Mystery. Part 29

Huge clouds scudded across the moon.

He had forgotten to leave lights on in the lodge, and he groped around the big sitting room, walking into furniture that seemed to have moved and changed places while he was gone. Then his hand found a lampshade, his fingers met the cord, and the room came into being again, just as it had been before. He fell onto a couch. After a moment he got up and turned on another light. Then he stretched out on the couch again and read a few more pages of The ABC Murders The ABC Murders. He remembered being dissatisfied with it yesterday, but could not remember why-it was a perfect book. It made you feel better, like a fuzzy blanket and a gla.s.s of warm milk. A kind of simple clarity shone through everything and everybody, and the obstacles to that clarity were only screens that could be rolled away by the famous little grey cells. You never got the feeling that a real darkness surrounded anyone, not even murderers.

Tom realized that Lamont von Heilitz had begun talking about Eagle Lake the first night they had met-almost as soon as Tom had walked in the door, von Heilitz had brought out his old book of clippings and turned the pages, saying here here and and here here and and here here.

Tom swung his legs off the couch and stood up. He tossed the book down and went into his grandfather's study. Light from the big sitting room touched the hooked rug and the edge of the desk. Tom turned on the lamp beside the desk and sat behind it. He pulled the telephone closer to him. Then he lifted the receiver, dialed 0, and asked the operator if she could connect him to Lamont von Heilitz's number on Mill Walk.

She told him to hold the line. Tom turned to the window and saw his face and his dark blue sweater printed on the gla.s.s. "Your party does not answer at this time, sir," the operator told him. Tom placed the receiver back on the cradle.

He placed his hands on either side of the phone and stared at it. The telephone shrilled, and he knocked the receiver off the hook when he jumped. He fumbled for it, and finally put it to his ear.

"h.e.l.lo," he said.

"What's going on up there?" his grandfather roared.

"h.e.l.lo, Grand-Dad," he said.

"h.e.l.lo, nothing. I sent you up there to enjoy yourself and get to know the right people, not so you could seduce Buddy Redwing's fiancee! And go around pumping people for information about some ancient business that doesn't concern you, not in the least!"

"Grand-Dad-" Tom said.

"And break into the Redwing compound and go snooping around with your popsy! Don't you know better than that?"

"I didn't break in anywhere. Sarah thought I might like to see-"

"Is her last name Redwing? If it isn't, she doesn't have any right to take you into that compound, because she doesn't have any right to go in there herself. You grew up on Eastern Sh.o.r.e Road, you went to the right school, you ought to know how to conduct yourself." He paused for breath. "And on top of everything else, on your first day there, you go into town and strike up a relationship with Sam Hamilton's son!"

"I was interested in-"

"I won't even mention your consorting with that nauseating queer, Roddy Deepdale, who ruined the lot next to mine, but I wonder what you thought you'd accomplish by physically a.s.saulting a member of the Redwing family."

"I didn't a.s.sault him," Tom said.

"You hit him, didn't you? Frankly, once you got to Eagle Lake you set about destroying most of what I've been building up during my lifetime."

"So do you want me to come home?"

His grandfather did not speak.

Tom repeated the question. All he heard was his grandfather's breathing.

"Sarah Spence isn't going to marry Buddy Redwing," he said. "n.o.body can make her do that-she isn't going to let herself be bought." bought."

"I'm sure you're right," his grandfather said. His voice was surprisingly mild. "Tell me, what do you see when you look out the window, this time of night? I always liked nights up at Eagle Lake."

Tom leaned forward to try to see through his reflection. "It's pretty dark right now, and-"

The lamp beside the desk exploded, and something slammed into the wall or the floor with a sound like a brick falling on concrete. The chair shot out from beneath him, and he landed hard on the floor in the dark. His feet were tangled up in the legs of the chair, and small pieces of gla.s.s glinted up from the floor all around him. Other shreds of gla.s.s had fallen into his hair. His breath sounded as loud as a freight train chugging up a grade, and for a moment he could not move. He heard his grandfather's tinny voice coming through the phone, saying "Tom? Are you there? Are you there?"

He untangled his feet from the chair and raised his head above the top of the desk. One light burned in the Langenheim lodge. Cool air streamed through an empty hole that had once been an upper pane.

"Can you hear me?" came the shrunken, metallic sound of his grandfather's voice.

Tom s.n.a.t.c.hed at the phone and pressed it to his face. A sliver of gla.s.s fell from his hair onto his wrist. "Hey," he said.

"Are you all right? Did something happen?"

"I guess I'm all right." He brushed the sparkling shred of gla.s.s off his wrist, then looked out at the still lake and the light in the Langenheims' lodge.

"Tell me what happened," his grandfather said.

"Somebody shot through the window," Tom said.

"Are you hit?"

"No. I don't think so. No. I'm just, ah, I'm just-I don't know."

"Did you see anybody?"

"No. There's n.o.body out there."

"Are you sure about what happened?"

"I'm not sure about anything," Tom said. "Somebody almost shot me. The lamp blew up. Part of the window's broken."

"I'll tell you what happened. Men from the town sometimes prowl through the woods, seeing if they can get an out of season deer. I remember hearing a lot of gunshots, up there. Hunters."

Tom remembered Lamont von Heilitz saying something similar, that first night in his house.

"Hunters," he said.

"One of them got off a wild shot. They'll be long gone by now. How do you feel now?"

"Kind of shaky."

"But you're okay."

"Yeah. Yes."

"I don't think there's any reason to call the police, unless you think you have to. After all, not much damage was done. The hunters will be halfway to the village by now. And the police up there never were much good."

"Somebody shot at me!" Tom said. "You don't think I should call the police?"

"I'm just trying to protect you. There's a whole history you don't know about, Tom." His grandfather was breathing heavily, and his voice was slow and heavy. "As you proved by going to see Sam Hamilton."

"Chet Hamilton," Tom said. "His son."

"Chet Hamilton! I don't care! You're not listening to me!" His grandfather's voice had turned ragged. "It's not like Mill Walk-the police are not on your side up there." Hamilton! I don't care! You're not listening to me!" His grandfather's voice had turned ragged. "It's not like Mill Walk-the police are not on your side up there."

Tom almost laughed. Everything was upside down.

"Did you hear me?" his grandfather asked.

"I'm going to call the police now."

"Call me back when they leave," his grandfather said, and hung up.

Tom replaced the receiver and stood up by inches, looking out of the window as he did so. His bottom ached from the fall. He rubbed the sore place, and then righted the chair and sat on it. The head of the lamp lolled toward him, and a small ragged hole perforated the shade. He touched the hole, and then looked down sideways at the juncture of the floor and the wall. Without the light, he could see only shadows where the bullet must have stopped. He wanted to turn on the other lamp in the room, but his legs would not let him get out of the chair. His blood made a tidal sound in his ears. Tom tilted the chair and looked up into the lamp. The bulb had disappeared, and the twisted socket canted over like a broken neck.

His grandfather had saved his life.

Then he could stand again, and he pushed himself away from the desk and turned on the lamp across the room. One small windowpane was broken, and the top of the lamp beside the desk lolled like a broken flower. A glitter of broken gla.s.s lay across the desk. Tom turned on the deck lights with the switch inside the back door, and the window lit up and the lake disappeared. He went back to the desk and looked down-he thought he would find a smashed hole, broken boards, and shattered molding, but at first saw nothing at all, and then only something that looked like a shadow, and then at last a neat hole in the wooden wall, eight or nine inches above the molding.

In ten minutes someone knocked at the front door. Tom peered out and saw the blond policeman who had arrested the drunk on Main Street. "Mr. Pasmore?" he said. His police car had been pulled up in front of the lodge, and all its lights were turned off-Tom had expected a siren and flashing lights. "You're the person who called? I'm Officer Spychalla."

Tom stepped back and let him in.

"I understand you had some trouble. Show me where it happened, and then I'll take some information." Spychalla looked as if he were straining out of his uniform, stretching the dark blue cloth and the taut black leather. His belt creaked when he moved.

He gave the office a quick inspection, made some notes in a small ringbound notebook, and asked, "Where were you sitting at the time of the incident?"

"At the desk, talking on the telephone," Tom said.

Spychalla nodded, walked around the desk, looked at the lamp and the bullet hole, and then went out on the deck to see the window from the outside. He came back and made more notes. "There was only the single shot?"

"Isn't that enough?"

Spychalla raised his eyebrows and flipped to a new page in his notebook. "You're from Mill Walk? What are your age and occupation?"

"Officer, don't you think you should send some men up into the woods, and see if you can find who shot at me?"

"Your full-time residence is on the island of Mill Walk? What are your age and occupation?" His jaw was as square as a box, and the point of the pencil above the clean sheet of paper was perfectly sharp.

"I live on Mill Walk, I'm seventeen, I'm a student."

Spychalla raised his eyebrows again. "Date of birth?"

"Is that going to help you?" Spychalla waited with his pencil in his hand, and Tom gave his birth date.

"This lodge, are you staying here by yourself? What I know about this place is, it belongs to a man named Upshaw."

Tom explained that Mr. Upshaw was his grandfather.

"Sounds like a pretty good deal," Spychalla said. "You get to shack up here by yourself all summer, drink a lot of beer and chase girls, is that it?"

Tom began to think that his grandfather had been right about calling the police. Spychalla was giving him a hard little smile that was supposed to communicate a total understanding of the pleasures of being seventeen and alone for the summer. "Some of you kids get up to a pretty wild time, I guess."

"I guess you could say that being shot at is pretty wild."

Spychalla closed his notebook and put it back in his hip pocket. He still had the little smile on his face. "Shook you up a little."

Tom sat down behind the desk. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"I'm going to explain something to you." Spychalla stepped nearer the desk. "You got a screwdriver or something like that? A long knife?"

Tom looked at him, trying to figure out what this request was about. Spychalla put his arms behind his back and did something with his arm and chest muscles that made his uniform creak.

Tom went into the kitchen and came back with a screwdriver. Spychalla went down on the toes of his boots and began to dig away the wood surrounding the sh.e.l.l. "People ain't supposed to hunt deer in the summer, but they do. Same way as they ain't supposed to get drunk and drive, but they do that too. Sometimes they go out at night and jacklight 'em." He slammed the screwdriver into the wall and chipped out a jagged piece of wood. "We arrest 'em when we catch 'em, but you can't always catch 'em. There's only me and Chief Truehart on the force full time, and a part-time deputy in the summer. Now one of the places these people know they can find deer is the woods around this lake, and sometimes we get calls from you people saying you hear shots at night. We run over here, but we know we ain't gonna find anybody, because all they they have to do is turn off their lights." He slammed the screwdriver into the wall. "If they drive, we can get 'em when they come back to their cars, but plenty of times they walk-hide their deer until the next day, sneak it back into town under a tarp on the back of a pickup. Here we go." He twiddled the screwdriver in the enlarged hole, jerked it backwards, and a black lump of metal clattered to the floor. Spychalla b.u.t.toned it into one of his shirt pockets and stood up. His uniform shirt was so tight Tom could see his muscles move. have to do is turn off their lights." He slammed the screwdriver into the wall. "If they drive, we can get 'em when they come back to their cars, but plenty of times they walk-hide their deer until the next day, sneak it back into town under a tarp on the back of a pickup. Here we go." He twiddled the screwdriver in the enlarged hole, jerked it backwards, and a black lump of metal clattered to the floor. Spychalla b.u.t.toned it into one of his shirt pockets and stood up. His uniform shirt was so tight Tom could see his muscles move.

"So I could go out there and root through the woods, but I'd be wasting my time. There's a village ordinance stating that hunters are not permitted to discharge weapons within two hundred and fifty feet of a dwelling. Now let's think about where this came from." He grinned, and looked like a handsome robot. He walked to the far end of the desk and pointed to the broken gla.s.s. "It came in here, busted this lamp, and hit the wall-slanting downwards. So the rifle was probably fired from way up above one of those lodges on the other side of the lake. The man who fired the rifle didn't have no idea in h.e.l.l h.e.l.l where his bullet went. Every summer and fall, we get complaints from people whose lodges are hit by bullets-not a lot of 'em, but one or two. The funny thing is, this guy could have been a quarter mile away from you." where his bullet went. Every summer and fall, we get complaints from people whose lodges are hit by bullets-not a lot of 'em, but one or two. The funny thing is, this guy could have been a quarter mile away from you."

"What if it wasn't a hunter," Tom said, "but someone who was trying to shoot me?"

"Look, I can't blame you for getting excited," the policeman said. "But if a guy with a high-powered rifle was trying to kill you, he'd a done it. Even if it was dark in here, he'd a put a couple more bullets through that window. I'm telling you, this happens about once every summer. You're just the closest anybody came to getting hit."

And you're friendly Officer Spychalla, who doesn't really mind that the Mill Walk people get an accidental bullet coming their way once a summer or so, Tom thought. "Somebody pushed me off the sidewalk into traffic the other day," he said. "In town."

"Did you file a complaint?"

Tom shook his head.

"Did you see anybody?"

"No."

"Probably an accident, just like this. Some fat old tourist turned around and hit you with a hip the size of a front-loader."

"Probably if I was dead, you'd investigate a little harder," Tom said.

Spychalla gave him the robot smile. "What do you hunt down there on that island you live on, rum drinks?"

"It's not that kind of island," Tom said. "We mainly hunt policemen."

Spychalla slapped his pockets and marched toward the door, boots and Sam Browne belt creaking magnificently, his service revolver riding ma.s.sively on his hip. He looked like a huge blond horse. "I'll file a report, sir. If you're worried about a recurrence of this incident, stay away from your windows at night."

He clumped down the steps to his patrol car.

A male voice came out of the dark. "Officer?" Sarah's father stepped into the ring of light on Tom's front steps, looking like someone used to being obeyed by policemen. He was wearing pajamas and a grey bathrobe. "Is this young man in any trouble?"

Spychalla said, "Go back to your lodge, sir. All the excitement is over."

Mr. Spence glared exasperatedly at Tom, then back at Spychalla, whose face made it clear that he had seen a lot of exasperation. He got in his car and slammed the door.

Mr. Spence put his hands on his hips and watched the headlights moving down the track. Then he turned around and tried to kill Tom with a look. "You are not to bother my daughter anymore. From now on there will be no communication between you and Sarah. Is that understood?" His big belly moved up and down under his shirt as he yelled.

Tom went inside and closed the door. He walked across the sitting room and went into the study. He realized that he was framed in the window, and his stomach froze and his blood stopped moving. Then he began sweeping broken gla.s.s off the desk into the wastebasket. After that he searched around the kitchen for a whisk broom and a dustpan, found them in a closet, and took them into the study to sweep the rest of the gla.s.s up from the floor.

He was returning the broom and the dustpan when he heard the telephone ringing, and he set them down on the table and returned to the study. He moved out of the line of the window and pulled back the chair. Then he sat down and answered the phone.