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“I told you,” Lettice said, gripping her husband’s arm. “We could have been killed.”
“If you’d arrived later,” I said, “or if the killer had gone to the bridge sooner, you might have been on it when the ropes broke. But you weren’t his target, and I don’t think Orris was, either. Not specifically.”
Someone wanted to know what I meant.
“He couldn’t be sure who he’d get. Maybe someone else would arrive from outside. Maybe someone other than Orris would be the first to leave. The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to believe that the damage he did to the bridge wasn’t designed to kill anybody.”
“Then what was the point of it?”
“To prevent anyone from crossing the bridge. To keep us all here, and keep the rest of the world on the other side of Cuttlebone Creek.”
The colonel was nodding in understanding. “A bridge too far,” he said thoughtfully. “He sabotaged the bridge-when would you say, Rhodenbarr? Before or after he struck down Rathburn?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hard to say until we know who he is and why he did it, eh? But if he just wanted the bridge out, why stop at cutting the ropes halfway through? Why not make a good job of it and drop the bridge into the gorge in one shot?”
“He may have been concerned about how much noise it might make when it fell,” I said. “And worried that someone within earshot might catch him in the act. From what I saw of the rope ends, he didn’t leave a great deal uncut. He may have expected the bridge to fall by itself in a couple of hours, from the weight of the snow that was continuing to fall. If that had happened, Orris would still be with us.”
That last observation tore at the heart of Earlene Cobbett. The poor thing cried out and clutched her hand to her bosom, a task to which one hand was barely equal. The other hand, though, held a tray containing two glasses of sherry, and it wasn’t equal to the task, either; the tray tilted, the glasses tipped, and the sherry wound up spilling onto Gordon Wolpert.
“A little while ago,” I said, “Orris fired up the snowblower. It didn’t start right away, but once he got it ru
“It made an awful sound,” Miss Dinmont recalled. “As though everything inside was being ground up.”
I turned to ask Nigel if that had ever happened before. He said it seemed to him that the snowblower, while occasionally difficult to start in cold weather (and of no use whatsoever in warm weather), had in all other respects performed perfectly the entire winter.
“Here’s what I think,” I said. “My guess is it was deliberately sabotaged. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but when we all rushed out of the house there was a faint smell in the air.”
“Gasoline,” Millicent Savage said. “From when Orris was ru
“I noticed it while we were working on the snowman,” her father confirmed. “What about it?”
“There was more to the smell than gasoline.”
He thought about it. “You’re right,” he said. “There was another element to the odor, but I can’t tell you what it was.” And his nose wrinkled, as if to pursue the scent through the corridors of memory. “Millicent,” he asked his daughter, “what was the smell like?”
“When I had the toy stove,” she said. “With the light bulb for heat? And you could bake your own cookies?”
“Not very good cookies,” he remembered.
“Not like Mummy’s,” she said, wi
“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 Kirschma
I had help when Nigel came back. His own expression was not merely grave but troubled.
“Still no phone service,” he said.