Major Vices

by Mary Daheim

  Jill nodded. “The brickwork can be finished right away. I’ll wait until the weather gets better before I have the roof done. In fact, that silly Toadie should have held off on the masonry until summer. It’s so cold in here.”

  Judith was about to concur when something peculiar dawned on her. It was a stray comment, seemingly without relevance. And yet, with Jill’s remark about the chill feeling inside Major Manor, Judith’s brain began to follow its customary pattern of logic.

  But before she could pose a question to Jill, the front doorbell chimed. Jill went off to answer it just as Renie returned with a tall glass of milk. Judith hurried over to the window. She saw a KINE-TV van pulled up at the curb.

  “Drat! The media have landed,” she said to Renie.

  Renie shrugged. “They were bound to, eventually. I suppose they couldn’t get up the hill until now. You want to be on television?”

  “I sure don’t,” Judith replied. “I’d have to identify myself, and then Buck Doerflinger would know who I am. Let’s go upstairs. Or better yet, out the back and hide in the garden.”

  Renie bolted her milk, grabbed three more cookies, and followed Judith out through the kitchen. Shrugging back into their jackets, the cousins headed for the lily pond. They descended the steps furtively, looking over their shoulders to make sure that the TV reporters on the front porch couldn’t see them. A glimpse told them that Jill must be fending them off: The quartet of three men and one woman hadn’t yet penetrated Major Manor.

  “She can’t stop them from filming the house,” Renie noted. “They can go around in back and get an exterior of the den. That ought to satisfy them.”

  The cousins were now out of sight, in the sunken garden next to the pond. Judith shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun, which had grown uncommonly bright for February. She started to sit down on one of the stone benches, but the ripples on the thawed pond caught her eye.

  So did the body which had floated to the surface. Judith stifled a scream. Renie choked on her last cookie.

  FIFTEEN

  WITH A SHAKING hand, Judith hit Renie on the back. The cousins’ eyes were riveted on the corpse. It was a man of medium build, perhaps middle-aged, facedown among the lily pads. He was wearing dark slacks and a deep green ski parka. Renie sputtered and turned away. Judith gritted her teeth and edged closer. The body bobbed peacefully as the winter wind ruffled the waters of the pond.

  “What do we do?” Renie asked falteringly.

  Judith craned her neck, trying to see over the terraced bank that led up from the sunken garden. Despite her height, she couldn’t manage it. “We wait. The last thing I want to do is alert the media and get myself plastered all over KINE-TV. Or KWIP, or any of the nightly newscasts.”

  “Great,” Renie said, her tone morbid. “We get to sit down here in this hole with a stiff. Is there another way out?” Trying to avoid looking at the dead body, Renie scanned the terraces that surrounded the pond. “We might climb up the other side and escape through the rose garden.”

  Dubiously, Judith regarded the landscaping. The spaces between the terraced plots were fairly steep. “We’d still have to hide out until the TV people leave,” she said.

  “We’d have better company,” Renie pointed out. But she didn’t press her cousin. It wouldn’t do to sprain an ankle or break a leg trying to climb out of the sunken garden.

  Judith went over to stand on the bottom flagstone step. She saw no sign of Jill, but after cautiously ascending to the second step, she could observe the TV crew opening the van and removing their equipment.

  “They’re going to film something,” she told Renie. “Let’s make for the gazebo while they’re busy with the cameras and stuff.”

  Renie was only too glad to follow orders. Once away from the sunken garden and the lily pond with its gruesome burden, the cousins dashed from shrub to shrub to ensure not being spotted. Moments later, they were in the gazebo, brushing away cobwebs, dried leaves, and dust.

  The hexagonal structure gave them the opportunity to see out while staying hidden. They had just settled in when the KINE crew hauled their equipment onto the front lawn. Judith figured they had Jill’s permission to go that far and no farther.

  “They shouldn’t take too long,” she said. “We don’t want to call the police until after they leave.”

  “And how do we do that?” Renie asked wryly.

  Judith’s face fell. “Damn! I forgot. Maybe we can go back to the neighbor up on the corner.” She sounded dubious.

  Renie was peering through an opening in the lattice-work. “The woman must be the reporter. They’re hooking her up with a mike.”

  Judith glanced outside, but since she’d overcome the initial shock of finding yet another body, her mind was racing ahead. “Who can it be? There’s nobody from the household or family unaccounted for.”

  It was clear from Renie’s blank expression that she hadn’t given the man’s identity much thought. “The jewel thief?” she said off the top of her head. “Making his getaway and slipping on the ice? Maybe he drowned.”

  Judith was silent for a moment. “I’ve heard worse theories—like Buck and the big box.” She snuggled into her jacket and gave Renie a half smile. “This is nice. Peaceful, I mean.”

  Renie looked aghast. “Coz, you are nuts. There’s a corpse floating around with the lily pads, a murderer may or may not be on the loose, somebody’s made off with a fortune in jewels, your husband let you down, and your mother’s acting like…your mother.”

  Taken aback, Judith stared at Renie, then lowered her eyes, along with her voice. “You know me—I always try to look on the bright side. I’ve had to. For years there was so little of it.”

  Renie’s expression softened. She knew that the only thing that had seen Judith through the dark decades of her marriage to Dan had been her buoyancy. And her courage and her patience and her inner strength, which were all the same when it came right down to it. As ever, Renie could overlook almost any of Judith’s flaws.

  “So what’s your idea?” Renie inquired as the TV crew marched around the south side of Major Manor, presumably to get the den on film.

  Judith looked a bit startled at Renie’s change of subject. “About the body? I don’t know. I can’t imagine who it could be. As a wild guess, I’d say it was one of the masons. Maybe Toadie fired them because they drank. Nothing people do is ever too outlandish. That’s where logic sometimes fails me. Often, people don’t act at all logically. Let’s say this guy got drunk, got fired, went down to the pond to sulk, passed out, and fell in. It’s no weirder than your jewel-thief scenario.”

  “True,” Renie agreed. She jumped as a spider crawled out of a crack and headed for her wrinkled pants. “But he isn’t dressed like a workman. It looked as if he was wearing slacks. And that parka is too snazzy to wear for laying bricks.”

  There was no argument from Judith, only a craning of her neck as she tried to see where the TV crew was now. The garage jutted out from the house, blocking the view of the den and the surrounding lawn.

  “Weed Wakefield said something interesting—a couple of things, actually,” Judith told Renie. “He asked me when a shot didn’t sound like a shot. Now, it’s possible that the pressure-cooker explosion, which was very loud, might have masked the noise of the gun, but I doubt it. The coincidence would be too great.”

  “Unless it was planned.” Renie arched her eyebrows.

  Judith reflected briefly. “That would mean collusion, probably on the part of the Wakefields. And that’s impossible, because Mrs. Wakefield and Zoe were both helping us serve at the time.”

  Renie cocked her head inside the hood of her jacket. “Okay, scratch the pressure cooker. So what about the other noises?”

  “Two fairly loud thuds—for want of a better word, but not exactly the same. And, as Weed asked, when doesn’t a shot sound like a shot? When a silencer is used, that’s when.” Judith gave Renie a self-satisfied look.

  “So where’s the sile
ncer? It wasn’t attached to the gun you found in the garbage can.”

  Judith deflated. “I know. But it could have been removed. You’re right, though—it has to be somewhere, which leads me to the other remark Weed made.”

  “Which was?” coaxed Renie.

  But Judith put a finger to her lips. The crew from KINE was coming around the north end of the house. They stopped by the back porch, a mere ten yards away. One of the men went over to the terminal box and bent down to examine it. The cousins sat motionless while the camera recorded the cable cutting. They could hear the clear, professional voice of the female reporter speaking to her would-be viewers:

  “…and to add to the mystery of Major Manor, someone severed the outside telephone wires, thus cutting the inhabitants of the house off from the rest of the world. This is Sheila Resnik, reporting from the murder site on The Bluff, a neighborhood where violence is not only a stranger, but in very poor taste.”

  Judith winced. She winced twice more, since Sheila apparently wasn’t satisfied with her first two versions. At last the television crew headed back to the van. The cousins waited until the vehicle was out of sight.

  “As you were saying,” Renie urged as they went back to the house. “Weed?”

  “One thing at a time,” Judith replied. “I’m still wondering about that other sound. What was it? More to the point, why was it?”

  Jill was in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine. “Thank God they’re gone. What pests! I could only get rid of them by promising not to call the police and have them thrown off the lawn, and then I let it slip that I couldn’t call because the phone wires were cut! I’m not very good at handling crises, I guess.”

  “This isn’t your usual crisis,” Judith said in consolation. “By the way, what’s going on with the phones?”

  Jill took a sip of her wine, then offered some to the cousins, who declined. “My parents were going to report the problem to the phone company when they got home. I bet nobody will come until Monday, though.”

  Judith waited for Jill to take another drink. “Uh…there’s something you should know, Jill. I hate to mention it, but…ah…there’s somebody out in the lily pond.”

  Jill’s reaction was one of annoyance. “Kids? They should be in school. Oh, no—it’s Saturday…”

  “Not kids,” Judith said gently. “A man. A dead man. We’ve got to call the police. Again.”

  Jill went pale. The wineglass trembled in her hand. “Oh, no! I can’t believe it! This house is cursed!”

  Alarmed by her reaction, Judith led the younger woman into the breakfast nook and sat her down at the table. “It might have been an accident,” Judith said quietly. She described the man as best she could. “We can’t tell what happened to him just from looking. Do you have any idea who he might be?”

  Except for the possibility of the masons, Jill didn’t. Her color began to return, though she drank her wine with haste. “Somebody walking in the fog last night…Maybe he wandered onto the grounds and fell in the pond…?” She gave Judith a hopeful look.

  “It’s possible.” Judith tried to sound encouraging. “The main thing is that we have to call the police.” She explained about the chilly reception from the neighbor on the corner. “I hate to bother her again, but we didn’t find anyone else at home. Of course, we could try the street across from the front of the house.”

  Jill, however, was eager to volunteer. “I belong here now, so the neighbors better not treat me like an intruder. I’ll tell this stuck-up shrew that I’m Mrs. Major. She’d better kneel and kiss my feet.”

  The cousins wished Jill luck. After she had left, Judith checked her watch. It was a few minutes after three. “An hour or so until the tow truck gets here,” she murmured. “Say, won’t Bill be wondering what’s happened to you?”

  Renie gave Judith a wide-eyed stare. “Bill? My husband, Bill, on a Saturday in February? Even now, he’s watching the final one hundred and twenty-eight college basketball teams dribble their way to the Final Four. The kids all had plans, so he’s home alone, and loving it. You know Bill, the Neville Chamberlain of family life—peace at any price.”

  Judith acknowledged Renie’s wifely appraisal. Joe was probably still at work. Her six guests could be checking in at any time, though officially they shouldn’t show up until after four o’clock. “I wonder if Mother will think to be in the house so that she can let the new guests in. I should have gone with Jill and asked to use the phone, too.”

  “What makes you think your mother will open the door?” Renie asked, her eyes dancing.

  Judith made a face. “What makes me think she’ll answer the phone? She doesn’t always. Honestly, the one time I get in a bind, my nearest and dearest treat me as if I were a big germ.” She glanced at her watch again, seeking reassurance that the minute hand hadn’t spun ahead and eaten away her hour of grace. “I can wait, I suppose, and see if the tow truck gets here a few minutes early.” Without another word, she headed for the entry hall. Renie tagged along.

  “The noises,” Judith said doggedly as they went into the den. “Think about them. Skip the pressure cooker, and concentrate on the other two. When did we hear them? Who was where?”

  Renie sat down in one of the two side chairs. Judith seated herself behind the desk. “We were getting ready to leave,” Renie recalled in a measured voice. “I’d estimate it was around nine-twenty or a couple of minutes earlier. Zoe was helping us, Mrs. Wakefield was with Weed, Aunt Toadie came from the living room to ask about the noise—”

  “No,” Judith broke in, emphatically shaking her head. “Toadie came out after the pressure cooker blew up. She didn’t return again. How long before we heard the second of the two unaccounted-for sounds?” Judith was relying on Renie’s keen sense of time.

  “Five minutes? No more. Mrs. Wakefield and Zoe helped us cart the stuff out to the car, remember? Then I realized I had forgotten my purse.” Renie looked chagrined. “If only I hadn’t—”

  “Never mind,” Judith interrupted briskly. “We might have skidded down the hill and killed ourselves. Jill said it was nine-thirty-seven when the rest of them decided to go. We came back in the house just as they were trying to say good-bye to Uncle Boo.” She paused, opening a desk drawer and taking out a ruled tablet and a ballpoint pen. She made out a time schedule, based on Renie’s and Jill’s estimations.

  9:01—Boo goes into den

  9:06—Guests move to living room

  9:08—Beets blow up

  9:20—First unidentified noise

  9:25—Second unidentified noise

  9:35—Cousins leave

  9:37—Guests start leaving

  9:39—Cousins return

  “One of those two sounds must have been the shot with a silencer affixed to the gun,” Judith declared. “Why two? What was the other one and which was which?” She tore off the paper on which she’d been writing and passed it to Renie.

  “What,” Renie mused, staring at the sequence of events, “if the man in the pond was also shot? I know the sounds weren’t exactly alike, but if they were fired in two different places, couldn’t that account for the discrepancy?”

  “Maybe.” Judith chewed on her lower lip. “But why? Neighbor strolling through sleet storm just happens to see murder most foul and killer runs out and shoots him on the spot, then throws his body in the lily pond? It’s possible, I suppose, but…Ah!”

  Renie saw Judith’s face light up. “What?”

  Excited, Judith jumped around in Uncle Boo’s swivel chair. “I just had an idea which we will check out shortly. But first, let’s take another look at these times. When were Jill and Mason out in the entry hall?”

  Renie wasn’t sure. Neither was Judith, but after some intensive concentration, they agreed that Mrs. Wakefield had spotted the pair before the pressure-cooker explosion.

  “Which,” Judith noted, “would have been between nine-oh-one and nine-oh-eight. But we don’t know when either of them came back to the livin
g room. And we don’t know exactly when Holly and Vivvie made their separate trips to the bathroom.”

  “If Derek went out to the garage to smoke, why didn’t he see Mason coming or going?” Renie queried. “Had Mason already returned to the living room? He would have had to come in that way or go through the kitchen if he really went outside to the car.”

  Judith nodded. “Unless Mason went somewhere else. Or Derek did. And Toadie—she checked on Uncle Boo but says she didn’t go in the den.” She tapped the timetable. “My, but there was a lot of activity in and out of the entry hall during this thirty-six-minute period.”

  Renie looked rueful. “There sure was. Along with the Wakefields, we were about the only ones who weren’t there.”

  “Zoe could have been there,” Judith pointed out, “while she was cleaning up in the dining room. Her mother, too.”

  Renie quibbled. “I doubt it. Both of them were back and forth at a pretty good clip. Then the pressure cooker blew and Mrs. Wakefield went downstairs to tend to Weed.”

  “True.” Judith had to concede the point. For a long moment the cousins were silent. Renie appeared to be admiring the rich mahogany paneling. Judith was studying the room itself, as if it might reveal something she’d overlooked. “What’s missing?” she asked at last, her gaze fixed on the desk.

  “You mean besides Boo?” Renie considered. “The brandy snifter. Mrs. Wakefield took it away. The key. Ditto. Or was it the police?”

  Judith tipped her head to one side. “And?”

  Renie frowned. “The blotter’s still there; so’s the ashtray. I don’t remember anything else.”

  Judith leaned forward and grinned at Renie. “The cigar. Where is Boo’s cigar?”

  Renie scoffed at the question. “Boo dropped it, I suppose. It probably fell on the floor and the police picked it up.”

  But Judith had pushed the chair back from the desk and was leaning down to examine the intricate parquetry. “Then why isn’t there a burn mark? The cigar would have smoldered for some time before the police arrived. There’s no sign of it.”