The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 23

If ever you have a problem, I mean a really knotty problem, a first-class puzzler, like the square root of two, for instance, or who really killed Farmer Agricola and why, allow me to recommend a long ride in the country, lying on the floor behind the front seat of an automobile, covered by a varicolored knitted afghan smelling pleasantly of horse.

The trip took well over an hour, most of it happily on good roads. At first, I admit, I gave myself up to a stunned absence of mental processes, a blank mindlessness of shock, but slowly I began to thaw down from that frozen plateau and I began to get in there and do some no-holds-barred thinking.

There was so much to think about. Who had killed Farmer Agricola, and why, and how? Who had been informing to the police, and why? Why had Tough Tony Touhy identified me as the informant?

I poked at it the way I occasionally poke at the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times. You struggle and struggle, trying to get just a couple good long words to give you a kind of a grip on the problem, and from there on with any luck at all you can get half or two-thirds of the puzzle lickety-split. Lying there under the afghan I poked and pried at everything I knew, everything that had happened, everything I understood and everything I failed to understand. There was a lot of that last-mentioned stuff.

I also did a lot of thinking about the people involved, all the people I’d come up against the last three days. My Uncle Al, and Farmer Agricola and his daughter Miss Althea, and Mr. Gross, and Inspector Mahoney, and Tough Tony Touhy, and Trask and Slade. And the ones who’d helped me, willingly or not: Artie Dexter and Chloe and Patrolman Ziccatta. I wondered, for instance, where Artie and Miss Althea were by now. And I wondered where Patrolman Ziccatta would get his quick nips on windy nights from now on, and would it ever occur to him to start an official inquiry into my disappearance, and I shook my head because I supposed it never would, not with his habit of keeping his nose out of other people’s business. And I wondered why Tough Tony Touhy had lied, and why and how and by whom Farmer Agricola had been killed, and who had really passed the information on to the police.

I kept coming back, time and time again, to the killing of Farmer Agricola. It seemed to me that had to be connected with my own plight some way, that his having been killed in the short interval between his talking to Trask and Slade about me and my own arrival at the farm was too pat for coincidence. But where was the connection, where did it connect, that was the problem.

Lying there in multihued darkness, like being inside a cathedral in late afternoon under the stained-glass windows, lying there under the afghan, breathing the smells of afghan and horse, I kept chewing it, chewing it, chewing it. Was it possible Farmer Agricola had been killed by the same person who was really giving information to Tough Tony Touhy? Could the connection between the killing and my plight be quite that specific?

What if... What if Agricola hadn’t been entirely satisfied that I was the squealer? Yes, and what if he’d done some additional investigating, and he’d discovered that I was not, in fact, the squealer? And what if he’d been about to call off the hunt for me and redirect his killers, Trask and Slade, at the real squealer? Wouldn’t the squealer, if he knew about it, kill Agricola in self-defense? Of course he would.

Except, how could he possibly have known? Or, knowing, how could he possibly have gotten there and committed the crime? At the time Trask and Slade left him he apparently still believed I was the squealer, and it was less than half an hour later than I found him murdered. In the interim, I didn’t see how anyone could have come to the farm without having been seen by me. And the three servants in the house, Clarence and Tim and Ruby, alibied one another.

Unless... Now, what if, what if... What if the killer was the killers? What if Trask and Slade were the ones themselves? Agricola had begun to suspect I wasn’t the squealer, so he told them to lay off me while he did some more investigating. So they killed him and then went on hunting me just the same in order to cover themselves. The bodyguard at the Agricola farm, Clarence, had told me Agricola was still alive after Trask and Slade left, but one or both of them could have snuck back into the house, followed Agricola upstairs, and stuck the knife into him, using the knife instead of their more-accustomed guns because a gun might have been heard by the others in the house.

Scrunched down on the floor, feeling the road vibration all over me like one of those agitator beds in the new hotels, I thought about that possibility, and the more I thought about it the less I liked it. It would explain the knotty problem of how Agricola had been killed, of course, but for the rest of it, it didn’t make sense. Trask and Slade were hardly squealers in the first place, and besides that they wouldn’t kill Agricola just for not suspecting me so much any more. They’d play a waiting game, see how things were going.

No, it wasn’t Trask and Slade. Somebody else, somebody else.

I ran through more theories, possibilities, suggestions, but none of them were any good. I tried coming at the problem through Tough Tony Touhy, and I tried coming at it through the reason for killing Farmer Agricola, and I kept on getting nowhere. I also returned time after time to the how of the killing of Farmer Agricola, how someone had managed to get there and kill him between Trask and Slade’s departure and my arrival, which in many ways was the most baffling part of all.

I could understand it if Trask and Slade had done the killing. They leave the house, Agricola stops to say something to Clarence and then goes upstairs, Trask or Slade sneak back in, follow him up, kill him, go back down, leave the house again, and they drive away. But they hadn’t done it, they just hadn’t done it, of that I was positive.

Then I saw it.

It hit me so hard I sat up, shedding afghan on all sides. Bright sunlight angling low through the back window blinded me — we were going east, which didn’t help me much, except to tell me we were somewhere on Long Island — and I squinted against it and pointed at Trask. Both of them were in the front seat, Slade driving. To Trask I said, “You didn’t go along!”

He turned his head and scowled at me. “Down, nephew,” he said.

“Tell me,” I insisted. “When Slade went to see Mr. Agricola, you didn’t go along. You stayed watching Artie Dexter’s place, or my mother’s place.”

Trask said, “So what? Lie down and cover up.”

To Slade I said, “Who went with you? Who did you take to see Farmer Agricola?”

It was the answer of course, the ultimate answer. But I wasn’t to receive it, not that easily. Slade didn’t say a word, and Trask reached over a big-boned hand with a big hard gun gripped in it and clonked me gently on the head with the barrel. “I said down, nephew.”

So I went back down, pulling the afghan up over myself.

There was the answer, locked away in Slade’s head. Trask and Slade hadn’t gone to see Farmer Agricola, Slade had gone with someone else. That someone else had seen or heard or said something that was dangerous to him, so when they left he said to Slade, “Forgot my cigarettes,” or, “Remembered something I wanted to ask the Farmer,” or, “Hold it, I got to go back and use the head.” Something, anything. Slade waited, the other guy went back in, killed Agricola, came out, rode away with Slade.

And they might have suspected him, Slade at any rate might have remembered and suspected him, if I hadn’t come blundering onto the scene a few minutes later, taking all the blame and suspicion onto myself.

I should have realized it long ago, but I was too used to thinking of Trask and Slade as a team, inseparable. But hadn’t they been separate last night, one of them watching Artie’s place while the other was probably with Inspector Mahoney? If only I’d stopped to think then of the implications, that Trask and Slade could survive for short periods of time away from one another, I might now be a lot closer to the solution than I was.

Still, it was something. I knew how Agricola had been killed, and I could guess why. All that remained now was the knotty question of who.

And just before the car stopped I realized who it had to be.

Had to be, absolutely had to be. There wasn’t anyone else in the world who could have known the proper things, who could have been in the right places at the right times, who could have handled this whole mess with such a teetering combination of panic and cunning, desperation and wiliness.

The car had left the road, was moving slowly now across something that crunched beneath the wheels. Sand, it sounded like. More and more slowly, rising and falling over uneven ground, the big black car finally settled to a stop.

Doors opened and then shut again. Feet crunched through sand. Another door opened, the one by my feet. Trask’s voice said, “Okay, nephew.”

I pushed the afghan away and sat up. “It’s all right,” I said. “I know now.”

“Let’s go for a walk, nephew,” Trask suggested.

He wasn’t listening to me. “But I’ve figured it out,” I said. “Everything’s all right now, I’ve got it doped out.”

Trask showed me that big hard gun again. “Come out of the car, nephew,” he said.

I looked at him. I looked past him, and saw nothing but Slade.

I had it all figured out, and these two knobheads couldn’t care less. I knew the whole thing, and I’d run the course anyway.

“Nephew,” said Trask. “Come along. We’re goin’ for a walk.”