“I don’t know. I don’t know what her deductions were. I could have helped in listing her expenses—business expenses—but she didn’t let me. It needs checking before the Treasury boys get the return, just in case.”
“I’m not going to worry over it now.” Ryker frowned into his glass.
Zia rose and came to the shelf of books, passing close beside the two men as they stood talking. She hesitated, reading titles.
“That peculiar rattle—I can’t get it out of my head, I know it means something ghastly—” Grubler stopped, glanced sharply at Ryker. “Did you hear it?”
“Plainer than you, I’ll bet. I was looking out through an open window at the courtyard. There was the rain, of course, but I couldn’t miss the other.” Ryker shook the ice in the bottom of his glass.
Grubler stood very still, his eyes fixed on the floor. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”
“Not a thing. How could I? It was as dark as a stack of black cats.” He rubbed his temple with his knuckles. “I’m getting so damned tired that I’m going to have to get some sleep. Somewhere … even in bed with a snake.”
Grubler looked at him nervously from under his thick white brows.
Miss Rachel turned to glance behind her. Zia had disappeared. This whole end of the room was empty. She had the impression that the door to the hall had just finished closing, that it was this movement which had drawn her eye.
No one in the group about the fireplace was watching her. Ryker and Grubler were now facing the row of Kachina dolls.
Her cat was at her heels when she slipped out. She had to wait a moment before letting the door shut, to be sure that the tip of the black fluffy tail was entirely out of danger. Samantha lifted her black nose, sniffed, seemed to listen. Here in the hall, with its high ceiling, the sound and the smell of the rain were more distinct, a flood rushing on the tiles of the old house.
Miss Rachel went up to the arched doorway at the top of the stairs. The yellow light on the gallery illuminated Zia’s figure, directly below it. Zia’s fingers were reaching for the switch.
When the light went out, Zia must have noticed the reflected glow from the hall and Miss Rachel outlined by it in the doorway. She said quietly, “Have you come to watch too?”
Whatever was to be watched, Miss Rachel was willing. She went out on the tiled floor into the dark and Zia shut the heavy door behind her. Miss Rachel sensed, rather than saw, that Zia moved over to the railing. She followed, feeling her way. Zia’s voice came in a whisper: “When it appears again, I shall know.”
“When what appears?”
“The Kachina.”
Miss Rachel recalled Jennifer’s nervousness over the thing she had seen from their window, the secretive glance she had exchanged with Gail. Plus Ilene’s queer story of what had drawn her to the little room at the corner of the garden. “How do you think it’s managed?”
“Nothing very difficult—Gail has a Kachina mask, one she made from a sketch she did at my village. The mask used to hang in the hall. She tells me now that the paint had begun to chip and that she had moved it, intending to repair it eventually. She had put it in the room where Christine lies.”
The disembodied voice was soft and controlled. In it, too, were watchfulness and caution. The rain was a faintly silver mist; Zia was only a shadow, close at hand.
“And the rest of the costume?”
“Not necessarily authentic. Anything bright would do.… You have never seen the Kachina dances?”
“No. I suppose they’re very picturesque.”
“It is only recently that I have begun to appreciate the ceremonies of my people, to see their fitness and their usefulness in our world. I suppose as one grows older one inevitably becomes wiser.”
“It applies to some,” Miss Rachel agreed.
There was a small silence. Then Zia asked, “It’s your cat, isn’t it, that I feel now and then … she’s breathing against my stocking.”
“She’s smelling you. A rude habit, but her way of knowing people.”
“No doubt she can tell many secrets about us.” Zia brushed Miss Rachel as she bent, lifted Samantha, whose eyes gleamed in the dark.
“I never felt that one could fool a cat,” Miss Rachel admitted. “Of course the pose of sphinxlike knowingness impresses you, to start with. Then …” She hesitated, leaning towards the railing under the arch. “Isn’t there a light of some kind below us?”
It had seemed as though a faint, uneven shadow were moving against the curtain of the rain, that there had been a dim illumination of the edge of the garden.
“Yes, someone is down there,” Zia whispered.
The thunder had died. Under the velvet drumming of the rain was a pool of silence, of apprehensive listening, that seemed spread over all the house. Something tickled the back of Miss Rachel’s scalp. Hairs rising, she thought with a touch of self-scorn. Below them was a sound of a step, the scratch of a match, then a feeble yellow glow.
“Por Dios,” said Pedro hoarsely in the lower gallery. “Let my little light live awhile so that the Old One who waits in the corner shall not find my flesh.” He continued to mutter what seemed to be a prayer as he shuffled towards the kitchen. They heard a door open, then the futile clicking of a switch.
Miss Rachel felt Zia’s swift movement towards the light fixture.
Pedro came back, hurrying in darkness.
“It’s true—there isn’t any electricity,” Zia said.
“And no telephone,” said a man’s voice dryly from the doorway. It took Miss Rachel a moment to identify it as Emerson’s. “Do you know, in a way it’s a relief? We were all huddled together there in the living room, cozy in the protection afforded by a couple of little wires strung over miles of desert, not understanding that the floods which could wash out the highway would sooner or later get to the poles and take them too”—there was a dry, ironic chuckle—“and all at once there was just the fire. A scared sputtering little fire that didn’t light up half the room.”
Zia said nothing. Miss Rachel had the impression that she was alert, on edge, and that for some reason she mistrusted Emerson.… Gail’s influence, perhaps. Finally Zia said, “What time is it?”
“After one. Ten minutes or so.” Emerson lit a match, held it to a cigarette, and in its light offered the pack to Miss Rachel and Zia. Zia accepted a cigarette and allowed Emerson to light it. “What were you two doing up here on the gallery?”
“Talking,” said Zia evasively. “As for lights—I suppose Gail has a supply of candles?”
“She sent Pedro to the kitchen for them.” He came over to the railing, threw the glowing match stub out into the dripping dark. “Miss Rachel—that first business about a rattling sound … where were you?”
“I was in Ilene’s room.”
“Ilene was with you?”
“Yes.”
He smoked for a while in silence. “Where was she stand-ing?”
Miss Rachel looked at the black-cotton dark, trying to bring back the details of Ilene’s room. “She was at the window. She had a hand on the drapery.”
Emerson asked quietly, “Why didn’t she want us to know that Bob was at the window tonight when this other thing came … rattler, or whatever it was made the sound?”
Miss Rachel thought about it. “Perhaps she thought the repetition, the sameness of that one detail, might be noticed—that I might notice it.”
“Dave got hold of it right away. Ilene acts terrified. Which is her room?”
He struck another match and stood watching Miss Rachel from the other side of its pin-point yellow flame.
“The third door.”
He walked to it, turned the knob, threw the door open. “We searched up here … there weren’t any snakes in any of the rooms. Anyway, this thing is a fake and Ilene’s in on it.” He went across the room; his figure seemed to narrow and diminish in the faint glow of the match.
They came after, walking uneasily because their errand was one
of suspicion, of accusation.
“Damn. Burned myself.” Emerson dropped the stub, lit a new match, gave the package to Miss Rachel. “Keep lighting them while I look this over. There’s a piece of twine here. Feels like fishing line … He twitched something behind the heavy drapery. “Listen.”
His fingers moved again. As dry as beans in a basket came the answering rattle from the outside of the pane.
He pushed up the lower pane, leaned outward, motioned for Miss Rachel to hand him the little box of matches. He struck two while he leaned out into the dark, then drew his head inside. “It’s above, up under the eaves. Of course it would be. We’d have noticed anything hanging down the wall. I’m going to let down the upper pane.”
When he had the upper part of the window open, he climbed to the sill and twisted his head and shoulders through.
Miss Rachel struck a fresh match. At the moment she met Zia’s eyes. They were fixed on Emerson with a look of suspicion.
It was true, she thought—they had no way of knowing what he was doing outside there. Certainly, though, he hadn’t had anything up his sleeves. Whatever he brought in …
He was swinging it in front of their eyes. A gourd, exactly like those in the painted clusters beside each bedroom door.
“Hear that?” He held the neck of the gourd, shook it lightly.
So far as Miss Rachel could tell, it was the same whispering rattle she had heard before.
Chapter 13
Miss Jennifer was sitting upright in bed, surrounded by a little lake of candlelight and buttressed by various implements of self-defense. The gauzy yellow glow softened no lines in her indignant face, mitigated none of the battle-axey determination in her eye. When the door opened slowly and rather slyly she lifted an umbrella off the pillow beside her.
The shadow of the umbrella tip was sharp on the opposite wall, like an uplifted finger of warning. Miss Jennifer breathed through her teeth.
The cat slipped in, looked around, came over to the bed, and studied Miss Jennifer cautiously. Miss Rachel stuck her head through the doorway. “Oh, it’s you,” said Jennifer, letting the umbrella drop. “And high time.”
Miss Rachel came in and shut the door behind her. “What are you doing up here?”
“When the lights failed, those other people began popping in and out of the room like a bunch of rabbity ghosts. They made me nervous. I got some candles from Pedro and came upstairs.” Jennifer punched her pillows higher behind her back. “I don’t intend to sleep, naturally. But a bed makes a sort of natural fort.”
“Have you seen Miss Taggart?”
“No, I have not. Now that you’re here, we’ll lock the door. She can knock if she wishes to get in.”
“Mr. Emerson and Zia and I have been searching for Miss Taggart and we can’t find her.” Miss Rachel went over to the cot and sat down on its edge. “We found rather an odd arrangement in her room.” She explained to Jennifer about the gourd hanging outside the window. “I’m pretty sure it caused that sort of whispery rattle we’ve been hearing. Mr. Emerson thinks that Ilene rigged up the gourd-and-twine arrangement in order to give Mrs. Ryker a fright … a revenge for the note Christine had sent her.”
The candles flickered; shadows moved uneasily in the room. “He’s implying, then, that Miss Taggart had already known the identity of the poison-pen letter writer?”
“Yes. And he has seized, or seemed to seize, on a most simple motive. A harmless and rather childish vengeance against a ruthless, venomous woman.…” Miss Rachel tapped her foot absently and frowned. “There is another difficulty. A problem of time. Miss Taggart didn’t go upstairs as soon as she arrived. I didn’t keep my eye on her all of the time before I slipped away to come upstairs, but I’m fairly sure she was below, either in the gallery or with Mr. Ryker in the kitchen.”
“But if she was downstairs, hadn’t even as yet come up here—”
“Wait a minute. There is one small loophole there—I was in Mr. Ryker’s room first, looking through the things he’d brought, trying to get a line on whoever was writing those letters. I was in his room for some minutes. I didn’t hear anyone go by to another room, but the walls are thick and the doors fit tightly. And she’d have worked quietly and quickly, anyway.”
“I hadn’t heard of this snooping previously, Rachel. Did Gail really ask you to rummage into her guests’ belongings?”
“No. I think the idea rather shocked her, in fact. Going back to Ilene, could she have burst in on me and pretended surprise and mild outrage as a sort of alibi? Could she have realized how clever it would be to have a witness with her, actually in her room, while she pulled her little trick behind the window draperies?”
Jennifer blinked thoughtfully. “Of course, once you discard the idea that the snake was already here, you might as well start speculating as to whether it wasn’t brought into the house from the Snake Dance.”
Miss Rachel got up and roamed the space between the bed and the cot. “Would it be possible, do you think? How thoroughly were those snakes guarded?”
Jennifer shivered. “They seemed literally underfoot.”
“And yet as soon as the dancing was over, all of them were gone, neatly gathered up by the priests, to be disposed of far away from the village.” She watched vexedly as the nosy cat, having climbed the bed, tried to get her nose close enough to investigate a candle. “Keep an eye on Samantha. She’s going to scorch some whiskers. If the snake were brought here from the village, a container had to be provided for it. Fangproof, and something no one would be curious about.”
Jennifer drew the umbrella closer. “Mr. Grubler carried an enormous pair of field glasses. The case hung by a strap over his shoulder. In the car, coming back, I noticed he kept the glasses out to look at the storm clouds.”
“Mr. Ryker had the little lunch hamper which we supposed contained his vodka. Zia brought that big buckskin carryall. Ilene’s purse is roomy enough to store the contents of a pharmacy … she carries a small drug department with her everywhere. Hal Emerson took a package out of the car when we got to the house, something he apparently had bought in the village. About the size and shape of a shoe box—he bumped me with it as we came in and apologized for being clumsy. Even Gail—she keeps a little Indian basket in her car which I supposed she used for shopping. It has a tight lid. She brought it indoors.” Miss Rachel smoothed the white widow’s peak in the middle of her forehead worriedly. “You see, it could have been any of them—if the snake got in that way.”
There was a rap on the door. When Miss Rachel turned the key in the lock, Gail looked in. “Have you seen Ilene recently?”
“Not since coming upstairs,” Jennifer said, hefting the umbrella absently.
Miss Rachel said, “Zia and Mr. Emerson and I were looking for her a few minutes ago.”
“I know,” Gail said. “Zia told me, and then we all searched. She isn’t anywhere. She’s gone.” Gail came farther into the circle of candlelight. Her expression was one of worry, of suppressed fear. “Don’t you think that Ilene behaved very peculiarly tonight?”
“She was very nervous,” Miss Rachel agreed, “but that may have been due to the fact that she was lying. She was scared stiff we were going to find out that Mr. Ryker was standing beside the window when that ratting noise came tonight—she knew, you see, that I’d recall the other rattle, the first one, while she was standing by her window.”
Gail touched her lips with her tongue. “Zia told me about that gourd under the eaves. I can’t understand the purpose behind it, unless it was meant to frighten Christine.”
“We can’t know why the gourd was put where it was until we find Miss Taggart. When you spoke of her acting peculiarly, you included, of course, all that business with the diaphanous nightgown and robe.”
Gail looked back at her blankly. “Yes, I had thought it rather queer.”
“They were the only garments in her entire wardrobe which were what Jennifer calls ‘fast’ and I’d call ‘sexy.’ You told
me more than once, in speaking of Miss Taggart, what an old maid she was, how prim and proper, and the girl herself put on an almost pathological display of repression and timidity.”
Jennifer raised the umbrella in the manner of a teacher getting ready for a lecture. “Timidity.… Rachel, you could practically see through those garments.”
“Oh, indeed,” Miss Rachel nodded. “Didn’t it strike you, though, that they had rather the air of a costume? Of something put on to play a part?”
“I suppose so.” Gail frowned into the candlelight. “But strictly out of character for Ilene—her character, I mean, as I’ve known it for years. Of course it’s always possible for people to change.”
“Or to reveal some substratum of desire or of recklessness,” Miss Rachel said. “Like our aunt Lily. She was our mother’s sister, and Father liked her and had arranged a respectable match with a young banker of his business circle. Then Aunt Lily ran off with a traveling salesman and when their romance wilted she joined a leg show.”
Miss Rachel had shed the coat she had put on over her gown previously. With a full set of clothing over her arm, she started for the bathroom.
“What I’m getting at is that Ilene Taggart may have suddenly, in the shock over Christine’s murder, felt free of shyness—free enough to run about openly in the daring negligee. This is a possibility—that she bought those clothes out of wistful longing and then afterward suddenly found the courage to use them.”
Jennifer said curiously, “You sound as if there are other possibilities.”
Miss Rachel left the bathroom door ajar as she dressed. “I think there is a chance that the garments were provided for her.”
Gail’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean …”
“No. Ilene is not the girl to be seduced by a wolf bearing black undies. Nothing obvious like that—but say that she was to assume a part and carry it out. Remember that in addition to wearing these clothes she did something else most strangely out of character.”
Jennifer had suddenly gotten the drift of Miss Rachel’s actions. “If you intend to go out gallivanting around in the dark, with a fiend and heaven knows how many rattlesnakes …
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