Act of God

the driveway, what did you do?”
    “I went out to the street, to see if I could spot the lads running away, but I couldn’t, now.”
    “And then?”
    “I came back around here.”
    “To the back door.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Running?”
    “Me running, do you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well now, no. No, I don’t suppose I was. Not till I got close to the door, that is.”
    “What happened there?”
    “I could hear Mrs. Swindell screaming.”
    “You could hear her?”
    “Yes, like through the door, even all the way down here. I understand she was up at the door on the fourth floor, screaming her heart out over finding Mr. Rivkind.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “I went up the back stairs here, quick as I could.”
    “Can we do that?”
    “We can.” Quill unlocked the door with a key, ushered me inside, then closed it behind him, using another key on the red and silver box again. The stairs in front of us were concrete, gray with black rubber treading, the paint on the walls yellow. Emergency lighting boxes, like camping lanterns, lined the top of each landing.
    As we climbed the stairs, I said, “You didn’t stop on the second or third floors?”
    Quill turned to give me the funny look again. “And why would I do that?”
    “You knew the screaming must be coming from the fourth?”
    “Of course I did. That’s the only place anybody would be.”
    We reached the fourth-floor landing. “What happened when you got to here?”
    “I opened the door.”
    “With your key?”
    “That’s right. These doors, they’re all designed that way, to lock when they’re closed so that nobody on the stairs in a fire would get out before they reached the bottom and safety.”
    I watched Quill. “Go on.”
    “Well now, I couldn’t hear anything over the alarm.”
    “Which was still sounding?”
    “Nobody had turned her off, man. I would have down below when I came back in, but I could hear Mrs. Swindell screaming, and I didn’t want to take the time.”
    “Was she screaming the whole time you were coming up the stairs?”
    Quill stopped. “No, no, in fact I didn’t hear the lady at all once I was back inside downstairs, which made me hurry all the more.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? I thought there might be more troubles on the fourth floor, and I was right.”
    “So you’re up here on the fourth floor—”
    “And I open this door, and I hear somebody yelling— well, I know now it was Mr. Bernstein and Mrs. Swindell. In the owners’ office, they were, and when I got down there, they were trying to move Mr. Rivkind— Ah, a horrible scene it was, John. Horrible.”
    “What did you do?”
    “Well, I went in to help them, but Mr. Bernstein, he was on his hands and knees, blood on his hands, too, and so I stepped in and moved the poker so he wouldn’t kneel on it.”
    “You picked up the poker?”
    “Yes. I was almost going to kick it, then picked it up before I saw the... the gore on the working end of it. Then I’m afraid I dropped it pretty fast.”
    “Did Mrs. Swindell see that?”
    Quill stopped again. “I couldn’t swear to it either way. I think she was on the telephone by then, calling for the police. Didn’t have to, of course.”
    “Why not?”
    “That alarm, I expect it would have brought the cops, too-We surely got more than our share of firemen out of it.”
    I pictured the scene. A madhouse, as Bonnie Cross had described it.
    Quill fingered his key ring. “You want to see the fourth floor, too?”
    “Already have. Wait a minute.”
    “What is it?”
    “How could we go through this door without setting off the alarm?”
    “How? By using my key, John.” He waggled the thing in front of my eyes.
    “This key opens the door from the stairwell side without the alarm sounding?”
    “And from the store side as well.”
    I didn’t reply.
    “John?”
    “Who else has one of them?”
    “One of the keys, do you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “Let me see. Mr. Bernstein for certain. Mr. Rivkind had his, too. I suppose that’s all. Anything else, now?”
    “No, I don’t think so.”
    As Quill turned to go back down the stairs, I said, “I’ll have to take these a little slowly.”
    “A bit gimp in the knee, are you?”
    “A bit.”
    “I noticed from the way you held yourself on the stairs with Master Rivkind there.”
    “Tell me, you know much about him?”
    “The son, now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Nothing but what I saw of him at the funeral. Never really came around the store. Of