The Pied Piper of Death (10 page)

“Right on,” the Welch Rabbit commanded from his supine position on the cabinet counter underneath rows of silver goblets and ornate tea services. “Hit it again, Katty,” he commanded as he brought the lip of a silver flask to his mouth.

“Got visitors,” Katherine Piper slurred.

“Tell them to fuck off,” Rabbit said without turning his gaze from some interesting panorama that seemed to be reflected in the bottom of the cabinets above his head. “You're the lady of the place, tell them to fudge it.”

“You always were a gentleman, Rabbit,” Katherine said.

“You know it, Katty.” The Welch Rabbit finally turned his head and saw Lyon. “That you, Wentworth?”

“I believe so, Rabbit.”

“Party's over. Go home. Mrs. Piper and I are having a conference between majordomo and lady of the house. We are planning next month's menu and arrangements for a formal state visit. Got it? It's employer to employee.”

Katherine Piper giggled. “Actually we are considering becoming lovers, but we can't figure out how to work out the technical details.”

Rabbit returned the giggle. “If my wife ever finds out it would be snap time.” He brought the flat of his hand down so hard on the surface of the counter that he winced in pain. “Snap! She'd cut my head off.”

Katherine Piper lurched to her feet and grasped the edge of the table with both hands to keep from falling. “Frieda will be furious, Rabbit,” she said. “I will drive you home because you are too drunk to drive.”

“Nonsense! I am only as drunk as I pretend to be.” He swung his legs over the edge of the counter and hit his head on the bottom of the shelves. “And tonight I am very imaginative.” He held his head with both hands and looked down at the floor below his feet. “Who moved the floor?”

Katherine Piper shifted her grip from the table edge and cradled Rabbit's head. “Rabbit is the only true gentleman at Bridgeway.”

“My granddaddy always said, we might be small in stature, but we are large in soul.” He pushed off the counter and fell to the floor. Lyon and Katherine helped him to his feet.

“I'll drive if you'll tell me where we're going,” Lyon said.

After further confused discussion, Lyon surmised that he was to drive the golf cart to Rabbit's house, which was located off the grounds of Bridgeway, on a lane a quarter of a mile away.

Katherine Piper demonstrated her ability to sober at will and provided coherent directions.

They stashed Rabbit in the back of the cart with his feet pointed directly to the rear.

“Does he always drink like this?” Lyon asked as they drove down the hill toward the gate.

“There seemed to be two things bothering him tonight. I'm one of them. He watches over me like a little brother, and when he does that we often drink together.”

“That's big brother,” the slurred correction came from the rear of the cart.

She turned and pulled their rear passenger's ear lobe, “Little men seem to have big ears.”

“Screw you,” was Rabbit's final comment before he emitted a snore.

They passed by the gate cottage and sped into the dark lane that ran along the perimeter of Bridgeway's grounds. “You said two things were bothering Rabbit?” Lyon said.

“I don't know the second, except I feel that something else is bothering him, and has been for some months. He seems happy enough with Frieda, but who except the participants really knows what transpires in a marriage?”

Lyon glanced over at the woman sitting next to him whose face was barely visible in the half-moon night. Her features had gradually firmed into a more rigid cast from the slack features of the near-drunk. “You seem to have remarkable recuperative powers,” he said.

“There's nothing like a murder to set the tone for an evening.”

“You and Rabbit don't always drink like this?” Lyon asked.

“Rabbit's always there when I need him. He's the one who keeps me sane around here. When I need to drink, like tonight, he drinks with me.”

“Where were you when it happened?” Lyon asked as casually as he could, knowing that there was no truly casual way to ask for an alibi during a murder investigation.

“In my room, and before you ask, no one saw me,” she replied. “Markham and I were also having an affair. I bet those two items will place me high on someone's list of suspects.”

“I'm sure they'll eventually get around to talking with you. Knowing Rocco Herbert, he'll probably talk with you tonight.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“What's happened to you, Kate?” Lyon asked.

“By that, do you mean did I kill Markham? Bastard that he was and as much as he deserved killing?”

“That wasn't what I meant.”

“Then you're asking how a nice girl like me who was once rather attractive and a little bit bright could end up as a Hadrian rummy.”

“I would never have used those terms.”

“A few years ago I found myself as a contract college instructor without a tenure track. My affairs were becoming further apart, my drinking was increasing, and my cute little figure was filling out. Peyton bounced in for a second chance after his first wife was killed in the airplane accident.” She waved her hands expansively. “I traded my going nowhere career for this place and Peyton.”

“And picked up a heavy dose of cynicism along the way.”

“That's the rate of exchange for these trades, Went. Turn down this drive and Rabbit's house is behind those trees.”

Lyon stopped the cart in the darkened drive not far from the cottage nestled in a grove of trees. He turned off the ignition and the lights flicked off. Rabbit slept soundly in the backseat. Katherine Piper put her hand lightly on Lyon's arm and brushed her lips across his cheek. “It's pass time,” she said. “Don't worry, I'm easy. No fuss. No bother. No phone calls the next day and no repeats required unless you do the asking.”

“You know I find you attractive, Kate. But there's …”

“That sounds like a Bea but. Are you one of those strange birds that actually loves his wife?”

“Not so rare.”

“You don't travel in my circles.”

“Question time,” he answered. “Why did you have the affair with Markham?”

She gave a small laugh. “Because he was here. No, I mean that. He paid attention to me. When he first arrived at Bridgeway for his research on that great literary event,
The Piper Contribution
, I was given the assignment of touring Markham around the grounds and library. Peyton did not seem to realize that such activities for Markham were the equivalent of issuing a prepaid hunting license.”

“You were that easy?”

“I was willing to be, but I restrained myself. It was delicious having that much attention paid to me after all these years. Markham worked diligently at my conquest and I rewarded him suitably.”

“Then you had no reason to be angry with him?”

“But I did. He threw me over the day before yesterday. I know, of course, that this was not an unusual occurrence for Mark. Once conquered the prey becomes carrion and fresh flesh is required.”

“Then you hardly hated him enough to kill him?”

“I didn't? What makes you think that?”

As Lyon levered the sleeping Rabbit from the rear seat, Katherine eased behind the wheel and sped down the drive in the nearly silent cart. Lyon watched her go as Rabbit awoke.

“She didn't do it,” Rabbit mumbled as he leaned his head against Lyon. “She was with me the whole time.”

“Nice try, Rabbit.”

Rabbit leaned heavily against him as they moved in lockstep down the drive toward the house.

It was a tiny dwelling obviously built on half a normal scale for the exclusive use of little people. The miniature house had a steeply pitched roof tiled with white slate that glistened in the moonlight. Dark timber supports spaced evenly along the walls gave the dwelling the appearance of a Bavarian forest cottage. A welcoming shaft of light fell through gaily colored cafe curtains in the two front windows and cast a bright swatch on the path before them.

“Who's out there?” A woman leaned out the open portion of the Dutch doors. “Is that you, Rabbit?”

“Yes, Frieda, light of my life. I am with a friend who cannot stand loud noises or violence. So please be on your good behavior.”

“If you've been drinking, I'll violence both of you. You can bring your friend in if he isn't throwing up all over the place,” she said.

Frieda was a busty woman of sharp features and Rabbit's height. Her long straw hair was wound around her head in long braids. She wore a floor-length sheath mostly hidden by an embroidered apron that fell past her knees. She held a cast iron frying pan in one hand and glared at the two men in her doorway.

“Hello, honey,” Rabbit said. “Love you.” He kissed her cheek.

“We will see about that,” she said in a perfectly normal voice that belied her height.

Lyon stooped to enter the tiny kitchen. The room's proportions were for a child or adult who happened to be under four feet tall. He could see past the kitchen into the front parlor, where the furnishings were also built to this small scale.

“Sit over there,” Rabbit said with a gesture toward a lone straight chair of normal size that sat in a corner.

“Thank you.” Lyon sat in the chair while Frieda continued glaring at her husband.

“I was held up working the party,” Rabbit said as he pulled himself erect.

The frying pan clanked on a chopping block with a loud crack that made Rabbit jump.

“You were into the Piper brandy again. They sent you to the wine cellar and you brought back some of the Napoleon for yourself. You cannot be trusted in the wine cellar, Rabbit.” The pan whacked down on the chopping block again and Rabbit shivered.

“I'm sorry, Frieda. It won't happen again.”

“I know it won't happen again. I'm going to make sure of that.”

“No, Frieda, please.”

It occurred to Lyon that Rabbit had made an extremely poor career choice when he decided to hold up gas stations. He seemed to have a low threshold of fear as this threatening little woman in front of them now proved. “It is punishment time.”

“Come on, Frieda. My stomach won't take it.”

“You want brandy, you get brandy.” Frieda reached into a cupboard and grasped the neck of a liquor bottle. She opened it with a flourish and plunked it down with a thump in front of Rabbit. A large empty water tumbler quickly joined it. “Drink.”

He squinted at the bottle's label. “This is a very bad year.”

“And it gets worse. Drink!” She poured the large tumbler half full of brandy and folded her husband's hand around its base.

Rabbit glanced imploringly at Lyon. “My wife believes in aversion therapy.” He took a large gulp and gripped the edge of the table with both hands as his cheeks began to balloon. His face turned florid before he stumbled frantically toward the bathroom.

“Drunk,” Frieda said as she looked toward the closed bathroom door with concern. Then she turned toward Lyon. “Coffee, Mr. Wentworth? It's all made and I was just about to have a cup.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I know your wife from her politics. Sometimes on the television I'll see you by her side.” She poured coffee from a small pot on the stove into demitasse cups. “Has Rabbit been playing up to Mrs. Piper again?”

Rabbit stumbled from the bathroom. “She needed my help again.” He visibly winced when he rejoined them at the table and Frieda handed him the remains of his brandy.

“I've heard about the goings-on at the big house,” Frieda said. “Cook stopped in on her way home and told me about that man Swan. Mrs. Piper is very foolish and should not have been involved. As you can guess, Mr. Wentworth, there are no secrets from the servants in a large establishment like Bridgeway.”

Lyon watched with macabre interest as Rabbit slowly choked down the final two ounces of brandy. He clenched the table's edge, but this time was able to retain the liquor. “The Pipers serve better booze than this kerosene. They know how to treat a dwarf,” he said as the new alcohol laid a carpet of slurred sarcasm over his speech. “We get to live in this house that the first colonel built for my great grandfather. We all grew up here and are attached to the property like serfs.”

“If we had children they would grow up here,” Frieda said wistfully.

“And be exploited like the rest of the little people,” said Rabbit with an ineffectual thump to the tabletop.

“You don't have it so bad,” Frieda said. “You aren't exactly working in an underground mine like the seven dwarfs. The only time you go underground is to ransack the wine cellar.”

“If I were one of those exploited seven dwarfs I'd be the one they called Grumpy. All the little people should be grumpy because we got what's called the short end. You notice that Snow White didn't stick around the little people. After her nap she couldn't wait to run off with the Prince.”

Frieda sighed. “After a couple of drinks my husband goes into his ‘Great Speech,' which sometimes includes how he might have been president if he could see over the podium.”

“They force us to stay here, you know,” Rabbit said in a drunken conspiratorial tone. “The Pipers are the ones who keep us here.”

“Now, Rabbit, that's just not true,” Frieda objected.

“You do not know the history, it goes back generations,” Rabbit said. “Some of us try and leave, but it doesn't work. We always come back to Bridgeway. My granddad ran away to join the circus and ended up in Hollywood as a Munchkin.”

Lyon looked at the little man with interest. “Your granddad was a Munchkin?”

“A Lollipop Guild Guy. That's where he met Mom, out there in Hollywood. Then after
The Wizard of Oz
was over the roles got scarce and no way were they going to work the circus.”