“That must have led to a certain embarrassment between Willie and the boys,” I said.
Conrad grunted. “You could call it that. Willie must have stolen my copy of the options agreement. I don’t even remember it disappearing, and it is only a record in any event. The actual transaction is registered at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I can only conclude that Willie took this along to the rendezvous, as proof of good faith. It was not accepted as such.”
Joe said, “No surprise there.”
“I don’t know the details,” Conrad went on. “Only that Willie, who had provided himself with a gun, apparently shot the two thugs during their . . . uh . . . discussions. He and Watson then came to an understanding that Watson would keep the second bag of money from the bank robbery. Watson, who was not a very bright fellow, apparently felt that, because there were two bags of money in the bank safe, they represented equal shares. The news reports of the time mentioned a sum of $140,000 rather than $210,000; his bag contained $70,000. He believed, mistakenly, that he had half the take. It was Watson who actually buried the bodies.”
“I presume Willie told you all about it?”
“Not about the options slip. I never even knew of its existence until Robinson heard of it on the radio, and, of course, recognized both the significance of the numbers and the possibility that, sooner or later, someone, somewhere, might work out the significance of that slip—even though quite a different form is used today—and trace it back to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And thus, to me. We began at once to close down operations here. You may have noticed a moving van.”
“The moving van comes from Maryland. Are you headed for Maryland? That’s where you shipped Willie off to after things went sour, isn’t it?”
“It is. I told him to get out of my office and out of the country as quickly as possible. Robinson arranged for us to open a small operation in Baltimore, ostensibly for Willie to run, but, of course, he just drank himself silly and got into trouble of all sorts. He was killed, apparently by a local hoodlum, probably over some falling out down there.”
“You mean that stuff about dying in Bellevue Sanatorium was just a story?”
“Just a story. It was not hard to plant it, in a community as fond of gossip as this one.”
Joe said, “I take it, then, that the real reason you bought The Eagle’s Nest was to keep an eye on the golf course?”
“That was an added bonus. You see, we had no idea at that time that it was possible to buy the golf course, which would have been the simple solution. In fact, when Robinson investigated the matter, he was told that it could not be done. It seemed to us the best we could do was to leave things as they were. While we were up here, on that original trip to check out what Willie had told me, we saw that The Eagle’s Nest was for sale. It was and is a most desirable property, and, of course, it did have the advantage of allowing us to keep an eye on the golf course, in case anything were to be . . . ah . . . disturbed. We concluded the purchase, and everything went along quite smoothly, until recently.”
There was a brief pause while we thought about that.
“Coming back to your story file, Carlton, I must say I am grateful to you for the information that the golf-course purchase was arranged by—how did you put it?—‘a local personality with publishing interests.’ Mrs. Post. Stupid of us not to have thought of that. For some reason, when you think of developers, you immediately imagine outsiders, from Toronto. It has all become rather academic now, but I presume that it will not be difficult to get the development stopped, since the sale is doubtless illegal.”
“Does it matter? The bodies have been found. Your charade is over.”
“Of course it matters. Robinson was quite serious when he told you that I undertook to protect Sir John’s bequests to the village. When I leave, which is in only a matter of a few hours now, the golf course will be as it was.”
“Minus the bodies, of course.”
“They were not part of Sir John’s bequest.” Another smile.
“Who orchestrated the sabotage at the golf course?”
“Amelia.”
The reply came not from Conrad Jowett but from Robinson, who had re-entered the room and was now standing directly behind Joe, holding, I regretted to note, a very sinister-looking gun of some sort, which had, unless ten thousand TV shows had led me astray, a silencer on the barrel.
“Amelia,” Robinson repeated, “my great-niece. She got a tremendous kick out of it. She and Harrison—not that Harrison does much but trail around after her and do her bidding—arranged it all.”
“She said he had just arrived.”
“Amelia,” Robinson smiled, “does not always tell the truth.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to buyout the other party and get the golf course yourselves?”
Conrad replied, “Ah, but we didn’t know there was another party, did we? I think you’ll find, if you check the dates on the deed, that this whole sale was orchestrated very carefully before anything was done, and then it was all done within a couple of days. The closing wasn’t to take place until last Friday, the very day Charlie Tinkelpaugh met with that unfortunate accident; the very day the village councillors, as we now know, left for their yacht ride.
“We had heard—it is impossible not to hear things in a community this small—that someone was looking at the golf course. About six weeks ago, a survey crew from Toronto appeared, presumably at Mrs. Post’s behest, so she would know exactly what she was buying. One of my employees spotted them and reported to me. We decided that, if someone was able to buy the golf course, we would, as you have so wisely pointed out, be better to get it ourselves. But first we had to discourage the other party. We presumed, quite wrongly, that they were trying to buy the golf course as a golf course. So far as we knew, and in fact, so far as we know today, it couldn’t be converted to any other use.”
Conrad looked down briefly at his nails before continuing.
“But if it could be purchased, we would purchase it. That was the point of asking Amelia to . . .”
“. . . conduct a campaign of terror.”
“. . . see to it that the golf course became a less attractive proposition. Very quietly, of course; not actually concealed, but keeping very much to herself. She didn’t really show herself until, you will recall, Mr. Tinkelpaugh’s demise brought that aspect of things to an abrupt halt.”
“Tell me about Charlie Tinkelpaugh.”
“You understand, of course,” Robinson said, “that we knew nothing of what Amelia was actually doing. We asked her to take care of it; she is a very intelligent and ruthless young woman, and we felt we didn’t have to say more than that. However, she was perhaps a little more ruthless than anyone expected. She has a rather strange turn of mind, and she has always had a penchant for rather elaborate, sometimes cruel, practical jokes. Thus, the laxative in the well.”
“Yes, but explosives?”
Conrad sounded apologetic as he took up the tale. “I ought to have predicted that, but I did not. Amelia has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland. I gather she found no difficulty whatever in rigging up what was supposed to be a harmless, time-delayed explosion, which would be set off thirty seconds after the pin was removed from the hole. As you know, the normal practice is to lift the flagstick and set it aside, and then go and line up your putt.
“A thirty-second delay should have caused a very loud explosion, but nothing more. As it was . . .”
He paused.
I asked, “Where did she get the explosives?”
“Made them herself, in the lab in Maryland, and brought them over the border in her purse.”
“There’s something wrong here,” said Joe. “For a chemical engineer, it isn’t hard to calculate how much of a bang how much explosive will generate. If Amelia was merely setting out to scare the bejabber
s out of people, the blast would have been a tenth, a hundredth, of what actually occurred.”
There was silence again. I swivelled my head to look at Robinson. He was looking at Conrad. Conrad nodded.
“Yes, of course, you are quite right,” said Robinson. “The fact is that Amelia is, has become, or is very rapidly becoming . . .”
“As crazy as a coot,” I said.
“. . . somewhat out of control. There were a number of signs of this. The most dramatic was the quite unnecessary death of Mr. Tinkelpaugh. Then, of course, there was the attack on yourself and Miss Klovack, in the car.”
“You knew that was deliberate?”
Robinson nodded. “Harrison came to me. I gather that something you said to Amelia on the telephone caused her great excitement. She said you had information that was dangerous to us all and rushed off in her car. When he heard about the . . . uh . . . accident later, even Harrison recognized that Amelia had to be stopped. Despite his appearance, he is really quite a sweet chap, although, of course, utterly devoted to Amelia. He recognized that, for her own good, something had to be done. Not only was her attack on you and Hanna quite pointless, it was very likely to be brought home to her.”
Conrad jumped in. “She will be given the finest of care.”
I was now beginning to realize that we were being told too much and too little. Too much to leave us alive, not enough to satisfy my natural curiosity. If I was going to die, I wouldn’t die ignorant.
“Did you people arrange for Chuck Wilson to kill Dr. Rose?”
“Carlton, my dear chap, we didn’t arrange for anybody to kill anybody,” Conrad replied, with the utmost sincerity. “Amelia killed Charlie Tinkelpaugh, we grant you that. She says she didn’t mean to injure anyone with her little device, but you may choose to doubt that. My brother William killed two thugs, years ago. That is all. As for Wilson, whoever he may be, we have never spoken to the man.”
“Did you ever speak to Charlie Watson?” Joe asked.
Robinson answered this one. “No. We wanted no connection whatever with him. We hadn’t heard anything of him for forty years.”
Conrad said, “As to Dr. Rose, you will understand, if you think about it for a minute, that we had nothing to do with that. As you yourself pointed out in the first story written under Hanna’s byline—”
“Where did you see that?”
“It was on the front page of the Lancer this very day, Carlton.”
I’d forgotten. What with one thing and another, I had completely forgotten to read the Lancer today. Shame on me.
Robinson went on, “That story pointed out that another expert would be sent to investigate, and then another. As was bound to be the case. We couldn’t keep killing them. Surely you see that?”
“What were you going to do?”
Conrad Jowett answered this one. “If the golf course was for sale, we would buy it. If it had been sold, we would buy it from the purchaser. If it was possible to block the sale, we would do that. Whatever,” he concluded, “was necessary.”
Robinson waggled his gun, and then looked at it as if he wondered what it was doing there in his hand. “But you must believe me, Carlton,” he said. “The death of Dr. Rose was not carried out by, or with the connivance of, anyone here. We told Amelia to cease her activities, from the minute we heard of the death of Charlie Tinkelpaugh. Actually, Carlton, that is the main reason I hired you to paint the boathouse. I thought you would keep her amused.”
“Thanks a lot. What if Harrison objected?”
“I think you will find that Harrison never objects. He would certainly do anything for Amelia but, by the same token, he would never do anything to annoy her, no matter what she had done.”
“Well, I guess it must be about time,” said Conrad, and got up.
I was expecting Robinson, on that cue, to start in with the revolver, or pistol, or whatever it was, but instead he smiled and said, “Today, as Conrad may have told you, is his birthday. I really came back to fetch him for the cutting of the birthday cake. It won’t take long, and then we can resume our little chat about the need not to take any hasty steps for the next little while.”
Conrad bustled past, actually humming to himself, da-da-da-da-da-dee, da-da-da-da-da-dee, but Robinson stayed where he was, with the gun still at the ready. As soon as the door closed behind Conrad’s back, I asked, “Hanna, Robinson. Where have they got Hanna?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Robinson said.
Could that be so? Could it be that someone else had grabbed Hanna? Why should they? The people who had the most to lose if and when the real story came out were the people in this house, who would be looking at murder charges, and aiding and abetting. They also had the requisite ruthlessness, and the organization. Could it be that her kidnapping had been arranged without consulting Robinson, the facilitator?
I was pondering furiously as we sat there, and I guess Joe was too. My guess was that Joe’s thoughts and mine were running on parallel lines. If Hanna was here, we ought to try to jump Robinson, because otherwise there was a good chance Conrad Jowett would return with a smile on his face and cake in his hand and say, “Righto, Robinson, kill the bums.” We wouldn’t even get to blow out the candles. If, on the other hand, Hanna was not here, or was here without Robinson’s knowledge, we ought to sit tight for a while, to see if we could figure out what was going on.
The man liked me. We knew that. He was, setting aside a covered-up murder or two on behalf of a dangerous loyalty to his half-brother, basically a decent man. If he could help us without betraying the weird bond that existed between himself and Conrad, I felt he would do so.
So the key question was, how could we find out about Hanna?
I looked around the room, and suddenly had one of the few—some would say very few—brilliant ideas in my lifetime. I reached forward quickly and hit the redial button of the phone on Conrad’s desk.
The little panel at the top of the phone lit up.
“885–3163,” it said. My number. The last call made on this phone had been to my place. The threatening call, the one in which I had heard Hanna’s voice, had come from here.
“Here, what are you doing?” said Robinson. He walked across beside Joe’s chair to see what I had done with the phone, and I doubt very much if he ever saw what hit him. Joe came out of his seat in one lithe move, smashed Robinson on the side of the neck with the edge of his hand, and caught him as he fell.
“Damn,” he said.
“Why are you saying damn? That was wonderful. Now let’s get the hell out of here and bring the cops down on this joint.”
“I can’t.”
I looked at Joe; his face was ashen. “What’s the matter?”
“The damn gun. He must have jerked the trigger accidentally. It hit me in the foot.” I had heard a sharp Pop! but I thought it must have been a log crackling in the fireplace. Joe’s face contorted with pain.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod.” I am not at my best in a crisis.
“Listen to me.” Joe was bent over now, examining his foot. “Calm down, Carlton, calm down.”
“Holy Jesus, Joe, I can’t. It’s okay for you. You come from generations of people who laughed and sang while they lashed you to a stake and toasted your tootsies. My bunch are the ones who lost their heads and ran down the hill at Hastings. Do I sound hysterical?”
In the background, I could hear the strains of “Happy Birthday to You” dying down, and a deep voice began chanting, “Speech. Speech. Speech.” We had a few minutes.
Joe grabbed my arm.
“Ouch,” I said.
“I can’t move,” Joe said. “I don’t think this is really serious, but if it is, I’ll bleed to death.”
“Omigod omigod omigod,” I said again.
Joe squeezed on the arm. “You’ve got about five minutes,
maybe ten, to find Hanna and bring her back here, and the two of you can get me out of here.”
“What about Robinson?”
“He’s all right. If he comes to, I’ll clock him again.”
“How do we know Hanna is still in the house? It’s a hell of a big house.”
“We don’t. We hope. If she’s here, you’ll find her.” Since I didn’t move, he shook my arm. “You’ll find her.”
“Should I take the gun? I should not take the gun.”
“One of us getting shot in the foot is enough to be going on with.”
“Okay.” I was calmer now. “Okay. Wish me luck.”
As I started out the door to the yard, I thought I heard a voice say—but I may only have been imagining it—“Brains. I wish you brains.”
Chapter 30
If you happen to be searching for a kidnapped girl as you come out of the side door of the Jowett mansion some dark evening—the moon had now cheesed it—turn right as soon as you get outside. Not left. Left is where they stash a huge cask full of geraniums, and you will go ass over teakettle when you lurch into this, cracking your shin a nasty blow and winding up with a handful of dirt and flowers. It was all I could do to keep from shrieking in agony, but I clung to the image of Joe quietly bleeding away inside, and I stifled myself.
Reoriented, I worked my way to the right through the bushes. There was an outside stairway beside the kitchen; I had often seen the maids up on the landing at the top of this, smoking instead of dusting. Maybe the door up there would be open. Maybe Hanna would be in the first room I came to. Maybe babies really do come from Eaton’s.
I got to the stairs easily enough, and started up. I didn’t stumble—have I mentioned that I am not a neat mover?—until about the fifth step, when I pitched forward and cracked my knuckles sharply on the riser of one of the higher steps. Why my knuckles? Ah, yes, I was still holding onto a geranium, grabbed in the previous tumble; perhaps I was hoping to appease the bad guys with a bouquet. I tossed it over the stair railing. At the top of the steps, I found myself on a platform perhaps six feet square, looking into the window of a sturdy pine door. A locked, sturdy pine door. There were no lights on in the hallway that led from this door. There was a peaked roof, which came to its climax directly over my head, and a light usually burned just below this peak. It was turned off too. Obviously, precautions were being taken against curious eyes.
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