Flynn's In (21 page)

“He must have heard the gong,” Arlington said.

Flynn said, “Sure, that gong is enough to wake the dead, isn’t it just?”

Oland turned in his chair and ladled the soup into his bowl himself, using his right arm.

“I’m sure he’ll be right down,” said Wahler.

Across the table, Cocky was watching Flynn, as if waiting for him to speak regarding where Rutledge was. Flynn said nothing.

Buckingham hitched forward in his chair. “I think it’s time we put a few cards on the table.”

“Your deal, Uncle Buck.”

Leek soup was ladled into Flynn’s bowl.

“I admit I didn’t like Lauderdale,” Buckingham said. “Never did. And I admit I wasn’t too pleased when I got the wire from my sister saying she’d eloped with the son of a bitch.”

“I think he would have preferred just ‘bitch,’ “Roberts said.

A chuckle went around the table.

“I didn’t particularly like Ashley, either. And I admit I poured a goodly amount of capital into Ashley-Comfort recently, when that jerk Huttenbach pulled out, without a word to any of us. Ashley wasn’t the wisest administrator. Huttenbach himself, in my opinion, was a charmless dolt. Life was dealing him much more than he deserved, and he never had the grace to realize it.”

“Are you volunteering as the murderer, Uncle?”

“Just saying my piece. Coming clean. What I’ve realized this weekend is that due to accident of birth, one spends all one’s life with a certain number of people without ever really liking any of them much.”

“Thanks,” said Roberts.

“Nice of you,” said Clifford.

“Did you murder them?” asked Arlington.

“No.”

“Then your breast-beating and general insults are unnecessary and irrelevent.”

“I think my nephew did.”

Everyone looked at Clifford. Who laughed.

“I did?”

Everyone had soup. No one was eating.

“You killed Huttenbach because he was a married man diddling your sister. You killed Lauderdale because he was a silly old man who married your mother. You killed Ashley because he was diddling the family finances, and you knew it. I had told you so. In my opinion, Ernie, during your recent tour of duty, you snapped somehow. You were under heavy fire, weren’t you? It’s happened before. When you see so much useless, sudden death…”

“One thing is certain,” Arlington added. “Whoever killed Lauderdale and Ashley was physically strong. Clifford is strong.”

“Strong or obsessed,” D’Esopo said quietly.

“I’m strong for my age.” Oland flexed his left arm. “Remarkably strong. Wiry. I never fail to do my exercises. A cold shower every morning of my life—”

“Arlington’s the crazy one!” Clifford sputtered. “For God’s sake, we all know that! He’s been in and out of institutions more than-”

“Once!” Arlington shouted. “Years ago!”

Clifford jerked his thumb at his table mate. “He was damn near lobotomized.”

Flynn’s soup was warm.

“Years ago,” Roberts said.

“Okay,” Clifford yelled. “You think he hasn’t been under pressure in Washington? Under pressure from us? What about all those real estate deals he’s been making for himself in Canada? Talk about an obsessed personality!”

“I won’t hear this talk!” Arlington slammed his fist on the table. “You all know me. I’m disgusted by your antics! Not one of you big, tough guys can get through a day without slaughtering some animal, shooting some helpless deer, holding a wriggling, suffocating fish up by its mouth! You guys can’t live a day without bullying someone!”

“‘Bullying?’” Buckingham asked drily.

“Yes, bullying. Bullying me! Bullying Ashley!”

Thoughtfully, Roberts said, “Lauderdale was our best hunter. He never went out with rod or gun that he didn’t—”

“And Huttenbach was the sloppiest,” groaned Buckingham.

“And Uncle Buck’s the biggest bully.”

To Flynn, all these cross-accusations seemed another dinner-time game being played out.

The beer keg was being ignored.

“Why don’t we all calm down,” Roberts said in his committee-chairman voice. He smiled down the table at Eddy D’Esopo. “We all know each other pretty well. Very well, indeed. Something very different has been happening here these last few days. Something that hasn’t happened in a hundred years at The Rod and Gun Club. Every few hours, someone is getting killed. Murdered. If you stand back and look at the situation, ask yourself what new, different element has been introduced to the club the last few days…?”

“Like a chemical formula,” said Oland. “What new element has been added to bring about such radical change?”

“D’Esopo,” said Clifford.

“Who
is
D’Esopo?” Roberts asked.

Chairs of the slain either side of him empty, D’Esopo looked large and isolated at his end of the table.

“I’m the Commissioner of Police for the City of Boston,” D’Esopo said simply. “I’m a cop.”

“Does anyone know D’Esopo?” Roberts asked. “I never saw him before in my life.”

“He’s not a member,” said Arlington. “He’s a guest.”

“Whose guest?” Roberts asked. “Why?”

“I am—I was a guest of Mister Thomas Ashley. This is my third visit to The Rod and Gun Club.”

“He came back this time to kill us all,” Arlington said.

“Does anyone here really know D’Esopo?” asked Roberts.

Arlington looked myopically down the table. “The people who knew him best are all dead.”

“There is the resentment factor,” Clifford said. “We’ve all had to live with that.”

“Which is why The Rod and Gun Club exists,” Buckingham said. “To get away from damned fools and—”

“—cops,” said Clifford. “People who feel the need to make middle-class judgements.”

“Who knows more about how to murder people than a cop?” Arlington asked. “And who’s quicker to make half-baked moral judgements?”

“I know about murdering people,” Oland said. Only he and Flynn had emptied their soup bowls. “I’m quite good at it. You see, once you start thinking about your own death…” Again his voice trailed off.

Clifford giggled. “Oland’s killing off all his old friends so they’ll be waiting for him in that great steam-room in the sky, Valhalla.”

Taylor’s head came around the swing door to the kitchen. He saw that most of the soup bowls still had soup in them and withdrew.

Buckingham nodded. “D’Esopo is the unknown element here. The different element.”

“And,” Roberts announced. “Apparently he was the one who got this… Flynn up here to investigate. A few minutes ago, in his room, Flynn told me that he is not investigating.”

Quite seriously, Clifford asked, “Were you brought here not to investigate? Was that part of the understanding?”

“Instead he seems to be developing all sorts of material for blackmail,” Roberts said. “In his room just now, he came out with quite a bill of particulars. For example, somehow he knows Arlington was confined at one point in his life—”

“God,” said Buckingham. “He knows we’ve been flogging bodies around—”

“How much do you want?” Arlington demanded of Flynn.

“And there’s Concannon, too,” Clifford said.

“We’ve been set up!” concluded Arlington. “That’s what happened. We’ve been set up! Someone was let into the club as guest, this D’Esopo, without being properly vetted, and now we’ve got three cops at table, a conspiracy if I ever saw one…”

“Three different methods of murder,” Clifford said quietly.

Flynn said, “An entrancing idea. Is this why I was especially invited to dinner? To hear this?”

D’Esopo pushed his untasted soup away with his thumb. “If you want to know what a cop thinks, what one cop thinks….” No one took him up on it. Everyone was silent. “…Well, all
this reminds me of indirect murder. Third-party murder. Where someone decides who dies and someone else actually does the murders.”

“You mean, like in a mob, or a gang?” Clifford asked.

“Something like that.” D’Esopo spoke diffidently. “I see two brains here.”

Cocky was looking at the commissioner with interest.

“I think one guy is sitting back and keeping his nose clean…” D’Esopo continued slowly “…and the other guy is loyally following orders, doing what he’s told whenever, however he can.”

At the word
loyally
, first Clifford, then Arlington, then the rest looked at Wahler.

“And what would Mister Rutledge’s motivation be?” Wahler asked in the tone of a detached lawyer.

“Maybe he knows something we don’t know,” said Buckingham.

“Or is thinking something we’re not thinking,” said Arlington.

“Your motive would be money,” said Roberts. “Money and power. That’s clear enough.”

“’Fraid you’ll have to do better than that, gentlemen.” Wahler said. “Your approaches to the problem may satisfy you, but the cats are still screaming in the trees.”

In a quiet tone, Roberts asked, “Where is Rutledge, Wahler?”

“He wasn’t even in the sauna,” Buckingham said. “He rarely misses the sauna.”

Roberts said: “Wahler. Go get Rutledge.”

The silence around the table indicated concurrence.

Wahler left the room.

“You don’t think I’m capable of doing murder?” Absently Oland rubbed his bare chest with his right hand and looked around the dining room. “Sometimes one gets tired of certain things, certain people, finally wants things his own way…”

“Wahler’s the bastard,” Clifford said. “All by himself. As sure as God made little green apples.”

“He may well be,” agreed Buckingham.

“Was he ever put up for membership?” Roberts asked.

“Yes and no,” Buckingham answered. “Rutledge said the bastard’s had the impertinence to suggest it. Several times.”

“And what happened?” Roberts asked.

“Rutledge put him off.”

“The point is,” continued Oland, “murder is a social device, like any other.”

Eyes smiling, Clifford said across the table to Flynn: “At least he’s forgotten about his waterproofs.”

Everyone looked at Wahler, standing in the door. “Rutledge’s door is locked. He doesn’t answer.”

Cocky looked at Flynn for instructions about the key.

Flynn shook his head.

Roberts said, “Break the door down.”

At the door to the dining room, Wahler hesitated.

Buckingham, clearly the most successful football lineman at the table, pushed his chair back. D’Esopo too, rose.

Wahler, Buckingham and D’Esopo left the room.

Clifford said to those remaining at the table, “My Uncle Buck loves to tease me. He always has. What he was really doing was clearing the air of charges against both him and me.”

“I see,” Cocky said.

Roberts asked Clifford, “Why didn’t you go help break the door down? I should think that would be something a kid your age would want to do.”

“Why didn’t you?”

From upstairs, faintly, Flynn heard a door banged in its frame. Then a louder bang, and a louder. It was a strong door. Finally the splintering of wood and one final bang as the door bounced against a wall.

A few seconds of silence.

A deep, incomprehensible yell.

Everyone at the table remained at the table.

Dunn Roberts lowered his head.

“Dinner seems awfully slow tonight,” Oland said in a peculiarly loud voice. “Wasn’t cook ready?”

After another silent moment, Oland petulantly asked Flynn: “When is dinner coming in?”

“That’s always the question, isn’t it?”

Wahler was in the doorway then. “Rutledge is dead.” He leaned one shoulder against the door frame. “Stabbed. The knife….”

Next to Flynn, Oland gasped. His right hand never made it to his chest.

The naked old man’s head fell forward into his empty soup bowl.

The bowl cracked.

His skinny shoulders sagged onto the table.

Flynn put out a hand to catch him.

Oland fell no further.

Across the table, Arlington shrieked. His eyes were round, staring at Oland’s empty, cracked soup bowl.

Taking in breath, Arlington pushed his own soup bowl away, violently, making the soup in it slop out onto the table cloth. “We’re being poisoned!”

Gracefully, Clifford had come around the table. With Roberts help, he lowered Oland to the floor and began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

“Poisoned!” yelled Arlington. “It’s the Goddamned people in the kitchen! I knew it!”

Taylor came through the swing door from the kitchen carrying a roasted turkey on a carving tray.

He saw Clifford working over Oland’s naked, bluing body on the floor.

The turkey skidded off the tray and bounced along the floor. Stuffing dropped out between the turkey’s legs.

Passing Wahler in the doorway, Buckingham entered the dining room, and stopped. “What happened to Oland?”

“Poisoned!” Arlington shrieked. “He ate the soup! We’re all being poisoned!”

“Heart attack, I suspect,” said Flynn. “I ate the soup.”

“Oh, God.” Taylor said with dismay. “Another body to dispose of.”

“Well.” Flynn put his napkin beside his empty soup bowl. “There are dinner parties.” He rose from his place at the table. “And there are dinner parties.”

“I
think I’ve got it.”

“Cocky! Good man! I knew you’d crack this case!” Flynn steered a wide dinner tray through the door of his bedroom. “More to the immediate point, I’ve got victuals.” On the tray were thick turkey sandwiches, a large pot of tea, cups and saucers.

From his seat at the chessboard, folders in his lap, Cocky asked, “Last time I saw that turkey, wasn’t it behaving like a practice football?”

“Question not the source of your sustenance,” Flynn said putting the tray on the floor beside the chess table, “and you might not starve.” He handed a sandwich to Cocky. “Actually, I discovered I know one of the kitchen help. Our paths crossed previously in Afghanistan. At the time he was peddling passports.”

“Always nice to know someone in the kitchen.” Gladly Cocky bit into his sandwich.

“In most cases, it’s essential.” Flynn poured tea for them both, and helped himself to a sandwich. “Or so I have had every reason to observe.”

Settled at his own side of the chess set, Flynn took a soiled envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Cocky. “Also a mash note for you. Taylor asked me to deliver it.”