The Murder of Twelve

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Another attempted murder?” Harry asked me.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “I just did.”

  “This one succeeded.”

  Harry hesitated, only the sound of his breathing telling me he was still there. His tone sombered when he resumed.

  “What’s Mort have to say about this?”

  “I don’t know. He’s on his way here now.”

  “What do you mean, he’s on his way? In this storm?”

  “He’s coming by snowmobile.”

  “Do we have a bad connection, or did you just say he’s coming by snowmobile?”

  “What is it you have to tell me, Harry?”

  “See what happens when I’m not there to protect you? Maybe I should head up there, too.”

  “You’re in New York.”

  “But I’ve always wanted to see what five feet of snow looks like. Imagine all the bodies you could bury in that. . . .”

  “I don’t have to imagine that,” I told him. “I’m living it right now.”

  “Well, here’s something that might help. Does privilege exist between a private detective and his client?”

  “You know, I’m not sure.”

  “If it doesn’t, we never had this conversation, okay? Because it involves breaking a whole bunch of federal banking laws.”

  “You’ve lost me, Harry.”

  “Then allow me to get you back. I have a hacker friend who specializes in bank accounts, brokerage statements, investment accounts—all that sort of thing. Anyway, he was able to hack into the checking account of a certain PI named Loomis Winslow.”

  I recalled texting Harry the names of all those comprising the wedding party and now understood why he’d needed them.

  “Turns out there was a rather sizable check deposited from a certain trust account. Care to guess who the signatory of the trust was?”

  “Can you just tell me?”

  “Constance Mulroy.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Harry had just added yet another piece to an increasingly twisted puzzle. In the scenario I conjured, Connie’s hiring of Loomis Winslow must have been connected with the funds her husband had fleeced from his clients, provoking the investigation that led him to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge on the eve of his arrest. If that were the case, I could also assume that whatever Winslow had uncovered had led to his death. So no longer was the detective’s presence in Cabot Cove a mystery in itself; he must have come here to meet directly with his client but had somehow ended up at that old textile factory before he could do so. His presence inside the decrepit, crumbling structure, though, indicated he’d ended up meeting with someone else entirely before he was murdered.

  And not by Bigfoot either.

  So who? And for what purpose? And how might the murder of Loomis Winslow be connected with the murder of Mark Mulroy and the attempt on his mother’s life?

  Before signing off with Harry, I forwarded him the text message containing the links detailing how comparably sized and similarly isolated groups had been summarily wiped out one or two at a time. If we were being toyed with, if the serial mass murderer behind those incidents had staked his claim here, that would substantially change the nature of what we were facing. Solving a mystery starts with motive, but when that motive is in itself the pure joy of killing, there is no launching point for the investigation. That didn’t appear to be the case here, but who’s to say seeking pleasure wasn’t part of this killer’s modus operandi? Maybe all the victims in these other mass murders were associated with one another, with secrets to hide and scores to settle that the killer was able to seize upon. In that scenario, I might be facing the most challenging adversary I’ve ever come up against.

  “There’s something else,” I told him, already picturing all Harry might be able to unearth about those two other murder sprees.

  “Wait a minute while I work my cash register. . . . Ka-ching! Ka-ching! . . . Okay, I’m ready.”

  “How are you with birth certificates, Harry?”

  “Well, I like to avoid my own because it reminds me I was born, but other than that, what do you need?”

  “If I gave you names and approximate birth dates, could you track them down?”

  “What about city and hospital of birth?”

  I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “Sorry.”

  “Ka-ching! Ka-ching!” he said again. “The difficult I can deliver in five minutes. The impossible takes a bit longer and tends to be very expensive.”

  “Put it on my bill.”

  “Your bill’s longer than one of your books at this point. So, what are these names?”

  * * *

  * * *

  I needed to wait for Harry to learn what he could about the other incidents, along with the other hunch I was playing. I needed to wait for Mort to arrive by snowmobile to take charge of the investigation.

  In the meantime, I took the elevator to the second floor to assist Seamus McGilray’s efforts in securing the guests in their rooms. I stepped off the elevator to find staring at me a bearded mountain of a man I’d never seen about Hill House before.

  “You must be Mrs. Fletcher,” said the man, who was wearing a Hill House kitchen uniform stretched at the seams by his vast bulk.

  Bigfoot, I thought, as Seamus drew even with us. “I see you’ve met Eugene. I asked him to stand guard in the hallway to discourage anyone from leaving their rooms.”

  “How are things holding up, Constable?” I asked, finally lifting my gaze from the bearded mountain of a man.

  “All guests secured in their rooms, having been advised that we intend to conduct searches in quest of Mrs. Mulroy’s missing tote bag.”

  We started down the hall to begin that process.

  “Tell me about Eugene,” I said softly.

  “He’s a temp we brought on for the wedding-party weekend, as we call it. As you know, we’re short staffed during the winter, and we needed to beef up a bit even before our responsibilities became increased by the stranding of our guests.”

  I glanced back at Eugene and tried to reconcile his appearance with Hank Weathers’s claim to have witnessed Bigfoot murdering Loomis Winslow. “Nice to hear all of those guests cooperated,” I said, returning my gaze to Seamus.

  “They’re frightened, Mrs. Fletcher—terrified might be a more accurate way of stating it. I think the bulk of them see you as their best hope to live through the night.”

  “That text message and the possibility that we’re facing a killer who’s done this before, several times, has definitely changed the equation.”

  Seamus’s expression tightened. “You think it was the killer himself, or herself, who sent the text message, don’t you?”

  “In that scenario, we’d all be nothing more than pieces to be moved around the board of this game he’s playing. But it could also be a distraction, someone covering their tracks in advance and making us chase something we’re never going to find.”

  Before Seamus could respond, a figure I recognized as the actress Virginia Da Salle burst out from a door at the far end of the hall.

  “Someone help me! Help me!” she cried out, before her eyes fell on Seamus and me. “Please help me!”

  Seamus and I charged down the hall, as the doors along the hallway jerked open.

  “Doyle’s locked in the bedroom of our suite!” Virginia screeched, digging her fingers into both my arms, when we got to Doyle Castavette’s suite. “Something’s happening in there, something terrible!”

  Seamus and I surged past her into the living room portion of their suite, swiftly followed by more of the wedding guests, trailed by Harrison Bak, maneuvering gingerly on his crutches, Henley Lavarnay riding his wake. The sounds of a terrible commotion emanated from inside the bedroom.

  Seamus got to t
he door first and began pounding. “Mr. Castavette, Mr. Castavette, can you hear me? Mr. Castavette, it’s Constable McGilray! What’s happening in there? Open the door, man—open the door!”

  The commotion continued, all manner of crashing and smashing sounds, including the distinct crackle of something breaking in whatever struggle was transpiring inside the bedroom. Who might be in there with Doyle Castavette? The increasingly annoying Ian and Faye were absent yet again, and I couldn’t see Lois Mulroy-Dodge anywhere about either. But it was the absence of Tyler Castavette that struck me the hardest, given the bitter attack his father had launched on him down in the lobby.

  Something slammed against the door, rattling the heavy wood and forcing the lot of us gathered in the living room section of the suite to lurch backward involuntarily. I was quite certain the screams and cries I heard were coming from Doyle Castavette himself and not whoever he was struggling with.

  “Get Eugene,” I told Seamus, who backpedaled and then charged out of the suite.

  I continued to pound on the door in vain, kept futilely calling Doyle Castavette’s name as his unmistakable cries kept raging, the only sound before heavy footsteps pounded the carpeting of the suite and Eugene brushed past me to have a go at the door. Talk about a temp worker earning his keep!

  I got well out of his way, so he’d have a clear path smashing it. But the heavy wooden frame, as old as Hill House itself, resisted the first thrust from the massive man’s shoulder, and the second. It buckled on the third, and with the fourth finally shattered along the jamb from the latch on up.

  The sounds of Eugene’s pounding had hidden the fact that all signs of a struggle had ceased inside the bedroom portion of the suite. When the door finally blew inward, it was to reveal Doyle Castavette slumped on the floor with his back resting against the bed, head pitched downward as if to stare at the knife protruding from his chest.

  And no sign of his killer anywhere.

  * * *

  * * *

  It had been a direct strike to the heart that killed Doyle Castavette. Judging by how little blood had leaked from the wound, he had died almost instantly. He had been screaming until he stopped all of a sudden, the explanation as to why now clear.

  I surveyed the body but didn’t dare touch it or otherwise disturb the scene with Mort Metzger’s arrival likely imminent by now. But I couldn’t help sweeping my gaze about the wholly disheveled bedroom. The mattress was half on, half off the bed, the bedcovers themselves in tatters. A highboy bureau had tipped over and crashed to the floor in the melee, and both a single table lamp and a floor lamp had shattered and left shards of glass and porcelain scattered across the rug. The big mirror over the desk had cracked, and the desk chair had overturned and was now missing a chunk of one of its legs. The closet door hung awkwardly from its broken hinges, revealing a trio of suitcases: a single oversized one for Doyle Castavette and two smaller pieces from a floral set that must belong to his companion, Virginia Da Salle.

  Doyle Castavette had certainly fought for the life he ultimately lost to his killer, who was nowhere to be found in the room.

  Which was, of course, impossible—even more impossible than Constance Mulroy’s wine ending up poisoned.

  “What?” I heard someone blare from the doorway. “What?”

  I spotted Tyler Castavette standing there.

  “Who did this?” Tyler Castavette hissed to himself as much as anyone else. “Where did they go?”

  His eyes, which had been fixed on his murdered father, rotated about the room, and I found myself following his gaze. He started to enter the room but I blocked his way.

  “Constable McGilray,” I said, using my most authoritative tone, with my eyes still fastened on Tyler Castavette, “I’d like you and Eugene to conduct a thorough search of the premises we will then secure. We need to uncover what became of Mr. Castavette’s murderer.”

  Seamus nodded, not hesitant at all and perhaps even welcoming the task, given that it was his hotel that had been invaded by a killer. So, leaving the body exactly as we found it, I closed the door Eugene had shattered at the latch as best I could behind Seamus and the hulking Eugene, so they might go about their business unencumbered by curious eyes.

  Tyler finally got the message and backed stiffly from the doorway, into the living room section of the suite. He was breathing hard and seemed to be shaking, out of shock, I imagined. I then moved my gaze across those gathered in the living room portion of the suite who’d heard the now-sobbing Virginia Da Salle’s desperate pleas and come running. The Sprague sisters sat on either side of her, rotating words of comfort in a constant stream as best they could. So, that was four of our remaining number, and my gaze quickly found Henley Lavarnay, the victim’s former wife, who didn’t bother with any faux displays of emotion over his passing. Add her weekend companion, Harrison Bak, to the number and we were all of six, I thought, realizing that didn’t include Lois Mulroy-Dodge.

  “Oh my,” I heard her gasp in that very moment, storming into the suite with her hair still wet from the shower.

  “It must be her!” a dry-mouthed Virginia Da Salle managed, bursting out of her chair and pointing an accusing finger toward the young woman. “She’s the only one who was unaccounted for when Doyle was fighting for his life!”

  “Not quite,” I realized. “Where are Faye and Ian?”

  “Who are Faye and Ian?” Tyler Castavette challenged. “Do we even know their last names? Is there anyone among us who’d even heard of either one of them before tonight?”

  His mother, Henley Lavarnay, raised her hand tentatively. “I may have once. Allison’s college graduation party, I think it was.”

  “And you’re sure this is the same couple?” I asked her.

  “Right now,” she said, looking past me toward the body of her dead ex-husband, “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “Why don’t we see what’s become of them?” I suggested.

  “I’ll tell you what’s become of them,” said the belligerent Tyler. “They hightailed it out of this place when the rest of us rushed in here.”

  “Then,” I suggested, “let’s see if they’re still in their room.”

  * * *

  * * *

  When a polite round of knocking on the door to the room occupied by Ian and Faye produced no response, I knocked again, more loudly, then pounded the door hard enough to make my fist ache. None of these efforts achieved any result, leaving me no choice but to wait for Seamus to emerge from his search of Doyle Castavette’s bedroom with pass key card in hand.

  I spotted him emerging from the dead man’s suite, with Eugene riding his wake, and I steered him away from the congestion of guests gathered in front of the door to Ian and Faye’s room.

  “I’m assuming you found nothing,” I said to Seamus.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Fletcher. We checked every hiding place in that room. Behind the curtains, under the bed, in the closet with clothes strung from hangers over suitcases tucked away for the weekend, and finally in the shower.” He shook his head. “Nothing, not a trace. I’d almost venture to say that our killer either disappeared into thin air or was invisible in the first place.”

  “Since we can safely rule out both of those options, the killer must have used another means to exit, and perhaps gain access to, the room.”

  “Our security software will be able to tell us the sequence of the room’s door lock being tripped.”

  “But we know the killer didn’t leave that way, not past all those gathered witnesses, don’t we? Ruling out the door and any possible concealment, what are we left with?”

  Seamus shrugged. “The window, I suppose.”

  “Did you check it?”

  “I couldn’t even see out of it, my good woman. It’s an old-fashioned casement window, and the way it’s frozen over and crusted with snow, I can tell you with some certainty t
hat it hasn’t been opened since the storm’s start.” He seemed to regard the guests gathered before Ian and Faye’s room at the end of the hall, before continuing in a lowered voice. “We did find something inside Mr. Castavette’s closet that will be of significant interest to you, though, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  I recalled the door hanging awkwardly from its hinges. “I’m listening, Seamus.”

  I watched him hedge. “It’s better you see for yourself, ma’am.”

  I could feel the eyes of the other guests tightening upon us from down the hall before Ian and Faye’s room. “That will have to wait. There’s something else that requires your attention right now. I assume you have your pass key on you?”

  He was already reaching for the key card in his pocket.

  * * *

  * * *

  But his pass key card didn’t work. Seamus swiped the card again and again, drawing only a repeated red flashing signal from the door’s locking system.

  “That’s truly odd,” Seamus managed, backing off.

  He’d been going nonstop, but strangely, the exertion of swiping the key card again and again took his breath away more than any other exertion of the evening.

  “Should we summon Eugene?” I asked him, not even convinced we could yet trust the big bearded man whom a drunken witness might have easily confused with Bigfoot.

  Seamus shook his head. “This is a steel fire door. It would take an entire American football team to shoulder through it. I suppose I—”

  Before he could continue, the door clicked from the inside and Ian yanked it open.

  “What’s the problem?”

  * * *

  * * *

  “We thought you might be dead,” I told them. “Why didn’t you answer the door when I first knocked?”