“There’s bound to be some sort of an investigation,” she retorted. “At least from the coroner’s office. Uncle Joel was too rich a man to pass out as easily as all that without any questions being asked.” She sniffed.
Outside there came a knock at the kitchen door. Two firemen, left behind to watch the dying blaze, came shivering in to ask for coffee. The family trickled out of the kitchen, and Cousin Mabel drew me aside as I started down the hall.
“You know what this is going to be, don’t you?”
“A very unmerry Christmas,” I told her. “Why?”
“It’s going to be a murder investigation!” she snapped. I shook my head and tried to convince myself that I had not been thinking the same thing.
“We all had motive enough, don’t forget that!” she went on. “His death is worth a small fortune to each of us—and heaven knows we all need it. When you’re thinking up answers for the police, think up an answer to that one!”
I suddenly found myself tired and worn. Nothing appealed so much to me as the thought of a few hours alone in my bed before I had to face the gauntlet of official questions that seemed bound to arise. But first I had to talk to Dorothy.
I climbed the stairs and went down the long hall toward the room she shared with her sister. The door was half open, and I stopped outside long enough to see that Mildred and Todd Cameron were with her. They were playing “Don’t You Remember?”
“Remember the mistletoe?” Dorothy was saying, perched on the edge of her bed and blowing excellent rings from her cigarette. “You never knew it, Todd, but I had a crush on you that Christmas. I stood under the mistletoe for hours, waiting for you to take advantage of me. But you never did.”
Todd laughed. It was good to hear a laugh in that house. He leaned toward her. “Better late than never,” he said, and kissed his cousin on the mouth, expertly and casually.
I saw Mildred’s pretty little face turn into a mask. They all turned to face me as I came into the room.
“I don’t want to be a wet blanket,” I said, “but you may as well know what Mabel is saying. Her nursing has given her some experience and authority, or so she thinks.
“Anyway, she is confident that we’re due for a fine-tooth combing over this business, on account of the money involved. The old stuff about the heirs and the missing will.”
“Oh!” Mildred said.
“That’s possible, of course,” Dorothy said. “After all, if anything happened to Uncle Joel, I mean anything worse than just a tragic accident, you know the reason, don’t you, Alan?”
I looked blank.
“You sealed his death warrant last night,” she said soberly, “when you said you’d block any attempt to have him certified as insane. This fire—it may be an attempt to cover up a murder that was the only alternative!”
“Dor’thy!” gasped Mildred. “You don’t—Oh, I know nobody in this house is a murderer!”
“One of us is!” Dorothy said. “Maybe more.” She stood up, looked at herself in the mirror. “Before we start the Guess Who game, I’m going to fix up the old ruin a bit. So do run along, you two.”
Todd and I went out into the hall. “I’m going to change,” I told him, conscious of the fact that I was soaked through. “Want to brush up in my room?”
He brought in his suitcase, took out a fresh shirt. I happened to have a small flask of brandy in my bag, one that I usually carry when traveling. I thought that the situation called for a stimulant, but he shook his head. “Never touch it,” he apologized.
I must have looked amazed.
“I know,” he said, “but in my profession you need a clear head.”
I had never heard that Todd Cameron adopted any profession except the expenditure of what little money had been left him at the death of his father and mother some five or six years ago.
He took out a cigarette, and for the first time I noticed that he had, I think, the most beautiful hands I had ever seen on a man. They were almost too slim, beautifully strong and quick. He went to the window, stared at the smoldering ruins outside.
“Was it an accident?” he said again.
“Well, was it?”
“Smoke chokes you and wakes you up,” he said. “I’ve been through a fire at sea, and I know. Uncle Joel could have got to a window. Alan, men jump out of high windows rather than roast alive.”
That seemed reasonable to me. “And if he’d got to a window, somebody would have heard him,” I finished.
He nodded. “You know, there’s something going on here,” he said thoughtfully. He threw himself on the other bed, clasped his slim hands at the back of his neck. “Dorothy told me about the telegrams, and about Gilbert,” he went on. “I’d give a good bit to know just who sent those telegrams.”
“You think he was the murderer, then? Planned even then?”
Todd looked at me, dropping ashes on the coverlet. “Suppose we find out?” he said.
I felt as flattered as a kid does at school when chosen first for a game of one ol’ cat. He had said “we.” Mysteries have always captured my imagination. Now instead of the secrets locked in the archives of the past, I was faced with a real, flesh-and-blood mystery, a mystery that was still, so to speak, going on.
“The first thing to do…” I began. Todd held up his hand.
Then I realized that somewhere in the house a woman was laughing, a steady, monotonous laugh that rang false as a cracked goblet.
We rushed down the stairs; everybody rushed. Aunt Evelyn was standing in the sitting room, under the cobwebbed branches of the ancient brown Christmas tree.
Uncle Alger was ahead of us. He went up and shook her, but she kept on until Todd slapped her cheek soundly. She stopped laughing, pointed to the pile of neatly wrapped packages under the tree.
“I—I couldn’t help looking to see,” she choked. “I had to see the presents Joel left for us last night.” She began to laugh again. “Look!”
The boxes were in a heap, most of them opened, with Christmas wrappings and seals strewn everywhere. There were handbags of fine soft suede for the women, ostrich wallets for the men… all but Todd. They were empty except for the tissue paper that manufacturers stuff into leather goods.
“Empty!” cried Aunt Evelyn. “But his death this morning automatically fills them for us, and that’s what’s so funny!” She subsided into a chair.
Dorothy, uninterested in her first Christmas gift of the day, was at the window. She turned to face us. “Jiggers, the cops are here—and that’s what’s so funny!”
We heard the screech of brakes, an eerie wail outside the house. Then suddenly the room was filled with another sound. We all looked at Mildred. She faced us, smiling prettily, but in spite of herself her teeth were chattering with a strange individual life of their own.
IV
….THE FUEL OF ONE FLAME
And all we have of them is now a legend and a name.
—EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
WE WERE ALL IN a strange dreamlike state, like divers undersea moving feebly against an invisible current in a world of glimmering shadows. Danger and excitement were generally supposed to quicken the mental processes, but at least as far as I was concerned I found it just the opposite. Only Todd Cameron among us all seemed to retain his vitality, to keep untarnished the bright quicksilver of his mind.
“Here,” he said to me, “is where we go into action. Come on!” and I came.
Out on the driveway stood a new but mud-bespattered V-8 touring car, from which a weather-beaten man with melancholy mustaches was climbing. He wore neither cowboy boots nor a ten-gallon hat, but all the same there was something about Sheriff Tom Bates that always reminded me of the cowboy extras who stand around the corner of Sunset and Gower in Hollywood.
We introduced ourselves. Sheriff Bates’s voice was mild, filled with guile. He passed me over with a glance, devoting his attention to Todd. “So you came all the way from the Islands to spend Christmas with your uncle, eh?” He ch
uckled. “Long trip just for a turkey dinner.”
“Longer if you come by tramp steamer to Mazatlan, as I did,” Todd said. “But no trip is too far when you have an object of affection.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. It was clear that he intended to give this young man rope enough. He smiled. “A girl, eh?”
“I was referring to another kind of affection,” Todd said. “The love one bears toward a rich and elderly relative—‘greater love hath no man than this!’”
“Huh?” The sheriff blinked. Then he nodded, and, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, wandered idly up the drive. I was just beginning to feel relieved at his evident lack of desire to question the family when Todd gestured me to follow.
“This had better be a personally conducted tour,” he said. Todd was staring thoughtfully at his car, the blue Auburn speedster which still stood where he had left it. But the sheriff was moving in the other direction, toward the garage.
We came up behind him as he dropped a handful of smoking ashes, and turned, shaking his head. “Still hot,” said the sheriff. “If Joel Cameron is in there he’ll have to stay a while longer.” He sniffed. There was the usual sour smell of damp ashes which always surrounds the scene of a fire, but in addition there was another odor, faintly sweetish and sickening.
“Looks like he was in there all right,” went on the sheriff. “Just like old man Cameron to build a house bigger ’n a hotel and then bed himself down in the garage.” He grinned, and made his forefinger waggle around his ear. We were looking in the open double door of the garage. The walls still stood, blackened and cracked, but the floors had dropped in and all of the ashes and refuse was piled over the gaunt skeletons of the two cars, Waldron’s and mine.
“No, you shouldn’t have any trouble about the insurance,” the sheriff went on. “Not unless the fire was incendiary. Don’t suppose you set it, did you?”
He looked at me. My car was insured for two hundred dollars, so I told him that it would seem unlikely. A wide grin almost took the sting out of his remark.
Just at that moment another car came roaring up the slope into the yard, with a loose connecting rod banging companionably and clouds of foul-smelling bluish-black smoke coming from the exhaust. Out popped a plump little man who was tangled up, mummy-fashion, in two mufflers, a long hairy overcoat, and woolen mittens. He carried a black case like a country doctor’s, and his eyes were magnified to ridiculous dimensions by the thick lenses of his spectacles.
“Well, Sam!” said the sheriff, barely turning from his survey of the ruin. “For once you’re ahead of time.” He nodded at Todd and me. “Shake hands with a couple of the old man’s nephews—boys, this is the county coroner, Dr Eckersall.”
“Meetcha,” grunted Dr Eckersall. He was looking at the still-smoking building. Then he faced the sheriff. “Well, bring him out so I can get to work!” he snapped.
“Hold your horses,” protested Sheriff Bates. “That fire won’t cool off for hours.”
“Never mind, I’m the coroner and I’ve got to view the body,” insisted Dr Eckersall fussily. “It’s up to you to dig Joel Cameron out where I can get at him, if he’s in there at all.”
“He’s in there all right,” the sheriff said dryly. “But if you want him now you can go in and get him yourself. Eh, Mr Cameron?”
Todd shrugged. “I’ve got work to do!” Dr Eckersall vented angrily. “I have two confinement cases and some lab work on a streptococcus culture. What’s more, I’m going back and do it. If you find any human remains—which I very much doubt!—you know where I am!”
He climbed back into his car, turned noisily around, and headed down past the terraced gardens and along the cracked pavements of the ghost city.
“You know,” Sheriff Bates said, as if to himself, “this here is one autopsy that the coroner is going to enjoy. Mighty impatient he is, and no wonder.” He noticed the surprised look on my face. “Yes sir, the coroner is going to enjoy doing that job. You see, some years back Sam was one of the local boys who got led into making deposits on lots in your uncle’s subdivision—what they now call ‘Soapbubble City.’ Sam took losing the money kinda hard when the whole thing fell through. But say! Burning alive is pretty strong punishment, even for a real-estate promoter.”
Neither Todd nor myself felt like commenting on that. The sheriff rolled himself a homemade cigarette. By this time he had seemingly lost interest in the ruin of the garage. He started toward the house, scattering shreds of tobacco.
“That your car up there?” he called to Todd. “Nice wagon. Don’t suppose you drove it all the way from the South Seas, though?”
“Yes,” said Todd. “No, I didn’t.”
He came close beside me. “Keep John Law here five minutes—for God’s sake!” said Todd, without moving his lips. I could sense that he was wound up like a spring.
“Why, er—” I began. Then I took the plunge.
“Sheriff!” I called.
He dropped his match, exhaled clouds of blue smoke. “Sheriff, could you come back a moment?” I cried. “Something here in front of the garage…”
Sheriff Bates came back, his eyes alight with interest. “You—you ought to have a look at this,” I went on. Todd seemed somehow to fade out of the picture just then, leaving me alone with the keen-eyed peace officer.
For the first time the sheriff seemed to include me in his field of suspects. Perhaps he caught something vague in my voice, some hint that I was out on a limb. I have never been a good liar.
“Is something biting you?” he demanded.
I shook my head, staring at the mud-covered cement like a schoolboy caught in the act. Well, I’d done my best for that appealing scamp of a Todd. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of him beside his blue roadster. If it was a getaway he wanted I rashly decided to help him for the few moments more that he needed.
“Don’t you see it, Sheriff?” I mumbled, thinking of footprints.
There was a moment of silence. Then came the sheriff’s voice, filled with awed wonder. “Well, I hope to kiss a rattlesnake!”
He was looking down at the ground, following my gaze. Suddenly he squatted on his hunkers. “You’ve got something!” he said.
“Eh?” was all I could muster, being completely beyond my depth. But the sheriff went on:
“The fire chief said that they didn’t put a ladder down,” he said in an awed tone. “Said they got here too late to think of trying to get in a window.” The sheriff’s stubby finger indicated a pair of triangular indentations in the shallow mud, smeared by the rain but not obliterated. “All the same, a ladder was set here early last night, sometime after the rain began! A ladder that reached up to that window.” He pointed, and we looked up to a black gaping oblong high on the front of the building. “Where’s that ladder now?” he demanded. I told him that I didn’t know, that we had searched everywhere for one while we were trying to fight the fire.
“The Mexican ought to know where it’s usually kept,” I said.
Sheriff Bates nodded. “I want to talk to that Oviedo anyways. Want to ask him if your uncle kept any gasoline or anything like that in the garage. More than was in the two cars, I mean. The fire chief said that the fire seemed a damned sight hotter ’n it had any reason to be, and burned a lot longer.”
He was heading for the kitchen door. “Wait,” I advised him. “The Mexican and his wife aren’t home yet. After we arrived last night they took Uncle Joel’s car and left for a big native celebration up toward Capistrano. ‘Fiesta,’ I think they called it.”
The sheriff stopped, threw down his brown-paper cigarette, and laboriously ground it with his heel. “You sure?” he demanded.
I said I was sure.
“That’s blame interesting,” Sheriff Bates remarked. “Because that greaser fiesta was held night before last, not last night. Um—looks like I’m aholt of something.”
He snapped his fingers. “Yessir, it looks like I got the world by the tail with a
downhill drag,” he informed me. “See you pretty soon—don’t let anybody leave here, and keep folks away from where the fire was.” He trotted toward his own car, slid behind the wheel, and slammed the door with its official seal of the County of Santa Felice. Then he was gone.
Todd appeared behind me. “As easy as all that?” he said.
I turned on him. “Yes, and where were you all this time?”
Todd beckoned to me, led me to his car. Now I saw that the convertible top was down, effectively concealing two clean bullet holes through the canvas. There was another hole in the body, its edges neatly pounded back into place. “I didn’t want him to see that,” Todd confessed, looking at me with his head cocked on one side, like an insolent sparrow. “These would have been misunderstood.”
“But who did that?” I demanded.
Todd smiled. He pointed to the two bullet holes hidden in the canvas. “Courtesy of the Customs,” he admitted. “They didn’t like my crossing the border at Tijuana after midnight closing.” Then he rubbed his fingers over the repaired hole in the body. “This I got down in Mexicali, hottest town in Mexico. From the man who owned this car,” he added dreamily.
He watched me, faintly smiling; waiting, I suppose, to see what the effect of his remark would be. I had a pretty good idea that he was trying, as they say, to get a rise out of me—that this was a bit of a spoof. Though those three bullet holes were genuine enough. Anyway, before I was forced to take a stand for virtue or else give in to the damned cheek of the fellow, we ran into gangling Eustace.
He was walking slowly in the direction of the Auburn, his eyes alight. “What a crate you got!” he said to Todd. He looked upon the roadster, its shining blue enamel and the burnished metal, as a mother might look upon a first-born son. “What I wouldn’t do for a crate like that!”
“You like cars, kid?” Todd asked.
“I’m going to have me the hottest crate in California,” Eustace declared. “I’m going to have me a snow-white Rolls with a Brewster body. I’ve dreamed of having a Rolls ever since I was a kid!”
Omit Flowers Page 5
