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“Ach, tell me something I didn’t know,” said Flynn. “And when I catch the bastard, what do you want me to do with him—privately?”

  Rutledge turned and looked down at his feet. “We’ll see.” He cleared his throat. “I can assure you, Flynn, no one here is going to go off half-cocked. We have our own resources. Considerable resources. At The Rod and Gun Club the members consult with each other constantly. There will be no decisions independently made.”

  Flynn thought of a recent bank robbery in Boston. One of the desperately nervous robbers shot another robber when the second robber didn’t obey fast enough. The first robber, besides being indicted for bank robbery, was also charged with attempted murder while committing a felony.

  Wahler said, “I’ll bring you down and show you where Huttenbach was killed.”

  “And I can assure you, Rutledge,” Flynn said, standing up, “that when it comes time for your special investigator, and my portable witness, Concannon, to testify, you’ll hear nothing from our mouths but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “We’ll see.” Rutledge turned his back on Flynn, again to look through the small window. “If this matter is disposed of correctly, there might never be reason for anyone to testify.”

  8

  “There are two people at table I expect you don’t know,” Charles Rutledge said at the beginning of lunch. He smiled engagingly at the man seated at the thick round table. “At least I hope you have no reason to know. I think most of you have met Boston Police Commissioner D’Esopo.”

  Eddy D’Esopo sat across the round table from Rutledge in his double-knit jacket, his heavy face lined with sleeplessness.

  “D’Esopo is not a member, as you know, but has been a guest two or three times the last year.” From where he was seated, Rutledge turned his open face to the right, to Flynn. “This, gentlemen, is Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn, a man whose background does not invite delving into. Suffice it to say, he has a brilliant record of running discreet investigations, let’s say, above the salt, with spectacular results.”

  “Shall I dance around the ring?” gently inquired Flynn, putting on what he hoped would be seen as a wry smile.

  Rutledge turned his face to Cocky seated across from Flynn, looking small and misshapen among the big, ruddy, well-cared-for men. “And this is Detective Lieutenant Walter Concannon who, I understand, took early retirement from the Boston Police some while ago. We weren’t really expecting Concannon, but under the circumstances, a guest of Flynn’s necessarily is a guest of ours.”

  Cocky kept his eyes in his empty stew bowl.

  At a table near the kitchen door Taylor stood with another white-coated man, Vietnamese, awaiting the courtesies to be over.

  Around the big dining room panelled in barnwood there were several other round tables, smaller, not set for lunch. Large leaded windows on one wall overlooked the lake.

  “Never thought we’d be entertaining investigators of any kind at The Rod and Gun Club,” Rutledge said, “but you all know of the tragic occurrence of last night, and those preliminary steps we have taken so far.” “Threw it all down the hill.” Naked, seventy year old Wendell Oland sat at table to Flynn’s left. Formerly, Flynn had dined with naked people, of course, but he could not remember having done so formally. “Quite right, too.”

  Rutledge said, “I promised Flynn he will have the cooperation of each and every one of us. It was agreed last night, gentlemen, that we want to know what happened and why before we decide what to do about it.”

  At first Flynn welcomed the flurry of skirt, the flash of stockinged leg, the tumble of silken hair which then appeared in the small door of the dining room.

  Then he realized how ungainly the apparition was.

  The person wearing these clothes was tall, broad-shouldered, and needed a shave.

  “Ah, Lauderdale,” chided Rutledge. “Late again.”

  “That’s Judge Lauderdale,” Wahler whispered from Flynn’s right. “He likes to wear dresses.”

  “He doesn’t wear them well,” observed Flynn.

  The man’s wig was off several degrees counterclockwise, his blouse screwed several degrees off clockwise, and the skirt was twisted counterclockwise. His stockings sagged.

  “He keeps closets of ’em here,” Wahler whispered.

  “Can’t say I don’t hear the damned gong,” Lauderdale said. “It gives me migraine.” The Judge pronounced it me-graine. “It rushes me so.”

  Lauderdale sat between Wahler and D’Esopo.

  From below his shaggy eyebrows, Eddy D’Esopo was looking worriedly at Flynn. He then looked worriedly at Cocky.

  “Permit me to finish the introductions.” Rutledge began at his immediate left. “Clifford… Arlington…” He skipped Cocky. “… Buckingham… Ashley…” He skipped D’Esopo. “…Lauderdale…” He skipped Wahler and Flynn. “…Oland…” Rutledge looked at the empty place set immediately to his right. “I guess Dunn Roberts didn’t make it to lunch. Must be out hunting.”

  “He’s napping,” Lauderdale said.

  “Crocked,” said Ashley. “Drank his breakfast. He’ll feel the better for it.” Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham and Ashley were those who had been playing poker so earnestly upon Flynn’s return to the clubhouse. Ashley had since changed from a bathrobe to a hunting jacket.

  Rutledge nodded toward the kitchen door.

  Taylor and the waiter began going around the table ladling stew into the bowls.

  “What about the gong?” Flynn quietly asked Wahler.

  The Sunday noon peace of the hills had been devastated by the sound of the gong, struck once. At its sound, Wahler had led Flynn from the storage room to the dining room.

  “Everything around here happens to the sound of the gong. Breakfast, lunch, sauna, swim, dinner. It’s a tradition.”

  “But where is it?” asked Flynn.

  “Outside, on the kitchen porch.”

  “It must be pretty big.”

  “Damned big,” agreed Wahler. “Damned big noise.”

  It took Flynn a moment to realize the naked man to his left was addressing him. “I never had much to do with criminal law.”

  “I can tell,” said Flynn.

  The naked man carefully placed his napkin on his right thigh. Stew was being ladled into his bowl.

  “Have you investigated the scene of the crime?”

  “Both,” answered Flynn. “Considerate of your membership to give me a choice.”

  Wendell Oland looked regretfully at Flynn as stew was ladled into Flynn’s bowl.

  “I’d like to know,” Wendell Oland said, sticking the spoon into his stew, “what bastard shot holes in my new waterproofs.”

  Buckingham filled his glass from the keg of beer on its own stand near the kitchen door.

  Ashley asked, “What have you detected so far, Flynn?”

  Each member at the table had taken a hard roll from a basket handed around.

  Next to him, Oland had broken open his roll and was making small bread pellets out of it.

  “Dwight Huttenbach was murdered last night at about eleven o’clock in what you call the storage room at The Rod and Gun Club. He was standing near the north side of the room when he was shot. The murderer was standing at the south side of the room, near the door to the back corridor of the clubhouse. Possibly, if the door were open, he stood behind the door. In any case, it’s a conjecture at this point that Huttenbach may have opened the door, entered, not closed the door, and not seen his murderer until he walked to the north side of the long room and then turned around. The weapon was a shotgun. Besides putting holes in Mister Oland’s new waterproofs, the blast also blew out two small, high windows, wrecked several cross-country skis, ski parkas and other coats hanging on the far wall.”

  “We don’t use ‘Mister’ at The Rod and Gun Club, Flynn,” reminded Rutledge.

  “If I were willing to be a member,” answered Flynn, “I’d be willing to obey your rules.”

  D�
�Esopo looked sharply at Flynn. He got up and got himself a beer from the keg.

  “What shotgun killed him?” asked Arlington.

  “There are several shotguns stored in that room,” answered Flynn. “Fifteen, to be exact.”

  “Mostly we keep them for guests,” said Ashley, trying his stew.

  Buckingham, too, was making his roll into bread balls.

  “Ballistics tests on shotguns aren’t much good,” said Flynn. “Plus, in that storeroom, there are cases of ammunition of various kinds, hunting rifles, various kinds of fishing gear, skis, ice skates, and, one music box.”

  “You found my music box?” exclaimed Lauderdale.

  “It plays The Wedding March,” said Flynn. “From the Second Act of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Fis missing.”

  “My music box!” Lauderdale clasped his hands in front of his flat chest. “He found my music box! What a detective!”

  Beside Lauderdale’s plate was a smashed roll and an assortment of bread balls.

  “Then,” said Flynn, “most evidence was criminally destroyed, or altered. The corpse was moved ten or twelve kilometers, and placed outside Timberbreak Lodge. Generally, the scene of the crime was so disturbed there is little reason for examining it much further. The victim’s personal belongings, as much as I know of them, were also removed to the lodge. Outside the lodge an ersatz scene of crime was carelessly arranged. It is a useless source of evidence. The motel operators, I suspect the local police authority, others, the county coroner, apparently have been bribed into a willingness to give false evidence, to perjure themselves.” After tasting it, Flynn considered his stew a moment. He wondered how anyone could make venison stew so bland. “Quite a catalog of crimes, gentlemen, for such a few short hours.”

  “Oh, my,” said Lauderdale. “I just knew I shouldn’t have come this weekend. And my son was so hoping I’d get to his football game. But I just had to get away.”

  “Why doesn’t everyone at table state right here and now where he was last night at eleven o’clock?” said Clifford.

  “There speaks the man with the perfect alibi,” said Flynn.

  “There speaks a man who reads mystery novels,” said Ashley.

  “Actually, not,” said Clifford. “Wrong in both cases.”

  “You don’t read mysteries?” said Ashley. “You never read Don Quixote?”

  “I went to my room about nine thirty. I was asleep by quarter to ten.”

  Clifford was the youngest at the table. Flynn guessed he was in his early twenties. His dark blue sweat shirt complemented his wide, dark eyes and neatly clipped black hair. The skin over his prominent cheekbones was tight and clear and slightly touched by sun even in October. His neck was muscular and suggested an athletic body. Of everyone at the table, he had appeared to be listening most intently to Flynn.

  “So was I, so was I,” said Buckingham. “In my room early, asleep. I didn’t even hear the shot.”

  “You were passed out,” said Lauderdale.

  “Yes,” said Buckingham. “I’d had a lot to drink. Long before ten o’clock.”

  “Long before six o’clock,” said Lauderdale.

  “We don’t watch that sort of thing around here,” said Rutledge. “We surely don’t comment on it.”

  In his fifties, Buckingham had the large, wide-open face that almost seems to be a guarantee of success in business or politics. Such a face, rightly or wrongly, gives the impression of a bigness and frankness on the part of the man himself. Flynn had the sense of having seen photographs of Buckingham. At least Buckingham’s hair was thinner than agreed with some previous knowledge of Buckingham’s face. He had the build of someone who had played college football a generation before. And if he’d had too much to drink the night before, Flynn thought, studying him, he was not showing much sign of it at lunch the next day.

  “What time did we finish playing gin?” Ashley leaned against the table and asked Arlington.

  “About ten fifteen, ten thirty. Then I went into the television room to look at my local news off the Betamax.”

  Arlington, too, looked vaguely familiar. The curious thing about him was that his body was short and flabby; his face not at all fat or sagged. His eyebrows rose unnaturally at their outer ends, giving him a peculiarly supercilious expression. Flynn suspected that close examination would reveal scars of cosmetic surgery along his hairline, above and below his ears, under his jaw. Arlington looked in his early fifties but Flynn guessed he was in his mid-sixties.

  “And I went for a walk,” said Ashley. “I walked around the lake.”

  “That takes just an hour,” Rutledge told Flynn.

  “In the dark?” asked Flynn.

  “There’s a path.”

  “When I came back the shooting had taken place. Perhaps I heard it. I’m not sure. Apt to get sort of abstracted, when I walk.”

  Ashley was no more overweight than a normally healthy man is, in his mid-forties. His complexion was ruddy enough, but partly the source of his ruddiness was broken veins, and his eyes were liverish. Of all the men there, Ashley seemed to have given himself the closest shave, the most careful combing job.

  “You were counting the days,” Lauderdale said, “until you have to declare yourself a bankrupt.”

  Ashley glanced at Lauderdale. As he reached for his roll, Ashley’s hand shook.

  “When Icameback,” Ashley said, “I found everyone in the storage room. Poor Huttenbach lying there, bits of him on the wall.”

  “Ashley’s not going bankrupt,” Buckingham said loudly. “When did The Rod and Gun Club ever let one of its members go bankrupt?”

  Lauderdale said: “When it serves our purposes.”

  In his early fifties, Lauderdale’s extreme thinness could not diminish his bones, his man’s shoulders beneath his blouse, the big knuckles of his hands. Clearly, Judge Lauderdale would look far more graceful in his judicial gown.

  Flynn asked Ashley, “Precisely who was in the storage room when you arrived?”

  “Everyone. Not Buckingham.” Ashley looked around the table. “Everyone but Buckingham.”

  “Was Taylor there?”

  Taylor and the waiter had retreated to the kitchen.

  Several nodded affirmation.

  “How was Taylor dressed?” asked Flynn.

  “In shorts,” Lauderdale said definitely.

  “Shorts? You mean, undershorts?”

  “No, just shorts. Those flimsy, short, running-short things. Barefooted. Shirtless. Sweating.”

  Clifford looked evenly at Flynn. “Just shorts.”

  “Where were you, Judge Lauderdale?” Flynn enjoyed asking.

  “Actually, I was in my tub. Soaking. I had a face cloth folded over my eyes, as I lay back, soaking. There was the bang of the gun. The face cloth plopped into the water in front of me, I was so startled. It was all I could do to get on my chemise and mules and run down to see what happened.”

  “Soaking wet,” said the naked Oland. “You did well not to catch cold.”

  “I may have a sniffle,” Lauderdale sniffed.

  Wahler leaned over and whispered to Flynn: “You realize all this is an act. Away from here Lauderdale is as straight as a Texas road. He just puts this on to entertain the boys.”

  “Is that why he does it?” asked Flynn.

  “I was reading by the fire,” Oland offered. “I may have fallen asleep. The shot awoke me. I had gone to considerable trouble to get my new waterproofs. I was alone in the main room at the time.”

  Oland, well into his seventies, seemed the most relaxed of all sitting at the table. A skinny old man with thinning hair, tired eyes, a small pot low on his stomach, he seemed perfectly comfortable being the only naked person in the room.

  “Do you remember what time Ashley and Arlington left the main room?” Flynn asked.

  Oland thought a moment. “I don’t remember them being there at all. I doubt they were.”

  Flynn asked Ashley and Arlington, “You were playing cards in
the main room, weren’t you?”

  Both men said, “Yes.”

  “I doubt they were,” repeated Oland.

  “That leaves Wahler and me, I guess,” said Rutledge. “We were together in my suite until about quarter to eleven. I had taken a shower, gotten into bed, and read a few pages when I heard the shot. It was seven minutes past eleven by my watch.”

  Everyone looked at Wahler.

  “I came down to the main room, mixed myself a Scotch and soda, and took it out onto the front veranda.”

  “You went out without a coat?”

  “I was wearing my suit jacket and vest. I didn’t intend to leave the porch. I wanted some fresh air.”

  “And Senator Roberts?” Flynn asked the room.

  “I don’t know.” Rutledge looked at others at the table. “Anyone know where Roberts was?”

  No one seemed to know where Roberts was.

  “How was he dressed when he arrived in the storage room?”

  “In bathrobe and slippers,” said Lauderdale.

  “Yes,” said Clifford. “I think so. He was carrying a book.”

  “And where were you?” Flynn asked Boston Police Commissioner Eddy D’Esopo.

  “When I heard the shot?” the Commissioner asked absently.

  “I think you’ve been hearing the conversation,” Flynn said softly.

  D’Esopo smiled foolishly. Then he laughed. “I was trying to commit burglary. Breaking and entering. I was in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat. The refrigerators were locked. All the cupboards were locked.”

  Laughter rose from the table.

  “Of course they were locked,” said Arlington. “What’s so unusual about that?”

  Testily, Oland said, “Such things are always locked at that hour.”

  Embarrassed, D’Esopo said, “I didn’t know it.”

  “You learn that at school, man,” said Buckingham.

  “A good thing, too,” said Oland. “Can’t have people running in and out of the kitchen grabbing things at all hours. Makes things impossible for the servants.”

  Clifford was giving D’Esopo a friendly smile, which D’Esopo was feeling too miserable to accept.

  Clifford had rolled an immense number of bread pellets beside his plate.