It was so easy to see now that every action, every motive I had ascribed to Selena applied just as well to Marny. Old Mr. Friend had found Marny and Jan together. He had called Marny in. He had threatened to cut Marny out of the will. Marny had given him the overdose just as the drunken Gordy walked in. Marny had lured Gordy here to this old house and shot him—and later had used Jan to do whatever dirty work was necessary.
The skein of her cunning was untangled for me then. How had I found the “suicide note” that evening? Simply because Marny, who knew I was going to take old Mr. Friend’s poems to my room, had thrown the book down on the piano, knocking over the photograph so that I would find out what was hidden in its back. That, of course, had been the first step in the remorseless plan which was to have ended with me committing suicide in the living-room. She had been able to read my thoughts, as plainly as if they were headlines, before I had even thought them myself. She knew I would be curious and pick up the note. She knew I would read it. She knew that, from the deliberately misspelled “weather” I would think Selena had written it. She knew that, once I thought that, I would remember my bargain with her and somehow get away from Selena to her.
The device of the letter hidden in the photograph frame had been a risky one. It might not have worked. But her need to lure me out of the protection of Selena’s room was so great that she had to take the risk. If that plan had failed, she would have had another one ready.
But I had risen to the first bait; and once I had trundled myself in the chair to Marny as my only ally, the rest seemed simple to her. She had already stolen Gordy’s gun. She could have wheeled me into the living-room, offered me a drink from the doped bottle, and, after I had passed out...
But, by the grace of something, things hadn’t happened that way. I’d been smart enough to figure out that Gordy was in the farmhouse and had insisted on coming here to prove it. She couldn’t refuse to drive me without arousing my suspicions. So from then on she had to go along with me, improvising.
She’d improvised brilliantly, however. She must have made arrangements earlier for Jan to bring the gasoline, arrangements she’d had no chance to alter. She knew then that even if she strung along with me, she would have to be there in the house alone to receive the Dutchman when he came, so that he wouldn’t snoop around and find the body. So she pretended she’d dropped the keys to the car and had gone back for them. She had pretended to take a drink from the doped whisky, which she had brought with us, in order to be sure that I would follow her lead and drink too.
Now, while she was meticulously setting about her task of destroying Gordy’s body, I was supposed to be lying doped in the car.
Once the fire started, all she had to do was to drive me home, bundle me into the chair, wheel me into the living-room and fake the suicide, note and all. Even if the police made an autopsy and found traces of the sleeping powder, they’d never suspect. After all, I was an invalid and full of sleeping powders anyway.
And, as she had said herself, there was nothing to fear from the rest of the family. Once I was dead, and there was no saving me, Mimsey, Selena, and Nate were too deeply involved in the conspiracy against the League to expose the fact that I wasn’t the real Gordy.
Yes. That was brilliant improvising, all right.
I thought of Marny from the beginning—Marny posing as the frank one who only joined the conspiracy under pressure, Marny subtly poisoning my mind against Selena with warnings and lies about Jan, Marny assuming the role of little helper so that I would trust her and, when the time came, go with her like a lamb to the slaughter.
A shiver wracked my body. From inside the room I could hear muffled sounds as Marny dragged a second can of gasoline across the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to look in through the window.
Marny had talked about fiends. The shiver tingled up my spine again.
There had only been one fiend in the Friend house after all.
I forced myself to plan, because the danger was still great. It would be hopeless to rush her in the house because she had the gun. She would be able to use it long before I could clinch with her.
Gradually I saw I had one advantage. She didn’t know that I had discovered the casts were fakes.
I was supposed to be back in the car, immobile in my casts and doped with the whisky.
Okay. That’s where I was supposed to be. That’s where I would be.
I slipped away from the house and around the garage to the trail. Silently I made my way back through the cold, desolate moonlight to the car. The flakes of plaster gleamed white on the grass where they had spilled. I tidied them up and tossed them under a bush. I got into the car. I pulled a robe from the back and wrapped it around my legs, concealing the fact that the cast had gone.
I thought of releasing my right arm from the cast and decided against it. I would not be able to hide the fact that the cast was gone, and the added mobility would not be worth the loss of the surprise element. With two legs, one arm, and preparedness, I should be more than a match for her.
I put the whisky bottle ostentatiously on my knee and slumped back against the upholstery with my eyes closed and my mouth open. She would be coming soon. One match would be enough to start the building blazing. She would want to get away quickly then and finish her grisly job in the living-room.
I didn’t hear her come. Suddenly, I was conscious of her face at the car window, only a few inches from mine.
For a long moment she stood there, quite still, watching me. Through my lashes, I could see her black, glossy hair, the white oval of her face and her eyes. They were shining with a flat, hard brightness.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
I made a vague answering grunt as if I was dimly reacting to sound in a doped stupor.
She leaned even closer. I could feel her breath warm and rapid against my cheek. Then she giggled. It was a high, tittering sound like a little girl trying to repress irrepressible mirth in church.
She drew her head back from the windows. I could hear her pattering around the car. The outer door opened. She squeezed into the driver’s seat next to me. She giggled again, excitedly, bubblingly. I’d never heard anyone make a sound quite like it before and it curdled my blood.
Her hand, reaching to put the key in the ignition, brushed against my knee. I could feel its hectic warmth even through the robe.
I was thinking rapidly. She had the gun. There were only two places she could be carrying it. In one or the other of the pockets of her jacket. Since she would want it in her right hand, if she had to use it, it was probably in the right hand pocket. And the right hand pocket was on my side.
Lurching a little as if I was moving in my sleep, I turned my head and squinted down. Was there a faint bulge in the black flannel of the pocket?
She had started the engine. She would have to back onto the trail. That would be the moment to act, when her hands were busy.
The car began to lumber backward. I pretended to be thrown against her. Swiftly my left hand grabbed at the pocket.
She screamed, a sudden, sharp scream. Her right hand hurtled down, clawing at the back of my hand with long fingernails. The car stalled. The nails dug deeper. Her other hand made a lunge at my face. I could feel the nails scratching savagely down my cheek. For one second I almost had the gun. Then she wrenched it out of my grasp.
I saw the muzzle pointed at me. I jerked her wrist upward. There was an explosion and then the tinkle of smashed glass.
I had hold of her wrist now with my only hand. She was fighting with the seething ferocity of a demon, and screaming—screaming that shrill, rasping scream which wasn’t a scream of fear but a scream of rage.
She made a sudden plunge at my eyes with her nails. I ducked and at that moment she shook her wrist free. I grabbed it again in a second. And, the moment I grabbed it, another shot rang out. And a third.
Her screaming stopped as if someone had cut a sound track with a knife. The gun clattered to the floor. H
er hands were scrambling wildly. One of them caught my wrist and clung on. I could feel the pressure tightening until it was almost unendurable. Then her body started to slide downwards. Gradually the fingers unwound from my wrist. She was slumped on the floor of the car now. I could see something dark welling up, soaking her white blouse under her left breast. Her head was propped against the seat. Her eyes stared blankly and a little gurgling sound came from her lips.
I bent over her. My hand fumbled for her wrist and felt the pulse. One of the bullets must have got her in the heart.
She was dead in less than a minute.
I got out of the car, my head swimming. I walked stumblingly around the bushes to the trail. I stared at the farmhouse. An ominous red light was pulsing beyond the windows. It had begun all right.
Gordy’s funeral pyre was lit.
I went back to the car. I hadn’t meant it to happen this way. That thin, rasping scream still rang in my ears. Beyond Marny on the floor something gleamed white. I leaned over her and picked it up. It was the suicide note. I put it in my pocket.
I had to get away, far, far away. I knew that. But how? In this car with its splintered windshield and the body of Marny sprawled across the floor?
I didn’t really think. I just remembered. I remembered that other car, which Gordy had used, parked in the garage with its key in the ignition. I ran towards the burning building. Flames were tonguing through the windows now, but the conflagration hadn’t reached the garage yet. It would, of course. In a few minutes the house, the garage, everything would be swallowed up.
I reached the garage, pushed back the old squeaking double doors and ran to the car parked inside. Clumsily, with my one good hand, I started the engine and backed it out, making it leap down the gravel path well away from the menace of the flames.
I sat for a minute in the front seat, trying to make myself think. I looked in the glove box. There were cigarettes. I lit one and leaned back against the upholstery.
The horror was over, but it had left chaos behind it. Marny had murdered her father and her brother and now Marny was dead, having tried to kill me. But how to explain that to Inspector Sargent without getting myself inextricably committed?
I would have to disappear. I saw that at once. If the police knew there had been two Gordy Friends, it would be fatal for everyone. And I could escape in this car. Gordy was supposed to have vanished in it weeks ago. No one would miss it. I could drive as far away as I liked. What did it matter that I didn’t know who I was or where I belonged? That was child’s play in comparison with what I would have to face if I remained at the Friend house.
But, even with my embarrassing presence eliminated, what would happen to Selena and Mimsey? Confronted with the disappearance of Marny and the man they thought was Gordy, the police would start a search. Soon they would find the remains of a male body in the burned farmhouse and Marny’s body in the second car. Without the information that only I could give, Inspector Sargent would almost certainly arrest Mimsey and Selena not only for Mr. Friend’s murder but for my murder and Marny’s too.
Now that I knew they had been almost as fiendishly victimized as I, my old affection for Mimsey and Selena returned. I couldn’t walk out and leave them to face the rap for three murders they hadn’t committed.
As I leaned forward to toss my cigarette out of the window, the suicide note made a crinkling noise in my pocket. That little sound gave me an idea. I pulled the letter out and, taking the note from the envelope, read it through in the pulsing light from the burning building.
Yes. After all, there was still a way.
My mind was working very clearly now. I ran back to the other car. Roughly, so I wouldn’t have to think about it, I pushed Marny’s body to one side. I backed the car onto the trail and drove it past Gordy’s car straight into the garage. The house itself was blazing now, and flames were already licking at the garage roof.
I picked the revolver up from the floor of the front seat. I made sure no fragments of plaster had caught in the matting. I pulled the crutch out of the back window.
As I left the garage cones of flame were skittering all over the roof. In a few minutes the garage would be burning as furiously as the house.
I carried the crutch and the revolver around to the back of the house. I could still make out the gaping hole which had been the window of the room where Gordy’s body lay. I inched as near to it as I could. The heat was terrific. I tossed the crutch and revolver through the window into the flames.
There were the casts to think of too. I didn’t know what happened to plaster of Paris in fire but I was taking no chances. I was sure the cast on my arm was as phony as the cast on my leg. With the dagger, I split the plaster off. I flexed my arm. Like my leg it was stiff but there was no pain. It was obviously sound. I threw the flakes of plaster and the sling through the window. I went back to the spot behind the bushes where Marny had parked the car. I gathered up all the fragments of my leg cast and, bringing them back, threw them into the building too.
I stood a moment, making sure I had taken care of everything. Satisfied, I went to Gordy’s car and started driving back to the house. There was only one more thing left to do.
When I reached the house, I parked the car outside the garages and walked to the terrace and through the french windows into the dark library. Jan was the only member of the household at all likely to be awake, and his room was in the other wing. There wasn’t much risk of attracting his attention. I groped for the writing lamp on the desk and turned it on. The typewriter stood where it had always stood—by the telephone. There was paper, too.
I slid a piece of paper into the typewriter. I had composed the note on the drive back. I knew exactly what I was going to say. The typewriter had rubber keys. I didn’t know whether the police would be able to get fingerprints. I suspected that each finger as it tapped a key would hopelessly blur its print with the print left there before. But once again I was taking no chances. In the note I was going to write, I was posing as a man with his right arm in a cast. So I typed with my left hand only.
And I typed:
Dear Mimsey:
This is terribly important. Tell Sargent. Marny killed Father. I knew it all along. I walked into the room when she was giving him the overdose. I knew with Father dead I’d be rich. Marny made me promise not to tell so I agreed. That’s why I went off on a bat. I was scared of being around, of giving it away. I wasn’t going to tell but now Sargent suspects, it’s different. Marny realized that too. She made me promise to meet her tonight in the library after you’d all gone to sleep. I had to dope Selena with sleeping pills. That was the only way I could get away. Marny was waiting here. She said Sargent would find poison in the body at the autopsy, and it would all come out. She said if I told she’d done it, she’d accuse me of helping her. I said it was hopeless. Sargent would find out the truth anyway. She said maybe I was right and that the only thing to do was to escape while there was a chance. But she wasn’t going to leave me behind, knowing what I knew about her. She’d stolen my gun. She brought it out then. She said I had to go with her in the car or she’d shoot me. I pretended to agree. I’m helpless in the casts. But I said I couldn’t get into the car without a crutch. I said she must get me a crutch. I pretended they were in the attic instead of the closet so that I’d have more time to write this while she’s away. She locked me in here. She’ll be back any minute. She says she’s going to escape to Mexico and take me with her. I don’t believe she’s going to take me with her. She mentioned the old farmhouse and looked funny. She has the gun. I think she’s going to stop at the old farmhouse and try to kill me. No one would think of looking there. I’m going to stop her. But if I don’t, if I’m not back, here tomorrow or if I don’t call, go to the farmhouse. Please, Mimsey, please. She’ll be here in a second, I must stop. I…
I picked up a pencil in my left hand and signed a clumsy, scrawling Gordy at the foot of the page. I slipped the note under the typewriter with on
e corner sticking out so that they would be bound to find it in the morning.
That story, compounded of truths, half-truths, and lies, was the best I could do. At least it pinned the crimes on the right person and drew Sargent’s attention to the farmhouse. When he searched the ruins and found the remains of Marny in the garage and the remains of Gordy in the house, the note was sufficiently vague to enable him to form his own theory as to whether Marny or Gordy started the fire and whether Marny killed Gordy first or Gordy killed Marny. After the flames had done their work he couldn’t possibly tell that Gordy had been dead for a week, and I had arranged my props so that, even if some quirk of the fire left something undestroyed, the right things were in the right places—the crutch and the casts in the room with Gordy’s body.
It had been a toss-up whether to leave the revolver with Marny or Gordy. I had chosen Gordy because I thought that made a plausible story. Marny had fatally wounded Gordy. Gordy had managed to get the gun, kill her, and then stumble into the house to die.
Between the lines there was a message for the Friends in the note too. They would realize that I was telling them obliquely that Marny had killed Gordy the day she killed her father and hid his body in the farmhouse. I was letting them know the truth and hinting broadly at the attitude they should take with the police. Unless luck was dead against them, they should be able to clear themselves.
They might even get the money, I thought with a faint twitch of amusement. The police would never know a false Gordy had existed or that the signature on the abstinence pledge was a forgery. Once they believed that Marny had killed her father, there was no legal hitch to Mimsey’s and Selena’s inheritance. They would have trouble with Mr. Moffat, of course. But, between them, Mimsey and Selena were expert trouble girls.
Puzzle for Fiends Page 22
