A Key to Death

by Frances

  “How’s the cat?” Bill asked, and got a surprised “Huh?”

  “The cat who found the body,” Bill said. “Or, helped find it.”

  “Oh, that one. Last we saw, it was sitting on the doorstep. Making a good deal of noise.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “Right. Thanks.”

  He waited again, his fingers drummed again. He looked out through the small window at the snow.

  (The Loot’s jumpy, Mullins thought. Looks like we’re getting places.)

  The telephone rang again. This time it was Records. Bill listened; he made notes. It took some little time. Bill said, “Yes,” three times and “Right,” once. He said, finally, “The company paid? No squawk?” and when he was answered, said, “Hm-m-m.” He said “Thanks” and replaced the receiver. Mullins waited.

  “Accidental death,” Bill said. “Fell downstairs, as Mr. Karn said. At his apartment. Little before midnight, December fourteenth. Duplex apartment. Got up to go downstairs for something and stumbled.”

  Schaeffer had died of a broken neck. There had been no injuries not explained by the fall. He had been sixty-five years old. He had been five feet eight; weighed over two hundred pounds. The precinct detectives had no hesitancy in noting “Accidental Death” on the record. There had been no autopsy.

  “Let’s go, sergeant,” Bill said. Mullins said, “O.K. Loot,” but he looked puzzled.

  “To the scene of the crime,” Bill told him.

  Not until she reached the street was Pam North really convinced that she was making a mistake—possibly the mistake of her lifetime. Leaving Phoebe James’s apartment, in Phoebe James’s wake, caught up in Phoebe James’s urgency, Pam had had no time to think. Nor was there, then, anything to arouse alarm, and there was much to quieten it. In the carpeted corridor, softly bright, assurance that all was well, since all was comfortable, was almost automatic. In the elevator, more brightly warm, faintly fragrant with the mingled perfumes of well provided women who rode snugly up and down, there was nothing alien. But on the sidewalk, under the canopy, doubts rapidly arose.

  It was snowing and snow in the city of New York impels almost anyone to look on the dark side of things. It had been about to snow when Pam went into the hotel, but about to snow is another matter; there is always a chance that it will not. It was snowing heavily, now, and the snow blew under the canopy with savage intent. It was after four, and dark—glumly dark, grayly dark. The doorman, who had been sheltering himself in the doorway, went out with his head shaking in doubt, and with his ears covered with small slip-covers, and whistled into the gloom. He’ll never get one, Pam thought, and was thankful. But he got one almost at once.

  “Wait,” Pam said, as Phoebe James urged her into the cab. “Oughtn’t we—the police—”

  “Come on,” Phoebe James said, and it occurred to Pam that she was being pushed. But then Mrs. James was beside her and the door was closed on them, and Mrs. James gave a number in the far east Sixties to the cab driver. They were, Pam realized, going almost to the river.

  “She’ll call the police,” Phoebe James said. “Only—there isn’t enough time. It might take them hours.”

  “Minutes at most,” Pam said. “Surely you know—”

  “Then they’ll get there first,” Phoebe said. “That’ll be fine. Driver, can’t you go faster?”

  “In this, lady?” the driver said, and stopped, skidding a little, in a line of stopped cars. “Sit back and take it easy, lady.”

  But Phoebe James sat on the edge of the seat.

  “You haven’t told me anything,” Pam said. “What did she say? What happened? Listen—I don’t even know where she is.”

  “Where she used to live,” Phoebe James said. “They took her there. I don’t know why. She wasn’t coherent. Kept saying they were coming back. You didn’t hear her?”

  “No,” Pam said. “No, I didn’t.”

  “She’ll tell us,” Phoebe said. “If we’re in time.”

  The cab started up again. Mrs. James sat forward on the seat, as if by leaning forward she could force the cab to greater speed. She seemed to strain forward.

  She changes so fast, Pam thought. In the apartment she was quiet, controlled. Now—I wouldn’t think any other woman would be so important to her, Pam thought. Not any woman. I don’t know anything about her. If Jerry was killed, Pam thought, would I be as she is—like—like a clock running fast and slow, with hands now whirling, now almost stopped? As if whatever governs a clock’s speed were broken?

  She looked at the intent face beside her, seeing it in profile. It was a strong face. Was there a sort of ruthlessness in it? Pam shivered. Unconsciously, she edged a little away from the other woman. The cab stopped again. I could reach out and open the door and get out of here, Pam thought. But she could not do that; not until she knew. Nan Schaeffer needed help. I wish I had never got myself into this, Pam North thought, and then thought, what have I got myself into, really?

  She tried to sort it out. Nan Schaeffer had telephoned, from the apartment in which she had lived before her husband died. The men she had surprised in her hotel suite the night before had forced her to leave with them, and had taken her to her former apartment and—and left her there, with time to telephone? After they had told her they were coming back?

  “Why did they leave her?” Pam asked Phoebe James, and Phoebe, without turning, said, “What? I don’t know. I told you I didn’t know.”

  But then, as if unconsciously, she put a hand out and gripped Pam North’s wrist. The pressure of the hand was unexpectedly strong. Pam moved, and the grip seemed to tighten.

  How do I know it was really Nan Schaeffer? Pam North thought. If she’d been speaking loudly—hysterically—wouldn’t I have heard the voice, if not the words? Even from the other end of the room. Was it someone else? Did she arrange, after she knew I was coming, for someone else to call at a certain time, so that she could pretend it was Nan Schaeffer and get me—here with her? Going to—to this place which must be almost in the East River?

  The cab had crossed Second Avenue. It was moving more rapidly, now, through streets less crowded.

  She knew I suspected her, Pam thought. I told her I did, or as good as told her. And—she warned me. Said I was impetuous. Perhaps she thinks I know more than I do—because I don’t—I didn’t, anyway—do anything but guess. Perhaps Nan Schaeffer knew more, as I thought, and—and isn’t waiting for us, somewhere, but is—dead somewhere!

  She moved. The grip on her wrist did not change. “We’re almost there,” Phoebe James said.

  “You’re hurting my wrist,” Pam said.

  Mrs. James turned and looked at her, and said, “What? I—” But she looked down, then, at her own hand, gripping a slender wrist. “Why,” she said, “I didn’t—how awful of me. What a strange thing for me to do.”

  She released Pam’s wrist. She smiled at Pam, faintly, as if in apology.

  “I must,” Phoebe James said, “just have wanted to make sure—make very sure—that I wasn’t alone. Because—I’m not brave. Not really. Not brave at all. If you hadn’t happened to be there—when Nan telephoned—I don’t know what I’d have done.” She shook her head, and looked at Pam, intently.

  “I’ve never done things like this,” she said. “Never in my life. Just written about them.”

  She wrote historical novels, Pam remembered. Pam did not often read historical novels, but it occurred to her that there is a good deal of violence in most of them—a good deal of violent death.

  X

  Wednesday, 4:25 P.M. to 5:20 P.M.

  The house was on a corner; it was on the last possible corner. The cross street dead-ended beyond the house; a reflecting sign gave final warning, an iron railing blocked the unobservant from a plunge to the busy drive below, or to the East River. Now, there were fewer cars on the drive than usual; lights of tugs in the river were hazy through the snow, and the water-craft hooted sadly at one another. The northeast wind had full sweep here, and made the m
ost of it. The driven snow was not soft here; here it seemed half sleet.

  The house was dark. “This what you want, lady?” the cab driver said, as if doubting it. “It’s what you said.”

  “Yes,” Phoebe James said. “Oh yes,” and had the door open, had a bill out of her purse. The driver, paid, said “Thanks, lady,” and almost before Pam and Phoebe James were out of the cab, he swung it in a u-turn and went away—went back toward light and the familiarity of crowded streets. Pam shivered, and followed Mrs. James, who was across the sidewalk, at a door in the center of the house. There was another door, to the right as one faced the house, almost at the corner of the house. There were tall windows on either side of the center door, and they were dark.

  There was a little light from a street lamp on the corner. Toward it, Phoebe James held her opened purse, searching it; toward the light, after a moment, she held a key case, keys dangling. She seemed uncertain for a moment, as if choice were difficult. But then she said, “This is it,” and held one key alone and turned to the door. She turned the key in the lock and then, as the door opened inward, reached out for Pam’s arm. They went through the door almost together, and Pam had only time to think of holding back before it was too late to hold back.

  It was warm inside—warm and dark, and Phoebe James said, loudly, “Nan? Where are you, Nan?” Her voice had a hollow sound in what was, evidently, a large room—her voice seemed to echo from emptiness. “Here somewhere,” Phoebe said, in a lower voice—but not low enough, Pam thought; not nearly low enough; it was a time to whisper. Phoebe was groping along a wall; there was a click and light went on—light high above them in a two-story room, an enormous room.

  “Nan!” Phoebe James called again, and again she was unanswered. She found another light switch, and lamps went on, and now the room was merely a large room, comfortably furnished, with tall windows on their left—the river side of the house, Pam realized, without thinking—with curtains which hung straight from distant ceiling to floor.

  “But she’s not—” Phoebe James began, and turned toward Pam, and her eyes were wide. Then they heard a faint sound; a voice which seemed to come from a distance, to be muffled by distance, and by walls and closed doors. “The library,” Phoebe James said, and went across the big room. Pam went after her.

  A steep staircase of ornamental iron angled upward across the wall they faced, projected out from the wall, with only a single iron column supporting it at its highest point. It led to a balcony, from which two doors opened. But Phoebe James did not lead them to the stairway, but under it to a door, off center, near the bottom of the steep iron stairs. The door opened toward them; opened into a corridor, with doors on either side. Light showed under the nearest door on the left and when, once more, Phoebe called Nan Schaeffer’s name she was answered, faintly, from behind the door. “Here,” the voice said. “I’m herein here.”

  The room was not large, but it was large enough for a desk, and an easy chair, and a heavy sofa. It was by the sofa, on the floor, that Nan Schaeffer lay, a telephone—the receiver out of its cradle—beside her. “Oh,” Phoebe said, and was across the room, on her knees beside the slight, bound woman.

  There was nothing of Nan Schaeffer’s immaculate grooming left, now. Her dark gray suit was crumpled, her short hair in disorder. On her right temple there was the discoloration of an ugly bruise, and in the center of the bruise there was dried blood. And her ankles were tied together with heavy cord, and more cord wound about her body, pinioning her arms. She drew her breath in and out quickly, convulsively, as Phoebe, kneeling beside her, kneeling between her and Pam, tore at the knots.

  “Get a knife,” Phoebe said, over her shoulder. “In the kitchen. Across the hall.”

  Pam went. The first door opened on a closet, empty except for two coats on hangers, and Pam slammed it shut. The second opened into the kitchen; the light switch was near the door jamb; knives were in the second drawer Pam opened. She ran back across the hall, holding a paring knife.

  But it was evident that Phoebe James had worked efficiently without a knife. Nan Schaeffer was sitting up, the upper part of her body free. She held herself upright with her arms extended behind her and seemed dazed. She watched Phoebe working on the knot which held her ankles bound. The knife aided, there.

  They helped her to the sofa. They got her water, first; then, from a cabinet under the steep iron staircase, brandy. She kept saying, “I thought nobody would come. I thought nobody would come.”

  “Wait,” Pam said, as Phoebe said, “You need coffee. I’ll make some coffee,” and started toward the door. “Wait,” Pam said. “The men who did this. Didn’t you say they were coming back? Hadn’t we—”

  But Nan was shaking her head. She seemed, now, to be emerging rapidly from the shock which had been, minutes before, so evident.

  “The lights,” she said. “You turned the lights on. They’ll know somebody’s here. It’ll be all right, now.”

  “And,” Phoebe said, “the police will be here. You called them, didn’t you, Nan?”

  “The police?” Nan Schaeffer said. “Oh—yes. I called the police. My head hurts. They hit so hard. Did I tell you?”

  She seemed, again, uncertain. She swayed a little, on the sofa where she sat, and Pam sat beside her, and told her that everything was all right, now, and agreed that there would be time for coffee—and listened for the sound of police sirens, which at any moment must scream in the blustery night, scream through the heavy walls of the house. It was a little puzzling, Pam thought, that the police had not got there first. The police were quick.

  “This will work wonders,” Phoebe James promised, when she brought the coffee. It was a homely phrase, and a hopeful assertion. But it did seem to work wonders. After she had drunk a cup, accepted another, Nan Schaeffer seemed much clearer in her mind. She touched her bruised temple gently, and said “Ouch,” and managed to smile. “I’m much better, now,” she said. She looked from one to the other of her rescuers. Doubtfully, she stretched arms and legs. She said, “I wondered if I’d ever be able to move them again. They tied the cord so tight.” Phoebe looked at her. “You saw,” Nan Schaeffer said, and Phoebe nodded slowly, then said, “Yes.”

  “What did they want?” Pam asked, then. “Or—probably you’d better wait.”

  Nan shook her head, at that. She said, “I don’t know what they wanted. I still don’t know,” and then, “They talked about a list. They went through Sam’s desk—” she indicated the desk—“and started to pull out the books. I wasn’t tied up then. That was later.”

  “It would be clearer,” Pam said, “if you started at the beginning. Started with last night.”

  “Of course,” Nan said. She seemed anxious to make it clear. “I’d been to dinner with Reg and he took me back to the hotel and I went up, and—”

  She had opened the door, and found the living room dark. She had stepped inside, and reached to the side for the light switch, and then the lights went on before she touched it, and the door closed behind her. They had, she supposed, heard her key in the lock, and been waiting just inside the door.

  One of the men had a gun, she told them—a small gun, she thought a revolver. He had said, “Take it easy, sister,” and had pointed the gun at her. The other man had done most of the talking, although not much talking was done.

  They had not struck her then. That came later. Nan Schaeffer told her story slowly, looking, as she spoke, now at Pam North, now at Phoebe James.

  She had not gone out of the living room of the suite. She had been ordered to sit down, and had sat down on a sofa. The man with the gun stood in front of her, with the gun ready. He had been a man of medium height, dark, with a small tight mouth. The other man, who was somewhat taller, had gone into the bedroom and been there about five minutes and come out. He had shaken his head.

  “All right, lady, where is it?” he asked, Nan told them. She seemed very much herself, now; her voice was steady; she chose her words.

 
; “I said I didn’t know,” she told Pam and Phoebe James. “I said I didn’t know what he meant. He said, ‘The list, lady. Where’s the list?’ I still didn’t know what he meant, and told him I didn’t. He said, to the other man, something like, ‘She don’t know much, does she?’ and the other man—the man with the small mouth—said, ‘Maybe we could help her.’ It was—”

  She stopped, as if she had remembered something then, as she spoke.

  “A small mouth,” she repeated. “One of the men who—who threatened Reg—had a small mouth. Reg said so; he said it was the only thing he could use in describing them. These must have been the same men. But—why?”

  She seemed to seek an answer in their faces. She did not find it.

  It was strange the police didn’t come, Pam North thought. They always came so quickly.

  The taller of the two men had shaken his head, Nan told them, to the suggestion—the threatening suggestion—of the man with the small, tight mouth. The taller man, who seemed to be the one who made decisions, turned and started to go through the desk. It had been, until then, apparently untouched.

  “What he wanted must have been something written down—really a list of some sort,” Nan said. “He went through everything. He worked very fast, but he looked at everything.”

  “Wait,” Pam said. “Wasn’t there a woman with them?”

  Surprise was evident in Nan Schaeffer’s face. “A woman?” she repeated. “What makes you ask that? There wasn’t any woman.”

  “Not in the bedroom?” Pam said. “She couldn’t have been in there? Where you wouldn’t see her?”

  “There wasn’t any woman. The door was open. I could see into the other room. Why do you ask about a woman?”

  “I thought—” Pam said. “I made a mistake, apparently. Go on, Mrs. Schaeffer. What happened then?”

  (But, as Nan, after shaking her head, as if puzzled, went on, Pam looked not only at her, but at Phoebe James, also. Mrs. James was watching her friend intently and now and then, just perceptibly, she nodded her head at something Nan Schaeffer said. It could be—of course it was!—the movement so many people make as they listen to show that they do listen. It could not be—of course it could not be!—a gesture of approval, a way of saying, “You’re doing fine. You’re getting it all right.” As—as a teacher might nod, finding a pupil letter perfect.… Why don’t the police come? Pam North thought.)