Fletch Reflected

26

“Undisciplined people are running amok,” Jack said to Fletch.

“Or a disciplined person is running amok,” Fletch said to Jack.

“Are we both right?” Jack asked.

Fletch said, “Empires crumble; then people, of all sorts, run amok.”

A servant had told Jack and Peppy when they entered the main house that she had seen Mister Fletcher in the nursery when she happened to pass the open door. She gave them directions to the third floor, back of the building.

In the nursery’s anteroom, Fletch sat in an easy chair.

The chair looked as if nurses and nannies, infants and small children, had lived in it: eaten in it, cuddled in it, played in it, slept in it.

Fletch looked unusually comfortable in the chair.

Through double doors a uniformed nanny and Amy MacDowell were tending to the children.

Mrs. Houston sat in a rocking chair. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face was turned toward the light from the windows.

“Jack,” Fletch asked in a low, slow voice. “Can you tell me why someone would put two large cuts crosswise on Alixis Radliegh’s back?”

“Did someone do that?” Jack asked.

“Yes. With a barbecue fork.”

“Alixis doesn’t know who?”

“She was on her stomach sunning on a pool lounge. She may have been asleep. She says someone hit her on the side of her head. When she became sensible, she found her back stinging and bleeding. At that point, she was alone in the pool area.”

“You’re asking me who would do that to Alixis?” Jack glanced at Peppy, who stood with half lidded eyes beside him. He looked like a horse going to sleep on his feet.

“And why.”

Jack turned his back to his father. He pulled up his t-shirt. “I see. Alixis did that to you?”

Turning around again, Jack said, “It isn’t that important to me. It’s just a cut.”

“Did you see Duncan’s accident?”

“Heard it,” Jack said. “I don’t need to see accidents.”

Jack had the impression Fletch was still looking behind Jack.

And Fletch’s voice continued low and slow.

“And I expect you saw Mrs. Radliegh hanging from the balcony.”

“Yes.” When Peppy saw the dangling corpse he puked into the driveway’s gutter. “Why hasn’t someone taken her down?”

“Lieutenant Corso is awaiting police reinforcements.”

“Where is Lieutenant Corso now?”

“Went down to supervise the accident, I guess. Await reinforcements at the main gate.”

“Do these events have anything to do with each other?”

“The barbecue fork was on the floor of the balcony from which Mrs. Radliegh was hung.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you’re sitting here alone in the nursery …”

“To protect Mrs. Houston, Amy Radliegh MacDowell, and seven little Radliegh heirs.”

“From.” Jack said the word as if, by itself, it made a statement. He sucked in a big breath and let it go. Doing so did not cool his face. Fletch waited. Jack said, “Shana Staufel.”

“I thought you’d think so, too.” Fletch smiled. “I noticed the blood on your sheets. Chester Radliegh mentioned to me Alixis had shared your bed the night before. One of you had bled. I was willing to believe Alixis not a virgin. And, somehow, because a girl scratched your back in lovemaking, I couldn’t see you attacking her with a barbecue fork; such smacks more of frustration, jealousy, than revenge.” Very softly, slowly, Fletch said, “One might even speculate insanity. Nor could I see you threatening a drugged older woman with a barbecue fork, for any reason. Of course …” Fletch smiled again. He was giving his son time to think. “One can never be sure. Waiting for lab reports confirming Alixis’ blood and Shana’s fingerprints on the barbecue fork necessarily would have made me just a tad nervous. So I thought I’d ask.”

Having thought, Jack said, “Shana’s gone crazy.”

Fletch shrugged. “Shana loved. She was so convinced people here were trying to kill the man she loved, she asked you to insinuate yourself into this household, and investigate. She convinced you that people here were trying to kill Chester Radliegh. You asked me to come here.”

“They were trying to kill him.”

“Be that as it may, they didn’t. At least they didn’t succeed. They may have driven him to his death, contributed to it. Shana may have been literally correct. Driving him to his death, his self-destruction, somehow, may have been their true intention.”

Jack’s eyes were big. “Shana killed Mrs. Radliegh.”

“Mrs. Radliegh’s suggestion of burying her accomplished husband in the laundry yard—such an expression of ignorance of and contempt for the man Shana loved deeply and passionately—rather tipped Shana over the edge, wouldn’t you say?”

“So she hung Mrs. Radliegh with a bedsheet.”

“After inscribing Alixis’ back with a barbecue fork. She may have meant to do more harm to Alixis. Shana hit Alixis on the head hard enough to knock her momentarily senseless. Being inexpert in such matters, she may have thought she had killed Alixis.”

“And you think Shana means harm to Amy?”

“Who knows what charges, real or imagined, Shana has against Amy, Mrs. Houston? Perhaps her mental state is such that she intends to deprive all natural heirs of Chester Radliegh from benefiting from his life, his work, his death. I decided I’d rather sit here than be sorry.”

“She had nothing to do with Duncan’s death, did she?”

“I think it will be found Duncan self-destructed. You see,” Fletch said, “where Shana is wrong is in failing to understand the usual self-destructive nature of those eager to destroy others.”

Again, Jack got the impression Fletch was talking to the side of his head, to the ceiling, walls behind him.

Jack’s own eyes were attracted by the light in the nursery; his attention distracted by the noises and movements of the children.

“So,” Fletch said, “that leaves the murder of Doctor Jim Wilson to be solved. You’re not looking well this afternoon, Peppy. A little peaky.”

Peppy had remained standing quietly beside Jack during this conversation.

Spoken to, he focused slowly.

“Peppy has something to say,” Jack said. “He wants your help, Dad.”

Fletch looked at Peppy and waited.

Peppy swallowed but said nothing.

Jack said, “One morning, Chet went to the stables at dawn, saddled two horses and went for a ride with his father. Only one morning.”

Fletch said, “I know.”

“Sitting, talking with me in the woods, Doctor Radliegh said his children never rode horses with him; one morning, Chet did ride with him. I didn’t have the sense to realize he was offering me a clue. I didn’t have the sense to ask, ‘Why?’”

Fletch asked, “Do I need to?”

“So Peppy could drive to Birmingham, Alabama, to pick up a canister of gas for Chet.”

Peppy said, “I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was for. I didn’t know it was gas that could kill someone. It had a long name. Chet wrote it down for me on a piece of paper. He had ordered the canister in my name, I only found that out after I got there.”

“Do you still have that piece of paper?” Fletch asked. “The one on which Chet wrote down the name of the gas?”

“Yes. I found it when Jack told me Doctor Wilson had been gassed to death. I have it at the cottage.”

“That’s good,” Fletch said. “Will you give evidence in court against Chet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” Fletch said. “You see? Chet has self-destructed, too. Just as Chet was able enough not to flunk his bar exam, he was smart enough not to write down the name of a lethal gas he had already ordered in his own handwriting and give it to Peppy. Yet he did so.” He stood up. “And, sir, I guess that’s all the help I can be.”

“I thought you were waiting for Shana,” Jack said. “Protecting—”

“Shana is standing behind you,” Fletch said. “With a knife in her hand. She has been for some moments.”

Jack turned around.

In the black shorts, white shirt, and sneakers she had been wearing all day, Shana stood silently. In her hand was any kitchen’s largest carving knife.

Her coal-black hair was a little tousled.

Her very wide-set, coal-black eyes were staring, but seemingly at nothing present, something in the middle distance, perhaps within herself.

“I think she would like you to take the knife from her, Jack,” Fletch said. “Ms. Shana came here to do something. Listening to us talk, first from outside the door, she has come into the room slowly and quietly. And I don’t think she any longer intends to do whatever she came here to do.”

Jack took the knife from Shana’s hand easily.

“I’m sorry to have involved you, Jack,” Shana said. “This is your father? Why is it… ?”

Jack asked, “Why is what?”

Never, ever did Shana Staufel speak again, not to police, defense attorneys, therapists, the courts, not to those who fed her and cared for her where she was institutionalized.

Not ever.