Mr Splitfoot (Dr Basil Willing)

by Helen McCloy

  Was it just a difference in manner that made Folly seem so cool? Or was her sense of decorum so outraged by this emotional explosion that she was trying to instill a little of her own self-control into Vittoria by example? It was only too easy for Folly to keep cool in the circumstances. She had none of the feelings for her stepdaughter that Vittoria had for her son.

  “Why don’t you lie down and rest?” urged Folly. “Captain Marriott and the other men are searching the woods. They’re sure to find Giovanni. He’s only been missing a little while. He can’t have gone far.”

  “Little while!” Vittoria’s opulent bosom heaved and she threw out her ample white arms as if she were embracing grief. “I have not seen him since last night, and he was ill then with fever—too ill to go out. That was fourteen hours ago! Or is it sixteen? You call that a little while? Do you? Do you?”

  “He’s probably not alone,” said Folly. “Lucinda is sure to be with him, since they are both missing. If there has been a skiing accident, only one is likely to be hurt. The other can come and tell us.”

  “A-a-ah!” It was more like singing than wailing do, fa, sol, with a vibrato on the last soprano note. “That girl!” The woodwinds were taking up the theme now. “She is the one who leads my Giovanni astray. He is innocent as the Paschal lamb, an angel, a saint, brought up according to the latest scientific principles and—”

  This was too much for Folly. “Who ever heard of a saint brought up according to the latest scientific principles? Really, Vittoria! You know perfectly well that Vanya is a mischievous boy who—”

  “He is not mischievous and his name is not Vanya! It is the girl who calls him that. His name is Giovanni.”

  Folly lit a cigarette and exhaled the first fine feather of smoke. “He told me his name was Jack.”

  “Are you suggesting that I do not know the name of my own son?”

  Folly changed her tactics. “Vittoria, dear Vittoria, do come upstairs and leave all this to the men. I’ll make you a cup of tea with a little brandy in it. Your poor, dear nerves are all raw and quivering and no wonder. . . .”

  It was obvious that Folly’s nerves were not raw and quivering, that Lucinda’s disappearance had not disturbed her at all. Basil decided that he liked her better when she was being astringent with Vittoria, but apparently Vittoria could not tell the difference between real compassion and its counterfeit. Protesting, weeping, still voluble, she allowed herself to be led upstairs with Folly’s arm around her.

  Ginevra looked at Basil. “Is Bradford really out in the woods searching with the other men? He shouldn’t have gone. Suppose he gets separated from the others and has an attack when he’s alone and there’s no one to give him his medicine quickly? He might die in seconds.”

  “I didn’t realize his condition was so serious.”

  “Well, it is.” She sighed. “It’s been going on for years now, of course. If he takes life calmly and keeps his medicine handy, he manages to exist, but it’s not really living, is it? The possibility of an attack is always hanging over him and I don’t like him to be left alone. If he had a severe attack, he’d need someone to give him the medicine. He might not be able to do it himself. Isn’t it strange how we never know consciously what is going on in our own bodies? We may feel perfectly well and on top of the world and all the time the first little cancerous cell may be starting to spread or the first accretion of cholesterol to coat the inside of our arteries. If only these things were as painful as a toothache in the beginning, we might have a chance of doing something before it was too late.”

  “If you’d been with us last night, I don’t suppose you would have wanted your husband to join in our little experiment in the haunted room.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I asked him this morning if he didn’t think he had been unwise. Suppose that when you drew cards to see who should spend the night in the haunted room, the lot had fallen on him instead of David Crowe? Would he have gone through with it? He said he would. He was convinced that there was no danger of anything happening that could upset him, because he didn’t believe in ghosts or poltergeists or anything of that sort. He thought then that the whole thing was some silly hoax. It never occurred to him that anyone was going to die.”

  “Any sign of them yet?” Captain Marriott was standing in the front doorway, Swayne and Alcott just behind him. “I thought I heard a cry.”

  “The boy’s mother having hysterics,” said Ginevra. “Folly finally got her upstairs.”

  “Oh . . .” Marriott stamped on the doormat, loosening some of the snow from his boots. “I’ve got a dozen men searching the woods now, some troopers and some locals from the village, but I still think it’s too soon to call this a disappearance and send out a full alarm. They’re both young and their skis are missing. We found some tracks of two skiers who left the Radanine house together and got as far as the road. We haven’t been able to trace them farther because tire tracks on the road have obliterated the ski tracks, but we’ll find where they left the road eventually. They’re probably somewhere close by having the time of their lives in the snow and not realizing what a storm they’ve kicked up here.”

  Or realizing it very well and enjoying themselves all the more, thought Basil.

  “I still think they’re most likely to be in the woods between here and the Radanine house,” said Swayne.

  “We did search there,” objected Alcott.

  “But not thoroughly enough. We should search again.”

  “Okay, Mr. Swayne,” said Marriott. “You take over the east side of the road to the Radanine house and Mr. Alcott can—”

  “Mr. Alcott can’t,” said Ginevra sharply. “He’s looking tired already.”

  “I can at least walk down the road to the Radanine house,” suggested Alcott in his weary voice. “Mild exercise is supposed to be good for me. Remember?”

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Ginevra.

  There was a flash of impatience in Alcott’s eyes, the only time Basil had ever seen his lethargy stirred. But it was only a flash. When he spoke a moment later, his voice was level as ever. “How kind of you, my dear. Shall we go now?”

  How hard for a man who had once shouldered responsibility for all the financial and intellectual adventures of publishing to be coddled and managed now like a small child even if the woman who did the coddling and managing was as devoted and charming as Ginevra. For the first time Basil wondered if she was exaggerating the state of his heart for some reason of her own . . .

  If it had deteriorated to such a degree that his wife was afraid to let him walk alone through the woods for a little while, he was hardly likely to have engaged in such a stressful activity as murder. It was a sort of medical alibi. For that very reason it wakened in Basil the lightly sleeping suspicion of all those who deal with criminals for any length of time. Could all this talk of heart disease be a clever bit of misdirection? Better check with Alcott’s doctor. . . .

  “What about me?” Swayne asked Marriott.

  “Try the road to the village.”

  “I already did.”

  “Try again. They might be coming back that way after going somewhere else. I’m going back to the Radanine house now to see if they’ve doubled back there.”

  “What shall I do?” asked Basil. “Vanya’s mother hardly needs my attention now. Mrs. Swayne is with her.”

  “Why don’t you take a look at the woods near this house? They just might be somewhere close and there’s no one here who would notice. Mrs. Crowe is upstairs, but she’s asleep.”

  “Thanks,” said Basil.

  “For what?”

  “For giving me the place where I think they are most likely to be found. There are a lot of questions I’d like to ask those two.”

  “You think they might stick around this house because it’s the least likely place for us to look?”

  “That’s one reason.”

  “There’s another?”

  “Wouldn’t you have found them by now unles
s they are either far away or hiding? I believe they are more likely to have a hiding place in or near this house than anywhere else.”

  “Why not at the Radanine house?”

  “It’s a modern house. Privacy is hated in this age of togetherness. Half the rooms in modern houses never have any doors at all, and there are no real nooks and crannies. You could never play hide and seek in them efficiently. But there are almost always good hiding places in old houses.”

  “But why hide?” demanded Marriott.

  “That’s one of the questions I’d like to ask them.”

  “Let’s be off,” said Swayne. “I’m going to climb the hill at the back of the house. It’ll save me about a mile if I don’t have to go around to the east side of the road by the driveway.”

  “I’ll take the west side of the road myself,” said Marriott. “I can reach that most easily by the driveway.”

  As he moved away, Basil looked at Swayne. “I’m going to start by having a word with the cook. She may know more about this house than anyone else. Is she in the kitchen?”

  “At this hour you’ll find her in her own quarters over the garage. She always takes a coffee break before luncheon.”

  Swayne moved away toward the corner of the house. Even without snowshoes, he didn’t make a sound in the deep snow. Once he had disappeared around the corner, the stillness was so lonely that, for a moment, Basil wanted to whistle or stamp his feet, just to destroy that eerie feeling of being watched by something unseen that always haunts unbroken stillness.

  Yet he knew that what he needed most now was silence, the mother of reflection. During the last twenty-four hours enforced intimacies with strangers had been distracting to the point of irritation. Impressions of events had been superimposed upon one another as rapidly and incoherently as a montage in a movie. Only alone and in silence might he begin to see each event separately and the pattern formed by relationships among them.

  His own feet made no sound on the packed snow as he went down the path to the garage savoring the pure, cold mountain air. He no longer wanted sound. To break such silence now seemed to him as if it would be a desecration. In the wilds winter and silence are synonymous unless there is wind. Today there was no wind at all, and if there were any hardy birds or animals abroad, they made no sound in the soft pile of powdery snow.

  The garage was a converted stable built at about the same time as the house. Double doors stood open revealing old box stalls and three modern cars, each with a New York license.

  The Lincoln was the Alcotts’. Roomy and steady, Basil had found it an ideal car for an invalid when he drove Gisela to the hospital. The Rover convertible looked like Swayne’s taste—compact, maneuverable, with luxurious appointments— real leather, real wood. That left the Dodge Dart for the Crowes, a sound, reliable, all-purpose car, but the interior of this one was untidy. Bits of used paper tissue on the front seat, a crumbled newspaper, half a pack of cigarettes. Crowe had been either naturally untidy or very busy.

  You could tell a lot about a man from his car. The books on his shelves and the pictures on his walls might be wedding presents or heirlooms. He might furnish his house to please his decorator, he might dress to please his wife or children, but his car and everything about it was his own choice. It told you what he thought about money and machinery, safety and taste, order and cleanliness. It even told you the kind of impression he wanted to make on other people.

  An expensive car? Either he cared about machinery or he accepted Veblen’s theory that conspicuous waste is the only source of distinction. A well-kept car with a little of the romantic elegance of a carriage? A sense of history, cultivated tastes and some feminine influence. A car with nothing to distinguish it from a hundred thousand others? Either he had no taste or his mind was on something more important than cars. No seat belts? Reckless. A seat belt for the driver’s seat and none for the passengers in back? Selfish. What fun Sherlock would have had with cars. . . .

  At one side of the building a ramp led up to what may have once been a carriage house. Farther along a narrow door led through an old tackroom to a stairway freshly painted white with a bell in the wall beside it. At the top Basil saw a closed door. He rang the bell and heard a quick step overhead.

  Martha opened the door at the top of the stairs.

  “I’m sorry to bother you while you’re resting,” said Basil. “But it’s important. I’m looking for Miss Lucinda and the Radanine boy.”

  “Oh, that boy!” Just as Vittoria had automatically defended her boy and condemned the girl, Martha was automatically defending her girl and condemning the boy. Lucinda was much more Martha’s girl than Folly’s.

  “I’ve got coffee made,” Martha was saying.

  “Thanks, I’d like some.” Basil went up the stair and came out in a large cheerful room, jonquil yellow and white like the kitchen.

  “They did it all up for me.” Martha’s eyes followed his approving glance with a smile. “Used to be a hayloft.”

  “They?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Swayne. Everything had to be done over when they took this place. Cream and sugar?”

  The hot, sweet, creamy coffee was welcome after the cold outside.

  “How long has Miss Skipper been missing?”

  “Miss Skipper?”

  “That was my name for Miss Lucinda when she was a little thing and I was left alone with her after her mother died. I used to say: ‘This house is a ship, you’re the skipper, and I’m the crew.’ Not this house, of course. The one we used to have in Westchester. She loved being skipper. . . . Has she been gone long?”

  “No one has actually seen her since early this morning, but she’s probably in the neighborhood with the boy who’s missing, too. You’ve known her a long time?”

  “Since she was born. I knew her mother before she was born.”

  “Do you think she might be hiding just for mischief? And, if she is, where are we most likely to find her?”

  Martha was silent. Her skin was the dark brown of West Africa and her face was West African, too, a face that might have been carved out of some dark, hard wood like ebony or teak. The brow was high, the nose straight, the nostrils and everted lips chiseled sharply and cleanly. The chin was stronger than usual in women either black or white. She bore herself with an air of enduring calm.

  “If I knew, you think I’d tell?”

  “Not in ordinary circumstances, but these circumstances aren’t ordinary.”

  “She might be in danger?”

  “She might.”

  “I don’t know anything. I can only guess.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “Try the house. Miss Skipper has a hiding place there. I don’t know just where, but it’s somewhere in the house.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Yesterday afternoon I looked in every room for her and I couldn’t find her. I decided she must be outdoors. Then two minutes after I gave up looking, she popped into the kitchen. She hadn’t been out. Her cheeks weren’t pink with cold. And she hadn’t been far. If she had, she couldn’t have got back that fast.”

  “Is there an attic?”

  “Mrs. Swayne says there’s just a crawl space, but the roof is pretty high for that.”

  “You’re suggesting that the Crowes kept the attic a secret from their tenants?”

  “Either that or the old Miss Crowe who just died kept it a secret from her heirs.”

  “There are no windows above the upper floor.”

  “Couldn’t there be skylights? From the ground you wouldn’t see them among all those gables.”

  “Odd you should think of all this when Mrs. Swayne didn’t.”

  “Not so odd.” Martha smiled. “The woman who cleans the house is the one who knows the house best. I’m the one they come to when something’s lost in the house and they want it found.”

  “There’s one other thing I’d like to ask you, since you’ve known Miss Lucinda so long. Is there any particul
ar reason for her hostility to her stepmother? Or is it just that— traditional resentment of a stepmother?”

  The last of the smile faded from Martha’s eyes and lips. Now her face looked more than ever as if it had been carved in hard, dark wood. She hesitated, weighing her words, and then spoke reluctantly. “It may be her father’s fault.”

  “Her father? I thought he wasn’t even aware there was hostility.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t. Or perhaps he sort of likes the idea of two women competing for him. Some men do. But I think everything would have been different if he had managed things a little more gradually. For several years after Miss Lucinda’s mother died she was the center of his life, and then suddenly she was just nowhere . . . You see what I mean?”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. These situations demand tact, and tact is just another word for love.” Basil rose.

  Martha was putting on her snow boots. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll be up at the house in a minute and help you look. . . .”

  As Basil walked back up the steep path to the house, he came to a break in the trees where he could see other mountains in the distance. Where he stood, each branch and twig of each leafless tree was starkly articulated in the chill, clean sunlight, but the distant mountains faded into a pearly haze that had no apparent connection with the earth.

  The mountaintops themselves were rounded because they were among the oldest mountains in the world, Permian, and their peaks had worn away long ago. They had been old before life appeared and to them the two million years of man’s existence would seem brief as a summer day.

  Now they seemed to float between heaven and earth, dreamlike, enigmatic, fateful. The Abode of the Gods . . .

  With a little shiver, he went on.

  At the door of the living room he paused. The room seemed empty, yet he had an odd feeling he was not alone. He felt something so different in the quality of the silence that he called out: “Anybody here?”