“A shock? Why a shock?”
Hicks patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll understand when you meet her. Go ahead and change your dress — or wear that long dark coat you had on last night—”
“I’m not going to meet her,” Heather said, “unless you — unless something—”
“Right. So the chances are you’ll never have the pleasure. I’ll explain further on our way to town. Probably—”
The door swung open and R. I. Dundee barged in.
“Irving’s here. My lawyer,” he snapped.
“Coming,” Hicks said. He smiled at Heather. “See you later.”
He followed Dundee out.
Eighteen
Heather had scornfully repudiated Hicks’s suggestion that she might be afraid.
She would certainly have denied that it was fear that made her heart beat faster when she entered the kitchen and found that Mrs. Powell was still there, washing up, and a state policeman in uniform was standing by the corner cupboard, drinking coffee. Mrs. Powell glanced at her, saw the long dark coat, and asked:
“Going out?”
“Just for a breath of air,” Heather said.
From the corner of her eye she saw that the policeman was looking at her, and, though he said nothing, she was convinced that if she started for the door he would stop her. She hesitated, became acutely aware that she was acting unnaturally, and turned and made for the door to the dining room, where she had just come from after getting the extra car key. She stood there a moment, berating herself as a coward and a ninny, and then went on through to the side hall. Without a glance at a man on a chair by the door to the living room, she opened the outer door and was on the terrace, and felt her heart start thumping again at the sight of another state policeman standing in a ray of light from a window. That made her mad. She addressed him without regard for the fact that she was interrupting something he was saying to Ross Dundee:
“If anyone wants me you can call,” she said. “I’ll be around within hearing.”
“Very well, Miss Gladd,” he replied, in a tone not only acquiescent but positively sympathetic.
Lord, I’m a simple-minded fool, she thought as she rounded the shrubbery and stepped onto the lawn.
She had decided on her route: straight back to the vegetable garden, around to the rear of the garage, on through the birches to the upper corner of the orchard. In the vicinity of the house there was enough light to go by, but farther on she found that clouds were obscuring the stars and it was so completely black that she barked her shin on a wheelbarrow someone had left at the corner of the vegetable garden. She went more cautiously, skirting the berry patch and threading her way through the slender birches.
She was in the orchard, towards the middle of it, when, stopping by a tree to decide whether to bear more to the left she heard a noise behind her. Her head whirled around and her heart stopped.
An apple falling, she thought.
She could see no movement, nothing whatever.
This is one on you, my fine brave girl, she thought. You’re scared stiff. An apple falling.
She went on, bearing to the left, walked faster, tripped on something and recovered her balance without falling. Still she went faster, walking straight into a low-hanging limb. Had someone enlarged the darned orchard? No, at last, here was the stone fence. She climbed over, deciding that she wasn’t so scared after all since she was carefully avoiding the poison ivy, and started across the meadow. Soon she came to the lane and turned right on it; and, stopping for a look to the rear, saw something moving.
A cow. No. There were never any cows in here; they mooed. It continued to move; it was coming closer! now she could hear it. Her legs were running, she was running. No, she wasn’t, she was standing still. She made her legs stop running...
A voice said, “It’s me. Ross Dundee.”
She was stunned, speechless with rage.
“If you call this around within hearing,” the voice said, from a face now near enough to be a blotch in the darkness.
“You... you—” Heather choked with fury.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you. I didn’t—”
“I’m not an utter coward,” she said contemptuously. “Will you let me alone? Will you stop following me around?”
“Yes. I will.” The face was near enough now so that it was a face. “I’ll stop following you around when you’re back inside the house. But I want to know where you got the fantastic idea that I had a sonograph plate of your sister’s voice.”
“I’m not going back. I’m never going inside that house again.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“You’re leaving like this? At night? Walking? Without your things? Running away? No. You’re not. By God, if I have to carry you—”
“You try carrying me! You try! I’m walking to the road. I’m walking there now. You touch me!”
She turned and walked, not precipitately, with sufficient care on the ridge between the ruts of the lane. Without looking back she followed the lane to the bars in the fence gap, straddled the lower bar to get through, bumped into the rear of the car that was parked there, went around to the front door, and climbed in behind the steering wheel. As she banged the door shut the opposite one opened, and Ross Dundee was there beside her.
She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly, that if she wasn’t terribly careful and terribly strong she would cry. She might anyway. She wanted to order him to get out, in a tone of calm and concentrated disdain, but she didn’t dare to try to speak. In a moment she would...
He said, incredibly, “This car happens to be the property of R. I. Dundee and Company.”
That fixed her. There was no longer any necessity for crying.
“I suppose,” she said, in precisely the tone which only a moment before had seemed out of the question, “I can’t get rid of you without telling you what I am going to do. Mr. Hicks drove this car here. Since he is working for your father, I presume he is using the car with his permission. I am going to wait here for him and we are going to drive to New York.”
“You and Hicks?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know him! What do you know about him? Listen, for God’s sake—”
“I’m not going to listen. About that sonograph plate, I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t understand about it and I don’t expect you to tell me. I don’t understand anything about all this awful horrible business. If I stayed in that house another night, sitting there and lying there not understanding anything, I’d go crazy. I think Mr. Hicks understands it, or he’s going to. I don’t think that dreadful district attorney would ever find out anything. Whether anybody finds out anything or not, I can’t stay there and I’m not going to, and I won’t talk about it. Now you can go back to the house and tell the police, and they can come and get me. I’ll be right here.”
Heather was looking, not at Ross, but straight ahead through the windshield into the darkness. He was gazing at her profile. He told it:
“That’s a fine, noble, generous thing to say. Me telling the police. You have no right to say a thing like that, even to me.”
“You can tell them if you want to.”
“Thanks. I don’t want to. Anyway, I can’t, because I won’t be seeing them. I’ll be going to New York with you and Hicks.”
“You will not!”
“I will. But I’ll settle that with Hicks. You said you won’t talk about all this awful business, and I don’t expect you to, but I’ve got to ask you one question and I hope you’ll answer it. About that sonograph plate. Do you mean the one that was in with those other unmarked plates?”