Nets to Catch the Wind

by Dolores Hitchens

  Mrs. Schneider came into view out of the fog, walking up the driveway, her eyes on Amy and the girl. She had on a gray squirrel coat, luxuriously full and soft, gray pumps with silver buckles, a large gray suède handbag swung by a strap from her shoulder, gray gloves that wrinkled into cuffs at her wrists. Her silver hair was brushed high, its rolls and puffs touched by the fog. She looked very much the duchess, Amy thought—straight, tall, imperious. But the early light was unkind to her face. Under the careful makeup were the ravages of time. Her eye sockets were deep, hollow, and the skin was puckered with tension. She smiled at them. It was not a very natural or appealing smile; she seemed to slip it on over her real expression as she might a mask. “Hello.”

  Amy said, “Good morning, Mrs. Schneider.”

  The woman looked at the girl, and Amy introduced them.

  “This is Tzegeti’s child?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How do you do, my dear?” Mrs. Schneider held out a hand and made a ceremony of the greeting. Amy wondered if she had read somewhere that the way to impress a child favorably is to treat him like a grownup. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Elizabeth said nothing. It was a curious lack in the child’s manners. In all ways she had been courteous and outgoing. But she had drawn away from Mrs. Schneider.

  “We were just leaving,” Amy said, hoping to avoid going back in the house.

  Mrs. Schneider brushed back a glove and glanced at her watch. There was a brief sparkle of diamonds. “I won’t keep you but a moment.” Her glance grew level, direct. “I understand that you intend going to Ensenada to see my husband’s son.”

  Amy felt a flash of impatient anger, and then checked it—Pop Bronson had too many friends, too many visitors, and the natural garrulity of an old man. People went to him for information—as she had done. She could hardly have expected him to keep her affairs a secret. “And you came to say—what?”

  “Don’t go. Save yourself a bit of useless trouble.”

  “Useless? How?”

  “Raoul Schneider was but barely acquainted with his father. He knows nothing of the murder case, of Tzegeti’s trial. I doubt if he even has heard of the events on that train. He lives as his mother and her people have always lived. A Mexican peon. You won’t get anything of value from him.”

  “Still,” said Amy, meeting her eye, “I’d like to have a go at it.”

  Mrs. Schneider smoothed the cuff of the glove where she had displaced it. “There are other and more rewarding lines that you might follow. I understand from Mr. Cunninghan that you visited him and saw the material Vernon had collected. You might have doubted the validity of the confession——” Her eyes swept over the child’s bent head; an uneasy tension flickered behind her watchful attitude. She was wondering if the girl had understood, Amy thought.

  “I reserved any opinion,” Amy threw into the pause.

  “Of course. But now we may be on the trail of a much more convincing piece of evidence.” She stopped again; her eyes took on a sudden glitter. “I don’t know how much of the gossip concerning the case has reached you. The item I mention was only talked about at the trial—never produced.”

  Amy tried to keep her face blank. Mrs. Schneider was, of course, talking about the journal. She was coming out into the open about it, acknowledging her interest in it, her determination to possess it.

  Amy hesitated over her reply. How much was she supposed to know? If the Arkuto woman had talked to anyone, her own interest in Tzegeti’s diary could be common knowledge. Then she remembered Fogarty’s remarks, that nothing concerning the journal had come out at the trial or in the newspapers. He had seemed sure that the existence of such a diary was known to just a few.

  She remembered, too, that Mrs. Schneider had been strangely excited at about the time Mrs. Tzegeti must have taken her fatal dose of poison. Could this woman have been the mysterious visitor Elizabeth had mentioned? Could she have frightened Mrs. Tzegeti into committing suicide?

  Or had she, perhaps, an even stronger role in that strange tragedy?

  “It is rumored that the murderer kept an account of his doings,” Mrs. Schneider said in a strong, firm tone. “This is what we want, what is needed to complete the story, to tear away the mystery and reveal Tzegeti’s companions. You will know the secret of what happened on that train, Mrs. Luttrell, when you find the book left by the man who killed my husband.” Again her glance flickered over the girl, and again there was that air of fixity, of watchful menace. Elizabeth seemed oblivious to the woman’s stare, though Amy could not be sure—the pup was worrying a shoestring and Elizabeth was chiding him.

  A lot of thoughts rushed through Amy’s mind, not all connected or coherent. She tried to analyze Mrs. Schneider’s motives in coming here now; there was either a compelling reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to meet Schneider’s son, Amy decided, or Mrs. Schneider actually hoped that she knew the whereabouts of the journal.

  “Since you have the child here——” The rest of the sentence Mrs. Schneider communicated with her eyes.

  “I’m rather in a hurry on a lot of things,” said Amy, “but not that. I won’t play Gestapo.”

  “Tactful questioning might save you a good deal of trouble.”

  “I’m surprised that you should be concerned as to how I waste my time.” Mentally, Amy added: You’ve let the mask slip, Duchess. The vulture is showing a bit around the edges. You’re the one the police would have picked up for your husband’s murder if Tzegeti hadn’t been so close at hand. And you’re the one who collected a fat wad of insurance, who now owns the Picardy Club, and whose sudden widowhood might not have arrived any too soon in view of Schneider’s renewed interest in his son.

  “I don’t wish to argue with you.” Mrs. Schneider glanced at her watch again. “Don’t let affection blind you, nor pity sway your judgment. If the information is at hand, as I believe it is”—a sidewise sweep of the eyes, quick as an arrow; the face took on a stony cast—“you’d be quite foolish not to have it. You can play with your judgment, delay, put off definite action too long. It isn’t always true, you know, that if given enough rope the guilty will hang themselves.”

  Her words died and there was strange silence. The fog touched Amy’s face wetly, the sea-smell swimming with it into her lungs, a wet salt odor. “Enough rope? Is that what you said?”

  Mrs. Schneider rubbed her smooth gloved hands together, made an idle peaked roof with her finger tips, sighed. “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “You’re not thinking of any particular rope?”

  The calm face didn’t alter. “I don’t understand.”

  “Let it go. If I did locate the journal, what would you have me do with it?”

  Mrs. Schneider’s gaze crept toward Amy’s house. It was a weighing look. Amy got the impression that Mrs. Schneider was somehow reading off the shingles the amount of the down payment, the monthly tariff, and even studying the bare walls inside, the monastic plainness, the homemade rug she’d saved rags for, the desert picture they’d coveted and never bought. “Of course,” Mrs. Schneider decided, “you could turn the diary over to the police.”

  Amy felt a savage impulse to egg her on. “Such a book might be of more use, though, in other hands.”

  “I think that’s quite possible.” The tone was frank, casual; only the eyes were full of meaning. “Once buried in official files, it couldn’t do anyone any good.”

  “Are you prepared to make an offer?”

  Mrs. Schneider’s face twitched as though Amy had stepped on her toes. “Of course such important evidence couldn’t just be sold to the highest bidder!”

  Amy appeared surprised. “Couldn’t it?”

  There was a pause while Mrs. Schneider made up her mind not to be too indignant. “When the stakes get too high, there’s the danger of losing everything. We’ll need the Tzegeti journal to fill out our other evidence. You can be sure we’ll be entirely fair with you.” She swept the house with another gl
ance, and Amy felt Persian rugs grow on its floors, the mortgage shrivel to ash, the sickly lawns turn lush with flowers. Money could do a lot of things. Right now it was trying to buy Tzegeti’s diary.

  “I’ll think about it,” Amy said, her tone dismissing.

  Still Mrs. Schneider lingered. “I think you should know—there is some talk going round about your having the girl here.”

  “Oh yes. I’m sure there is.”

  “If you feel attracted to the child, if you want to keep her, go to see Mr. Cunninghan. He’ll advise you what to do.”

  “I was wondering——”

  “Yes?”

  “—if he had told you to come here this morning.”

  Mrs. Schneider’s laugh was genuine. “I came on an impulse. He doesn’t approve of impulses. Probably his idea of locating the book I mentioned would be to serve a writ of some sort on anyone who might have possession of it.” She half turned. “Come and see me soon.” She walked away, still very much a duchess. The soft coat rippled as she walked, shining with a frost of droplets.

  Elizabeth was standing by the garage door. “What did she want?”

  Amy fitted the key into the padlock. “She was trying to find out if I had your father’s diary.”

  “Father’s book?” The words echoed a complete surprise. “Why should she care where it is?”

  “Perhaps she thinks he wrote something about her in it.” She took a look at Elizabeth. The child’s face was sober, guarded, a lot of thought in the eyes. “Or about what happened at the club the night her husband was killed.”

  “I don’t think he could have put that in,” Elizabeth said seriously. She helped push up the garage door, cornered the scampering pup and held him, stood aside to let Amy back the car. But Amy hesitated. Elizabeth saw her curiosity and said, “I remember the book. Father wrote in it sometimes in the mornings, before he went on the job. I remember one day that it was lying on the breakfast table—my mother had cleared the dishes, and Father had taken down the ink out of the cupboard—and Father put his hand on the book and said, ‘In here is the truth.’ He sounded—somehow—a little anxious, as if we might not believe. But I never did see what he had written. Mother did, I think, but I didn’t.”

  “Do you know where it is now?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No. I didn’t see it again after Father was arrested.”

  “What sort of book is it? What does it look like?”

  “Oh . . . about so big——” Elizabeth shifted the pup, made a rectangle with her fingers. “About an inch thick. Black covers, the pages edged with red. He bought it at the dime store.” The pup licked her in the face; she rubbed the spot and giggled.

  “Did your mother ever talk to you about it?”

  “I asked her once where it was. Mrs. Arkuto thought I should try to find out. Mother said it was gone, burned up or thrown away, she’d forgotten which. I was to tell Mrs. Arkuto. I don’t think Mrs. Arkuto believed it.”

  No, Amy thought wryly, Mrs. Arkuto hadn’t believed—this explained the overneighborly solicitude with the appearance of the Tzegeti house. It brought back the memory of Mrs. Arkuto in her dust cap, wielding a broom. Sweeping in odd corners—the odder the better. No nook was left unexplored in that house. Probably Mrs. Arkuto had heard the siren song, big money wanting the Tzegeti diary. Well, at least the prayer had been real, Amy thought; it was like that earthy peasant to be praying over the Tzegetis while she rooted out their secret.

  The book had been hidden—somewhere. She had the clue, the fevered whisper given up by Mrs. Tzegeti when death must have stared into her face—— The little handle . . .

  The little handle—to what?

  She was tempted to ask the child and then bit back the words. Truly Elizabeth didn’t know. She’d been kept from knowing. There was planning and care behind that ignorance. It made a shield for the child. In the days when Tzegeti had sat in court, the lonely nights in jail, the hours of waiting and despair that had gone on in the little house in his absence, no word had been spoken to indicate the whereabouts of the diary. If it came to light, it wouldn’t happen because Elizabeth was threatened and afraid. There was no way that danger could make her talk. And, Amy thought, I’d be a fool to endanger that careful planning. I’ll figure the thing out on my own.

  Elizabeth locked the garage and got in beside her, and they were off to Ensenada.

  In the early afternoon they rounded the promontory and looked at the wide waters of the Bay of All Saints, and the small town crooked in an elbow of the shore. It was sunny here and there was a brisk wind off the sea. Sailboats bobbed in the sun’s glare, and a Mexican coast guard cutter lay at anchor off the pier, like a hen watching her chicks. Amy guided the car down the causeway shut in by the fish canneries to the main street of the town.

  Elizabeth was on the edge of the seat, hugging the pup. “Is it Ensenada?”

  “This is it. Not very big. Interesting, though. I spent a week here a couple of years ago.” Amy’s mind closed down, shutting out the memory of the honeymoon she’d had with Robert Luttrell. There was no time now for softness, for reverie. “It’s sort of border-town in a lot of ways, like Tijuana—only more relaxed, friendly; and you get a flavor, sometimes, of the real Mexico.” She began to read street signs.

  They turned left and began to climb the hill. Elizabeth was looking back and below. “There’s a huge big place down there, a regular palace.”

  “It was built for a gambling casino. Then the Mexican government changed a few laws. Now only the hotel section is kept running.” The Avenida del Toros had turned into a dusty track. Beyond a clump of castor-bean trees a small house stood in shadow. Amy braked to a stop. “You wait here. I’ll go and read the number on the house. You can let the pup out if you want.”

  “He needs to go,” Elizabeth said seriously, “or he’ll forget what we’ve taught him.”

  “I doubt if he knows what it’s all about,” Amy replied cynically. “I think he’s just as surprised as anybody, when it happens.”

  Elizabeth crooned over the dog. “He’ll learn. Wait and see.”

  Amy crossed the rutted street, passed the clump of dusty castor beans, and entered the yard. A low wall of stones, fitted haphazardly and without mortar, enclosed a square of barren earth. The steps and the porch were cement, badly cracked. The house was a box, tan stucco, and it hadn’t been painted for a long while. The whole place looked desolate, neglected. But the numbers over the door corresponded to those on the address Pop Bronson had given her. Amy went up to the front door and knocked.

  The door opened at once. A small, dark Mexican woman looked out at Amy. She was about sixty. There was a lot of white in the hair pulled back smoothly over her ears. She wore a silver crucifix on a chain around her neck; it lay on the bosom of the stiff black dress. “Si, señora? What do you wish?”

  “I came to see Raoul Schneider.”

  “He isn’t here. He is at work at the hotel.”

  “When will he be home?”

  The black eyes settled beyond Amy; the passive face might have been an Indian mask. “What is it you wish to see him about, señora?”

  “His father.”

  The woman seemed to study her without actually looking at her. “You have come from Señora Schneider?”

  “No.”

  “He will be here at dinnertime.”

  Amy hazarded, “Six o’clock?”

  The woman nodded, began to withdraw, to shut the door.

  “Is he at the big hotel? The Pacifico?”

  There was a slight polite smile that admitted nothing. The door went shut with a click. Amy sensed that the woman waited, a foot or so away, to listen for her departure. Amy went over to the edge of the porch and looked at the view without actually seeing it. She was tired from the long drive, keyed up at the expectation of meeting Schneider’s son. She had questions to ask, and she was being thwarted by a small mummy in black serge.

  She went back to the door and pounded on
it. Just as promptly as before, it opened and the wrinkled face looked out.

  “I want to see Raoul Schneider now. Not mañana, and not at six o’clock. Right now.” She showed the little old woman the watch on her wrist, and the jet-black eyes peered at it with interest. “Do you understand?”

  “You are in a hurry, señora.” The tone implied that this was a sickness suffered by americanos to their detriment, an affliction to be pitied.

  “Very much so.”

  “Ask for my nephew at the desk of the Pacifico, then. He’s a bookkeeper at the hotel.”

  A bookkeeper, Amy thought—quite a jump from the barefooted peon Mrs. Schneider’s description had conjured up.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE LOBBY stretched away under about a half acre of rugs, a big quiet room with a beamed ceiling, some couches, a couple of grand pianos; it had, Amy thought, the look of having had a lot of money spent on it years ago, and then the long mellowing of scrupulous care. The desk was up a couple of stairs to the right, in an alcove that led into a hall. She left the girl and the pup at the door and walked over to inquire for Schneider. The man behind the desk gave her a polite smile. She stated her errand.

  The man nodded. “I will see if he’s free. Your name, señora?”

  “Amy Luttrell.”

  “Just a moment, please.” He went away down the hall and turned a corner. Amy examined the big room, testing her memory. At its other end there would be passages leading to the ballroom, the café, the outdoor coffee shop, and then farther on the vast section that had been built for the casino, great rooms all carpeted, lavishly decorated, hung with chandeliers—and utterly empty. She turned back to meet the gaze of the clerk.

  “Mr. Schneider will be here in a couple of minutes. Would you care to sit down?” He indicated the scattered chairs and couches.

  She went over to where Elizabeth stood. “I’ll have to park you and the pup somewhere safe—I mean, safe for the floors. There’s a terrace outside those windows, some little tables and benches. Suppose you have some chocolate while I’m busy.” She gave Elizabeth some money.