Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat (2 page)

A human being is a frail vessel.

And the juggernaut of the storm had snuffed out a human life in its passing, impersonally and implacably.

Or so it would seem.

But there had been one dissenting opinion. His eyes squeezed shut.

No—
it’s not possible! It can’t be an accident! Please listen to me—he was murdered!

*

He looked down, his eyes slipping out of focus, his consciousness slipping back into memory.

Directly below him to the north of the house was a public beach access. A farseeing Oregon governor had recognized a truth many years ago: the beaches belong to all the people. They were designated public property, and the state maintained these accesses at regular intervals along the coast.

This one was only a small paved area large enough to park three or four cars and provide easy pedestrian passage to the beach.

An empty space now, the pavement wet and oily, streaked with fingers of sand encroaching from the beach. A space as bleak and lonely as a desert expanse for all its small dimensions; a loneliness created by the long-drawn sighs of the wind, the dull, vague light, and the gray mist moving like smoke, gathering the glow of the street lamp in a blue aureole.

This small paved area had provided a stage for the last act of a tragedy only a few hours ago, and he knew he would never again see it as anything else.

Conan had been awake when the curtain went up; he seldom turned off his lights before 2:00 A.M. The arrival of the storm front at midnight had distracted him, but only briefly, from his labored efforts at translating a century-old book. He’d been so engrossed, he hadn’t even heard the siren until it was quite close.

The siren. 1:35 A.M.

Even in memory that sound sent a chill along his skin, and last night, when the siren finally separated itself from the storm sounds, he’d felt the same chill. He’d put his book aside, thrown back the covers, and paused only long enough to switch off the reading light before coming to this window.

There had been more sirens, but all of them sank into silence by the time he reached the window, and this small paved area had been crowded with an ambulance and two police cars, one state, the other local. A Dantean scene in the black heart of the storm, lit by headlights, spotlights, flashlights; white shafts glittering with rain. The red emergency lights spun, pulsing reflections wavering and angling down the windows with the wash of rain. Hooded figures, bent against the onslaughts of wind and rain, moved in and out of the light shafts.

Conan had observed that scene from the vantage point of his bedroom, making no move to join the cluster of curious onlookers already accumulating on the periphery of the stage—a silent chorus. He waited for the drama to resolve itself, and it did within the next few minutes.

A pair of headlights came out of the darkness, out of the sea itself, it would seem. That apparent impossibility hadn’t disturbed him; in this context it seemed reasonable. And there was a reasonable explanation. The tide was going out, and the vehicle was making its way along the beach.

The Beach Patrol jeep.

The jeep lurched through the sand on its oversize tires, was caught in the headlights of the cars at the access, and finally came to a halt beside the ambulance.

Conan was satisfied, even then, to watch the scene from a distance, but he changed his mind a moment later. A figure emerged from one of the police cars; the one emblazoned with the shield of the Holliday Beach chief of police. He’d been only mildly annoyed as he watched Harvey Rose make his way around to the passenger side. It was more than the wind that made Chief Rose so unsteady.

Conan changed his mind when Rose opened the car door, and a tall, slender woman stepped out. She was bareheaded, her gray hair slipping from its upswept corona, windblown tendrils streaming unnoticed across her distraught features.

Elinor Jeffries.

This gave the entire scene substance; brought it into jarring, sharp focus. Conan grabbed his robe, pulling it on as he ran out of his bedroom and along the balcony to the staircase.

But he didn’t have an opportunity to talk to Nel Jeffries. There was too much confusion, and in the end he’d been too stunned to react before the scene dissolved and Nel disappeared with Chief Rose and the ambulance and the police cars.

He remembered that the front door had jerked out of his hand as he opened it. It was at the north end of the house facing the access, and in the lee of the wind, but some wayward gust pulled it away, and he met a solid wall of icy rain.

He saw Elinor Jeffries near the Beach Patrol jeep, and began working his way through the crowd toward her. Two men were maneuvering a laden stretcher out of the jeep. The occupant of that stretcher was shrouded with a blanket.

But Harvey Rose was bending, turning the blanket back, looking up at Elinor Jeffries, and Conan caught a glimpse of the man on the stretcher before Rose covered the head again.

He recognized him. The victim.

Captain Harold Jeffries, U.S.N., Ret.

A man who had survived thirty years of active duty—most of it at sea—before his retirement.

Conan’s next thought had been for Nel. The shock of seeing her husband…

But Elinor Jeffries needed no comforting then. She was pleading, but not for comfort.

His memory was focused almost entirely on her face and on her voice. Then, as now, the words were clear, etched indelibly. Her hands locked on Chief Rose’s arm, her features taut, intense, Rose making a befuddled effort to calm her.

She wouldn’t be calmed. And if her voice was strained with shock, it still carried a solid conviction as chilling as the beating wind and rain.

“…it’s not possible! It can’t be an accident. He was murdered! Please listen to me—he was
murdered
!”

*

Conan turned away from the window and went back to the bedside table to dispose of his cigarette. The gray morning light, devoid of warmth, made even this room seem bleak and empty.

Murder.

Most foul, as the Bard would have it. It was primarily that word that had deprived him of his sleep last night, not Harold Jeffries’ death in itself.

He couldn’t regard the death as a personal loss; Jeffries had never been a close friend. Conan hadn’t even particularly liked the Captain; he’d always cared a great deal more for Nel than her taciturn husband.

But he couldn’t dismiss the memory of that word on Nel’s lips.

He lit another cigarette and wandered through the gray shadows back to the window, his eyes drawn inexorably to the beach access.

Shock. Hysteria. Elinor Jeffries had just seen her husband’s drowned body when she spoke the “murder.”

Yet he knew Nel well enough to call her a friend, and he found hysteria an inconclusive explanation. The Jeffries’ marriage wasn’t exactly one of deep passion, and Nel wasn’t prone to uncontrolled emotional outbursts.

And why would she react in that particular way? Why throw out a word like “murder”?

Conan, son, you’re muddlin’ yourself…

So Henry Flagg would have dismissed these fruitless speculations.

…you’re just like your mother, the Lord rest her soul. Always rattlin’ up spooks.

But Henry Flagg had been a man with his feet planted firmly on the ground, and hidden somewhere in the recesses of his land-rooted psyche was the conviction that only birds were meant to fly.

And Conan Flagg had been handed, in a period of less than twenty-four hours, two conundrums; two enigmas. It was enough to make him muddle himself.

He took a long drag on his cigarette, letting the smoke veil around his head, his dark eyes narrowing as he gazed down through the less tangible veils of mist beyond the window.

Nel’s reaction might be explained as emotional strain. But the man in the blue Chevrolet—that enigma couldn’t be explained away so easily.

Major James Mills, Army Intelligence, Retired.

At least, he was retired from G-2.

Conan smiled in retrospect, remembering the jarring shock of recognizing that bland, nondescript, eternally middle-aged face yesterday evening. It had been ten years since he’d last seen James Mills, and half a world away. Berlin.

He found his own reactions vaguely amusing. In spite of the shock, he’d walked past Mills without a word or a hint of recognition. Reflex. He’d taken his cue automatically from the Major; from that disinterested gaze focused across the street.

It hadn’t occurred to him until later that what he interpreted as a no-recognition signal might simply have been an attempt on Mills’s part to avoid being recognized.

He turned his gaze outward to the headland that loomed to the south; a shadow now, blued with a dense growth of hemlock and jack pine. Jefferson Heights, the natives had patriotically, if unimaginatively, named it. He watched the waves breaking in slow, monumental explosions along the black cliffs at the point of the headland, but he found it impossible to enjoy this vista now, or even to focus his thoughts on it.

Finally, he turned away from the window and walked back to the bedside table, wondering if he’d ever have any answers to the questions Major James Mills called up by his very presence, or to the questions Nel Jeffries called up with the word “murder.” It was highly unlikely, and he had other, more mundane problems to occupy his mind.

The rain was beginning again, rattling against the glass and thrumming on the roof. He heard that sound with a little dread. The roof at the bookshop would probably be leaking by now. He should get to the shop early to help Miss Dobie with the buckets and mopping.

And this was Saturday. His housekeeper, Mrs. Early, was due at ten, and he intended to be gone before she arrived. He wasn’t equal to a rehash of Captain Jeffries’ death as interpreted by the local grapevine.

He switched on the reading light and picked up a book from the table. It was an old, extremely rare, and exquisitely beautiful book entitled
L’Histoire de la Peinture Italienne
. His fingers moved gently, with almost covetous pleasure, across the embossed leather cover. Then he put the book on the bed and took an open notebook from the table, frowning as he read his own scrawling handwriting.

Last night, he’d headed the page: “L’Hist. de la P. It.—Columbia U. Lib. Re: Consultation project: Fabrizi. (Unsigned triptych; nativity).” Under this, in parentheses, was written: “For H. R. Bishop, Montgomery, Alabama.”

The rest of the page was blank except for one short entry: “pp. 373-74. Ref. to painter ‘Fabrizio’—school of Giotto. Alterpiece (?) Pitti, Florence. Possible alternative spelling of…” The entry ended abruptly there.

He’d ceased writing when he heard the mourning wail of the sirens.

Conan dropped the notebook on the table and stood for a moment with his hands on his hips. Concentrating on mundane problems would be difficult today.

Then he turned, stripping off his robe as he walked to the bathroom, making a mental note to call Nel Jeffries later in the day.

Through the automatic process of showering, shaving, and dressing, he was still preoccupied, his thoughts turning in a repetitive fugue whose major themes were Harold Jeffries and Major James Mills. It wasn’t until he stopped to pick up the
Histoire
before leaving the bedroom that he took note of the particular combination of slacks and heavy turtleneck sweater he’d chosen.

He’d dressed himself entirely in black.

And perhaps it was the only appropriate color for the day.

The chime of the doorbell stopped him before he reached the bedroom door. He went to the high, narrow windows on the north wall and saw the town’s one-cab taxi fleet retreating up Front Street.

He was only annoyed as the chime sounded again. He turned and crossed the room with long strides, then traversed the balcony and descended the spiral staircase into the living room, his pace quickening as he hurried down the screened passage under the balcony to the front door.

His annoyance was mounting as the chime rang again. He didn’t even take time to check the view-hole before he opened the door, and he was entirely unprepared for what he saw.

His unexpected visitor was Elinor Jeffries.

CHAPTER 3

Conan had always maintained that Elinor Jeffries was the most beautiful woman in Holliday Beach.

Hers wasn’t the self-conscious beauty of youth, although he doubted she’d ever been less than beautiful. If he’d been asked, he couldn’t have guessed her age; with Nel, age seemed irrelevant. And almost inevitably in her presence, such old-fashioned adjectives as “gracious” and “well-bred” came to mind.

She was tall and slender, with fine-boned features, and steel-gray hair worn in a style almost reminiscent of Gibson. She had a smile to light a whole room, and gray eyes that always had a hint of laughter in them. But this morning, there was no life in her eyes, although she was as impeccably groomed, her bearing as graceful as ever.

“Nel, come in. Please.” He recovered himself finally, and stepped back from the door.

She smiled faintly, turning as he closed the door behind her.

“I’m sorry to burst in on you without warning, Conan. I’d have called, but—”

“I know; my phone’s unlisted. And I need no warnings from you, Nel. You know that. May I take your coat?”

“No, thank you. I won’t be staying long.”

He hesitated, still a little off balance, then led her down the entry hall. At the kitchen door, he stopped.

“Go on into the living room. I’ll put some coffee on.”

“Oh, you needn’t go to the trouble for me.” She stepped down into the living room and paused by the piano, her eyes moving around the room distractedly.

After a moment, he nodded and followed her, stopping to switch on the lights. But the high ceiling and the dark, paneled walls seemed to absorb the light, and the room, which usually seemed so spacious and warm, was bleak and dark. He went to the windows that made up the west wall and started to pull the drapes, then hesitated and glanced at Nel. It occurred to him that she might not enjoy this particular view this morning.

But she smiled at him and walked over to the two Barcelona chairs by the windows.