George Coffin’s face was irresolute for nearly a minute. Then he said, “I suppose I’d better answer the questions. It’s either that or go to jail, isn’t it, Sheriff?”
The sheriff replied, “One or t’other.” He appeared perplexed, as though new ideas were occurring to him.
George Coffin patted his sister’s arm. “You always had the better sense, Mary.” He regarded the sheriff in a friendlier manner. “Where should we go?”
“Perhaps the library?” suggested the colonel.
Dr Harvey’s voice was harsh. “You don’t have to go, George. You can wait until I get a lawyer, don’t forget that.”
“Yes, George,” concurred Mrs Coffin. “Let us get Mr Fitzgerald for you.” She stared angrily at the sheriff. “He’ll make a monkey out of this rustic bumpkin.”
A glint of humorous despair came into George Coffin’s eyes. “I can’t say you are helping me much, Grace,” he said. “I’ll call Fitzgerald if I think I need him, and in the meantime I do not want to arouse the sheriff.”
“Very well.” Mrs Coffin drew herself up proudly. “If you prefer me to allow this yokel——”
“I prefer you to be silent, my dear.” George Coffin bowed to Colonel Black. “Shall we go to the library?”
The colonel bowed to him. “After you.” They started toward the library door.
“Do you want me to come?” I asked.
“You better,” said the sheriff hastily. “You’re our chief witness.”
I could feel the surprised eyes of the others on my back as I followed the sheriff through the door. George Coffin had already seated himself in a straight-backed chair, and the colonel was leaning over the bright green surface of the billiard table, his elbows on the heavy cloth. My cousin gave me an interrogatory glance, but I avoided his eyes. I was wishing heartily, as, indeed, I had been for the past ten minutes, that I had not mentioned George’s midnight excursion to the colonel. The enormity of the thing I was doing—bringing an accusation against a member of my own family—was heavy on my conscience. I felt like Benedict Arnold, to whom, by the way, I am related.
George Coffin lit a cigarette with uncertain hands, but when he spoke his voice was firm. “All right, Sheriff; let’s hear those questions.”
The colonel shook his head as the sheriff turned to him. “You open the show, Sheriff.”
“Well, this is what we want to ask you, Mr Coffin,” said the sheriff with an air of embarrassment. “We want to know what you mean by taking food out of the kitchen in the middle of the night and throwing it in the lake, why you were sneaking about with your face half covered with mud and why you frightened your wife last night.”
George Coffin’s face remained immobile, but I thought I detected a trace of sudden terror in his eyes. It was gone immediately, however, if, indeed, it had been there at all.
“Someone must have misinformed you, Sheriff,” he said calmly. “I spent last night in bed, sleeping peacefully except for the brief interruption provided by my wife’s screams.”
“There’s no use trying to deny it, Mr Coffin,” said the sheriff. “You were seen in the kitchen and out by the lake. You might as well tell us all about it.”
“Your witness, Sheriff, is either mistaken or a liar.”
Then the sheriff took me by surprise. He swung around in my direction and asked, “What do you say to that, Mr Coffin?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at George, “but I saw you throw a chicken and other comestibles into the lake last night and then return to the house.” His eyes dropped away from mine. “Moreover, your face was smeared with mud.”
There was a long pause before George replied to my accusation. A clock, hung on the wall, seemed to tick a thousand times before he broke the silence.
“You must be mistaken, Peter.” His voice was soft. “I didn’t leave my bed all night except to go to my wife. You must have seen someone else.”
“Is that possible, Peter?” asked the colonel.
“I don’t think so. I’m positive it was George Coffin.”
George shrugged his shoulders. “It’s my word against his.” He peered up at the sheriff. “What in the world would I be doing out there anyway? Throwing food to the fish? Is there any sense in that?”
“I don’t see none,” admitted the sheriff.
“Well, what does my cousin think I was doing there?”
“Only one answer is apparent to me,” I said. “You wished to have us believe that the madman had returned to Graymere on the night Bronson was murdered.”
Colonel Black nodded approvingly. “That’s good reasoning, Peter. My congratulations.”
This surprised me, too, as he had previously commended me on this bit of deduction.
“But why would I want to make you think the madman had returned?” demanded George Coffin.
“That’s what we want to know,” said the sheriff ominously.
George Coffin looked at the sheriff, then at Colonel Black. “There’s no use going into the realm of fancy. All I can do is to repeat that I spent the night in my bed.”
“What do you say, Colonel?” asked Sheriff Wilson.
The colonel’s mouth was grim. “I say, lock him up.”
I don’t know which of the three of us was the more astonished. The sheriff had evidently been prepared to let him go with a warning that he was not entirely free of suspicion, and I didn’t see that we had any case against George anyway. It is not a crime to break into your own kitchen, nor is it one to toss various edibles into water. What George had been thinking I do not know, but I could see he was badly shaken by the colonel’s words.
“What charge?” asked the sheriff, obviously bewildered. “Not the murder charge?”
“Yes, the murder charge,” said Colonel Black. “And you’d better put the handcuffs on him.”
George Coffin’s face was gray. “But this is inhuman.” He seemed to shrink in his chair. “You haven’t anything against me except the word of Peter. You surely can’t——”
“Put the cuffs on him, Sheriff,” said the colonel harshly.
The sheriff said, “I’ll have to get ’em. They’re in my car.”
“We’ll watch him while you go,” said the colonel.
During the absence of the sheriff George Coffin sat in silence. The only sound was his breathing, loud and quick, as though he were having difficulty drawing air into his lungs. The colonel took a cue from the rack and nonchalantly practiced caroms on the billiard table. I pretended to be interested in one of the bookcases, but each agonized breath of my cousin pulled at my heart, made my lungs throb. I felt as upset as if I had been accused of the murders.
Presently we heard the sheriff’s returning footsteps. He reached the door, had it half open when we heard Mrs Coffin ask, “What are you going to do, Sheriff?”
The sheriff clanked the handcuffs together. “We’re going to lock your husband up, ma’am.”
Mrs Coffin screamed, and there arose a tumult of voices, some endeavoring to comfort her, others hurling angry questions at the sheriff. He opened the door wider and backed toward us, away from the living room.
Burton Coffin was in front of the others, and in all that confusion the most startling thing to me was the emotion betrayed on his face. His lips quivered, his eyes fluttered, his whole body trembled with an overwhelming perturbation. He seemed utterly beside himself with horror.
“You can’t arrest him!” he cried. “You can’t arrest him! You mustn’t!” His hands clutched at the sheriff.
There was no noise now in the living room. Burton Coffin’s voice had silenced everyone, had created an involuntary tableau of all the spectators. I noticed Dr Harvey’s awestruck face and, slightly in back of him, Joan, her skin like the petal of a gardenia, her gray eyes luminous with sympathy.
“You can’t arrest him,” repeated Burton Coffin loudly.
The sheriff had backed all the way into the library, evading Burton’s hands. “Why can’t we?” he demanded,
finally coming to a halt.
His cue held in position for a one-cushion carom, his face politely interested, Colonel Black paused to watch the scene at the door.
Burton awkwardly pushed himself into the room and stood swaying in front of the sheriff. “You can’t arrest him,” he said, “because I cut off Uncle Tobias’ head.”
Completely startled, the sheriff took two quick steps backward. Mrs Coffin rushed into the room and seized her son’s arm. “Burton, you can’t …” Her voice fell away to silence. Colonel Black regretfully laid down his cue and asked:
“You mean you murdered Tobias Coffin, Burton?”
“I cut off his head, but he was dead already.” He looked across at his father’s dead-white face and repeated, “But he was dead already. Dead by his own hand.” He drew a gasping, sobbing breath.
His composure regained, the sheriff demanded, “You expect us to believe you cut off his head without killing him?” He added fiercely, “You better get a better story than that.”
Colonel Black came around the end of the billiard table. “But Bronson,” he said. “Did you kill him?”
Burton’s eyes sent another message to his father. I was unable to interpret it, but I thought I detected a note of assurance in it, a sort of a pledge. I had no idea what it meant.
“I don’t know,” he replied to the colonel’s question. “But I must have.”
“You don’t know?”
“Yes. Yes. I do know.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “I killed him.…”
Chapter XVIII
THE DEPUTY named Jeff and two others of the posse, which was still beating the woods for Mr Glunt, were summoned from the kitchen to take charge of George Coffin. He was removed to the pantry, the handcuffs fastened to his wrists.
“Don’t let nobody talk with him,” ordered the sheriff, closing the door between the library and the living room.
Burton Coffin, also handcuffed, was seated in the straight-backed chair his father had vacated. Some of the color had returned to his tan face, but he betrayed his nervousness by continually moistening his lips with his tongue. His eyes were half closed, as though the recent emotional strain had exhausted him.
“Now,” said Colonel Black, fingering the red billiard ball, “will you tell us your story, or would you rather wait until we take you and your father to the county jail?”
“There’s no reason to take my father.” The whites of Burton’s eyes showed. “He doesn’t know anything about this. I’m the only one responsible.”
“Then you want to tell us about it now?”
“I guess so.” Burton moistened his lips and spoke in a low sullen voice. “I’ll be glad to get it off my chest.”
His story, told haltingly and with the help of questions from the colonel, seemed utterly incredible to me. I listened with growing amazement as the first part of it was related.
Burton had been awakened, he said, during the night of Uncle Tobias’ murder by some sort of a noise. He didn’t know what the noise was, but it had, in some mysterious subconscious manner, alarmed him. He had put on his bathrobe, gone out into the hall and had caught sight of the light coming from a crack in Uncle Tobias’ door. Filled with wonder that Uncle Tobias should be up so late (it was nearly three o’clock) and desirous of learning whether he, too, had heard the noise, Burton had gone down and tapped on the door. There was no answer, and after half a minute he had tapped again. Still no answer. He had pushed the door open.
For a moment, he told us—his words coming faster now and his voice louder—he had had difficulty in keeping from yelling at the top of his lungs. Uncle Tobias lay dead across his desk, blood oozing from a bullet hole back of his right ear, a pistol grasped in his right hand. A suicide!
“A pistol?” exclaimed the sheriff, his voice rising. “A pistol, you say?”
“Let him continue,” said Colonel Black.
Burton had rushed to the desk, he related, and confirmed his impression that Uncle Tobias was dead. His eyes, as he bent over the body, had caught sight of a note on the desk. It was under a bottle bearing a white label marked chloroform.
The colonel dropped the red billiard ball and said, “Damn!” Then he said, “Please go on.”
The note had said, as well as he could remember it, that Uncle Tobias was tired with life and old age, that he foresaw nothing but a gradual diminution of all his faculties, that he feared his gastric ulcers might turn to cancer and that he was going to end his life at this gathering of the Coffin clan with an overdose of chloroform. At the bottom of this note, Burton said, was a scribbled line which he remembered exactly:
“Chloroform makes me sick, will use gun instead.”
After reading the note he had realized, Burton continued, that he must take some measures to prevent Uncle Tobias’ death from being regarded as suicide.
“Why?” demanded the sheriff.
“The insurance,” said Burton with an air of surprise. “Didn’t you know that the policy became invalid in case of suicide?”
Colonel Black was frowning. “But what did you care about the insurance? None of it goes to you.”
“Miss Leslie,” said Burton Coffin.
Suddenly the explanation of Burton’s strange remarks about me to Joan, provided Burton’s story was true, came to me. He had said he was tired of doing my “dirty work” for me. He had meant by that the removal of the suicide evidence from Uncle Tobias’ room, an act which had placed him in considerable jeopardy and which would, if successful, bring me one hundred thousand dollars. He had naturally felt it unfair that I, whom he did not like, should benefit from an act meant to help Miss Leslie.
“I don’t make nothing of this,” the sheriff was saying, “but go on.”
He had first thought of removing the pistol, the note and the chloroform to make it appear that Uncle Tobias had been shot by someone, Burton proceeded, but he had abandoned this idea when he saw the powder burns on the side of Uncle Tobias’ head. He knew the burns would make a smart detective think of suicide and in all probability cause the insurance company to hold up payment on the policy.
Then he had remembered the escaped madman and his penchant for chopping off people’s heads, he said, and a plan, perfect in all details, had formed in his mind. He had hurried downstairs to the kitchen, taken the cook’s meat cleaver, returned to the upstairs library and decapitated Uncle Tobias with it. Then he had made a bundle of the pistol, chloroform, rag and note, wrapped the head in a newspaper, thrust the cleaver under the silk tie cord of his dressing gown and returned to the pantry. The problem was to discover a good hiding place for these articles. He had been unable to think of a safe place in the house; the lake, too, seemed dangerous since the bottom is visible for hundreds of feet out on clear days; thus the only remaining choice was somewhere outside.
He had thought first of the woods, but when he had opened the pantry window and had crossed the lawn on his bare feet the strange, forbidding aspect of the trees, lighted grotesquely and fitfully by occasional flashes of lightning and filled with the mournful noise of the wind, had terrified him. A conviction had assailed him that the real madman was lurking in the woods, waiting for him and his burden. In a blind fright he had wandered out past the cow barn and into the small pasture. The earth, drenched by the heavy rain, had been soft at the foot of the big oak tree, and he had been able there to dig a deep hole with his cleaver. Into this hole he had placed the head, the pistol, the cleaver and the other things and had covered them with the loose earth. Then he had raced back to the house and had gone to bed.
The sheriff was shaking his head in reluctant admiration. “Some story,” he said. “How much do you believe, Colonel?”
“I’d like to believe it all,” replied Colonel Black. “It’d save the insurance company I represent a couple of hundred thousand dollars.”
“Could I ask Burton a question?” I inquired of the colonel.
“Go ahead.”
“Burton, did you know that the insura
nce money, under the terms of Uncle Tobias’ new will, was given to Miss Leslie and myself to be used for scholarships, not for ourselves?”
“No!” He stared at me with an expression which changed from incredulity to despair. His chin sank down on his chest, his eyelids dropped over his eyes. His voice was hardly above a whisper. “No, I didn’t know that. I thought a share was to go to Miss Leslie.”
“Yeah,” objected the sheriff, “but there ain’t a new will. As far as I can see, you two get the money to do with as you please.”
“My share of the money will be used as Uncle Tobias desired,” I said, “and I believe Miss Leslie will do the same.”
The colonel was smiling at me. “You seem to forget one thing. There won’t be any money for either you or Miss Leslie if Burton is telling the truth.”
“Well, it is the truth,” said Burton sullenly.
“Perhaps so,” agreed the colonel. “But now tell us how you killed Bronson and why.”
“I didn’t …” began Burton vehemently. Then he hesitated, said, “I killed him because he knew I had cut off Uncle Tobias’ head. I didn’t want him to tell you about it.”
“How did you know he knew?”
“He told Father that what he was going to tell you would affect me very materially. He wouldn’t tell Father any more, and when Father asked me what it was all about I lied and said I didn’t know. That’s why I killed him.”
“Good,” said Colonel Black. “Now tell us how you killed him.”
“I cut off his head with the cleaver.”
“No. I mean how did you go about it? How did you get from this house to the servants’ house without making tracks on the court?”
“I just walked over there. You must have overlooked my tracks.”
“You’d better think of a better story than that. Even the sheriff will admit we couldn’t have overlooked your tracks.”
“All right,” said Burton savagely. “I swam over then.”
“You couldn’t have done that,” I objected. “Not in the time you were supposed to be down in the cellar.” I spoke to the sheriff. “It would take twenty minutes to go down to the lake, take off your clothes, swim around to the servants’ house, murder someone, hide the head, swim back, put on your clothes again and come back to the house.”
The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head Page 20
