Corpses at Indian Stone (20 page)

"Easily," said Aggie.

"Beth," Sarah went on. "Beth was asleep in bed, I imagine. Bill too, and Martha.

Bill and Beth hated their father. I don't know that either of them hated George Davis.

But--again--if George had found out that they'd committed patricide--"

"Asleep in bed!" Wes muttered. "Try and disprove that one!"

"Jack Browne," Sarah continued. "Calder had done plenty to that boy. Caused his father to kill himself--which is supposed to have brought about his mother's death.

Deprived him of his inheritance. Jack-of course! He was up at the club all night. Asleep?"

She looked at Wes.

"Asleep," said Wes, with a sigh. "So he says."

"And old John," she went on. "Calder even robbed old John! And where old John was, from the time I went to bed that night--till I woke Aggie at four, only old John knows. And there are a good many other people here who--!"

"This," Wes said abruptly, "is getting us nowhere!"

Sarah checked herself and agreed. "A mountain of evidence--and a roomful of candidates--but not one ounce of certainty even about what happened. Aggie, you've disappointed me."

There was the sound of a car in the drive. It stopped under the porte-cochère. Beth walked to the screen door and leaned into the living room. "Bill and Martha and I are going swimming," she said. "It's hot as a baked brick! We'll turn on the boathouse floodlights--and probably collect a crowd. Want to come?"

"Maybe later," Aggie said.

Beth smiled at Wes. "How about you?"

"Thanks. I'm leaving. I've still got a lot of foraging to do tonight."

Beth said, "You be sure to come, Aggie. Do you good to dunk your beard. Bring Danielle, if you like. There's a light in her living room and her coupes in the drive."

Aggie flushed.

Wes stared at him with incredulity. "You aren't toying with that blonde heartbreaker, Aggie, are you?"

"Certainly not!"

Sarah snorted.

Wes went to the door. "Well, I'm going. I've got to look up some men in a tavern about twenty miles down the line. They think they saw a guy like Bogarty buying gas, on the night in question. While I'm at it, I may push on to catch a black-jack dealer in Saratoga who believes Bogarty put up at his aunt's tourist home in western New York. It's been like that--for a long time." He grinned. "Thanks at lot, Aggie, for all the help. Don't think I don't appreciate it."

The professor waved his hand. "Incidentally," he said, "just to keep the record straight: where were you the night Calder--and so forth?"

The trooper stared with an irritability that became amusement. "To tell the truth, I was about three miles on the other side of Garnet Knob, watching some yokels open up a night-running still. So I haven't any alibi either, Aggie. Good night!"

After he had gone there was a long silence. Sarah finally said, "I feel out of it, you know. Neither of you put the finger on me!" When Aggie did not answer, she turned to look at him. He literally had not heard. He was lying on the inglenook seat, with his feet hanging over the end, banging his forehead with his fist as if it were a door. Sarah smirked. "Don't beat your brains out, Aggie. They may be a nuisance now, but perhaps you can use 'em later for something."

He sat bolt upright. "Listen, Sarah! Don't jump and don't scream! I think your old friend Hank is alive--and I think I know where he is!"

CHAPTER 16

Sarah Plum looked at her talented nephew for a full minute with an expression of electrified anticipation. In that time he had risen from the inglenook seat, made a complete circuit of the room, lighted his pipe, set it on the center table beside the silver fox, forgotten it, and started to hunt for it. Sarah pointed at the pipe. "Well?"

"We've been making more sense than we thought," he replied. "But what to do next is the question."

"If you'd care to enlighten a poor old woman who is about to explode with excitement--"

He gazed at her. "Enlighten you? First, I've got to enlighten myself. Then I'll discuss things with you." He started toward the front door and stopped as he reached it.

"Be back in a few minutes. Fifteen. Look. Remember--some time ago--you told me that you'd once found an old plan of the original hotel? The--Sachem House? The one that burned?"

"Certainly. I found the drawings in the club library. That's how I learned about the old cellar with the strong room in it."

"You got 'em?"

"The plans? Of course not! As soon as we'd decided to dig out that strong room on the quiet--I burned them."

"Big help," he said. "While I'm gone--draw 'em--from memory."

"Draw plans I destroyed thirty-some years ago? Are you batty?"

"You said I was." He grinned and went out, slamming the screen. He came right back. "Flashlight," he said. "Where is it?"

"Aggie, don't be in such a dither! The light's on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, where it always is!"

He crossed the room and picked it up. "You might try to catch Wes by telephone--

though the prospects aren't hot. Tell him I have another idea. And as for being in a dither-

-when Jim Calder and George Davis were dead--that was one thing. An--academic thing.

But I don't think Hank is dead--and that's entirely non-academic--in view of the fact that he might be killed any minute, hour, or day!"

In spite of the heat of the night, he ran to the road and turned in the direction of Upper Lake. The hypotheses he had propounded to Wes Wickman had been mental exercises rather than deliberate explorations of possibilities. But one of them--the theory that somebody might have been using Hank Bogarty's possessions to simulate his presence--so neatly fitted the circumstances that it had hung suspended in Aggie's brain.

It brought him, first, to the old consideration of where Hank's body might be if Hank was dead; second, to the new notion that Hank could, conceivably, be alive and confined somewhere. Aggie realized the difficulties in keeping any man--and especially a man such as Hank was supposed to be--under lock and key. Moreover, he'd have to be fed, probably, to be still alive-and he'd have to get water, surely.

But, as Aggie allowed that notion to percolate through his mind, Beth had arrived to invite him to go swimming. Aggie had spent the whole evening in a discussion of every oddity and abnormality connected with Indian Stones since his arrival, so the mention of swimming, coming as it did, while he was wondering where and how a man like Bogarty could possibly be held, recalled the statement made by Mrs. Drayman about algae in the water of Upper Lake. That statement pulled together a host of seemingly irrelevant ideas. Their integration represented a wild guess. But Aggie had confidence in it. A quick trip to Upper Lake was imperative.

The "beach" on that lake--where Mrs. Drayman preferred to swim, owing to its proximity to her house--was a short, narrow strip of natural sand. No attempt had been made to extend it by trucking in more sand, as at Lower Lake. A small brook had carried in the sand, year by year, and the waves had arranged it.

Aggie trotted up to the beach and swirled on his light. The water was disappointingly clear. Clear--but stained, perhaps. It certainly looked more brownish than the water of Lower Lake. He scooped up a handful and tasted it. No peculiar flavor. He hurried along the strip of sand to the mouth of the brook, wishing it was daylight so that he could define colors more accurately. The stream gurgled into the lake from a tier of pools shored up by mossy ledges. It was distinctly brownish. Since it was presumably spring-fed, the stream should have been crystal clear. Aggie thought that Mrs. Drayman would readily assume that a sudden darkening of the water on the beach was due to

"algae" and that it was "unhealthy"--two notions that had nothing, essentially, to do with fact. Mrs. Drayman's opinions were forceful--and her interest in fact was always swayed by convenience.

Aggie plunged into the woods and followed the stream up the hill. Now and again he examined it to make sure he was also following the brownness in it. The brook threaded its way between trees and glacial boulders for an eighth of a mile and came to an end in a gravelly bowl. This emergence represented the spring that fed the brook. It was, in reality, the spot where the stream ceased to run underground. The water in the bowl was even darker than the water farther down. On the bottom were myriad small squares of torn-up paper. He dipped into the basin and examined some of the fragments.

Paper from a notebook and from what had probably been a tin-can label. Aggie shone his light at the surrounding rocks and studied them. He estimated the location of the spring.

The clubhouse lay above him, several hundred yards to the southwest.

He ran back to the lake shore and started for the road. On his way he passed a small pier at which two or three rowboats were moored. A voice spoke from one of them.

"Hello, Aggie."

He spun around. "Danielle! I heard you were back!"

"What the deuce are you doing--whizzing around in the woods?"

"What are you doing--sitting in a boat alone?"

"Thinking. Just--thinking. I was going to come over to see you and Sarah, by and by. How is she?"

"Much better. Well, I've got to push on."

"You're in a terrible hurry!"

"Yes," he said. "I am."

"Won't you talk to me awhile?"

He was already moving away. "Can't. Busy. See you tomorrow." He ran again.

When he came back to the living room at Rainbow Lodge, he found Sarah bent over a large piece of brown paper, with a pencil and a ruler. "I take it," she said, "you believe somebody's hidden Hank under the club?"

"Yeah. I'm sure of it, now." He looked over her shoulder. "Yeah. That's the way it goes. The plan of the wine cellar is perfect. I think the passage to the strong room goes more north and less east. But it'll do." He watched her erase and make the change. "Yeah.

Like that. Do you remember any other cellar space? Anything they might have covered up? Anything the fire itself might have covered up?"

"I honestly don't, Aggie. I
think
there was some. But maybe that's just a wish. I have a vague recollection it would be around in back--say, where the sun parlor is now.

Part of the Sachem Hotel was built up on bare rock-carved and blasted out. It might have been that. I know that the foundations were so strong, everywhere, that the architect used all he could and built new ones only where he was compelled to. There was a note about it in those plans--and the old foundations were all in dotted lines. The Sachem House, though, was perfectly rectangular--"

Aggie slapped his hands together. "That's something! If we could find two opposite corners--hunh?"

"And it was smaller than the club. Much narrower." Aggie thought. "Which means--if there's still some unexplored cellar--the old entrance might have been in a place now outdoors. Here's the thing. If I were Hank, and if I were being kept underground--

and if--mind you--if--I had a spring on a rivulet or even a sink-hole in my prison--one that ran in and out--as it would have to do in order not to fill my prison full--well, I'd muck up the spring in the hope somebody would notice the muck. But--suppose the place was rock? Old oak beams overhead, say, and perhaps a mess of roots coming through cracks in the stone? There's a lot of sumac around the club. Suppose I had a pot or a pan or a kettle. Well, I'd boil up the wood and the roots, if I could. Make a brown stew and pour that in the spring. I'd tear up all the paper I could--and add it too. The rocks round here are ferrous. I might put some of them in, if it was possible to stew anything. Then--if the tannin in the roots would act at all on the iron in the rocks, I'd get something really good. Tannic acid and iron salts are the basis of the earliest inks. I'd keep staining that water, knowing that I wasn't far from the lake and that the spring must flow into it. And I'd keep praying that somebody would notice that the lake, at some point, was becoming an unprecedented, color, and that whoever noticed would investigate. Since I was being held by force, and since I'd sent word that I was coming, I'd expect people to be looking for me. The police. And I'd expect the police to investigate the change in the water. Not--

expect,
maybe. But I'd
hope!"

Sarah had just listened--with her mouth open and her gray eyes very alive. When her nephew stopped talking, she said, "Aggie, that's the first thing a soul has said about what Hank might or might not do that sounds like him! What put you on the track of a stain in Upper Lake?"

He sat down and covered his face with his hands. "Mrs. Drayman. She wouldn't swim in it."

Sarah frowned. "Lots of excavations hit springs. As far as stewing up a mess of roots and rocks--wouldn't it smother him to make a fire?"

Aggie shrugged. "We don't know." "He was an engineer--of course--"

"Exactly. So he'd know about the rocks. About the iron in 'em. And he raised silver foxes--so he knows about fur and tanning--and tanning involves using tannic acid--

that's what the word comes from."

"I wish I could remember," she said, "some spot on those old drawings that was marked 'Hit water here'--but I can't."

Aggie grinned at her and returned to her side. He stared at her sketch. "This is my department--now--isn't it? That's what I'm brooding about. An archaeologist ought to be able to dope it. I've helped open tombs. I've directed the digging up of a whole city--a city more than three thousand years old. This joint isn't a century old. How much narrower than the club was the old hotel?"

"Maybe a third."

Aggie began to draw. "The front veranda--is on new foundations--I think.

Cemented fieldstone. So the old ones begin with the club. They must have gone back--out over the spot--where the rear drive is now. Where they trundle out the garbage cans. In the days of the hotel--that was probably part of the basement. Now--widthways--if we take off a third--that just about does come to the solarium. The water table level in those rocks slopes from southwest to northeast--roughly--and the spring--is over about here where the fox's tail is. A line would run pretty close to the solarium--if not under it. That's alongside the first tee on the golf course--and the sun porch is about half a story above it.