He smiled a tight knowing little smile. “Why don’t you go ask her? She’s very friendly. I’ve already told you she was his hostess.” He glanced quickly at the clock over the bar. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go unlock the street door.” He sighed. “It’s about time for the tourist gang to show up.”
It was 11:30 and the sign on the door had said 12:00. Did my nervous friend want to let the tourist herd in simply so that he might be interrupted? I decided to let it pass.
Instead of unlocking the outside door Alphonse Paquette had quickly scampered up the stairs to the hotel, doubtless to warn the heiress apparent, Mary Pilant, that the villainous and nosy Biegler was abroad. I was left alone in the big empty barroom, whereupon all the malty frustrated yearnings and boozy instincts implanted in me by generations of sturdy distillers and brewers and saloonkeepers by the name of Biegler swept suddenly over me; I found myself gliding behind the bar as though drawn by a magnet. “Hm … .” I said, and paused.
On the floor in the middle of the bar was a large dark blotch. That would be the spot where Barney had fallen. I carefully studied the bar at this point. Then I knelt and surveyed the situation from that position. “Hm … .” About six inches below the surface of the bar itself, near the bar service station and out of sight of anyone standing in front, I found a narrow wooden shelf about four feet long. I whistled softly and leaned closer. It was made of wood inferior to that of the bar itself and had been added later, crudely added, I saw, as though the job had been done by an amateur. And to what purpose? Right now it held a forlorn collection of assorted salt and pepper shakers and mustard jars. But it could also, I plainly saw, have held a small arsenal of firearms, yes, even a sawed-off shotgun or short rifle in a pinch. It could even have held a brace of pistols.
I turned my back on the bar, facing the bar mirror and bottle shelf. The mirror seemed intact. I craned over the rows of bottles, on my tiptoes. There was a neat small splintered hole near the base of the mirror, about the height—yes—of a man’s heart. If this had been caused by one of my man’s shots, then at least one of the bottles should have been broken. As I walked out from behind the bar I felt like Sherlock Holmes and longed for a curved bulldog pipe and one of those fore-and-aft-peaked deer-stalker’s caps. Yes, damn it, and a checkered tattersall vest. Someone was rattling at the locked street door. I could hear him swearing softly and I visualized him standing out there, sagging with thirst, eyes glazed and tongue parched and dangling. I longed to slip a pair of frilled elastic garters over my shirt sleeves and let him in and then scamper back behind the bar, palms down and elbows out. “What’s yores, pardner?” I would say as he advanced. I shook my head. “Down, Grandpa, down,” I thought; this was no time to be playing at saloonkeeper.
It struck me that the bartender and his new boss must be having quite a huddle. And the need must have been pressing for them to leave me alone with all this wealth of booze. I felt touched and honored by this subtle testimonial to my honesty and sobriety. The thirsting door-rattler had given up and gone away, but I took solace in the knowledge that he had but a short way to go to find another oasis.
I walked over towards the door and stood by the table and window where the bartender had said he stood “resting.” An awning outside somewhat obstructed my view and I stooped to what I judged to be the height of the shorter Paquette. Ah, the view was now fine—I could see outside and, turning slightly, also see the bar, a perfect place for a warning lookout. I glanced around. On the wall adjoining the door on the other side, closer to the bar, was a large bulletin board which appeared to be covered with various anouncements, scores, newspaper clippings, snapshots and the like. I quickly moved over that way and put on my glasses.
I found myself shortly thinking of Max Battisfore, the Sheriff. For this bulletin board, I discovered, was a shrine apparently dedicated by Barney Quill to Barney Quill about Barney Quill; it was devoted almost solely to celebrating his exploits as a fisherman, hunter, expert marksman and, to a lesser extent, as a bowler, downhill skier, and racer of outboard motor-boats. And there had been many exploits; there were dozens and scores of snapshots and photos and newspaper clippings, old and new, all attesting his prowess in all of these things and more: Barney Quill had won the turkey shoot the previous fall, he’d won a skeet shoot, he’d placed first in another pistol shoot; he’d skied the Iron Bay course in 1:53. Over here Barney had shot the biggest buck at over two hundred yards; Barney had caught the largest brook trout last season, and on a mere 5-X leader, too (I read this particular item with an envious pang); Barney and his outboard had won—
“He was really quite a guy, wasn’t he?” a voice behind me said. Startled, I wheeled around. Alphonse Paquette, the bartender, had returned.
“What nice soft shoes you wear, Grandma,” I said.
He smiled faintly. “Have to wear ’em for my bunions. Standing all hours at that goddam bar, you know.”
“And standing and enjoying the view from this goddam window when you’re not,” I said. “Did you have a nice little chat about me with Mary Pilant?” I said, smiling.
“Most satisfactory and to the point. She told me to keep my trap shut. No more questions and no more answers. Those were the lady’s orders—and she’s the boss.”
Well, Mary Pilant might have been just a trifle late, I thought. I wondered what kind of witch she would be. Probably a pearl-laden dame with gold teeth and a baritone voice who shaved twice a week; the kind who, after five minutes, started calling total strangers “darling” and “honey” and who wore long loopy earrings from which small boys could depend while performing gymnastics. The picture was not good; maybe I could shove her off on Parnell.
“Well,” I said, “since you can’t or won’t talk I guess I might as well up and leave. It’s time for lunch, anyway. When a journeyman lawyer can’t talk he’s in a bad way; he can’t very well open his mouth without asking questions.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
Something on the bulletin board had caught my eye. Caught and perplexed me. “But I have just one more question, an easy harmless little one,” I said. “And it demands no more cerebration than those certified questions on TV where people constantly win life annuities and round trips to Jamaica for guessing President Lincoln’s first name. Just one little question.”
“Will you promise to lay off and go, then? I’ve got my work to do.”
“On my honor as an Eagle Scout,” I said. “But I won’t promise I won’t be back.”
He shook his head and sighed. “Shoot your damned question. You lawyers are boring in all the time.”
“That’s the prettiest compliment I’ve had since I retired from public life,” I said. “Thank you, Al.” I pointed at a large glossy unframed photograph on the bulletin board. It showed a couple standing on a sandy beach. The man, who had wavy hair which was graying at the temples—and who was clearly Barney, I judged from the other pictures—was smiling down at the woman, a stunning-looking brunette who was gravely regarding the camera. They were a striking, handsome-looking couple and I would have guessed they were married or in love except for one thing—the considerable disparity in their years; I guessed that the man, in a pinch, was old enough to be her father. Could it be possible that this fragile and well-bred-appearing young woman was the scheming Mary Pilant?
“Is that Barney and Mary?” I said.
“That’s Barney and Mary,” he said. “I’ve a good-looking boss, don’t you think?”
“Very,” I said, trying to hide my confusion over this sudden new development. The pea soup was getting thicker. “Now I go,” I said, “like I promised,” and like a good Eagle Scout I marched resolutely to the stairway. I paused on the first step and looked around. “One friendly tip,” I said, “not a question.”
“What’s that?” he said, with an elaborate show of patience.
“Don’t remove the gun shelf from behind the bar. It’s too late—I’ve already seen it and it’ll only look worse if you take it o
ut now. You should’ve done that before the police came—at the same time you got rid of the pistols.”
“Next murder I’ll remember to rehearse it,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to play the part of the dead body, would you? It would be a real pleasure to have you.”
“Only over your dead body, Buster,” I said, turning and trudging slowly up the stairs. Here was really quite an amiable character. Certainly not dumb either; perhaps only a little nervous. I wondered how much his cut would be if everything turned out all right. Well I certainly did not wish either him or the charming Mary Pilant any harm. Live and let live was my motto. No, no harm at all—just so long as they did not foul up the defense of my murder case. But when they moved into that area there would really be war, charm or no charm. And it was beginning to look like war.
I had told Mitch that this case had everything but Technicolor. It had been the prize understatement of the year. For Technicolor had now been added and its name was Mary Pilant. I quickened my step on the stair.
chapter 21
Hotels that aspire to look cozy and homelike generally succeed about as dismally as chain-bakeries fool anyone by calling their lumps of pumped-up dough Grandma Higgins’ homemade bread; but insofar as any hotel can perhaps be made to look homelike, someone had almost succeeded with the Thunder Bay Inn. The place was actually attractive. Even with all the milling tourists there was an atmosphere of uncontrived hominess and cheer about it, especially about the lobby, that defied analysis.
Perhaps it was the handsome stone fireplace or the superb heads of three white-tailed deer over it (Barney would undoubtedly have shot those), or the colorful and yet restful drapes at the large picture windows overlooking the blue expanse of lake, or the attractively paneled walls of unfinished red cedar that glowed and shone like burnished copper, or the carefully selected prints and photographs—and even a few interesting water colors—all of which depicted scenes indigenous to the Peninsula rather than the usual tourist art showing fairy dream castles in Wales. Whatever the reason the room possessed undeniable charm. Would the enigmatic Mary Pilant have had a hand in all this, I wondered.
The lobby was crowded with people, including Maida, who was sitting by the fireplace oblivious to the clatter and turmoil around her, her nose buried in one of her inevitable mystery thrillers. Mystery thriller indeed, I thought. Here she was, working on a case that had more real mystery about it than a dozen contrived thrillers, a case as bristling with mystery as a porcupine with quills—and she sat reading a damned mystery thriller. I thought of my old hermit Danny McGinnis incredulously glued to his story about his fellow hermit.
True, in our case there was little mystery about what had actually taken place—that was becoming all too brutally apparent. But these facts, however melodramatic, skimmed but the surface, were in themselves merely the tip of the iceberg at sea; it was the “inner facts,” the heart of the case itself, that teemed with the stuff of real mystery, the deepening tangle of dark impulses and mixed motives of real men and women.
I glanced about. There was a milling group of vacantly staring people wandering aimlessly up and down, most of whom appeared to be carrying boxes of cleansing tissue. But where was all the Army brass? What had happened to the Army? I went over to the lobby desk.
The bespectacled clerk appeared to be playing a losing game of solitaire with a pack of registration cards. His rapt concentration plainly brooked no interruption. “Ah, cheating!” I thought, as he finally dealt a card from the bottom. After an indecent interval he sighed and reshuffled the deck and looked up. “Yes?” he inquired, with that fine mixture of condescension, boredom and inner pain that seems to be the trademark of hotel clerks the world over.
“What happened to the Army?” I said. “I don’t see any glittering brass. Has there been a new war?”
“The Army has retreated,” he answered solemnly. “They cleared out yesterday, bag and baggage, thank goodness.” He rolled his eyes up, obviously a sorely put-upon man. “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve had,” he seemed to be saying.
“Was the retreat according to plan or because of the shooting of—of Dangerous Dan McGrew?” I said. “I thought the Army was supposed to stay here on maneuvers or something through September.”
“The Army has not officially informed me of its reasons for departure,” he replied with enviable sarcasm. “All I know is that they have mercifully departed.”
“By the way,” I asked casually, “were you on duty the night Barney was shot?”
He glanced sharply at me. “What’s that to you?” he said coolly.
“I’m Lieutenant Manion’s lawyer,” I said. “Paul Biegler from Chippewa.”
“Oh,” he said, shrugging. “I thought you might be another of those prying tourists.”
“Smile when you say that, pardner,” I said, wincing. “But were you on duty?”
“Yes, I was ‘on nights’ last week.”
“Ah, a break at last,” I thought as I pressed rapidly on. “Do you remember when Barney came in? How he was dressed? His general appearance?”
He nodded his head. “I certainly do,” he said emphatically. “Barney came running in the front entrance at just about—”
At this juncture a large soft blimp of a woman bustled herself squarely between us and pelted the clerk with a flurry of questions. “Yes, madam, we will serve lunch until one-thirty,” he explained patiently. “No, madam, we do not pack lunches for the road. No, madam, the check-out hour is four not five. Yes, madam, downstairs is the place where the ‘poor defenseless man’ was shot.” The clerk turned wearily back to me. “You see how it is?” he murmured. “They’re driving me simply insane.”
“You were just saying … .” I began. At that moment a waitress hurried up to the desk, all but running, and spoke earnestly to the clerk. “Miss Pilant wants to see you in the dining room—immediately!” she said.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, innocently trotting away to have his gag applied. So Mary Pilant wanted to play it that way, did she? I turned ruefully, bitterly, upon the still-waiting lady tourist.
“Excuse me for intruding,” I said coldly, thinking of how satisfying it would be to hoist her a nice slow kick in the blubber. I stalked away.
So the Army had taken a powder, had it?—gone away, retreated before the superior fire power of Lieutenant Manion? We were certainly getting all the breaks. I had arrived a day late and now couldn’t find out what if anything the Army knew. And now even Mary Pilant was getting in my hair. And how was this sudden flight of the Army going to affect our chances for getting one of their damned psychiatrists?
As I stood there morosely Parnell came charging into the lobby, wheezing and puffing like an old wood-burning locomotive, his broad face perspiring and red as a beet. I felt alarmed for him until I saw the look of wild triumph in his eye; the old boy must have come up with something, all right; he looked as proud and pleased as an old dog with a new bone. He brushed blindly past me and joined Maida at the fireplace, flopping down in a chair like a winded whale, but not quite so overcome, I noted, that he forgot to display the tattersall vest for the bedazzled tourists.
As I threaded my way glumly through the milling crowd to join Parnell and Maida I found my way blocked by the same lady tourist who had just interrupted the clerk and me. She was intently studying a large road map affixed to the wall, leaning over and thoughtfully scratching her fanny. The target was magnificent and I stood itchily weighing the possibilities for making a successful drop kick … . She was hoydenishly clad in Bermuda shorts large enough to sail the Kon-Tiki. She wore a bandana top and a girlish head scarf and on the incredibly tiny feet of her lumpy piano legs she wore some sort of gay open-toed sandals. She was, I saw, of the common or sun-worshiper variety of tourist, looking as though she had been but recently dipped, and held, in a boiling lobster pot. As Mencken once said, she was the sort of female that made a man want to burn every bed in the world.
“Merciful God,” I thou
ght, studying this prize specimen of homo tourosis.
“How do you like my new hair-do, Boss?” Maida chirped amiably as I joined them.
“Fine,” I conceded, “if looking like a curly blonde Zulu is an effective disguise for the undercover work you’re doing. But the jackpot question is: are the results worth all the sacrifice? Who are you trying to look like, Mata Hari on a drunk?”
She appealed to Parnell. “See, Parn, see,” she pouted. “Now you can see why I’m so starved for a kind word.”
I stole a look at the still-scratching lady tourist. “On second thought, Maida,” I said, “you look positively ravishing. Pardon my outburst—I’ve just been through a harrowing experience. Let’s go eat and I’ll tell you.”
As we entered the dining room a young woman came forward to meet us. I caught my breath. It was Mary Pilant. She was much lovelier in person than her photograph, small and poised, with wide intelligent dark eyes.
“Three?” she inquired politely.
“Please,” I said. “And please, too—far away from the tourists.”
“Perhaps you would prefer to dine on the veranda,” she suggested. “We keep a few overflow tables set up out there. And there you will not only escape the tourists”—she paused and smiled slightly—“but be alone to talk.”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling back. “That’s very thoughtful of you. By all means take us to the veranda.”
As she led the way through the multitude of noisily feeding tourists I watched her with the kind of avid and rueful admiration that balding middle-aged males bestow upon hopelessly unattainable young loveliness. I noted the poise and slender grace of her walk, the trim modeling of her legs and ankles, the small ears and small well-shaped head with the tendrils of dark hair curling up from the nape of her neck, the sort of pent and brooding intelligence of her face. Yes, poise and grace and intelligence was the verdict for Mary Pilant.
Anatomy of a Murder Page 17
