No Mortal Reason (21 page)

“I still have the other murders to cover for him. I may as well add this one. I am over the first shock. Indeed, I believe I will feel much less disturbed by what I saw if I write—”

She broke off when she saw his expression and winced when she realized what she’d just let slip.

“The other murders?” Ben asked in a deceptively calm voice. “What murder besides Elly Lyseth’s are you investigating, Diana?”

“I intended to tell you. Horatio Foxe sent a second telegram asking me to write a piece on the Sailor Jack case. That’s why I wanted to speak to Mr. Buckley.” She aimed a too-bright smile his way.

The pulse in Ben’s neck began to throb, a warning sign that his temper was coming to a boil.

“You knew what I did for a living when you asked me to marry you.”

“I wanted to take you away from all that.”

“Are you saying I must choose between you and my career?”

He hesitated a moment too long.

“No. Don’t answer now. I don’t want to hear it. I have a job to do, Ben. I need to do it or I
will
become one of those frail, weepy females.”

Neither of them said anything more for the short distance that remained before they reached Liberty. Ben drove straight to the telegraph office and while Diana sent her news story to Horatio Foxe and a second telegram to Mrs. Curran, asking her to reply in a like manner rather than by post to the letter she had already sent, Ben composed messages to his mother and to the doctor caring for his brother.

He found Diana fuming when he finished.

“This is outrageous,” she complained. “I am entitled to the privileges of the press.”

“Nobody gets special privileges here, ma’am. This isn’t Western Union.”

“
That
is obvious. I’ve never even heard of J.& L. Telegraph.”

The telegraph operator continued as if she hadn’t spoken, and seemed unmoved by the content of her lengthy telegram. “The rates to all points on the line are ten cents for ten words. Messages to be transferred to the Western Union cost ten cents additional.”

Diana turned to Ben. “I haven’t enough money.”

“I’ll pay for all the telegrams.” There was no advantage to him in trying to prevent her from contacting Foxe.

A few minutes later they were back out on the unpaved and dusty street. “I suppose it is pointless now to show that blank document to the constable.”

“Probably,” Ben agreed. “Shall we head back to the hotel? The coroner will have questions for us, and you did say you had a few for him as well.”

When he’d first planned this drive into town, he’d also intended to tell Diana about her grandfather and suggest a visit to Isaac Torrence, but there was no sense in burdening her with such an announcement today. There wasn’t time to pay a visit and she had more than enough on her plate as it was.

He wasn’t happy about the way she was dealing with finding a body, or that she had kept the contents of Foxe’s second telegram from him, but she was right about one thing. He did not want a fragile female for a wife. He wanted Diana, flaws and all.

Chapter Ten

They returned to Lenape Springs to find that Coroner Buckley had convened the inquest. Diana wasn’t surprised. The fact that Norman Saugus’s body was no longer in the cornfield indicated that a coroner’s jury had already viewed it and moved on to the next stage of their duties.

“Mr. Buckley is not happy you two left before he could question you,” Mrs. Ellington informed them.

Diana suspected he’d be even less pleased when he found out where they’d gone and why. She was sure it was only a matter of time before Mr. Buckley discovered that she was a newspaper reporter.

“They’re in the main dining room,” Mrs. Ellington added, leading the way. “With half the town crowding in, it seemed the best place.”

Diana’s steps faltered. “Does that mean I’ll have to answer questions before an audience?” she whispered to Ben. Giving testimony suddenly seemed uncomfortably similar to being on stage. She hoped she wouldn’t mumble her lines or, worse, forget what she’d meant to say.

“Just concentrate on Mr. Buckley,” Ben advised. “Ignore everyone else in the room.”

That was easier said than done. Mrs. Ellington, who returned to her own duties once she’d delivered Diana and Ben to the dining room, had not exaggerated when she’d said half the town was there—the male half. Diana was the only woman present.

“Mrs. Northcote, I presume?” Buckley said.

Diana took an instant dislike to him. Spectacles perched on his long, thin nose, he reminded her of a pompous schoolmaster she’d once had. His attitude was equally annoying. Supercilious, she decided. Condescending.

Glaring at him, she felt her chin come up and her spine stiffen. When he indicated that she should take the makeshift “witness” chair, she obliged with a hauteur of her own.

“Now, then,” Buckley said, “we’ll try to keep this brief.” After he swore her in, he asked, perfunctorily, “You are Mrs. Benjamin Northcote?”

Diana swallowed, struck not by stage fright but by a different kind of panic. Would she be breaking the law if she lied? And yet, how could she not? To reveal, here before all these people, that she was living in sin with a man not her husband, was impossible.

“Mrs. Northcote?” Mr. Buckley sounded impatient.

Diana cleared her throat. “I prefer to be addressed by the name I use professionally,” she said. “As Diana Spaulding I write a column called ‘Today’s Tidbits’ for the
Independent Intelligencer
.”

She heard a startled gasp and a few mutters as previously unenlightened spectators absorbed this information. The coroner looked as if he’d stepped in something nasty and moved a bit farther away from her. “Very well, Miss Spaulding, I—”

“Mrs. Spaulding. I was a widow when I met Dr. Northcote.”

“Very well,
Mrs.
Spaulding, will you tell us, please, how you came to discover Mr. Saugus’s remains.”

She kept the account factual and brief, having no desire to revisit the unpleasant details. She breathed a sigh of relief when he seemed satisfied. In spite of the mistrust she’d generated by revealing her profession, Mr. Buckley was clearly a gentleman who’d been brought up treat ladies courteously. She took ruthless advantage of this weakness by feigning a need for Ben’s support when she left the witness chair.

Once Diana’s testimony had been recorded on paper, she was dismissed. If she
had
been a proper lady, she’d have taken her departure at once. Instead, she remained, at the back of the dining room, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, while Ben took her place to answer questions. 

“You examined the body?” Mr. Buckley asked after he’d established Ben’s identity and credentials.

“Yes, I did. I estimate he’d been dead for several hours.”

“Killed during the night then?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Northcote, keeping in mind that mere matter of opinion is not legal testimony, do you have any more to add about the circumstances of Mr. Saugus’s death?”

“He was killed elsewhere and brought to the cornfield. I observed signs that a wagon had been driven into the field and that a heavy object—the body—had been dragged from those tracks to the scarecrow.”

Diana stifled a gasp. Ben hadn’t shared that tidbit with her.

“So he was moved under cover of darkness?” the coroner asked.

“I’d say so, yes.”

Buckley nodded, as if to himself. “Well, then. That should do it.”

When the coroner turned to address his jurors, Ben joined Diana by the door. “Shall we go?”

“I want to hear what they decide.”

“They have little choice. This time the death is clearly murder. And just as clearly, there is no suspect who can be charged.”

“We missed earlier witnesses, if there were any. I want to hear what the jury has to say.”

Yielding, Ben propped his shoulders against the doorframe, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and waited while Mr. Buckley reminded the jurors of their choices.

“Murder is the killing of a human being, without the authority of law, by poison, shooting, stabbing, or any other means, or in any other manner. It is either murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, excusable homicide, or justifiable homicide, according to the facts and circumstances of the case. The charge shall be murder in the first degree when it is perpetrated from a pre-meditated design to effect the death of the person killed, or of any human being.”

Buckley paused to let that sink in, then rattled off the remaining definitions, seemingly just to get them out of the way.

“It is murder in the second degree when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.”

“Not that,” Diana murmured. Not in Saugus’s case, at any rate.

“It is murder in the third degree when perpetrated in committing the crime of arson in the first degree.”

Diana and Ben exchanged a glance. She wondered if she should investigate more thoroughly the laws on arson. They might prove relevant even now.

“The killing of one human being by the act, procurement, or omission of another, in cases where such killing shall not be murder under the statute is either justifiable or excusable homicide or manslaughter,” Mr. Buckley continued.

He’d obviously memorized the statutes, and went quickly through manslaughter in the first, second, third, and fourth degrees. The latter, Diana thought, would apply if Elly Lyseth had been struck down during a quarrel. This was deemed “excusable” homicide, “justifiable” being an adjective reserved for homicides committed by public officers and those acting by their command in their aid and assistance.

Mr. Buckley had barely finished his list of options before the jurors agreed that murder in the first degree had been done by person or persons unknown. He dismissed them, with his thanks, and waited until the room had cleared before turning his attention to Diana and Ben. “You will be required to appear and testify at the next criminal court at which an indictment for this offense can be found.”

“And when will that be?” Ben asked.

“Hard to say. Depends on whether the villain who committed this heinous crime can be identified. You wouldn’t have any ideas on that, would you?” With a deliberate motion, he put his transcript of the proceedings away, indicating that he was not asking the question in his official capacity.

“None at all,” Diana said.

“A pity. I’d have thought a journalist would be snooping already.”

“I am also a guest at this hotel, Mr. Buckley, vulnerable to the same kind of attack that ended Norman Saugus’s life. Until the local authorities discover who killed him and arrest that person, I fear for my own safety. Indeed, I fear for my very life.”

“Very melodramatic, Mrs. Northcote, but hardly relevant.”

“My wife has a point, Buckley,” Ben interrupted. “Will you extend the professional courtesy of keeping me appraised of your progress in—”

A crack of laughter cut short his request.  Buckley looked first at Diana, then at Ben, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. “Professional courtesy,” he repeated. “Because she fears for her life!”

Diana slanted a glance at Ben and found a slow smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “What is so funny?” she hissed at him.

“I think you have to be in medicine or law enforcement to understand this type of humor,” he whispered back.

She felt like a child who’d been patted on the head and told to let the grown ups worry about it. All that stopped her from snapping at the coroner was the level look he gave Ben when he stopped chortling.

“All right, Dr. Northcote,” he said, pulling out chairs at one of the tables for them. “I’ll tell you and your reporter what I think, but only because I want your ideas. No holding back, eh? After all, you’ve got no personal stake in this. These people are all strangers to you.”

“That’s right. Or rather, they were strangers until last Friday. But I have had time since to get to know a few of them.” Ben settled Diana at the table before seating himself.

“Three days?”

“Some men inspire instant dislike,” Ben told him. “Others radiate honesty.”

“Very true,” Buckley agreed, taking the third chair and leaning forward on his bony elbows. “What’s your opinion of Howard Grant?”

“He’s not a killer.” Ben spoke up before Diana could.

“Odd, though, that he’s disappeared.”

“Do you plan to send someone after him?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Howd Grant wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Diana protested, tired of being ignored by the coroner.

Buckley looked skeptical.

Outraged on her uncle’s behalf, Diana found herself telling Mr. Buckley their suspicions about Saugus’s business practices. “The man must have left a trail of fraud victims in his wake,” she concluded. “Any one of them could have followed him here to take revenge.”

She was about to advance her alternate theories, especially the one that involved local opposition to expanding the hotel as a motive, when the coroner cut in.

“But his most recent victims have the best motive, don’t you think, Mrs. Northcote? Especially since Mr. Saugus quarreled with Myron Grant only hours before he was murdered.”

“How—?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice that the corpse had a black eye? When I asked her about it, Mrs. Saugus reluctantly admitted there had been a fight in their suite. She said you were both there, together with Howard Grant. She made no accusations, and claimed not to know what it was that provoked the fisticuffs, but it is obvious Myron Grant was angry at Mr. Saugus. Perhaps angry enough to kill?”

“He calmed down,” Diana protested.

“And Howd Grant was with his brother afterward,” Ben put in.

“Not all night. Either one of them could have met up with Saugus again before dawn. His wife tells me that when he couldn’t sleep he often went out for a breath of air.”

Diana frowned. Why
hadn’t
Belle Saugus accused Uncle Myron outright? Much as Diana hated to admit it, he
was
the obvious suspect. If Mrs. Saugus had come forward as a witness, claiming Myron wanted her husband dead, the coroner’s jury would probably have ordered his arrest. A word from her even now and he’d be on his way to the county jail.