Everyone was carrying a rifle except Rutledge and Taylor. Flynn was surrounded by eight rifles pointing at the ground.
And everyone had come from a separate direction.
“Ashley, Ashley…”
“I was just coming up for lunch,” Clifford said. “I damned near tripped over him.”
“Did you hear anything, see anything as you approached?” Flynn asked.
“His hat. I wondered who had lost his hat.”
Flynn looked up into Rutledge’s eyes. “He could have been dead more than an hour.”
Rutledge continued to look at the corpse.
All but Hewitt and Arlington wore leather gloves. Hewitt’s and Arlington’s were wool. Taylor’s hands were in his jacket pockets. He had not worn gloves on the drive up to Rumble de Dump.
All but Clifford, Arlington and Oland held their rifles in walking positions in the crooks of their right arms. Arlington’s and Oland’s were in their left. Clifford held his in both hands across his blue-jeaned thighs.
There was no immediate way of telling whether the back of Ashley’s head had been struck from the left or the right. He had been clubbed hard, straight on.
Flynn stood up. He stepped over Ashley. Being careful not to disturb Ashley’s hat, he stood with his back against the thick tree.
“How are you going to manage this one?” he asked. The circle of men looked from Flynn to the corpse back to Flynn again. Clifford wiped his nose with his glove. Only Hewitt looked away. Managing was not in Hewitt’s line. “I’m sure you’re already trying to figure out something…”
“I don’t blame Flynn,” snapped Arlington. “Certain decisions have been made around here, and the situation has gotten worse rather than better. It looks to me like this whole affair had been mismanaged.”
Mismanaged, mismanaged. The phrase had a boardroom ring to it. Call the office of the manager, and speak to his secretary, mis-managed.
“Right,” chimed in Clifford. “Maybe if we had done something different when Dwight was killed…”
Buckingham, Rutledge and Roberts seemed more complained against than complaining. And Wahler seemed to be a spectator. Beside Flynn, D’Esopo remained dull-eyed. Hewitt just stared at the corpse. Taylor’s eyes were as lively as ever. The man’s ebullience was irrepressible. Flynn saw Taylor catch a snow flake on his tongue.
“I was with Oland,” Arlington said. “All morning. I can say that much.”
“You were not!” exclaimed Oland.
Arlington flushed.
“I was alone all morning,” Oland said, “No one was with me. I didn’t hear a shot, either.”
“He wasn’t shot,” Clifford said.
“What do we do now?” Roberts asked.
“I’d like Mister Wahler to go back to the clubhouse with Taylor and call the police,” Flynn said. With the oven in the back of the Land Rover there was room left for only the driver and one passenger. “It may seem a radical suggestion to you gentlemen, but this is the third murder in a row, and I think it’s time the authorities were notified. Of course, the last time I made that suggestion, I was knocked unconscious for hours while you scurried about altering evidence. Let me warn you—”
“Why Wahler?” Rutledge asked abruptly.
“He’s a member of the bar,” said Flynn; “not a member of the club.”
“Rutledge should make the call,” Arlington said.
“Why not Flynn?” asked Buckingham.
“I’ll call, if you like,” said Flynn. “As long as you understand I shall do nothing to put a good face on all your crimes and misdemeanors. Should any of you still be in doubt, let me assure you, gentlemen, your power and prestige don’t impress me much. Even if I don’t make the initial telephone call, I expect to give evidence, fully and truthfully, as would any other good citizen.”
“You’re supposed to help us,” Oland said petulantly. “Who’s doing these murders?”
“I don’t know,” Flynn said. “Doubt I’d tell you if I did know.”
“Why not?” Buckingham asked.
“Not sure what you’d do with the information if you had it. Or what you’d do with the culprit if you had him. You haven’t given me much reason to trust you. I hate to think of the extents to which you gentlemen might go in behalf of efficient management.”
“Flynn, I think you’re overstepping—“Rutledge began hotly.
“I’d make a citizen’s arrest of you all now,” Flynn continued in his mild voice, “if such had any real meaning in a snowy wood. Instead, I’m going to ask you all to tiptoe away, leaving the evidence around Ashley’s murder undisturbed. Go back to the clubhouse. Wahler should go with Taylor in the Land Rover and call the authorities. By the time the rest of you gentlemen have walked back to the clubhouse, at least the local police in the person of Chief Jensen should have arrived. The State Police should not be far behind. I’ll take a look around here, if you don’t mind. I intend to be a good witness.”
The men stood silently a moment, looking back and forth at each other. Clearly their instincts wanted a board meeting, with the advice of bought expert consultants. None wanting individual responsibility for this positive step, they wanted a shared irresponsible consensus against it.
“He’s asking us to turn ourselves in,” said ex-Governor Buckingham.
“To the Chief of Roads,” Clifford giggled.
“You haven’t much choice,” Flynn said. “You’ve had three murders in thirty six hours. Who’s next, Governor, you? You, Clifford? How about you, Rutledge? Wahler?” Flynn shifted his back against the tree. “Sorry, boys. There comes a time when things get out of hand. Members of the grown-up world have to intervene.”
“You’re not one for rules,” D’Esopo said. Then he cleared his throat.
Flynn looked at him in surprise. “What are you saying, Eddy? That we let this situation continue? Find Oland dead at six o’clock, Arlington at ten?”
“It’s a matter of police work.” D’Esopo began moving away from Flynn, around the outside of the circle of men. “You can do better than the local guys. You can do better than this.”
He trudged up the hill toward the Rumble de Dump.
“We’ll do as you say,” Rutledge finally said.
He nodded to Taylor and Wahler and led them up the hill behind D’Esopo.
Silently, the other members wandered away, taking slightly divergent routes back to the main clubhouse. Arlington walked behind Oland.
“Want me to stay here?” Clifford asked.
“I do not,” Flynn said. “But you might tell me what you’re still doing here at The Rod and Gun Club. Why haven’t you flown up the chimney by now?”
“What do you mean?” the big young man asked.
“Didn’t I hear that your new stepfather fell off a horse last night? Had his neck broken and crushed? Why haven’t you rushed to console your mother, his new bride?”
“Oh.” Clifford looked at Flynn from under heavy brows. “Uncle Buck said we were not to leave, either of us, until you had come up with some answers. Anyway, my mother’s buried two husbands. And Lauderdale had his own kids…”
Hewitt had cleared the wet leaves away from the base of another tree and sat down. His back was against the tree; his rifle over his knees. He looked ready to remain there until the spring thaw.
Flynn asked Clifford, “How did you like the idea of Lauderdale being your stepfather?”
“Things aren’t that way, Flynn. With Jenny. Or my mother.”
“What way?”
“What they do with their lives is strictly their own business.”
“You mean you don’t care about your mother or your sister?”
“That’s not what I mean…” Clifford’s eyes moved over the ground almost as if he were looking for a place to be sick. He did not say what he did mean.
“The prince came home on his charger,” Flynn said, “to make all right at the castle. Is that it?”
Clifford was staring at Ashley on
the ground. “Honest, Flynn. I thought Ashley was the murderer. The guy was getting desperate, maybe going nuts…”
Flynn, too, looked down at the corpse. “Honestly,” he repeated. “So did I. What’s more, I’m still not sure he wasn’t.”
Flynn turned Ashley’s body part way over from both sides, enough to examine cursorily the man’s front.
Hewitt watched him from the base of the tree.
Then, on hands and knees, Flynn combed through the leaves on the ground in a wide area around the body. No calling card turned up, not that any, at that point, would have done much good. Each of the suspects had been in that area.
He was combing very close to the body when he heard someone coming down the hill. He sat back on his heels and looked up.
Wahler. Still carrying his rifle.
“What are you doing here?” Flynn asked.
“Thought I’d come tell you,” Wahler said, standing over Flynn. “Rutledge went back in the Jeep with Taylor.”
“Posh-tosh,” said Flynn. “Rushed back to make new arrangements, I dare say.”
“You’re not going to get these men to turn themselves in,” Wahler said. “They each have too much to lose. Together, they have everything to lose.”
Flynn said, “It must have been the effect of the drug. I was having a drug-dream.”
Heavily, he stood up. He brushed the knees of his trousers.
To Hewitt, he said, “You’ll stay here? I’ll send the police out to you as soon as I can.”
Hewitt nodded.
“And how long will it take us to walk back to the clubhouse?” Flynn asked Wahler.
“More than a couple of hours.”
With a gloved hand, Flynn picked up the tree branch he believed had been used to club Ashley to death. “Just what I need: to spend a snowy afternoon walking through the mountains.”
26
With Wahler, Flynn entered the Rod and Gun clubhouse through the front door. None of the members was about. “Don’t tell me we got back before them,” Wahler said. Going up the stairs in their wet boots, they passed a Vietnamese coming down in slippers.
In his room, Flynn put the tree branch across the top of his bureau and took off his coat.
On the bed was the Monday edition of the local newspaper.
On the front page was a story of Huttenbach’s death. A story.
Flynn scanned it as he sat on the edge of his bed taking off his boots.
While staying at Timberbreak Lodge, Bellingham, United States Representative Dwight Huttenbach was killed Saturday night when his shotgun discharged accidentally while the Congressman was cleaning it…
Boston Police Inspector F.X. Flynn, who happened to be staying at Timberbreak Lodge over the weekend, reviewed the findings of Bellingham Chief of Police Alfred Jensen…
“And neither confirmed nor denied,” Flynn muttered to himself. “Sometimes silence is dross.”
Cocky came through the open door. “Wahler said you had to walk back.”
“You leave this here for me?” Flynn waved toward the newspaper.
“Yes.”
“Complicity.” Flynn stood up in stockinged feet. “I am guilty of the complicity of silence.” He studied the chessboard. Cocky had moved his King to Rook One. “I don’t suppose there’s tea water bubbling on that bar table downstairs?”
“There isn’t. Just booze. I guess they don’t put out the coffee and tea service until after dinner.”
“Ashley is dead. Did Wahler tell you?”
“No.”
“Smacked on the back of the head, I suspect with that tree branch.” Flynn moved his King Rook to King One. “Everyone assembled over the corpse, from different directions, mind you. I gave a long and tiresome speech—a continuation of the speech I was giving last night when we both fell asleep—insisting the authorities be called in, and notifying them I intend to be a good witness. Then Rutledge grabbed the Jeep and came back here, I presume, to telephone fellow members around the world, to figure out how best to obstruct authority now. You haven’t seen Police Chief Jensen around, have you?”
“No.”
“Any chunky lads identifying themselves as representatives of the State Police?”
“No.”
“I got outmanaged again. When did the other members get back?”
“I haven’t seen anyone. I didn’t hear them come back.”
“How do you feel?” Flynn asked.
“Okay. I got a couple of hours sleep.”
“Nothing like a mountain walk in the snow to clear the head,” Flynn said.
“Frank, doesn’t one more murder help clarify things?”
“Indeed,” said Flynn. “Ashley may have had reason to kill Huttenbach and Lauderdale. He may even have done so. He may have had reason to kill himself. He did not do so. If one is up to doing oneself in by clubbing oneself in the back of the head, then one has extraordinary reason to continue to live: a good job with the circus.”
“Yeah,” Cocky said. “Win an Olympic gold medal for gymnastics.”
“I told Rutledge Ashley could have been dead more than an hour, because Rutledge had spent the previous half hour talking to me. He could have killed Ashley and been waiting at the cabin for me when I arrived. But the temperature was below freezing; the ground was cold. Ashley could easily have been killed after we arrived.”
“We,” repeated Cocky. “You and Taylor.”
“Yes. Immediately after we arrived, Taylor disappeared into the woods. To relieve himself, he said. To see the view, he said. On a cloudy day, mind you, just before it began to snow. No one is eliminated. Clifford found the body. By the by, ol’ Cocky, Rutledge tells me Lauderdale married Clifford’s mother last month, eloped with her, during Clifford’s absence abroad. What do you make of that?”
Cocky’s eyes had wandered to the windows. “It’s snowing pretty hard. Is it accumulating?”
“Not that much. I left Hewitt with the body. So: Everything is becoming about as clear as the weather.”
“I found something interesting,” Cocky said. “A huge vault. There was one locked door in the communications room. I opened it. Behind it is a man-sized vault door. Winchell, circa 1958.”
“You opened the locked door?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t open the vault?”
“Thought I’d better have your permission.”
“You mean, my complicity. Do you think you can open the vault?”
“Sure. I learned how when I was on the Burglary Squad. It’s an old, simple kind of safe. Child’s play.”
Flynn gave Cocky a long look. “My, my. If only Commissioner D’Esopo knew of all your talents, Cocky, you’d be back on full pay fast enough. You could help him break into the refrigerator after hours.”
“Shall we go open the vault now?”
“No.” Flynn sat on the bed again, near the pillows. “No more complicity for me. It is well past time to summon the local authorities. I believe it a fair assumption that the playful members of The Rod and Gun Club again have avoided turning themselves in. I am about to do so.” He picked up the telephone receiver.
The telephone was dead in his ear.
“Oh, my,” Flynn said after waiting a moment for an operator to answer. “They’ve done this, too. Cut off the phones. Cocky, please go to your room and try that phone.”
Flynn listened to the silence coming from the telephone. He might as well have been holding a shoe to his ear.
Cocky limped back into the room.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Flynn put the phone back in its cradle and reached for his boots. “Get your coat, Cocky. We’re going for a ride.”
27
“I think the car that was there was a Cadillac.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
In the short walk from the clubhouse to the car park, Cocky had begun to shiver. Flynn realized that Cocky was outdoors seldom nowadays. He had
become acclimated to the overheated police building on Craigie Lane.
“What’s the make of the car that left and came back?” Flynn asked.
“A Mercedes.”
In the five or six centimeters of snow that had fallen, tire tracks made it perfectly clear that some time ago two cars had left, probably at the same time. One car had returned, very recently. The tracks went down the slope, around the lake toward the main gate.
“This old beauty has a marvelous heater,” Flynn assured Cocky as he started the engine of the ancient Country Squire station wagon. He fiddled with the dashboard knobs. The wipers cleared the windshield of snow. Cold air blasted their faces and knees. “In a moment you’ll feel as warm as a politician being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.”
“I wonder who left,” Cocky said into his coat collar. “Who came back.”
Flynn backed the car around. In the snowing dusk he turned on his headlights. He followed the tracks down the slope and around the lake.
“Frank?” Cocky asked. “Do the great variety of murder weapons puzzle you?”
“Indeed they do.”
“A shotgun,” mused Cocky. “A piece of rope. A club.”
“Different methods of operating altogether,” agreed Flynn.
“That usually means different people are doing the murders.”
“It could mean that,” said Flynn. “Or it could mean one person taking whatever opportunities present themselves.”
“Are half the members of The Rod and Gun Club killing the other half?”
“What for?” asked Flynn. “Some traditions are better not started.”
The car slipped a little going around a curve in the woods.
“Obviously they’re not all of the same political party. Dunn Roberts-”
“Ach, no, it’s not that. People who play with power so stratospherically support all parties. They cover their bets. They don’t care so much who is in power, so long as they have influence. And they make sure they do.”
“Then what issue would divide them?”
“To the point of wholesale murder? I don’t know. Maybe somebody’s grandfather insulted somebody’s grandmother. Maybe somebody put frogs in somebody’s bed at school a million years ago.”
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