Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 (6 page)

“Somebody saved our lives,” Luke said, measuring the distance with a practiced glance. “Damn. That was one helluva shot. Eighteen hundred yards at least.”

“But it couldn’t have been Deacon. I sent him back to Detroit.”

“Then maybe it was someone else. My grandfather taught me everything I know, including how to shoot. He was a sniper in Korea, won the Silver Star.”

“We must go back. They’ll arrest him.”

“I don’t think so. At this distance there’s no way to tell who did what. Who
ever
fired that shot took Larkin out in front of a hundred witnesses to make sure we couldn’t be blamed. He opened the door for us, Aliana. We have to go through it.”

Back at the boathouse, Gus settled into his deck chair with Razz at his feet, sipping a beer, watching the last sails vanish over the horizon. He’d already used Luke’s acetylene torch to reduce his ancient ’03 Springfield to slag and ashes. It was a pity to destroy such a fine old weapon, but he’d watched
C.S.I.
on the TV. The police could do wondrous things with evidence nowadays. Like tracing a gun to the man who fired it. Destroying the weapon was a prudent move. Gus might be getting on, but he still had his wits about him.

And he still had a few skills. He hadn’t killed men at a distance in many years, but the terrible arts a man learns in his youth are embedded in his bones, impossible to forget, even when he wishes he could. As Luke found out after Iraq.

His grandson and Aliana would do well in Cree country. She was a pretty little thing and very intelligent, a trait far more useful than beauty.

He even admired her evil temper, so much like Kathleen’s. Living with such a woman might be difficult at times, but it would never be dull.

If the law did come for him, it wouldn’t matter much. Any trouble would be only temporary. His true love and most of his friends were already in the next world. He knew more people there than here.

When he was a boy with the Cree, the old ones said a man nearing the end of his time would hear an owl call his name. A foolish superstition.

Here on the Point, Gus often heard owls, horned owls and great grays hooting deep in the forest. They never spoke to him. Only to each other, in their own tongue.

But in the gathering dusk, as the shadows settled gently over the lakeshore, he found himself listening to the wind whispering through the tall pines.

Waiting for the cry of an owl to pierce the soft silence.

Hoping to hear his name.

Copyright © 2011 Doug Allyn

 Next Article

Previous Article 
 Next Article

Fiction

Cheating the Hangman

by Judith Cutler

Fans of this historical series featuring early 1800s Reverend Tobias Campion won’t want to miss Judith Cutler’s two novels starring the sleuth: 2008’s
The Keeper of Secrets and 2009’s Shadow of the Past.
The British author also has two recent novel-length installments in her Lina Townend antiques-dealer series, which frequently appears in
EQMM
at short-story length. See
Ring of Guilt,
Severn House Publishers (February 2011) and the earlier
Silver Guilt
.

Of all the days in the Church calendar, Easter is surely the most important—when the Master I serve defeated death that we might all be saved. This particular Easter Day I was given the joy of celebrating Holy Communion twice over—once with my own dear friends in Moreton St. Jude and once at All Saints, Clavercote. The incumbent of this parish, never very assiduous in his duties, had recently and at the shortest of notice informed the bishop that he was about to travel on the Continent for the sake of his health. Why, with Europe in its present state, the Reverend Dr. Nathaniel Coates did not choose to repair to Bath or to Cheltenham, no one knew. Suffice it to say that the church in his care was but half full, and there was surprisingly little joy in the voices raised in the Easter hymns.

Having blessed them all and offered what I hope were comforting words, I mounted my faithful Titus and set off for the village I now thought of as home—although my parents, in the vastness of their Derbyshire estate, would have disagreed. The shortest route was through the woods of Lord Wychbold’s estate, though the rides were badly maintained and the byways little more than rabbit tracks. Lord Wychbold, a man in his seventies, led the quietest of lives, receiving no visitors and only venturing out if he considered the occasion was pressing. Perhaps if he had set a better example, more of his estate workers would have been in church today.

Comprehensively losing my way, I resolved to follow what seemed the most recently trodden path in the hope that it would bring me to a clearing where I could orientate myself by the sun, the overhead canopy being far too thick for the early spring rays.

Despite the chill beneath the branches, there was a hum of insects: flies. And a sickly smell that spoke of death. Thinking an animal had died in a trap, I dismounted and led Titus very slowly, keeping my eyes peeled, lest he or I be similarly caught.

Alas, the corpse I found was all too human. And it was not caught in a trap. In a dreadful parody of what we had just been celebrating, a man hung on a tree, nailed by his ankles and wrists, a deep gash in his side. But for a loincloth and a crown of thorns, he was naked. Even a local could not have recognised him, for his face was beaten to a pulp. There was a great deal of dried blood.

“You have done well to find your way back here, Tobias,” Dr. Hansard said, trying in his kind way to distract me from the horror we faced. We had brought with us my former groom, Jem, whose new post as village schoolmaster had not rendered him too grand to assist Dr. Hansard whenever there was a need. Now he was carrying what was once an old tabletop, adjusted to carry either the living or the dead in need of the doctor’s skills. For Edmund was developing an extraordinary prowess in examining bodies to help determine the cause of death, a process at which I found myself totally unable to assist.

We had brought a couple of trusted men to assist us in the grisly task of removing the corpse from the tree. Hansard and I placed them under the most solemn oath not to reveal what they had found, but I was sure that by the time we were back in Langley Park, Dr. Hansard’s residence, our activities would be all the way round the two villages and probably others besides.

I was deputed to break the news to Lord Wychbold. A surly butler showed me into a shabby morning room. After near on twenty minutes, Wychbold entered the room, reading my card. “The Reverend Tobias Campion! My idiot of a butler did not tell me a man of the cloth had called! What can he be thinking of, to leave you cooling your heels in here? Pray, come with me to my library, which has the advantage of a fire, and join me in some sherry and biscuits.”

Only when we were seated, one each side of a fitful fire, did I break the news to him.

“A corpse? In my woodland? And in such a state? Dear God, how can that be?”

His face went so grey I wished Edmund had been there to administer restorative drops. But a sip of sherry did much to improve his colour, and he was soon able to speak quite rationally, offering me the help of all his estate workers to search for the evidence so beloved of my friend.

“Dr. Hansard insists that he wants but two or three of your most trusted men,” I said. “And they must work with the utmost discretion—we do not want to frighten away the killer.”

He rang for the surly butler and gave his orders.

“You told Lord Wychwood the method of the corpse’s death?” Edmund expostulated, slapping his glass down so hard the port slopped over the rim. “Dear God, Toby, I took you for a man of discretion. Surely you know the rumours surrounding the old reprobate? That in his youth he was a member of the Hellfire Club, and most assiduous in its vilest practices? Of all the men I can think of, he is the one most likely to have been involved in such a sacrilegious parody!”

Mrs. Hansard laid a calming hand on his arm. When we supped informally, she never retired while we men drank our port, instead sipping a glass of champagne and joining in the conversation. “My dear, even if you had personally sewn Tobias’s lips together, and employed only blind and dumb men to assist you, the news of the man’s death and the manner of it would have reached his lordship before nightfall. At least Tobias was able to observe how he received the news.” Her bright eyes prompted me.

“His colour was poor, his breathing shallow. I feared for his health, and indeed cursed that I had forgotten to take some of your restorative cordial when I went on my errand. But a sip or two of sherry restored him.”

“So he was shocked,” Jem said.

Edmund nodded. “Did you at any point feel that his shock might have its roots in guilt?”

I considered. “I thought he was simply as appalled as any man might be. And I cannot think differently now.”

“Very well. We have,” he continued, “a victim aged between forty and fifty, I would say, strong of build. So whoever overpowered him and killed him must have been even stronger.”

“Who would choose such a dreadful method of execution?”

“An interesting choice of word, Tobias. You would be right, had the victim actually been killed on that tree. But when Jem and I examined the corpse, we came to believe that the man was killed first—that knife thrust into his side. I will spare you and your ticklish stomach the details, my friend,” he said with a laugh. “However, even assuming the man had expired, it would not have been an easy task to lift him and nail him in place.”

“A dead weight,” Jem observed, with a dry smile.

I asked bravely, “How do you know he was dead before he was crucified?”

“Apart from that wound? Well, you may have observed that there was surprisingly little blood from his hands—very well, Maria, I will not ruin an excellent supper by making Tobias cast up his accounts. I will just say this, Tobias—we are sure, Jem and I, that there is a sexual motive to the crime. An element of revenge, I would say.” He looked meaningfully at his wife and said no more.

Mrs. Hansard, however, was a redoubtable woman. “Do you imply that a female avenged herself by stabbing and then mutilating—?”

Jem overrode her. “We are sure a woman was at the heart of the problem. But not as the killer, unless she were an Amazon indeed. Even her jilted or outraged lover would surely have needed assistance.”

She nodded sadly. “So we need to find the betrayed young woman.”

“If only Dr. Coates were here to consult,” I said. “I suppose that in his absence we must refer to the verger.”

Maria smiled enigmatically. “If you and Tobias are going to Clavercote in the chaise, my love, perhaps you will take me as your passenger. An old friend of mine, the widow of a steward at a noble house, has retired there to share her son’s house. I think it is time to pay her a visit.”

The verger at All Saints, a man of few smiles, insisted that he had no forwarding address for Dr. Coates. He was entirely uninformative, in fact. If any villagers had hurriedly quit Clavercote, if any strangers had been in the neighbourhood, he knew not—and seemed to care less. Frustrated, Hansard and I retired to the tiny inn, hunched round-shouldered on the edge of the village. Perhaps the landlord would offer us information as well as ale.

We were just abandoning our attempts to squeeze more than a monosyllable from the sour-faced man, and were waiting for the chaise to be brought round, when a party of riders trotted by. Mine host, forgetting the claims of his existing customers, was all at once full of smiles and forelock-tugging, clearly recognising members of the
ton
from forty yards’ distance. But it was not his toadying that brought the party to a halt.

One of the riders wheeled his horse and brought it back to where I stood. “Tobias, you whelp—what in Hades are you doing outside a foul drinking-den like this?”

I was ready to faint with shock. I had been estranged from my father for many years, ever since I took Holy Orders, and had never dreamed to see him in this neighbourhood. But from somewhere I drew enough strength to bow low, and to kiss the hand he extended. “Father! Sir, may I present Dr. Hansard? Edmund, Lord Hartland.”

Both, one from the height of his magnificent horse, the other an equally proud pedestrian, bowed with great civility. Neither eyed the other with any pleasure.

With less haste, the other riders had turned their mounts and gathered round us. I recognised one as Lord Ewen, whose estate adjoined Lord Wychbold’s. He greeted me far more cordially than my father had done, bidding me to sup with them that very night. “And your friend, too,” he added with a careless smile. “You must both join us for dinner and a hand of cards. It’s a bachelor establishment, Campion, so do not expect more than a mutton stew.”

“I regret that I am engaged, my Lord,” Hansard said, as I knew he would, since his love of gambling had once near ruined him and he no longer played whist for so much as a matchstick. “A friend of my dear wife’s . . .” he murmured.

“Another evening,” Ewen declared with a smile. “Campion shall furnish me with your address.” He nodded to me. “We sup at six-thirty.”

“Of course you will go, Tobias,” Mrs. Hansard said severely as, in the chaise on our way back to Langley Park, I explained what had happened. “You are the first to preach reconciliation and forgiveness: Now you must act on them. I have no doubt that you parted from your father with great anger on both sides, but in my experience, that simply shows how much love you bear for one another. And my dear Edmund is quite right to have cried off, so that you may have private conversation with Lord Hartland, though I hope he will present himself on a more eligible occasion—no country doctor can afford to spurn a possibly lucrative acquaintance,” she added, impish dimples belying the mercenary motives she suggested.

Silenced by her logic, Edmund and I exchanged a sheepish glance. Edmund recovered more quickly than I. “But we have far more important matters to discuss. What gossip did you two old biddies dish over your tea?”

Since, with her fine complexion, excellent teeth, and elegant figure, Maria might have passed for a lady ten or more years her junior, to stigmatise her as an old biddy was a gross slander. But it earned him no worse a rebuke than an ironic raising of her eyebrow. “No one has left the village in a hurry, man or woman. There has been no talk of broken betrothals. All is, it seems, perfectly well. I must tell you, however, that Mrs. Hendry’s little serving-maid looked at me as if I were an avenging angel when I asked how she and her family did. And Mrs. Hendry reports more gossiping in corners, a greater sense of unease about the village, than is usual. In short, my dears, everyone knows something and no one dares admit anything.”

Edmund nodded.

“I rely on you to be our eyes and ears at Ewen Court tonight, Tobias,” he declared.

The murder might be on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s thoughts, but my father took a different view. “Investigating a crime! With some bumpkin sawbones!” he repeated, so that the words, originally spoken quietly, echoed round the dining room. “You are a man of the cloth, Tobias, not some flea-bitten parish constable.”

Ewen, perhaps shamefaced, though the amount of port he had consumed made it hard to tell, explained that Dr. Hansard was a medical man of considerable reputation. As for the constable, none of the small villages in the area had such a representative of the law.

“Then it is about time you did,” my father growled, topping up his own glass. Such were his potations that I was alarmed; many a time I had seen an evening like this followed by many days of painful, gout-ridden repentance.

Soon cards were called for. Although, unlike Edmund, I had no fear of gambling, I had neither taste nor money for the occupation. So at last I made my excuses and left, with an odd sense that my action irritated and pleased my father in equal measure.

I make no excuse for failing to concentrate on the journey home. My mind, when I let it wander, was still afflicted with images of the crucified man. Then there was my strange reconciliation with my father, in which nothing at all was said about the six or seven years since our last meeting. Titus was used to my absentmindedness, and was as surefooted as any horse, but even he could not have been calm in the face of two men jumping up in front of him and grabbing his bridle. Wrenching me from the saddle, they set about me with a will. I tried to fight back, but at last I lost my footing and slipped into the darkness surrounding me.