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Chapter Ten

Tough Guys Don’t Last

“ I only see three points of entry,” said Ned. “This door over here, that window over there, and the furnace grate in the floor back here, behind the door. Hang on a sec. Edgar, what’s that?”

Ned had noticed a circular piece of tin about the size of a saucer that had been attached to the wall at roughly eye level, next to the glass cabinet, and held in place by finishing nails. The tin had a faded image of a fish painted on it, a crimson carp, perhaps?

“I took it from an old cookie tin. Scarlet Sturgeon was the brand, I think. It covers a hole in the wall where a stovepipe used to be,” said Edgar.

“I see. No secret passages? Behind the cabinet or the bookshelves?” Ned wasn’t joking.

Edgar shook his head, still unnerved by the presence of the dead man sprawled on the chair in the middle of the room.

“When I renovated this room, I stripped it down to the studs. The exterior is solid brick, but the interior is hardwood and plaster—no cavity walls with gaps between the bricks, no hidden chambers lurking within. Just good old solid eighteenth-century craftsmanship.”

Era-appropriate paisley wallpaper and a pressed tin ceiling had been added to preserve the room’s Victorian feel, but those were embellishments added later.

“It was originally the servants’ dining hall. I turned it into a reading room.”

“Didn’t think to paper over that hole?” Ned asked, still looking at the tin circle pinned on the wall.

“I was going to install a traditional potbellied stove to warm the room with firewood rather than the radiator. But in the end, it was too expensive.”

“The arrow could also have come through that hole in the wall. It’s a straight line from that to the chair Kane died in, nothing in between.

” Ned fiddled with the tin covering, trying to see if it would move.

“Could someone have replaced the tin after shooting an arrow through the hole, and then pulled the nails in from the other side?” he wondered.

Ned tried each finishing nail in turn, but none jiggled; none were loose.

“The hole is only on this side,” said Edgar. “When I redid the wall on the other side, I papered it over. I’d given up on the idea of adding a wood-burning stove.”

“Not a point of entry, then,” said Ned. “How about the vent?” He bent down with a creak of the knee to examine the heavy iron grate embedded in the floor next to the door. “Heat vent?” he asked.

“Ventilation,” said Edgar. “The furnace heats the water in the radiators, pumps it out, and then separately draws air in through these ducts.”

“Right,” said Ned, as though he should have known better. “Not forced air. Radiators.”

The slab of iron on the floor was an ornate arrangement of curlicues and geometric patterns. Ned worked his fingers into the gaps, tried to lift, but couldn’t. He looked closer. “What the heck? The edges have been painted over. That your handiwork work, Edgar?”

Sheepishly, “Yeah.”

“Next time, maybe hire Tanvir,” Miranda said to a loud silence from Edgar.

Upstairs, they could hear the clatter of his dog pacing back and forth. “My dog is getting agitated,” said Edgar. “Can we wrap this up?”

“Can’t rush these things, Edgar. Have to figure this out.

The door was locked when Kane was killed.

No sign of a bow. The transom is closed, the hole in the wall is papered over on the other side, and the grate is too heavy to move, and even if it could be, it’s been sealed shut by Edgar’s finesse with a paintbrush—no offense. ”

“None taken,” said Edgar, though his eyes said otherwise.

“Kane was in this room, alone, with no way for anyone to enter or escape. So who fired that arrow?”

Even more baffling was the position of the body, with the book splayed open on his chest—the pages facing out—and skewered into his heart. It looked like a macabre joke, a dark comment on authorial vanity. Pinned by his own words.

Ned scratched the back of his neck, looked to Doc for help.

“What do you figure, maybe he fell backwards into the chair? He’s slumped in the chair facing the cabinet now, but I don’t see how the arrow could’ve been fired from inside the cabinet.

His body must have hit the chair and then slowly turned—swiveled, in fact. ”

“That part makes sense,” said Doc.

“So,” said Ned, trying to visualize it. “Kane is here at the door. He starts to unlock it. Stops. Turns around, holding up a copy of his book for some reason. He couldn’t have been standing in front of the door when he was hit, though.

If he was, he wouldn’t have fallen into the chair, he would have fallen against the door.

The only place it could have come from is the transom above the window.

Except the transom is latched down. And even if the killer could figure a way around that , he still had to slip away without leaving any footprints in the flower bed outside the window.

Even with those gaps, as a general hypothesis, does that work for you, Doc? An arrow from the transom?”

“Not so sure about that, Ned,” Doc Meadows said.

He was considering the angles involved. “You’d have to figure an arrow that was shot from the transom would’ve had to have been pointed downward at the target.

But the arrow that’s buried in this fella’s chest seems to have gone in at a perfectly straight angle.

No downward trajectory, so to speak. Hey, Edgar, you’re about my height. ” Doc called him over.

Edgar joined them beside the body, reluctantly it must be said, as Doc Meadows raised his arm out straight and pointed a finger directly at Edgar’s chest.

“ Bang ,” he said. “I know that’s a gun, but I don’t know how to make an arrow sound.

Y’see?” Doc stepped closer, keeping his arm perfectly straight.

Brought his pointed finger to Edgar’s chest. “The arrow went in straight, like this, like how I’m holding my hand, not from a higher position.

” Doc then tilted his hand to show them how it would have looked if it had come in through the transom.

“That’s how it should have gone in. But that arrow went in parallel to the floor. Couldn’t do that from outside.”

“Which means the killer would’ve had to have been inside this room with Kane,” said Ned. “Squared off, facing him directly, firing at close quarters.”

They couldn’t help it. Their eyes darted around the place. But there was nowhere in the room for someone to hide.

“When we first rushed in, could the killer have been hiding behind the door?” Miranda asked, “then sneaked out in the confusion?”

Edgar answered this one. “No. When I saw the body, I immediately veered over here, by the door. If someone was hiding behind it, I would have seen. There was no one else in the room when we came charging in. Just Kane.”

Doc said, “Could still be from the transom. Maybe the victim arched his back violently just before he was hit by the arrow. That might account for the fact it entered his chest at 90 degrees. You’d have to talk to forensics in Portland about that, Ned.”

He nodded. “I’ll get Officer Holly to photograph and tag the scene. We’ll call Portland, get them to notify the Criminal Investigation Department, though I doubt they’ll send anyone till tomorrow. We’ll have to hold the fort till then.”

Edgar was horrified. “His body is going to stay in my bookstore overnight?”

“ Our bookstore,” Miranda corrected.

“It is called the Murder Store,” Doc pointed out, but Edgar found no humor in this.

“Why did I let a bunch of writers into my life?” Edgar moaned. “All they do is cause problems. They’re almost as bad as actors.”

Miranda, taking the high road, decided to let that slide.

“We’ll move the body eventually, don’t worry,” said Ned.

Doc assured Edgar that he’d have it transported to the town morgue as soon as Officer Holly was done tagging the crime scene. None of them realized that the nightmare was only beginning. When the early hours came, the body would still be there. And they would have worse things to worry about.

“Jessica,” said Miranda. “Fletcher. Remember, Edgar? The woman who handled the weapons on Pastor Fran Investigates . The fletcher. Jessica Smith, I think her name was. She was always making sure the feathers—or ‘fletchings’—on the prop arrows were done correctly.” Miranda nodded to the arrow that was stuck inside Kane.

“Those fletchings look far too small. Barely there. It’s like they’ve been trimmed down. What do you think?”

But Edgar had no intention of approaching the body,

Ned had no such qualms, however.

“The fletchings?” he said, looking closer. “The feathers, you mean. They do seem disproportionately small for the size of the arrow. They could’ve been altered to fit a different type of bow, I suppose. I’m not an expert on such things.”

“And why the open book?” asked Miranda. “A gruesome souvenir? Some grim poetic justice at play? If Kane was reading the book, or even flipping through it, the pages would have been facing toward him and the arrow would have gone in through the back of the book. But it didn’t.

It was speared with the pages facing outward.

” She stepped closer. “We know Kane was facing his attacker, because the arrow hit him in the chest. But why would Kane be holding the book up in such a way? And why one of his books? His books weren’t even in the reading room; he’d have had to bring it in with him. ”

Doc said, “Maybe he held it up like a shield, in a desperate act, instinctively, like in a panic when he saw the killer taking aim. Fear does strange things to people’s minds.”

“Or maybe he was presenting the book,” said Miranda. “Holding it up to show the killer something.”

“A panicked attempt at protecting himself makes more sense,” said Ned. “Why would he be showing the killer”—he stooped over the body to check—“Page 100 of his own book. Hey, guy with an arrow pointed directly at me, check this out! Look what I wrote! ”