I started up the drive toward the house.
The wide, sagging veranda looked as if it had collected dirt and dust for years. Several generations of creeping ivy covered the wall of the house. Hinges screamed as I opened the front door.
The living room was large, high-ceilinged, and gloomy with a little light seeping through the dirt stained windows. Two old-fashioned lamps with stained glass shades were lighted but did little to dispell the twilight. The furniture was that huge, ancient stuff upholstered in black leather that was cracking with age. Four people were gathered in a knot in the middle of the room. They stood stiffly, the two men smoking nervously, and I knew Nicki had told them.
“This is Mr. Clarke. Jeff Clarke,” she said. She indicated the tall, cadaverous man with the salt and pepper hair. “Mr. Samuel Everette, my uncle’s lawyer.” The small sleek man with black hair, midnight eyes under smooth brows, and high cheek bones which made two spots of color on his face was Horace Ingalls. The woman beside him — small-limbed, vivacious looking — was Anna Rawlins, the uncle’s stepsister. Introduced to her, I immediately thought of the campact I’d found and the initials on it: A. R.
“Gaspard’s death is most unfortunate,” she said. Her voice like her copper-burnished hair, had a silken quality. “He advised my brother on everything and was the first person my brother called in time of need. My brother Theron will miss Gaspard greatly.”
I didn’t care much about their personal matters. Cops was the thought uppermost in my mind. “Where is the phone?”
“I’m sorry,” Sam Everette said, his voice of surprising depth considering that it came from such a slim body, “but there isn’t a phone here. Mr. Rawlins has never had one put in. This is the first time he’s ever come here.”
I pondered that. Horace Ingalls, the small, sleek man, hovered near Anna Rawlins. I tagged him as a high-class leech. Sam Everette, the lawyer, smoked his cigarette and thought thoughts of his own. I said, “Then someone will have to drive down to the village and bring back the sheriff.”
“I’ll go,” Nicki said quickly. She sounded anxious to get away from the house.
“I’ll tag along with you,” I said. But her eyes were trying to convey some sort of message. I added hesitantly: “On second thought maybe I’ll stick around and take a drink.” She nodded faintly, telling me that’s what she wanted, that I should stay here and keep my eyes open. I didn’t take to the idea like a duck to water, but I’ve already told you what she looked like and what it did to me. I shrugged as she went out.
Anna Rawlins called out “Cy” in that silk-like voice. Feet shuffled in the hall, the door opened, and a sleepy, rawboned, hunch-shouldered hillbilly said, “You want somethin’?”
“Get a drink for Mr. Clarke,” Anna said. Cy squinted at me, shrugged with his brows, and went out.
The strained little group drifted to chairs. Cy, Everette the lawyer explained, was the caretaker who lived in the small house on the hill. Under present conditions, he was filling in for the butler. The thought of a butler in this spook joint was almost comical.
Cy came back with a water tumbler half full of clear, colorless liquid. “Good corn. Made it myself.” I swallowed it and discovered why they called it white lightning.
Nicki burst into the front door and the look on her face brought us to our feet.
Her eyes scanned their faces. She sounded angry and scared. “The car won’t run. Someone has taken the rotor from the distributor.”
Horace Ingalls’ eyes looked like a frightened calf’s. Everette and Anna Rawlins took the news in their stride. The lawyer said, “Then somebody’ll have to walk to the village. How about you, Cy?”
The overalled butler nodded phlegmatically and went out. There was a nervous clearing of throats and a shifting of feet and the people in the living room began to drift out. Horace Ingalls. I noticed, stayed close to Anna Rawlins, and I looked at Nicki. I didn’t like the way she was watching them. She felt my gaze, and the chilling something in her eyes was suddenly veiled. She forced a smile.
“Did you know what you were getting into?”
“No,” I said, “but I’m in it now. Could I meet your uncle?”
She hesitated; then turned abruptly. “This way.”
We entered a dark hall. It smelled a hundred years old, or like a tomb that’s waited a long time for its occupants. I bumped into a piece of furniture in the half light and she reached out her hand to guide me. Her fingers were cool and strong. They felt exactly as I had imagined they would.
We groped down the hallway and she opened a door. It was a bedroom, as dreary as the rest of the house, but with a brighter lamp in a big brass bracket over the high head of the wooden bed. The windows were large, drawing in a heavy draft that had cleared most of the musty odor from this room.
Theron Rawlins was lying in the bed, a tubby lump beneath the covers that I guessed had come from the linen closet of Cy’s wife. Theron didn’t look like an oil king. More like an overgrown, innocent baby, with a pink fat face, big brown eyes, and sandy-colored fuzz in a thin ring about his bald head. But he had grown up. The odor of moonshine was strong in the room, and a fruit jar half full of Cy’s corn liquor was on a table by the bed.
“This is Mr. Clarke,” Nicki said. “He... he was with me when we found Gaspard.” Her hands were clenched tightly as she watched him rear erect.
“Gaspard?” he howled, and all the innocence fell away as he became the roaring executive. “Where did you find him?”
“Under some bushes,” I said.
His forehead knotted. “Under bushes? But that’s... that’s asinine. Gaspard doesn’t drink. Even if he did, he has too much finesse to pass out...”
“He is permanently passed out,” I said. “Dead.”
He looked at me for a moment. Then he eased back in bed and said very softly, “Ohhhh.”
I sat down in the chair beside the bed. “You’re a big man, Mr. Rawlins, and any time something like this happens near a big man, there’s lots of nasty publicity. Maybe I can help you.”
“Who are you?” Nicki asked.
“A domestic correspondent,” I said. “Reporter to you, but so much romance has been attached to newsmen who are correspondents abroad that I have to keep in tune with the times.”
I looked at her and saw that she liked me less. I went on quickly: “But I didn’t come here after any sort of story. I work on a paper in Baltimore. I was trying to catch an arsonist some time back, and got myself trapped in a burning house. I jumped — from way up, and broke a leg. When it knit, my boss gave me some time off to amble down here for a vacation, which has been a rare thing with me of late. As soon as I got a C.D.I went right back to my old job. Then I saw you today, and...”
“Did you catch your arsonist?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty good at catching people. But what I want most is to help you keep this thing as quiet as possible. The sheriff can do the catching.”
Theron Rawlins mumbled, “That’s nice of you.” He stared dazedly at nothing and Nicki’s fingers plucked my sleeve. We left the room.
Back in the living room, she sat down tiredly in one of those aged chairs. “I don’t know what uncle will do without Gaspard. Gaspard got him out of jams, ran his business, looked to all the details that uncle hates. It’s been a very trying time.”
I said, “Two things are bothering me. Why are you here? And why are the others here?”
She waited a long time to answer and I heard a whipoorwill crying in its agony of loneliness.