Eight Faces at Three

by Craig Rice

  He flung an armful of newspapers on the floor.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Jake wearily. “One of those impulses of the moment that you can’t resist.”

  “Where in God’s name have you hidden her?”

  “Won’t tell,” said Jake coyly.

  Malone swore desperately. “Three million people in Chicago, and everything happens to me! Where is she?”

  “Don’t tell him,” Helene said. She looked at Malone. “Do you really want to know?”

  He thought a moment. “No, by God, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  “What is this?” Jake asked. “A game, and what kind?”

  “If I don’t know where she is, I’m still in the clear,” Malone told him. “My professional reputation is safe.”

  The word Jake used about John J. Malone’s professional reputation was very very rude.

  “She’s in a good safe place,” Helene said, “where nobody on earth could find her. When you do want to know, we’ll tell you.”

  Malone groaned. “But how did you do it?”

  Jake described the mad flight through Chicago with Holly disguised as an accident victim.

  Malone sighed, swore, finally laughed. “That damn blonde wench,” he said to Jake. “She’ll land us all in the penitentiary before we’re through.”

  “She’ll make it worth it if she does,” Jake said happily. “Give me those newspapers, and order breakfast.” He read avidly while Malone talked to room service.

  “Now I know how people feel about their press notices,” he said at last. “Listen to this, ‘Police state that the fugitive could not have been aided from outside, as no suspicious persons had been seen anywhere in the neighborhood, although a close watch had been kept. Jasper Fleck, chief of police of Maple Park, declared he is unable to tell how the young woman managed to escape from the grounds on foot. However, there appears to be no other explanation of her disappearance.’ ” He laughed. “Helene had that car of hers parked with a whirlwind driver who had Holly halfway to the Loop before Jasper Fleck was down the stairs.”

  “Of all the Goddamn crazy stunts.”

  Breakfast came; it made everyone feel much better.

  “There’s something I keep trying to remember,” Jake told Malone over the last of the coffee. He rubbed one ear. “It bothers me. Something very important, too. What the hell— Oh never mind. It’s going to come to me. What do we do this morning?”

  “We take me to where I can get some clothes,” Helene said firmly.

  “I’m a little bored with those pajamas myself,” Jake told her. “But I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Malone frowned. “We’re going back to Maple Park. The Parkinses are keeping something back and I’ve got to know what it is. And I want to check on Featherstone’s management of the estate. May be some monkey-doodling there. I never,” he finished, “bothered with such details before. It may be that I’m too advanced in life to turn detective. But this case,” he said, “this case has got me so Goddamned curious!”

  They cheered him faintly.

  “Besides,” he said a little bitterly, “now that you two have robbed the Blake County jail of its one murderer. I’ve got to provide another one or be damned forever.”

  “Teacher,” said Helene simply, “I never would of done it if l had of knew.”

  Jake was busily writing something at the desk. “Note for Dick,” he said, “explaining everything, telling him to sit tight, say nothing, and hold rehearsal as usual until he hears from us.”

  Malone found his hat under the bed. “I’ll bring my car around and drive you out to Maple Park.”

  After he had gone, Jake lifted the bottle from the dresser.

  “Shame to waste this,” he said.

  They divided it with mathematical precision.

  Jake tried to think of the word that meant Helene’s beauty. Flawless was almost it, but not quite.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what does it all mean, anyway? Who are you, and who am I, and why are we here?”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said dreamily, “when you tell me who did the murder.”

  “The hell with the murder. What does it all add up to?”

  “It isn’t real,” she told him. “You’re not here, and I’m not here. There is no such place as this room. Nobody’s been murdered. Holly isn’t being hunted by the police. Aunt Alex— For God’s sake,” she said, “hand me that drink and be done with it.”

  He handed the glass to her solemnly.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She set the glass down on the dresser, empty.

  “Nothing is real,” she said very softly.

  Her arms slid around his neck, her fingers crept along his shoulders. He felt smooth blue satin grow warm like skin under his hands.

  The telephone rang, and Malone was ready with the ear.

  “This much is certain,” she said very thoughtfully, wrapping her coat around her, “if this keeps up, sooner or later one or the other of us is going to be the victim of a rape.”

  He looked at her for a long appreciative moment.

  “Yes,” he promised, “and if it’s me, I won’t struggle.”

  Chapter 15

  “Where is Holly?” Glen asked anxiously.

  Jake looked at the young man across the gloomy Inglehart library and decided he hadn’t been sleeping well. He was very pale and very tired.

  “Don’t you know?” Jake asked in a surprised voice.

  “No. Of course not. I assumed all along that you knew.”

  “Well, well,” said Malone, “quite a coincidence!”

  Glen stared at them. “You mean you thought I planned her escape?”

  “Didn’t you?” Jake said mildly. “I could have sworn you pushed her down that laundry chute.”

  “Don’t joke about this,” Glen said in a desperate tone. “She may be dead. She might have fallen over the bluff. God only knows what’s happened to her. I thought all along that you—”

  “We did,” Helene said suddenly. “She’s hidden somewhere, perfectly safe and out of danger.”

  Glen looked relieved. “I thought so. I remembered your sliding down the laundry chute to see if you could do it, and when she popped down it like that, I thought that was what was up. That’s why I led everybody down the wrong staircase afterward.”

  “It was a help, too,” Jake told him.

  “I’m glad,” Glen said gratefully. “God, I couldn’t stand thinking of her in jail. But I hate to have her run away like this. Maybe she’s safe, but it isn’t enough. I don’t want people thinking she’s a murderess. She’s my own sister, my twin sister.” He drew a long breath. “Maybe I’ve no business to ask questions. But has she run away with Dick Dayton? I like Dick. I think he’s a swell guy. I wanted her to marry him, yes, in spite of Aunt Alex. It didn’t matter about the money, really. Because I’d have seen that she got her share after Aunt Alex died anyway.”

  Helene looked at him sympathetically. “You look as though you’d been sleeping in your clothes.”

  “I have been,” Glen said briefly. He hesitated a moment. “Look, Holly really didn’t have a motive. She knew that I’d see to it she got her share of the estate after Aunt Alex died, whether she married Dick or not. So it couldn’t have been Holly. And I think I know just what did happen.”

  “Hm?” said Malone inquiringly and noncommittally.

  “It must have been done—the murder I mean—by some outsider. Someone who came in the house while we were away. That’s what the phone call was for. I mean, someone wanted to get Parkins and me away from here. Someone who knew Nellie was away. I mean, they knew she was away and so they called up and pretended to be Holly. I’m getting this a little mixed up, I guess. But anyway, whoever it was came in while we were gone and stabbed Aunt Alex. That’s how it happened.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Malone said, “if I can. You believe that
whoever telephoned you that night was imitating your sister’s voice.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Do you remember anything about the voice?”

  “No. That is—it sounded like Holly’s voice. Of course I’d been asleep and just waked up. It sounded like Holly’s voice and whoever it was said, ‘This is Holly.’ So of course I just assumed it was Holly. If I’d noticed—sort of subconsciously, I mean—that it didn’t sound like Holly—I’d have assumed that it was because she’d been in an accident. See what I mean?”

  “I see,” said John J. Malone. “And then when you and Parkins had been lured away, this unknown person came in and murdered your aunt?”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “But,” said Jake thoughtfully, “who the hell would want to murder your aunt? Pardon me, I didn’t mean to put it just that way. But in any murder you’ve got to have four distinct elements. Murderer, murderee, method, and motive. Now we have a murderee in the person of your Aunt Alex; Blake County has named one murderer and we’re looking for another; you’ve just outlined a possible method; but where,” he said, “where in the name of Judas is the motive?”

  “I don’t know,” Glen said thoughtfully. “But somebody must have wanted to murder Aunt Alex, or nobody would have.”

  Jake muttered rude words under his breath.

  “What about this bird Featherstone?” Malone asked.

  “Motive?”

  “Maybe he’s been embezzling your account,” Malone said. “I’m sure as hell going to find out, anyway.”

  There was a short pause.

  “He almost married Aunt Alex, years ago,” Helene said. “I remember Mother telling me about it. Nobody knows what broke it off.”

  “Possible motive there too,” Malone said.

  There was a longer pause while everyone tried to imagine O. O. Feather-stone imitating Holly’s voice over the wire, luring Glen and Parkins away from the house with the accident story, climbing in the window of Alexandria Ingelhart’s room, and murdering her. No one could.

  “You forget,” said John J. Malone, spilling ashes on his necktie. “Where was Holly while all this was going on?”

  The silence was almost deafening.

  “She’s shielding somebody,” said Glen helpfully. “She thinks someone she loves did it, and she’s telling this insane and incredible story—Dayton, for instance, she loves him—”

  “Dick was leading the band at the Blue Casino until after four in the morning,” Jake reminded him.

  Glen blinked at him. “Well, somebody. Maybe—Oh God, maybe she thinks I did it and she’s trying to shield me.”

  “Well, did you?” Jake said nastily.

  Glen ignored him. “If Holly hadn’t gotten out of jail, I was going to confess to the murder.”

  “Glen,” Helene began imploringly. “You don’t realty mean—”

  “Why haven’t I a motive too?” Glen went on. “Aunt Alex always held me down and I didn’t have any money of my own and wouldn’t have until she was dead. I was going to tell them I did it, and that would give Holly a chance to get away.”

  “You forget,” Malone said kindly, “the police knew very well that at three o’clock you were in a car with the Parkinses, coming back from town.”

  Glen sighed.

  “And where was Holly at three o’clock?” Helene asked.

  No one answered.

  Jake sat regarding Helene admiringly, thinking that what she had was not beauty, not loveliness, but a kind of perfection, and wondering what she was really like. He looked at them one by one: the short, red-faced Malone, his eyelids swollen, his necktie creeping towards one ear; Glen, his olive skin unnaturally pale, his damp black hair rumpled; Helene, her brilliant blue eyes expressionless in her marblelike face.

  The room was terribly still. Something dark and cold crept into Jake’s brain. The aftermath of a hangover, he told himself angrily, but he knew it was not the hang-over. There was a smell of death in the room, death and a premonition of horror yet to come, of terror unspeakable and indescribable, of blood, violence, and a world gone red and mad. Was it some inexplicable communication? He didn’t know, he didn’t dare know. But he did know that there would be tragedy and that it would touch himself—that Somebody—he didn’t know who—was going to die, horribly, hideously, and that he was going to watch that person die, helplessly, that he was going to hear that person shrieking in the face of sudden death while the very sky ran scarlet and flaming—

  “Where the hell are all the matches in this house?” said Helene suddenly in the silence, and the spell was broken.

  Before anyone could say another word, Parkins opened the library door to admit the pessimistic Mr. Fleck.

  Jasper Fleck was an unhappy man. Being familiar with Maple Park, it was his duty to assist the county authorities in this painful matter. It was an unpleasant and embarrassing duty. He had been chief of police of Maple Park for nearly thirty years, and he’d never had any trouble like this before. It had been his job to prevent any possible annoyance coming to the residents of Maple Park, to protect them from irritations, and occasionally to straighten out the little difficulties they would get themselves into, in their impetuous way. He had a vague feeling in the back of his mind that this little murder was just another of the impetuous things these Maple Park people would do occasionally, and that he ought to be able to smooth it over.

  “I don’t like this business,” he said unhappily, after greeting them. “There haven’t been no murders in Maple Park since that Filipino butler of the Bradshaws’ carved up the cook, back in ’twenty-five, and that was different.”

  “None of us like it,” Malone said briskly.

  Jasper Fleck sighed heavily “It don’t seem to me like she could of done it without she was out of her mind, which she certainty must have been from the way things seem to have happened out here. If it hadn’t been for her getting out of jail that way, I’d say she hadn’t done it.”

  Both Jake and Helene caught the reproachful look Malone gave them.

  “Maybe she just didn’t like the Blake County jail,” Helene said.

  “Well,” said Jasper Fleck thoughtfully, “without it was a robbery—” He paused and scratched his eyebrow. “Without it was a robbery—we do have robberies in Maple Park even if we don’t have murders.”

  “You’ve had one murder,” Jake reminded him.

  “Well,” Fleck said again, “the window was open. Why should a window be open when it was that cold outside, without somebody wanted to get in it or get out of it? And there wasn’t nobody in the house that wanted to get out of the window, so it stands to reason somebody might of wanted to get in the house, and who would of wanted to get in without it was because of a robbery?”

  It was wonderful!

  “And of course,” said Helene, “Aunt Alex, a helpless invalid, was such a threat to the safety and well-being of this alleged burglar that she had to be killed.”

  Mr. Fleck gulped.

  “To say nothing of the fact that nothing was taken.”

  “I only meant,” said Jasper Fleck defensively, “that’s the way it could of happened if it had of been a robbery.” He emitted a tomblike sigh. “But that isn’t what I came here for. It’s you, Miss Brand. They told me next door you might be over here.”

  “What have I done now?” Helene asked.

  “There have been some complaints about your driving. Mrs. Ridgeway next door—she didn’t like your driving across her lawn.”

  “I skidded,” said Helene briefly, “on the ice. Since I was coming here anyway, I kept right on going. Mrs. Ridgeway is an old fuddyduddy.”

  “But you weren’t driving your car last night,” Glen said.

  “It wasn’t last night,” Mr. Fleck said, “it was night before last. The night of the murder.” He looked at Helene unhappily “If you go on doing things like that, Miss Brand, someday I’m going to have to arrest you.”

  “I’ll be good,” Helene promised in an
affectionate tone. “And I’ll square things with Mrs. Ridgeway.”

  Mr. Fleck looked relieved. He reached for his hat. “It’s a good thing none of you had anything to do with Miss Holly getting away last night. Hyme Mendel’s plenty sore. He said—” He paused, evidently concluded Hyme Mendel’s words were not appropriate to the Inglehart library, said good morning to them all and went away.

  “Well,” said Helene after a while, “we can all prove our innocence. Jake and I were right here and we helped him look for her. You, Malone, were parked in Jake’s room at the hotel. Dick was leading his band.”

  “Just the same,” Malone growled, “you’ve put me in a hell of a spot. And everybody in this damned case is lying.” He glared at Helene and Glen. “You two. If you want to help Holly, you’d better come clean.”

  Jake hardly heard him. He was thinking over what Jasper Fleck had said.

  But Malone’s next words brought him back to earth.

  “For one thing,” Malone was saying, “I want to know just what Parkins meant when he spoke of the wrong that had been done his daughter. And I have a hunch you know what it is.”

  Helene and Glen looked at each other. Then Helene rose slowly and deliberately, walked to the window, looked out for a moment, walked back again.

  “He’s right, Glen,” she said. “He’s got to be told. And I’m going to tell him myself.”

  Chapter 16

  ‘There isn’t so much to it, really,” Helene said slowly, “and there isn’t any real reason why it shouldn’t be told. Except for Glen.”

  “Forget that stuff,” Glen said almost savagely. “No one has to protect me.” He turned to Malone. “Maybelle was brought up here. We all played together as kids. Maybelle and I grew up and had a love affair and Aunt Alex kicked her out of the house. That’s all there is to the story.”

  “Glen,” Helene said. “Glen, don’t.”

  “Shut up, Helene. I’ve been paying for her apartment in Rogers Park. I couldn’t marry her because Aunt Alex would have tossed me out on my ear. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Alex, I would have married her.”