Voice Out of Darkness by Ursula Curtiss

I’ll go.
    Another voice in the lobby, brusque, careless. “Miss Poole thinks she might have left a compact here last night—black alligator, with her initials. Would any of the maids have reported it by now, or one of the waiters?”
    Mr. Lasky hadn’t heard anything about it, but he would check. Jeremy Taylor said, “I’ll be having coffee,” and swung through the dining room doors and came toward Katy. “Waiting for someone, or may I have coffee with you?”
    “Do,” Katy said politely, and wondered why it was that she could never be alone for very long without having one of that intimate little collection of people close in on her quite pleasantly, quite normally.
    “Cassie thinks she might have left her compact here,” Jeremy said. “I told her I’d look in. Frightful thing last night, wasn’t it?” He was intent on opening a package of cigarettes, fingers impatient with the cellophane. When Katy said, “Yes. Horrible,” he looked up, greenish eyes calm and questioning. “Cigarette? Did she ever get to see you, by the way?”
    The package of cigarettes was extended toward her. Katy took one with steady fingers, leaned toward Jeremy’s match. “No. Not last night, that is. Did she want to see me, particularly?”
    She was safe because Miss Whiddy was dead, because Miss Whiddy hadn’t been given time to see her. It was shocking all over again, because now she was about to find out for certain that it had been Miss Whiddy who had tapped at her door and gone away unanswered.
    “I came out to the lobby to get cigarettes somewhere around nine last night,” Jeremy was saying, “and Miss Whiddy asked me where you were. She’d just come in, apparently—hat and coat and galoshes. She seemed to be bursting with something, but then,” he grinned faintly, “she generally was.”
    Somewhere around nine. Katy had gone to her room at about ten-thirty; at nine she had probably been finishing dinner with Michael. And Miss Whiddy had died at—what? Twelve-thirty? One? One-thirty? Ask Michael. Not, she thought with sudden warning, Jeremy.
    She realized that he was talking again, that he was asking when she was to be married.
    “Very soon,” she said, “almost immediately. How about you and Cassie?”
    Jeremy was vague. “March. Cassie’s white satin-minded, and there are things—” He broke off, ground out his cigarette and stood up. “I’ll probably see you at dinner some time soon. Francesca said something about rounding us all up.”
    He started to move away. Katy said gently, “But you haven’t found out about the compact yet, Jeremy.”
    Jeremy stared down at her. For a second he was sharply, completely still and intent, so intent that Katy, who had meant to add probingly, “That’s what you came for, isn’t it?” didn’t dare speak. The dining room, except for themselves, was empty. So was the lobby beyond. A muscle jumped in Jeremy’s cheek, and the animal panic in Katy subsided. Jeremy said musingly, “Yes. She’ll want to know, won’t she? Thanks for—reminding me,” and was gone.
    The blood was still pounding at her temples. The fingers that had been so steady only a moment ago shook uncontrollably as she gathered up cigarettes and matches. She looked at them with almost clinical detachment and thought, that’s right, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do: go limp and trembly, read murder in any and every pair of eyes, like a poor little laboratory rabbit.
    Unfortunate, that. Laboratory rabbits were experimented with, gently but persistently, and died in their tiny wire worlds.
    It was nearly nine o’clock. Too late to sit any longer with coffee, too early to wake Michael, who had had the good fortune to sleep through this windy purple morning. Katy went upstairs to her room, tiptoeing along the quiet hall. There had been two other envelopes with the letters in her trunk: a wedding invitation from a girl who had once worked at Paige’s, a bill from Saks—things she had