Chapter 8
The Last Battle
None of us quite knew what had happened, at first. The sound of a shot, unexpected in the confined space of a room, can be paralyzing as well as deafening.
We heard the thud of the falling body before any of us---unless it was Darius---knew who had been shot. For Darius was the only one who had been facing Fergus Fillmore, who had been standing at the back of the group in a corner of the room.
Charlie Lightfoot and I were the first ones to reach him. The revolver---a small pearl-handled one---was still in his right hand, and the shot had been fired with its muzzle pressed to his temple.
Charlie's gesture of feeling for the beat of Fillmore's heart was perfunctory. He said wonderingly, “I suppose this means that he--- But in heaven's name, why?”
I nodded toward Fillmore's ankles, exposed where his fall had hiked up the cuffs of his trouser-legs above the tops of his high shoes. Under the trousers a pair of heavy leggings were laced on.
“Mine,” said Charlie.
Hill said, “Isn't---isn't that the corner of an envelope sticking just past the lapel of his coat?”
Surprised, I looked up at Darius Hill. He was standing very rigidly, his hands clenched. But he was looking at the corpse; he had, to that extent at least, overcome his necrophobia.
Charlie took the envelope from Fillmore's inside coat pocket. It was addressed to Darius.
And Hill, his face pale and waxen, but his voice steady, read to us the letter it contained:
“Dear Darius: Are you really a criminologist, or are you a monumental bluff? I have a hunch it's hot air, my dear Darius, but if you ever read this letter, I apologize. It will mean that you were more clever than I---or perhaps I should say you are more clever than the book you wrote. To meet that contingency, I carry a pistol---for a purpose you have already discovered. It would be quite absurd for a man of my position to stand trial for murder. You will understand that.
“I am writing this at the desk in the hallway. As soon as I finish writing, I shall join you for coffee and a sandwich in the kitchen. Then I shall carry out the third step in the program which has been forced upon me by the necessity of keeping my neck out of a noose.
“I remembered your book, Darius, as soon as I discovered, early this evening, that Elsie was dead. She walked into Paul Bailey's room early this evening while I was searching that room to get back the letter which Paul had held as a threat over my head---”
Darius Hill looked up from the letter and said to Bailey, “What letter is that, Paul?”
The bewilderment on Bailey's face seemed genuine enough.
Then, suddenly, “That letter! Good grief, he thought I still had it. Why, I'd destroyed it months ago.”
“What was it?”
“One Fergus wrote me about ten months ago, while he was trying to get me to take the job here. He talked too freely---or rather---wrote too freely, in that letter.”
“What do you mean, Paul?” Darius demanded.
“He criticized Dr. Lecky---pretty viciously. And said some things Lecky would never have forgiven, if he'd ever seen the letter. And he took some swipes at the regents in Los Angeles, too. From what I've learned since about how touchy Lecky was, I have a hunch that letter would have cost Fillmore his job---if either Lecky or the regents had ever seen it. But I didn't keep it. I threw it away before I packed my stuff to come here.”
“But you threatened Fillmore with it, later?”
Bailey shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well---not exactly, no. But when Zoe broke our engagement---and it was Zoe who broke it---Fillmore had the crust to tell me that unless I managed to patch things up between Zoe and me, he'd see that I lost my job. We had some words and I told him his own job wasn't any too secure if Lecky and the regents knew what he'd written about them. I didn't threaten him with the letter but he may have got the impression I still had it.”
Darius turned back to the letter and resumed reading:
“I happened to be to the left of the door, and Elsie walked in without seeing me. But in a moment, I knew, she would turn. I acted involuntarily, although I swear my intention was merely to stun her so I could leave the room without being identified.
“I was standing beside the bureau and I picked up the first convenient object---a hairbrush. I struck with the back of it.
“Then I found---as I caught her and lowered her to the floor so there would be no sound of a fall---that I was a murderer. A man after your own heart, Darius.
“And it was then that I recalled those lessons in your book, about how to get away with murder. Recalled them after I was already, inadvertently, a murderer. And some of the things in your manuscript make sense, Darius. As you say, a killer of several suffers no worse penalty than a killer of one.
“I forced myself, very deliberately, to sit down for a few minutes and think out a course of action. First, an alibi. I could not prove I was elsewhere when Elsie was killed but I could make her seem to be killed when I was elsewhere---playing bridge.
“A DeWar flask was the answer to that. I went downstairs, found Bailey and set him a task with the blink-mike which would keep him busy for an hour. Then I went to the lab and liquefied some air, taking it upstairs in the flask.
“Extreme cold applied to the leg joints of the body froze them, and I propped the corpse erect in a corner. By the time the flesh thawed and she fell, I was playing bridge downstairs with several of you. Was that not simple, Darius? Is this news to you, or had you solved the method?
“Even the coroner's examination of the body will not show what happened, because I'll see to it there is a leak in the tubing of the makeshift refrigerator we rigged up to preserve the body.”
Rex Parker's voice cut in. “I'd better check that right away, Mr. Hill.”
Hill nodded and read on, as Parker left the room. “But Otto Schley saw me leaving Bailey's room. It meant nothing to him then and he mentioned it to no one. But he will be a source of danger if the police ferret out---or you ferret out---the fact that Elsie's death did not occur during the bridge game but at about the time Otto saw me.
“So I remembered your book, Darius. And my method of dealing with Otto needs no explaining.
“A fortunate accident added to the confusion. I refer to the rattlesnake with the missing rattle---or the rattle from the missing rattlesnake. I had nothing to do with that. Wunderly says he slammed the door on a snake, and it is probable that the closing of the door knocked off or pinched off the rattle.”
I said, “Damn,” softly to myself.
“But now all is quiet again,” Darius Hill continued reading. “Bailey is asleep under a mild drug. After coffee, I shall go to complete my search of his room. I am almost convinced, by now, that he does not have the letter any longer and that his tacit threat was a bluff.
“And then, whether or not I find it, a third and final murder.
“You see, Darius, I have taken your lessons to heart. No one will suspect that I would kill Lecky merely because---whether you or I receive the directorship---I shall be freer to concentrate on lunar and planetary observations and no longer will take orders from a doddering fool.
“No, I would not kill him if I had a stronger motive than that. I shall not kill Bailey, for that very reason. If I succeed to the directorship, however, he would be taken care of. Of course, I would not kill Lecky for so slight a motive, as motives go, save that the doing of two murders has made a third a matter of slight moment.
“Adieu, then, Darius. Coffee, then Bailey's room, then I shall steal Charlie Lightfoot's leather leggings from the closet, lace them on, and visit friend Lecky. Then---but if you ever read this, you'll know the rest.”
Darius looked up. He said, in a curiously flat voice, “That's all.”
* * * *
A month later, Annabel and I were married at the observatory. Darius Hill, the director, had insisted on giving the bride away. Charlie Lightfoot was my best man.
Darius spoke, copiously, at the dinner afterwards. He'd been at it for what seemed like hours.
“. . . and it is most fitting that Einar should be the setting for this sacred ceremony,” said Darius, “wherein are joined the most beautiful woman who ever graced a problem in differential calculus, and a young man who, although he came to us in an hour of tribulation, has proved. . . .”
“Ugh,” said Charlie Lightfoot. “Paleface talk too much.”
He reached for his glass---and I reached, under the table, for Annabel's hand.