Free The Late Clara Beame by Taylor Caldwell Page B

is.”
    “Henry, there’s something I’ve got to tell you about Chicago.”
    He sat very still for a moment. “I know. You told me about going into Sam’s room, and I told you not to mention it to the police. What good would it have done, except to make them ask embarrassing questions? The whole story would have sounded foolish. Believe me, dear, I know. I’m a lawyer. You didn’t murder Sam by any chance, did you?”
    His wife did not giggle as he expected. Instead, she told him of the sounds she had heard, and then he was quiet again, pondering what she had said. “But it could have been David — you said you bumped into him. Alice was asleep in the big bedroom, until she saw you coming out of Sam’s room. You heard the voices, or whatever, when you were still in Alice’s bedroom, and another sound. Did it ever occur to you, dear,” he added seriously, “that you might have heard poor Sam, who had finally made up his mind, in the night, to kill himself?”
    Laura shuddered. “You think it was Sam I heard? But why should I have heard David twice in the hall? Before I got up, and then a little while afterwards when I met him as I came out of the bathroom?”
    “You know,” her husband told her, “it could have been me. I couldn’t get to sleep, so I sat up on that damned hard couch and smoked half a cigarette. Then, feeling restless, I walked around a little, wishing I were home. I went as far as that hall leading down to the bathroom.”
    Laura sighed. “That explains it, then. Everything sounds queer in the night.”
    Laura dressed hurriedly, for the little stove did not give off much heat. She chose a thick tweed skirt and a sweater, brushed her hair and touched her pale lips with lipstick. “Why did it have to be so stormy, darling? If it were nice, David and Alice would be walking all over the country and we — ”
    “Could have had a little time to ourselves.”
    Hand in hand, they walked downstairs, Henry carrying the stove. The hall was flickering with candlelight. Henry took the stove into the dining room, which was in total darkness, and Laura waited for him to return. Everything seemed to have been explained. But still, there had been something, there still was something, that did not quite fit all the smooth explanations. She knew eventually she would remember what it was. Henry came into the hall. “Now, smile; that’s my girl.”
    The men stood up when Laura came in, smiling with determined brightness.
    “Why doesn’t one of you give Laura a drink,” Alice suggested. “She needs it.”
    “I will,” David offered. “Martini?” John Carr smiled at Laura and her spirits rose. The nightmare was over.
    And when John walked with her to the tree, she was vivacious in telling him the story of many of the ornaments. Alice listened, remembering again bitterly that all this was Laura’s now. She glanced up to see that John had returned to the fireplace and was watching her seriously. There was something about his expression that touched her. It was as though he knew her thoughts.
    No one mentioned the shooting episode at dinner that evening. They talked instead of the storm. Henry told his guests: “Until it calms down, they don’t do too much about the lines. They expect that we residents have had the intelligence to fortify ourselves with auxiliary systems — oil lamps and candles — so we can wait it out. But we had no need of anything, until this year.”
    “I’d think,” Alice commented, “that with a house in town you’d stay there all winter.”
    “We’ve rented it,” Henry replied. “We needed the money.”
    “You needed the money,” Alice began. Then she saw that Laura was embarrassed. “Henry insists we live on his salary, and we do,” Laura said shyly.
    “Noble,” David commented. “Keeping his self-respect. Really heroic.”
    “Anything wrong with that?” Henry asked.
    “No. But what are you two saving it all for?”
    “Our children,” Henry answered