Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

Ellen started to cut again as soon as Hilde was gone. She wondered if the puff she was clipping had been written by a graduate, and then she stopped cutting. Art exhibitions, she thought; their art department was excellent, and Newton Bridges had been there fifteen years ago, and was now head of department. She started to cut again and stopped again. Something was nagging, she realized, and she closed her eyes a moment.

Then she heard a question in her mind: Who painted the snakes all over Philip’s body? It was followed by a second question: Where were the paints? Not listed in the stuff in his apartment. Would he have kept paints in his van? That time of year, the end of May, the interior would have been like a furnace.

She didn’t move as she thought through the night of the party. Philip had gone with someone, or followed someone home. And the next day had that same person painted the snakes on him? He couldn’t have done that alone. Then he went to the campsite and... What happened hack at the fire? She shook her head, trying to clear the question away. The important thing, she told herself, was that someone else knew what he had done, what he had been up to with his costume, his jewelry, the body paint. Janice? Would she have been able to resist watching his experiment?

She had not moved yet when there was a tap on her door and it swung open. “Good, you’re still here. I thought you’d ducked out on me.” Haliday did not enter, but regarded her with interest from across the tiny space. “Your face is still dirty.”

She stood up. It was ten past five. “I was just ready to leave,” she said.

He came into the room and closed the door. “Great. Look, I really need someone who recognizes names to have a look at those student newspapers from Philip’s days. Would you? Not on school time, but on your own time? I know it’s an imposition.”

She shook her head. “I have a dinner date. Sorry.”

“Not tonight, tomorrow. It won’t take long. We’ve pulled the right ones out; they’re all ready to view. Winona’s doing her best, but she doesn’t know anyone.”

“I have a job to finish tomorrow,” she said, gathering up newspapers into a manageable pile.

“After that.”

She stopped moving and looked at him. “What do you want from me, Haliday? Why me?” Suddenly she remembered something else and sat down hard. “You knew the first time you met me who I was, that Dad owns the garden store. I said Philip had come to the store and you asked if he was a gardener. You knew. What do you want?”

He smiled. “Good morning, Blair.” He held up his briefcase. “Look, I’m ready to split, too. Give me a lift? Maybe I’d better drive you this time, you shouldn’t touch anything with those hands.”

She gathered her things silently, and they walked out to her car. The sun was low now, but the day was still warm and pleasant. The campus was nearly deserted. She felt numb with fear.

At her apartment he went to the door with her and followed her inside. “You wash up a bit and I’ll show you something,” he said, glancing about.

She put her things down on the kitchen table and went into the bathroom to wash her hands. Her face was filthy; she scrubbed it fiercely until her cheeks showed color again.

He was sitting at the table when she returned. She took the chair opposite him. The table was so small that the newspapers and other things she had put down covered it almost entirely. Haliday handed her a sheet of paper that was creased from folding.

She read: Ask Ellen Blair who killed Philip Seymour .

She stared at it so long the words began to dance. Finally she looked up. “Why didn’t you?”

“Who killed Philip Seymour?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. That’s why I didn’t ask you before. But someone seems to think you know something.”

“Where did it come from? Who gave it to you?”

“Mail. In my box bright and early Tuesday morning. Postmarked Salem. Of course, that’s just a fifteen-mile drive, not difficult to run over, drop a letter in a box, and scoot back home.”

“But that’s the day you came. No one knew about you.”

“Someone did. See, I got on the case on the Friday before that, reviewed everything over the weekend, came up here on Monday, and checked into the hotel. Your sheriff knew by Friday, and he called one or two of the trustees, who no doubt called a number of people including your Dr. Melton, who might have told her own confidantes. Word gets around in a small town, Blair. You should know that.”

“You’ve been playing a game with me, watching me.”

“Someone thinks you know something, and maybe you do. I tried making you a killer and it just didn’t work, not now, not at seventeen. I mean, if you’d had anything going with Philip Seymour everyone in town would have known about it, and no one did. But did you see something, overhear something, get told something? Maybe. Did you?”

He was still playing his game, she thought. Carefully she put the sheet of paper down on top of the newspapers. He ignored it, watching her. What did he expect? That she would break down and blurt out a confession? She stood up.

When she spoke, her voice sounded as if she had rehearsed this scene. “I have to get cleaned up. I have a dinner date.”

“Will you help out with the student newspapers?”

She couldn’t hide her incredulity. “Me? Aren’t I a suspect now?”

He laughed. “Well, you’re the only one anyone’s fingered. On the other hand, you’re the only one to bring up the blue tux. After lunch tomorrow?”

Helplessly she nodded. He picked up the sheet of paper and returned it to his briefcase, and got up from the table.

“See you in the administration building. Around one?”

She nodded again.

Time spent with her parents usually was a good time; she loved them very much, and they made no attempt to hide their love for her. Her father never had a lot to say, but he smiled at her from the moment she arrived until she left, and her mother always made the things Ellen had loved as a child, and still did. That night she probably had made Ellen’s favorite dishes, but Ellen was not aware of it. She left before nine.

Her father’s store fronted North Main; the residence was behind it, facing First. She kept off Main, where she was likely to run into people she knew; at least on the back streets they were all inside their houses. She knew every house, every occupant, what the kids were up to, where the adults worked, where they had gone to school... The houses were big, with well-cared-for yards and gardens. Where the houses had started out small, they had been added to over the generations until they were an architect’s nightmare, but they were comfortable, suitable for people who preferred the small town to anything else. She could go to any door, knock, be invited in, given a cup of coffee or a glass of wine; they would chat, gossip, be at ease. They were all people who had babysat her, whose kids she had babysat. Kids she had gone to school with, she thought then, had grown up, married, moved. Changed. And there was not a person in town she could talk to.

With some bitterness she thought of the phrase she had grown up believing: a town of eighteen hundred people and no secrets. But how many of these pleasant houses sheltered people as desperate as she was, with secrets as devastating as hers?

Listening to her mother rattle on and on about nothing in particular had made her realize how much she needed to talk to someone, to tell someone about that night, to try to sort it out by talking it out.

Nothing had changed, she thought in wonder. Everything kept getting more complicated, but nothing changed. She had driven off in his van, and he had gone back to the group at the fire.