver about her right wrist. Sleek and blonde, she makes me feel like a frump, Laura was honest with herself.

She wished miserably that she had never invited them. Even Henry had been displeased when he learned that David was coming. Loath to say anything unpleasant about anyone, nevertheless he had remarked: “Frankly, I’m sorry to hear that. I know we should feel grateful to him, and I’ve known him all my life. But there’s something about him I never liked, though God knows I tried. No, I can’t tell you, for the simple reason that I don’t know. He and Sam were closest to each other. And that’s a funny thing,” he had added, frowning.

“What?” Laura had asked.

Henry shook his head. “I just don’t know. There’s something about Chicago, when Sam died, that I’ve been trying to remember. It keeps slipping my mind; but never mind. It probably isn’t important.” Apparently, however, his subconscious mind registered some disquiet, for he referred to the matter again, later. Then, only this morning, at breakfast: “If I could just put my finger on it,” he had muttered.

Laura, intrigued, recalled Sam’s death, and the subsequent events. Yes, she had conceded, sipping more coffee after Henry had left for New York, there had been ‘something’. A strangeness in the air, perhaps, when the police had come. A sort of hiatus, as if someone knew something he wasn’t telling. Alice had only cried once, briefly and painfully. David had merely walked through the apartment, again and again, his head bent. If someone spoke to him suddenly he would start, and then stare, his black eyes unseeing. Had he actually looked afraid? Laura could not remember. But surely it was all imagination. Poor Sam had killed himself when he had discovered that he had an incurable disease. However, who had told him about it? For months, the police searched for any physician who had attended him and warned him of his illness. None was found. They finally came to the conclusion that, knowing he was ill, he had gone to a physician out of town, and had given a false name. But, why should he have done that, Sam who was like a playful and young boy, Sam who could never keep a secret, good or bad? It wasn’t like him at all. He would have confided in Alice, at least, for he had loved his wife. Or, if not Alice, then David, who was a physician. But he had said nothing to anyone, and had never appeared abstracted or depressed. Of a buoyant nature, and a good color, he had not seemed sick. In fact, he was excited about Christmas, a Christmas he never saw, and he had bought Alice something very special. They had found it later, a string of exceptionally fine, matched cultured pearls with a diamond clasp.

“You’re spilling your drink,” Alice warned her in a detached voice.

“So I am,” Laura said, her cheeks flushed. “I was thinking of a year ago.” She couldn’t help it, and she was ashamed, but she wanted to hurt Alice. “It was exactly a year ago that Sam killed himself.”

“No,” Alice corrected her calmly, “it was a year ago yesterday.” She spoke as if she were referring to something of no consequence. She gave her brother a quick glance, and he spoke as if cued.

“Why bring up the melancholy subject, Laura?”

She could not explain that she had wanted to hurt Alice. “It’s just that — well, you can’t help remembering, can you?”

“Like Banquo at the feast,” David suggested.

“Henry and I were talking about it only this morning,” she heard herself saying. “Henry thinks there was something ‘off’, as he called it.” She caught her breath.

David and Alice had not moved at all, yet Laura had the sensation that they had closed in about her — tightly. The glass in her hand shook. Gently, David took it from her and put it on the mantelpiece. “What did Hank mean, Laura?” he asked softly.

She was frightened, and this was absurd, in her own house, in front of her own crackling hearth. She looked from David’s intense eyes to Alice’s blue ones. Alice no longer seemed indifferent; she was vividly alert.

Oh, thank God, Laura thought, there was the car with Henry and his guest! “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. It was nothing. Henry and Mr. Carr are here.” She ran out of the room like a frightened child, and the brother and sister heard her throwing open the door.

“Don’t worry,” Alice said in a low voice. “She’s too scatterbrained to remember that she told us that. Are you afraid she might repeat it to Hank? Look, I know Laura. She’s an absolute fool. Listen to her carrying on out there. She’s already forgotten.”

“Now I’m sure of one thing,” David told her. “Henry does know something. We’ve got to find out. Why don’t they shut that damn door?”

Laura came in, smiling like a carefree child again, and Henry Frazier followed her with their guest. Both men looked cold, and their faces were red.

“Well, well, kiddies,” Henry said, shaking hands with David and lightly kissing Alice’s cheek. “As beautiful as ever,” he told Alice, and patted her shoulder. “Alice, this is John Carr, a client of mine. Mrs. Bulowe, John. And this is Alice’s brother, Dr. David Gates.”

How easily he does everything, Laura thought proudly.

She looked at John Carr with interest, judging him to be about thirty-six. Quite good-looking, he was very lean. He had a wide, thin mouth and charming smile. His gray tweed suit did not fit him perfectly, but he was unaware of that, and in a way, it added to his charm.

“From Baltimore?” David asked, scrutinizing the stranger in that intent manner of his. “I know some Carrs, in Baltimore. The Bentwood Carrs. Related?”

“No,” John replied. He had a deep, pleasant voice with a slight trace of a Southern accent. “Sorry. Do you know the Bridges?”

“No,” David answered.

“Let’s have some drinks,” Henry suggested affably, turning to the portable bar with its array of glasses and bottles. “What’ll you have, John? I see these people didn’t wait for us; they’ve been slopping martinis on the sly.”

“Bourbon. I’m expected to like bourbon, and I do.” He turned to Alice, who was watching him closely. Laura was surprised to see her smile easily, and she was relieved. Alice seemed interested in the stranger and would be agreeable, thank heaven. Gratefully, Laura turned to him, then stopped, her dark eyes opening wide in surprise.

“I’ve seen you somewhere, Mr. Carr,” she stated. “I’m sure of it. Haven’t we met before?”

He studied her thoughtfully, his head cocked slightly. He said at last: “No, I don’t think so. Do we know anyone in Baltimore, in whose house we could have met, Mrs. Frazier?”

“I’ve never been in Baltimore,” his hostess told him.

“And do call me Laura. Perhaps we met at mutual friends’ in New York? No? Boston? Philadelphia?” She burst out laughing. “On a plane, somewhere! That must be it!”

“Yes, that must be it,” John agreed, taking his glass from Henry’s hand. “You meet everybody on planes, don’t you?” He found Laura very pretty, but compared with Alice Bulowe she was nothing at all. He turned to Alice. “Have you seen me somewhere before, too, Mrs. Bulowe? On a plane?”

“No. And please call me Alice. If this storm keeps on, and I know these New England storms, we’ll be snowbound together until spring.” Alice’s voice had taken on warmth, even a little liveliness. Laura almost forgot that she had felt the force of Alice’s hatred only a few moments before in this very room. How nice it would be if something came of these days for Alice.

“Coming down to it, you do look familiar, all at once,” Henry remarked, studying his guest intently. “Or perhaps it is the power of suggestion. I didn’t notice it before. Now, who do you look like, that I know?”

“Everybody looks like everyone of his own generation, these days.” David smiled cynically. “The organization man; faceless; cut out of the same pattern. Look at us three. Suggestion of crewcut; big, healthy, open faces; absolutely expressionless. We’re only allowed two expressions these days. Outgoing interest. Smiles, with lots of teeth. It used to be that men didn’t resemble each other. Now we do. I bet if we were all murdered, and had only our teeth to identify us, not a single dentist could do the job. ‘Look, Ma, no cavities!’ ”

“David,” Alice chided. But she was smiling.

“It’s true,” David went on, after a swallow of his drink. “Look at Hank, here. Outdoor type, though his contact with the outdoors is limited to going back and forth to the station, in all seasons. Sunlamp for that healthy effect. Look at me. I blink in sunlight. My sunglasses, on bright days, are no affectation, friends. Yet, I’m suntanned, and how I got that way I don’t know. How about you — John?”

“The same,” John Carr agreed. His gray eyes were sparkling with amusement.

“I don’t think we look alike,” Henry remarked. Laura was surprised because he sounded annoyed. “Except in our minds. We are conformists these days, aren’t we? But it’s a complex world.”

“Being complex, the people who inhabit it should be more of a variety,” David stated. He filled his glass again. “A complex world is a challenge. We shouldn’t melt down in its face like a lot of candles. But we do. There was a time when we could tell a man’s occupation just by looking at him, no matter how he was dressed. But could anyone say the same of us?”

“I think so,” Henry said.

“Well, say you don’t know me, and have never met me,” David went on. “What would you say was my occupation?” He spread out his hands. “No calluses. When I walk I have that bold stride we’re always affecting; makes us look like ads in a man’s magazine. Alert, that’s us. Eager, that’s us. Interested, that’s us. Twentieth-century man, the living and breathing robot, moving to a tune played by sinister men who prefer us to be of one type. We won’t cause them any trouble that way. We won’t be a burden on mental health facilities. Why, damn it, we’ve got to be of one type or we’re ‘sick, sick, sick’.”

“Same old tune, yourself.” Henry smiled at John Carr. “Don’t mind old Dave. He was always a nonconformist, even when we were kids. If everybody asked for strawberry ice cream he’d ask for something exotic, just for spite. Once he demanded pistachio, got it, and couldn’t eat it.”

“At least I made a try, which is more than the rest of you ever did, or do,” David retorted.

Laura thought with dismay, “He’s taken a dislike to John Carr.” The coming days were taking on a distinctly dreary look. But John Carr continued to be amused. “I’m right with you,” he said. “I’ve always disliked strawberry ice cream, and that’s literally and figuratively. America’s now one big, sunny, dripping, sweet ice cream cone, and somebody planned it that way, and if I could find out who, I’d wring his or their necks.”

David’s smile became more amiable. “When you find out, let me know and I’ll help you. And if that be treason, as Patrick Henry said, make the most of it. Laura’s been telling us you’re going into the advertising business. May I ask why?”

“I like it. It’s one of the lively arts, even if you don’t think so. It’s very interesting. Guessing, or molding, the public taste is as exciting as a horse race, sometimes. You won’t believe it, but I bet it’s as interesting as electrocardiograms. The graphs are frequently the same.”

“Pulses,” David said sarcastically.

“Exactly. Why, through the advertising business you can find out if the buying public has stenosis of the pocketbook, or a thrombosis in the paycheck, or a block in the wages.”

“Just full of romance and heartbeats,” David said.

John nodded. He glanced at Alice. She was listening with great interest. “Henry was telling me you do commercial art, Mrs. Bulowe. Free-lancing?”

“Yes,” she answered, and Laura hardly recognized her animated voice. “The cup running over one month and not even dregs the next. But I prefer it that way. I’d die of boredom on a salary.”

“So should I,” John agreed. “I’ve been on salary. Now, I’m going to live dangerously. In short, I’ll get a share of the profits, if there are any profits.”

“There will be,” Henry told him. “Rogers and Belton are a fine concern. One of the best.”

“But they’re not a matter of life or death,” David pointed out. He was refilling his glass again, Laura noticed. “People can’t live very well without doctors,” David continued. “I’ll always be in demand.”

John, who was standing near the fire, beside Henry, turned his profile to Laura, and once again she was startled by the fact that she had met him, somewhere! She could almost say where and when. A long time ago. But that was ridiculous. Feeling her stare, John turned towards her, and she caught her breath. His eyes. He regarded her thoughtfully, and frowned, as if he were suddenly disturbed.

“We have met!” she blurted out. “You know that, too, don’t you, John?”

Everyone looked at her, and she blushed, but she held John’s eyes almost defiantly. “Why should there be such a mystery about it, anyway?”

“I’m not unusual-looking, Laura,” he answered easily. The frown, however, returned. “In fact, I’m a very ordinary-looking guy. You see thousands just like me on the streets of every city. Faceless, as Dave here has said.”

It was not like Laura to be persistent, but she went on: “No. We’ve met somewhere. I don’t forget faces. That’s one of my few talents.”

She knew she was making a fool of herself. Henry was embarrassed; she could tell by the way he sipped rapidly at his drink. And then, in the silence, she saw David and John Carr exchange a swift glance. It was like a flash between them, an alert signal. They knew each other! She was positive of it. Feeling the silence growing heavier, she spoke in a higher voice: “I know you all think I’m silly, or something. But I do remember faces. Alice. David. Haven’t you seen John Carr somewhere before?”

“Not I,” Alice said, her voice expressing her distaste for Laura’s outburst.

“David?”

“Well, Laura, as our friend has said, you’ll see thousands just like him, and us, on every street in any city. The molded-plastic type. Almost invisible.”

“Laura,” Henry cautioned her in a low voice, and she blushed again. I’m embarrassing him, she thought miserably.

“Please forgive me,” she apologized. “I probably know someone who looks like John. Dinner’s ready. I hear Edith banging the bell very hard.”

Chapter 4

They could hear the storm during Mrs. Daley’s excellent dinner, but Laura was, in spite of her uneasiness, pleased that Alice appeared to be enjoying the roast beef and red wine. Alice’s interest in John Carr seemed to be increasing and although she had never exhibited any particular fondness for Henry before, smiled at him occasionally and even told a joke which had ribald overtones.

John sat at Laura’s right. She couldn’t help wondering why he was lying about their having met. And, he knew David. She couldn’t forget the sharp glance they had exchanged.

She tried to become interested in the conversation. Alice was speaking, controlled and precise. “I have to go to publishers’ cocktail parties. You have no idea how weird writers are, John.”

“I went to one, once,” John told them. “About three years ago. I never knew that so many people could be jammed into one place at one time. You couldn’t lift your arm to drink. You won’t believe it, but I found myself drinking out of someone else’s glass. Hundreds of people. But the lady writer was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, almost. They gave away enamel cigarette cases with her profile on them. What did she write, that sold so fabulously?”

“I know!” Alice exclaimed. “Hidden Secret! That was Janice Entrett. Were you really there? David and I were, too.” She turned to Laura. “And so were you and Henry. Don’t you remember?”

Laura was relieved, and laughed delightedly. “So, John, that’s where we met!”

“We couldn’t have,” John said, shaking his head solemnly. “Nobody met anybody. It was just a mob scene.”

“We were there, all right,” Henry said, critically examining a slice of meat meant for David. “I wore my best gray flannel suit, and the sleeve was ripped out. Sam was there, too. How did we all get to be invited, anyway?”

Alice was serious now. “I’d sent a sketch for a book jacket, to my agent in New York. It was a prize contest. I’d given up my profession, if you’ll be kind enough to call it that, when Sam and I were married, and we moved to Chicago. But then I saw the notice about the book jacket in the New York Times. I had nothing to lose, so I designed one. There was a synopsis, very coy, about the book, and its fascinating heroine. Jade, I think she was called. I sent my entry, and though it didn’t get the first prize, it did get the second. Two hundred dollars. And an invitation to meet the adorable author, Janice Entrett, all expenses paid for two in New York, for three days. There was a lot of publicity. Sam insisted we accept, and we did.” Alice looked down at her plate, remembering. “He was so happy and excited.”

Laura found herself thinking, “I’ve never given much thought to whether or not Alice loved Sam. But, of course, she did.”

“I still have the cigarette case, somewhere,” John told them.

“What were you doing there?” Alice asked him.

“Well, a friend of mine had an invitation, and he took me along. I wanted to see the sweet uses of publicity at first hand, just to see if I’d like it. I did.”

“Too bad,” David said. “What was your racket before advertising?”

“You wouldn’t believe it, considering that I was graduated from the Harvard School of Business Administration, but I sold race horses.”

“Oh, no!” Laura was enchanted. “I thought only Hollywood Southerners did that, in the movies.”

“Sometimes Hollywood isn’t too far off,” John smiled at her over his wine glass. “I honestly did sell race horses. My own, in fact. Nothing on a big scale. Not the kind that make the big derbys; just the harness races. Nice, jogging, half-witted horses, with absolutely no character. I felt like a murderer. I have a soft heart. I knew where they’d finally end up. But dogs have to eat, too.”

“No more meat for me,” Alice said, laughing. “Not after that.”

“It took me all over the country. I know every hamlet, village, town and city in the hinterlands.”

“Where was your farm?” Henry wanted to know.

“You won’t believe this either,” John answered. “It was in Maine. Not far from Portland. And had a mortgage as big as a house. I finally sold it just to get rid of the mortgage. It had the original name of Horse Fair.”

“What were you doing so far from Baltimore?” David inquired.

John sighed. “I know you’ll think I’m making this up, but I won the horse farm at poker. After I came out of the Navy. Or, rather, the very day I was demobilized. The captain owned it, and I won it from him. I’ve had an eventful life.”

“Wonderful as a background for the advertising business,” David added.

At that moment the lights blinked on and off, and then went off with a complete finality. Only the candles illuminated the big, walnut-paneled dining room, and glimmered on the old tapestry that hung over the immense mahogany buffet. As if by prearranged signal, the thundering of the storm came closer, and the rumbling furnaces halted. There were annoyed cries from the kitchen.

“That does it,” Henry told them. “We’ve had it.”

“Just like old times,” Alice said. “We’ll probably be living in blankets for days now. Not only that, but we’ll be snowbound. This house is three miles from the main road, on its own private road. Do you still have a plow, Hank?”

“Yes, but it’s not big enough to do a three-mile job. Don’t worry, Alice. We have freezers. . . .” He stopped. “I forgot. The freezers will be off, too. There’s nothing for it but that Evelyn and I will have to take up a lot of the meat and things and put them in the woodshed. No later than tomorrow morning. Any volunteers?”

“You mean this can go on for days?” John Carr sounded surprised. “No electricity?”

“It went on for two weeks one time,” Alice said. “You remember, Laura. But we weren’t so dependent on the utilities as we are now.”

“Alice is teasing you.” Laura smiled at John’s dismay. “Just as soon as the storm stops, the electricity people will be out putting up the lines again. After all, we don’t live too far from the village. Henry, don’t you think you should call?”

“I will.” He went into the hall to telephone.

“You never did put in an auxiliary system, did you,” Alice pointed out accusingly.

“Well, no. It didn’t seem necessary. This is the first time the lines have been down for a long while. They always got around to putting them up again, usually in just a few hours. It isn’t as it was when we were children, Alice.”

Henry returned gloomily. “I should have thought about it. The phone’s gone, too.”

“Yes, indeed,” Alice reiterated. “It isn’t as it was when we were children.”

Her rudeness caused a sudden hiatus in the dining room. The words had been nothing, but the tone had been contemptuous and insulting. Laura rose. “Let’s have our coffee in the living room.” She hurried out, and Henry, raising his eyebrows, followed with Alice.

David and John Carr found themselves alone. “That was close,” David muttered.

“Not too close. It was a good thing I was at that damned party, though,” John said. “But let’s be more careful; keep it impersonal. He’ll check, of course. He’s that kind. All lawyers are.”

“Alice came in at just the right time, almost as if she had been coached,” David recalled. “I thought of letting her in on all this, but it’s better if she doesn’t know about you. As for Frazier, the phone’s down, and he’s not going any place.”

“Which adds complications,” John Carr commented. “Because neither are we.”

Later, when they were in their bedroom, Henry said to Laura: “It wasn’t like you, honey, to be so persistent about having seen that Carr somewhere before. You almost called him a liar when he said he’d never met you.”

“I don’t like mysteries, darling, and there didn’t seem to be any reason why he should refuse to acknowledge we’d met. But it’s all settled now. We met him at that party, in spite of the crush. I never forget a face.”

The old stone house was still warm. Tomorrow it would begin to chill rapidly. The oil lamps were being reserved for downstairs, as long as there was kerosene, and Laura was creaming her pretty face by the soft candlelight. Her bright hair curled about her head like a halo, and her lovely figure was swathed in yards of filmy material. Henry put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her reflection in the mirror. “You look like a Christmas angel.”

“Not tomorrow night,” she laughed, her dark eyes full of love. “I’ll be wearing flannel pajamas, and so will you.”

There had been such a scarcity of love in her life, she mused. There had been gruff old Aunt Clara, and finally Henry. One at a time. Never two or three together. Only one at a time. Perhaps, if God were good to her, there would be children, several of them, a ring of tenderness about her, protecting her.

“Henry, don’t ever leave me,” she murmured, with an intensity that surprised her husband.

“Why should I?” he asked indulgently. “I’m strong and healthy. I’ll be here for days, never out of your sight. You mustn’t get morbid.” He sat on the edge of the double bed, lit a cigarette, and then asked: “Are you sure it was at that cocktail party that we met Carr? I know you pride yourself on your photographic memory. But I was watching you. You looked as if you were about to burst out in recognition. Were you introduced to him? I can’t remember any formal introductions at all.”

Laura frowned in the mirror. “Everybody introduced himself to everybody else, if there was time. He probably did, too. Hundreds of people.”

“But he didn’t remember you, himself. And nobody could forget you, darling.”

“Oh, you,” Laura said fondly. “But there were scores of other pretty women there; Alice, for instance. Yet he’d never seen her before, according to them both.”

But Henry was not satisfied. When Laura was asleep beside him, and all was silence except for the creaking of the old house and the moaning of the wind, he went over his own knowledge of John Carr. He had had lunch over two weeks before, in a restaurant he very seldom patronized, but which was a favorite of old Bancroft’s. Mr. Bancroft was sitting at his usual table, talking seriously with a man whom Henry had never seen before. Henry merely glanced at them both; as a junior partner, he had no intention of intruding on a senior partner who was never very cordial with his juniors at the best of times. The two men glanced at the menu tacked to the wall. In the mirror above it, Mr. Bancroft noticed Henry waiting for a table. Henry saw the old man hesitate, and politely looked away. He was just about to leave when the headwaiter came to tell him that Mr. Bancroft had suggested he join him at his table. Henry went at once.

“Henry,” Mr. Bancroft said in his powerful voice, “this is a new client of ours, John Carr. At least, I hope he’ll be. What will you have to drink?”

Henry, ever tactful, saw that the others were not ordering a second drink, so he refused, and noted that Mr. Bancroft was pleased. “We’re having the lentil soup and sauerbraten. How about you, Henry?” Henry hated sauerbraten, but as a junior in the firm he ordered heartily, “Same here.”

During the meal Mr. Bancroft explained that John Carr wanted the firm to look over proposed partnership papers. “I’m not satisfied with the fourth page and its provisions,” he said. His pale eyes suddenly became intent. “Henry, you handle that sort of thing well. How about you taking over? John, Henry’s up to all the tricks of other lawyers. I’m not. Want Henry to handle it?”

John Carr hesitated. He studied Henry, a man of his own age. “Well, if you’d rather have it that way, Mr. Bancroft.”

Mr. Bancroft’s wrinkled cheeks had colored slightly. “I’ve merely suggested it. If you’d rather I did — after all, you came to me, yourself, on recommendation — I’ll go ahead.”

John Carr had said nothing; he had looked offended, Henry remembered, and Mr. Bancroft changed the subject.

A few days later Mr. Bancroft had come down with influenza, and John Carr was assigned to young Hunt, Henry’s junior. Hunt had come to Henry. “I’m not familiar with all this about partnerships,” he had confessed. “I’m just creeping around in the dark. How about your taking over that guy Carr?”

“I don’t think he likes me,” Henry told him.

Young Hunt had grinned. “So I heard. Carr wants the papers rushed through before the end of the year. Probably a tax matter, too. At this rate, I won’t be finished for another year. How about it?”

“Why don’t you ask Carr?”

“I wanted to get your reaction first.”

“All right. If he agrees.”

Apparently he had not agreed immediately. It was two days before Henry saw him again, and he seemed to think Bancroft’s illness had been specially designed to thwart him. “If you don’t have confidence in my ability, you can go somewhere else,” Henry had pointed out, annoyed. “There are other concerns.”

Then John Carr had smiled. “I’m sorry. Old Bancroft knew my father, and I don’t know any other lawyers in New York. Let’s get to work, shall we?”

It had been as simple as that. Henry recalled every incident. Nothing at all out of the way. But why should there have been? He wouldn’t have given it another thought if Laura hadn’t been so insistent tonight, plus his own feeling that he had seen the man before.

Henry leaned on his elbow and looked at his sleeping wife.

Laura was dreaming. Her first sensation was of overwhelming fear. She dreamed she was standing on the threshold of the house in the dark winter night. Suddenly she heard Aunt Clara crying, “Run, run! Run as fast as you can, lovey! Hurry!”

The door was open behind her, and she saw someone standing there, someone who wanted to kill her. She couldn’t move. She screamed again and again in horror.

“Laura! Wake up, wake up!” Henry was shaking her, and she could hear his voice. But she could not drag herself immediately out of the dream world. She woke to find her husband standing over her, his hand on her mouth.

“You’ll wake up the whole house, Laura. You’ve had a nightmare! My God, your screams!”

She clung to him, shivering, unable to control herself. “I thought someone was in the house, trying to kill me! I dreamed Aunt Clara was telling me to run away! It was so real!”

“Hush, hush.” Henry held her tightly in his arms. “I’m here, darling. It was just a dream.”

But she had aroused at least part of the household. Alice had opened her door and crept into the hall to listen at the Fraziers’ door. There was silence again after Henry had calmed his wife, but Alice had heard every word. As she turned to go back to her room, she saw the door to John Carr’s room closing slowly.

She frowned, and then quickly ran to her brother as David’s door opened, pushing him forcibly into his room. “No. No light,” she whispered. “I’ve got to tell you something. Laura feels something. You were right, after all. You know, I never believed in that extrasensory perception thing, but I’ve got to admit that if there is such a thing, our little Laura has it. She always had. She used to make me creepy at times.”

“She just feels it,” David said, “she doesn’t know it. I’m sure of that. Have a cigarette.” They smoked for a moment.

Alice broke the silence. “I’m going to ask a few questions.”

“Don’t!” David told her sharply. “This is too ticklish. We don’t want Hank to have any more suspicions than he already has.”

‘There’s another thing,” Alice said. “That horse seller, John Carr. He heard Laura scream too. He saw me. Yet he tried to shut his door so I wouldn’t know he’d been listening too. Why should he have been so stealthy about it?”

“Easy,” David smiled. “He knew you were eavesdropping, and he’s a tactful sort of guy. Never embarrasses a lady when she’s sticking her ears out. So our Laura feels someone is out to kill her.”

Alice went on: “There’s still another thing. You know Carr, don’t you? I saw the way you two looked at each other.”

“Don’t be a fool,” David told her. “I never saw him before tonight, not even at that party.”

“Uh-uh,” his sister said. “I know you too well. That casual air doesn’t fool me.”

Her brother seized her wrist and twisted it painfully. “Don’t ever say that again. I tell you I never saw him before until tonight. Is that clear?”

Alice replied coldly, “Very well. You never met him before. Now let go of my wrist.”

She stood up and with a faint sound of contempt left the room. David waited until he heard her door close, then let himself out into the hall and knocked lightly at John Carr’s door. It opened immediately. There was a candle burning in the room, and Carr was in pajamas, but it was obvious that he had not yet gone to bed. On a chair near the door lay a gun. The two men exchanged glances.

“You heard?” David whispered.

“How could I help it?”

“She’s afraid.”

“Well, she has reason to be, hasn’t she?” Carr asked.

Chapter 5

By sunrise the snow had stopped falling. The sky was a silvery gray and the drifts in some places were almost six feet high.

“Don’t let this fool you,” Alice told John Carr and her brother as they ate breakfast in the dining room. “The blizzard is just catching its breath for more mischief. I know these storms.”

“I’ve never been isolated before,” John Carr remarked as he began putting away three eggs and several strips of bacon. “There aren’t any neighbors?”

“The nearest, the Ulbrichs, are over half a mile away,” Alice answered. “And they had the sense to leave for Florida the first of December. The village is over three miles away.”

She looked at him and grudgingly admitted to herself that he had a great deal of charm and magnetism, though he was not especially handsome. I could like him, Alice thought, if only I knew more about him. She held out her chilled hands to the small oil stove. “I’ve heard cranky sounds in the kitchen. The help doesn’t like being cut off from radio and TV. They think it’s all the fault of some amorphous collection of human beings they call ‘the powers-that-be’.”

“They’re not the only ones,” John commented. “I heard a Princeton graduate call another equally amorphous collection of human beings ‘the vested interests’. I’m a vest man, myself. But I do know what they call us — I mean, me.”

“What?” Alice asked.

Edith burst into the dining room. “I suppose you want more coffee?” she asked in a belligerent tone.

“We all want more,” Alice told her. “Have you taken a tray up to Mrs. Frazier yet?”

“Mister Frazier said she wasn’t to be disturbed,” Edith stated. “He said to let her be until she yelled. She had a bad night. But it’s almost ten-thirty, and we gotta clean up the kitchen sometime!”

The three in the dining room looked at each other. “Get a tray ready, please. I’ll take it up to Mrs. Frazier,” Alice volunteered. “You and Mrs. Daley have enough to do as it is with the five of us.”

“You can say that again,” Edith agreed.

They laughed. “Everybody in the world thinks that there is ‘some group’ after him,” John said, drinking his third cup of coffee. “We’ve become a paranoid society.”

“ ‘Sick, sick, sick’,” David quoted.

“I prefer ‘sin, sin, sin’,” John amended. “What does a paranoid world do, eventually? It starts murdering ‘in defense’. Then it blows its head off. It’s happened before.”

“You were about to tell us what they call you, John, when Edith came in,” Alice reminded him.

He seemed baffled. “Was I? I don’t remember.”

David was amused. His black eyes sparkled. “They call you the ‘wastemakers’,” he said. “Or a subsidiary of the wastemakers. I agree.”

“I wonder where Henry is?” Alice said.

“He’s hauling up the blocks of frozen meat from the basement to the frozen woodshed with the handyman,” her brother answered. “Remember? Electricity’s off. To save the meat and other edibles our host is imitating the Eskimos.”

“So that’s all the jolly calling back and forth I hear. Aren’t you boys going to help?”

“Let Hank get the heart attack,” David retorted. “He’s the athletic type. I’m the doctor. If I collapse, who is going to take care of this little arctic colony?”

A pale gilt sun suddenly shone through the leaded windows and turned the walnut paneling over the buffet to a dark burnished gold. Alice looked at the loveliness about her and thought, once more: this should all be mine.

She suddenly remembered her childhood here, and how she had loved every old room, every corridor, and stairway, especially the broad oaken one that rose from the hall. She was familiar with every passageway, the attic, cellars and barns, every tree and stream. While she had been exploring as a child, Laura had spent her time with Aunt Clara sitting in the ‘morning room’. Or following the lumbering old woman during inspection of the linen closets. “No wonder this all came to her,” Alice thought bitterly. “And I, who loved it all as it should be loved, received nothing.”

She felt the hatred in her heart, and when John leaned towards her over the stiff, white damask of the tablecloth to light her cigarette, she was aware that he was watching her covertly. Edith arrived at that moment with Laura’s tray.

John looked at it critically. “Two soft-boiled eggs, one soft piece of toast, one pot of chocolate, and orange sections,” he announced.

“Typical of Laura,” Alice said. She put down her cigarette, picked up the tray and left the room, her slim back straight and stiff.

“I gather that Alice doesn’t like our hostess,” John remarked.

“You gather right. And with good reason, too,” David told him. “Laura calls this place ‘our little home in the country’. You know, rustic. Alice always thought she would have it; this house, its grounds, are part of her, though she was born in New York. She came home again, when sweet Aunt Clara invited her to live here.”

“Why did sweet Aunt Clara do that? You never told me.”

“Well, she had all that money and property, and Laura and Alice were the only two girls of the family, if you overlook Bertram Beame’s first daughter, whom Aunt Clara resolutely did. Aunt Clara didn’t care for boys. So, the idea was to see which of the girls she wanted to leave her money to, and Laura was the one who hit the jackpot. Alice never got over it.”

John stood up abruptly, adjusting his tweed jacket, and strolled out into the kitchen. It was suffocatingly hot, with the ovens going, and the windows were streaming with moisture. “Well, it’s comfortable.” He smiled at Mrs. Daley, who, after a moment, returned his smile. “Came out to get warm.” He held his hands over a gas jet.

“You got the oil stove in there,” Edith reminded him sullenly.

“And we’ve got the other oil stove up in our rooms.” Mrs. Daley glared angrily at her niece.

“And we’ve got log fires in the living room and morning room,” John replied amiably. “We won’t freeze. The point is, will the plumbing?”

“No. All protected, Mr. Carr,” Mrs. Daley said, studying him thoughtfully.

“When did Mr. Frazier have his breakfast?” he asked. “He hasn’t been in here this morning?”

“Oh, he had his breakfast right at the kitchen table, long before you got up,” Mrs. Daley told him. “He’s a hearty eater, not like Dr. David, who doesn’t like big breakfasts. That’s why he’s so thin.”

“One of these mornings I’ll have some chocolate, myself,” John said. “It smells good. I drink too much coffee.”

He became aware, after a moment or two, that the women were watching him curiously. He turned to them, smiling, and then returned to the dining room, where he and David began a serious conversation.

“Nice gentleman,” Mrs. Daley commented to her niece.

“I don’t think so,” Edith said. “One of those smart alecks. Watching everything. He doesn’t miss nothing.”

“You watch that toast!” Mrs. Daley warned her.

Laura was still sleeping when Alice placed the steaming tray on a small table near the bed in the handsomely decorated bedroom. Once, long ago, this had been her room. Laura awakened abruptly, sat up and looked around in confusion.

“The help is going to quit, drifts or no drifts, if you add invalidism to the problems of this house,” Alice told her disagreeably. “Here’s your breakfast.”

Laura shivered in her silk nightgown, hugging herself, and Alice took an afghan from the chaise longue and threw it over her shoulders. Laura murmured her thanks. It was very cold in the room.

Alice sat down and lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you drink your chocolate while it’s still warm? You never liked the stuff. You just drank it to please dear old Aunt Clara.”

Laura’s mouth trembled. “Alice, please,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t ever seem to make you understand. I did try to please Aunt Clara. Because she loved me. I had no one. So, when Aunt Clara showed she really wanted me — I was so grateful I’d have killed myself for her if she’d wanted it.”

Abruptly Alice changed the subject. “Why were you screaming bloody murder last night?”

“I — I had a terrible dream.” Laura did not elaborate.

“There is something I want to ask you.” Again the change of subject was abrupt. “And I want an answer.” Alice’s voice was almost threatening.

Laura’s dark eyes regarded the other woman intently.

“Yes?”

“What were you doing in Sam’s room the night he died?”

Laura sat up suddenly, her mouth open.

“Answer me,” Alice demanded. “You remember. You and I shared Sam’s room and mine, with the twin beds, because there was a bathroom off it. Sam slept in the spare room, and Hank and David had the two sofas in our living room. Sam had a cold.” Alice went on quickly. “His colds usually turned into bronchitis, and so about four in the morning I decided to take him some cough medicine. I saw that his door was open, and when I went in you were picking up a glass from the floor near his bed. You looked — stealthy. That’s all I can call it, Laura! That’s why I ran back to my own room and watched you, while you took the glass to the bathroom down the hall.”

Laura seemed stunned.

Alice stood up, caught Laura’s shoulder, and shook it.

“And that’s why the police couldn’t find the glass, or any glass in the bedrooms, which had Sam’s fingerprints on it! You washed the glass in the second bathroom, Laura! Why? You’ve got to tell me. That’s why the police kept coming back again and again, driving us mad!”

Suddenly Laura’s face turned crimson. “Why didn’t you ask me before? It’s so simple.”

“Is it, Laura? Tell me how simple it all was!”

Laura’s hands began to twist the fringe of the afghan. “You make it sound so — . Well, I woke up in the night, and it was dark. We had only been in your apartment in Chicago once before. I wanted a drink of water, and I couldn’t find the bathroom! I’d stumbled around the bedroom for a couple of minutes, before I found the door to the hall. I’d forgotten that Hank and David were sleeping in the living room. I honestly thought Henry was in that other bedroom. Remember? We left the boys arguing about who’d sleep in the bedroom! I — I simply assumed that it was Henry.”

She knew how important it was to convince Alice, but her voice faltered. “I wanted to see — if Henry was — all right. It was the first time we’d ever slept apart. I still thought it was Henry in the bed, then my foot hit against the glass. There was a little light from the street. I bent down to pick up the glass and saw the back of Sam’s head on the pillow and his red hair. So I went out of the room to the bathroom down the hall, remembered that Sam had a cold, and washed the glass out with soap and hot water before I used it.”

She looked up at the silent, white-faced Alice. “What in God’s name,” she cried wildly, “have you been thinking all this time! What?”

“The glass was on the floor, as if it had been dropped?”

“Yes!”

“There was no sign of anyone there, then? You didn’t hear or see anyone?”

“No! I could hear the boys snoring in the living room, and the sound of distant traffic. That’s all.”

“Did you know what time it was?”

“Yes. I had my wrist watch on. As a matter of fact, I looked at the time, in the bathroom. It was ten after four.”

“The doctors said Sam died between three and four,” Alice told her. “And you’re sure you didn’t hear anyone talking to Sam, or moving around?”

“No. I told you — ” She stopped, her face pale.

“What?” Alice demanded.

Laura’s hands were suddenly still. “When I came out of the bathroom,” she whispered, “Dave was near the door. He — he looked very sleepy.”

“Dave!”

Laura nodded. “He was as surprised as I was. He — he was just reaching for the doorknob. You see, I’d turned out the light, because I was leaving.”

Alice walked to the window and stood, staring out. “You never told the police about that?”

“Why should I have?”

“Why did you take the glass with you, when you saw it was Sam there, and not Hank?”

“I — I don’t know. I’d picked it up. And then when I saw it was Sam, I just hurried out of the room. I didn’t want to disturb him. I didn’t know he was — And then when I was in the bathroom I saw there wasn’t any glass there, so I washed — Sam’s — glass — and drank from it.”

Alice turned back to her. “What made you keep quiet about it? Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“I told Henry,” Laura said. “I didn’t think it meant anything. Why should it have? Henry said I shouldn’t bother mentioning it to the police. It would just cause complications — ”

“In a plain case of suicide.” Alice finished the sentence.

“Of course,” Laura agreed weakly. “It was all terrible enough, as it was.”

“Of course. Have you and Hank discussed your being in Sam’s room since then?”

“No. I — I forgot all about it until now. It was painful to remember.”

Alice took a deep breath. “Well, I’m sorry. Forget it again.”

At that moment there was a sharp report outside, with thunderous echoes which reverberated across the countryside. And then a series of alarmed shouts.

Alice swung around and ran from the room. Laura got out of bed and quickly put on slippers and a robe. She was hurrying down the stairs just as the front door opened, and she saw her husband and Evelyn come in, both of them white-faced.

“Someone took a shot at me!” Henry’s voice was high-pitched and trembling.

He stared blindly at the two women.

“I said,” he almost shouted, “someone tried to kill me!”

Chapter 6

David came into the hall with a book in his hand. “What’s going on here? Who shot off that gun?”

He looked at the two silent women, and at Henry, in his plaid lumberjacket, his boots and legs dappled with snow. Henry took off his plaid cap and stared at it as if it were an object he had never seen before. He was shaking badly. Evelyn, the little wizened handyman, breathed loudly in the sudden quiet. David turned to him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, sir,” Evelyn wheezed, “we was just coming out of the woodshed — Mr. Frazier here said we had enough up from the freezers — and then we heard this bang. Sounded right close by. Mr. Frazier ducked; not that it’d done much good if he’d really been hit. You know, you don’t hear the bang first, it’s the bullet you get. Then comes the bang. And there’s the bullet, yessir, right in the door of the woodshed. Still there, matter of fact. What I’d like to know, who tried to kill Mr. Frazier?”

There were running footsteps, and John Carr appeared. He looked at the group in astonishment. “What’s wrong?”

“Hank says someone tried to kill him. Shot at him, just now,” David told him. “Didn’t you hear anything?”

“Yes, I did. A hunter?”

“In this weather?” David asked. “In all these drifts?”

It was then that Laura screamed, and Henry ran to his wife and caught her in his arms. Mrs. Daley and Edith appeared from the back of the house, their eyes wide. “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Daley asked. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Frazier?”

David turned to her quickly. “Did you see anyone outside except Mr. Frazier and Evelyn?”

“Lord, no,” Mrs. Daley replied. “No one can walk in that snow. Was that a shot we heard?”

“It was,” John Carr told her. “You’d have seen anyone if there had been anyone to see? The shot was fired from close range.”

“I’d have seen anyone.” Mrs. Daley was thoughtful for a moment. “In fact, I was looking out the window at my feeding shelf for birds, and the woodshed is right there, thirty feet away. Then Edith said something from the stove, and I turned my head, and the bang came. I sort of thought it was hunters from the village, though it isn’t the season.”

David and John Carr exchanged a glance. Henry had finally calmed Laura. “She’s all shaken up. I’m going to take her back to bed.” He did not look at the others as he and Laura climbed the stairs.

“It’s all right; it probably was some fool of a hunter,” David commented. “Alice? John? Let’s go into the living room.”

But Alice caught his arm. “I want to talk to you.” John Carr nodded, then left them alone. “David. Laura saw you — that morning. At four o’clock. She just told me.”

David glanced around quickly.

“Of course she did.” Then he frowned at his sister. “How did she happen to tell you?”

She was silent. “Keep out of this!” he warned her. “You do your part; I’ll do mine.”

When Henry came downstairs a little later, he was still pale. “I’ve given her a sedative. We’ll let her sleep.” He reached for his pipe. “There’s only one other window facing the woodshed side. The hall window, upstairs. And there are no tracks in the snow except mine and Evelyn’s.”

“Then who fired the shot?” John Carr asked anxiously.

Henry filled his pipe and lit it. His audience waited tensely.

“I wouldn’t know,” he answered in a slow voice. “Does anyone here have any ideas?”

“How could a hunter get up here so far, in the snow?” David asked incredulously. “It must be six feet deep in some places. And the village is miles away; he couldn’t have driven.”

“That’s what I figured out all by myself.” Henry’s tone was sarcastic.

“Unless,” John Carr pointed out, “it was a stray shot, a spent bullet.”

“Those mostly come from rifles. I don’t think that bullet was a rifle shot. In fact, even though only the end is sticking out, I’d say it was a forty-five.” Henry looked slowly from David to John. “That shot wasn’t fooling. It struck hardly a foot from my head. Somebody tried to kill me.”

“Or,” John Carr said softly, “warn you.”

There was silence in the room. The smoke curled up slowly from Henry’s pipe. He leaned against the fireplace.

“Now, who would want to kill me or warn me?” He looked at the two men. “Another thing,” Henry went on, “the only place from which that shot could have come is this house. No tracks in the snow for forty feet or more around, except Evelyn’s and mine. So, either the shot was fired from the kitchen door, which would make the criminal Mrs. Daley or Edith, and that’s damn silly, or it was fired from the upstairs window in the hall, which is the only window facing the woodshed besides the kitchen window.”

Again, he looked at each of them. “And the window’s been opened. The snow’s disturbed. So who in this room, dear friends, tried to kill me? Which one of you?”

Alice’s smile was hollow. “I was with Laura.”

“So it narrows down to you, Dave, or you, John.”

“Are you serious?” David exclaimed.

“I am. John?”

“Why in God’s name should I try to kill a comparative stranger?” John Carr’s expression was no longer pleasant. “What could be my motive? I never knew you until a short time ago.”

“I don’t know anything about you,” Henry told him, “except what I’ve gotten from you. And a few others.”

“I refuse to defend myself against ridiculous suspicions.” John’s face was flushed. “Has it ever occurred to you that there may be someone else in this house besides us, somebody hidden?”

The fire quieted on the hearth, then suddenly leaped high.

“Someone in this house?” Henry repeated. “That’s impossible.”

“How many rooms are there?” John asked. “Eight bedrooms on the second floor, and one room and the attic on the third.” Henry paused. “That’s funny. I thought I heard someone on the third floor, this morning, when I got up. But I assumed it was Mrs. Daley or Edith, though they don’t sleep on the third floor. Let’s go!”

The three men hurried from the room.

When they encountered Mrs. Daley on the second floor, her arms full of linen, Henry asked her: “Were you up in the attic this morning? I thought I heard footsteps.”

She was alarmed. “Why, no. Neither was Edith. No one goes up there, except in the spring and fall. Do you think there’s a burglar?”

Henry patted her arm. “We’re just going to look around. Keep an eye on Mrs. Frazier until we come down, will you?”

They climbed the steep attic stairs in almost total darkness and Henry pushed open the big trapdoor. It moved easily and the dusty attic, filled with shadowy shapes, lay before them. At the far end of the room there was a closed door. It opened into a bedroom, unmade, neat, and bitterly cold. This was where Evelyn often slept, instead of in his own room over the garage, if the house was filled with guests.

The window in the room had been opened. Snow was melting on the floor. John Carr went to the window and peered out. “Look!” he shouted to the other men. Just below the window, some seven or eight feet, was the roof of the room over the attached garage. There were footprints in the snow, which led to the far side of the roof.

“So that’s how it was,” Henry said. “You could go ten feet from the house and be lost. Look, the prints are already filling in. In a few minutes they’ll be gone.” The wind lifted the snow, and even as they watched, the edges of the holes blurred and smoothed.

“Look here.” John was holding something in his hand, and the small object gleamed faintly in the half-light. It was the jacket of a bullet. “A forty-five, I think. On the floor.”

“But why here?” David asked him. “This window doesn’t face the woodshed.” He squinted out into the storm. “But look. If you go along that roof, where the prints are, you can turn and face the woodshed! But who in hell — ?”

“That’s always the question,” John Carr commented. “Who? Why? Something in your dark past, perhaps? Examine the victim and you’ll get your best clues about a murderer or would-be murderer. Let’s go down where it’s warm, before we all get pneumonia. And let’s interrogate, as the mystery novels call it.”

They went downstairs, shuddering in the cold, and grouped themselves around the fire.

Alice listened earnestly to their description of the attic bedroom, then interrupted. “But the shot couldn’t have been fired from the roof of the garage. The hall window on the second floor had been opened, facing the woodshed, remember?”

“Trust a woman to ruin a perfectly good solution,” David said gloomily. Then added: “Just a moment,” and left the room.

“She’s right, you know,” John said. “Intruder or not, he came down to the second floor and fired from the hall window. Still, I found the shell in the attic. But we can’t have two separate murderers. That would wreck the whole picture. I like tidy explanations. The shot was fired either from the hall window or the roof of the garage. Take your choice. If from the hall window, what was our boy doing in the attic? Have we got an unseen witness, after all?” He paused to light a cigarette.

Alice stared at the fire. “At any rate, the intruder’s gone,” Henry remarked. “I think I’ll take a look at Laura. I wish to God the phone was all right; I’d call the police.”

David came back into the room, half laughing. “One mystery solved. Mrs. Daley said she shook a bedroom rug out of the hall window half an hour before that shot was fired. So, she’s the one who disturbed the snow. Now we have only one mystery left.”

In the kitchen, Mrs. Daley spoke to her niece in a low voice: “Not a word out of you, ever, my girl. To nobody. If you do — ”

Edith whimpered. “I’m frightened. I don’t like to get into such things.”

“Keep quiet, and you won’t,” her aunt told her. “People only get into trouble when they talk too much. A long tongue is a long rope, for hanging.”

Laura awoke in the cold gray twilight of her room, with a sense of foreboding. She huddled under the heavy blankets, reluctant to get up. If only she had listened to Henry when he had quoted Benjamin Franklin to her: “Guests, like fish, stink after three days.” It was much too long for people who are really strangers to be together.

David and Alice provided problems enough, but now there was John Carr.

And here I lie, Laura thought, quivering like jelly, and it’s my house, and they’re my guests. Her head swam from the sedative, and she groaned as she remembered that the lines were down, and the telephone out. If only none of them had come, there would be peace. She tried to get up the courage to dress and go downstairs and be the bright hostess and pretend that all this had not happened.

The gale was worse. The stone house was like a ship on a sea: waves of snow roared around it and hissed against the windows.

Laura tried to shake off the questions Alice had asked, but they returned to her. Had she seen or heard anyone? No, only David, that night. Only David.

But, had there been only David? The memories were painful but she couldn’t help reliving in her mind that whole terrible night. They had all gone to bed a little after midnight. Alice had slept at once, but Laura, missing her husband, had not fallen asleep immediately, and had awaked a few hours later. Why? There was something —

Yes, now, a year later, she remembered. Footsteps. Soft footsteps in the hall outside the bedroom door. Stealthy footsteps. But, she had told herself, it must have been one of the men on his way to the bathroom. Moving so as not to disturb the others. She had half fallen asleep again — she remembered now — and in that semiconscious state she had heard something. A voice? Voices? The sound of something falling or rolling? No, she had been dreaming. Still, she had gotten up, and had been thirsty. The room had been dark. She had heard the distant murmur of traffic. She had lost her way in the room and had found herself in the hall. Then all had been as she had told Alice this morning.

Not one person, not even herself, had admitted to the police that they had been up during the night. She had forgotten. Had the others forgotten, too? It was possible. But what had she heard?

The bedroom door opened and Henry came in, carrying the little oil stove that heated the dining room.

“Awake?” he called cheerfully. “I brought the stove so you won’t freeze while you dress. How are you, darling?”

“Close the door,” she whispered. “And don’t light the candle yet. I’ve got to talk to you. Sit beside me on the bed. Henry, who do you think tried to kill you today?”

“Nobody did. We — investigated. It was a spent bullet from somewhere, probably shot from a mile away or something.” He had asked the others not to tell Laura about the intruder, for she was too easily frightened.

“A hunter?”

“Who else?” he laughed. “Do you think Dave or John or Mrs. Daley or Edith wants to kill me? Be sensible, honey. And Alice didn’t leave your room. You see how ridiculous it is.”

“Henry, there’s something I’ve got to tell you about Chicago.”

He sat very still for a moment. “I know. You told me about going into Sam’s room, and I told you not to mention it to the police. What good would it have done, except to make them ask embarrassing questions? The whole story would have sounded foolish. Believe me, dear, I know. I’m a lawyer. You didn’t murder Sam by any chance, did you?”

His wife did not giggle as he expected. Instead, she told him of the sounds she had heard, and then he was quiet again, pondering what she had said. “But it could have been David — you said you bumped into him. Alice was asleep in the big bedroom, until she saw you coming out of Sam’s room. You heard the voices, or whatever, when you were still in Alice’s bedroom, and another sound. Did it ever occur to you, dear,” he added seriously, “that you might have heard poor Sam, who had finally made up his mind, in the night, to kill himself?”

Laura shuddered. “You think it was Sam I heard? But why should I have heard David twice in the hall? Before I got up, and then a little while afterwards when I met him as I came out of the bathroom?”

“You know,” her husband told her, “it could have been me. I couldn’t get to sleep, so I sat up on that damned hard couch and smoked half a cigarette. Then, feeling restless, I walked around a little, wishing I were home. I went as far as that hall leading down to the bathroom.”

Laura sighed. “That explains it, then. Everything sounds queer in the night.”

Laura dressed hurriedly, for the little stove did not give off much heat. She chose a thick tweed skirt and a sweater, brushed her hair and touched her pale lips with lipstick. “Why did it have to be so stormy, darling? If it were nice, David and Alice would be walking all over the country and we — ”

“Could have had a little time to ourselves.”

Hand in hand, they walked downstairs, Henry carrying the stove. The hall was flickering with candlelight. Henry took the stove into the dining room, which was in total darkness, and Laura waited for him to return. Everything seemed to have been explained. But still, there had been something, there still was something, that did not quite fit all the smooth explanations. She knew eventually she would remember what it was. Henry came into the hall. “Now, smile; that’s my girl.”

The men stood up when Laura came in, smiling with determined brightness.

“Why doesn’t one of you give Laura a drink,” Alice suggested. “She needs it.”

“I will,” David offered. “Martini?” John Carr smiled at Laura and her spirits rose. The nightmare was over.

And when John walked with her to the tree, she was vivacious in telling him the story of many of the ornaments. Alice listened, remembering again bitterly that all this was Laura’s now. She glanced up to see that John had returned to the fireplace and was watching her seriously. There was something about his expression that touched her. It was as though he knew her thoughts.

No one mentioned the shooting episode at dinner that evening. They talked instead of the storm. Henry told his guests: “Until it calms down, they don’t do too much about the lines. They expect that we residents have had the intelligence to fortify ourselves with auxiliary systems — oil lamps and candles — so we can wait it out. But we had no need of anything, until this year.”

“I’d think,” Alice commented, “that with a house in town you’d stay there all winter.”

“We’ve rented it,” Henry replied. “We needed the money.”

“You needed the money,” Alice began. Then she saw that Laura was embarrassed. “Henry insists we live on his salary, and we do,” Laura said shyly.

“Noble,” David commented. “Keeping his self-respect. Really heroic.”

“Anything wrong with that?” Henry asked.

“No. But what are you two saving it all for?”

“Our children,” Henry answered simply.

“Any on the horizon?” David asked with interest.

Henry smiled at Laura reassuringly. “Not yet, I’m afraid. But soon. After all, Laura had quite an experience last summer.” He looked directly at David, who was carefully cutting his steak. “She might have been killed. Isn’t that so, David?”

David looked up. “Sure, she might have been killed. I knew, as a doctor, how badly she was hurt. Concussion, as well as everything else.”

“Please, let’s not talk about it.” Laura was ill at ease. “We’ve got the whole future.”

“Yes, indeed,” David agreed.

But Henry pursued the subject. “I’ve often wondered about the ropes on the swing. You see, when I was alone the day before, I sat in the swing, myself, and I weigh at least fifty pounds more than Laura does. I wanted to find out what was so fascinating about the swing to Laura. I’d never been on one before, so, I stood up, and swung. ‘Way out.” He paused. “And nothing happened.”

“That’s what probably did it,” David remarked casually. “If you hadn’t reverted to your second childhood, and caused the old strands to loosen, Laura wouldn’t have gone through what she did.” He smiled. “The day after, I looked those ropes over, myself. Particularly the broken one. Raveled away into threads. A little more, and you’d have gone sailing into the trees yourself, Hank.”

“I’m glad it was me,” Laura added quickly. “Just so nothing happens to Henry.”

There was a sudden silence. Both David and John regarded her gravely. Henry neatly cut the meat from the steak bone. “I wish it had happened to me. I could have stood it better than you, Laura. Now, let’s forget it.”

The rest of the evening went smoothly. Alice and the three men played bridge, and Laura picked up a current best seller, but soon the print blurred. She waited for a pause in the bridge game, and then stood up. “I know I’m being a bad hostess, but I’m not feeling too well. Please excuse me. No, Henry, don’t get up.”

They watched her go, and then as she climbed the stairs she was assailed by a truly devastating sense of desolation. She forced herself to walk faster. She lit the candle in the bedroom, and undressed quickly. The sheets were icy cold and the windows were covered with frost, which glittered in the candlelight. It was an old candle, twisted and red, left over from last Christmas. Laura remembered that she hadn’t asked Mrs. Daley how many candles were left. I’m afraid to ask, she told herself, smiling a little. She decided to be reckless and let the candle burn for Henry. The old grandfather clock downstairs chimed midnight. Thinking that it was Christmas Eve now and that surely the plows would be out by morning, she drowsed into sleep.

It seemed only a short time later when she awoke, with a sharp pain in her stomach, a cramping, tearing pain, followed by acute nausea. She sat up, retching, and then dragged herself out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where she was violently ill. She cried out, loudly, again and again, in terror.

Immediately there was the sound of running footsteps on the stairs, and Henry rushed into the room, followed closely by David. “Here,” Laura sobbed from the bathroom. “I — I was sick.” Suddenly she bent double, as the pain returned. David pushed Henry aside roughly and looked. “Blood,” he said, and swinging Laura up into his arms, he carried her to the bed. “Get me some salt, fast! And hot-water bottles! Hurry up! Don’t stand there like an idiot!”

Henry stood blankly, his face without color, his eyes glassy. He caught the side of the bathroom door. “You damned fool, hurry!” David shouted, pulling the blankets over Laura. “She’s been poisoned! Alice! Everybody! Come here quick!”

Laura, only semiconscious now, seemed to be in a whirl of pain. She kept drifting into darkness, and when she did so she felt her face being slapped hard. Someone was making her drink something salty, warmish, abominable, although she protested faintly. She was terribly cold, and hardly felt the hot-water bottles against the bared flesh of her stomach. Hands were all about her, and there was the blurred sound of voices and movement. Several candles had been lit, or at least there was light. It was Henry who was holding her, smoothing her hair. Then she was sick again.

She couldn’t see their faces; they were merely bobbing outlines in the light. It was Henry who whispered, “Don’t be afraid.” She felt a prick in her arm, then hot coffee, scalding and black, was brought to her lips. “No,” she whimpered, “please.”

“Drink it!” Alice’s voice was stern. “Every drop. Hold her head.”

Then, out of the blur of darkness and light, she heard David curse, close to her ear, and the pain began to recede. Hard fingers were at her wrist, feeling for her pulse. “Better,” David confirmed, out of the world of swimming lights and darkness.

“Shouldn’t you make her walk, or something?” a man’s voice asked, somehow familiar.

“You’re thinking of drugs,” David answered. “This wasn’t a drug. I have my suspicions. But what she needs now is sleep.”

There was another prick in her arm.

“Close?” said the man’s familiar voice.

“Too damn close,” David answered.

The pain ebbed away. She was unutterably weary and longed for sleep. “Henry,” she murmured. “Don’t worry.” The candles burned on. Once she woke, covered with perspiration. She felt a fresh, warm cloth against her forehead. With a sigh of contentment, she fell into a deep sleep.

Haggard and disheveled, the three men were sitting downstairs around a fresh fire with their drinks. It was half past five in the morning.

“She’ll be all right now,” David told them, filling his glass again. “She’ll just sleep off the injections I gave her. Lucky I never go anywhere without my bag.”

He looked at John Carr, who was sitting in silence, his lean face tense. Henry lay sprawled in his chair, utterly dejected.

“I think,” David said, “that we should have a talk. First, let me make this plain. Laura was poisoned. I think I know what it was. A lethal dose of arsenic.”

“No,” Henry said, shaking his head.

“Yes. The next point is, when did she get it?”

“It’s impossible,” Henry argued. “She’s been nervous for months. But she wouldn’t — ”

“Laura’s always nervous,” David said brutally. “I’ve never known her but what she’d go to pieces if you said boo to her. She’s alone too much up here. But, let’s get back to the subject. For one, I don’t believe she took the poison deliberately. She got it — accidentally. I can’t see Laura trying to kill herself. If she had tried she wouldn’t have screamed like that, and brought us running.”

“Perhaps,” Henry commented, in a broken voice.

“Where did she get the poison? How was it — administered?”

“Administered?” Henry asked, bewildered. “How? We all ate what she had.” He stirred suddenly and pushed himself up painfully in his chair. “She had a drink. I made it for her.”

“No, I did,” David corrected him. “And I drank from the same bottle. So, it wasn’t in that.”

“We all had the same food,” Henry reflected. “All the same food. Nothing different.”

John looked at David. “Let’s get Mrs. Daley and her niece.”

“They’ve hardly been in bed two hours,” David pointed out. “Let them sleep.”

“No.” There was authority in John’s voice. “We’ve got to do it now.” He stood up and walked wearily into the hall and then slowly climbed the stairs. Henry, overcome with fatigue, dozed in his chair. His usually ruddy face was pale, and there were black shadows under his eyes.

David watched him for a moment, and then went to the portable bar, which no one had as yet removed. He took a sip of every bottle. Frowning, he came back to his chair, and sat down.

Someone here is a little quicker than we are, he thought bitterly.

When John came down, pushing the protesting Mrs. Daley and Edith in front of him, David looked at them closely. Both were clad in shapeless bathrobes and had their hair in curlers. Mrs. Daley. She had been with Aunt Clara for years. The old lady had left her two thousand dollars. Not much, for a couple of decades of service. Edith had not been here during the time Clara Beame had been alive. So that ruled her out. Or, did it?

“I don’t know what we can say, or do,” Mrs. Daley told them, falling into a chair. “I’m just — What’s the matter with Mr. Frazier?”

“Out like a light. He can’t take these things. Don’t mind him. Mrs. Daley, I wouldn’t have called you down just for a chat. Has Mrs. Frazier been depressed lately?”

But it was Edith who answered, in her sullen voice: “Has she! Mooning and crying all over the place. And talking to empty chairs, and standing in the hall talking to no one there.”

“Edith!” Mrs. Daley warned her.

The young woman lifted her head. “I don’t care. I know she’s crazy. She keeps saying to chairs, ‘Aunt Clara?’ I heard her, day before yesterday, and that ain’t the first time. And then I heard her crying to Mr. Frazier, about the baby she lost. Over and over, crying. She said, other night, and I heard her, ‘The baby would now be up in his crib tonight. His first Christmas.’ Mr. Frazier’s sure had it hard since last summer. Always calling her up and telling her to cheer up. But she won’t go nowheres any more.”

“Is all this true, Mrs. Daley?” David asked.

The woman hesitated. “Well,” she said, shooting a sharp look at her niece, “I don’t know that I should be talking about Mrs. Frazier, anyhow.”

“Just answer me. Is it true?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Not that it means anything. She just adores Mr. Frazier; lives for him. And him for her, too. Never saw anything like it. Married five years, and like honeymooners. You can’t blame a girl, having a broken head and leg, and losing her baby. She’s the lonesome kind. She wanted that baby.”

David said in a hard voice: “Mrs. Daley, think very carefully before you answer. Do you think Mrs. Frazier is the kind who would commit suicide, a young woman who loves her husband and who can have other children?”

“No, I don’t,” Mrs. Daley stated promptly. Then she looked down at her hands. “Well, you want my honest answer. She was almost out of her mind for weeks last summer. She wanted to die. She never did seem to get over it.”

“And you think, now, that she might have tried to kill herself?”

Mrs. Daley winced, tried to meet David’s eye, failed. “Well, she’s kind of tenderhearted. Cries easily. Things upset her, little things. She cried for a day when she found a dead bird, old bird, too, probably died of old age. Even Miss Beame, who was like a grandmother to her, would get mad because she cried so much. Always clinging to everybody, like she was lost. A frightened little thing. She went to school in New York, and every weekend she begged not to be sent back. She wanted to stay here. She was what they call — ”

“Unstable?”

“Well, nervous. Wanted to be alone, and then when she was alone for a little while, she’d come running out to the kitchen. She was sick two months when Miss Beame died. I thought she’d lose her mind.”

Edith snorted. “ ‘Lose her mind!’ She never had one, I’d say. I snapped at her once, and she looked like death.”

“That’s because she couldn’t stand people being mean!” Mrs. Daley retorted with spirit.

John and David looked at each other. “Just two more questions, Mrs. Daley. Was Mrs. Frazier in New York recently?”

“Yes. She went down to see her lawyers about something.” Again Mrs. Daley hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know. Guess it doesn’t matter what I say now. It was to deed over this house to Mr. Frazier. For a Christmas present.”

“Oh,” David said quietly. “He knew about it?”

“He did not!” Edith exclaimed. “I heard them fighting about it when she told him. He said she had to call her lawyers right away and stop it! That was the night before you came, Dr. Gates. He was real mad. Shouted how he didn’t want any of her money, and she’d got to live on his salary.”

David considered this. He turned to Edith. “You said ‘fight’. Do they fight a lot?”

Edith looked sullen again. “No, I guess not. But that’s because he’s always giving in to her. All she has to do is cry a little. Don’t see how he stands it.”

“How does she spend her time here alone?”

Mrs. Daley answered. “Well, she plays the piano, and she’s been making petit-point for the dining room chairs, and she reads a lot, and walks.”

“No friends? She doesn’t take part in the village activities?”

“Well, before the accident last summer. Not much since then. She don’t even go to New York often. Maybe once a month, when Mr. Frazier asks her to go to a theatre. She’s a lot like old Miss Beame, in some ways.”

“Edith.” David changed the subject. “Why don’t you like Mrs. Frazier?”

The girl blushed a dark red, then blurted, “Well, she’s got everything, and it don’t seem to matter to her. Just whining about things she don’t even know she wants. Mooning around, as if she ain’t got a single cent, when she’s so rich.”

“All right,” David said wearily. “Go to bed, please. You both need sleep.”

When they had gone, David turned to John Carr. “Well, what do you think?”

“I know what I think. Why ask me?”

Henry stirred. Then started upright. “Laura!”

“Relax,” David told him. “Laura’s all right. Alice won’t leave her.”

Henry rose, only half awake, and without another word stumbled out of the room, moving like an elderly man. They heard his slow and heavy progress upstairs.

David murmured in a low voice: “Things are moving faster than I expected.”

“They seem to be,” John Carr replied, and gave him a grim smile.

Chapter 7

After the sun rose, there was another lull in the storm, and suddenly the sky was the color of blue tile and the snow sparkled in the brilliant light. The big house stood isolated, half drowned in an ocean of rolling whiteness. Every room glittered with sunlight, but every window was a sheet of ice and the only warmth could be found near the fireplaces.

“Pretty day,” Mrs. Daley remarked, as John Carr came into the kitchen, yawning wearily. “It’d be nice if any of us could appreciate it. And it’s the day before Christmas, too. Happy holiday.”

“It could be worse,” John told her. “How about giving me a cup of that hot chocolate to get the frost out of my bones?”

Mrs. Daley poured a cup for him, and he sat down at the kitchen table and looked about the warm and pleasant room. “I never did get over liking kitchens better than any other rooms in a house. That was because of my grandmother’s kitchen. All brick walls, and brick floor, and copper pans hanging on the walls, and big, leaded windows with window seats, and a fireplace an ox could stand up in, easily, and probably did at one time, and rocking chairs, and brick and iron stoves — two of them — always simmering with something.”

“Don’t sound like any kitchen I ever saw,” Mrs. Daley declared. “Don’t sound efficient, either.”

“It was in Ireland. The Irish prefer peace to efficiency. That’s why they live to be so old and remain chipper until they just dry up and blow away like ashes.”

“I thought you was a Southerner,” Edith said, turning from the sink to look at him.

“Well, I was born in Baltimore. By the way, is anyone up this early except me?”

“Early! Why, Mr. Carr, it’s almost eleven!”

“So it is. Well, where is everybody this fine morning?”

“Nobody’s been down yet. After last night.” Mrs. Daley lowered her voice. “We got everything to get ready today, and I could fall on my face and sleep for a week. Mr. Carr, I’m all shivery. Did — I mean, did Mrs. Frazier really get — ”

“Poisoned? I’m afraid so, Mrs. Daley. But what the poison was Dr. Gates himself isn’t quite certain yet. There have to be some tests.”

“You think she took it, herself?”

John helped himself to a warm doughnut from a plate on the table. “Do you, Mrs. Daley?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No sir, I don’t! I’ve been thinking it over. I couldn’t sleep. Mrs. Frazier is very religious. She’d never even dream of such a thing, no matter what. She was alone three years after Miss Beame died, and drooped around and cried most of the time, but she never once ever talked of dying, herself. And after she met Mr. Frazier, and they got engaged and married, why it was all the sun out for her again.”

“That was quite a while for a young girl to be alone,” John said.

“Well, we wasn’t up here, except in the summer. We stayed in the house in New York. Then Mrs. Frazier met Mr. Frazier at a party Dr. Gates was giving for Mrs. Bulowe and Mr. Bulowe — she was Miss Gates then — and they had just got engaged. It was love at first sight.”

“Mrs. Bulowe is a very beautiful woman,” John stated, holding out his cup for more hot chocolate.

“I wasn’t talking about Mrs. Bulowe, I mean Miss Gates, then. I was talking about Mr. and Mrs. Frazier. They met at Dr. Gates’ party. That was just before he went to the Clinic, in Cleveland. It was a big offer. They’d heard of him. He’s mighty smart.”

“He is, indeed,” John said drily. “Very, very smart.”

“I like him.” Mrs. Daley was loyal. “He’s one fine young man. Never did see why Mrs. Frazier didn’t marry him. He was crazy about her.”

“Is that so? Well, we can’t always win, can we?”

“That don’t mean Mr. Frazier ain’t as good,” Mrs. Daley went on. “It was just that Dr. Gates and Mrs. Frazier seemed so suited. Dr. Gates wouldn’t let Mrs. Frazier, if she was his wife, mope around so much. But then nobody cared anything about her until Miss Beame brought her up here. Mr. Carr, are you going to make your breakfast out of those doughnuts, you’ve had three now, or do you want me to fix you some ham and eggs?”

“I’ll have the rest in half an hour, thank you. This is a warmup.”

“And you so thin, too. My, if I ate a warmup like that, and then a regular breakfast, I’d be as big as a house.”

“You are, already,” Edith giggled.

Mrs. Daley gave her a fierce look, and John reached for another doughnut. Apparently Mrs. Daley had the eyes of Hydra, for she turned swiftly and removed the plate from temptation. She hesitated. “Mr. Carr, if it was poison, then Mrs. Frazier either took it herself or — or — ”

“Or somebody gave it to her,” John finished genially. “Excellent deduction. Have you any ideas who’d like to see Mrs. Frazier dead?”

There was a shocked silence in the kitchen. A big copper kettle sang on the stove. Then Mrs. Daley asked: “Why, what do you mean? Somebody try to kill Mrs. Frazier? Why, that’s crazy, Mr. Carr!”

“It’s always the husband,” Edith remarked, nodding her head. “I read all the murder mysteries Mrs. Frazier gets, and it’s always the husband or the nephew or the secretary.” Her aunt stood speechless, staring at John. “But all Mrs. Frazier’s got is the husband. Do you think he did it?” Edith added.

“Oh, shut up!” Mrs. Daley cried in a savage voice. But she did not take her eyes from John. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you think — that — that somebody wanted to kill that poor little thing?”

“It was poison,” John said reasonably. “She took it herself, or it was given her deliberately to kill her, or she swallowed it accidentally. Did she eat anything, or drink anything, before she came down to dinner?”

“Not a thing!” Mrs. Daley exclaimed. “She didn’t touch her breakfast. Edith brought down the tray.” She put her hand to her large bosom. “Mr. Carr! I don’t believe — ”

Then she stopped. “And somebody tried to kill Mr. Frazier, shooting at him. I’d forgotten about that, after Mrs. Frazier got sick. Who’d want to kill them both?”

“Your ideas are as good as mine.” John rose and looked longingly at the distant doughnuts. “I don’t know any of these people very well. I met Mr. Frazier about two weeks ago; he’s my lawyer. I never saw Mrs. Frazier, Mrs. Bulowe or Dr. Gates before. You know them better than I do.”

“I know!” Edith burst out. “It’s Mrs. Bulowe!”

“Edith!” Mrs. Daley was aghast. “Don’t mind her, Mr. Carr. Why, those girls grew up together in this house. Like sisters. I was here.”

“But Mrs. Frazier got all her aunt’s money,” Edith pointed out.

“I told you to shut up, Edith! What if she did? Miss Beame used to say to me ‘Molly, Alice will always be able to take care of herself, but Laura won’t.’ It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mrs. Bulowe — ”

“Well, what else, then?” John asked. “She could have divided the money, couldn’t she? Share and share alike, as the lawyers say. Why didn’t she?”

Mrs. Daley opened her mouth, then closed it primly. “I couldn’t say.”

“I can,” Edith said gleefully. “And you told me about it yourself, Aunt Molly. Miss Beame got so she couldn’t bear Mrs. Bulowe, and you know it. I bet that it’s Mrs. Bulowe all the time.”

“But Mrs. Bulowe isn’t one of Mrs. Frazier’s heirs, is she?” John asked.

“She sure is!” Edith reported happily. “Now, Aunt Molly, you slap me just once again and I walk out of this house, snow or no snow. Just before she went to New York last, I heard her call her lawyers and tell them she wanted a coddy or something, in her will.” She paused, basking in the attention she was receiving from the others.

“A codicil,” John corrected. “Go on.”

“It was to be a secret. Nobody was to know. Mrs. Bulowe was to get two hundred thousand dollars in the codi — codicil?”

“That’s right. Codicil. Please, Mrs. Daley, let the girl talk. How did you know about that call, Edith?”

“Well, I was just going to use the phone, myself, downstairs, and there was Mrs. Frazier on the upstairs extension, in her bedroom, and I heard it.”

“I thought you promised me not to listen in on people’s talk!” Mrs. Daley cried. “And now you done it again, always poking in other people’s business.”

John ignored her. He smiled winningly at Edith. “I like to know other people’s business, too; I’m a born gossip, though I won’t repeat what you’ve told me, Edith. You wouldn’t know, by the way, what Mr. Frazier said about that codicil, or did he suggest it, himself?”

Edith shook her head. “She said it was to be a secret, even from Mr. Frazier. She was afraid, she said on the phone, that he would be hurt, her not telling him first, but she wanted it to be quiet, from everybody. She kind of talked as if she didn’t know, herself, why she didn’t want nobody to know.”

“Then nobody knows, except Mrs. Frazier and you, Edith?”

“Nobody,” she declared emphatically. John grinned. “I think I’m ready now for my breakfast.” He went into the dining room where the little oil stove was burning, and sat down, staring before him thoughtfully. There were faint sounds of angry words in the kitchen, but they failed to bother his thoughts.

At six in the morning David had gone up to Laura’s room and ordered his sister to go to bed. Alice stood up, pallid with exhaustion, nodded, and left without a word. David wrapped himself in a quilt and watched the sleeping girl intently. She was pale, but she was breathing naturally. Very gently he felt her pulse. A little weak, but steady.

Candlelight flickered in the room, and the storm was beginning to abate. After a while David went into the adjoining bathroom, carrying a candle with him.

He opened the door of the medicine cabinet. The usual things were there: Henry’s electric razor and shaving lotions, a bottle of aspirin, a cough syrup, which he sampled delicately with his tongue, a jar of baking soda, another of boric acid, which he also tasted. There was also a bottle of the sedatives he had prescribed for Laura last summer. Five of the thirty capsules remained. His skillful physician’s fingers opened the capsules; he touched the contents of each with the tip of his tongue. Pure barbiturates. He put the capsules together again. There was, of course, no arsenic in the cabinet. He had not really expected to find any. He looked in the wastebaskets in the bathroom and in the bedroom, knowing it was useless. He carried the candle back to the table and put it down, and sat again in the big wing chair, thinking.

He had fallen asleep just as the sun rose, during a lull in the storm. He awoke suddenly, to find the room bright and Laura, awake, staring at him with wide eyes.

“David?” Her voice was weak.

“No one else,” he said, yawning. “How do you feel?”

“Awful. Weak. Where’s Henry?”

“Don’t be frightened,” he said in the professional voice which always soothed his patients. “I sent him to another bedroom in this mausoleum to get a little sleep. Laura, I’ve got to ask you a few questions. Did you eat anything or drink anything, anything at all, before going downstairs to dinner last night?”

“No.” Her voice seemed a little stronger. “Not a thing. You gave me a drink, David. Was there something wrong with it?”

“There might have been,” he answered evasively. “Something poisoned you.”

“Poison — ?” David hardly heard her whisper the word.

“Ptomaine, probably,” he said. “A bad thing. It can kill, sometimes. Or am I thinking of botulism?” He yawned again, elaborately. “You didn’t have anything at dinner except what we had? No different wine? No separate side dish?”

“Nothing. Is anyone else sick?” she asked in alarm.

“I wouldn’t say anyone in this house is feeling exactly on top of the world this morning. Now, poisoned — food — doesn’t always have a revealing smell or taste. In fact, the deadliest poison can’t be detected that way at all. However, some people can take as much of one — poison — as another, and they might get a little queasy or have no reaction at all, and someone else, more susceptible, could die of it. It was probably that way with you.”

She nodded her head against the pillow. “I did think the water had a funny taste. You know how it tastes in New York and other places. Chlorine?”

“But you have your own well water, don’t you, Laura?”

“Yes. Artesian. Sometimes it does taste — off, you know.”

“But you don’t use chlorine in the water here, do you?”

“No.”

“And you tasted chlorine last night?”

“No.” She frowned, trying to remember. “It was a distinctly different taste. Like metal, I think. I’d slept in the afternoon, and somehow I’m always desperately thirsty when I wake up. So I drank the water the first thing at the table, and then Edith refilled the glass when she came in with the soup.”

“Like metal? Did the second glass taste the same?”

“It left a very unpleasant aftertaste,” Laura told him tiredly. “That’s why I drank another glass as soon as Edith brought it. The second glass was better.”

“Did your stomach bother you after dinner?”

“Yes.” Her voice was faintly uneasy. “I thought once, while I was reading, that I was going to be sick; I felt a little nauseated and very sleepy. But that was because of the sedative Henry gave me earlier. It was half a capsule of what you gave me, yourself, last summer.”

David nodded seriously. “You didn’t notice any particular symptoms after he gave you that half capsule?”

“No, just after I drank the water.”

“Did the water look clear to you?”

“Yes. I don’t know. There was only candlelight. I don’t think I noticed whether it was clear or not. David! I hope you’ve told Mrs. Daley not to use the well water!” She sat up, frightened.

“What do you suggest we use for water, then?”

“We get big cases of spring water, for use when the well isn’t tasting right and we are waiting for it to be tested. Please tell Mrs. Daley to use that!”

“I shall, indeed, though the water didn’t upset anyone as much as it did you. Now, stop getting so excited. You’ve got to rest. Have you forgotten this is the day before Christmas and tonight is Christmas Eve?”

Laura groaned. “Oh, what a mess I’ve caused! I had everything planned so wonderfully! David, do give me something, so that I can go down to dinner and join the celebration.”

“You won’t need anything. But you had a bad — attack. There was blood, Laura, which I could see clearly, even by the candlelight from the bedroom. Now, I want you to listen carefully. Don’t take any medicine, not even that soda in your bathroom, or anything else, until I’ve sampled it. I want to be sure that everything you eat and drink is all right. And keep under those covers. I can’t see for the life of me,” he said irritably, “why you didn’t install an auxiliary system in this outpost.”

“You’re so kind, David.” Laura smiled at him. “Poor Henry. Did he have a terrible scare? I don’t know what I’d have done without him during all that.”

“In what way?”

“Well, his holding me so tight, when I was being so sick, and whispering to me, and everything.” Her pale cheeks colored a little.

“Good for old Henry,” David said. He hesitated, then patted her hand. “I’ll bring up your breakfast tray, personally. Alice can take over later.”

He went into the freezing hall, and looked at Henry’s closed door, wondering if he were downstairs. Cautiously he turned the knob and looked inside. The room was empty. He heard water running in a bathroom, and closed the door. That could be the explanation. Shrugging his shoulders, he went downstairs, eager for a cup of coffee.

But Henry was not in the adjoining bathroom. He had made certain that John Carr was having his breakfast, and had listened to him joking with Mrs. Daley in the dining room. Then he had gone into John’s room, closing the door behind him. I’m not used to this sort of thing, he thought. He opened the clothes-closet door where John’s clothes were hanging neatly on the hangers, and felt one pair of trousers. They were wet. Bending down, he examined a pair of shoes, which were black and stained with moisture. He stood up, trembling violently. The suitcase was on its rack, but closed. He hardly expected it to be unlocked, but it was. He lifted the lid quickly. A gun lay on top of a couple of books and a robe which had not been taken out. The gun was heavy and smelled faintly of cordite. He examined the cylinder. There were five bullets; the sixth was missing. He ejected one of the bullets. It was a forty-five, and looked exactly like the one which had been fired at him.

He dropped the gun back into the suitcase and slipped out of the room. There was no doubt about it. John Carr had fired that gun at him; he had climbed out of the window of the room in the attic. Reaching the corner of the house, he had only to brace himself against the roof and half-turn to see the woodshed. Henry had made a perfect target. The bullet had missed him by a few inches. John Carr had tried to kill him!

But why? He had come to him, on business, three weeks ago by the purest accident. If old Mr. Bancroft had not been taken sick, Henry would not now be handling Carr’s affairs.

Henry had not been entirely satisfied at the glib and easy explanations offered so far. He was, by nature, a man who questioned everything. He had trusted no one in his life except Laura, and he trusted her absolutely. She sometimes did foolish and childish things, but never things inspired by malice. He had not even trusted the boyish Sam Bulowe, nor Alice, not even his partners, and he had especially, even from boyhood, mistrusted David Gates. David was one man whose motives seemed always in doubt, whose words invariably carried a double meaning.

Henry remembered reading, somewhere, that lawyers are born, not made, and they have built-in distrusts. He had smiled when reading that, for he knew it to be true. And now, what was going on around here? Who was John Carr? Men don’t come on social visits, as house guests, carrying guns. A man carries a gun for a reason.

What had Carr said yesterday? “Or, a warning.” Henry rubbed a little spot in the frozen window. The snow was much deeper. No one could walk to the main road. They were all prisoners in this house, until the plows could get to the private road. If only the phone were in order and he could call the police.

In the meantime, he had, as his house guest, a man who had tried to kill him.

Putting on a careful expression and a determined smile, he went into his wife’s room. She held out her arms to him, and he caught her slight body to him and held her tightly.

“Tell me you’re all right, darling.” He held her off a little. “What was wrong? What did you eat?”

“It was the water. David said everyone got a little sick from it.”

“The water?” Absently he smoothed her rumpled hair.

“I told him about the water, the taste. You know, like metal. Didn’t you notice it, Henry?”

“I believe I did, a little,” he answered vaguely.

“That’s all. Ptomaine. Or bot — I don’t know the word. Don’t worry, darling. You look awful, and you need a shave, and there isn’t any electricity.” She tried to be gay. “You’ll just have to use your old razor.”

He stood up, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Henry?” Laura asked. But his mind was engrossed, and he did not hear her. The door opened and David entered with a tray. “Here we are.” He stopped when he saw Henry.

“Well,” he said flatly, “and how are you this morning?”

“Feeling hellish,” Henry told him. “Do you think Laura should have food?”

“Why not? I want to see how it lies on that delicate stomach. Here you are. Coddled eggs, toast, tea. How does it look?”

“Very good,” she said, trying to please him, though her stomach lurched a bit. David placed the tray on her knees. “I’ve asked Laura not to drink anything, not even water, or eat anything at all, or take any medicine, until I’ve examined it.”

“Why?” Henry asked quickly.

“Why? I want to taste it. To see if it’s okay. Any objection?”

“Why should I object?” Henry retorted.

“Just don’t give her anything, yourself, not even water, no matter how thirsty she is. Until I’ve tasted it. You understand, don’t you?” David’s black eyes were serious.

“Well, if you put it that way.”

“I damned well do,” David replied. “How does breakfast taste, Laura?”

“Not too good.”

David said, very slowly, “Well, I can guarantee it won’t make you sick.”

“I’d like to talk to you a minute, alone,” Henry told him.

“Won’t you stay?” Laura asked.

“After all, I want breakfast, too, and that food smells good.” Henry ruffled her hair. He went to the door and looked back at David, who seemed to be absorbed in watching Laura eat. Then David turned to him, nodded, and they went out together.

Henry shut the door behind them and, when they were in his room, turned to David abruptly. “Look, don’t tell me any fairy stories. Laura was poisoned last night, wasn’t she?”

“She was.” David leaned against a chest of drawers.

“Then, what is all this about the water? She said you told her there was something wrong with it.”

“She must have gotten the poison in the water, before dinner.”

“How could it have gotten in the water she drank?”

David was silent for a moment. “Someone in this house knows. Someone put it there.”

“That’s ridiculous! The water was poured from the same pitcher we all used. It was on the sideboard.”

“The water glasses were filled before we went in.”

Henry sat heavily on the rumpled bed and stared at the floor.

“Why should anyone — ? I don’t believe it!” he added furiously.

“Would you prefer a better explanation, such as Laura poisoning herself? You said something about her being depressed, you know.”

“I don’t know what I said last night. All right, she has been depressed. But not enough to try to kill herself. Why should she do that?”

“You don’t suspect that she might be neurotic or something, do you?”

Henry averted his head, and concentrated on his thoughts.

“You’d rather think that she tried to commit suicide than to suspect that someone wanted to kill her? Is that it?”

“For God’s sake, Dave. I can’t accept the fact that someone in this house — someone in this house! — tried to kill Laura. What for? What could be the motive?”

“An interesting question.”

Henry got to his feet and walked up and down the room slowly.

“All right,” he said, stopping with his back to David. “I’d prefer to think that Laura had a momentary aberration — than to accept the notion that you, or Carr, or Alice, or Mrs. Daley, or Edith, or even Evelyn, would want to kill her, for an unknown motive. Laura’s never hurt a soul in her life. She’d hurt herself first.”

“I think so, too,” David agreed.

Henry swung around to him. “All right, then. But you are absolutely certain it wasn’t some food poisoning, or that she took something accidentally?”

“I’m certain.”

“What was the poison?”

“Arsenic, I think. I’ll know for sure, later, when I can get the sample to the police laboratories.”

Henry was shocked. “The police! But there might be a scandal!”

“You’d rather someone who tried to kill your wife got away with it?”

“But — ”

“Attempted murder carries a very large penalty, I’ve heard. The law doesn’t like it. As a lawyer, now, do you disagree with the law?”

Henry fumbled for his pipe, and could not find it. “Here, have a cigarette,” David offered. “Pretend you’re in your office where you do smoke cigarettes.”

“Oh, shut up,” Henry told him. “I don’t need your sarcastic remarks just now. I’m thinking.”

“Good. I hope you come up with something. As you said, who would have a motive to kill Laura; who would hate her enough to kill her?”

“Your sister, for one,” Henry said bitterly.

“You can see Alice killing your wife? Okay, she hates her. But only insane people kill those they hate. Do you think Alice is insane?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“The real motive, I’ve found out, for most murders is money. Alice won’t get Laura’s money if Laura dies. You will, I suppose.”

“Laura said she’d made me her heir, just as she will inherit anything I leave, and it’s a tidy sum, by the way. More than you’re worth, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. I’m on straight salary. You get bonuses. Are they taxable?”

“Go to hell,” Henry retorted. “We are each other’s heirs. I’ve never touched a cent of Laura’s money. I didn’t marry her for her money, just in case you think I did.”

“We’ll leave money out of it. The next motive is usually love. Getting an unwanted person out of the way.” David grinned. “You aren’t having an amour with anyone, are you?”

Henry gave him a withering look. David laughed a little. “All right, then. I’ve been giving my suggestions. You give yours.” Then he added seriously, “A murderer who fails always tries again. That’s why we’ve got to find him.”

Henry lowered his voice. “I must tell you something. I never did quite accept your and Carr’s suggestions about an intruder yesterday. I think the intruder is still right here in this house.”

“You do?” David asked. “But why? Where?”

Henry hesitated, then told David what he had found in John Carr’s room. “He tried to kill me,” he said quietly. “Why, I don’t know. I never saw the man until about two weeks ago. He was turned over to me by accident. Everything seemed on the level. I did a little investigating myself. Rogers and Belton have known him for some time, and are anxious to get him into their business. I know his whole financial picture, the whole setup. He’s authentic, as far as I can make out. Why should he want to kill me?”

David sat down slowly. “You can’t be sure it was Carr. He might have tried to take a walk in the snow. He’s a country boy, you know.”

“The gun,” Henry reminded him. “It had been fired very recently. The bullets are forty-fives, and it was a forty-five that nearly hit me.”

David thought for a moment. “Would you, as a lawyer, accept wet slacks and shoes, and a gun which had been fired — you don’t know exactly when — as evidence that Carr had tried to kill you?”

“I’d give it plenty of consideration; those things plus the other circumstances — the storm and no one else around, no footprints but mine and Evelyn’s, and the footprints on the roof, and the snow on the floor of the attic room.”

“And the motive?”

“I can’t find any. I hardly know the man.”

“So,” David said reflectively, “we have a stranger in the house, whose actions are somewhat suspicious, to say the least, but who comes to you in a perfectly bona fide way, well vouched-for, aboveboard, who never knew you before, never saw Laura until he came here — nothing mysterious about him. Yet, you are sure he tried to kill you, and Laura. The only explanation could be that he’s a homicidal maniac. Now, you’ve met homicidal maniacs in your career. Think about them. Does Carr resemble them in any way?”

“You never know a man is a homicidal maniac until he kills people,” Henry replied soberly. “I had a client only a year ago. Fine husband, fine father, excellent businessman, no financial worries, no family difficulties. But on Christmas Day, without showing any hostility to anyone before that, he shoots his wife, his son, and tries to kill his daughter and then himself. His wife died, and so did his son; his daughter lived. I talked with the girl. Daddy, she said, had always been ‘the loveliest daddy in the world’, and the poor girl couldn’t explain it at all. Berserk.”

“Let’s go into it a little further,” David suggested. “You got psychiatrists for him, didn’t you?”

Henry could not help smiling. “Three of them. My client could afford it. One said the client was completely sane and understood what he’d tried to do. So, we dismissed him. We got another in his place. The verdict was homicide while mentally incompetent’ — in other words, ‘temporary insanity’. He’ll be out in another six months. He’s recovered.”

“Well,” David said thoughtfully, “that’s an entirely different proposition. Confidentially, why did your client try to wipe out the whole family community, including himself? Or did he try to eliminate himself, honestly? Or, are you trying to imply a parallel between your client and John Carr? After all, as we’ve so carefully noted, Carr never knew you before, and never saw Laura until a couple of nights ago. But your client had lived with his family, knew them intimately. Never mind the temporary insanity bit. You talked with the man. Why did he do it?”

Henry hesitated and then shrugged. “Frankly, I think he didn’t really intend to kill himself. He just grazed the side of his skull with a bullet; very precise. Enough to stun him and knock him out for a while. A real suicide does better than that; they usually stick the gun in their mouths or aim carefully at a temple. Of course,” he added meticulously, “he was in a state of mind, after the other killings, where his hand might not have been very steady.”

“Stop talking double talk,” David told him. “Why did he go on the rampage?”

“I think, though I’m not sure, that there was a woman involved, whom he wanted to marry. His wife could have refused him a divorce.”

“You know damn well that was behind it all. All right, let’s make it hypothetical. John Doe, impeccable in every way, kills his wife and son, tries to kill his daughter, then carefully shoots himself so he isn’t killed. Let’s say he has a perfectly reasonable motive in wanting to kill his wife, but why his children? They couldn’t have stood in the way of a second marriage.”

Henry was silent, staring at the floor.

“Were the children his own?” David asked.

Henry answered reluctantly, “Well, the son wasn’t. His wife was a widow when she married him; she had that boy by her first husband; he was twenty-three when the shooting took place. The girl was his own, nineteen.”

“And she lived. How badly was she hurt?”

“Flesh wound in the right arm.”

“So Daddy’s girl wasn’t in any danger. How much, by the way, did he get from his dead wife?”

“I told you he was all right financially, himself,” Henry said irritably.

“Nobody is,” David remarked placidly. “Money’s almost always the chief motive for murder. Well? How much?”

“About a million dollars.”

“A new love, and a million dollars.” David’s smile was infuriating. “Good enough. And as your unfortunate client was temporarily insane when he killed his wife and his stepson, he inherited. Who died first?”

“The wife.”

“So her son was one of her heirs. As he wasn’t married — he wasn’t, was he? — his sister would be his heir. So, the girl is provided for, no drain any longer on Daddy, and Daddy gets his wife’s loot. He’s free to marry again. Very neat and clean-cut.

“However, none of these things applies to John Carr. He isn’t a relative; he’s an absolute stranger. He has no hostility towards you, and certainly no hostility for Laura. He has no motive to be a homicidal maniac — as your client had. As a reasonable man, and a cynical lawyer, can you ascribe any motive to him for wanting to kill you and Laura?”

“I don’t know everything,” Henry told him. “There are reaches in the human mind and soul — ”

“Let’s not get mystical. Carr’s not insane. You’re ready to admit that? Even insane people have a peculiar logic of their own when they commit murder, but logic, even insane logic, has to have a foundation. You don’t think he took a dislike to your pretty hazel eyes, do you?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Well, you’re trying very hard to be, Hank. Carr’s out, in spite of the hanky-panky with the gun, and climbing out of the attic window. Let’s say he’s whimsical, or just cute, trying to stir up excitement. He shot one shot. A man out to kill, who’s worked himself up to kill, doesn’t stop at one shot, unless he scored. He didn’t try again, though he could have. Maybe he’s hyperthyroid; they can’t stand prolonged periods of peace and quiet, I’ve heard. Anything for laughs, on a day when everything is snowbound. They have gallows humor, sometimes. If Carr had wanted to kill you, my friend, he would have.”

“Maybe that was a blind,” Henry suggested. “Maybe his real target was Laura.”

David made a sound of complete exasperation. “Why? He never saw her before.” He paused. “Or, did he?”

Henry raised his eyes and stared at David.

“I never thought of that.” He covered his face with his hands.

“Laura did insist she had seen him before,” David reminded him. “Would you, for instance, call that a ‘blind’?”

“I don’t know what to think!” Henry burst out.

“You think that it’s possible that Laura has been playing games behind your back, when she got bored up here all this time?”

“You can’t say that about Laura!” Henry cried. “I refuse to think it.”

“Good, loyal husband,” David commented. “Now, think again. You and Laura may have met him at that party. You aren’t sure that you remember him. But you are sure that you never saw him until a couple of weeks ago. Are you so sure now?”

There was a long silence. Then Henry lifted his head, and he looked ill. “I — I did think he looked familiar, perhaps too familiar, when Laura mentioned it a couple of nights ago. I had the strange feeling that I’d seen him around — a lot of times. But I can’t remember where or when.”

“Around here? In New York? In one of these bleak country clubs you have up here?”

Henry stood up and went to the frosted window. His fingernail scratched at the thick white deposit. He said, at last, “Yes. I’m pretty sure of it now.”

“Before you ever met him at that restaurant you told me about, and before he was your client?”

There was another silence. Then he spoke almost inaudibly. “Yes, somewhere, I know! Several times!”

He turned to David, and was shocked at the expression on the other man’s face. He moved back a step or two.

But David spoke easily. “Now, why should our little Laura, who always blurts out everything, try to hide from you, or anyone else, that she knew John Carr very well indeed? If it was all innocent, that is?”

Henry’s hand trembled as he rubbed his mouth. David went to him and touched his shoulder lightly. “Don’t go off the deep end. We’ve just been exploring — possibilities.”

Henry stared at him in anguish. “I know what you’re thinking. Laura’s poisoning was just a blind. I’m his real target.”

“It could be,” David said. “Just watch it, will you?”

“Then Laura’s really safe? Nothing will happen to her?”

David spoke with authority. “Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”

Henry sighed. “That’s all I care about. I’m exhausted! I must have been insane, myself, to let you say what you did about Laura.”

“Go down and eat your breakfast. Things might look different after you’ve eaten. I’ve already had my breakfast, and from the looks of the help they’re getting restive.”

Walking like an old and broken man, Henry left the room. David watched him go. When he heard his slow footsteps on the stairs, he went into Laura’s room.

She had eaten all the food, and was half asleep. When David came in she smiled at him and held out her hand. “Dear David. You are so good to me.”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I see you’ve eaten your breakfast. Stay down? Good.” He sat on the edge of her bed, and his smile disappeared. “Laura. I’ve told you before, but I want to mention it again: don’t eat or drink anything that I haven’t okayed. You’ll remember that?”

“Of course,” she promised.

Suddenly there was a loud thumping sound, and then a whirring.

“Oh, good!” Laura exclaimed. “The lines are up again!”

They both listened to the hum of the furnaces. “Now everything will be wonderful for tonight! No more freezing rooms. No more huddling around the fireplaces, no more smelly oil stoves — David, why are you looking at me so strangely?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Why, of course.”

“I was just thinking that you and Alice are the same age, chronologically, but you are a child in comparison with her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.” Laura laughed.

“It isn’t. When are you going to stop believing the world’s a lovely place, Laura, full of the kindest people, just teeming with affection and good will?”

Laura appeared startled.

“I don’t, honestly,” she said in a low voice. “I know what the world’s like.”

“Then why, in God’s name, do you give the impression that you are about sixteen years old?”

She hesitated. Without appearing to be conscious of the act, she reached out a slender white finger and began to trace a slow pattern over the back of David’s hand. He sat very still, watching her.

“I think it’s because I am — afraid. I’d like to think the world is good and decent and kind. I know better, really. But I had a lot of it the other way — loneliness, fear, desertion, cruelty. When I came here to be with Aunt Clara, it was like leaving a dark, cold place for sunshine, where someone saw me, not as a nuisance, but as a person who deserved to be cared for. It was strange about Aunt Clara,” she said, thinking back. “She was so sensible, so realistic. She had loved my mother, who found life joyous and amusing. I was surprised that Aunt Clara seemed to think, when Mama was here, that the world had — another face. I was so grateful to Aunt Clara, who was old and alone. I knew, even when I was ten, that she was exactly like me in so many ways. Mama had made her happy, had made her laugh, and cuddled up to her like a kitten. So, I tried to make it up to Aunt Clara, and pretended to be like Mama, so she would laugh again and enjoy some happiness. I — I often felt that Aunt Clara was the child, and not I. Sometimes I even thought it was Aunt Clara who had been lonely and afraid and abandoned, and not myself, and that she had come to me to be cared about; in other words, I almost felt that our positions were reversed. So I stayed with her all the time I could, being her guardian and taking my mother’s place, at the same time. I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that it’s all very complicated and complex. But that’s the best way I can explain it.”

“I think I understand,” David told her. “But, Laura, that doesn’t really explain why you persist in being childish at your age.”

Laura considered this without offense. Then she nodded. “Well, Henry expects it, I suppose, and I never had any friends to speak of. I discovered that people just don’t like you if you’re serious or sad or depressed. But if you pretend that you think everything is just lovely, they’re nice to you and want you around.”

David nodded gravely.

“But you don’t have many friends around here, do you?”

She laughed a little, and shook her head. “It’s awfully wearing to keep pretending all the time. So, when I just feel like being myself, which is almost always, I don’t go anywhere. Then Henry doesn’t get home until very late, and so we see little of the community except on summer weekends, at the club, and once or twice a week isn’t too much to be the life of the party, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s all I can stand, anyway, David.” She hesitated. “I met Henry when Alice became engaged to Sam, and he thought I was a fluffy helpless little thing, and he liked that. We’ve been married five years now, and I keep pretending — ”

“That you’re a simple little girl who needs protection and pampering?” David’s tone was dry.

“I’m afraid so. Anyway, it makes him happy. I’m not a fool, really. It’s very tiring to be gay and gushing all the time. No one ever really cared about me except Henry and Aunt Clara and Mama, and so I have sort of — well, an inferiority complex, and I do try to please.”

David thought of his sister. “I suppose you antagonized Alice by your eagerness when you were kids here together?”

“Yes. I never did understand Alice. I felt, inside, just as lonely and insecure as she did, and I was always surprised that she didn’t understand.” The small white finger traced another pattern on David’s hand.

“People will only believe what they want to believe,” he suggested. “I’ve just been wondering when you’d give up the little girl bit, that’s all.”

“But Henry likes it. He expects it. He wants to be deceived. Sometimes I don’t know where the real me begins or ends. If I get serious with Henry, it makes him miserable. When he comes home he wants to find a never-never land, where everything is warm and beautiful.”

David’s face changed. He looked at her finger on his hand.

“If you had married me, Laura, you wouldn’t have had to pretend.”

She blushed. The afghan slipped from her shoulders. “You didn’t want to marry me, David! You always looked at me as if I amused you, and that frightened me.”

“You did amuse me,” he said. “I knew all about you.”

“You didn’t — ” she murmured, and stopped.

He stood up. “I did,” he said flatly. He waited, and when she didn’t speak he went on. “Would it have made any difference, Laura? If you had known?”

Laura thought of the thin, dark, ‘older’ boy she had seen only a few times when she had been quite young. She had timidly thought him very handsome. But when he had looked at her coolly, she had told herself he probably thought her a silly child. Then she had seen him more often when Alice was working in New York, before she had married Sam Bulowe. And each time she had been aware of a kind of overwhelming excitement. However, she had needed to say only a few words to make him turn away, as if he were unutterably impatient with her. Then she had met Henry Frazier, who had accepted her for what, she saw now, was not herself at all. But she had suddenly loved him, when she had understood that he loved her. Her awareness of David, always too acute, had faded away.

“I’m very happy with Henry,” she told him. “We haven’t been married too long. We’ll understand each other, eventually. We’re reaching that point more and more, every day.”

“Good,” David said gently. He stood up, and went to the door, where he paused. “Don’t forget what I’ve told you. Eat or drink nothing unless I tell you you can.”

“All right,” she answered. The room was growing warm. “And I’ll get up very soon, David. We can’t have a really gay celebration tonight, because of Sam. But I will try to make it pleasant. I feel really well, thanks to you.”

He left without speaking again.

Chapter 8

Henry sat with John Carr and Alice in the dining room, drinking a last cup of coffee. There were grayish shadows under Alice’s eyes. The brilliant sunlight bathed the side of her face, revealing her pale cheeks. She wore a blue sweater and skirt, and John Carr was watching her listless motions as she tried to eat breakfast.

When David came in, Henry said at once, “The phone is still down. But the Ulbrichs’ phone may be all right. So I’m going to get out the snowshoes and go over there.”

“Oh? You’re their caretaker?” David asked, regarding with interest the large platter of ham and eggs, and then sitting down.

“They leave their key with us when they go away for the winter. We’re old friends. Evelyn or I go over every day or two, when we can, to check up on things.”

“And if the phone there is all right?” David helped himself to food. Henry cleared his throat.

He glanced furtively at John Carr, who was pouring Alice another cup of coffee.

“I’m going to call the highway department and ask them to plow out our private road. Tomorrow’s Christmas. The boys will come, if they think we’re still here. A little handout does wonders, you know.”

“I’ve wondered why you and Laura stay up here in the winter like this,” David said.

“Laura likes it up here, alone,” Henry told him. “She doesn’t care about New York.”

“You don’t think it’s lonely for her?”

“She likes to be alone. And this isn’t exactly Antarctica.” Henry was a bit annoyed. “We have neighbors, scattered far off, I must admit. But the club is open all winter; we have skiing and other winter sports, and dinners. It isn’t always that we’re marooned like this, and if we are we’re soon plowed out. We are going to a New Year’s party at the club this year, as we always do.”

“And you think Laura likes to be alone?”

“Certainly! You know how shy she is. Everybody loves her because she’s so gentle and simple. She’s always been sheltered and protected. And I admit that I intend to keep on sheltering and protecting her.”

David asked abruptly, “If the Ulbrichs’ phone is all right, are you going to call the police about someone taking a shot at you — and poisoning Laura?”

Henry stood up. He looked at all of them. “I might do that. Yes, indeed. I might do exactly that.”

“I’m glad,” David said. “I’d like to see Laura stay alive.”

Alice spoke for the first time. “You think the police could persuade Laura not to try to kill herself again?”

Henry spoke quickly. “I don’t intend to tell them about the — accidental — poisoning, if it really was poisoning. Laura couldn’t stand scandal and talk and the newspapers. Besides, there’s a little law about suicides; it’s a felony to attempt to kill yourself. Do you think I want to expose Laura to all that? What good would it do? Her whole life would be ruined; she’d be afraid of facing anyone after that. And, it’s just possible that my own firm would take a dark view of the thing; they’d wonder if I were at fault. Wives who attempt suicide are a poor recommendation for a partner.”

“Do you think Laura really did try to commit suicide?”

“I tell you, I’m not going to mention it! What I think is my own business. But I am going to tell them about the pot shot at me.”

David said thoughtfully, “You mentioned this morning that Laura’s poisoning was probably a blind.”

“I’ve thought it over,” Henry retorted angrily. “No one poisoned Laura. She’s very excitable; you know that. She was upset at the shot at me.”

“Well, we’ll soon know when the police examine that specimen.”

John Carr and Alice listened intently. They saw Henry’s deep flush.

“I know,” he told them, “that you don’t like Laura. But what good would it do to hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt? How can you be so vindictive?”

“You haven’t the slightest idea how vindictive I can be,” David remarked cheerfully, as he buttered a piece of toast.

“Can I persuade you not to subject Laura to a police investigation, or the newspapers?”

David gazed at him blandly. Then he turned to Alice and John Carr.

“I’ll make a bargain — temporarily. Though it’s a police offense to do so. I won’t say a word — unless something else happens to Laura.”

“Thanks,” Henry said gratefully. Then his expression changed. “But what if she — ”

“She won’t,” David told him heartily. “She’s in good spirits now, preparing for a happy, if subdued, celebration tonight, because of our late lamented Sam.”

Alice moved restlessly. “If we can ever get to the main road, I’d like to leave tomorrow. I’m a city girl at heart. I want to go home; all this snow is too much for me.”

Henry smiled at her. “We have snowshoes in the garage. Bear-paws and beaver-paws. You’ve used snowshoes before. How about walking with me to the Ulbrichs’? The air will do us both good.”

Alice was about to shake her head when she caught David’s eye. “All right,” she agreed. “I’m rusty, though. I’ll probably pitch into the nearest snowbank.”

“Not with Henry’s manly arm to protect you,” David remarked. Alice’s mouth tightened angrily, and she stood up.

“In about half an hour?” Henry suggested. “I want to talk to Laura before we go.” He left the room, and Alice followed a moment or two later. She paused at the door of the dining room and looked at John Carr. Then she was gone.

The two men ate in silence. Finally John Carr asked: “Will the phone be up, at that other house?”

“I don’t know,” David told him. “I doubt it.”

“It was all right here,” John remarked casually. “Though it isn’t, as of now.”

“What did you do?” David whispered.

“Cut it. What else?”

David nodded. “If it was on here, then it will be on at the Ulbrichs’. He might call the police, you know.”

“No doubt of it,” John Carr commented. “But he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“All of you, including our host, forgot something. The Fraziers share a party line with the Ulbrichs’. This is off, the Ulbrichs’ are off, too.”

“Then,” David told him, “you did a damn dangerous thing with the line.”

“Not dangerous, if you know how. And I’ve done a lot of dangerous things in my time. It did take some scrabbling, while you were all concerned with Laura. The phone, for your information, was all right at midnight, long before the other electricity went on. I checked regularly.” John sipped at his coffee. “When it suddenly went on, I went on suddenly, too. The telephone boys are always eager to keep their lines up.”

“What if the phone boys check?”

“They won’t. They just take it for granted that if a phone line has been restored it stays restored. After all, it’s just this line.”

“This game we’re playing could be disastrous,” David said.

“So it could. That’s what you intended, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Except for the complications. Not that they weren’t expected.”

John laughed. “By the way, I like your sister.”

“She’s suspicious of you.”

“She has reason to be. Very astute girl.”

Henry entered the bedroom he shared with his wife. Laura had just taken a warm bath, and the room was steamy and comfortable. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a pale pink dressing gown, her blonde hair curling softly about her head, her cheeks flushed. When she saw her husband, she laughed and ran to him. “Oh, isn’t it wonderful that the furnaces are on again!” She kissed him warmly. He held her off to examine her face.

“Are you all right now, darling? No bad effects?”

“You know I’m really abominably healthy, darling,” she confessed. “Well, come to think of it, I do feel a trifle weak around the knees, and my stomach hurts as if it had been kicked. Otherwise, I’m quite all right. David said I could go downstairs, and that there is nothing wrong with me, now.”

“Thank God for that,” Henry said with a tired sigh. The ice-coated windows were dripping, and through wet patches he could see the shining blaze of the day. He hesitated. He did not want to tell Laura that he was going to the Ulbrichs’ to phone for the police. But should he? Wouldn’t it be best to wait until tomorrow? Or even the day after? Frankly, he did not know what to do. He only knew that the police must be told about the attack on him. How, though, was he to keep Laura’s ‘poisoning’ from them? David had given his word; but he did not trust David. At the very least, outside of his natural malice, David would be compelled by the ethics of his profession to tell the authorities.

“What is it?” Laura asked, sensing his hesitation.

“To be quite frank, Laura, I’m thinking of going outside for a little air. To be even more frank, I’m fed up with our guests.”

He took his wife’s hand and led her to the bed. “Now, lie down for a little while.” He tucked her under the blankets. “I want to talk to you.”

“Yes?” She looked up at him expectantly.

“Darling, you said that you remembered Carr from someplace. Then you decided that it was at that damned cocktail party. You met a lot of people there that night. Can you remember anyone else besides him, except for that author, of course, and Dave and Alice?” She thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “No, I can’t remember a single soul. The room was packed.”

“Then how could you remember Carr? He isn’t unusual-looking; he doesn’t stand out.”

She frowned. “That’s true,” she admitted thoughtfully. “He’s the sort of man you’d overlook in a crowd, unless you knew him well.”

Henry scrutinized her closely. “Think, Laura. You didn’t know him before that time, or meet him afterwards?”

“I told you I didn’t. I honestly don’t remember meeting him anywhere. If it hadn’t been for Alice mentioning that party I wouldn’t have recalled it. And, I don’t even remember seeing him at the party, though that’s the only place I could have seen him.”

“Never at the club? Never in New York? Never at friends’?”

She was so absorbed in trying to remember that she did not see the reluctant suspicion in his eyes. Then she said, “I give up! I can’t recall a single time I ever met him. Yet, he’s familiar in a way, as if I had known him for years. It could possibly be that I’ve met someone who looked very much like him. Don’t you ever meet people who remind you of other people?”

“Yes. Quite often.”

She noticed his expression. “Henry! Is there something wrong about him?”

“I don’t know. I thought you could help me — by remembering.”

She was dismayed. “But, Henry, you knew all about him two weeks ago, didn’t you? Mr. Bancroft’s client?” She paused. “Is he an impostor?”

“Of course not.” Henry tried to sound reassuring. “It’s just that I remember him faintly, too.”

“But what would an impostor want here? Have you told Alice and David about your suspicions?”

“Laura, I haven’t any suspicions. It was just something that puzzled me.” He saw that she was tense again, and he bent and kissed her. “I’ve got a legal mind; I just like everything orderly and neat, with no loose ends, no little mysteries. That’s all. Now, be quiet, or you won’t be able to come down this evening.”

After he had comforted her, he went downstairs slowly buttoning his mouton-lined leather coat. He was sure, now, that Laura had never seen John Carr before. She was incapable of pretense. If he hadn’t been exhausted this morning he’d never have permitted David to arouse any suspicions in him. Damn David! He felt for the woollen cap in his pocket. Alice was waiting downstairs, wrapped in her thick coat with the seal collar, a blue scarf tied over her blonde hair.

“How’s our precious little invalid?” she asked.

“Fine, now. But you don’t look well, Alice.” She was indeed very pale; her light lipstick was a startling note on her face, and her eyes appeared sunken. She shrugged. “With all the alarms you have around here, who could be placid? I remember years going by when I was a child, and nothing ever happening. Do you do this sort of thing regularly, Hank?” She smiled briefly.

“We live a very quiet life,” he answered in a tone of mock gravity. “Where are the others?”

“They’re both stretched out in the living room, fast asleep. I tell you, Hank, the city is never as rugged as this; we’re all exhausted.”

He took her arm affectionately. “Let them sleep.” Together they went to the garage where they fitted on snow-shoes. The air was cold and sharp, stinging their faces. Alice was silent as they began their first few awkward steps on the snow. It was well packed and very deep, and they hardly sank into it. Alice floundered a few times until Henry took her arm. She laughed at their awkward progress; a yellow strand of hair fell across her forehead, and all at once she was young again. They walked with care, at a slow, steady pace.

“It’s wonderful,” Alice murmured. “I’d forgotten a country winter, the pure air, the way the sun shines so blue on the snow, the still conifers like a mass of big white hands hanging down, the clean wind that sweeps out your sooty lungs, the quiet. The blessed quiet!”

The wind brought out color along her smooth cheeks and brushed her lips with red.

Henry’s square, kindly face smiled down at her. “You aren’t too tired?”

“No. I feel renewed. Just bursting with oxygen.”

They had left the house far behind, and as they climbed uphill they stopped to get their breath at the edge of a copse of frozen trees. Alice looked back. The big gray house stood in the snow, its windows winking, its chimneys smoking against the greenish light of the sky. Alice’s smile disappeared.

“I always loved it,” she said, as if speaking to herself. “I always thought it would be mine. Even the barns, and the old chicken run. Once we had a cow. That was for Laura. Fresh milk. It was all for Laura, after all. It was the first home I ever had, and the last. Never once did I think, until Aunt Clara died, that it wouldn’t always be my home.”

Henry fumbled for his pipe and carefully lit it. He did not look at Alice for some time. Then he said, “You can still consider it your home. But you never come. God knows we’ve invited you often enough.”

“You don’t understand,” she told him sadly. “I’d only be a visitor. I don’t want to be a visitor in a house I’d always thought of as my own.” Her voice broke. “Dear God, I used to imagine myself living there always, with a husband. And children. I planned what to do on all these acres. I’d have a swimming pool where the natural spring is, I’d have arbors, and glades. I’d never leave even for a day, unless it was necessary. You can’t imagine what it’s like, to love every inch of land, every tree, every shrub, to hold it in your thoughts, so that it becomes part of you. I used to touch the tree trunks. They knew me, just as I knew them. It was like a death to me, when I learned that Aunt Clara had left it to Laura, all those green cool orchards, the brook, the spring, the fences, the brick chimneys, the fires, the waking in the morning to a day like this!”

Her lips trembled; there was a hint of tears on her cheeks. “And in the warm, rainy June nights; the smell of the roses in the air, and the scent of the pines and the grass. I’ve been driven away, Hank. It’s not so much the actual owning of it, not really. It’s as if my whole self is there, and what is with me in New York, and what was with me in Chicago was the real ghost.”

“I understand,” Henry said gently. “I love it that way, too.”

“Does Laura?” she asked, with sudden sharpness.

“I think so.”

“But not the way I do?”

He hesitated. “Perhaps not exactly. I don’t think Laura has the imagination you have, Alice. And sometimes I do think she’s lonely here.”

“I wish I had the money to buy the house from you and Laura!”

“And live here alone?” His tone was affectionate.

And then they were looking into each other’s eyes with enormous intensity. Both were silent, unable to turn away. Alice’s breath rose in a faint plume from her mouth.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh, no, Hank.”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

His lips opened on a quick sound. He took her hand. “Yes, Alice,” he said, “I’m afraid I do.”

“And you?”

He turned away from her.

“Why did you marry Laura, Hank? When you loved me, even before I married Sam?”

There was no answer. Her fingers dug into his arm. “Was it the money, Hank? The money and the house!”

He shook his head. “Alice, you know it wasn’t that.”

“What was it then?” she demanded. “Tell me!”

“Would you believe me if I said it was love?”

She pulled her hand away from his. “No, I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Not even if it’s true?”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. How could you? A man like you — and that stupid child? What have you in common? What can she be for you but a clinging vine? How can you possibly stand her!”

“You hate her.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I do. I’ve never concealed it. I wish she had died last summer! I wish she had died.”

“Alice!”

“I do! I do! Then you and I — ”

“What about Sam, Alice? Why did you marry him?”

She turned away. But he caught her arm. “What about Sam?”

She would not look at him. “I loved Sam, in a way. I saw it was useless waiting for you. I’d been waiting most of my life for you, and you weren’t even aware of it. When you met Laura, I knew it was all over, the waiting, everything. I was fond of Sam,” she added dully. “I thought we could be happy together. He didn’t want to leave New York, but I did. I couldn’t stay here, thinking of you and Laura in that house, the house and you not belonging to me.”

The sun was gone suddenly, and the sky grew full of ominous, purple-shadowed clouds. A strange light filled the air, gray but clear. Alice’s misery was obvious as she turned to Henry. “I’m sorry I said that I wished Laura had died last summer,” she told him. “That was cruel of me.”

“But you meant it?”

She sighed. “I suppose I did, when I said it. I don’t, now.”

Large flakes of snow began to fall, and the wind rose, swirling the flakes around them. Alice asked, “When did you know I loved you, Hank? Not before I married Sam!”

“That’s true,” he admitted.

She smiled at him sadly. “And you haven’t yet said you love me.”

“Do you want me to say it?”

“Not unless it’s true.”

He looked at the sky, and felt the sting of the wind on his face. “I’ve been absolutely faithful to Laura, Alice. I intend to remain faithful. That’s all I can tell you.”

“All?”

“All.”

“Very well.” Alice sounded tired. “Let’s go on to the Ulbrich house. It’s still a quarter of a mile from here. And forget we ever had this fascinating conversation. What makes you think the telephone might be all right there?”

“I thought I’d find out.” He stopped suddenly, as a thought occurred to him. “Damn it! I’d forgotten! We have the same party line! If we’re out, so are they.”

The wind was growing stronger. Henry groaned. “Better take my arm, Alice. It’s getting dark. We can easily lose our way.”

They stumbled in the growing dark of the storm and the almost blinding snow. They didn’t speak again; when Alice stumbled into a snowbank, Henry shook her coat and brushed the snow from her head. The way back was longer and more arduous than the way they had come. They wiped the snow from their faces. Their tracks had already been smoothed over by the wind and then the house was before them, looming like a dark shadow. Henry led Alice to the door, then stopped. “Go on in. I have something to do before I come in.”

She put her hand on his arm; her face was a mask in the gloom. “Hank, please forget what I said, won’t you? I don’t know why I said it at all.”

He pressed her hand. “I’ve already forgotten, Alice. Go in, now.”

He turned before she had reached the door and made his floundering way to the woodshed. He found the door, and reached up for the bullet which had been fired at him. There was nothing there. Incredulously, he took off his glove and felt for the hole. It was a round hollow, but the bullet was gone. It could not have fallen. Only the end had protruded from the wood. It had been removed.

Stunned, Henry Frazier stood for a moment. Then he was terribly afraid.

Alice went into the quiet hall, where the only sound was the old clock ticking majestically. Wearily, she removed her coat and wiped her wet face with her handkerchief. Then she started. David stood at her elbow, watching. She read the question in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s all I can tell you. Yes. I’ve got to lie down. I’m exhausted.”

Her brother watched her slow progress up the stairs, her hand on the bannister. He waited until she shut her door, but couldn’t see her collapse on her bed or her terror as she stared into the darkness.

David returned to the living room, where a big fire burned brightly. John Carr sat forward on a round stool, smoking and staring into the fire. He looked up, and David nodded. Both men regarded the fire in silence. Then John Carr asked: “Where is he?”

“He didn’t come in with her. I have an idea — ”

They heard the hall door open, and felt an icy flow of air. In a moment Henry Frazier came into the room. Both men turned to him, and David yawned. But Henry paused some distance from the fire.

“Have either of you been out today?” he asked.

“Who? Me?” David sounded surprised. “No, indeed. I’m not a polar bear like you. And John’s been here all the time, with me.”

“Are you sure?” Henry advanced a little farther into the room.

“What do you mean?” David asked. John turned his head again.

“I wasn’t out. Why? Is there something the matter?”

“Only that the bullet that was shot at me was taken from the woodshed door.” Henry walked to the fire and looked down at his guests.

“Fell into the snow, probably,” David suggested.

“No. That’s impossible. It was taken out. I felt the edges of the hollow. There were splinters.”

“Bullets usually do make splinters,” David said easily.

Henry’s pale face flushed with anger. “Don’t be funny. The bullet’s gone. And now I have nothing to show the police but the hole.”

“How about your handyman with the girlish name?”

“He wouldn’t take it.”

“Why don’t you ask him? Maybe he collects souvenirs.”

Henry looked from one smiling face to the other. He felt frightened, for there was not only mockery but hatred in the room. They were so tangible that he stepped back from the fire. The men continued to smile at him.

“Or perhaps Mrs. Daley or Edith?” David suggested.

Henry moistened his lips. He looked at the windows, which were freshly covered with snow. He had an unfamiliar but desperate urge: to flee his own house.

“There’s something wrong,” he said, feeling his heart beating too fast, too painfully. “Evelyn wouldn’t take the bullet. Let’s not be stupid. It couldn’t have fallen into the snow. Someone took it out.”

“Alice?”

Henry’s voice rose. “Don’t!” he exclaimed. He swung to John Carr. “Did you take it out?”

“Why should I?” John’s voice was hard.

Henry paused. “Do you have a gun?”

The smile was gone. “No,” he said emphatically. “Why should I? What would I need a gun for?”

Henry stared at John. Then he said, “Dave, I’d like a word with you.” He walked out of the room and stood in the hall. David looked at John before he rose and went out to his host. Henry spoke quietly, “I told you he had a gun. And now he’s taken the bullet.”

“You should have removed it when you had the chance, yesterday.”

“I was too — ”

“Scared?”

“All right! Wouldn’t you have been, damn it?”

David shrugged. “I suppose so.” They could hardly see each other in the darkness. “You don’t seem very concerned,” Henry remarked resentfully.

“I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You’ll find the bullet in the snow, come spring, if it’s ever spring around here.”

“I’ve lost my evidence. For the police. Can’t you see that?”

David didn’t answer. Henry glanced through the archway into the firelit living room. John Carr was smoking, and studying the fire.

“Can you keep him here?” Henry asked. “I never thought of it this morning. I’m going to empty his gun.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Henry!”

“He denied he has a gun.”

“What would you do under the same circumstances? Admit it?”

“Why does he have a gun at all?”

“Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you tell him you found his gun in his suitcase?” David’s eyes caught a gleam from the leaping firelight.

“You didn’t tell him I found it!” Henry’s throat felt tight; he could hardly breathe.

“Of course not. Didn’t you ask me not to?”

Henry rubbed his chin. “I don’t know.”

“He’s your guest, not mine. You know him, I don’t,” David pointed out. “By the way, did you get to a telephone?”

“No. No.” Henry spoke absently. He looked again at the man by the fire. “Keep him down here. I’m going to look for his gun and empty it.”

“He’s not going to like that, when he finds out, and he will just as soon as he goes to his room.”

“I can’t help that!” Henry said, his frustration growing.

“What’s to prevent him from killing us, if he’s insane or something?”

“I’ll keep him down here,” David promised.

Henry ran up the stairs quickly. He felt almost as though he were being pursued. He heard Laura singing a Christmas carol behind the closed door of their room, and welcomed so normal a sound in the midst of his fear. Tiptoeing to John Carr’s door, he felt his way along the wall in the dusk. He opened the door silently, then entered the warm, neat room. Faint light reflected from the snow filled it. The suitcase was where it had been that morning. Henry held his breath, then went to it and released the catch. The gun was not there.

He opened all the drawers of the single chest in the guest room. They were filled with the few things John had brought with him. Henry ran his frantic hands over the garments, and in the corners of the drawers. Nothing. Opening the closet door he made a fruitless search of the pockets of the suit, which was still damp. In his frenzy he even explored the comfortable wing chair in the room, lifting its cushion, feeling under the frilly chintz of its skirts. He lay on the floor and ran his hands over the polished bare boards. He stood up and flung aside the heavy draperies at the window and looked at the broad window sill. He was finally satisfied that the gun was not in the room. But wherever it was, there was danger. John Carr had discovered, in some way, that his gun had been found by someone in the house. But where had he hidden it? The house was large; there were hundreds of hiding places.

“I’ve got to stay calm,” Henry thought. “Maybe he has the gun with him.” He glanced over his shoulder. Someone had turned on the hall light. He left the room, shutting the door behind him. Then Alice’s door opened, and she stood in the doorway. As she saw Henry in the hall, she started to speak.

“Hush!” he cautioned her. Her blonde hair, loosened to dry after her fall in the snow, hung to her shoulders. Henry could feel her apprehension. “I found a gun in Carr’s room this morning,” he whispered. “One bullet had been fired. Yesterday. At me.”

Alice stepped back, clasping the palms of her hands together. Henry went on: “I looked for the bullet a few minutes ago. It had been dug out.”

“Tell David right away!” Alice’s voice echoed Henry’s own fear.

“I told David this morning about finding the gun in Carr’s room. And I told them both, just now, about the missing bullet. David’s keeping him downstairs so I could search his room.”

“David knows?”

“Yes! But he doesn’t seem very concerned. Thinks the bullet may have dropped into the snow. That’s impossible.”

“What is John Carr doing with a gun?”

“That’s what I’d dearly love to know.”

The sound of Laura’s singing came to them faintly.

“Lots of people have guns, and even carry them,” Alice said after a pause. “Perhaps that’s why David isn’t too upset.” She sounded hopeful. “And you don’t know if the bullet came from John’s gun.”

“The gun is a forty-five. So’s the bullet. Now I’ve lost my evidence against him.”

Alice thought for a moment. “I wish to God I’d never come. Hank, what do you really know about John Carr?”

“Only what I’ve been told by half a dozen, or more, of the most reputable people,” Henry answered. “There’s nothing wrong about him; all on the level. Unless it’s all a ‘cover’.”

Alice sighed. “He’s probably perfectly all right. If David isn’t worried, then there’s nothing to worry about, I suppose.”

“Well, I’m worried,” Henry told her grimly. “Damned worried.”

Alice shook her head. “You said Dave’s keeping him downstairs. Search his room.”

“I did. The gun’s gone.”

Alice sagged against the side of the door. She moistened her lips. “Perhaps he thought it was dangerous to leave around. Maybe he hid it.”

“It’s not in his room at all. I went over everything.”

Alice was silent. She started to lift her hands, then dropped them. “Did he deny taking the bullet out of the woodshed door?”

“Yes. Dave said he was with him all the time while we were out.”

“Then, it must have fallen into the snow!”

Henry shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. It was dug out.”

“I’ll talk to David myself.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did.” Henry hesitated. “Keep your door locked tonight, Alice. I’m going to lock mine.”

“This is incredible,” she told him. “If I can only get out, I’m going to leave tomorrow. I’d leave tonight if I could.”

He touched her gently on the cheek. “I’m sorry I had to frighten you. But I wanted you to be warned. Please talk to Dave.”

She watched him silently as he went into his room, and then waited at the top of the stairway. In a few moments David and John Carr came up, laughing together. They stopped abruptly when they saw her.

“David,” she said coldly, “may I speak to you for a moment?”

“All right. But we came upstairs to dress. Make it fast, will you?”

John touched his forehead lightly in a salute to Alice. But she merely stared at him. David entered her room and she shut the door.

“I said, before we came, that we’d have no cozy-corner chats together,” David told her, frowning. “We did all our talking before we came. I told you what you should do. Now, what’s up?”

She told him what Henry had said a few moments before. David lit a cigarette and sat down in a wing chair. He took quick puffs at his cigarette, as he listened intently. Then he grinned at his sister.

“Much ado about nothing,” he commented. “Let’s keep our voices down. Carr has a gun. Hank says he saw it this morning. He swears it was a forty-five and is positive that the bullet that almost hit him came from that gun. He finds the bullet gone later. He looks for the gun and it’s gone, too. My explanation? People carry guns, often. I frequently do, at night, on night calls when they’re necessary. Nothing unusual. Maybe Carr likes guns; doesn’t feel comfortable without them. He’s knocked around. Then, thinking one of the women downstairs might get curious about his suitcase — people are usually damned curious — and find the gun, he hides the damn thing. Oh, all right, Hank can’t find it. Carr would be sure to hide it where it couldn’t be found. For safety’s sake. What a stink you’ve both raised!”

“And the missing bullet?”

“In the snow. Or that Evelyn’s got it.”

“There was a bullet gone from the gun.”

“A coincidence.” David smiled at his sister. “What could be nicer than Hank having the hell scared out of him at this time?”

“Don’t! Don’t be so — so frivolous. I’m frightened, David. Terribly frightened.”

“I knew you would be, before you came up here. I told you so.”

“If only you were sure — ”

“I am. Absolutely sure.” David stood up. “We’ve got to find out what he knows. And don’t talk about leaving.”

Alice closed her eyes and shuddered. “Laura,” she whispered.

“We’ve started something, and we’re going to finish it. Is that clear, Alice?”

“All right,” she murmured listlessly. She sat on the edge of her bed and stared bleakly at the floor, not even noticing when her brother left.

Chapter 9

“Are you sure you feel all right, Laura?” Henry asked again, as they both entered the quiet living room.

“Yes, darling.” Laura looked about her with a satisfied sigh. “It’s wonderful to have the furnaces on again, and the lights.” The living room basked in mellow warmth; the fire crackled and threw up sheets of flame. Laura switched the tree lights on, and the tree came alive in shimmering color. Henry watched his wife closely. Her profile reflected nothing but youthful pleasure, and Henry frowned a little. He stirred up the fire unnecessarily. Laura went to the piano and began to play carols. Then the others came into the room, Alice, as always, dressed in blue, her golden hair tied back severely. She looked wan and preoccupied.

“Well, well,” David said. “Christmas proceeds as scheduled, come snow, darkness, alarms in the night, bullets and Borgia cups! What a wonderful spirit America has. Disaster to the right, disaster to the left, disaster fore and aft, and America beams at Christmas and pretends all is deliciously right in this worst of all possible worlds. How about some drinks?”

“Don’t be a bore,” Alice told him. “Martini for me.” She looked restlessly at Laura, who had stopped playing, and was smiling across the room at her guests. She seemed hardly more than a child, which always irritated Alice. “You make a nice picture over there,” she told her. “Aren’t you going to join us?”

Laura got up slowly, the folds of her rose velvet dress flowing about her. Henry caught her eye and winked encouragingly, and she reminded herself that this was her home. She was mistress here.

David made her a drink, and when she reached for the glass their fingers met. Laura stood still, as she felt a thrill from David’s touch.

“Are you feeling better?” John Carr had come to stand beside her. She started, and stared at him as though she had never seen him before. “What?” she murmured. “Oh, yes, thank you.” He was smiling at her charmingly, but when she looked into his eyes the old feeling that he was not strange to her at all returned.

“Isn’t the drink all right, Laura?” David asked.

“Yes, of course. Thank you.” She did not know why, but as she turned to him she felt the sting of tears along her eyelids. She bent her head and sipped at her glass. A sense of loss, of foreboding, rushed in on her. Henry and Alice were talking amiably and quietly together on the other side of the hearth, and Laura suddenly became conscious of a kind of intimacy between them, though Alice’s smile was coolly indifferent and Henry’s expression that of the genial host.

“Hope you didn’t buy me any ties for Christmas,” David said. “I have exactly ten ties, four dark blue, three dark green, and three dark gray. Don’t confuse me with anything else.”

Laura couldn’t look at him directly, still remembering the thrill of their touch. She had known it only once before, when she had been sixteen and had met David for the first time in two years. Where had it been? She had the confused memory of a restaurant in New York, or perhaps it was a shop. She said, staring down into her glass, “I didn’t get you ties, David. Our gift to you, well, you can open it yourself after dinner. We open our presents Christmas Eve.” She remembered now; she and Alice were in Schrafft’s. A summer day. She had shaken hands with David and had experienced that almost shocking reaction as he had taken her hand in his.

“Aren’t you going to toast Christmas Eve?” Henry suggested.

They all began to talk at once. They had more drinks. The ornaments on the tree sparkled and glittered. The storm raged on outside, unnoticed. Even Alice’s haggard face lightened under the influence of the cocktails. But Laura still felt alone, outside of this group, outside of this house, as though she had been banished or forgotten, and was not even a memory to these four gathered around her hearth, on Christmas Eve, with their glasses in their hands. By nature and early environment she was shy, and had never thrust herself into the center of things. She had always been content merely to watch and smile and enjoy the pleasure of others. But never before had she felt herself so forgotten, like someone long dead who had not, even in her lifetime, inspired interest or solicitude. She studied them all. If they would only notice her just at this moment, smile at her. But though David was standing near her, he was laughing with the others. “Notice me, please notice me,” she implored them in her mind. “I don’t know why, but I’m frightened. I feel terribly alone.”

Alice suddenly looked at her, almost as if she had heard. “Laura, are you sure you’re really well enough to be down here?”

Henry moved to her and touched her arm. “Laura?” She tried to smile, but her mouth quivered.

“Nothing, darling,” she told him. “But — ” She paused. “I always seem to remember Aunt Clara on Christmas Eve. I just can’t help it, but I have a feeling she’s right here with us.”

“Really?” John’s gray eyes were serious. “I always did believe that the dead aren’t very far away. Honestly,” he said, when the others laughed a little. “Besides, don’t our religions teach that? You pagans, you.” But his glance at Laura was kind and understanding, and she was overwhelmingly grateful. When he smiled like that, she could not believe he was a stranger.

“I’ve heard that ghosts walk on Christmas Eve,” David commented.

“You’re thinking of Halloween,” Alice told him. Her blue eyes were cold; “I’m sorry, but I can’t feel a thing about Aunt Clara. It doesn’t seem possible, but I can hardly remember how she looked, or much about her as a person, though she was a formidable old woman. But then, I rarely sat with her here in this room. I was always roaming around outside or investigating the rooms and attics.”

“She used to sit in this very chair,” Laura said, putting her hand on it with a curious sense of protection. “She was always sewing or embroidering or mending. She would say that no lady’s hands are idle, at least not American ladies’.”

“Old-fashioned as the devil,” David remarked. “I only saw her about half a dozen times, myself. She smelled of peppermint, mothballs, and old clothes. Are you offended, Laura?”

“Not exactly.” Laura’s voice was sad. “But how awful it is to die and not be remembered by anyone.”

Henry spoke sharply. “Now, Laura, let’s not be morbid again. This is Christmas Eve. And we have guests.”

Laura looked at him in confusion. He said to David, “I’ve thought of asking Laura’s doctor in New York to give her a tranquilizer to take when she’s depressed.”

David studied Laura as he spoke to Henry: “Everyone has a right to be depressed at times. Often depressed, Laura?”

She was still confused. Henry answered: “Too often. Come now, Laura, let’s be gay tonight, shall we?”

“Of course,” she murmured. She thought to herself: I suppose I have been morbid and depressed occasionally, since I lost the baby, and Henry’s been noticing it. I didn’t think it was that obvious, though. In fact, I haven’t spoken of the baby for weeks and weeks, perhaps months, until the other night. Sometimes I’ve even forgotten, too, for days. And my leg hardly bothers me any more.

“If I hadn’t thought it would lift your spirits, I would have insisted you stay in bed, Christmas Eve or no Christmas Eve,” Henry told his wife with concern.

Laura’s sense of confusion deepened. Henry spoke again, to David: “She was very upset, about the accident and the baby, the night before you came. I was worried about her. You don’t have any tranquilizers with you, do you, Dave?”

Laura interrupted quickly. “I don’t need any.”

“Yes, you do, dear,” Henry contradicted her firmly. “I don’t want you to have another crying fit as you did the other night. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. But what did he mean by ‘crying fit’? She had only cried a little, but had laughed again afterwards.

“Crying fits often, Laura?” David asked casually, refilling her glass.

She hesitated. To deny it would put Henry in a foolish light. She glanced at him: he seemed tense. “I suppose I’ve been pretty bad, sometimes.” Why were they all looking at her so oddly?

“I thought you were getting over it,” Henry said reproachfully. “And your memory, Laura. You’re always forgetting things lately.”

She was utterly bewildered now. There was silence in the room. “Have I?” she asked faintly.

Henry sighed. “All right, sweetheart, let’s forget this, too.” He appeared extremely disturbed as he went to the small bar and poured another drink. “One for me, too, Hank,” Alice said. He seemed not to hear; his hands moved slowly. She repeated her request, and he started. “Of course, of course.”

David and John looked at each other; John lifted his eyebrows. “Is that damn storm still prowling around outside?” he asked. “Does it go on forever?”

“If it weren’t for making us snowbound, I’d be enjoying it,” Laura told him, eager to forget the past few moments. “It gives me a very snug feeling.”

“I think Laura has a touch of the hermit in her,” Henry commented. “Too much so, sometimes. I’m sure it’s that that makes her depressed.”

But I’m rarely depressed, Laura thought. And I’m not a hermit. It’s just that I like New York and miss it sometimes, and the women around here now are so much older than I am, and they have children they talk about constantly. I do love my house, where I’ve always been happy, but I’d like to go to New York more often. We used to, until I had that accident. Henry protects me too much.

Again David refilled her glass. She drank absently. She promised herself that as soon as she could she would meet Henry in town more often. They would resume their visits to theatres and restaurants. He must miss them, too. That is why she had insisted he stay in town many evenings while she had been recovering. But though she had been really well since the first of November, Henry had not suggested that she meet him in the old way. Yes, she commented to herself, he pampers me too much. He doesn’t seem to realize that I’m quite normal again.

“Now what’s bothering you, dear?” Henry asked affectionately. “You remember what you promised me, don’t you?”

She stared at him blankly for a moment. “Promised? Oh, you mean about being festive tonight?”

“Yes. You are going to keep your promise, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” Again she was confused. Had she really upset her husband so much? Tears came to her eyes and Henry noticed them at once. “There, there, darling.” He touched her cheek lovingly, and smiled down at her. “Are you feeling those drinks? You know you can’t take too many these days. We expect to listen to carols tonight, and I don’t want to have to carry you up to bed sound asleep.”

Now Laura found her confusion mixed with exasperation. Her cheeks turned bright pink. “Henry! You make me sound like an alcoholic!”

“Interesting,” Alice remarked languidly. “Is our Laura hitting the bottle these days?”

“I don’t think that’s fair, really,” Henry said. “You forget that Laura had a bad experience last summer. Darling, you don’t want the rest of that drink, do you? You’ve had three big ones so far.”

Laura looked about her, sick with humiliation. David and John Carr were studying the glasses in their hands, their expressions serious.

“I think I know when I’ve had enough to drink!” she retorted. Her face trembled, and she felt like crying. What was wrong with Henry? “You know I drink very little, Henry. Please, let’s change the subject.”

“I just don’t want you to be sick again.” Henry put his arm around her.

“I don’t intend to be,” she told him, and heard the edge of hysteria in her voice. Oh, what a fool she was making of herself, spoiling everything, for her husband, her guests, and herself. The wind thundered against the windows. Then Edith announced dinner. Laura turned quickly and stumbled, as Henry grasped her arm. “Take it easy,” he cautioned, as the others watched them closely.

When they were at the beautifully set table, with the crystal and silver sparkling in the candlelight, Laura felt ill again. She could not eat; she simply could not force herself. Her sense of isolation, of being completely alone, had returned. The others, sensing that she was upset, made light conversation around her. John Carr mentioned that he had not had the time to sit down with Henry to go over the partnership papers. Smilingly he confided to Alice: “Too many pretty women around. That’s the trouble.” “I’ll teach you to use snowshoes,” she promised. Suddenly she remembered what Henry had told her about John’s gun. It all seemed absurd now. David had been quite right. Surely he had hidden it for safety. A charming, easygoing young man like this could hardly be dangerous. She knew perfectly well that criminals often had honest eyes, and truly evil people the expressions of saints. But she had usually been able to detect liars and the truly evil, and there was none of this in John Carr. There was more than candor in his eyes. There was sincerity, and there was strength and kindness about his mouth. Not all the fraud in the world could put them there.

Then she thought of her dead husband, and her face was empty again.

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” Henry asked Laura anxiously. “You haven’t touched your dinner.”

Laura fumbled for her knife and fork, and tried to eat the excellent lamb chops, but the meat nauseated her. She was aware of Henry’s close attention, his encouraging smiles, which made her nervous. If only he would stop watching her! She dropped her fork in her lap and uttered an exasperated cry.

“No damage,” David said, brushing her skirt with his napkin.

“I’m always dropping things!” Laura apologized, gesturing with her hand and suddenly overturning her water glass. Henry was on his feet immediately, his face drawn with concern.

“It doesn’t matter!” she told him. “Please don’t bother about me!”

Edith came in with hot rolls. “Please bring a heavy towel, or something,” Laura told her. “I’ve spilled the water.”

Edith went out, sighing loudly. “That girl always makes a fuss over the slightest thing Laura does,” Henry said, annoyed. “She never makes allowances for — everything.”

“She’s really very good,” Laura put in. “And we couldn’t get anyone else to stay here, so far from everything. I don’t mind her tantrums.”

Edith returned with a towel and made elaborate work of sopping up the water. Conversation resumed. Laura knew she had offended Henry; he refused to look at her. She ought not to have lost her temper; she ought not to have been so nervous.

She wanted desperately to enter the conversation. Alice was describing the technique of using snowshoes to John Carr, and he was listening, his head bent to her. When she paused, Laura interrupted excitedly, “I wrote you that we’d have snow when you came, Alice, and I was right.”

Alice looked puzzled. “In your last letter: The one inviting me?”

“No, the first one I wrote you after Thanksgiving, when we did have a flurry. You remember I wrote that if we have snow at Thanksgiving we usually have a heavy snow at Christmas?”

Alice frowned. Laura felt a little thrust of exasperation again. “The letter you didn’t answer, Alice, the first one inviting you. Don’t you remember?”

“But I didn’t receive any letter from you after Thanksgiving, Laura, except the one you wrote about two weeks ago.”

“But I wrote you two letters!”

“I only received one,” Alice repeated.

Laura regarded her blankly. “I did write you two. You didn’t answer the first. That’s why I wrote you the second time.”

Alice shrugged. “Well, don’t let it upset you. Letters sometimes get lost, you know.”

Laura turned to her husband. “You remember, darling? I wrote Alice two letters. When she didn’t answer the first, I mentioned it to you, and said I would write again, as we did so want her to come for Christmas. You took both letters to New York with you to mail, so they’d reach Alice quicker.”

Henry looked embarrassed. “I — I can’t remember, Laura. You’re always giving me letters to mail.”

“But you do remember my mentioning that Alice hadn’t answered my first invitation?” For some reason it seemed desperately necessary to her that Henry remember, and assure her of it.

“I honestly don’t remember.” He smiled sheepishly. “After all, it wasn’t a matter of life or death, was it? I have lots of things on my mind.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed as she looked questioningly at Henry.

“But Henry! You even asked me if Alice had answered the first invitation! Don’t you remember? You suggested that I write again, that Alice might not have received the letter or was out of town. So, I wrote that night, and you put an airmail stamp on it. I noticed the stamp; you said it was a special issue. We talked about it.”

“I remember that letter, yes,” Henry told her. “But not the first one, dear. It doesn’t matter. Alice received your last letter, and she’s obviously here, isn’t she?”

Laura thought fearfully, I must be losing my mind. They say it’s a sign of insanity to get excited and frantic over trivialities. What’s wrong with me?

Edith came in to remove the dinner dishes, and Laura watched her through a haze of misery and embarrassment. She swallowed and noticed for the first time that her throat was scratchy and a little sore. Her heart sank. A sore throat could mean chills and fever during the night, and at least two weeks of complete wretchedness and disability. Oh, no! she thought. I just can’t be sick on Christmas, of all days!

She said to David: “I’ve just discovered I have a sore throat. How can I head off a cold?”

“Try dissolving two tablets of aspirin in hot water and gargling with it,” he prescribed. “And swallow a couple of tablets. Then hie you to bed as soon as possible, with a hot-water bottle. That’s as far as medical science can reach with a cold. Greatest mystery in the world — colds. We’re about to have a breakthrough on cancer, and we have diabetes practically licked, and tuberculosis can almost always be cured in a reasonable length of time. But when it comes to colds, which are as miserable as almost any other disease, and twenty times as prevalent as any of them ever were, we stand absolutely impotent, with our fluids, aspirin, beds, nose drops, and gargles. And antibiotics to help against secondary infections. Nothing does much good, of course, except a limitless supply of handkerchiefs.”

“I hope we don’t get it,” Alice commented.

Her tone was light, but Laura felt guilty. “As soon as dinner’s over, I’ll do what David advised.” She laughed weakly. “Perhaps if I use will power it will help.”

She excused herself immediately after dinner. She understood suddenly, with relief, that the cold must have been coming, which had made her nervous and confused. She took her temperature. It was 101. She could have smashed the thermometer in her annoyance. But still, her heart lifted. She could almost laugh at the spectacle of herself becoming frantic over a lost letter. They must think her very childlike, all of them, except poor Henry, who had only been trying to pamper her. Her head felt light and giddy. She really had drunk too much; she had taken a fourth drink just to annoy Henry. I am behaving, as usual, like a spoiled child, she told herself.

“Any fever?” David asked her, when she came downstairs and rejoined the group around the fire.

“Well, a little. But my throat feels better. No, no brandy for me, Henry.”

“No?” He looked surprised. “Laura doesn’t want brandy! Did you hear that?”

But I don’t like brandy, Laura thought. Henry knows that.

“Good girl,” Henry said, as if she had given him great pleasure. “You don’t mind us having some, dear?”

“Not at all,” she told him.

She would have enjoyed some crème de menthe, and looked at the bar for the customary bottle, but it wasn’t there. Oh, well, she thought. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps it would be better, with a cold coming on, not to drink. She noticed that Henry was looking at her with such obvious love, and attracting amused attention by doing so, that she was embarrassed.

A little later they opened their presents. Laura, conscious of Alice’s pride, had paid only a modest price for the pretty nightgown and matching silk coat she gave her. Alice examined the garments and thanked Laura somewhat stiffly. She had brought Laura a velvet jewelry case. Henry had diamond earrings for his wife, which she insisted upon wearing at once. She had given him matched traveling cases. “We are going abroad in the spring, unless a war breaks out,” she told John Carr. There was, of course, nothing for John, and Laura felt deeply sorry for him.

“You really have no relatives at all?” she asked.

“One detestable sister,” he told her, with an agreeable smile. “Married to a detestable man, and with two detestable children. Fortunately I don’t have to see any of them very often.”

“I thought you didn’t have anyone,” Henry said. “That’s the impression you gave me. Can’t you stand your sister even for Christmas?”

“She lives in California. We have nothing in common, and I’m sure she’s glad I’m not squatting on her hearth tonight.”

Then Alice said an extraordinary thing. “I’m not sure of that. If you were my brother, I’d be glad to have you; I’d want to have you.”

Laura was astonished. She had never heard Alice express such frank emotion before, and Alice, suddenly aware of what she had said, blushed like a young girl. “Oh, it’s all that brandy!” She laughed.

“I’ve never had anyone say a nicer thing to me,” John Carr told her. “Thank you, dear Alice.” He reached out, took her hand, and kissed it noisily. They all laughed, and the blush remained on Alice’s face.

A few minutes later, Laura became aware of a familiarly ominous fatigue. She put the back of her hand against her forehead. It was very hot, and her head ached. As she leaned closer to the fire, she glanced at the old clock on the mantel. Almost midnight. She stood up and forced herself to say: “Now, we’ll have our carols.” As she sat down at the piano, she was aware of how much colder it was away from the fire.

She began to sing, and the others joined her. John Carr stood beside Alice, holding her hand, and she appeared almost unaware of it. Then Laura, feeling her voice becoming hoarse, stopped singing, and merely played and nodded her head in time with the music. How could she leave them in this pleasant mood, to go and pamper a cold? But she was feeling extremely ill. She really must go to bed if she were to have any hope of getting up on Christmas Day.

Suddenly the music was interrupted by a loud roaring and meshing sound outside and Henry ran to the windows. “The plows!” he cried joyfully. “They’ve finally come through, bless them!” He turned, beaming, to the others. “Now they’ll go on this way for about two miles, then turn and clear the other side of the road. I’ve got to give the boys something on the way back.”

They joined him at the window to watch the huge plow with its red lights throwing up fountains and billows of snow. “No longer snowbound,” Alice said with relief. “I was getting claustrophobia.”

“Twenty dollars, Laura?” Henry asked, fumbling for his wallet.

“Oh, make it thirty!” She laughed. Henry went into the hall for his leather jacket and overshoes. He stood in the doorway putting on his gloves. “While I’m at it, I’ll bring in some more firewood. Evelyn’s probably dead drunk tonight.” He looked at Laura, and stopped smiling. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“It’s my throat again,” she confessed. “I think I’ll have to go to bed. But, please, please! don’t let me break all this up.”

“I’m sorry, Laura,” Alice told her kindly. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you, Alice.” Laura looked pleadingly at the three men. “You won’t let me break things up? It’s this awful cold. But if I take care of it again as David advised, then I may be over it by tomorrow. Look, it’s only half-past twelve. Do stay up and drink to — ” She paused. “Drink to peace on earth and good will to men.”

Henry put his arm about her gently, and kissed her hot forehead. “All right, dear. We’ll do that for you, and drink a toast to you, too.”

She told them all good night, as Henry called after her: “I’ll bring you some hot milk in a few minutes. And now for that wood. No. I don’t need any help. I’ll only bring in a few pieces, just to tide us over tonight. I ought to fire Evelyn.”

The others sat down near the fire and smoked in silence. Once John questioned David with his eyes and nodded his head towards Alice, but David shook his own head firmly. John refilled the brandy glasses. After a sip, Alice remarked: “I’m so ashamed of myself. Laura is really terribly nice, and now I’ve discovered she isn’t the fool I always thought she was, I’m ashamed. I honestly don’t hate her any more. I think I could even reach the point of liking her a lot.” She laughed, and the laugh broke. “But perhaps it’s only the brandy talking, and tomorrow I’ll be just as fiercely jealous of her as ever.”

“I don’t think you will,” John told her, touching her hand. “I don’t think you ever really hated her. You’re not the kind to hate, Alice.”

Her face became tense immediately. “You’re wrong. You’ve no idea how I can hate. That is,” and she glanced at David, “if I do have a reason to hate. Have I, David?”

“You have,” he said shortly.

Alice bent her head. “I wish to God I didn’t. I’d give anything if I didn’t. Anything.”

John watched them both, his intelligent eyes moving slowly from one to the other, finally resting on Alice. “There are some things we can’t escape,” he said. “An old aphorism, but true. There are things we have to face. It’s good to deal with them, if we can, and get them over with.”

She looked up startled. “But sometimes the results can be very terrible. Especially for the innocent.”

David’s expression was brooding. “That’s something the gods haven’t provided for, I’ve noticed. All justice, and let the innocent burn up in the holocaust, too. That’s because innocence always get in the way, somehow.”

“That’s because good and evil are often bound up together,” John pointed out. “To eliminate one, you sometimes have to eliminate the other. Unfortunate. But life’s a mystery, anyway. Remember what Aristotle said: ‘It is presumptuous to question God and demand an answer, for His words are not our words, and His justice is not ours.’ ”

Alice meditated on that, and then she shook her head sadly, turning to her brother. “Perhaps we could forget — After all — ”

“You forgot there is a reason,” David reminded her. “You must remember the reason. We don’t know just why, yet, though we now have an idea. And so, Laura — ”

They heard a stamping at the door to the hall, and Henry came in carrying wood in the large brass holder. “Cold as all hell out,” he told them. “I was right. We need more wood. And the boys will be back. I think I hear them now. So on with the boots again. Dave, stir up the fire, will you?”

The plow was indeed returning. They went to the window and watched Henry slogging through the deep snow to the private road. He was waving a flashlight. The plow came obediently to a stop. There were voices, laughter, cries of “Merry Christmas!” and Henry returned to the house, grinning.

“Now, when Evelyn shovels out our driveway,” he said, “we’ll be open to the world again.” He gave John Carr a quick glance, then continued, “I’ll take that hot milk up to Laura, as I promised. Or perhaps Mrs. Daley left some of her hot chocolate.”

“I think I’ll look her over just once before she goes to sleep,” David said. “A lot of flu around this year, and she seemed feverish. She shouldn’t have come down tonight, I suppose, after what she went through with that — food poisoning.” He went into the kitchen with Henry. Mrs. Daley had left a pan filled with chocolate, and Henry turned on the gas under it. David watched him idly. “Still suspicious of Carr?” he asked.

Henry turned to him. “Maybe I do have the lawyer’s suspicious mind, as you say, Dave. But he has a lot of explaining to do, and I want an explanation.”

David chuckled. “You scout around in a guest’s room and find a gun he had missing. He put it away to protect snoopers — like you — from danger. One of the bullets in it — if there had been, originally, a full quota, which I doubt — is also missing. You think you detect a smell from the gun, as if it had recently been fired. You immediately link up that gun with the bullet you persist in believing was fired at you, though all evidence points to it as being a stray. Yes, yes” — Dave put up his hand — “I remember the attic window and the prints on the roof of the garage. Who made them? I don’t know. Could be you,” and David’s dark face twinkled with mischief. “Lawyers are naturally dramatic, I’ve heard.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Henry said, watching the chocolate. “You know very well it all ties up together. At any rate, I’ll let the police come to their own conclusions. I’m going into the village tomorrow, after the driveway is cleared.”

He poured the hot chocolate into a cup. David sniffed. “Smells good. Any extra?”

Henry hesitated. “Well, there’s just about two cups left. Not enough to serve all the others.”

“Then let’s be selfish,” David suggested, getting out two more cups and pouring the chocolate into them. “We’ll take our cups up along with Laura’s and spend a couple of minutes with her, cheering her up.” He deftly put the three cups on a silver tray and marched out of the room, Henry following him.

Laura was half drowsing on her pillows over a book. The large and handsome room was lit only by the bed-light. She smiled and yawned luxuriously when she saw her visitors. Her face was flushed and her eyes were a little glazed. “I feel so comfortable and sleepy; it’s good of you both to waste your time on me. Three cups?”

“Take your choice,” David said. “We’re having a cup of cheer with you so you won’t feel you are abandoned.”

Laura took a cup, and yawned again. “Has the storm stopped? I don’t hear the wind much.”

“It’s stopped,” David told her. “At least the snow has. Not the wind, though.”

“I hope it’s hot enough, Laura,” Henry said, sitting on the edge of the bed and anxiously studying his wife’s face. She sipped and nodded, giving him a long and loving look. “Perfect,” she murmured. David stood and drank the chocolate. “Did you gargle with aspirin and take a couple?”

She nodded as he reached out to take her pulse. Considering the heat of her hand, which indicated fever, he was surprised that her pulse was quite slow. “How much aspirin did you swallow?”

Laura said guiltily: “Well, I wanted to be better by tomorrow, so I dissolved three tablets. Was that too much?”

“Well, it’s more than the recommended dose, but it won’t kill you. It will make you sleepy, though.” So that accounted for the slow pulse.

“You took nothing else but the aspirin?”

Laura shook her head. “Nothing.”

David patted her hand. “I think you’ll be better tomorrow. Just sleep as much as you can. If you feel worse in the night, call me. Hank will be here, won’t he?”

“Oh, no,” Laura said. “Not when I have a cold. He’ll sleep in one of the other bedrooms. Don’t worry, David. I’ll be all right. I’ve had colds before.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “I’m going to use psychology. I’m going to be absolutely all right tomorrow.”

She did not understand why David suddenly looked grave. But his voice was kind, when he told her: “Just make up the old mind, old girl. That’s psychology.”

Henry kissed Laura on the back of her neck and murmured in her ear. Then he and David went to the door. “Merry Christmas!” she called to them as they went downstairs to join Alice and John Carr. Henry lit his pipe; David lit a cigarette. While doing so he caught his sister’s eye and nodded. She pressed her lips together and stared at the fire. Then taking a deep breath, she began to speak casually.

“As you know, John, I’m a widow, actually the widow of a — suicide. Everyone’s keeping it all so nice on the surface, thinking to spare me, as they used to say. Sparing people is one fine way to make them remember everything more acutely.” She paused. “I can’t help it. I just feel like talking. Sam, my husband, killed himself and left a note for me. The autopsy showed that he had extensive cancer of the stomach and liver. So, he had apparently decided to kill himself and spare me, not to mention himself, months of misery and agony. We never did find the doctor who had told him. And I never noticed, myself, that he was sick. He always had such good color, though he had lost weight recently.” She put her hands over her face.

David noticed the expression of sympathy on John Carr’s face. John said: “I know it’s against all religious doctrine, but I can hardly blame your husband, Alice.”

“I told Alice,” David said, “as I told the police, that Sam must have known. In June of 1959 he and Alice visited me in Cleveland, and he mentioned that he had ‘some kind of indigestion’. Illness always made Sam impatient and mad, as if his body had let him down. But he’d never had any serious illness in his life. He asked me for something he called ‘stomach medicine’. I suggested a full G.I. series, but he refused; he looked insulted. ‘Just heartburn,’ he insisted. So I gave him a simple antiacid, in capsules, to take after meals and at bedtime. He could always have them refilled without prescription. Later he wrote me that the capsules had ‘helped him’. I never gave the matter another thought. However, he must have been bothered between June and December, and he must have gone to some doctor, probably in another city, under an assumed name. Sam was a bright boy. I think, myself, that he may have suspected, later.”

“Too bad,” John commented. “If he’d taken your advice that June, he might have been saved?”

“Perhaps. A bare chance. At any rate, his life would have been prolonged, and he wouldn’t have had as much pain.”

“Where did he get the poison?” John asked.

“I think I know,” David answered. “Though I never told the police, for the simple reason that it didn’t occur to me until much later. Months later. He got the poison from me.”

Three faces turned to him at once, alert but silent. Then Henry blurted out: “What do you mean? You gave him poison?”

“No. He took it. Hank, try to remember. Alice and Sam visited me in Cleveland, at that time, and so did you and Laura. You wanted to see my offices. Remember? It was a hot summer day. I showed you all around. And I mentioned that I’d recently attended a convention of heart specialists. One of them was a Hungarian refugee, who announced that he had done some work on tachycardia with a synthetic of the curare family. I told you about it. He gave us all a sample of his stuff, one capsule each. A minute quantity of the powder, mixed with water, and injected, slowed down the heart, our boy told us. Now, any of the curare family is lethal; the original curare was and is used by jungle hunters on their spears. I know it’s used in some way for polio victims. I haven’t followed that part up though. I showed all of you the capsule, and tossed it back in a drawer in its little box. I never did get around to trying it out, myself; I have too much respect for any form of curare. Conservative guy, me.”

They were all listening. David lit another cigarette thoughtfully, and nodded. “I mentioned that the drug was deadly. Sam must have pricked up his ears. Did he know then that he had cancer? It’s very possible. He must have taken the little box when my back was turned, and no one else saw him, either. We were all over the examination room, and, as usual, I was sounding off on my specialty.

“So, Sam had taken the capsule. He must have seen that I didn’t think too much of it, and that I’d probably never notice it was gone, and even if I did, I’d only wonder when I’d thrown it away. He — took that gamble. Even if I discovered it within a few days, or weeks, what would it matter? I’d never even think that he, or anyone else in that room with me that day, would take it. What for, anyway?

“The police wouldn’t even tell me exactly what poison Sam had taken. They only said it was ‘virulent’.” David gestured with his hands.

“But you don’t really know it was that capsule?” John asked eagerly.

“I know now,” David said quietly.

“How?” Henry exclaimed.

David was silent a moment. “I examined Sam before the police came. There were some — aspects — of his appearance that puzzled me. I’d have sworn he had had a heart attack. If it hadn’t been for that damned note he had left — the police had his handwriting compared with other samples. It was his own handwriting, all right — I’d have staked my reputation that he had had a heart attack. He had had, too,” David added grimly. “His heart had been permanently stopped, by my capsule for tachycardia. His heart had been paralyzed. I don’t know how long he lived after taking it. He told me once, he would sometimes wake up in the night and take one of my antiacid capsules, white like the curare one.”

John interrupted. “He couldn’t have taken yours by accident?”

“Be sensible! Why should he have stolen it in the first place? He took it for a reason. Well, I doubt he lived very long after taking it. Oh, you wanted to know how I knew he had taken my capsule and what the poison was. One day last fall I suddenly remembered the curare. I don’t know why. So, I looked for it. It was gone, of course. Then I went to Chicago and visited the coroner’s office. I insisted on knowing what had killed Sam. After a lot of bullying, they finally told me. Then they were curious, too. Why had I wanted to know? That was ticklish. But I told them that I had thought, before I had seen the note, that Sam had died of a heart attack, and I mentioned that as my sister was still brooding over her husband’s suicide I’d like to be able to tell her that he hadn’t killed himself at all, but had died of an attack. They mentioned the note. I sheepishly agreed. End of episode.”

“And they never traced the poison to you?”

“No. How could they? They did wonder, though, where and how he had gotten it. The coroner said, however, that if a man wants to kill himself, he’ll always find a way. True. So does a murderer.”

“You never told them you suspected Sam had taken it?” Henry asked after an uneasy silence. “From you?”

“Certainly not. At the very least, they’d think I’d been damned careless, leaving the stuff around, which I was, of course, and not locking it up. They never traced the poison to me. For which I’ve been devoutly grateful.”

He stood up. “Let’s have another drink.” He glanced furtively at his sister, whose face was pale even by the firelight.

John reached over to take Alice’s hand. “All that must have been pretty terrible for you.”

She spoke with an effort. “In a way, I’m not sorry it happened like that. Sam was spared many months of suffering. It was a shock, yes. But a quick one.” She attempted a smile.

“Sam didn’t tell me, I suppose,” David went on, “because he was afraid I’d tell Alice. Yet Sam was one of those amiable, loquacious guys who couldn’t keep a secret. If someone told him one, he’d be dying to pass it on, or look so mysterious that you’d get suspicious and try to find out what he was up to. You’d usually find out, too; then Sam would look relieved. Also, as I’ve said, he hated the very slightest physical indisposition. If he even had a headache he’d insist on talking about it to the most casual acquaintance. He used to write me anxious letters about little creaks and groans in his carcass, and then I’d have to write back that the human machine was just as susceptible to grunts and twinges as mechanical ones. I remember one letter, ten pages of it, in which he gave a brilliant description of a passing touch of gout in one of his toes. I tell you, it should have been incorporated in materia medica! I told him to take aspirin, and if that didn’t help, to go to his local doctor. But Sam was terrified of doctors. He had a blood test, once, and passed out.”

David, frowning, lit another cigarette. “Now cancer, when it’s beginning to assert itself, isn’t as uncertain and vague as passing gout pains. That’s what I can’t understand. Why didn’t Sam begin to write me frightened letters about his symptoms, describing each one minutely? He wouldn’t have suspected, in the very beginning. He did complain of what he called ‘heartburn’ and I did give him some antiacid, which Alice tells me he took religiously. Had he had any other symptoms — ” David shook his head.

“I just don’t know. Sam may have been a hypochondriac, but unlike most hypochondriacs, he hadn’t the slightest knowledge of anatomy. Most hypochondriacs can diagnose their condition, and have surreptitiously studied medical books so well that they can give doctors a very precise picture. Sometimes erroneous, but sometimes right on the mark. But Sam didn’t even have the slightest knowledge of the simple process of digestion. His idea of anatomy was grotesque: it was all a deep mystery to him.” David paused. “I don’t think Sam ever ‘suspected’ that he had cancer. He couldn’t have. So, when the first definite symptoms appeared, he’d have written me volumes.”

David stood up and made another drink for himself. No one spoke. Alice’s eyes were turned to the fire. John Carr frowned. Henry looked extremely interested.

“But you told the police yourself, Dave, that Sam had apparently committed suicide — after all, there was that note — when he discovered he had inoperable cancer.”

“So I did,” David agreed. “That’s what I thought myself. Then. I don’t think so, now, remembering Sam’s character and his letters to me.”

“Then why did he kill himself?”

“It must have been something else. Something we don’t know.”

“Oh, God, what?” Alice murmured, pushing a strand of hair from her forehead.

David sat down. “Alice, the three of us have known Sam all our lives. Did he seem bothered to you before he — killed — himself?”

Alice shook her head. “No. I’d have known if he’d been upset. He was an extrovert, a happy, boyish extrovert. Always cheerful and optimistic. He couldn’t act to save his life. You remember the night he died? He wasn’t hysterically buoyant. He was just his natural, friendly self.”

David glanced at John Carr, and as if cued, John asked: “There wasn’t anything wrong in your married life, was there, Alice?”

Alice started, and turned her face from the fire. She answered, in a low voice, “Well, we’d known Sam all our lives. When we were children, Sam and I would talk about getting married, when we grew up. I suppose — well — we just drifted into it.” She swallowed painfully.

Henry was staring at her. She forced herself to look back at him steadily.

“But your husband did care about you, Alice?” John Carr asked, his voice warm.

She sighed. “Yes, of course. But I’m not demonstrative. I took our marriage as a matter of course. Maybe Sam missed something. I don’t know. But I was fond of him.” There were tears in her eyes.

“No children,” John remarked. “Did Sam miss them?”

“I don’t know. Frankly, we seldom talked about children. I have a feeling Sam was relieved that we didn’t have any. He was so like a little boy, himself. Perhaps he didn’t want to be displaced.” She laughed softly. “He had so many friends. I didn’t know, myself, that he had so many. And he was always so eager to help people. He remembered what it was like to be poor. Hundreds attended his funeral, and went out to the cemetery, although it was a horrible day. Quite often, when I go to his grave, I find new flowers there. Everybody loved Sam. Everybody,” she added in a whisper.

“And your marriage was happy, Alice?”

She hesitated, then looked at Henry. “I think it was, for Sam. I’m not so sure, now, about myself. Let us say I was — contented.”

“He never suspected?”

“No. Sam loved everybody and he took it for granted that everybody loved him.”

Henry turned to David, his frown deepening. “Just a little while ago you said that Sam must have known, and consulted a doctor. Now, you disagree.”

“I’m not so sure of anything right now,” David replied blandly. He yawned. “We’ve been hounding poor Laura about being morbid, and yet we’ve been having a morbid conversation ourselves. How about going to bed? It’s well into Christmas Day, now.”

“Let’s have one last drink,” Henry suggested.

“I thought you were an early-to-bedder,” Alice commented.

“So I am. When we’re alone. But this is a holiday. I’m not sleepy. Anyone else?”

He threw a light piece of wood on the blazing fire. They sat quietly, watching it. David was worried. Something’s wrong! he thought. I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s wrong!

Alice glanced uneasily about the large, pleasant room. “Laura often used to say she ‘felt’ Aunt Clara was around, especially on important occasions. I used to laugh at her, and her superstitions. But all at once I feel, myself, that Aunt Clara’s here! Isn’t that stupid? I feel that if I turn my head quickly enough, I’ll actually see her, standing near that tree or peering through the windows. I never knew what she was looking for; there was nothing to see but the private road and the trees. But she looked, anyway. It’s funny. I feel her prowling, in her old, fat, clumsy way. Do you believe in ghosts?” Her question was for John.

“How can I believe or disbelieve in them? Because nothing is absolutely proved doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There’s Dr. Rhine, you know, at Duke University, with his experiments on extrasensory perception, and his heaps of evidence on apparitions and occult happenings, beyond the laws of natural evidence. The belief in ghosts is too deeply embedded in human history and legend, civilized as well as savage, to dismiss it as fantasy.”

“Then,” Alice said gravely, “Aunt Clara’s in the house. I almost heard the rustling of her dress just then! I wonder what she wants?”

Laura was dreaming. It was a frightening dream, and she could hardly breathe. She was in the apartment in Chicago, where Alice and Sam Bulowe had lived. Again, though it seemed like the first experience, she had awakened in the twin bed next to Alice’s, and she was conscious of extreme thirst. The room was dark. She could hear the distant traffic of the restless city. She lay and listened, and her thirst grew. But she was a heavy sleeper and it took her a long time before she stirred — reluctantly.

She got out of bed, fumbling, staring into the darkness, unable to see anything at all. She tried to remember where the bathroom was. She walked slowly, holding out her arms before her. Once she bumped into a dressing table. But she could not recall its exact location. Was it next to or beyond the bathroom door? She scraped her shin against another object, and bit her lip to keep from exclaiming aloud. Then her hand was on a doorknob. Relieved, she stood there a moment. What had she heard before she had awakened, or had she been more than half awake then? Quiet voices? A faint laugh? Yes! Now, she thought in her dream, why hadn’t I remembered that before? People talking. The boys talking. At this hour of the morning. Talking in the living room. But the living room was far down the hall. They must have been talking outside this room.

She found it harder and harder to breathe in the fetid city air. She could hear herself panting heavily in the darkness of the bedroom. A weight like a stone was on her chest. She was dreadfully thirsty and very, very sleepy. She shook herself. If she had heard voices she was not hearing them now. She turned the doorknob and found herself in the dimly lighted hall.

The hall appeared strange and distorted. The walls leaned and came to a high point at the ceiling, gathered together like arches. And the light was odd; it had a faint glow, eerie and frightening. The doors along the hall bent inward towards her, flapping silently like leaves. The door tilted steeply. She stepped into the hall, trembling, struggling for breath, and she could hardly keep her footing on the sloping floor. She tried to cry out, but she could make no sound. She wanted Henry, who would explain to her why the walls leaned together and came to a pointed arch — far over her head, and why the floor was slippery and steep and almost impossible to walk on. And why she felt she was smothering.

Henry was somewhere behind one of those doors sleeping. But which one? This one? Her hand reached for the doorknob. It was red and glittering, but it was cold to her touch. Where was Henry? She turned the knob and saw that the draperies in the room had not been drawn; the distant light from a street lamp filtered into the room. She saw the bed. It stood on a pitching floor, and here too the walls were pulled up high together to a four-cornered point. Henry was there, sleeping. She could see his form on the bed. She tried to run to him; he would warm her in his arms. I’ve never been this cold before, she thought, plaintively. Henry? Henry? Her foot struck sharply against something, which rolled on the rug, and then with a loud clatter, on the wooden floor beyond the rug. Then, as she reached down, fumbling, she saw that the street lamp was illuminating the head of the man on the bed. The hair was red, bright red. Sam’s thick, light red hair. The man in the bed was not Henry.

She was deeply embarrassed. The thing in her hand was a glass, and she held to it tightly, unconsciously. She began to back away from the bed towards the leaning door, her heart beating loudly in her ears. She had just reached the door when she became aware of a solid dark shadow in a corner of the room. (Strange, she thought in her dream, I didn’t remember that before!) The shadow did not move. The hall light penetrated very faintly. (Had there been a hall light before?) She stared at the shadow as she slowly backed away.

“Laura! Laura! Wake up! Wake up!” The voice was Aunt Clara’s voice, screaming loudly. But Aunt Clara had never been in this apartment, had never been in Chicago.

“Yes, Aunt Clara,” Laura answered obediently. “I’m trying to wake up.” Aunt Clara was shaking her. But where was Aunt Clara? Laura still stared in confused terror at the silent shadow in the far corner of the room.

Then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the semidark, she saw a face in that shadow. I had forgotten! I hadn’t remembered! I was sleepy — I hadn’t remembered! But I remember now!

The greatest terror she had ever known enveloped her. She couldn’t swallow. She was afraid for her life; she knew she was going to die.

“Laura! Laura!” Aunt Clara shouted. “Wake up! Wake up!” Her hands gripped Laura’s shoulders. “Wake up, lovey! Wake up!”

“Yes, yes,” Laura answered. “Oh, dear God! Dear God!”

She had reached the threshold of the room now. “Dear God,” Laura prayed in her dream. “There must be some reason — why am I so afraid?”

She awoke, suddenly, covered with perspiration. The night light was still on. But even while her blinking eyes saw that she was safe in her own bed in her own house, the room began to whirl. The whirling was filled with streaks and sparks of colored light, and the whirlpool in the center of the room had a dark and impenetrable center, like a vortex of death. With every fierce revolution it came closer to the bed. She couldn’t breathe. Her arms and legs were numb and cold, her breast paralyzed.

I am dying, she thought. I must get help! But her body could not move; her lungs labored vainly. Soundless scream after soundless scream tore through her throat. “Laura!” Aunt Clara cried. And then Aunt Clara was at the foot of the bed. Aunt Clara with a stern face, gesturing wildly.

The edge of the whirling vortex had reached the bed. In that horrible moment of terror, Laura was able to lift her right hand. Still keeping her eyes on Aunt Clara, her hand closed numbly about the slender bed lamp. She heard Aunt Clara’s words: “Yes, lovey, yes, throw it. Throw it!” But she couldn’t. Her hand felt heavy and lifeless. She made a last supreme effort and toppled the lamp from the table. From far off, faintly, she heard the crash as it fell. Then the edge of the vortex filled the room with darkness.

“Good heavens, it’s half-past three,” Alice said.

“Merry Christmas.” John toasted her with a last drink.

Their talk had left morbid subjects and had become general and pleasant. No one felt sleepy or tired. Henry played the genial host, adding another piece of wood to the fire. “I only wish that Laura were here,” he said. “Poor girl. This has been rugged for her.”

“It’s my opinion, Henry,” David said, “that Laura suffers from allergies. She may have an occasional cold, but I bet that most of them are of allergic origin. Do you have any antihistamine in the house?”

“No, I never thought of that,” Henry said, interested. His kind, strong face kept turning from one to the other of his guests. “I’m never sick, myself. When Laura says she has a cold, then I take it for granted it’s a cold.”

“I’ll write you a prescription for some. Let’s see how she reacts to them. I’ll bet anything that after a couple of doses she’ll suddenly feel all right.”

“Thanks,” Henry said. It was peaceful in the large room. The tree ornaments shimmered in the firelight. “How about the traditional?” he suggested. “I’ll put the poker in the fire and get it red-hot, then we’ll have mugs of spiced wine.” He stood up, eager to prolong their comfortable mood.

“None for me,” David yawned, thinking back to Alice’s comments about Aunt Clara. He had seen the old woman less than half a dozen times in his life. Big, ponderous, fat, sullen, always in black like a widow though she had never been married. Hadn’t she always worn a white lace cap on her mounds of gray braids? Funny he hadn’t remembered that until now. He could almost see her again, alert, her shrewd gray eyes always bright.

“I don’t mind,” Alice said. “Aunt Clara used to do that on Christmas Eve. You never saw her, Hank. She was what they call a ‘character’. Full of will power. Honestly! I can hear her roaming around! Don’t laugh, but I can. Just now I could — almost — see her in that arch leading to the hall, beckoning to me. The way she used to do. ‘Alice!’ — I can hear the way she used to say my name. She never spoke except rebukingly, sternly, and warningly. But sometimes she would speak to Laura like a sentimental mother. I suppose, now, it was because Laura was so frail.”

“Nonsense,” David told her. “Laura is as frail as an iron bar. There’s stamina in that girl though none of you seems to know it. I remember, though.”

“Laura? Stamina?” Henry laughed. “Why, she can’t stand anything.”

“You’re wrong,” David said, and they all stared at his suddenly grim face, a little startled at the determination in his voice. “Laura can take anything. She, like dear old Aunt Clara, has ‘character’. It’s just that she was so browbeaten and frightened as a child that everyone treated her as if she were made of whipped cream. But that girl has character. Yes, indeed. And she’ll need it,” he added.

“Why do you say that?” Henry asked, thrusting the poker deep into the heart of the fire.

David shrugged. “I have a feeling — ”

Somewhere, upstairs, something crashed. A faint, tinkling crash, barely heard through the thick walls.

“What was that?” Alice was the first to speak. “It sounded as if something had fallen.”

They listened. There was no other sound.

“Did you hear it?” Alice turned to her brother.

“Yes, I did.” He had gotten to his feet. “It sounded like smashing glass.”

“I heard it, too,” John said, standing.

“I didn’t,” Henry said, puzzled. “It could be an icicle falling from the roof. It thumps when it hits the ground or the side of the house. I’m used to that noise, so I don’t hear it.”

“It was in the house, not outside,” John told him. His expression conveyed a message to David.

“Then maybe Mrs. Daley or Edith dropped something,” Henry suggested. “Their rooms are far down at the end of the upper hall.”

“I know this house,” Alice said sharply. “I can place sounds. That didn’t come from the servants’ section. It sounded as if it came from Laura’s room!”

“Perhaps she was just moving around.” Henry stood up, looking in bewilderment at David and John. The two men seemed to be communicating silently. “Alice, watch the poker, will you?” Henry ordered. “I’ll go up and see. I hope Laura’s awake, so she can share the wine with us.”

He went quickly towards the hall, and heard footsteps behind him. He turned to see that the others were at his heels. David said easily, “I thought that we’d go with you.”

“Fine, but there’s no need.”

“I’m her temporary doctor, remember? We’ll all pay her a visit.”

“All right,” Henry said. “But let’s keep it quiet, eh? Mrs. Daley and Edith are asleep. After all, it’s almost four a.m.”

They went up the stairs swiftly but silently. “There’s no light under the door,” Henry said. “I bet Laura’s fast asleep.” He switched on the hall light; the little chandelier glowed. Tapping softly on the bedroom door, he called: “Laura?” There was no answer. “The noise didn’t come from here,” he told the others. “There isn’t a sound. She’s asleep.”

Then David said: “Open that door.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I said, open that door. Or, do you want me to open it, Hank?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Henry exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you?” He looked helplessly at Alice and John; then, shrugging, he turned the knob and the door opened silently. It was dark inside. The bathroom was also dark. The only sound was the groaning of the wind. “Laura?” Henry whispered.

“She’s asleep. Why disturb her?” he asked, as he began to close the door.

David fumbled for a switch near the door, found it. Instantly the room came alive with soft lamplight near a reading chair, and on a distant wall where there were old light brackets.

Laura was lying across the bed. Her bare arms trailed to the floor; her head almost touching it. She didn’t stir. Her profile turned towards them was oddly still, her mouth half open. Suddenly Alice screamed uncontrollably. Hysterically she pointed to the shattered lamp on the floor. David ran to the bed, and lifted Laura back on her tumbled pillows, feeling for her pulse. John Carr stood quietly and silently by the door, Henry next to him. Then suddenly Henry staggered to the bed, groaning as he watched David examining his wife. Laura’s eyes, faintly glazed, stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Her blonde hair was stained dankly with perspiration. Hers was the majestic withdrawal of one close to death.

“My bag!” David shouted.

Alice had hurried from the room. John Carr did not move.

“Oh, God!” Henry moaned. “Look at this!”

He held his trembling hand out to David. In it was a small, cream-colored sheet of paper. David straightened up from the bed, his face distorted. “Read, read,” Henry demanded. “Oh, Laura, Laura, why did you do it?”

David took the paper. Laura had written in her artistic hand: “ — Henry. I’ve never known what to do about you, dear. I’ve tried, all these years. You never did understand. I never could please you. You won’t even give me a chance to explain. You never listened. Will you listen, now? Love, Laura.”

“Laura, Laura,” Henry whispered, his face twisted in agony. “Why, Laura? Why? Don’t go away, don’t go away.”

“Where did you get this?” David asked him, his voice harsh.

“Where did you get it?” he repeated.

Henry pointed stupidly at the bedside table. He was trembling violently, as he reached for one of the posts of the bed. His knees bent under him as he knelt beside the bed and wept.

Alice returned with David’s bag, and gave her brother a mute and anguished look. “We should have known,” she whispered. But David took the bag from her, then, seizing Henry by the back of his coat, he tried to lift him to his feet. When Henry, his eyes streaming, sagged again to his knees, David clenched his fist and hit him savagely in the stomach. Weakly, Henry bent over and retched.

“Get out!” David yelled. “Get out, or I’ll kill you!”

Henry stood dumbly by the bed, gasping and holding his stomach. Then he felt a hard object against his side, and he shrank away.

“Let’s go,” John Carr told him softly. Henry swung his head to the other man. “I think,” John Carr said quietly, “that we’ll go downstairs.”

Henry’s eyes focused on the gun John Carr was holding. “I think,” John went on, “that I might kill you. But not just yet. Let’s go. Downstairs.”

Henry, his eyes reflecting shock, suddenly remembered the gun. “You,” he muttered. “You tried to kill me. You tried — ”

“If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d have killed you,” John told him. “Now, downstairs.”

It was then that Mrs. Daley and Edith, in bathrobes and with their hair in curlers, rushed from their rooms at the end of the hall. Mrs. Daley saw John Carr and Henry, and the gun. She stopped halfway down the hall, opened her mouth, and shrieked. Edith also saw the gun and cried out. Henry swung to them hopefully.

“Get the police!” he cried. “Run, quickly! Call the police!”

Mrs. Daley’s hands flew to her mouth in the ancient gesture of fear. Edith seemed unable to comprehend the panorama before her.

“The police!” Henry cried.

Mrs. Daley and Edith continued to stare.

“My friends,” John Carr said to them gently, “I think he is asking you to call the police.”

“The police,” Mrs. Daley whispered.

“Mr. Frazier!” Edith whimpered.

“Damn you!” Henry shouted. “Get the police!”

“But Mr. Frazier!” Mrs. Daley cried, her eyes fascinated by the gun. “We can’t — The snow — ”

“Idiots, idiots,” Henry groaned. “Get something on you, and go for the police!”

“But the gun,” Edith whined. “I never seen a gun.” She glanced over her shoulder at the open door of Laura’s room. “It ain’t a real gun, is it?”

“The gun’s real,” John said. “Now, if one of you wants to go for the police, do so.”

“Telephone’s out,” Mrs. Daley told them. “You can’t do nothing without a telephone.”

Prodded by the gun, Henry went slowly down the stairs in front of John Carr.

Mrs. Daley, still standing fixed and frightened on the landing, became aware of Edith’s sobbing. She turned to her niece and slapped her face. “Wake Evelyn,” she ordered. “Hurry! Wake Evelyn!”

Chapter 10

It seemed incredible to Henry Frazier that the living room could still be warm and festive, and that the fire still burned brightly, and that in the corner their Christmas tree still sparkled. “Sit down.” John Carr’s voice was firm. “We have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Laura,” Henry said, wringing his hands. “Laura. She’s — ”

“Dead? No doubt,” John said. “I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?” Henry cried.

“I said sit down. You’ve asked questions, and I’ll answer them.”

“Laura!”

“May she rest in peace.”

Henry moved a step or two closer. But the gun pointed towards him never wavered. “I don’t have the slightest objection to killing you,” John told him. “Sit down. This is the last time I’m going to tell you, Frazier.”

“What do you want?” Henry asked in a faint voice. “You tried to kill me. Did someone try to kill Laura?”

“I didn’t ‘try’ to kill you. I never intended to kill you when I fired on you. And someone indeed tried to kill Laura. You weren’t fooled by that note, were you? Or, were you?”

Henry sank slowly onto a chair, his face drawn. He glanced towards the hall. Was there a furtive movement in the rear of the house, a soft opening of a distant door? Would there actually be help? Would one of the women go for the police?

John Carr fished for a cigarette and lighted it as he contemplated the man across from him. “Let’s have a talk. First, though, let me introduce myself. I’m John Beame.”

Henry regarded him in stunned silence.

“That’s right. I’m Laura’s brother. Actually her half brother. We had the same father, if you want to dignify him by calling him a father. That’s why you both recognized me, or thought you did. I look like the old man. Laura dimly remembered him. And, in some ways, I seem to resemble Laura. Same coloring and features, except for the eyes. You both remembered me, or recognized me, for entirely different reasons.

“Laura’s brother!”

John shrugged. “A pretty poor specimen. I never thought to look her up. But then my mother hated him, hated poor Lucille, and, of course, hated Laura. The stories! Well, it doesn’t matter. Later I decided that if I came to see her she’d think I was after something. My father was a washout; after he died, my mother told me that dear little Laura was some sort of a vampire, and that the family would never get a cent out of old Clara. We did, though. She gave my mother fifty thousand dollars outright, for my sister and me, and then eight hundred dollars a month until she died. Not bad, would you say?”

Henry stared. John Beame smiled.

“Isn’t it funny that Laura and I never met before a couple of days ago? I’m ashamed of myself. You won’t believe it, but I’m ashamed. If I’d known how much she needed me, I’d have been here before this. But there were the prejudices I’d been taught by dear Mama. Then there’s my sister, a couple of years older than I. Just like dear Mama. Shakespeare speaks of ‘lean and hungry men’, but he never seemed to notice that a lot of women are lean and hungry, too, and much more vulturish than many men. Mama and my sister, Edna, were that kind.”

The clock in the hall struck half-past four.

“Laura — need you?” Henry muttered incoherently.

“She certainly did need me. Ever since she met you, Frazier. Ever since she married you.”

Henry pressed the back of his hand against his tired eyes. Laura? Was that Laura muttering and crying? Or Alice?

“Let me tell you something about myself,” John said, still very much at ease. “Aunt Clara’s money sent me to Harvard. I was a teaching fellow there for a time. Then I joined the FBI and was stationed in Cleveland. Dave Gates and I met there, at a party. He recognized my name immediately, of course. We found that we were distant relatives. Oh, by the way, I’m still with the Bureau. They gave me the ‘cover’ I’ve been using with you. Pretty convincing, wasn’t it?”

Henry had straightened in his chair and sat rigid and unmoving.

“Dave and I became good friends. Very good friends,” John went on. “And then he told me all about you and Laura. He told me about Sam Bulowe and his alleged suicide. I decided I ought to move in on you. For Laura’s sake. I received special consent from Washington. By the way, did you think it was all an accident that old Bancroft managed to get you to take care of my law business? We set it up with him, and all the background. I can tell you, he was pretty disturbed and shocked. Yes, indeed. It took us months to build up a new ‘cover’ for me, for we know how suspicious lawyers are. It had to look authentic.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Henry asked.

“Oh, come off it! You killed Sam Bulowe. You tried to kill Laura last summer. Neatly planned. You tried to kill her when Dave was around, so you’d have a reliable witness. He took away a sample of the rope you had carefully unwound and torn here and there; he’s a suspicious soul, like you. Then, he discovered something which convinced him you’d killed Alice’s husband. If he hadn’t come on that, he wouldn’t have suspected anything phony about Laura’s ‘accident’. He’d have accepted her death, if she had died as you had intended, as just one of those things. But he had been alerted by what he had found among Sam Bulowe’s papers. Then — last summer. You wanted a witness that Laura’s accident and death were all natural. Everything lovely between you, as the poor girl, herself, had believed. What else could it be but an accident? You got Dave to swing Laura. Very smart. You’d fixed the rope that morning. Very clever. You were setting out the picnic things, so what was more natural than that you should suggest that Dave swing Laura? She loved to swing, and Dave remembered that, later. So Dave complied, and she went sailing off into the trees and smashed up. Not bad! I congratulate you on your plotting, at any rate.”

Henry continued to sit absolutely still, as though in a trance.

“But Dave came to me with samples of that rope and I sent them to headquarters for examination. You did it all very cleverly, in case there was an investigation locally, which there wasn’t. But we came to an interesting conclusion. The accident wasn’t an accident. It was intended murder.”

John watched the smoke from his cigarette curl in the air. He heard a car with chains lumbering through the snow of the driveway to the private road. Henry seemed not to have heard. John continued:

“Now let me tell you what Dave found among Sam Bulowe’s papers. We checked your phone calls subsequently, of course. You had called Sam several times from your office in New York. You never wrote him a letter. I don’t know exactly what you told him but we can work that out — later. I suspect, from the evidence, that we can reconstruct it all. You manufactured a friend, let’s say, a friend in some deep and complicated trouble whom you wanted to help. We’ll get all the details later. Possibly even from you.

“You didn’t know that Sam would make some notes in his office so he would remember. You never called him at home, of course, so Alice knew nothing about it, and you had no doubt asked Sam to keep the matter quiet. Sam, however, was a ‘doodler’. He was also a man who kept records of calls, being an orderly sort. So, he had all your calls written down in his handwriting. We have the dates, which coincide exactly with your telephone calls. Did you say something?”

But Henry merely shifted his position in the chair. His face was haggard.

“You had not only manufactured a friend, but a whole rigmarole of his imaginary troubles. You had asked Sam to help this friend. Sam would write you; unfortunately, he didn’t make carbons, as you probably knew he wouldn’t, seeing it was all a private matter. But you had to be artistic. You had to add your own little touches.

“Finally, after a couple of years, Sam wrote you exactly what you’d been waiting for. In his own handwriting, poor devil! ‘I can’t see any way out of the situation but this.’ Your fraudulent friend’s ‘situation’. Sam was sorry. ‘But I can’t think of any alternative.’ A fine, good man, that Sam Bulowe, always wanting to help people. ‘I know you will understand.’ You did, didn’t you? He had written exactly what you needed. I wonder how many other letters he had written you that didn’t come up to the standard you wanted? ‘Affectionately, Sam.’ Yes, affectionately. You’ll have a lot of time between now and a date with the hangman to think of that.”

“You’re wrong. You’re crazy,” Henry whispered.

John turned to the door. “Come on in, Dave.”

David entered, followed by his sister. Neither of them looked at Henry. David announced sadly, “Laura is dead. I did what I could. But she’s dead. Poisoned with barbiturates. The five capsules in the medicine cabinet are missing.”

Henry started to get to his feet, but David pushed him back in the chair. “You animal,” he said quietly. “You killed Laura, just as you killed Sam.”

Henry glared up at him. Then he saw Alice’s face, and read the utter hatred and loathing on it. He shrank back in his chair.

“Alice, go and sit with Laura. She won’t know you’re there,” David said in a broken voice, “but I don’t want you to be down here now.”

“I just wanted one last look at him,” Alice told them.

“The man who killed Sam, because he wanted me. Yes, he wanted me, long before I married Sam. But I had no money. Aunt Clara had left me almost nothing. And Hank was ambitious. So he married Laura for her money. Then he thought up his great plot to get my husband out of the way — dear, good Sam! And then, once Sam was out of the way, he turned to Laura. He moved very carefully. First Sam, then Laura. I, a widow, and he, a widower, with all Laura’s money. What could be better than all that? What he didn’t know was that I’d detested him for years.” She burst into tears. “Sam! And now Laura.” Her voice broke. “I want to be there when they execute you!”

David caught her uplifted arm by the wrist. “Alice,” he said very quietly. “Please go back and sit with Laura.”

“I want to see him suffer!”

“Go back to Laura,” David told her. “The law will take care of him.”

Alice covered her face with her hands, then turned and left the room. They watched her go. David sat down. “How much have you told him, John?”

“Almost everything. Except what you found among Sam’s papers. Read them aloud, Dave. I don’t think he’s in a mood to read, himself.”

“It’s all a lie,” Henry said dully.

“The normal reaction,” David commented. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a long sheet of yellow paper and studied it for a moment. “Sam’s handwriting. Dated October 15, 1959. ‘Hank called. Friend in a mess; undoubted embezzlement at Sloan & Company. Wish he’d told me at first; know Sloan. Too late now. Write Hank. Can’t do anything, myself. Hank should let him go? Mention that? Four years. Can’t go to Sloan after that time. Should make clean breast. Maybe Hank help with money? Law lenient if money returned. Couldn’t talk with Sloan about it. Need their business. Wary friends of embezzlers.’ ”

David folded the paper and calmly put it away. “That’s only one of the notes Sam made of your anxious phone conversations about your ‘friend’. And that letter, which you used as a fraudulent suicide note, was probably only one of many Sam wrote you. But until he wrote exactly what you needed, until you had maneuvered him into that letter, you waited, and called him frequently. Right, Hank?”

Henry’s response was automatic. “Lies, lies. I never took a cent of her money. You have no motive, for Sam’s death, and Laura’s. I can prove I refused her money — ”

“Yes, you were pretty smart about that, weren’t you?” Dave said. “Proving neatly that you hadn’t married her for her money.” He swore softly. “Never mind. I’m not one to rush into things. John called on Sloan, himself, saying there were some rumors that an employee or two was embezzling funds. Naturally, they didn’t believe that. The whole business department is automated. No one could steal a stamp. So then I knew it was all a fake. Poor Sam didn’t investigate, because you probably told him it was top-secret with your ‘friend’.”

Henry closed his eyes, his voice was faint. “Lies, all lies.” David’s laugh was bitter. “After I found Sam’s notes, and put two and two together, I came up here to watch and see what I could find out. You never knew it, Hank, my friend, but I’ve loved and wanted Laura ever since she was a little girl. And I’d known all about you since you and I were kids together. Sam was the only one you ever fooled. Under all that sunny charm of yours, that openness, and warmth, there was always a greedy little swine, even when you were a kid. Surely someone like Laura could see that, I thought, and she’d kick you off the premises.

“I should have remembered,” David went on, “how slick and slippery you always were, particularly around women, especially girls like Laura. I should have known that you would be able to fool Laura easily, without even straining your mental resources. You were what she thought she needed, because you persuaded her you were. She didn’t need what she thought I was. The kind of life we’d all led as kids had made me hard as nails, and pretty damn cynical. It had done that to you, too. But you were smarter than I was. You saw you could get more out of life a lot more easily by being sweetness and light. You could work less and accomplish more, your way. But I’m the hard guy. I’m the guy who yells at patients and antagonizes superiors and only stays where he is because he’s needed and respected, in spite of his personality, and he saves lives. Throw me a cigarette, will you, John?”

John Carr shifted the gun to his left hand and threw David a cigarette. David lit it and studied the burning match for a moment before he blew it out. “I always loved that guy, Sam Bulowe. I never heard him say or do an ugly thing, not even when we were kids, and hungry. Lovable guy, Sam. Only, you hated him, because of Alice, didn’t you, Hank? While I was doing my investigating before coming up here last summer, I woke up, suddenly. You’d discovered Laura years ago at my party for Alice, and you sensed at once that the poor girl was dying for love. But not for Dave Gates, that stupid roughneck. I thought it was obvious to Laura that I wanted her; I thought she had realized it through osmosis or something, but she hadn’t. That was after old Aunt Clara died. Then, there was all that money, and I had a lot of idiot pride; I wanted to be established before I asked Laura to marry me. But, you got there first. I hated both of you then,” David said, reflectively. “It was all plain to me last August. Sam’s notes. I wanted to watch you, to see what I could find that would incriminate you. Then came Laura’s ‘accident’. And, by the way, it wasn’t that poor little nurse who gave Laura the overdose of sedatives, was it? You were quite willing for the nurse to suffer, though, for her ‘carelessness’, and be tried for manslaughter or something if Laura had died from your poison. What was a nurse’s future compared with all the money you’d inherit from Laura? A whole life’s work shot, an innocent life — they meant nothing to you. Yes, it was plain to me last summer. I was catching on to your deadly game.”

David sighed. “I was absolutely sure when Alice wrote me, later, that you’d been taking her out in New York, while Laura was stuck up here with a broken leg. I wrote her to play up to you. She did. Then I showed her Sam’s notes. She couldn’t believe it. Not at first. She couldn’t even believe the truth about the accident. It took me weeks to convince her, and to work out a plan with her. She hated Laura then. She resented her, and she was so bitter that nothing mattered. I had to repeat over and over that you, Hank, had killed Sam. Until, finally, it sank in. After we worked out our plan, we accepted Laura’s invitation to come up here.

“I didn’t tell Alice about John. It never pays to complicate a woman’s mind too much. Besides, telling her would only have made her nervous. She couldn’t have gone through that little scene with you, out in the snow, Hank, if she’d been aware of who John was. She wanted final convincing, herself, and you sure convinced her.” The hand that held his cigarette was trembling.

“Get hold of yourself, Dave,” John said gently.

David took a deep breath. “All right. I’m okay now.” He looked at Henry. It was hard to tell if he were listening.

“We came up here, the three of us, for two reasons, Hank. One, to prove you killed Sam. The second, to stop you from killing Laura. To frighten you, John shot at you, not from the attic window but from the hall window. I made Mrs. Daley promise that if you asked you were to be told that she had used that window herself, to shake a rug. But all this didn’t warn you, and obviously didn’t stop you. You were getting impatient, now. You had gotten away with murder once, and here you had three witnesses who could ‘prove’ you couldn’t have killed your wife. And then you poisoned Laura, with arsenic or whatever it was. We’ll know, soon. And you got away with it again. How you must have felt when I saved Laura the other night! If only we hadn’t heard her scream. You hadn’t counted on us hearing that. You thought she’d die quickly, without making a sound. You poisoned her glass of water at the table, in the flurry of all of us seating ourselves.

“We told you we were leaving on the twenty-sixth. So you had to hurry. Alice had you whirling with her seduction act. You couldn’t wait any longer. You built up a case against Laura by practically making her admit she was an alcoholic, a potential suicide, a depressed and confused person. You forgot one thing that I didn’t remember until it was too late: Laura had never liked brandy. It was her pet hate. But you tried to make us think that you were really astonished because she refused brandy after dinner! So, you did slip up, didn’t you?”

Henry put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands. His voice was muffled: “Go on, go on. It doesn’t matter. You know it’s a pack of lies. When the police come — ”

“Yes, when the police come,” David agreed. “I have my sample. And, we have a dead girl upstairs. We also have her suicide note. That was part of the letter she’d written to Alice, wasn’t it, Hank? The letter you didn’t mail. I’ve studied that suicide note. The top of it, which seems to begin with ‘Henry’ was cut away. ‘Henry’ was the end of a sentence, not the beginning. Microscopic examination will show it all up better. That was slip number two.

“You must have been opening Laura’s letters for weeks, maybe months, trying to find one whose words would fit what you had in mind. When they didn’t fit, you resealed and mailed them. The letter you didn’t mail to Alice was a plea from the poor girl asking Alice to understand. It fit beautifully. When Laura wrote those words she didn’t know she was writing a suicide note. She never knew anything at all about you, really, did she, Hank? Three murders! Sam, your unborn child, and now Laura!”

Henry dropped his hands and stared at David. His face was suddenly the face of a broken and aged man. “That’s a lie. I never knew she was pregnant.”

“Would it have mattered to you if she had told you?”

“I mailed Laura’s letters to Alice, all of them,” Henry told them. “If there is a murderer here, it isn’t I. Alice denied she received that letter. But she did. And one of you got your hands on it. One of you killed Laura, the same one who killed Sam.”

“No good. No good at all. You see,” David said, “Laura was conscious for a minute or two before she died. It often happens that way — consciousness returning completely just before death. Laura lived long enough to tell me the truth. The fact that she had seen you in Sam’s room the night he was supposed to have committed suicide.”

“Another lie!” Henry cried, clutching the arms of his chair. “I was sleeping in the same room with you!”

The fire had died down to embers. Lamplight played softly on the tense faces in the room, as they watched Henry Frazier.

“And you didn’t get up?” David prodded. “Of course you did! What did you do. Go into Sam’s room and talk to him, confidentially, about your ‘friend’? That’s probably it. You knew Sam was taking capsules I’d given him for heartburn. The bottle was still beside his bed when we found him. It was you who stole my poisonous capsule last June, right out from under our noses. You considerately fed Sam that capsule, knowing he thought it was an antiacid tablet. I suppose you’ll never tell us how long you’ve been plotting these murders.

“But Laura saw you in that room. You knew that. Did you plan to get rid of her immediately? Or, did you so confuse her that she forgot? She did forget, by the way. That sometimes happens after shock, and she was terribly upset over Sam. The brief glimpse she had gotten of your face was driven from her mind by subsequent events. Tonight, before she died, she remembered it. She told Alice and me. And that cook of yours, Mrs. Daley. She had come into the room to see if she could help, and she heard what Laura said. Perhaps that, in the end, was what really killed poor Laura, the knowledge that her husband was a murderer.

“It’s possible, too, that she unconsciously drove the memory of seeing your face out of her mind. How could you explain it to her, if she asked you? Shock, and refusal to believe she had really seen something, combined to make her forget. But death can stir up memories.”

“Memories! Probabilities! You can’t prove anything!” Henry shouted. “I’m a lawyer, and I know. You haven’t evidence that I — killed Sam, or Laura.” He clenched his fists. “You can’t prove this pack of insane lies. Carr — Beame, if he is Beame — admitted he shot at me. And on some flimsy pretext of ‘warning’ me! Do you think I’m a fool?” he demanded, shaking his fist at David. “You all came up here for one thing, to get rid of me or Laura! To get Laura’s money, one way or another! One of you killed her; two of you are accessories before the fact.”

“I really should kill you,” John said thoughtfully. “There’s a chance, after all, unless you confess, that you’ll get away with it. Friendly, kind, responsible Henry Frazier, lawyer, clubman, loving husband. You’ve played it well, I admit. Dozens of people, including your own help, can testify you’ve been the best of husbands. That girl, Edith, would be only too willing to testify that Mrs. Frazier wasn’t in her right mind. She’s hinted at it often enough. But, with all the evidence we have against you, flimsy though you think it is, if you should start struggling with me for this gun — well, we’ll have saved the state some money.”

He lifted the gun, and there was the sharp click of the safety catch. Henry flung himself against the back of his chair. “Don’t! Don’t kill me!” he screamed. “Don’t add another murder!”

They watched him as he stared in terror at the gun. Moments passed. “I don’t know,” David said finally. “Let me think about it for a minute, John.” His gaze rested on Henry. “Relax, you swine. You aren’t going to die immediately. But you are giving me ideas.

“There was another thing Laura told me, before she died. She had gone upstairs because of her cold, to take some aspirin. You, the ever-loving husband, came in briefly, before you rushed out to get wood. Always solicitous, that’s you, Hank. You dissolved three tablets of aspirin in some water for her. But you also dropped in the barbiturates. Perhaps you’d already removed them from the capsules. Only you can tell us that. So you gave Laura her second dose of poison, partly disguised under the strong taste of aspirin. She downed it quickly, she said. There was a bitter taste, she said. But she thought it was only because of the third aspirin tablet. Then she rinsed out her mouth. That’s what she told me, Hank. Just before she died. In the presence of Alice and Mrs. Daley.” He leaned forward and pointed his finger like a gun at the white-faced man. “That’s the only possible way she could have taken the barbiturates. She told me she hadn’t taken anything else, when we took the chocolate up to her. And I believe her. No one will believe it if you say that she swallowed the capsules later, intending suicide. Suicides aren’t anxious about colds; they don’t take aspirins; they don’t sip hot chocolate and chat gaily, as Laura did. Especially not someone like Laura. She’s absolutely unable to cheat, or lie, or pretend. She’s as open as a book. She wasn’t depressed. She was a happy young woman who had gone to bed with a slight cold, waiting for a Christmas Day she’d never see, waiting to see a husband again who had tried to kill her once, had tried to kill her a second time, and then succeeded the third time.”

David sighed wearily, and his voice was becoming husky. “She knew, before she died, what you had done. She knew all about it. That’s an awful thought to die with — that someone you loved had murdered you, had hated you enough to murder you. Good, kind, trusting little Laura, who never harmed a soul in her life.”

Henry remained silent. It was as if he had not heard a word. He was still helplessly watching the gun in John Carr’s hand.

“And to think,” David continued, “that after giving Laura the dose that was to kill her, you could come into this room carrying wood, and grinning! And could sit and chat for hours, while Laura died in agony, her lungs and chest slowly becoming paralyzed. Did you listen for a last cry of help from the wife who loved and trusted you?”

“Liar, liar,” Henry moaned, fascinated by the gun and afraid to look away from it. “You wouldn’t dare kill me, after the other murders. I’m a lawyer. I know defense tactics. I’ll get Alice on the stand, and she’ll admit she played up to me. And she’ll be forced to testify that I never encouraged her for a moment, that I told her I loved Laura. I’ve nothing to fear from the law. But you have.”

Alice came into the room, lines of exhaustion etched on her face. She nodded to her brother, and smiled faintly.

David said softly, “We’ll have another witness, Hank. We’ll have Laura. She isn’t dead.”

Henry took his eyes from the gun, stood up, and looked towards the hall. “Laura? Laura?”

“We walked her up and down,” David said grimly. “Mrs. Daley made coffee; we are pouring buckets of it into her. I gave her a strong stimulant, and Mrs. Daley’s to keep her walking. And then she’ll be all right. She’ll be safe from you. She knows now it was I, not you, who held her the other night, after the first poisoning. I told her. She knows now who really cares for her. And she knows all about you. I think, for a while, she wanted to die. She doesn’t want to see you, Hank. I don’t think she’ll ever want to lay eyes on you again.”

David doubted, even in his medical practice, if he had ever seen a man as pale as Henry Frazier. His features were waxlike, his eyes dead.

“She’ll make a statement,” David went on, “and she’ll identify that alleged suicide note as a letter she wrote to Alice. She remembers seeing you in Sam’s room. She remembers a lot of things, including your preparation of the aspirin. You won’t talk your way out of these things, Hank. You’ll never talk your way out of anything again.”

Then Henry spoke, slowly, deliberately. “Damn her. Damn her and everything she is. Her childishness, her stupidity. After I married her I thought I could make something out of the cursed situation, after all. There was all that money. But it was no use. Her naïveté, her trusting idiocy, her belief in everything; it used to make me ill. Marriage to a fool is hell. It’s worse than being married to a whore. I might have given it all up, if she’d only grown up. But she never did. How could I live with all that? My God, you don’t know.”

“You never really knew her,” David told him. “You never knew how strong she really is. If she hadn’t been, she’d have died tonight. She hates you, Hank, but she isn’t giving up. She only wants you to be punished for killing Sam. That to her is more than the attempts on her own life. Well. Thanks for the confession, anyway. Before the three of us.”

Henry’s haunted eyes turned involuntarily from the gun. He looked at Alice, his expression unfathomable, and for a moment she returned his look before turning away.

There was the sound of a car outside, the slamming of doors, and men’s voices. “Good for old Evelyn,” David said. “He finally got to the police. Well, Hank. This is it. After they take our statements, and yours, we’ll see you in the county jail. Merry Christmas!”

Three days later Laura was able to come downstairs again. Mrs. Daley had tactfully taken down the tree, and a fire burned brightly on the hearth. Laura’s face was drawn and pale as she sat by the fire. David sat beside her, holding her hand. She forced herself to smile at him.

“As soon as I can,” she said in a tired voice, “I’m going to leave here. I never want to see this house again, even though it was Aunt Clara’s. It was Aunt Clara who really saved me, you know,” she told them seriously. “She woke me up. She made me drop the lamp.”

“I know,” Alice said gently. “I felt her here, myself.” Laura nodded.

“They say the dead can’t come back, but when someone they love is in danger, perhaps God lets them come to help. Or perhaps it is the thought of them, thinking of us, and seeing us from wherever they are. And praying for us. And we ‘feel’ their anxiety. I don’t know, and you won’t believe it, but I have a sort of happiness now, knowing that Aunt Clara came to help me. I know, too, that she doesn’t want me to stay here, now.”

“I don’t think she does,” Alice agreed. “There’s too much for you to remember, Laura. You’d never be happy here again.”

Laura looked at David, and her eyes filled with tears. Her fingers held his hand tightly.

“I’ll go back to New York when I feel stronger. You won’t leave me, will you?” She said it to all of them, but her eyes rested on David.

“We won’t leave without you,” David assured her, admiring her calm acceptance of all that had happened.

“And I won’t have to — He’s confessed about Sam. I won’t — ”

“Testify? I don’t think so,” John said. She looked at him, her dark eyes somber.

“John, I can’t tell you how it makes me feel to know that all at once I have a brother who cared enough about me, though he’d never seen me, to try and save my life.”

“I don’t like murderers, Laura,” John told her. “Frankly, little sister, I didn’t care about you at first. It was a job to be done. Then I got to know you. All about you. My other sister — well, you wouldn’t like her. Neither do I. But now I have a real sister. I’m a lonely guy, myself.”

He looked at Alice. Her blue eyes returned the look warmly and color touched her cheeks. She turned away hastily. “Laura, would you consider selling David and me this house? We haven’t a vast sum of money between us, but we could manage it, somehow.”

Laura appeared to think. There was the faint hint of a smile about her mouth. Then she shook her head. “No, Alice, I won’t sell you the house. But I’ll do this: When you marry — someday, soon perhaps — I’ll give you the house as a wedding present. Aunt Clara would like that. She knows now that she was wrong about you.”

“I couldn’t — ” Alice began.

“You can,” David corrected her. “You always loved this Antarctica. Let’s stop all this infernal pride we’ve been throwing about. We can’t afford it, Alice. I’m now so pride-less that I’m going to look around for a very rich woman who’ll marry me. Very, very rich. I’ve always wanted to live in the manner to which I was never accustomed.”

For a brief moment Laura’s expression was serious. Then she smiled as she leaned against David’s arm. “I hope,” she said, “that you won’t wait too long, David. And then we can come up here to visit sometimes. But not too often, and not for a long time yet.”

She looked about the room where she had been so happy, where she had believed herself cherished and protected, and all at once it was unfamiliar to her. It was as though she had never lived here at all, not even as a child. It was another little girl who had sat near this fire, and some other Aunt Clara. She had nothing to do with the house any longer. She was already a stranger here, preparing to leave after a sad visit, and glad to go.

Good-by, she said to herself. Good-by, Laura Frazier.

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