Dr. Nate Croft was standing in the doorway.
He stood very stiffly, staring at us, his eyes blazing in a cold, stricken face.
“Selena!”
Selena twisted away from me, stood up and saw him. She pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and smiled at him cheerfully.
“Hello, Nate, dear.”
Most men, feeling the way he obviously felt, would have done something violent. Dr. Croft, apparently, was not the violent type. He dropped into a chair, as if his legs had suddenly melted.
In a pinched voice, he said: “Does it have to be every man, Selena?”
“What do you mean?” She stared, open-eyed. “Really, aren’t you being rather complicated?”
He looked up, his face haggard and exhausted. That’s what happens when you love Selena, I thought.
“This time I thought it’d be safe. I put on the casts. I… Oh, what difference does it make?”
“Darling, please. So stuffy.”
“Stuffy?” Anger and a sort of weary hopelessness made his voice shake. “I gambled everything helping you because you said you loved me. Remember? You said you’d divorce Gordy and marry me because you loved me.” A laugh forced its way between his pale lips. “You’ll never marry me, will you?”
Selena moved to him, caressing his arm. “Darling, it’s so silly thinking about things in the future.”
“And if you do, it’ll still be every man that comes in sight.” His eyes met mine for the first time. “It’s wonderful. I recommend it. Try it sometime—if you haven’t already. Try falling in love with a tramp.”
“Nate!”
He swung round to her. “That’s the word for you, isn’t it?”
Selena laughed her deep, full-bosomed laugh. “It’ll do, baby, but I think you could have thought out a nicer one.” She kissed him perfunctorily on the ear. “Darling, you make such a fuss always. So suspicious. I was only kissing him because he’s going away.”
Nate stiffened. “Going away?”
“Yes, honey. The most exasperating thing’s happened. You might as well hear it now and get it over with. The reciting of the poem and everything went wonderfully. We thought we had everything in the bag. Then that dreary Mr. Moffat…”
She told him, with a bald callousness that shocked me, exactly what the dreary Mr. Moffat had done. Without giving him a moment to catch his breath, she went on with my theory about Gordy and the plan for getting me out of the house if the autopsy report was bad.
I’d been sorry enough for Nate before. I was almost too sorry for him as I saw his face crumple and his lips start to quiver. I’d taken a lot from the Friends but I had nothing much to lose. Nate had everything to lose. His hopeless desire to make a monogamous wife out of Selena had already lured him into gambling his entire career. Now he was faced with the possibility of exposure as an accomplice in a murder charge. A connection, however faint, with murder spelled the end of a doctor’s existence.
“So you see, baby?” Selena concluded, almost absent-mindedly. “If the police are objectionable tomorrow, we’ll somehow have Jan smuggle him out of the house and up to your cabin. That’ll be all right, won’t it? I mean, you don’t mind his using it?”
“But, Selena,” he stammered, “if the police find him hiding out in my cabin…”
“And, later, after a few days, when it’s time for the casts to come off, you can just run up there and do it for him. Then he’ll have to be on his own.”
She slid her arms around him and nestled against him, her lips close to his.
“I know you’ll be a darling about it, won’t you?”
“Selena…”
“And you mustn’t be selfish, baby. “She caressed his ear.” After all, you got him into this jam. The least you can do is to help him out of it.”
Mrs. Friend came in then. She smiled at me and then at Nate.
“Hello, Nate, dear. Just in time for lunch. How nice.”
“Lunch,” he echoed bleakly. “How can you talk about lunch when Mr. Friend…”
Mrs. Friend lifted her hand. “Now, dear, I’ve made the others promise not to talk about it any more. If things should go wrong tomorrow, we have our plans. There’s no point in harping upon unpleasantness.”
She crossed to my chair and started to wheel me towards the dining-room. She was humming some vague little tune.
“The only thing now’s to be patient until the Inspector comes tomorrow. I’m so glad Nate came to lunch. Cook’s thought out a really rather daring aspic…”
Chapter 21
We ate the rather daring aspic and settled down to be patient. Our plan, unsatisfactory as it was in almost every way, at least had the virtue of simplicity. Nate admitted his mountain cabin was stocked with canned foods. We decided that if the autopsy report indicated murder tomorrow afternoon, we would somehow stall the police from any serious investigation until the next day. As soon after nightfall as was safe, Jan was to smuggle me out of the house to Nate’s cabin by way of a disused track which wound from the rear of the Friend house over the desolate, uninhabited mountains. Jan had to be rehearsed in his role. That was all.
Marny and I decided to do it between us. She wheeled me down the corridor past her own room and Mimsey’s to the Dutchman’s quarters. Then we entered in answer to his call. We found him scrambling off his bed, tying the cord of a blue towel bathrobe around his waist. With the departure of the Clean Living League, he had obviously reverted to his customary nudism.
He grinned at Marny, stared inquiringly at me and tossed the blond hair back from his eyes.
Marny said: “He understands me if I talk slowly. Let me handle this.”
She put her hand on his huge arm. “Jan, tomorrow you take him”—she indicated me—“in car. Okay?”
He nodded, still grinning.
“You take him to mountains—place in mountains where you took Selena. Remember?”
He nodded again.
“When you get there, stay with him all the time. Stay with him.”
The blond lock flopped down again as he nodded.
“And don’t tell anyone. Don’t say anything. Never, never tell.”
His big bronze hand moved over hers, enveloping it completely.
“Ja,” he said. “Ja.”
Marny glanced at me. “He’s got it,” she said. “I’m quite sure.”
“There’s only one place in the mountains where he took Selena?”
“Yes. Only Nate’s cabin. He drove her up there twice.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, wait a minute.” She turned back to Jan. “When you drive to mountains—don’t go out front drive. Go back way.”
His face clouded.
“Back way. The way behind the house. The old track.”
Jan still frowned his incomprehension.
“Here. “Marny picked up a pencil, found a piece of paper and drew a rough sketch of the house indicating the front drive and the winding track at the back. She showed it to him.
“Not the front way,” she pointed. “The back way. Go the back way.” She pointed again. “The way Gordy used to take. Gordy’s way.”
Understanding smoothed the wrinkles out of his tanned forehead. He took the pencil from Marny and drew a cross half-way down the back path. He looked at her questioningly.
Marny stared at the cross. “No, Jan. Not there. Just the back way. Gordy’s way. Take the car and…” She pushed the pencil along the track and then right off the paper, indicating he was to drive me straight off the property. “To the mountains. To Selena’s place. Understand?”
He understood then. It was obvious. He was grinning all over his face, pleased with himself. He was still grinning when Marny and I left.
It was nice to know that someone could find amusement in the situation somewhere.
After our visit with Jan there was nothing left to do but to wait. We spent the rest of the day waiting and, in spite of Mrs. Friend’s determination to look on the bright side, t
he hours passed with increasing gloom. The shadow of Gordy as a murderer or at least as a probable murderer hung over me like a pall. Nate had to go back to his sanatorium fairly early. The three Friend women and I managed to get through dinner and an evening of desultory card-playing. But I couldn’t keep my mind on four-handed gin-rummy. I saw so many pitfalls ahead, so many things that might happen to make a hash of my very makeshift plans.
Although the Friends were going to try to put the Inspector onto the track of the real Gordy, I was the Gordy he knew and it would be my trail from the house that he would follow first. Sargent would soon know, if he didn’t already, that Nate was a friend of the family. If he also discovered he owned the cabin in the mountains, it would be one of the first places he’d search. My plan was really no plan at all. It was merely ignominious flight from a predicament that was impossible to face. And my only real hope for saving my own skin and, incidentally, the Friends, was to remain hidden until the casts were off and then re-establish myself under my own real identity.
But that meant getting my memory back. That’s what it would all rest on. My memory.
I looked across the card-table at Selena who was my opponent. Her fair head was bent over her cards; her skin was soft and tanned to the color of brown sugar. Absurdly, although she had made a wreck of Nate Croft and even now, I was sure, would deliver me as a fall guy to the police without batting an eye if she could get away with it, I knew I was going to miss her. Even an amnesiac knows that Selenas don’t happen often.
She caught my eye and grinned.
“I’m ready for bed. I don’t know about anyone else.”
Mrs. Friend, playing Marny, discarded a card and then picked it up again with a little cluck and discarded another in its place. “Selena, dear, are you still going to sleep in the same room with this darling boy? It seems rather odd and I don’t know that Nate likes it.”
Selena laughed. “Of course I’m going to, Mimsey. After all, he’s so helpless. Even if you did walk out on him, he still needs a nurse.” She turned to me. “Don’t you, baby?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And I’ll read you some more of Father’s poems to send you to sleep. There’s a wonderful one against sex. You’d like to hear that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, “I said.
Marny shot me a sardonic glance. Mrs. Friend said: “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to throw away that jack of clubs. How foolish. It would have made a lovely sequence.”
In spite of the loss of the jack of clubs, Mrs. Friend still managed to collect a lovely sequence and ginned, finishing the game. She had won handsomely from all of us. I didn’t own any money so I couldn’t pay her. But she insisted upon collecting from the girls. Selena went off for her purse, telling me to bring the book of poems when I came. Marny picked up the grey volume of verse and opened it at random.
In a deep, booming voice she recited:
“ ‘Sex, sex, sex
Where the hussy solicits for hire.
Sex, sex, sex
Drags the flower of your youth in the mire…’ ”
“Oh, god, what a filthy mind Father had.” She tossed the book down on the piano, sending the framed photograph of old Mr. Friend lurching over onto its face.
Mrs. Friend called: “Marny, really.”
“Well, he had.” Marny stared at her mother. “How much do I owe you?”
“Three dollars and seventy-five cents, dear.”
“Okay. I’ll get it or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Marny hurried out of the room. Mrs. Friend gave me a little rueful smile.
“It’s the principle, you know. I’ve always tried to make the girls realize that a debt is something that must be paid.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m butting my head against a wall. Excuse me, dear. If I don’t watch them, they’ll probably just take the money out of my own purse and give it back to me.”
She moved out of the room in pursuit of the girls, absently patting the stray hairs of her upsweep.
It was nice to know that Mrs. Friend was instilling a sense of morality into her daughter and daughter-in-law. She should have worked on her son too.
I was very jittery at the prospect of tomorrow. I thought it might be steadying to have Selena read me Mr. Friend’s atrocious poem. I wheeled myself to the piano and picked the book up. Automatically I restored Mr. Friend’s picture to its original position. As I did so, the back of the frame, which must have been dislodged by the fall, dropped off and a white envelope slipped out from the space between the frame and the back of the photograph. I picked it up. Typewritten across its front was the word:
Mimsey.
The envelope was unstuck and I saw there was a sheet of paper inside. It wasn’t a letter that had come through the mail. Someone in the house must have written it and, for some reason, concealed it in the back of the photograph.
Because I was innately suspicious of everything in the Friend house, I started to take out the sheet of paper. I heard footsteps approaching from the hall. Quickly, I slipped the envelope into the pocket of my seersucker jacket, put the back on the photograph, set it up in its original position and wheeled myself away from the piano.
Mrs. Friend came in, clutching dollar bills and change in one hand.
“I got it,” she said triumphantly. “I sent the girls on up to bed, dear. Shall I wheel you to your room or can you manage by yourself?”
“I can manage myself.”
She moved to my side, smiled at me and picked up my hand in hers.
“You know, dear, I’ve grown most fond of you. You’re almost like my own son.”
“I hope I don’t behave like him.”
Her brow puckered. “Really, I do wish you’d take my word for it, dear. I know there is nothing in Mr. Moffat’s scurrilous suggestion. Nothing at all. I am glad we have made plans but there is no cause for worry.” She glanced ruefully at the photograph of her husband on the piano. “He was rather sweet when he was a boy, you know. He had the most divine moustache… like a young disarming seal… I shall never forget the night he asked me to marry him. He got down on his knees and then he stretched up somehow and kissed me. The moustache tickled fascinatingly. I’d never been kissed by a lovely big moustache before. Really, I think that’s why I married him.”
“Which proves,” I said, “that he couldn’t have been murdered?”
“You!” Mrs. Friend slapped archly at my hand. “It’s being cooped up in that wheel chair that makes you so gloomy. I’ve just remembered. Last year my husband sprained his ankle and he bought the most pretentious pair of crutches. They’re put away somewhere in the store-closet off the library. Tomorrow we’ll get them out and we’ll see if you can’t lumber about with one. Won’t that be nice?”
She leaned over and kissed me, bringing her heavy, expensive perfume very close.
“You trust me now, don’t you?”
I grinned. “Do I?”
“A very sweet boy,” she said. “We’ll remember you a long time.”
She moved majestically out of the room, still clutching her dollars and cents.
She was right about remembering me a long time. We’d all of us remember each other until we died either in our beds or in the electric chair.
I wheeled myself to the grey and gold bedroom. A sound of hissing water from the bathroom told me that Selena was having a shower. I threw the book of poems on her bed and then, maneuvering the chair across to my own bed, I pulled the envelope out of my pocket. I knew it must be important. People don’t hide notes in the backs of photographs for the sheer whimsy of it. Uneasily I pulled out a single sheet of paper. I unfolded it. I was confronted with a typewritten note.
It said:
Dear Mother: I’ve thought this out and I’ve decided there’s no use waiting for the autopsy report. It’s all going to come out then so why prolong the misery? I thought about running away but how can I? There’s only way one
out. Please believe me I didn’t plan ahead to kill Father. It was only after he bawled me out and called Mr. Petherbridge and said he was going to cut me out of the will that the idea came. He even, asked for his medicine. It was so easy just to pour half the bottle in. He didn’t notice. And then when Dr. Leland signed the death certificate I thought I’d got away with it. But I haven’t, of course. I never get away with anything. Well, this is it, I guess. I hope you get the money. I think you should. Weather you believe it or not, I did it a bit for you just to make life less impossible for you. Anyhow, good-bye. And don’t worry about me. The way I’ve figured out won’t be painful.
The hairs at the back of my neck had started to crawl. Dizzily I glanced at the signature which had been written in pencil, clumsily, the way a right-handed person would sign with his left hand.
It was signed: Gordy.
For a few seconds, when I first started to read that diabolic communication, I had thought it was a genuine suicide note from the person who had murdered Mr. Friend. I didn’t think it for long, of course. With a shiver of horror, the truth overwhelmed me. This note, announcing that the murderer of Mr. Friend was preparing to commit suicide, was signed Gordy—but it wasn’t meant for the real Gordy, the Gordy who had disappeared on the night of the death and had never been heard from again.
It was meant for the false Gordy.
It was a letter to Mrs. Friend from me, telling her that I was going to kill myself.
As I stared blankly, one word kept me hypnotized, one misspelled, tell-tale word.
Weather.
There was, there could be, no doubt as to who had written that note.
I saw then how appallingly right my suspicions had been. While I was still lying unconscious in Nate’s sanatorium, the Friends must already have had this destiny prepared for me. They had needed me to trick the Clean Living League and Mr. Petherbridge, yes. But that had been only the prologue to their plan. They had known that suspicion of Mr. Friend’s murder would leak out. They had known they would need a victim. That had always been the role intended for me. Once again that evening, with a brilliant half-truth, Mrs. Friend had deceived me. She had made the “victim” theory sound ludicrous by pointing out how easily I could explain myself away once the police arrested me. But the police had never been intended to arrest me. Before they arrived tomorrow, I was supposed to have committed suicide.
Puzzle for Fiends Page 18
