I heard him, then, talking out in the hall to Ken. "It's the manpower shortage," he was saying fretfully. "I could not spare a man to stay here this afternoon. But it is utterly absurd, for Mrs. Fredon to accuse me or any of my men of locking her into that bedroom."
"I suppose so," Ken said abstractedly. "Well—I have to go and get this prescription filled. The doctor says it won't do her any harm."
"These women who go into hysterics!" Egbert muttered gloomily. "It holds my work up. I could clear these things up in half the time if they'd only behave themselves."
They moved off and were out of the front door before I could rise from my bed and throw something at Egbert.
I settled back and began to think about the body again. It was its dreadful coldness that I remembered best—too cold, even for dead flesh, for anything that had been lying long in that drawer. It must have been put there, I thought uneasily, while Mary and I were locked into our rooms. But where had it been brought from—and how could it be that cold?
I had a dizzy spell at that point, so I stopped thinking and watched the ceiling spin around for a while, but as soon as my head had cleared, my mind became active again at once.
Mary and I had been locked into our rooms while Egbert—for reasons of his own—had brought the body through the streets in an ice wagon, carried it up to the apartment, and placed it in the drawer. But I had found it and fainted, so he had to remove it again—only just what he'd done with it I did not know. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. And yet Egbert had the body, so how could anyone else have put it in the drawer?
A cold doubt as to my own sanity assailed me momentarily, but I brushed it aside. Whatever the explanation, the body had been there.
The body. Not Betty's . . . someone else . . . wrapped in the same way, and frozen in some fashion. Homer, of course—poor old Homer. That's why the police, had been unable to find him. He was dead, and his body had been hidden in somebody's ice chest. No, that was wrong. He couldn't have been in an ice chest .... And then I got it. The cold-storage vegetable bin in Mary's kitchen. It was a huge thing and was not used in the summer—and Homer's body had had to be removed because of Mary's announced intention of doing a thorough cleaning in the kitchen. For some reason it was important to keep him from being discovered.
I had to look in that vegetable bin at once—I felt so sure that I was right about the whole thing. I threw back the covers and got out of bed, but I had to get right back in again, because Lucy and Mary came into the room with a tray.
"We've brought you a little snack," Lucy said brightly. "The doctor said you must have plenty of good, nourishing food."
I accepted the tray with thanks and invited them to sit down. Lucy found a chair at once, but Mary hesitated.
"Do you think we ought to let her talk? You know what the doctor said."
"He was talking through his hat," Lucy declared. "Eugenia's no more mentally disturbed than she's always been."
Mary made a sound of shocked protest, and I said grimly, "So that's it— he thinks I'm loopy. Well, you two wait a minute until I finish this snack, and I'll show you something. I'll prove to you that I have my wits about me ...."
My voice trailed off, and I suddenly devoted myself exclusively to the tray. I felt quite sure that Homer's body was back in the vegetable bin, but I had been forgetting that Mary still expected him to return home at any time, and the thing would have to be broken gently to her.
I ran a restless hand through my hair and winced at a sudden sharp pain as my fingers encountered a rough spot in the scalp. I pulled my hand away gingerly and saw that my fingers seemed to have specks of dried blood on them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
"WHAT IS IT—what's the matter?" Mary asked.
"Snappy diagnosis," I murmured, feeling around my scalp gingerly. "He says I'm mentally disturbed—or temporary insanity or something—and here I have a head wound. I knew I wouldn't have fainted—I never faint. Somebody tried to brain me."
"My dear! How awful!" Lucy screamed.
Mary said, "Let me see," and took a look at my head. She drew in her breath sharply and added, "This is bad, Eugenia—we'd better get that doctor back here."
"I won't have Grandpa again," I said firmly. "Get someone else."
Lucy shook her head. "Doctors are scarce and hard to get, unless you're a regular customer. I had a hard time getting him."
"Wasted effort," I muttered, still exploring my battered head.
Ken came back, and Lucy excitedly told him the tale. He examined my head, declared that the wound was a minor one and that he would attend to it himself.
I lodged an immediate protest, and he begged me not to be ridiculous. "When I first went into the Army I was with a medical unit, and we were given a very complete and thorough three-month course. Those medical corps-men—"
"I suppose you know everything it takes a doctor six or eight years to learn?"
"The Army has to cut corners," Ken explained simply.
He sent Mary and Lucy off to collect supplies and then tried to get me to take a dose of Grandpa's prescription, which he had just brought back from the drugstore.
I balked and told him to drink it himself.
"Come on," he insisted impatiently. "It's only a mild bromide, and you need it—even if you're not temporarily insane. Anybody would need a bromide after living in this apartment for the last few days."
Mary and Lucy came back with various articles, including a pair of scissors and a razor—and we were immediately plunged into another hot argument. That one I won—Ken agreeing finally and reluctantly not to shave my head around the wound. He grumbled constantly, while he bathed it, and declared that the hair kept getting in his way. In the end he contrived some sort of an awkward bandage, and Lucy, after looking it over silently, went and fetched the yellow satin ribbon, which she tied around my head in such a way as to hide Ken's fearful handiwork. I thanked her quite humbly until I remembered that I had paid for the ribbon and had never been reimbursed.
I wanted desperately to go to the kitchen and look into the vegetable bin, but I knew that Mary would be at my heels, and so of course I couldn't. I lit a cigarette and watched her and Lucy clean up the mess that Ken had flung around during his fancy surgical dressing. He was too busy admiring the results of his skill to help them, and he paced up and down the room explaining in detail how a dressing of that sort should be applied.
Lucy stopped once or twice to listen to him, and observed finally, "I think that's right interesting—I always like to learn things. Only why didn't you do it that way?"
"What the hell do you mean?" Ken roared. "I did."
Lucy looked both astonished and offended, and he had to apologize, and then immediately asked her if she would prepare a little supper before we all went to bed.
"I'm not going to bed." Lucy declared, "unless Egbert sends a man to guard us. If people are going around hitting people on the head it's time we had some protection."
"Oh, don't be so hysterical," Ken said disgustedly. "Gene probably stumbled and hit her head on something—and had a few hallucinations."
Mary backed him up. "I think that's exactly what happened," she agreed comfortably.
Lucy departed to prepare the supper, and Mary went off to clean up the bathroom, which she described as a "mess."
"I've just eaten," I said, "and I don't want to eat again."
"All right, all right," Ken agreed, "nobody's going to force it down your throat. But the rest of us could do with some nourishment—we've merely been working over you for a couple of hours or so."
I got off the bed and, when he protested, told him I was going to the bathroom, which shut him up. I went straight to the kitchen, where Lucy greeted me with a shocked cry.
"My dear—you ought to be in bed!"
I went over to the vegetable bin and asked, "How do you open this thing?"
Lucy joined me. "Here—like this." We raised the lid together, but the bin was empty
. I looked at it for a moment, decided that it was quite large enough to hold a human body, and then slowly closed the lid again.
"I could have told you there was nothing in it," Lucy said, mildly interested. "Mary and I cleared out all the radishes tonight. What did you want out of it anyway?"
"Oh, nothing much," I replied vaguely. "I wanted a—I just wanted to gnaw on a carrot."
To my dismay, she provided me with a carrot at once, and I muttered, "Thank you," and backed out of the kitchen.
I went along the hall, hid the carrot in Mary's antique desk, and then slipped into Mary's bedroom.
I sent a frightened glance around but the room appeared to be empty, and after a moment or two of working my courage up I moved forward and hastily searched the closet and the bathroom. Nothing.
Back in the middle of the room. I hesitated, finger tapping at my teeth— and then I went over to the bed and pulled out the drawer beneath it. It was empty, as I had expected, and before I had time to close it again Egbert's voice spoke smoothly behind me.
"What are you looking for, Miss Eugenia?"
When I got my breath back I told him, through gritted teeth, that I was searching for the body that had been in the drawer only a short while ago.
Egbert's eyebrows crept up, and he pursed his lips—but forbore to comment.
"If you take my supposed mental derangement too seriously," I warned him, "you'll be making the mistake of your life."
"I have already searched for that body of yours," he said mildly. "Not a sign of it."
"Well, it has to be somewhere," I insisted. "Do you know that I was hit on the head?"
He didn't know—and he subjected me to such a painstaking questionnaire that I began to wish I hadn't mentioned any of it. My head started to spin after a while, so I told him to desist and staggered off to my room. He followed right after me—probably to his regret, because Ken was still there and lit into him at once. Ken wanted to know when the thing would be cleared up—declared that the solution was considerably overdue, and complained that the women of the household were not being adequately protected.
I slipped onto the bed and lay there, listening, and after a while, Egbert managed to edge a few words in.
"Passing over the fact that two women have lost their lives," he said with chilly scorn, "I suppose you mean that the situation is spoiling your furlough."
"Yes, it is!" Ken bellowed defiantly. "I've only a few more days, and I want this thing out of the way so that I can enjoy them."
"Those are the wrong tactics to use on Mr. Egbert," I suggested, from the bed—and was instantly quelled by two furious looks from the pair of them. I hastily picked up a book and pretended to read it.
Having ganged up on me, they immediately became more amiable with each other. Ken sat on the foot of my bed, and Egbert perched himself on the edge of the studio couch.
"I have a real problem," Egbert said seriously. "It is possible, of course, for Mr. Homer Fredon to have committed these crimes—but everyone else in the vicinity had ample opportunity as well. And there seems to be no motive—none whatever. We thought, at first, that Mr. Fredon had done it in a fit of insanity, but his friends and business acquaintances are definitely against the idea that there was anything wrong with him. Then, too, he could hardly have hidden himself so effectively if he had been demented. However, that is still the best theory for motive—the only other one being that Mrs. Fredon and Mr. Emerson wished to marry and so disposed of the encumbrances— and Mr. Fredon's body has been hidden somewhere."
The idea of Mary and John sending each other lace-edged valentines was so absurd that I laughed heartily.
Egbert gave me a cold stare and then returned his attention to Ken. "We have searched the Fredons' cottage thoroughly—but Mr. Fredon is not there."
I put down my book and said, "Now listen. When you searched this apartment, did you look in that freezing bin in the kitchen?"
"Certainly," said Egbert, addressing the ceiling.
"What was in it?"
"It was full of radishes."
"Did you stir the vegetables around and look under them?"
"No," said Egbert, abandoning the ceiling and looking at me with frank dislike. "They appeared to be solid."
"Was the freezing unit on?"
"Yes."
"All right," I said, "now listen to this. That thing is not used in summer— it's kept empty and turned off. Mary stocks it in the fall with harvest delicacies, which are gradually used up through the winter."
Egbert shifted his position on the couch and asked uncomfortably, "Is that contraption usual in a private home?"
I shook my head. "I think they use them on ranches, and fancy farms, and things like that. Mary bought it for the cottage, but she found it so useful for storing summer fruits and vegetables that she brought it down and had it installed here."
"And it should not be in use at this season of the year?" Egbert murmured.
"It isn't usual."
"Your idea, then, is that there was a body concealed under the vegetables which was moved to the drawer under the bed, just before you discovered it?"
"It sounds pretty involved, the way you put it—but that's just what I mean. If you prefer to think that I've been having hallucinations that's your privilege."
"What do you suggest as a course of action?" he asked politely.
"I think if you search this apartment you'll find the body. "
"Whose body?"
"I think it's Homer—I'm almost sure of it."
Egbert stood up, said lightly. "I'll have another look around now," and sauntered out.
Ken turned on me and sent a pointed look at my head. "You ought to be in some kind of a home. You know Homer was playing hide-and-seek with us a couple of days ago—we even found his pipe still smoking after he'd left it in the kitchen."
"That was a couple of days ago—and besides, we never actually saw him."
My voice trailed off and I forgot Ken for a moment. I was reminded that I had never actually looked in that drawer for the small object that had fallen back into it. I got off the bed, determined to look at once, although I was nearly convinced that anything the drawer might have contained was surely in Egbert's pocket by this time.
Ken trailed after me, asking irritably. "What the devil are you up to now?" but I ignored him and hurried along to Mary's room. He helped me to open the drawer, at the same time calling me a careless fool for getting out of bed with a fractured skull complicated by mental derangement.
The drawer seemed to be quite empty, but I carefully felt around in the corners—and after a moment my fingers touched something small and smooth and hard. I thought at first that it was a marble—and then I took it to the light and gave a little gasp of horror. It was an artificial eye—a black eye that stared up at me with cold, expressionless opacity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
KEN WHISTLED SOFTLY and took the thing out of my hand. "False eye," he murmured. "That's what it looks like."
"John Emerson," I whispered. "Remember, he was looking for a black eye."
Ken nodded. "I'd better phone him and tell him it's been found."
"But what is it? I mean, what does he use it for? He has both his eyes."
"I don't know," Ken said slowly. "We'd better try to find out."
"We ought to tell Egbert about it. Where is he?"
"I'm here," Egbert's voice replied from behind us. "What do you want to tell me?"
I jumped, and wondered—as I had wondered before—how the man could move around so quietly, and I released some of my nervous irritation by asking nastily, "What sort of sleuthing lessons do they give you people anyway? I just turned this up after a casual look in the drawer, here, and—"
But Egbert had seen the eye in Ken's hand, and I had ceased to exist for him. His face quivered with sudden excitement, and he took the small object from Ken and hurried from the room without another word. We followed him, but he went straight out the front doo
r, and when we opened it to peer after him we saw him disappearing into the elevator.
"I think he knows it belongs to John," Ken muttered thoughtfully. "It has some other significance for him too. But where is he off to? Why didn't he take it in to John?"
Mary came up the hall, her heels tapping briskly, and announced, "Lucy has something for us to eat—as usual—and it's all ready. But where is that man Egbert? I want to complain—"
"He's gone," Ken told her. "Anyway, he wasn't the one who locked you in."
"Well, if he didn't, somebody did, and I want that sort of thing stopped."
"He knows all about it, Mary," I said patiently, "and if he did it himself he'll never admit it anyway, and there's really no use in bothering."
She half turned away from me and, put her handkerchief against her eyes, and her body was suddenly shaking with sobs. "I can't stand it," she whispered in a strangling voice. "People overrunning my apartment like this, and Homer refusing to come back and help me."
I silently offered a spare handkerchief, and Ken put his arm across her shoulders. She continued to cry until Lucy appeared from the kitchen and called in loud dismay, "For heaven's sake, has someone hit her over the head too?"
Mary dried her eyes at once and said with cold dignity, "I am all right now—it's just that there has been so much."
She offered the explanation to Ken and me, and ignored Lucy, who merely shrugged and led the way to the dining room. She had a nice little spread laid out, but the sight of the food made me dizzy and I turned away and said I was going back to bed.
Back in the bedroom, I found that I was too restless to lie down, so I slipped into a cool yellow dress that matched Lucy's ribbon and made my way quietly to the little balcony. Light streamed out from the Emerson living room, and although I resisted the temptation for a while, in the end I found myself stepping over the low barrier and peering in through the open French doors.
The Black Dream_Rue Morgue Vintage Mysteries Page 14
