The Name of the Game Was Murder

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “What about a real heart?” Buck asked. “Augustus didn’t have one pickled in a bottle or anything like that, did he?”

  “Of course not,” Thea said, and shuddered.

  “I wish he’d had a change of heart,” Alex muttered.

  I ignored them as I looked up at Aunt Thea and said, “You had the nine of diamonds. Does that mean anything special? Like, do you have nine diamonds?”

  “More than nine,” she answered, “but would the clue have to refer to real diamonds? I’ve been thinking about the diamond pattern of the tiles in the hallway.”

  “There’s baseball diamonds,” Buck added.

  “Crystalline carbon,” Senator Maggio said.

  “What?”

  “The chemical composition of a diamond.”

  I doubted that Augustus had thought in that direction, but I wrote down what the senator had to say, as well.

  “Anyone else with a diamond?” I asked.

  “I have the king of diamonds,” Alex answered.

  “King,” I said, “monarch, pharaoh, ruler …”

  “Aha!” said the senator. “Ruler … a tool with which we measure. I think we may be on to something here.”

  Buck shook his head. “I’ve got the jack of clubs. So what do you make of that? A club is a weapon.”

  “It may also be something social,” the senator answered.

  “Oh, yeah,” Buck said. “Like a softball club, or the Lions Club, or the Rotary Club.” A pleased kind of grin warmed his face. “I just got an award from the Rotary Club in Wickasee, Ohio, for being an outstanding role model to kids.”

  “That’s lovely, Buck,” Thea said.

  But Julia snapped, “Come on, come on. It’s no big deal. We all get awards. What we’ve got to work on now are these clues.”

  Laura poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Well? Well?”

  “Give me time,” I mumbled, and said to the group, “I think we have to keep in mind the words that begin all the clues: ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL. From what we’ve learned so far, what do you think this means?”

  “If we’re talking about the cards themselves,” Alex said, “spades are the top suit.”

  “Suit, maybe,” Senator Maggio said, looking firmly at me, “but in card value we’re back to the ace.”

  “Or it could be the king,” I insisted.

  Alex spoke up. “Has anyone noticed there’s a run of ace, king, queen, jack, ten, and nine? Could that mean anything?”

  No one answered. In case it did, I quickly wrote down the clues in order along with the initials of the people who held the card clues, hoping this might spell out something. The first part was zilch, and the last three initials spelt out BLT, which made me realize I was awfully hungry and would give anything right now for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on white toast. It seemed kind of disrespectful to think of lunch when we were trying to find a missing manuscript and I was trying to discover the identity of a murderer, but I couldn’t help it.

  Once again I looked at what I had copied under the heading Game Clues #2:

  ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL: THE ACE OF SPADES’ M.

  ″ THE KING OF DIAMONDS’ A.

  ″ THE QUEEN OF HEARTS’ J.

  ″ THE JACK OF CLUBS’ B.

  ″ THE TEN OF SPADES’ L.

  ″ THE NINE OF DIAMONDS’ T.

  Finally, Julia said, “Let’s think in a different direction. If Augustus meant things, not cards, then in value you can’t beat diamonds.”

  “Good point,” I said. I made some more notes.

  Mrs. Engstrom appeared at the door. “Are you finished, Mrs. Trevor?” she asked, and her next words warmed my heart. “Lucy would like to set the table for lunch.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Engstrom. We haven’t finished, but we can take our work to the sun-room,” Thea answered.

  The senator pushed back his chair. “I don’t think we’re going to finish, unless we have more to go on than this.”

  “We could share the first clues,” I suggested.

  I was surprised when Thea said, “No! I don’t think we need to do that. At least not yet.”

  Buck got up. “What about your clue, Sam? That special clue Augustus gave you. Didn’t he say something about it making more sense than the rest of them?”

  “He was kidding, because it didn’t,” I mumbled.

  “Didn’t it?”

  They all stared at me again, but I didn’t feel like telling them the rude message Augustus had given me, so I quickly asked them all, “May I keep these clues for a little while? I’d like to study them and see if there isn’t something—maybe even in the typing of them—that we’re missing.”

  When no one objected, Buck shrugged and Julia nodded. They left the room with the senator and Alex, allowing me to gather the sheets of paper. Aunt Thea graciously put her clue into my hand and smiled at me, while Laura shoved hers at me and said, “You’ve got to solve this quickly, Sam. We haven’t much time.”

  She and Thea walked from the room. I hurried to pick up all the sheets of paper and catch up with them, but Mrs. Engstrom put a hand on my arm, detaining me.

  “Miss Burns,” she said softly, “I hope you’ll be able to help your aunt.”

  “I do too,” I said.

  “I’m glad that after you find the manuscript, it will be destroyed before anyone has read it.”

  I liked the confidence she had in me. She didn’t say if I found it. It was when I found it, but she was still looking at me with a pleading, hopeful look in her eyes, so I said, “Mrs. Engstrom, I don’t agree. The contents of the manuscript might help us discover who the murderer is.”

  “If the things he wrote about were made known,” she said, twisting the word he as though it tasted bitter in her mouth, “they could destroy innocent people.”

  “Things” had to refer to Thea. I doubted if Mrs. Engstrom cared that much about the others or thought any of them to be innocent. She and I both knew that one of them was a murderer.

  Her steady gaze made me so uncomfortable, I quickly said, “Believe me, I wouldn’t hurt Aunt Thea for anything,” and hurried out of the room.

  I didn’t join the others in the sun-room. I took my pad and pen and the clues to my room, then walked down the hall to Augustus Trevor’s bedroom. I needed more answers, and I hoped I could find them there.

  A key, almost exactly like mine, protruded from the keyhole in his bedroom door. The door was locked, so I held my breath while I turned the key and slowly opened the door. The room was so silent and dark, I quickly fumbled for the light switch before I closed the door behind me. It was cold, too, and I felt clammy, as though dampness from the storm had seeped through the walls. I saw that the heating vents had been closed and wondered why anyone would want to sleep in this depressing, cavelike room.

  I didn’t care for Augustus Trevor’s tastes. Over the windows heavy, tapestry-like draperies had been drawn, shutting out most of the light. The massive high-posted, king-size bed was covered with a spread made of the same dull tapestry; and a maroon overstuffed chair, brass lamp, and table were grouped in one corner of the room. The table, chest of drawers, and wardrobe were of dark, carved mahogany, and all sorts of framed photographs of famous people cluttered not only the walls of the room, but also the tops of the chest and the table.

  Mixed among the standing photographs were a lot of carvings of animals and fish. I supposed they were very expensive and valuable, but if this had been my bedroom, I’d have tossed them out and put up posters instead. Who wants to see, first thing in the morning, a hideous green jade frog with his tongue lolling out. Yuck!

  When I cautiously opened the top drawer in the chest of drawers, I could see that the contents had been pawed through. Everything inside the drawer was a mess, and I was positive that wasn’t the way Walter kept Augustus’s things. Someone had been looking for the missing manuscript and thought, as I had, that Augustus would have kept it close by—if not in his office, then in his bedroom.

/>   Had whoever it was found it?

  As I opened the rest of the drawers and looked into them, I was pretty sure that the manuscript had not been found, because the contents of every single one of the drawers had been stirred through.

  I found myself standing next to another door, and this one had a key in it as well. I turned the knob, but the door was locked. It had to be the door to a bathroom, but why lock it? I asked myself, and I immediately began to wonder if the person who had searched this room had checked out the bathroom as well. Bathrooms had closets or cabinets. What if Augustus had wrapped his manuscript in towels or sheets, thinking no one would ever think of looking in a bathroom?

  Well, I would!

  I unlocked the door and opened it to find a large white-and-black-tiled bathroom that was even colder than the bedroom, if possible. Rain beat at the small window, seeping through the crack at the bottom and staining the wall like tear streaks down a dirty face. A white shower curtain closed off the tub, and I ignored it, trying not to think of that scary Psycho movie Mom and Dad had rented in which a woman gets stabbed in a shower. I took baths, instead of showers, for months after I saw that movie.

  I opened the built-in cabinet that reached from floor to ceiling, and was pleased to see that the sheets and towels and all the other stuff people keep in bathrooms—like extra boxes of tissue and hot-water bottles—hadn’t been disturbed.

  So I disturbed them. I was neater than the person who’d searched the bedroom had been. I took out stacks of things, looked through, around, and behind them, then put them back the way they’d been. It was hard because I had to work fast, and—unfortunately—it was all for nothing. The manuscript hadn’t been hidden in the bathroom.

  All that bending and stretching had made me tired. I shoved the shower curtain aside so that I could sit on the edge of the tub, but instead I froze in midair.

  I clung to the curtain with fingers as tight and stiff as claws, unable to move. My mouth was open, but not a sound came out, and—as though I were a bird trapped by a snake—I couldn’t look away. Augustus Trevor’s bloody, twisted face stared up at me from the bottom of the tub!

  EIGHT

  “What are you doing in here?” a low voice asked.

  That did it. The words broke the spell, terrifying me so much, I nearly fell on top of Augustus. Grabbing the shower curtain for support, I swung around and out and slammed into Walter, who clutched my shoulders and kept me on my feet.

  “Downstairs … in his office … bathtub … two of him? No, couldn’t be … but where … why?”

  “Be quiet please, Miss Burns,” Walter said. “If you’ll stop making so much noise, I’ll explain.” He gave me a gentle push in the direction of the bedroom and pulled the shower curtain closed before he followed me out of the bathroom and locked the door again. This time he pocketed the key.

  “Since it will be at least a day or two before the storm will subside and we’ll be able to notify the police, I deemed it prudent to—um—store Mr. Trevor’s body in a room which could be kept at a cool temperature.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But what about when the police get here? Won’t they mind? Doesn’t the body have to be just the way it was when we found it? I mean, maybe they’d see clues that would tell who murdered him, although—”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Walter interrupted, and his tone of voice was less like a butler and more like our suspicious next-door neighbor when she used to ask, “Who threw the ball into my petunia bed? Was it you, Samantha?”

  I wanted to be straightforward about everything with Walter, so I told him that I couldn’t decipher the second group of clues we’d been given, and I hoped that if I looked around Augustus’s bedroom I’d learn something that would help.

  “And find the manuscript?” he asked.

  “Well, I guess I had that in mind too.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “All I discovered was that someone else searched the room before I did,” I answered, and explained about the messy drawers. “Whoever it was must have been looking for the manuscript.”

  “Do you think they found it?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t.”

  Walter rose an inch taller and became a butler again. “Luncheon has been served,” he said. “I was sent to find you.”

  Lunch? I’d forgotten all about it, but my stomach hadn’t, because it began to growl.

  When I entered the dining room, everyone stopped talking and looked at me. I was getting awfully tired of being the center of attention.

  “Well?” Laura asked. “Well?”

  “I haven’t had enough time!” I happened to glance at myself in the mirror over the sideboard and saw that my face showed my irritation, so I tried to calm down.

  No sooner was I seated, with my napkin in my lap and a salad—with more of those strange, crunchy things—in front of me, than Senator Maggio nodded in my direction, peered from under his thick eyebrows, and asked, “Where have you been?”

  “In Augustus Trevor’s bedroom,” I said.

  “Why, dear?” Aunt Thea’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “There are two places most people would hide things in, because they’re personal places,” I said. “So I figured that Augustus would hide whatever he wanted to hide either in his office or in his bedroom. I thought I’d look.”

  “Aren’t you the one who said we should work on clues instead of wasting time searching for the manuscript?” Julia demanded.

  “Well, yes,” I said, “but we can’t get very far with just one set of clues.” I took a large bite of salad. It tasted good, but what was that curly purple stuff?

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “You were looking for clues?”

  “Both.”

  The senator put down his fork, his salad untasted. “Augustus spoke of giving us clues throughout the weekend. There must be a series of clues he’d prepared for us. The question is, where are they?”

  “What did you find, Samantha?” Thea asked.

  “No clues and no manuscript,” I said, “but I did find that someone had already searched through all the drawers in the chest and the wardrobe.”

  No one spoke up. I guess it was dumb to expect someone to say “I did it.” Everyone at the table shot questioning glances at the others, though, and everyone except Buck just poked at their salads. Buck ate every bite of his. Oh, well, for that matter, I did too.

  Finally, Senator Maggio said, “We have to assume that one of us found the manuscript and is in possession of it.”

  “No, we don’t,” I said. There I was, contradicting him again, and it was obvious by the thundercloud expression on his face that he didn’t like it.

  “What I mean is,” I continued, trying to make the situation less tense, “all the drawers were a mess. If the manuscript had been found at some point in the search, then we could even tell where it had been, because some of the drawers wouldn’t have been touched. The prowler wouldn’t have needed to keep looking.”

  “Good point,” Julia said.

  The senator didn’t give in graciously. “Perhaps one of us—or all of us—should look carefully through the room to make sure that Samantha was correct in what she found.”

  “Oh, really,” Thea began, but I just shrugged.

  “It’s fine with me,” I answered, “only don’t go in the bathroom.”

  “Why not?” Buck asked.

  “Because Augustus Trevor is in the bathtub.”

  “What?” Julia shouted, and Laura screeched.

  “Please, everyone, don’t get upset,” Aunt Thea quickly said, and she went on to explain why Walter had moved the body—after consulting her, of course.

  “I can understand your reasoning,” Senator Maggio said, “but the police may not accept it. Evidence leading to the identity of the murderer may have been destroyed.”

  “Oh, don’t be so pompous, Arthur!” Julia snapped. “What’s done is done, and for that matter, do any of us car
e who murdered Augustus? I don’t!”

  “Me either,” Laura said.

  I couldn’t stand it. Everything that had happened around here was making me crazy. “Please don’t talk like that. He was Aunt Thea’s husband,” I reminded them. “Besides, if you just think about it, whoever murdered him could murder you too.”

  Laura gasped, but Alex said quietly, “The only one who would need to worry is the person who might accidentally discover the murderer’s identity.”

  “Please!” Aunt Thea held out her hands almost as though she were begging, then dropped them into her lap.

  Senator Maggio looked sternly in my direction. “We must respect each other’s privacy, Samantha,” he said. “I’d like to know why you gave yourself permission to open a locked door.”

  Walter came in and began removing the salad plates and substituting some kind of soup with chunks of tomatoes and shrimp in it. His expression was unreadable, and he didn’t look in my direction.

  It didn’t matter. I had something to ask the senator. “How did you know that the door was locked?”

  For a moment Senator Maggio’s eyes widened, and he made a flapping fish mouth while he tried to think of what to say next. But he quickly recovered and answered smoothly, “I passed the door as I was coming downstairs and saw the key in the lock. Just to make sure that the room was secured, I checked the knob and was gratified to discover that the door was locked.”

  “Did you know that the bathroom door was locked?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I’d have no way of knowing that.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. I thought he was.

  “I can’t take much more of this,” Alex blurted out. “While we’re eating lunch, I don’t want to hear another word about the murder! We have to talk about something—anything—else.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Buck said, “What d’ya think of the Green Bay Packers’ chances this year?”

  “Chances for what?” Laura asked.

  Buck made kind of a choking sound.

  Julia said, “My agent called on Tuesday. Starved for Love is going into video.”