The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 42

"Was this electric lamp tipped over when you found him?" asked Banner.

Verl nodded.

Ten paces beyond the piano stood a grandfather's clock. The wall shelves were stuffed with music alb.u.ms.

Verl said: "Doesn't that music on the piano strike you as being particularly significant, Senator? La Somnambula. The Sleep Walker!"

"Uh-huh." Banner bobbed his grizzled mop of hair.

Verl rattled on as if he couldn't restrain himself. "Woolfolk was a funny one. Peculiar. His talk wasn't all music. He was full of weird theories about the power of suggestion, mind over matter, that sort of thing. He sometimes mentioned a lot of grotesque characters and objects, like: Abbe Faria, Carl Saxtus's zinc b.u.t.ton, Baron du Potet's magic mirror, and Father h.e.l.l's magnet. He thought all that esoteric knowledge would help him to rule women. But I don't think it helped very much. Women," he added regretfully, "know intuitively how to get the best of men."

Banner didn't answer. He lumbered to both windows. He opened each. Thirty feet to the east of the small house stood a pole with insulated cross-arms. Nowhere was the snow on the ground disturbed. There was no snow on either of the window-sills. The over-hanging eaves had sheltered them. He looked up at the eaves.

Verl said in a tired voice: "The snow on the roof hasn't been disturbed either."

Banner closed the windows and they both trudged across the white lawn to the manor house.

Ora Spires was a thirty-one-year-old spinster. She wore horn-rimmed eyegla.s.ses and her hair was drawn back from a worried brow and knotted into a tight black bun. Her slack dress left you guessing about her figure. Her mouth had a pinched-in look as if she were trying to cork up all her feelings with her lips. Yet with some attention to her features she wouldn't have been half bad-looking. Banner wondered if she deliberately made herself unattractive or if she didn't know any better.

"The police have gone," she said in a cracked whisper to Verl. "They've taken him to Hostetler's." She looked at Verl as if he had just come in to have her try on the gla.s.s slipper.

Verl said to Banner: "Ora means Woolfolk's body. Hostetler is the town undertaker ... Ora, you haven't told the police what you told-"

"Oh no," she said.

Banner got impatient. "I'm Senator Banner. Verl thinks I can help you."

"Oh, yes," she said quickly. "I voted for you once."

"Mighty fine. Tickled to meetcha." He pumped her limp hand. "Come sit down. We'll iron this out."

When they sat down in the parlor she said fretfully: "This morning I thought I'd dreamed I'd killed Mr. Woolfolk, but the whole nightmare has turned out to be real."

Banner was deep in the waffle-back armchair. "Tell me everything."

Her eyes were cloudy behind the gla.s.ses. She would tell him everything. Banner was the kind of man you told your troubles to. "I've lived in Cobleskill all my life. My parents are dead and my sister Caroline helped bring me up. She's four years older than I am. About three years ago I came to work for Mr. Woolfolk taking care of his little daughter. Have you told him much about Beryl, Verl?"

Verl shuffled his feet on the bird-of-paradise pattern rug. "Only just mentioned her."

Ora smiled sadly. "Beryl's ten now, she's very hard to manage."

"That's putting it mildly," groaned Verl.

"But I stuck it out, Senator. Mr. Woolfolk was always going away on concert tours, leaving me alone with Beryl." She was thatching her long, white, sensitive fingers nervously. "I keep a diary. It's locked up secretly in my bureau drawer and I wear the key around my neck. One night, about two weeks ago, I took it out of the drawer to make my day's entry. I was stunned to see that the last words I had written were: I hate Mr. Woolfolk!" She stiffened. "I never remember writing those words!"

"Clever forgery?" suggested Banner.

She shook her head. "How could it be? It was positively my handwriting. Besides, how could the forger have gotten to where I hide my diary? The lock on the bureau drawer wasn't forced ... All that night I lay sleepless thinking about it. I realized there were a lot of things I didn't like about Mr. Woolfolk, things that could make me hate him. Things that had never entered my conscious mind before."

"What were they?" said Banner when she paused to draw a shuddery breath.

"Why, little habits I detested. The way he dressed-one shoe always used to squeak when he walked. The way he put extra spoonfuls of sugar on his morning cereal. The way he coughed irritatingly after he'd smoked a cigarette too many. The-the thin whistle of the breath in his nose whenever he breathed too near me. And the way he would drop little hints to me about what a devil he was with the ladies, trying to get it across to me that-Yes, all that night an inner voice kept saying to me: I hate Mr. Woolfolk!

"During this last week he got on my nerves more than I can say. Yesterday was Christmas Eve. After supper he left for town to visit my sister Caroline. She's been deathly sick lately. I tried to amuse Beryl, but she was extra unruly and I finally had to pack her off to bed as punishment. Mr. Woolfolk returned about ten o'clock. There was snow on his coat. He said, 'It's snowing out.' And I thought that was perfectly hateful. I knew it was snowing. I could see it on him. It was a perfectly exasperating remark and I hated his false teeth when he grinned at me. He hung his coat up and came over to me. He reached out and felt my hand. It was the first time he'd ever touched me like that. Inwardly I squirmed. I tried to draw my hand back without offending him. He said suggestively, 'I'm going out to the Music Box afterwards. Come out where you hear me playing.'

"I answered with as much sarcasm as I dared. 'Christmas carols?' He was still grinning. 'No,' he said. 'Not exactly Christmas carols.' I didn't answer him. I walked away from him." She paused to straighten her eyegla.s.ses primly on her narrow nose. "Oh, I knew what he meant. But he didn't press me about it. I worked on the Christmas tree and spread presents around it until I noticed the clock striking in the hall. It was twelve midnight. I felt he was down here in the parlor and went up the stairs. On the first landing I stopped for a moment and looked out the window. The snow had stopped falling. The moon was out. Everything was beautiful and white. I hurried up the rest of the stairs to my bedroom. I locked the door. I felt too tired to open my diary last night, but something kept drawing me to it. At last I decided: A few words. When I opened it and saw what was in it, it fell out of my hands. The last words written in it were: Tonight I'm going to kill Mr. Woolfolk."

She swallowed painfully. "I thought I must have gone insane. Why should I have written such a terrible thing? It couldn't have been me. Yet it was in my own handwriting. I flung the book back into the drawer and crawled into bed, trembling, sick at my thoughts. It was as if some evil thing had come into the house and taken possession of me during the past two weeks. I knew I walked in my sleep. Beryl told me that she'd seen me. Once I found some silverware in my room where I'd hidden it while I was asleep. I was afraid I'd do something horrible when I had no conscious control of myself. I didn't want to go to sleep, ever. I lay awake, fighting it, for as long a time as I could. I kept listening. The house was still. But I couldn't keep awake. I couldn't. I did fall asleep-and I dreamed ..."

Her face was the color of ashes. "Somewhere in a dim corner of my mind I remembered Mr. Woolfolk saying, 'Come where you hear me playing.' My actions were all of a dreamlike floating quality. In the distance I could hear Mr. Woolfolk playing a part of La Somnambula score. I don't know how I got there, but I was eventually facing him across the Spanish shawl on the piano. The music had stopped. He was rising to his feet, grinning. I hated him more than I ever did. There was a gun in my hand. I don't know how it got there. He kept repeating, 'Shoot me! Go ahead! Shoot me! If you hate me so much, why don't you shoot?' I heard the shots stabbing into my brain. Then it all faded out again.

"When I woke up it was morning and I was in bed. I thought: Thank G.o.d, it's all been a horrible dream. I dressed, woke Beryl up, and went down to make breakfast. Mr. Woolfolk wasn't anywhere in the house and when I looked outside for him I saw those footprints that led to the Music Box. That's where he was. He wouldn't have stayed out here all night, unless-I knew what had happened, but I was too terrified to go and look. And then Verl came ..."

Banner frowned. "When did Woolfolk die?"

Verl answered: "The police say about four o'clock in the morning-four hours after it'd stopped snowing."

"And the weapon used?"

"The old horse pistol that was kept in the stable."

"Have they found it?"

"They searched the house from top to bottom first, before they did find it. The murderer had laid a stick across the chimney stack and the gun was hanging halfway down on the inside tied to a string."

Banner heard a thin voice pipe up behind his chair. "You should see the dog now. I painted him blue."

Banner swiveled his big head. The child was staring at him with blank green eyes as if they were painted on a wooden face. Two rat-tails of carroty hair hung down over her scrawny shoulders. The pale-skinned arms had freckles sprinkled on them and her bloodless lips were chapped.

Ora had reached the limit of her endurance. She lifted her voice shrilly. "Beryl! I told you to stay in bed!"

"I won't. I tore up the bed. You'll have to make it over." She stared steadily at Banner. "I don't like you. You're fat and filthy and you can't play the piano."

Banner said sweetly to Ora: "Does Snook.u.ms know about Daddy?"

"Yes, we told her," said Ora.

"She doesn't seem very grieved," said Verl.

"Let her stay up if she wants to." Banner plowed his hand into one of the roomy kangaroo pockets of his coat and took out a paper-wrapped candy bar. He held it up. "b.u.t.terscotch," he said. "It melts in your mouth. I would've given it to you, tadpole, if you'd wiggled off to bed. But since you'd rather stay up-" He gave a t.i.tanic shrug.

She watched sullenly while he returned the b.u.t.terscotch to his pocket. Then she sat on a footstool and appeared to be reconsidering the situation.

Verl's mind was tinkering with something. He said: "Ora, has the radio aerial been fixed yet?"

"No," said Ora listlessly.

"What happened to it?" said Banner.

Beryl squirmed on the footstool. "I broke it yesterday," she confessed.

"You broke it!" said Banner.

Beryl shrugged her thin shoulders. "Sure. I was up on the roof, breaking off shingles, when I thought I'd climb the aerial. Is it any business of yours?"

Banner scowled. "Yep. I investigate that under the head of monkey business."

Ora was sitting looking wide-eyed at Verl. "How did you know the aerial was broken? I never told-"

"Yes, you did. You told me about it when you saw me yesterday in town."

"I never saw you yesterday!" she said strongly.

"Why, Ora, you most certainly did. You dropped into The Griffon editorial office and asked me if I wanted to go with you to the all-Tschaikovsky afternoon concert at the school hall. And we went. And you liked the Nutcracker Suite."

"Verl! Stop ragging me! I was right here all afternoon. I stayed in and cleaned the house."

"See here, Ora. You spent at least two full hours with me."

"That's a lie!"

Verl checked an angry retort. "Ora," he said tightly, "I can prove it. Several other people saw you too, my father among them. Why should we all lie about it?"

She was near frantic tears. "But, Verl, I never left the house. I remember what I did all afternoon. I never went out!"

"Someone was masquerading as you, I suppose?" Verl shook his head. "No, it was you. We've grown up together. n.o.body could pull off a deception like that."

Beryl perked up accusingly. "You walk in your sleep."

"People don't act that wide-awake in their sleep," argued Verl. "I tell you, Ora, you were awake and you were with me."

"I won't listen to any more." Ora stood up. "Beryl, for the last time, are you going to lie down?"

Beryl looked questioningly at Banner's pocket. "I might go if-"

Banner chuckled. "Hunky-dory." He put the b.u.t.terscotch in her hand. "Off to blanket cla.s.s."

Beryl, pacified, left with Ora.

Banner said sternly: "What snicklefritz needs is to get the tar whaled outta her."

Verl flung out his arms and snapped: "Why should she deny being with me? I know I'm not lying."

"Mebbe she ain't either," said Banner cryptically. "Does anybody like Beryl?"

"Her father did. G.o.d knows why. She's a h.e.l.ler. She spies on people and tells nothing but lies. Breaking the aerial was just another one of those things. She takes showers with all her clothes on. She rings the dinner bell before time. She lets all the horses out of the stable. She floods the garden. She puts heavy books in her pillow-slip when she wants a pillow fight. She says Ora is loony."

Verl broke off suddenly.

Banner glanced sideways at a slight sound and saw a strange woman standing in the doorway. It was Caroline Spires. Caroline was totally different from her dowdy sister. The figure was thickening (fat with sin, as Banner liked to put it), but it was dressed in the latest of fashions. She had strawy blonde hair, fresh from a cold perm-wave and a little too much pancake makeup on. Banner had a feeling that in spite of her placid exterior she could be a vixen when aroused.

"h.e.l.lo, Caroline," said Verl, with some surprise. "I want you to meet Senator Banner."

Caroline teetered in on very high heels and used the properly sorrowful smile for the occasion as she shook his hand. "How do you do?" she enunciated.

"Meetcha," said Banner.

"Seeing you standing there, Caroline," went on Verl, "gave me a turn. Ora said that last night you weren't able to lift a finger. You've made a very rapid recovery."

A crease of annoyance came and went between her penciled brows. "Oh, no matter how I felt, I couldn't stay away at a time like this." She took a package wrapped in holiday tissue from her handbag. "I know that Caspar would have wanted me to bring this." She let her lower lip tremble. "Who knows? In another few weeks I might have been Mrs. Woolfolk."

Banner thought: Nice acting, baby.

He said: "You felt that Beryl needed you for a mother."

"I should say not," said Caroline forcefully. "She's ungovernable. I wouldn't feel safe living in the same house with that brat. I wanted her sent away to a school. I told him so. I wouldn't marry him under any other condition."

"Woolfolk visited you at your sick-bed last night. He left near ten. Didja get up any time after that?"

She smiled archly. "I hardly dared. My nurse looked in every half hour to see if I was asleep. Surely you don't think I did it. I'm not one that's likely to kill a goose with golden eggs." She twisted the wrapped gift over in her manicured hands. "Excuse me. I want to put this under the tree." Before she turned away she added: "What a horrible Christmas!"

They listened to her heels tap away in the hall.

Verl said: "If she'd had her way with Woolfolk, she'd be mistress of Falconridge now. Lately she's been afraid that Woolfolk might get too interested in Ora. There's a rivalry between those two sisters, but it doesn't show on the surface. I don't think she was sick for one minute. This sudden recovery proves it. She did it to keep Woolfolk at her bedside morning and night. Finally he would have married her out of sheer sympathy."

Banner studied him with his shrewd baby-blue eyes. "Are you in love with Ora? Or vice versa?"

Verl looked genuinely surprised, then he grinned. "That's funny. I never thought of that before." He shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Senator. We've known each other all our lives. We're good friends. But I doubt that Ora will ever marry anyone. She's a born and bred spinster. Since she was a tot, Caroline put the fear of men in her." He paused. "There's that interesting sidelight on Woolfolk that I was telling you about. Come into the library. I'll show you."

Banner followed him in.

Three of the room's four walls were banked with heavy books.

Verl waved his hand at them. "Abnormal psychology-every last one of them." He handled a volume. "Most of these subjects are old familiars with me. I majored in psych at Holy Cross."

Banner ran his eye over the t.i.tles: Paranoia. Mania. Melancholy. Hallucination. Hypochondria. Sadism. Masochism. Lycanthropy.

There was a volume lying closed on a square table. Banner leafed through it and stopped at a chapter headed Schizophrenia. There was a marginal note in a fine masculine hand: There's no doubt she has a split personality.

Banner snapped the book shut. To whom had Woolfolk referred? Ora? Beryl? Caroline? Or someone else?

Banner trotted across the library and laid the book on a victrola top. "What kinda gun did the police find hanging down the chimney?"

"I told you. The old horse pistol. A single loader."

"When the police searched the house, they didn't find another gun?"

"Another one? No. Why should they? It was the horse pistol that killed Woolfolk."