There is No Return

by Anita Blackmon

  8

  It has been my experience that a stout offensive is the best defence, so when I went to the door with Chet Keith on his way out that night I fastened my most forbidding glance upon Butch, the deputy, as he sat propped back against the wall in a straight chair, his hat tilted over one eye.

  “If that was you I heard snoring a minute ago,” I said severely, “I shan’t find it necessary to report it this time, but don’t let it happen again.”

  It was purely a shot in the dark, as I am sure Chet Keith recognized, for he uttered a choked sound which he tried to cover by clearing his throat. However, I appeared to have scored a bull’s eye, for the deputy turned very red and the cynical amusement with which he had been staring from me to my companion altered abruptly.

  “The sheriff never said I couldn’t catch a wink or two of sleep,” he said sulkily, “long as nobody can get in or out of these here rooms without my knowing.”

  He indicated the door to Sheila Kelly’s room and the one to the professor’s on the other side. The deputy’s chair was about midway between and he seemed to consider that he had every approach under guard. Needless to say I did not disillusion him, nor did Chet Keith, although he gave me an odd look.

  “Why don’t you bunk in with your friend Mrs Trotter for the rest of the night?” he asked suddenly.

  I stared at him. “Don’t be silly,” I snapped. “Why should I?”

  He said nothing and it was not until I was back in my own room that it dawned upon me that the deputy’s presence in the corridor was little if any protection to me. I had heard Sheila Kelly shoot the thumb bolt on her side of our connecting door, but while there were screw holes, indicating that there had once been a bolt on my side, there was none there now. I tried to recall if Chet Keith had relocked the inside door after the girl left us. To the best of my recollection he had not. For a moment I believed it would be impossible for me to stay in that room with nothing between me and Sheila Kelly except the bolt on her side of the wall. I even took a rapid step on my way to remedying the matter, then my common sense reasserted itself.

  “People can’t be hypnotized into doing things contrary to their moral principles and the dead don’t come back to life,” I said to myself, a litany to which I was to cling with both hands during those dreadful twenty-four hours which followed.

  I had denied to Ella that I was on Sheila Kelly’s side and I do not know even now why, with all the evidence against her, I could not bear to think of her as a murderess. It may have been partly because the sheriff had aroused all my antagonism. As Ella insists, I do like to be the belied cow or nothing, and everybody except Chet Keith seemed determined to hang the crime upon Sheila Kelly.

  Partly, I think, it was because the girl herself was so pitiful that I shrank from believing her guilty. It seemed to me much more probable that Professor Thaddeus Matthews had used his unholy influence over her mind to put her on the spot, while he himself committed the actual murder.

  “She’s the victim of an unscrupulous scoundrel!” I muttered.

  Having argued myself into that state of mind, it behooved me to have the courage of my convictions, so I did not send for Chet Keith to return with his skeleton key. Instead I went soberly to bed and lay for a long time wide awake, listening to the stealthy creakings of the old frame building, unable to close my eyes without seeing that hideous gash in Thomas Canby’s throat and recalling that the other half of those sharp gold scissors had not been found.

  I could have sworn I had not slept at all. Apparently I was mistaken, for I woke up the next morning at eight by my travelling clock on the bedside table. The rain had stopped but there was no sign of the sun. It was one of those depressing days which I recalled from my former stay at Lebeau Inn, when the clouds hang low over the mountain and wander in and out of the windows in a cold grey mist like fog, only wetter and more dismal.

  Even my shoes felt damp when I slid into them, and the white linen collar on my black knitted dress was as limp as the cheap towels in the bathroom which was cut off one corner of my room.

  There was a similar bathroom in Ella’s room, which is why there was no connecting door between us, as I have said. I heard her grumbling about there being no hot water as usual, while I was brushing my teeth. Except in the bathroom it was impossible to hear any movement on her side of the partition, but I distinctly heard Sheila Kelly when the deputy knocked and asked what she would like for breakfast.

  “Nothing,” she said in a low, spiritless voice. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Suit yourself, lady,” was the reply.

  I put my head out into the hall. “Of course she wants some breakfast,” I said crossly. “Have them bring her plenty of hot coffee and buttered toast and an egg.”

  The deputy Butch looked at me as if he wanted to tell me to mind my own business, but he thought better of it when I frowned him down.

  “You heard the order, George,” he said to the elderly porter who had conducted me to my room the night before.

  According to my recollection, the porter’s name was Jake but he appeared willing to answer to anything. In fact he scuttled off as if only too glad to get away.

  Butch grinned. “He’s scared the ghost will get him.”

  “Ghost?” I asked.

  He motioned with his shoulder toward Sheila Kelly’s door.

  “You can’t make George believe that that girl ain’t possessed of a vampire. He claims he has seen her more than once, wandering around up here in the shape of a big black bat.”

  “Tommyrot!”

  “Sure, but Jake swears he caught her, or maybe it was the bat, hovering over a cat which had been cut all to pieces, and he says she was the only person on this floor the next day when another cat come tearing down the stairs with his insides hanging out.”

  I felt sick but I tried to tell myself it was because I had had no breakfast. “You don’t believe such drivel?” I demanded sharply.

  Butch hoisted one shoulder in a bored manner. “Nope,” he said, “when you bury ‘em they stay buried. The gal’s a killer all right, but she ain’t doing her killing for nobody except herself.”

  “How about the professor?” I asked indignantly.

  “I and the sheriff figure he’s just her tool.”

  “I should say it was definitely the other way around,” I announced haughtily.

  Butch regarded me with cynical amusement. “You mean you think there is such a thing as hypnotism?” he inquired.

  “Certainly there is such a thing.”

  Butch tittered. “ ’Sfunny how education makes it easy for folks to swallow a lot of fool notions,” he said comfortably. “Now I and the sheriff and Mart Butler and Coroner Timmons, we don’t pretend to be no college graduates, but we ain’t took in very easily. In fact we ain’t took in at all. We know that gal killed Canby and we know she knew what she was doing when she done it, and Sheriff Latham ain’t the man to be throwed off the track by a lot of crazy talk about mental suggestion and a dead woman’s vengeance.”

  I had the impression that one might as well butt one’s head against a brick wall as attempt to make any impression upon the deputy’s fixed idea. I felt depressed as I walked slowly down the hall and I thought Chet Keith looked much the same when I met him in the lounge downstairs, although he gave me a bright smile and his voice sounded positively blithe.

  “Nice morning, isn’t it, if you don’t mind a cloud roosting on your chin,” he said.

  I nodded. “Any news of the bridge?” I inquired.

  “I understand they’ve corralled it somewhere down the river. Getting it upstream against the current is now the problem.”

  Fannie Parrish, looking more than ever like a shaggy, beady eyed lap dog, joined in the conversation. “It’s terrible, positively terrible, for us to have to stay in this horrible place!” She glanced nervously over her shoulder. “I heard people creeping about all night. I simply never closed my eyes. I had the most awful feeling that if I did I’d wake
up with my throat cut from ear to ear.”

  Captain Bill French, who was behind the desk, gave her a worried look. “There is positively no danger, Mrs Parrish,” he said. I suppose he was thinking of what a blow to his business all this was. “With the murderers under lock and key and the authorities on guard, nothing can happen to the guests in the house.”

  “With the authorities on guard indeed!” cried Fannie. “As if that means anything! I ask you, what good are bolts and keys against a man like the professor? If he can raise the dead he can walk right through doors and everything.”

  “Nonsense!” I exclaimed angrily. “The professor can’t raise the dead!”

  Fannie did not pay me the slightest attention. “Isn’t there any way a person can get down off this awful mountain without crossing the river?”

  Captain French sighed. “I assure you there is no need for the guests at the inn to feel uneasy,” he said feebly.

  Ella touched my arm. “If you ask me, Captain French isn’t so easy in his own mind as he lets on.”

  “Naturally he hates to think of the place being deserted in midseason and he realizes there will be a general exodus the moment the road is open,” I said, “thanks as much as anything else to the alarms of your friend Mrs Parrish.”

  Ella stared at me intently. “Fannie Parrish is a silly woman, but she’s right about one thing,” she said in a low voice. “The sheriff’s precautions did not keep the prisoners from mingling around last night.”

  I gave a guilty start, believing for a minute that Ella knew about Sheila Kelly’s visit to my room the night before. “What do you mean?” I stammered.

  “I don’t for a minute believe that Professor Matthews has supernatural powers,” said Ella. “I never, have believed so, Adelaide, whatever you choose to think. But somebody or something visited the professor, last night in spite of locked doors and the sheriff.”

  “Someone visited the professor!”

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” explained Ella. “It seemed to me I could hear a mumble of voices.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Were you talking to somebody in your room after I left last night, Adelaide?”

  I did not tell a falsehood; I merely evaded the question.

  “What if anything are you driving at, Ella?” I demanded with considerable hauteur.

  “It seemed to me,” repeated Ella with a frown, “that people were talking. I looked out into the hall. That deputy was fast asleep — so much for the protection of the officers. I intended to wake the man up and tell him what I thought of such negligence. After all, we pay taxes to be protected. But just as I opened my mouth I saw a shadow down the hall. At least I thought for a moment that it was a shadow.” She paused.

  “Go on,” I exclaimed impatiently.

  “It was standing just outside the professor’s door.”

  “Yes?”

  “I couldn’t swear it came through that locked door, Adelaide.”

  “I should hope not!”

  “But I am sure it did,” finished Ella.

  “Ridiculous!”

  “It’s all very well for you to scoff at everything and everybody,” said Ella wearily, “but you can’t deny that some very queer things have happened and are continuing to happen in this place.”

  “Such as a shadow you saw in the hall!” I jeered. “As if that upstairs corridor isn’t alive with shadows with only one dim light bulb to illuminate it.”

  “But you see, the shadow moved away toward the stairs.”

  “Just a trick of your imagination,” I said crossly.

  “And it looked” — Ella’s voice trembled — “it looked exactly like an enormous bat.”

  “Are you spoofing me or what?” I demanded.

  “No,” said Ella meekly, and curiously enough I was more impressed by that than by anything she had said. It is very unlike Ella Trotter to be meek. “I’m not spoofing you, Adelaide. The thing was like a bat, all black and shapeless, like a huge bat with its wings folded, and it moved away toward the stairs without making a sound.”

  I was convinced that Ella’s imagination had deceived her, although it did occur to me to wonder if Chet Keith had a monopoly on all the skeleton keys in the house.

  “I suppose you woke the deputy up and had him investigate,” I said to Ella.

  She gave me a defiant glance. “Not being a born meddler, like some people I could name, I did nothing of the sort. Instead I locked my door and went back to bed and, if it is any satisfaction to you, I put my head under the covers and kept it there.”

  I must have eyed her severely, for she bridled. “I suppose you would have dashed off after that thing and chased it to its lair,” she said in what she evidently intended for cutting accents.

  “If people are hobnobbing with the prisoners behind the sheriffs back he has the right to be told of it,” I announced weakly.

  Ella shook her head. “I have changed my mind,” she said.

  “When I sent for that book, Adelaide, I intended, as I told Fannie Parrish, to expose the professor. In other words I meant to take a hand in whatever is going on in this wretched place. But” — she shivered and stared at me fixedly — “that was before the devilish thing got into Sheila Kelly which mutilates stray cats and strangles pet canaries and cuts people’s throats.”

  “I may as well tell you, Ella,” I said with a frown, “that I don’t seem to have arrived with the book. At any rate it is not in my luggage anywhere.”

  “Thank heaven!” cried Ella and then she regarded me sternly.

  “I know your penchant, Adelaide, for dabbling into things which do not concern you, but here is one piece of advice I urge you to take. Let this fiendish business alone, just as I intend to do from here on.”

  So saying, she led the way into the dining room, the doors to which Captain French had at that moment thrown open. Because of the general dreariness of the day and the murky effect of the clouds, which had settled down upon the mountain like a coverlet of wet grey down, the room was again lighted by the big chandelier with the green shade, and the guests who straggled in by ones and twos to breakfast looked even more haggard and drawn than on the night before. Nobody appeared to want to be alone. I saw Fannie Parrish beckon to her table the young mother who had been at the séance, and shortly afterward they were joined by the dyspeptic-looking old gentleman who had received the message from his brother Peter.

  Ella made a grimace at me and said, “They are going to have the inquest the first thing this morning, and Fannie is all of a twitter.”

  I was spared the effort of a reply by Judy Oliver, who at that moment came into the dining room and hurried over to us. “Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asked a little breathlessly.

  I raised my eyebrows. None of the Canby party had put in an appearance at that time except Jeff Wayne, who was sitting by himself, pretending to be absorbed in a paper, although there were no morning papers of course, and I was positive he was merely using the crumpled sheet in his hand for a shield behind which to hide his face.

  “I don’t feel as if I could bear my own company this morning,” said Judy.

  She did not look at Jeff Wayne, and the only sign he gave of being aware of her presence was an involuntary twitch of the hand which held the newspaper.

  “Sit down by all means,” said Ella cordially and gave me a mutinous glance.

  Ella and I rarely like the same people, but I merely raised my eyebrows again, and to my surprise Judy Oliver coloured painfully.

  “Jeff and I haven’t fallen out or anything,” she declared in a tone of false levity, or so it seemed to me. “It’s just that-that ...” She caught her breath and started all over again. “You see, we never were – I mean, it was all a mistake thinking that we – that we were in love with each other.”

  I stared at her curiously. She could not even speak the boy’s name without tripping over it. She could not meet my eyes, either, and her hand strayed without her volition to that tiny piece which had been clipped
out of her ear.

  “Jeff was in love with Gloria,” she said sharply. “He still is.”

  “So I heard him say last night,” I remarked in a dry voice.

  She glared at me. “It’s true!”

  “Only you didn’t believe it until last night,” I said, “and your cousin Gloria died not believing it.”

  Her small pointed face crinkled as if she were about to burst into tears. “You have no right to judge people by what Gloria Canby thought or said!” she burst out. “She was a horrible person.” Her lips quivered. “I know you aren’t supposed to say things against the dead, but Gloria — she was three years older than I. She was sixteen when our father died and Patrick and I came to live with Aunt Dora. We hadn’t a penny to bless ourselves with and nowhere else to go and-and Gloria never let any of us forget for a minute that we were living off charity.”

  I felt myself weakening and Ella must have seen it, for she gazed at me triumphantly. I realized that she had heard all this before.

  “I had to wear Gloria’s old clothes,” went on Judy in a bitter voice. “Aunt Dora would have bought me new ones and Uncle Thomas was not stingy, so long as he had the say-so, but Gloria begrudged me everything, even-even friends. She threw a tantrum every time I had a new hair ribbon, and if people acted as if they liked me it made her furious. She told them all sorts of terrible tales to put them off. She said I was a little sneak. She said I couldn’t be trusted not to steal your purse or-or your sweetheart behind your back.”

  “People usually aren’t greatly deceived by slander like that,” I said. “Generally if they know a person they form their own conclusions.”

  “But you see, nobody knew me very well,” said Judy. “I’ve always had to be – to be kind of a companion to Aunt Dora. Unless you were around the house a lot you never knew me well at all.”

  “Jeff Wayne was around a lot after he got engaged to your cousin?” I suggested with what I considered perfect suavity.

  Judy winced. “Yes,” she said, “Jeff was around a lot.”