by Unknown
The detective took in the chaos in cold, seething rage.
The final shock was waiting for him at the washstand.
Four black, lumpish objects lay on the flower-embroidered face towel. At first he thought they were potatoes. Like a kick in the stomach, it came to him what they were: rattlesnake heads. Meaty, evil-looking things, severed just back of the jaw.
“This cinches it,” McGavock decided. “This is the lad that touched off Fern Springs. The footprint on the pajamas—that’s where he got wet shoes. And that’s where the rattlesnakes came from, too.”
He slid a slip of paper from under the ugly things. A note, in the same script as that he had received the night before, and also on hotel stationery, said: These vermin got in my way. You see what happened to them. God be with you.
McGavock considered. “He’s scared. He’s blown his top. He’s mouthing threats. From now on we’d better watch our step—he’s hysterical.”
Fatigue disappeared with the first splash of cold water. He bathed to the waist, gave himself a brisk rubbing and selected the least crumpled of his shirts from the disorder on the floor. A shave, twice over, finished the job in short order.
He was all set to wrap this business up.
CHAPTER FIVE
MURDER SPA
y the time McGavock hit the sidewalk the air was breathless—sultry. There was the electric threat of a summer storm about to break loose. In the southwest sky, above the hillcrests, smoky thunderheads were gathering in a diaphanous haze. Even the hound dogs had vanished from the rutted road. The few mules left at hitching posts, their ears flat against their necks, stood stark and fearful in anticipation of the coming squall. McGavock didn’t like it. Rain would bring an early nightfall and he was playing against darkness.
Lawyer Maldron lurked in the doorway of his office. The detective had the sensation that he’d been waiting there a long time for McGavock to pass.
He was a different lad from the one that McGavock had quarreled with last night. Somehow, in twenty-four hours, the attorney’s cruel ego had withered almost to the vanishing point. “Good evening, sir.” He was downright servile. “Could I speak with you a second?”
McGavock asked sarcastically: “What’s the matter with the horseshoe-nail ring? Don’t tell me you’ve given up window rapping?”
Maldron forced a cavernous laugh. “I don’t rap for my friends, it’s not polite.” He threw a loop in his lower lip, screwed up his face. “That note on my blotter. You wrote it, didn’t you? It was a joke?”
“I wrote it,” McGavock said genially. “But it wasn’t a joke.”
Maldron was hugely pleased. “You admit it? Would you mind informing the sheriff? He’s been after me—”
McGavock jeered. “Amnesia has come over me. I don’t have the slightest idea what we’re talking about.” He asked sharply: “In the old days, back when Fern Springs was doing a rush business, how did the out-of-county guests get there? It’s a long walk for gentlefolk.”
Maldron was perplexed at the question. “They didn’t walk, of course. Most of the guests were from right here in Bartonville. Those from out of the county came by train. There was a junction about eight miles from the resort. A surrey was sent out for them. Is that what you mean?”
“That’s what I mean.” McGavock turned up his coat collar. A sudden spray of raindrops, a premature warning of the storm on the way, whipped down the sidewalk in a swirl of tiny silver crowns.
The sheriff was not in his office at the courthouse. A turnkey greeted McGavock warmly. “Steve’s done got Buck.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m a-sayin’ Stevie’s done picked up Buck. He won’t talk, though. Stevie says, should you drop in, for you to go back and make a try at him.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s at the end of the cell block.”
McGavock said speculatively: “O.K. I’ll see what I can do.”
Buck was the phoney Asie Tenniman, the mountain boy with the plaid shirt and brass-studded belt. He was stretched full length on his bunk, reading a Sunday school paper. Every few minutes he’d take a glass jar of snuff from his pocket and rub a pinch of the powder into his gums. He looked at McGavock with glassy eyes, as though the detective were an unpleasant figment of his imagination. “You might’s well leave me be. I hain’t got nary a thing to say.”
McGavock became chummy. “What you reading, Buck?”
“This-here paper was here when I come in. I’m a-whilin’ away the time till Hal Maldron gits over to see me. You fellers’ll be sorry then. I’m fixin’ to sue y’all—”
The detective listened amiably. “But you haven’t answered my question. What are you reading? It looks like a Sunday school paper.”
The mountain boy said smugly: “That’s what it is. It’s a Bible paper. I’m reading a piece about how a lady preacher lived forty year amongst the Eskimos and spread the word of—”
McGavock took a little red leather book from his inside pocket. He leafed through it with great concentration, selected a page, tore it from the book and flipped it through the bars of the cell to the floor. “When you finish up the lady preacher you might start on that. It’s a copy of the state arson laws.”
“Arson laws?”
“That’s right. You threw Bennett and me off the trail while somebody rushed out and torched the old hotel. You’re as guilty as the man that held the match. I’ve just been in consultation with Mrs. Bennett and she says it’s the pen for the lot of you.”
The mountain boy was thoughtful. “I’ll make you a swap. I’ll tell you what I know—if you’ll promise to have Maldron scorch over and git me out of this.”
“I’m not in a position to make such a trade. This is worse than arson—it’s murder!”
The corridor and the cell block were growing dark. The boy looked out the small window at the smudgy clouds heaping themselves around the hilltops. “I think I been foxed,” he said woodenly. “This-here was supposed to be a prank. I’m shootin’ me a game of nine ball down to the Shamrock when Gussie says I’m wanted on the phone. It’s a funny voice. It sounds like a woman tryin’ to talk like a man—or maybe a man tryin’ to talk like a woman, it’s hard to place. Anyways, this voice says for me to go to Bennett and tell him about the fire—like I did. I was to go to Bennett’s tonight at ten o’clock and Mrs. Bennett herself was to pay me ten bucks. I don’t know anythin’ about any murder and till the sheriff picked me up I didn’t know that Fern Springs had really been burned. I’m a good boy. I’m deacon back in the settlement where I come from. I tithe, I eschew the ways of evil, like it sayeth—”
McGavock tossed him a crumpled package of cigarettes. “You don’t know it but you’re a lucky kid. Stay right where you are. The streets aren’t safe for you tonight.”
The first deep growls of thunder were bumbling across the opaque heavens as McGavock strode down the magnolia avenue of the Bennett mansion. The lawn shrubs were swaying to the pressure of the wind, showing the undersides of their leaves in silvery glitters. The great white mansion was a sulphur yellow beneath the racing storm clouds. Gil Bennett, in his singlet, wearing whipcord slacks and buckled sandals, was on the side lawn. His sparse hair, licked by the oncoming gale, lay plastered to his shiny pate. He was batting a wooden ball over the bent-grass sward, immersed in a solo game of croquet. He swung the mallet with a limp left hand; in his right he carried a jumbo sixteen-ounce mint julep. He waved to McGavock, beckoned him in.
“At it again, eh?” the detective observed dryly. He eyed the pint-sized goblet. “Tomorrow it gives prairie oysters. Where’s Mrs. Bennett?”
“She’s at Malcom’s.” He looked unhappy. “I’m supposed to join her there.” He belched. “Ole Malcom, the man of nature, with his six eyes. That man gives me the creeps. I’m getting fortified.” He walked to a wicker lawn chair, picked up a blazer jacket, slipped into it. “I thought you told me you weren’t working for Hal and Laurel?”
“I’m not. They’ve been tempting
me but I haven’t succumbed. While I’ve got you alone I’d like to learn a little more about that divorce your wife is preparing to hang on you.”
“You mean what I said last night? Forget it. It was just an alcoholic hallucination.”
“That’s what I thought at the time, it sounded like a drunken sympathy gag. Now, I’m not so sure. Do you want to come in on this with me or not? There’s more at stake than meets the eye. There are wheels within wheels—if you get what I mean.”
Bennett gave his head a blunt, decisive shake. “No thanks. You’re a pal, and I appreciate it, but I’m a family man and I handle my own affairs.”
“Your wife says you are sending money to Paducah. Where did she get that idea?”
“I gave it to her. She’s been prying around, pumping me in a delicate offhand way about that money I’ve been withdrawing. I told her that I was footing the bills for a kid in finishing school up in Paducah. It wasn’t very nice of me but she had me wacky with her nagging. Boy, did she show her claws!”
McGavock said: “That I can believe. Where are you sending this money, by the way?”
Bennett grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know! I’m sending it to a big bank in a little town on the West Coast. More than that, I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It’s perfectly legal, you understand. It’s my own money.” He seemed uneasy. “Why the gathering at Malcom’s? What’s Old Spooky trying to pull?”
McGavock laughed. “Time will tell. It’s not Jarrell’s party—it’s mine. The sheriff and I are going to saw this business off. It’s the finale.”
“Wheels within wheels is right!” Bennett studied his fingerails. “You’ve got your little scheme, Maldron’s got his—and I’ve got mine. And ten to one, all our schemes, all our plans, are perfectly transparent to Malcom Jarrell. Well, as you say, time will tell. Let’s go.”
he storm hit them a half-block from Jarrell’s cottage. It opened up with a deafening clap and a raging sluice of water. Lightning flayed the black sky. They broke into a lope and, sheltered by the arching maples, managed to make Jarrell’s front porch.
Laurel let them in. She was wearing her jet lace semi-formal with the cameo at her throat. She seemed unnaturally stiff, apprehensive. Bennett brushed past her, towards the study. The girl stayed McGavock with an arresting hand. “I’ve discovered the most horrible thing,” she whispered.
“Another hammer?”
She flared. “You’re impossible!”
McGavock said quietly: “I can make a good guess as to what’s disturbing you. You found the headless bodies of four rattlesnakes, didn’t you? Well, dismiss them from your mind. They’re a plant. I’ve got the heads, I knew the bodies would turn up somewhere.”
“It’s too repulsive! They’re back in the kitchen—in Malcom’s bread box.”
“He’s a naturalist, isn’t he? Maybe he goes for gamy food. They’re quite tasty if you pretend you’re eating crab.”
There was an atmosphere of subdued hostility in the study. The naturalist, his four-lensed spectacles hooked on his monstrous head, was busy sorting and mounting butterflies. He hardly seemed aware of the fact that he had company. Gil Bennett, his cheeks and ears flushed with open antagonism, lolled in the window bay. Behind him, the squall lashed the leaded panes in cracking gusts.
“Where’s the sheriff?” McGavock asked.
“He’ll be here later,” Laurel said.
“That’s just as good,” McGavock commented. “Maybe we can thrash out a little domestic difficulty before he arrives. Are you planning to divorce your husband?”
Jarrell snapped an iridescent azure wing, fretted. “You have no idea how brittle these things are. I’ve ruined three since you people have been here. You distract me. Can’t you go away and come back tomorrow?”
“No, you don’t,” Bennett said firmly. “Not in this downpour. Where’s your southern hospitality, sir?” He addressed McGavock. “You’ve been here a day, now. What have you found out?”
“Plenty,” McGavock answered. A bell in the hall clanged. Sheriff Robley, in a swanky gabardine raincoat, walked in on them. “Where’s Bad-Tooth Maldron?” McGavock demanded.
“I don’t know.” The sheriff was annoyed. “I couldn’t find him. I left messages for him all over town.”
“There are a few things I’d like to run over,” McGavock remarked. “Just to help us get organized. This case breaks itself into two installments: the old hotel murders, thirty years or so ago, and the present situation. You understand, this isn’t what is generally known as a murder chain. It’s just sort of a double outburst. The second, or contemporary, affair dovetails into the older business.”
Sheriff Robley’s calm eyes held him as he spoke. “I’m sure you’re right, Luther. But it’s the current mess that concerns me. Who killed Lester Hodges?”
McGavock ignored him. “Put it this way: why was Hodges killed? Hodges was working for a rascal. The old eccentric was employed to search Fern Springs for the cowhide satchel in which Wainwright carried his seventy grand. This rascal had long suspected that the absconder had been knocked off. He reasoned that the satchel lay hidden beneath the flooring of one of the rooms. He’d been clerk at the time—”
Jarrell said petulantly: “Why the mysterious circumlocution? If Cal Bradley is the rascal you’re talking about, why don’t you say so!”
“Check. Names it is.” McGavock watched the naturalist’s nimble fingers in the lamplight. “Cal Bradley, as room clerk of the old inn, knew who had which room. Find the satchel under a certain floor and he’d know for certain who had slain Wainwright. He hired Lester Hodges to locate this satchel. Hodges did his searching by means of a rat.”
“Did he,” Bennett asked, “find the satchel?”
“No. But he made the killer nervous. This prowling, this attempting to uncover an old crime, got our murderer jumpy. He got him a magnetized hammer and a two-inch roofing nail and knocked off Lester Hodges. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear enough,” the sheriff agreed. “But it’s highly speculative. Why isn’t Cal Bradley here with us tonight? It appears he holds the key.”
“He’s absent through no choice of his own,” McGavock retorted. “He’s shuffled off this mortal coil. He’s in the cellar of the Bradley House—stiffer than a briar root—”
There was a gasping silence. Laurel Bennett murmured: “We’re doomed—all of us! There’s an unholy hand at work among us. What have we done to merit such a fate?” She flung out her arms, crossed her hands piously over her heart.
McGavock barked angrily: “Won’t you shut up! This is no time to mug for a spotlight.” The storm outside dropped with a cleaver-like slash, there was only the low whine of the wind.
The girl cried dramatically: “Why isn’t Hal here? Have they slain him, too?”
An oily voice from the doorway said: “Not me, Mrs. Bennett. Hal Maldron can take care of himself.” The attorney barged his gelatinous body into the center of the assembly. “Sorry, Malcom, to pop in this way. Guess you didn’t hear me ring. Got your message, Sheriff. Hustled right over. I was home peeling a bunion off my— But you folks aren’t interested in that.”
“You’re all bunion, if you ask me,” McGavock observed. “Quiet, please. Where was I? Oh, yes. Now let me tell you about Fern Springs. In its heyday it was a fashionable resort, no doubt very popular. It was more than that—it was a murder nest. I don’t mean that the management was involved. I mean that somebody saw certain possibilities and summer after summer turned them to his bloody advantage. Jarrell, I’d like to ask you this question: who carted the guests to and from the railroad junction?”
The naturalist considered. “As I remember it we had a station wagon but we rarely used it. Usually the incumbent guests would take the out-of-county people to the railroad in their personal carriages. We were all one big family.”
“Among you regulars,” McGavock said, “there was a man who plied a terrible trade. He struck up friendships with wealthy guests. In weeks of
intimacy he learned about his victims’ contacts, learned who could be disposed of safely. Lonely men and women came to Fern Springs. Many of them would have no one to miss them. When their stay was up, he wheeled his buggy from the stables, gallantly offered to drive them to the junction.” He paused.
“That, of course, was their last ride. He murdered them around the first bend—for their travel money. Men, women and children.”
“It doesn’t seem practical,” Maldron argued. “Murder for a pittance.”
“Pittance, says you. Wealthy vacationists went well-heeled in those days. I’ll wager he cleared two thousand in a season.”
“But Wainwright—” the sheriff put in.
“He broke his routine for Wainwright. And well he might! It netted him a fortune. He slew Wainwright the night he registered. He was afraid to wait, afraid that the absconder might slip from his clutches. Wainwright was his blunder. That’s how I found out who he was.”
“I knew who he was all along,” Malcom Jarrell chirped up. “I saw him drag Hodges’ corpse into my yard.”
“You keep out of this,” McGavock said. “When we need your comment, we’ll ask for it. To continue the story. Hodges, working for Bradley, snooped around until he got himself eliminated. I appeared on the scene. Somehow, probably through Bradley’s loose gossip, the killer learned a city detective was after him. He lay in wait for me at Hodges’ shanty and threw a handful of number four shot at me, sent me a warning note at the Bradley house. I didn’t scare. The next day he changed his tactics. He sent a hillboy named Buck around to Bennett’s—when I was present—to say that Fern Springs had burned at dawn and then hightailed out to fire the building. Actually, there was no evidence in the old building, it had been long since removed, but he had heard about newfangled methods of detection and didn’t know but what maybe a fluoroscope or something would turn up evidence.”
