The Andre Norton Megapack

by Andre Norton

  The back door slammed behind them. This is madness, Fredericka thought, utter madness. She’s lost all sense of reason. But if it has to happen, it’s best to get it over and done with. Otherwise she’d be at me all night. She stepped out boldly into the small bobbing circle of light on the grass.

  Chapter 14

  After a few steps, Fredericka allowed herself to look up from the magic circle of light moving ahead of her. The sky was overcast now and the stars that she had watched so happily from Thane’s living room window, had disappeared. How long ago that seemed; and how normal and sane and infinitely remote from this world of madness and delirium.

  Philippine spoke from just behind her. “Can you see now? Is it all right if I hold the flashlight like this?” she asked.

  “Yes. Yes. It’s fine. The path’s easy to follow if you keep the light just as it is.”

  “Good. I will then. And I follow you.”

  They moved slowly forward in their private pinpoint of light. It seemed to intensify the darkness that walled them in. There was no escape, Fredericka thought wildly, fighting back a feeling of panic. She could hear Philippine’s quick breathing behind her. “Are you all right?” she asked in a louder voice than she intended. Then she tried to continue more normally, “The well’s just ahead. Good grief, they’ve left the cover off altogether!”

  “Yes, I see it. It’s O.K.” Philippine barely whispered the words. Then she leant forward and muttered in Fredericka’s ear. “But, mon Dieu, we are being followed! I know it! I can hear someone behind me! Footsteps! Listen—who could possibly?—Oh—My God… Now—damn—I—I’ve dropped the flashlight!”

  The light went out suddenly and the suffocating darkness closed around them. Fredericka turned back to Philippine and reached out her hand but, as she did so, something crashed down on her head and she pitched forward to fall down—down—down into a black sea of oblivion.

  When Fredericka opened her eyes she closed them again quickly to shut out the light that blinded her and was a knife thrust through her temples. Then, after a moment, she tried again, slowly and cautiously. The effort was painful, not only to her eyes but to her whole body. She must know where she was and what had happened to her, and why she was in such agony. But it was no use, she could not think—could not even keep her eyes open. She closed them and drifted off again into unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  It was a long time later when she again struggled to open her eyes. A familiar voice was calling her name and some instinct told her that she must answer. It was important to make herself heard. But at first she could not speak. Then she moved her body slightly and the pain was so great that she cried out wildly.

  “Thank God,” and then, “Oh—thank God you’re alive,” the voice said. But it seemed to be coming from miles away—somewhere far above her.

  She tried to raise her head and felt the sharpness of rock dig into her shoulders. Then, gradually, she eased her back forward from the hard wall behind it, and looked up to see a round gray hole broken by a darker shadow against its rim. As she tried to puzzle this out, the shadow moved and the voice spoke again.

  “Fredericka, can you hear me?”

  “It’s Peter,” she cried feebly, before she closed her eyes again. Now everything would be all right. She was alive and Peter had come. But he couldn’t take away the pain. Pain and darkness. Darkness and pain. Anyway she had spoken. He had heard her. Now there was no need to struggle any more.

  When Fredericka next opened her eyes, the pain was still there stabbing at her head but the hardness of rock behind her had become strangely soft. She looked up cautiously and saw a pleasant female face bending over her. She tried to speak but no words came.

  The face disappeared and then another one took its place.

  “Peter,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Don’t talk now. Rest is what the doctor’s ordered and you look as though you could do with it.”

  “But what—what happened?” Then as memory came back slowly she forced herself to say slowly: “Where’s Philippine? Is she all right?”

  “Yes to that one, too. Now go to sleep. You are bruised and battered.” He grinned. “My God, if you could see your face! And nothing more serious than a bashed head, a broken left arm, and a broken right ankle. You’ll recover. But not another word for twenty-four hours.”

  Before Fredericka could find the words to speak again, he had disappeared. Then the woman came back, and this time she said: “I’m going to lift you up a little to drink some hot milk, but I’ll try not to hurt you. Then you’ll go back to sleep again, and when you wake up you’ll feel better—much better.”

  “All right,” Fredericka said, as though each of the two words was of the greatest importance.

  The woman slid an arm under her shoulders and lifted her gently. Fredericka found she could hold the cup in her good hand and she drank gratefully. Then she was lowered back on to the pillow and fell instantly to sleep.

  This time when Fredericka woke up, the sun was streaming across her bed and the air coming in the open window beside her smelt of hay and tansy. She felt hot and sticky but the pain had gone. She moved her body cautiously and felt stiffness and soreness—no more. She looked around her with interest at the very white room and the large open screened window. Hospital, she decided, and—remembering the woman’s face—that must have been a nurse. She felt immensely pleased with her intelligence. Next she looked at all of herself that she could see: a right arm covered with black and blue marks and scratches, a left arm in a plaster cast. With a great effort she untied the curious white sack that was her nightdress and found more bruises on her chest and shoulders. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and began to want a cigarette—badly.

  The door opened a cautious crack and Peter’s head appeared.

  “Have you got a cigarette?” she asked a little irritably.

  “I have. And you’re better—if a little undressed.” He came in, gave her a cigarette, lit it, tied the tapes of her nightdress carefully and then sat down in the chair by the bed. “You deserve to be dead, you silly little fool,” he said agreeably.

  Fredericka made no attempt to reply. She was enjoying the cigarette and it did not, at that moment, seem to matter very much what Peter or anyone else had to say about her.

  He got up and went to the chest of drawers on the other side of the window. Presently he returned with a hand mirror. “Here,” he said. “A survey of the ruins, please.”

  Fredericka took one look and put the mirror down quickly. Her face was covered with long red scratches. One eye was black and swollen; the other stared out from a deep cavern of a mysterious dark colour and her forehead had a large egg-shaped lump just to the right of centre.

  “Well, I don’t see why you had to show me,” she said crossly.

  “It was good enough to be shared,” he answered pleasantly. “And you’d have had to know sooner or later, females being what they are.”

  “And now that you’ve had your fun, am I to be told anything? I want to know more—all in fact. Just why am I a silly little fool? I think I quote correctly?”

  Peter put back his head and roared with laughter.

  This was too much for Fredericka. She hated him. Never had she hated anyone quite so much.

  Finally he stopped laughing and reached for her free hand. “I don’t care how you look and I like you to be disagreeable. It’s so comfortingly human of you. I’d imagined you to be—but we won’t go into that now—”

  “You’d imagined me to be what?” Fredericka couldn’t help asking, but she took away her hand and then said quickly, “Oh Peter, don’t tease me any more.”

  “Now let me see. You’ve lost some of your—well, primness—down the well perhaps. But I thought you wanted to know what happened on Sunday night—or rather what’s happened since. It is now Wednesday morning, in case you’re interested.”

  “Wednesday morning,” Fredericka gasped. “The bookshop—” She started
up in her anxiety. “Calm yourself, woman. The bookshop’s O.K. Connie Carey’s taken over and with this new chapter of antics, you’ve increased the customers by about one hundred percent.” He laughed suddenly, then he went on: “Connie makes them buy, too. If they get their view of the scene, they have to pay for it, and extra for the well.”

  “The well?” Fredericka asked.

  “Yes, that’s where you were. I pulled you out, like little Johnny Stout.”

  Fredericka leant back against the pillows with a sigh of relief. “Even though I do hate you, I have to admit that you are good to me—all of you,” she said simply.

  Peter reached over and patted her hand gently. “You’re worth it,” he said, “even if you do despise me so much.”

  Fredericka turned her head away quickly. In spite of herself, sudden tears pricked against her eyelids. It’s weakness, she thought fiercely, just silly stupid female weakness.

  If Peter noticed, he made no comment. “What I want really is your story. It’s much more important than mine, and I’ve told you the important part already.”

  “Please,” Fredericka said with some effort, “let me have a minute to think it all out. You tell me the rest of yours first.”

  “Right, then. Here it is in brief. I got back at seven A.M. on Monday morning after having turned Washington upside down for a couple of hours, and, though you will never believe it, I went straight to the bookshop with the idea of cadging a breakfast—” He held up a hand when Fredericka started to break in. “No, you wanted my story so you shall have it in toto. I made one hell of a racket trying, as I thought, to wake you up. Then I suddenly panicked because I realized all at once that Jim Brown wasn’t there—the doors were all unlocked, too, and that wasn’t like our town gal either. I went in to the office and was just picking up the receiver to call Thane when Jim Brown walked in. I turned on him and he was the sickest and saddest guy I’ve seen for a long time. He told me all—or at any rate all he knew. But he knew enough to scare the pants off me. Well—we didn’t wait to call Thane, we began a systematic search of the place. And it wasn’t long before we discovered Philippine’s body—”

  “Body? But you said—”

  “I repeat. You are not to interrupt unless you want the whole floor.She was alive, but apparently in a very bad way. She seemed to have a bash on the back of her head but not all that bad. Still, she looked like a corpse all right. Jim carried her back into the kitchen and I let him in on the contents of Lucy’s secret cupboard. So, while he was pouring brandy down Philippine’s throat, I went on looking for you. But, hell, I couldn’t find you anywhere. I confess I didn’t feel too happy—even though you are such a care and worry to me—”

  “Peter. Do you have to drag this out so—please.”

  Peter grinned. “I am telling my story as you wanted me to. And in my own way. I went back to the house. By that time Philippine had come to, and she was, as she always is when conscious, both sensible and coherent. She confessed that you had both agreed to let Jim off and then she said that you two got talking and that you told her about that secret cache of Margie’s in the shed out back—”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it? Good. She said she felt that she must have a look at Margie’s things even at that late hour, but you objected because you were frightened—”

  “I—well, yes, I have to admit that I was—”

  “And with good reason, I may add. I was wild with her by then and called her all kinds of names for such an escapade—utter madness. Then she poured out a story about how she thought Margie had a guilt complex and had been taking poison and she wanted to protect Margie’s name—and, I suspect, the business—by having a look at Margie’s private possessions before the police could—”

  “Well, but isn’t that true? I mean didn’t Margie commit suicide?”

  “Are you absolutely insane, Fredericka, or have you a few grains of sense left? If Margie was the guilty one, who the devil hit you over the head—after Margie was dead?”

  “I never thought of that,” Fredericka said weakly. “Philippine then went on to tell me how you two bright little gals started out with your flashlight—”

  “Hers—”

  “What difference does that make? It was the one that bashed you both over the head.” Peter’s patience seemed to have worn thin. “Then she told me about feeling someone come up from behind, dropping the flashlight in panic and then being hit on the head, and knowing no more. She said you were ahead of her and had just warned her about the old well. That gave me a bright idea and I dashed out—and sure enough I found the well, all neatly covered up with boards. I ripped them off in a hurry and there, sure enough, was our Fredericka, all crumpled up in the bottom which, thank God, was full of old cuttings that Chris must have been dumping in for years—and so where you landed was dry—”

  “Not very—”

  “Enough so you didn’t drown. I called and—you answered. It was a good sound, I confess. Well, it didn’t take long to hoist you out and get you here. By that time, of course, you’d passed out again. Jim helped. Philippine also went out again on the sofa, but eventually she was able to drive herself home while we were getting you to the hospital. Thane came to rejoice with me. And that, boys and girls, will be all for this morning. If you listen in at the same time tomorrow!”

  “Oh, Peter, shut up!”

  “I have. It’s your turn now.”

  “Everything’s exactly as Philippine told you. I can see that I wasn’t very bright, but for one thing I didn’t want to admit that Philippine was braver than I was when there didn’t seem to be any logical reason to be scared after what Philippine had told me about Margie.”

  “Exactly what did she tell you?”

  “Just what she told you, I expect,” Fredericka said. But when he urged her for details she tried to remember all that Philippine had said and repeated their conversation word for word.

  “Yes. That’s pretty much what she told me.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “It made sense, you mean. You seem to forget that there has been as near another murder as makes no difference.”

  “Some difference, I think. But why don’t you say ‘as near two other murders as makes no difference’?”

  “What? Oh yes—two, if you like—” Peter agreed absently. “The present puzzle is about Margie’s pathetic little secret hiding place in the shed. The police found some sort of makeup kit, a few bottles of cosmetics, several letters from firms advertising cures for skin diseases to which she had obviously been writing, and some comics, but nothing else of the slightest interest—”

  “That’s all I remember seeing there, but my visit dates back to the day after Catherine’s murder. I haven’t been near the shed since then. Thane told me about the stuff and I was going to speak to Margie about it but never did. And then when I talked to Chris, he said Miss Hartwell was in favour of her having the stuff there so, of course, I left it alone, just as Thane did. Anyway I wouldn’t have touched it without his O.K.”

  “Why did you feel you had to get his permission?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Fredericka said slowly. “I guess it was just that he had told me about it—well, he didn’t really say anything more than that he’d found some curious oddments about the place. But I thought when I found Margie’s junk that that was what he meant. I suppose it’s because I’m Watson, well trained by Holmes, that I didn’t want to get rid of it just because he did know about it. It could have been a plant or something.”

  “Good girl,” he muttered. He looked at his watch. “Your nurse gave me one hour and I think I hear an ominous starched rustle outside, so I’m going before I’m chucked out.” He stood up and then leaped over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I repeat,” he said softly, “good girl—but perhaps just a little silly, my dear Watson.”

  Fredericka again turned away toward the wall to hide the tiresome tears. Then at the door, Peter stopped in his flight to
say: “Fredericka, you must rest and sleep and eat. Your arm and leg will slow you up for a bit but you’re absolutely O.K., and we hope to get you back to work in a day or two. I ought to say ‘Forget this nightmare,’ but I know you can’t forget it, and so, selfishly, I want to say just the opposite. Try to remember everything. Think of every damn little incident. When you remembered Chris’s stamps and those letters, you gave me a most valuable clue. So, as you lie here, please think over every moment of every day since you’ve been here. And think especially of last Sunday night—every miserable inch of it.”

  “I will, Peter,” Fredericka said quietly. “Anyway I’ll try.” Then a sudden thought occurred to her. “That clue. Did you find out anything in Washington?”

  “Yes, something, but not enough. I know who murdered Catherine Clay—who probably murdered Margie, and who attacked you and Philippine. Oh yes, I know all right. But I haven’t proof. It’s there you can help me.”

  “Peter. If you know, why don’t you tell me? I could think it out much better if I knew what I was trying to find.”

  “No. I don’t think so. You’d invent things—not intentionally, but because you’d be cutting off toes to make the slipper fit, like Cinderella’s sisters. Besides, you haven’t got a poker face, my dear Fredericka, and I don’t want you to be attacked again. Another time it might be more successful. Anyway, we’re going to keep you here under guard just in case. You see, the murderer must feel, just as I do, that there’s probably something important you might remember. I’m sorry, but the rule is NO VISITORS.”

  “What are you, then?” Fredericka asked, a little crossly. All her annoyances seemed suddenly to be of major importance. This secrecy, her own tendency to tears, her helpless heavy arm and foot, and now her imprisonment, and all this officiousness.

  “I’m Police, and very special.” Peter grinned: “And I’ll probably bother you a lot. If you have any inspirations, though, please get the nurse to call the station, and they’ll have instructions to relay the good news to me. And I—wherever I am—will come loping over here with all possible speed—”