by Jack Iams
Mrs. Barrelforth appeared in the doorway. “I say, Mrs. Ludlow,” she called across the room, “somebody’s been sending you mash notes.”
Squareless looked up angrily. “Wait till after the hand,” he snapped.
Mr. Whittlebait looked around in sorrowful reproof. Mrs. Barrelforth was waving a folded sheet of lined note-paper, then, seeing the disapproving eyes at the table, she stuck it in the pocket of her tweeds.
Sybil crossed the room quickly. “What is it?” she asked, softly so as not to disturb the players.
“Blowed if I know,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Take a look.”
Tim looked up from his cards and, even across the room, saw Sybil’s hands starting to tremble as she read. The color drained out of her face.
“What is it, dear?” he asked.
“For God’s sake,” interrupted Squareless, “let’s finish the hand and everybody can yammer all they want to.”
“It’s nothing,” said Sybil. Her voice was shaky. “It’s a joke of some sort.”
“A fine time for a joke,” said Squareless. “Play a card, Ludlow.”
“It’s your play,” said Tim.
“Oh,” said Squareless. He looked at his hand, in which there were three cards: the king of hearts and the king, jack of diamonds. Mr. Whittlebait had just discarded the queen of hearts from dummy on his last spade, leaving the ace and queen of diamonds.
“Sybil,” said Tim, “are you sure—”
“Shut up,” said Squareless. He pulled the king of hearts out of his hand, then put it back and looked peculiarly at Mr. Whittlebait. “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark,” he said.
“There certainly is,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
“Quiet!” roared Squareless. He played the king of hearts.
Meekly, Mr. Whittlebait led the good jack. Squareless threw down his cards with a throaty yelp and reached for his wallet. “Whittlebait,” he demanded, slapping a five-dollar bill on the table, “was that just luck?”
Mr. Whittlebait’s watery eyes blinked at him. “Well, it was and it wasn’t,” he said. “I figured if I kept on leadin’ them spades, somebody was bound to slip up.”
“Nobody slipped up,” said Squareless. “What you have just pulled off was a perfect Vienna coup.”
“A what?” asked Mr. Whittlebait.
“A Vienna coup. Establishment of an honor in opponent’s hand so you can squeeze him later on. And I’ve never heard of its happening by luck.”
“Guess you have now,” said Mr. Whittlebait.
“I wonder,” said Squareless.
Mr. Whittlebait’s walrus mustache quivered. “Mr. Squareless,” he said in a hurt voice, “if I’ve done something wrong, it was out of ignorance. But I’d a sight rather not take your money.”
Squareless stared at him, then a slow grin spread over his face, which had grown quite red. “It’s your money, all right,” he said. “And when you get back to the store, you can tell the boys you pulled a Vienna coup against the best bridge player in—in Merry Point,” he finished with wry lameness.
“One of the best bridge players in Merry Point,” said Sybil. She was still pale, but her voice was calm, even gay.
“All right,” said Squareless. “one of the best.” He stood up and stretched. “Thank you, Lady Sybil, for a lively afternoon. I’ve enjoyed it, even if I didn’t sound like it.”
He started toward the door, then paused. “What was all this about mash notes?”
“Nothing,” said Sybil. “Nothing at all.”
“Then why all the fuss?” demanded Squareless. “Even Garcia would have waited with a Vienna coup going on.”
He nodded shortly around the room and went out. Mr. Whittlebait made his humble adieus and followed him.
Tim absently picked up the cards and watched Sybil. Mrs. Barrelforth was watching her, too. Sybil crossed the room and poured herself a drink. “Anybody else?” she asked.
“Please,” s aid Mrs. Barrelforth.
“Tim?”
“I’d like to see that note first,” said Tim.
Sybil looked at him hesitantly, biting her lip.
“I’ve already read it,” said Mrs. Barrelforth cheerfully.
“Oh,” said Sybil. She gave a nervous little laugh and tossed the crumpled sheet of paper onto the card table. Tim picked it up and read it:
Mrs. Ludlow: If you are a smart girl you will not say anything at the inquest tomorrow about recognizing the body on the pier. You won’t say anything about getting this good advice, either.
Chapter Seventeen
Not A Fit Night—
“What’s it all about, anyway?” asked Mrs. Barrelforth. “It sounds to me like a case for the Association.”
“As what isn’t?” murmured Sybil.
“Where did you find the note, Mrs. Barrelforth?” asked Tim.
“In what I presume is the guest room,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “It was pinned to the pincushion on the dressing-table. Therefore, it must have been left by someone who thought that was your bedroom. Therefore, it must have been someone unfamiliar with the house.”
“Not necessarily,” said Sybil. “I usually use that room as my dressing-room.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Didn’t realize I was putting you out. Pity. In that case, we’ll have to reverse our field. The note must have been left by someone who was familiar with the house but didn’t know I was going to spend the night. Logical, what?”
“Also,” said Tim, “it was apparently left by someone who didn’t want me to find it.”
“Logical, logical,” agreed Mrs. Barrelforth. “Already the web of logic begins to close in on the culprit. Next comes the question of opportunity. Who had the opportunity to leave the note between the time when you, my dear, so kindly prepared the room for me and the time when I inadvertently discovered it?”
“I’m trying to think,” said Sybil. “It’s possible that the note was there when I got the room ready.”
“Hardly,” said Mrs. Barrelforth with assurance. “You were about to rejoin guests so you must have had a look in the mirror before you came downstairs. In which event, you couldn’t have missed the note.”
Sybil smiled. “Quite right. I did look in the mirror and I’m sure there was no note on the pincushion then.”
“That narrows it down,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Slowly the web closes in. Except that webs don’t close in, do they? No matter. Is there just the one staircase?”
“No. There’s a back staircase leading up from the kitchen.”
“Aha,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Was the kitchen door locked?”
“No,” said Sybil. “I left it open so people could go to the privy.”
“B-r-r-r,” shivered Mrs. Barrelforth. “Don’t remind me of that privy.”
“It’s an item, though,” said Tim. “Because everybody in the room made at least one trip outdoors during the afternoon. Ruling out the three of us, either Squareless or Whittlebait could easily have slipped up the back stairs and left the note.”
“Why rule out the three of us?” asked Mrs. Barrelforth. “How do I know, Ludlow, that you didn’t write this note to your wife for some sinister reason of your own? How do I know Mrs. Ludlow didn’t write it to herself?”
“And how do we know,” asked Sybil, “that you didn’t write it and produce it in order to spoil poor Mr. Whittlebait’s grand slam?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Mrs. Barrelforth calmly, “I did produce it when I did with malice aforethought. I hoped it would bring a reaction that would point to the perpetrator.”
“Did it?” asked Tim.
Mrs. Barrelforth pursed her lips. “It certainly rattled your Mr. Squareless,” she said.
Sybil laughed, a merry and unforced laugh. “Mrs. Barrelforth,” she said, “you’re
not a bridge player. If you were, you’d realize that in the middle of a redoubled grand slam, depending on a Vienna coup, you’d have got the same reaction if you’d produced a plate of fudge or a live cobra.”
“Humph,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Let’s get back to fundamentals. Whose body on what pier at what inquest is the blasted note talking about?”
“I don’t think we need go into it,” said Sybil.
“Dash it,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “how is the Association going to help you if we don’t go into it?”
“I wasn’t aware of having asked for the Association’s help,” said Sybil coolly.
Mrs. Barrelforth looked at the ceiling. “I hate to bring up the subject of the roof over your heads,” she murmured, “but—”
Sybil smiled, wearily. “There was a suicide,” she said. “An old pine woods man shot himself on the pier. Tim and I happened to find his body. That’s all.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Of course not.”
“Why does the writer of this note think you did?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Humph,” said Mrs. Barrelforth again.
“Thinking the whole thing over,” said Sybil, and Tim felt the brittleness in her voice again, “the note is undoubtedly the pine woods community’s way of letting us know it doesn’t want us poking into its affairs. Mr. Whittlebait was probably delegated to deliver it.”
“It doesn’t sound like pine woods jargon,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
“They go to the movies,” said Sybil.
“So do I,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “and my movie-trained mind doesn’t think your explanation is worth two pins. You don’t either. One of the first things we teach our brides is to confide in the Association. We’re mothers to others, so why not to you?”
“Is that your slogan?” asked Sybil.
“It will be,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “I just made it up.”
She stalked exasperatedly across the room. Suddenly Tim and Sybil heard a horrified boom of “Good God!” They both turned.
“We’re out of Scotch,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. She stared at Tim with anxious eyes. “Is there—by any chance—”
“Mrs. Barrelforth,” said Tim, “how do you stand on rum?”
The president of the New Jersey Chapter beamed and said, “Like fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest.”
* * * *
Tim woke up in darkness, sure that something had awakened him. It might have been the wind, still hurling its noisy weight against the house, or the rain still beating on the windows, but it seemed to him that something else, something more specific, had pierced his sleep. He realized, slowly, that Sybil was not beside him, and a moment later he heard, or thought he heard, the sound which must have awakened him. It was scarcely distinguishable from the rowdy elements, but he was almost sure, as he sat up in bed and strained to listen, that somebody was hammering at the front door and that a voice was crying out against the wind and rain and pounding sea.
He slipped out of bed and peered into the dark hall. Simultaneously another door opened a few feet away and a voice, reassuringly familiar, said, “That you, Ludlow? Thought I heard somebody at the door.”
“So did I, Mrs. Barrelforth,” said Tim. Her large, comfortable presence, voluminous in the gray Army bathrobe he had lent her, was extremely welcome just then. He flipped the switch at the head of the stairs, which controlled the light in the hallway below. “I’ll take a look,” he said.
As he padded down the stairs, with Mrs. Barrelforth behind him, there was a noise in the kitchen, then Sybil appeared in the dining-room doorway. She was wearing her tweed coat over pajamas, the trousers of which clung damply to her ankles. Her face and hair were glistening wet. “Hullo,” she said. “Did I wake everybody up?”
“Where’ve you been?” asked Tim.
“Indelicate question. No pleasure jaunt, either, on a night like this.”
As she spoke, the hammering at the front door came again, unmistakable now, accompanied by a human cry that rose, harsh and desperate, above the wind. Sybil whirled and exclaimed. “My God! What’s that?”
Tim walked swiftly to the door and drew back the heavy bolt. He opened it carefully, bracing himself to prevent the wind from sending it flying. A tall, angular, bedraggled figure, wrapped in a dark cloak, lurched in and staggered against the coat stand, clutching at it for support.
Sybil cried, “It’s Mr. Squareless’s housekeeper.”
The woman lifted her gaunt face. White as death, the skin was strained tight across the stony features. “Mr. Squareless has been shot,” she said. “You’d better come.”
Chapter Eighteen
—For Man Or Beast
Tim pulled his trenchcoat over his pajamas and went to fetch the car. The Luger and the flashlight, he was glad to note, were still in the pockets. When he drove up under the porte-cochere, in the dim light of the lamp over the front door, the three women were waiting. Clutching their hasty wraps over their nightclothes, they looked like refugees from flood or fire. They climbed into the car and Tim drove off through the wind-whipped, sodden dunes.
Sybil sat beside Tim while Mrs. Barrelforth sat in back beside the stiff, unyielding figure of the housekeeper. Tim could see the latter’s grim white face in the windshield mirror. She seemed to be holding herself in control with tight-lipped effort, but Mrs. Barrelforth managed, with gentle prodding, to get a few halting sentences out of her.
She had been awakened, she said, by a loud noise of some sort and, while she was collecting her wits, she heard it again. The report of a gun, it sounded like, close to the house but not inside. She went downstairs from her second-floor bedroom to see if everything was all right. There was light under the door to Squareless’s den, but that wasn’t unusual. She knocked and, when there was no reply, pushed the door open. Squareless was slumped sideways in his big easy chair by the fire and, at first, she thought he had merely fallen asleep. Then, in the pool of light cast by the room’s lone lamp, she saw that blood was running down his face, apparently from a wound in his head. His eyes were closed but when she approached and touched his shoulder, they had opened. “Better get help,” he was able to say, then his eyes closed again. She had paused to soak a cold towel, which she laid over the wound. Then she had hurried off into the night.
“There’s no phone, I take it,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
The housekeeper shook her head.
“In that case,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, as Tim swung the car into the Squareless driveway, “you’d better leave Mrs. Ludlow and myself to apply what first aid we can while you high-tail it for the nearest doctor.”
“I picked up a bit of nursing in the ATS,” said Sybil.
“I’m no slouch as a nurse myself,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
“That’s all very well,” said Tim, “but I’m not going to leave three women alone to deal with any murderers who may be around.”
“We can discuss that after we survey the situation,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.
The gate in the stone wall stood open and the car slid to a stop on the wet gravel in from of the tall, dark house. At the side, where the windows of Squareless’s den curved out, faint yellow light was visible between the curtains.
“You’d better go first,” Sybil said to the housekeeper, “in case Goethe doesn’t recognize us.”
“I don’t know where Goethe is,” said the housekeeper woodenly. “I called him but he didn’t come.”
They followed the angular figure along the flagstones, through the rain, and into the house. She switched on a single bare light in the hallway, then, putting her finger to her lips as if from force of habit, tapped on the master’s door. From within came a weak and indistinct groan. “It’s Julia,” she said, apparently interpreting the groan as a query, and opened the door.
Squareless sat under the lamp’s cone of light. The rest of the room, the sweeping curtains, the mounted heads, the rows of books, melted into shadow. Evidently he had tried to move since the housekeeper left him. He was no longer slumped sideways, but looked as if he had tried to sit up and then had slid down in the chair. One hand clutched at the leather arm, stubby fingers spread, while the other was pressed to the wet, white towel, coiled like a turban around his head. Against the whiteness, the dark red splotch looked almost like an embroidered flower between the short fingers. The blood on his face, which was almost as white as the towel but grayer, looked dry. His eyes were open and looking at them. His lips moved a little, but there was no sound.
Mrs. Barrelforth walked across the soft carpet to his side. “Let’s have a look,” she said, her voice cool and professional. Squareless let his hand fall and she lifted the towel. Then she put it back, holding it there, and turned to the housekeeper. “I’ll need a lot of things,” she said. “Some blankets and a pillow to begin with. Then a razor, some adhesive tape, scissors, hot water, and some kind of bandages. Strips of cloth will do.” From between Squareless’s clenched teeth came two words: “And brandy.”
“By all means,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “We could all use some.”
The housekeeper nodded and went out.
“You, Ludlow,” Mrs. Barrelforth went on, “get going for a doctor.”
Squareless heaved himself up in his chair. His voice came in painful jerks. “No! No doctor.” Tim hesitated at the door. Again Squareless spoke, his voice labored but commanding. “No doctor. I forbid it.”
Tim looked at Mrs. Barrelforth. She stared down at Squareless, then shrugged. “All right,” she said. “As far as I can tell, it’s only a scalp crease. Even so—well—”
She was silent, holding the towel to Squareless’s head. He subsided in the chair, breathing hard from his exertion. The housekeeper came back with the blankets and pillow and went out again.
