The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

  “Did she have red hair?” Barbara asked.

  The woman thought a moment. She said she thought perhaps she had had. She could not be sure. It was evident that she remembered the “old lady” more clearly—the old lady in her eighties, leaning on a cane; the old lady dressed in black, with sharp black eyes. She was thin and, although stooped, still tall—much taller than the girl.

  Neither the old lady nor the girl had, so far as could be remembered, before visited Mme. Jacques’. If names had been given—but there was no particular reason they should have been; the dress was carried away—they had long since been forgotten.

  “But the girl might have had red hair,” Barbara said, on the sidewalk outside. “They shopped in Danbury.”

  Many people shop in Danbury; it is a small, but busy city. It was not a needle in a haystack; it was a tiny end of string, projecting from a tangle, something to be pulled at. But it seemed to have slipped from their fingers.

  They separated for the search, for the asking of questions of busy clerks; they met blank faces and shaking heads, and a reticence based on suspicion. Other clothing shops had at first seemed most likely, but half a dozen produced nothing. It was Barbara who suggested that, after such shops, drugstores should come next. Women in their eighties may be presumed to be often in need of medication.

  There were many drugstores, and they went to the wrong ones first, and it was almost six when John, asking familiar questions of an elderly clerk in a small, and sedate, apothecary’s (so termed) on a side street, was answered slowly, doubtfully, with the possibility that “it might be the old lady is Mrs. Piermont. Except, she lives pretty near over to Brewster. Shops there, mostly, I guess.”

  But at long intervals, if something brought her to Danbury, old Mrs. Piermont came to the apothecary’s shop; came for a proprietary no longer advertised, nor much stocked. Could be this was old Mrs. Piermont. A girl—once he had seen a girl. Or thought perhaps he had. At other times, Mrs. Piermont had been alone.

  Brewster, which is not far from Danbury, and in New York, is a village, with a main street and a railway station. They were late at Brewster. The post office, of which John had thought first, was closed. They tried one of the two drugstores. They were trying to find a Mrs. Piermont, John told a quick, dry, small man at the prescription counter. “Old Mrs. Piermont?” the man said. Then he added, “Not that there’s a young Mrs. Piermont. Lives up on Ridge Hill. Lived there a hundred years, more or less.”

  “Less, surely,” Barbara said, and was laughed with, was told “not a lot less.” Somewhat hastily, the small, quick man, added that Mrs. Piermont was a great old girl and then, by way of correction, that she was a mighty fine old lady. Then, he waited, with curiosity.

  “A friend of my grandfather’s,” Barbara said. “Isn’t there a girl lives with her? A red-haired girl?”

  “The Titus girl,” the druggist said. “That’d be the one. Right pretty, considering.”

  They waited. He did not amplify.

  “Ridge Hill?” John said. “How do we get there?”

  They were told. They went back for a mile or two on Route 6, turned right on Ridge Road, turned off Ridge Road, again, to the right, at a white house, climbed a hill and turned right once more. A dirt road, that would be, but ought to be all right now. Two weeks ago—but it wasn’t two weeks ago. Dry enough now.

  Reached, it was dry enough—narrow and tortuous, but the little car was nimble. A driveway, finally, led to the left, opposite a small mailbox marked, simply, “Piermont.” Partially, through close-growing trees, they could see, several hundred feet back from the road, a large, gray-painted house. Much more clearly, and closer, they could see a heavy chain across the driveway. John pulled the car to the side of the road. He got out and examined the chain. One end was fixed to a ring in a metal post; the other padlocked to a similar post. But, on the drive beyond, there were the tracks of a car. Barbara joined him.

  “We’ve come this far,” John said, and they ducked under the chain. The driveway wound, and climbed. They went a hundred feet, and a man’s voice said, “Looking for somebody?” There was no welcome in the voice.

  He was a rangy, weathered man. He held a long pole, with pruning sheers fastened at the end.

  “Mrs. Piermont,” John said.

  “Can see she ain’t here,” the man said. “What’d you think the chain was for?”

  “It’s important we see her,” John said.

  “Ain’t here,” the man said. “So how you gonna see her, mister?”

  “If you could tell us—” Barbara began.

  “Florida,” the man said. “Be back next month.”

  “And,” Barbara said, “Miss Titus?”

  He looked at her.

  “What about the Titus girl?” he asked.

  “Is she here?”

  He looked at Barbara slowly before he answered. Then he said, “Nope.”

  “With Mrs. Piermont?”

  Again he was slow in answering. Then he said, “You got a lot of questions, haven’t you? Told you nobody’s here. What more do you want?”

  “To know where Miss Titus is,” John said. “In Florida?”

  “Where would she be?” the man said. “Sure she’s in Florida.” He paused again. “You want to see them so bad,” he said, “whyn’t you go to Florida?”

  He turned, and walked off a few paces, and looked up at a tree. He raised his long pole and snipped at a branch. The branch fell. Then he turned and looked at them. “Get out,” he said. “You understand English, don’t you?”

  They went. He watched them down the drive, under the chain barrier.

  They were watched, also, and from beyond a stone fence, by a man who had parked a black sedan around a bend beyond the Piermont driveway. When he saw them start toward the road, he walked for a short distance behind the fence, and then went over it and back to the sedan. He hoped, absently, that the stuff growing on the wall would not turn out to be what they called poison ivy. He had heard of poison ivy, but he didn’t know what it looked like.

  He had turned the car, so that it was headed back the way they had come—the way the Corvette had come, and he after it. Presumably, they would turn and go back that way. He waited in the car, and heard the Corvette’s motor start.

  It had been quite an expedition—into the country, which was a nuisance; into Danbury, where it was almost as difficult to park as in New York—more difficult, for him. He had loitered on foot from dress shop to dress shop, and drugstore to drugstore until finally, apparently, they had found what they wanted. He had been lucky to get back to the sedan in time to follow them to Brewster, and now to this house, occupied—or any rate claimed—by someone named Piermont.

  There would be a good deal of backtracking to be done; a good deal of checking out. He had a guess as to what they were up to, and, if he was right, somebody had slipped up in Eleventh Street—which Miller wouldn’t like. On the other hand, it might be that work was being done without having to be paid for, a thing to which nobody would object.

  Abruptly, Detective Nathan Shapiro slid his long body as low as he could in the front seat of the sedan, and pulled his hat as low as he conveniently could over his face, so that he looked like a man dozing in his car. At any rate, he hoped he did; it would be a nuisance if he looked dead, and the occupants of the Corvette—which had not turned and gone back, but had continued in the way it was headed—got out to investigate.

  They did not. They were talking as they went by, and only glanced at the sedan, pulled off the narrow road.

  Shapiro had to drive back to the Piermont drive, and turn in it, nosing up to the chain, before he could follow. With the time so lost, it would be easy enough for the Corvette to ditch him—if it wanted to. The country was a hell of a place, and full of noisy birds.

  VIII

  It had been Barbara who suggested that, instead of turning back, they might as well go on. “Since we don’t know where we’re going anyway,” John said.
r />   “Roads always lead somewhere,” she said. “Little roads lead to larger roads.”

  “Or,” John said, “to farmers’ barnyards.”

  But he started the Corvette and they went on up the winding road. They passed a black sedan, drawn to the side of the road, with a man sleeping in it. He didn’t look too comfortable, Barbara said, and they said no more, and thought no more, of that.

  “The girl was named Titus,” Barbara said. “We know that much.”

  But they did not; not certainly. It was still, he said, intangible. All tangibility was, still, on the other side. They would fix that, she told him. Oh, surely, they would fix that.

  She was right, at any rate, about the road. It dead-ended at a wider road. “We could flip a coin,” John said, and, without bothering to, turned to the left. And, almost at once, they were in a village—the smallest and neatest of villages—a dozen white houses spaced along the road; a single, but general, store; a filling station with only two pumps and without blatancy. And—a church with a white spire. They drove slowly, the low sun in their eyes, through this tiny, pleasant place. And then Barbara said, “Wait, John,” and pointed.

  In front of the church was a reticent sign, black lettered on white—lettered, “St. Matthew’s (Episcopal.)” But it was not at that Barbara pointed. In front of the white house next the church, there was another sign, even smaller, more sedate. The sign read, “The Rectory.”

  “Well?” John said, but further slowed the little car.

  “Somebody to ask,” she said. “Somebody who would know—almost surely would know.”

  John pulled the car to the side of the road, and, after a moment, cut the motor.

  “You mean,” he said, “we just barge in? Say, ‘Who’s this Miss Titus? Is she a girl with red hair? Not in Florida, but dead and in the morgue?’”

  “There is,” she told him, “only one way to find things out. Only one way I’ve ever heard of.”

  She was out of the car. To John, following her, she seemed to twinkle in the slanting light of evening.

  The road, here, was lined with trees—maple trees, and very old. Suddenly, as he followed the girl under one of the trees, up to the door of the white rectory, John thought: The tree by the tennis court is a maple tree. He looked up at the tree under which he was walking. A tree like this—I can almost see it. But then, as quickly as this certainty had come, it passed, and he could not see the tree by the tennis court, or remember where it grew. After this, John Hayward thought, I’ll look at things. By God, but I’ll look at things.

  The narrow, winding road dead-ended at a wider, straighter road. Detective Nathan Shapiro stopped the small black sedan and looked hopefully for road signs. He was, he discovered, at the end of Elm Lane. He could go right or left on Briggs Hill Road. But where he would come out, in whichever way he turned, was not revealed. He could flip a coin. He turned right. If his hunch—it was only that—proved out, this way would take him back to Brewster. Whether it would take him in further pursuit of the Corvette was anybody’s guess.

  Whether it had remained anybody’s guess, but the point became academic. Whichever way they had gone, they had shaken him, by intention or by chance. He thought the latter; he was quite certain they had not recognized him when he slumped low in the seat of the sedan, like a man asleep. He did not think they had had any idea they were being followed.

  He drove a mile or so. He encountered only one other car—a Jaguar, top up, occupant almost obscured, bound in the opposite direction at, for a Jaguar, a discreet speed. It was, Detective Shapiro thought vaguely, getting so you saw a lot of those about. And damned uncomfortable they looked.

  The road turned, and the countryside opened. He was on a hill, with Brewster below him and the road easing down toward the village. Here and there, although needlessly, there were already lights in the village.

  The Corvette was nowhere in sight on the straight down-slope. Well, he had not supposed it would be. He rolled down the gentle hill, through the gentle countryside, toward Brewster, and a telephone.

  The door was opened before they knocked. A man in black, with a clerical collar, opened the door wide and stood in the doorway. He was not a tall man, and he was plump. He appeared to be in his sixties. His plump face was rosy; he took off glasses and looked out through gentle (and obviously myopic) eyes.

  “I am Father Higbee,” he said. “I seem to be wearing the wrong glasses. Do come in.”

  He stood back, holding the door open. They went in. He took them into what appeared to be a study. Small windows were open, and the spring air stirred softly in the room. Father Higbee went behind a desk, and peered down at it. “Ah,” he said, and picked up another pair of glasses. He removed the glasses he wore and put on the others. He looked at Barbara and John through the new glasses.

  “At this time of the day,” Father Higbee said, and spoke gently, “I customarily have a cocktail.” He looked at his desk. There was a partially empty glass on it. “Indeed,” he said, “I was having a cocktail. A martini. Of course, if you”—this was to Barbara—“would prefer a cup of tea?”

  “Father Higbee,” John said, “you never saw us before. You don’t know why we have come.”

  “In good time,” Father Higbee said. “All in good time.”

  “A martini,” Barbara said, “would be very pleasant, Father. My name is Barbara Phillips. This is John Hayward.”

  “Ah,” Father Higbee said, but it did not seem probable he had heard. He had turned to a cabinet behind him; had taken from it a cocktail mixer, and bottles, and from a container, ice cubes. He measured carefully, but evidently by color. He poured into fresh glasses and then, abstractedly, filled his own glass.

  “At the end of the day,” Father Higbee said, “the creature comforts.” He raised his glass, and they raised theirs. The drinks had the appearance, but by no means the flavor, of water. “Possibly,” Father Higbee said, “a touch too much vermouth?”

  He was reassured; he was quickly reassured.

  “I felt,” Father Higbee said, “that I had not met you before. Either of you. You are new to Saint Matthew’s Parish? It is pleasant to see new young faces.”

  “Father,” John said, “we are looking for information.”

  “Ah,” Father Higbee said. “I had thought perhaps you planned to get married.”

  “Oh,” Barbara said, “we do. But—not today.”

  “You will like being married,” Father Higbee said, and smiled at her, but then the smile faded on the rosy, friendly face. “My own dear wife and I were happy for many years.” He put down his half-empty glass and looked at it, as if, somehow, it puzzled him. “However,” he said. “If I can help you in any way?”

  “We—” Barbara began, but John said, “No. Wait, Barbara,” and then, “Father Higbee, a girl was killed last Saturday. In New York. The police think I killed her. I didn’t kill her. We are trying to find out who she was.”

  Father Higbee looked at John, steadily, and for some time.

  “Tell me how I can help you, John,” he said, finally.

  John told him. At the end, he showed him the newspaper picture. As the woman at the dress shop had done, the round-faced clergyman looked at the picture, holding it to the light. He changed his glasses and looked at it again. And, then he, too, shook his head. He said it was very hard to be sure.

  “Actually,” he said, “it could be almost anyone, couldn’t it? Any pretty young woman. It might be Julie Titus—that is her name. Julie. But from this, I doubt whether anyone could be sure.” He gave the picture back. “And,” he said, “I’ve only seen Julie once or twice since—since she became a young woman.”

  They looked at him. He nodded slowly.

  “She is very rarely seen by anyone,” the priest said. “For—for reasons which seemed adequate to Angela.” He paused. “Angela Piermont,” he said. “She has done a great deal for Julie. She is a good woman, John. Whatever she did was for the best. But—it left the girl very unprepa
red. I have ventured to tell Angela that but Angela—” He paused again. “She knows her own mind, as we say,” Father Higbee said.

  He sipped from his glass. He said that he could tell them little more than anyone, living for miles around, could tell them of Mrs. Angela Piermont, long a widow, and Julie Titus—“the pretty Titus girl.” It was simpler, probably, to begin with the Tituses.

  “I can only tell you of the background,” he said. “Of events—I know little of events. Angela goes to Florida every year—goes much earlier than most, and stays longer. Angela is very old, and blood thins as we grow old. Or, so we say. The girl goes with her—to Bradenton, I think it is. Somewhere on the Florida west coast, at any rate. I would have supposed they were there now. So, on that I cannot help you. But for the background—”

  The Titus family had been long in the area. For two centuries there had been Tituses in that part of Putnam County, in upper Westchester, in adjacent areas of Connecticut. There had been a Titus who was a governor; there were Tituses who had been judges. “My own great-grandfather was a Titus,” Father Higbee said. “Angela Piermont is a Titus.”

  “Then the girl—” Barbara said.

  “Is a relative?” Father Higbee said. “Yes—of Angela’s. In some degree, perhaps, of mine. But remotely.” He paused. “In a sense,” he said, “only the name—the name itself—connects. One could never trace it down. And—Julie is a Briggs Hill Titus.” He paused. He said that, of course, the term meant nothing to them. Briggs Hill was—“a kind of backwater.” There were many such communities in the country, even quite close to New York. “Even in Westchester,” Father Higbee said.

  By no means all the Tituses had been judges and prosperous merchants and physicians, although some had. Others had been day laborers, farm hands—and less. Much less. The Briggs Hill Tituses—