by Ed Ifkovic
I ventured a thought. “I was told the police believe that the killer lifted Dougie’s wallet from his breast pocket. I did see the killer bend over and…”
Her hand shot up, her voice biting. “And you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe.” Then, considering my words, I added, “Of course, you’re right. I don’t believe it was a simple robbery gone horribly wrong.”
She made a harrumph sound. “Exactly. Which is why I am here this afternoon disturbing you.”
As we were talking, Rebecca quietly entered the room and placed a coffee pot on the table. A tray of freshly baked macaroons. She nodded at me and I nodded back. “Coffee, Lady Maud?”
“Of course.”
Rebecca poured cups for both of us, adding a dollop of whipped cream to mine. She placed a cup in front of Lady Maud, but the woman never touched it. I sipped mine slowly, watching her.
“I’m waiting.” Imperious, her eyes riveted to mine.
“I don’t know who murdered Dougie,” I said, exasperated. “I liked Dougie, as you know. Noel and I both did.”
“He had no friends,” she said coolly, a remark I resented, given what I’d just stated. “I am talking about long-time friendships, the wonderful camaraderie of young men doing the Grand Tour together. Venice, Paris, Vienna. Polo at Yale. Hunting parties in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. I must tell you—my late husband went hunting with Teddy Roosevelt out west in his younger days. Buffalo fell like bowling pins. But not for Dougie. My son refused membership in the Cloud Club in the new Chrysler Building. A coveted invitation, of course. Power brokers, men only. A sacrosanct world of cedar humidors and ticker-tape machines and private business tête–à–têtes. No thank you, he said. Chrysler, Benton—vandals, he termed them. An impossible boy sometimes.”
“He must have had school chums.”
She barely shook her head, though her eyes flickered. “You would think so, yes? But in boarding school the teachers considered him—odd. A bump on a log, they informed me. Sitting alone, staring off into space like a defective child. A dreamer, they said, and they shook their heads. I had big hopes for college. My husband insisted on Yale, of course. Everyone in his family going back centuries. Henry insisted on him pledging a fraternity, though Dougie balked at that. But for once he listened to his father.”
“What about Corey Boynton?” I asked. “At Yale, the same fraternity, I gather, rediscovering each other in the city—rooms across from each other at the Stanhope.”
She pursed her lips. “A gadabout fool, that boy. A family impoverished by the Crash, blaming everyone else. This young Corey hasn’t a dime to give a beggar on the street. A hanger-on.” A thin smile. “A younger version of Buzzy Collins. You know him, right? He hangs on the sleeve of every moneyed soul in town. But Corey is a leech, Edna. Dougie flashes cash, and Corey puts up his paws like a lap dog getting a treat. Disgusting. I never liked him. I never liked his family. Pretenders, really. Poseurs.” A sigh of resignation. “But I understood that Dougie needed a companion in the city, so I allowed Corey into our world.”
I sat back, annoyed. “I think it was Dougie who allowed Corey into his world.”
She reached for the coffee cup but then changed her mind. “Think what you want, Edna.”
“I always do.”
“That is unfortunate for those listening to you, I imagine.”
I smiled. “Good for you, Lady Maud.”
She ignored that. “His father indulged him too much. Once he discovered that Dougie had an affinity for finance, as he himself did, it was as though God had given him a younger version of himself—to be molded into a Wall Street tycoon. The Midas touch. And Dougie responded—money was his way of hiding from people.”
“I’m afraid that never works.”
A sharp rebuke. “Of course it does.” Her fingers grazed the coffee cup. Then, not missing a beat, she said, “The detective I hired was an abject fool. Whatever were the Vanderbilts thinking? His reports about that girl’s murder simply mimicked what could be found in the Daily News. Yet perhaps I dismissed him too early.” She drew in her breath. “Tell me who killed my son, Edna.”
I said nothing, watching her, waiting.
“Please have some coffee,” I said finally.
She glanced at the cup but didn’t move, that spine still rigid, that mink coat draped over her shoulders like a thick, furry blanket. For a moment she looked away, nervous. “Dougie told me he thought he was being followed. Lately.”
That was news. “What? He never mentioned that to me or Noel.”
“Perhaps he had his reasons.” A smirk. “I am his mother.” A pause. “Of course, he had no proof, but he felt a presence now and then, a shadow, he said. A sudden movement behind him. A trail of cigarette smoke. A whiff of strong cologne. I paid it no mind. He’d become a walker in the city, to my horror. A man who wandered down to the rotting piers. He’d be lost in Central Park. From my upper windows I could see him in the park.” She shivered. “What was he thinking? I’d be in the car and the chauffeur would point. ‘Your son.’ Humiliating, really. A wanderer, crazy.”
I was alarmed. “Followed? That bothers me.”
“He laughed it off, said, ‘I’m seeing ghosts.’”
“But who?”
She was talking to herself, lining up facts in an order she could make sense of. “I admit that lately—for some time now—Dougie has been out of focus. Ever since he met and wooed that girl. He lost his center. The family business suffered dreadfully. My husband dead, Dougie ran the works. The vast monies that survived the Crash. But I tell you, Edna—his lack of focus was not good. I have enemies—anyone in our world does. Business rivals, especially now with rich folks hurling themselves out of windows in despair, money-grubbing, trickery, takeovers, vicious disregard for old-guard civility. Gone, all of it. There are those who would take our wealth.”
I was puzzled. “So someone murdered Dougie—maybe murdered Belinda too—because of the family investments.”
A patronizing smile, unhappy. “Rich folks don’t want to stop being rich, Edna.”
“I understand that, but…”
“Of course I believe his murder has to do with his crazy involvement with theater. With that dreadful woman, herself murdered.”
I watched her face tighten. “Then you must have some ideas, no?”
“Suspicions that the police will not entertain.”
“Like?” I was impatient.
Her eyes got cold. “Cyrus Meerdom, for one. You do know that the old letch resented being abandoned by that hussy—who’d set her sights on Dougie. Vast money and pretty youth. A tantalizing combination for a schemer such as she. Meerdom’s a powerful man, travels in some of the same financial circles my family does, of course, and wields undue influence.”
“But murder?”
Again that tone that she must have honed on generations of skittish help. “Don’t be naïve, Edna. The old man mooned over that girl, and Dougie told me how they’d had chance encounters on the street. Murderous eyes, Dougie said about the look. Those were his words. ‘Murderous eyes.’ Meerdom followed her—he had to know where she was. Always.”
“But how?”
“Spies. Cash.”
“Servants?”
A slippery smile. She had no intention of answering me. “Think, Edna. The rich and the poor need cash. Victims of the Crash. Everybody in our world knows everyone.” A purposeful pause. “Even her so-called friends. A few dollars here, there.”
“Incredible.”
“Welcome to the real world, Edna. This isn’t a page out of your romantic novels, this new world out there.”
“But it’s one thing to think murder—I’ve considered killing George Kaufman on a daily basis—but the actual act takes a certain madness.”
“Or passion. Use that word.” S
he considered her words. “Lord, Edna. I don’t mean that old codger lay in wait with a gun or a kitchen knife. He hires someone. People need—work. A job. Read a mystery novel, my dear. Agatha Christie, maybe. That’s how it’s done. Lackeys will do your bidding for a handful of gold coins.”
“But risky for such a rich man.”
“But one who was miserably besotted with the memory of that dead girl—and doubtless believed, as does the Daily News and the Mirror and those other subway rags, that my Dougie did it.”
“So you think it’s someone in the theater then. You haven’t mentioned Belinda’s brother, Lady Maud. The actors at that struggling theater.”
“Of course, I thought of that sad crowd. Jackson Roswell immediately came to mind, so said the inept police captain. His theater floundering, him and that brassy actress yelling at the cops as though they’re mindless children.”
“Yes, there was resentment there, Lady Maud.”
She eyed me closely. “Except for one thing, my dear. Jackson would be foolhardy killing my son. You see, Dougie, coming out of his haze one morning, suddenly waxed sentimental about the dead Belinda and those…those failed actors. The brother who allowed my Dougie to find Belinda. Or some such circuitous thinking on his part. Giving money to beggars wasn’t enough. So he actually sent Jackson money. A pile of it. Too much—to produce a new show. A check I fought him over. He wouldn’t listen to me. A lavish Christmas day present. Frankincense and myrrh and dollar bills. A note that regretted the delay. All this blather about keeping Belinda’s beautiful memory alive—return to the source. Stuff and nonsense, that boy. My dear boy, against my wishes. So Jackson is flush again. A mistake, I told Dougie, but he insisted. Hicks from Podunk doing square dances in the family barn, the cows keeping time.” She looked over my shoulder and shrugged. “No, not Jackson. Why would you shoot up the bank?”
I sipped my coffee, watching her over the rim. “Then you have no proof of anything. No suspects. The police have to do their job.”
She arched her head, looked down at me, her eyes dropping. “That’s why I’m here, Edna.”
Surprise in my voice. “Visiting me? What do I…”
“You know these theater people. I told you once before that Dougie’s investment in theater sealed his doom. That Noel Coward. I saw his play Private Lives, reluctantly dragged there last year by misguided friends. A British nothing, frivolous chatter and idle quipping, empty as a drained cocktail glass. And questionable—effete, airy men in purple ascots who sail above the clouds. A bad example for my Dougie.”
I hardened my voice. “I will not defend my talented friend to you.”
“I don’t expect you to. But I do wonder if you have any thoughts.”
I sat back. “No, I’m afraid not.”
A trace of sarcasm laced her words. “I don’t know if I believe you. You are a perceptive woman, sharp, opinionated, smothered in fame and money, but you’re an orderly woman, disciplined. I imagine you find murder—messy. Disorder probably upsets you. Your own instincts demand you run through the possibilities.”
I smiled. “You do read one part of my character well.”
She spoke over my words. “You have a foot in theater but another foot in”—she swept her hand around my lovely rooms——“in luxury, in taste, in an Upper East Side reserve.” She pointed to a small marble sculpture on a stand. An original Lipchitz. A gift from Herbert Swopes. “Quite the dichotomy. I imagine you have some sleepless nights.”
I bristled. “Lady Maud’s one-stop psychoanalysis?”
She shivered. “Oh Lord, don’t bring that crippling faddist obsession up with me. Friends of mine lying on strangers’ couches when all they need is a trip to Newport. Sit on a rocking chair on a veranda, for heaven’s sake, not lie on a couch and bleed out your imagined sins.”
I laughed out loud.
Her eyes got a sudden faraway look. “Anther thing I failed to mention. Tommy Stuyvesant, Belinda’s rich paramour, so far as we know.”
“So?”
“So the death of that girl has caused his show to flounder, so my spies inform me. Folks went to Tommy’s Temptations”—she scrunched her mouth in disgust—“to see Belinda Ross. Her alone, sensational. Her being gone turned his revue into a ho-hum show, with no shining light. Attendance is down, the show might close. Times are tough—people spend their nickels elsewhere. Tommy is furious.”
“So he murdered Dougie?”
“Anything is possible.”
I noticed a faint hint of color rising in her parched face.
“Lady Maud,” I began, “perhaps you shouldn’t be here.”
She wasn’t listening. “Let me tell you about my family, my dear. We trace our roots back to early Boston. Settlements in Concord. My husband’s side. My side. Frankly, most D.A.R. members are newcomers to the shores. Old New England. Founders of towns in Connecticut. Rhode Island. My family’s Harvard, my husband’s Yale. An uncle a member of Grover Cleveland’s cabinet. Another an ambassador to Spain. You get the picture.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Her voice became raspy. “Because the line ends with Dougie. An only son, the period at the end of that long American sentence. My husband and I hoped he’d marry well, produce a son with his name, carry on for another hundred years. We are America.” Her words like rapid gunfire now. “It…ended…with…Dougie. Do you understand what that girl took from us?”
I counted the seconds. “I’m very sorry.”
Her foot stomped on the floor. “Do you know what’s it’s like to have to face your friends? They stare at you with wonder—maybe accusation—in their horrid looks. Blame. That horrible word. Blame. The old lady in the castle. Alone now. Dougie and I were so close. We did everything together. I’ve been done in by that girl. Then by murder. His murder. How do you hang that painting over the family hearth? I step out of my car and eyes accuse, fingers point.”
I sat up, gobsmacked. “Lady Maud, you’re firing your guns in every direction but…”
“But what?” A harsh laugh. “Are you going to blame me?”
“I never said that.”
“You think I haven’t woken in the night and wondered—what did I do to create this failed boy? This boy who ran off with the…I almost said circus. Virtually the same thing, no?”
“You blame yourself,” I said quietly.
“Of course not.” But her voice faltered.
Suddenly, perversely, I understood the reason for her visit: she was seeking absolution, someone to take away the nagging sting that let her believe, if only for a heartbeat, that she contributed to her son’s death.
I wanted no part of that.
“Lady Maud.” My voice low. “Go home to grieve for your son.”
She seemed not to know what to do, planted so deliberately in that chair, the mink covering her shoulders.
“Yes. Much to do.”
I looked into her face. “Lady Maud, if I might say something completely candid to you—Dougie made his own choices. Like it or not, he was a grown man, and maybe some of the choices he made were not the best. But they were his choices. Maybe the coddled boy wanted to declare himself a man. Yes, a man hopelessly in love. But he tackled his own world. Finally. Maybe his own demons. Maybe…”
I stopped because Lady Maud’s eyes got wide.
“Yes.” One word, emphatic. “You’re right, Edna. A life separate from mine. His choices.”
For a moment she looked triumphant, as if slammed into a welcome epiphany. Her eyes flickered, her chin jutted out, and one of her jeweled hands caressed the side of her powdered face.
“Yes,” she repeated.
But in the next instance her lips quivered, her eyes got moist, and she turned away, staring out the window. I waited. Her hand trembled. Then, finally, she turned back to face me. The moment had passed. Her body was rig
id again, in control, her face set in a grim countenance, her eyes pinpoints of clarity. Grandly, she pulled the mink tighter around her and stood.
“You’ve been absolutely no help, Edna.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sitting with a cup of hot tea in my workroom, staring at the blank sheet of paper in the Remington, I ignored the ringing of the phone. Then it rang again. Rebecca was out shopping and, against my nature, I answered. Muted, swallowed words, a man’s tremulous voice. I waited.
“Miss Ferber.” The sound of men laughing in the background. “Please.”
“I’m here.”
“Corey Boynton.”
“I know. What’s the matter?”
A deep intake of breath. “The police have been questioning me. Over and over. That makes no sense. Why would they stop at the Stanhope? Everyone here…They asked…” His voice trailed off, but then, clearing his throat, he stammered, “I have nothing to do with this. Dougie—murdered. Murdered? I never wanted anything to do with this.”
“You were a friend of Dougie.” Annoyed, I cut into his blather. “It’s expected that the police question his friends. Those who knew him.”
A long silence, someone calling his name from behind, which he ignored. “They mentioned you—and Noel Coward. There. At the scene. Hours after you left me on the sidewalk, it seems. All of us.”
“I’m not following this, Mr. Boynton. All of us?”
“Everybody involved.” Panic in his voice. “Can you meet us in a while?”
“What do you mean—‘us’?”
“Kitty and me. They’ve been talking to her, too. Both of us. She’s terrified, Miss Ferber. She’s been on the phone with me over and over. Each call is worse—hysteria. Why? This is not the kind of world we want to be involved with. Lord, I can’t tell my father any of this.”