The Collection (117 page)

I shivered a little, and wished I hadn't asked him.

Then, ahead of us, there were lights.

Charlie said, “Take the left turn here. You might as well
drive right up to the garage.”

I turned left, around the big dome on the north end of the
building. Apparently, someone had heard us coming or seen our headlights, for
the garage doors were opening.

I said, “You know the place, Charlie?”

“Know it?” His voice sounded surprised. “Hell, Bill, I
designed it.”

The Thud of Murder

Annabel was more beautiful than I had remembered her. I
wanted to put my arms around her then and there, despite the presence---in the
hallway with us---of Charlie Lightfoot and a morose-looking man in overalls,
who'd let me in the garage and then led us into the main building.

But I had a hunch I wouldn't get away with it, besides I was
standing in the middle of a puddle of water and was as wet as though I'd been
swimming instead of driving.

Annabel looked fresh and cool and dry in a white smock. She
said, “You should have waited in Scardale, Bill. I'm surprised you made it.
Hello, Charlie.”

Charlie said, “Hi, Annabel. I guess Bill's in safe hands
now, so I'm going to borrow some dry clothes. See you later.”

He left us, managing somehow to walk as silently as a shadow
despite the heavy, wet shoes he was wearing.

Annabel turned to the man in overalls. “Otto, will you take
Mr. Wunderly to his room?”

He nodded and started off, and I after him. But Annabel
said, “Just a minute, Bill. Here's Mr. Fillmore.”

A tall, saturnine man who had just come in one of the doorways
held out his hand. “Glad to know you, Wunderly. Annabel's been talking about
you a lot. I'm sure you're just the man we need.”

I said, “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” I guess I was thanking him
mostly for telling me that Annabel had talked a lot about me.

I remembered, now, having heard of him. Fergus Fillmore, the
lunar authority.

A minute later I followed the janitor up a flight of stairs
and was shown to the room which was henceforth to be mine. I lost no time
getting rid of my wet clothes and into dry ones. Then I hurried back
downstairs.

A bridge game was in progress in the living room. Annabel
and Fergus Fillmore were partners. Their opponents were a handsome young man
and a rather serious-looking young woman who wore shell-rimmed glasses.

Annabel introduced them.

“Zoe, this is Mr. Wunderly. Bill, Miss
Fillmore. . . . And Eric Andressen. He's an assistant, as I am.”

Andressen grinned. “This is an experiment, Wunderly. Annabel
thinks she can apply Planck's constant
h
to a tenace finesse.”

There was a cheerful crackling fire in the fireplace. I
stood with my back to it, behind Annabel's chair. But I didn't watch the play
of the hand; I was too interested in studying the people I had just met.

Eric Andressen had a young, eager face and was darkly handsome.
He could not have been more than a few years out of college. Something in his
voice---although his English was perfect---made me think that college had been
across the pond. Scandinavian, probably, as his name would indicate.

Zoe Fillmore, playing opposite Andressen, looked quite a bit
like her father. She was attractive without being pretty. She seemed much less
interested in the game than the others.

She caught me looking at her and smiled. “Would you care to
take my hand after this deal, Mr. Wunderly? I'm awfully poor at cards. I don't
know why they make me play.”

While I was trying to decide whether to accept her offer, a
man I had not yet met came into the room. He said, “You were right, Fillmore. I
blink-miked that corner of the plates again and---”

Fergus Fillmore interrupted him. “You found it, then? Well,
never mind the details. Paul, this is Bill Wunderly, our new office man.
Wunderly, Paul Bailey, our other assistant.”

Bailey shook hands. “Glad to know you, Wunderly. I've heard
a lot about you from Annabel. If you're as good as she says you are---”

Annabel looked flustered. She said, “Bill, this sounds like
a conspiracy. Really, I haven't talked about you quite as much as these people
would lead you to think.”

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.

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---”

“Please, Mr. Hill.” Annabel's voice was sharp and I noticed
she addressed him by his last name this time, not his first. “If it was murder,
neither Paul nor Zoe could have done it. They were both in this room, right
here, when she died. We all heard her fall.”

“Ah---then the scene of the crime was upstairs? And right
over this room. Let's see---of course. She was in Bailey's room, waiting for
him.”

“Apparently. Paul had been sent to check plates on the
blink-mike and he was passing through here on his way to his room when---when
it happened. If you'll both pardon me, I think I'd better go tell the
housekeeper about it. She should know right away.”

Hill and I both nodded. Hill said, “I'd like to talk to you,
Wunderly. Come on up to my room and have a drink.

“This way---” He was taking my acceptance for granted, so I
could do nothing but follow.

Hill's room was just like the one that had been assigned to
me, save that one entire side of it was made up of shelves of books. While he
hunted for the bottle and glasses, I strolled to the shelves and looked them
over. The books were in haphazard order and they concerned, as far as I could
see, only three subjects; one of which didn't fit at all with the other two.
Astronomy, mathematics---and criminology.

When I turned around, Hill had poured drinks for us. He
waved me to a chair, saying:

“And now you will tell me about the murder.” He listened
closely, interrupting several times with pertinent questions.

When I had finished, he chuckled. “You are a close observer,
Wunderly. If I am to solve this case, I shall let you be my Watson.”

“Or your Archie?”