Nine Man's Murder (18 page)

“Like Damien,” Hatter replied without emotion.

“Where are Gideon and Jill?” Bryan asked.

“Gideon is still in his room, I presume. I haven’t seen Jill lately.”

Hatter’s pen hovered like a hawk over his notepad.

“Something wrong, Hatter?” Jonas asked.

Hatter passed a hand over a dark fringe of thinning hair vaulting hollow gray eyes set deep in a skeletal face. “Four down, five to go.”

“A cheery thought.”

“When are you going to face the facts, Bryan?” Hatter cried. “We’re all going to die.”

“But why, Hatter, why? Why would anyone want to kill us all? What’s the motive?”

“The motive,” Hatter said flatly, “is revenge.”

“Yes, but revenge for what? Don’t you see that if we only knew the motive, that in itself might point to the murderer?”

Jonas seemed jolted by a sudden thought. “You know, Bryan, we’ve been assuming from the start that someone wants to kill us all.”

“The fact that we’re all being murdered one by one does tend to support that view.”

“But what if it doesn’t? What if that is merely subtle misdirection? What if you just hit the nail on the head? You said that if we knew the motive, that in itself might point to the murderer.” Jonas paused, arranging his thoughts. “Suppose you wanted to kill someone. You have a motive. But that motive points directly to you. If you murder your victim, everyone will know you had reason to do so. You will become the prime suspect. So what do you do?”

Bryan understood. “You conceal that motive by murdering a group of people. No one knows the true victim—or, therefore, the real motive.”

The theory provoked a burst of derision from Hatter. “Are you saying that your murderer really wants to kill only one of us, and is murdering the others to camouflage his motive?”

“A motive which, if known, would point straight to the culprit.”

But Hatter remained antagonistic. “Even if your theory is correct, it doesn’t bring us any closer to the truth, because it doesn’t answer two vital questions. Who is the intended victim, and who has a motive to kill him?”

Into the drawing room walked Jill. “Did you find Bennett?” she asked.

They related their discovery of Bennett’s body.

“Who’s next?” Jill whimpered. Suspicion ricocheted from eye to eye. “Wait a minute. When was Bennett killed?”

“This morning,” Jonas replied.

“We were even warned—” Bryan began.

Jill interrupted. “What are you talking about?”

Jonas handed her the murderer’s second note. “I’d love to compare this to the first note.”

“I have it. It’s in my room.” Jill turned to leave.

“Wait,” Bryan said. “Have you seen Gideon lately?”

“Not since you two left.”

Bryan and Jonas exchanged concerned glances. As Jill returned to her room, the two former partners hastened toward Gideon’s.

“Gideon?” Jonas called loudly, knocking on Gideon’s door.

No reply. He pounded on the door. “Gideon, are you in there?” he shouted.

Still no response. Jonas eased the door open as Hatter arrived. No one wanted to enter alone, so all three entered together.

Gideon sat motionless in his wheelchair, peaceful as a sleeping infant.

“Gideon?” Jonas said softly. But nothing he did could wake Gideon from this sleep. Jonas searched for a pulse, or signs of breathing.

“He’s not asleep,” Jonas declared. “He’s dead.”

49

J
ill stood in
the doorway, breathless.

“I heard shouting … I raced out of my room …” She noticed Gideon’s lifeless form. “Oh, no, is he …”

Jonas lowered his eyes, while Hatter and Bryan examined the body to confirm Gideon’s death. Though they found no signs of life, neither did they find signs of violence: no wounds, bruises, or marks of any kind.

“Neither shot nor stabbed,” Bryan said. “No contusions on the skull, so we can rule out a blow to the head. Plus, he shows no consistent signs of poisoning, that I can discern. In my opinion, he was suffocated.”

“Yes,” Jonas agreed. “There are no marks around his throat, so strangulation is out. But notice the blue tinge to his lips and ears, and under his fingernails. Cyanosis: an excess of carbon dioxide when it is prevented from leaving the body. I think someone put a pillow to his face and smothered him.”

Jill wore a puzzled expression. “The window is locked, but didn’t you find the door unlocked?”

Hatter nodded. “Gideon was more careful than that. He would have locked the door.”

“Then how did the murderer get in?”

“There’s no way Gideon would have let someone into his room.”

“Especially after Amanda was murdered in hers.”

“Then how—?”

“I told you,” Hatter said. “This murderer can do things others can’t.”

“Cut it out, Hatter. Things are already spooky enough without your help.”

“Besides, if your spook entered the room through supernatural means, why didn’t it leave that way? Instead, after murdering Gideon, the killer appears to have opened the door, passed through, and left the door unlocked. Just as he did with Amanda.”

Jonas was staring at the corpse.

“What, Jonas?” Bryan asked.

“We agree that Gideon was suffocated. But there’s no sign of a struggle. Which is not what one might expect of suffocation.”

“Unless Gideon fell asleep in his wheelchair.”

“If he was up all night like I was,” Jill said, “he might have been tired enough to.”

“Or he had help,” Bryan said, pointing to the empty juice can. “If the murderer drugged that drink—”

“Then Gideon would have slept through anything,” Jonas concluded. “So it would have been a simple matter to enter the room without waking him.”

“Assuming the door was unlocked,” Jill added.

“And it wouldn’t have taken much strength to suffocate him, either,” Hatter said. “Being drugged, he would have offered no resistance. Even a woman could have done it.”

“Are you changing your mind about the killer being supernatural, Hatter?”

“Just stating possibilities.”

“While we’re listing possibilities,” Bryan said to Hatter, “where were you while we were out looking for Bennett?”

In his bedroom the entire time, Hatter claimed, working on his book, until hunger drove him into the kitchen. Jonas noticed, however, that the notes scribbled across Hatter’s small writing pad barely covered one entire page.

“So now it’s down to us four …” Jill said.

“On the bright side,” Jonas noted, “that makes the killer’s job much more difficult. The narrower the list of suspects, the harder it becomes to kill undetected, since we have fewer people to keep an eye on. The murderer will have to be pretty clever to surprise three people on the lookout.”

“Shouldn’t we do something with Gideon?” Jill asked.

Hatter and Jonas carried the corpse outside, burying Gideon in a frozen bed beneath a blanket of snow. Bryan remained behind with Jill.

“You didn’t ask me where I was this afternoon,” Jill said. “But then, you also chose to stay behind just now.”

“I wanted to ask you privately.”

After Bryan and Jonas had left the inn, Jill explained, she preferred the risk of a quick, painless death at the hands of a murderer to the certainty of lingering torment in the company of Hatter, so she locked herself in her room until she heard the voices of the returning men.

“You don’t think I murdered Gideon, do you?”

Bryan averted his eyes. “I don’t know what to think.”

“You know me better than that.”

“It’s been fifteen years.”

“You knew me once.”

“Did I? I’m not so sure. There was always a part of you that you seemed to be holding back.”

“Look who’s talking. The moment we broke up, you took up with that cheap actress. What was that, your idea of a birthday present?”

“I was hurt, Jill. And I was only using her to help me get to the director’s files. Besides,” he added, “I see you weren’t too hurt to find someone else.”

“What do you mean?” Jill struggled to control her panic. “Are you talking about Imogen?” A nervous laugh. “She’s not my daughter, silly. Not my biological daughter, at least. She’s Amanda’s baby.”

Bryan seemed lost for words.

“You were right about my father, Bryan. Eventually Mom and I found out. I couldn’t handle it, on top of everything else. I spent two years in Lakeview—”

“I’m sorry, Jill.”

“It was shortly after Dad left. Mom’s health had never been great. The stress—of Dad, and my commitment—took its toll. Eventually Mom was hospitalized—cerebral hemorrhage. After Mom came home, Amanda gave birth to Imogen. It’s a long story, Bryan, but I offered to raise her. Then Mom took a turn for the worse. It wiped me out financially. I had to go on welfare. Which meant lying about Imogen.”

“You could have adopted her—”

“Not without bringing Amanda into it. I told you, it was complicated. But it was all working out—until you interfered. And now she’s gone—”

Jill fled from the room as Hatter and Jonas returned.

“Looks like someone still blames you for the breakup years ago,” Hatter taunted. “And from what I just heard, losing her daughter. She seemed angry enough to kill.”

“You know, Hatter, for someone who believes the killer to be a ghost, you certainly are free with your accusations.”

“Besides,” Jonas added, “she has no motive to kill the rest of us.”

Hatter pounced on Jonas’ words. “Wasn’t it you, Jonas, who had a theory about that? Let’s say for a moment that Jill did want to kill Bryan. If she were to do so, an investigation of Bryan’s past would lead directly to her. He was responsible for their breakup. He was responsible for the loss of her daughter. Two perfect motives. She would be the prime suspect. The only way to kill him without arousing suspicion would be to make it look like he was simply one of a group of victims. A search would be made for someone with a motive to kill everyone—which Jill doesn’t have—rather than a motive to kill Bryan specifically.”

“I see you’re not as insistent on the ghost theory,” Bryan observed, “when you are the only alternative to Jill as Gideon’s murderer. You claim you were in your bedroom the entire time. Jill says she was in hers. Either of you could have entered Gideon’s room and smothered him without alerting the other.”

“But that doesn’t explain Amanda’s murder, does it?” Hatter snapped. “You said so yourself: None of us could have done it. There’s only one explanation for that. And it’s eventually going to get you, too.”

“And you,” Bryan pointed out.

Bryan’s reminder sent Hatter retreating from the room.

“When we went off in search of Bennett,” Bryan said half to himself, “we left Gideon alive. While we were gone, somebody murdered him.”

“And that someone had to have been one of two people. Hatter or Jill.”

“But Hatter’s right. We still have to confront a different problem. Who killed Amanda?”

“We know it wasn’t Bennett. And Hatter has an alibi—as do you and I. So it was either Gideon or Jill. And Gideon would seem to be exonerated.”

Somehow, they reasoned, Jill had persuaded Gideon to supply her with an alibi. How this had failed to arouse Gideon’s suspicion, neither man could fathom. Murdering Amanda under the cover of a vulnerable alibi, Jill then went about silencing Gideon, snipping off the one loose thread in her tightly woven scheme, the only one who could unravel that alibi.

“So what are we going to do now?”

“We keep an eye on her. We don’t let her out of our sight. We only have to make it through one more night. Tomorrow Bill and Max return for us, and when they see the bridge is out, they’ll send for help. Once we’re rescued, we can decide what to do.”

As Bryan removed a cigarette packet from his pocket, a flutter caught Jonas’ eye. Something had fallen from Bryan’s pocket. It lay on the floor beside his right foot, small and white. Whatever it was, Bryan had not noticed it fall.

“You look concerned,” Bryan observed. “Perhaps rightly so. After all, Jill was in an asylum for two years. Who knows what she’s capable of?”

When Bryan departed, Jonas scooped up the white object from the floor. A piece of paper, folded. Jonas unfolded the note and read it.

50

E
ventually the four
survivors were drawn like helpless pieces of metal to some magnetic center of doom, pulled by the force of a single issue: the best way to stay safe.

“We’re not safe,” Hatter whined, “together or apart.”

“Hatter has a point,” Jonas said. “Amanda and Gideon were locked in their rooms, and that didn’t protect them.”

Jill shook her head vigorously. “I’d still feel safer with locked doors between us.”

“Locked doors can’t keep this killer out,” Hatter replied.

“Our strength is in numbers, Jill,” Jonas said. “It’s still three against one.”