Liz had heard it first from Ben. That was when Ben Latimer was Sherry’s young man, and Liz had thought men were all very well as mechanics or co-pilots, but otherwise unnecessary.
There’d been a long postmortem after she’d heard Hinchcliff read his paper on his new direction finder, and she got home late. She had heard voices in the west room and had wandered in. Even before Sherry hastily excused herself and went upstairs, Liz realized she’d interrupted a scene. Liz hadn’t known whether to go or remain, so she’d stood there, looking at Latimer.
Ben had taken a long time lighting his pipe.
“I want you to be the first to know, Liz,” he said at last. “I’ve been jilted.”
Liz gasped. “Why, Ben! We’ve all always believed it was completely settled.”
Ben got up from the chair slowly, standing very tall and straight. He was still in uniform then.
“I’ve bumped into a powerful rival,” he said. “A rival too strong to buck. The Church. Sherry’s determined to become a nun. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Afterwards, when Liz had gone upstairs to bed, Sherry had told her about it.
“I didn’t want to do it blind, Liz,” Sherry had said. “I wanted to see enough of the world first so I’d be sure. And now I know. There’s no mistake about it.”
Now here it was, settled. All the hopes of that chocolate-smeared confab had been carried out. Wilhelmina—now Lorna—Drake was in Hollywood, and one of the most celebrated stars in the country, for reasons which had not been especially apparent twelve years ago. Liz was a grade A aviator—she hated the word “aviatrix”—and would be flying again as soon as this damned arm healed. And Sherry was a nun—or at least, well on the road to being one.
How about that? How close to being a nun was a novice? How irrevocable was it if you changed your mind? Liz wasn’t sure. But she felt absurdly glad that Ben Latimer wouldn’t be present for dinner tonight. Liz even hoped something might come up to keep him busy for the next few days.
CHAPTER IV
Dr. Frayne tasted the contents of the casserole and his white teeth glistened as he beamed with pleasure above his beard.
“Magnificent!” he proclaimed. “And you concocted this out of canned remnants, Vicky?”
Mrs. Cain shook her head. “She did it. Sister Helena.”
“Ursula,” the nun said quietly.
Dr. Frayne turned his smile down the table and eyed her with an approving gaze.
“As an atheist of long and solid standing, I have always admired monks, if only because they know how to make wine and liqueurs,” Dr. Frayne announced. “But I had no notion that nuns had their fleshly virtues, too. If this is a sample, Sister, you must publish a Convent Cook Book.”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t learn this in a convent,” the nun confessed. “Oh, we cook, of course—and Sister Immaculata could shame many a cordon bleu—but this recipe I learned from the wife of a lieutenant on the Homicide Squad. She is the best cook I have ever known.”
Liz felt a little shudder run up and down her spine. A lieutenant on the Homicide Squad? She hadn’t mentioned Ben Latimer since Sherry had arrived. Now she let her eyes meet those of her cousin, and wondered if her own were as unreadable as Sherry’s. She caught sight of a dangerous smile on Roger Garvey’s handsome features and saw his full lips part as if to speak.
Hastily she plunged in. “How on earth do you happen to know such strange people, Sister?”
She didn’t hear what Garvey said, though she knew it was some question directed at Sherry and Ben. His speech and hers had overlapped and canceled each other. There was another awkward silence.
Then Liz’s mother took a taste and stared at the untouched plate before Uncle Brian Cain.
“Brian, Dr. Frayne’s right,” Mrs. Cain said. “It really is wonderful. I’m almost tempted to enter a convent myself. How can you sit there, not touching a morsel of it. You look pale.” Her face grew anxious. “Are you ill?”
“I’m all right, Vicky.” Brian Cain forced a smile. “Something must have upset me at lunch. I feel a little squeamish.”
“Overwork,” Dr. Frayne diagnosed. “You won’t be much use to the war effort if you wear yourself out, Brian.”
Mrs. Cain spoke to everyone. “There’s plenty of seconds for everybody.” Her face brightened. “Ah—I know!”
“What, Mother?” Liz always feared the worst from her mother’s sudden inspirations.
“That poor Mr. Thatch! He must be terribly hungry after welding things all day. I’m sure he’d be glad to eat up whatever is left over.”
She bustled out of the room. Sister Ursula smiled approval, but Roger Garvey lifted his carefully brushed eyebrows.
“At least I hope she’s able to persuade Hatch to wash his hands,” Roger said. “Changing his clothes would be too much to hope for.”
Nobody had a chance to answer him. From the second floor they heard Mrs. Cain’s shrill, terrified scream.
It was an unearthly sound that came quavering through the old house. It caused them to hold their knives and forks suspended and sit for a brief space in stunned surprise.
Dr. Frayne recovered first. His professional duties had trained him to rise to emergencies. He jumped out of his chair and darted out of the room. Sister Ursula was not far behind him. Liz and Sherry momentarily got tangled up in the doorway, then went racing for the stairs, with Brian Cain close on their heels. Only Roger Garvey did not move. He shrugged wearily and went on eating.
When Liz reached the bend, Sister Ursula was already well up the steps. But Dr. Frayne had halted at the small table at the bottom of the flight and was looking about him in a perplexed manner.
“Where is it?” he was muttering. “I’m sure I left it here.”
Then he looked under the table, saw his bag, snatched it up, and started to climb the steps, two at a time. Liz followed.
There had been only one scream. Now silence reigned on the upper floor. Automatically Liz headed for Graffer’s room.
“The poor old man is dead and Mother must have found him,” she was thinking. “Too bad! But perhaps it’s for the best. He’s been in pain so long.”
Just as she remembered about Fists and those threatening notes, she saw Graffer’s door open and Miss Kramer, starched and efficient, with her cap on, come out into the hall. As the nurse headed toward the east bedroom, Liz glanced into Graffer’s room. The old man was sleeping peacefully, with his veined aged hands resting upon the folded sheet.
Liz turned and hastened toward the east bedroom, too. Down the hall she could see Sister Ursula about to enter that room. Liz ran forward past Miss Kramer and stopped in the doorway. Her mother was lying on the floor in a faint, but when Liz’s glance went to the bed, she forgot about everything else.
The little shipyard worker, who had been so perkily alive an hour before, was lying upon the bed with his head on the pillow, face upward. He was dead. But it was something more than mere death that halted Liz in the doorway of the room—something which jarred her nerves as they had never been jarred before. It was the expression upon the face of the corpse. The features were screwed up into a grin which was indescribably appalling.
Grins are supposed to depict mirth but this grimace was anything but humorous. It expressed pain—nothing else. Homer Hatch had died in agony and that last contortion of his features remained frozen there.
The effect was heightened by the stringy, greasy hair that hung down over his high forehead and the gleam of his yellow, bared teeth.
It was Dr. Frayne’s dry voice, behind Liz, as he spoke to the nurse, which broke the spell of her horror.
“Miss Kramer, you stay here and assist me,” said the doctor, as he pushed Liz to one side, and moved forward into the room. He glanced at Sister Ursula who had stopped at the foot
of the bed. “Everybody else must clear out. Brian, carry Vicky to her room. Liz, you go with him, undress her and put her to bed. No—of course you can’t do that with your lame arm. Sister, will you help?”
The nun nodded and Liz, recovering from her shock, turned. They were all there now, Uncle Brian, Sherry, Miss Kramer—everybody except Roger Garvey.
Brian Cain picked up Mrs. Cain and went out, followed by Liz, Sherry, and Sister Ursula. Miss Kramer remained with Dr. Frayne who stood at the door and closed it after them. They followed Brian as he carried his sister-in-law down the hallway.
Sherry had lingered in the doorway. Her face was as white as her wimple.
“Is—is Hatch dead?” she asked Liz.
“Yes.”
“I never saw death like that before,” Sherry said in shaky tones. “I know I’ll have to. We do so much nursing work. But it’s awful, just the same.”
Her voice dropped. For the first time since her mother’s scream Liz had the chance to ask herself how, what, why? Why had Hatch died almost on the instant he entered their home?
She had plenty of time to think, too, for when they arrived at Vicky’s room and Uncle Brian had laid her down on a couch, Sister Ursula took charge and shooed them all out, just as Dr. Frayne had done.
Brian Cain went downstairs again, perhaps to finish his interrupted dinner. Liz and Sherry remained in the hallway, too excited to care about food. The two girls didn’t say much to each other. They just stood there, thinking about what had happened.
After about fifteen minutes had passed, the doorway of the east bedroom opened and Miss Kramer came out. She motioned to them and they hurried forward.
“I’m going to see how Mrs. Cain is getting along,” said the nurse. “Dr. Frayne told me to. You better go in and see if you can help him. He may need someone.”
Then with a nod at Liz, she went up the hall to Mrs. Cain’s room.
Liz could feel Sherry steeling herself, tightening her nerves against the death-chamber. She took the novice’s hand in her good one and squeezed it reassuringly.
“Come on,” she whispered.
The body had been clothed at Liz’s first glimpse of it. Now the clothing lay on the floor, and when Dr. Frayne caught sight of the two girls, he hastily pulled a sheet over the corpse.
“Have to report this to the coroner’s office right away,” he told them. “Although I couldn’t very well give a certificate, I was curious to see for myself.”
“Why did he die?” Liz asked. She tried to forget about that grin.
The doctor frowned and tugged at his beard. “Damned if I know why, but I’m getting an idea of how. Thought at first it was tetanus. Typical enough spasm. But if that was it, we’d have noticed he was sick when he came.”
“He looked fine then,” Liz said. “Just a little tired.”
“Sure. That’s why I checked over the body. Tetanus could have resulted from an industrial accident but with modern precautions, it’s unlikely. Also, there’s no abrasion or wound on the body.”
“Then what killed him?”
Dr. Frayne pulled down the sheet. The distorted grin seemed to have no effect upon his hardened nerves.
“Look at those eyebrows,” the physician said. “Look at the mouth. Indisputable signs. Has to be either tetanus or strychnine. Since it wasn’t tetanus, it must have been strychnine.”
Liz shuddered. She heard a small groan from Sherry. “You mean he killed himself?”
“That’s what the poor devil wanted the room for. Suicide in privacy. That’s why he needed a room so badly. He did it quick, too.”
“But if it’s suicide, shouldn’t there be a glass or something?” Liz asked.
“Why?” Dr. Frayne retorted. “Pills in your pocket—gulp ’em down.” He was still oblivious of the girls’ reaction to the casual vividness of his picture and the twisted features of the dead man.
There was a sound from the doorway and Liz glanced around to see Sister Ursula standing there. How long she had been in the doorway Liz didn’t know.
“May I come in?” the nun asked “Mrs. Cain is in bed. She seems to have passed into a normal sleep. And this poor man, God rest his soul! I wonder where he got the strychnine.”
Dr. Frayne raised his eyebrows. He could not conceal his astonishment. “You go in for diagnosis, too, Sister? Or did you hear what I said?”
“No, I didn’t hear.” The nun gestured at the contorted dead face. “It is easy to surmise the cause of death must have been strychnine.”
The doctor grunted. “Also, it might have been tetanus. Trust an amateur to jump to the sensational.”
“Remember, Doctor, I saw him only an hour ago. He was well then.” She moved quietly to the bed. “He’d been drinking, hadn’t he?”
Dr. Frayne nodded. “Common prelude. Nerve yourself up to it.”
“But when he came here, I stood close to him and smelled no liquor. Have you sent for the police?”
“Police?” Sherry gasped.
“They check up on suicides,” Dr. Frayne said. “Liz, will you please put in the call?”
CHAPTER V
Liz left the room. As she walked out she heard the nun’s quiet voice.
“Dr. Frayne, why are you so sure it was suicide?”
Liz dialed OPERATOR and said, “I want a policeman.” She gave the address and hung up. When she turned, Roger Garvey was standing behind her.
He glanced at her unsteady hand and wordlessly offered her a cigarette. After he had lighted it, he puffed on his own.
“I know to my sorrow, my dear Felicity, that you yearn for a specific policeman,” he drawled. “But what drives you to this step? What has been happening?”
“You don’t know?”
“When a woman screams, and a doctor, a nurse, and a nun are all available, it strikes me that I’d be more of a hindrance than a help. I decided to finish dinner. But what happened?”
“That little defense worker, Mr. Hatch, just killed himself in the room Mother let him have.”
Garvey blew out a smoke ring. “And you still find death moving? Even in this year of death? But why the police?”
“Dr. Frayne says suicides must be reported.”
“Of course. I should have remembered. But why just ‘a policeman’? Why not give the family business to a family friend?”
“Please, Roger. Don’t heckle me. I’ve got to get back.”
Roger Garvey halted her by placing his hand on her shoulder.
“Felicity, you still misunderstand me. I don’t mean to heckle. I only want you to see yourself clearly. Don’t you know why you didn’t call Ben?”
Liz’s eyebrows went up.
“Why should I? It isn’t his sort of job. He wouldn’t want to be bothered.”
“Of course, you can rationalize it.” Roger sounded impatient. “But can’t you see why you subconsciously shrank from calling Ben? Because you don’t want him to come here, not while Sherry is in the house. It’s because you still aren’t sure of him.”
“Let me go, Roger.”
“Felicity.” His voice was low and urgent. “You could be sure of me. You should know that.”
“Let me go!”
She jerked away and ran upstairs. She could almost feel Garvey’s eyes following her, although he had let her go.
At the head of the stairs she met Miss Kramer.
“Oh, Miss Cain,” the nurse said, “would you please go in to your grandfather? He’s awake now and he’s demanding to see you and Miss—Sister—his other granddaughter,” she concluded, uncertain of the correct designation for a novice.
“Right away.” Liz again went into the room where Hatch had died. “I put in that call, Doctor,” she told Frayne. “A prowl car should be here any minute.”
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“Thank you, Liz.” The doctor turned to the nun. “And please, Sister Ursula! Leave it up to them when they arrive. After all, it’s their business.”
“I hope they know their business,” the nun said.
Liz turned away and hurried up the hall to see her grandfather.
Graffer had always been old, as Liz remembered him. He had always had that white hair, that heavily lined face. But there had been strength and vigor under the semblance of age; now he was just an old man, weak and helpless and very much alone.
He sat propped up with pillows and a bedrest. He smiled as Liz came in. The smile lit up his gray, wrinkled face.
“Did you see your young man today?” he asked. His voice was gentle, but probing.
She understood what he meant. “He said he’d see to it, Graffer. He promised to have men posted around the house. You can rely on him. He’ll take care of it.”
“Good. I feel like an old fool, calling for help from the police.” His withered face took on a cunning expression. “But Vitelli always meant what he said. Can’t take chances with you and your mother here in the house. What’s been happening?” he demanded with considerable abruptness.
Liz tried to stall off his question. “I haven’t heard the news yet this evening,” she said. “What makes you ask that?”
“People tramping up and down halls, in and out of rooms. What’s been going on? Or has that fool of a doctor decided it’s not good for my heart to let me know? Come on. Tell me.”
Liz tried to smile. “You’re imagining things, Graffer. Of course, it takes a lot of shuffling around, getting people settled in guest rooms, when we’re having a family reunion.”
He gave Liz a skeptical stare, then shrugged his shoulders.
She was glad that Sherry came in just then. Graffer took one look at this other granddaughter and shut his eyes in a wry grimace.
“Mary Sheridan Cain!” he barked. “What are you doing in that masquerade costume?”
Sherry stiffened. “It’s my uniform,” she said.
Graffer snorted. “Hmf! I warned your father what would come of your mother’s religion. But I never expected to see a granddaughter of mine dressed that way.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 128