The Silver Cobweb

by Ben Benson

  “The uniform has nothing to do with it. You got into a fight with some drunks in a public place. I’m a reasonable man, Lindsey. I don’t mind my troopers having a ball once in a while. But on the quiet. Let ’em go off somewhere out of sight where I don’t hear about it.”

  “It wasn’t a fight, Captain. I just removed one man from the premises.”

  “Because he made a few remarks about a night-club singer. What were you acting as, the official bouncer for The Red Wheel?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You know the regulations about conduct in a public place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You keep getting tangled up here, Lindsey. I’d like to know who is making all this trouble for you.”

  “So would I, sir.”

  “I don’t like the way this looks, Lindsey. We’ve had men who were accident-prone. You put them in a cruiser and they crack it up. Put them on a motorcycle and they break a collarbone. Accident-prone, no matter what kind of an assignment you give them. They may have the best intentions in the world but you have to ease them out of the organization. You’re the same way. It’s never your fault, but you keep getting jammed up all the time. And, what’s more important, I don’t want a man in my troop who keeps making mistakes in judgment.”

  He looked at me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t have one.

  “I’m sorry, Lindsey,” he said. “I’m more sorry for your father because I have a lot of respect for him. But I’ll have to turn this over to Major Carradine. Meanwhile you’ll make out a complete report on it. Understand?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “I don’t know if they’ll suspend you or not pending the investigation. I’ll leave it entirely up to them.”

  He dismissed me abruptly. I went out of the duty office, past the dining room, where I heard the clatter of dishes and glassware, and up the stairs to my room. I lay back on the royal blue blanket and stared up at the ceiling. Captain Dondera had made his point. A trooper, off duty, had no business being in a place where rough and abusive language was used. If he did go into such a place by mistake with his wife or girl friend, he was supposed to leave quickly and quietly.

  I lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke, thinking, bitterly, they expected too much from you. Lead the life of a celibate monk. Keep away from bars and trouble spots. Don’t defend your girl. Don’t have too many drinks. Go to a movie and hold hands, or sit in a living room and play anagrams.

  And I knew what would happen next. The executive officer, Major Carradine, would make Captain-Adjutant Crow aware of it, then turn the matter over to Divisional Inspector Reilly for investigation. While that was in process the trooper was usually transferred to another barracks. The investigation could result in one of two things. A suspension with loss of pay, or loss of time off for a specified period. I didn’t think it was serious enough to warrant a court-martial or my resignation.

  The worst part was thinking of how my father would take it. He would know about it soon enough, and my future career would be as clear as rain to him.

  I was down to the end of my cigarette when I heard somebody coming up the stairs. Tony Pellegrini poked his head into the doorway and said, “What’s the matter, kid? No chow?”

  “I had something on the road,” I lied. I was choked up and I tried hard not to show it. I don’t know if I was deceiving him. As much as these little matters were hushed up they had a way of getting around the barracks.

  “You riding with Ludwell again tonight?” Pellegrini asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Pellegrini leaned against the door jamb. “How do you like Ludwell?”

  “Okay.”

  He nodded, then grinned. “Look, kid, you might find it a little tough here at first. They hold a tight rein on you.”

  “I’ve been finding that out, Tony.”

  “Stay with it. Just clamp your teeth and hang on tight. It’ll pass.”

  “I hope so.”

  He locked his thumbs in his gunbelt. “You remember asking me about shapers?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Did you have any particular reason for asking me?”

  “No, Tony.”

  “You’re sure, kid?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Nothing.” He stood there for a moment as though bursting to say something. I knew he would never say it. He scraped a toe on the floor and fiddled with his gunbelt. “Look,” he said, “any time you’ve got a problem and you want to talk about it, I’m around. I might not pull any weight around here, but I’m a good listener, kid.”

  “Thanks, Tony.”

  He waved his hand. “I’ll see you later. If you want me, I’ll be out on Route 1 chasing taillights.”

  He left. I stood up and went to the bureau. On it was the blackened brooch. I picked it up and looked at it. Then I went over to Keith Ludwell’s special silver polish.

  I cleaned the brooch, being especially careful with the fine strands of the cobweb. When I was through it shone. I looked at the initials on the back. A.B. Amy Bell. It could be nobody else.

  I wrapped the silver cobweb in a piece of tissue and put it into my drawer.

  15

  SERGEANT NEAL DIDN’T SEND ME OUT ON PATROL THAT NIGHT. Keith Ludwell drove off with Driscoll and I was assigned to other duties. First I drove a cruiser to the Framingham troop headquarters garage for servicing and repairs, leaving it there and returning with another. Then I went on a mail delivery, meeting an Andover cruiser near Georgetown and swapping parcels. When I got back to the barracks I had a great deal of paper work to do. It gave me a chance to check the files. There were no major crimes last summer when Amy Bell had first arrived in Dorset. I asked Sergeant Neal if anything unusual had happened about that time.

  “I don’t remember anything special,” he said. “Just regular small stuff. Why?”

  “No big robberies or anything?”

  “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I handed the papers to him. “I’m finished with these reports.”

  I went upstairs, cleaned and oiled my gun and polished all my leather and buttons. I got my laundry together. When I finished it was midnight. Sergeant Neal told me I could turn in.

  The next morning, Saturday, they sent me out to assist Chief Rigsby again. I drove down to Rigsby’s garage on Main Street. He was working on a car that was set up on jacks. Crawling out from under the car, he wiped a smear of grease from his cheek.

  “You’re back again,” he said. “What are we supposed to do together?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They sent me here. There’s no reason why we can’t do a good, careful investigation.”

  “We’ve tried our best, haven’t we?” he asked. “What else is there we can do?”

  “We might have missed something.”

  He took out a battered pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I lit up. The cigarette had no taste. Breakfast had had no taste. I was a little heartsick about everything.

  “I’m surprised Bart Neal is paying so much attention to me,” Rigsby said. “I’ve got no police force, no radio, no police car. I’m nothing more than a part-time night watchman.” He wet the end of his cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it. “Now if I had an organization like Marblehead or Newburyport or Gloucester it would be different.”

  “Size isn’t everything,” I said.

  “I’m nothing, Lindsey. Your boys don’t have any use for me and I don’t blame them.”

  “No, they’ve got a lot of respect for you.”

  He sat down on a workbench and smoked. “I guess I should be doing something. I can’t just sit around, putting in my time and waiting, can I?”

  “No,” I said. “Because you’re closer to it than anybody else.”

  “I don’t have anything to work with, Lindsey. I don’t have what your outfit has. They’ve got everything.”

  “You’ve got one thing they haven’t got. You’re closest to
it. You could spot something they might have missed.”

  “It’s no good to be too close to it. Sometimes it affects your reasoning.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’m not thinking of Swenke. I’m thinking of Mary Ann Fedder. I remember her since she was five years old and she was going to church in a starched pink dress and a straw bonnet with ribbons on it. In her hand she had a nickel because she wanted to put her own money in the collection plate. Those are the things I remember—” He broke off, dropped the cigarette and ground it hard under his heel. “I knew Mary Ann. She would never do anything wrong. She’d never get mixed up with a Swenke—not intentionally.”

  “There was a suitcase in her car,” I said.

  “I don’t care about the suitcase. I knew Mary Ann, I tell you.”

  “So we try a new direction.”

  “Sure,” he said. He waved his hand. “North, east, south, west. She went somewhere Tuesday afternoon. She crossed paths with Swenke for the first time. I’m sure of that, and that’s all I’m sure of. Thursday Russell Westlake disappears. There’s another kid I’d stake my life on. Could I be that far wrong? All these years living in this town, wouldn’t I know those two kids?”

  “Sure, you would.”

  “So now it’s your turn, Ralph. They spent a lot of money training you. You’re supposed to be smart and alert.”

  “Supposed to be,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “Where did Mary Ann go? How did she meet Swenke and what was he doing at the time?”

  “I’ve got my mind set on one thing,” I said. “I keep thinking of their honeymoon plans. There must have been some rumors around where these kids were going to honeymoon.”

  “We went over that,” he said, his shoulders drooping tiredly. “There was nothing. It was all a big secret.”

  “Why? Why should a honeymoon be such a big secret?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Rigsby said. “I never had a honeymoon. I got married in the service on a three-day pass.”

  “These kids were trying to save money. If I was trying to save money I’d get a cottage somewhere. This time of year it would be dirt cheap.”

  “To each his own,” Rigsby said. “If it was me I’d sure take in Bermuda.”

  “Bermuda would cost money. A summer cottage in the month of May or June would be a lot cheaper.”

  He moved off the bench and stood there pinching his ear. “Would you go back there, Ralph?”

  “Go where?”

  “Say you were Russell Westlake and you rented a honeymoon cottage. Then your girl was murdered. Would you ever go back to the cottage again?”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” I said. “Would you go back?”

  “Not me. I wouldn’t want to see it ever again. I wouldn’t even want to think about it.”

  “I might,” I said slowly. “I might be sentimental. I might want to go there and dream a little and picture myself there with my bride.”

  “Romance stuff. That’s because you’re younger than I.”

  “So is Russell Westlake, remember. I’m trying to think like he would.”

  “It would be like pulling out your own teeth.”

  “Not necessarily. It could be dream stuff. Some people live on that kind of thing. A man like Russell Westlake might do it, Chief.”

  “Al,” he said. “Call me Al. I’m a hell of a chief. I’ve heard the selectmen are going to give me the can.”

  “Because of one murder?”

  “The first murder they ever had in this town. A cop is hired to prevent crime. I didn’t prevent this one. So I have to take the rap. They throw me out and put in another chief. Then everybody is happy.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Since when does it count whose fault it is? The world is made up of wolves and goats. I’m a goat.”

  “Dammit, it’s not right.”

  “What are you getting so stirred up about? Did you ever squawk when a baseball club fired a manager? He might have all .250 banjo hitters and ten sore-armed old pitchers. The team’s in last place. The public screams for somebody’s scalp. What do the owners do? They fire the manager. Then everybody’s satisfied. They start coming back to the ball park. Of course, the team doesn’t get any better. You still have the .250 hitters and the sore-armed pitchers. So the team ends up in last place again. What happens? They fire that manager and get a new one. And so it goes, on and on. Every time the wolves howl they sacrifice a goat.”

  “You don’t have to be a goat,” I said.

  “Sure, I can always fix cars.”

  “No, you can crack this case, Al.”

  “With what? If the case is going to be cracked, the State Police will do it, not me.”

  “But with your help,” I said. “You’ve got one thing I haven’t got. Local knowledge.”

  “Knowledge. A hell of a lot of knowledge I’ve got. I wouldn’t know if my coat was on fire.”

  “You’ve got a bad fault, Al. You keep running yourself down. Snap out of it and let’s think about the possible honeymoon cottage again. Maybe those kids had a friend who owns a summer cottage and would let them use it.”

  Rigsby shook his head. “The honeymoon plans were a secret. If a friend knew, it would let the cat out of the bag. Anyway, your own cops have contacted all friends.”

  “All right, what about the Fedders? If they owned a cottage, Mary Ann could get the key without anyone being the wiser.”

  “They don’t have a cottage. But come again.”

  “The Westlakes.”

  “No. They did own a cottage. Not any more. They sold it last year.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Where was the cottage? In Ipswich?”

  “Why did you pick Ipswich?”

  “Everything keeps pointing to Ipswich. Westlake’s car was found in Ipswich. Was their cottage in Ipswich?”

  “No. It was on Dorset Pond.”

  “So we’ll change direction,” I said. “Dorset Pond. Who bought the Westlake cottage?”

  Rigsby pulled at his ear. “Somebody in Groveland named Henry Allenby.” He fished for a cigarette and looked at it thoughtfully before putting it in his mouth. “What do you think?”

  “That could be it,” I said. “Don’t you see the gag? The big joke? The secret? Westlake spends his honeymoon at his old family cottage. Nobody would think he’d rent it from Allenby.”

  “It’s a chance. But you could be wrong.”

  “I’ve got a terrific knack of being wrong,” I said. “But all it takes is one phone call. I’ll pay for it.”

  “It’s on me. Use mine in the office.”

  I went into his tiny office, called Groveland and spoke to some woman at the Allenby house. Then a man came on the phone. I told him it was the State Police calling.

  “I’m inquiring about that cottage you bought from the Westlakes last year,” I said.

  “I don’t see where I have to give back the money,” Allenby said. “It ain’t my fault the girl was killed. They rented the cottage for a week and they can have it. A deal is a deal. As it is, I let them have it dirt cheap. The law can’t force me to give back the twenty dollars.”

  “Mr. Allenby,” I said, “I don’t give a damn about the twenty dollars. I want to know if you rented the cottage to Russell Westlake.”

  “I did. And a deal’s a deal.”

  “Have you seen Russell since you rented the cottage to him?”

  “No. I ain’t seen him in a month. And it won’t do him no good to try and get the twenty dollars back.”

  “Did you give him a key, sir?”

  “Didn’t have to. There’s only one key. It’s always kept under the milk box on the front porch. If Russell’s gone and lost that key I’ll charge him for making another. I paid his family a good price for that cottage.”

  “Good-bye, sir,” I said. I hung up.


  Coming out of the office I saw Chief Rigsby washing his hands at the sink.

  “Well?” he said. “Any luck?”

  “We’ve made a start,” I said. “Russell did rent the cottage from Allenby. From the way Allenby talks, I guess he doesn’t know Russell has disappeared.”

  Rigsby put on his leather jacket. “You coming out to the pond with me to have a look at it?”

  “I sure am.”

  He was buckling an old holstered Colt revolver under his jacket. “Are you going to call your barracks and tell them?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I don’t think they care much where I go or what I do.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then after a moment, “You’re on the out-list, too?”

  “Way down at the bottom, Al. You’re looking at one of those goats. They’re going to transfer me out of here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You make me feel ashamed of myself, kid.”

  “Why?”

  “A youngster like you, you’ve been listening to all my whining without saying a word. All the time you had your own troubles.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Do you want to take both cars?”

  “It would be better. If anything comes up, we may need both.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”

  I went outside to the cruiser, called Corporal Kerrigan on the radio and told him where I was going with Chief Rigsby. He said to go ahead, and he wished me luck, and from the tone of his voice I think he knew I needed it.

  16

  I FOLLOWED THE OLD PONTIAC DOWN POND ROAD, passing the Derechy house. The two children, filthy and grimy, were playing in a trash pile near Derechy’s old hulk of a car.

  We made the turn at the pond and rode up over the bluff. My heart gave a little thump as we passed the parking area where I had been with Amy Bell. That was another interlude that seemed over, too.

  The Pontiac descended slowly along the twin ruts. I followed, passing the spot where I had found the silver brooch. The Pontiac bumped and groaned as we came through the overhang of fir trees and into the dappled sunlight of a grove. To the left was the cottage covered with boiler plating over the windows. Another boarded cottage was to the right.