The chuckling fingers (11 page)

I asked, “Is it all right if I go out?”

“The porch,” he answered. “Do not try to leave the place.” He waited for me to be gone before he continued questioning.

Except that Myra was gone the people on the porch were as they’d been when I walked through with Aakonen. Mark was still missing—Mark and Jean Nobbelin. The guard pointed to a chair.

“You can sit there. No talking.”

Aakonen’s voice rumbled inside; Jacqueline answered, but it was too far away for words to be audible. Gradually I saw the differences in the people on the porch, under their common tension. All were turned toward me now, the Corvos and Lottie sullen and frightened, Phillips with recovered aplomb; he rested back in his chair like a Roman senator viewing Christians about to be divertingly eaten by lions.

I asked him, “Where are Mark and Jean?”

He gestured toward the lake. “Out there.”

Cecile said, “They left early this morning on one of the boats.”

It was a defensive answer; sullenness was heavy on Cecile’s lipsticked mouth and in the blue eyes flickering toward Bradley Auden. Lipstick had been becoming to her the day before, but now pallor made too sharp a demarcation at the lip line.

Carol swallowed a gulp. “I could have pretended I was in love with him.” It was a meek and pitiful voice to be hers; impishness was gone from the woebegone triangular face. When I looked at her she bent double, her face to her lap.

“I was so mean to Fred yesterday—just as mean as I could be!” She cried aloud, unashamedly, crying not only her shock that a boy she’d known was dead but a second tearing grief over her own lack of love.

Bradley Auden proffered a large handkerchief. “You know about redheads having a hard time being ladies.”

The girl gave an enormous gulp and straightened, to sit swallowing recurrent fits of sobbing, dabbing at her cheeks.

Over the back he patted Bradley Auden asked me, “Have they decided yet if it was murder?”

“You ain’t supposed to answer that,” the guard cut in sharply before I could reply.

Bradley Auden brushed a hand across his forehead. “Poor Bill. I don’t suppose he wants to see anyone. We were told only that Fred was dead and murder suspected. Surely it must have been an accident.”

“Bill’s upstairs. I don’t imagine the sheriff would let you see him.” I answered as much as I thought was permissible.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Phillips Heaton asked blandly. “Except for Bill, little Carol here seems to be the only case of grief.”

He let words drift out lazily. “Even more interesting, isn’t it, to think that behind one mask of careful shock someone might be glad?”

“That’s enough there!” The order was sharp, but every pair of eyes leaped, and I felt my muscles contracting. Someone here—yes, was there a pair of hands here from which blood had been washed? Had someone here been the figure that skulked at the Fingers, waiting? Was there someone here from whom one’s touch should shrink?

A car’s motor hummed behind the house, hummed more loudly, stopped. Footsteps on the gravel and low voices.

Three men came around the corner of the veranda—Jean Nobbelin, Mark, a tubby and important stranger.

Two exclamations rose, one mine, one Carol Auden’s.

Mark Ellif carried his head forward, tipped, as if he had difficulty seeing. Both his eyes were blackened; a bruise on his left cheek spread, swollen and magenta, far below his cheekbone, and a ragged cut ran from the right corner of his mouth to his chin.

Carol was on her feet, running to him at the porch door. “Mark! You’ve been hurt! Fred’s dead! Is everyone going to get hurt and killed?” The cry came hysterically.

Under the flamboyant color of the bruises Mark’s face was ash gray. He raised his eyes to the rest of us, over Carol’s head. The look on his face was one of stoicism and despair.

“I heard Fred was dead,” he said. “I guess I must have killed him.”

* * *

Excitement and consternation broke loose in questions the two deputies could not quell.

“I never meant to.” The boy seemed in an advanced state of shock. “I didn’t mean to.”

I’d thought of Mark as a possible murderer, but this didn’t make sense. “Whoever killed Fred meant ” I began, but a big hand clapped harshly down on my shoulder.

“No talking here!” It was a bellow from the tubby, important deputy. “I got to get these men to Aakonen.”

“In the living room,” from the deputy who’d been guarding us.

The tubby man shouldered his charges to the door and inside it. Carol had fallen back, looking as dazed as Mark.

“He couldn’t have. Mark couldn’t kill anybody.”

Her father put his arm around her, leading her back to a chair. “We don’t know anything, Carol. We’ve got to wait.”

Then I forgot them; Jacqueline stood in the door.

“Was it Mark?” she asked. She looked taken aback, but that’s all; my heart jumped like a minnow in a pail when you grab for it.

If it’s Mark, it isn’t you
—how could I even think that? I sprang to get her to sit by me. She asked where Toby was; I answered, but all that mattered was that Aakonen had let her go.

I asked, “What did the sheriff say when Mark came in?”

“Aakonen said no talking here.” That command again.

Impatience burst. “What difference does talking make?”

“Suppose somebody knows something he ain’t been told?” Professional contempt. What did I know about hunting murderers? All I had was my necessity.

From inside the house came a hoarse shout—Jean’s voice talking for a moment loudly. Then the voices sank again. My ears strained, but it was no good; there were too many water and tree sounds.

Mark’s “I didn’t mean to” when the murder setting was so deliberate. Yet why should he have admitted that he must have killed Fred if he hadn’t? What sort of farce could he and Fred have staged that could lead to that final scene, with Mark not knowing what he did?

We had to sit for twenty minutes in that suspense, Jacqueline quiet and aloof, Carol running the hem of a soaked handkerchief between forefingers and thumbs, Bradley Auden alertly waiting, Cecile with more color in her cheeks, so that her lipstick blended naturally, Ella and Lottie hunched like rabbits, Ed sitting up fierce and straight, his water-dark eyes watchful and wary, his face sharper than ever.

At the end of twenty minutes Mark Ellif walked out, behind him Jean’s dark shadow.

What looked like relief so great it was weakness showed in every line of Mark’s face and every relaxed muscle of his body. Jean had a hand under his arm, supporting him. The boy’s cheeks were wet.

He said, “I didn’t kill him.”

The rusty man even then wouldn’t allow a question.

* * *

The interviewing from then on went quickly. When Ella Corvo came out—she was the last—there was an interval in which Aakonen must have gone up to do his best with Octavia, because thinly from upstairs came a sound like a shrill, protesting child’s cry, and I guessed that for the first time I was hearing Octavia’s voice.

Jacqueline rose. “I suppose Myra—”

But Toby’s small feet were already running across the living room; she appeared in the door, pausing in sudden shyness at seeing so many people, until Jacqueline picked her up.

“I stay you now. Gramma said.”

“That’s fine. We’re all glad you’re down.”

Undoubtedly Myra had gone with Aakonen into Octavia’s room, but, whatever he got out of that colloquy, it didn’t last long; within ten minutes he was in the doorway, brooding over us like a sphinx.

“Come in, please, all of you. Take chairs here in the living room.”

What was this to be—a public accusation? My heart beat faster as I followed Jacqueline in; I couldn’t touch or look at her, because that would be open confession of the fear that leaped. Myra was on the stairs, looking toward Toby anxiously.

“Must Toby—?” she began, and Aakonen jerked around.

“No, of course,” he answered, and made a gesture at the long, rusty deputy.

That man at once walked toward Toby, fishing a jackknife from his pocket. “I got a good knife here,” he said. “I whittle wood dolls for my little girl. I guess I could make a pretty good doll now if I had a stick.”

Toby, in Jacqueline’s arms, slowly started sliding, her eyes glued to the knife.

“You know where there’s any sticks?”

No answer, but the seduction was complete; Toby went out with him, hand in hand, and Jacqueline looked after them with a sigh.

“He looks as if he’d be responsible … I wonder when Mrs Foster will get here. It’s only a hundred and twenty miles from Duluth.”

Then she forgot even Toby. Bill was coming downstairs with the wood-shingle man, erect, not shading his grief but looking nowhere for consolation. Jean Nobbelin started to his feet but halted. Through the room ran a current of sympathy so strong you could almost feel it with your hands.

* * *

Aakonen stood behind the table, facing us, bent, so that his fisted hands rested on the table. His big head was forward like a bull’s, his eyes steadily grave.

Aakonen said, “There are fourteen people who may be mixed up in this murder. Those people are Mr Bill Heaton and Mrs Bill Heaton, Mrs Sallishaw, Mr Philipps Heaton, Miss Octavia Heaton, Miss Ann Gay, Mr Bradley Auden, Miss Carol Auden, Mr Mark Ellif, Mr Jean Nobbelin, Miss Cecile Granat, Miss Lottie Elvesaetter, Mrs Ella Corvo and Mr Ed Corvo.”

Of the fourteen he named only one wasn’t looking at him now. He must have been unable to get Octavia up, or else he thought her presence unnecessary.

He went on more slowly, “I believe that one of the people I have just named murdered Fred Heaton.”

Stirring breath, tension that was already tight growing tighter, the trap walls closing in.

“I am not going to say who I think might be that murderer. I am going to say what I will say because among you people there are thirteen who are not murderers. From those thirteen I want help.”

Breath released, bodies moving forward.

“Somebody who has a grudge seems to have been working around here. Things have been smashed and cut up. I know Mr Bill Heaton’s son Fred was jealous of the stepmother but I have asked Mr Bill Heaton and all of you, and you all say you know no reason why anyone would want to kill Fred.”

Again a pause.

“Yesterday afternoon I was out here, talking to some of you about Ed Corvo’s boat. About four o’clock I went back to the resort with Ed and stayed for supper. So I know Ed and Mrs Corvo were at the resort until maybe eight o’clock, when I went home. They say they stayed there all evening. Lottie got there about nine o’clock, and they all went to bed.”

A change in stress between what he knew and “what they say.” Only the word of the Corvos and Lottie that they’d been at the resort through the evening and the night. Ella Corvo’s soft bulk moved as if a hand had shaken her shoulder.

“Here at the Fingers you were together for supper at six. About seven Mark took Miss Auden home. He says he stayed at Auden until eleven.”

A rising, “Mother will tell you—”

“There is nothing here to be proved. Fred Heaton was killed long after eleven. So. After Mark Ellif and Carol Auden left Fred was seen by his father to walk away in front of the house toward the boathouse where his bedroom was. Only Mark Ellif will say he saw Fred Heaton leave after that.”

Again a pause, in silence.

“That was maybe seven or a little after when Fred Heaton went to the boathouse. Lottie came out and took the trays in to wash the dishes. The little girl got sleepy and was taken off to bed by her mother and grandmother and Miss Gay. The little girl was crying because she had lost a blue chalk. We have not yet found that blue chalk but we know for what purpose it was used. Left on the lawn were Mr Bill Heaton and Mr Nobbelin, talking. Mr Auden and Miss Granat and Phillips Heaton also stayed there talking. It got cool, and the mosquitos began to come out. Miss Granat picked up Mrs Sallishaw’s shawl where it had been left in Mrs Sallishaw’s chair and wrapped it around her shoulders. In another few minutes the five people moved to the porch, taking the chairs along. After a while Mr Phillips Heaton left to drive to Grand Marais.”

Had that been the car I heard when I came downstairs?

Fear and waiting over the room; from our piecemeal testimonies Aakonen had built this carefully dovetailed account.

“Miss Granat says that when she left she dropped Mrs Sallishaw’s shawl in the porch chair in which she was sitting. No one of you will admit seeing that shawl after that. Mr Auden took Miss Granat home. Mr Auden’s car was at the resort. He says he left in it at once.”

That shadow at the Fingers wasn’t Bradley Auden, then, unless he lied.

“When Mr Auden got home his daughter told him that Mark Ellif had just started walking back along the shore. The Audens say they then went to bed.

“Here at the Fingers Mr Bill Heaton bumped into Miss Gay in the living room. She says she was coming downstairs to see if anyone was up. They went to the porch to talk. Mrs Sallishaw heard the voices in her room overhead and came down to join the talk. Mr Bill Heaton decided his wife and the little girl should go to Minneapolis with Miss Gay until the person who had been up to tricks around here should be caught.”

Did his eyes touch me obliquely? Had he guessed the real reason for the decision? If he had he gave no sign.

“Mr Bill Heaton then went for a walk. Miss Gay and Mrs Sallishaw returning upstairs, where Mrs Sallishaw locked the door of Octavia Heaton’s room from the outside as a precaution against her sister’s habit of sometimes walking in her sleep. I may say now that it is hard to see how Octavia Heaton could be the murderer, since she was there behind that locked door when Mrs Sallishaw unlocked it this morning.”

Yes, no wonder he hadn’t forced Octavia to come down. She seemed to be out.

“While Miss Gay was opening her window about ten o’clock she saw what she thought was some dark figure lurking near the Fingers. Mrs Sallishaw also saw this figure and decided it must be Mr Bill Heaton, since he was out walking. Mr Heaton, however, says he did not go near the Fingers—he was on the lake shore near the boathouse. There is a chance what the two women saw was Mark Ellif, coming home from Auden. Fred Heaton was probably not killed until midnight, but of course that does not mean someone could not have lurked by the rocks, waiting.”