“That’s exactly what I want to know. Did you by any chance happen to notice anyone picking beans off the plants?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. I wasn’t thinking much about the beans at the time, I have to say. I was mostly hoping he wouldn’t come over and start talking to me.”
“He who?”
“Cedric Rintoul, naturally. But then Frieda Loye came along and told him he’d better leave those beans alone because Houdon had been warning everybody that they were deadly poison. So Cedric said, “Then what have you been stuffing them up your nose for?’ He reached over and pretended to be pulling them out. Cedric was good at magic tricks, I have to say. It honestly looked as if he was getting them out of her nose.”
“And how did Frieda Loye take that?”
“Not too well, I’m afraid. She went right up in smoke.”
“What did she say?”
“She said—” Gabriel swallowed and blushed. “She said, ‘Honest to God, Cedric, one of these days I’m going to kill you!’ ”
Chapter 19
“DID SHE, INDEED?” ASKED Madoc. “And what did Rintoul say to that?”
“It was rather strange. He said, ‘Cool it, Frieda. You’re not going to get hold of it that easily.’ ”
“What do you suppose he meant by ‘get hold of it’?”
“Well, Cedric had such a filthy mind that I thought maybe he was telling Frieda he wouldn’t—you know—have it off with her. Though I can’t imagine why she’d have wanted him to. Cedric was kind of a mess. Anyway, that was just a guess. He probably didn’t mean anything at all.”
“And what did he do with the beans he’d picked?”
“Tossed them back among the bushes.”
“All of them?”
“How could I tell? He might have palmed a few, I told you he was good at sleight-of-hand. Inspector, you’re not thinking Cedric used those beans to poison Wilhelm Ochs?”
“It’s fairly apparent that somebody did.”
“But Cedric and Wilhelm were pals. They always hung around together.”
“He could have given them to somebody else.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea. We simply have to bear in mind all the possibilities.”
“I suppose so. Oh look, there’s a car pulling up out front!”
“It’s the ranger wagon, Madoc,” Sir Emlyn exclaimed, quite unnecessarily since his son was already heading for the door, feeling some sixteen pounds lighter than he had a moment ago.
Rick was out of the wagon, opening the tailgate to get at a large kettle. Ed Naxton was running over to help him. So were a number of other people. Madoc got there first.
“Ellen sent you a present.” Disdaining any help, Rick was going to carry the kettle himself. “Your kitchen stove going?”
“It was the last time I looked,” Madoc replied. “What have you got there?”
“Spaghetti, best she could do at such short notice. We knew from what you told us last night that the rations were getting pretty slim up here. When the message came through from Wagstaffe, Ellen got on the radio and told me I’d better get back and let her fix something for you all to eat. That was when I was up here earlier with the plane. Maybe you noticed me turn back. It didn’t look as if I was going to get down any time soon, so rather than waste my gas circling the field, I went on home and waited till they quit buzzing over. You folks have had a busy morning.”
“You might say that,” Madoc agreed. “But what’s happening, Rick? Are there any plans to get us out of here?”
“Yes, we’re going to start ferrying you folks down in the wagon to the ranger station as soon as we get the word. A charter plane’s coming to collect you from there and fly you on to Vancouver. They didn’t want to risk landing on Lodestone Flat with the Grumman in the way. But it’s going to take a while yet before they get everything organized, and we figured there was no reason why you had to go hungry in the meantime. Ellen said to tell you she’s sorry she didn’t have a dessert to send, but she’ll have something baked by the time you get to the house. I put this kettle inside a box of straw to keep it hot on the way up, but you might want to set it on the stove a while. Better give it a stir now and then, Ellen says, so it won’t catch on the bottom.”
“Don’t worry, this spaghetti isn’t going to scorch. It won’t last long enough,” Joe Ragovsky assured the ranger. “Boy does this smell good! How about rustling up some plates, somebody? We’ll stick ’em in the oven to take the chill off.”
All was joy and bustle, everybody getting in everybody else’s way and nobody giving a rap. Lady Rhys came downstairs, marvelously revived by the odor of home cooking and the prospect of getting away. Sir Emlyn kissed her right in front of the entire assemblage. It was no mere peck on the cheek, either.
Only Lucy Shadd was oddly subdued. She made no move to run the show as usual. While the others milled around making themselves more or less useful as the case might be, Lucy stayed out in the lobby, sitting next to the stove, holding the scarf high around her throat.
Since the chairs were all in the lobby anyway, it seemed silly to try to cram them back into the kitchen. The sensible thing, it was agreed by mass osmosis, would be for each person to fill a plate for himself from the spaghetti kettle and Joe’s new batch of biscuits and carry his lunch into the lobby. Luckily, Ellen Rick was the kind of cook who breaks spaghetti into short pieces instead of leaving it in strings, probably because she was used to feeding small children and Ace Bulligan, so they wouldn’t have much trouble managing the food buffet-style.
Steve MacVittie remembered that there were still two bottles of red wine in the plane, not much for a party of this size but enough for everyone to have a few sips in celebration of their impending rescue. Ranger Rick had already eaten, he told them; he wouldn’t share the festive repast but acted as waiter and busboy instead. It was he who brought Lucy Shadd the spaghetti and wine she hadn’t been able to raise gumption enough to get for herself.
Madoc noticed how quiet she was, but didn’t say anything until he himself had managed to put away the double helping he felt he deserved and knew he needed. Then he asked her, “What’s the matter, Lucy? Is your neck still bothering you?”
Lady Rhys and Frieda Loye were both clearly surprised that Madoc should bring up the topic which those in the know had been avoiding. So was Lucy, but she answered readily enough. “Yes, it’s rather painful. I expect I did too much yesterday.”
“What did you do to your neck, Lucy?” Joe Ragovsky asked.
Madoc answered for her. “Somebody wrapped a violin string around it yesterday morning. That’s what all the screaming was about.”
“My God!” shouted Joe, “you mean he was trying to strangle her?”
Everybody started yelling at once, but Sir Emlyn made a small gesture with his finger to his lips, and the mouths all snapped shut together. There was much to be said, Madoc thought, for a policeman’s having a conductor as a father.
“That appears to have been the intention,” he went on quietly. “And this morning, I must tell you, we’ve had a further complication. When I came down to open up the fires, I found Cedric Rintoul on the kitchen floor, stabbed to death with an icepick.”
This was almost too much for them to take in. Nobody was shouting now, there was only stunned silence. Frieda Loye had her hands pressed across her mouth, perhaps to suppress a scream, perhaps because she didn’t want to throw up in front of Lady Rhys. Then Corliss Blair, quite green about me lips, emitted a hysterical giggle. “So would the real murderer please raise his hand?”
“That would be extremely helpful,” Madoc said in all seriousness, but nobody did. “Then, Rick, if you have a CB radio in your wagon, would you please go out right now and see whether you can get through to the sheriff or constable or whoever’s in charge around here?”
“She’s a sheriff.”
“Good. Ask her to come as quickly as possible. I must caution you all that she will be
quite within her rights not to let us leave Lodestone Flat until she finds out who’s responsible for these outrages. If you hope to catch that plane, it behooves you all to cooperate as fully as possible. Now then, Lucy, do you stick to your story about that masked intruder who attacked you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” The hot food and wine had put some color into the woman’s cheeks. “Did you think I was making it up?”
“I merely want to be absolutely clear as to your testimony. And it’s your impression that the attacker was a man?”
“That was my impression at the time, yes.”
“Could that man have been Rintoul?”
“I think I’d have recognized Cedric.”
“But you said everything was blurry because you didn’t have your contact lenses in.”
“Frieda said that, I didn’t. It wasn’t completely blurred. I could see you well enough to recognize. That was why I thought the man must have had a stocking over his face.”
“Thank you. Now, is there anything you’d like to add? Can you think of any way we might positively eliminate Rintoul?”
“I don’t know about positively, but I’m pretty sure, yes. For one thing, Cedric never wore perfume.”
“Perfume?”
“Shaving lotion. Men’s cologne. You know what I mean. Like that stuff Dave Gabriel’s been dousing himself in lately.”
“One of the students gave it to me,” the oboist mumbled. “And I don’t douse myself.”
“Was this in fact the same scent as Gabriel’s?” Madoc persisted.
“I can’t tell you. I just remember getting a whiff of some kind of fragrance when he bent over me. It wasn’t awfully strong. Not like those knockout drops Delicia Fawn wears, for instance.”
“Thanks, Lucy, I’ll do as much for you sometime.” The luscious soprano was yawning, not really interested in a dead man or a half-strangled woman. Hers could hardly be called a one-track mind, but it must certainly run on a remarkably narrow-gauge line.
“Let’s keep to the subject, shall we?” Madoc pleaded. “We don’t have much time left. Lucy, can you remember anything else at all about this intruder? Was he tall or short? Thin or fat?”
“I’d say he was tall. Tallish, anyway, and definitely not fat. About like Dave here.” Lucy fastened her eyes on Gabriel, her face setting hard. “Quite a lot like Dave.”
“And can you think of any reason why Dave Gabriel might have wanted to strangle you?”
“Only that he probably knows I saw him lurking around Jacques-Marie Houdon’s castor oil plants that day at the garden party. And Dave’s kind of a weirdo.”
“Would you care to amplify that observation? In what way does Gabriel strike you as weird?”
“Well, he never talks to anybody, just sits there in a corner making reeds. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to do with them all. Cedric snitched a few one day last month to practice one of his magic tricks with, and Dave almost killed him then and there.”
“Is that true, Mr. Gabriel?” Madoc asked him.
“Yes, it’s true,” snarled the oboist. “That big bastard grabbed every single reed I had with me, and set fire to them. This was a Friday matinee, we were due onstage in fifteen minutes, and I was left without any way to play my instrument. One of the guys in the section offered to lend me one, but I can’t play with somebody else’s reed. It’s like trying to chew with somebody else’s teeth. Which makes me a weirdo, evidently. Anyway, I had to sit down and make myself another one, and you know what it’s like when you’re all upset and trying to do something finicky in a hurry. God knows what I sounded like that day. I’m sorry for swearing in front of you, Lady Rhys, but God damn it to hell, Cedric Rintoul was a bloody, rotten son of a bitch!”
“So what if he was?” Jason Jasper shouted back. “Is that any reason to go jabbing an icepick into him, eh? Does that give you an excuse to strangle Lucy, just because she happened to laugh when she saw him light the match? I laughed, too, if you want to know. I mean, here’s this gink with a million reeds and not one to play with.”
“A situation in which I personally fail to see the slightest vestige of humor,” said Sir Emlyn. “Deliberately to render a fellow musician’s instrument unplayable at any time, much less fifteen minutes before a concert, is unpardonable. Rintoul ought to have been fired on the spot. Where was your conductor? I beg your pardon, Madoc. My question is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Please go on with your interrogation.”
“Thanks, Tad. Mr. Jasper, is there any other point of information you’d like to get off your chest?”
“I was just wondering whether you knew Cedric and Dave were the last two people left in the lobby after the rest of us went upstairs.”
“Yes, I do know, but how did you? As I recall, my parents and I were still in the lobby when you yourself went up.”
“Yes, I know, but I was”—Jason hesitated—“sort of watching to make sure Cedric got to bed all right. He’d been down in the dumps ever since your father jumped on him at the rehearsal we never got to hold.” Jason was avoiding Sir Emlyn’s eye, which was the sensible thing for him to do in the circumstances. “I heard the rest of you come up, but I didn’t hear Cedric and I didn’t hear Dave.”
“How indeed could you have heard Mr. Gabriel? Mrs. Shadd has already mentioned that he never talks.”
“Well, I know his step.”
“Ah, I see. So failing to hear his step, you went back down to check on Mr. Rintoul?”
“No! No, I didn’t.”
“Why not, if you were worried about him?”
“Well, I figured Dave was with him, so—” Jason let his voice trail off into silence.
“You assumed Gabriel was offering cheerful conversation to alleviate Rintoul’s gloom? Notwithstanding the fact that Gabriel is known for his lack of loquacity?”
“He’d be a warm body anyway, wouldn’t he? Something’s better than nothing, isn’t it? Look, for God’s sake, I don’t know what I thought. I was tired and hungry and fed up with the whole damned business. I was wishing to God I’d never”—for some reason Jasper paused—“that I’d stayed the hell home and studied to be a druggist or something. I didn’t go down again because I went to bed and fell asleep. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of crime? I’m sorry I opened my mouth.”
“Please don’t feel that way, Jasper. It’s your duty to assist the police in the performance of their duties, you know. When did you go to sleep?”
“How do I know? I wasn’t timing myself.”
“Was there a lamp burning in the room? Had you been reading to while away your wait for Rintoul? Or perhaps playing solitaire? Or just twiddling your thumbs?”
“I—don’t remember. I’d had a few drinks, I wasn’t feeling too sharp. That’s it, I was drunk!”
“Jason Jasper, you were not drunk.” That was Helene Dufresne at her most schoolteacherish. “What sort of nonsense are you handing us here? You’ve never taken more than two drinks together in your whole life.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“I know your wife and I know she’d snatch you bald-headed if you ever tried it.”
“My wife isn’t here. For God’s sake, Helene, I’ve never been marooned with a pack of murderers before. A man can slip once in his lifetime, can’t he?”
“Certainly he can, but you didn’t last night and you needn’t try to make us believe you did. Look here, Jason, you know perfectly well you and Joe Ragovsky were playing euchre with Corliss and me from the time we finished the supper dishes until about fifteen minutes before we decided to call it a night. You had one drink before we ate, like the rest of the crowd, and one after we quit playing, to help you sleep. And those were mostly water because we were running low on whiskey. What are you trying to play at here?”
“I had more than two,” Jasper insisted. “After you went up, I sneaked out to the—” He stopped so short they could almost hear the screeching of brakes.
Frieda Loye broke in,
her voice high and shrill. “To the kitchen, Jason? To get another drink, or to get hold of that icepick?”
“Frieda, for God’s sake!” he yelled back. “I told you I went to get a drink. There was about an inch left in the bottle and I picked it up and drank it right down.”
“You’re a liar, Jason Jasper! Liar! Liar! You did it, you killed them. It has to be you, there’s nobody else left. You wanted it worst of all, and we weren’t dying fast enough for you. Were we, Jason? Were we?”
For the second time that day, Frieda Loye was hopelessly out of control. Her voice was like the scraping of a madman’s bow across a loosened E-string. Her face was stark white, her eyes blazing red, her mouth a ghastly, writhing grimace. “It has to be you, Jason. There’s nobody else left!”
Jason Jasper became quite calm, strangely dignified for one who a moment ago had been determined to play the drunken buffoon. “Oh yes there is, Frieda. There’s somebody else. There’s you.”
Chapter 20
“WHAT ARE YOU TRYING to do, drive me crazy?”
If that was the case, Jasper wouldn’t have far to drive. Frieda Loye was all to pieces: shaking, sobbing, barely able to talk, much less to scream. If Corliss Blair hadn’t put an arm around her, she’d have toppled out of her chair. Nevertheless, Madoc bored in.
“Why should Jasper want to do that, Frieda?”
“For God’s sake, Madoc!” snapped Lucy Shadd. “Let up on her. Can’t you see she doesn’t know what she’s saying?”
“Then she has in fact been driven crazy?”
“Of course she hasn’t. That is—oh, all right. Frieda’s been having some problems the past few months.”
“What sort of problems?”
“Oh, nightmares, spells of hysteria. Getting strange notions, delusions that somebody’s chasing her, trying to hurt her.”
“Trying to kill me, she means! Lucy, you bitch!”
“Watch that mouth, Frieda. You know what I told you last time.”
Madoc intervened. “What did Lucy tell you, Frieda?”
Troubles in the Brasses Page 18
