A Show of Hands

by David Crossman

  Funny. His brain was working. His heart was pumping. His lungs rose and fell with his breathing. His body looked fine, all things considered. Spotted and wrinkled, like any ancient fabric, but still in one piece. Yet somewhere the edges were fraying.

  Any good general targets the bridges first. Perhaps death was a good tactician. He’d done well lately. The Calderwood boys, Mostly Sanborn, Amanda Murphy, and nearly a Crisp for the collection. But only two toes and a finger to show for his efforts. So far.

  It was so obvious now. Motive, opportunity, method. He shuddered mentally. Even the red wig made sense. So did the makeup, the fingerprints—everything—once you realized you were dealing with someone sane enough to seem normal, perfectly normal, sublimely normal, capable of saintly devotion, human error, and fiendish malice, but someone whose mental and moral bridges were out.

  More than anything, it was the hands that did it. He was reminded once again of the bicycle seat. So narrow. Too long and delicate. Out of place on the man in the photo. They were piano player’s hands. Herbie was the piano player. Of course, the operation must have taken place at the mortuary the night after the wake. That would have taken some nerve, and just a little knowledge of surgery and the composition of the wrist. Otherwise there would have been a lot of sawing.

  True, Sarah Quinn was a robust young lady. She could have sawed all night. But she didn’t have to. She’d trained as a nurse. She probably used one of Charlie Young’s scalpels. A few relatively easy cuts near the joints, remove Andy’s hands for future use, then put Herbie’s in their place, the sutures neatly hidden by Andy’s cuffs so no one would suspect when they exhumed him—which they would, once they found his fingerprints on the dead girl’s neck. Nice and clean. No blood, just a little embalming fluid. Once done, she reclosed the coffins. They’d be sealed and buried the next morning. No chance anyone would ever dig up Herbie as well as Andy. Why would they? Andy had hands where hands should be. Who would ever suspect they weren’t his?

  Where were they? In the tree? In the quarry? Where was Leeman? What had he found? Was he still alive?

  The red wig was easy. It had been taken from Mrs. McKenniston’s trunk and used to impersonate Amanda Murphy on the mainland, an Amanda who was always walking away from the witnesses. Almost anyone could have pulled that off—the red hair, the distinctive dress. Besides, the witnesses were all older people with less than perfect eyesight. Not a coincidence.

  Brilliant. Affixing the wig to Amanda Murphy’s red hair, probably while the body was still in the freezer—what better way to hide the evidence?

  But there was other evidence. The little trove in the bottom hole of the old tree. Why not the higher one, where it was more likely to escape detection? Because it was as high as she could reach. That simple. Neddy McKenniston could have reached the top hole. So could Andy Calderwood, had he been alive.

  Crisp would bet his life that the red wig was no longer where he put it in the drawer at the funeral parlor. It was required for the impromptu encore at Amanda’s funeral. That appearance was a loose thread. What was the point in taking such a risk?

  The makeup, also from the theatrical trunk, was both grotesque and practical. It would throw any investigation into chaos, and retain Andy’s fingerprints forever, once she’d taken his hands and pressed them around Amanda’s neck. They’d have to dig him up, just to make sure he was really dead. And what would they find? Neddy McKenniston’s fingerprints on the bright brass buttons. Retribution would be perfected when Neddy was trotted off to prison for the murder of Amanda Murphy, while Sarah stayed at home and raised his child.

  It was then that Crisp realized, more by revelation than deduction, the ultimate irony of the whole tragedy. Neddy was a Harvard man. He’d never have given his girls Yale sweatshirts. Yet both Amanda and Sarah wore them like banners. Billboards advertising the fact that their man was a Yaley.

  The baby wasn’t Neddy’s, it was the senator’s!

  Neddy was both procurer and fall guy for his own father! Nothing more than a pawn in the whole hideous business.

  Amanda was absolved of falling for his crass bravura. She and Sarah had succumbed to the wiles and lies of a much more accomplished and sophisticated seducer. The senator.

  And now Neddy was the pawn again. Sarah hadn’t attacked the senator directly. She chose to get to him through his son, the one through whom she’d come to ruin. Odd he had no alibi.

  “Are you awake, Professor?”

  The voice startled Crisp. His thoughts had exhausted him and, without being aware of it, he’d fallen asleep. With effort he drew the speaker into focus. It was Sarah Quinn.

  “Oh, good,” she said softly, closing the door gently behind her. She was dressed in her uniform and carried a shopping bag over her arm. “I just thought I’d drop by.” Crisp’s heart began pounding wildly as she came closer. His eyes opened wider and wider with each step. He couldn’t help it. He had no other way to respond.

  “You know, don’t you?” she said. She dropped her arm, and the bag slid down and caught on her fingers. She held it in front of her with both hands. “I can see it in your eyes. I thought you did. That’s too bad.” She lowered her voice and looked directly at him. “You must think she’s a terrible person.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, her back perfectly erect. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but rather at the wall. “It had to be that way, you know. Gruesome, like that,” she said. “Murder’s so common today, isn’t it? I mean, if it was just an average murder, he’d have been out of prison in a year and a half. That’s the national average for first-degree murder, Professor. Did you know that? I looked it up. A year and a half. That wouldn’t do any good. It had to be especially awful, you see? So it would be in all the papers, and he’d be in for a good long time. Forever, maybe. Should be, too. A terrible, gruesome murder like that.”

  She wrung her hands continually. “I got the whole idea from Mrs. McKenniston’s trunk,” she said. “I was out in the shed putting things away—the grandchildren had found the key and got stuff out to play with—and then I saw that wig. It looked just like Mandy’s hair.

  “I remember, I just stared at it for the longest time. All kinds of things went through my mind—J. T. and what happened to Andy and Herbert and other things—and by the time I got done staring, the whole thing was there in my mind, like it just got there all by itself, you know? I didn’t sit down and work it out . . . cold blooded like that. It was just there. All I had to do was . . .

  “But even that wasn’t like me doing it. It was like somebody else, and I was just watching. It’s funny. You don’t think of yourself as a murderer, even when you’re right in the middle of it, you know? It’s like you’re acting out a play, and you get to have everything just right, but later—you don’t think about later.” She sighed. “Like now, when I do what I have to do, I’ll think in my mind, he’ll get up later, and everything will be all right.” For a second she stopped wringing her hands and fixed him with a gaze that threw a frantic dance of shadows on the wall of his soul. “Does that make me crazy, do you think?”

  She began to unbutton her blouse. “I know you’re paralyzed. Doctor Pagitt says there’s not much chance of your getting better.” She left his bedside, stepped into the shadows by the kneewall, and continued to undress. “But I can’t take any chances, you see? I have to think of Papa and J. T. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”

  Crisp didn’t look at her. He heard the rustling of the bag. It wasn’t the fact that he was going to die that terrified him. It was the method. Sarah Quinn, though relatively new to the field, was an original thinker. He didn’t even want to speculate about what might be in the bag, or why she was undressing.

  “I wish you could talk,” she said softly. “I thought I had everything so perfect, you know? I guess I really did though, didn’t I?” She stepped from the shadows and stood over him. She was wearing a red wig, a black body stocking, and a billowy, multicolored skirt. Even head on,
from a little distance, she could pass for Amanda Murphy, though much more voluptuous. “I guess you know that Neddy McKenniston’s been tried and sentenced. Life imprisonment.” She smiled. “Without parole.” She laughed halfway up the scale. “Anytime the senator wants to see him, he’ll have to go to jail.” She completed the scale. “How do I look?” She spun around gracefully, stopped, and returned to the bedside. “Everybody thinks Neddy planned everything to make it look like it was done by somebody who was insane. Neddy! He couldn’t plan his own funeral.

  “Of course, that’s the way it was supposed to be. It worked out just the way I wanted. The only thing that kept messing things up was you.” She sat down beside him. “I was watching you in the barn, going into all those little rooms. Then you found the trunk. I was standing behind you with an ax in my hand when I heard Mostly out on the patio.”

  Crisp’s eyes widened. She laughed lightly. “I thought that was my last chance, but then you went into the freezer. I couldn’t believe it! Of course, Mostly was there. He saw me just before I . . . I still had the ax. Neddy was out fishing, like always, poor fool. All alone. No alibi. But you didn’t die!

  “I decided to call the hospital. I’d applied for work before, like I told you, but there weren’t any jobs. So I volunteered! They always take volunteers. I asked to be assigned to your room.” She was delighted with the cleverness of it all. “And they said okay because, well, we’re both from the island, aren’t we? Practically family.

  “I had everything ready, planned and planned. I was going to tell them I had to leave early to run some errands. Then I was going to sneak in the back way—there was a door just down at the end of the hall, and nothing but the bathrooms and a linen closet between there and your room—and I’d smother you with your pillow, while you were asleep.

  “Then you checked out!” she exclaimed. She was almost in tears. “Again! It was like there was some angel or something watching out for you. I couldn’t believe it!”

  Where was that angel now?

  She stared at him for a moment. “I told you then I wanted to take care of you.

  “Then I had the idea about the medicine,” she said. She was staring at the wall again. “That was one of my jobs, to throw out the old medicine. What could be better? It would look like an accident, and no one would even know it was missing! Isn’t that a good idea?

  “Mrs. Hadley’s medicine, that was just lucky. Coincidence, you know? Of course, I was sure it would kill you. I want you to believe that. I didn’t want you to suffer.” She stared at him. “They didn’t suffer, you know. Amanda . . . it was all over in a minute. And Mostly, I liked him, so I made sure to hit him real hard. I’m not sure he was dead when he went off the cliff, but he never knew it.

  “It wasn’t easy getting him to the golf cart. One of his feet got caught in the screen door. I had to lay him there while I undid the spring. I was scared to death someone was going to come along!” The thrill of excitement tickled her. She laughed demurely with her hand over her mouth. “But they didn’t.

  “Now,” she said, looking at him with a sincere sadness. “Let’s take care of you.”

  She held up a syringe and pressed the plunger. A thin, silvery stream of liquid spouted from the needle and arched through the air. “The funny thing is, I almost wish I could tell everyone I did it,” she said. “People don’t think I’m very clever, you know? I hear them talking about what happened and I want to say, I did it!” She rolled up his sleeve. “I can tell you, though. Can’t I? You can see how right you are.” She rubbed the crook of his arm with alcohol. Ever the nurse in training. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Nobody will think to look for signs of foul play. It’ll be just like you had another stroke.

  “Isn’t Amanda terrible, doing such a thing? But don’t you worry. She’s been punished already.” She slid the needle into his vein and emptied its contents into his arm. “There,” she said, removing the needle and daubing the puncture with the gauze. “I’m afraid you may get a little uncomfortable in about five or six minutes. I wish you could just go to sleep, but unfortunately that’s not how this drug works, and it’s all I could find in the garbage.”

  How could anyone be so analytical, so thorough, and so mad all at once? Crisp wondered.

  “And there isn’t anyone to help you. Matty’s . . . gone.”

  Poor Matty, thought Crisp.

  “I waited outside until she left to go to mail her letters.”

  Poor Crisp, thought Crisp. He imagined Matty returning home with a letter from some magazine, informing him that his poem had been accepted, only to find him dead. Poetic injustice.

  “I almost hate to stay and watch,” she said, looking at him. “But I have to make sure.” She smiled the same warm smile he’d noticed when she fed him Jell-O. “Besides, like I said, I can tell you while we’re waiting.

  “The fingerprints . . . you figured that out, I know,” she continued. “I could tell from what Leeman and Mr. Gammidge were talking about, even though they didn’t understand what they were saying. You did.

  “At first I was afraid the hands wouldn’t come off and I’d just make a mess of it. That’s why I did Herbie’s first. His wrists weren’t so thick, you know? I was surprised how easy it was. Andy’s weren’t hard, either. But it wouldn’t have worked without the scalpel. Thank heavens Charlie had some!”

  Crisp doubted heaven had anything to do with this particular stroke of fortune.

  “That made all the difference. Once the flesh was out of the way, I just sawed through the bones with Papa’s hacksaw.” She rubbed her left wrist with her right hand. “That was hard work.”

  “Amanda, well, she never knew what happened. Like I said, it was over very quickly. She never saw me.”

  Sarah turned her sincere blue eyes to Crisp. “I didn’t have anything against Amanda, you know. Not really. She couldn’t help it.” She looked away again. “You don’t know how the senator can be. But it was because of J. T. He couldn’t just leave me like that, with his child. It’s not natural, is it, for a man to do such a thing? But he did. Come Labor Day he was gone. Back to Washington. Not a word all winter, even though I called his office. I left messages.

  “Then in the spring, I got a call from his housekeeper in Massachusetts, telling me to go up and get the house ready, like always. Just like that. Like nothing ever happened. And here J. T. was just born, and nobody even knew who he was! I mean, I guess they thought Neddy was the father, but,”—she leaned close and spoke into Crisp’s ear—“I can tell you this about Neddy. He’ll never be anyone’s father, if you know what I mean. He just got married because his father made him. Just for appearances.

  “Then he showed up with her.” She shook her head and the red hair settled on her shoulders. “I knew what that meant. I’d seen it before. He’d get girls for his father, pretend to be their boyfriend, then he’d leave them here and go back to his boyfriends in Provincetown during the week.

  “I’m sure he’ll be very popular in prison.”

  She turned and looked at him. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheek. “I told them I’d open and close the house—I needed the money—but I wouldn’t work there. I wouldn’t be there at the same time as the senator.

  “All summer long I thought and thought about how to get back at him. I was thinking mostly how to embarrass him, but I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t humiliate J. T., too. Then, the day after Andy and Herbie’s accident, I was there closing up and putting things away in the trunk, like I said. It was all perfect. It all came to me at once. Mandy and Neddy were the only ones who stayed on after Labor Day. Perfect. Everything just fell into place . . . the hands, the wig, the makeup. Even the freezer and the quarry. All at once, like magic!

  “And Neddy’s buttons . . . that’s why it all worked. His fingerprints were all over them after the dance. All I had to do was snip a few off and sew them on Andy’s coat at the same time I . . . Except one I just left lying there, loose, so the
y’d see something was wrong. It all worked just like I wanted!” She looked at him, laughed, and shivered. “I tell you, I was sure I was going to get caught. Charlie’d come barging in, or something. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m a little scared now, but not as much.”

  A sudden jolt of pain gripped Crisp’s stomach and lower abdomen. He gasped as his body began to convulse reflexively.

  Sarah put her hand on his and patted it. “It won’t last too long,” she said sympathetically.

  “I put all the odds and ends in the old tree. Then you found them!” She looked at him deeply. “That’s when I knew something had to be done about you. Whatever made you look in that tree? I wish you could talk.”

  Crisp wished he could scream, but all he could manage was a rasping croak as another seizure gouged at his insides.

  “I don’t see how Amanda can bring herself to put you through this,” Sarah commiserated. He knew she was squeezing his hand, but he couldn’t feel it. How was it he could feel his insides so well?

  “I had to keep an eye on you. Going up to the cemetery that night, I got soaked. Nearly caught my death of cold. But I found out what you were up to, and I knew you were using Leeman Russell. That’s all I needed to know.

  “Leeman can’t keep a secret,” she said with a smile. “Everybody knows that. All I had to do was let him give me a ride home a few nights. He practically begged me to let him tell me everything. But he swore me to secrecy. He found the jacket, Neddy’s, in the tree. Just like you knew he would. He asked me what to do with it.” The laughter that followed the comment was not musical. It was almost frantic. “I told him to hold on to it until you came ’round.” She giggled. “He gave it to me, and told me to do it!”