Severed Key (24 page)
Authors: Helen Nielsen
“Sounds like you’re taking that boat out to sea again,” Keith suggested.
“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it’s nobody’s business.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Keith said. “But to tell you the truth, I was disappointed in the wedding ceremony. I thought Hannah would be the maid of honour instead of Sigrid and she didn’t even show up. Is her nose out of joint?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she won’t be mistress of The Mansion any more. I can’t see Hannah Lee settling for anything less than top billing.”
“You’re way off base, man. Hannah’s been pushing for this wedding longer than I have.”
“Maybe so—but isn’t she the lady who says that fidelity is the curse of an impoverished imagination? She may be planning to get you back on the rebound.”
“I think you’re mean!” Sigrid said. “You shouldn’t say such things after such a lovely wedding!”
“Tell him, Sigrid,” Simon urged. “If he can’t get the idea in English try Swedish.”
“With gestures,” Keith said. “I know just the place. I have a feeling we’re not wanted here.”
Wanda finished her number to thunderous applause and took her bows. By the time she reached the table, Keith and Sigrid were gone and Simon waited alone.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
“That sounds nice, but the manager talked to me right after the show started. He wants you for another four weeks.”
“No!”
“At twice the salary.”
“Simon—”
“I told him we would think about it for thirty days—and he’s not to call us, we’ll call him.”
It was dawn by the time they reached Marina Beach and completed the drive up to The Mansion. The town was still asleep. With luck they could change and get down to the boat without being delayed by wellwishers or reporters. But they had reckoned without Chester. He was in the kitchen preparing a wedding breakfast complete with champagne.
“I had to cram for an exam anyway,” he explained, “and it’s about time I learned to cook.”
“Is Hannah asleep?” Wanda asked.
“I don’t know where Hannah is. She went to a house-warming last night and hasn’t come back.”
“Bernardi’s?” Simon asked.
“Who else?”
On the way upstairs Simon paused at the landing where Hannah’s binoculars were still in place on the window sill. He got them in focus and located her ancient red Rolls parked beside Bernardi’s sports car in the driveway. He handed the glasses to Wanda.
“So that’s why she didn’t come to the wedding,” she said. “Simon, look. The house is dark. The party must be over. No, there are lights showing in one wing. It’s such a different style house. I wonder what that wing is for.”
“Don’t ever ask,” Simon said. “Knowing Hannah, it’s probably the bathroom.”
If you liked The Severed Key check out:
The Crime is Murder
It was almost impossible to see the road. The rain bore down in a blinding curtain, parted only by the spasmodic arcs of the windshield wipers; and the feeble protest of the headlamps was all but canceled by deluge and darkness. Curran Dawes drove by instinct and memory. Every tortuous curve of the road as it corkscrewed its way up Pineview Bluff, was a challenge to both his nerve and the shuddering frame of his small sedan. And he drove hard, his time-tempered face grim in the reflection of the instrument panel, and his hands like steel on the skittish steering wheel.
It wasn’t late as time is measured. The hands of the panel clock showed twenty-seven minutes before nine; but the road was empty tonight. Almost everyone who lived on the bluffs had gone down to the town auditorium for the climactic event of the Cornish Memorial Music Festival. But three important people were missing. Mere reflection on that fact sent Curran Dawes’s foot harder against the accelerator. It was flat against the floor boards when a burst of light shot around the bend just ahead. The brakes screamed, the small sedan careened crazily toward the ditch, spun about, and finally righted itself, but not before the light was gone and the source of the light, a wildly driven station wagon, had roared past into the black oblivion of the road behind.
For an instant Curran Dawes hesitated, as if considering pursuit. But only for an instant. Three important people were missing from the auditorium, and he’d caught a hasty glimpse of only one face behind the windshield of the station wagon. That left two more….
The road climbed higher and then laced off through the storm-drenched pines. There was no hesitation now. No doubt of which finger to follow. Minutes later the small sedan screeched to a stop before a huge, rambling house half-hidden by shrubbery and vines. But there was no hiding the path of light that fanned out from a door flung open wide to meet the wind and rain. The rain beat a hard tattoo on the gravel walk and bounced up brightly from the cement slab, but Curran Dawes didn’t pause to wipe his feet on the rubber mat in the front hall or to remove his raincoat and dripping fedora. He was no gentleman tonight, and no scholar. He ran down the bright hall. A blast of music came to meet him, reverberating through the awful emptiness of the house and beckoning him on to the open doorway of the study. Here the music became momentarily deafening as the deep throat of a huge cabinet radio caught the full orchestration of a haunting theme, sweet, sensuous, pleading, rising higher and higher toward inevitable triumph. Curran Dawes no longer heard the music. One unlatched French door was being battered by the storm. He crossed the room to close it, swiftly at first, then halting abruptly. For now he could see what lay just inside the windows. The wind had blown in rain and a few dead leaves. Autumn would be early this year.
He stooped and picked one of the wet leaves from a lifeless face. He moved slowly now, like a man who’s finished running a race, and lost, and is trying to regain his wind. When he rose up again, his somber eyes caught on a moving object on the desk. The twin discs of a wire recorder still spun, but the microphone now dangled useless over the edge of the desk. He reached over and snapped off the control button.
Across the room, the orchestra was concluding the theme that now rose and fell, rose and fell, like the ebbing strength of life, until nothing remained but the echo of sound. And then, after a full moment of silence, the startling cacophony of applause.
“You have just heard the first public performance of this year’s Cornish Memorial Award composition,
Nocturne Romantic
, by—”
The suave voice of the radio announcer was cut off abruptly. Curran Dawes looked up. Another intruder had made the journey through that open front door and down the brightly lighted hall. A woman wearing a wet beret and a dripping trench coat stood beside the console. She stared across the room toward the desk and came slowly forward.
“Professor Dawes,” she began, “what are you doing?”
Her foot, clad in a thick-soled brogue, struck a metal object on the carpet. She looked down. The overhead light glittered on the barrel of a small revolver.
“Don’t touch anything,” the professor warned. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to make a telephone call.”
The woman in the trench coat made no response to his words. She stood there staring first at the revolver and then at the body beside the desk. She seemed unable to comprehend what she saw.
“It’s most urgent,” the professor insisted. “Please call Sheriff Elliot down in the town. Tell him a station wagon is racing down Pineview Road. If he hurries, he may be able to intercept it before it reaches the highway…. Well?”
He had to speak sharply before the woman reacted. Even then she seemed dazed. She said nothing, but she did go out into the hall. Moments later he heard her voice on the telephone.
Now Curran Dawes removed his hat and placed it, heedless of its dripping condition, on the desk. The light made a silver halo of his hair. His head bowed slightly, wearily. He was not a man eminently versed in police procedure, but he knew better than to disturb anything in the room. And yet, there was something he must know. He turned on the wire recorder again and set it at reverse. He allowed the discs to unwind for a few moments, and then switched the control to play. The first sound he heard was the music from the radio—that same theme that had lured him down the hall—and then he heard words, just a few half-whispered words, barely audible against the orchestral background.
Curran Dawes shut off the playback and switched the control to reverse again. This time he let the discs spin all the way back to the beginning of the story.
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Copyright © 1973 by Helen Nielsen
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4132-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4132-2