L
ater, that same day, Fenimore tied up the loose ends of the Pancoast case for Rafferty as they faced each other in a booth at
The Raven
. The dinner was Fenimore's treatâa small gesture of appreciation for the loan of one helicopter.
“Motive!” demanded Rafferty, shaking out his napkin.
“Ah. That was a tough one. And the reason why my suspicions didn't fall on Adam sooner. But he spilled it all out this afternoon when I went to see him. Moneyâ
the love of which
is the root of all evil. He needed big bucks for his special project, orâmission.”
“Mission?” Rafferty raised an eyebrow.
“To found a chain of private schools throughout the country which would specialize in the sciences and in which the standard of excellence for entry and graduation would be the highest. Only the best and the brightest would be allowed inâor out.”
“Go on.” Rafferty was intrigued.
“You see, Adam feared that America was falling behind in the science race. He often attended international conferences on science education and he knew that other countries were providing more rigorous academic training for their young people. England, Japan, and Germany. He wanted to correct that. He visualized the next stage of this country as a great empireânot unlike the Roman Empire. And he thought that our power and influenceâour future place in historyâwould be jeopardized by our mediocre science program.”
“Nothing crazy about thatâ”
“No, but listenâ” Fenimore sipped his martini. “Adam taught science at a boys' school which demanded very little of its pupilsâexcept in athletics. And when he tried to raise the standard of excellence in his courses, the administration sat on himâtelling him the parents would complain if their little darlings had to stretch their minds too much and made poor grades. This was frustrating to a dedicated teacher who instinctively demanded the best of himself and his students.”
“Hmm.”
“Adam suspected that many American schools suffered from a similar malaise. So, he came up with this plan to found a chain of schools across the country which would be rigorously academic. But to implement his scheme required money. Piles of it. He knew his wife's family was very wealthy. But he also knew he wouldn't be able to get his hands on it until he was old. By then it might be too late. Too late to save his country. And even then, he would only get a piece of it. His wife's piece. The rest would go to her brother and sister. His wife's piece wouldn't be enough. And he could never make enough as a
teacher to increase it significantly. But if he had the whole lotâthe entire Pancoast fortune? Now that would be something to work with. And once he had established a sample school, he could apply to the government for grants to create more.”
“So, he systematically set about bumping off the Pancoast heirsâ” Rafferty downed his martini. “And how was our little fanatic going to explain why
he
wasn't murdered?”
“Oh, but he was murdered. To avert suspicion from himself, he became a murder victim. He drownedâtemporarilyâin a sailing accident.”
“And his resurrection? How did he plan to explain that?”
“Amnesia. He had it carefully planned. He would lie low for a year. He had been preparing for this for a long timeâhoarding food and other supplies and stashing them in an abandoned boathouse in a deserted marsh outside of town. It had a cot, a woodstove, and books. Hundreds of books on science, in many different languages, on the latest scientific topicsâparticle physics, cold fusion, black holes, TOE (the Theory of Everything). He even had a telescope. In his spare time he was an astronomy buff.”
“In his spare time? Between murders, you mean?”
“When he rose from the dead,” Fenimore went on, “he planned to represent himself as an amnesia victimâthe result of a bump on the head from the boom of his boat.”
“Why didn't he drown?”
“He came to and hung on to the boat until it reached shore. Then, dazed, he wandered off, unable to remember who he was, where he was ⦠and he has been wandering ever since. That was to be his story.”
“Random Harvest II.
Then, one day, he suddenly wakes up, remembers where he lived, his wife, his two kids, andâin this caseâall that lovely money!”
“Something like that.”
“And he almost got away with it.”
“If it hadn't been for Doyle.”
“Doyle?”
“She upset his plans. Adam had planned to murder Mildred by drowning her in the bathtub. He was hiding in her bathroom closet, waiting for her. But she never came. Why? Because Mrs. Doyle had interrupted Mildred's schedule by taking her out to tea and then inviting her back to the Pancoast house for dinner. There, Mildred witnessed the preliminary scene for her own murderâa clothespin submerged in the dollhouse bathtub.”
“Clothespin?” Rafferty spread his hands. “You've lost me.”
Fenimore described the burial of the dolls and the substitution of clothespins by the murderer.
Rafferty ran a hand through his hair and whistled. The mean streets of Philadelphia rarely provided such interesting murderers.
“Mildred ended up in the local sanitarium, which, for Adam's purposes, was almost as good as dead. But it unnerved him. He took a two-month break after that. There were no murders between the end of March and the end of May. I thought he had given up.”
“Then there was the fire,” Rafferty prompted, after ordering a second martini.
“Right. He decided to do in my nurse along with Judith and Emily Pancoast. Three birds with one conflagration. He owed
Doyle one for messing up his plans for Mildred.” Fenimore scanned the menu and handed it to his friend. “That was the only time he didn't create a preliminary scene beforehand. He didn't have to. It had already been created for him by the auntsâwhen they had burned the dollhouse.”
“What was the point of setting up those preliminary scenes, anyway? It obviously increased his risk of being caught.”
“Ritual. Compulsive ritual. He was an obsessive-compulsive scientist. In the lab, the scientist always tries out his experiments before attempting them in real life. Adam couldn't conceive of killing someone without having a little practice session first. In his twisted mind, the dolls took the place of mice or guinea pigs. When the aunts disposed of them, he substituted clothespins. We found a box of them in his boathouse hideaway. Mildred's attempts to exorcise Seacrest of them was all for naught. And that's not all we found.” Fenimore reached in his pocket and placed a small object on the table in front of Rafferty.
“A toy sailboatâ” Rafferty picked up the small vessel. No more than three inches high and two inches long, it fit in the palm of his hand.
“It's the one that disappeared from the dollhouse carriage house before Adam's boating accident. I was surprised he hadn't destroyed it. If found, it would have been a piece of incriminating evidence. Then it occurred to meâmaybe Adam felt it was a talisman. A sort of good luck charm. As long as it survived, so would he. Maybe he was as superstitious as Mildred. That would explain his great antipathy toward her. We often despise those who share our weaknesses.”
“That's something for you and Dr. Landers to work out over lunch,” Rafferty grinned. “What I want to know isâwhy wasn't Adam worried about his wife? Didn't it occur to him that if she was the only Pancoast left, she would inherit all that money and become the primary suspect?”
“Oh, he thought of that. He was very clever. Every time he committed a murder he made sure Susanne had an airtight alibi. When Pamela was poisoned, Susanne was playing charades with the family in the parlor; when Tom was asphyxiated, she was picking up the children at school; when Marie was struck on the head, no one was present and no alibi was needed; and when Edgar was harpooned, Susanne was driving Mrs. Doyle to Mildred's house or helping the aunts make cucumber sandwiches. Her husband's murder would, of course, explain itself when he reappeared. And the night Adam had planned to drown Mildred, he had made sure that his wife was out of town. Susanne had taken the children to a dentist in Ocean City. The appointment had been of long standing and he knew of it before he disappeared. He also knew that after every visit to the dentist, his wife took the children for a treat to a small family restaurant where everybody knew them.”
“Okay, okay.” Rafferty threw up his hands. “I get it. This guy's a genius. But how did he manage to set up all those little preliminary scenes in the dollhouse without leaving any prints behind? You told me the bathtub was completely clean. So was the bust of Hercules, the harpoon, and the little hatchet.”
Fenimore reached in his pocket and pulled out a surgical instrument. It resembled a small pair of scissors, with one differenceâalthough
the ends were tapered, they were blunt like tweezers.
“What's that?”
“A hemostat. It's used for a variety of delicate surgical procedures, such as drawing thread through an incision, grabbing a lost spongeâ”
“So you
do
lose them?”
Using the hemostat, Fenimore reached for a peanut in the bowl on the table. He removed it deftly, barely disturbing the peanuts on either side.
“Useful,” Rafferty admitted. “Wonder why they don't issue them to our boys. Can it pick locks?”
Fenimore grinned. “On occasion.”
“But even with that, he still stood a chance of getting caught poking around the dollhouse in plain view of everyone.”
“That was where he had an advantage. He knew the aunts' house inside and out. He was their handyman. He fixed their plumbing, solved their electrical problems, and did their carpentry. And the house helped him. Like most Victorian houses, it was full of secret hiding placesâclosets, cupboards, and back staircases. He knew every one of them. He even used the dumbwaiter to carry his tools from one floor to another. It was the perfect house for his purposes. And, of course, he was familiar with the aunts' habits and schedule. He knew when they went to market, what time they took their naps, and so forthâ”
“Okay. Here's the sixty-four-dollar question. Why did he go after Doyle again? There was Judith safely tucked away in prison, ready to take the rap for himâthanks to you.”
Fenimore reddened.
“Why didn't he let sleeping dogs lie? He could have easily buggered Emily's pacemaker againâ”
Fenimore had recounted that episode to Rafferty earlier. How one night Adam had slipped Emily a sedative, gone into her room after she was asleep, and, with the programmer Fenimore had left behind, reset her pacemaker so it didn't take over when it should have. Since Fenimore had also kindly left the instruction book behind, Adam, an able scientist, had had no problem figuring out the instructions and then lowering the heart rate at which the artificial pacemaker kicked in. Later on, Emily began to have her “spells” and the artificial pacemaker didn't take over when her natural pacemaker slowed up.
“Adam could even have waited for Emily to die of natural causes” Rafferty said. “She was getting on, after all. Why did he risk everything and go after Doyleâwho wasn't even an heir?”
Fenimore smiled. “You're the expert on motives, my friend. You tell me.”
Rafferty grinned. “Revenge.”
“Bingo! He was furious at her for meddling in his affairs. The final blow was when Doyle saved Emily from the fire. He told me so this afternoon, in his calm, deliberate way. When Doyle's name came up, he began arranging four pencils on the desk into a perfect square. He did this over and over again. According to Dr. Landers, this is one way these obsessive-compulsive types demonstrate their rage.”
“What did he plan to do with the five kids? They were heirs too. Drown them like kittens?”
“He told me they wouldn't be a problem. He was used to handling children. They'd do what he told them.”
“Huh. They must be different from my kids. By the way, what made Doyle suspect him?”
Their waiter was hovering with pad and pencil, but from long experience, knew better than to interrupt
The Raven'
s two best customers.
“When he came to the door that night, posing as a meter man, he attempted to disguise his voice by pretending to have laryngitis. Mrs. Doyle is a nurse. At one time in her career, she was a school nurse. She'd had lots of practice with kids trying to fake illnesses to get out of school. No kid ever got past her. Neither did Adam.”