Death at Devil’s Hole by Julia McNiven{©1974 by Julia McNiven.}

Department of “First Stories”

This is the 408th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine... a fine and unusual debut in print in which the author integrates background and plot with the skill of an old pro...

Mrs. Julia McNiven was born in England and spent her childhoodcommutingbetween England and the United States during World War II, “dodging torpedoes en route.She attended college in the fifties, and is now settled in Mamaroneck, New York, in a Charles Addams-type house, with husband, four children, cat, dog, and hundreds and hundreds of books, her “life bounded on all sides by mystery stories.Her husband reads them, one son makes them into movies, and her father writes them. Her main interests: writing, tennis, skiing, theology, and medieval history.

Oh, yes, her father writes mysteries. Julia McNiven is the oldest daughter of one of the Grand Masters, one of the most famous mystery writers of all time — John Dickson Carr...

A thin cold wind that had blown all day died suddenly, making the air almost warm by comparison. Turner pushed his goggles up onto his head and squinted at the dark clouds gathering at the summit of Devil’s Mountain. The upper trails, covered with ice and virtually unskiable, glinted wickedly in the late afternoon light.

There will be fresh powder tonight, thought Turner with relief, feeling snow in the leaden stillness of the air. Ten inches, maybe a foot. The small knot of worry in the pit of his stomach relaxed momentarily as his mind flashed ahead to the night, to snow-cats crawling over the mountain like giant insects on a white blanket, packing down the powder, covering the ice which had plagued Devil’s Mountain for the past month.

Tomorrow all the trails would be open again — all, that is, except Pitchfork. The knot of worry was back in his insides. They would not open Pitchfork — not this season. Never, if he had his way.

In front of him his afternoon ski class stood in its usual crooked line, six pairs of boots shifting restlessly in their bindings. Hell’s Irregulars, Turner thought grumpily, the Impossible Six. In spite of demonstration, cajolery, threats, and bribes these past five days, not one of them had made the transition from a snowplow turn into the faster, neater stem Christie, the beginning of intermediate skiing. For Turner, who prided himself on his teaching ability, this was a source of considerable irritation. Thank heaven it was Friday and he’d get rid of the lot of them in an hour or so.

An onlooker would have found Turner an attractive figure, slim and compact in his red and black ski clothes. His sun-bleached hair was short for the season, his eyes gray as the gray winter sky. Skiing was the deep abiding passion of his life, and he enjoyed sharing this love with others.

From November to April they came to him in all shapes and sizes, hoping to learn grace and agility in five easy lessons. Some of them learned it, too. But not this lot. The fault, he decided, was his own. The latest death on Pitchfork had left them all at Devil’s Hole shaken and unsure.

“All right,” Turner barked. “That’s the sloppiest line on the mountain. Straighten up. Get closer together. Arthur, your buckles are undone again. Sigmund, those poles are five miles too long. Millie, never mind the lipstick, you don’t need make-up on a mountain. From here on back to the base lodge I want nothing but good form, you hear me? Remember,” he tried to sound enthusiastic, “I’ll be watching to see who earns the Best-in-Class Award, and gets to come down Exhibition all by himself! Okay?”

Millie slipped the lipstick back in the pocket of her lime-green jump suit and smirked. Lord, Turner was a pill! As if there was any doubt who would get the award! She looked up and down the line. Arthur, her rabbit of a husband? Sal and Sue, the Bobbsey twins, forty pounds overweight each of them? Sigmund the slow? Or Jennifer, her own crummy daughter?

Millie let out a scream. Her mouth formed a girlish O in a face that was trying hard not to look 40.

“Jennifer! Jenn-i-fer! Turner, she’s gone off on her own again, the little freak!”

Turner threw one startled glance at the end of the line where Jennifer had been standing a few minutes earlier.

Millie’s voice became shrill.

“How could you let her get away from us? Why don’t you keep an eye on her? Think of the time we’re wasting, not to speak of the money.”

“Stop shouting, Mother, I’m here. I’m right here.”

Moving easily on her skis, Jennifer glided out of a clump of pine trees. Her cheeks were flaming with cold, and something else. Embarrassment? She held both poles in one hand and was tucking something inside her loose old-fashioned parka.

“You rotten kid, holding us up again! Arthur, you’re her father, why don’t you speak to her? Why does it always have to be me? You let her get away with murder!”

The other skiers shifted uncomfortably.

Turner sidestepped up to the young girl and held out his hand. The lumpy face looked up at him, not defiantly, but with eyes as cold and lackluster as two pebbles.

Turner took hold of the white corner protruding from her parka and pulled out the inevitable bulky sketching pad, bent slightly by the shape of her body. There were five or six new drawings since yesterday, he noticed. The top one was a pen-and-ink sketch in bold dark strokes, the lines suggesting starkness and cold. In the background was Devil’s Mountain, its peaks haloed in storm clouds. In the foreground were figures on skis.

Sketching without mittens, Jennifer’s fingers must have been numb with cold, but she had caught them all. Millie, smug and contemptuous; Sal and Sue, plump nonentities; Arthur with his bindings undone, and hopelessness in the droop of his shoulders; Sigmund the slow, all beard and glasses. Finally there was Turner himself, worry, exasperation, and all.

How much time had she had to do it? Four minutes, maybe?

There were other pictures on the pad, some swift and impressionistic, some highly realistic, colored with magic marker or paint. All were equally good.

“Give it back, Turner.” The girl’s voice was flat and thin, like the blade of a knife.

“Look, Jennifer, these are fine, really fine. You are a very talented young lady. But—”

“Some people don’t think so.” Jennifer glanced at Millie.

“But,” Turner went on, “you can draw any time you want to. Why hold up the class?”

“Because she’s a rotten kid is why! Moping around all the time — doesn’t talk, just draws and grunts! Doesn’t ski.”

Sigmund seemed to wake up fractionally from his usual trance.

“Say, uh, Turner, how about we, uh, get going, huh? Are we here to ski or to listen to Millie?”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

“You shut up, you hippie freak!”

“Okay, calm down, everybody!” Turner tried to make light of the whole thing. After all, with luck, he’d never have to see any of them again.

With a snake-quick movement,of a mittened hand Jennifer grabbed the sketching pad from Turner, shoved it under her parka, pulled the drawstring tight, and dared him to come and get it.

Turner held onto his temper, reminding himself for the hundredth time that he was here to make the paying customers happy. And besides, with miserable Millie for a mother, how could the kid be normal? So he said with false heartiness, “We’re wasting time. I’ll ski down to that pine tree and you follow me. Lean forward! Bend your ankles! Let’s see who’s going to win that award!”

Without waiting for a reply Turner took off rapidly, making a series of faultless linked turns. Momentarily he was thrilled all over again by the purity of the air and the snow, the beauty of the great mountain.

They followed him down the moderate slope, teetering and sliding, skis chattering on the ice, arms flapping, legs stiff. Hopeless! What had he done to deserve this?

“Millie, slow down! Bend your knees!”

It was too late. The lime-green figure came straight toward him, out of control, skiing, as always, on the thin edge of disaster. Turner braced himself for the impact, but at the last possible moment Millie veered off to one side, stopping in an uncontrolled skid and a spray of ice chips.

“How about that?” Millie was pleased with herself. “Guess we know who gets the award in this class!”

Over my dead body, thought Turner grimly.

But to do Millie some sort of justice, the rest of the class was definitely worse. The Bobbsey twins had fallen flat on their faces over the same small mogul. Arthur had hit ice and was in considerable difficulty. Sigmund was making no attempt to do anything but a lumbering snowplow.

And Jennifer? Could that be Jennifer?

For a moment Turner thought he had picked up a skier from another class. But there was no mistaking the bulky red parka. Jennifer, who had not listened to instruction all week, was coming down the mountain, angulating well in a series of nice tight traverses and stem turns. As she drew near Turner she stopped in a beautifully executed uphill christie.

“Hey, Jennifer! That was great!”

For a moment her plain face softened.

“Yeah. Well. I can do things when I want to. It’s just that I don’t really want to do anything but draw. You know? If Millie would send me to art school—”

“I’ll art school you! Just wait till we get down to the lodge!” Millie’s face was tight with anger.

Slowly the others straggled up until they were all standing on the same level patch of hard packed snow. A couple of trails branched off to the left, each marked with a wooden signboard. On one was painted a green triangle, the mark of an easy run. The other showed a blue circle, indicating a harder, steeper slope.

To the right a narrow path, slick with blue ice, twisted sharply downward. An ominous black square warned skiers that this was a slope for experts only. Somewhere nearby, B lift clanked upward, and there was laughter, but the sounds were muffled in the heavy air.

“Hey, Turner!” Millie shouted. “All week you’ve kept us on these crummy easy slopes. How about taking us down an expert trail to end up with, huh? What do you say?”

“No way, Millie. You’d kill yourself on this ice.”

Millie frowned but made no further comment.

“Listen,” said Turner, “whoever wins the award will come up B lift over there, then ski down Exhibition. It’ll be icy, but the person I choose will be able to handle it. The rest of us will be in the lodge watching and cheering. Understand?”

“How do we, like, know which trail to take, Turner? Is it marked?” Sigmund, coming out of his trance again, sounded worried.

Cheer up, Sig, it won’t be you, thought Turner.

“Sure, it’s marked. In fact, there are only two trails directly from the top of B lift. One is Exhibition. Look for the signboard with the blue circle. You can’t miss it.”

“Is the other an expert slope?” Millie didn’t give up easily.

“Yeah. But it’s marked with a black square, and, anyway, it’s closed off with a rope.”

“Why don’t we come down that one to show how good we are?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, Millie. The closed-off slope is Pitchfork.”

“So what?” shrugged Millie.

But she was impressed. They were all impressed. Although the resort had tried to keep the story as quiet as possible, the fatality had been in the papers. Three weeks ago a skier had broken his neck on Pitchfork. Everyone staying at Devil’s Hole knew about it.

What they did not know, as Turner did, was the exact number of accidents that had taken place on Pitchfork over the years, or that last season an instructor, coming down the slope too fast in bad light, had slammed into a tree at 60 miles an hour. He had been Turner’s best friend. It had been a closed-coffin funeral.

“What’s Pitchfork like?” asked one of the Bobbsey twins.

“Steep,” said Turner, seeing in his mind the long approach, the incredible drop, the perpendicular chute, the twin forks at the end of the drop. If you missed the turn onto one of the forks, forget it. “You can see Pitchfork from the base lodge, Sal. It’s dangerous. Spooky.” He shivered, not entirely from the cold. “Come on, let’s go down. Some hot wine will taste good.”

Through the pearly light of late afternoon, of flattened shadows and growing chill, they skied the easier slopes of Devil’s Mountain, taking trails called Little Imp, Old Scratch, and Homerun. They passed under B lift with its cargo of laughing skiers, strung out on suspended cable, like beads on a string.

Below them the roof of the lodge made an oblong patch of scarlet against the snow. In a few minutes Turner and his straggling band were threading their way through the spiky racks of skis toward the doors of the lodge. Above the entrance two wooden imps leaned out, gargoyle fashion, supporting a sign between them.

Welcome, the sign said, to Hell.

Clang, went the electric guitar, clang, clang!

On a small stage the Hell’s Belles were gyrating to amplified music. Smoke, laughter, and the indefinable ambience of après ski filled the timbered lodge with blue haze and loud noise.


It was 4:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. The ski week was over. Pins had been given out all around. The lifts had closed, except for B lift which was still running for the use of the award winners from each class. Most of them had already come down Exhibition. Their form had ranged from excellent to terrible.

It had started to snow, but inside the lodge hot spiced wine spread a pleasant warmth through the crowd. Turner sat jammed in on a wooden bench with the members of his two classes. The winner of his morning class had just made a creditable run, and was now back at the table laughing and accepting congratulations.

“So,” said Turner, standing up and shouting to make himself heard over the music. “The announcement you’ve all been waiting for! The winner in my afternoon class is—” He paused dramatically and glanced around the table. The Bobbsey twins were watching him in mute adoration. Sigmund, unmoved, was lost in the music. Jennifer was sketching on her lap. Arthur looked tired. Millie smirked.

“Jennifer! Get your skis on, girl, you’re it! Best skier in the class!”

The drawing pencil paused in mid-air.

“Me, Turner? You mean it?”

The plain face was suddenly pretty.

“You bet I mean it! Now get up on that mountain and show them how you do it!” Turner did not look at Millie.

Still clutching her sketching pad, Jennifer headed for the door, pulling on her parka as she went.

Clang, went the guitar, clang, clang!

Out of the comer of his eye Turner saw Millie get up from the table. The music drowned out much of what she called him, which was just as well, since she commented in detail on his ancestors, his present habits, his probable future.

“Choosing that rotten kid instead of me! You fake! Well, I’ll just show you, Mr. Wonderful Turner, I’ll show you all! Want to see some real skiing? Just watch me! You just watch!”

And she was off, a lime-green fury, shoving and pushing her way toward the door.

Turner’s head began to ache.

Should he go after her? What was she going to do? Come down Exhibition, most likely, trying to steal Jennifer’s thunder. But that still wouldn’t win her the award. Forget it.

Turner moved through the laughing, jostling crush of bodies to the large windows with their excellent view of the south face of Devil’s Mountain. Lazy flakes of snow were drifting down, and this alone should have made him feel better, should have loosened the knot in the pit of his stomach.

What was worrying him now? Jennifer?

Through the windows the mountain was open to view, like a map. He studied the trails, empty except for Exhibition where a lone skier had just taken a fall over the finish line. Any minute now Jennifer would be coming down.

Sigmund, Arthur, and the Bobbsey twins had joined him, and were peering upward. To the right, in sharp contrast to the broad easy Exhibition slope, a narrow death-trap of a trail plunged almost vertically downward, before forking out wickedly into two headwalls of ice. Pitchfork.

It should have been closed years ago, thought Turner. But it has its own legend, its own mystique.

“I skied Pitchfork,” was something to brag about among veteran skiers.

“Come on, Jennifer! Get it over with!”

Then he saw her. She had chosen a faster line than she should have for her ability, but, Turner noted with satisfaction, she was skiing easily, in good control.

He was so intent on the girl that it took a gasp from the crowd to alert him to trouble. His eyes moved to the right, and, incredulous, he took in the whole picture, not believing what he saw.

On the left, Jennifer, a small red stick-figure, skied gracefully down Exhibition. On the right, as if on a split television screen, someone in lime-green was coming too fast down the narrow approach to Pitchfork, skiing out of control, on the thin edge of disaster.

Millie!

She was over the drop in a flash, and, miraculously, managed to stay on her feet for a moment longer. Then she was falling, falling down a chute of ice, a wild eggbeater of a fall, arms and legs in a tangled mess. One ski released and flew off into the air. Another snapped like a matchstick. The small figure, gone limp as a stuffed toy, fell faster, gaining momentum.

From those watching at the window there were shouts and screams. All over the lodge the noise died suddenly as people pressed forward to see. It seemed to go on for a long time, the limp green body catapulting toward the fork in the trail. Then it was over. The body did not make the turn.

On Exhibition, Jennifer skied serenely down the mountain.

It was Sigmund who finally broke the stunned silence.

“She said she’d show us, uh, how to ski.”

Millie, rushed to a nearby hospital, was pronounced dead on arrival.


The managers of Devil’s Hole made immediate plans to reshape and gentle the mountain. The name Pitchfork was taken off the ski maps. The slope was bulldozed off of the mountain. The resort lost very little business in spite of the publicity. Snow conditions for the rest of the season were excellent.

Turner continued to teach morning and afternoon classes, but his heart had gone out of it. He had been among the first persons to reach Millie after the accident, and one of the last ever to ski Pitchfork. He had ridden with Arthur in the ambulance and was at the hospital when the doctors shook their heads.

The next day he had talked to Jennifer.

She was sitting on her packed suitcase, doodling with a pencil.

“I shall have to tell somebody, you know, Jennifer. Somebody in authority.”

The two dull pebbles stared hard at him.

“About Millie,” he said.

“What about her?”

“I saw those drawings that day on the mountain. Remember? Clever pictures. Realistic pictures. Pictures of wooden signs, one with a blue circle on it, one with a black square. Did you plan it all ahead of time?”

“Plan it? No! How could I?”

Then her plain face crumpled.

“You see, Turner... I was so proud when you said I won the award. So proud. But then Millie had to go and spoil it all, as usual. She came out of the lodge yelling at me to stay off the mountain, that she was going up instead.

“By then I had my skis on and was heading for the lift, so I pretended not to hear. All the way up I hoped she wouldn’t follow, but she did. You know something, Turner? She hated me ever since I was a little girl. I don’t know why.”

The pencil moved meaninglessly over the pad, making swift blind strokes.

“When I was almost at the top I saw her get on the lift, and something happened to me. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt her bad.

“I knew just what to do. It sort of came to me. I had tape in my pocket, and my sketching pad in my parka. You know?”

Vividly Turner remembered her hurrying out of the lodge, the pad still in her hand.

“I tore off the sign pictures, taped the blue one over the black signboard, and the black one over the blue. Then I un? hooked the rope and hid it behind a tree. There was plenty of time. I stood where she couldn’t see me, and waited. She came rushing off the lift, took one look at the blue sign, and skied off down Pitchfork.

“I put back the rope and tore off the pictures. It only took a few seconds. Then I skied fast down Exhibition.

“Funny. I didn’t think you’d remember those pictures. But anyway, I burned them, so you can’t prove anything. Besides, who would believe you? Did you know daddy is going to send me to art school?”

The knot in Turner’s stomach had become a sharp pain.

“What if someone does believe me? What then?”

Still doodling, the girl shrugged.

“Reform school, I guess.” The pebbles regarded him steadily. “I hear they have great rehabilitation programs now. I’m sure they’d offer art.”

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