Inspector Queen’s Own Case (26 page)

“I'd very much like to, but there are reasons why I can't. Do you mind if I call you Sadie?”

“Not you I don't,” Mrs. Smith said grimly.

“Do you remember that Friday you came to do the wash, Sadie? The morning after little Michael was found dead?”

“I surely do.”

“Did you run across one of those batiste pillowslips with the delicate lace that day—a slip that was very dirty? In fact, that had the print of a man's dirty hand on it?”

Sadie Smith cocked an eye at her. “That's what the detectives kept asking me that day.”

“Oh, they did? Did anyone else ask you about it? I mean … people of the household?”

“Mrs. Lenihan mentioned it to me first thing I set foot in the house. Told me about the child, and said the policemen were turning the house inside out looking for a dirty pillowslip like that. I told her I'd keep an eye out for it, and I did.”

“Anyone mention the pillowslip to you besides Mrs. Lenihan and the detectives?”

“No.”

“I take it you never found it.”

“That's right. Picked that wash over a dozen times, but it just wasn't there. There's the kittle!” The stout woman jumped up and began bustling about.

“Were there
any
pillowslips in the wash that day?” Jessie persisted.

“Nary one.”

“Not one?” Jessie frowned. “That's queer.”

“I thought so, too. You take sugar and cream, Miss Sherwood?”

“Neither, thanks,” Jessie said absently. “No pillowslips at all …”

“Well, you're going to taste some of these sweet buns I just got from the bakery, or I'll take it real unfriendly of you. But about those pillowslips. First thing I thought was that snippety upstairs maid of theirs had stuffed too big a bundle into one of the laundry chutes. She'd done it a couple times, and the laundry'd got stuck, and we had to go fishing for it in the chute with a plumber's snake they have in the basement.”

A stopped-up chute!

“Do you suppose that's what could have happened to the pillowslip they were looking for, Sadie?” Jessie asked excitedly. “A chute already stopped up, and the slip just didn't go all the way down?”

Mrs. Smith shook her head. “Wasn't no stopped-up chute. I took some clothespins and dropped one down each chute that morning to see if they was clear, and they was. Then I remembered. Friday mornings was the upstairs maid's day to strip the beds and change linen, and the way things was in the house that morning she just didn't get to do it. You eat one of those buns, Miss Sherwood.”

“Delicious,” Jessie said, munching. “You checked
all
the chutes, Sadie? The one in the nursery, too?”

“Well, not the nursery one, no. First place, they wouldn't let me in there. Second place, never was any stopping-up trouble in the nursery chute, 'cause
you
always slid the wash down from that room.”

Could that be it? Jessie thought hungrily.

But she had been the only one who used the nursery chute. She always stripped and remade the baby's crib herself. And she had always been automatically careful to throw one piece down the chute at a time, even though the sheets were only crib size.

Jessie sipped her tea hopelessly.

“—though there was that trouble with the nursery chute when they was installing it,” the laundress was saying. “I'd forgot about that. Maybe 'cause nothing ever happened.”

“What?” Jessie looked up. “What did you say, Sadie?”

“When they was installing it. Before you came to work there, Miss Sherwood. Wasn't no nursery or room off it—the one you slept in—till just before Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey adopted the baby. That all used to be an upstairs sitting room. They had it made over into two rooms for the baby and a nurse, and that was when they installed the chute in the nursery. Hadn't been one there before.”

“But you said something about some trouble with the nursery chute during installation——”

“And it only just come to mind,” Mrs. Smith nodded. “Mr. Humffrey was fit to be hogtied. Seems after the chute was put in and all, and the man was testing it, throwing things down it, he found out there was a defect in it—it had a little piece of metal or something sticking out some place down the chute—and every once in a while something would catch on it. The man poked some kind of tool down in and felt around till he found the snag, and sort of sawed away at it. I guess he smoothed it down, 'cause you never had nothing stick in that chute, Miss Sherwood, did you?”

No, Jessie thought, I never did.

But suppose that was just luck!

Suppose the night Alton Humffrey dropped the damning pillowslip down that chute …
suppose that time it caught on what was left of the snag?

So Sadie Smith hadn't found the slip, and Alton Humffrey thought Sadie Smith
had
found it and washed it out, and all the time it was stuck in the nursery chute …
and it was still there
.

Jessie hung up, collected her coins, and sat in the telephone booth nibbling her nails. Richard's phone in New York didn't answer, so he must be out after Henry Cullum. Taugus police headquarters said that Chief Pearl had left for the night, and there had been no answer at the Pearls' house—they must have gone visiting, or out to dinner and a movie.

Jessie sat there, frustrated.

I've
got
to know, she thought. And not tomorrow, but tonight.

Suddenly she thought, I can do it myself.

She accepted the thought instantly, and without attempting to think through the difficulties. If I think about it, she told herself, I won't do it. So I won't think about it.

She left the drugstore, got into her coupé, and set out for Taugus.

The electrified ship's lantern over the gatehouse looked lost against the black bulk of Nair Island.

Jessie drove across the causeway slowly. Did they maintain guards after the season? If they did, she was sunk. The closer she got to the gatehouse the more foolhardy the project became.

A burly figure in a uniform stepped out of the gatehouse and held up his hand.

And the gate was
down
.

So much for private enterprise, Jessie thought.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “It's Miss Sherwood.”

Charlie Peterson!

“Why, Mr. Peterson,” Jessie said warmly. “What are you doing here? I thought you'd quit. At least you said you were going to.”

“Well, you know how it is,” the big guard said. “It ain't such a bad job, especially after the summer.”

“And when policemen aren't driving you crazy,” Jessie smiled. What can I say to him? she thought.

“That's a fact.” The guard planted his elbow on the edge of her window. “How you been, Miss Sherwood?”

“Just fine. And you?”
I'll have to think of a plausible excuse. But what?

“No complaints. Say, I never expected to see you again.” Peterson looked at her in the oddest way, and Jessie thought, Here it comes. “What brings you to the Island?”

Jessie wet her lips. “Well …”

He pushed his big face close to hers, exhaling an aroma of bourbon. “It wouldn't be me, now, would it?”

Jessie almost laughed aloud. Problem solved!

“Why, Mr. Peterson,” she said archly. “And you a family man and all.”

He guffawed. “Can't blame a redblooded guy for a little wishful thinking! You going up to the Humffrey house? Nobody's there.”

How lucky can you get! Jessie thought exultantly.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Nobody, Mr. Peterson? Where's the caretaker?”

“Stallings had to drive up to Concord, Mass. tonight. Mr Humffrey phoned him to take some bulbs or something there for transplanting. That's their winter place.”

“I don't know what to do,” Jessie wailed. “Is Stallings going to be back tonight?”

“Tomorrow night, I guess.”

“I suppose I could come back tomorrow, but as long as I'm here …” She turned her eyes on him appealingly, hoping the bourbon hadn't worn off. “Do you think anybody'd mind if I went up there for a few minutes? Like a fool I forgot some of my things when I packed, and I've just got to have them.”

“Well.” Peterson scratched his bulging jaw. You big oaf, Jessie thought, I'll—I'll vamp you if I have to. “Seeing it's you, Miss Sherwood …” But then he said, with his hand on the barrier, “Wait a minute.”

Now what?

“How you going to get in?”

“Oh,. I'll manage,” Jessie said quickly. How, she had no idea.

“Hold it.” Peterson went into the gatehouse. In a moment he was back, flourishing a key. “Stallings always leaves the key with me in case Mr. Humffrey should show up while he's off the Island. Need any help, Miss Sherwood?” he shouted after her gallantly.

“No, thanks,” Jessie shouted back, clutching the key.

She felt rather bourbonish herself as she drove up the Nair Island road.

Stallings had left the nightlight burning over the service entrance. Jessie parked in the driveway near it, turned off her ignition and lights, and jumped out.

Her feet crunched loudly on the gravel, and Jessie hesitated, her skin itching. What am I so nervous about? she thought. Nobody can hear me.

Still, she found herself putting her feet down as if she were in a bog.

She unlocked the service door and slipped thankfully into the Humffrey house.

But with her back against the door, thankfulness melted away.

She had never seen such dark darkness.

This is what comes of being an honest woman, she thought. Nobody here, nobody on the Island but Peterson, whose blessing I have, and yet … It seemed to her the house was full of furtive noises. As if the wood and plaster were breathing.

Remember Michael, she told herself rigidly. Remember that little dead body. She filled her lungs with air, deliberately, then let the air out.

Immediately the house became a house, the darkness friendly.

Jessie pushed away from the door and stepped confidently forward. Her hand touched the basement door. She opened it, felt for the switch, found it, and snapped it on.

The basement sprang at her.

She ran down the stairs. The steps were cushioned and carpeted and her descent was soundless.

At the bottom she paused to look around.

She knew where the outlet of the nursery chute was. She could see it from where she stood, with the big canvas laundry basket still in place under the vent. She had always done the baby's diapers and undershirts herself, refusing to allow Mrs. Humffrey to employ a diaper service.

“I like to know what my babies' diapers are washed in,” she had said to Mrs. Humffrey. “I've seen too many raw little bottoms.”

Funny the things you thought about when … Jessie forced herself to think about the problem at hand.

Sadie Smith had mentioned a “plumber's snake.” Jessie had only the vaguest notion of what a plumber's snake might be. She supposed it was some device for getting into clogged pipes and things that might choke up and be hard to clean. Where would such a thing be kept? Then she recalled that one of the basement walls was covered with shelving for the storage of tools, light bulbs, and odds and ends of housewares and hardware. The snake would probably be there. Wasn't it at the far end of the basement, behind the oil burner?

Jessie walked past the set tubs where Mrs. Smith had done the hand washing, past the washing machine and dryer, around the burner …

There it was.

She found the snake on the bottom shelf among some wrenches, pipe elbows, and other plumbing accessories. It was unmistakable, a large coil of metal cable with a loopy sort of head on it.

She took the snake over to the vent of the nursery chute, set the canvas basket to one side, inserted the head of the cable in the opening, and pushed. As she unwound the snake, she kept pushing upward. The cable made a raspy, rattly sound going up. She kept wiggling it, shaking it, making it go from side to side.

It went up, up, up. Finally it banged against something far overhead, refused to go further. It had obviously struck the door of the chute in the nursery.

And nothing had come down.

Jessie sat down on the basement floor and laughed.

Exit Jessie Sherwood, Female Sleuth.

The only thing to do was return the snake to the shelf, turn off the light, get into her car, and go back where she belonged.

Still seated on the floor under the vent, Jessie began to coil the cable. It came down, scraping, as she rewound it. The head appeared.

And something crumpled and white appeared with it and dropped into her lap.

The material was batiste. It had a lace edging. Honiton lace.

With trembling fingers Jessie took the pillowslip by two corners and held it up.

The imprint of a dirty right hand showed plainly just off the center of the square.

“Why, I've done it,” Jessie said aloud in an amazed voice. “I've found it.”

A horribly familiar voice behind her replied, “So you have, Miss Sherwood.”

Jessie's head screwed around like a doll's.

Her eyeballs froze.

Alton K. Humffrey was standing at the foot of the basement stairs.

In his right hand there was a gun, and the gun was aimed at her heart.

The eye of the gun came steadily nearer, growing bigger and bigger.

Richard, Jessie thought.
Richard
.

“First, Miss Sherwood,” the horrible voice said, “I'll relieve you of this.”

She felt the pillowslip jerked out of her hand. From the corner of her paralyzed eye she saw his left hand crumple it, stuff it into his pocket.

The gun receded.

Not far.

“You're frightened, Miss Sherwood. I sympathize. But you have only yourself to blame. Not a particularly consoling last thought, I suppose. Believe me, I dislike this almost as much as you do. But what recourse have you left me?”