The Oxford Book of American Det (74 page)

“Of what?” I asked. “What was it she claimed she could do?” The detective at the door moved forward. “My orders,” he said, “are that you’re not to talk about what happened until after the lieutenant has taken your statements. Make it easy for me, will you?”

That made it difficult for us. Any other conversational subject just then seemed pointless. We sat there silent and uncomfortable. But somehow the nervous tension that had been in our voices was still there—a foreboding, ghostly presence waiting with us for what was to happen next.

A half hour later, although it seemed many times that long, Garrett was taken out for questioning, then Kendrick. And later I got the nod. I saw Elinor Drake, a small, lonely figure in the big hall, moving slowly up the wide stairs. Doran and the police stenographer who waited for me in the stately dining room with its heavy crystal chandelier looked out of place. But the lieutenant didn’t feel ill at ease; his questions were as coldly efficient as a surgeon’s knife.

I tried to insert a query of my own now and then, but soon gave that up. Doran ignored all such attempts as completely as if they didn’t exist. Then, just as he dismissed me, the phone rang. Doran answered, listened, scowled and then held the receiver out to me. “For you,” he said.

I heard Merlini’s voice. “My ESP isn’t working so well today, Ross. Drake is dead. I get that much. But just what happened up there, anyway?”

“ESP my eye,” I told him. “If you were a mind reader you’d have been up here long ago. It’s a sealed room—in spades. The sealed room to end all sealed rooms.” I saw Doran start forward as if to object. “Merlini,” I said quickly, “is Inspector Gavigan still with you?” I lifted the receiver from my ear and let Doran hear the “Yes” that came back.

Merlini’s voice went on. “Did you say sealed room? The flash from headquarters didn’t mention that. They said an arrest had already been made. It sounded like a routine case.”

“Headquarters,” I replied, “has no imagination. Or else Doran has been keeping things from them. It isn’t even a routine sealed room. Listen. A woman comes to Drake’s house on the coldest January day since 1812 dressed only in a bathing suit. She goes with him into his study. They seal the window and door on the inside with gummed paper tape. Then she stabs him with a paper knife. Before he dies, he knocks her out, then manages to get to the phone and send out an SOS.

“She’s obviously crazy; she has to be to commit murder under those circumstances.

But Drake wasn’t crazy. A bit eccentric maybe, but not nuts. So why would he lock himself in so carefully with a homicidal maniac? If headquarters thinks that’s routine I’ll—“ Then I interrupted myself. There was too much silence on the other end of the wire. “Merlini! Are you still there?”

“Yes,” his voice said slowly, “I’m still here. Headquarters was much too brief. They didn’t tell us her name. But I know it now.”

Then, abruptly, I felt as if I had stepped off into some fourth-dimensional hole in space and had dropped on to some other nightmare planet.

Merlini’s voice, completely serious, was saying, “Ross, did the police find a silver denarius from the time of the Caesars in that room? Or a freshly picked rose, a string of Buddhist prayer beads, perhaps a bit of damp seaweed?” I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

After a moment, Merlini added, “So—they did. What was it?”

“Shells,” I said dazedly, still quite unconvinced that any conversation could sound like this. “Philippine tree snail shells. Why, in the name of—“ Merlini cut in hastily. “Tell Doran that Gavigan and I will be there in ten minutes. Sit tight and keep your eyes open.”

“Merlini!” I objected frantically; “if you hang up without—“

“The shells explain the bathing suit, Ross, and make it clear why the room was sealed.

But they also introduce an element that Gavigan and Doran and the D.A. and the commissioner are not going to like at all. I don’t like it myself. It’s even more frightening as a murder method than PK.”

He hesitated a moment, then let me have both barrels.

“Those shells suggest that Drake’s death might have been caused by even stranger forces—evil and evanescent ones—from another world!” My acquaintance with a police inspector cut no ice with Doran; he ordered me right back into the living room.

I heard a siren announce the arrival of Gavigan’s car shortly after, but it was a long hour later before Doran came in and said, “The inspector wants to see all of you—in the study.”

As I moved with the others out into the hall I saw Merlini waiting for me.

“It’s about time,” I growled at him. “Another ten minutes and you’d have found me DOA, too—from suspense.”

“Sorry you had to cool your heels,” he said, “but Gavigan is being difficult. As predicted, he doesn’t like the earful Doran has been giving him. Neither do I.” The dryly ironic good humour that was almost always in his voice was absent. He was unusually sober,

“Don’t build it up,” I said. “I’ve had all the mystery I can stand. Just give me answers.

First, why did you tell me to warn Drake about Rosa Rhys?”

“I didn’t expect murder, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he replied. “Drake was elaborating on some of Rhine’s original experiments aimed at discovering whether ESP

operates more efficiently when the subject is in a trance state. Rosa is a medium.”

“Oh, so that’s it. She and Drake were holding a séance?” Merlini nodded. “Yes. The Psychical Research Society is extremely interested in ESP

and PK. It’s given them a new lease on life. And I knew they had recommended Rosa, whom they had previously investigated, to Drake.”

“And what about the Roman coins, roses, Buddhist prayer beads—and snail shells?

Why the bathing suit and how does that explain why the room was sealed?” But Doran, holding the study door open, interrupted before he could reply.

“Hurry it up!” he ordered.

Going into that room now was like walking on to a brightly lighted stage. A powerful electric bulb of almost floodlight brilliance had been inserted in the ceiling fixture and its harsh white glare made the room more barren and cell-like than ever. Even Inspector Gavigan seemed to have taken on a menacing air. Perhaps it was the black mask of shadow that his hat brim threw down across the upper part of his face; or it may have been the carefully intent way he watched us as we came in.

Doran did the introductions. “Miss Drake, Miss Potter, Paul Kendrick, Dr. Walter Garrett.”

I looked at the middle-aged woman whose gayly frilled, altogether feminine hat contrasted oddly with her angular figure, her prim determined mouth, and the chilly glance of complete disapproval with which she regarded Gavigan.

“How,” I whispered to Merlini, “did Isabelle Potter, the secretary of the Psychical Research Society, get here?”

“She came with Rosa,” he answered. “The police found her upstairs reading a copy of Tyrrell’s
Study of Apparitions.”
Merlini smiled faintly. “She and Doran don’t get along.”

“They wouldn’t,” I said. “They talk different languages. When I interviewed her, I got a travelogue on the other world—complete with lantern slides.” Inspector Gavigan wasted no time. “Miss Drake,” he began, “I understand the medical foundation for cancer research your father thought of endowing was originally your idea.”

The girl glanced once at the stains on the carpet, then kept her dark eyes steadily on Gavigan. “Yes,” she said slowly, “it was.”

“Are you interested in psychical research?”

Elinor frowned. “No.”

“Did you object when your father began holding stances with Miss Rhys?” She shook her head. “That would only have made him more determined.” Gavigan turned to Kendrick. “Did you?”

“Me?” Paul lifted his brows. “I didn’t know him well enough for that. Don’t think he liked me much, anyway. But why a man like Drake would waste his time—“

“And you, doctor?”

“Did I object?” Garrett seemed surprised. “Naturally. No one but a neurotic middle-aged woman would take a séance seriously.”

Miss Potter resented that one. “Dr. Garrett,” she said icily, “Sir Oliver Lodge was not a neurotic woman, nor Sir William Crookes, nor Professor Zoellner, nor—“

“But they were all senile,” Garrett replied just as icily. “And as for ESP, no neurologist of any standing admits any such possibility. They leave such things to you and your society, Miss Potter—and to the Sunday supplements.” She gave the doctor a look that would have split an atom, and Gavigan, seeing the danger of a chain reaction if this sort of dialogue were allowed to continue, broke in quickly.

“Miss Potter. You introduced Miss Rhys to Mr. Drake and he was conducting ESP

experiments with her. Is that correct?”

Miss Potter’s voice was still dangerously radioactive. “It is. And their results were most gratifying and important. Of course, neither you nor Dr. Garrett would understand—“

“And then,” Garrett cut in, “they both led him on into an investigation of Miss Rhys’s psychic specialty—apports.” He pronounced the last word with extreme distaste.

Inspector Gavigan scowled, glanced at Merlini, and the latter promptly produced a definition. “An apport,” he said, “from the French
apporter,
to bring, is any physical object supernormally brought into a séance room—from nowhere usually or from some impossible distance. Miss Rhys on previous occasions, according to the Psychical Society’s Journal, has apported such objects as Roman coins, roses, beads, and seaweed.”

“She is the greatest apport medium,” Miss Potter declared somewhat belligerently,

“since Charles Bailey.”

“Then she’s good,” Merlini said. “Bailey was an apport medium whom Conan Doyle considered bona fide. He produced birds, Oriental plants, small animals, and on one occasion a young shark eighteen inches long which he claimed his spirit guide had whisked instantly via the astral plane from the Indian Ocean and projected, still damp and very much alive, into the séance room.”

“So,” I said, “that’s why this room was sealed. To make absolutely certain that no one could open the door or window in the dark and help Rosa by introducing—“

“Of course,” Garrett added. “Obviously there could be no apports if adequate precautions were taken. Drake also moved a lot of his things out of the study and inventoried every object that remained. He also suggested, since I was so sceptical, that I be the one to make certain that Miss Rhys carried nothing into the room on her person. I gave her a most complete physical examination—in a bedroom upstairs. Then she put on one of Miss Drake’s bathing suits.”

“Did you come down to the study with her and Drake?” Gavigan asked.

The doctor frowned. “No. I had objected to Miss Potter’s presence at the séance and Miss Rhys countered by objecting to mine.”

“She was quite right,” Miss Potter said. “The presence of an unbeliever like yourself would prevent even the strongest psychic forces from making themselves manifest.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Garrett replied stiffly. “It’s the usual excuse, as I told Drake.

He tried to get her to let me attend but she refused flatly. So I went back to my office down the street. Drake’s phone call came a half hour or so later.”

“And yet”—Gavigan eyed the two brightly coloured shells on the table—“ in spite of all your precautions she produced two of these.”

Garrett nodded. “Yes, I know. But the answer is fairly obvious now. She hid them somewhere in the hall outside on her arrival and then secretly picked them up again on her way in here.”

Elinor frowned. “I’m afraid not, doctor. Father thought of that and asked me to go down with them to the study. He held one of her hands and I held the other.” Gavigan scowled. Miss Potter beamed.

“Did you go in with them?” Merlini asked.

She shook her head. “No. Only as far as the door. They went in and I heard it lock behind them. I stood there for a moment or two and heard Father begin pasting the tape on the door. Then I went back to my room to dress. I was expecting Paul.” Inspector Gavigan turned to Miss Potter. “You remained upstairs?”

“Yes,” she replied in a tone that dared him to deny it. “I did.” Gavigan looked at Elinor. “Paul said a moment ago that your father didn’t like him.

Why not?”

“Paul exaggerates,” the girl said quickly. “Father didn’t dislike him. He was just—well, a bit difficult where my men friends were concerned.”

“He thought they were all after his money,” Kendrick added. “But at the rate he was endowing medical foundations and psychic societies—“ Miss Potter objected. “Mr. Drake did not endow the Psychical Society.”

“But he was seriously considering it,” Garrett said. “Miss Rhys—and Miss Potter—

were selling him on the theory that illness is only a mental state due to a psychic imbalance, whatever that is.”

“They won’t sell me on that,” Elinor said, and then turned suddenly on Miss Potter, her voice trembling. “If it weren’t for you and your idiotic foolishness Father wouldn’t have been—killed.” Then to Gavigan, “We’ve told all this before, to the lieutenant. Is it quite necessary—“

The inspector glanced at Merlini, then said, “I think that will be all for now. Okay, Doran, take them back. But none of them are to leave yet.” When they had gone, he turned to Merlini. “Well, I asked the questions you wanted me to, but I still think it was a waste of time. Rosa Rhys killed Drake. Anything else is impossible.”

“What about Kendrick’s cabdriver?” Merlini asked. “Have your men located him yet?” Gavigan’s scowl, practically standard operating procedure by now, grew darker. “Yes.

Kendrick’s definitely out. He entered the cab on the other side of town at just about the time Drake was sealing this room and he was apparently still in it, crossing Central Park, at the time Drake was killed.”

“So,” I commented, “he’s the only one with an alibi.” Gavigan lifted his eyebrows. “The only one? Except for Rosa Rhys they
all
have alibis.

The sealed room takes care of that.”

“Yes,” Merlini said quietly, “but the people with alibis also have motives while the one person who could have killed Drake has none.”

“She did it,” the inspector answered. “So she’s got a motive, and we’ll find it.”