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

voice, of course, because you couldn’t see. The talks were always clear: —

“I’d better send for Pierce, Captain Maclain. The servants’ quarters are upstairs in the other wing. The door leading in there is the last to the left at the end of the hall.”

“I can find it, Mrs. Tredwill, thank you. I prefer to go alone. I went upstairs with the state policeman this afternoon.”

“Bella’s room is the second to the right at the top of the service stairs.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Tredwill. My dog can see. If I need something I can call.”

The talks were always clear, like that one with Colonel Gray: “The last war blinded you, Maclain—this one may end your career!”

God, how careful you had to be—“I’m sorry, Mr. Tredwill. I’m afraid your plans all smell of gasoline.”

Twenty paces.

Twenty yards.

And three times twenty is sixty feet.

“Left here, Schnucke!

“Good girl, you’re right again! This is the door to the servants’ wing.”

Through it and close it and listen.

“Nobody here, eh, Schnucke?”

Thirty-two paces and then the stairs.

Darkness. Blackness. Silence. The carpet is thick. The kitchen’s below. See that rattle of dishes. See that smell of cooking lingering from the day.

Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.

Five steps up and a landing.

Turn right.

Seven steps up and a landing.

Turn right.

Ten steps up and you’re there. Or was it nine?

Watch your step at the top, Maclain! Next time you’ll remember—twenty-one, or twenty-two. It’s careless to confuse them with those thirty-two steps in the hall.

“Thank you, Schnucke. It’s twenty-one, not twenty-two!”

Darkness. Blackness. Silence. The carpet is thick. Bella sleeps in the second room to the right at the top of the stairs.

One. Two. Three.

That’s the front door, and it’s open. Feel that change in the air?

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Right here, Schnucke. Bella’s door is open. The light would shine in. If she’s sleeping, it must be dark here in the hall. I’ll call her softly.

“Bella!

“Steady, Schnucke, and forward! What are you trembling for?”

One step onward and listen.

“Schnucke, my ears are better than yours. Quit your whining and balking. I’ll call her again.

“Bella!”

Darkness and blackness and silence and a smell of violet perfume. Maybe Bella uses it. “My nose is as good as yours, Schnucke. I smelled it out in the hall. Forward, Schnucke! Forward, I say! All right, if you want to be stubborn I’ll leave you here at the door!”

Another step into the room and stop.

A table here. A bureau here, but nobody breathing.

“Bella!”

Those are clothes on the back of the chair.

Another step—Merciful Christ, Maclain, what’s that you kicked on the floor? It’s rolled away! No. It’s only rolled. It’s right there close to your toe.

Down on your knees.

No. You’d better stand and reach down with your hand. It can’t be what you think it is—a football would roll that way!

They do such things in Germany—but never do them here.

Merciful Christ—a football with teeth and a nose and hair!

Out in the hall and down the stairs and through the serving door.

“God, Maclain, you’re deathly pale! What are you running for?”

That’s Thaddeus Tredwill. Calmly now. Tell him about the girl.

“It’s Bella, Mr. Tredwill—”

“Bella,” he’s saying. “Pierce said she was upstairs in bed.”

“Her body’s in bed, Mr. Tredwill—but her cut-off head’s on the floor!”

CHAPTER XVI

1

POLICE.

Sergeant King was grim. Under his faultlessly tailored uniform of trim khaki his broad shoulders tapered down to a waist athletically small.

This was murder beyond the Sergeant’s ken—brutal and bloodier than the swift striking thrust of a maniac. Decapitation—a genus of crime the capable Sergeant hadn’t met before, and most heartily hoped he’d never meet with again.

“And you, Mr. Tredwill—you were on your way upstairs when you ran into Captain Maclain?”

The Sergeant’s voice had roughened from the grating of endless questions. He seemed reluctant to move from his commanding post in front of the mantel; equally reluctant to relinquish his comforting grasp on the butt of his gun.

“Good God, man—yes—yes—yes!” Thad’s affirmatives grew progressively louder. “Get someplace, can’t you? Someplace that we haven’t been before.”

King eyed him unemotionally. “I’m doing my best. Your son sent Trooper Stinson away. If the trooper had stayed he might have saved that girl.”

“I sent no one away,” said Gil in patient contradiction. “I merely told Stinson he might go if he thought it safe to do so. How would his presence—”

“Have saved the girl? Maybe it wouldn’t.” The Sergeant turned his back on the room and made passes at the fire with his toe. “He was downstairs, it’s true,” he went on, speaking more to the fire than to Gil, “but it wouldn’t have been so easy to get that broadax out of the hall.”

“There’s a back stairway, as I’ve told you,” Thad put in. “Whoever killed her probably went up that way.”

“A broadax,” Sergeant King repeated as though the words were indigestible. “Why?”

Captain Maclain answered him. “It’s quick and silent, Sergeant, and a method that’s certain sure. The best executioners abroad are reviving it for political purposes, I understand. In addition, I believe I’m safe in saying that it fills potential victims with a certain sense of fear.”

The Sergeant pivoted at the waist to look at Maclain. The Captain had drawn a straight-back chair up to the long table in the center of the room. He was sitting with his hands folded on the table edge, quiescent as a good scholar in school.

“What do you mean by potential victims?” King asked. “Are you hinting there may be more?”

In an end place on the settee, Bunny Carter squirmed uncomfortably, waiting for Maclain to reply. Bunny had arrived at The Crags shortly after dinner to be plunged into an evening of horror that would leave him with a lifetime memory. Now the Sergeant was asking if Maclain expected more.

The Captain’s cheeks flushed faintly. “This murder struck fast enough. This girl was beheaded—”

“Merciful heaven, Maclain,” Thad burst out. “Can’t you say killed—murdered—anything but that. It’s wearing on me.”

“She’s just as dead, Mr. Tredwill, whatever word we are forced to employ.” The Captain might have sounded callous except for the sympathy in his tone. “She