Skeleton Key (26 page)

“…Yes, we should be interested in confirmation of the story.”

“…
Who?
”

The officer sat back, his brows drawing together. “I'm afraid that will be impossible.” He looked narrowly, curiously at the swollen eyes peering from under the bandage. “That man is dead. He died during the blackout.”

“…I'm telling the truth, of course, Stort, Hollister was killed in a freak accident; a driverless car plunged downhill and struck him as he was going on his rounds.”

“…What's the trouble? What did his death mean to you, besides this matter?”

The battered mouth under the bandages stayed tightly shut, and the tortured dark eyes turned to the window and would not meet the officer's.

The officer repeated his questions, gently enough. He asked others. There was still no answer.

He could bring no pressure to bear. There was nothing more that could terrify Ralph Stort, who was dying; nothing except the possibility of saying too much. He did not speak again before he died.

Georgine Wyeth wondered if she had slept at all, if the miserable dreams from which she had so often started up had been the product of sleep or of the waking mind. And there was the rap of knuckles on her door, again; for a blurred moment she thought this was yesterday morning, and it was the Professor knocking, and it was all to be done over again. “I won't go into Mimi's this time,” she told herself dizzily, struggling out of bed.

“Just a minute,” she said, startled wide awake by the sight of Nelsing on the doorstep; and rushed back into the bedroom to tie up her hair in a neat bandanna—he would catch her in curlers!—and put on some clothes.

“She hasn't turned up?” Georgine asked anxiously.

“Who, Mimi? No,” said Nelsing soberly. He sat down, his eyes fixed on her so that no evasion was possible. “You asked me to wait till this morning, Georgine. I've done it. Now, will you help me, please?”

She nodded, for some obscure reason unable to speak.

“I'll tell you what we've done. We've made inquiries of every person who was at home in Grettry Road yesterday afternoon, and got nothing. Peter Frey is the only one who might conceivably have seen Mimi go out the garden door, and as it happens he didn't. He was in his basement studio, and all the south and west windows have been covered; something about the light. He wasn't watching, anyway. Sheila Devlin was at home, but she's very uncommunicative, beyond saying she saw no signs of Mimi. McKinnon was on the other side of the street, around the curve. He couldn't have seen anything, either. Professor Paev—didn't seem inclined to help us.”

Georgine smiled faintly, for the first time that morning.

“So it's up to you, to give me some idea of why Mimi Gillespie was upset yesterday; so upset that she rushed downstairs and into the garden and disappeared.”

She felt tired and defeated. “All right, I'll tell you,” she said dully. “She knew there was to be a blackout last Friday night. Her brother knew it too. He caused it.” She stopped, and looked at Nelsing. “You're not surprised.”

“We had some kind of an idea,” said Nelsing smoothly, “when we investigated at Stort's ranch and heard the deputy sheriff's story. His sister had claimed she knew nothing about what he did after he left on Thursday.”

“She did, I'm afraid,” said Georgine. “And if that wasn't a mystery to you, I didn't do any harm by holding it back. That's all there was to her story.”

“Oh, no, it isn't. The fact that she knew is plenty important. Oh, you saw that too, did you? I want the story in full, please.”

“You knew that Hollister made him do it?”

“I know it now. Pretty much to have been expected, don't you think? Could have been guessed when we found out why Hollister was in Grettry Road. What more?”

“Nothing much.” Georgine told him, though, looking with a sort of painful wonder at his face as she talked.

All that fuss last night had been for nothing, if he knew the story already.

Then why was he listening so carefully, relaxed yet intent? Because he was checking up on how truthful she was? Well, she was doing her best. “And so I asked her,” she concluded wearily, “if anyone else knew about this; and she said no, that nobody could possibly have heard her and Ralph talking. And then she—went.”

“Just like that, quietly?”

“No. She stopped a minute by the stairs, and said, ‘
Oh
, my God,' as if she'd just thought of something, and ran.”

Nelsing nodded. “She was fairly tight, you said? Probably just dawned on her what kind of spot
she
was in.”

“Nelse, do you really think she has the stuff of a murderer in her?”

“You'd be surprised what real devotion can do,” he said.

“Would you blame her?”

“Now, Georgine, you know better than to put it that way. No matter how unselfish the motives are, you can't condone the taking of human life. Isn't that so?”

She said nothing. “It's plain enough,” he went on, “what Mrs. Gillespie did. She took a powder. If you'd been willing to tell me last night what was worrying her, we'd have had a better chance of catching her.”

“Then I'm glad I didn't,” Georgine muttered stubbornly. “And haven't you considered that she could be innocent, and might simply have wandered away and passed out somewhere in the brush?”

“We'll take everything under consideration,” said Nelsing, all at once bored and impatient. He got up. “Are you going to work up there today?”

“I suppose so. I've only about twenty more pages to do, but I don't get a chance to finish them!”

“Very well. But please don't talk, don't spread this story about the blackout. Among other things, it's a military secret.”

Going down into Grettry Road seemed to get harder every day. Georgine paused at the top, late in the morning, and braced herself as if she were about to plunge into icy black water. Yet the street was as placid as ever under the gray light; a sprinkler whirred on the Devlins' lawn, and Claris Frey looked out the Frey kitchen window, where she seemed to be washing dishes, and smiled. Georgine found herself looking around, just why she did not know, for a lean graceful figure with sandy hair. No sign of him this morning.

But when she came out, after a completely uneventful day, at five o'clock, he was sitting on the broken white fence at the foot of the road. He had taken his mouth-organ from his pocket, and was breathing into it.

“Don't play that!” Georgine cried out at the second bar.

“You don't care for it after all?” The agate eyes turned to her, and McKinnon gave a mock sigh.

“It's bad luck,” Georgine said with a little shiver, and saw his eyes go blank and narrow. She added hurriedly, “Maybe I'm getting superstitious, but I can't ever hear
The Trout
again without thinking something's going to happen.”

“Then I've played it for the last time,” McKinnon said. “But surely things haven't been happening for twelve hours out of every day, since I've known you?”

“You haven't been playing it that often!”

“Just about. Maybe,” he suggested gently, “you've listened only when you were sort of sharpened up by apprehension.”

“Maybe,” Georgine said, again shivering. “The other day, when I was waiting for Mimi, it—it seemed as if your music had lured her away, and she'd followed it and disappeared. They haven't had any word of her?”

As they passed the three white houses, she looked nervously at each one. The first two already looked empty and desolate, with accumulations of dead leaves drifting across their shallow porches. “They haven't had any word,” the quiet voice beside her repeated.

“Just to go off like that, into thin air!” Georgine said apprehensively. “It isn't right, she can't have gone far. I wish I could get hold of her again, it seems as if I blundered horribly somewhere.” She looked back over her shoulder, and stopped in her tracks.

“Todd,” she said, keeping her voice level with some difficulty, “I seem to have left my—my keys behind, at the Professor's. Don't walk all the way back with me, you go on slowly and I'll catch up with you. Oh, no, no, I know just where I left them, thanks.”

This was something that must be done alone. If Mimi were afraid of anyone else's knowing her secret, she would hide again if anyone but Georgine spoke to her, or entered her house; and it must have been Mimi whose hand had lifted that curtain, upstairs in the Gillespie house, and so hastily, furtively, let it drop again. She
had
been hiding somewhere, and managed to elude Nelsing's search; and when the search was dropped, she had crept home again.

There, Todd had rounded the corner, and was out of sight. Georgine turned swiftly and ran uphill. She rattled cautiously at the Gillespies' door, and found it unlocked, and stepped in.

If that hadn't been Mimi? The only other person it could be was Harry, and there was no reason for him to be furtive. If it should be, she could just inquire if there was anything new…

“Mrs. Gillespie,” Georgine called softly. Surely there had been a footfall above her; the hall was chilly, close and dark; the blinds all over the house had been closed. “Mrs. Gilles-pie!”

That was a perfectly good name, but it took on a silly sound when you were constantly shouting it upstairs, and getting no answer. “Mimi,” she said, more loudly. “Come on, it's safe enough, I only want to help you.” No answer.

Georgine, conquering a slight uneasiness, started up the staircase. She rounded the turn of the stairs.

On the top landing a huge figure stood motionless.

For one startled moment she thought it was a suit of armor, so broad and dark was its silhouette against the eastern window, so round the shape of its head.

Then the figure stirred, and she saw that the round crown was a shipyard worker's helmet, and the wide shoulders were those of Harry Gillespie.

“Oh!” Georgine said on a gasp of relief. “You scared me. I—I hoped I'd find Mimi.”

He spoke in a voice so flat, so drained of expression that it sounded like that of a man under torture.

“She's not here,” said Harry Gillespie. “What have you done with her?”

“Why, nothing, Mr. Gillespie!” Georgine retreated a step or two, and he began to descend steadily, his weight making each tread groan a little. “Nothing! What could I have done with her? I haven't seen her since yesterday.”

“You know where she is.” His feet thudded on step after step. “You're going to tell me.”

“I'd be glad to if I could, but I don't know.” Georgine was feeling her way backward, down and down; the turn of the stairs hid his face from her momentarily, and she thought:
There's something about his voice…I'd better run for the door
.

Then his feet were on the landing, and he stood looking down at her. He was still dressed in his working clothes, with the stiff windbreaker and the greenish helmet making him look more than ever like something not quite alive. In the dimness of the hall his face was half shadowed, but its outlines looked like a grotesque mask of tragedy.

“You're going to tell me,” said Harry Gillespie, in his flat far-away voice, “or I'll kill you.”

She found herself looking into a round black hole rimmed with steel.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

H
ER FIRST IMPULSE WAS
to nervous laughter. Why, she knew this man, better than any of the other neighbors in Grettry Road! A simple, obnoxious, candidly patriotic soul, who loved his wife and was proud of his new prosperity. She had ridden with him, chatting about movies and the war and the graveyard shift.

“Oh, go on, Harry,” said Georgine cheerfully. “Don't wave that gun. How should I know where Mimi is?”

“You saw her last. Then she disappeared. That cop said so. What did you do with her?”

He was on the lowest step now, and the pistol was held unwaveringly trained on her. She put out a hand to push it aside, and saw his hand go taut.

Why, he meant that
.

Her gesture died in mid-air, and she looked at his eyes. He could not have slept for two days. He had come home from a long bout of questioning at the police station, and found his wife was gone. Had he gone back to the shipyards for his night's work, thinking she would reappear, and returned to discover that she was really lost? There was only one emotion behind those burned-out eyes.

He was determined and dangerous as a half wild animal intent on the kill. “Go on in there,” he said, with a motion of his free hand toward the living room. “We'll sit down. I'm tired, I've been huntin' her in every vacant house up and down the road.” The words fell heavily, one by one, as he backed Georgine into a chair at the far end of the room.

He sat down a few feet away, neither his eyes nor the gun hand wavering. “She's not at the Carmichaels' and she's not at Hollister's and she's not at the Cliftons'. She's been at the Cliftons' but she's not there now. All night, I looked. Then I came back here and sat and thought.”