Death by Hitchcock (16 page)

Chapter 42

Edwina read the
New Guilford Gazette
over a bowl of steaming oatmeal drizzled with honey. When she came to Franky McGill’s obituary, she read it over twice, and studied his photograph intently.

Mrs. McGill’s favorite picture of her son had been taken at the State Fair when Franky was sixteen years old, and that was the picture she gave the
Gazette
for the obituary notice. Franky was biting into a hot dog, smiling. He looked happy and carefree. Edwina stared at Franky’s face. He looked dimly familiar, and yet she couldn’t remember ever meeting him. Maybe she had seen him around town––at Dan’s Bridge Market, or possibly at Earl’s Café?  

When Edwina had asked to borrow Will’s copy of Wallace Duncan’s documentary, he simply made an extra copy for her to keep. Edwina eked one last cup of tea from the pot, and washed the breakfast dishes. She stoked the embers in the wood stove, and shoved a few logs onto the sputtering fire, before settling into the rocking chair by the kitchen windows to watch the movie on her laptop.

In previous viewings she had mainly studied the principal action of the scenes, but this time she would focus on background action––on peripheral characters and dialogue. Perhaps she could garner new insights. In Edwina’s line of work, it was important to think outside the box of conventional interpretations. To arrive at the core reality of things one had to try out new ways of seeing. As she explained to her students, when you observe the orbit of a planet going around the sun with no understanding of physics, you will find no great meaning. But once you examine the orbit with knowledge of gravitational pull, the whole thing starts to make sense––now you know why the orbit’s path is the shape it is, why it takes as long as it does––everything makes sense when you slot the laws of gravitational pull into the equation. Edwina hoped to find some deeper meaning in the film this time around––something that might shed light on Bunny’s murder. 

When she got to the picnic scenes at Lattimer’s Pond she stopped the film. There was something there that still bothered her. Edwina peered at the screen, replaying this sequence over and over. Whatever was bothering her continued to elude her. So
she watched the rest of the movie.

In a bonus section at the end, Wallace had included a series of still photographs taken by Hugo Hitchens at various locations during the movie shoot. Edwina scrolled through them, pausing over each picture to carefully examine it. Hugo Hitchens was a talented photographer, and the pictures illustrated the contrasting personalities of Milo Marcus, Louis Edwards, and of Wallace, himself
––the storyteller and his two subjects––one dark and enigmatic, the other sunny and gregarious. The final photograph was a beautifully atmospheric portrait, taken on the last day of shooting at Lattimer’s Pond, the day of Bunny Baldwin’s murder. Hugo Hitchens had set up the camera on a tripod. The moody composition showed Hugo and Wallace in the foreground, gazing across the pond toward a shadowy Milo Marcus, as he disappeared into the woods. Edwina stared at it for a long while.

Her head needed clearing.

There is a saying among outdoor enthusiasts, ‘there is no bad weather, only the wrong gear’. It was a gray day, chilly and rainy. Edwina decided to go for a paddle on the river. Paddling always cleared her head, and she needed to think. She needed to breathe fresh air.

She dressed snugly in layers of warm clothing, topped off by a waterproof jacket and brimmed hat. The wet streets were quiet except for the squishing of her tires as she cycled along. She locked up her bike and skittered down the wooden stairs to the Boat House and the lower landing where the boats were stored. Within a few minutes she was easing her kayak into the water, heading downriver. 

Soon enough
, the shoreline would be icy and difficult to negotiate. The deeper it got into the winter season, the more Edwina relished her trips on the river. Once the winter season took hold, she would not venture out again until the spring. The unwritten rule of winter kayaking was not to go on your own. This was meant for safety reasons. But this would defeat the very purpose for Edwina, who went out on the river so she could be alone with her thoughts, without conversation, without interruption––so her mind could wander freely.

The sound of wet plops of rain falling on the water was pleasing. Gradually Edwina’s mind quieted and relaxed. She listened to the sound of her paddle hitting the water. As she gazed into the woods along the riverbanks her thoughts flowed. The trees had mostly lost their leaves, and Edwina fleetingly wondered what the woodland creatures were doing at that moment.

She thought back to the night of Bunny’s murder.
Spellbound
...was Bunny’s killer under a ‘spell’? Beguiled by desire, perhaps? Obsessed by unrequited love? Or was it a jealous spell the murderer was under? Did a clue to the murder lie in the movie, itself? Edwina began slowly arranging facts in her mind.

In order to connect the dots, you must collect the dots,
she thought.

1.       
   Bunny Baldwin is strangled with a piece of filmstrip from the movie,
   Les Enfants Gates
   , translated ‘spoiled children.’ A chunk of her hair falls out when her body is moved. Why?
   
2.     
   Honeysuckle Blessington has a French connection––she translates French poetry for a living. And she’s a film buff.
   
3.      
   Motive? Honeysuckle has a crush on Professor Winner, Bunny’s boyfriend.
   
4.     
   The colchocine and esculin poisoning had to be Honeysuckle’s doing, because of her homeopathic/herbal knowledge, but these things did not kill Bunny. Why not? Had Honeysuckle bungled an attempt at murder? Was it someone else who ultimately killed Bunny?
   
5.     
   Mary Buttery despised Bunny: motive. Could she and Honeysuckle be in it together? Mary is into homeopathy, too. Honeysuckle’s “protégée.” 
   
6.      
   Susan Winner? She hated Bunny for stealing her husband. Susan and Wallace were together near campus at the time of Bunny’s murder. Did Susan kill Bunny and convince Wallace to alibi her? Or vice versa? Did they do it together?
   
7.      
   And what about Frank McGill? How does he fit into all this – or does he?
   

Edwina guided the kayak through the rain.
Her forward stroke was strong and continuous––a smooth, simultaneous push-and-pull motion with the paddle. It became automatic and effortless, like breathing, as the kayak glided through the water.

Am I casting a wide enough net? What about Chaz Winner? Will said he fainted when he learned of Bunny’s murder! Does that suggest guilt or innocence? And what about Milo Marcus?
What about that nutty postcard Milo sent to Mary Buttery, signing as Hans Beckert, a fictional murderer? Is Milo so bewitched by Mary that he could have been manipulated into helping her and Honeysuckle kill Bunny? 

The image of Franky McGill eating that hotdog hovered in Edwina’s mind, and under it floated a caption,
Les Enfants Gates.
Franky’s face morphed into that of Peter Lorre. In turn, the image of Peter Lorre was superimposed with another one––the last still photograph on Wallace’s documentary reel––a picture of Wallace Duncan and Hugo Hitchens looking across Lattimer’s Pond, with Milo Marcus on the other side in the background. Edwina relaxed her mind, tried to release control over her thoughts, tried to allow connections to form by themselves.

She looked across the river at the dense landscape of woods and far hills
––at the varying heights of the trees. Shorter ones had grown sideways out from under the shadows of the taller trees in an effort to reach more sunlight. The leaves were gone, and the bare branches appeared sculptural and elegant, forming all sorts of angles and shapes, like a forest of petrified, modern dancers.

Aaron Farb. Why was that name coming to mind? Wasn’t he the student who was running the projection booth on the night of Bunny’s murder? What had Will said about Aaron Farb?

Edwina stopped paddling, and allowed the kayak to drift along with the current. As the rain continued to fall all around, her thoughts whirred.

She remembered. Will said that Milo Marcus had rushed into the projection room on the night of
Spellbound
and told Aaron Farb to shut off the movie. Milo instantaneously grasped that the auditorium would be in pandemonium, and that the film needed to be stopped. Milo knew this before anybody. The kayak continued to drift in the current.

Rifling through the pockets of her jacket for the phone, Edwina tore off her gloves, and through the phone’s waterproof aquapac covering she punched out a message to Will.

Can you please get me Milo Marcus, Wallace Duncan, and Hugo Hitchens’ heights ASAP?

Water spilling off the brim of her hat, she sat clutching the phone, staring at it, willing a reply. Despite the raw wetness of the day she remained dry under her raingear. When Will’s answer came through a few minutes later with the information, she replied instantly.

Can you be at my house at 4?

Her mind was now racing with emerging connections. She stuffed the phone back into her jacket and zipped the pocket closed. She skillfully maneuvered the kayak around 180 degrees, and paddled toward the Boat House as hard as she could.

Fifteen minutes later, the Boat House started coming into view.  With only a few hundred yards to go until she got to the ramp, where she would negotiate the kayak out of the water and return it to the Boat House, Edwina heard a gunshot. Reflexively she crouched down, and stopped paddling in order to listen. When a second shot fired, she darted her head from side to side in an effort to gauge the direction the shots were coming from. Suddenly overcome by paranoia because of the fact she now knew who killed Bunny Baldwin and Frank McGill, Edwina wildly thought someone might actually be shooting at her.

Take it easy!
she told herself.  

How the hell would anybody know you just figured out who committed the murders?

Edwina slowly straightened up, and listened intently to her surroundings. Her hands were locked around the paddle in an uncomfortably tight grip. She relaxed her fingers and resumed paddling toward the Boat House. As she approached the wooden launch ramp, Edwina scanned the riverbank for signs of activity, but there was no one in sight. Nor could she detect any movement when she gazed up at the Boat House windows.

She looked across and scanned the woodlands on the far side of the river. There were scattered houses among the trees farther up into the hills, but none close enough to take a potshot at someone on the river. The houses were too far away. There was simply no one in sight.

It must have been a hunter,
Edwina thought.
Yes, of course. I always forget about that––about how the town schedules a hunting season in Cedar Hollow during the fall...it must have been a hunter’s shots I heard. Shooting at pheasant, or grouse, or rabbits.

Chapter 43

Pushing thoughts about being somebody’s prey out of her mind, Edwina jumped on her bike and rode home as fast as possible, nearly spinning out of control around a wet corner onto Canaan Farm Road. She dumped her bike against the hedges, and ran inside the house and up the stairs. Stripping off her river clothes, she pulled on a pair of flannel pajama pants covered in little blue stars and crescent moons, a pair of heavy socks, and a turtleneck. She scampered downstairs, and sat with the computer at the kitchen table. She had an hour and forty minutes to work. Her concentration faltered only once, for a few seconds, when she had the fleeting feeling of someone watching her through the windows.

Probably just a squirrel!
Edwina thought.

By the time Will arrived at five minutes past four o’clock she was ready.

He hung his jacket on a coat hook by the front door. It was still raining hard, and his face and clothes were damp. He swiftly finger-combed his wet hair off his face, and stood by the wood stove in the kitchen to warm himself.

“What’s up?” he said.

She opened her mouth to speak but before she could, there was a loud banging noise coming from somewhere inside the house. 

Her nerves got the better of her, and Edwina let out a scream. She imagined someone had climbed a tree, broken into an upstairs bedroom, and crashed through the window. Someone who wanted to stop her from sharing this information with Will.

Get a grip!
she thought.
How would anybody know I figured this thing out––I haven’t told a soul!

Will, meanwhile, had found the source of the noise. The wind and driving rain had pushed the front door open, and it was banging against the wall in the front hall. Will closed the door and locked it. When Edwina timidly looked into the hallway to see what was going on, he saw that her hands were trembling.

“Everything’s okay,” he said. “The wind blew the front door open; that’s all.”

He walked with Edwina back to the kitchen table, sat her down, and poured a glass of water. Will had not seen her like this before, in such a nervous state, and he observed her keenly, watching for signs of shock.

“Why don’t you have a few sips of water,” he said, “before you tell me what it is you wanted to tell me?” He spoke quietly, with the bedside manner of a country doctor’s son.

Edwina’s eyes filled with tears. She quickly blinked them back. Will hovered discreetly a few yards away near the wood stove, adding logs and stoking the fire. The house was once again calm. The sound of the steady rainfall wrapped around them like a sleeping bag. Will kept an eye on her while he fiddled with the fire. Soon he could hear that her breathing had slowed down. She drank more water.

“I’m okay, now,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

Will refilled Edwina’s water glass and sat down at the table across from her. She sipped from the glass.

“What I wanted to tell you,” she began, “is that the key to this whole thing is spoiled brats. Narcissistic, spoiled brats. Whoever murdered Bunny Baldwin gave their reason for killing her with that film title,
Les Enfants Gates
––‘spoiled children.’ I think she was killed just for being a spoiled brat. But that movie title points in both directions––it also describes the killer, although I don’t think the killer intended that,” she said.

“First, we have the oldest brat in the bunch: Honeysuckle Blessington
––fluent in French, speaking of
Les Enfants Gates
. Before living with Nedda, she lived with her aged mother her whole life, after having a bad experience with a man. She thinks nothing of taking things that belong to other people. Her attitude toward men became so screwed up and warped, she thought it was fair game to poison Bunny Baldwin so she––Honeysuckle––could have a chance with Chaz Winner.”

Will listened intently.

“I think Mary Buttery’s initial connection with Honeysuckle,” Edwina continued, “was through the homeopathic and herbal stuff, which they are both genuinely interested in. Always the good student, Mary wanted to learn everything she could about homeopathy from Honeysuckle, so she made herself Honeysuckle’s protegee.”

Edwina suddenly shivered.  She got up from the table and filled the kettle.

“But as time went by, they discovered they had a mutual enemy in Bunny,” she said. “Mary wanted revenge for Bunny taking credit for the screenplay Mary wrote. And she was also probably jealous of Bunny’s power over men. We know Honeysuckle wanted Chaz Winner for herself. So they hatched a plan.”

“That’s not all Mary Buttery wanted revenge for,” Will interjected.

“When I spoke to Susan Winner,” he said, “she told me that Chaz had a brief fling with Mary Buttery last year. Maybe Mary hoped it would become a relationship. Add Chaz to your list of brats––he obviously made a habit of abusing his position of power by having affairs with his female students.”

“Good lord,” Edwina said, filling the teapot. “Chaz Winner and Mary Buttery?”

“And Mary Buttery probably wasn’t his first student conquest,” Will added.

Edwina carried a tray holding a pot of tea, cups, and honey to the table.

“Know what the side effects of colchicine and esculin are––the stuff you told me the lab turned up from those homeopathic remedies Mary took from Chaz Winner’s apartment?” she asked.

“Colchicine causes hair loss,” she continued. “Remember how a big clump of Bunny’s hair fell out when her body was moved? I think Honeysuckle and Mary came up with ways to make Bunny less attractive with various remedies like those tablets for cramps and others for headache. Even the special tea she drank. Remember, Bunny used her beauty and sexuality to manipulate people. I think Mary and Honeysuckle wanted to take away her mojo
––put a stop to Bunny’s career as a siren. So they gave her things with side effects like hair loss. But I don’t think they intended to kill her.”

“What about esculin?” Will said.

“Headaches. Too much esculin causes chronic headaches. Chaz Winner told you Bunny had been getting headaches lately, right? Mary and Honeysuckle were counting on Bunny becoming less desirable if she was constantly dealing with headaches and hair loss, so they supplied her with homeopathic ‘remedies’ that would cause these things and make her life miserable. You told me, yourself,” Edwina added, “the raspberry tea you took from Mary’s shopping bag had ingredients that shouldn’t have been in there.”

“And Mary removed the incriminating items from Chaz Winner’s apartment so we wouldn’t find them,” Will said. 

“Of course. They needed to cover their tracks. ”

“We’ll bring charges against Honeysuckle and Mary,” Will said. “Trouble is, colchicine and esculin are harmless in small amounts, and the raspberry tea, the tablets for cramps, and the headache pills were sitting around Chaz Winner’s kitchen for months. Mary and Honeysuckle could say in their defense that any number of people were in and out of that apartment, and could have tampered with the stuff.”

“Mary Buttery’s the second spoiled brat in all this,” Edwina continued, “a vengeful girl who came up with the plan to poison––but not kill––Bunny. Mary wanted to torment Bunny. I’m sure she convinced herself that Bunny deserved it.”

“What makes you think Mary is the one who came up with the plan, and not Honeysuckle?” Will said.

“Because Mary and Bunny were roommates––she’s the one who would know Bunny got bad cramps each month, and that Bunny would welcome a natural remedy, even be grateful for it.”

“So Mary felt entitled to have a big, fat revenge tantrum,” Edwina continued. “She enlisted Honeysuckle’s help, and together they devised a plan to poison Bunny by giving her toxic remedies in amounts that would make her suffer. And make her less beautiful.”

Will stirred honey into his tea. The spoon tinkled sweetly inside the cup like a chime.  

“What about Susan Winner?” he said. “She doesn’t have a solid alibi for the time of Bunny’s murder. She spent part of that evening in the back of a car with Wallace Duncan, but there was still time for her to get to Hexley Hall in order to kill Bunny.”

“Possibly,” Edwina said. “Maybe she and Wallace did murder Bunny.” 

“But first we come to Milo Marcus,” she continued. “Brilliant, maladjusted, a social misfit. Milo felt entitled to flaunt the rules because he thought he was smarter than everybody. Did you know he started as a freshman at Cushing at age sixteen?
I think Milo was fixated on Mary Buttery. I think he probably sat around at night thinking of ways to make her fall in love with him. I doubt Milo has had many––or
any––
girlfriends, and I don’t think he had any idea how to go about the whole thing. So he came up with an idea to win Mary over by getting rid of her nemesis, Bunny.” 

“When I saw Frank McGill’s obituary in the paper,” she continued, “his picture looked familiar, but I knew I’d never met him before. Then it finally dawned on me. Frank McGill bears a certain resemblance to Milo Marcus. They both have dark, bushy hair and pale skin, and they have a similar body type
––short and heavy. I think Milo made a deal with Frank McGill. I think he paid Frank to go to Lattimer’s Pond that day, so Milo could be free to kill Bunny, and at the same time, have an airtight alibi. I went up to Lattimer’s, and looking across the pond from one side to the other, at the time of day when it’s starting to get dark, Wallace Duncan and Hugo Hitchens easily could have mistaken Frank McGill for Milo Marcus. Wallace was filming Milo walking away from the camera––remember?––so he was mostly looking at Frank McGill from the back, and from a distance.  Milo probably persuaded Frank to do it by telling him it was a prank or something, a practical joke. And he probably gave him a nice amount of money to stand in for him that day, and not to tell anyone.”

“Then afterwards, Milo must have realized he had to kill Franky,” Will chimed in, “so Franky could never tell anyone about it, and blow Milo’s alibi for the murder.”

“Remember when we were watching the documentary?” Edwina said. “I finally figured out what was bothering me about that picnic scene. It was Milo. He appeared to be shorter in the first part of that picnic scene, and then taller by the end of the scene when he walks away through the woods. It all makes sense, if you know it was Frank McGill standing in for Milo at the end of that scene. Frank was two inches taller than Milo.”

“I figured it out after I looked at those still photographs at the end of Wallace’s documentary
––the still photos Hugo Hitchens took. Look.”

Edwina laid a sheet of drawing paper on the table in front of Will. On it she had drawn a large triangle, with each corner corresponding to the height of three stick figures. Their differences in height produced the angle measurements of the triangle. 

“The angles of this triangle are derived by connecting the heights of Wallace Duncan, Hugo Hitchens, and Milo Marcus,” Edwina explained.

“Here,” she said, placing another piece of paper on the table. It was a copy of the last still photo on Wallace’s reel
––the photo showing Wallace and Hugo looking out across the pond, with ‘Milo’ in the background on the other side. Edwina had enlarged it.

“Like I said, I rode my bike out to Lattimer’s Pond. I measured the distance from where Wallace and Hugo were standing in this picture, to where Milo was standing on the other side. Taking this distance into account, I put the three of them on a level playing field. Then I drew another triangle based again on their heights. The angles of the new triangle came out different from the first one.”

Edwina had drawn the second triangle on a sheet of tracing paper. When she laid it on top of the first triangle, the sides clearly did not match up. The angle measurements were different.

“Do you understand what this means?” she said, her eyes gleaming.

Will studied the two triangles, looking back and forth between them, and then at Hugo Hitchen’s photograph.

“Somebody’s height changed!” he said at last.

Edwina grinned.

“Holy
cow. The sides and angles are different,” he said slowly, “because Franky McGill was taller than Milo. Milo must have figured neither Wallace nor Hugo would notice the height difference from a distance. So, Milo got Franky to take his place that day. Milo knew his alibi would be unshakeable, because not only would Wallace Duncan and Hugo Hitchens say he was with them at Lattimer’s Pond, but it would actually be on film.”

“It’s all thanks to the Pythagorean Theorem,” Edwina said.
“Well, so-called, anyway. Actually, it’s highly doubtful that Pythagorus, himself, ever actually––”

“Wow!” Will interrupted excitedly. “So, what was it, again, you noticed in that picnic scene?”

“Something seemed visually off-kilter,” she replied. “Something registered in my brain as being different––something between the beginning of the picnic scene, and the end of it––I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally I realized it was Milo who changed, or rather, the spatial relationship between Milo, Wallace, and Louis Edwards had changed.”

“The three of them,” she continued, “are photographed together in some of the pictures Hugo Hitchens took. My brain imprinted an idea of their heights relative to one another. In the last shot, their heights seemed off. That’s when it struck me that Frank
McGill and Milo look similar, especially from a distance. If you substitute Frank for Milo in the equation, everything fits. When you slot in Frank McGill’s height instead of Milo’s, the data makes sense.”