The Case of the Weird Sisters (13 page)

Duff waited quiedy, sending her his steady friendliness.

"Some things ain't right," Josephine said, and her eyes fell and her big pink hand clenched and covered the cross.

Duff saw, then, that the handyman was coming along the back of the house, outside. He would get no more from Josephine. He stepped quickly to the back door, relying on her essential meekness to watch him go without requiring an explanation.

When Mr. Johnson found Duff waiting on the narrow stoop, he stopped with one foot in a broken shoe resting on the bottom step and looked up. His unfathomable black eyes were as rudely without self-consciousness, as insulting in their complete lack of personal curiosity, as the child's had been on the train. Duff sent back his own synthetic innocence.

"You want to say something?" inquired Mr. Johnson without a flicker.

"About the furnace here," Duff purred. "Do you remember what time you banked the fure last night?"

"Ten o'clock, close to."

"It was all right then, was it?"

"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat into the dust, but his eyes came back as boldly as ever.

Duff tried a quick carelessness. "Who closed all those dampers afterward?"

No surprise or pretense of surprise showed on the dark face. The big shoiilders denied knowledge. Duff smiled his most enigmatical smile, but the black eyes continued to take him for a total enigma in which they were not much interested.

"I wonder, did you see the lamp fall a little earlier in the evening?" Duff said.

"Naw."

''You were out of the house, perhaps?"

"Sure."

''Downtown?"

"Naw."

"Where, then?"

"In the bam."

"Alone?"

''Sure."

"See the accident?" Duff surrendered to the staccato and tried sharpness.

"What accident?"

"To the car."

"Naw."

"Where were you then?"

"In the bam."

"Alone?"

"Sure."

"What were you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Alone?" Duff tried it softly.

Mr. Johnson spat.

Duff said a few words in a strange tongue. The black eyes betrayed no light, although they were not uncomprehending.

"What about it?" said Mr. Johnson.

MacDougal Duff said, ''Thank you. I won't keep you," in a tinny voice and stood aside to let him by.

Mr. Johnson went by.

Duff stood on the back stoop for a few minutes, gnawing on his own thumbnail. After a while he took his thumb out of his mouth and looked at it, wiped it twice across his other sleeve, put his hands in his pockets, and commanded himself to stroll aroimd the house toward the front door.

One who knew Duff well would have remarked that he seemed upset.

14

Alice woke up with her cheek on the bare mattress, her tweed coat scratchy under her chin, sat up under the mass of muddled bedclothes, and looked at her watch. Ten o'clock, Saturday. And the real significance of that was that Art Killeen must have been here in this house for nearly two hours.

She began to dress in a hurry, with a guilty sense of being late to a rendezvous. Her eyes, she saw in the glass, were puffy with weariness and her hair was wild. In her skirt and blouse, she snatched a towel and her make-up I box and fled through the deserted hall to the bathroom. |

When she came out, she was on the surface a self-possessed and fairly well-groomed young woman who might have taken the wild goings-on of the middle of the night in her stride. She'd made herself seem refreshed by sheer skill, and she had beaten down her excitement. She was ready when Innes's door opened and Art Killeen came out.

Ready or not, her heart jimiped, and she choked it back when she saw with a litde shock how fair he was, how white his skin, appreciated his well-washed look and the clean line of his nose and chin.

"Good morning!" he said with the surprised pleasure that was so familiar.

"Hello, Art," said Alice, and her own voice was tired.

He was tall, and she had to look up. He was smiling radiantly. He said in a hushed voice, "Innes has been telling me. My dear, I think it's swell! Just swell!"

Alice felt sick. She knew the word "swell" in his vocabulary. She knew his convention of wholehearted rejoicing in another's success. The code, the gentleman's law. But this radiance turned her a little sick.

"Thanks, Art," she said wearily. She knew weariness didn't attract him. How was it that she sounded so tired and was so tired of the whole idea of marrying Innes? If this was triumph, if this was revenge, it had no taste to it. It was flat. The excitement she'd been struggling to conceal died of itself. It disappeared and left her weary.

He had a brief case imder his arm, and he patted it.

"Where can I go to do a little work?" he asked, still smiling.

"I don't know," she said.

"You know what it is I have to do, don't you?" His voice was colorless, deliberately, but she knew there was secret congratulation behind it.

"Yes," she said.

"He's very fond of you, Alice."

His confidential air suddenly infuriated her. She put her hand on Innes's doorknob. "I've got to say good morning," she said over her shoulder. "Somebody will find you a corner if you go downstairs."

Her coolness didn't dim the radiance of his smile.

"Aw, please, you show me," he coaxed. "Whitlock's busy talking to Duff."

"Duff!"

"Professor MacDougal Duff, none other," said Art Killeen. "Oh, yes, he's here. Didn't you know?"

Alice said briskly, "I'm sorry. Art, but I've got to talk to Mr. Duff.''

"Of course." He was quick to agree, m that charming way he had of deferring and resigning his claim on one's attention. "But I'll see you later?"

Alice tapped on the door. "Oh, yes," she said, more wistfully than she had intended.

Art Killeen was the kind of man who, when a girl said don't,' didn't. That's why they don't often say don't, thought Alice, with a shock, as if she saw through another of life's veils.

It was MacDougal Duff himself, all right, rising to say good moming, and his lean hand was warm and strong.

"Oh, Mr. Duff, you did come back! I'm so glad. Do vou know Innes?"

"I do now," said Duff.

Innes, sitting up in bed, his face flushed with a little new color, said, "How are you, dear? You got some sleep, didn t you?"

"How are you, Innes?"

"Better," he said, "better. I've been talking to this friend of yours. As a matter of fact, I've been doing all the talking." 

Duff smiled. "My method," he claimed. "I believe there was something you wanted to say to me. Miss Brennan when we were so rudely separated yesterday by the train's departure."

"Oh," said Alice, "it was all this." She sat down, looking up. "I mean all the things that have happened to Lines. We were worried. Even then, we couldn't . . . Have you seen Fred? Has Innes told you about last night? Oh, what do you think?"

"My dear Alice, I've hired the man," said Innes complacently. "He's going to find out what to think and tell all the rest of us."

"I'm so glad,'' said Alice. "It's just what I wanted." She wondered how on earth Duff had got around Innes so quickly. But she realized that Duff's perfect and selfless willingness to concern himself with Innes's troubles and devote all his talents to understanding them was Duff's convincing credential. "But how do you happen to be back here?" she asked.

"I'm studying the American Indian this spring," said Duff, "just for fun. Ogaunee is my headquarters at the moment. I'm Mrs. Innes's boarder, you know."

"Oh, are you?"

"Lucky, isn't it?" said Innes, as if he, himself, had just been very clever.

"Yes, it's lucky," said Alice. "Also, it's terribly good of you to drop your own work and help us instead."

"Two birds with one stone," said Duff, a trifle grimly. "Mr. Johnson, the handyman, is a full-blooded Oneida."

"I don't," said Alice in another moment, "understand Mr. Johnson."

"Of course he's an Indian," protested Innes. "Been here ever since I can remember. Tends the furnace, washes the windows, works in the yard. He used to keep the horses when we had them. He's always been Mr. Johnson, I don't know why. Suppose he always will be. He belongs out in the bam. I suppose my sisters pay him wages. He's an Indian, all right."

Duff said, "What's the matter, Miss Brennan?"

"I couldn't place him. I thought he was so foreign. He scared me."

"Mr. Johnson's nothing to scare you," Innes said with conviction. "He's not sneaky."

"You suggest," said Duff, "that if he wanted to murder anyone he'd be rather direct about it?"

"He is direct," said Innes, frowning. 'That's what makes him so reliable. He does exactly what comes into his head. He . . ."

"But he's so mysterious." insisted Alice,

Imies pouted. "He doesn't seem mysterious to me. I'm used to him."

Duffs eyes were dreamy. "I wonder. Is he mysterious? Or isn't he? The Indian was, they say, fond of fancy speaMng, of indirect, symbolic, image-full language. He was oratorical. Your Mr. Johnson upsets my conception. Perhaps he isn't typical. But if he is . . . How I would like to know the set of ideas he lives by! Or if he has any ideas." Duff shook his head slightly. He smiled at Alice. "I don't understand Mr. Johnson either," he admitted.

Innes stirred a little impatiently. "However"—Duff roused himself—"that's my hobby, not your trouble. Suppose we get Fred up here and pool what we know? I have been hired to find out what goes on, without unnecessarily offending anybody. A very ticklish job. One that will take some careful doing. Before I meet the Misses Whidock—-who are not yet visible, are they?"

Alice shrugged.

"—let's get the facts. Facts are good enough to start with," Duff said carelessly.

Alice ran downstairs. She saw Art Killeen working on a typewriter in the sitting room as she went by. Fred was in tiie kitchen. Alice said, "May I have a cup of coffee to take with me, Josephine? Fred, Mr. Duff wants you. Come on upstairs."

Fred came to attention. "The lawyer's here," he said, watching her face.

"Yes, I know," said Alice. "But come on. Duff wants us."

As the council went into session. Duff leaned back in a chair beside Innes's bed, quite as if he had all day. Innes reclined on his pillows. Alice sat on a hassock against the wall, following eagerly, and Fred sat in a straight chair at the other side of the bed, facing Duff, his ankle on his knee, looking extremely intelligent.

"This business of the veal in the meat loaf," said Duff, "seems to yield very little. It's quite possible that Miss Isabel, who seems most active in the running of the house, deceived herself into thinking it wouldn't matter. She is, I gather, rather set against unnecessary expense. Perhaps she didn't want to prepare another kind of meat, on account of the expense, or on account of the bother, and convinced herself, therefore, that there was no reason to do so. Do you think that's possible, or am I doing Miss Isabel an injustice?"

"You're right," said Iiines wryly. ''Miss Gertrude is aloof from the details," Duff went on. "Perhaps she felt it wasn't any concern of hers. And Maud didn't hear about it beforehand. Maud may have known, at the tabid, that she was eating veal. We do know she said nothing about it But is Maud likely to have said anything about it?"

"No. You're right again. She wouldn't worry. You say you haven't met my sisters?"

"Not yet," said Duff, "but Fve been gleaning, here and there. Now, you see, the veal-eating and Mr. Whitlock's consequent iUness may have been the result of carelessness or of a simple mistake."

"In other words, an accident," said Fred, whom Duff had gently maneuvered into the position of a man with opinions to give, and who accepted that position simply.

"Yes. And since nothing was actively done, the dinner was served as originally planned, the only crime was neglecting to change it, I don't think the incident can tell us much."

"Things like that add up, though," said Alice.

"Oh, yes. Of course. Nevertheless, let's go on to the first attempt to do Mr. Whitlock harm. If it was an attempt and not still another accident The lamp fell off the table upstairs. It might have fallen by itself. None of us can see how. But we can't say it couldn't have happened. The devil in the inanimate, you know. Still, if we assume that someone pushed it over, let's see who might have done so. You point out to me that Miss Maud, who is totally deaf— Is that true, Mr. Whitlock?"

"She never hears anything that I know of," said Innes.

"Well, being deaf, she couldn't, we say, have known that you were walking down the hall. You had opened the bathroom door, malang a sound, of course, and your footsteps could have been heard. But you couldn't have been seen from upstairs? There is no glass in which you might have been reflected?"

"Lace curtain on the front door," said Fred prompdy.

"No mirror?"

"It's on the side wall," Alice said. "I was standing in front of it. I couldn't see the top of the stairs in it."

"Could you see the mirror, Mr. Whitlock?"

"No, no, I'm sure I couldn't."

"Very well," said Duff. "This crime, if one, was done by ear. The victim must have been heard approaching, and Maud can't hear. Exit Maud. What about Gertrude, who can't see?"

"She knows every inch of this house," said Innes. "She goes anywhere she pleases, upstairs or down. She knows exactly what's on every table. She knew that lamp was there. Nothing's ever changed around in this house. And her ears are sharp."

"All true," said Duff. "But tell me, when was that downstairs bathroom put in?"

"When? About... let me see ..." ' "Before or after Gertrude lost her sight?"

"Oh, after," said Innes. "Some years after."

"Yes," said Duff. "Well... I don't suppose Miss Isabel would have been prevented from pushing that lamp by the fact of her having one arm?"

"Not a bit. Isabel could have pushed the lamp," said Fred.

"Does anything about their opportunity help us at all? As far as we know, all three of them had the chance to be there in the upstairs hall at that time? Is that right?"