The velvet hand

by Helen Reilly

  Had William done it, in some dark dream of frustration, because at that time they all still thought Libby had run off with Tony Wilder? The destruction of the hat didn’t seem to impress Libby much—but then she hadn’t seen it. . . .

  Philip’s rage reawoke. He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted. William came down. He denied having had anything to do with the hat, stutteringly, repeatedly. “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I didn’t go into Libby’s room at all.”

  It was Hugo who asked, “If you jumped out through the study window that night how did you get back into the house? I locked the window after you, and all the other windows and doors downstairs were locked.”

  William wiped his forehead. “I didn’t get back in until morning when the maid came. I told her that I’d been out for an early walk and that I forgot to put the door on the latch.” He looked at Libby, his eyes pleading behind his thick glasses. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Libby. You know it, don’t you?” He was close to tears. Libby said gently, “Of course you wouldn’t, William.”

  Kit didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The passion behind the smashing of the red cloche was difficult to reconcile with his timidity, his blundering indecisiveness. A few minutes later she changed her mind.

  Philip took William into the study with him. “I want to talk to you.” He didn’t close the door. Going past it on the way into the kitchen for a drink of water. Kit heard Philip giving William money. “Here’s fifty dollars—and remember, the next time you’re short, come and tell me like a man.” William’s gratitude was fervent. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to thank you, Mr. Haven. But I’ve had my lesson. I can’t tell you, sir. . .”

  When Kit returned from the kitchen William was alone in the study, leaning against the typewriter desk holding bills in his hand. He was looking at the bills. He didn’t do anything but that, just stand there and look at them. He was smiling. The smile was slow and small—and somehow horrible. Timid? Indecisive? There was nothing indecisive about William’s expression. He was gazing at the money as though it were an illimitable sum, slyly, with a sort of rich enjoyment.

  Kit walked quickly on, telling herself that she was imagining things, that William wasn’t like that. Then she remembered the Inspector’s warning not to take anyone at face value, and shivered.

  Mr. Strait, meanwhile, was talking to McKee in a room in the village inn. The Scotsman wasn’t surprised at the news about William, or Philip Haven’s reaction. He said with a grin, “That man would give his shirt away. He’s probably made an enemy of William Grant for life.”

  Strait shrugged. "I can’t see Grant as our quarry—he hasn’t got the brains for it, or the daring. He’s a small-time cliiseler.”

  McKee said perhaps. The phone rang. It was the desk clerk. If the Inspector wanted Mr. Wilder, he had just come in. His room number was 24. Strait went along to 24 with McKee. On the way he said, “Anything new on the blackmailer in New York you thought might be linked up with the extortion of the twenty-five thousand up here?” and McKee said, “Not yet.”

  Anthony Wilder was evidently not expecting visitors. He received them in shorts and a singlet over which he threw an elegant bathrobe of crimson brocade. He was apparently in for the night; the trousers of a light gray suit were neatly folded over a chair and the coat was on a hanger. The discus thrower, McKee thought, magnificent build. Careful of his clothes. That suit’s custom made, he may not know where the next one’s coming from. The robe looked like a woman’s gift.

  His opening question took Wilder by surprise. His coolness, the savoir faire with which he had greeted their arrival, shriveled. A young married woman named Margery Adams was the particular blackmail victim McKee was concentrating on. Hers was the most recent death. He said, “I believe you knew a Mrs. Adams, Mr. Wilder? Her first name was Margery.” McKee knew nothing of the kind. It was a shot in the dark.

  “Mrs. Margery Adams?” Wilder swallowed, moved his lips about. “Adams, Adams—Madge, they called her. I knew her, but only slightly. It was quite a while ago. Something happened to her, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wilder, she jumped off the George Washington Bridge last December. I understood you were a good friend of hers.”

  Wilder had recovered himself. He protested McKee’s statement, coldly. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, Inspector. I met the woman around town occasionally, in bars—that was the extent of it.” McKee went on asking questions. Eleanor Oaks? Yes, Wilder knew Eleanor Oaks, she had been very kind to him. Samuel Pedrick? He frowned, annoyed but patient. “I think I’ve seen the man you describe with Eleanor. May I ask what this is all about?”

  McKee said that they wanted his help. “You’re a friend of Miss Tallis’—and you know what happened to her.”

  At the mention of Libby’s name Wilder stopped throwing his discus and became flesh and blood. He seemed to be genuinely in love. He said that he wished from the bottom of his heart that he could help, but he knew absolutely nothing that would be of the slightest assistance. McKee and Strait were going when the phone rang.

  Wilder didn’t pay any attention to it; instead he crossed to the door and held it open. McKee remained where he was, close to the table on which the phone stood. “Go ahead and take your call, Mr. Wilder. We can wait.” Wilder had no choice but to obey. He picked up the receiver.

  The voice that came over the wire was clearly audible to both Strait and McKee. It was a harsh, rasping whisper. “That you, Tony boy?”

  “What do you want?” Wilder said loudly, beads of sweat springing out on his forehead. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Wait a minute. . . . Here, Inspector . . .” he turned and held the instrument out to McKee.

  The line went dead.

  Wilder had very effectively choked his caller off. McKee took the phone without comment and rang the desk. The call, a dial call, had been made from somewhere in Denfield; that was all the girl at the switchboard could tell him. It hadn’t been made from the Haven house. McKee gave the number and a masculine voice that announced itself as George Corey said so. Everyone there was in the living room and had been for the last quarter of an hour. McKee wanted it tied down. “Who’s everyone?” Corey said, “Mr. Haven, Miss Haven, Miss Tallis, Mrs. Stewart, Mrs. VanKreef, Mr. Cavanaugh, Mr. Grant and myself.”

  McKee hung up and he and Strait went, leaving a badly shaken Wilder behind them. Strait was shaken himself. When they were a sufficient distance away from Wilder’s door he pulled up. “What did you make of that, McKee? Was that Libby’s whispering man who called Wilder?” Instead of answering directly McKee asked, “Did anything about the voice strike you—I don’t mean the whispering part of it. That’s easy enough to reproduce. Try it yourself sometime—I mean the tone of the voice?”

  Strait frowned at a patch of faded wallpaper. “It seemed, it didn’t seem—particularly threatening.”

  McKee nodded. “My own impression. No, it wasn’t threatening, it was kidding, having fun.”

  The lawyer struck the railing with the edge of a hand. “Then Wilder’s lying. He knows the man who took Libby Tallis.”

  McKee shook his head. “Not proven. Not necessarily. It needn’t have been Libby Tallis’ whisperer. But most certainly the man who just called Wilder knows all about the real whisperer—and it would be interesting to know how he knows. Let’s get out of here. I want to do some checking at the barracks.”

  It took time. Neither Eleanor Oaks nor Pedrick was at the Oaks apartment in New York. Pedrick wasn’t in his own place, and the yellow convertible was not in the garage. It had been driven away by Pedrick at five o’clock that afternoon.

  Meanwhile in the Haven house to the north the evening was at an end. Shortly after McKee’s call George and Anita and Hugo left and the others went to bed. Both girls were tired, Kit inordinately so. She couldn’t even remember undressing, fell at once into a deep sleep.

  The house was in complete darkness before twelve. The trooper continued to m
ake his rounds, his torch a passing flicker in the black night. There was neither a moon nor stars. At on toward one he thought he heard something near the terrace. It sounded like the crunch of a footstep. But when he turned back there was no one there. Now and then a car went past on the road below. Peepers kept up a monotonous serenade. There was nothing else. Then, at twenty past one—he looked at his watch—there were several sharp reports from the direction of the road.

  The trooper hesitated. It could be a car backfiring. His job was to guard the Havens. ... He ran part-way down the slope, torch light bright ahead of him, pulled up, and listened. There were no sounds now. If it was a car the car was gone. He retraced his steps and resumed his vigil.

  William Grant’s body was found by the relief man coming on at 4 a.m. William was dead. He was sprawled face down on the grass near the front gate, beyond the tallest of the maples. The revolver that had sent two bullets into him was lying a few inches from an outflung hand.

  XV

  Morning sunlight flooded through the windows, reflecting itself in polished wood, in shining parquet beyond the edge of the rug. The curtains moved gently. Apple blossoms sailed in a drift against the lilac bushes. The air smelled sweet. It was a magnificent day. The house was in the same frozen state it had been in the night they waited for Libby to come home.

  It was a little after nine o’clock. Libby, Kit, Philip Haven and Miriam VanKreef were in the living room with the Inspector. Miriam had been up first. She had seen what was going on outside, the policemen all over the place. Her scream when she was told had alerted the others.

  tvlpKee gave them what little had been discovered to date." William had slipped out of the house at around 1 a.m. That much was certain. The trooper had heard a sound then, but had been unable to track it down. At one-twenty the shots came but the trooper had assumed, as nothing else happened, that it was a car with ignition trouble.

  William could have been killed, or he could have taken his own life. He had been shot at close range; there were powder burns on his coat. The gun that had fired the shots, a German Luger, was untraceable, one of those souvenirs that continually cropped up to plague the police. William had been in the army and had spent nine months abroad toward the end of the war. Fearing the disclosure about the kited check he could have brought the gun to Denfield with him or. . .

  Miriam VanKreef erupted then. Patches of color made a dull burn in her cheeks and her red-rimmed eyes were cold and accusing on her brother-in-law. “That’s it! The poor, poor boy—he couldn’t take it. If only you’d been a little kinder to him last night, Philip. If only you had! No wonder William didn’t want to go on living. No wonder!” Haven raised his head. He looked mortally tired. He stared at his sister-in-law blankly. “What the hell do you mean, Miriam? Are you trying to say that I drove William to suicide?” But he was shaken.

  The two girls were aghast. Libby said, “Aunt!” in a white fury, putting her arm through Haven’s. Kit was equally angry. She told McKee about the money Philip had given William in the study later on in the evening. “William was pleased and grateful. He said he didn’t know how he was ever going to be able to repay my uncle for his kindness.” She broke off, her inner gaze focused on William when she had seen him, leaning against the desk in Philip’s room, holding the sheaf of bills, looking at them with a smile. “No,” she cried vehemently, “I don’t believe William killed himself. I just don’t believe it.”

  Miriam VanKreef s head jerked back as though she had been slapped. She glared lividly at Kit, the red spots in her cheeks gone.

  Haven stirred. Groping for a cigarette and lighting it he said, “What I don’t get, Inspector, is how, with a policeman out there in the grounds, it could have happened.”

  McKee shrugged. He said that the trooper could only be in one place at once, that the house was large and buried in tree shadows, and it took almost three minutes to round it. The night was dark, the trooper’s torch a feeble light. William must have watched him go past the terrace, and then slipped out. Which didn’t resolve the identity of the person William had gone to meet—if there was someone. He was himself convinced that Sam Pedrick was the whisperer who had phoned Wilder at the inn, and the call had been made from Denfield—which meant that Pedrick was somewhere in the vicinity last night, he and Eleanor Oaks. Nothing on them yet. In addition, Cavanaugh, George Corey and Anita Stewart had been in the house the evening before. At the time of the shooting Corey was ostensibly in the inn, from which there were a number of unobtrusive exits, Anita Stewart was home, and Cavanaugh was on his way back to New York, where he arrived, he said, before one o’clock. No check on that, so far.

  The Scotsman returned his attention to the room. Kit Haven was sitting forward, elbows on her knees, her eyes narrow. She turned impetuously to her cousin, “Libby, how do you feel?” The younger girl was massaging her temples with her fingertips. “Not very well, Kit. I’ve got a headache, but. . .”

  Kit nodded. “I have too, and my tongue’s furry.” She looked at McKee. She said slowly, “Do you know what I think? I think William put something in that last drink we had last night. He insisted on making it. It was a rum Coke. I didn’t notice anything from the taste, but the Coke would have covered that.”

  Miriam VanKreef took sleeping pills. Haven took a sedative prescribed by his doctor. If William had wanted to make a noiseless exit the two girls were the ones to be feared—McKee made for the kitchen with rapid strides, and was lucky. A brass tray holding used glasses from the night before was still unwashed. He snared the tray, gave it to a trooper in the hall and returned to the living room and delivered the rest of his news, watching faces keenly.

  From the evidence, William was the one who had stolen Libby’s glove and the tissue with the print of her lips on it two nights ago. The glove and the tissue, balled and torn, were under his body when he was lifted. And there was fluff from the tissue in his pocket. In addition, the shoe Libby had kicked off in the driveway on the night she was taken, in her attempt to make her plight known, had been found in William’s room in New York, under a pile of papers.

  He let them draw their own conclusion. Libby said, white faced, “You mean that William—William didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to me?” Haven said in a choked voice, “My God, he tried to keep us in ignorance.” Miriam VanKreef didn’t speak. She sat staring ahead of her, her mouth folded in. Kit Haven said, “William must have found the shoe early Wednesday morning. You missed it Tuesday afternoon, Philip, when you got here in a cab. I came in that evening by way of the gate. William must have taken the pump back to New York with him in his bag. Is he—was he tied up with the people who took Libby, Inspector?”

  It was a question McKee couldn’t answer. Grant’s job as clerk in a hotel in midtown Manhattan brought him into touch with a number of dubious characters. On the other hand William could have played a different part, a part that was thoroughly in character. The snooper, watching and listening, picking up a little here, a little there. He could have come on something important—made his knowledge known to someone, and received his instructions. Meet me tonight when the house is asleep—and we’ll have a talk. It was the gun that had spoken. Exit William. That was the way it could have been—but an idea wasn’t proof. They could only get proof by backtracking. One thing was sure. What had started as a money-making scheme had developed into full-dress homicide, and once started on that course there was no telling what might develop. Desperation knows no laws. Before he left the house McKee had a word aside with Libby and Kit.

  The whispering voice that had called Libby after her return had ordered her not to talk to the police. She must therefore know some detail, however small, that threatened the perpetrator.

  But try as she would, and she did try, Libby couldn’t recall anything significant she hadn’t already told McKee. “I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, Inspector, but I was drugged most of the time. It’s like a nightmare now.”

  The nightmare, with Willi
am’s death, had become cold reality. “Well, if anything does occur to you, let us know at once, at any hour of the day or night.” He wanted to get to the barracks. Kit walked with him to the terrace steps. He told her about Wilders telephone whisperer of the night before, about the New York end, the blackmailer who had brought about two deaths, and that Wilder had known Margery Adams.

  Kit leaned hard against the terrace wall. Sunlight and sweet air. A yellow warbler flitted in and out of maple boughs. The June morning was a cruel mockery.

  William had been killed because he knew something it was lethal to know. Libby, too, must know something—or why that whispering phone call telling her not to talk? “Is Libby in real danger, Inspector?”

  “Well, I’d keep an eye on her. And Miss Haven . . .” He said that Wilder was no man for Libby, guilty or not guilty. “Try and convince her of that. Tell her what I’ve told you.”

  He turned away, turned back, and asked her suddenly about Anita Stewart. Someone connected closely with the house: besides Cavanaugh and George Corey and the principals themselves, Anita Stewart filled that bill.

  William’s death had made a difference. Kit hesitated. Anita wouldn’t kill anyone. She wouldn’t—and yet there was definitely a link between Anita and Pedrick.

  McKee duly noted her hesitation. He already had lines out on that angle. Maybe by this time there would be something. He took his departure.

  Kit watched him go, despair in her heart. How was it all to end? She thought of Hugo’s phrase, “a velvet hand.” It was as though there was just such a hand, touching them, nudging them into position, beckoning William outside last night. Suspicion on every side, not only of Pedrick and Eleanor Oaks and Miriam, but of Anita and Hugo. Well, you could only do the best you could, not day by day or hour by hour but minute by minute. The others were in the same state she was. Disoriented, restless, on edge. Looking gray, Philip retired into his study. Miriam went about various tasks, a large stricken ship. William’s funeral would have to be arranged for, distant connections notified. She still thought William had killed himself and kept on saying so until Kit and Libby could have screamed. A few minutes later they quarreled themselves, about Wilder, out on the terrace.