Invitation to Murder

by Zenith Brown

  Leslie Ford

  INVITATION

  TO MURDER

  Invitation to Murder

  Copyright © 1954, renewed 1982, by Zenith Brown.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  Dedication: For: Frieda Lubelle

  CHAPTER : 1

  Fish (James Fisher) Finlay counted eleven.

  Thirty-four minutes by the crystal clock on the crystal mantel he’d been cooling his heels in the terrace window in Malvern Towers, waiting for the Countess de Gradoff (nee Dodo Maloney).

  “—Ten-thirty absolutely sharp, then, Fish, darling—if it’s really important and not too horribly grim,” was what the countess had said.

  His leg was getting tired, standing. He could sit, but he was also tired of looking at James Fisher Finlay reflected ad nauseam in the crystal mirrored walls on three sides of the room. The places to sit were an equal hazard. He glanced from the shell-pink love seat next to a shower of yellow mimosa over to the silver-blue satin job of the same insubstantial elegance with white lilacs beside it. Then he glanced at Finlay, the weather-beaten hide around his hazel eyes wrinkling with sardonic amusement. Six feet two, shaggy-browed, thatched with rusty red iron filings it took a magnetized currycomb to straighten, he was an outsize ox in either shell-pink or silver-blue.

  He gave his short clipped thatch a swipe with the heel of his palm, buttoned his gray flannel suit jacket, and gave up. The patina of the well-groomed New Yorker was not for him. No amount of spit and polish lasted long enough for the next layer to build on. It was hard to see why Caxson Reeves, Vice-President and Trust Officer of the Merchants and Mechanics Bank and Deposit Company, officer in charge of the James V. Maloney Trust, had hired him, when he limped back from three months in Korea, half a leg gone, after a year in the Big War without a scratch . . . with no patina and no connections. And harder to see why he’d sent him up here to the present beneficiary of the James V. Maloney Trust on a job that, if it wasn’t horribly grim, was certainly damned unpleasant.

  Which was probably why Caxson Reeves had waited until Fish Finlay was leaving the office to spring it on him. His rugged face sobered as he sat cautiously down next to the white lilacs, seeing Reeves behind his desk, dry, inscrutable, a sheet of note paper in his hand, hooded lids raised over the rims of his half-spectacles, waiting while Fish limped back to him.

  “A job for you in the morning. Make the appointment before you leave.”

  He handed Fish the sheet of paper.

  “Dear Mr. Reeves,” it said. “I wonder if you will please tell my mother I’m not coming to Newport this summer. I’m going to secretarial school as soon as I graduate this June, so I can work this fall. If my mother doesn’t want to send my allowance, Anne Linton says she can manage to lend me the money. I will stay with her at Dawn Hill Farm and go in to town every morning. It will save a lot of trouble if you can make my mother understand before they go abroad again next week. I tried to do it myself but she doesn’t listen to me, and I really mean it. Sincerely, Jennifer Linton.”

  “Well, well,” Fish Finlay said. He read it again, the lovely peach-blow face and violet-blue eyes of Jennifer Linton’s mother, Dodo Maloney, Countess de Gradoff, coming between him and her daughter’s letter.

  “Did you say a job for me?”

  Reeves nodded his grizzled head once. He wasted nothing, money, words or motion.

  “How do I do it?” Assistant Trust Officer Finlay asked.

  “I’ve no idea.” Reeves took the letter back. “How does anyone tell a very lovely, very spoiled woman her eighteen-year-old daughter prefers potluck with her widowed stepmother on a run-down farm in Virginia to luxury with her mother and her mother’s fourth husband in Newport? I don’t know. My methods have failed for years. Jennifer adores Anne Linton. Under the terms of the Trust she has no money until she gets it all, when she’s twenty-two. But she’s your problem, Finlay. That’s what you’re being trained for. You’ll be the buffer state between the two of them for a long time. You might as well start . . . it’ll be experience.”

  “—Experience I’d rather skip,” Fish Finlay thought, coming back to the crystal room and looking at the clock again. The more he learned about the Maloney Trust and its beneficiaries the more he admired Caxson Reeves’s controlled and apparently inexhaustible patience. He settled back and looked out the terrace windows. They were opened at oblique angles to let in the unexpected warmth of the early April sunshine, and he was aware suddenly of an image of another room in one of them. It looked like a mirage room at first, until he realized it was an image, refracted in the angled window glass, of a sunlit dining-room along the terrace. When he moved his head it disappeared. He moved it back, and it returned. He closed one eye, and the other, playing a game he became so engrossed in he did not hear the door open behind him.

  “Oh, Fish, darling, I do hope I didn’t keep you waiting!”

  The Countess de Gradoff was there, her husband with her. Fish Finlay scrambled to his feet, his awkward leg giving the fragile love seat a jolt that lurched the white lilacs.

  “Oh, don’t get up, darling!” Dodo de Gradoff’s lovely eyes were filled with understanding and sympathy. “It’s so stupid to have pots of things sitting around, anyway.”

  She smiled at him, enclosing him in the warm and pearly aura she diffused about her, as fragrant as a sun-washed rose. Small and peachy-gold, she was as soft and lusciously curved, and as feminine, as a blue-eyed freshly brushed Angora kitten.

  “And you know Nikki, don’t you, darling.”

  “How do you do, sir,” Fish said. He felt more like an ox than ever in contrast to the casual elegance of the handsome man behind her. Nikki de Gradoff had patina. He was as tall as Fish, broad-shouldered, as Nordic as his bride, with clear blue eyes and smooth blond hair with a suspicion of a wave in it, sun-tanned, his English pin-stripe suit without a wrinkle. He had gloves, a stick and a Homburg hat.

  “How ’je do, Finlay?” he said. His English accent was what they call “Oxford,” with only the slightest trace of whatever Indo-European speech—unknown to Fish—had been his native language.

  “Nikki’s not staying, darling.” Dodo took her husband’s arm, her eyes proudly caressing. “I just can’t get him to worry about the Maloney Trust. He thinks money’s stupid.”

  “Not at all.” Nikki de Gradoff smiled at her, and at Fish. “It’s just that I don’t know a damned thing about it, and you fellows do. I never had but one job in my life—and you know what happened to that, my darling.”

  He bent down and kissed her affectionately on the cheek.

  “Don’t worry your pretty head, sweet. That’s what Finlay’s for.”

  She went to the door with him. “Don’t be too long, will you, love?”

  When she came back her eyes were shining, her rounded cheeks flushed a warmer peach. “It’s true, you know, Fish,” she said. “Nikki had a job. In a garage, of all places! He got it in Paris—to support me!” She laughed delightedly. “It was very cute, and very silly. Because you see, we just ran into each other, quite literally, under a lamppost in the rain. I looked like a beggar, because I’d been antiquing with a friend and we didn’t want them to think we were rich Americans. So Nikki didn’t know I had any money at all, when he fell in love with me. It was fate, really. We’d never have looked at each other under normal circumstances. He was as sick of rich women as I was of impoverished nobility. And he got a job so he could ask me to marry him. It was terribly sweet. And when he found out, he was so upset. I had to bribe his concierge to find out where he’d gone . . . and go after him. Believe it or not.”

  She sat down in the shell-pink sofa against th
e mimosa, her face lighted with a warm glowing tenderness. Fish lowered his frame carefully back into the silver-blue satin.

  “It’s so sort of wonderful,” she said. “I’ve had such rotten luck with my other husbands, and Nikki’s perfect. He leans over backward to keep anybody from thinking the Maloney Trust was the reason he married me. That’s why he’s so determined not to know anything about it. Because you know how people are.”

  The smile on her lips dissolved, leaving her face as gravely earnest as a child’s.

  “Did you know that his first wife killed herself? It was horrible for Nikki. He wanted a divorce, but it was religion, or something—she was from the Argentine. Nikki was away. He felt terribly sorry for her, and he called her up on the phone and she started crying about the divorce, but he hadn’t any idea she’d . . . do anything. Poor lamb, he blamed himself, of course. That’s why he wouldn’t keep anything she had, or take any part of her estate. It was terribly quixotic, I thought, but he says Americans don’t understand honor, and I guess we don’t.”

  She laughed merrily. “You can see how embarrassing it is, to have another rich wife, especially when you didn’t know that’s what you were getting.”

  Fish Finlay listened, knowing that when she got through with Nikki and got to her daughter this butterfly dust of happiness would dissolve like the mirage there on the terrace windowpane. He glanced over at it, moved slightly to bring it into focus, and sat motionless. There was a new figure in the center of his mirage. It was de Gradoff. He was moving quickly across the dining-room, oddly intent.

  Probably forgotten something, Fish thought, glancing at the door de Gradoff would be coming through. But the door did not open. He waited a moment, and another. The door stayed closed, with de Gradoff behind it. Fish Finlay mentally lifted his shaggy brows. So Nikki isn’t interested in the Maloney Trust. Nikki thinks money’s stupid.

  He sat forward as Dodo went blithely on.

  “Nikki simply hates the idea of Newport, but I can’t afford not to go there. Where my father got the idea—”

  “Look,” Fish said. “Why don’t we go outside?”

  “Outside? Whatever for?”

  She looked down at the crisp fresh lace of the breakfast coat she was still wearing. “But darling, didn’t you know? I’m not the outdoor type. Really!”

  She got up, laughing. “Still, if you think this atmosphere isn’t business-like, I’m happy to oblige. If it’s not windy, that is.”

  Fish, listening intently, thought he heard a movement. He got up. “I’ll see if it’s windy.” He went out and crossed to the balustrade, turned and glanced into the adjoining room. A door was closing noiselessly, leaving the room empty again. But the chances were there were other doors. . . .

  He turned back. “It’s not windy.”

  “Look, darling.” Dodo de Gradoff laughed again as she came out. “If you’re afraid somebody’ll hear you, you can relax. I’ve sent both servants out on errands. Still, it is rather nice out, isn’t it?”

  She sat in the bamboo chaise longue he drew out for her and looked at him with sparkling amusement. “You’re wonderful, you know.” She tilted her golden head appraisingly. “I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that makes you so really attractive. You’re not pretty, heaven knows, but neither was Abraham Lincoln. I suppose you’re just so homely every woman knows you’re an angel at heart. The girls must adore you, don’t they?”

  “I can get out of most places without being mobbed.”

  The sharp twinge he felt for an instant was in scarred tissue other than his leg.

  She was still laughing at him. “That’s what Caxson Reeves told me when he asked me to look you over—not that it mattered what I thought if he’d made up his mind, but it was a nice gesture. He said you ‘inspired confidence.’ “ She made her voice gruff and let her eyelids droop. “Poor Caxey, he’s like an old crocodile they won’t let back to his native ooze. But he’s sweet, really. You’re the first person he’s ever trusted with any of the Maloney problems. He said you were just what he’d been hunting for. Not too urbane, and very understanding . . . somebody he could depend on to take over for my daughter when her turn comes. If it comes.”

  Fish glanced at her. She was going cheerfully on. “Poor old Caxey, he’s always been in love with me, after his fashion. But it’s you I’m interested in. Why aren’t you married? What do you do with yourself nights and weekends?”

  “I’ve got a place in New Jersey,” Fish said. “It used to be an old mill. I’ve got a couple of sheep and a few strawberries, and I plant stuff. Azaleas, mostly.”

  “Oh, no! Pour l’amour de. . . . Don’t tell me!” She put her hand to her head in despair. “Just like my father! I can’t bear it—”

  She sat up. “Do you realize, Fish Finlay, that that’s why I have to go to Newport every summer? Because my father got the mad idea of endowing that matchstick monstrosity of a house and grounds, because he thought those two horrible old gardeners Jan Vranek and Rob McTaggert were Nature’s noblemen! Scheming old devils, is what they are. That’s why he endowed the place, so I couldn’t sell it and kick them out of their job—both of which I would have done instantly, but believe me. So I’m stuck with the place. If I skip two summers, the whole works goes to the city of Newport as a public park. It’s monstrous. It’s fantastic. But, of course, the whole Maloney Trust—”

  She broke off, smiling at him. “That’s why I’ve sent Nikki and the servants out. I don’t want anybody to know I’m a lady for a day. Not even Nikki . . . though it wouldn’t make any difference to him. But I’d be ruined if my friends and creditors knew the truth. And it’s wicked, Fish. The whole, entire Maloney Trust handed over to my darling daughter on her twenty-second birthday! Can you believe it! I won’t have a hundred dollars a month that Jennifer Linton doesn’t give me, six years from now.”

  “Four,” Fish Finlay said mildly.

  “Oh, my God, no! It can’t be four!”

  “She was eighteen last week.”

  “Oh, dear—and I forgot to send her a present.” She smiled helplessly at him. “But Caxey said you’re to take over when her turn comes, and I said if it comes. Because it’s not coming, believe me. I’m going to break that Trust, Fish. But Caxey’s told you that, hasn’t he?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “Because it’s an outrage, Fish,” she said earnestly. “Father was out of his mind, stark, raving mad. He must have been, to write that kind of a Trust in the first place. And then to walk out of the bank and vanish into thin air—it doesn’t make sense. All I’m waiting for is the legal seven years, and I’m going to have him declared dead and smash the Maloney Trust to smithereens. I’ve never believed my father just vanished anyway. I think he was killed and his body hidden, or something. He carried enormous sums of money with him. Why would he want to disappear, for heaven’s sake?”

  Fish shook his head. It was three years before his time that James V. Maloney had walked out of the bank at high noon one Friday and never showed again. It would be seven years next October twenty-third.

  “And if he did, that in itself would be plenty to prove he was out of his mind when he drew up that insane and revolting document. You know that’s true, darling. It is revolting.”

  “I’ve never read it. Mr. Reeves won’t let it out of his private vault.”

  “Well, it’s fantastic. Here everybody thinks I’m rolling in wealth. Why, I wouldn’t have a friend in the world four years from now. Except Nikki, of course. I wouldn’t have married him if he cared about money. I’m sick of husbands who married me to get them out of debt. That’s one thing I’m but really tough about. And Caxey thinks I ought to tell Nikki about the Trust. He thinks it’s because I’m afraid of my marriage that I don’t. But that’s wrong. If it was money Nikki wanted, he wouldn’t have stood aside from his first wife’s estate and he wouldn’t have fallen in love with me in an old raincoat. Caxey lives for money and he thinks everybody else does . . . especiall
y foreigners.”

  She lowered her voice, her eyes dancing again. “Do you know what he did?”

  “Mr. Reeves?”

  Dodo nodded. “He had a detective do a complete dossier on Nikki, the poor lamb. He doesn’t know I know it, and I’m terrified Nikki’ll find out. This absurd Frenchman gumshoeing around, asking my maid all sorts of questions.”

  Fish looked at her. “Are you sure? That it was Mr. Reeves, I mean?”

  “Of course. Who else gives a damn who I marry, darling?”

  “It doesn’t sound like him, though.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, of course. There’s nothing about Nikki I haven’t been told—by him or by his friends. You know, the ones that have their duty to do, however painful?”

  She looked at him earnestly. “—You like him, don’t you?”

  Fish Finlay had a sudden sense of Caxson Reeves’s bleak hooded gaze fixed on him in absentia. She was waiting, her eyes wide and serious.

  He grinned at her. “No, of course not.”

  Dodo de Gradoff tossed her head back and laughed with delight.

  “You’re divine, Fish. Who said the American male had lost all gallantry? If I weren’t old enough to be your mother—”

  “Well, hardly,” Fish said.

  “I’ll be thirty-nine my next birthday, if I don’t forget it. With my child at Newport this summer I can’t go on pretending I’m thirty-two.”

  Fish shook his head. “—Wait a minute.”

  “What do you mean?” Her sparkling gaiety vanished instantly.

  “Your child isn’t coming to Newport.”

  It came out quicker and flatter than he had meant it to.

  “Who says so? Of course she’s coming.”

  He shook his head again. “She wants to stay at home and go to secretarial school.”

  For a moment she sat looking at him as blankly as if he’d spoken in Sanskrit. Then he realized it was not blankness. It was shock—as if he’d picked up a stick and hit her across the face.