Vallancourt’s knee hit him in the groin. He fell back, nothing real for the moment except the pain. Helplessly, he felt the gun being jerked from his pocket. Then the weight lifted from him. Keith crawled to his feet, lashed out feebly.
“You don’t know when you’re licked, do you?” asked the quiet, friendly voice.
Useless now. He had the gun... Keith stood with arms dangling, slobbering breath.
Vallancourt made no move with either his hands or the gun.
“Son, you have one hell of a fine physique and a lot of potential, but you lack the training,” Vallancourt said. “I was a Marine field commander in the war, and I keep in shape. No, Keith. Stand easy.”
Keith panted, “This isn’t the end. You haven’t got me down there yet. It’s a long way from here to the lodge.”
“The way back is as long as you want to make it, Keith.” Vallancourt studied Keith intently. “Yes, you have a great deal of her in you.”
“Her? What you are talking about? Who?”
“Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Dorcas Ferguson,” Vallancourt said.
Keith glared at him.
“You won’t believe it on such short notice,” Vallancourt said, “but it’s true. Your real father was killed in a hydroplane accident before he and your mother could marry. She loved you too much to give you away. She gave birth to you in another city and left you with Maggie and Sam Rollins. All these years she’s cared and provided for you. I’m sure she didn’t know the full story of the relationship between you and Sam. He cowed Maggie to silence and put on a front when your mother, in the guise of aunt, was around.
“But as she grew older, I’m convinced Dorcas came to realize the wrong she had done you. Your mother, in your time of greatest need, brought you here, and I’m positive that only her death stopped her from telling you and the world that she, not Maggie Rollins, was your mother.
“I know you didn’t kill Dorcas Ferguson, Keith, and that’s why I’ve gone to all this trouble to talk to you.
“You can keep running. Or you can come off this hill and take hold of your future — start acting rationally. Which will it be? It’s up to you. I’m going back to the lodge.”
Vallancourt glanced at his hand, raised his arm, and threw the gun in a high, flashing arc. It vanished from sight with a crash.
Before the sound died, Vallancourt was walking rapidly down the hillside.
18
They were waiting for him on the porch of the Ferguson cottage.
“You didn’t nail him,” Howard Conway said with disappointment.
“Aren’t you glad?” Vallancourt smiled.
“What do you mean?” Ralph Hibbs asked.
“Go inside, Nancy,” her father said.
A glance at her father’s face was enough. Nancy went into the lodge.
“I mean that the case is still open. A fugitive is still at large. There’s still the chance that he’ll stop a police bullet and close the book on the Dorcas Ferguson murder.” Vallancourt smiled. “Except for one thing. I know who the murderer is — and his name isn’t Keith.”
Conway and Hibbs exchanged puzzled glances.
“I suspected Keith was innocent quite early,” Vallancourt said. “In fact, when the cashbox from Dorcas’s study turned up in Keith’s car. He was not carrying the box when he broke out of the house. That means it had been put in his car beforehand. It simply wasn’t reasonable that Keith would kill her, lug the cashbox out, then return to her lifeless body.
“So it looked very much as if the cashbox was a plant, and Keith the victim of a frame-up — the sacrificial goat being offered up by the real killer to save his own skin. At the time, of course, my principal concern was not Keith’s innocence or guilt, but getting Nancy back before she came to harm.
“The morning of her death, Dorcas phoned Keith to come to her home. I’m convinced she was going to tell him the truth about their relationship — that she was his mother.
“When he got there, he found her dead. She had been dead only a short time. Someone had preceded him there. Obviously the murderer. And the murderer, having been informed by Dorcas that she had summoned Keith, and why, had used those few minutes to set his stage. He was desperate. He had nothing to lose at that point, and his neck to save.”
“Ralph,” Conway said, “you went by Dorcas’s house early that morning.”
“Even if Ralph did,” Vallancourt said, “it was too early, some time before she was killed. At the time of her death Ralph was selling a car to a customer.”
“That’s true,” Ralph Hibbs exclaimed. “I remember mentioning it to you, John.”
“And it would have been a silly attempt at an alibi if it weren’t true,” Vallancourt said. “Too easily checked.”
Howard Conway moved to the edge of the porch and leaned against the railing. “So where do we go from here?”
“Police headquarters, Howard. We’ll have a matron sober Ivy up.”
“Damned poor joke,” Conway said.
“Yes, it was. But it’s not on Keith any longer, Howard,” Vallancourt said. “I don’t think you intended to kill Dorcas, but she’s no less dead. And to have framed Keith... Did you think your own hide worth the lives of a boy and girl, Howard?”
“Afraid you’ve lost me on the curve, John.” But Conway was beginning to sweat.
“Then let’s take it from the beginning,” Vallancourt said. “You tried to talk Dorcas out of revealing the truth about Keith. Your motive was obvious. If the whole world knew she was his mother, she might then leave everything she had to him. And that would freeze out Ivy, her sister — your wife. You’d counted on that inheritance. So you argued, and she wouldn’t listen, and you lost your head and shoved her, and the edge of the table got in the way — and there you were, with a dead woman on your hands.
“You were on a very hot spot, Howard. Keith was due to arrive momentarily. But... the boy was already under suspicion of the nastiest kind of murder — that Florida business. Why not let Keith pay for the crime? Make it appear that Dorcas, the doting aunt, had become suspicious of his part in the Florida rape-murder, disillusioned. That he’d knocked her down when confronted, killed her, stolen money from her study, and fled.
“Sam Rollins was the only other person, aside from you and Ivy, who knew the truth about Keith. You figured that, if it ever came to that, you could buy Sam’s silence.
“Your more immediate problem was your wife. You had to tell her Dorcas was dead, and you had to force her to pretend to be Dorcas — to make the call summoning me, the needed witness whose additional testimony would wrap it up tight for you.
“Dorcas was dead. Nothing Ivy might do could change that. And you had a prime weapon. You could threaten Ivy with the exposure of Keith as Dorcas’s son and heir, if you went to jail. Ivy wanted that inheritance, too. She made the call.”
Ralph Hibbs was gaping at Howard Conway as if he had never seen him before.
“You were cutting it thin, but you had luck,” Vallancourt said. “But not quite enough, Howard. There never seems to be enough luck for that kind of thing.
“First detail to go haywire for you was the cashbox. I imagine you wanted it to look as if Keith had gone from the living room back to the study, grabbed the box, and opened it on his way out.
“You snatched the box, opening it outside while you waited for Keith’s arrival. I’m sure you intended to return the box to any point in the house where it would look as if Keith had dropped it. From your hiding place you saw Keith arrive. A mere matter of minutes for it fall in place for you now. If I got there late, it wouldn’t matter. You could pretend you’d just arrived, too; you’d seen Keith drive away hurriedly; we’d both go inside and discover the murder.