The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head

by Jonathan Latimer

  We hurried up the stairs and started the search in my room. We found nothing of interest there nor in the colonel’s room nor in either the study or Uncle Tobias’ bedroom. While we were in the study Miss Harvey asked me if I knew what the colonel suspected.

  “I don’t think he suspects anything,” I replied. “He’s just trying to check up on everyone who might not have had an—I think this is the correct word—alibi at the time Bronson was killed.” I bent down and looked under the desk. There was nothing there. “You and your brother have alibis because you were together after dinner playing billiards. I have one because I was either with Mrs Bundy or the colonel the entire time.”

  Her pert face was awed. “Gee, detectives are smart, aren’t they?”

  I admitted I should be inclined to answer her remark in the affirmative.

  Next were the stairs to Mrs Spotswood’s third-floor rooms. I felt somewhat hesitant about intruding, and I suggested that Miss Harvey go up under the pretense that she was inquiring after Mrs Spotswood’s health. I suggested that she could in this way ascertain whether or not anyone had been in Mrs Spotswood’s room after dinner and, if they had, whether they had left any wet clothes with her for the laundry, and so spare Mrs Spotswood and Mrs Bundy needless alarm.

  I waited in the hall until Miss Harvey came down the stairs. In response to my unspoken question she shook her head.

  “Nobody except Mrs Bundy has been in her room since dinner,” she informed me.

  The remainder of the search was equally fruitless. We went through each room with the utmost care, but there weren’t any muddy shoes. Both of us were quite disappointed. We went downstairs and discovered that Colonel Black, Karl and Mr Bundy had returned from the servants’ house. The colonel glanced at me, and I said, “No luck at all.”

  Dr Harvey showed his sharp teeth in a grin. “I should’ve thought you were intelligent enough to know that before you started searching.”

  Colonel Black took a position close to the fire. “This is a very strange crime—a very strange crime,” he declared, his voice sounding like one of my fellow professors giving a lecture on the ablative absolute. “As I see it there are three possibilities: that the madman killed Bronson; that Karl Norberg or Mr Bundy killed him; or that someone from this house killed him.”

  He paused to allow our minds to grasp this.

  “Chances are the madman committed this second crime as well as the first, but the fact that Bronson was killed almost at the moment he was going to present me with information connected with the first crime is worthy of considerable speculation.” The colonel held the palms of his hands to the fire. “Bronson was killed less than ten minutes before Karl found his body. That means, if someone from this house killed him, that the murderer must have gone over to the servants’ house and come back here in the short interval between the end of dinner and the time we all met to have a glass of brandy.”

  There was a general silence during another of his pauses.

  “Now between this house and the servants’ house is a large court, the surface of which is clay. It is impossible, except by a long walk through the woods, to get from this house to the servants’ house without walking across this court. That’s why I wanted to make sure there were no muddy shoes in the house.”

  “I get the idea now,” said Dr Harvey with something like admiration in his voice. “You figured that if there were no muddy shoes it would clear everyone in the house.”

  “In a way, yes,” agreed the colonel. “But of course there is a possibility that the shoes had been cleaned. However, I did postulate one thing. I assumed that, in the limited time offered, no one would have been able to reach the servants’ house from here without crossing the court. Muddy shoes would have proved that someone did cross, but no muddy shoes does not prove someone didn’t.”

  “But then, not finding any muddy shoes,” said Dr Harvey, “it appears that you are out of luck.”

  “No,” said the colonel solemnly. “There is an infallible way of determining whether or not someone did cross the court between the two houses.”

  “And what is that?” asked Mrs Coffin.

  “First I want to know who has crossed that court since it began to rain this afternoon.”

  “I did,” said Karl, his face embarrassed. “I crossed it to come over here to tell you about Bronson.”

  “Yes, I know about you and Mr Bundy, since you crossed with me. But did anyone else?”

  There was no reply.

  “Good.” The colonel’s face brightened. “Then, if there are any tracks on the court beside those of Bronson, Karl, Mr Bundy and myself, they will be the tracks of the murderer.”

  “Yes.” Dr Harvey nodded. “That sounds reasonable. But how are you going to keep people off the court until morning? The sheriff, for instance, and his men will have to cross it to get to the house.”

  “Boards,” said the colonel. “Boards.” He swung around toward Karl. “Any boards around the house?”

  “Sure. There’s a pile of one-by-eights under the kitchen porch.”

  “But you can’t board up the entire court,” I objected. “It would take enough boards to build a house.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Colonel Black’s eyes were amused. “I’m not supplying work for Roosevelt’s unemployed. I simply intend to board over paths from the point where the driveway enters the court to this house, and from here to the servants’ house. Everybody’ll be made to walk on those paths.”

  “Somebody will have to warn the sheriff before he drives up,” I said. “He and his men will make a mess of that court if they’re allowed to walk over it.”

  “Mr Bundy will look out for that. Karl, do you think you and Mr Bundy can lay a path of boards to the driveway? I’d like to have it ready for the sheriff.”

  Karl glanced at me, and I nodded. “Yes sir,” he said. He and Mr Bundy departed in the direction of the kitchen.

  Colonel Black paced slowly across the room, came back halfway and halted. “You won’t mind if I ask a few questions?” he inquired. “I’d like to be able to straighten things up as much as I can.”

  “It seems to me you’re doing as much as you can to involve us in these horrid crimes,” stated Mrs Coffin, “and I see no reason why we should oblige you.”

  “Perhaps not, madam,” said the colonel politely. “But since it is the truth I’m after, I believe everyone who has no connection with the murders should be eager to help me.”

  To my surprise George Coffin took the colonel’s part against his wife. Perhaps it was only habit which led him to disagree with his spouse or perhaps it was because he was feeling better. At least his face looked better. There was color in it now, and his eyes, behind the horn-rimmed spectacles, were steady.

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t answer any question the colonel has to ask,” he said. “Perhaps he will be able to clear us from suspicion, and certainly we will be no worse off than we were before.”

  Dr Harvey jerked his head up and down in vigorous agreement. “Ask away, Colonel.”

  The colonel, it appeared at once, was interested in what we all had done in the interval between dinner and brandy in the living room.

  “I can eliminate the professor, since he was with me all but a moment or two of the time, and I can, I believe, eliminate the two young Harveys,” he said. “And that is all.”

  “I think you can eliminate Mrs Spotswood and Mrs Bundy,” I suggested. “They have been together ever since Mrs Bundy went upstairs.”

  “That’s what they told me,” supplemented Miss Harvey.

  “All right.” The colonel smiled at Miss Harvey. “We’ll cross them off the list. Anybody else?”

  Considerable questioning showed that everyone else might have had time to cross over from the house and kill Bronson.

  Either George Coffin or his son, because they missed each other in the cellar, might have made the murderous trip. Mrs Coffin, upstairs by herself, might have done it, and so might Mi
ss Leslie and Dr Harvey.

  “How about Ma?” asked Dan Harvey, entering wholeheartedly into the spirit of the affair. “She could have done it too, couldn’t she?”

  Colonel Black solemnly wrote Mrs Harvey’s name on his list.

  I was suggesting Mr Bundy and Karl Norberg when the sheriff and two deputies entered from the pantry. Their faces were alarmed; all three carried shotguns. “What in thunder’s goin’ on up here?” demanded the sheriff.

  “I wish I knew,” I replied and introduced him to Colonel Black.

  “I heard you was over here,” said the sheriff, shaking hands vigorously with the colonel. “The coroner said you wanted some extra work done on the autopsy, though why, I can’t make out. It’s plain as day he died when his head was cut off.”

  “You don’t mind if I try to assist you, however, do you, Sheriff Wilson?” asked the colonel respectfully. “The insurance company I represent is heavily involved in this matter.”

  “Glad to have you. Glad to have you.” The sheriff looked at his deputies, one of whom was the gawky Jeff, the guard of two nights before. “All I want to do is to clear this business up and get the newspapers off my neck. I ain’t had time to turn around in the last two days, much less to tend to my seed business.” The second deputy, a heavy-set man with a grim face, nodded approvingly. The sheriff continued, “I want to get my hands on that Glunt as quick as I can.”

  “The colonel,” said Dr Harvey with a trace of sarcasm, “thinks the madman is innocent of these two murders.”

  “The heck he does!” The sheriff’s mouth popped open; he let his hat fall to the floor. “Why, man, that’s direct contrary to all common sense.” His wide-open eyes were fixed on the colonel.

  The colonel smiled at him, “I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve cleared the madman, Sheriff Wilson,” he said. “But certain facts make me suspect the case may not be as simple as you believe. Suppose we take a look at Bronson’s body, and while we’re over there I’ll tell you all I know. I think Karl has laid the wooden path by this time.”

  “But why a wooden path?” demanded the sheriff in a bewildered manner. “I got rubbers on.”

  “I’ll explain,” said the colonel, a touch of impatience in his voice.

  Chapter XIV

  THE SHERIFF stretched out on the davenport to the right of the fireplace and groaned luxuriously, saying, “I hope that Glunt don’t show up around here again tonight.”

  It was now almost two o’clock, and the storm had passed on to the south, leaving behind a soft wind which moaned and sighed about the house. The lake, subsiding quickly, was so quiet that only an occasional murmur of water reached us from the shore. The rest of the household had gone to bed, but I was too disturbed over the death of Bronson to sleep.

  “So you don’t believe in Colonel Black’s theory that the murders were committed by someone in the house?” I asked.

  “I personally don’t.” The sheriff laid his shotgun on the floor beside him. “It ain’t reasonable that a sane man would cut off a couple of heads like that. But as my deputy, Jeff, says, it don’t cost us nothing to let him go ahead on his line.”

  I shifted my chair so that the heat from the bed of glowing coals could reach my shoulders. “What’s the program for tomorrow?”

  “Well, we got the inquest in the afternoon. I have to be there, I guess. And at dawn we’re going to take a look at the court to see if we can find any footprints. And by that time Jeff and Fred will be back from Traverse City with a posse to search the woods. There’s no doubt but what Glunt’s got a hide-out right near here.”

  “You’ll certainly be busy enough.” I paused to wonder what we would find on the sticky surface of the court. Would there be imprinted the evidence of someone’s guilt, the solution to both crimes? Or would the surface be bare of information? I spoke to the sheriff. “What will you do if we find someone’s footprints leading from the house to the servants’ house and back again?”

  He had evidently been drowsing. “Huh?”

  I repeated the question.

  “Pick the fellow up on suspicion, I guess,” he replied.

  “But you do agree that it would be impossible for anyone to reach the servants’ house from here in, say, five minutes without crossing the court, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. The colonel’s right about that. It’d take half an hour to go by way of the woods, and just about as long if you swam around so’s to come up behind the servants’ house.” He sighed deeply. “There’s no doubt that if the murderer did come from this house he’d have to cross the court. The only trouble is that the murderer didn’t come from over here. He came from the state asylum’s ambulance, and I’m going to stick him right back in there.”

  “But you’ll help the colonel examine the court, won’t you?”

  “Oh sure. I don’t plan to stand in his way.”

  His tone implied that he was willing to put up with any nonsense on the part of the colonel, no matter how absurd.

  I inquired, “But what makes you so certain that it is Glunt?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You saw him on the path by the lake, didn’t you?”

  “I’d almost forgotten.” I saw with a shock that the sheriff had turned one surprised, dubious eye on me, and I continued hurriedly, “I suppose other people have seen him, haven’t they?”

  “You’re the only one.” His eye closed. “Seems sort of funny you’d forget seeing him.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said. “I simply didn’t know that the chase hinged on the fact that I saw him that night.”

  “Well, it does,” said the sheriff complacently. “And when Jeff and Fred return from Traverse with the posse we’re going to scour the area around this lake cleaner than a dishpan. We’ll get him this time, see if we don’t.”

  “Then you think he’s still around here?”

  Sheriff Wilson sounded irritated. “Well, he must be, dang it, or he wouldn’t have killed Bronson.”

  I remained silent after this outburst, and in a short interval I heard the sheriff’s breath assume a deeper quality than usual. While he slept I pondered over the latest developments in this terrible adventure. It seemed to me that the sheriff had developed a rather specious line of reasoning in regard to Bronson’s murder. The madman’s near here; he cuts off people’s heads; therefore he cut off Bronson’s head. But how do you know he’s near here? Why, dang it, he must be, or he wouldn’t have been able to kill Bronson.

  I decided this was an evident sophism.

  The air in the room had become cold, and I put another pine faggot on the fire. Little tongues of flame, like dancing elves, raced over the dry wood to a brisk sound of crackling. A bright yellow blaze, growing larger every second, sprang up in the center of the fire place, made moving shadows in the living room.

  Why was George Coffin so disturbed this evening? Something had certainly upset him. I went back to my chair and sat down, holding my hands toward the fire. Could it have been what Bronson had said to him? What could Bronson have said to him? Why hadn’t Bronson told me, as long as he spoke to George Coffin about it?

  Then the question that I had been fighting off, that I had been trying to keep unspoken, even in my own mind, submitted itself. Could George Coffin have murdered Bronson? I shuddered as I asked myself that, but I felt a certain relief in bringing it out in the open. All evening I had been tormented with this fear which I would not allow myself to admit. I was afraid that it must have been George, and I liked him so very much.

  But if Bronson was in terror of his life and George Coffin was the man he feared why would he speak to him? It didn’t seem possible, if Bronson knew George was a murderer, that he would tell him so. Yet whatever he had divulged had upset George. Another unreasonable thing was the murder itself, if it had been committed by George. He must have known that everyone had seen he was disturbed after talking to Bronson. Would he have dared, then, to kill Bronson? I didn’t think so.
He wouldn’t …

  What was that?

  I sat up on the edge of my chair, my hands gripping the arm rests. Had I heard a noise in the pantry? I held my breath until my lungs throbbed with pain. My heart, beating wildly, sent blood rushing through my head. I could hear the tinkle of glowing coals in the fireplace, the regular breathing of Sheriff Wilson, the sough of the wind outside, the irregular lapping of the lake.

  Then it came again: a faint padding sound, as though someone was crossing the pantry with bare feet. It was a ghostly, subdued sound, almost supernatural, and I felt my flesh crawl. I had a fleeting conviction that the noise was being made by some sort of an animal.

  Every inclination bade me sit quietly in my chair until the sounds stopped, but I forced myself to my feet. I knew the sheriff, if I shook him awake, would utter some noise likely to frighten the intruder, whether it was man or beast, and so I crept on toward the pantry alone. I was terribly frightened; I had difficulty breathing through a suddenly constricted throat, and I felt as though I was about to be sick to my stomach, but I was determined to get a glimpse of the thing in the pantry.

  I reached the pantry door without a sound and pushed it open noiselessly. A gust of cold wind beat against my face. The pantry window was open, and outside on the lawn I caught a glimpse of something white moving away from the house in the direction of the lake. It was gone in half a second, and I almost believed it had been a product of my imagination, already highly charged.

  I slipped through the window and dropped to the grass. Wind ruffled my hair, and water from a branch of an oak tree I had grasped to steady myself wet the back of my neck. I started for the lake, walking in an Indian crouch to keep my body as near the dark ground as possible. To the north a corner of the sky had cleared, and a few pale stars were visible. They looked unusually small. The grass was very wet, and I nearly fell several times. My feet made a low sloshing noise which I found impossible to stop, but I comforted myself by the thought that the wind, now blowing off the lake, would carry the sound back toward the house.