The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  Rosemary said, “Judge Shively had left camp before the storm.”

  “By the Eternal! That caps the climax. Left camp, you say? Without his glasses, without his cane, without his clothes—-for that matter? Do you think that there is no end to our credulity. Lies—lies—”

  For once Miss MacDonald stirred herself to slip in a few words edgewise. “I wonder, Mayor Oakman, if you will allow Miss Young to go on with her story? Later we shall take up the question of Judge Shively’s leaving camp.” She turned to Rosemary, “You were saying——”

  “That Twill never, never would kill Betty-Jean. No one can believe that. Even Uncle Adam doesn’t really believe it. His killing Clyde Shively was a man’s murder—if you will. He had taunted Twill for being a cripple and for daring to love Betty-Jean. Twill went mad. Clyde Shively was drunk. He threatened Twill. I think that Twill shot in self-defense. But, if he didn’t, he shot in fury—a man and a drunken wretch. If Uncle Adam hadn’t disliked us both, as he did, I’d have begged Twill to stay and stand trial. Anywhere in the world but right here, in this county, I’d have begged Twill to stay.”

  “Easy talk, now,” Adam said. “Big talk. But you wouldn’t. If he had stayed, he’d have had as fair a trial here as he could have had in any man’s country. We haven’t much use for cowards, though, who allow innocent persons to suffer for their crimes.”

  “You won’t believe me,” Rosemary said. “But, after I had finally persuaded Kent to go to the community house, I realized for the first time that some innocent person might be accused. I thought of it because, after Kent had gone, I decided to wait until I knew that he would be with others before I fired the shot. And then I thought that since I wanted to protect Kent, I should want to protect everyone—that I must wait until I knew that you’d all be together for dinner just before eight o’clock.”

  “You’re right,” Adam said. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t wait.”

  “Possibly you are right,” Rosemary answered. “Possibly my reasons for even that short delay were fear when the time came to test my plans and—a very little—my horror of killing anything, even Funny. And of course I didn’t wait. I knew that I didn’t dare wait.

  “I had gone to Twill’s cottage and lowered the bed to get the pillow. Twill and I had shut Funny in the kitchen. He always ran and barked on the shore when Twill was swimming. I carried Funny to the pillow and shot him. It seemed not to hurt him. One minute he was alive and then he was dead.

  “I had hoped that when the shot was heard people would think it was a firecracker. I had hoped to be able to go to the community house and tell what had happened. I had counted on that much time. But, almost at once, I heard footsteps coming along the walk. I thought that ever so many people were coming to find out about the shooting. I picked Funny up in my arms before I carried him on the pillow to the refrigerator. Then I put the pillow on the floor and ran outside.

  “As I ran I tried to revise the other plans I had made about what I should do and say. But when I got outside, I didn’t act as I’d planned and my words wouldn’t come right. It was easier than I’d thought it could be. All my emotions were true. Only my words were lies. I could allow the shock and the terror that I’d been hiding for hours to come out, insanely. It seemed to me that I was insane. I wondered whether I should recover——”

  “You had no cause for alarm as to that,” Adam said. “You were sufficiently recovered, by the following day, to look me straight in the eye and lie with a proficiency I have never heard equaled by either man or woman. Unless it was by yourself during our later conversation on the subject.”

  Rosemary said, “It was necessary, then, for you to believe that I was sane.”

  “I can’t understand,” Miss MacDonald said, surprising me by speaking, and amazing me because I thought that detectives never admitted not understanding anything, “how you planned to account for the absence of your brother’s body.”

  “I knew that I couldn’t,” Rosemary answered. “So I didn’t try. I hoped for confusion and delay——”

  “And got them, by the Everlasting!” Adam said, adding: “But they are likely to be expensive, young woman. Did you ever think of that? You got what you wanted. But in this world we usually pay for what we get.”

  “I know,” Rosemary said. “I thought that I was willing to pay.”

  Chapter XXXIII

  “But now you’ve changed your mind?” Adam asked. “Of course I have. I’d act the same way again, but I hate paying. When Kent was in that hot jail——”

  “You didn’t care one good red cent. I told you how hot it was, how dangerous——”

  “I cared. Kent wasn’t my responsibility. Twill was. He always has been. Have you any more questions to ask me, Miss MacDonald?”

  “A few more, I’m afraid. You buried the dog’s body on the desert?”

  “Yes. I took it out there Thursday morning. I could find nothing but a big cooking-spoon to dig with. The handle snapped almost at once. I thought that this didn’t matter, because when I had covered the grave over and put some rocks about, I couldn’t notice it at all. Footprints don’t show on these rocky deserts. I rode out there again this morning; but I hadn’t left any landmarks and I couldn’t find the place. I didn’t dismount to look. I thought that much at least was safe from discovery. I can’t understand how the grave was found. I’m sorry. This doesn’t matter, of course.”

  “It does not,” Adam said. “Get on to your tale about Judge Shively’s leaving camp before the storm.”

  The way he said that it sounded terrible. I was glad when Rosemary showed more spunk and answered, “Why should I try to help, if you don’t believe anything I say?”

  I thought that Miss MacDonald would make peace again by telling Rosemary that she believed her word for word. To my horror, she asked another question, and not quite so pleasantly, either.

  “Do you know, positively, that Judge Shively left the camp before the storm?”

  “No, I don’t,” Rosemary answered. “I know that Clyde Shively told Twill that the tourists who had brought him—Clyde Shively, that is—to camp had returned to bring him a piece of luggage that he had forgotten in their car. And that the Judge had decided to ride into Ferras with them.”

  “And that is a likely story, isn’t it?” Adam said. “What about his clothes? What about his glasses?”

  “It is possible,” Rosemary answered, “that Clyde Shively may have brought some extra things of his father’s with him. He might easily have brought the extra glasses. I’ve wondered, too, if these tourists might have kidnapped the Judge, or——”

  “Worse and worse,” Adam said. “You’re getting in too deep, now.”

  “No,” Rosemary said. “It has to be thought out. The wind lasted at least ten minutes, I’m sure, before the rain came. Betty-Jean said that she was afraid of the wind, so I think it was during that time that she telephoned to the Judge. We know that the Judge was planning to surprise us all by bringing his son to the dinner party. He might have wanted to go to Ferras to get balloons, or snappers, or something he thought would add to the gaiety of the party. He may have planned to pay the tourists to bring him back to camp.

  When the cloudburst came, the car couldn’t return. It seems unlikely that the Judge would simply ride away with the tourists. Something must have happened. Kidnapping doesn’t seem probable. None of this seems very probable. But something of the sort is possible. And nothing is as impossible as thinking that the Judge has simply vanished.”

  Adam admitted, I liked it in him, “If a car was here during the windstorm and before the rain began, the Judge could have gone away in it, either dead or alive.”

  Brigid spoke up. “That Clyde Shively was a thorough rotter,” she said. “Probably he killed his father and got these persons in the car to take the body away.”

  “Or,” Adam said, “possibly Rosemary Young and her brother paid these people to take the body away.”

  “Rosemary was in the co
mmunity house from before the storm started until it had almost cleared,” Brigid said, adding, very saucy: “And shouldn’t you think that if they were sending one body away, they’d send both bodies? Or should you—think?”

  I thought it was high time Miss MacDonald said something. Not she. She sat there listening so hard you could almost hear her doing it.

  “On the other hand,” Adam answered Brigid’s remarks, “if Clyde Shively killed his father, and a car was leaving here, why should he send the body away and stay here himself?”

  “Thousands of reasons,” Brigid answered, and if she hadn’t been talking too much I might have been a little proud of her. “If he came here planning to kill his father—and his bringing the revolver points to that—he probably didn’t come with tourists at all. He probably came with persons who were helping him. He stayed here to tell us, as he told Twill, that his father had gone to Ferras with some tourists. Later, he’d write notes to be found here and there, demanding ransom money. Later still, he’d be the one to carry the ransom money to the kidnappers. Probably even then he would have returned here, freeing himself of all blame, before he rejoined his accomplices weeks later.” Joe said, “Yeah, but why would he have to rejoin them at all?” I don’t know, but it seems to me, yet, that Joe was right about that.

  Mac said, “A high power car could have made it around the mountain, easy, after the wind began but before the cloudburst. But if he’d used his gun, would you think he’d be sitting with it there on the table? Come to think of it, wouldn’t somebody have heard the shot, any time except when it was thundering?”

  “There are ways of killing besides shooting,” Brigid said, and Adam said, “There are—indeed.”

  Maybe Miss MacDonald was trying only to change a sad subject, but she sounded as if she was after something when she asked Rosemary: “Did your brother tell you to say that you saw Judge Shively and his son alive together at four o’clock?”

  Rosemary waited so long to answer that when she finally said, “Yes,” it sounded too important.

  “Do you know why he asked you to say that?”

  “No, I don’t. I thought at the time that he must have some reason for it. But we were so hurried, so frightened——”

  “He had a very good reason for it,” Adam interrupted, and waited for somebody to ask him what the reason was. Nobody did so. Miss MacDonald went on talking to Rosemary.

  “After Wednesday, did you ride again to the place where you had left your brother, across the lake?”

  “I wanted to,” Rosemary answered, “but I didn’t. I was afraid that I might be seen going there. I should have gone. That was another of my mistakes.”

  “Four o’clock,” Adam said, telling whether he was asked to or not. “After the storm was over. Twill Young killed both Judge Shively and Clyde Shively. If they were seen alive at four o’clock he would have an alibi, of sorts, for himself.”

  Joe said, “What did he kill himself for, then, if he’d set his alibi?”

  To this day I think that Miss MacDonald spoke more from surprise at Joe—she being unacquainted with him—than from any wish to give us information. “But, Coroner,” she said, “you know that Twill Young was not a suicide, that he was murdered there in the canoe. I thought we were agreed on that.”

  “What’s that?” Adam asked, and kept asking, like Reggie, over and over. “What’s that? What’s that?” Joe started explaining. “He didn’t kill himself, because no man can shoot himself in the back-—”

  “He was shot below the throat,” Brigid said. “I saw it.”

  “The upper lobe of the left lung,” Miss MacDonald said.

  Joe hadn’t stopped talking, but I’d stopped listening for a minute. “So you see,” Joe was going on, “he couldn’t shoot himself twice, once in the back and once in the lung—let alone kill himself twice. Once, yes. Twice, no.”

  Adam began saying “Twice?” just the way he had been saying, “What’s that?” I couldn’t blame him. I was so mixed up myself that I went clear off thinking about the pearl-handled revolver that had been shot twice, while Miss MacDonald was explaining, much better than Joe had explained, that Twill had been shot twice—once in the back and once in the lungs. “Incredible,” Adam said, adding. “Impossible.”

  “Suicide is impossible,” Miss MacDonald said. “The nature of the wounds and the position of the body positively preclude suicide.”

  “But the gun was right there in the canoe,” Adam said.

  “Yes,” she said. “He was killed in the canoe. The revolver was put under his body after the murder.” Adam said, “Then two persons were murdered here this afternoon?”

  “Yes,” Miss MacDonald said.

  Adam didn’t say anything more. Nobody said anything. We were all stunned dumb. I’ll bet you that even Mrs. Duefife wouldn’t have said anything if she had been there.

  Kent and Rosemary got up and went to the big car and sat in it. If Kent had been afraid that Miss MacDonald was going on into what might have been called the gory details concerning the canoe, he needn’t have Worried. It was almost unwomanly the way that Scotch-Irish detective always stopped talking long before it was necessary. Finally who should take a notion to break the silence but Joe Laud, remarking: “According to my count that makes four.

  “Murders,” he volunteered, when nobody asked him what he was counting. “Four murders. Two here on Wednesday. Two here this afternoon. Four murders. No suicides. Two by two. I mean, if you think of it that way, that’s what you think. That everybody on this place is getting murdered two by two. Or in pairs. It ought to be put a stop to. It looks awful,” he said, and added: “Present company always excepted. Not counting the dog. He makes five.”

  I couldn’t have been glad, but I wasn’t sorry when the phone bell started ringing right then. I got up and went in to answer it, taking hold of Brigid on my way and kind of drawing her along with me.

  “Brigid, honey,” I whispered, when I’d got her inside the room, “whatever you do stick to your story about a man, two horses and a hammer.”

  “I will not,” she said, backing off like I was contaminating. “Not now. But what did I tell you?”

  “When? Which time?” I asked. “You mean about the extra luggage?”

  “No. I told you that we were getting the wrong answers to the wrong questions. I said that things were not getting cleared up; didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but how do you know?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think Miss MacDonald does,” and went scooting outside again before I could stop her.

  Chapter XXXIV

  The phone was Shorty of course. I told him what to tell the drummer. After that I sat there alone deducing and deducing for quite a while.

  A lot of things I hadn’t understood very well began to shape into sense, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I understood why Brigid had been carrying on the way she had, but I doubted like thunder that anybody else would understand. It looked to me like she had done a terrible amount of good lying at a terrible bad time. I found myself getting scared. Being scared made me mad, and being mad made me more scared. I thought about O’Dell,, gallyhooting around back East drinking tea with carefree editors. I decided that I’d just let that young man in on the fact that his only daughter had bitten off from here to Hades more than I knew how to chew.

  I disguised the wording of my wire by calling Brigid one of the hundred or so nicknames that her papa calls her in private. It seemed, at first, that I’d picked the wrong name because when Curly Merts—the telegrapher operator at the depot—read the wire back to me over the phone: (“Simon Legree accused of four murders and two robberies. Come pronto. Wire advice. Jefferson Davis Johnson.”) what did Curly up and say, but, “O. K., Little Eva.”

  Come to find out, it didn’t matter, though, because Curly thought I meant Adam by “Simon Legree.” I was glad to leave it at that, and I went outside again feeling some better and a little smart on account of having ad
ded the robberies to make it sound stronger.

  Just as I’d feared, Miss MacDonald had managed to get Brigid alone with her on the porch and was leading her on to talk too much. Kent and Rosemary were still in the big car, and Joe—it was just like him—was there too, sitting in the back seat. Adam was with Mac and Ernie, milling around in front of the cottage where Twill’s body was. I sized it up that I wasn’t wanted on the porch, but I wanted to be there, so I sat down easy trying to look absent.

  Brigid was telling Miss MacDonald what had gone on in the community house during that Wednesday afternoon before the trouble started, and Miss MacDonald was displaying quite a bit of housekeeping curiosity about there being only one pineapple to make the pudding and it getting eaten, when Adam started hollering at me. He had hollered nine or ten times before Miss MacDonald told me that Mayor Oakman was calling me.

  I hate being hollered at. I wanted to be nice to Adam, but I couldn’t help asking him, when he came to meet me, why he had to be always hollering at me all the time.

  “During the entire course of my wretched and harassed life,” he said, “I have never once hollered at you. Please let that pass. I shall consider that you have flatly contradicted me, as usual, and get on with what I have to say.

  “Two persons were murdered here today. Twill shot Clyde Shively. We believe, because there is nothing else to believe, that the old Judge was either taken away from camp or left on his own accord before the cloudburst on Wednesday afternoon. Now, if Twill did return to camp and murder Betty-Jean——”

  “I don’t believe he did, Adam,” I said. “Do you?”

  “No, damn it,” he said. “I don’t. I never have.”

  “You said you believed it. You said it I don’t know how many times to everybody.”