“Dead!” Danborn exclaimed. “But... but how? What—”
She was turned on her side and Gregory saw the clotted stain on her nightgown. It was a dark brown in color, and it had spread slowly and touched the sheets under her. There was a narrow slit in the cloth of the gown just over her heart.
“You’d better call the police,” Gregory said slowly. “She was murdered.”
Danborn made a choking noise in his throat. His grayish face was suddenly waxen, and his eyes stared wildly at Gregory.
“You— No! It can’t be! You’re mad!”
“I’m sorry,” said Gregory, “but you’d better call the police. Mrs. Van Tellen has been stabbed.”
“Oh, good God!” Danborn said, and wavered a little. “Stabbed! Somebody—” He turned and walked toward the door, his feet dragging leadenly.
Gregory listened to the clump of his feet going down the stairs, and then he heard a slight rustling noise close to him and the indrawn gasp of a breath. He whirled around. In two long steps he reached the painted screen that stood in the opposite corner of the room.
He struck it with his clenched fist, and the screen fell with a slashing rattle of sound. Then he was staring at a girl who was crouched back in the angle of the wall. Gregory could feel the blood pumping hard in his throat, and he released his breath in a little sigh.
“Well?” he said evenly.
She was small, only a little over five feet tall, and slender. She wore a white, sleeveless house dress. Her features were clean-cut, delicately even. They were distorted with terror now, and her white lips moved soundlessly.
“What are you doing here?” Gregory asked.
Her lips moved again, and the words came, half incoherent: “You said — she was dead?”
“Yes,” said Gregory.
Her eyes were a wide, smooth brown, and now they glazed suddenly with tears. She put her hands up over them. She sobbed, quiet little choking sounds of agony.
“She was the only person who was ever kind to me.”
“Who are you?” Gregory asked, more gently.
“Anne Bentley. I am — was Mrs. Van Tellen’s companion.”
“Why were you hiding here?”
She looked up at him slowly. “I was watching. I was afraid for her.”
“Afraid?” Gregory repeated. “Why?”
She swallowed and then shook her head mutely.
“Who were you afraid of?” Gregory asked.
“You,” said Anne Bentley.
The answer so astounded Gregory that for a second he was speechless. “Of me?” he said, recovering himself. “Me? Why?”
“I heard they were going to get a doctor for her. I was afraid — they’ve been torturing her... I thought perhaps you were part of it, too. I wasn’t going to let you hurt her! I won’t stand for it any more! I won’t! She’ll not suffer—”
“No,” said Gregory. “Never any more.”
She stared at him. “No,” she said numbly. “She’s dead, isn’t she? She can’t suffer any more now. She’s dead.”
“Who was making her suffer?” Gregory inquired.
She clenched her fists. “They did everything they could to make her feel badly. Nasty, mean little things. They even stole her dog from her. And then, this!”
“Who?” Gregory said softly.
There was a shout downstairs and the rumbling pound of feet running along the hall. The sound seemed to bring the girl back to herself with a violent jerk.
“You said — stabbed?”
“Yes,” Gregory said. “She was stabbed.”
“I’ve got to get out! They can’t find me here! They’ll say that I—”
“Did you?” said Gregory.
She stared at him with dazed unbelief.
“Did you murder her?” said Gregory.
“No. No, no, no! You can’t believe that!”
“How long were you here?”
“A half hour. I thought she was asleep. I came in very quietly, tiptoed behind this screen.”
Gregory sighed. “She’s been dead more than an hour. But I’m afraid you’re going to have trouble making the police believe your story.”
“Police,” she said, and her voice thickened on the word. “They mustn’t know. You can’t tell them! You can’t!”
“Why not?” said Gregory. “You haven’t anything to fear if you are innocent.”
“I can’t face them! Don’t you understand that? If they know I was here — they won’t stop for questions.”
Feet sounded on the stairs, climbing at a run.
Anne Bentley’s face was a white twisted mask. “Let me go! Please! I’ll explain, I’ll tell you, but not now! I can’t!”
Gregory stared at her for a dragging second. “All right,” he said suddenly, stepping back. “I won’t say anything if you meet me in a moment in that sunken rose garden at the side of the house and explain everything you’ve said. If you don’t—”
“I’ll be there! I can explain. But not now, not to the police.”
She was gone, running lightly across the room. She went through a door at the side, and it closed softly after her.
Gregory picked up the screen and set it back in its place just as Danborn came back into the bedroom, followed by Mr. Van Tellen, weaving loosely.
“I called the police,” Danborn said to Gregory. “You’re sure there’s nothing to do? Nothing to help her?”
“Nothing,” Gregory said. “She’s thoroughly dead.”
Van Tellen sat down on the floor and leaned his back against the wall. “Aggie dead,” he said thickly. “My, my. Hard to believe. Thought the old girl would outlive me seventy years. My, my.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I was very fond of her, too. Very sad. My, my.” He began to hum slowly and softly to himself.
“There’s the heir,” Danborn said bitterly. “She didn’t have any blood relations. He’ll get all her money. Nice to think about, isn’t it?”
Van Tellen opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is. Now that you mention it.” He began to hum again in a low, minor key.
Gray of dusk was changing into black of night as Gregory came down the steep stone steps into the sunken garden. It was a maze of narrow walks, winding and criss-crossing around clumps of shrubbery and flowers that had lost all their color and beauty in the darkness and were only weird-shaped masses of shadow.
Gregory wondered absently if he had made a mistake about the girl, Anne Bentley. He had told no one of her presence in the bedroom. Still, there was time for that, when the police arrived. If she didn’t explain...
But he thought she would. Gregory had seen a great deal of human emotion, a great many people twisted and tortured by feelings that went down deeper than scalpel could probe. He was very rarely deceived. Anne Bentley’s fear was not the fear of a criminal.
He strolled down one of the narrow paths, circled around its crooked length, back to the steps again. He stood there for a moment with the breeze blowing the rich, soft scent of the flowers across his face.
A foot made a quick, furtive scuffling noise on the walk behind him. Gregory had started to turn, and a man’s voice said:
“Don’t. Stand still.”
Gregory’s thin body stiffened. The round, cold ring of a gun muzzle touched the back of his neck. He could hear the light, shallow sound of the man’s breathing just behind him. He could feel the light tremor in the steel of the gun muzzle, and he knew the man’s hand was trembling.
“Walk ahead of me,” the man said. The words were forced out in little spurts between the quick breaths. “Around that path to your right.”
“Why?” said Gregory.
The man’s voice went up a tone in jittery tenseness. “Walk! You hear me? Walk!” His nerves were screwed up tight, quivering. Gregory could hear the thin sound of hysteria creeping into the words, and he knew, the man would shoot in another split second.