by Emma Lathen
The officer in charge broke in. “Oh yes, we can. And you’re next, buddy.”
He nodded a command, and two of his men efficiently frog-marched Caldwell away to the waiting riot car.
They passed in front of Thatcher so that he saw the blank stupefaction descending on the angrily twisting face of the Southerner.
It was all over in minutes.
“My God!” somebody said. “Abercrombie tried to murder him in front of a thousand people . . .”
“I tell you he’s crazy . . .”
“Oh, Henry . . .”
‘‘Daddy!”
Laura, white-faced and suddenly defenseless, had moved close to him.
“It’s all right, baby,” said Thatcher, tucking her hand reassuringly in his arm. “Just a passing ugliness.”
But it was more than a passing ugliness. Gloria Parry, breathing hard, was stroking the sleeve of her husband’s coat to reassure herself that he was still there. Mr. and Mrs. McCullough, who had hurried over, stared blankly at the door through which the police and their prisoners had gone.
Thatcher looked down at his daughter. “No, don’t talk about it. Let’s have some of that coffee we were aiming at.”
Mrs. Parry seconded him. “Yes,” she said, and her voice shook only slightly. “Yes, I think I’d like some coffee, too.”
But once the initial shock was over, Owen Abercrombie’s arrest cried aloud for comment. The NAACP banquet, once recovered, discussed it in a brittle near-hysterical way until late into the night.
As Wall Street did, on Monday morning.
According to the Sloan’s Chief of Research, no arrest unconnected with storage tanks had aroused so much talk for decades. Walter Bowman was having the time of his life, trumpeting into the phone, sounding old contacts, opening new pipelines of information. His subordinates were lashed into a frenzy of activity.
“The New York City Police Department employs over 40,000 people,” he thundered. “One of you must have a contact Think!”
He refused to admit that very few budding young bankers do know a cop. Neophytes in the Research Department, accustomed to appraising their circle of acquaintance in terms of potential tipsters to mergers and acquisitions, suddenly found themselves remembering that dim daughter of their mother’s Cousin Susan who was rumored to have married somebody in the police public relations office. Irately they reviewed their relatives, their classmates, their neighbors. Wait a minute! Didn’t their roommate at the Business School have a brother who was a pathologist, somebody who did autopsies? Spiritually, the Research Department rang with cries of “Mush!”
In spite of this self-flagellation, very little meat was added to the bare bones of the official press releases. These were massively uninformative. Owen Abercrombie had been formally charged with violating the Sullivan Act by carrying concealed weapons, with breach of peace, malicious mischief, and a host of misdemeanors and minor felonies. Bail, however, had been denied, indicating that a more serious charge was in the offing. His cohorts had also been the subject of miscellaneous holding charges. Indeed, two of the thugs were wanted in Rhode Island for armed assault. Dean Caldwell was out on bail.
“And that’s about it,” Bowman summed up for Thatcher. “Not much so far. But we’ll keep working at it. By tomorrow—”
He was interrupted by the entrance of Charlie Trinkam, who beamed at them in high good spirits while draping himself on the windowsill.
“Hashing over this Abercrombie business?” he asked. “I just got all the dirt from Paul Jackson.”
Thatcher nodded approvingly. A criminal lawyer had the contacts they needed. He would know everything there was to know. But perhaps it was more than a question of knowing the right people. So far there had been no announcement of an attorney for the defense. This delay had inspired the White Association for Civic Intervention to an angry denunciation of incommunicado tactics by city officials and confused mumblings about habeas corpus, which had hitherto been incapable of provoking “Whacky’s” recognition, let alone its approval. The Police Commissioner had wearily countered by disclosing that the defendant had already seen his wife, his son, his doctor, his partner, and three lawyers whom he had refused to retain.
“Is Jackson going to undertake the defense?” asked Thatcher.
“They asked him to, but he said no.”
“Good man,” murmured Bowman.
“Oh, it isn’t that.” Charlie shook his head. “He’ll act for anybody. But he says that it’s a million to one against this coming to trial, so it’s not his cup of tea.”
Bowman began to protest this view of the situation, but Trinkam held up a restraining hand.
“It’s all very interesting,” he said. “You know Abercrombie is a rich man. Well, he threw out his son a couple of years ago when the boy decided to go and be a poet in a beach shack out in California. They’d been having trouble anyway, since Owen’s second marriage.”
Rapidly Walter Bowman scanned his mental files on the personages of the financial community. “That’s right. He got married about five years ago. To that model.”
“Exactly. And the honeymoon’s been over for some time. Personally, I think Owen lost interest in sex when he discovered segregation. So, guess what happened as soon as the news hit the radio. The boy flew into town in the middle of the night, and he and the wife put their heads together. Their theory is for Owen to beat the rap by being pronounced insane.”
“Ah-h-h,” Thatcher was appreciative. ‘‘Then he’d be legally incompetent to handle his estate.”
“Sure. They get themselves appointed guardians, then they hold the purse strings, and the beauty of it is that Abercrombie doesn’t have any financial liabilities. He’s piled up a mess of criminal charges but there aren’t any civil damages, no big tax bills, nothing. It’s just a question of putting him quietly away in a private sanitarium for a couple of years. Hell, he’s going to have to spend more than that in jail anyway if he doesn’t agree. Public opinion won’t go along with a suspended sentence, particularly when it comes out that those two thugs from Providence got their guns from him. And that’s even if they don’t get him for the two earlier attempts on Parry.”
“Yes, it doesn’t seem as if Abercrombie has any choice. But you say he’s resisting the idea?”
“The way I hear it, he’s barely able to get out a coherent sentence. When his own lawyer advised an insanity plea, Abercrombie threw him out. Sure, he’ll fight it at the start. But then he really hasn’t taken in the fact that he’s a criminal. The wife and the son have got the old man in a squeeze. He doesn’t have any choice. And even if he does contest it all the way, the family isn’t going to have any trouble producing a string of witnesses. Quite apart from his performance last night, a lot of people think he’s loony.”
“Then that takes care of Abercrombie for the duration,” said Walter Bowman out of the depths of his experience. “The courts can settle a lot of things fast when they want to, but the one thing that takes months, if not years, is a family quarrel about control of an estate. And part of that estate is his partnership interest in Dibbel Abercrombie. Had you thought about the mess this is going to make over there?”
Everyone present agreed that even customers with a strong enough stomach to deal with Abercrombie qua broker during the past few weeks were going to fight shy of a house that managed to foul itself up into a situation worthy of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
Thatcher’s interest, however parochial, was not confined to this aspect of Owen Abercrombie’s arrest.
“Are they going to charge him with the other attempts on Parry?”
“Not if he sets up a successful insanity plea.”
Thatcher waved away this technicality. “Of course not. But do the police think he did it?”
Charlie shrugged. “They don’t know, according to the poop from Jackson. They tried to check his alibi for the shooting, but you can guess what they came up with. The wife doesn’t get up till noon, and Owen drives to t
he station himself. He lives in the same town as Parry, after all, and the whole thing took place during commuting hours. He could easily have slipped over for half an hour and then gone on his way to New York. But that holds true for everybody in that neck of the woods. All of Westchester and the Connecticut shore.”
“Connecticut? How does that come in?”
“While the police had their hands on Dean Caldwell, they decided to run a check on him too. He lives in Greenwich, and he has the same itinerary as Abercrombie. Solitary drive to the station and time of arrival in New York unprovable within an hour or two. I think what the police are really pinning their hopes to is finding the rifle. They’ve got both the bullet and the cartridge case. And the way Caldwell has been talking makes him a good second-string suspect. Personally, I think it’s a lot of hot air. At least he wasn’t carrying a gun last night.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Bowman objected. “He had a good motive, and the attempt in Katonah was pretty safe. He’d be smart to let Abercrombie take the spotlight at Lincoln Center where no one but a nut would try anything.”
“Maybe so.” Charlie was still unconvinced. “But look, John. If you really want the latest, why don’t you have lunch with Jackson and me? I fixed it up with him for one-thirty.”
“I’d like to,” said Thatcher, “but right now I’m interested in what you said about a motive, Walter. I thought young Caldwell was simply giving vent to his spectacularly unpleasant racist feelings.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Bowman wryly. “Sure, he’s from the South and he thinks exactly the way he talks. But what really put the bite into his venom was the situation at Schuyler & Schuyler.”
Both men turned to him respectfully and Bowman visibly expanded under their attention. Trinkam might know criminal lawyers, but when it came to what was going on behind the scene at any brokerage house in the world . . .
“You’ve got to go back to the time when Ambrose Schuyler died. That’s a small house they have over there, but even so it was obvious that they were going to need a new partner. Even before Art Foote died they were understaffed. Now, that kid Caldwell’s got a swollen idea of his own competence. He decided that he was going to be the new partner. Normally that idea would have been squelched damned quick when it became obvious that Nat Schuyler was talking to all sorts of prospective partners. But Nat played the whole Parry scheme close to his chest, and the negotiations dragged on for a couple of months, even after Nat located his man. In the meantime Caldwell convinced himself he was as good as in. I saw him around that time and tried to get him to backpedal a little, but it was useless. Then, when he finally found out what was going on, he exploded. As far as Caldwell is concerned, Ed Parry stole something that was his. And he doesn’t have a doubt in the world that, with Parry out of the way, he could have it back”
Thatcher frowned. “You say you tried to discourage him even before you knew about Parry? But how did you know he was wrong, Walter?”
“Because nobody in the world would have offered him a partnership. He was never even in the running. Dean Caldwell is a good enough research man,” replied Bowman with all the serenity of a man who knows that he is the best of all possible Chiefs of Research and has no further ambition, “but there are others. And he’s lacking on almost every other score. He has no pull, he’s not a salesman, he doesn’t get on with people, and he doesn’t have the judgment to be a particularly good trader.”
Trinkam whistled at this comprehensive indictment.
“I wonder if the police know about this,” mused Thatcher.
“Jackson will be able to tell you,” said Bowman handsomely.
“Sure, they’ve dug up all that business about Caldwell’s bid for a partnership,” said Paul Jackson, spearing his butter with a breadstick. “All these people seem to be complete blabbermouths. Caldwell must have spent his entire working day complaining to people about how Parry did him dirt.”
Jackson did not approve. His own clients were noted for taciturnity.
“Amateurs,” Trinkam murmured indulgently.
“You said it,” agreed Jackson heartily. “They’re having a hell of a time finding out whether there’s a gun missing from Abercrombie’s collection. It seems they found an arsenal at his place in Katonah, rifles, shotguns, machetes. The only thing he was short on was pocket weapons. I guess that’s why he only outfitted two of his boys.”
“I’m surprised the others didn’t march into Lincoln Center shouldering shotguns,” Thatcher observed.
“The boys wouldn’t go for that.” Jackson was perfectly serious. “But the fact remains that the bullet and cartridge don’t match anything in the Abercrombie house now. I understand they’re sifting through the Katonah dump. It would be just like that lunatic to toss his rifle there.”
Trinkam was sympathetic. “Hell of a job.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a model dump. Won a prize or something,” Jackson said, displaying yet another piece of esoteric information. “Just the sort of thing Katonah would have.”
“Then it’s the kind of dump that will probably have vaporized this rifle within twenty-four hours.”
“No,” said Thatcher and Jackson simultaneously. Charlie Trinkam every now and then displayed a powerful ignorance of life as it is lived outside the confines of a metropolitan district. He would have been far more at home in the center of Peking than in South Orange, New Jersey.
“Scavengers,” explained Thatcher clearly. “In fact, in Katonah, it’s probably antique dealers who inspect the throwaways.”
“That’s right. A good rifle would be picked up right away. One of the dealers got a fine Oriental off the trash heap up in Westchester.”
Charlie moodily pecked at his salad, unprepared to contemplate this strange and exotic way of life. Jackson tactfully turned the conversation.
“The police are pretty hot on the idea of Caldwell as their boy. They figure it this way. Practically everyone at the poison party lives within striking distance of Katonah. In fact, Nat Schuyler is about the only one they care to cross out. He lives in Princeton, and hasn’t driven his own car in years. Even so, he could probably still have done it if anybody can think of a reason why he would want to. So, unless they can find the gun, they’ve pretty well had it on the shooting. But then, there’s the poisoning. And that’s where you come to an interesting point.”
“But everyone at the party could have done that too,” Thatcher protested. “It still leaves you with the same group of people.”
“Not exactly. First of all, they’ve compiled a monster timetable of movements at the party. They were lucky there. They got to people right away, the next morning in fact, while the details were still fresh in everybody’s minds. And they figure they got as much as they ever will by that route. So they haven’t been around again. But they’ve been working on it.”
Thatcher realized with a start that he had almost forgotten that gravely deferential young man who had interviewed him so efficiently. But Centre Street had not forgotten. All through these past days people had been sitting in offices piecing his statement together with seventy others and amassing a very accurate picture of that ill-fated party.
“And poison isn’t like a gun,” Paul Jackson was continuing. “This won’t be a case of someone having nicotine around the house for years. If they ever pin this one on anybody, access to the poison will be a part of the case. Anybody can have a rifle innocently. It’s a lot harder to pull that as a defense with nicotine.”
“People in cities don’t have rifles,” said Trinkam, still obsessed with his unfortunate glimpse of exurbia. “And anyway, I thought people in these estate areas had weed killers and insecticides by the ton. That’s what the pharmaceutical firms are always saying.”
“Foote wasn’t killed with any weed killer,” Paul Jackson replied. “It was the pure alkaloid. You don’t come across that often, and it’s damn hard to explain away.”
It was apparent that Jackson was already
readying himself for the arduous task of defending the poisoner, if and when brought to trial. His dark eyes glinted with interest and he elaborated further.
“The police will really have something to sink their teeth into if they can find a solid motive, and I don’t mean one of these ‘Let’s Keep Wall Street White’ things, and access to poison. I assume they can prove opportunity with their charts.”
“That still doesn’t narrow things down at all.”
“Ah, but if you think of it as a rational crime, then you get to the point about the confusion of the glasses. That’s what I meant about the police being onto something interesting. They’re concentrating on the people who had reason to know that Foote was on the wagon. Someone who wouldn’t have been put off by finding four men with three glasses.”
“Does that narrow it down much?” asked Thatcher dubiously.
“Does it ever!” replied the lawyer exuberantly. “What with old Nat Schuyler spending all his time squiring Parry around, and someone having to take up the slack in the office, poor Art Foote was pretty well chained to his desk, except when he was helping on the Parry bit. His contacts were much more restricted during his last week than normally. And practically everyone he saw was at the reception. Of course there was one group that heard about his ulcer morning, noon and night, and that was the people at Schuyler & Schuyler.” He ended on a triumphant note.
Thatcher was forcibly reminded of canny old Nat Schuyler’s comments on the use of Owen Abercrombie as a stalking horse. He said as much.
“Of course it makes sense. Anybody could play these racists like a piano. And there’s not much doubt that somebody’s been doing it from Schuyler & Schuyler. Abercrombie was a gift from heaven to the murderer.” Jackson grinned brilliantly around the table. “And he’s going to be even more of a gift to the guy’s lawyer.”
Chapter 16
Day of Wrath! O Day of Mourning!
JOHN PUTNAM THATCHER set off for his office Tuesday morning in high spirits. Since no sane observer could derive satisfaction from the current state of affairs, this left him to conclude that he was an unregenerate earthling, as opposed to the rare Eastern spirit Mrs. Davis had apparently discerned. An excellent breakfast, including first-rate eggs, bacon, hashed brown potatoes, real coffee, and the other necessities, was followed by the discovery that the sun had finally reappeared, bathing the world outside the Devonshire with a vitality which endless days of gray drizzle and fog had drained from it.