“What you say, Doc?”
“About what?” the bug-eyed man snarled.
“Cause and time of death.”
“Don’t be a damn fool, Jim Patton.”
“Can’t tell nothing, huh?”
“By looking at that? Good God!”
Patton sighed. “Looks drowned all right,” he admitted. “But you can’t always tell. There’s been cases where a victim would be knifed or poisoned or something, and they would soak him in the water to make things look different.”
“You get many like that up here?” the doctor enquired nastily.
“Only honest to God murder I ever had up here,” Patton said, watching Bill Chess out of the corner of his eye, “was old Dad Meacham over on the north shore. He had a shack in Sheedy Canyon, did a little panning in summer on an old placer claim he had back in the valley near Belltop. Folks didn’t see him around for a while in late fall, then come a heavy snow and his roof caved in to one side. So we was over there trying to prop her up a bit, figuring Dad had gone down the hill for the winter without telling anybody, the way them old prospectors do things. Well by gum, old Dad never went down the hill at all. There he was in bed with most of a kindling axe in the back of his head. We never did find out who done it. Somebody figured he had a little bag of gold hid away from the summer’s panning.”
He looked thoughtfully at Andy. The man in the lion hunter’s hat was feeling a tooth in his mouth. He said: “Course we know who done it. Guy Pope done it. Only Guy was dead nine days of pneumonia before we found Dad Meacham.”
“Eleven days,” Patton said.
“Nine,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said.
“Was all of six years ago, Andy. Have it your own way, son. How you figure Guy Pope done it?”
“We found about three ounces of small nuggets in Guy’s cabin along with some dust. Never was anything bigger’n sand on Guy’s claim. Dad had nuggets all of a pennyweight, plenty of times.”
“Well, that’s the way it goes,” Patton said, and smiled at me in a vague manner. “Fellow always forgets something, don’t he? No matter how careful he is.”
“Cop stuff,” Bill Chess said disgustedly and put his pants on and sat down again to put on his shoes and shirt. When he had them on he stood up and reached down for the bottle and took a good drink and laid the bottle carefully on the planks. He thrust his hairy wrists out towards Patton.
“That’s the way you guys feel about it, put the cuffs on and get it over,” he said in a savage voice.
Patton ignored him and went over to the railing and looked down. “Funny place for a body to be,” he said. “No current here to mention, but what there is would be towards the dam.”
Bill Chess lowered his wrists and said quietly: “She did it herself, you darn fool. Muriel was a fine swimmer. She dived down in and swum under the boards there and just breathed water in. Had to. No other way.”
“I wouldn’t quite say that, Bill,” Patton answered him mildly.
His eyes were as blank as new plates.
Andy shook his head. Patton looked at him with a sly grin.
“Crabbin’ again, Andy?”
“Was nine days, I tell you. I just counted back,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said morosely.
The doctor threw his arms up and walked away, with one hand to his head. He coughed into his handkerchief again and again looked into the handkerchief with passionate attention.
Patton winked at me and spat over the railing. “Let’s get on to this one, Andy.”
“You ever try to drag a body six feet under water?”
“Nope, can’t say I ever did, Andy. Any reason it couldn’t be done with a rope?”
Andy shrugged. “If a rope was used, it will show on the corpse. If you got to give yourself away like that, why bother to cover up at all?”
“Question of time,” Patton said. “Fellow has his arrangements to make.”
Bill Chess snarled at them and reached down for the whiskey. Looking at their solemn mountain faces I couldn’t tell what they were really thinking.
Patton said absently: “Something was said about a note.”
Bill Chess rummaged in his wallet and drew the folded piece of ruled paper loose. Patton took it and read it slowly.
“Don’t seem to have any date,” he observed.
Bill Chess shook his head somberly. “No. She left a month ago, June 12th.”
“Left you once before, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Bill Chess stared at him fixedly. “I got drunk and stayed with a chippy. Just before the first snow last December. She was gone a week and came back all prettied up. Said she just had to get away for a while and had been staying with a girl she used to work with in L.A.”
“What was the name of this party?” Patton asked.
