The Origin of Evil (20 page)

Laurel hooked the flash to the belt of her coat and began to open dresser drawers. It was the weirdest thing, rummaging through Delia's things in the dead of night by the light of a sort of dark lantern. It didn't matter that you weren't there to take anything. What chiefly made a sneak thief was the technique. If Delia's father, or the unspeakable Alfred, were to surprise her now … Laurel held on to the thought of the leaden, blue-lipped face of Leander Hill.

It was not in the dresser. She went into Delia's clothes closet.

The scent Delia used was strong, and it mingled disagreeably with the chemical odour of mothproofing and the cedar lining of the walls. Delia's perfume had no name. It had been created exclusively for her by a British Colonial manufacturer, a business associate of Roger Priam's, after a two-week visit to the Priam house years before. Each Christmas thereafter Delia received a quart bottle of it from Bermuda. It was made from the essence of the passion flower. Laurel had once suggested sweetly to Delia that she name it
Prophetic
, but Delia had seemed not to think that very funny.

It was not in the closet. Laurel came out and shut the door, inhaling.

Had she been wrong after all? Maybe it was an illusion, built on the substructure of her loathing for Delia and that single, startling look on Delia's face as Ellery had held up the green wallet.

But suppose it wasn't an illusion. Then the fact that it wasn't where she would ordinarily have kept such a thing might be significant. Because Delia had hurried out of Roger's den immediately. She might have gone directly upstairs to her bedroom, taken it from among the others, and stowed it away where it was unlikely to be found. By Muggs, for instance.

Where might Delia have hidden it? All Laurel wanted was to see it, to verify its existence …

It was not in the brass-bound teak chest at the foot of the bed. Laurel took everything out and then put everything back.

After conquering three temptations to give it up and go home and crawl into bed and pull the bedclothes of oblivion over her head, Laurel found it. It was in the clothes closet after all. But not, Laurel felt, in an honest place. It was wedged in the dolman sleeve of one of Delia's winter coats, a luxurious white duvateen, which in turn was encased in a transparent plastic bag. Innocent and clever. Only a detective, Laurel thought, would have found it. Or another woman.

Laurel felt no triumph, just a shooting pain, like the entry of a hypodermic needle; and then a hardening of everything.

She had been right. She
had
seen Delia carrying one. Weeks before.

It was a woman's envelope bag of forest green alligator leather, with gold initials. The maker's name was Leatherland, Inc. of Hollywood, California.

A sort of Eve to the Adam of the wallet someone had sent to Roger Priam. A mate to the fourth warning.

‘I suppose I should have told you yesterday,' Laurel said to Ellery in the cottage on the hill, ‘that Mac and I were down to Farmers' Market on the trail of the green wallet. But we didn't find out anything, and anyway I knew you'd know about it.'

‘I've had a full report from Keats.' Ellery looked at Laurel quizzically. ‘We had no trouble identifying Tree Boy from the sales-girl's description, and it stood to reason you'd put him up to it.'

‘Well, there's something else you don't know.'

‘The lifeblood of this business is information, Laurel. Is it very serious? You look depressed.'

‘Me?' Laurel laughed. ‘It's probably a result of confusion. I've found out something about somebody in this case that
could
mean …'

‘Could mean what?' Ellery asked gravely, when she paused.

‘That we've found the right one!' Laurel's eyes glittered. ‘But I can't quite put it into place. It seems to mean so much, only … Ellery, last night — really in the early hours of this morning — I did something dishonest and — and horrible. Since Roger was poisoned, Alfred Wallace has been locking the doors at night. I stole a key from Mac and in the middle of the night I let myself in, sneaked upstairs —'

‘And you went into Delia Priam's bedroom and searched it.'

‘How did you know!'

‘Because I caught the look on your face day before yesterday when
you
saw the look on
Delia's
face. That man's alligator wallet meant something to her. She either recognized it or something about it reminded her directly of something like it. And her start of recognition produced some sort of recognition in you, too, Laurel. Delia left the room at once, and before we went away we made sure of where she'd gone. She'd gone right up to her bedroom.

‘She left for Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon, and last night — while you were luring the key out of young Macgowan, probably — I pulled a second-story job and gave the bedroom a going-over. Keats, of course, couldn't risk it; the L.A. Police have had to lean over backwards lately, and if Keats had been caught housebreaking there might have been a mess that would spoil everything. There wasn't enough, of course, to justify a warrant and an open search.

‘I left Delia's alligator bag in the sleeve of the white coat, where I found it. And where, I take it, you found it a few hours later. I hope you left everything exactly as it was.'

‘Yes,' moaned Laurel. ‘But all that breast-beating for nothing.'

Ellery lit a cigarette. ‘Now let me tell you something
you
don't know, Laurel.' His eyes, which had not laughed at all, became as smoky as his cigarette. ‘That green alligator pocketbook of Delia's was a gift. She didn't buy it herself. Luckily, the sales-girl who sold it remembered clearly what the purchaser looked like, even though it was a cash sale. She gave an excellent and recognizable description, and when she was shown the corresponding photograph she identified it as the man she had described. The purchase was made in mid-April of this year, just before Delia's birthday, and the purchaser was Alfred Wallace.'

‘Alfred —' Laurel was about to go on, but then her teeth closed on her lower lip.

‘It's all right, Laurel,' said Ellery. ‘I know all about Delia and Alfred.'

‘I wasn't sure.' Laurel was silent. Then she looked up. ‘What do you think it means?'

‘It could mean nothing at all,' Ellery said slowly. ‘Coincidence, for example, although coincidence and I haven't been on speaking terms for years. More likely whoever it is we're after may have noticed Delia's bag and, consciously or unconsciously, it suggested to him the nature of the fourth warning to Priam. Delia's suspicious actions can be plausibly explained, in this interpretation, as the fear of an innocent person facing a disagreeable involvement. Innocent people frequently act guiltier than guilty ones.

‘It could mean that,' said Ellery, ‘or …' He shrugged. ‘I'll have to think about it.'

12

But Ellery's thoughts were forced to take an unforeseen turn. In this he was not unique. Suddenly something called the 38th Parallel, half a planet away, had become the chief interest in the lives of a hundred and fifty million Americans.

Los Angeles particularly suffered a bad attack of jitters.

A few days before, Koreans from the north had invaded South Korea with Soviet tanks and great numbers of Soviet 7.63-millimetre submachine guns. The explosive meaning of this act took some time to erupt the American calm. But when United States occupation troops were rushed to South Korea from Japan and were overwhelmed, and the newspapers began printing reports of American wounded murdered by the invaders, conviction burst. The President made unpleasantly reminiscent announcements, reserves were being called, the United Nations were in an uproar, beef and coffee prices soared, there were immediate rumours about sugar and soap scarcities, hoarding began, and everyone in Los Angeles was saying that World War III had commenced and that Los Angeles would be the first city on the North American continent to feel the incinerating breath of the atom bomb — and how do we know it won't be tonight? San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle were not sleeping soundly, either, but that was no consolation to Los Angeles.

It was impossible to remain unaffected by the general nervousness. And, absurd as the thought was, there was always the possibility that it was only too well grounded.

The novel, which had been sputtering along, coughed and went into a nose dive. Ellery hounded the radio, trying to shut out the prophecies of doom which streaked up from his kitchen like flak in wailing Louisiana accents from eight to five daily. His thoughts kept coming back to Tree Boy. Crowe Macgowan no longer seemed funny.

He had not heard from Lieutenant Keats for days.

There was no word from the Priam establishment. He knew that Delia had returned from Montecito, but he had not seen or heard from her.

Laurel phoned once to seek, not give, information. She was worried about Macgowan.

‘He just sits and broods, Ellery. You'd think with what's happening in Korea he'd be going around saying I told you so. Instead of which I can't get him to open his big mouth.'

‘The world of fantasy is catching up with Crowe, and it's probably a painful experience. There's nothing new at the Priams'?'

‘It's quiet. Ellery, what do you suppose this lull means?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I'm so confused these days!' Laurel's was something of a wail, too. ‘Sometimes I think what's going on in the world makes all this silly and unimportant. And I suppose in one way it is. But then I think, no, it's not silly and it is important. Aggressive war is murder, too, and you don't take
that
lying down. You have to fight it on every front, starting with the picayune personal ones. Or else you go down.'

‘Yes,' said Ellery with a sigh, ‘that makes sense. I only wish this particular front weren't so … fluid, Laurel. You might say we've got a pretty good general staff, and a bang-up army behind us, but our Intelligence is weak. We have no idea where and when the next attack is coming, in what form and strength — or the meaning of the enemy's strategy. All we can do is sit tight and keep on the alert.'

Laurel said quickly, ‘Bless you,' and she hung up quickly, too.

The enemy's next attack came during the night of July 6—7. It was, surprisingly, Crowe Macgowan who notified Ellery. His call came at a little after one in the morning, as Ellery was about to go to bed.

‘Queen. Something screwy just happened. I thought you'd want to know.' Macgowan sounded tired, not like himself at all.

‘What, Mac?'

‘The library's been broken into. One of the windows. Seems like a case of ordinary housebreaking, but I dunno.'

‘The
library
? Anything taken?'

‘Not as far as I can see.'

‘Don't touch anything. I'll be over in ten minutes.'

Ellery rang up Keats's home, got a sleepy ‘What, again?' from the detective, and ran.

He found young Macgowan waiting for him in the Priam driveway. There were lights on upstairs and down, but Roger Priam's French windows off the terrace were dark.

‘Before you go in, maybe I'd better explain the set-up …'

‘Who's in there now?'

‘Delia and Alfred.'

‘Go on. But make it snappy, Mac.'

‘Last couple of nights I've been sleeping in my old room here at the house —'

‘What? No more tree?'

‘You wanted it presto, didn't you?' growled the giant. ‘I hit the sack early tonight, but I couldn't seem to sleep. Long time later I heard sounds from downstairs. Seemed like the library; my room's right over it. I thought maybe it was Gramp and I felt a yen to talk to him. So I got up and went down the hall and at the top of the stairs I called, “Gramp?” No answer, and it was quiet down there. Something made me go back up the hall and look in the old gent's room. He wasn't there; bed hadn't been slept in. So I went back to the head of the stairs and there was Wallace.'

‘Wallace?' repeated Ellery.

‘In a robe. He said he'd heard a noise and was just going to go downstairs.' Macgowan sounded odd; his eyes were hard in the moonlight. ‘But you know something, Queen? I got a queer feeling as I spotted Wallace at the head of those stairs. I couldn't make up my mind whether he was about to go down … or had just come up.'

He stared at Ellery defiantly.

A car was tearing up the road.

Ellery said, ‘Life is full of these dangling participles, Mac. Did you find your grandfather?'

‘No. Maybe I'd better take a look in the woods.' Crowe sounded casual. ‘Gramp often takes a walk in the middle of the night. You know how it is when you're old.'

‘Yes.' Ellery watched Delia's son stride off, pulling a flashlight from his pocket as he went.

Keats's car slammed to a stop a foot from Ellery's rear.

‘Hi.'

‘What is it this time?' Keats had a leather jacket on over an undershirt, and he sounded sore.

Ellery told him, and they went in.

Delia Priam was going through the library desk, looking baffled. She was in a brown monkish negligée of some chick-napped material, girdled by a heavy brass chain. Her hair hung down her back and there were purplish shadows, almost welts, under her eyes. Alfred Wallace, in a Paisley dressing-gown, was seated comfortably in a club chair, smoking a cigarette.

Delia turned, and Wallace rose, as the two men came into the library, but neither said anything.

Keats went directly to the only open window. He examined the sash about the catch without touching it.

‘Jimmied. Have any of you touched this window?'

‘I'm afraid,' said Wallace, ‘we all did.'

Keats mumbled something impolite and went out. A few moments later Ellery heard him outside, below the open window, and saw the beam of his flash.

Ellery looked around. It was the kind of library he liked; this was one room in which the prevailing Priam gloom was mellow. Leather shone, and the black oak panelling was a friendly background for the books. Books from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and a fieldstone fireplace with a used look. It was a spacious room, and the lamps were good.