Girl Meets Body

by Jack Iams

  “Yes, he does,” said Tim.

  Mrs. Barrelforth looked at him and whistled softly. “I’ll be blowed,” she said.

  Another chill thought struck Tim, more frightening than the other because it was more grotesque. “Mrs. Barrelforth,” he said, and his voice sounded small to him, “has it occurred to you that—that Squareless’s housekeeper might be a man?”

  “Not possible,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Of course, there were those stories in England about spies dressed as nuns, but—no, it’s not possible. Any other phones around there? How about that general store you mentioned?”

  “No phone there,” said Tim. Then something clicked in his mind. “Although, by God,” he added, “something that sounded like a phone rang in the back room when Sybil and I were there. The storekeeper said it was an alarm clock.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Around eleven.”

  “Damned queer,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Well, these are matters to be borne in mind. Meanwhile, Ludlow, there should be one bright spot on your horizon.”

  “What?”

  “I’d say, offhand, that that letter proves one hundred percent that your Sybil is no wrong un.”

  “Yes,” said Tim, half to himself. “Yes. If only she’s a live un.”

  Behind them the Skyway rose in a majestic sweep of pinpoint lights against the gray-black sky. Ragged threads of the cold night air rushing past curled into the car, damp and chill and full of foreboding. Tim huddled inside his trenchcoat and smoked one cigarette after another.

  An hour and a half later, the road broke out of the cedar swamps as if glad to escape their oppressiveness. Across the salty gray marshland ahead of them lay the sharp, black shapes of Merry Point’s empty houses. In the distance, on the rising tip of land above the inlet, they could see pale light in John Squareless’s house. The house on the opposite bluff was dark.

  Mrs. Barrelforth slowed the big car and turned off the lights. “I’ve got a gun this time,” she said. “Just in case. Can you handle one?”

  “Not happily, but I can.”

  She thrust cold metal into his hands. “Don’t use it unless I tell you. No telling what you might hit.”

  The car glided silently through the ghostly main street and crossed the white bridge slowly with scarcely a rumble. Mrs. Barrelforth drove past the driveway and came to a stop a hundred yards farther on in the shadow of overhanging dunes.

  “We’ll do better on foot,” she said. “No telling who might be expecting us.”

  They slipped and skated in the loose sand as they pushed through the dunes. The wind whipped the long beach grass around their legs and sent stinging gusts of sand into their faces. Catbriars caught at their clothes. Close but invisible, the surf licked at the sandbar, at the beach below the house, which now rose in front of them, windswept and bleak.

  Mrs. Barrelforth caught Tim’s arm. “Something moved beside the porch,” she whispered. “See it?”

  Tim strained his eyes through the murk. The gravel of the driveway was pale against the dark shapelessness of bushes. He couldn’t see anything that moved. “By the steps,” whispered Mrs. Barrelforth. “See?”

  “No.”

  “You will in a second. Point your gun that way.” She brought a flashlight out of her pocket and sent a dazzling beam against the porch steps. Besides the steps, crouched in the bushes, was a human figure.

  “All right,” called Mrs. Barrelforth in a brisk, cool voice. “Get ’em up and walk this way. You’re covered.” Slowly the figure straightened up, tall and muffled.

  “My God,” said Tim, “it’s Squareless’s housekeeper.” The woman turned her gaunt face, pale and suddenly grateful, toward him. “Is that Mr. Ludlow?” she called. “Thank God!”

  She came toward them, pulling her cloak around her in the wind.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Mrs. Barrelforth. “Mr. Squareless saw a car drive up a little while ago.” She was breathing hard. “Then it drove away again. He was afraid something was wrong. He sent me to see.”

  “And was anything wrong?” asked Mrs. Barrelforth. Her fingers still held Tim’s arm and they were tight.

  “Yes,” said the housekeeper. “Look.”

  She turned toward the porch and pointed. Mrs. Barrelforth sent a beam of light shimmering in the direction of the woman’s finger.

  In front of the door, in a crumpled heap, lay Sybil.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Attached Find One Wife

  “She’s alive,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, on her knees beside the inert form. Tim, kneeling too, couldn’t speak.

  Mrs. Barrelforth shone the flashlight on Sybil’s face and forced an eyelid open. Then she sniffed at her lips. “Chloral hydrate,” she said. “Let’s get her inside.”

  Tim’s hands were shaking so he could scarcely get the key into the lock. The rush of relief, after those seconds of thinking his wife had come home as clay, was almost too much for him. He leaned dizzily against the wall while his hand felt weakly for the light switch. Lights and the warm familiarity of hall and living-room steadied him a little. He turned back toward the porch, but Mrs. Barrelforth was already coming in with Sybil in her arms.

  She laid her on the wicker settee opposite the fireplace and loosened her clothes. “Get a fire going,” she said to Tim. “The child’s cold as ice. And coffee,” this was to the housekeeper who had followed them in, “lots of coffee.”

  Julia didn’t seem to hear her. She was staring down at Sybil’s clammy white face and disheveled dark hair and twisting her bony Hands. Then she realized she had been addressed. “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

  “Coffee,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Gallons of it.”

  Julia nodded and went out, pausing at the doorway to look back once more at Sybil. Mrs. Barrelforth glanced after her thoughtfully, then she turned her attention to Sybil again. “Hullo,” she exclaimed, “what’s this?”

  A white envelope protruded from the pocket of Sybil’s rumpled coat. Mrs. Barrelforth looked at it and handed it to Tim. “Addressed to you,” she said.

  Tim got up from the fireplace, where a cheerful crackle was rising, and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a note written, again, on lined tablet paper.

  “If it’s not too personal,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “you might read it aloud.”

  Tim read:

  “Mr. Ludlow

  Attached, find one wife in better condition than you or she has any right to expect. There’s nothing wrong with her a little sleep won’t cure. But the next time you or she pokes a nose into something that is none of your damned business, it will be a different story. The smart thing for you two to do is to get the hell out of this locality and forget everything you ever knew or guessed about bodies on piers or anything else. This is friendly advice. If it becomes necessary to bring the matter up again, it will be on a slightly different basis. Better get started.”

  “Hmm,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “That last bit sounds like an advertisement, doesn’t it? Clip the coupon now.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” said Tim, “if I don’t laugh.”

  “I do my best laughing in times of stress,” said Mrs. Barrelforth “On the other hand, nobody has told me to move in the middle of a housing shortage. That could be serious.”

  Julia came back into the living-room. “The coffee will be ready in a moment,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I feel I should get back to Mr. Squareless.”

  “That’s right, he’s an invalid, too,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “I’d almost forgotten that.”

  She walked across the room toward the housekeeper, then stumbled over her own feet and fell against the other woman. Julia gave a little cry.

  “So sorry,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, regaining her balance. “I must have tripped on the rug. Do forgive me.”

 
; “Certainly,” said Julia. Her cold expression made it clear that she thought Mrs. Barrelforth had been drinking. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll be going.”

  She bowed slightly with austere dignity and went out.

  “It’s rather convenient sometimes,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “to have a reputation for tippling. Which reminds me, it’s been a long time. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about the housekeeper’s gender any more. It’s the genuine article.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Rest Of The Story

  Tim woke up to a day that was bright and clear and cold. The sea lay an untroubled blue outside the bedroom windows and, for a moment, the night’s events seemed but the evanescing blur of an evil dream. Sybil’s dark head was beside him on the pillow and, as he looked at her with sleepy relief, her eyes opened, puzzled at first, then gradually content. They were still a bit bleary, though, and her face was pasty.

  “Am I really here?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear,” said Tim.

  “Did somebody knock? Or did I dream it?”

  A light tap sounded on the door.

  “Somebody knocked, I guess,” said Tim. He raised his voice. “Who is it?”

  “Me,” came the familiar Barrelforth boom. “I’ve brought you slug-a-beds some coffee.”

  The door opened and the President of the New Jersey Chapter appeared, wrapped once again in Tim’s old bathrobe. She was carrying a tray which she set down on the bedside table. “Shall I pour?” she asked. “How do you feel?”

  “Groggy but good,” said Sybil. “How did I get here?”

  “Special delivery,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “Drink a little coffee and maybe you can tell us where you last remember being.”

  Sybil drank a little coffee and asked for a cigarette. “I’m not sure where I was,” she said.

  “That may be,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “but you were with Frankie Heinkel, were you not?”

  “So I was given to understand.”

  “I don’t mean to press you, my dear,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “but there arc certain matters that have got to be cleared up right away. What did you do after you left the Harbor Snuggery?”

  Sybil looked from her to Tim. “So you found the Snuggery, did you?” she murmured. “Charming spot, what?”

  “Still,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “bridge, like a honeymoon, is fun anywhere, isn’t it? If you like bridge.”

  Sybil chuckled. “Won a hundred and forty dollars,” she said complacently.

  “While you were waiting for a meeting with Heinkel to be arranged?”

  “Yes.”

  “Using the murder of Sam Magruder as a letter of introduction, you might say?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened?”

  Sybil sipped her coffee. “First,” she said, a little tremulously, “there was the phone call from Jake Burlick. When I talked to you.” She turned regretful eves on Tim. “You’ll understand, in a minute, that I couldn’t do anything else.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Tim.

  Sybil smiled gratefully. “Then,” she said, “the word came through that Heinkel was waiting to see me. We got into a car and then, quite politely I must say, I was blindfolded. And we drove for a long time. I’ve no idea where but I thought I smelled pines.”

  “Then what?”

  Sybil’s tongue ran over her lips as if she were trying to identify a bad taste. “Then,” she said slowly, “we stopped and went into a house. I suppose it was a house. It was warm and it smelled like a place people lived in. Not very tidy people.”

  “You were still blindfolded?”

  “Yes, the whole time. Then somebody said, ‘Frankie, this is the lady who wants to talk about Sam Magruder.’”

  “Reminds me of Dorothy’s first interview with the Wizard of Oz,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “What happened next?”

  “We talked.”

  “What about?”

  Sybil hesitated. “Personal matters,” she said.

  “Sybil,” said Tim gently, “perhaps I should tell you that Mrs. Barrelforth knows about your father.”

  “Oh,” said Sybil. Her eyes grew faintly reproachful. “Did you—”

  “No,” said Tim. “She already knew. That’s what you talked about, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Sybil softly. “We talked about my father.” Mrs. Barrelforth waited a moment, then demanded impatiently, “Well?”

  “That’s all,” said Sybil.

  “Rubbish,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “You offered to trade what you knew about Sam Magruder, plus a pledge of silence, for something Frankie Heinkel knows about your father. Right?”

  “Roughly.”

  “How did it work out?”

  “Not very well. First, Heinkel wanted to know who else knew about Magruder and I told him nobody. But that the police would know if anything went wrong.”

  “Jolly good thing, too,” said Mrs. Barrelforth. “By the way, did Heinkel’s voice sound familiar?”

  “It’s strange,” said Sybil, frowning. “For a while, I thought it did, then I decided it didn’t. Did you ever feel that way at a masquerade?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” replied Mrs. Barrelforth. “Go on.”

  “There isn’t much more. Mr. Heinkel proceeded to give me a pompous little lecture on how foolish I was to involve myself in his affairs. He said he didn’t trade information; he suppressed it. Then somebody shoved something to drink at me and that’s all I remember.”

  “You were pretty lucky, at that,” said Mrs. Barrelforth.

  “Was I?” said Sybil bitterly. “I didn’t get what I’d risked everything for.”

  “What was that, dear?” asked Tim.

  Sybil was silent for a while, pulling hard on her cigarette. Then she spoke with an effort. “When Daddy went away the last time, went away knowing it might be the last time, he told me that—if anything went wrong—there would be a message. A very important message. Something that would change everything. He didn’t say how he would get it to me. Perhaps he thought they—they’d give him more of a chance.”

  She turned her face away and wept quietly into the pillow.

  Mrs. Barrelforth touched her shoulder. “Lady Sybil,” she said, “the time has come for you to tell your husband the rest of the story about your father.”

  Sybil continued to press her face to the pillow. Then she lifted it, white and stained. “Yes,” she said, and bet voice was calm, “I suppose it has.”

  She sat up in the bed and looked at Tim with a kind of sad but yet defiant pride. “Remember,” she said, “I never told you my father was the earl of anything. He wasn’t. He was a professional shipboard gambler.”

  She paused, watching Tim’s troubled face. “He acquired himself a title,” she went on, “because it made it easier for him to slide into the most exclusive, and richest, card-playing circles. Especially, if you’ll forgive me, among your compatriots.”

  Tim gazed into his coffee cup, then automatically lifted it to his lips, though it was empty.

  “Poor Tim,” said Sybil. The hard brightness, like a defense against emotion, crept into her voice. “It came as a great shock to me, too, if that helps. I didn’t know till I was eighteen. First Santa Claus, then the stork, and then—this.”

  Tim still stared at his cup. Mrs. Barrelforth took it from him and filled it. “Go on,” she said.

  “You see,” said Sybil, “I never saw much of Daddy until I grew up. I lived with an aunt, his sister, and all I knew was that my father’s affairs required him to travel a great deal. It was a frightfully normal girlhood, really. There wasn’t any nonsense about a title, and I turned out to be rather good at field hockey. And quite fetching in a field hockey costume, which is difficult. The only thing that was unusual about my adolescence was Daddy’s insi
stence, whenever he was home, that I learn to play bridge. I liked it, too. May I have some more coffee, please?”

  Mrs. Barrelforth filled her cup. Sybil lit another cigarette with taut hands.

  “When I was eighteen,” she said, “Daddy took me on one of his trips. You can imagine the thrill. And on top of the excitement of a luxury liner, I found out that I was supposed to be Lady Sybil, instead of plain Sybil, or even Syblet, as I’m afraid I was called. Daddy explained that he’d never told me because he hadn’t wanted me to grow up apart from other girls.

  “It was a lovely trip. In the Mediterranean, and everybody was so gay. That was when I met Sam Magruder. And, of course, there was a great deal of bridge. I didn’t even know what the stakes were. Daddy would always carry me. It made him seem fearfully honest—the distinguished, gray-haired earl, accompanied by his charming and innocent daughter.”

  “Did you play innocent bridge?” asked Mrs. Barrelforth.

  “Yes,” said Sybil. She spoke with fierce emphasis. “My father wasn’t the sort who cheated. He didn’t have to. He used to say,” and her eyes grew fond, “that it wasn’t the Great God Luck, it was the Great God Percentage.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Barrelforth, “he was using you as a confederate. By his lights, perhaps—he was honest. But he had no right to use you for his—I can think of no other word—skullduggery.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sybil, “but I loved him.” She was silent for a moment, struggling to regain her composure. “I must admit,” she continued, “that my aunt was of our opinion. After we came back from our cruise, my aunt cornered Daddy. I was upstairs, but I could hear a hot and heavy row going on. The next day, my aunt told me the truth. It wasn’t a very happy day in my life.” She glanced sideways at Tim, as if hoping for a sign of sympathy in disillusionment. He didn’t look at her.

  “I faced Daddy with it,” she said. “I had to. But it was pretty dreadful. He cried. And, of course, I did. I don’t like to think about it. In the end, he swore he’d give the whole thing up but he had to make one more trip. He just had to. Then he told me he was in a spot of trouble. That’s all. And that there’d be a message if he didn’t come back.”