“Slander,” I said, and Dominic said, “Huh?”
“When the publication is by word of mouth, that’s slander,” I explained. “It’s libel when you print it.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’ll do it. Say, look, Carlton”—he gave me the broad smile—“I don’t blame you one bit for trying to find out whatever you can about this case. Stands to reason. But,” and the smile vanished, “I am a reputable businessman. I’m also one of about fifteen people in this town alone who have the initials DS, and I’ve already told the cops where I was the night Ernie was killed. Which was bowling, in front of about half a dozen witnesses who know me. So, my advice to you is to go find some other sucker, okay?”
Well, nothing could be fairer than that. And we exited, with his instructions to give his best to the Widow Golden ringing in our ears.
After lunch at the O.K. Café—“Why don’t they call it the O.K. Corral?” Hanna complained. “It’s just as deadly”—we drove back to Bosky Dell to speak to Harry Franklin. Hanna pointed out that it made more sense to tackle Tommy Macklin first, since we were already in town, but I demurred. I was leaving Tommy Macklin until last.
Harry told us to get lost; he had said what he had to say to the police, and it would be a frosty Friday in the middle of July before he would discuss his personal affairs with the press. I told him we were no longer of the press, having been canned. That cheered him up a little, but did not make him any more forthcoming.
Harry refused to discuss what Ernie had been blackmailing him over—even when we told him we already knew—and stuck to his story about driving over to Bosky Dell on the Monday night and, as he put it, “letting off steam with the boys.” He gave us the names of three other merrymakers, all of whom I knew, who could testify that he was, as he put it, “incommoded” from about 7 p.m. onwards on the night in question. I thought we ought to clear this up right away, but Hanna insisted that the time had come to confront Tommy.
On the way back to Silver Falls, I noted, bitterly, how differently things seemed to work in Bosky Dell than on, say, Murder, She Wrote. In any well-constructed television show, I noted, when the amateur sleuths start sniffing around, the bad guys throw off confessions like a Catherine wheel. All we’d picked up was one threat of a libel—pardon, slander—suit, and an invitation to drop dead and turn blue. It didn’t seem fair.
Hanna said, “Uh-huh.”
I was talking, in point of fact, more to keep up my morale than anything else. I was not looking forward to the coming conversation with Tommy Macklin, a man with the temper of a Brazilian killer bee. Thus it was with feelings of inexpressible joy that I noted, as we pulled up in front of the Lancer building, that Tommy was emerging from the premises in the company of that well-known OPP officer, Mutt, who ushered him into a waiting police cruiser. Jeff held the door for him. Then Mutt got into the driver’s seat, and they drove off.
I jumped out of Hanna’s car. “Hey, Tommy,” I shouted, “decided to confess, have you?”
Tommy jerked his head up, but didn’t say anything; just sat there in the back of the cop car, looking guilty. Then a voice spoke in my ear, making me start like a frightened hare.
“Ah, Mr. Withers,” said Det. Frank “Thuggy” Thurston, “you’re just in time to join the party. Get in.”
He gestured towards what we used to call “a plain brown wrapper” when I was on the police beat. An unmarked cruiser. He put one hand under my elbow and kind of moved me along, so I decided to do the courteous thing and accompany the officer. Hanna, I saw, was being invited to get in the back seat with me, by Det. Arthur “Smiley” Smollett. The two cops sat in front, with Thuggy at the wheel, so we weren’t under arrest.
“Hey, where are we going?” I asked Smiley, but it was Thuggy who replied.
“On a wild goose chase, if you want my opinion,” he said.
Chapter 23
This had obviously been prearranged.
“This has obviously been prearranged,” I told Hanna. She looked thoughtful.
“Naturally.”
“Hey,” I prodded Thuggy in the back and asked again, “Where are we going?”
He glanced back. “Don’t do that,” he said, and I decided not to do that.
“Well, where are you taking us? You can’t just pull people off the streets, you know. This is a free country. More or less.”
“We’re going to church,” said Smiley.
“To church?”
“We’re going to your church in Bosky Dell. Staff Inspector Eberley asked us to assemble all the principals in this case at the church. He has a theory he wants to try out.”
“Holy mackerel,” I said, “Just like television. Did you hear that, Hanna? Hanson’s cracked the case. That is what you do with cases, officers, isn’t it? Crack them? Why crack them, I wonder? Why not break, or smash, or, more simply, solve? Why not . . .”
A soft hand, firm but soft, clamped suddenly over my mouth. Hanna thought I was babbling. Well, I was. But this was babble-worthy news. Hanson, I knew he could do it. He would confront the bad guy, demolish his arguments with ridiculous ease, and wring a confession out of the rascal. I was still unemployed, broke, and a criminal suspect, but things were looking up. I kissed the hand that shushed me—which was hastily withdrawn.
I reached out and took Hanna’s left hand in my right. She looked startled, but didn’t withdraw, and when I squeezed her hand, squeezed back. We rode to the church in what was, for me at least, perfect contentment.
Whether the officers were perfectly contented was another matter. Probably not, is my guess. As we pulled up in front of the church, Thuggy grumbled, “This is an asshole idea.”
“What harm can it do?” asked Smiley, and Thuggy shrugged. We went into the church.
Hanson was up on the raised platform at the front. The pine pulpit had been moved off to one side, and Hanson had set up a table in its place, with a couple of kitchen chairs drawn up to it. There were a few documents on the table—“Clues, I’ll bet,” I told Hanna, who murmured, “The boy’s a genius”—and a pin punch, just like the ones from the missing set. Unless three decades of television had led me entirely astray, we were about to get a re-enactment of the crime.
Hot diggety dog. I fished a notebook out of my jacket pocket and a ballpoint pen out of the lining of my jacket, where the buggers always migrate. The ballpoint didn’t work—they seldom do—but I was able to borrow one from Mrs. Golden, who was there in her capacity of official observer or neighbourhood snitch, and dressed formally. That is, she was carrying a purse. In the Dell, that’s formal. She produced a pen from its cavernous depths when I told her I needed one to write my story, and she said, “What story, Carlton? You’ve been fired.”
How in tunket did she know that?
“I can sell this one in Toronto,” I replied, “freelance.”
Tout le gang was there, ranged along the benches, though not, of course, in the box pews: the Widow, now sitting next to Dominic Silvio; Moose, and another beefy gent who was, I presume, Clarence, his business colleague and fellow heavy-hitter; Harry and Bernice Franklin; the Campbell brothers, looking truculent; Tommy Macklin, sitting by himself and looking pale and wan, a great improvement over his normal, red-faced rage; Nora Eberley, wearing a demure shirtdress and an expression of injured innocence; and Lillian Wentworth, the librarian. Add in Hanna, self, and two more cops and you had a better crowd than turns up most Sundays. It was a pity that the Rev. couldn’t be here—he might have counted the crowd and decided to take up a collection.
Lillian the Librarian was sitting right next to Bernice Franklin, and they were whispering together, boding no good whatever for poor Harry. Comparing notes, no doubt. They looked so much alike that I was moved to wonder, once more, why Harry bothered to range afield for that same flower that bloomed so close at hand.
Hanson gave a tiny tug on one end of the immacul
ate cravat which, as ever, topped his customary costume—blue blazer and grey flannels. Then he cleared his throat and rapped once, sharply, on the table. The four cops, who had been murmuring together about halfway down the centre aisle, immediately spread out. Mutt took the left aisle, Jeff the right, Smiley stayed in the centre, and Thuggy moved up to the front, just behind where Hanson now seated himself at the table.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “suppose we get started. I have asked you all to come here, and I may say I am grateful to you all for coming, and for the cooperation of the police, because it is my hope that together we will be able to clear up the mystery surrounding the murders of Ernie Struthers and Ephraim Wylie.”
Under-the-breath muttering at this, in the crowd. The murderer, I guessed, was writhing.
“The facts,” Hanson went on, “are not complicated. Ernie was discovered, deceased, on the front stoop of Carlton’s Withers’s place on Third Street last Tuesday morning. The Rev. Wylie was discovered, deceased, in this church, last Friday morning in the Flannery pew.
“Preliminary autopsies suggest the time of death in the case of Ernie Struthers was somewhere between 6 p.m. and midnight, give or take an hour, on Monday night. Rev. Wylie’s slaying is rather easier to pinpoint. He was still alive at approximately 11 a.m. last Friday morning, and was discovered, dead, by Carlton Withers, at approximately 11:30.
“Death in each case was caused by stabbing with a pin punch, very much like the one you see here on the table before me. These tools, commonly employed in woodworking, came from a set which belonged to Carlton’s father, and were kept in the workshop behind the Withers home on Third Street. Since they were readily available to anyone, we cannot yet attach any particular significance to their ownership.”
I nodded. Damn right.
“There were no fingerprints discernible on either instrument belonging to anyone in police files”—this was new to me—“but these days, when even the most elementary student of crime knows about using gloves, that doesn’t mean much, either.
“The rest of the set, incidentally,” he added, “was discovered this morning, in the lake, down by the public dock.”
Mild sensation in the audience.
“Ordinary police routine,” Hanson went on, “led to this discovery. Sergeant Moffitt and Constable Jeffrey, in the course of a normal search, checked the waterfront, and some boys who had been swimming there told them of finding a set of tools in a plastic case. It is one of these that now sits on the table in front of me.”
He smiled, briefly. “It may become useful, as we go along.”
“There were a number of puzzling aspects to the case,” Hanson resumed, when we had all finished gawking and stirring, “at least at first. One was this: a number of clues suggested that Ernie had been hiding here, in one of the box pews, and that this had something to do with his murder. A Rotary pin was found, attached to a torn piece of cloth, which might have indicated a struggle. However, the pin did not belong to Ernie, though it might, of course, belong to his killer. His hat was also found in the pew. But when the Rev. Mr. Wylie returned to the church after his meeting with Dominic Silvio, Ernie was not in the pew. Why not?”
“I know why not,” I ejaculated. I had just figured it out.
“Then perhaps you would be good enough to explain to the rest.” Hanson smiled benignly, as on a favourite pupil.
“It was the wrong pew.”
“Merciful Moses, the man has flipped,” said Hanna, and for the non-Bosky Dellers present, the statement did seem strange, but Hanson soon explained it.
“Precisely,” he said, “the wrong pew. For outsiders, I should explain that the box pews here are, symbolically, quite important, almost”—a fleeting smile—“sacred. Oh, not so much sacred, as privileged. They have from the first been occupied only by the social leaders of Bosky Dell. Now, Ernie Struthers was a snob to his fingertips, like most villagers, and there is no way on earth that he would have inserted himself into Miss Flannery’s box pew in order to eavesdrop on a conversation between Reverend Wylie and Dominic Silvio, which was the ostensible reason for his presence in the church.”
“Where else could he hide?” asked Silvio.
“In the vestry, right behind me. It isn’t as close, but with the acoustics in this fine old building, it is quite close enough. If he wanted to conceal himself here—and mark that ‘if’—he would simply have gone into the vestry and left the door open. He could see, because he was looking from the darkness into the lighter body of the church, whereas, in the box pew, he’d have to duck down below the front wall, and hope that nobody looked directly in, for fear of being spotted. If he moved, he’d be heard, and if he was heard—or spotted—he would have had no way to escape, whereas, from the vestry, he could simply duck out the back door.
“No, ladies and gentlemen, the one fact that was clear from very early on was that Ernie did not hide in the Flannery pew.”
“Then how about the hat I found?” asked Harry Franklin.
“Misdirection,” Hanson replied promptly. “Easily planted clues designed merely to confuse the investigation, or at least slow it down. The church is important only in pinpointing the probable time of the meeting between Ernie Struthers and his killer. Rev. Wylie’s statements, combined with the rough estimate of the time of death, put that time at somewhere around 9 p.m.”
“Well, what about the newspaper clipping?” Hanna asked.
There was a brief, but perceptible, pause.
“Probably part of the same misdirection,” Hanson replied. “We haven’t yet worked that part out. Presumably, the killer put the envelope into Ernie’s hand to direct us to the church, and it fell out.”
Hanson went on, “We now come to the matter of suspects.”
Hanna stirred discontently at my side. “What about the clipping?” she complained. “He brushed that off.”
I made a firm resolve to speak to the pipsqueak later, this niggling was likely to break Hanson’s concentration. I needn’t have worried, after a brief, wintry smile in our direction, he went on.
“At first, it seemed possible that Dominic Silvio, for reasons that were not quite clear, might have been responsible. He may well have believed that, with the Rev. Mr. Wylie out of the way, a new minister might have seen things differently in connection with the proposed development he had in mind here. That is an argument that works only if the Rev. Mr. Wylie had been the first victim. However, it is hard to see why Ernie Struthers would have been killed, and then the minister. Ernie had nothing whatever to do with the development, or the church. The attack on Carlton outside the Lancer offices also pointed to Mr. Dominic—or, at least to his helpers.”
Rich blush from Moose at this.
“However, as it turned out, this was a simple error. Mr. Silvio, it has been established, was bowling on the night of Ernie’s murder, in front of witnesses who have been interviewed by the police. Nor would he have arranged for someone else to do the killing for him, because Ernie’s death could not have benefited Mr. Silvio. The question of the possible development of a condominium complex on church property, which the Reverend Wylie opposed, did not depend on anything Ernie Struthers did. It, literally, did not matter to Mr. Silvio whether Ernie lived or died.”
Hanson shuffled his notes, cleared his throat, was obviously starting to go on, when Hanna butted in.
“Hey,” she said, “what about blackmail for a motive?”
“It did not apply to this individual,” said Hanson, shortly.
“Why not? Didn’t the cops find the initials DS at the top of one of the pages in Ernie’s handy-dandy little notebook?”
“They did indeed.”
“Well, then?”
“The initials, police investigation determined, were those of someone else.”
“Oh, yeah, who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Pause.
“A resident of another community.”
The Widow Golden put up her hand, the bright kid in school who has the answer.
“Dorothy Sternblossom, I’ll bet,” she said, and added in a loud aside, “you know, that woman from Panny Point who got caught cheating in the Daughters of Rebekah Bridge Tournament last winter. They had the dickens of a time hushing it up.”
“Was Dorothy Sternblossom the one referred to in Ernie’s notebook?” Hanna asked.
Hanson looked very stern. “That information is not relevant to this inquiry,” he said. “What is relevant is that the police were able to satisfy themselves that the initials were not those of Dominic Silvio.”
The Widow babbled right through this in a loud stage whisper, “Though why Dorothy would pay to keep something like that hushed up, I can’t understand. Everybody who is anybody knew about it.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Oh, Carlton,” she responded, “you never know anything.”
“That’s why they call me a reporter.”
“If we can get back to the point at issue,” said Hanson, giving us both a dirty look, “we can say that ordinary police procedures showed that Dominic Silvio had an alibi for the relevant time, and had no motive for wanting Ernie Silvio dead.”
“One down,” I said.
“Next, it seemed possible that someone who was being blackmailed by Ernie had, in desperation, killed him, and planted a number of confusing clues, in such a way that the blame would, in the end, fall on Carlton.”
“I don’t follow,” said Tommy.
“I do,” I said. “The killer wanted to point to me, so he planted the body at my place and then set up the other clues to point to the church. It was pretty likely that the police would soon work out that the murder didn’t take place there, so the trail would lead back to me, again, without seeming obvious.”
Right Church, Wrong Pew Page 18
