Chapter 7
Judy drew back between the bookshelves and huddled, fascinated and repelled by the scene she'd witnessed and the revelations about her mother. She felt too unnerved to risk moving; she'd stumble against the books and give herself away for sure. But Edith and Lowell were already stirring. They were soon dressed and out of the room.
Judy waited, wandering around the library and looking at book titles while she waited. The worst thing she could do, she decided, was to come out of the room soon enough to let them suspect she'd heard or seen them. It hadn't made an unpleasant office for Oliver; the north wall had high, pleasant windows and there were only the two doors, the one from the service hall she'd come though and a larger one opening onto the main hallway. The books occupied perhaps half the floor space with a couch, two simple armchairs and the desk and swivel chair providing an uncluttered air in the other half. In the end opposite the main door she found built-in cupboards that were partially filled with miscellaneous types of office supplies.
When she judged she'd allowed enough time, she started toward the side door. But as she reached for the handle a scraping noise arrested her attention. She hesitated, listening. The sound came again and she retraced her steps to investigate. Before she reached the point where she'd crouched while spying on Lowell and Edith, there were quick footsteps and Mike passed the aisle. He walked purposefully toward the main door, disappearing from her view as rapidly as he'd entered it, and by the time she could get to the end of the shelves he was going into the main hall and pulling the door shut behind him.
She stared, shaken. Under his arm, he'd carried the dilapidated strong box she'd last seen in Colleen's bedroom. That fact numbed her to the realization that slowly swelled until it drove out every other thought-that he'd been hidden somewhere in the library the whole time she'd been there, herself.
How? she asked herself. How could I possibly miss seeing him?
After all, Mike was no small man. He was bigger even than Cal, and Cal was a real brute! With his size and his splendid physique and obvious, cat-like quickness and grace, Mike could have played some professional sport-pro football, for example-she'd thought before. But he couldn't have hidden that bulk in the library the whole time she was prowling around it. She stood motionless and stared at the cupbroad-lined wall at the end of the room. That's how! She gasped and shivered. That's how! And that's how come he's got Colleen's strongbox! Good God! That's how come Colleen's door could be bolted from the inside and I could hear a door open and close! She was murdered! A secret passage from here to her room.
She opened the first cupboard and gazed helplessly into it. There was nothing to suggest it could possibly conceal an entrance. And if it had, a person Mike's size could certainly not squeeze between its shelves. Of course, there are the two at the end without shelves, she thought. That's where a door would be. And then, in a rush of horror, she realized, It's Mike! Mike knows the passage and he's the one who's stolen the strongbox! So it's Mike who killed her, not Edith! Oh, God, suppose he catches me here when he finishes with the box and wants to put it back!
She stumbled in her haste to get out of the trap she'd put herself into. She was so frightened she scrambled halfway to the proper aisle on all fours before she could regain her feet. But she reached the side door and slipped to the relative safety of the service hall without Mike's having returned.
She crept up the back stairs-the "murder stairs" she'd come to think of them-and into her own cubicle. A quick peek assured her Sarah was asleep, so she closed the interconnecting door and pulled her only chair to her window. Sitting there quietly staring down into the woods where she'd walked with Lowell, she tried to sort out the confusing elements of the situation that had turned into such a ghastly nightmare for her.
Colleen's suspicions had seemed thoroughly sound. Edith had hated Judy's Irish mother from the beginning. An erotically oriented girl of twelve when her mother had married Oliver and brought her and Lowell into this house-obsessed with the idea of sexual relations with him, by her own admission-Edith had fiercely resented the way the twenty-two-year-old housekeeper had undertaken Lowell's sexual education. She'd probably never outgrown a sense of being inferior in experience and second in her brother's sensual regard. With the added incentive of Oliver's curious will and the fact that Colleen was Oliver's illegitimate daughter, Edith had clear motive for wanting Colleen dead.
Mike's possible implication hadn't even entered Judy's mind. He was so disagreeable it was easy to picture him as a potential murderer, but there hadn't seemed any strong motive. He stood to gain nothing through Oliver's will by her death; her share would go to Lowell and Edith. And nobody had suggested he'd had any other reason to want her dead. Except-and here Judy hesitated-except the emphasis both Colleen and Sarah had placed on the Garlock name. The name was a legendary one in the history of the nation, Judy had to admit. It had almost the same connotation to the average child in terms of integrity and self-sacrifice as Washington's. But that hadn't struck Judy as grounds for murder. With the evidence she'd seen today, she had to reassess the possibilities. To a person who bore the name, maybe its preservation would be that important. Maybe it would be worth a killing to conceal the fact a Garlock had fathered an illegitimate child.
Or maybe, she thought at last, there's something buried in the argument that made Mike leave Garlock Heights. One thing sure-I'm going to find that secret passage!
Edith wanted to sit with her mother that night after dinner. She'd be with her an hour or two, she told Judy. No need for anybody else to stay around.
Judy took advantage of the situation to search for an entrance to the secret passage. She was squeamish about searching Colleen's room with Edith and Sarah right next door-and she'd have to enter through Sarah's room if she did-so she went to the library. She remembered to take a flashlight, just in case she did find the door she was looking for.
In the library, she went immediately to the two cupboards without shelves. Even the fluorescent lighting in the room wasn't good enough to illuminate the rear corners of those two closets, and she had to rely on her flashlight from the beginning. She didn't expect to find a control easily, and she was right. She tugged and twisted every hood and peg that projected into either enclosure without results. When even poking at minor irregularities in the surfaces failed to produce any kind of movement, she wondered if she'd jumped to a rash conclusion. She shone the beam of her light on the rear walls and examined them minutely for the kind of cracks she thought would show the edges of a door. But the only crack she could find was the one where the quarter-round molding met the rear panel.
In the corner cupboard, her search was somewhat hampered by a stack of long storage tubes that leaned in a corner. The other cupboard, however, was empty, its hanger rod showing it had been designed for storage of coats or other types of clothing. She'd returned to it, severely discouraged, when she heard the main door open. There was a muffled exclamation and the room was plunged into darkness. Whoever had come in, however, didn't leave. Instead, Judy saw brief flashes of light, as if a flashlight were being turned on for very short intervals. For a time the intruder seemed to stay near the desk; she heard drawers being opened and their contents being jumbled. She considered slipping along the bookcase that shielded her to where she could see who was there. But the drawers snapped closed and footsteps warned her the unknown searcher was coming toward the cupboards.
In panic, she backed into the coat closet, pulling its door shut behind her. One foot caught on the other and she felt herself losing her balance. With a wild, silent prayer, she snatched at the hanger rod and hung on. For a moment she twisted, not daring to drop the flashlight so she could steady herself with her other hand. And she heard a low grating sound at her back.
She gasped and switched on the beam of her flashlight for an instant to see the passage she'd been looking for. She stumbled into it at once; there was no other hope for avoiding discovery if the intruder should open that cupboard. Inside, slightly above head level, she saw a long lever projecting from the wall and surmised it must activate the door. She wrenched at it and the rear panel of the closet slid smoothly into place.
In contrast to the fine workmanship that had made it so difficult to find the door, little case had been taken on the construction of the passage, itself. It consisted merely of the space between two walls (where one would otherwise have sufficed) and she could reach from one end to the other with her outstretched arms. A crude ladder had been installed by nailing crosspieces between two of the studs in the wall. Awkwardly, the flashlight hindering her and making her feel insecure, she began to climb.
Eight crosspieces up, rough planking had been laid across the shaft, their ends resting on what looked like scrap two-by-fours. The two-by-fours were nailed to studding, half the nails having bent and been pounded against the wood before they could have penetrated to the studs. Judy put her flashlight on the unfinished "floor" and edged her way through the opening, letting herself back sit on the edge of the platform. She shook her head at the fact the planking hadn't even be secured by nailing. Terrified she'd displace the boards and plummet to the floor below, she twisted gingerly until she could rise to her feet.
As she bent to retrieve the flashlight her face thrust directly into a thick, stiff mass of cobweb. She held her breath to suppress a scream of distaste and panic. But when she had the light in her hand and had scraped away the clinging web, she couldn't locate the spider that had spun it.
She heard the noise of an opening door faintly from below; the intruder had opened the closet. Mike! she thought. God! It's Mike and he's going to come up here!
She found a control lever like the one at the bottom immediately. Jerking down accomplished nothing, but by pushing upward she made a panel slide open and could step into Colleen's closet. She pushed her way through the lovely garments she'd admired earlier and reached up hopefully to twist at the clothes rod. To her immense relief, the back of the closet closed smoothly, leaving no trace of an opening.
Still using her flashlight-guarding the beam to prevent its creating a flicker at the bottom of the door to Sarah's room-she looked for the strongbox. It wouldn't be fair to convict Mike while there was the faintest possibility there were two boxes that looked alike. She wasn't surprised to find the box truly missing; she'd have been surprised if it had been there.
With nothing else to do and conscious of the danger of being heard by Edith or Sarah, Judy crouched beside her dead mother's bed to wait until she could be sure Mike wasn't going to come up through the passage. When a half hour had gone without his appearing, she steeled herself to the return trip to the library. She found it dark and empty; whoever had been there was gone.
The sheriff and the coroner arrived together the next day, cursing the difficult road that isolated Garlock Heights and grumbling over the necessity for the trip.
"Don't know why suicides always have to make it tough," the coroner remarked. "Either make such a bloody mess of things it makes a man sick, or pick some God-awful inaccessible place for it."
His examination had established drowning as the cause of death, then. He confirmed that and added there had been no evidence of other injury. "Nobody beat her up first," was the way he put it.
Still, the law demanded certain formalities, and the two men went through them in a perfunctory manner. In view of their obvious lack of interest in the case and their settled conviction that Colleen had taken her own life, Judy couldn't bring herself to approach either of them with her version of the coffee poisoning or to show them the secret passage and accuse Mike. They were both too matter-of-fact and bored with the case to encourage speculation or confidences.
When they'd left, Sarah suggested Judy consider moving into Colleen's apartment. "Far more homey and comfortable, dear. Your room and the one I'm in were intended as sick rooms." She smiled briefly. "That was in the days when the doctor had to come seventy miles by buggy and things like measles and scarlet fever and God knows what else were awful things to have going through a household. Think about it, child. In a way it would be a gesture Colleen would appreciate."
Judy finally did consent to the move, despite the presence of the passage. She'd simply have to find a way to prevent its use. She wasn't seriously troubled, though; there wasn't any reason to think anybody was concerned about her.
But her confidence was badly shaken the first day after she'd completed the simple move. Sarah had strangely come to require far less companionship. She repeatedly shooed Judy out, maintaining a young girl ought to be moving about more and taking an interest in what was going on around her. And Judy had gravitated toward the library, where she spent increasing amounts of her time. In contrast to her first day in that room, when she'd begun to think it might be a main traffic pattern, she found she was seldom disturbed. Hardly anyone was interested in going into the room.
So the day after her move, Judy opened the back of her closet and lifted the planking of the makeshift platform into the room, where she stacked it under her bed. She smiled at herself for the precaution; she wasn't likely to be troubled by visitors. And then, closing the secret door, she left the apartment and went to the library. She was engrossed in one of the journals Oliver had kept when somebody came in.
"Well! Didn't expect to see anybody in here!" It was Mike. He sounded mildly surprised, but no more.
Judy glanced up absently. "Hmm. I come in here when I have the chance. It's quiet."
"Deserted," remarked Mike, correcting her. He wandered to the desk and dropped into the swivel chair. Opening the top center drawer, he began putting its contents in order.
Judy returned to her reading. Oliver's bold scrawl was describing the skeletal essentials of a transaction involving mining interests in Central America. Dry and terse, his prose sketched an absorbing picture of the translation of one kind of financial empire into another. Without dramatics or emphasis, his crisp account managed to convey a sense of his dedication and drive that hadn't come through to her in the stories the others had told her.
"Lot more comfortable in Colleen's apartment?" remarked Mike as if to avoid seeming to ignore her.
"Mmm-hmm." She continued to read.
"Never did get her stuff moved out. Bother you?"
"I want it there."
At that moment, she read a short sentence in the journal that noted the fact one of Oliver's associates had somehow gotten away with a substantial sum of money Oliver should have had. For the first time, she detected a note of heat in Oliver's style.
Mike's next comment was unfortunately timed. "You'd think a woman would have more after twenty-five years."
Without looking up, Judy snapped at him. "Might have, if people left it where it belonged!"
"Huh?"
"That box-you could put it back." She gasped, sick with horror at what she'd said. She raised her head to stare into Mike's startled eyes.
For a time they studied each other, he with an expression of speculative concern and she with growing terror. At length Mike rose, still having said nothing, and crossed to the main door. He shot the bolt, then strode rapidly to the side door, where he repeated the ominous procedure. Judy dropped the journal and sprang to her feet, certain he intended to silence her then and there. She raced to the windows, only to discover the bars that covered them were permanently fixed, rather than being removable gratings as she'd expected. She whirled, pressing backward against the metal as Mike approached her.
He studied her again, his face looking cold and merciless. "Sit down." It was a simple, uncompromising order.