An Owl Too Many (4 page)

“
YOU WENT UP
?”

Haverford’s voice was going up, too. “This guy gets caught in a net, hauled into the tree, and stabbed to death. And you went up?” His voice ended on a squeak.

“We didn’t know he’d been stabbed,” said Peter. “That high neck on Emmerick’s sweater seems to have absorbed most of the blood. I never noticed the wound in his neck until Miss Binks and the president had gone to get help, leaving Stott and myself to guard the body. As for searching the tree, we may have been a trifle precipitate but I don’t see where we were all that foolhardy. Bear in mind that this didn’t all happen in rapid succession. When the firecrackers started banging, we reacted quite as the—er—perpetrators no doubt expected, trying to shelter ourselves from the apparent shooting, then focusing our attention on Emmerick’s body. Whoever’d been in the tree had plenty of time to get down and away without our noticing.”

“On a bicycle,” said Winifred Binks.

“A bicycle? Why, Professor Binks? Did you see it?”

“No, I merely hypothesize one. They’re fast, silent, easy to hide, and easy to ride on a path like this. I myself would have ridden a bicycle. But then I always do.”

“You do?” This was clearly not what Haverford would have expected from a multimillionairess, but he nodded. “That’s a good point. Edwards, you and Andrews take a look around. See if you can find any bicycle tracks.”

The two officers scouted the area with their lanterns. They didn’t find any bicycle tracks, but they did turn up a sizable heap of black plastic not more than twenty feet from the oak tree. It looked brand new.

“This is interesting,” said Peter. “It wasn’t here this morning.”

“How do you know?” Haverford demanded.

“At the president’s request, I walked the path to make sure there were no obstacles that might give us trouble. We’d be working in the dark, you understand, so as not to disturb the owls. They don’t like light, it interferes with their hunting.”

“I see. And you’re quite sure the plastic wasn’t here?”

“Oh yes. I spent a fair amount of time walking around the tree; big old oaks like this are apt to have holes in them where owls can nest. I also searched the ground for owl pellets, those little balls of fur and bones they regurgitate after they’ve eaten a mouse or whatever. I couldn’t have missed a great wad like that, I’d either have taken the plastic away myself or sent one of the college groundsmen over to pick it up. That’s not to say it wasn’t around, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it had been still rolled up and hidden under the leaves.”

“What do you mean, still rolled up?”

“Just that it looks brand new and is the kind of plastic sheeting that comes in rolls. Gardeners and landscapers use the stuff as a mulch, to keep weeds from growing and to reflect heat up on their plants. It also prevents moisture from soaking into the ground and can turn your garden into a desert if you don’t watch out, but I’ll spare you the lecture. Could we spread it out and have a look?”

“I guess so, if we’re careful.”

Handling the plastic through paper napkins left over from Iduna’s picnic, pages torn from Sergeant Haverford’s notebook, President Svenson’s red cap, and anything else they could find to protect the surface from their fingerprints and preserve any others that might be present, the lot of them worked the bundle carefully over the path. Stretched to full length, and paced off by Peter, it measured all of a hundred feet and didn’t show them a thing.

“Maybe they just used it to wrap up the bicycle,” one of the state policemen suggested.

Haverford gave him a look. “No sense trying to guess. We may as well roll it up and take it to the lab. Careful, try not to pick up any leaves or twigs.”

“What about the rope that must have been attached to the net?” Peter asked.

“We haven’t found any on the ground, maybe it’s still up in the tree. Did you have anything special in mind, Professor?”

“I was just wondering whether the rope had been cut or broken. That could indicate whether Emmerick fell by accident or was deliberately dropped. I forgot to look before the body was taken away.”

Haverford clearly hadn’t thought to look, either. “We’ll know definitely when we get the lab report,” he fudged. “Thank you, Professor Shandy. Now could we get your statement, Dr. Svenson?”

He got it in about seven words, then wasted a good deal of time trying to extract the names of persons who might have had both the inclination and the ready funds to hire somebody to assassinate the president. By the time he got around to Professor Daniel Stott, Haverford was visibly shaken. When Stott said he hadn’t noticed Emmerick’s getting caught in the net because he’d been ruminating, the sergeant got downright nasty. Peter’s efforts to convince him that Professor Stott was only telling the plain truth because Dan always ruminated met with little favor. Since they were also insistent that he’d never once stepped out of line, there wasn’t much Haverford could do but table the question.

“All right, I guess we won’t be needing you people any longer tonight. You aren’t any of you planning to leave town in a hurry?”

“Hadn’t better,” snarled the president. “Classes.”

“Oh, right. Then I expect we can find you at the college if Chief Ottermole requests our further assistance.”

Peter said they’d be looking forward to it, and the two groups parted company. Most of the policemen headed back the way they’d come, two stayed to guard the tree. The owl counters walked on the way they’d been heading for half a mile or so, but none of them spotted so much as a regurgitated pellet of mouse fur, and not a hoot was to be heard. After a while, Dr. Svenson voiced what was by now the consensus of the group.

“Hell with the owls. Let’s go home.”

They were a silent lot as they followed Winifred Binks’s lead back to where Peter had parked his car. He automatically headed back toward the college, since most of his passengers lived within its purlieus, then realized he was being less than courteous to the lone female member, who lived miles out of town. To cover his gaffe, he said, “I’ll just drop the others, Miss Binks, then run you back to the station.”

“Indeed you will not,” Winifred protested. “I’ll get a security guard to let me into the gym, and doss down on one of the tumbling mats.”

After a certain amount of argy-bargy, she agreed to the pull-out sofa in the Shandys’ upstairs den. Truth to tell, Peter was glad not only that he wouldn’t have to make the long drive but also that Miss Binks would be safe under his roof instead of out on a thirty-mile tract in the middle of nowhere. He managed to get her settled without waking his wife, then climbed gratefully into the conjugal bed.

Considering how late it was by then, Peter had expected to sleep like one of the logs he’d spent so much of the night clambering over. Instead he lay wide awake, thinking about the many who might still be out there owling. He hoped none of them had got tangled up with a phantom netter.

Or netters. How many hands would have been needed to run that operation? One could have done it, maybe, if the person was strong enough. Hauling Emmerick up into the tree would have been the hardest part. Maybe that was why he’d got dropped so fast; whoever had pulled him up couldn’t hold him any longer. Could that mean the netter had been a woman, or a young kid? Or that the netter had tried to hold him with one hand while stabbing him with the other?

It wasn’t as though Emmerick had been a big man, he’d been a few inches shorter than Peter himself, and Peter was no giant. Say five feet six or so, about Winifred Binks’s height. He’d no doubt weighed twenty or thirty pounds more than she; her mostly vegetarian diet kept her weight down, although the muscles developed by her arboreal habits made her look heftier than she was. Emmerick had not been noticeably muscular, he mightn’t have been able to put up much of a fight even if he hadn’t been pinioned by the net. Easy to stab, then; maybe hard to hold.

And so what? Peter dozed off at last and had a not particularly amusing dream about Emory Emmerick, dressed in Miss Binks’s deerskins, being chased through the woods by an unidentifiable absent-minded professor with a minnow net. He woke gummy-eyed and heavy-headed, wondering why the sun was so high and why Helen wasn’t here beside him. Then he heard her talking to somebody downstairs, and remembered.

The time was half past eight, at least he hadn’t wasted the whole morning. Not that it mattered much, this being Saturday; but he might as well get up. Peter didn’t feel obliged to put on the dog for Miss Binks, she’d seen him in far worse shape than this. Four minutes, later, unshaven but showered and more or less respectably clad, he was downstairs drinking his first cup of coffee and lending his voice to the postmortem.

Usually Peter got breakfast, but today Helen was officiating at the stove. “Shall I poach you an egg, dear?” she offered. “Winifred and I are having one. One each, that is. Maybe you’d better have two, you’ve got to keep up your strength.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but you’re bound to have a reason before long. I’m surprised Thorkjeld’s not on the phone right now demanding to know why you haven’t found out who bagged Mr. Emmerick. What a totally bizarre way to kill somebody! You don’t suppose it could have been a joke that went wrong?”

“Some joke! A hunting knife smack in the medulla oblongata.”

“You don’t know for sure that it was a hunting knife. What if the person who hauled up the net happened to have been holding something sharp in his hand, like a—”

“A sword cane?” Peter offered.

“Exactly. I see you’re in one of your moods.”

“If you say so, my love. May I trouble you for the jam? And the butter?”

“Of course, my precious. Would you care for a piece of toast to put them on?”

“I was working up to the toast,” said Peter with what little dignity he could muster in his present condition. “Thank you. As to the question of how Emmerick was stabbed, my suggestion is that we wait and see what the police pathologist turns up. Drat! I’d like to take another look around that tree, but I suppose Haverford, or whoever’s taken over for him, is out there with a posse already. I wonder if anyone’s thought to notify the Meadowsweet Construction Company that they’re short one site engineer?”

“It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?” said Miss Binks. “Don’t business offices generally open at nine o’clock?”

“I believe that depends on the nature of the business. Construction workers start early, so perhaps their inside people do, too. Anyway”—Peter glanced up at the kitchen clock—“it’s almost nine now, so we may as well try them. Let’s hope they stay open Saturday mornings.”

“But it’s not your responsibility,” Helen protested. “Shouldn’t Fred Ottermole be the one to tell them?”

“Why? We’re Meadowsweet’s customer, aren’t we? At least Miss Binks is. Who better than she to break the news?”

“And who better than you to be listening in on the upstairs extension when she calls? At least eat your eggs first. Do you have any idea who Mr. Emmerick’s superior might be, Winifred?”

“I expect Mr. Gyles would be the one we should talk to. He’s the man who handled all that business about the bidding with us. I don’t mind a bit making the call, and do please listen, Peter, in case I don’t explain properly. You know what an ignoramus I am. Now let’s see, I’m quite sure I have the office number here in my compendium. One does need to be organized.”

Now that she was a woman of property, a member of the college faculty, and the driving force behind Balaclava’s new field station, Winifred Binks had equipped herself with a large leather tote bag from which she was seldom parted. Along with a good many other things, it held a thick loose-leaf notebook into which Winifred scrupulously entered every scrap of information that she or anybody else involved with her project might by any chance require. She hauled out the book and thumbed quickly down the bristle of index tabs.

“Here we are. Addresses and phone numbers. E-F-G—Golden Apples. I must remember to—J-K-L—ah yes. M for Meadowsweet. Why don’t I run upstairs and straighten the sofa, then put the call through from the den? By the time I’ve changed the sheets and got hold of Mr. Gyles, you’ll have had time to finish your eggs, Peter. Unless, of course, you’d rather I waited till you’ve had another cup of coffee?”

“No, no, you go right ahead.”

Peter was banking on that Old Boston accent of Miss Binks’s to overawe any receptionist or secretary who might otherwise have obstructive tendencies, nor did he bank in vain. By three minutes past nine, Miss Binks had Mr. Gyles on the wire and was saying her piece about his late employee. She said it well, she said it succinctly and with exactly the proper note of compassionate concern. What went wrong was Mr. Gyles’s reply.

“Just a moment, Miss Binks. You say this man’s name was Emory Emmerick and our company sent him out to your job as site engineer?”

“Yes.”

“Could you hold on a minute, please?”

“Certainly.”

Peter, on the downstairs phone, raised his eyebrows at Helen.

“What’s happening?” she murmured.

“God knows. Maybe he’s gone to take up a collection for the funeral wreath. He’s being long enough about it.”

He was, indeed. It was a long time before Mr. Gyles came back.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Binks, but we seem to have a major problem here. Our site engineer’s name is Patrick Henry O’Gorman and he’s not scheduled to go out to your site until a week from Tuesday. We have nobody named Emory Emmerick on our payroll. As far as our personnel department can tell, we never did have.”

“
BUT THEN WHO WAS
he?”

That was what Viola Buddley wanted to know. That was what everybody had been asking everybody else ever since Winifred’s startling conversation with the man from Meadowsweet. So far, nobody had come up with an answer. As soon as he’d hung up the phone, Peter had passed on his astounding piece of non-information to Dr. Svenson and state-police headquarters, then driven Winifred Binks and her bicycle back to the field station. At the moment, she was over in her new house changing out of her deerskins while Peter broke the news about Emmerick to the two full-time members of the field staff.