Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

Norma guardedly opened the door and went in. The lulling hum of an electric clock was the only sound. Uninterrupted by any breath or movement of a sleeping occupant, the steady whir of the timepiece attested to the vacancy of the room.

She switched on the lights and looked about her. The room was in perfect order, undisturbed from its cleaning during the day. Its perfection and beauty reflected Babs. The girl had something of the same sleek comfort about her, the same exquisite warmth. Norma felt doubly depressed. Babs, like her boudoir, was a product of much money, and the products of much money were often fragile and in need of loving care. Like the shimmering satin coverlet on the bed, Babs belonged at home. It was doubtful that she could ever survive the racking ordeal of a fear-impelled flight through a winter storm.

Norma closed her mind against a thousand questions. Had the child any money? Would she seek the doubtful safety of friends in another city? If she hadn’t struck down Paul Gerente, why had she gone? If she had killed him in a struggle, where in the name of heaven could she go?

An automatic light clicked on in the closet as Norma opened the door. A colorful line of dresses on hangers crowded the interior. On the shelf, a row of hats on separate holders vied with each other in an exotic display. Metal shoe racks fastened to the inside of the closet door held twenty pairs or more.

Norma decided against the shoe racks. The fur tops of the overshoes stood out too conspicuously among the dainty slippers. She pushed some of the dresses aside and placed the galoshes on the closet floor. The dresses swung back over them again, hiding them from view. With a feeling of lightness, as though she had rid herself of some dragging encumbrance, she shut the closet, put out the lights, and started back to her room.

Halfway down the hall she paused and wrapped her bathrobe closer about her. The wind whipped up outside in a sudden strong noisy flurry. Far downstairs, probably from the basement, came the slam of a door.

Her only reaction was to suppress a “Damn!” of annoyance, for she had heard that particular door before. It led from the laundry into the storeroom, and the latch never held. Unless it was locked with the key, its irritating slamming began sooner or later when the wind started to blow. Once begun, the slamming kept up indefinitely.

She decided to go and lock it herself, rather than call Pierce on the house phone. But at the top of the steps she paused again, recalling with slight uneasiness the incident of her glove in the downstairs hall.

Stubborn dislike of weakness in herself urged her on. She had made that trip to the basement at night more than once. Certainly she didn’t intend to have her life at The Crags disrupted by the hectic events of a single day. If Bella, the housemaid, had dropped the glove, then Bella might have unlocked the storeroom door as well. Bella was not only nosy, she had a deep-rooted love for jams and jellies. The storeroom contained quite a selection.

Norma pushed a switch at the stairhead and descended with more assurance when light streamed up from the lower hall. Habit, more than anything else, caused her to fasten the heavy brass safety chain on the double front door—a Tredwill habit which left a final lockup for the last one in. Interrupted by Stacy’s phone call, she had overlooked it before.

She went through living room and dining room into another hall. There, the lights set high in a dome seemed dim. Great draperies of crimson swept down from the ceiling, held by medieval weapons against the walls. Burnished suits of armor stood on pedestals. Shells of ancient men, they watched her with vacant faces as she passed, saluting her with motionless halberds in their hands.

At the end of the hall she avoided the entrance to Thad’s miniature theater and took a door to the right which led to the basement stairs. A switch at the top landing lighted a bulb in the laundry below. Norma went on down. The cold of the concrete crept through the soles of her slippers as she crossed the laundry to the storeroom door.

The door was locked. Hanging on a nail beside it was the old-fashioned key. Yet Bella must have been there, for lingering above the clean soapy smell of the laundry was a trace of violet perfume.

In the boiler room to the right the oil burner flashed into action with a muffled pop, warning Norma that morning was very near. Out of a darkened passage to the left an icy draft swept through the laundry as though the starting of the heater had drawn it irresistibly toward the flame.

“Bella.” Norma called the maid’s name softly. Gil’s workshop lay at the end of the darkened passage. Gil had used it since he was a boy of ten. It was forbidden territory to servants and family, but that rush of cold air must have come from the opened workshop door.

Norma groped her way down the passage, feeling above her for a light cord which she knew was there, but couldn’t see. She found it at last, much farther along than she had expected. The bulb was gone. Ahead of her something creaked raucously. She was certain then that the big whitewashed door which Gil kept padlocked so carefully was swinging free.

A wall switch was at the left inside the door. Norma reached around the jamb, found the button, and pushed it. Two green-shaded droplights lighted, throwing white radiance down on a drafting table spread with drawings and blueprints, filling the balance of the workshop with an emerald glow.

Machines and a forge stood at the back of the workshop, crowding the room in a double row. A wooden workbench, littered with tools, ran the full length of another wall. Two model