Voice Out of Darkness Read online

  He hadn’t seen her. Katy looked away again and thought amusedly, Mr. Pickering—and Francesca? Mr. Pickering was not only a lawyer but a legend; in a town where the natives referred to the first selectman as “old Frank” and the chief of police as “Matty Abbott’s boy,” he remained, respectfully, Mr. Pickering. He was immaculate, from polished gray-white hair to richly glowing shoe-tops. At somewhere between fifty-five and sixty he had the face of a serene and well-fed baby, unless you looked too closely at his eyes, cold and curious and shallowly orange-brown. He had been the Merediths’ lawyer.

  Out of the corner of her eye Katy saw Mr. Pickering draw out a pocket watch, glance at it, and replace it. A second later heels clicked in the doorway to the bar and Francesca, in ash-green gabardine and furs, was threading her way through the tables. She didn’t see Katy. Probably she didn’t, Katy thought, see anything very clearly. Her face was blind and concentrated, and so white that the bones seemed almost about to thrust through the delicate skin.

  Michael arrived as Katy was wondering if she would ever be able to look at any of them normally again. Without painting evasive shadows under Cassie Poole’s eyes, and an odd unseeing whiteness on Francesca’s face. Without finding too much intentness in Jeremy Taylor, and a sort of chilly threat in Ilse Petersen, and quick, sharp perception beneath Arnold Poole’s alcoholic blur, and surveillance from Pauline Trent’s dark eyes—Pauline Trent, who was Uncle John’s cousin and who lived in the house that was still stamped indelibly with Monica’s death.

  But they can’t all be writing me letters, Katy thought practically, and managed a dazzling smile for Michael and lifted her drink.

  Michael wanted to know everything that had happened since she had stepped off the train at Fenwick. Whom she had met, what had been said, what, if anything, had been the reaction among the people concerned to her coming back to Fenwick.

  Katy talked. Guardedly, because there was that feeling of being surrounded. At the end she said, “That’s the defeating part of it, Michael, except for the flowers and that letter Francesca was carrying, that looked like the ones I got, there’s been nothing at all that couldn’t be my imagination. You start—seeing things.”

  “The letter,” Michael said slowly. “Francesca Poole could have been mailing it, or she could have just received it. Or she could have been mailing it for someone else.”

  Katy nodded. “That’s just it. And I can’t believe that anyone who’s been so terribly careful up to now would flip it right under my nose like that.”

  “Might have been a mistake,” Michael said, unexpectedly savage. “Someone’ll slip up, you know, sooner or later. She couldn’t have known she’d meet you on the street like that.”

  They were silent. Michael ordered another drink. “The flowers, Katy. Think there’s any use going after Farrow?”

  Katy shook her head. “I’m sure he doesn’t know. After all, why shouldn’t it have been I who called him? But you said the post-office clerk—someone there might recognize the writing. I know Bill Allen, he’s been postmaster for years. We might ask him tomorrow.”

  “We will,” Michael said. He lifted his head and stopped frowning and smiled. “Do you know it’s three full days since I’ve seen you, Katy?”

  Katy smiled back. She said, “Heavens, three full days?” and Michael, not smiling any more, said abruptly, “Katy, I wasn’t going to ask you anything, remember? Because you’re in the middle of this thing and you’re frightened and confused and can’t really give the whole of your mind to anything else.” He stopped, his eyes quiet and exploring on hers.

  Katy, just as she had been in the apartment when Michael had given her the ring, was acutely conscious of shapes and colors and sounds around her, because she knew that this was the kind of moment that turned out later to be indelible. Deliberately, she shut out the spurting laughter and the passing waiters and the hum of voices and said, “You can ask me, Michael.”

  Michael didn’t say anything. Very gently, his face grave, he lifted her right hand and slid the ring off and replaced it on the third finger of her left hand. There was a tiny, throbbing silence. Katy was horrified to find her throat tight and aching. She was aware of Michael’s warm fingers on her hand and Michael’s voice, low, saying, “It’s very much the wrong time for this, I know. But Katy—look at me—I couldn’t wait. I can’t stand being away from you and not knowing.”

  Katy found her voice. She said simply, “I’m glad to know, too, darling,” and caught Michael’s hand in her own. All the things that they hadn’t said before came spilling out, then. Plans, dates, questions. Michael said, “When you come back to New York?” and Katy answered fiercely, “Yes. Whether I’ve found out about all this or not.” Who to ask? “I haven’t a soul,” Katy said, momentarily wistful. “A few friends, maybe, if I stretch a point.”

  “And now,” said Michael wryly over coffee, “we come to the subject of my renouncing your wealth.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Katy said. “Why do we talk about that, when there’s so much else? ”

  “Because other people talk about it, and it’s nice to have it straight,” Michael said. “However, you’re a most uncomplicated heiress. You’ve managed to keep it in the background so far and get along quite adequately on your own salary. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to get along on mine although it won’t”—he grinned—“keep us in nightingales’ tongues.”

  “Idiot,” said Katy. “I’m Yankee-bred, what more could you ask?”

  “We could,” said Michael, rising and putting an overlay of lightness on the deeper thing that had sprung up between them, “step outside for a moment.”

  They didn’t stay long on the icy, shadowed porch. The night was dizzy with silver—stars and sequined snow and shafted moonlight, woven through the winter black. Katy kissed Michael back, and felt for a fractional time safe and sure and utterly content. And knew, even before she stepped out of his arms, that things were not right.

  She was tired, of course, that was part of it—and you couldn’t, unfortunately, divide your emotions into two distinct and tidy halves: Michael and happiness on one side and, on the other, the ugly, idle game that someone was playing with her. Michael, looking down at her, said gently, “I’m a damned fool, Katy, rushing you like this. You’ve got enough on your mind as it is. Come on in and have something warm, you’re shivering.”

  Katy hesitated. There would be people and noise and probably introductions to come; she wanted, instead, silence and sleep. She said, “One drink, then. I’ll go and do something about my lipstick—shall I meet you in the bar?”

  The ladies’ room was up the stairs from the lobby and to the left. To the right were linen and mop closets and beyond those bedrooms, among them Miss Whiddy’s, halfway along the hall, and Katy’s near the end. Katy opened the door of the ladies’ room, and after a startled split-second began a soundless retreat. Not in time. Cassie Poole stopped crying and lifted wet lashes and said, “Oh, don’t bother, Katy, I’m all through anyway.”

  She drew a long shaking breath. Katy closed the door carefully behind her and sat down on one of the two faded chintz seats in front of the mirror. She pretended an absorbed search for her lipstick while Cassie began methodically to powder away the tears. She said lightly, re-capping her lipstick, “Anything I can do, Cassie?”

  Their eyes met in the mirror—clear hazel, blurred blue. Something searching and thoughtful came into Cassie’s gaze. She slid, almost perceptibly, back into her cool and charming shell. She let a tiny waiting silence go by before she said, deliberately, “No.” The flat negative came out like a careless slap. She added quickly, “It’s nothing anyway—hangover from the flu, maybe. Sulfa always makes me sorry for myself.” She gave a final flick of the powder puff, re-did her mouth, and stood up. “Why don’t you and—it’s Michael Blythe, isn’t it—join us for a drink? We’re in the bar.”

  Katy said they would, and when Cassie had gone looked absently at her own reflection and thought w
ryly, Drama and yet more drama. We’ll have a night-cap, now, and some screaming hysterics.

  They didn’t. She and Michael joined the party in the corner of the bar and she explained that they were going to be married shortly and there were the usual congratulations and lifted glasses. Francesca laughed and groaned and said, “Heavens. First my own daughter and now you, Katy—you make me feel like a hundred.” She wouldn’t, Katy thought with a flash of something like malice, dare say a thing like that unless she knew how preposterous it would seem to them all, how clearly and boldly her skin and eyes and odd lithe grace stated that she could never feel a day older than thirty-five.

  The atmosphere was normal, friendly, gay. Once Katy caught a glimpse of Arnold Poole, glass in hand, talking to a group of people in the doorway of the bar; she wondered if Francesca had seen him, and then thought, how silly, this has been going on for five years. But something had happened, earlier, to strip the charming play of expression from Francesca’s face and leave it white and shaken. Something else, then, because the situation had obviously ceased to be a social crisis. Mr. Pickering, making stately progress through a scotch and soda, nodded affably toward someone in the group with Arnold, and Arnold intercepted the nod and grinned back in careless recognition.

  A few minutes after that, Katy threw Michael an apologetic glance and rose. She was tired, she was going upstairs, she’d see them all again soon. Michael went with her into the dim and deserted lobby and kissed her gently. “Have a good sleep. And don’t worry, darling.”

  Katy said she would and she wouldn’t, and went on up the stairs. The clock in the lobby pointed to ten-thirty; it felt more like the hectic early hours of the morning. She went along the half-shadowed hall, turned the knob of her own door, thought annoyedly, Why won’t I remember to lock it? and switched on the overhead light—and stood still, staring.

  After a long moment she closed the door behind her. Without pausing to check the contents of the opened closet or to investigate the out-pulled bureau drawers, she crossed the room to the window and knelt beside her trunk. The lid was up, the contents tumbled. The letters, of course, were gone. She sat back on her heels and pushed hair away from her forehead and went on looking, mechanically, at scallops on the edge of a satin slip, a fold of yellow sweater, a stocking trailed casually out of the trunk.

  It was her own fault, her own blind, stupid fault for leaving her door unlocked. (But, if someone had been really intent on retrieving the letters, would the ancient locks at the Fenwick Inn have stood in the way?) No matter; they were gone, and almost certainly back in the hands of whoever had written them. Which was baffling enough in itself, without the further question of who.

  Katy’s first thought was to let Michael know. But the trip back to the bar, the pretext for privacy, the questions and explanations—no, not tonight, not over a dozen masked men with blackjacks.

  And on the heels of that, eerily, came a soft, tentative tap on the door.

  Katy’s stomach leaped and dropped. She sat motionless, drawing her breath with infinite care, watching the door. It wasn’t locked. A turn of the knob, the thrust of a hand, would find her there, trapped and terrified.

  The knob didn’t turn. Instead, muffled footsteps receded and died away altogether, and after a cautious interval Katy dared to get up and lock the door. With that fragile guard between her and future visitors, fatigue came rushing back and a heedless, overpowering desire for sleep. She took a casual glance at the bureau drawers, brushed her teeth, and went to bed and instantly to sleep.

  She didn’t stay asleep. Car doors slammed maddeningly in the Inn driveway, and voices hung on the frosty night air. The bar must be closing. Katy turned her back on the window and closed her mind and her ears determinedly and drifted off again.

  She woke a second time to a blur of excited voices—were they in the hall or out on the porch below?—and to the sound of car motors humming up the hill to the Inn. Now the voices and the door-slammings were different, urgent, middle-of-the-nightish. Fire? Of course not, or there’d be sirens.

  Useless this time to try to slide back into sleep. Katy threw aside the covers, switched on her lamp and put on a quilted robe and slippers. The hall, when she opened her door, was black; the night light at the end had gone out. So had the light in the wall sconce where you turned for the stairs.

  The disturbance was centered in the lobby. Someone said in a loud, awed voice, “—must have slipped,” and someone else said, “Poor old thing.” Someone had fallen, then, and must be badly hurt because all at once there was a respectful, waiting hush. Katy went halfway down the darkened stairs, blinded momentarily by the lights in the lobby, and stared.

  People were standing in thin little knots around the foot of the staircase, held motionless by the unwilling fascination of spectators at accidents. A dark-suited man, his back to Katy, rising and stepping aside said in a loud, incongruously cheerful tone, “Okay, Pete, you can take her away. Broken neck and a fractured skull that probably would have killed her anyway. You can see why.”

  Heads turned automatically to look up the long, steep, dark staircase. Katy went down it slowly, unconscious of startled glances and a fresh tide of murmurs. She was looking at Miss Whiddy’s whipped-cream curls, matted and horribly stained. A white-coated intern came forward and blotted out the dreadful head and there were only Miss Whiddy’s feet, decorous in pointed black calf with discreet bows touched with imitation tortoise-shell.

  Then the feet jostled onto a stretcher and people stepped back. The Inn door opened and closed behind the interns and their burden and the hum of voices grew louder.

  “Bulb must have blew,” said Mr. Lasky defensively, glancing up at the staircase. “But that’s not all. Her shoe had a loose heel, she told me so herself this morning.”

  Frank Abbott, Fenwick’s chief of police, looked up from his notebook and said sharply, “That so? About the shoes?”

  “Had ’em in her hand,” Mr. Lasky said, nodding violently. “I asked her, sort of joking, if she always carried a spare, and she said one of the heels was loose and she was going to take them down to Nick’s and have it tightened.”

  “But those aren’t the same shoes,” whispered Katy. Michael, who had come quietly up beside her, touched her arm warningly. She turned her head and looked at him, still bewildered with shock, and Michael’s eyes were warning, too. She turned away again. Frank Abbott shut his notebook with a regretful snap. “Guess that’s it,” he said. “Poor old soul.” He took a final glance over his shoulder. “Those are nasty stairs you’ve got there, Ed. I’d get a light on them right away, before there’s another accident.”

  Mr. Lasky, anguishedly aware of a spattering of guests, whirled on a small awe-stricken office boy. “ ’S the matter with you?” he demanded witheringly. “Get a new bulb up there right away, and don’t wait till it burns out, see that it’s replaced every week!”

  The spell snapped. Chief Abbott and Mr. Lasky moved toward the door; the little groups around the stairway stirred and broke. Katy was half-conscious of Jeremy Taylor and Cassie caught in the stream starting away from the staircase, of Mr. Pickering’s smooth, silvery head, of a cross voice saying, “… told you we should have gone to the Silvermine Tavern, but would you pay any attention?” Someone else said uneasily, “Well, I’m going to bed.”

  But those weren’t the shoes she was taking to have fixed, Katy thought. Because the others had been long and black and pointed too, as she vaguely supposed all Miss Whiddy’s shoes were, but they had had no bows, no modest touch of amber.

  The lobby was nearly empty. The scurrying office boy would be back at any moment. Moving almost without volition, Katy shook off the light pressure of Michael’s arm and turned and ran up the stairs. At the top, she fumbled for the wall sconce and twisted the loose bulb, cool now, and the light sprang on.

  Michael had come partway up to the landing. He looked from the wall light to the foot of the staircase, measuring the plunging, bone-breaking dist
ance. He said slowly, “Bulbs work loose.”

  “Particularly,” said Katy, “when they’re unscrewed.”

  She told him about the missing letters. She said, “I’ll care in the morning, I suppose, but right now it doesn’t seem to matter much,” and Michael put his hands on her shoulders and shook her a little and said, “All right, go to bed. But don’t you see, this is why I didn’t want you to say anything, down there. You’re involved in enough.”

  “Quite enough,” Katy said, and turned away. It was shocking that you could look down on violent, red-stained death one moment and think longingly of your bed the next. But she had to have sleep; the days of watching and listening and wondering, the countless little shocks, the frightful sight of Miss Whiddy’s matted hair and bobbing black-clad feet had built up into a crescendo of utter weariness. She put a hand up to her cheek and became aware all at once of her robe and slippers and sleep-tumbled hair. “Good-night, Michael.”

  She went slowly back to her own room and locked the door and got into bed. First the shoes, the wrong shoes, entered so clinchingly in Frank Abbott’s notebook. Then the bulb that hadn’t burned out. And, earlier, that soft, questioning tap at her door. Had Miss Whiddy stood there in the hall, with something to say to Katy, who hadn’t answered the knock?

  For some reason, that was the most dreadful thought of all.

  6

  Saturday. A storm-warning sky, so purple-gray that the snowy roofs and distant hills stood out against it like chalk stroked on colored paper. Lights in the lobby and the Inn dining room, even at eight o’clock in the morning, because of the threatening gloom.

  Katy drank tomato juice and coffee alone. Michael had said to sleep as late as she could, had said, pleadingly, “This time, Katy, lock your door.” But two aspirin and a locked door hadn’t helped when she’d waked to the icy dark-lilac dawn. Neither had dispassionate morning-after logic. Light bulbs did loosen, especially in old, unsteady wall sconces. And Miss Whiddy hadn’t been young and sure-footed; in any case it was fatally simple to catch your heel in a looseness of carpet, to put out a foot, confidently, for solidity that wasn’t there.