The chuckling fingers (15 page)

He walked the room from end to end, unseeingly, his eyes seeking inward for the dark clue he desired.

Unobtrusively Phillips melted away. I was to notice him later in what was by that time a knot of reporters near the Fingers. Chris Paxton got the news source he wanted.

At loose ends now that Bill’s rush of effort had flagged, Myra, Jacqueline and I did the dishes and then called Toby, who said she was ready to come back now, and Aunt Harriet, who asked why we didn’t all just leave. About two Aakonen called— there’d be an inquest Monday morning at ten in the Grand Marais town hall. Of Ed Corvo’s arrest or any other clues he might have he would say nothing.

Jean was back by that time. “Inquest,” he said. “Aakonen must figure he has something. I wonder what he figures about your gun being gone. Bill. I’ve been thinking about that and I don’t like it.”

There‘d be only one reason the murderer might want to keep the gun.
I looked at the others and saw my perception leaping —in Jacqueline’s eyes, quick but steady, in Myra’s. Bill and Jean already knew.

Bill said, “Carol and Mark got back here just before Ann came in. They’d looked all morning and didn’t see anything.”

“Forty thousand acres of hiding places around here,” Jean said.

But my mind fled over those surrounding miles of wilderness, then pulled in close. “The murderer had to reach the hiding place—if there is one—between the time Fred was killed and morning. He had to cut up my bathrobe while it was still dark too.”

“Good girl!” Jean said. “Well, I thought I’d start on the patch of woods between here and the resort. Anyone want to come along?” He looked at me.

Bill chose slowly. “I think I’ll get farther staying here as headquarters. Mark and Carol said they’d go out this afternoon again too. I want to do some thinking. And Jacqueline had best stay with me.”

Myra got to her feet but she was only too obviously all in from sleeplessness and strain. I sent her to bed for a nap and went with Jean alone—through the pantry window, to avoid reporters.

* * *

Bill had said Jean was above question, but as I walked with him toward the resort path some apprehension quickened; suspicions can’t be settled with a word. The fog that had swathed the morning had lifted only slightly; it hung heavily—within touching distance, it seemed—overhead; the lake dashed angrily, the color and the apparent consistency of geyser mud; the chuckle of the Fingers echoed distantly, as if mocking our frail, unproductive efforts.

“Look for any sign,” Jean told me. “Broken twigs, a scrap of fabric, leaves or mold disturbed—anything.”

At first as I stumbled back and forth between trees half my attention was for him. Inside a house he sometimes seemed hesitant and clumsy but here he moved easily and swiftly, covering much more ground than I but keeping near me.

We’d worked perhaps half an hour when I thought I heard a rustle from somewhere near the center of that patch of woods.

I didn’t speak, but Jean straightened from a rock he was overturning, to look at me. More certainly this time a small rustling, not continuous but intermittent, as if someone moved, stopped to listen, then moved again.

“Stay here close to the path,” Jean whispered, and instantly was gone, melting into the trees and grayness like a shadow. He made no more noise than a panther, but as I strained my ears that other sound of movement stopped; when it began again it was much more open and coming in my direction. Whoever it was had heard Jean coming and was cutting directly into the path. Straight at me.

For the first time in my life, waiting for the unknown rustle to resolve itself into a human being, I wished I had some weapon of defense. I moved backward until I was on the open path.

Then a figure became visible, and relief washed up. Cecile Granat.

Queerly, seeing her there, her own words flashed in my mind —her words to Bill on the porch. “And you think you have the right to tell me what to do, too, don’t you?” Inimical words— she’d been angry. What little I knew of her was none too good; what little I’d guessed of her was none too good, either, and still, perversely, I was relieved. What I’d expected was probably a man, huge, uncouth, unknown, to leap at me, snarling and slavering.

I said, “Oh, hello, Cecile! I couldn’t imagine who was there in—”

“Hello yourself. You all alone out here?”

“No. Jean’s along.”

No surprise on the gold-tanned, exotic face over which caution was now laid like an enamel.

“I was out looking around,” she said. “Thought I might stumble over the hiding place of that gun if it is hidden. Bradley Auden told me it hadn’t been found. That what you’re doing too?”

It was a little too prompt, but I nodded. Jean had heard her change of direction and was coming back, threshing noisily this time.

To him she repeated her explanation. “I was getting the shakes, sitting in that cabin all alone.”

One of Jean’s thick brows went up an infinitesimal fraction, but he seemed to accept her words at face value.

“We can use another hunter.” He spaced us so we went through the woods like a dragnet. Birds flew up under our noses; rabbits fled; we even flushed a young fox who sprang with a liquid, angry bark from a secure thicket, then stopped thirty feet off to look back at us with disdainful incredulity before he trotted daintily away. The fog began lowering, so that we worked in progressive gloom.

Whatever her purpose in the wood lot, Cecile was playing up to her part; apparently she hunted with thoroughness. Before long we were dusty, twig scratched and—in spite of the chill dampness—hot.

Cecile stuck until perhaps five o’clock before she stood upright to rub a rueful hand along her back.

“We’re nuts.” It was disgruntled and sulky. “What we’re hunting might be under one leaf we don’t turn. This is where I quit.”

I stood, too, to ease back muscles that yelped.

Jean cajoled, “It’s only a few hundred feet to the road. Come on, Cecile, stick.”

“Too much is sticking to me. My clothes. I’m getting back to the shower before it freezes—which wouldn’t surprise me any minute.”

She left, and Jean bent again to his task but he wasn’t really hunting—he was listening to her audible passage through the woods.

“No, she’s too clever,” he said when the sounds ceased. “She went straight to the resort. Come on. I’m going back to the spot where she was when we heard her first. I marked where it would be.”

So we went back to the center of the wood lot, to ground we’d already covered. We turned over practically every bush leaf. There was nothing.

Jean didn’t give up until we’d been at it an hour. “She was in here for some reason. What?”

“If she was hiding the gun—”

“Aakonen searched her cabin. And we agreed the murderer had plenty of time to hide the gun the night of the murder.”

“She might have come to see if it was safe or to move it to a safer hiding place.”

“Possible. If she did, she did a damn good job.” He kicked at the soft leaf mold. “The trouble with this damp, crumbly ground is that it’s hard to see if it’s been disturbed. Sprinkle a few leaves over it, and a dug-up spot would look like all the rest.”

I said slowly, “We’ve got to remember a girl like Cecile might have something else she’d want to hide. Something she mightn’t want to burn or throw in the lake but would want to hide if she thought the hunt might get too close.”

“I said Aakonen searched her cottage.”

“He didn’t search me personally.”

A grunt. “He slapped me over. And Mark. The kind of clothes you girls wear makes a personal search unnecessary.”

“That’s especially true of Cecile.”

“All right. So either she came to see the gun was safe or to hide something flat and small she could have had on her person. Or something else we haven’t thought of. All right, let’s get back to that strip of woods we haven’t covered.”

I followed without demur, but I’d seen the impossibility of what we were attempting. If the wilderness hid anything we wanted we were doomed never to find it—the hiding places were too many, the space too great.

* * *

It was perhaps eight when we emerged on the highway after a more and more cursory search. Jean, too, was accepting impossibility. By the time he quit he was muttering to himself in anger; evidently unsuccessful physical effort had the same effect on him that unsuccessful mental effort has on me. By that time darkness was so heavy we automatically followed the highway around to the Fingers drive instead of cutting in through the woods.

“We should have stopped before,” were Jean’s first articulate words. He grabbed at one of my torn and aching hands and began a brisk trot. The moment I’d stood still I’d begun feeling chilled; it was a relief to run in the freshening wind; the big breaths I had to take were clear and sharp in my nose. When we passed the gate and got in among the pines the treetops were knocking together in that wind, the bare branch nubs clashing.

“Sounds like a thousand skeletons being jangled,” I said. Lulled by his actions, my suspicions of him were gone; I was warm from running, and my muscles were as smooth as oil.

“A little less of those skeletons,” but he grinned at me.

We got to the lodge at the end of a spurt so speedy that I grabbed at the screen door and stuck to it, panting.

“That was fun.” He was breathing heavily, smiling. “Let’s do it again sometime. The trouble with civilization is that you have to be so all-fired decrepit the minute you’re grown up.”

“That’s not true of you… . Heavens, the house is dark!” It was a darkness that was quickly reminding, sobering. Yesterday morning I’d discovered murder and now I ran and smiled.

“Here, I’ll get a light on.” He had me across the porch and inside the living room, his fingers groping for the nearest lamp. Then he pulled a chain, and a warm cone of light swam up.

“Everyone must be out,” he began, but we both saw at once that everyone wasn’t.

A limp arm hung over the arm of a chair near the fireplace.

I ran, fear gripping my chest like a cold steel wrench. But when I got to where I could look down on Jacqueline’s dark head relief came out of me in an audible gasp. She was sleeping normally, soundlessly, her head fallen against her shoulder, her whole body relaxed and easy.

Jean said low, beside me, “Bill must have gone out.”

I tiptoed backward. “Let her sleep. She needs it. The others must be around. Maybe Myra’s still asleep. I’ll run upstairs to wash. If you’ll stay I’ll get you something to eat.”

He hesitated, looking at me. “No, I’ll drive in to Grand Marais —I understand we’re being allowed that much rope—if I can’t get anything at the inn. I’ll see you later tonight though.”

“Get any news there is—especially if they’ve found out if that bullet came from Ed Corvo’s gun.”

Jacqueline stirred, sighing. He nodded agreement and left as I tiptoed the rest of the way to the stairs and up. On the way I again had an impression of movement ahead of me; I thought again that Octavia had probably been in the hall listening and had scurried to her room.

It was hard, except when Myra took her food or spoke of her, ever to remember that Octavia was in the house, she succeeded so completely in effacing herself. What, I wondered as I passed her door, was her existence now? Did she, like the rest of us, have an apprehension that the person who had killed Fred might strike again? Was that why she hid so completely, cowering and waiting for a footfall? Did she, like the others, suspect Jacqueline? Or was it merely the exposure of her infirmity from which she fled? Certainly she was queer. If she hadn’t had that alibi …

The key was no longer on the outside of her door. She must be locking it herself on the inside.

Myra’s door, too, was closed; I hoped she was asleep.

Not knowing the hurry there was, I dawdled. I was in the bathroom perhaps fifteen minutes, some of the time with the clanking faucet open; the bathroom window was closed. Leisurely I went back along the hall to my room where I got out slacks and a fresh sweater and stood in front of the dresser putting them on.

It was then I made that small discovery so soon to be brushed from my mind.

The travel folders I’d dropped there were still on the dresser top; when I’d pulled the sweater over my head I scooped them up to throw them into the wastebasket. like everything else we’d worked on that day, they seemed just a dead end. But, curiously, before dropping them I looked at them again. Only some of them were marked. The steamship line which Bill and Jacqueline had taken was marked for times of leaving and arrival; some of the passages of descriptive goo were also underlined—rapturous accounts of life aboard ship.

“No Marco Polo, no Cortez, no Balboa, no other explorer silent upon his peak in Darien ever thrilled to more exotic, more exciting sights and sounds than you’ll thrill to on these South Sea trips of the Island Line,” one folder began. “For you we have planned …”

That passage had been underlined in an odd, disrupted way. A line under a word here and a word there—a line under
no
, a line under
more
, a line under
trips
, a line under
for you
… .

Stupidly I stared at it, knowing I had something but not able to see what it was. Then I did see.

The underlined words were a message—
No more trips for you.

A message Fred had gotten perhaps while Bill and Jacqueline were on their honeymoon. A taunt.

Quickly I went through the folders again. In some the passages underlined were just the more glowing accounts of the fun to be had on the boats and the islands. But there were other messages.

“Take it and like it.”

“You’ll keep … your nose on the grindstone.” Out of a passage adjuring the opposite.

Peculiarly, with those folders in my hands, I could feel as if I were Fred getting them. Envy coming on. He’d been getting a lot of ribbing about his father’s marriage. There ‘d be the possibility of brothers and sisters at his age. He’d been manfully throttling his natural jealousies. And then these had come, arrows turning in the wound. I could understand now that scene of his clowning… .