Helen McCloy

by Minotaur Country

  “You’re suggesting that the bird killed himself and then someone who found the body put it on your typewriter?”

  Tash nodded.

  “Miss Perkins, did you look closely at that bird?”

  “No, I couldn’t bear to.”

  “It didn’t die by beating its head against a window-pane. Its neck was twisted. It was strangled the way a farmer’s wife strangles a chicken—with hands. I doubt if we can get any fingerprints off the feathers, but we may get a trace of bodily secretion—sweat or saliva—or a pulled thread from a frayed cuff. Such things can be used for identification. That’s why I sent the bird to the lab with everything else.”

  “But what could the motive be?” demanded Hilary. “Just to frighten Mrs. Playfair or Miss Perkins?”

  Wilkes’ face stiffened like something that had been melted, now hardening as it chilled.

  “You don’t need motives if drug addicts are involved. They tear down their own minds deliberately, psychoanalysis in reverse. Sometimes I almost wish we had a whipping post the way they used to over the Border in Delaware.”

  “You can’t regard flogging as a civilized deterrent,” Hilary spoke with the detachment of an anthropologist inspecting a peculiar tribal custom.

  “We could call it aversion therapy, if that would make it sound more civilized,” retorted Wilkes. “It’s only a bird this time, but next time it could just as easily be a child. An atrocity against an animal is just a warm-up for an atrocity against a human being. There’s a case in Hans Gross records of a man who couldn’t achieve pleasure unless he strangled a bird during coition. Of course the time came when he strangled the woman instead of the bird. It always does.”

  “Then you think a pervert broke in and strangled the bird just for kicks without malice toward any of us?”

  “Either that or strangling the bird was a perverted reaction to the tension of breaking in the way you or I would light a cigarette.”

  “But it was so stupid!” cried Tash. “If he hadn’t strangled the bird we would never have known anyone had broken in.”

  “Which is another reason for thinking the whole thing was psychopathic,” said Wilkes. “The only motive I can see for this is a psycho’s desire to shock or disgust somebody.”

  “I can think of another motive,” said Hilary. “We’re on the eve of an election. There are all kinds of position papers and projected schedules about future policies lying around the office wing. They might be salable to newspapers or stock market speculators or even opposition candidates. In that case, the bird would be strangled just to make us think a psycho did it.”

  “I am more interested in how he got in than why he got in,” said Wilkes. “Miss Perkins, was your burglar alarm on when you left your office to go to luncheon?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Was it still on when you came back to the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can’t understand how anyone got in and out of your office without the alarm going off. Did anyone else know the combination?”

  “Only Mr. de Miranda who showed me how to set it this morning.”

  “One last question,” said Wilkes. “Has anything out of the ordinary happened here the last few days?”

  “Everything that happens here is out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s not what I mean and I think you know it, Mrs. Truance.”

  “Something out of the ordinary happened to me before I came here.” Tash hadn’t meant to volunteer information, but the words popped out of her mouth as if they had an independent life of their own. “My pocket was picked.”

  “Oh?” Captain Wilkes collected himself like a pointer dog on point. “Did you report this?”

  “Yes, at the precinct station house near my home. They showed me mug shots, and I identified one of the pickpockets, a man with a cast in one eye. It made his face look lopsided, like a gibbous moon. The other was just a boy. They didn’t have photos of him.”

  “What did you lose?”

  “Thirty-nine dollars and a wallet containing a blank check and an identity card.”

  She knew she ought to add: and a letter Mrs. Playfair asked me to mail, but she didn’t. The role of tattletale was too distasteful.

  “Did they tell you the names of these characters?”

  “The man was a Barloventan known as Halcon and the boy was one of his chicks or polluelitos known as Freaky.”

  “Oh!” Hilary was distressed.

  “I see you know what a chicken hawk is,” said Wilkes.

  “But I don’t,” said Tash.

  “A chicken hawk is a man who traffics in young boy prostitutes, the younger the better. He has his heterosexual counterpart, of course, and both are under the protection of the Family, our cozy, domestic name for organized crime in this state.

  Silently, Lieutenant Pulaski materialized at his captain’s elbow, but it was Tash he addressed.

  “Is this yours, ma’am?” A coin lay in the palm of his hand, a bright new copper penny. “I found it on the floor in your office.”

  “I don’t think it’s mine,” said Tash. “But I suppose I could have dropped it there this morning without noticing.”

  “There’s nothing much more to report, sir,” Pulaski told Wilkes. “Mr. de Miranda says both he and the Governor will be here as soon as the Governor finishes making his speech, probably around ten o’clock.”

  “It’s nearly ten now. Anything else?”

  “No unauthorized person tried to get past any of the sentries today. There is no evidence that any circuits in the alarm system have been tampered with, and no signs of housebreaking at any door or window.”

  “What about the men searching the house?”

  “They’ve found nothing so far, sir. No sign of any intruder.”

  Tash and Hilary looked at one another. It was Hilary who found voice: “If you’re suggesting that someone here in the household strangled a pet of Mrs. Playfair’s, I just don’t believe that’s possible.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Wilkes. “But isn’t it possible that someone in the household might have let in someone else who did the strangling? A mechanical security system is only as strong as its weakest human link.”

  They all heard the crunch of the gravel under wheels in the driveway.

  The usher who opened the door stood aside to let Jeremy and Carlos enter. They looked festive, debonair, and old-fashioned in the contrasting blacks and whites of full evening dress.

  Whatever Carlos had said, Jeremy assumed something was wrong with Vivian. His eyes went to Hilary. “Is she ill?”

  “No, nothing like that,” said Hilary. “But we have something to tell you before you see her.”

  “What is it?”

  “Her canary is dead.”

  “Her canary!” Jeremy laughed with relief. “Poor, old Blondel! I thought he had at least another five years to go, but—”

  “Jerry, you don’t understand. Blondel didn’t just die. He was killed. Strangled and left on Tash Perkins’ typewriter.”

  “Governor,” said Wilkes. “Somebody got in from outside. At least, we think that must be it, but the alarm system didn’t go off, and none of the sentries saw anybody.”

  “Does Mrs. Playfair know?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jeremy turned to Carlos. “Will you take over here for a few minutes? Vivian must be told, and I want to break it to her myself.”

  He ran lightly up the wide curving staircase.

  Carlos became all Spanish now. The distress of his friend Jeremy made him furious, but the fury was frigidly controlled.

  “Captain Wilkes.”

  “Sir.”

  “How do you account for this?”

  “I cannot account for it yet, sir.”

  “Will you kindly have the goodness to start at the beginning and tell me everything that has happened so I can report it to the Governor in detail as soon as possible?”

  “Carlos, don’t you think we might all si
t down?” said Hilary plaintively.

  Carlos moved a chair out from the wall for Hilary, and Tash quickly perched on another, but Carlos himself remained standing and Wilkes felt obliged to follow suit.

  He was nearly at the end of his story when there were footsteps on the stair.

  Tash looked up.

  The Governor was coming down alone. His quick movements, slight figure, and tousled hair contributed to an illusion of boyishness until you saw his eyes.

  He stopped on the bottom step. His glance fled from Wilkes to Hilary to Tash and came to rest on Carlos.

  His voice was husky.

  “She isn’t there. I can’t find her anywhere. No one has seen her since luncheon.”

  7

  IN THE NEXT half hour Captain Wilkes and his men established that Vivian was not in the house or on the grounds, and that her small, open car was not in the garage.

  She had not vanished through a black hole into a counter-universe of antimatter. She had gone away in a car driven by an engine fueled with gas.

  The only uncanny thing was the stubborn fact that none of the sentries guarding roads in and out of Leafy Way had seen her leave.

  Leafy Way had been laid out long before any need for tight security. There was no wall, no electrified fences, just hedges. Anyone could get in or out of the grounds on foot, but how could anyone get out by car when there was a sentry box by each carriage gate?

  Wilkes wanted to know if he should assume she had left of her own free will.

  Jeremy looked at Carlos helplessly. “What do you think?”

  Carlos’ shoulders moved skeptically. “Who knows?”

  “Has anything like this ever happened before, Governor?” said Wilkes.

  “Nothing quite like this.”

  “There have been rumors.” Wilkes paused tactfully. “What rumors? Don’t pull punches.”

  “Rumors that Mrs. Playfair is in the habit of absenting herself from her family without explanation.”

  “You may deny those rumors.”

  “No doubt I shall soon have the opportunity. You do realize, sir, that we cannot keep this disappearance from the press? We will have to send out a five-state alarm. I could not take the responsibility for not doing so, but such an alarm is news when it involves a governor’s wife. Big news.”

  “Yes, of course, I see that, but you don’t have to tell the press every detail. This business about the canary. The possibility that she may have left impulsively without telling anyone. There’s no point in mentioning either one of those things to the press.”

  Tash had a sense of the dreadful unspoken, the shadows in every life that must never be put into words or even thought, the ghosts at the back of every mind.

  Was Jeremy trying to defend the indefensible? Was he ruthlessly smothering his own unbearable suspicion that Vivian was responsible for everything, even the strangling of her own canary?

  “We’ll have to tell them the car is missing,” said Wilkes. “State and city police must have a full description of that car. And we must get the alarm out now. For Mrs. Playfair’s own sake, we can’t afford to wait another second.”

  “You’re right,” said Jeremy. “Do it at once. Carlos, call a press conference to be held here in an hour.”

  “Let me take the first barrage,” said Carlos. “I’ll meet them with a written statement. You can put in a brief appearance at the last minute confirming what I’ve said.”

  “Don’t you think I could stand up to the first barrage?”

  “I’m sure you could, but why bother when you don’t have to? This is going to be rough. The slightest slip of the tongue, even the slightest hesitation, and they’ll be on you like a pack of hounds on a wounded hare. Save your strength for tomorrow when you may really need it.”

  Hilary nodded to Carlos. “I’ll see he gets some rest.”

  “Rest?” Jeremy’s scorn flashed out like a whiplash. “Do you think I can rest now? If anybody needs me I’ll be with Wilkes in the communications room. That’s where news will come first.”

  Carlos sighed. “Tash, you and I have work to do and only an hour to do it in. We use the Florida Room for press conferences here, because it’s big and secluded from the rest of the house. We’ll need a telephone there.” He unplugged an extension from the wall.

  “Let’s go.”

  The Florida Room was in darkness. Carlos switched on chandeliers and sconces, plugged in the telephone he was carrying, and dialed the Leafy Way switchboard operator.

  “Nick? Miranda here. If there are any calls for me or Miss Perkins in the next hour, we’ll be in the Florida Room. Call the press room at the State House and tell every correspondent there that the Governor is having a press conference here at eleven o’clock. Better call the wire services, too. Tell the chief usher that everyone is to be shown directly to the Florida Room. We don’t want them straying all over the house. Call whoever is on night duty at the secretariat and tell her to stand by for a typing and Xerox job in a few minutes. Tell one of the pages to bring a tape recorder to the Florida Room now.” Tash looked at her watch. “Ten after ten already.”

  “Time enough if we don’t hurry,” returned Carlos. “You Saxons in North America are always hurrying.”

  “You mean Anglo-Saxons?”

  “Same thing. Now please stop hurrying so I can think a little.”

  “Saxons can’t stop hurrying,” said Tash. “It’s in our genes. The ice age and all that. If we hadn’t hurried then, we would have been extinct.”

  She stopped as she realized Carlos was not listening. “Miss Perkins—”

  “You said ‘Tash’ a moment ago.”

  “Did I? All right, Tash. What do you think has happened to Mrs. Playfair?”

  “How can I possibly say? I’ve been a member of this household less than twenty-four hours.”

  “So you have a fresh-point of view, and that’s why I’m asking you. Jerry and I are so close to her, we can’t see her as she really is. What do you think of her?”

  “She’s beautiful but somehow tragic. I don’t know why.”

  “Tragic?” He tasted the word. “You think she’s not happy?”

  “She ought to be.”

  “That’s no answer. Did she seem happy to you the first day you met her?”

  “No, but she did today. At luncheon she was radiant.” Carlos started to offer her a cigarette. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t smoke.” He lit one for himself. “In a small, closed official household like this you never know what is being said in the real world outside. Tell me: Do people in town gossip about Vivian?”

  “There have been rumors that she disappears every now and then for no known reason. My editor briefed me on this before I came here to interview her.” Carlos lit another cigarette, forgetting the one already burning in the ashtray. He lifted his chin to blow out a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling, then brought his eyes down to Tash again.

  “It has happened. Three times. We don’t know where she goes or what she does. Her explanations are what lawyers call ‘frivolous and irrelevant.’ The only people who are supposed to know about this at all are those closest to her.”

  “And they are?”

  “Her husband. Me, because I’m close to him. Her social secretary, Hilary. And her maid, Juana, whom you haven’t met. When Vivian disappears we four close ranks and cover up for her, but we didn’t do a very good job of it tonight. The canary business unnerved Hilary. Nothing like that has ever happened before.”

  “But she always comes back unharmed?”

  “She has in the past.”

  “And you can’t even guess where she goes or what she does?”

  Carlos’ answer was dragged out of him. “Perhaps I don’t want to guess.”

  “Oh, Carlos, don’t you think the police should be told everything now? That strangling of her pet bird may be a symbolic threat of violence against her. She may be in danger.”

  “She doesn’t behave like a frightened woman. Each tim
e she has gone away she has always come back in good health and spirits. Each time, she’s insisted that it would never happen again.”

  “But it has. Couldn’t you tell the police all this without telling the press?”

  “You’ve just told me your editor knows about her disappearances already. We thought that was a secret we had kept. Did he say anything else about Vivian?”

  “No, he didn’t, but something happened to me which I think the police ought to know about now. There was a letter—”

  The door opened. A page came in with a tape recording machine.

  “On the coffee table,” said Carlos.

  “Anything else, sir?”

  “That’s all, thank you.”

  The door closed. Carlos turned back to Tash. “What’s this about a letter?”

  “The day I interviewed Mrs. Playfair she gave me a letter to mail for her. Then, when you and the Governor appeared and I mentioned the letter to her, she said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ This morning I tried to speak about the letter again. Twice. The first time she changed the subject. The second time she said she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “When did you mail the letter?”

  “I never got a chance to mail it. My pocket was picked after I left here. The pickpockets took her letter when they took my wallet.”

  “Does she know the letter was stolen?”

  “No. That’s what I was trying to tell her when she refused to talk about the letter. I couldn’t have forced her to listen without making a scene. There were other people there. It was just before luncheon.”

  “Did you notice the name and address on the letter?”

  “Not really. I just noticed that it was addressed to a Doctor, not to a Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Don’t you think we’d better get that press release blocked out now?”

  Carlos looked at his watch. “Dios! Only forty minutes left! We’ll both have to be Saxon now and hurry. I’ll dictate. You stop me and smooth out any rough places as we go along. Remember, this must be all cliches. They’re so reassuring. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Carlos narrowed his eyes against the cloud of cigarette smoke around his head.