No Mortal Reason (24 page)

“Wildcats, do you mean? I’ve never seen one but I’ve heard them. A shrill scream, and then a sobbing noise, like a baby after being spanked.”

Ben would have said it was more of a rasping noise, but the description was close enough. “A sound to lift the hat right off your head,” he agreed.

“Especially if you’re alone in the woods at night at the time.” Howd grinned. “I was coming home from visiting a lady friend first time I heard it, and the only thing I could think was that wildcats sometimes get as big as thirty pounds. Animal that size can pounce on a deer’s head, bite down on the jugular vein, and have venison for a week. I sure didn’t want him chomping on me!”

Grant’s collection also included a fox, a gray squirrel, and a woodchuck that, incongruously, was wearing a hat. Ben honestly didn’t know what to make of that.

He shifted his gaze to one of the paintings, a water color that showed a bird clinging to the underside of a limb. Butterflies drifted through one corner of the painting and a squirrel peeked around the trunk of the tree.

“Nuthatch?” Ben asked, studying the bird.

“Red-breasted. Less common than the white-breasted nuthatch, but there are plenty of both around. They make a squeaky little cry. It’s as impossible to mistake as the harsh scolding of a blue jay, or the warbles of the purple finch, or the arpeggios of the hermit thrush or the chip chip sound of a junco. Now, this is what I’ve been working on today.” He indicated a half-completed painting. “That’s a hairy woodpecker. Rarer and bigger than the downy woodpecker.”

As he prattled on, Ben looked at the butterflies again, caught and pinned in place, dying so that they could become subjects of Howd Grant’s art. Ben’s brother studied subjects just as intently before he painted them. The difference was that Aaron used human models.

Ben frowned. Although Aaron kept them alive, the girls were just objects to him, bits and pieces to be used and discarded when the painting was complete. What was at first almost an obsession, accompanied by flattery and kindness, was later replaced by indifference, even cruelty, when he was ready to move on. Ben had heard him tell a girl she was too ugly to model for him anymore, simply because he’d found a new subject. Her tears had not moved him in the least.

Did Howd ever paint people? Ben wondered. In particular, had he ever painted Elly Lyseth? His water colors of animals, so beautiful and serene, gave no hint that living creatures had been killed to produce them.   

Grant was still going on about woodpeckers when Ben interrupted him. “At what hour did you leave Lenape Springs?”

“I’m not certain, though it was in the middle of the night. The night Myron tried to kill Saugus. I was with my brother for awhile, then I went to my room, but I couldn’t sleep.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good time to get away for a few weeks, so I left a note and came up here. Sometimes a man needs to be alone.”

“Did you see Saugus again after the fight with Myron?”

“No. I didn’t see anyone. It was quiet as a tomb when I left the hotel.”

“How did you get up here?”

“I walked the five miles to Liberty.”

“At night?”

“The moon was nearly full. Besides, I like to walk at night. I see well in the dark.”

“And then?”

“I found rides with travelers driving wagons to get from Liberty to Neversink Flats and then from Neversink Flats to Grahamsville. I walked the rest of the way here.”

“You need to come back with me,” Ben told him.

“Why? Myron was still up when I left him. I can’t prove he didn’t kill Saugus.” It apparently didn’t occur to him that he could lie to help his brother.

“If you don’t, suspicion may fall on you instead,” Ben told him bluntly.

“Me? Who’d think I’d do such a thing?”

An hour ago, Ben would have said “no one.” Now he wasn’t so sure. You could never tell about the quiet ones.

* * * *

By Tuesday afternoon, some twenty-four hours after Ben had left for Sundown, Diana was beginning to think that there must be secret passages in the Grant Hotel. Not only had she been unable to run Mercy to earth, but she couldn’t seem to find Mrs. Saugus, either. Perhaps they were together in a hidden room somewhere. That theory made as much sense as any other!

Why on earth did her cousin continually find excuses not to talk to her? Diana had briefly entertained the notion that, as a child, Mercy might have known more than people thought about her father’s romantic adventures, but she hadn’t seriously considered Mercy a suspect in Elly Lyseth’s murder. Perhaps she should have. Certainly the young woman was acting in a suspicious manner.

Diana continued along another hallway, stopping when she came to a alcove with a window offering a panoramic view. She could see the road from here, but there was no sign yet of Ben returning. She hoped he’d be back soon. She missed using him as a sounding board. She missed him in other ways, too, but in particular she liked being able to talk about anything and everything with him. Even when they quarreled, they ended up further ahead. He had a way of sparking insights in her. Sometimes it took her awhile to accept them, and even longer to be grateful to him for forcing her to look hard at some aspect of the situation, but Diana had long since accepted that she and Ben made a good team.

Did he feel the same way? She thought so. Sometimes. At others, she knew his protective instincts took over and he let his concern for her safety interfere with treating her as an equal partner.

With a sigh, she left the alcove and continued along the corridor, opening doors as she went to reveal bedroom after bedroom, each furnished and ready for the season. None of them contained Mercy Grant or Belle Saugus, but the last on this floor was occupied. Diana surprised Celia Lyseth putting fresh linens on the bed.

“You!” Mrs. Lyseth exclaimed, glaring at her.

“I beg your pardon. I was looking for Miss Grant.” She retreated a few steps as Mrs. Lyseth advanced, hands curled into fists at her sides.

“I know about you! Spawn of the devil!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Newspapers!” Mrs. Lyseth grimaced as she spat out the word.

“Yes, I am a journalist, Mrs. Lyseth,” Diana said in her most placating voice, “and I have been assigned to report the facts concerning—”

“Hah! I know what you’re up to!” Step by step she backed Diana toward the stairwell.

The temptation to turn and flee was great, but Diana withstood it. She stopped, her back literally against the wall beside the door to the stairs, and attempted to reason with the woman. “I mean you and yours no harm.”

“No harm? No harm!” The second time the words were uttered in a screech that made Diana’s ears hurt. “I know your sort.”

“My . . . sort?” Diana was beginning to become alarmed for Mrs. Lyseth’s health. The woman’s face was a dangerously purple red and beads of sweat glistened on her upper lip. As her ample bosom rose and fell with ever increasing rapidity, she began to pant.

“What the newspapers did to Pastor Riker was a crime. He should have sued that scandal sheet! That’s what Lida May says. All vicious lies. Tried to crucify him, they did.”

Only the wild look in Mrs. Lyseth’s eyes kept Diana from asking for details. Deciding it would be the better part of valor to unearth them from some other source, she posed a different question instead: “What is it you think I mean to do, Mrs. Lyseth?”

“Defame us.” Without warning, Mrs. Lyseth grasped Diana’s wrist, squeezing so tightly that Diana was certain she’d have bruises. “Make us laughing stocks.”

“There’s nothing funny about the death of a young woman.”

For a moment, Mrs. Lyseth looked confused. Her grip loosed and Diana was able to pull free. “You mean Elly?”

“Of course I mean Elly. What else have we been talking about?” She rubbed her sore wrist, and inched closer to the door.

Diana had to admit, if only to herself, that she was of two minds about badgering the families of victims of crimes. She hadn’t had to question grieving relatives when she’d reported on those few murders in Manhattan. There had been enough juicy details available without resorting to such low behavior.

“You can say what you like about Elly,” Mrs. Lyseth announced. “She was no better than she should be. But I won’t have you casting aspersions on the righteous. We’ve a fine upstanding congregation. The chosen of God.”

And who am I to argue with God?
Diana prudently kept that thought to herself.

“Repent your evil ways!” Mrs. Lyseth’s shrill voice rose to a new level and she took another threatening step toward Diana.

The door behind Diana opened and Floyd Lyseth stepped through. “That’s enough, Celia. They can hear you all over the hotel.”

“Stay out of this, husband. I am on a mission from God.”

“You’re a crazy old woman, that’s what you are.” He brushed past Diana and seized his wife by the shoulders, giving her a rough shake.

Celia Lyseth promptly burst into tears.

“Mr. Lyseth—”

Lyseth turned his scowl on Diana. “I’ve nothin’ to say to you. We know why you’re here.”

Diana could see that both the Lyseths were upset. She told herself that they would naturally resent questions from the press. Elly had been their daughter, no matter that harsh words had marked their relationship with her.

“I have no intention of causing you further distress, Mr. Lyseth. If anything, I hope to alleviate your grief by revealing what really happened to your daughter.”

“She died. That’s enough.” He enfolded his still sobbing wife into his arms and awkwardly patted her back. “She died the night she left us, the night her poor mother sobbed till dawn because that ungrateful child had said such terrible things to her.” His eyes unfocussed, he stared past Diana. “Sat up all night, the both of us, and never knew she was lyin’ there dead. We still thought she’d come back in the morning.” He gave a short bark of mirthless laughter. “We’d have thrown her out if she had.”

“I thought Elly packed up all her belongings and left town.” Wasn’t that what Celia Lyseth had claimed? Diana wondered when Celia had made that discovery. Or had she made it? For all Diana knew, Elly’s things were still in the Lyseth house. After all, Mrs. Lyseth’s grasp of reality was tenuous, to say the least.

The Lyseths walked away from Diana before she could ask any more questions. She thought better of following them and instead retreated in the opposite direction, heading down the stairs.

The Lyseths, she decided, were bad-tempered and self-involved. They’d probably made Elly’s life a misery. And it was possible they were more than that. Thoughtfully, she reconsidered Celia and Floyd Lyseth as suspects. Certainly each had demonstrated the potential for violence and passion and irrational behavior. In addition, Celia had come under Pastor Riker’s influence this past year. She
might
have seen fastening an enemy to a cross as some sort of poetic justice. Especially if she thought that enemy had killed her daughter.

Frowning, Diana pushed open another door and entered the passage to the lobby. There was a flaw in her logic—Celia Lyseth didn’t seem to care that her daughter had died. Did that make it more or less likely that she’d murdered the girl herself?

In addition, her husband appeared to have given her an alibi. She might have slipped out of the house after he’d fallen asleep. She might have known where to find Elly. But had the murder occurred at night?

Diana stopped in her tracks. She had meant to ask Uncle Howd where he’d last met with Elly and at what time of day. She needed to find out if anyone had seen her after that and, if so, whether she had been alone. People would have had no reason to remember, not when they’d all thought she’d run off with a peddler, but now that they knew she’d never left Lenape Springs . . . .

She needed to trace the drummer, too, Diana decided. Who knew what he might remember of events from that long ago autumn?

Oblivious to everything and everyone else, Diana headed for the writing room. She seemed to do her best thinking there. Why, she wondered, had Sebastian told her to keep Mercy and Celia Lyseth apart after Elly’s bones were discovered? She’d assumed at the time that it was because Mrs. Lyseth was so unpredictable in her behavior, but Mercy had been angry that day—at her father in particular. Why? Had it only been because she’d discovered he’d given Elly that locket? Or had there been more to it?

“Diana?”

Diana jumped, startled out of her reverie by Mercy’s voice.

“I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

Turning, Diana caught her cousin by the wrist, employing Mrs. Lyseth’s tactic to keep hold of her quarry. “Come with me,” she said, and led the way to the writing room.

When the door was firmly closed behind them and both women were seated on the comfortably upholstered wicker chairs that furnished the room, Diana looked her cousin square in the eyes. “Why have you been avoiding my questions?”

“I’ve been busy. The hotel—”

“No, Mercy. You’ve been avoiding me. You’ve never given me a chance to interview you about Elly.”

“That’s not true!” Mercy protested. “I told you I barely remember her.”

“And I don’t believe you. What are you hiding?”

Mercy was out of her chair and on her feet before Diana could stop her. She all but flew from the writing room, slamming the door behind her.

With a sigh, Diana pulled her list of suspects from the pocket of her skirt. She stared at it, her expression bleak. There wasn’t anyone she could cross off . . . except Norman Saugus.

When an hour in the writing room resulted in no new inspiration, Diana returned to her suite and took a nap before the evening meal.

* * * *

Well-rested, well-fed, and determined not to let Mercy out of her sight, Diana cornered her cousin the moment Mrs. Ellington began to clear the table. “A word with you,” she said in an undertone. “Now, and in private. Or would you prefer I ask your uncle to insist on your cooperation and remain with us while you answer my questions?”

They adjourned to the veranda. Dusk was upon them, and in the dimness Diana could hear the hum of insects. Mercy plucked up two fans from a table and handed her one.