“Well, you know Bill.” Max shrugged and waved his hands, and Lieutenant Codfin actually laughed.
“One gets the message. Mr. Kelling, when Ashe was at the center, did he wear some kind of disguise?”
“He dressed like a bum and got himself so filthy nobody cared to get close enough for a good look,” Dolph sputtered. “Showed up tonight dressed to the nines, calling himself Hetherton Montague and thinking I wouldn’t recognize him because he’d washed his face.”
“What a strange thing to do,” said Lieutenant Codfin politely. “When you escorted him out of your house, Mr. Kelling, was either of your gardeners around, or Mr. Burr? I take it you’re a friend of the Kellings, Mr. Burr?”
“It would be more accurate to say the Kellings have been good friends to me,” Harry replied. “I’m a bona fide member of the SCRC. I’m sorry, but I was not near the door at the time. One of the neighbors had taken exception to having cars parked near his property, so Mrs. Kelling asked me to stay down by the end of the drive and make sure they parked up here instead of on the street.”
“Precisely where up here?”
“Back by the tennis courts,” said George. “I can show you if you want, but there’s nothing much left to see. Walter and I were back there most of the evening. We got a lot more cars than we’d figured on, and we had to keep opening up more places to put them. Then people who’d come early started wanting to leave, so we’d be helping them find their cars and steering them out the right way. We kept pretty busy.”
“I see, thank you. Mr. Kelling, after you’d gone out and shut the door as Mr. Loveday testifies, you didn’t bring Mr. Ashe out here to the toolhouse?”
“What kind of damn fool question is that? No, I did not. I merely walked out with him as far as the front terrace, told him I’d punch his face in if I ever laid eyes on him again either here or at the center and pointed out the way to Chestnut Hill Station.”
“Why did you do that? Didn’t Mr. Ashe have a car?”
“I never thought to ask. I assumed he didn’t because he’d come with some other people.”
“Were these people friends of yours?”
“No, but they’re all right,” said Dolph. “Their daughter’s engaged to Eugene Porter-Smith. Young fellow who boards with my cousin Brooks and works for my cousin Percy. Gene, clerked at the auction.”
“Can you add anything to that, Mr. Bittersohn?”
“Only that my wife chatted with them for a few minutes as she was showing them into the auction rooms and got the impression that Ashe simply had been making use of the Wilton-Rugges. When Dolph confronted Ashe at the door, Sarah thought she’d better get the Wilton-Rugges away and also find out how well they knew Ashe. Assuming what they told her is true, he’d shown up with somebody or other at their cocktail party, where Bill Jones met him. Bill Jones told me Ashe was identified to him as Wilbraham Winchell at the party, but evidently the Wilton-Rugges didn’t hear that. They claim they only knew the man as Hetherton Montague. He bumped into the husband a couple of times after that, and it was his suggestion that they meet for dinner and go on to the auction together tonight.”
“Why do you think he picked on the Wilton-Rugges?”
“Presumably because he knew their daughter’s engaged to Eugene Porter-Smith. Gene’s done some volunteer work for the SCRC, and as Dolph mentioned, he was also working here tonight. The auction hadn’t been announced at the time of the cocktail party, but I suppose Ashe went on speculation, so to speak. Scavengers like him are always looking around for an angle, you know.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bittersohn. Mr. Kelling, the station is a fair distance from here. Did you actually expect this man you call Ashe to walk that far?”
“Walked it myself often enough, why shouldn’t he? Exercise would have done him good.”
“It would have done him more good than staying here, obviously. What did you do after you’d shown him the way?”
“I went back into the house. The place was crawling with people and I had my duties as a host.”
“And Mr. Ashe went off quietly?”
“Of course not. He’s still here, isn’t he? I assumed he would because I’d told him to. I now assume the crafty swine sneaked back here to see if he could cadge a ride from somebody. He couldn’t find anybody leaving, saw the toolhouse door open—”
“Sorry, boss, but he couldn’t have,” said George. “My orders are to keep it locked, and I do.”
“Then he picked the lock. Had a lock picker taped to his leg, I suppose. That’s how they do, I’ve seen ‘em in the movies. Anyway, he came in here to hide out till somebody came, tripped over the pickax and stabbed himself. Hell of a way to go, but there it is. Plain as the nose on my face. Get him out of here, can’t you? I said I didn’t want him around, and I still don’t. I’m going back to the house.”
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Kelling,” Lieutenant Codfin protested. “This man is lying on his back. The pickax has penetrated his rib cage and pinned him to the floor. It’s not reasonable to assume he got into such a position by accident.”
“Seems reasonable enough to me. Well, you figure it out. My wife will be wondering where I’ve got to. Come along, Osmond. No sense in your standing around cluttering up the place. If you have any notion of keeping George and Walter up all night, Lieutenant, kindly bear in mind that they’re getting time and a half for overtime and it’s my pocket the money’s coming out of.”
“Yes, Mr. Kelling. Neither you nor Mr. Loveday was planning to leave this house tonight, I hope?” Codfin glanced over at the tremendous agglomeration of misguided architecture whose lights still showed through the trees. “I expect you could find room to put Mr. Loveday up?”
“A suite is always kept ready for me,” Loveday informed him with a deprecating little laugh. “At least I assume it still is. I haven’t had occasion to use it lately.”
“Nobody’s swiped your pink pajamas that I know of,” Dolph growled. “No, Lieutenant, I’m not going anywhere tonight except to bed. Max, you and Sarah had better stay too. She should have been asleep hours ago, in her condition.”
“As a matter of fact, she was. Don’t forget I still have to deliver those kids back to Boston.”
“The hell with that. We’ll send ’em home in taxis.”
“What kids are you talking about, Mr. Bittersohn?” asked Codfin.
“A group of young actors and actresses who donated their services this evening. I doubt if any of them left the house at any time. They were all in costume, mingling with the guests, passing food and champagne and so forth. I expect you’d like their names as a matter of routine, but they may not be able to help you much.”
“These young people are in no way connected with the Senior Citizens’ Recycling Center?”
“Not at all. They were recruited solely for this occasion by a part-time actor named Charles C. Charles who also works for my wife’s cousin, Brooks Kelling, and lives at 30 Tulip Street in Boston.”
“I see. Thank you. Sergeant Mufferty, why don’t you go back to the house with Mr. Kelling and Mr. Loveday, and see what you can get out of the actors? Now, Mr. Burr, I haven’t meant to neglect you, but you know how it is.”
“Oh yes, I know how it is. My name is Harold Eustis Burr. My address is the Come-All-Ye Community Church, 27 Amber Street, Boston.”
“You’re the minister there?”
“No, but they let me sleep in the basement as a professional courtesy.”
“I thought I recognized the name. I once had the honor of arresting you myself, Mr. Burr, back in the sixties when I was still on patrol duty. You were sitting at the intersection of Boylston and Hammond Streets, holding up a sign that read, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’”
“I expect I was,” said Burr. “I don’t recall the precise incident, but those were busy times.”
“I should have said Reverend Burr, shouldn’t I?”
“No you shouldn’t. Reverend is merely an adjective. You could say the Rev
erend Dr. Burr if you wanted to, but it’s been so long since I held a pulpit that the title sounds ridiculously pretentious. In jail they generally called me plain Harry and I’ve grown to prefer it.”
The lieutenant wasn’t quite ready for Harry. He cleared his throat. “I’m required to ask whether you’ve had any convictions other than for civil disobedience.”
“Yes, one for assault on a police officer who was roughing up a young girl for what I considered to be no valid reason. I took away his truncheon and did unto him that which he’d been doing unto her, in order to give him a clearer understanding of the Golden Rule. The judge was only lukewarm to my argument that I’d acted solely for the purpose of religious instruction and gave me sixty days.”
Harry shrugged. “But I mustn’t bore you with personal reminiscences. You want to know when I last saw Ted Ashe alive, I expect. It was yesterday at lunchtime, in the center. He’d made a point, as he often did, of standing next to me in the chow line and engaging me in conversation.”
“What about?”
“Usually small details concerning the members.”
“Did he ever ask you about their collecting methods?” Max broke in. “Which of them worked hit or miss and which had regular routes, that sort of thing?”
“I believe he did, now that you mention it. Many of us are quite serious about our collecting, you know, and some incline to be rather territorial. Ted might have been asking merely because he didn’t want to encroach on someone else’s hunting ground, though I admit it was this habit of his that made me think at first he might be an undercover agent. But you say he was a newspaperman named Wilbraham Winchell? I don’t suppose there could be two?”
“It doesn’t seem likely,” said Max. “Why? Do you know him?”
“He was younger then, of course, and he had a beard, but I think it must be the same man. He interviewed me once in jail.”
“Really?”
“Yes, we had a long talk. He seemed like such a pleasant fellow. Then he sent me a copy of the published article. I don’t know why he did that. It was a chastisement I didn’t think I needed just then, but maybe the Lord knew better.”
“What do you mean, a chastisement?” Max asked him.
“What Winchell had done was to twist and distort every single thing I’d said so that it came out sounding like hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement. Having turned me into a Fascist, he then accused me of being a Communist. At that time I’d been getting a fair amount of press coverage because of my intransigence on certain issues, so naturally some of the other publications picked up his article and did their worst with it. When I got out of jail, I found Wilbraham Winchell had effectively rendered me a zero. Affiliating with a minister who’s been tagged as a Commie, however unjustly, doesn’t do much for the credibility of an association, a church or even a private person.”
“So you had good reason to hate Wilbraham Winchell,” said Lieutenant Codfin.
“My dear sir, nobody, and least of all a practicing Christian, has good reason to hate anybody else. We may not care for what some of our fellows stand for, but that doesn’t give us a right to destroy them. No, Lieutenant, I did not drive a pickax through this poor man. Frankly I doubt whether I could if I wanted to. I’m an old man and the life I’ve led has not been particularly conducive to physical well-being. I have endurance but no great muscular strength.”
“You wouldn’t need a great deal,” said Codfin. “A tool that heavy would do much of the work for you.”
“Not that much,” George argued. “You’d have to know how to swing it. It’s not just the arms, you know. You’ve got to be able to get your back and legs into it. Harry gets a crick in his back every time he bends over.”
The gardener wasn’t afraid of the corpse any more. He was staring at that expensive suede jacket. “What gets me is there’s no blood showing. I mean, cripes, a blow like that, you’d think—”
“I expect the medical examiner will have an explanation,” said Codfin.
“I’ll bet I know what his explanation will be,” said Max.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Bittersohn, we’ll wait for the official report. By the way, I don’t believe I have your statement of where you were when the incident between Mr. Kelling and Mr. Ashe, as we may as well go on calling him, took place.”
“According to my wife, I was auctioning off a beaded footstool. She came looking for me after the fracas broke out.”
“She didn’t approach you in the auction room?”
“No, the bidding was going well and she didn’t want to interrupt, so she just went back and told them to put a lid on it. In case you have any ideas about my wife, I may add that she’s small, delicately built, and very pregnant. Physical violence isn’t her bag. She copes pretty well without it,” Max added with a grin. “As Loveday testified, she went upstairs right after that. She fell asleep in one of the bedrooms and didn’t even wake up when her aunt went in to kiss her good-bye. I finally woke her myself, after the auction was over. I suppose you’ll want her personal statement, but that’s the gist.”
“Thank you. Have you anything further to add?”
“Yes. So you won’t have to waste your time thinking Ashe’s death is an isolated incident, you should know that it may quite possibly be the latest chapter in a long story that Brooks Kelling and I presented to the Narcotics Division of the Boston Police yesterday afternoon, along with photographs and other corroborative evidence. You’d be well advised to get in touch with them as soon as possible.”
“Narcotics?” Lieutenant Codfin blinked. “I shall certainly do so. Er—you said you had an idea of how Ashe was killed.”
“Let’s say that if I were in charge here, I’d check those garden carts, especially that big one over there, for fresh dirt on the wheels, possible bloodstains in the box, and a noticeable lack of fingerprints on the handles. I don’t suppose you’ll find the bullet, but it wouldn’t hurt to look.”
“What bullet, Mr. Bittersohn?”
“The small-caliber one Ashe was most likely shot with shortly after Dolph Kelling kicked him out and before he was brought here to the toolhouse. That would explain the lack of blood George so rightly remarked on, and also the position of the body. Surely you don’t think anybody would meekly lie down on the floor and wait for somebody to drive a pickax through him, unless he was already either dead or damned close to it.”
Chapter
22
“BUT PEOPLE WOULD HAVE heard the shot,” Mary protested. There’d been a long, long night of waiting around and answering Lieutenant Codfin’s questions before any of them had got to bed. The enigma of keys to the toolhouse had been gone into with little result. Nobody could remember whether Great-uncle Frederick had had one or not, much less what might have happened to it. Dolph had his, but it turned out he’d changed his clothes for the auction and left his key ring lying on his dresser since he wouldn’t be needing to unlock anything that night. As far as he could tell, the keys were where he’d left them, but who could be expected to notice a detail like that?
As for the keyboard in the kitchen, Genevieve confessed that she’d been worried about leaving it where it was with a bunch of young strangers running in and out all evening, so she’d quietly and gently taken the board off the wall and set it in the pantry behind the cookie sheets. None of them had gone into the pantry because they’d had no call to, and they wouldn’t have seen it if they did. That appeared to narrow down the list of possible suspects, most of whom wished Genevieve had left the board alone.
The way matters stood now, Max, Jem, Egbert, and Eugene Porter-Smith were all in the clear. None of them had left the auction room for more than a few minutes from the time they went in until the last bang of the gavel. Every one of the young actors had enthusiastically alibied Mary, but nobody could be a hundred percent sure about how long Dolph had been away from the party after he’d ejected Ted Ashe.
Genevieve and Henrietta hadn’t had time for any shenanigans. Sarah
was technically a suspect since she’d admitted to having been alone upstairs for hours and could easily have borrowed Dolph’s key for herself or a confederate. Osmond Loveday was still iffy. He’d been popping in and out of the various rooms so often that neither Mary, Henrietta nor any of the servers could pinpoint his movements.
Then of course there were an indefinite number of other possible suspects since nobody could say how many of the patrons had been milling around outside during the crucial period, or even how long the crucial period had been. By the time Lieutenant Codfin left them to get what little sleep they could, though, he’d made it fairly clear that his primary suspects were Dolph Kelling and Harry Burr. Harry had gone back to the gardener’s cottage with George. Dolph was here at the table, eating a great deal and saying little.
“Surely people would have heard the shot,” Mary repeated.
“Maybe some did, but not as a shot,” Max replied, helping himself to another biscuit. The household had been so late pulling itself back together that breakfast had turned into brunch. “A small-caliber pistol doesn’t bang. It pops.”
“And champagne corks had been popping all evening,” Sarah finished for him so that he could get on with his biscuit.
“Why do you say a small pistol?” said Osmond Loveday. “It seems to me that if I were to embark on so picaresque an enterprise, I’d want the biggest pistol I could get.”
“You’d be borrowing trouble if you did,” Max told him. “Large-caliber handguns are awkward, heavy and conspicuous to carry. They make a lot of noise and a messy wound, and they’re harder to get rid of afterward.”
“If you’re right about the small-caliber pistol, they ought to find the bullet still in the body, shouldn’t they?” Sarah asked. “I wonder if the murderer really meant it to be thought that Ashe was killed by the pickax, or if he was just buying time to confuse the issue and give him a chance to get rid of the gun? Or if he hated Ashe so much that he went a little bit crazy? Ugh.”
The Recycled Citizen Page 19
