Skeleton Key

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “I tell you nothing, as usual. Haven’t you got it figured out for yourself, already?”

  McKinnon looked sadly at Georgine. “I’m afraid he’s making fun of me. If you must have it, Nelsing, I’d begun to tell myself a fine story. Young Devlin’s jeep parked at the one spot where it would have a clear run down the road; someone who dislikes the warden, who lies in wait for him during the blackout, knocks him out in the street, gives the car a push downhill to make it look like one of our hill accidents; that’s as far as I’d gone, but it has possibilities.”

  “There wasn’t time for that,” Georgine said. “Hollister was walking, right up to the minute the car hit him.”

  The detective glanced at her quickly. “You’re sure?” he said, and at the same moment McKinnon put in, “Were you here when it happened, Mrs. Wyeth?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Georgine wearily. “Throwing my weight about, trying to be a little angel of mercy. Next time maybe I’ll know enough to stay inside.”

  “Good Lord! You went out in the blackout?” McKinnon thrust a hand through his sleek hair. “I should hope you would know better. For six months the wardens have been trying to educate people, and the first time—”

  Georgine interrupted him tartly, quoting the immortal utterance of a high official, “Well, no bombs fell, did they?”

  “And consider this, Mac,” said Nelsing quietly. “A dying statement comes in kind of handy.”

  “A dying—oh, God give me strength.” McKinnon looked agonized, and then, in the face of this new idea, gradually appeared to forget the Warden Service. “So,” he said slowly, “that’s why—H’m. You think your mystery has come along at last?”

  “I’ve told you, I think nothing. I collect facts.” Nelsing had been surveying the terrain with rapid, intent glances. “Straight line across the curve of the street,” he murmured, beginning to descend toward the jagged gap in the fence. Georgine and McKinnon followed as if drawn in his wake. “Where was he struck, Mrs. Wyeth? I see someone’s been out with the hose and washed the street. Very thoughtful. Tramped all over the ground where it levels out, too.” He clamped his lips together and shook his head quickly.

  “Hullo, Mrs. Wyeth,” said Ricky Devlin from the group by the fence. His eyes were dark and tired, and sometimes a muscle twitched in his smooth young face, but he was putting up a debonair front. “Hi, Mr. McKinnon.” His glance traveled to their companion.

  “Showing off the scene of the accident?” Nelsing asked.

  Ricky shook his head. “Mourning my car.”

  “It’s you that owned it, then. I’m doing a little investigation for the city,” said Nelsing easily. His manner with Ricky was perfect. “What’s your name? Frederic Devlin? Well, Fred, let’s have a look. I wonder if all you people would mind coming back later?”

  The sightseers straggled off, reluctant, but vaguely recognizing the voice of authority. Ricky stood tense, his head turning jerkily to watch the examination of the car. After a time Nelsing climbed back to the fence, and dusted the burrs from his trousers. “Just one spot where the man could have been hit,” he said thoughtfully, squinting up the road. “Funny how it worked out. He had to be crossing the street—wonder why he wasn’t keeping to the side?”

  “He had to turn out a light in a vacant house,” Georgine said. “The Carmichaels forgot their illuminated number.”

  “Forgot it?” Ricky Devlin looked at her quickly. “No, they didn’t. That light was out Wednesday night, after they left. I—I was walking down here,” he trailed off lamely.

  Doing a warden’s duty, in spite of everything, Georgine thought. She smiled at Ricky, but his face didn’t change.

  Nelsing said, still casually, “You happen to know, Fred, did the warden have a regular route that he followed?”

  “Yeah,” Ricky said. “He was awful methodical. He always went up our side of the road first, and then came down the middle and took a look at the Carmichaels’ and went over to Professor Paev’s, and then back to his own house.”

  “So that if he hadn’t had to turn off that lighted number, he might not have been crossing the road?”

  “Uh-huh, he’d have angled off onto the Prof’s lawn. I used to kind of watch him, to see how a warden—Say, what is this?”

  “Nothing,” Nelsing said. “Just getting the picture.”

  “Listen. I told ’em and told ’em I was careful about parking the Jeep. It couldn’t have got away.”

  “I hope not,” Nelsing told him kindly. “You would have seen anyone meddling with it, I suppose? Did the warden happen to take a look at it during the blackout?”

  “Well, gee. It was awful dark, and my room—you see, I sleep on the lower floor, they fixed up the game room for me.”

  “You were in bed when the siren sounded?”

  Ricky glanced around, and his tongue came out to moisten his lips. “Y-Yes, sir. I—you know how it is, you’re kind of scared when the noise starts, and first you think it isn’t anything and decide to stay in bed, and then—after awhile I put a few clothes on and went up to the breakfast room that we’ve got blackout curtains in, and—well—”

  Georgine’s chest felt cold and tight. Not a word about hearing his mother call to him through the door?

  “You went there before or after the crash came?”

  “A—a few minutes after. Dad was there.”

  Nelsing nodded calmly. “And then, I suppose, you heard people talking and came out into the street? Look, Fred, have you salvaged anything from the car?”

  “No, they said not to, last night. But,” Ricky confessed, “I did take the steering wheel, it was just hanging there on a bush.”

  “Ah. The steering wheel.”

  “Thought I’d have something, you know. ’Tisn’t likely I’ll get another car for the duration.”

  Georgine kept her eyes on his face, though she was conscious of the listening stillness of McKinnon by her side, of the Inspector’s subsurface awareness. She was thinking, What have I done? I didn’t mean it to be like this. She felt the little shock that ran through the boy at Nelsing’s next question, so casually, so kindly put as they started off up the road.

  “Let’s see the wheel, if you don’t mind. What’s the matter, son? You hurt your foot? No, it’s your knee, isn’t it?”

  Ricky kept his face still, but a just-perceptible line of sweat came on his upper lip. “Fell over a chair, when I got out of bed in the dark,” he said jauntily.

  “Well, I’d like to talk to your mother and father, and get this thing cleared up,” said the Inspector. He glanced at Ricky. “Until we do, I wouldn’t talk about the matter. These questions are between us.”

  The boy said nothing. He followed Nelsing up the hill, and the turn of the road hid them.

  The Inspector seemed to have forgotten his expressed need for Georgine. She was left behind, with Todd McKinnon. They looked at each other.

  “I could yell,” said Georgine softly and furiously. “I did this. The Inspector couldn’t possibly believe that Ricky had anything deliberate to do with Hollister’s death! Could he?” she finished weakly, in a whisper.

  “I don’t know. Indeed I don’t,” said McKinnon thoughtfully. “He couldn’t very well have missed seeing that the kid was lying.”

  “Oh, dear. Did you think that too?”

  “I did. And needless to say, I’ll get no inside information from Nelsing until the case is closed.”

  “Why should you get any?”

  His hard-textured face turned slowly toward her. “It’s how I make my living,” said Todd McKinnon. “Murder is my business.”

  Georgine gave a little start. “What do you—”

  “S-sh. I’d like to talk it over with you later, but now—”

  She glanced over her shoulder. On the Freys’ front walk Claris was standing, gazing toward the Devlin house. She turned, with a swing of the hips so that her skirt swirled round bare knees, and came strolling across the narrow border of grass. “Hello there,”
she said, including them both in her greeting but saving an upward flick of her extravagant eyelashes for the man.

  “Hello, cupcake,” said Mr. McKinnon, looking down at her and faintly smiling. “I see you got downtown to buy the war bond and your sweater.”

  “This?” She smoothed the gray angora. “No, this’s an old one, we never did get to town.” The hazel eyes raked the road swiftly, but her voice continued languid. “Have all the ghouls gone away? I suppose there’ll be some more after a while, but Dad wouldn’t let me come out while the place was full of strange characters.” And then, very offhand, “Who was the man with Rick?”

  “He’s investigating the accident,” McKinnon told her.

  “Exciting,” Claris said. “Shame about poor Mr. Hollister, of course, but if it had to happen—at least it’s something going on in this dead end. You should have seen Daddy when I told him. Poor thing, he slept right through of course, and never knew anything had bust loose. Honestly, he just couldn’t seem to take it in.”

  The scarlet enamel of her mouth moved carefully, shaping the words. Georgine gazed at her, fascinated. Excitement, or something—strain, perhaps?—had matured and tightened her lovely face. She looked completely beautiful, a fact which Mr. McKinnon was not overlooking.

  “Well,” Claris went on, not waiting for an answer, “I suppose I ought to be getting Dad’s lunch, I just came out for a breath of air. I was wondering, Mr. McKinnon—”

  She paused, and Georgine said, “Good-by for now, I’d better go into the Professor’s and get some work done.”

  She thought, moving away, What can you make of these young things? That child looks like something a Hollywood director would grab at, and she keeps house for her deaf father and is probably a model of virtue. Or was she? There was something unexpectedly firm under the glamor-girl surface, anyway, no matter what it might signify.

  Mrs. Blake opened the door and immediately laid a conspiratorial finger on her lips. “If you just slip upstairs quiet, Mrs. Wyeth,” she said, “maybe the P’fessah won’t get stirred up again. We had reportahs here this morning and they riled him worse’n I’ve seen fo’ months.”

  Georgine whispered in return, “He told you what happened last night?”

  “Yes, mam,” said the African Queen. “Seemed to think Mist’ Hollistah didn’t get no mo’ than was comin’ to him.”

  “Really? I think he was annoyed already when he—”

  “What is that whispering?” said Professor Paev furiously, from the door to the basement stairs. “Mrs. Blake, if anyone tries to make you give out infor—Oh, Mrs. Wyeth, it’s you. I’m not ready for you, today’s a holiday and I am revising the next section so you can have it on Monday.”

  Georgine wished he wouldn’t make her feel sorry for him and irritated at the same time. She said meekly, “Were the lists all right, Professor Paev? You didn’t have time to look them over before you left, last night.”

  “Lists!” the Professor barked. “Those lists are in a trash can in the Terminal Building. There was no use for them.”

  “The Regent didn’t—”

  “Bah! The Regent!” Alexis Paev strode over to her and wagged a long forefinger under her nose. “Someone was very, very funny,” he said venomously. “Someone thinks, it is clever to play on an old man’s hopes, perhaps one of my comical friends at the University. They’d have let me go out to Wadsworth’s home, and present myself humbly at the door with my list of requirements for a new department, and be told that the Regent left yesterday morning to visit his son in camp at San Diego! They’d have laughed themselves sick, thinking of it, I’ve no doubt. What they did not count on was my having dinner at Solari’s—to celebrate,” said the Professor bitterly, “and running into Wadsworth’s nephew, who used to be one of my students. I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm. I told him of his uncle’s offer; perhaps he laughed, too, but he spared me—kept me from going out there—”

  He broke off, fiercely shaking his bald eagle’s head. Georgine said, “I’m so sorry. If it was a joke, it was in very bad taste. You didn’t recognize the person who gave you the message on the telephone?”

  “No,” the Professor said. He had recovered his composure, and his black eyes were only normally angry. “It’s of no moment. It only means that now I shall keep my discoveries to myself, to be announced at the time I choose. It’s better like that. I prefer it.”

  “So that was it,” said Georgine. “I wondered how it happened that you came back so early last night.”

  “So early?” the Professor said, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Yes; because the blackout began a little after ten, and you were on this side of the Bay—weren’t you?” Georgine found herself stammering a little, wishing she had never made that idle remark. She backed away a foot or two, toward the door. “You said yourself that you were caught in the dark; you were sitting on someone’s front porch.”

  “Ah. Perhaps I did.”

  “And—I simply thought when I saw you that you looked disappointed, and I was sorry to feel that something might have gone wrong.”

  “My dear Mrs. Wyeth,” said Professor Paev, in a tone of ominous suavity, “when I want your pity I will ask for it. Now, please go and spend your holiday somewhere else!”

  “Thank you so much,” said Georgine, her eyes snapping. “If you’ll allow me to work on the job that you’re so anxious to see finished, I’ll be here tomorrow morning. But if I hadn’t already been paid, you could blasted well whistle for me!”

  She went out, and would have slammed the door heartily except that the Professor had hold of it.

  There was another set of eager gawkers draped over the fence, and milling about the level space in front of the Paev house. She thrust her way through them angrily. Nobody in sight but strangers; no McKinnon, no Inspector, neither of the youngsters; yet the upper end of the road, as she passed through it, gave her a troubled feeling. It was as if the atmosphere in those closed houses had become so heavy with strain that some of it had escaped outdoors. “You and your feelings,” said Georgine to herself, crossly, and climbed on toward the intersection.

  From an open window somewhere behind her came a terrible cry. She stopped and whirled around, recognizing the voice of Peter Frey; that curiously unresonant voice, without control in volume.

  “He was murdered, you mean! Oh, God, an accident would have been bad enough. It was my fault, my fault!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hidden in the Bushes

  THE HEDGE BESIDE her rustled, and Georgine started and swung around. The smooth sandy head of Todd McKinnon, making for the gap in the hedge, was just visible.

  In another moment he emerged, coatless, swinging a trowel from an earth-encrusted hand. “Did you hear that?” Georgine breathed. “What did it mean?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you,” Mr. McKinnon said. His face was impassive as ever. Only the deep-set eyes were alive, flicking from one to another of the houses across the street.

  At an upstairs window of the Devlins’, Mrs. Devlin was visible for a moment, her hands pressed together on her mouth. “She heard it too,” said McKinnon softly, as the woman whirled and disappeared. “Murder. It’s a word to stab with; goes right through the chinks of our armor.”

  The Devlins’ door opened and Inspector Nelsing came out, unhurriedly. He spoke to Georgine, his level tones conveying a rebuke. “You’re not leaving, Mrs. Wyeth?”

  “What good am I around here?” Her own voice was quite as level. “If you really need my help, you know where I live.”

  “H’m,” McKinnon murmured. “Getting rough with an officer? I’d say she was safe, Nelse. She won’t run out on you. ’Dyou get anything out of the Devlins?”

  “Now look,” said Nelsing patiently. “If I had, do you suppose I’d sit down on the front steps and tell you all about it?”

  “Well, I can dream, can’t I?” Mr. McKinnon chuckled, deep within his chest. “There’s one thing, though—they didn’t by any chance ha
ve a guest last night?”

  “Didn’t mention one. Why?”

  “Mrs. D. was in a hurry to change the guest-room bed. She was up there tearing at it, ten minutes after you went in to talk to her.”

  “The guest room? Which one is that? Oh, the one to the south.” Nelsing turned to look up at it. “How did you know which—no, never mind answering… Queer,” he murmured just audibly, “I thought they shared the north bedroom. She said they were together when—”

  He shook his head, and walked briskly down the road to the Freys’. Georgine watched him ring the bell, and saw the door open and the tall figure vanish.

  A moment later she heard Peter Frey’s voice once more. He must be standing by the open kitchen window, which faced on the street. “I brought him,” the voice said, loud and flat. “I brought Hollister to this place.”

  Still softly, Todd McKinnon said, “It seems that nobody escapes. I’d have said that Roy Hollister was nothing to these people, besides being the warden; but what’ll you bet they’re all bound up somehow in the matter of his death? All of ’em, every one on this street.”

  “Not me,” said Georgine firmly. “I’m going home now.”

  The Devlins’ door opened and Sheila Devlin came out, crossing the road with a swift stride. “Mrs. Wyeth,” she said in a tone of such cold fury that Georgine took an involuntary step backward, “you brought that man here. I saw you drive up together. You encouraged him to pry into our private lives, to ask questions, to—to suspect us of being untruthful. You did that. May I ask why you interest yourself in us?”

  Georgine thought, I mustn’t get mad, I absolutely must not lose my temper. “Mrs. Devlin, I had no intention of making trouble for you; just the contrary. It was to prove that Ricky wasn’t responsible.”

  “That was very good of you,” said Mrs. Devlin coldly, “but I can defend my son if it’s necessary. And it’s not! Ricky has never in his life done anything wrong. He was asleep in bed last night when the siren sounded. I—I saw him. I went down to his room and looked in,” she said with nervous emphasis. “He heard me, he said so.”