The chuckling fingers (28 page)

She sank back, looking from me to Aakonen. “It’s like the other tricks. If you didn’t see me here sleeping you couldn’t know it wasn’t me.” Her head went forward to her hunched knees in the blanket.

“No more you than anyone else,” I told her firmly.

The dark head lifted, accepting. “I’ll get up.”

Without a word Aakonen went downstairs, to return in a moment with Myra. The two of them went into Octavia’s room but were there a bare five minutes. When Jacqueline and I got downstairs he was just finishing telling the group there what had happened.

Two men stood at the door, one of them heavy and weather-roughened, the other slight and quick.

“Here I am. Sheriff,” the small man said when Aakonen turned. “Diver. Got my boat out front. Hell of a time for it.”

Jean was on his feet, bewildered. “Good heavens, Aakonen, a diver can’t move that car! You’ll need a scow and a derrick. Even for Fred’s motorcycle we—”

Aakonen ignored him, moving toward the newcomers with his ponderous tread. The three went out together.

“A diver,”
Jean repeated, incredulous. Then he whirled on me, and behind the black eyes thought was racing. “Ann, you were along. What did Aakonen do in that car before it got into the lake?”

“We both tried to stop it.” Nothing made sense. “Aakonen caught at it, but it wouldn’t stop. I tried to drag my feet. Aakonen tried to reach the emergency brake, but the car was in the water, and we had to jump.”

“He tried to reach the brake… . He’s got a diver out… . It’s in the middle of the night… .” The black eyes fled from face to face as if he were enumerating, as if he were storing up each person present. He stood stock still, but someone else was moving. Toward him.

Bradley Auden. Bent, like a tight bow.

He whispered, “Aakonen’s got a diver out. A diver could only … Carol.”

Like a slow-motion picture his body swayed from his feet in a circle, and he sank on the floor. He was almost like the puddle of Aakonen’s clothes that still lay by the fireplace. .

* * *

But it wasn’t the body of Carol Auden that the diver brought up.

IT WAS AFTER FOUR in the morning when Aakonen finally came in to tell us.

The time before he came was pulseless, endless. Bradley Auden, after we revived him, was put in a chair beside Mark; as he sat there he looked like the ash of a man, like a burned cigarette that still loosely holds its shape before a touch scatters it to dust. Something else was happening in Mark: Mark was drawing in close to some inner steel framework, hardening, toughening, as if he were being beaten to strength.

The rest of us sat waiting in petrification, as if we were statues doomed to sit in timeless isolation.

That eternity ended on an opening door, on Aakonen striding in. He’d been wet again—his shoes, his arms. The khaki hunting coat was water-splashed. Inside the door he halted, to stand brooding over us as he had that day after Fred was killed.

Then he said quietly, “I will tell the rest of you what almost certainly one here already knows. From Mr Bill Heaton’s car we have recovered a body—a body that was on the floor between the seat and the controls. That was why I could not reach the brake.”

Slowly, deliberately he ended.

“It was die body of Phillips Heaton.”

* * *

From Mark came one sharp, wordless cry, as if he were a sleepwalker blinking at light. Life seemed to creep up Bradley Auden’s body, too, flesh growing back on his bones, blood running. Over the whole room there was a breath of movement… .

Phillips Heaton. Gone, like Fred. Not a villain but a victim. No need to wonder now if his alibi might be a smooth trick like the other tricks; no need to delve into his jealousies and resentments; no need for fright to rise when he stood in a door… .

Phillips, Myra’s brother …

She’d sat beside and a little behind me. When I turned to look I saw her mercifully gone, without a sound or a sign. Her head was fallen to the side of the chair, her whole body crumpled. .

* * *

Even after we roused her from the faint she just kept bleakly staring, and no strength came back to her body. At Aakonen’s command Jean carried her upstairs, and Jacqueline and I put her to bed. We wanted to stay, but Aakonen brought up a deputy to stay by the bed and ordered us down.

“I’m—all right,” Myra whispered, but she looked like little more than a drift of last year’s leaves in that bed and once when Jacqueline touched her she closed her eyes, wincing.

Downstairs Aakonen spoke. “I want each one of you to repeat to me when you last saw Phillips Heaton alive and exactly what you have done since then. The rest of you listen for any small word you know is not true.”

He was so tired he seemed to sag together as he stood, to be shorter, wider, looser because of the depressing weight of weariness. Over the rest of us there was just one thought.

One more of us gone. By Fred’s murder we’d been horrified, and after Bill was shot we’d been stricken into terror, but now we seemed in a state beyond fear or terror, as if the bombs had fallen time after time and we’d been cowering and afraid, but now we could only wait stoically for what came … for the next bomb to fall.

Into that anesthetized terror Aakonen spoke again. “When Fred Heaton was killed I named fourteen people who might have fired that shot. We now know that neither Bill Heaton nor Phillips Heaton held that gun. We know that Ed Corvo did not shoot Bill Heaton. Our circle grows smaller.”

With slow deliberation he looked from face to face, and I looked with him. Jacqueline. Cecile. Ella Corvo. Lottie. Bradley. Mark. Jean. Me. Except for us there were only Myra, broken, and poor shrinking Octavia and Carol Auden, lost somewhere. Bradley and Jean looked fixedly at Aakonen, but the others stared at Jacqueline. . , .

“You will begin, please, Miss Gay.”

Sound was odd in the room; it was like talking in a radio station’s soundproof cubicle, with the faces in which fear was deadened pressed against the glass, looking in, but with the microphones turned off so they couldn’t hear a word. Into that thick silence I had to repeat what I had done that evening since Jean and I had left Phillips sitting with his amused and satisfied smile beside the fireplace.

When I was done Aakonen waited as if someone might comment. No one did; the eyes still flickered toward Jacqueline. Aakonen himself repeated first what he had learned from Octavia, then what Myra had told him. Octavia had gone up to her room the moment she and Myra and Jacqueline had returned from the hospital. She had, she said, stayed there.

“Octavia’s door was locked on the inside when I got out of the lake. That’s no proof, but—I must remember she has a good alibi for the night Fred was killed.”

Clearly he had no belief Octavia had killed Phillips.

“As to Mrs Sallishaw, she and Jacqueline Heaton went upstairs together, leaving Phillips by the fire. Mrs Sallishaw says she took one sleeping tablet and was just dropping off when Miss Gay and Mr Nobbelin and I entered the house.”

He paused as if to judge. “I know Mrs Sallishaw was upstairs when I got here and I know she was upstairs later. She would have had to be very quick to get down to release the brakes on that car. I do not believe she could have done it. Now you, Mrs Heaton.”

Jacqueline repeated her story. Again no comments, but the eyes were terrible to bear.

“You, Mr Nobbelin.”

Jean said that when he left he had gone straight to the resort. There’d been a light in the inn. When he’d found Mark gone from the cabin he’d walked up to the main building. Ed Corvo was up, roused by the phone call asking if Carol was there. He’d stayed with Ed perhaps five minutes, then gone back to his cabin and to bed. Ed had wakened him to tell him to dress and wait at the inn.

Again the wait; again no comment.

“Mr Auden, please.”

Phillips had answered when Bradley called the Fingers to ask if Carol was there. Phillips had said he was alone; he hadn’t seen him since. Bradley had been in town looking for Carol until a deputy’s car had stopped him to tell him Aakonen wanted to see him and that Carol had been caught rifling Bill’s office but had escaped. The same deputy had driven him to the Fingers. He’d borrowed Jean’s car and left again. On the highway he’d been hailed by Owens in another car. Owens had left the deputies in the other car to go with Bradley and had been with him since.

“That’s right.” Owens was uneasy. “I saw the car turning out of the drive here and hailed it. He didn’t come back here to release the brakes on any car.”

Of us all Bradley was the only one who had a positive alibi for this murder.

“You, Mr Ellif.”

Mark spoke abstractly, almost dully. “When Jean and Ann left this afternoon Carol and I went and sat on the rocks, talking. About six Carol left in her car. She said she was going home for dinner but she’d be back. Bradley called up after seven and said Carol hadn’t come home. I was worried, but she’d told me to wait there, so I did. After a while Ed Corvo came around, looking for Carol. After that I went out on the highway, watching the cars go by, thinking she had to come pretty soon.”

The deputy had found him there. He admitted he and Carol had quarreled a little. He didn’t know why she’d go to hunt anything in Bill’s office.

Aakonen prompted, “This quarrel.”

A hesitation, then a careful statement. “It was about whether we should get married.”

Bradley Auden stiffened. “She can’t get married. She’s just a kid.”

Mark answered soberly, “That’s what I think.”

A wheel in my head began turning. It was Carol, then, who wanted the marriage. She was tempestuous and sudden, but I wouldn’t expect her to try to provoke a reluctant Mark into marrying her.

Again Aakonen waited; nothing was forthcoming.

“Miss Granat, please.”

Cecile lifted her sullen, withdrawn face to speak, without moving the body held stiffly in the baby-blue coat. “Phillips Heaton was at the resort talking to me this afternoon. He was going on and on, purring to himself, about why everybody did this, why they did that, how smart he was. He said he’d just made some lucky investments.”

“You’re sure he said nothing of what these investments were.””

“No, he just said I’d be surprised how much money he was going to have.”

“He told Miss Gay shortly after that that he knew the murderer. Didn’t he make any such statement to you?”

“No. Don’t you think I’d have jumped at it if he had? Mostly he said how stupid everyone was. He said Jean was stupid, Ann was stupid, his sister Myra was stupid, Jacqueline was stupid, and especially Bill was stupid, who was supposed to be so smart. Everyone was stupid except him.”

Aakonen had her try to give the conversation in Phillips’ own words, but apparently she’d already given the gist of it. After he’d gone she’d spent the evening tightly locked into her cabin, as she spent her evenings nowadays, reading magazines and listening to her radio. Ed Corvo had routed her, too, out of bed.

When would Aakonen speak about those checks? I sat waiting for it, but he turned away from her without a word on them.

“Ed Corvo, please.” I sat up, opening my mouth to ask about those checks myself, but when I looked at Aakonen the tired, bulging eyes were fixed on me and he was shaking his big head significantly. He didn’t want those three checks asked about— not there. And back of his eyes I saw the reason—he thought he knew why Bill had given Cecile that money.

Unaccountably and perversely I wanted to disagree with him. I saw Bill as he’d been until Fred was shot—tall and arrogant and—all right—wickedly masculine. But I couldn’t think that on his honeymoon he’d been paying Cecile twenty-five dollars a week because she was his mistress.

Then suddenly I was certain. If Bill did have a mistress he wouldn’t pay her. He might give her things, lavishly, in chunks. But that small, regular payment wasn’t in character.

I turned to meet Jean’s eyes. What was he thinking? Something—it was right there under the surface of his eyes.

Lottie, Ed and Ella contributed nothing; they’d been at the resort all evening apparently. When they were done Aakonen’s tired eyes again made the rounds, but he knew then he wasn’t going to get anything.

“You can talk now,” he said wearily. “I’m going to look around the house.” He plodded toward the stairs.

Jean spoke quickly. “I suppose Phillips was shot.”

Aakonen paused, halfway up the stairs. “In the back,” he said.

Jean said slowly when he’d gone on, “Fred. Bill. Phillips. Someone seems to have it in for Heatons.”

I could feel my eyes extending, seeing those people on the lawn, that significant afternoon of the Fourth. There ‘d been four born to the Heaton name; of those four only Myra now was left. Bill was still alive, but that wasn’t by the will of the person who dealt death. But no again—there was still also Octavia, so hard to remember as a Heaton or anything else.

* * *

Before I could think beyond that Aakonen was calling down the stairs.

“Miss Gay! Will you come here?” It sounded angry and exasperated. As my foot touched the first step I remembered my resolve about not letting Jacqueline out of my sight. She came quickly at my beckoning glance, glad to get away from what that room had for her. As we went up Ella whispered significantly to her sister.

Aakonen stood in the middle of my room, glaring at an ash tray on the dresser.

“I thought I remembered I didn’t find any cigarettes in your room before. Can you tell me how you smoke?”

He pointed at what the tray held—matches, some of them broken. No cigarette ashes.

I explained my silly lie. “What I really wanted to do with those matches was put them between spring and mattress, then bounce on them to see if they’d ignite.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“It was so involved, and a cigarette was so simple.”

“It isn’t simple now. Don’t you see, Miss Gay? You lied to me before—you said you had not been in Mrs Heaton’s room the night Fred Heaton was shot, yet I am certain that for some reason you were there. How can I believe anything you say?”