Escape the Night Read online

  Jem did not reply to her. He said, holding Serena’s gaze with his own: “I wouldn’t let them talk to you tonight. You’d had all you could take today. But they’ll want to question you later. It’s only an attempt to prove it wasn’t murder. That’s all.”

  Some facet of Serena’s mind was suddenly very much aware of Amanda. There was a stillness about Amanda, something arrested and extremely, warily quiet. Like a cat at a mousehole. But that was wrong, for before she could reply to Jem, Amanda said swiftly: “Of course, they’ll want to question you, Sissy. After all, you were there. And while they don’t, I suppose, think you pushed her over, still—well, as I say, you were there.”

  “She didn’t have a motive,” said Jem. “Don’t be absurd, Amanda.”

  “Oh, didn’t she?” said Amanda. “And I suppose that everyone is going to say that I had one. Or at least Sutton. As Leda said tonight, Luisa was rich. And everybody knows Sutton has no money. Naturally he was her heir. Why not? There wasn’t anybody else. He’d tried to borrow from her; so had I, any number of times. She never would loan us a penny. Oh,” Amanda laughed rather recklessly, “she wasn’t what you’d call a good and loyal friend. She was tight as the paper on the wall, as a matter of fact. And now because she—fell off a cliff, we’re in for a murder investigation.”

  “Amanda, what are you saying?” cried Serena incredulously. “Sutton’s rich. Everybody knows it.…”

  “Sutton was rich,” corrected Amanda, still with that odd air of recklessness. “He’s not rich now. Sutton never had any capacity for making money. Or even for keeping it. All he’s ever known about money is how to give it away, and how to lose it.”

  “But, Amanda, that’s not possible! You married him …” She stopped herself on the very verge of saying that was one of the reasons why Amanda had married him. She’d accepted that fact, when Amanda was married, mainly because Amanda had talked of Sutton’s money from the Condits, of the Condit ranch, of the things she, Amanda, intended to do and get and the places where she intended to go, more than she had talked actually of Sutton Condit; with his pleasant, weak face and kind smile—and all the Condit money.

  Amanda laughed shortly. “I hope, darling, you were not going to say I married him for his money. A nice, frank, sisterly remark! As a matter of fact, Sutton’s money was already slipping through his fingers when I married him. Sutton is the original and prime sucker, you know. But I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it for at least a year afterward. Sutton, my pet, is simply one of the world’s ineffectuals.”

  Jem’s face had closed up like a room with no doors or windows in it. He was lighting another cigarette, and wouldn’t look at Serena or at Amanda. Serena faltered: “But, Amanda …”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be a baby,” snapped Amanda. “I tell you Sutton’s simply got no strength of character. He has no business sense. He doesn’t know what aggression is. He makes an investment and something happens to it. He—oh, never mind! Everybody knows what he’s like. I wish I’d known it before I married him. I knew about his inheritance. I thought he still had most of it. I thought …” This time Amanda stopped herself in full flight, and bit her red, thin lower lip, and lowered her eyes. What had she been about to say: I thought he was rich, successful? She said: “I thought, naturally, he’d always have money. Not that I mind, you understand. Sutton is my husband and I’ve tried to do my duty. I’ve done everything I could think of to save the ranch. I’ve been a good and faithful wife …” She paused and said suddenly, “Haven’t I been, Jem, dear?”

  Jem said slowly: “All that’s rather beside the point, isn’t it? I don’t think anybody will say you murdered Luisa to get her money.”

  Amanda’s expression changed again. Her face resumed its look of rather hard, nervous preoccupation. “You can’t tell what they’ll say. I wish—well, it does seem preposterous, but I wish I had an alibi.”

  “Haven’t you?” asked Jem rather quietly, studying the end of his cigarette.

  “You heard the police ask us where we were,” said Amanda impatiently. “We were both out all day. I rode up in the hills. I wanted to take a look at the cattle up there. I took sandwiches and coffee with me. I got a late start because of Serena. She slept late and I wanted to be sure she was all fixed for the day before I left. Oh, I stopped at the Palfry farm and talked to them awhile. He is the tenant farmer, Sissy, and our two remaining ranch hands live there. But it’s simply nothing in the way of an alibi. That’s what they said, Sissy, very politely and horridly. If we’d just tell them, Sutton and I, exactly where we were all day, it would be a simple way to let us out of inquiry which they felt might be disagreeable.” She laughed shortly again. “Disagreeable. They’ll never stop talking about it around here. No matter what happens, there’ll still be some that think we pushed Luisa into the sea.” She looked at Serena speculatively, so Serena knew that something was coming. It was odd how fully she was beginning to remember Amanda and all Amanda’s little tricks of speech and voice and eyes. Her eyelids now were lowered a little so her long black lashes stuck straight out in a manner that gave her rather the look of a fractious, mean-tempered—but always very beautiful horse. Jem said, his face still closed and uncommunicative, that Serena was only a witness. “It’ll blow over in a day or two. You mustn’t worry, Serena.”

  “Oh, mustn’t she!” snapped Amanda again. “She was there, wasn’t she? There wasn’t anybody else to push Luisa off the rocks.”

  “Amanda, stop that,” said Jem so quietly that it was queer how forceful his words were. He went on: “Don’t say things like that even to me. Serena’s got to sleep. She’s had a terrible experience.”

  “It’s not pleasant for anybody!” Amanda opened her lovely dark eyes very wide and arched her strong black eyebrows. “Luisa was Sutton’s aunt. He’s her heir.” Serena had time to remember, too, that a certain wide-eyed look in Amanda’s lovely face wasn’t as innocent and wide-eyed as it looked. It meant—or used to mean when they were young—some kind of purpose. Amanda said: “What do you think happened, Sissy? You were there! Didn’t you hear or see anything? Really?”

  Jem said harshly: “For God’s sake, Amanda, can’t you see the child’s had all she can bear? You’d better get something to make her sleep. Haven’t you some sleeping tablets of some kind?”

  “I’ll get something. After all, Sissy …”

  “Hurry, Amanda.”

  “But I—oh, all right.” Amanda’s scarlet mouth looked annoyed and tight but she went away.

  “Jem, could Luisa have been murdered!” A new and stunning thought struck Serena. “Jem, will they say I did it?”

  “My God, no! Don’t talk like that.” He sat down beside her again.

  “I was the only one there. I’ve thought of the rocks above her. I don’t see how anybody could have been there and got up them again, out of sight so quickly. I’ve thought of all that, Jem.”

  He waited a moment, looking steadily at her, as if arranging his thoughts. Then he said slowly and with force and great earnestness: “Listen to me, Serena, no matter what happens, you are out of it. You had no motive; not a ghost of a motive. Remember that.”

  “You think she was murdered!”

  “I don’t know what to think. Except … My God, can’t you believe in me? I love you, Serena. I’m not going to let you be hurt by anything. Or …” He paused for a second. A cold, angry look came into his eyes again, and he said: “Or by anybody. Listen, Serena, there’s something I want you to tell me, quickly. Was there any special reason for you coming home just now? I mean, did anybody write to you, or send any messages or—oh, send for you? Did anybody urge you, for any reason to come? Or even suggest it?”

  “I don’t understand why you ask …”

  “Please, Serena.”

  Leda, of course, had begged her to come. But it was the knowledge of Jem’s presence that had brought her, and Leda couldn’t have known that it would. She looked at Jem in bewilderment, for she felt a significa
nce in his inquiry without knowing what that significance was. But before she could speak, feet ran up the stairs and across the veranda. Amanda flung into the room again. Again swiftly she closed the door behind her, but this time there was something odd in her motion, something quite unlike Amanda, something unsteady and wild in her look. She cried, panting: “Jem! Jem, what shall I do? Bill Lanier’s back.”

  There was a pause. “When did he get back?” asked Jem then, shortly, eyes on Amanda.

  “Just yesterday. Alice didn’t know it. He came around to see her today. He wanted to use one of their cars, and she gave it to him. He’s in the army. He’s a captain. He was put in a desk job somewhere, and now he’s been transferred and is about to go overseas. He’ll be here two weeks. Two weeks, Jem! That’s what she said. He was … You know Bill. He’s so—violent. She phoned me just now. She thought she ought to warn me.” Serena suddenly was able to put a name to the thing about Amanda that was so unlike her. It was fear. Of Bill Lanier? Serena remembered Bill. A big, well-built man, with a rather sullen dark face. He was silent as a rule, laughing suddenly and with brutal loudness at only the broadest of jokes, always elegantly dressed, his thick, curly black hair always glistening, his black eyebrows meeting over his nose. In any describable way he was handsome. Actually, his silent presence, his cruel mouth, his odd light brown eyes which looked cruel, too, were a little dampening to any party. He had a curious immobility. He would simply appear, elegantly tailored, manicured, groomed to the last degree; his face completely unmoved by most of the talk and laughter to which he listened. There was a latent brutality about Bill Lanier; there always had been. He’d not had money. Alice had had the money. Their marriage had not been exactly happy, for there were rumors of violent quarrels, yet Serena had been, somehow, surprised to know of their divorce.

  Jem said: “Why?”

  “Why …” began Amanda. She stopped and thought, and her lovely, frightened face changed, subtly, but magically. It became young and lovely; pleading and a little sad. “Jem, you know why.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Jem bluntly. “Why would Alice warn you that Bill was back? You said warn, didn’t you?”

  “I …” Amanda’s hands moved upward beseechingly. “Jem, this isn’t like you. I—I do need you so much.” She went to him and put both hands upon his coat lapels and looked up into his face. “Please help me, Jem. I’ve asked you for so much but now …”

  He didn’t move away from her, but his face looked as if a kind of mask had come down over it. “But now—what?”

  “But now—oh, well, Jem, you know how brutal Bill is. How …” Again a queer something throbbed in Amanda’s voice that was like fear. “How deadly he can be! When he’s in a rage about something.”

  “What did you do to Bill?”

  “I …” Serena couldn’t see Amanda’s face. She could only see her long, beautiful body, supplicating hands upon Jem, her dark loose hair. But she could hear her voice, and she knew again that Amanda was concealing something. Amanda said: “I didn’t do anything. Not really. But the—oh, it’s too long a story, Jem. Except if he’s in one of those horrible rages he gets into he might …”

  “Might what?” said Jem implacably.

  “Might do—anything,” said Amanda, with the thin throb of fear in her voice again. “Jem, you’ve always been so wonderful. You’ve never failed me. I count on you so much. I don’t know what I’d do if …”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Bill Lanier. Did you bring the tablets?”

  “The—oh, yes.”

  The little bottle was in one of her hands. Jem took it, moved away from her hands and from her, and came to Serena. He looked at the bottle, read the label, shook out two small tablets, scrutinized them rather closely, it seemed to Serena, got a glass from the bathroom while Amanda just stood there watching him rather thoughtfully, and came back. “Take these,” he said to Serena.

  She did so obediently. He said: “Now go to bed. Good night, my dear. Don’t worry, Amanda.”

  He left then. “Are you going home …?” began Amanda, but the closing door cut off her inquiry. There was a short silence. “Well!” said Amanda then, and looked at Serena. The thoughtful look in her beautiful face deepened. Her dark eyes were unfathomable, yet fixed hard upon Serena, as if seeking and plumbing something in Serena’s own thoughts. If there were questions and speculations going on behind that dark gaze, her beautiful face with its lovely, high cheek bones and painted red mouth gave no indication of their course. She came, though, to the chaise longue and sat down where Jem had sat and said quickly and decisively: “Look here, Sissy. Don’t get any ideas about Jem.”

  “Ideas?” said Serena after a moment.

  “You know what I mean. I’d better tell you something. You remember my wedding?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well. If Jem had had his way I wouldn’t have married Sutton. Jem fell in love with me the first time he saw me. He begged me to run away with him, the day before the wedding. I …” Amanda shrugged. “I couldn’t do that, of course. It would have been too cruel. I couldn’t have treated Sutton like that. Jem begged me to do it. I refused and married Sutton. It was …” Her eyes slid away from Serena and became dreamy. “Well, I’ll never forget going down the aisle of the church with Jem standing there beside Sutton—knowing that every step I took was like, well—like stepping on Jem’s heart. Do you remember my dress? White satin—I looked rather well, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Serena in a rather suffocated voice. “I remember.”

  “Grandmother’s veil; that coronet effect was becoming, too.” Amanda’s voice and eyes were still dreamy and rather pleased. She sighed and linked her vigorous, long hands together on her knee. “It was very dramatic, really. Nobody knew about it, of course, except Jem and me. Oh, I may have told Leda. I’d had a terrific scene with Jem, really, the night before the wedding. I told him I had to go through with it. We said good-bye then. That was just after my bridesmaids’ dinner. I was wearing blue that night—pale blue …”

  There was a silence. Amanda stared thoughtfully at the floor, smiling faintly. Finally Serena said: “And were you in love with Jem?” Her voice still had an odd, stifled sound. Amanda sighed again: “Oh, it was all very sad. Just like a play. We gave each other up forever.”

  Serena got up. She moved across the room, lighted a cigarette, put it down, started to undress. It was rather curious, it struck her, that things which one would expect to be stunning blows sometimes work the other way, so that one discovers an unsuspected reserve of strength. But she believed Amanda, allowing for some of the romantic phrases. Besides, it fit her own recollection of Jem and the day of the wedding. That, of course, was why he’d thanked her, Serena, and kissed her. It had been a bad day for Jem and she had unconsciously, helped him to weather it.

  It was all very clear. Too clear.

  She said presently: “Didn’t you say that you and Jem said good-bye forever? He seems to be here now.”

  “Oh,” Amanda’s eyes lost their dreamy look and became attentive. “Well, yes. Jem is here. A man like Jem doesn’t change, you know. He’ll always be in love with me. That’s why I told you.” She paused and then resumed with an unnatural sweetness, “I didn’t want you to be hurt, Sissy dear.”

  Serena reached for her dressing gown. “Don’t worry about me being hurt,” she said crisply. “Frankly, Amanda, I think there are other things for us to worry about at the moment.”

  “You mean Luisa?” Amanda’s face darkened. “Or Bill Lanier?”

  Serena began to brush her hair, without replying. In the mirror she could see her own face, queerly white and small and, somehow, stern. And she could see Amanda, leaning back now in the chaise longue, lighting a cigarette, her red, thin lips tight around it.

  “I did rather go off the deep end about Bill Lanier.” She got her light and put her head back, and blew a light cloud of smoke before her lovely face.

  “Why?”

  “
Well, really, Sissy, is it any of your business?”

  “What happened? You’re afraid of him, Amanda. Why?”

  “Really—oh, all right. I may as well tell you. After all, you’re my sister, in spite of our being so different. That is, don’t be offended, Sissy …”

  “I’m not. You’re beautiful, Amanda, and charming, but I don’t want to be you.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened, this time in surprise. “But everybody … I’ve always been …”

  Serena took a long breath. “You’ve always been the leader of the circle around you. I’ve always admired you. You know that.”

  “Why, of course. Everybody …”

  “Everybody does. What about Bill Lanier? You didn’t do anything—well, anything really serious?”

  Amanda’s red lips pouted a little. “It depends upon what you mean by serious. If you mean did I have an affair with him, I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t mean …” Serena broke off sharply. (“I’ve been a good and faithful wife,” Amanda had said, and had looked at Jem and added, “Haven’t I been, Jem dear?”) Serena said slowly: “You’re right, Amanda. It’s not my business to question you.”

  “That,” went on Amanda unperturbed, “was the trouble, really. If you know what I mean. You see, Bill, for no reason at all actually, got the idea that I was in love with him. I’m sure I don’t know why.” She looked a little self-conscious and smiled. “But he—well, he did. He liked me and he … Bill is the violent type and …”

  “Did you promise to marry him if he divorced Alice?”

  “No, certainly not. I didn’t at all mean him to get a divorce. I never dreamed he was serious. And then Alice got wind of it somehow and she divorced him. Just as quickly as she could. Oh, there wasn’t any talk. She called it mental cruelty. Bill didn’t contest it. But then he expected me to get a divorce, and good Heavens!” Amanda’s eyes widened indignantly. “I wouldn’t marry Bill Lanier if he were the last man on earth. He hasn’t any money. Alice has the money in that family. Besides, Bill has no future. You’d never get any place with him! And he’s got a wicked temper as everybody knows. So then he seemed to blame me. I can’t imagine why. Alice is my friend. That shows you whether or not I’m to blame for it. But Bill …” Amanda bit her lip. “I thought everything was all right once he got in the Army. I never thought of him coming back on leave. I thought by the time the war’s over he’d have forgotten.”