The Indigo Necklace Read online

  At St. Peter we turned right. It was our habit to go past the Cathedral, and then walk on along Chartres Street to Dumaine. We had to double back half a block to the house from Chartres on Dumaine when we went this way, but we liked to walk past Jackson Square.

  We were within a few steps of Chartres when we saw a girl appear from the direction of the Cathedral and meet a tall man in uniform waiting under a lamp. They kissed, then sprang apart.

  In a flash Patrick whirled me around and walked me back toward Royal.

  The clock was striking midnight and we were back on Royal Street before I spoke.

  “I don’t think they would recognize us in that haze, Pat.”

  “I hope not.”

  “They themselves were under a lamp.”

  “Yep.”

  “You knew who they were, I guess?”

  “Um-m.”

  “I told you so, Pat.”

  “I guess you did, Jean.”

  “It’s too bad, darling.”

  “Rather!”

  “He’s got no right. He’s married and his wife is ill and he’s already twenty-eight. Carols young. She’s the kind that falls terribly in love and gets hurt and never gets entirely over it. I hate this happening to Carol, Pat.”

  “Maybe they can’t help it.”

  That roused my Scottish ancestry. “There’s some things people have to help. Roger’s the one to blame. He’s got the wife—a sick wife....Look, darling, what do you really think is wrong with Mrs. Clary?”

  “What happened to our fine evening?” Patrick said. “What became of my beautiful liberty we started out to enjoy?”

  “Do you know what ails her, or don’t you?”

  “No,” he said, very seriously. “I don’t. I suspect it’s very serious or Roger would have told me.”

  “These Southern men...”

  My husband drowned my statement with such sudden laughter that a timid pedestrian, about to meet us in the haze, prudently beat it to the other side of the street.

  In the hand-wrought ironwork which embellished the double balconies at the front of the Clary house the monogram RC, for the Roger Clary who built this house, mingled to make an exclusive pattern with dainty iron marguerites, for his wife, the first Marguerite.

  The balconies were among the finest in the Quarter. I always admired the ironwork every time I went out or in, and now, as Patrick fished for his keys, I stepped into the street to take my usual gander.

  At a window on the level with the sidewalk, to the right of the main entrance, a curtain was drawn slightly back and then allowed to flow softly into place.

  I hopped on the sidewalk beside Patrick.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “No-o. Or maybe yes. I suppose that was Uncle George, peeping out of their sitting-room window. I was only looking up at the ironwork, but goodness only knows what he will think. I wish he wouldn’t pry so.”

  “Time on his hands, maybe.”

  “Darling!” I said, indignantly. “I refuse to be noble about people who snoop. Uncle George snoops. You can call it insomnia or you can blame it on his heart, but I say Uncle George snoops.”

  We stepped into a widish, paved passage. Patrick closed the door.

  At once we seemed out of the world. This passage had once been the carriageway which led on through the flagged courtyard and the garden to the stables which were now a storage house beyond the outside kitchen. When Aunt Rita and Aunt Dollie were young girls they tripped down one or the other of the two flights of five marble steps which led down to this carriageway from the two parts of the house. They stepped into their carriage. Once outside the house they never set foot unchaperoned in any public place.

  These stairs were just inside the point where this passage widened to make the courtyard. Over our heads the library made a sort of bridge which joined the house together on the second floor. Only now the two wings no longer communicated because the door from the library had been plastered up to give Toby’s bedroom privacy from the house. His duplex was entirely independent of the house and had its own entrance from the street.

  We paused near the steps which led to our front hall to have a look at the back of the house and the garden in the queer haze.

  There was nothing to see. The haze seemed thicker here than outside. Even the courtyard so near us was lost in the purplish blur. The silence was intense. Not an insect was chirping tonight, not a leaf stirred.

  All at once it seemed to me that the queer night had drawn in and lay crouching over the old Clary house.

  II

  THE LEFT flight of marble steps led into a hall which served our apartment and the Roger Clarys’.

  Patrick turned on the lights. The hall was lofty and white-walled with a spiral staircase which clung airily as a vine to the walls as it rose from just outside the Roger Clarys’ entrance to our own on the second floor. The balusters and risers were painted white. The handrail and treads were mahogany.

  There was a gold-framed mirror in the lower hall and, at the back, where the hall came to a dead end, stood a large carved mahogany chest. The mirror was in the wrong place for convenience. It should have been directly opposite the Clarys’ entrance so that you would see yourself as you stepped out their door, or off the lowest step. But the slightly uneven plaster at this spot marked the place where a door had formerly joined the hall with Toby Wick’s apartment.

  As Patrick unlocked the Yale lock which presumably made our front door secure I recalled that somebody else had a key to this door. Someone who had chosen to slip through our apartment three times to my knowledge. The French windows had bolts, but now that they stood open all the time on account of the heat there was no way really to lock up the apartment. Latches held the closed shutters, but they could be unfastened, even from outside through the slats.

  Already the place was home. It smelled like home. Some of our own odds and ends would spring into view when we turned on the lights.

  A tiny tinkle which anticipated the buzzing of the muffled telephone sounded in the bedroom. Patrick can see like a cat in the dark. He struck out to answer the phone, expecting me to turn on a lamp. There were no wall-switches in our apartment.

  One pair of the shutters was slightly open. First I went over to close them. I could see the other wing plainly. I stepped out on the gallery. The reason for this clarity was that the haze did not rise as high as this floor. The moon was about to appear somewhere or other and I could see the irregular old rooftops in the next street.

  As I went back into the living room Patrick snapped on the bathroom light and its glow was sufficient. We met halfway. He put his arms around me.

  “My liberty didn’t last long, Jeanie.”

  “Darling?”

  “Can’t be helped, remember.”

  “I know. But you’ve worked so hard, and all...”

  He kissed me. “Anyhow, I’ve got all this to come back to.”

  “You mean me, or the house, darling?”

  I felt his grin crook up one cheek. “Lovely house. All the conveniences, even a doctor.”

  “The doctor isn’t in the house. Remember? The doctor’s someplace else instead.”

  Patrick kissed me again, hard. And then he was gone.

  I felt sunk. My imagination had him crossing the foggy yellow Mississippi and enmeshed in some snaky bayou in pursuit of some spy or other before he was even downstairs and out of the house.

  I got a cigarette, turned off the bathroom light, and went out to smoke on the gallery. As I sat down near the vine-draped iron railing the Cathedral clock chimed a quarter past twelve.

  A little wind started moving the vine leaves. The haze below presently began to thin. The view at this level was clear in any case. I could see distinctly the length of our porch as far as the balustrade guarding the top of the spiral stairs. The honeysuckle and wisteria, kept pruned for the sake of light and air, looked black against the ironwork.

  A night bird flew over so close overh
ead you could hear the rustle of its wings.

  I finished my cigarette, looked for a tray, and ground it out. I felt tired now, and resigned, and a little sleepy.

  Someone walked the full length of the Roger Clarys’ gallery down below.

  I woke up and listened. It was walking that seemed to have no start or finish. No door sounded, if one was opened and closed. No hinge squeaked, no stairs gave out any sound, if the walker continued on into the courtyard or garden. The lower floors in this house were five steps off the ground. There were short five-step flights from the lower galleries into the garden at the back and into the courtyard at the front.

  Who walked in that light whispering fashion?

  The nurse. She would wear rubber soles, she was small, and when attending an invalid she would by habit walk lightly.

  Uncle George Sears walked lightly. He was so fat you thought of a balloon, but he skimmed along, on his small polished handmade English shoes.

  Toby Wick walked like a velvet-pawed cat. His talk was as smooth as his walk. “I don’t specialize in botany, Sugar,” he’d said the other day when he came to the herb garden to get some mint when I happened to be there, and I asked about one special herb. I had replied, stiffly, “I think it’s basil.” He had batted his green, oblique eyes. “Then basil it is, Honey-eyes. If you say it’s basil, it’s basil to me, Dream Girl.”

  My goodness! What a thing to remember in the night!

  The Cathedral clock struck twelve-thirty.

  There was no more walking. It had no doubt been the nurse. I forgot about it and stood up to go inside.

  I stopped dead still before taking a step. Someone was coming up the gallery stairs. Those were our stairs, exclusive to this upper gallery.

  In a moment I would know the secret of those nocturnal journeys through our apartment. I felt angry. I braced myself to give out a piece of my mind.

  A woman in white appeared. When she saw me, she paused, then advanced timidly. She was slender and about my height. By day her hair would be blonde. She came close and I could see that she was dressed in a white nightgown. She was barefoot. I knew at once that she was Mrs. Roger Clary and, with a sudden rush of compassion, I knew what was wrong.

  Mrs. Clary gazed at me with wide eyes. I couldn’t make out their exact color.

  I began to consider what I should do. I’m not very good at screaming, and I hated to disturb the quiet house. The nurse must be not far away. I edged over to the railing to speak to her when she discovered the absence of her patient. It was certainly the nurse I had heard on the lower gallery and, no doubt, in a moment, she would discover that Mrs. Clary was missing and run out to look for her. Then I would quietly call her.

  “How do you do?” Mrs. Clary said. She had a gentle, disarming, sane sort of voice.

  “How do you do?” I said. I moved closer to the railing, listening hard for the nurse.

  “I’m sorry I can’t make a proper call,” Mrs. Clary said. “You see, I haven’t my hat. I must go now.” She bobbed her head prettily. “Goodbye.”

  I said goodbye. She went gliding off the way she had come. Her feet, touching the bare boards, sounded softly, like silk.

  When she got to the twisting stairs she went down their middle instead of keeping near the railing. I always kept within reach of the balusters because of the uneven width of the segment-shaped treads.

  I hurried into the apartment. I fastened the latches of the shutters carefully and went to the bathroom to undress. I knew now who it was that had walked through our apartment. That nurse couldn’t be very vigilant. Mrs. Clary must have got hold of a key. All keys were rather silly here because the courtyard was really an extension of the whole house. Anybody who wished could get into any room in the place, except Toby Wick’s duplex. We could, of course, rig up tighter fasteners for the shutters.

  I would have to tell Patrick.

  What a tragedy! I didn’t feel so hard toward Roger now. Poor Carol! The whole family, even Uncle George, and even that would-be wolf of a Toby Wick, if he knew, had been pretty gallant in not telling us what ailed Roger’s wife.

  Still, we should have been told. Patrick would look grim and would jump on Roger Clary. Maybe, I thought, brushing my teeth, I wouldn’t tell him, after all. Yes, yes, I would...No, I wouldn’t—would.

  I brushed my hair and twisted it for coolness on top of my head, put on white-silk pajamas and, after checking the bedroom shutters, got into bed. The telephone gave its anticipatory clink.

  Patrick spoke first. “Hello?” he asked.

  “Hello, darling.”

  “Nothing wrong, is there, Jeanie?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “You sound different from usual, and you answered before the phone rang.”

  “Darling, I’m clairvoyant.”

  “Heaven help us! Listen, I’ll be home....”

  “When?”

  “Pronto. Pretty pronto, soon as a long-distance call comes in. Thought I’d let you know.”

  “That’s nice. Be careful, darling. Be careful in the fog.”

  “Fog? There’s no fog now. There’s a wind.”

  “Be careful in the wind, then. And hurry.”

  Patrick laughed softly. We said goodbye. I cradled the receiver. I felt very happy. I looked at the luminous dial of the clock. It was ten minutes to one. If that long-distance call came through at once Patrick could be home a little after one o’clock. I would stay awake, of course.

  He was right about the wind, which had picked up a lot while I was getting ready for bed. I could hear the leaves of a clump of banana trees brushing drily together in the garden.

  Some of the slats were a little loose on the shutters. They rustled from the wind. It was a different sort of rustle from fingers fiddling with a latch. Oh, that! I certainly would wait until tomorrow to tell Patrick about Mrs. Clary. Sadness, like a cloud, crossed my happiness.

  To forget Mrs. Clary I kept my mind on Patrick, walking with long steps through the old, balconied streets of the French Quarter in a gay wind.

  All at once, something seemed wrong.

  I sat up in bed and glanced at the clock. It was three minutes before two. More than an hour had passed since Patrick had phoned. I had been asleep. I had been wakened, apparently by one of the shutters on the garden side. The shutter had come open and was swinging in the wind.

  I got up quickly and crossed the room to close it.

  As I put my hand on the shutter I heard a dragging noise down below and then a sort of thumping and a final thud.

  The thud sounded near the grass plot below this end of our gallery. I opened the shutter and tiptoed over to the railing.

  The moon was well up. It shone clearly on something white sprawled on a black square of turf. I thought it was Mrs. Clary.

  As I ran back to the bedroom to get a robe and slippers the Cathedral chimes began striking two o’clock.

  Mrs. Clary lay on her side two yards or so from the foot of the short flight of steps. I spoke to her softly. I bent over her. She did not move. Her neck was twisted so that her face was upright. Her eyes were wide open and staring.

  I had the presence of mind to reach for a wrist and feel for the pulse. Something sticky and black-looking covered her arm and coated my fingers. It had made a black splotch on the side of her white-satin nightgown.

  There was no pulse! I stooped over her and laid my hand on her chest. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

  I stood up and for seconds did nothing at all.

  Then I turned and ran back up the steps to look for the nurse. A French window stood open in the room below our bedroom. I hesitated before entering, but not wanting to make a noise and rouse the house by calling out, I stepped silently across the sill.

  The room was literally a pit of blackness. I could see nothing at all. It smelled stuffy and close.

  “Nurse?” I whispered.

  My whisper echoed in the black, stuffy room. No one answered.

  All at once I smelle
d another smell, something spicy and fresh.

  “Roger?” I whispered now. “Roger?” I pitched my whisper as high as I could.

  There was no answer. The spicy smell was strong and fresh.

  Suddenly, for no particular reason I could later account for, I felt afraid. I had to get out of that room. In a panic I tried to step backward, to go out the way I had come in.

  III

  I KEPT SMELLING iodoform.

  I opened my eyes. There was a lamp glowing on a table nearby and Roger Clary was kneeling beside me. He was in his uniform, but without the cap. “Hello,” I said. His lips crooked. “Hello,” he said. “What happened?

  “I think something fell on my head.” It was aching. I felt stuffy and tired.

  “The curtains fell down,” Roger said. His fingers were now on my wrist. “I suppose the pole got you. It looks as if it weighs a ton. Did something happen to fetch you downstairs?”

  I remembered Mrs. Clary. I tried to sit up.

  Roger grasped my shoulder and forced me down. “Stay lying down if you don’t want to get sick,” he said, pretty brusquely.

  “It’s your wife,” I said. “She’s—she’s out there in the garden.”

  Roger looked at me without speaking. After again telling me to keep lying down he jumped up and hurried out the door.

  He was very handsome. I thought so even with my head aching. Roger Clary looked like a portrait painted long ago in the middle of the last century. His face was dark and slender, his tilted black eyes rather brooding. His hair was smooth and very black. He didn’t smile a great deal, and when he did it was like a warming light on his dark face.

  The room I found myself lying in was something like our own bedroom. There was a towering bed with a lofty tester—the satin tufting on its underside rose-pink, however, instead of blue—a huge mahogany wardrobe, a marble-topped bureau, many tables and chairs. A straw matting covered the floor. Long stiff brocade drapes outlined the four tall French windows. The bed had not been slept in.