All But Impossible, page 11
I decided it was a good thing to keep Josie busy, taking her mind off the shock of finding the body. When I was alone with Kate Grady I asked, “Do you know anything about this room your daughter described? You started to tell me something earlier.”
“It was about the story,” She gazed out the bedroom window at the road, remembering her father. “Even after he was confined to this room, he was always a good and kind man. When he was growing up, he once met a woman named Madeline Yale Wynne, whose father invented the Yale lock. She had a minor writing career and my father became fascinated with one of her stories that appeared in Harper’s magazine. It was called ‘The Little Room,’ and dealt with a girl visiting her aunts at a New England farmhouse. She remembered a little room where she had played, but when she went back years later the little room had vanished, replaced by a shallow china closet, and the aunts denied it had ever existed. Years later, when the woman visited again with her own daughter, she found the little room was back and the aunts denied the existence of the china closet. After her mother’s death the daughter returned to the house, and the china closet was there. She felt she must somehow learn the truth, and asked two close friends to visit the place together. But they became separated and on their individual visits one found a little room while the other found a china closet. Finally they determined to return to the house together.” She paused.
“And what did they find?” I urged.
“The house had burned to the ground during the night. That was the end of the story.”
“And you told this story to Josephine?”
“My father told it to me many times, and in later years I repeated it to her.
In her imagination the little room of fantasy became this phantom parlor. The china closet downstairs has always existed, but her visits to her aunt became like those in the story.”
I put my hand in my pocket and fingered the red tassel. “Do you mind if I look around outside?”
“Not at all.”
I went out the front door and walked around to the rear of the house. There was only one large window there, the magnificent half-circle in the big downstairs recital room. Next to it, where Josie’s parlor should have been, the stones of the wall were unbroken.
“Lookin’ over the house?” a nearby voice asked.
I turned and saw Bill Herkimer, the gardener, walking toward me. “Hello, Bill. I didn’t know you were working today.”
“I’m not. Just came by to pick up my tools. Won’t be any more work for me here now that Min Grady’s dead.”
“It was a terrible thing. Any idea who might have killed her?”
Herkimer shrugged. “A hobo, probably, looking for food. They come off the freight trains down at the junction.”
“I know.” I’d always suspected that Herkimer himself came to Northmont last summer by exactly that route.
“How’s the girl taking it?”
“Josie? She found the body, which was quite a shock. I think she’ll be all right, though.” I started to turn away and then asked, “Bill, you’ve been in the house, haven’t you?”
“A few times,” he admitted.
“Were you ever in the little parlor on the main floor? The one with the red wails and the tasseled sofa?”
“Can’t say that I was. Don’t remember it, anyhow.”
“Thanks anyway.” I had a final thought. “You might ask Kate Grady, Min’s sister, if she wants you to keep on working through the rest of the summer.”
“Don’t think I will,” he decided. “Never met the woman.”
“I could introduce you. She’s inside now.”
“Another time, maybe,” He walked off across the back lawn, leaving me alone. I noticed he wasn’t carrying any tools.
* * *
When I returned to the front of the house, Mrs. Russell from down the road had appeared with a wicker basket of fresh fruit for Kate and her daughter.
They were standing in conversation on the big front porch and she waved when she saw me. “Hello, Dr. Hawthorne!”
“Good day, Mrs. Russell.” She was a large jolly woman about Kate Grady’s age, an infrequent patient of mine.
“Isn’t this a shocking thing, what happened to poor Minnie? I won’t feel safe in my house until the murderer is caught.”
“None of us will,” I assured her.
“To think that I was in this house talking to her just last Sunday!”
My interest stirred. “Did she ever have you into the parlor—the red room with the tasseled sofa?”
Mrs. Russell frowned. “I never saw any parlor like that. She always entertained visitors in that big room with the wonderful view.”
After she’d gone I asked Kate Grady if I could examine the china closet again. “Of course,” she told me. “Josie and I have work to do upstairs.”
I opened the white double doors and stared grimly at the shelves of china.
Then I went into the large room next door. I was busy tapping the wall adjoining the china closet when I realized that Josie had slipped back downstairs to watch me. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for secret panels.”
“Are there any?”
“If I knew that, they wouldn’t be secret.”
“You believe me about the room, don’t you?”
“There certainly is space for such a room, and it doesn’t seem to be used for anything else. Are there any tools around? I need some sort of drill.”
“Mr. Herkimer keeps a few tools in the basement.”
I followed her down the cellar stairs, fearing he might have returned for them, but they were still there. I chose a drill and a small flashlight and went upstairs. Working together, we cleared the china from me of the shelves and I turned the crank to drill several small holes in the wooden backing. Then I put my eye to one or them and shined the flashlight through the others.
If I’d expected to find the phantom parlor, I was in for a disappointment, the flashlight’s beam revealed only a big window with cobwebs draped from the rafters and walls.
“What’s this?” Kate Grady asked from behind me. “What are you doing in the china closet?”
“I’m sorry I should have asked permission. There seems to be too much space unaccounted for, and I drilled some holes in the wood to see what was back there.”
“It was to be my father’s private study,” she explained. “His smoking room. After the accident he decided there was no need for it, so it remained unfinished. My mother had a china closet installed in part of it.”
“Did your father leave any blueprints or papers concerning the house?”
“There might be some things in the Northmont library. I believe Min gave them some papers after Mother died and I moved away and married. She was so furious about not meeting my husband or being invited to the wedding that she acted as if I’d abandoned the family. She told me I was cut off from the house and everything that had belonged to my father. I’d already received an inheritance, of course, but she said the house and all his belongings were hers. I was pregnant by then and I didn’t fight her, though I resented her attitude. Father left a trust fund for his first grandchild, and that always upset her.”
“And then your husband left you.”
She gave a warning glance toward Josie, who’d drifted into the big room to gaze out the window but was still within earshot. “Mr. Scarcross did not want the responsibility of children,” she said simply. “He was gone by the time she was born and he’s never returned.”
I took the red tassel from my pocket. It was time for her to see it. “Your sister was clutching this in her hand when she died.”
The color drained from her face. “The parlor—”
“Yes, just as Josie described it. Is there any other tasseled red sofa in the house?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “If the parlor exists, does that mean my father—?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, Mrs. Grady. This house exists in the here and new, not in some parallel universe where it’s still nineteen ten and your father is alive and well.” I headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to stop by the library before it closes.”
* * *
The Northmont library occupied one wing of the courthouse, with a separate entrance onto the side street. Miss Isaacs, the elderly librarian who’d run the place during my entire fifteen-year residence in the town, was moving about the room with the help of her cane when I entered just before the six o’clock closing hour.
“Well, Dr. Hawthorne, this is an odd time for you to acquire a yen for reading.”
“It’s something special, Miss Isaacs.”
“I’m just closing,” she announced through thin lips.
“I understand that Min Grady donated her father’s papers to this library some years back.”
“Don’t know why she did it,” Miss Isaacs sniffed. “They were just personal papers from his years as an invalid. All the important things had already gone to Yale.”
“Would it be possible to see what you have?”
“Tomorrow morning. We’re closed now, Dr, Hawthorne”
“Miss Isaacs—”
She stared at me grimly. “The time is six o’clock. We’re closed now.”
There was no arguing with her.
In the morning I was back there at ten when she opened the door. If she was surprised at my persistence she gave no sign of it. “If I remember correctly, you wanted the Carson Grady papers.”
“That’s correct, Miss Isaacs.”
She brought me a large cardboard file. “This is everything. I told you there wasn’t much.”
I saw at once that there were no plans or drawings of the house. The file contained only unimportant letters and a journal he’d tried dictating to his daughters over the years. Even this seemed to have been a failure, with gaps of six months or longer not uncommon. Mostly it commented on the changing seasons. One entry, dated just after the end of the Great War, seemed typical: My lovely daughter Kate is transcribing this as I lie on my sickbed. Finally the world is at peace and we can only hope that it will last. It is mid-November now and the trees are bare. I stare out the window at the great old guardian oak and even if is devoid of leaves. Winter is a depressing time for many people, but to someone confined to his bed, unable move, summer can be even more depressing.
“It was a hard life for him,” I commented, closing the journal.
Miss Isaacs nodded, helping me put everything back in the cardboard file.
“He used to come in here sometimes. After the accident I visited him out there just once, up in his room. I brought him some books and I know the family appreciated it.”
“Thanks for your help,” I told her. It wasn’t her fault that I’d found nothing useful. That afternoon I went to the funeral parlor. It seemed as if half the town was there, drawn perhaps by the violence of Min Grady’s death rather than by any special fondness for her. Kate Grady stayed close to the casket, greeting each new arrival, but I noticed that Josephine drifted away. Sheriff Lens was there, of course, and I asked him how the investigation was going.
“Not very well, Doc,” he admitted. “No sign of forced entry at the house,
but she could have opened the door to her killer. People do it all the time.”
“The missing room is what bothers me, Sheriff. If Josie is telling the truth, what happened to it? Is the place haunted?”
“And if she’s not telling the truth?”
“I hate to even think about that.”
Josie walked past us and went outside. I left the sheriff and followed her out, but she’d disappeared around the corner of the building toward the parking lot. I saw Bill Herkimer lingering nearby. “Hello, Bill. Going inside?”
“I—no, I don’t think so. I came to pay my respects, but I’m not much at wakes. I like to remember people the way they were.”
Josie came back then, having retrieved something from the car. “Hello, Mr. Herkimer.”
He smiled broadly. “Hello, Josie. How are you today?”
“Okay,” she answered with a shrug.
“Will you be going back with your mother after the funeral?”
“Sure. I can’t stay here.”
I turned to see Kate Grady sticking her head out the door, apparently seeking her daughter. She saw us talking and suddenly she came running down the steps and along the sidewalk, her face a study in fury. “Josie! Get back inside!”
“I just—”
“Get back inside! Do what you’re told!”
I tried to calm her down. “Mrs. Grady, we were just talking. Josie wasn’t here more than a minute. This is your sister’s gardener, Bill Herkimer.”
She turned on me then. “It’s been twelve years but I’d still know him anywhere. This is Bill Scarcross, my ex-husband!”
* * *
I walked with him after that, just the two of us, threading our way between the cars and out to the highway where we started toward the town square a few blocks away. “What brought you to Northmont?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’d never seen the house or met Kate’s sister. My own life was sort of a mess and this seemed a way to bring back happier times. I only came to look, but then I met her gardener in a bar one night. Min Grady’s gardener. He told me he was moving out west because of his health. He’d developed an allergy to all those flowers. More important, he told me that Min’s niece visited for a week each summer, and on some holidays, too. After all those years I wanted to see my daughter.”
“So you applied for his job.”
The man I now knew as Bill Scarcross nodded. “I had no great skill but I read books at the library. Soon Miss Grady was complimenting me on my gardening ability. And my daughter came to visit. A week with her, even at a distance, made it all worthwhile. Min had never met. me, of course, and I managed to stay out of sight when Kate delivered her and picked her up. I saw Josie briefly at Easter and again this week. She seems to be turning into a young woman before my very eyes.”
“She is that,” I agreed. “Do you want to get back with Kate?”
He gave a snort, “You saw her just now. There’s no chance of that! I left her and she’ll never forgive me,”
I took a deep breath. “I have to ask you this, Bill. Did you kill Man Grady?”
“Min? Of course not! Why should I ruin my only chance to see my daughter, even for one week a year?”
“You were at the house a lot. Did you ever see anyone else hanging around? Did you see or hear anything strange while you were inside?”
“I told you, I was only in there a few times. I kept some tools in the basement. Once I heard a strange noise, but big houses are always making noises, aren’t they?”
“Your daughter mentioned noises, too. Was it a sort of howling, like someone imitating a ghost?”
He shook his head. “Nothing like that. It was more of a faint whining, and it didn’t last long.”
“An animal?”
“It could have been,” he answered doubtfully.
“I have to go back for my car,” I told him. “I’ll see you later, Bill. Will you be at the funeral?”
“No need to stay away, now that she’s seen me.
* * *
Sheriff Lens and his wife had invited Kate and Josie to their house for an early dinner before the calling hours resumed at the funeral parlor. It was a nice gesture and I was especially thankful, because I’d decided I needed another look at that china closet. There was still plenty of daylight left when I reached the house, and I parked the ear around back, entering through the cellar door. It was easy to unlatch from outside, using only a stick, and I knew a killer could have done the same thing. I mounted the steps to the main floor, moving quietly, and then stopped dead.
One door of the china closet stood slightly ajar.
I moved down the hall, barely able to breathe, somehow knowing what I would find. I opened the door further and there was Josie’s parlor. Red walls,
heavy drapes over the window, sofa with red tassels—all just as she’d described it. I could even see the stain from Min’s blood still on the oriental rug.
I stepped into the little room as if in a dream. And then I heard her behind me, and turned to see the hammer in her hand.
“I left Josie with the sheriff and came home to do some cleaning up,” Kate Grady said. “You should have stayed away.”
“No, but I should have checked the garage for your car.”
“So you found the phantom room at last.”
I shook my head. “It’s not a room. It’s an elevator.”
That was when she swung the hammer.
* * *
It was much later, after the evening visiting hours, before I finally got a chance to explain it all to Sheriff Lens. By that time Kate Grady was locked up and things were starting to settle down. “I never bought you’d hit a lady, Doc,” he said with a trace of a smile.
“She was coming at me with a hammer, Sheriff. I didn’t have much choice. I think you’ll find it’s the same weapon she used to kill her sister. It came from Bill’s toolbox in the basement.”
“You’d better start at the beginning, with this phantom parlor.”
“I read something this morning at the library. It was a journal that Carson Grady tried to keep, dictating to his daughters from his sickbed. He mentioned looking out the window at the guardian oak, but the only window
from which it could be seen is the big semicircle in the recital room on the main floor. Carson Grady’s bedroom faced the front of the house. This baffled me at first, but then Bill Scarcross mentioned hearing a whining noise in the house once. Josie had heard some sort of noise too. I remembered that construction on the Grady house was just beginning when Carson Grady was in the train wreck that crippled him, and suddenly it was all clear to me. Grady had altered the plans of his house to include an elevator. Moreover, it was an elevator large enough to accommodate his hospital bed. Early elevators were often decorated to look like little rooms, with chairs and lamps. This one even had drapes covering an imaginary window. When it was running it made the noise that Scarcross and Josie heard, but a hole in the china closet revealed only the empty shaft.”
