“Now, keep in mind that, to him, this is wholly his domain. This is how he must have quieted his fears of being apprehended for murder, and acted so boldly. This is his quarry, his personal lake, his home. He controls the only the roads that lead to it. He stocks the lake with the fish he likes to eat, then goes out alone to catch them. He has altered this home so that he has the best view, one he will not share with others except by invitation to his bedroom. He alone decides who will visit it and when.
“No, he didn’t worry much about discovery, given that he ruled this kingdom. He probably felt certain that once the bedroom was returned to order, he had little to fear. If questions were asked about the bed or the boat, he would quash them as impertinence. He was a rich man known to have his whims. Those dependent upon him were unlikely to challenge him. So-back to the disposal of the mattress.”
He paused. “Turn around, if you please, gentlemen, and look back toward the house.”
He had held our attention utterly, so until that moment we had not looked behind us.
Here and there along the cliff face below the house, in the trees growing up from the quarry water, and in clumps on the water at our level, were downy white feathers. A large, white, bloodstained, sheetlike object was draped in the branches of one of the trees. The mattress cover.
“Last night,” Slye said, “when I alarmed Max by leaning out the windows of Grimes’s bedroom, I saw many more of these feathers. But what Grimes did with the mattress is plain. He opened the window, but the feather mattress would not fit through it. He was tired at that point, and still had more to do before he could allow anyone else into the house. He used a knife or scissors from the nearby secretary to create an opening in the mattress cover, and spilled the feathers out the window, until he could fit what remained through the opening. The cover caught on a tree, but he believed he would have time to retrieve it later.
“What next? He disassembled a bed in one of the seldom-used guest rooms and reassembled it in his own room. He may have washed or destroyed whatever clothing he had on that day-we may find that at the foot of the cliff beneath his windows, as well.
“At some point after he had rested, he realized he should call in someone more experienced to do the real cleaning. He gives, as Max has noted, an especially cruel order, and requires the young man’s mother to do just that. The rest you know.”
He began to climb the cliff steps again.
“Slye!” the sheriff called after him.
Bunny stopped and turned toward him. “Yes?”
“Did she know?”
“Mrs. Westley? I’m not a mind reader, Sheriff Anderson.” Seeing the sheriff’s look of frustration, he relented a bit. “You saw everything she saw, and you believed the couple had run away. I stand by what I said to you earlier. You will have a hard time proving that Mr. Grimes’s death was other than an accident. If you believe there is some injustice here, by all means, arrest her.”
The sheriff swore quite colorfully, then said, “You know damn well I won’t.”
“Your compassionate approach to law enforcement is, indeed, why I am always happy to help you.”
All the way up the steps, I heard soft muttering behind us, with the phrase “compassionate approach to law enforcement” often being repeated.
The sheriff brought more men to the quarry and dragged the lake in an area Slye suggested as the place where the boat most likely lay. It took several hours, but they found it and were able to recover the bodies.
Some weeks later, Digby announced a visitor: “Mrs. Senechett.”
Bunny said, “What a pleasant surprise! By all means, show her in.”
There was something in Digby’s manner that made me ask Bunny if I should give him privacy. He smiled and told me to stay, that I would find this visitor interesting.
He was right. An elegant woman stepped into the room, who, if only nearly as divine as Mrs. Grimes in appearance, had a je ne sais quoi that made me think that if she had a favor to ask, I would do all in my power to make her happy. She was perhaps ten years my senior. A decade never seemed of less consequence.
She saw Bunny, hurried to him, and embraced him, saying, “Boniface! How good of you to admit me when I’ve not given you a word of warning!”
“Eleanor, could I ever deny you? Come, you must meet my good friend Dr. Max Tyndale, who does his best to keep me sane.”
For the second time that summer, I met a gorgeous woman who did not seem to notice my own appearance. She smiled at me, took my hand in hers, and said, “Oh, Bunny has written to tell me all about you. How fortunate he is to have such a friend.”
We were seated. Digby brought in refreshments, then made himself scarce.
Eleanor Senechett shook her head. “Bunny, you devil, you didn’t tell Dr. Tyndale who I am.” She laughed and turned to me. “You should be warned, sir, that you are having tea with a dangerous lunatic.”
“Bunny is not dangerous. Mostly not,” I amended.
“She means I should warn you that she is an escapee from an asylum-although I think that the order concerning Eleanor Delfontaine Grimes, now Eleanor Senechett, has been lifted, am I right?”
“Yes, you wonderful man. Senechett sends his love and wants to know if there is a quiet place you’d like to have dinner together to celebrate. I’ve been in Beaumont too long to know what’s what around here.”
“Beaumont, Texas?” I asked.
“Yes. My husband is in the oil business. Has Bunny not told you the story?”
“It’s your story to tell, Eleanor,” Bunny said.
“All right, short version for my part of the story. When I was far too young to know any better, I allowed my father to persuade me to marry a man he had chosen for me, a businessman named Everett Grimes. I believe you know enough about him-and at last the world knows enough about him-for me not to need to explain how that worked out. You know he had me committed?”
“Yes.”
“For noticing that he was unfaithful and daring to object to it. My parents were no longer living by then, he controlled my inheritance, and he had a local judge in his pocket.”
“That, too, is being looked into,” Slye said.
“Good. I promised the short version. Here it is. There was a sixteen-year-old boy I won’t name, who quite unexpectedly helped me to escape, and to live for a brief time in a little caretaker’s cottage at the far reaches of the family estate. Said boy was utterly charming, and I believe-if I may be so shameless as to admit it-he had a crush on me.”
“A mad crush,” Bunny said with a grin. “But… well, sixteen.”
“This noble sixteen-year-old who could have been in so much trouble-arrested, but worse, targeted by Everett Grimes as an enemy-in the true madness of his mad crush arranged for me to travel to the home of a female cousin in Texas, a young woman starting a business of her own, and who probably received the money for my wages from her wealthy cousin in New York.”
“You’re wrong, Eleanor. She would accept nothing from me.”
“That’s a relief. And she did make a success of it.”
“With your astute help.”
She waved this away. “Short version! While on the job, I met one Mr. Senechett, oilman. The stuff practically comes up out of the ground looking for him, although at that time he was just hoping his first well would come in. I told him he was falling for a lunatic, he told me I was, too, since you had to be crazy to wildcat. We married. The rest-the rest is that we adore Boniface Slye and all who are good to him.”
Bunny, to my amazement, blushed. “It is you who are too good to me. Now, as for a quiet place, no one in the village cooks as well as Armand. You will dine here, of course.”