The place went up for grabs, of course, but I quieted them down, by gesturing and waving as if they were a rebellious choral group I was directing.
“Please don’t ask any questions,” I said, forcing my voice above their collective one. “I think I can anticipate most of your questions, and after I’ve put the basic facts before you, you can grill me all you want.”
Curt Clark said, “Let Mal speak. He’s been wanting to report a murder all weekend.”
“Thank you, Curt,” I said. “And he’s right. All of you know about the ‘prank’ I witnessed outside my window Thursday night. What only a few of you know — specifically, Curt, Kim, Mary Wright, Jill Forrest and I — is that Kirk Rath really was murdered.”
They kept it down this time, but they were whispering among themselves, heads were shaking, is that guy crazy or what?, but all eyes were on yours truly. I had the floor; I hadn’t had so much attention since I played Lester Denton this morning in this same little parlor.
I told them about the mountain hike and how Jill and I had found Rath’s body; also that the police chief had asked the few of us who knew about the murder to keep mum for the time being — a directive I now felt compelled to ignore.
“So the prank wasn’t a prank,” Tom Sardini said, matter-of-factly. He wasn’t a guy who fazed easily. “Rath was killed outside your window, and somebody hauled his body in Rath’s own car up to Sky Top and dumped it.”
“That’s how it looks,” I said. “But why do that? The body was bound to be found there before very long; if it hadn’t started snowing yesterday, there’d have been other hikers out besides Jill and me, and the body would’ve been found even sooner. That’s a standard hike to take when you’re visiting Mohonk.”
Jack Flint, his irritation gone, was somber as he said, “You don’t hide a body out in the open like that — not with all these woods around.”
“Exactly my point,” I said. “Somebody wanted that body found while we were all still here.”
“Why?” Flint asked.
“To get the inevitable investigation over with,” I said. “We were all invited here because we had real-life motives to kill Kirk Rath. Oh, some of us aren’t really very convincing suspects, I’ll grant you. As I pointed out to somebody earlier tonight, you generally don’t kill somebody over a bad review. But Kirk Rath was no ordinary reviewer. He caused a lot of misery — Pete blames him for a death and so does Tim Culver. Most of us have suffered career setbacks because of Rath. Face it... we’re suspects. That’s why we were invited here.”
Curt stood and said, “But I invited you here, Mal. I invited all of you here.”
“I know. But then, unless I’m very mistaken — and God knows I hope I am, Curt — you killed Kirk Rath.”
Curt’s smile was faint; the shadows of flames from the nearby fireplace reflected off his glasses and made him look just a little crazy. Which is exactly what he was.
But he was also smart and shrewd, and he said, “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t have killed Rath. You and I spoke on the telephone, just moments before you saw him killed.” He pointed at me like Humphrey Bogart pointing at Mary Astor. “And you yourself said the killer was a stocky man; in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about six-three in my bare feet.”
“For the record, I didn’t say Rath’s supposed assailant was a man; I said ‘person.’ It could’ve been a woman.”
Cynthia had long since stopped noodling at the piano; she was quite serious as she asked, “Why do you say ‘supposed assailant’? Haven’t you been saying all along that what you saw outside your window was a real killing?”
I laughed a little. “I sure have. Because Curt was right, from the very beginning — what I saw was a prank. A ‘Grand Guignol farce,’ as he put it, staged for my benefit.”
Now people were shaking their heads and shifting in their seats and climbing all over each’s attempt to tell me how ridiculous I was.
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand, palm out, stop. “Just wait.”
They quieted, somewhat reluctantly.
I said, “Curt wrote, produced, and directed that skit; but he didn’t appear in it. He had an accomplice for that. But consider this — he and Mary Wright have been making all the arrangements for the weekend—”
From the back of the room, Mary Wright said, “I had nothing to do with this — leave me out of this!”
I ignored her, pressed on: “The point is, Curt knew well in advance which room was mine. In fact, Thursday evening, he dropped by and looked it over... walked to the window and glanced out, like a producer checking out the theater the afternoon before the night the curtain goes up on his new show. Oh, and he was ready for that curtain to go up. Before I checked in, he’d been in that room — for one thing, he dragged my phone from the nightstand over to a table by the window. Having the phone by the window allowed him to call me later, supposedly about a scheduling crisis caused by Rath’s leaving, but in reality merely making sure I was right there at the window to witness the show he was staging. He even directed my attention where it was supposed to be, by asking me to look out my window to see if it was snowing yet. Also, he’d jammed my window shut, beforehand — superglue, nails, what have you. Somehow he made sure that window wouldn’t open, to keep me from getting into the act.”
Curt said, “I wish you’d refrain from referring to me in the third person. And, if I might add, this is the most harebrained plot you’ve ever come up with. Just who was playing the role of Kirk Rath in this supposed charade of mine?”
“It was typecasting,” I said. “Rath was playing himself.”
I expected a chorus of what’s from my audience, but they had settled down, now. They had decided I was worth listening to. I hadn’t convinced anybody yet, but they were willing to listen.
“When I found Rath’s body on those rocks, two things struck me — first, his face was passive, not contorted, as it had been when I’d seen him slashed outside my window. This, on reflection, suggests to me that Rath’s face might have been slashed after he was dead, as part of an effort to keep his corpse consistent with what I’d witnessed. Second, when I checked his pockets I found his envelope of instructions, like the one I’d been sent by Curt for my role in the mystery weekend. But if you’ll recall, we all received two things: a list of our fellow suspects in Roark Sloth’s murder; and, for our eyes only, a description of our own role in the weekend’s festivities. In Rath’s envelope, however, I found only the list of suspects. Not the instructions for his own part. Why? I think it’s because the murderer — which is to say, you, Curt — destroyed that sheet.”
Pretending amusement, Curt said, “And why would I do that?”
“Because it would reveal that Kirk Rath was only playing the game you outlined for him to play.”
He laughed at that, glancing at Kim, shaking his head; she wasn’t laughing.
“You instructed Kirk Rath to throw that tantrum and leave,” I said to him. “You told him that that was part of his role this weekend — to storm out, pretend to leave... but then appear near my window later and, with someone’s help, playact a murder.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“The Mohonk Mystery Weekend thrives on the preposterous. The scenario I’ve just suggested is very much in keeping with the activities here. My guess is that Rath thought he was supposed to make a surprise reappearance the next morning, perhaps after the suspect interrogation; he probably planned to sneak back in, to a room you arranged, later Thursday night, possibly wearing a ski mask to keep from being recognized — or he could have stayed in a motel in New Paltz. That detail I’m not sure of. But I feel very sure that Rath — like so many of the game-players here this weekend — thought the prank was a part of the mystery. Hell, the Arnolds and the Logans have as much as hit me over the head with that... that it had to be part of the Mystery Weekend, in which case it could only be the work of one person: Curt Clark.”