McNally's Luck

by Lawrence Sanders

  I found it amazing that the two were sisters. I could see a slight resemblance in their features, but their carcasses were totally dissimilar. If they stood side by side, Meg on the left, they’d look like the number 18.

  And their personalities were so unlike. Laverne was a bouncy extrovert, Meg more introspective, a serious woman. I thought she was not as coarsely woven as Laverne, not as many slubs. As of that moment I was not smitten, but she intrigued me. There was a mystery to her that challenged. Laverne was about as mysterious as a baked potato.

  I pulled into the driveway of the McNally castle, a tall Tudorish pile with a mansard roof of copper that leaked. I parked on the graveled turnaround in front of our three-car garage, making sure I did not block the entrance to the left-hand bay where my father always sheltered his big Lexus. The middle space was occupied by an old, wood-bodied Ford station wagon, used mostly for shopping and to transport my mother’s plants to flower shows.

  I found her in the small greenhouse talking to her begonias, as usual. Her name was Madelaine, and she was a paid-up member of the Union of Ditsy Mommies. But she was an absolutely glorious woman, warm and loving. I had seen her wedding pictures, when she became Mrs. Prescott McNally, and she was radiant then. Now, pushing seventy, she was even more beautiful. I speak not as a dutiful son but as an eager student of pulchritude. (I carried in my wallet a small photo of Kay Kendall.)

  Mother’s specs had slipped down on her nose, and she didn’t see me sneak up. I kissed her velvety cheek, and she closed her eyes.

  “Ronald Colman?” she asked. “John Barrymore?”

  “Tyrone Power,” I told her.

  “My favorite,” she said, opening her eyes. “He was so wonderful in The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

  “Mother, that was John Garfield.”

  “I loved him, too,” she said. “Where have they all gone, Archy?”

  “To the great Loew’s in the sky,” I said. “But I’m still here.”

  “And I love you most,” she said promptly, patting my cheek. “Ursi is baking scallops tonight. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I’m in a scallopy mood. Ask father to open one of those bottles of muscadet he’s been hoarding.”

  “Why don’t you ask him, Archy?”

  “Because he’ll tell me that a jug chablis is good enough. But if you ask, he’ll break out the good stuff. He’s putty in your hands.”

  “He is?” she said. “Since when?”

  I kissed her again and went up to my suite to change. “Suite” is a grandiloquent word to describe a small sitting room, cramped bedroom, and claustrophobic bathroom on the third floor. But you couldn’t beat the rent. Zip. And it was my private aerie. I had no complaints whatsoever.

  I pulled on modest swimming trunks (shocking pink), a terry coverup, and sandals. Then I grabbed a towel and went down to the beach. The Atlantic was practically lapping at our doorstep; just cross Ocean Boulevard and there it was, shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight. The chop was not strong enough to give me second thoughts.

  I try to swim two miles a day. Not out and back; that’s for idiots. I swam parallel to the shore, about fifty feet out. I go a mile north or south and then return. I don’t exactly wallow, as I told Meg Trumble, but I sort of plow along. However, since it is the only physical exercise I get—other than an occasional game of darts at the Pelican Club—it makes me feel virtuous and does wonders for the appetite. And thirst.

  My father is very big on tradition. One of the ceremonies he insists on honoring is the cocktail hour, a preprandial get-together that usually lasts thirty minutes during which we imbibe martinis he mixes to the original formula of three parts gin to one of vermouth. Not dry enough for you? Complain to Prescott McNally, but be prepared to face a raised eyebrow—and a hairy one at that.

  “Are you going out tonight, Archy?” my father asked that evening at the family gathering.

  “No, sir,” I said, “I hadn’t planned to.”

  “Good,” he said. “Roderick Gillsworth phoned this afternoon and wants to come over at nine o’clock. It concerns some matter he didn’t wish to discuss at the office.”

  “And you want me to be present?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

  The governor chomped on his olive which, in a small departure from his love of the hallowed, had been stuffed with a sliver of jalapeno. “Yes,” he said, “Gillsworth particularly asked that you sit in.”

  “And how is Lydia?” mother asked, referring to the client’s wife.

  Father knitted his brows which, considering their hirsuteness, might have resulted in a sweater. “I asked,” he said, “but the man didn’t give me a direct answer. Very odd. Shall we go down to dinner?”

  The scallops were super, the flavor enhanced by a muscadet the lord of the manor had consented to uncork. He’s inclined to be a bit mingy with his vintage wines. It makes little difference to mother, who drinks only sauterne with dinner—a dreadful habit my father and I have never persuaded her to break. But I like a rare wine occasionally: something that doesn’t come in a bottle with a handle and screw-top.

  For dessert, Ursi Olson, our cook-housekeeper, served big slices of a succulent honeydew with wedges of fresh lime. Surfeited, I climbed upstairs to my cave and did a spot of work before Roderick Gillsworth arrived.

  During discreet inquiries in the past I had learned to keep a record of my investigations in a ledger. I have a tendency to forget things that may or may not turn out to be important.

  So I scribbled short notes on the cases in which I was engaged. That evening I started a new chapter on the catnapping of the malevolent Peaches. I jotted down everything I had learned during the day, which wasn’t a great deal. When finished, I put my completed notes aside and glanced at my Mickey Mouse wristwatch (an original, not a reproduction). I saw that I had a quarter-hour before my presence was required in my father’s study, to listen to what was troubling our client. I spent the time recalling what I knew of Roderick Gillsworth.

  He was a poet, self-proclaimed. His first book, The Joy of Flatulence, was so obscure and prolix that critics were convinced he was a genius, and on the strength of their ecstatic reviews TJOF sold 527 copies. But Gillsworth’s subsequent volumes didn’t do as well, and he accepted employment as poet-in-residence at an exclusive liberal arts college for women in New Hampshire.

  There he married one of his students, Lydia Barkham. She was heiress to a fortune in old money accumulated by a Rhode Island family that began by making string, graduated to rope, moved on to steel cables, and eventually sold out to a Japanese conglomerate at such a humongous price that one financial commentator termed it “Partial revenge for Pearl Harbor.”

  Lydia and Roderick Gillsworth moved to Palm Beach in the late 1970s and, despite their wealth, bought a relatively modest home on Via Del Lago, about a block from the beach. They lived quietly, entertained infrequently, and apparently had little interest in tennis, golf, or polo. This did not make them pariahs, of course, but they were considered somewhat odd. According to Palm Beach gossips (the entire population) the Gillsworths had what the French label a marriage blanc, and what your grandmother probably called a “marriage in name only.” Naturally I cannot vouch for that.

  Roderick continued to write poetry, but now his slim volumes were privately printed, handsomely bound in calfskin, and given as Christmas gifts to personal friends. The McNally family had eight of his books, the pages still uncut. The most recent collection of his poems was titled The Cross-Eyed Atheist.

  When I entered my father’s study on the ground floor, Gillsworth was already lounging in a leather wing chair. I went over to shake his hand and he didn’t bother rising. I was an employee and about ten years younger than he, but I still felt it was bad manners. My father sat behind his big leather-topped desk, and I drew up a straight chair and positioned it so that I could observe both men without turning my head back and forth.

  “Archy,” the don said, “Mr. Gillsworth
apparently has a personal problem he wishes to discuss. He is aware of your responsibility for discreet inquiries and the success you have achieved in several investigations with a minimum of publicity.”

  “No publicity,” the poet said sharply. “I must insist on that: absolutely no publicity. Lydia would never forgive me if this got out.”

  Father stroked his mustache with a knuckle. That mustache was as bristly as his eyebrows, but considerably wider. It was the Guardsman’s type and stretched the width of his face, a thicket that was a sight to behold when he was eating barbecued ribs. “Every effort will be made to keep the matter confidential, Mr. Gillsworth,” he said. “What exactly is it?”

  Our client drew a deep breath. “About three weeks ago,” he began, “a letter arrived at our home addressed to my wife. Plain white envelope, no return address. At the time Lydia was up north visiting cousins in Pawtucket. Fortunately she had left instructions to open her mail and forward to Rhode Island whatever I thought important and might require her immediate attention. I say ‘fortunately’ because this particular letter was a vicious threat against Lydia’s life. It spelled out the manner of her murder in such gruesome and sickening detail that it was obviously the product of a deranged mind.”

  “Dreadful,” my father said.

  “Did the letter give any reason for the threat?” I asked.

  “Only in vague terms,” Gillsworth said. “It said she must die to pay for what she is doing. That was the phrase used: ‘for what she is doing.’ Complete insanity, of course. Lydia is the most innocent of women. Her conduct is beyond reproach.”

  “Do you have the letter with you, Mr. Gillsworth?” father asked.

  The poet groaned. “I destroyed it,” he said. “And the envelope it came in. I hoped it might be a single incident, and I had no wish that Lydia would ever find and read that piece of filth. So I burned it.”

  Then we sat in silence. Gillsworth had his head averted, and I was able to study him a moment. He was a tall, extremely thin man with a bony face split by a nose that ranked halfway between Cyrano and Jimmy Durante.

  He was wearing a short-sleeved leisure suit of black linen. With his mighty beak, scrawny arms, and flapping gestures he looked more bird than bard. I wondered what a young coed had seen in the poet that persuaded her to plight her troth. But it’s hopeless to try to imagine what spouses find in each other. It’s better to accept Ursi Olson’s philosophy. She just shrugs and says, “There’s a cover for every pot.”

  The silence stretched, and when the seigneur didn’t ask the question that had to be asked, I did.

  “But you’ve received another letter?” I prompted Gillsworth.

  He nodded, and the stare he gave me seemed dazed, as if he could not quite comprehend the inexplicable misfortune that had befallen him and his wife. “Yes,” he said in a voice that lacked firmness. “Two days ago. Lydia is home now, and she opened the letter, read it, showed it to me. I thought it even more disgusting and frightening than the first. Again it said that she must die for what she was doing, and it described her murder in horrendous and obscene detail. Obviously the work of a homicidal maniac.”

  “How did your wife react to the letter?” my father asked gently.

  Gillsworth shifted uncomfortably in his wing chair. “First,” he said, “I must give you a little background. My wife has always been interested in the occult and in psychic phenomena. She believes in supernatural forces, the existence of spirits, ESP, and that sort of thing.” He paused.

  I was curious and asked, “Do you also believe in those things, sir?”

  He made one of his floppy gestures. “I don’t believe and I don’t disbelieve. Quite frankly, the supernatural is of minor interest to me. My work is concerned with the conflict between the finite expression of the human psyche and the Ur-reality concealed within. I call it the Divine Dichotomy.”

  My father and I nodded thoughtfully. What else could we do?

  “To answer your question, Mr. McNally,” Gillsworth continued, addressing mein papa, “my wife reacted to the letter with complete serenity. You may find it remarkable—I certainly do—but she has absolutely no fear of death, no matter how painful or horrid its coming. She believes death is but another form of existence, that we pass from one state to another with no loss, no diminution of our powers, but rather with increased wisdom and added strength. This belief—which she holds quite sincerely, I assure you—enables her to face her own death with equanimity. And so that letter failed to frighten her—if that was its purpose. But it frightens me, I can tell you that. I suggested to Lydia that it might be wise if she returned to Rhode Island for an extended visit until this whole matter can be cleared up.”

  “Yes,” father said, “I think that would be prudent.”

  “She refused,” Gillsworth said. “I then suggested both of us take a trip, perhaps go abroad for a long tour. Again she refused. She will not allow the ravings of a lunatic to alter her life. And she is quite insistent that the matter not be referred to the police. She accepts the entire situation with a sangfroid that amazes me. I cannot take it so lightly. I finally won her permission to seek your counsel with the understanding that you will make no unauthorized disclosure of this nasty business to the police or anyone else.”

  “You may depend on it,” my father said gravely.

  “Good,” the poet said. “Would you care to see the second letter?”

  “By all means.”

  Gillsworth rose and took a white envelope from his outside jacket pocket. He strode across the room and handed it to my father.

  “Just a moment, please,” I said. “Mr. Gillsworth, I presume only you and your wife have touched the letter since it was received.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Father,” I said, “I suggest you handle it carefully, perhaps by the corners. The time may come when we might wish to have it dusted for fingerprints.”

  He nodded and lifted the flap of the opened envelope with the tip of a steel letter opener taken from his desk. He used the same implement to tease out the letter and unfold it on his desktop. He adjusted the green glass shade of his brass student lamp and began to read. I moved behind his shoulder and peered but, without my reading glasses, saw nothing but a blur.

  Father finished his perusal and looked up at the man standing before his desk. “You did not exaggerate, Mr. Gillsworth,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Would you read it aloud, sir?” I asked him. “I’m afraid I left my glasses upstairs.”

  He read it in unemotional tones that did nothing to lessen the shock of those words. I shall not repeat the letter lest I offend your sensibilities. Suffice to say it was as odious as Gillsworth had said: a naked threat of vicious murder. The letter was triple-distilled hatred.

  Father concluded his reading. The client and I returned to our chairs. The three of us, shaken by hearing those despicable words spoken aloud, sat in silence. The pater looked at me, and I knew what he was thinking. But he’d never say it, never dent my ego in the presence of a third person. That’s why I loved him, the old badger. So I said it for him.

  “Mr. Gillsworth,” I said as earnestly as I could, “I must tell you in all honesty that although I appreciate your confidence in me, I am beyond my depth on this. It requires an investigation by the local police, post office inspectors, and possibly the FBI. Sending a threat of physical harm through the mail is a federal offense. The letter should be analyzed by experts: the typewriter used, the paper, psychological profile of the writer, and so forth. It’s possible that similar letters have been received by other Palm Beach residents, and yours may provide a vital lead to the person responsible. I urge you to take this to the proper authorities as soon as you can.”

  My father looked at me approvingly. “I fully concur with Archy’s opinion,” he said to Gillsworth. “This is a matter for the police.”

  “No,” the poet said stonily. “Impossible. Lydia has expressly forbidden it, and I cannot flout her wishe
s.”

  Now my father’s glance at me was despairing. I knew he was close to rejecting Gillsworth’s appeal for help, even if it meant losing a client.

  “Mr. Gillsworth,” I said, leaning toward him, “would you be willing to do this: Allow me to meet and talk with your wife. Let me try to convince her how seriously my father and I take this threat. Perhaps I can persuade her that it really would be best to ask the authorities for help.”

  He stared at me an excessively long time. “Very well,” he said finally. “I don’t think it will do a damned bit of good, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Archy can be very persuasive,” my father said dryly. “May we keep the letter, Mr. Gillsworth?”

  The poet nodded and rose to leave. Handshakes all around. My father carefully slid the opened letter into a clean manila file folder and handed it to me. Then he walked Roderick Gillsworth out to his car. I carried the folder up to my cave and flipped on the desk lamp.

  I put on my glasses and read the letter. It was just awful stuff. But that wasn’t what stunned me. I saw it was on good quality paper, had been written with a word processor, and had an even right-hand margin.

  How does that grab you?

  Chapter 3

  I WENT TO SLEEP that evening convinced that the Peaches letter and the Gillsworth letter had been written on the same machine, if not by the same miscreant. But what the snatching of a cranky cat had to do with a murderous threat against a poet’s wife, the deponent kneweth not.

  I awoke the next morning full of p. and v., eager to devote a day to detecting and sorry I lacked a meerschaum pipe and deerstalker cap. Unfortunately I also awoke an hour late, and by the time I traipsed downstairs my father had left for the office in his Lexus and mother and Ursi had taken the Ford to go provisioning. Jamie Olson was seated in the kitchen, slurping from a mug of black coffee.

  We exchanged matutinal greetings, and Jamie—our houseman and Ursi’s husband—asked if I wanted a “solid” breakfast. Jamie is a septuagenarian with a teenager’s appetite. His idea of a “solid” breakfast is four eggs over with home fries, pork sausages, a deck of rye toast, and a quart of black coffee—with maybe a dram of aquavit added for flavor. I settled for a glass of OJ, buttered bagel, and a cup of his coffee—strong enough to numb one’s tonsils.