Bloody Relations by Don Gutteridge

nobody any good. We’d all suffer. As we’re going to do soon. Besides, I’ve told you that no one else got in here after midnight except the pale gentleman, and there’s no way anyone could have got into this house once the doors were barred.”
    â€œExcept through the booby-hatch,” Carrie blurted, then slapped three fingers across her lips.
    Marc sat bolt upright. “Are you saying that there is another way into this house?”
    Mrs. Burgess blushed, started to look daggers at Carrie, then turned to Marc and said with a sigh, “I’m afraid so.”

SIX

    I t’s right down here.” Mrs. Burgess directed Marc and Cobb along the narrow hallway that led to the three cubicles and water closet. (It was a cistern Marc had noted on the outside wall.) The curtains were tightly drawn across the doorway to the murder scene; Marc noticed Mrs. Burgess shudder as they passed it. Once at the end of the hall, she stood to one side and pointed at the lower wall. Marc squatted down with Cobb peering over his right shoulder. The outline of a small door, hinged on top like a hatch, was just visible, but he could see no latch or handle. He pushed at the door but it did not move.
    â€œIt opens only with a key,” Mrs. Burgess said. “You can get in or out by kneeling down and squeezing through.”
    â€œBut why on earth would you put a door like this right next to the rooms where your girls work and sometimes fall asleep?”
    â€œIt’s really an escape hatch. I had it put in when the house was first built. I wanted a secret door so if there was trouble in the parlour or these rooms, one of us could slip away and get help.”
    When Marc looked skeptical, she said pointedly, “You’d be surprised how folks around here help one another out. We have to; nobody else will.”
    Marc stood up and stared at the end wall. Unless a direct lightwere thrown on it—even in the afternoon the windowless hallway was gloomy—the hatch was barely detectable. Which would explain why neither Cobb nor Sturges had spotted it last night. And Carrie, for whatever reason, had chosen not to point it out when she accompanied Cobb on his inspection of the windows earlier.
    â€œThere’s no knob inside or outside,” Mrs. Burgess said. “You need a key to unlatch the lock and to pull the door open.” With that, she reached down into her ample cleavage and drew out a large key on a thin gold chain. She knelt down, inserted it in the keyhole close to the floor, and, using it as a knob, eased the hatch upward. Then she locked it again and returned the key to its bower.
    â€œBut how would one of the girls be able to use this as an escape route? Do they all have keys?”
    â€œOf course not. That would be foolhardy. I had the locksmith on King Street make only two keys for this lock. I keep one around my neck. The other is tucked behind that picture on the wall there.”
    Marc looked at the dusty, framed engraving of an English racehorse hanging on the wall well above the hatch.
    â€œOnly my girls and I know it’s there.”
    â€œWell, we’d better check to make sure, don’t you think?” Marc asked patiently.
    With a resigned gesture, Mrs. Burgess lifted the picture off its hook and turned it over in both hands. A small groove had been carved into the bottom slat of the frame to accommodate the key.
    But the key was not in it.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    ONCE AGAIN THEY WERE BACK IN the parlour, and ready for another go-round. And this time there was a different kind of tension in the air.
    While the three girls sat somewhat stiffly around Mrs. Burgess and exchanged furtive glances, Marc began. “It now appears that one of your customers may have stolen the escape-door key and used it to slip unnoticed into the hallway, murder Sarah McConkey, and get away into the night.”
    Mrs. Burgess sat tight-lipped. Clearly she had been