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But Grandy stirred, and she heard his voice, “Where’s Tyl?” It carried through every other noise, that beloved voice, so rich and tender. “Where’s my duckling?” he said. He called her to him. “Is she all right?” That was his anxious love. “Tyl, darling.”

  Mathilda’s head turned. His hand was out, waiting for hers to slide within it. Appealing to her. Confident of her. His darling. Yes, of course, she was his darling.

  She saw something on the floor. It was as if there was an explosion inside her head.

  She gasped, put out her hand. “Oh, please … please.” The words rose out of her throat to join Jane’s. Then she thought, Talk, words. Words won’t do it. What’s the use of talking? For Jane had been talking; Jane was still begging them, weeping, pleading. But Grandy, lying on the floor with his eyes shut, was too strong.

  Mathilda’s body was taut now, and it felt strong and alive. Leaning a little forward, she said, quietly, aloud, “If Francis is down there, it’s got to stop.”

  She flung up her arms. For a second she was poised in the air, a Winged Victory indeed. Then she had done it. She was falling, falling. She struck the soft, rotten, evil heap. She had leaped. She was down in the pit.

  Above, men were shouting again.

  Oh, yes, now the bucket would not come down. Mathilda smiled. She’d stopped it. She’d stopped it quickly the only way. In a moment or two, she straggled up and began to wade, as Grandy had done. She toiled and struggled. It was nightmarish, that journey through the evil muck. Her hand reached the trunk, touched its hard surfaces. Both hands now were at the lock.

  From above, they saw what she was trying to do, and they saw her fail. They heard her when she called to them. Heard her cry when she said, “I can’t! The trunk’s locked! It’s locked!”

  “Locked?”

  Gahagen looked at Blake, and he looked down where Grandy lay, rolled on his side now, peering over. Grandy’s big, thick-knuckled hand on the curb, the rim of the pit, tightened, loosened.

  Down in the pit, where the fumes rose and overpowered her, Mathilda fainted.

  33

  Mathilda was bathed, scrubbed, scented and immaculate. She lay on the couch by the fire, wearing a coral-colored frock. Her legs were lovely in her best sheer prewar stockings. Her feet were comfortable in gold kid mules. Her hair had been washed and brushed until it shone. It was tied back with a coral ribbon. She looked very young and a little pale.

  Jane was sitting on the little low-backed chair, the skirt of her brown dirndl spread around her. A bracelet slid on her arm where she propped up her chin. Oliver was back a little, with his face in shadow.

  These three were silent, listening to what Tom Gahagen and Francis were saying, trying not to think about what had happened to Grandy. Grandy was dead.

  It was not yet certain whether or not from natural causes, whether his arrogant spirit had arrogantly fled from the prospect of disgrace by some hocus-pocus of his own will and device, perhaps by poison, or whether an old man’s heart had been unable to stand the various excitements and had literally broken.

  Anyhow, he was dead. There would be no legal aftermath. No long-drawn-out, sensational trial. It was all over really. Except the chase after Press and his wife. They would be caught and explode into headlines. Yes, it was all over but the headlines. And they, too, would pass.

  Francis was not only alive and well, but looking extremely handsome in a soft blue country-style shirt without any tie. Shaved. Shampooed. His hair looked crisp and still damp.

  They were, perhaps, the cleanest group of people gathered anywhere at that given moment. Mathilda had the thought. But she didn’t smile. Her whole heart ached. Pale and quiet, she lay, and although she listened, something inside kept weeping, not for the shell of Grandy, who lay somewhere in the town, but for the Grandy who had never lived at all, for the Grandy that never was, the one she’d loved.

  With the one she’d loved went everything she’d known. All gone. She could not yet be sure what anyone was, what anything was like. She’d seen the world through Grandy’s eyes. That world was gone. Even his chair they’d pushed away. The long room was his no more. It was a strange room in a strange house where she’d always been a stranger.

  Gahagen said, “He never made as much money in the theater as people thought. You see what he did? The head of the firm that handled the estate for Frazier, he died. So Grandy got into disagreement with the juniors and took the business away. So there was nearly two years when the fortune was fluid, and Grandy was handling things himself, buying, selling, changing things around. While he had everything confused, he must have managed to transfer a pretty big hunk of the stuff into his own name. Then he gave the business to a new firm. How would they know she’d been robbed? But I can’t figure out how you ever got on the track of such a thing from the outside.”

  “Jane had a letter,” said Francis. His dark eyes were somber and troubled. “It was little Rosaleen Wright who got on to it.”

  Mathilda’s heart ached.

  “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know exactly how,” said Francis in that sad, patient way. “But she was here when Mathilda turned twenty-one and made her will. Maybe then—”

  Mathilda said, “They did work on it a long time, the lawyer and Rosaleen. He wouldn’t.”

  “Grandy wouldn’t?” Somebody said the name she couldn’t say.

  “He said financial matters were too dull. He said it was a paper world.” She turned her face to the inside of the couch.

  “Maybe Rosaleen wondered why the records didn’t go all the way back to your father’s death,” said Gahagen.

  “She wouldn’t have been fooled,” said Jane suddenly. “There was something terribly honest about Rosaleen.”

  “You knew her well?” said Gahagen sympathetically.

  “She was my cousin,” Jane said. “We all grew up next door to each other.”

  “You never did think she killed herself?”

  “No,” said Jane. “And now I can imagine how he did it. I can imagine how he’d have asked her to write out that suicide note. He’d have made it seem plausible. He’d have—”

  Mathilda closed her eyes.

  Jane’s voice was a knife.

  “—maybe said to her, ‘I’m experimenting, dear child.’ There’d be that hook up in the ceiling. He’d have said he was trying to understand one of his old crimes. He could have got everything ready right under her eyes, because he’d have been talking, the way he talked, all the time.”

  Mathilda shuddered. The spell was broken. She could see now that he’d been a spellbinder. She could feel a shadow of the spell.

  Oliver said, with a whine in his voice, “I wish you people had come to me. I could have helped you. Althea did tell me about that ‘Burn tenderly’ business. I was your missing witness, if you’d only known. I didn’t know that you needed a witness. We just didn’t get together.”

  Francis said gently, “None of you could be expected to see our point of view.” He didn’t say it reproachfully, but as if the fact had been troublesome, but not misunderstood.

  Oliver said weakly, “I suppose that’s so.”

  Gahagen turned curiously to Mathilda. “But you finally did see their point of view, Miss Tyl. What made you so sure, all of a sudden?”

  She felt blank and dull, couldn’t remember.

  “Up to that point, you were pretty near ready to think you’d been seeing things, weren’t you? I don’t understand how you came to be sure enough to take a jump like that.”

  Mathilda said, slowly, “I don’t know. Yes, I do, but I don’t know how to explain it exactly.”

  “Don’t try,” said Francis quickly.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “I’ll try.” She went on, groping. “You see, there were a lot of pieces. I’d heard all about the fuse blowing. Oliver gave me another piece. He told me how Althea had heard a man on the radio. Then Jane gave me another piece when she said she’d been checking up, and the man had said ‘Bum tenderly’ so late that
morning. You see, I had all the pieces. They went together, just all of a sudden.”

  They sighed.

  “But that wasn’t all,” Tyl said more vigorously. She felt better for being able to explain. “There was another handful of pieces. You see, I knew Francis had been down in the cellar.” She was half sitting up now, her face was vivid. “And I was sure it was Francis, on account of the candy. Who else could have left that for me to see?”

  “Who else but you could have seen it?” said Francis huskily.

  “Well”—she shot him a green glance—“then Jane had her story about the man Mr. Press and the truck. I just suddenly saw that if Grandy wasn’t”—she’d said the name —“wasn’t a true link, if he was unreliable, then the impossibilities all cleared up. I just suddenly put the thing together and I saw that Francis had been there. He had gone; he must have gone somewhere, and Jane was on the track of how he could have gone. And then,” she said, “I happened to look at Grandy, and I saw that piece of Dutch chocolate spilling out of his trousers pocket.”

  “The candy?”

  “Yes.” A little shiver ran down her slim body. “I didn’t stop to think he might have had one of his own chocolates in his pocket. I just remembered that I’d seen them on the ground by that house, and that they’d disappeared. Who picked them up? If I wasn’t crazy— Who knew enough to pick them up? Who knew what they meant? Only me, and Francis … and Grandy.

  “So you see,” she added quietly, “I understood that he wasn’t reliable. I think I just … saw him.”

  “He was—” Gahagen shook his head. He had no adjective for what Grandy had been. “Then, when he unlocked that trunk under our noses to pretend to look inside! And he locked it again too. He didn’t dare risk the thing falling open when the bucket picked it up. Of course, that finished him.”

  “You were quick to see that,” Jane praised him.

  Francis said, “I must say I’m glad I was out like a light most of that time. I’m just as pleased I didn’t know about that bucket or where I was.”

  Jane said simply, “I nearly went crazy.”

  Mathilda, looking at the pulse in Francis’ throat, thought, So did I.

  “Well, that finished him,” said Francis abruptly. “He might have pleaded bad eyesight. He just might have been able to pretend he couldn’t distinguish me from a bunch of old rags in the bad light, eh? He’d have talked, and who’s to say he might not have wriggled out of it, when and if you’d found my bones? But with that key in his pocket!”

  “He fell in on purpose, to keep us from looking inside that trunk,” said Gahagen. “It was a brilliant idea. Mr. Howard, here, might have been pretty well destroyed. We might not even have stopped the works to look again. I don’t know. Can’t say. Looking back, it seems impossible that we believed him at all. But, of course, we did believe him at the time.”

  Gahagen got up to go. Perhaps his tongue slipped. When he said “Good night,” he called Mathilda “Mrs. Howard.”

  When he had gone, Francis moved restlessly about, poked at the fire.

  Oliver came out of the shadows and took a nearer chair. “Doesn’t he know you two aren’t married?” he asked with bright interest.

  Francis stood still, with the poker in his hand swinging like a pendulum. “I guess you realize now that Grandy deliberately rearranged your wedding,” he said bluntly.

  Whose wedding? What was he talking about? Tyl looked up. Met his eye. “Mine!” she gasped.

  Oliver said, “Ours, dear.”

  Tyl let her head fall back again. She didn’t know how revealing her face was. How its serenity and the simple curiosity with which she asked her question told them so much. “But why didn’t he want Oliver and me to marry?” she wondered almost placidly.

  “He didn’t want you to marry, ever,” said Francis angrily, “on account of the money. Didn’t he teach you to think you’d never be loved except for the money? Didn’t he make you believe you weren’t personally very attractive? Didn’t he play up Althea against you? Weren’t you always the Ugly Duckling? And not a damn word of it true.” He put the poker into its place with a banging of metal on metal. Mathilda felt surprised.

  Oliver said uneasily, “He certainly tried—”

  “Of course he was a pretty persuasive old bird,” said Francis much more mildly.

  Oliver’s face was red. Of course, thought Mathilda. Oliver had let Grandy persuade him. He hadn’t seen Mathilda or Althea either with his own eyes, but through Grandy’s eyes. And now Oliver was ashamed. So now he was preparing to laugh it off. Oliver was about to be nonchalant. How well she knew all the silly expressions on his silly face.

  “Mathilda doesn’t care for me,” said Oliver gaily. “Maybe I’ll marry Jane.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jane promptly. “My husband wouldn’t like it.”

  Francis laughed and got up and put his arms around Jane. He put his chin down on her hair. “You’re wonderful,” he said. “Little old Jane.” He kissed her. “Go to bed now. I want to talk to Mathilda.”

  When Jane had gone and Oliver had, rather awkwardly, gone, too, and they were alone, Francis’ eyes were filled again with trouble. But Mathilda’s green eyes were wide open now. The long room was a real room, after all. Those people were real. She could see.

  She said, “I thought you were engaged to Rosaleen?”

  “I was.”

  “But … you’re married to Jane!”

  He gasped. “I’m not married to Jane. Her husband happens to be in Hawaii at the moment. That’s Buddy.” He began to laugh. “It’s ridiculous, but she’s my little old Aunt Jane. My father’s youngest sister, bringing up the rear of the family. Hasn’t anyone told you? I’m Francis Moynihan.”

  “Oh.” Mathilda played with her belt. She said, “I haven’t seen things or people the way they are. It’s hard to begin to see.”

  He said, “I know.” He said, “But you’ll be all right.” He said, “You need to … look around now. Now that he’s gone.”

  She turned her face away. Her heart—something—ached terribly.

  He said, “I realize how you see me. I don’t know how to explain to you or apologize. I dreamed up this thing before I knew you. In fact, I thought you were dead.”

  She murmured that she wasn’t.

  “I know,” he said. He got up again and ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t seem to know how to go on.

  She lifted her head. “But who is that Doctor White?”

  He corrected her gently, “Doctor Wright. Rosaleen’s father.”

  “Oh. Oh, then that’s why— He walks like Rosaleen.”

  “Does he? Yes, I guess he does.”

  Francis looked unhappily into the fire. “What can I do now about this marriage business?” he blurted. “You see, I haven’t told. Gahagen doesn’t know. The papers will say I stumbled on something suspicious after I got here. I didn’t want you dragged through all that—at least until I asked you what you wanted.”

  She said nothing. She thought, Is it up to me?

  “Tyl, what can I do now to fix things? Would you like to get a—fake divorce? That might be better for you. Better than to confess all this ridiculous masquerade. What do you think?”

  “Can we get a divorce if we’re not really married?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “Maybe we can fake something.”

  “Let’s not fake any more,” she murmured. “Do you think Doctor Wright would just quietly marry us—really, I mean?”

  “Tyl—” He half crossed the rug to her, but he stopped.

  Her green eyes were wide open and cool. “Then, you see, the divorce could follow.”

  “I see.” He went back to poke at the fire. He ran his fingers through his hair. He took a turn on the hearth rug. Then he looked at her and his brows flew up. “It’s a risk,” he warned.

  “Risk?” she repeated.

  “Terrible risk.”

  She got up on her elbow and looked across at him with a cu
rious intentness, as if she were, indeed, seeing him for the first time. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly.

  He came quickly to her and sat on the edge of her couch. He took her hands. “We’ll do that, if it’s what you think will be— Actually, it might be the sensible way. There’s no risk, Mathilda.”

  “You don’t mind?” she murmured.

  He said with a twist of his mouth, “Why, I guess the rest of my life is yours. There’s no one else I owe it to.”

  She shook her head, not satisfied.

  His eyes lit, but he hid the light. “We’ll do that, Tyl,” he murmured. “Then … we’ll see.”

  She nodded. He put his face down on her hands.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1946 by Charlotte Armstrong

  copyright renewed 1974 by Jack Lewi

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-4573-6

  This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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