Nine Man's Murder (20 page)

“We made a thorough search of all the rooms on Friday, while looking for the missing guns,” Jonas countered. “There are no secret passages, in this room or any other. There is no other way out of this room.”

Hatter—who had also searched Jill’s room on Friday—confirmed Jonas’ assertion with a nod.

“Then you see my problem?” Bryan asked. “Jill did not strangle herself. Yet how could someone enter the room, murder Jill, and leave the room completely sealed—from within? This murder was impossible.”

53

“I
told you
so,” Hatter said. “No human could have left the room sealed up like that. But a spirit can pass through walls. It’s the only explanation. Even you have to admit that now.”

To escape the ghastly scene, the three men had retreated to the drawing room. The dying fire gasped its last light, tinting the room with its eerie amber glow.

Jonas searched Hatter’s face for answers but found none. “I don’t know how you managed it,” he said, “but this spook trick of yours is not going to work.”

“Spook trick? Mine? You don’t understand. The danger is far from over.”

“Don’t play games with us, Hatter. When Bryan and I went looking for Bennett, you and Jill were alone with Gideon. One of you killed him. Obviously, it wasn’t Jill.”

“I was almost one of the victims, myself—remember?” Hatter cried. “Someone tried to poison me last night. And nearly succeeded.”

“Or that’s what we’re supposed to think. Isn’t it interesting that the killer poisoned you and Carter at the same time, yet only Carter died? Unless, of course, you were intentionally given a nonlethal dose.”

“You think I did it? Why would I do that? Why poison myself, risk my own life?”

“To divert suspicion from yourself. You would appear to be one of the intended victims and would therefore be ruled out as the murderer. So you could go around murdering everyone else without coming under suspicion—or scrutiny.”

“And you weren’t really risking your life,” Bryan added, “since you were controlling the dose.”

“But my motive,” Hatter protested. “What motive do I have to kill all of you?”

“That,” Jonas said, “is what I believe Bennett uncovered last night. I overheard him talking to you in the parlor room. He was struck by the similarity of the crimes in your books to real-life crimes. It’s not hard to figure out what he was implying. He believed that you had committed those real-life crimes to procure details for the crimes in your books.”

“That’s preposterous! But even if it were true—”

“What does it have to do with us? You’ve already admitted that you’re working on a new novel. Perhaps this game of ‘Nine Man’s Murder’ is your idea of research for that book. You murder us, then use the details of those murders to fuel the plot.”

Hatter, reading his defeat in his captors’ eyes, made a futile run for the door. His foes, anticipating the maneuver, intercepted the retreat by cutting off the escape route. The captive struggled savagely against his captors.

“So what do we do with him?” Jonas asked.

“I say we tie him up and watch him all night.”

Jonas’ drooping head struggled against exhaustion. “We’ve been through the entire inn, garage, and work shed. Did you see anything we can use to tie him up with? I didn’t.”

“So what do we do? Just sit here with him, trying to stay awake? Or lock him up somewhere?”

“Please, no,” Hatter cried. “I won’t be safe. You saw what happened to Jill. Locked doors can’t stop this … thing. I promise I won’t try anything.”

“Well, as reassuring as the promise of a man who’s murdered seven people is, think about it: a man crafty enough to kill several people in locked rooms guarded by two men who haven’t slept in forty-eight hours? I don’t think so, Hatter.”

Jonas turned to Bryan. “We tried locking him out. What if we tried locking him in?”

“No!” Hatter screamed. “You can’t do that. You’ll be signing my death warrant. You can keep me in, but you can’t keep It out.”

“There’s no sense arguing with him, Jonas. Let’s just lock him up.”

The question was, where? All of the rooms had doorknobs allowing their doors to be locked—and unlocked—from the inside. All except the library, the only room that could be locked and unlocked solely from the outside. Hatter resisted futilely their efforts to drag him toward the carpeted prison. When they released him in the library, he fell to the floor like a crumpled piece of paper.

All of the library windows were picture windows that could not be opened. The only exit was the door—there were no secret passageways. The men knew, from their search the day before, that beyond the door opposite the north windows lay a storage closet that led nowhere.

“You’re going to spend the night here in the library,” Jonas told Hatter. “The only way out is to break a window, but the entire inn—every door and window—will be locked up. You can get outside, but there will be no way to get back into any other part of Moon’s End. The garage and work shed are not attached to the inn, so you can’t get to us through either of them. Therefore I suggest you simply make yourself at home.”

Jonas fetched an armload of blankets, tossing them onto the carpet at Hatter’s feet.

“Looks like you’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight.” Jonas glanced at the wall heater, then up at a heating vent near the ceiling, too small to accommodate even a small child. “But the room is well-heated, so you’ll be warm, if not comfortable. And, more important, we’ll be safe.”

Hatter looked up with a hollow, ghostly laugh. “You fools,” he snapped. “That’s the one thing you won’t be. Don’t you see? Locked doors can’t keep this killer out.”

“We’re hoping they will keep him in,” Jonas said dryly.

54

“W
hat now?”
Jonas asked. “Do we stay here and guard the door, in case Hatter gets out?”

Bryan shook his head. “Not sure that’s a good idea. If he does get out, he may come out armed—we don’t know where he hid those guns. And if he’s armed, what then?”

But there was a second argument to which neither man was willing to give voice. Even with their main suspect locked up, the thought of falling asleep within easy access of the only other suspect was unlikely to appeal to someone who hadn’t slept in two days.

“You’re right,” Jonas agreed. “We’re probably safer locked in our rooms.”

“Besides,” Bryan added, “we still have to make it through one more day, pitted against someone it would be fatal to underestimate. We really should rest.”

Jonas held out the library key. “What about this? What do we do with it?”

Although Hatter was now locked away, each man was reluctant to entrust the key to his companion, yet careful not to volunteer to hold it himself. Nor would it do to leave the key in a place easily accessible to either. A knotty dilemma, which neither offered to untie.

Something other than hunger sent Bryan to the kitchen. There he began packing pots and pans into a large cardboard box from the service porch, while Jonas, intrigued, lent a hand. Together they wrestled the box upstairs.

Bryan found a suitable bedroom. Hatter and Reeve had had rooms connected by a common bathroom with doors locked from the inside by pushing a button. Bryan opened a drawer of Reeve’s night table and asked Jonas for the library key. Satisfied that it was the library key, identifiable by its distinctive shape, Bryan placed it in the drawer as Jonas watched vigilantly.

Bryan locked, from within, the door between Reeve’s room and the hallway, leaned a chair against the doorknob inside the room, and began piling the upside-down cardboard box, pots, and pans in a wobbly tower of kitchenware propped precariously between the chair and door.

“Now, even if either of us were to get past the lock,” Bryan explained, “this door could not be opened without toppling over the pots and pans and making a racket that would wake the soundest sleeper.”

They placed the key to Reeve’s room (which they had tested in Reeve’s lock) in a second drawer of the night table, latched the bedroom window, then stepped into the connecting bathroom and made sure that window was locked, as well. Locking the door to Hatter’s bedroom from the bathroom side, they entered Hatter’s room and shut the door. The entrance to the bathroom was now sealed and could be unlocked only from within, there being no keyhole on Hatter’s side of the door.

“I think the key to the library is safe for the night,” Bryan said, satisfied that access to Reeve’s room, and the library key locked inside it, had been rendered impossible.

Jonas agreed. “And with Hatter now safe and secure, so are we.”

* * *

I
t had been
the perfect murder. The door had been locked from within, for the key had been found in the room, with no other way into or out of Jill’s room. No way to get out of the room and leave it sealed up like that. It could not have happened, and yet it had.

Of course, the same was true of Amanda’s murder. How could any of them have gotten to Amanda’s room without being observed by at least one of the others? And Hatter, being in the library, had had the greatest challenge: to get past Jonas in the parlor room and Bryan in the billiard room.

Of course, Bryan knew, for every mystery there is a solution.

Every mystery but one—Amanda’s behavior earlier that day. Clearly she had worked something out; but what had triggered her suspicions? If Bryan remembered correctly, her odd manner had begun in response to some remark of Jill’s. What was it Jill had said? Aside from browbeating Bryan, all Jill had really talked about this weekend had been their graduation assignment. Nine Man Morris.

It always seemed to come back to that.

Had some memory about that assignment tipped Amanda off? Amanda had played a relatively small role in it. The day before Julian Hayward fell to his death, Amanda had inspected the scaffolding with Jonas. The next morning she had been in the director’s office with William Hayward. Nothing there.

It was something Jill had said.

Bryan tried to shake the fog from his mind as he returned to his room. What specifically had Jill talked about? William Hayward’s skill with makeup, his impersonation of the actors. Jill had been questioning William in the makeup department when Adam Burke twisted his ankle and Julian Hayward—substituting for Burke—fell to his death. Earlier that morning she had been on the lot, watching the three-man construction crew finish work on the scaffolding. The scaffolding that had been sabotaged, despite the fact that they had proven it could not have been sabotaged.

Wait.

Was it possible? It was incredible … yet it would explain so much.

Thoughts blurred past as Bryan’s sluggish mind began to accelerate. If that was indeed what had happened, could the same thing be happening now? After all, the bridge … Two impossible murders. Even the cigarette lighter. Things were beginning to fall into place.

There was really only one way to be sure.

Bryan made a quick detour to Amanda’s room. He opened the door and approached the window. Outside the black night pressed its face against the glass pane, eclipsing all but a few pale streaks of moonlight. Bryan extended his hand, as if to caress the cheek of darkness.

Well, what do you know?

He returned to his room and snapped on the light. He saw it at once, lying on the dresser top.

Closing the door behind him, he approached the silver object.

A handgun.

He studied it with interest, turning it thoughtfully in his hand. A Remington Derringer .38 Special. Loaded. The same type of gun as his own. But it was not his own.

It belonged to Jonas.

55

T
he next morning
Jonas was surprised to find Bryan in the dining room, indulging a hearty appetite at breakfast.

“You’re up early,” Jonas observed. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Not really. How about you?”

Jonas shook his head. “Well, I see this crisis hasn’t dulled your appetite.”

“Today’s the day they come for us: Bill and Max. Looks like we made it. We survived.”

“I suppose we should let Hatter out.”

“Do we have to?”

They carried the ax upstairs to Reeve’s room. Bryan turned the doorknob. The door was still locked. With the ax, Jonas chopped a hole in one panel. He reached in and unlocked the door, easing it open to a protest of crashing metal.

They retrieved the library key from the night table drawer. Entering the connecting bathroom, they found the door to Hatter’s room still locked. The windows of Reeve’s room and the bathroom had remained latched. The key to Reeve’s room was still in its drawer.

Downstairs, the library door had remained locked. With the key Bryan unlocked it, cautiously pushing it open. Jonas entered first.

“Wake up, Hatter,” he called. “And don’t try anything.”

No reply. Was Hatter crouched in silence, preparing to spring a deadly ambush?

They found him lying face down on the floor, his head toward the north windows. They knelt beside him warily, at once noting the two red splotches encircling a pair of holes in Hatter’s shirt. In disbelief both men confirmed his death.