Nine Man's Murder (24 page)

“And how did the murderer know what Aaron (that is, Bennett) looked like? As Bennett later told us (falsely, it turned out), he had never met the murderer. Bennett had been given his instructions over the telephone. If the murderer never met Bennett (that is, Aaron), how could he have described him to Bill?”

“Bill could have been told what Aaron would be wearing,” Jonas suggested.

“Bennett wore a gray raincoat and rain hat completely covering his clothes. So did Hatter. Yet Bill picked Bennett out immediately, though Hatter had arrived first. No, Bill was not an innocent dupe hired by the murderer,” Bryan continued. “He was part of the plot, the mysterious tenth person. And if so, then perhaps he was William Hayward.

“Jill had unknowingly hinted at this when she recognized Bill at Owen’s Reef. She had spent time at the Lakeview sanitarium, where William Hayward had been committed.” Bryan studied Hayward. “She must have seen you there after your hunger strike had altered your appearance—so she did not recognize you as William Hayward in the asylum. Years later, however, at Owen’s Reef, you naturally looked familiar.

“Of course, there was one major objection to the tenth-person theory,” Bryan continued. “There were only nine of us on the mountaintop. A search had ruled out a tenth person. It wasn’t until I finally put together some clues that had been staring me in the face that I realized the truth.

“Do you remember that while you were disguised as Bennett, Jill spilled wine on your white overalls? That was a critical oversight on your part. Because when we found Bennett’s body, he was still wearing those same white overalls—and they were spotless. There should have been a wine stain on the pants leg—like the one on yours now.” Bryan indicated a red stain on the leg of Hayward’s white trousers. “But of course, Bennett was already dead and buried before the wine-spilling incident took place.

“Unfortunately, none of this occurred to me at the time. Once it did, however, the implications were clear. The man we had found buried in the snow was not the same one Jill had spilled wine on. There were two Bennetts.

“The indications had been plain enough, if only I had read the signs. At Owen’s Reef you (as Bill) had produced a cigarette and asked for a light. Odd: a man who carries cigarettes but no way to light them. But then, you had dropped your cigarette lighter at Moon’s End that morning, when you murdered Damien.

“It was that lighter that we gave Bennett—the real Bennett—when we found it. When, a short time later, he left to meet you and you killed him, you buried him—unknowingly—with the lighter in his pocket. That was why, when we later asked you about the lighter, after you had taken Bennett’s place, you had no idea what we were talking about—because it was not you to whom the lighter had been given. You hastily improvised a story about having lost it. You can imagine my confusion when the lighter ended up back in Bennett’s pocket when we found his body. Of course, it had been there all along.

“That was another clue I had overlooked. If you give a right-handed person an object, he’ll take it in his right hand and put it in his right pocket. But we found the lighter in the left front pocket of Bennett’s pants. And he wore his wristwatch on his right arm.

“You see, Bennett was left-handed—while you, on the contrary, are right-handed. I’ve seen you favor your right hand. Another indication that the left-handed Bennett who had departed the inn Friday afternoon was not the same as the right-handed one who returned.

“This, in turn, explained why Aaron had manifested two distinctly different personalities—one timid and uncertain, the other confident. It was as if there had been two different Aarons, as indeed, there had been two different Bennetts playing him. The real Bennett was the insecure one; you were the confident one. If only I had realized this earlier.

“Eventually, however, I began to fit the pieces together, until I finally formed a picture consistent with the facts. Bill, whom Jill had recognized as William Hayward without having realized it, had killed Bennett shortly after our arrival at Moon’s End and had taken his place.”

Some lunatic alchemy transmuted Hayward’s defeat into a laugh of deranged triumph. “But you figured it out too late—too late to save the others. None of you could stop me from repaying you all for the roles you played in my brother’s death: Carter, for having proposed the graduation assignment in the first place; Damien, for having assigned it.” He turned savagely upon Bryan. “You, Bryan, for putting everyone back on the case after Reeve had implicated Adam Burke by planting Burke’s ring in the sabotaged stunt car. The affair would have ended then and there if it hadn’t been for your meddling.

“Then there was Reeve’s bungling the attempt to frame Burke. Hatter and Gideon had been assigned to guard the set, yet had failed to keep out the saboteur.” Here Hayward turned to Jonas. “You, Jonas, had inspected the scaffolding with Amanda, yet had overlooked the sabotage—”

“How could they have found anything,” Bryan asked, “when the set hadn’t yet been tampered with? The same goes for Hatter and Gideon. And while we’re at it, aren’t you leaving out a major contributor to your brother’s death—the one who actually sabotaged the set? You, William.”

Hayward stood speechless.

“It had always struck me as peculiar,” Bryan explained, “that the accidents involving your brother had all been relatively harmless. They were never even potentially life-threatening—”

“You’re forgetting the one that killed him,” Hayward protested.

“But that’s precisely the point. It was Adam Burke who was supposed to have performed that stunt. It was only an unforeseen turn of events that caused him to be switched at the last moment with your brother. It was almost as if Julian had never been meant to be injured by the accidents. But when Burke was the intended target, the tampering took on a much deadlier nature.

“Adam Burke was going to replace your brother as Hollywood’s premier stunt man. You were outraged and set out to prevent it. You could have undermined Burke’s stunts to make him look bad, but then your brother might have been suspected, if sabotage was discovered.

“So instead you sabotaged Julian’s stunts, hoping that Burke would be accused of trying to eliminate the competition. Of course, you were careful to make sure your brother was never actually in jeopardy.

“You had hoped to have Adam Burke blacklisted as a stuntman; but when that plan failed, you turned to more drastic measures. You tried to get rid of Burke permanently, by sabotaging a dangerous stunt. The scaffolding scene.

“Unfortunately—for you—Burke twisted his ankle when Bennett removed the staircase from his trailer. Julian had to replace Burke at the last minute. Only you didn’t find out on time, because Jill had detained you in the makeup department.”

“I figured out Bennett’s role in Burke’s accident,” Hayward explained, “as well as Jill’s responsibility for what ensued. I took great pleasure in repaying their contributions to my brother’s death.”

“Now Gideon’s accident,” Bryan continued. “That was your doing as well, wasn’t it?”

“I went to sabotage the set that night. But Gideon was guarding it. I had to get him out of the way. I rigged the trap door and made a noise to draw him in that direction. I had hoped the fall would render him unconscious. I didn’t know he would end up paralyzed.”

Bryan frowned, more at himself than at Hayward. “I should have realized your role in Julian’s death long ago, and I didn’t. But someone else did.”

“Amanda,” Jonas said.

“It was something Jill had mentioned yesterday that tipped Amanda off. Amanda had told us—while Jill was out of the room—that she had been in the director’s office on the morning of Julian’s fatal fall, when the director received a telephone call. One of the three crew members who were to have completed work on the scaffolding was sick and would not be coming in that day. No replacement had been available.

“Yet later, Jill told us that she had watched three members of the construction crew finish the job.” Bryan’s eyes glowed like those of a cat crouched to pounce. “There should have been only two. I think Amanda put things together and realized that one of those three crew members had been an impostor.”

Bryan turned toward Hayward. “You had failed to sabotage the set the night before. It had been guarded regularly before and after Gideon’s accident, so you couldn’t get near it. But you were in the director’s office with Amanda when that call came through the next morning. That’s when you saw your opportunity. You disguised yourself as one of the construction crew—it was the only way you could get onto the set. Everyone simply saw three construction workers, as usual. You sabotaged the scaffolding as the work was being completed. It’s the only time the set could have been tampered with.

“Amanda deduced that the third crew member had been you. You were the only other person in the director’s office that morning, besides the director, and therefore the only one who knew about the sick construction worker. That was probably what she had wanted to talk to Jonas about yesterday. She may have conjectured, as I later did, that if disguise had been involved in Julian’s death, it may also have played a part up here.

“But it was already too late. Because after Jill mentioned the three construction workers, Amanda began acting strangely. You noticed that and figured out why. You couldn’t take any chances. You had to silence her before she could share her suspicions with anyone else. That’s why she was killed ahead of schedule.”

“Julian was never going to see me independent: not as long as he lived.” William’s body seemed to go limp, as if dangling from strings it could not cut. “But all by myself I punished the people responsible for his death.”

“You were responsible for his murder, William,” Bryan said. “You sabotaged the set.”

“It was an accident,” Hayward insisted. “Murder is killing with intent.”

“That set was deliberately sabotaged,” Bryan said. “You killed your brother, not us.”

“No.” Hayward was strangely calm.

“You murdered him,” Jonas insisted.

“No!” Hayward roared. He whipped the handgun from his pocket and aimed it at Jonas. But before Hayward could pull the trigger, Bryan fired his own weapon. Hayward fell at Jonas’ feet. Warily, Jonas examined the motionless body. Hayward was dead.

“I owe you one,” Jonas said. “But what do we do now?”

“We wait to be rescued.”

“That’s not what I meant. We have no proof that all those people buried in the snow weren’t murdered by us.”

“That’s why I took some precautions.” Bryan reached behind and produced the cassette tape recorder they had found two days earlier. “We’ve got Hayward’s confession on tape.”

“I underestimated you,” Jonas said. His eyes dropped. “Sorry about killing you.”

A dismissive hand sliced through the air like a sharpened sword through twisted rope. “You can’t undo things you didn’t do to begin with.”

“I thought you were trying to—.” Jonas shook his head. “We’re a lot alike, you know. With a lot in common.”

But Bryan said nothing. Instead, he removed the cord from around his neck.

“What are you doing?” Jonas asked.

“A final gift to Jill.”

“You’re giving up the crusade against her father?”

“Actually, I’m thinking of retiring. Spending more time with Prissy. Maybe she can help me raise a little girl I’m thinking of adopting.”

“Sounds very domestic,” Jonas said. “But as for retiring, it seems a shame to break up such a good act without giving it just one more chance …”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge my debt to Christian Alighieri, the “invisible author.” (He’s the one who put the period inside the quotes of this acknowledgment.)

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