by Emma Lathen
“Because of what Todd told me. The police got to work very quickly. The Knightley place is one of those lakeside cottages where at this time of year their neighbors have closed down for the winter. As a result they almost completely isolated at this time of year. But one of the locals was out on the lake, and he swears he saw three people busy around the boathouse, the two Knightleys and a strange man. The state police, of course, want help from the New York police to find out who the man was.
John pondered over this new information. “I see,” he said after a long pause. “If somebody on the lake saw the Knightleys, they probably saw him. So they would know they’d have to account for an unidentified guest. Do you think Marian put pressure on Gabe to come to the rescue; it sounds a bit that way. But then so would his desire to disassociate himself from Sprague’s murder. It doesn’t help us much does it? But why are you so surprised by this Gabe business, George? Did the local give a description of the visitor?”
“Nothing like that.” Mournfully George shook his head. “It was already dusk, and there was some dim lighting at the boathouse. The local can’t describe the man; he doesn’t even think he could recognize him. No, what bothers me, John, is how we got on to the Knightley cottage. It was through following up on Baxter’s trail. Then Baxter disappears at the beginning of the summer, with no explanation about where he could be. Then an extra man turns up at the Knightleys, everything seems to fit into place. Until Gabe steps forth.”
Lucy pulled the last arrow, and perhaps the best one, from her quiver and let fly for another bull’s-eye.
“I’m afraid, dear, there is an explanation of what has happened to Baxter.” Almost apologetically she related the history of Patterson’s letter to the Brothers of Silence.
“A monastery.” George was stunned. “Lucy, are you sure you are not making this up as you go along?”
Lucy’s look spoke volumes.
“I don’t exactly mean making it up,” as George backtracked quickly, “but are you certain you understood?”
“I saw the carbon.”
George was reluctant to abandon his theory of Baxter being the mysterious visitor. Doubtfully, he turned to John for his opinion. “What do you think John? After all, a carbon isn’t the same as the letter itself. For all we know, these two precious fund raisers fixed up this letter overnight and slipped it into the files.”
Before John could reply he was respectfully forestalled by Miss Corsa. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Lancer,” she said from her desk, “but that would be impossible in any well run office.”
Miss Corsa’s tone was pleasantly informative. She was genuinely tolerant of the ignorance of office mechanics sometimes displayed by her bosses. Nonetheless it was perfectly clear what would happen to the expectations of anyone foolhardy enough to insert a superfluous carbon into Miss Corsa’s files. “There are letterbook numbers, file logs, and stenographer notebooks,” she amplified.
While George argued that not all offices measured up to Miss Corsa’s high standards, John was pursuing another train of thought. “George, don’t you think we are in danger of overlooking the obvious? We started looking for Baxter because he might have been concealing Patterson. There’s no firm reason to suppose that the list of four names was ever intended for escape purposes. But one thing is certain. If Patterson is hiding with a friend, it has to be a close friend, not someone he saw only now and then. In fact, the most likely sort of intimate, outside of a relative, would be someone he saw practically daily, someone whose sympathies with him outweighed any obligations to Sally, Dartmouth, or the police. Have you considered the possibility that the unidentified man in the Knightley cottage is Patterson himself?”
“You mean that Mrs. Knightley has been hiding him all along?”
“Precisely.”
“Are you suggesting that there’s something between the two?”
Scarcely a week ago George would have sent up psalms of thanksgiving at this solution to the problem. Now h sounded censorious.
In a different way so did Lucy as she said, “No.”
George’s eyebrows went up. Lucy was the one who kept up with modern literature and was broadminded.
“Well if she’s hiding him, there obviously is something between them,” she conceded, “but not what you mean. Not Marian. You haven’t met her.”
John was intrigued and said, “I notice you don’t dismiss the idea, just the motive.”
Lucy nodded vigorously.
“You go meet her, then you’ll understand. She’s not a woman guided by conventional standards, that’s not what I mean at all. I can see her doing all sorts of things that other people would shrink from. But she wouldn’t do them for conventional reasons. You will see.”
John accepted both the judgment and the suggestion. “You’re probably right. After all the husband seems to be part of the New Hampshire business, whatever it is. I confess I’m beginning to be curious to meet the lady. She does manage to keep herself in the background. George and I have been tripping over everybody else in this mess, but we could go on for months and never meet Marian. What do you say, George? I’m in favor of phoning and making that appointment we didn’t get yesterday.”
George’s serious face was suddenly split with a grin. “Yes, I agree. But look what happened yesterday when we didn’t bring Lucy along. I can’t take this sort of thing two days running. Are you planning any more explosions, dear?”
“Now George,” she said indulgently, her seraphic expression of rebuke to such fantasy, “John and you go and see Marian for yourselves. I am going to be quite busy working on this list. Miss Corsa and I think we are beginning to close in on Father Martin.”
If one calls for an appointment at 11:30 AM in New York, one ends up at lunch with them. Gabe beamed impartially on his two hosts. “We’ve already had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Lancer, you know,” he said cheerfully. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble working out something for the Friends.”
George blinked once, then expressed polite confidence in Target. Under cover of his menu John reflected appreciatively on Lucy’s tactics.
The first ten minutes passed in an exchange of commonplaces. They all deplored the trials of Target and Dartmouth, although as George pointed out, Target hadn’t lost a penny. They all extolled the talents of Todd, although as Gabe pointed out he was a wee bit old-fashioned in his approach to fundraising. They all refused to believe Patterson could have murdered Sprague, although, as John pointed out, this conclusion simply compounded the confusion.
Marian confined herself to short statements of agreement or disagreement, delivered calmly and concisely. But while George and John were still searching for an opening it was she who signaled the end of the first round.
“I expect your wife told you Gabe spent last Saturday night at our cottage in Saxe, Mr. Lancer,” she said coolly.
George, blandly buttering his breadstick, was equally cool. A lifetime of Lucy made other women child’s play. “Yes she did. I understand the police heard you had someone there and thought it might be Baxter.”
“They don’t think so anymore. “Was there a slight undertone of mockery in her voice? “Gabe called them up this morning to explain.”
As if on cue, Gabe took up the tale. “It seemed advisable that there should be no misunderstanding. You can’t be too careful in a murder investigation, and they might have gotten the idea I drove straight to New York after the football game.
“They might, said John dryly.
“But now everything is cleared up,” Gabe said rubbing his hands together briskly. “They were very understanding about the whole thing.”
Target had wasted no time getting its story on the record. But had they given the police all the facts?
“It must have been a relief to them to know they could cross off Baxter. I suppose you told them about the carbon copy that came to light yesterday?” AS he said this, John hoped that Lucy’s familiarity with the letter had been gained by orthodox methods
.
Apparently it had. No one reeled back in shock. On the contrary Gabe received the question in a welcoming spirit.
“Indeed I did. Of course they were suspicions at first. But they called Gethsemane right away and that laid their doubts to rest. You know what they found out,” as Gabe became conspiratorial. “I confess I was so intrigued by the situation. I asked them to call me back. If they hadn’t, I think I would have called Gethsemane myself. But there was no need.”
“And Baxter is there?” asked George, a last ditcher by nature.
“Everything was confirmed.” Gabe’s smile could not have been broader. “Baxter is there in residence, he’s in the preliminary stages of entry into the order. And of the references he supplied originally was from Patterson. Amazing isn’t it? Not the kind of thing you would expect from artists.”
Marian demurred. “IT is not really what you expect from anyone, is it? I mean someone who has made an adult life in the outside world. It would be different if you were talking about a boy who went straight into a seminary.”
“But was it a surprise to you and your husband?” asked John. “We heard that you had seen Baxter as late as in May.”
“Yes, it came as a complete surprise. He didn’t say a word about this. But then I imagine this is one of the decisions people don’t talk about. It must be too private for discussion. And,” here she smiled slightly, “he wouldn’t expect me to be sympathetic.”
John could easily believe Marian would look on a sudden retreat to a monastery as a confession of failure. “Would you have tried to talk him out of it?” he asked out of curiosity.
Gabe guffawed. “Try talking one of these bohemian artists out of anything. They’ve had a lifetime of doing exactly what they want often fully supported by their parents. I met Baxter through one of the ad agencies we work with.” Gabe paused for reflection. He had relaxed his manner, now that his disclosures to the police were no longer in the spotlight. “He was the kind to pick and choose the work he’d do. And when he snaffled a grant from somewhere, he just packed up and went to Paris. Heck, he even insisted in living in some fleabag place so that he only had to do a minimum of work to support him. Oh, I know, Marian, Steve says he had a great future. But no one could have talked him out of doing anything. He wasn’t in the habit of listening. So it would have been useless to try to talk him out of going into a monastery or anything else for that matter. And if he ever decided he wants to leave, they won’t be able to talk him out of that either.”
John reflected that if Baxter were only an acquaintance, he had sparked a disproportionate response from Gabe. But perhaps this was simply the standard reaction of conformity to any kind of deviation from the norm. Persistently John returned to his original question and to Marian said, “But would you have tried in a case like this?”
Marian took a moment to orient herself and shook her head no. She said almost fiercely, “I don’t believe in interfering. Gabe makes it sound like a piece of self-indulgence, but I don’t believe in that at all. He must have been terribly troubled to make that decision, more troubled than anyone else realizes. He probably agonized about this for months, and perhaps years, and those around him didn’t begin to understand what he was going through. It’s not a time for gratuitous advice and interference by outsiders. Problems always look easier to people who don’t understand them, I find.”
“Oh, now, I didn’t mean —” Gabe began to protest. Marian swept over him as she continued her Baxter defense: “I don’t begin to know what prompts a man to enter a monastery. I suppose it is some kind of idea of spiritual freedom. It is not my idea of it, but what difference does that make? Who am I to have ideas on the subject for someone else? I do know that, for a grown man who is committed to another way of life, the pressures that make him reverse course have to be so compelling that his whole existence must seem like one long suffocation.”
“One long suffocation,” Gabe’s outrage burst forth as his instinct to apologize was overrun by her commentary. “He does what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants. He should try the life most of the rest of us lead.”
Marian had lost her earlier heat. “The trouble with you, Gabe,” she said lightly, “is if you don’t understand something you act as if it doesn’t exist.”
In the silence that followed, John lifted his coffee cup and toasted her: “Alec is fortunate in his friends.”
Marian relaxed completely. As she raised her cup in reply, there was a distinct twinkle in her eye:
“Alec Baxter deserves what he gets!”
Chapter 21
Independent Work
In the taxi it developed that this inconclusive exchange had helped George reach a conclusion. “We’re wasting our time,” he said, glancing at his watch. “We have to get back to fundamentals.”
With instinctive caution, John agreed that this was a sound procedure and invited elaboration. In his experience, getting back to fundamentals was easier in theory than in practice.
George complied, “Just look at this list of names Patterson left behind. Including Baxter’s. Or these reports of an unidentified man at the Knightleys. Now what’s come of them? Absolutely nothing. They’ve only obscured the major issue which remains that Patterson disappeared and took $50,000 with him. That’s what we should concentrate on. The rest …” He broke off and shrugged, possibly in comment on their recent lunch.
John sympathized. Gabe and Marian had provided them with considerable food for thought, but from the Dartmouth pint of view demanded of George, they had not, strictly speaking, been profitable. Nevertheless John felt obliged to enter an objection.”
“You are not forgetting the Sprague murder are you George? I that it should be considered in the … er … fundamentals.”
“Of course, of course,” George said with dissatisfaction. “But, as I was saying, tracking down Baxter has wasted our time. What do we have? Baxter has turned religious. He has absolutely nothing to do with Patterson, with the theft or the Sprague murder. This is simply an example of what I mean. Obviously we can spend weeks finding answers to questions, and none of them will do us any good. We have to get back to the bare bones of the situation. Cut away the nonessentials.”
“I don’t know that I agree with you,” said John. It would be unkind to add that cutting away the nonessentials left pitiably little information. Nor did he agree with George about the wastefulness of their forays. Marian’s comments on Baxter, like Patterson abstraction of SAT scores, like Gabe’s visit to Dartmouth, were meaningless and irrelevant at the moment. But so was each individual piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Somewhere in the back of John’s consciousness was the feeling that this whirlwind of isolated facts was beginning to take a shape of some sort. “Sorry, what was that George?”
They had reached the Sloan. As George paid the drive he joined John and repeated himself. “I did, that’s what I told Ralph. He called about Sally selling off everything for cash. Seemed to feel it was important.” He stood aside to let a substantial matron precede him into the Sloan’s elegant lobby.
John responded to the faint question in George’s voice, “I suppose one could say it was suspicions. Sally may be planning to join her husband. But if that’s the case we misinterpreted her completely. I admit that it’s possible that we did, since I didn’t pretend to understand her thought processes. Still I’d be surprised …”
This was enough for George, “Exactly,” he interrupted with renewed assurance. “I told Ralph that the police are the people to keep an eye on Sally. After all, the poor woman has plenty of problems without us adding to them.”
Since George at heart was surprisingly sentimental about such things as devoted wives, he dropped the subject and with some asperity repeated, “We should forget these detours. Get back to essentials. Do you know what’s happening at Dartmouth? Lyman called again, and says that the situation is extremely bad. Says that the only thing keeping parents from withdrawing students is the draft. If we don’t get to the bot
tom of things, Dartmouth may be irreparably harmed.”
John was leading the way to his own office. “It’s surprising what colleges can rise above, especially great ones like Dartmouth,” John remarked.
But George was not listening. “Good heavens. Lucy is still here.” There was no dissimulation about Lucy now. She and Miss Corsa were thick as thieves and openly bubbling with triumph.
“Aha,” announced Lucy.
Miss Corsa was more informative. “We found him Mr. Thatcher. We found him.”
George was bereft of speech. John hastened to enlighten him. “No George, not Patterson. Father Martin.”
Fortunately both Miss Corsa and Lucy were too pleased with themselves to register the tepidity of the response. “I finally called the Cardinal’s office, Miss Corsa said with a militant gleam. “And we finally discovered Father Jonas Martin. He’s only been at St. Patrick’s for eight months.”
“I was waiting to see what your lunch was like,” Lucy said enigmatically.
“We decided,” Miss Corsa said with heavy significance, “That it would be best if Mrs. Lancer talked to Father Martin. He specializes in converts.”
John reflected that only a faithful Daughter of the Church could pack so much meaning into such a simple sentence.
“And so, George, I’ve just had a long talk with Father Martin. He was perfectly charming,” Lucy concluded.
George shook free from his initial disappointment and managed to sound receptive if not overly hopeful. “Did he know anything about Patterson?”
“No, but he did know Baxter. In fact …”
In fact it had been Father Martin to whom Baxter first took his spiritual doubts, then religious uncertainties, and finally a profound new religious awareness that required a change of affiliation. There had been, Lucy reported, conferences, confessions, joint prayers, and instruction.
Was that a smirk on Miss Corsa’s face? John would never know. He turned his attention back to Lucy.
“And he knew all about the Brothers of Silence,” she continued. “He said that as soon as he realized how sincere Baxter was he urged him to consider a religious vocation. He admits that at first he was hesitant, because he thought Baxter might be just another one of those lawyers.