Murder in the Grand Manor

by Tom Hoke

  Jim leaned over him and said soothingly,

  "Found what, Jerry?"

  "The graveyard…the marker…like Aunt Edith said." Then he looked at Jim craftily. Jim decided to change the subject.

  He pointed to the ceiling. "The bellboy?" he asked, sitting astraddle the chair. Jerry’s face crumpled like he might burst into tears. "They hit him…thought it was me…they had to kill him. That's why I came to your room.

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "Heard them talking about you," Jerry announced, nodding his head.

  "Who?"

  "Never mind who. Never mind." He reached over the side of the bed with some difficulty, picked off the bottle of whiskey and concentrated on opening it.

  "Wait a minute before you take another slug."

  Jerry's brow puckered into a most unbecoming frown. Jerry's eyes looked puzzled. He opened the bottle and asked, "Drink?"

  Jim took another tack. "So now you own the hotel. What are you celebrating? It's a liability.

  And what happened to your Aunt, Jerry?"

  "They musta killed her," he mumbled. Then he waved the bottle. "Aunt Edith wouldn't talk…they might have known that. She had guts, plain old guts. I didn't like her, but she had guts." He grabbed at Jim’s shirt with one hand. "She wrote me! I ain't afraid of what she was afraid of, but they want me because they think I know and nobody else does. They'll kill me too! After I tell them what I know…they'll kill me. Hide me, Jim…hide me!"

  "What do you know?"

  He upended the bottle and leered at Jim. "I won't tell." He looked at the bottle and back at him in surprise. Jim came out of his chair and shook Jerry. "Where are your Aunt's rooms, Jerry? Where?" Duprey sank back on the pillow and his eyes glazed over, but he pointed to the ceiling. He spoke a couple of unintelligible words and conked out.

  Jim looked at him in exasperation. Just where did he think he could hide him? If he went wandering about the hotel dragging Jerry after him, because he couldn't carry him over his shoulder, he would run into almost anybody.

  And almost anybody was apparently already searching for Jerry Duprey.

  Jim went through Jerry's pockets and came up with nothing he could use. So Aunt Edith wouldn't tell, but Jerry would! Just what would he tell? How would Jim know? It was small satisfaction to him if somebody picked Duprey off. What he knew about the Grand Manor, except for the back stairs, the room over Aunt Annie's, and the bar, was nothing.

  He rolled Jerry under his bed. Even this took a bit of doing. Jim pushed the inert body until Duprey was up against the far wall. As a kind gesture, he rolled up the bath mat, crawled under the bed, and stuck the mat under Dupreys head. A missing pillow might give whoever they were an idea. For once Jerry wasn't snoring. However it wouldn't have mattered much because the sudden wild wind tearing at the ivy around the window would have drowned him out.

  Jim made up the bed carefully. Then he sat down, wondering why he had ever thought of stopping the characters that had Beau Mitchell cornered in San Antonio.

  The whole mess hinged on Aunt Edith's letter to Jerry. Jim was hot, sweating, disgusted, and curious. Here he was in the middle of a hurricane with a dead body upstairs, the question of the quick dispatch of Mrs. Benning, two zany females who had adopted him, and Jerry Duprey. He remembered Jerry had cost him a grand. But he was not so disgusted his eye didn't catch the turning of the doorknob.

  He gave the doorknob his undivided attention.

  It turned to the right and to the left. Jim had heard no footsteps, but who could with all the noise outside? Jerry, even under the bed, didn't need a visitor. Neither did Jim. He promised himself he had first dibs on Duprey when he came out of his stupor. There were a couple of million answers he needed from him.

  Jim began to whistle loudly and stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower hard.

  The doorknob stopped turning. Switching off the light, he unlocked the door and stuck his head out into the hall. There was nobody in the grim uncarpeted length.

  He locked the door of his room and went quickly to the back stairs. Aunt Annie had given him thirty minutes, and he was running out of time. But he wanted to have a look at Mrs. Benning's quarters. Why had the girls acted so strange over his sarcastic description of the late Mrs. Benning? Among other things, he wanted to see if the recently deceased bellboy was still in the room over Aunt Annie's.

  The last was easy. There was no body and nobody in the room where he had seen the body the night before. Getting rid of him must have been quite a chore, he thought, as he went on down the hall.

  It stood to reason Mrs. Benning, being the owner of the Grand Manor, would have the pick of the crop, if there was such a thing. Her rooms were at the front of the hotel overlooking the bay. He stopped and tried the door. It wasn't locked, but it wouldn't have mattered. Jim’s key would have fit the lock, just as it probably would every room in the hotel. That's why there was another deadbolt lock on the inside.

  For once he hit the jackpot as he entered, closed the door, and took a step forward reaching for the light switch. It was Edith Benning's parlor. He stumbled over something on the floor. The stark, center light changed his mind about giving it a swift kick. He discovered he had fallen over a good old-fashioned solid doorstop about the size of a brick and weighing at least a ton from the way his foot felt. Limping over to a scarred veneer table loaded with bric-a-brac, he pulled the ornate cord of the heavily beaded lamp with less wattage than the center light. He limped back to the door and turned off the center light.

  Then he looked around and winced.

  Jim knew an antique dealer who would go stark, raving insane at the conglomeration of furniture in Mrs. Benning's parlor. He also knew enough to spot the only really valuable piece of furniture in the room, a walnut Queen Anne chair that had to go back to the early seventeen hundreds stood out like a sore thumb. He drew a deep breath, wishing it belonged to him. Jerry would never appreciate it.

  In this room the Queen Anne chair was desecrated by rococo tables of various sizes, all loaded down with unappealing dusty ferns in overly large pots. He shuddered over a lumpy unstable couch covered with small pillows adorned with names of various states and long fringes. Antimacassars were pinned to the arms and backs of the divan and the hideous chairs, except for one, the Queen Anne. Aunt Edith must have been doorstop happy. They were all over the place, holding down stacks and stacks of newspapers, holding back the doors to the next room. There was even one set on top of the out-dated magazines on the table. They looked like a bunch of bricks rolled up in dirty brown carpeting. But he forgave Aunt Edith all her atrocities. The Queen Anne chair was beautiful.

  There was only one picture on the west wall. It was a large religious painting, if you could call it that, made up of burnt match sticks! He cringed as he glanced at it, looked longingly at the Queen Anne chair, and went into the next room.

  The next room was an office. An open door to the left showed a small bathroom. Someone had really torn up Mrs. Benning's office. The filing cabinet beside an old oak desk had been emptied on the floor. The drawers of the desk had been pulled out. The swivel chair was tipped over against a closet door. Jim righted it and looked in the closet. It was lined with shelves. It had the treatment too. He didn't give this room much of his time. No use in trying to find something when he didn't know what he was after in the first place, especially since someone else had already beaten him to it.

  He glanced at his watch. Aunt Annie and Lena would be looking for him. But he had to see Aunt Edith's bedroom. There were no pictures in the office, and more than anything, he wanted to see the portrait of Mrs. Edith Benning. He stepped into the next room. It was heavy with massive furniture. The four posters of the mahogany single bed reached to the ceiling. To the left of the bed was a great, ugly monstrosity of a dresser, with the drawers opened and clothing dumped out on the floor.

  A large box of candy with the lid half-off and a hairbrush were the only items left on the top of th
e dresser.

  His eyes went to the right of the bed. An enormous gilt frame hung askew. That was all there was, one gilt frame without a picture!

  The portrait, if it was of Mrs. Benning, had been whacked out carelessly and in a hurry with a sharp knife.

  He turned back to the door he had entered, and there was another gilt frame. This one held a portrait. But the portrait was slashed at and shredded viciously. It was so completely destroyed it would never resemble anyone again. Was this Mrs. Benning's portrait, and why were the pictures either removed or destroyed? There was something in the destruction that took his breath. It made him leave Mrs. Benning's domain with a queasy feeling in his stomach. Something particularly evil was going on in the Grand Manor.

  Outside the rooms he rushed toward the front stairs. At the top it dawned on him he had left a light on in Mrs. Benning's parlor. He thought about returning to switch it off, but it was too late. The blast of Lena's whistle came up the stairs. It would have pierced a steel vault.

  Certainly it pierced Bertha.

  He took the steps two at a time wondering how long it would take for Jerry Duprey to recover. On the first floor landing stood Lena with her arms folded. Naturally she had on a hat, only one this time. She seemed to be waiting for someone or something. Jim hardly needed to guess. Aunt Annie came gasping up the stairs to stand beside her friend. Even at this distance he could see Aunt Annie was inspired with great determination. She looked up at him.

  "What have you been doing, Charlie? We need you in the lobby."

  Lena gave him a black stare. "Where have you been?"

  He said, "I was just checking upstairs. There's nobody on the third floor." He was exactly right. Meekly he followed the two ladies down to the lobby.

  The occupants of the hotel, except for Duprey and the remains of the bellboy and the watchdog, who seemed to also have disappeared, were assembled in the lobby.

  Leddon seemed spellbound by Aunt Annie's dictatorial manner. He stood woodenly behind the desk, looking gloomily over the guests' heads.

  Just inside the door stood two new arrivals, both dressed in identical no nonsense raincoats hanging almost to the floor. Throwing back their hoods, they were treated to a male and female probably in their sixties who were more excited than frightened by the antics outdoors.

  Aunt Annie took over. She marched up to them, had a few words, and introduced everyone to them as though we were all involved in nothing so much as a tea party.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Tribble," she announced, waving her hand around the lobby, "we are all victims of the hurricane."

  Jim never did know what their first names were. Mr. Tribble addressed his wife as 'Love', and apparently that was his name too, because she said quite excitedly: "Lover and I saw the most unusual bird over the beach. We've never seen one like it before!"

  Aunt Annie was trying to make the Tribbles feel at home. She acted like she was President of the Bird Watcher’s Society. "My goodness!" she said brightly, ignoring the hurricane,

  "What sort of bird did you see, Lover…I mean Mrs. Tribble?"

  "Well, it had a scissor tail and was big and black and had long wings."

  Lena said ominously: "Man-o-war birds. Mrs.

  Tribble. They live in the Florida Keys and throughout the tropic oceans. We almost never see them unless there is a major hurricane!"

  Her words had a chilling effect on a room growing chillier in spite of the steamy mildewed heat. Mrs. Tribble blinked and grew silent.

  Lena's ominous tone brought Aunt Annie back to her responsibilities. "Hear. Hear!" she said, clapping her hands. The bride and groom didn't hear. They were staring into each other's eyes. The man in the seersucker suit cocked his head and looked at Aunt Annie wonderingly. George simply looked at the ceiling.

  "Lena and I have carried food into the bar,"

  Aunt Annie announced. Of course the most likely place Aunt Annie could think of for the food was near the booze. As it happened, it was the best idea she'd had yet. "We will need all our strength," she went on firmly. "I suggest you help yourselves before too long.

  It's not fancy, but it will have to do."

  Bertha must have destroyed even the Tribble's appetites. Nobody moved.

  Aunt Annie did a slight-of-hand trick and came up with a kerosene lamp. She showed it to us lovingly, as if it were an antique of unmentionable value. Then she cleared her throat. "Perhaps we will feel more like eating later," she said kindly. She raised the lamp.

  "This may be useful."

  Aunt Annie certainly had the floor. "First," she said imposingly, "we will fill all bathtubs on this floor with water." She raised her eyebrows at Jim. "Not boiling water, Charlie!" she said scathingly. "The ladies will search for candles."

  This meant Lena and 'Lover' and the new bride and herself. Leddon is not acquainted well enough with the hotel to tell us where they might be. Lena and Mrs. Tribble, try the dining room buffets for candles. You are on candle duty!" Then she turned to the bride. "It might be wise to fill up the pots in the kitchen with water too. The drinking water might become polluted." She pointed toward the kitchen. "You might fill the pots, Mrs.

  Collson."

  Her bombardment of words had temporarily stopped everyone in their tracks. Aunt Annie went on with her monologue. "I think we'll get the northeast quadrant of the hurricane, don't you, Lena?" Lena nodded solemnly, waggling her hat dangerously. Aunt Annie went on. "In any case, we will probably be without lights before the night is over. Try to find some kerosene on the back porch." This order she directed to the man in shorts.

  The bride gave her new husband a thwarted look and followed the guy in the shorts toward the kitchen. The door into the dining room was open and dimly lit by some sort of sconce on the inner wall. It was two steps down, and Jim would have bet a couple of bucks somebody would stumble over them before the night were over. The bride maneuvered the steps gracefully.

  Lena led Mrs. Tibble into the dining room, where they began rummaging in the drawers of a couple of ancient sideboards. The two salesmen wandered toward the long L of the building muttering something about water with a questionable distaste in their voices. The rest of the men followed close behind. The groom said something about putting plugs in the bathtubs. He seemed to think the two salesmen needed direction.

  Aunt Annie stood in the middle of the lobby looking noble. Jim tapped her on the shoulder.

  "What are YOU going to do?" he asked curiously.

  "My dear boy," she said brusquely. "I am in charge. Somebody has to be, you know." She gave the motionless Leddon a pitying glance.

  Then she came up with a fine idea. "Why don't you check the outdoor furniture, Charlie?" Jim could hardly protest inasmuch as something rather formidable slapped the side of the building.

  He looked down at Aunt Annie. "All right…all right, I'm going. But look here, Miss Annie Gary…I'm going to go out into the elements and endanger my life. But you know and I know there's more going on in this place than one measly hurricane." He should never have underrated Bertha. "Would you please answer one question before I go. Have you ever been in Mrs. Benning's rooms?"

  Aunt Annie looked everywhere but at him. "I guess I'm just nosy, Charlie. I had never been in her rooms until after she died. But yesterday, I went up there. Lena said it was a very good likeness of Mrs. Benning," she added brightly.

  Jim replied: "So it WAS a very good likeness.

  Come now, you didn't see it at all. It wasn't there. But what about the portrait beside the door, was that Mrs. Benning's portrait?"

  She shook her head. "No. Lena said Mrs.

  Benning's portrait was on the east wall." She brought her eyes back to Jim. Then she said slowly, "That was a bit nasty, don't you think?"

  He nodded. "Yes, it was a bit nasty. Do you know whose portrait it was?"

  "I've never been in her rooms before. I don't know. You'll have to ask Lena."

  He turned toward the dining room, but Aunt Annie grabbed his arm. "Not now
Charlie.

  You'll have to ask her later. That yard furniture will be through the front windows if you don't hurry up!"

  Chapter 9

  If Jim were to have the dubious pleasure of renaming this particular hurricane, he would abandon the usual pattern. He could think of nothing more apropos than EXASPERATION.

  There were any number of questions which might be answered if it hadn't been for this Act of God called Bertha.

  His association with Aunt Annie told him he could never give her credit for stupidity. She had a wide-awake non-stop curiosity. Who was trying to fool whom, removing Mrs.

  Benning's portrait from the gilt frame? It had to do with temporary urgency. Was Mrs.

  Benning alive? Perhaps someone didn't want him to know what Mrs. Benning looked like. It also had to do with the reason Jerry Duprey hot-footed it to Bay St. Louis in the first place.

  Lena certainly knew about the slashed portrait.

  If it weren't for Bertha, he could corner the old girl and find out whose portrait was so outrageously destroyed. It was just possible he was being given the run-around, aided and abetted by Bertha.

  With all this kaleidoscoping through his mind, he slammed out the front doors of the Grand Manor at Aunt Annie's command. Aunt Annie was right. He conceded Bertha would be quite a problem as the wind picked up. The wild Texas winds plus the gales blowing off Lake Michigan seemed like summer breezes compared to this blow.

  The bay was dirty and angry and great with whitecaps. Water came in with a roar against the seawall, beyond the road separating the lawn of the hotel from the road and the beach.

  Yesterday it was a beach. Today the beach was non-existent. It was almost dark. He wished it were dark enough to block out that water. It looked alive, vicious, and mean. He began to wonder, despite Aunt Annie's assurance to the contrary, if the water might rise and slowly cover the hotel like it had covered the beach.