The chuckling fingers (10 page)

Aakonen pointed, and my eyes lifted.

On the face of the middle rock, the one against which Fred’s shoulders had been propped, letters were scrawled in blue chalk.

Blue chalk. Then that was what had become of Toby’s chalk!

Suddenly, thoroughly, my mind came alive. No place for formless fear now, no time for cringing behind walls. I knew now what Jacqueline faced.

Monarch
. That was the word on the rock.

That scene of Fred’s clowning on the afternoon before— harebells in his hands, Myra’s shawl, the stanza he’d recited.

Here at the same spot the scene of his death had been made to look as if Jacqueline had retaliated.

* * *

I felt cold and hard, sitting in the chair in the living room to which Aakonen returned me.

Aakonen said, “Now, this is the first time you have been here at the Fingers, is it?” There was a tightening in him too.

“Yes.”

“You came yesterday. You’re a cousin of Mrs Bill Heaton’s. Why did you come?”

“Jean Nobbelin sent me a note. He said he thought it would be a good idea for me to get here.”

“Jean Nobbelin?” His voice lifted. “Tell everything you saw or heard happen after you got here.”

“That’s quite a lot.” I fenced for time, chaos inside my head. Why hadn’t I spent the time since the discovery of the murder sorting out what I’d want to tell? How could I hide what had been going on? He’d be sure to find out from others. No, best to tell everything, coloring it as well as I could.

So I began, feeling in tight throat muscles the effort to keep my voice level. Perspiration came out all over my skin; I was soon cold with its chill. The one important thing was the effort I must make.

I told of my arrival and, since the chalk had become important, even of the gifts I’d brought. Told about the wire snare and the smashed motorboat, leaving out Bill’s reactions; surely he must have the decency to conceal what his doubts had been. Told of berrypicking and then, choosing my words as if they were steppingstones over a torrent, told of Fred’s behavior on the afternoon before—minimizing and softening it.

“Apparently a little jealousy of his father’s second marriage,” I said. “No one took it seriously.”

Just the same, he made me go through it a second time, my tongue burning every time it touched a fatal word—the harebells, the shawl, the stanza. Only too open now the links between that scene of yesterday afternoon and the scene of the murder.

When I finished the second time he leaned back, his eyes like the points of ice picks. He asked another question, but I didn’t hear it. My hands were on the arms of my chair, raising me.

That group of us on the lawn—Myra, Phillips, Cecile, Bradley, Auden, Bill, Jean, Mark, Carol, Jacqueline, Toby, me. We were the only people who had seen that act of Fred’s.

Only someone who had seen that act could have arranged the carefully fantastic setting of the murder.

* * *

Aakonen repeated sharply, “You then went in for supper?”

“Yes,” I answered breathlessly, but I was thinking: Myra, Phillips, Cecile Granat, Bradley Auden, Bill, Mark, Jean or Carol—the murderer is one of them. Or Lottie—Lottie might have seen and perhaps told the Corvos. And hadn’t there been a glimmer at Octavia’s window? Yes, it was just possible that Octavia might have seen—or anyone else who had been watching …

That dark figure I’d seen near the Fingers …

Again I automatically lifted myself. “Good heavens! I saw someone—Myra and I both did—out near the Fingers. In the night. Suppose it wasn’t Bill—”

He was nodding. Relief so intense it hurt excruciatingly, like blood going back into a foot that’s been asleep. I tried to hide it, but he pounced.

“You are overjoyed at remembering this figure by the Fingers. You were afraid the murderer was someone you know.”

“Oh no.” I could fence easily now. “It’s just that—I wouldn’t want to have to think anyone from here or Auden or the resort — It must have been an outsider.”

“This outsider, who would he be?”

“Anyone—a tramp. Fred might have surprised him “

“You think a tramp would put a shawl on Fred’s shoulders, dress him up with flowers and a word on the rock?”

Some of my relief ebbed. “A prowler might have watched yesterday noon and thought he’d throw suspicion on us.”

Aakonen shook his massive head. “Miss Gay, I have been sheriff of Cook County many years. Every once in a while a man gets killed. Two men drink and fight, and one man sticks a knife in the other and runs away. I wish I had that kind of murder here. There might be a man hiding out, hoping to steal food or money or a car—sure. He wouldn’t stop to dress up the dead body fancy.”

“But you can’t rule that out.”

“Fred had money in his pocket. It was still there when I looked him over. He had a watch and ring. You had two cars here and you still got two cars. No cars gone from anywhere around.”

Persistently I clung to hope. “Fred’s been away at school—he was quite overbearing. Suppose someone came to get even? Or Bill Heaton—men important in business have enemies.”

The lower lip thrust out. “Enemies? Bill Heaton?” When his voice came again it was gentler, changed.

“Miss Gay, I can see you do not know about Mr Bill Heaton— who he is. You do not know how things were in this country before Mr Bill Heaton changed them. The lumbermen had taken all the big trees. The summer is short, and the nights cold. There wasn’t enough to feed the people on the sandy farms or in the towns that had grown up while the trees were going out. Many left. But there were some people too poor to leave. There was little tourist business then—only trapping and fishing. It was that way when I was a boy.”

He paused, waiting.

“When Mr Bill Heaton took over his father’s small business he was very young but in a little while he got this idea—that farms here should raise crops of trees as other farms raise corn. It seems easy now, doesn’t it. It wasn’t easy then. Trees take a long time growing. I have heard Bill Heaton talking for hours, angering men into doing what he wanted, forcing them through debts, bullying them. But after a while it was different. When the first growths were cut there was food in the stores. Children came to school, because they had shoes. Bill Heaton would be away, planning with the railroad to get vacationers here. Bill Heaton would be in St Paul fighting for the North Shore road, so the automobiles could come.”

The big mouth twisted. “I think all the first money he had was spent on bribes. You see, no murderer could kill Bill Heaton’s only child, because this country, too, is his child.”

Again he waited. In spite of my turmoil over Jacqueline I could feel his reverence. Inescapably my own attitude toward Bill was colored; I could see why Jacqueline felt about Bill as she did, why Myra admired him so much and had been so delighted when he married Jacqueline.

The sheriff went on slowly, “You can see now how important this is, how heavy my responsibility is. Go on, please. You were beginning to tell me what happened as you ate supper yesterday.”

Subdued, I went on with yesterday’s incidents—supper, the first brush between Fred and Mark over Carol… .

“Fred was angrier than Mark,” I tried to judge. “Fred might have wanted to beat Mark up, but I didn’t think Mark was equally angry. Why should he have been? Carol picked Mark.”

Aakonen grunted as if for once he was pleased and gestured me on. The game in which I’d been blindfolded, Carol’s departure … It wasn’t until I told of Toby’s missing chalk that he interrupted again.

“Who was there when you found that out?”

“Mrs Sallishaw and my cousin and myself. We three took Toby in to bed. Bill Heaton and Jean Nobbelin—they were arguing about something. Cecile Granat and Phillips Heaton and Bradley Auden sat together talking. Fred had left before that—I didn’t notice him go.”

“So the chalk could have been taken during supper or the game… . When did you next see Fred?”

I hadn’t seen him again until I saw him dead.

“You perhaps heard someone speak of him?”

Fred had been in my mind last night; I’d thought him an aggressor, thought him perhaps responsible for the tricks, for Jacqueline’s trouble—when he was a victim, perhaps already lying dead.

“No.”

“Tell me what you did do through the evening.”

I told of going down to talk with Bill. What had Bill’s account of that talk been?

“We agreed my cousin and the little girl should leave with me today.”

“Why?” The word leaped at me.

“Because we didn’t like the looks of that smashed motorboat and a few other things that had been happening.”

Apparently he accepted that. He went over the glimpse I had had of that figure near the Fingers again and then how I had wakened in the night, how I’d found my bathrobe slashed. I left out my trip to Jacqueline’s room and the scent of spice, left out the tuft in Jacqueline’s scissors—no one knew about those things except me and Jacqueline. I told of telling Jacqueline about my robe and her recital of the previous tricks but left out her hysteria and fear.

His eyes were like leeches, but I thought he surely must see the incidents I told were no more connected with Jacqueline than with anyone else who might be a familiar of the house.

When I was done he nodded at the brown man. He asked me, “You have a gun here?”

I braced to the new attack. “Oh no, I’ve never had a gun— never so much as held one.”

Dryly, “You’d recognize one?”

“I suppose so. I’ve seen pictures.”

“Seen any guns here at the Fingers?”

No answer to reaching thoughts. “No.”

“Mr Bill Heaton says he had an automatic in his room. On top of his wardrobe. Now he says it’s gone.”

That big carved-oak wardrobe I’d glimpsed in Bill’s room— at some time there’d been a gun hidden behind the raised scrolled front, up high where Toby couldn’t reach it.

I said, “I’ve never been in Mr Heaton’s bedroom.”

The man like a wood shingle curled closer; Aakonen grunted.

“That gun and the blue chalk seem still to be missing.”

“Then I should think you’d be looking for them.” The words slipped out tartly.

The wide mouth smiled, but the eyes didn’t. “Since the murder was done is many hours. The murderer did not wait until I got here to hide what he had to hide, nor to say what had to be said. If that were not so, do you think I would let two of you sit alone together upstairs?”

Then when he had me following that line of thought he thrust sharply, unexpectedly.

“Why is it you and Mr Bill Heaton and Mrs Sallishaw all work so hard to get me not to pay much attention to your cousin, Jacqueline Heaton?”

I’D FAILED. By my very care I’d made his suspicion greater.

I said, “You can’t think my cousin committed this murder.” The words welled, resounding, in my head. “I’ve known her since she was born. She’s never even done anything unkind.”

I had known her since she was born; I’d been three; I’d worn a white embroidery dress, sticking out in a ruffle over my long, thin legs in black ribbed cotton stockings. I’d stood with my nose against plate glass, staring in at the top of a dark-fluffed head in a hanging white canvas basinet in a row of hospital baskets. My mother said, “That’s your cousin — that’s Jacqueline. She’ll be the sister you never had, and you’ll love her very much.” When I took my nose away my breath was still on the glass — mist.

I said steadily, “I haven’t worked to keep you from suspecting my cousin. I’ve told you things as they really were.”

He smiled at me wearily, as if he didn’t expect much truth from humanity. “As you saw it perhaps.”

I escaped to anger, remembering who he’d said had tried to protect Jacqueline. “I suppose you think Phillips Heaton is the one who tells the truth. That malicious, envious, fat bedbug!”

He laughed, a short yelp like a coyote’s. “I’ve known Phillips Heaton a long time… . If you’ll ask your cousin to be next, please.”

As I walked toward the stairs my ears were too thickened by emotion to hear what he was saying to the warped little man; my heart was hot, swelling so it pushed against my ribs.

Jacqueline next, not knowing what she faced.

She stood up when I came in, expecting to go next.

I told her without preamble—the harebells, the shawl, the word on the rock. But I wouldn’t have had to; she already knew.

She said, “I saw them.” She smiled lightly, touching my arm, and walked out of the room.

Mary Queen of Scots, they say, once walked out like that… .

* * *

Toby was awake, playing on the floor. After a while Myra dragged listlessly up to join us. She, too, knew where Aakonen’s suspicions tended; the knowledge was on her face like a blow taken.

“We must do something. We must find out who that person by the Fingers was.”

I stared at her, and suddenly strength poured into me like a river. I didn’t just have to sit by watching things happen.

“Of course! Myra, who could that person have been?”

“Ridiculous now to think it was Bill.” She sat down at the bedside. “It must have been one of the others.” She’d seen the same small circle I had.

“I’ve been sitting watching them—most of them—there on the porch, thinking until my head feels ready to crack. Why would any one of them want to kill Fred? That’s what I can’t see.
Why?
”

I said slowly, “There was one other person Fred showed resentment against yesterday “

She said, “But Mark’s such a boy. He isn’t down there… . I don’t know what to think.”

I left her with Toby. As I went along the hall Octavia’s door was still closed; I could picture her cowering in bed still, the blanket pulled to her eyes, as she’d been when Myra had gone up to her that morning and been again at noon when we’d set a tray beside her bed. Aakonen would have a hard time getting anything out of Octavia.

He was talking when I descended but stopped at the sound of my footsteps. Jacqueline sat as I’d sat in the wicker armchair, facing him, and I knew a little relief; she was braced against him, but he seemed to be treating her as he had me— as a witness.