Figure Away

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  “There’s a clambake up at the shore. Did you know?”

  “Is there?” Asey was not overly interested in clambakes.

  “Thought I might go. How about you?”

  “Oh, I’ve got to see Brinley, when he has a spare moment. I don’t want to tear him away from his duty.”

  “Where’s Eloise?” Kay didn’t sound as though she really cared a whoop.

  “Upstairs, I guess. The other maid, Sally, is supposed to be lookin’ after her.” Asey hesitated. “Kay, what’s on your mind? What’s botherin’ you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing except what?”

  “Oh, look – it isn’t anything, really. It’s – tell me, do shotguns kick?”

  “They’ve been known to. Why?”

  “Well, would they kick enough to make some mark, like a black and blue mark?”

  “They might.”

  “Not going to help me out one bit, are you? Well, last night, after all the flurry, Jane and I had a cigarette together, in my room before we went to bed. She was in an awful state. I feel sorry about her. I remember all about her, now. Her father was one of the—”

  “One of the brokers who jumped,” Asey said. “I know. I heard about it any number of times.”

  “That still doesn’t make it funny,” Kay returned. “I say, it’s odd how the depression worked, isn’t it? Some people crashed through, and some slumped, and some like Jane – well, it just didn’t touch them. Oh, she went through it, and it touched her in a way, but I don’t suppose it’s done a thing to the way she thinks. She won’t accept things and make the best of them, she just gripes around – where was I, anyway, before I got all involved with the depression?”

  “I think,” Asey said, “you were about to break it to me that Jane had a funny bruise in the general section of her right shoulder. Was that it?”

  “How,” Kay said, “how you must exasperate some people! It took my eye, somehow. I couldn’t seem to look away from that black and blue spot. When she saw I was staring at it, she got awfully embarrassed. She launched into a lot of unnecessary explanations, all about cellar steps and falling down them—”

  “If you’d ever seen those cellar steps in the kitchen up there at the hollow, you wouldn’t treat’em so lightly,” Asey told her. “I nearly broke my neck on’em twice the other night. But she explained, did she?”

  “Endlessly. I feel like a squealer, but it seemed a point to consider. Oh, you don’t think so? Let it pass, then. Have I time for a swim before it rains?”

  Before Asey could answer, Dr. Cummings arrived.

  “Save me some questionin’,” Asey said, “Mrs. Brinley was up on the ferris wheel with your wife, wasn’t she? Do you know where J. Arthur was durin’ that time?”

  “That ferris wheel obsesses you,” Cummings said. “I never knew anything like it. Open your mouth, and out pop the words ferris wheel—”

  “He wants to know what makes the wheel go around,” Kay said. “That’s his trouble.”

  “Have your laugh,” Asey lighted his pipe. “And then when you get through, tell me about J. Arthur.”

  “Lord, I don’t know. I don’t seem to recall even seeing him. He must have been around somewhere. I never notice him much, one way or another. And he wasn’t carrying a gun, like Mike Slade, or being very spectacular. I wouldn’t know about him. I’ll think it over while I chat with Eloise.”

  He was grinning widely when he returned.

  “Just don’t know what,” he said, “we’re going to do. Just completely unnerved, that awful face of that awful man, always did mistrust a communist, horrid people, no God, the poor Czar and those sweet little girls, deserved something much better I’m sure, although as I always say, there was Rasputin.”

  “You’ve caught it,” Asey said, “but don’t give it to us. It is catchin’, the way she nibbles with things. An’ say, now that I think of it, what was she up for, an’ how come she had the opportunity to see the horrid man leerin’ at her? That window he was at opens into the hall.”

  “En route, or returning from the bathroom, I shouldn’t wonder,” Cummings said. “I didn’t ask, but I’m reasonably sure. That’s another complication that annoys her, but I keep telling her, if she eats that much she does, she has to expect certain attendant inconveniences. Going to get some rain, I guess.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a nice batch of colds,” Kay said. “Isn’t that cheering?”

  “Oh, I pin my faith on the banquets. Only ptomaine now, but I’ll be reducing fat women all winter, and there’ll be plenty of aftermath. You can eat just so much chicken a la King, and just so many charlotte russes – oh. They tell me uptown that Win Billings ate the paper cup to his. Wanted me to do something about it, but I didn’t see the sense. After what that old duffer did to the lining of his stomach during prohibition, he could eat sheets of corrugated iron without the slightest difficulty at all. There was a legend that he used to eat the bottles. No one could ever find any – well, so long!”

  “Now there,” Kay said, “goes a character.”

  “Good doctor, too, in spite of all he talks. Look, do you really want to swim?”

  “I do, and it’s rank heresy, but I like fresh water. Is there any around?”

  “There’s a pond up near the hollow where people do go,” Asey said, “though I wouldn’t give two cents for it myself. Tourists wash there, and cottages without any bathtubs take a cake of soap an’ dabble with the outer layers, an’ any number of dogs get washed there, too. Thoph’s Pond. It’s notorious. It’s got a slimy sort of bottom, with a few horn-pout.”

  “How delightful,” Kay said. “How attractive! Billingsgate Beautiful.”

  “Get along an’ change, an’ I’ll take you. Bring somethin’ to keep my car leather dry. I sort of favor that leather.”

  “So you don’t,” Kay said as they sped along later in the roadster, “put any stock in this bruise on Jane’s shoulder?”

  “It’s nice to know about, but how could Jane have set that fire, or left that note for Slade?”

  “Slade could have done that part, easily. He had and has access to the town offices. He could have picked up that ‘Get out’ message without any trouble. He could have faked the fire, easily.”

  “Then come back to Jane,” Asey said, “an’ tell me what become of her shotgun? Or any gun? Lane said he had three fellows on the line of that shot this mornin’ – we know the line, even if we don’t know the place on the line. Lane’s still got high hopes of findin’ the shells, but I’m sure he’s doomed to disappointment. We worked it all out on a time basis, so many minutes to get her indoors after the shot was fired, so much time for her to get to a point where she could of shot – it’s easier to work it backwards, see. What’s left of the seven or eight minutes there was between the time Zeb an’ I heard the shot an’ got back here – that’s the time anyone had to hide or throw away a gun. You see, that narrows you down. The time element was hair splittin’.”

  “And everything’s been searched, all around?” Kay asked as Asey swerved off the tarred road onto a narrow rutted lane that slid at a sharp angle down to the pond.

  “Searched, combed, dug an’ prodded,” Asey said. “Here’s your fish bowl. Go swim.”

  “Is it safe to dive?” Kay asked. “Oh, what a simply glorious spot, Asey, and what grand blue water! It’s a wonderful place, and how you did malign it! Can I dive?”

  “There’s a couple over there, divin’ off that end of the ice house pilin’ – see?” Asey pointed. “Makes off deep around there. Don’t you wear a cap?”

  “Hate them. I’ll be quick—”

  Asey watched her run along the narrow shore to the ice house, and make her way out to the end of the old wharf. She poised for a moment, and then shot cleanly into the water.

  Nodding his approval, Asey bent over and lighted his pipe. When he raised his head, there was no sign of the girl, and the couple by the ice house w
ere peering over into the water.

  Asey dropped his pipe and set out on a dead run.

  He reached the last pile in time to see a white hand reach up through the water.

  In it was a shotgun.

  “Well,” Kay said breathlessly a minute later, “here’s exhibit A!”

  Chapter 11

  The couple who had been diving from the wharf took an intense interest in the shotgun Kay had salvaged.

  “Gee, Sammy,” the woman touched the trigger with her finger, “isn’t it funny, huh? Isn’t it funny? You know, I said I seen something down there, don’t you remember? But I didn’t think it was anything but a stick, maybe. Sammy, didn’t you see something down there too? Didn’t you think you seen something? I thought you said you did.”

  “Yeah,” Sammy said. “I seen something. I didn’t think it was a stick. I knew it was a gun. I was just going down for it when she come.”

  “See?” the woman said to Asey. “We knew it was there, all the time! Now, I don’t want to get sore or anything, but we knew it was there, and we was going to get it, so you—”

  “It pierces my heart,” Kay said. “It shatters me to small bits, but neither of you possibly could have seen it. I didn’t see it myself. I felt it. Therefore, if any claims arise—”

  “Well, now just you look here!” the woman raised her voice. “I guess we did see it too! I guess we knew it was there! I guess, if anyone’s going to march off with that gun, we are. Do you hear that?”

  “I think,” Asey said, “they heard you over in Weesit Centre. And I rather think that you—”

  “Fresh, huh?” Sammy demanded. “Want to start trouble, huh? Well, listen! We seen that gun, and it’s ours, and who do you think you are, to—”

  “Who do you think you are, you?” the woman chimed in. “My God, I never seen such a town as this! You hicks, you seem to think you—”

  “And what’s more,” Sammy continued, paying no attention to the woman, “I lost a gun here in this lake last fall. My boat tipped over, and I lost—”

  “Fiddlesticks,” Kay said, wondering why Asey didn’t make any more of a stand. He was fishing around in his pockets, handicapped somewhat by the shotgun firmly clutched under one arm. “Fiddlesticks, and pooh. I don’t believe a word of it. You just think you can bully us into handing the gun over to you, that’s all, and it’s the most nonsensical notion I ever heard tell of.”

  “Listen!” Sammy shouted her into silence. “That gun is ours, see? It belongs to me. And we’re going to have it, and take it – take – oh.”

  He and the woman stared at the two badges Asey was nonchalantly fixing on the lapel of his jacket. One said, “Chief of Police,” and the other was a state police badge.

  “Oh, well,” the woman said hurriedly, “maybe it ain’t your gun, Sammy. Yours was a bigger gun. It was a much better gun, too. After all, if they’re going to get sore, why what’s the use of raising a rumpus, I always say—”

  “It’s been nice,” Asey said, “havin’ this little chat with you. Any time you feel like continuin’ it, you’ll find me at my offices in the Town Hall. Ask for Mr. Mayo. So long.”

  Looking terribly injured and outraged, the couple departed. They were muttering, but they were wise enough not to mutter very audibly.

  “Well I never!” Kay said. “How simply – what nerve! What gall! Asey, did you ever in your life see anything like that?”

  “Tourists,” Asey said. “Just tourists. They’d call a cop if you stepped foot on the lawn of their own house – always providin’ they got either a lawn or a house, but travellin’ puts the gypsy into ’em. I found some one day makin’ off with my great grandmother’s best hooked rug that I’d been airin’ on the line.”

  “They were pinching it?”

  “Oh, my no, what a horrid thought!” Asey said. “Of course not! They’d left me fifty cents. Offered me two-fifty before they left. Didn’t seem wise at that point to tell’em how much Bill Porter made me insure it for – Kay, how in time did you find this gun?”

  Kay smiled. “I was trying to make a nice spectacular dive to impress you, and it was shallower than I thought, and I bumped. You were right about the nasty bottom. It’s all muggy with weeds and things. I hit something in the weeds and grabbed at it for fun, and that’s the story. Asey, is it the one?”

  “It is.”

  “But you haven’t even looked at it!”

  “See that tag? Says ‘Anniversary Special’ on it. And the gun ain’t been in the water very long, either. Under the circumstances, I think you’ve done a noble task. Will you finish your swim so’s we can get back an’ look into it in a large way? While you’re gettin’ the mud off, I’m goin’ to put the car top up. Our shower’s just about hoverin’ over Ames’s woods at this point.”

  “I’ll hurry.”

  Asey strolled back to the car and put up the top, just as a few tentative drops of rain began to fall.

  Kay hurried back and wrapped herself in a white terry-cloth robe.

  “That’s not bad, really,” she said, “that water, I mean. It’s warm, but the air’s getting cold. I have a feeling that the clambake is going to be rather soggy. Asey, how do you get the car out of here? Can you turn around?”

  “I can ease her out.” Asey backed into a thicket. “That’s the one trouble with this beast, she can take a pile of turnin’ on these lanes. The blow comes if someone d’cides to drive down that little path as we’re cornin’ up it. Someone, say, like Sammy an’ his girl friend.” He leaned out to gauge his distance from a clump of scrub oaks. “An’ in that case we get a biff on the bumper or some scratched paint. Oho. My goodness gracious! Shan’t you die!”

  “What’s wrong now?” Kay asked as he stopped the car and pulled on the brake.

  “Look yonder, will you? There’s food for thought.”

  Back over by the ice house another couple had appeared, but these two were no tourists. Not even a light drizzle could disguise the chubby figure of J. Arthur Brinley.

  With him, a wrap over her bathing suit, was Madame Meaux.

  “Tch, tch,” Kay said. “Dear Miss Fairlawn, I always thought my husband was true to me, but recently we had a guest staying to our house, a Blonde Woman from Another World, and I find from my many warm friends that she was often seen in my husband’s company, often in dishabille. Dear Miss Fairlawn, should I turn a deaf ear towards this entanglement, or should I bundle the little weasel into the meat chopper. Answer soon.”

  Asey chuckled.

  “I wrote answers to a column like that,” Kay said, “for six months, and for six months the world seemed populated entirely with Blonde Women and Tall Dark Men and Sprightly Widows and simply fiendish children, all violently demented. Asey, what is your Blonde Woman doing with that Faithful Husband?”

  “Considerin’ we’re some of the Virtuous Wife’s many warm friends,” Asey said, “we’ll park right in this thicket an’ eavesdrop. It’s a wife’s priv’lege to Know All.”

  “They see us, don’t they? They simply must!”

  “They ought to, but they ain’t looked over this way, an’ the car’s b’hind bushes – wonder if we ain’t misjudged J. Arthur, Kay? See him pursue her behind the ice house? All the same, I bet on Madame. This is what you might call a new slant on Brother Brinley.”

  “I bet,” Kay said as they waited for the two to return, “I bet he’s an old pincher, when Mrs. B.’s safely out of the way. The firm young flesh school. Asey, something very definite has happened.”

  “Not happened,” Asey corrected her. “Transpired.”

  Madame Meaux strolled to a little patch of sandy shore, took off her robe and folded it with immense deliberation, while J. Arthur hovered restlessly in the background. With the same pointed deliberation, she walked to the edge of the water, dabbled a foot in it, and then walked doggedly into the pond.

  J. Arthur called out something indistinguishable to her, but she never turned her head.

  He called again,
and then shrugged and walked over to the ice house and the old loading piles.

  “I rather think,” Kay said, “that J. Arthur has been forward. Maybe he’s even made advances. Asey, by heaven – look!”

  Brinley, after picking up a piece of broken oar, had walked out to the end of the piling and was prodding around almost exactly over the spot where Kay had found the shotgun.

  “I think,” Asey got out of the roadster, “that we’ll go chat with Arthur. If he seen us leavin’, he might feel we was miffed with him. An’ I don’t know anyone I have kinder thoughts towards than Arthur. I shouldn’t want him to think otherwise.”

  “Who,” Kay agreed, “are we, to slink off like a couple of ships in the night?”

  Brinley’s head jerked up at the sound of their approach, and he began nervously to edge back to shore.

  “Hi,” Asey’s voice was silky.

  “Oh, hullo. How do you do? Er – how do you do?”

  “Fine,” Asey said. “Fine.” After all, he thought, J. Arthur had asked him twice.

  “It looks rather like rain, doesn’t it?” Brinley dropped the broken oar down on the sand.

  “It is raining,” Asey said truthfully.

  “Our dog,” as Brinley walked up to them, Asey and Kay noted with delight the thick welt on his right cheek, “our dog, we – that is, we usually wash our dog here. It’s so much easier, we find, than the set tub or the hose. He hates the set tub, it’s so cramped for him, and he’s afraid of the hose.”

  “That so?” Asey sat down beside Kay on a log. “I never had a dog myself, but – what’s that, Kay?”

  “Man’s best friend,” Kay said. “A true pal. Isn’t that so, Mr. Brinley? By the way, where is the dog? I don’t see any dog around.”

  J. Arthur looked a little bewildered. “Amos – oh, Amos is home. You see, the last time I brought Amos – he’s a black dog, you see – the last time I brought him here, the license tag off his collar got lost on – I mean, the license tag on his collar got lost off. I don’t know how it happened, but I told my wife that the next time I was around here, I’d poke around and see if I could find it.”