Skeleton Key

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “Gosh,” said Ricky inadequately, turning the beam of his flashlight on the crumpled mass of metal.

  There seemed to be little else to say. The four stood viewing the Jeep’s carcass, tipped on its side in the brush. The windshield was gone except for a few shreds of glass, the steering wheel hung rakishly from a near-by bush, and the shabby leather upholstery was scarred and torn. Ricky started toward the car, and the officer said, “Don’t touch it, sonny. We’ll want to inspect those brakes.”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything. And I told you fifty times I left it in gear, with the handbrake on and the wheels turned against a rock. I told you!”

  “Sure,” the officer said. “I know you told me.”

  Ricky swallowed. “Poor old Jeep,” he said with fine carelessness. “Two of the tires gone, that’s the real disaster.” He scrambled round to the front and surveyed the crushed radiator. For a minute more he said nothing; then out of the dimness behind the torch his face looked at his companions, its lower lip hanging slack. “It—it killed someone. It killed a man,” he said in an unsteady whisper, and suddenly dropped the torch and disappeared into the bushes. There were sounds.

  “Poor kid,” Mimi muttered. “Should we go and—”

  “I’d leave him alone,” Georgine said quietly.

  The young officer looked at the Jeep and then up the slope, and shook his bead. “These hills!” he said soberly. “It’s a wonder more people aren’t killed just this way. There’s hardly a month that a car doesn’t get away and run into someone’s back garden. This jalopp’ could have got up a lot of impetus, tearing down that hill; hit this fellow near the bottom, knocked him for a loop and run over him—one wheel at least—and then bounced against this fence and somersaulted over. Crazy sort of accident, but it’s not so unusual.”

  Ricky emerged from the bushes, very white, wiping his lips with a handkerchief. “Listen, officer,” he said. “Am I supposed to be responsible? What’ll they do to me?”

  The young policeman resumed his official reticence. “There may have to be an investigation,” he said.

  Ricky looked at the two women. There was appeal in his eyes, and the most abysmal terror Georgine had ever seen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Not All Aboveboard

  ON THE MORNING OF July 4, Georgine Wyeth walked downtown through almost deserted streets, and came to the handsome new building that housed the Berkeley Police Department, and hesitated only a moment before she went in. It had taken her the larger part of a restless night to make up her mind to this move.

  Maybe it would be simpler just to find out where the offices of the Homicide Squad were. It proved to be easy; down the hall to the right, and through the door with its glass panel blacked out. She went in, glancing to her right into a glass-enclosed cubicle. A man in plain clothes was standing at the desk, his back to her. She tapped on the door, and he turned.

  The Messrs. Walter Pidgeon, Gary Cooper and Ian Hunter paraded rapidly through Georgine’s mind, and then vanished. No, not like any of them; but a hint of each face in the rugged, blue-eyed one before her. “Something I can do?” the man said courteously.

  “Yes,” Georgine said. “I have some—what might be some information about the death of that air-raid warden who was killed last night. I didn’t know to whom to give it.”

  “Perhaps I’m the one you’d want to see,” the man said. “I’m Inspector Nelsing. Will you sit down?”

  She took the chair he indicated. Inspector Nelsing was looking at her in a disconcerting way, as if she were not a person at all, but a sexless entity labeled Bringer of Information.

  “Do you know about that accident?” She made herself speak steadily. “It was a man named Roy Hollister. A car ran downhill in the blackout and killed him. The car belonged to a young boy who lived on his block, and I—the officer didn’t say what might happen to him, but I thought if they decided it was his fault it would be called criminal negligence. There were one or two things I noticed that it seemed you ought to know.”

  “Just a minute,” the Inspector said, and walked rapidly out and down the hall. Before he returned with a handful of papers Georgine had had time to reflect that he wasn’t even approaching middle-age, with that unlined skin around his eyes; and she had inadvertently read the address of a letter tucked into the desk blotter. His first name was Howard.

  He shut the door behind him and sat down, his eyes already devouring line after line of a typewritten report. “You’ll excuse me if I read this?” he inquired, briefly glancing up. “The officer who handled the case isn’t on duty just now.”

  Georgine said she’d excuse him. She had never in her life met with such devastating politeness as was practiced by the police of this city, even when they were making light of her fears. She wondered how they acted if they suspected you of murder. “Pardon me, madame, would you mind stepping into the jail?”

  Inspector Nelsing put the sheets of paper on the desk, and meticulously evened their edges. “You are—?”

  “Mrs. Wyeth.”

  “Oh, yes. You heard the impact, and after a time—how long? Several minutes?—yes; you went out to see if someone had been hurt.”

  “There was something else. I didn’t tell the officer this, I wasn’t absolutely sure I’d heard it, but—it sounded to me as if someone might have been tiptoeing off up the road.”

  “H’m. Near the body?”

  “I thought farther up. You know, I may have imagined it,” said Georgine in a hurry, forestalling him if he should think of this himself. “When I got to Hollister he moved once or twice, very feebly, and his hand struck against the pavement. It could have been that.”

  “Anything else?” He was serious, and very patient.

  “Yes. He—said something before he died; or at any rate before he lost consciousness for the last time. Mrs. Gillespie heard it. She thought, and of course she may have been right, that he said he was dying. But I was nearer.”

  “What did you think he said?”

  Georgine looked at him warily. “I worried about it all night, the words seemed to—well, sort of stick in my ears, and I couldn’t convince myself that was all he said. I think the words were—‘someone driving.’”

  “That would refer to the car that hit him?” said Inspector Nelsing dispassionately. “Was the engine running?”

  “No, no. All I heard was a kind of rush and rattle, just the noise a car would make if it had started downhill by itself. It’s perfectly possible that’s all that happened, only I thought you should know. Please understand I’m not being a busybody, I’m—”

  “Mrs. Wyeth,” said Nelsing, “may I ask you not to apologize so much? Just tell me what facts you gathered, and let me decide for myself whether they’re worth consideration.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. Those are all the facts.”

  “Did you want to add any conjectures?”

  “Are you asking for them? Well, I did have some, but they sound rather fantastic.” She caught his eye, and hurried on. “If someone had got into that car, as the warden went down the road, I—I suppose it wouldn’t have been impossible to wait till he was in the right position and then run him down?”

  The impersonal gaze did not change. “Just a minute. The report says that no one was in the car when it went over the fence; at least, there were no signs of an occupant. It would mean that the person would have to jump out somehow before the crash.”

  “That—that might have been possible, too, if the car slowed up on the level part of the road. Ricky’s car didn’t have any doors. That made it like a jeep; he was very proud of the resemblance.”

  “Did you hear anything like a person jumping out?”

  “No, but there are drifts of leaves along the road.”

  “It would have to be a very agile person. A leap like that, from a car going even at half speed, would spin you around hard; you’d be likely to fall. I don’t suppose you noticed if any of the people who were standing around after the
accident showed signs of having had a spill?”

  Georgine hadn’t thought this far ahead. She looked at him, frowning. “The—the only one—yes, there was one, but it couldn’t have meant anything.”

  “Who was it, Mrs. Wyeth?” His handsome mouth tightened. “I presume you didn’t volunteer this information with the intention of withholding part of it?”

  Her eyes dropped. She said in a troubled voice, “Ricky Devlin, the boy who owned the car.”

  “I see,” Nelsing said quietly. He waited for a minute before letting drop his next question. “Did you know the man who was killed?”

  “Hollister? No. I met him only once or twice in his capacity as warden.”

  “What kind of a man was he?”

  “The boss of the barnyard,” Georgine said with a subdued laugh. “He wardened harder than anyone I ever saw. Otherwise, he was just ordinary, like—like all the men you see walking along the street smoking cigars. And yet—” she hesitated, wondering how to frame the next sentence. “He had a sort of impact on people that I couldn’t define or explain to save me.”

  “Was he popular with the neighbors?”

  “Well, no. On the contrary, I’m afraid,” she said.

  The question slid in casually. “Would any one of them want to kill him?”

  “I don’t know, Inspector. I thought if there was somebody driving that car, he might have come from outside.”

  Inspector Nelsing just looked at her, during a lengthening pause. She became aware of several things, one after another. A) She must have believed that someone in the Road had killed Hollister, but B) in the attempt to convince herself it wasn’t true she had said exactly the opposite; and C) the detective was scornfully aware of this process of reasoning.

  After a long time he spoke. “Everyone is immobilized during a blackout,” he said wearily. Georgine made no response.

  Nelsing arranged the sheets of the report once more. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “That isn’t a great deal to go on, Mrs. Wyeth,” he said, “but it so happens that there are one or two points of interest in this report. The officer said you had Hollister’s keys for awhile.”

  “Yes. Mr. Devlin insisted that I take them, but the door was unlocked. And—while I was in the hall, using the telephone, it seemed to me that someone else was in the house. Mrs. Gillespie thought so too, and ran. But we might have dreamed that up too, you know, simply because we were scared. I was awfully scared,” she added, defiantly.

  “I see,” said Nelsing. “Someone in his house. You didn’t investigate?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Did you examine those keys at all? No? I wonder, Mrs. Wyeth, if you’ve ever seen a skeleton key.”

  She looked up at him again, silently.

  Inspector Nelsing rose. “Yes,” he said deliberately, “there were two or three on that bunch you had, and the Warden Service hasn’t authorized the use of any such thing. I think I’ll take a little run up to this Grettry Road. I wonder if you’d mind coming with me.”

  From a welter of thoughts and disturbing new ideas, Georgine expressed only one. “No,” she said firmly.

  Nelsing looked up from locking his desk. “No what?”

  “No, I don’t want to go up to the Road with you. I’ve given you my information, and now I want to go home. Soon or late I suppose I’ll have to go back to the Professor’s and finish my typing, but I’ve no desire to meet any of those neighbors again.”

  “Could I ask why?”

  “No reason, only a silly feeling. I’ve been—well, uneasy, ever since I stepped into that place last Monday. And now that there’s been a—” She broke off and swallowed. “You might as well know. I’m a terrible coward.”

  “Many women are,” said Inspector Nelsing calmly.

  Well!

  It had cost her a good deal to make that honest admission. “But I asked for it,” Georgine told herself; “what did I expect him to do, say, ‘Oh no, not you, you’re brave as five lions’?”

  “And surely,” he added, “if you’ve mingled freely with the neighbors during this week, if you talked with them and went in and out of their homes last night, you shouldn’t be afraid of them now. If you kept your head enough to try first aid and call the ambulance when you found a man was hurt, surely you see that your fears can be overcome?”

  “I was geared for a war, not for a murder.”

  Howard Nelsing stood by his desk, tapping it softly with a forefinger, looking down at her. “There isn’t so much difference,” he said seriously. “Murder is on a smaller scale, that’s all, and it stems from the same things: greed, jealousy, fear, hatred. Somebody gets stabbed in the back, and justice demands that the stab be avenged. The ordinary citizen gets caught up in it just as he does in war. And have you thought that individual crime goes on just the same, century after century, no matter whether we’re fighting other nations or not? If we could wipe it out, perhaps there wouldn’t be any wars.

  “Besides,” his tone became suddenly more personal, “I’m afraid I’m going to need you, Mrs. Wyeth.”

  She looked up again, seeing how the hard light of a foggy sky struck across his face, the serious mouth, the blue eyes. This sensation inside her was very disturbing, as of a well-made gelatine, firm but ready to quiver at a touch. “All right,” said Georgine ungraciously. “After all, you’re not sure there’s been a murder, are you?”

  “Not at all sure,” said Nelsing briskly. “Now; we’ll drop in at the Civilian Defense office for a moment.”

  She did not see what was written on Hollister’s dossier, but as Nelsing helped her into his car he told her. “Nobody seems to know much about him; no family, as near as we can discover. He came here last August and took a lease on that house. Seemed to be retired, young as he was. After Pearl Harbor, when the Warden Service was organized, he offered his services. They were glad to get him; nobody else in Grettry Road could serve. He’s been faithful and efficient, and that’s what counts, mainly.”

  “But, skeleton keys!” Georgine said, troubled. “What on earth do those mean?”

  “Maybe nothing.” Nelsing shrugged. “Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Wyeth. In cases of violent death, we’re always running into odd little sidelines, loose ends that haven’t a thing to do with the situation. Will you tell me about the boy that owned the jalopy? What does he do, go to school or just hang around?”

  The car skirted the University campus and began to climb steadily through winding tree-lined streets. “Ricky?” Georgine said thoughtfully. “In vacation I suppose he does just hang around, except that he’s crazy to get into the War himself, somehow, and his mother won’t let him. Seems he might get into coarse company if he went fruit-picking, and he can’t sign up as a warden’s messenger because that’d mean being out during an air-raid—though she denies at the top of her lungs that there will ever be any. She’s rather a dreadful woman, though I imagine she’s really devoted to her husband and her son and doesn’t know any other way of expressing it. You should have heard her telling Ricky that he was only a baby yet, and that they’d never take him as an air-raid warden unless all the available men were—Oh!”

  Nelsing said nothing. He could scarcely have missed it.

  “I’ve given you the wrong impression,” said Georgine, trying to speak quietly. “He’s a nice kid, and when I saw he might be in trouble through no fault of his own I wanted to help him. He looked at me so—I have a little girl myself, you see, and I’m awfully susceptible to young things.”

  The man set his car in low gear for the precipitous climb up Rose Street; it growled and hummed to itself. “Don’t worry about forming my impressions,” he said calmly. “I’ll decide on my own, after I’ve talked to him.”

  Georgine did not feel much better. The higher they climbed, the lower her heart seemed to sink. The thick fringe of eucalyptus against the sky looked black and unfriendly; in a minute the car would swerve under those trees and drop down into Grettry Road.


  “I’ll park up here,” Nelsing said, stopping near the road signs at the intersection. He looked round at her soberly. “I’ll introduce myself as a city detective, but it may make things easier if the Homicide Squad isn’t mentioned.”

  “Very well,” said Georgine. “You’re incog; I shan’t give you away.”

  They rounded the turn and the slope of Grettry Road was spread before them, alive with the excited babble of sightseers. The fence at the end was completely obscured by leaning forms. At the curve of the vacant lot stood Mr. Todd McKinnon, hands in the pockets of an admirably cut tweed jacket. He seemed to be sighting carefully down the road.

  “Incog, hell!” said Inspector Nelsing in an undertone.

  “You know him?” Georgine looked up, surprised. “He’s kind of a screwball, isn’t he?”

  “Acts like one,” Nelsing said, walking toward him. “What’s he doing here so soon?”

  “He works here daytimes, I believe, but at what I don’t know. He wasn’t here last night, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Nelsing, “and I bet it’s eating him.”

  At the sound of footsteps, McKinnon looked round casually. The oddest thing happened to his face; it could scarcely be called an expression, since not a muscle moved, but his agate eyes took in Georgine and her companion with a sudden complete awareness.

  With one long step he was off the edge of the lot and onto the pavement. “Great Scott,” he said easily, “have I messed up any evidence?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I’m practiced,” McKinnon said to Georgine, “at jumping to conclusions. Eleven feet from a standing start was my last record.”

  Nelsing looked him over with a wry smile; he was much more at ease with men than with women, Georgine thought. “How the vultures do gather,” he observed.

  “Vultures,” McKinnon repeated, interested. “I’ve been called worse than that, by smaller men than you. Nothing ever happened to them,” he added pensively. “Well, this is interesting, Nelse. You don’t tell me—”