“Yes,” Ava managed.
“She walked only round the block,” Patrick said. “She came back stealthily, keeping close against the house, as if she didn’t want to be seen by Uncle George. You agree, do you not, Ava?”
“Yes,” Ava said, very bored.
“Then you must admit, Captain Jonas, that the important thing for us to know is why the nurse came back.”
Dr. Postgate, who hadn’t been heard from for some time, said, “She probably slipped back because she was afraid the curare extract hadn’t really worked. She wasn’t sure her mistress was dead. Probably she thought that Mrs. Clary might regain her sanity and tell what had happened.”
Patrick said, “But, Dr. Postgate, the nurse herself was murdered because she came back. She paid for coming back to this house with her life. Maybe we shouldn’t ask why she came back, but why, in the first place, she left the house?”
Captain Jonas said drily, “We’ve been over all that. Obviously she had orders to go.”
“Who gave those orders?”
Nobody said anything, but glances drifted to Roger Clary and away again.
Patrick said, “It is my opinion that the nurse was struck down in Roger Clary’s bedroom a few minutes before Jean entered the door and was herself struck down. Let’s assume that the nurse came back into the house just after her mistress, limp and unconscious from the injection of the curare, had been dragged along the gallery and pushed down the steps into the garden. The murderer went back to the apartment for some reason. He entered Roger’s apartment through the bedroom. He met the nurse. There was darkness, tempered somewhat by the moonlight, but his eyes had adapted to it. On seeing the nurse the murderer reached for a dark object on a table and smashed it down on her head. The nurse bowed her head to ward off the blow and got it on the back of her neck, as is shown by her type of concussion. She collapsed. Then Jean came down the back steps, found Mrs. Clary and hurried on into the bedroom in search of Roger Clary. The murderer, crouching in that room with the same blunt instrument still in his hands, brought it down on Jean’s head. He then took away and hid the body and got off the scene himself.”
“What was the blunt instrument?” Jonas asked drily.
“Volume X of Tice’s Practice of Medicine,” Patrick said.
“A book?” Jonas didn’t believe it. “Must have been quite a book. What makes you think that, Lieutenant Abbott?”
“Because I found it on the floor near the spot where Jean was knocked down. I took it upstairs. It was later removed from a drawer in the kitchenette. I assumed at the time by the police.”
“Your apartment was not searched,” Jonas said. “A medical book, huh? Who owned it?”
“The book is mine,” Roger Clary said.
“Did you take it from the Abbotts’ apartment?”
After a moment Roger said, “Yes, I did. I saw it there when I was in the apartment this morning and when they were out for lunch I went upstairs and found it and put it back in my bookcase.”
“You certainly stick your neck out, Major Clary.”
Roger made no reply.
Patrick said, “If I may continue, I believe the murderer carried the body of the nurse to the chest in our hall and left it there temporarily because almost at once after that Major Clary returned to the house, found Jean lying unconscious, discovered his wife in the garden, and then, of course, the whole house was aroused.”
“What makes you think Clary wasn’t there all the time?” Jonas asked.
Patrick told them about the smell of anise, and, after I regained consciousness, the stronger smell of iodoform.
The specialist pondered it, and agreed. Jonas said blandly that maybe Clary ran quickly and dabbed himself with iodoform while Jean was unconscious. Patrick grinned and asked if that would not require an almost inhuman presence of mind, since the doctor could not possibly know that Jean had checked out with the scent of anise in her nostrils.
“To return to the nurse. The body, in my opinion, was dumped in the chest. The nurse may never have regained consciousness. She died from suffocation, probably in that chest before she was moved to the vault.”
“And when was that?” Jonas asked, still drily.
“While we drank coffee at the French Market.”
“Why wasn’t she put in the vault in the first place?”
“Possibly the murderer didn’t think of it. He had to work fast. The house was awake. Besides, he did not anticipate a police inquiry, which later made the vault a more secure spot for hiding the body.”
Jonas said, “Look here, Lieutenant, you’re dreaming up a lot of stuff that’s not essential to solving this case. Our time is limited. But, all the same, I want to ask a few questions. Did anybody hear anyone moving the body of the nurse around about four this morning?” Nobody had. “Major Clary, did you sleep in your bedroom?”
“I did not. Paulette made up the divan in the sitting room next the dining room.”
“Sleep well?”
“I didn’t sleep at all.”
“Then you would have heard somebody moving that body from the chest to the vault?”
“Not necessarily,” Roger said.
Jonas sighed. “Well, Wick, what about you?”
“I went back to my café. So I wasn’t there. I can prove it.”
Jonas asked, “Miss Ava, was that body in the vault when you came through it from Wick’s apartment at three o’clock?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Ava screamed. All at once she lost all self-control. “How dare you even think such a thing? Why do you pester me like this? Think what a spot I was in! You had policemen outside and policemen inside and there I was in that awful place of Toby’s, and trapped. I didn’t know what to do. So I came through the mirrors. That was all I had to do with any of it. I wasn’t even here, really.”
“The hell with the vault,” Roger Clary said. “Besides, how does anybody know the nurse was really hidden there? Who saw her there? What difference does it make?”
Patrick got up suddenly and stepped over to Jonas’s table. From his shirt pocket he took out an envelope and, helping himself to a sheet from the stenographer’s notebook, he slowly permitted the small chip from the indigo-blue bead to slip from the envelope onto the paper.
There it lay. A tiny thing, vividly blue. The smallest, the most conspicuous, the most dramatic object in the beautiful room.
Every eye was bent on the little blue thing.
“I think you will find this came off one of the nurse’s voodoo beads,” Patrick said.
He took his time.
“Maybe those beads did hold magic. Maybe in this way they have led us to the place where their owner’s body was hidden—and eventually—to her murderer.”
The Clary family remained silent, except Aunt Dollie, who again wept. The three servants, even Paulette, began to sniffle.
My goodness, I was thinking. I hoped Patrick wouldn’t get caught in his own net. That bead-sliver came from Helen Clary’s bedroom. It might have nothing to do with the act of murder at all. Patrick certainly had never seen that vault. He was certainly dreaming things up. Oh, dear!
Roger Clary spoke first.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Pat, but I wish to God you would lay off things that are no concern of yours and leave this business to the police.”
“I shall be glad to,” Patrick said. “If you yourself will speak up and tell what you are keeping back.”
Jonas’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Roger said.
“You do know,” Patrick said. “You’re concealing evidence. That was why you let Uncle George blackmail you into giving him five hundred dollars. You’re protecting someone.”
“You must be nuts.”
“Come clean, Roger!”
Roger made no answer. It was one of those you-could-hear-a-pin-drop moments. Nothing happened.
Patrick said, softly, “Then I’ll say it for you, Roger. You ar
e trying to protect your—Aunt Rita.”
XX
AUNT RITA stood up very straight and then gave a small sigh and slumped to the floor. Aunt Dollie went into more hysterics. The doctors rushed to their aid. Carol ran out to bring cold towels and, as she ran, called to Paulette to fetch ice from the kitchen. Ava looked at Toby. He looked back. There was no love lost in either glance.
Captain Jonas approached us.
He flapped his helpless-looking hands. “Can you tie it? And I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t all put on.” He turned to his stenographer. “Call that family doctor again. Get him over here if you can locate him. And call the medical examiner’s office and tell them to send a couple of his assistants right away. I need doctors to watch these damn doctors.” He turned back to us as his stenographer went off to a telephone. “I can’t go to dinner like this. I’ve got to change. I live ten minutes from here. Listen, why don’t I wait while you get dressed—you are dressing?” I smiled, and nodded, thinking of the playsuit I was still wearing and of Patrick’s khaki cottons which were limp from an afternoon’s wear. I would change to my best white crepe. Patrick had only more of the same sort of summer khaki, but we would both want a bath. Jonas said, “Suppose I join you in your place after I talk to Callahan? I’ll leave him in charge here. You and I can talk as we drive out home together and back to Antoine’s.”
As he talked I kept thinking, “So it was Aunt Rita all the time. Of course. She had the opportunity, the motive, and she stole the means from Dr. Postgate’s medicine case.”
“Half a sec,” Patrick said. He stepped over to Dr. Postgate, who was trying to settle Aunt Dollie. “Was there enough curare extract in your two little bottles to kill three people, Dr. Postgate?”
The specialist thrust up his beard. “Oh, definitely not. Two, maybe. But not three.”
“Would Miss Rita Clary have died if you hadn’t given her prostigmine?”
“I think it very probable, Lieutenant. She had apparently had a good deal of the stuff. They snap out of it at once, fortunately. No hangover at all.”
“I see.” Patrick turned around and said to Jonas, “Aren’t you going to do a p.m. on Sears? I know they all say it’s his heart. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe...”
Jonas said, “If it’s another case of the curare extract, what’s the use? That’s not detectable by analysis, Lieutenant. But I reckon maybe I ought to order an autopsy as a matter of routine.”
“It would show if it was his heart,” Patrick said.
“I meant to do it anyway,” Jonas said, in a barely audible voice. “I was being careful, before the family” He jerked his head at Aunt Dollie.
He remained behind to give some orders to Sergeant Callahan as we went to our apartment.
Dusk had fallen when we stepped into the courtyard. The air was cool and fresh and the scent of the flowers was lifting from the garden. I felt stunned, and let down. So Aunt Rita had done it all! We crossed the flags cooled by the rain and once more climbed the twisting outside stairs. I should have known it from the first. In the back of my mind I had always suspected Aunt Rita. She loved this house too much. She adored Roger Clary. He was enough like Aunt Rita to be really closely related. Somehow or other many of her fine characteristics had been reproduced in him. He had her fanatical loyalty to his own. He had her fine toughness of character. My goodness, what character! Even her plan to murder Helen Clary and clear the way for Roger and Carol to marry took more character than most people ever even heard of.
Taking the first bath, I could just imagine how she had thought it all out. With Helen out of the way Roger would have the money to insure himself a fine career. He would marry Carol. Aunt Rita loved Carol as much as Roger. They would have this house. She herself was old. She would not want to be caught, for the family’s sake, but even if she were she had such a short expectancy of life she would think it wouldn’t matter—except for a possible scandal. She had sent the nurse away and—but how did she know that Roger might not come in?
Patrick had asked Roger if anyone thought he wasn’t coming home last night. Had he telephoned not to expect him back?
He had not answered. Now we knew why. He was protecting Aunt Rita.
Well, Roger had come home. And the nurse had come back, for some reason. And we had had murder. Aunt Rita had done murder.
Now we would have to move, whether there was any place to move to or not.
I put on the terry robe and Patrick took over the bathroom. I dressed in the bedroom. I had finished, all but a few touches, when Captain Jonas came to our front door. Patrick was just getting into his jacket. He went to admit the detective to the living room and I sat down at the old-fashioned marble-topped bureau in the bedroom to fix my mouth. I had put on a white-crepe dress. I was wearing my synthetic-emerald earrings and my real emerald engagement ring. I wished I had my emerald bracelet, but we had left it this time—because it cost less than paying insurance—with our war bonds in our San Francisco bank.
I began to think nostalgically about our dog, our cat, our three really good pictures, and then about our startling lack of real capital with which to support such luxuries. I sighed and my depression came back.
Someone spoke to me through the closed shutters on the garden side of the gallery. “Jean!” she said, softly.
I caught my breath. It was Aunt Rita!
“Come out,” she murmured through the slats. “Come here, my dear.”
I started shaking like a leaf. I sensed what she was up to. She had got away from the others, in some fashion. She intended to kill Patrick. He shouldn’t have said what he said to Roger. Maybe she had a gun. She could probably see me through the chinks in the slats. Maybe she would first kill me!
I said, “Half a minute, Miss Clary.” I dived for the lamp and put it out. The room was dark. I started toward the living room. I could hear Patrick and Captain Jonas talking in low serious tones.
“It’s me, Dollie Sears,” the voice said.
Why, of course. My fear vanished. Her voice had had that ephemeral resemblance to Aunt Rita’s voice that I had noticed sometimes when she forgot to be stylish. Poor old rudderless Aunt Dollie! I stepped over at once and unlatched the shutters. “Won’t you come in?” I said.
Aunt Dollie replied, with something of her old dash.
“Come outside, my dear. Isn’t my barging up here like this simply too too! I had to do it this way. The place is crawling with those police, or at least two or three, and they question every little thing. Look, I’ve come to ask if you wouldn’t intercede with your husband. I mean, about that autopsy.”
“My husband?”
“Darling, that police detective eats out of Pat’s hand. It’s too quaint.”
I shook my head.
“Oh, no, he doesn’t, really, Mrs. Sears.”
The gallery was in deep shadow. The darkness was almost complete. The garden was a cool, windless hollow and the flower fragrance was growing heavy.
“I insist,” Aunt Dollie said. She got dramatic. “You must try. It’s the only chance.”
“I will ask,” I said, “but I doubt if it will do any good, Mrs. Sears.”
“Of course it will,” she said. She seemed relieved. “Your husband loves you very much, my dear.”
I said, “Well, Captain Jonas doesn’t. He thinks I’m a pain in the neck. Only—well, I should think you would be glad to have the autopsy....”
“It was his heart!”
“Well, I don’t know much about autopsies but I think that they can tell if a person dies from a bad heart.”
Aunt Dollie moved closer. I could see the line of her jaw, which was hard and set, and startling when you remembered that strong jaws are supposed to indicate strong character, and that Aunt Dollie had no character at all.
“I won’t have it!” she hissed.
“But, suppose he were really poisoned....”
“He wasn’t poisoned. He died of a heart attack. This awful excitement! The horrible thin
gs that went on here! It was all just too much for his poor heart. I won’t have his body mutilated, hear? If it was your husband would you want a lot of doctors—police doctors, and you know what they’re sure to be—laying him on a slab and cutting him up?”
“I’d want it if he might have been murdered.”
“He wasn’t,” Aunt Dollie said dogmatically. “Will you do as I say, or won’t you?”
She moved close. She was taller than I and she seemed to crouch above me. “I’m about at the end of my patience,” she said.
I shrank away. She grabbed my arms, and her bony long-fingered hands kneaded into the bare flesh. I was powerless. She held me in a vise. She shook me violently. Her fingers loosened, but did not let me go.
Then she spoke in her stylish fashion.
“Thank you, darling. And now I must get back to my poor sister. Don’t think too badly of her, will you, dear? She was quite out of her poor head. This house has always been her obsession. She could have had a wonderful life had she been willing to part with the old shack, or even some of the stuff in it. That furniture in the drawing room—my dear, any one piece could be sold for enough for her to spend a whole year in Paris. But she hung onto the old place and even made part of it into flats in order to get income. Can you imagine? I think my poor sister became slightly touched.”
The fingers relaxed. The flesh on my arms felt sore and bruised. And I was helpless with terror. I didn’t know what to do. I thought Aunt Dollie had gone crazy. She stood there, darker than the darkness, cautiously holding onto me.
Then I realized something. Aunt Dollie smelled like anise. No, it was absinthe.
I drew away, to escape. Everything was clear at last.
The fingers grabbed me again, plowed into my flesh.
“What are you up to?” she asked, suspiciously. She shook me. She gave a little cluck. “Am I a fool!” she chuckled, horribly. “So you knew all the time? You did see me there in Roger’s room before I hit you with the book. I said so to George. He didn’t agree.” The hands leaped to my throat. “All right! You, too!” she said.
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