Snow That Never Fell

[SFX: Boots in snow. Tower door rattles]

NARRATOR: The tower door was locked from within, but Ada had stopped respecting that phrase. She opened it by lifting the hinge pins, which had been recently greased. Inside, they found a portable phonograph playing a loop of three taps and a coil of cord leading back toward the organ mechanism.

PETER BELL: Another delay. Gideon built the house like a clock, and the killer wound every threat at once.

ADA MERCER: Not every threat. The rifle fired because we opened the archive shutter. Someone could not know when we would do that. A trip line linked the shutter to the spring gun.

CELESTE MOURNING: So the house is still being used against us.

NARRATOR: Ada studied the snow below the tower. It appeared untouched, yet the layer against the parapet had a smooth glazed surface. Salt had melted it before the night storm, then fresh snow covered the channel. A narrow maintenance gutter ran from the tower to the solicitor's guest room.

LEON VALE: You are suggesting I crawled along a gutter in winter.

ADA MERCER: No. I am suggesting you sent the cylinder along it. Wax flakes are caught in the drain guard.

[SFX: Metal gutter scraped. Small object rolls]

NARRATOR: At the bottom of the gutter lay a brass cylinder cap. Leon said Gideon had thrown the recording away. Ada pointed out that the cap had fallen uphill from Gideon's window and downhill from Leon's.

IMOGEN ROOK: He took it from the cabinet and tried to burn it in his stove.

LEON VALE: Search it.

NARRATOR: They did. The stove held only pine ash. Ada found a darker smear beneath the grate, but laboratory proof would wait until the road opened. Leon remained composed because delayed evidence felt to him like absent evidence.

ADA MERCER: Gideon was poisoned before snow began at seven forty. The delayed bell moved his body at nine. Everyone's alibi for the bell is irrelevant. I need your movements before dinner.

NARRATOR: Peter had repaired the generator. Celeste had spoken to the bank. Imogen had tested microphones in the chapel. Leon alone claimed to have worked in his room, where no telephone call, fire, or witness confirmed him.