It was the murder that drew Senator Brooks U. Banner to Cow Crossing, a town in the upper reaches of New York State. The study of crime had been Banner’s hobby for years. Now Banner, a whopping big man, stood before the flimsy office door over the post office and gave it a brisk drubbing. The moulting gold-leaf lettering on the door read: Judge James Z. Skinner.
Skinner himself opened the door. Behind him his office was stuffy and smelled of mouldering papers. Dusk was shadowing all the corners and Skinner had been getting ready to close up shop for the day. Skinner recognized Banner at once, probably from Banner’s many colourful political billboards.
‘Senator Banner!’ said Skinner, half surprised and half delighted. He spoke with a fruity voice.
‘Yessiree, bub. Life-size, in the flesh, fulla beans, and raring to go.’ Banner chuckled and came in. A liver-coloured leghorn was pushed back on his grizzled mane. He carried his frock coat over his arm, for the evening was still too warm to wear it. His silk shirt was mottled with sweat. He stood up straight, but his baggy grey britches looked ready to sit down. On his feet were a pair of brogans spotted with clay.
‘I just horse-and-buggied into your burg, friend,’ he said with a boom. ‘I’m on a tub-thumping junket. After each sentence of my speech I pitch a forkful of hay. That puts the farmers behind me one hundred per cent. I think I’m gonna need the farm vote to carry me back to Washington this fall.’
Skinner bobbed his narrow head soberly. ‘Your oratory is welcome in the hinterlands. Demosthenes on the stump. Usus loquendi.’ He smiled bleakly. He was the law in Cow Crossing. He was in his sixties, long and weedy, with carefully parted grey hair and eyes like the heads of new ten-penny nails. Winter or summer he wore an antique beaver hat that reminded one of an abdicated kingdom: it had a fallen crown. He had the hat in his hand.
Banner eyed the old man sharply. ‘I was in the next town when I heard that Cow Crossing had been glorified with a murder. It tempted me like a kid is tempted with custard. I had to come. Puzzles have teased me ever since I tried to take my socks off with my baby booties still on. They tell me you’re the johnnie I have to see.’
‘Yes,’ said Skinner. ‘If there’s any law in this place, I’m it. I’m the lex loci, so to speak. People see me when they’re married, they see me when things go wrong, and they see me after they’re dead, only then they don’t care.’ He took a flat silver case out of his pocket. ‘A fresh cigar?’
Banner remembered he had a corona between his teeth. It looked as if the rats had been at it. He took it out of his mouth and glowered distastefully. ‘I’ll own up to you,’ he said. ‘I never smoke seegars. It’s all window-dressing.’ He pegged the gnawed fag-end into a spattered cuspidor. ‘About this murder, judge, what’s the score?’
Skinner said there was not much to tell. He related all the known circumstances. In the shallows of the creek some fishermen had discovered Beverly Jelke’s body. Farther upstream they found her clothes piled neatly on the bank. The body was in a common black bathing suit. Half her head had been blown away by the charge of a double-barrelled shotgun.
Apparently the victim had been swimming about ten feet off shore in the deep water near where her clothes were found. The murderer had fired from the heavy brake that overhung the banks at that point.
Hudson Jelke was Beverly’s younger brother by a year. He was in his early twenties, with a face as pasty as dough, shaggy-haired, and unshaven. He had greedy eyes. He had lumbered into the mortuary that hot August afternoon and claimed the body. He had taken the dead girl’s hand in his own. For a moment, the judge said, it looked like an affectionate gesture, but Hudson went ahead to strip the heavy ring off one of the fingers.
Skinner had said, ‘Do you have to be so ghoulish, Hud? Can’t you wait?’
‘It’s an heirloom,’ responded Hudson. ‘It’s mine now.’
When he left, Hudson had all Beverly’s personal belongings. He went back to the farm, knowing that all of it belonged to him now.
Banner shifted his feet in the gloomy office. ‘Got any wild guesses who killed Beverly Jelke?’
‘No idea.’ A little cough cleared Skinner’s long throat. Then he went on, in a gossipy manner, about the Jelkes. ‘This is a pretty sparsely populated region, Senator. The Jelke farm—they call it Blackmarsh Grange—is about eight miles out of town and there are no farms in between. There were two Jelkes, Beverly and her brother Hudson. Hudson married a French Canadian girl from just over the border. There’s an uncle living there too, and a hired man.’
Banner waited.
Skinner went on, ‘Blackmarsh Grange is a big sprawling place, named on account of the dismal quagmire that was originally on the land, but most of that has been filled in. In the last couple of years the Jelkes haven’t been happy. They’ve produced merely enough to get by on, and the brother and sister have been having one long hot argument.’
Banner was attentive. ‘Argument?’
Skinner said, ‘About selling the Grange. I offered them five thousand for it—a fair price, considering. Beverly wanted to sell right off and hie herself out of here and start fresh in one of the bigger cities. But Hudson was all against it. He had something to say about selling the farm. And he wasn’t going to budge an inch. They came close to blows over it more than once.’
Banner grunted. ‘Now that Beverly’s dead, Hudson’ll have it all his own way.’
Skinner’s nail-head eyes dulled. He said slowly, ‘That’s the size of it.’
‘And,’ said Banner, ‘you won’t get the farm for love or money.’
Banner couldn’t see Skinner’s expression, for the judge had turned away to flick dust off a law tome with a flame-coloured bandanna.
‘I’m anxious to see that crowd,’ went on Banner.
Skinner looked at him. ‘The Jelkes? You mean you want to help me solve this murder?’
Banner shrugged his bulky shoulders. ‘Skunks and rabbits, they have habits,’ he said.
They rode up through the long lane of dark poplars in the judge’s buggy with the wobbly top, pulled by a spavined horse. The old buildings spread over acres. Lights were on in the kitchen and the front parlour.
Skinner, who had phoned the local constabulary and ordered no interference with Senator Banner’s prowlings, had added a hawthorn stick to his rig since leaving the office. He courteously rapped the head of the stick on the front door. A girl in a printed house dress popped out at them.
‘Come in,’ she said at once.
They moved through double sliding oak doors into the parlour. There was a heavy brass lamp on a tabletop that was glazed with turpentine and beeswax. In the light Banner saw that the girl was small and slight. She had dark brown hair that she had begun to neglect and it was getting stringy. Her arms, bare from the elbows down, were sunbrowned till the skin looked like tan satin. Banner liked her wholesomeness. Skinner introduced her as Celeste Jelke, Hudson’s wife.
‘So you’re the little girl the judge’s been telling tales about,’ said Banner as he shook her firm hand. She turned shyly away and called for Hud.
The doughy-faced, shaggy young man with the greedy eyes tramped in and stared suspiciously at Banner as the judge made them known to each other.
‘I’m sorry we can’t offer you any supper, Senator,’ said Hudson coldly. ‘We just finished.’
‘I’ll raid your ice chest,’ Banner stated blandly. ‘I’m needing a shakedown for the night. The hotel in town is fulla drummers.’
Hudson’s brow blackened. ‘You’re damn cagey, ain’t you? We all know what you’re up to. Come right out and say it’s about Bev!’
Banner grinned. ‘That’s throwing in your blue chips, son. We understand each other. Tray bone, as we used to say to the Frenchies in the Big War. We all wanna see punished the person who killed your beloved sister.’
Hudson was brutal. ‘I didn‘t love her.’
Celeste’s hazel eyes grew round at his audacity.
‘If everyone’s as truthful as you,’ said Banner sourly, ‘we won’t have much trouble cleaning house. This’s like catching another man with your wife: the situation calls for action.’
Celeste spoke up. ‘I do have something to tell you. That double-barrelled shotgun we kept behind the kitchen door—it’s gone.’
‘Have you looked for it?’ said Banner.
‘High and low,’ Hudson replied.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Then Banner said, ‘Haven’t you got an uncle?’
‘He ain’t here,’ said Hudson curtly. ‘He’s out prowling around.’ He made it sound sinister.
A sinewy young man in overalls came into the parlour. His hair and eyebrows were bleached by the sun. He stopped and took a smoke-blackened clay pipe out of his mouth and looked at the others with blank ocean-aqua eyes.
Celeste said quickly, ‘Senator, this is our hired man, Wayne Markes.’
‘How dee do,’ said Wayne.
Hudson seemed to take a perverse delight in making others uneasy. He said, ‘Wayne’s got things on his mind, Senator. He’s thinking all the time about that girl student over at Foxchase Hall.’
‘What’s that?’ Banner asked. ‘A school?’
‘Yeah. A finishing school for girls. It’s the nearest place to ours. Her name is Joan Vicars, ain’t it, Wayne? He met her down by the creek a couple of times. He thinks it’s love.’
Wayne’s cheeks were as red as a Valentine heart. ‘The Senator ain’t interested in that, Hud,’ he said resentfully.
‘Ain’t he, though?’ Hudson persisted.
‘I ain’t,’ said Banner. He patted his punchbowl tummy. ‘Which way’s the kitchen?’
‘I’ll get something for you,’ Celeste said hurriedly. ‘Wayne, straighten out one of the rooms upstairs for the Senator.’
Wayne went back out through the sliding doors. Hudson followed Celeste into the kitchen.
All this time Skinner had kept a keen-eyed vigil on Banner. ‘There isn’t much to go on, is there?’ said Skinner.
Banner hitched up his pants. ‘What kind of a damsel was this Beverly Jelke?’
‘Not bad looking, not bad at all.’ Skinner paused to think about it. ‘I knew her all her life. She was a tomboy, always running around barefoot and going fishing. Her favourite pastime was horseshoe pitching and she was expert at it. She was clever—and heartless …’
There were plenty of rooms in the house. After a cold supper, Banner followed Celeste up a dark stairwell. Celeste lit a dim light in the upper hall. They passed one locked door. It was Beverly’s room.
Banner eyed the steel-springed cot, the feather mattress, and the fat pillow. Inconveniences never fazed him. Celeste said good-night softly and left him. He tossed his toilet articles on top of a pine bureau. From his pocket he had taken a straight razor with a bone handle, a shaving brush, and a toothbrush for his upper plate.
He jimmied off his shoes and threw them away from him. They landed like kegs of nails. He dropped his clothes in piles on the floor. There was a crazy quilt on the cot. The night was getting cool. He pulled the quilt over him and went to sleep.
At a quarter to one Banner bounced like a gutta-percha ball into a sitting position. The echoes of a shot were still reverberating. He swung his feet over the side of the cot, feeling for his pants. As he tangled himself up in red suspenders[1] he heard doors slam and feet running inside the house. He kicked his feet into the widely-flung brogans and scrambled down the stairs without a shirt on.
The others were already clustered on the porch step. Celeste sobbed hysterically. Banner pushed his way through and looked down on the step.
In the moonlight Hudson Jelke lay sprawled with part of his scalp and his face blown away by buckshot.
Wayne Markes got a quilt and covered the body with it.
Skinner, who had also decided to stay overnight, phoned to Cow Crossing for a wagon to take the body away. Banner, consoling Celeste in a fatherly way, took her to her room and made her lie down. He came downstairs again to study the ground in front of the porch step.
Skinner came out and looked stupidly at Banner. Two murders were getting to be too much for the legal lights of Cow Crossing.
‘There’re some footprints,’ said Banner. ‘We’ll have to wait till it gets daylight to follow them.’
‘Do you think we can?’ questioned Skinner doubtfully.
Banner was grim. ‘We can use a coupla hounds.’ He raised his head as if to listen. Skinner and Wayne listened too and understood.
The dogs were strangely silent. The sound of the shot had stirred them up a bit, but they soon grew still.
Wayne said, ‘We had a house-breaker come one night and the hounds bellered till dawn.’ He shook himself. ‘All right if I take a look around, Senator?’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Banner.
The hired man melted into the dense shadows.
In time a wagon came with a fussy coroner who bawled everybody out merely for being there. Finally Hudson’s body was taken away to keep his sister company.
Banner and Skinner went into the farmhouse. They could hear Celeste still crying in her room. Skinner went up to offer a few words of comfort.
Wayne came into the parlour looking ashen under his sunburn. ‘I just saw something,’ he gulped. Banner eyed him narrowly. ‘I was wandering among the fruit trees,’ went on Wayne. ‘I saw something moving—flitting. It seemed to have a human shape. And it was luminous!’
‘Luminous?’
‘It gave off a glow.’
‘Did you get near enough to—’
‘No, no, it was gone in a flash.’ Wayne turned abruptly towards the door. ‘I’m going to bed.’ Banner heard his feet stumble on the stairs.
No one knew if Banner went back to bed again that night or not. He didn’t.
The first pink of dawn sifted through the heavy screens on the parlour windows. Banner heard a sound of pots and pans in the kitchen. He went in and found Celeste preparing breakfast. She had cried herself out and now managed to present a weak smile.
Skinner and Wayne came down shortly afterwards. Skinner looked more than his sixty years. Wayne was as fresh as if he had had a full night’s sleep. That’s what age does to you, thought Banner.
‘Get us a doublet of hounds,’ Banner said. Wayne brought a pair on chain leashes to the front of the house.
The footprints of the killer were plain in the early light. The hounds caught the scent and they bayed like muffled bells.
The footprints went on and on, past the storage shed and out towards the open fields. The trackers pressed into a clump of sassafras, the hounds sniffing confidently. The murderer’s heavy ungainly shoes made perfect impressions in the loam. They crossed some shale where the prints disappeared, but the pace of the hounds never slackened.
They came to the edge of a field newly ploughed for winter wheat. The dogs stood motionless and stopped baying. There was bafflement in their melancholy eyes. They whimpered and quivered.
‘What the devil’s the matter with them?’ snapped Skinner irritably.
He saw that the others were looking ahead at the footprints that went off across the freshly turned soil. A single line of prints they were. And they led straight to a gaunt scarecrow that stood some forty feet off, idly flapping its empty arms at them.
They trudged back to the house silently. Banner couldn’t get the scarecrow out of his mind. He had gone out to it and stood looking at it, flabbergasted. The trail had stopped there.
The scarecrow was well dressed, as scarecrows go. It had on a frayed-brimmed straw hat. Its face was an old flour bag with two lopsided holes punched in it for eyes, a triangular nose, and a crayon mouth that resembled the teeth of a rake. The coat hung limply from stick shoulders. At the sleeve cuffs were pinned soiled white cotton gloves. The legs of the loose pants fluttered gently in the morning breeze. A pair of battered shoes with heavy soles stood within a foot of each other under the scarecrow. They fitted the tracks.
The footprints had made fools of them. Each print was sharp and clear. It hadn’t been a case of using the same prints twice, for going and coming.
Banner said suddenly, ‘Was that scarecrow always in that field?’
‘No,’ said Wayne. ‘That’s the one that used to be in Beverly’s vegetable patch.’
As they drew near the house a man came out of it to meet them. He was as fleshless as a hoe-handle, and had hair like singed cotton and a dehydrated face. In short, he was the ugliest gaffer Banner had ever seen.
Banner leaned his head towards Skinner. ‘Who’s this, judge? Gloryanna! He’s as ugly as a—’ He stopped short, for something had clicked in his mind.
Skinner grinned without humour. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and say it, Senator? As ugly as a scarecrow! We know that. His appearance has been against him ever since he was a kid. He isn’t as bad an actor as he looks. He’s Hudson’s uncle, Magnus Fawlkes.’
‘What did you find?’ croaked Uncle Magnus as he met them.
Banner said, ‘The murderer’s out in the field. Anyone can go arrest him. He ain’t gonna run away. But how can you jail a wraith, an empty suit of clothes? It’s the scarecrow … Let’s eat.’
They all went in to a profusion of eggs and bacon and cornbread. Banner regretted that there was no black coffee. But Celeste had made excellent hot cocoa.
Banner thought hard. He didn’t talk to Uncle Magnus, who got the story from the others piecemeal.
Banner suddenly cut in. ‘Where were you buzzing last night, Unk?’
Uncle Magnus turned a pair of haddock eyes in his direction. ‘After I heard Beverly got killed,’ he said, ‘I went settling affairs.’
‘In other words,’ said Banner, ‘I can take that or leave it.’ He jabbed his fork into the yolk of another sunny-side-up.
‘I don’t mean nothing,’ said Uncle Magnus, ‘but I’m not sure a city man like you’ll get any place among us yokels.’
‘Who’s a city man?’ grunted Banner. ‘Listen, Karloff, I was born on a farm. I left it ’cuz it was too quiet. I like lotsa noise. There’s lotsa noise hereabouts, what with shotguns going off at regular intervals.’
Celeste began to gather up the breakfast plates.
Banner said to her, ‘Those groceries stick to the ribs, young ’un. Thank yuh kindly, ma’am. I’ll help you with the crockery.’
Celeste was scandalized. ‘Oh, no, no, Senator. Please sit still. I’ll take that. Oh.’
But Banner wasn’t easily discouraged. He trotted into the large kitchen with a tottering pagoda of cups and saucers and plopped them into a dishpan of hot soapy water. It was a new experience for Celeste to wash dishes with a senator. He was full of funny stories and soon she was laughing. Before she knew it she was telling Banner about Uncle Magnus.
Uncle Magnus, she said, had a grievance against nearly everybody, for all his life he had been either shunned or made fun of. ‘You won’t believe,’ she said, ‘that he once tried to make love to me.’
‘Why, the nasty old home wrecker.’
‘Oh, no. That was before I was married. He wanted to marry me. Of course I refused him as gently as I could.’
So Uncle Magnus and his nephew were once rivals for Celeste’s hand, and now the nephew was dead. Was it the revenge of the scarecrow?
It was dusk and they began to light the lights. Celeste was sitting in the parlour with Banner and Skinner. Skinner seemed reluctant to leave the farm. Celeste’s hands were twisting nervously in her lap. Her fingernails were chewed short.
She looked straight into Skinner’s metallic eyes. ‘Blackmarsh is mine now, isn’t it, judge?’
‘Legally, it is,’ nodded Skinner.
‘Then I’m going to sell it to you,’ she blurted. ‘I want to get away. I want to get rid of this place tonight. Will you still buy it?’
Skinner glanced quizzically at Banner, who didn’t say anything. ‘It’s a little unusual,’ said Skinner, ‘what with everyone involved in a murder case. But I’m the law and I can make it stand. My offer is five thousand dollars, as you know.’
Celeste stood up. ‘That’s more than plenty.’
‘I’ll have to go to Cow Crossing to get the money,’ Skinner said eagerly, getting up. ‘Excuse me.’ He took his mangy beaver off the hat rack, grabbed up his hawthorn stick, and presently they heard his horse and buggy crunch down the gravel drive.
Celeste looked appealingly at Banner. ‘It’s been a hard day. Do you mind if I go upstairs for a rest, Senator?’
‘Run right along, baby bunting.’
She smiled gratefully at him. He followed her out of the parlour and watched her go quickly up the stairs, into the dark. Near the top he saw her hesitate and he plainly heard her startled, ‘Oh!’
His bulk travelled up the stairs at a surprising clip. He stood by her side. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I—l stubbed my toe,’ she said. Were there lies in her round eyes?
‘Are you sure?’ he questioned.
She laughed nervously. ‘I’m all right, Senator.’ She crossed the dark hall and switched on the dim bulb. He watched her walk to one of the rooms and go in and close the door quietly.
He went back down the stairs again. ‘Something’s wrong here. Damn it. It’s all wrong. But there ain’t gonna be any artful dodging tonight.’
Uncle Magnus and Wayne were playing snip-snap-snorem on the oilcloth of the kitchen table. And both were yawning.
‘Thinking of hitting the hay early tonight, neighbours?’ asked Banner.
They said they were about ready to turn in.
‘Tonight,’ said Banner, ‘I’m gonna lock you all up.’
‘Lock us up!’ the men repeated at the same time.
‘As a precaution,’ said Banner. The two card players looked at each other. ‘As a safeguard for yourselves and the others. Who has the bedroom door keys?’
‘Celeste,’ said Uncle Magnus. They got up and stretched.
Banner went upstairs and knocked on Celeste’s door. She let him in. She was wearing a navy flannel robe over her nightgown.
Banner said, ‘I’m locking all the bedrooms tonight, Celeste. They tell me you have the keys.’
‘Key,’ she corrected. ‘All the doors have the same sort of lock. Hudson had a key. This is it.’ She took a thick-bodied key off her dresser and put it into his hand.
He went over to her window and examined it. There were storm shutters that could be closed from the inside and locked. On the outside of the window a heavy screen was nailed solidly to the casing. To get out that way the occupant of the room would first have to punch a hole in the screen.
‘When I go out I’ll lock this door,’ he said. ‘If it ain’t too warm for you, bolt those shutters.’
She didn’t ask him why. She said good night timidly, and as he went out he saw her move toward the window.
He locked her door. Then he took a heavy chair and jammed the back under the doorknob as an added measure.
All the bedrooms were along the same hallway, some on one side and some on the other; but there were no connecting doors between rooms.
Banner went in to bid both Uncle Magnus and Wayne separate sleep-tights. He looked at both of their windows. They were like Celeste’s; the shutters and the screen nailed to the window-frame from the outside. He locked both their doors too and put chair-backs under the doorknobs. Now just let anyone try and get out.
He was down in the parlour playing idiot’s delight, a game of solitaire, when he heard the horse and buggy rattling up the drive.
Skinner came in. ‘Where’s Celeste?’ he asked.
Banner riffled the deck of cards. ‘She’s gone beddy-bye. You’ll have to save it till morning.’
‘Oh, lord,’ groaned Skinner wearily. ‘Do I have to go all the way back to town tonight?’
‘No,’ said Banner. ‘Take the same room you had last night. Go out and unhitch your dapple grey.’
When Skinner came back into the house Banner led him upstairs. Banner said, ‘The people are sleeping in this house tonight under certain conditions—behind locked doors. I’m locking yours.’
Skinner looked stunned. ‘Then you think that I—’
‘I’m not thinking anything,’ said Banner gruffly. ‘I’m just doing.’
Assuring himself that Skinner could not get out through the window, Banner turned the key in the lock. Another chair-back went under a knob.
He padded down to the end of the hall to the stairway and looked back at the four bedroom doors barricaded with chairs.
There was one other door that he went to and tried. It opened on Beverly’s room and it was fast. He left the hall light burning.
Going into the parlour, he surveyed the scattered cards on the glossy tabletop. ‘I’m licking you this time,’ he vowed. Idiot’s delight began again.
Time had slipped by. Banner might have dozed over his game. A quake shook his whole big body and he found himself blinking at the sallow face of the grandfather clock.
It was past midnight.
What had brought him up so sharp?
The house was as still as a catacomb. Then he heard something that chilled him to the very marrow.
In the upper hall where the bedrooms were situated, someone was walking.
Someone was walking in the hall—and yet he had locked them all in!
He could hear the sound of each shoe as it came down on the hall runner. It was a clumping sound, as if the shoes were hanging loose on feet that were mere bones—or sticks!
Listening, he reached out and ran all the rows of cards together. He felt glued to the chair, unable to get up.
Then came a scream. It was Celeste. And the shotgun roared.
Banner heaved himself up clumsily and the heavy table rocked. The glass lamp teetered dangerously and then toppled to the floor. The smashing of the bulb brought blackness crashing down. Banner groped across the fallen lamp and found the sliding doors. He pushed them wider and scrambled for the stairs.
He came puffing to the top.
The dimly lit hallway was exactly as he left it. The four chairs were still propped against the four doors.
A spasm of bewilderment shook him. Then he heard weak rapping on the inside of Celeste’s door. He plunged towards it, pulling the key out of his pocket. He flung the tightly jammed chair aside and keyed open the door.
Celeste was on the floor, half unconscious, her breath coming shallowly. A faint trickle of blood showed deep red on her whitened face.
Automatically Banner shot his eyes to the window. The storm shutters were bolted on the inside. The boxed-in air reeked of discharged gunpowder. But there was no shotgun.
He bent over Celeste, noting that it was a grazing head wound she’d suffered, while dimly into his consciousness came the steady sound of hammering.
The three male sleepers, trapped in their rooms, were pounding on the doors.
Banner ignored them. He brought water in a basin and bathed Celeste’s face. It didn’t look so bad with the blood washed away. Still her scalp was torn and there were powder burns.
She stopped groaning and opened her eyes. She clutched blindly at Banner’s arm with both hands. ‘The scarecrow! It was in here! It shot me!’
‘Easy now, child. How’d the scarecrow get in?’
She looked dumbfounded. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I left the light on after I locked the shutters. I went to bed. Finally I went to sleep. I woke up with a start. It was standing right there at the foot of my bed. I almost died of fright. But when I saw the shotgun pointing at my head it made me throw myself forward to wrench it out of the thing’s hands or to spoil the aim. It seemed to go off right in my face. I guess I fainted. When I was myself again I was alone in the room, trying to get out.’
She was frightfully weak from shock. Banner left her on the bed while he went to examine the shutter bolt. There was nothing tricky about it. The screen outside the window was intact and the lock on the door hadn’t been tampered with.
Banner went out into the hall, took the chairs away from the other doors, and let the three men out. They peppered him with questions. All he said was, ‘The scarecrow got into Celeste’s room.’
‘This finishes me with this house,’ said Uncle Magnus. ‘I’m taking Celeste to a doctor.’
‘Wait a minnit,’ snapped Banner. ‘No wandering off, Unk, till I give you the checkered flag. We’re all sticking together, like the Rover Boys.’ He led them back to Celeste’s room. ‘Unkie’ll take you to town,’ he said to Celeste.
‘I want to go and never come back,’ she said. ‘But there’s one thing I haven’t told you, Senator … You know that time when I was going up the stairs? You asked me why I’d stopped.’
‘Yep.’
‘It was something I saw.’
‘What’d you see?’
‘It was—just a white figure. That’s all I can tell you. It was gone in an instant. When you asked me what happened I wasn’t sure I really had seen anything. I thought perhaps I was so nervous I’d imagined it. But now I don’t think so.’
Banner nodded soberly. He said to Skinner and Uncle Magnus, ‘You two stay here with Celeste. Wayne, we’ll hitch a horse to the shay.’
They went out of the house and started toward the stable. They drew up short.
Ahead of them on the path stood the empty grotesque scarecrow. It stood on its pole, taunting them.
Banner heard Wayne breathe heavily beside him. ‘The hounds,’ he was muttering. ‘They never barked.’
Celeste and Uncle Magnus, to the pound of horse’s hooves, were gone towards Cow Crossing.
The three remaining men huddled like sheep in the parlour. Banner went to a wall phone and said to a sleepy operator, ‘Wake up, Rip, and gimme Foxchase Hall.’
Wayne looked at him in mute surprise.
Banner got one of the lady instructors on the wire after a lengthy wait. ‘Lissen, Trixie,’ he said, ‘I’m calling the roll. You’ve got a gal there named Joan Vicars. Am I right or wrong?’
‘You’re incomprehensible, whoever you are,’ was the reply. ‘But you’re right. She’s a member of my American Literature class.’
‘Is she in the school now?’
‘Of course she’s in the school now.’
‘I’m still taking stock, sister. Put her on.’
‘I’ll transfer your call to her dormitory.’
Banner heard a click and a dull buzzing. Then a lazy blond voice came on the line.
‘Who’s this?’ said Banner.
‘A girl.’
‘Joan Vicars?’
‘Nope, one of her classmates.’
‘Girlie, put Joanie on.’
There was a pause. Then the girl said, ‘I can’t. She isn’t here.’
‘Where is she, playmate?’
‘Lord knows,’ said the girl. ‘Who’re you? Her old mandarin?’
‘No, this’s Senator Banner.’
‘I guess I can tell you what we think. She got pretty mushy with a farm boy named Wayne Markes. All last week she was starry-eyed and telling us she planned to elope with him. When she didn’t come back the other day we all guessed she’d gone and done it. We’ve been covering up for her. Isn’t that romantic—or are you just an old fuddy?’
‘I’m an old fuddy,’ he said. He hung up. He wheeled on Wayne. ‘Did you elope with Joan Vicars?’
‘Elope!’ cried Wayne. ‘No such luck. I haven’t seen her for days.’
‘The gals at Foxchase Hall think you’ve spirited her off.’
‘Well, I’ll see about that.’ Wayne jumped up impetuously and started for the door. There he paused, expecting Banner to halt him gruffly. Banner was carved from rock. Wayne bolted out. They heard him running.
That left Banner and Skinner at the Grange.
‘Better stick with me,’ said Banner, starting to follow Wayne out. Skinner stuck with him. They went past the storage shed, where Banner picked up a bull’s-eye lantern. The horses stirred in the stable when they went in, the whites of the animals’ eyes gleaming.
Banner climbed into the loft and kicked the straw around. He came down again and eyed the pile of horse blankets.
In a few minutes they went out into the night again.
‘Skinner,’ said Banner, ‘the scarecrow is gonna make one more attempt.’
Skinner’s voice sounded as if it were riding the edge of a razor. ‘Who—’
Banner’s hand fell heavily on the lean shoulder. ‘You, Skinner.’
Skinner’s laugh was sickly. ‘You’re clowning.’
‘No, I’m not. You’re next. Knowing that, we’ve gotta hamstring the scarecrow.’
Skinner almost sobbed. ‘If you know that much, you know who the scarecrow is.’
‘I do, pal.’
‘For mercy’s sake, Senator Banner, who is it?’
Banner shook his head. ‘It’s no use. You wouldn’t believe me.’
They were halfway to the house in a wide open spot.
Banner said, ‘You’re bait, Skinner. As long as I’m with you, you’re safe. That goes for me too. The scarecrow won’t tackle two of us. But I’m gonna leave you alone—’
‘No,’ begged Skinner, ‘don’t leave me!’
‘Scaredy cat. I’ll only pretend to. We’ll go back to the parlour. Then I’ll tell you I’m returning to the stable. I’ll go out and run around to the side of the house, and come in the window. Then we’ll wait for the scarecrow. The scarecrow’s forced to act tonight—now—if anything’s to be accomplished.’
Banner helped Skinner, shaking and white-faced, back into the parlour, where Skinner flopped weakly in a chair. Banner prowled to the window and loosened the screen. Then he went to the sliding doors and said in a voice that must have carried all the way to the barn:
‘It’s no use your staying, Skinner. I’ll put your dobbin between the shafts and you can jog back to town.’
‘Yes,’ said Skinner in a choked voice.
‘Pull these doors closed after me,’ continued Banner loudly. ‘It’ll only take me ten minutes.’
Skinner got up and slid the doors closed. Banner went out on the porch and let his footsteps die away in the direction of the stable.
In an incredibly short space of time Banner, puffing and blowing, appeared at the side window. He came wriggling into the room like a walrus. ‘This’s what comes of eating too much strawberry shortcake,’ he whispered, smothering a chuckle.
Skinner was collapsed in the rocker by the table in the centre of the room. Banner pulled a chair close to the sliding doors, now closed, sat down, and began to wait.
One minute went by. Two minutes. Three minutes …
Skinner, rooted to his chair, looked horrified at the crack slowly appearing between the two doors beside Banner. There was not a sound. The crack got wider. White-gloved fingers pushed their squirming way in and then a hand rested between the doors.
Banner never moved.
The white-gloved hand was withdrawn and gradually the double barrels of a shotgun slid through, the invisible gunner drawing a bead on Skinner’s head.
Then like lightning Banner’s hand shot out and seized the barrels and forced them up. The shotgun roared and buckshot riddled the ceiling. Banner slammed one of the double doors back and followed the gun out into the front hall.
Skinner uprooted himself. He had to see. He was behind Banner.
Then his senses almost failed him.
Struggling in Banner’s iron grip, her face distorted with rage, was Beverly Jelke!
Daybreak was spreading over the sky like a pale stain. Banner faced Skinner in the jurisconsult’s office above Main Street.
Banner said, ‘Everything indicated that the body found in the creek was Bev’s. Her clothes were on the bank, her ring was on her hand. Generally, the physique and colouring were Bev’s. But exact identification of the features wasn’t possible, ’cuz, as you had told me, the buckshot had smeared most of the face.
‘Wayne saw a luminous figure in the fruit trees. Bare flesh gives off a glow in the moonlight. The person Wayne saw was naked … Then there was the peculiar stillness of the hounds, though the hideous scarecrow cavorted all over the place. There’s only one answer to that. The hounds knew who the scarecrow was. It was a person they were thoroughly used to.
‘But it was the attempt on Celeste while all the doors were locked that settled it for me. Nobody could have gotten out of those four rooms. That proved the murderer was still on the outside. The murderer, then, was someone who had complete run of the grounds and whom the dogs regarded as a master. Everyone at the Grange was eliminated except one person—Beverly Jelke. That’s why I told you the answer was unbelievable. But taking it as true, whose body was found in the creek?
‘Remember that Wayne caught sight of Bev running naked through the trees after the second murder. Why was she naked? ’Cuz she had left all her clothes on the bank. Why didn’t she put on her victim’s clothes? ’Cuz her victim had been wearing nothing but a bathing suit; she had come down to the creek in a bathing suit.
‘Who finds the creek that convenient? It wasn’t anybody from the Grange. They were all accounted for. The nearest other place is Foxchase Hall. It was one of the schoolgals! And we knew that Joan Vicars had come down to the creek occasionally. Could it be Joan Vicars they found in the creek? I checked later and found her missing.
‘We can see now that Bev needed clothes. She couldn’t get back into the house immediately. All that was available was the scarecrow rig. She put that on. Bev, as heartless as she’s painted, had killed Joan to pave the way to the more important murder of her brother.
‘To murder Hudson, she made some disturbance outside the farmhouse while all of us were asleep, and when he came to the porch to investigate she let him have it with the kitchen shotgun. Before she vamoosed she removed a bedroom key from Hudson’s pocket. It had been her key. Hudson had taken it from the body in the mortuary along with the rest of Bev’s effects earlier that day.
‘Then Bev began to play tricks. She left a broad trail from Hudson’s body. This trail petered out in some shale at the edge of the ploughed field. At least we couldn’t see any more footprints at that point, but the hounds were still able to follow the trail by the scent. Then Bev hit us between the eyes with the footprints in the newly ploughed field.
‘What she did was simple. She wanted us to see with our own eyes where the trail led, so that we’d call off the hounds. She was standing there dressed as the scarecrow. She had to get that scarecrow forty feet inside the field with only one set of shoe tracks leading up to it. First she made a cross-piece of a couple of dead branches to hang the ragged clothes on. Then she took off the scarecrow shoes she was wearing and continued barefoot out into the field for another forty feet.
‘She took off her clothes and set up the scarecrow the way we found it. All except the shoes. She put the heavy shoes on again and walked backwards to the edge of the field, where she started from. She stepped carefully on each bare footprint—the ones she’d made walking into the field. We didn’t think right off that large shoe tracks can completely blot out slighter bare footprints …
‘We have Bev standing nude on the rim of the ploughed field, the scarecrow forty feet from her and a pair of shoes in her hand. How’d she get the shoes out under the scarecrow? Horseshoe pitching is her favourite sport. You told me that. She could put them in pretty close at forty feet, couldn’t she, Skinner?’ Banner chuckled.
‘During the day she hid out in the stable or the barn and kept herself covered with straw and horse blankets. She ate raw carrots, kale and broccoli from her vegetable garden.’
Skinner interrupted, ‘But why—Why did she want to kill me?’
‘She wanted to get away from the farm with the five thousand you were willing to offer for it. Since Hudson was dead, he could no longer raise an objection to the sale. Celeste would wanna sell out and you’d bring the money to the farm. Bev had to have that money to start over again somewhere else; there was no use going away without it. She knew she had to kill you for it.
‘Bev had finally slipped into the house and into her room by the time you and Celeste had come to that sale agreement in the parlour. Bev had dressed herself in some of her own clothes. She was up on the stairs, listening to us. She knew you were gonna get the money that night. Then Celeste ran quickly up the stairs and Bev ducked back into the dark to hide herself. But Celeste caught a glimpse of Bev, though she didn’t know who it was. For all Bev knew, Celeste had spotted her and knew she was still alive. So Bev had to put your killing on her waiting list. She had to erase Celeste first.
‘As you can see, there really was no problem of getting out of the locked rooms. The scarecrow was outside all the time. The shoes on her feet sounded loose as she walked down the hall, for they were far too big for her. She removed the chair I had put up and entered Celeste’s room with the same key she’d taken off Hudson’s body. She intended to blast Celeste full of buckshot. But Celeste defended herself. Bev couldn’t stay for a second shot. She had to get out and leave things the way I’d set them before I could stomp up the stairs.
‘Bev was hard pressed. To get the money she had to kill you before you left the Grange last night. Her hand was forced. So she fell into my trap. Come into my parlour, said the flies to the spider.’