There is No Return

by Anita Blackmon

  I got the feeling that he was watching me closely.

  “Died!” I exclaimed. “And so young. What a pity!”

  “Perhaps,” he said with an ugly twist to his voice.

  I gave him a scathing glance. “Are you one of those bolshevists who envy a capitalist everything, even his innocent children?” I demanded.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Thank God I’ve outgrown that rash,” he said, “and God knows nobody envied Thomas Canby his daughter.”

  At this moment the power magnate’s long maroon car passed us again with another indignant flirt of loose gravel. “Apparently Mr Thomas Canby is in a hurry,” I remarked dryly.

  Chet Keith nodded, then smothered a sharp exclamation. The machine ahead had stopped so abruptly, it was all our driver could do not to pitch directly into it. For a moment both cars hung sickeningly on the edge of the bluff, and I felt as if my stomach had turned a somersault.

  “What the hell!” exclaimed Chet Keith. “Sorry,” he muttered with a perfunctory glance at me as he swung out of the bus.

  The Canby chauffeur, a wiry, muscular-looking man in livery, had also leaped to the ground. They were joined by the bus driver. All seemed to be staring intently at something just around the short curve in front of us. I could see Thomas Canby craning his long thin neck from the back seat of the limousine. I suppose they expected me to have no natural curiosity. At any rate Chet Keith gave me an impatient glance when I crawled out of the bus and walked toward them.

  “You might as well go back,” he said curtly. “It’s just a rock in the road.”

  “I can see that for myself,” I retorted in a tart voice.

  There was a large boulder lying on the inside of the curve. It seemed to have fallen from the side of the mountain just above, where there was a gaping hole of loosened earth and gravel.

  “We’ll have it out of the way in a jiffy,” murmured the chauffeur, “if you’ll lend me a hand, brother.”

  He glanced at the bus driver, who was scratching his head.

  “Funny what made that rock fall,” he muttered.

  Chet Keith again shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t have been so funny if either of us had hit it going round that curve,” he said.

  I shuddered and glanced away from the sheer drop at the edge of the precipice to our left.

  “You’d think on such a road they’d take precautions against things like this,” I remarked.

  The bus driver was still scratching his head. “That’s what makes it funny,” he said. “They do.”

  The utility magnate spoke for the first time. “Can’t you clear that rock away, Jay?” he asked in a testy voice.

  The chauffeur touched his cap. “Watch me,” he said.

  He and the driver fell to and with considerable heaving and panting shifted the boulder off to the side of the road. Chet Keith did not lend a hand. Instead he climbed up the side of the mountain and stood looking down with a frown at the hole from which the rock had fallen. He was still there when the maroon car went on its way. The bus driver had gone back to his own machine, where he tooted his horn several times to attract our attention. I had not returned to the bus either. I was watching Chet Keith. He gave a start when he saw me staring up at him.

  “Wind must have blown it over,” he said, giving me what I regarded as a distinctly shifty glance.

  “Except that there has been no wind all afternoon,” I replied.

  He frowned and tried to slip something into his pocket which he had picked up from a clump of withered grass at his feet.

  “Accidents will happen,” he murmured.

  “I wouldn’t call it an accident if a cold chisel had been employed to dig a rock loose,” I said with a sniff.

  He looked at me as if he would have enjoyed wringing my neck, but he produced the object which he had attempted to secrete in his pocket without my seeing it. It was a cold chisel. Bits of gravel and clay still clung to its side.

  “It’s probably been lying here for weeks,” he observed in a defiant manner.

  “That’s why it’s all rusty,” I commented with elaborate sarcasm.

  The cold chisel was not rusted. It looked bright and new.

  “You don’t miss much, do you?” inquired Chet Keith.

  This time it was I who reached up and plucked something from a clump of withered grass clinging to the side of the mountain.

  “Not a great deal,” I said and would have pocketed my discovery without another word, but he caught my wrist and held it.

  “A woman!” he exclaimed.

  I nodded. “Looks as if.”

  The object which I was holding was a hairpin, an amber-coloured hairpin made of cheap celluloid.

  “Jees,” he said softly and then grinned. “Any reason why somebody at Lebeau Inn should crave to see you reach a sudden end?”

  I thought of Ella and shook my head. “If I should have been taken down with a mild case of poison ivy it might not have been unwelcome, but” – I took another shuddering glance at the bluff on our other side – “nothing like this.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be met with a brass band either,” he admitted with his cocksure grin. “However, as you say, murder is a cat of another odour.”

  I caught my breath. “Murder!”

  He gave me a sharp glance. “The real question before the house is: Who tried to send Thomas Canby to kingdom come?”

  I gasped, but he was already walking toward the bus and, feeling suddenly infirm in the region of my knees, I followed.

  2

  I shall never forget my first glimpse of Lebeau Inn that afternoon.

  The storm which was slowly gathering made a sullen background for the rambling frame structure with which twenty years of neglect had wrought havoc. An effort had been made to repair the sagging columns along the wide veranda at the front. The grounds closest to the building had been cleared, but there was still something frowzy and unkempt about the shrubs which grew up so high as to obscure the lower panes of the tall windows on the first floor.

  There were too many scraggly pines hugging the house. No wonder the place had a musty smell, I thought, it needed a good sunning.

  I remembered that, being so high above sea level, the clouds had a habit of meandering in and out of the inn at the least excuse.

  “I don’t know why everybody in the place doesn’t come down with rheumatism,” I grumbled as I was untangling myself from my cramped position in the bus.

  Chet Keith grinned. “It does look a little on the dreary side,” he remarked, then added in what he evidently intended for a facetious tone, “A swell setting for a murder.”

  I had succeeded in hanging my skirt again and, hearing a slight rip as I jerked myself loose, was not in the sweetest temper. “What are you going to do about that cold chisel?” I demanded.

  “Do?”

  “I suppose there is such a thing as police protection in this benighted spot.”

  He changed colour. “I dare say you’re right,” he said slowly.

  “What we saw will have to be reported — at least to Thomas Canby.”

  “Well, I should think so,” I snapped and stared with a slight shiver at that angry black sky behind us.

  “We’re probably making a great to-do about nothing,” he said.

  I glanced at him sharply but he turned away, following the bus driver, who, laden with our joint baggage, was leading the way into the inn. The lobby, or lounge as they call it at Lebeau Inn, is a huge, barn-like room with high ceilings and distempered green walls in which the oak armchairs and leather-seated settees look lost. At the right as you enter is the desk, a tall walnut contraption with pigeonholes behind the counter for room keys and the mail.

  At one end of the desk is a combination cigar and news stand. At the other is the door to the dining room. Opposite the desk is the entrance into twin parlours. At the rear of the lounge a single door leads into a long corridor from which opens a series of guest rooms, extending clear across t
he back of the building, there being only two storeys to the inn.

  A blond young woman was presiding over the old-fashioned register which she pushed toward us with an ennuied gesture. In spite of her bored manner she took a lively interest in the young man who gallantly permitted me to register first. I saw her watching him from under her eyelashes. I thought Mr Chet Keith was aware of the fact. He struck me as a young man who was accustomed to exciting a ripple in feminine breasts. He was just a shade too nonchalant about the way he lit a cigarette and allowed his gaze to stray over the young woman’s rather blatant curves.

  “Lady-killer,” I remarked to myself, having lived long enough about hotels to recognize the type which I abominate.

  I did not miss the caressing gesture with which he accepted the pen from the girl behind the desk after I laid it down. However, upon reading the name which I had written the young woman transferred her attention to me.

  “Oh, Miss Adams, Mrs Trotter left word for me to let her know the moment you arrived,” she said brightly. “I’ll give her a ring while Jake takes you upstairs. I’m sure you’ll both be pleased to know that we have been able to give you adjacent rooms.”

  I had my doubts on that score as I followed the elderly porter to the stairs at the rear of the lobby. Lebeau Inn does not boast elevators. It was a stiff climb to the second floor. My arthritis being what it is, I did not look forward to manipulating those steps several times a day.

  “I should think I could have a room on the ground floor,” I observed.

  Jake shook his grizzled head. “First floor all reserved, ma’am.”

  “Reserved?” I protested. “I had no idea the place was crowded.”

  “No ‘m, ‘tain’t crowded, that’s a fact,” he admitted. “Ain’t hardly nobody here, but the first floor is reserved for-for…” He gave me an odd look. “For Mrs Canby and her doings.”

  “Doings!” I repeated sharply. “What on earth do you mean?”

  But Jake could keep a still tongue when he liked.

  “Here you is, ma’am,” he said, exactly as if he had not heard me, and conducted me into a large, bilious-looking room at the back of the second floor.

  He hastily deposited my travelling bags beside me and made off so hurriedly I followed a sudden impulse and pursued him as far as the head of the stairs. It was my intention to insist upon an explanation, but as I reached the steps I glanced downward and was just in time to see Mr Chet Keith chuck the young woman at the desk under the chin, at the same time managing to steal a kiss.

  “I thought he was a fast worker,” I said to myself. “The disgusting young whippersnapper!”

  At that moment he glanced up and caught my eye, but instead of appearing in the least abashed by his conduct he had the audacity to wink, a piece of flippancy which I accepted with a disdainful snort. However, almost instantly the smile died upon his lips and he glanced past me, his handsome, insolent young face flushing darkly.

  I turned to look over my shoulder. A girl was standing at my very elbow, though I had not heard her approach, a slim, rather frail-looking girl with pale gold hair knotted in a coil on her neck, and a slender, oval face, dominated by a wistful mouth and two enormous grey eyes. There were dark circles beneath the eyes, and one hand was clenched at her side as she stared past me at the young man in the lounge.

  The next minute she was gone, and down the hall a door opened and I heard Ella Trotter’s voice call out. “Adelaide! Thank God you have come!”

  Before I could recover from my astonishment Ella bustled into the hall and seized me by the arm. You would have thought from the feverish manner in which she clutched at me and drew me into her room after her that I had arrived in direct answer to prayer. I was so overcome by her unexpected reception, I am afraid I merely gawked at her, and she had the grace to blush.

  “I was never so glad to see anyone,” she said.

  I drew myself up to my full height, which is not inconsiderable.

  “Seeing that you took every possible means to keep me away,” I began haughtily.

  “That was yesterday,” interrupted Ella and then she clutched my arm again and glanced over her shoulder. “What was that?” she whispered.

  “It sounded to me like a cat squalling,” I snapped, beginning to wonder if Ella had gone into her dotage.

  She turned so white, I thought she was going to faint. “A cat! Oh, Adelaide!” she cried and sank down into a chair as if her knees would no longer support her.

  “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed crossly. “What on earth has put you into such a stew? You’ve heard alley cats squall before.”

  Ella was trembling and I saw a little row of sweat beads on her upper lip. “They’ve found two cats in two days,” she said in a breathless voice. “Dead!”

  “And what of it?” I demanded impatiently.

  “You don’t understand, Adelaide,” quavered Ella. “They were were – their stomachs were ripped to pieces.”

  At that moment there came the first roll of thunder. I found myself clutching Ella’s arm quite as tightly as she had clutched mine the moment before.

  “Well,” I said, striving to throw off the eerie chill which persisted in playing up and down my spine, “cats have clawed each other to pieces before this and will again, I dare say.”

  Ella was whispering, and there was something about the way she kept glancing over her shoulder which made me nervous.

  “There was no sign of claws,” she said. “They-they’d been cut, Adelaide, cut all to pieces with a sharp knife and left to die like that in agony.”

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and for the second time I thought she was going to faint. I went over to the door and closed and locked it. Then I got myself a chair and sat down across from Ella.

  “You’d better tell me all about it,” I said.

  Nothing could better illustrate the state to which Ella had been reduced than the docility with which she accepted my suggestion.

  As a rule one has only to offer Ella Trotter advice to have her fly off in the other direction.

  “How much do you know about Thomas Canby and his wife?” she asked, still sounding very tremulous.

  “I know what everybody knows,” I said curtly. “Thomas Canby started with nothing and built up a fortune.”

  “You knew their only child died last year?”

  “I heard so this afternoon. She was very young to die.”

  Ella shivered. “She didn’t just die, Adelaide.”

  I glanced at her sharply. “It isn’t like you to beat about the bushes, Ella,” I said. “For goodness’ sake, what’s wrong?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Ella with a gulp like a sob. “Anyway, Gloria Canby killed herself, Adelaide.”

  “Killed herself!” I ejaculated. “A young girl like that, with everything to live for!”

  “She opened her wrists with a razor blade.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “She was quite dead when they found her.”

  “It must have been terrible for the mother,” I murmured. “I recall how devoted she was to the child when they stayed here at Lebeau Inn twenty years ago.”

  Ella gave me a look that startled me. “They say Dora Canby’s devotion to her daughter was almost an obsession,” she whispered, again glancing over her shoulder, although the door was locked.

  “What ails you, Ella?” I demanded.

  Ella’s lips were actually quivering. “The dead can’t come back, can they, Adelaide?”

  “Are you crazy!” I exclaimed.

  “I’m beginning to think so,” said Ella wearily and then she got to her feet and, going over to the dresser, took a folded newspaper, out of a drawer and handed it to me.

  “I ordered this from an old news dealer,” she explained. “It came out at the time of Gloria Canby’s death.”

  The headlines marched clear across the page. GLORIA CANBY, THE POWER MAGNATE’S DAUGHTER, COMMITS SUICIDE, they announced. There was a picture, blurred like
most newspaper cuts, but I could make out the features well enough.

  “I saw that girl not five minutes ago on the stair!” I cried, feeling grateful for the chair under me.

  Ella shook her head. “You saw Sheila Kelly.”

  “Sheila Kelly?”

  “The resemblance is marked,” said Ella, “but that isn’t what makes it so uncanny.”

  “Do stop talking in riddles, Ella,” I said as severely as possible.

  “The thing that is so awful,” whispered Ella, “is that Sheila Kelly looks more like that-that terrible girl than she did a week ago, than she did even this morning.”

  “What terrible girl?”

  Ella drew a long breath. “Gloria Canby was a very unpleasant person, Adelaide. She was never quite normal, I think.” She shuddered.

  “They say even when she was a child she used to pull wings off butterflies and stick pins into puppies just-just to see them suffer, and once-once when she was only ten she-she cut a kitten’s stomach all to pieces.”

  There was another rumble of thunder, so close I flinched. Ella leaned nearer to me and again she lowered her voice. I had to bend down to hear.

  “Gloria Canby killed herself because her father was about to have her committed to an institution, or so she believed,” she whispered.

  “An institution!”

  “She-she tried to kill him.”

  “Her own father!”

  “Made an attempt to poison him, or so they say, although every effort was made to hush it up.”

  “The girl was mad!”

  “Of course,” said Ella, “that’s why her father was having her put away.”

  “Only she killed herself first?”

  I found myself glancing over my shoulder, as if it were contagious.

  “Poor Dora Canby!” I sighed.

  “But that’s just the trouble,” said Ella. “Dora Canby never realized that the girl wasn’t – wasn’t right. She seems to have been able to close her eyes to every bit of the evidence. You know how stubbornly blind foolishly doting mothers of problem children can be.”

  “I know,” I admitted grimly, thinking of more than one such phenomenon which I had witnessed.