Fillmore said, “Zoe has just offered Wunderly her hand, Paul. Would you care to take mine?”
Bailey’s voice was hesitant. As though groping for an excuse, he said, “I’d like to—but—”
He paused, and, in the silence of that pause, there was a dull thud overhead.
We looked at one another across the bridge table. Bailey said, “Sounds like someone—uh—fell. I’ll run up and see.” He ran out the door that led to the hallway and we heard his swift footsteps thumping up the stairs.
There was an odd, expectant silence in the room. Eric Andressen had a card in his hand ready to play but held it.
We heard Bailey’s footsteps overhead, heard him try a door and then rap on it lightly. Then he came down the stairs two steps at a time. Andressen and Fillmore were on their feet by now, crossing the room toward the doorway when Bailey appeared there.
His face was pale and in it there was a conflict of emotions that was difficult to read. Consternation seemed to predominate.
He said breathlessly, “My door’s bolted from the inside. And it sounded as though what we heard came from there. I’m afraid we’ll have to—”
“You mean somebody’s in your room?” Zoe’s voice was incredulous.
Her father turned and spoke to her commandingly. “You remain here, Zoe. And will you stay with her, Annabel?”
Obviously, he was taking command. He said to me, “You’d better come along, Wunderly. You’re the huskiest of us and we might need you. But we’ll try a hammer first, to avoid splintering the door. Will you get one, Eric?”
All of us, except Eric—who went into the kitchen for a hammer—went up the stairs together. Almost as soon as we’d reached Bailey’s door, Andressen came running up with a heavy hammer.
Fergus Fillmore turned the knob and held it so the latch of the door was open. He showed Andressen where to hit with the hammer to break the bolt. On Eric’s third try, the door swung open.
Bailey and Fillmore went into the room together. I heard Bailey gasp. He hurried toward a corner of the room. Then Andressen and I went through the doorway.
The body of a young woman with coppery red hair lay on the floor.
Bailey was bending over her. He looked up at Fillmore. “She’s dead! But I don’t understand how—?”
Fillmore knelt, looked closely at the dead girl’s face, gently lifted one of her eyelids and studied the pupil of the eye. He ran exploratory fingers around the girl’s temples and into her hair. Turning her head slightly to one side, he felt the back of the skull.
Then he stood up, his eyes puzzled. “A hard blow. The bone is cracked and a portion of it pressed into the brain. It seems hard to believe that a fall—”
Bailey’s voice was harsh. “But she must have fallen. What else could have happened? That window’s locked and the door was bolted from the inside.”
Eric Andressen said slowly, “Paul, the floor’s carpeted. Even if she fell rigidly and took all her weight on the back of the head, it would hardly crack the skull.”
Paul Bailey closed his eyes and stood stiffly, as though with a physical effort he was gathering himself together. He said, “Well—I suppose we’d better leave her as she is for the moment. Except—” He crossed to the bed on the other side of the room and pulled off the spread, returned and placed it over the body.
Andressen was staring at the inside of the door. “That bolt could be pulled shut from the outside, easily, with a piece of looped string. Look here, Fillmore.”
He went out into the hall and the rest of us followed him. At the second door beyond Bailey’s room, he turned in. In a moment he returned with a piece of string.
He folded it in half and put the fold over the handle of the small bolt, then with the two ends in his hand he came around the door. He said, “Will you go inside, Wunderly? So you can open the door again, if this works. No use having to break my bolt, too.”
I went inside and the door closed. I saw the looped string pull the bolt into place. Then, as Andressen let go one end of it and pulled on the other, the string slid through the crack of the door.
I rejoined the others in the hallway. Bailey’s face was white and strained. He said, “But why would anyone want to kill Elsie?”
Andressen put his hand on Bailey’s shoulder. He said, “Come on, Paul. Let’s go find Lecky. It’ll be up to him, then, whether to notify the police.”
When they’d left, I asked Fergus Fillmore, “Who is—was—Elsie?”
“The maid, serving-girl. Lord, I hope I’m wrong about that head-wound being too severe to be accounted for by a fall. There’s to be a bad scandal for the observatory, if it’s murder.”
“Were she and Paul Bailey—?”
“I’m afraid so. And it’s pretty obvious Paul knew she was waiting for him in his room. When he heard that thud downstairs, you remember how Paul acted.”
I nodded, recalling how Bailey had hurried upstairs before anyone else could offer to investigate. And how he’d gone directly to his own room, not looking into any of the adjacent ones.
Fillmore said, “Mind holding the fort here till Lecky comes? I’m going down to send Zoe home.”
“Home?” I asked. “Doesn’t she live here?”
“Our house is a hundred yards down the slope, next to Lecky’s. There are three houses outside the main building, for the three staff members. Everyone else lives in the main building.”
When Fillmore had left I walked to the window at the end of the hallway. The storm outside had stopped—but the one inside was just starting.
Bailey and Andressen returned with a short, bald-headed, middle-aged man. Abel Lecky, the director.
He and the others turned into Bailey’s room and I went back downstairs.
Annabel was alone in the room in which the bridge game had been going on. She stood up as I came in. “Bill, Fergus tells me that Elsie’s dead. He took his daughter on home. But how—?”
I told her what little I knew.
“Bill,” she said, “I’m afraid. Something’s been wrong here. I’ve felt it.”
I put my hands on her shoulders.
She said, “I’m—I’m glad you’re here, Bill.” She didn’t resist or push me away when I kissed her but her lips were cool and passive.
Chapter 3
The Murderer’s Guide
THERE WERE heavy footsteps. Annabel and I stepped apart just as the door opened. A short, very fat man wearing a lugubrious expression came into the room. Pince-nez spectacles seemed grotesquely out of place on his completely round face.
He said, “Hullo, Annabel. And I suppose this is your wonderful Wunderly.” Without giving either of us a chance to speak, he held out his hand to me and kept on talking. “Glad to know you, Wunderly. I’m Hill. Darius Hill. Annabel, what’s wrong with Zoe? I passed her and Fillmore out in the hall. She looked as though she’d seen ghillies and ghosties.”
Annabel said, “Elsie Willis is dead, Darius.”
“Elsie dead? You’re fooling me, Annabel. Why, I saw her only a few hours ago, and— Could it have been murder?”
The italics were his. He took off his pince-nez glasses and his eyes went as round as his face.
I said, “Nobody knows, Mr. Hill. It might have been accidental. Probably she fainted and fell.”
“Fainted? A buxom wench like Elsie?” He shook his head vigorously. “But—you say fell? That would imply a head injury, would it not? Of course.
“But what a banal method of murder—with a garage full of rattlesnakes at hand. And with Bailey a chemist, too. Or would Zoe have done it? I fear she would be inclined to direct and unimaginative methods but I didn’t think she harbored any animosity—”