The Silver Ghost (27 page)

“He must be crazy!” cried Hester Tolbathy.

“No doubt,” Max agreed, “but he’s an efficient organizer. He explained how he wanted the Gaherises to remove the cars by a series of clandestine operations utilizing a concealed door in the car shed which had been installed some time ago by a rival gang of subversive operators who were no doubt Russian spies. The owner had been absent at the time but Hohnser had naturally maintained close surveillance and discovered the mechanism that operates the door.”

“Do you mean he’s been spying on us all these years? And using Bob as a—” Words failed Bill.

Max shook his head. “Hohnser states that your gardener has remained obstinately loyal to you and should not be approached with bribes or other inducements, which have already been covertly tested and proven ineffectual.”

“Why, that infernal scoundrel! He ought to be strung up by the boot heels. Forgive the intemperance of my language, but I find this revelation totally incredible. Hohnser’s been a pillar of this community. He’s served without emolument in town offices.”

“Yeah,” said Myre. “That’s how come we got Grimpen for police chief. Hohnser ganged up with the chairman of the Board of Selectmen and they rammed the appointment through. I even heard it was Hohnser who took Grimpen’s written exam for him.”

Bill shook his head again. “I knew Hohnser was an enthusiastic supporter of Grimpen, but—good heavens! And to think we’ve lived right on the same road with the man all these years.”

“And never heard a cordial word out of him the whole time,” snapped Abigail. “You know what he said last Christmastime at the Fromes’ about your little homilies, Bill. Your soft answer didn’t turn away my wrath, I can tell you. How did Versey get mixed up in it, Max? He wasn’t really Drusilla’s lover, was he?”

“Probably not, but he appears to have been on the Gaherises’ payroll for a good many years. He did own a house in Venice, by the way. It was no palazzo, but it must have cost Ufford something to keep up. That may explain why he developed a sideline.”

“But surely he wasn’t sending out noxious propaganda over our stations all that time,” Billingsgate protested.

“No, Bill. I’m sure this was a recent development. Otherwise Ufford wouldn’t have been testing to find out whether his messages were going to work for the Hohnser project. There was no point to that ‘eat the frumenty’ stunt unless it was an experiment in mass persuasion to show Drusilla he was capable of handling the job. I expect he valued his long connection with you mainly because it gave him a legitimate excuse to be skipping back and forth on the Gaherises’ errands. Like those so-called visiting lectureships he kept telling you about. Some of them may have been genuine, but I suspect a good many weren’t.”

“He seems to have got away with a great deal.” Lionel Kelling spoke not in censure but in envy.

“He wouldn’t have for much longer,” Max assured him. “Ufford had been getting too arrogant and taking needless risks. The Italian police had been keeping an eye on him, I found out.”

“Probably that was why Mrs. Gaheris decided to get rid of him,” said Sarah. “The bicycle was definitely his, by the way. Brooks checked it out with the professor’s landlady. They had a cup of tea and a cozy chat together. Brooks would, you know. The landlady says she saw Professor Ufford riding off on his bike about half-past one Monday morning, but thought nothing of it because he often did. He’d told her he liked to ride when the streets were empty of traffic, but she thought it more likely that he had some woman on the string whose husband worked the graveyard shift.”

“Well, I’d say Versey booked himself for the graveyard shift when he got mixed up with our old school chum, Abby,” Hester Tolbathy reached over to set down her empty cup on the tea wagon. “And to think Drusilla planned the whole thing sitting right here with that everlasting needlepoint.”

“Wherever she planned it, she didn’t do as good a job as her husband would have, if you’ll forgive the sexist observation,” said Max. “Gaheris would have known better than to underestimate the opposition.”

Boadicea Kelling sniffed. “Drusilla always did think she could get away with anything. She was a positive menace at field hockey. She’s kept herself in shape, though, you have to hand her that. Not many women her age could have got to the car shed, killed Rufus and hidden his body in that bizarre way, driven the Silver Ghost to the honey shed, stopping to commit mayhem on my person and haul me aboard en route, hidden the car, then run the whole length of the hedgerow path, gone around through the house and been back inside the pavilion before anybody noticed she was gone.”

“You could have done it, Bodie,” said Hester.

“I’m sure she could,” said Sarah, “but I’ll bet Drusilla Gaheris didn’t. My theory is that she told Rufe on Sunday morning to drive the honeybug out to the honey shed and leave it there. Melisande noticed after the revel, when she and I went for our ride, that the bug wasn’t parked quite where it ought to have been. She thought the kids must have been fooling around with it, and said she was going to jump on somebody’s neck, but she probably forgot.”

“Rufe wouldn’t have taken an order from Drusilla,” Tom Tolbathy objected.

“He would if she claimed to be carrying the message from Bill. She’d have known it was safe to lie to Rufe because he wasn’t going to be around long enough to—” Abigail choked up.

Boadicea decided to be tactful.

“Having the electric cart left where she could quickly find it and drive it back would certainly have been the practical thing for Drusilla to do. My own feeling is that while she’s in excellent condition for her age, as I remarked earlier, Drusilla is by no means the athlete she used to be. She couldn’t have put much of her old force behind that blow she dealt me with the
Totschläger,
or I shouldn’t be here to criticize. Of course her arms may by then have been tired from pulling Rufus’s body up into the tree,” Bodie conceded as a gesture to positive thinking. “I should have thought her ingenious arrangement of pulleys would have reduced the expenditure of muscular force required, but perhaps I underestimated the original degree of difficulty. What really puzzles me is how Drusilla managed to install the hoisting apparatus so expeditiously.”

“That hoist must have been rigged in advance,” Max told her. “Since Mrs. Gaheris used to be a mountain climber, I expect she could have got up the tree all right, but ifs more likely the rigging was another of Versey’s jobs. He probably biked out here Saturday night with the rope and pulleys. Getting them up in the tree wouldn’t have been any big deal for an ingenious guy like him.”

“But why didn’t anybody notice the rope on Sunday morning?” Lionel demanded.

“Partly because of the thick foliage around it, partly because everyone’s mind was on other things, and partly because the rope blended in so well with the tree trunk,” Sarah told him. “It was the same dark brown as the one you use on your rock climbs.”

“Ungh.” Lionel didn’t care much for that. “And would you kindly inform me as to when Mrs. Gaheris could have had time to throw the dart gun into the pond?”

“I don’t suppose she did. She’d have tossed it in among the bushes or somewhere for Professor Ufford to find and dispose of. That would explain what he was doing up on the hill when I met him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had the gun hidden under that full cloak he was wearing even when he claimed to be trying to date me up for the dance.”

“Damn good thing you didn’t accept,” Lionel grunted.

“Men were deceivers ever.” Tom Tolbathy was getting his spirits back. “But what about this business of the bicycle, Abigail? I was given to understand you and Drusilla spent the whole morning together in good works yesterday.”

“We weren’t always together. In fact, there was a space of time when I’d gone off to do a few errands and Drusilla stayed here. The idea was that she’d be helping Cook pack the rest of the food for us to take out to Milltown, but when I got back I found Cook meditating, which is a euphemism for taking a nap, and Drusilla nowhere near done with the packing. She made a little joke about having to work slowly so as not to disturb Cook’s meditation, and I helped her finish up. It wasn’t that much of a job, really, and I remember feeling just a trifle annoyed that Drusilla’d managed to drag it out so long. But you know how it is, working in someone else’s kitchen. I thought perhaps she’d been unsure about what I wanted done, and blamed Cook for not staying awake to tell her. It just never entered my head that Drusilla Gaheris could be up to anything shady. How in the world did you get on to her, Sarah?”

“Max and I both wondered about her right from the beginning. You didn’t actually know her, after all.”

“We certainly didn’t,” Abigail replied bitterly.

“But of course you know and trust Tick Purbody implicitly, so when the evidence began piling up against him it seemed possible somebody else had marked him out for the scapegoat. Living here in the house, Mrs. Gaheris was in an excellent position to manage that. That story of hers about the wandering Morris dancer made us wonder even more, especially when we found we couldn’t identify the man she allegedly saw. But what clinched it for me was when you said the person who hit you was wearing a dust coat, Aunt Bodie. That costume Mrs. Gaheris had on was exactly the same color. I expect the veil you thought you saw was the wimple, pulled over her face.”

“But Drusilla’s not tall enough,” her aunt protested.

“She’d be plenty tall enough standing up in the Ghost,” Lionel broke in impatiently. “And at least you know now you weren’t talking through your hat when you said you’d kept hearing Drusilla’s voice while you were tied up in the car. How did you get on to Hohnser, Max?”

“Well, I’d thought it a bit strange, his insisting Bob work for him both Sunday and Monday when he must have known the Billingsgates would have plenty for Bob to do here. Bob impresses me as being a bright, active guy; he mightn’t have been so easy to dispose of as Rufe was. But I thought maybe Hohnser had just done it to be ornery until I persuaded the Italian police to open a safety deposit box Mrs. Gaheris had in a Busto Arsizio bank.”

“Good heavens,” Bill exploded, “do you mean she kept Hohnser’s letter? Why ever would she do a reckless thing like that?”

“For insurance, I’d say offhand. The Gaherises may have intended to finance a prosperous old age by blackmailing their former correspondents. Only they didn’t retire soon enough. Getting back to Hohnser, once the preliminary negotiations had been opened through Ufford, he came to call on the Gaherises at the Albergo Verdi, posing as a tourist named Brown.”

“How original,” Tom Tolbathy remarked. “Why Busto Arsizio, Max? I know it’s up near the Italian Alps, but I thought it was a manufacturing town, not a tourist resort.”

“It is, but it’s also close to the Swiss border, you know, and the Gaherises used to pop back and forth a lot, especially on weekends. Signora DiCristoforo told me there always seemed to be tourists passing through when the Gaherises were there, and they always managed to strike up acquaintances. A nice elderly couple, possibly a bit lonesome and bored, it seemed natural enough at first. After a while, though, she began to get curious and had her nephew Pietro, who’s quite a talented fellow, run a few spot checks.”

“How?” demanded Lionel.

“In Hohnser’s case, by lifting his wallet. As soon as he found out Mr. Brown wasn’t Signore Bruno, Pietro took a few snapshots and jotted down the real name and address on the back.”

“Sounds as if the DiCristoforos were taking out a little insurance themselves,” Lionel grunted.

“I expect it’s a fairly profitable sideline.” Max took out his own wallet and extracted a small sheaf of plastic envelopes. “These cost me fifty thousands lire apiece. There you are, Bill. One of Ufford having an
aperitivo
with Drusilla on the terrace, one of Hohnser sitting at a table with the two Gaherises, a good, clear closeup of Hohnser himself, and one of Mr. and Mrs. Gaheris watching him leave. It’s okay, you can pass them around. Just don’t take them out of the envelopes.”

“So that was Drusilla’s husband,” said Abigail. “My goodness, he was a handsome rogue. No wonder she fell for him. He had a mean mouth, though. Don’t you think so, Bodie?”

“Let me see.” Boadicea Kelling put on her reading glasses and took the photograph from her friend’s hand. “Good heavens, that’s Lance!”

“Your brother Lancelot? I thought he died years ago. Bodie, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I know my own brother? So that’s why Drusilla went to live in Europe. All those years, sending me postcards and polite little notes, never once letting me know Lance was alive and she was my sister-in-law. Drusilla always did have a mad crush on Lance, even when she was captain of the lacrosse team. She roped him on the rebound, I suppose. Poor Lance, throwing his life away because of a heartless, scheming woman.”

In mingled grief and righteous indignation, Boadicea shoved her reading glasses down to the tip of her nose and pressed a clean white handkerchief to her eyes. “I hope you realize, Sarah Kelling Bittersohn, that if it hadn’t been for your precious Aunt Caroline, all this would never have happened.”

“If you say so, Aunt Bodie,” said Sarah. “Actually, I never liked Aunt Caroline either. Abigail, if there’s any more tea in the pot, I think Aunt Bodie and I could both use another cup.

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