Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

turning his head with consummate slowness when he heard a pattering sound on the road.

  Dog, he thought straining his eyes. Black dog. Funny-looking one. Like a fox. Was a fox.

  He puffed his pipe; the animal, seeing the eddy of smoke, also saw the man. It vanished.

  Sarah's door was opening. Aggie heaved himself tiredly from the porch railing and hurried into the living room. Danielle's father was replacing things in his bag with hands so swift and dexterous it was interesting to watch him do even that.

  "Got to quarantine Sarah," he said.

  "How's that!"

  "Mumps."

  "Mumps?" Plum echoed.

  "She gave a banquet to a slew of refugee kids. Right interval. Right symptoms.

  Wouldn't stake my reputation on it--but I wouldn't bring her a pickle for breakfast, either.

  Not if I valued my life. In a person of her age--mumps can be serious. Keep her in bed.

  You had 'em?"

  The bearded man was grinning with relief. "Me? Sure. Both sides." Then his left eyebrow lifted in an expression of solicitous mirth. "Boy, will that be a blow to Sarah!"

  CHAPTER 3

  Aggie slept late. When he came downstairs, he found old John preparing his breakfast. "Heard your shower," John said. Aggie gazed at the bright sunshine and the wind-ruffled trees. It was a fine day. He learned that Sarah was "up and swearing" and he carried a cup of coffee into her bedroom.

  She was sitting in a mighty rocker, enveloped in the red kimono, and smoking a cigarette. "This," she said, looking at the cigarette, "makes me feel as if my jaws were full of hot wires. Mumps! Imagine it! Disgraceful!"

  "You said something of the sort, early this A.M."

  "Sit down, Aggie. Drink that coffee. I want you to summon your strength. I've got work for you."

  "Good," he answered. "I mend pipes, spray flowers, build shelves, fix old rock walls, repair tools--"

  "Not that kind of work. My grapevine's in operation and I need a field agent. A person can't snoop--with mumps!"

  He chuckled and shook his head. "For you, Sarah--anything but that. No espionage. You forget. I'm the original social mouse. I hate people. I would rather face a juramentado than a hostess."

  "And what is that?"

  "A juramentado is a hopped-up holy man on a killing jag against infidels."

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. "No. matter. You can't let your favorite relative sit here sweating with curiosity day in and day out. My grapevine has already been working by telephone. By servants' murmurs, carried to me from Windle and from Chillie. I have a host of inquiries in mind. Myriad things that must be known. Problems. Indian Stones is seething with enigmas."

  He eyed her. "You're serious, aren't you? What enigmas?"

  She cleared her throat. "Tell John to bring me more coffee. Never mind. I'll yell."

  She yelled, and went on, "What did you think of Danielle Davis?"

  "That she was the kind of woman about whom the less I thought, the better."

  "Mmm. She was crazy about Bill Calder, once. At least, she led him along in a most sensational manner. Bill's married to Martha Drayman."

  "Let me get this straight. Bill is the son of the evil-mannered Mr. Calder, who barged in here last night? Bill has a sister named Beth, whom I am supposed to marry and have children by? Right? How many children, incidentally? You carelessly forgot to let me know. And Danielle Davis, the menace type, once pursued the luckless Bill, or vice versa, but it came to nothing. Bill is now married to a girl with the nice name of Martha.

  A local belle, too, if she is one of the Draymans that I feebly remember."

  Sarah nodded. "That's it. Well, it happens that I know that Danielle has been eating lunch in odd nooks here and there with Bill Calder--in New York--for some weeks, now. Danielle's not married. She doesn't come up here, as a rule. Makes the summer rounds--Newport--Maine--you know. But she's here this year for the season--and I'll bet that she's out to make trouble for Bill."

  "Put it the non-feminine way. Trouble for Martha. I daresay, wherever that copper-tinged blonde is, there's trouble."

  "So--" said Sarah, "I'll want you to keep tabs on Bill and Danielle. I want to know what they're doing. Danielle's headstrong and she's able, potentially, to ruin Bill and Martha's lives--"

  "Why," he asked, accepting another cup of coffee from John, "do we wantonly barge into that private matter?"

  "Because. I got Martha and Bill married, and I propose to keep them married."

  Aggie nodded as if the idea were acceptable to him. "What's next on our list of meddling and peeking?"

  "Next," she said, without being fazed, "is--what has happened to Hank Bogarty?

  He wired four of us. Jim Calder, George Davis, Byron Waite, and me. The wires were sent yesterday morning from Albany and delivered in the noon mail.

  Plenty of time for him to get here-but he didn't. No one's seen him. He may have had an accident. I'm worried about him."

  "I don't think he had an accident," Aggie said. He told Sarah about the knife and the calling card.

  After he had done so, he wished he had not. His aunt tried to dissemble the fact that she was now very much concerned with the absence of Mr. Bogarty. He could see her intelligent gray eyes alive with numerous speculations, the nature of which he could not guess. Her knitted red bedroom slippers tapped for a full minute. Finally she said,

  "Hank belonged to a family that lived here long before your time. He went to Harvard for a year-which was all he could stand. He was a cross between a sweetie-pie and a grizzly bear--even when he was a youngster. Loved the West. Jim Calder, Dr. Davis, Byron Waite and I--backed him on a prospecting trip--and he's lived in British Columbia ever since. You remember Byron Waite? You kids used to pester him--"

  Aggie nodded. "Did Bogarty make out?"

  "Ye-es," Sarah admitted. "Well enough. Very well, for years. He--he paid us back, all right. And I guess he'll turn up. He was full of fun--and full of the devil too. He's the very kind of person who would stick his card on your door with a knife--to give you a shock--and to make sure you'd see it. He must have called shortly before our arrival last night--and I suppose John was out in the barn, or somewhere." She hesitated. "You're sure the knife was gone?"

  "Yes. Certain. Do you think Calder took it? He probably did."

  "I can't imagine why. He wouldn't know whose it was."

  Aggie started. "Yes, he would--if he examined it when he passed it. The darned thing was monogrammed."

  "With Hank's initials?" Sarah was excited.

  "Search me. I didn't look. I had the calling card--and I assumed the initials were the same."

  "You're a big help," Sarah said. "For an archaeologist, you did fine! Aren't you supposed to observe things--and deduce from them?"

  Aggie grinned. "I draw myself up with dignity," he answered. "I am a scientist--

  not a Paul Pry. How was I to know you'd' be playing house dick this morning? Ask the local cops to trace Bogarty's car. I assume he didn't come here on foot?"

  "It's not that," she answered. "Jim Calder didn't go home last night. He hasn't showed up since."

  Aggie felt a recrudescence of the prickling sensation he had experienced when he saw the knife in the door. The undue worry his aunt had shown, and the urgent behavior of Mr. Calder, began to take form. Something was happening that Sarah would not talk about. At least-that she had not talked about. He waited for her to go on.

  "The Calder cottage," she said, "is being done over. Jim's room is finished-and he was there last night--and the night before--with Gannon, his butler. The rest of the Calders, Beth, and Bill and Martha--are at the Draymans for the moment. That's Martha's mother's house. They didn't see their father last night. Gannon says, this morning, that Jim must have left the house after he'd gone to bed. He came over here, anyhow. What time was that?"

  "Around eleven?"

  "Maybe half past. He didn't sleep in his bed last night. He hasn't been seen since."

  "And you think he p
icked up Mr. Bogarty's knife, walked off on our road toward his home, ran into Bogarty, attacked him, and that they both killed each other and hid each other's bodies?"

  "I'm--worried--that's all."

  "Look, Sarah. Have you got any reason to believe that Mr. Bogarty would do harm to anybody? Or that the unpleasant Mr. Calder--my prospective father-in-law--

  would snatch up a sheath knife and disappear with it, after--say--poking it into somebody? If you have, I think you ought to tell me."

  Sarah considered. "No."

  "I can bank on that?"

  "Well--plenty of people hated Jim. Even old John. Jim robbed him--virtually--and poor old John thinks I don't know it. There's a good deal of unforgotten injury and unrequited hate in every place that has been established for generations, and is as closely knit and as self-centered. But there's no definite reason--no." Aggie had risen. "Where are you going?"

  "Out," he said. "As a matter of principle, I refrain from applying my undoubtedly immense analytical power to the problem of love triangles. Danielle versus Martha does not interest me. I don't know what Martha is like, but I'd say, offhand, that this Bill was a fool not to have married Danielle, if he ever had the chance. It would have been exciting.

  But I will saunter around until I can reduce your worries about Mr. Bogarty, the missing Westerner, and Mr. Calder, the missing meanie. They bother me, a little. Telegram, knives in doors, people not showing up, people vanishing, knives vanishing--yeah. I'm going out."

  Sarah smiled with relief and a certain small malice. "In the Plum blood stream,"

  she said, "there's a gene of nosiness."

  Aggie remembered the clubhouse foyer as accurately as he had the living room of Rainbow Lodge. Deer heads on the paneled walls. Mounted fishes. A prodigal fireplace.

  A desk--like the desk of a hotel. A medley of furniture: Victorian mahogany, rustic hickory and birch, wicker and chintz. There were people sitting around in the foyer when he entered. Somebody was playing table tennis on the glassed-in porch. Waiters were serving luncheon to the early customers in the dining room beyond the archway.

  Aggie walked to the desk, behind which stood a man of his own age, a powerfully built man with amiable features and eyes that were attentive and at the same time somber, as if he had resigned himself to living with an indelible disappointment. He regarded Aggie politely, although with a shadow of amusement at Aggie's oddity, and he asked,

  "What can I do for you, sir?"

  The professor leaned across the desk, tugged at his Vandyke, and said,

  "Remember, Jack, when we sealed up the wasp nest with adhesive plaster and put it in Byron Waite's bureau drawer?"

  The club manager stared uncomprehendingly.

  "--or--the time you and I rigged up a bucket of water in the Patton bathhouse so it would spill on old man Patton--and then you went back in the dressing room for the hammer--and got the water yourself?"

  Jack Browne gaped. "My Lord," he murmured. "You're not Aggie Plum? You can't be!"

  "Then I've mistaken my own identity."

  Jack gulped. "But--! Yeah--you've got the same color hair. It's that beard, maybe."

  He raised his voice, then, to a loud cry that turned the heads of the older people. "Aggie!

  You old scoundrel! Welcome home!"

  Aggie chuckled. Jack started around from behind the desk. Three or four of the people in the room, hearing the name, hastened from their chairs to greet Aggie. He spent. a few minutes talking with them-but, as soon as he could, he wandered away with Jack Browne. Aggie wanted to ask questions, but he listened diplomatically to Jack instead.

  "I suppose it would hurt your feelings if I said you'd changed. I mean--from what-we . all thought you'd grow up to be like. You were energetic--and inventive--and--cockeyed. Neurotic, they'd have called it. Now you look like old Professor Mossback. Hope it doesn't make you mad? You ought to shave off that beard for the summer. No kidding!

  We have a lot of fun here--summers. Winters--aren't so much fun. Sarah told you about me?"

  "Sketchily."

  Jack sighed. "I spend too much time feeling sorry for myself. I had the bright years of college and a lot of Park Avenue--afterward. Then--Dad's business blew up--

  and--"

  "I know."

  Jack Browne forged ahead as if he could not stop himself--as if the circumstances kept running constantly through his mind. "Dad was one of the many who went out of a high Wall Street window in 'twenty-nine. It killed Mother--eventually. I was broke--and the times were tough then. Remember? I tried marrying rich girls--but I could only get engaged. I was seriously thinking of following in Dad's footsteps--when Sarah got me this job--and I've been up here ever since. Year round."

  Aggie looked with sympathy at his one-time playmate. "It's too bad. But none of us turns out to be-just what he'd imagined. I wanted to fight Indians and cannibals and explore the Poles--"

  "You've come pretty close to it, haven't you?" His eyes, resting on Aggie, were envious for a moment. "Seen the works! 'plenty of jack! I'd--" he chuckled--"I'd swap--

  beard and all! Who do you want to meet? What do you want to do? The golf course is in swell shape. Ralph Patton's in there playing table tennis with Beth Calder. You remember Ralph? He's a big-time accountant now. Does all Calder's work--and damn Calder, too!

  He's the guy who wrecked Dad--"

  "I know. Beth's in there playing, eh?" Aggie frowned. "I'd like to take a look at her. Sarah says she's a rare flower."

  "Up to her old tricks, huh? Beth's all right. It's only her dad. Incidentally--he's missing."

  "I should think Beth would be out looking for him."

  Jack shook his head. "If word went around that Jim Calder was drowning, hardly a person at Indian Stones would reach for a life preserver. He probably barged off on one of his confounded errands. Not merciful ones. And he never does leave an itinerary. He goes where he pleases when he pleases, and he likes to be secretive. He'll turn up.

  Unfortunately."

  "Sarah was worried. He called on us last night. She's also worried about why a chap named Bogarty hasn't shown up here, too."

  "Bogarty?" Jack shook his head. "Bogarty. Name's vaguely familiar. Don't know anything about him. Bogarty." They had been walking slowly down the foyer. Now, Jack pointed through French windows. "Beth."

  Beth's back was turned. A figure, Aggie thought, like a fashion model. She said,

  "Eighteen-fourteen?" and Ralph Patton, a squarish, serious man, stopped to wipe the moisture from his glasses. Beth's voice was deep and delicious. Torch singer's, Aggie told himself. Wavy, long black hair, parted in the middle. She saw Ralph's attention lift from his handkerchief and she looked around. A strong, appealing face, with no sign of her father in it. Large eyes, very dark. Sensitivity in her lips and in her long, thin, curved eyebrows. "Hello, Jack," she said. "Introduce Exhibit A, will you? "

  Aggie sat on an ottoman at Sarah's feet, late that afternoon. He was making his report. "I feel as if I'd been pushing around in things that were totally inconsequential. I bought a lunch for Beth and Ralph. He's obviously nutty about her. Or else--trying to worm his way from being Father's accountant to being his son-in-law. Both, maybe. After lunch, I watched them play tennis and I talked to as many of your cronies as I could. No sign of any Davises--or of Byron Waite. I dropped by the Davis house on the way home--

  but they were out. Nobody else seems to know that Hank Bogarty was expected. Most people don't even remember him. Nobody's worried about where Calder is. It seems he's liable to shoot off on a business trip at the drop of a hat. He likes to hike around the woods--too. Likes walking in general. He might have walked clear down to Parkawan and taken a train to New York, for example."

  "Without saying a word? Without any luggage?"

  "He has an apartment in town, hasn't he? Search me. Beth says that if she doesn't hear from him by tonight, she's going to do something about it. I suggested that he might have gone for a stroll and got hurt. Jac
k Browne sent a couple of guys looking along the principal paths. I scurried around myself, a bit. But the paths haven't been used--

  everybody just got here--and those people are so darned afraid Calder will turn up and make any excited effort look silly, that they won't bother. I'm beginning to feel that way, myself. I talked to Bill Calder. He's worried about his father--but he's a lot worse worried about Danielle."

  "How do you know that?"

  Aggie grinned. "Once I get going I'm shifty-and I'm enterprising. I decided maybe the State Police--they're apparently the law-enforcement guys for this area--ought to know about our possible problem. Just a short while ago. I was sitting in the club library.

  I picked up the phone to call--and it was in use. Danielle was cajoling Bill into a date this evening before dinner on Garnet Knob. Quiet tête-à-tête was her idea. Bill balked and she pushed him. I don't know where she was phoning from. He agreed, finally, and I was still sitting with the phone on my lap when Bill came out of the office, where he'd been talking. Surprised both of us. He realized I'd been listening--didn't know who I was--and bawled sin out of me. It was very embarrassing. I made out I hadn't heard much--he had terrible fidgets--and we talked a minute about his missing father. Seems like a nice chap.

  The Danielles of this world should not be allowed to communicate with married men."

  "You then called the State Police?"

  "Not yet. I then came down here to see my inquisitive auntie."

  "You're going up on Garnet Knob, of course?"

  "To watch a lovely creature force her illicit attentions on a harried, married male?

  Nix!"

  "But you're going, nevertheless."

  He opened his mouth to refuse. He said, "Exactly. I'm going. Nevertheless."

  Aggie went through the woods like a ghost. At the club, he was uncomfortable and unsure of himself. In the forest, he was at home. He moved swiftly, keeping near the trail that led up the peak. He heard the sound of a car laboring on a distant lumber road and knew that Danielle and Bill were on their way. He took a short cut that demanded a climb over a steep rock ledge and he came out, presently, on the Knob itself. It rose a thousand feet above the two lakes and afforded a fine view of the blue water, the surrounding hills, the tree-girt cottages, and the sinking sun. He found a place to hide among some wind-fluttered poplars.