Skeleton Key (23 page)

No, that wasn't it. She looked at herself with bleak honesty and thought,
Howard Nelsing hasn't finished his investigation. He'll be there, at Grettry Road, some of the time anyway; and he'll never be here again
.

The Professor spoke once more. “If you have any doubts about your own safety,” he said pleadingly, “they can be laid at rest. The police are there for most of every day. I myself will escort you home if you like—and if I am not too absorbed in the laboratory,” he added very seriously.

Georgine could not restrain a grin. “That would hardly be necessary, Professor Paev,” she said, and knew she was lost.
The police are there
. H'm. Had the old galoot read her mind?

“Very well. I'll be up as soon as I can make it.”

“I brought my car,” the Professor said. “I thought if I could persuade you to come back, it might save some time.” She glanced out the window. Sure enough, there at the curb stood the vintage coupé.

“You'd have to wait while I got dressed and ate.”

“Food, food, food,” the Professor snarled.

“Yes, food. It'd do you good if you thought more about it,” said Georgine severely, reflecting that she'd better keep the whip hand while possible.

The Professor drank two cups of coffee and ate four pieces of toast, in an absent manner which indicated he didn't know what he was doing. He drove his car, she discovered later, in much the same manner. “I'll never be nearer to death again,” she told herself, clutching the door-handle of the coupé and uttering mental prayers as stone walls, trees and blind curves loomed at great speed over the car's hood, and were miraculously avoided.

As the car stopped in Grettry Road she drew a great sigh. This was partly relief that she was still alive, and partly the return of that oppression she had felt, increasing every day, as the Road closed around her.

The Professor let her out, looking grim. As they passed the upper end of the road, a muffled but unmistakably derisive “Moo-oo” had floated from an open window. Somehow, the story about the calf was already current. She suspected Mr. Slater.

The car moved toward the basement garage, and she saw, climbing up from the canyon path, the tall figure of Howard Nelsing. He caught sight of her, and stood still.

Georgine walked toward him. He didn't look angry any more. “You came back, then?” he said.

“I came back.”

“Does that mean…”

“It means I'm going to finish my job.”

“You haven't—remembered anything?”

She met his eyes. “I still don't care about justice.”

And that was all; except that during the morning, the African Queen brought up a note:
I told them. You'll be safe enough now. Chin up. T. McK
.

Safe enough, Georgine thought. Only two more days of work, and she'd be finished—if there were no more interruptions.

But when she went out at noon, there was no sign of a policeman, and the road lay quiet under a gray sky. This sunless weather gave an oddly changeless quality to the hills and the houses. The light looked exactly the same when she emerged again at mid-afternoon, and now the street seemed not only asleep but half dying.

There was someone awake and alive; Georgine started as the urgent whisper reached her. “Mrs. Wyeth! Oh, please, Mrs. Wyeth, come in here for just a minute.”

Georgine stopped in the street, looking toward the door from which the call had come. She didn't want to talk to Mimi Gillespie, she was busy, she'd come out only for a minute…

But Mrs. Gillespie had been crying, her blond prettiness was blurred and swollen; and she hadn't dressed; she was hanging pathetically against the edge of the door, wrapped in the familiar white chenille housecoat and wearing white fur slippers like two small muffs. She was in trouble.

Reluctantly, Georgine moved up the front walk. “I can't come in, I'm afraid,” she said gently.

“Oh, you must!
Please
. I was so afraid I'd miss you, I've been watching for two hours, I was going to watch till you started home. I tell you,” said Mimi, “I damned near
prayed
.”

She laid her hand on Georgine's arm, almost forcing her into the house. “I've got to talk to you.”

“But why me?” Georgine inquired, somewhat dryly.

“I need someone so badly. And you're nice, you're not like these old cats up here that wouldn't—wouldn't believe anything I said. You know what trouble is,” said Mimi, her brown eyes filling, “and you'll help me. I know you will.”

“Well—what is it?”

“Come on out here.” Mimi pushed her into the kitchen, whose windows overlooked the street. “Have a drink, won't you?”

The bottle of Black and White was almost half gone, but it had been opened recently; the tinfoil seal still lay on the kitchen table. “No thanks,” Georgine said.

“Well, I will. God knows I need it.” Mimi poured a generous four fingers. “Look here, Mrs. Wyeth, maybe you don't know what's happened.”

Her brother
, Georgine thought swiftly.
They've decided he was the murderer, they're on his trail…it isn't possible she's got him hidden here?
She took an instinctive step toward the door.

Mimi put out a hand. “They've got Harry down at the police station.”

“Oh. Not—under arrest?”

“They said for questioning, but he's been—he didn't come home at all, they got him from work—he hasn't been home all day and I don't know when they'll let him go.”

Georgine sat down slowly. “That may not mean so much.”

The golden head turned from side to side, as if in pain. “He was here the night Hollister died,” Mrs. Gillespie said drearily. “They made him admit it. He just let on to go to work, his night off had been changed to Friday and he never told me. He let me think he'd be gone, so he could c-come back here and maybe catch me. And all because he heard me telephoning to Roy that morning about something else—oh, I don't know what to do.”

“I'm terribly sorry, but I don't see how I can help you.”

“You've got the inside track with that cop, what's his name? Nelsing. You know what he's thinking, you can tell me what I—”

“I'm afraid you're mistaken, Mrs. Gillespie. The last thing I have is an inside track!”

“Go on,” Mimi said roughly, “he's in love with you.”

Georgine gave her an incredulous look, and glanced at the bottle.

“No, I'm not tight. I wish to God I was.” Mrs. Gillespie sloshed another generous portion into her glass. “Anyone could see how he feels. I was looking out the window this morning when you were talking to him, and…”

“My dear,” Georgine said, “far from being in love with me, Inspector Nelsing half believes I'm a murderer.”

“Ba—I mean baloney. If he's made you think that, he's trying to fool himself 'cause it makes him mad to fall for a woman. I know that much,” said Mimi, swallowing, and turning her flushed face toward Georgine. “He despises me; I know that too, and he'll think the worst of me if he can. And so I don't know what to do. You've got to help.”

She began to cry again, her lips loose and quivering, but after a minute she rubbed the tears away with the sleeve of her robe. “He thinks Harry was jealous because Roy used to come here nights after he was gone. Well, he was jealous, but there wasn't any reason. There wasn't! What if I did take Roy pies and things when he first moved up here? He was all alone, and a bachelor, and I didn't do it for very long. By that time he'd started to pal up with Ralph, with my brother, and it was Ralph he came to see.”

“You could tell the Inspector that yourself, Mrs. Gillespie, if that's all. I'm not sure how much it would help.”

“No, I can't!” Mimi whispered. “I can't let anyone know he came to see Ralph.”

“Why not?” There was a cold feeling at the pit of Georgine's stomach. “You—you don't know anything about Hollister's death that you haven't told? You don't think it was—your brother that killed him?”

“No—oh, no!'” Mimi laughed, forlornly. “He couldn't have done it, Ralphie couldn't. He's the one person on earth who couldn't!”

“You mean you have real proof of that? He has an unshakable alibi?”

Mimi swayed a little, recovered herself, and looked at Georgine. “You bet he has.” Her hand came up, rather unsteadily, and the white sleeve fell away from the arm as her wavering forefinger pointed at the sky. “He was—up there!”

Georgine found herself standing. “Up where?”

“Sidd—sit down, won't you? Up there flying around, that's what I mean. It was Ralph that made the blackout, in his plane.”

Georgine sat down again, very slowly, her eyes fixed on the disheveled silhouette of Mimi's head against the gray window. Outside sounded the majestic steps of Mrs. Blake, going homeward. They died away. Now her vision and hearing narrowed again, to take in the homely setting of this kitchen, and to echo the fantastic words that had just been spoken.

“He wasn't!” she said at last, incredulously.

Mrs. Gillespie's head went up and down in a portentous nod. “Oh, God,'” she said then, faintly. “Maybe I shouldn't have told you that. I'm—I've been half crazy, I tell you. I go to the police and say Harry's innocent, they say how do you know, and I have to tell 'em, and get my brother into the worst jam—I don't know what they'll do to him if they catch him, or if they know what he did; and suppose that he got away after all, they could go after him!”

“But—but, my dear—you can't have this straight. He had his own plane, did he, before the war? But don't you know that those planes were immobilized the day after Pearl Harbor? I think they had to take out the engines and turn them in to the authorities, at least in the defense area.”

“Sure,” said Mimi wearily. She sat down and rested an elbow on the enamel table, her hand supporting her rumpled head. “And in about a week they told people to put their engines back in again. The ships had to be kept under guard or somep'n, there was an old deputy sheriff they had watching Ralphie's plane. There aren't any public hangars out there in the sticks, I guess his was the only ship for miles around. And he—I don't know how he fixed it in the end, but he was going to get the sheriff away or give him a Mickey, so's he could get the plane out.”

“You knew about this beforehand?” The head nodded again. “But
why
, Mrs. Gillespie?” Georgine felt her preconceived ideas spinning into confusion. “Your brother had quarreled with Hollister, I know, but he couldn't possibly have—provoked the blackout on purpose, knowing that someone was planning to—to kill—”

“He did it on purpose, all right.” The heavy eyes came up and dwelt somberly on Georgine's.
“Hollister made him do it.”

The spinning ideas flew together, all at once, and fused into their inevitable whole.

“So that was it,” Georgine breathed.

That said it all. The incredible coincidences were there no longer: Professor Paev's absence from home, Ralph's disappearance, the blackout coming on that very night. She remembered Hollister's terrifying word-pictures of what would happen if you didn't shut yourself into your refuge room, his threats of penalties.

Hollister had engineered the events of that night—up to a point. With a clear field, he could have gone completely unobserved and at his leisure to Professor Paev's laboratory. He'd have had time to inspect the almost-completed notes, perhaps copying the ones he needed, or abstracting some of the carbons—whose absence afterward could be blamed on the typist's carelessness.

A clear field. What would Hollister have done if he'd found her, Georgine, unexpectedly in the house? Well, that wouldn't have been ruinous. As the warden, he was the one person who might have a legitimate errand there. He could have got rid of her somehow, told some story…

An accidental blackout wouldn't have been the same thing. There'd be no way to gauge its length, nor the time when it would begin. But with Ralph's plane up there above the fog, Hollister would know that it would take some time to chase and identify it. Weren't the patrols up over the Bay all the time, in foggy weather? But perhaps they were all flying half blind in that thick mist. He could have counted on at least forty minutes of darkness. The plan must have seemed perfect.

And before he could begin it someone had killed him. Someone had thought, perhaps mistakenly, that he knew Hollister's errand in Grettry Road, and had feared for his own precious secrets; someone had baited his trap with a tiny spark of light, so that person must have known, too, that there would be a blackout that night.

Mimi knew it.

The long, stunned silence was broken by the clink of bottle against glass. “I wish I could get tight,” Mrs. Gillespie said dully. “I might get up the nerve to do something about Harry.”

Georgine said, “You're sure you haven't—worried yourself into imagining this? How on earth could Hollister have made your brother do anything so dangerous, to himself and everyone else?”

“Ralphie had to. He
had
to. Didn't you guess Roy was—after him? He was a Fed, Roy was.”

“Did he tell you so?” Georgine exclaimed. How had he dared? Weren't there penalties for impersonation?

“Why, no.” Mimi gazed at her wild-eyed. “We—just knew. At first he talked to us just like anybody, and then he got Ralphie to talkin' about the gover'ment, Ralphie always hated it no matter who was in, he always felt he didn't get a fair deal in life, him or nobody else who grew up between wars. And it used to be all right to say so, nobody cared how you felt before—before we got into this. He shut up after that, he was afraid. But Roy knew already. And then when we got in the war, he—he changed. And then Ralphie and I were both afraid,” Mimi said, taking another drink and gasping, “We didn't know what they'd do to him for handing round those pamp'lets in L.A., and there was what happened to Pelley, and all.”