The Amber Eyes Page 4

  “I suppose they all had the opportunity to get at Lisa. You know how that house is built. All those stairs and all.”

  “I didn’t go to the third floor again. I had a little private talk with Caroline. I spoke to her in one of the two other bedrooms on the second floor. She is feeling very bad because she dragged me in and also because I said they must call the police. Martin told her it had to be done, but she is worried because of her father.”

  “She’s sweet. Quite different from Audrey. What do you think of Audrey Alby, Pat?”

  “I think she has brains. She’s got her man and she’s going to hang onto him. You’ll see.”

  “What about Rona?”

  “And Quayle? Audrey has money, or will have soon, when she is twenty-five. Rona is no match for Audrey, even if Quayle does find Rona more desirable. He’d probably rather have Caroline, but she has three years to go before she comes into the money their mother left them. Audrey will be twenty-five in six weeks. That’s the deadline. Twenty-five. Caroline is just twenty-two. Caroline told me about that. It tickled me to see how Audrey maneuvered that son of a bitch around tonight. She’s got him hooked.”

  “Why do you dislike him so?”

  “Because he even attracted you.”

  “You’re jealous, Pat. He has sex appeal, good old-fashioned sex. He’d have it if he was ugly as an octopus.”

  “Yep. He and Rona.”

  “Does she attract you?”

  “Sure.”

  “More than me?”

  “I didn’t say I’d want to marry her. Neither would Quayle. But that voice of hers makes my spine shiver. Sam’s, too. Even Sam was attracted to Rona. It’s her voice. Even when hoarse.”

  “Not the wonderful eyes?”

  Pat had another silent spell, and then said the eyes were most unusual, but actually her great attraction was her voice. Women, he said, rarely knew the lure, or the lack of it, in their voices. I said men were the same, that Quayle had one of those rich voices that make women drool. I said Quayle would simply use up Audrey’s money and move on.

  “Oh, no,” Pat said. “Caroline has loveliness and sweetness. Rona has personality and much sex. Audrey has a slick conniving brain. She’ll get him and she’ll hang onto him. You’ll see.”

  “He’ll break her heart, as they used to say.”

  “Nope. Audrey’ll break what heart Quayle’s got and then she’ll unload him.”

  “You don’t like him at all, do you?”

  “I’d rather chum up with a big red Mexican rattler. That’s how much I like him.”

  I said, “Sam put you off with his talk about Quayle’s being a crook, Pat.”

  “Thanks. You think I have no brain of my own, do you?”

  “Let’s not argue. On such a night, darling? If it weren’t too much trouble I would come over and sit on your lap.”

  “If it weren’t ditto, I’d bring you over,” Pat said, putting down his glass. He wrapped me in his arms. I said ouch. His beard scratched. After a while, I asked if he would mind my asking more questions.

  After rehashing what we knew of the case, I asked, “Do you think Lisa was murdered?”

  “What else?”

  Six

  It was terrible. I said so. It was like killing a baby. Who was to blame? Dr. Alby had prescribed the cough syrup. He had it in his bathroom medicine closet and the child had got it. That didn’t really mean that anyone had given it to her. It was a pretty cherry color and she might have been attracted and had taken it to her room, and there you were. Everybody was downstairs. The child had smothered herself while they were at dinner. Perhaps.

  “Could Rona have given it to her?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to imagine Rona’s motive. The child was her sinecure of a good living as long as Lisa lived, which would likely be a long time, because such a child is not exposed to accident and ordinary illness as much as normal children who are always with others of their kind.”

  I said, “Anybody with half an eye and ear could see instantly that Rona desperately wants Don Quayle. Maybe she wanted to be free of the child, and free of Dr. Alby, since the child was all there is to keep them together.”

  “There’s more than that. Rona is intensely loyal to Dr. Alby. It’s not a real marriage but she would be loyal to her agreement to look after the child.”

  “Not that loyal, I bet. She said she was going to divorce Dr. Alby now that she’d found Don Quayle again. She certainly must have figured on his possible early death when she married him partly to spite Sophia. If there was to be money enough for the care of Lisa, maybe she’d think she could wangle enough of it to support Quayle.”

  “Rona was to get fifty thousand if the child died. She might think that would be enough to hook Quayle. She might be right, too.”

  I said, “You are attracted to her, aren’t you!”

  “I told you that.”

  “She’s more attractive to you than I am, then.”

  “In some ways,” Pat said.

  I was annoyed. “With those crazy eyes, her look of not being quite clean, you’re still attracted?”

  Pat laughed and said, “You admitted being smitten on Quayle.”

  “I did not. I just told you what made women fall for him. Oh, we said this before, for goodness sake. How about another drink?”

  “You’ll have to get it. I’m weighed down. Some woman’s on my lap.”

  “Okay,” I said, going into the kitchen. I made the refills and some snacks. Pretty soon we ought to have some bacon and eggs, I said.

  So Pat really thought that poor child was murdered. Well, Caroline had called him there and let him go. Caroline had agreed that there was no proof. Caroline had probably been so worried about her father that she wanted to have done with the whole business. Pat wasn’t on the Force, and Caroline had brought Pat into the case and she had the right to let him go.

  We had certainly had a dismal evening, met some very unpleasant people, a few pleasant ones in Caroline and Dr. Alby and Martin Kent, and we had come home with the mess on our minds and that was all.

  I made the drinks stronger, hoping they would make us sleepy. It was wonderful to have such a fine night, but what good was it when your head was swirling with unanswerable problems? I was ready to carry the drinks out on the terrace.

  “Why, hello,” I heard Patrick say. His chair scraped back on the tiles. “Sit down, Caroline.”

  Now what? This was odd. I didn’t hurry out. I waited inside the back-hall door to the terrace. I didn’t want to stop something that might explain some of our questions.

  “I had to come back,” Caroline said. “Lisa was murdered.”

  “Now, just a minute,” Pat began.

  Caroline’s voice was full of tears. “I don’t blame you for being disgusted. When I found her I panicked. I rushed up here when I did because Martin said it was a police case and I was afraid Aunt Sophia would find a way to stop me coming to you. I wasn’t sure. I only had a suspicion that Lisa was murdered. Now I know. I know she was, Mr. Abbott.”

  Pat asked, “What has come up to make you sure?”

  “That stuffed bear she carried. She slept with it. She called it Honey. She never went anywhere without it and she couldn’t sleep unless she had it in her bed. She had all kinds of stuffed animals, and Aunt Sophia was always fretting about what she called that dirty old yellow bear, but Lisa refused to have any other. If it was taken away she would cry and cry until she was given it back. There was simply no other toy that she so deeply loved. The bear’s gone. It’s not there.”

  “Did you go back into her room?”

  Caroline was silent. “Did you?” Pat asked again.

  “Yes. The Inspector locked it up. There is another key. You see, there seemed to be something missing. Suddenly I realized what it was. That bear. The bear wasn’t in her bed when I went up there and found her. Dead. It was horrible. Simply horrible. I didn’t think about the bear till after you left this last time.”

/>   “How did you happen to be the first to go to her room?” Pat asked.

  “She wanted me to tuck her in. You see, she hadn’t seen my sister and me for a while, so we were special. Rona always tucks her in but at first she was busy with dinner and …”

  “What time was this?”

  “The first time I went with Lisa upstairs was twenty minutes before eight o’clock. She was excited and obviously wasn’t going to sleep. She wanted to play awhile in bed, she said. I gave her the bear and some dolls and told her I’d be back and I went down to help Rona put dinner on the table. God forgive me. I didn’t go upstairs again for almost two hours and she was dead. The dolls were on the floor beside her bed. The bear wasn’t there, but I didn’t remember that till a few minutes ago.

  “Would you like a drink, Caroline?” Pat asked gently.

  “No. You see there was a good deal of fussing at dinnertime. Aunt Sophia didn’t want Rona to sit at the table with us. Daddy came down, so she shut up. She didn’t dare be nasty before Daddy. She simply went to the kitchen and told Rona she must serve. Rona hit the ceiling. I said to let Rona eat and I would serve. Then Audrey arrived, looking starry-eyed …”

  “What about?”

  “Don. They’d just got engaged. But we didn’t know that yet, Mr. Abbott. They’ve been seeing a lot of each other but Audrey didn’t tell us because she knows how Daddy feels about Don Quayle.”

  “Your father doesn’t like Quayle?”

  “Like him? He loathes Don. Aunt Sophia is my father’s only sister but in Denver he forbade Don to come to the house. That’s going a long way for my father. He’s the gentlest, sweetest man. But not sweet about Don Quayle. I think he knows things about Don that the rest of us don’t know. Aunt Sophia might know more, too, but to her Don is perfect no matter what. Kind of makes you sick, Mr. Abbott.”

  “How do you feel about Don, Caroline?”

  “I despise him.”

  “And Audrey will marry him?”

  Caroline said, “Audrey and I never did agree about men. She likes jerks, she honestly does, so long as they are good-looking and can show her a good time. She likes men who dress and dance well and are chummy with head waiters and so on, like Don.”

  “Was Don there for dinner tonight?”

  “He came late. Audrey waited in the living room for him. I served. Rona didn’t come to the dining room till she brought the dessert. Daddy ate hardly anything. He never does. Rona came in talking, saying he really must eat some cake. She was setting it down for Aunt Sophia to serve when she saw Don. I thought Rona would drop dead. Then Audrey announced they were engaged. Rona didn’t say a word. She backed out by way of the pantry. It was cruel of Audrey. She did it on purpose.”

  “Rona is in love with Don, Caroline.”

  “She was, at one time. Don’t you want to know about that missing bear? Only it’s not missing. We found it and locked it in the fruit room in the basement. You see, it kept bothering me, that is, my not seeing it, so finally I told Martin I was going up to that room and look around. He said I shouldn’t, but I got the key …”

  “Where was that key?”

  “There’s an extra set hanging in a hall closet on the second floor. I slipped up the back stairs and let myself into Lisa’s room. The bear was definitely missing. I wondered if Rona had taken it to her room. I went in. She’d been drinking. She was lying on her bed. She asked what I wanted and I asked about the bear. She didn’t answer, so I went back downstairs.”

  “Did you lock up Lisa’s room again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you careful not to leave fingerprints?”

  “No. Does it matter? I got Martin then and told him the bear wasn’t in Lisa’s room. The third-floor door to the incinerator is in the wall between Lisa’s room and Rona’s. Martin said we should go to the basement and check the incinerator pan. There was nothing in it, not even ashes that should be there. The yard man cleans it when he comes mornings, so there should have been ashes at least. We looked around and found what was left of the bear and some other ashes and stuff in a scuttle in the box room. We put the scuttle in the fruit room and locked it in there.”

  “Any other keys around?”

  “I think I have them all,” Caroline said, jingling them in a pocket.

  Pat called, “Coming out, Jeanie?”

  I said pronto. I put the drinks in the refrigerator. They wouldn’t be so good when all the ice melted.

  Seven

  The big Redwood House was, as I said, built on the side of our steep hill. The downhill side of the basement had an outside entrance and good-sized windows. The side toward the hill had the same height ceiling but only a couple of small windows high up for ventilation. There was a box room on this side. The fruit room was on the side where there was plenty of light and air. There was an outside door in the furnace room which led out to the foot of the outside stairs that led down from the back hall and were, in their way, a continuation of the back stairs which led to the second and third floors.

  There was another inside flight which connected a utility room behind the kitchen and the basement.

  The basement door of the incinerator was near the furnace. The shaft had doors on all floors. Pat had made note of the opening on the third floor previously. There were, incidentally, some other rooms besides Lisa’s and Rona’s on the third floor, unfinished rooms which served as an attic. The Albys had brought only a few things from Denver and the extra attic rooms were being used as storage space by the absent owners of the house.

  We walked around the drive to the basement door. Quayle’s car was still parked in the drive. There was a two-car garage at the end of the drive. The doors were closed. Caroline ran ahead, saying that the basement door was locked on the inside, and she would run up the outside stairs, let herself in, come down by way of the utility-room stairs to the basement, and open up for us.

  Patrick tried the basement door. Caroline was mistaken. It wasn’t locked. Pat snapped the switch to the right inside and very bright bulbs illuminated a big, neatly kept, properly ventilated place. He was trying the fruit-room door, which was locked, when Caroline came down.

  “How did you get in?” she asked, astonished.

  “The outside door wasn’t locked.”

  “That’s funny. Martin locked it all right. What about the fruit room?”

  That door was locked, but Caroline had the key. She opened it and turned on the lights. There were shades on the side toward the drive. They had been pulled down like those in the main part of the basement.

  The scuttle was there. Pat poked around in the contents. The bear had burnt partially, but a portion of its middle was intact and moist from saliva. Its eyes were missing. There was a scattering of what looked like and might be white ashes sticking in the saliva. Patrick looked around for a box large enough, found one in the box room, and put the scuttle and its contents in the box. He went out into the drive again, leaving me with Caroline.

  “Where is he going?” she asked.

  “I haven’t the faintest,” I said. “Are you sure that basement door was locked?”

  “Martin may have been mistaken. It’s a Yale lock and should have caught when the door was closed. Maybe it wasn’t fixed to catch. Are you sure you don’t know where your husband took that scuttle?”

  I was pretty sure I did know. He was undoubtedly taking it to Sam Bradish, who would hand it over to the police lab. I didn’t know what might be found, maybe nothing, but it certainly was peculiar that somebody had tried to destroy that stuffed bear, and had failed because, probably, the heat at that time of night in the incinerator hadn’t been sufficient to burn the animal. It would burn slowly, anyway. It was stuffed with thick unventilated cotton.

  “Who would try to burn it, Caroline?”

  She said, “Aunt Sophia, probably. She was always griping about it and if she saw it, all gooey like that, she would pop it straight into the incinerator.”

  “Did she go upstairs aft
er you found Lisa dead?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. What should we do now, Jean?”

  “You want to come back to my house?”

  She shook her dark head. “No. Let’s wait in the kitchen. Martin is keeping an eye on Daddy. He’s worried about his heart and of course I am, too. Daddy hasn’t slept since the police came in the second time and woke him. He doesn’t want any more sedatives, he said. Heart patients, at least Daddy, sit propped against two or three pillows when in bed, and he and Martin have been talking medical talk to each other, which I suppose won’t hurt him.”

  Patrick had turned off the fruit-room lights and locked the door. There was a switch at the top of the utility-room stairs which turned off the main basement lights. The kitchen was a big old-fashioned one that I longed to have the likes of, and never would, because it meant just that many more steps. I asked if we might sit here. Caroline brought me coffee and said she would just run up and have a word with Martin about her father and then come back. She left by a door which I knew opened into the back stairs.

  There was an old-fashioned swinging door into the butler’s pantry and I’d been there alone about two minutes when somebody came into the pantry.

  Aunt Sophia spoke, and not in her darling-Donnie voice.

  “Now see here, Don, you’ve got to talk Audrey into an elopement. At once. There is no time to lose.”

  Don’s rich male voice was petulant.

  “Have a heart, Sophia. For God’s sake.”

  “She’s crazy about you, Don. And with that woman here …”

  “That woman, as you call Rona, means nothing to me. Strictly nothing.”

  “You mean plenty to her and you know it. I closed my eyes to your affair with her for years in Denver. I knew you wouldn’t stoop to marrying a woman of that class. But now things are different. You have your chance to marry Audrey and have enough money to set you up in a respectable business. You’re thirty-five. Not thirty-three, as we pretend. Such luck is not likely to come your way again, Don.”

  “You came out here to head off Rona, didn’t you, Sophia?”

  “I did indeed. She didn’t know you were here. Neither did your Uncle William. He didn’t know about your going with Audrey till tonight. He’ll put his foot down. Dr. William Alby speaks softly but when he makes up his mind about something he thinks isn’t what he calls right, he acts. He doesn’t like you, Don.”