“You’re serious,” Curt said, though not sure yet.
“Deadly fucking,” I said.
“Quit saying that word,” Mary said, suddenly irritated.
“I’m the one who said it before,” Jill said.
Mary whirled on Jill. “Why don’t you just shut up?”
Jill said, “What are you going to do about it?”
“What do you want me to do? Pull your hair out?”
“I mean about the murder,” Jill said. Hands on her hips. “Don’t lose your composure, dear.”
Mary had nothing to say to that. Her face fell, and her rage went with it. Ashen, she sat on the bed next to Curt; they looked like lovers in the midst of a bedroom quarrel, not sure what move to make next. Curt had one hand on one of his knees, the other, with the Scotch, was in his lap. He was studying me.
“You are serious,” he said, as if he didn’t believe his own words. “This is not a joke.”
“It’s not a joke. It’s not a goddamn joke! Do we look like we’re kidding? Are either of us that good an actor?”
He looked at me hard and then he stood; Mary continued to sit, lost in worry.
He came and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed off what you told me before.” He was shaking his head; he seemed embarrassed and bewildered. “What can I say? I steered you wrong.”
“I can see how you thought what you thought,” I said. “I’ve been around these people today. I’ve seen how caught up in their game they are. How obsessive they are about it. I can see why you figured it for a prank.”
“But it wasn’t a prank,” Jill said. She was over pouring herself some more bourbon.
“So it would seem,” Curt said, shaking his head, more in amazement than bewilderment now.
“I should call the police,” Mary said, sick about it.
“Yes you should,” I said.
She used Curt’s phone. Before long she was talking to somebody called Chief Colby. I wondered if that meant he was head cheese.
Soon I was talking to the chief, filling him in.
“You’re a good observer, Mr. Mallory,” he said.
“Thank you. What do we do now?”
“Wait there at the mountain house. We’ll be right up.”
I hung up the phone. Outside the wind was rattling the windows, whistling through its teeth.
“Cops are on the way,” I said.
“Good,” Jill said.
“They’ll have a hell of a time,” I said, “getting up to Sky Top now.”
“It really is coming down,” Curt said with a fatalistic shrug, looking out the frosted window at the snow. “What was he doing back here?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Rath. He left last night — why did he come back and get himself killed?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe he only pretended to leave.”
“But why?” Curt asked. “And why would somebody kill him Thursday night, outside your window, in the broad moonlight, and then lug him up to Sky Top?”
“Beats me,” I said. “Hell of a place to hide a corpse — right out in the open where the next hiker will find him.”
“Whoever did it,” Jill said, “hauled the corpse up in Rath’s own car. Maybe to get both of them out of sight, just for the moment.”
“Just for that evening,” Curt said, nodding. “Perhaps the murderer did his — or her — deed and then took off.”
Mary seemed to perk up, just a bit. “You mean it wasn’t necessarily someone who was here for the Mystery Weekend?”
“Not necessarily,” I agreed. “It could have been somebody who followed him here, or came looking for him. His coworkers knew where he was going; it was no secret.”
The phone rang. Curt answered it, then held it out for Mary. “It’s for you.”
“Yes?” she said. “Yes? Oh... oh, really. Well, I’m not surprised... Yes, well, thank you.” She hung up and sighed and looked around the room at all of us, including Jill, shrugged elaborately and said, “That was the Gate House. The road up the mountain’s been shut down.”
Nobody said anything.
“It’s not passable,” she said, shrugging again. “It’s heavily drifted, over a sheet of ice. And it’s still coming down.”
I held out my open palms to her. “Don’t you have plows...?”
“Yes,” she said. “And they’re not getting anywhere. It’ll be hours — maybe longer — before we can get that road cleared. Until it stops snowing, we won’t even try.”
“What!”
“Mr. Mallory,” she said quietly, “there is no reason to, even if we could. Our guests are safe and warm and perfectly content here at the mountain house. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“What about Kirk Rath?” Jill said.
Curt said, “He isn’t going anywhere either.”
Mary said, “It’s not uncommon for us to be snowbound here at Mohonk for several days. Par for the course, really.”
I stood. Paced. “If the murderer is somebody here at the mountain house — one of the guest authors, for example, all of whom hated Rath — then he or she is stuck here, too.”
“That’s right,” Mary said. Nodding sagely.
The phone rang again. Again it was for Mary.
Who spoke to Chief Colby for about five minutes, most of her contribution to the conversation being, “Uh-huh” and “Yes.”
Then Colby asked to speak to me.
“Mr. Mallory,” he said, “we may not be able to begin investigating for a while yet. You may have a murderer in that lodge somewhere. I’d suggest you keep what you know to yourself.”
“Why?”
“To keep the murderer under that roof. Whoever it is, they don’t know they’ve been found out yet. They don’t know anybody’s found the body. Let’s keep it that way. Maybe when I can get my buggy up that mountain, we can catch the culprit flat-footed.”
“I don’t think it matters much either way,” I said, not knowing what to make of a modern-day cop who used the word culprit.
“Listen here. If that murderer finds out he’s been found out, somebody else might get killed. Leave the damn lid on, okay?”
“Okay, Chief. I’ll go along with you.”
“Fine. Now, let me talk to Miss Wright again.”
I did.
While she was talking to him, I explained to Curt and Jill that we were supposed to keep the murder under wraps, and why.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Jill said.
That response surprised me. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Mary hung up and came over and managed to smile a little. “I’m glad we’re agreed to keep quiet about this, for now. We can proceed with our weekend and not spoil anything for our guests.”
“Except for Kirk Rath,” Jill said. “The weekend’s pretty well shot for him.”
“You’re drunk,” Mary said nastily.
“Not drunk enough,” Jill said. “When I look at you, you’re still in focus.”
They glared at each other for a while. Neither one seemed terribly well composed.
Curt was still working on his Scotch. He seemed vaguely amused. “Perhaps in the long run it will boost the Mystery Weekends, Mary. Think of the publicity.”
“Bad publicity,” she said, shaking her head, almost scowling.
“No such thing as,” Curt affirmed, saluting her with his glass. Then he raised it in a more general toast: “And here’s to Kirk Rath. God have mercy on him. Poor bastard.”
I finished my Scotch.
But I was still cold inside.
Nevertheless, I was warmer than Kirk Rath, even if by now he was under a blanket.