The Opening Door

by Helen Reilly

  Alicia Flavell didn’t see him. She was in a hurry. She went straight to the door of Natalie’s room, opened it without knocking. She didn’t close it behind her. She was a woman in her thirties, very smartly dressed with smooth dark hair under a small hat. Natalie was at a desk on the far side of the room. She dropped the telephone into its cradle and turned, her face pinched and tear-stained and woebegone in its window of fair hair. Her nerves were on edge. She was startled and not too pleased by her sister-in-law’s abrupt entrance. “You—heard, Alicia?”

  Alicia Flavell said, “Yes, I heard. I saw them taking Charlotte away...She put her handkerchief to her mouth. “Someone said she was shot. It doesn’t seem possible...Did she—kill herself?”

  Natalie’s “No” was small, desolate.

  Alicia Flavell’s back was to the Scotsman. It was a handsome back but uninformative. Her voice was enough. It was harsh and vibrant around the edges as she said, “Eve was here last night, Natalie. In the Square, in the house. She said goodbye when she left in the afternoon. Why did she come back? She didn’t like Charlotte...Charlotte was watching her yesterday afternoon and Eve has a pistol...Oh, Nat—I’m frightened.”

  She wasn’t the only one. Natalie said “Shush,” with white violence, leaping to her feet. It was too late for shushing. McKee was already in the room. It was shortly after that, before he had time to do more than ask a few preliminary questions, that the twin discoveries were made.

  For one thing Charlotte Foy’s room had been searched during the night, and, for another, decorating the mauve broadloom at the foot of the stairs, there was a long brown stain that was undoubtedly blood, blood that in all probability had been carried from the pool under the dead woman in among the bushes in the park across the street.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  McKee looked at Mrs. Gerald Flavell thoughtfully and tried to remember where he had seen her before. He had just come up from the lower floor after a brief survey of the smeared stain at the bottom of the staircase. It could have been made by a shoe slipping, a shoe that had been cleansed on grass, but not well enough, with attention only to the soles, when the uppers were also splashed. A square had been cut from the carpet and removed for tests. Charlotte Foy’s room could wait for a detailed examination later.

  Natalie sat on a dressing-table stool. Her long slim hands plucked at each other in her lap. She looked white and exhausted and furiously angry. Alicia Flavell was calm. She stood near one of the front windows, fixing her face. She was handsome in a smooth dark way, not tall, all curves and very well turned out. There wasn’t a spontaneous bone in her body. Everything about her was calculated, arranged. There was greed in the sullen mound of her mouth and in her stubby fingers. They were busy with compact and lip stick. Now where—ah, he had it—an advertisement for creams or powders in a magazine; Alicia Grand, post-debutante of New York and Southampton, winner of...some blue ribbon at some dog show. She wasn’t married to Gerald Flavell then; she must have been post for some time, she was in her middle thirties.

  “Mrs. Flavell, if you please. You were saying to Miss Flavell a few minutes ago...”

  “Yes, Inspector,” Alicia snapped the compact shut, dropped it into her purse. Her words had been intended for Natalie’s ear alone. Finding that he had heard her, she didn’t attempt to retreat. She was too shrewd for that. She went at it in another way, consolidating her losses and taking a temperamental plea.

  “I was upset—naturally, Inspector—one does jump to conclusions, stupidly. It couldn’t have been Eve I saw down here last night. Natalie says Eve was with Jim Holland all evening. I was thinking about Eve and Jim and how sudden their engagement was. That’s how I came to make the mistake, I imagine. So...”

  Pinned down, she admitted that the evening before, at around twenty minutes or a quarter of eight, she had seen a woman who might have been Eve Flavell, who looked like her, certainly, and walked like her, cross the street from the direction of the park and enter the house. When McKee said, “You were in the park yourself, Mrs. Flavell?” she gave him a faint smile, heavy lids at half mast over her full brown eyes.

  “No, I wasn’t in the park. I was walking Dum-Dum, my bull, around the Square. One does use it sometimes.”

  She was offering him insolence as a red herring—for what? She had regained her composure. Underneath it she was badly rattled and not, McKee surmised, because of her implication of Eve Flavell. Her voice was cold when she spoke of her sister-in-law.

  He got her story of the afternoon and early evening up to a quarter of seven, when Jim Holland left the Flavell apartment on the other side of the Square. After that? After that, except for her stroll with Dum-Dum, she and Gerald had spent the remainder of the evening quietly at home playing the radio and reading.

  Natalie had listened in silence, a white manikin frightened and angry at both Alicia and the Scotsman. She said suddenly, turning on the older woman, “But I thought you and Gerald were dining out, Alicia. You said so when Charlotte wanted you to stay here for dinner.”

  Alicia Flavell flushed. She became embarrassed, prettily. She said, “I didn’t want to mention it but—but, well, the truth is, Gerald had had too much to drink and wasn’t fit to go anywhere. It isn’t really his fault; it’s just that he’s worried about business, poor boy. So I made him lie down on the couch and got him to bed as soon as I could. That’s why I took Dum-Dum out myself...

  Charlotte Foy had been killed at some time between 6:50 and 11 p.m. on the previous night. A man or woman who knew she was dead had carried her blood from the thicket where she lay into this house. The visitor hadn’t been admitted by a servant, which left Hugh Flavell or a key. Alicia Flavell had been out in the Square alone. As far as an alibi for either herself or her husband was concerned, her story was worthless.

  McKee left the two women without further comment. Before he got into the Cadillac parked at the curb and drove away he gave orders to Kent, who had been reinforced by Wileski and McGill, that there was to be no more telephoning for the next twenty minutes.

  Eve Flavell’s shop on East 19th Street was a tiny building crushed down between a garage on one side and an electrical supply house on the other. It had a tiled roof like an immense eyebrow above timbered plaster stained a faint pink. The single window held a pair of cobwebby stockings flung across an ottoman, pigskin gloves thrown down on a Chippendale table and an array of bright-jacketed books. Behind them, crisp white-dotted swiss curtains concealed the interior. The blue door, of heavy planking, had a latch and wide strap hinges. McKee lifted the latch and walked in.

  The shop was long and narrow. The walls were green. White shelves covered with flat boxes lined the front half; at the back the little building broadened out into a small room with a worn Persian rug on the floor, low bookcases on the left, a beautiful Sheraton desk opposite, several comfortable chairs and in the rear wall, between two simulated windows that were mirrors, a mantel of white brick.

  Fire burned redly in an iron basket under the mantel. Eve deposited a lump of cannel coal on the fire with a tongs, turned, and stiffened.

  McKee studied her as he continued to advance. She wasn’t at all like her half-sister Natalie. She was lovely. Hair that was bright on the crests and a warm shining chestnut in the hollows waved away from a face that would have delighted a sculptor with its sweep of brow and cheek bone, the modeling of the jaw and chin.

  Like her father and Natalie and her sister-in-law Alicia, Eve Flavell was frightened and on her guard. Odd to find a fear that was individual in each of them when apparently they had nothing to be afraid of, he reflected. They couldn’t all have killed Charlotte Foy, but they could all be concealing important and incriminating knowledge.

  McKee said pleasantly, “Miss Flavell?” and Eve said “Yes,” and moistened dry lips and swallowed. “You’ve come about Charlotte?...Sit down, Inspector. I’d better lock the door so that we won’t be disturbed.”

  She did so and came back, and they both sat and lit cigarett
es. Light from a lamp over a bookcase fell on the curve of Eve’s cheek, on a string of pearls around her white throat, on the buttons of her yellow cardigan. “You know how your aunt died, Miss Flavell?”

  “Yes, in the park. She was shot. Poor Charlotte.” Eve passed a hand across her eyes.

  The better not to see you with, my dear? There was something very charming about this girl, and for the first time in a long while McKee found himself disliking the work he had to do. Yet, according to Doctor Hendricks and the servants and a neighbor or two, Eve Flavell was not on good terms with her aunt...

  He didn’t attempt to trap her. He told her what Alicia Flavell had said about her being in the house the night before.

  Eve looked at him steadily, the pupils of her beautiful gray eyes large and dark. She said “Alicia,” with a wry smile and looked away from him at the fire. The fear, at which the Scotsman had guessed, was hard and tight inside of her, an iron ball crushed up under her ribs, so that the pain was physical. Think fast, Mr. Moto, she told herself shakily. This is no ordinary policeman. For all his good manners, his courtesy, he’s an astute, a clever and a ruthless man. Aloud she said quietly, “Yes, I went back to the Square last night, Inspector, and I was in the house. But I didn’t kill Charlotte. I didn’t know she was dead until Natalie told me a few minutes ago.”

  McKee’s heart sank. “Why did you go back, Miss Flavell?”

  Eve’s own heart was pounding. He must never know that—never. She forced herself to speak slowly. “I went back because, like an idiot, I forgot my purse. I left it behind me in the afternoon.”

  The Scotsman’s brows rose. “You came all the way here without missing your purse, although I presume you took a cab? Yes—and then, instead of telephoning, and in spite of the fact that it was a nasty night, you returned to get it, through the fog?”

  Eve let him finish. “I did miss it. I missed it when I got into the cab, but there was a woman here I had to see, so I paid the man off when I arrived. I didn’t phone later because I knew the servants were out and I didn’t want to disturb Father or Charlotte.”

  Her statement was very thin. There was no way of disproving it. The cook had been in the basement, the two maids were at the movies, Natalie was out with Bruce Cunningham and Hugh Flavell presumably in his study on the third floor. Unless Charlotte Foy had admitted her...“Who let you in, Miss Flavell?”

  “I still have a key.”

  “And a gun?” She was obviously suffering. Anger at her and at himself for having to go on with it made him curt.

  “Oh, yes.” Eve produced it, calmly, from a drawer in the desk, handed it over. It was a Colt .32. The chamber was full. It bore no traces of having been fired recently. Such traces could have been removed by cleaning. The rifling on the barrel, compared with the marks on the lethal bullet—when it was found—would tell the tale. McKee pocketed the weapon.

  Eve said she hadn’t been in the park at all; she had no key for that and the gates were always locked. She reached the Square at around a quarter of eight and went directly into the house. She hadn’t seen her father, or anyone else. Her purse was in the living room, behind one of the couch cushions. She retrieved it and—left.

  McKee pounced on her hesitation. “At once?”

  Eve thought swiftly. Bruce was with Natalie, so it couldn’t have been Bruce who...She told the truth.

  “No, not at once, Inspector. I went upstairs to Charlotte’s room. I thought she might have heard me, might wonder who it was. Charlotte wasn’t there, her door was locked, I tried it—but there was someone in her room.” Eve’s hands tightened in the lap of her tartan plaid skirt. It had been bad enough when it happened, but now—murder had been abroad in the blackness and the silence of the fog-filled Square the night before—coldness spread through her. “I rapped on the door and I called.”—“Charlotte,” she had whispered so as not to rouse her father. “Charlotte, it’s me, Eve.” Her life, more than her life, had depended upon getting an answer to a single question. There had been none forthcoming.—“Whoever was inside the room stopped moving around, didn’t speak. I’m sure it wasn’t my aunt, Inspector—or she would have said something.”

  She had no clue to the identity of the person in Charlotte’s bedroom. She admitted that the vague stirrings and rustlings behind the locked door had upset her. The house had seemed curiously empty and, yes, frightening—but not enough to make a fuss about. She could still feel the constriction between her shoulder blades when she ran down the stairs, without looking back, and let herself out into the open air.

  McKee was pleased. His eyes began to shine. They were getting to it. If this girl was speaking the truth—and he thought she was, up to a certain point—Charlotte Foy had gone out of the house on the Square before seven-forty-five. Her death hadn’t been long delayed after she left the house. The soles of her shoes, protected by the branches which had closed in over them, were not much more than damp—which meant that she had been killed between ten minutes of seven when Natalie and the maid last saw her, and a quarter of eight, when Eve entered the house.

  Anyone with an alibi for those fifty-five minutes could be struck off the list of possible perpetrators. So far there were no complete alibis. Hugh Flavell had none, he was alone in the upper part of the house all evening; the cook had none, she was in the basement; Natalie had been with the lieutenant she was engaged to, but only from seven-thirty on; Alicia Flavell was confessedly out and about Henderson Square from seven-thirty until almost eight, which left her husband, Charlotte’s nephew, uncovered. This girl certainly had no alibi.

  He didn’t mention the blood stain on the carpet in the Flavell hall. A roundup of shoes was being unobtrusively begun; have Eve’s wardrobe examined. He didn’t believe for a moment that she had killed her aunt in cold blood, but what about hot? He was engaged in probing for the root of her controlled terror when the phone rang.

  Eve sat facing him, an elbow on the flap of the desk. She turned, lifted the instrument, said “Yes?...Sorry, wrong number.”

  Her profile, silhouetted against a stretch of green wall, was a medallion in ivory. The Scotsman made a long arm. He took the phone from her. He said, “It may be for me, Miss Flavell,” and spoke into the mouthpiece. Instead of an answer there was a click. Whoever was at the other end of the wire had hung up on finding that Eve Flavell was not alone.

  McKee replaced the receiver without comment. It wasn’t Natalie and it wasn’t Alicia; Kent was taking care of them. It wasn’t Eve’s fiancé, either. A stick rapped smartly against, the closed door and a man called the girl’s name in muffled tones.

  “That’s Jim,” Eve said, jumping up as though movement of any sort was a relief. She let Holland in. He kissed her and she said something inaudible to him and they both came toward the fire. Jim Holland was a big man in his middle thirties with a strong rugged face that was massive without being fat, thick brown hair, a high forehead and intelligent blue eyes. He looked solid and dependable and clever. He walked with a slight limp, using a cane.

  Holland was shaken by the tragedy in the Square. There were lead-colored marks under his eyes and his big mouth was grim. “I’ve known Charlotte since I was a kid. It’s a horrible thing—horrible...” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose resoundingly. “Has anything important been discovered, Inspector?”

  The news that Eve had returned to the Square the previous night rocked him backwards. She hadn’t confided in the man she was going to marry. Holland grew roots in the floor. He jerked himself out of stillness to say, turning to her frowningly, “Ha—well, did you see anything that helps, Eve?”

  His devotion to her was obvious; he was evidently head over heels in love. He had been in the house when Charlotte Foy announced her impending trip to Boston, a trip that had been cut down in its youth. According to Alicia he left the Flavell apartment on the east side of the Square at six-forty-five.

  Jim Holland corroborated her. “It must have been around that, I should say. I got back
to my place on Kossuth Street at seven, did a little work to pass the time and then came up here to the shop.”

  He had arrived at eight-thirty. Eve had fixed scrambled eggs and bacon and made coffee and they had been together until eleven, when he went home. He hadn’t seen Charlotte after he left the Flavell house at a little before six; he hadn’t heard a shot while he was negotiating the Square. He began to look angry. He had a formidable jaw. Eve Flavell might not always find him as easy to handle as she did now.

  Holland had no alibi for the crucial hour. He could have killed Charlotte Foy; he had no motive, showing. Neither had anyone else. Holland could have been the person in Charlotte’s bedroom, if he had been able to procure a key to the front door—which to a man familiar with the house would have presented no particular difficulty. Search his rooms for a weapon, for shoes with tell-tale stains on them, the Scotsman decided. Meanwhile—Eve Flavell was even more anxious to get rid of him than her young half-sister had been. Oblige her, by all means. She was evidently contemplating action of some sort, and the sooner the basic facts were established in the sudden, violent and motiveless death of a middle-aged woman of excellent character and good family, the better. Too many people were concealing too many things. There was a smell of danger about the case he didn’t care for; someone was likely to get hurt.

  Five minutes later he left the shop. He didn’t turn as he crossed the pavement to the Cadillac parked at the curb. He had a shrewd idea that Eve was standing behind the dotted swiss curtains watching him with those long gray eyes. He drove away but not far. Around the corner he stopped the car, got out, found a convenient doorway and waited for what he was sure was going to happen—and was right. Three minutes later Eve emerged from the shop, alone. Holland was evidently playing storekeeper for her. She glanced quickly up and down the street, crossed it, and began to walk rapidly south.

  CHAPTER FIVE