Obelists Fly High

by C. Daly King

  ‘You agree in laying this entirely at Amos Cutter’s door?’ Lord asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pons, ‘I do. Both the young women agree about that, if about nothing else, and that brings us to them and their part in this last matter. Fonda first. You will agree that Fonda Mann is physically beautiful; she has also the emotional beauty of highly-developed feminine captivation which, like her father, she exercises with more force than discrimination. She is very much like her father, the adventurer, I think, but she is purely feminine, whereas he is purely masculine. Their understanding of each other’s recklessness and their complimentary emotional sequences would both draw them together. Fonda is rather contemptuous of her mother, but she is definitely in love with her father. My God, no, Michael,’ the doctor raised a protesting hand, ‘I am not hinting that this is an abnormal relationship. I am asserting that they are emotionally in love with each other, and I mean by this that their mutual responses are more like what is called romance than like some pallid parental affection. I think there is very little that Fonda would not do for her romantic father; and she is quite reckless enough to do it.

  ‘Isa is another story entirely. Again, if you can get it out of your head that I am referring to physical acts, Isa is emotionally an active homosexual. For us her personality is important, and her personality is a mannish one; emotionally, which is the main thing, she is more masculine than feminine. She is uninterested in men, and I doubt if she cares a snap of her fingers about her father; but her mother – ah, there is something different. I believe she is in love with her mother, with the same kind of jealous, protective “love” that Amos has always manifested. Anne’s very uncertainty, her weakness, her female rather than feminine dependency, all of this would be an irresistible magnet to Isa, just as to a certain type of appetitive male. Accordingly, she is Amos’ ally; she is all for the divorce, where Fonda is all against it, and she is plainly hostile to the absent husband.

  ‘Well,’ Pons stretched, got up, ground out a cigarette and sat down again, ‘there is the Cutter-Mann set-up. With a situation like that, with a man like Amos Cutter pursuing his jealousies in the main successfully, there is nothing to be surprised at in what has happened. He has thwarted the strongest responses of human beings and his own appetitive behaviour has inevitably raised against him the appetitive hatreds of other men, with what most people would say was good reason. I have told you only the cases I know, but there are doubtless many other men who bear him something more than an ordinary grudge. I am not surprised that he should be found one day with his throat cut; certainly any one of the four men whose stories I have told had just the kind of motive that is to be looked for in a case of murder.’

  Lord observed quizzically, ‘What surprises me is that, after your long recital and analysis of all these emotions, we are not a bit advanced. Of your four suspects, the first two are God knows where, the third is dead and the fourth is in Africa. You are not suggesting, are you, that either of the first two young men, harassed by Cutter so many years ago and long since without any connection with the family, probably with families of their own by now, are travelling on this ’plane with us?’

  ‘How do I know?’ asked Dr Pons.

  ‘But it has been years – forty years or more. That is a longer time to hold even a very serious animosity than I can easily credit.’

  ‘Rarely, very rarely, indeed,’ the psychologist remarked, ‘the love responses of a man toward a particular woman are really permanent. Then they continue over absences and over years of separation. Presumably they would continue to reinforce his hatred of the one who caused the separation.’

  The detective sat thinking for a short period. Then, ‘No. Aside from the rarity of such an occurrence, which you admit, there is more than that against it. Cutter was not killed in a large city where anyone could have access to him; he was killed in our baggage compartment on the Medicine Bow field. Someone in the ’plane killed him, but he himself had carefully observed everyone and had recognised no one of you. Had he seen one of his enemies, he would surely have told me of him. Therefore – ’

  ‘Of course they might have an altered appearance after forty years. They might even be disguised, and he hadn’t seen either of the pilots we took on at Cheyenne. Yes, I know they have alibis . . . Well, to stop fooling about it, Michael, there is someone else right here who had the motive and who has the ability and who has a close and intimate connection with the family.’

  ‘Do you mean Tinkham? You haven’t mentioned him at all yet.’

  ‘I don’t mean Tinkham. It is agreed that he took no part in the family affairs, was uninterested even in the daughters, is altogether wrapped up in medical research. Why look into the far distance and avoid what is straight before us?’

  ‘And who,’ Lord inquired, ‘is straight before us?’

  ‘Fonda.’

  All along he had guessed at Pons’ selection, but, put into words, it was still a shock. He said, ‘Yes? Fonda is not a rejected suitor or an estranged husband.’

  ‘She had the motive, and the motive in this case is too plain to overlook. Cutter’s interference with his sister’s love affairs is certainly what caused his death. Fonda was acting for one of Anne’s lovers, for her father. She is in love with him, really in love with him, and wants his happiness, which she is convinced lies in a reconciliation with her mother. She would do anything for him; and she has all the recklessness necessary for her to have done this.’ There was an inexorable reasoning in the answer, and the detective stared down the cabin to where the girl they were discussing slept quietly in one of the forward seats. Her hat and scarf had been removed and placed in the little hammock above the chair; the small curls of her blonde, bright hair reflected the dim light in a rumpled confusion.

  ‘Has she an alibi, Michael?’ Pons added after a moment.

  Lord said miserably, ‘No, she hasn’t an alibi.’

  ‘I know how you feel, Michael,’ his friend told him. ‘She is beautiful and she is captivating. All the same, you have your duty, and murder is murder. There was provocation – more than enough. But no matter how abnormal Amos Cutter’s behaviour has been, murder is more abnormal still. Murder must be punished. You will have to pull yourself together and do a distasteful but a necessary thing.’

  Lord still continued to stare down the cabin. He was casting about desperately in his mind for another, some different, lead. The slip he must have made. The weapon. With the suddenness of lightning an idea flashed into his mind. Before he had even considered it, he had gotten up, walked quitely along the aisle and returned with Fonda’s scarf in his hand. Attached securely to the scarf was the large and gleaming clip, four and a half inches long when folded. He unfastened it with difficulty and opened its two leaves which, hinged at the centre, allowed it to clip two layers of material together. He raised it to the light and brought his eyes close to the shining metal.

  Along the sharp edges of one of its pointed blades were unmistakable traces of dried blood; caught in the projection of a setting on the reverse side was a tiny, torn piece of flesh.

  9500 FEET

  Michael Lord sat alone on his camp stool in the rear of the cabin. He was bent forward with his head in both hands, and his head ached horribly. Pons had retired to his chair ahead, where he reclined stretched out at full length. Below, the Grand Island beacon welcomed them out of the night, was drawn under the ’plane and vanished. In the open skies they flitted through patches of moonlight, slipping into darker areas, where only the wing-tip aviation lights and the yellow bulb above the cabin made three small pin-points in a black void.

  One of his hands still clutched the soft silk of Fonda’s scarf; between this hand and the other he stared at the little section of carpet between his feet. He was vaguely aware that he felt wretched, sick and discouraged. She couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t imagine the slim daintiness of her hands digging that thing into a living throat. God, what a rat the man had been if Pons were only partially righ
t about his history! What if she had done it? He deserved what was coming to him – plenty.

  That wouldn’t help her, though; it wouldn’t help her a bit. He had seen murder trials. He knew they weren’t pageants of dramatic interest, that they were sordid, hateful crucifixions, justified only by the sordid, cruel people who there were brought to book. Even if she were acquitted, which would be likely enough, the experience would either break or lastingly embitter her; and if he expected a jury of other men to have the decency to bring in acquittal, what about himself, cast for the first role in the course of this torture?

  ‘The hell with it,’ muttered Michael Lord through a dry mouth. He swayed with a sudden dizziness and brought himself up sharply just as he felt the stool slipping from under him. Into his headache came the notion of wiring in his resignation and getting out of here, getting the hell anywhere out of here. It jingled around in his head for several moments, until he saw that that wouldn’t help Fonda, either. Someone else would come out on the job, some hard-faced dick to haul her up before a judge who, as Craven had put it, was paid every thirty days to thunder orthodox stupidities.

  He straightened himself and brought out a flask. He took a stiff peg of brandy, then a small chaser of water from the faucet beside him in the rear wall. There, that was better. He must snap out of this. The girl was in a jam and no fooling about it. All these theoretical motivations. The trouble was that they were so entirely reasonable. People would believe them; more than that, they would probably be quite right in believing them. Pons had been wrong before, all the same. Pons had been wrong twice within Lord’s experience. It was true he hadn’t been very much wrong, and this time he probably wasn’t wrong at all. Of the four without alibis, Fonda had so much stronger motive than the others that no one in his senses would look at them twice. Isa, no motive; Tinkham, no motive; Craven, not even connected with any of them, except the distant father. Still, logic aside, Pons might be wrong. It occurred to Lord that that was just exactly what he had to prove.

  Reasonable doubt.

  And what about justice? What about the oath he had taken when receiving his commission? What about a crime that was no mere technical evasion of a technical law but a true crime against humanity and against all human beings? Fonda had probably committed this crime. Murder is murder, Pons had said. Clichés, platitudes. ‘The hell with it,’ Lord’s mutter repeated. ‘All right, Pm a damned cluck ... It suits me.’

  Now that he had cleared up his course, his thinking cleared up also. What was the case against Fonda? A simple one, and a nicely damning one, too. She had a strong and obvious motive for killing Cutter; she had the strength to have done what had been done; she had had the opportunity, for during the crucial period no one else had been found who had seen her; finally, the murder weapon was hers and had been found in her possession. That was the case. Part of that, at the very least, had got to be upset.

  He began carefully going over so much of the crime as he actually knew. He had come out of the cabin and gone around the nose of the ’plane to the baggage compartment. It had taken him some time to open the door. Well, there was nothing there; that would have given her just about time to arrive when he had been hit. Agh, he didn’t like the idea of Fonda hitting him from behind, although at the same time he realised, wonderingly, that if she had, that was all right, too. His surprise at this discovery delayed his thoughts for a full minute, while he remembered Fonda’s ankles and her face and the lines of her trimly clothed figure and the changing expressions in her blue eyes.

  All right, he had been hit from behind on the right side of his head. There was something there. Now, what was it? The right side of his head, that reminded him of some obscure point, but the more he thought, the less it reminded him of anything. That she was strong enough to have hit him had been established, he went on. He had fallen in the snow, and the murderer had entered the compartment and slashed Cutter’s throat. That, definitely, was incredible when she was put in the rôle. Yet she might have done it in the dark, he supposed, nerved to the act by her determination to help her father. ‘I’ll bet anything you like she would have been sick afterwards, though,’ he murmured. There had been no sign of illness.

  The right side of his head! Of course. He had it now. He saw a picture of Fonda catching the matches he had thrown across to her on the bed in the field keeper’s little room.

  ‘Why, Michael, what are you doing here?’

  He looked up suddenly, to see the girl he was thinking about standing before him. Her eyes were sleepy and her coat a little wrinkled where she had been lying on it, but as he got to his feet he couldn’t decide whether she looked more or less attractive in this condition. She looked damned attractive, he knew that. His desire to exonerate her received prompt reinforcement.

  ‘Michael, please, won’t you lie down? You look as pale as a ghost. I don’t think you’re well a bit. Come on, lie down for a little while, anyway.’ She held out a hand to take one of his.

  He leaned against the wall, pretending not to notice the hand. He asked, ‘You didn’t come back here for that, did you?’

  Fonda said, ‘No. I didn’t imagine you weren’t resting. I came for a drink of water. Whatever are you doing with my scarf, Michael?’

  ‘I – Here is your clip.’ He handed it to her, and she took it automatically. He watched her closely as he said, ‘Do you see the blood along the edges? That is the weapon that hacked the life out of Amos Cutter’s throat.’

  The girl took a step backwards and involuntarily looked at the object in her hands. ‘Oh!’ She dropped the clip to the floor as if it burned her. T don’t want it. I never want to see it again. It – it’s just horrible!’

  After a moment he asked, ‘Well, what about it? It’s your clip.’

  Fonda looked at him with eyes that now were wide. ‘You don’t think I did it. I didn’t do it! I don’t know anything about it. Oh, I don’t care about that hateful man, but . . . Michael, I don’t want you to think I did it.’

  ‘You had better be thinking about other people than me. The prosecutor, for instance.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll do the best I can for you, Fonda.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ She looked at him with growing bewilderment.

  ‘I’m trying to find everything I can to throw doubt on the case against you. It’s strong, strong as hell.’

  Fonda actually smiled; and strangely, under the circumstances, her smile seemed to hold a measure of contentment. ‘You’re a dear boy, Michael, but you’re awfully silly. No one can prove I did something that I didn’t do. Now, come, please lie down. You’ll see how foolish all this is in the morning.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. You’ve never been in a jam like this before. It’s a murder case; you just don’t know . . . Tell me, how do you play tennis? With which hand?’

  ‘I play left-handed,’ was the surprised answer. ‘Do you always change the subject as quickly as that?’

  ‘Can you prove that you play left-handed?’

  ‘Why – why, of course. Lots of people know that. I play in tournaments. I’m not a bad player; you won’t mind playing with me, really, Michael. I have a good backhand, too.’

  There was a short silence. Lord’s face had fallen abruptly and its grimness, momentarily relieved, had returned. Ordinarily it could be shown that the blow from behind against the right side of his head had been delivered by a right-handed person. Why in God’s name had she had to make that addition about her backhand? That tore it. Any prosecutor with high school wits could make hash out of Lord’s attempted point. Lord said ‘Hell’ softly.

  ‘Won’t you please lie down now?’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got to think.’

  ‘About getting me out of a jam? But that’s silly, I tell you.’

  ‘It’s not silly, I assure you.’ He spoke with certainty. He gave an impotent shrug. ‘I’ve got to get you out. I’ll do it, too, somehow; but there’s no time for sleep
.’

  Fonda recognised the signs of masculine decision. She said, ‘You’re a dear, obstinate boy. Can I sit up with you?’

  ‘No.’ His lips held the hint of a smile. ‘I can think better, I’m quite sure, if you’ll just go back again to your chair.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go back if ... ‘

  ‘If what?’

  She looked at him for seconds that seemed like very long seconds indeed; and her blue eyes, even in the little light there was, were very blue.

  ‘Michael . . . kiss me.’

  9900 FEET

  For minute after minute the detective sat on his stool, and during this time he thought only of Fonda’s kiss. It is doubtful if he would have noticed an outbreak of fire. Bridger Butte slipped away beneath them and Salt Lake City was only thirty minutes away.

  Finally the glint of the clip on the floor caught his eye and brought him back to his problem. He reached forward and retrieved it, dropping it into his pocket. It was evidence. It crossed his mind with a sudden shock that he might have to do away with it – if the worst came to worst.

  It hadn’t come to that yet, thank God, that he, Captain Michael Lord, should become an accessory after the fact to the crime he had been assigned to prevent and to solve. Well, where was he? The four-point case; motive, ability, weapon, opportunity. Which of these points could he disprove? Could he disprove any of them? Or, if not, could he at least procure something to cast reasonable doubt upon some of them?

  He turned his attention to the first point – motive. Very carefully he went over Pons’ construction of the Cutter family inter-relations, Fonda’s position in respect of the various members who made it up. Constantly he found it necessary to check his own prejudices, to view the situation as someone else who had never seen or heard of Fonda would view it. He came to the conclusion that it was tight and logic-proof. Whether or not she would ever have done it, the girl possessed a powerful and consistent motive for murdering her uncle.