Corpses at Indian Stone (11 page)

"Me, too."

Danielle gazed at him intensely, shaking her head a little, as if in doubt about what she was thinking. In a moment, she chuckled, and the sound was, somehow, self-deprecatory and pathetic. "The people at Indian Stones," she began, "are used to authority and accustomed to taking matters of all sorts into their own hands. That goes double for the Davises, and triple for me. Dad has a fearful temper. Not many people know it. But most of those cold, concentrated men have tempers."

"Yes-?"

"He could have clubbed Jim Calder and carried him up on the hill and built the trap. Easily, I couldn't have. I don't want you to think I'm trying to establish an alibi in your mind--but--"

"I don't think it. Because it's no alibi."

Danielle was startled. "Certainly--"

"The woods were dry. The ground was hard. Did you ever hear of moccasins? Or sneakers? Anybody wearing 'em could have followed Calder that night and hit him from behind and then proceeded to rig up that trap. A woman, an old man, a kid. The wind blew all the next day. The body lay there all day. The presumptive murderer could have got up to the scene again and carefully removed any incidental signs of his or her presence. There were hours for that--hours in which we didn't know Calder was dead and nobody kept track of anybody. Such a murderer, wanting to be sure the stage was set correctly, might even have arranged a palpable reason to be in the vicinity the next day--

just to cover any possible chance of a clue he'd overlooked. A rendezvous on Garnet Knob, for instance--"

Danielle gasped faintly. "You can be very trying, Aggie!"

"All right. You didn't do it. Maybe Bill did. Maybe he welcomed your bid to him to go hiking before supper--in spite of pretending not to want to go."

"I never thought of that." She pondered. "Do you believe--philosophically--that killing a man is ever--permissible? I mean--would you hunt down a very useful man because he'd murdered a very dangerous one?"

"I dunno."

Danielle shook herself. "You always make me take the chances on you! It's very unsatisfying! Look here, Aggie Plum! The night Jim was killed, Dad went for a consultation to Parkawan. He left fairly late and he didn't get back till much later. There are three physicians in Parkawan. I phoned them all--this afternoon--when Dad was out in his darkroom. None of them called on Dad. The hospital didn't. That's thing number one that frightens me. Then--I had another thought. How long was Dad busy with Sarah that morning--to diagnose her mumps?"

"Maybe half an hour."

"Did he leave--right after that?"

"Yeah. Shortly."

"He didn't come home. I slept late--naturally. I'd been up most of the night, what with him out--and coming back--and you. But the cook says she's sure she heard him sneaking upstairs by the back way when she was getting up--and that was around seven--

long after daylight. The cook wasn't sure--she just mentioned it. I didn't think anything of it at the time--I just assumed he'd stayed a long while with Sarah."

"I see," Aggie said. "No wonder you're--scared."

Danielle said, "I'm telling you because I'm sunk. I don't know what to do. They shouldn't--certainly--take Father's life for Jim Calder's! He's not a very sympathetic man--

but he's a very valuable one! I never could love him--much--because I think he's always·

felt icy toward me--since Mother left him. As if I were contaminated, somehow. Then--

you saw him throw those shoes overboard--"

Aggie took out his pipe, held a match for her cigarette, and made no reply.

"They
were
shoes," she went on. "I've looked in his closet and they're gone. Shoe pacs--if you know what they are. Deerskin, or elkskin, or something. He always wore them for walking--and he kept some sort of oil on them that turned the rawhide brownish.

I didn't think of the importance of the fact that they have no hard soles and no heels at all-

-till you explained it just now. Do you suppose he was getting rid of them because there was some blood on them that he knew he couldn't get out thoroughly enough so that if Wes, or somebody, examined them with a microscope--?"

"A pretty fancy thing to prepare for."

' Dad has a pretty fancy brain. He'd think of microscopic examinations and chemical examinations-all that." She sighed. "I've told you--anyway. I'm glad I did."

"Why didn't you tell Wes Wickman?"

"I couldn't decide whether to go to him or not. I've got the jitters--the inside kind--

and that's the worst kind. Then--Wes was crazy in love with me, once--and I turned him down fiat. He was miserable for-ages. Maybe you won't understand--but a woman can hesitate about--turning in her own father--to a man who has loved her--a man she's hurt.

Maybe that's nutty. And, anyway, I didn't want to make the decision about whether all this should be forgotten--or whether it should be brought out, and Dad arrested. Because, after all, he did kill Jim Calder--didn't he?"

Aggie smoked. "It looks like it," he said. There was a long pause. "This doesn't explain anything about Hank Bogarty, though."

' They haven't found his body?"

"It seems as if they won't. You can't add anything about him to what you've told me?"

"Nothing," said Danielle.

"Want to eat dinner with me?"

"You're not going to call up Wes right away?"

"Not this minute. I want to think."

Danielle said, "I feel--better than I have--ever since it happened. Do you mind my--chucking the whole business on you?"

Aggie grinned. "Yeah. It's quite a load."

She sighed. "You're a very funny man. You look like a cartoon professor. In the club--you're about as comfortable as a rabbit in a lion's cave. And yet--the things you know!

The things you've done!"

"Nonsense. Sifting dust in ruined cities. Measuring the heads of native rug weavers."

"Nonsense, yourself! I had Dad borrow a couple of your books from Sarah.

You've got more nerve than Tarzan--and a vocabulary that makes a sap out of Webster's dictionary. Come on. Take me to dinner. It'll make people talk. Whoever I dine with--it makes people talk. You'll blush--and that's ridiculous--for a man that attacked a gorilla with a--garden fork."

Aggie blushed as they started into the club.

Danielle took his arm. "I wish things weren't like this," she said. "I wish I'd met you long ago--and some other way."' She laughed. "Or married you when I was six. Like those natives in India you wrote about. You'd make such an interesting husband. So nice to go on trips with. There's Beth! Are you as keen about her as the rumors say? She's extremely beautiful--and I suppose--having spent so much time in the tropics--you prefer brunettes."

She looked at him wickedly and his blush deepened. But the glimmer in her eyes faded back to anxiety. "I'm incorrigible," she said.

Aggie walked back to Rainbow Lodge in the early part of the evening. He had left Danielle at the club--with Ralph Patton and Beth and Bill Calder. Left her sitting with them, talking, killing time, listening to the radio. It seemed to Aggie that, having told all she knew, she had completely relaxed. The burden was now on his shoulders. He had no idea what to do about it. If Sarah were only a little less silent and truculent--more confiding--he would tell her. He decided, as he walked, that he would tell Sarah part of it, anyway. He needed help.

She was in bed. Around her were unopened books, unplayed games, unread.

magazines. She looked at her nephew with disturbed eyes and said, "If you want to learn patience and humility, try the mumps! What's afoot?"

"Well--for one thing--they haven't found Bogarty's body."

"I know it! Wes was here--making a sick call--and prying harder than a burglar's jimmy on the subject of Hank."

"I was wondering," Aggie said, "if you happen to have any old fox traps lying about?" Sarah squinted at him. "Thousands. Help yourself. Wes told me about the fox.

What good will it do you to catch it?"

He shrugged. "I just have a hunch I'd like to--that's all. Like to see that collar.

Like to check the teeth with pictures of the bite on Calder's hand. I'm not kidding."

"Well--if you really want to--I'll have Windle get you some, in the morning. I doubt if it will help you find out who killed Jim--"

"Oh, I know that. What I want to find out is--where's Hank?" Sarah was staring as glassily as he had expected. "you
know
--?"

He was almost supercilious. "Oh, yes. George Davis."

"Don't be an idiot!"

"He had reasons for doing it of which we are all aware.

He's strong enough and decisive enough. His alibi for that night is rotten.

Circumstantial evidence shows he was probably on the scene of the crime shortly after diagnosing you--removing traces of his original presence. A brilliant analytical mind--

broken down after years of morbid and vengeful brooding. Oh, yes. George is our man.

Question is--shall I turn him in? Danielle put it up to me."

"Danielle! What's she got to do with it?"

"Oh--she did the redhanded catching."

"You're not serious, Aggie!"

"Perfectly."

His aunt was silent for an unconscionably long time. "George didn't do it," she said finally. "I've known him like the palm of my hand--ever since he cracked his first speller. At least--if he did do it--he's gone crazy."

"People do," said Aggie.

"I'd suspect Danielle herself-before I'd dream of George! I'd suspect Byron Waite.

Or that strong, silent young Patton boy. Greed, there. Beth-who hated her father. Old John, here. Bill--or Martha--or Jack Browne even. Or myself. George is as rentless as rock! His sense of values wouldn't permit him to waste time thinking about murder. As a surgeon, he's seen too much of life and death to be interested in it in any but an intellectual way. Rubbish, Aggie! George never did it!"

"I wanted your reaction," he grinned. "And--boy!--did I get it."

Sarah grunted.

"Nevertheless, I'm going to phone Wes and tell him to come over right away. And you're going to hear a set of circumstances that will probably result in the immediate arrest of your physician."

Sarah sagged. She seemeo, suddenly, old and scared and uncertain. "I--" She shook her head. "Never mind. Go ahead. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm an old fool.

Maybe the confidence I have in my knowledge of people is wholly misplaced! Wholly.

All my life, I've been a Miss Foot. I haven't hesitated to use any stratagem I could think of to make people do what I believed was good for them. Usually--I've been right. But I could be wrong--fundamentally."

' There's something," Aggie said, "about not being your brother's keeper, in the Bible. A good program. I'm going to phone."

He did so. Wes Wickman, however, was not at Headquarters. He was not expected until morning. The sergeant offered to send up another man. Aggie decided to wait until morning. It was a terrible decision-not from Aggie's viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of chance. He went to bed awhile later and fell into a troubled sleep. A creaking of the stairs woke him up.

CHAPTER 9

Sarah pushed open his door as the lights clicked on. She was wearing a heavy wrapper--a velvet one. Upon her form it looked like a fur coat. A towel, under which an ice bag audibly squdged, encircled her neck. There was red on her cheeks-high and spotty--like bad make-up.

"You're worse!" Aggie exclaimed. "I'll get Davis--!"

She shook her head and sat down in the largest chair his room contained. She thrust out her feet, which were encased in lambskin boots. "Get me a stool. I want to talk."

Aggie shoved his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown. There was no stool in his room. He made one, of a box and a pillow. He arranged his aunt's feet, and stripped a blanket from his bed to tuck around her. Then he switched on a bridge lamp and sat down, facing her. He smiled, and she smiled back at him.

"Shoot," he said.

Her first words were an apology to herself rather than a prelude to a definite subject. "I can't ask you not to repeat what I'm going to tell you, Aggie, because it isn't that kind of information-and this is not a time when innocent people can be required to keep secrets. I must not say what I'm going to--and yet I've got to. I decided, only now.

I'm old and I'm ill and I'm not as astute as I used to be. I determined that you would have to judge about things just as Danielle evidently has done." She smiled again. "It's funny.

Nobody has done my thinking or my judging--ever."

Aggie reflected her expression and waited.

"It's about Hank Bogarty. Since he hasn't turned up, I'm going to tell you. Davis threatened me, if I talked. I had a long note from Waite yesterday in the same vein-and another today. I--personally--haven't anything much to lose. They have. Which is the reason I've kept my mouth shut.

"Aggie, this is going to sound a shade dramatic, and quite silly! To you, I mean.

To businessmen--it would seem more commonplace. Their lives are bound up in money.

Money means security to them. It also means power. Without power, such men lose their reason for living. Without security, they get panicky."

"A fact," he said, "that applies too universally, these days! Because security and power, as represented by money, always were, and always will be, illusions."

"If you have any moralizing to do," Sarah responded tartly, "do it some other time. I feel rotten and I have something to say."

"Sorry!"

"And don't, for heaven's sake, keep going through life saying, 'Sorry.' Who gives a damn if you're sorry! Listen. Thirty-odd years ago, Byron Waite was rich by inheritance, and a very promising Wall Street youngster. Jim Calder had shown enough of the ruthlessness that has made him unbearable to impress a lot of important people. His father, too, was rich, and Jim was coming up. George Davis had his inheritance--we all did, at Indian Stones--and Marilyn's money--that was his wife--and his skill. We were a clique within this Indian Stones clique. There were a couple of others in our crowd who have long since petered into their graves and I won't bother you with them.