The Perfect Plot Read online

  Dorothea Burden

  Nancy stared blindly at the note. Dorothea’s manuscript had revealed a “terrible truth” of some sort. Maxine had read it and died. Was it because she had learned that terrible truth? What kind of secret would inspire murder?

  The answer had to be in the manuscript, Nancy realized—and the manuscript was missing.

  Nancy leaned against a beam, trying to piece together all she knew about the book. Erika had admitted taking it from Maxine’s room. Then, according to her, it had vanished from her room. Nancy had no way of being sure Erika was telling the truth. Without seeing the manuscript, she had no way of knowing if it implicated Erika—or someone else—in a crime.

  As Nancy read through the letter again, she was struck by a sentence. Dorothea had recorded the text of the book, then had a typing service transcribe the tapes. What if the tapes were still around somewhere?

  Her pulse racing, Nancy hurried back to her room. She grabbed her shoulder bag and put the flashlight in it. Seeing George’s portable cassette player on the dresser, she took that, too. If she found Dorothea’s tapes, she wanted to be prepared.

  Nancy looked for and found Kate in the dining room, overseeing the setup for the buffet lunch. “I hope we can manage to reschedule the conference,” she told Nancy. “Maybe for next month sometime. But I don’t know. After all that’s happened, people probably think that Mystery Mansion is jinxed.”

  “That’ll just add to its charm,” Nancy assured her. Turning the conversation to Dorothea Burden’s books, she asked, “How did Dorothea work? Did she write the books out herself, or dictate them to you, or what?”

  “When I first came to work for her, she typed everything herself, then revised it in pencil and gave me the corrected sheets to retype,” Kate replied. “Sometimes we went through three or four drafts that way. But after her husband died and she became ill, she didn’t have the strength to keep that up. Her last two books were dictated into a tape recorder.”

  “Really?” Nancy said. “Did you save the tapes? That might be an interesting feature for the museum, a chance to hear Dorothea reading—I mean, writing—her work.”

  “Good idea,” Kate said, nodding thoughtfully. “I’ve got an entire file drawer stacked with cassettes. I’ve been meaning to go through and catalog them, but I haven’t had a chance yet. Would you like to listen to one?”

  Nancy tried to hide her excitement. “Why, yes, if it’s no trouble.”

  “Not at all,” Kate told her. “You know the little file room off Dorothea’s study? Look in the top drawer of the right-hand file cabinet. There’s a tape player on the desk. Please be careful. Those tapes are irreplaceable.”

  “I will,” Nancy promised.

  Moments later she was looking in dismay at the dozens of tape cassettes in the file drawer. She picked up one and read the label: Memos, Letters Oct-Nov. Another said Notes for Memoirs. Still another was marked Danger Chaps 12-16.

  Taking them out one by one, Nancy stacked the tapes on the top of the cabinet, ordering them as best she could. Some were labeled in ways she couldn’t make out.

  “Some of these aren’t even labeled at all,” Nancy muttered to herself. “This is hopeless!”

  Then she noticed that several tapes were marked CHI, CH2, and so on. She had been reading CH as an abbreviation for chapter. But the title of the missing book was The Crooked Heart—CH! She grabbed the first of the marked tapes, inserted it into the player, and put on the headphones. Holding her breath, she pressed the Play button.

  “The Crooked Heart, Chapter One. Why should he be rich, while I am poor?” said the voice of an elderly woman. “He is old and used up, but I have all of life before me. He is all that stands in my way. I would smash him with a hammer or throw him from a high window tomorrow, but then they would punish me. Punish me, for daring to claim what should be mine!

  “But I am clever, sly, cunning. When I have carried out my plan, no one will know. No one will suspect. Why should they? An old man, an old rich man, dies a natural death. He leaves everything to his sick, dying wife, who has only one relative in the world. It happens every day. And it will happen again, very soon, in this house.”

  Nancy pushed the Stop button and stared down at the recorder. What was this about? A wealthy, old man and a young person who planned to kill him for his money. Maxine had said that the book was a fictionalized version of a real crime, Nancy recalled. But whose crime, and against whom?

  Suddenly an image flashed in Nancy’s mind of the portrait of Dorothea’s husband in the living room. What was it that Vanessa had told her? That he had been in good shape, that no one had expected him to die as suddenly as he did. Yes, that was it. With him gone, there was only Dorothea, who was quite frail.

  And Patrick.

  That was it! Dorothea had somehow learned that her nephew, her only living relative, was responsible for the death of her husband. Perhaps she’d been unable to prove it, so she had found this way of punishing him for his crime—writing a book that everyone who knew him would understand.

  Why hadn’t she thought of Patrick before? In her mind, Nancy saw Patrick in his purple and green running suit gathering the scattered pages from the ground and handing them back to Erika. He must have recognized the book and then stolen it from Erika’s room! By now he had probably destroyed it, not realizing that the book existed on tape as well.

  Nancy stood up, gathered the CH cassettes, and hid them behind a row of Dorothea’s books in the bookcase. She didn’t dare risk taking them with her. Next she went to a window and looked out at the tennis court. Patrick and George were still engrossed in their game. She was afraid Patrick might suspect something if she interrupted them. There was no reason to think he’d hurt George, since he didn’t realize Nancy was on to him.

  Nancy hurried upstairs and set to work on the locked door of Patrick’s room. After several minutes the lock clicked open, and she slipped inside.

  The first thing she noticed was that the room smelled faintly of smoke. She crossed to the ornate fireplace and knelt down to examine the grate. It was clean—too clean. Someone had done a careful job of sweeping away every speck of ash from the fireplace. Nancy thought for a moment, then reached up and groped around inside the lowest part of the flue. As she had hoped, there was a smoke ledge, put there to stop smoke from blowing back into the room. And caught on the smoke ledge . . .

  The blackened fragment of paper was no more than an inch across, but she could still make out the typed letters ed Heart.

  “Crooked Heart!” Nancy crowed softly. Patrick must have burned the manuscript in this fireplace, then swept up the ashes. Nancy hoped that enough ashes remained for the forensic scientists to reconstruct parts of the manuscript. They would be swarming over this room as soon as she told Lieutenant Kitridge what she had learned.

  Something warned her—a subtle change in the quality of the light or a faint sound—that someone was behind her. She started to whirl around, but before she could, an arm wrapped itself around her neck in a choke hold. The pressure on her carotid artery was agonizing.

  Nancy tried desperately to free herself. She clawed and tore at the arm with both hands, but the pressure only grew stronger. A red haze spread in front of her eyes. Then the room went dark.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  NANCY’S THROAT ached horribly. Her left knee hurt, and something was digging into her back. She had a constant buzzing in her ears and a throbbing pain above each temple.

  Nancy opened her eyes, then snapped them shut again. A bare bulb hung directly overhead, and the glare made the pain in her head a thousand times worse.

  As she became more alert, she realized that her left leg was doubled under her—that was the reason her knee ached. She rolled to the right, onto her side, and straightened her leg.

  Gradually the pain in her head subsided. Pushing herself up into a sitting position, Nancy opened her eyes and looked around.

  She was on the floor of a s
teel cage whose bars rose to just beneath the low ceiling. The cage took up most of the space in a narrow, windowless room with a single steel door. Nancy shuddered at the updated version of a medieval dungeon. She didn’t want to think about what Patrick planned for her. Even though he wasn’t in the room now, Nancy was sure he’d return.

  She got to her feet and examined her space more carefully. Aside from the cage, there was nothing in the room except a wooden folding chair. On the wall next to the door, just out of reach, were two electrical switches, one black and one bright red. The lock on the cage door was almost certainly pickproof.

  Looking down, she saw that her shoulder bag was lying on the floor of the cage. That must have been what was digging into her back. She opened it, hoping to find something she could use to escape. There was only her heavy rubber flashlight and George’s tape recorder.

  Nancy’s heart caught in her throat as a key scraped at the lock of the door. Whatever he planned to do with her, Nancy was determined to leave evidence behind. She thumbed the tiny volume wheel of the recorder to the maximum setting and pressed the red Record button. A second later, the door swung open.

  “George!” Nancy called. A feeling of dread welled inside her as George stumbled forward, nearly falling. Patrick was right behind her, holding her arm in a hammerlock.

  “Nancy? What—” George broke off as Patrick shoved the outer door closed with his foot and unlocked the cage. He pushed George inside.

  “Welcome, ladies,” he said, mocking them.

  “What’s going on?” George demanded. “Why did you bring us here? Unlock that door, Patrick!”

  “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he replied. “I’m not here at all, you see. Famed teen detective Nancy Drew and her faithful sidekick George Fayne went exploring the secret passages of Mystery Mansion on their own. They’d been warned that there were hidden dangers, but the daring sleuths didn’t pay any attention. It’s a sad story, but maybe it will keep others from making the same fatal mistake.”

  George ignored him as she spoke to Nancy. “Are you all right?”

  Nancy nodded. George went on in a rush, “We were playing tennis, and the balls were dead, so he went up to his room to get a can of new ones. He was gone a long time, and when he came back, he said that you found something I had to come see right away. He took me down a hidden ladder in the summerhouse, into a tunnel. We walked for a while, then he suddenly twisted my arm, opened a door, and shoved me in here. What’s going on?”

  “He killed Maxine,” Nancy replied. “When he found me in his room, he must have known I figured it out. He choked me until I passed out, then brought me down here. I guess he was afraid that you knew what I did, too.”

  “Please go on,” Patrick said, sitting down on the folding chair and tilting it up on its back legs.

  Anything to stall for time, Nancy thought. Aloud she said, “We made one big mistake. We thought that Maxine was killed to keep her from telling what she knew about the theft of the figurines.” Nancy pitched her voice in the direction of the concealed tape recorder in her purse on the floor. “But what she discovered was a much more deadly secret. She found out that Patrick had murdered his uncle, and that Dorothea’s last book, The Crooked Heart, was a detailed account of how he did it.”

  Patrick sprang to his feet. The chair teetered and fell over sideways. “How do you know that?” he demanded angrily. “I burned the only copy of that book!”

  “I won’t tell you how I know,” Nancy said coolly. “And I won’t tell you who else knows.”

  “You just signed your own death warrant,” Patrick growled.

  “So Patrick used Erika’s scarf to frame her?” George asked, thinking out loud.

  “I had to frame someone,” Patrick said. “On Friday night Maxine told me about Aunt Dotty’s book and strongly suggested that I leave the country. She made it clear that if I stayed, she’d make life hard for me.”

  So that was the conversation they’d heard through the vent, Nancy now knew.

  “I had to silence her,” Patrick continued, “but it had to be some way that couldn’t be traced back to me. I didn’t have enough time to hot-wire her shower.”

  “Is that how you murdered your uncle?” Nancy asked. “By electrocuting him in the shower?”

  “Of course,” Patrick replied. “It looked exactly like a heart attack. I still don’t understand how Aunt Dotty caught on.”

  “It’s just the sort of device a mystery writer like her would think of—the undetectable murder weapon,” Nancy said.

  “What about Maxine?” George insisted.

  Patrick gave a self-satisfied smile. “I was lucky. There I was, jogging around the grounds, to give myself an alibi, and I ran straight into Erika. Everything in her bag went flying. And what do you suppose was in there?”

  “The only copy of your aunt’s book,” said Nancy.

  “Exactly. Well, I understood at once. Maxine would never have lent the manuscript to Erika, which meant Erika must have gone to Maxine’s room and taken it. Her scarf had fallen out of her bag, too, and I tucked it under my jacket. Then I ducked into the passages, made my way to Maxine’s room, and—”

  He raised his two fists to throat level and pulled them apart sharply.

  Nancy’s stomach lurched. She’d faced dangerous criminals in the past, but she couldn’t help being affected by Patrick’s chilling, deadly tone.

  “Then you must have gone to Erika’s room, taken the manuscript, and destroyed it?” she asked. She had to keep him talking until she could figure a way out of there!

  “Exactly,” Patrick said proudly. “I didn’t even stop to read it. It’s a pity, in a way. I mean, how many people have been the main character of a book by a famous author?”

  “Try Jack the Ripper,” George said, shaking her head in disgust.

  Patrick’s nostrils widened with rage. He took a quick step toward the cage door, then seemed to think better of it. “There’s no point in dragging this out,” he said, his voice still calm. “Nobody’s going to rescue you. Nobody even knows this room is here. The police will have to search a long time before they discover your tragic fate.”

  He broke into a laugh that jarred Nancy.

  “That was you in the tunnel last night, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “You followed me from the party to the summerhouse and down into the passages. Why?”

  Patrick shrugged his shoulders. “Call it curiosity. I couldn’t resist the chance to put a little scare into you. I enjoyed that.”

  “I bet you love pulling the wings off flies, too,” George said. “I’m glad your aunt realized the kind of monster you are, in time to change her will.”

  For a brief moment Patrick’s mask slipped again, showing the blind rage behind it.

  “Oh, that!” he scoffed. “It’s only money. And anyway, I’m working on a few ideas for recovering my rightful share. I wish you could be around to see how clever I am, but that’s really not possible, I’m afraid.”

  Patrick took a step backward, toward the door of the little room. “From what I hear, you two have been in some tight spots together,” he said. “But I guarantee that this one will be your last.”

  Laughing still, he reached over and flipped the red switch. From somewhere came a low hum, followed by a screeching metallic noise.

  “Nancy!” George cried, grabbing her shoulder. “The side of the cage—it’s moving this way! It’s going to crush us!”

  “ ’Bye, girls,” Patrick said from the doorway. “Have a nice day!”

  Even after the door slammed shut, they could hear his laughter echoing in the passage.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  NANCY AND GEORGE could only stare at the slowly approaching wall of steel bars.

  “This is just like what happened to Amelia at the end of The Deadly Chamber!” George said, her fear obvious in the shakiness of her voice.

  “How did Amelia escape?” Nancy asked. “Maybe it’ll work for us, too.�
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  George shook her head. “Roderick Moore, the dashing highwayman who was reformed by his love for her, came to her rescue. I don’t think we can count on anything like that.”

  “Come on, we’ve got to try to stop it,” Nancy said. She planted her feet firmly, grabbed two bars of the moving wall, and shoved with all her strength. Next to her, George did the same.

  It took only a few seconds to realize they were wasting their energy. The wall had already moved over a foot toward them, leaving only about eight feet of cage for the girls.

  “We’ve got to do something!” George said urgently. “What if we pushed something down into the track the wall is riding in? What’s in your shoulder bag?”

  Nancy quickly retrieved it from the floor. “Your cassette player and the flashlight from our room,” she replied.

  “Could we wedge the flashlight between the bars somehow?”

  “Great idea!” Nancy exclaimed. She thrust the flashlight into the gap between two bars on the long side of the cage, just an inch from the moving wall. She held it in place until the steel frame of the moving wall met it. Then she stepped back, holding her breath.

  A moment later the wall rolled right over the flashlight, crushing it. With a clatter, the flashlight fell to the floor.

  “Nancy, it’s hopeless!” George exclaimed. “There’s no way we can stop that wall!”

  Nancy’s eyes moved frantically around the room. “Wait, I have an idea,” she announced.

  She grabbed the ruined flashlight, detached the headphones from George’s tape player, and tied the thin headphone cord tightly around the flashlight. Thrusting her arm through the bars as far as she could reach, she set the flashlight swinging like a pendulum. It flew out in wider and wider arcs as Nancy aimed it at the red switch on the opposite wall, some five feet away.

  “You almost got it!” George said, encouraging her.