The Cases of Susan Dare by Mignon G. Eberhart Read Free Book Online

said. “I suppose she didn’t realize you were here.”
    “No,” said Susan.
    “I’ll tell her—” She made a stiff gesture with her long hand and turned to enter the room beyond the open door. As her gray silk rustled through the door the little monkey jerked around, gave her one piercing black glance and was gone from the table in a swift gray streak. He fled across the room, darted under an old sofa.
    But Jessica did not reprove him. “Marie,” she said loudly and distinctly.
    There was a pause. Jessica’s flowing gray silk skirts were now silhouetted against the table lamp, and the monkey absently began to lick its paw.
    “Yes, Jessica.” The voice was that of a person long deaf—entirely without tone.
    “Susan Dare is here—you know—the daughter of Caroline’s friend. Do you want to see her?”
    “See her? No. No, not now. Later.”
    “Very well. Do you want anything?”
    “No.”
    “Your cushions?”
    Jessica’s rigid back bent over Marie as she arranged a cushion. Then she turned and walked again toward Susan. Susan felt queerly fascinated and somehow oddly shocked to note that, as Jessica turned her rigid back to the room, the monkey darted out from under the sofa and was suddenly skittering across the room again in the direction of the table and the candy.
    He would be, thought Susan, one very sick monkey. The house was too hot, and yet Susan shivered a bit. Why did people keep monkeys?
    “This way,” said Jessica firmly, and Susan preceded her down the hall and into exactly the kind of bedroom she might have expected it to be.
    But Jessica did not intend to leave her alone to explore its Victorian fastnesses. Under her somewhat unnerving dark gaze, Susan removed her cock-eyed little hat, smoothed back her light hair and put her coat across a chair, only to have it placed immediately by Jessica in the enormous gloomy wardrobe. The servants, said Jessica, were out; the second girl and James because it was their half day out, the cook to do an errand.
    “You are younger than I should have expected,” she said abruptly to Susan. “Shall we go down now?”
    As they passed down the stairs to the drawing room, a clock somewhere struck slowly, with long trembling variations.
    “Five,” said Jessica. “Caroline ought to return very soon. And David. He usually reaches home shortly after five. That is, if it isn’t rainy. Traffic sometimes delays him. But it isn’t rainy tonight!”
    “Foggy,” said Susan and obeyed the motion of Jessica’s long gray hand toward a chair. It was not, however, a comfortable chair. And neither were the moments that followed comfortable, for Jessica sat sternly erect in a chair opposite Susan, folded her hands firmly in her silk lap and said exactly nothing. Susan started to speak a time or two, thought better of it, and herself sat in rather rigid silence. And was suddenly aware that she was acutely receptive to sight and sound and feeling.
    It was not a pleasant sensation.
    For she felt queerly as if the lives that were living themselves out in that narrow old house were pressing in upon her—as if long-spoken words and long-stifled whispers were living yet in the heated air.
    She stirred restively and tried not to think of Marie Wray. Queer how difficult it was, once having seen Marie and heard her speak, not to think of that brooding figure—sitting in its web of shadows, waiting.
    Three old women living in an old house. What were their relations to one another? Two of them she had seen and had heard speak, and knew no more of them than she had known. What about Caroline—the one who was afraid? She stirred again and knew Jessica was watching her.
    They heard the bell, although it rang in some back part of the house. Jessica looked satisfied and rose.
    “It’s David,” she said. At the door into the hall she added in a different tone: “And I suppose Caroline, too.”
    Susan knew she was tense. Yet there was nothing in that house for her—Susan