“Made a mess, too,” Greg Savage said. “Jesus!” He looked at me. “Burnt sugar,” he said.
“That’s what I smelled,” I said.
“Sugar in the gas tank?”
I nodded.
“An old standby,” Colonel Blount-Buller said. “Readily available to any local wog bent on mischief or any malcontent in the ranks. Engine starts up, runs for a bit, then ruins itself entirely. If it’s been sugared, Eglantine, you’ll never get that snowblower working again, not without replacing the engine.”
Nigel just stared. Cissy, who had just come back with a cloth to sponge off Gordon Wolpert, wanted to know why anyone would want to ruin their snowblower. “It does make a racket,” she said, “but it’s ever so useful when it snows.”
“Someone wanted to prevent Orris from clearing the path to the bridge,” I said. “Perhaps they thought that would keep us from setting foot on the bridge, or at least delay our doing so until the bridge had fallen of its own weight.”
“But why?”
“To keep us here,” I said.
“And why keep us here?” It was Dakin Littlefield, holding out his glass to be refilled. “I suppose we can take it for granted that the person who sugared the snowblower and cut the ropes on the bridge was the same nut who killed the poor sap in the library.”
Heads nodded in assent.
“What’s the stiff’s name, Rathburn? He kills Rathburn, he bundles up warm, he goes out and saws the ropes halfway through and sugars the gas tank. Then he slips back inside and goes to bed. Why, for Christ’s sake?”
“Maybe he did what he did to the bridge and the snowblower before he killed Mr. Rathburn,” Carolyn suggested.
“That seems even wackier,” Littlefield said, “but even if he did, same question: Why? I know, I know, to keep us here, but why keep us here? Unless he didn’t come back to the house but got the hell out, and the business with the snowblower and the bridge was to keep us from following him.”
“The bridge supports were cut through on this side,” the colonel reminded him. “He’d have been burning his bridge before he crossed it, so to speak.”
“Then I don’t get it. I don’t know anything about Rathburn, so I won’t even try to guess why somebody would want to kill him. But I suppose there’s always a reason. Once Rathburn’s dead, though, wouldn’t the killer just want to get away from here and back to his life as quickly as possible? Instead he’s stuck here with the rest of us. Or did I miss something?”
“No,” I said. “Whoever he is, he’s still here.”
“Well, where’s the sense in that? By keeping us stuck here, he keeps himself stuck here, too. Why?”
“Maybe he wanted to keep the police away,” Leona Savage said.
“The police,” Nigel said. “I ought to call them.”
“But the phone-”
“They may have restored service by now,” he said, and went off to find out.
While he was gone, we batted around theories and arguments. Keeping the police away didn’t make sense, someone said, because they’d still get here before anybody here could get away. So what was gained? I let them talk it through, sustaining myself with small sips of malt whisky. It wasn’t Glen Drumnadrochit, but it wasn’t bad.
I didn’t want to take too much of it, though. Even if Nigel got through to them, it would be a while before the police could reach us. A plow would have to precede them down the long driveway from the road to the bridge, and then they’d pretty much have to throw up a new bridge. The distance wasn’t that great, so maybe they could heave a rope across the gap. Once we’d secured it, they could make their way hand-over-hand.
Of course they’d have to be young cops, in good condition, and either brave or stupid enough to try it. I thought of the cops I knew back in New York and tried to picture any of them dangling above a rock-strewn gorge. I had gotten so far as to put Ray Kirschmann in that unlikely picture, and the resulting image had me working hard to keep from giggling. It wouldn’t have been terribly appropriate, not with Rathburn and Orris dead and the rest of us marooned here, but it was hard to keep a straight face.
I had help when Nigel came back. His own expression was not merely grave but troubled.
“Still no phone service,” he said.
“You were gone a long time,” Gordon Wolpert said.
“Yes.”
“Longer than you might think it would take to lift a telephone receiver and listen for a dial tone. Of course it would be natural to jiggle the receiver and poke the disconnect button a couple of times, but even so it seems to me you were gone quite a while.”
“Quite a while,” Nigel agreed.
“I realize there’s no television here,” Greg Savage said, “but someone must have a radio. Maybe one of the local stations will have something to say about when telephone service is likely to be restored.”
“The cook has a radio,” Cissy Eglantine said. “But it only gets one station, and it doesn’t come in very clearly. We mostly play tapes on it.”
“Still, if you could bring in that station-”
“There won’t be anything about the resumption of phone service,” I said. “Or if there is it won’t apply to us.”
“Why do you say that, Rhodenbarr?”
I glanced over at Nigel. “Better tell them,” I said.
“I don’t know what made me check,” he said. “‘You’re being silly,’ I told myself, but I couldn’t dismiss the thought, so I pulled on my boots and put a jacket on and went outside. That’s what took me so long. It was slow going, you see, because it’s all the way round the back of the house, and you’ve already seen how deep the snow is.”
Rufus Quilp wanted to know what it was that was all the way in back of the house.
“That’s where the telephone lines come in,” I guessed.
“Quite right,” Nigel said. He sighed heavily and his shoulders sagged. “Someone’s gone and cut them,” he said.
CHAPTER Sixteen
There were no screams or gasps in response to Nigel’s revelation. The general reaction was not so much one of panic and alarm as it was a sinking feeling, a bottomless dread. A couple of the guests voiced the thought that they just did not understand what was happening to us or why, but that sounded like denial to me. We all knew what was going on.
Carolyn spelled it out. “It’s all straight out of Agatha Christie, sort of a combination of The Mousetrap and And Then There Were None. We’re isolated, all of us. We can’t get out of here and nobody can turn up to rescue us. And it’s that way because that’s how the killer wants it.”
“He couldn’t have arranged the snow,” Gordon Wolpert pointed out.
“No,” she said, “but he could have picked a weekend when a heavy snowfall was forecast. Or maybe he decided to take advantage of the snow once it fell. Outside of the snow, it was all his doing. He clubbed Rathburn and smothered him, he cut the phone wires, he fixed the snowblower so it would be ruined and the bridge so it would fall if anybody set foot on it. It’s pretty obvious why he wants us stranded here. He’s not through.”
There was a sort of general intake of breath at this announcement. I don’t think it was a new thought for most of the people there, but no one had put words to the tune until now.
Colonel Blount-Buller looked at the drink in his hand as if wondering what it was, then set it aside and cleared his throat. “There will be more killings,” he said. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it, Mrs. Rhodenbarr?”
“Well, why else would he seal us off like this?”
“You’re assuming he’s still here, and he wasn’t merely seeking to discourage pursuit.”
“Pursuit?” She spread her hands. “What pursuit? Who’s gonna pursue him? If this guy wants to get away from here, that’s fine with me. I’ll pay for his cab.”
The colonel nodded slowly. “And there’s really no way he could have left, is there? The snow and all, and the bridge. He’s elected to remain at Cuttleford House.”