Richard Deming: Gallows in My Garden

“As punctuation,” I said shortly, wishing Grace would shut her beautiful little trap.

Maggie, the housekeeper, appeared in the arch from the dining-room and announced dinner was ready. During dinner I took the opportunity of studying the group more closely, adding little to my knowledge except that Abigail Stoltz rarely opened her mouth; Jonathan Mannering had an old-world manner and a stock of complimentary clichés which he ponderously showered on his hostess, and that Dr. Douglas Lawson had a delightful sense of humor.

Ann seemed to be as fond of Douglas as her niece was, and once or twice I seemed to detect more than a sister-in-law’s indulgence in her laughter at his dry wit.

We were served by Kate and the Negro houseboy who had been tending bar.

Throughout the meal I had been wondering where the fifth habitual week-end guest was, the man Grace had mentioned as general manager of the Lawson Drug chain. As. we returned to the drawing-room for coffee, Ann cleared up the mystery.

“Gerald Cushing will be out later this evening,” she told Jonathan Mannering. “He wants to see you about a corporate surplus, or something important-sounding like that.”

“Indeed?” the big man intoned. “Are you sure that isn’t an excuse to visit a beautiful woman? I use business as an excuse all the time, myself.”

Which gives an idea of what the lawyer considered delightful compliment, and is the reason I have not reported his previous conversation in detail.

I wondered if Gerald Cushing were a bachelor, too, and if he, Douglas Lawson, and Jonathan Mannering were all politely suiting for the widowed Ann’s hand. My wondering was cut short by an overalled youngster about seventeen years of age, who burst in suddenly from the front porch.

“Ma’am!” he blurted out at Ann. “There’s a dead man caught on a snag halfway down the bluff!”

The initial reaction of everyone was speechless surprise. Mine was greater than that of anyone else, for in addition to the shock of the announcement, the incongruity of a boy in overalls suddenly appearing in these sleek surroundings was startling in itself. Apparently everyone else knew who the boy was.

Ann Lawson was the first to recover.

“Where, Karl? On our property?”

He advanced farther into the room, a large, gangling lad with coarse yellow hair, a big nose, and protruding ears.

“Right behind the house, ma’am. Not twenty feet from the beach stairway. You can’t see him from above or below, or from the stairs, but I was out in the skiff fishin’, and I seen him from the river.”

Douglas Lawson rose to his feet. “Show us the place, Karl. How do you know he’s dead?”

“He’s hanging sort of head down, and he didn’t move. I watched near five minutes.”

We all trooped out behind Karl and circled the house to the bluff at the rear. Though it was eight-thirty, the combination of long summer days and daylight-saving time had pushed dusk to nine o’clock. On top of the bluff it was still quite bright, but since the steep bank faced east, the iron stairway was already in deep shadow.

We followed Karl down in single file, Dr. Lawson immediately behind the boy, then Ann, Abigail, Grace, Arnold, and Mannering, with me bringing up the rear. About fifty feet down we reached a ledge approximately six feet wide, and here a roofed and railed platform containing three wicker lawn chairs stretched a dozen feet both ways along the ledge. Beyond the platform the stairway again began its steep descent.

Karl went to the north railing and pointed to where the ledge petered out to a mere six inches when it reached a bulge in the side of the bluff. A light puff of wind brought a faint but unmistakable odor to us.

“He’s just the other side of that,” the boy said. “Want I should go over there and see who it is?”

“You might fall,” Ann said.

Arnold put in slowly, “Perhaps the proper person to investigate is Mr. Moon, since he has a semiofficial connection with the police.”

Everyone but Grace glanced at me with varying degrees of surprise. She continued to stare at the narrow path, her face pinched and empty. I looked over the narrow railing at the fifty-foot drop, examined the slender foothold again, and shook my head.

“I couldn’t make it,” I said.

“I been over there before,” Karl said. “It’s easy if you lean inward and feel your way.”

“It wouldn’t be easy for me,” I said.

“It doesn’t look dangerous,” Arnold insisted. “I’ll follow, if you want.”

“Sorry. I said I couldn’t do it.”

He looked at me first with surprise, then his lips curled slightly. “Acrophobia?”

“If it’s any of your business,” I said, suddenly irritated, “I have a false leg. I have to be able to see where I put my foot.”

He looked uncomfortable. “Sorry. I’ll go.”

Without further ado he swung over the railing, walked along the ledge until it began to narrow, then faced the wall and edged around the bulge sidewise.

“Just look and come back,” I called after him. “Don’t disturb anything.” In view of the odor there was no point in issuing first-aid instructions.

A long time seemed to drag by after he disappeared from sight, but actually it was only two or three minutes before he edged his way back again. He climbed over the rail without saying anything, his eyes averted from those of Grace.

“It’s Don, isn’t it?” she asked in a flat voice.

He nodded, still not looking at her. His eyes touched Ann briefly, then swung to me. “He must have been there all along. Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“I’ll call them,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do here. Suppose we return to the house.”

The spirit of quiet festivity had been replaced by one of funereal silence when we again gathered in the drawing-room. Ann conducted me to a phone in what had apparently been her husband’s study and left me alone.

The number I called was not police headquarters, but the bachelor apartment of Inspector Warren Day, chief of Homicide. My long relationship with Day was a peculiar half-friendly, half-enemy one, but in spite of the fact that neither of us hardly ever spoke a courteous word to the other, we managed to maintain fairly effective mutual co-operation.

“Manny Moon,” I said when he came to the phone. “Nobody answers at police headquarters, so I called you. They must have forgotten to pay the phone bill.”

“What bar you in?” he inquired.

“I’m out at the Lawson home in Willow Dale. Remember the Lawson kid who supposedly ran away last Sunday?”

“Vaguely. What about him?”

“We just found his body. He fell off the bluff and has been lying halfway down all along.”

“Well?” he said. “There’s cops on duty. Why bother me with a routine accident?”

“Because it may be murder, and if it is, it’s going to require kid-glove handling. Some of the most important people in town are going to be suspects. I think it merits the personal attention of the chief of Homicide.”

“Blast you, Moon,” he growled. “Why can‘t you find bodies in the daytime? You only work about a third of the time yourself, but you expect me to work night and day.”

“I don’t care what you do,” I said. “Send out a rookie if you want. He’ll probably report it as an accident and let it go at that. But whoever comes better bring a fifty-foot rope to salvage the body.”

I hung up without waiting for his reply.

When I returned to the drawing-room, a short, stocky man wearing horn-rimmed glasses had been added to the group. He had a brisk, businesslike appearance, a cherubic face, and sparse blond hair parted in the middle.

“This is Mr. Cushing, Mr. Moon,” Ann introduced him. “He arrived while you were phoning.”