“Back to the game,” Davies continued, squaring his shoulders. “The first few innings were uneventful. There was no scoring, and little if anything to root about, as again I am sure you are aware. Because both teams are from New York City, Orson urged us to be rigidly impartial and cheer equally for each of them. So when that home run got hit in the fourth, we all jumped to our feet waving our flags and yelling, and then, well . . . Orson keeled over and Mona started screaming. None of us—and that includes Mona—realized immediately what had just happened. We could not possibly have heard a distant shot over all of that crowd noise.”
“Were you sitting next to the senator?” Wolfe asked.
“No, I was two seats to his right, with Mona between us. Everything occurred so quickly. It must have been just moments before Orson got shot that Mona fell against me. I later learned that the heel of her shoe had snapped off. She said afterward that Orson had leaned over to grab her to stop her fall, and at that moment he was hit.”
Wolfe drew in air and exhaled. “Is it correct that you were the senator’s second-in-command?”
“My titles—campaign manager and strategist—might indeed have led one to believe that,” Davies said in a sour tone. “But in reality, Mona was the real number two in the operation. She had Orson’s ear on almost everything to do with his office and his campaigns. The power behind the throne, you might say.”
“Were you surprised when she announced her candidacy for the senator’s seat?” Wolfe asked.
“Not really. And I am not surprised that she never said anything to me about it, not one word, either. I had to read about it in the papers like almost everyone else. Mona has always been extremely ambitious. Oh, she makes an attempt to hide it behind a veneer of modesty and self-effacement, but for anyone who’s been around her for very long, it’s clear that ambition bubbles up just below the surface. It’s not hard to detect if one is around her for very long. I liken her to a caged animal just waiting to be turned loose.”
“I assume Mrs. Fentress has not asked you to be a part of her campaign.”
“You assume correctly, Mr. Wolfe,” Davies said, tight-lipped. “Although I’ve heard via the grapevine that she’s hired Musgrove to do her polling. He hasn’t said anything to me, however, even though we were in a taxi together for twenty minutes coming over here. I have not asked him about it, nor am I about to.”
“Has there been what one would describe as animus between you and Mrs. Fentress?” Wolfe posed.
“I find animus to be far too strong a word, Mr. Wolfe. Rather, I would describe our relationship as being marked by a certain amount of mutual distrust, although most of the distrust is on my side. Mona has little if any reason to distrust me.”
“How would you describe Mrs. Fentress’s relationship to the senator?”
Davies looked down at his glass for several seconds before responding. “Any answer I give you would be pure speculation, I’m afraid.”
“This is a confidential conversation, sir,” Wolfe said, “with Mr. Goodwin every bit as closed-mouthed as am I. Much of what has been said in this room over the years has been speculation. On many occasions, speculation voiced here has led to the solution of a problem.”
Davies frowned, seeming to be at odds with himself. “There was some talk,” he finally said after finishing his drink, “that they were more than just working colleagues.”
“Did you see evidence of that, sir?”
“What I would term circumstantial evidence only. They often dined together, danced in public places, and seemed fixated upon each other, beyond what any professional collaboration called for. All that, of course, led to gossip—gossip, by the way, that I scrupulously avoided being a party to or passing along.”
“Do you have a sense of how their spouses felt about this situation?”
Davies snorted. “It was pretty clear how Charles Fentress felt. More than once, he made a scene, complaining loudly that Orson was working his wife too hard. At least that was what he claimed his beef was about. As to Mrs. Milbank—or Miss DuVal, if you prefer—I have no idea what she thought about her husband’s relationship to Mona. I didn’t see her often at fund-raisers, speeches, or other political events. She preferred to stay out of the limelight most of the time.”
“She is an attractive woman,” Wolfe said. “Would not she have been an asset to her husband by being seen with him more often in public?”
“You raise a very good point. After all, she had been a film actress of sorts, for heaven’s sake, so she was used to playing roles. And being the wife of an officeholder certainly entails playing a role—an extremely important one. I can think of several wives who have won—and lost—elections for their spouses. I don’t mean to say Elise was invisible, but she did not attend as many events as you might expect of a senator’s wife, particularly those events that were held up in Albany. I have heard that she didn’t care for that town, preferring the bright lights and the social whirl of Manhattan. Pretty hard for our humble old state capital to compete with that.”
“Another question, Mr. Davies: Do you have any thoughts as to who might have wanted the senator dead?”
I had refilled Davies’s scotch, and he took a sip before answering. “The obvious answer would seem to be Franco Bacelli, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Especially given their recent history. But I don’t buy that.”
“Why not, sir?”
A shrug. “Somehow, I simply cannot see the mobster orchestrating a killing that had the potential for giving him nothing but headaches. He’s got enough of those from Uncle Sam right now, as has been well reported in the newspapers. And, of course, I am all too aware of the business interests in his district that were pushing for that Northern Parkway. Some of them, notably Jonah Keller and Ray Corcoran, were mad as hell at Orson. But to shoot someone over a road?” Davies folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Wolfe, but to me that makes absolutely no sense. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that among the thousands of people in his district, there was some mentally deranged individual who felt, God only knows why, that Orson had done him or her dirt and was out to exact revenge.”
“I would not think a state senator capable of stirring such strong reactions,” Wolfe observed.
“You would be surprised—maybe shocked is a better word—at the number of inane and weird calls and letters that we get in the office from constituents who think their senator is also their personal problem solver. Just a few weeks ago, a woman from up in Dutchess County kept me on the phone for fifteen minutes badgering me about why Orson couldn’t use his influence to get the road in front of her house paved with asphalt. When I tried to explain what the proper channels were for such work, she screamed, ‘And to think that I actually voted for that man!’ as she slammed the phone down.
“That was just one example. Another time—”
“I get the point,” Wolfe cut in. “May I assume you have no further thoughts on the killing?”
“No, I don’t,” Davies said, looking sheepish. “Sorry.”
“Archie, escort this gentleman to the front room and bring in Mr. Musgrove.”
Chapter 16
Keith Musgrove edged into the office warily, as if expecting a trapdoor to open and drop him into the basement. His eyes, magnified by those thick lenses, darted from left to right and back again before settling on the substantial figure of Nero Wolfe. “I am . . . Keith Musgrove,” he said in an apologetic tone that suggested we must have been expecting someone of greater importance.
“Mr. Musgrove,” Wolfe said, “please be seated, and thank you for coming tonight. I trust you were served refreshments. Would you like anything more?”
“No, no, I am just fine, thank you, just fine. Your man gave me coffee, very good coffee,” he said, hunching narrow shoulders as I steered him to the red leather chair. He sat on the front few inches of the cushion, kn
eading his hands and blinking. Maybe Fritz had served him too much coffee in the front room, or maybe he was always wound this tightly.
Wolfe waited until the pollster had ceased twitching before starting in. “I will begin by making the same request to you that I did to Mr. Davies. Please describe the events at the Polo Grounds from the moment you entered the stadium.”
I won’t bother feeding you a verbatim of Musgrove’s report on what happened at the ball park as it essentially duplicated what Davies had told us. What you are getting here is the equivalent of an edited transcript.
“I sat on the aisle, with Todd on my right and Orson next to him,” Musgrove said in his high-pitched voice. “I don’t go to baseball games very often, so I was really concentrating on the action on the field, trying to learn something about strategy and such. When the home run was hit and the shot came, I probably was the last one of us aware of what had happened, as I related to the police. What followed was, well . . . I would call it pandemonium.”
“Did you see Mr. Milbank fall?”
“No, no, I didn’t. Todd yelled something, and that’s when I turned to look. Orson was already down, with Mona and Mr. Davies bending over him. Then all sorts of other people came rushing over, some of them shoving me aside. Finally, a policeman arrived—a little late, I should say,” Musgrove sniffed.
“You were the senator’s pollster,” Wolfe stated.
“Yes. He had been a client of mine since his first campaign for the state senate years ago.”
“You have other clients?”
“Oh my, yes, I do,” Musgrove said, leaning forward and finally showing some animation. “Although my firm is small—only four full-time employees, including me—we do work for several New York state assemblymen, another state senator, he’s from up in Rochester, and members of the state legislatures in New Jersey and Connecticut as well. And we also do polling for various special interest groups. We are in demand, if I may say so.”
“At the time of his death, what did your polls say about Senator Milbank’s chances for reelection in the autumn?”
Musgrove made a clicking noise with his tongue and studied the ceiling. “The last canvass we took . . . he was running behind his opponent, getting about forty-two, forty-three percent favorable, which was up slightly from the week before. But those numbers were down from his previous campaigns, where he usually got about well over a fifty percent favorable rating. And obviously, he also got well over fifty percent of the votes cast in previous elections.”
“How do you feel his position on the new road had affected his standing?” Wolfe asked.
The pollster cleared his throat and looked around the room, as if seeking an answer. “No question, his initial stance against the parkway had hurt him, and for a while we were showing support at well below forty percent, an all-time low for him. Then when he eased off on his opposition and got behind the alternate route, he jumped up a few points, and I feel that if, well . . . if things had happened differently, in the next polls, he would have begun to move back toward fifty percent, or even above it. He had extremely strong residual respect throughout the district. I have no doubt whatever that he could have overcome the early disapproval voters had about his original position on the parkway.”
“And now you will be working for Mrs. Fentress’s campaign?”
“It . . . well, it has not been formally announced yet.”
“Yet the candidate herself has informed Mr. Goodwin of your role,” Wolfe said, “and he is by no means within her inner circle of acquaintances.”
Musgrove turned red, all the way to the tips of his ears. “I don’t know what to say, except that it is up to Mrs. Fentress to discuss her team with others.”
“Would you consider that you have good relations with the other members of Senator Milbank’s staff?”
“Overall, yes. I like to think we worked well together. Oh, there were the occasional disagreements over strategy or tactics, but these were minor differences. I felt we made a good support staff for the senator.”
Wolfe shifted in his chair. “Has Mrs. Fentress selected a campaign manager?”
Musgrove appeared increasingly uncomfortable with Wolfe’s questions and shook his head. “I really don’t know. She has not shared her plans on that with me, and there is no reason she should.”
“Do you have any theories as to who might have wanted Orson Milbank dead?”
“The police asked me that, and I told them—as I will tell you—that I have absolutely no idea. None at all.”
“I thought perhaps in the process of your polling you might have encountered someone with especially rancorous feelings toward the senator.”
“You’ve just hit upon a most interesting point,” Musgrove said, sitting up straight and now energized. “We use many part-time people to make telephone calls, ring doorbells, and stop people at commuter railway stations and along streets in shopping districts. We ask these volunteers to record the reactions of voters, and almost without exception, the responses to Mr. Milbank as an individual were favorable, even from those persons who disagreed with his position on the proposed parkway and who said they definitely would vote against him. It appeared that the reservoir of good will he had amassed over the years, and which I referred to a moment ago, endeared him to the great majority of his constituents, even including those who said they definitely would vote for his opponent.”
“What do you think of the anger directed at Mr. Milbank from those whom you did not canvass, specifically Messrs. Keller, Corcoran, and Bacelli?”
“Them!” Musgrove rasped, waving a hand, which for him seemed to constitute a violent gesture. “There is no question whatever that Keller in particular was angry at the senator and may have been able to sway some voters, but I’ve always felt that his importance as an influence on the electorate has been vastly overrated. I do not think Corcoran had much effect at all, and as for that, that criminal, well . . . all I can say is that I’ve never met him and I hope that I never will. Also, in all of our polling, we have seen nothing at all to indicate that Mr. Bacelli’s opinions have any effect whatsoever on voters.”
“What is your sense as to Mrs. Fentress’s likelihood of winning the Milbank senate seat in the autumn?”
“It is so early in her campaign, but I firmly believe that she will emerge victorious in what likely will be a close race.”
“What is her stance on the road?” Wolfe asked.
Musgrove sunk back into the red leather chair. “As I understand it, that is, well . . . yet to be determined,” he said.
“Will you advise her to take a position?”
“Oh no, not at all. I do not view that as our role. We will, of course, canvass the electorate again as to their attitudes about the Northern Parkway—both its original and revised routes—and then present our findings to Mrs. Fentress. In fact, we probably will begin our polling as soon as next week. As you would expect, the candidate is eager to quickly gauge the pulse of the voters.”
“Thank you for your time, sir,” Wolfe said. He then turned to me, which was my cue to escort Musgrove back to the front room and fetch Todd Armstrong.
The young man seemed almost as wary as Musgrove had been as I introduced him to Wolfe and got him settled in the red leather chair. Armstrong had nothing to add to previous descriptions of the events at the baseball game, except to say that “one second, Mr. Milbank was standing next to me, the next second, he was . . . dead.”
“Did you enjoy your work with the senator?” Wolfe asked.
“Yes, I did, a lot. It was a wonderful experience. I majored in political science and government at NYU and got really interested in political campaigns and all the planning that goes into them.”
“What comes next for you?”
The young man shrugged and shook his head. “I really don’t know for sure. When I found out Mrs. Fentress was go
ing to run for the senate seat, I asked if she could use me on her team, but she said no, that she was going to have a very small staff and needed only people who have had a lot of experience, which I fully understood. Mr. Davies has written me a good reference, though, and I am hoping to get a job in the office of a US Congressman. I’ve already sent out letters to two of them from New York and one each from Connecticut and Massachusetts, although I haven’t heard anything back yet.”
“Can you conceive of any reason someone would want to kill Senator Milbank?”
“No, sir, I simply cannot, and over these last several days I’ve given this a lot of thought. I realize, of course, that he made some people in the district angry about his position on that proposed road, but how could anyone possible commit a murder over a highway? It makes absolutely no sense to me.”
“Did you ever hear anyone wish Mr. Milbank harm?”
“No—oh, wait. When the senator eased his opposition to the road, Franco Bacelli apparently made some threats, according to what I heard around the office. But I don’t think anyone took them very seriously, and that includes the senator himself. One day, he even laughed with us about Bacelli’s grumblings. ‘That’s just Franco sounding off again,’ he said. ‘That’s to be expected of him.’ ”
“Did the other members of the staff seem to be concerned about Mr. Bacelli’s rantings?”
Armstrong shook his head. “Not as far as I could tell. They all laughed with the senator, even Mr. Musgrove, and he hardly ever laughs.”
Murder in the Ball Park Page 11