Coroner Timmons frowned. “But it was clutched in the dead man’s hand.”
“On the contrary,” said Chet Keith quickly. “If you remember, I called it especially to your attention, sir. The pin was not clutched in the professor’s hand. It was merely resting between his fingers on the floor and they were perfectly relaxed.”
“What’s the difference?” demanded the sheriff. “He had it, didn’t he, and it’s our only clue.”
Chet Keith continued to address the coroner. “You’re a doctor,” he said. “You know that at the moment of violent death the extremities of the victim undergo what is called a cadaveric spasm.
This causes the fingers to close tightly upon whatever is held in the hand, so tightly it is almost impossible to loosen them. It is a condition which nobody can simulate.”
Coroner Timmons nodded reluctantly, and the sheriff gave Chet Keith an impatient scowl. “What of it?” he asked again.
“The pin was placed in the professor’s hand after death.”
“Why should the girl put one of her hairpins in his hand after death?” scoffed Sheriff Latham.
“She didn’t,” said Chet Keith. “The pin was put there by the murderer to incriminate Sheila Kelly.”
His eyes travelled slowly over the circle of faces about him.
“Somebody in this group killed Canby and framed Sheila Kelly for the murder,” he said, “but the professor knew the truth and he was weakening. If he had lived, sooner or later he’d have told everything, so one of you killed him.”
I think we all gasped and it seemed to me for a moment that everybody there looked both guilty and apprehensive, a reaction which even the innocent are apt to show to such an accusation.
“Aren’t you covering a lot of territory?” demanded Allan Atwood savagely. “You and your cadaveric spasms! How do you happen to know so much about that sort of thing?”
Chet Keith’s mouth tightened. “I’ve been a reporter, a police reporter, if I must be exact. I’ve watched the best detectives in the business work. There’s not much about crime I don’t know.”
“Oh yeah?” muttered Patrick Oliver.
Chet Keith turned upon him so suddenly the boy involuntarily drew back. “You’re due for a little explaining, Oliver,” said Keith.
“Oh yeah?” muttered the boy again, but I saw how white he had become and his sister saw, too, for she moved closer to him.
“You admitted at the inquest this morning that it was you who brought the professor into your aunt’s life,” said Chet Keith sternly.
“I believe you expressed it that you put up a job on your Aunt Dora.”
Patrick Oliver was trembling. “It was-was just a joke,” he stammered.
“You and your eternal horseplay!” exclaimed Jeff Wayne bitterly.
“I’d never have thought of it,” said Patrick, directing a glare at Sheila Kelly’s averted face, “if it hadn’t been that she looks like – she reminded me of Gloria.”
He mopped his brow with a shaking hand.
“You saw the professor’s act and you saw a way to put over a hoax on your aunt,” said Chet Keith, looking very grim, “so you called the professor and made an appointment to talk business with him.”
Patrick Oliver had a hunted look. “There wasn’t any harm to it,” he mumbled. “I swear I didn’t mean any harm. I thought it would-would make Aunt Dora feel better to have a message from Gloria. That’s all it was supposed to be, just harmless messages, saying Gloria was happy and Aunt Dora wasn’t to worry.”
“So that’s all it was to be, according to your story,” murmured Chet Keith. “Just an innocent prank to comfort your Aunt Dora.”
The boy looked at him helplessly, then he glared at Sheila Kelly.
“She threw us a curve. Me and the professor too,” he said thickly. “That pretending to be Gloria wasn’t in the act. She thought it up herself to get her hooks into Aunt Dora’s money.”
“Your bargain with Professor Matthews did not include the Gloria manifestations?” inquired Chet Keith with a sceptical grimace.
“No!”
“They were a surprise to you and also to the professor?”
“Yes.”
“But you did give the professor the data for the Gloria messages?”
“For the Little Blue Eyes messages, yes,” said the boy sullenly.
“I had to make sure the old codger could deliver the goods.”
“Just so,” assented Chet Keith and glanced at Sheila Kelly. “You don’t remember afterward what has happened when you’re in a trance?”
She shivered. “Not unless I’m told to remember.”
The girl was all to pieces. Chet Keith realized that as well as I. That is the reason, I am confident, that he avoided questioning her, as much as possible. He was afraid that at any minute she might blurt out the truth about the door between her room and mine.
I fixed stern eyes upon young Oliver. “I suppose you realize that you and you alone had the opportunity to frame this business?” I inquired coldly.
“I didn’t! I didn’t! Everything I told the girl to say was harmless. The professor knows. He heard every word.”
“Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for you, the Professor’s knowledge died with him,” said Chet Keith gravely.
“You can’t even prove I ever made a deal with him.”
“No,” said Chet Keith, “I couldn’t have proved it. That was a leap in the dark, but it worked. You admitted that you and the professor used Sheila Kelly to play a hoax upon your aunt.”
“I never put her up to pretending to be Gloria!” insisted the boy. “The first time she did it I was scared to death and I’ve been scared ever since.”
“Nevertheless last night when Sheila Kelly wanted to back out of the séance you insisted that she had to go on.”
The boy’s shoulders sagged. “There wasn’t anything else to do,” he stammered. “Uncle Thomas was here. To have run out at that stage was as good as admitting it was all a fake. I thought the only thing to do was to bluff it out. You’ve got to believe me. I never dreamed it would end in murder!”
His voice rose to a scream and Judy put her arm about him.
“You haven’t any right to torment him like this,” she protested with a sob. “Patrick didn’t mean any harm. He was-was just trying to-to help me.”
“Keep still, Judy!” cried the boy. “For God’s sake, keep out of this.”
I think I have never seen a more wretched face than Judy Oliver’s or a more determined one as she went on in an unsteady voice. “It was on my account Pat got mixed up with the professor and that girl.”
I saw Jeff Wayne make a startled movement, but she did not look at him. She kept her eyes fixed upon Chet Keith and something in them brought a lump to my throat.
“You see,” she said, “I have been in love with Jeff for-for a long time and-and I imagined he was in love with me, but he used to be engaged to Gloria and Aunt Dora has the idea that Gloria could not be happy in her grave if Jeff married someone else.”
“You couldn’t, could you, darling?” murmured Dora Canby to Sheila Kelly.
There was a painful silence and then Chet Keith said softly, “So your brother decided to help you out, Miss Oliver?”
Judy’s small tortured face quivered. “Jeff’s job depended upon Uncle Thomas and so did my future. I was mistaken, but until-until last night I thought that was why Jeff did not ask me to marry him. I believed it was because-because Uncle Thomas would have cut us off without a penny if we married. It was quite hopeless, or so I thought, unless Aunt Dora could be convinced that Gloria did not want Jeff to stay single on her account.”
Chet Keith’s voice was very gentle. “You planned to have Sheila Kelly give your aunt a message, supposedly from her daughter, that it was all right for Jeff to marry?”
The girl’s haggard face twitched. “Yes.”
She threw one miserable glance at Dora Canby, who shook her head and said reproachfully, “
Gloria will never give Jeff up to you, Judy, will you, darling?” she asked Sheila Kelly, who shivered and looked with despair at Chet Keith.
He again turned to Patrick Oliver. “So that’s the job you put up on your aunt?”
The boy made a harried gesture. “There was nothing criminal in it,” he said feverishly. “Judy’s a good scout and she’s never had a break. I thought if Little Blue Eyes told Aunt Dora that Gloria wanted Jeff to go ahead and marry, all Judy’s troubles would be over.”
“You framed up with the professor to deceive your aunt just to give your sister a break?”
“Yes!”
“But you also had Little Blue Eyes suggest to Mrs Canby that her daughter would rest easier in her grave if your debts were paid?”
Patrick Oliver turned perfectly white. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s true, isn’t it, Mrs Canby, that during one of the séances Little Blue Eyes suggested to you that it would make her happier if you’d do her cousin Patrick a small favour?”
Before Dora Canby could answer the boy interrupted, “All right, all right,” he said. “I did try to do myself a good turn as well, but there’s nothing criminal in that either. God knows Aunt Dora will never miss the money.”
“No,” said Chet Keith, “but you were very unwise to have Captain French here at the inn cash the check for you. It made it very easy for me to trace and just as easy for Thomas Canby.”
“Uncle Thomas!” faltered Patrick. “He knew about it?”
“You know he knew about it, Oliver.”
“No! No!”
“I found out from Captain French this afternoon about the check. According to the captain, your uncle found out about it last night. That’s why you killed him.”
“No, no!”
“You are an opportunist, Oliver. You happened accidentally to attend a small-town picture show. You saw a fake spiritualist act. The girl reminded you of your dead cousin Gloria Canby. Right away you cooked up a scheme to cash in on that resemblance. It may be that in the beginning you intended only to pull a few strings on your sister’s behalf. But it was too good a chance to reap a bit of benefit for yourself. And then Thomas Canby came and he found out that you had finagled his wife out of a whopping big check on the strength of these false séances.
“It didn’t take him long to figure out who was responsible for the whole business. He meant to expose both you and the professor last night and you would have been out of the Canby fortune from then on. So Thomas Canby had to die. That’s why you were determined that Sheila Kelly should go through with the séance. You had laid your plans very cleverly. You knew what was going to happen because you had primed her to put on the tirade against your uncle. All you had to do then was jerk the light cord out and cut his throat to be safe, or so you fancied.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” wailed the boy.
Judy stepped in front of him, her eyes blazing.
“You can’t hang this on my brother,” she said. “He couldn’t have killed Uncle Thomas. I was holding Patrick’s arm when the lights went out. I never turned him loose until they came on again.”
“We have only your unsubstantiated word for that,” said Chet Keith.
“It’s true.”
Jeff Wayne drew a long breath. “I had hold of Patrick’s other arm,” he said. “He didn’t kill Mr Canby.”
Patrick’s frantic face smoothed out. “How’s that for the perfect alibi, Mr Sherlock Holmes?” he demanded with a slight revival of his natural exuberance.
Chet Keith shrugged his shoulders. “There is nothing to prevent the three of you from having been in on the deal,” he said.
“After all, by your own admission it was a plot to make it possible for Jeff Wayne to marry Judy Oliver without endangering their chances at the Canby fortune.”
“Jeff wasn’t in on it!” cried Judy quickly. “He knew nothing about it.”
“But you knew?”
She hung her head. “Yes.”
“Your brother told you before he took your aunt to the show in Carrolton?”
She hesitated and Patrick Oliver interrupted. “Judy didn’t know then,” he said. “She’d never have stood for it. It wasn’t until-until after the professor and the girl moved up here to the inn that Judy caught on.”
Judy’s lips trembled. “I’m younger than Patrick,” she said in a low voice, “but he-he has never had any forethought. I mean, it is just like him to get into a thing like this without seeing that it might lead to-to something dreadful.”
“So you found out for yourself that Patrick and the professor had made a deal?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find it out?”
She flushed painfully. “At one of the séances Little Blue Eyes said that it made Gloria unhappy for Jeff to waste his life away, grieving for her. At another she said Gloria was worried about Pat because he was in debt.”
“Those messages struck you as slightly too apropos?”
“Yes.”
“You taxed your brother with being responsible for them?”
Again she hesitated and, making a wry face, Patrick Oliver for the second time answered for her. “She did better than that,” he said. “She followed me one night.”
“Followed you?”
“The professor and I had to get together to keep the show going,” said Patrick Oliver defiantly. “After all, he needed information, didn’t he, to put on the act.”
“So you were in the habit of meeting the professor on the sly to lay the groundwork for the séances?”
“Sure.”
“Where?”
“Oh, anywhere away from the inn.”
“Anywhere?”
“Down the road to town, wherever I happened to overtake him.”
Judy drew a long breath. “The professor pretended that a séance was a great mental and physical strain for both him and the girl,” she said. “Every night after it was over they used to take a walk.”
“Yes?”
“I noticed that Patrick usually disappeared at the same time.”
“Yes?”
“It was easy to trail him.” She smiled painfully. “I’ve always had to keep an eye on him.”
“You trailed him and found the three of them together?”
She shivered. “It was horrible. I came right up to them. Patrick was furious and the professor nearly had a fit, but Sheila Kelly looked through me as if I were so much air. At the time I was certain she did not know I was there.”
Sheila Kelly gave her a haggard glance. “I never knew either of you was there.”
“I begged Pat to tell Aunt Dora the truth and send the professor away,” said Judy in a trembling voice. “I warned them that if they went on with it I’d tell her myself.”
She paused abruptly and her eyes widened with terror.
“But you didn’t?” asked Chet Keith.
“No,” said Judy, her lips trembling, “I didn’t. You see, it was that night, while I was standing there, that-that Gloria suddenly began to speak with-with that girl’s lips.”
“It’s true,” said Patrick, swallowing hard. “Until that moment everything had been according to form, then all at once she” — he glanced with horror at Sheila Kelly — “she began to laugh, just the way Gloria used to laugh.” He shuddered. “She said she had found the-the way back. She said we’d never stop her until she’d accomplished her purpose.”
Chet Keith ignored the boy to stare soberly at his sister. “So you let Sheila Kelly seal your lips?”
She was trembling. “It wasn’t she. It was-was-” She broke off and stared, her eyes dilated with horror, at the girl sitting with bowed head at the coroner’s table.
“Surely,” I exclaimed, “you don’t believe your cousin Gloria actually takes possession of Sheila Kelly at times?”
“What else can I believe?” cried Judy in a stifled voice. “How else can she know the things she does know?”
Chet Ke
ith moved a step nearer and she shrank back.
“What did Sheila Kelly say that night in your cousin Gloria’s voice which frightened you so terribly, Miss Oliver?”
“I-I- Just the usual thing, the things she has been saying all along,” stammered the girl. “That she hated me, that she hated all of us.”
He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “You are sure that is all she threatened you with?”
“Certainly it was all,” interrupted Patrick Oliver.
Chet Keith looked from brother to sister and again his voice sharpened. “The professor knew more than it was safe to know,” he said. “The professor paid for his knowledge with his life. Bear that in mind.”
I thought Patrick Oliver was weakening. I saw him wet his lips with his tongue, but after a second horrified glance at Sheila Kelly his sister seemed to make a terrific effort to recover herself.
“We’ve told you all we know,” she said. “Patrick did bring that girl here. He did put over a hoax on Aunt Dora, but he-he had nothing to do with killing Uncle Thomas. She – Gloria did it! She came back from her grave to – to revenge herself.”
“To revenge herself?” I repeated with a frown.
She pressed her shaking hand against her lips. “Yes.”
Hogan Brewster, with a flippant smile, interposed. “Canby was planning to have his daughter put away in an institution, you know. That is why she killed herself.”
Apparently he had come to the aid of Judy with his explanation, but it was at Lila Atwood he looked and I saw her whiten and lean closer to her husband, who promptly moved farther away.
“Where did this interview take place, Miss Oliver?” demanded Chet Keith. “I mean this first manifestation of Gloria Canby’s alleged spirit?”
“I told you,” muttered Patrick Oliver. “It was down the road.”
“Can you be more explicit, Miss Oliver?” persisted Chet Keith.
Her lips trembled. “It was-was opposite the entrance to that old abandoned cemetery down the road,” she said faintly.
“Cemetery?”
“There is some sort of shack there. It used to be a chapel, I think. The cemetery is enclosed with an iron fence, but I-I could see the-the tombstones through the pickets.”
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