Margaret Millar - The Devil Loves Me

Revel smiled. “It’s all quite simple,” he said, and walked out and closed the door behind him.

Prye sat in a chair until two o’clock, smoking. When he woke up he was still in the chair and the sun was streaming in on his face. He sat up and discovered that he had a stiff neck and a sore throat. Cursing Revel roundly, he went down the hall to the bathroom.

While he was shaving he began to whistle “Yankee Doodle.” He laid down his razor, interested. Why “Yankee Doodle”? he wondered.

Prye believed that the songs people whistled or sang were not chosen haphazardly. There was always a reason, a chain of circumstances behind the choice. Sometimes the reason was a simple one: whenever he and Nora quarreled Prye found himself whistling “Stormy Weather” with monotonous regularity.

But why “Yankee Doodle”? The tune kept running through his head long after he had forced himself to stop whistling it.

When he went into the dining room he found that he was the last to arrive. He greeted the others and took his place beside Nora, who was having a cigarette with her coffee.

“Hello,” she said. “You’ve been thinking again. You’re all wan and haggard.”

“I shaved,” Prye said. “Jackson, two boiled eggs, four minutes.”

Mrs. Shane said, “I’m glad you’ve come, Paul. We still haven’t decided what to do about the wedding presents. I’ve phoned everyone, of course, but it is a problem. Now if we could set another definite date—”

“We’ve gone into that,” Nora said.

“Not thoroughly,” Mrs. Shane protested. “Suppose the case is never solved?”

Dinah glanced at Prye and said smoothly, “That possibility doesn’t worry Paul. Does it, Paul? I shouldn’t be surprised if Paul has already solved it and is simply keeping us in suspense like the enigmatic detectives of fiction.”

“Don’t be silly, Dinah,” Nora said sharply.

The others were silent. Dinah was gazing into her coffee cup as if she were trying to see into the future. Revel was sitting across from her, not looking at her but knowing how she looked and what she wore.

Jackson came in again very quietly. Dinah’s head jerked up.

“I wish you wouldn’t creep, Jackson!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Revel,” Jackson said politely. “Inspector Sands is here and wants to see you.”

“Me?” Dinah said.

“Yes, madam.”

Dinah rose and waved an apology to Mrs. Shane. “Here I go.”

She went out into the hall. Sands was standing by the front door holding his hat in his hands. He still wore his topcoat and he looked pale and rather uncertain, Dinah thought.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Won’t you come in?”

He didn’t move, but stood regarding her soberly.

“What were you doing in Stevens’ room on Sunday night?” he said. “I saw you.”

“You didn’t actually see me, Inspector.” She stood facing him, smiling. “The curtains were drawn.”

“The door was locked,” Sands said. “I locked it.”

“I unlocked it,” she said dryly. “Not hard. I was looking for something.”

“Find it?”

“No.”

“Know what it was?”

“No. But it would be a parcel, wouldn’t it? And I knew Duncan. He was too suspicious and sly to hide anything where he couldn’t watch it. Therefore I searched his room.”

“I was in Boston yesterday,” Sands said.

“The home of the bean and the cod,” Dinah said. “So what?”

“Stevens was a crook.”

“Of course,” Dinah said. “He hadn’t enough space between his eyes. Therefore, he was a crook.”

“Why?”

“For the hell of it. He had enough money.”

“Had he?” Sands paused. “He leaves his sister barely enough to keep her.”

“Keep her in mink, you mean.”

“I mean, keep her in food,” Sands said, frowning. “He had a dollar in his bank account.”

“You’re crazy.” She was staring at him in disbelief. “Or you’ve been taken for a ride. I’m charitable. I vote for the ride.”

“Neither. He had no money. He spent forty-two thousand dollars in the past month. I want to know what he spent it on.”

Dinah smiled. “On himself. Or buying off one of the hepatica’s men. Anything at all.”

“You can’t help me?”

“No, sorry. You might try asking Revel.”

“I have. That’s all I want to ask you now, Mrs. Revel. If you’re going back to the dining room you might tell Sammy Twist I want to see him.”

She looked at him for a moment and said, “You are crazy. Who’s Sammy Twist?”

Sands said, “A young man who’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Well?”

“His landlady reported this morning that he went out around ten last night and he never came back.”

“He never came back,” Dinah repeated slowly. “I think I’m rather envious of your Sammy Twist.”

“His landlady said he had a telephone call about seven o’clock. He told her he was going out and he asked her to remember an address for him. She wrote it down.”

“This address?” Dinah said. “Yes, it would be this address, of course, or you wouldn’t be here. The port of missing men.”

“I think he’s dead.”

“Of course,” Dinah said. “Of course he’s dead.”

She kept nodding her head, her eyes half closed and glassy. “Duncan and Dennis. Why not Sammy?”

“You’d better go up to your room, Mrs. Revel.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why should I go up to my room? I want to follow you. I want to see that you don’t find Sammy. Maybe Sammy never went back because he didn’t want to go back, see? Maybe Sammy was like me, not giving a damn, only wanting to be left in peace. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found—”

“You’re hysterical, Mrs. Revel. Please—”

“O God! There are things so much worse than death. You say I’m hysterical because you don’t want to admit it. I know about you, Sands. You haven’t the faintest respect for human life. I can see it in your eyes, contempt for weakness. Why are you a policeman, Sands? For a laugh? Guilty conscience, maybe?” She drew a long, deep breath that ended in a sob. “Sammy’s all right, and Duncan, and Dennis—”

“Guilty conscience, I think,” Sands said quietly. “You’d better go and rest. Perhaps Dr. Prye will give you a sedative.”

“To hell with Prye.” She straightened up and threw back her head. “To hell with sedatives. I’m going to get roaring drunk. I’m going to get so drunk I’ll think you are the Dionne quintuplets. You wait there. I’ll be back.”

She swung round and walked quickly and unsteadily toward the drawing room. Sands made a feeble noise of protest. He was a little uncomfortable with Dinah Revel even when she was cold sober.

He went into the library, laid his hat on the desk, and began to reread the notes he had taken in Boston. He was still there when Prye came in.

“You don’t get handwriting samples by playing charades,” Prye said. “Let’s get that straight.”

Sands looked up in surprise. “Don’t you? Sit down.”

Prye tossed an envelope on the desk. “But there they are.” He walked over to the windows. A police car was just stopping on the driveway. Six men climbed out of it, armed with a strange assortment of implements — spades, pickaxes, a camera, and an iron-toothed rake.

Prye raised his eyebrows. “Friends of yours?”

Sands said, “We’re looking for something that may be under ground.”

“The fifty brunettes?”

“No, a young man, one young man.”

Prye froze.

“The young man came here last night,” Sands said. “I think he is still here.”

“Who was he?”

Sands told him.

“I see,” Prye said. “You think he came here and never got away. Why?”