And One to Die On (29 page)

Gregor went to the door of the dining room and looked inside. The decorations had mostly been taken down. The paper plates and cups had been put in stacks and stowed away on the sideboard. Lydia Acken was setting out the silver candlesticks that had been on the table the night before. Gregor folded his arms across his chest and coughed to get their attention.

“Oh, look,” Hannah Graham said in her nasty voice. “If it isn’t the great detective.”

“That’s right,” Gregor told her. “It’s the great detective. And the great detective now requests the pleasure of your company in the television room. Immediately.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Hannah Graham said dismissively. “You ought to know that by now.”

“I know that if you don’t walk across that foyer under your own steam like a civilized human being, I’m going to drag you there by your hair,” Gregor said. “I no longer have any interest in putting up with your act. Ladies and gentlemen. If you would, please.”

“Where’s Richard Fenster?” Mathilda Frazier asked.

Gregor didn’t answer her. She would find out where Richard Fenster was soon enough. He turned away from the lot of them and went back across the foyer to the television room. They followed him in a big round herd, like cartoon sheep. Gregor stepped back far enough for the rest of them to get into the doorway and see inside. When most of them didn’t seem inclined to do this, Bennis Hannaford came forward and walked into the television room on her own.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “There’s another one. There’s another one dead.”

“Who’s dead?” Mathilda Frazier asked, hurrying forward. When she saw Richard Fenster on the floor, she went green and backed up, smacking into Kelly Pratt.

They were all crowding close now.

“Jesus Christ,” Kelly said. “What’s going on around here?”

“I know what’s going on around here,” Hannah said. “It’s a plot. Cavender and Geraldine planned it all months ago. They just waited for us to get here so that they could pull it off.”

“Planned what?” Lydia asked. “What could they possibly have wanted to plan?”

Cavender Marsh didn’t come anywhere near the television room door. Gregor noticed it, but didn’t remark on it.

“Right now,” he told them, “there’s only one thing we really have to worry about. And that’s the fact that Richard Fenster is not dead.”

“Not dead?” Hannah demanded. “What do you mean he’s not dead? His face has been smashed in just like all the others.”

“Not quite like all the others,” Gregor said. “The murderer’s stroke was off. More of Richard Fenster’s cheek and jaw were crushed than his skull. So now he’s alive, and we have to get him off of this island. We have to do it now. We don’t have much time.”

“But there isn’t any way to get him off this island,” Mathilda Frazier wailed. “The weather is still terrible. Just look at it.”

“I can think of a way we might be able to tell the people on the mainland that we needed help,” Geraldine Dart said suddenly. “It might not work, but it might. It couldn’t hurt us to try. But we need somebody who knows Morse code.”

“I know Morse code,” Bennis Hannaford said. “Eight straight years at Camp Winnipesaukee. What do you want me to do?”

What Geraldine Dart wanted Bennis Hannaford to do was simple enough. It was so simple, Gregor was embarrassed not to have thought of it himself, hours ago.

“Out in the garage we’ve got these spotlights,” Geraldine explained to the rest of them. “Battery-powered spotlights. We bought them a couple of years ago to serve as backups in case of a power failure. So that people could get in and out of the dock and up and down the stairs in the dark if there was an emergency. I don’t know if any of them still work.”

“What about the batteries?” Bennis asked. “If the batteries have been lying around for two years, they must have expired.”

“No, no.” Geraldine shook her head. “Don’t worry about the batteries. I’m very careful to keep up-to-date on all the different kinds of batteries we use in this house. It’s the lights themselves we have to worry about. It’s very damp out in the garage.”

“But what will you do with the lights when you get them?” Mathilda demanded. “What does Morse code have to do with it?”

“Don’t you see?” Kelly had a tiny smile on his lips. “They’re going to send out a signal. Save Our Ship.”

“There’s a balcony that looks out toward the front of the house from the living room,” Geraldine said. “We can set up there. Maybe there won’t be anyone on the mainland looking out at us, but maybe there might be. Maybe Jason might be. And if somebody sees our signal, they’ll know we’re in desperate need of help.”

“But what difference would that make?” Mathilda asked. “Nobody can get out here in this weather. Everybody’s been saying that right from the beginning.”

“I think it’s a very good plan,” Lydia said firmly. Her face was very pale. “Maybe somebody on the mainland could think of something really special to do once they knew our situation was really dire. Maybe they could send in a helicopter.”

“A helicopter couldn’t land here,” Hannah Graham objected. “It’s much too windy.”

“Whatever it’s going to be, we’d better get started,” Bennis said. “Shall Geraldine and I go out to the garage together, Gregor?”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Gregor said.

“So what are the rest of us supposed to do?” Hannah demanded. “Stand around staring at the silly jerk’s body and twiddling our thumbs?”

“No,” Gregor said. “You’re supposed to help me search the closets one more time. In case none of you had noticed, and I’m sure at least one of you didn’t have to notice, because you knew all about it in advance, Richard Fenster is lying on the floor in there, but Tasheba Kent’s body is not lying on the couch. It has disappeared. I suggest you help me find it.”

“Oh, dear,” Mathilda Frazier wailed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Even if Carlton did kill Tasheba, he couldn’t have killed himself. That means somebody else killed him. One of us.”

“Carlton didn’t kill Tasheba,” Gregor said.

“We’re going,” Bennis said, ignoring Mathilda’s vapors. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. Keep your fingers crossed and wish us luck.”

Bennis and Geraldine Dart left the room. A moment later, Gregor heard them leave the house through the front door. Then he turned and faced the rest of the group.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

They were good. Even Hannah Graham was good. Cavender Marsh did not help out, but Gregor did not expect him to. He was old, and he was furious, a prisoner of alien forces in his own home. He got even more furious when Gregor refused to allow him to stand guard at the television room door, and assigned Lydia Acken to that job instead.

“You can’t possibly be implying that you suspect me of bashing that young man’s head in,” Cavender fumed. “I couldn’t lift whatever it was that hit him.”

“I’m sure that’s perfectly true,” Gregor said calmly, “but I want Lydia at that door.”

Cavender stormed off. He went to sit by himself in the living room, muttering imprecations against Gregor Demarkian and all his works and offspring in four languages. Lydia Acken took up her place in front of the television room door.

“This makes me very nervous,” she told Gregor. “What is it I’m supposed to do here?”

“Make sure nobody else gets in.”

“I don’t see how I’m going to bring that off. I couldn’t physically restrain someone like Kelly Pratt. I couldn’t even physically restrain someone like Mathilda Frazier.”

“If someone gives you a hard time, shout. I’ll do the physical restraining myself.”

Lydia looked dubious, but she let it go. Gregor knew that he was flabby and out of shape, but he let it go, too. It had taken him a lot of work to get flabby and out of shape. He had spent years on the project. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do what he had to do in an emergency.

Since Gregor knew that this body could not have gone far, he did not send the group fanning out all over the house the way he had when they were looking for Carlton Ji last night. He sent Kelly and Hannah to search the three closets at the west end of the utility hall. He sent Mathilda and the security guard to search the three closets at the east end. The security guard was sullen and more than a little tipsy. Gregor didn’t know where he was getting his liquor, but he was certainly getting it somewhere. Maybe the poor man figured he was owed, after being knocked out and tied up the way he had been.

Gregor took the closets in the middle of the hall himself. They were both the most likely and the least likely ones. They were the most likely because they were the closest and the easiest to get to. Someone in a hurry could have taken Tasheba Kent’s body and shoved it into one of these in no time at all. They were the least likely for exactly the same reasons. Someone hoping to hide the body until it could be disposed of would be right to fear that in one of these three closets, it would be much too quickly and too easily found.

In the first closet Gregor looked in, he found nothing at all of interest. In the second, he found three black feather boas wound around hangers and hanging from a rod. He wondered if the one that had been on the table with the auction things had been the original, or at least the one from 1938, or if it had been just another copy, like these so obviously were. Gregor went to the third closet. It was empty of everything except dust.

“Oh, look,” Mathilda Frazier exclaimed, backing out of the closet she had been looking through. “One of those shoes.”

She held up what must once have been a black high-heeled shoe with a rhinestone buckle. Its sole had been cut to shreds; part of its top was missing.

“Where did you find this?” Gregor asked.

Mathilda pointed into the closet. Gregor got down on his hands and knees to look.

“You only found the one shoe?” he asked her.

“That’s right,” Mathilda said.

“Mr. Pratt,” Gregor called out, “go down to the library and see if you can find the mate to that shoe. It should be on the table with Lilith Brayne’s things.”

Kelly Pratt hurried away obediently. Gregor went on searching in the closet. This one was stuffed full of all kinds of things, mostly packed away in opaque green plastic bags. Gregor pulled out a moth-eaten old quilt and a Persian lamb coat yellow with age. Kelly Pratt returned.

“It’s not there,” he announced breathlessly. “There’s nothing at all like it on any of the tables.”

“That’s not surprising.” Gregor went left to the next closet. “Have you tried this one?”

Mathilda Frazier shook her head.

“What about the one on the other side?”

“I looked through that one, yes,” Mathilda said. “There was nothing at all in it.”

Gregor nodded and opened the third door. He was suddenly reminded of Monty Hall’s
Let’s Make a Deal
, a show he had only watched once or twice in his life, but that had this kind of feel. The difference was that Gregor already knew what was behind door number three.

The corpse from the television room was propped up in a back corner of the closet. It was partially hidden by a hanging dry cleaning bag with a Brooks Brothers gray wool suit inside it. When Gregor pushed the bag aside, the body slumped forward and slid to the floor.

“Oh, my God,” Mathilda Frazier squealed.

Just then the front door slammed open and Geraldine Dart and Bennis Hannaford came running in.

“Gregor,” Bennis was shouting. “We’ve got them. They’re going to work.”

Bennis ran across the foyer and into the utility hall, closely followed by Geraldine Dart. Cavender Marsh emerged from his sulk in the living room and came after them. When Bennis saw the crowd clustered around the open closet door, she strode toward it.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she demanded. “We got the lights. We dumped them next to the door as we came in. We’re going to take them right out and set them up.”

“Your timing is wonderful,” Hannah Graham said.

Bennis ignored her and poked her head through the open closet door. “What the—oh, for God’s sake.”

“We’ve been having a very interesting time while you were gone,” Gregor told her.

Geraldine looked into the closet, too. She blanched.

“I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. Doesn’t anybody ever make any sense around here at all anymore?”

“Oh, this makes perfect sense,” Gregor said.

“I’m glad you think so.” Bennis was getting out her cigarettes, crime scene or no crime scene. Who knew what was a crime scene around here anymore? “Personally, I think somebody put funny little pills in the water around here and we’ve all become positively certifiable.”

“Why would anybody want to move Tasheba Kent’s body from the television room into that closet?” Mathilda Frazier said. “Whatever for?”

“Well,” Gregor said, “for one thing, because it isn’t Tasheba Kent’s body.”

“But, Mr. Demarkian,” Lydia said with mild indignation. “It has to be Tasheba Kent’s body. Who else’s body could it be?”

“Lilith Brayne’s,” Gregor said.

“Lilith Brayne’s?” Kelly Pratt repeated. “But, Mr. Demarkian, that couldn’t be. The kind of a switch you’re talking about—somebody would have noticed.”

“No, they wouldn’t have,” Gregor said. “Not after what happened to that body in that sluice.”

“But they didn’t even look all that much alike,” Mathilda Frazier objected. “Everybody always says they were very different.”

“They were very different,” Gregor told her. “With the makeup off. But they almost never had their makeup off. And with their makeup on, all either one of them ever looked like was what their makeup made them look like.”

“They were just about the same height,” Bennis Hannaford said thoughtfully.

“I think this is in terrible taste,” Cavender Marsh burst out. His body was trembling with rage. “Terrible taste. What makes you think you can come in here and make these ridiculous accusations, for which you have no proof whatsoever, as if you were God Almighty and better than the combined police forces of two countries, which is what it was, by the way, that investigation, two countries—”

“But I do have proof,” Gregor interrupted gently. Cavender Marsh fell silent, his eyes blazing. “I have the same proof Richard Fenster had. I have the shoes.”