The morning remained gray but the mist had lifted. Along the dirt road to the main gate of The Rod and Gun Club, the fog patches had left all but the deepest dells. The trees along the road seemed uniformly pine, tall and dark, with the odd stand of silver birch. On the rises of the road, broader views could be seen of October foliage muted by overcast.
The car was stopped at the gate. The armed guard came close enough to the car to ascertain there was no one in the back seat. He noted the names of the two men in the front seat on his clipboard.
As the car went through the gate, Flynn said, “He didn’t check our pockets for the silverware.”
“He has to know who is on the place and who has left, Flynn.”
“Why?”
There was no answer.
On the paved road, they turned downhill.
“Are you Rutledge’s driver?” Flynn asked. “Valet? Secretary?”
Wahler straightened one sleeve of his expensive three-piece suit. “Lawyer. I’m a graduate of Harvard Law School, member of the bar.”
“Please accept my personal regrets,” said Flynn.
“I’m not Rutledge’s only lawyer, of course. Just the one closest to him. I sort of work things out with him, then translate his decisions to other lawyers and all the other people he has to deal with.”
“So there is never any question about his expressing himself in a legal manner.”
“That’s right. Before he says or does anything, anything at all, all precedents and documents have been checked. By me.”
“Ah, the modern world,” said Flynn, spinning his Rs. “We’re all just puppets dancing on strings pulled by lawyers.”
“That’s about right.”
“Do you often travel with him?”
“Usually.”
“What? Even on a weekend like this, huntin’ and fishin’?”
Wahler did not answer right away. “Meetings go on at The Rod and Gun Club, Flynn.” More easily, he said, “And there’s always the telephone.”
“Married yourself? Have a home life?”
Flynn guessed Wahler was in his early thirties.
“Not anymore. Was married. I have an apartment between Rutledge’s home and his home office. His car picks me up most mornings, drops me off most nights.”
“Home,” Flynn hummed. “And as the young husband said to the gynecologist, ‘What’s in it for you?’ ”
“No one in the world has a better overview of his business than I have. I’m listed as an executor of his estate now.” Gently, Wahler was braking the big car down a grade. “He controls many huge interests, Flynn. And I know them all as well or better than he does.” Wahler crossed the yellow dividing line and turned off the road to the left into the parking lot of The Timberbreak Lodge. “Sooner or later, as gaps appear, I should be able to pick any position I want. Meantime, I walk around with his power in my pocket. And everyone knows it.”
“And if Rutledge makes a mistake?” Flynn asked. “Is it the son of your mother named Paul who gets the blame?”
Wahler turned off the engine. “First we find the manager of the hotel. His name is Morris.”
Only a few cars were in the motel driveway. One was dented, mud-splattered and said “Bellingham Police” in chipped paint on its side. Its appearance did not suggest much concern for image.
From down the road an old Cadillac hearse waddled into the parking lot. Two men in dark clothes with very white faces were on the front seat.
Standing beside the car, Flynn looked at Timberbreak Lodge. As a piece of architecture, it seemed oddly truncated. Its main office area, under a peaked roof, seemed almost the right size, but the one-store area for rooms extending from the reception area seemed uncommonly small. The lodge looked like a gaunt woman in a long dress.
Following Wahler into the reception area, Flynn hit his knuckles against the wall. He might as well have knocked against a match box. Cheap plywood, covered with a pine stain with no insulation or other building material behind it, he guessed.
The reception area was colder than outdoors.
“Morning, Mister Wahler,” said the man behind the reception desk. He was a ruddy, outdoors type in a heavy woolen shirt.
“Morning,” Wahler said. “This is Police Inspector Frank Flynn.”
The man extended a heavily calloused hand over the counter.
“Pleased to meet you, Inspector. Sad business, this. Carl Morris, owner and manager of Timberbreak Lodge.” He looked down at the reception book on the counter. “You’re in Room 16, Inspector.”
“Am I indeed? I’m liable to be anywhere.”
“What room was Huttenbach’s?” Wahler asked.
“Other side of the building. Room 22.”
Across the reception lounge a huge window looked out over forested valley and hillsides. Flynn supposed the view would be dazzling, if the sun were out.
Open doorways led from the left and right of the lounge. Over one a wood-burned sign said “Rooms 11-16”; over the other, “Rooms 17-22.”
“Is there a lower level to this place?” asked Flynn. “A downstairs?”
“Nope,” Morris answered. “Just the one floor.”
“Then you have only twelve guest rooms.”
“We’re a small lodge.”
“You must have a pretty high room rate,” Flynn shivered. “To pay the fuel bill. Not at all sure I can afford it.”
Behind Morris was a closed door. Wood-burned on it were the words: “Manager Private.” As they stood there, Flynn heard the voices of either two or three women talking, sometimes simultaneously.
“I see the Shaws are here.” Morris had ducked his head to look through the front window. “Things have been moving slowly, I guess. Sunday morning. Chief Jensen is with the body now. I’ve told him you’re here, Inspector. In a manner of speaking, of course.” Morris allowed a small grin. “He’s waiting for you. And Doc Allister is here.” Morris’ grin opened as he looked at Flynn. “Doc Allister gets something like a thousand a year from the county to play coroner. He’s about the only doctor we got. At least, he’s the oldest.”
“Not a qualified pathologist,” said Flynn.
“He’s best at sending out bills.” Morris came around the counter. “I’ll bring you to them. You going to stay here, Mister Wahler?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have a breakfast room, as you know. There’s a Mister Coffee maker over there by the fireplace.”
“Thanks.” Hands in the pockets of his suit jacket, to warm himself, Wahler sat in a wicker chair in the lounge.
As Morris led Flynn through the main door and around the building he said, as if he could hardly wait for the opportunity, “It happened last night. About eleven. I was in the office just watching the late news. I heard the blast of a shotgun from outside the building. I rushed out and there was Huttenbach…”
There was Huttenbach.
They had gone a few meters onto unkempt grass from the path surrounding the lodge.
Face up on the grass lay the body of a young man. His head and upper body were dotted with blood. One eye was still open. The other was half-closed, with a single dot of blood on the lid.
Two men stood nearby.
One said, “Inspector Wynn?”
“Flynn.”
In gray mountain light of an October Sunday morn, two men shook hands over the corpse.
“Alfred Jensen. Bellingham Chief of Police. Well, I’m all the police there is in Bellingham. I’m also head of the town road department. Mostly, that means I’m in charge of snow removal. This here is Doc Allister. He’s pretty much in charge of births and deaths ’round here, not much good in-between, if you’re just sick.”
Doc Allister had a big nose, which he lowered and raised in salute to Flynn.
“Death was instantaneous,” Doctor Allister stated, showing he was not completely innocent of the formal language of the witness stand. “Result of a shotgun discharge. I would put the hour of death at somewhere around eleven o’clock l
ast night.”
“Where’s the shotgun?” Flynn asked.
“In my car,” Jensen said. “It’s a pretty good one. Had his initials on it. D.H. It was lying right here when we found it.”
Jensen pointed to the ground near Huttenbach’s feet.
“Here’s our funeral director,” Jensen said. The two black-suited men from the hearse had come around the corner of the lodge. They walked in slow parade. “Shaw and son. Shaw’s pa used to be the town drunk,” Jensen said to Flynn. “Now Shaw is. Shaw’s son is workin’ on it. Depressing, undertaking. Hello, Fred!” Jensen said cheerily enough. “Glad you could make it.”
Shaw’s and son’s blotchy faces nodded.
“We’ll just let this Inspector inspect around a little, then you can take the body. Got your stretcher, or whatever you call it?”
Shaw looked at the rough ground.
“Better get somethin’ to carry him off.”
Flynn crouched by the body.
Indeed death had been instantaneous. There had been little bleeding. The young man’s tweed jacket and light woolen shirt, opened at the throat, had been shredded by shotgun pellets. All his clothes, including his light corduroy trousers, socks and loafers, were rain-soaked as he lay. His hair was wet. A hank of hair matted on his forehead.
He was a slim, well-built young man, not more than thirty years old, if that. Flynn guessed his sports would have been squash racquets, handball, something that required speed, agility and brains rather than weight or brute force. His wrist watch was heavy gold. On his right wrist was a gold identification bracelet. A shotgun pellet had shattered one tooth. Other than that his teeth were white and even.
The grass around him had been washed by rain and stomped down by Carl Morris, Doctor Allister, Chief Jensen and whoever else.
Flynn lifted the late Congressman Huttenbach’s left arm, felt it, and let it drop. Putting his death at about eleven the previous night was not far wrong, if wrong at all.
Knees snapping, Chief Jensen crouched beside Flynn. “Really appreciate your expert opinion on all this, Inspector. I know you big-city police guys see more of murders than you do of your own coffee cups.”
“I don’t use stimulants,” Flynn said.
The nearest line of trees was more than two hundred meters down the hill from where they were crouching.
Chief Jensen was staring at the ground. “The man was killed by his own shotgun,” he said slowly. “One barrel. We hear he has a wife and kids. Young man. Congressman from south of here, somewhere. It’s easy enough to say he got killed accidentally while cleaning his shotgun.” The Chief looked off at the line of trees. “That’s what we say around here about most such suicides.”
Flynn swiveled on the balls of his feet.
Shaw and son were pushing, pulling a metal framed stretcher on wheels over the rough ground toward them.
Flynn stood up. “No reason why you shouldn’t move him. I take it you took photographs of all this.”
“Yes, we did,” Chief Jensen said happily. He stood up. “My son came out here at very first light and took pictures. He has one of those idiot-proof cameras, you know? And he’ll turn them into the drugstore first thing in the morning. We should have ’em back Wednesday, Thursday.”
“You took the photographs before you removed the shotgun?”
“Yes, we did,” Jensen said proudly.
“Did you encase the shotgun so it can be examined for fingerprints?”
Jensen’s face fell. “No. We didn’t. What fingerprints could we expect on it? It was his own gun. His own initials were on the stock. It had already been rained on, last night, by the time we got here.”
Flynn looked at Morris, standing nearby, smiling. His smile seemed to suggest he was ready to burst out singing, Oh, what a beautiful morning.
“If you’re ready, Inspector, I’ll show you the Congressman’s room.”
“Really appreciate all you’re doing, Inspector,” Chief Jensen crowed. “Us country boys don’t get to see a real professional work too often. Damned nice of you to disturb your holiday weekend and come out and give us a hand. Busman’s holiday, uh?”
Flynn stared at him.
“It will be fun to hear you give evidence, too,” the Chief continued. “You’ll give it right. As it should be done.”
Flynn asked Morris, “Has Mrs. Huttenbach arrived yet?”
“Don’t think so. Not by the time we came out here.”
A gangly teenaged boy in a hunting cap came around the corner of the lodge and stopped. A camera hung on a strap from his neck. In his hand he had a notebook and ballpoint pen.
“There’s the press, though,” Chief Jensen said. He called, “Hi, Jimmy!”
Doctor Allister was already walking toward the Voice of the People.
Jensen hurried over to him, too. “Thought you were at your grandmother’s this weekend, Jimmy. Ain’t she eighty?”
“I came back,” the boy said. “Patty called me and said there’d been a mor-der.”
Doctor Allister’s beak bobbed as he dictated into the notebook what he had to say to the world.
“Show me the room you gave Huttenbach,” Flynn said to Morris. “Even the White Queen can believe six things before breakfast.”
Silently, Wahler drove Flynn back up the paved road, along the dirt road, and through the check point in the tall, miles-long fence surrounding The Rod and Gun Club.
Just as they were cresting the last hill before coming to the lake, a helicopter roared up from behind the clubhouse. When it got well above tree level, it turned, and still gaining altitude, flew southeast.
“My, my,” said Flynn. “It seems not everybody gets in and out through the hole in the fence. Some fly away under blades of steel.”
6
“Grover,” Flynn found himself grumbling into the telephone. To the switchboard of The Old Records Building on Craigie Street, Flynn properly had asked for Sergeant Richard T. Whelan, but once hearing the voice of the man himself answer he could not restrain himself from addressing him by the nickname Flynn had given him but Sergeant Whelan never had accepted.
And Grover did not restrain himself from a prolonged sigh. “Yes, Inspector? Not coming in today?”
It was well past ten o’clock Sunday morning. Flynn seldom went to the office Sundays, which was why Grover usually did.
Taylor had met Wahler and Flynn at the door. The guard had phoned ahead their arrival. Taylor said he had put Flynn’s breakfast in his room.
Taylor led the way upstairs, to show Flynn his room. But Flynn went to the wide doorway of the club’s grand hall and looked in.
A skinny old man, totally naked, sat in a chair by the fire, reading. In the changing firelight the white skin and heavy blue veins of his legs and feet had almost the effect of a flashing neon light.
Behind Flynn, Wahler said under his breath, “That’s Wendell Oland. He doesn’t like to wear clothes.”
“And who is he when he’s dressed?”
“Senior partner at a major law firm. Income in the millions a year.”
Still dressed for fishing, shoeless, Senator Dunn Roberts sat in a chair within reach of the bar table. Even from across the big room, Flynn could see the man was despondently drunk. He might as well have been sitting in a slum doorway.
“Looks like the Senator missed breakfast,” commented Flynn.
“Not much.”
Four men, one in a heavy, torn bathrobe, sat at a poker table down the room, playing seriously, silently. The only currency visible, blue in the firelight, was in one hundred dollar demoninations.
“A quiet Sunday morning in the country,” said Flynn.
In Flynn’s room instead of tea or coffee a silver pot of plain hot water for his herbal tea had been laid out, as well as a half grapefruit and French toast.
“Thoughtful of you,” Flynn said to Taylor. “Been working here long?”
Flynn lowered his tea bag into the pot of hot water.
“Just
since last spring.”
“Are you from around here?”
“I’m from New York City.”
“Rather dead around here, isn’t it?”
Taylor’s ready grin filled his face again. “Getting deader every minute.”
Flynn saw that Cocky had been in. The chess set was laid out on a side table.
White pawn had been moved to King Four.
Flynn moved Black Pawn to King Four.
“Anything else you want, sir?”
“Just need to make a couple of phone calls after breakfast.”
“Right, sir. Dial seven, wait till you hear a clear line, then dial your number.”
So Flynn made the most of his breakfast and called Grover.
“I was called away,” Flynn said lamely.
“On another one of your mysterious trips, Frank?”
Grover doubtlessly had his own explanation, or explanations, for Flynn’s odd disappearances. Flynn had no idea what such explanations might be, but he was sure they lacked both accuracy and imagination. Not being able to explain his absences himself, he had never been able to enquire how Grover saw them.
“I’m on a trip, yes,” Flynn admitted. “And, yes, it is mysterious.”
“I bet.”
“Lieutenant Concannon is with me.”
A snort assaulted Flynn’s ear. “Hadn’t noticed him missing.”
“Grover, I’m particularly interested in that hit-and-run bicycle death on Tremont Street last night.”
“No one else is.”
“You mean, you aren’t. What have you done so far?”
“This old man was knocked off his bicycle and run over by a car traveling south at high speed about eight fifteen last night. Dead on arrival. A female witness said she could not give a description of car or driver, she was too horrified, she said, but she was able to say the car didn’t stop.”
“Didn’t stop at all? Not even slow down?”
“Didn’t even slow down. Just went through the intersection at high speed.”
“I doubt you could hit an old man on a bicycle, run over and kill him and not know something had happened. How many people were in the car?” Flynn asked.
Again Grover seemed to be referring to the scene-of-the-accident report. “Just the driver. She was pretty sure of that. ‘One head in the car,’ she said.”
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