Mr. Goodwin blinked and said he too lacked these three necessary qualities; but after being hauled to his feet by Crawford he admitted he might work them up. Since Mr. Goodwin’s case was settled, he wandered out into the hall and stared helplessly up and down. Confronted by space free of Miss Rudd, he took heart and ventured to open a door which looked promising. It happened to be the library door — Mr. Goodwin was not fortunate in these matters — and he closed it again very quickly. Floraine was not a sight calculated to cheer the heart, and Mr. Goodwin retreated to the dining room looking bilious.
“Back again?” Crawford said grimly.
“My dear Anthony!” Mrs. Vista exclaimed. “Your face is positively mildewed. Really, we cannot take chances with your health. Poets are so delicate. You must remain here with me.”
“I want to go with Chad,” Joyce said.
“You shall go with me,” Mr. Hunter said.
“No, Poppa, you’re so dull.”
“I have never been considered dull.”
“People were just too polite to say so, Poppa.”
“Shut up!” Crawford roared again. “And get out! All of you! Get — out — of — my — sight! scram!”
There was a general movement towards the hall. In less than a minute Mrs. Vista found herself alone with Maudie.
Mrs. Vista sniffed audibly and turned her eyes to the ceiling.
Maudie drew in her breath.
“You addle-pated, bulbous-nosed old bat.”
“Coarse,” Mrs. Vista said sadly, with her eyes turned upwards. “A very coarse little bitch.”
13
Dubois surprised and displeased Isobel by quite suddenly going to sleep in the middle of one of her sentences. He lay with his head propped against the back of the chair, but even in sleep his body seemed to have a watchful rigidity.
She waited, hoping the banging of the radiators or the shuffle of feet and the sound of raised voices from the hall might waken him again. She felt lonely without him. His self-assurance calmed her.
Finally she rose and went out into the hall and found Mr. Goodwin. The others had disappeared, either up or down, and Mr. Goodwin, for lack of anything better to do, was trying to play a tune on the crystal chandelier by tapping it with his cigarette holder.
When he saw Isobel he dropped the cigarette holder and looked sheepish.
“Yes?” Isobel said curtly. “What are you supposed to be doing?”
“Precisely my question,” Mr. Goodwin said. “What am I supposed to be doing? Nobody told me.”
“Well, think of what the rest are doing and do that. Where are they all?”
Mr. Goodwin shrugged. “Here and there. Looking for Miss Rudd. Waste of time.”
“Why a waste of time?”
“It’s her house. Probably she knows plenty of nooks and crannies where she can hide, supposing hiding is desirable, as no doubt it is.”
“This isn’t a nook-and-cranny house,” Isobel said. “She’s probably just in a closet upstairs.”
But when Crawford and Joyce and Chad and Mr. Hunter came down they were willing to swear that Miss Rudd was not upstairs. Every available space had been searched, including the bathroom and the back staircase, and Miss Rudd had not appeared.
“It’s damn funny,” Chad said. “If she was a normal person I’d say she was tricking us some way, making monkeys out of us. But — this is the third one.”
“Third one?” Joyce echoed.
“Third one to disappear,” Chad said slowly.
Joyce’s eyes widened. “She wouldn’t be out in the snow?”
“No,” Crawford said. “I looked out of all the windows and there were no marks on the balcony and no marks below, and it hasn’t snowed since she disappeared.”
“The third floor,” Isobel said. “Perhaps that door really does open and it fooled us.”
Both Crawford and Mr. Hunter disagreed with her.
“Maybe Paula and Herbert and Gracie have found her down in the cellar,” Joyce said.
But when Paula and Herbert and Gracie came back Miss Rudd was not with them.
“This is insane,” Isobel said shrilly. “She must be somewhere. I’m going to look myself.”
“Go ahead,” Crawford said. “If you think you’re so much better at it.”
“Will anyone come with me?” Isobel said. “Mr. Goodwin?”
“Me?” Mr. Goodwin said.
“Comic relief only,” Isobel said coldly. “I need some to steady my nerves.”
“Oh, quite. Know just how it is. You find me amusing?”
“You’ll never know,” Isobel said and walked off down the hall with Mr. Goodwin trailing behind her. The others watched in grim silence.
How often have I been down in this cellar now, Isobel thought, pausing at the top of the stairs. I practically live here. But I can’t get used to the smell.
Mr. Goodwin noticed it, too. “Lime,” he said. “Like a morgue.”
“And rotting potatoes.”
“The macabre note, yes,” Mr. Goodwin said, advancing carefully into the main room.
“I’ve already searched this room,” Isobel said. “There’s no place for anyone to hide.”
“The trunks?”
“I’ve looked there before,” Isobel said, barely glancing at them.
Mr. Goodwin went and looked at the trunks. “I haven’t seen a trunk like this for years. Reminds me of when I was a boy...”
“Were you ever a boy?” Isobel called from the next room.
There was a long and noticeable silence after this, no sound at all from Mr. Goodwin.
Now what? Isobel thought and came back into the main room.
The lid of the trunk was open and Mr. Goodwin was crouching beside it, like a tiger motionless before its prey. But his face was dreamy.
“She is here,” he said in a deep strange voice.
Miss Rudd seemed small in death, and helpless. The wild look had gone from her face and she was only a little old woman curled up in a trunk to sleep for a time. Her eyes were closed and her hands were clasped under her chin, and her tongue stuck out of her mouth in a roguish way.
“She was a child,” Goodwin said, “a child who lived too long.”
It was a gentle epitaph. Isobel began to cry almost without sound.
“Hush,” he said. “This is hardly death. She is warm and soft and happy.”
“No, no, don’t talk like that. She was killed — killed!”
“Yes. The bruises on her neck,” he said, but he still looked dreamy. “She is not like the other one. She died easily, perhaps gladly.”
“Someone closed her eyes afterward,” Isobel whispered. She looked again at Miss Rudd and for a moment she saw her as Mr. Goodwin saw her, as a child who should have died before and was glad to die now. But she said again, “No, no! Someone killed her! I can’t see it as you do.”
Mr. Goodwin straightened and closed the lid of the trunk, and once the lid was closed he seemed to change back to what he had been. The change was so sudden and so intense that Isobel thought, that’s the first glimpse I’ve ever had of him, the first sight backstage behind the curtains.
“Frightful,” he said in his old voice and walked upstairs ahead of her, muttering to himself.
Crawford was waiting in the kitchen and when he saw Isobel’s face he didn’t have to be told that Miss Rudd had been found.
He said, “Dead?”
“Yes,” Isobel said.
“How?”
“Strangled.”
“With a rope?”