The Case of the Unconquered Sisters

by Todd Downing

  He took a deep breath and expelled it noisily. He moved back to the chair like a man in a daze and sank into it heavily. He bent forward and raised one hand to wrinkle the skin of his forehead.

  His voice sounded deflated. “You win, Mr. Rennert. I can see I’m in a tight spot. I’m not going to try to excuse myself by saying that I’ve only done what my competitors have been doing for years. The Teague Museum is a new one and entered the Mexican field after the Eastern museums were already entrenched. We wanted to enlarge our collection as quickly as possible, so when Echave approached me at the beginning of the season with regard to … an arrangement between ourselves, I agreed. Not without a qualm of conscience, I admit, but I agreed. For a small sum I was to be allowed to take out of the country whatever I wanted of our finds. He turned the rest over to the government and reported that this was the full share due them.”

  He cleared his throat and said earnestly, “No one knew of this except the two of us. Weikel and Biggerstaff did not. Get that straight. It worked satisfactorily until—” anger underscored the words—“Echave began to raise the price above that agreed on. I protested, but there was nothing I could do. If I reported him to his superiors it would only mean that I’d get into trouble and lose material that I wanted badly. I can see now that he’s been double-crossing me, collecting from me for permission to send the stuff out, then stealing it and selling it to Sart. You probably won’t understand, Rennert, what a temptation it was to me. We were speaking a moment ago about honesty, intellectual and material. Voice would never have done what I did. But he would have suppressed a manuscript that conflicted with some thesis he was building up. I wouldn’t. That was the difference between us. But there— I said I wasn’t going to try to exculpate myself.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. You’ll find that you have acted wisely in telling me this. Now I want you to write out a complete statement of what you have just told me. You have a typewriter there, I see. List every object, as far as you can, which you sent out of Mexico this winter.”

  “What has already been sent away—can that be confiscated?”

  “As to that, I can’t say. I think, however, that the Mexican government will be disposed to leniency in return for your testimony against Echave. He has probably been engaged in the same operation with other expeditions. In the meantime I’ll take your place in the interview with Echave. At nine, isn’t it?”

  “So you know about that. Yes, it’s at nine.”

  “May I borrow your flashlight?”

  “Certainly.”

  Fogarty got up and moved to the chair by the table. He took the cover from the typewriter and slipped a sheet of paper into the machine.

  “This is really a death warrant that I’m going to type, isn’t it?” he said.

  “A death warrant?”

  “Yes, for Echave. If it had been anything but murder I might condone it.”

  Rennert watched the long, big-knuckled fingers poise above the keys.

  “What motive,” he asked, “would you give for Echave’s murder of Voice?”

  Fogarty looked up, startled. “Motive? Why, I haven’t thought of that.”

  “Abandoned cemeteries are common enough here in Mexico, had he merely wanted a skeleton.”

  The room was very still for a moment, and Fogarty’s laugh was incongruously loud. “Oh, it’s easy enough to find a motive. Voice may have got wise to his graft and Echave had to kill him to keep him from talking. It’s likely that money was involved, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Rennert said abstractedly, “it is.”

  The clicking of the keys was in his ears as he went down the hall. He secured his hat and raincoat from the stand and made his way across the landing to the rear door.

  The rain still descended in a steady downpour, obscuring his vision. His feet slipped in the shifting gravel and mud as they followed the course of the wavering cone of light toward the coach house. It was bitterly cold.

  He came at last, wet and tired, to the doors. Sliding them back on their grooves, he stepped inside and closed them behind him. He sent the beam of the torch darting about the room until he had ascertained that there was no one there. No one, at least, who wanted to make his presence known.

  He began a slow circuit of the place, his senses alert. A rat scurried for cover behind some loose sacking. The rain beat monotonously on the shingled roof.

  He came to the trestle table, where they had stood that afternoon. He leaned upon it and waited.

  The light traveled here and there, idly, over the dusty floor. It rested for an instant on a burlap bag which lay in the center of the room. It started to move on, then came back with a jerk.

  Rennert moved swiftly forward and knelt upon the bricks. Carefully he threw back the bag, through whose porous sides moisture had seeped.

  The torch’s rays glistened upon the dark pool beneath.

  He got up and directed the light in a circle about him. Little drops, like those of discolored rain, had spattered the dust toward the southeast corner.

  He followed them unerringly to a pile of broken packing cases. He began to throw the splintered wood aside.

  It was a matter of seconds only before he stopped, let fall the board which he had raised and bent over what it had concealed.

  In other circumstances recognition might have been slow in coming.

  On account of the blood. It matted the dark hair and covered the face, which was twisted at an unnatural angle toward one shoulder. The left temple was a sickening, clotted mass about a gaping hole.

  It was Diego Echave.

  Tossed upon his body, like an ironic crucifix, was a double-edged pick.

  21

  Key

  Rennert straightened up and surveyed his fingertips with eyes bleakened by repugnance.

  The blood was still warm.

  He shoved open one of the doors and held his right hand out into the rain.

  The rain which had washed away betraying footprints, he reflected, as his left hand swept the torch in a widening semicircle over the dark rivulets of water cutting their channels through the soft earth. Even his own prints were almost gone.

  He dried his hand with his handkerchief and lit a cigarette. He smoked and stared into the rain-filled night.

  It was impossible now to keep the police out of the affair. In no other land, probably, does a corpse assume per se as much importance as in Mexico. Transgressions against a living man may be regarded as mitigated by a multitude of considerations. But once he is dead—irrevocably and demonstrably dead—he becomes, as it were, sacrosanct. In Mexico dying is man’s most significant act. By the mere touching of the lifeless body in that corner Rennert had put himself in imperative need of a dispensation which could come only from certain high quarters in Mexico City.

  He started up the incline toward the house.

  Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place now, with a neatness in which he felt a purely impersonal pleasure. They required only the final welding of proof. And, he realized wearily, there was little enough of that.

  But wasn’t there?

  The thought brought him to an abrupt stop.

  He turned and walked with quickened step back to the coach house.

  He strode across the room and located a spade. With it thrown over his shoulder he went again into the night.

  Fitting, he thought, that a skeleton should finish what a skeleton had begun….

  It was fully fifteen minutes before he got to his feet and began to throw the viscous black mud back into the shallow hole.

  When it was filled he trod upon it. The flashlight, propped up on a stone, illuminated his muddy shoes, the sodden cuffs of his trousers and the splattered hem of his raincoat. It left in shadow the grimace of distaste which hardened his nostrils and lips.

  He returned the spade to its place, then directed his steps toward the house, breathing deeply of the clean, cold air.

  Having no key to the rear door, he let himself in at the fron
t.

  The muffled click of the typewriter keys greeted him as he tramped up the stairs and down the hall to Fogarty’s room.

  The archaeologist looked up in surprise as he entered. He had his pipe going again, and the room was filled with the pungent odor of tobacco.

  “Hullo, Rennert. Didn’t expect you back so soon. Didn’t Echave show up?”

  “Yes, he showed up. A little prior to the time you and he agreed on.” Rennert disregarded the question in the other’s eyes. “You mentioned the fact that you were a Phi Beta Kappa, Doctor. Do you have your key?”

  Fogarty’s wide lips, chapped and hardened by wind and sun, always seemed to move into a laugh with difficulty.

  “My key? Lord, no. Don’t have the faintest idea where it is. I never wear it more than once or twice a year. Too ostentatious.”

  “You didn’t bring it to Mexico, then?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be of any use to me down here. I left it back in San Antonio.”

  “Of course. Do you know whether John Biggerstaff has one?”

  “Yes. The novelty of it hasn’t quite worn off for him yet.”

  “I’ll leave you now, Doctor, while you finish your statement.” Rennert extended a hand.

  Fogarty, obviously surprised at the gesture, took it with lax fingers. His expression changed abruptly to one of astonishment. “I didn’t know that.”

  Rennert smiled. “I didn’t see any need to tell you before.”

  “Testing my veracity, were you?”

  “No, Doctor, testing my own memory. Good-by.”

  Rennert walked down the hall to Biggerstaff’s room. He entered quietly, keeping the light directed away from the bed. He glanced in that direction, however, and saw that it was empty.

  On the little table near the head were the box of sedative tablets and an empty glass. The glass which Biggerstaff had had at his lips as he and Roark went out.

  For a full minute Rennert centered the light upon the pillow, which still retained the impress of the young man’s head. He was frowning.

  The frown cleared, and he moved to the improvised closet. With nimble fingers he went through the clothing which hung there.

  Next he had recourse to the dresser. In one of the top drawers he found the little square key, stemming at the top into a ring, which abrasion might well wear off. Knobs, Monica had called them, at top and bottom.

  He held it to the light, and for an instant his thoughts strayed as he studied the once-familiar design. On one side, the three bold Greek letters and the hand directing man’s arduous journey to the stars. On the reverse, the name John Clay Biggerstaff, faintly inscribed, the intertwined initials and the date, December 5, 1776. Usage had taken off its brightness and scratches had marred its surface, but it still gave back the light of the torch.

  What a grim jest it was, he thought as he slipped the key into a vest pocket, that such a relic of the gray halls of learning should play a part in another episode of Mexico’s blood-drenched soil.

  It was as he was closing the drawer that the sight of the news paper in the bottom started another train of thought. Why not? The supposed note from Voice had come on the second of May. On that day or soon afterwards his belongings would have been packed and removed to the coach house. An occasion, if he had any knowledge of feminine housekeeping, for a renovation of the vacated quarters….

  But that would have to wait.

  Rennert left the room and went down the rear stairs to the kitchen.

  It was the first time he had visited this part of the house, and he cast a swift, interested glance about the room. The walls above a charcoal stove were grimy from smoke, and the curtains at the windows were frayed. But a meticulous hand had seen that the tiled floor was clean and that the rows of utensils could flash back the light of his torch.

  There was a table in the center of the room and on it a candle. Across the unflickering flame Marta was looking at him.

  Seen thus, with the light lengthening and softening her dark face and glittering back from her eyes, she belied the prosaic background. The ugly factory-made dress loosened and accommodated itself with an unstudied grace to her lithe, full body. The bracelet gleamed bright and barbaric.

  Rennert closed the door and came closer. “Marta, you know that I am a guest in the house, that Miss Faudree has given me permission to ask questions?”

  She nodded.

  “I want to know if anyone besides yourself has been in this kitchen tonight, during or since dinner?”

  “No sir. No one has been.” Her voice was low and not unmelodious, but again he detected that lack of precision in her enunciation. Her English, evidently acquired in this house, was a curious echo of Lucy’s speech.

  “The door to the rear hall has been closed?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you know what people have been in or out of it?”

  Her head moved back and forth in a negative, which she reinforced with a toneless “No.”

  “Have you seen Diego Echave tonight?”

  Something stirred deep in her eyes, but they did not waver. “No sir. I have not seen him.”

  “Someone killed him tonight, Marta, in the coach house.”

  Rennert, watching her face, saw the emotional unrestraint which was a heritage of one of her forbears struggling with the impassivity of the other. She crossed herself quickly, and her lips moved without sound. He speculated briefly what the man might have meant to her.

  He went on: “The person who killed him took from his neck a piece of gold on a thong. You have seen it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Rennert extended a palm on which lay Biggerstaff’s Phi Beta Kappa key. “Was it like this Marta?”

  She stared down, the lids of her eyes dropping slightly. She nodded. “Yes sir.”

  He turned the key over and put a fingernail upon the two lines at the top. “Was there a name here, Marta?”

  “I do not know. It was dirty. The letters were not plain.”

  As he had thought. Those diminutive lines which, in this case, were all-important would be the first to fade with abrasion.

  He replaced the key in his pocket and asked: “Señor Echave found this in the gully north of the coach house, didn’t he?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did anyone besides yourself know that he found it?” He saw her hesitate and added, “And Monica Faudree.”

  “No sir,” she said then, readily.

  “Did Echave ever find anything else in this gully, Marta?”

  She thought for a moment, running the bracelet up and down her arm with long, flexible fingers. “There were some old bones,” she said.

  The little globules of wax tumbled down the sides of the candle, hissing faintly and sending their odor to Rennert’s nostrils. The excitement in his eyes made them almost as bright as hers.

  “Echave found the bones where he found this piece of gold?”

  “I saw them there. I showed them to him.”

  “When?”

  She was entirely Mexican in her vagueness. “A long time ago.”

  “About the time the summer rains started?”

  “Yes.” She grasped at this. “When the rains started.”

  He regarded her for a moment, debating whether to venture further along a line of inquiry of whose goal he was already certain.

  “Did Echave come at night to the coach house,” he asked, “to the old stables where the archaeologists work?”

  There was no expression at all on her face or in her eyes now. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you know why he came?”

  “I do not know,” she replied simply.

  Although the motion was invisible, he saw the effect of the tightening of her facial muscles. He knew the futility of proceeding where a negative would be so easily given and so unassailable.

  “Marta,” he said, “the body of Diego Echave is still out in the coach house. We must call the police and a doctor. Are you willing to go up to the plaza to a t
elephone?” He laid a bill on the table.

  She scarcely glanced at it. “Yes sir.”

  “Very well. You are to call this number in Mexico City. You are to ask for Lieutenant Jaime Tresguerras.” He wrote on a slip of paper. “Tell him to come here immediately, if it is possible, and bring a doctor with him. I shall meet him in the coach house. Is that clear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He started away, then turned. “You remember Professor Voice?”

  “Voice?” she repeated. “Yes, I remember.”

  “He used to live in the southeast room upstairs. The one I have now. Did you clean that room after he left?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did you put newspapers in the drawers of the wardrobe?”

  She nodded. “Yes sir.”

  “Thank you, Marta.”

  There were other means of verifying that theory of his, he reflected as he went up the stairs. But this was quicker.

  In his room, he went directly to the wardrobe and removed one of the drawers below the glass panels. He emptied onto the bed the clothing which he had put into place such a short time before. The newspaper in the bottom was the Mexico City Excelsior of May 2.

  These were the front and back pages of the first section. He ran his eyes over them hastily, then thrust them back.

  He followed the same procedure with the other drawer. On the second page he found what he was seeking. He sank on the bed, recklessly crushing shirts, and held the flashlight to the printed sheet as with the other hand he took from his pocket the envelope which he had found in Voice’s coat.

  His eyes went from the numbers on the envelope to those in the newspaper. A3,400. A3,401. A3,402….

  Nothing there.

  He went on to the next column. G735. G736….

  It was not until he came to P22,007, in the last column, that he let the newspaper fall on the bed.

  He knew why Garnett Voice had been killed.

  He drew a breath of relief that the motive was such a simple one.

  22

  LIE

  The rain must have been slackening for several minutes before Rennert was brought to awareness of the fact by sounds which reached him from the length of the hall. Low voices, a man’s laughter, the shutting of a door.