A Show of Hands Read online

  Gammidge produced a cigarette.

  “Don’t let Matty see you with that,” Crisp warned.

  “But you—”

  “She likes the smell of pipe tobacco. At least this kind. It’s the same as her father smoked. But she hates cigarettes—foul the air, she says. Burns in the furniture, you know.” Gammidge started to put the cigarette back. “You want to go out on the porch and have a smoke?” Crisp offered. “I’ll go out with you.”

  Once they were out on the porch swing, heavily garbed against the cold, the conversation picked up where it had left off. “Why do you think I didn’t find water in the lungs?”

  “From what I’ve heard, she wasn’t bloated,” said Crisp. “She was dead before she went in.”

  “Well, I expect it’ll be all over town by morning anyway,” Gammidge sighed. “She was strangled. Pretty brutally, too, from what we can make out. Must’ve been huge hands to reach clear ’round her neck like that.”

  “Who could have done such a thing?”

  “Well,” said Gammidge after a long, satisfying pull at his cigarette, “it won’t be a mystery for long.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints!” said Crisp. “That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? I mean, if the body had been in the water any length of time.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll put it down to expert detective work, Mr. Crisp,” Gammidge confided. “But, just between us, it was pure luck. Seems the girl had fresh makeup on”—his hands went to his neck—“all the way down here.”

  “And that’s where the fingerprints were preserved, in the makeup?”

  “In the makeup,” Gammidge echoed. “Plain as day. You can see ’em with the naked eye.” He smiled. “Somebody’s in for it.”

  A corner of Crisp’s mouth smiled all by itself. “No doubt,” he said. “No doubt at all.” The moment’s silence that followed was finally broken by Crisp. “I’m curious, though. You see, I’m . . . that is, in my line of work—well, I’m retired now—but . . . I was a bit of a chemist. I like to do little experiments now and again. Would you happen to know what kind of makeup it was?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Gammidge replied. “Ugly as sin. Must have been some kind of chemical reaction with the water. You’d know better than me. Anyway, I took some samples. They’re in my case. But that’s more than a little out of my line, if you know what I mean. I’m an appointee—just sign the death certificates, basically. Leave all the hands-on business to doctors and the lab folks up in Augusta. That’s who I got the sample for.”

  “I don’t suppose it would be possible to have a look,” Crisp asked, only poorly concealing his excitement.

  “Oh, no,” Gammidge replied quickly. “No. I don’t think that’d be a good idea. It’s evidence, you see. Not a whole lot of it. That is, I didn’t take a lot—”

  “Oh, but I only need a dusting, really.” Instantly Crisp regretted putting Gammidge in an awkward position. “I’m sorry, Nate,” Crisp said with a smile. “I tend to get a little carried away from time to time. Of course I understand . . . evidence, and all . . . you need to—”

  “I have to turn it in.”

  “Turn it in, of course you do,” Crisp said.

  “Send it up to Augusta,” Gammidge said. “That’s their job.”

  “Of course it is,” Crisp agreed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” He tapped out his pipe on the porch railing and, producing a pipe cleaner from his coat pocket, began a meticulous cleaning process. For a while the noises of the night took over the conversation. “Just curious is all,” Crisp said at last, as if to himself. “If it’s oil based, well, that’s curious.”

  Gammidge took the bait. “What?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said, ‘If it’s oil based.’ What do you mean?”

  “Oh, well, I was just thinking out loud, you know, about the makeup. To have stayed on any time in the water . . . is she fair skinned or dark skinned, would you say?”

  “Fair,” said Gammidge. “Very fair.”

  “Mmm. Fair. Well, then. To have stayed on any time in the water, the makeup would have to be oil based—anhydrous,” said Crisp.

  “It would?”

  “Most makeup is water based nowadays. It would wash off in less time than it takes for water to freeze, you see? And whatever hadn’t washed off—well, it’s not likely you’d notice it straight out of the ice like that.” Crisp waited. Just a nudge or two in the right direction. “But Leeman said Chuck noticed it as they were chipping her out. Curious.”

  Gammidge scratched his neck and pulled his collar up a little higher. “What’s fair skin got to do with it?”

  “Fair skin and dark, or ruddy, skin react differently to makeup. The makeup would probably have congealed on someone with darker skin.”

  “Don’t that beat all,” said Gammidge.

  “Curious,” said Crisp. “A little bit of a puzzle.”

  Gammidge studied Crisp long and hard while Crisp looked absent-mindedly into the distance, pretending not to notice that he was being stared at. He’d learned a lot about human nature in seventy-odd years. He knew that silence was the midwife of thought.

  “I don’t see what we’d gain,” said Gammidge. “I mean, what difference does it make? She was strangled, then thrown in the quarry.” The statement had a rhetorical ring about it, so Crisp left it alone. Gammidge made thinking sounds. “Maybe how long between when she was strangled and thrown in . . . You think it might tell us that?”

  Crisp doubted it. “You never know what an investigation will turn up.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” Gammidge looked again at Crisp. “You’re really a chemist?”

  “Hmm?” said Crisp as if his train of thought had gone off on another track. “Pardon?”

  “You’ve done that sort of thing before? I mean, have you ever worked for the police? Forensics?”

  “The police?” said Crisp. “Well, no. No, I can’t say I have . . . worked for the police. No.”

  It would have made it easier if he had. “Oh,” said Gammidge.

  “Mmm,” said Crisp. “Nope.” He paused, laying a foundation of silence upon which to build his addendum. “Unless you count the CIA,” he said, more steam than sound. “I don’t suppose they’re police though, are they?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What did you say about the CIA?”

  “Oh,” Crisp said. “I was just . . . thinking out loud, you know. I said I’ve done a little work for the CIA in my time. Well, actually it wasn’t the CIA when I started. It was—”

  “You worked for the CIA?” said Gammidge, suspended tightly between skepticism and the wish to believe.

  “The OSS,” said Crisp, who thought it impolite not to finish a sentence, providing you could remember what you wanted to say. “Not directly, though. I mean, they didn’t . . . I was working for another branch of the government at the time, but—”

  “But you did work for the CIA? Chemistry work?”

  “They’d call me in from time to time for some little problem or other. Yes,” said Crisp. “From time to time.”

  Gammidge would need a moment or two to argue with himself. Meanwhile, Crisp worked at looking like the kind of person with whom Gammidge wouldn’t mind entrusting important evidence.

  “You have what you need here, up in your room, I suppose?”

  “You suppose correctly,” said Crisp. “Nothing very elaborate . . . ”

  Gammidge got up. “It’s cold out here,” he said, faith having triumphed over reason. “Won’t hurt to see what you’ve got up there, would it?”

  “I don’t see how it could,” said Crisp. “Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to do anything you might feel uncomfortable about.”

  Two hours later, amid a jumble of dinner dishes, ashtrays, and test tubes, Gammidge found himself leaning over Crisp’s shoulder as the latter arranged a few specks of residu
e on a glass slide and fixed it under his old brass microscope.

  “Of course, this isn’t the real problem, is it?” said Gammidge. “Given what we know about the fingerprints and . . . The question is, what happened to her after she left the island? And why did she come back? And who killed her?”

  “I understand she was seen in Rockland,” said Crisp, trying to bring the smudge into focus. “Did anyone else see her? I mean, anywhere else?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Gammidge. “ ’Course, the FBI was handling the whole thing. Senator got ’em in on it, so we didn’t have a whole lot to do with the case. But she wasn’t seen anywhere else, far as I know.”

  “That’s strange,” said Crisp.

  “What? Do you see something?”

  “Oil-based.”

  “Well, that explains why it didn’t come off in the water. Not so strange, I wouldn’t say,” replied Gammidge.

  “No,” said Crisp thoughtfully. “No. What’s strange is, it contains traces of lead.”

  “Lead?” Gammidge peered into the microscope. “Lead?”

  They looked at each other at close range. “Reddish traces, in the pigment.”

  “That’s awful poisonous to put in makeup, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed,” said Crisp. “That’s why they stopped making it in 1932.”

  Gammidge pondered the statement for a moment, then stood abruptly as if he’d been struck. He began to pace, rubbing his forehead in an effort to massage some sense to the front of his brain. “This thing’s getting more holes than my car insurance contract, Crisp. First there’s this gap between when she turned up missing and when she died. And nobody knows how she got back to the island. Now it turns out she’s wearing makeup older than she was. I tell you, this business is getting beyond me in a big hurry.”

  It was Crisp’s turn to study Gammidge, and the scrutiny made Gammidge uncomfortable. “What?”

  “I’d like to see the body, Nate,” Crisp said flatly. Before Gammidge could protest he added, “It’s highly irregular, of course, I realize, but it’s not illegal, is it?”

  “You know it isn’t,” said Gammidge. “Mighty irregular, though.” A blink or two in punctuation. “Mighty irregular.”

  “I’ll call Mr. Young, if you like.”

  “Mr. Young?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Oh, the undertaker. Mmm, wouldn’t have to if he’d had his way,” said Gammidge. “You know I almost had to twist his arm to get him to lock the door. ‘She ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ he says. I had to remind him this wasn’t another old lobsterman dying of a heart attack. ‘She still ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ he says.”

  Crisp smiled. “Keys aren’t much in fashion out here.”

  “No,” said Gammidge. “I can see that.” He paused long enough to make it seem as though he hadn’t made up his mind. “Go ahead and call him, but for pity sakes just don’t tell him about the makeup. Not good to have too much evidence floating around, even if none of it makes any sense.” He paused. “ ’Specially if none of it makes sense.”

  Outside the mortuary a lone streetlamp orphaned its light on the doorstep of the dark and the cold. Snowflakes, jostling one another for their turn in the spotlight, parted to make way for a distinctly Charlie Young–shaped shadow that approached, leaning on the wind at an almost supernatural angle.

  Winston Crisp and Nate Gammidge were on the porch of the mortuary, keeping as much out of the storm as possible. Charlie had to hold the railing and pull himself up the steps. He dug for the keys in his overcoat pocket and yelled to make himself heard.

  “I’d like to know what in blazes is so important it couldn’t wait ’til mornin’!” His mittens made his fingers too fat to grab the keys. He took them off. He cursed, or prayed, depending on your point of view. There were only three keys on the ring and one was a car key; nevertheless it took three tries to find the right one. “If you’d’ve let me leave it open in the first place, I wouldn’t’ve had to—” The wind tore off the rest of his words and ran away with them. Seconds later everyone was inside, dripping on the linoleum.

  “Sorry about getting you out on a night like this, Chuck,” Crisp said as soon as he had command of his tongue.

  The storm had highlighted Charlie’s face with white and hung icicles on his eyebrows and mustache. “Why didn’t you drive?” Gammidge asked.

  “Car’s broke,” Charlie snapped. “And if it wasn’t I don’t guess I’m so spleeny I’d drive it up here from the bottom of the hill. I get to that point, you can just lay me on the slab in there and start diggin’.” He shook off his hat and stamped his boots. “What’d you want over here, Professor?”

  “Well, Mr. Gammidge and I were just talking. You know he’s staying over at Matty’s.”

  “Well, I guess he would be, come to think of it, since the motel’s closed,” said Charlie thoughtfully, thawing now that he was out of the cold. “You get her to make you some’ve her blueberry muffins, Nate. She makes blueberry muffins good enough to bring a sailor home. Still,” he said with a jerk of his head toward the cooling room door, “what’s that got to do with her?”

  “Seems there’s some things that just want explaining,” said Gammidge. “The more we talked, the murkier the water got, you know?”

  “Well, somethin’ awful is all I can say,” replied Charlie. “Baby is all she is.” He paused. “Was. Had her whole life . . .” Snow seemed to melt in the corner of his eye. He wiped it away. “I don’t get too many young ones. Mostly pretty old. Half embalmed already. That ain’t so bad.” He pushed open the door to the kitchen and turned on the light. “They lived a long time and jus’ come through here in the natural flow’ve things. I’ve known ’em all my life, most’ve ’em. I talk to ’em, you know? Sounds crazy, don’t it?” He filled the teakettle with water, put it on the stove, and turned on the gas. “Well, I do. Just like I was Doubtful Bailey givin’ ’em a haircut, or somethin’. You want tea, Nate?”

  It was too cold to say no. “Please.”

  “Crisp?”

  Crisp nodded. Charlie got out two cups. “They all know me, too,” he said. “You know what I mean? They all know they’ll come to me sooner or later. Makes kind’ve a bond. I mean, I meet ’em on the street, or down to the hardware store, the post office, or anywhere—it’s always kind’ve in the back’ve your mind, isn’t it? They know, when the time comes, I’ll do right by ’em. Do ’em up good. Treat ’em with respect.” He extracted tea bags and a little Cool Whip container of sugar from the cupboard. “Same time, they know I ain’t countin’ the days, though. That’s important.”

  Gammidge looked at Crisp with a smile on his face, but Crisp was craning his head toward the speaker, listening with all his heart. Anticipation perhaps? He was getting on, after all. Seventy-five? Eighty? Not long ’til he’d be a captive audience for one of Charlie Young’s monologues.

  “But this poor child,” Charlie continued. “Some days I hate this job.” He shut off the gas and poured steaming water into the cups. “You can leave your coats on them pegs in the hall,” he said, putting on his mittens and his hat. He slid the key ring off the counter and handed it to Gammidge. “You want the place locked from now on, you lock it. I ain’t gettin’ outta bed again tonight.”

  Gammidge took the keys good-naturedly. “I’ll bring them over first thing in the morning.”

  “No need,” said Charlie, making his way to the door. “I’ll just come in the back door and unlock it from inside.”

  “You mean you didn’t lock the back door?” said Gammidge.

  Charlie grinned. “It don’t have a lock.”

  “But what’s the point? Why did you bother?”

  “Just wanted to see what you was up to,” said Charlie. “ ’Night.” It was hard to tell if he grinned or not. He closed the door and let the storm carry him homeward.

  Crisp was trying not to smile. Fortunately he didn’t have to make a living at it.

  “That beat’s everything,”
said Gammidge, prepared to be thoroughly put out, until he saw Crisp’s expression. Then he laughed to wake the dead.

  The wind howled maniacally, driving legions of snowflakes to their death against the mortuary windows. No two died alike. Winston pulled up short with both hands on the cooling room door. “I wish this wasn’t necessary,” he said. Gammidge put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and nudged the door, letting Winston’s weight push it open. Light from the hall painted a doorway on the floor. The shadows it framed stood still a moment. The far edge of the light was draped with the folds of a white cloth, which Crisp presumed to be the shroud. He sniffed. “Formaldehyde.”

  “You’d think I’d’ve stopped getting the creeps in these places long ago,” said Gammidge, feeling for the light switch. “I can just picture her, sitting up on the table in the dark, looking at us.”

  Crisp hadn’t thought of that. He was relieved when the light clicked on. The body was on the table in the middle of the room, where it belonged. Not that it took a lot to imagine that the folds of the shroud that covered it had just fallen into place.

  Gammidge took two pairs of disposable gloves from a dispenser on the wall and handed one pair to Crisp. “Put these on,” he said. “Enough fingerprints around here already.” Gammidge knew the body, so Crisp let him approach first. He drew the shroud back from her face and looked at Crisp. “Well,” he said by way of introduction, “here she is.”

  Crisp took a few crablike steps toward the body, deaf side forward, and squinted as if to keep as much of the image as possible out of his brain. Once beside the table he stood staring into the air above it. Murder once removed was a mystery. Give it a face and a name, it was a tragedy. He knew that when he looked down, the girl on the table would become part of his life forever.

  “We don’t have to do this, Mr. Crisp,” said Gammidge softly. “My people in Augusta will sort it out. It’s their job, you know.”

  Crisp closed his eyes, swallowed hard, lowered his head, opened his eyes, and absorbed the image of the dead girl.

  “Good Lord!” he gasped reflexively.