The brass rainbow df-2

by Michael Collins

  It was a big house, but austere. The simple three-story brick center section was over a hundred and fifty years old. Two white frame wings had been added later, but no later than 1850. My driver had another train to meet, but he’d come back in an hour unless I called earlier. I knocked and waited in the brittle cold and impossible silence of a country twilight.

  A short, dark man in a butler’s outfit answered the door. Walter Radford was not at home. I gave my name and asked if I could talk to Mrs. Radford. The butler bowed me into an elegant entry hall and vanished through sliding doors to the left. A fine Federal Period staircase curved upward at the rear of the entry hall. A thin woman came through the sliding doors.

  “Mr. Fortune? I’m Gertrude Radford.”

  She had the neat white hair, veined hands, and loose skin of her years, but there was a youthfulness about her. It was her eyes: wide, blue, almost innocent eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had faced few hard knocks, and who had never had to doubt anything. She wore a long black silk dress. Her pale face and nervous hands were the only signs that she might be disturbed by what had happened.

  “I’d like to talk about Monday, Mrs. Radford? About your brother-in-law?”

  “You’re the detective George and Deirdre mentioned,” she said. “I don’t understand what you want. The police assure us that the man will be caught soon. He must be put away.”

  “They’ll throw away the key.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Mr. Fortune,” she snapped, and frowned. “We are at coffee. You’ll join us for a cup.”

  It was a command. I followed her into a dining hall of ornate sideboards, high-backed chairs, and a center table as long as six pool tables. Portraits of grim men from the past hung on the walls, all of them having a vague resemblance to the late Jonathan Radford and to George Ames. There were some fifteen people in the room. One of them was George Ames. They were all drinking coffee.

  “How do you like it prepared, Mr. Fortune?” Gertrude Radford said.

  The question would have been a surprise except that I was looking at the sideboards. There were percolators of every type; drip pots; filter-paper pots; silex types; espresso pots; one large urn; pots for boiling; and some ways of making coffee I couldn’t even name.

  “We each brew our own, Mr. Fortune, in our own way,” Mrs. Radford said. “A family tradition going back over a hundred years. Coffee was the original Radford-Ames business. I myself favor a simple percolator.”

  “Percolator is fine,” I said.

  She led me into a corner. For a time we sat and drank. Coffee was sacred. It was good coffee. I watched the whole crew mothering their pots and cups, and all at once it gave me a chill. It was like a blood ritual with the celebrants drinking the blood of their ancestors at the high altar of family. A tribal rite designed, as all rites are designed, to keep the members inside and everyone else outside.

  Mrs. Radford brought me out of my visions. “You’re suggesting, Mr. Fortune, that there is doubt about what happened to Jonathan?”

  “I don’t know what happened to Jonathan,” I said.

  “The police seem sure this Weiss…”

  “Sure isn’t the same as knowing,” I said.

  A man’s voice answered me: “That is a cynical statement, Mr. Fortune, and stubborn. You’re more competent than you look.”

  George Ames stood over me. He wore evening clothes now-white tie and tails. He looked good.

  “The police talked to me,” I said. “They’ll let me hang myself. Maybe we could talk about Jonathan’s enemies now?”

  “Influence didn’t get rid of you, perhaps answers will,” Ames said. He took a black cigarette case from his inner pocket and selected an elegant cigarette with gold trim. “Every man makes enemies in sixty years, but there was no one recent or special. Murder is drastic, Fortune. It takes a powerful reason, don’t you think? There was no enemy of that magnitude.”

  “Business?”

  Ames smoked, smiled. “Jonathan was chairman of Radford Industries. It’s actually a financial holding company: impersonal, collective, almost anonymous. Jonathan’s death will change nothing for anyone.”

  “Who gets the business now? Who gets his money?”

  Mrs. Radford answered that. “Jonathan’s personal money goes all over the family. He made no secret of that. He was a bachelor, and at least fifty people will share in his will.”

  “His real wealth,” Ames added, “was his holdings in Radford Industries. Everyone in the family has some shares. I have a few thousand myself, but Jonathan held fifteen percent. That chunk gives control of the company; he would never break it up. I assume it will go intact to Walter as the only young Radford.”

  “It will,” Mrs. Radford said, “together with the five percent my husband had and Jonathan controlled since my husband died.”

  “So Walter gets the business?” I said.

  Ames laughed. It was a loud laugh. Almost too loud. “The stock doesn’t mean the power if I knew Jonathan. He’d just about given up on Walter as a businessman.”

  “Don’t be insulting, George,” Mrs. Radford said coldly.

  “Come now, Gertrude,” Ames said. “Walter hates the idea of running the company, and you know it. Jonathan knew it, too, and he’ll certainly have arranged it so that management will run the company at least for now. I hope so, anyway. I have a stake.”

  “Walter will prove he can run the company,” Mrs. Radford said. “He’ll take hold now. Deirdre will help once they are married.”

  “Perhaps she will at that,” Ames said.

  I said, “Miss Fallon and Walter are being married soon?”

  “The announcement will be made after the funeral.”

  When I had first talked to George Ames, he had called Deirdre Fallon a “lady friend.” Ames was a man I would have expected to be formal, and a fiancee is not a lady friend.

  “A sudden decision?” I asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Radford said, “it was actually to be announced yesterday. That was what Deirdre discussed with Jonathan at lunch on Monday. Walter and Deirdre think we should wait longer, but I see no useful reason. We must balance death with life.”

  It was a nice speech that proved nothing. Had the late Jonathan maybe really opposed the marriage? It was a thought, but I wasn’t going to find out here.

  “Did Jonathan have a personal, private problem?” I asked.

  “Good gracious no,” Gertrude Radford said.

  “Damn it, Fortune,” George Ames said, “this Weiss came to collect money, Jonathan refused, and Weiss killed him. Those are the plain facts. You can’t evade them.”

  “Why go to Jonathan?” I said. “Why not go to Walter?”

  “Because Walter couldn’t pay,” Ames said testily. “Jonathan had control of his brother’s estate until Walter was thirty.”

  Mrs. Radford said, “My husband did not believe that a woman could, or should, handle money. Except for a small income of my own, Jonathan controlled our money.”

  “What are you trying to find out, Fortune?” Ames said. “No one in the family was near the apartment at the time, except Gertrude, and she couldn’t get in. She has no key. Jonathan was already dead then.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “or maybe someone was with him keeping him quiet. Maybe he wasn’t dead at two o’clock after all.”

  They didn’t look startled, or guilty, they just stared at me with nothing to say to that.

  I said, “Do any of you know a man named Paul Baron?”

  “No.”-“Of course not.” They said together. Their ignorance sounded genuine. I dropped it.

  “Where could I find Walter now?”

  “He went out with Deirdre. She’s staying in one of the cottages until the wedding,” Mrs. Radford said. “We don’t mean to be unhelpful, or callous, Mr. Fortune, but we can’t help you. At the moment I am only concerned with binding our wounds.”

  “We all like to bind wounds,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  None
of the others drinking their ritual coffee had even glanced at me, and they didn’t now as I walked out. I was an alien animal, some foreign species. They were behind their walls, and outside there were only strange breeds of no interest to them.

  The butler ushered me out. The hour was almost up, so I stood in the biting night cold and waited for the taxi to return. I was thinking about Paul Baron and a world a lot different from the world of the Radfords, when I heard the light steps in the snow.

  A thin shadow watched me from the trees at the corner of the house. The shadow hissed at me, said:

  “Are you the detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hurry,” she said.

  A female shadow that turned and walked away around the house. I followed.

  7

  The path led toward two cottages behind the house. Only one showed light. The tall woman led me toward the lighted one.

  She wore boots, a loose one-piece wool dress, and nothing else against the ten-degree cold but an enormous red-and-white-striped scarf. She strode out like one of those old fanatics leading a crusade.

  Inside, the main room of the cottage was bright and well-furnished. She led me through into a smaller room without even a glance at the expensive furniture. In the small room there were a narrow bed, straight chairs, two worn bureaus, an old desk piled with papers, and a shabby dining table. A monk’s cell.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  I sat. She sat at the desk. I saw her clearly, and she was a girl: a tall, lanky girl of about twenty-five, with a long solemn face.

  “I’m Morgana. You’re investigating Uncle Jonathan’s death?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “You think someone here really killed him?”

  “I don’t think anything yet. Do you?”

  “I think that a total stranger is a bit too convenient. My uncle was a strong and clever man. It strikes me that he was not a man to be killed so easily by someone who had come to squeeze money. He should have been alert in that situation.”

  That thought had crossed my mind. “Do you have an idea?”

  She crossed her legs. It was an efficient, mannish gesture. She swung her booted leg as if she were about to give instructions to her soldiers. “No, not really. Any Radford or Ames is capable of murder, but I don’t know of any motives. Logically there is my brother, Walter, but it couldn’t have been Walter.”

  “Why not, and why logically?”

  “He is basically too gentle to hurt anyone, although he hated Jonathan. Jonathan tried to make him a businessman, and Mother tried to make him a cold aristocrat. Because they both failed, they think he is weak, but it isn’t that.” Her leg swung faster to some inner conflict. “When we were both small, we took an oath to right the wrongs our family had done. To do only good. Mother and Jonathan destroyed that in Walter, but they could not make him what they wanted, so he became what he is.”

  “What is he?”

  “Bitter, corrupt and self-indulgent.” She looked at me. “But the gentle boy is still there; I know that. He couldn’t kill.”

  “He has an alibi anyway. If he was really here on Monday.”

  “He was. I talked to him.” Her leg swung. “But she wasn’t.”

  “She?”

  “The cool Deirdre. She gets it all now, you see?”

  “Did Jonathan dislike her? Did he oppose her?”

  “No, not at all. Jonathan admired her just as Mother does. They admired her strength. Good for Walter, they considered.”

  “Then why would she kill Jonathan?”

  “There may be things I don’t know. They don’t tell me much.”

  “It’s not logical for her to kill a man who liked her.”

  “Unless something had changed,” Morgana Radford said. Her leg swung in spasms and her hands twitched. “There’s something dark and animal in her. She looks at Walter like a spider.”

  “But she has an alibi. Everyone has an alibi.”

  She sighed. “I suppose so. I suppose it was this Weiss. In a way it is a kind of justice. Simple, stupid violence.”

  I watched her. “You didn’t like your uncle, did you?”

  Abruptly, she stood. She began to pace the Spartan room. “My uncle was an evil man. One of the evil Radfords! Do you know how the Radfords became powerful, rich? On blood! They called it coffee, but it was blood they sold. The blood of Indians, peasants, slaves! They robbed, killed and maimed the darker people of the world so that they could live in ease at home. It still goes on, day after day. Power, greed and self-interest, and Jonathan was the leader of today. A most efficient, strong man. I’m glad he’s dead, and I won’t let them make Walter like him!”

  In her shapeless brown dress she looked like some fundamentalist preacher promising fire and brimstone. That’s just what she was. A fanatic. What else she was, I couldn’t say. Maybe she was on the edge of a private darkness, or maybe she was only a sensitive girl in a rapacious family. Fanatics do a lot of harm, but they do a lot of good, too. Maybe most of the good.

  “Where were you on Monday, Miss Radford?”

  “At work. I’m an officer in the Society of Economic Missions. Our work is to correct the wrongs of exploitation in colonial countries.” She gave me an appraising look. She knew what I was asking. “It’s in the East Fifties. I was there all morning. I came home on the train after Walter.”

  “Do you know about any problems your uncle had?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. I did hear Mother say once that Jonathan was becoming a night owl in his old age, but I don’t know what it means. He did seem to take longer business trips recently.”

  “Night action and longer business trips? But you don’t know if he was involved in something unusual for him?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t be surprised by anything Jonathan was involved in,” Morgana Radford said bitterly. “Anything.”

  “Do you know where I can find Walter?”

  “Probably at that Costa’s gambling house. Jonathan closed it, but it opened up in the next town. Walter has to gamble, you see? He has to wallow. They did that to him.”

  She was no longer talking to me. I left her staring at what had to be some invisible image of Walter Radford. I went back to the house where my taxi waited in the snow. Mrs. Radford was there. “You were speaking to Morgana?”

  “Yes.”

  She was silent a moment. In the forest some large night bird attacked a small animal. Mrs. Radford said, “She is a strange girl, withdrawn from us. It comes from having no father. She worshiped her only brother. She can’t let him grow up, mature. She sees mature strength as evil.”

  There are always two sides, sometimes more, and all sides can be true. Strength can be mature. It can also be evil.

  “Walter must assume charge now,” Mrs. Radford said.

  “I guess so, Mrs. Radford,” I said. I was thinking that there were pressures in the Radford family. Whether they were a cause of Jonathan’s death, or only a result, I had no way of knowing.

  I got into the taxi. Mrs. Radford stood in the snow in front of the house and watched me leave.

  Carmine Costa’s casino was a big house on a back road with many small rooms inside. Some of the rooms were for relaxation and booze; six were for action. There were two roulette rooms, a dice room, a blackjack room, a baccarat layout, and a poker room. It was all open. No one cares much about other people gambling. In most police forces the vice squad is separate so that the other squads don’t have to arrest the gamblers and girls they depend on for so much information that solves bigger crimes.

  There was little of the frantic madness of Las Vegas. The people here had plenty of money to lose if that would help them to pass the time. Still, there were tense jaw muscles and sweaty palms hidden in dinner jacket pockets. No gambler wants to lose. Not once, not ever.

  Deirdre Fallon stood at the dice table as slim as a crystal doll. A white evening dress that fitted her curves from ankle to high neck left no question thi
s time about her hips and breasts. Her hand rested on the arm of a slender man beside her.

  He was like his dead uncle, but younger and smaller. He held his body in an arrogant attitude, but the pallor of his face was almost anemic. His dinner jacket was flawless, and there was a superior tilt to his chin, but his eyes were dark circles with brown chips small in the center. His attention was totally on the dice game, and his mouth had a loose, petulant cast.

  “Miss Fallon,” I said.

  She turned. “Are you following me, Mr. Fortune?”

  “No, but it’s a nice thought.”

  She wrinkled her nose at me, smiled. It gave me that twinge in my back. She touched the small man beside her.

  “Walter. I think Mr. Fortune wants to talk to you.”

  He turned fast as if afraid he might respond too slowly and make Deirdre Fallon angry. His shadowed eyes scanned me. He did not like what he saw, and he was not a good enough actor to hide it. Or maybe he didn’t give a damn.

  “Fortune? You’re working for that killer? Damn you, he killed my uncle for his blood money!”

  “I thought it was Paul Baron’s money?”

  “Sure, Baron’s money, but Weiss came crawling to get it! Why don’t you find the money! Find it and you’ve got Weiss!”

  His voice was loud, and people were looking at us. Deirdre Fallon put her arm around his thin waist.

  “Walter is upset,” she said. “He feels his uncle was killed because of him, and…”

  He squirmed. “Deirdre, don’t…!”

  “It’s the truth, Walter,” she snapped.

  “I know, damn it, but not to him!”

  I was the alien, the outsider, in front of whom no Radford should ever drop the wall. Deirdre Fallon did not seem as worried about me. Maybe because she wasn’t yet a Radford. She wasn’t quite in the castle.

  “Maybe you could tell me more about this money you owed to Paul Baron?” I said.

  He seemed about to answer when the stickman tapped him. It was his turn to roll. He forgot me as if I had gone up in smoke. The dice were in his hands. His dull chip eyes shined. His mouth tightened, became firm, almost cruel. He was taller, as if he had gathered his muscles. He laid a hundred-dollar bill down.