The kitchen window and the kitchen door were given thorough attention next. The kitchen door had once fitted loosely, but it had been weatherstripped; the men figured for an hour before they gave up, to admit the bolt couldn’t possibly have been pulled by any contrivance from the outside, however ingenious.
“Besides,” I said from my watchtower on the kitchen table, “I’ve decided that whoever’s doing this is someone stupid. You have to look for something easy.”
I’ll skip the answers I got.
They passed on to the unused door to the unused staircase. Its bolt was rusted as stiffly as ever; the lieutenant worked at it until the veins bulged on his forehead; couldn’t budge it.
They tapped the walls, took the rugs up off the floors, and examined the ceilings. Not a chance.
They stood in the living room, then, looking at each other in gloomy defeat. Lieutenant Strom rallied.
“Now, men, I don’t believe in ghosts. Not ghosts wielding hammers and anything as modern as Kleenfine. This was a human being, and maybe even a dumb one at that, if we’re going to go by Mrs. Dacres. Just dumb enough to wear gloves. What I wouldn’t give for a fingerprint on that Kleenfine can! We’ve gone over all this stuff, and there’s isn’t a clue in it. All you can say for the methods used on Mrs. Dacres is that they were thorough, except for a lucky chance, but not expert. Our best bet is tracking him down by how he got in or out. That’s what we’ve got to do, concentrate on those two questions. How’d he get in? How’d he get out?”
“He might of been in here, hiding, when Mrs. Dacres came in that night,” offered Van hopefully.
“Oh no!” That was me, appalled. “He couldn’t have been! I was all through the rooms.”
“Sure of that?”
“Oh yes!”
“In the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“Lavatory?”
“Yes.”
“Closet?”
“Yes. I hung my dress away. I don’t have so much in my closet anyone could hide in there.”
“How about that closet of Mrs. Garr’s?”
“Before all its contents got thrown out it was so full I don’t think anyone could have squeezed in. Besides, look how the lock on it was broken. I’d certainly have noticed that.”
Again the three men walked through the two rooms, looking for hiding places. My studio couch came low to the floor. My steamer trunk was tightly against the wall. There just wasn’t any hiding place.
“Now let’s snap out of this.” The lieutenant was exasperated. “What if he did hide here? That wouldn’t tell us how he got out. There’s just one more place I can think of to give the works, and that’s those cellar stairs. We’ll get at ’em from below. Come on.”
The order was to his two men, but I came, too.
“Why, the door’s open!” I cried at the foot of the cellar stairs.
The lieutenant turned his hooded eyes on me.
“Sure, it was opened Monday afternoon, by the last cop before he left. Why not? We were through with it.”
He went on into the room in which all that was left of Mrs. Garr had been found.
I swallowed hard, but pattered right after.
It was the first time, really, that I had been in that kitchen. Before, I’d just seen it from the furnace room; sometimes the door had stood open, but usually it had been closed. Now I saw it closely. All trace of the nightmare once dwelling there had been removed. The floor was empty, clean. But it was an unappetizing kitchen, for all that. Lavatory to the right, under mine. A door, which Van opened on a flight of stairs going up toward my kitchen. At the left, a grimy, hooded gas stove. A dust-gray cupboard. Against the wall ahead, a table.
My blood quickened.
A kitchen table. One table. The only table. It stood against the back wall, midway between the two basement windows at the back, just about under where my back porch was. It stood four feet under and about three feet to the left of the basement window that was open an inch.
The lieutenant had halted at the foot of the stairs.
“Wait!” I called.
He turned around. “What?”
“The table. Is that the table where the key was found?”
“Sure.”
“Then Mrs. Garr was murdered,” a loud, clear voice was saying. Mine. “And I know how the murderer got out of this room after he killed her.”
The two policemen, already halfway up the stairs, came tumbling back. The three men advanced on me, almost like an army; there was something threatening in the way they stood over me.
“Okay, talk.”
“It’s awfully simple. The murderer walked out the door and locked it behind him. He probably caught the animals one by one, shoved them in, and locked the door behind them.”
“Yeah, he shoved the key in and locked the door behind that, I suppose.”
“Oh no. He waited until the house was quiet. Then he walked around to the back of the house, outside, and threw the key in through that partially opened window. It landed on the table. That was the sound I had heard down here. Plink, it said.”
“By God, Lieutenant, I believe she’s right!” Van was excited, staring up at the slit the window was open. “I bet it would make it! Wait. I’ll go up and throw my keys in.”
He dashed out.
The lieutenant was viewing me sourly.
“Don’t mind me,” he said bitterly. “Don’t tell me anything. I’m the last person to tell things to. Did you ever tell me one word about things falling into the cellar?”
I was mournful about it myself. “I can’t help it. I forget things. Then
