“Bella!”
Darkness and blackness and silence and a smell of violet perfume. Maybe Bella uses it. “My nose is as good as yours, Schnucke. I smelled it out in the hall. Forward, Schnucke! Forward, I say! All right, if you want to be stubborn I’ll leave you here at the door!”
Another step into the room and stop.
A table here. A bureau here, but nobody breathing.
“Bella!”
Those are clothes on the back of the chair.
Another step—Merciful Christ, Maclain, what’s that you kicked on the floor? It’s rolled away! No. It’s only rolled. It’s right there close to your toe.
Down on your knees.
No. You’d better stand and reach down with your hand. It can’t be what you think it is—a football would roll that way!
They do such things in Germany—but never do them here.
Merciful Christ—a football with teeth and a nose and hair!
Out in the hall and down the stairs and through the serving door.
“God, Maclain, you’re deathly pale! What are you running for?”
That’s Thaddeus Tredwill. Calmly now. Tell him about the girl.
“It’s Bella, Mr. Tredwill—”
“Bella,” he’s saying. “Pierce said she was upstairs in bed.”
“Her body’s in bed, Mr. Tredwill—but her cut-off head’s on the floor!”
CHAPTER XVI
1
POLICE.
Sergeant King was grim. Under his faultlessly tailored uniform of trim khaki his broad shoulders tapered down to a waist athletically small.
This was murder beyond the Sergeant’s ken—brutal and bloodier than the swift striking thrust of a maniac. Decapitation—a genus of crime the capable Sergeant hadn’t met before, and most heartily hoped he’d never meet with again.
“And you, Mr. Tredwill—you were on your way upstairs when you ran into Captain Maclain?”
The Sergeant’s voice had roughened from the grating of endless questions. He seemed reluctant to move from his commanding post in front of the mantel; equally reluctant to relinquish his comforting grasp on the butt of his gun.
“Good God, man—yes—yes—yes!” Thad’s affirmatives grew progressively louder. “Get someplace, can’t you? Someplace that we haven’t been before.”
King eyed him unemotionally. “I’m doing my best. Your son sent Trooper Stinson away. If the trooper had stayed he might have saved that girl.”
“I sent no one away,” said Gil in patient contradiction. “I merely told Stinson he might go if he thought it safe to do so. How would his presence—”
“Have saved the girl? Maybe it wouldn’t.” The Sergeant turned his back on the room and made passes at the fire with his toe. “He was downstairs, it’s true,” he went on, speaking more to the fire than to Gil, “but it wouldn’t have been so easy to get that broadax out of the hall.”
“There’s a back stairway, as I’ve told you,” Thad put in. “Whoever killed her probably went up that way.”
“A broadax,” Sergeant King repeated as though the words were indigestible. “Why?”
Captain Maclain answered him. “It’s quick and silent, Sergeant, and a method that’s certain sure. The best executioners abroad are reviving it for political purposes, I understand. In addition, I believe I’m safe in saying that it fills potential victims with a certain sense of fear.”
The Sergeant pivoted at the waist to look at Maclain. The Captain had drawn a straight-back chair up to the long table in the center of the room. He was sitting with his hands folded on the table edge, quiescent as a good scholar in school.
“What do you mean by potential victims?” King asked. “Are you hinting there may be more?”
In an end place on the settee, Bunny Carter squirmed uncomfortably, waiting for Maclain to reply. Bunny had arrived at The Crags shortly after dinner to be plunged into an evening of horror that would leave him with a lifetime memory. Now the Sergeant was asking if Maclain expected more.
The Captain’s cheeks flushed faintly. “This murder struck fast enough. This girl was beheaded—”
“Merciful heaven, Maclain,” Thad burst out. “Can’t you say killed—murdered—anything but that. It’s wearing on me.”
“She’s just as dead, Mr. Tredwill, whatever word we are forced to employ.” The Captain might have sounded callous except for the sympathy in his tone. “She was killed some time around six or seven, as far as we know—maybe later. I arrived here about four.”
“What has that to do with it?” King asked sharply.
“Nothing perhaps.” Maclain raised his head. Brief as the life of a shooting spark up the chimney, the leaping fire brought a glint of flame to his sightless eyes. “Perhaps a lot. Bella may have been killed to prevent her talking to me.”
“About what?”
“About the disappearance of Mr. Tredwill’s daughter, Sergeant,” the Captain announced, choosing his words. “Barbara Tredwill vanished last night in New York City.”
“So! Kidnaping!” The officer whirled around on Thad and Gil. “I’m investigating a murder here, believe it or not. Why was this kidnaping kept from me?”
“It wasn’t,” Thad told him with cold preciseness. “You know it now. This isn’t a precinct stationhouse. I’ve a right to withhold information, if I think my daughter’s safety demands it. I’ve got a right to wait until someone communicates with me.”
“And who has?”
“No one, Sergeant King.” Thad’s big head sank down in his hands. For seconds the living room was still.
“It’s nearly midnight.” Bunny Carter looked at his watch and put it away. “My wife’s not well. Is there any reason, Sergeant, for detaining me?”
“No,” said King. “You can go.”
Bunny rose and flexed his stiffened muscles. King looked at him reflectively. “You came over here this evening to talk with Mr. Gilbert Tredwill, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Bunny. “That’s so.”
“Did you see him right away?”
“He was downstairs in his workshop. I waited in here with Stacy, Mr. Tredwill’s younger son—”
“Oh, yes.” The Sergeant opened a notebook and looked at it. “I remember now, Mr. Carter. You can go.”
“Thanks.” Bunny’s round face grimaced. “You can reach me at the plant if you need me tomorrow, Sergeant King. You too, Captain Maclain.”
“Why should Maclain need you?” King snapped out.
“He’s rather well known as an investigator,” Bunny said meekly. “I thought he might be helping you.”
“Oh,” said King.
The Captain covered the faintest of smiles with his hand. “The Sergeant has enough problems, Mr. Carter, without adding me.”
King left his post in front of the fire and walked to the door, where he signaled Trooper Stinson in the hall to pass Bunny by.
“Now where are we?” Thad demanded when King came back into the room.
“Damned if I know.” King leaned against the table by Maclain and said earnestly: “What do you make of this, Captain Maclain? What did that girl want to tell you that would provoke any human to murder her that way?”
“If I could answer that last question, Bella would still be alive, Sergeant. This is all I can say: you’ve questioned everyone in this house—and no one has an airtight alibi. I’d advise you to call in more men, Sergeant—enough to post one in every hall.”
“But no one in The Crags—” Thad began brokenly.
Maclain stood up, flowed to his feet, with a motion so commanding that it dominated the room. “Your wife was in The Crags when she was attacked last night, Mr. Tredwill. Bella was asleep in her room in The Crags when she was murdered today. The Crags has become the battleground of a war. I’m warning Sergeant King to watch everyone in this house, servants and all, as he’s never watched before. When a clever killer has started to work the end is never in sight. The worst murders in the history of crime were committe
d by a twelve-year-old boy.”
2
Gilbert Tredwill deposited the butt of his second cigarette in an ash tray beside him and turned to watch Helena conceal her smooth skin in the sleek satin of a nightgown.
She had undressed silently, carefully draping stockings and underwear over a chair, fussing wordlessly over her hair and make-up removal. Gilbert would have preferred her usual inconsequential chatter. When Helena undressed without speaking it was a fair premise that sleep would follow a family row.
He lighted a third cigarette which he didn’t want, making an elaborate ceremony of striking the match and throwing it away. Helena ignored his obvious dallying. He snubbed the cigarette after a single inhale, and said: “What’s the matter with you?”
She swung around from her dressing table as though the question had startled her beyond endurance. “I’m frightened, Gil.” Her round blue eyes moved toward the bedroom door.
“Why?” he asked with masculine unreasonableness. Helena’s remark aroused in him a quick irritation which he found it hard to account for.
“Well—why not?” Helena countered. “After what’s happened here, Gil, you don’t expect me to feel secure just because there’s a policeman pacing up and down the hall.” She turned back to her dressing table and began to brush her hair with quick petulant strokes. “Let’s get away from here, Gil. This place isn’t good for either of us.”
“My work’s here, Helena—and my family.”
“Voltaire said—”
“Don’t quote things, darling, please.”
Helena left the dressing table and sat down on the edge of her bed. She slipped the mules from her slender, high-arched feet and turned to face Gil halfway. “There’s too damn much family, Gil. The more you love me, the less they’ll like me. I’m an intruder and a foreigner. Families are like that. It’s—”
“Nonsense, Helena. Who’s said anything about—”
“No one has said anything—but you’re changing, Gil, becoming watchful and hard. I want some time alone with you. Even in New York we’re not alone.”
“You’re being difficult now,” said Gil. “Thad shared the suite with us—but he paid all the expenses, too.”
Helena slid into her bed and pulled the eiderdown quilt up to her chin. “I see.”
“Is there some hidden meaning back of that remark?” Gil reached for another cigarette, then decided against it. Instead, he sat watching his wife stonily.
“Not intentionally,” said Helena. “It just seems out of place to find a Tredwill considering expenses. Usually one finds them flinging money about most recklessly. Is it because your father also pays the expenses of the household that you don’t want to move from here?”
Gil began to undress, removing his clothes with short vicious tugs expressive of disapproval. In shirt and shorts he stood at the foot of his wife’s bed and said finally: —
“I’m broke, Helena. Thad holds the purse strings, not me. He’s generous—but generous in his own way. Our honeymoon trip—”
“Cost a lot,” Helena supplied. “I know. And the things you’ve bought for me.” She held out one hand. A diamond and platinum wrist watch caught multicolored rays from the bed lamp. She put her white arm back under the covers. “How much did you spend for Christmas presents, Gil?”
“My dear!” His dark face became more pleasant with a smile of protest. “I’m not that broke. Why, my salary from International is—”
“Twelve thousand a year. That won’t buy three-thousand-dollar wrist watches for me.” Helena shielded her face from the glare of the lamp, and added, “Nor Christmas necklaces. It was sweet of you—but I canceled the order before we left New York today.”
Gil’s face darkened again. “Who told you about that necklace?” He slid into pajamas and tightened the sash about his waist. “That was to be a surprise.” He waited expectantly.
“It was an accident, Gil. The jeweler phoned the hotel about delayed delivery and I got the call. Look, darling,” she said almost entreatingly, “you’ve lost money in the market, I know. Where did you get the cash to buy such a necklace? It was going to cost you plenty.”
Gil switched off the lights and got into bed. “I borrowed it, Helena.”
“From whom?”
“My boss—if you must know.”
“Bunny Carter?”
“That’s right,” said Gil.
“When?”
“Last night in New York.”
Helena was quiet as the footsteps of the patrolling state policeman passed softly in the hall. After a time, she asked: —
“Where did you see Bunny?”
“At the banquet I went to—at the Biltmore.”
Helena raised herself on one elbow and relaxed again. “I must have misunderstood Norma. I thought she played bridge with Bunny and Bea last night until after two.”
“Bunny was in New York,” said Gil.
CHAPTER XVII
1
DUNCAN MACLAIN leaned back farther into the softness of an armchair, clasped the heavy silk folds of his dressing gown closer about him, and for a time gave himself up abstractedly to counting the footsteps of the trooper in the hall.
An air of somber expectancy had settled about The Crags, muting the life of the Tredwill home. The Captain felt himself caught in its toils, and the feeling was most unpleasant. It rasped on his super-keen senses, tearing at his nerves as some bad violinist might draw discords from strings with an over-resined bow.
Maclain’s very existence was composed of ordered patterns. Before he could move with assurance, articles of furniture must be mentally pictured, allocated to their proper places. The conduct of humans affected him in similar fashion. Men and women were governed by certain immutable laws and customs. It was Duncan Maclain’s habit to study those about him, and judge, as a trained psychologist might judge, what they would do under a given set of circumstances.
Bella’s murder had struck with terrific impact, shattering those immutable laws which served as guideposts. The murder formed part of a pattern; that, he knew. But the picture was broken—obscured by tiny lines, as broken glass becomes opaque. Somehow he must strip away the cloudy inessentials and make the picture clear.
The stripping process might prove dangerous. Broken glass held nothing but peril for a careless hand.
Bella’s murder was most annoying, and clever, too. Before it happened the picture had been clear. Bella fitted neatly into it, smiling cryptically out of its tragic frame.
Maclain had come to Hartford searching for someone nosy—discreetly nosy. Bella had filled the bill. Cleverness, even ruthless astuteness, was easily hidden under the role of an ignorant housemaid with a predilection for raiding the storeroom to loot it of sweets and jam.
The State Police were certain that no one had left The Crags after Norma Tredwill was attacked the night before. Again Bella fitted into the frame.
The odor of violets fitted, too.
Maclain restlessly left his chair, went to his Gladstone bag, and took out a box containing a jigsaw puzzle. It was easier to concentrate when his fingers had something to do. Seated at a writing table, he dumped the pieces of the puzzle out before him and began to sort them swiftly.
The puzzle was more than half together when he paused to touch the chime button on his Swiss repeater watch. The timepiece tinkled half-past two.
He placed the watch on the table before him, touched the desk lamp, and found it was on. Switching it off, he sat for a moment listening to Schnucke’s light breathing, then went to work again in the darkness. Piece by piece the puzzle grew, built by the uncanny prescience of fingers which could see.
The odor of violets was a means of identification—labeling its wearer as a spy. It identified documents, too—showed they had been traced, or earmarked them as originating from agents of the same unfriendly power.
“Those Braille instructions were deciphered before they were brought to me,” he said under his breath as he patted a fragm
ent of the puzzle into position. “Probably by another blind man—a member of the ring. That checks all the way through—but I have no proof, and no one will believe what I say.”
He turned his thoughts to the missing girl. For several long minutes he sat holding another piece of the puzzle in his hand.
Why had Barbara Tredwill run away?
It violated the rules of normal conduct in the opinion of Duncan Maclain. Norma had thought somebody was in the other room of Gerente’s apartment. If that was true, the same person must have been there when Babs found Paul. The murderer? Perhaps, but there was no immediate means of proving it true.
The Captain laid the piece he was holding down on the table and stirred it about in small concentric circles.
Why hadn’t Babs raised an alarm?
Why hadn’t she phoned her father, or Stacy, or Norma, or anyone, before she ran away?
There were other questions—too many of them. The Captain relinquished the piece he was moving about and leaned back wearily.
If the murderer was discovered by Babs, why had Babs been allowed to leave unmolested?
The Captain straightened up suddenly, found the piece, and fitted it into the puzzle.
Murdered in Gerente’s apartment, Babs would have bathed The Crags in a searchlight of publicity. Publicity was bad for a place which had become an outlet of information which might affect the outcome of a war. Gerente was killed because he became too interested in The Crags. Then if Barbara had seen Gerente’s killer, Barbara was allowed to leave the Twelfth Street apartment for one reason only—because a neater plan had been conceived to get her out of somebody’s way, a plan which would allow a few days’ leeway for work to be completed.
To get her out of whose way?
The Captain stood up and ran supple fingers through his hair. He felt that his reasoning was sound, but it presupposed one thing he had failed to consider. If Barbara had encountered anyone in Paul’s apartment, it must have been someone she knew. No stranger could have argued her into leaving quietly. There was a chance, of course, that she had left in terror, as Norma had done, without seeing anyone at all.
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