Murder in the Rough

by Otto Penzler

  “You really do have golf clubs this rare?”

  “They look and feel old. But I know nothing about the game.”

  “I’ll take them, for the right price.”

  We argued for an hour, him driving me down and me moaning about being robbed. In the heat of the deal I quite forgot I hadn’t got as much as a single old golf ball. When he offered a deposit, I said he could be trusted and I left. On the way out I asked the old dear if the judge had family living nearby. She prattled contentedly about him. I listened for as long as she wanted to chat, then drove to catch up with Fern Margrave.

  Except I made a detour. I paused at the best of the specialist antique dealer’s shops in Poulton and bought seven matching lithophanes, all genuine. I charged them to Mrs. Margrave. Hang the expense. I also bought a Victorian bangle, about 1860, with turquoise pellets, fragment diamonds and coral. These aren’t favored by dealers now—fashions change—but they’re beautiful things. You can take the central cluster out and use it as a brooch.

  “Wrap them, please,” I commanded airily. “I’ll carry them under my driving seat for safety.” I meant secrecy.

  When I reached Mrs. Margrave, I was disappointed about her progress. She’d bottled out of all but one of the antiques I’d told her to bid for, and she’d even got confused about that and bought the wrong thing.

  “Ancient parchment is sheep or goatskin,” I told her wearily. “The manuscript you’ve bought can’t be seventeenth century because it’s simply cotton soaked in sulfuric acid and glycerin, then pressed out. You can do the same with ordinary paper in nitric acid. There’s a modern watermark. See? It’s a fake.”

  She filled up. “You’re rotten to me,” she sniffed. A couple of old dears who were passing clucked in disgust at me, oppressor of poor downtrodden women.

  “Take no notice of him, love,” one crone said sympathetically. “They’re not worth it.”

  I waited outside for Fern to settle up at the auctioneer’s table. The two elderly ladies went past. One said scathingly, “He’s even made her pay! Rotten to the core.”

  Mrs. Margrave didn’t even buy me a pastie on the way home. I was famished.

  That night I penciled on the reverse of each lithophane and added a name. I got a spade from my neighbor’s shed and drove to the corner of the De Haviland estate. There was no moon, so it was hard blundering to the right spot. I deliberately sidestepped where I guessed Thalia was lying, and started digging.

  Honestly I’m never really spooked. But I’ve never been a lover of countryside. I mean, once you’ve seen rivers, trees, a couple of fields and a pond, what else is there? And things flit by in the darkness that I really think shouldn’t be flying about at that hour. Towns are safer. In fact I’d go so far as to say that cities are innocent. Countryside scares me.

  And there’s another thing. Digging near somebody’s grave is more than a mite worrisome. I mean, who knows what a corpse might be up to, alone down there in the earth? The idea was to make others discover Thalia, not me in the lantern hours like this. I paused for breath, clicked on my torch to check how much I’d dug, and there staring at me was a fox. We both yelped and leaped a mile. I dropped my flashlight and had to scrabble for the damned thing. The fox was gone. See what I mean? Countryside’s not good for your health. My heart was going like a hammer. I made myself stop shaking and kept on. Deepest of all, I laid the bangle, its central cluster separate, then began replacing the soil. Somebody finding the cluster would hunt on for the matching piece.

  The stink from the rubbish dumps was more noticeable at night. I worried about how deep to plant the lithophanes and finally decided that one foot down would do, give or take. I was tempted to smash one of the lovely ’phanes and leave the fragments scattered, but didn’t. There are too many vandals about. I kept one back.

  All remaining six I buried as near to Thalia as I had the nerve to do, then walked back to the motor. I’d cunningly labeled it Beckholta Owl Watchers’ Society Members This Way, with a vague arrow, in case some cycling plod got suspicious. I drove home. Next dawn I was waiting for Marjorie at the council dump.

  Professionals are great. You’ve got to admire them. Marjorie arrived in her grand saloon, wafting elegantly across the lunar landscape among the council trucks and early bin-loaders. The men all shouted greetings, some more cavalier than others. She did a Queen Mother wave, smilingly pulled up to the edge of the landfill. She alighted and simply stood, careful of her high-heeled shoes. I trudged across, avoiding puddles.

  “Morning, Marj.” I offered her the last of my lithophanes. She didn’t move. I wiped it with a grubby hankie. She deigned to accept it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Lithophane, love. Dealers call them Berlins.”

  She held it up to the light, smiling at the translucent picture impressed in the porcelain glass. “Very pretty, Lovejoy.”

  It showed a frolicking Pan among lovely shepherdesses.

  “A kind of glass porcelain. Sometimes they’re only four inches long, up to the size of a small windowpane. Used to be popular. Nobody recognizes them nowadays. Victorians put them in windows, vestibules, even had them in the bottom of drinking cups. You only see the picture when light comes through, see? Gone out of fashion.”

  “Why’re you showing me?”

  “I found it. Couple of days ago I went to the old De Haviland place, checking on an old watercolor somebody showed me. I noticed this sticking up out of the ground. I nicked it.”

  “And now you want me to do the rest of your dirty work?”

  “Sorry.” I went all crestfallen. “But you can charm the workmen. I can’t.”

  She laughed, examined the lithophane. “We go thirds,” she said. “Agreed? Me two-thirds, you get one. What’s this writing say? Looks like Forgive.”

  I peered. “Forgive what, I wonder?”

  Then I went to phone Lisa. Her scoop was on the way.

  Three days later I sat with Bendix by his riverbank. I brewed him some tea and told him the tale. He had me read out the newspaper reports to him, even though I’d sent Lisa to tell him how she’d interrogated the workmen, made accusations against Judge Wymond and Dr. Lambourne. And how she’d worked out—she was thrilled at her cleverness—how the judge had decided to use an unscrupulous land developer, his friend Margrave, to cover the De Haviland estate with untouchable toxic rubbish, thereby rendering Thalia’s grave cloaked in East Anglian soil forever. A golf course is sacred. It would remain undisturbed.

  “She’ll not print anything about you, Benny. She reported Teddy Winter as the last of the staff.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled. I’d never seen him do that before. It was good, full of nostalgia. “I mean, for those things you wrote on the tiles.”

  “Forgive me, dear Thalia, my murderous hands. I think it’s a quotation.” I’d put one word on each lithophane. Pencil’s best in soil. Ink is so easily degraded, not to mention easily dated. Graphite pencil isn’t. Lisa had waxed lyrical how older generations, back to the ancients, had tried to provide pleasant vistas for their buried dead, only they’d used translucent alabaster.

  We watched the boats on the river. I wanted to ask who Thalia’s bloke actually was, but hadn’t the courage. If he’d wanted to tell me, he’d already have said. I’d already guessed that Fern Margrave was Thalia’s child. How come old Bendix and she had teamed up, though? And how would Fern Margrave square it with her husband? I felt too intrusive and closed my mind to it.

  “I added his first name: Donald,” I confessed.

  Bendix winced and shook his head. “There was no relationship between him and Thalia.”

  “Well, it worked. They arrested Judge Wymond today,” I told him. “Lisa’s ecstatic. She says he’s admitting everything.” I felt uneasy. “I’ll be in trouble with Mrs. Margrave, Benny. She’ll bring a million lawsuits against me, using her like I did to expose Thalia’s killing.”

  “You’ll hear no more of it from her.”

  �
�Benny,” I said, hesitant. “You know they’re disinterring Thalia? And they’ll do tests, to decide how she died?”

  For a while he didn’t speak. “Then we’ll be buried together,” he said finally. “Fern will see to it.”

  He said it as if to a child. I sat with him for an hour. He said he was fine. The district nurse would be along presently. I told him so long, and went.

  Returning the hire motor the next day, I drove past the Margrave dump on the De Haviland estate. Police in lines walked slowly across the greensward. Others prodded the mounds of rubbish. A white canvas marquee covered Thalia’s grave, a cluster of photographers and paparazzi loitering at the corner, stamping to keep warm and drinking from vacuum flasks.

  Lisa was in the thick of it. I gave her a wave. She stared after me, didn’t wave back, just watched me as I went by. A typical woman, full of suspicions when there’s just nothing to be suspicious about.

  ROOM FOR A FOURTH

  Steve Hamilton

  By Sunday morning, the rain had washed the blood away. The sun was finally coming out. It was a perfect day for golf, or at least it would have been if the course were open. I could see a couple of policemen on the twelfth hole as I drove in—it’s a short par 5 running right along the entrance road, with a stream cutting across the fairway just in front of the tee. The water’s just for looks, of course. It’s not in play unless you really skull one. With a decent drive, you can roll a fairway wood right down the middle between the two sand traps. Two putts and you’ve got a birdie. It’s one of the easier holes on the golf course, and with the tall marsh plants running down the right side, one of the prettiest, too. At least on the days when there are no dead bodies on it.

  There were thirty or forty members milling around the clubhouse when I got there. They jumped all over me, assuming that as the assistant pro I’d know what was going on, who had found Old Sal the day before, whether the police had any idea who could have done such a horrible thing. More than a few of them wondering why the course was still closed. Old Sal would have wanted them to play—that was the common sentiment, anyway. He would have wanted the course open on such a beautiful day. The members would stay off the twelfth tee, of course, play the reds on that hole, maybe make it a long par 4. There was no reason why the whole course had to be closed. What better way to honor his memory?

  I listened to that sort of thing for a while, nodded my head, told them I’d see what I could do. That seemed to make everyone happy. A couple of men started putting on the practice green.

  The detective poked his head out of the bag room, gave me a little nod—the same man I had already talked to the day before. I was sure he’d want to sit down with me again, go over the whole thing one more time. Which was fine by me. Anything to help. But first, I had a little mission of my own.

  I found the three men in the grill room—Anderson, Crowe, and Sabino—sitting together at their usual table in the corner. I went to the bar first, got myself a drink, agreed with Jenny behind the bar that yes, it was a terrible thing. And yes, it was good that we could all be together today, that we could all help each other get through it. “Everybody loved Sal so much,” she said.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I can’t believe Old Sal is gone.”

  There was an empty chair at their table. I wandered over and sat down.

  “Gentlemen,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

  They seemed to have been in the middle of a serious discussion. Whatever they were talking about, they shut it right down and just looked at me with careful smiles.

  “Do you mind if I sit for a moment?” I said.

  They all looked at one another. “Of course not,” Anderson said. “Please do.” Anderson was the lawyer, so it figured he’d be the first one to speak up. He was a big man with a big golf swing. Before Sal straightened him out, Anderson was the most dangerous man on the course. He was the only member, in fact, who ever put a ball into the swimming pool.

  “I’m sure you’re all talking about Old Sal,” I said. “And what a shock this whole thing has been.”

  “Of course,” Crowe said. “It’s good that you’re here. I’m sure the members feel better.” Crowe was a psychiatrist, so this kind of line was probably automatic for him. Crowe’s swing had once been so fast, he barely had a backswing. Old Sal had slowed him down by making him hum the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony while he was swinging. Whatever works, that was Old Sal’s motto.

  “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Unbelievable,” Sabino said. “That’s just the word for it. Here’s to Old Sal.” He lifted his glass. Sabino was a state assemblyman, so of course he had to make a little public ceremony out of it. Once truly awful, Sabino’s golf game was perhaps Sal’s most miraculous renovation project. Sabino’s hairpiece, however, was beyond help. Today it looked like he had styled it with a sand trap rake.

  “Here, here,” I said as we all raised our glasses. “To Old Sal.”

  “Well, then,” Anderson said. “We shouldn’t keep you. I’m sure you have a lot of people to talk to.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve already talked to everybody, I think. Although I’m sure I’ll need to speak to the detective again.”

  “He asked you about Friday afternoon, of course,” Anderson said. “Naturally, you were able to help him out? You know, with the chain of events?” Chain of events, he says. More lawyer talk.

  “Yes,” I said. “At least as much as I know. I mean, I was just in the pro shop all afternoon, watching the baseball game.”

  “Is that what you told him?”

  “It was such a miserable day,” I said. “All that rain. There were hardly any golfers on the course at all. Only a few diehards like you fellows.”

  Anderson shook his head. “Not diehard enough,” he said. “If we had only stayed out there with him, I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened. Whoever did this thing…”

  “Wouldn’t have had the chance if he wasn’t alone?” I said. “Come now, you can’t blame yourself for that. I would have quit after nine holes, too. I can’t imagine why Sal kept playing in the rain.”

  “You know Old Sal,” Crowe said. “A little rain wasn’t going to stop him. He had a good round going, too. We couldn’t convince him to come in with us.”

  “That’s what I told the detective,” I said. “On such a terrible day, with his friends all calling it quits like that, he must have really wanted to finish his round.”

  “We really should have made him stop,” Sabino said. “Lord knows we tried. We kept yelling at him, even as we were on our way to the clubhouse. You probably heard us.”

  “No,” I said. “Not that I remember.”

  “Well,” Anderson said, “you did see us, at any rate. You saw us coming in after nine holes.”

  “No, I was watching the game,” I said. I looked down at my drink and swirled it in the glass. “Like I told the detective, I couldn’t be of much help. You know, in determining who was coming and going. And when.”

  I let that one hang in the air for a while.

  “It’s really quite incredible,” I finally said, “when you think about it. The one day Sal plays the back nine by himself, that’s the day somebody is hiding in the woods, waiting to beat him to death.”

  “Whoever it was,” Anderson said, “he may not have been waiting for Sal specifically. He could have been waiting for anybody.”

  “I suppose,” I said, just as Jenny came by to check on us. I ordered a round for everyone. When she had left, I leaned back in my chair and said, “There’s something else that’s been bothering me. Maybe you can help me make sense of it.”

  “It was a madman,” Crowe said. “It had to be. Who else could do such a thing? There’s no use trying to make any sense out of it.” Dr. Crowe, expert on the workings of the human mind. Especially the crazy ones.

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “But here’s what I’m thinking. I know Old Sal was what, s
ixty-three years old? But he was a tough old bird, wouldn’t you say? I bet he could put up quite a fight if he had to. He wouldn’t go down easy.”

  “The killer must have snuck up on him,” Sabino said. “From behind. Or maybe there was more than one!”

  “A whole band of killers?” I said. “Lying in wait on the twelfth tee? I just don’t see it. I think it had to be somebody he knew. Somebody who could have caught him off guard.”

  “Someone from this club, you mean,” Anderson said.

  “Someone from this club,” I said. “Someone, or some persons, who really hated him. Or else had some other very good reason to want him dead.”

  There was a conspicuous silence. I looked out the window at the empty golf course. I didn’t watch them think about it. I didn’t watch them squirm. I didn’t have to.

  “Funny thing about that detective,” I finally said. “He reminds me of that detective on the television show. Columbo—remember him? This guy even looks like him. Little short guy, wandering around like he’s not quite sure what he’s doing, asking all these crazy questions, driving people nuts. But then he’d always come up with all the answers. You remember that show?”

  “I believe so,” Anderson said.

  “When I was talking to him down in the bag room yesterday, he didn’t seem to know much about golf, but he was asking me all these questions about clubs.”

  “What kind of questions?” Anderson said.

  “Mostly about the different kinds of clubs, you know, irons versus woods, the different shapes. It was like he already had this theory in his mind that Sal was beaten to death by a… well, this might sound crazy, but by a golf club. Like the forensics guys would come back with a certain type of trauma to the head, you know what I mean? So he wanted to see some examples. As a matter of fact, he looked in all of your bags.” I rattled the ice cubes in my empty glass. “Where did Jenny run off to, anyway? I thought she was bringing us another round.”

  “He looked in our bags?” Anderson said. “Whatever for?”