His thoughts broke. For god's sake, a zoo, a whole zoo, and he was in the middle of it. A squirrel, dogs, a fox, seals, a raven, a raccoon.
Patiently he tried again. The raccoon was in this too. His own hat, minus tail. A raccoon, a small type of bear. A washbear, the Dutch name. Raccoons wash their food before they eat it. They had discussed raccoons, alias wash-bears, with Jeremy during their first visit to the island.
De Gier sat up and grinned stupidly. BEWARE THE BEAR, BEWARE THE WASH BEAR. Jeremy, the hermit known for exceptional behavior, carting a sign about, and that's what the sign said. Beware the bear, beware the wash, beware Janet Wash.
This discovery blocked all further thinking for a while, and he stared at the bay and the island. But once again he tried. So Jeremy had denounced the lady of the mansion to the authorities, in his own spectacular manner. By carrying a sign. No wonder the commissaris had been in such a good mood afterward, smiling and chatting and burbling in spite of his pain, for he was limping badly these days, his rheumatism aggravated by the cold.
So what puzzles were left? Why would Reggie kill on behalf of his employer? All right, some nuttiness mere. Why would Jeremy help his would-be killer out of her car?
Love, according to the commissaris, causes most violence. De Gier agreed. Tested police knowledge. Lovers and loved ones are first-class suspects. Now Janet wanted the island-he was getting ahead of himself again, but he could sort the next puzzle a little later. Why would Janet want all that land? There could be no other motivation- she didn't want her neighbors' homes because she had them destroyed. Back to Jeremy now.
Jeremy loves Janet. No, past tense: Jeremy loved Janet, and the other way around too. They were of the same age and Janet's husband had been a cripple in a wheelchair. She might have taken a lover. She was still a beautiful woman at sixty so she would have been stunning at forty. Jeremy had been on his island for twenty years. Very good, an illicit affair, a small boat rowed between island and shore. Charming, really. He looked at the bay, an ideal spot for a love affair. And when the general died, his widow proposed to Jeremy or expected to be proposed to, but nothing doing. Jeremy preferred to be a hermit.
So now Janet had a double motive; she wanted revenge and she wanted the island. She told Reggie to kill Jeremy and Jeremy changed his island into a fortress. Perhaps Jeremy enjoyed the situation, like the squirrel enjoys being chased by the dogs. And if that were true the BEWARE THE BEAR sign had been to warn the commissaris and himself, the sergeant. Jeremy didn't want innocents to suffer. Good old Jeremy.
De Gier sighed and scratched around in his curls. The headache was still getting worse, so was his thirst. Very well, on with it. The final puzzle: Why did Janet want all that property? Why did she buy it through the realtor Astrinsky, Boston Better Holdings, and finally Bahama Better Holdings? Where did Mr. Symons fit in?
He had come to a full stop for lack of data. Even computers can't conclude if they haven't been fed properly. But the commissaris had managed to extricate himself from the case's traps and claimed to be ready for a finale. So where had he, Detective Sergeant Rinus de Gier of Amsterdam's homicide squad, gone wrong?
Were there any other open leads?
His hand moved to the car key when he finally remembered.
Jeremy had not told them for sure who he had bought his island from. He had mentioned a name, Reynolds. But he hadn't proved his statement. The name would be on the island's deed and the deed was supposed to be in one of Jeremy's cartons and Jeremy wouldn't look through his cartons. But there would be a copy of the deed in the town clerk's office.
De Gier started the car. He found the Jameson town office, a one-story brick building next to the jailhouse. The clerk turned out to be helpful and talkative.
'Jeremy's Island?'… 'Certainly'… 'Had an inquiry about the island this morning'… 'Old gentleman came in, with an accent, same as yours'… 'Dutch accent, is it?' The clerk had Dutch ancestors. He had been to Holland. Lovely country. De Gier became frantic and knew he couldn't show his state of mind. He thought about a variety of subjects while the clerk prattled on. The clerk came to the end of his journey through the Netherlands and began to discuss the shortcomings of his stove. 'Might as well paint it red, look at it now, bright red but still no heat. If I painted it it would save a lot of firewood, eh? Hahahaha.'
'Hahahaha,' de Gier said.
'Now what was it you wanted?'
'The name of the man who owned Jeremy's Island before Jeremy bought it.'
'That's right,' the clerk said. 'Man by the name of Symons. Symons the gambler we used to call him. Brother of Janet Wash. Janet was called Symons before she married the general.'
'Ah,' de Gier said.
'You know Janet Wash?'
'Yes.'
'Nice lady. But not her brother James. He got half the estate, part of the cape, and the island, and he sold it all and split. Left his wife and his son, James the Third. He's bad too. James the First was fine, a Yankee skipper, made his fortune in the China trade in the time of the big clippers.'
'What happened to James the Second?' de Gier asked.
The clerk looked sad. 'Got himself killed I hear, in the bad country, the country where they do the gambling.'
'And what happened to James the Third?'
The clerk held up a finger. 'Trouble here. All sorts of trouble, so he left town.' He held up a second finger. 'Went to Bangor, more trouble.' Third finger. 'To Portland, same again.' Fourth finger. 'To Boston, more of the same but he's holding out I hear. Buddy of mine ran into him in the street. Had a drink with him. Young James does a lot of drinking.'
'I see,' de Gier said. 'Thank you, you've been very helpful.'
The Dodge took him back to Cape Orca. He was whistling. 'Straight, No Chaser.' When he had whistled enough, he sang. 'Cannonball.'
So he had his answers, the same answers as the commissaris had found. The picture was complete, more or less. He still wanted to know why Jeremy had helped Janet out of her car, although he could surmise an answer. Jeremy had said that he had gone beyond the behavior of the squirrel. The squirrel, when cornered, would try to bite the dogs, but the squirrel was an animal, with a limited program imprinted into its small brain. Jeremy considered himself to be an advanced human. And he very likely was too. Jeremy might be prepared to fight Reggie and therefore carried arms, but he wouldn't fight a lady who, once upon a time, had been his mistress. If she wanted to try to kill him, fine, but he wouldn't be violent in return. The fox had described the hermit as a sage. Perhaps he was. And the commissaris had got on very well with Jeremy. The commissaris was a sage too, full of tricks, but tricks of an elevated and superb order. Such as turning the other cheek, without losing out. That was the superb part of the trick: the commissaris never lost out, not so far anyway, and de Gier had spent many years watching his chief move about, sneak about. 'But there is sneaking,' de Gier said aloud, 'and sneaking.'
And Symons, young Symons the Third had been able to get out of trouble, time and again, because his Aunt Janet helped him. Like now, for she had made him the manager of her holding companies, and paid him a wage.
There was still Astrinsky, of course, but de Gier refused to think about Astrinsky. The realtor would fit in later. Right now he had a headache and he had thought enough. The car picked up speed as his foot came down. One last look at Cape Orca and he would drive back to the jailhouse and enjoy supper and have an early night. The commissaris would be coming in the morning and they would have a grand counsel. A sign flashed past, a square yellow sign on a white stick. There was one word on the sign: HILL.
'Too fast,' de Gier said and touched the brake gently. The car was skidding. He pressed the brake hard and the car turned around, then around again. De Gier sang. The theme of 'Straight, No Chaser.' He hummed it over and over as the car made several full turns. He saw the tree coming and he felt the car turn over. For a few seconds the Dodge rode on the edge of its roof, then it fell on its side and rested against the tree. De Gier stopped humming. He turned the key and the engine cut off. It was quiet on the road. A bird screamed further down in a ravine. He could hear a brook gurgle under the ice.
'Shit!' de Gier said. He used the English word. It seemed more appropriate than its Dutch translation. He was upside-down, held by the safety belt. He began to move about carefully and managed to unlock the belt. The driver's door was closed, probably forever, but the passenger door still worked.
He walked down the rest of the hill until he saw a light shimmering through the snow-covered evergreens. He
