Corpses at Indian Stone (19 page)

Wes slapped his knee. "Sure! The car is driven into the lake! A cinch! The card is stuck to Sarah's door--for her to find. But Aggie puts the knife on the rail, Calder picks it up, the murderer is around with the fox on a leash--Calder runs into them--the murderer bangs Calder one on the head--because being seen with that fox would give him away!

He gets back Hank's knife from Calder's person! The murderer lets the fox go--or it escapes--he doesn't care. That's wonderful! From there on--the murderer only has to go on making it look as if Bogarty was round to keep me, and the newspapers, and everybody, looking for Hank--instead of somebody else!" The trooper's excitement faded.

"Except for one thing."

"Exactly," said Aggie.

Sarah looked blank. "Exactly what?"

Wes glanced at Aggie. "How does this murderer pass through a locked and bolted door--or a window the size of a book--and put that knife in Davis? Or--did Davis kill himself--after all? Had he stolen the money in the cellar--and did he come across Hank's knife somehow--and use it?"

"No," Sarah said, "George never did!"

"Then I wish," Wes grunted, "you could explain what
did
happen in that darkroom!"

"I can," Aggie answered. "It was very simple. Finding out--was what put me onto the theory of blue-sky thinking." Nobody interrupted him as he described, meticulously, the two trees he had seen at the summerhouse--the tree with the scars and the tree with the knothole. "In other words," he said, "if you think of the knothole as the little window-and the big tree as Davis--you get the picture. Somebody
threw
that knife into Davis."

Sarah gasped. "I thought of that long ago. But I didn't believe you could throw a knife hard enough--and, besides--George had the thing in his hand."

"Somebody," Aggie answered, "was out there at the summerhouse--throwing a knife through that knothole and into the tree beyond it--hard enough to dig the point into the wood well up on the blade! The slits were an inch wide! Anyway-Sarah's wrong. That was a heavy knife. You could throw it as hard as a baseball. You could throw it clear through a man, I daresay, except that it had a guard on it."

"But--George was holding it--" she protested.

Aggie nodded. "Yeah. Being struck--in the heart--like that--might produce instantaneous collapse in most people. Shock. But not in George Davis. Not in a surgeon.

Look at the scene. George Davis, locked in his darkroom, working on those prints he'd made of the deadfall. Up in the tree sits the man we don't know. Woman--even. Why not?"

' Tree?' she asked.

"There's a big maple outside the barn. The murderer is in it--looking at George.

Maybe he is going to kill him because he is afraid of what those films may show.

Something of the sort passed through my mind when I broke in. I thought that maybe the murderer might have intended to come back for something in that darkroom. Pictures.

And that maybe Danielle and I had beaten him to it." Aggie looked patronizingly at the trooper's nod of commendation. "I can, and do, think--sometimes. Only--you didn't find a thing that was useful in any of the negatives--did you, Wes?"

"Nothing directly useful. Or very useful. No."

Aggie hesitated--and went on. "Okay. The murderer makes a deliberate noise.

George turns and peers at the window. The knife is thrown. George clasps it and tries to withdraw it--for one, fearful instant. Then he topples."

"I guess," Wes said, "you've got it."

"Guess! Do you need corroboration? If you do--think of this. The maple tree is at an angle from the barn. The phone wires run through it--low down in the branches--to the first pole.-I daresay, if you look, you'll find the limb from which the murderer threw.

Maybe even some old scratches. And you'll find that he had to lean, probably, in order to throw. You'll find, maybe,that even if he used the best possible limb, after a throw, a person might lose his balance-"

Wes finished for him. "And break down the phone wires! By golly, Aggie, that's brilliant! Why didn't I think an
accident
might have brought those wires down!"

"Because," Aggie answered, "when telephone wires are severed, you habitually think it was done to cut off telephones--and hence, on purpose. The very point I was making."

"So," Wes went on, "if we'd had the sense in the next few days to strip everybody at Indian Stones and look for two parallel bruises--or welts, at least--those wires should have made beauties--we'd have found whoever threw the knife!"

"Unless, of course," Aggie said calmly, "the person who threw it does not belong to Indian Stones."

Wes's expression was both humorous and irritated. "First I like you--and then I hate you. Sure. Could have been an outsider. Somebody who never had a thing to do with the people here--and was unknown here. Unknown--" he broke off and brightened-

"except for the fact that he practiced that shot out by the summerhouse!
So--likely--not
unknown. I'll have a look at those marks in the morning--get an expert on such things--!"

"I'm something of a dendrochronologist, myself," Aggie said, touching his beard.

"Every good archaeologist is, these days. That means, literally, telling dates by tree rings.

But we can stretch it to include telling seasons by bark growth over knife stabs. The marks were made last winter."

' Winter?'

"Yes: I didn't deduce that--exactly--by the regrowth--though if it had been winter before last, the bark would be pretty much healed. I'm telling it by the height from the ground of the tree with the big knot and the height of the marks--both of which heights I gave you. As you can see, nobody could have stood on the ground and thrown a knife through a knothole twelve feet off the earth in a slightly downward direction to a tree twenty feet away."

"Snow!" said Sarah. "Drifts!"

"Exactly. Snow. Somebody on snowshoes, probably. Not
practicing
to throw through a window at a noted surgeon. Just--ambling around--coming on the two trees--

realizing the setup was a test of skill--and making a lot of tries. I should say, not tries--but superb shots. Know anybody who can throw a knife like that, Wes?"

The trooper looked rather guiltily at Aggie. "I--well--I think I could myself. I was a crack at it when I was a kid."

"Nobody's here in the winter, though, except Jack," Sarah said.

"What about Jack?" Aggie asked.

The trooper shrugged. "Search me. He's an athlete. I've seen a lot of him--winters.

Gets lonely here--and you like to talk to a person with an education. He's pretty darned swell company. Smart."

"It's silly, anyhow," Sarah said. "He's such a--"

"--lamb." Aggie supplied her word. "I know. Well, he was here, anyhow. Does he ever go away from here--in the winter?"

"Certainly," Sarah replied. "He gets a whole month off--for one thing. His vacation has to be in the winter--because he works all summer. He comes down to New York for short trips to buy things for the club during the winter. Various people from Parkawan substitute for him. On rare occasions, the club has been closed altogether--

though the insurance rates go up, I believe. It was closed last year--for several weeks--in January or February. Jack had the flu. He was in Parkawan hospital."

"I see." Aggie nodded in agreement with himself. "In other words,
anybody
could have been throwing knives in trees here last winter! Most of the people have been here in the winter, at one time or another. If we assume that the murders had to do with the missing gold--if they
were
murders, of course--and if we assume that the person who tossed a knife in that tree last winter was the murderer--we can probably assume--just
assume
--that he was up here last winter on some errand connected with the whole business."

"Trying to locate the cache," Wes said.

"Well, probably. And--if so--that person undoubtedly took great pains to make it appear that he--or she--was anywhere but in Indian Stones at the time. Probably 'left for a vacation in Florida'--or what not. That means--we'd have to check every alibi for everybody in the place for the best part of the winter. We'd have to check Hank Bogarty for the whole winter--out in Seattle--"

Wes groaned. "We're back to him again!"

"--and we'd also have the possibility of a person--or persons--unknown to us--

which we could not check."

"Look," said the trooper. "I'm grateful for the explanation of what happened to Davis. And for the capture of the fox. If you've got any more beauties like that, trot 'em out. If not--don't sit there making me drive myself nuts all over again! I like tangible stuff."

Aggie nodded, without annoyance. "All right. Okay. You like things. Realities.

Stuff. What have you got? List 'em in your mind. You've got a knife, a calling card, a fox, an automobile, some veal bones that were in it. Incidentally--the veal bone I spotted on the cellar floor! What about it?"

"Just veal," said Wes. "No teeth marks. No gnawing. No fox signs."

Aggie chuckled. "I'd all but forgotten that. All right. You've got the deadfall and the bread and the honey and so on. You've got a wine cellar, a bottle of hock, an open cellar window, a secret door, a secret safe that contains straw and some chips from boxes.

You've got broken telephone wires, a missing million in gold and platinum that is real though absent. You've got a pair of shoe pacs that Dr. Davis dropped in Lower Lake.

That is, if you're the man I think you are, you've got 'em."

Wes nodded. "There was blood on them--a little trace in the leather. Same type as Calder's--the expert says."

"Good. Then--you've got two bodies--one with a bitten hand--all extremely concrete and tangible things. A slew of realities. And yet--you're no nearer to finding the murderer of Calder and Davis than the man in the moon! You can't even prove absolutely that either one was murdered! What does that suggest to you?"

' That I'm a dunce."

Aggie shook his head. "Again--the thought-direct. It suggests to me, captain, that the murderer--I think there was one--was a person of enormous invention. A resourceful person. One who could improvise rapidly. It suggests, in other words, the realm of ideas.

It may suggest that you're a dunce. But I, myself, refuse to admit that
I
am a dunce, or anything like one. Therefore, it suggests that the person responsible for what you once called 'this rumpus'--is bright. Have you ever examined the people connected directly with this whole matter, in the light of that?"

"I've considered 'em, sure. In the light of that--and of opportunity. Who could have had a chance--besides those 'persons unknown' you talked about?"

Aggie started to tick off names on his fingers. "First--Bogarty. Sarah vouchsafes he was an intellectual bearcat. He knew the gold was around here. He's missing. He's the number one possibility. Next--Davis was a likely suspect for killing Calder. Davis may have discovered that Calder robbed the mutual till. And someone else may have killed the doctor. Always a chance of that. Besides, Davis had the best motive on earth for doing in Calder. Calder ran off with his wife. Davis had no decent alibi for the night Calder died."

Wes said, "He had one. So did Waite. I promised old man Waite I wouldn't bring it out unless I had to--but I'll tell you two--on the same pledge. Waite married a chorus girl in the early nineteen-tens--"

Sarah drew a prodigious breath. "He did! And
I never knew it!
Why! That's--that's practically treason!"

The policeman grinned. "He was ashamed of the woman. They had a daughter.

The mother died--Waite had paid all her bills and taken care of her. Took care of the kid--

afterward. Saw her once in a while--although he never let her know he was her father. He brought her to Parkawan several years ago--about ten, as I recall. She went to school there--and married there. The night Calder was killed--she was taken fearfully sick. Her husband was away. She called Waite--as an old friend. He called Davis. Waite told Davis who the girl was--and Davis went to her house. Took an X ray of her. Some sort of kidney stones. I found the plate in the darkroom. Checked it. Anyway--Davis got Waite's daughter fixed up and comfortable--and Waite was mighty relieved about it. The girl--no need of your knowing her name--didn't know who Davis was, either. I've talked to her.

And that's what Davis was doing between the time he left Danielle--and the time he came back with the X-ray plate!"

"How long was he at the girl's home?"

Wes shrugged. "An hour. Waite was there longer--came in the afternoon, in fact--

but he left around two in the morning. A neighbor came in; the girl was asleep. I know what you're going to say, Aggie. An hour's not enough. Two o'clock still left time. Each man had his own car. Each might possibly have run into Calder here, after, say, two o'clock--and killed him--and carried him up on Garnet Knob. That deadfall might even have been made
after
daylight. I never could decide. It's possible that Waite or Davis, coming back from that emergency, might have stopped at Calder's house because there was a light on--and killed him--and hidden him in the woods--and thought out and rigged up the bear-trap dodge later in the day. Possible. But you'd hardly think--after a night such as they'd put in--!"

"On the contrary. You might think with equal logic that, having established such superb alibis--which could be weaseled out of them in a crisis--either man might feel in the exact right mood to carry out a scheme against Calder."

Wes looked at Sarah. "I leave it to you."

"I vote with Aggie," Sarah said. "That gives us three possible people--people with opportunity--people who had motives--or who could have had motives. Go on. Danielle-had both. Hated Jim. Alone in her house. No check on her that night at all. Ralph Patton was alone in his house too. I asked him. His motive could be fear of Calder--or a desire to have Beth inherit and a plan to marry Beth--or, Ralph could have taken the gold and Calder could have found out. Davis could have also found out--later. He might have taken a squint in our safe and discovered it empty. He might even have found a clue to the person who emptied it."