Alys was propped up in what had been the guard’s chair. Janet was alternately bathing her forehead with cold water and waving a crystal bottle under her nose. Horace Brainard still sagged ashen beside the now closed door to his room. An unintelligible and persistent noise came from inside.
As Fergus and the doctor came out into the hall, Horace Brainard started hastily forward. “O’Breen, I feel I have done you a great injustice I had not recognized the true gravity of the situation if you are still disposed to discuss the matter with me I am sure we can reach …” His words gushed out all ababble, as though he had been composing and memorizing the speech ever since he awoke and now could not get it said quickly enough. But in midsentence he choked, coughed, and looked about him with wild fear. He seized Fergus’ hand and gasped, “Oh God. You won’t let him …” His free hand jerked spasmodically toward his throat.
“Mr. O’Breen has everything well in hand,” said Dr. Arnold soothingly. “Control yourself, Horace.”
Janet paused in her ministrations and made a contemptuous face at her patient. “What’s been going on around here? What’s the matter with Father? And what happened to Alys? Did she pass out at last?”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Horace Brainard made a strangling noise that might have been “Lucas” and pointed helplessly at the closed door of Quincy’s bedroom.
Janet said “Oh God …” Her hands clenched tight. “It’s … it was … ?”
“He is dead,” Dr. Arnold announced in a level voice.
She stood perfectly still for an instant, her gold-brown eyes dull and expressionless. Then with a sudden fear she clutched Fergus’ arm. “But Tom was on guard … Tom… ! Where is Tom? What’s happened to him?”
“He’s all right.” All at once Fergus felt very tired. “He’ll be out here any minute.”
Slowly Alys Trent opened her eyes and cast a blank and blinking gaze about the hall. The eyes lit on Fergus and came alive. “There he is!” She rose, pointing with a dramatically outstretched finger like an avenging ghost or a 1917 recruiting poster.
Janet turned to her and urged her back into the chair. “There, Alys. You’re all right now.”
“The hell I am,” Alys stated emphatically. “That son of a bitch socked me.”
“Fergus!” Janet laughed, not hysterically but with a much needed relief of tension.
“Mr. O’Breen!” Brainard drew back from the detective. “What does this mean?”
“It means,” said Fergus, “that Alys was right after all. What I need’s a drink.” He reached into Alys’ coat, nimbly eluded the sweeping scratch of her nails, hauled out the whisky bottle, and uptilted it.
Exactly three drops fell into his mouth.
“Nyaaa!” remarked Alys gleefully.
The bottle clunked on the floor. “It also means,” Fergus went on quietly, “that I’m hereby taking over this house as thoroughly as if I was the Los Angeles Police Department in person. Or make it Santa Eulalia or the coast guard or whatever the hell has authority on this bleak rock. I know this is absolutely extralegal and unconstitutional enough to curl Hughes’ beard, but I’m doing it. And anybody wants to argue argues with the Smoker’s Companion.” He held the bonehandled revolver clearly in sight.
“Our friend likes night,” he continued. “People are off guard then. It’s easy. All right: As has been previously remarked by Mr. Lunt and by a certain elderly gentleman on the Isle of Patmos, There Shall Be No Night. From now on nobody sleeps. Macbeth hath murdered sleep. A night of memories and sighs we dedicate to this, and our sleeves’ll get the hell raveled out of them. And I’m bitchtired and babbling streamofconsciousness but I can still think and I can still act; and somebody here had damn well better remember that. O. K.?”
“But of course, Mr. O’Breen,” babbled the pallid Horace Brainard. “Of course. We want you to do everything possible. You are in full charge. Take absolute command. Do everything.”
Fergus smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes. “Quick-change artist, huh?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t bother. I should argue with such coöperation. All right, I’m in charge. Here’s orders for the campaign: I want everybody rounded up in the livingroom. I’ll station myself in that thing that hopes it’s going to be a library. I’ll talk to each one of you in there. We’ll spend the rest of this night pounding and sweating till we’ve found the truth. And tomorrow we’ll—”
Miss Paris stepped out of the master bedroom. Fergus broke off and turned to her. “How is she?”
Miss Paris shook her head. “Still hysterical. She’s quieted down a little, but not much. Hugh, I think you’d better help.”
Dr. Arnold nodded and followed her back into the bedroom.
“A sweet cast,” Fergus mused aloud. “Twelve people on this island. Five of them are either unconscious or hysterical. One is dead. And one is a murderer.”
“O’Breen,” said Janet.
“Yes?”
“Take me to Tom.”
ii
“If ever I manage to get me a fee out of this case,” said Fergus, “I’m going to buy some books for this hypothetical library. Not sets—just good solid lived-with handfuls from the two-for-a-quarter trough …” He paused in his pacing and looked down at Tom Quincy. “How’s it going?” he asked, almost gently.
Tom felt the back of his neck and tentatively shook his head as though to make sure it was still fastened on. “No tackle ever hit me like that,” he groaned.
“Handy thing, socks.”
“And Uncle Lucas … While I was lying there, he …”
“We make a swell pair of guards, don’t we? Youth will take charge. You are all safe as houses with the redoubtable team of Quincy and O’Breen on guard. No pasarán and stuff. And look at us … I’m damned near tempted to hand in my license.”
Tom shook his head again and seemed to get his eyes at last in focus. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“Can’t I just? Tom, my boy, you don’t know the bottomless depths of the O’Breen capacity for self-blame. Sure, in a whodunit it’s swell. As soon as the Great Detective shows up at the house party, all hell busts loose. Murder in every nook and cranny. Murders by every crook and nanny. And at the grand finale he nabs the murderer and preens his tail-feathers and says What a good boy am I and the hell with those corpses. But my—what can I say without sounding like a prig?—my professional ideals don’t run that way. I think the best detective isn’t the guy that solves murders; he’s the man who prevents them. And by those standards I don’t stack up so good right now.”
“It didn’t seem real before,” Tom reflected. “Cats … Cats die and it’s too bad, but it isn’t anything immediate. Even Corcoran—a servant that we’ve never even seen—he didn’t make it come home to me. Before, it was all not quite real and rather curious and interesting. Now it’s so goddamned actual that you can’t bear to think about it. And what, in God’s name, can you be grinning about at this time?”
“Sorry.” Fergus let his face go serious again. “I was just thinking of Janet being a ministering angel and bringing you back to consciousness. She puts on such an impressive act of being independent and efficient, but there’s a lot of good pure feminine in her. And somehow I think she likes you, God knows why.”
Tom was half-grinning himself. “Isn’t she wonderful? She’s an even finer girl than I remembered. She’s the one bright spot in this whole—”
“Come in,” Fergus called.
Janet entered with a bottle. Fergus started to snatch, restrained himself, said, “We must be dignified, we must,” and slowly poured a long gurgle down his throat.
Janet went directly over to Tom. “Are you all right now?” She rested her hand lightly on his head.
He said “Owl” and jerked away. “It’s all right if you leave it alone, but it still doesn’t feel quite like part of me. It’s like that Thurber—you know, the fencer with his head sailing off in the air and saying, ‘T
ouché!’”
“You poor man. But at that you’re …” She paused.
“… damned lucky,” he finished for her. “Sure. Damned lucky I’m not stretched out in splotched sheets like … And I was on guard, Janet. I was on guard.”
Fergus wiped his lips. “Now who’s wallowing in self-blame? Here, take this. O’Breen’s Standard Home Remedy for Self-Accusation.”
Tom followed the prescription.
Fergus turned to Janet. “They all out there?”
“Stella’s still upstairs with Mother. She’ll bring her down as soon as she thinks she’s up to it.”
“And the others?”
“Uncle Jim’s up and around now, looking even worse than Tom, I’m afraid. And Father and Dr. Hugh are out there. And,” she added contemptuously, “Alys.”
“The doctor checked up on Corcoran and Ramirez?”
“They’re all right.”
Fergus frowned. “That bothers me. If our murderer’s mad, you’d think he’d want to finish off his work nice and neat. If he’s sane, you’d think he’d be afraid they might talk. … How’s your father holding up?”
“He’s suddenly decided you’re wonderful and our only hope.”
Janet’s voice was steady and her face impassive, but Fergus watched her with curious concern. “Stick out your hands, babe,” he commanded abruptly. “Straight out, like this.” He observed their helpless tremor. “O’Breen’s Standard Home Remedy for you too,” he prescribed.
“I couldn’t!” she burst out. “I don’t see how you can sit around drinking as though this were a literary tea when—”
Fergus perched himself on the library table. “Look, my sweeting,” he said patiently. “Did you lead a normal childhood?”
She looked blank. “I guess so.”
“By which I mean: of course you know Alice damned near by heart?”
“Yes.”
“Well, remember when the Red Queen explains to Alice how you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place?”
“Of course. But—”
“All right. That’s the way it is with the Home Remedy. There come times you’ve got to drink as hard as you can to stay sober. And this, macushla, is one of those times.” He took the bottle from Tom, illustrated the precept with another swig, and set it on the table beside the now complete knife-collection.
“I still don’t want any,” said Janet. “But I understand now. Sorry. I shan’t lecture you again.”
“I could do with a good lecture. I could do with anything that made sense. Because that is the primest hell of this whole primally hellish business: It does not make sense.”
“Sense from a madman?” Tom asked.
“But it doesn’t make even mad sense. Take it from the beginning. Well, Valentino and Corcoran—maybe they do make mad sense. But Ramirez: Say our murderer wants to isolate us all on this island. So he conks Hokay and sends the launch off into the nowhere. Sure. Fine. Only why does my suitcase disappear?”
Janet’s serious expression relaxed. “That’s funny,” she said. “And I mean funny-ha-ha. It’s the comedy relief in this mess of ours. The brilliant young detective rides hi-yo to the rescue, and the first thing happens is all his equipment gets stolen.”
“O. K.,” said Fergus dourly. “Let’s all have a good laugh. Ha ha. But if you can control your mirth—why was it stolen?”
“He knew you were a detective. He was afraid you might have a gun in there or—”
“—or all the possibly helpful stuff I damned well did have. O. K. Pretty and logical. But who knew I was a detective? I’m not famous. My fair Irish puss doesn’t grace the tabloids. My name doesn’t ring resounding through the land. Two people on this island knew who I am. Quincy was with me at the time the boat was stolen, and as for Miss Paris, if by any unbelievable chance she didn’t want me around, why, all she had to do was just not invite me.”
“Madmen,” said Tom tentatively, “do the damnedest things.”
“From a professional psychologist, sir, that’s feeble and unworthy question-dodging.”
“I know,” Tom admitted. “Wait till I’ve got a brain again instead of this fuzz.”
“Or,” Fergus resumed, “take what just happened. The socks with the sock. Can you find even a madman’s reason for that? Lay out Tom, sure. That’s clear and sensible. Get rid of the guard before you go about your dirty work. Though even at that, if you were a madman with a passion for throat-slitting, if you had a nice sharp eager carving knife in your hand, and if a man was stretched out there unconscious all ready for you, like a trussed sacrifice—would you stop at socking?”
“Now that,” Tom insisted, “does make mad sense. He wasn’t thinking of me as a living person with a throat to be cut, but simply as an obstruction in his way. He’d no more slit my gullet after laying me out than he’d have carved up a door after picking its lock. I was just a thing.”
“Could be,” Fergus reflected. “Could be. … But that isn’t the major inconsistency. The big problem is: Why sock Herndon? The sand-sock, for our man, is what you might call a utilitarian weapon. He uses it to get rid temporarily of people who are in the way: Ramirez at the boat and you in the hall. How was Herndon in his way?”
“Perhaps he’d cached the knife in Herndon’s room.”
“Possible. But not what I’d call downright likely. He’d want it somewhere handy, where he could get at it whenever opportunity arose. No …” Fergus sprang lightly from the table and lit a cigarette as he began to pace. “But the hell with these questions. The limbo, rather; they’re just shelved, not irrevocably damned. But we’ve got other fish to fry first.” His momentary despondency had now vanished. He moved with a lithe rhythm, and his green eyes were eagerly alive.
“We’ll make a formal start on you, Janet. Then you can go join the happy group outside. First question: Tell me everything you did between when you left the bonfire and when you heard your mother scream.”
“I went inside the house,” said Janet. “Tom was in the hall, and we talked together a little while. Then Uncle Jim wanted to say goodnight to me. I was in his room probably about five minutes and then came out to Tom again. Mother came out of the bathroom, and Father was so nervous he wouldn’t let her in their room till we proved she wasn’t the murderer.”
“And how did you achieve that?”
“It was Tom’s bright idea. We sang Three Blind Mice.”
Fergus reached for the bottle. “Forgive me, Miss Brainard,” he said formally, “but I need a reassuring slug. I have heard of people establishing their innocence by every means from a knowledge of Chinese ceramics to getting murdered themselves, though that always seemed to me an extreme measure. But this is a new one. Will you tell me how the ability to sing rounds is incompatible with guilt?”
“It proved she was plural. I mean, we were.”
Fergus thought a moment and nodded. “I guess it’s all right. Go on from there.”
“I talked with Tom a while longer and finally went to bed. I was feeling all confused and upset and I expected to toss for hours; but I went right to sleep.”
“Unromantic,” said Fergus. “And you didn’t hear anything?”
“Not a thing. I was a log.”
“Ah,” Fergus sighed, “the healthy sleep of tired youth. … Touching-like. And how about this afternoon? Where were you when Corcoran was attacked?”
Janet forced a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to say, “You understand this is all purely a formality?’ I was dressing, I guess.”
“And later on when the boat was stolen? Where were you then?”
“Then? Why I …”
“I left you in the livingroom.”
“I know, but …” She hesitated and looked side-wise at Tom.
“Go on.”
“All right. I was very silly and I got annoyed because the first time I see Tom in five years there he is drinking with Alys. So after you left, I left too and went upstairs. I didn’t have any earthly go
od reason for doing that so I tried to alibi myself to myself by putting on some more lipstick and then deciding it looked terrible and taking it off again and Tom Quincy if you go on grinning like that I swear I shall sock you.”
Fergus went to the table and made a few scribbles on a sheet of paper. “Thanks, Janet. Good clear direct answers, aside from rounds and lipstick. Maybe there’s something to the theory of crosswords as mental discipline.”
“I’ve got to keep myself clear, O’Breen. It’s the only way that I can help you. And you’re the only one who can help us.”
“I’ll try to live up to that,” said Fergus seriously. “And now you run along and be a good shepherd. I’ll send Tom out as soon as I’m ready for the first interview.”
Janet rested her hand on Tom’s as she passed him. She did not speak, nor, after that exchange of glances, did she need to.
“I don’t suppose,” said Fergus dryly, “that you can tell me one damned thing?”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“I’m not. Just stating facts clearly, like Janet. Am I right?“
“Of course. If I knew anything, if I so much as suspected anything, don’t you think I’d have come out with it before this?”
“I’d hope so.”
“This may be a job to you, Fergus. It’s a damned sight more than that to me. These people are my friends, almost my own family. That man who was murdered was my uncle. And Janet …”
“I know. I didn’t mean to start anything. But tell me, while we’re on these tender family emotions: How did you get on with your uncle?”
“Well enough. No house afire, you understand, but well enough. He … I suppose you might say he tolerated me, and that was more than he did most people. He never rode me the way he would ride his employees or Mr. Brainard, even though he did have a financial whiphand over me. And now that he’s dead …
“Uncle Lucas was my only living relative, you know. My father died when I was in diapers, and my mother was always an invalid. Died about ten years ago. My uncle put me through college on an allowance—even my work for the Ph.D. And now that he’s dead, it somehow seems as though I’d been damned close to him.”
The Case of the Seven Sneezes Page 14
