Arlington smiled at Rutledge, and Rutledge at Oland.
The Wedding March began to tinkle through the dining room again.
“I’m not sure you understand me.” Flynn declared his chance at dinner over by standing up to leave. “No one from the village or surrounding area, none of your associates outside The Rod and Gun Club, none of your relations not members of The Rod and Gun Club seems to know you members well enough, or care enough about you, to penetrate your defenses, and do murder.”
As Flynn was leaving the room, he heard Clifford’s voice say, quietly, “Rumble de dump!”
18
“I need to know what all this means to you,” Francis Xavier Flynn said to Commissioner Eddy D’Esopo. They were in a small, book-lined den with a few reading chairs, a desk. Flynn was sitting while D’Esopo paced. “You were quite right. I don’t like it at all. You’ve put the three of us—you, Cocky, and me—in the way of being accused as accessories to murder after the fact.”
“Come on, Frank. We have some positions. We are police.”
“Not in this state.”
“You do, Frank. Don’t you?”
“Is that what you think? Is that why I’m here?”
“I know you’ve operated well outside my jurisdiction before. And gotten away with it.”
Flynn said, “I suppose so. But not the way you think.”
D’Esopo squared his shoulders. “I’m just a guest here. However incriminating that may be. And I didn’t ask you to bring Concannon. I distinctly told you to come alone. And to shut up about where you were going.” D’Esopo waved his hands. “And here your kids seem to feel free to call you, whenever one of them spends too long in the bathroom!”
“Ach,” said Flynn. “If Jenny only knew the extent she has to go to, to get a little privacy in this world.”
After dinner, Flynn had toured the clubhouse, finally, in a loose search for Cocky. Not in Flynn’s room; not in his own.
Flynn had found a communications room at the back of the house with several television screens, several computer consoles, several telephones. In the basement he found a well-equipped gymnasium and the large sauna.
Along the corridor from the great hall to the dining room were three of these smaller rooms overlooking the dark lake. Obviously they were designed for quiet reading, quiet meetings. The largest, in the middle, in which the affairs of Ashley-Comfort Incorporated had been discussed that afternoon, had a baby grand piano in it.
He had not found Cocky.
“That’s all very well, Eddy. But I need to know what all this means to you.”
In the room next to them, chords rippled from the piano.
“You’re not one of these people. You’re not a member. And you never will be. Do you know that?”
Accompanying himself on the piano, Lauderdale began to sing the old romantic ballad, The Isle of Capri, in a loud, wavering falsetto.
“That nut!” D’Esopo clapped the palm of his hand to the back of his neck.
Flynn chuckled. If such was Lauderdale’s “act,” as Wahler had described it, it was funny. Especially when Lauderdale’s off-key falsetto and fumbling piano notes only could be heard through the wall, the sight of him sitting alone at the piano in raspberry wig, punched-in evening gown, huge high-heeled shoes working the pedals could be only imagined in the mind’s eye. Satiric. For an all-male company, Lauderdale was satirizing what errant people thought of the most terrible traits of womanhood, from constant bitchiness to an insistence on ballads after boiled fish and broccoli. Errant, as satire is, but funny.
“I swear to God!” D’Esopo said.
“As I was saying, Eddy: You’re not one of these people. By the way, tonight I might join you in burglarizing the kitchen. Together, we might manage to break a few locks.”
In the next room, Lauderdale reached for a high-C and missed.
In a more serious tone, Flynn said, “Eddy, I’ve had enough of this. You asked me to come; you ask me to stay. I cannot take part in destruction of evidence, bribery, suborning of witnesses, possible perjury…”
“I have an expensive child.”
Flynn waited, saying nothing.
“Born defective,” D’Esopo said. “Born with a defect the very name of which make me sick even to think about, let alone say.”
Flynn said, “I didn’t know.”
“It—My wife and I decided some time ago it was okay, necessary, to call our child an ‘it.’ You may not think it nice, but we decided, we had to decide, that referring to it as it was the only way of impersonalizing it. Staying sane.”
Flynn thought of his own five healthy, gorgeous children and said nothing.
“It needs constant care, twenty-four hours a day, twelve months a year. More than any man can afford; more than any mother can manage.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Eddy.”
“A while ago, when federal and state agencies cut back on programs caring for such children, our child was turned back to us. I couldn’t afford private care. I have the other kids. Coincidentally, at about the same time, I was invited up here. I came quick enough. I was glad to get away for a weekend. Home had been turned into…a kind of hell. Have you ever heard of the Huttenbach Foundation?”
“Just recently.”
“That first weekend I was here, Dwight Huttenbach mentioned to me that his family foundation runs a school, hospital, whatever you want to call it for such children. Within ten days my child was in that hospital, where it has been ever since. And, honest, Frank, some of its abilities have improved. The people there are just marvelous.”
“And no expense to you.”
“Very little expense.”
“How did Huttenbach know about your child?”
“In vino veritas, D’Esopo smiled at Flynn. “You and I have never had a drink together, Frank.”
“Maybe I’m missing out on something. Whose guest at The Rod and Gun Club were you, Eddy? Whose guest are you?”
“Ashley’s.”
“Ach: guns.”
“That’s right. Buying guns and ammunition for the force.”
Flynn tried to remember. “Do we Boston police use Ashley-Comfort guns and equipment?”
D’Esopo shrugged. “We were anyway. To answer your next question, we are not now buying more or less equipment from Ashley-Comfort than we ever were. I do admit that Ashley asked me, as Edward D’Esopo, individual, not as Commissioner of Boston Police, to make a quiet endorsement of Ashley-Comfort equipment. And I found, in good conscience, I could do so.”
Now Lauderdale was warbling through Silver Threads Among the Gold. Oddly, it wasn’t funny anymore. Flynn supposed satire must keep its distance from reality to remain funny.
“And what else do you do for the members of The Rod and Gun Club, Eddy?”
“Oh, sometimes the V.I.P. treatment when one of them comes to Boston and asks for it. Lay on a police escort with siren. Special police protection, the few times it’s been asked. Had a police honor guard at a funeral for someone’s maiden aunt, once. That took a bit of doing. I said she’d baked brownies for the vice squad.”
“It would seem to me,” conjectured Flynn, “that many of these members would have children and grandchildren at schools and colleges in the Boston area. How many times have you stopped charges against them, Eddy?”
“I’m not going to answer that, Frank.”
“And in all this time, I’m willing to wager, no one has put you up for—”
In the next room, Lauderdale’s singing stopped for a brief moment. As did the sound of the piano.
Then the keys of the piano were banged.
The falsetto returned and warbled successfully through high-C It became a horrible shriek.
“That guy!” D’Esopo said. “I don’t see what’s supposed to be so funny—”
D’Esopo read Flynn’s face.
“He’s just playing,” D’Esopo said.
The shriek became a gurgling and a coughing.
Finally, there was a weak yell in a distinctly man’s voice.
“Isn’t he?” D’Esopo asked.
Flynn said: “I think not.”
19
Flynn looked through the porthole in the door into the lit gymnasium.
Dressed only in shorts, Taylor was working a leg press.
Flynn entered.
Taylor stopped his workout and stood up. Throughout his body his muscles were extremely well defined.
“Do you wish to use the equipment, Mister Flynn?”
“Funny time of day, or night, to be taking such heavy exercise.”
Taylor shrugged. “It’s the only time I’m sure the members don’t want to use the room.”
Flynn looked up the stairway beside the sauna. Half the bulkhead door was open. “How long have you been exercising?”
“Years,” the muscle-bound young man said modestly.
“I mean, tonight.”
“Oh. About twenty minutes.”
“You’re not sweating.”
“I’m used to it. I do this every night.”
“Why is the bulkhead door open?”
“Fresh air.” Even standing easy in all his heavy muscles, Taylor remained the obedient servant, ready to fetch and carry. “Something wrong, Mister Flynn?”
“Yes. I missed you from the music room.”
“The music room?”
“The room with the piano in it. Everyone showed up there but you.”
“Why? What happened?”
What happened was that when Flynn and D’Esopo hurried into the room, they found Lauderdale slumped over the piano keyboard.
Rutledge was standing over Lauderdale at the piano as if waiting to turn a page of sheet music for him.
Lauderdale’s raspberry wig was half off. The left cheek of his face rested on the middle octave. His purple tongue stuck out between teeth which had bitten into it, starting a stream of blood. His eyes bulged as if staring incredulously at the number of upscale notes.
And the door onto the veranda was open.
“Lauderdale’s been strangled,” said Flynn.
“Dead?”
“Yes,” said Flynn certainly. “Dead.”
“I heard the noises.” Taylor in his taut young flesh was an ironic contrast to the flabby male in his fifties dressed in an evening gown relaxed in death only a few meters away. Flynn figured the music room was right over the gymnasium. “I guess I heard the noises. I thought he was kidding. I mean, I heard the silly noises he was making. He was dying?”
“Without much of an audience,” said Flynn.
Buckingham, who had arrived in the doorway of the music room immediately after Flynn and D’Esopo, had shouted, very loudly, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
That summoned Arlington, Clifford, Ashley, then Cocky and Oland. Wahler and Roberts were the last to arrive.
Looking up from his examination of Lauderdale, Flynn asked, “Where’s Taylor?”
“Probably in the gym,” Clifford said.
And Flynn said to Cocky: “Keep everyone out of here. Try to keep their bloody hands off the evidence this time.”
Flynn had run down the basement stairs to the gymnasium.
Now the cold night air from the open bulkhead door was making Taylor shiver.
“How long were you in prison?” Flynn asked.
“How do you know I was?”
“The was society now works,” Flynn said. “Society now takes its undesirable citizens off the streets and puts them into prisons with fully equipped gymnasiums and all the time in the world to build themselves up into extremely strong undesirable citizens. Few others have the time to set themselves up muscularly as well as does our criminal class.”
“It’s the only way to stay alive in prison. It’s the only way of working off the pressure. Getting yourself tired enough to sleep. Of protecting yourself.”
“I know,” said Flynn. “How long?”
“Three years. A little more than three years.”
“And which crime was your specialty?”
“Marrying people.”
“That’s a crime?” asked Flynn. “I’ve known people to be congratulated for it.”
“In my case, they called it bigamy.”
“And what’s bigamy these days?”
“Getting caught with nine wives.”
“Nine! Good heavens, man, you are the marrying kind.”
“Judge—The judge who sentenced me said it was a bad habit I should break.”
“A bad habit with too much future in it, I’d say. Your mother never told you about divorce?”
“It would always happen too quickly. There would always be so much urging on the part of the in-laws-to-be. I never had the heart to tell them all, well, I’d been married before. Was still married. I’d just get sucked up by another family. Bang, I’d end up at the church rail again.”
“Come now, Taylor. You married nine times without fraudulent purposes?”
“I never got anything out of it but the wedding presents. And how many Kitchen Aides do you need? I didn’t need any.”
“Taylor…”
“I like weddings. I’m crazy about them. Crazy, I guess. I like being the groom. I have everybody’s attention. Everybody loves me. I love the in-laws being so glad to see me, always, to have me in the family. I love wedding receptions. I love wedding nights. Doesn’t everybody?”
Flynn studied Taylor. Yes, with Taylor’s basically good build, clear olive skin, bright dancing eyes, dark curly hair, Flynn could see Taylor being grabbed into any family with a daughter.
He looked like someone who belonged on top of a wedding cake.
Taylor blushed and shivered at the same time. “The prison psychiatrist said I’m badly oversexed. But she was…”
“I know. A female. I’m sure she was very helpful to you.”
“She diagnosed my problem correctly.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“That’s why I work here, Mister Flynn. To keep myself away from women. I’ve been out almost nine months and I haven’t married once. Haven’t even been close to it.”
“You’ve done well, lad. All us fathers of daughters are grateful.”
“One is too many,” Taylor said miserably. “A million aren’t enough.”
“At least you know you have a problem,” commiserated Flynn.
“Badly oversexed,” blushed Taylor. “So I work out every night. Just like in prison. It helps get rid of it.”
“And did you and your nine wives spawn many children?”
“Oh, yes,” Taylor said happily. “Lots and lots. Nice ones, too. All my in-laws really love them. They were all glad to have them. You know, to take care of them. Obviously, I couldn’t.”
“I can see you were busy.”
“Toward the end there, I was very busy,” admitted Taylor.
“You mean, you never abandoned any of these wives?”
Taylor shook his head. “I wouldn’t marry a girl and then abandon her. Especially if she was pregnant. Toward the end there, I lost weight. I lost ten, fifteen pounds.”
“We each react differently to strain.”
“Without exception, all my in-laws were nice. I mean, about taking all the kids. Taking all my wives back. I married into some real nice families. Of course they all did sort of gang up on me, at the end there. You know, they got me dragged into court. But they were all just jealous, you see.”
“Jealous over you.”
“Yes,” said Taylor. “Once word began getting around. You see, a minister recognized me as having been in that same church a few weeks before. As groom. First one father-in-law got angry, then they all got angry.”
“I can see they might be touchy on the topic.”
“I figure if none of the families could have me,” Taylor said shrewdly, “none of the families wanted any of the other families to have me. So they had me put in the clink.”
“I’ve often heard,” sighed Flynn, “that talent can be a bu
rden.”
“It took the three years I was in stir for everybody to divorce me and annul me.”
“And who was the judge who sentenced you to celibacy?”
Taylor looked at the ceiling.
“Lauderdale,” said Flynn.
“That old hen.”
“And was it Lauderdale who got you this sexless job?”
“I didn’t want to go into a monastery, Mister Flynn. I don’t like cheese all that much. Besides, the prison psychiatrist said I’ll calm down with age. I will likely calm down with age, won’t I, Mister Flynn?”
“Not,” advised Flynn, “if you keep yourself in shape.”
20
“Sprightly lad, that Taylor,” Flynn said to Cocky as he re-entered the music room. “Who said we all lead lives of quiet desperation? And where have you been the while?”
“I had dinner out.”
“Wise man. I didn’t have dinner in.”
“I took a bottle of Scotch from the bar table and walked down to Hewitt’s cabin by the lake. We had fried fish and venison steak together. I brought you back a bag of apples.”
“I smelled the fish boiling, too.” Flynn, hands on hips, surveyed the murder room. “Didn’t think of taking evasive action.”
“He’s not a well man, Frank.”
“I’ve heard.”
“You can see a strange protuberance through his shirt. His skin is more yellowish than weathered, you know what I mean? I think he should be in the hospital.”
“And young Taylor is in the basement trying to burn off enough energy for nine people, all of them husbands.” Flynn nodded to the bewigged, evening-gowned male corpse collapsed on the piano keys. “And there’s a member of the bench who’s played his last bar. Have you discovered anything interesting?”
“Strangled by an ordinary piece of used clothesline, knotted at both ends. The murder took some preparation, therefore, but not much. I’d say whoever strangled him was very strong. The clothesline is deeply embedded in his neck. It’s possible the neck is broken.”
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