The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

  Todhunter traversed the path carefully, ears cocked, eyes alert. He pushed branches quietly out of his way. Jumbo pattered along, now in front, now behind him. The night was featureless, filled with vague unidentifiable shapes that were bushes and trees and rocks and hummocks thicketed with clumps of sumac and alder.

  The little man wondered uneasily whether he was on the wrong track. There were no signposts, there was nothing to guide him. Then, just as he was about to give up, he came on a second footprint in the soft earth of a slope heading toward the crest of the long pine-clad hill that topped the promontory. He kept on running a pencil of light over the ground immediately in front of him. Satiny brown needles, the exposed roots of the towering trees, blackness advanced and retreated. He tried to pierce the enveloping walls of its solidity for a sound, a movement. There was nothing but the wind and the rank tangled vegetation on either side and the hidden water.

  Jumbo pawed at a stone, abandoned it and snapped at a pine cone. He looked up into Todhunter’s face. The little detective’s pointing finger gestured in a circle. Jumbo obediently trotted off. He came back, looked again, started in a different direction.

  Something caught at Todhunter’s knee and he swung. It was only a briar. The night was pretty cold. The little detective’s teeth began to chatter. The stalker and the stalked, which was which? Todhunter’s torch betrayed his own whereabouts and the black walls patterned with traceries of leaf and twig kept closing in on him from every side. He waited for the bushes to move. They remained motionless until he pushed their branches aside.

  His torch flicked over the point systematically from cove to cove, moving forward toward the tip. It was a good ten minutes before he realized that Jumbo hadn’t returned from his last excursion into the recesses of a small choked grove of young pines. Todhunter whistled softly.

  The whistle was light, thin, might have been the cry of a nocturnal bird. He waited. Jumbo answered. His growl was low, muted, almost inaudible. Todhunter recognized the quickness in it. Jumbo had found something.

  The detective made his way in the direction from which the growl had come. The land running downward from the northern shoulder of the point was thickly treed. Underbrush crowded between the marching trees. He came on a place where a group of young poplars had edged themselves in among the evergreens.

  Todhunter wriggled his way through the slim saplings. They suddenly ceased. He was in a sort of oasis, a cleared space, crowned and centered by the bare branches of an ancient sycamore, its black and white bark traveling upward to the hidden stars. Todhunter whistled again. Jumbo responded. He was not in sight, but he was near.

  Todhunter frowned. He couldn’t quite make it out. If Jumbo had trailed the spade stealer, the man or woman who had been the occupant of Pat Somers’ car, why was there no reaction to the dog’s growl? The detective didn’t like it. He allowed the merest glimmer of light from his torch, in his left hand, his right was on his holster as he inched forward past the sycamore, then stood stock still.

  The beam of brightness rested on Jumbo and on something else, the edge of a long narrow hole in soft earth near the rim of underbrush. Jumbo was digging. He paused to look over his shoulder, resumed his work, busily. Todhunter’s startled glance took in the piles of black earth, the leaves that had been pushed away and the length of the excavation. That hadn’t been done by the hound. The hole was roughly six feet long by a foot and a half wide and about two and a half feet deep. The missing spade was thrust at a forty-five degree angle into a pile of freshly dug soil at the end of the sinister trench hidden in that almost impenetrable thicket.

  The little detective stared down at the long dark hollow in the middle of a pine wood in the lonely hills. Thoughts raced through his mind, thoughts of their fruitless search for a body in the waters of the cove, and in the swiftly moving currents of the lake surrounding the point. They hadn’t found anything. Their search was over, to all intents and purposes. Their men had been withdrawn.

  He recalled Benedict and Benedict’s description of the rock formation on which the point rested, recalled the crevices in the rock into which a body might have been crushed by those same swift currents. The coast was clear of their own men. Had someone with knowledge returned to complete the work that he himself and the Inspector had interrupted on Halloween night?

  Todhunter ran over Benedict’s instructions carefully as he stood over that ghastly hole in the ground. West of the big rock and east of the two tall pines, the two biggest ones. That was where the crevices were, where the fisherman, if there was a fisherman, would be busy. Todhunter patted Jumbo, took hold of his collar. Just before he reached the edge of the bank sloping steeply to the water, he heard a soft splash.

  The rock Benedict had talked of was between the detective and the spot from which the splash had come. The rock was a huge boulder with a broken and uneven face. It offered a vantage point for observation, commanded a view of the entire point. Todhunter mounted it until the sky loomed up in front, twisted his shoulder and looked down.

  At first he could see nothing, nothing but an expanse of water and the shore line broken by bushes and catkins. Then he saw the light. It was a peculiar light, faint, nebulous. It came from beneath the water, some fifteen to twenty-five feet beneath.

  Todhunter gaped. The underwater light was a golden shuttle, drifting back and forth for the space of perhaps ten or fifteen seconds. The light vanished. Blackness came down.

  Jumbo had climbed to the peak of the granite boulder and was nesting beside his master. The eyes of man and dog were fixed on the spot where the light had disappeared. It didn’t return but something else showed. Darkness on darkness, a splash, and a figure reared itself above the surface of the lake, grasped an overhanging bough and clambered up onto the bank.

  Panting breath from exhausted lungs, long, deep, tearing; a pause for rest; Todhunter strained forward. He couldn’t tell whether the huddled figure on the edge of the bank was that of a man or a woman. If only whoever it was would stand up, move about so that he or she would be outlined by the slightly paler waters of the lake. Nothing of the kind happened. Instead, the person crouching on the shore dove again.

  Todhunter hugged the rock with his breast. Nothing to do but wait; to move now would be premature and might be fatal. All he was sure of was that the secret visitor to the Hazard farm could swim. That meant nothing, everybody could swim these days.

  The light appeared again below the surface of the clear icy water. Bubbles rose to the top. The light dwindled, went out, dropping to the bottom of the lake like a spent rocket. The figure bobbed up out of the little lapping waves, clambered back to its perch on the bank. It was holding something in its hands. Craning, Todhunter presently made out what that something was. It was a section of a thick length of hempen rope.

  One end of the rope was tied to the bough of an overhanging tree, the other was invisible, trailed downward over the edge of the bank into the lake. The figure was hauling the rope in. It required effort, there was a weight attached to it.

  Wind whispering through the trees sent branches swaying up and down. A dog barked miles away. Todhunter laid a quick hand on Jumbo’s scruff, stopping his answering howl before it could come out.

  Foot by foot the rope shortened. Black hills, black night sky, the ineffectual candles of the scattered stars on the pale washes of the lake, the bent figure leaned forward, shoulders hunched. The length of hemp kept on moving.

  Todhunter eased himself down the rock and around its flank. Not more than half a dozen yards separated him from the dripping hauler and the burden that was being brought to land.

  The little detective gripped his torch. He trained it on the water in front of the crouching huddle. Something broke the surface, something long—pale. Todhunter’s finger moved.

  A round circle of brilliance from the mouth of the flashlight rested on the thing in the water the rope was tied to. It had a face. The face appeared, was veiled with wetness, appeared again. The eyes we
re closed. It was a woman who was being hauled ashore. She had been dead for some time. Fair hair trailed away from the exposed forehead. The features were bloated, unrecognizable.

  Todhunter leaped forward. As he did so he collided with Jumbo and the torch was knocked from his hand. The crouching figure had sprung to its feet. Darkness enveloped the little detective and the grisly fisherman.

  XXI

  The man on the bank didn’t move. He had on swimming trunks and a black jersey. His hands held the rope in a tight grip. His head was bent. He raised it. Todhunter found his torch, picked it up, switched it on. The man who had gone down under the surface of the lake to bring up a dead woman was Steven Hazard.

  Hazard made no attempt at flight. He remained where he was, half kneeling, half sitting as Todhunter advanced. The little detective put torchlight on the woman in the water. She wasn’t a pleasant sight. The second glimpse was no more informative than the first.

  All he could tell was that the woman was youngish, had fair hair and had been dead for some time. The face was hopelessly bloated. It was impossible to guess at the identity of the terrible thing looped with hemp. Todhunter put the question away from him. He had to get word to the Inspector, had to get help. Beside him Jumbo was growling softly, tail stiff, scruff bristling. Todhunter said quietly: “Nice fishing around these parts, Mr. Hazard.”

  Steven Hazard didn’t answer. He kept on staring down at the face of the body in the water. He was wet to the skin and the night was cold. He didn’t seem to feel the cold. He ran a tongue over blue lips, eased his throat out of the neck of the dripping jersey and then, at last, turned and looked at the detective. His gaze was dull, indifferent. He got stiffly to his feet, handed the rope to Todhunter without a word.

  “Who is she, Mr. Hazard?” Todhunter began hauling the body in.

  Steven Hazard shrugged. “How do I know? Could anyone?” His eyes were glued to the figure in the water. Dark clothing, hatless fair hair matted and tangled and intertwined with weeds; like the face, the hands and the feet, without shoes, were shapeless, swollen.

  Todhunter didn’t persist. Hazard would have to talk later. This was neither the time nor the place. He and Hazard pulled the body carefully ashore, laid it on the bank. The detective had already made up his mind there was only one thing to do. He couldn’t leave Steven Hazard alone with the dead woman, he himself had to get to a telephone. A boat would be the best, transportation would be easier that way. He asked whether there was a boat on the farm and Steven Hazard said yes.

  A quarter of an hour later, the four of them, Hazard, Todhunter, Jumbo and the long dark shape, wrapped in a blanket from the house, started across the lake through the cold wind-swept blackness of the November night. The inn on the western shore was their destination. There were lights there and people and telephones.

  Hazard had replaced the clothes he had removed before he went into his diving act. He was at the oars. Todhunter sat facing him and the thing behind him in that improvised bier. The little detective had no occasion to use the gun in his holster. Hazard had the appearance of a man under the influence of a narcotic that had killed his brain, but had left his physical reactions untouched. His hands and arms, the powerful sinewy shoulders, moved lightly, easily, sending the boat swiftly through the water, but the man himself was lifeless, squeezed out, a shell.

  Todhunter asked a number of questions. He got only one answer. Hazard said: “I heard that splash the other night. You didn’t find a body. I thought there might be one. I knew about those rock crevices under the point. When you left I went down.”

  “Yes,” Todhunter said mildly in his whispering voice, “and the spade, Mr. Hazard, and that grave on the hill, what were you going to do?”

  It was useless. He might just as well not have spoken. The face of the man less than three feet away remained empty, a blank.

  They reached the opposite shore. Todhunter’s whistle, his shouted hello brought a Negro in hip boots and a torn sweater and a Filipino in a white jacket running across the lawn to the dock. A half dozen other people joined the knot of men on the shore. The manager of the inn was among them.

  Todhunter left the body in the manager’s care, took Hazard into the hotel with him, went directly to a telephone.

  At the other end of the wire McKee listened and hung up. He took the instrument out of the cradle again and called the telegraph bureau. The telegraph bureau located Dwyer at Luchow’s. The District Attorney, snatched from his wiener schnitzel and wurzburger, said impatiently to the Scotsman, “My digestion’s bad enough now, McKee. Can’t a man get through a single meal in peace? What is it? What do you want?”

  McKee explained what had happened at Kokino. Guesswork had resolved itself into certainty with the appearance of a second corpse. There was no longer the slightest vestige of doubt that it was murder they were investigating. The Scotsman said, “I’ll take care of the body Steven Hazard fished out of the water, Dwyer. I want the other one too. I want the order for Sara Hazard’s exhumation and I want it tonight.”

  Dwyer said, “Oh, but look here, McKee, it’s after eight o’clock...”

  McKee said, “Get one of your bright young men up to Poughkeepsie. The judge will have to come through now, Pat Somers or no Pat Somers.”

  Assistant District Attorney Dorrens started north less than ten minutes later.

  McKee was already on his way to Kokino with three carloads of men and a heavy truck.

  He arrived at the inn. He viewed the sodden and disfigured body lying on trestles in the boat house. It was impossible to reach a definite conclusion of any sort about it. The water had done its work too well, the water and the rocks and the swift currents. The local doctor who had been called refused to make even a guess as to how long the dead woman had been in the lake. He hemmed and hawed and polished his glasses.

  The Scotsman didn’t press him, Fernandez would take care of that later. All that was perceptible to the casual eye was that the dead woman was young, had been slender and had blonde hair and brown eyes, a description that would fit roughly some half million people.

  McKee talked to the state police. He talked to Hazard, with no better success than Todhunter had had. He went over to the point, returned to the inn. The exhumation order came through shortly after midnight. The Scotsman was prepared for it. Men had been waiting in the cemetery with the necessary equipment. It was on toward three o’clock when McKee was informed that the actual disinterment was about to begin.

  The little cemetery lay on the slope of a hill to the north of the village. The dim bulk of an old white colonial church rose beyond tall elms that ringed the graveyard on three sides. White stones glimmered palely through the darkness, some of them at a slant. A small faded American flag hung over a neighboring plot. There was no wind; dried wreaths, clumps of fading flowers, were still in the frosty and unstirring black night.

  Grotesque shadows shot out from the steel-blue flood of brilliance cast down by the elevated searchlights. The headstone had been removed. It was propped against a marble angel on the left. A stretch of dry turf, an oblong of it, had already been dug out. Sandy soil extended flatly. The inscription of the tombstone leaning against the angel read: “Sara Hazard, wife of Steven Hazard. Born, March 1, 1912. Died August 25, 1940. Requiescat in pace.”

  Rest in peace. More turf was lifted off. McKee signaled to the waiting men. The spades flew.

  Todhunter stood beside the Inspector during the progress of that swift and accurate performance. Dig and throw, dig and throw, the pile of excavated earth grew. The oblong hole deepened. The Scotsman didn’t talk. He made no mention of the other body that had been taken from the icy waters of the lake lying cupped in a hollow far below, nor did he refer to the missing maid, Eva Prentice, or the vanished Mrs. Thompson, both of whom had blonde hair and brown eyes.

  The work was almost over. Shovels scraped against metal. A little more depth at the sides and ends; the last crumbs of earth were brushed away. Relentless radiance
beat down on the bronze box that enclosed Sara Hazard’s coffin. Two men descended nimbly into the cavernous trench. Ropes went slithering down. Shovel, shovel again, push, tilt, draw. More ropes were added, the men clambered up out of the open grave. Twelve pairs of hands seized the ropes. Slowly, very slowly, taking care to avoid an accident, the long bronze box began to rise.

  A truck had been backed to the iron railings that enclosed the Hazard plot. The bronze box was lifted into it. McKee got into the Cadillac. The procession of cars drove round the lake. The other body, the one Steven Hazard had so conveniently produced for them, was laid beside the bronze casket in the truck. Hazard was brought out of the inn, put into one of the police cars in Lieutenant Sheerer’s charge. McKee had nothing more to say to Hazard at the moment. That was for later.

  The funeral cortège started south over the hills toward the main highway. The light was coming now, a vast translucent purple heralding another day. The two women, coffined and uncoffined, rode side by side under the tarpaulin. Beyond the village McKee signaled to the man at the wheel and the Cadillac cut around the truck and was off. The Scotsman was in a hurry.

  Mile after mile of woods interspersed with fields and little towns fled by. The light grew. The Scotsman sat silent in a corner of the Cadillac. Todhunter watched him from the other corner. The Inspector’s long dark face was inscrutable. The little detective sensed the fire of impatience under its immobility.

  Full day now; the sun was coming up in the East. As they crossed the city line, McKee’s arm shot out. They were within reaching distance now. He picked up the radio telephone and spoke into the mouthpiece.