The Silver Ghost (13 page)

“Sarah! Good God, is that you?”

“Of course. We came to get you.”

“What’s the matter? Not Egbert?”

By this time, the old tires that served the
Mary L.
for fenders were smack up against
Maphwacha III’s
sleek white hull and a man in captain’s uniform was having thirteen kitten fits. Sarah was not to be put off by a tantrum.

“Stop yelling and throw us a rope. We need Jem Kelling on urgent business.”

“What business?” demanded the captain.

She looked across at the gaping faces, half of them slightly glassy-eyed although the sun was nowhere near the yard-arm and wouldn’t be for hours yet. Jem looked to be cold sober, thank God.

“Top secret,” she snapped.

“What’s this? What’s this?” The passengers were all agog. “God, Jem, you’re not a CIA agent?”

“No comment.” This was a glorious moment for Jeremy Kelling. His face grew as hard and inscrutable as its surrounding chins would permit. “Get me aboard. Pronto.”

Transferring an elderly, overweight, and none too nimble gentleman wearing a natty blue blazer and white flannel slacks from a forty-five foot yacht to a twenty-six foot fishing boat in open sea is not accomplished without some discomfort to the man and dire peril to the white flannels. However, Jem was eager to bear himself manfully in the face of this unexpected notoriety and Mr. Lomax was a capable seaman even if one or two of those aboard
Maphwacha III
were something he muttered under his breath and Sarah didn’t quite catch. Egbert might go into convulsions when he saw the flannels, but Jeremy Kelling was relatively unscathed and insufferably proud of himself by the time they’d got him into the cockpit of the
Mary L.

“Will you be rejoining us, Jem?” the yacht’s owner called down in a more respectful tone than he’d used hitherto.

Jem looked at his niece. Sarah shrugged.

“If you want to. I could probably run you down to Scituate later on. Can you reach them by telephone if necessary?”

After a fair amount of backing and forming, it was determined that Jem could. The phone number, written on paper adorned with signal flags and headed “Memo from
Maphwacha,
” was sent across in a pink plastic bucket. Jem saluted smartly, Mr. Lomax gunned his engine, and they were off.

“What’s this all about?” Jem roared as soon as they were under way, but the noise level was so high that Sarah only screamed back, “Tell you when we get ashore,” so Jem leaned back on the cushions and practiced his inscrutability.

The trip back was only half as long as the trip out, as is ever the case. Sarah was agreeably surprised to see by her car’s clock that it was only a quarter to twelve when they’d tied up at the Ireson’s Landing dock, thanked Mr. Lomax and persuaded him to accept reimbursement for his gas, and headed back to the house. On the way, she gave her uncle a quick fill-in on what had taken place at the Renaissance Revel.

“So that’s why we need you, Uncle Jem. You know the Billingsgates’ crowd, you’ve got the memory of an elephant. What I want you to do is start remembering. For all we know, Aunt Bodie’s life may depend on you.”

Jem chuckled. “Let’s hope it doesn’t. Bodie would never get over the chagrin of having to be grateful to a dissolute rogue like me.”

They reached the house just in time to embarrass Mrs. Blufert for not having quite finished the dusting. Sarah parked Jem in the living room with a martini and the morning paper. She seized the opportunity to give Davy a few quick hugs and settle him in his high chair with a pilot biscuit to work on. Mrs. Blufert would have to feed him his lunch; Uncle Jem was not spiritually attuned to teething babies. She put a pot of chowder on to heat and fixed Jem another martini.

“Take this to my uncle and talk to him for a minute, would you please, Mrs. Blufert? I want to call my husband.”

Max wasn’t in the house, Abigail told her, but he and Bill were around the place somewhere. She’d give him the message. Sarah hung up and went to open a bottle of chablis she’d been giving a quick chill in the freezer. Jem wouldn’t be crass enough to drink martinis at the table, but he’d expect to be given something other than water. As she was giving the chowder a final stir, one of the phones rang, a shrill bleep that could only be the private hotline. She clapped the lid on the pot, shoved the chowder off the heat, and ran to pick up the red handset.

“Hi, what’s new?” was Max’s greeting.

“Jem’s here,” she told him. “We’re about to have lunch.”

“Jem? I thought he was in Newport. How the hell did you get him off that yacht?”

“Mr. Lomax picked him up in the
Mary L.
” Sarah thought perhaps she wouldn’t go into details just now. “What’s new at the Billingsgates’?”

“Bill got the results of the autopsy.”

“So?”

“Tranquilizer gun. They found the dart in Rufus’s jerkin.”

“What? Max, do you mean one of those things they shoot into animals on the
National Geographic
programs? Isn’t that awfully,” Sarah floundered for a word and came up with “inappropriate?”

“Awfully,” Max agreed. “The pathologist figures Rufus got a dose big enough to stop a rhinoceros.”

“You don’t suppose Gerry Whet brought one back from Nairobi?”

“I assume you mean the gun, not the rhinoceros.” Max didn’t sound particularly struck by his wife’s suggestion. “It’s a thought. On the other hand, you might ask Jem which member of the party has a cousin who works in a zoo. Tranquilizer guns are more common in this country than you might think. Lots of people use them: game wardens, animal control officers, researchers, vets.”

“What do they look like?”

“Pretty much like an air rifle, and they’re used the same way. They have a spring mechanism that shoots a hollow dart. The principle’s the same as an overgrown hypodermic syringe.”

“How close would you have to be to hit anything with one?”

“Maybe fifty yards, if you were a first-rate marksman.”

“Then Rufus could have been shot from the edge of the copse.”

“Quite likely. The gun could have been stashed there in advance, then hidden again while the killer ran forward to hoist Rufe’s body out of the way. Again minimizing the risk of getting caught, you see. If the killer was unlucky enough to be seen crossing that strip of lawn, he could have claimed he’d seen Rufus fall and was hurrying over to see what was wrong with him.”

“Has the gun been found?”

“Not yet. Grimpen’s got his men messing around in the pond now. My guess is they’ll find it and it won’t tell us a damned thing.”

“I must say there appears to have been some efficient planning.” It flashed into Sarah’s mind that Boadicea Kelling herself couldn’t have organized the matter more efficiently. All she said was, “Anything new on Aunt Bodie?”

“Not a yip so far. What’s with Jem?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with him yet. He’s still catching his breath.”

“Acquiring one, you mean. How’s Davy?”

“Eating his lunch. Have you had any?”

“Plenty.” Max’s carelessness about regular meals worried Sarah sometimes, but she might have known there’d be no problem about that today. A person would have an awfully hard time starving around. Abigail Billingsgate. She explained about promising to take Jem to meet the yacht, broke off reluctantly, and went to give her uncle his lunch.

Being a Formerly Exalted Chowderhead of the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish, Jeremy Kelling took his chowder seriously. Sarah waited until her uncle had a pint or so aboard before she broached the business of the meeting.

“Max just told me they’ve found out Rufus was killed by a dart from a tranquilizer gun, Uncle Jem. Do you know who might have been able to get hold of such a thing?”

“Wouter Tolbathy made one once.”

Sarah groaned. “I might have known. Whatever happened to it?”

“Don’t ask me. The only time I ever saw the gun was at a farewell party Tom gave for Gerry Whet. Gerry’s always tootling off to Kenya, you know. Generally it’s to buy bug powder, but this time he was taking his son, Bunny, and his two sons-in-law on safari.”

“Who are the sons-in-law?”

“Joe Abbott and Buck Tolbathy. Joe married Gerry’s daughter Lilias and Buck married Primula.”

“And all three are in the Morris dance group,” said Sarah.

“Well, naturally. Joe and Buck are cousins, the whole tribe have always been close. Ski together, sail together, all that. Anyway, Wouter had made this great big hippo out of some revolting plastic stuff and painted it in a tasteful mélange of fuchsia, chartreuse, and turquoise, as Wouter would naturally have done. We were all supposed to plug away at the hippo with the tranquilizer gun. If you happened to hit it in a certain spot, the beast would begin to snore.”

“Clever,” said Sarah. “But you don’t remember who got to keep the gun, Uncle Jem?”

“I haven’t the dimmest recollection. Most likely Wouter kept it himself, or else Tom took it and locked it up somewhere. It wasn’t the type of thing they’d want the grandchildren to get hold of.”

“Did the gun shoot real tranquilizer darts?”

“What would have been the point if it hadn’t? Wouter didn’t put real tranquilizing juice in them, I don’t suppose. Probably lemonade or some such abomination. He was loading the darts in and the rest of us were shooting them out, that’s all I can tell you.”

“Can you find out from Tom what happened to the gun, Uncle Jem? If you don’t, the police will have to.”

Jem spluttered into his napkin. “Confound it, Sarah, hasn’t Tom had troubles enough from Wouter’s inventions?”

“I’m afraid he’s in for more when he learns what’s been happening with that insane garage door Wouter installed in Bill’s car shed. Did you know anything about that?”

“Not a yip, on my word of honor, and I Was as close to Wouter as any man alive except Tom. Old Wout could be closed as a clam when he was working up to one of his more spectacular effects. It would surprise me if he told anybody at all except his accomplices.”

“What accomplices, for goodness’ sake?”

“In this case, I’d say Rollo, that old coot who works for the Tolbathys, and Rufus.”

“Rufus?” cried Sarah.

“Oh yes. Rufus and Rollo were great cronies, and they both pretty much worshipped the ground Wouter walked on. Maybe you don’t realize what an odd old cuss Rufus was. He was born and brought up right there on the Billingsgate estate, to begin with.”

“Yes, I do know that. Bill told us yesterday.”

“Rufus fancied himself as a kind of seneschal of the castle, but he also had a streak of court jester in him. Most people didn’t know that because he was careful to keep it under cover most of the time. Anyway, Rufe was also a dab hand at lots of odd jobs, so Wouter used to get him to help with projects he and Rollo couldn’t handle by themselves. I should think a blasted great concrete wall might well fall into that category.”

“Uncle Jem!” Sarah put down her chowder spoon. “That puts the whole case in a new light. Rufus must have been killed not just because he was in the car thief’s way but because he knew how the cars were being got out of the shed. But why was he allowed to live until the second robbery? Why didn’t he tell the Billingsgates about the secret door as soon as the New Phantom disappeared?”

“He well might have if he’d got the chance,” Jeremy Kelling replied. “According to what you told me in the car, Bill got home, found the Phantom gone, turned around, and rushed off to Maine without even stopping to tip his hat to the queen bee. He didn’t get back till Saturday morning, by which time everybody was flapping around in all directions getting ready for the revel.”

“Abigail was at home the whole time,” Sarah argued. “Rufus could have told her, couldn’t he?”

“He could, I grant you, but he wouldn’t have. Rufe liked the mistress well enough, but his fealty was to the lord of the manor. He’d have waited until such time as he could crave an audience at his master’s pleasure.”

“Rufus sounds a trifle batty to me.”

“Ah, you modern women,” Jem replied tolerantly. “You’re too young to understand the workings of the feudal mind, that’s all. I was about to add, Sarah, that Rufe might have received a message purportedly from one of the lads, say Bunny Whet, for instance, that he intended to appear as a knight in shining armor and had borrowed the Phantom with the intention of disguising it as a richly caparisoned steed. This is only one hypothesis, of course, but it’s one Rufe would inevitably have fallen for. He tended to think of Bill as King Arthur and the rest of us as Knights of the Table Round.”

Sarah glanced across the table. Like her son, Jeremy Kelling had a round, rosy face. Like Davy when last seen, he had a red checkered napkin tucked under his extra chin. As Davy would do were he here, Jem was regarding her with an expression of guileless innocence.

“No comment,” said Sarah.

S
ARAH DID HAVE A
question, though. “Uncle Jem, why did you mention Bunny Whet?”

Jem’s face turned a shade rosier. “Dash it, Sarah, how do I know? Why do women have to pounce on a man every time he dares to open his mouth? I mentioned Bunny Whet because we were talking about the Whets just now, I suppose.”

“We were talking about other people, too. What are you squirming for? Come on, Uncle Jem, this is not the time for your Boys of the Old Brigade routine. Rufus’s death was no practical joke; it was cold, calculated and very well planned murder. For all we know, Aunt Bodie may have been murdered, too, and she’s one of your own relatives.”

“I beg to differ. Boadicea Van Brunt was a member of an aristocratic New York family said to have been descended directly from the Headless Horseman. Her forbears made their fortune selling pickled pigs’ feet to Hessian soldiers during the Revolution, though Bodie would be the last to tell you so.”

“All right then, what else do you know about her? Why were she and Aunt Caroline so down on each other?”

“Would you by chance be referring to the circumstance that before she married Uncle Gilbert, Caroline jilted Bodie’s brother Lancelot?”

“Is that what it was? You mean Bodie held a broken engagement against her all that time? Was it because Aunt Caroline thought Uncle Gilbert a better catch?”