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“George!” Phalen said. “I never suspected him.”
The group was seated in the large library that overlooked the lake. The setting was beautiful, marred only by the knowledge that two murders had been committed on the property, and two evil men had escaped.
Destinations unknown.
“How did you know?” one of the patients asked Flix.
Flix was standing in the center of the room. His suit was as crisp as the new morning.
“I didn’t, until last night. I will be as brief as possible, for I understand many of you have trains to catch or private cars awaiting your arrival.
Several things set the hairs on the back of my neck on end.
I kept wondering why Quintland was so quick to finger young Jannins. I was convinced that the railroading of that young man was due to the doctor’s financial predicament. If his patients flew the coop, out of fear, the institution would have to lock its doors. That theory proved only partially true.”
“How could someone in Quintland’s position have access to so much hooch?” another asked.
“Connections,” answered Wolcott Abercrombie.
“Yes. And many that had to be unsavory,” said Phalen.
“But didn’t you say George was our man?” asked Mrs. Hood.
“I did. I believe that George was the mastermind. The others, George used, like a puppet master, to his own ends. Many of you have experienced George’s crass behavior. It was designed to throw you off balance, to make you pity the poor man trapped inside a wasted body, to make you seethe with anger at the impossibly cruel words he said to you. All of his actions were his way of keeping your mind spinning while he wove his evil web.
Doctor Quintland provided George a plausible screen to hide behind as he continued his operations. I think George paid the doctor handsomely for harboring him. And the doctor played along with George.”
“But how are we to believe that George is capable of such horrible deeds. George is a cripple,” said Mrs. Hood.
“A poor invalid, a decorated war hero, and a man above reproach. That is the mask George wore in front of us all,” Flix said. “But it was all lies. Those things were only what he wished us to believe, Mrs. Hood. It was a clever ruse. I must admit, I fell for it, like everyone else.
I think Avery saw through his subterfuge, perhaps while on one of her woodland excursions. I believe she saw George standing and talking to the stranger. I remembered the insult she hurled at George about being perpendicular. Remember her comment, ‘Nasty little bohunk. Perpendicular paraplegic.’
It made no sense to me, at the time, but they were very dangerous comments to make to George. I believe that it was at that moment, Avery sealed her fate. George had to eliminate her. If Avery talked, his ruse was up.
I was fumbling about like a blind man in the dark until I spent time in George’s room. You see, when I had the chance to visit with George, on the offhand invitation of joining him for a drink in his room, there were several alarms that immediately went off in my head. After only a few moments in his room, I was sure George was an imposter.”
“What on earth are you jabbering about, Flix?” Mrs. Hood asked.
“George is not a war hero?”
“What!”
“Who told you those stories, Mrs. Hood? Dr. Quintland?”
“Yes. He did mention it, offhandedly.”
“The medals in George’s room are a sham,” Flix said. “Oh, the medals themselves are quite real, and from a variety of countries. But, they were purchased or stolen. Not won.
I pretended that a heart defect prevented me from fighting overseas. I praised George on his many medals, all the while, inspecting each one.
George’s story about them did not wash.
Of particular interest to me was the British 1914 and 1914-15 Star. I commented on the amazing accomplishments it must have taken to receive both. George blushed like a school girl.
I knew he was lying.
You see, it is impossible to be awarded both medals.”
“But George is a cripple, injured during the war!” cried Mrs. Hood.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. When I was sharing a drink with George, the maid assumed he was out of his room having dinner. She entered with a pair of his shoes. The poor woman was so flustered when she saw us that she dropped one of them at my feet. I picked it up. The sole was scuffed and worn. I looked inside his closet as George put the pair of shoes away. I noticed another pair was muddy.
Someone who cannot walk does not own scuffed or muddy shoes, Mrs. Hood. George can walk as well as you or I.
And then, there was the large desk positioned in the center of the room.
George remarked that he had ordered the room rearranged to accommodate his wheelchair. But, why, I wondered, was such a large piece of furniture not in some far dark corner, out of the way. The desk is huge. It took up most of the room. It would prove hard to manipulate a wheelchair around it. Yet, there it sat, like a four hundred pound gorilla, right in the center of the room.
And there was a telescope he had near a window.
George told me some story about being an insomniac who stared at the stars to while away the night hours. The lens was not pointed up the sky. It pointed downward across the lake. The telescope’s stand was positioned too high for a man to comfortably look out of it from his wheelchair. George is a tall man. I am not. At the level of the scope, I would have had to tiptoe to see out of the lens.
Standing.
The telescope was fixed on its stand for a tall man who was standing.”
“Bravo, Cupid,” Phalen said.
“But George was with you, Cupid, when the maid that discovered the first body screamed, so he had an alibi,” said Abercrombie Wolcott.
“He was sitting next to me when the first body was discovered. That is correct. Now, whether or not George strangled the first victim, and exactly what time she was killed, I cannot say.
Both victims were strangled, but with two very different weapons. I am sorry to say science has not advanced sufficiently in 1920 to allow me to give you the exact time of death for the first victim.
We can only say, with certainty, the exact hour the first body was discovered in the boathouse. And, as I said before, our first victim was strangled with something which left no impressions, a silken scarf or necktie perhaps, whereas our second victim was strangled with a wire.
I do not know whether or not George killed both women with his own hand, but I am sure that the murders were committed by his order.”
“How do you figure that?” Phalen asked.
“I thought Avery’s comment about a weekly Wednesday meeting with a ‘bohunk,’ as she described him, rather odd. The term is extremely reproachful, suggesting a shady fellow or a common laborer from Europe.
And remember the night of the costume party, Phalen?
You and I bumped into a rather aromatic reveler in the hallway outside of my room. In the men’s section of this facility. Hardly a stone’s throw away from George’s suite.”
“You’re right,” said Phalen. “We thought he was masquerading as a hobo or something. But he really did smell like he had not bathed in ages.”
“Bohemian. Swarthy, Dirty. Uneducated, no doubt. But how could such a man get here on this estate?”
“George made a point of telling Avery that people come and go here all the time, remember Flix,” Mrs. Hood pointed out.
“Yes, but there was another method of transportation that George also talked about. I think if I was embarking on some clandestine operation the mode George mentioned would be the one I would choose.
Let me refresh your memory.
Remember George was talking about how Miss Avery did not dance the night of the party. According to George, the behavior was very unusual for the girl. But then, I remembered something else he said.
I knew that I had fallen for one of George’s little mind traps. George was wonderful at laying his cards on the table, then distracting his audience, and pulling a slight of hand.
Because of the way he worded it, I was focused on Avery’s apparent bad temper. But that was not where my attention should have been. Remember George’s words . . .
“Anyway, I noticed a couple of strangers crashing the party. They were young. Probably thought it a wild prank to look in on the loonies.
Bet you a donut, they were some of the riffraff from across the lake. You’d be surprised how many motor boats are out in the middle of the night.
But Avery didn’t go for any of them. The young men, I mean. Not like her at all. She’s usually the life of the festivities. She just sat around like a knot on a log. Wore such a grimace all night, even I didn’t dare speak to her.”
It wasn’t the fact that Miss Avery was a wall flower that was remarkable. George was practically telling me how unsavory visitors came onto the estate.”
“By boat!” Phalen interjected.
“Exactly. It is the most feasible way that both George and Dr. Quintland escaped, as well.
Our smelly stranger arrived and departed by boat!” Phalen said.
Then, there was the telephone.”
“A telephone!” Mrs. Hood exclaimed.
“Yes, Mrs. Hood. A telephone.”
“Blasted rule. I hated going down to that grim water closet whenever I needed to talk on the telephone.”
“Yes. It was inconvenient. The absence of telephones in the residents’ rooms was just one more of Dr. Quintland’s unbreakable rules. Think about it. Having one line available to the patients made it very easy to eavesdrop on their conversations to the outside world.”
“Cupid! Quintland and George were always a step ahead. They knew we were on to them by listening in on your calls to me!” Phalen said. “No wonder they escaped this estate like bats out of hell.”
“Yes. But George had his own telephone, and I would bet money, his telephone has a private line.”
“So, George could telephone anyone he wished, at any time.”
“Yes. With no one, the wiser.”
“Unbelievable,” someone added.
“Then, there was the ornate calendar on George’s desk. It was two months behind.”
“How odd,” Abercrombie Wolcott commented.
“I know. I commented on this fact, but George made a joke about driving the staff crazy by leaving it like that.
But a busy cleaning staff would hardly take the time to notice.
I am sure they have seen many strange things in patients’ rooms. The staff would not have cared one way or the other.
So, I paid no attention to George’s remarks.
It was the intricate designs I noted inside each numerical box on this page that caught my eye. And even more valuable, the scrawl that was written in the lower margin of the page. At the bottom of the calendar, George had scribbled the answer to the coded message that was found in the maid’s hand.”
Here, Flix produced a copy of the coded message, along with its meaning.
“This piece of paper cost the maid her life.
I believe she planned to use this to blackmail George. She was a desperate woman. She was sick. She was unmarried. She was with child. Perhaps, she overheard George make some incriminating remark. I don’t know. But I believe she knew this piece of paper was worth money.
There is no limit to what a mother will do to guarantee a future for her child. A mother’s love knows no boundaries. And you do not stay at this estate unless you are a person of some means.”
“But George was talking to you,” Phalen said.
“While his henchman was murdering the maid?” Flix said. “Perhaps. There are so many scenarios. It is hard to say exactly who the murderer of the maid was. We can never know.
Maybe George murdered her, left her body in the boathouse, and hurriedly positioned himself back in his wheelchair to reappear among the rest of us as if nothing had happened.”
Here, Flix stopped for a moment and collected his thoughts.
“Detective Archer and I noticed that the maid’s body showed signs of poisoning. I will admit, I was so focused on uncovering the poison that I put off trying to decipher this coded message. I doubt that I could have solved it, but I will never know.
Here, Flix showed Phalen the decoded piece of paper.
READY PROCEED AS PLANNED
“If everything was ready, as this message suggests, why not simply telephone his accomplice?”
“Good question. My guess is,” Flix said, “the man did not have a telephone. Remember, he is poor. Probably an immigrant. And, I believe, an anarchist!”
“My word!” blared Mr. Birmingham-Hill.
“Yes,” Flix said.
“But I thought the war was over,” Dabney said.
“But remember the headlines in the newspaper. Wall Street has just been bombed! America is under attack!” said Abercrombie Wollcott.
“Correct on both points,” Flix said. “Armistice has been signed. The war is over, and with it, the immense profits of supplying a war machine. My theory is this: George is collaborating with anarchists to incite instability and procure immense gains financially. He told me his father had been in arms and manufacturing.”
“Murder and mayhem for money?” Phalen asked.
“Mammon. Filthy lucre. Money. It is one of the oldest motives for a crime, is it not?” Flix said. “The war has ended. The river of wealth that flowed into George’s family’s coffers has dried up.
There is no reason for nations to stockpile munitions during peace time. What better way to restart the war machine up again, and reap fantastic profits by supplying the hardware necessary to outfit the combatants, than to foment instability in America?”
“Germany is defeated. In ruins. Europe has war debts. America is the logical choice to stir up insurrection. America is where the money is,” added Clive Birmingham-Hill.
“Another interesting clue on George’s desk was the rifle shell, engraved with the initials AAM. George had some line about those initials belonging to some soldier who had saved his life. But those initials also stand for something else.”
“American Anarchy Movement!” said Phalen.
“Exactly.”