Eight Faces at Three

by Craig Rice

  It was Jake who told him Holly’s story as he had heard it from Jasper Fleck—the dream, the clocks, the discovery of the body. The little lawyer nodded his head.

  “Insanity,” he said tersely.

  Jake Justus frowned uncomfortably. “It’s just that things don’t match up.”

  “Match up? What doesn’t match up?”

  “Oh, different things.”

  “Well, what things?” Malone asked.

  “The phone call, for one thing. If she was there all the time, how could she have phoned from somewhere else, and if she wasn’t there, where was she? If she was in bed, how could she be out of the house? If—perhaps,” Jake said lamely, “we’d better get some of this straight.”

  “It might help,” said Malone severely. He managed to find a large, clean sheet of paper without calling for his secretary’s help.

  “All right,” he said, “first—”

  “First,” Jake said, “Glen goes to bed. Parkins has gone to bed. Mrs. Parkins has gone to see her daughter. Presumably Holly is in bed. The old lady was sitting up in her room. Mrs. Parkins was to put her to bed when she came home. Old lady was something of a night owl. Then. Glen gets a phone call from Holly, who claims to be at St. Luke’s Hospital. Now—” he paused and thought for a moment. “Where was she when she made the phone call?”

  “Where did she say she was?”

  “She says she didn’t make it. She was in bed and asleep.”

  Dick frowned. “But Parkins told you that when he was in her room, she wasn’t there, and her bed—”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  “Is there an extension phone in the house?” Malone asked.

  Helene shook her head. “The only phone is downstairs. Aunt Alex wouldn’t have an extension. Thought they were a damned nuisance, all telephones.”

  “They are, too,” Jake said.

  “Of course,” Dick suggested miserably, “she could have been phoning from a corner drugstore.”

  Malone nodded thoughtfully.

  “Or,” said Jake suddenly, “it may not have been Holly who called.”

  “Someone imitating her voice?” Helene asked.

  Malone nodded again. “A possibility.”

  “The point is,” Jake said, “first, was it Holly who called? If not, who? And where was she when that call was made? Hiding somewhere in the house? Second, if it was Holly, where was she? Phoning from a corner drugstore? Where?”

  “She claims she was asleep,” Dick said.

  “Second problem,” Jake went on. “Her story is—that she went to bed early and went right to sleep. Woke up at some indeterminate time after three. She got up to find out the time—heard alarm clocks ringing—”

  “Or thought she did,” Malone put in.

  “Well—anyway, she found Glen gone and his bed not slept in. Looked in the Parkins’ room—found them both gone, and the beds not slept in. Went into her aunt’s room, saw the body, and fainted. The story,” he said wearily, “the story ends here.”

  “I couldn’t have thought of a better one myself,” said Malone coldly.

  “Now. Glen had gone to bed. Parkins had gone to bed. When Parkins went into Holly’s room he found that she was gone, and her bed hadn’t been slept in. There’s something that doesn’t jibe.”

  Malone wiped his face. “Unless Glen and this Parkins made up their beds after getting out of them—before going down to the hospital after the girl—their beds would have been slept in.”

  “Oh, you do see it, too.”

  “And her bed—”

  “Hadn’t been slept in when Glen and Parkins left the house.”

  “The whole thing’s impossible,” Malone said.

  “Look,” said Helene suddenly, “what was the condition of the beds when Glen and Parkins came back?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which beds had been slept in?”

  “I see,” said Jake slowly. “If Glen’s bed and Parkins’ bed hadn’t been slept in—then either they weren’t in bed when the call came from Holly—or someone romped around the house making beds while they were away.”

  “You get the idea,” said Helene.

  “And if they had been slept in,” Jake continued, “then either Holly is lying or crazy or someone went around mussing up the beds while Glen and Parkins were away, and while she was—where was she?”

  They looked at each other in open bewilderment.

  “Anyway,” said Helene, “it’s simple enough to find out. I’ll phone Nellie. She’ll know.”

  “Approved,” said Malone. He pointed to the phone and turned to Dick.

  “A hell of a thing to happen,” he said sympathetically.

  Dick set his jaw hard. “The old woman deserved it.”

  Malone nodded vigorously. “A lot of people do. If half the people who deserve murdering were murdered, the problem of overcrowding would be solved. Still—” he paused to wipe his face again. “Tell me. Did she ever seem at all strange—well—not quite herself—queer—?”

  “No. Never. Nothing like that.”

  “Hell,” said Malone, “that’s no good.”

  “Of course—” slowly. “She had been under a terrible nervous strain. Her Aunt Alex—she wasn’t human to the girl. She—”

  “Was trying to make a slave of her?”

  “Yes—yes, that’s it—”

  “Tortured her—mentally—”

  “Yes—yes, and—” Dick began to have a faint idea of what happened to witnesses when Malone got them on the stand. “What am I saying? I mean—” He broke off, stammering.

  Malone beamed. “That’s all right. That’s wonderful. We’ve got a case.”

  And then Helene put down the telephone.

  “Well?”

  “The beds had not been slept in.”

  They looked at her a little blankly.

  “Or if they had been slept in—someone had made them.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, all of them. Glen’s, Parkins’, and Holly’s.”

  There was a long silence.

  “But the thing’s insane!” said Jake stupidly.

  “If Glen’s bed and Parkins’ bed hadn’t been slept in,” Malone said slowly, “part of the girl’s story appears true. About going in their rooms and finding them gone. But her bed hadn’t been slept in either. And according to her story, she was in bed and asleep and—no, it doesn’t jell.”

  “You’re missing one thing,” said Helene suddenly. “Holly did go to bed last night, just about the time she said she did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there.”

  “You—what?”

  “I put her to bed,” said Helene calmly. “Just before ten o’clock. I’d run over to return a book I’d borrowed, and she was just getting ready for bed. She looked terribly tired, almost groggy—I tucked her in and turned out the light, and then nipped back home again.”

  Malone fixed his eyes on her. “Tired? Groggy? Anything else?”

  Helene stared at him. “Oh! I see what you mean. Yes, damn it—she was acting queerly. It’s hard to explain exactly—but—no, not like herself—” Her voice trailed off into a thoughtful silence.

  “Perfect!” said Malone happily. “Absolutely perfect!” He wiped his forehead meditatively.

  “You don’t get this at all,” said Jake Justus suddenly. “You’re all going on the theory that Holly did murder the old girl, and she was nuts when she did it. Well, she didn’t. And she wasn’t nuts. She’s as sane as any one of us here and probably—” with a reflective eye on Helene—“a damned sight saner.”

  “You mean she didn’t do it?” said Malone.

  “You’re dead right, sweetheart. You’re seeing the picture from the wrong side, that’s all. Get this fixed in your mind right now. Holly isn’t guilty!”

  John J. Malone looked at him with disgust.

  “Hell’s bells!” he said icily. “If the girl’s not guilty, what in
the name of God do you want a lawyer for?”

  “Talk to her yourself,” Jake said. “You’ll see. Her story may sound crazy as hell and it may sound false as hell, but it’s true. And she’s sane.”

  “You mean you believe all that stuff about the clocks, and her being asleep all that time and the beds not being slept in?” Dick asked slowly.

  “I believe she’s telling the truth,” Jake told him. “There’s a lot that she doesn’t know about what happened. But she’s telling the truth about what she does know, and it’s the key to something. Remember, the beds hadn’t been slept in.”

  “Hers wasn’t either,” Malone reminded him.

  “I know it. And that’s significant too. I don’t know how, but it is. I don’t know what it means, but it means something. And her dream. It means something too. I don’t know what. But something.”

  “You’re drunk,” Dick said irritably.

  “I’m not having hallucinations, if that’s what you mean, unless you could call her one—” jerking a thumb at Helene, “and you’re seeing her too.”

  “Jake thinks better when he’s drunk,” Malone said from long experience.

  “Let’s hope you do too,” said Jake savagely. “Go out and see the girl. She’s your client.”

  “All right, Galahad,” Malone said, looking under the desk for his hat.

  “I’ll drive you out there,” Helene offered. “Drive all of you out there.”

  Jake paled. “I’m a brave man,” he muttered, “but riding with you strains my courage to its ultimate limit.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll feel perfectly safe, driving with a lawyer in the car. Malone here could get us out of anything.”

  “Not out of the Blake County morgue, he couldn’t,” Jake said indignantly.

  “I’m coming with you,” Dick said.

  “Like hell you are. It’s too damned hard to find a good band to manage these days. You won’t risk your neck in this woman’s car if I have anything to say about it. You couldn’t do any good out there anyway.”

  “But I ought to be with Holly.”

  “The chances are they won’t let you see her,” Jake scowled at him with affection. “There’s nothing you could do, and you have a rehearsal coming up.”

  “But—”

  “I know,” said Jake, “I know. You’re thinking that you can’t go through a rehearsal when you’re wondering what’s happening to your girl, and if you will ever see her again, and if she really did stab her Aunt Alex three times.”

  “Jake!” The young man’s face was dead white. Then, “All right. You win.”

  “The show must go on,” Helene told him theatrically.

  “A little trite,” Jake said, “but true, like most trite things.”

  “One drink before we go,” Malone advised, his eyes on Dick. He rummaged through a filing cabinet for a bottle. They drank to Malone’s success with the case, to Holly’s ultimate vindication, and to Helene’s driving. Then they headed north. They dropped Dick at the Casino and Helene settled comfortably in the driver’s seat.

  “Hold your breath, and watch a woman drive that can drive.”

  Thirty breathless minutes later they pulled up in front of the Blake County jail.

  “If I can,” said Jake in a small voice, “I’d prefer to forget the details of that ride. It would be better, I think, to pretend it never happened. Then there’s a chance,” he finished, “that it won’t come back and haunt me.”

  Chapter 7

  John J. Malone had not been quite sure what to expect at the Blake County jail. North-shore debutantes were a little out of his line. An ex-Follies girl who had shot her husband in an enthusiastic moment, a gangster’s sweetheart who had impetuously stabbed her rival, a perfumed blonde who had accidentally poisoned a wealthy salesman while trying, innocently enough, to rob him—these were his stock in trade. An Inglehart of Maple Park was a horse from another circus.

  Or so he thought until he saw her. But one look at Holly Inglehart Dayton convinced him that any male jury would turn the lovely red-haired girl loose in twenty minutes.

  He sat down, smiled his most reassuring smile, and talked with her as gently as he might have talked to a frightened child, in what Jake Justus had once called his best cellside manner.

  “Remember, I’m your lawyer, my dear. I might be your second self. There’s nothing you need be afraid to tell me. All I want to know is exactly what happened. Don’t leave out any insignificant detail. It might be important. Everything. And the truth, no matter what it is.”

  She frowned wearily. “Do I have to tell it all over again? I’m so dreadfully tired.” Her voice broke just a little.

  “I know you are. I’m sorry to have to do this. But I’ll learn more from you now than from what you might tell me tomorrow.” He smiled at her, watching her closely. It was good that she was tired, near the breaking point, in fact. The barriers were pretty well down. She’d be too tired to remember to stick to her story, if it wasn’t true.

  “Go on, my dear.”

  “I—woke up. I’d been asleep. I went to bed and went to sleep, and I woke up, and—”

  Little by little he worked the story out of her, to the last detail. It checked exactly with what Jake Justus had told him.

  “This is all true?”

  “Of course it’s true.” She smiled weakly. “You’re my lawyer. You said you wanted the truth.”

  He glanced at her sharply. “But can’t you see, young lady, it can’t be true. Your brother and—” he paused a moment. Should he tell her? Yes, he decided, he should. He told her of the telephone call that presumably came from her, of Glen and Parkins driving to the hospital.

  “But where was I?”

  “That’s just it. Where were you?”

  Her eyes darkened. He went on.

  “You may not have made that telephone call. Someone may have been imitating your voice. But if so, who? And why? And certainly you weren’t in your bed when Parkins looked in your room. That was before midnight.”

  “But I must have been. I woke up there. Sometime after three. I know I did. I was in bed, and I got out of bed to look in Glen’s room—”

  “But when they came back from the hospital, your bed hadn’t been slept in.”

  There was a mounting terror in her eyes.

  “Tell me about your dream. The dream you had before you woke.”

  She told it, haltingly, the dream of hanging, of standing up in a coffin that was balanced on end. He shook his head.

  “I can’t see any meaning in it yet. But there must be a meaning. There must be a meaning to the rest of it.”

  Her eyes were pleading for reassurance. “Tell me. Could all of it have been a dream? My being in bed—getting up—the clocks—”

  “But the clocks were stopped. That much is true.”

  “Yes. I know. And Glen’s bed and Parkins’ bed hadn’t been slept in. I’m right about that, too. But—” Her eyes were like holes in blank paper. “Is it— do you think—I mean, could I—without knowing I was doing it—”

  He looked at her long and searchingly. “Yes. It’s possible.”

  “Oh!” It was only the faintest bubble of a sound.

  “It’s possible, but—no. I don’t think it happened that way. That leaves too much unexplained. The fact is, Mrs. Dayton, no one knows, now, exactly what did happen in the house last night. And we’ve got to find out.”

  “And if you don’t find out?”

  “In that case, we’ll go ahead on the assumption that you murdered your aunt in a fit of temporary insanity, and we’ll have you acquitted on the first ballot.”

  “Oh no. You can’t do that. Because I might have done it. It might be true. I’m—yes, I’m beginning to be afraid that it was that way.”

  He smiled at her as though she were a child afraid of the dark.

  “Let’s go back a little, Miss Inglehart—Mrs. Dayton. Yesterday you married Dick Dayton.”

  She tried t
o smile. “Was it only yesterday?”

  “Yes, I know. It doesn’t seem that way. But it’s true. Why did you marry him secretly?”

  “Because I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Aunt Alex.”

  “Why? Aren’t you of age? I thought so. You didn’t need her money, not married to Dayton. She was a little old woman, crippled, bound to a wheel chair. Why were you afraid of her?”

  “I don’t know. But I was. I can’t ever remember not being afraid of her.”

  “Was she severe with you?”

  “You wouldn’t call it severe. Cruel, perhaps. Though she never actually did anything to me. Even when I was a little girl, she never spanked me. Never touched me. But I was afraid of her. Terrified. She never spoke to me unkindly. But I used to wake up in the night and if I heard a step in the hall and thought it was hers, I was petrified. Then when she became paralyzed and never left her room—well, it was worse, somehow. It was worse than you can ever imagine.”

  It all came out in an almost hysterical rush, the old woman’s heartless domination over everyone, the subtle ways in which she made her cruelty felt, the manner in which she kept the entire household in awe of her.

  John Joseph Malone began to feel that, no matter who had murdered Alexandria Inglehart, it had been a good idea.

  “And she would have opposed your marriage to Dick Dayton?”

  “Opposed it!” The girl laughed wildly.

  “Why? Because he was a dance-band leader?”

  “No. Not that. Aunt Alex wasn’t going to let me marry anyone.”

  “Oh, come now.”

  “It’s true. She used to tell me that. Her sister—my mother—had married foolishly and broken Aunt Alex’s heart, and I wasn’t to be allowed to marry at all. It was—well, a kind of repayment. I was to stay single and live with Aunt Alex as long as she lived, and take care of her. She told me she’d left her money tied up so I wouldn’t inherit anything if I married after her death.”

  “What about Glen?”