Nine Man's Murder (6 page)

“Did you hear anything?” Jonas asked. Aaron shook his head. The mute caretaker’s loud sawing had apparently muted the sound of the scream, as well. “Has anyone come in here? Did you see anyone?” Again Aaron shook his head.

A fruitless encounter. Departing the shed, the investigators circled the inn in vain pursuit of the source of the mysterious cry, completing the circuit with the discovery of Amanda, Hatter, and Jill standing in front of the inn, with Gideon just emerging behind them.

“Did you find anyone?” Amanda asked.

Jonas shook his head. No one.

“There’s no place to go,” Gideon observed. “There’s nothing out here but trees, with trunks too narrow to hide behind.”

“As if whoever—or whatever—was responsible just vanished into thin air,” Hatter pointed out darkly.

* * *

I
t was the
booming voice of Reeve Argyle, echoing down the staircase, that drew everyone from their rooms like an early dinner gong.

“Where is it?” Reeve shouted.

“Where is what?” Carter asked, stepping into the corridor.

“My gun,” Reeve bellowed. “Somebody took it from my suitcase.”

In the startled hush, Bryan and Jonas raced to their rooms, spurred by the same misgiving. Jonas was the first to return.

“Mine is missing, too.”

Bryan’s eyes, as he reappeared, told the same tale.

“Did anyone else bring a gun?” Carter inquired.

No one had. Or at least no one admitted to it.

“Someone took those guns,” Gideon said, glancing at the faces around him. “The question is, who?”

“No,” Jonas countered. “The question is … why?”

21

J
onas summed up
their plight with passionless efficiency. “A call for help that draws us all outside … then, suddenly, our guns disappear. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Someone lured us outside deliberately,” Carter suggested, “so that he, or she, could steal our weapons while the inn was empty.”

Reeve nodded. “The last time I saw my gun was before I left my room and went downstairs to the billiard room. That was a good forty minutes before we heard the scream.”

“And I was handling my own gun at roughly the same time,” Jonas corroborated. “Which confirms that the weapons were stolen sometime after that.”

In the awkward silence that followed, the front door creaked open. Aaron entered the parlor room and seated himself in an empty chair.

“So when did the thief enter Moon’s End and take the guns?” Bryan asked.

Jonas thought for a moment. “I was in the parlor room when the scream came, so I would have seen anyone who came through the front door. You have to pass the parlor room when you cross the entry hall. You joined me shortly thereafter, Bryan. We encountered Reeve in the empty hallway coming out of the billiard room.”

“I came from the kitchen, through the billiard room, before you were out the door,” Carter reminded them.

“There’s a door in the kitchen that leads outside,” Jonas observed.

“Yes, there is,” Carter replied. “But forget it, if you’re thinking I made that racket outside and then ducked back in through the kitchen door. To get to the bedrooms—and the guns—from there, I’d have to have gone through the billiard room. But Reeve was in the billiard room and would have seen me. Which means I would have had to wait for Reeve to leave the room. That wouldn’t have left me enough time to grab the guns, upstairs and down, and join you three in the entry hall before you were out the door. Besides, you would have seen me leave the billiard room.”

“Maybe the thief didn’t enter the inn through the front door,” Amanda suggested, “but through the kitchen door.”

“Impossible,” Carter said. “That door was locked.”

So the thief had entered through the front door; and, as no one had come through that door between the scream and the time the four men left the inn, the intruder had to have entered sometime after that.

“But before I got outside,” Jill added. “I was the first one out after you four left. No one could have gotten past me through the front door without me seeing them.”

“So whoever got inside,” Carter said, “did so between the time we left and the time Jill arrived.”

“If someone had gone up—or down—the stairs once I came out of the parlor room,” Gideon reasoned, “I would have seen him. Which means he had already been upstairs and come down by the time I entered the entry hall.”

“Unless,” Jonas argued, “he robbed the downstairs first, went upstairs before you got out, and never came back down.”

“You mean he left the inn from upstairs?” Reeve asked.

“Through a window,” Hatter suggested.

“That should be easy enough to verify.” Bryan and Jonas slipped outside and returned a moment later.

“Four of us circled the inn after the scream,” Jonas explained, “but we never got near the inn itself. And there are no footprints now beneath any of the windows—first or second floor. So the thief couldn’t have left through a window.”

“Which also means that he did not enter Moon’s End from any of the windows,” Bryan added. “He did indeed enter through the front door.”

So the intruder had not robbed the downstairs first, then gone upstairs and left the inn through a window. That meant he had robbed the upstairs first, then downstairs—but would not have had time to beat Jill to the front door. And after that, he couldn’t have left through the front door without being seen by Jill. Nor had he departed through a window. Which left only one possibility.

“The door to the kitchen,” Bryan said. “I noticed some footprints outside by it—”

“They were ours,” Jonas countered. “I tried opening that door, but it was locked, like you said, Carter.”

“Damien keeps it locked and bolted,” Carter explained. “I never unlocked it.”

A quick check confirmed Carter’s claim. Bryan found the bolt drawn across the inside of the kitchen door.

“But,” Bryan asked, “if the intruder departed through the kitchen door after Carter left the kitchen, how did he rebolt it from the outside?”

The answer, of course, was that he could not have.

“Yet if he did not leave through the kitchen door—or the windows, or the front door before or after Jill reached it—then he couldn’t have left the inn at all.”

“Which means he’s still here.”

Three groups searched the inn. Amanda, Reeve, and Carter searched upstairs. Bryan and Aaron inspected the billiard room, dining room, and kitchen. Jill, Hatter, Gideon, and Jonas checked the drawing room, parlor room, library, and downstairs bedrooms.

But, aside from the eight guests and Aaron, the inn was as empty as a politician’s promise. Bryan and Aaron examined the kitchen door for signs of tampering but found none. Hatter and Jonas uncovered behind the staircase a door beyond which a flight of stairs descended to the basement. There they found a collection of cobwebs and a non-working furnace, but no window, door, or other way out of the basement.

And no intruder.

Most of the guests reassembled in the parlor room to report what they had, or had not, found.

“We’ve searched every inch of this place. No one’s here.”

“But he couldn’t have gotten out,” Reeve protested. “We’ve already determined that.”

Hatter shook his head. “What will it take to convince you people?”

“Don’t start that nonsense again, Hatter. This is not one of your ghost novels.”

“How else can you explain it? Someone took the guns. He couldn’t possibly have gotten out. Yet he—and the guns—are not here. What other explanation is there?”

“How about,” Bryan suggested, “that the guns were stolen by one of—”

But he never had a chance to complete the remark, because of the chilling scream from upstairs. Not from a mysterious source this time, but from Amanda.

All except the wheelchair-bound Gideon hastened to the second floor. At the top of the staircase they encountered Carter emerging from one of the bedrooms, in pursuit of the same sound. Like bloodhounds they tracked it around the corner of the upstairs hallway to the quivering figure of Amanda, covering her mouth with both hands. To her right, a closet huddled in the shadow of a wall’s recess, its door swung open like a mouth hungry for a meal—or, in this case, having just disgorged one.

Stretched across the floor at Amanda’s feet lay what might have been her shadow—had it been facing the right way. But it cut across the hallway widthwise rather than lengthwise, as if defying the light.

Carter was the first to reach the corpse. He turned it over gently and recoiled at the sight he had uncovered.

Rising from a patch of shirt sparsely daubed with blood in the center of the man’s body was the hilt of a deeply-buried knife.

“It’s Damien,” Jill gasped.

22

B
ryan examined the
corpse. “Stabbed through the center of the upper abdomen. And the angle of the blade … slight upward trajectory …”

“From the position and angle of the knife,” Jonas declared, “I think we can conclude that the blade sliced right through the aorta.”

Bryan agreed. “A major artery. Near the surface of the skin.”

With morbid interest Hatter examined the wound beneath the red-daubed shirt.

Jonas looked at Bryan, their professional instincts overriding their emotions. “How long would you say he’s been dead?”

“At least since this morning.”

Aaron arrived on the scene, staring at the corpse with an expression Bryan could not fathom.

Carter’s voice struggled through strangling tendrils of shock woven across his throat. “We need to notify the police.”

“Where’s the telephone?” Jill asked.

Carter led them on a pilgrimage to the second-floor bedroom Damien always slept in. On a night table beside the bed sat the telephone Damien never used. Carter lifted the receiver to his ear. “Static.”

Reeve snatched the telephone receiver and listened for himself. Static. He tried punching “0” on the keypad. Nothing. 911. Nothing.

“I knew the phone would be out,” Carter said. “I couldn’t get through when I tried calling Damien this week. My email bounced, too. The Internet must be down. The study is up here. That’s where the computer is.”

Carter headed for the study with the others at his heels—until Jonas veered down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Hatter called.

“Outside.”

Before anyone could ask why, Jonas disappeared down the staircase.

The others entered the study, where an outdated computer sat on a desk beside a dust-covered printer. Carter turned on the computer and tried to access the Internet. The monitor blinked, then displayed:

A SERVER CANNOT BE FOUND.

PLEASE CHECK ALL CONNECTIONS.

Anxiously the guests tested the cables between the computer and modem. All of the connections were solid. Carter tried once more to get onto the Internet, with the same results.

“Why can’t we get anything?” Jill asked.

“Because,” came Jonas’ voice from the study door, “the phone line has been cut. That’s why the phone is out. This computer’s Internet service is routed through a modem—which is connected to the telephone line. No phone service, no Internet.”

“Then we use our cell phones,” Hatter declared, unholstering his own.

But his attempts to contact the outside world met only with frustration.

“I’m not getting a signal,” he muttered.

“There’s no cell phone reception up here,” Carter explained. “You’re wasting your time.”

But Jonas, Bryan, and Amanda all produced their cell phones, with the same results.

“I told you,” Carter said. “Cell phones are useless up here.”

“Then we have no way of contacting the outside world?” Hatter asked.

“What’s going on up there?” Gideon called from the foot of the staircase.

The others filed out of the study toward the head of the stairs. They apprised Gideon of their predicament.

“So we’re stranded on a mountaintop with no transportation out,” Gideon muttered.

“We’re a good twenty-six miles from Owen’s Reef. And it’s all winding mountain road. Damien’s car is gone. So we’re stuck here until Sunday—unless anyone has a suggestion …”

“I suggest we do something with Damien,” Amanda said.

“Such as?” Carter asked. “The police will want his body for an autopsy. We have to preserve him as best as we can until then.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that.” Jonas glanced out the hallway window. “It’s cold enough up here to preserve his body just fine as it is.”

“You have a point, Jonas,” Bryan agreed. “Medical examiners place corpses in deep freezers until they can perform an autopsy. And with the mountaintop covered in snow, we have our own personal freezer.”

“Bury his body in the snow,” Reeve suggested.

“Exactly. It will preserve his body—and the evidence—better than any other method.”

The others gave their assent to Bryan’s plan.