The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head

by Jonathan Latimer

  Mr Bundy’s tone showed that he thought milk to be a minor consideration in forming an estimate of a herd of cows. “They give all we can use and then some,” he said.

  “Well, that’s pretty good for seven cows.” The colonel’s voice had a note of sarcasm. “But how much milk?”

  “The best is Lady Cleo here. She produced fourteen thousand pounds of milk last year.”

  “That’s not bad.” The colonel glanced admiringly at the silver-dun back of Lady Cleo. “What was the percentage of butterfat?”

  “Better than five percent. The whole herd averaged better than five percent.”

  “Whew!” The colonel moved over to take a closer look at Lady Cleo. “That’s remarkable.”

  “Mr Coffin was always very careful about his sires,” said Mr Bundy, following the colonel.

  “A wonderful cow,” said the colonel. “A wonderful cow. Is she the one your boy is accustomed to ride?”

  “Yes sir. He’s been around her ever since she was a calf.”

  “Remarkable.” The colonel bent over Lady Cleo and ran his hand along her back. A few loose hairs appeared. The colonel gathered them in his hand. “Do you mind if I keep these, Mr Bundy?”

  “Gosh, no.” Mr Bundy’s eyes were round. “I can get you a lot more if you want them.”

  “No. These will do very nicely, thank you.” The colonel took an envelope from an inside pocket and dropped the hairs in it. “Quite a trophy, don’t you think?” he asked me.

  “If you care for hair,” I said.

  “Oh, I do. Definitely.” He swung around on Mr Bundy. “What do you think of the Mount Hope Index?”

  “Mr Coffin thought it was excellent,” said Mr Bundy. “He thinks—I mean, thought—that its use would be a big factor in raising the quantity and quality of milk in this country.”

  “It is an interesting way of determining the inheritance of milk and butterfat production which a bull transmits to his daughters, if not entirely accurate,” said the colonel.

  He launched into an involved explanation as to why the index could not be perfectly accurate, throwing scientific terms by the score at the bewildered Mr Bundy.

  “Let’s go out and see how the hunt is coming along,” I whispered to Joan.

  As we went out the barn door into the night I heard the colonel saying, “As you know, Mr Bundy, there are nineteen pairs of chromosomes in cattle, and thus the possible number of combinations among chromosomes is almost five hundred and twenty-five thousand. But in addition there are genes in the chromosome, so our possible combinations rise to an …”

  His voiced faded into silence as we neared the lake. We looked to the right and saw the lights were only slightly closer to the house. The posse was moving slowly.

  “He’s a strange man,” commented Joan. “Why is he so interested in cows at a time like this?”

  “I don’t know. I’m almost inclined to believe he’s a trifle …”

  “So am I,” she said.

  We halted by the lake shore. The night was mild, and the wind from the south was soft and fragrant. The moving air caressed our hands and faces and rustled the leaves on the trees over our heads. On the lake, in a patch of still water, were reflected stars.

  “Please don’t feel too badly toward me because of George Coffin,” I said. “I wish now I hadn’t mentioned having seen him throw that food into the lake.”

  “It was the only thing you could do. It was your duty.”

  “I don’t care so much about duty.”

  “I’m glad of that. But if Mr Coffin killed your great-uncle, then he deserves to be caught.”

  “But I don’t think he did kill him.”

  “Then you think Burton …?”

  “I almost believe his story.”

  “You mean that your great-uncle was dead when he found him?”

  “Yes. A suicide.”

  She pondered over my words for a moment. “I hope, for his sake, you’re right.”

  “But don’t you believe Burton’s story?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do. But it seems such a horrible thing—to cut off even a dead person’s head.”

  “He did it for you, you know.”

  “I know.” Her voice quavered. “But I wish he hadn’t. It seems so brutal.”

  The wind carried to our ears a distant noise of shouting. The lights, flickering as they moved through the trees, were in a half circle again.

  “Joan,” I said, “do you care very much for Burton?”

  “I like him very much.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Even in the dark my voice trembled. “I ask because—because—well, darn it, because I’m interested in you,” I blurted out.

  Like a purple cloak of some soft material the night hung over the lake, wound itself about the trees. The wind uttered a faint sigh. A few dry leaves ran along the shore. Seconds passed, and I wished with increasing fervor I had not spoken. What a clumsy dolt I was! What a bumpkin! This was no way to speak to a girl of love: to speak of it as though it were an unpleasant confession. What would the Earl of Rochester think of me?

  Then she spoke, her voice strangely husky. “I do like Burton.” I could just make out her face in the darkness. It was like a cameo, heart shaped and cut out of pale ivory.

  I felt relief that she was not angry. But, like a man who is proceeding in a direction he knows is indiscreet but is unable, through some quirk of character, to change his course, I persisted. “And I?” I asked. “Have I any chance for consideration as a suitor?”

  She hesitated, then replied softly, “I have already considered you.” There was the faintest suggestion of humor in her tone.

  “And the result of your consideration?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit early for conclusions?”

  “It seems as though I had known you all my life instead of three days.”

  “When we do know each other better, perhaps …”

  “Perhaps what?” I said eagerly.

  “Perhaps”—I knew she must be smiling—”perhaps you won’t like me as well.” Suddenly she grasped my arm. “Who is that?”

  She drew me around so that I was facing the house. The change in her tone, from a mocking note to one of real terror, made my hair stand on end. I peered into the darkness. Someone was coming around the house from the forest side to the front steps. Reflected rays from the lights in the house dimly outlined the figure, which moved with a painful hesitancy, shoulders hunched and one leg half dragging, as though from some crippling wound.

  I cast a quick glance at the lights of the sheriff’s posse. They were still far down the lake. No help there. I started toward the house.

  Joan’s hand was still on my arm. “Wait,” she whispered. “I believe it’s Mrs Spotswood.”

  She was right. The figure came into the shaft of light cast across the lawn by the french windows in the living room, and I saw that it was Mrs Spotswood. “Walking,” I breathed. “Walking!”

  There was something incomparably sinister, almost evil, in her slow progress up the long stairs. She looked, with her bent body, her frail shoulders covered by a shawl, her weird limp, like the hags I had seen moving about late at night in London’s back streets. She finally climbed the last step and pulled an object toward her from the shadowed portion of the veranda. It was her wheel chair. She allowed herself to sink back in its embrace, then, moving quickly, she passed into the house.

  “Whew!” I exclaimed.

  Joan’s hand tightened on my arm. “Peter! Perhaps that’s how Bronson was killed.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Don’t you see?” Her voice was excited. “That’s the way the court could have been crossed. In the wheel chair. There wouldn’t have been any footmarks.”

  “Gosh!” I pressed her hand. “Maybe you’re right.” I tried to think what we should do. “We better find the colonel.”

  “I’ll look in the house,” she said
. “You see if he’s still in the barn.”

  We separated. Hurrying toward the barn, I endeavored to picture Mrs Spotswood as the murderer. Could she have killed Uncle Tobias? She might easily have a motive, I thought. She might want the money left her in the will. Or she might have hated Uncle Tobias. She had lived with him many years. Maybe she thought he should have married her. Or perhaps——

  “Peter! Peter! Peter!”

  My name, uttered in a voice vibrant with fright, resounded in my ears. It was Joan’s voice. I turned and raced back toward the front of the house.

  Joan was standing in the center of the lawn, slightly nearer the lake than the house. Between her and the house was a man. My heart stopped beating. It was the madman. I couldn’t see his face, but the manner in which he held his head tilted toward the sky was unmistakable. There was something round clutched in his arms, and he was advancing slowly upon Joan.

  I felt an impulse to shout for help, but my brain warned me a sudden noise might frighten the madman into an attack upon Joan. Besides, the sheriff’s posse, still beating the forest at the end of the lake, was beyond the range of a shout.

  I hurdled a rosebush and came to a stop by Joan’s side. “Oh, Peter,” she whispered in terror, “who is it?”

  The madman had halted now, and I could see his face. He was frowning, and his lips were moving. “You can’t take it,” he muttered. “You can’t.” His arms were wound about the round object.

  For an instant Joan’s hand rested in mine. Her touch bespoke her confidence in me. I felt a sensation of exultation. She really didn’t believe I was a coward. I squeezed her hand and stepped between her and the madman.

  “We’ve been looking for you, Mr Glunt,” I said in a conversational tone.

  The madman’s eyes, which had been raised toward the sky, suddenly bored into mine. There was a glow back of the pupils: they were like those of an animal at night. There was death in his eyes, inexorable and immediate.

  Chill terror seized me; my blood turned to water, my bones dissolved, my muscles lost their strength, my stomach seemed to be frozen. I felt a dreadful impulse to run at top speed from this crouching figure. Yet I was unable to move, held in my tracks as if under a hypnotic spell.

  For what must have been seconds, but what seemed like minutes, we stood facing each other. I struggled to master my fear. My mind was a tumult of conflicting thoughts and sensations. I could hear the wind in the trees, the murmur of water. I thought thankfully that Joan could not see the fright imprinted on my face. I was conscious of a heavy odor from a bed of tiger lilies. I noticed the night was colder.

  Then the madman moved a step in my direction, centering my attention upon him. There could be no doubt he intended to attack me. He had dropped, with his step, the object in his hands, and his arms hung at his sides. He was dressed as he had been the night of my arrival—in a shirt and trousers. His feet were bare and stained with mud; his arms and face were a network of cuts and scratches, sustained going through the underbrush. Under the shreds of his shirt I could see bulky muscles.

  He shambled forward another pace. I could hear Joan catch her breath. His eyes were still fixed on mine; he had assumed a half-crouching posture, like a wrestler; he was waiting for me to move.

  Suddenly a sense of inevitability struck me, as it must strike everyone confronted with death, and my confusion vanished. I was still afraid, but who save the very old or the very tired is not afraid in the presence of death? I made up my mind to throw myself upon him and hold him until Joan had time to escape to the house.

  He advanced another step. His lips were moving; he was saying, “Oh, my heads. My poor hurting heads.” His voice was high.

  Something stirred in my memory. The high, absurd voice made me recall what he had been chanting that night on the path, his face joyous.

  I spoke slowly, distinctly. “A tisket, a tasket,” I said, “a green and yellow basket. A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket.” I forced a grin on my face.

  What followed was as unreasonable as a nightmare. The expression of watchful concentration faded from the madman’s face. He straightened up abruptly. His expression became ecstatic.

  “A tisket, a tasket?” he said in an inquiring tone.

  “A green and yellow basket,” I replied.

  With a single bound he was by my side. He grasped my hand, swung my arm, started to skip across the lawn. I followed, also skipping. We chanted as we skipped, “A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket,” repeating this absurd verse again and again.

  As we made a circuit of the lawn I caught sight of Joan’s face, expressing wondering horror.

  I found I could direct our course by exerting pressure on the madman’s arm. His hand in mine was slick with sweat. I pulled him toward the front steps of the house. We moved in that direction, bounding through a bed of zinnias and along the path of half-buried stones, still chanting our verse. His grasp was like that of a small child, his face entranced, joyous. We leaped up the veranda steps, skipped through the front door of the house.

  It is not too much to say that our entrance created a prodigious sensation among the group of my relatives gathered in front of the living-room fire. They were actually struck stupid with wonder. Not one of them, even Dr Harvey, had sense enough to help me or to be frightened. Even the women weren’t frightened. They just stared at us, eyes wide at this ineffable occurrence.

  Still guided more by my subconscious mind than by an orderly process of reasoning, I led the madman past my relatives into the dining room, through the pantry, into the kitchen. I released his hand, pranced to the electric icebox and, chanting “A tisket, a tasket, nice food from the basket,” brought out milk, part of a roast leg of lamb, potatoes and half a pie. I placed these on the metal table, drew up a chair and said, “Eat.”

  He fell upon the food like a starved animal. He drank the milk noisily, in great gulps; shoved whole potatoes in his mouth; chewed on the leg. Occasionally he would raise his eyes to mine like a grateful animal.

  While I was watching him eat, still apprehensive, two men came in the pantry door. One of them was the sheriff. He looked frightened, and he halted in the doorway. The other was a thick-set, middle-aged man with level eyes and a firm jaw. “Well, Elmer,” he said, smiling at the madman, “you certainly led us a merry chase.”

  The madman giggled proudly, continued to eat.

  The thick-set man drew up a chair and seated himself beside the madman. He fastened a handcuff on his left wrist. “Go ahead and eat, Elmer,” he said. “Plenty of time.” He turned to me. “Thank you very much, Mr Coffin. You handled him just like a professional.”

  As I went into the living room, feeling now very frightened and sick, the radio spoke matter-of-factly:

  “Attention, all cars. Madman Glunt recaptured. Return to your posts. All cars, return to your posts.…”

  Chapter XX

  I WENT UPSTAIRS to wash. I wanted to get the sticky feel of the madman off my hands. In the hall by my door I met Joan. Her face was as pale as a gardenia.

  “Thanks for being so quick in summoning the sheriff and the captain of the asylum guards,” I said. “Another minute in that kitchen would have done for me.”

  “It wasn’t anything,” she said.

  “It saved me from a collapse. I was frightened enough as it was.”

  “I think you were marvelous.”

  “I was frightened.”

  “You were marvelous.”

  My heart began to beat faster at her insistence. The tone of her voice, too, was warm. I said, “You know, you never did answer the question I asked you by the lake.”

  “The question?”

  “The question as to whether I deserve consideration as a suitor.”

  Her smile was half mocking, half tender. “Only the brave deserve the fair.”

  My heart sank. She had once called me a coward. “And you don’t think I’m brave?” I suggested.

  She moved slowly past me to
ward the stairs. “I’m beginning to think,” she called over her shoulder, “that you’re the bravest man I ever met.”

  I watched her vanish down the stairs, a warm glow invading my veins. Could that mean she liked me? I went into my room and leaned on the bureau and peered into the mirror. Would my face attract a girl? I had never considered my appearance in this light before, and I was forced to confess, after a brief examination of my features, that Hollywood would never offer me a fabulous sum to appear in motion pictures. My skin was good, and my eyes were all right, but one of my eyebrows was arched more than the other, giving me an expression of waggishness, if not of insobriety. My jaw was fair, but my lips were crooked, and my nose was larger than it should have been. Definitely I was not handsome.

  On the other hand, I was not altogether unattractive. Several co-eds at college had signified their interest in me, and there was Susan Briggs, the associate professor of biology, who had held my hand all during a symphony concert. Maybe Joan Leslie was the sort of …

  “Peter!”

  Startled, I drew back convulsively from the mirror, knocking off the silver vase I had taken from the mantel above the fireplace in my great-uncle’s study.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Colonel Black from the doorway, “but I’d like to have you look at something.”

  “I’ll be glad to look at it,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “In my room.”

  The colonel vanished, and I bent over to pick up the vase. As I lifted it from the floor a roll of paper fell out. The roll was composed of three sheets of fine bond paper, held together by a metal clip. The first sheet began, “I, Tobias Coffin, being in sound mind and body, do …”

  Quickly I examined a paragraph on the second page. It began, “And to my nephew, Peter Nebuchadnezzar Coffin, I bequeath Graymere, my country estate at Crystal Lake, Michigan; including in said bequest all …”

  It was the missing will. The new will! And it had been in my room all the time. I rushed to the colonel with it. “Look,” I started to say as I reached his door, then halted in surprise.

  There were trousers, at least twenty-five pairs, of all description strewn about the floor of his room. There were gray, brown, black, blue, green trousers. There were tweed trousers, cotton trousers, linen trousers, dress-suit trousers. The colonel stood ankle deep in trousers, and on his table, under a bright lamp, were a pair of Oxford-gray trousers. He was examining them through a magnifying glass.