fairly imimportant, but ... I ... I have no sense of smell. You see, we Whitlocks all lack something.' He said it as if he hoped it would be a joke, but he was ashamed. He was afraid Alice would recoil from him. He would never in all his life have admitted this, she knew, had he not been forced to.
She tried to smile at him. 'You're lucky,' she said. 'You got off the easiest.' But, she thought, never any perfume of flowers or of good cooking or salt in the air. And she did recoil, invisibly.
'Who knows about this lack of yours?' Duff was asking.
'My family.'
Alice, thinking of the advantages, began to laugh a little
hysterically. 'I wondered how you could get so close to her. Oh . . .' She choked.
'To whom?'
'Maud,' said Alice. 'Oh, Mr. Duff, she's dreadful!'
'I know what you mean,' said Fred, with his nose wrinkled.
'What do you mean?' demanded Innes. 'What are you talking about?'
'She smells . . . well. . . like an Indian,' said Fred.
'Does she indeed?' Duff said.
Alice put her head in her hands. 'I'm sorry, Innes. They're your sisters. Are we crazy, Mr. Duff? Is there something ugly and malign and wicked ... or are we just cruel to think so because we are healthy and they are more or less . . . deformed?'
Duff said, 'I've wondered. I think it is remarkably self-critical of you, Alice, to be able to think of that.'
Innes said, 'Alice is sweet and good.'
'I'm not.'
He paid no attention. 'But please don't think because they're my sisters that any of you have to guard your tongues with me. I never liked them, and they never loved me. Never. I was a little boy, and they were young ladies, and I never felt the slightest warmth from any of them. But they . . . they awe me.' His voice sank. 'When I get away from here I can make myself believe they don't matter very much. Put them in their place, you know. I can even feel sorry for them.
'But the minute I step back into this house, I believe again. They seem just as important as they think they are. And this house, kept up just as it used to be, and their reputations here, and the whole Whitlock background, sucks me back in. I can't help it. I. . . dislike them. They make me nervous.'
Innes wound up with this understatement and looked defiantly at them all.
'They never loved you,' said Duff. 'Did they love their parents?'
'No. I don't know. Papa used to crack the whip. They'd hover around him like . . . like a chorus, you know. His three daughters. That's what they were. His. Like his coattails. And he got away with it.'
'They resented him?'
'I don't know. But I don't think they loved him. If they loved anyone, it would have been their mother. She was dead before I was born, and Gertrude made her into a legend. But I don't know. I wasn't here. She was supposed to be something superfine, and my father was her worthy consort. And my mother wasn't worthy of him. All I know is, they don't. . . aren't affectionate.'
'Toward each other?'
'No,' said Innes. 'Toward anybody.'
'You speak as if they were all alike?' Duff made this a question.
'No, no. It's Gertrude, really. Gertrude blames me, you know. Shell always blame me, and she's cold. Maud's not . . . well, you can get along with Maud. She's happy-go-lucky. She doesn't care if you know she doesn't care. So you don't mind so much. Isabel stays away because she's always got some worry of her own. It's Gertrude who t- terrifies me now.'
Duff said, calmly, 'We are getting into the realm of emotion, and very helpfully so; but have we come to the end of our other set of facts? Let's be sure. Does anything occur to any of you?'
'No. But what occurs to you?' Fred said boldly.
'Only this,' Duff said. 'These tremendous hot-air pipes that run through the walls magnify sound, don't they? Turning the dampers is not a perfectly silent operation. They were turned while Mr. Whitlock was asleep, and Alice was asleep. And while Fred was in the hall, rather far from any register. Unless any of you heard such a sound.'
'There was the storm,' Alice said. 'It was so noisy.'
'Yet you heard the little queer cough?'
'I know,' she admitted, 'but it came in a kind of lull, and it was near.'
'It makes me wonder,' said Duff, 'whether the person who turned those dampers used the storm for cover. Synchronized sounds. Waited for a blast.'
'Maybe,' said Fred.
'Then was it Maud?'
'The deaf can feel a storm,' Innes said.
'I believe you are right. But would the deaf expect the noise of a damper turning?'
