The chuckling fingers (12 page)

I shivered, seeing again that dark, curiously elongated shadow.

“Mark says he got to his cabin at the resort about ten-thirty, he thinks. Fred Heaton was sitting on the doorstep. Mark, I would like to hear for a second time what happened then.”

A glisten of sweat stood on Mark’s forehead, but the eyes inside the bruised circles seemed steady.

“That’s right. Fred was sitting on the step. He stood up. He said, ‘You had a nice long evening with my girl.’

“I said, ‘You haven’t any mortgage on Carol.’

“He said, ‘Come on down to the shore. I want to talk.’

“So I went down to the beach with him. The minute we were there he swung on me. He didn’t say anything—his fist just got me in the jaw. He had a ring on—it cut. I couldn’t just stand there and let him beat me up. We rolled all over the beach. He got me on the side of the head, and I went out. When I woke up I was still there on the sand. I was icy cold and wet. I don’t know how long I’d been out. I looked around for Fred. There was enough moonlight so I could see he wasn’t there. So I thought he’d gone home. I was still punch drunk. I went back to the cabin and woke Jean up.”

Jean spoke quickly. “It was about two then. Mark told me what had happened. I gave him some whisky and washed him up and put him to bed. This morning when Bill came over—”

“Wait!” The order was Aakonen’s. “At the Fingers, too, things were happening.”

He described how I’d wakened in the night, my morning discovery about my bathrobe, my visit to the Fingers. As he described the scene of the murder I watched the faces—apparently it was the first real knowledge of the murder that most of them were getting. Bradley, Carol, Cecile, Jean, Mark, Lottie, the Corvos—they all sat immobile, as if mesmerized by their own imaginations.

“There is no sign the body was dragged or moved,” Aakonen went on. “Apparently Fred was shot right there at the Fingers. I will know more later, but Doctor Rush thinks the death was sometime between midnight and two o’clock.”

Phillips Heaton said quickly, “I’m lucky. I was at Hanson’s until three o’clock this morning.”

He sat forward, his entire body looking plump and cheerful, like a rubber ball all ready to bounce. That was all he would think of, I thought—his own safety. Animosity against him rose in my chest, and I thought mine wasn’t the only one. Out of all of us he and the quailing Octavia were the only ones who apparently had an alibi.

Aakonen said abruptly, “That is all. For you who are innocent, remember this. No one of you is safe while a murderer is un-caught.”

Swift blaze of realization, like a fire following a kerosene trail. Into that awareness he sank his next words.

“Some one of you is lying. If any of you recognize anything not true in what I have told it is best to say so now.”

Silence so strong it seemed lifting us on currents of air.

“Very well. I shall expect the innocent among you to work heartily with me. Anyone who finds a gun or a piece of blue chalk is to bring them to me. Now I will look at your feet, please.”

He went around examining our shoes, top and bottom. I wondered if it would be possible to tell, as long afterward as this, if shoes had been dew wet.

“You, of course,” he said to Mark. It was his only comment

When he was done he gestured at the wood-shingle man, and the smaller figure warped after him upstairs. They must be going to search the house.

Something that is not true … How many half-truths had I told? Either he knew them for what they were, or else Bill and Myra had made the same evasions.

Movement over the room, people breaking out of the trance into which Aakonen’s account had thrown them. Bill went over to rest his hand a moment on Mark’s shoulder, then walk upstairs. As if Bill’s gesture of belief were a signal, some of the others, too, circled around Mark. Carol was there, clasping his hand; the boy looked back at the sympathy gratefully.

“I thought maybe I hit too hard. I thought maybe he got away and died. The man who came out in the motorboat wouldn’t say anything except that Fred was dead. Then when I heard he was shot—”

His words stopped, as if he couldn’t tell his gratitude that he wasn’t a murderer.

* * *

We had the small irrelevant hustle and bustle of getting Toby off soon after that. Mrs Foster came.

She looked buxom, indulgent and capable; Myra had chosen well. Toby and the long, rusty deputy were found on the ladder leading to the boathouse bedrooms, the deputy carving a Mickey Mouse, and Toby delicately cradling a long-legged doll with a remarkable likeness to Cecile Granat.

When Jacqueline and I went upstairs for Toby’s things Aakonen and his men were just coming out of Octavia’s room. He nodded with what looked like relief when we asked if Toby could go and followed, to stand talking apparently aimlessly while we packed. But he didn’t miss anything that went into the suitcases.

When we got down Mickey wasn’t yet quite done, and we had to wait until he was. And when the car drove off it wasn’t Jacqueline or Myra that Toby wept to have along but the long, rusty man.

* * *

It was when we walked back toward the porch from seeing Toby off that I got my first idea of what life was going to be from then on for Jacqueline. Ed Corvo and his wife were on the porch, asking the guard for permission to return to the resort.

Jacqueline just brushed Ella Corvo’s soft bulk, and Ella, turning, saw who’d touched her. Her body drew back, and her butter-pale, sagging cheeks mottled with an unpleasant blue. What was on her face was unmistakable—loathing. Either Ella Corvo, after hearing Aakonen’s summary, believed Jacqueline to be guilty, or else she was giving an awfully good imitation.

Ed Corvo, too, swept Jacqueline with truculent, distrustful eyes. Then the two of them hurried out the door and toward the resort.

I gasped, ” Jacqueline, they’re just—”

Her face was just quiet.

Myra said, “The Corvos are trash. You mustn’t pay attention to what they may think,” as helplessly caught in anger as I.

The people in the living room had been talking but as we came in they stopped. Almost all the eyes seemed to come toward Jacqueline with a furtive, morbid interest. Not certainty in those eyes perhaps but heavy doubt.

It was into that beginning of mass decision that Aakonen came down. I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs and looked up to his ponderous descent. He was carrying something in his hands—something that looked like a soft puddle of silky black.

With a knife thrust of foreboding I knew what he had—the evening cape I’d brought Jacqueline yesterday—the black hooded evening cape.

AAKONEN COMPLETED his descent without speaking and, still without speaking, walked all the way across the living room through the quick hush, to hold the velvet out to Jacqueline.

“This thing,” he said. “Miss Gay told me she brought you an evening cape yesterday for a present—is this the one?”

The brown-flecked green eyes flashed me a stricken glance, but there was no panic in straight shoulders or level voice.

“Yes. I didn’t have any before.”

“It was a new cape when you got it, wasn’t it? It hadn’t been worn?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t tell me you went out last night, wearing this cape.”

“Why would I? I didn’t.”

His left hand took the garment by the shoulder, letting the fabric fall until the cape hung its full length in soft folds. His right hand held out the ribbons at the neck.

“These have been tied.”

“She tried the cape on to show her husband and the little girl—” I couldn’t keep out of it.

But he ignored me, keeping his heavy eyes on Jacqueline.

“You say that is all you wore it?”

From Jacqueline, staunchly, “Yes.”

“Then how,” he asked, and his voice was sharpened to a point, “how do you explain this?”

The clumsy right hand dropped the ribbons to gather in the bottom of the cape. Unmistakably that cape had been worn outdoors. The velvet pile at the bottom was spotted, plastered down – dry now, but at some time it had been wet, as if it had swept over dewy grass.

* * *

That figure by the Fingers, that oddly long shadow …

In that instant I had all I could do to keep from screaming. Myra and I had been together when we saw that shadow; Octavia had been behind a locked door, and the only other woman in the house was Jacqueline… .

But I couldn’t follow where that thought led. Someone else must have taken that cape last night. Through the roaring in my ears the sheriff’s voice came again, still questioning Jacqueline.

“Perhaps you now remember going for a walk last night?”

“I didn’t. I stayed in my room after Ann left.”

“It is nothing against you if you went out last night—and can explain.”

“I didn’t go.”

“Perhaps you loaned the cape to someone.”

“No. I hung it away yesterday morning. I didn’t see it again.”

My tongue loosened. “Her bedroom door was open all night. She was fast asleep. Anyone could have walked in there to take the cape out of her closet—anyone. I’ll bet the house wasn’t even locked.”

The eyes did come to me then, perplexed and sharpened.

“How do you know your cousin’s door was open all night?”

He’d caught me short. My trip to Jacqueline’s room in the night was one thing I hadn’t told.

I got the pieces of myself together. “I was in Mrs Heaton’s room until probably ten o’clock. She was dropping off to sleep when I went. I was the one who left the door open.”

It wasn’t good enough; he waited.

I had to push on, improvising. “Then when I couldn’t sleep —before I went downstairs—I walked back to the door of her room. I thought if she was still awake I’d talk to her again. But I could hear by her breathing she was asleep—both she and Toby.”

“You walked into the room?”

“No.”

“You could hear from the door that two people slept—by the breathing?”

“Yes.”

“You have good ears.”

“Yes. You heard about the game we played last night.”

“Uh.” If I was lost, so was he; he was almost glaring at me, he was so incredulous. He pulled in a violent breath.

“Perhaps you borrowed the cape to wear down on the porch.”

“I had my bathrobe on—it was still whole then. I haven’t seen or touched the cape since I gave it to my cousin yesterday.”

“No,” Jacqueline said, “of course she hasn’t. It’s ridiculous to mix Ann up in this.”

He shook the stained bottom folds of the cape at us. “Were these stains on this cape yesterday noon?”

“No,” Jacqueline said.

“They got there, then, sometime between yesterday noon and now. Certainly it is reasonable to think they got there during the night.”

Abruptly he turned from us to glare at the room’s other occupants who stood watching in arrested postures, as if they’d been playing that old game we used to call statue. Bradley Auden held a blackened match halfway between pipe and ash tray; in the kitchen door Lottie stood, with a bread knife, patently forgotten, upraised like a pikestaff.

Aakonen looked at them all, then back to Myra, beside me.

“Was there anything about that figure you saw out near the Fingers to prove it was wearing this cape?”

Myra’s dark eyes seemed hypnotized by the black velvet. “No. It was just a shadow.”

“Did you know Miss Gay had brought this cape?”

“No. I wasn’t there when she unpacked.”

Already Aakonen was leaving her, swinging swiftly across the room to Lottie, still standing in apparent blankness at the kitchen door, the bread knife in her hand.

“You know this cape was in the house?”

“Ya.” It came faintly, stiffly. “I see it when I fix little girl’s bed after she sleep in afternoon. I hang away sleeper.”

A small pause, then fostering indulgence. “Now, Lottie, if you borrowed this cape to wear to the resort last night Mrs Heaton won’t be angry. Just tell the truth.”

“No. I Just take off hanger, hold up and look at red inside. Is so pretty.” From fright her tone had slipped to a Scandinavian singsong.

“When else did you take out the cape?”

“Didn’t take out again. Didn’t even look again.”

“Maybe you told someone about it?”

A new freezing. Then slowly, as if the words squeezed through a tight throat, “I tell my sister Ella.” Tears began sliding down her cheeks. “But Ella don’t come here! We stay to resort all night!”

Vehement, desperate. With a last threatening glance at her, Aakonen swept on to the others in the group—Cecile, Carol, even the men. No one would admit having seen or heard of the cape. When he’d gone around the room he came back to Jacqueline and me, his eyes focusing on us like searchlights, their penetration almost insupportable.

Yet he said nothing to us; when he finished that second wordless inquisition it was to nod at the long, rusty deputy.

“Mr Bill Heaton is upstairs. Get him down here.”

Silence, except for the deputy’s footsteps going upstairs. Aakonen walked across the room to stand close to the stairs; Jacqueline and I followed. Silence still, with the footsteps coming back doubled; Bill descending, in the dark, untouchable shell in which he’d cased himself.

I knew then what the coming moment must bring—decision for Bill. Yesterday he had wondered or feared that Jacqueline might have strung a wire across a path, wrecked a boat… . Now he must choose whether or not he would believe she had killed his son.

Powerless to help or hinder, I stood beside Jacqueline, we, too, statues in that room of waiting statues.

Aakonen held out the cape to Bill. “You have seen this before?”

“Why, yes.” The color of Bill’s face had dulled since morning; his eyes had retired behind a glaze of grief. “It belongs to my wife. Miss Gay gave it to her yesterday.”

“Someone wore it in the night.”

Bill stood staring at him; obviously at first he didn’t know what Aakonen meant. Then he saw.

He said rapidly, “You mean you’re suspecting “

The one overwhelming fact of Fred’s death must have blotted out all the details of that death for him, because he looked now as I’d felt when I saw the word on the middle Finger.