Rest You Merry

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Porble scowled. “Then I suppose you’ll have to make some show of effort. It’s a complete waste of time, but we don’t want to get Svenson roaring in here chucking the desks around.”

  He fished in his top middle drawer for a key that had got tangled up in a wad of elastic bands and paper clips.

  “This way.” He opened a door that led into a rear corridor lined with doors, one to the mop room, one to the staff toilet, one to the basement, and finally to a room at the very end. This one, he attempted to unlock but couldn’t.

  “Drat! I seem to have brought the wrong key. Funny, I thought that was the only key I kept in that drawer. Usually I’m pretty careful about leaving them around, but this one wasn’t worth—well, I’ll have to go back and look again.”

  “Wait a second,” said Helen. “I have Mrs. Ames’s key ring. Maybe there’s one on here.”

  After a couple of tries, they found it. The door opened on a smallish room that looked to be one solid jumble of books.

  “God, what a mess!” said the librarian. “As you can see, Helen, your predecessor didn’t get much done. She might at least have stacked the books in piles, instead of pawing them into one big mess. I can’t imagine how the room got into this state.”

  “Neatness wasn’t Mrs. Ames’s thing,” Miss Marsh agreed. “Are you sure a few freshmen haven’t been in here having a book fight?”

  “Not possible. Nobody except staff and cleaners is allowed into this corridor. As a rule, we keep that door out of the main reading room locked. You need a key to get to the bathroom. No doubt you’ll find that on Mrs. Ames’s key ring, too. She was big on prerogatives, though short on performance. I believe that’s a desk over there among the debris.”

  “I’ll fight my way to it in time,” said Helen. “First, I’m going to need some more shelving and an armload of dustrags.”

  “We’ve got some old bookcases in the basement. I’ll assign a couple of student helpers to move them up here and start tidying, in case the president should take a notion to check on you. He prides himself on running a tight ship. His grandfather was third mate of a New Bedford whaler or something. I suspect his grandmother was one of the whales.”

  “Balaena mysticetus?”

  “Grampus orca, I should say,” Porble replied gloomily. “They say it doesn’t kill for sport, but we take no chances. Right, Shandy?”

  “Entirely so, Porble. I think you’re showing great acumen in—er—ordering full speed ahead on the Buggins Collection just now. Mrs. Ames’s death is bound to raise questions at the next general meeting. I know you don’t play campus politics, but it can’t hurt to have the jump on those who do.”

  Having tossed his golden apple, Shandy judged it was time to leave, and did so. He looked into the Germination Laboratory, smiled fondly at the flats of vermiculite under whose misted plastic roofs lay the promise of Portulaca Purple Passion, then went to call on the security chief.

  Grimble was in his office, yelling through the telephone about some matter that sounded remarkably trivial in proportion to the fuss he was making about it. Shandy learned a good deal about the fine art of fulmination before he got to state his business.

  “I’ve been wondering how Mrs. Ames got into my house.”

  Grimble stared. “Through the door, I s’pose. How else?”

  “That’s precisely my point. To get in, she’d need a key. To lock the door after her, she’d also need a key. The doors were locked when I got home, but no key was found on or near her body. Where did it go?”

  The security chief puffed out his cheeks and scratched his head. After a while, he “replied, “So? Somebody else must have unlocked the door for her and taken the key away.”

  “Yes, but who?”

  “How the hell do I know? Whoever had a key.”

  “Nobody had a key except myself and you and Mrs. Lomax, my housekeeper. Mrs. Lomax was visiting her daughter in Portland and took her key along with her.”

  “What for?”

  “I suppose because it was in her pocketbook and she didn’t bother to take it out.”

  “How they lug them trunks along is beyond me. And they claim women are the weaker sex.”

  Grimble showed an inclination to expand on this outmoded theme, but Shandy was having none of that.

  “Grimble, I’m not a careless man by nature, neither am I a forgetful one. You told Ottermole that people around the Crescent are always leaving keys with their neighbors, and I daresay some of them do. I myself have never once, in all the eighteen years I’ve lived here, done so. I have no pets to feed or valuables to guard, so there’s no need for somebody to keep running in. Mrs. Lomax is paid to take care of the place and she’d always been willing to adjust her holiday plans to mine. This was the first instance I can recall when we’ve both been out of town at the same time. As far as I can see, that key had to come from here.”

  “Well, it damn sure didn’t,” yelled Grimble. “Look here, Professor, I know my job. Nobody gets at those keys except me personally. Come in here.”

  He led Shandy to his private sanctum, a tiny office whose main feature was in fact a huge keyboard that ran all around the room. One wall was given over to faculty residences, with each hook marked by a neat sticker bearing one family’s name and address. Each key on the hook bore a tag stating whose it was and what door it fit.

  “See that?” Grimble pointed at the board with totally justifiable pride. “Nobody takes a key off there but me. Anybody wants their own, they have to come to the outer office and ask for it. Anybody wants somebody else’s, they have to give me a damn good reason or they don’t get it. I can tell at a glance who’s in and who’s out. That board gets checked every day and if your key was missing, I’d damn well know it. And see this?”

  He dragged out an immense ledger and dumped it on the desk. “Everybody’s listed here. Every time the key gets taken out it has to be entered on the right page with the time written down, and when you bring it back I enter that time, too. Look, here’s your page. One key, front door. Not one damn entry on it since the day you turned it over to this office. So the key didn’t get taken. See, there it is, right where it’s hung for the past eighteen years.”

  Shandy glanced at the tarnished bit of brass and shook his head. “That’s not my key.”

  “The hell it ain’t! It’s got your name on it.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. Look here.”

  Shandy fished his key ring out of his pocket. “This is my front door, this is the back, and this is the cellar. The key on your board doesn’t match any one of them.”

  “Could you have changed a lock, maybe?”

  The professor didn’t answer right away. He was counting keys. “Sixty-seven. And how many are listed in your book?”

  “I never thought to count ’em,” Grimble mumbled.

  Shandy thumbed pages like a hound on the scent. “Sixty-eight. There’s your answer. Somebody just lifted my key, switched tags, and put another in its place.”

  “Whose, for instance?”

  “How should I know? Check your list and find out which hook is a key short.”

  The security chief was a shaken man. “But how could it happen? Nobody gets to these keys but me. Nobody.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course I am! My guys know the rules. They wouldn’t dare set foot in here without me saying it was okay.”

  “But you have visitors coming and going all the time, don’t you? Students getting keys to the labs, faculty people who’ve locked themselves out and whatnot?”

  “Sure, that’s what we’re here for. But nobody gets past the outer office.”

  “What happens when you go on vacation?”

  “I give Sam, my head assistant, a set of master keys that unlocks all the doors in the college, and I make damn sure nobody gets it away from him because I lock it on a chain around his waist. Cripes, his wife is glad to see me come back! Then I send around a notice that campus residents hav
e to make their own arrangements about spare keys. You ought to know that. You get one, same as everybody else.”

  “I suppose I do. I’ve never paid much attention, since I make my own arrangements in any case. Then what it boils down to is that my key could have been stolen any time these past eighteen years.”

  “No, it couldn’t! I keep telling you.” Grimble was thoroughly demoralized now, scarlet-faced and bellowing. “Nobody touches these keys but me.”

  “Don’t be a jackass,” Shandy snapped back. “The damned key’s gone, therefore somebody took it. Since nobody’s ever broken into my house before, it’s probably safe to assume either Mrs. Ames or somebody who let her in stole the key for that specific purpose. If you’d stop yelling and use your head, we might be able to determine how it happened. Who cleans up in here, for instance?”

  “I do, damn you!”

  “All right. Now, when you say nobody ever comes into this office, precisely how literally do you mean that? Suppose, for instance, that President Svenson was locked out and came to get his house key. If he happened to follow you, chatting as people do, would you slam the door in his face?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Or Mrs. Svenson, or one of the trustees, or anybody in a position to make things hot for you if you gave him or her a hard time?”

  “I suppose not,” the security chief mumbled, “but—”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I. Let’s take it a step further. Suppose this person asked for a key that was on the opposite board. Since the hooks are so admirably well marked, how long would it take him to lift my key and put another in its place? The name tags would have to be switched, but these clever little clip things you use don’t seem to present much difficulty. Time me.”

  Shandy plucked two keys from different hooks, whipped the tags off, put one on its opposite, and hung that key back on the board.

  “How long?”

  “ ’Bout a second and a half. Okay, Professor, have it your way.”

  “I’m not trying to score off you, man, I’m trying to make some sense of what happened. It’s a great deal more important than you seem to realize. Who was in here late on the afternoon of the twenty-second? Have you some way of knowing that?”

  “Of course I know,” said Grimble sulkily. “It’s in the daybook.”

  He led the professor back to the outer office and pointed to a dog-eared binder lying open on the counter that barred entrance to his private office. “See, everybody that takes a key has to sign out when they take it and in when they bring it back, no matter if it’s college or residence. If it’s college keys, I make damn sure they bring ’em in by the end of the day, even if one of my boys has to track ’em down in the girls’ shower rooms. If it’s residential, there’s not much I can do but call up and remind ’em. That’s why I keep a special ledger for the house keys, so if somebody comes in here wantin’ a key some other member of the family took out and didn’t return, I’ve got a comeback. We don’t run into that kind of trouble very often, I must say. Got ’em pretty well trained. It’s a good system. At least I thought it was.”

  “Nothing is perfect,” Shandy mumbled absent-mindedly. He was running his finger down the list of entries for the twenty-second. “Seventy-two. Good Lord, this place must have been a madhouse.”

  “It’s like that sometimes. Then some days you don’t get hardly anybody for hours at a time. Comes in bunches.”

  “Mrs. Jackman locked herself out, I see.”

  “She generally does. Sends the kids to get the key and we have a big fight about whose turn it is to sign the book.”

  “This time she seems to have signed it herself.”

  “Christmas shopping. Went by herself so the kids wouldn’t see her dragging home the loot.”

  “Half past four,” Shandy mused. “I rather had the impression she’d been at home with her children that afternoon, watching the men put up my decorations. Probably I misunderstood. Did she happen to follow you into the private office, do you remember?”

  The security chief’s eye became a thought less fishlike. “Can’t say I’d mind if she did, them tight pants she wears.”

  “What ought I to infer from that?”

  “Oh hell, I was only kiddin’. You know the rules around here, same as me.”

  Shandy also knew equivocation when he met it. Yesterday, he would never have entertained the possibility that pretty young Mrs. Jackman might look twice at a randy old goat with a paunch. Still, her name was only one among many.

  “Who are all these people I don’t know? Students, I suppose. You wouldn’t let any of them past the counter?”

  “Damn right I wouldn’t.”

  “What’s this name?”

  Shandy pointed at a scrawl that spread itself across four spaces. Grimble hitched up his eyeglasses.

  “Looks like Heidi somethin’. Oh, I know. Big blond kid. Took the key to the sled shed.”

  “Heidi Hayhoe? It would be, with a handwriting like that. But she’s put down the time as a quarter past five. I should have thought the sleds would all be out by then.”

  The security chief smirked. “Maybe that’s why she wanted the key.”

  “I see. You certainly are a stickler for morality on campus.”

  “What the hell am I expected to do, follow every damn kid on campus around to make sure nobody don’t get screwed but the bunny rabbits in the animal lab? She brought the key back, see? That’s all I have to know.”

  The man was starting to yell again. Shandy changed the subject.

  “Why do you suppose Dr. Cadwall wanted the key to the weaving shop at two minutes before six? Why should he want it at any time, for that matter?”

  “Because he’s a goddamned Nosy Parker is why! Comes in here just when I’m ready to shut up an’ go out to supper, follows me into my office chewin’ my ear about—”

  Grimble stopped short. “Followed me into my office, sure enough. And I was so damned mad I turned my back on him and took my own sweet time pickin’ out the key.”

  “That key being on the board opposite the residential keys?”

  “You bet your life it was. I ain’t accusin’ nobody of nothin’, you understand. I’m just tellin’ you what happened.”

  “Then do me a favor and don’t tell anybody else. I’ll take it from here.”

  Shandy left the security office. He didn’t particularly want to confront Ben Cadwall right away. He ought first to think out a line of approach. Nevertheless, he found himself climbing the broad granite stairs of the yellow brick building that had housed the administrative offices since Balaclava College was hardly more than a few clapboard sheds and one small herd of Guernseys.

  There was hardly anybody in the building today, not a telephone nor a typewriter to be heard. Those few secretaries who hadn’t called in sick must be taking late coffee breaks or early lunches, or both combined. It was an unwritten rule that while the wheels of administration must be kept turning during the Illumination, nobody was to push any harder than necessary. Most of the bosses, including President Svenson, would be off skiing or otherwise holidaying. Cadwall, however, would probably be holding the fort. Shandy pushed open the golden oak door with “Comptroller” stenciled in black on its frosted glass panel, and went in.

  Sure enough, Cadwall was at his desk. His mouth hung open. His eyes were staring, the pupils dilated. Nobody could look like that, and be alive.

  Chapter 14

  VERY CAREFULLY AND DELIBERATELY, Shandy backed out of the comptroller’s office and shut the door behind him. There was a telephone in the outside cubbyhole where Cadwall’s secretary ought to have been sitting, but he did not use it. Instead, he walked down the corridor to Registrations, where Miss Tibbett was also absent from her post. He sat down at her desk because he suddenly realized his knees were wobbling, and reached for the local directory.

  “Police station/Officer Dorkin speaking.”

  Shandy recognized the voice. A few years ba
ck, Budge Dorkin had been the guiding force behind his lawn mower.

  “Hello, Budge,” he said. “This is Peter Shandy. Is Chief Ottermole there?”

  “Oh, hi, Professor. Gee, no, there’s nobody here but me. Some guy in a sixty-six blue Stingray held up the liquor store, ran the red light on Main Street and totaled Mrs. Guptill’s Dodge, fled the scene of the accident and skidded off the Cat Creek bridge. The chief’s down at the scene, waiting for the fire department to fish the guy out so’s he can throw the book at him.”

  “Well, you’ll have to get hold of your chief somehow and tell him to come up to the college fast. I’ve just found Dr. Cadwall dead in his office.”

  “What from?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want Ottermole. Hurry him along, will you, Budge?”

  “I’ll do my best, Professor. I’d go myself, only we can’t leave the office unmanned. Say, doesn’t it strike you sort of funny, Dr. Cadwall dying right after Mrs. Ames, them being next-door neighbors and all?”

  “Funny is hardly the word,” said Shandy grimly.

  “Hey, I tell you what. If the chief doesn’t show pretty soon, how about if I get on to the state police? They take over when something comes up we can’t handle.”

  “That would be an excellent thing to do. Good thinking, Budge.”

  He hung up and searched the phone book again. The president would have to know, not that Shandy relished the prospect of telling him. After many rings had produced no result, he concluded the Svensons must have gone off on one of their family cross-country ski treks, no doubt toting knapsacks crammed with smorgasbord and extra socks. They’d be lost in the frozen wastes until sunset.

  Who else? Melchett. The doctor could do nothing for Ben now, but he must be called anyway. Doctor was on his way back from the hospital and couldn’t be reached at this time, but would be given Professor Shandy’s message the second he walked through the front door. In a pig’s eye he would. Shandy slammed down the receiver, sat brooding a moment, then switched to the interoffice line and rang Security.

  “Grimble, this is Shandy. I’m over at Administration. Dr. Cadwall’s dead.”