Return to the Scene

by Patrick Quentin

  “You weren’t there!” Kay felt uncertainty sliding back into her, uncertainty and fear.

  “I didn’t get back until almost twelve. I found Don waiting for me.” The crooked smile stirred again in his lips. “I told him I’d been for a walk.”

  “Then Don—Don could have been lying to you. He could have pretended he’d been waiting for you. He could have killed Ivor.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “While—while you were out for a walk.”

  “Out for a walk! That’s only what I told Don.” Kay asked sharply: “But you were?”

  “No.”

  “Then where—where were you?”

  His hands dropped to his sides. His face was pale again and gaunt. “Out on the bay—paddling to Hurricane House.”

  Kay felt as if the polished cedar of the playhouse floor were shifting under her feet.

  “Hurricane House? Tim—why?”

  “I was going to see Ivor, going to beg him for the last time to give me back that letter.” Tim Thorne’s voice was very low. “I was paddling over to Hurricane House when I heard Ivor’s speedboat start from the dock. I knew that meant he was sleeping on the island. It seemed like a good opportunity to get him alone, so I changed my course to the island. I was almost at the dock when—when I saw Simon slip up onto the jetty from another canoe and go to the playhouse.” He threw out his hands. “It was no use trying to see Ivor if Simon was there. I just turned round and paddled home.”

  Kay had been listening spellbound to this brutally unexpected story. Now she said: “So you were right there in the bay when the—the murder was committed!”

  “Exactly. Right there in the bay when the murder was committed.” The casualness of Tim Thorne’s tone had a desperate ring. “Now you can see just what a good suspect I am.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  KAY WAS TOO SHOCKED to speak. For one awful moment, as she looked at him, her thoughts switched against her will to Alice Lumsden’s body lying on the Hurricane House drive, pitiful, abandoned in the rain. Tim Thorne had been at the house this evening. Just after the rain started, he had come in through the French windows. Just about the time she had seen Alice pushing her bicycle out of the shed, he could have seen her too, guessed the reason for her errand and…

  She forced herself not to think that way. She couldn’t stand it, now of all times, having to suspect that ghastly thing about Tim. And yet, in spite of herself, something constricted around her heart. As she watched his dark, unrevealing face, the tingling happiness which had been with her flickered out. She remembered that she was drenched to the skin, cold with a chill that seemed to have seeped through to her bones.

  She felt stiff, awkward. She couldn’t bear having to listen to anything else he might have to tell her.

  She said: “Well, I suppose we should get back to the mainland.”

  She turned to the table and picked up the folder.

  He too seemed to have lost his ease with her. He said gruffly: “I brought my medical bag with me—to look more official if I was caught. Why don’t we put the folder in it? It’ll be safer.”

  She hesitated about letting him have anything so precious but she couldn’t bring herself to show that much suspicion. He took the folder as she handed it to him, waited for her to precede him into the living room, and then turned out the bedroom light.

  In the dark living room they groped forward. He found his bag lying behind a chair; he opened it and put the folder inside. Silently, with a silence that grew increasingly uncomfortable, they moved out of the door.

  It was still raining hard, but some of the hysterical violence had worn itself out of the storm. It was really dark now. A roll of thunder, far softer than before, made Kay realize that she hadn’t been conscious of it in the playhouse. As they moved toward the dock, Tim Thorne’s hand folded around hers. It was a strange, tentative gesture. She wanted desperately to give his fingers a responsive pressure, but somehow she couldn’t.

  They reached the jetty. Across the bay they could see the lights of Hurricane House twinkling through the rain.

  Kay said: “We’d better paddle our own canoes back. We don’t want to leave one here.”

  He let go of her hand. “All right. You follow me.”

  He dropped into his canoe, taking the bag with him. Kay climbed down into hers. They both freed the painters and started off.

  After she had moored it, Kay’s canoe, luckily, had swung under the shelter of the jetty. Otherwise it would have capsized by the rain. Even so it was half full of water. As she huddled on the thwart, paddling noiselessly after the dim silhouette of Tim’s canoe, water was up to her calves.

  Feeling suddenly faint, she wondered if the body had been discovered yet.

  Whether it had or not, there was an appalling ordeal ahead. Kay felt far too weak to face it—to face either the strain of returning to confusion and Major Clifford or, worse still, the strain of returning to a house where she alone, and the murderer, knew that Alice Lumsden’s body was lying undiscovered out in the rain.

  She wished that Tim had let her tell him. He would have been able to give her strength. But there again, if she had told him, if she’d read guilt in his face…

  Stealthily the two canoes slipped on. Once a flash of lightning flared weakly and she realized that Tim was not making for the jetty, but for the swimming beach. Probably because there was less chance of their being observed there.

  The two canoes glided up to the beach, nosing into the soft sand. She saw Tim jump out, carrying the bag. He came to her, helping her out.

  She squeezed his hand.

  He breathed: “Well push the canoes offshore. They’ll think they broke adrift in the storm.”

  He did it, giving each canoe a gentle push, letting the ebb tide rock them slowly out into the darkness.

  With a little shiver Kay realized they were standing almost exactly on the spot where the Major had found those ominous marks the night before. Thunder rolled again. They moved away, up past the yuccas where the lawn crept down level to the beach.

  “When we get to the house, you can slip in through Mr. Chiltern’s room,” Tim said softly. “He’ll be expecting you. I’ll wait and then come by the front door as if I’d just arrived.”

  They had to take a tortuous course to avoid the lights playing out from the living room. They circled the lawn and hit the drive. Kay felt a quick, sickening fear as the soft crunch of the sand under her feet made the image of Alice Lumsden suddenly vivid.

  Ahead to their right, she could make out a vague, looming bulk which must be the bicycle shed. If she hadn’t been found, Alice was still lying there on the other side of the shed, lying huddled in the red slicker with the grotesquely overturned bicycle sprawled in the darkness behind her.

  The thought of Alice was all-obsessing now. The other side of the bicycle shed. The very words, drumming in her brain, became an open-sesame to panic. Tim, close at her side, was leading the way. Would he pass the shed? Would they start together down the drive on the other side of the shed and stumble over…? She put out her hand to steady herself on Tim’s arm.

  And then, with a stab of relief, she realized that the French windows to Gilbert’s room lay to the left. They weren’t going to pass the shed. That terrible thing wasn’t going to happen.

  Tim, guiding her, suddenly froze. “There—ahead!” he whispered. “Something moved. There’s someone there.”

  Tautly Kay looked. But she could see nothing but darkness.

  “I’m sure I saw someone,” Tim repeated. Then, when there was no response from her: “Well, I guess it was my imagination. Come on.”

  They veered left, heading straight toward the spot where Tim thought he had seen movement. Every nerve in Kay’s body was alert as they stole down the drive away from the shed.

  Tim’s voice came again: “I’ll go a few feet more with you. Then you can cut across to Mr. Chiltern’s room. You know the way.”

  “Yes.”

&n
bsp; “I’ll pretend…”

  His words stopped as he stumbled toward her. He gave a little grunt of surprise.

  “Something’s here on the ground. Almost tripped over it. Wait a moment.”

  Kay stood still, feeling the strength dwindling out of her, feeling the darkness and the rain wrapping around her like a cloak.

  Tim had pulled a flashlight from his pocket. She saw the beam switch on. Then, suddenly, it was tilted downward and Kay gave a stifled scream.

  It couldn’t be true! That was her first reaction. This thing she was seeing was a ghastly hallucination, something she saw with her eyes because she had been seeing it so vividly with her thoughts.

  She stared down, knowing that she had to accept it, that against all reason it was here at least twenty yards from the place where it had been before—the huddled body in the red slicker with its white face glaring in the light from the torch, and beyond, glistening in the rain, the overturned bicycle.

  At first the dazed thought came that she had been mistaken before about its location. But, no. Its position was different, too. This time the arms were twisted beneath it, the legs were sprawled out.

  Tim’s voice, strained and hoarse, cut into her numbed thoughts: “It’s Alice Lumsden.”

  Then he was on his knees, the torch playing down, his hands running swiftly, pointlessly, it seemed to Kay, over the red slicker.

  “She’s—she’s dead.”

  He looked up at her. The beam from the flashlight tilted upward too so that Kay seemed to be blinded with light.

  “Kay, it’s—Alice.”

  A little sob wrenched its way through her clenched teeth. And she blurted: “But it can’t be. She was on the other side of the shed. She’s—she’s been moved.”

  Tim Thorne scrambled up, coming to her. He didn’t switch off the flashlight. He gripped her arm. His voice, urgent and baffled, asked: “What do you mean—she’s been moved? What do you know about this?”

  Weakly she temporized: “I—I must have been crazy. I didn’t know what I was saying. I…”

  She stopped as he broke in sharply: “Look!”

  The beam from the flashlight, held limp in his hand, was playing down the drive toward the bicycle shed. Kay followed the direction of his pointing finger. Dimly, at the far end of the powerful beam, she could make out a vague figure, slipping away through the rain.

  “I was right. Someone was here. Here by the body. Quick.”

  Almost before Kay realized it, they were running together down the drive, following the beam of the flashlight, following the shadowy figure.

  For one moment Kay saw it distinctly. Then, abruptly, it turned into the shed—disappeared.

  They reached the bicycle shed. They ran into it together. Tim threw the arc of light from the torch forward across the ranks of bicycles. He called: “Who’s there?”

  In a way it was the greatest shock of all to Kay when she saw that the figure standing impassively among the bicycles was her sister.

  Maud Chiltern had made no effort to conceal herself. She wore a blue cellophane slicker with a hood. Water drops glistened on it. Her face, beneath the queer, nunlike hood, was white, haggard, but monumentally calm. In one hand she held a drenched, crumpled piece of brown paper. In the other, hanging limp toward the floor, was a pair of white cotton pajama pants.

  She stared at them, blinking from the light of Tim’s torch.

  “It’s you, Kay, isn’t it? And Dr. Thorne.”

  Kay’s words tumbled out. “Maud, did you do it? Did you move the body?”

  Maud’s lashes, flickering over her steady gray eyes, almost concealed the fact that she had glanced at Thorne.

  “Move the body, dear? I don’t know what you mean.”

  Her placidity, so preposterously out of key with the situation, was too much for Kay.

  “It’s no use pretending, Maud. We saw you there by the body.” And then: “Don’t worry. Tim’s all right.”

  “My dear, if I had anything to tell you, I would naturally tell you in front of Dr. Thorne.”

  “You mean you don’t want to tell us anything.”

  “If you care to put it that way.”

  Kay’s gaze shifted to the pajama pants in her sister’s hand, and noticed on the dangling leg a large, brownish burn. In a tangle of images, she remembered Elaine—when was it? Years ago—Elaine in the kitchen, ironing white pajama pants, resting the iron on them, lifting it with a little cry as the cotton scorched. She remembered Alice too, Alice with a brown-paper package under her arm, staring at them triumphantly from the foot of the stairs. “I have the evidence here…”

  In a strange, flat voice, she said: “Those pajamas were in the brown-paper package Alice was carrying, weren’t they?”

  Maud did not reply. Her fingers merely tightened over the crumpled cotton. And her eyes, meeting Kay’s, suddenly flickered with a look of stark, ungovernable horror.

  It was over in a flash and her face was steady again. But Kay realized then that her sister’s calm had been the result only of an immense effort of will.

  “Maud, won’t you tell us…?”

  “Please.” Her sister’s voice was quavering. “If you don’t mind, I—I think I’ll go back to the house.” Fantastically, that was the end. Before Tim or Kay could say anything, she had brushed past them to the door and disappeared.

  Tim’s voice, dazed and uncertain, asked: “What on earth is all this, Kay? Have you both gone mad? What—what do you know about Alice?”

  “Maud’s lying,” Kay said breathlessly. “She moved the body, I’m sure of it. She—she must have had some reason.”

  She poured out the whole story to him of her discovery of Alice’s body and her desertion of it to continue her trip to the island. It was a great relief to be able to confess and, in her relief, she forgot some of her anxiety about Maud.

  “I knew she was dead,” she explained. “There was absolutely nothing I could do, and I had to get that folder for Terry’s sake. I was going to tell you everything at the playhouse, but you stopped me. I suppose it was awful of me. I…”

  He wasn’t interested in justifications, only in facts. “You’re sure the body’s been moved?”

  “Quite sure. She was on the other side of the shed when I found her. And the body was in quite a different position; so was the bicycle.”

  It was horrible that they could be talking that way about something which only a few hours ago had been a living human being.

  “Someone moved her,” she added. “And I’m sure it was Maud because Alice had a brown-paper package with her. Those pajama pants must have been in it. She said they were her evidence against the person who killed Ivor.”

  Kay hesitated, then went on. “I know something else about those pants, too. Last night, very late, I found Elaine ironing them in the kitchen. I know it’s the same pair because she scorched them with the iron. I think she’d washed them out and was planning to give them back to whoever owned them, so that no one would know.”

  Tim’s face was strange. That diffident, remote look had come back into his eyes.

  She asked hopelessly: “What—what are we going to do now?”

  “Call Major Clifford.” His tone was abrupt, final. “She must have been dead over an hour. We can’t possibly keep it back any longer. I must get to the body too. But we—I’d better call the Major first.”

  They hurried to the house together, no longer bothering whether they were seen or not. They went in through the kitchen door, their drenched slickers and white faces receiving startled glances from the colored waitress and cook. Kay took Thorne down the corridor to the alcove where the phone stood. She waited, cold and tense, while he dialed, talked to the Major, and hung up.

  “He’ll be over right away.” Tim looked at her, the thin ghost of a smile on his lips. “You better get into some warm, dry clothes. I’m going back to the body.”

  He turned away and then veered back, watching her intently. “Listen, before I go, is
there somewhere where we would be alone for a moment?”

  “We can try the library.”

  No one was in the library. Tim shut the door be-hind them. He said quickly: “Kay, I’ve got to be sure you’ve told me everything about Alice. I want to know how much you know because—well, it’s the only way.”

  She repeated the story just as she had told it to him in the bicycle shed. Then, suddenly, she remembered something else.

  “Earlier this afternoon Gilbert and I came in here and found Alice bending over the couch in the corner. She seemed to shuffle something under the cushions when she saw us. And she—she was excited as if she’d found something important. After she’d gone, I went to look under the cushions, but I couldn’t find anything.”

  Instinctively they moved together to the low couch piled with lemon-yellow cushions. Kay bent and started pushing the pillows aside.

  “There was a green cushion at the bottom of the pile,” she said. “I looked under it.” Then sharply: “It isn’t here any more.”

  She tossed the cushions about, making sure. She turned to Thorne.

  “A light-green cushion with dark-green stripes. It was damp and rather stained. I…”

  “A green cushion!” he echoed.

  “Why, yes.”

  She stared at him, startled at the change in his expression. His face was pale, haggard. And his mouth tightened at the corners, growing grim and forbidding.

  “What a fool!” he breathed, half to himself. “The green cushion—and those marks in the sand!”

  “Tim, what is it? What are you talking about?”

  His hands went out, taking her arms.

  “When Ivor was killed, Kay, you had no conscience about trying to protect his murderer. But now someone else has been killed, someone whose only crime was knowing too much.” He paused, his eyes searching her face: “You wouldn’t want to go on condoning murder indefinitely, would you?”

  Kay felt frightened, horribly frightened.