“I see. So you and Chilton agreed on the total?”
“Not really. Cal told me about the problem last night after supper, an’ I went an’ double-checked.”
Marc could not hide his surprise. “You’re saying that Chilton did not come here yesterday afternoon?”
“That’s right. And if he did, we didn’t see him. I was in the barn all that time.”
Puzzling, Marc thought, as it had been Bragg who had served them coffee around two-thirty in the library, not Chilton. Where had the butler been?
Marc thanked Struthers and began to walk back to the house. It looked now as if Bragg had had access not only to laudanum but to Amontillado as well. If Bragg and Giles Harkness did plot the death of the butler, they knew that only an expensive brand of sherry could be used as a gift, a “peace offering” and a deadly bait. The exchange must have been made after church on Sunday. And there were lots of places besides his room where a wily servant could stash such a bit of contraband. Now, if Cobb could just pinpoint Harkness’s movements on Sunday last, they could begin closing the net over Bragg.
As he left the shelter of the cedar windbreak twenty paces past the stables, Marc felt the icy nor’wester on his face and pulled the collar of his greatcoat up over his ears. He was glad it was Cobb who was braving the elements.
***
Mrs. Sturdy sat across from Cobb in an overstuffed easy-chair and offered him what she took to be a lascivious smile. Its effect, however, was somewhat dimmed by the smoking cheroot that hung perilously at the edge of one thick lip and by the tarpaulin-sized dress she had arranged to flatter her numerous curves – its crimson and yellow tulips rippling and winking in a most distracting manner. Her right hand lay plump upon the greasy doily of the chair-arm, grasping and regrasping a glass of gin so potent Cobb thought he could hear it sizzle. He had accepted a glass of it from his enthusiastic hostess, but had not yet raised it above waist level.
“I don’t often get company on a Friday afternoon,” she was saying, “especially a handsome gentleman of the law.”
“I’ve come on official police business,” Cobb said with one eye on the precarious perch of the live cigar. “I am looking for information on a boarder of yours, Giles Harkness.”
Mrs. Sturdy guffawed, and her cheroot landed on the rag rug beside her chair. She stamped it out with one savage blow of her leather slipper, as she said to Cobb, “I take it you’re referrin’ to the gentleman who puked all over yer boots on my verandah a coupla weeks ago?” She raised her gin-glass towards her mouth, but snorted so vehemently at her own witticism she had to stop it mid-way and watch it splash across her lap. “God damn it!” she cried, still laughing. “I hate to waste the stuff on a good dress!”
But Cobb was not eyeing the gin-stain seeping among the tulips. He was reminded once again of that incident on the verandah: not the vomit on his boots but the threat that Harkness had made. Cobb could not remember its precise nature, but he knew it was made against Elmgrove and that it had been uttered in deadly earnest. It was clear now that Giles Harkness had to be connected somehow with the murder of Graves Chilton. Even though Harkness could not have known the man, he must have viewed him as a usurper, and would have found a ready ally in Austin Bragg. But when could they have met to collaborate?
“What can you tell me about Harkness?” Cobb asked after a pause, in which his hostess found time to light another cheroot with a nearby candle.
“Well, for one thing, he ain’t here,” she said, finally getting the gin where she had been aiming it, and capping the pleasure with a hefty puff on the cheroot.
“You mean he’s left yer place?”
“I do. The bastard skedadelled a week ago Sunday. Up an’ left early in the mornin’, owin’ me fifty cents rent money. If he ever shows his ugly mug here again, I’ll run his balls through my sausage-grinder.”
Cobb sighed. Harkness apparently had disappeared just two days after that Friday evening when Cobb had dragged him out of The Cock and Bull and dropped him on Mrs. Sturdy’s porch. This was not the sort of news Cobb wished to hear. “Any idea where he went?”
“I know exactly where he went.”
“Outta town?”
“All the way to Burford, a hundred miles outta my reach!”
“How do you know this, if he just up an’ took off?”
“Found a letter in his room, didn’t I? Seems some farmer down that way raises a few horses an’ heard our friend was outta work. The letter invites him to come down an’ try his hand at tamin’ them broncos. But the only thing I ever seen him tame was a bottle of cheap sherry.”
“I’d like to see this letter, if I might.”
“I’ll get it fer ya. Meanwhile, unbutton that dreadful jacket an’ make yerself comfortable.”
She got up with some difficulty and lumbered into one of the nearby rooms. Cobb tried not to watch her tulips shimmy. A minute later she came out with the letter. Cobb read it right through. It was definitely a job offer from one Simeon Mortimer near the village of Burford.
“An’ you’re sure he left town on account of this?”
“I’ve had two of his drinkin’ pals lookin’ out fer him. He ain’t appeared in any of his usual waterin’-holes.”
Disappointed, Cobb realized there was little more to be gained here. At the door, he tried one last question. “Did Harkness ever have any contact, here or elsewhere, with a fella named Austin Bragg?”
“Don’t know the name. An’ Mr. Harkness didn’t entertain a lot.”
Cobb thanked her and headed down the porch steps.
“Hey,” Mrs. Sturdy called after him, “you ain’t touched yer drink!”
***
At four o’clock Marc could contain himself no longer. He had spent a frustrating half-hour making notes on the interview with Abel Struthers and then reading carefully through the notes Cobb had left from his morning downstairs. It simply had to be Bragg. The disgruntled Tremblay was a possibility, of course, in that he could have taken the laudanum when he left the bathroom about a quarter to ten, doctored the sherry he had cached in his luggage, and slipped down to Chilton’s office after he heard LaFontaine come back. But the motive was weak. There were many other ways in which Tremblay might wreck the negotiations, short of murdering the butler and risking the noose. Tremblay had been through the wars, perhaps had killed even, but he had a needy family back in Quebec and had ambitious plans for his own future. Moreover, Marc did not want it to be him.
Marc decided he would not wait for Cobb with news of a conspiracy between Bragg and Harkness: he would go to Prissy Finch and break Bragg’s alibi. He met Macaulay outside the billiard-room, looking frayed and anxious.
“We’re getting close,” Marc said. “I need to find Miss Finch right away.”
Macaulay seemed desperate to ask for details, but said evenly, “I sent her down to the kitchen for biscuits a minute ago.”
Marc headed for the servants quarters. As he went down the stairs and pushed open the door to the kitchen, he almost knocked Prissy and her tray of sweets flying backwards.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Not to worry,” Prissy said quickly enough, but she was obviously flustered.
But not by the sudden appearance of the police interrogator: it was the scene behind her that had upset her and sent her hurrying towards the stairs. Hetty Janes was sitting in Mrs. Blodgett’s rocking-chair with a ten-fingered grip on its wooden arms. She was rocking furiously up and down, like a child in mid-tantrum, and tears were streaming down her face. Her sister Tillie was waving ineffectually at the rocker as it whizzed back and forth past her, and chanting, “It ain’t yer fault, Het, it ain’t yer fault! You gotta stop!”
Before Marc could blink or say a word, Prissy had scooted past him and up the stairs to the rotunda. In front of him, Hetty Janes – startled by the abrupt arrival of a tall, authoritative gentleman – stopped rocking. For several seconds the only sounds in the room were the diminishing squeaks of
the chair and the ritual snuffling of the distraught young woman.
“Oh, Mr.Edwards,” Tillie cried as she reached out and finally brought the rocker to a halt. “You’ve come just in time!”
“I have?”
“Hetty has somethin’ she’s gotta tell you, but we ain’t been able to quiet her down enough to have her utter a sensible word. She keeps blamin’ herself, which ain’t right.”
Hetty choked back a sob far enough to say, “I just hope we ain’t woke up Mrs. Blodgett. You mustn’t tell her, Til. Promise.”
“She won’t blame you anyways, Het. You know that, so there’s no need to carry on so. It ain’t the end of the world.”
Marc took a couple of steps towards the sisters, who had momentarily forgotten him. “What isn’t the end of the world?” he said gently. “What is it you need to tell me, Hetty?”
Hetty blushed extravagantly, but was already so red and blotched from weeping that it made little difference to her ravaged appearance. She looked at her sister: “Oh, I couldn’t, Til. You gotta do it for me.”
“I’d like one of you to tell me,” Marc said a little less gently.
“It’s embarrassin’ fer everybody,” Tillie said, “but it’s gotta be said. Mr. Edwards, Austin was fibbin’ when he told you he spent the night with Prissy. He couldn’t have, because he never left Hetty’s bed, not fer one minute.”
Marc was speechless. The claim seemed incredible. Why would Bragg coerce or wheedle his fiancée into lying for him if he had a ready-made alibi in Hetty Janes? More to the point, would the too-handsome fellow deign to spend a night of passion with such a plain, thin little thing? Something was amiss here.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Tillie said. “But Prissy an’ Austin had a dreadful row – we both heard it – an’ Prissy went slammin’ inta her room. Hetty says Austin saw her door open an’ her peekin’ out, an’ he just sidled up an’ eased her back inside. He was mad at Prissy an’ he wanted to get even.”
Hetty began to snuffle again.
“He put his hand over her mouth an’ – an’ had his way with her,” Tillie said in a tone that conveyed both amazement and outrage.
Marc wanted to ask why Hetty had not cried out, but suspected the answer would be too painful for everybody concerned.
“It was me who let him stay,” Hetty bawled. “I’m the one to blame. And I’m sure Prissy guessed what I done when she seen me in such a state next mornin’.”
“She won’t blame you, even if she has,” Tillie soothed. “If she hadn’t let that awful butler make eyes at her an’ kiss her, none of this would’ve happened, would it?”
“So Austin Bragg never left your room after ten o’clock last night?” Marc said to Hetty, though the answer to that question had already been made clear.
Hetty nodded, and dropped her eyes to her lap.
“But why would Austin and Prissy both lie about what they were doing?”
Neither of the sisters answered, but in their faces Marc could discern the reason well enough: Bragg had regretted his haste, did not want the world – or Prissy – to know what he had “stooped” to, and had convinced Prissy that he needed an alibi because he had been “sleeping alone” in his own room.
“Thank you for being truthful,” Marc said lamely, and slowly backed out of the kitchen. As he turned on the stairs, he heard Hetty say in a plaintive voice, “But it was so nice, Til, so nice.”
By the time he reached the rotunda a few moments later, it struck Marc that, unless Cobb had discovered something of significance in Toronto, these new revelations had in all likelihood eliminated their prime suspect.
TEN
“Jesus Christ on a donkey!” Cobb cried when Marc broke the news to him at quarter to five in the library. “Ya mean to tell me we ain’t got the bugger by the short hairs no more?”
“Or any other hairs,” Marc said. “If the crime was set up sometime between ten o’clock and midnight, as we’ve surmised, then Austin Bragg is in the clear. But there’s still Harkness, remember. Bragg could be part of a conspiracy. Though it’s not likely, the Amontillado could have been doctored with some other laudanum and given to Chilton long before last night.”
Cobb sighed, and let his dripping helmet drop to the carpet. “My news ain’t so good either.”
“Let’s hear it anyway. The only thing that counts, alas, is the truth.”
Cobb proceeded to give a detailed account of his visit with Mrs. Sturdy, leaving out only her allusion to the vomit on his boots.
“Burford?” Marc said when Cobb had finished. “It would take a day and a half to get there, check out Harkness’s story, and get back here.”
“That’s the way I figure it too. But what good would it do? If I find the bugger there, then he’s more or less off the hook – bein’ absent from the scene, so to speak, fer almost two weeks. And if he ain’t there, then that means he’s found another hidey-hole in Toronto, an’ it could take us a month of Sundays to flush him out.”
“Quite right on both counts. But we may have to go after him regardless if we can’t solve the case by Monday at noon. What interests me right now is that threat he made against Macaulay or Elmgrove in general. What better way to get even than by murdering the man he viewed as his usurper and causing his master embarrassment or worse?”
“But when could Bragg an’ Harkness have got together to dream up this plot? You said Struthers was sure Bragg was kept too busy to be gallivantin’ off to the city.”
“There was a short period last Sunday when Bragg left his group after church and disappeared. I was counting on Harkness having been nearby to meet up with him. But all the signs now indicate he was already in Burford. Damn! If we could have been given just a few more days – ”
“Could you purr-sway Doc Withers into delayin’ the inquest?”
“Probably. But I’m certain our French guests will have reached the end of their tolerance by then, and decide to go back to Quebec. We can hardly hold them here indefinitely – that is, unless we accuse one of them of the crime.”
“Tremblay, fer instance?”
“He has not been struck off my list, but until we come up with a better motive than his unhappiness with our ‘economical’ negotiations, as you so quaintly called them, I am loathe to even question him vigorously as a suspect.”
“The French gents’ll close ranks, ya mean?”
“Something like that.”
Cobb picked up his helmet, shook the last of the melted snow off it (he had dropped it in a drift after an inelegant descent from Macaulay’s cutter) and set it on the table. “Well, where does all this leave us, then? Our prize fish has wriggled off the hook, we lost our bait, an’ the hook itself is lookin’ a trifle bent.”
“We’ve still got the laudanum, Cobb. The disappearance of that bottle from the bathroom shelf after nine-thirty or so and the timely appearance of laudanum in a bottle of Amontillado three hours later can’t be mere coincidence, can it? And Macaulay says it was a fist-sized bottle with a long neck. The windows in Elmgrove have long been frozen shut. One of the servants could easily have disposed of it, but if our killer is not Bragg, and is to be found among our guests, then that bottle is still in this house.”
“So we oughta roust everybody outta the fancy wing an’ go rummagin’ through it inch by inch?”
“If we have no luck by Sunday afternoon, I intend to scour the place. Meantime, I’ll ask Macaulay to keep the guests indoors or, if they go walking, to accompany them. I’ll also ask Prissy Finch to keep a sharp eye out when she’s tidying up their rooms. But for now, caution and discretion are still the watchwords in that quarter.”
“Whatever you say, Major. But what about them missin’ pages ripped outta the lead-ger? I been wonderin’ all along why Bragg would have cause to cart them off if he was the killer.”
“I haven’t given that a lot of thought, but it’s a valid question all right. Remember, we did speculate that Chilton seemed overzealous and was keepi
ng a critical eye on his underlings. Those pages could have contained damaging reports on their perceived peccadilloes.”
“But why put yer list of their peck-a-dillies in yer big fat accounts book?”
“It’s the one absolutely safe place for them. The upstairs servants move freely through all the rooms up here, including Chilton’s own quarters. Macaulay told me yesterday that Chilton was working late to bring the estate’s accounts up to date because they’d been neglected since Alfred’s death. Macaulay normally checked the book every month or so, and in this case he would have waited until Chilton had it ready for him. No-one, then, would have occasion or reason to consult it. Also, I noticed in your notes that you unlocked the drawer in his office desk with the key you found on his person and – ”
“An’ there was nothin’ in it.”
“Because he kept only the ledger in there, eh – locked away.”
Cobb’s face lit up. “Say, you don’t suppose all the servants are in on this, do you? Harkness gives Bragg a bottle of Amontillado – somewhere, somehow – an’ Bragg gets Prissy to snitch the loud-an’-numb, he spikes it, gives himself an alibi with poor Hetty, an’ then Prissy or Tillie sidles up to Chilton’s office when the house settles down, say about eleven o’clock, an’ bats her lashes a bit an’ says ever so sugary, ‘We chipped in to buy ya little present’ an’ so on. The other servants know what’s up, but turn a blind eye an’ help with each other’s alibi.”
Marc smiled, genuinely amused despite the desperateness of their situation. “A reasonable enough theory, old friend, but I was downstairs, as you were, and we were present to judge for ourselves the strength and truth of the emotions we witnessed there. Still, Prissy herself remains a possibility. Her evasiveness and her tears may well have much to do with guilt and regret.”
“Then we need to get to her soon.”
“Yes. We’ve got an hour before I’m to meet with Robert and LaFontaine.”
Unholy Alliance Page 16
