Murder in the Winter (7 page)

“Lieutenant, did you say that no one is staying in any
of these rooms?”

“That’s right, Son.”

“Well, while there was no one in the room I checked, I
believe someone is staying in it. There’s a suitcase, clothes hanging up, and
personal items scattered in the bathroom.”

“Let me see the room.”     

The young officer led me to the room in question.
While the bed was made, it was obvious someone had been staying in the room. At
least, someone’s belongings were in there. All that I could tell was that it
was a man. I wondered who it could be, since Mr. Longworth told us none of the
back rooms were occupied. Could someone have been using the room without his
knowledge? Could it have been the murderer, who may not even be registered? If
so, how could he have gotten in?

By 12:30, we’d finished checking all the rooms off the
middle and back hallway. There was no one in any of the rooms, and none of the
other rooms contained evidence that they had been occupied recently.

+++

All of us were tired from working so late. I made a decision.
I would open rooms for each of them to get some rest. Each room contained an
alarm clock. I told each man to set the alarm for 6:00, except for those who
would relieve the men guarding the doors. George arranged a schedule where,
every two hours, each man would be relieved from guard duty, in order to get
some rest. We would reconvene by the front desk at 6:30.

Lou stopped by my room to rehash the case before retiring
for the night.

“What do you make of all this, Lou?”

“It’s too early for me to tell.”

“Okay, let’s take a minute to talk about what we know.
Maybe if we sleep on it we can solve it in our sleep.”

“Provided the murderer doesn’t break into our rooms in
the middle of the night.”

On that cheery thought, I continued.

“We have two people murdered and another one missing.
As far as we can tell, our murderer is someone who works at the inn, Tony
McArthur, or Isabel Dukenfield, who may be living or dead.”

“If that’s our total suspect list, then it looks like
we can narrow our lists of suspects to one.”

“How’s that, Lou?”

“Well, Cy, someone traipsed through the snow to leave
you a note this morning. Everyone but McArthur was here at the inn this
morning, and there was no break in the snow when we arrived. Only McArthur
arrived after we did.”

“Which will present a magnanimous problem if we learn
that McArthur really was in Chicago at the time the footprints were left.”

“I know the person who wrote the note acted like he
was one person acting alone, but could it be we have two people working
together, and one of them has an alibi while the other one is wreaking havoc?”

“The problem is that we’re having trouble coming up
with one suspect without an alibi. How in the world are we going to come up
with two?”

“Well, we can always pin it on your next-door neighbor.
She could’ve left the note, and she did arrive after we did.”

“Is there any way we can implicate the dog, too?”

Lou and I found out something a long time ago. It’s important
to take your job seriously, but if you take it too seriously, it can be your
downfall. Even in the most stressful of moments we take time for levity
whenever possible. We laughed at the good sergeant’s suggestion, realized we’d
gotten nowhere, and went to bed. Maybe we’d solve the murder in our sleep.

+++

Tired, I dosed off quickly. As is usually the case
when I’m exhausted after working hard during a murder investigation, I began to
dream. I was sitting at the inn’s dining room table. I looked around the table.
Everyone else at the table had fallen into their soup. Mrs. Longworth stood beside
me, and spoke.

“Now, Lieutenant, you must eat your arsenic soup before
it gets warm.”

I pushed her away and ran. Mrs. Longworth ran after
me, sloshing the soup as she bore down upon me. I turned a corner, found a
door, and yanked at the knob. It opened, and I followed the steps that led
down. The steps continued to lead down, and finally I heard a sound, as if
someone were digging. I could see a faint light in the distance. As I descended
the light grew stronger. I reached the bottom step and turned right, the only
way I could turn. I froze as I encountered Longworth, shovel in hand.

“Come, come, Lieutenant. Let me measure you for your
grave. You are so much larger than the others. You and the sergeant. Hurry! I
must get everyone buried before the next guests arrive.”

I screamed and woke. I found myself under the bed,
batting a house slipper at a table leg. I slid from under the bed and made a
mental note that next time I would ask for a room with beds closer to the
floor. But would that help? Maybe I should seek safer work. Was it too late for
me to become an engineer?

7

Shortly after I went to bed for the second time, a
terrible noise woke me. I sat up, looked in the direction of the awful sound.
It seemed to come from a little box that had lights on the front that showed
6:00. I fumbled with the buttons, got the noise to stop. I contemplated turning
over and going back to sleep, then pictured angry men with a passkey lining the
sides of my bed, contemplating murder. I hoisted myself from my comforter, and
stumbled to the bathroom. Thankfully, my eyes had not adjusted to the new day,
so I didn’t look as bad as I expected. I splashed water on my face, rinsed my
eyes, and suddenly, I looked worse. I shed my pajamas and stepped into the
shower. I had just enough time to take a shower, pray, and read my daily
devotional book before I met the others. I thought of Lou. I know that he does
a Bible study booklet assignment every morning that takes close to an hour. I
knew he wouldn’t miss a morning. Lou had set his alarm for sometime before
6:00.

+++

As I walked down the steps George Michaelson walked
toward me.

“Our keeper has been kept long enough. He wants to
know if he can get back to business as usual. Also, the SOC team finished in
the kitchen. None of the food was poisoned, and they found no poison anywhere
in the area.”

“Evidently, they didn’t check that stuff Lou and I ate
last night.”

I wondered where the poison had come from, provided
the deceased had been poisoned. Evidently, whoever poisoned these two men kept
the poison secured somewhere in his or her room, provided that there was any
poison left. It would be easy for someone to throw a container of poison over
the cliff, if he had no further use for it. A person with a good throwing
motion could possibly heave a bottle from the roof. As far as I could tell, if
someone brought poison and no longer had any of it, he or she would’ve had to
have tossed it from the roof or washed it down the sink. I made a note to check
for evidence as we continued our search for Mrs. Dukenfield.

George stood there as I pondered the situation. When I
made eye contact again, he knew I was through for the moment. I excused myself,
walked behind the counter, and knocked on the door of the Longworth’s private
quarters. Longworth opened the door, and I opened my mouth before he could open
his. I kept him abreast of the situation. At least as much as I wanted to tell
him. I let him know that another guest was missing, and a second body had
turned up. I cushioned the blow by letting him know that the SOC team were
through in the kitchen, so it was okay for the chef to go back to work. It was
difficult not to choke on those words. I asked him about extras at breakfast.
He agreed to serve everyone, and bill the city. Then, I told him we would need
to search the living quarters of each of the inn’s staff. I explained that it
wouldn’t take long. We were merely looking for bodies, dead or alive. I didn’t
tell him about vials of poison. I allowed Longworth to let each person know that
we needed to search all the premises. I didn’t want to walk in on Mrs.
Longworth, just in case breakfast would be an improvement over dinner. I
instructed him that Miss Humphert needed to be served in her room. Miss
Humphert and McArthur were the only guests who had been located alive who
weren’t members of the police department. I wanted to keep one for a suspect,
and one for a victim, but wanted to allow Frank to catch up on his autopsies
before I fed him another body. I asked that Miss Humphert’s server make her
aware of her restriction, and that they find something that the dog could eat.
I refrained from recommending the previous night’s leftovers.

With that chore completed, I assembled the troops. We
would do a visual check of the outdoors from each of the doors and windows. If
Mrs. Dukenfield was not found in some of the staff’s quarters, we would do an
outdoor search after breakfast, footprints, or no footprints. But first, I
caught up with Longworth and asked him directions on how to get to the roof. It
would be our first adventure after breakfast. Well, our first adventure after
we checked the staff’s quarters.

+++

A search of the staff’s quarters indicated nothing, except
the neatness or messiness of each person. No extra people inhabited any of the
rooms. No bodies were found stuffed in the closet.  I assumed  there  were  no
drugs or poisons. Our hurried search didn’t include squeezing all the
toothpaste out of each tube. Nor did we cut open each mattress.

A second indoor search after breakfast revealed nothing.
Daylight was upon us, and it was time to wrap up and search outside. But first,
we would tackle the roof.

As it turned out, what we thought was an upstairs closet
was our pathway to the roof disguised as a closet. Were there other methods of
disguise inhibiting our progress? One at a time we pushed away the clothes
hanging in the pseudo-closet and climbed the stairs. I led the way and took my
time doing so. At the top of the stairs, I encountered a door, which was
locked. I shined my flashlight on the door and discovered that only a hook
prevented me from opening it. I sprung the hook, opened the door, and stepped
out into the icy climate. Before I did so, I noticed that the walkway had been
shoveled clean. No snow. No footprints. No clues.

I walked at once to the parapet, leaned over and perused
the expansive area. Being up high increased our ability to see over the cliff,
but we were neither high enough nor close enough to the cliff to see all the
way to the bottom. If we hadn’t been in the middle of a murder investigation,
I’d have taken time to enjoy the view. There’s just something beautiful about a
snow-covered world as long as you don’t have to drive through it. But in a
manner of speaking, we did have to drive through this snow-covered world, and
we had a murder to solve. Maybe we could come back in the spring, if no one has
been murdered, to enjoy the view.

I stepped away from the parapet and led our team. We
walked around lemming style and leaned over the side at intervals of twenty or
so feet. For the most part, we saw nothing, but at one corner of the house we
noticed footprints leading to the edge of the cliff. Only one set of
footprints, but they didn’t return. I hoped our murderer hadn’t committed
suicide. It might be hard to prove. Then, another idea struck me. What if someone 
had  carried  Mrs.  Dukenfield to the edge of the cliff and thrown her over?
But then, if they had, there would’ve been returning footprints. Regardless,
because of some misguided individual, a cornucopia of cops would have to trek
to the edge of the cliff. One man fell in his dinner. Another one dived to the
bottom of a swimming pool. Could it be that a third had plunged to her death?
And if so, was I supposed to be getting a message from this? That reminded me.
Lou and I hadn’t talked about his message of the day. I would find out that
message as soon as I could get him by himself.

After completing our tour of the roof and finding no
more clues, we rushed to the rooftop door to do something about our blue skin.
But only for a moment. None of us expected the temperature to rocket before we
reached the front door to engage in a tour of the premises.

+++

Before we toured the grounds, I accosted Longworth and
found out that Manfred had shoveled the snow from the roof on Friday morning,
before we arrived. I asked Longworth why Manfred had done it so quickly. He
responded that it was because there was a large amount of snow, and the snow
had nowhere to go. Heavy snow could cause the roof to collapse. Melted snow
could cause leaks. Longworth said it was better to be safe than sorry.

I hastily pulled Lou aside and asked him his clue for
the day.

“
North By Northwest
.”

“What is this? Hitchcock week? First we get something
about the Bates Motel, and now
North By Northwest
.”

“I don’t’ make them up. I just repeat what I hear.”

“So, He’s started to speak to you.”

“Not out loud.”

“So, what do you think it means? Is an airplane gonna
try to dust us off for good in the middle of a corn field?”

“I don’t know. I just hope no one locks the two of us
in an upper berth on a train.”

“Those berths aren’t big enough.”

I turned and found several pairs of eyes looking at
us. It was time to abate our rhetoric. At least for the time being. Besides,
none of my mental pictures from
North By Northwest
were anything I
wanted to keep with me, and it was time to venture outdoors.