Skeleton Key (29 page)

“But why, Inspector?” John Devlin demanded harshly. “For God's sake why should anybody want to kill that harmless little woman?”

“I can think of a number of reasons,” Nelsing said. “It must have been done on impulse, of course; a sudden fit of rage or apprehension, fingers around her throat in a panic—she could have lost consciousness very quickly; we are told that she was in an advanced state of intoxication when she left the house.”

“We are told,” Sheila Devlin murmured, and smiled. “The impersonal touch is very good, Inspector Nelsing, but every one of us knows that Mrs. Wyeth was in the house, possibly drinking with her, and was the last to see her.”

Georgine said nothing. Let them think what they liked.

“And,” Mrs. Devlin continued, reaching for a large sewing bag, “since no one else saw her, isn't it obvious what happened?”

There was a little silence, during which the tiny heartbeats of the clock were quite audible. Then Nelsing said, “I should be interested in hearing your theory, Mrs. Devlin.” His courtesy had never been more formidable.

The long face lifted, and Mrs. Devlin looked across the room at Georgine. Her eyes shifted to McKinnon. After a moment she smiled. “Why of course, she ran down into the canyon and met a tramp; and—” Her gesture finished the sentence.

“We searched the canyon yesterday evening, while it was still light,” Nelsing pointed out.

“Oh, well, obviously you weren't thorough enough, and simply missed seeing her body.” She threaded a needle for her embroidery.

“Then,” said Howard Nelsing frigidly, “why was she buried? Mrs. Devlin, could I ask that you give me your full attention?”

Sheila put away the needlepoint, with an impatient shrug.

“She was buried under cover of night,” Nelsing went on. “That much is obvious. Did none of you hear unusual sounds during the night?”

Once more there were blank looks. A faraway part of Georgine's mind said,
Most of the bedrooms are upstairs near the street. Nobody would necessarily have heard sounds in the gardens or in the canyon, except—

“I sleep heavily,” said Professor Paev on a sharp bark.

There was another little silence. Everyone looked furtively at the Professor, and then back at the floor. Nelsing opened his lips to resume.

Peter Frey leaned forward violently, as if to thrust himself by force through the invisible wall that surrounded him. His harsh outcry ripped the air. “This damned place! It's a—a sink of danger, I tell you! Our women aren't safe. I won't have my daughter staying here, running this risk. You've got to let her go away!”

“That will be all right,” Nelsing said, mouthing the words. Frey seemed to understand, for he fell back in his chair and sat breathing hard as if in relief.

“Couldn't she stay with me?” Georgine said diffidently.

“That might be a solution. How about it, Miss Frey?”

“Oh, yes, I'd like that,” Claris said.

“Suggest it to your father.”

She scribbled for a moment. Peter Frey read what she had written, and looked at Georgine; his slanting eyelids pulled tight with some expression like fright or horror. “No!” he said loudly, and tore the sheet from the pad, hurling it in a crumpled ball toward the fireplace.

“Let them think what they like,” Georgine told herself apathetically. She was still too cold and sick for feeling.

No, not entirely; for with a terrible pang, she remembered Barby. If Barby had to see her mother suspected, dragged through an investigation as a possible criminal—would she be old enough to understand? Or if she were, would there be any way of explaining to her that you had only to hold tight to your own knowledge of innocence, and things would come right in the end?

It's got to be over by the time she comes home
, Georgine prayed silently.
If it can only be over and settled, so we can go back to our own quiet life! There are two days more
.

Ricky Devlin was speaking, his face drawn tight with strain. “You haven't said yet, Inspector, why she was killed. It couldn't have been a tramp, like Mother said?” Nelsing shook his head. “Well, then,
why?
Because after all, Mr. Hollister's dead now, and—” He stopped, flushing scarlet.

“You don't know what you're talking about, Ricky dear,” his mother told him with a sweet smile.

“Yes, he does, Mrs. Devlin. That is a possibility,” Nelsing said quietly. “Jealousy might have entered into the motivation, though it seems unlikely so long afterward. But, when two violent deaths take place in the same neighborhood within a week, and the murdered persons were connected in a way whose details I am not at liberty to give you, it is a not unlikely assumption that the deaths were also connected. The first one, I believe, was premeditated, or partly so; the second entirely impulsive, for no one could have foreseen that Mimi Gillespie would have rushed out—unnoticed, as it happened—to the home of one of the neighbors with something she must tell or ask. I believe”—Nelsing's voice was very smooth—“that she held some clue to Hollister's murder, possibly one she had not recognized before; and that on a sudden impulse she went to the person whom she had vaguely suspected, perhaps with an accusation.” He slanted an unreadable glance across the room. “It was Mr. McKinnon who suggested that she might have been killed to silence her, rather than that she had run away to escape questioning.”

“Fiction-writer's mind,” Todd murmured modestly. He had been sitting motionless on one of the satin-upholstered chairs, his eyes flickering from one speaker to another. Georgine, not far away, could feel even through the dull aftermath of shock that he was more than usually alert and attentive.

“What was it she knew?” said Alexis Paev suddenly, harshly, from his corner. “Mrs. Wyeth, she was talking to you before she made this hypothetical sortie into some neighbor's territory. What did she say?”

“Nothing,” Georgine told him wearily. “Just that; nothing. There was a story that—” she caught Nelsing's eye and went on, “that I can't repeat; but it did nothing but remove one possible suspect, and make me think that nobody else could possibly have known what—what was important.”

Their eyes were all on her; fierce black ones, anxious light blue ones, incredulous brown ones. The last were Sheila Devlin's. She smiled slowly, and Georgine's own eyes dropped.
Let them think it!

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Nelsing abruptly. “Someone is refusing to coöperate. There is the remote possibility that none of you, here in this room, had any part in Mimi Gillespie's death. I should be glad to think that. You must see, however, that suspicion rests in some degree on every one of you.”

Once more his eyes swept about the circle of mute, stubborn faces. “I must ask,” he concluded, rising, “that you all stay as close to home as you can for the next few days. We will make suitable arrangements for Miss Frey; if you'd tell your father that?—Thank you for the use of your home, Mrs. Devlin.”

The group broke. People got up sighing as if at a reprieve, not yet with the full breath of relief. Sheila Devlin stood uncompromisingly by the door, waiting for them to go, her long horse-face wearing an incongruously social smile, one large hand on her son's arm.

In the doorway, “I've got to talk to you,” Todd McKinnon murmured in Georgine's ear. “Will you wait here a minute?” He went quickly after Peter Frey, holding out his hand for the writing pad. Georgine could see them, in the shaft of light from the doorway, one scribbling quickly, the other bending a gray head over the paper.

“Mrs. Wyeth,” said Nelsing formally, coming past, “don't go yet, please. I'd like you to ride down to my office with me, I have a report to put in; and then I'll see you home.”

“All right,” she said, not much caring; and moved a few steps into the darkness. A moment later she thought, with a sort of faraway laughter,
I never was so popular
, for a low voice came from the shadows behind her.

“Mrs. Wyeth,” Claris Frey said breathlessly, “listen, quick, before anyone sees me talking to you, Daddy told me I was to go straight home but I can get there before he does. I know where he's going to send me, over to Grandma's. Oh, heck,” she added, her young voice breaking plaintively, “if he'd only let me stay with you!” She must have missed the implications of her father's refusal. “Grandma's just ghastly strict!”

“I should be, myself,” Georgine told her firmly without looking round. “Seems to me it'd do you good.”

“Well, look. If—if anybody asks, that you think ought to know, would you give 'em the address? Her name isn't Frey, she married again, it's Tilton. Mrs. Carrie Tilton on Gough Street, will you remember that
please
, because I daren't try to tell anyone else.”

“Yes, I'll remember,” Georgine murmured wearily. “How will your father get along if you go over there?”

“He'll be all right. He was happy as a clam when he bached it up on Telegraph Hill when I was little. He only came and got me from Grandma's when he wanted to move over here and paint all these trees, and he couldn't get a housekeeper. I told you before,” Claris said, very offhand, “he doesn't care what I do.”

Georgine's numbness melted in a warm flood of compassion. “You poor baby,” she said in a low voice, “you haven't had very much out of life, have you?” No wonder Claris had flaunted her attraction to men. Their admiring looks provided the nearest thing to family affection that she could get.

“Only Ricky,” came Claris's soft murmur out of the shadows. “'S funny, isn't it, I just thought of him as a kind of excitement, at first. You—if you get a chance, you'll tell him where I am?”

“I'll tell him,” said Georgine, and heard Claris slip away under the tall shadows of trees. It was neatly timed, for Mr. Frey was still occupied and did not follow his daughter for several minutes.

Beside Georgine, Todd McKinnon materialized from the darkness, making her start nervously. He began to talk at once, in the casual voice that usually calmed her. “I was asking Frey how everybody looked when the news about Mimi came out. They all rushed into the street, you know, and I thought he might have noticed some odd expression; people who can't hear are very quick about picking up visual clues. But he told me they were only shocked, as anyone would be.”

“What did you expect?” Georgine said tiredly.

“I scarcely know. Whatever it was, I didn't get it. Look, before Nelsing whisks you off, this is what I wanted to say: we're outsiders in this business, you and I. We have been from the start. Naturally the police didn't confide in us. We'll not know, until Nelse chooses to tell us what progress he's making.”

“I suppose that won't be till the case is closed. Well, that seems only fair.”

“Perhaps. But it's just possible that you and I could pick up some information that people wouldn't want to give him. We can pass it on right away, but it's up to us to gather it if we can.”

“No,” Georgine said.

“For your own sake,” McKinnon pointed out softly. He was standing a bit behind her, and she felt an unaccountable crisping of her nerves. “You'd be safe asking a few innocent questions. If you should happen to see Ricky Devlin alone, would you find out who put up the signal first, last Friday night—he or Claris?”

“Why?”

“I just want to know,” McKinnon said.

“I don't want to ask.”

He was silent for a moment. In the band of light flung from the doorway, Nelsing appeared, speaking to a policeman whom he had called in from the street. “How do you feel about Mimi's death?” Todd inquired abruptly.

“That was
bad
,” Georgine said somberly. “That was really evil. I couldn't quite see it in Hollister's death, but I do in this. I liked her, Todd. She was loving and pathetic, and she ought not to have died.”

“You wouldn't believe any of these people were bad,” the half whisper sounded in her ear. “Hollister died because one of them was weak and afraid, but Mimi died because that weakness had gone too deep; there was no difference between it and evil.”

She said, “Todd. You've got to tell me—did I cause her death? I mean, by not telling soon enough that she'd disappeared.”

A shade too quickly, he said, “No! You mustn't think that. She must have died within five minutes of the time she ran down the stairs, before you'd even missed her.”

“How do you know that?” she whispered, and took an involuntary step forward into the light.

“I'm only guessing,” he said, surprised. “I haven't a minute's doubt that she thought of something while she was talking to you, and was just tight enough to think of going to check up on it, but not sober enough to realize her danger. And maybe she'd only got out a few words of the accusation, when the person who'd already killed once realized that she knew too much.” His voice was only a breath now. “And a pair of hands was ready.”

“Will you stop?” said Georgine painfully.

“No. Because you must realize that she was talking to you just before she died; and nobody knows how much she said. It's quite possible that if you hadn't run out into the street when you did, you might have died too.”

“But I told them! I told them all that there was nothing! Don't
you
believe that?”

“I believe she told you something without your knowing it, perhaps without realizing its importance herself. If I came by tomorrow morning, would you go over the interview in detail?”

“In the morning,” said Georgine grimly, “I am going to be locked up tight in my house, and if I can manage it I'll be fast asleep.”

“M'm,” Todd said. “I see. Then, good night, Georgine.”

As Nelsing came up, he wandered carelessly away.