Читать книгу: «Bodies from the Library 2», страница 6

They had all focused their attention on the president. He stirred uneasily in his chair, a faint flush diffusing his cheeks.

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ he said weakly. ‘Not the slightest idea.’

Suddenly Carol remembered how Mr Whitfield had been in conference with Mr Rowley all that afternoon. During the past few days, too, the lawyer had been coming in regularly. And while he was there the door of the office had invariably been shut—a sure sign that they were discussing something too confidential even for the ears of a private secretary.

Impulsively she turned to her employer.

‘It wasn’t anything to do with those conferences you’ve been having with Mr Whitfield lately?’

Mr Rowley started. There was an almost angry gleam in his eyes.

‘Really, Miss Thorne, my private business with poor Whitfield has nothing whatsoever to do with this. We were discussing a purely personal matter—purely personal.’

Another awkward moment of silence followed. Carol could see the veins on Mr Rowley’s temples, standing out blue and taut against the pallor of the skin.

It was Marcia Leland who spoke first.

‘I’ve just remembered something.’ Her voice was brisk. ‘I never would have thought of it if Mr Howe hadn’t brought up the matter of the fused lights.’

‘The lights?’

‘I was listening to Mr Whitfield at the time. I think we all were. That’s why I only heard it more or less subconsciously.’ There was a touch of pink in the white coral of her cheeks. ‘But just when the lights went out, I heard a very faint spluttering sound.’

Peter took a quick step forward. ‘The fuse going?’

‘Yes. Don’t you see? That means it was blown from the room where we all were. That would prove it was done by one of us.’

Miss Gregg stared at her over her spectacles. ‘Provided you really did hear the sound.’

‘Oh, she heard it all right,’ put in Miles, smiling sideways at Marcia. ‘Trust Miss Leland on the technical details. Electricity is her own backyard. Honours graduate in physics, Vassar. Nothing can be more efficient.’

‘And so,’ Marcia was continuing, ‘if we can find out which outlet was fused, we might be able to remember which of us was standing near it at the time.’

Carol remembered now that Nathaniel’s daughter had given up a brilliant career as a physicist to look after her father. Find the fused outlet—remember who had stood next to it—discover Mr Whitfield’s murderer. It was as simple as that and it had taken the calm, flower-like Marcia Leland to arrive at it.

‘An excellent idea, Miss Leland.’ Mr Druten from Pan-American was gazing at the girl admiringly as though at last a suggestion had been made of which he approved. ‘One of us better go right away and look at those outlets.’

‘I’ll do it,’ volunteered Miles.

‘No, Miles.’ Marcia Leland rose, a slim but oddly authoritative figure. ‘I don’t think any one of us should go. After all, if there’s a murderer here in this room, we’re all equally under suspicion. We don’t want to give anyone a chance to destroy evidence.’

‘You’re a very logical person, Miss Leland.’ Peter gave a wry smile. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘That we all go together.’

‘Very sensible,’ approved Mr Druten.

‘I think it’s terrible,’ cut in Miss Gregg. ‘Going back to that room? With poor Mr Whitfield lying there? I—I couldn’t do it. I’ll stay right here.’

‘You’d better not hang round alone, Miss Gregg.’ There was a faun-like twist to Miles’s mouth. ‘You never know what might happen.’

The treasurer started, flashed an uneasy glance through the open door into the darkness of the main office, and then rose hesitantly. The others were rising, too. This opportunity to do something definite seemed to have restored a more normal atmosphere.

‘We’ll have to use spills again.’

Marcia Leland moved to the desk, Carol joined her, and together they folded sheets of paper.

They had started towards the door when Peter exclaimed, ‘Wait a minute.’ His hands were fumbling through his pockets. ‘Darn it, I’ve used all my matches. Has somebody else plenty?’

‘Afraid I haven’t.’ Miles shrugged. ‘My last match went in search of the mythical murderer. I’ve got my lighter, though.’

There was an uneasy ripple of comment. Mr Druten brought out a book with two matches in it. Marcia and Miss Gregg did not smoke. Mr Rowley and Carol had about six between them.

Peter looked rather worried. Miles said:

‘We’ll have to go easy; that’s all.’ He solemnly handed his lighter and the matches to Carol. ‘I think we can trust the efficient secretary with the illumination. Use the lighter, Miss Thorne, and save the matches for emergencies. The emergencies being a crack-up of the lighter. It’s very unpredictable.’

Carol put the matches in her bag and kept the lighter in her hand.

Instinctively keeping close together, the little group moved out into the main office.

Now that all the bulbs in the east block of private offices were burning, it was not so dark as it had been. An eerie radiance illuminated the nearer desks and chairs. But it was no easier to see. In fact, by contrast, the gloom beyond seemed thicker and even more impenetrable.

In taut silence, they moved out of the restricted area of half-light into a shadowy obscurity. With uncertain fingers Carol lighted a spill, sending a cone of flame wavering up. Its weak rays struck on the dislocated switchboard, then on the black shaft of the lift as they left the lighted offices further behind.

It was a rather weird sensation. There seemed no light in the world but this little taper. They were all pressed round it like moths. Surely, thought Carol, this is the strangest crime investigation there has ever been. Seven people shut in a dark office forty floors above the streets returning to the scene of the crime in search of a clue that might prove one of them a murderer!

They were passing the fire escape door now. Carol caught a glimpse of the chairs tilted grotesquely against it and the heavy glass carafe gleaming dully on top. The burglar alarm! They wouldn’t be needing that now, she reflected grimly.

When they reached the door of Mr Rowley’s office, they paused for one indecisive moment by Carol’s desk. The spill was burning low. Carol lighted another. Then Miss Gregg gave a little sob.

‘I can’t,’ she whimpered. ‘I can’t go in there. Not with poor Mr Whitfield—lying murdered.’

‘You’ll be all right. Don’t worry, Miss Gregg.’

Peter’s voice was soft, reassuring. He slipped an arm round the treasurer’s plump waist. It was that incongruous, rather pathetic picture that held Carol’s attention as they all stepped over the threshold into the room.

Carol held the taper up so that its rays shone as far as possible into the office. In the fitful light, there was something horrible about this dark, deserted room. The murder that had been committed here less than an hour ago seemed to have charged all the familiar objects with some subtle, sinister unreality. Only one thing seemed real—vividly real—the huddled body of the little lawyer, lying beneath the desk with one arm flung helplessly out and the other still gripping the black briefcase.

‘Miss Thorne, perhaps you know where the outlets are.’ Marcia Leland’s voice was brusque as she moved into the centre of the room.

‘Yes. There’s one by the window.’

Carol joined her. The others followed, Miss Gregg still pressed nervously against Peter’s side.

While Carol held the taper low, Marcia stooped to inspect the plug in the wainscot. She looked up, her green eyes gleaming like a cat’s.

‘No. We can’t tell anything from that.’

It was amazing, thought Carol, this calm scientific efficiency in the presence of death.

‘Some sort of insulated gadget must have been used,’ Marcia was saying. ‘I don’t think the murderer would have been foolish enough to keep it. I imagined we’d find it left by the outlet. is there another plug?’

‘Yes, there’s—there’s one in the wall right by my desk.’ Mr Rowley’s voice was rather hoarse. ‘I had a desk lamp for a time and—’

‘And we were all round there when the lights went out,’ cut in Miles. ‘That’s probably the one he fused.’

Carol held the burning end of her taper to a fresh one. With Marcia and Miles hurrying ahead, they moved through the darkness, grouping round the desk.

‘There!’ Mr Rowley was pointing to a plug in the wall a few inches from the desk and on the same level as its surface. ‘I had it put in specially.’

‘A very convenient place,’ mused Marcia. ‘Anyone could have pushed something in there without having to bend and attract attention.’

‘And here it is.’ Miles’s voice rang out excitedly. ‘Clue number one.’

They all spun round. From beneath a sheaf of papers on the desk he had produced a small, two-pronged kitchen fork with a wooden handle.

‘Of course!’ Marcia took it and slipped it into the outlet. It fitted perfectly. ‘The ideal thing for fusing a plug. Easy to use and easy to hide afterwards. The murderer must have brought it in with him.’

‘But who …?’

Pale faces gleamed faintly in the taper light. Eyes moved uncertainly to eyes.

‘Yes, who?’ echoed Marcia. ‘Which of us was standing there to the left of the desk?’

Carol was wracking her memory, trying to recreate in her mind that tense tableau which had formed there just before the lights had gone out. If only someone could remember, this whole ghastly thing might be solved. But everything was blurred. And yet—wait a moment. Hadn’t Miss Gregg been standing just there while Mr Whitfield began his extraordinary speech?

‘I thought it was you, Miss Leland.’ It was the voice of the treasurer that cut into Carol’s thoughts. ‘Weren’t you standing there?’

‘I,’ said Miles softly, ‘thought it was Howe.’

Mr Druten’s eyes were intent on the president. ‘Didn’t you move over there, Rowley, just after you’d been speaking?’

‘No, indeed. No.’ Mr Rowley’s voice was crisp. ‘I was on the other side of Mr Whitfield—to the right.’

‘Well, one thing’s definite,’ Peter’s voice broke in dryly. ‘We’re not going to get anywhere from this angle. In thirty seconds we’ve accused three different people. To be perfectly frank, I haven’t the slightest idea where anyone was at the time.’

‘I’m afraid I agree,’ said Marcia. ‘When something startling happens, like the lights going out, you don’t remember what went before. My idea wasn’t very successful.’

‘Then what—what shall we do?’ Miss Gregg asked weakly.

There was a long moment of inaction. They could do absolutely nothing, of course, thought Carol. They had found out where the lights had been fused, and how. But that was all.

‘We might as well go back to Mr Howe’s office,’ she suggested. ‘After all, the cleaning women ought to be here soon. There’s not much longer to wait.’

She turned. As she did so, the light from the spill struck fanwise across the surface of the desk. She gave a gasp.

‘Look!’ she exclaimed ‘Look!’

‘What is it?’

‘Where …?’

The others swung round, reacting instantly to the alarm in her voice.

Carol was pointing at the loose-leaf calendar for the new year. Just a moment before she had been feeling calm, efficient. Now, once again, there were swift stirrings of panic.

When last they had been in this room the calendar had shown January 2. Now the light of the taper revealed:

JANUARY
4

‘You see?’ she asked faintly.

Miles gave a low whistle. ‘The second and third—someone’s taken them.’

‘And it must have been one of us.’ Mr Druten’s voice was sharp with incredulity. ‘One of us must have taken them while we’ve been here at the desk.’ Beneath the thick brows his eyes were bright with alarm. ‘That definitely proves that the murderer is here—here in the room.’

In the uneasy silence, Marcia Leland moved forward. Her dark head bent over the vaguely illuminated calendar. She looked up, her lips very pale.

‘It also means,’ she said, ‘that the danger isn’t over yet. Number Two and Number Three. Apparently the murderer has decided to kill two more of us.’

Carol gave a little shiver. It had been so horribly cold-blooded, taking those calendar slips while they were all there. The murderer, whoever he was, must be utterly sure of himself. It was almost as though he took pleasure in letting them know what he intended to do next. Marcia was right. The danger was certainly not over yet.

‘Come on. Let’s get back to my office,’ said Peter brusquely. ‘You lead the way with the light, Carol.’

She was only too glad to obey him, only too glad to leave this room, where Mr Whitfield lay dead and where the atmosphere of murder seemed to hang thickest.

Shielding the taper with her hand, she moved quickly to the door and out into the darkness of the main office.

Ahead, she could just make out the faint glow from the lights in the private offices.

She hurried towards it—vaguely conscious of the others behind her, of their voices, low and rapid, and the hard click of their footsteps as they followed her light.

Her vague, unreasoning fear was growing.

‘One of them,’ her mind kept repeating dully to itself, ‘one of those six people is a murderer.’

She passed the chairs piled bizarrely against the fire stairs door. She passed the steel gates of the lift. She was almost half-way to the safety of light when she heard something that made her stop dead—something that made the hair at the back of her neck crawl. Her thoughts started to reel crazily. It wasn’t possible; it couldn’t be true …

And yet she knew that it was.

From the darkness behind her had come an ominous rattle. Almost immediately it was followed by a crash that resounded like thunder around the invisible walls—the heavy crash of chairs falling and the splintering crash of broken glass!

The trap they had set on the door had been sprung!

The echoes, dying away, gave place to utter silence. Carol had never been so acutely conscious of the absence of sound. Somewhere there in the darkness, the others must be standing, paralysed into immobility.

But there was not the slightest whisper, the slightest rustle to hint at their presence.

The trap had been sprung. That could mean only one thing. They had been wrong. The murderer had not been one of them.

He had been waiting out on the fire stairs and now he had slipped in through the door. At that very moment he was somewhere there in the darkness around her—somewhere …

In those fleeting seconds, Carol had forgotten the taper. She gave a little cry. It had burned low, searing the skin of her finger.

Before she realized what she was doing, she had dropped it. In horror she watched the flame flicker a moment on the floor and then wink out.

Some remote part of her brain was conscious of the others. They had burst into hectic life. She could hear them stumbling against desks and chairs, calling out to each other, shouting for lights.

Lights! She was still gripping Miles’s lighter. Mechanically her fingers started to struggle with it. She struck and struck again. A grudging spark flashed and then died. It wouldn’t work.

And then one voice rose above the vague babble around her, loud and authoritative. It was Peter and he was shouting loudly:

‘Get back to the lighted office—all of you. Get back.’

The lighted office! Safety! Once Carol’s mind grasped that idea, she could think of nothing else. She forgot she had control of the lighter, all the matches. With a little sob, she turned and ran as fast as she could towards the faint radiance ahead.

When she reached Peter’s room she sank into a chair. Her hands were trembling and she could not stop them. She had never thought she could possibly feel like this—starkly, physically terror stricken.

There were hurrying footsteps outside. Someone else dashed into the room. It was Peter.

‘Quick, Carol. The spills and the lighter. Quick.’

Shakily she gave them to him and he was away again before she could speak.

The others were entering now. Mr Rowley, a frail, ghost-like figure; Mr Druten; Miss Gregg, her greying hair falling loose and dishevelled over her forehead.

None of them spoke. They just stood by the open door, gazing out, straining their ears for sounds out there in the darkness.

Carol crossed to join them. At last Miles and Peter appeared. Their faces were very grim.

‘We were fooled,’ said Miles curtly. ‘No one came in through that door. We’ve looked at it. The trap was knocked over from inside.’

‘ By one of us?’ exclaimed Mr Druten.

‘Yes.’ Peter’s eyes were moving rapidly round the room. ‘It was a false alarm. The murderer must have done it to …’ He broke off with a cry. ‘Where’s Miss Leland?’

‘Marcia!’

Throwing a swift glance around the group, Miles dashed out into the darkness. Peter followed instantly, lighting a taper as he went.

‘Marcia, Marcia …’ Miles’s voice trailed back to them.

Carol’s gaze flickered helplessly from one face to another. She had been too numbed by her own panic to notice that Marcia Leland had not come back.

‘She’s been murdered!’ screamed Miss Gregg suddenly. ‘I know it. In the darkness, she—’

Her fingers plucked at each other. Her shoulders started to quiver spasmodically. Her voice rose to a high hysterical laugh.

‘For heaven’s sake, stop it, woman,’ barked Mr Druten. He spun round, gripping her arms. ‘Stop that infernal noise.’

Carol would never forget those moments. Miss Gregg’s convulsive sobs; her own growing fear for Marcia; and Miles’s echoing voice in the darkness outside.

From the door she had been able to follow Peter’s progress by the lighted taper in his hand. It threw an uncanny radiance around his tall silhouette as he passed through the main office, holding the spill first to the right, then to the left—searching.

Suddenly he stopped, somewhere near the lift shaft. For a second he stood absolutely still. Then he stooped and shouted anxiously:

‘Quick, Miles!’

Carol drew in her breath. From where she stood she could just discern the outlines of what Peter had found, what lay there, stretched on the floor.

The light of the downward pointing taper had revealed the prostrate figure of a woman.

The spill burned out almost immediately, and darkness swallowed up what Carol had seen. Behind her in the lighted office, Miss Gregg had stopped sobbing now. Carol could hear her voice whispering softly:

‘I was right then. He did kill her—did kill her.’

Kill her! Carol’s thoughts flashed jerkily through her mind. How horribly clever to spring the trap on the door; to throw them into a panic; and then to choose his next victim. But Marcia Leland—the lovely, self-possessed Marcia.

As Carol peered urgently forward, she saw figures approaching through the gloom of the main office. Peter first—then Miles. ln his arms Miles was carrying a vague, slim form.

The others shifted back as Peter hurried in.

‘Miss Leland,’ exclaimed Mr Druten. ‘ls—is she …?’

‘No.’ Peter crossed to the couch and piled the cushions up at one end. ‘Looks as though someone had tried to strangle her. But she’s still breathing, thank God!’

Miles had come now. He carried the unconscious girl to the couch and very gently set her down.

Carol moved forward. Her gaze lowered to the girl’s throat. There, livid against the skin, were long inflamed marks and a single scratch, gleaming with tiny drops of blood.

‘She was unconscious when I found her,’ Peter said grimly. ‘Something must have interrupted the murderer.’

Mr Rowley was fluttering helplessly around. ‘But one of us attacking Miss Leland! It’s impossible! I can’t believe it.’

‘On the contrary, she’s the ideal victim. Twenty thousand shares.’ Miles’s voice was sardonic. He had brought water and was bending over Marcia, trying to force some between her teeth. ‘Poor kid. I’m afraid I’m developing an intense dislike for someone in this room. I can appreciate ingenuity up to a point. But I draw the line at strangling young women and …’

He broke off with a little grunt of surprise. Carol saw his fingers slip down the front of Marcia’s dress and bring out a crumpled piece of paper.

‘What is it?’ asked Mr Druten sharply.

‘I could make a shrewd guess.’

Miles rose from the couch, smoothing out the sheet. The upward slant of his eyes was dangerously accentuated.

‘A very methodical murderer.’

Even before he held it out, Carol realised what the paper would be. Those calendar slips! She had forgotten them.

The crinkled scrap of paper showed: