by Emma Lathen
“I’m thinking, Arthur,” she said slowly. “Just thinking.”
Chapter 13
Watering the Stock
When Jane called Ken at his office Friday morning to report that she was having a field day at Bloomingdale’s and looked forward to seeing him that evening, it had seemed simple enough to arrange a meeting after work at the Algonquin. By five-thirty that afternoon nothing seemed simple any longer. Only three hours earlier, Charlie Trinkam had rung through to remind Ken that a finalizing letter must go out in the mail that evening for the executors of the Betz estate. Virtuously conscious of a completed first draft of that letter reposing in his files, Ken had calmly reassured Trinkam and promised to see to the mailing himself. A quick glance at the draft, however, convinced him that one of the tax tables required some minor revisions. Two hours later Ken delivered to his Miss Todd a mass of rumpled and heavily interlined typescript with urgent injunctions for speed and neatness.
He should have added accuracy to his list of requirements. At five-fifteen he erupted from his office and shook the second page of his seven-page letter accusingly at Miss Todd. Wearily she removed the cover from the typewriter which she had optimistically bedded down for the night.
“But what did I do? I can’t see if you shake it like that, Mr. Nicolls.”
“You left out a paragraph—a whole paragraph!”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry, but I was trying to do it quickly for you. Give it to me, and I’ll do it over.”
“It’s on the second page,” groaned Ken. “You’ll have to do the last six pages.”
Miss Todd wasted no more time on idle chatter but squared away to her typewriter, attacking the keyboard with savage ferocity. Ken removed himself to his office and started pacing its confined limits in an agony of impatience, unconsciously giving a splendid imitation of the expectant father who has lost control over the creation of his offspring. With heroic self-restraint he quelled the impulse to hover impatiently at Miss Todd’s shoulder, knowing that nothing was more certain to lower her already unpredictable standard of performance. The savage tom-tom of her activity was proceeding at an incredible tempo when it came to an abrupt halt; Ken winced visibly at the sound of sheets being ripped violently from the carriage and dropped into the wastebasket. In rapid succession he considered and rejected the possibilities of: (1) urging Miss Todd to accomplish her task at a less tempestuous and disastrous pace, (2) paging Jane at Bloomingdale’s, (3) leaving banking for a less nerve-wracking profession and (4) committing suicide.
Finally he forcibly removed his mind from further contemplation of his present plight and fixed it instead on a detailed reconstruction of Jane’s appearance. This had a remarkably tranquilizing effect on his agitation. He had limned out the delicate bone work of her jaw and cheekbones and was lost in satisfaction at the curious identity her face retained in his memory when he awoke to the realization that a justifiably annoyed Miss Todd was addressing him for the second time.
“Mr. Nicolls, it’s all done.”
“What?—oh, Miss Todd.”
“If you wouldn’t mind checking it”—this with heavy sarcasm—”so I could go. I have a dinner date.”
“So do I,” replied Nicolls, hastily scooping up the letter. “Why don’t you get ready to go, while I look this over, so you won’t waste any time?”
Miss Todd clicked off to the ladies’ room, not prepared to waste any more time on the inscrutable behavior of bankers in general and Mr. Nicolls in particular. That could wait until the incident was served up to her fiancée in much detail over the dessert.
Nicolls discovered, much to his surprise, that she had presented him with a flawless product. He signed the letter with a flourish, initialed the file copies before tossing them in his basket, and prepared for his own departure. He was emerging from his office when Miss Todd returned and looked profoundly relieved upon learning that they were through for the night. He thanked her, she offered to mail the letter for him and they hastened to the elevator together in perfect amity.
In the taxi a few minutes later Ken realized that it was the first time that he had allowed himself to appear to Miss Todd in any light other than that of the weighty and impersonal man of affairs. It must be spring, he thought idly, as he looked out at the leaden January sky. Then he forgot about Miss Todd as his thoughts pressed ahead of his taxi to his destination.
At the Algonquin he hurried across the sidewalk only to find Jane entering the foyer directly on his heels. They broke into parallel apologies.
“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get a taxi at my hotel.”
“Last-minute rush. I was held up at the office.”
“I had to walk to Fifth Avenue.”
“Then the letter had to be retyped.”
“So afraid you’d be waiting.”
They broke into laughter and moved toward one of the corner settees in the lounge. Ken felt a pleasant glow of warmth and a momentary shock of surprise as he helped Jane slip out of her coat. His remembrance of Jane was so vivid, that he had automatically expected her to be wearing the same blue wool dress she had worn in Boston. But she had, reasonably enough, dignified their first night together in New York with a more urban ensemble. Her black silk dress was deceptively simple, relieved only by a knotted gold pin high on her shoulder, and the clean sweep of her radiant golden-red hair. But best of all, she looked happy to be with him.
The waiter interrupted their silent satisfaction with each other and, by the time he brought their martinis, they had found a conversational footing. Jane had never been to the Algonquin before and was charmed with its substitution of comfortable chairs and couches and convenient tables for the usual bar and booth arrangement. They slipped easily into a discussion of Ken’s life in New York—his job, his apartment, his favorite places to eat. He was about to point out that this last subject had some bearing on their further plans for the evening, when two men rose from some corner chairs across the room. One man snatched up a briefcase and plunged hastily toward the exit. The other was standing, collecting his belongings in a leisurely fashion—it was John Thatcher. As Ken had just amused Jane with a spirited and disrespectful word description of his superior, including Thatcher’s paralyzing effect on erring and not-so-erring subordinates, he pointed him out. The next moment he cursed himself for the impulse. The movement had caught Thatcher’s attention, and when his path inevitably brought him close to Ken’s table, Jane whispered, “Oh, I would like to meet him.”
Thatcher was now at hand, pausing courteously to acknowledge Ken’s presence. Ken rose to perform introductions, and then, in frozen horror, heard his own voice treacherously inviting Thatcher to join them. Jane beamed welcomingly and added her own persuasions.
“Do join us if you have time, Mr. Thatcher. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Ken had time for one vast, convulsive shudder, but mercifully Thatcher looked elsewhere for Jane’s source of information. He had years of experience with the wives of his subordinates and was adept at overlooking extracurricular remarks.
“And how is your father?” said Thatcher blandly as he seated himself. “I regret that I couldn’t get up to Framingham myself the other day.”
“Such a shame you couldn’t come up with Ken,” said Jane, who was clearly unwilling to subtract Nicolls from the expedition, even in retrospect. Ken grinned at this version of Thatcher’s role in life and relaxed suddenly in a spurt of devil-may-care abandon to listen to Jane’s determined pursuit of Thatcher.
“Daddy is fine, but, of course, he’s terribly worried about this whole affair. He’s so busy, you know, but he has to spend a great deal of his time soothing Aunt Grace and Martin. Actually that’s why I’m in New York. Because Aunt Grace is with us now and she’s always so difficult.”
“I have met Mrs. Walworth,” said Thatcher gravely.
“I know,” rejoined Jane. And suddenly they smiled at each other.
“It’s so unfair. I don’t understand why Marti
n and Aunt Grace won’t leave the management of the business to Daddy, when he’s so much better at it than they are.”
The two men received this dictum in respectful silence.
“Particularly now,” Jane continued. “The murder doesn’t really matter for Aunt Grace. I believe she actually enjoys the theatrical side of it, although she complains about being questioned by the police and being an official suspect, she still gets some compensation out of it by being in the limelight. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that a cousin of hers whom she knew for twenty years has actually been killed.” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. She was genuinely troubled by Grace’s lack of feeling and shocked by it. Ken realized in a sudden wave of affection that no daughter of Josephine Schneider was likely to view the brutal extinction of another human being as a matter to be passed over lightly or as a suitable subject for self-dramatization.
“There are people like that,” said Thatcher gently. “They don’t really absorb emotionally what has happened to other people. They see only the reflections of the event in their own day-to-day lives. The rest has no meaning to them.”
“Yes,” said Jane, obscurely comforted, “but Daddy isn’t like that. To him it all has meaning. Oh, I know he seems a little pompous and fussy. But his own life is orderly and dignified and he wants everyone to be that way. He lives his life by a high set of standards and he’s used to being well regarded. It’s a terrible shock for him to have Robert murdered and his own sister and cousin questioned about their alibis.”
“Of course it is and it does him credit. While I realize that it’s small comfort at this point, think how much better it is that he has an alibi for himself and only has to worry about Martin and Mrs. Walworth.”
“But you should hear Aunt Grace on the subject,” said Jane wryly. “She claims that if Daddy had had the consideration to spend the night at her house in Georgetown instead of at the Mayflower, she wouldn’t be in this fix. But you can imagine what she would have said at the time if he had come barging out to her house with no advance warning.”
“That’s right.” Thatcher was all innocence. “There was some confusion regarding your family that night, wasn’t there, and your father ended up in Washington while you waited for him.”
Why, the old so-and-so! thought Ken in alarmed admiration. So that’s what he’s up to. He thinks he’s going to cross-examine her about her alibi and all in the most social manner possible. Well, not on my drink, he isn’t. He has amused himself enough already with that one.
“Yes, it was a flight that will go down in the Schneider family history. Tell him about your father’s troubles, Jane,” interrupted Ken, firmly directing the conversation away from Jane’s activities at Logan.
“Everything went wrong right from the start. Poor Daddy was in a fret for days,” said Jane in the gleeful tone appropriate to the recital of complex and comic family misadventures. “He hates to be away from home and always rushes back as soon as his business is done. True to form, he came rushing into Chicago two minutes before a plane for Boston was departing and he bundled himself on to it. Then, an hour and a half from Boston, they ran into our big snowstorm, and the plane was rerouted to Washington. He spent the night at the Mayflower, and ended up taking the train to Boston the next morning. Meanwhile, I spent the night—”
“Wasn’t there some trouble about his baggage?” asked Ken, alert for any digression toward Jane’s alibi. Thatcher smiled benignly at him.
“Of course. That was the final straw. The airlines had lost one of his bags in the last-minute rush at Chicago. Daddy was simply livid. Why, he wouldn’t even let his secretary go into town to file a tracer for his bag. He said she’d be fobbed off with some subordinate. So he went in himself to give the manager a piece of his mind. Daddy,” proclaimed Jane innocently, “says that it saves time to always see the man in charge.”
“I know,” said Thatcher simply, forbearing to remark that he himself had been a victim of this principle and had little, if any, sympathy with such conduct. Presumably the man in charge at the airlines, just like the man in charge at the Sloan, had better things to do with his time than placate an irate Arthur Schneider. Well, with any luck, the Sloan at least would soon be relieved of the necessity for further dealings with the man.
“But he got his baggage eventually?” prompted Ken, laboring under a grim determination to keep the conversation safely anecdotal.
“Oh, yes, about two weeks later they called up and said they had finally found it. But I think that it’s inexcusable that it should have taken that long. Anyway they shouldn’t have lost it in the first place.”
“Well, well,” said Thatcher tolerantly, reaching for his coat while Ken looked on with relief,
“I’m afraid I may have kept you from going on to your dinner. It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, Miss Schneider, and I trust that you’ll convey my regards to your father and tell him that I look forward to seeing him when he next comes to New York. Good night, Nicolls.”
“Good night, sir,” said Ken with simple satisfaction.
“But he’s not an ogre at all,” said Jane. “Why, I think he’s an old dear.”
“Well, you may think he’s an old dear, but thank Lord we kept him off the subject of alibis.”
“What alibis?” said Jane blankly.
“Now, I know it seems absurd to you, but Martin and your Aunt Grace aren’t in the clear by a long shot.” There seemed small point in informing Jane that one of Thatcher’s amusements was pin pricking her own alibi.
“Martin and Aunt Grace!” sputtered Jane. “But that’s outrageous. Why they couldn’t kill anybody. It’s comic to even think of Aunt Grace doing anything like that. She feels aggrieved if she has to open a door for herself.”
“Remember that you know them. The police don’t know them and, for that matter, neither does Thatcher. And you have to admit that there’s a certain offhand, callous quality about the way they both view this murder that doesn’t leave people thinking they wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“But that’s just the way they talk. Oh, I admit that they’re both selfish when it comes to their own convenience, but most people know the difference between that and the ability to commit a murder,” Jane now protested.
“I agree, but I still think that it would be a good idea if you didn’t speak too freely about their activities on the night of the murder in front of Thatcher. He’s in direct communication with the police in Buffalo.”
Jane’s blue eyes widened at this. It clearly did not fit in with her idea of a dear, sweet, old banker. Just as well she doesn’t think of me as connected with the police too, thought Ken, as he realized how very much he did not want her to march out of his life.
“But I don’t know anything about their activities on the night of the murder,” replied Jane reasonably. “After all, Aunt Grace was in Washington and Martin was in New York.”
“Let’s hope they were,” said Ken a little grimly.
It was not until sometime later when they were taxiing up to the Viennese Lantern that Jane reverted to the subject.
“You know, Ken, I’m not so sure that it is absurd to think of Martin’s murdering somebody for money.”
Chapter 14
Profit and Loss Statement
Every weekend, no matter how fine, is followed by a Monday. Ken drew his one-hundredth star, and then stared glumly at the pad on his desk. Doodling was going to solve none of his problems. He resolutely put thoughts of Jane Schneider—and a perfect Saturday and Sunday—out of his mind, and pulled the memo pad toward him: two items John Thatcher wanted him to check were carefully noted, “Martin and stock,” and “Logan.” Unfortunately they were the same two jottings that had set off this spate of gloomy inactivity.
Ken was feeling his role distasteful, a reaction that disturbed him. Was this the by-product of age—a developing stodginess and sobriety that looked upon anything out of the ordinary as unsavory? Ken was no fool; he knew that one of the reasons th
at John Thatcher was Senior Vice-President of the Sloan while Everett Gabler remained a trust officer was that Thatcher had never developed the pompousness that was a Gabler characteristic—a pompousness that viewed with alarm, urged caution, suggested prolonged consideration, and generally made decisive activity impossible. Ken profoundly hoped that he wasn’t turning into an Everett Gabler.
But he was rapidly finding John Thatcher’s detached interest in the murder of Robert Schneider less and less amusing. Within the last few days he had come within an inch of indignant exclamations: “Stop it! You don’t draw your princely salary to play cops and robbers. The Sloan shouldn’t be involved in this kind of thing.”
Which was very much the sort of thing that Everett Gabler, in a more measured, reproachful way, was likely to say. Ken drew four more stars. “Be honest,” he admonished himself. “You don’t give a damn about the Sloan’s dignity. You just don’t like this spying and probing into Jane’s family.”
But since he had resolutely been trying to put Jane Schneider out of his thoughts for the better part of twelve hours, this merely added to his impatience. He flicked the pencil across the room; action, no matter how distasteful, was what he was being paid for. He picked up the phone. On his fourth call, he struck gold. Arnie Berman, at Waymark-Sims admitted that Martin Henderson was a customer, and cordially invited Ken to come over and have a good long talk about him.
“Check one,” Ken thought as he put his coat on: “But two?”
He stood for a moment, turning his hat in his hands, and then went out to his secretary’s desk.
“Miss Todd,” he said with a frown, “will you have time to do a little job for me this morning?”
“Certainly, Mr. Nicolls,” she said automatically, without looking up from her typewriter.
“I want you to call the airlines and find out about how long Logan Airport in Boston was closed on Friday the thirteenth.”
“Closed?” she asked.
Ken patiently explained what he realized was a somewhat obscure request: “There was a bad snowstorm that night and flights were grounded in and out of Logan. I want to know about what time flights started operating.”