Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

  After a while, Danielle and Bill came up the trail, panting. They stood on the eroded rock, which was hob-nailed with true but valueless garnets. Bill looked at the scenery, to avoid looking at the blonde girl. Danielle looked at Bill.

  He spoke first. "What's it all about? I can't just rush off at suppertime and leave Martha because you insist on it. That woofly little Plum guy heard you talking to me, too.

  He was listening on the phone. In about forty-eight hours it'll be all over Indian Stones that we were up here."

  Aggie smirked at the indictment of his tact. When he thought of Sarah's penchant for gossip, his smirk subsided.

  Danielle said, "You told me--in New York--that you were looking forward to the summer, because I'd be here."

  Bill grunted. "Yeah. After ten cocktails. And--in New York. The more I thought about it the more worried I got. I was crazy about you. That's no lie. Any man who wasn't--if he had a chance--wouldn't be much of a man. But I'm happy. Martha's a fine girl. I could do without her mother--but that's the handicap for Martha's high score. You'll just make trouble--"

  Danielle tossed her head. "Maybe--that's what I want to make! Nobody in this world has spared my feelings! Or my mother's--"

  "You don't blame me for what my father did!"

  "I'm bored. I've been engaged over and over--and I never loved one of them.

  Nobody worries about my feelings. Danielle can take care of herself! That's how they think."

  "You certainly never were--" there was a trace of humor in his voice--"exactly a dependent dame."

  "No. Now look at me! I'm almost twenty-eight. It seems that I can't have affection. Men get scared of me. When I was a kid--I always imagined a man would come along who would tell me what to do and where to get off. Nobody did. Nobody can.

  I've been gypped. Maybe I'm not meant for affection. But I certainly think I'm entitled to excitement--anyhow. Fun. I used to think you were pretty swell--when you played football--and later. If my having fun means trouble for people--then, there's going to be trouble!"

  "A nice, wholesome attitude."

  "And it's just beginning! I'm going to wreck homes and influence people-for the worse. Indian Stones is a monument to hypocrisy. One more generation, and everybody in it will be as dead and dried up as--Aggie Plum!"

  There was a great deal more of that sort of conversation. The sun settled behind the hills that rimmed Indian Stones and its two lakes. Six-forty-five passed--and seven.

  The two people were so engrossed that Aggie was able to move closer and to part the branches in order to look at them. A reddish glint of sunset shone on Danielle's smooth hair and silliouetted her vivid profile. It illuminated Bill Calder, lounging against a boulder, downcast, tormented. Aggie felt sorry for him; what the girl was doing seemed coldly deliberate. As if she were merely trying to keep him there as long as possible. That thought became so clear to Aggie that he wondered what it could mean. At last, however, Bill tore himself away and hurried down the trail.

  Again, Aggie slipped into the woods and started back by a straighter, shorter route. He was determined to reach the club ahead of them. He took a series of steep rock ledges with the facility of a chamois. He hurried along under a growth of white pines. In his brain, recollection unfolded a map imprinted during his youth. There would be a brook with easy going for a while. Then a cut through a narrow burned area to another old road which would come out behind the Patton place.

  The burn was now thick with a second growth that would become timber in a couple of decades. The old road wasn't a road at all, any longer, but a tunnel, sometimes discernible in the woods. Every here and there it was choked completely with young birches and pines, poplars and beeches. But, without mental effort, he knew the way it went and he saw long-forgotten landmarks--a balanced rock, a ledge marred in another century by logging sledges, a moss-grown chestnut, awesome even in decay. There hadn't been any lumbering for a long time--or any hunting to speak of. Good thing, he thought.

  Nature had restored the primordial quality of this northern forest. The approach of twilight made the man seem small and his surroundings Gothic.

  He followed a track of grass bleached wan by shade--a remnant from the time when the road had been more open. Then he plunged into a dense thicket--and stopped just before he emerged on the other side.

  He looked at the ground. What held his attention would have terrified most persons, in that gray and silent place. But Aggie was not in the least frightened. Startled--

  and no more. He pursed his lips and whistled one low, soft note.

  Two logs lay across the vestigial road--one on top of the other. Long, vertical stakes held them together--stakes that had guided the upper log to drop on the lower.

  Beyond the logs lay trigger, lever and bait--bread and honey, in this case. There were ants busy now in the honey. It was a deadfall--a big one--of a size suitable for bear. But the top log had closed, like the blade of a giant scissors, on a man. The man was Jim Calder.

  CHAPTER 4

  There was nothing new about the spectacle of death for Aggie Plum. In his researches among the ruins of many civilizations, he'd seen the remains of myriad deaths, violent and peaceful. In his association with primitive people, he had seen death under circumstances which most of· the members of the Indian Stones Country Club would have found insupportable. A social misfit, a wallflower, he was nevertheless no sissy.

  He turned briefly to work out an explanation for the presence of the dead man in the trap. Calder had been coming in the same direction as Aggie. His footprints were there to show it--dim depressions, recent small disturbances. He'd ducked low in the tangle to avoid some festoons of bull brier. He'd stepped toward the bottom log-with the intention of going over it--and accidentally hit the trigger. Or, perhaps, he'd pulled at the bread and honey out of curiosity--not noticing the other log poised above his head. It could have been either way.

  Aggie took a careful route to examine the man. There was no doubt that he had been dead for some time. The blood, at the base of the shattered skull, was dry and dark.

  Broken-off leaves were not just wilted, but curled by the day's heat. There was evidence of reflex kicking around the man's feet. And--Aggie checked back a few paces--the man had been alone. He made a search next for the knife that had pinned Bogarty's card to Sarah's front door. It was not there.

  He then inspected the deadfall itself. When he had finished, he whistled again, bemusedly. It was a pretty crude job. Correct in principle, but not expert. Too much friction in the trigger. Calder, to have set it off upon--himself, must have yanked hard--or lunged into it. The bear for which it had been intended would in all probability have robbed it safely without causing it to drop. Aggie wondered about that bear. He had not been noticing things especially as he had walked along; his mind had been occupied. But now he went back to the brook and skirted it. He satisfied himself presently. There were at least two bears in that part of the mountain. Bears had been scarce during his boyhood.

  They were coming back--and some contemporary youngsters, probably, had undertaken to catch one of them.

  Aggie returned and knelt in order further to study the victim. He noticed one other thing. The man had, on the back of his left hand, the marks of a dog's teeth. Aggie did not touch the body. It was beginning to get dark in earnest. He straightened up--and heard a crackling in the woods. The noise was faint and it was made by a person. He hurried toward it.

  Through an avenue of tree boles, he saw Danielle coming along the old road, He allowed himself to appear, as if he had not been in concealment.

  Danielle seemed completely calm. "I thought I'd find you," she--said. "You heard me make the date with Bill. And--coming back--I saw where somebody had walked up alongside the trail a ways. I let Bill go--and started looking for you. I know my way around here better than you--though I must say, you have a good memory."

  He nodded calmly. "Yeah. I followed you."

  "Why? Why did you listen to my c
all?"

  He studied her. No use explaining that accident and a desire to satisfy his aunt were largely responsible for his first act of eavesdropping. No use, indeed, of trying to explain or apologize for anything--in Danielle's case. "I felt in the mood," he said.

  She frowned. "What sort of oaf are you, anyway? Maybe the psychiatrists ought to have a shot at you." He ignored that. He asked, "You been around here--in these woods--in the last twenty-four hours?"

  "I live here," she answered. "I'm a dryad."

  "I mean--seriously. When did you and your father get up here?"

  "Yesterday afternoon," she answered. "Anything else? Do you want to walk back to the clubhouse with me?"

  "Maybe. Do you know how to make a deadfall?"

  "Deadfall? I don't even know--oh! A trap! No."

  "Who does--around here?"

  "Look, ducky. It's been over ten years since I was a Girl Scout. What about a deadfall?"

  Aggie pointed. "There's one back yonder about a hundred yards. A big, powerful one, that was counterbalanced with rocks. Jim Calder's in it--and he's dead."

  Danielle stood still. She was shocked, but he could not discern how much or in what way. Her first words were peculiar, under the circumstances. "How--how long has he been there?"

  "I'd say--since last night. Why?"

  The girl was already recovering her self-possession--even her normal manner of venomous banter. "Alibis. Everybody will have to have them. Me--for instance. I was at home, alone, a good deal of last night--because Dad was out on a call. How about yours?"

  "I didn't say Calder was murdered."

  She was silent again. Then she shrugged one shoulder. "Oh, no, you didn't. One simply assumes--I guess--that if Jim Calder died--it would be because somebody had done· him in. He was marked for murder. There were times when I could have done it--

  when I was little--and he went away with Mother. Dad could have. I wonder if he did?"

  "Are you talking that way cause you think it's funny--or because you're rocky?"

  "Because it's the way I talk. Can you say--offhand--just what is normal for this little meeting? Are you acting normally--popping out of the woods like a ghoul and telling me that Jim Calder, whom I've known and hated all my life, is dead in some sort of trap? Telling me as if you were giving the homework assignment for a class in biology? Let me look at him."

  "That won't be necessary."

  Her eyes still had color, even in the dusk, and it was a greenish color. Her lips smiled. "Maybe not. But two witnesses are better than one. Somebody else may find him after this--and change something, for instance. Besides, I've seen plenty of dead people and I'd like to see what I think myself. I inherit that quality from Dad."

  He led her to the deadfall and leaned against a tree while she made a thorough reconnaissance. When she had finished, she said, "We better go down to the club and call the police."

  "Yes."

  "Somebody could have built that thing--heaven knows why--it doesn't look as if it would catch a cow, let alone a bear. He may have fallen into it. Or--somebody may have hit him, and carried him up here, and made that thing, and dropped it on him to cover up the original blow."

  ' Then there'd be two sets of tracks."

  Danielle glanced at him. "Not if the somebody put on Jim Calder's shoes-and carried the body. You'd have to be awfully good to be able to demonstrate that. The ground's hard."

  "Sophomore biology homework," he said.

  "What?"

  "You're talking like the professor. You're a peculiar girl."

  "I'm the ruins of what was a good one."

  "Let's go to the club. We can discuss your character all summer. I was eavesdropping on you and Bill just now. Interesting--when the female undertakes to become a cad. Interesting--but unconvincing."

  They went down the hillside.

  Danielle made the call to the police, whom, she said, she knew. In any event, when she asked for "Wes" she was put through. She told the story tersely. When she had finished she turned to Aggie. "Wes wants us to round up everybody we can hefe. He'll go up on Gamet Knob with some men--and then join us. I'll start by getting Dad--and pick up anybody I can, on the way."

  They left the library. Aggie went across to the desk. Through the archway, he could see numerous people in the dining room--families who were eating at the club until their kitchens were in working order--and individuals who used the club dining facilities all summer. He beckoned Jack from work. He told him what he had found and what had been done about it and what the police had requested. He kept his voice low. Jack listened with a blank, meaningless look. His face perspired and he wiped the back of his hand across it.

  "All right," he said finally. "I'll go into the dining room and make an announcement. I don't know exactly what Wes wants--but if he said he wanted everybody--I'll have everybody." He gazed for a moment at Aggie. "Was the old man killed by accident--or on purpose, do you think?"

  "I couldn't say."

  Jack's jaw muscles set. "I hope it was on purpose!" he--whispered. "I hope he saw it coming--and was frightened!" Then he drew a breath. "I'm sorry. I hated Calder." He shook himself. "Have to get into that old, soothing mood for the customers! You had the right hunch this afternoon when you had me send out guys to look for Calder, didn't you?" His expression changed once again. "Here comes Beth. You take care of her, will you? Her brother and the Draymans haven't come for dinner yet--and it would be rotten for her to find it out by me just stepping forward and announcing it."

  Aggie said, "Sure."

  He turned. Beth had come partway across the foyer. She saw him and smiled.

  "There you are! All covered with burrs and Spanish bayonettes! Been on a nature walk!"

  Her manner was a mockery of the most fatuous maternal patter--almost baby-talk. She was kidding him.

  "Beth," he said, "I want to talk with you. Come on out to the solarium." Already he could hear Jack Browne's voice beginning his "announcement."

  Her very dark eyes caught, fully, the expression in his. She looked surprised. Her voice dropped half an octave. "Is this going to be serious, professor? I've just heard the darnedest thing! Cynthia Symmonds says Sarah is going to promote a match, and who do you think between? You and me! Of course, I don't know a dinosaur bone from a piece of driftwood. But I'm nice in other ways--"

  Aggie flushed darkly. This was tough. They were, by that time, on the threshold of the sun porch. He struggled with the self-consciousness she had thrust upon him and the incongruity of such a thing at this time. He kept looking at her. "I've got a shock for you," he said. "And it's not funny--and I hope you won't faint."

  "Yes," she said in a still lower voice. "Something's the matter. What, professor?"

  She was no longer teasing him.

  "Your father's dead. He was killed in a--a homemade trap set for bears--in the woods--apparently last night, after he'd left Sarah's place. By accident." He added that gratuitously.

  Beth sat down on a corner of the ping-pong table. "Got a cigarette?"

  "Only my pipe."

  "Never mind." She sighed unevenly. "Are you sure it was an accident?"

  There was the same doubt--this time expressed by the dead man's daughter. "I think so. One can never be sure--offhand."

  "I'm glad," she said presently.

  "Glad?"

  She nodded and slung her head in such a way that half her black hair was thrown back over her shoulder. "In a way. You wouldn't want to live with a father like that! To know some of the destructive and some of the sinister things he's done! To be afraid--

  always--there were others--or that a new and worse one would be done any minute!" She hesitated. "Bill and Martha and Mrs. Drayman were coming right along behind me. I'll go and catch them. They won't want to eat dinner here now."

  "The police want--everybody--they said--to be here. They're coming. You tell them--and bring them back."

  "Thank you," she said.

  Aggie nodded. "You're being pretty s
ound about this, Beth."

  "I am sound," she said. "Perhaps--because Dad was so unsound--and neither Bill nor I ever approved of it."

  Aggie watched her go--and prepared to kill time until the police arrived. He saw her come back, after a while, with her dinner party. He noticed that one man--a rather elderly man--had been thrown into a hidden funk by the news. He made a point of finding out that the man--who stayed in the bar drinking neat whisky--was Byron Waite. He saw, also, that Danielle and her father had a long, private conference after their arrival. He noticed that Bill Calder, son of the dead man, contrived to sneak out of the clubhouse and was gone for nearly half an hour, while Martha, his wife, and Mrs. Drayman, Martha's mother, made a not-too-evident attempt to cover up Bill's absence. Beth stayed outdoors--

  alone--but within view.

  Mr. Waite, also, took a shot at going out. Dr. Davis intercepted him at a side door.

  "I think we all ought to stick around here till the police arrive," the surgeon said.

  Aggie heard and saw most of that, from a small table in the dining room where he sat, reluctantly eating a sandwich which Jack Browne had pressed upon him with the reminder that he'd had no supper. Jack was doing an excellent job of maintaining morale among the older people. Aggie finished his sandwich and drank some milk and watched Waite accede ungraciously to Davis's insistence that everybody stick around. After that, Aggie returned to the main lounge. People asked him whispered questions--and the police arrived.

  Aggie had expected that the police inquiry into the accident would be dramatic.

  One by one, the people related to Calder in any way would be taken into a room--

  probably the manager's office--and questioned by a bulldozing, beetle-browed, back-county sheriff--who might be either very shrewd or intensely stupid.

  Nothing of the sort took place. Into the lounge came a tall, rugged young man, with an almost too good-looking face; he wore the uniform of the State Police and the insignia of a captain. As he slipped off leather gloves and tossed them, with his hat, on the top of a grand piano, he shouted cheerful greetings to many of the persons there. He called Mr. Waite "Byron," Dr. Davis "Doc," and Danielle by her first name.