Skeleton Key

by Lenore Glen Offord

  She could not have dragged herself up the stairs if it had not been for the memory of those slow drops of blood. Coming down, after a brief search, with the neat tin box, she told herself weakly: I’m always thinking that I’ve never been nearer death, but this time it was true. The poor devil was clean off his head.

  McKinnon’s breathing was back to normal; he was still kneeling quietly by the still form. He stretched out a hand without looking up, and Georgine found a gauze compress for him to lay against the shallow wound in Harry’s head. Only when the bandage was in place did he look up.

  “I think,” she murmured, “you saved me from a very sticky death.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Only thing I could think of, to make sure, was to draw him off. Bleating of the kid excites the tiger.”

  “That wasn’t—true, what you made him think?”

  The hard-textured face did not change but she saw a flicker of mockery behind his eyes. “You believed it? I didn’t know my fiction was so convincing.”

  “Of course I didn’t believe it.” Georgine’s tone was a little too indignant, and she moderated it. “But good heavens, you made it up like a flash! He—he was right.” She sat down suddenly on the rug, and put both hands over her face. “We might both have been dead and buried by the time help could have got here. Todd—he wasn’t the murderer, then? I thought for a minute—he might have gone into one of those rages against Hollister, too, but surely, surely, Mimi’s disappearance has something to do with this—and he couldn’t have known where she is.”

  “I don’t know,” McKinnon, said drawing out the words. He looked past her, as if he were thinking of something else, a long way off. “Dead and buried,” he said under his breath; and then recollected his thoughts. “I don’t know, Georgine. Suppose he seized the opportunity to take another crack at you, and put on this act to justify himself. He could plead insanity—”

  “You don’t believe that!”

  “I never know what I believe,” he said, and gave her one of his quizzical looks. “I can talk myself into almost anything. Look, I’ve got to report this to Nelse, and talk to him. Could you stay in here with him for a few minutes?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You won’t be too frightened? Sure?”

  “Oh, get on with it,” Georgine snapped. “I’m afraid of lots of things, but an unconscious man isn’t one of them.”

  “That’s better,” Todd said, moving toward the telephone in the hall. “Always relieves my mind when you get mad.”

  He hesitated a moment and then came back, leaning over to grip her shoulder firmly.

  “Georgine. Do you want to prefer charges against Gillespie?”

  She looked at the unconscious face, like an overgrown boy’s in sleep. “No, I don’t think so. He was crazy with anxiety.”

  “Then look here. How about telling everyone that he’d worn himself out looking for Mimi, and got despondent and threatened to shoot himself? You grabbed his arm and the bullet was deflected. That’s near enough to the truth, and we shan’t have to mention anything else—his suspicion of you, or any of it.”

  Georgine glanced up at him. After a moment, she said, “Very well, if you think it’s best that way.”

  “Don’t mention any of it,” she repeated softly aloud, after he had gone into the hall. The words ran round and round in her mind. Not any of it.

  Nelsing arrived in very short order, but he didn’t come in. She heard Todd talking to him at the door, the tones low and grave, the words unintelligible. Sitting in the dusky living-room, her watchful eyes on Harry Gillespie, who seemed to be resting easily under the blanket with which she had covered him, she tried to make her tangled nerves relax. None of the neighbors had seemed curious about the pistol shot; probably in the classic manner, they had thought it was a car backfiring.

  Time passed. She was not eager to hurry it, nor to be away. It was enough for the moment to have the terror removed, to know that even if danger threatened again she had only to call out for help.

  Once she dragged herself wearily into the kitchen for a drink of water, and glanced out the window as voices suddenly rose and swelled in the street. There was a knot of people up there on the Devlins’ lawn, their heads close together, chattering and gesticulating. She saw Ricky and his parents, and Mr. Frey and Claris, and—yes, even Professor Paev, standing a little aloof from the group, his long bony hand covering his mouth. Georgine supposed they must all have heard of the suicide attempt, and had gathered out there in the twilight to talk it over. The clock said half-past seven; they were all through with their dinners, no doubt. For once in her life she didn’t feel in the least hungry.

  The group, however, seemed to be looking down the road, past the Gillespie house. Peter Frey’s head turned birdlike from one to another, his eves trying to catch those rapidly mouthed words. There, someone had taken pity on him and was writing. She saw him look up suddenly, and the slip of paper dropped from his fingers. It shouldn’t have startled him that much, that there’d been an accident to Harry Gillespie.

  The ambulance came at last; it had been delayed by a bad traffic crash downtown. The young intern stood out of sight on the Gillespies’ doorstep for several minutes, seemingly talking to someone, receiving instructions. Perhaps it was Nelsing who gave them to him, for when he and the stretcher-bearers took Harry away, they asked no questions.

  When she came out into the cool foggy twilight, the group of neighbors had vanished. “What on earth were they looking at down there?” Georgine murmured to herself. She glanced toward the foot of the road but could see nothing more exciting than a number of parked cars.

  Surely another car couldn’t have plunged into the canyon? She walked down the slope, feeling a curiosity so idle that it was almost a state of inertia. One might as well see…

  But there was nothing in the canyon.

  At the south side of Professor Paev’s house the high shrubbery rustled, and she imagined that now and then a murmur of conversation could be heard. Not the calf again? Oh, surely they hadn’t dug up those ridiculous bones for the second time!

  She glanced into Professor Paev’s, through the door that unaccountably stood ajar. She crossed the open parking-space and went in. Nobody was about. She found herself going up the stairs and opening the door of her workroom. “What did I come up here for?” said Georgine aloud, in astonishment. Force of habit, she supposed, and the remains of the afternoon’s shock, which had carried over into a sort of dreamlike state. She looked vaguely at her desk. Only one or two pages of the notes remained to be typed, and one untidy sheet to be re-done.

  For a moment she dallied with the idea of sitting down right now and finishing. And then I’d be done forever, Georgine thought, and I’d never have to come back here.

  No, that wouldn’t be practical; she realized that she was too tired and shaken to be capable of decent work. Much better go home and eat something soothing, like milk toast, and get some rest. Todd might have stayed to see her home; she couldn’t think why he’d disappeared so abruptly.

  There were voices down there, in the tall flowering bushes; and the square of late cold light in the window had flashed brighter for a second. What on earth were they doing?

  She was in the Professor’s bathroom, raising the window. She leaned out, gazing straight down on to the heads of a group of men clustered round that space next to the wall of the house. It had been loosely filled in by Nelsing and Slater before they had left it on Wednesday night. Now the grave was open again.

  Nelsing was there; he heard the window go up, and his head tilted back so that the after-sunset light struck cold on his face. For an instant his eyes met Georgine’s; he began a violent gesture; and at that moment a photoflash bulb burned, and the grave’s contents started into stark clarity.

  She found herself backing across the room, gasping, “No! No!” and pushing in front of her with her hands as if to press away that glimpse of a blackened face and a protruding tongue. N
o one could have recognized the features in that dreadful swollen globe, and the bright blond hair was dulled and grimy with loose earth; but the white chenille robe was still wrapped about the body.

  They had found Mimi.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Speaking of Clocks

  “THERE IS NO DOUBT about this one,” said Inspector Howard Nelsing soberly. “There was a good chance that Hollister’s death was accidental; but there is no way in which Mimi Gillespie could have been accidentally strangled with the belt of her own housecoat and then buried. The same argument applies to suicide.”

  He paused, and let his eyes travel deliberately round the room: Sheila Devlin’s living-room, formal and perfect in its pale green carpeting, its tight upholstery of shining gold and salmon satin, its flower prints and crystal. The impersonal blue gaze dwelt on face after face: John Devlin’s, its handsome fleshiness grown loose and flabby; Ricky’s, shocked and defiant; Sheila’s tightly set mouth and outraged eyebrows; Peter Frey’s strained look of intentness, as if he were trying to follow the proceedings from behind a thick wall of glass; Claris’s face, every now and then quivering out of control; Professor Paev’s, its angry black eyes like coals in a bed of ashes.

  He looked last at Todd McKinnon, paler than usual but still impassive; and at Georgine.

  Georgine huddled in a corner, drawing her shabby coat tightly around her. In spite of heat from the register, she felt cold to her very bones. She met Nelsing’s glance dully. He looked as if he were choosing one from this company; choosing sides for a spelling bee or choosing a victim for the gas chamber, you couldn’t tell which from his expression.

  One person was absent; but she knew that Nelsing had not forgotten Harry Gillespie.

  “At seven forty-five, when she was found,” Nelsing resumed “Mrs. Gillespie had been dead for twenty-four hours or more.”

  Everyone looked at the gilt clock over the cold fireplace. Its hands stood at half-past nine, and before he spoke again it gave out a tiny tinkle to mark the hour. “Twenty-four hours or more,” he repeated. “That means she must have been killed shortly after she left her home late yesterday afternoon. It is scarcely credible that she wandered about in negligee for any appreciable time without being seen by someone. I think you will all agree that it’s more likely she died almost immediately. I will ask you again, how many of you were at home between four-thirty and six yesterday afternoon?”

  There were murmurs; John Devlin had been on his way home from the office, Sheila resting in her room, Ricky working on an airplane model in his basement bedroom. Peter Frey, after his daughter had hastily scribbled the question on his pad, said, “I was,” in a tone scarcely above a whisper. Professor Paev had been in his laboratory.

  “I was at the movies,” Claris added in a defiant voice. “I had a date, and it was a double feature, and I didn’t get back till nearly supper time.”

  “None of you saw Mimi?” Nelsing said. “If you denied this yesterday and wish to change the story, now’s the time.” He waited. “Could she have crossed to the top of Grettry Road without being seen?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Mrs. Devlin said, as if brightly interested. “I was in my bedroom, and I should have noticed.”

  “Very well. That bears out the implication of the fur slipper, allegedly left in the Clifton home, under an open window. Someone killed Mimi,” said Nelsing without change of inflection, “and concealed her body during the early part of the evening, and, much later that night, took it to the place behind Professor Paev’s house of which you all knew; took it there for easy concealment, in earth that was loosely filled in and free of vegetation. It would not have been a difficult task; Mrs. Gillespie was small, almost anyone here could have carried her body. Probably in handling her, one of her slippers fell off unnoticed for the moment; and the murderer, finding it later, decided to confuse the issue by getting rid of it. He or she flung it through the open window of the Clifton house.”

  “But why, Inspector?” John Devlin demanded harshly. “For God’s sake why should anybody want to kill that harmless little woman?”

  “I can think of a number of reasons,” Nelsing said. “It must have been done on impulse, of course; a sudden fit of rage or apprehension, fingers around her throat in a panic—she could have lost consciousness very quickly; we are told that she was in an advanced state of intoxication when she left the house.”

  “We are told,” Sheila Devlin murmured, and smiled. “The impersonal touch is very good, Inspector Nelsing, but every one of us knows that Mrs. Wyeth was in the house, possibly drinking with her, and was the last to see her.”

  Georgine said nothing. Let them think what they liked.

  “And,” Mrs. Devlin continued, reaching for a large sewing bag, “since no one else saw her, isn’t it obvious what happened?”

  There was a little silence, during which the tiny heartbeats of the clock were quite audible. Then Nelsing said, “I should be interested in hearing your theory, Mrs. Devlin.” His courtesy had never been more formidable.

  The long face lifted, and Mrs. Devlin looked across the room at Georgine. Her eyes shifted to McKinnon. After a moment she smiled. “Why of course, she ran down into the canyon and met a tramp; and—” Her gesture finished the sentence.

  “We searched the canyon yesterday evening, while it was still light,” Nelsing pointed out.

  “Oh, well, obviously you weren’t thorough enough, and simply missed seeing her body.” She threaded a needle for her embroidery.

  “Then,” said Howard Nelsing frigidly, “why was she buried? Mrs. Devlin, could I ask that you give me your full attention?”

  Sheila put away the needlepoint, with an impatient shrug.

  “She was buried under cover of night,” Nelsing went on. “That much is obvious. Did none of you hear unusual sounds during the night?”

  Once more there were blank looks. A faraway part of Georgine’s mind said, Most of the bedrooms are upstairs near the street. Nobody would necessarily have heard sounds in the gardens or in the canyon, except—

  “I sleep heavily,” said Professor Paev on a sharp bark.

  There was another little silence. Everyone looked furtively at the Professor, and then back at the floor. Nelsing opened his lips to resume.

  Peter Frey leaned forward violently, as if to thrust himself by force through the invisible wall that surrounded him. His harsh outcry ripped the air. “This damned place! It’s a—a sink of danger, I tell you! Our women aren’t safe. I won’t have my daughter staying here, running this risk. You’ve got to let her go away!”

  “That will be all right,” Nelsing said, mouthing the words. Frey seemed to understand, for he fell back in his chair and sat breathing hard as if in relief.

  “Couldn’t she stay with me?” Georgine said diffidently.

  “That might be a solution. How about it, Miss Frey?”

  “Oh, yes, I’d like that,” Claris said.

  “Suggest it to your father.”

  She scribbled for a moment. Peter Frey read what she had written, and looked at Georgine; his slanting eyelids pulled tight with some expression like fright or horror. “No!” he said loudly, and tore the sheet from the pad, hurling it in a crumpled ball toward the fireplace.

  “Let them think what they like,” Georgine told herself apathetically. She was still too cold and sick for feeling.

  No, not entirely; for with a terrible pang, she remembered Barby. If Barby had to see her mother suspected, dragged through an investigation as a possible criminal—would she be old enough to understand? Or if she were, would there be any way of explaining to her that you had only to hold tight to your own knowledge of innocence, and things would come right in the end?

  It’s got to be over by the time she comes home, Georgine prayed silently. If it can only be over and settled, so we can go back to our own quiet life! There are two days more.

  Ricky Devlin was speaking, his face drawn tight with strain. “You haven’t said yet,
Inspector, why she was killed. It couldn’t have been a tramp, like Mother said?” Nelsing shook his head. “Well, then, why? Because after all, Mr. Hollister’s dead now, and—” He stopped, flushing scarlet.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ricky dear,” his mother told him with a sweet smile.

  “Yes, he does, Mrs. Devlin. That is a possibility,” Nelsing said quietly. “Jealousy might have entered into the motivation, though it seems unlikely so long afterward. But, when two violent deaths take place in the same neighborhood within a week, and the murdered persons were connected in a way whose details I am not at liberty to give you, it is a not unlikely assumption that the deaths were also connected. The first one, I believe, was premeditated, or partly so; the second entirely impulsive, for no one could have foreseen that Mimi Gillespie would have rushed out—unnoticed, as it happened—to the home of one of the neighbors with something she must tell or ask. I believe”—Nelsing’s voice was very smooth—“that she held some clue to Hollister’s murder, possibly one she had not recognized before; and that on a sudden impulse she went to the person whom she had vaguely suspected, perhaps with an accusation.” He slanted an unreadable glance across the room. “It was Mr. McKinnon who suggested that she might have been killed to silence her, rather than that she had run away to escape questioning.”

  “Fiction-writer’s mind,” Todd murmured modestly. He had been sitting motionless on one of the satin-upholstered chairs, his eyes flickering from one speaker to another. Georgine, not far away, could feel even through the dull aftermath of shock that he was more than usually alert and attentive.

  “What was it she knew?” said Alexis Paev suddenly, harshly, from his corner. “Mrs. Wyeth, she was talking to you before she made this hypothetical sortie into some neighbor’s territory. What did she say?”