'It is that, mum, and you do be looking like a May morning yourself.'
The little maid helped Miranda into a rose mousseline bed jacket, thinking, Glory be that things had been better of late. The Master'd had none of his real wicked fits, had mostly been acting as pleasant and proper as ever did Squire O'Brien at home. And now with him away 'twas better yet.
'And how's your Hans, Peggy?' asked Miranda, smiling mischievously and wishing well to all the world. 'Would you like the evening off to see him?'
Peggy giggled and tossed her head. 'I see enough of him as it is. The great lout forever under me feet in the kitchen and the servants' hall. Him and his sheep's eyes. 'Tis hoping to be footman here, he is.'
'Is he?' asked Miranda, surprised. 'But I thought he was a blacksmith.'
'And a good one, mum.' Peggy hesitated. 'It's because of me he wants to come into service here. He knows I'll never leave you, so he's been thinking—maybe—'
'Of course,' said Miranda, putting down her teacup. 'I've been very stupid and selfish. Do you really love him, Peggy? Do you think he'll make you happy?'
The girl nodded. Her bright Irish eyes softened. 'He's willing to turn Catholic for me, mum. And he's so good. He doesn't—he's never said a word about—about my leg.' She turned and shook out Miranda's ruffled morning gown.
'You shall have a wedding in June, dear,' said Miranda quickly. 'A beautiful one. We'll get a priest from Hudson, or New York if necessary. And your wedding dress—white, of course. White India muslin. I've a length put away in the attic somewhere.'
'Oh, missis dear!' cried Peggy, laughing. 'White's only for gentry; 'twouldn't be proper for the likes of me.'
'Of course it would! It's the happiest color for brides.' She paused, remembering a girl in green silk, the sound of rain beating on the windows. Four years ago. Four centuries.
She jumped from the bed, thrusting her slender feet into the swansdown slippers which Peggy held for her. 'I'll hurry and dress. We'll go up and find the muslin. I know just how it should be made. Bodice tight, skirt very full but no hoop. Lace at the neck. I've a point de Venise collar in the lace box.'
Peggy twinkled affectionately. You couldn't make a white peacock out of a little mud hen with a twisted leg, she thought, but she held her peace. It was good to see the missis all bright and lively, that worried look gone from her.
After breakfast they went up to the attic together. This top floor covered the entire house, and the south wing was as familiar to Peggy as the back of her hand, for it housed the servants and one of the tiny rooms was Peggy's.
But they went through a green baize door into the seldom entered storage section, which contained a maze of unfinished cubicles and a raftered loft.
They found the lace box without difficulty, but not the length of India muslin. Miranda had bought it during that first fall of her marriage, intending to make it up later for the baby. It must have been stored with other pathetic remnants of that brief and tragic period. Mrs. MacNab had attended to all that and Miranda had never had the courage to investigate.
She now found that there was amongst all the boxes and chests and trunks no trace of the tiny being upon whose coming had been lavished so much hope. Not even the cradle could they find anywhere.
It must have been Nicholas' orders, thought Miranda with certainty. His hurt had been so deep that he had banished from his house every reminder of the baby as he had banished them from his consciousness.
Her eyes filled with tears. Oh, why do I ever doubt him, she thought, just because he is a man and hides his tenderness? Swept by a sudden warmth of pity for her husband, she sank down on a broken chair in a corner of the loft.
When he came back she would redouble her devotion. So often in the past she had been wanting in understanding, had distorted incidents. The shooting at Astor Place—what could have been more natural to any proud and brave man? He had simply avenged an insult and at the same time he had been protecting her. And the opium—how grossly she had exaggerated that danger! Many a man took liquor in excess occasionally and wives thought little of it. Why, then, had she been so terrified by those small silver pipes? And after all, it had not happened again.
So thought Miranda, freed from the pressure of the disturbing presence and finding it therefore easy to believe what her heart told her that she must believe.
It was then that she saw the mattress. Peggy was busy in one of the small storage rooms, repacking a trunk which they had ransacked, and Miranda sat alone amongst a welter of discarded furniture.
A sunbeam struck through cobwebs in the eastern dormer and shed its dusty light directly on an enormous rolled mattress which stood upended against a painted Kas. There was something familiar about the Kas, she had seen those pealing roses and garlands before. She leaned forward idly and realized with a shock of distaste that it was the cupboard which used to stand in Johanna's room. All the furniture in this corner she saw had been Johanna's. There was the chipped table with something sticky still adhering to its veneered surface. And this mattress had come from the Van Ryn bed.
She rose abruptly and turned to go when a peculiarity about the mattress stopped her. Years of mice and damp had mouldered the ticking, which had split in a dozen places. From one of these a dark object protruded. She touched it gingerly and drawing it out found that it was a leather-bound book. She opened it and saw some pages of writing with the ink faded to brown. Puzzled she riffled the pages, and on the last one which contained writing a sentence leaped at her.
'And why does he bring me flowers, who never does—the pink oleander? I'm in mortal fear, but why should I be? Must be I'm feverish with my cold. Ever since that girl came—
'He's called a doctor for me, yet I'm not really ill. Not our own doctor, the new one—'
There was a space, and farther down the last entry:
I've been so foolish. Nicholas was here and kind. He cut the tipsy cake and sprinkled nutmeg on it for me, the way he used to do when we were first married. He tells me the girl is going in a few days. I'm so glad. It will be all right now—'
There were more pages, but they were blank.
The diary slipped from Miranda's fingers and fell to the floor. She stood motionless staring down at it. After a moment she picked it up and put it in the pocket of the dimity apron with which she had protected her dress from the dust. She turned and walked out of the loft, unheeding Peggy's astonished call.
She walked down the two flights of stairs and out of the house. She cut across the gardens, through the formal beds of peonies and white iris, the banked lilies-of-the-valley which clustered about a miniature waterfall. She made for the south bluff beside the river where a grove of hemlocks had been untouched by Nicholas' improvements and she flung herself full length upon the needles. A gentle wind soughed through the thick-set branches above her head, and from far below came the murmurous lapping of the water.
She drew the diary from her pocket and opening it read the last page again, quickly. See—she told herself, there's nothing here. It means nothing. It's just that Johanna too sometimes found him hard to understand. Then he was kind to her. She says so.
Again she dragged her eyes from that sentence. 'He says the girl is going in a few days.' How had Nicholas known that she would be leaving Dragonwyck? There had been no such plan. It was because of Johanna's death—
'No,' she said out loud. 'I must be calm. I must think clearly.' Not half an hour ago in the attic she had resolved to avoid distortion and exaggeration.
It was for some other reason of his own, of course, that Nicholas had decided she must leave Dragonwyck, perhaps simply to please Johanna. And this draught, which would have been unbearable then, now seemed to her inexpressibly comforting.
She opened the book again and read the early passages. They were few and incoherent, but written in a neat, pretty writing that was so incongruous as having belonged to Johanna. As she read, Miranda's throat grew dry, for here was the evidence of a dumb and despairing
misery.
'I think he hates me since that girl came. I know he never loved me as I did him, but we used to be happy. If I could only have a son—God help me, why does it have to be like this—'
And another entry.
'I finished the monograms on two of his handkerchiefs today and gave them to him. He said I'd better let Miranda finish the rest. The minx preened herself and smiled. Would to God she'd never come. She's always between us.'
Miranda raised her head. She remembered that speech of Nicholas', she remembered her own delight in it; and had she indeed preened herself, glorying in the petty triumph? She had been so contemptuous of those botched monograms, so pleased with the exquisite ones she herself had embroidered to finish the set. How pitilessly she had thrust home every small advantage in the secret struggle which the two women had had!
Once more she turned to the last page. Why does he bring me flowers, who never does?' There was nothing in these words, nothing on the page, and yet this time as she read them it was as though cold black waters were seeping upward toward her heart.
There was only one person who could reassure her, could help her get a true perspective. Only one who knew the circumstances.
She was seized suddenly with a feverish desire for action. She ran to the stables and told the astonished coachman that he must drive her to Hudson at once. She sent a groom flying to the house for a cape and harried the stable boys until a horse was harnessed to the open landaulet.
They made the trip to town in less than two hours, and all the way Miranda sat staring down the road ahead, the diary clasped tight in her hand beneath the cape.
Doctor Turner was in, but he was eating dinner, said old Rillah repressively, eyeing Miranda's informal attire with disfavor. They was mighty queer white trash often came to Doctor's office, but this one was as wild-eyed and fly-away-looking as any of 'em.
'Call him, please,' said Miranda. 'I must see him at once. Tell him it's Mrs. Van Ryn.'
That was different. Rillah grinned apologetically and bobbed her grizzled head, indicating a chair.
Jeff came out of his little dining-room, still chewing, the napkin in his hand. 'My dear girl. I'm delighted to see you, but I hope mere's nothing seriously wrong.'
'I don't know. I've got to see you alone.'
He nodded, and ushered her into the surgery, closing the door behind them.
She dropped her cloak on a chair, opened the diary at the last page and held it out to him.
'Nicholas is in New York. I found this today in the attic. It was hidden in a slit in the mattress, the old one that Johanna had. It's her diary. I want to know what you drink of it.'
Jeff looked at her set face and down at the book in her hand. A chill went over him, and a premonition.
He read the diary's last page and sank slowly down in the chair behind the desk. 'My God,' he said at last, very low. 'The oleander!' He read the entry again.
'What do you mean?' said Miranda sharply.
Jeff got up and went to his new bookcase. In it were over a hundred books he had not owned five years ago. He opened to the herbal section in Lunt's Toxicology.'
He turned his back on Miranda, carried the book to the window. 'Nerium Oleander. Family Apocynaceae. A glucoside somewhat similar in its action to digitalis, but possessed of greater toxicity. The ingestion of three or four leaves has been known to kill cattle. Blossoms and bark equally poisonous.'
And at the bottom of the paragraph was the irrefutable list of symptoms. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he saw flung up at him in the small clear type the exact clinical picture of Johanna's illness.
'Vomiting and colic. Giddiness. Slow and irregular heart action. Marked mydriasis of the pupils. Bloody flux. Respiratory paralysis. Death. Urine usually normal in color and appearance. May be difficult to diagnose, easily confused with any other acute gastritis.'
He shut the 'Toxicology' and put it back in the bookcase.
'What is it, Jeff?' whispered Miranda. 'What were you reading?' She had not moved since she had handed him the diary.
He sat down again behind the desk, instinctively trying for calm in this familiar position where he had solved so many problems. But there was no precedent for this.
She leaned forward, pressing her hands on the desk; her eyes, grown dark as the onyx brooch on her breast, regarded him steadily.
'Tell me what you're thinking, Jeff.'
He had not been going to tell her; his first instinct had been to reassure her quickly and send her away, until he could find his own bearings and decide what to do. He changed his mind as he lifted his head and met her eyes.
'I think,' he spoke slowly, careful to exclude from his voice the slightest trace of emotion, 'that in some way, by means of the oleander which he brought to her room, Nicholas murdered Johanna.'
She made a muffled sound. He ran to her side. She shook her head, pushing away his supporting arm. She walked from him and sat down on the small Windsor chair reserved for patients.
He took a bottle of ammonia spirits from his cabinet, poured a stiff dose into a glass of water.
'Drink this,' he commanded. 'I had to tell you, Miranda. If it were possible for me to spare you this—this horrible thing —I would. I've no proof. But I'm sure. And for your own safety, you must believe me.'
He began to pace the strip of drugget beside the desk.
For her own safety—that was the core of fear which he had discovered simultaneously with his acceptance of the fact of murder. If Nicholas had once scaled the barrier which separated normal humanity from the outlaws, there was nothing to prevent his doing it again.
Jeff turned and knelt down beside her, taking her limp hand in his. 'Miranda, you must never go back to Nicholas. I know this is a terrible shock and to you must seem unbelievable. I wouldn't believe it either except that I had a suspicion long ago at the time of—of the death. I was a fool, a criminal fool, not to have investigated more than I did. But I had nothing but a hunch to go on, and I couldn't find any trace of the common poisons, and I didn't know half as much as I thought I did.'
He spoke so as to give het time to recover and to collect himself. Both his nature and his training moved him to face reality squarely, no matter how intolerable that reality might be. She too must face it. She must emerge from this numb white silence and be convinced. Only too well he knew that he must battle her insensate loyalty for the man she had worshiped.
He began to speak quietly in a casual voice, trying to reconstruct objectively. 'He must have planned it ahead for a long time. I believe he waited until Johanna developed some trivial illness so that a doctor might be on hand. It was very clever.' Jeff paused to master a wave of bitter humiliation. Nicholas had very neatly used him as a cat's-paw. How shrewd to have chosen a young, inexperienced doctor, one too who was known to be a political enemy so that there was even less chance of suspicion in the countryside!
'It was,' he went on evenly, 'very like him to use flowers as an instrument of death. It would appeal to his fastidiousness. It happened, of course, when he was alone with her that night. And the tipsy cake, as I did suspect, must have been the agent. But how?' He thought a minute. 'The silver nutmeg mill, of course. He ground the leaves.'
He thought of Nicholas' peculiar remark: 'Her foul gluttony has killed her.' It had doubtless accorded with the man's sense of irony that Johanna's unhealthy passion for the cake had accomplished her death.
All too vividly Jeff now remembered the small green particles which had clung to the sticky slice he had examined. He had thought that they were angelica or citron. The rum with which the cake was saturated would have disguised any flavor.
'She was befuddled with her cold,' he said aloud. 'She wouldn't have noticed what he was doing with the mill.'
And at last Miranda stirred. 'What difference does it make how it was done?' she said in a dull, flat voice.
'It's only that you must believe the truth—to know,' he answered gently.
She raised h
er head and her lips parted in a blind and terrifying little smile. 'I think I've always known,' she said.
Jeff made an involuntary sound. She shook her head.
'No, not in the way you mean, not consciously. But in the dark, secret part of my soul where I never dared look.'
'Rubbish!' cried Jeff, made violent by relief. 'This is morbid, Miranda. Let's try to be sensible and face together what must be done. We must keep our heads and use them.'
She was not listening. She lowered her eyes and stared at the gold band on her left hand. 'I've been married four years to a murderer,' she said in the dull, thin voice. 'Enjoying the results of that murder.'
'You couldn't help it. You didn't know,' he said sharply.
'If it hadn't been for me, it wouldn't have happened,' she went on without listening to him. 'It was the weakness in me touched off the evil in him. Like flint and steel. Zélie knew, but I wouldn't listen.'
'Zélie?' repeated Jeff, bewildered. You mean that old half-breed servant of the Van Ryns'? But she was senile, her wits were gone, and whatever she knew or didn't know has nothing to do with you.'
He put his hands on her shoulders. 'Listen, my dearest girl. You must be brave and strong. You had nothing to do with Johanna's death. At worst you may have been the innocent cause, but you were innocent, and you must rid yourself of these morbid feelings of guilt. We can't change the past, but the future is clear. The murder must be exposed.'
She moistened her lips. You can't, Jeff. You said yourself there was no proof. No one would believe you.'
He frowned, releasing her shoulders. For a moment he quailed before the prospect of trying to indict Nicholas. Who, indeed, would take the word of a country doctor against that of the powerful patroon? Jeff would have to make a hash of his own reputation, admit to having been a dupe. There would first be the struggle to get an order for exhuming the body, and even then, he simply did not know whether analyzable traces of this particular poison would remain for so long in the viscera. This, of course, he could find out. And he thought with relief of Doctor Francis. The old man would help him. But suppose there were no traces. Then there was no proof at all. Nothing but a few ambiguous entries in a diary, and Jeff knew enough of the law to realize what Nicholas' counsel would make of those. There was, however—Magda. He suddenly remembered Johanna's embittered housekeeper. As he looked back on it now he felt certain that the woman had had suspicions too She had seen Nicholas give his wife the tipsy cake Perhaps she could be found and brought to testify.