Danger in the Dark Read online

  But there was that mute and awful presence in the springhouse.

  And Dennis and Rowley were going to do something with it. She knew it; she could tell by the way they looked at each other.

  But she wouldn’t be drawn into it; not only that, she wouldn’t let them do it. After all, such a thing demanded secrecy, and she would tell the truth. She would tell her father and the aunts what really happened. And she would tell the police.

  They were men now, Rowley and Dennis. And she a woman. Those childhood days were long past. This old springhouse was just an outdated and outmoded heap of wood and concrete and glass. Its feeling of continuity, of the immutability of time, had no truth and value. It belonged to the time of a slim little girl with yellow pigtails and wide blue eyes. It belonged to two boys—one of them brown and hard and unafraid; the other one a little sallow and thin and, always, prudent.

  And those children were far away and distant. Lost. In their places were three adults with the same names but with thoughts and motives and secret lives of their own. Drawn together again in that place by murder—sharing that horrible dilemma, shocked and terrified by the thing Rowley had suggested. Hideously impressed by the doubtful solution it offered. But it was wrong: it was gruesomely askew.

  No, she wouldn’t be drawn into it. And she wouldn’t let them do it.

  “I’m going to cover him,” said Rowley abruptly. “I can’t stand looking at him and—and thinking about it. He’s—so damn big. Where’s your coat, Dennis?”

  He turned toward the open steamer chair where Daphne had sat, but Dennis said something quickly and forestalled him and himself took up the coat and fumbled with it for a moment and then placed it across Ben Brewer’s body. It was a relief. A fold of the coat covered the flashlight for an instant before Rowley stooped and pulled it out with a quick, nervous gesture so there was again a fan of garish, diffuse light spreading upon them, leaving the springhouse half in light and half in shadow.

  “So long as nobody sees this light,” said Dennis. “The windows must be visible through the trees, and there’s nothing but windows.”

  “Everybody’s gone to bed hours ago,” said Rowley. “Any way, it’s snowing so hard that no one can see—”

  “But you saw, Rowley; you saw the light. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I—that is—Don’t look at me like that, Dennis.”

  “Rowley, why did you come here? What were you doing?”

  It didn’t sound like Dennis. And all at once it was as if the door had blown silently open and a chill, strange draft were whispering about them. Rowley was ghastly pale in the half-light. He glanced from Dennis to Daphne nervously and said quickly:

  “I—I wasn’t sleeping. I happened to look down—my window’s on this side—and saw the light—”

  “You’re lying, Rowley. I know your tone when you lie. Besides there wasn’t time. You couldn’t have seen this light and dressed and come down through the house—”

  “I was already dressed. I tell you, I couldn’t sleep, and I hadn’t—”

  “Hadn’t tried very hard, had you?”

  “Don’t take that tone, Dennis. I didn’t kill him.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No. No, I tell you. Oh, good God, Dennis, if we start quarreling—”

  “Why did you come down here? You’d better explain, Rowley.”

  “I came because I saw the light. I—I was downstairs already. I happened to look out a window. Saw a—gleam of light through the trees and came up to see what it was.”

  Dennis’ brown hand reached for the flash and snapped out the light

  “You are still lying,” he said, his voice hard and cold in the black void that instantly surrounded them. “Did you see anybody anywhere?”

  “No. Nobody,” cried Rowley thinly. “Turn that thing on again, Dennis. It—it’s bad enough in here without—Turn it on, I say. Look, you can put it under something. Hide it a little. But we can’t stay here in the dark with—with—And we can’t move it—decide what to do—”

  He was moving, taking a cautious step or two along the concrete floor. It was pitch dark and terribly still. So still they could hear each other’s breathing and those cautious, sliding steps. He was trying to reach the flashlight in Dennis’ hand. Dennis said:

  “It’s all right. I’ll fix it so we can see. I’ll—fix it—”

  Curious how voices rebounded in the darkness, against those eight walls. It sounded as if Dennis were speaking from somewhere near the door, quite the opposite direction from which he stood. Rowley was moving—no, Dennis was moving.

  “Dennis,” said Rowley’s voice sharply out of the blackness, “what are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” This time there was no rebound of his voice, and almost instantly the light was turned on again, only now it was under something, so only a thin ray showed.

  “I put my hat over it,” said Dennis. He didn’t question Rowley further, but stood there looking thoughtfully downward.

  “I’m going to the house,” said Daphne. “I’m going to call the police.”

  It was as if she had not spoken.

  For Rowley and Dennis continued to stare at that long hump under the coat, both of them lost in thought. The thin light brightly illumined a patch of damp cement floor and a fold of Dennis’ coat which did not quite cover an outstretched hand, so the tips of the fingers showed—thick and powerful-looking even then, with broad, handsomely manicured nails. Again Daphne felt a sick wave of incredulity. And again she remembered that hand on her own for a hot, still moment at dinner—touching her fingers under the lace cloth, reminding her that in only a few hours she would be his wife. Herself only half hearing the things Ben said, because she was looking and trying not to look at Dennis beyond that expanse of lace and silver and Amelia’s best Coalport; and in spite of herself she had caught his eyes and had known somehow that he knew. Instantly and sharply she had pulled her hand away, and Ben had turned and given her a long, watchful look. Ben always saw everything; and he was always wary, always guarded. How, then, had he been murdered?

  “He’s so damn big,” said Rowley again out of the gloom above that small patch of light. He spoke with a touch of peevish resentment, as if blaming Ben.

  Dennis was a tall black shadow beside her. Except for the patch of light on the floor, the springhouse was in almost complete darkness; she could see the blacker shadows of the two men—the dim white patches of their shirt fronts and the paler ovals of their faces. It added to the nightmarish aspect of things, yet at the same time gave it a kind of truth and poignancy, as if it permitted the fact of murder to stand there, too, beside them in the shadow.

  She pulled her coat more tightly about her. Through her thin slippers she could feel the damp chill of the floor. It was so horribly cold and still—with the snow blowing against the door behind Rowley so that it trembled and sighed as if it wished to open itself. Or as if something outside in that snow-muffled blackness were trying to push itself against the door.

  “Yes, he’s big,” said Dennis. “He—Odd I never thought of how difficult it would be to—to get away with a body. I mean, it’s sort of imperishable, isn’t it? Of course, there’s the river.” He spoke in a low voice, tentatively.

  Rowley’s voice was hushed and tentative, too.

  “I thought of that, too. It’s frozen. But we could—break some ice. It would soon freeze over again.”

  “And be covered by the snow. It’s lucky it’s snowing. Otherwise there ‘d not be a chance. Our footprints would show. But with the river—”

  “Oh, stop, stop!” cried Daphne in a choked way. “You must not—”

  “The trouble with the river,” went on Dennis without looking at her, “is that sometime the body will come up again. Soon as it thaws. I think they could tell even then from the wound and state of—of it—what happened. It would only put off the inquiry. But the river, of course, would be the—” He stopped, as if to arrange words, and finished: “The
easiest way.”

  “Dennis, Rowley!” cried Daphne, flinging out her hands violently toward them into the twilight. “You are both mad.”

  Rowley was shaken, too; she could see the tremor of his cigarette as he held it to his lips. There was a tremor in his voice, too. He said, “Yes, it would be easiest. In fact, I—” He stopped, and Dennis said:

  “Yes, I know. I couldn’t, either.”

  Daphne cried in short, jerky whispers, “I can’t stand it. You are both mad to think of such a thing. You can’t seriously consider it. Don’t you realize that it’s impossible? That we’ve got to face this—tell everybody the truth about it? You can’t possibly do anything else. Please, Dennis.” Her hands were on his arm now, feeling the smooth texture of broadcloth, finding his hand. It clasped her own, but he said nothing. “Dennis, I can’t let you. It is too dreadful. Too—Why, it’s dangerous, too! Don’t you see how dangerous it is?”

  “Not as dangerous,” said Dennis in a stiff, remote voice—“not as dangerous as—as some other things, Daphne.”

  She was beginning to sob now—with terror and with shock; with a horrible nostalgia for things to be as they had been before she had opened that springhouse door and had plunged upon disaster.

  Rowley stirred impatiently.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Daph, you’ll have the whole house out here. All you have to do is keep still about what really happened. I mean—I mean about his being here. Dennis and I will see to the rest. We’ll plan it so no one ever knows. I—Look here, Daph, we’ve got to do this. You don’t realize how things are with the company. You don’t understand what Ben’s murder or suicide would mean just now. Dennis does. You don’t know, and you are going to wreck us all for a whim—”

  “Whim!” cried Daphne in furious, choked repudiation.

  “Yes, whim. If it would help Ben, or bring him back to life, or anything, it would be different. But he’s dead. There’s not one thing we can do for him. If he were here he would be the first to—” He checked himself, suddenly aware of the ugly aptness of his words, and Dennis took Daphne’s cold hands.

  “He’s right, Daphne, dear,” he said. “I’m going to take you to the house. It’ll take just a moment or two, Rowley. I’ll be back.”

  He put his arm around Daphne’s waist, turning her toward the door.

  “No, no!” she cried again. “Don’t you care for—for truth and justice and—”

  “I care for something else very much more,” said Dennis grimly and opened the door. Snow struck lightly upon their faces. Rowley spoke beside them, and his voice was thin and frightened:

  “I say, Dennis—you will be back, I suppose? It wouldn’t be a good idea, you know, simply to call the police and let them find me—with it.”

  “Good God, Rowley,” said Dennis, “you can think of the damnedest things!”

  “I’ll stay in the doorway,” said Rowley, unperturbed. “If anybody comes but you, I get out.”

  “That’s like Rowley,” said Dennis, leading Daphne around snow-laden shrubs. “Look out—here’s a step somewhere here. He would suspect his own mother—and as to that, I can’t say I blame him. He’ll be in a state of jitters by the time I get back. Still he was cooler about the whole thing than I would have thought Rowley could be.”

  It was dark in that chaos of snow and blackness and cold, but still there was a faint luminousness about it, and white shapes loomed out here and there. It was good to feel the clean snow on her face. Fresh air to breathe. Back there…

  Yet somehow, strangely, there was a quality of furtiveness in their cautious steps. Of flight, of escape.

  She fell to shivering again, violently.

  “Dennis—who killed him?”

  “I don’t know, Daphne. I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Why was he killed?” He considered it, guiding her down that slippery little path and below the thick, crowding shadows of the firs through snow that went between the straps of her slippers and was icy and cold around her silk ankles. “How can I tell?” he said finally, wearily. “Wait here a second.” They waited, listening. There was no sound at all. The snow muffled the sound of their steps as they emerged cautiously from the path onto the driveway, with the black shadow of the house ahead and its many unseen windows.

  “Walk lightly,” Dennis whispered so close to her ear she could feel his lips and his warm breath.

  And the caution roused her suddenly to a new and disquieting thought, and that was the thought of immediate, unseen danger. Danger because murder had walked in that night of blackness and of swirling snow that muffled all sounds and made them secret. And murder has its own secret terror.

  The firs were thick along the drive, and there were tall clumps of shrubs all about—any of them tall enough and thick enough to conceal a man. And if the snow muffled her light footsteps and Dennis’, it would also muffle another’s footsteps.

  They reached the deeper shadow of the entrance. Directly above was the great window, dark now and almost invisible, which commanded a view of the entrance. There were steps, and Dennis’ hand was on the cold latch of the door. Her face was wet with snow: all around them were those flying, bewildering veils.

  “Where’s your key, Daph?” he whispered.

  It was a wrench to go back to that time when she had left that door.

  “Key? But I had no key, Dennis. I unlocked the door. It’s a night latch. The door is heavy, you know. Push harder.”

  He pushed harder. Swore and worked the latch. Turned finally and put his hand on her shoulder with a queerly desperate grip.

  “You must have the key, Daph. You must have it. Good God, I’ve got to get you back into the house. You don’t understand—you are so stunned by this that you haven’t had—all along while Rowley and I were talking—the faintest notion of the things we are, all of us, going to be plunged into. Daph—oh, my darling, you must have the key.”

  But she hadn’t it.

  And the door was locked now and would not open.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS DENNIS WHO found the open window. A drawing-room window it was; one that was actually one of the two french windows, reaching to the floor. The altar for the wedding was to be there; before the windows ferns and tall jars of chrysanthemums were already arranged. The pungent odor of the flowers crept through the well of darkness beyond the open window.

  “It was unlatched,” whispered Dennis. “Florists forgot it, I suppose. In you go, Daph—wait!”

  In the cold darkness he took her suddenly in his arms.

  “My dear, I love you so,” he said. “Somehow, someway we’ll come through it all right. Don’t forget that.” He kissed her, too—not as he had kissed her earlier that night in the hot little library, while that table laden with wedding presents winked and glistened and made an accusing witness, but soberly, gravely. “Go to your room at once,” he said. “You’ll be all right. Try to sleep—if you have any sleeping powder, take it. I’ll manage to see you before anybody comes to question you. Don’t wait, Daph—for the love of God, do as I say.”

  She was inside, out of the snow, and Dennis on the outside was carefully, very cautiously closing the window again. He was gone suddenly into the snow, so she could no longer see the dim outline of his figure.

  But he had to go back to Rowley, of course. Rowley waiting beside that in the springhouse.

  Don’t try to think—don’t stand here in the darkness, listening. There is danger in waiting; danger in thinking.

  “Go to your room,” Dennis had said, “at once.”

  She groped in the darkness. Something brushed her hand lightly and seemed to move away and returned. A fern—one of the flowers—she was standing in the little alcove made by the french windows; after dinner they’d all gone into the drawing room to look at the flowers. How were they arranged? She couldn’t remember the arrangement, for she’d been thinking of that mad scene with Dennis. Of the thing she was to say to Ben. And they had insisted on he
r coming with them to look at the floral arrangement; three weary-looking men in wrinkled white smocks, boxes and burlap-wrapped ferns and green raffia trailing around. Gertrude in the middle of it in her ruby velvet with her pale eyes glittering. Amelia talking to Ben about the huge white chrysanthemums. Ben …

  No one had thought of this—of murder.

  And she mustn’t think of it now. This was to have been the altar—where she was to stand in her white satin gown.

  She groped among the flowers, which swayed into blackness, and she had to remind herself that they were really ferns and great white chrysanthemums. Good, she was through them now; only their scent remained in the thick, moveless blackness. Opposite the improvised altar was a sort of aisle through small gilt chairs which were already arranged in ranks across the room. “Family and intimate friends were present …” She touched the smooth round back of a chair and, fumbling a little, found the aisle. That was simple, to go from one chair to another directly to the door. And the door opened easily, with only the faintest creek of its old hinges.

  There was, as usual at night, no light in the hall, but once there she was more certain. Nothing had been changed there, no furniture moved aside and rearranged for the wedding. She crossed it, her feet making furtive little taps on the thin old rugs, her yellow gown swishing, whispering a little along the floor. In spite of the familiarity and certainty she felt, she became confused in crossing that blank space of complete blackness and brought up against the newel post unexpectedly. Her whole body seemed to leap, and her heart rocked her with its beating. But it was only the newel post. Now up those narrow old stairs and along the hall. Dennis had told her to go to her room at once.

  It was a goal; vaguely she felt that when she reached it and turned on the lights something would shift and things would become natural and real again.

  It was the first time she had thought of turning on lights; but light would be dangerous; better not.

  The banister was smooth and cool to her touch; she clutched her skirt in her other hand, pulling it high over her wet, silk ankles so she would not trip. She knew the house as she knew her own small hand. She knew that stairway and the creak on the third step from the bottom. The small, stealthy creak of weight on the dry old step.