Skeleton Key (30 page)

“Nelse, I'm frightened,” she said.

“I can't say I blame you,” Nelsing told her surprisingly. He stood by the glass-topped door of his office, looking out into the lighted corridor, his back to Georgine. Outside the big building were the midnight streets, in this quiet town almost empty of life; but in the Hall of Justice there was ordered activity. Officers in neat khaki uniforms and Sam Browne belts came and went; telephones burred briskly.

“What are they doing?” Georgine demanded wearily. “What is it you're waiting for?”

Without turning, he said, “It may not be done tonight, but we're making chemical analyses of the scrapings from under her toenails, and testing the robe she was wearing. Maybe that'll show us where we're going. This time,” he added with satisfaction, “we've got something to work on. When Hollister died, his murderer didn't touch him, and there wasn't a thing to be found out from the car; no fingerprints on the steering wheel, except Ricky's. Nothing to go on, d'you see? But you can't strangle someone without personal contact.”

Georgine made a small sound, and put her hand over her eyes.

“I'm sorry you had to see her as we found her,” Nelsing said remotely. “We thought we had everyone corralled.”

“But
why
, Nelse? I know, everyone kept asking you that, but I can't see it yet. Was that true, what Todd suggested, that she knew too much?”

“There's a chance that he was right. The murderer's in a panic now, that much is certain. If we just keep still for a few days, and go on with our analyses, we may get a break.”

“Who is it? Do you know?”

“Not yet.”

“But—whom can I trust?”

“Nobody, I guess,” Nelsing said briskly. “I'll see that you're kept safe, if I can find a man to stand guard. Wish I could do it myself, but—”

“Oh, no. You're going to be busy, of course.”

She looked at his broad back in the dark suit, outlined against the lighted inner window, the yellowish finish of woodwork. A man in plain clothes went past in the corridor, not looking at Nelsing's cubicle.
I've got to ask him straight out
, Georgine thought; and got to her feet as if it would be easier, standing.

“You don't know who killed Hollister and Mimi. Please tell me, Nelse, did you suspect me a few days ago?”

His back was still toward her. “No,” he said roughly.

“Thank heaven,” said Georgine, relaxing. “And did you think you'd get more information out of me if you treated me as a suspect?”

Nelsing turned round slowly. His hands were in his trouser pockets, and she could see the fists straining against cloth.

“Georgine, will you marry me?” he said.

She found herself sitting down, without knowledge of how she had found the chair. Her face felt stiff with astonishment.

There was a brief silence. Outside the glazed partition the plain-clothes man went by again, briskly. She opened her lips, and by sheer reflex out came a remark whose inanity nearly undid her.

“But, Nelse,” she quavered, “how can—I mean, this is so
sudden!
”

She would have laughed, but he remained entirely solemn. “Didn't you know why I was so hard on you?” he said harshly. “Good Lord, I talked to you in a way I never used on a witness before, man or woman either. It was all because I—I was afraid of letting my own feelings come between me and justice. I thought you—look, I've got to explain something to you.”

He paused, wetting his lips. “I've been waiting for a case like this ever since I was a rookie, and made up my mind I'd try for the homicide squad. I got on the squad, finally, after I'd studied and been trained for years. And what did I get? A few razor battles down in Darktown, and a filling-station robbery with violence, and a couple of dead tramps to identify. And then, after five years, this breaks: the real thing, a chance to use all that science and training, a case that can make or break me.” He waited for another minute, looking at her with a bewilderment that was almost dislike. “I never thought that there'd be anyone like you mixed up in it. You didn't try to lie your way out of anything, or flirt with me or drown me in tears so I'd let you off. I've seen plenty of women, but I never—I didn't think there was anyone who—oh, damn it, I didn't want to fall in—to be thrown clear off, like this.”

He broke off and stood waiting.

In her wildest dreams Georgine had never got him as far as the altar. She couldn't seem to recover from the vast astonishment of this proposal.
Why
, she thought,
I could stretch out my hand and take him. What on earth is holding me back?

“Nelse, can't you see what's happened?” she said at last, gently. “You've got me mixed up with the case itself. It's your heart's desire, and getting it at last has—sort of dislocated all your other feelings. It wouldn't be fair to settle this now. Wait till it's all over.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “It should be over in a few days more.”

In a few days more Barby would be at home. “Let's not talk about it until then,” Georgine said. “But I'll do anything I can to—to hurry it up.”

Nelsing nodded and drew a quick breath. With the movement he became once more the impersonal officer of Justice. “If you feel that way, perhaps there's something more you want to tell me?”

“I'm sure you've thought of this already, but—almost the last thing Mimi said to me was, ‘Nobody could possibly have heard us.' And then she stopped in the hall, as if she'd thought of something, all of a sudden, and then cried out and rushed for the stairs. Do you think—”

Nelsing, once more seated at his desk, nodded slowly. “Sounds almost as if she'd remembered someone who could have heard Stort telling her about the plan for the first foggy night. But who? She didn't tell you that. If someone did know, the rest of it all falls into line. You're sure Mimi hadn't let out any details of the plan to anyone?”

“I asked her that, and she said
no
; especially not—” Georgine stopped short.

“Not who?”

“T-Todd McKinnon. I don't know why I thought of asking about him, except that he talks to everyone.”

“Did she seem to be afraid of him?”

“She wasn't really afraid of anyone, that I could see; and if she had been, surely she wouldn't have rushed out and—”

With a horrid sensation of chilliness, she watched Nelsing's forefinger gently tapping on the desk blotter.

“Just what went on this afternoon between you and Harry Gillespie?”

“I think he was really going to shoot me, except that Todd managed to—to deflect his interest.”

“How?”

“He—went off on a flight of fancy, and made Harry think that he, Todd I mean, had been Mimi's lover without anyone's suspecting it; and that maybe Hollister had got in the way. It was all fiction, of course. He said so.”

“He thinks fast,” Nelsing observed. The finger tapped on.

Georgine nodded. She shuddered once, remembering, among all the other events of the day, that moment when Harry Gillespie had walked slowly across the softness of the figured rug; the other moments when, half-incredulous, she had watched the silent clock on the mantel and had wondered if she had only five more minutes to live.

“Have you been in the Carmichael house?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes. Why?”

“What kind of clock have they?”

“Electric, I believe. It's a modern interior. What made you think of that?”

“For some reason I keep expecting to find a chiming clock.”

Nelsing looked up at her, consideringly. “I haven't heard a clock chime in any of the Grettry Road houses.”

“Oh,” Georgine said, and frowned. “I must be thinking of the Campanile.”

“Maybe,” Howard Nelsing said, continuing to gaze at her.

The door of the cubicle opened and Slater came in. “Preliminary report on those tests, Inspector,” he boomed.

Nelsing leafed through the sheets of paper, and glanced up, frowning at his assistant.

“Nothing there,” he said heavily. “We'll have to try again.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HERE WAS NO ESCAPING
now, no way to pretend that nothing had happened. The papers had the news. For two days the whole populace of the Bay Region rocked with the excitement of Mimi Gillespie's death, and the headlines were secondary only to those about the war.

Georgine had been warned, not only by Nelsing but by a hasty telephone call from McKinnon. “You'll probably be more comfortable if you manage to dodge the reporters. So far they've minimized your part in the case, but if they got a personal interview…”

He let it trail off ominously. “I'll stay close to home,” she told him, “and not speak to anyone. I haven't even looked at the papers.”

“There's nothing new. The police are supposed to have a clue,” said Mr. McKinnon, rather sardonically. “That may be so, and it may be a good story. But they'll get something in time. After a day or so you can come out and resume operations, when the first excitement's blown over. You're not nervous, there by yourself?”

“A little. Nelse said he'd try to find a man to guard me, but that makes me feel rather foolish. Anyway, maybe he didn't do it, I haven't seen anyone.”

“I see.” McKinnon seemed to be digesting this information. “Well, I think you'll be all right.”

Turning away from the telephone, she thought that he'd sounded queer, unlike himself, toward the end. She didn't like any of her thoughts, these days.

There was one bright spot; Barby's hostess had written to say that the homecoming had been postponed for one day. In order to avoid the week-end traffic, the party would drive down to the Bay on Monday, reaching home in time for supper. Georgine could hardly believe that she was glad of this—another day's delay before she saw her own baby!—but it was so. One more day for the police to work, to come nearer to the solution that meant safety.

She thought of it through all of Saturday and Sunday, moving about behind drawn curtains that cast a cream-colored gloom over the three small rooms of her cottage. She cleaned the place from top to bottom, and made Barby's favorite cookies and cinnamon rolls, and listened to the radio: every program from the horridly cheerful wake-up ones of early morning to the last fragment of news at night. By Sunday the local newscasters had almost ceased to mention the “Grave in the Hills Mystery.” Did that mean that the excitement had really blown over?

She had been out once, to the grocery three blocks away. She didn't try it again, for the trip had left her with a curious feeling of uneasiness. It had been only discreet to choose the path through the rear gate of the property, and across the weeds and brush of the vacant lot. What she didn't like was the rustling noise among the bushes, that seemed to parallel her progress to the street. It gave her the feeling that someone was following her, even when she came back unmolested by the front gate.

It could have been a dog among the bushes; it could even have been the police guard of Nelsing's half promise. If the latter, however, it seemed a queer way for the police to act.

After that last news broadcast on Sunday night, she thought of this again. She stepped outside the front door, closing it behind her as if she meant to go on down the walk, and then suddenly halted.

Yes. Someone had moved quickly, out there in the darkness, as if to melt into a deeper shadow.

Georgine looked hopefully at the lighted windows of her landlords' house. Nobody would dare do anything to her, surely, with people right here within call. She thought also of challenging the intruder, boldly; and after she had opened her lips found that she couldn't do it.

It would be safer inside the house, with the telephone at her elbow. She went back quietly; she even managed to sleep through most of the night, with all the doors and windows locked and the lights blazing in every room. In the morning, perhaps this would all seem foolish.

Daylight, and coffee and toast, and the sounds of Monday traffic did indeed restore her nerve tissues to an appreciable extent. She remembered uneasily that at 82 Grettry Road she had left a job unfinished, and that Professor Paev had paid her a hundred dollars in advance—which she'd already spent—to insure the job's being done within a specified time.

Georgine cursed her conscience, and her utter inability to suspect anyone whom she liked or pitied. It was no use; she'd have to finish earning that money before she could ever feel comfortable again. She called the Homicide Division, and found that although Nelsing was not in his office, Mr. Slater was.

After inaudible consultation with someone at the other end of the wire, “I think it would be safe enough, Mrs. Wyeth,” the startling bass voice said. “Things have calmed down, up there.”