Lay On, Mac Duff! Page 18
“What?”
“You told me so. There in the kitchen. So you couldn’t hear that there was nothing to hear.”
“I never said I heard him.”
“But you believed.”
“Oh, I was scared.”
“You were always scared by Hugh. Do you realize that? Your fear began whenever he showed up.”
“It’s a good thing,” J.J. growled, “that he’s in jail.”
“Yes. Hugh stirred up fear of your uncle in you. Yet he made a mistake when, in his role of stirrer-up, he told the Peppinger story and completely omitted the story of Herbert Graves. When I found that for myself, I wondered why, of course. It seemed incredible he’d never heard it. It wouldn’t have hurt him to tell it, either. But everything he told was against Cathcart. He always brought us back to Cathcart. I wondered if he hated Cathcart. Someone hated someone that night of the parcheesi game. And Bessie was close to Hugh in the room. If you believe one feels such emanations, surely the nearer the stronger. And these were strong.”
“I know it now,” I said. “His face was wet with it.”
“When I met him myself,” Duff said, “I met a fussy mind. Full, don’t you know, of little thoughts? A gleaning mind. It was the very mind to turn to account whatever came along. Trifles. As he did, of course. He had the trick of using trifles. He used his glimpse of the stalled bus. The picayune business of the phone calls. He used Bessie—”
“Who is not a trifle,” J.J. said sternly.
“Forgive me. He used Effans’s toothache, Effans’s possession of toothache drops. He was working up to an alibi for later, of course. He wanted to be solid, well beyond where medical evidence was going to reach.”
“He never even had a toothache?” I cried.
“My dear, he picked it up at the dinner table. Another trifle. The moment I knew there was a toothache for him to glean, as it were, I suspected it. Another thing, when he called the red men symbols, quite soberly, I knew he was romantic. Oh, not about women. Just romantic. He spun his ideas out fine. The sealing of the doors. That wasn’t practical, you know. Oh, yes, it might have worked. But why suppose that very night important? He never gave any reason for that. And dragging you about with him. Yet, leaving himself free in between times. All hocus-pocus. Little thoughts. Pseudo-science. Romance. He had a strange conception of human motives—the ones he faked for himself, I mean. And then he was superstitious about those red men.”
“But Uncle, too …”
“Your uncle has no truck with symbols or superstition either.”
“But he said …”
“My dear, he grants the reality of the other fellow’s superstition. He’s a practical man. So he destroyed the fourth red man. And upset Hugh most dreadfully. He was upset every time that was mentioned. I wonder why he didn’t take the fourth man when he had his one chance at it. Oh, he regretted that. It meant something to him. I think he felt he couldn’t just kill your uncle without it. Your uncle was going to have to be punished another way. A better way for the arch enemy. Yet, I don’t think Hugh felt he could shoot him or slay him in the body without the symbol.”
“Cathcart would have been on to him if he’d taken the fourth red man that morning,” J.J. offered. “Cathcart saw him there. In the library. And Cathcart knew it was in the box.”
“Yes. Possibly. I think Cathcart was wise to burn the fourth man.”
I remembered Hugh’s face above me on the stairs while it was burning. “Did anybody ever look and count the other colors?”
“Oh yes,” Duff said. “Cathcart did.”
“He knew the red man was a symbol for his own death?”
“Oh, not so clearly as that, perhaps. Four men, three symbols. He just took no chances. He didn’t believe in symbols, however, but in himself. Nor would he ever in this world have gone about murdering people and leaving symbols on them. I knew that the moment I met him. For Cathcart, I daresay murder is murder. Just as business is business. He’s not romantic. Not the type to hold a grudge, either. Certainly not for any such reason as a business deal.”
“But he did throw them out of the window.”
“He can be angry. Oh, heavens, yes. And woe unto those who make him angry.”
“He can be cruel,” I said.
“He’s a clever man,” Duff said, “and fairly unscrupulous and perfectly unsentimental. But you don’t understand him, Bessie. You have too many emotions of your own about your uncle to be in the least reliable as a reporter of his feeling. For instance, your background leads you to consider him sinister when he is merely worldly. His sophistication strikes you as unholy mirth. Because he sees straight through you and isn’t sentimental about it, he embarrasses you. Also, you find him fascinating. He is an uncommonly attractive man.”
“Attractive!” I cried.
“Attractive male, I should say,” Duff corrected himself gently. “I’m afraid it frightens you.”
“She’s a bit of a prude, me darlin’ is,” J.J. said, squeezing my arm.
I said, “But he’s my uncle!”
“Which frightens you still more. Do you remember what you said about him when you were doing that free association stunt?”
I blushed. “But he’s old and not handsome or …”
“Darling, I put it to you, am I a handsome man?”
“No,” I said, “you’re not a bit, J.J.” They laughed at me for that.
“So you see,” Duff went on, “I couldn’t take your word for how he felt, ever. That’s why you were so mistaken about Lina.”
“Mistaken?”
“Good heavens, yes. Maxon made the same mistake. But he was stupid and vain. Do you remember what you said, for Lina?”
“Yes, but I …”
“You weren’t fooled, were you, J.J.?”
“Tell me about what before I commit myself.”
Duff leaned back, and his eyes took on a smoky look. “It reminds me,” he said, “of the case of Peggy Shippen.”
“Is that so! Well! Sure!” J.J. exclaimed. “Benedict Arnold’s wife, Bessie.”
“Benedict Arnold?”
“Yeah. You know. Duff’s specialty. Well, I don’t know as I wasn’t fooled. But I’ll tell you this. Lina’s not hunting. A man knows that much.”
“Maxon didn’t know it, who thought Cathcart was too old and less attractive than he was, poor fool. And Miller. Miller made that mistake. He took Bessie’s opinion, I think. He was fairly dumb about women. He was late tumbling to you and Bessie. I wonder if his wife’s death … Well, there was Andrew Jackson and the Peggy Eaton affair. It was a bad mistake for Miller. Because it made him assume a motive that couldn’t exist. You saw that?”
“Well, but I’d heard he bought her,” J.J. said, “and that tends—”
“If you don’t stop being so smart,” I cried, “and explain so I can understand …! What about Peggy whoever she was? And what about Lina?”
“The way Peggy Shippen acted after Arnold’s treachery and flight simply can’t be understood,” Duff said, “unless you realize that she loved him. That’s all. Bessie, my dear, take my word for it, Lina Cathcart isn’t anything like Peggy Shippen, but she’s mad about her husband.”
“Mad? You mean she …?”
Duff said gently. “Your Aunt Lina is a very happy woman. I know. One tends to think that a young girl, married under some kind of duress to an older man, is bound to be unhappy. But your uncle is not an ordinary man. Neither was Arnold, Look, Bessie, have you never read The Sheik?”
“Of course I read it. It was forbidden.”
“There are a thousand other novels with the same plot. Why, it’s classical, in women’s novels, the kind they read with a box of chocolates. Married, not for love, to the strong, the ruthless, the masterful man. She falls for her husband and doesn’t admit it until chapter twenty, except to the palpitating reader. How he makes her suffer, and how she loves it! Don’t you see? Lina’s living a love drama every day of her life. Her husband is her
secret passion. You can’t beat that combination for ideal happiness from the female point of view. It’s about as close to having your cake and eating it, too, as she can imagine.”
“Doesn’t he care for her at all?” I asked wistfully.
“As much as he’s able. Oh, yes, he’s very fond. And wise. He lets her play to him, go out with other men, so serene, so beautiful, so obedient, so misunderstood. But not by your Uncle Charles. He understands. Don’t you tell. I doubt she knows that. She’s having such a lovely time,” Duff sighed, “that lovely child.”
“Then she really was worried for him?”
“She didn’t take Hugh’s bullet for fun,” J.J. said. “That’s sure.”
“A light inside,” I murmured. “Why, yes. She’s in love.”
“Look here,” J.J. said sternly, “the point is, are you?”
I smiled—he looked so funny and dear—and he put up his hands as if the sun were in his eyes.
“Eat your ice cream, Bessie Gibbon,” Duff said. “This is a public place. You’ll shock us city slickers.”
About the Author
Edgar Award–winning Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was one of the finest American authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong was born in Vulcan, Michigan, and attended Barnard College, in New York City. After college she worked at the New York Times and the magazine Breath of the Avenue, before marrying and turning to literature in 1928. For a decade, she wrote plays and poetry, with work produced on Broadway and published in the New Yorker. In the early 1940s, she began writing suspense.
Success came quickly. Her first novel, Lay On, MacDuff! (1942) was well received, spawning a three-book series. Over the next two decades, she wrote more than two dozen novels, winning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films, and A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel. She died in California in 1969.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
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Copyright © 1942 by Jack and Charlotte Lewi Family Trust
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-4274-1
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