Free Corpses at Indian Stone by Philip Wylie

night we got here, definitely. I, personally, believe that deadfall was put up at the same time. Or in the afternoon of the day before we got here."

    Sarah gazed at him. This was a tidbit of news. "You do? Why?"

    "Plants!" he answered crossly. "The plants the two dead trees fell on--and the plants trampled around there. Juices still sticky. I imagine Wes noticed that, also. He notices most things. He's smart. Anyway, the doctors didn't find a thing that the blow wouldn't explain. They did an autopsy. Bill insisted on that. There were no fingerprints on the deadfall worth anything. Smears--that's all. Suspicious--but not conclusive. A lot of people wear gloves in the woods. Wes was wearing them himself, the other night.
    They didn't go into the murder angle much more than that. Brushed it over."

    "But, Aggie, there's not a scrap of evidence it was murder!"

    "Et tu," he said, staring at her. "No. That's the trouble. Nothing but hints. Why was the bull brier growing so as to make it essential for a man walking on that road to lean and thus to lunge? Did the brier really grow that way--or was it festooned there to set the stage for an appearance of accident? Things like that. Maybe there isn't a perfect murder. But--I wonder--if there is ever a perfect accident, either? This one was absolutely pat. It had to happen that way. And yet--nobody can explain why Calder was there--
    except that he liked to ramble." He shrugged. "I saw Wes for a few minutes. Asked him if he'd learned anything about this--this--"

    He was watching her from under his hand--rubbing his face and yawning. She supplied the name fast enough--but with perhaps a trace of a quaver--and perhaps the quaver was due to her swollen glands. "Hank? Hank Bogarty?"

    "Mmm. He hadn't. The Albany cops checked all the hotels and the tourist homes.
    Nobody had registered by that name. Ads were put in the papers in quite an area. No response so fat. Of course, they haven't any description. Not yet. They've wired British Columbia for one. Nobody hereabouts bas seen him recently enough to say more than that he'd had curly black hair and gray eyes, very far apart. Stuff like that. But he wired he'd be here-and he hasn't shown. Isn't it quite possible that your man Bogarty did drive in at Indian Stones and right up to Calder's--after that man Gannon of his had gone to bed--and that--things happened, and Bogarty left these parts forever?"

    "What things happened?"

    "You tell me," he replied impatiently. "Since you've shut down on me--I'm licked.
    The whole joint is crowded with mummers. Not a word out of a soul. They are burying Jim Calder tomorrow--but I'm going for a swim right now."

    "It's too soon after lunch," Sarah said petulantly.

    Aggie left the house a few minutes later. He carried his bathing suit--not just trunks, but a jersey also--in a waterproof satchel. The men and women of Indian Stones had adopted tropical winter fashions for summer wear: shorts of a Tahitian pattern for the former, and for the latter, quite similar shorts, and bras. They wore slack suits in the daytime; at night the men had commenced to try dinner jackets in a variety of pastel colors. This conventionality of unconvention was one which Aggie did not remotely understand. He was dressed then, as always, primarily for comfort.

    His appearance at the boathouse was thus another occasion for mirth at his expense. He came down the tree-roofed road, bobbling contentedly, in worn moccasins, khaki trousers, a faded blue jumper-shirt, and a pith helmet--the last because of the hot sunshine. Less for jauntiness than from a long-standing field habit, he wore a scarlet bandanna around his neck. All this, taken together with his beard, his flashing black eyes, and his knee-bent, forward-leaning gait, made him look outlandish.

    Beth, who caught sight of him first, struck the precise note when she called, "Dr.
    Livingstone, I presume?"

    People lying on the dock on air mattresses, people floating on them in