She grabbed the rifle, held it firmly to her shoulder, took careful aim at One-ear and fired.
She returned the rifle to Barnaby, then struck him as hard as she could.
Barnaby rose, tossed the rifle aside and hit her back. They fell to the floor, fighting savagely.
Sergeant Coulter stood in the doorway. Never had he been so frightened.
It was a warlock’s Sabbath that met the horrified gaze of the Mountie, blood and death and flickering shadows, with the cougar hounds, leaping over everything, baying and snarling like creatures from unspeakable regions, and the two hysterical children twisting on the floor, screaming.
He kicked the dogs aside, spurring the famous hound, Mynheer, who, blood-crazed, perversely insisted on worrying the throat of Uncle rather than One-ear.
He reached the children, dragged them apart, picked them up and carried them, one under each arm, outside.
They still screamed. Overcome by relief and a senseless rage, he slapped them until they both hiccuped to silence.
He handed them to Constable Browning.
‘Take them home,’ he said, and re-entered the church.
DR WHEELER CAME OVER from Benares to sign the death certificate. Cause of death? Death was due to misadventure, and the case was closed.
Apart from One-ear and Uncle, the only other casualty was Constable Browning, who had injured his foot when he fell in some sort of pit in the forest, during the darkness.
It was a darned crime, he said, for people to go around leaving things like that open, and it should be filled in. But Sergeant Coulter, who was an Island boy and knew all about these things, said it had probably been there for fifty years, and it was only one chance in a million that anyone had fallen in it, so remote was its position. It was probably a trap, made by the Indians.
Barnaby, that sturdy little fellow, was a hero. Yes, Christie said, once she got her breath back, Barnaby had shot the cougar after it had killed Uncle. Barnaby modestly admitted this was so.
Reporters came from the city to take pictures and write stories of the plucky boy who, single-handed, had shot the largest cougar on record. The dread cougar who for so long had ravaged the peaceful countryside.
The Islanders were stunned by the death of poor Uncle Sylvester, but the man would no doubt be justly canonised in heaven, dying as he had to protect those helpless innocents. Mr Rice-Hope wondered if he should ask the Bishop for the rites of exorcism, for surely his little church had been invaded by a demon incarnate.
‘My dear children, my dear children,’ he cried, clasping them to his bosom, ‘you have no idea how close you came to the fiend himself. That animal was almost human.’
He paused.
‘Dear me,’ he added in alarm, ‘what am I saying?’
One-ear lay wrapped in a bloody tarpaulin on the deck of Sven Anderson’s boat. The photographers wanted to take Barnaby’s picture holding the rifle and standing beside the huge cougar, but the child went so pitifully white at the suggestion that Mr Brooks intervened.
Leading the press away, he chided them on their lack of delicacy.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the poor child saw that animal kill his uncle. Why, Major Murchison-Gaunt was like a father to the boy. Surely you must realise how shocking the sight of the beast, dead or alive, must be to him.’
He shook his head and fumbled for his pipe, at a loss for words, and shamefaced, even those hardened men left the child to his natural grief.
The one little fly in the ointment was the rifle. The children insisted they had found it in Desmond’s shack. Desmond, they said, had found it on the wharf.
Sergeant Coulter knew how hopeless questioning poor Desmond would be, and since he couldn’t shake the story of the children, he was forced to accept it for the time being. But the gun had been stolen, and he knew it, and poor Desmond, in his whole thirty-five years, had never before taken anything that did not belong to him.
Albert was a patient man, and he knew that the truth, like murder, would out. The children had been subject to quite enough excitement in the last twenty-four hours. He would give them a couple of days’ grace before interrogating them further about the rifle.
He and Constable Browning were in the launch, on their way to the little hospital at Benares where Constable Browning would have his ankle X-rayed.
Constable Browning sat resting his injured foot, staring reflectively at Sergeant Coulter.
‘They’re going to hang Gitskass Charlie.’
‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Coulter, ‘I thought they would.’
He hated the idea that he was secretly relieved.
‘I saw Skookum Charlie, Sonny’s uncle, in Nanaimo last week. The way he spoke, it sounds as if they’ll hold a family celebration when they hang Sonny. It doesn’t seem right. After all, he is a member of their family.’
‘So was his father,’ observed Sergeant Coulter drily.
Constable Browning scratched his head.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Gitskass Charlie is crazy. It doesn’t seem right in this day and age to hang people for being mentally incompetent. Don’t you think so?’
‘The courts found him sane. That’s why they’re hanging him.’
‘I know, but it stands to reason, people don’t commit murders like that if they are sane.’
Sergeant Coulter sighed. Constable Browning was twenty-one years of age and he could, Sergeant Coulter knew, argue interminably on a moral point.
‘Listen,’ said Albert, ‘just try to remember that we’ve got a lot of intelligent people who decide what laws are legislated. We have our little say when we vote, and after that all we do is enforce them.’
‘Well, do you think it’s right to hang Gitskass?’
‘If that’s the law.’
Constable Browning was not giving in so easily.
‘But what if the wrong people got in power in the government. It could happen, you know. Look at Hitler. The people put him in power. What if that happened in Canada, and laws were passed saying that all mental patients had to be destroyed. Would you still obey the law?’
‘It won’t happen in Canada.’
‘That’s it! It can’t happen here!’ said Constable Browning with youthful triumph. ‘Well, it did in Germany. You were a prisoner of war, you know what they did well enough. What would you do then? Would you still enforce the law and help round up all the crackpots of the country and gas them?’
‘What are you trying to do, make me into a Storm Trooper?’
‘It’s a hypothetical question. What’s your answer?’
‘Another hypothetical question. Why didn’t you join the Brownies instead of the Mounties?’
Constable Browning gave him a wounded look, and, picking up the field glasses, he limped out to the deck.
‘Don’t go away mad,’ Albert called after him, laughing.
Constable Browning had had two years, university, and Sergeant Coulter was undecided if they were too much or too little.
As the launch passed Death Beach, Sergeant Coulter was startled to hear.
‘Oh my God!’
‘What’s the matter?’ he called. ‘Are you all right?’
When he received no answer, he cut the motor and dashed onto the deck, where he found Constable Browning standing with his head bowed and the glasses dangling from his hand.
Looking past him, Sergeant Coulter saw the leaky old rowboat, half filled with water, bobbing on the waves.
He grabbed the field glasses and swept them over the beach.
Then he, too, bowed his head and the glasses dangled from his hand.
The two little pairs of shoes, as sad as empty Christmas stockings, stood by the water’s edge, one pair still laced the way a naughty, careless boy would step out of them. Sergeant Coulter raised the glasses again.
Yes, they were Barnaby’s. The toes were slit, just as Sergeant Coulter remembered seeing them. How terrible! Spared from death by One-ear, only to be drowned the following da
y!
Two white-faced Mounties returned to the dock.
‘Start making arrangements for dragging operations,’ Sergeant Coulter shuddered. ‘And I - I - I suppose I’ll have to go up and see the Brookses and Mrs Nielsen.’
But before he had a chance to impart the dreadful news, he ran into the two departed spirits. They were sitting on the porch of the store chawing green apples.
‘What - how - ?’ Sergeant Coulter paused, unable to speak. His emotions were twofold: he was so glad to see them alive; at the same time he wanted to box their ears for going back to that beach.
Startled by his expression, they leaped to their feet.
‘You’ve been back to Death Beach!’ he shouted.
They protested their innocence so indignantly and vehemently that he believed them.
‘Well how do you explain the rowboat out in the water? It was past the tide line on the beach, so don’t tell me it floated out. And how did your shoes get there if you haven’t been there?’
They knew nothing about the rowboat, and the last time they had seen their running shoes was when they had left them in front of the stove in the store to dry. The running shoes had disappeared and the children couldn’t find them.
The boy was playing with an odd-looking weighted piece of wire.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
Barnaby handed it to him.
A commando garrote. Sergeant Coulter hadn’t seen one in years. The handgrips of teak were worn smooth.
‘Where did you get this?’
Uncle had had it in his hands when One-ear leaped on him, said the boy.
Albert stood puzzled, looking down at it.
‘I want the truth,’ he began, and stopped, appalled by the expressions on their faces. Their teeth chattered with terror, and without a word, they turned and fled.
Sergeant Coulter looked around. It was only poor Desmond. Why were they so frightened of him?
Ah, but having wound poor Desmond up, they had completely forgotten to unwind him.
‘Desmond,’ said Sergeant Coulter gently, ‘have you done something to scare the kids? You haven’t been a bad boy, now, have you?’
‘Uh uh,’ said Desmond, putting his finger in his mouth.
Still puzzled, the Mountie shook his head and turned to go, but Desmond barred his path.
He stood squarely in the way, took his finger out of his mouth and scratched his head.
Finally he remembered.
‘I did it!’ he said with his lucid smile.
‘You did what, Desmond?’
But Desmond had forgotten again. Sergeant Coulter decided there would be no more mysteries on his Island.
In a friendly manner, he put his hand on Desmond’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, whatever it is, Desmond. Now you try and remember what it was you did.’
Desmond moaned, wrung his hands and begged Sergeant Coulter not to scare him with the snake.
So that was it. The damned kids had been teasing Desmond.
‘It’s all right, I haven’t got any snake, Desmond.’
Desmond smiled.
‘Now I remember,’ he said distinctly. ‘I killed the uncle. Barnaby’s uncle.’
Sergeant Coulter swallowed hard.
‘You what?’
‘Yup.’
‘Now listen here, Desmond,’ said Sergeant Coulter, and his voice was very quiet, ‘One-ear, the cougar, killed Barnaby’s uncle. I know. I know that for sure. Right now it’s about the only thing I am sure of.’
‘Yes,’ said Desmond, delighted that Sergeant Coulter was following his reasoning, ‘that’s it. I mistook the uncle for the cougar. I mistook the uncle for the cougar and I shot him.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sergeant Coulter, his eyes cold and hard. ‘Then you must have had a gun, Desmond. Tell me what you know about the gun, Desmond.’
‘Gun?’ Desmond was in agony again and wrung his hands once more. ‘Gun?’
Then he smiled. ‘Yes, the gun. They put it under my bed. I found it but they told me not to touch it.’
‘They did, did they? Did they tell you to say this, about killing Major Murchison-Gaunt?’
‘Who?’ said Desmond.
‘The uncle, the uncle, Barnaby’s uncle.’
‘Yup,’ said Desmond proudly. He’d been a good boy and remembered everything. ‘Can I have a candy now?’
‘Yes, of course, Desmond.’
He took poor Desmond by the arm and led him toward the police launch.
Constable Browning limped out.
‘The kids are all right,’ said Sergeant Coulter. ‘See if Sven will give you a lift over to Benares. I want to talk to Desmond. Have you got any candy around? I promised Desmond some.’
‘There’s a chocolate bar in the desk drawer.’
When he had left them, Sergeant Coulter turned to Desmond.
‘Don’t be frightened, Desmond. I think, Desmond, that you and I will have a little talk.’
They had a lovely little talk, particularly Desmond. He had known Albert since they were children and he adored him.
Completely relaxed and unafraid, he told everything. His mind, with the fidelity of a tape recorder, reeled off conversations word perfect.
It took Desmond a long, long time, but then, Sergeant Coulter was a patient man. It all came out, the abortive raid on the police launch, the theft of the American gun, the million-dollar murder partnership, the snake pressed into service to aid poor Desmond in his memory course, and the various plans to kill the wicked uncle.
Hours later, a weary, broken man left the police launch. It was Sergeant Coulter.
When he reached Benares he found that Constable Browning would be off his feet for a few days. Albert visited Sven Anderson and asked if he might borrow his famous hound, Mynheer, for the afternoon.
He could have had an R.C.M.P. tracking dog from Victoria, but this was something he preferred to do unofficially, on his own time.
Mynheer was a friendly beast and he bounded joyfully from Albert’s speedboat and up the wharf. Albert called him back and, looping his hand in the dog’s collar, he led him past the store, along the path and up to the Major’s cottage.
Albert was frightened again, and only his inbred discipline forced him to continue. If the children had been wrong about the uncle, it was terrible. It was even worse if they were right.
He poked around the silent, clueless rooms. Taking a high-powered magnifying glass from his pocket, he carefully examined the whiskey bottle, the brass Turkish coffeepot and the Major’s toothbrush mug.
The prints were strangely blurred and he could only conclude that Major Murchison-Gaunt had had hair on the palms of his hands.
He was puzzled, for he had never seen anything similar. As a matter of fact the prints bore no particular resemblance to those of even one of the higher primates.
He replaced everything he had touched, and going into the bedroom closet he took out a pair of the Major’s shoes. Then, leading the dog out, he held one of the shoes before its nose. The dog sniffed, lowered his head and began scampering down the path that led to the store.
Albert called him back. He already knew Uncle had been in the habit of taking that route.
The obedient Mynheer returned and obligingly sniffed again. Once more he lowered his head and this time he began running in short circles. Then, his nose on the ground like a vacuum cleaner and his tail waving proudly, Mynheer started for the path that led to the forest. He paused, looked at Albert with his big, sagging eyes, as if to inquire ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ and with nose down and ears flapping, he led Albert straight to that pit.
Only Albert knew now, it wasn’t a pit. It was a grave.
He looked at the ferns, the earth-packed roots carefully wrapped in sacking, ready to be transplanted, and then he followed the dog to a shallow stream where the dog flushed out the bucket used for watering, cunningly hidden under some bushes at the water’s edge.
Albert sat on a log, ab
sently stroking Mynheer’s head. He took out the garrote and stared at it, sickened by the posthumous evidence of Uncle’s handiwork.
They had tried to tell him. They had all tried to tell him, even Hobbs, but he would not listen. The professor was not crazy after all, he was merely shocked, as Albert now was, by even the memory of that man.
Albert bowed his head on his hands and wondered if he should resign. It was criminal negligence on his part and it was no thanks to him that the children were alive.
Mynheer put his forepaws on Albert’s knee and licked Albert’s hands. The policeman jerked his head back, then he put his arm about the dog’s neck and sat for a long, long time, staring into the forest.
My dear,
This is probably the last letter I will be writing to you. You didn’t get any of the others, and you won’t get this one, but I must write it, because I must tell someone.
I have reached the crossroads and for the first time since I took the oath of ‘Without Fear, Favour or Affection’ I am going to do something which can only be construed as a travesty of all three.
The real tragedy of people who are in the position I now find myself in is that, having done one dishonourable thing, they move on to the next. This won’t happen to me, I promise you. I’m only too aware that it’s the little rift within the lute that by and by will make the music mute. You didn’t know I liked poetry, did you? There are so many things we shall never know about each other. You will never know what I am going to do tonight.
I am going to withhold evidence and destroy a report. I don’t know if you realise the seriousness of that from my viewpoint. I have thought about it until I am dizzy and it’s the only way out. Those two children planned and very nearly committed a murder. It wasn’t the uncle’s fault, it was mine. He was a homicidal maniac; I am not, I am only incredibly stupid.
If I file that report, the case will be reopened. And no matter which way I write it, the children emerge as a couple of monsters. If I could prove anything about the uncle there might be some loophole, but he was too clever. And as far as the children are concerned, the facts remain. They stole a gun for the purpose of killing - it’s called malice aforethought in law - the boy promised the girl the sum of a million dollars, to be paid when he was twenty-one, to help him commit the murder. Then they tortured the village idiot and tried to pin the rap on him. Nice pair of kiddies, aren’t they.
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