Authors: Elizabeth Peters
How convenient that attack had been for Ye Olde Hoste of the Mountain Laurel Inn. Now he would have a perfect excuse for any lipstick smudges or lingering odor of perfume. Mollie would never think to ask whether Jacqueline had worn scent that evening—which she had not—or ask which one she favored—which was not Eau de Lilac. As she snuffled pathetically against Tom’s broad chest, Jacqueline had identified it without chance of error.
Tom’s infidelity was none of her concern. (The bastard—and Mollie pregnant, too.) Nor was the scent distinctive. Dozens of women within a fifty-mile radius might wear it. (Fifty miles was surely not too far to travel for a hunk like Tom.) But she wouldn’t have to drive fifty miles, Jacqueline thought. Only five. And she had been wearing it the other day.
That was none of her business either. The only thing that ought to concern her about Tom’s tête-à-tête was the fact that it did not constitute an alibi. He could easily have arranged the booby trap before trotting off to keep his appointment.
It had been an inefficient trap, designed, surely, to maim and frighten, not to kill. But the most intriguing thing about it was that it completed a pattern. If she had pigged out on the ipecac-loaded chocolates, her “accidents” would have paralleled the ones Kathleen Darcy had before she died.
Before she died.
The next morning was not one of the most productive periods in Jacqueline’s literary career. When she covered her typewriter and slammed out of the house, Ara was still in her self-induced coma in the temple of the Dark God, and the only thing that kept Jacqueline from pitching the first twenty-five pages of her outline into the wastebasket was the fact that she couldn’t think of anything better.
It was too early for the mail to have arrived and she found herself disinclined to face the betrayed wife or the betrayer. She got into her car and put the key in the ignition. Then her fingers froze. She got out of the car and raised the hood.
Not that she’d recognize an infernal machine if she saw one, Jacqueline thought morosely, studying the inefficient-looking collection of objects. There didn’t seem to be anything there that shouldn’t be there, however. The tires were intact and she would make damn good and sure the brakes and steering functioned properly before she so much as left the parking lot.
They did. But if her reading of thrillers had guided her correctly, there were methods of tampering that might not become apparent until the car was on a steep mountain road, or…
“The hell with it,” Jacqueline said aloud, and put her foot down on the gas. “He was goin’ down the track doin’ eighty miles an hour, / When the whistle let off with a scream, poot, poot…”
Inaccurate and inappropriate, but a good song anyway. The trouble was—one of the trouble was—she knew of only three so-called accidents, the ones Kathleen had described in her letters. There might have been others she had not mentioned. It would be nice to know, Jacqueline thought. Then she could decide whether to buy a suit of armor or hire a food taster.
It would also be nice to know why she had been singled out—or even, come to think of it,
whether
she had been singled out. Like the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight, having someone attack you did concentrate your mind wonderfully, upon your own precious hide. Booton had had at least one accident. He had played it cool, but she had a feeling he had been concealing something. Why had he been running? It was hard to run in Manhattan, the streets were always crowded with pedestrians and there were traffic lights every few yards. And what about the others—St. John, Mrs. Darcy, the sisters, the Craigs, Paul? It wouldn’t be easy to question them about unfortunate incidents in their recent pasts without giving away certain information she would prefer to keep to herself.
The bleat of a horn from the car behind her informed her that the traffic light had turned green. She found a parking place farther along and pulled into it, so that she could continue her ratiocinating without interruption.
She could tell part of the truth—that someone had been playing tricks on her, nasty tricks that paralleled Kathleen’s accidents. That just showed you, Jacqueline thought piously, how important it was to be open and honest with people. She wouldn’t have to invent a story to explain how she knew about those accidents. Craig and St. John were aware of the fact that she intended to read Kathleen’s correspondence.
An answer to the question of whether she was the only one to be favored by the attentions of an unknown assailant could help solve another burning question, that of motive. The most obvious one was resentment, against the writer who had dared profane Kathleen Darcy’s work. An admirer who was warped enough to attack the writer might also resent the others involved—Kathleen’s agent and her heirs. Jacqueline could think of one admirer who might be a little abnormal, and who was conveniently located in Pine Grove; but she couldn’t believe Jan was physically capable of setting the traps. The old patriarch in the wheelchair, Jacqueline thought with wry amusement. One of the oldest tricks in mystery fiction. Nobody dared use that these days. Besides, she liked Jan—and never mind what O’Brien would think of that method of eliminating a suspect.
It was possible that one of the rival candidates was trying to scare her into breaking the contract, or make her so nervous she would be unable to fulfill it. That was really far out, though. Even if Booton and St. John were forced to find another writer, there was no way of knowing whom they would select. And anyone who thought she, Jacqueline Kirby, could be frightened away from a multimillion-dollar contract didn’t know her very well.
The third motive was the one Jacqueline preferred. It postulated that in her search of Kathleen’s files she had discovered information that could expose Kathleen’s killer.
O’Brien would have said “hypothetical killer,” and sneered even as he made that concession. Jacqueline scowled. A passing infant, draped over his mother’s shoulder, saw her through the open car window and began to scream with fright.
She would have to find out more about those accidents of Kathleen’s. They appeared to have been much more serious than her own. Kathleen had been sick in bed for a week after the poisoning incident; whatever the deadly ingredient, it could not have been an emetic like ipecac. The ladder incident could have been fatal if the rung that had broken had been one of the topmost, and if the ladder had been high enough. She could try to find the answers to those questions, and she could also inquire about the habits of Kathleen’s cat. Kathleen had climbed the ladder to rescue Lucifer from a tree. Was he given to tree-climbing as a hobby? Some cats were, some were not. Those in the first category were often unwilling or unable to descend; they preferred to perch aloft howling piteously and refusing to be lured down; hence all the jokes about little old ladies calling the fire department to retrieve their pets.
Kathleen had not been a timid little old lady, and she appeared to have been one of those cat-owning softies who let themselves be conned by the poor helpless pussycat. The sterner types simply stuffed cotton in their ears to muffle the heartrending screams, and waited till the cat decided to come down. They usually did. As the old saying went, “You don’t see any cat skeletons in trees.” Amusing but irrelevant; naturally you wouldn’t see cat skeletons in trees, the cat would fall as soon as it died or lost consciousness.
Jacqueline forced herself back to the point. Find out, then, whether Lucifer was a climber and whether Kathleen was in the habit of climbing trees after him. If both those assumptions were correct, the killer wouldn’t have to be on the scene when the accident occurred. He could saw partway through one of the topmost rungs and await events.
She needed more information on the third incident as well. From what part of the house had the stone fallen? Jacqueline recalled seeing small attic windows on the third floor, high up under the eaves. The brick walk from the front of the house to the back door passed directly underneath them. It was at that part of the wall that damage to the mortar, from leaking gutters and rainfall, would most logically occur; and it would pass unobserved until season after season of moisture contracting and expanding had edged a loosened stone outward. Watching from the attic window, high above normal eye level, the killer could wait for Kathleen to return from a shopping trip and carry her groceries to the kitchen door. Country people didn’t often use the front door. Then the stone, already removed and ready, silently falling… From a height such as that it could easily have fractured her skull.
The theory was perfectly plausible, and absolutely unsubstantiated. Jacqueline’s scowl intensified. Fortunately, no small children were passing by at that moment.
She didn’t even want to consider why someone might have wanted to kill Kathleen. Not that she couldn’t have come up with a round dozen motives; any halfway competent writer could. But in Kathleen’s case it was hard to think of anyone who would not have been worse off with her dead. All of them profited from her work, including the Craigs, who had charged her the earth for legal advice. All of them except Paul Spencer, and Tom. So far as she knew…
Jacqueline got out of the car, hung her purse strap over her shoulder, winced, and transfered it to the other shoulder. Then she went in search of the offices of Craig, Craig and Craig.
Mr. Craig Junior was, of course, busy. Lawyers, doctors, clerks, and people who fixed things always were busy. Everybody is allowed to be busy except writers, thought the representative of that ill-used profession. To the obvious annoyance of the receptionist she declined to make an appointment, said she would wait, and planted herself firmly in a chair.
The Craigs didn’t appear to be all that busy. There were only two other people in the waiting room, and over the course of the next half hour both were called into the offices of one Craig or another. Jacqueline continued to sit, turning the pages of a five-year-old copy of
Field and Stream,
and running over in her mind all the mysteries she had read that featured villainous lawyers.
When Craig Two finally appeared, he was alone. He had not been with a client, then. But perhaps, Jacqueline thought charitably, he had been poring over a brief or a will or some such thing. Craig was wearing a bright red tie, and the sight of it softened her, indicating as it did a defiant streak of originality. In Pine Grove’s business community, a red tie was practically a confession of Communist leanings.
He apologized for keeping her waiting. That was a nice touch, which Jacqueline duly noted; she apologized in her turn, and explained that she had received his message only that morning and had stopped by in the hope of finding him free for a few minutes.
Craig then proceeded to lose all the ground he had gained by suggesting they discuss business over lunch. It wasn’t the invitation itself, it was his mention of a charming out-of-the-way restaurant that had excellent seafood, and his obvious assumption that she had picked this time of day in the hope of being asked.
In Jacqueline’s experience, charming out-of-the-way restaurants were frequently attached to out-of-the-way motels. Despite her resentment she was glad he had blundered; she had begun thinking she might have been unfair to Craig, and the invitation reinforced her first negative impression. If there was anything that offended her, it was a man who treated her like a body without a brain. “I’m afraid I have a luncheon engagement,” she said frostily. “What I have to say won’t detain you long. I presume the same is true of you?”
“I—uh—there’s no urgency about the matter.…”
“Good. If we could talk in private…?”
He had no choice but to show her into his office. Jacqueline could see that he was furious, and she wondered how long it would take his secretary to spread the word that Ronnie had tried it on Mrs. Kirby and been turned down flat.
The discussion lasted only ten minutes; Jacqueline left the office no wiser than she had come. Craig had expressed the proper distress and surprise at her unfortunate run of bad luck, but he could see no connection between her accidents and Kathleen’s. In fact, he had not been aware of the latter. Or, if he had, he had forgotten about them. The relationship between the two series of events was pure coincidence. Of course, in the vivid imagination of a writer—a writer of fiction—incidents could be… might he say exaggerated? Might he say misinterpreted?
He might also have said she was a neurotic seeker after sensation and a liar. Jacqueline studied him with such intensity that he began to squirm. No bandages, no scratches, no wounds. No point in asking whether he had suffered any recent run of bad luck. She wished he had.
And it certainly would have been a waste of time to ask him how Kathleen’s first will had differed from the second and final will. How he would have enjoyed looking grave and talking about confidentiality! Hunched over the wheel of the car as she drove, a little too fast, out of Pine Grove, Jacqueline consoled herself by reflecting that Craig would have been no more forthcoming under the less formal circumstances he had himself proposed.
She had already decided where she meant to go for lunch, but she had no reason to treat her potential hostess as rudely as she had treated Craig, so she stopped at a gas station to call first. Kathleen’s sister Laurie answered the phone with the wariness of someone who expects the caller wants her to do something; but genuine warmth colored her voice when Jacqueline identified herself.
“It’s nice of you to call, Miz Kirby. I kept meaning to ask you to come for supper or something, seemed like the least I could do with you going to make all that money for us, and being so nice about Bennie the other day.”
There might have been something wanting in Laurie’s accent and grammar, but there was nothing wrong with her manners. It had not occurred to anyone else to thank Jacqueline for working her fanny off so that they could get rich.
She wangled the luncheon invitation out of Laurie with no difficulty at all. “Right now would be a good time for you to come, Miz Kirby. Once school gets out, things get kinda lively around here. And Bennie is with Earl’s ma today. No, it sure wouldn’t be a bit of trouble, I made bread this morning, and a big pot of soup. It’s not what you’re used to, I guess, but—”