The Case of the Unconquered Sisters

by Todd Downing

  “Did you see the bird after you shot it?”

  “Yes, we looked at it the next morning before we buried it at the base of the cedar tree.”

  “Was it an ordinary tecolote?”

  “Yes, as far as I could see.”

  “Did Voice say how long he had been bothered in this way?”

  “About a week, I believe he said. I got your point downstairs about the coincidence of the letters and the incursion of the tecolotes.”

  “I don’t believe,” Rennert said, “that it was a coincidence.”

  Roark’s laugh was a bit nervous. “You’re not suggesting anything supernatural, are you?”

  “No, I’m satisfied we’ll find a rational explanation.”

  Roark tamped out his cigarette and lit another. His eyes followed Rennert’s progress across the room with a handful of shirts, underwear and socks. “Are you going to try and find the explanation tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I be of any help?”

  “I think not.” Rennert pushed shut the drawer of the wardrobe and faced him. “You’ve done your part in getting me acquainted with the scene and the people here. It’s my job from now on. As you can see, I’m settled in this room until I finish it.”

  “I can come back tonight or in the morning if you want me to.” Roark picked up his hat and stood twirling it upon a finger.

  “It’s not necessary to come back tonight. I’d like to see you tomorrow.”

  “All right. I’ll come out in the morning.” Rennert took a card from his pocket and wrote on it. “Here’s my address and phone number, in case you want to get in touch with me.”

  “Thanks.”

  Roark extended a hand. “Good night, Mr. Rennert.”

  “Good night.”

  When he had gone Rennert walked to the window.

  Far away, at the base of the mountains which had confined the flow of the lava centuries ago, a single light had twinkled into being, emphasizing by its remoteness the extent of the wasteland between these two human habitations. In the one, a dark-skinned family grouped about a hearthfire, speaking a tongue which their ancestors had spoken before the white man saw this continent, following thought processes unintelligible to the foreigner who waited in this room for a summons to a polite and civilized meal. And between them, dark and unpassable, the lava.

  Better now than ever before Rennert could understand the quality of the fear with which the Pedregal is endued by those who dwell on its fringes. In other places, even in the deserts of the north or on the bleak mountain peaks, man might die, but Nature lived fecundly on. Here Nature herself was dead. Never, in any cycle of the planet, would a flower or a blade of grass grow on this dead sea of stone. Small wonder that Malinche, when she returns at night to the land which she loved and betrayed, should seek this spot to keen her sorrow….

  The window was narrow and high, with leaded panes. Rennert pushed up the lower sash and leaned out. The air was damp, already impregnated with the night chill of the Mexican uplands.

  The sound of Roark’s car was already dying, on the road that leads to the plaza of San Angel and the lights and clatter of Mexico City.

  Directly below him was the window of Lucy Faudree’s room, on either side the blank surface of the wall. The gutter at the edge of the roof was at least eight feet above his head. From the window frame above the upper sash a nail projected. Something dangled from it.

  Rennert drew back into the room and pulled down both sashes. Taking a packet of matches from his pocket he rested his foot on the sill and, with the painful realization that such acrobatic feats were for younger, slimmer men, hoisted himself into a sitting posture half in, half out of the window.

  He thrust his head out, struck a match and, holding it carefully cupped in his left hand, raised it. The nail was deeply imbedded in the wood. From it hung an inch or so of string, frayed at the end.

  He perched there, uncomfortably, until the flame of the match approached his skin. Flicking the stub into the night he swung himself back into the room and closed the window.

  When the tinkle of chimes echoed through the hall, he had his coat off and was engaged in strapping a leather holster under his left armpit. In the holster nestled a small but dependable revolver.

  This constituted his dressing for dinner.

  16

  Yawn

  “The weather,” Lucy Faudree said, “always surprises foreigners in Mexico for the first time. They can’t understand that summer and winter don’t mean hot and cold with us, but wet and dry.”

  “It’s partly the fault of the tourist companies,” Rennert said. “Those in the North particularly. Their appeal is to people who want a change from cold and dampness. So they play up the balmy sunshine of Mexico, regardless of the geographical variations here.”

  Silence fell on the table. Rennert had felt it edging in on them since the beginning of the meal—that special silence, charged with tension, which comes between people who are constrained from voicing the only thoughts which they have in common. Never an accomplished conversationalist in circumstances such as this, this brief preliminary skirmish with the subject of the weather left him temporarily at a loss.

  Lucy sat at the head of the table, her thin, straight shoulders dwarfed by the high-backed chair. She ate little, and her gaze kept going to the still flames of the two tall red candles as if fascinated by their steady diminution.

  She looked up as if suddenly aware of her lapse. Her eyes seemed extraordinarily bright. “We must have some wine, Mr. Rennert. I very seldom drink it, but I think that under the circumstances…”

  She left the sentence unfinished, but raised the tiny bell which rested on a lace doily by her right hand. Its tinkle sounded singularly inadequate in that large room, with its dark wainscoted walls rising to a dimly perceived ceiling.

  She looked over Rennert’s shoulder and said to Marta, who had entered with a soft swish of skirts: “Some rioja, please, Marta.”

  “Rioja is all that is needed to make this Brunswick stew perfection, Miss Faudree,” Rennert said.

  It was the first time that evening that he had seen spontaneousness in her smile. “I’m so glad you like it. It’s one of our traditional Southern dishes. Perhaps you have eaten it in the South?”

  “Yes, although usually I have to depend upon a restaurant version.”

  “You are a bachelor, then, Mr. Rennert?”

  “Yes.”

  For some reason the word sounded too rotund and decisive, effectually blocking further ingress upon this subject. He was trying to think of some way to continue when Marta came in again. She was carrying, with an almost sacerdotal air, an antique purple bottle. She began to pour the deep-red liquid into Lucy’s glass.

  The latter stopped her in a moment. “That’s enough, Marta.”

  It was while his own glass was being filled that the hall door opened and Monica entered.

  “Wine!” she exclaimed as she walked toward the table. “My, this is an occasion.”

  Her face was slightly flushed, from agitation or haste. She wore the same dress but had attached white lace collar and cuffs. Both were awry, and she was worrying with the right sleeve as Rennert held her chair for her.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said breathlessly, “I’m so sorry to be late, but I’ve had the most distressing time.”

  “You have?” he inquired politely.

  “Yes. I sat with Mr. Biggerstaff while he slept. I looked out the window and watched the rain clouds gradually blot out the sun. I got to thinking how symbolic it was and composed a little poem. His young life was the sun. Ardent, you know, and full of promise. The clouds were the deep sleep that he was in, that covers a person just as if—well, just as if he were dead. But then, in the morning, the sun— Oh yes, thank you, Mr. Rennert, I will have some Brunswick stew. And just a bit more wine, Marta, please.”

  As the gold bracelet slipped down the warm, dark flesh of Marta’s wrist toward the glass into which s
he was pouring the rioja, the candle flames flared suddenly, sagged and slowly righted themselves. The walls seemed to recede and advance with the shifting shadows. A draft of cold air touched Rennert’s ankles. It came, he judged, from the rear door, through the kitchen and across the narrow intervening hall.

  Lucy said dryly, “The dinner chimes rang, Monica, at the usual time.”

  “Oh yes, I know. Will you please set this down, Mr. Rennert? Thank you. Yes, I heard the chimes. I hadn’t realized, you see, how late it had got. I hurried across to my room, then, to—well, to tidy up a bit. And it was so dark in there, with only a candle, that I couldn’t find a handkerchief. It was the strangest thing. I always keep my handkerchiefs in a little box in the upper right-hand drawer of my dresser. With sachets between them. I keep my work-bag in the same drawer, so I knew that box had been there when I went to Mr. Biggerstaff’s room about an hour before. But it wasn’t there when I came back. It gave me the oddest feeling, just as if there were little brownies about playing their tricks. And where do you think I found it?”

  She sipped wine and looked about the table expectantly.

  No one said anything.

  There was something definitely forced in her exuberance. Her fingers kept playing with the stem of the glass, as if she were unable to set it down.

  “Well, I found it in the upper left-hand drawer. Just stuck in carelessly with—with some other things. And I’m sure that it was the upper right-hand drawer I put it in. I always do. And when I opened it I found all the sachet envelopes on top of the handkerchiefs and not in between, as I always lay them. And one of them was torn open. The powder had sifted down into everything. But the strangest thing was that I found some more of that same powder in a little pile on the carpet by the window. And I’m positive that I never had that box near the window. There wouldn’t be any reason for my carrying it over there, would there, Mr. Rennert?”

  Rennert was regarding her thoughtfully. He was sure that it was no effect of the lighting which made her eyes appear so heavy, their pupils almost torpid.

  “No, Miss Faudree,” he said. “Unless you wanted to take the box to a place where you could see better. You may have done that and forgotten about it.”

  “But, Mr. Rennert, I know I didn’t. It wasn’t dark when I went in Mr. Biggerstaff’s room. And besides, I didn’t touch the box then.”

  The back door slammed, and the candle flames shuddered again in the current of air which went through the room. Heavy booted feet clumped up the stairs to the second floor.

  Lucy’s voice came cool and a bit sharp from the other end of the table:

  “You forget, Monica, that Mr. Rennert isn’t interested in these little intimate details, such as which drawer you put your handkerchiefs in.”

  “But he is! I can tell by his face that he is.”

  Rennert said, “I am very much interested, Miss Faudree. How large are these sachet envelopes you keep the powder in?”

  “Oh, they’re just ordinary correspondence envelopes. I get the powder in big cans and then put it in envelopes. It goes so much farther that way.”

  “So that at dusk a person might mistake them for letters?”

  “Why yes, I suppose so. But …” Monica laid down the fork with which she had been playing with a morsel of chicken and raised her napkin. But not quickly enough to cover a yawn.

  Lucy’s laugh was clear, bell-like almost. “You are a perfect bachelor, Mr. Rennert. You can pretend interest so convincingly in little feminine foibles. If you were a married man, now, it would be impossible. They would be such commonplaces to you.”

  Rennert had to make an effort to answer calmly. “Perhaps, Miss Faudree, I’m interested because, being a bachelor, I often mislay my own handkerchiefs. I have some hectic moments, I assure you, getting to the office in the morning.”

  The rain stopped further conversation for the moment. It came suddenly, without the accompaniment of thunder or lightning, drumming upon the ground and setting the windows to rattling with the violence of its impact.

  “Oh, speaking of handkerchiefs, I remember an anecdote my father used to relate …”

  Lucy talked on, resolutely, against the crescendo beat of the rain.

  Rennert heard someone descend the rear stairs, heard the back door close and felt the draft again on his ankles.

  His attention, however, was upon Monica. Twice she leaned back in her chair and let her eyes close for an instant. Their lids looked puffy, as if she were drugged by sleepiness. Each time she suppressed a yawn and began again on her food. At last she gave it up and sat, her shoulders slack, staring listlessly at the candles.

  Finally Lucy glanced at her sister sharply and laid down her napkin. “Shall we go into the parlor now? Marta will bring our coffee to us there.”

  As Monica rose one of her hands caught the back of her chair, while the other brushed over her eyes.

  Rennert fell into step beside her as they passed into the hall.

  “There’s a question I want to ask you about that gold coin which you saw, Miss Faudree.” He tried to speak naturally. “You said that it had a date. Do you remember what it was?”

  The only illumination was the candlelight which came from behind them and through the open door of the parlor opposite, but he could see the muscles at the corners of her mouth move as if she were about to draw in her cheeks. She said thickly:

  “Oh yes, the date. I associated it with something. Let’s see. What could it have been? Something in United States history.”

  “Was it, by any chance, the Declaration of Independence?”

  Her steps were slowing. “Yes. That was it. 17 …”

  “1776,” he said for her.

  She had stopped at the door of the parlor. “I wonder if you’d mind if I went upstairs and lay down for a while? I don’t feel very well.”

  He said quickly, “Let me help you.”

  “No, no, don’t bother, Mr. Rennert.” Her reply was indistinct. “I’m just sleepy. I—I don’t think I should have drunk that wine.”

  Alarmed, he watched the darkness of the landing envelop her.

  17

  Creak

  Monica wondered what was wrong with herself.

  It had come over her so suddenly, this leaden drowsiness which was weighing down her eyelids and setting up a humming far back in her head. The distances between the treads of the stairs seemed to have lengthened, too, so that it took increasing exertion to lift her feet from one of them to the next. She thought of her bed as a haven toward which she was moving with nightmare slowness.

  She gained the upper hall and paused for breath. There was no light at all, but she knew her way from a lifetime of experience.

  She opened her door, but kept her hand on the knob for several seconds, bothered by the darkness which confronted her. Despite the confusion of her mind, she was sure that she had left a candle burning on top of the dresser. It had been such a small extravagance, and Lucy would never know of it.

  She groped across the room. Her fingers touched hot wax, and she withdrew them quickly. Odd that the sides of the candle should have stayed so hot if she had blown it out when she left. But no, she was sure she hadn’t done that. It must have been a draft, although the window was closed. She found a packet of matches, lit one and applied it to the wick.

  The yellow light struggled out over the room, projecting shadows crazily.

  She looked about her, vaguely uneasy. But everything was as she had left it. The big four-poster bed on one side of the door, with its embroidered coverlet of which she was so proud. On the other side of the dresser a rocking chair, a low bookshelf and, by the south window, the wardrobe, like the one in Mr. Rennert’s room. Its two long glass panels were closed, and she could see her reflection in it, slightly distorted.

  A small clock ticked away, very faintly, on the dresser. She had to strain her eyes to see its face.

  Only seven-forty.

  It was nonsense to go to bed this early. She wa
nted to see Mr. Rennert again, to give him that letter which he was so anxious to get. He had been so nice and polite about it.

  She went to the bookcase and took out a thick album bound in deep-purple plush with her initials stamped on the cover in gold.

  She carried it to the dresser and laid it beside the candle. She opened it and found a certain page upon which a sheet of notepaper was pasted by one of its edges, so that it could be turned to either side.

  Face downward was the typewritten letter which Mr. Rennert wanted.

  Dear Miss Faudree:

  An unexpected development makes it necessary for me to return to the United States at once. I am not sure at present how long

  Without finishing it she carefully removed the sheet. It was of no more interest to her, now that she knew it hadn’t been written by Mr. Voice. This knowledge rather spoiled, too, the pleasurable sensation which she had derived from reading the lines of poetry which she had written on the reverse side.

  “Words at Parting,” she had called the little poem. The beginning had come to her suddenly the morning she read the letter. As always, on such occasions, she had sat down immediately to put them on paper. It was so hard to regain that first exciting moment of inspiration if one let it pass. In fact she usually carried a little pencil and a slip of paper in her pocket for that very purpose, as she had read so many poets did. This time, however, it had been more appropriate to write on the back of the letter which had been the cause of those words slipping into her mind.

  Words at meeting

  Are so fleeting …

  She brought out her pencil and began to erase them. Of course she could have explained to Mr. Rennert about how she came to write a poem on the back of the letter. She had observed that an almost dreamy look came into his eyes sometimes. Undoubtedly he would have a feeling for poetry, despite the rather imposing bulk of his masculinity. But it might be necessary for him to show the letter to someone else. Lucy perhaps. And Lucy was always ridiculing her poetry….