Crime is Murder (16 page)

Dr. Hazlitt didn’t seem to understand. He still wasn’t quite sure.

“I won’t let it happen again,” Lisa said.

“I must be leaving,” the doctor murmured.

“But you won’t forget what I’ve told you. I
won’t
let it happen again.”

It didn’t disturb Lisa when the doctor left so quickly. She liked being left alone. The voices died out in the hall. There was a little quiet time before the strangers began to arrive—noisy strangers with little pink admission tickets purchased from Miss Pratt’s desk in the hall. The museum belonged to the strangers then, and so Lisa left it to them.

Outside, the drive was cleared of the last vestige of the memorial committee. Johnny was uptown replenishing supplies and had taken the station wagon with her. Lisa glanced at her watch. If she hurried, there would be time for one call before Johnny returned. When the footing was level, she could walk very fast.

It was nearly four blocks to the Cornish Memorial Auditorium. The stage door was open in welcome to any lake breeze that might stray that way, and the sounds of an orchestra tuning up for rehearsal met her back stage. She peered through the wings. The perspiring man in shirt sleeves with an agitated baton in his hands wasn’t Sir Anthony. Good. She would find him then in his office.

And she did.

“Lisa!” Arms outstretched, he came to meet her. He was a rugged man with reddish-blond hair and excited blue eyes. In sport shirt and slacks he looked more the R.A.F. officer on leave than the world-renowned conductor he was. “Lisa! To think of finding you here? I was so happy to get your vote! When are you coming back to London?”

In the face of such an enthusiastic greeting, Lisa could say little. She must let him talk, question, reminisce. She must wait until the excitement abated in his voice, and then she could ask,

“And have you gone through all the award entries, Tony?”

“The entries! Oh, the things I let myself in for, Lisa! There aren’t a dozen of all these hundreds with the slightest evidence of talent … except one.”

Lisa smiled. “Then you have decided?”

Sir Anthony frowned. His eyebrows were very shaggy. They seemed to knit together at the bridge of his nose.

“There’s only one possible winner, and yet—”

“And yet what, Tony? Is anything wrong?”

“Not exactly. The entry seems in order. But, hang it all, Lisa, I’m a musician! I know—”

“The purpose of the Cornish Award,” Lisa said quickly. “Do you know that?”

He hesitated. “To advance music,” he said, “and young musicians.”

“ ‘And young musicians.’” Lisa repeated the words in a quiet voice. But there was something more. “And to pay tribute to the memory of Martin Cornish,” she added. “We mustn’t forget that, above all.”

Now Lisa looked at her watch again.

“Oh, I must go. I can’t keep Johnny waiting. I really shouldn’t be here anyway. I’m only an ‘honorary’ judge, you know, and the name of the winner must be kept secret. Not a word, Tony. Not a blessed word!”

When Lisa left the auditorium, the orchestra had concluded its preliminaries and broken into an overture—one of the brighter, earlier works of Martin Cornish. She couldn’t wait to listen, but the music followed her down the street. And Lisa marched, her gnarled stick tapping out a happy rhythm on the sidewalk. She’d caught the contagion, too. And Miss Oberon was right—this would be the most exciting festival of all.

The last day of the music festival dawned bright and clear, but there was an oppressive sultriness in the air that had been gathering in intensity for several days. That it would eventually break in a summer storm no one doubted; that it would hold off until after the all-important concert everyone prayed, particularly Tod Graham.

“The man’s aging,” Johnny reported, after a trip to the village. “You can actually see him aging before your eyes. I understand the field’s sold out for tonight—bleachers and all. If it rains, they’ll have to refund most of the money. The auditorium won’t hold any more than a few thousand.”

“It’s a scandal,” Carrie muttered. “All that fuss for a no-good—”

“Don’t you like music, Carrie?” Lisa asked.

Carrie was changing flowers in the vase on Lisa’s desk. She finished the task and stood holding the wilted blossoms, which, somehow, looked perfectly natural in her bony hands.

“Not when it’s written by the likes of
him?
And now they say that wild one’s going to win the prize tonight. Well, I tell you, if she does—if she does the heavens’s liable to split wide-open! There has to be some justice, Miss Bancroft. There has to be some justice!”

And Lisa, working behind the desk, didn’t argue with Carrie. When she had gone out, Johnny added, “There’s only one really calm person left on the committee. You should have seen Her Majesty today, Lisa. I swear, I don’t know how she does it. Everybody else is exhausted, or nearly hysterical—Miss Oberon for one. But Nydia Cornish is—”

Johnny broke off, groping for the right word.

“Is what?” Lisa prompted.

“Gracious,” Johnny said. “Would you believe it? I stopped by the auditorium where they’re setting up broadcast equipment just in case the storm breaks before the concert. The press was there, too, taking pictures of Nydia and Sir Anthony. The way she was kidding them along, you would have sworn she was almost human.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Lisa said, “if she is.”

Johnny looked at her strangely. “I was wrong,” she added, after a thoughtful silence. “There are
two
calm members of the committee. I don’t like it, Lisa. There’s such a thing as being too calm.”

Lisa laughed. “Are you referring to me?”

“You know darned well I am!”

Johnny walked over to the windows. They were open, but not a breath of wind was stirring. Hour by hour, the humidity grew more oppressive.

“I don’t like it,” she reflected. “I never have liked it, not from the beginning. Lisa—”

She turned about and looked at Lisa. Johnny, the loyal. Johnny, the cantankerous, the cynical, the impatient—but always the loyal.

“What’s going on? What is it that I feel?”

“
How
do you feel?” Lisa asked.

Johnny scowled. “I don’t know. Peculiar. Some way I’ve never felt before. The professor’s acting strangely, too. I met him down in town this morning, and he tagged around after me like a lost beagle hound looking for its master. He kept asking about you.”

“About me? Why?”

The scowl was growing on Johnny’s face.

“I don’t know. He said something about coming up to the house to talk to you later. Do you suppose he’s heard something about Marta’s missing manuscript?”

“I really couldn’t say, Johnny. You know as much about it as I do.”

But Johnny wasn’t convinced.

“That’s just the trouble,” she said. “I don’t.”

The last day of the festival. The longest day of the year for several hundred young contestants. It passed slowly. The heat became hotter, and the humidity became stickier. An old brass barometer Lisa had dug out of the attic and hung on the study-wall was dropping steadily by midafternoon. By five o’clock the sky was as dark as the summer-late dusk, and a little wind from the open windows was beginning to ruffle the papers on Lisa’s desk. She stacked them carefully and placed them inside the top drawer along with what was left from the professor’s last call—a few sheets of unused music paper. She was rewinding the wire recorder when Johnny came to the door.

“Late flash,” Johnny announced. “Carrie must have put the old evil eye on Tod’s well-laid plans. He just telephoned to stand by for a change of arrangements.”

Lisa looked up. “The auditorium?”

“Probably. He’s holding off the announcement until he’s checked with the weather station.”

“Poor Tod. And poor Stanley!”

Johnny couldn’t know about poor Stanley because she’d never gone to those committee meetings and done a little inadvertent eavesdropping under the stairs. But she did look troubled. Too troubled.

“There’s something else. Tod asked if Marta was here.”

“Marta? Why should she be here?”

“I don’t know and Tod doesn’t know. He just said that she has to be somewhere. He’s tried the house, but Mrs. Cornish thought she’d gone down town.”

“What about Joel?”

“Joel was with him when Tod called. They’ve both been looking for her.”

Johnny’s troubled expression was contagious. Lisa found herself frowning, too. She tried to shrug off the mood.

“She’s nervous,” she said. “She’ll turn up.”

“Maybe it’s just as well if she doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I find myself getting crazy ideas lately. I keep wondering what’s going to happen to Marta tonight if it turns out that she didn’t fake that contest entry.”

Johnny waited in the doorway. She waited for an answer, any kind of answer. She waited for something to break the silence that went deeper than this present pause.

“That’s an interesting thought,” Lisa said.

It wasn’t the right answer.

“Lisa—” Johnny stepped into the room. It was the first time Lisa had ever seen her look helpless. “I don’t know what this is all about and I never have. I’m just the innocent bystander, but I’m worried!”

“You’ve been seeing too much of Carrie,” Lisa suggested. “But don’t let Tod upset you. Marta’s around somewhere.” Lisa was finished with the wire recorder. She walked over to the windows. Already the air had the smell of rain. “She may be down at the old ruins. I found her there once before.”

“I’ll go—”

“No.”

Lisa’s stick barred Johnny’s way. “Tod may call back. It’s easier for you to get to the phone before it stops ringing. I won’t be long.”

The sky was wild now, the wind stronger and noisier through the pines. Lisa walked as rapidly as she could, her head ducked against the wind. Poor Tod! Poor Stanley! How much would the memorial fund lose this season? There was no need of a weather report to give the verdict on this night’s performance. Bellville was living up to its reputation, climatically speaking.

At the edge of the pines, Lisa hesitated. No sound of playing from the grim old house on the hill this evening. No show of lights. She opened the gate and went on to the ruins. It looked so very desolate against the angry sky.

“Marta.”

The wind was wilder outside the shelter of the trees. Lisa’s voice rose with it.

“Marta, are you here?”

No answer. Dark inside the ruins, so very dark. Lisa’s eyes sought the sky. It was a deep, ugly, greenish color now with little wisps of black riding ahead of the storm like witches’ skirts. She stood at the threshold of a skeleton-like tomb and watched the performance overhead. All it needed was an overture.

She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. The wind was too loud now for that. She didn’t hear anything at all; she only saw as she lowered her eyes and turned away from the doorway to nothing. What she saw first was the professor’s white hair blowing like streamers in the wind.

“Miss Bancroft, did I startle you?”

Lisa stepped back inside the doorway.

“I can’t hear you out there!” she cried. “Come on in. It’s quieter.”

The broken walls gave some shelter from the wind. The professor stepped inside. His eyes were only for the ruins now.

“This is the first time,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.” And then he seemed to remember why he had come and that some explanation was in order. “I stopped by the house. Miss Johnson said you’d come down here looking for Marta. I see you haven’t found her.”

“No, she’s not here. And no one else has found her, apparently.”

“Not yet. It’s rather frightening.”

The professor’s eyes were still busy with the ruins. There was no way of telling whether his remark referred to them, or to Marta’s disappearance.

“Perhaps she’s up at the mansion after all,” Lisa suggested. “It’s such a big place.”

“I’m sure not. Tod talked to Nydia again just before I drove up to your house. She’s frantic. I understand there was quite a scene before Marta ran off this afternoon.”

“A scene?”

The professor looked wretched. He combed a handful of fingers through his wind-blown hair and scowled up at the sky.

“We’d better be getting back to the house,” he said. “It’s going to start pouring any minute now.”

But Lisa wasn’t thrown off the track so easily.

“What scene?” she persisted.

“What kind of scene would you expect from Marta. She flew at her mother. Accused her of trying to manage her life. Accused her of being in collusion with Tod—”

“Collusion?”

“Oh, don’t try to make sense of it! Don’t try to make sense of anything! I’ve quite given up!”

It wasn’t Marta’s running away that bothered the professor. Lisa could see that now. He’d been asking for her this morning. That meant that his trouble antedated the scene he’d described by quite some time. But he didn’t want to talk about it.

“That girl!” he said. “I know you’ll defend her, but I still think she’s dangerous.”

And Lisa didn’t argue.

“Of course she is. Anything living is dangerous when it’s cornered.”

“Then why—?”

The professor’s question was cut off in a howl of rising wind. She didn’t need to hear the question anyway. Now she could read it in his eyes.

“Yes, why?” Lisa said, when the wind dropped again. “Why did a girl so desperate to escape deliberately throw away her chances of winning a five-thousand-dollar award—
particularly in her avarice had already encouraged the demise of two former suitors?
”

She let the question stand alone barren of embellishment. She was right. The professor had been thinking. That’s why he was so disturbed. The wind became a whisper for just a moment. Quietly he said it.

“I suppose the entry could have been tampered with. I didn’t examine the seal. There were so many—” And then a kind of horror came over the professor’s face, as if a thought he’d been fighting all this time finally broke through the subconscious barrier. “Good Lord, if there’s a chance that Marta doesn’t know—”

“I keep wondering what’s going to happen to Marta tonight if it turns out that she didn’t fake that contest entry.”

Johnny had thought of it first; now the professor. Then he turned to Lisa.

“Why didn’t you tell her?” he cried. “Why didn’t you do as I asked?”

Across the lake, muffled in a blanket of black clouds, came the first warning growl of thunder. The storm would break at any moment. It was time—past time—to get back to the house. But the professor blocked the doorway, still waiting for an answer.

“I told you why,” Lisa said. “It was our only chance to get at the truth.”

“But I don’t understand—”

“Our
only
chance,” she repeated. “Think, Professor,
think
. There’s only one possible reason why Marta would deliberately mislead us into believing she’d entered the competition with that blank music paper—to hurt someone, to strike back.”

The professor was thinking.

“Nydia Cornish,” he said.

“Nydia, of course. She resents her mother; she resents the Bell heritage. But would she relieve that resentment more by failure than by success? Wouldn’t she rather be free—free of all Bellville?”

The lightning came. One bright flash that made the professor a pale silhouette against the blackened walls. He was still thinking.

“What you’re implying seems logical,” he admitted, “but I’m still confused. I could follow you easily enough the night of your dinner party when you made such a good case about that fifteen thousand dollars. I can see where Marta might have been used as a front for profit. But if someone eliminated her chance of winning the award tonight, it could be nothing less than a deliberate attempt to—”

The professor’s tongue stopped short of the word. He was thinking very hard now.

“Go ahead and say it,” Lisa urged. “Think of the pattern, Professor. Think of Duval. Think of Gleason.”

All of that thinking had grooved a deep furrow on the professor’s forehead. He was trying to understand.

“Marta’s impulsive,” he admitted, “but I don’t think she would resort to suicide.”

“Perhaps not, although she threatened as much. The day she came to my garden, the day of that dinner party, she told me that she might do what Gleason did one day. What Marta might do isn’t the important thing, anyway. It’s what’s being done
to
her. Think of the pattern, Professor. Everyone has a weakness. Find that weakness. Work on it, play on it, build on it over the years until it finally gives way.”