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The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head

Page 11

by Jonathan Latimer


  She couldn’t have said anything that would have surprised me more. She said, “I thought maybe you’d stop whatever it is that you’re doing.”

  I felt as though someone had struck me a hard blow in the stomach. I sank back on the davenport and literally struggled to secure air for my lungs. “This is incomprehensible,” I said weakly. “Simply incomprehensible.” She watched me without expression. “Do you mean to say, Miss Leslie,” I asked, “that you believe I’m some sort of a criminal?”

  “Perhaps not that.” Her face did appear doubtful. “But why would Burton be so bitter about you?”

  “I don’t know. But I assure you I’m not involved in any evil-doing other than our conspiracy during the card game.” A new thought crossed my mind. “What a bewildering person you are, Miss Leslie,” I said. “First you think of me as a bungling coward—I admit, with some grounds—and now you regard me as a sort of master villain who has Burton Coffin in his toils.” I took a breath. “I am, in reality, a perfectly harmless college professor.”

  She made a negative movement with her dark head. “You didn’t seem so harmless when you had Burton Coffin in the water. You almost drowned him, you know.”

  “So you haven’t forgiven me for that. Don’t you think I had some justification when Burton jolted me into the water?”

  “But it was Dan Harvey who upset you.”

  “He did!” To my shame I felt only a mild regret that I had ducked Burton unjustly. “Then I shall have to apologize to Burton.” I grinned at her serious face. “And at the same time I’ll tell him he is freed from my toils. I will make him do no more of my’dirty work’, whatever it is.”

  She smiled reluctantly. “I’m not going to worry about it.” She rose gracefully to her feet. “I can’t imagine what the’dirty work’ could have been either.” She placed The Dolly Dialogues under her arm. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

  “I don’t think so. My watch comes so soon that I might as well wait up.”

  She bent over me and spoke in a whisper. “Then you are going to watch them.” Her glance drew my eyes to George Coffin and Dr Harvey.

  “Watch them?” I rose with my back toward the fire. “I’m not in the habit of spying upon anyone,” I said with dignity. “What makes you think I’d want to watch them?”

  Her gray eyes were scornful. “Either you’re very smart, Peter Coffin, or terribly—the opposite.” She turned her back on me and walked toward the stairs. “Good night,” she called to the chess players.

  They replied abstractedly, and she went on up the stairs without a backward glance. I sank back on the davenport and tried to make some sense out of our conversation. If Burton Coffin’s accusing me of forcing him to do my “dirty work” and my spying upon George Coffin and Dr Harvey made sense, I finally concluded, then Miss Leslie was right intimating that I was terribly dumb.

  However, in my thinking, I found one ray of light. She had called me Peter Coffin! I liked the way my name sounded on her lips.

  Presently Dr Harvey acknowledged that he was defeated, and the chess game was over. The doctor went out in the kitchen to get a glass of ice water, and George Coffin came over to the fire. “You and Miss Leslie had quite a chat,” he observed.

  I told him what she had said about Burton and also about my watching him and the doctor. His face was genuinely puzzled.

  “I can understand why she might think you would want to watch us,” he declared, “but about my son being a member of your criminal syndicate, I am completely in the dark. You’re sure she wasn’t spoofing you?”

  “I don’t think so.” I got up and pushed some of the red coals further back on the hearth. “She seemed quite serious.” The fire was quite hot. “Why would I want to watch you?”

  “I suppose on account of the new will. It is quite possible that one of us older members of the family might have it in our possession and would like to have an opportunity to destroy it.”

  “I’m not worrying about the will. It’s the madman who’s got me puzzled.”

  I told him what Mrs Bundy had said about the window.

  “Locked from the inside,” George Coffin repeated. “That is something to think about! Do you suppose he has a friend inside the house?”

  “I hope not,” I said. “It’s bad enough to have to worry about his breaking in, without having to think of his being escorted in.”

  Dr Harvey returned from the kitchen. He had evidently caught the last part of my sentence. “Who’s being escorted in?” His face was alert.

  I repeated what I had told George Coffin.

  “She’s probably confused,” said the doctor. “After times of extreme stress, such as occurred last night, people often become confused. Probably she locked the window the night before last.”

  “Maybe,” agreed George Coffin.

  “She seemed pretty sure of it,” I said.

  “She would,” said Dr Harvey. “That’s the attitude a person in such a condition would take.” He looked keenly at me. “Did you open your windows last night, Peter, or did you keep them closed?”

  “I opened them.”

  “Are you sure?” His expression was that of a person who knew me to be wrong.

  “Why, fairly sure.”

  “Would you swear you left your windows open in a court of law if a man’s life hung on your testimony?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’m fairly certain I left them open.”

  “But you’re not positive?”

  I thought it best to humor him. “No,” I said.

  “There!” Dr Harvey triumphantly wheeled on George Coffin. “That’s the natural response to questions about some minor act. A moderate certainty, but some doubt. That’s what the cook should have said had she been telling the truth.”

  “You think she’s lying?” I asked.

  “I won’t go as far as to say deliberately lying. She probably thinks she’s telling the truth.”

  George Coffin was nodding his head. “You’re probably right, Doc. It seems very fantastic, anyway, that someone inside would unlock a window for Mr Glunt’s particular use.”

  “It’s impossible.” Dr Harvey glanced at his wrist watch. “Five minutes of one. Time for the new shift to take over.” He gave me a tight smile without any humor in it. “Think you and my son can protect us all right?”

  “You can count on us,” I said.

  He moved away from the fire. “Come on, George.” He grasped my cousin’s arm. “I’ll send Dan down to you.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  They both responded pleasantly and disappeared up the stairs. Three or four minutes later Dan Harvey appeared. He had on his pajamas and a dressing gown, and he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. “Hi,” he said. He sat on one of the davenports and partially hid a yawn behind his hand. “Any attacks yet?”

  “Not a one.” I put a pine faggot on the fire and watched the tongues of flame curl around the dry wood. “It looks as though we’re going to have a peaceful night.”

  He watched the blaze drowsily. “What are we going to use for weapons?” he asked.

  “Bronson told me this afternoon there were loaded shotguns in the library.” I went into the library, took two of the guns from the rack and returned to the fire. Dan Harvey was asleep on the davenport. I shook him. “Here.” I handed him one of the shotguns. “Now we’re ready for anything.”

  He blinked at the gun and laid it on the couch. “Say, Professor,” he demanded, “is it straight stuff that you were once world’s hearts champion?”

  I confessed that it was not. “I cheated,” I admitted.

  “I thought there was something phony about the game,” he said thoughtfully. “Still, I don’t see how you managed to do it all by yourself.”

  “I didn’t. Miss Leslie acted as my accomplice.”

  “Holy cow! I’d never have suspected that. I thought she had it in for you.”

  “What made you think that?”

  �
�Well, she called you a coward last night, and this morning after you ducked Burton she said you were a bully. I don’t think that’s being exactly crazy about someone.”

  I felt there was considerable reason in what he said. “I was surprised myself when she came to my aid. I think she was aware of certain irregularities in your sister’s and your play.”

  “Irregularities!” He laughed scornfully. “We were cheating as much as we could, but it didn’t seem to do any good at all.”

  I smiled back at him. “The point is that evil-doing prospers when it comes from an unlikely source. You never thought to suspect me and Miss Leslie of cheating.”

  For an instant Dan Harvey’s drowsy blue eyes widened. “Say! Maybe that’s an idea for the will. Maybe someone beside the old people got away with it. Maybe someone we don’t think would have the least idea of swiping it.”

  “What reason would anyone have for taking the new will, outside of the Coffins or your parents?” I asked. “What good would it do them?”

  “Why, don’t you see?” He brandished the shotgun in the air. “They, or he, could sell the will. They could sell it to somebody who would destroy it or to one of us.” He was getting his subjects slightly mixed, but his meaning was clear. “He could get people bidding against each other for it and sell it to the highest bidder.”

  His theory, I saw, made the possible suspects in the theft of the will practically unlimited. Even the deputy, Jeff, might have taken it. Or Mrs Spotswood or Mr Bundy.

  “You may be right,” I conceded. “We’ll know as soon as someone approaches one of us with an offer to sell it.”

  “If he ever does approach us,” Dan Harvey said darkly.

  “But you don’t think your father would buy the will and destroy it to keep you and your sister from the estate, do you?”

  “I don’t know.” He laid down the shotgun. “But I have a darn good suspicion that he would.”

  “But why?”

  “Dad likes to wear the pants in the family, and he couldn’t if Sis and I had the dough.”

  I walked over to the french window opening on to the veranda and pondered his last remark. I wondered if his father really would go that far to keep his children from inheriting the money. Dan Harvey evidently thought so, but I was extremely dubious. Relatives were notoriously harsh in their opinions of one another. Take George Coffin’s contemptuous references to his son’s athletic prowess, with their implications of a lack of gray matter. I was willing to grant Burton some intelligence. Perhaps not much, but some. In the same way I was unwilling to agree with Dan Harvey’s estimation of his father.

  I turned to tell him this and discovered that he had again dropped off to sleep. His head was thrown back against the arm of the davenport, and his thin neck vibrated with each breath. His mouth was slightly open. He looked enviably comfortable.

  By this time the moon had risen, coating the lake and the dew-damp lawn with silver, and I half opened the glass door. It was really a lovely night. So soft was the wind that I could hear the murmur of ripples on the shore, the susurrus of a cricket near the front steps, the distant croaking of frogs. There was an odor of lilac in the cool air, and of rose. It seemed incredible to me that this enchanting gray and black nocturne could follow only a day after the rain, the wind, the hysteria, the terror of the weird night which saw my great-uncle’s head brutally severed from his body.

  With something like anger I closed the door and returned to the fire. What right had anyone, even an insane person, to take another’s life? What had poor Uncle Tobias done to deserve such an unnatural end? Yet he had, I reflected, apparently been aware that his life had run its course. His will was evidence of that, and the insurance. I sat down on the davenport opposite Dan Harvey and tried to think.

  I went over the murder again in my mind. It seemed to me no normal person would murder a man by chopping off his head. That was the kind of a thing a Jack the Ripper or a similar fiend would do. And then there was the difficulty of concealing the head. In the first place no murderer would want the head, at least not for any reason that I could possibly conceive, and in the second place the necessity of disposing of the head would add immeasurably to the risk.

  This left Mr Glunt, the madman, in possession of the field.

  But what would Mr Glunt want with the new will? I could see how he might treasure the head, since he had already begun the collection with his wife and children, but I couldn’t believe he was also making a similar hobby of final testaments. No, there was only one way out of that. Someone had come upon the corpse after Mr Glunt had left and before Mrs Spotswood had screamed, and had taken the will. Naturally this person, to avoid suspicion of theft, had returned to bed without giving the alarm.

  This was fine, I thought, but it still didn’t tell me who had the will (doubtless it had already been destroyed) or who had struck me an obviously murderous blow on the head in the upstairs library. Nor was there in this line of reasoning any motive for the search or for the blow either. Then as a final complication there was the window in the pantry. Despite Dr Harvey I believed that Mrs Bundy had, as she said, locked it. Who had opened it and why?

  For an instant I thought I had the answer to the window. It occurred to me that the person who had stolen the will might have gone out through the window to hide the will outside. But on second thought I decided this surmise was absurd. There was no reason for taking the will out of the house: it could be hidden or destroyed quite easily indoors.

  By this time my brain was terribly confused by these unanswered questions, and I determined to give myself a recess in the form of a tour of the house. Everything was utterly quiet, even the fire having died to a bed of rose-colored coals, but I wanted to make certain that none of the doors and windows had been opened since Bronson had made his final inspection. Cautiously picking up the shotgun, I left the fire and walked to the staircase, then halted. Of course there could be nobody in the house, but perhaps it was just as well to take precautions. It would be easy for a prowler to dispose of one person but difficult for him to surprise two. I went back and woke up Dan Harvey.

  “I’m going to take a tour of the house,” I said after he rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Want to come along?”

  “Sure.” He grasped his gun firmly and got to his feet. “Did you hear something?”

  “No. I just thought it would be a good idea to see if everything’s all right.”

  His mouth drooped in disappointment. “I’d like to get a shot at that old madman.” He pretended he was wiping out a battalion of madmen coming down the stairs. “Pop-pop-pop-pop. That’s the way I’d give it to him.” I saw he was younger than I had thought.

  We went up the stairs and along the hall. A single bulb was burning in the corner where I had sat and inexcusably fallen asleep last night, and our advancing bodies threw grotesque shadows on the wall. Our feet fell noiselessly on the thick carpet.

  “Spooky, isn’t it?” whispered Dan Harvey.

  We had rounded the corner and were starting down the hall toward the back stairs when I laid a hand on his arm. “What’s that?”

  We halted abruptly, and he said, “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Wait.”

  It was a breathing noise, but unlike any I had ever heard before. It was sort of an agonized gasping, as though the throat had become clogged in a particularly painful manner. It was the hoarse breathing of someone fighting for air and for life. It made my lungs throb in sympathetic pain to hear each gasp. It was horrible.

  “Gosh!” Dan Harvey’s face was yellow pale. “It’s in Burton’s room.”

  I tried the door and found that it was locked. It resisted my efforts to shake the catch free.

  “Here,” said Dan Harvey, holding out his shotgun. “Let me shoot the lock out like they do in the gangster movies.”

  “No. You’ll scare everybody in the house to death. Let’s hit it with our shoulders together. That ought to get it.”

  We hit the door toge
ther, and it flew open with a bang. I groped along the wall and finally found the light switch. When my eyes adjusted themselves to the glare I saw Burton Coffin stretched out on his bed, his hands and feet bound with brown cord, his mouth covered with a gag of blue cloth, a thick smear of blood on the side of his head. There was blood all over his pillow. His eyes were agonized.

  With fingers that seemed all thumbs I unfastened the gag, which I found to have been improvised from a blue shirt. At the same time I told Dan Harvey to bring me a wet towel from the bathroom. Then I undid the cord, and when Dan returned with the towel I washed the blood from Burton’s head. I found he had a nasty cut over the left temple. He was still breathing heavily.

  “Don’t talk until you feel all right,” I warned him.

  He nodded and lay back on the pillow. I could see that he was not badly hurt, but at the same time he had suffered a violent nervous shock.

  The commotion we had caused in breaking down the door had evidently wakened nearly everyone else in the house. George Coffin and his wife arrived first, and on their heels were Dr and Mrs Harvey. Mrs Coffin uttered a cry at the sight of her son’s towel-wrapped head and threw herself down beside the bed.

  “What have they done to you, Burton?” she wailed.

  “I’m all right, Mother,” he said. “I’m all right.” He sat up in the bed and blinked at us.

  “I think you’d better look at his head, Dr Harvey,” I said. “He has some sort of a cut.” To reassure Mrs Coffin I added, “It’s not deep.”

  I saw Miss Leslie and Miss Harvey arrive at the door as the doctor bent over the wound. “It’s just a nasty scratch,” he said. “A little iodine’ll fix it.”

  George Coffin was still by the door. “How did it happen?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. Dan and I were taking an inspection trip over the house, and we heard a strange noise in here. We broke in and found Burton bound and gagged and with this cut on his temple.”

  Burton regarded me with interest. “The door was locked?”

 

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