The Recycled Citizen (24 page)

“As a matter of fact, she was. Don’t forget I still have to deliver those kids back to Boston.”

“The hell with that. We’ll send ’em home in taxis.”

“What kids are you talking about, Mr. Bittersohn?” asked Codfin.

“A group of young actors and actresses who donated their services this evening. I doubt if any of them left the house at any time. They were all in costume, mingling with the guests, passing food and champagne and so forth. I expect you’d like their names as a matter of routine, but they may not be able to help you much.”

“These young people are in no way connected with the Senior Citizens’ Recycling Center?”

“Not at all. They were recruited solely for this occasion by a part-time actor named Charles C. Charles who also works for my wife’s cousin, Brooks Kelling, and lives at 30 Tulip Street in Boston.”

“I see. Thank you. Sergeant Mufferty, why don’t you go back to the house with Mr. Kelling and Mr. Loveday, and see what you can get out of the actors? Now, Mr. Burr, I haven’t meant to neglect you, but you know how it is.”

“Oh yes, I know how it is. My name is Harold Eustis Burr. My address is the Come-All-Ye Community Church, 27 Amber Street, Boston.”

“You’re the minister there?”

“No, but they let me sleep in the basement as a professional courtesy.”

“I thought I recognized the name. I once had the honor of arresting you myself, Mr. Burr, back in the sixties when I was still on patrol duty. You were sitting at the intersection of Boylston and Hammond Streets, holding up a sign that read, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’”

“I expect I was,” said Burr. “I don’t recall the precise incident, but those were busy times.”

“I should have said Reverend Burr, shouldn’t I?”

“No you shouldn’t.
Reverend
is merely an adjective. You could say the Reverend Dr. Burr if you wanted to, but it’s been so long since I held a pulpit that the title sounds ridiculously pretentious. In jail they generally called me plain Harry and I’ve grown to prefer it.”

The lieutenant wasn’t quite ready for Harry. He cleared his throat. “I’m required to ask whether you’ve had any convictions other than for civil disobedience.”

“Yes, one for assault on a police officer who was roughing up a young girl for what I considered to be no valid reason. I took away his truncheon and did unto him that which he’d been doing unto her, in order to give him a clearer understanding of the Golden Rule. The judge was only lukewarm to my argument that I’d acted solely for the purpose of religious instruction and gave me sixty days.”

Harry shrugged. “But I mustn’t bore you with personal reminiscences. You want to know when I last saw Ted Ashe alive, I expect. It was yesterday at lunchtime, in the center. He’d made a point, as he often did, of standing next to me in the chow line and engaging me in conversation.”

“What about?”

“Usually small details concerning the members.”

“Did he ever ask you about their collecting methods?” Max broke in. “Which of them worked hit or miss and which had regular routes, that sort of thing?”

“I believe he did, now that you mention it. Many of us are quite serious about our collecting, you know, and some incline to be rather territorial. Ted might have been asking merely because he didn’t want to encroach on someone else’s hunting ground, though I admit it was this habit of his that made me think at first he might be an undercover agent. But you say he was a newspaperman named Wilbraham Winchell? I don’t suppose there could be two?”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” said Max. “Why? Do you know him?”

“He was younger then, of course, and he had a beard, but I think it must be the same man. He interviewed me once in jail.”

“Really?”

“Yes, we had a long talk. He seemed like such a pleasant fellow. Then he sent me a copy of the published article. I don’t know why he did that. It was a chastisement I didn’t think I needed just then, but maybe the Lord knew better.”

“What do you mean, a chastisement?” Max asked him.

“What Winchell had done was to twist and distort every single thing I’d said so that it came out sounding like hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement. Having turned me into a Fascist, he then accused me of being a Communist. At that time I’d been getting a fair amount of press coverage because of my intransigence on certain issues, so naturally some of the other publications picked up his article and did their worst with it. When I got out of jail, I found Wilbraham Winchell had effectively rendered me a zero. Affiliating with a minister who’s been tagged as a Commie, however unjustly, doesn’t do much for the credibility of an association, a church or even a private person.”

“So you had good reason to hate Wilbraham Winchell,” said Lieutenant Codfin.

“My dear sir, nobody, and least of all a practicing Christian, has good reason to hate anybody else. We may not care for what some of our fellows stand for, but that doesn’t give us a right to destroy them. No, Lieutenant, I did not drive a pickax through this poor man. Frankly I doubt whether I could if I wanted to. I’m an old man and the life I’ve led has not been particularly conducive to physical well-being. I have endurance but no great muscular strength.”

“You wouldn’t need a great deal,” said Codfin. “A tool that heavy would do much of the work for you.”

“Not that much,” George argued. “You’d have to know how to swing it. It’s not just the arms, you know. You’ve got to be able to get your back and legs into it. Harry gets a crick in his back every time he bends over.”

The gardener wasn’t afraid of the corpse any more. He was staring at that expensive suede jacket. “What gets me is there’s no blood showing. I mean, cripes, a blow like that, you’d think—”

“I expect the medical examiner will have an explanation,” said Codfin.

“I’ll bet I know what his explanation will be,” said Max.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Bittersohn, we’ll wait for the official report. By the way, I don’t believe I have your statement of where you were when the incident between Mr. Kelling and Mr. Ashe, as we may as well go on calling him, took place.”

“According to my wife, I was auctioning off a beaded footstool. She came looking for me after the fracas broke out.”

“She didn’t approach you in the auction room?”

“No, the bidding was going well and she didn’t want to interrupt, so she just went back and told them to put a lid on it. In case you have any ideas about my wife, I may add that she’s small, delicately built, and very pregnant. Physical violence isn’t her bag. She copes pretty well without it,” Max added with a grin. “As Loveday testified, she went upstairs right after that. She fell asleep in one of the bedrooms and didn’t even wake up when her aunt went in to kiss her good-bye. I finally woke her myself, after the auction was over. I suppose you’ll want her personal statement, but that’s the gist.”

“Thank you. Have you anything further to add?”

“Yes. So you won’t have to waste your time thinking Ashe’s death is an isolated incident, you should know that it may quite possibly be the latest chapter in a long story that Brooks Kelling and I presented to the Narcotics Division of the Boston Police yesterday afternoon, along with photographs and other corroborative evidence. You’d be well advised to get in touch with them as soon as possible.”

“Narcotics?” Lieutenant Codfin blinked. “I shall certainly do so. Er—you said you had an idea of how Ashe was killed.”

“Let’s say that if I were in charge here, I’d check those garden carts, especially that big one over there, for fresh dirt on the wheels, possible bloodstains in the box, and a noticeable lack of fingerprints on the handles. I don’t suppose you’ll find the bullet, but it wouldn’t hurt to look.”

“What bullet, Mr. Bittersohn?”

“The small-caliber one Ashe was most likely shot with shortly after Dolph Kelling kicked him out and before he was brought here to the toolhouse. That would explain the lack of blood George so rightly remarked on, and also the position of the body. Surely you don’t think anybody would meekly lie down on the floor and wait for somebody to drive a pickax through him, unless he was already either dead or damned close to it.”

“B
UT PEOPLE WOULD HAVE
heard the shot,” Mary protested. There’d been a long, long night of waiting around and answering Lieutenant Codfin’s questions before any of them had got to bed. The enigma of keys to the toolhouse had been gone into with little result. Nobody could remember whether Great-uncle Frederick had had one or not, much less what might have happened to it. Dolph had his, but it turned out he’d changed his clothes for the auction and left his key ring lying on his dresser since he wouldn’t be needing to unlock anything that night. As far as he could tell, the keys were where he’d left them, but who could be expected to notice a detail like that?

As for the keyboard in the kitchen, Genevieve confessed that she’d been worried about leaving it where it was with a bunch of young strangers running in and out all evening, so she’d quietly and gently taken the board off the wall and set it in the pantry behind the cookie sheets. None of them had gone into the pantry because they’d had no call to, and they wouldn’t have seen it if they did. That appeared to narrow down the list of possible suspects, most of whom wished Genevieve had left the board alone.

The way matters stood now, Max, Jem, Egbert, and Eugene Porter-Smith were all in the clear. None of them had left the auction room for more than a few minutes from the time they went in until the last bang of the gavel. Every one of the young actors had enthusiastically alibied Mary, but nobody could be a hundred percent sure about how long Dolph had been away from the party after he’d ejected Ted Ashe.

Genevieve and Henrietta hadn’t had time for any shenanigans. Sarah was technically a suspect since she’d admitted to having been alone upstairs for hours and could easily have borrowed Dolph’s key for herself or a confederate. Osmond Loveday was still iffy. He’d been popping in and out of the various rooms so often that neither Mary, Henrietta nor any of the servers could pinpoint his movements.

Then of course there were an indefinite number of other possible suspects since nobody could say how many of the patrons had been milling around outside during the crucial period, or even how long the crucial period had been. By the time Lieutenant Codfin left them to get what little sleep they could, though, he’d made it fairly clear that his primary suspects were Dolph Kelling and Harry Burr. Harry had gone back to the gardener’s cottage with George. Dolph was here at the table, eating a great deal and saying little.

“Surely people would have heard the shot,” Mary repeated.

“Maybe some did, but not as a shot,” Max replied, helping himself to another biscuit. The household had been so late pulling itself back together that breakfast had turned into brunch. “A small-caliber pistol doesn’t bang. It pops.”

“And champagne corks had been popping all evening,” Sarah finished for him so that he could get on with his biscuit.

“Why do you say a small pistol?” said Osmond Loveday. “It seems to me that if I were to embark on so picaresque an enterprise, I’d want the biggest pistol I could get.”

“You’d be borrowing trouble if you did,” Max told him. “Large-caliber handguns are awkward, heavy and conspicuous to carry. They make a lot of noise and a messy wound, and they’re harder to get rid of afterward.”

“If you’re right about the small-caliber pistol, they ought to find the bullet still in the body, shouldn’t they?” Sarah asked. “I wonder if the murderer really meant it to be thought that Ashe was killed by the pickax, or if he was just buying time to confuse the issue and give him a chance to get rid of the gun? Or if he hated Ashe so much that he went a little bit crazy? Ugh.”

“Well, it’s my guess,” said Mary, “that sticking him in the toolhouse and using the pickax was a deliberate attempt to pin the killing on Dolph. And I’m pretty mad about it, I can tell you. Sarah, you finish your milk and don’t be dwelling on guns and pickaxes. You shouldn’t be thinking of such things in your condition.”

“Yes’m,” said Sarah. She was used to being bossed around by elderly relatives. “All the same—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Kelling.” That was Henrietta. “Lieutenant Codfin’s here again, wanting to speak to Mr. Kelling.”

“Oh he is, is he?” said Mary. “Well, you show him right into the breakfast room. Anything he’s got to say to my husband he can say in front of me, and you tell him I said so.”

“Shall the rest of us leave?” Sarah asked.

“Hell no,” said Dolph. “Stick around and watch the fur fly. Mary’s pretty spectacular when she gets her Irish up. Don’t be too hard on the poor fellow, dear. He’s only doing his job.”

“Well, he’d better do it right or he’ll wish he had.”

Mary wiped her lips, laid down her napkin and stood up to greet Codfin. She came about to his elbow. “Good morning, Lieutenant. Would you like some coffee?”

“No thank you.” Lieutenant Codfin was as spruce and straight as he’d been the previous evening, notwithstanding the fact that he probably hadn’t had a wink of sleep. His expression, however, was that of a man nonplussed.

“I’d really prefer to speak to Mr. Kelling alone.”

Mary planted her fists on his hips, cocked back her head and gave him the full force of her bright blue eyes. “And would you, now? Come on, spit it out and get it over.”

“If you insist.” Codfin drew a long breath. “Adolphus Kelling, I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of—”

“Don’t you dare say it! If you think my Dolph’s the kind of man to go shooting people and clobbering them with pickaxes to cover up what he did—”

“The charge is not murder, Mrs. Kelling. If you’d please let me finish what I have to say—”

“Whatever it is, you’re wasting your time because he didn’t do it. Go ahead and get it out of your system if you have to, but don’t expect any of us to believe a word you say.”

Osmond Loveday pushed back his chair. “I’d better go telephone Mr. Redfern.”

“Not yet, Osmond,” Dolph objected. “Hadn’t you better wait and see what I’m getting pinched for first? Somebody ought to get Jem out of bed. He’d hate to miss this.”