The Cat Wears a Mask Read online

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  Miss Rachel turned again to Bob Ryker. “May we open your wife’s suitcases?”

  He shook his head.

  “The police will, you know. You won’t be able to keep them out of things.”

  Indecision burned in his eyes. “Let me think for a minute. Gail—could I—is there something left in your little cupboard with the blue doors?”

  Gail didn’t say anything; she rose and went out into the dark hall. Florencia was in the kitchen crouched in a corner beside the range since her fright over the snake, with all lights on. Miss Rachel caught a glimpse of Gail’s figure, a slim shadow hurrying through the gallery. The kitchen door opened on a blaze, with Florencia’s mouth opened for a scream in case the intruder were a monster of some sort. Miss Rachel turned from the window to meet her sister’s indignant eye. Jennifer was not charitable about the weakness of tipplers. Plainly she thought that Mr. Ryker should be able to make up his mind without the aid of a drink.

  Bob Ryker said nothing until Gail returned with a glass of what looked like whisky and water and set it down by him.

  He didn’t pick up the glass at once. His eyes dwelt on the yellowish liquid with a sort of dry self-amusement. “In there,” he said, tapping the glass, “in there, every man’s a king. Even a bum who lives off his wife.” He lifted the drink then, downed it in one swallow.

  They waited. Miss Rachel wondered with what emotions—in one mind, at least, there must be a cold fear that something in Christine’s things might be a betrayal.

  Ryker looked up briskly. “Let’s not make a public affair out of it. I don’t mind Miss Rachel, nor Gail. But I’m damned if the lot of you are going up there to paw through Christine’s stuff like a lot of ghouls.”

  Ilene Taggart flushed. She’d been sitting very quietly, in her familiar attitude of weariness and anxiety, off in the shadows against the wall. “I don’t want to see what Christine had with her. I’m not a bit … curious.”

  Grubler broke in. “I am curious. As Christine’s business manager, I ought to have a chance to know what shape her affairs are in.”

  “Not you,” said Ryker roughly.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m damned sure that Christine was ready to give you the sack.”

  The room grew still.

  Emerson, smoking in a chair that sat in shadow in the farthest corner of the room, said, “It’s going to be much simpler if we confine ourselves to stuff we have proof of.”

  “I’ll say what I please, and be damned to you.”

  For a minute the two men looked at each other measuringly; then Ryker got up from his chair and walked towards Emerson. “You were going to tackle me outside, weren’t you? Let’s settle it now.”

  Emerson rose leisurely, and though his figure was stocky, he gave the impression of being light and sure on his feet. He waited until Bob Rykcr came close, ducked a clumsy right punch, moved in swiftly, and reached out with his open hand to shove hard. Ryker went back staggering, off balance, struck a chair, and sat down hard.

  “I could beat your head in and you wouldn’t be able to help yourself,” Emerson said coldly. “You’ve burned yourself out. You’re a mess.”

  “Someday he’ll tackle the wrong fellow,” Grubler put in sourly.

  Emerson looked over his shoulder, a glance that had dry amusement in it. “He’s your employer now. Did you forget that?”

  Grubler shook his head. “There won’t be a business for long.”

  Gail went to Bob Ryker, bent over him, pulled at his sleeve. “Let’s go upstairs. You promised we could see what Christine had in her luggage. If there’s proof she was sending the Ka-china letters, we should know it.” The lost, unhappy look was back in Gail’s eyes. It would be best, Miss Rachel thought, to run down the truth about those letters at once.

  She stood up, letting her cat drop to the floor.

  Ilene murmured, “I think it’s dreadful to pry into a d-dead person’s belongings.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps. But we’re cut off here, and quite possibly someone among us murdered Mrs. Ryker by letting a snake loose in her room,” Miss Rachel pointed out reasonably. “We’d better do a little work in self-protection before the police come.” She led the way towards the door.

  Gail and Bob followed her, the cat running ahead, a blacker shadow among the shadows of the hall. The upper gallery was wet with the slash of rain in through the arches. A bracket lamp threw a thin wash of light over the glistening tiles, showed them Pedro in the doorway.

  “Has anyone been here?” Miss Rachel asked.

  “Si … I think—I could not see who it was, señora. There was a sound like footsteps, then I thought somebody waited a little while at the top of the stairs, looking at me.” He moved his shoulder blades under his leather jacket. “That was before I remembered the light. When I came to put it on, the footsteps went away. I felt queer in the backbone for a time, I’m telling you.”

  Miss Rachel tried to recall the movements of the people in the room below. More than one had left and returned on various errands. Ilene had slipped out for an aspirin. Grubler had gone for Bob and Hal—had there been a little lag in time there, before he interrupted the scene beside the fishpond? She frowned, trying to pin down her impressions.

  The person who had slipped up here to stare at Pedro didn’t necessarily have to be Christine’s murderer. There must be a good deal of curiosity about the contents of the luggage.

  Gail was sending Pedro downstairs. “Get yourself some coffee and food, and help Florencia clear up. We’ll look things over inside and then lock the room.”

  “Shall I take the snake now?”

  “Yes, take it away.”

  He lifted the hoe from against the wall and disappeared inside, clicking the light on as he went in. He came out in a moment, bearing the dangling body of the snake on the end of the hoe. He paused with an air of apology. “The floor, señorita … I could not kill this old one without …”

  Gail turned her face from the limp thing on the hoe. “The floor can wait until tomorrow. Try to calm Florencia. She’s very upset. Don’t take that thing in where she can see it.”

  “I’ll put it in the tool shed,” he promised.

  Bob Ryker pushed the door wide and Miss Rachel and Gail walked in. The musky perfume was fainter now; the clothes laid over the chair seemed to have taken on the lifeless impersonality of a doll’s. The room smelled of rain from the open window. Bob Ryker walked to the suitcase where the layer of silken underwear made a peach-colored glow. He ruffled the garments from the bottom of the case. “Nothing here.”

  “She had two bags, both monogrammed—one, I think, a trifle smaller than the other. It’s the smaller one that’s missing.” Miss Rachel glanced about the room.

  Ryker made a gesture of resignation. “You don’t miss much, do you? The little one was the one Christine was careful about—all the time, even at home. She wore the key on a chain around her neck.”

  Miss Rachel was in the closet. On a shelf slightly above head height was the smaller calfskin case, Christine’s monogram in gold shining under the closet light. Miss Rachel edged the case off the shelf with her finger tips, carried it to the bed. The contents seemed solid and heavy. The lock held fast. Bob Rykcr took a knife from his pocket, pried the blade under the catch, lifted. His fingers whitened with pressure. Suddenly there was a metallic snap and the lock sprang open.

  The cat got upon the bed and tried to get her head into the case and had to be removed firmly to the floor.

  Miss Rachel saw that the top of the case was fitted with a tray in which were pockets arid loops holding jars of cosmetics and toilet articles. She lifted out this upper tray, found below it another, a shallow one lined with dark blue plush. A diamond pin and a pair of diamond earrings glittered like tears. Miss Rachel pried at the rim with her nails, then glanced at Ryker. “Originally this jewel tray came out. She’s fixed it into place like a false bottom.”r />
  Ryker went to the dresser, returned with a long nail file. “Try this.”

  The plush-lined tray came up with difficulty. Afterward they found that its underside had been fitted with hinges and a small invisible catch set into the leather wall of the case. The hinges splintered the fine, thin wood; then the plush tray was lying out on the bed and the three of them were staring at the things in the bottom compartment.

  The cat came for another look, overcome with curiosity.

  In the secret space was a sheaf of creamy note paper, a little tube of paste, tiny scissors, and a small book bound in limp brown leather. On the book’s cover, in silver lettering, was We Are Seven.

  Miss Rachel lifted the book and riffled its pages. The leaves were raddled by cutouts. A spattering of white rectangles drifted out suddenly upon the bed. Miss Rachel scooped them up. “Here’s something she started. Let’s see what we can make of it.” She began laying out the clipped words.

  Bob Ryker laid his hand on hers.

  “Please … you’ve proved what you wanted to. Whatever this last piece of mischief was—let it die with her.”

  She felt impatience rise in her at his attitude. “The police will most certainly pry into every possible clue to your wife’s death.”

  He rubbed his head with an air of weariness. “All right, if they have to, I can’t stop them. Maybe by the time they get here, it won’t matter.” His eyes looked directly into hers; his voice was husky. “You see, I wasn’t much of a husband. You might even say that I was part of the general futility and annoyance that drove Christine into finding the sort of outlet she did. Maybe I can make amends of a sort by doing what I can for her memory. Not whitewashing—the situation’s gone past that. But trying to make you understand. And putting the lid on when it’s done. She’s dead now—let me put the lid on all this.”

  He had the plush-lined tray in his hand, ready to drop it back into place, but Miss Rachel stopped him. She had caught a glimpse of color in the bottom of the case, under the note paper and the scissors and the tube of paste. She reached swiftly, brought the object out, turned it on her palm.

  Ryker and Gail stared at it without understanding or interest.

  She frowned at the memory, the teasing tag end that related itself to this deep purple chip, the echo of anger and suspicion.

  In Reno. The blonde. The stack of dollar chips …

  Ryker said in a puzzled voice, “What is it? A gambling chip?”

  She turned it, studying the color. “How long since your wife was in Reno?”

  “Reno? I don’t know. She wasn’t a gambler. She hated gambling. She was a bad loser and she knew it.”

  “Did she make a trip of some sort last week?”

  “Two days.” An uneasy expression flickered over his face, a look of confusion and, Miss Rachel thought, some undertone of guilt. “What makes you think she’d go to Reno?”

  Miss Rachel tried to fathom what was in his voice.

  He went on quickly without waiting for her answer: “Las Vegas was more Christine’s town. She liked to run down there once in a while, check in at a big hotel for a day or two, and feel that she was rubbing elbows with the movie crowd. The Hollywood bunch does go there, you know.”

  Miss Rachel was remembering Christine’s overuse of cosmetics, the exaggerated facial changes, the startling clothes. The woman had been shallower than she had thought, playing shallow games of looking and acting as she imagined a movie actress would … getting a petty satisfaction out of sending those poisonous letters. Shallow and stupid. Too stupid to know when she had gone too far, when someone was ready to strike back.

  Ryker grew quiet, as if knowing the train of Miss Rachel’s thought.’

  Gail, too, seemed under some sudden constraint, her face gone paler, her mouth taut. She was staring at the deep purple chip. Obviously she was adding up mentally what Miss Rachel had said, what Ryker had answered, and the solution she got was that Christine must have been in Reno when she was.

  She seemed deliberately to be restraining herself from glancing at Bob Ryker. Perhaps she sensed that flicker of guilt or embarrassment and had no wish to add to it by her curiosity. Or perhaps there was something else, deeper, a shared secret between them …

  Miss Rachel got the uncomfortable impression that a sort of telegraphy was running between them. It’s queer, she thought, how they never think that a spinster suspects. Actually, spinsters are the most suspicious people alive. They should listen to Jennifer after a church social.

  Bob Ryker had gathered up the cut-out letters and words on the counterpane as if he’d suddenly remembered them. He tossed them in upon the little book, the scissors, the note paper. Then he waited, looking at the gambling chip on Miss Rachel’s palm. “Does that mean anything?”

  She nodded. “It means that your wife was following Gail, spying on her in Reno. Why should she do that?”

  There was no telegraphy now … only utter stillness between them.

  Chapter 9

  Bob Ryker raised his black brows and his mouth twitched in the wry grin that Miss Rachel recalled from their first meeting in the courtyard. She was wiser now, though—she saw that the mischievous little-boy humor was a mask, perhaps a desperate mask for something quite different. He said jokingly, “I haven’t kept very good track of Christine’s comings and goings for the last few years. I’ve had other things on my mind—when I had a mind. Such as the condition of the liquor supply. And why porcelain ladies in taffeta bother to do anything but just be decorative.”

  She felt the warmth of his friendly magnetism. Liquored or sober, he could turn it on like a faucet. The words, the grim situation, meant nothing; they were overwhelmed by the intimate me-to-you sense of mischief. She jerked her mind away as from the edge of hypnosis. She understood in that moment why Christine had been long-suffering about his drinking—and why she might have followed other women, spying on them in a torture of suspicion.

  “I happen to know this particular chip,” Miss Rachel said. “I know how it came to be lost. In Reno.”

  She knew something else also, her mind told her—that Christine’s letter writing hadn’t been enough. The woman had had other satisfactions. In the back of the crowd surrounding the roulette table she must have heard the blonde’s vituperative lament. And, as in the way she had enjoyed Gail’s agony of dismay when Hal Emerson appeared, she must literally have wanted to hug herself.

  Miss Rachel looked up, seeing the wry grin that seemed frozen on his face, and wondered how one went about charting the course of a marriage, exploring what it had done to the two people involved. Did one ask, as she was now, baldly: “Why didn’t you keep better track of your wife? Didn’t you ever suspect that she might be following you?”

  He seemed ready for the question; there was no surprise over it. “Oh, Christine used to track me like a bloodhound. She couldn’t believe that it was just drink I wanted. She’d slip in and sit at the rear of the joint, at a dark little table, while I wolfed it down at the bar. But she didn’t have the stamina. She had to give it up.” For a moment, as if at the memory of Christine’s futile spying, his face showed absent-minded regret.

  Gail had turned from the bed. She said woodenly, “There isn’t any use staying longer, is there? We’ll leave everything just as it is and lock the room until the police get here.”

  Ryker reached for the gambling chip, took it from Miss Rachel’s fingers, dropped it into the bottom of the case. He frowned. “I knew there was going to be some monkey business about a snake. I felt it in my bones. But I didn’t dream … this way.” He dropped the jewel tray in, put the cosmetic tray into the top of the case, and closed the lid.

  “Perhaps you thought your wife had planned something unpleasant along that line.”

  He seized on it. “Yes, I did. I ran around warning everyone like a fool. Everyone except Christine.” He turned to stare attentively at Gail’s averted head. “I’ll need a drink when I get downstairs.” He said it like a naughty
small boy pleading for a cooky.

  “Oh, of course. Why don’t you help yourself? The cupboard isn’t ever locked.” Gail was changing the key to the outside.

  “Come mix me one.”

  The key rattled; Gail had almost dropped it. The edge of the door threw a shadow across her face. “I’d better see how the others are getting along.” Her tone was formal, hostessy.

  Miss Rachel put on as innocent and unknowing a look as she knew how. She gathered up her cat and went out upon the gallery, crossed the expanse of wet tiles to the shelter of the arch and the dim landing at the top of the stairs. Big beamed doors, shaped to fit the arch, had been drawn half shut, probably by Pedro on his way down. Behind one of them, at the edge of the top step, she waited in shadow.

  She heard Gail’s key, the scrape of the bolt in Christine’s door, then quick steps coming towards her.

  Ryker’s voice pleaded, “Hey, wait a minute.”

  Gail slowed, stopped. Miss Rachel pictured her turning, looking back at Ryker in the yellow gleam of the bracket lamp.

  “Don’t freeze up on me like this.” His tone was humble, coaxing.

  “Christine followed me to Reno, watched me there—watched every move I made. She trailed Miss Rachel, too, and found out somehow who she was and got into her room to go through her things.”

  “You’re trembling … There’s nothing to be afraid of now.”

  Gail’s reply was husky, scarcely louder than a whisper. “Are you so sure, Bob?”

  There was a moment of hesitation—of surprise, of careful thought, of wary measuring. “What would it mean if I were?”

  “That you knew … more than you should.”

  He waited again. Then: “Knowing isn’t the same as guilt.”

  “What set Christine after me? What did you do or say to get her started?”

  “Look, honey child, you knew Christine. Nobody had to start her—on anything. She was born with all sixteen cylinders already primed. The Reno business—that could have meant that she was on the extension when I called your place, when Florencia answered and said something about your going to Reno.”