Justice Done (4 page)

The kitchen was clean, if not as orderly as the one at the quarry house. It was not in disarray, it merely had the look, feel, and heavenly aroma of a kitchen in use, rather than the sterile environment of the one at the quarry. The cook bristled at the sheriff's suggestion that the small remaining quantity of the previous night's soup should be sealed and taken for testing, or that anything could be amiss with her soup.

“Do you think me a
poisoner
?” she thundered.

While the rest of us made efforts to soothe her—a task made more difficult when the deputy seemed to lose his appetite—Slye roved toward the area where the pots and pans were stored. Our discussion came to a halt when he said, “I believe I've found the poison.”

“What!” the cook shouted. Mrs. Westley turned pale.

“Oh, nothing you prepared.” He held up a jar. “This is your silver polish?”

“Yes, sir,” the cook said.

“Who polished the tureen today?”

“I did,” Mrs. Westley said weakly, sitting down in a kitchen chair.

Slye brought the jar to the sheriff. “Many brands of silver polish contain cyanide, as does this one. The tureen was quite large. If this polish was not rinsed well from its inner surface, enough cyanide may have remained to mix with the soup and cause Grimes's poisoning. There was recently just such a case in the city.”

Mrs. Westley was shaking now, her face buried in her hands.

“An accident, then,” Mrs. Grimes said firmly.

“Yes, of course,” the sheriff said, and a gust of relieved sighs went through the room.

Then the sheriff noticed that Slye was staring out the kitchen window, and had said nothing in response to his pronouncement. “Mr. Slye, do you agree?”

“I don't think you'll ever prove it to be anything else,” Slye said absently. He refocused on the sheriff. “It wants only a few minutes before dawn. I know your men are tired, Sheriff Anderson, and no doubt most of them should be allowed to seek their beds. Allow us to return you to the quarry house. I don't like to delay you, but there are one or two matters upon which I'd like to reassure myself.”

Mrs. Westley looked up at that, frightened. Slye took her hands and said gently, “You have suffered a terrible ordeal, and you have my deepest sympathies.”

She began to weep in earnest. Mrs. Huddleson took her to her quarters.

Mrs. Grimes thanked us and said that she would remain at home, but to call if she was needed at the quarry house. She begged us to let her know if she could be of help in any way.

“It occurs to me to ask a question I should have posed earlier,” Slye said, turning to Mrs. Grimes. “Was your husband allergic to feathers?”

“Feathers? Why, no. In fact, nothing but a feather bed and pillows would do for him.”

“Ah. Thank you. And if I may have a word with Mrs. Huddleson before we go?”

“Certainly.”

Mrs. Grimes asked the cook to go sit with Mrs. Westley and to request that Mrs. Huddleson rejoin us in the kitchen.

“Just one question, Mrs. Huddleson. When you were cleaning Mr. Grimes's bedroom, did you find any loose feathers on the floor?”

“Oh! Yes, a few. But he had changed the beds around, so I expect that's when it happened.”

“Changed the beds?”

“Yes.” She glanced nervously at Mrs. Grimes, then said, “Pardon me, missus, but he was out of his head, you ask me.”

“I don't doubt it, Mrs. Huddleson. You must speak very plainly to these gentlemen, without worry about my feelings. What happened with the bed?”

“I can't really say. He didn't want us asking about it, but when we went to work in there—well! We were surprised. And he got irritated and said it no longer suited him, and he could do as he damned well pleased, and not to ask impertinent questions—but we
hadn't
. We both worked for him long enough to know better than to say ‘boo' to him when he was in such foul mood.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Huddleson,” Slye said. “We'll be going now.”

O
nce we were back in his limo, Wishy asked the question that was on all our minds.

“What the deuce was that about feathers, Bunny?”

“Do you remember the pillow fight we got into when we were seven?”

Wishy gave a delighted laugh. “Do I ever. Earned us each a tanning, and worth every blow. Feathers everywhere.”

“Exactly. Feathers, once no longer attached to their original owner, tend to scatter. Loosed violently from a pillow or mattress, they are nearly impossible to gather up again, as we learned when we were seven and were made to pick up the mess we'd made.”

“I agree, but I still don't see what this has to do with Old Grimes losing his mind.”

“Oh, everything, Wishy. Everything.”

S
lye did not reenter the quarry house, but invited us to accompany him on a walk to the dock. So we followed him across the property to the edge of the sheer drop down to the water. We could see our way now, but I was glad we had not made the attempt in the darkness.

In the growing light, I could see what an oasis it was, a deep, blue, walled-in lake, too perfectly rectangular along its shores, held in place by dramatic, hewn cliffs. Piles of cut and abandoned blocks of stone could be seen rising from the water here and there. The natural world had reasserted itself to some degree, with grasses and trees growing all along the sides, and a few trees rising out of the water closest to the cliffs. The quarry was an alluring place, if you could ignore the occasional rusted-out belt systems, rigging, and other derelict machinery that dotted its shores.

“From what you tell me, Sheriff,” Slye said, when we had paused on a stone landing about halfway down the steps, “loading a boat is more easily done from the other end of the quarry.”

“Yes.”

The sheriff was plainly losing his enthusiasm for Bunny's methods.

This was not lost on Slye. “You are understandably tired and wishing for your bed. You are thinking that the matter of Grimes's death has been resolved. And yes, in all likelihood, we do know how he was killed. But there remains the important matter of the other two murders.”

“What other two murders?” the sheriff was suddenly alert again.

“Of Billy Westley and Jeannie Lindstrom.”

“But they ran off—”

Slye interrupted him, saying in a fierce, quiet voice, “I cannot express to you how much I wish I could bring myself to hope that they are indeed on a honeymoon; how much I would love to learn that the two of them are cavorting about the countryside even without benefit of marriage. We could argue the moral implications of two healthy, good-looking, young people acting on their desires at that point, but first I would celebrate the fact that they must needs be alive in order to sin, if sin it is.” He gestured toward the water. “But this quarry lake, I am sad to say, is most probably their grave.”

Struck silent, we followed him as he made his way down to the dock. Birds were singing, a breeze rattled branches and whispered through the pines, bringing the scents of the forest to us. Our steps echoed on the stone stairs. No one spoke a word. The early light enhanced the colors around us, revealing a stunningly beautiful scene.

I could cheerfully hate it.

When we reached the dock, Slye said, “We observed several things, early in the day, that pointed the way. We learned other things from people who knew the three individuals well. We learned that Billy and Jeannie were smitten with one another. We learned that when fishing here, Grimes usually went out all day, that Mrs. Huddleson had been returned to the Grimes mansion by a young man who was no doubt looking forward to an encounter in a place where, for a few brief hours, no one would be telling him where to go and what to do, no mother or unofficial aunts and uncles coddling him or watching his every move. We know that Grimes, who had his own lustful plans for Jeannie, was hotheaded, competitive, thin-skinned, and had weapons at hand—some of which are missing from his gun room.”

He paused.

“I think more than one gun was taken in an attempt to confuse matters. Or he may have planned to construct a self-defense plea.”

“You mean,” Wishy said, frowning, “that Grimes fired off several weapons, and he planned to claim he'd been shot at, then fired back.”

“Precisely.”

“So what do you think happened?” the sheriff asked.

“No one living was here to witness what happened, but our observations give us the basics. Mr. Grimes repaired plaster on a bedroom wall, directly behind a point where two lovers' heads may have been nestled together. Two shots at least. Others may have lodged in the mattress or the lovers' bodies. As you know, Sheriff, there is unlikely to be self-restraint in such cases.”

The sheriff nodded. “Spurned lovers tend to overdo it.”

“Whatever he did required him to replace a headboard, a mattress, bedding. He opened windows on a chilly evening. He needed to telephone for help for further cleaning, and was very specific about who would answer that summons.”

“In that, he was cruel,” I said.

“Very much so,” Slye agreed. “Understanding that much of this is conjecture, but based on physical signs and what we know of the individuals concerned, here is what I believed happened. Grimes left the house at about this time of day two days ago. He took the rowboat out, but came back unexpectedly early.”

“Why?” I asked.

Bunny shrugged. “We can't be sure, Max. Perhaps he forgot some part of his fishing tackle, remembered a new lure or something of that nature. Perhaps his unruly desire for Miss Lindstrom left him thinking he could send Billy and Mrs. Huddleson back to the mansion long enough to force his attentions on her. Perhaps, out on the lake, he happened to look into the window of his bedroom and saw them standing in an embrace. We will never know.”

“And they,” the sheriff said, “perhaps planning to leave his employ, thought to thumb their noses at him and make love in his own bed.” He shook his head. “What did Owen call him? ‘A cheeky bastard.' ”

“Grimes and Billy perhaps had a few things in common,” Slye said.

“He grew up fatherless in Everett Grimes's household,” I said. “His beliefs about manhood may have been molded by Grimes.”

“Likely, although until he could drive, he probably spent more time with the servants. As for using Grimes's bed, since that is the only place in the house with a view of the lake, their choice may have been practical in intent—they could watch for his return, which they thought would come much later.

“In any case, finding these two in his bed must have enraged Grimes. I believe he reacted violently. He shot them both.

“Then what to do? He wrapped his victims up in the damaged and bloodstained bedding, and carried them down to the limousine. While not as large as Wishy's Pierce-Arrow, the Hudson is a roomy vehicle. He included in his cargo the damaged headboard—perhaps he sawed it into smaller pieces first. He had the foresight to check in the small cottage and gather anything that might indicate Billy planned to stay. He overlooked or ignored
The Count of Monte Cristo
, which may have belonged to him, after all.”

He paused, frowning in concentration; then he went on.

“He probably hid the car nearby, in the highly unlikely case someone should come upon its gruesome cargo. He came back down theses step and rowed the boat to the other side of the quarry. He tied it up and walked back to the house. This all required a great deal of physical effort, but he was in excellent condition. He got into the Hudson and, with his limited driving skills, scraped the right front fender on his way out, as Wishy noted.

“He unloaded his burdens into the boat, which must have been crowded, with not only himself but two bodies, bedding, and perhaps even pieces of headboard, although he may have burned the wood.

“He planned to have the boat sink, and had to ensure it didn't return to the surface. He would be especially concerned that the bodies not rise, as they would in the natural course of decomposition. Using materials readily available—this is a quarry, after all, with no shortage of rock—he undoubtedly weighted the rowboat's contents. He rowed out a certain distance from the shore—not too close, but not too far, because the day had already been one of extreme exertion. He then intentionally damaged the boat, perhaps by drilling a hole in the hull beneath his feet, and let it sink. He swam back to shore.

“Between his fears and his efforts, he must have been quite exhausted at this point, but there was still more to do.”

“He got into the driver's seat,” Wishy said, “sopping wet, and left water everywhere. Which is why the car was still damp the next day.”

“Exactly.”

“And coming back, he smashed the other fender!”

“So it seems. We cannot know the exact sequence of events after he returned to the quarry house. Perhaps he went upstairs and slept a little. Perhaps he set to work patching the wall and cleaning up the worst of it. Perhaps it was then that he called his wife, invented a tale of runaway lovers to hide his crime, and insisted he be left alone to ensure that no one from the mansion would come to the quarry. He still had one major problem to resolve. The bed itself.”

“Did the bed leave the feathers in the car?” Wishy asked.

“No, for even though the Hudson is large, it would have been quite loaded down at that point—bodies, headboard, Billy's personal effects from the small house. I believe those feathers came from the bedding, possibly a damaged pillow, or perhaps a few feathers had clung to the bodies and were dislodged in transport.

“In all likelihood, not only the bedding but the mattress itself was stained. A feather mattress is bulky, too unwieldy to be included in the rowboat's cargo. He had to discover a way to otherwise dispose of it. And he found one.

“Now, keep in mind that, to him, this is wholly his domain. This is how he must have quieted his fears of being apprehended for murder, and acted so boldly. This is
his
quarry,
his
personal lake,
his
home. He controls the only the roads that lead to it. He stocks the lake with the fish he likes to eat, then goes out alone to catch them. He has altered this home so that he has the best view, one he will not share with others except by invitation to his bedroom. He alone decides who will visit it and when.