“Wonderful power of concentration,” I said dryly. “I also notice you have a wonderful view of everything that goes on in the village.”
“Oh, I don’t need windows,” she said enigmatically. “Not that kind. What I have to do is to keep open the windows of my soul.”
I could think of no reply to that.
“And now, off with you while I lose myself in Where the Bee Sucks. No one’s going to hear a peep out of me until dinnertime.” She started pushing me roguishly toward the door. “I have a Shakespearean title, you know, for all my works. I do hope you like the idea.”
“Fine,” I said. “What’s the next one going to be called? On a Bat’s Back?”
“Oh, you slyness!” She giggled and laid a tiny birdlike hand on my arm. “Dr. Westlake, just one thing.” Her face was tense with drama. “I wonder if you could do me a little favor?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Those silly, silly men downstairs. Do try and pour oil on the troubled waters. It’s so goosy of them thinking they have to be rivals and fight over poor little me.”
I gulped, muttered something vague, and fled.
Luckily there was no need for oil and no particular indication of any troubled waters. George had left the porch, and Renton Forbes, smoking a cigarette, was waiting for me outside the house. The Forbes mansion was at the east end of the valley, so we started walking home together.
As we left the Raynors’, Renton threw an ironical glance over his shoulder.
“That poor guy, George,” he said. “If he had just a little more backbone, I’d be sorry for him. Know what he wanted to do?”
“What?”
“Scrub the kitchen floor in expiation for having been unkind to dear, wonderful, talented Avril. I can’t understand why he doesn’t take a meat ax to her and have done with it. I almost told him so, too.”
I said: “I thought you were meant to be a devoted admirer.”
“Me?” His laugh boomed out heartily. “Give me credit, Westlake. Give me credit. I must admit last year she entertained me. I was fascinated in finding out just how preposterous she could be. But now”—he shrugged his perfectly tailored tweed shoulders—“où sont les neiges d’antan?”
He chatted on with amusing malice, and I found him a relief after the neurotic egotisms of the Raynor household. Renton was frankly a philanderer, frankly shiftless about money, but in spite of his charm, he had a ruthless common sense that I found attractive. He was wonderful-looking too, well-groomed and lean as a race horse. I envied the elegant way in which he was strolling into middle age.
The ancient sedan which had brought Rebecca was still parked outside my house, and the sound of uproarious festivity issued from the kitchen.
“Looks like you’ve got company,” said Renton.
I explained Rebecca’s return and my reasons for summoning her.
“Very wise,” he said soberly. “If I had a kid. I’d have the house surrounded with state troopers. It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Bad.”
“And with Ernesta away.” His old, amused smile returned. “We’ll never hear the end of it. Till her dying day, she’ll go on saying it would never have happened if she’d been around.”
As he went off up the lane, I turned for a final glance at the Raynors’ house. I was just in time to see a figure disappear into the drive and to catch a glint of platinum hair shining in the sun. Whether the visitor was Caleb or Lorie, I was unable to tell.
If it was Caleb, I wondered whether Avril would shoo him away as unceremoniously as she had shooed us.
I was greeted by an excited Dawn, who had seen our approach and came running down the garden path toward me.
“Daddy,” she announced breathlessly, “Rebecca’s terribly happy to be back and she’s lost ten pounds and she’s brought a goose so we’re going to cook it for supper and a harmonica and a stuffed owl which her cousin Avon killed right near our house in Kenmore. And there are seven cousins in the kitchen, and they’re all married to each other which shows how silly Mrs. Bray is, and they’re all so jolly and it’s so hot and they had such a hot ride from Grovestown and, Daddy, don’t you think it would be nice if maybe a little beer …”
“Okay, toots.” I grinned. “There’s a couple of cases in the laundry.”
From the racket in the kitchen, I strongly suspected that beer was already flowing free and that Dawn was asking only for the sake of appearances, but I didn’t care. I was so relieved at the comfortable sense of security engendered by Rebecca’s return that I would gladly have drowned her cousins in beer.
Announcing as an afterthought that Cobb had telephoned and would be out to see me sometime that evening, Dawn rushed back to reassume her role of Hebe to Rebecca’s escorts. I did not feel in a party mood myself, so I avoided the kitchen and sought sanctuary in Dr. Stokes’s comfortable office. Dawn was right about the day. It was oppressively hot. I took off my coat, loosened my tie, and lay down on the couch. I had intended to put in some serious thinking about the murders, but before I knew it I was fast asleep.
I slept for almost three hours. The sunlight had a touch of evening softness to it when I awoke, and the relative quiet of the house told me that Rebecca’s cousins had departed. A delicious smell of roasting goose stole into the room. I strolled to the kitchen and greeted the beaming Rebecca, who, delighted to be back at work, was bullying Dr. Stokes’s gas range into producing a very promising dinner. Dawn, forgetful of her virtuous intention to spare Rebecca from household duties, was seated, legs dangling, on the kitchen table. With one arm she clutched an enormous and evil-looking stuffed owl to her bosom while, with her other hand, she ran a scarlet harmonica back and forth over her lips, manufacturing a succession of wheezy notes.
Rebecca seemed completely incurious about the tragedy that had brought her back to us. To her, obviously, it was nothing more than a fortunate excuse for terminating her unwanted vacation. Her solid, good-humored normalcy was comforting. But I could not enjoy it for long. Rebecca was as temperamental as Avril Lane when it came to her own art of cooking. She could not abide men in her kitchen. Soon I was shooed away with instructions not to dawdle around, getting in folks’ way, but to read a good book or something.
Her reference to a good book reminded me of the biography of Charles and Mary Lamb that I had borrowed from Phoebe. I searched the office unsuccessfully for it and realized that I must have left it at the Raynors’. Phoebe was one of those generous people who are surprisingly fussy about borrowed books. I decided I had better go and retrieve it before it got appropriated for the snuggery.
I put on my coat, straightened my tie, and went out into the village street. It was cooler now, and Skipton, with its glimpses of the river through the green, feathery willows, looked deceptively peaceful. I met no one on the short walk to the Raynors’. This was the hour, maniac or no maniac, when the housewives of Skipton withdrew to their kitchens to prepare the evening meal.
There was no sign of life in the Raynor house. I walked up the drive and looked into the screened porch. No one was visible. I tried the door. It was unlatched. I went in, calling:
“Anyone at home?”
No one answered, but from upstairs I could hear the faint tap-tap of Avril’s typewriter which told me that Where the Bee Sucks was still in progress. Since I saw my book lying where I had left it on the porch table, there was no point in disturbing genius at the moment of creation. I picked the book up and was about to leave when a strong, pungent odor trailing from the house arrested me.
Cabbage was my first thought. George must be cooking cabbage for supper.
But, if it was cabbage, it was very old, very moldy cabbage, not at all the sort of vegetable one would expect in the kitchen of George Raynor, that paragon of cooks.
I took a step into the living room. The odor was even stronger here. I started to follow it toward the kitchen. As I did so, I realized suddenly what must be causing it. Most of the houses in Skipton used canned gas for
cooking, and canned gas is manufactured in such a way that it gives out a cabbagelike stench when the cylinder is almost empty—a rather crude reminder to the customer that a fresh cylinder is due.
Uneasily I hurried down the short passage which led to the kitchen door. It was closed. I put a handkerchief to my mouth and pulled the door open. The odor, almost overpoweringly strong, rushed out at me.
I might have been prepared for the sight that confronted me, but I wasn’t. Sunlight streamed through the tightly closed windows and the glass panels of the shut back door. It played on the range which stood on the back wall with all its jets turned full on.
It also rippled over the body of George Raynor which sprawled on the red-and-white linoleum beside the kitchen table.
He was lying on his back. His arms were flung above his head. The frilly pink apron, which had been twisted askew, foolishly and horribly draped his buttocks.
The gas fumes were lethal. I knew that, of course. But that wasn’t the only thing. The sunlight revealed blood and matted hair on the back of George’s head, and lying on the floor at his side was a heavy wooden rolling pin.
I rushed to the back door and tugged it open. I ran to the range, snapping off all the jets. But, as I did it, I felt a sensation of futility and despair.
And I thought of Avril’s little roguish smile as she said: They’re so goosy thinking they have to be rivals and fight over poor little me.
I thought of a song, too, and that little jingle in my mind was more frightening than a dozen corpses:
I’ll sing you three-O,
Green grow the rushes-O.
What is your three-O?
Three, three the rivals.
Two, two …”
CHAPTER VII
Struggling against nausea, I caught George under the armpits and dragged him out of the kitchen. I closed the door on the fumes. Then I half pulled, half carried him to the fresh air of the porch. For a moment I stood taking great gasps of air. Most of the dizziness left me. I dropped down at George’s side. My sense of futility in the kitchen was justified. The chance that he might be in a deep coma and still living was gone.
He was quite dead.
It was the similarity between this murder and the murder on the mountain last night that doubled the horror of my discovery. The “lily-white” boys hit on the head and left to drown in the pond. The “rival” hit on the head and left to asphyxiate in the gas-filled kitchen. I felt stealing through me the panic which, any minute now, would blaze through the village.
One is one
And all alone.
Was “one” the murderer? The lonely murderer consistently but insanely putting into homicide the pattern of the song?
Dimly I was conscious once again of Avril’s typewriter still tapping away in the snuggery upstairs. There was something macabre in the thought of that silly little woman beating out Where the Bee Sucks while, all the time, her husband had been lying in the kitchen dying by inches.
As I stood, collecting myself, I heard the click of the garden gate behind me. I turned and, to my acute discomfort, saw my daughter hurrying up the path to the house. I ran out to intercept her before there was a chance of her seeing what lay on the porch.
With more than her usual breathlessness, she announced: “Oh, Daddy, Mr. Cobb’s at the house and wants to talk to you, but he says he’ll stay for a bite of supper anyway, and the goose is cooked and Rebecca says to come at once—or else.”
“I can’t make it—not yet. Tell Cobb to come over here right away, will you?”
Dawn’s eyes widened. “What ever’s the matter?”
“It’s Mrs. Raynor,” I improvised. “She doesn’t feel so hot.”
“Oh, pooh, don’t waste a perfectly good goose for Mrs. Raynor.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You and Rebecca had better go ahead and start supper.” Seeing the look of disappointment on her face, I added: “And save some of that goose for Cobb and me. We’ll be back later.”
Dawn pouted. “I bet Mrs. Raynor isn’t really sick. It’s just that Caleb’s got tired of flirting with her, so she wants to flirt with you.” She blinked. “I suppose you need Mr. Cobb as a kind of chaperon. I mean, she can’t very well flirt too much when there’s a policeman in—”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “And scram.”
Dawn threw a savage glance in the direction of the house and turned reluctantly away back along the village street.
As I returned to the porch, I noticed that the typewriter had stopped. Light footsteps clicked on the stairs, and Avril’s voice, half singing, half humming, trailed down to me:
“I’ll sing you four-O
H’m, h’m, h’m, h’m, h’m.
What is your four-O?
Four for the—”
The singing broke off and she caroled: “George! Georgie-Porgie!”
She was in the living room now. Had she been almost any other woman in the world, natural sympathy would have been strong enough to make me go to her and break the news as gently as possible. But I didn’t feel that way about Avril Lane. I thought that a jolting contact with reality would do her the world of good. The detective in me also was curious as to how she would react.
She came straight onto the porch. The door from the living room was so situated that I was behind her, and the body of her husband, in its pitiful frilly apron, lay directly in her path.
Avril saw it at once and stopped dead. It was then that I learned something interesting about the author of Where the Bee Sucks. She did not need an audience. She played a part just as theatrically when she thought she was alone.
Her hand fluttered out toward George. Then she lifted it to her temple in the classic pose for a Sensitive Woman experiencing Emotional Shock. With a little cry that was almost a giggle, she exclaimed:
“He did it. Renton, that rash, rash boy—he did—”
Something must have made her conscious of my presence, for she choked off the end of the sentence and swung round to me. In the first instant, her eyes showed consternation and indignation at having been caught off her guard. But my expression must have been grim enough to drag her out of the realms of fancy, because her face suddenly collapsed. For once all her fictitious girlishness deserted her. She looked nearer fifty than forty.
“Oh, oh,” she breathed. Then: “He’s—he’s dead? George’s dead?”
“Murdered,” I said.
“Like the White boys. Like the lily-white boys.”
There was terror in her eyes now, and it looked pretty genuine to me.
“Again,” she whispered. “The lily-white boys. The rivals. Three, three the rivals.”
She took a clumsy, swaying step toward me. I caught her as her little body sagged into a dead faint.
I carried her upstairs to a bedroom and left her on the bed, still unconscious. I had more urgent things to do than to minister to Avril.
I hurried down to the kitchen. The gas was dispersing through the open back door, but I opened all the windows for good measure. I expected Cobb at any minute, and when I returned to the porch I saw his solid figure coming up the drive. I met him halfway to the house and told him what had happened. Grim lines settled around his mouth, but he did not say anything. I took him to the porch. He stared down at George and swore softly under his breath. Cobb isn’t a swearing man. I knew then just how hard this second murder had hit him.
“What’s the idea of the apron, Westlake?”
“He did the housework. His wife’s a writer—too talented and valuable to sully her hands with chores. That type.”
He grunted. “And you say it’s the gas that killed him, not the blow on the head?”
“Yes.”
“How long’s he been dead?”
“I can’t be exact. About an hour, I’d say.”
“And how long would it have taken the gas to kill him?”
“That’s impossible to tell offhand. It depends on the size of the room, the amount of ventilation, the concentra
tion of the gas, and any personal idiosyncrasies in George’s physical setup. Taking a guess, I’d say anywhere between half an hour and four hours.”
“You and Forbes left him here around three, you say. Then he could have been hit with the rolling pin any time between then and about a half hour ago?”
“You can’t get much nearer than that at the moment.”
“And the wife was in the house all the time?”
“Up in her office working.”
“Doesn’t it seem kind of…?”
“Not necessarily. Just this afternoon she told me a bomb could drop on Skipton and she wouldn’t notice it when she’s creating. And the gas is heavy. She wouldn’t have smelt it up there.”
“I don’t exactly mean that, Westlake. What I mean is, this murderer must have known she was in the house. For one thing, he’d have heard the typewriter. Wasn’t he taking a terrific chance killing him slow with gas like that when any minute the missus might be running down from upstairs?”
“There wasn’t much risk, and anyone who knew Skipton at all would realize it. Avril spends every afternoon and all of the afternoon beating out her brain children upstairs and never comes down till she’s called to supper. I guess everyone in the village knows that.”
Cobb grunted again. “Seems kind of funny to me, but then I don’t have much experience with literary ladies.” His china-blue eyes fixed my face solemnly. “Is there a window up in that office?”
“Yes, looking right down the village street. But the same thing applies there. When she’s working, she doesn’t look out of the window.”
“Then anyone could have walked in here, conked him on the head, and walked out and she wouldn’t know?”
“It’s possible. Matter of fact, someone did call. I know because I caught a glimpse of them going up the drive just after I left. It was either Lorie Bray or Caleb Stone. I couldn’t tell which, but I saw the light blond hair.”
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