Shaker slapped the table. “And who stood to gain more than Sybil? She’d get Nola’s part of the Bancroft fortune. Millions upon millions upon millions. Right?”
“We know one thing for certain we’d only suspected before.”
“What?”
“The killer really is in our hunt field.”
CHAPTER 31
The rain stopped Sunday morning, revealing skies of robin’s egg blue and temperatures in the middle sixties.
Sister, Shaker, and Walter met Ben Sidell at the mailbox for Roughneck Farm. They drove in two four-wheel-drive trucks to the cornfield, then parked off the farm road to walk to the coop between the cornfield and the Bancroft woods.
Impressed by Walter’s attention to detail at Norwood Bridge, the sheriff was glad the doctor accompanied them. Sister just felt better when Walter was around, although she didn’t really know why. The same was true for Shaker. He grounded her.
The mud sucked on their work boots. The ends of their pants’ legs were sopping wet from the grass.
Raleigh and Rooster bounded along with them. At first Ben resisted, but Sister convinced him their superior senses might turn up something helpful.
A half-moon puddle glistened before the coop, the depression the result of many hooves digging in before the jump.
Ben crouched down. The rains had washed away hoofprints. He stood up, leaning his hands on the top kick-board as he studied what had been the landing side of the coop on the way home from Saturday’s hunt. All he had found near the body was Ralph’s new flask. He’d hoped he’d find more here.
“And this was the last place anyone saw Ralph?”
“Yes,” Walter answered. “It was the last any of us saw him, those of us who stayed with Edward.”
“Shaker, Betty, and I left him at the apple orchard,” Sister reminded Ben.
“Right.” He cupped his chin in his right hand. “And you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face.”
“Right,” Walter again replied.
“Well, how’d you get over the coop?”
“Trusted my horse,” Walter said.
“And you still jumped it?” Ben thought these foxhunters were crazy.
“Sheriff, you do things in the hunt field you’d never do anywhere else.” Walter heard a caw as St. Just flew overhead.
“Over here,” Raleigh barked at Sister.
Sister walked to where both the Doberman and the harrier stood. A sodden handkerchief lay in the cleared path between the cornfield and the fence line. “Sheriff, I don’t want to touch this.”
They hurried over, and Ben knelt down and peered at the handkerchief. He pulled on a thin latex glove, picked up the wet, muddy handkerchief, and dropped it in a plastic bag.
“Keep coming,” Rooster, farther down the fence line, called out.
Shaker walked up to the hound. “Sheriff. A string glove.”
The white woven glove lay in a puddle.
A few minutes later the other glove was found where the cornfield curled right toward a small tributary feeding into Broad Creek.
The four humans and two dogs, wet to the knees, ankle deep in mud, sloshed to the base of Hangman’s Ridge.
“Hansel and Gretel,” Sister sorrowfully said. “Maybe Ralph dropped or threw away his gloves and handkerchief on the way.”
Shaker exhaled. “Anyone could have dropped gloves or a handkerchief. I just don’t know why Ralph would have left the other people. It makes no sense to me even if he was nervous. Wouldn’t there be protection in numbers?”
“Guilt—or he snapped. People do,” Walter said. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets, then asked Ben, “What do you think?”
“I try not to jump to conclusions.”
“What can we do?” Walter asked.
“Wait for a crack in the armor,” Ben evenly replied. “The morning newspaper, which I’m sure you read, reported he was shot, the weapon hadn’t been found, and the sheriff is investigating.” He smiled ruefully, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s a nice way of saying we don’t know a damned thing.”
“You’re a doctor, Walter. Do you think our killer is rational?” Sister asked as she knocked one shoe on the other. Mud fell off in red clumps.
“I’m a neurosurgeon, not a psychiatrist.”
“For which we’re all grateful.” Sister half smiled at him. “But you see people in crisis daily. Surely you get a feeling about the real person. Do you have a sense of this person?”
“Well, yes, I think our killer is rational and opportunistic. The fog gave him—or her—a chance to do what he or she was ultimately planning to do. Sister, I think it was Ralph who called you,” Walter said.
“Me too. Shaker and I thought of that. And I told the sheriff, too.”
“Shock. It’s a hell of a shock to see someone you know like that.” Shaker wanted to get his hands on the killer. “Poor bastard, flat out in the rain.”
“Which brings me back to why?” Sister said. “Why make a spectacle of Ralph? Why not kill him away from everyone? Why not dispose of his body and be done with it just like he thought he had done with Nola and Guy? I wonder if this isn’t a warning.”
“The hanging tree, a warning to all, the place of punishment.” Shaker nodded up toward the ridge.
“Shaker’s right. This was so dramatic. He’s arrogant. He thinks he’s invincible. He must have some incredible sense that he’d never be suspected.”
“No one would think Sybil killed her sister,” Shaker said quietly. He didn’t want to think Sybil capable of such a deed, but she had the best motive that he could discern.
“Paul Ramy certainly fingered her for a suspect. But he couldn’t make anything stick,” Ben confided to them. “He thought if she killed her sister that her family would protect her.”
“Tedi? Never!” Sister quickly responded.
“Sister’s right. But Edward might cover for her,” Shaker added. “He’d lost one daughter. What good would it do to have the other in jail? I assume that’s what a father would think.”
“I don’t believe it. I know Edward is protective of his girls, well, fathers always are, aren’t they?” Sister’s voice rose quizzically. “But he’s a man of principle. I don’t know that he would provide an alibi for her. Even if he thought the original murders were an isolated incident, you know, if he was sure she’d never kill again, he wouldn’t help her.”
“Paul’s reports say she stayed at the party, then went to the C&O with Ken. Other witnesses confirm seeing her there.”
“The Bancrofts could pay off the entire county,” Shaker said.
“Oh, come now, someone would talk. Keep a secret for two decades? Not here.” Sister interlocked her fingers. “I agree that Sybil had a financial and perhaps even an emotional incentive, but I don’t think she did it. Had Nola lived, Sybil’s inheritance would still be beyond most people’s wildest dreams.”
“Never underestimate the greed of the rich,” Ben Sidell said. “But you’re right, Sister, that our killer feels we can’t touch him. He’s fooled everybody for twenty-one years. I doubt he’s even that scared now.”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Sister said quickly. Then she whirled around, as did Shaker, their senses sharper than either Ben’s or Walter’s.
A brush, brush in the cornfield alerted them.
Raleigh and Rooster charged down a row, the stalks bending deeply.
“It’s Clytemnestra and Orestes,” Raleigh informed them.
Encouraged by the canine companionship and hearing the human voices, the large Holstein cow and her calf walked out of the corn, making a squishy sound with each step.
“You two!” Sister was disgusted with them. “Raleigh, Rooster, let’s herd them home with us. We’ll get them over to Cindy’s later.”
“You bet.” The dogs paced themselves behind the two bovines, keeping just out of reach of a cow kick.
“Guess we might as well walk you home, too,” Ben said. “I’ll take do
wn the yellow tape tonight.” He indicated the police tape used to cordon off Hangman’s Ridge. “Nothing else to find here.”
CHAPTER 32
A Titleist golf ball, white, rolled to a stop next to a small grooming brush, bristles full of flaming red fur.
“You thought that golf ball was an egg when you brought it home, didn’t you?” Inky mischievously batted the golf ball.
Charlie, a natural collector of all sorts of objects, replied, “It’s fun to play with, but I don’t think the humans that play with them have much fun. They curse and throw their sticks. Why do they do it if they hate it so much?”
“Human psychology.” Inky observed the flat-faced species with great interest. For one thing, their curious locomotion intrigued her. She thought of human walking as a form of falling. They’d catch themselves just in time. It must be awful to totter around on two legs.
“They do like to suffer,” Charlie noted. “I believe they are the only species who willingly deny themselves food, sex, pleasure.”
“And they’re so happy when they finally give in and enjoy themselves.” Inky laughed.
Charlie’s den used to belong to Aunt Netty, but she’d wanted to be closer to the orchard, so she had moved last year. Netty was like a perfectionist lady forever in search of the ideal apartment.
Charlie had enlarged the den. Given his penchant for toys, he needed more space.
“Look at this.” He swept his face against the dandy brush. “Feels really good.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Cindy Chandler. She left it on the top of her tack trunk. When she forgets potato chips or crackers, that’s the greatest. Not only does the stuff taste good, the bags crinkle!”
“Some sounds are so enticing. Sister’s big wind chimes— I like to sit in the garden and listen to them ringing at night.”
Inky and Charlie, the same age, belonged to two different species of fox. Inky, a gray, was slightly smaller. She could climb trees with dexterity, and in many ways she was more modest than the red fox, who had to live in a grand place, making a conspicuous mound so everyone would know how important he was.
The reds found this lack of show on the part of the grays proof that they were beneath the salt. Nice, yes, but not truly first class. And their conversational abilities missed the mark most times, as well. The reds enjoyed chattering, barking, even yodeling when the mood struck. Grays were more taciturn.
Both types of fox, raised in loving homes, went out into the world at about seven or eight months. The annual diaspora usually started in mid-September in central Virginia.
And both types of fox believed themselves the most intelligent of the land creatures. They allowed that cats could be rather smart, dogs less so. Humans, made foolish by their own delusions of superiority, delighted the foxes because they could outwit them with such ease. Nothing like a small battalion of humans on horseback and forty to sixty hounds, all bent on chasing a fox, to reaffirm the fox’s sense of his own cleverness.
“Charlie, how did you disappear in the apple orchard?” Inky had heard from Diana how the red fox evaporated as if by magic, leaving not an atom of scent.
He puffed out his silky chest. “Inky, there I was in the middle of the apple orchard, fog like blinders, I tell you, the heavy scent of ripe apples aiding me immeasurably. I’d intended to duck into that abandoned den at the edge of the orchard. You know the one?” She nodded that she did, so he continued. “But along came Clytemnestra and Orestes. And I thought to myself that those hounds, young entry, mind you, have denned a fox each time they’ve been cubbing. Getting too sure of themselves. If I simply vanish, they’ll be bumping into one another running in circles, whimpering, ‘Where’d he go?’ I jumped on a big rock and up on Orestes’s back. Up and away.” He flashed his devilish grin.
“You shook their confidence,” she admiringly complimented him, “for which every fox is grateful.”
“The T’s and R’s are going to be very good, I think. Trinity, Tinsel, Trudy, and Trident, Rassle, and Ruthie. Good. And now that the D’s are in their second season, well, we may have to pick up the pace. Aunt Netty was right.”
“Usually is,” Inky agreed.
Outside, the arrival of soft twilight announced the approaching night.
“Would you like a golf ball?”
“That would be fun.” Inky liked to play.
“I know where she keeps them at Foxglove. It’s a piece of cake to reach into the golf bag and filch one. And her house dog sleeps right through it.”
“Charlie,” Inky said and blinked, “did you notice anything unusual in that fog when you were riding Orestes?”
“I smelled Ralph. He sent off a strong, strong odor of fear. And I heard two other riders moving in different directions. They weren’t together. I know one was Sybil, because I could smell. I couldn’t get a whiff of the other rider. Too far away.” He rolled upright. “Don’t you find it odd that humans kill one another? To kill for food, well, we must all survive, but to kill members of your own species? Very nasty.”
“You know, sometimes a vixen will go into a killing frenzy to teach her cubs how to kill,” Inky soberly said. “I think humans can go into killing frenzies, too, but for a different reason. I worry that this person might do that.”
“Possibly.” Charlie swept forward his whiskers. “You know that Cly and Orestes didn’t see the killer or they would have blabbed to everyone. Cly can’t keep a secret. Cows are dumb as posts.” He laughed.
As the two left the den, Inky wondered if murder was a pleasure for humans the way catching a mouse was a pleasure for her. If so, how could a killer ever stop killing?
CHAPTER 33
Plain pews of rich walnut accented the severe yet uplifting architecture of the local Episcopal church. When its first stone was laid in 1702 it was a rough affair. Few Christian people lived this far west, and those who did had little money. The native tribes of Virginia, divided into Iroquois-speaking peoples and Sioux-speaking peoples, warred against one another sporadically. The handful of whites found themselves in the middle, an uneasy place to be.
The small church proved a refuge from the unrelenting hostilities of the New World, a land devoid of familiar English nightingales yet filled with scarlet tanagers. For every animal left behind on England’s shores, there appeared here some new, beautiful creature.
Stone or brick was necessary for buildings of any permanence since the Indians used fire when raiding settlers. The large church bell could be used to sound an alarm. Every farm also had a bell. Upon hearing it, people set free their livestock, hopped on their horses, and galloped to the church.
While it may not have been its most Christian feature, the church, like their homes, was built with a small room with gun slits in the walls. The settlers took aim at attackers through those narrow openings in the stone. A slate roof provided protection from fire.
Over time, truces were made, later broken by both sides. But as the Thirty Years War raged, followed by the English Civil War, the trickle of colonists swelled to a stream, then a river. The hardships of America were more alluring than the hatreds of Europe. A few adventurous souls pushed west toward the fall line.
The fall line was a series of rapids dividing the upland freshwaters from the saltier waters below. Above the fall line rolled the undulating, fertile hills of the Piedmont, which lapped to the very feet of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Very few whites had reached the Blue Ridge. Those who did hung on for dear life. Building churches with rifle slits did not seem a Christian contradiction to them.
The early American experience was one of intense loneliness and backbreaking labor relieved by bouts of paralyzing danger. Church on Sundays meant seeing other people as much as prayer.
Once the Thirty Years War ended, the worst destruction that would befall Europe until the Great War, there was less reason for Europeans to flee. And after Charles II was restored to the English throne, he had the sense not to kill most of
those who had overthrown his father, with a few exceptions. Even more Englishmen decided to stay home.
Hands were needed to work in Virginia, South Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts. So as the seventeenth century became the eighteenth, Africans were forcibly hauled onto the shores of the New World in increasing numbers.
The parishioners of this isolated church had argued among themselves over slavery. Many noted that the Bible not only has numerous stories about slaves, it never actually says that one human being should not own another. Reason enough, many said, reason enough. And so an economic monstrosity found theological dress clothes to hide in.
If the Native tribes thought the slaves would turn on their masters during attacks, they discovered these new people fought against them as ferociously as the Europeans.
Slave and master, back to back in the fortress room, would shoot at the raiders, then emerge to clean up the mess, the vertical hierarchy again restored. If anyone perceived the irony in this arrangement, they tactfully kept it to themselves.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the fortress room attached to the church was no longer needed but, as is the wont of Virginians, they kept it out of tradition.
Ralph Assumptio’s body lay in this room, his casket on a kind of gurney that would be pushed into the sanctuary at the appropriate moment by two burly employees of the funeral parlor, flanked by two honorary pallbearers. The other pallbearers acted as ushers.
Frances sat in the first pew with her two daughters and two sons, grown now with families of their own.
The entire membership of the Jefferson Hunt attended, all 135 people. Sister Jane sat to the right of the Assumptios, three pews behind. The Bancrofts and Sybil Fawkes sat in front of her. Ken, being a pallbearer, remained in the fortress room.
Shaker escorted Sister while Walter sat with Alice Ramy, who had driven all the way back from Blacksburg the minute she’d heard the news. This surprised some people, but Alice really had turned over a new leaf.
The closed casket was brought out. The service for the dead had begun.
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