“It looks to me as if Miles Scanlon is our main suspect,” Mac said, pointing out the obvious.
Marc said nothing, however, about the attempt on his own life during the night. He might eventually do so, but his instincts told him that the two incidents were unrelated, and he did not want one complicating the other needlessly. His own stalker would surely strike again, and further opportunities would open up for catching him in the act.
Marc took one last look at what remained of the proud and audacious captain. The tumble into the creek had caused the upper buttons of his greatcoat to come open, so that the top of his militia-jacket with its gold chest-bars was just visible. His officer’s boots, polished to an ebony gleam, lay out of the water upon a shelf of ice, as they would have if he had fallen on the field of battle. The rest of him lay almost fully submerged in the chattering stream whose effervescence seemed to be keeping him afloat and continuously bathed. But the greatcoat itself-his pride and joy, freshly purchased, no doubt, just for the expected rebellion-was now waterlogged and threatening to pull the body down. Its bright green sheen had succumbed to the insistent waters, which left it soggy, darkened, even shabby. It was a sad end.
“So the only one of your crowd who was actually out of sight of you or any of the others during the critical twenty minutes was this Charles Lambert fellow?”
“That’s right,” Marc said, his puzzlement showing. “He was. We saw him and Dingman go around the corner into the hall leading to the door of Dingman’s office. They were supposed to be discussing a will.”
“Where is the office? I don’t quite remember.”
“It’s at the end of the centre hall, just beside the rear exit.” Marc’s eyes widened. “It’s possible Lambert didn’t actually go into the office with Dingman.”
“Well, we’ll just have to check that out with Proprietor Dingman, won’t we?”
“In addition to double-checking everyone’s whereabouts. And, may I suggest, Mac, that you not exclude me as a suspect.”
“Ah, that I haven’t, Marc, though I have given the notion a low probability. But we shall soon hear everybody’s tale in detail under oath. I’m going to have Dingman’s lads put this corpse into the back of my sleigh. Then I’m going to drive it to my surgery, where I can get it up on a slab and second-guess my own conclusions. Then I’ll have it boxed for the grieving widow to take back home to kith and kin, should they be concerned for it. I’ll have all this accomplished by one o’clock, after which I shall enjoy the fine luncheon my chatelaine will have prepared for me, washed down with a half litre of ten-year-old Burgundy. And because most of the witnesses and potential culprits are now here and hoping to depart soon, I shall hitch up Prometheus and return to Mr. Dingman’s taproom for the coroner’s inquest-at three o’clock sharp.”
“But shouldn’t you consult the magistrate first?”
MacIvor Murchison, Esquire, grinned like a moose in a mayflower swamp: “I am the magistrate,” he said.
THIRTEEN
After the initial shock of discovery, Marc had no opportunity to study the reactions of his fellow passengers to the murder of Randolph Brookner. Adelaide remained closeted with Mrs. Dingman; Sedgewick and Lambert retired to their rooms (with luncheon being sent up); and Pritchard, ever eager to converse, found himself alone in the lounge. Of the four Marc would like to have questioned a little more closely, Pritchard, alas, was the only one who had no motive. Nevertheless, Marc did go into the lounge to take lunch there with the perplexed wine merchant.
“I was warned that the colonies lacked many of the civilities it has taken the mother country centuries to accumulate and refine,” he was saying to Marc through his cigar smoke. “But I never expected to be accosted by hooligans on the Queen’s highroad or discover a travelling companion brutally slaughtered a few paces from his hotel. I haven’t stopped trembling since I came upon that gruesome sight.”
“You and Sedgewick found the body together, I understand.”
“Yes. I was no more than a step behind him, but it was I who had the misfortune to first look down into the creek.”
That confirmation, as Marc had suggested to the coroner-magistrate, appeared to let both Pritchard and Sedgewick off the hook, unless they had, improbably, conspired together to kill Brookner.
“I would go easy on those brandies, old chap,” Marc said, getting up. “The inquest begins in less than two hours.”
“So I’m told,” Pritchard said, “in the taproom!”
After lunch, Marc took it upon himself to interview the kitchen staff, who might have seen something or someone from one of the windows facing the stable and woods. But no-one had noticed Brookner or his stalker on the path about 9:15 or later. The stable-hands had all been indoors at the critical time and could not help. Nor had anyone, inside or outside, seen anyone lurking about the premises last night or earlier this morning. Marc re-examined the footprints between the woods and the back and side of the inn. No clear pattern emerged. He sat down and prepared a written report for the coroner and had it sent off to Mac in Prescott. Perhaps the inquest itself would turn up some useful information.
Dr. MacIvor Murchison arrived before the porticoed entrance of the Georgian Arms like the potentate of some far-flung pocket of empire. The one-horse sleigh, ribald with bells and jangling chains, glided to a graceful stop at the behest of a rail-thin gentleman, who set the reins down with a silky gesture, stepped smartly to the ground, then held out a suede-gloved hand to assist the magistrate out of his elevated seat. Although no general notice of the proceedings had been broadcast, somehow word had leaked out and the big tavern-room had begun to fill up with gawking, dry-throated devotees of the court shortly after opening time at two o’clock. The presiding justice, however-much to the chagrin of the gathering crowd-ordered the bar closed until the inquest was concluded, in keeping with the dignity and sanctity of British jurisprudence. The presiding official himself, of course, had taken on sufficient quantities of fortifying liquors well before his ostentatious arrival.
Murdo Dingman bellied his way through the considerable throng outside the inn to greet Doctor Mac and welcome him to court, as it were. “I have arranged everything just as you constructed me, your honourable,” he boomed, acutely conscious of the gallery watching. “There’s plenty of chairs in neat little rows and my best table up front with the big, padded captain’s chair for your gracious to be seated upon.”
His Honour nodded in curt acknowledgement of these amenities. “And a chair for my clerk here, Mr. Digby Parsons, with pen and ink?”
Parsons stared at Dingman with his long, horse-like face.
“Already done, sir. You’ve brung your own paper?”
“We have, Mr. Dingman. We have.”
And without further clarifying dialogue, the cavalcade of three swept through the awed crowd into the foyer, where they made a right wheel into the re-rigged tavern.
By three o’clock, when Digby Parsons rapped the gavel on behalf of the coroner upon the deal table before him, the makeshift courtroom was jammed, with a standing overflow crowd in the foyer beyond the opened double-doors. As many women as men were in attendance, a fact that invariably puzzled and appalled new arrivals from the more proper domain of Her Majesty’s kingdom. What they would have observed on this particular afternoon was a spacious taproom from which all tables but one had been removed and the orphaned chairs set up in respectable ranks facing the official dais at the front. Behind it, his bulging bulk having been shoe-horned into its padded chair, sat the coroner-magistrate draped in a tattered red cape with furred collar and sporting a moth-infested wig, which teetered on the random tufts of his delinquent hair. To the right the clerk sat with poised pen and parchment before him. To the left was the witness chair, a spare bar-stool. Farther left, beneath the tavern windows, a bench had been cleared for the assembled witnesses, who looked on anxiously.