John Everett, with magnificent presence of mind, found the switch which flooded the stairs and porch with light, yelled "Stay here!" to the immobile Ann, and followed Toby up the stairs.
As they burst into the only room from which a faint light showed, they saw the figure of a man with a gun in his hand bending over the form of a woman on the floor; a large flashlight, lying on the floor beside her, illumined the head—or what was left of it—bringing forth the golden glint of blonde hair. They stood transfixed as he rose slowly, the gun dropping from his nerveless fingers onto the bare polished floor with a metallic finality. A blank face turned toward them. "I had to do it," the quiet, expressionless voice said, "I had to kill her—it was a matter of family honor, you see."
It's not Penny, it's not Penny, was all Toby's dazed mind could register. "Who is she? Whom did you kill?" he muttered stupidly.
"My wife, I killed my wife," said Steven Dimola, and began to weep.
Toby looked around at the shattered glass cases, at the bits of shattered pottery and stone tools lying all over the floor—evidence of a fight, one hell of a fight. "Penny," he said woodenly, "where is she?"
There was a slight scrabbling noise from behind the big desk and a small head wobbled cautiously into view, back-lit by an overturned lamp on the floor. Apart from a small cut on her forehead and an extreme state of dishevellment, Penny appeared to be more or less intact. "Here I am," she croaked groggily. "Shooting all over? Fancy seeing you here, Toby. Nice timing. Oh, hello, John, you here too for the finale? Just like old home week." She wobbled over to a chair and sat down in it very abruptly. "Well! That was quite a fight—and a bit more than I bargained for."
"One of these days," Toby snarled, severe in his relief. "You're going to get yourself killed for certain, and you'll ruddy well deserve it too!"
John Everett, who had picked up the gun and had it trained rather nervously on the still, silently sobbing figure of Steven Dimola, started suddenly and swung toward the door as footsteps clattered up the stairs. Ann Langley appeared on the threshold, her face blanching in terror as she took in the shambles. "No, no, no!" she screamed, "not you, Steven—it isn't, it couldn't be you!" and rushed at him.
"Don't!" Penny commanded sharply. "Don't, Ann! Steven had to do it He saved my life. Inga would have killed me just as she had killed twice before; Inga was the murderer, Ann, not Steven."
CHAPTER 22
Naturally there had been hell to pay. The state police had arrived first, headed by Detective Eldredge, who looked as if he would willingly have committed murder himself given the slightest encouragement. The most likely candidate would have been Carson, but since the latter was still unconscious Eldredge was reduced to muttering darkly under his breath as he watched the rescue squad cart Carson off to join his uncle in the hospital, the police doctor having diagnosed a concussion.
The Barnstable police arrived with the rescue squad, adding to the general air of confusion, and Detective Thompson, faced with yet another body in his jurisdiction, was equalling Eldredge in the murderous looks and feelings department.
Steven Dimola had been taken into custody, but even then it was not plain sailing for the beleaguered police. In view of Penny's adamant testimony that he had shot his wife to save her own life, they couldn't charge him with murder. They dithered on about manslaughter, until John Everett primly pointed out that they would run into serious difficulties there, since, in his opinion, to kill a felon in order to prevent a murder could hardly be construed as manslaughter. Bemused with all these ardent amateur criminologists,.the police had finally, and rather lamely, charged Steven with "the theft of a deadly weapon and its unlawful firing on private premises," and hoped to improve on the situation later.
Within the hour, Alexander had come charging to his brother's rescue like some medieval knight, flanked by a battery of lawyers, and Steven was once again a free, if shattered, man.
Both police forces would willingly have incarcerated Penny and thrown away the key, but could think of no valid reason to arrest her and were considerably hampered by the apparent fact that she had, at one fell swoop, solved all their most thorny cases for them. Of course they had given her a hard time, but she was so bucked up by her own success that she gave as good as she got, supplied them with all of the statements and explanations she thought was good for them to know, and emerged still tousled but triumphant from the ordeal.
Toby and John Everett stood helplessly by during the badgering, since they had to be studiedly vague about their own fortuitous arrival on the scene lest they get Penny into even deeper hot water than she was already in. But, finally, it was over. The police retreated, bearing with them the body of the murderer; the dazed Ann took her sleeping little charges back to the cottage; and Penny, Toby and John wearily sought sanctuary in a Hyannis motel. "I'll tell you the whole story tomorrow," the groggy Penny had promised, and falling into bed had slept for twelve straight hours.
They had had to feed her first, but after she had munched her way through an enormous lunch she sat back with a happy sigh. "Ahh! I feel a whole lot better. So, explanation time is here, I guess. By the way, I can't thank you two enough for arriving when you did, you most probably saved another life."
John Everett looked at her open-mouthed. "You mean Steven Dimola was involved after all?"
She shook her head. "No, but if you hadn't come charging in when you did, I think he may well have turned the gun on himself. Basically he was very fond of her, you know, which is probably why he allowed himself to be blinded to what she was really up to for so long. I'm so glad he wasn't involved. I thought for a while they were both in it, but she put my mind at rest on that last night."
"What made you so certain it was she?"
Penny looked at Toby with a bright eye. "I wasn't until you supplied me with three crowning facts: Lorenzo's legitimacy, his imprisonment and his trip over here—then a whole lot of details fell into place. For one thing Steven and Inga would have had the most to lose by the arrival of the new heir. Steven was the apple of his father's eye only because he was the seeming elder, for in other respects they had nothing in common: the doer and the nondoer, the dynamic and the passive. Inga was shrewd enough to realize this. She was also greedy, possessive, not overly bright and insecure—the theft of the photo and the ransacking of Ann's cottago show that. With Lorenzo taking the crown as eldest son Steven would have been reduced to just another rich dilettante "
"I would have thought Alexander would have been just as likely a suspect," Toby interposed. "He, by all accounts, is a man of action and more likely to have taken drastic steps against a threat to the family or his position than Steven."
"Yes, but I never thought about Alexander too seriously," Penny continued brightly. "After all, there's the name —I never think anyone called Alexander could do anything very wrong."
Toby cast his eyes to heaven in silent entreaty against her magnificent illogic and retreated behind his pipe again.
"And besides, he is so valuable to his father, nothing really could threaten his position," she went on. "To all intents and purposes he is Dimola Enterprises, so his motive was less. Also I was certain he did not kill his wife and, of course, he didn't fit the bill in other respects too. Let me go on." She brushed aside an attempted question.
'They had the motive. As to the means: well, I knew they had all been to Imola in Rinaldo's wake. They may have surmised about Christiana Amalfi, they may have even guessed at a child, in view of Rinaldo's changed behavior, but none of them could have known for sure about Lorenzo's legitimacy unless they had seen that letter announcing his unexpected arrival, the letter that precipitated Rinaldo's stroke. No letter was ever found, but who discovered Rinaldo that day slumped over his desk in the study? Inga!
"She probably had been watching Rinaldo closely ever since he had 'cheered up," as Annette Dimola told me, shortly before. After all, Rinaldo thought he had things in hand, was about to fly out to Rome to make amends to this unkn
own son of his first love, who so far had had such a disastrous and shameful life. Probably he was planning to settle a large sum on him and start him off on a new life in another country, but not here.
"Then comes catastrophe! Lorenzo jumps the gun and is on his way to claim his rightful place in a family unaware of his existence. The shock is too much for Rinaldo, who has a stroke. Inga finds the letter. Inga realizes in a flash what it means to her own position. In the confusion after Rinaldo's stroke she realizes that if she can get to Lorenzo first and fast to silence him no one need ever know. She phones New York and sets up a rendezvous. 'Your father is ill, I'm your sister-in-law, and I'll meet you at Hyannis bus terminal and take you right to him' or some such likely story. LorenzcnnTght have been wary of his half brothers, but the news must have been an awful shock to him too, remember, and he'd no reason to suspect her of any ulterior motives—so he comes.
"She meets him and sees the striking resemblance to Rinaldo. Now she has a further problem; not only must she kill him but she must be sure the body is not found. She drives him to the estate and, with almost a touch of genius, takes him to the one place where he can be quickly hidden —the Indian site where there are ready-made graves dug to order, much safer than, say, the marsh or the bog where the body might be found and identified.
"I imagine another factor entered in here. I think she was well aware of Wanda's drug taking and drug pick-up activities. Since we found a Speed capsule in the grave this may well have been one of Wanda's pick-up points Inga knew about. So, after braining Lorenzo with a shovel, she hides the body in that grave, banking on the fact that Wanda and Eagle Smith, seeing the grave had been newly disturbed, would just think it was the other one's doing.
"Up to that point everything had gone her way, then it began to go sour. She had not banked on Zeb's eagle eye nor on his obsessive concern about those Indian graves. Undoubtedly she left some kind of private markings on the grave to satisfy herself that no one had been messing in it — leastways, that's what I would have done. So. She learns to her horror that Zeb has found the body, but still all is not lost. She moves the body, making sure this time that no one will identify it by mutilating the face. To make doubly sure the troubled Zeb does not have a chance to get together with Rinaldo she persuades the family to bring Rinaldo home and to dismiss the professional nurses. In that she did succeed and I think, if it had not been for the persistent Maria, Rinaldo may never have improved at all under her 'care.'
"But, in spite of her, he did improve a little. The words he tried to say made no sense to Maria, but they did to Inga, who of course knew Lorenzo's name; so at that juncture she probably quieted her father-in-law by saying that Steven had taken care of the matter and he was not to worry.
"Then comes her second catastrophe—the second finding of the body. Zeb, poor soul, is finally roused to action, and my ill-advised attempts to get in touch with him alert her for the first time to the fact that he may be about to tell someone else what he has found. From this point she becomes panicky. She tries to 'arrange' the accident, but is scared off by Eagle Smith before she succeeds. Zeb is out of action, but I arrive and start sniffing around to little purpose. She is scared now, but still safe—perhaps even more so after the inquest when Maria reveals to her father the facts of the inquest and which shows Rinaldo that the body in the bog must be Lorenzo's. Then Inga's assurance to him that 'Steven had taken care of the matter' takes on a new and terrible meaning, which I'm sure she reinforced —hence his absolute refusal to try to communicate with me about it.
"Eagle Smith's arrest for the attack on Zeb was a mixed blessing to her. While it diverted the police to the wrong track, it didn't get me off her back and, worse, it finally aroused the flaky Wanda into action. Again, I feel panic made Inga commit an unnecessary murder. Remember she couldn't be sure who was in the barn that day she attacked Zeb; Eagle Smith, Wanda or both. She couldn't be sure whether she'd been seen or not. So when Wanda set up that appointment with me I think she followed her on the bicycle to find out what she was up to; Wanda probably acted surprised and guilty when she turned up, so she killed her out of hand. Her 'alibi' was that she was sitting with Rinaldo—but the only person to have gainsaid that would have been Rinaldo, who in the circumstances wouldn't, and there are literally dozens of ways she could slip out of the house unseen through all those glass doors. So, no problem there.
"But this centered the police's attention really for the first time on the estate, and she must have been getting pretty desperate and not thinking clearly—otherwise I would never have gotten away with my little charade."
"Why on earth did you take such a risk?" John Everett interrupted. "I mean, there must have been a safer way of smoking her out."
Penny grinned sideways at Toby, who was puffing on his pipe and looking resigned. "Well none that occurred to me, and I had to act quickly. You, see, as soon as I got all the vital bits of information together, I realized the same thing that brought Toby here hurtling across the Atlantic; after they had traced Loren2X) to the estate, and even when the motive became apparent, proving what had happened to him would have been well-nigh impossible. It was all so long ago that time was on her side—who would remember a woman at a bus terminal or identify a voice over a telephone after six months? So I had to act to force her to show her hand before she knew all that we knew. Hence all the rigmarole I went through about a hidden statement of Zeb's. I don't think it would have fooled anyone in their right mind, but by that time she was just about round the bend with worry/'
"But the risk of it!" Everett continued to fuss.
"I thought I'd taken care of that by bringing Carson along. The idea was to let her come in, give her a little time to make her move on me, and then for Carson to appear and save the day. Neither of us anticipated that she was so hyper by that time, that she'd lurk inside the door to see no one had followed her, and, when she did see him, would conk him on the head with the big flashlight before coming up to finish me off at her leisure."
Toby took the pipe out of his mouth and broke his silence. "What exactly did happen in that room. I mean, I know what you told the police but, damn it, she was twice your size and very strong, how did you manage to keep out of her way so long?"
"I got lucky," Penny grinned at him again. "When she came storming in, the first thing she said was, 'So you set a trap you bitch, but it won't do you any good.' So I knew at once the jig was up; that she'd seen Carson and dealt with him somehow and I was on my own. She came toward me. I swept the desk lamp on the floor, trying to get out of the light, and then she tripped over the damned cat, who was scooting for the door. She went down- Her flashlight, which must have been damaged when she conked Carson, went out, and it gave me the time to get from behind the desk. I was going to make a run for the door, but she got between me and it and and her flashlight went on again. Then we had a right royal game of dodge-'ems; me throwing pots, tools, anything I could lay hands on, and scurrying around like a demented cat to keep out of her way "
"Then how come, with all this going on, she confessed?" Toby interrupted.
"That's just it, she never did confess to me, she confessed to Steven, who literally did arrive in the nick of time. I had run out of things to throw and she had got me backed up in a comer, her hands around my neck, when he turned up in the doorway with Carson's gun. He just stood and yelled at her, 'Stop it. What in God's name do you think you're doing!' and she kept right on throttling me and yelled back, 'She knows too much, I've got to do it. She knows about the others.' It struck him all of a heap, but I kicked her in the shins and managed to break loose again and gasp out, 'She means she murdered Wanda and your half brother and now will kill me too.' She lunged for me again and then he brought the gun up and shouted, 'If you don't stop, I'll shoot.'
"That seemed to drive her berserk. She pushed me down and rushed at him, screaming, 'Don't you see, you fool, I did it for you! I did it all for you. And if you don't help me now, I'll say you were in it with
me all along. It's what I've told your father, and it's what they'll believe!' " Penny stopped abruptly and then went on in a quiet voice, "And then he shot her. I've never seen such a terrible look on anyone's face as I saw on his when he pulled that trigger. I know what 'to look like death' means now." She shivered-"Three times h,e shot her—the last time in the head as she lay at his feet. Then you came in—and, well, you know the rest.
They all three sat quiet for a moment until John Everett cleared his throat nervously. "So what do you think will happen now?"
"Not much, I hope," Penny said with fervor. "I'm banking on Alexander to bring the heavy Dimola guns to bear and to quiet things down as much as possible. They may get Steven for manslaughter—but I doubt it. The one I'm worried about is Carson; I've put him in a terrible position. I meant to have him covered with glory after capturing the murderer, instead I've landed him in hospital with concussion and in danger of being booted out of his job. Still—" she brightened— "at least I've cleared him of all the suspicion he was under, and he's young enough to get another kind of job if Alexander can't or won't help him. He ought to do something with children, he is terribly good with them."
"You're incorrigible, absolutely incorrigible," Toby sighed. "One thing I'm certain of—as soon as humanly possible I'm going to drag you out of here before you get into any more trouble."
"Oh, where are you proposing to drag me?" Penny was interested.
"To Italy—where you should have been all along," he said severely. "There's still ten days of vacation left, thanks to the enlightened policies of the University of Oxford. I have to pick up the car—not to mention a couple of cases of wine from my good friend Enrico. Besides, I'd like you to see Colle d'Imola where all this started."
"Yes." Penny was thoughtful again. "From the start of this case the accent has been on youth; Rinaldo's youth reached out to him and touched his life with its tragedy; my youth, in the shape of Zeb, reached out to me and caused me to be the unwitting Nemesis for all the young people involved in the case. It has brought tragedy to them too—but I only hope some good will come of it. They must all hate me, so I don't suppose I'll ever know the outcome." In that she was wrong.
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