The Silver Ghost (25 page)

“Why, I honestly don’t know. They were messing around out by the pond for quite a while, as I don’t have to tell you, then they went off with that wretched gun of Wouter’s and were gone quite a while. When they came back, they searched for that syrup container, which they found, and then for that bicycle you phoned about, which they obviously didn’t find. I hardly think they’d have had time to search the house. Did they, Abigail?”

“I don’t believe so, dear. I was too preoccupied to think about it myself, what with having to cope with Rufus’s funeral preparations and all that leftover food, and then Bodie.”

“Then let’s have a look now,” said Tick.

“Great idea,” Max agreed. “You and Melisande start in the cellar, why don’t you? Bill, you and Abigail check around downstairs. Sarah and I will do this floor.”

“Surely the house is the last place,” Bill started to protest. “But then the honey shed was the last place, too, wasn’t it. Come along, Abigail, if you’re not too tired.”

“No, no, I’d rather be doing something.”

The four of them hurried downstairs. Sarah turned to Max. “I can’t say I much relish the thought of prowling through everybody’s bedroom.”

“I doubt if we’ll have to do much prowling,” said Max.

He led her away from Boadicea’s room. “The one opposite is Mrs. Gaheris’s, we can skip that. I was there earlier and it’s bare as a baboon’s backside.”

He went on down the carpeted hall, opening doors and closing them again. Sarah followed him, tired and bewildered, wishing the next room could be her own. At the end, the hall broadened out to accommodate two spacious bedrooms side by side. One had to be the Billingsgates’. Through the open door, Sarah glimpsed massive Victorian furniture, crocheted dresser scarves, lovely old blue glass scent bottles, silver-backed brushes, crowds of photographs in little fancy frames. Max didn’t even bother to look inside, but opened the other door.

“This has to be it. Okay, kid, go find the
Totschläger.”

“But this is Melly’s room,” Sarah protested.

“Précisément, ma chérie.”

It was a lovely room, decorated years ago for a young girl. The furniture was pale green French provincial, picked out in cream. The wallpaper, the Aubusson carpet, the chintz draperies, even the flirty skirt on the vanity table teemed with pink roses. Mr. Hohnser would adore them, no doubt. The red satin costume Melisande had worn at the revel was tossed over the back of a slipper chair upholstered in tufted rose velvet. Tick’s black leather dancing slippers looked huge and gross beside the rose velvet bedspread. Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

“If you say so, dear.”

Eschewing more obvious hiding places, Sarah headed straight for the old-fashioned cast iron radiator that stood under the window, climbed upon it, and ran her hand over the top of the cornice box.

“I’m touching it, I think, but I can’t quite reach. You try.”

Being so much the taller, Max had no difficulty seeing over the top of the cornice. “My God, your aunt must have a skull like the Rock of Gibraltar.”

“Take the thing down so I can see.”

Instead he lifted her up. “We’d better leave it alone for the time being. Too bad Abigail’s such a good housekeeper. Fingerprints in the dust would have helped, but there isn’t any dust.”

Sarah let him swing her down off the radiator. “It’s dreadfully obvious, isn’t it, darling? I did try to turn up an alibi for Tick, but all I got were holes.”

“You had no luck with Lionel, either,” Max reminded her.

“And I think I know why. I’ll fix that right now. Is there a telephone on this floor?”

Max opened the drawer of Melisande’s night table and pulled out a pink princess phone, the kind that had been all the rage back in the fifties. “Try this.”

“Oh, don’t be so sickeningly omniscient. I suppose they’ve been putting the phones where they can’t hear them on account of all those reporters calling.” Sarah perched herself on the rose velvet bedspread and began to dial. The party at Bunny Whet’s was winding down. Elizabeth sounded sorry she’d ever thought of it, but Lionel was still celebrating. He would be. Sarah wasted no time on the amenities.

“Lionel, I’m at the Billingsgates’. Get out here as fast as you can. Otherwise, Vare’s going to get an earful about what you were really up to when you claimed to be taking part in that whale watch for Greenpeace.”

Max could hear frenzied yowls. Sarah merely held the receiver away from her ear until Lionel simmered down, then went on twisting the screws.

“Lionel, don’t try that nonsense on me. If you’re not in this house within half an hour, I’ll be on the telephone to Vare. Get started this minute, or you’ll wish you had.”

She tucked the phone back in the drawer and smiled sweetly up at Max. “There’s only one way to handle Lionel.”

“God, you’re a vicious woman. What’s his evil secret?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, but I knew he wasn’t watching whales. Lionel’s had a phobia about them ever since his father made him read
Moby Dick.
He’s mortally ashamed of being afraid because whales are such an in thing these days, so he tells dreadful lies about going out among them in a little rubber boat to convince them we’re all brothers under the blubber.”

“I suppose I have to believe that,” Max replied faintly. “And what do you think about Tick?”

“The same as you do, I expect. It’s going to be horrid for the Billingsgates, but we know Bill suspected something like this from the start. Should we simply let them keep on hunting until Lionel gets here?”

“Why not? Maybe you’d like to go back and watch your aunt drink her eggnog.”

“Yes, I believe I should. I’d hate for her to have a sudden relapse. What are you doing to do?”

“Stay here and phone the police station, for whatever that may be worth. Yell if you need me.”

“I always need you.”

Sarah gave her partner a highly unprofessional kiss and left the room. Max put in his call to the station, then took out his little black book and spent a mere twelve and a half minutes, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, getting through to the number he’d copied from Vercingetorix Ufford’s telephone bill.

The woman who answered was kindly disposed, volubly distressed, and ultimately informative. Max made a number of careful notes, promised to drop by and say hello next time he was in Busto Arsizio, and stashed away the pink telephone again. As he was wondering whether to round up the searchers, Abigail came upstairs to tell him Sergeant Myre had arrived. Seconds later, Lionel panted across the drawbridge.

“Where’s Sarah?” he bleated. “Tell her I’m here. Quick. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Whatever is the matter with you, Lionel?” Abigail was demanding when Sarah heard the hullabaloo and came down.

“Lionel, quit blathering. You’re under the wire. How on earth did you make it here so fast?”

“You said I had to.”

“I didn’t say to kill yourself speeding.”

“It would have been the more merciful way out,” he told her grimly. “All right, I’m here. What do you want?”

“I want you to come into the keep and sit down. Oh, Mrs. Gaheris.” The houseguest had come down, too, carrying the needlepoint she’d evidently been working at to relieve the tedium of nursing. “Would you mind going down cellar and asking Tick and Melly to come up?” Sarah asked her. “Sergeant Myre, how nice to see you. Where’s your dauntless leader?”

A smile of infinite beatitude illuminated the sergeant’s plump and not unpleasing features. “He shot himself.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Max, who’d also joined the group by now. “How?”

“With the hippopotamus gun. When we got back to the station, Officer Swithin was on the desk. She’s our token policewoman. So naturally ol’ macho Grimpen starts handing her this big line about the dart gun. He’d got hold of a couple more tranquilizer darts over at the ballistics lab, small ones like you’d use for a mongoose or a coatimundi.”

“Why a coatimundi?” Melisande wanted to know. “They can’t be all that much of a problem in Massachusetts, can they?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Myre. “People buy these so-called exotic pets, which are really wild animals straight out of the jungle. They grow up and turn ugly, so one day the owner kind of forgets and leaves their pen open. Next thing we know, they’re killing the neighbor’s Pekinese or taking a nip out of some kid who didn’t have sense enough to keep away. So anyhow, Grimpen loads the gun to show Swithy how smart he is. He sticks it under his arm, leans over to see if he can get a gander down the front of her blouse, and accidentally hits the trigger. The dart hits him right in the jodhpurs and he’s out like a stuck bandicoot. We carted him off in the wagon and told the hospital to put him in traction for a month or so. What’s up, Mr. Bittersohn, or shouldn’t I ask?”

“We’ve found the bicycle and the
Totschläger.
”

“No kidding! Where?”

“The bike was under Rufus’s bed in the gate house and the
Totschläger
on top of a cornice in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”

“Which one?” demanded Tick Purbody.

“The one with your shoes and your wife’s dress in it. I assume you didn’t search either place, Myre?”

“No. I wanted to, but the chief told me not to be stupid.”

“Chief Grimpen seems to be quite an authority on stupidity,” said Nehemiah Billingsgate. “Max, may I ask whether you’ve been able to draw any viable inferences from these most recent discoveries?”

“Go ahead, Max,” Tick grunted. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Tick, how can you?” cried Melisande.

“It’s fairly clear-cut, isn’t it? I ride a bike. The car shed and the honey shed are my responsibilities more than anyone else’s. I’ve worked with Versey Ufford a darn sight oftener than I’d have chosen to. I know all the radio stations and the people who work in them. I haven’t always been in complete agreement with your parents’ policies on either the stations or Apian Way, as you well know. Now Great-granddad’s war club’s turned up in the same place where I parked my dancing shoes, so that makes me the villain. Right, Max?”

“You left out the fact that you don’t appear to have much of an alibi for the period during which Rufus was killed and the Silver Ghost moved,” Max replied.

“How do you know when it was?”

“We know Rufus was alive shortly after the banquet started because Dorothy Dork saw him. We know he was dead when Boadicea got to the car shed, because she didn’t see him. You heard her say so, and you knew Rufus. He had your father-in-law’s strict orders to stay at his post. Would he have disobeyed if he’d been alive?”

“No. What else?”

“That’s all I can think of offhand. How about that alibi? Can you give us any help?”

Tick Purbody shrugged. “How can I remember? I went to the bathroom after I left the dance floor, then to the pavilion. I’ve already told you that. I went back again a little while later to get a cushion for Ethelyn Frome’s back. I’ve got to find a rental place that has more comfortable chairs next year, Bill. Providing I’m still around, that is.”

“My boy, don’t talk that way,” Bill expostulated.

“Let’s not get sidetracked,” said Max. “Where did you take the cushion from, Tick?”

“The front parlor. It was nearest the door. Let’s see, I met Lissy, our youngest daughter, as I went in. She was staggering out with a trayful of flagons. It was far too heavy for her, so I took the tray and let her carry the cushion. Then the bartender asked for more ice and the kids were all busy, so I ran back to the kitchen. Cook was meditating, so I ran down cellar and got some from the big freezer there. I think I went out the cellar door that time and ran around under the drawbridge.”

“Not into the copse?”

“Of course not. I was carrying about fifty pounds of ice cubes, for God’s sake! I just dumped the ice and—I don’t know what I did next. I was all over the place. Trying to make the old people comfortable, watching the kids so they didn’t begin sampling the mead, just doing what needed to be done. And I was hungry myself, you know. What I’d have preferred to do was just sit down and eat my dinner. But anyway, that’s my unsatisfactory story. What are you going to do about it?”

“Ask some more dumb questions, I suppose.” Max sounded tired. “Mrs. Gaheris, when you first told us about watching that Morris dancer walk into the copse, you specifically mentioned the figure wasn’t tall enough to be Tick. Would you care to amend that statement now?”

Mrs. Gaheris had taken up her needlepoint again. Now she let the canvas fall across the workbox she was holding in her lap. “How can I? You don’t seem to realize, Mr. Bittersohn, that Abigail and I were at boarding school together.”

“Mr. Bittersohn doesn’t consider that touching fact germane to the issue at hand,” said Tick Purbody. “I can’t say I do, either. Go ahead, Drusilla, say what you think.”

Mrs. Gaheris wet her lips. “I also mentioned, I believe, that it was difficult to judge heights correctly looking down from my window. I simply don’t know. Can’t we just let it go at that?”

“D
ON’T LET IT BOTHER
you too much, Tick,” said Sarah. “Lionel doesn’t have an alibi, either.”

“What are you talking about?” her cousin yelped. “Of course I do. I was with Mother.”

“No you weren’t. Your mother didn’t sit down for ages, she was milling about chatting with everybody in sight. You never set foot inside the pavilion till at least half an hour after the rest of us did. Where were you all that time?”

“I—” confession didn’t come easily to Lionel Kelling.

Sarah showed him no mercy. “Mrs. Gaheris, you must know Lionel was one of the Morris dancers. Could he have been the man you saw?”

“My dear Mrs. Bittersohn, I’ve already told you I didn’t know. I suppose I’d have to say he’s as likely as anybody else.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gaheris. I might point out in passing that Lionel’s taller than Tick. Now, Lionel, are you going to come clean? You and I both know where you were and what you were doing. It’s what you always do when you get the chance, isn’t it?”

Her cousin drew himself up and primmed his lips. “I’m sure I can’t imagine what you think you’re talking about, Sarah. Unless you’re referring to my penchant for exercising my powers of observation to increase my store of knowledge. If so, I’m quite willing to agree with you.”