“Why would he do that?” Leona Savage wondered.
“Because, even before A murdered Rathburn, B realized the stage was set. All the players had arrived at Cuttleford House. Once Lettice and Dakin Littlefield had made it across the bridge, it was time for the bridge to come down.”
Littlefield had been leaning against a bookcase. Now he snapped to attention. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What the hell did our arrival have to do with B and the bridge?”
“Once you were here,” I said, “he wanted to make sure you stayed.”
“Well, it worked,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to haul ass since the moment I got to this godforsaken hellhole.”
“Oh, dear,” Cissie Eglantine said. “We try so to make Cuttleford House a pleasant place for all our guests.”
“There, there,” Nigel said, and patted her hand.
“But he called it a godforsaken hellhole,” she protested. “It’s not, is it?”
“Of course not,” the colonel assured her. “Would I spend half the year in a hellhole? The man’s upset, Cecilia.”
“I know the food’s not all it might be,” Cissie said, “because of what happened to Cook, and the snow’s made things difficult for everyone, and what with poor Orris gone-”
The inevitable cry came from Earlene Cobbett.
“Excuse me,” Rufus Quilp said. The fat man was sitting in an overstuffed armchair, and I’d thought he’d been dozing. But he hadn’t missed a thing. “This is getting interesting,” he said. “A killed Mr. Rathburn. B dropped the bridge in the gully, either shortly before or shortly after Mr. Rathburn’s murder. If after, he may not have known it had taken place.”
“That’s correct.”
“And if before, did he know it was likely to take place? Did B expect A would murder Rathburn?”
“Probably not. He knew the Littlefields had arrived, and he didn’t want anyone else coming or going.”
Littlefield sighed, exasperated, but Rufus Quilp persevered. “So he slipped outside,” he said, “and cut the bridge supports. And, I suppose, made assurance doubly sure by sugaring the snowblower.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t do that, and why should he? It wouldn’t prevent anyone from coming or going. Anyone else could do as Orris did, and indeed what B had done himself to reach the bridge. It might be slow going, especially as the snow continued to fall, but it wouldn’t be impassable for any of us. Except Miss Dinmont, of course. You’d need a clear path for a wheelchair.”
This upset Miss Dinmont, who required immediate reassurance that the snowblower had not been sabotaged as a deliberate attempt to inconvenience or imperil her. When Miss Dinmont calmed down, Mrs. Colibri wanted to know who’d sugared the snowblower.
“Because it seems entirely gratuitous,” she said. “What effect did it have? It simply inconvenienced us.”
“It inconvenienced Orris,” I said. “The person who poured the sugar in the engine-let’s call her C-”
“Her, Bern?”
“Well, him or her,” I said. “I thought I’d give the male pronoun a rest. C didn’t have the slightest idea that A was going to kill Rathburn, or that B was planning to bring down the bridge. All C knew was that it was snowing to beat the band, and that it would be a good joke on young Orris Cobbett if his beloved snowblower could be rendered hors de combat. It was his job to keep the path clear of snow, and the snowblower made that task an easy one, whereas it involved a lot of heavy lifting if you had to do it the old-fashioned way, with a snow shovel.”
“All my fault!” cried C. “I swear I never meant for nuffin bad to happen to him! Never! I loved him, an’ now he be dead, and it be all my fault!”
CHAPTER Twenty-six
It was Earlene Cobbett, of course, and I’ll spare you the fits and starts in which she told her story, along with the exclamation points that! accented! virtually! every! word! of it. She had not meant to injure Orris, nor had she intended any lasting harm to the inoffensive snowblower. As she understood it, a cup of sugar in its gas tank would just stop it from running, and eventually someone would have to drain it and supply it with clean gas, at which time it would be as good as new.
And Orris would be as good as new, too. She was a bit peeved with him, less for his having managed to impregnate her than for the attentions he’d been paying to her cousin Molly. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, for after all boys will be boys, and at least it was all in the family, and not as if he’d been misbehaving with a guest, or some stranger. But he still deserved to be taught a lesson, and an hour or so of snow shoveling did not seem inappropriate.
“You didn’t do any harm,” I told Earlene, “except to the snowblower, and in a couple of weeks it’d be useless anyhow. It could probably do with a good overhaul between now and next winter.”
“Need a new engine now,” the colonel murmured.
“As far as Orris is concerned,” I went on, “if anything, you gave him a few extra minutes of life. If the snowblower had started up right away, he’d have cleared the path in a few minutes’ time, and that means he’d have wound up in the gully that much sooner. I know you miss him, Earlene-”
“I loved him!”
“-and he’s gone, and nothing can bring him back, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk, and at least you don’t have to worry that you were the one who kicked the pail over.” The metaphor stopped her tears, anyway; she stood there blinking, trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about.
“Well, so much for C,” Greg Savage said. “It’s upsetting for the poor girl, but she didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Orris, or any of the rest of it, either. So we’re back to A and B. B cut the bridge supports shortly before or shortly after A murdered poor Rathburn.”
“Matters would be greatly simplified,” the colonel announced, “if B would identify himself.” An eloquent silence greeted this remark, and he broke it himself by elaborating. “After all,” he said, “while B’s action had the awful luck of causing an accident, it’s not in the same category as murder. B just wanted to keep us all here.”
“A fate worse than death,” Littlefield muttered.
Cissie gave him a look, and Rufus Quilp piped up with the observation that cutting the ropes was hardly an innocent prank. “He didn’t just disable the bridge,” he reminded us. “He booby-trapped it, cutting partway through the ropes so that the bridge would collapse as soon as someone set foot on it. If he merely wanted to isolate us here, why not cut all the way through the ropes?”
“He was trying to murder someone,” Miss Hardesty said. “But he couldn’t have meant to kill Orris. And if he had someone else in mind, how could he know that person would be the next one to try to cross the bridge?”
“He couldn’t,” I said.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Colibri said. “Do you mean to say that he didn’t even care which one of us he killed?”
“No,” I said. “I mean to say he wasn’t trying to kill anybody.”
“But Mr. Quilp just said-”
“I know what Mr. Quilp just said, and his point is well taken. Here’s what I think, although I admit I can’t prove it. I think B slashed all the way through the cables. He didn’t set any traps, booby or otherwise. He cut the ropes and dumped the bridge in the gully.”
They looked at me. Leona Savage said, “Then when Orris gave up on the snowblower and walked to the bridge-”
“It was already out.”
“And he kept walking?”
“It bothered me,” I said, “that nobody actually heard the bridge fall. Greg, you and Millicent were outside when Orris had his accident. You both heard him cry out. But did you hear the bridge crash into the gully?”
“I might have,” he said. “I don’t remember.”