The Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  I was impressed. "You have an answering service, Joe?"

  "—and see whether there are any messages about being in court Wednesday. Yes I have an answering service."

  "What happens Wednesday?" I asked. On Saturday morning Wednesday had seemed a century away; now it loomed closer, it had a shape to it, it was something that could remove Joe, and I was feeling less charitable.

  "It's when Griselda's case may or may not come to court," he said. "Griselda's eleven years old and was taken away from her grandmother because her grandmother's seventy-three and can't jump rope with her, for heaven's sake. She was put in a foster home where she changed so much over a period of two years that they've decided she's schizophrenic and ought to be institutionalized."

  "O boy," I said.

  He nodded. "Her grandmother's a smart cookie and hired a lawyer, who hired me. We've collected handwriting samples from years back, and think we can prove 1) that the foster parents are the crazies and 2) that Griselda has withdrawn because she has neither stability nor love in her life. She needs her grandmother."

  "Will there be someone to believe you?" I asked cautiously.

  "One always hopes," he said. "There'll be some heavy batteries drawn up against us, because bureaucracies are certainly not happy about being wrong, which is why they're playing games with us about the court hearing." He drank the last of his coffee and put the cup down. "Are you finished yet? We've got a long list of things to do today, Amelia."

  "Right," I said, and swallowed the last of my toast. "Death certificate first, or obituaries?"

  "I think death certificate first," Joe said. "After all, if it turns out that Hannah died in a hospital of pneumonia, or collapsed of a heart attack in full view of a crowd of people, then we might as well go sightseeing."

  "Joe, you don't really think—"

  "Verify, Amelia, verify," he said with a grin. "Don't forget I have a lawyer for a father, and some of his legal mind has rubbed off on me. Verify everything."

  It was a shabby diner, with an eroded mirror behind the counter. While Joe paid the bill and asked directions to the courthouse I studied its dreary decorations, which consisted mainly of signs pasted over the scars across the huge mirror: in god we trust but not in credit: A smile costs nothing, try IT, and the same ubiquitous political posters, which this time I read in depth: for u.s, senator elect angus tuttle, four years State Senator, a man of experience, a man of vision. This poster carried a photograph of him wearing tweeds and sitting in an armchair looking like a man in a toothpaste ad. He had prematurely white hair, handsome brows, a young face, and that broad, dazzling white smile.

  The other poster read vote for silas whitney for U.S, senate, a man of the people, a new voice, a man of judgment. There was a picture of him, too; he looked as if his face had been carved out of granite, long and thin, with long thin lines running from nose to mouth, steady black eyes and a lantern jaw. Silas Whitney looked as if he really did have judgment and was a man of the people but I guessed he was already doomed. I didn't think he had a chance against that enormous toothy smile.

  "What on earth are you doing?" asked Joe, seeing my lips moving silently.

  "Counting teeth," I said, pointing to Tuttle's political poster. "His smile shows twelve upper teeth, it's un believable."

  "So are you," he said, reaching for my hand, and as we walked out into the sunshine Joe looked down and smiled at me. It was a lovely smile, made up of all that we'd shared together since we awoke at six that morning in each other's arms, and I couldn't help wondering if I'd ever be so happy again. I think I realized even then that it was real, but that it wasn't real like work and morning and eating and sleeping, and that enchanted moments come seldom, like beads on a long string with spaces in between. But this made it all the more precious; I had never been cherished before, or truly and utterly happy.

  The courthouse stood on a side street, a very old building with Corinthian columns and a fine frieze set into the inverted V over the entrance. We had to ask, and then look for the City Clerk's office, and then it was necessary to buy a copy of the death certificate in order to see it. "It's how they make a little money," Joe pointed out, amused at my indignation.

  But I wasn't really indignant at buying it. I was trembling with suspense and angry at the wait. This was the moment of truth: if, as Joe had pointed out, Hannah had died of pneumonia or a heart attack, then how was I going to reconcile it with the note in the hurdy-gurdy? Was I about to discover that I had been a fool to take the note so seriously, after all I'd gone through to find Hannah?

  The copy of the death certificate was presented to us, I paid the two dollars and we leaned over it eagerly, my eyes skidding past the name meerloo and down to the cause of death: a, it read, intracranial hemorrhage; b, basalar skull fracture. It was signed by Timothy Cox, M.D.

  "Not pneumonia," I said flatly. "Not heart attack."

  Joe shook his head. "Skull fracture."

  "Like maybe a blow on the head," I said. "Joe, let's get to the newspaper office and see if we can find an obituary."

  He nodded, and it surprised me how startled he looked. I suppose until now his interest had been spasmodic and academic and the thought of foul play unreal; he had come along only for the ride, so to speak, and to humor me. Now his attention had been wrenched away from me—I didn't begrudge it for a moment— and was fastened upon five words on a certificate that couldn't be lightly explained away by anyone who had read Hannah's note. The possibility of a murder was just becoming real to Joe for the first time, I could actually see it happening.

  The Anglesworth newspaper was on the main street, and its office so small that I was afraid they might not have files of back issues; but I was wrong: the office was small but its basement ran under all the other shops in the building.

  "You might as well come down with me if you're doing some kind of research," the woman clerk told us. "It's a bit clammy down there but there's a table for reading, and chairs; 1965, you said?"

  "July 25, 1965," I reminded her.

  "Well, that's easy enough, we've only microfilmed up to 1963. The newspaper," she added in a pleased voice, "was founded in 1897."

  The Anglesworth Tribune was a weekly paper, which was disappointing, but it explained why the plastic-bound volume for 1965 could be easily carried to the table and deposited there by one person. The clerk went upstairs, and Joe and I eagerly opened the looseleaf jacket and riffled through the pages to May.

  "Obituaries, obituaries," I murmured, running my finger down the index on the first page of the July 28 issue.

  Joe said in a strange voice, "You don't have to look for the obituaries, Amelia."

  I followed his pointing finger to the headline on the first page of the Tribune: noted resident dies in bizarre ACCIDENT.

  "Bizarre accident," I repeated aloud. "Joe, it says bizarre accident. They must have gotten away with it."

  And then I saw the subheadline: "Hannah Gruble Meerloo, Philanthropist and Author, Dead at 40."

  My eyes were caught—trapped—by the word author and the word Gruble. Only with an effort did I wrench them free to skim the page, my heart literally pounding, my breath suspended.., and there it was, down near the end of the column: "in 1950 Mrs. Meerloo, using her maiden name of Gruble, published a book for young people entitled 'The Maze in the Heart of the Castle,' of which the New York Times wrote, 'a small classic, a book for adults as well as children, full of enchantments and insights.' It is the only book Mrs. Meerloo is known to have written."

  I whispered, "Joe, she's H. M. Gruble—my Gruble. She wrote the book."

  "Take it easy for heaven's sake," Joe said. "You look as if you're going to faint, Amelia. Are you all right?"

  I just stared at him, my head spinning. No, not my head but the thoughts inside of it.., and so she went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn... .If search you must then I can only give you this advice, the important thing is to carry the sun with you, because there will be a gr
eat and terrifying darkness.. .But I must clear up one detail, my dear young lady, that is not a hurdy-gurdy but a mere hand organ... They're going to kill me soon—in a few hours I think '... Look, whoever this is, she has to be dead now, which makes you some kind of a nut, doesn't it? and Amman Singh saying to me, Trust the wind. Someday you will understand.

  I said in a clear hard voice, "I am very much all right, Joe, I am very much all right."

  And I sat down at the table, glanced politely at a rather blurred photograph of a woman that capped the story, and began to carefully read the column below it.

  July 25/ Mrs. Hannah Meerloo, long-time resident of Carleton and noted philanthropist, was pronounced dead on arrival at Anglesworth Hospital early yesterday morning, following a fall down the cellar stairs in her home on Tuttle Road. Mrs. Meerloo was the widow of Jason Meerloo, killed in World War II, and had lived in Carleton since 1953. In the house at the time of the accident were her niece, Leonora Harrington, who mi had arrived just that day for a visit; a house guest, Hubert Holton, and her summer chauffeur, John Tuttle, a graduate student of Union College. Of the accident Miss Harrington said, "I heard this terrible scream and when I turned on my bedside light it was five minutes after one in the morning. I raced into the hall and bumped into Mr. Holton, who'd heard it, too. We knocked on my aunt Hannah's door and then went in and found her lights burning but the room empty. We began searching for her, not knowing where the scream came from, and then we heard a pounding on the kitchen door.

  "It was Aunt Hannah's chauffeur, Jay, who sleeps over the garage adjoining the house. He'd heard the scream too. We finally found her lying at the foot of the cellar stairs. She must have been going down to the safe— there were canceled checks lying all around her. She was always up late nights, and the safe is in the basement, in the old preserve closet."

  Miss Harrington was admitted to hospital suffering from shock and gave this account this morning upon being discharged.

  Joe said in an astonished voice, "It's real then, Amelia: a very odd and disputable death."

  We were silent then, each of us immersed, I think, in this explosion of theory meeting fact. Hannah had written that she believed she was going to be murdered, and here was Hannah's death described for us: a bizarre accident in the middle of the night, one of those inexplicable tragedies that do happen to people occasionally, except that more than a decade later we possessed Hannah's note.

  Joe said, puzzled, "But how was it done, considering what we know from her letter? And by whom? She knew these people, Amelia."

  "I think a successful murder has to be like a magic trick," I said slowly. "Like sleight-of-hand, Joe, with something moving faster than the eye can follow."

  He said, "Give me Hannah's note to read again."

  I dug it out of my purse and while he reread her letter I finished scanning the rest of the news column. It was Hannah's obituary, but the pattern and shape of her life had begun to matter to me now as much as her death. It said:

  Mrs. Meerloo was born Hannah Maria Gruble in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1925, the daughter of a carpenter and a schoolteacher. At 18 she married Jason Meerloo, whose father was an inventor who made millions from his various patents and inventions, a fortune his son Jason inherited several months before his tragic death in France. Left widowed and wealthy at an early age Mrs. Meerloo traveled extensively for several years and is believed to be the first American woman to have visited Tibet. In 1950, using her maiden name of Gruble she published a book for young people entitled "The Maze in the Heart of the Castle," of which the New York Times wrote, "a small classic, a book for adults as well as children, full of enchantment and insights." It is the only book Mrs. Meerloo is known to have written.

  In 1953 she purchased the old Whitney house on Tuttle Road

  in Carleton and lived there in semi-seclusion with her housekeeper. She endowed and built the Greenacres Private Psychiatric Hospital near Portland, established in 1946 the Jason Meerloo Orphanage in Anglesworth, and gave to this city the building which now houses the public library.

  She leaves as survivors her niece, Leonora Harrington, of Boston, and a nephew, Robert Gruble, of New York City, professionally known as Robert Lamandale. Funeral plans are as yet incomplete.

  A formal inquest into the death will be held on Thursday.

  "Joe," I said, pointing to the last sentence.

  "Inquest," he echoed. "Thank God! Find the inquest edition."

  In a fury of haste I turned the pages of the August 5 edition. This time it was on the second page of the newspaper and Nora's age was listed as twenty-four; Hubert Holton, forty, was described as an associate professor of Political Science at Maine's Union College; John Tuttle was introduced as a graduate student, age twenty-seven, who had chauffeured summers for Mrs. Meerloo for nine years.

  "That's a very respectable group," I said, taken aback.

  "What did you expect, the Mafia?" countered Joe.

  It was not a long report. Dr. Timothy Cox gave his testimony: death due to a basal skull fracture, with subdural bleeding. When asked to enlarge upon this he explained it as bleeding between the pia matter and arachnoid, a wound, he said, that fitted with the circumstances of her death, in this case the head striking cement, causing instant unconsciousness. She had been unconscious but still alive—barely, he said—when he reached the house. She had died in the ambulance.

  Nora repeated the story that had been given earlier to the newspaper, and both the chauffeur and the house guest confirmed that they had been awakened by a scream in the middle of the night. The only new person to give testimony was the housekeeper, a Mrs. Jane Morneau, age forty-two, who said it was customary for Mrs. Meerloo to give her, and any other help, their vacations during the month of July because July was "when Mr. Robin or Miss Nora, or both, came to visit her." Mrs. Morneau said that on July first, the day she left for her holiday, Miss Harrington had already been there, "and very high-spirited she was," and had been there for a week. She recalled vague plans for Miss Harrington and Mrs. Meerloo to be driven to New York City by John Tuttle to see Mr. Robin in a new play he was appearing in on Broadway. Mr. Holton's name was vaguely familiar to her but she was sure he was no friend of Mrs. Meerloo's. He had never come to the house before, and he was a stranger to her now.

  The verdict by Judge Henry Tate was rendered as death by accident due to lack of evidence to the contrary.

  Joe closed the volume thoughtfully. "Due to lack of evidence to the contrary," he repeated.

  "Funny thing to insert," I said. "Don't they usually just say 'death by accident'?"

  "I don't know," Joe said, frowning. "What strikes me first is, who is this Hubert Holton the housekeeper may have heard mentioned but had never seen before? Was he a friend of Nora's?"

  "Yes, but there's something else, too," I pointed out, reaching for my spiral notebook. "Why did the first report in the newspaper say that Nora had 'just arrived for a visit' on the day of Hannah's death when the

  housekeeper testified she was already there on July first? Where had she been?"

  Joe, still scowling, was lost in thought. I opened the notebook and wrote, Hubert Holton, underscored, and then, If Nora was away, for how long was she gone? I wrote down the other names given, too: Judge Henry Tate, Dr. Timothy Cox, Mrs. Jane Morneau.

  "Three people," Joe said abruptly, with a shake of his head. "Just three people in the house at the time, aside from Hannah, of course: Nora and this Holton chap and the chauffeur John Tuttle in the adjoining building. But Hannah writes about 'the faceless ones.' Who could they have been? Do you suppose she could have been hallucinating?"

  "Has it occurred to you," I said, "that her captors might have worn stocking masks when they brought her food? That could explain their facelessness."

  "But what captors?" argued Joe. "The people in the house were known to her, Amelia. Even in stocking masks she would have recognized them: by their gestures, their walk, their voices."

  "There could have been
others in the house," I pointed out. "Nora was the only one related to her, and according to the newspaper account she had only just 'come back.' While she was gone there could have been others there, Joe. We have to find out how long Nora was away."

  He nodded. "Okay, where do you suggest we start?"

  "Why not at the very beginning?" I asked.

  "Why not?" he grinned, and kissed me. "Let's go."

  I replaced the volume of 1965 Tribunes and followed Joe up the stairs. But at the top I turned and looked back, knowing that I would never forget that electric, almost overpowering moment when I discovered that Hannah Meerloo was H. M. Gruble. Then Joe switched off the basement light and I followed him out to resume—or to really begin—our hunt for clues to a long-ago murder.

  8

  The real estate agent was a nice little man with a pink cherubic face and bright blue eyes. His name was Bob Tuttle—lots of Tuttles in Anglesworth, he said—and he drove us back to Carleton in his ancient Chevy, pock-marked and stained from winter road salt.

  We hadn't taken the time to visit the house yesterday, having become so very happily distracted, and so this was our first look at it. At first glance it was disappointing; I guess I'd expected a huge brick mansion after reading the word philanthropist in the local paper. It was large—ten rooms, Mr. Tuttle said—but it was just a comfortable, old-fashioned frame house with a porch running all around it and the south corner of the porch glassed in. It was an inconspicuous dun color that blended with the overgrown, frost-killed lawn around it, although on closer inspection it proved to have started out as olive-green.

  "Needs a fresh paint job," Mr. Tuttle said cheerfully. 'The Keppels had it only two years."

  "How many people have owned it in the last, say, fifteen years?"

  "Oh, a number," he said breezily. "Nice old house, you know, but then people see something small and modern and off they go."