Chapter 1
She was a writer of fiction, so naturally the scene in the garden fascinated her. And made her feel so terribly guilty for watching.
Anna Simms wrote mysteries, but that didn't mean she didn't harbor a secret desire to write a mad love scene now and then. As a matter-of-fact she did, but these little sexy tidbits never saw her publisher's desk.
At the moment, Anna was mesmerized.
The two lovers she watched from her bedroom window were at the point of heavily breathing "ahhs" and "hramms" as their bodies moved in a slow and rhythmic dance against the backdrop of the evening sky.
Exciting, true, but the scene also saddened Anna. She could easily identify the pair, and it pained her to realize that here were two people she knew, becoming involved in an illicit relationship that certainly could result in nothing but trouble for everyone.
And then the two figures were gone, running off somewhere. Dead silence.
She strained her eyes against the night's darkness.
Anna watched a thin stream of blue smoke ascend without haste from the long throat of a tiger lily. Michela, then, had escaped also. She was not, however, on the long veranda, for the clear, broadening light of the rising moon revealed it wide and empty, and nothing moved against the silvered lawn which sloped gently toward the pine wood.
Anna listened a moment for the tap of Michela's heels, did not hear it or any other intrusive sound, and then pushed aside the bowl of lilies on the low window seat, let the velvet curtains fall behind her, and seated herself in the little niche thus formed. It was restful and soothing to be thus shut away from the house with its subtly warring elements and to make herself part of the silent night beyond the open windows.
A pity, thought Anna, to leave. But after tonight she could not stay. After all, a guest, any guest, ought to have sense enough to leave when a situation develops in the family of her hostess. The thin trail of smoke from the lily caught Anna's glance again and she wished Michela wouldn't amuse herself by putting cigarette ends in flowers.
A faint drift of voices came from somewhere, and Anna shrank deeper into herself and into the tranquil night. It had been an unpleasant dinner, and there would still be an hour or so before she could gracefully extricate herself and escape again. Nice of Christabel to give her the guest house-the small green cottage across the terrace at the other side of the house, through the hedge and up the winding green path. Cristabel Frame was a perfect hostess, and Anna had a week of utter rest and contentment.
But then Randy, Christabel's young brother, had returned.
And immediately Joe Bromfel and his wife Michela, guests also, had arrived, and with them something that had destroyed all comfort. The old house of the Frames, with its gracious pillars and long windows and generous dim spaces, was exactly the same-the lazy Southern air, the misty blue hills, the quiet pine woods, and the boxed paths through the flowers-none of it had actually changed. But it was, nonetheless, a different place.
A voice beyond the green velvet curtains called impatiently: "Michela-Michela!"
It was Randy Frame. Anna did not move, and she was sure that the sweeping velvet curtains hid even her silver toes. He was probably at the door of the library, and she could see, without looking, his red hair, lithe young body, and impatient, thin face. Impatient for Michela. Idiot, oh, idiot, thought Anna. Can't you see what you are doing to Christabel?
His feet made quick sounds upon the parquet floor of the hall and were gone, and Anna herself made a sharply impatient movement. Because the Frame men had been red-haired, gallant, quick-tempered, reckless, and (added Anna to the sage) abysmally stupid and selfish, Randy had accepted the mold without question. A few words from the dinner conversation floated back into her memory. They'd been talking of fox hunting-a safe enough topic, one would have thought, in the Carolina hills. But talk had veered-through Michela, was it?-to a stableman who had been shot by one of the Frames and killed. It had happened a long time ago, had been all but forgotten, and had nothing at all to do with the present generation of Frames. But Christabel said hurriedly it had been an accident; dreadful. She had looked white. And Randy had laughed and said the Frames shot first and inquired afterwards and that there was always a revolver in the top buffet drawer.
"Here she is, " said a voice. The curtains were pulled suddenly backward, and Randy, a little flushed, stood there. His face fell as he discovered Anna's fair, smooth hair and thin lace gown. "Oh " he said. "I thought you were Michela."
Others were trailing in from the hall, and a polite hour or so must be faced. Queer how suddenly and inexplicably things had become tight and strained and unpleasant!
Randy had turned away and vanished without more words, and Tryon Welles, strolling across the room with Christabel, was looking at Anna and smiling affably.
"Anna Simms," he said. "Watching the moonlight, quietly planning murder." He shook his head and turned to Christabel. "I simply don't believe you, Christabel. If this young woman writes anything, which I doubt, it's gentle little poems about roses and moonlight."
Christabel smiled faintly and sat down. Mars, his black face shining, was bringing in the coffee tray. In the doorway Joe Bromfel, dark and bulky and hot-looking in his dinner coat, lingered a moment to glance along the hall and then came into the room.
"If Anna writes poems," said Christabel lightly, "it is her secret. You are quite wrong, Tryon. She writes-" Christabel's silver voice hesitated. Her slender hands were searching, hovering rather blindly over the tray, the large amethyst on one white finger full of trembling purple lights. It was a barely perceptible second before she took a fragile old cup and began to pour from the tall silver coffee pot. "She writes murders," said Christabel steadily. "Lovely, grisly one, with sensible solutions. Sugar, Tryon? I've forgotten."
"One. But isn't that for Miss Anna?"
Tryon Welles was still smiling. He, the latest arrival, was a neat gray man with tight eyes, pink cheeks, and an affable manner. The only obvious thing about him was a rather finicky regard for color-he wore gray tweed with exactly the right shades of green-green tie, green shirt, a cautious green stripe in gray socks. He had reached the house on the heels of his telephoned message from town, saying he had to talk business with Christabel, and he had not had time to dress before dinner.
"Coffee, Joe?" asked Christabel. She was very deft with the delicate china. Very deft and very graceful, and Anna could not imagine how she knew that-Christabel's hands were shaking.
Joe Bromfel stirred, turned his heavy dark face toward the hall again, saw no one, and took coffee from Christabel's lovely hand. Christabel avoided looking directly into his face, as, Anna had noticed, she frequently did.
"A sensible solution," Tryon Welles was saying thoughtfully. "Do murders have sensible solutions?"
His question hung in the air. Christabel did not reply, and Joe Bromfel did not appear to hear it. Anna said: "They must have. After all, people don't murder just-well, just to murder."
"Just for the fun of it, you mean?" said Tryon, tasting his coffee. "No, I suppose not. Well, at any rate," he went on, "it's nice to know your interest in murder is not a practical one."
He probably thought he was making light and pleasant conversation, reflected Anna. Strange that he did not know that every time he said the word "murder" it fell like a heavy stone in that silent room. She was about to wrench the conversation to another channel when Michela and Randy entered from the hall: Randy was laughing and Michela was smiling.
At the sound of Randy's laugh, Joe Bromfel twisted bulkily around to watch their approach, and, except for Randy's laugh, it was entirely silent in the long book-lined room. Anna watched too. Randy was holding Michela's hand, swinging it as if to suggest a kind of rank camaraderie. Probably, thought Anna, he's been kissing her out in the darkness of the garden. Holding her very tight.
Michela's eyelids were white and heavy over unexpectedly shallow dark eyes. Her straight black hair was parted in the middle and pulled severely backward to a knot on her rather fat white neck. Her mouth was deeply crimson. She had been born, Anna knew, in rural New England, christened Michela by a romantic mother, and had striven to live up to the name ever since. Or down, thought Anna tersely, and wished she could take Randy by his large, outstanding ears and shake him.
Michela had turned toward a chair and her bare back presented itself to Anna; she saw the thin red line with an angle that a man's cuff pressing into the creamy flesh had made. It was unmistakable. Joe Bromfel had seen it too. He couldn't have helped seeing it. Anna looked into her coffee cup and wished that Joe Bromfel hadn't seen the imprint of Randy's cuff, and then wondered why she wished it so fervently.
"Coffee, Michela?" said Christabel, and something in her voice was more, all at once, than Anna could endure. She rose and said rather breathlessly: "Christabel darling, do you mind-I have some writing to do-"
"Of course." Christabel hesitated. "But wait-I'll go along with you to the cottage."
"Don't let us keep you, Christabel," said Michela lazily.
Christabel turned to Tryon Welles and neatly forestalled a motion on his part to accompany her and Anna.
"I won't be long, Tryon," she said definitely. "When I come back-we'll talk."
A clear little picture etched itself on Anna's mind: the long, lovely room, the mellow little areas of light under lamps here and there, one falling directly upon the chair she had just left, the pools of shadows surrounding them; Michela's yellow satin, and Randy's red head and slim black shoulders; Joe, a heavy, silent figure, watching them broodingly; Tryon Welles, neat and gray and affable, and Christabel with her gleaming red head held high on her slender neck, walking lightly and gracefully amid soft mauve chiffons. Halfway across the room she paused to accept a cigarette from Tryon and to bend to the small flare of a lighter he held for her, and the amethyst on her finger caught the flickering light and shone.
Then Anna and Christabel had crossed the empty flagstone veranda and turned toward the terrace.
Their slippered feet made no sound upon the velvet grass. Above the lily pool the flower fragrances were sweet and heavy on the night air.
"Did you hear the bullfrog last night?" asked Christabel. "He seems to have taken a permanent residence in the pool. I don't know what to do about him. Randy says he'll shoot him, but I don't want that. He is a nuisance of course, bellowing away half the night. But after all, even bullfrogs have a right to live."
"Christabel," said Anna, trying not to be abrupt, "I must go soon. I have work to do-"
Christabel stopped and turned to face her. They were at the gap in the laurel hedge where a path began and wound upward to the cottage.
"Don't make excuses, Anna honey," she said gently. "Is it the Bromfels?"
A sound checked Anna's reply-an unexpectedly eerie sound like a wail. It rose and swelled amid the moonlit hills. Anna gasped and Christabel said quickly, though with a catch in her voice: "It's only the dogs howling at the moon."
"They are not," Anna said, "exactly cheerful. It emphasizes-" She checked herself abruptly on the verge of saying that it emphasized their isolation.
Christabel had turned in at the path. It was darker there, and her cigarette made a tiny red glow. "If Michela drops another cigarette into a flower I'll kill her," said Christabel quietly.
"What-"
"I said I'd kill her," said Christabel. "I won't, of course. But she-oh, you've seen how things are, Anna. You can't have failed to see. She took Joe-years ago. Now she's taking Randy."