There were still things Matt wanted clarified: tombstones and skulls tumbled in his brain among automatic cameras and the deplorable results in candid photography as a hobby. He picked up a picture he had examined three times by now: Ada, her blackmailer, and a small square wooden stool.
The front told him nothing new, so he flipped it over. A large black X had been drawn in one corner. Remembering something, he replaced the picture, face down, and started to flip over the others.
“Censor,” noted Ada, leaning forward.
A pattern of Xs began to appear: about half the pictures had one. Matt flipped each of these up, and then back down. Then he checked the ones without any X.
Ada watched all this with interest. “Are you detecting, Hercule, or are you just picking your favorites?”
Matt did not reply before he had flipped, flopped, and reflipped every flip-flopping picture in the display. Then he sat back, rolled his shoulders to relieve the muscles, and sighed, “You’re right.”
Ada accepted this. “I always am. About what?”
Matt pointed to the bottom row and let his hand drop to his knee. “There’s an X on the back of every picture where you can see his face.”
She reached past him to check for herself, and he went on, “So this has got to be his personal file. Nobody else would care. YOUR blackmailer could send them all, but Jerry Siberwetter wouldn’t bank on his stepfather being a good sport. If this was a file he had on deposit with a go-between, he’d have given that person only the ones without the X. The tombstone pictures each have two Xs: that was to separate them completely.”
“Well!” said Ada, sitting back. “You may get somewhere in the detective business yet. My guess about the tombstones was that he took some other pictures on the roll first and they just got mixed in. Very nice.” She pointed. “Look: even Miss Skull gets covered up in some.”
Matt nodded. So the “Miss Skull” who wrote the letters had two murders on her record: two and a half counting last night’s attempt. His eyes moved across the pictures, inventorying the skulls. Then he glanced beyond them to the manila envelope Ada had used for storage.
As one who had sent out many envelopes, and seen most of them come back, Matt had an experience with brown envelopes, in transit and repose. This one did not repose just right.
He leaned down to peer into the open end. “Is there still something in there?”
Ada scooped it up. “Oh, yes. The letters. The real ones, I mean.”
“Real….” Matt wilted a little.
Her shrug slid the robe clear off one shoulder. “I figured your mom could deduce something right away from the envelopes and the tombstones, so why bother her with all the details?”
“The real….” He took the papers she handed him. “What does he really ask for?”
Her sigh was heavy with regret. “Only money.”
Matt remembered the drooping b typed on the envelopes; these letters showed the same birthmark. There wasn’t much in common with the other letters, save for the pseudonym Miss Skull and an interest in the Personals column of the Reader. Dispensing with baroque vituperation, they cut right to the bone. Miss Skull knew the target well enough to skip any idea that she would be afraid of scandal; Miss Skull went right for a threat to Marshall.
“What happens to your mealticket if new evidence comes out? But maybe his kids will set up a trust fund for you.” Matt bit his lip. This style was familiar from hundreds of memos at Down.
The suggested text for a reply in the Personals was the same as in the bogus letters, though Miss skull was a bit more explicit about what Ada could expect, especially in Letter B, with “Let’s see those teeth.” If Ada needed further proof that Miss Skull had the driver’s seat, a negative—“the one where you are apparently playing round-up”—could be swapped for a small amount of cash. Dire things would befall if a trap was set.
That was the most recent message. As Matt set it down, his partner noted, “I liked my letters better.”
Matt nodded absently. “Why has Miss Skull waited so long? If she’s had the prints and negatives since Jerry Silberwetter died?”
“Maybe she wanted to let the death investigation cool off,” Ad suggested, leaning way forward to straighten the bottom row of photos. “Or maybe she salted them away like an IRA and didn’t need the money until this stock market unpleasantness.”
Matt picked up the letters again. Something was missing besides such coined words as “fornify”. He looked over the first letter again.
“There’s no threat to kill somebody.”
“No.’ She sat back and the robe slipped some more. “He missed out on a good thing there.”
He rattled the pages at her. “But what about…what was the name, who fell dead in his soup at Thanksgiving?”
Ada set the tips of both index fingers on his knee. “We didn’t serve soup.” Her head tipped to one side. “He could have dropped dead in the Buffalo wings.”
Matt sat way back, his mouth open. “Yes,” she went on, “I should have had him fall facefirst into the Buffalo wings.”
She glanced up at Matt, and her smile spread wide. “You’re thinking something very nasty, aren’t you? I can tell.”
“Why,” said Matt, choosing his word carefully and letting them cool before release, “Did you go to all this trouble? Fake letters, fake murder story….”
Ada hitched up the shoulder of her robe and wriggled a little more securely inside. “Well, I had to have some excuse. You wouldn’t want me to take all these pictures to your mother.”
Matt blinked. He had not expected her to have decency left.
“After all, with her eyesight, it would have been terribly frustrating.”
“Funny.” Matt dropped the letters on the floor. “Get Bing Crosby and we’ll call the movie Road to Ruin.”
Ada tossed her hair back. Matt slapped one hand down on the letters. “How do I know you didn’t write these letters too?”
She stared at him. “Why would I do something like that?”
Matt gazed at her apparently genuine expression of puzzlement. “Maybe you wanted an excuse to show off your portfolio?”
Ada looked into his face a moment longer and then bounced forward on her knees, dislodging all the adjustments she’d made to her robe. “Oh, I KNEW you’d be fun to detect with!”
Matt tried to slide back about a mile and a half, and failed. “They are rather good of me, most of them,” she went on, scanning the bottom rows. A delicate finger arched out. “I can’t say that one shows my BEST side.”
He declined to see which one. “Well?”
Pink lips gathered into another pout. “Well, I didn’t. Miss Skull really means it and really wants my money, just when I need every penny for Christmas shopping. Though I guess I could save what it would cost to have a picture taken for the family Christmas card.” She bent over to pick something from the gallery.
Matt still refused to look either at the pictures or the borders of her robe. “I suppose that left you nothing to hire a real detective.”
The robe billowed as she sat back on her haunches. “Oh, but Marshall would have found out about that in no time! And he’d have worried, poor lamb. I couldn’t get help from any of his aides, either: they’d run to him right away. That’ll be my extra present for him: I’m going to do it completely pro bono. But I do need some helper outside our circle.”
“So you picked on me.”
Her smile dimpled up again. “I couldn’t much farther outside than that.”
As Matt growled, she rubbed her hands together. “Now, then. Shall we all start behaving like mature adult detectives now? Who do you like as Geegee’s murderer? Practically everybody at the City knew about Miss Skulll, and he probably had pictures of at least half of them.”
The other hands in the room were clenched into fists. “Listen. There’s….” Matt stopped to think; blood rushed to his face and ears.
Interested, Ada leaned in. Matt took two breaths. “You mean that to keep this from Marshall you walked my mother all around City Center talking about Miss Skull so the entire municipal government knew what you were doing?”
She held her hands out toward him. “I told you why. Besides, if it isn’t someone with the city there’s no problem.”
“It could…be an outsider.” Matt-the-Writer was fighting to get past Matt-the-Wronged.
“I don’t see how,” she replied cheerfully. “Now what do you know about our dear little Walter Prince?”
Matt considered it. “The only other person at Down from those days is Linda Szarkowski. I could ask….”
“I didn’t know her very well.” Ada shook her head, perhaps with regret. “But any woman who worked with Geegee was probably photographed at some point. He was oversexed. So many of the Silberwetters are.”
She reached out and slid a picture toward Matt. Matt had lost interest in the photographs. “But if he was just a stepson, he…never mind. What about Holly? Did he ever make a pass at her?”
“Who?” One tiny wrinkle appeared in her forehead.
“Holly MacTaggart? She’s your granddaughter. You must have met her at some point.”
One pink hand shot into the air. “Her! Geegee had taste!” Matt glanced involuntarily toward the photos. “Anyhow, in those days she’d only have been about…well, she would have been away at college.”
Matt felt this violated the timeline of the story, but excused it on humanitarian grounds. Ada lowered her eyebrows at him and went on, “But we’ll get a look at Miss Skull when he delivers the negative. You’d recognize Walter Prince, right? Even in disguise?”
The room seemed to waver. Matt was facing a gun in the hands of a familiar figure again. He stared at it until fingers snapped next to his left ear.
“Yoo hoo! Anyone home? You’re awfully absent-minded, even for a Watson.”
“Pardon me!” Matt snapped, as the room came back into focus. “I’m not used to having people try to kill me!”
Ada folded her arms; the pout reappeared. “I haven’t done a thing to you! So far.”
“You weren’t even there.” Matt folded his own arms, close to his chest. “Disasters do happen sometimes without you.”
He had intended to hang onto this story until he was sure Ada Silberwetter had nothing to do with the gun and the ski mask, but her expression was that of a small child demanding a story before bed. By the time he’d finished, sweat was beading on his forehead and Ada was positively panting.
“Such fun! And I missed it! You should have come to me right away! You probably botched the whole thing: what do you know about searching a woman’s coat? And you didn’t even bring the gun to show me. Some Watson! Well, I have to take what I can get, I suppose. Did you recognize him?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was Walter Prince, wasn’t it?”
Matt threw his hands forward. “I thought I recognized the way they were standing. But I just don’t know who it was.”
“Oh, you do so!”
“It could have been Prince. But it could have been Carleton Nairn, or Holly. I think Linda might be a little too….” He realized what shape his hands were making, and pulled them down.
“Probably too much Thanksgiving dinner.” Ada nodded. “And under a coat, too. So it could really have been any of the four.”
“Or none,” Matt pointed out. “It could…I ran into Harry Silberwetter just after that. I think.”
He explained this other violent encounter, but Ada was not as pleased. “Oh, I don’t like that at all!” She shook her head. “Not at all. I don’t loke Harry either, but…. And that little vinyl piece of bone is his favorite niece, too. They could have been in on it together and he was blocking your investigation with his noise. But they LIKED Geegee. It was Walter Prince. Take my word.”
Leaning toward Matt, she set three fingers on his nearer knee. He ignored these. “It still could have been Linda. Or Holly, under that coat. Or Harry. Or Nairn.”
“I think Carleton was in the jug by that time. When Geegee was moved on, I mean.”
“And Holly could….”
Ada rocked back. “If it was that flimsy little butter piecrust tart I will just spit. No, no: my heart is set on Walter Prince. You will send me a thank you note, won’t you, when they take him away and you wind up with his cubicle and desk? Or shall I come over and throw a housewarming?”
Matt was busy with other possibilities. Holly MacTaggart might have no motive for killing her Uncle Geegee but had every motive for annoying her stepgrandmother. Or perhaps Marshall had killed his stepson after all, only Harry and Holly had found the photos tucked away somewhere. But no: Marshall would surely have found and destroyed the pictures. Unless he happened to like them. Or Harry and Holly could be working on Marshall’s orders, as part of some massive plan Ada had no knowledge of. Marshall could be listening in right now, ovr some hidden intercom. That’s what this room looked like: the guidance counsellor’s office at his high school, with its secret tape recorders.
He took out the thumbnail he’d been chewing on and wiped it on his sweater. “Um, why don’t we think all this over and talk about it somewhere tomorrow? We could, you know, make lists of suspects and motives and things. And there might still be a clue in the tombstones: I can check the tombstone books at the library. Maybe those were blackmail for somebody else, or he belonged to a genealogy club and we’ll find leads there.”
He stood up. “After lunch tomorrow, maybe. Then….”
Ada gazed up at him from where she was. “You’re not leaving already!”
“Well, I have errands and stuff.” Matt threw a longing glance at the door. “I, er, need to get to the bank before it closes.”
Ada checked the clock on the wall. “It’s barely ten-thirty!”
“There could be a line!” He strode to the door as she laughed and looked for the lock. “And there are the tombstone books to find and…Christmas shopping to do!”
“Have you measured me for size?” She reached out and pulled the pictures into a stack. “Something in silver lame would be nice. Do you know I have never owned a silver lame anything? What have those TV stars like Iris Chacon got that I haven’t got?”
Matt was not prepared to answer that.
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