Odor of Violets Read online

  “Fantastic,” Thaddeus repeated, and fixed the slightly square face of his daughter-in-law with an accusing stare. “What can be fantastic, Helena, after what’s happened in this house since yesterday?” He swung his head around from person to person with the gesture of a minister daring some member of his congregation to reply.

  “I find that my only daughter is consorting with a man.” Thaddeus decided to sum things up for the fifth time, since no one had the temerity to answer him. He paused just long enough to let his audience grasp the full implication of the word man. Few orators could condense more vitriol into a single tone.

  “A man,” he reiterated. “My wife’s ex-husband—a brute and a libertine—and everybody knows that he’s seeing my daughter—everybody except me.”

  “Nobody knew it, Dad,” said Gilbert placatingly.

  “The world knew it—and the press knew it. I suffered the humiliation of having a blind man point that out to me. Now my wife’s been badly injured in her own home, and my daughter’s gone. Where? Who can say?” He broke off with genuine grief in his voice.

  “Norma’s awake, Thaddeus.”

  Gil moved on the settee to make a place for Cheli Scott, who had come in from the hall.

  “I’ll go up,” said Thad.

  “I wouldn’t.” Cheli sat down. “Better let her rest. She’s still frightfully nervous. I had Pierce bring her some tea.”

  Thad questioned the girl with his eyes.

  “She’ll be all right in a day or two,” Cheli told him. “Dr. Trotter said this morning that she’d suffered a shock and a shoulder sprain—”

  “I feel guilty as hell,” Gil interrupted morosely. “I’ve been intending for years to move that wardrobe out of the way. It was always tottery.” He turned to Cheli. “You had plenty of nerve to go down there alone last night when you heard that thing fall.”

  “I thought that Pierce went with you, Cheli,” Helena remarked, with a smile that missed her china-blue eyes.

  “He certainly did.” Cheli crossed her legs and smoothed her house coat over her knee. “Norma was the one with nerve, Helena. I wouldn’t go into that basement alone in the daytime—not me.” She looked at Gil. “I don’t like to pry, but will someone tell me what that man with a dog is doing upstairs in the hall?”

  “He’s Captain Maclain, a detective,” Stacy volunteered eagerly. “He got here about an hour ago in his car. He’s trying to find out where Babs went. He was blinded in the last world war.”

  “A blind man—” Cheli began incredulously.

  “He’s world-famous,” said Thad. He spoke with automatic preciseness, as though he had determined to drop the one subject which had torn at his heart all day. “Maclain’s a challenge to any playwright, Cheli. Someday you should put him into a show. Humanity has become too dependent on the old phrase ‘seeing is believing.’ The Neanderthals knew what the four other senses could do. Without them man wouldn’t have survived until now.”

  “Quite right, Mr. Tredwill.”

  The group before the fire turned to see Captain Maclain standing in the doorway.

  “Come in, Captain,” Thad said quickly. He started to ask a question, and added instead, “Cocktails will be along presently. Won’t you take a chair?”

  Schnucke moved forward, eyeing the Tredwill family with canine dignity. Helena stood up, and the dog unerringly directed the Captain past the barrier of a library table to Helena’s proffered chair.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing part of your remarks as I was crossing the hall,” Maclain apologized with a smile. He sat down and continued, “You mentioned the old phrase ‘seeing is believing.’ That’s a true statement, Mr. Tredwill. I can’t use my eyes. Will it surprise you to learn that I believe only what I can see?”

  “You’ve already proved surprising in many ways, Captain Maclain.” Again Thad stopped just short of speaking impatiently.

  “I’ll try to prove my contention.”

  Schnucke watched her master settle back in the chair. Maclain gestured with his hand and she lay down beside him. “The unabridged dictionary gives more than a dozen definitions for see,” he announced. “Only the first two relate to the eyes. I depend on the others. Particularly on mental perception—definition number three. My vision is communicated to my brain through other mediums. I venture to say that, excluding color, it is just as clear as the vision accorded you.”

  Gilbert said, “That’s a fascinating idea.”

  “It’s true.” The Captain sat silent. He had the rare ability to relax utterly at will, to become almost a component part of lounge or chair. “There are five people here with me now,” he said after a time. “When I first arrived, an hour and twenty minutes ago, I was introduced to four. The young lady on the settee to my left passed me in the upstairs hall.”

  “I’m Cheli Scott, a playwright, Captain Maclain. I’m visiting here.”

  The Captain acknowledged the information with a nod and a smile. “You’re wearing a taffeta house coat, Miss Scott. You’re in your early twenties. You have a bracelet with bangles on your right wrist, and woven Mexican slippers on your feet. You’re holding a manuscript in your lap. You’re slender and about five foot seven or eight—more than average tall.”

  Cheli laughed a trifle uncomfortably. “You must have questioned the trooper closely when I passed you in the upstairs hall.”

  “Not at all,” said Captain Maclain. “Taffeta has a distinctive rustle, and house coats have zippers. You pulled yours up closer about your neck as you passed us upstairs. The house coat might have been a dress—except for its extra length swishing about your ankles, and the fact that you’re wearing Mexican house slippers. The weave of them creaks unmistakably.”

  “What about her age?” Helena asked.

  “Her voice,” said Maclain. “It’s young. Yours is too. The timbre changes with the years—just as the vocal cords alter with maturity. Stacy, on the bearskin rug at my feet, is still earmarked by his voice as a boy. Mr. Tredwill can never pass vocally for anything but a most mature man. In addition, the voice, more clearly than the face, expresses fear and hope, happiness and pain, excitement and calm.”

  Stacy asked, “How did you know about the bearskin?”

  “My feet are on it. I can touch the head with my toe. See? And the first time I came in the room Schnucke shied slightly away.”

  “I suppose you heard the bracelet and the manuscript, too,” Cheli remarked with a reflective glance at her wrist. “But my height and weight? I still don’t understand.”

  “The bracelet jingles only when you turn a page. You’ve been leafing them over unconsciously. That placed it on your right wrist. Your height and slenderness were comparatively simple. I counted your footsteps—then compared them with my own as I walked the length of the upstairs hall. I live in blackness, Miss Scott, but it frees me from many distractions of those who use their eyes to see.”

  “And what, if anything,” asked Thaddeus, “did you see in my daughter’s room?”

  “Nothing that can be of much value, I fear.” Maclain stood up. “This is very pleasant, but I have a little more exploring to do. Before we have cocktails, I’d like to have Mr. Tredwill take me down to his workshop.” He turned in Cheli’s direction. “You found Mrs. Tredwill this morning, Miss Scott. I wonder if you’d come too. The trooper arrived later, I believe. He wasn’t quite sure where Mrs. Tredwill fell.”

  “Would she refuse?” Helena murmured as Cheli followed the two men from the room. She answered her own question softly, “Jamais de la vie!”

  The Connecticut State Trooper joined them in the hall. He gave a polite nod to Gilbert and Cheli, and asked, “What are we up to now?”

  “More looking around, Stinson,” said Maclain.

  “I hope you find something,” Trooper Stinson replied. “I’ve been over this house three times today.”

  “Why don’t you go?” asked Gil. “Mrs. Tredwill met with an accident, that’s all. There’s nothing to keep you here
now.”

  The trooper looked doubtful. “If you need me, Mr. Tredwill, I’ve orders to stay.” He hesitated and added, “But I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  “About the accident?”

  “That’s it, Captain,” said Stinson emphatically. “Trooper Halick and I got here early this morning in answer to a call. One of us has been here off and on all day. When we got here the butler, who let us in, had to take a safety chain off the front door. Every window was locked inside, on the basement and ground floor. I’ll stake nine years in the State Police that nobody got in and out of this house at all.”

  “Mrs. Tredwill got in late last night,” Cheli reminded him. “She’d been with some friends, the Carters. Couldn’t someone have come in the front door before she got home?”

  “How’d he get out?” The officer shrugged. “We saw the tire tracks of Mr. Carter’s car. It snowed here all day long and most of last night, too. There was that one set of tire tracks up the driveway from the village—no more.”

  “Which doesn’t mean much, Stinson,” the Captain said. “Any former tracks might have been effaced by passage of the Carter car and the snow. I suppose you and Halick checked for footprints, too.”

  “Captain Maclain,” said Stinson earnestly, “I’ve been in this racket nine years, as I said before. We not only checked for footprints, we checked for fingerprints, and pick locks, and breaking and entering, and marks on the window sills—inside and outside on the ledges in the packed-up snow. I’m telling you now—if anybody got in here last night without leaving a trace, then he’s still in here. Either that—or he flew.”

  “Maybe he had on winged galoshes,” said Duncan Maclain. “I think he’d have needed them with all that snow.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHELI AND Gilbert watched with interest as Maclain followed Schnucke’s imperceptible signals down the length of the high domed hall. The Captain proceeded slowly. Twice he stopped and explored the mounted suits of armor with fluttering touches of his fingers. Each time, Schnucke’s dark eyes turned up inquiringly to the glittering metal men.

  “I don’t think she likes them,” Cheli said in a low tone to Gil.

  Maclain’s keen ears caught it. “I don’t like them much, myself.” He spoke for the first time since the State Trooper had gone. “Do you think it was the best thing to do, Mr. Tredwill—sending that officer away?”

  “My father’s been anxious to get rid of him ever since we got home this afternoon.”

  “Why?” Maclain stopped at the end of the hall with one hand resting on the ornate knob of the theater door.

  “He thinks my sister’s been kidnaped,” said Gil.

  “Kidnaped,” Cheli whispered, and uttered a stifled “Oh!”

  “Can I take it, Miss Scott,” Maclain inquired with a quick turn of his head, “that you’re inclined to disagree?”

  “I don’t know why, Captain Maclain, but somehow it seems preposterous. Babs didn’t know she was going in town herself until yesterday. I thought that kidnapers—”

  “Planned their coups in advance,” Maclain supplied. “That’s quite true. But Mr. Tredwill’s father must have some justification for his idea.”

  “He hated Paul Gerente,” Gil said simply. “Dad thinks that’s why Gerente was seeing Barbara—that he planned this kidnaping and something slipped. Dad believes that the kidnapers killed Gerente. He was certain he’d hear something from them today.”

  “If he’s right,” said Cheli, “maybe he will, Gil, now that you’ve sent the police away.”

  “That’s why I let Stinson go.”

  “Perhaps it was the best thing to do.” The Captain opened the theater door. “What’s in here?”

  “Dad’s theater.” They had stepped inside and Gil’s voice echoed in the resonant room.

  “Your father’s wife was an actress, wasn’t she?” asked Maclain. He walked down toward the stage counting the rows of seats by touching them with his hand.

  “Norma? She played the lead in Dawn before Darkness. Thad married her after the close of the play.”

  “I wish I could get her for the one I’m working on now,” said Cheli.

  “I doubt if she’ll ever return to the stage,” said Gil.

  The Captain turned at the first row and came back to join them. “Can you get outside of the house from this theater?” He rested himself against the back of the aisle seat in the last row and addressed his question to Gil.

  Cheli said, “There’s a door at the back of the stage. The police examined it today and said it hadn’t been opened for a long time.”

  “It was locked?”

  “Barred,” corrected Gil. “It’s fireproof and fastens with a big iron bar inside. Nobody could have come in there—or gotten out without leaving it unbarred.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Let’s go downstairs.” The Captain stood erect. They left the theater with Gilbert leading the way.

  The Captain was silent until they reached the basement. He spoke when Gilbert started across the laundry toward the passage Norma had taken the night before.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get a little more information, Miss Scott. I understand that Mrs. Tredwill came down here last night because she heard the slamming of the workshop door.”

  “That’s not quite right.” Cheli glanced at Gil, who was watching the Captain with a wondering frown. “Norma thought the storeroom door was open. She had been down here to close it before.”

  “Last night?” Maclain asked quickly.

  “No. I meant in the past.”

  “That’s true,” said Gil. “Unless it’s locked it has a pesky habit of banging. I’ve fastened it more than once when I’ve been working late down here.”

  “Where is the storeroom?”

  “Straight ahead of you,” said Gil.

  Maclain moved forward until Schnucke paused, signaling his nearness to the door. He found the knob after a single try. “It’s locked now. Who keeps the key?”

  “It was locked last night,” Cheli told him. “The key hangs on a hook to the right of the door. Norma saw it there when she came down.”

  The Captain ran his hand upward along the wall.

  “Farther right,” said Gil. “Here, let me.” He stepped up beside Maclain and handed him the key.

  The Captain unlocked the door, stepped back, and slammed it to. The lock clicked but slipped out again, and the door swung free. For a moment Maclain stared at the door almost as though he had the power to see.

  “Leave it open, please,” he said. “Something about this interests me. Suppose we go into the workshop now.”

  He followed Gil and Cheli down the passageway. Keys tinkled on a ring. “The state policeman padlocked the door again,” said Gil. “I have a key.”

  “Do you mind if I open it?” The Captain extended a hand.

  “Not at all.” Gil handed him the ring after locating the proper key.

  The Captain took his left hand from Schnucke’s brace, steadied the padlock, and inserted the key. He removed the heavy padlock and briefly hefted it in his hand. Freeing the hasp from the staple, he pushed on the workshop door. It opened with a creak. Maclain pushed harder.

  “Engineers never do anything,” said Gil. “For a year I’ve intended to oil that door.”

  “And line it up, or plane it,” the Captain advised. “It scrapes along the floor.”

  Caught in a draft, the storeroom door in the laundry banged noisily.

  “There!” said Cheli.

  “There was somebody in this basement when Mrs. Tredwill came down last night,” the Captain declared. “Somebody who locked that storeroom door.”

  “It’s almost impossible, Captain,” said Gil.

  “It’s impossible for a scraping heavy door to slam. This one in particular.” The Captain opened and shut the workshop door again. “It’s also impossible for storeroom doors to lock themselves, Mr. Tredwill. That much I know.

  “Mrs. Tredwill heard that stor
eroom door slam, as she thought. Not this one, here. It blew shut, as it did just now—from a draft caused by someone opening this workshop door. Yet that storeroom door was locked when Mrs. Tredwill got downstairs. If no one was down here, who removed this?” The Captain held up the padlock with a questioning air.

  “I thought that I might have forgotten to lock it,” Gil said without much conviction. “I don’t know of any other key.”

  “Nor of anyone who might be interested in the work you’re doing here?”

  “I know of nations who might be interested, Captain, but I can’t name any one person whom I know.” He turned to Cheli with a touch of defiance and asked, “Can you?”

  For a second her eyes showed sympathy. “No, Gil. I certainly can’t.” She flushed and turned away.

  Maclain located the drafting table and set the padlock down. Moving one hand in a circle, he found the cord of a hanging electric light and traced it down to the shade.

  “This is on,” he remarked absently. “I suppose it’s controlled by that switch you clicked as you came through the door.”

  “That’s right,” said Gil. “There’s a second light near the other end of the drafting table.”

  Cheli said, “The wardrobe that fell on Norma is behind the forge at the far end of this room.”

  “I’m interested in lights right now,” said Maclain. “Are these the only ones controlled by that switch?”

  “Yes,” Gil answered. “The lights over the machines turn on individually.”

  The Captain’s sedulous fingers were surveying the table top, touching drafting boards, T squares, and triangles; delicately locating bottles of India ink, drawing pens and erasers, and, with equal delicacy, passing on again.

  “Tell me, Miss Scott.” The probing fingers were momentarily still, resting on the surface of a half-completed plan. “What lights were on in here when you found Mrs. Tredwill?”

  “Just those two over the table.”

  “Do they illuminate the entire room?”

  “Enough to get around,” said Cheli. “Pierce turned on some others before we moved the wardrobe off of Norma.”

  “But these two give sufficient light, don’t they,” Maclain continued, “to see anyone who might be hiding in this room?”