A Touch of Death (4 page)

I thought about it again. “No. Wait. There’s no reason I should have to answer at all. Those three calls, fifteen minutes apart, will be the signal. When I hear the third one, I scram.”

“That’s good,” she said, nodding. “You know how to use your head. It’s funny, but in a lot of ways you’re just like Butler.”

“Not too much, I hope.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He’s dead. Remember?”

She fell silent. We came up out of the river country and ran through rolling hills with dark farmhouses here and there along the road. In a few minutes she said, “We’re almost there. It’s on the left as we go into town.”

I looked, but it was too dark to see much. All I got was the shadowy impression of a house set far back from the street among the darker gloom of big trees. There was no light anywhere. We made a gentle turn to the right and then were on the street going into town, with houses and lawns on both sides. About three blocks up a street light hung out over an intersection. She turned left before we got to it, went a block down a side street, and turned left again.

“When I stop,” she said, “we’ll be right behind the place. There’s a big oleander hedge and a woven-wire fence, but the gate probably won’t be locked. Or if it is, you can climb over or go around in front. Good luck.”

“Check,” I said. “Friday morning at two o’clock. Right here.”

She was slowing. The car came to a standstill for not more than two seconds. I slid out and eased the door shut. Her hand lifted and the car slid away. I was on my own.

The red taillights of the car swung left and disappeared. I stepped off the street and stood for a moment while my eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness. There was no moon, and the night was hot and still. Somewhere across town a dog barked. I could see the dark line of the oleanders in front of me now, and started walking toward them, putting out my hand. I touched the fence, and walked parallel to it, looking for the gate and a break in the hedge.

I’d forgotten to look at my watch again before I got out of the car, but I should have nearly two hours until daybreak. It was plenty of time to find a way into the house.

I went twenty steps along the fence. Thirty. There had to be a gate somewhere. She’d said there was. I came to a corner. There was no opening. I had gone the wrong way. I turned and went back, touching the fence with my hands. It was six feet high, with steel posts. The oleanders were on the inside, a solid wall of them nearly fifteen feet high.

I found the gate. It rattled a little when I put my hand on it. I felt along one side for the latch and located it. Apparently there was no chain or padlock. I eased it open. A dry hinge squeaked in the silence. I stopped, then pulled it open very slowly.

I could see the dark bulk of the house looming ahead of me now across the expanse of rear lawn. It was enormous, two stories and an attic, probably, with high gables running off into the big overhanging trees at each end. Off to the right was a smaller pile of blackness, which I took to be the garage.

I stepped inside, through the break in the hedge, and studied the blank windows carefully for any sliver of light at all. There was none. The whole place was as dark and deserted and silent as if it had been vacant for twenty years.

I eased across the grass toward the back porch. Then, suddenly, I thought of something we had overlooked. We hadn’t thought of the grounds themselves. There were probably two acres of trees, flower beds, shrubs, and lawns around the place. If the money—or even Butler’s body—had been buried out here somewhere, it would take a gang of men with a bulldozer a week to search it all. We’d been stupid.

But what could we do about it, if we had thought of it? Our only hope was that the stuff was in the house. If I didn’t find it there, we were whipped. The only thing to do was go on.

I came to the corner of the porch and went around it to the rear of the house itself. In the darkness I could just make out the forms of two windows set close to the ground and partially screened by shrubs. They were just what I had been hoping to find—basement windows.

I slipped up to the first and took out the small flashlight. Standing close to shield it with my body, I shot the tiny beam inside. The screen and the window were both dirty, but I could see the latch where the top and bottom sashes met. It was closed. I moved to the other window. It was latched too.

Probably they all are, I thought. I stood back a little and sized them up. This one was better screened behind the shrubs. Getting down on my knees, I turned the light on again and shot it in on the hook at the bottom of the screen. I took out the screwdriver, pushed the blade in through the wire, and pried at the hook. It slid out, and the screen was free. I swung the bottom of it outward against the shrub and got in behind it.

Taking the Scotch tape out of my pocket, I began peeling it off and plastering strips of it across the glass of the upper sash, crisscrossing it in all directions. Then I reversed the screwdriver and rapped smartly with the handle right in front of the latch. The glass cracked, but the tape kept it from falling. I slid the screwdriver blade through against the latch, and pushed. It slid open.

I raised the bottom sash, swung the beam of light down inside, and dropped in. Pulling the screen back in place, I hooked it and closed the window. I took a quick look around the basement. This must be only part of it. It was a big room with a furnace in the center. Against the opposite wall was a coal bin, and beside it were some old trunks and a pile of magazines and newspapers. I saw a door, and went through it. This room held a washing machine and a lot of clotheslines.

There was no use trying to search this now. What I had to do first was take a quick look at the whole house and size up the job—and make certain that maid wasn’t here. Diana James had said she’d be gone, but it wasn’t Diana James that was going to wind up behind the eight ball if she happened to be wrong.

I went back in the first room and started swinging the light around, looking for the stairway. I’d just spotted it, over against the rear wall, when I stopped dead still and cut the light. I held my breath, listening. I could hear my heart beating in the dead, oppressive silence, and the hair along the back of my neck was still prickling. The place was making me jumpy.

What I’d thought I heard was music.

Music at four o’clock in the morning in an empty house? Nuts. I listened for another full minute and then flicked the light on again. I went up the stairs. There was a door at the top of them. I opened it softly and went through. I was in the kitchen.

There was a window over the sink, but the curtains were drawn. That was something I had to check in all the rooms, so I could move around freely during the day. I examined the rest of the room. The door by the sink must be the one going out onto the back porch. The one on this side, beyond the stove, apparently led into the dining room and the front of the house. This left one more, besides the cellar door I’d just come through. It was at the end of the kitchen, and it was closed. I had to see in there. It should be the maid’s room.

I eased over to it, got my hand on the knob, and cut the light. I turned it slowly, very slowly, and pushed. It swung open into more of the same impenetrable darkness. I stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of breathing. It was the maid’s room, all right.

The room was full of her, but that didn’t mean she was here now. What I was smelling was the place she lived in. But I had to know, and know now, before it was daylight and too late to get out. I flicked the light on, pointed straight down, my nerves tightened up for the scream that would split the night. Or the gun blast that’ll blow my stupid head off, I thought, if she’s here and she’s got company. I was sweating. I eased the beam forward. It hit the end of a bed, climbed it. The bed was empty. I breathed again.

I closed the door and walked back through the kitchen. The drapes were drawn in the dining room. The table and sideboards were old, massive, and very dark. One of the sideboards was covered with an ornate old silver service that had probably cost somebody’s ancestor a young fortune.

I walked on into the living room and inspected it in the beam of light. No wonder Mrs. Butler’s a lush, I thought. Living in a mausoleum like this would make anybody take to the juice. It was an enormous room, furnished the same way the dining room was. The woodwork was all mahogany and walnut, and dark with age. The drapes, which were drawn, looked like wine-colored velvet, and the sofas and chairs were upholstered in maroon plush— the ones that weren’t black leather. One whole wall was covered with books.

I stopped the light suddenly, staring at the rows of books. I backed it up a little. Then I brought it ahead, very slowly, watching. It was odd. The volumes of the encyclopedia were all jumbled, in no order at all, and there were other books sandwiched in between them.

I began to have an odd hunch then. I threw the light around over the rest of the room again. Everything else seemed to be in order and in its place. I got down on my hands and knees beside one of the sofas and looked at the dents in the rug where the feet rested. It had been moved recently, all right. But that didn’t mean anything. The maid had probably done it, cleaning.

Picking up one end of the sofa, I swung it away from the wall and looked at the back of it. I saw it then. It was a long slash in the cloth, made by a sharp knife or razor blade. I began snatching up the cushions. They were all slashed on the undersides. So were the ones in the chairs.

For an instant I wanted to throw the flashlight through the window. Then I settled down a little, and squatted on my heels to light a cigarette. Who was it? No, the question was: Had he found what he was looking for? There was a chance he hadn’t.

But, if not, why wasn’t he still here, looking for it? That was the one you couldn’t get around.

Was there a chance it was just the search the police had given the place, two months ago? No. They wouldn’t have cut things up that way. And Mrs. Butler or the maid would have put the books back in some sort of order by this time. This had been done recently.

But there was one thing about it. The fact that somebody else had been searching the place proved we were right. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who had reason to believe Mrs. Butler had killed her husband before he could get away.

And I was here, wasn’t I? And I was going to be here until Friday morning. What did I want to do— quit before I’d even got started? What the hell. Go ahead and search the place. That was what I’d come for. Maybe the other people hadn’t found it. I located an ashtray and crushed out the cigarette. The thought of the money was making me itchy again.

I went out through an archway at the end of the living room. There was a short hall here, or entry, with the front door at one end and the stairs at the other. I started up the stairs.

The steps were carpeted, but halfway up one pf them creaked under my weight. I stopped, cursing silently; then I shook off the jumpiness. What was I worried about? I had the whole place to myself, didn’t I? The maid was gone.

I reached the top. I started to turn, sweeping the flashlight beam ahead of me. Then I froze dead and snapped it off, staring down the hallway. A door was open on one side of it, and I could see a very faint glow of light spilling out into the hall. I put my other foot down silently and eased the awkward position I was in. I wanted to turn and run, but something about the light fascinated me. I remained motionless, hardly breathing.

It was too dim to be an electric light of any kind, and it seemed to flicker. Was it a match? Maybe whoever it was was setting fire to the place. But no, it didn’t seem to grow, as a fire would. I waited. It remained the same. Then I knew what it was. It was a candle.

That didn’t make any sense. Who’d be wandering around with a candle, with flashlights selling for forty-nine cents? But before I could even start to think about it, I became conscious of something new. It was a sound. It was a faint hissing noise, coming from the room.

Then, at almost the same time I guessed what it was, the music started. It had been the needle riding in the groove, of a phonograph record. The music was turned down very low, and it was something long-hair I didn’t recognize.

I knew I should run, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to look in there. It was only three or four steps down the hall. There was a carpet to muffle the sound of my steps.

I stopped just short of the door. This was the dangerous part of it. Whoever was in there would be able to see me when I looked in if he happened to be facing the door. The music went on very softly, but there was no other sound. I put my face against the doorframe and peered around it.

It was a strange sight. At first there was an odd feeling about it, as if I had wandered into some kind of religious ceremony. Then I began to get it sorted out. It was a bedroom. The candle was burning on the floor in a little silver dish, and beside it was the record player. Phonograph records were scattered around on the rug, and in the middle of them, alongside a low couch, a girl in a long blue robe sat on the floor and swayed gently back and forth as she listened to the music.

I saw her in profile with the candlelight softly touching her face and the cloud of dark hair that swirled about it. She was almost unbelievably beautiful, and she was drunk as a lord.

I remained very still outside the door, thinking coldly of Diana James. Mrs. Butler was like hell in Sanport.

Had she thrown that curve deliberately, or had it just been a mix-up? She’d lied right at the beginning, because she didn’t want to tell me any more about the thing than she had to. Maybe she’d lied again.

But maybe it had just been an accident. Mrs. Butler must have come back from Sanport unexpectedly, without her hearing about it. It made sense that way. We wanted the money. To find it, we had to search the house. So there was nothing she stood to gain by getting me to come up here to try to shake it down with Mrs. Butler in it.

Was there?