The Laughing Man

by Forrest, Richard;

  “I assume you’re not outlining a master’s thesis?”

  “During the Second World War, he commanded the 1055 Regimental Combat Team. It was patterned after British Commandos and Darby’s Rangers.”

  “I heard about them when I was in the service. We always thought they were modeled after the SS.”

  “Evidently, until they went too far and massacred a company of captured Germans. The regiment was disbanded, and its commanding officer cashiered from the service. He would have been court-martialed except that trying an American officer for war crimes in the midst of World War II didn’t seem like such a good idea at the time. Colonel David Bellchamp Wright was mustered out and sent home.”

  “Retired from war wounds to his palatial estate and lovely young wife, as the tabloids put it.”

  “Right! And some months later their child was kidnapped. Taken right from the nursery while the Colonel and his wife were downstairs.”

  “That comes back to me. The kidnappers used a ladder from a gardening shed up to the nursery window.”

  “A week later a ransom note was delivered. It instructed the Colonel to have a quarter of a million on a certain New York elevated train. Somewhere during the trip, a light signal was given and the money was thrown off the train. The child was never sent back, but a few months later, one of the Colonel’s ex-aides was found passing some of the marked ransom money. A … a.…” Brian snapped his fingers. “A Captain Ralston.”

  “Tried and executed, as I recall. The rest of the money and his accomplices, if any, were never found.”

  “I dug this all out of microfilm at the library.”

  “Could have asked me and saved time.”

  “Do you know the name of the Colonel’s house?”

  “People always call country homes silly names, like the Hedges or the Laurels, things like that.”

  “Bellchamp.”

  “So?”

  “Harry and Martha Rubinow worked for Colonel Wright. A few years after the kidnapping, their finances improved remarkably. Good God, don’t you see, it all fits!”

  Clinton Robinson’s feet slipped from the desk as the chair creaked forward. “Well and good, perhaps typical of casual research mixed with a great deal of speculation. If you had continued with the newspaper microfilm, you might have read on and discovered that the Wright child was found. Discovered dead, not two miles from the estate.”

  “I read that, and also that the body was so badly decomposed it had to be identified by the Colonel on the basis of its clothing. Do you know that the medical examiner allowed immediate cremation, supposedly because the cause of death was an obvious massive blow to the head?”

  Clinton shook his head. “A marvelous edifice of speculation. On such a premise does the Grand Duchess Anastasia still cavort, and Martin Borman inhabits an executive suite at Radio City. Out of desperation, you have now decided that the Rubinows were the actual kidnappers, which explains their sudden affluence and rise from custodial work to real estate tycoons.”

  “Only after some years had elapsed. They were smart enough not to start spreading the money around until almost ten years after the ransom payoff.”

  “I would suppose, by logical extension, that Mary, your mother, if you still call her that, was in on it?”

  “I don’t like to think about that.” Brian sat down pensively. “Of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “Like, who was the baby found in the woods? Like, for example, why would a woman like Mary get involved in something like that?”

  “And who killed the Rubinows and why?”

  “An interesting hypothesis, which explains a lot and leaves more unexplained. These are questions, I might add, that will be impossible to answer thirty years after the fact. In assessing your whole speculation, I’m afraid you’re reaching.”

  “I might have thought so too, until I saw the photographs of the estate where it all happened—Bellchamp. I don’t know how or why, but the sense of déjà vu was overpowering.”

  “The baby was two when kidnapped.”

  “And Mary arrived back in Tallman when I was three. Where had we been?”

  “There was a little gossip at the time, but those things die out.”

  “I’m telling you, I know Bellchamp. There are too many coincidences.”

  “Where is this place?”

  “Upper New York State.”

  “And your intention is to mount a great white steed to charge up the Adirondacks to the enchanted castle, where everyone’s been in a state of suspended animation awaiting your arrival.”

  “Don’t make me sound foolish.”

  “I only suggest that you may be a little old for a child’s foundling fantasy.”

  “Goddamn it! Mary didn’t find me under a cabbage leaf.”

  “That she didn’t. Let’s think about the people involved a minute. Harry Rubinow was a conniving money-grubber. Martha would go along with any scheme of Harry’s. Your Uncle Lockwood, in his extreme naiveté, could have been persuaded to do things he shouldn’t. I do not believe, nor can I even comprehend, that Mary Dwight, the woman you’ve called your mother all these years, could have been a party to a plot that included murder.”

  “Then why did they kill her?”

  “If we follow your line of thinking, another accomplice, covering old tracks.”

  “Because she was going to tell me, as Lockwood and the Rubinows might have. Is there a statute of limitations on kidnapping?”

  “No, and you forget that there’s also a murder involved. I’m only pointing out that this is all conjecture on your part.”

  “I found the smiling man. His name is Wilton Henry, and he served as an orderly to Colonel Wright. The Rubinows introduced him to Mary at Bellchamp.”

  “And they became involved.”

  “They were engaged until she broke it off.”

  “Could be that simple romantic remembrances gave her an attachment to the name of the house. When she knew her time was limited, she wanted to apologize for not marrying the man she loved, for not having a father in your home.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “And you think Mary helped take the child?”

  “I have to find out.”

  “There are other explanations. People do make money from real property. Frugal people do make wise investments and amass a good deal of money. Women with character, like Mary, do take in stray children as their own. There’s a half-dozen other possibilities.”

  “I never saw an obituary for Colonel Wright. He’s alive somewhere.”

  “It wouldn’t be difficult to locate him. You know, Brian, even if this is all true, how can we prove it?”

  “I’m not sure, but I do know one thing. If it’s still there, some of the answers might be at Bellchamp.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The town of Indian Forks, New York, was a dying thing. The lake that had nurtured the area was now covered with large splotches of green algae that gave the water a scummy appearance. The two-lane road that led through the village, to become Main Street on the outskirts of town, ran parallel to the lake and continued onward to a heavily forested area. A large Victorian building, once a resort hotel, dominated the center of the village. Fire escapes crisscrossed the building’s frame, as a large sign near the road proclaimed it to be the Maywood Convalescent Home. Where the lake curved to the west, an unpainted, decrepit building perched on the water’s edge. A sign near its lone gas pump announced the sale of bait and tackle, with rental boats available.

  When Brian got out of the car near the gas pump, a tow-headed boy, holding a bottle of Pepsi and wearing grease-spattered Levis, nonchalantly walked from the building. “Fill ’er up?”

  Brian nodded. The attendant inserted a nozzle into the tank and stared off down the road as he pumped gas. “I’m looking for an old house down this way. They call it Bellchamp.”

  “Lots of old houses around here, most of them boarded up and falling apart.�
��

  “A Colonel Wright used to own this one, if it’s still here.”

  “The old Wright place. Yeah, it’s over across the lake. Still owns it, last I heard. Story is, that years ago there was a murder or something, and they just closed it up and left.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “You can almost see it from here across the lake. Just follow the road around the lake until you find the entrance. If you can find it.”

  The road gradually disintegrated into disrepair after it made the sweep around the end of the lake and began its course up the far side.

  Brian thought of Jan. Dreading the thought of what he might find in the long-vacant house, he considered the woman he had left early that morning. Her face, so intent the night before, had relaxed in sleep into a serenity he didn’t often see in her. He could marry her, leave Tallman with its inscrutable problems and go back to Canada. She would agree. They got along well together, and the specter of financial ruin, which continually seemed to haunt her, would be removed forever.

  “Don’t go,” she had said from the bed as he dressed. “It won’t lead to anything, and you’re only putting your life in jeopardy.”

  Brian had hefted the raincoat and taken the sawed-off shotgun from the floor near his pillow, checked the load and placed it in the pocket. “I’ll be all right. If all goes well, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  Recalling the morning’s events made him miss the turnoff. He had gone too far up the lake. He drove onto the breach of a logging road and turned around to go back. Again, he almost missed the entrance to the estate, which was overgrown with long poplar branches that hung over the rutted and unused road.

  The road ran a quarter of a mile to a fence surrounding the house. A high stone wall topped with jagged glass ran several hundred yards, until it turned toward the lake. Brian left the car at a high, wrought-iron gate to peer through the latticework, past the overgrown circular drive, at the house.

  Boarded windows stared back at him with malevolent eyes. The sense of déjà vu, felt so strongly in the photographs he had seen, was now gone. The empty house spoke only of desolation. A strong breeze rippled tree branches that hung precariously over the drive, and the house momentarily vanished to reappear again when the wind passed. He examined the gate. A heavy chain was looped through the iron work and fastened with a new padlock. He examined the gate posts and, at shoulder height, found on the right post a recessed square with one bent and rusted bolt still protruding from the mortar. He crouched to run his fingers through the weeds immediately in front of the post. It must have fallen years ago and was nearly rusted into obliteration, but the name was still discernible as he ran his fingers over the pitted letters—Bellchamp—on the rectangular plate.

  He walked along outside the wall, pushing through thorn brush and saplings. It would be difficult to get over the wall without risk of injury. But he decided the wall probably only ran along three sides of the property and out into the water. The lake side had to be open—why build a house on a lake and then obstruct the view? He went back to the car and backed out onto the road.

  The rowboat he rented at the gas station pushed through the lake’s green algae toward Bellchamp. As he drew nearer, he turned to look over his shoulder at the estate. It loomed near the water’s edge, a large house of Florentine motif. The portico and intricate masonry were streaked with roof sediment from the years of neglect. To one side, what had once been a formal garden was now an overgrown jungle. Small trees grew on the front patio, splitting the concrete into radiating mosaics. It was a place of lost grandeur.

  A rotting pier jutted from the center of the property where Brian tied the rowboat to a slanting post. He hopped to the ground, carrying the tire iron and flashlight he had removed from the car trunk.

  Boarded windows and doors gaped obscenely toward distant objects. Well-buttressed heavy planking across the wide front entrance would be difficult to remove. He pushed his way through overgrown shrubs to the side of the house, where a smaller door was indented under a V-shaped extension of the eastern wing. Inserting the tire iron under the edge of the planking, he began to pry boards from the frame.

  Once the boards were removed, he was able to insert the tire iron inside a rusting hasp holding an oversized padlock and pry it from its mounting. The door creaked open and he stepped inside.

  The shaft of light from the open door cast oblong patterns across the dusty flooring. The storage area led to a large kitchen with a restaurant-sized stove along one wall that still held culinary implements hanging from the rack near its hood. Brian coughed as his feet stirred dust and sediment that, over the years, had seeped through dozens of minute openings. The pantry led into a formal dining room where table and side chairs were shrouded in sheeting. A dank smell permeated everywhere.

  He walked slowly through the maze of downstairs rooms, trying to recreate some vestigial memories. But his only feeling was that of an intruder in a dead past. Decay and disuse disturbed him, and he stopped at the foot of a wide circular staircase, repressing a strong inclination to leave.

  It had been a long drive, and now that he was inside the mansion, he might as well complete the mission. He walked tiredly up the stairs.

  He stopped at the head of the staircase and turned with the flashlight held limply in one hand. The light shone through the balustrade to cast dappled shadows on the marble vestibule below.

  From some deep subconscious level, inchoate feelings swam forward to merge into vague images. He knelt to grip the banister and peer down toward things that no longer existed. An iridescent chandelier glinted above highly polished marble as faint music formed a backdrop to the laughter of milling people. Men in uniforms and tuxedos and women in long gowns swirled across the floor.

  And then they were gone. He stood as the after-images of their presence faded from the yellow flashlight falling on the dust below.

  The main hall ran the length of the house, but Brian turned right without thought and went to the far end of the building to stop in front of a closed door. His fingers lightly brushed the handle.

  Again he felt irresolution, fearful of empiric confirmation of what the dreamlike images below the stairs had revealed. He could run from the house and return to Canada.

  The door opened with a slight twist of the knob. The windows had never been boarded, and it was a bright room with afternoon sun in swatches across the flooring. Benign tigers stared shrewdly from faded wallpaper, while a cobwebbed rocking horse laughed in a corner.

  The crib was by the window, where he knew it would be. He ran his fingers along its top rail and looked out the window, wondering about the child he had once been.

  Over the wall, the forest swayed gently as it stretched toward a distant ridge. At the gate, a large black man was unlocking the padlock.

  Brian had an immediate mental picture of the raincoat he had left in the car with the shotgun in its deep pocket. The man below approached the house in a wary crouch, his head weaving slowly back and forth as he clutched the long pistol. As if forewarned by a hunter’s premonition, the man stopped and flicked his eyes across the upper windows. The sunglasses reflected green luminescent patches from the lake as they looked directly toward Brian standing in the nursery window.

  In a slow ballet of lethal intent, the gun rose. Then it was steadied with both hands as it swung in a short arc toward the window.

  Brian stood immobile, fascinated by the sequence. He heard the abrupt thunk of the pistol as the molding to his right shattered. His abrupt backward movement jarred the bird mobile above the crib. Slowly, it revolved with the final notes of the Brahms lullaby.

  Brian pressed against the wall away from the window as he assimilated what had happened. The black man would find the open door and stalk warily through the house with the weapon constantly at the ready. It would be impossible to pry open another door in time. Brian held his breath to listen for ominous sounds in the long-dead house.

  He would be cornered a
nd killed in his own nursery.

  There was an almost imperceptible shuffling sound from the staircase down the hall. Brian opened the nursery window, then backed up, ran across the room and dove through.

  He landed on hands and knees, a sharp pain reverberating in a damaged knee as shock numbed his shoulders. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the lake. He turned once to look up toward the window.

  The man with the gun stood in the nursery window, aiming.

  Brian’s knee hurt, and he found running difficult. Bark spattered from a nearby tree trunk, followed by the low thud of the silenced pistol. He ran a weaving pattern toward the lake and out onto the rotting wood of the pier and dove underwater. He swam toward the end of the wall that ran a dozen yards into the water. When he surfaced for air, a quick backward look told him that the black man had left the house and was running toward the water. Brian ducked under, and when he surfaced for the second time, he found he was by the edge of the wall. His pursuer had reached the dock and was untying the rowboat. Brian rounded the wall and swam in quick strokes toward the shore on the other side.

  Mud sucked at his feet when he stood in shallow water and staggered over a fallen tree to shore. The rowboat rounded the wall with uneven strokes that pushed the prow first one way and then another. The rower turned and raised the pistol as Brian ran through a pine grove away from the lake.

  Low-hanging branches lashed at his face, but he stumbled on toward the front of the house and the car he knew would be parked there. He reached the car and fumbled uselessly with the locked door before trying to raise the latched hood.

  He would have to smash the window and reach inside to unlatch the hood before he could rip off the distributor cap or immobilize the vehicle in some other manner. He found a large rock at the edge of the woods and raised it overhead as the black man turned the corner at the far edge of the wall.