I quickly retied the wire about the rail as I had found it and went down again to the living-room.
Lamb stood by the fire, his wet clothes steaming slightly. His face was as blank as if no emotion had ever managed to push up through the heavy masklike layer of fat. He took a small pill box from his vest pocket, extracted a round pink capsule, and popped it absently into his mouth. Sigrid still sat woodenly in her chair and Watrous, leaning against the séance table, puffed nervously at a cigarette in a long black holder. They were all watching the middle-aged, dumpy little woman who faced Merlini, peering at him with near-sighted attention.
She wore a dark cloth coat over a faded dressing gown and held it drawn close around her body, one hand fussing uncertainly at the belt. She spoke, answering some question of Merlini’s, in a rapid, frightened monotone.
“I haven’t seen her since lunch time. She ate out on the terrace with the others. She was in her room all afternoon.”
“What time was lunch, Mrs. Henderson?” asked Merlini.
“One o’clock.”
“She didn’t appear for dinner?”
Mrs. Henderson shook her head. “No.”
“Wasn’t that unusual?”
“No.” This was Sigrid’s voice, strained and colorless. “Linda often had her meals in her room. Sometimes, when her attacks were bad, she stayed there for two or three days at a time.”
“I see. And yet Mrs. Henderson hasn’t seen her since noon.” He turned back to the elder woman. “Who took her dinner tray up to her?”
“No one. I didn’t fix one.”
“You didn’t inquire if she wanted one?”
“No. She — she had that sign on the door.”
Sigrid added another marginal note. “A sign that means exactly what it says, ‘Do Not Disturb.’ Mrs. Henderson has orders to take that literally. Meals are no exception. If Linda wanted anything she’d ask. She was quite strict about it.”
Merlini dismissed Mrs. Henderson. As she left, I crossed the room and went into the library. There was a floor lamp there near the phone. I knelt and started to appropriate the length of light cord that connected it with the base plug.
Merlini followed me in, closed the door behind him, and asked, “What luck?”
“The line’s cut outside, near the window of Linda’s room,” I said, and described it. “I’ll replace the missing piece with this light wire, and we’ll phone Gavigan.”
“And the cut line was tied around the sun-deck rail?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Leave that light cord alone. We’ll connect up later.” He turned toward the door. “If necessary.”
I stood up and looked after him. “What do you mean by that?”
But he went through into the living-room again, without answering. I heard Arnold and Dr. Gail come down the stairs and followed after him. Arnold wore a dark silk dressing gown, and the queer marks that had been on his face were gone.
“Rappourt’s sleeping,” Gail reported. “Dosed herself with sleeping tablets, I think. There’s an open bottle of luminal beside her bed.”
Merlini blinked a bit at that information. I did myself. Rappourt’s lack of curiosity seemed somewhat abnormal.
“What seemed to be wrong with her, Brooke?” Merlini asked.
“Shock, I should say. She came out of her trance too suddenly, she said.”
Merlini took a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece and tapped it against the back of his hand. “Mrs. Henderson says she saw Miss Skelton alive last at lunch time. One o’clock. How many of you saw her after that?”
For a moment, no one answered; then Arnold replied, “We ate out on the terrace. Linda, Madame Rappourt, Sigrid. Lamb, and myself, The air was far too thick with psychic discussion, and I excused myself immediately I’d finished. I didn’t see her after that. What happened after I left, Sigrid?”
Sigrid looked up at us gravely. “We sat there for a while. Ten minutes perhaps. Rappourt was telling Linda about some psychic experiences she had had in Europe. Then we all came in together. I went directly upstairs and dressed to go into town. Henderson was to take me at two. I came down very shortly, and Linda stood at the foot of the stairs talking with Madame Rappourt and Mr. Lamb. I passed her on the stairs as she left them and came up. I told her I was going to town and would not be back for dinner. I never saw her again.”
“You went directly to the boathouse?”
“Yes, The others came with me. Lamb went in to town too. Rappourt got into the boat, and Henderson put her on the houseboat as we passed. She wanted to see Brooke.”
“Did you see her after that, Lamb?”
He said simply in an almost bored manner, “No.”
Merlini’s eyes, that appeared to be watching the thin stream of his cigarette smoke, slid around toward Lamb. “When did you return to the island?”
“Six o’clock.”
“What were you doing in town?”
Lamb considered that a moment, stolidly. Then, without inflection, he said, “That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Merlini. “What about you, Brooke?”
“I haven’t seen her — alive that is — since breakfast this morning. I’ve been out on the houseboat all day.”
“Colonel?”
“Same as Brooke,” he said. “Not since breakfast. I left the island at eleven and returned in the boat with Lamb at six o’clock just before dinner.”
“You didn’t come in to lunch, Brooke?”
“No. I don’t usually. I took sandwiches and a bottle of milk out with me.”
“What keeps you so busy out there?”
“I have a workshop there.” Brooke’s easy, nonchalant manner faded perceptibly.
“That’s not very specific,” Merlini commented.
Brooke nodded and his chin came out a bit. “I know.”
Merlini didn’t pursue the matter. Instead, very solemnly, he pushed his cigarette, lighted end first, into his left fist, looked once at his empty right hand, and then opened his left fingers slowly. His eyebrows rose a bit as he stared with apparent surprise and wonder at the empty hand. Then he flicked a small bit of tobacco from the palm and, looking up, asked sharply, “What time did this séance tonight begin, exactly?”
No one answered for a moment. They never do after that cigarette business.
Sigrid spoke finally. “It was shortly after you came from the houseboat, Ira. What time was that?”
“I came in at 9:45. The séance started just at ten.”
“Exactly ten?” Merlini asked.
“Yes. When Madame Rappourt said she was ready to begin, I turned off the radio, just on a program change.”
“And then the lights were turned out?”
“No.” This was Arnold. “Not for another five minutes or so. Rappourt takes about that long to go into her trance.” His tone was more than faintly sarcastic.
“From 9:45 then, in the light for the first twenty minutes and afterward in the dark, until Harte interrupted you at 10:15, Rappourt, Brooke, Lamb, Miss Verrill, and Arnold were all in this room?”
Arnold and Sigrid nodded. Lamb’s expression was bored and impatient. Ira’s look was on the sour side.
“And you, Doctor. Where were you at ten?”
“Why do you ask that?” Arnold said sharply. “Did Linda — is that when she—?”
“No,” Merlini said, and without explaining further, waited for the Doctor’s reply. I knew what he had in mind — Captain Skelton’s ghost and the fire.
Gail, who had remained quietly in the background behind Sigrid’s chair, said, “At ten o’clock I was in New York. I took the water taxi out from 44th Street a few minutes after that and came directly up here from the boathouse. I arrived just after Mr. Harte.”
And that, I thought, accounted for everyone. The Doctor’s story would be easy to check since there was only one speedboat service on the river, the same Merlini and I had used. When Merlini, Watrous, and myself had discovered the fire, at ten, the doctor had been in New York; the others, except for the Hendersons, had been about to begin the séance. They had not yet turned out the lights; so it wasn’t a question of someone having left the room in the dark. And even Ira had come in too long before to be suspect. A nice Grade-A quality of alibis all around.