All Things to Me

She was blonde and tall and very regal. Her name was Nicki Jensen. Her eyes were a lazy violet in a deeply tanned face. She was icy fire, and after a look at her, I knew what the old proverb about playing with fire meant. Still, I took another look, and decided to hang with the proverb. I wanted to get burned.

The first time she saw me she almost killed me.

I was giving my game leg a work-out, walking down Ransom Cove Road. The late summer afternoon was hot, but here on the road, sheltered by the intertwining branches of elms and maples, with thick, cool green undergrowth stretching away on either side, it was cool. The road is a rutted, dirt affair, twisting back up into the hills, and birds were singing, a few squirrels chattering and a mountain brook gurgling somewhere to my left, when I heard the roar of the motor.

I spun about, kicking up dust, just as the heavy Buick rounded the curve. The curves on Ransom Cove Road make it practically blind driving, and the Buick was coming like a low-flying fighter plane. For a moment it was nip and tuck; then I was bottomside up in a blackberry bramble, where my dive had brought me. The Buick was slewing around, stopping sideways in a thick, billowing cloud of dust.

I heard the car door slam. She came out of the dust cloud as I gingerly extricated myself from the prison of brambles. I forgot my aches as I looked at her. She was breathing shallowly, and her lips, very red, were open just enough to expose her flawless teeth.

She said breathlessly, “Are you all right?”

I looked at her, brushed myself off to keep my suddenly trembling hands from making a fool of me. “I’m okay,” I said. “Just gave me a turn, saving my scalp by a bare three or four inches.” I dusted the knees of my trousers, stood up straight. “I’m Jeff Clarke, Miss...”

“Jensen. Nicki Jensen. I’m glad you’re not hurt, Mr. Clarke.” She turned quickly, started hurriedly toward the car.

“Hey!” I took a couple of steps after her. She stopped, turned, looked at me coolly. I felt silly.

“That is, I... Are you staying near here?” I asked a little lamely. “I haven’t seen you around. I’ve got a cabin back up at the tourist camp. I...”

“I’m sure it’s quite interesting,” she said, “but I really am in a rush. If you’re quite all right, Mr. Clarke, I must be going.” She got in the Buick, which was a convertible with the top down. She hesitated a moment, flashed me a smile. “I’m sorry to seem so abrupt. If I had time I would give you a lift. But I must get to Nordlands.”

I shrugged, “I was just walking.” Anything else I might have wanted to say was drowned in the roar of the motor. She gunned the car away with a wave of her slim hand. I stood watching until she had taken the next curve at juggernaut speed.

The hum of the motor spent itself over the rugged countryside, and she was gone. The scenery wasn’t so beautiful now, the green mountain undergrowth less green. I turned to go, and the rays of the sun, shafting over the ragged hills in the west, reflected from the blob of gold in the road. I bent, picked it up. It was a small gold compact. Turning it over in my palm. I saw the initials A. R. engraved on it. Not her initials, but she had evidently dropped the compact when she had got out of the car.

Where had she said she was going? Nordlands. I studied the compact for a moment. Nordlands. I remembered, was an estate about two miles down Ransom Cove Road. It belonged to a rich old man named Theron Rawlins, who had made a fortune in oil. He had bought the place with the intention of stocking a game reserve, but Nordlands had been unoccupied for the past several years. The hillbilly natives around the tourist camp had tales to tell of the dreary old house at Nordlands.

Slowly my fingers closed over the compact. I remembered the way she had looked. I knew where she was, and I had an excuse to see her again. Two miles would be a long hike for my game leg, but I compensated myself with the thought that it was downhill all the way. I dropped the compact in my pocket and started down the road.

Nordlands presented a high stone wall, overgrown with all sorts of green and decayed creeping vines, to the road, which was paved to this point and beginning to level off as it swept into the verdant valley. Sweat had dried stiffly over my forehead, and my leg was beginning to shoot sharp little pains upward as I neared the high, rusty iron gate. I looked through the ancient iron grilling. A weed-grown drive angled up to the house, which was set halfway up the knoll, a dark, brown, sagging bulk.

I opened the creaking gate. There was a rush and roar a few feet to my right. A huge beast came crashing out of the wildly-growing shrubbery and weeds. I fumbled at the gate, couldn’t get it open, grabbed the first handy vine and scrambled to the top of the wall. My heels were scant inches ahead of snapping jaws.

Panting. I lay on the wall a moment, while below me rose vicious, low-throated growls, the frantic scratchings of great paws against the wall. I ventured a look over, found myself gazing into the red eyes of a Great Dane. The dog was as large as a small pony, sleekly muscled, and evidently thinking it would be a pleasure indeed to tear me limb from limb.

I said, “Shoooo! Get away!” and was looking along the top of the thick wall for a loose stone, just in case, when I heard her cool voice say sharply, “Bimbo!”

The scratchings ceased and Bimbo moved a few feet away, sulkily. I sat up on the wall and watched her as she hurried down the unkempt drive.

“Well, it’s Mr. Clarke,” she said icily. “Did you lose your way?”

“Nope. Will the beast be reasonable now?”

“As long as I tell him.” She stood with arms akimbo as I slid down the wall. Both my legs were hurting now. In my flight to gain the safety of the altitude of the wall, I had torn my trousers and skinned my good, left knee.

She regarded my tousled hair, stained face, torn pants leg. A slow smile crept over her lips, and the walk was suddenly worthwhile.

“Were you lonely in your tourist camp?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, since you’re here, you might as well come to the house and have a drink. But,” she added firmly, “you can forget your persistence, if I may flatter myself by thinking you’re trying to meet me. As soon as you’ve rested a few moments, you’ll have to leave. My uncle is here, ill in bed, from a very great shock.”

I heard the chilling snuffling of the dog again, whirled, but he was several feet away. And not engrossed in me. He was scratching away at twigs and leaves and loose dirt beneath a cluster of ill-kept snowball bushes.

Nicki said sharply, “Bimbo!” But Bimbo paid no heed. Bimbo dug right to the corpse with those great paws of his. Nicki screamed. I grabbed a big stick.

I knocked the dog sprawling five feet away with my first blow. He came back, and I hit him again. His deep growl rose to a howl of pain, and before he could recover, I socked him over the rump and Nicki yelled, “Home, Bimbo! Go to the house!”

Between her orders and my big stick. Bimbo had had enough. He went loping up the drive.

I said, “You’d better not look.” I d already had a quick glimpse of the dead man. I was afraid the sight of his open, frozen eyes, thin face and gaping mouth, all liberally sprinkled with dirt and tiny bits of leaves, would be too much for her. But she looked at him without fainting. I slipped my arm about her shoulders and she shuddered.

“It’s Gaspard,” she whispered. “My uncle’s secretary.”

“You’d better go on up. I’ll be along in a moment; we’ve got to call the police.”

She went stumbling up the drive. I bent and forced my shaking hands to brush aside leaves and twigs.

Breathing heavily, I stood up. Gaspard had been a thin, lean man in faultlessly tailored clothes at the moment someone had slipped a knife in the hack of his neck. I didn’t know much about such matters, but I guessed that he had been killed sometime today. The fact that the dog hadn’t found Gaspard sooner seemed to bear me out.

I started up the drive toward the house.

The wide, sagging veranda looked as if it had collected dirt and dust for years. Several generations of creeping ivy covered the wall of the house. Hinges screamed as I opened the front door.

The living room was large, high-ceilinged, and gloomy with a little light seeping through the dirt stained windows. Two old-fashioned lamps with stained glass shades were lighted but did little to dispell the twilight. The furniture was that huge, ancient stuff upholstered in black leather that was cracking with age. Four people were gathered in a knot in the middle of the room. They stood stiffly, the two men smoking nervously, and I knew Nicki had told them.

“This is Mr. Clarke. Jeff Clarke,” she said. She indicated the tall, cadaverous man with the salt and pepper hair. “Mr. Samuel Everette, my uncle’s lawyer.” The small sleek man with black hair, midnight eyes under smooth brows, and high cheek bones which made two spots of color on his face was Horace Ingalls. The woman beside him — small-limbed, vivacious looking — was Anna Rawlins, the uncle’s stepsister. Introduced to her, I immediately thought of the campact I’d found and the initials on it: A. R.

“Gaspard’s death is most unfortunate,” she said. Her voice like her copper-burnished hair, had a silken quality. “He advised my brother on everything and was the first person my brother called in time of need. My brother Theron will miss Gaspard greatly.”

I didn’t care much about their personal matters. Cops was the thought uppermost in my mind. “Where is the phone?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam Everette said, his voice of surprising depth considering that it came from such a slim body, “but there isn’t a phone here. Mr. Rawlins has never had one put in. This is the first time he’s ever come here.”

I pondered that. Horace Ingalls, the small, sleek man, hovered near Anna Rawlins. I tagged him as a high-class leech. Sam Everette, the lawyer, smoked his cigarette and thought thoughts of his own. I said, “Then someone will have to drive down to the village and bring back the sheriff.”

“I’ll go,” Nicki said quickly. She sounded anxious to get away from the house.

“I’ll tag along with you,” I said. But her eyes were trying to convey some sort of message. I added hesitantly: “On second thought maybe I’ll stick around and take a drink.” She nodded faintly, telling me that’s what she wanted, that I should stay here and keep my eyes open. I didn’t take to the idea like a duck to water, but I’ve already told you what she looked like and what it did to me. I shrugged as she went out.

Anna Rawlins called out “Cy” in that silk-like voice. Feet shuffled in the hall, the door opened, and a sleepy, rawboned, hunch-shouldered hillbilly said, “You want somethin’?”

“Get a drink for Mr. Clarke,” Anna said. Cy squinted at me, shrugged with his brows, and went out.

The strained little group drifted to chairs. Cy, Everette the lawyer explained, was the caretaker who lived in the small house on the hill. Under present conditions, he was filling in for the butler. The thought of a butler in this spook joint was almost comical.

Cy came back with a water tumbler half full of clear, colorless liquid. “Good corn. Made it myself.” I swallowed it and discovered why they called it white lightning.

Nicki burst into the front door and the look on her face brought us to our feet.

Her eyes scanned their faces. She sounded angry and scared. “The car won’t run. Someone has taken the rotor from the distributor.”

Horace Ingalls’ eyes looked like a frightened calf’s. Everette and Anna Rawlins took the news in their stride. The lawyer said, “Then somebody’ll have to walk to the village. How about you, Cy?”

The overalled butler nodded phlegmatically and went out. There was a nervous clearing of throats and a shifting of feet and the people in the living room began to drift out. Horace Ingalls. I noticed, stayed close to Anna Rawlins, and I looked at Nicki. I didn’t like the way she was watching them. She felt my gaze, and the chilling something in her eyes was suddenly veiled. She forced a smile.

“Did you know what you were getting into?”

“No,” I said, “but I’m in it now. Could I meet your uncle?”

She hesitated; then turned abruptly. “This way.”

We entered a dark hall. It smelled a hundred years old, or like a tomb that’s waited a long time for its occupants. I bumped into a piece of furniture in the half light and she reached out her hand to guide me. Her fingers were cool and strong. They felt exactly as I had imagined they would.

We groped down the hallway and she opened a door. It was a bedroom, as dreary as the rest of the house, but with a brighter lamp in a big brass bracket over the high head of the wooden bed. The windows were large, drawing in a heavy draft that had cleared most of the musty odor from this room.

Theron Rawlins was lying in the bed, a tubby lump beneath the covers that I guessed had come from the linen closet of Cy’s wife. Theron didn’t look like an oil king. More like an overgrown, innocent baby, with a pink fat face, big brown eyes, and sandy-colored fuzz in a thin ring about his bald head. But he had grown up. The odor of moonshine was strong in the room, and a fruit jar half full of Cy’s corn liquor was on a table by the bed.

“This is Mr. Clarke,” Nicki said. “He... he was with me when we found Gaspard.” Her hands were clenched tightly as she watched him rear erect.

“Gaspard?” he howled, and all the innocence fell away as he became the roaring executive. “Where did you find him?”

“Under some bushes,” I said.

His forehead knotted. “Under bushes? But that’s... that’s asinine. Gaspard doesn’t drink. Even if he did, he has too much finesse to pass out...”

“He is permanently passed out,” I said. “Dead.”

He looked at me for a moment. Then he eased back in bed and said very softly, “Ohhhh.”

I sat down in the chair beside the bed. “You’re a big man, Mr. Rawlins, and any time something like this happens near a big man, there’s lots of nasty publicity. Maybe I can help you.”

“Who are you?” Nicki asked.

“A domestic correspondent,” I said. “Reporter to you, but so much romance has been attached to newsmen who are correspondents abroad that I have to keep in tune with the times.”

I looked at her and saw that she liked me less. I went on quickly: “But I didn’t come here after any sort of story. I work on a paper in Baltimore. I was trying to catch an arsonist some time back, and got myself trapped in a burning house. I jumped — from way up, and broke a leg. When it knit, my boss gave me some time off to amble down here for a vacation, which has been a rare thing with me of late. As soon as I got a C.D.I went right back to my old job. Then I saw you today, and...”

“Did you catch your arsonist?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty good at catching people. But what I want most is to help you keep this thing as quiet as possible. The sheriff can do the catching.”

Theron Rawlins mumbled, “That’s nice of you.” He stared dazedly at nothing and Nicki’s fingers plucked my sleeve. We left the room.

Back in the living room, she sat down tiredly in one of those aged chairs. “I don’t know what uncle will do without Gaspard. Gaspard got him out of jams, ran his business, looked to all the details that uncle hates. It’s been a very trying time.”

I said, “Two things are bothering me. Why are you here? And why are the others here?”

She waited a long time to answer and I heard a whipoorwill crying in its agony of loneliness.

Nicki began to sob, but I couldn’t see it; the sobs were too deep inside her. “Will you help us, Jeff?”

“If I knew the score.”

“Will you swear to keep a secret, even if you can’t help us?”

“I swear it,” I said.

She dropped her eyes, her voice almost a whisper. “I think my uncle killed his wife. Last night they had a terrific argument in our summer cottage sixty miles from here. He was a little drunk. They were in the kitchen and he struck her with a heavy iron skillet. I... I was scared, and brought him here last night. He’s a murderer, Jeff!”

Well, I thought, they even called Nelson Baby-Face; maybe Uncle Theron is quite an old gadabout.

“And the others?”

“Anna, my uncle’s stepsister, and Horace came early this morning. Sam Everette arrived not long after. Uncle called Sam here to make a new will.”

“Yes?”

“A will favoring me.”

“Has he made it?”

“No.”

“Whom does the present will favor?”

“All of us. I get about three million, but the new will would possibly give me much more.”

This was a helluva note. A fine silver and gold romance fading into the black night of impossibility. How could a guy like me marry — and keep — a dame with three million berries? A tough problem, one that I’d have to chew on later.

“I’m going out and talk to the others,” I said.

They were on the veranda, deep shadows against the lowering curtain of night. Sam Everette and Horace were sitting on the veranda steps. Anna Rawlins had the only available chair, a creaking wicker affair Cy had found someplace. I sat down on the top step between the lawyer and Horace. I didn’t see the monster-dog Bimbo nearby and my blood pressure went down a little.

“I remember when I was working on the Houston Chronicle, we had a murder sort of like this.”

No one said anything.

I pulled the gold compact out of my pocket, handed it up to Anna. She almost snatched it. “Where did you find it?”

“Where did you lose it?”

She didn’t answer.

“In Theron’s summer cottage?”

“How did you...” Then her teeth snapped together. “I’ll talk to the sheriff — and no one else! Come Horace!”

“Don’t let Nicki tell you things, palsy,” Horace said. “We love her like a saint loves Lucifer. I’ll break her damn neck if she starts telling things on Anna and me.”

I bit back a retort, and Horace took Anna’s arm, escorting her regally into the house. He had her wrapped around his little finger. And he was money mad.

I said, “Sam, can you tell me anything about this new will?”

“Nope,” Sam said. “I just had a call from Nicki to come up here. She said Theron wanted to see me and make a will favoring her completely. But none of us been able to see Theron today. Nicki said he’d been through some kind of shock and had to rest.”

“I’m getting no place fast,” I said.

He grunted, got up. “Think I’ll heist a little of Cy’s moonshine.”

I sat there, mulling it over and listening to the crickets for maybe ten minutes. I wondered how long it would take Cy to get back. I wanted to get out of here, but country sheriffs are funny. He might get the wrong impression if a material witness didn’t stick close around to the body he’d found. Then like ice water, Nicki’s scream poured on my thoughts. She kept screaming over and over, was in the middle of a scream, her clenched hands pressed against the sides of her face, when all of us, gathering from different parts of the house, ran in the bedroom of Theron.

I jerked her hands from her face. My reflexes were all mixed up. She was screaming and Theron Rawlins lying on the bed dead and her right hand felt hot and moist and her left hand was cool, dry; her eyes swam in my vision.

I slapped her once across each cheek, and she stopped screaming quite suddenly. “He’s dead,” she said woodenly, nodding toward the bed. “He committed suicide.”

I released her, and we all fanned out about the foot of the bed. Theron was bleeding profusely from the throat and the bed was gory. In his one agonized convulsion, he had twisted himself up awkwardly. The knife was lying beside the bed. I picked it up gingerly, guarding against smearing prints. The knife was clean as a new wife’s fresh kitchen.

“Not dead,” I said, “murdered. Someone killed him, wiped the knife...”

“...And,” Nicki choked, “the someone was scared away when I came down the hall. The someone dropped the knife, went out that door, doubled back and came in the room with the rest of you. I heard my uncle cry out, chokingly, and came running. Somebody here killed him — and Gaspard.”

“Let’s go in the living room,” I said. Stumbling, Anna turned and went out, Horace, white-faced, helping her. Sam Everette’s jaw muscles were twitching. I took Nicki’s arm and followed them.

“Let’s get a drink,” she shuddered. “I can even drink Cy’s brew — now.”

Anna, Horace, and Sam went in the living room. We turned down the hall to the kitchen. It was a large room, its plaster cracked, one side filled with a huge, closet-like cupboard. The old range, which burned lump coal or hickory logs, I couldn’t decide which, filled one side of the room.

On a rickety table stood the omnipresent fruitjar, Cy’s hillbilly token of good cheer.

“Want one?”

I shook my head. I watched her pour a tiny one, looked at her fingers as she picked the glass up. She was very much a right-handed person, and I didn’t like that, for it gave me all the answers.

I took the glass from her fingers. She looked at my face and her hand stayed suspended where it had been holding the glass.

“I feel very sorry for you, Nicki. It was beautiful — except for one tiny slip.”

“Beautiful?”

“Want me to tell you? You were fishing for money, and you covered every angle. When your uncle struck his wife, you convinced him that he had killed her. You got him to run away — to this house, where you were going to politely blackmail him into making a new will. As soon as the will was made you wore going to murder him.”

“Jeff, you’re joking!”

“I wish I were,” I said heavily. “But it isn’t funny. Your plan in the beginning was that simple — kill your uncle as soon as the new will was made. You’d claim it was suicide, that he’d taken his life in remorse, thinking he’d killed his wife. But two complications developed. Somewhere on the drive here, your uncle had access to a phone. He called his right-hand — Gaspard. Gaspard in his thorough way went to the summer cottage, found Theron’s wife alive. He came here and you had to kill him. The other complication was Anna and Horace. They arrived at the summer cottage. They followed you up here. Perhaps Horace had persuaded Anna to try a little blackmail on their own, not knowing your scheme. You told them all a tale of Theron suffering an illness to keep them out of the room. You drove back to the summer cottage, found Anna’s compact and knew they’d been there. You had to work fast then. You took the rotor out of the car, in order to delay the arrival of the sheriff — for you knew you had to clean the business up definitely before the police arrived. You planned to clean it up by pulling a smooth murder — Theron — and pointing the guilt at Anna and Horace. You wiped the knife, knowing we’d notice it and believe you innocent because you apparently thought it suicide. It was a very subtle business, with so many tiny things of that nature that you mixed in. You weren’t attempting to make an out and out frame-up of the affair. You knew that if you showed your own innocence well enough, the law, learning of Horace and Anna’s affair, their hate of you, their love of money, would eventually get around to pinning the crime on them. They had the obvious motive: they didn’t want the will changed; Gaspard learned of their plans, had to be killed to keep him quiet; Theron had to be killed in order to stop him from making the will.”

“All of which is correct, Jeff,” she laughed puzzledly. “I have no motive. I’m already included in the will. The only way I could gain was by the making of a new will.”

“Your motive was time,” I said, “and three million dollars. Three million is plenty strong motive. And the time element enters in when you consider the fact that Theron showed no signs of an early demise. You might have to wait for the money until you were an old woman. You killed him to get the fortune now. It’s as simple as that.”

She was close to me, and her perfume was heady. I backed away, close to the huge cupboard.

“But, Jeff, how could you know all this? Surely, you’re playing a game, Jeff! Her arms slipped around my neck, and it made my head whirl. She was beautiful, like an ice-frozen lake in clear, cold dawn.

“Two things tipped me, Nicki. When Bimbo started digging, you yelled sharply to him. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t — but you knew what he was about to find — Gaspard. You didn’t want Gaspard found so quickly. Then your hands... When we rushed in Theron’s room, I took your hands. The left was cool, the right hand hot and moist. You’d been wearing a rubber glove on your right hand. Nicki, short moments before, to keep from getting your prints on the knife, I’m sorry it...”

She buried her face in my neck. “Somehow when I first saw you, I knew my number was up, that you’re the guy who’d do me in. Jeff, I...”

And before I could bat a lash she had pushed me in that huge cupboard. I smashed the door, but she was too quick, flicking the key in the lock. I pounded as she ran from the room. “Nicki...! Nick...”

The low growl behind me in the darkness froze my words off. I knew now why I hadn’t seen Bimbo around. Bimbo was sleeping here in the cupboard...

I couldn’t see him. and he couldn’t see me, unless dogs can see in absolute, total darkness. But he could smell me and very likely heard the thudding of my heart. I heard the scrape of huge paws, knew he had sprung at me. I dropped down. He hit the wall with a thump that aroused thoroughly his ferocity.

I groped frantically, backing away. At his next charge, he took half my left coat sleeve and several inches of skin. It was only a matter of moments.

Then my fingers closed on the hatchet handle that someone had dropped in here in some forgotten past, never dreaming it might save a man’s life. The dog closed on me. buried his fangs in my shoulder: I gagged with pain, brought the hatchet down, oblivious to the fact that I might cut my arm off. I heard the hatchet thwack home sickeningly. Blood showered over my arm and chest, and the terrific weight of the dog fell from me.

My left arm a mass of fire. I held the hatchet in my other hand, chopped at the lock. The lock gave, and I was running down the hall. I reached the veranda just as the Buick roared down the drive. She’d known we would find the rotor somewhere with her fingerprints on it, also the rubber glove, which was probably in her pocket, planned to be disposed of moments later, while I had been talking to her.

She was a blonde Valkyrie, and that’s the way she drove the Buick. She reached the sharp curve at the bottom of the drive, and the weeds and soft dirt weren’t as stable as concrete. The Buick slithered, spun, flattened against the ancient stone wall like a tin can under a bulldozer.

When the sounds of tearing metal, showering glass, and her scream had faded into the depths of the night-shrouded hills, I became conscious that Anna and Horace and Sam were on the porch with me. No one said anything for a long lime, just looking at the wreckage. One headlight still burned, pointing crazily into the night sky.

I felt Anna’s hand on my arm, her soft voice in my ear. “You were falling in love with her, weren’t you, Jeff?”

My brain felt as if it would never let me sleep again. I wondered how long it would lake for the bitter lump in my chest to become a heart again. “Maybe I was,” I said. “She could have made me forget every woman I’ve ever known, even the girl in Baltimore who waited while I went to war, and who’s been thinking that a rattle-headed fool reporter would marry her someday. Nicki could have been all things to me, I guess, but,” I shuddered, “murder makes it different...”