2 Murder in the Winter Page 6
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 l
ed 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.
8
All of us walked out the front door. Half went to the left. Half to the right. Each of us stayed next to the inn and walked around the building until we met the other group. I led one group, George the other. Only my breath preceded me. We trudged along through the deep snow, seeing neither a body nor an escaping human. Our side of the building turned up nothing. Just as I turned to check out the back side, I stopped. A portly sergeant brushed against me. He stepped aside and saw what I saw. I had momentarily forgotten about the footprints heading up the hill to the edge of the cliff. They seemed to come from the wall of the building. Suddenly we had a murderer, or fearful lodger, who could walk through buildings. We stood, waiting on the others. They arrived to see what we’d discovered. They encountered no evidence of anyone on the elevated island until they met up with us. After a moment’s discussion, we followed our lone clue. We walked side-by-side, so that no policeman would be pushed over the cliff by the one behind him. We stopped two feet from the edge of the cliff, and I surmised the situation. A tree grew upward not more than six inches from the cliff. I stood there, stunned, as Officer Davis stepped to the edge of the cliff, leaned forward, and grasped the tree with both hands. It wasn’t something a sane man would’ve done, but then a sane man would never have applied for a position with the police department.
As I looked around for someone to notify Officer Davis’s next of kin, the young man stepped back and said, “Look, Lieutenant.” Now I wasn’t the only lieutenant there. George was there, too, but Officer Davis didn’t look at George when he said, “Look, Lieutenant.”
I had no choice but to do what Officer Davis suggested. To refuse to do so would earn me the nickname Chicken Little for the rest of my days. Another insane man, this time a chubby one, called out to God for help, then stepped forward and braced himself against the tree. I looked down and said, “Well, I’ll be.” While I knew I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t expecting Lou to tap me on the shoulder and say, “What is it, Cy?” Only the gloves I wore kept me from scraping my hands on the tree as I fell. A couple of seconds later, my feet landed with a thud on a ledge, three feet below the edge of a cliff. My knees buckled, but thankfully my hands still strangled the tree in front of me. I had survived, and I would live long enough to kill a sergeant. If my head hadn’t been visible above the edge of the cliff, I would’ve made the sound so often heard when someone has been pushed from a window of a high rise, a sound that lasts from the time the victim discovers free flight until he or she goes splat on the sidewalk below. I wanted my former friend to worry. Instead, I turned and said the words that scared him almost as much. “Lou, get down here.”
A humble sergeant pointed to himself, as if he was not the only Lou in our enclave. I smiled and nodded, feeling like Oliver Hardy as I did so. I could see my partner visualizing who might receive his badge and gun to remember him by. Lou reached out, wrapped his hands around the tree I had pushed away from, and wondered what to do next. It would take him longer to reach the ledge than it did me. No one tapped him on the shoulder. The first robin of spring arrived before Lou joined me on the ledge. It gave me time to realize what scene from North By Northwest our good Father meant.
Before Lou tapped me on the shoulder as I clutched the tree and looked down, I noticed two sets of footprints on the snowy ledge. One set led to the cliff wall, the other followed the ledge as it sloped downward and curved around the precipice. After I’d fallen, wiped out a few footprints, and regained my senses, I realized that the footprints that led up against the cliff actually disappeared inside an opening that looked much like a cave. I surmised that both sets of footprints were left by the same person as a ruse, hoping to confuse us.
I deduced that I had a slightly better chance of living if I checked out the footprints leading into the cave rather than ones that wrapped around the precipice like the grooves on a screw. I braced myself against the side of the cliff, pulled my flashlight from my pocket, and shined my light inside the cave. No bullets whizzed by my head. No angry bear charged to see who had awakened him. I grew a little bolder and stepped into the opening. I couldn’t see the back of the cave from where I stood. I reported to the others what I had found and told them I would check to see where the opening went. I asked George to send reinforcements if he heard sounds of violence, or if we didn’t return within two minutes. Then, I motioned for Lou to go first.
The footprints disappeared almost immediately. I suspected that the culprit stomped the snow from his or her feet, before entering the cave, provided someone had actually ve
ntured inside. Lou and I had to bend slightly to step inside. The ground sloped slightly at first, but then leveled out. After a few more feet, the pathway widened until it resembled a room with no stalagmites or stalactites to be found. Hard dirt floors and walls and a cool temperature, but warmer than the temperatures we faced outside.
By the time our time was up, Lou and I had rejoined the others. We had found three wooden staircases leading upward in various directions. I asked George for six men, and asked him to lead the others around the grounds to see if they could discover anything significant. Not wanting to be trampled to death, Lou and I stepped inside the cave as each man jumped to the ledge. Each man leaped more gracefully than the two middle-aged men had. I chalked that up to preparedness. Each of them knew that he would be jumping. I had been pushed by an offensive lineman.
I had each man step inside the cave while I addressed the group. One of the men who joined Lou and me was Officer Davis. It was time to get even with him for what he had done to me. If he hadn’t beckoned me to the edge of the cliff, I wouldn’t have found myself in such a predicament. I instructed Officer Davis and another officer to follow the footprints that hugged the cliff to see where they went. I motioned for the other men to pair off and follow Lou and me inside the cave and six flashlights focused on the path ahead. After a few steps, we stopped in the expansive area Lou and I had found a few minutes earlier. Nearby, to our left, the first staircase rose from the hard dirt floor. It was the steepest of the three staircases. Too steep for Plump and Plumper. I chose two men, told them to take the staircase, but to proceed with caution and venture forth as quietly as possible. The second flight of steps sprang from the middle of the room, much like a beautiful staircase in a stately home. I motioned for the other twosome to mount that edifice. I stood and watched the first two teams go to work. A few seconds before, our flashlights had merged. Now, as we headed off in three directions, the lights more closely resembled a shotgun effect. Satisfied that both twosomes would accomplish their tasks and report back to us in time, Lou and I walked the remaining steps to the last flight of stairs. The gradual sloping of the steps showed me that our climb would be the easiest of the three, but logistics suggested that we would have the greater number of steps to climb. Our path led to the far side of the inn. We had no railings to help us climb, but the climb was as easy as any could be for two men of our magnitude. The steps headed straight at first, then gradually curved to the left. It got to the point when we could see only a few feet ahead of us. If we were to meet anyone on our trek, we wouldn’t surprise them, nor would they surprise us. Even those less mentally gifted individuals know that bobbling flashlights don’t travel alone.