The Case of the Weird Sisters (17 page)

"Oh, dear."

"You try the sleeves. After all, she's supposed to be blind. Item two, is she blind? I think you'd better not be surprised at anything I do. Not out loud, anyway."

"I'll be careful."

"But most important, we want to know what Gertrude is. What, from her inside, might impel her to murder? Lines thinks she wants revenge. Fred thinks she wants his money. What does Gertrude want in this world, and how badly?"

"Oh, dear," said Alice.

"And watch the room. Notice. Look around. She lives there if she lives anjrwhere. It may tell us whether or not she can see, and other" things.

"Look sharp, now," said Mac Duff, and he knocked on Gertrude's door.

"Come in," called Gertrude.

Alice opened the door. "Miss Gertrude, this is Alice Brennan. I've brought Mr. Duff to see you. He's a very old friend of mine, a professor of American History, from New York. Staying with Mrs. Innes," she wound up breathlessly. "And he's been so anxious to meet you."

"How do you do, Mr. Duff," said Gertrude in her cool soprano. She inclined her head.

"It's very good of you to see me," said Duff in his quiet voice. "Everywhere I go, I try to talk with members of old and important families. You can understand that, as an historian, I find them fascinating."

Gertrude's face showed a flash of animation.

"Please sit down," she said. "The armchair to the left of my bed, as you are standing. You'll find it comfortable."

Gertrude herself, sat in an ancient rocker, upright, as usual. She wore gray sUk, a grim plain pattern, vastiy unbecoming and marred by a spot or two.

Her room was large and square, almost cubic, it seemed, so high was the ceiling. It was very bare and pain-

fully in order. Her bed wore an old-fashioned white bedspread. The window curtains were white. There was very litde color. Not a great deal of furniture. There were three tables in the big room, and Alice, conning the objects that stood on them, was surprised how few these were. The table near the bed had no lamp. A jug for water and a glass. That was all. The table near the window in the bay had a low bowl with bulbs in it. Narcissus. The table against the wall held a small wooden frame with some yam stretched across it, a device for weaving. It had scarcely been started. There was also a pack of playing cards.

The walls were perfectly bare. There were no pictures, but the conventional mirror was attached to the dresser. There were no books in the room. In the comer stood an old-fashioned phonograph with a crank. No radio. Alice wondered about that. But the radio was the voice of the brawling, tumultuous world; and this bare orderly room was Gertmde's, into which the tumult did not penetrate. Alice thought: I wonder if it gets into her mind. I wonder if she knows there is a war.

It was a sad room, somehow, and Alice looked with some pity at the woman's face.

That all-over straw-colored effect, she thought, would vanish with a little rouge and a lick or two with an eyebrow pencil. But of course not, although, peering closer, Alice thought she detected a streak of face powder. Straw-colored face powder, she supposed to herself, with an inner smUe.

Gertrude was speaking, "My father's forebears come from New England. My mother was of old southem stock, although of a branch that migrated north and west."

She knew her stuff, thought Alice. The delicate disdain with which Gertrude skirted sheer boasting alienated her agam.

Duff knew his stuff, too. He rounded out her picture with knowing murmurs. Through the room paraded the past, full of gallant and blue-blooded people.

Alice got up and tiptoed toward the closet door, which luckily stood open a crack. CJertrnde's sightless face was toward her. She felt conspicuous and exposed. The door swung easily as she touched it. Gertrude's dresses hung in

perfect order on a bar that ran across the closet. Surely, in no other closet did all the dresses face one way. All the left sleeves were toward her. She ran through them quickly. The right sleeves would be more difficult. She would have to burrow. And noiselessly.

Duff was saying, "I wonder if you can describe your father for me, Miss Gertrude? lliat type of man, the aristocratic pioneer, I call him, seems to me to have made a great deal of our history."

"I can see that you are right," agreed Gertrude. "My father was a man of great vigor and ability." Two halves of a buckle clicked as the dresses swayed. Gertrude was rnunediately alert. "Alice . . . ?" she said.

Alice caught her breath. How could she speak from behind Duff, where she shouldn't be? Desperately, she grabbed for the last sleeve to inspect it. She would do her job, anyhow.

Then she took two steps, swiftly, away from the closet. "I thought, perhaps an ash tray," she said.

Duff had a cigarette in his hand, like magic. "I believe I have automatically taken out a cigarette," he said apologetically. "Forgive me, Miss Gertrude? Do you mind smoke?"

"Not at all," said Gertrude graciously. "Alice, dear, you will find an ash tray on the window sill of the bay."

"That green dish?" said Duff.

"A small glass dish," said Gertrude.

"Oh, yes, I have it." Alice brought the dish, which was amber, to Duff, and he reached his hand for it.

"Thank you."

Then her heart jumped. Duff didn't move and he made no sound, but his face contorted with revulsion and horror and surprise. The glass dish in her hand was perfectly clean and empty. She could see that. There was nothing wrong with it. Unless invisible insects wriggled there. Or Duff could see something loathsome under her shaking fingers that were loosening, in spite of her. She nearly dropped it.

Duff's hand went imder the dish. He said, and by a miracle of control, his voice reflected nothing that was in his face, "Do you smoke. Miss Gertrude?"

"Thank you no," said Gertrude. There was no ripple in her. If she could see Duffs face at all, she, too, had

miraculous control not to cry out, "What's the matter?" But she said, "I don't smoke, Mr. Duff. I think, perhaps, because I am blind, you know.''

Duff put the ash tray down on his knee and lit his cigarette. He leaned forward, bringing his face only a few feet from Gertrude Whitlock. "I'm glad you said that," he told her. "One never can be quite sure . . . I've known blind persons who seem offended if their misfortune is mentioned. Why is that. Miss Gertrude? Because they wish to pretend . .. ?"

Gertrude said in her superior way, "I am never offended. After all, to be blind is to be different from people who retain their sight." Her tone came close to suggesting that people often retained their sight through sheer vulgarity. "One can scarcely pretend. There are many difficulties, of course. But I simply resolved that I would not be a burden."

Duffs long face grew roimder in a wide clownish smile. He winked at Alice and made, with his forefinger, the time-honored circular gesture near the head that means "crazy."

Alice knew that if Gertrude could see, she would be driven wild with fury. But Gertrude was not furious. Gertrude went on speaking. "Fortunately," she said, with shrieking modesty, "I am a person of very simple tastes and requirements."

"This is an interesting house," said Duff, dropping his facial monkeyshines and leaning back. "Your father built it?"

"Yes, indeed. We have always lived here, on the hill." Gertrude proceeded to unroll a panoramic view of herself as she saw her. The Whitlocks who lived on the hill, apart, above. The eldest daughter, upon whom the mantle of distinction most surely felL Now a woman of great sensitivity, fine and refined, bearing nobly and even triumphantly her tragic affliction.

Duff said, as if her words had decided him, "Miss Gertrude, I hadn't thought of asking you these questions. But now that I meet you, I feel that you may perhaps be the one best able to answer them for me. I had thought that, because you cannot see, you would not know. But I do believe your perceptions are far more alert and your intelligence more keen . . ." He appeared to stumble. "That is to say, of course, I haven't met your sisters. But. . ."

"What questions do you mean, Mr. Duff?" said Gertrude in a most friendly fashion.

"Well, you see, last night ..."

Gertrude stiffened just a little.

"Young Alice, here, tells me she believes there was an intruder in this house."

"An intruder?" said Gertrude slowly.

"Yes, I do," said Alice truculently. One had to look sharp with this Duff. He gave you a role without warning. Duff's confident smile was sweet praise, though.

"My dear, whatever makes you think . . . ?"

"I had a feeling," Alice said. "I woke up and I felt just as if there was somebody in the hall."

"Where, my dear?"

"In the hall. downstalrs," faltered Alice.

"Your brother is rather concerned about it," Duff put in, "because, of course, that very queer accident with the furnace has made him quite imeasy, and he wonders if someone has a way of getting in here, if you are safe."

"Safe?" said Gertrude. "Of course we are safe. You must have misunderstood Innes, Mr. Duff. I doubt if my half-brother is thinking of our safety."

"Indeed?" murmured Duff.'

"He has less family feeling than you think. I am afraid that he considers us three insignificant old women." She held her head higher, if possible. "That is quite natural, and I do understand it. Why, Mr. Duff, perhaps we are."

Somebody had to say, "Oh, no!" in a shocked voice, and somebody was Alice who found herself reacting as required. Gertrude smiled. "But an intruder, dear . . ."

"My dear Miss Gertrude," said Duff, "you fail to realize that if there is a thief in Ogaunee, this house would attract him." Gertrude seemed pleased. Her long narrow teeth showed in another smile. "Now, I am wondering if your very keen ears might not have noticed something."

Gertrude appeared to cast her mind back. "I retired to this room early. Quite early. Immediately after bidding Innes good night. I remember nothing out of the ordinary. I heard the telephone bell, of course, and Isabel answering it She came in to me, right afterward."

"At what time was this, Miss Gertrude, do you know?"

"I really caimot tell you," said Gertrude. "My own watch is, unfortunately, out of order."

"Your own watch has no crystal," said Duff.

"I read it with my fingers," said Gertrude majestically. "Why do you wish to know the time, Mr. Duff? I believe it was raining. I believe we spoke of the storm."

"Had it been raining long?"

"I am very sensitive to a storm," said Gertrude. "I have learned to disregard them. I have taught myself a certain amount of inattention."

"How wise," Duff murmured. "You see, I was thinking that no intruder could have been moving about the house while your sister was still . . . er . . . downstairs. But you heard nothing then. Or later?"

"Isabel went upstairs to her own room when she left me. I heard nothing after that Nothing at all, that I remember, until people began to shout and bang."

"I wonder if Miss Isabel heard something before she went upstairs."

"She would have told me," said Gertrude a little petulantly.

"Not necessarily," said Duff gently. "I wondered if she did not look in to see if you were all right, not caring to worry you . . ."

"Isabel would find it very difficult to deceive me," said Gertrude haughtily. "If she had been worried about me, I should have known it. She came in because she wanted witch hazel on her ... her injury."

"I don't imderstand," said Duff.

"My sister is rather helpless," said Gertrude. "She had bruised her . . . her limb."

"I don't imderstand," said Duff again, sounding lost in bewilderment.

"I applied the witch hazel," said Gertrude. "I have two hands. She came in with the botde and the cotton, but she finds it very difficult to manage. So often other people have to do the simplest things for Isabel."

Duff said, "Miss Gerttude, I am afraid I am being utterly stupid, but I seem to have quite lost the thread of what you are saying. Your sister had hurt herself?"

"Yes, days ago."

"I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I see now. Your sister came to you for help. Of course. And you very kindly did help her. You dabbed the witch hazel on her arm."

"It was not her arm," said Gertrude severely. "Really, Mr. Duff . . ."

"Forgive me," said Duff quickly. "I am struggling with a reversal of feeling. You see, I had been thinking of your sister taking care of you. I find, instead, that you, in the goodness of your heart and the fortitude of your spirit, are, instead, the one to whom she appeals."

Gertrude never winced, though Alice did. It was so sticky and so thick. Gertrude said, "It was nothing." But she didn't mean it

Duff bit his lip and cast a look at Alice. "Another question," he said humbly. "When you were out of doors, just before Mr. Whitlock and Miss Brennan and the chauffeur set forth in the car, do you remember ... ?"

"Yes," said Gertrude. "I had stepped out for a breath of air."

"You heard no stranger?"

"No," she said, puzzled. "Why?"

"Perhaps there was no stranger," said Duff soothingly. "Your brother is unwell and nervous, of course." He rose. "I hope," he said, "that I may come in and chat with you another time."

"Please do," said Gertrude cordially.

Duff drifted across to the table where the weaving lay. "You are doing some charming work," he said.

"My weaving?"

"Yes. Lovely."

"K you will hand it to me, Alice dear, perhaps I shall do a litde now."

Alice gave her the frame and the wool. They went away, leaving Gertrude upright in the rocker, her thin hands busy with the work, the very portrait of saintly patience.

Duff said, "Well? The sleeves?"

"They were all right," said Alice.

"None recently washed?"

"They were all silk. And not wrinkled. And pretty clean."

"The only hope was that she might have stained her sleeve and not known it."

"It's no help, though, is it?"

"Is she blind, Alice?"

"There's only one thing," said Alice slowly.

"Yes?"

"Those playing cards."