by Blake Banner
I turned and ran. Dehan was ahead of me with Bee by her side, shouting, “At the end! On the left! At the end!”
She left Bee behind. She had her red dress hiked up around her hips and was speeding down the passage on her long legs and bare feet. She angled around the corner, collided with the wall and kept going toward the door at the end.
Behind me I could hear Sally running and screaming, “Oh, God, no! No!” and Bee panting close behind her. There were other voices, maybe Brown. Dehan grabbed the handle and shoved. It was not locked. She burst through and I came in just behind her. We stopped dead.
Behind me I heard a small gasp, then a short scream, followed by more short, hysterical screams.
Gordon looked shocked. He looked shocked because his eyes were bulging out of the sockets in his head. His tongue was huge and protruding and his face was bloated and had turned dark purple, like a giant, grotesquely deformed eggplant. There was blood on his dressing gown and on his pajamas, but not much, and only around the collar, where he had clawed at the dressing gown cord that was tied around his neck. The other end was tied to the frame of his four poster bed. His toes, barely touching the mattress, were still twitching.
EIGHTEEN
We cut him down and between me, Dehan and Brown we laid him out on the bed. He was dead and well beyond resuscitation. I told Brown, “Go and tell Dr. Cameron that Charles Gordon Sr. is dead, will you? Tell him to come here as soon as he can.”
Brown nodded, said, “Yes, sir,” and left the room. Outside, Sally was sobbing violently. She had her back against the wall and her face covered with her hands. Bee had come in and sat on a padded stool by the door, where she was just staring at the deformed monstrosity that had been the man she loved.
Dehan backed away from the bed and stood staring around at the room. She looked tired. She spread her hands. “It could be either…”
I shook my head. “It’s not suicide.”
“How can you be sure?”
I made a gesture to her to hang on a minute and turned to Bee. “Bee…?” She seemed not to hear me. I approached her and hunkered down in front of her, obscuring her view of the bed. “Bee, you can’t be here. It’s a crime scene.” I smiled. “You might be sitting on evidence. And in any case, it’s not a good place for you. This isn’t how you want to remember him.”
She gave a small smile and nodded, then she reached for my hand and held it, staring at it. “I only held his hand once or twice, you know. So many years ago. He had strong hands, like yours. I remember it as though it were yesterday. Or this morning.” She raised her eyes to mine again. “You can’t do it, you know?”
“What’s that, Bee?”
“Play around with love and sex. It’s not a game. Sooner or later, all that passion just turns…” Her eyes looked past me at the obscenity on the bed, and she said simply, “Ugly.”
I nodded. “If only more people understood that, Bee. Come on.” I stood, pulled her gently to her feet and guided her to the door. There she stood a moment, looking at Sally. Next thing, Sally was crossing the corridor with an ugly, twisted, crying face and her arms held out, and the two women were holding each other and sobbing into each other’s shoulders.
Dehan put a hand on my shoulder. “We need to get a grip on this situation, Sensei. Where is everybody?”
I nodded. “More to the point, where was everybody?” I moved to the door up one and across the passage from Gordon’s bedroom and tried it. It was locked. I called, “Brown!”
I heard the scuffle of feet and the butler came hurrying around the corner. “Dr. Cameron will be with you in a moment, sir!”
I pointed at the door. “Can you unlock this, please? And let’s get everybody assembled in there.”
Dehan grabbed Bee and Sally and gently propelled them toward the spare bedroom while Brown fished out his keys, opened the door and switched on the light. I went around the dogleg and found Armstrong and the two maids leaning on the doorjamb and Cameron pushing his way between them. He caught sight of me and said, “What the hell is it now?”
I pointed at Armstrong. “You, in that room with Bee and Sally, now.” He drew breath. “Give me any more of your attitude and I’ll throw you in there myself.”
He sighed noisily and pushed past me muttering something about fuckin’ Yankees. He went in the room with Bee and Sally and I called Brown over.
“Lock Mrs. Gordon in her room and give Dr. Cameron the key. Put one of your girls on the door, the other on the spare bedroom, tell them to raise merry hell if anybody tries to get in or out. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, goes in there but him or me and my wife. Understood?”
He nodded vigorously. “Of course, sir.”
He went away to lock the door. I turned to the doctor. “Come with me. You need to write out another death certificate.”
He didn’t say anything until we got to the room. Then he stood on the threshold, staring at the body.
“Dear God, what happened here?”
“He was hanged. He has his own dressing gown cord tied around his neck in some kind of a slip knot.” I pointed at the frame of the bed. “You can see where it was tied. We cut him down, but he was already dead.”
He turned and looked at me bitterly. “I have to say, Detective Stone, you’re doin’ a great job of solving this crime. You know who it is and how they did it, but you’re going to leave them to run around killing the rest of us till mornin’? Tha’s a great plan!”
I fought down the irritation I felt and said, “I need two things from you, Doctor, and one of them is not any more of your attitude. I need a death certificate and I need to know if there is any bruising premortem or perimortem.”
He muttered something obscene in some ancient, primal Celtic language and opened his bag. Dehan came in and stood staring at me. With her hair disheveled, the strained expression on her face, the scarlet dress and her long, tanned leg showing through the slash, the only word to describe her was ravishing. She shook her head and said, “When I bought this dress, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
I smiled at her, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “You want to go and change? I got this.”
She shook her head. “Let’s try and work out what happened here. Time of death…” She took a deep breath and blew noisily. “Anytime after he left the drawing room and came upstairs…”
I turned to Cameron. “You didn’t sedate Bee…”
He was carefully removing the rope from Gordon’s neck and spoke without looking at me. “I gave her a mild sedative, but it apparently had no effect.” Then he added, “I hope you’re no seriously suggesting that she is capable of…”
“Can it!” I turned back to Dehan. “Who else was not in the room?”
She shook her head. “Only Brown and the maids.”
“So, at this stage, once everybody got upstairs and went into their rooms, it could have been anyone except Pam. So we’ll need to see who can alibi whom.”
She nodded. “But it does mean that whoever it was was not waiting for him in the room. They came afterwards. He was already changed, but he had his dressing gown on, so either he hadn’t gone to bed or, most likely, whoever it was knocked, he put on his gown and came to the door.”
I nodded. “Then one of two things happened: either his killer overpowered him and strung him up, which seems very unlikely given Gordon’s weight and strength, and…” I looked around. “The absence of any sign of a struggle; or they had a weapon and threatened him with it. They forced him to tie the rope, put it around his neck and gave him a shove.”
Cameron stood. “There’s a third possibility yer no considering, Stone, an’ that’s that his conscience got too much for him. He saw what he had done to the people around him, an’ how all the fuckin’ wickedness of his way of life had come back on him, an’ he took his own life. Bear in mind, in one single night, he lost his son and the woman he thought loved him. No many men could get over that.”
I heard him out, then said, “It�
��s an obvious and logical possibility, Doctor, but when we cut him down, his toes could barely reach the mattress. Which means that he was standing on something that the killer rather foolishly removed after killing him.”
Cameron frowned. “Why would they do that?”
Dehan shrugged with one shoulder. “They were in a rush, in a panic. Maybe Bee had just started shouting for everyone to come. Hard to think clearly in a moment like that, especially if you are improvising. Perhaps he was afraid whatever it was would be fingerprinted, and he had no time to wipe off his prints.”
I nodded. “It’s possible. We’re dealing with a very tight timeframe.” I glanced around the room. “He came up the stairs. When everybody had retired to their rooms he went in, dosed Pamela, emptied the pill bottle down the toilet, slipped out and came ’round to Gordon’s room. He knocked…” I trailed off and pointed at a wooden box on top of a tallboy against the wall.
I went and had a closer look. There were slight impressions of dust on the surface, but it was hard to be sure. I shrugged. “It will be interesting to see what forensics gets off this box.”
I turned. Dehan was frowning. “So there’s a second weapon?”
I nodded.
She shook her head. “I don’t like that, Stone. It’s messy. Where from? If he had a weapon, why’d he need to steal the old Smith & Wesson? Where’d he get it from? All that time when everyone was in the drawing room…” She shook her head again. “What? He stepped out of the drawing room and found a pistol somewhere? I don’t like it.”
Cameron was watching us. “Yous keep talking about a man. It could just as easily have been a woman.” He pointed at Gordon. “He has no premortem or perimortem bruising. He was not physically forced to hang hi’self. Either somebody held a gun to his head or he committed suicide. An’ frankly, my money is on that. Frankly, I think you’re both full o’crap. It is plainly obvious what happened.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow at him. “It is? Care to enlighten us?”
He pointed at Gordon. “Nobody stole his gun. He took it down hi’self. This bastard killed his son because he found out that he was shaggin’ my wife, his mistress. After you told everyone you had solved the murder, he believed you, came upstairs, and in a final act of malice and rage he killed his wife and then went and hanged hi’self.”
I sighed. “I just told you he couldn’t reach.”
“How fuckin’ hard would it be tu pull hi’self up, hold on to the frame with one arm an’ slip the noose around his fuckin’ neck, then let go?”
“Pretty hard. Will you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Have you got surgical gloves?”
“Of course.”
“Do you buy them on the island?”
He squinted at me like he was trying to fathom the depth of my stupidity. What?”
I gave him a moment, trying to hold on to my patience. “I’m not going to repeat the question, Cameron. It was very clear.”
“No! I don’t buy them on the fuckin’ island. What kind of a fuckin’ stupid question is that?”
“Have you got a pair with you?”
“In mah bag. Why?”
I held out my hand. He stared at it a moment, then sighed laboriously, reached in his bag and pulled out a sealed pack with a pair of surgical gloves in it. I tore the wrapper and pulled on the gloves, then I hunkered down, pulled over his bag and started going through it slowly and meticulously. After a moment, I said to Dehan, “You still got those freezer bags?”
“Yeah.”
She stepped over. I heard a rip and she squatted down next to me holding an open bag. I held up a syringe and looked up at Cameron. “You always keep your syringes lying around in your bag out of their packaging?”
He went pale. “Never. I have no idea how that got in there…”
I dropped it into the improvised evidence bag and smiled at Dehan. “There’s your weapon. The needle is down the can on its way to the bottom of the North Atlantic.” I looked back at Cameron. “I’m prepared to bet that if the ME looks hard enough among all the bruising caused by the rope, he’ll find a needle mark on the right side of Gordon’s neck.”
Dehan stood. “That’s why there was no syringe in Pam’s bedroom. He brought it with him, knocked on the door. Threatened Gordon with it, made him climb on the bed, probably on the box, then pushed him off, and replaced the box when Bee started screaming…”
“He flushed the needle, made his way to Pam’s room, and when the Doc arrived, he dropped the syringe back in his bag. If we’re lucky, we may get prints from it.” I stood and looked at Cameron, who was staring at me with his mouth open. “You want to get off my case now, Doctor?”
Dehan said. “Our pool of suspects is very small, and the Doc is right. It could just as easily be a woman.”
I nodded. “Doc, will you leave your bag there and join the others in the spare bedroom, please?”
He was shaking his head. “Och, no, you cannot believe that I did thus…”
“You want to tell me why?”
He fumbled and stammered, “I might have had reason to want the old man dead, but why would I kill young Charles? An’ Pam?”
Dehan shrugged. “To frame somebody else? The whole damn household heard you threaten Gordon. Your exact words were, if I remember rightly, that you would make him pay and you would destroy him. Killing his son and his wife, and then him, and make it look like he did it himself seems to me to be a pretty comprehensive way of destroying him, Doc.” She nodded at his bag. “And you own the weapon.”
His face cleared. “I was with Brown! He’ll tell yous. I was with him!”
“When?”
“When…” He faltered.
I shook my head. “It’s a very small window, Doc, but we don’t know exactly when he was killed. Hold on to that thought. And my advice, for now, keep your mouth shut. You’ll do everyone a favor. Now, please, leave the bag there and get into the spare bedroom with the others.”
He left the room and I stood in the doorway, biting my lip and watching him make his way down the passage. I turned and faced Dehan and we stared at each other for a long moment. It was a strange habit we had fallen into shortly after we met. It made other people uncomfortable, but it helped us to think. After a moment, she blinked and ran her fingers through her hair.
“Well, at least we know it wasn’t Gordon or Pamela.”
I frowned at her. “I wasn’t kidding, Dehan. I know who did it. I should have seen this coming. Our killer is crazy and almost unbelievably daring. This…” I gestured at Gordon. “This, while people were just feet away in the corridor—it is reckless to the point of insanity. But there is also a coldness to it, a clarity of thinking that, if we are not very careful, will lead to the killer being acquitted. There will be no evidence to convict them. The problem is not who did it, or even how. Both of those are obvious. The question, Dehan, is how do we prove it?”
NINETEEN
Sally was lying down with her forearm across her eyes. Bee was sitting next to her, holding her knees up to her chest and staring vacantly at the air six inches in front of her nose. The major was in an armchair by the window, watching her quietly. Cameron was on the floor, echoing Bee’s position, but with his arms laid across the top of his knees and his forehead on his arms. In the corner, Armstrong lay curled in the fetal position, snoring softly. Outside the door, the red-haired maid sat asleep in a chair. Beside her, Brown sat in another, drawn and anxious, watching me and Dehan.
I leaned on the doorjamb, and after a moment Bee turned to look at me. “Do you really, seriously think that one of us did these terrible things, Mr. Stone? Don’t you think that your theories have perhaps gone a little astray?”
Dehan came up beside me, leaned on me and rested her head on my shoulder. After a moment, I nodded. “No to the first and yes to the second, Bee.” I jerked my head at the window, where the sky was already turning pale. “The storm has pretty much blown over. Phones should be workin
g again soon.” I shrugged. “I thought I’d cracked it, but the fact is I hadn’t. And you know what? My wife and I came here on honeymoon, not to conduct a pro bono investigation, and frankly, if I’m honest, we are both pretty tired of getting insulted, sneered at and put down for no other reason than we are Americans and work for the NYPD. We tried to help, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
Cameron looked up at us. His eyes were resentful. “I told you from the start you were on the wrong track. It was Gordon. It had to be.”
Dehan snapped, “How! How’d he do it?”
“I don’t know, but…”
“When you do know, talk. In the meantime, why don’t you keep your mouth shut!”
Bee sighed. “It would be a relief if you did, Doctor.”
I said, “The fact is, everybody has an alibi for the time of Gordon Sr.’s death. So either it was somebody who was not a member of the party in the house, or it was suicide, as the doctor says. Either way, Dehan and I are washing our hands of the case. We will call the cops as soon as we have a signal, we will preserve the crime scenes and we will pass on our findings, such as they are, when they get here. But other than that we are done. I do recommend, though, that you all lock your doors when you go to bed. There is at least a chance that there is a killer at large on the island, if not in this house.”
With that I turned and made my way downstairs, with Dehan by my side. Above, I could hear them all leaving the room. We crossed the hall, I undid the padlock on the study door, stepped inside and I pushed the door to behind us. I checked my cell. “Still no signal.”
She picked up the landline and shook her head. She waited a moment, then started to dial and after a moment started to speak in a loud voice, as though she was talking to the cops. I moved quickly to the bay window, opened the left panel and climbed out. Then I sprinted around the side of the house, past the steps down to the kitchen and in among the rosemary bushes in the orchard garden. There I lay flat, watching the side of the house, and waited.
