Closer than the Bones (24 page)

In response, she snorted derisively. “You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. By now you probably think that sainted Mary Tucker McElroy walks on water, just like the rest of the freaking world, but that woman has a few secrets of her own to hide. There’re things she doesn’t want anyone to know, just like the rest of us.”

Despite the obvious malice behind her words, Alice’s tone carried conviction. She had known Miss McElroy far longer and far better than I, and I had to admit the possibility that Miss McElroy did indeed have secrets she wanted to keep hidden. The thought rankled me, because I had come to admire Miss McElroy, after some initial hostility toward what I had perceived as her high-handedness and downright snobbery.

I wasn’t going to give Alice Bertram the satisfaction, however, of asking her what Miss McElroy’s secrets were. That she was itching to tell me some of them was perfectly obvious. If they were germane to the murders, I’d find them out, but in some other way. If the queries I had directed Farrah Lockett to make for me bore any fruit, I’d know soon enough. And, I reasoned, I’d get the information from a far less malicious—and less biased—source.

“Just what did you see?” I asked, trying to keep my voice cool.

That ruffled her, because she was expecting another question. “It was the other day, after lunch. After everyone had left the dining room. Russ went off to the third floor, to pretend to write, and I came up here. I knew Hamilton had come upstairs as well, and I decided I might go across the hall and talk to him. Try to reason with him about the manuscript and get him to see what kind of damage it could cause.”

“You mean you talked to him not long before he was murdered?” My voice rose in disbelief, despite my attempts to remain nonchalant.

She shook her head impatiently. “Of course not. I had pulled my door open, just a fraction, when I heard another door opening. I peeked out into the hall, and that’s when I saw Mary Tucker coming out of Hamilton’s room.”

“Did she see you?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” Alice said. “She was in too much of a hurry.”

“And you saw her with the manuscript?”

“Yes, I did.” Alice’s tone was a purr of triumph. “She had it clutched to her chest, though she was trying to hide it underneath her shawl. She went down the stairs so fast I thought she might trip and break her neck. But she didn’t.” Alice sounded almost regretful.

“What then?” I said, prompting her.

“I went out into the hall and looked downstairs to see where she was going with the manuscript. She went right straight into her sitting room and shut the door behind her.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I came back in here.”

“Why didn’t you follow her downstairs and confront her? Ask her to let you see the manuscript?”

Alice shrugged. “What was the point? By the time I’d’ve gotten downstairs, she probably would’ve had it hidden away. She would’ve denied the whole thing anyway.”

“And all this happened right after you came upstairs.”

She pondered that for a moment. “Maybe about ten minutes after I came upstairs.”

Time enough for her to get to her room and for Miss McElroy to come along behind her and go into Hamilton Packer’s room.

“How long was all this before the body was discovered? Can you remember?”

“I’m not sure,” Alice said. “It was probably another twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five, before I heard that girl screaming out in the hall.”

“Was today the first time you had looked for the manuscript?” I asked.

“No, I had a brief look last night, but I didn’t find anything. There haven’t been many opportunities. People have been in and out of that room a lot ever since yesterday. I could’ve gone down last night, after everyone was in bed, but I didn’t much care for the thought of being downstairs by myself with a murderer in the house.”

Unless you’re the murderer yourself,
I thought.

“Are you going to look for it?” Alice asked me.

“I don’t see why not.” If I had said that I wasn’t, she wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

“And just what would you plan on doing with it?”

“I’d turn it over to the sheriff’s department, of course. Why, what did you think I’d do with it?”

“You might be willing to sell it.”

I didn’t like the expression on her face. “Does this mean you’re buying?”

“If you find it and don’t tell anyone else you’ve found it, I am.”

I had had enough. I stood up. “If I do find it, I’ll turn it over to the proper authorities. Because it’s the ethical thing to do. It’s evidence which will help put an end to these murders. More than likely, that is. None of us really knows what’s in the manuscript. It could be completely harmless.”

“You can’t do that,” Alice said, as if she hadn’t heard the tail end of what I’d just said. “You could ruin us all if the sheriff’s department—or anyone else, for that matter—gets a hold of that piece of trash.” Her eyes begged me, and I felt sorry for her, but not enough to comply with what she wanted.

“This is going to have to run its course,” I said as gently as I knew how. “If I find the manuscript, I have to turn it over to the sheriff s department. We can’t allow anyone else to be murdered. Do you understand me?”

With great reluctance, she nodded. Her face had turned gray with exhaustion, and she made no effort to stop me as I left the room.

Once out in the hall, I stopped for a moment, my back against the Bertrams’ bedroom door, trying to gather my wits. My first instinct was to barge into Miss McElroy’s room and confront her with what Alice had told me. But I couldn’t do that, I knew. I couldn’t risk causing Miss McElroy to have a stroke or a heart attack, for goodness’ sake!

Had Miss McElroy stabbed Hamilton Packer to death before she took the manuscript from his room? It was possible, though it was also just possible that Packer had either given her the manuscript or she had sneaked into his room and taken it while he was in the bathroom. Or maybe he was already dead when she went in there, and she just took the manuscript and left the discovery of the body to someone else.

I shook my head. Too much speculation, and not enough cold hard facts.

First, I had to determine whether Miss McElroy really had taken the manuscript and hidden it in her sitting room down-stairs. Alice could be inventing the whole story, for spiteful reasons of her own, but somehow it had the ring of truth to me.

I glanced at my watch. There was still time before dinner would be served for me to do some ferreting around downstairs. I headed to my room to retrieve something.

In my room I dug around in the huge wardrobe and pulled my suitcase out onto the floor. Stuffed inside was a knitting bag which would be large enough to conceal a manuscript, if I found one. It might not really fool the rest of the household, but it could at least confuse them for a moment. The bag actually contained some knitting. Not very good knitting, mind you, but respectable enough for my cover as a Miss Silver impersonator.

Knitting bag in hand, I walked briskly back down the hall and down the stairs to Miss McElroy’s sitting room. I opened the door without knocking, and I found no one inside, to my great relief. I had no way of locking the door, since there was no key in the lock, so I found a suitable chair and wedged it underneath the doorknob. It wasn’t a failsafe, but at least it would give me a warning, should someone try to enter the room. I could always pretend I was nervous about being alone in the room as an explanation for doing such a thing. And, truth to tell, it wouldn’t be much of a pretense.

Setting my bag down on the sofa, I surveyed the room. If I were a manuscript, where would I be stashed? I smiled at the whimsical thought. There was always the possibility that a house like this would have some secret hiding places, like a secret passageway or some other such thrilling device. Without a floor plan, I couldn’t tell if any of the interior walls were set too far in to match the outer walls of the house. I’d have to do this the hard way and start tapping, hoping to hear a hollow sound somewhere.

The problem with this plan was soon apparent. The room was stuffed to overflowing with all kinds of tables, pictures, shelves, and knickknacks; thus, getting close enough to a wall to tap on it was quite a bit of work. I must have spent nearly a half hour trying to find a secret panel, while nervously looking at the door every three seconds, before I gave up in disgust. If the room had a secret panel, I just wasn’t going to find it this way.

Time to try a different approach. I thought for a moment. There was always the old “Purloined Letter” gambit—i.e., hide it in plain sight. The trouble with that method, however, was that a manuscript was much bulkier than a mere letter and, therefore, not as easy to secrete. There were a few books, here and there throughout the room, which looked big enough, if they were hollowed out, to hold a manuscript. An examination of them revealed that they were all whole. Musty smelling, in some cases, but whole.

There was always the furniture. The room held numerous chairs, one big sofa, and several tables of varying sizes, some of them with drawers. Perhaps that old desk in the corner had a secret compartment. I spent nearly another half hour, crawling in and around the desk, the tables, and finally the sofa, before concluding that none of them had any secret compartments.

On to the chairs. Might as well start with Miss McElroy’s chair. I sat down in it, to rest for a moment.

I sat, then I squirmed. It wasn’t a very comfortable chair. The cushion was a bit thin for my taste, and it almost felt like there was something underneath it.

Bingo!
I thought, a broad smile creasing my face.

I stood up and pulled the cushion up from the bottom of the chair. At first I thought I was doomed to disappointment, because it looked to me like the fabric beneath the cushion was whole. I put the cushion on the floor, then knelt on it, the better to examine the seat of the chair at a close angle.

Pinching a bit of the fabric at the front of the chair, I tugged at the covering. For a moment, it held against the firm pressure I was applying. Then, without warning, it pulled free. Resting in a hollow in the bottom of the chair was a pile of paper, tied together with a purple ribbon.

Chapter Seventeen

With great satisfaction, I stared down at the manuscript in the bottom of Miss McElroy’s chair. I had been half-inclined to believe the whole story of the manuscript was a hoax, intended by the late and mostly unlamented Hamilton Packer to extort money or power from the group assembled in this house.

But there it lay, the cause, so it would seem, of the multiple murders which had taken place here at Idlewild. For a few moments longer I gazed at it without touching it.

The title was intriguing. “Closer Than the Bones,” I read, “a novel by Sukey Lytton.” A vague memory stirred. Where had I read that phrase, or something similar to it, before? A quotation from a poem, perhaps, or a line from a novel, no doubt. There was one way to find out. I reached for the manuscript.

Then I stayed my hand, albeit reluctantly. Should I remove it from its hiding place? I had planned to, but now I was doubtful. Perhaps I should leave it, in situ, so that I could show it to Jack Preston just as I had found it. Would it be safer here than in my knitting bag, until I could locate him?

No, I decided, I’d much rather carry the manuscript with me, even though Alice Bertram might suspect I had it. I doubted she would confront me in the presence of others, anyway.

I dumped the contents of my knitting bag on the floor, then reached into my skirt pocket for my handkerchief. Gingerly, with the handkerchief wrapped around my hand, I lifted the manuscript from its hiding place and slid it into the empty bag. Then I stuffed bundles of yarn, several knitting needles, and my latest project, an afghan for my cousin Maggie, into the bag on top of the manuscript.

With as much care as possible, I put the chair back together and got up from the floor. Moments later I had restored the chair I had been using to block the door to its accustomed place, and I opened the door and sailed out into the hall, as if I hadn’t been doing anything more important than knitting in a quiet place for an hour or two.

Brett Doran was coming down the stairs, two at a time. “Ernie!” he said. “Where have you been?” He eyed my bag. “What’s this?” He halted at the bottom of the stairs, a few paces away from me. “Don’t tell me you’ve been doing your Miss Marple routine? Knitting calmly and pondering the guilt of all assembled.” He grinned.

I bit back the retort I wanted to make. “Well, actually, I have been doing just that. I find that having something for my hands to do helps free my mind to do its work.”

He laughed. “Idle hands make the devil’s work, and all that, huh? How positively Victorian of you, Ernie!”

“Very funny, Brett,” I said, my tone purposely a bit sour. I didn’t want him to suspect that I was lying, but by the calculating glances he kept directing at my bag, I wasn’t sure I had fooled him in the least.

“Time to put your knitting aside,” he said, taking my arm and beginning to guide me toward the dining room. “Time to eat instead.”

I muttered something under my breath, something which would have made my dear departed mother want to rap me on the knuckles.

“Sorry,” Brett said, “didn’t quite catch that?” He had heard very well what I had said—he was just hoping to make me blush.

I did blush, and he laughed.

“Have you seen or heard from Jack Preston in the last half hour or so?” I asked, stopping before Brett could lead me into the dining room.

“Not for a couple of hours, thank goodness. Why? Have you got something to tell him?” He eyed me speculatively.

“Oh, just something I wanted to ask him,” I said. Like,
Will you let me read the manuscript before you haul it off to be examined?
But of course I couldn’t say that aloud.

“I’m sure he’ll be back before the evening’s over,” Brett said, urging me toward the dining room again. “We haven’t seen the last of him, not by a long shot.”

“You go on ahead,” I said, disentangling my arm from his grasp as gently as I could. “I need to make a quick phone call, then I’ll join you.”