Nine Man's Murder (23 page)

Jonas tried to forestall the inevitable with a raised palm. “Wait. Surely you’re not going to kill me without telling me how you pulled off the murders?”

As Jonas had hoped, Hayward succumbed to vanity. “Why not? I poisoned Carter’s dinner Friday night and gave Hatter a nonlethal dose. I knew that would cause you to suspect Hatter eventually.

“That afternoon I had climbed up the trellis to Amanda’s window. While she was showering I stole her room key. Unfortunately, on the way down I broke a couple of wooden slats—”

“Jill and I noticed them.”

“So I knew the trellis was no longer safe. From then on I used the ladder from the shed. That night I planted the gun in Amanda’s room and her room key in Reeve’s room, along with the fire poker and note that would bring Reeve to Amanda’s room—and to his death. Later that night I attacked Amanda on the staircase, to set up Reeve’s murder.

“On Saturday morning it was time for Bennett to disappear. I left the inn, still dressed precisely as Bennett had been dressed when I had killed him the day before. When you found the real Bennett’s body, he would be attired exactly as he had been when ‘he’ left the inn Saturday morning. I made certain I was observed leaving, to ensure that Bennett’s body would eventually be sought and found. I didn’t want you looking for him later, and finding me.”

“That’s why you marked the grave. To make sure we’d find the body.”

“Obviously. Later, it was time to kill Amanda. She had locked her door and window—”

“Then how did you get into her room?”

Hayward chuckled. “The same way I broke into Reeve’s room. After I killed Damien on Friday morning, I made a slight modification to Amanda’s window latch. I removed the inner spring and pin. Even with the latch pushed all the way into the locked position, the window is not locked. There’s no pin to hold it in place. A simple push will open the window, even in the locked position. Amanda only thought she had locked the window.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Jonas asked himself.

“I used the ladder from the work shed to climb up to Amanda’s window. I pushed opened the ‘locked’ window and shot her. I unlocked her door and left through the window, leaving it ‘locked.’ But before I killed her, I used the shovel to mark the spot where I had buried Bennett.”

“But why masquerade as Bennett, only to end the charade later?”

“Don’t you see? Only as one of you could I control everything. Besides, there was no place on the mountaintop to hide. Eventually you would search the area, and I would be found. The only safe hiding place was as one of you.

“But as the list of suspects dwindled, it would be more difficult to get away with murder. With fewer people to keep an eye on, I would be too closely watched. But if I—as Bennett—were to die, you would all be focusing on one another—an outsider having already been ruled out—leaving me free to go about my plan unseen, my presence unsuspected.

“Amanda’s window was not the only one I had tampered with. There were others: Reeve’s, Bryan’s, Gideon’s, Carter’s, and yours. After killing Amanda, I hid in Carter’s room until you and Bryan went off in search of Bennett. While you two were out finding his body, I went back outside through Carter’s window and climbed through Gideon’s.”

“And you managed to enter Gideon’s room without leaving him time to get out a cry for help—”

“Because I had broken into the room earlier, while he was out with the rest of you, and drugged his juice. When I later climbed through his window, he was fast asleep. I killed him easily and unlocked the door—since you were to suspect Hatter or Jill—and hid in the library. Then, when Jill raced out of her room in response to your discovery of Gideon’s body—leaving her door unlocked—I slipped into her room and hid in her closet—”

“So that’s how you murdered Jill in a sealed room. You were already in the room when the door was locked, and you managed to leave the room sealed up … because you never left.”

“I had substituted Jill’s medication with sleeping pills before hiding in the closet. Once she was asleep, I crept out and strangled her. I then set her alarm to rouse you all—the next murder had to take place at night, when you would not all be together, so I had to get you out of your locked rooms—and returned to the closet. There were only three of you left—Hatter, Bryan, and yourself—and you had all gathered in Jill’s room. The notion of an outsider had already been dismissed, so I knew you wouldn’t search for anyone else. I waited safely in the closet until the three of you left the room. While you were in the drawing room, I planted your gun in Bryan’s room. When he had rushed out of his room in response to Jill’s alarm, he did not have the presence of mind to lock his door.”

“And then?”

“I figured you would suspect Hatter and lock him in the only room that could not be unlocked from the inside: the library. Which is exactly what you did. I was already waiting in the library storage closet. I shot Hatter a short time later, while his back was turned.”

“That explains the position in which we found Hatter’s body. Face down, his head toward the north windows—which are across the room from the storage closet. His back had thus been to the storage room—and he had been shot in the back. That should have told us he had been shot from the storage closet.”

“The rest you helped me with,” Hayward continued. “By planting your gun in Bryan’s room, I simply allowed you both to fight it out between yourselves. Now all that’s left is to kill you …”

“You can’t hope to get away with it,” Jonas warned desperately.

“I already have. All of the bodies will be buried in the snow. When Max arrives with help this afternoon, all they’ll find is a lone vacationer stranded on a mountaintop.”

“But Max knows how many were brought here.”

“Of course he does. He’s in on it. A fellow inmate from Lakeview. Crazy as a loon. He knows the bridge is blown up. That’s why he’s bringing help. I will be rescued, and no one will ever know that anyone else had been up here. Even if they eventually find the bodies, there’s nothing to tie William Hayward to this gathering. I worked out every detail flawlessly.”

“Every detail but one.”

The words had not come from Jonas. They had materialized behind William Hayward.

Swiftly the gunman turned to face what should have been an empty corridor behind him. In the entrance to the parlor room Jonas and Hayward could see the shape of a man leaning casually against the door jamb.

“Bryan,” Jonas gasped.

59

“B
ut I shot
you,” Jonas protested. “At close range. I couldn’t have missed.”

“Well, I won’t miss,” William Hayward promised just before pulling the trigger. An explosion knocked every complacent thought in the room off its feet; yet Bryan remained standing. Hayward squeezed the trigger again and again, knowing his aim had not strayed—yet had not reached its target, somehow.

With a wisp of a grin, Bryan reached into his pocket, withdrawing a clenched fist that he held outstretched before him. His fingers unfurled to reveal several shells.

“Blanks,” Bryan explained. “I got them from Jonas at the train station.” Again he dipped into his pocket. “Now this,” he added, removing a handgun, “is loaded. I borrowed it from Amanda’s room on Friday night.”

“So that’s how it disappeared,” Hayward muttered.

“Then that battle between us,” Jonas asked Bryan. “You staged the whole thing?”

“It was the only way to flush out the murderer. And of course, if my theory was incorrect—and you were the murderer, Jonas—it was to my advantage that you think me dead.”

“I don’t believe it,” Hayward exclaimed. “You couldn’t have known.”

“For a long time,” Bryan admitted, “I didn’t. You came quite close to getting away with it.”

“What gave him away?” Jonas asked.

“It was a number of little things, none of them conclusive in itself. For instance, one of the murderer’s notes had mentioned writing a book about us and being sued for ‘slander.’ Of course, anyone with a legal background knows that you wouldn’t be sued for slander, but libel. The thing is—and I pointed this out at the time—Damien gave us all a very thorough legal background.

“This was my first indication that the murderer was not really a detective—at least not one trained by Damien. But, as I said, it was not conclusive in itself. However, I did begin to notice that the murderer’s notes made liberal use of some technical film terms: ‘premiere,’ ‘spotlight,’ ‘scenario,’ ‘fade to black.’ That, in conjunction with the reference to the movie Nine Man Morris, made me start to suspect that our killer might be someone involved in the film industry—specifically, someone who had worked on Nine Man Morris—masquerading as a detective.

“And when Jill reminded us about William Hayward’s abilities as a makeup artist, I began to consider the possibility of a deranged William Hayward—who had recently been released from an asylum—having disguised himself as one of us, to avenge his brother’s death. In other words, that one of us was an impostor. The question was, which one? And that, Hayward, was where you gave yourself away.”

“How?”

“Damien had been stabbed through the aorta, yet the wound had scarcely bled—a fact to which I myself alluded. But a knife wound through a major artery—especially one near the surface of the skin—should have bled profusely. To a trained detective this could only have meant one thing: Damien was already dead when he was stabbed. This view was supported by the blow to his head that we found. The killer had knocked Damien out first, and, not realizing that the blow had been fatal, he then stabbed his victim.

“But as Bennett, you made a grave mistake. You expressed the belief that Damien had died of the knife wound, when you pointed out how quickly the victims had died. That suggested to me that Bennett was no detective.

“This conclusion was reinforced by other things. On several occasions you—that is, ‘Bennett’—had used terms normally reserved for the film industry. When we were trying to interpret the murderer’s second note, you talked about getting it right ‘on the first take.’ You also spoke of ‘standing in’ for me with Jill. This suggested a background and training that had more to do with film than private investigation.”

“It all sounds pretty flimsy to me, West.”

“And so it was. That is, if it hadn’t been for a more substantial discrepancy. One that had been bothering me for some time. The detonator.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“We had all assumed that the explosive that had blown up the bridge had been set by the murderer on Friday morning, after he had killed Damien. But, if you remember, it had rained heavily before we left the train station Friday afternoon. Later we found the detonator behind a rock—uncovered. It was housed in a balsa wood box.

“Balsa wood absorbs water readily. If the box had been placed there on Friday morning, before the afternoon rain, exposed as we found it, it should have been waterlogged when we discovered it. But it was bone dry—as you noted, Jonas. The entire day had been overcast: There had been no sun to dry it out. Which meant the detonator could not have been placed there before the rain. It was planted after the rain—and therefore, after we arrived. Planted by one of us.

“But the only one of us to have left the inn between our arrival and the explosion was Bennett. So there, I reasoned, was proof that Bennett had set the charge—as he was the only one who could have—and was our man.”

“But that’s not the way it happened,” Hayward objected. “When Bennett left the inn, he went straight to meet me—and I had already set the explosive, after Max had driven off and I had recrossed the bridge.”

“Yes, I realize that now. But at the time, I didn’t question my conclusion—that is, until we found Bennett’s body. Which was when it all fell apart—there went my prime suspect. I must hand it to you, Hayward, that threw me completely off course. And it took me a long time to get back on track.

“After a while, however, the logical conclusion began to force itself on me. If the explosive had been set after we arrived, and not by Bennett or the rest of us, then there was only one other possible explanation—a tenth person had to have planted it after our arrival at Moon’s End. Of course, it took quite a while for me to come to this conclusion—since we had already ruled out a tenth person.

“It wasn’t until I confronted something else that had been troubling me that I began to take this theory more seriously. From the beginning, I had felt there was something about the reunion that was not quite right—aside from the fact that the guests were all being murdered. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what that was.

“If the reunion had all been a sham—if Damien had never sent those invitations—then what had Bill been doing at Owen’s Reef? Who had sent a truck to meet us at the train station, if Damien hadn’t? And if ‘Aaron’ was just a masquerade—if Damien had never really hired a caretaker named Aaron—how could Bill have known about him? Clearly Bill was in on it—the elusive tenth person.”

“Unless Bill had been an innocent dupe,” Jonas suggested. “That is, what if the murderer had arranged with Bennett to masquerade as Aaron, and then simply hired Bill, telling him about Aaron?”

“Then how did Bill recognize Aaron? As the mute Aaron, Bennett never uttered a word—never identified himself as Aaron—yet Bill knew him on sight.”

“The murderer described Aaron to Bill.”