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

Then she frowned, trying to recall something she had noticed and forgotten again. Janice had been in the leather chair, Hilde pouring wine, Ellen looking around the personal collection that made the room human. Abruptly she went to the other room and rummaged in a desk drawer for a file folder. She hurried back to the kitchen and found several articles she had tossed because they had appeared in more than one newspaper; she put them in the folder.

Then she drove back to the college, this time to the president’s mansion. She rang the bell. The housekeeper, Mrs. Lawrence, opened the door.

“Has Dr. Melton left yet?” Ellen asked.

“A couple of hours ago.”

“I was afraid of that. I have some papers she wants to have on hand the minute she gets back home Monday. She told me to put them in the private sitting room if I missed her.”

Mrs. Lawrence nodded and stepped back. “Come on in, Ellen.”

“I won’t be a minute.”

Mrs. Lawrence walked with her. “That poor woman,” she said. “All this business has her beside herself, I’m sure. She can use a rest from the telephone.” She remained at the door of the sitting room when they got there.

Ellen crossed to a low table and put the folder down, remembering. Janice over there in the leather chair, Hilde at the table, Ellen trying to avoid both of them, gazing straight ahead at the diplomas, certificates, plaques, one a handsome bronze inscribed, “President American Archaeology Society, May 31, 1980 — May 31, 1986.”

Mrs. Lawrence was still talking, she realized, after they left the room and were back at the entrance. She was only vaguely aware of the puzzled look the housekeeper gave her when she said, “Thanks,” and hurried to her car.

She sat thinking for several minutes and then started her engine and drove out to the road and turned toward the campsite. One more thing, she thought.

She had not been back since that night, although she had driven past countless times on her way to the coast. Today she pulled into the gravel parking area. Few people used the site for camping overnight and only infrequently did anyone use it by day. People stopped to rest a minute, to take a walk, use the toilets, or maybe eat lunch, but it was fifteen miles to the coast from here and that was the destination of most people heading west on Crystal River Road. Today no one was in sight.

She pulled into the same spot Patty had used that night. Two other cars had been there, both of them in the center parking area, facing west, as her car was facing now. She nodded and got out of her car, and slowly walked the trail through the woods to the spot where they had made the fire near the river. The fir trees here were old growth and mammoth; the trail was like a tunnel, in perpetual dusk with glowing green mosses on rocks, trunks, fallen branches. The moss colored the dim light with its green reflection; it was like walking under water, without the water. She reached the clearing and looked all around it. The trail she had used was the only trail; the woods closed in on three sides, the river made up the fourth. Then she retraced her steps. The trail curved around trees; it was hard to find a straight line in the forests here. She remembered how his light had led the way like a living thing moving up and over rocks, a fallen tree trunk... She had been unable to look away from it. If anyone had been ahead of them with another light, she would not have seen it.

The little disk of light had led back to the parking area to his van, in line with the other cars, but facing the opposite way, toward town. If another car had been parked at the far end of the area, she would not have been able to see it. When the van lights came on, only the woods she had just left had been lighted, not the rest of the parking area.

“Blair, you’re playing hookey.” Haliday’s voice sounded close by.

She jerked around to see him leaning against a tree near the road. “Are you following me?” she demanded. Her voice was shaky.

“Yep. Nice day for a walk in the woods.”

She took a deep breath. “Haliday, I have something to tell you.”

He straightened, took the few steps to the road and motioned to someone; when a car pulled up with a strange man driving, he went to it and spoke briefly. The man nodded, turned, and left again.

“Told him I’d hitch a ride,” Haliday said, approaching Ellen. He pointed to a log. “Let’s sit down.”

On the log, plucking pieces of moss from the bark, not looking at him, she told him about that night, everything but names. For a long time he was silent. Then he said, “Show me the clearing.”

She led the way. While he looked at the fire enclosure and examined the woods encircling the space, she stood at the bank of the river gazing at the water. At this time of year it was full to overflowing with rapids, churning white water, falls; it sounded very loud.

“What time did you get here?” he asked, suddenly at her side.

“Nine-thirty or later. It was getting dark.”

“When did he show up?”

She shook her head. “At least two hours later, maybe more. I don’t know.”

He was scowling at the river below. “What made you tell me now?”

“I think someone will try to kill me,” she said.

He looked at her swiftly, then motioned toward the fire enclosure. “One of them?”

“No. The one who killed Philip, if not directly, then through them, by goading one of them to do it. I think I was supposed to break before now, tell the whole story with names, and then a lot of people would have been involved and I would have been the chief suspect and she would have been out of it.”

Very slowly Haliday said, “Who is she, Blair? Who are you talking about?”

Keeping her gaze on the frothy water below, she said, “Hilde Melton.”

He let out a breath. “Ah, Blair, how we’ve all underestimated you. Give. Why?”

“She lied about her husband being home that weekend. He was in New York being inaugurated as president of the American Archaeology Society. She lied about having days off after that weekend. If Pryor had gone to Hawaii, she would have had to stay on the job. There’s too much to do at the end of the school year for both of them to be gone. She would have known Philip had rented the apartment through the middle of June. That’s the kind of detail work we flunkies keep track of. She could have gone any night to get the manuscript and letters. So many little things, like the way the van was parked as if it had come from the coast, not from town.”

“What about the van?” Haliday asked.

“She talks about the cottage on the coast, but it’s a big house, with a two-car garage. I think she hid the van there until late one night when she drove down the coast somewhere and ran it off the road into the ocean. And her husband’s car was always kept out there, so she could have used that to get back to town. The faculty houses have small garages,” she added. “With glass panes. It would have been seen by the mailman or someone.”

He sighed. “We’re having the deep coves searched,” he said. “Nothing so far, but we’re still looking. I sure hoped something would turn up linking her to Seymour. No luck yet.”

This time she looked at him in surprise. “You suspected her? Why?”

“You,” he said. “I told her I wanted a crack at the files and she came on like a matchmaker, pushing you at me. After that note, it seemed curious. And I had to wonder why she hired you,” he said almost apologetically. “You said it yourself, you’re not presidential timber. A month or so after Langford bought that land and his plans became known, she hired you after getting along fine without an assistant for years. It seemed almost as if she did it just to keep you around, in case.” He paused and added, “And her husband’s schedule. I checked that as a matter of routine. He came out the following weekend.”