by Helen Reilly
The nurse was downstairs making tea and Libby was out of bed and on the chaise in sunlight near a window. She looked surprised when Kit told her Tony Wilder was on the phone, and then pleased. Kit said, “I can’t get rid of him. Do you want to talk to him?” Libby said, “Yes, I feel fine,” and got up. Kit left her sitting in the little chair beside the phone in the upper hall saying hello cheerfully to Wilder, and went downstairs and outside.
There was no one around. Philip and her aunt had both gone into town, Philip to post letters he wanted to get off in a hurry and Miriam to do some marketing. Kit sat on the terrace wall swinging her legs and pulling at a rose leaf. The lilacs and the apple blossoms were out, the roses would be out soon. . . . Did Libby really care about Tony Wilder —or was it simply a temporary infatuation with his looks? It was hard to tell. If she was genuinely in love with Wilder, what was that going to do to Hugo Cavanaugh?
So I should worry, Kit told herself scornfully, and jumped down off the wall. Libby must be through now. She opened the front door and went in. Lucy Barrett was carrying a tea tray upstairs, her uniform rustling. She rounded the bannisters, moved out of sight, and gave a choked cry. China tinkled sharply and a cup fell over the railing and shattered on the newel post.
Something had happened to Libby. . . . Kit flew up the stairs. Libby was still in the chair beside the telephone, slumped down in it, her hands gripping the arms, her head sagging. Lucy Barrett was kneeling beside her. Kit ran to her in wild alarm. “Libby,” she cried. "Libby—what is it?”
Libby raised her head slowly. She didn’t seem to see either of them. Her eyes were wide open and fixed and the pupils were enormous. She might have been blind, as well as deaf and dumb. Suddenly she roused. She said, speaking carefully and swallowing repeatedly as she spoke, “Tony hung up and I was still sitting here and then the phone rang and I picked it up and a voice came on, a— whispering voice. It said—” she licked her lips—“it said for me not to say anything to the police. It said that if I did—” On that she pitched forward and would have hit the floor, if Lucy Barrett hadn’t caught her.
XII
They got her into her room. She refused to get into bed. She went completely to pieces, walking up and down wildly and wringing her hands. “They don’t need to be afraid,” she exclaimed bitterly. “I won’t say anything. You don’t know what it was like, the blackness, their hands touching me, the jab of the needle, then I’d fall asleep— and each time I’d wake up it was worse . . .** She poured it out in a flood.
It took a long while to get her even partially calmed. It wasn’t until Lucy Barrett had given her two bromides and they began to take effect that she was able to talk coherently. A breakdown like this was utterly unlike Libby—she was usually so controlled—but she had been afraid of the dark ever since she was a child. Turning off electric lights where they weren’t being used was one of Philip’s few economies. Libby went around turning them on, careful as she was, by habit, of the bills. But there was more to her collapse than childish fear. No wonder she was a wreck. She had recognized the whispering voice that had spoken to her on the phone after she had talked to Tony Wilder. It was the voice of the man who had bandaged her eyes in the driveway, the man who gave most of the orders in the place where she had been shut up in blackness. She had never seen his face, but she had heard him.
“The police won’t catch him,’' she cried. “He knows everything that’s going on, he said so.” Her voice rose alarmingly. “I won’t tell the police anything. I won’t. I won’t.” Within fifteen minutes she was eating her words.
Kit and Lucy Barrett were still trying to quiet her when the front doorbell rang. Libby started to her feet. “If that’s a policeman, Kit, I won’t see him. Say I’m dying—say I’m dead. Say anything—only keep them away from me. Go on. Hurry.” She stamped her foot imperiously.
Kit looked a question at Lucy; the nurse’s nod said she could handle Libby, and Kit went downstairs, newly and deeply disturbed. Hugo had been right; Libby had nearly echoed his, “Someone knows everything that’s going on in this house.”
Philip had come back and was in the living room with two men. He caught sight of her. “Kit, come in here, will you?” She went through the wide doors. One of the men was Mr. Strait, the other was Inspector Christopher McKee of the Manhattan Homicide Squad.
The Inspector was a tall, rangy man with thick dark hair just beginning to recede from his temples, and a pleasantly casual manner. She glanced at her uncle, and hid a flash of amusement. Philip was peering at McKee like a crane on one leg staring at an imposing fish that was far too ibig to swallow.
The Scotsman, in his turn, surveyed Kit and catalogued her briefly—amendments were always possible later. A striking head. Beautiful eyes, a good mouth, beautiful legs, slender body, braced. A fencer. Nervously alert and very intelligent. “How do you do, Miss Haven?”
For an instant Kit felt the scorch of his penetrating brown gaze from under a bold forehead. She thought, he’s charming, and rather fearful. He would drive Libby wild. Philip was openly fascinated by him. She had watched McKee look her over; Philip was trying to grasp him, get him into words. Not at all a policeman—extraordinary personality—wouldn’t hurt a fly, bother anybody. A gentleman. Safe to talk to. He expanded, talking volubly. He added little to what McKee already knew.
The Scotsman hadn’t wanted to come up here to Denfield; only Strait could have brought him. He had heard the lawyer’s story without much interest—the niece of a man who had come into a lot of money snatched, the ransom money paid, the girl returned unharmed. Except that Gerard Strait was an old friend he would have fed it into the hopper and let routine take its course—Carter or Bell would probably have handled it, with little hope of success. The bills had been unmarked, the numbers hadn’t even been taken, the niece knew nothing, and too much time had elapsed since the money had been paid over. Now that he was here, his interest was aroused by Haven himself, and by this girl. He said to the writer, “If you think Miss Tallis is well enough, I would like to have a word with her,” and rose suggestively.
To Kit’s horror, Philip said, “Of course, Inspector. Come upstairs.” Libby’s reception of the file of three—Mr. Strait stayed in the living room—was not propitious. She was on the chaise. She sat up grasping the arms, red-eyed and forlorn, gave a cry and sank back, her swollen face averted. “Philip! I can’t see anyone, anyone at all. Please!”
It was an impassioned plea. Philip cleared his throat nervously. McKee was the one who spoke. “It’s my fault, Miss Tallis, don’t blame your uncle. I can guess at how you must be feeling. I wanted to ask you a few simple questions but—later, perhaps.”
He had won Philip; he succeeded in winning Libby. She glanced at him through wet lashes and put a hand to her hair. She was still uncertain. The Inspector consolidated his gains by starting for the door. “Another time.” “No, Inspector,” Libby raised herself, smoothed folds of her robe. “It might as well be now.”
The bromides had taken hold, Kit reflected, and Libby was a lot more relaxed, but it was also the man’s personality, his ability to disarm you, put you at your ease. Satisfied that things were going well, Philip rejoined Strait downstairs. Kit ignored McKee’s unspoken suggestion that she follow her uncle. Good kind Lucy Barrett did, too.
McKee gave his entire attention to Libby and Kit listened engrossed. Where they had gotten very little, the Inspector succeeded in building a fairly complete picture. Libby trusted him; already she looked more herself. She answered him fully, searching her mind as he led her on step by step. Odors? Libby said yes, that there had been a funny smell in the room in which she was confined— “Something like what you get in a Fifth Avenue bus sometimes.” Sounds? There had been a dog that barked a lot, and a rooster that crowed. McKee said that she must have been in a house in the country, heated by kerosene, and in close proximity to a chicken house.
He asked her about the tissue with the print of her lips on it, and she nodded. They
had done that while she was blindfolded, after they had stuck a needle in her. There was a lipstick in her bag. “Do you want it, Inspector?” McKee said there wouldn’t be any fingerprints on it. She had no recollection about the car in which she had been taken away, she didn’t think the seats were leather, but wasn’t sure.
The Scotsman studied her thoughtfully. She had been home and safe for a day and a half; she had had a bad fright within the hour—her pulse was rapid and her breathing shallow. “Now, since you got back, Miss Tallis?”
Libby had gone as far as she intended to go. Her mouth was stony. She was in one of her obstinate fits. Kit intervened. “You’ve got to, Libby, or I will.”
They both did. McKee digested the whispering voice that had called the house after Libby had finished talking to Tony Wilder, and that she had instantly recognized. “When you picked up the receiver who did the man ask for?”
“Nobody. He knew me right away. He told me not to talk to the police, not to tell them anything, or else . . .” She was white again. “He just—just threatened me.” She swallowed in a dry throat. “He said I’d be sorry if I had anything to do with the police.”
The girl wasn’t being completely frank, just as obviously she was terrified at what had been said to her over the phone. A new threat of some sort flung at her, perhaps a threat to her cousin, or her uncle? Conjecture was useless; the Scotsman rose, said good-bye soothingly, and that she was not to worry, that she was perfectly safe and nothing more was going to happen, and left the room.
Kit went with him. At the foot of the stairs he asked her a question. “Who was here in this house, Miss Haven, when the arrangement for the delivery of the money was made?” Kit said, “My uncle and I, and my aunt, Mrs. VanKreef.” She added wretchedly, giving him a sideways glance, “I know. I thought about the extension in the upper hall, too, at the time, but my aunt was in the middle of a shower. I ran up and looked.”
Miriam VanKreef was in the living room. She was frostily gracious; she was afraid she could tell him very little, her brother-in-law hadn’t seen fit to take her into his confidence until after the money was paid over.
McKee knew all about Kit’s subway journey and the tall woman in the green raincoat on the Seventy-second Street platform. “You remained here undisturbed, Mrs. VanKreef, while Mr. Haven and Miss Haven went to New York?” She had. “I didn’t hear from anyone. Not a word. Philip didn’t tell me the truth until after he came home. I was—stunned.”
McKee looked sympathetic. Earlier in the day the help, the maid, a laundress, a woman who came in to clean two days a week and the gardener, had been investigated and given a clean bill of health. Hugo Cavanaugh had told only Kit and Philip that Strait had gotten in touch with the police but Miriam VanKreef had listened in on the conversation between Cavanaugh and Kit Haven. Less than an hour later the call had come warning Libby Tallis not to talk to the police—and Mrs. VanKreef had been out of the house and in the village at the time the call was made. Try and check on it. He said to Kit, “I’d like to have a look at your uncle’s study.”
He had a look—and the mystery of the kettle boiling in the small hours of the morning was resolved. Kit watched while McKee examined some opened mail lying on the big typewriter desk. It was at Philip’s bank statement that he paused, turning the long brown envelope over. Philip had tom the narrow end open. The flap was still sealed. “Well, well,” McKee said, “I thought it might be something like this.” He pointed to a bright smear coming from under the sealed flap. He said that the bank statement had been steamed open, that was what the kettle had been used for. The smear was fresh mucilage that had been applied to reseal the flap. “Will you get your uncle, Miss Haven?”
Philip came in with Mr. Strait. Yes, he said, he had looked at his statement only yesterday, although it had been in the house since last Wednesday. Did it tally with his own stubs? Philip looked sheepish. cfWell, to tell you the truth . . .” He confessed that he was careless. At least a third of the stubs in the checkbook he produced were blank.
McKee said that the only possible reason why the bank statement had been steamed open was to remove a canceled check that had been either forged or kited. “You’d know, for instance, if you gave your maid a check for a hundred dollars and found it made out for a thousand that there was something wrong.”
Philip said irascibly, “I don’t pay the servants, Libby tends to all that. Does it matter? There’s plenty of money.” McKee said, smiling, “It’s just a little question of a penitentiary offense, Mr. Haven. Strait, will you take this statement and Mr. Haven’s checkbook and get in touch with his bank and see what you can find out?”
He was finished with the house and the people in it, for the moment. He assured Kit and Philip that they needn’t worry, the state police were putting a man in the grounds, and accompanied by Strait, started back for New York, and Eleanor Oaks and Pedrick and Anthony Wilder.
McKee knew the little there was to know about Pedrick, as far as the law was concerned; he suspected a good deal more. Pedrick was one of those fringe men who operated on two levels, a canny bird who kept his foot in both camps. Public-relations counsellor was an elastic term, and the small accounts he handled wouldn’t pay his tailor. His real and illicit business was infinitely more profitable, but surmise was one thing, getting the goods on him was another.
The Scotsman had Strait drop him at Eleanor Oaks’s apartment. Standing on the curb he asked a question that made the lawyer start and stare. “What do you know of this fellow in your office, Hugo Cavanaugh?”
Strait said through the open window, “He’s a bright lad and does good work, and he comes from good stock—I know his background, his people. What makes you ask?” McKee said, “Oh, nothing in particular—except he’s the type we’ve been looking for.” He told the lawyer there was a blackmailer loose in New York he wanted to get his hands on. Over a period of three or four years a number of girls and young women had been victimized. Several of them had committed suicide. In each case there had been a man involved, a man who went to the right restaurants and hotels and night clubs, and wore the right clothes and spoke the right language. They had never been able to get a line on the fellow. “You know what people are where blackmail’s concerned—they’ll suffer anything rather than have the truth come out.”
“Libby Tallis wasn’t being blackmailed,” Strait objected.
McKee agreed. “But the money was there to hand. Our man may have prospected and when he couldn’t get any material to work on, he pulled this deal. Haven’s a pushover—he practically asked for it.”
Strait shrugged. “Perhaps if it was your niece . . .” The Scotsman nodded. “Oh, I know, I know. Just the same, Haven could have taken the serial numbers of those bills. It almost looks as though someone knew he wouldn’t have common sense enough for that, knew exactly how he would react. In fact, Strait, there’s a queer smell about the whole business. Twenty-five thousand? Why not fifty?— and then that smashed hat, that was a fancy touch if you like. I’m going to want to know a good deal more about the Havens and their friends and relations. Well, I’ll be seeing you.” Ignoring the consternation on the lawyer’s face, he walked toward the canopy.
Outside Eleanor Oaks’s door on the sixteenth floor and about to put his finger on the bell, McKee didn’t press it. There was a row going on inside the apartment. Voices were raised, a man’s and a woman’s, or rather the woman’s was, you could just barely hear the man. Suddenly a chair went over and there was a thin scream. Then McKee did ring the bell.
Silence, more of the same, footsteps; the door was opened by a tall woman in a dinner gown, handsome in a hard way. She held a handkerchief to her face.
The woman was Eleanor Oaks. The handkerchief was to conceal the mark of a blow on the right lower jaw, which had been given to her by Pedrick and which presently revealed itself.
Not that he said so, and the chair in the living room had been replaced on its legs.
“Sweetie, this man insi
sts on coming in.”
"It’s all right, Ducks. Good evening, Inspector. Pleasure to see you. To what do we owe the honor?”
Pedrick wore a dinner jacket and black tie, might have been an ambassador from one of the smaller countries, poised, elegant, addressing an underling with slightly bored courtesy. His clothes, his yellow briUiantined hair, everything about him, was just a little too sharp. You felt in some odd way that it was an ironic livery, deliberately assumed. His death’s head face was imperturbable; it would be.
"Sit down, Inspector. Have a drink.”
McKee sat down and didn’t have a drink. Pedrick asked what he could do for him.
“You can answer some questions, if you care to.”
“Why shouldn’t I?—unless it’s about my income tax. Shoot.”
“Where were you. . . ?”
Pedrick slapped his hands together softly. “Where was I on the night of last December the second?” He smiled. “You fellows are all alike. It’s so hammy it’s almost convincing. What do you really want, Inspector?”
The man was in good form. His affairs must be going unusually well. . . . McKee said patiently, “Where were you the day before yesterday from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m.?” The ransom money had been collected from Catherine Haven at approximately 5:40.
“That would be Monday ... I was right here in this apartment. I had a touch of flu and Miss Oaks kindly insisted on calling her doctor. He saw me at around—it must have been close to half-past five. You were fixing a drink, weren’t you, dear, when the medico arrived?”
“Yes, Sweetie. I thought a hot whiskey would do you good—and I was right. You don’t take enough care of yourself.” The doctor’s name was Javish and he was in the building if McKee wanted to check.
“Thanks. Tell me what you know about a man named Tony Wilder.”
Pedrick was prepared for the question. Not a muscle of his cadaverously carved face moved. Eleanor Oaks showed nervousness. The handkerchief, which she had removed, was again pressed to her swelling jaw. McKee decided that it was about Wilder that the precious pair had been quarreling. Pedrick said in accents of surprise, “Tony Wilder? Not much, I meet him around, just a bowing acquaintance.”
