When the third man returned to the solarium, he and the other two continued exploring the house, looking now for a place to hide until the funeral party returned. They went up to the second floor, entered several rooms, and in one came unexpectedly face to face with Earl Chatham.
Earl didn’t realize anything was wrong; these looked like clean-cut ordinary young men. He said, “May I help you?”
Thinking that all family members must have gone with the cortege, the leader of the young men decided on boldness as a tactic. He said, “You could tell me what you’re doing up here.”
Earl’s amiable, rather vague face took on the smiling-through-bewilderment expression it often wore when Evelyn more bluntly rejected his advances. He said, “I beg your pardon?”
“No one’s supposed to be up here,” the young man told him firmly. “Are you with the mortician?”
“Of course not,” Earl said. “I’m family.”
The young man was flustered for just a second, but it didn’t show. He said, “Oh, in that case, it’s all right. Come on, men.” And turned around to leave.
Belatedly it occurred to Earl to wonder who these people were and what they wanted. He said, “Just a minute. Who are you three?”
“We’re just keeping an eye on things.” The three trooped on out to the hall.
“Keeping an eye on things?” Earl, following them, frowning now in puzzlement, said, “But I’m supposed to keep an eye on things.”
The leader turned back. “Oh, are you? What’s your assignment?”
“Just a minute, now,” Earl said, with sudden suspicion. “Let me see some identification.”
“Sure,” the leader said, and hit Earl in the mouth.
Earl, staggering backward through the doorway, eyes wide in surprise, managed somehow to stay on his feet. But the three pushed into the room after him and shoved him farther backward, shutting the door behind them. The second time the leader hit Earl, he fell down.
Earl shouted, a call for help from someone who didn’t yet really believe he needed help, and one of the others kicked him in a sudden panic to make him stop. Earl shouted again, this time louder, with more panic in the sound, and all three started kicking him, desperate to keep him silent. He screamed, and the leader grabbed up a table lamp and swung it hard, hitting Earl’s forehead with the metal base. Earl dropped backward flat on the floor, and was silent.
“Good Christ,” one of them said. His voice was hushed.
The leader, trying not to show his shakiness, put the lamp back on the table. “Go see if anybody heard,” he said. Blood was pouring out of Earl’s forehead and down into his hair.
One of the others went to open the door and listen. The third one said, “I think he’s dead.”
“No,” said the leader, “I didn’t hit him that hard.” His nervousness made him irritable.
“Hold a mirror to his mouth,” the second one said.
“He isn’t dead!” the leader said, more angrily than before.
“I don’t feel any pulse,” the third one said. He released Earl’s wrist, and put a hand on Earl’s chest. “I can’t feel him breathing.”
“He’s in shock,” the leader said,
The second one looked around the room, which was Elizabeth’s bedroom. “Where’s a mirror?”
“Never mind that,” the leader said. His voice was unsteady. “We’ve got other things to do.”
“We don’t need a mirror,” the third one said. He wore glasses, which he took off and held so one lens was just above Earl’s mouth.
The leader went over to look out the window, while the second one came back to see if Earl’s breath would fog the glasses. The glasses stayed clear.
The third one put his glasses back on. “He’s dead,” he said.
The leader stayed looking out the window while the other two gazed at his back, waiting for him to do something. Finally, he gave an angry shrug and turned around, saying, “What the hell was he doing here anyway?”
The second one said, “What do we do now?”
“What do we do now? We wait for the funeral party to get back, what do you think?”
“What about this guy?”
“What about him?”
“We can’t just — He’s dead, for Christ’s sake!” Hysteria hung like fog around the edges of his words.
The leader frowned. Fear and nervousness demonstrated themselves in him as irritation.
“Put him in a closet,” he said finally, and turned around again to glare out the window.
The other two looked at one another. After a moment, they picked Earl up and carried him to the closet and put him inside on the floor. His bloody head smeared several of Elizabeth’s dresses.
iv
Was there to be only the one attempt? Wellington was growing increasingly nervous as each stage of the funeral passed with no further trouble. They had come to the church, and James Fanshaw and Joe Holt were both outside and in the proper places, the sign that everything was all right within. The ceremony, twenty-five minutes long, had droned to an end without an interruption, as had the procession from church to cemetery. Near the cemetery entrance, Eugene White and Mortimer Wellington signaled by their presence that here too everything was as it should be.
Beforehand, Wellington had believed the time of the burial would be the most dangerous of all. Bradford would of necessity be out of the car then, the cemetery was rolling open land, a grab here would be extremely difficult to deal with. But the time came, Elizabeth was put in the ground, and nothing happened.
And now the final leg, down the road along the river, through town, back to the house. Three cars of outriders led and flanked the cortege now: the Wellington brothers in one car, Fanshaw and Holt in a second, Eugene White and Mortimer Wellington in the third.
Four blocks from the house, Wellington spoke into his transmitter: “Six.” That was Earl Chatham. “We’re approaching.” That was the signal for Earl to leave the house and walk a block and a half to a certain intersection. His presence there would indicate there was no trouble in the house.
After a moment, the small voice in Wellington’s ear said, “He hasn’t emerged.”
Wellington frowned. Would there really be trouble at the house? He’d assigned that post to Earl Chatham, a willing but ineffectual man, because it was the least likely place for any kind of ambush.
Of course, it could simply be that Chatham’s receiver wasn’t working properly, or that he’d taken it out of his ear for a while because it itched or something. But Wellington wouldn’t take a chance; he waited until he could see ahead to the intersection, see that Chatham wasn’t there, and then he said into the transmitter, “Seven.” That was Albert Bloor, in the first car. “Circle.”
Bloor, three cars ahead, heard and understood the message. He leaned forward and said to the driver, “Go around the block, please.” As he understood it, Wellington had prepared the driver of the lead car for this eventuality; in fact, the driver was one of Wellington’s men. And now that the hearse and flower car were no longer with them, he was at the head of the line.
They did not make the turn they were supposed to make. They kept going straight ahead.
Wellington spoke again into the transmitter: “Three.” Fanshaw and Holt. “Four.” Wellington brothers. “Five.” Eugene White and Mortimer Wellington. “No reaction from Chatham at the house. Check it. Three in the back way, four and five in the front.”
The three automobiles, widely scattered around the general area of the cortege, all turned at once toward Sterling’s house, arriving almost simultaneously. James Fanshaw and Joseph Holt went around to the rear of the house and in through the solarium, while the three Wellingtons and Eugene White went in the front. All were men in their forties and fifties, but all were healthy, fairly active types, only Mortimer Wellington among them being very much overweight.