“You’ll tell your mother the news when you see her?”
“Of course.”
“She threatened to break with you entirely if you married Caleb, didn’t she?”
“She threatened, but she won’t do it.” Lorie’s voice was hard. “I’m grownup now, anyway. She can’t rule my life. It isn’t as if she even trusted me.”
“Trusted you?”
“She doesn’t trust me. I know she doesn’t. And if she doesn’t trust me, I don’t have any obligations to her.”
“What makes you think she doesn’t trust you?”
“I just know.”
I said quietly: “You know something else about your mother too, don’t you?”
“Something else?” Her eyes, suddenly on their guard, flashed up to meet mine. “What do you mean?”
I came out with it then. “You know, for example, that she’s been in Skipton when she was meant to be in New York.”
A gasp, almost like a sob, broke from her. “That’s not true.”
“It is, Lorie. That’s why you lied about the cigarette butt. You hadn’t been in the sawmill for weeks. But you knew your mother had been there Saturday night, and you pretended you’d smoked the cigarette there—to protect her.”
The old haunted expression was in her eyes. I hated doing this to her.
She said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should Mother—?”
“If you go on denying it, you’ll make me think she’s tied up with the murders. After all, if she’d come back for some innocent reason, there’d be no harm in admitting it, would there?”
“But—”
“Tell me, Lorie. I called her New York hotel. I know she checked out Friday afternoon. The whole story’ll break, anyway. It’s much better this way—between you and me.”
In a small, icy voice, she said: “Mother had nothing to do with the murders.”
“You know why she came back, then?”
“Yes.” She swung round to me. “It was mean, not like her. But she’s hipped on that one subject. I wouldn’t give her my promise not to marry Caleb. She was terrified I’d go ahead in spite of her, and she wanted to put things to the test. That’s why she pretended to be in New York. She came back to spy on Caleb and me.”
“How did you know she came back?”
“I saw her. Friday night. After Caleb had left me. I was coming home through the woods. I crossed the back trail that leads up to the sawmill. I saw a car’s headlights. I wondered who it could be. I slipped back behind the trees. Then I saw Mother’s car. I saw her at the wheel. I saw her drive up to the sawmill.”
She added softly: “I saw her again Saturday night too. After the—the twins died, after you’d all gone home, I couldn’t sleep. At about four I got up and went down to sit on the terrace. I heard a car coming down the trail. The headlights were off but there was a moon, and I saw the car—Mother’s car—slip by.”
We reached the turn-off to Breakneck Hill. I swung into it. My theory was right, then. Almost certainly Ernesta had been in the sawmill on Saturday evening while the picnic was going on. Almost certainly she had been there when the twins, George Raynor, Dr. Jessup, and Love Drummond had broken in on its mysteries.
But what were the mysteries of the sawmill, those mysteries which now seemed definitely to implicate Ernesta? What in the sawmill could have been so important that five of Ernesta’s neighbors had to be killed in cold blood?
Cold blood. A new thought brought me a stirring of uneasy excitement. Both Lorie and Phoebe had told me that Ernesta was the one member of the family who had always been haunted by the specter of her mother’s madness. Perhaps she had been obsessed with this terror because she thought she could trace the seeds of the same madness in herself. After all, her mother had been forty-seven when the first attack came. Ernesta was exactly forty-seven now. What if her fears had preyed on her mind to such an extent that they had become an actuality? She was going to have a baby. That in itself was enough to unsettle a woman of her age. Coupled with memories of her mother and her exaggerated anxiety that Lorie might marry Caleb against her will, it might have unhinged her mind.
With a vividness that was rather awful, I imagined Ernesta, goaded by neurotic suspicions, returning to Skipton to spy on her daughter. I imagined her hiding in the sawmill, struggling against the furies of her own coming insanity. I imagined happy, laughing voices drifting up to her from the picnic ground, and then the lilting melody of that insidious song:
I’ll sing you one-O,
Green grow the rushes-O.
What is your one-O? …
It is impossible to guess what happens in someone else’s mind. Perhaps that song had some half-forgotten connection for Ernesta with her mother, the mother who went mad and tried to kill the man she loved. Perhaps that was the moment when insanity had finally engulfed Ernesta and the song had given her mania a pattern.
One is one
And all alone
And ever more shall be-O.
CHAPTER XX
I glanced at Lorie, sitting pale and tense at my side. My thoughts had taken me down dark channels where I could not have her follow me.
I said: “Then you think your mother came back just to spy on you and Caleb?”
“I know it’s true.”
“It isn’t just that you hope it’s true?”
“It’s got to be true,” she whispered. “What other explanation could there be?”
From the way she said it, I could tell she too was tormented by doubts, but I could also tell that she would never admit to them. A blight had fallen between us—that blight which sooner or later tainted every conversation in Skipton nowadays. We rode in uneasy silence. And then, ahead, halfway into the ditch at one side of the road, we saw Ernesta’s black sedan.
The flat was in one of the rear wheels. I changed the tire for the spare while Lorie made an ineffectual pretense of helping. She was obviously relieved when the job was completed and we could make the return journey in separate cars.
She went ahead, driving down the steep incline at a reckless speed. When I reached the main road she was out of sight.
I started back toward Skipton. I paid no attention to the parched August countryside which stretched around me, dappled with the long shadows of late afternoon. I was thinking of Ernesta Bray somewhere above me on the mountainside striding home through the woods. Ernesta who had pretended to be innocently in New York collecting her restrung jade from Tiffany’s, and who then had pretended with a deviousness that was terrifying that she was returning to Skipton.
The image of her, striding through the woods, grew clearer and clearer in my mind. She no longer looked like the Ernesta I knew. She had become a portentous figure of doom. And, quirkishly, chanting along in rhythm to her imagined strides, came the song. It was almost as real as if someone were whispering it slyly behind my shoulder:
I’ll sing you six-O,
Green grow the rushes-O.
What is your six-O?
Six for the six proud walkers.
The song and the puppet image of Ernesta were still jerking their way through my thoughts when I noticed the smoke. I had turned a corner in the winding road leading to Skipton, and suddenly that heavy gray pall became visible hanging over the treetops on the mountain flank to my left. I could trace a red pulsing in the center of the smoke too, and then a spire of flame thrust up into the blue sky.
Dread of a forest fire lurks in the back of everyone’s mind in a country community. This one was not yet large, but, remembering the aridity of the summer, I watched the smoke with mounting anxiety. Skipton was still new to me. I could not gauge the location of the fire with any accuracy, but it was dangerously near the village. I was sure of that. I pressed down on the accelerator. The fire fighters would already be out, but man power would always be needed.
Another turn brought Ernesta’s car into view. It was parked in the middle of the road, and Lorie was standing by its side. When she sa
w me she waved. I stopped. She ran to the car, clutching my arm through the open window. Her eyes were dark with fear.
“It’s right behind our house. Up by the sawmill. It’s spreading through the woods. And Mother’s up there.”
Her fingers dug into my arm. “Follow me. I know a back trail.”
She ran to Ernesta’s car and shot off down the road. Infected by her anxiety, I followed. The song and the image of Ernesta were still in my mind. But now there were flames too; flames sprouting from the sawmill which had kept its secret so well; flames encircling Ernesta as she stumbled through the tangled undergrowth.
Lorie was driving wildly. Suddenly she swung off the road into a trail to the left. I turned too. As our cars lurched up the overgrown track, wisps of smoke blew around the treetops above us and I could hear the sound of the fire—that sinister roar like the hum of a giant swarm of bees.
We were headed directly toward the fire. In a few moments I heard confused shouts and caught glimpses of active, running figures. Lorie stopped her car. I did too. Together we hurried along the trail toward the fire fighters.
The slight evening breeze came from behind us, and the main body of the fire was sweeping away from the village up the side of the mountain. This was only a minor tributary of the conflagration which had already been stamped out. But the ground we ran across was black and charred.
Ahead, a group of men from the village under the supervision of a state trooper were beating out the remaining cores of flame with spades and brooms. Lorie went to one of them.
“Joe, where did it start?”
He passed a hand over his sweating face. “Up by the sawmill, Lorie. The sawdust pile, they think. Some crazy fool must have dropped a match.”
“It’s getting under control?”
“Seems that way. There’s the troopers, the inspector from Grovestown, and pretty near the whole village up fighting. They stopped it spreading down the valley. Ain’t no danger to your house, no more.”
I asked: “Know where the inspector is?”
He nodded to the right. “Likely he’s over by the mill. That’s where the main fire is. There’s a whole bunch of them there.”
Lorie and I hurried on. There were dozens of fire fighters, and the fire had been checked with admirable efficiency. It was still climbing the mountain, but the danger of a really serious outbreak seemed slight.
Almost before I realized it, we reached the picnic ground. It was a scene of desolation. The chokecherry saplings and the young pines had been burned out. One large pine was still alight, blazing and crackling like a huge candle. The ground was hot and still pulsing with red.
We picked our way through the smoldering weeds toward the mill. To our right the sawdust pile had been transformed into a glowing inferno of heat. Beyond it, already no more than a ruin, loomed the charred skeleton of the mill.
A group of eight or ten people were collected in the clearing in front of it. There was something about them, a sort of unnatural stillness, which told me instantly that something more than the fire was wrong. They were huddled with their backs to us, and they seemed to be looking down at something that was responsible for the extraordinary silence.
I caught a glimpse of Inspector Cobb’s broad back in the group. At first I thought all the others were men too. Then, as we got nearer, I noticed the small figure of Phoebe Stone.
Before we reached the group she turned and saw us. She stared at Lorie, and her face was the face of someone who had looked on the ultimate horror. With little jerky steps she came running toward us.
“Don’t go there, Lorie.” She clutched her niece’s arm and started to drag her away. “Lorie dear, come home.”
Something in her voice sent a chill up my spine. I gazed at her. So did Lorie.
I said: “What’s the matter?”
“Yes,” broke in Lorie urgently. “What’s happened, Aunt Phoebe?”
Phoebe put up a hand to cover her eyes. “We should have known from the beginning that it would happen. We should have known from—the six proud walkers.”
“Mother!” The word burst from Lorie. “Aunt Phoebe, is it Mother?”
The image was back in my mind, that terrible image of Ernesta encircled in flames, stumbling blindly forward.
Phoebe was whispering: “She had almost reached the mill. She had almost got home.”
Thinly Lorie said: “In the fire? Burned?”
My mental image of Ernesta had violently changed. She wasn’t Ernesta any more. She was a wild, nightmare figure of a madwoman who had killed five people and was hurling herself into the very heart of the flames.
Phoebe’s face was gray as the incinerated weeds at her feet. “It wasn’t the fire, Lorie. They found her on the trail beyond the mill. The flames had gone right over her. But it wasn’t the fire. They could tell.”
“Tell what, Phoebe?” I asked harshly.
She looked up at me, and the horror in her eyes seemed alive.
“It must have happened before the fire. Someone must have crept up behind her. They could tell from her head. She had been hit … and hit …”
6: ONE IS ONE AND ALL ALONE
CHAPTER XXI
For a moment the news stunned me, not only because it was so terrible, but because it proved how wrong my deductions had been. I had built Ernesta up in my mind as an insane murderess. Now she had turned out to be just another victim. The real murderer was still as shadowy a figure as he had ever been, someone who seemed to know everything and could strike wherever and whenever he wanted. He must have overheard Ernesta’s call to Lorie on the party line. He must have been waiting there by the sawmill for this sixth victim whom he had chosen to represent the six proud walkers.
As I stared at the little group huddled in front of us, it seemed impossible to me that we should ever find a sane motive for the killings. And yet the sight of the ruined building reminded me that Ernesta, like the other victims, had been at the mill Saturday night. Did Cobb’s theory still hold? Whatever the reason for Ernesta’s secret return to Skipton, had she been killed merely because she had seen the forbidden thing in the mill? And had the murderer postponed killing her until her death fitted into its logical sequence in the song?
I felt Phoebe’s hand on my arm. “I’m taking Lorie home, Hugh. I’ll be there with her if you need me.”
I said without thinking: “You’d better tell Renton, too.”
“Renton? Why Renton?”
Phoebe looked blank, and I realized that I was still the only person in Skipton who knew of the marriage.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
As she moved away with her niece, I crossed to Inspector Cobb, who stood in the center of the group of village men. I hated having to look at Ernesta, but it had to be done. What Phoebe said was all too right. Ernesta had been struck on the back of the head, far more savagely than the other victims. Almost certainly the blows themselves and not the fire had been responsible for her death. A coat had been put over the body. I replaced it and stood up. As I did so, Dan Leaf arrived with two stretcher men. They took Ernesta away.
Cobb and I walked together out of earshot of the others. The inspector was obviously at the end of his tether.
“Must have started the fire to try to destroy the-body, Westlake.”
“Why would he want to destroy the body? He didn’t destroy the others. It’s more likely he started the fire to destroy the sawmill.”
“The sawmill,” he repeated blankly. “What in the name of glory could have been in the sawmill?”
That, of course, was the unanswerable question.
Now the body was gone, the group of men were moving off to help with the fire fighting. From their leisurely, almost listless pace, it was obvious that the danger was over and the fire virtually under control. Cobb stared down at the charred grass at his feet.
“Guess I was wrong again, Westlake. It’s got to be a crazy motive. Mrs. Bray only fits in the pattern on account of she was fo
nd of walking. She wasn’t even here Saturday night.”
“Matter of fact, she was. Lorie saw her. She came back secretly Friday night. Lorie saw her again Saturday. Both times she was either coming from or going to the sawmill.”
Cobb’s blue eyes stared in unwinking astonishment.
“What she come back for?”
“Lorie thinks it was to spy on her and Caleb, to see whether they’d try to elope while they thought she was away. But it doesn’t really matter why she came back now. What matters is that she chose the sawmill for her hideout.”
“So she was the one who dropped that cigarette butt?”
I nodded.
Cobb glanced at the burned remains of the mill and the cottage. “Looks now like we’re never going to find out what was in the mill.” He paused. “Talk to Mrs. Raynor and Forbes about Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Did they see anything that helps?”
“Nothing—except a rat. They must have left before Ernesta showed up.”
“A rat.” Cobb gave a frustrated laugh. “Maybe that’s it, Westlake. Maybe there’s this homicidal rat used to live in the barn and didn’t like people disturbing its privacy.”
“And didn’t like music, either.”
“Yeah. That’s it.” He shrugged. “Well, they don’t need us up here. Those troopers have the fire licked. Isn’t much to do, but at least we can get down to the Bray house and find out more about what Mrs. Bray’s been up to.”
Phoebe was alone in the Bray living room. She was sitting in one of Ernesta’s green brocade chairs. With her untidy gray hair and haunted face she looked completely out of place in that elegant setting.
“Lorie’s upstairs. I made her rest. It won’t do her any good, but one has to suggest something.” She stared at Cobb challengingly. “Does this have to go on and on, Inspector? Isn’t there something you can do?”
Cobb said awkwardly: “We’re doing all we can, ma’am.”
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