A Fatal Feast

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Everyone ready for Tom Turkey?” I asked brightly.

  The main part of the meal went smoothly despite the unexpected presence of Billups. He wasn’t talkative, although he did respond to comments and questions from others at the table. And when we were making toasts—to everyone’s health, to the hostess and her visiting Scotland Yard inspector, to welcome new neighbors—he raised his glass and called out, “Down the hatch.” Everyone laughed except Linda, who had swallowed too quickly and coughed; her husband helped by pounding her on the back.

  George sampled every dish and condiment, complimenting the various chefs who had contributed to the meal, and saving his highest praise for Maureen’s praline sweet potato casserole, an opinion shared by everyone else, including me.

  “It’s a Southern recipe,” she told him shyly. “I know Jessica wanted to have a classic New England menu for you, but I figured she wouldn’t mind if we had sweet potatoes from another part of the country. It’s still American.”

  “I don’t mind where the recipe comes from when it’s as delicious as this,” I said, smiling at her.

  Mort grinned and winked at his wife. I was willing to bet that he’d be delighted to eat these sweet potatoes another day, but I doubted there would be any leftovers for him to take home.

  After the turkey and its accompanying dishes had been consumed and the plates and silverware removed to the kitchen, I suggested we take a break in the living room before coffee and dessert. As was usually the case at Thanksgiving dinner, everyone had eaten too much and needed a respite before attacking the array of pies and cakes provided by the guests, and by yours truly.

  As I’d done at the table, I found myself interested in the interaction between people. Contrary to what I’d expected, Archer Franklin had kept his ego in check. For the most part he ignored Billups; an expression of disgust crossed his face each time he glanced in the direction of the newcomer, but he refrained from making any comment. Wilimena had spent most of the dinner looking concerned, as though a calamity would ensue at any moment. Her sister, Kathy, poked her with her elbow and whispered admonitions to stop being a baby. Mort kept his distance from Billups, and did the same with Victor Carson, who rivaled Billups as a noncommunicator. Linda Carson’s spirits were high throughout the meal, chatting constantly while stealing peeks at Billups. She must have been wondering why I’d invited him. Seth staked out his favorite chair, a plump, overstuffed one where he fought to keep his chin from dropping to his chest. I sympathized with him. The heavy meal had made me drowsy, too.

  “Coffee, Mr. Billups?” I asked.

  “No, thank you. I’ll be going.”

  “But you haven’t had dessert.”

  “Thank you for the dinner. You’re okay. G’bye.”

  I walked him to the door. He said nothing else as he went down the front steps, walked across the road, and disappeared from my sight. An odd man, to be sure, and I wondered what his life had been like prior to coming to Cabot Cove. My intention to learn more about him hadn’t been successful, but maybe others at the table had gleaned information.

  I returned to the living room, where George was in a discussion with Mort, Mayor Shevlin, Archer Franklin, and the Copeland sisters. I picked up snippets of their conversation as I gathered empty glasses to take to the kitchen, where Maureen, Susan, and Linda helped with the cleanup. Franklin was pontificating about what was wrong with Cabot Cove and what he’d do to fix it—provided, of course, that he was in a position to do anything. Seth had dozed off. Victor Carson stood at the window, his attention on anything but the room and those in it. He turned and intercepted me.

  “Enjoying yourself ?” I asked.

  “Huh? Yeah, very much, only I’m not feeling too good.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Can I do anything for you, get you something, an aspirin or—?”

  “I think I’d better leave,” he said.

  “If you’d feel better at home, I certainly understand.”

  I turned toward where the guests were talking. Mort’s focus was on us, a frown on his broad face.

  Victor went to the kitchen to tell his wife that he was leaving. Her expression immediately fell. I could see that she was torn: stay, or go with him?

  “You stay,” he said, and without a parting word he was gone from the house.

  With two down, the eleven remaining guests enjoyed dessert and even livelier conversation than before—Willie had cheered up considerably—until fatigue set in and it was time to end the day. As I said goodbye to my friends at the door, I looked across the road and saw Hubert Billups pacing back and forth. Was he waiting to talk with someone? I wondered.

  “I’ll see if he wants a lift into town,” Seth said. But Billups waved Seth off when he stopped the car. Perhaps he would have accepted if the weather had been foul, but it was a lovely, unusually mild November evening, with plenty of stars and a full moon.

  Once back inside, George suggested we finish the cleanup. The lure of the couch and the urge to let everything slide was powerful, but I knew he was right. An hour later, a little after nine, the house was put back together, and the only reminder of the earlier feast—apart from the aluminum foil packets in my fridge—were the delicious aromas that still lingered in the air.

  “In the mood for a walk?” George asked.

  “Good idea,” I said, “get rid of some of these excess calories.”

  We went along the road in the direction of town, arm in arm, and all was well with the world. Dinner had been a rousing success, especially since it was clear that George had gotten a taste of the holiday traditions and its food, exactly what I had hoped for him.

  “Happy?” he asked.

  “Very. You?”

  “Verra much,” he said, the Scots accent clear. He squeezed my arm and smiled.

  We covered what I judged to be a mile or a little less, and turned around. I was enjoying the crisp air and the company, so when we reached the house, I suggested that we continue to the end of the road, where the Carsons’ home was located.

  “Not the friendliest fellow,” George commented when I mentioned the Carsons.

  “He seemed terribly uncomfortable, but his wife certainly enjoyed herself,” I said. “It was almost as though she seldom gets to go out and felt free for the first time.”

  “About your Mr. Billups,” George said as we slowly strolled along the shoulder of the road, “not a bad chap. His presence seemed to unsettle the sheriff, although everyone else took it in stride.”

  “Not Wilimena Copeland. Billups was the thirteenth person at the table, which really bothered her. I had no idea that she was so superstitious. But I agree with you. Mort was on edge the minute he walked in. I’m sorry if Billups took away some of the pleasure of the holiday for Mort. I didn’t stop to think of the run-ins he’d had with Billups, including the fight we witnessed between him and Archer Franklin. I really can’t blame Mort for being uneasy.”

  Clouds had begun to roll in and obscured the moon during much of our postprandial stroll.

  “I should have brought a flashlight,” I said.

  “Let’s head back,” George suggested.

  We’d reached the Carsons’ house. Lights shone through the windows. Their cat, Emerson, suddenly sprang out of a bush and ran across our path, causing me to jump. George pulled me close. “At least he’s not a black cat,” he said, chuckling.

  “Now don’t tell me you’re superstitious, too.”

  “Not a bit. I’ll even walk under a ladder to prove it to you.”

  “There’s no need for extreme measures,” I said.

  We retraced our steps, the moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. When we were halfway home, they parted and the full moon came to life, shedding light over the swath of weeds that ran alongside the road, the feathery heads of dried grasses rippling in the breeze.

  We were within yards of the house when George stopped. “What’s that?” he said, pointing to an area of tall grass to our right.

  I
squinted to see what had captured his attention. Something in the grass now glistened in the moonlight, tiny specks of brilliance twinkling like earthbound stars.

  It wasn’t until I was ten feet from it that I recognized what it was.

  The hilt of Seth’s knife!

  That should have been cause for celebration.

  But there would be no celebration.

  The elaborately crafted carving knife protruded from a body—a man’s body from the glimpse I saw of his clothes. The moon had washed out the colors. It wasn’t until George knelt beside the victim and swept aside the wispy grass that we saw the lifeless eyes of Hubert Billups.

  Chapter Fourteen

  George stayed with the body as I ran to the house and called 911. Within minutes police and medical personnel started to arrive, their flashing lights, blaring sirens, and crackling radios penetrating the night. Mort Metzger eventually joined his officers and took charge of the scene. They used crime-scene tape to create a wide off-limits area around Billups’s body. George and I stood next to Mort’s squad car and watched as his deputies performed their official duties. An officer videotaped the body from a variety of angles, as well as the surrounding area. Another of Mort’s deputies took measurements. When Mort felt that things were appropriately buttoned down, he came to us.

  “Well, he’s definitely dead. You called it in, huh, Mrs. F?” he said.

  “That’s right. George and I were taking a walk and spotted the handle of the knife sticking up. I was elated at first, thinking we’d found Seth’s missing knife, but then we saw Mr. Billups.”

  “Before you found the body, did you notice anything out of the ordinary or see anybody else while you were walking?” Mort asked.

  George and I looked at each other. “No,” I replied. “There were cars that passed us, but no one on foot.”

  We turned as the medical examiner’s ambulance arrived. The tape was pulled back to allow it to get close to the body, and two men in white coats placed Billups inside. I noticed that the knife had been carefully secured in a brown evidence bag by an officer wearing latex gloves.

  Residents of other houses had ventured forth to see the cause of the commotion. Included among them were Linda and Victor Carson. They stood apart from others. She leaned against him, and he had his arm around her. I was pleased to observe their closeness, even though my instinct that theirs was a troubled marriage hadn’t abated.

  “I’d like you two to come down to my office in the morning and make formal statements,” Mort said.

  “Of course,” said George.

  “In the meantime, I suggest you lock up tight. Looks like we’ve got a homicidal nut running loose in Cabot Cove.”

  George and I returned to my house, where I made coffee, and we sat in the kitchen discussing what had just transpired. I’d been reluctant to express what I’d been worrying about since coming across the body, and George sensed I was holding something back. “Tell me what you’re thinking, lass.”

  “I know it’s an outlandish notion, but it has been running through my mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you think it could have been someone who was here tonight?” I said, chilled by the very thought.

  “I can’t imagine that anyone close to you would be capable of such madness,” he said.

  “I agree,” I said, “but there were others here who aren’t close to me, like Archer Franklin and Victor Carson. I really don’t know them.”

  “Then it’s not unreasonable to consider them suspects, Jessica, but what about the women? You mentioned that Ms. Copeland was upset at his arrival.”

  “Just a silly superstition about having thirteen people at the table. She was afraid it would result in tragedy. And look what happened. Now she’ll be convinced she was right.”

  “Is she—?” He hesitated, patting the patch pockets on his jacket.

  “Is she what?”

  “Is she mentally unbalanced?”

  His question took me aback. “No. Not at all,” I said. “Willie can be quirky, but I don’t see her as a murderer. As I said, I don’t know anything about Victor Carson, and the same holds true for his wife, Linda. Archer Franklin certainly didn’t have any love for Billups. We saw them fighting, and he’d made a number of comments about ridding the town of men like Billups.”

  “True, but he behaved relatively rationally tonight. And he’s a wealthy businessman. Such men don’t usually stoop to stabbing people in the chest with a carving knife.”

  “Ruthless ones stab competitors in the back now and then,” I said.

  George grunted, pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket, and stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Thought I’d go outside and take a pull on my pipe. Helps me to think.”

  “You can do your thinking right here,” I said.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I’ve always been partial to the aroma of a pipe.”

  George settled back in his chair. “What about your neighbor, Victor?” he asked as the flame from his match ignited the tobacco and sent a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air.

  “I’ve been thinking about him. He probably represents the great unknown among people who were here, but why would he kill someone like Billups?”

  “I don’t have an answer,” George said. “I’d say it’s highly unlikely that anyone gathered around your table today is a murderer. Let’s put that notion aside for the moment and step back. Billups was likely to have been killed by one of three people: someone he knew who bore him ill will, someone he may or may not have known, a deranged person, say.” He took a puff on the pipe.

  “And the third?” I asked

  “Someone he didn’t know at all, perhaps someone passing through, who selected him at random.”

  I remembered Mort telling me about a man at Billups’s rooming house with whom Billups had had altercations. And there was Wally Winstead, a notorious Cabot Cove hothead consumed by jealousy over his wife, and who’d physically assaulted Billups. Who knows how many others he’d offended or enraged since his arrival in town?

  George was right. There were ample avenues to follow to Billups’s murderer without turning a suspicious eye on those who’d shared our Thanksgiving table. It had to have been someone from town with a grudge against Billups, or he’d been slain during a chance meeting with his killer.

  It was almost midnight when George announced that he was leaving. I walked him to his rental car.

  “Okay to drive to Seth’s house?” I asked, aware that he’d had two short drinks of Scotch and water.

  “I’m fine,” he said. He placed his hands on my shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “I’m sorry, lass.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  “That you’ve ended up close to another murder.”

  “That seems to be my fate.”

  “Sure you’ll be all right alone? I’ve slept on many a couch in my day.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll lock up. We’ll go to Mort’s office first thing in the morning?”

  “I’ll be here at eight.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  We kissed good night and I watched him drive away. The mild night had turned chilly—or was it an inner chill I felt? I went to the house, ensured that the doors and windows were locked, poured myself a glass of cranberry juice, and settled behind the desk in my study. I’d forgotten about my novel and how far I was falling behind with each passing day. I stared at the computer screen on which the last page I’d written reminded me that I’d neglected to build upon it, advance the story, continue to lead my characters in the direction I intended for them.

  “Go to bed,” I told myself, and reached to turn off the desk lamp. But the last of the letters I’d been receiving over the past eight days stopped me. “GLOTCOYB,” I said aloud.

  Was there any connection between them and the fate that had befallen Billups? My earlier happiness had faded. I felt very much alone at that moment, impotent,
unable to write my book or to make sense of anything—of unwelcome letters from a stranger, or the murder of a man who’d been watching me for weeks and who’d enjoyed dinner at my house only hours earlier.

  I quickly undressed for bed and climbed beneath the covers. The full moon that had illuminated our grisly discovery was now positioned in the sky so that it was fully visible through one of the bedroom windows. Despite its beauty, it was too much of a reminder of what had occurred that evening. As I got out of bed and approached the window, intending to close the drapes, the honey-colored moon seemed to turn bloodred. I snapped the drapes together, scurried back to bed, and waited for sleep to deliver me from reality.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Appreciate you folks coming in so early,” Mort said after George and I had given our statements.

  “Nothing more you can remember?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” I replied. “We were taking a walk and came upon the body.” I picked up a photo of the crime scene from Mort’s desk and examined it.

  “You, Inspector?”

  “I think we’ve covered everything, Sheriff.”

  “Did you notice how the angle of the knife is straight in?” I said, turning the picture sideways to see if it made a difference.

  George leaned over to see what I was looking at. “Whoever killed him slipped that knife between two ribs straight into his heart.”

  “Do you have any leads, Mort?” I asked.

  “Too soon for that, Mrs. F. I’m heading over to that rooming house where he lived. I sent one of my deputies there to make sure nobody disturbs it.”

  “Mind if we tag along?” I asked.

  “Now, why would you want to do that, Mrs. F?”

  “I feel very much a part of this,” I said. “He’d been a guest at my dinner table hours before he was murdered, and had been spending an inordinate amount of time standing across from my house. Besides, there’s the matter of the knife that killed him. It belonged to Seth, and I lost it.”

  “We lost it,” George corrected.