Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “I'm going to ask you both to spend the night.” Sturdevant gathered up his notes to make room for Cora Starling's sandwich tray. “There's a guest room with twin beds upstairs.” He waved off any question of propriety before Corbin could express it. “Gwen knows the way. It will be well if all three of us remained in close contact for a while, especially the two of you. You, Gwen, seem to be an effective anchor for Jonathan.”

  Corbin was barely listening. He was near dozing again. An early night of it sounded good.

  Bits of his dream were coming back to him now. A fuzzy detail here and there. The Japanese maple tree, the small park, a curious feeling of intimacy with a long-dead president, and his nose felt sore. He could even recall things that were ancillary to the dream but not part of it. He remembered, for example, that there was a book he was supposed to read, and although he forgot its title, his mind gave him a glimpse of the young man's room and the big oak table-desk on which he'd left it. There was a leather mark in place about halfway through its pages. He remembered a desk lamp that burned oil. It had a wide brass base with a slot for pencils, and it had two shades of green glass. On the wall behind it was an animal skin someone had given him. And pinned behind the animal skin were two hidden copies of the Police Gazette, which were the major reason why he wasn't as far along on his book as he should have been.

  These memories, as they came, were not unpleasant. Not at all. He remembered that Gwen seemed troubled when she aroused him from his dream. That she was alarmed. But the dream was fine. He would not have minded staying there a while. It was a happy place and it was summer. Especially,when it was summer.

  “Do you want to freshen up, Jonathan?” Sturdevant's voice.

  “Hmm?”

  “You'll find most of what you need in the guest room. The soup and sandwiches will keep. Actually, I'd like a few minutes to myself.”

  Alone in his study, Harry Sturdevant sat with both hands folded under his chin. He wished he hadn't given up his pipe, speaking of tranquilizers. Nothing like a pipe to help the mind settle and focus.

  Where to start? His own bookshelves, he supposed, as long as there's no such thing as an all-night library. But what was he to look for? Was he to begin checking facts, verifying the many tidbits of detail offered voluntarily or otherwise by young Mr. Corbin? To what purpose? Did he believe Jonathan or not? He'd believed him without reservation until a few minutes ago, because he could imagine no reason why Jonathan Corbin would concoct such an elaborate and superbly researched fraud. But that was before the name of Tilden Beckwith arose. Before there was a possible motive. Money. Many millions of dollars.

  A young man, let's suppose, discovers by whatever means that he bears an uncanny resemblance to a long-deceased man of wealth. He decides to claim a blood relationship. Better yet, he decides to claim that he is the only true heir. Someone switched babies, he claims. He relies on the threat of scandal and waits for his offer of hush money. But who would care nowadays? Least of all the Beckwiths, who are hardly pillars of propriety themselves. They'd laugh at such an extortion attempt. It's remotely possible that they'd pay a few dollars to avoid the nuisance of tedious meetings with attorneys, but they'd be much more likely to ignore him. Or slap him down.

  Sturdevant was on his feet. No, he decided. There is simply nothing about Jonathan that would suggest deceit, especially a conspiracy this complex. Too complex to work. Murphy's Law and all that. And it would take a superb actor to pull it off. Jonathan, as far as we know, hasn't been an actor since his kindergarten Christmas pageant. It would also take a much more subtle turn of mind than Jonathan seems to have. Collegiate boxers with banged-up noses are rarely paragons of finesse. Which reminds me ...

  He stepped around the table to the bookshelves that were devoted to sports. There he found an encyclopedia of boxing and opened it to its index. Flood, John. Pages 107 to 109, photo on page 115. Sturdevant flipped forward. -Ah yes, his memory had been correct. Flood, the Bull's Head Terror, fought John L. Sullivan, bare knuckles, in May of 1881 on a barge off Yonkers. Probably with a fully rigged cutter standing by in case the police had been insufficiently bribed in advance. Knocked out in eight rounds, though he did much better than anyone else who faced Sullivan that year. Sturdevant wondered whether his grandfather had seen the fight. It's possible, he supposed. But if he had gone to an illegal prizefight, as opposed to a boxing match at his club, he probably would have disguised himself and kept quiet about it afterward. They were such tawdry affairs in those days. More like a dogfight than an athletic contest. Even young Tilden of Gramercy Park seemed to know that. Biting, kicking, wrestling, even gouging. Whether a fight was allowed to finish often depended on whose supporters were better armed.

  Roosevelt. There was a Roosevelt biography here someplace.

  Sturdevant found a faded volume whose gilt printing had long since worn away. Roosevelt boxed. Sturdevant knew that. Boxing team at Harvard. Sparred for exercise virtually until his death. But did he ever live near Gramercy Park? Sturdevant found the reference he was looking for. Yes. Early years in his family's home on Twentieth Street, just off Fifth Avenue. That would be about five blocks from Gramercy Park. Not exactly next-door neighbors but young Tilden never said that. Only that they'd both learned to fight from John Flood in the stables back of the Rhinelander house where Flood probably worked when he wasn't driving a beer truck and fighting pass-the-hat matches in the saloons along his delivery route. As for Roosevelt, his family, Sturdevant saw, did move to a new home on Fifty-seventh Street in the summer of 1875. Number 6. And Roosevelt remained in that home until he married and returned there after the death of his first wife. That address would have him only a block from the Plaza and only two blocks from the Osborne Apartments at about the time the original Tilden Beckwith seems to have lived there. Did they remain friends? Jonathan didn't say. Or doesn't know. Not yet, at least.

  Biographies.

  Sturdevant ran his finger across the bottom row of books until it stopped at a red-bound copy of Who's Who. There it is. Tilden Beckwith II. He hadn't thought of that name in years. Chairman of Beckwith Enterprises. Which includes Beckwith Hotels, Beckwith Realty, Beckwith Land Development, and an assortment of smaller companies— probably contractors, architects, and the like. Sits on the board of the investment firm of Beckwith, Stone & Waring, which used to be Beckwith & Company, which is where the family fortune began. No other board seats, however. Unusual. A man in his position would normally have a list of a dozen or more. Certainly on that of his bank. No charitable involvement, either. No committees, no hospital boards. Not much of a listing, really, for a captain of commerce from old money. Why? Is he lazy? Stupid? On the other hand, neither has ever been a barrier to sitting on corporate boards. All one must be is a major stockholder. Attended Harvard, it says. There's another thing. Not graduated. Attended. Which probably means he didn't finish.

  No military service, either. No clubs listed, not even the Harvard Club. All in all an embarrassing entry for Who's Who. He really isn't anybody. Just a rich man's son. Yet here he is, chairman of Beckwith Enterprises. Tillie, Sturdevant mused. I believe they used to call him Tillie.

  Sturdevant closed the book and returned it to its slot. His hand moved to a much smaller volume bound in blue cloth. The Social Register might have more, he thought, assuming the Beckwiths bothered to subscribe. Ah, yes. Beckwith, Tilden II. Homes in New York and Palm Beach. Married to the former Elvira Payson. Two children, Huntington and Barbara, then more of the same about Harvard and Beckwith Enterprises. Let's see. Huntington, named after the grandfather, would be about Jonathan's age and Barbara not much older than Gwen. Otherwise, very little information there, either. Sturdevant was about to put the blue book away when his eye drifted to a listing it had almost missed because it began at the top of the next column. Hello, look at this. Beckwith, Ella Huntington. Ella. Of Greenwich, Connecticut, of all places. Sturdevant decided to make a phone call or two.

  “Uncle Harry?” The door opened
following Gwen's knock. Sturdevant waved her in as he nodded a series of uh-huhs into the telephone crooked at his neck. He thanked the person on the other end, suggested lunch sometime soon, and replaced the receiver on its cradle.

  “Uncle Harry,” she asked, “you weren't just telling someone about Jonathan, were you?”

  “His name didn't arise,” he assured her. ”I was refreshing my memory about the Beckwiths. How is he, by the way?’'

  ”A bit dreamy, otherwise fine. If you don't mind, I'm going to take our sandwiches upstairs and then get him into bed. After that I might run over to my place and pick up a few things.”

  “Can't that wait until morning? I have everything here except a change of clothing.”

  “I'll see how Jonathan settles in.” Gwen pushed the door until the lock clicked. “Uncle Harry,” she asked,

  “what was all that about Tilden Beckwith? How did you come up with that name?”

  ”I knew him.” Sturdevant brightened. “It's the most remarkable thing. Ever since you first introduced me to Jonathan I've had a feeling we've met before. He is the absolute image of a young Tilden Beckwith, including that broken nose and the scarred eyebrow, which Tilden apparently got from young Todd Fisher. How did Jonathan get his, by the way?”

  “I never asked. College boxing, I suppose. Uncle Harry, don't you find it almost unbelievable that you happened to know this Tilden Beckwith?”

  “Not at all. Almost everyone knew him back when I was a young man.”

  “He was famous?”

  Sturdevant shook his head. “Everyone more or less like me,” he corrected himself, reluctant to say “Everyone in my set.” “He died during the war at about my age. Some sort of accidental fall in his office.” Sturdevant gestured toward the telephone, as if to indicate the source of this recollection. “Which is ironic because he was always very graceful and athletic. A great sports fan too, especially of the New York Giants. His box up at the Polo Grounds wasn't far from ours. We'd also see him up at the old Saint Nicholas Arena for the Friday night fights and at just about every championship match at Madison Square Garden.”

  ”I don't believe this, Uncle Harry.”

  “New York is a big city, Gwen dear, but the circles within it can be very small. Avid followers of a particular sport tend to meet and know each other. Beyond a certain income level, they tend to congregate in the same public places. The baseball and boxing crowds of today hang out at Gallagher's Steak House, among others. Go back sixty years and that crowd gathered at the Hoffman House bar.”

  “You're not going to tell me you saw Tilden there.”

  ”I won't.” He smiled. ”I was only there a few times as a very young man and then only with my father. I did know Oscar, however, the man who stopped Jonathan's ... Tilden's fight from turning into a Pier Six brawl. Now there's someone who was famous. He became Oscar of the Waldorf when the first Waldorf-Astoria opened back in the nineties, and he must have been a fixture there for thirty years. Not many people knew Oscar's last name. Jonathan would have known if he'd researched it, which is why I questioned him about addressing anyone by his first name in those days. He did not know it. Oscar's last name, incidentally, was Tschirky, T-s-c-h-i-r-k-y; pronounced approximately ‘Jerky.’ It would not do to have a maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf-Astoria, let alone the Hoffman House, who is called Mr. Jerky.”

  Sturdevant noted a look of mild impatience on Gwen's face with what she must have considered a bit of pointless trivia. Oscar's name, of course, was not significant in itself. However, the fact that Jonathan seemed to recall him as Oscar of the Waldorf was the single most puzzling facet of this whole bizarre episode: Genetic memory is genetic memory. One can only carry memories that an antecedent had prior to the conception of a descendant. The 1888 memories of the storm, the woman's death, the Hoffman House scene, were sufficiently dramatic, even traumatic, and sufficiently close to the conception of a child by Margaret that they might well have been retained in genetic imprints. But why should Jonathan remember anything that happened later? For that matter, why should he have this fixation about Connecticut if Margaret moved there only after Tilden's son was conceived? Perhaps they'd find out tomorrow.

  “Speaking of names,” he told Gwen, “there is not only a currently living Tilden Beckwith, of the hotel-owning Beckwiths, but he also has a sister named Ella. Care to guess where Ella lives?”

  “Not Greenwich.”

  “‘Greenwich, indeed.''

  “We can go see her. Tomorrow.”

  “Not so fast, dear. If Jonathan is in fact a direct blood descendant of the original Tilden Beckwith, and if the original Ella had a child by Ansel Carling, no Beckwith from 1888 forward is legitimately a Beckwith. They will not greet that news with enthusiasm. That's assuming they don't know it already and are not keeping it a closely guarded family skeleton. Besides, the Beckwiths by all accounts are not particularly nice people.”

  Sturdevant nodded. 'Tilden's son, or rather Ella's, was Huntington Beckwith. My friend thinks Huntington was Ella's family name. I remember Huntington Beckwith although I never actually met him. He was a cold, hard, taciturn man who would take anything that wasn't nailed down and pry up anything that was. A thoroughly unlovely man, no friends, belonged to no clubs, not that he didn't try to join a few. He was even blackballed by the University Club, which is about as exclusive as the state of New Jersey. In some respects he was a lot like Jay Gould, whose name also keeps popping up, although Jay Gould made no effort whatever to be accepted by polite society. Huntington, however, kept trying and was repeatedly rebuffed, which made him all the meaner.”

  “When was all this happening?” Gwen asked. “It would have to have been during the twenties and thirties.”

  “It was. Why do you ask?”

  “You said Tiîden, Margaret's Tilden, was very well known and liked. If Huntington was a part of New York society at the same time, how could that society have accepted one and not the other?”

  “It doesn't seem to have been a problem,” Sturdevant answered. ”I, for example, must have seen Tilden Beckwith fifty times at one event or another. I never recall seeing Tilden with his ‘son’ or his ‘grandson.’ It appears that although he saw to Huntington’s education and gave him a place in a part of the family business, their estrangement was otherwise total and one never invited Tilden and his son to the same party. No doubt an occasional hostess wondered why this seemed to be an established rule, but more likely she counted her blessings. Whatever inevitable whispers there might have been concerning the nature of their rift are now largely forgotten, but you can be sure that at least some of them focused on the physical dissimilarity between the two men.”

  “You mean they guessed that Huntington was a bastard.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “How bad could he have been? He found a woman who'd many him. And she had two kids by him, right? Another Tilden and an Ella.”

  Harry Sturdevant shrugged. “It's said that there's no man so mean that a woman or a dog won't love him. No offense. As for Ella the ‘granddaughter,’ I don't recall ever laying eyes on her or hearing anything about her. I've seen Tillie at one affair or another but never really paid much attention to him. That's sort of interesting, you know. You'd think that I'd recall having compared him unfavorably to his grandfather—he was actually just a less satanic version of Huntington—but I don't. All by itself, my mind seems to have separated the two men completely. That may be why I was so slow in making this connection unaided. By the way, there's still another generation of Beckwiths. Eric Ludlow, the friend I called, says Tillie's wife, one Elvira Payson, now lives in an alcoholic haze at the Beckwith Palm Beach home. Elvira produced two more Beckwiths, another son and daughter. The son also lives in Greenwich, where he's called Chip, if you can believe that, and is known to cheat at both yacht racing and bridge in his own sober moments, which are increasingly few. The daughter, named Barbara Beckwith, seems to have disappeared shortly after graduating from c
ollege.”

  Gwen folded her arms across her chest and shuddered. Sturdevant raised an eyebrow. It was the second time he'd seen her do that in the past five minutes.

  “What is it, Gwen?”

  “Nothing,” she said. But she'd hesitated first.

  “If you have an insight, I'd like to hear it.”

  “Nothing like that. It's just remarkable that there can be so many bad seeds growing out of anything so really lovely as the feelings between Tilden and Margaret. Or out of Jonathan.” Gwen Leamas paused thoughtfully. “See what's happening? I'm beginning to think of Jonathan as almost the same man as Tilden. The nice Tilden. And I like them both very much. And I'm afraid for both of them.”

  “You're clear, aren't you, that the Huntington seed has no relationship whatsoever to Tilden and Margaret?”

  ”I understand that.”

  “And that Tilden and Margaret started a line that very probably ends with Jonathan. We can either fly to. Chicago and try to trace it back, or go to Greenwich tomorrow and try to trace it forward.”

  Gwen nodded, looking away, then shivered a third time.