There is No Return (19 page)

“Keep still, Judy!” cried the boy. “For God’s sake, keep out of this.”

I think I have never seen a more wretched face than Judy Oliver’s or a more determined one as she went on in an unsteady voice. “It was on my account Pat got mixed up with the professor and that girl.”

I saw Jeff Wayne make a startled movement, but she did not look at him. She kept her eyes fixed upon Chet Keith and something in them brought a lump to my throat.

“You see,” she said, “I have been in love with Jeff for-for a long time and-and I imagined he was in love with me, but he used to be engaged to Gloria and Aunt Dora has the idea that Gloria could not be happy in her grave if Jeff married someone else.”

“You couldn’t, could you, darling?” murmured Dora Canby to Sheila Kelly.

There was a painful silence and then Chet Keith said softly, “So your brother decided to help you out, Miss Oliver?”

Judy’s small tortured face quivered. “Jeff’s job depended upon Uncle Thomas and so did my future. I was mistaken, but until-until last night I thought that was why Jeff did not ask me to marry him. I believed it was because-because Uncle Thomas would have cut us off without a penny if we married. It was quite hopeless, or so I thought, unless Aunt Dora could be convinced that Gloria did not want Jeff to stay single on her account.”

Chet Keith’s voice was very gentle. “You planned to have Sheila Kelly give your aunt a message, supposedly from her daughter, that it was all right for Jeff to marry?”

The girl’s haggard face twitched. “Yes.”

She threw one miserable glance at Dora Canby, who shook her head and said reproachfully, “Gloria will never give Jeff up to you, Judy, will you, darling?” she asked Sheila Kelly, who shivered and looked with despair at Chet Keith.

He again turned to Patrick Oliver. “So that’s the job you put up on your aunt?”

The boy made a harried gesture. “There was nothing criminal in it,” he said feverishly. “Judy’s a good scout and she’s never had a break. I thought if Little Blue Eyes told Aunt Dora that Gloria wanted Jeff to go ahead and marry, all Judy’s troubles would be over.”

“You framed up with the professor to deceive your aunt just to give your sister a break?”

“Yes!”

“But you also had Little Blue Eyes suggest to Mrs Canby that her daughter would rest easier in her grave if your debts were paid?”

Patrick Oliver turned perfectly white. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s true, isn’t it, Mrs Canby, that during one of the séances Little Blue Eyes suggested to you that it would make her happier if you’d do her cousin Patrick a small favour?”

Before Dora Canby could answer the boy interrupted, “All right, all right,” he said. “I did try to do myself a good turn as well, but there’s nothing criminal in that either. God knows Aunt Dora will never miss the money.”

“No,” said Chet Keith, “but you were very unwise to have Captain French here at the inn cash the check for you. It made it very easy for me to trace and just as easy for Thomas Canby.”

“Uncle Thomas!” faltered Patrick. “He knew about it?”

“You know he knew about it, Oliver.”

“No! No!”

“I found out from Captain French this afternoon about the check. According to the captain, your uncle found out about it last night. That’s why you killed him.”

“No, no!”

“You are an opportunist, Oliver. You happened accidentally to attend a small-town picture show. You saw a fake spiritualist act. The girl reminded you of your dead cousin Gloria Canby. Right away you cooked up a scheme to cash in on that resemblance. It may be that in the beginning you intended only to pull a few strings on your sister’s behalf. But it was too good a chance to reap a bit of benefit for yourself. And then Thomas Canby came and he found out that you had finagled his wife out of a whopping big check on the strength of these false séances.

“It didn’t take him long to figure out who was responsible for the whole business. He meant to expose both you and the professor last night and you would have been out of the Canby fortune from then on. So Thomas Canby had to die. That’s why you were determined that Sheila Kelly should go through with the séance. You had laid your plans very cleverly. You knew what was going to happen because you had primed her to put on the tirade against your uncle. All you had to do then was jerk the light cord out and cut his throat to be safe, or so you fancied.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” wailed the boy.

Judy stepped in front of him, her eyes blazing.

“You can’t hang this on my brother,” she said. “He couldn’t have killed Uncle Thomas. I was holding Patrick’s arm when the lights went out. I never turned him loose until they came on again.”

“We have only your unsubstantiated word for that,” said Chet Keith.

“It’s true.”

Jeff Wayne drew a long breath. “I had hold of Patrick’s other arm,” he said. “He didn’t kill Mr Canby.”

Patrick’s frantic face smoothed out. “How’s that for the perfect alibi, Mr Sherlock Holmes?” he demanded with a slight revival of his natural exuberance.

Chet Keith shrugged his shoulders. “There is nothing to prevent the three of you from having been in on the deal,” he said.

“After all, by your own admission it was a plot to make it possible for Jeff Wayne to marry Judy Oliver without endangering their chances at the Canby fortune.”

“Jeff wasn’t in on it!” cried Judy quickly. “He knew nothing about it.”

“But you knew?”

She hung her head. “Yes.”

“Your brother told you before he took your aunt to the show in Carrolton?”

She hesitated and Patrick Oliver interrupted. “Judy didn’t know then,” he said. “She’d never have stood for it. It wasn’t until-until after the professor and the girl moved up here to the inn that Judy caught on.”

Judy’s lips trembled. “I’m younger than Patrick,” she said in a low voice, “but he-he has never had any forethought. I mean, it is just like him to get into a thing like this without seeing that it might lead to-to something dreadful.”

“So you found out for yourself that Patrick and the professor had made a deal?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find it out?”

She flushed painfully. “At one of the séances Little Blue Eyes said that it made Gloria unhappy for Jeff to waste his life away, grieving for her. At another she said Gloria was worried about Pat because he was in debt.”

“Those messages struck you as slightly too apropos?”

“Yes.”

“You taxed your brother with being responsible for them?”

Again she hesitated and, making a wry face, Patrick Oliver for the second time answered for her. “She did better than that,” he said. “She followed me one night.”

“Followed you?”

“The professor and I had to get together to keep the show going,” said Patrick Oliver defiantly. “After all, he needed information, didn’t he, to put on the act.”

“So you were in the habit of meeting the professor on the sly to lay the groundwork for the séances?”

“Sure.”

“Where?”

“Oh, anywhere away from the inn.”

“Anywhere?”

“Down the road to town, wherever I happened to overtake him.”

Judy drew a long breath. “The professor pretended that a séance was a great mental and physical strain for both him and the girl,” she said. “Every night after it was over they used to take a walk.”

“Yes?”

“I noticed that Patrick usually disappeared at the same time.”

“Yes?”

“It was easy to trail him.” She smiled painfully. “I’ve always had to keep an eye on him.”

“You trailed him and found the three of them together?”

She shivered. “It was horrible. I came right up to them. Patrick was furious and the professor nearly had a fit, but Sheila Kelly looked through me as if I were so much air. At the time I was certain she did not know I was there.”

Sheila Kelly gave her a haggard glance. “I never knew either of you was there.”

“I begged Pat to tell Aunt Dora the truth and send the professor away,” said Judy in a trembling voice. “I warned them that if they went on with it I’d tell her myself.”

She paused abruptly and her eyes widened with terror.

“But you didn’t?” asked Chet Keith.

“No,” said Judy, her lips trembling, “I didn’t. You see, it was that night, while I was standing there, that-that Gloria suddenly began to speak with-with that girl’s lips.”

“It’s true,” said Patrick, swallowing hard. “Until that moment everything had been according to form, then all at once she” — he glanced with horror at Sheila Kelly — “she began to laugh, just the way Gloria used to laugh.” He shuddered. “She said she had found the-the way back. She said we’d never stop her until she’d accomplished her purpose.”

Chet Keith ignored the boy to stare soberly at his sister. “So you let Sheila Kelly seal your lips?”

She was trembling. “It wasn’t she. It was-was-” She broke off and stared, her eyes dilated with horror, at the girl sitting with bowed head at the coroner’s table.

“Surely,” I exclaimed, “you don’t believe your cousin Gloria actually takes possession of Sheila Kelly at times?”

“What else can I believe?” cried Judy in a stifled voice. “How else can she know the things she does know?”

Chet Keith moved a step nearer and she shrank back.

“What did Sheila Kelly say that night in your cousin Gloria’s voice which frightened you so terribly, Miss Oliver?”

“I-I- Just the usual thing, the things she has been saying all along,” stammered the girl. “That she hated me, that she hated all of us.”

He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “You are sure that is all she threatened you with?”

“Certainly it was all,” interrupted Patrick Oliver.

Chet Keith looked from brother to sister and again his voice sharpened. “The professor knew more than it was safe to know,” he said. “The professor paid for his knowledge with his life. Bear that in mind.”

I thought Patrick Oliver was weakening. I saw him wet his lips with his tongue, but after a second horrified glance at Sheila Kelly his sister seemed to make a terrific effort to recover herself.

“We’ve told you all we know,” she said. “Patrick did bring that girl here. He did put over a hoax on Aunt Dora, but he-he had nothing to do with killing Uncle Thomas. She – Gloria did it! She came back from her grave to – to revenge herself.”

“To revenge herself?” I repeated with a frown.

She pressed her shaking hand against her lips. “Yes.”

Hogan Brewster, with a flippant smile, interposed. “Canby was planning to have his daughter put away in an institution, you know. That is why she killed herself.”

Apparently he had come to the aid of Judy with his explanation, but it was at Lila Atwood he looked and I saw her whiten and lean closer to her husband, who promptly moved farther away.

“Where did this interview take place, Miss Oliver?” demanded Chet Keith. “I mean this first manifestation of Gloria Canby’s alleged spirit?”

“I told you,” muttered Patrick Oliver. “It was down the road.”

“Can you be more explicit, Miss Oliver?” persisted Chet Keith.

Her lips trembled. “It was-was opposite the entrance to that old abandoned cemetery down the road,” she said faintly.

“Cemetery?”

“There is some sort of shack there. It used to be a chapel, I think. The cemetery is enclosed with an iron fence, but I-I could see the-the tombstones through the pickets.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you see?” she cried hysterically. “She was just standing there in a daze, and then suddenly she wasn’t there at all. It was Gloria! Sneering at us as she always did! Taunting us! Gloria risen from the grave!”

“People don’t rise from their graves,” said Chet Keith sternly, “not even outside abandoned cemeteries.”

But Judy had whirled upon Sheila Kelly. “You wouldn’t stay dead. You had to come back to torture us. You should have been buried with a stake in your heart to pin you down forever, you vampire! Why didn’t we think of that? Oh, God, why didn’t we think of that?”

Chet Keith gave Judy’s fit of hysterics as his reason for postponing the investigation for a couple of hours. “Moreover, I think we’d all be the better for a little food,” he said after Judy, sobbing wildly, had been carried off to her room by her brother, pursued by Dora Canby, leaning upon Lila Atwood’s arm.

In my opinion Chet Keith seized the opportunity to adjourn the inquest because he saw, as I did, the effect which Judy’s outburst had upon Sheila Kelly. Only the fact that Chet Keith acted before the girl had time to betray herself had prevented her from again blurting out an admission of guilt; I was certain of it and so, I felt positive, was he. His glance followed her as she left the room, walking after the deputy Butch with slow, faltering steps, her eyes fixed with despair.

“She believes that stuff about Gloria Canby,” he said to me, being careful to lower his voice.

“Yes, and you were right about Jeff Wayne,” I acknowledged. “He believes it too.”

Young Wayne had not followed Judy out of the room. He had not gone near her or offered to help her. He kept his arms folded on his chest and I saw the muscles strain through his coat sleeve, but he let them take Judy away without a word and his glance also followed Sheila Kelly, with implacable hatred.

“You wouldn’t think it possible,” sighed Chet Keith, “that people could be taken in by such hooey in this day and age.”

“Day and age indeed!” I protested. “The belief in ghouls and witchcraft goes back to the beginnings of the race. If you think we have outgrown them, what about those hex murders only a year or so ago in Pennsylvania?”

He gave me a startled glance. “Good heavens, you aren’t weakening on me, are you?”

“I don’t believe in vampires or that rot,” I said dubiously.

He shook his head. “I counted on your common sense, Miss Adams. I sort of felt that you were a Rock of Gibraltar holding up my hands, to scramble a few metaphors.”

I looked him straight in the eye. “That cat was mutilated in my room and there was no key in the lock on my side at the time.”

He took a long breath. “No,” he admitted, “the key wasn’t there before I arrived. You aren’t suffering an attack of conscience, are you, Miss Adelaide? You won’t at this stage, for Pete’s sake, feel called upon to tell the sheriff about it?”