“With my flashlight?” Crawford said dryly. “Watch those light fingers, Isobel.”
Flushing, Isobel continued. “And the driver did come here. I found parts of his clothing. And if you want to hear the rest of it, I think he’s dead, do you understand? I think they killed him and you stand there raising your silly eyebrows and...” She broke off in a sob.
“Dear, dear,” said Mr. Hunter. “Tut, tut. Don’t cry.”
“She’s putting it all on,” Crawford said in a hard voice. “I don’t know what her game is...”
“Crawford, you’re a brute,” said Mr. Hunter.
“He’s scared,” Isobel said huskily. “He’s scared silly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Crawford said. “All right. You want to search, all right let’s search. What in hell you expect to find I don’t know. Where’s my flashlight?”
“I lent it to someone,” Isobel confessed weakly.
“You are beginning,” Crawford said gently, “to annoy me intensely.”
He walked towards the staircase. Mr. Hunter hung back and looked wistful.
“Why don’t you come, too?” Isobel said. “Heaven knows we can’t have too many.” She raised her voice. “And I can’t spend the whole night trying to persuade Mr. Crawford to put one foot in front of the other.”
“Nuts,” Crawford said. “Make it snappy. I’m tired.”
“Tired?” Isobel said. “You’re moribund.”
“Mightn’t it be a good idea to examine the third floor first?” Mr. Hunter suggested. “Make sure it’s really shut up, I mean, a sort of process of elimination.”
Isobel said, “Mr. Crawford, if you’re not too tired, think that over, will you?”
“Sure,” Crawford said. He turned around and led the way to the back staircase. It was enclosed, and the door was shut and padlocked. Mr. Hunter held his lamp directly over the padlock.
“Rusted,” Isobel said. “Hasn’t been used for years.” She bent down and examined the sides of the door. The cracks had been filled in with putty.
“Nobody could get through here without a battering ram,” Crawford said. “Now what? More eliminations? What, no suggestion from the little lady?”
“You talk too much,” Isobel said coldly. “Obviously the next step is to go through all the bedrooms. She may be simply hiding. Had that occurred to you?”
“Last year,” Crawford said. “How do you go about searching bedrooms?”
“Let’s try yours first, shall we?”
“Sure,” Crawford said. “Welcome, I’m sure.”
Crawford’s bedroom was small and without a clothes closet or fireplace. There was obviously no place anyone could hide except under the bed. And there Isobel looked, her face reddening under Crawford’s exaggerated leer. He said, “T-t-t-t. Sorry, Isobel. Better luck next time.”
Nothing of interest came to light in the bedrooms except Maudie Thropple’s beautiful bridgework which had been removed to prevent her swallowing it while in a faint.
There remained Miss Rudd’s bedroom but no one seemed eager to tackle it, least of all Crawford who said it would upset all his favorite ideas of how he was going to commit suicide some day. So they went downstairs.
Mr. Goodwin was giving his insomnia a workout in front of the fire.
He said, “Well?” rather aggressively.
“We want to search this room,” Isobel explained. “Mr. Crawford, could you take that side and I’ll take this side with Mr. Hunter.”
“What about me?” Mr. Goodwin said.
“All we ask from you is a cozy silence,” Crawford replied. He began to creep around the room, patting the chesterfield cushions and peering behind the drapes saying, “Ah!”
Isobel gritted her teeth and tried hard not to pay any attention, but Crawford’s “Ah’s!” became too loud to ignore.
“Stop your clowning,” she said sternly.
“Hell, I was just getting into the spirit of the thing,” Crawford said.
“If you think this is a joke you’d better not come with us.”
“I do think it’s a joke. If I ever saw a woman better able to take care of herself than Floraine...” He stopped and shrugged. “Oh, come on. You lady detectives kill me.”
He went out first. Mr. Hunter, after whispering something soothing but inaudible in Isobel’s ear, followed him.
The room across the hall turned out to be a library. It hadn’t been used for years, evidently, as the furniture was covered with dust sheets and the sheets themselves were grimy. Only one shelf of books remained. Isobel picked one out and opened it, closing it hastily when a couple of bookworms stirred themselves and started to move across the page. The binding of the book was mildewed. Isobel replaced it on the shelf and looked at the titles of the rest of them. Historical books, mostly, with one or two on local geography and a vast tome on how to recognize and cure your own ailments. Isobel would have liked to sit down and pick herself out a couple of ailments and worry over them; but business before pleasure, she told herself firmly, and began swatting at the dust sheets in the faint hope that Floraine would be underneath one of them.
But Floraine was not in the library. Nor, it developed, was she in the dining room. In the hall closet Mr. Hunter turned up a pair of old snowshoes and in the kitchen Crawford found a bottle of brandy, but Floraine remained elusive.
Crawford wanted to open the brandy on the theory that it would provide inspiration for all. Isobel objected. Mr. Hunter wavered, then catching Isobel’s cold eye, he also objected. Crawford put the bottle in his pocket.
“Are you sure you have room for it?” Isobel said sweetly. “Sure it won’t load you down when you’re carrying your arsenal?”
“I’ll put it in the other pocket,” Crawford said.
Mr. Hunter looked from one to the other. “I don’t quite follow...”
“That’s all right,” Crawford said. “Nobody can keep any secrets from our Isobel.”
Mr. Hunter was beginning to show signs of strain. He kept pulling violently at his mustache.
“I wish she’d turn up some place,” he said. “I mean to say, there’s only one more floor, and if she’s not in the house, where is she?”
They looked, simultaneously, out of the kitchen window. There was nothing to be seen but the snow beating on the window.
Isobel swallowed hard and said, “She wouldn’t have gone out. She’d die in this blizzard. She must be here some place.”
“Miss Lashley said the scream was very faint,” Mr. Hunter said. “That might mean it came from the cellar.”
“Well, let’s go,” Crawford said, and opened the door into the cellar.
In the main room Isobel’s eye fell on the two trunks that Joyce had said were empty. She opened the lids of both and found that Joyce, as usual, had been right. She examined the floor — solid concrete, impossible to bury a body here — and then followed Crawford into the furnace room.
She saw that Crawford was staring intently at the furnace and that he was no longer amused.
“She put the cat in there,” Isobel said weakly. “You don’t suppose...”
“Take a look at the size of the door,” Crawford said roughly. “You couldn’t get a body in there unless you cut it up into steaks.”
Mr. Hunter looked green and said, “Really. I must ask you...” His voice faded.
“Try cutting up somebody and you get blood,” Crawford said. “And there’s no blood.”
“Please,” Mr. Hunter bleated.
“There’s only one other place,” Isobel said. “Under the coal.”
Crawford eyed her grimly. “Yeah? And that means?”
“I’m afraid it means,” Isobel said in a small voice, “that you shovel.”