“Well, I certainly don’t know that it couldn’t be you, either,” Sebastian snapped back.
“And I don’t know for sure that it couldn’t be either of you,” Cerise said.
“You see what I mean?” Violet said.
They saw, all right, as they stopped talking and considered the implications of this new possibility, which seemed to make matters even worse than before. Instead of an intruder, there was an impostor; instead of terrible but motivated crimes, there was random, unreasoned psychopathy.
Again, it was Derrick who broke the silence. “All right, Violet,” he sighed. “I’ll admit you have a point, though I’m a long way from agreeing with you. But if you want to go with this theory, you’ll have to give up your idea about Mrs. Hook.”
“Why?” Cerise asked before Violet could reply. She looked at Derrick with a curious but not very friendly expression in her eyes.
“Why? What do you mean why? They said his name was Francis Hacker.”
“Why couldn’t it be Frances, with a final ‘es’, you chauvinist buffoon? What makes you think it has to be a man? Why do you assume that only men are capable of insane homicidal rages? What about Lizzie Borden? Or the girls of the Manson family? Or that mad French countess who killed six hundred young girls? Women are also perfectly capable of violence and murder and mayhem.”
Looking at Cerise standing over Derrick, green eyes flashing, fist shaking, voice rising to a shrill pitch, the others were strongly inclined to agree.
“What about—” Cerise suddenly broke off and looked around as though confused or lost. “My God! What am I saying? What’s happening to me? I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.” Shaking her head and repeating, “What’s happening to me?” she went back and sat, slumped, on the couch.
“So it is still any of us, isn’t it?” Sebastian said. “We’re right back at the beginning again.”
“Not quite,” Violet said. “For one thing, there’re fewer of us. For another, we’ve just gotten an important piece of information.”
“What?” Derrick said. “That one of us is a lunatic murderer? I think we’d already had an inkling of that.”
“No. The new bit of information is that one of us is an escaped lunatic murderer. Therefore, someone here is not the person that he or she pretends to be. Far from Mrs. Hook being eliminated, she looks more and more likely to me.”
“Why, Sis?”
“Haven’t you noticed? When you call Mrs. Hook’s name, she doesn’t always answer right away. Then she acts surprised and flustered. As though she wasn’t used to that name. As though it were not her real name, but an assumed one.”
“You’re right, Sis! She got very upset when I made some harmless little joke about her name. At the time, I just thought she was sensitive about it—and with good reason. I’m sure I’d be sensitive if my name were Hook.”
“I said there was something not right about that woman,” Violet went on. “I think we may have found what it is. And there’s one other significant bit of data.”
“What’s that?” Derrick asked.
Violet smiled at him, as she would at a particularly dimwitted child. “She’s disappeared.”
Another tense silence descended upon the room as each of them pondered Mrs. Hook in the role of Frances Hacker, escaped homicidal maniac. She did indeed seem well suited.
Somewhere a clock struck the half hour.
“Will you be wanting your lunch soon?” a voice growled from the doorway.
Cerise shrieked, Sebastian gasped, Derrick turned pale, Violet jumped out of her seat, and Mrs. Argus cackled merrily.
“A simple yes or no would be enough,” Mrs. Hook said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Where the hell have you been?” Violet said.
Mrs. Hook glared at her. “What’s it to you, little Miss Snoop-into-everybody-else’s-business?”
“In case you haven’t heard, Mrs. Dijon was killed a little while ago.”
“I heard. I guess that means you’ll be five for lunch.”
“And we also heard,” Violet said offhandedly, but keeping a close watch on the housekeeper, “about the escape of Frances Hacker.”
Mrs. Hook’s face darkened ominously, and she scowled. “So now you’re saying there’ll be six for lunch? I wish you’d make up your minds. A body’s got enough to do without all these changes.”
“I’m sure you do,” Violet said “But what we’d all like to know is just what your particular body has been doing for, say, the last hour?”
Mrs. Hook directed what Sebastian termed her Medusa stare at Violet, but did not answer.
“Please, Mrs. Hook,” Derrick said in his most soothing manner, flashing her an encouraging smile. “It would help if you’d tell us.”
The housekeeper looked at him and snorted. “I suppose there’ll be no peace until I do. Since it’s so important to you, I was out walking in the woods. Looking for mushrooms. A body’s got to have some time off, you know. A housekeeper’s not the same thing as a slave. Though there’s been some that have thought so. But they learned otherwise. Oh, yes, they learned that—” Mrs. Hook cut herself off, frowned, then looked suspiciously from face to face. “Besides, a body doesn’t take orders from you. I worked for little Missy, and since she’s not here, you can’t tell me what to do. I’ll do what I was paid to do and nothing more. Understand? So just you tell this Hackman person that if he’s going to stay, he can make up his own room. A body’s got enough to do with the lot of you, without having to take care of unexpected guests.”
“Oh, She’ll take care of herself,” Mrs. Argus cried happily, clapping her bony hands. “And very well, too, thank you.”
Violet looked at the others with raised eyebrows, then turned back to Mrs. Hook. “Just how long did you work for Miss Sill?”
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“Long enough to know—” Mrs. Hook stopped. “Just long enough.”
“And where’d you work before?”
Mrs. Hook made a sharp intake of breath, and glared at Violet. Behind the evident hostility, there seemed to be an undercurrent of alarm. “What’s it to you?”
Violet shrugged. “Just curious.”
“Don’t forget what that did to the cat, Miss.… And the rat,” she added, smiling at the recollection.
Just then Mr. Ching burst into the lounge. He seemed extremely agitated, his eyes round, his face pale, his black hair standing up in tufts that were even spikier than usual. The cook ran up to Violet and handed her a sheet of paper.
Violet looked at the paper, then jerked her head up in surprise. “Where did you find this? In the kitchen?”
Mr. Ching nodded.
“What is it, Sis?”
“It’s a note. An old favourite—made from letters cut out of magazines. It says, ‘You will cook no more meals.’”
“Oh, good!” Sebastian said. “At last, something positive.”
“Sebastian!”
“What does that mean?” Derrick said. “Is that an instruction, or…or.…”
“Or a sentence?” Violet asked softly. “I don’t know.”
“It just gets worse and worse!” Cerise cried. “Is there no end? Can’t someone do something?”
“Cerise is right,” Derrick said. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get help.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Violet asked. “Have you changed your mind about swimming for it? The water isn’t any warmer, nor the distance any shorter.”
“Well, there is some diving gear.…” Derrick shook his head. “But no. I wouldn’t make it.”
Violet nodded. “Neither would I. And Sebastian needs water wings in the bathtub. Cerise? No? Okay, so let’s forget about that. Mr. Ching, I won’t tell you not to worry, because obviously you should be worried. But at least you’ve been warned, so if you’re careful, you should be able to protect yourself.”
Mrs. Argus chuckled quietly, a complacent, in
dulgent smile on her thin lips.
Mr. Ching looked nervously at each of them, muttered something decisive-sounding to himself in Chinese, and turned to leave.
“Oh, Mr. Ching,” Violet called, stopping him. “We were wondering about something just before you came in. Could you tell us how long you and Mrs. Hook worked for Miss Sill?”
Mr. Ching didn’t answer but seemed to grow even more nervous. Mrs. Hook snorted viciously and angrily stared at Violet.
“All right, Miss Busybody. I don’t suppose there’ll be any peace until you find out everything you want to know.” Mrs. Hook motioned with her square head towards the cook. “He’s only been working for her a few months. I been with Missy two years. Isn’t that right?”
She stared hard at Mr. Ching, who stared back, in what might have been either fear or confusion.
“Isn’t that right,” she repeated. This time it was not a question.
Mr. Ching hastily nodded agreement, then hurried from the room, looking even more desperate and concerned than when he had entered.
“Anything else, Miss?” Mrs. Hook asked Violet, her tone anything but polite, her expression anything but expectant. “If not, maybe a body can go and do her work.” Mrs. Hook abruptly turned and left.
After the housekeeper had gone, Violet went to the door to make sure she wasn’t still hovering in the corridor outside, then returned to the others.
“Does everyone agree that there’s something very strange about that woman? I mean, besides her being extraordinarily unpleasant. Does anyone doubt that she’s hiding something? And that exchange with Mr. Ching. She certainly made sure he didn’t get a chance to answer freely.”
“But that still doesn’t mean she’s this Frances Hacker,” Derrick said.
Violet sighed in acknowledgement, and the group lapsed into yet another uncomfortable silence.
Sebastian rummaged in a pocket and pulled out the mysterious handkerchief he’d found. It was wrinkled and mudstained, but he smoothed it across his knees and studied it.
“‘HM.’ Her Majesty?” he suggested, then snapped his fingers. “I know! It stands for Homicidal Maniac.”
Mrs. Argus laughed happily at this, and Cerise managed only to half-swallow a sob.
“Sebastian,” Violet said wearily, “since you clearly have nothing constructive to contribute, do you think you might for once keep quiet.”
“What’s that?” Derrick pointed to the handkerchief.
“Oh, that’s right—you weren’t there,” Violet said. “Sebastian found that beside the Colonel’s body. Just another thing that doesn’t seem to make sense, like the missing teeth.”
“Let me take a look at that.” Derrick crossed the room and took the frilly piece of cloth from Sebastian. “I say! This belongs to Mrs. Hook.”
“What! Are you sure?” Violet said.
“Of course I’m sure. That first afternoon she dropped it, and I returned it to her. This is the same one.”
“That’s right,” she nodded. “I remember your doing that. And I also remember that you looked at the thing. Didn’t you notice the initials were not correct?”
Derrick shrugged and blushed. “Guess not. I saw an M and an H, and I must have registered it as standing for Mrs. Hook. Silly of me.” Embarrassed, he shifted from one leg to the other and looked down at his shiny, expensive shoes.
Violet rolled her eyes and made a face, then followed Derrick’s gaze. No wonder he wears loafers, she thought; the dolt probably never learned to tie his shoes. MH stands for Mrs. Hook? Really!
“So,” Violet said, looking up. “Mrs. Hook is not who she says she is.”
“But, Sis, that still doesn’t mean she’s the escaped killer. Don’t forget—those initials are FH.”
“I’d hardly forget that, Sebastian. And I’ll admit that I don’t understand it. But we’ve got a lot of things that don’t yet seem to fit together. I still believe that they will, though, that there’s an explanation that will make sense of them—if only we can find the right perspective from which to look at it all.… Unless, of course, that’s the point—that there is no point.”
“Huh?” Derrick said.
“That all these things that don’t make sense are that way intentionally—designed to complicate matters, sow confusion, get us looking in wrong directions and running in circles. In other words, a smokescreen.”
Mrs. Argus was again chuckling to herself, but the others nodded in agreement. Violet’s analysis undoubtedly seemed reasonable at the time, especially since they could not have known that the alternatives she proposed were in no way mutually exclusive.
Abruptly, Violet stood up and crossed the lounge. In the doorway, she stopped and looked back. “If any of you get the chance, you might try to keep Mrs. Hook occupied for a while.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Sebastian said. “You want us to engage in idle conversation with a person we believe to be an escaped killer. ‘Tell me, Mrs. Hook, what does it feel like when your homicidal urges come on you? Have you always been a deranged lunatic, or is this a recent development?’ Thanks a lot, Sis.”
But Violet had already gone.
“Where’s she off to?” Derrick asked.
“I imagine the Society-Girl Detective is once again going to do some detecting.”
“Hmm.” Derrick looked around the large room, not really taking in anything, but rather as a kind of transitional activity. He glanced at his watch, cleared his throat, then said with studied casualness that there were a few things he wanted to look into himself, and hastily left without looking back.
Sebastian looked after him with raised eyebrows, then shrugged. “He’s probably discovered a new mirror.”
Cerise did not reply, nor did she seem to have heard Sebastian’s remark or noticed Derrick’s departure. She sat with her head down, eyebrows lowered in concentration, lips compressed, hands tightly clasped between her knees, knuckles taut as long maroon nails pressed into the backs of her hands. Finally she sighed, shook her short hair, and turned to Sebastian.
“Do you think the person who’s responsible for…uh…what’s been happening knows what he or she is doing?”
“Well, I hope so! I’d hate to think this was all inadvertent.”
Cerise shook her head. “No. I meant, do you think this person is aware of these things while he or she is doing them? Or could this person have no recollection of the murders, perhaps have done them in a sort of fugue state?”
“I guess that’s possible. Certainly, that’s your basic schizoid defense, isn’t it? ‘But Your Honour, I have no idea how that smoking gun ended up in my hand. I may have fired it six times, but I’m not really responsible.’”
“But do you believe that? I mean, have you ever—you know—found yourself somewhere, and not had any idea how you got there?”
“Constantly!” Sebastian said with a laugh. “I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve awakened and not had a clue where I was, or how I got there, or who all those people were who were strewn about the place. Believe me, daylight has brought me its share of surprises. Why, I could tell you—no, on the other hand, maybe I’d better not. But that’s nothing. A couple of weeks ago I ran into a friend who started talking about the way I had behaved at some recent function, and do you know, I had no idea what he was talking about. Not only could I not remember doing what he said I did, I couldn’t recall anything about that function, or that there had even been a function. Total blanko.”
Cerise frowned and shook her head. “But doesn’t that worry you?”
“Well, the first six or eight times it was a bit disconcerting.… Now, I just accept it as another of the miracles of modern chemistry. Frankly, I suspect I’m much better off not knowing what I’ve done. If I could remember, I’d probably stop doing it. And I wouldn’t want that, since by all accounts I usually have a really good time.”
“But suppose you—” Cerise cut herself off.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She s
hook her head and looked down. “Nothing.” She sat for several minutes, biting her lips and clenching her hands, then looked up at the mounted animal heads and shivered violently. “My God! Make it stop! Please make it stop!” Her face distorted with what seemed to be either pain or fear. She looked wildly about, then ran from the room, a hand clamped over her mouth to hold back the sobs.
Sebastian watched her go, both puzzled and concerned. He turned towards Mrs. Argus, who pulled back her lips in a broad grin, revealing a lot of crooked, discoloured teeth. Sebastian quickly stood up and hurried from the lounge.
Mrs. Argus chuckled to herself a bit, then went over to the French windows. She looked cautiously around, smiled again, opened a door, and went outside.
Meanwhile, Violet had looked through the kitchen, the pantries and the other service rooms on the main floor, but had found nothing of interest.
More to the point, she had seen no one, which was too bad. Since she planned to search Mrs. Hook’s room, she would have greatly preferred to know beforehand just where the housekeeper was. Violet didn’t fancy being caught in the act, especially by a person who might be a psychopathic killer.
But she had no idea where Mrs. Hook was, so she’d have to chance it. Indeed, the stakes—all of them—were sufficiently high to justify certain risks.
As she went up the back stairs, Violet looked out the landing window and saw Mr. Ching heading in the direction of the boathouse. He was walking very fast, almost running, in fact, and he kept looking back nervously over his shoulder. He seemed extremely agitated. And not without reason, Violet thought. Assuming that the note he found was legitimate, Mr. Ching looked like an excellent candidate for number five. Since at least two of the first four seemed to have been taken unawares, the killer clearly must be feeling pretty confident if he or she was willing to provide a warning and thus give up the edge that surprise provided. On the other hand, Violet knew that the delusion of invincibility and omnipotence was a common characteristic of the personality type with which they were undoubtedly dealing. (What Violet did not yet know was that it was not precisely a delusion.)
An Old-Fashioned Mystery Page 14