The Cat Wears a Mask
Page 19
He waited; there was only an occasional flurry of rain, big drops that smashed and spattered when they hit.
“Got anything to say?”
Grubler shook his head. Something like a smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “Ask Miss Murdock. I’m sure she can explain everything.”
Chapter 20
Two nights later in Gail’s living room there was a cheerful fire, soft lamplight, and the tinkle of tea-things as Florencia came in beaming with a tray. The weather had turned cold after the rain, colder for August than Gail said she could remember. The windy twilight had been bitter. But now, inside, with window draperies drawn against the dark, the room had warmth, brightness, and comfort.
Miss Jennifer knitted in a deep chair with her feet stretched out towards the fire. The cat on the floor roused herself once in a while to tap at the yarn ball. Mostly she lay somnolent, slitted eyes fixed on nothing, no part of her moving except the tip of her tail.
Miss Rachel, at the desk, was making jottings in a new notebook.
Gail tended the tea-things when Florencia had put down the tray. She glanced at Miss Rachel. “It’s queer that the house seems so right, so normal again. Leaving it yesterday, I thought I could never endure to come back to live, that it would always have that atmosphere of horror. And ghosts … Ghosts too terrible to face.”
“It’s a lovely house,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “And the people who died here brought death in with them—your house had nothing to do with it.” Her pen made scratching noises.
“Part of the comfort and friendliness is having Pedro and Florencia here,” Gail said softly. “When you think—they’re only a poor Mexican couple, neither of them can read or write—and yet they’re generous and faithful, far more decent generally than the group I asked them to serve.”
“It is the style now to be enthusiastically astonished over the decency of people not quite like ourselves,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “It is an intellectual fad—to me it seems rather an insult to these people of other races and other religions whose decency should have been taken for granted always.” She lay down her pen to take the cup of tea Gail offered. “It’s getting so you can’t sec a good murder picture without sitting through a lot of propaganda in the second feature, and the books about the wrongs done our minorities are crowding the whodunits off the shelves.”
“And good riddance,” said Miss Jennifer, “but don’t let her go on with that subject, Gail. She’s quite long-winded at it.” “Perhaps the only way we can make tolerance widespread is to popularize it,” Gail offered.
“I resent the faddist element. Tolerance shouldn’t be a fashion. It should—”
Jennifer cut in briskly, “What arc you putting in that notebook? Something about what happened here?”
“Yes. I’m thinking of writing the case up for a true detective magazine.”
“Oh no!”
“Isleton gave me permission to use his name in a joint byline and promised to let me have all sorts of pictures and official reports. Plus a photostatic copy of the confession Mr. Grubler signed before he died.”
“Where are you going to begin, Rachel?”
Miss Rachel stirred her tea thoughtfully. “With the character of Christine. A possessive and predatory woman. It wasn’t the threat of prison Mr. Grubler feared, so much as the grip she’d have over him once she completed the evidence of his forgery. Remember that she was merciless. He could have looked forward to a lifetime of drudgery and poverty. With the evidence of the check to keep him in line …”
“I can see his motive,” Gail said, “but I could never forgive him for treating Ilene as he did. To use her as bait in order to get Christine’s anger and attention off himself, then to murder her when her usefulness was over—that was dreadful.”
“I don’t think he knew at the beginning just how suspicious Mrs. Ryker already was of the girl,” Miss Rachel answered. “His mind must have been full of fear for himself, spurred to the edge of panic by the sly warning she threw him openly when she said, at the first and in front of us all, that Dave should use ‘whatever name had seized his fancy.’ An outright accusation of forgery, in light of what we know now. Thus he was genuinely confused by the gourd rattle which Mrs. Ryker had fixed outside Ilene’s window—especially so since he’d just decided to try to get a snake himself at the Hopi village and had stolen Bob Ryker’s gauntlets as the first step in preparation.”
“Those gauntlets … the gruesome way they kept popping up …” Miss Jennifer hitched her knitting closer to her face, shuddered delicately.
“Well, Grubler had shrewdness enough to throw us off about them. He confessed that in addition to slipping them on during the time he was around that rattler, he used them afterward during the search to make sure he left no fingerprints for the police. Putting the gloves on the bodies of Mrs. Ryker and Ilene Taggart was simply a trick to cover the simpler use.”
“How exactly did he slip that rattler into Mrs. Ryker’s room?” Jennifer asked. “It’s a point which isn’t clear to me.”
“He went through the door between her room and her husband’s—it had a much less complicated lock than the outer door, since the two rooms were used ordinarily as a suite. There was no difficulty, when he found it locked from Christine’s side, to slide a piece of paper underneath, punch out the key, and draw it to his side on the paper—this was at the first entry he made, when he stole the cluster of feathers off her hat and investigated the last Kachina letter to make sure that it had nothing to do with him. Then he discovered, according to his confession, that his own door key could work this simple lock, and afterward used that.”
“He was certainly nasty about keyholes,” Jennifer complained. “Peering through my door and giving that ugly little laugh. Like a ghoul or something. Nothing would have made me budge out of the house otherwise.”
“I knew it,” Miss Rachel admitted.
Jennifer studied her with sudden suspicion. “What do you mean?”
“I was the peeper at your keyhole, Jennifer. If you’d have insisted on remaining behind, Mr. Grubler would have been sure that you had his forgery and intended giving it to the police. Something very unpleasant might have happened to you.”
Jennifer was bolt upright. “You! I might have known. I would have known if I’d stopped to consider the habits you’ve cultivated during these past few years. The snooping, the prying, the happy enthusiasm for horrors, the utter abandonment of the behavior Father instilled in us, the craving for murder movies—”
She stopped to think of more faults for Miss Rachel. The cat reached out with a black paw and sent the yam ball rolling across the floor.
“My yam!” wailed Jennifer.
Gail hid a smile and rose to take away the tea-things. When she was out of the room, when the yarn was safely back beside Miss Jennifer, there was a moment of peaceful silence. Then Jennifer leaned forward. “Which one do you think it will be?”
Miss Rachel pretended to be shocked. “Are you going to pry into Gail’s love life?”
“Don’t think you’ll pay me back in any such silly coin, Rachel. You’re as curious as I am. Does she like Mr. Emerson or Mr. Ryker?”
“I haven’t the least idea. Does she have to like one of them?”
Jennifer stared at her, temporarily baffled. “It looks as though there’s a good chance she’ll take one or the other.”
Miss Rachel reflected that the case had, after a fashion, opened with a wager. “I’ll tell you what—” She opened the notebook. “We’ll make a little bet on the outcome. You can have your favorite—Mr. Ryker, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing, Rachel?”
“Making book, I believe they call it. Anyway, I’m keeping track of our bets. I’ll give you odds, since I’m getting Mr. Emerson. Shall we say ten to five?”
“I don’t know anything about gambling!”
Miss Rachel smiled discreetly. “Take it from me—there’s nothing to it.”
About the Auth
or
Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973) was a highly prolific mystery author who wrote under multiple pseudonyms and in a range of styles. A large number of her books were published under the moniker D. B. Olsen, and a few under the pseudonyms Noel Burke and Dolan Birkley, but she is perhaps best remembered today for her later novel, Fool’s Gold, published under her own name, which was adapted into the film Bande á part directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
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Copyright © 1949 by Dolores Hitchens
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-6695-2
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