A Pint of Murder (17 page)

There was something finical about the way that rock had been replaced. The act suggested a housewife with tidy habits and too little strength to move a tall, big-boned body like Dot’s. Somebody like Gilly Bascom, who liked to leave a place looking halfway decent, as she’d remarked while they were making the beds together. Somebody—and Rhys did not enjoy this idea—like Janet Wadman with her injured hand.

There was also the boy Bobby. Could he, with the fantastical reasoning of a child, have imagined he could clear himself of suspicion by putting back the weapon?

But why should any of these three, or anybody at all, want to kill Dot Fewter? Maybe nobody had. Here was a woman the size of Elizabeth Druffitt, wearing a distinctive and familiar outfit of Elizabeth Druffitt’s; a light-colored outfit, moreover, that would be easy enough to recognize in the dark.

It was not unreasonable that Elizabeth might have decided to break her long boycott of the Mansion and decide to spend a night here with her daughter and her cousin, rather than sleep alone in her own place. It was not unreasonable that she might find herself unable to sleep at all, and try to calm her nerves by a late-night stroll around the yard. Mightn’t somebody else have made the same mistake Marion did when she saw the body on the lawn?

Marion could even have made that same mistake twice. She’d have needed great powers of recovery, though, if she’d been able to stagger out here and commit a murder so soon after she’d passed out over the cribbage board. On the other hand, she might have been a good deal less drunk than she’d appeared to be. It was possible that his own faculty of discernment had been a trifle impaired by the time he dragged her to the couch.

Rhys was rather taken with that hypothesis. For one thing, it took Janet Wadman and her brother off the list of suspects. They’d known about the dress. Marion and the rest of them at the Mansion had not, so they could all be left on. So could the rest of the town, for that matter, unless Dot had managed somehow to get the word around in the brief time she’d had between leaving Mrs. Druffitt and coming to Janet. It appeared to be an accepted fact of life around here that Elizabeth Druffitt had never given away any of her possessions and never would.

Mrs. Druffitt made a far more logical victim than Dot Fewter. Mrs. Druffitt had a husband who’d just been murdered, so she constituted a possible threat to whoever had done that little job. She had property, she had power and influence in the community. Under that ladylike façade she had the gall of an ox. She also, he was willing to bet his Sunday boots, had by now worked out a deal of some sort with Jason Bain. That combination of circumstances suggested several possible motives.

Rhys slid a couple of twigs under the rock and lifted it gingerly on to a sheet of paper he’d asked Marion to bring him from the house. It was a letterhead captioned “Treadway Enterprises Ltd,” he noticed. He wasn’t concerned with letterheads; he was thinking about the chance of fingerprints on that whitewashed surface. A vain hope, no doubt. Anybody who’d take the trouble to put back the rock would be tidy enough or clever enough to wipe it off, most likely. Even young boys. Especially young boys. They read comic books, and watched cops-and-robbers programs on television.

Elmer, Gilly, and Bobby were all three missing and presumably all three together. The two grownups, if such they could be called, must have got back from their movie sometime after Rhys and Marion had been lulled to rest by Uncle Charles’s lotus-blossom brandy, picked up the child, and cleared out. What better reason could they have for doing so than the one that lay here in front of him?

They couldn’t have known Rhys would be asleep, unless they’d fixed it up with Marion beforehand to dose him with the brandy. That would mean they’d planned the crime in advance. But they wouldn’t have expected Elizabeth Druffitt to be here, so Dot would then have to be the right victim, after all. And what would Dot be doing here when she was supposed to be over with Janet?

He tried another tack. Suppose for the sake of argument that Bobby had skinned out of the house after Rhys had found him so sweetly asleep with his canine bedmate. Suppose the boy had got up to some mischief or other, not necessarily anything really wicked but something he wouldn’t want to get caught at, and been appalled to run into a woman he thought was his grandmother as he was sneaking back into the Mansion?

According to Janet, Bobby had been in trouble before. Mrs. Druffitt, being the sort of woman she was, would certainly have taken it upon herself to censure him for his misdeeds. With the terror of the fire coming directly on top of his grandfather’s death, who could tell what state of nerves he might be in? Might he not have panicked, grabbed up a rock from the border, and—what? Stood on tiptoe and asked his grandmother to bend over so he could bash her skull in?

What would any boy do with a rock? He’d throw it. He might not mean to hit, only to divert the woman’s attention long enough for him to get away without being caught. But that rock would be a heavy projectile for a boy his size, and his aim could have gone amiss. Gilly and Elmer could have come home to find a terrified youngster crouched on the lawn beside a blood-stained corpse. Their natural, though certainly not overbright, reaction might very well have been to hustle the boy into the car and take off.

Rhys went into the house, called RCMP headquarters, and asked for a road watch to be got out for a 1976 green Ford sedan presumed to be carrying its owner, Elmer Bain of Pitcherville, along with a short, slim blonde woman and a boy about ten years old. He had no great confidence they’d be picked up. Elmer might have sense enough to ditch the car. If they got off into the woods and young Bain was any sort of woodsman, they might elude capture for a long time. The weather was warm, there was plenty to eat in the forest if a person knew what to look for, there were fish in the streams and rabbits for the trapping. They could work their way west or north or south, perhaps down over the border. Elmer probably had some money on him. They might even split up, take different buses or trains, and meet in Toronto or somewhere a good way from here.

Well, wherever they were, he was here and there was work to be done. He took up the phone again and called Fred Olson. “Fred, you and your friend Sam Potts might as well come up to the Mansion. Tell him he’s got another customer.”

“Lord God A’mighty,” cried the marshal. “Who is it this time? Janet Wadman?”

“No!” Rhys managed not to add an unprofessional expression of gratitude. “It’s Dot Fewter.”

“You hauled in Sam Neddick yet?”

“No, I have not.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m a fool,” the Welshman replied sadly. “Make it quick, will you, Olson? I need somebody to take charge here while I go after Neddick. Oh, and stop at the Druffitt house on your way. See if Gilly Bascom and her son are there, with or without Elmer Bain. They’ve all three turned up missing.”

Olson said, “Right,” and hung up. A good man. Pitcherville was luckier than it knew.

“They won’t be at Elizabeth’s.” That was Marion, tagging close to Rhys as if afraid to be alone, for which he couldn’t blame her, considering her resemblance to the dead woman out in the yard.

“No, I don’t expect they are,” he replied, “but we have to check, you know. You have no idea where they might have gone?”

Marion shook her head. “None whatever. All I know is they tried to kill me and then took off.”

“Tried to kill you? Marion, do you really believe that?”

“Why the hell shouldn’t I? If Gilly gets rid of me, she inherits Aunt Aggie’s whole estate, doesn’t she? And why should anybody want to kill Dot Fewter, unless it was a mistake? Look at her. She was my size and build, had features like mine, hair like mine. She was here in my yard where she had no business to be at that hour. Okay, she was wearing Elizabeth’s dress, but why shouldn’t Elizabeth have passed that outfit on to me instead of Dot? I was down there yesterday, too, wasn’t I? I’m Elizabeth’s own legitimate cousin instead of her God-knows-what. I’d have got a lot more wear out of it than that Fewter bitch, wouldn’t I? My God, what am I saying? I ought to be damned glad she didn’t!”

Rhys scratched his mustache. “Did you talk with Gilly at all before she and Elmer went out last evening?”

“Sure. We had supper together. That’s when she asked me if I’d mind staying with Bobby because Elmer’d offered to take her to a show. I said yes, because what the hell? I wasn’t doing anything else anyway.”

“Did you repeat to her what I told you and her mother yesterday?”

“About Henry and Aunt Aggie being murdered? Yes, I did. Why shouldn’t I? It’s as much her worry as mine.”

“Of course it is and there is no reason why you should not have told. How did she take the news?”

“How does she take anything? Sat there staring at me like a scared rabbit.”

“Did she make any comment?”

“Just swallowed a couple of times and said, ‘Thanks for telling me, Marion.’ I don’t know what to think.” Marion shook her head as if it ached, which it probably did. “I was beginning to like Gilly.”

“One must not jump to conclusions,” Rhys reminded her gently. “Perhaps you can go on liking her. Was Elmer present when you gave Gilly this information?”

“No. I waited till he and Bobby went out to feed the dogs. Speaking of which, I guess I’d better go do it now before they start yapping their fool heads off. I cannot for the life of me see Gilly going off and leaving those little puppies like this. I’d have thought that was the last thing she’d ever do.”

“Do you think it possible Elmer may have taken her against her will?”

“Listen, buster, where that guy’s concerned, she hasn’t any will.”

“Listen, buster,” was hardly a respectful form of address to a member of the RCMP, but Rhys had long ago accepted the fact that it was no good trying to stand on his dignity. He merely inquired, “You don’t recall seeing or hearing any sort of commotion during the night?”

Marion grinned sheepishly. “After I passed out, you mean? You should know better than to ask. That stuff’s dynamite. Didn’t it get you, too?”

“I slept soundly,” Rhys admitted. “Marion, tell me the truth: Is that why you gave it to me? Did Gilly suggest that you try to get me plastered?”

She gaped at him in honest surprise. “Hell no, I just figured it would liven up the party a little. I was feeling lower than a floorwalker’s arches, if you want to know, finding out about Aunt Aggie being murdered and figuring I was probably first in line for the hot squat. And then Gilly going off on a date with a good-looking guy while I—oh hell! It’s my birthday next week and I’m going to be forty-seven, if you want to know.”

“Being forty-seven is perhaps better than not being forty-seven,” Rhys reminded her gently.

“Yeah, I guess you can say that again.” Marion darted a frightened glance out the window. “What a rotten break for poor old Dot!”

“She may not have been killed in mistake for you, you know,” said the Mountie. “It’s more likely that she was mistaken for your cousin Elizabeth. It is also quite possible that she was killed by somebody who knew perfectly well whom he was killing. Where would I be apt to find Sam Neddick, do you think?”

Marion brightened visibly. “My God, I never thought of Sam! I guess I’m not wrapped too tight this morning. There’s no telling where he’d be by now if he did this. If he didn’t, I suppose he’s over milking Bert Wadman’s cows, unless he overslept. You might look up in the hayloft. That’s where he lives, when he lives anywhere. Aunt Aggie let him use it in return for doing her chores. What’s the matter? You look funny.”

“So I have often been told,” said Rhys. “Would you mind getting something to cover Dot with? I’d as soon not try to move her until Olson gets here.”

Marion went and got the crocheted afghan she herself had been bundled up in the night before. “Will this do?”

“Fine,” he replied.

She tagged after him when he went outside, as if she couldn’t bear to stay alone. Since she was going to hang around anyway, Rhys decided she might as well make herself useful. “Marion, I’m going inside the barn to see if Sam Neddick’s there. You stay out here and watch for Olson, will you? If anybody else comes, or if you find you can’t endure being here, don’t come after me but simply call. I promise I shan’t go beyond shouting distance.”

“Okay.”

She gave him a doubtful attempt at a grin, and he went.

T
HE HIRED MAN’S AERIE
was surprisingly elegant. It contained an ornate brass bedstead with a mangy blue-velvet cover and a marble-topped commode that held a flowered ironstone pitcher and washbowl, neither of them too badly chipped. There was also a cheap but flashy modern dresser on which stood several bottles of men’s toiletries—gifts, no doubt, from the demised girlfriend. Sam wouldn’t be apt to use them himself, unless he got really thirsty.

Neddick wasn’t around. Marion’s analysis was doubtless correct. He must either be hard at work or over the hills and far away. There were plenty of signs that he’d entertained Dot Fewter often enough in his exotic boudoir: long black hairs on the velvet counterpane, a filthy powder puff thrown down among the colognes and after-shave lotions, a hopelessly laddered pair of pantyhose under the bed. It was a safe enough bet that she’d either been on her way here or going back from the barn to the Wadmans’ when she was attacked in the drive. A romantic tryst would account for her having bothered to put on the hand-me-down finery.

Rhys didn’t stay in the loft more than a minute or two. Marion was still over by the body and didn’t appear to be in too bad a state, so he called out, “Neddick isn’t at home. Do you mind if I go over to the Wadmans’?”

She flapped her hand, in either protest or permission. He took it for permission, and went. Sam was the first person he ran into. It had to be Sam, because the man looked exactly as Rhys had pictured him, of no particular age with a face and neck the color and texture of old boot leather and a perfectly blank expression. His body was neither tall nor short, a bit humped at the shoulders but no doubt strong and quick as a lynx when speed was necessary. The eyes were almost without color, like two miniature crystal balls.