There were no screams or gasps in response to Nigel’s revelation. The general reaction was not so much one of panic and alarm as it was a sinking feeling, a bottomless dread. A couple of the guests voiced the thought that they just did not understand what was happening to us or why, but that sounded like denial to me. We all knew what was going on.
Carolyn spelled it out. “It’s all straight out of Agatha Christie, sort of a combination of The Mousetrap and And Then There Were None. We’re isolated, all of us. We can’t get out of here and nobody can turn up to rescue us. And it’s that way because that’s how the killer wants it.”
“He couldn’t have arranged the snow,” Gordon Wolpert pointed out.
“No,” she said, “but he could have picked a weekend when a heavy snowfall was forecast. Or maybe he decided to take advantage of the snow once it fell. Outside of the snow, it was all his doing. He clubbed Rathburn and smothered him, he cut the phone wires, he fixed the snowblower so it would be ruined and the bridge so it would fall if anybody set foot on it. It’s pretty obvious why he wants us stranded here. He’s not through.”
There was a sort of general intake of breath at this announcement. I don’t think it was a new thought for most of the people there, but no one had put words to the tune until now.
Colonel Blount-Buller looked at the drink in his hand as if wondering what it was, then set it aside and cleared his throat. “There will be more killings,” he said. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it, Mrs. Rhodenbarr?”
“Well, why else would he seal us off like this?”
“You’re assuming he’s still here, and he wasn’t merely seeking to discourage pursuit.”
“Pursuit?” She spread her hands. “What pursuit? Who’s gonna pursue him? If this guy wants to get away from here, that’s fine with me. I’ll pay for his cab.”
The colonel nodded slowly. “And there’s really no way he could have left, is there? The snow and all, and the bridge. He’s elected to remain at Cuttleford House.”
“I don’t see where else he could have gone to,” Carolyn said, and drew a breath. “Matter of fact, he’s probably right here in this room.”
It was comfortable enough in the house, even without central heating, and there was a fire in the bar’s fireplace that had that room warm as toast. But right about then you got a sense of what absolute zero must be like, with the cessation of all molecular activity, because that’s the kind of silence that greeted Carolyn’s observation.
Nigel Eglantine broke it. “I say,” he said. “That’s a bit rich, isn’t it? ‘In this room.’ Why, there’s no one in this room but…”
“But us chickens,” someone said softly.
“But ourselves,” Nigel managed. “There’s only guests and…and staff…”
“A tramp,” Cissy Eglantine said. “Are we all that certain it might not be a tramp?”
“I’m afraid not,” the colonel said.
“Oh, I do so wish it could be a tramp,” she said. “It would be so much nicer for everyone.”
“It’s not a tramp,” her husband said heavily.
“But you said it couldn’t possibly be one of us, Nigel, and-”
“It can’t be,” he said, “but it must be. That’s what’s so awful. This is such a blessed spot, Cuttleford House, a haven from the cares of the world, and only truly nice people are drawn here. And nice people do not murder.” He set his jaw. “Or sugar snowblower engines, or sabotage suspension bridges, or cut telephone wires. Yet all these actions have been performed, haven’t they? Apparently by one of us.”
“That’s so dreadful, Nigel.”
“It is,” he agreed. “It’s quite insupportable, and that’s why it would be wonderful to blame it on a tramp, or the Bosnian Serbs, or the IRA.”
“I never thought of them…”
“Well, you needn’t think of them now, dear. I’m afraid Mrs. Rhodenbarr is correct. The killer is one of us.”
There was another silence, until Carolyn said, “Oh, the hell with it. It’s Ms. Kaiser.”
“But that’s remarkable,” Leona Savage said. “You mean you actually know who the murderer is? But which one of us is Ms. Kaiser?”
“I’m Ms. Kaiser,” Carolyn said.
“You mean…”
“No, for God’s sake! I wasn’t saying Ms. Kaiser was the murderer.”
“But you distinctly said, ‘It’s Ms. Kaiser.’ I’m positive that’s what you said.”
“Oh, Mummy,” Millicent said, exasperated. “Carolyn said ‘It’s Ms. Kaiser’ because she’s sick and tired of being called Mrs. Rhodenbarr. She’s not married to Bernie.”
“Well, I know that,” Leona said. “Neither of them wears a ring. I was being polite, in view of the fact that they’re here together and sharing a room.”
“I wouldn’t ordinarily mind what anybody called me,” Carolyn said, “but we’re all getting more involved than I thought we’d be, since one of us seems to be busy trying to kill the rest of us.”
“Quite right,” the colonel said. “When it’s ‘Nice day today’ and ‘Please pass the salt,’ one doesn’t much care what one’s called. But it’s a different matter when we’re thrown together to fight for our lives.”
Dakin Littlefield suggested that was a rather dramatic way of putting it. “If there’s a killer among us,” he said, “and that’s a pretty big if, all we have to do is wait him out. Yes, the phone lines are down and the bridge is out, but sooner or later someone’s going to fail to reach us and inform the authorities, and the next thing you know there’ll be a helicopter full of state troopers landing on the front lawn. How long can that take, a day or two? Three days at the most?”
No one had any idea.
“Say three days,” Littlefield went on. “I understand there’s plenty of food and water, and the bar’s not about to run out of Scotch. We came here to get away from it all and I’d have to say we’ve succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
“But what do we do now?”
“Whatever we please,” he said. “Play Scrabble, read a good book, sit by the fire.” He glanced at his bride, and I suppose he had the right to look at her that way, running his eyes insolently over her body. After all, he was married to her and they were on their honeymoon. All the same, I can’t say I liked it. “I’m sure we can all find something to keep us amused,” he said, and his tone made it clear what form of amusement he was thinking of for himself.
“That’s great,” Carolyn said. “The two of you can run off and make a Dakin-and-Lettice sandwich. Meanwhile the killer sees who he can knock off next.”
That brought everybody up short. Miss Hardesty wondered how long we could expect the killing to go on. Miss Dinmont admitted she was frightened, and asked if anyone could furnish her with a pistol for her own protection, as she could neither fight off nor flee from an attacker. Mr. Quilp, who had appeared to have dozed off, straightened up in his seat and demanded to know what we were to do.
Someone suggested that we had to defend ourselves. That got the colonel’s attention. “Have to do more than that,” he said. “Best defense is a good offense, wot? Can’t just wait for the cavalry to arrive. Have to meet them halfway, don’t we? Find the damned murderer ourselves.”
“How?”
“Smoke him out,” he said. “Trap him, chase him into a corner, harry him until he drops. Attack him on the right, attack him on the left, attack him in the center. Cut off his escape route, sever his supply lines. Then crush him.”
It was quite a performance. You could almost hear a tinny little orchestra in the background, belting out the theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai. In the respectful silence that followed I said, “I think we have to mount both a defense and an offense. The first thing we have to do is make sure that no more killings take place. While we’re seeing to that, we can also put our heads together and pool our information. It’s possible that we already know enough about one another to be able to determine the killer’s identity.”
“Good thinking,” the colonel said. “Daresay you’ve put on a uniform yourself, eh, Rhodenbarr?”
That made me stop and think. I knew what he meant, and the answer was no, I’d never been in the military. But had I ever worn a uniform? I went to prison once, I blush to admit, and they did dress us all alike, and not very stylishly, either. But would you call those prison grays a uniform?
Then I remembered my Boy Scout uniform.
“It’s been a few years,” I said.
“There’s a way of thinking that once learned is never forgotten, Rhodenbarr. Defense and offense, that’s the ticket. You have a plan in mind? An approach?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Good man. Let’s hear it.”
“First of all,” I said, “we have to make sure there are no more murders, and we’ll do that by sticking together.”
“You mean like this, Bern? All of us hanging out together in one room?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “That won’t always be convenient. But what each of us can do is make sure we’re never completely alone. If I always have somebody with me, then the killer can’t cut me out of the herd and do away with me.”
“Suppose the person you pick for company turns out to be the killer?”
It was Gordon Wolpert who offered this objection, and it was a good one. Others elaborated on the theme. If one of us was the killer, and if everybody was paired off with another person, that meant somebody would be buddied up with the killer.
“No problem,” Dakin Littlefield drawled. “Everybody pick a buddy and stick with that person. Then, next time somebody turns up dead, we’ll know it’s the person’s buddy who did all the killing.”
“That’s appalling,” Mrs. Colibri said. “But it’s not a great deal more appalling than the notion of being tethered night and day to another person. It’s all well and good for those of you who are married”-she glanced significantly at me and Carolyn-“or intimately allied, if unmarried. But what about those of us who are here alone?”
Someone said something about Greta Garbo.
“I don’t mean that I want to be alone,” Mrs. Colibri said icily. “But I’d as soon not share my bed with anyone, thank you very much, and I’m afraid I’m old-fashioned enough to prefer privacy in the bath. Add in the virtual certainty that one of us would be paired with the murderer, and you begin to see the dimensions of the problem.”
“Threesomes,” I said.
“I beg your pardon!”
“Not at night,” I said hastily. “During waking hours. If we divide into groups of three, that means two people will be buddied up with the murderer.”
“Safety in numbers,” the colonel murmured.
“Just that,” I said. “If A and B are buddies, and A’s the killer, he can wait for a quiet moment and knock off B. But if C’s part of the party, then he can’t.”
“What about bedtime?” Miss Hardesty wondered.
“That’s more complicated,” I admitted. “Millicent, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back to sleeping in your parents’ room. Sleeping arrangements for the rest of us will need a little more thought. I think, though, that Mrs. Colibri’s concerns about bathroom privacy are satisfied by this approach.”
“If I don’t want one person in the bath with me,” Mrs. Colibri said, “what on earth makes you think I’d be happier with two?”
“Because they’d be waiting outside,” I said, “keeping an eye on the door, and on each other. I’m sure there will be lots of details that need work, but I’m equally certain we can work them all out. We’re well motivated, and that’s a help.”
“That’s good sense,” the colonel said. “Carry on, Rhodenbarr.”
“Well,” I said, and put my glass down, wanting a clear head. “I guess the first thing to do is make sure we’re all here. I can’t think of anyone who’s missing, but I don’t have a list of all of us.” I patted my pockets. “Or anything to make a list with, either.”
“One moment,” Nigel said. He ducked out of the room and came back minutes later with a clipboard holding a yellow legal pad. The top sheet was blank, but a skilled investigator could have rubbed the side of a pencil point very gently over its surface to raise an impression of what had been written on the sheet above. Why anyone would want to do so, however, was quite beyond me.
“Thanks,” I said, and clicked the cap of my ballpoint pen a couple of times, and tested it with a quick squiggle in the margin. “This will do perfectly. But I should have stopped you.” He looked at me. “You went off by yourself,” I explained. “And that’s something none of us ought to do. Until we’ve got ourselves organized, can we agree that no one will leave the immediate area without a companion?”
“Two companions,” Lettice said. “Threesomes, remember?”
Threesomes indeed. Somehow the word had a special flavor coming from Mrs. Littlefield’s lips, and it threw me offstride for a moment. “Two companions,” I agreed. “Although one companion might be enough on a brief errand of the sort Nigel just ran. Just so no one goes off on his own.” Or her own? Or their own? The hell with it.
“Now,” I said, clicking my pen again. “Let’s start with the staff. Nigel Eglantine. Cissy Eglantine. Present and accounted for.” I wrote down both their names.
“And the two serving wenches,” Dakin Littlefield said.
“The upstairs maid,” I corrected, “Earlene Cobbett, and the downstairs maid, Molly Cobbett. Both here, I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” I said, and jotted down their names. “And Orris, of course, who is accounted for but not present. How do you spell his name?”
Cissy Eglantine spelled it. “Like the root,” she said.
“And his last name?”
“Cobbett,” Cissy said, and Earlene Cobbett let out a desperate sob. She seemed utterly undone by Orris’s death, and I’d wondered what they’d been to each other. The news that they shared a surname failed to clear up the nature of their relationship. Were they brother and sister? Husband and wife? All of the above?
My confusion must have shown, for Nigel Eglantine moved to clear it up. “There are a lot of Cobbetts in the region,” he said. “Molly and Earlene are cousins, and they’re both Cobbetts. And Orris was a cousin of both of them. Have I got that right, Molly?”
“Orris was cousin to Earlene, sir,” she said. “And cousin and uncle both to me, cousin on my father’s side and uncle on my mother’s.”
“My God,” Dakin Littlefield said. “They must all have webbed feet.”
“Or royal blood,” Nigel said. “The Cobbetts show about the same degree of inbreeding as the crowned heads of Europe.”
Orris, I’d written down, and now I wrote Cobbett after it. I looked at the name for a moment and then put a checkmark alongside it. I didn’t much like the way that looked, but decided that crossing it out would be even worse.
“Is that all?” I asked Nigel. “I know there are sometimes people behind the scenes whom one never sees, but who keep things running smoothly. Is there anyone else on staff I’ve left out?”
“I’m afraid that’s the lot,” he said. “We all work hard, you see, and put in long hours, so it doesn’t require very many of us.”
“Of course there’s Cook,” Cissy put in.
“Oh, yes,” Nigel said. “Quite right. Mustn’t forget Cook.”
I scanned the room. She’d been among us earlier, a comfortingly stout woman of a certain age who’d taken a glass of sherry and refilled it twice that I’d noticed.
“I don’t see her,” I said.
“I expect she’s gone to the kitchen.”
“But everyone’s supposed to stay right here.”
“I expect she slipped out before we decided that,” Nigel said, “or else she didn’t consider that rule as applying to herself.”
“Cooks are a law unto themselves,” the colonel agreed.
“She’d be preparing lunch now,” Cissy said. “I know it must seem as though we just got up from breakfast, but it’s been longer than that, actually, and she has lunch to prepare. I’d hate to call her away from the kitchen.”
Miss Dinmont wanted to know if she was alone in the kitchen. Because, she pointed out, we’d just agreed that no one was to be alone.
“It’s a bit different for Cook,” Nigel said. “She doesn’t much care for company in the kitchen.”
“And I’m sure she’ll be safe in there,” Cissy said. “Since we’re all out here, aren’t we?”
That brought another brief silence, reminding us that the “we” in that sentence presumably included the murderer. You’d think we’d have gotten used to the idea, but it kept taking us by surprise and bringing us up short.
“I’ll just put her on the list then,” I said. “I don’t believe I caught her name.”
Nigel and Cissy exchanged glances. “We just call her ‘Cook,’” Cissy said.
“She must have a name.”
“Of course,” she said, “but I can’t think what it is. Molly? Earlene?”
“Just ‘Cook,’ mum.”
“‘Cook’ is all, mum.”
“She has a name,” Nigel said. “I could look it up, but…”
“Not now,” I said, and wrote Cook on my list, then looked up. “I don’t suppose her name would be Cobbett,” I said. “Or would it?”
Nigel shook his head, and Molly assured me that Cook was no Cobbett, nor any kind of kin to Cobbetts.
“Just a wild guess,” I said. “And that’s all for the owners and staff of Cuttleford House? Now for the guests.”
Bernard Rhodenbarr.
Carolyn Kaiser.
Gregory Savage.
Leona Savage.
Millicent Savage.
Anne Hardesty.
Gloria Dinmont.
“I wonder,” Miss Dinmont said. “I don’t suppose I should say this, but…” She paused significantly and looked around. When no one urged her to go ahead and say it, she shot a peeved glance at her companion.
“Perhaps you should,” Miss Hardesty said obligingly.
“Well, I was just wondering. Of course the cook will be quite safe in the kitchen, if all the rest of us are out here, the murderer included. But what if the murderer is not included?”
“How could that be?” Colonel Blount-Buller demanded. “If we’re here, and if the killer is one of us-”
“Unless it’s the cook,” Miss Dinmont said, and lowered her eyes. “I’m sure I’m just a foolish woman.”
Dakin Littlefield rolled his eyes at that, while Leona Savage closed hers. The colonel said he somehow doubted that Cook was the sort to club and smother a man, then dash about cutting phone lines and bridge supports and destroying snowblowers.
“Of course she’d have no trouble getting sugar,” Greg Savage said. “There must be an abundant supply in the larder. She could have helped herself to a cup of it, and a funnel to channel it into the snowblower’s gas tank.”
“Anyone who walked into the kitchen could get all the sugar he wanted,” Nigel said, “and there are sugar bowls on all the tables in the breakfast and dining rooms as well. As for a funnel, well, how hard is it to pour sugar into a gas tank?” No one admitted to personal knowledge of the degree of difficulty of such an act. “In any event,” he said, “I’m sure she wouldn’t do any such thing.”
“How can you say that?” Miss Dinmont wondered. “You don’t even know her name.”
“And do you really want to check her off the list of possible murderers?” Gordon Wolpert asked. “Because if we start eliminating people like a trial lawyer issuing peremptory challenges, we’ll very quickly eliminate everyone. What you’re saying, Eglantine, is that the cook’s not the sort to commit murder. Well, neither is anyone else in this house, I’m sure. We’re all decent, upstanding people. That’s quite obvious. And I’m afraid it’s every bit as obvious that one of us decent, upstanding people has so far been responsible for two deaths. So I’m going to suggest that no one be eliminated from our working list of persons under suspicion except for cause. There’ll be no peremptory challenges.”
This soaked in, and we all looked at each other again. It seemed to me that I was being eyed with suspicion by some of our party, even as I was eyeing them with suspicion in turn.
“Let’s move on,” I suggested, and brandished my pen and clipboard.
Gordon Wolpert.
Bettina Colibri.
Dakin Littlefield.
Lettice Littlefield.
Col. Edward Blount-Buller.
“I was just thinking,” the colonel put in, “about the cook and her absence. It seemed at first a dangerous violation of a safety procedure almost as soon as we’d initiated it, but in fact it’s really entirely safe.”
“How’s that?” Wolpert asked him.
The colonel cleared his throat. “If the cook is entirely innocent of the crimes that have taken place here, as seems likely, then the killer is one of us. And in that case the cook is in no peril in the kitchen, because all of us are here.”
“Didn’t I say that?” Cissy wondered aloud.
“But,” he went on, “if by some chance the cook is the murderer, then we’re all quite safe. Because we’re here and she’s elsewhere.”
“In the kitchen,” Mrs. Colibri said.
“Quite so.”
“Preparing our lunch.”
The room went very still. Miss Gloria Dinmont broke the silence. “She could poison us all,” she said softly. “We’d drop like flies, never knowing what hit us.”
“Or writhe in agony,” her companion chimed in, “knowing we’d been poisoned, but unable to get hold of the antidote.”
“A tasteless and odorless poison,” Miss Dinmont said.
“A poison that leaves no trace,” said Miss Hardesty.
“Oh, come on,” Carolyn said. “What difference does it makes if the poison leaves a trace or not? If we’re all discovered lying dead all over the house, what do you figure the cops are going to think? That somebody said something so shocking we all popped off with heart attacks?”
“Besides,” young Millicent said, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a poison that doesn’t leave a trace.”
“It seems to me most toxic substances leave some sort of evidence that would show up in an autopsy,” I said, “but you generally have to look for it.”
“How do you know that, Bern?”
I knew it from Quincy reruns on Nick at Nite, but I didn’t want to say that. “We’re out in the country,” I said, “and a rural cop who walked in on a roomful of dead people with no marks on them would probably write it off as carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective furnace.”
“But there’s no central heating.”
“That might not occur to him. Still, we’ve got what, fifteen or sixteen people in the room? Safety in numbers.”
“What do you mean, Bern?”
“I mean that many people dying all at once under mysterious circumstances would trigger a full-scale investigation. The state troopers would run it, and there’d be a complete toxicological workup. If we’d been poisoned it would show up.”
“Well, that’s a load off my mind,” Dakin Littlefield said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.”
“All I’m trying to say-”
But he didn’t want to hear it. “For God’s sake,” he said, “if the cook was bent on lacing our porridge with rat poison she wouldn’t start off by killing people with a camel and a pillow and a cup of sugar. If Gloria over there in the wheelchair is seriously worried about poison, I’ll volunteer to eat her lunch for her. Assuming we ever get lunch.”
“Ha!” Rufus Quilp thrust his head forward, his little eyes beady and bright. “Lunch,” he said. “Breakfast was ages ago and no one’s serving us lunch. What about that, Eglantine?”
“I’m sure lunch won’t be long now,” Nigel said.
“If we’re not going to get it right away,” Quilp said, “I don’t see why we can’t at least have our elevensies.”
“Elevensies?”
“Normally served at eleven,” Quilp said dryly, “as you might guess from the name. Too late for that now, of course, so you could call it something else, or call it nothing at all, just so one has the opportunity to eat it. A cup of coffee, say, and a scone or some crumpets. Anything that will do to tide one over between breakfast and lunch.”
“Nigel,” Cissy said, “perhaps someone could fetch Mr. Quilp a cup of coffee.”
“And a scone,” Quilp said.
“And a scone.”
“Or perhaps a croissant,” the fat man suggested, “if there are any left, and perhaps with some of those gingered rhubarb preserves.”
“Yes, those are lovely, aren’t they? I’m sure we’ve some left, Mr. Quilp. Nigel, why don’t I just fetch something for Mr. Quilp?”
“Not by yourself,” her husband said.
“Oh. But if I simply went to the kitchen…oh, but…” She frowned, troubled. “Oh,” she said.
“I don’t want to cause a fuss,” Rufus Quilp said. “And if lunch should turn out to be imminent, well, I wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite.”
“Fat chance,” Carolyn muttered.
“But if lunch is destined to be rather a distant affair,” he went on, “then I do think I could do with a bit of tiding over. There’s my blood sugar to be considered, don’t you see.”
I found myself considering Mr. Quilp’s blood sugar, and wondered idly if it could render a snowblower hors de combat. While I pondered the point, the colonel took command, dispatching a patrol on a reconnaissance mission. Cissy Eglantine, flanked by the Cobbett cousins, were to go to the kitchen and inquire of the cook just how long it would be until lunch. If our estimated waiting time was thirty minutes or less, they would return empty-handed; if longer, they’d bring back something designed to tide us over.
They were no sooner out of the room than Raffles turned up, threading his way through the room, getting petted and cooed at and fussed over as he went, and rubbing up against the odd ankle along the way. “Oh, it’s Raffles,” Lettice said, reaching to scratch him behind the ear. Her husband asked her how she happened to know the cat’s name, and she said she must have heard someone call him that.
When, he wondered. Last night or this morning, she said, and why did he want to know? Because this was the first he’d seen of the cat, he replied, and he wondered when she’d had time to see it, and make its acquaintance.
“Why, Dakin,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of him. He’s a pussycat!”
“How do you know it’s a male?”
“Because he miaows in bass,” she said. “Darling, how do I know? I suppose whoever called him by name also referred to him with a male pronoun.”
“And he’s the resident cat here, is he? What happened to his tail?”
“He’s a Manx,” Millicent Savage said helpfully. “And he doesn’t live here. He came here with Carolyn and Bernie.”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’s the killer,” Littlefield said. “He might have clubbed the poor jerk in the library and clawed the bridge supports, but I can’t imagine him doing a number on the snowblower.”
“He’s been declawed,” Millicent said.
“I give up,” Littlefield said. “He’s innocent.” He started to say something else but stopped, probably for the same reason that everyone else in the room had stopped talking. Cissy Eglantine, back from the kitchen, stood framed in the doorway. The Cobbett cousins stood just to the rear of her, as if they were trying to shrink into her shadow.
She looked across the room at her husband. For a moment she didn’t say anything, and then she said, “Nigel, I spoke with Cook.”
“And what did she say, dear?”
“I’m afraid she didn’t say anything.”
“It’s hard to get much out of her, I’ll grant you that. Did you ask her directly when lunch will be ready?”
“No.”
“You didn’t? Whyever not?”
“I couldn’t,” she said, and her lip trembled. “Nigel, mind you, I’m not absolutely certain, but-”
“But what?”
“Oh, Nigel,” she said, and sighed. “Nigel, I believe she’s dead.”