Skeleton Key

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “I’m sure you deserve nothing less,” she told him.

  “Hey,” said Mr. McKinnon reproachfully, “I’m not sure that was kindly meant.”

  “Neither am I,” said Georgine.

  She thought of him more than once before the next morning, usually with an involuntary smile. Those mild little absurdities of his were really amusing, delivered in the casual voice that said, “You don’t have to listen,” with the expressionless face that assured you you didn’t have to laugh. Yet she couldn’t quite make him out; the absurdities cloaked something a great deal more serious.

  She was still thinking of him at nine a.m., as, once more late and in a hurry, she went down the steep path into the canyon and began to climb the other side. She was returning to Grettry Road with a mixture of interest and cold reluctance; but Todd McKinnon, she reflected, would be in his element, strolling around and chatting with the neighbors, and doubtless picking up rather more information than they thought they were giving. She wouldn’t put it past him to do a bit of detecting himself, on the side.

  Halfway up the slope she turned her head suddenly. That clump of bushes to the north was quivering strangely in the windless air. I bet I know what that is, thought Georgine, beginning to laugh silently. My pal Sherlock is digging for clues.

  There was somebody there. She stepped quietly through the tall dry grasses toward the thicket. Suppose it were the police, really finding clues? In that case, presumably, one just begged pardon and went away fast.

  Very gently she pressed one of the bushes aside.

  By some freak they had grown in a circle, enclosing a small bare space like a room; rather a cozy room, too, with its slippery carpet of dry wild oats, its aromatic leafy walls. Inside the circle Claris Frey was kneeling, furtively stuffing something under the lowest layer of branches.

  She turned; her horrified eyes met Georgine’s; she uttered a startled scream.

  For a moment they were both transfixed. Then Claris’s hand fell limply to her side.

  “Oh, God, now it’ll all have to come out,” she said, and dropped her head on her knees and burst into tears.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Secret Revealed

  “WHY, MY DEAR,” said Georgine, conscience-stricken, “don’t cry like that. What will have to come out?”

  “You would have to find me,” Claris said in a low voice, choking. “You would come snooping through the canyon, just now, when I’d been waiting and waiting my chance to get down here and sneak these things out before the police started searching.”

  Georgine looked at the cache under the low bushes, from which trailed the end of an army blanket. “Claris,” she said, troubled, “were you hiding something that was—in your house?”

  “Oh, no. Can’t you understand anything? We—we left our stuff down here, almost always we take it home with us but it was hard enough getting up the hill in the dark without carrying it—and yesterday morning those goons were looking over the fence, and yesterday afternoon after we found out about the murder Daddy was down near here every minute until the light went, painting like crazy because he was so upset, it’s one of his favorite places for the easel; and after dinner he didn’t let me out of his sight, I couldn’t get away until just now—you can’t have any privacy in this lousy place!”

  Trying to follow this desperate outpouring, Georgine had scrambled through the shrubbery and bent over the slim boneless figure in the gaudy peasant dress. “Claris, dear!” she said gently, “I can’t follow what you’re trying to tell me… Don’t do that, don’t cringe as if I were going to hit you!”

  “You’ll tell,” Claris choked, lifting a furious tear-stained face. “We weren’t doing anyone any harm! We’ve got a right to—to—neither of us has any chance to live their own life! And old people make such a fuss about things, we tried to k-keep it secret—we had to!”

  Georgine said crisply, “If you want any secrets kept, you’d better pipe down. Someone’s coming.”

  Claris gasped harshly, and shot up to a kneeling position. Peering through the screen of bushes, “Oh,” she said, relieved. “It’s Mr. McKinnon. That’s okay, he’s zoot.”

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s all reet,” said Claris impatiently. Mr. McKinnon was now strolling past the thicket. “I thought I heard a scream,” he remarked to nobody in particular, evidently willing to go away again if not needed.

  “C-come in here,” Claris whispered, holding aside a prickly branch of manzanita. “Make her not tell on me! Oh; make her keep still, you’ll understand!” And as McKinnon forced his way into the enclosure, she flung herself upon him and once more burst into tears.

  “Now, take it easy,’” the man said soothingly. He got out a handkerchief, raised the streaming face and mopped its tears in a manner so expert that Georgine’s eyebrows went up. “Point out, please,” she said in an offhand tone, “that I had no intention of telling on anyone, and that if I did I shouldn’t know what to say.”

  “You might as well know now,” said Claris dully. “I would have to fly apart and give it away, of course. We—we were down here Friday night, when the blackout began.”

  “Who were?” said McKinnon, frowning.

  “Ricky and me.”

  “When the blackout began?” McKinnon said in a steady tone that did not conceal deep interest. “How long were you—”

  At the same moment Georgine exclaimed, “Ricky! Then he couldn’t have had anything to do with—”

  “Wouldn’t it just have to be last night?” said Claris. Her voice stayed low and rough, and she wadded the big handkerchief nervously in her clasped hands. “We—we hadn’t been able to meet for a week or so, and I thought how lucky it was still light when I saw Ricky’s signal, and I hurried up to my room and fixed the curtain so he’d know I was coming—”

  “You signaled to each other regularly?” McKinnon said. “D’you mind telling me how?”

  “Oh, if Daddy was going to bed early I’d pin up my bedroom curtains on one side, and then if Rick thought he could get out he’d fix the garden hose in a place I could see it, coiled up the way he’s supposed to leave it instead of lying around the way he usually does; or it worked the other way round. And last night seemed a good chance. We’d go to our rooms just before dark, usually, and then duck out. Rick sleeps on the ground floor, and of course it’s easy for me to get out of the house if I’m careful not to shake the stairs so Daddy’d not feel them.” Claris reddened a little, as if aware that she had taken unfair advantage.

  “I—I don’t even know if he’d care, he always lets me do everything I want. And if that old bag wasn’t so mean we could just have had dates like anybody else!” She took refuge in self-justification. “When we left my grandma’s in the City last summer, and came up here to live, I said I’d do all the work if Dad’d realize that I was old enough to live the way I want to, and there was Rick next door, he got awfully tall and good-looking all at once, and I thought what fun—we’re young, we ought to have a good time!—and that old bi—”

  “Easy,” said McKinnon again. “You’re not referring to your grandmother?”

  “No, Grandma was just ghastly strict, but at least she was fair. It’s Mrs. Devlin. She’d die if she knew I ever spoke a word to Ricky when we weren’t right under her eye. Well, it was her fault!”

  McKinnon exchanged a glance with Georgine. “Let’s get this straight, about Friday. You met down here after dark?”

  “Yes, and we’d hardly got settled before the blackout started, and we didn’t know what to do. I’d have been all right, but Rick didn’t know if his family might look for him; but we were scared to move because we might have made a noise, stumbling through these bushes in the dark, and old Hollister might have heard us. We thought we heard him in the canyon, there was somebody on the path with a light. So we stayed put for awhile, and then it got longer and longer, and we were scared,” Claris said with a childish quiver of her mouth, “so we started up the hill, and Rick
fell down and took all the skin off his knee.”

  Georgine drew a quick breath.

  “And he’d hardly left me before that awful noise came. I guess he got in without anybody finding out.” She looked from one to the other of the adults, as if still afraid they were in league against her. “So now you know. And you promised you wouldn’t tell.”

  “But, my dear,” Georgine said soberly, “you must tell.”

  “No! We said, Rick and I, that we’d stick to our story, that we were home in bed. I’d be okay, but his mother—”

  “Claris, don’t you know what you’re up against? This may be a murder case. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Ricky might be in serious trouble if he lied about being in bed, and then wouldn’t tell where he was?”

  The hazel eyes burned suddenly hard. “He’d rather go to jail for murder than let his mother know. He doesn’t think he’s perfect, but she does.”

  “Isn’t it time,” said McKinnon, “that she found out?”

  “You try telling her,” said Claris, breathing hard. “I’m not supposed to know this, but one time an old lawyer who used to take care of her money tried to make her believe that Mr. Devlin didn’t know enough about investing and things, and she oughtn’t to let him keep all her money. She thinks Mr. Devlin is just perfect, too, and she—she jumped at that lawyer and nearly killed him. And you ought to have seen her at high school the time Ricky got a bad report card!”

  “It didn’t occur to her,” said McKinnon impassively, “that Ricky himself hadn’t earned a good report?”

  The soft, lovely young face took on a look of unexpected shrewdness. “She knew,” said Claris in a scornful voice, “but she wouldn’t believe it, ever.” She grasped McKinnon’s shoulder with a shaking hand. “Don’t you see? He does what he wants, and it’s all right so long as she can pretend not to know. But if you make her realize, all hell busts loose!”

  “I see.” Once more the man glanced at Georgine.

  “And if we told, she’d be sure to get hold of it. So—”

  “Let’s put it like this,” McKinnon said. “If Ricky should get into any serious mess, you’ll have to go to Inspector Nelsing and let him know where you were during the blackout. If the whole thing blows over—”

  “Then you needn’t tell,” Claris said eagerly. “I’ll promise, I’ll promise anything.”

  “So that’s settled,” said McKinnon briskly. “I still don’t know why you were revisiting the scene of the crime.”

  “Oh, to hide this stuff, or get it away somehow.” She gestured at the blanket, the battered cigarette tin and match-box.

  “You mean, carry ’em away in broad daylight?”

  “Well, it was the first chance I had.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a bit less conspicuous if I took them?”

  Claris, with a melting upward look, said it would be. She added further that Mr. McKinnon was a doll, which seemed a strange description; and slipped away between the bushes, to the head of the canyon.

  Georgine had been gazing at her soberly. The child was always fluent, but she’d gone into such detail this time…well, maybe she was glad to get it off her chest. Yet—was it possible that Georgine had been meant to find her, and to hear the story?

  If so, that might mean that Claris was trying to manufacture an alibi for Ricky—or for herself. No, that couldn’t be. Somehow, the story had sounded like the truth.

  “That would explain,” she said aloud, following her train of thought, “why Mrs. Devlin tried to convince herself Ricky was in bed all the time. By now, she probably believes she saw him.”

  Todd McKinnon finished picking up the burned matches, and stood up, giving her one of his inscrutable looks. “Possibly,” he said. “I thought you looked troubled. Was that all?”

  It wasn’t; she had followed the thought a bit further, and discovered that if the children hadn’t been at home, none of the three parents had an alibi for the moments just before the crash. Not that they really needed it, of course, she told herself, and then scowled.

  “This is a mess, all of it,” she said distastefully.

  “Oh, come,” the man objected in his casual voice, “surely you aren’t suspecting the worst of those kids?”

  “Never mind what I’m suspecting.” She started to climb the hill; he walked beside her for a few yards.

  “Not to hand myself any bouquets,” he continued mildly, “but I can usually tell a nice gal when I see one. Most men can, you know. And just because young Claris has a talent for duplicity, you mustn’t jump to the—”

  “Stop putting words into my mouth,” Georgine snapped. “How do you know what I’m thinking?” She left him, with the echoes of his remote chuckle in her ears. She didn’t really know why she should be so irritated, nor why, as she passed the Freys’ back gate, she should have an infantile impulse to kick it. This, however, she managed to control.

  The newspapers had contented themselves with one printing of the accident story, on the morning after the blackout. It was submerged next day in the vast tidal wave of the Sunday papers, and no mention was made of Inspector Nelsing’s investigations. The war went on, and the life of the city settled once more into its normal grooves; but in Grettry Road that steel-sharp word Murder flashed in every conversation.

  You heard or sensed it whenever the residents met in the street, when two or three of them stood talking on someone’s patch of front lawn. It was a curious fact that nobody, except Sheila Devlin, had any doubt as to the manner of Hollister’s death. Their minds had bridged the shock and the horror, and gone to awed speculation.

  Nobody said, “I’m glad.” Nobody was sorry. Nobody seemed either to suspect his neighbor or to be apprehensive for himself—not, at any rate, in public.

  It was all questions, whispered or murmured, and after each a silent pause for speculation. “Did you know Mrs. Gillespie has been in bed with a nervous collapse?… Did they ask you not to leave town or go anywhere without notifying the police? You know Mr. Devlin wasn’t allowed to go out on his trip this week?…Why d’you suppose they’ve had Hollister’s place sealed up? Did you see those cops in there, going over his things?…”

  Presently bits of irrelevant gossip began to salt the questions. Georgine heard them; she couldn’t help it, for she too had been caught in the centripetal force that held these five households in forced communion.

  She didn’t believe much of the gossip, nor find it particularly interesting, until on Tuesday noon she met Mr. Peter Frey. She had come out into uncertain sunlight and a chilly breeze, and was walking up and down the road, at once exercising and keeping warm. As she passed the Carmichaels’ high hedge, Frey came through the gap that led to the front walk, carrying an armload of weeds.

  He nodded and smiled jerkily at sight of her. Georgine said, “Not a very nice day for gardening, is it?” She never remembered that he could not hear her.

  “Did you?” Peter Frey said politely, in his insentient voice. Then his glance followed hers. “Oh, these; the ladies were so kind about asking us to pick their flowers, I felt it wouldn’t come amiss if I cleaned up their garden once or twice, and put out some poison for the gophers. More like paying for what one gets, you know.”

  His tone had become more and more breathy, until at the end it was almost inaudible. Georgine smiled again, embarrassed. “There’s Mr. Gillespie, I wonder how his wife is?” she said, carefully mouthing her words.

  “Oh, better, I think,” Mr. Frey muttered. “I believe she was out this morning.” Georgine looked at his tired face, and the red-eyed sleepless expression of Harry Gillespie, who came strolling across the road to join them. Nobody was feeling very well these days, she thought.

  Mr. Gillespie wasted no time in agitating his lips, he held out a hand and Frey produced a small pad and pencil. “Have you heard any more about Hollister, what’s going to happen?” he wrote in an unsteady sprawling hand.

  “Or have you, Mrs. Wyeth?” Harry said aloud, showing her the note and pas
sing it to Frey. Neither of them, it seemed, had heard.

  He wrote: “That dick was asking qu. about where we were when crash came. Told him I was caught somewhere nr. Richmond in dark, how in hell going to prove it? Don’t like this.” He was doing all the work so far; Georgine and Frey had only to shake their heads.

  Again he wrote. “You knew H., didn’t you? Mimi was sure you did, moving in here at same time. We hrd. you said you brought him here. ?????”

  Peter Frey spoke, his voice loud and harsh. “I did know him, slightly.” He saw Georgine wince, and flushed. “Too loud again?” he murmured. His eyelids, drooping toward the outer corners with a melancholy effect, were lowered now; he began to jerk dried pods off the bundle of weeds he was holding, his long hands moving nervously among the slippery stalks. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. It was painful to me for awhile, but it isn’t now. I met him over—over the matter of my wife’s divorce. She wished to leave me while Claris was quite small, and I didn’t think she was—fit to bring up the child. I might have been certain of it,” he said, his face settling into deeper lines, “from the day when I was foolish enough to marry her. But one always hopes, you know. So I was—forced to have her movements investigated, so I could ask for Claris’s custody. Hollister and I didn’t become intimate, one doesn’t become fond of a private investigator who’s been hired to—”

  It had been slipped in so casually that neither listener grasped it for a moment. Then—“He was a private detective?” Georgine cried out. “Hollister was?”

  Frey went right on, obliviously, “—spy on one’s wife. He seemed not a bad fellow, though, and once or twice afterward we exchanged letters, even after we moved to the Bay region, Claris and I. Then he wrote to say that he was retiring from the Chicago agency, going into some other kind of business, and asked me to look for a place where he could live, in Grettry Road. It happened that one of these houses was to be vacated in a month or so, everybody was moving around last summer—”