Murder in the Winter (6 page)

6

As we pondered how to proceed, Lou informed me that
George and his men were searching the common areas first. Even with all the
seats in the auditorium, it was easier to search the four rooms in the common
areas than to search all the empty sleeping rooms. I say four rooms, because
there was no need to search the sitting room or the dining room. There were no
walls and both were within sight of Officer Davis’s post at the front door.

A few minutes later someone knocked at the conference
room door. I tossed aside any thoughts to the murderer giving himself or
herself up, or that one of the two guests we were trying to locate had arrived
to make our job easier. Lou opened the door and invited a police officer
inside.

“Lieutenant, we’ve found Plankton. He was in the pool,
sir.”

“Taking a little swim?”

The officer smiled, nervously.

“With his clothes on. He’s dead, sir.”

Lou and I accompanied the officer to the indoor pool
and saw the body lying at the bottom. I informed George that Mrs. Dukenfield
was also missing, and asked him to disperse his team to look for her. As we
spoke, two officers stripped to dive into the pool to retrieve Plankton’s body.
Before they finished, I dashed to the phone to call Frank Harris. Upon recognizing
my voice, he spoke.

“Cy, the body just arrived, and they’re preparing it
for me now. You didn’t expect anything this soon, did you?”

“No, I was just curious as to whether or not two autopsies
take twice as long as one.”

“Don’t tell me you found another body.”

“No, someone else found it. You want to run out here
and check it out. This one was found in the pool. With his clothes on.”

“Okay, I’ll be right out. Of course you realize
this’ll hold me up from getting you the autopsy results.”

“No problem, Frank. I don’t expect anything before morning,
anyway. And by the way, one of the other guests is missing. If you take your
time I might have a third body for you before you get here.”

+++

I questioned Officer Davis. No one had gone up or down
the front stairs since he arrived. At least, no one except police officers.
From his post at the front door, he couldn’t see whether or not someone left
his or her room and escaped down the back hall. If he’d been looking up the
stairs, which he admitted he hadn’t done the entire time, it would’ve been impossible
for someone to have darted by, hurried down the hall, and walked down the back
stairs. But since Officer Davis was more concerned about the front door, and
paid little attention to the second floor, someone could’ve retreated via the
back stairs. Regardless of whether or not Officer Davis had focused his attention
on the stairs, someone could’ve crawled down the corridor and not been seen by
him. To his credit, Officer Davis admitted to spending part of his time in a
comfortable chair near the front door. He was certain no one had left through
that door, but couldn’t confirm anything else.

Knowing that Frank Harris couldn’t make good time driving
the road to Precipice Point on a wintry night, Lou and I caught up with George
and some officers in the library.

No Professor Plum. No candlestick. No Isabel Dukenfield.
The room contained an elongated table, long enough to seat twenty people. At
one end of the room, we saw computers, something I knew nothing about. Neither
Lou nor I had ever used a computer, despite friends and colleagues urging us to
do so. Easy chairs stood in three of the four corners of the room. Well, not
exactly in the corners. Chairs were far enough removed from the corners that
even a well-fed person like me could squeeze behind them without inhaling, in
order to peruse the books that lined the mahogany bookcases that surrounded the
room. Books were divided into categories. Engraved plates were affixed to
eye-level shelves to help someone like me identify the subject of each section
of books. There were classics, mysteries, and oversized books resplendent with
pictures, but most of the shelves contained the works of great playwrights. Lou
hovered near the classics, but there was nothing there for me. Someone had
forgotten to include books containing
The Far Side
cartoons. After
scanning the room and realizing there was no body in the bookcase, and no one
hiding under the table, we scratched the library from our list and strolled to
the auditorium nearby.

Once inside the auditorium, we dispersed. Not wanting
to tackle the stage or the balcony, I selected two officers to check out those
seats. I walked the aisles, looking for hands or feet sticking out from under a
seat, or for blood running downhill to the orchestra pit. By the time we’d
concluded that no one other than Hilldale’s finest inhabited the auditorium at
that moment, I looked at my watch. Lou and I would wait in the sitting room
until Frank Harris arrived. No one had mastered the art of sitting quite like
the two of us. The others were to continue the search of all downstairs rooms,
except for the staff’s quarters. Lou and I would search those rooms provided we
hadn’t found the old lady by the time we’d searched all the guest rooms upstairs. 

+++

We waited for Frank so that we could guide him to the
latest victim. At least it was the latest victim of which we were aware. The
first murder
deprived
us of our late night snack, but judging by our
evening meal, we weren’t deprived. Just malnourished. But I was prepared for
just such an occasion. I had not stashed all of my Hershey Almond bars in my
room. I had some in my coat pocket and was about to lower that total by one
almond and a miniscule bit of chocolate. I was sure more almonds and chocolate
would succumb to my hunger before Frank returned. I looked over at Lou just as
he attempted to guzzle another round of M&Ms and laughed when one escaped
to the nether reaches of the couch. He thought for a moment, and then decided
to leave it for the next person on a treasure hunt. Unless he ran out of candy
before Frank arrived. I heard two vehicles pull up before I had polished off my
first candy bar. Too bad our medical examiner was so punctual. Evidently he
wanted to get to the body before rigor did.

Lou and I met Frank at the door.

“Well, Cy, have you and Lou been here waiting patiently
ever since you phoned?”

“You know it, Frank.”

He laughed.

“Well, it looks like you were hit by a small piece of
chocolate while you waited,” he said as he pointed to the edge of my mouth.

I looked over and noticed Officer Davis smiling at my
expense. I would get even with him later. I turned with a response to Frank’s
retort.

“All this searching wore us out. Lou and I needed something
to give us enough strength to go on looking for bodies.”

“Take your time looking. My wife wants to see me before
spring.”

We were on our way to the pool when George intercepted
us.  His men had finished the first floor and found a second conference room,
but found nobody and no body. He told his men they could rest in the sitting
room until Lou and I returned. I had the only passkey that would open each door
in the inn, and I didn’t want to ask Longworth for a second key. I wanted to
know what cards I held before I encountered him again.

It was 11:00 o’clock before Frank left with the second
body. I told him to go on and we’d call with information about the third body
shortly after he returned to the morgue.

+++

Lou and I offered to search the few rooms in our wing,
allowing George Michaelson and his boys to rest a while longer. I knew George
had already put in a full day before I called him, so he, for one, would relish
the time off his feet.

We had to check every room, and that meant
every
room. I decided to get a certain room over with first. I knocked on the door,
and became quickly disappointed. Not only was Heloise Humphert in her room, she
was coherent. Well, as coherent as she is any other time. When she discovered
it was me, she yanked the door open and grinned.

“Oh, Cyrus, I knew you’d come. I told Twinkle Toes
you’d come, and you didn’t disappoint me.”

“Miss Humphert, I don’t have time for you or Muffy
right now. The woman who sat next to you at dinner has disappeared. We have to
find her.”

“If I disappear, Cyrus, will you come looking for me?”

“Of course, it would be my job to find you, but you
can’t disappear now. I’m too busy with other things. You must stay in your
room.”

I failed to mention how much time would elapse before
I went looking for her, but she didn’t need to know everything.

“But Cyrus, Twinkle Toes has to do her business.”

“Your room has a balcony. Let her go out there.”

“But I think she has to go the other way now.”

“How about if I find a rope, then we can tie it around
her neck and drop her to the ground? As I lower her, I’ll yank the rope a few
times to see if she’s still there.”

“Cyrus, you’ve offended Twinkle Toes. See how crestfallen
she looks.”

In a weak moment I agreed to send Lou to take Twinkle
Toes for a walk. That would even things for his letting Heloise Humphert know
which room was mine. I reminded him that dogs respond better if you walk them
near the edge of a cliff in the dark. He let me know that wouldn’t happen
unless the leash was a lot longer than he thought it was. As it turned out, my
partner merely opened the side door, stepped out a few feet, and informed the
dog she had two minutes.

+++

Lou and I had finished checking all the front rooms
when George raced up the steps. From his hurried manner, I expected at least
two more bodies.

“Cy, it’s Frank. He needs to talk to you.”

Reluctantly, I took George’s phone.

“Frank, so nice of you to call to let us know you got
home okay.”

“I wish I could go home. Cy, I was right when I told
you I might have a surprise for you. We’ve got a problem here.”

“What’s the matter? Your chainsaw quit working?”

“No, it’s about the victim. The first one.”

“You mean he isn’t dead?”

“Oh, he’s dead all right.”

“Then what’s the problem.”

“This guy isn’t who you think he is.”

“You mean he isn’t Myles Mycroft?”

“I don’t know about that. He doesn’t have any I.D. on
him.”

“Then, I don’t understand. I don’t really know anything
about him other than his name is supposed to be Myles Mycroft. Come to think of
it, the name does sound made up.”

“What I mean is the guy’s wearing makeup.”

“You mean he’s a fairy?”

“I don’t know about that. I mean he’s wearing actor’s
makeup. Actually, it’s more like fake skin, false teeth, and hair that isn’t
his own.”

“I know lots of people who wear hair and teeth that
aren’t their own, but that doesn’t make them fairies.”

“Forget the fairy stuff, will you, Cy. I mean, was
there some reason this guy’s disguised?”

“Maybe he’s an actor. But why would he wear makeup unless
this whole thing’s a play?”

I thought for a moment, wondering if maybe this was a
play, and Lou and I were the suckers sent here by someone from the department,
who would see that we remember this moment from now on. I remembered that Tony
McArthur acted like everything was part of a play.

“Come clean, Frank. Is he really dead, or is all this
a joke?”

“It’s no joke, at least not to the dead guy over
there. I’ll see what I can find out, and when I get all the makeup off him,
we’ll see if you or anyone else can identify him. By the way, I think the
second guy was made up, too.”

Could it be that my next-door neighbor, the one who
needed a new face more than anyone, was the only one other than Lou and me who
came wearing no disguise? I pondered what Frank’s comments meant. The guy was
dead. Both guys were dead. I scratched them off the suspect list. But the list
was dwindling. The only guest we had left, other than my next-door neighbor,
was missing. Could that missing old lady be responsible for murdering two men,
and whether she did or not, where was she?

+++

I stopped my woolgathering when I noticed a passel of
policemen looking at me. All would rather have been home in a nice warm bed
than hunting for murder suspects.

“Okay, men, there’s only one passkey. We’ve checked
the entire inn, except for guest rooms and employees’ quarters. It’s almost
midnight. Let’s check the rooms in the back.  To save time, I’ll walk down the
hall and open each door. As I unlock a door, one of you will check out each
room. Remember to check the shower and under the bed. We should have this
knocked out in no time.”

Since we didn’t interrupt those checking the food for
poisons and the three men guarding the front door, I soon found myself with no
officer beside me. I unlocked a door and stepped inside. The room was nicely
furnished, and quite different from my own, both in color scheme and type of
furniture. I knew little about decorating, but I knew enough to know that
Longworth had spared no expense decorating any of the rooms. I had finished
checking the room and was closing and locking the door when one of the men ran
up to me.