The chuckling fingers (14 page)

“Myra—look! These are for steamship lines! Here’s the line Bill and Jacqueline took on their honeymoon. What do you suppose—?”

Myra reached over to take them. “Imagine his keeping those,” she said. “He must have been following each place they went. Here are the times of leaving and arrival—marked.”

I said slowly, “Suppose he did follow—actually follow? That would explain that suit with the holes in it.”

“But that’s impossible! He was at school — how could he?”

“It’s one thing we can find out.” I laid the folders aside with the magazine.

An hour later we stood with dusty hands, having taken up the rugs from the floor, the bedding from the bed. There was nothing to say whom Fred had met that dark midnight by the Fingers or why he’d died.

* * *

Bill was silent over the magazines, looking soberly at each sketched face. Jacqueline looked whitely at what Fred had thought of her, she, too, not speaking.

To the travel folders—and my idea—there was more vehement reaction.

“That’s impossible. Fred couldn’t have been away from school in late May. I saw his grades.” But Bill rose to get the house mother of Fred’s fraternity on the phone, tracing her all over Minneapolis until he found her in summer residence at a daughter’s home.

From the receiver, when he got her, came a staccato rush of questions.

Jacqueline whispered, “The news must have been in the Minneapolis papers this morning.” Yesterday Bill had walked in a shell; today she was in one, as if her emotions had become too strong, she’d had to insulate herself. I went to hug her head against me, feeling unbearably the expectancy, the solitude in which she sat.

But she smiled up at me. “Everything’s going to —We’ll soon know. Bill will find out.”

She thought Bill could do anything.

Bill asked clipped questions at the phone, turning from it with finality. “That question’s settled. Fred was in residence at his fraternity from the day he got back from the wedding until school was out. He didn’t miss a day.”

I asked, “Then what do those folders mean? They must mean something.”

He took them up, his voice roughening. “Is that hard? Poor kid, he looked grown up but he wasn’t. It was the first time I ever took a trip without him. Here!”

He pushed the folders at me as if he couldn’t bear them. I still had them when I went upstairs with Myra to wash while he went on with his interminable telephoning. Later I was to find I’d absent-mindedly left those folders on my dresser. Jean was in my room when I walked in, and I didn’t notice what I did with what was in my hands.

“Sorry,” he said, “Bill’s orders.” He refolded a slip neatly and placed it back in a drawer. “Not that you’d hide anything, but something might have been planted on you,”

It was no time for personal sensitiveness. “Learn anything you can,” I said, and went on to wash.

When Myra and I got back downstairs Phillips was there, standing in the exact center of the living room, his heavy white head cocked, on his mouth the pleased triumph of the news bearer.

“We can quit our hunting. The murderer’s caught. Aakonen made the arrest this morning.”

FOR ONCE Phillips had enough attention. At the immediate questions he preened and pivoted, dragging out his answers to get the full drama.

It was Ed Corvo that Aakonen had arrested.

The moment the name was out Bill was facing him like an antagonist. “How much does Aakonen have to go on?”

I noticed then that Bradley Auden was there, too, standing back, letting Phillips do the talking, and that Jean had come down, Phillips couldn’t talk without elaboration; the gist of what he told was that Aakonen had stayed at the resort the night before, hammering at Lottie and the Corvos. Lottie had been trapped into an admission—after going to bed the evening of the Fourth she’d thought she heard someone going downstairs. Ed always got up if a car drove in or at any unusual sound; she hadn’t worried but had promptly gone to sleep.

Ed, cornered, had admitted he’d been up. At about ten, he’d said. He’d made the rounds of the cabins and the boathouse, his wrecked boat on his mind. You couldn’t, he’d said, tell what such a vandal might do—he might burn everyone in his bed.

“You stayed up all night?” the sheriff had suggested.

“No.” Ed Corvo had been insistent in that denial; he’d gone back to bed again, hadn’t again gotten up. Ella had corroborated, saying her husband was back within an hour, but she’d been unhappy and confused. Ella, who yesterday had made such an open display of loathing Jacqueline.

“Big chance you were taking, going around in the dark.” Aakonen had made an adroit suggestion.

“No, I—” Ed had caught himself, but too late. He’d been forced to admit he’d taken his gun along.

“It had been fired recently too.” Phillips closed his complacent recital. “Couldn’t tell when—but lately. Aakonen said he’d know for sure when he got the bullet out of Fred.”

Behind me Jean asked, “Where you get all this?”

“From Owens—the tall deputy. Brad and I went over for cigarettes. Owens is still there.”

Bill said, “You mean to tell me Ed Corvo planned this whole business of throwing suspicion on Jacqueline.” He wasn’t at the wedding—”

“Lottie was,” Jean said. “If Corvo did it he must have had help. Lottie saw that act on the lawn here too.”

“Even then I can’t see it. Can’t see a strong enough motive. Can’t see Ed being clever enough.”

“Owens figures it this way,” Phillips came in again. “He thinks Aakonen thinks Fred was mad at Ed Corvo because it was Ed kept Fred from having a car. Aakonen and Owens both were right there after the accident last summer when Ed said a kid like Fred shouldn’t have a car, and, Bill, you said from now on Fred wouldn’t. Aakonen thinks maybe it was Ed wrecked Fred’s motorcycle and Fred guessed it and went over and smashed his boat. Then on the night of the Fourth Ed might have heard Fred fighting with Mark and gone out. Maybe Ed charged Fred with wrecking his boat and Fred just laughed. Maybe Ed got mad and shot him.”

“There wasn’t any sign Fred’s body had been moved.”

“Ed’s got a wheelbarrow,” Jean said.

“My gun—why’s that gone if Ed Corvo used his?”

“Red herring,” Jean said.

As if that last were a signal, everyone moved and spoke, Jacqueline coming forward to stand beside Bill.

“It must be someone, Bill.”

“Yes,” Phillips repeated, “it has to be someone. If not Ed Corvo—who else had any reason for wanting Fred out of the way?”

Sly and poisoned—another barb. Why look for a motive?— that’s what people would say. Fred didn’t have anything, but his father did. The second Mrs William Heaton, that barb insinuated, wouldn’t be sorry the boy was gone.

Bill said harshly, “There is another motive. We can’t see it, that’s all. But we’re going to see it.”

Myra said slowly, “Can’t we believe it must be Ed Corvo? I suppose this explains why only one man is left on guard here. We’d all rather it was Ed than anyone else. That’s brutal but the truth.” She could be forthright even about murder. And this let Jacqueline out.

Bill said, “Get on with your hunting.”

* * *

So the dogged effort of that Saturday morning went on, flogged on by Bill. At the phone he was calling a detective in Duluth, ordering a search of Fred’s possessions in the Duluth apartment. He called friends of Fred’s, asking always the same questions—had Fred spoken of anyone who had it in for him, had he gotten threatening letters, had he been in debt. Phillips and Bradley Auden had finished searching the boathouse before going to the resort for cigarettes. At Bill’s suggestion, we went over the house again, Myra doing Octavia’s room, and then on to the barn. Mark and Carol were still out hunting among rocks.

As we walked toward the barn the grocery bus came into the drive; Myra left to pick out meats and vegetables.

“Lottie’ll never turn up now,” was her grim parting. “You go on with the men, Ann. I’ll start lunch.”

Bradley Auden had been working spasmodically, varying between feverish energy and gloomy thought. He said now, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we haven’t seen Cecile all day. I’m going over to see how she is.” He, too, left.

So only Jean, Phillips and I went on to the second searching of the barn which held Bill’s big old car, its top still down, and Myra’s newer sedan. Back in a corner was a mass of twisted metal. Phillips went toward that, to stand before it musingly, his head on the side.

“The trouble with Bill is he’s always right.” Jean was still grumbling over Bill’s reaction to the Corvo arrest. “If he thinks Ed Corvo is out Ed Corvo probably is out.”

“This business of the wrecked motorcycle now.” Phillips kicked at the twisted mass. “That was an interesting little incident too. Fred and Bill went over this wreckage—I don’t see what I could learn from it now.”

He turned to me as I went through Myra’s car; Jean had tackled Bill’s.

“It seems someone started the motor of that motorcycle one night while we all slept. Got it going across the lawn toward the lake. There’s quite a grade. Thing plopped into the lake. Current did the rest.”

Jacqueline had just mentioned the wrecking of the motorcycle. I lifted my head.

“How do you know that’s what happened?”

“Suspicious kitten, aren’t you? Fred found the tracks across the flowers on the terrace next morning. Went out in a motor-boat and hunted along the bar until he found it. All North Shore rivers have bars at their mouths, you know, except the Temperance.”

When I didn’t answer he went over to Jean. “Working hard, aren’t you?” He seemed to have lapsed into being as provoking as he’d been before murder struck. “I can see why. If Corvo is out—as Bill so gallantly thinks—that leaves just one person behind the eight-ball, doesn’t it?”

My hand stopped in the act of opening a car door, every muscle wanting to leap to battle. But before I could open my mouth Jean had swung around, his jaw outthrust,

“So I have a hard time believing Bill’s wife killed Fred,” he said. “What’s it to you?” Then his eyes half closed, and his tone became soft. “Aren’t you just a little anxious to remind us about the suspicions against Jacqueline? Where do you come in?”

Phillips didn’t retreat against the advance.

“Me?” he asked negligently. “I come in under the head of loving truth. Let’s see, didn’t you take Jacqueline out a few times before she met Bill?”

“Louse!” Jean said, and knocked him down.

Phillips Heaton got sweetly up, cocked an eye at me, smiled and strolled out.

Jean said furiously, “Jacqueline was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Sure, I dated her. I liked her. I was the one who introduced her to Bill. I wasn’t in love with her. I’m glad Bill married her.”

Each sentence was like a shot. He went back to hunting.

So there was that too. I’d found there was one more person who didn’t suspect Jacqueline, but …

If I could have wished the murder on anyone I’d have wished it on Phillips Heaton.

* * *

Of course I told Bill and Jacqueline. Before lunch. Myra didn’t ask Jean to eat with us; he left, going toward the resort.

Bill took my account with utter incredulity.

“I thought Phillips came in looking—” he began, then,
“Jean?”
He stared at me and suddenly, discordantly, he laughed, a laugh that sounded as if it drifted up out of hell. “Does Jean have to be suspected in this too? My friend that’s my brother?”

He walked away to the windows as if what he faced was intolerable.

Jacqueline had risen wonderingly from the phone book with which she’d been working. “But Jean wasn’t interested in me,” she said. “Myra met him one day and asked him for dinner. He took me to a movie. That was the only—”

Bill at the window, “Jean came back to the apartment that night. He was staying with me. He almost knocked me across the room. He said he’d met a girl I’d marry.” He swung around.

“No. That’s ridiculous. Jean has no personal interest in Jacqueline and he isn’t jealous of me. Jean’s square from the ground up.”

Bill was the one who was always right.

“There’s still Jean’s question,” I said, low, so that Myra, upstairs giving Octavia her lunch, shouldn’t hear me. “Where does Phillips come in? He seems to have an alibi, but—”

Bill shrugged intolerant shoulders. “What does Fred’s death put in Phillips’ pockets?”

* * *

Myra had made a fire in the fireplace and set the table before it. Toasting as I ate, it seemed to me that, although I hadn’t stopped to notice, I’d been cold as well as wet all morning.

Until then we hadn’t been bothered by reporters, but as we ate the vanguard arrived, skidding to a stop in the drive. Two men got out, one of them coming to the door.

“Mind if we take a few pictures here?” he asked pleasantly. “We’re from the Minneapolis
World
. Been in talking to Aakonen. He seems to have the murder sewed up.”

Bill answered curtly without rising, “I don’t suppose I can stop you.”

“You’re Bill Heaton, aren’t you?” The question came smoothly. “I’m Chris Paxton. You may ‘ve seen my name. We don’t want to get in your hair, Mr Heaton—we know this is hell. You agree with Aakonen’s ideas?”

“He’s in charge of the investigation.”

Mr Paxton nodded, still pleasantly but with an air of getting at some more malleable person later, and strolled off toward the Fingers, where a cameraman was already setting up a tripod. Later I learned that a piece of brown paper had been fastened over the chalked word as a protection against fog and wind; otherwise the rocks were now unguarded.

Phillips said sourly, “The Minneapolis
World
is going to list what we had for lunch. Pity it won’t do the family more honor.” The corner of his mouth was purplish where Jean had hit him.

“Getting nowhere.” Bill rose impatiently from the table where he’d eaten so little. “Fred’s friends say he has no enemies; he wasn’t in trouble with any girl; he didn’t owe any gambling debts; he hadn’t been spending heavily—it’s all too far afield. What I’m after must be here. Right here. There’s someone here who wanted him dead… .”