Skeleton Key (14 page)

“Not in fiction, of course,” said Mr. McKinnon with renewed hope. He pulled gently at a blade of grass until it slid out of its sheath, and nibbled at the tender end. “Easy enough to make 'em up, or magnify li'le indications that are there already. Take Harry Gillespie, for instance; he's jealous of anyone who comes within a mile of his wife, he's even glared at me when I stopped once or twice to pass the time of day on the front walk. Maybe Hollister made a practice of dropping in there, after Gillespie had gone to work at night.” If he saw Georgine's twitch of recollection, he appeared to ignore it. “And there's Stort; he and Hollister were thick as thieves for a while, and then had some kind of bust-up; who knows why?”

“This is
all
fiction, isn't it?” Georgine said warily.

“Well, not entirely.” He glanced up with one of his faint smiles. “It's all possible in fact.”

“Ralph Stort had gone home to his ranch the night before Hollister was killed, and Harry Gillespie left for work early that night. I heard his car go up the road half an hour before the blackout began.”

“If one of them,” said McKinnon, still smiling, “had turned on the light and put in that call to Professor Paev, a small detail like going away wouldn't bother him. He could come back.”

“Well, but who on earth knew the other conditions would be right? The blackout, I mean. Unless it was a practice one? You're a warden, were you notified to be ready?”

Mr. McKinnon raised his eyes to heaven. He spoke with careful emphasis. “There is no such thing in the Bay region as a practice blackout. They're too damned dangerous. The Army orders an alert only on real provocation. Last night's was ‘unidentified aircraft, afterward found to be friendly.' That's what the papers say, and that's all we'll ever hear about it for the duration.”

“All right, warden,” said Georgine, “you've given your lecture and ruined your own theory.”

McKinnon whistled softly. “So I have. Nothing like the lay mind—a sharp mind—to pull up a fiction plotter on his wildest flights.”

“I feel about as sharp as a dishmop, but thank you.”

“And now look what you've done, thrown me all off. At least four good shorts and one novelette gone up the spout,” he said, shaking his head at her reproachfully.

“Don't blame it on me, it's just fate.” Georgine grinned.

“I hope you'll allow me the impulse theory? Let's see if I can do anything with that. Wash out all those things that looked like premeditation. Okay; the alert sounds, catching everyone flatfooted, but the murderer quickly recovers himself. This impulse seizes him; he pops out before the sirens have done sounding, hides in the Jeep or near it, and waits his chance; it just happens that Hollister gets into the right position on the road; the impulse comes to a head, and the murderer lets the car roll and takes the chance of hitting him—”

His voice trailed off and he shook his head despairingly. The sun cast muted shadows through thin fog and low-hanging branches, across the summer-bleached grass of the garden, across the intent eyes under the sandy brows, the firm mouth. Georgine had a moment of complete incredulity. It wasn't possible that she was sitting here discussing theories of murder with this comparative stranger? And how funny that she hadn't thought of it before! There must be something about a mystery that forced acquaintances into premature bloom.

“That won't work,' said Todd McKinnon soberly, and shook his head. “The method's unsure enough without putting in all those ifs and maybes. It's got to be premeditation—and it can't be. There go all my magnificent plots.”

“That's too bad,” said Georgine. “I'll give you one; why don't you invent a bad man somewhere outside the Road, who'd hated Hollister for years and years and jumped at this opportunity to kill him? Why does the murderer have to live right there?”

“Sorry, an outsider won't do. Wouldn't it be asking even more of coincidence, to have this bad man—who presumably lives at least a mile away—lurking on the edge of Grettry Road on the very night the Bay region was blacked out? And if he'd been lurking there night after night, on the off chance, he'd have been seen; wouldn't he have chosen a quicker way that didn't depend on a very problematical set of circumstances? No, I won't have it. I am a seeker after artistic perfection,” said Mr. McKinnon impressively, “and I find it much neater and more likely to have the murderer live right there. It's the old desert-island gambit; narrows the field.”

“Fact or fiction?”

“Both.”

“Oh, dear. I dislike even thinking it could be one of the neighbors, it's impossible to imagine one of them as a deliberate killer. I
like
them; most of them, that is,” she added, thinking of Mrs. Devlin's ladylike tones.

“Sure. Lots of murderers have seemed likable, until you found out what they'd been up to in secret. Why, Mrs. Wyeth, that's what makes a murder mystery. Somebody among the suspects is living a colossal lie; under a pleasant harmless surface he's another person—brooding himself into insanity over a wrong that's been done him, or being a Casanova when he looks like a solid family man, or quietly stealing his employer's funds and spending them on dope. There's a lie somewhere in everyone; a big one, a little one, it doesn't matter much. If you could see into these people's lives—”

“I don't want to,” said Georgine vigorously. “What a mind you have! Isn't there anyone who's truthful?”

He looked at her slowly, with an odd expression: quizzical, personal, challenging. “Thee and me, Rachel,” said McKinnon, “and thee is a li'le queer sometimes.”

The gaze held for a moment longer. She thought,
What does he want of me? What is he trying to impress on me?

“Does that include the representative of the law?” she inquired.

“Nelse? No, he's a right guy. He lives for his profession—you might say, he cares more about justice than anything else. But that's there, right on the surface as well as underneath. Anyone can see it.”

“You're sure he's not a Casanova?”

“Far from it,” McKinnon said, fixing her with a sharp glance. “He's a highly conservative bachelor.”

Her eyes dropped. “Sounds like
Iolanthe
,” she said.

He got up from the grass as suddenly as he had sat down, and with a bewildering change of manner offered to take Georgine out to tea. She refused; he refused her invitation to a cup of coffee in the house; honors were even.

“I'll take a rain check on that,” McKinnon told her. “You may be seeing me around, as long as this investigation goes on. I'd better go home now and practice my music.”

“You keep that as a sideline, I take it.”

“No,” he said solemnly, “as an inspiration. While I'm thinking out a yarn, playing the mouth-organ takes up the slack of my mind, so to speak; lets the old subconscious rage unchecked. When I strike a snag, I work on something unsuitable.”

“Such as
The Trout
?”

“That's it. Makes a nice life for me, but it's hard on the neighbors, what with trout and typewriters.”

Georgine said nothing. He must somehow have read her expression, for he added, “You're thinking that this idleness would come to an end if I got into the Armed Forces? True; but I have to arrange my affairs first and that'll take some time. No one but you knows this, Mrs. Wyeth, but I was brought up in the Mohammedan faith and I have five wives, all dependent on me.”

“I'm sure you deserve nothing less,” she told him.

“Hey,” said Mr. McKinnon reproachfully, “I'm not sure that was kindly meant.”

“Neither am I,” said Georgine.

She thought of him more than once before the next morning, usually with an involuntary smile. Those mild little absurdities of his were really amusing, delivered in the casual voice that said, “You don't have to listen,” with the expressionless face that assured you you didn't have to laugh. Yet she couldn't quite make him out; the absurdities cloaked something a great deal more serious.

She was still thinking of him at nine a.m., as, once more late and in a hurry, she went down the steep path into the canyon and began to climb the other side. She was returning to Grettry Road with a mixture of interest and cold reluctance; but Todd McKinnon, she reflected, would be in his element, strolling around and chatting with the neighbors, and doubtless picking up rather more information than they thought they were giving. She wouldn't put it past him to do a bit of detecting himself, on the side.

Halfway up the slope she turned her head suddenly. That clump of bushes to the north was quivering strangely in the windless air.
I bet I know what that is
, thought Georgine, beginning to laugh silently.
My pal Sherlock is digging for clues
.

There
was
somebody there. She stepped quietly through the tall dry grasses toward the thicket. Suppose it were the police, really finding clues? In that case, presumably, one just begged pardon and went away fast.

Very gently she pressed one of the bushes aside.

By some freak they had grown in a circle, enclosing a small bare space like a room; rather a cozy room, too, with its slippery carpet of dry wild oats, its aromatic leafy walls. Inside the circle Claris Frey was kneeling, furtively stuffing something under the lowest layer of branches.

She turned; her horrified eyes met Georgine's; she uttered a startled scream.

For a moment they were both transfixed. Then Claris's hand fell limply to her side.

“Oh, God, now it'll all have to come out,” she said, and dropped her head on her knees and burst into tears.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“W
HY, MY DEAR,”
said Georgine, conscience-stricken, “don't cry like that. What will have to come out?”

“You would have to find me,” Claris said in a low voice, choking. “You would come snooping through the canyon, just now, when I'd been waiting and waiting my chance to get down here and sneak these things out before the police started searching.”

Georgine looked at the cache under the low bushes, from which trailed the end of an army blanket. “Claris,” she said, troubled, “were you hiding something that was—in your house?”

“Oh,
no
. Can't you understand anything? We—we left our stuff down here, almost always we take it home with us but it was hard enough getting up the hill in the dark without carrying it—and yesterday morning those goons were looking over the fence, and yesterday afternoon after we found out about the murder Daddy was down near here every minute until the light went, painting like crazy because he was so upset, it's one of his favorite places for the easel; and after dinner he didn't let me out of his sight, I couldn't get away until just now—you can't have any privacy in this lousy place!”

Trying to follow this desperate outpouring, Georgine had scrambled through the shrubbery and bent over the slim boneless figure in the gaudy peasant dress. “Claris, dear!” she said gently, “I can't follow what you're trying to tell me… Don't
do
that, don't cringe as if I were going to hit you!”

“You'll tell,” Claris choked, lifting a furious tear-stained face. “We weren't doing anyone any harm! We've got a right to—to—neither of us has any chance to live their own life! And old people make such a fuss about things, we tried to k-keep it secret—we had to!”

Georgine said crisply, “If you want any secrets kept, you'd better pipe down. Someone's coming.”

Claris gasped harshly, and shot up to a kneeling position. Peering through the screen of bushes, “Oh,” she said, relieved. “It's Mr. McKinnon. That's okay, he's zoot.”

“He's
what?
”

“He's all reet,” said Claris impatiently. Mr. McKinnon was now strolling past the thicket. “I thought I heard a scream,” he remarked to nobody in particular, evidently willing to go away again if not needed.

“C-come in here,” Claris whispered, holding aside a prickly branch of manzanita. “Make her not tell on me! Oh; make her keep still,
you'll
understand!” And as McKinnon forced his way into the enclosure, she flung herself upon him and once more burst into tears.

“Now, take it easy,'” the man said soothingly. He got out a handkerchief, raised the streaming face and mopped its tears in a manner so expert that Georgine's eyebrows went up. “Point out, please,” she said in an offhand tone, “that I had no intention of telling on anyone, and that if I did I shouldn't know what to say.”

“You might as well know now,” said Claris dully. “I would have to fly apart and give it away, of course. We—we were down here Friday night, when the blackout began.”

“Who were?” said McKinnon, frowning.

“Ricky and me.”