Читать книгу The Yellow Room - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 6

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She did not say any more. She made for the door which led outside from the service hall, and they could hear her retching there. Carol made a move toward the stairs, but Maggie was ahead of her.

“They’re both hysterical,” she said. “Probably saw a blanket on the floor. Better let me go up, Miss Carol. You don’t look so good yourself. You stay with Freda.”

Freda was still crying, but she was sitting up now and fumbling for a handkerchief. Carol gave her one from her bag and she dried her eyes.

“I guess I flopped,” she said. “So would you, if you seen what I did.” She shuddered uncontrollably. “I opened the door where you said the linen closet was, and—”

She did not finish. Maggie came in, and one look at her face was enough.

“I guess you’ll have to get the police,” she said. “There’s somebody there. Better not go up. I opened the windows in the hall, but I didn’t touch anything else.”

She went to the sink and washed her hands. Then she sat down abruptly, and began nervously pleating her apron.

“I don’t feel so good,” she said. “They’re right about the fire. We’ll never use them sheets and things again.”

The nightmare feeling closed down on Carol. It had been growing since their arrival, with Lucy not there, and Harry Miller’s story, and now this! She felt young and incapable, and the house itself had become horrible. She found she was shaking.

“Could you see who it was?” she asked.

Maggie shook her head.

“I told you. There’s been a fire.” She got up heavily and went to the stove. “I’d better make some coffee,” she said, her voice flat. “It’s a help. You’d better have a cup before you start for the village. Maybe you can get Colonel Richardson to drive you in. He’s near.”

“I ought to go up myself.”

“You stay where you are,” Maggie said forcefully. “Freda, you go up and lie down. Nothing’s going to hurt you. Whatever it is it’s over, and your room ain’t near it.”

Nora had come back by that time, but neither girl would go upstairs again. They looked shocked and helpless, but they looked, too, like a defiant combination against Maggie’s common sense. Carol looked at them with what amounted to despair.

“I’m sorry, girls,” she said. “Whatever has happened it has nothing to do with us. Mrs. Norton has broken her leg. She’s in the hospital, and probably some tramp came in while the house was empty.”

Nora was the first to recover.

“And burned himself to death!” she said, her voice high and shrill.

“That’s for the police to find out.”

“I’m staying for no police.”

Maggie turned from the stove.

“That’s where you’re wrong, my girl,” she said coldly. “You’ll stay here as long as the police want you. Don’t get any ideas about running away, either of you. You found the body, and here you’re staying till they let you go.”

It was a subdued pair of young women that Carol took upstairs. The service wing was cut off from the main house by a heavy door, and after she had seen them to their rooms she opened it. From this angle she could see the door of the linen closet. It was next to that of the elevator which had been installed for her mother some years before, and it was standing open, its white paint blackened and blistered.

She stood still, almost unable to move. Soon she would have to get help, but first she must see for herself. The odor was very strong. It was a combination of scorched linen, burned paint, kerosene, and something else she did not care to identify.

The morning sun was flooding the closet. The house was built entirely around the patio, with a passage running around it on the second floor and the bedroom doors and that of the elevator and closet opening from it. The windows were open, and she was grateful for the air. She moved forward slowly, past Greg’s old room, past the blue guest room and past the elevator door. Then she was at the closet, staring in.

The women had been right. There was a body inside, but it was not that of a tramp. It was that of a woman.

She did not go back to the kitchen. She went on rather blindly to the main staircase and huddled there on the top step. She was still wearing the black dress and fur-collared coat in which she had arrived, and she pulled the coat around her as if she were cold. She was not thinking yet. Her mind was too chaotic for that. She knew there were things she should do, but she was not ready to do them. Maggie found her there, her eyes wide and staring and her face chalk-white.

“I warned you,” she said. “Maybe I’d better go for the police. It’s nobody you know, is it?”

Carol looked up blankly.

“How can anyone tell?” Her voice was bleak, and Maggie was frightened.

“Now look, Miss Carol,” she said, “it’s not that bad. Maybe you couldn’t recognize her, but she’s—not really burned up. And the house is cold. If it’s only been there since Saturday—”

Carol roused herself.

“Saturday? Why Saturday?”

“Because Lucy Norton was here Friday night,” Maggie explained patiently. “You don’t suppose this went on while she was in the house, do you?”

“It might have. I didn’t tell you all the story. She says somebody reached out of the linen closet and knocked her down. That’s how she got hurt. She was running down the stairs in the dark.”

Carol got up slowly, holding to the stair rail, and Maggie caught her arm to steady her.

“I’d better get Floyd,” she said. “Maybe I can telephone from Colonel Richardson’s.” And when Maggie protested, “I need the air,” she said flatly, “I’m all right now. Let go of me. I’m only glad Mother isn’t here.”

Maggie nodded, and Carol went down the stairs. The sunlight on the white walls of the house made the patio dazzling, and she blinked in the glare. The blue pool needed paint, she thought distractedly, and some of the tiles had been cracked by the winter ice. It had been idiotic to build a house entirely around an open court. In winter any heavy snow had to be shoveled into a wheelbarrow and dumped on the drive, and when there was a rapid thaw the drainpipe in the pool was not adequate. More than once the plumber had had to come, have the current turned on, run a hose through the entry hall and pump the water out onto the drive.

She pulled herself together. All this was pure escapism, and she could not escape. There was a dead girl or woman upstairs, and she would have to notify the police. She was more normal when she left the house again, although her feet still bothered her. She had a pair of sandals in her bag upstairs, but she could not go back for them. Perhaps Colonel Richardson would telephone, or drive her into town. But as she stumbled down the drive once more, it was to see the Richardson garage doors open and the Colonel’s car gone. This was the time, she remembered, when he drove his man, his only servant, into town to market, and the house would be closed and locked.

She stood still, shivering in the cold air. She could go up to the Wards’ and get help there, but once again the long steep drive was more than she could face. She decided to walk, and some twenty minutes later she opened the door of the police station and went in.

Floyd was relaxing. He had taken off the belt and automatic, which lay on his desk, and was resting in a chair, with another drawn up for his legs. He looked up in astonishment when he saw her, and got to his feet.

“Anything wrong?” he inquired. “Here, maybe you’d better sit down.”

She did not sit, however. She stood just inside the door, holding the knob as if to support her.

“There’s somebody dead in the linen closet at Crestview,” she said, her voice flat. “I thought maybe you’d better come up.”

He looked astounded.

“Dead? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I think somebody tried to burn her. The house too, I suppose. Only the door was shut and the fire didn’t spread.”

“For God’s sake,” Floyd said softly. “So Lucy Norton wasn’t crazy, after all.”

He buckled on his heavy gun, his face set.

“My car’s in the alley,” he said. “I’ll call Jim Mason. He’s got the night job, so he’s at home. I’d better call the doctor too. He’s the coroner.” He reached for the telephone and stopped, his hand on the receiver.

“You’re sure of all this, are you?” he said. “Not mistaking something else for a body?”

“I saw it myself.”

She sat down then and kicked off her shoes, and the next thing she knew Floyd was holding a glass of whisky to her lips and telling her to get it down somehow.

“I’m not the fainting sort,” she protested. “I’m just tired.”

“You gave a damn good imitation of passing out,” he said gruffly. “Take the rest of this.”

And she was still half strangled when he put her into his car.

The whisky helped. She felt less cold, and things were out of her hands now. The law was beside her, looking stern and capable. She was no longer alone. And the chief was a shrewd man. He asked genially about the family, her mother, and especially about Gregory.

“All mighty proud of him here,” he said. “Hear he’s being decorated by the President.”

“He came home for that. They sent him. You know Greg. He didn’t want to leave his men, or his plane.”

She was looking better, he thought. He had always liked her. Had a rotten time, too, he considered, with that mother of hers and her hoity-toity sister. Then she’d been engaged to Don Richardson, and Don was dead, although his old man wouldn’t believe it.

He turned into the drive and put his car into second gear. The engine promptly began to knock, and he apologized.

“Car’s all right,” he explained. “It’s this rotten gas we’re getting. Hello, there’s the Dane fellow. Maybe we’d better get him.”

He stopped the car. A man in slacks and a yellow sweater had been slowly climbing the drive and limping slightly as he did so. He stopped when he heard the car behind him and turned, a tall figure with a lean, rather saturnine face and an aggressive jaw.

“Hello, major,” said the chief. “Kind of early for a walk, isn’t it?”

Dane grinned.

“My daily dozen,” he explained. “When I can run up this hill I’ll be ready to go back. Anyhow I saw smoke in this direction, and after the stories going round I thought I’d look into it.”

The chief remembered his manners.

“Miss Spencer, meet Major Jerry Dane,” he said. “The major had some trouble with the krauts a while ago in Italy, and he’s here getting over it.” He looked at the man again. “Miss Spencer’s had some trouble too,” he added. “Maybe you’d like to come along. She says there’s a dead body in the house up here.”

The major looked interested rather than astonished.

“A body?” he said. “Whose is it?”

He glanced at Carol.

“I have no idea,” she said coldly. “If you want to discuss it I’ll go on, if you don’t mind.”

“If it’s dead there’s no great hurry, is there?”

He was deliberately baiting her, and she felt her color rise. He saw it and grinned, showing excellent teeth in a sunburned face.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll hang onto the running board. Get going, Floyd. Let’s see this corpse.”

It was obvious that he did not believe her, and none of them spoke as the car climbed the rest of the hill. Carol promptly forgot Dane and braced herself for what was to come. And Dane himself simply lit a cigarette and from his precarious hold on the running board eyed her quizzically. Plenty of spunk, he thought, if what she said was true. Only—a body in the house! Whose body? Good God, he had walked up this hill daily for two weeks, and except for the Norton woman’s accident the place had been merely an ostentatious survival of an era that was finished. In a way it had annoyed him, sitting smug on its hill while the rest of the world blazed and died.

He was relieved when Carol let them go upstairs alone, and he saw now why the house had looked so huge. The court around which it was built might be a lovely thing when it had been put in order, but was now neglected and ugly. But once upstairs he forgot the house. He was accustomed to death, as a man in his particular job knew death. But not the death of a woman. And what lay on the closet floor had been a woman.

It lay relaxed and face up, with the hands and arms close to the body, and the legs neatly outstretched toward the door. When Floyd tried to step inside Dane held him back.

“Better wait,” he said. “Let’s see what we can first. She wasn’t burned to death, of course. Look at the way she’s lying. If she’d been burned—”

“I don’t get it,” Floyd said thickly. “Why kill her and then try to burn her?”

“That’s a very nice question.” Dane looked about him. “When was the Norton woman hurt?”

“Friday night. Saturday morning, maybe.”

Dane began whistling softly to himself.

“No fingerprint people around, I suppose?” he asked, after a pause.

“Why would we be needing a fingerprint outfit?” the chief demanded belligerently. “We haven’t had a crime here since one of the waiters at the hotel stole a watch, and that’s twelve years ago.”

Dane went back to his whistling, but his eyes were busy. The doorknobs were no good. Whoever had found the body had smeared them badly, both outside and in, and a thick layer of soot lay along the shelves and over the piles of neatly stacked scorched linen.

“Ever see her before?” he asked finally.

“How can I tell? Even her own mother—There’s no local girl missing. That’s all I know.”

“How about a camera? There ought to be some pictures before she’s moved.”

Floyd’s patience was rapidly going.

“Listen, son,” he said. “There’s a war on. I haven’t seen a roll of film for the last year. And I don’t own a camera anyhow. What do you think this is? The FBI in Washington?”

Dane did not reply. The doctor’s car had chugged up the hill and now he was coming up the stairs, with Jim Mason, Floyd’s assistant, at his heels. He stopped outside the closet and stared in.

“Good God almighty!” he said. “How did that happen?”

“Maybe you can tell us,” Dane said with his slightly sardonic smile. “I wouldn’t touch anything but the body, doctor. Not that I think there’s anything there. Just the usual procedure.”

Floyd gave him a cold stare.

“We’ll attend to that, Dane,” he said. “Go ahead, doc. The major here says she was dead before the fire. How about it?”

The doctor went inside the closet and stooped over the body. He was there a couple of minutes before he backed out. He looked rather white.

“Hit on the head,” he said. “Bad frontal fracture. Probably dead two or three days. No way to tell. Certainly dead before the fire.”

“Then why any fire at all?” Floyd persisted.

The doctor was lighting a cigarette by the open window.

“How do I know?” he said irritably. “Maybe somebody didn’t like her. Maybe somebody didn’t want her recognized. Or maybe it was just a firebug. Remember the Elks’ Club?” He sucked at his cigarette. “Better get her out of here,” he said. “I want to look her over.”

Dane left them then. He went downstairs, to find Carol in the library. She was curled up in a big chair by the fire, looking young and stricken. There was a tray with coffee on a small table beside her, but she had not touched it. His quick eyes took in the room before he spoke.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but have you got a camera in the house?”

“A camera?”

“They want to take her away, but I think there should be a picture or two first.”

“My brother’s camera is here. There are no films in it.”

He shrugged his lean shoulders.

“Well, I suppose that’s that,” he said. “None in the town either, I understand. No telephone, I suppose?”

“No. They’re all gone. Who is it up there, major? I mean—in the closet. Does anyone know her?”

He shook his head.

“Not yet. We’ll find out later, of course. They don’t think she’s one of the local people. That’s as far as they go.”

She shivered, and he went to the tray and poured a cup of coffee. Her hand shook as she took it, but she tried to smile.

“The cook’s cure for everything,” she said. “I’ve been having it ever since I came. I have practically a coffee jag. Not to mention Floyd’s whisky.” She glanced up at him, standing beside her. Aside from his slight limp he appeared to be a strong, well-muscled man in his early thirties, and his face as he looked down at her was now friendly and smiling.

“Don’t take this too hard,” he said. “It has happened in this house, but it has nothing to do with you. A little paint and a little time, and you can forget it, Miss Spencer.”

“I’ll never forget it. Do you think it was this—this woman who scared Lucy Norton the night she fell?”

“Might be,” he said lightly, and turned to go.

But she did not want him to go. She could not be alone again. Not then, with only the servants in the house and that horror upstairs.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, almost desperately.

“Is it strong?”

“It would float an egg.”

“I’ll be back for some in a minute.”

He was longer than a minute. Mason had disappeared when he went back. He left Floyd and Dr. Harrison in the hall and went into the closet. There he stooped for some time over the body, touching nothing but inspecting everything. When he came out again his face was set.

“She was a young woman,” he said. “And I don’t think she was killed here. That’s not certain, of course, but it doesn’t look like it. The autopsy will tell a good bit more, probably. She wasn’t wearing much when it happened. Apparently she’d slipped a fur jacket over not much else. Any girl around here have a silver fox coat?”

The chief snorted.

“A few, but mostly we leave them to the summer people. I’ll ask around, of course. Taking a lot of interest, aren’t you, Dane? Sure you didn’t know her yourself?”

“Don’t be a fool, Floyd. You brought me here. Why don’t you get busy and look around for her clothes? If she didn’t belong here she didn’t arrive in what she’s got on.”

“I’ll find them, all right.”

But Dane was aware as he went down the stairs again that the chief’s eyes, hard and suspicious, were following him.