Nine Man's Murder (17 page)

Bryan and Jonas returned, wearing coats and gloves.

“You two be careful,” Jonas told Hatter and Jill, “in case Bennett returns.”

Before leaving, Bryan asked Jill, “How was Bennett dressed when you saw him leave?”

“He was still wearing his work shirt and those white overalls.” She added, as an afterthought, “And the tan-colored down jacket he was wearing yesterday afternoon.”

“Not camouflaged,” Jonas said. “This should be easy.”

Bryan did not look as convinced.

46

G
ideon unlocked the
door to his room and wheeled himself inside, locking the door after him. The window latch was still pressed in, locked. On the writing table sat the open juice can he had sealed in the room. He guzzled what remained in the can. Warm, but he didn’t care.

It had been an exhausting day. His body melted into the wheelchair.

It was just before he fell asleep that the unwanted thoughts came. The people here were not to blame for his condition. They had done nothing. And yet someone had tampered with that trap door.

Gideon unthinkingly reached for … Where was the crucifix normally dangling from his neck? That’s right, the jeweler was repairing a break in one of the chain’s weaker links. It was not God who had pulled that lever, but a human being. God’s fairness must never be questioned.

Gideon felt woozy. Perhaps the stress of the weekend? All of a sudden, he could barely keep his eyes open. Stay alert, Gideon. You’ve got enemies out there.

He shouldn’t be bitter. He had survived. Four people dead so far, but he was still alive.

For years he had wondered who it had been—who had sabotaged that trap door. Until he knew who was responsible, he would have to blame everyone. It was not a matter of revenge. There would simply be no peace until he could finally put it to rest, settle the matter once and for all.

Until that time, the only repose he knew was in the serene oblivion of sleep.

* * *

T
he recently fallen
snow swaddled the mountaintop. For the moment, nature favored Bennett by effacing his footprints. If not for the fresh snowfall, finding him would have been as simple as following his tracks. Now method would have to replace luck, starting with a search of the garage and work shed.

Both were empty, yet something in the work shed was not the same. An item was missing. Everything seemed to be in its place: the tools in their racks, the extension ladder still hanging on the wall, the garden hose coiled in the corner. And then Jonas realized what it was. The work shed shovel had disappeared.

“Why would Bennett do it?” Jonas asked as they combed the mountaintop. “Why murder his former classmates? Revenge for a handful of pranks at his expense fifteen years ago?”

“I think it might be more serious than that. As that note he received implied, all of us were in a position to expose his theft of Capaldi’s ledger to the police. Gideon was his accomplice. Jill and I were actually there, with Hatter nearby. Reeve worked for Capaldi, and Damien was on his payroll, as well. He didn’t know if Carter was in on it with Damien. Amanda was investigating Capaldi, as were you and I.”

“So he had to silence us all, to protect himself?”

“So it seems.”

Despite the lack of footprints, the odds frowned on Bennett’s chance of winning a game of hide-and-seek on a mountaintop offering no hiding places. His pursuers had passed through a cluster of narrow-trunked trees when Jonas stopped and stared across a clearing.

“What is it?” Bryan asked.

“I’m not sure.” Jonas pointed. “Over there.”

“Looks like some kind of marker. Whatever it is, it wasn’t there when we searched the area yesterday.”

The men’s approach brought the object into sharper focus: the missing shovel from the work shed, its head buried in the snow.

Seizing the shovel, Jonas began to dig for answers.

“There’s something down there.”

“Bring it up.”

Like a sculptor, Jonas chipped away at the ice and snow to free the image trapped within.

It was Bennett.

“He’s been here for some time,” Jonas observed. “Long enough to have gotten this cold.”

“Which makes it impossible to tell exactly how long.”

“A good many hours, at least. He was probably murdered shortly after Jill saw him leave the inn this morning.”

“When everyone was on their own—leaving the murderer free to slip out of the inn, murder Bennett, and return unnoticed. Which means it could have been anyone.”

The men scoured the corpse with expert eyes. Unquestionably Bennett was dead; yet his unbruised limbs betrayed no sign of a struggle. The only evidence of violence was a large stain of congealed blood discoloring Bennett’s work shirt around the deep knife wound in his chest. Spurts of blood tarnished his tan down jacket as well, but his unsoiled white pants had been spared blemish of any kind. The men examined the chest wound.

“Stabbed through the heart,” Jonas noted.

“This is the first murder to have taken place away from the inn,” Bryan mused. “I wonder why.”

“Greater privacy? No one around to witness the murder.”

“True. But at the same time, there’s greater risk—that the murderer’s absence from the inn might be noticed—and his identity thus given away. The murderer took a big chance coming here. What made him so certain he could get away with it? One would think the risk—of exposure—to have outweighed the advantages. And this killer is not one who takes chances.”

“Which brings up another question. What was Bennett doing out here?”

“It seems unlikely that Bennett would wander this far for no reason.”

“Not with a killer on the loose,” Jonas agreed. “Which means that the murderer must have arranged with Bennett to meet here. But under what kind of pretext, I wonder?”

“Especially when Bennett must have been suspicious of any arrangement as questionable as a private meeting in an isolated place outside the inn. When he knew one of us is a murderer.”

“And then there’s the question of how Bennett could have been taken so completely by surprise—without even putting up a fight—when he should have been on his guard, knowing that at least three other murders had already been committed.”

They examined the body further, with an unexpected result. From the left front pocket of Bennett’s overalls Jonas withdrew a small object.

“The cigarette lighter,” he exclaimed. “The one we gave Bennett—thinking he was Aaron the caretaker—when we first arrived here.”

“The one he later denied having.”

“Was he lying? Did he have it the entire time?”

“When we asked him about the lighter, he truly seemed puzzled.”

“Besides, what would he be trying to conceal by lying? Clearly he’s not the murderer.”

“And anyway, Reeve searched him, remember? And didn’t find the lighter.”

“Could he have missed it?”

Both men dismissed the likelihood.

The corners of Bryan’s eyes crinkled. “Which leaves us the alternative explanation. Someone, undoubtedly the murderer, stole the lighter from him. Why? Because it provides a clue to the killer’s identity? If so, why did he return it to Bennett—to the very pocket from which it had been taken?”

“To get rid of the evidence?” Jonas suggested. “Bury it with Bennett?”

“And then mark the grave?” Bryan’s eyes stole down to Jonas’ hand. “Let’s have a look at that cigarette lighter.”

The lighter was an ordinary silver model, in working condition. No monogram, no unusual markings of any kind. Nor any out-of-the-ordinary signs of wear. Nothing, in fact, that could be construed as a clue, nor anything that pointed to its owner’s identity.

They decided to leave Bennett’s body where it was, re-covering the hole with snow.

“It seems obvious,” Bryan said, “that our killer planted this shovel because he wanted us to find Bennett’s body.”

“Then why did he kill Bennett way out here—and bury him? There was no guarantee that anyone would see Bennett leave the inn—and burying him would certainly not increase our odds of finding him. If the killer wanted us to find Bennett’s body, why not just leave it out here on the snow, for us to find? By burying it, the murderer was taking a chance that no one would discover the body at all.”

“Of course,” Bryan said, “he could have been trying to conceal the murder; but then, if he did not want the body to be found, why mark the grave?”

Which left them with more questions than answers. Never before had they been so baffled.

But things were to become more baffling yet.

47

“W
hat have you
got there?” Bryan asked as he and Jonas returned to the inn.

“The murderer’s second note,” Jonas replied. “Listen: ‘… the next victim has already been chosen. In fact, I have a special surprise in store for him: one he’ll never guess, though I’m sure he’ll take a stab at it.’ Anything strike you about those lines?”

“Aside from the dreadful melodrama?”

“Be serious, Bryan. It sounds to me like our killer was saying that the next victim would be male. Note the repetition of ‘he’ and ‘him.’ But the victim we found after this note was Amanda.”

“Read it to me again.” Jonas obliged. “Yes, he was referring to Bennett. Even the phrase ‘take a stab at it’ hints at the method he intended to use.”

“If Bennett, rather than Amanda, was intended as the next victim, then—”

“The victims were killed—or at least discovered—out of order.”

“Which means that the murderer killed Amanda sooner than he had planned to,” Jonas concluded. “Why?”

“Remember when Amanda wanted to talk to you but didn’t? I think she knew something, or was working something out. And the murderer knew it. He had to eliminate her before she could pass her knowledge on to anyone else. Hence, she was murdered ahead of schedule.” Bryan stopped walking. “I thought there was something wrong about her murder. It just seemed too rushed.”

Bennett, they had concluded, had to have been murdered and buried in the snow that morning, for him to have been as cold as he was when they discovered him. That very fact, unfortunately, made it impossible to determine how long he had been buried. And therefore to pinpoint the exact time of death.

Which made the question of alibis academic—for Bennett’s murder. But not for Amanda’s.

Everyone had an alibi for Amanda’s murder. Everyone except Bennett. But Bennett had clearly been killed in the morning, Amanda in the afternoon. Bennett could not have murdered her, for he was already dead by then. So who had?

“It wasn’t suicide,” Jonas argued, “with no gun found in her room. Yet according to what we know, no one could have killed her. Makes you want to reconsider Hatter’s ghost theory, doesn’t it?”

Bryan frowned. “There’s only one alternative. Someone’s alibi is vulnerable.”

Hatter had been in the library, Jonas in the parlor room, and Bryan in the billiard room. Gideon and Jill had been together in the drawing room. Something had been overlooked …

“You corroborated Hatter’s alibi,” Bryan said. “You and I substantiate each other’s. As for Gideon and Jill, we have only their word for it that they were together in the drawing room. No one actually saw them there.”

“But to lie for someone—”

“Unless they’re in on it together.”

Jonas nodded. “That has to be how it was done. So we know one of them is the murderer. But Gideon could not have climbed the stairs to kill Amanda.” An imperceptible pause. “Which leaves Jill.”

But Bryan seemed reserved. “The first rule Damien taught us was to question every assumption. For instance: How do we know that Gideon does not have the use of his legs?”

“We know for a fact he fell and damaged his spine.”

“Ah, but to what extent? And to what extent has he recovered in fifteen years?”

“So his wheelchair provides him with the perfect alibi. He couldn’t have attacked Amanda on the staircase last night. He couldn’t have stolen the guns from the basement. He couldn’t have hidden Damien’s body in the upstairs closet. And he couldn’t have killed Amanda this afternoon.” Jonas’ eyes glistened in the fading twilight. “Or could he?”

“But why murder everyone? Unless … unless he blames us for his accident, and whatever damage he actually suffered. And wants revenge.”

“Gideon never knew who tampered with that trap door. And then suddenly Bennett comes along and tells him it may have been one of us. Only he doesn’t say which one. The only way for certain to repay the culprit would be—”

“To kill us all.”

48

T
hey found Hatter
in the entry hall, carrying a sealed jar of olives. “Any luck?” he asked indifferently as he led them into the parlor room, where he settled, removing a pad and pen from his pocket.

“Depends on how you mean it.”

“You found Bennett, didn’t you?” Hatter spoke with the arcane fatalism of a Delphic priest interpreting an omen. “And he was dead.”

Resisting an urge to ask Hatter how he knew, Jonas merely said, “Stabbed through the heart.”