Murder for Lunch

by Haughton Murphy

  The local train began to fill up as it waited at the Grand Central stop. Without any bidding on his part, Frost found himself almost physically a part of an entourage consisting of a young black woman and two tiny children, a girl in a stroller and a boy at her side. The woman, barely twenty Frost thought, deftly manipulated the stroller, the wiggly boy and a large carryall with diapers and a baby bottle. With some relief, she sat down next to Frost, but had to move over as the boy climbed between them.

  Frost continued reading his newspaper but soon became aware of two small dark eyes staring up at him. He looked directly at the elfin starer, whose look continued unfazed.

  “Hello,” Frost said.

  The boy opened his mouth but without speaking.

  “What’s your name?”

  No response; Frost repeated the question, looking at the boy’s mother as he did so. She smiled back politely, pleased at the attention her tiny son was attracting, yet at the same time vaguely wary lest the seemingly nice man should turn out to be some form of monster or bigot.

  “Eddie.”

  “Your name is Eddie?”

  “Yes.” Then, after a pause, “What’s yours?”

  Frost was slightly taken aback by his bold new friend, but replied nonetheless. “My name is Reuben.”

  “Reuben?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to work.”

  “We’re going to grandma’s.”

  “To stay?”

  “No, just to visit. Do you have a grandma?”

  “Not any more. I used to.”

  “Used to. Used to.” Eddie became more animated and jumped on the seat. “Used to! Used to!” His mother took hold of him and tried to calm him down.

  “Come on, Eddie. We’re getting off here.”

  “Used to! Used to!” the boy continued to chant.

  “Sorry, mister. He’s only three but he’s uncontrollable already,” the woman said to Frost as she gathered up her objects, animate and inanimate.

  “Not at all. He’s a very cute youngster,” Frost replied. “And so is the little girl,” he added, gesturing to the tiny sleeping figure in the stroller.

  “Thank you.” She smiled and moved toward the door.

  The children were indeed cute, the mother attractive. Where did they live? What did the father do? What would become of the children? Frost speculated on these questions for an instant before returning to the newspaper. He wished them well—mother, son, daughter, unseen father, and even grandma—and hoped that the perils of the city’s underside would not claim any of them.

  At Brooklyn Bridge Frost left the train, crossed beside City Hall and then walked down Broadway to One Metropolitan Plaza. As he did so, he thought enthusiastically about helping young Griffith with his drafting.

  It was a beautiful day and Frost was determined to seize upon it and enjoy it, with the zest that only a septuagenarian can muster. It was too bad that enjoyment would not last through lunch.

  DEATH AT THE CLUB

  4

  The training table. That was what the more irreverent young associates at Chase & Ward called the round lunch table at the Hexagon Club reserved for partners of the firm. The theory was that partners not otherwise busy for lunch could come there for a fast meal, but one enjoyed in the relaxed surroundings of the club and in the company of their colleagues. And, it might be added, create a tax deduction to the firm for the cost of the lunches, at least in the view of Keith Merritt, the amiable southerner who was Chase & Ward’s senior tax partner. After all, Merritt reasoned, the primary purpose of the luncheon gatherings was to provide a forum for the refined, collegial discussion of legal problems of mutual concern.

  The practice did not quite live up to the theory. There were ten places at the table and thirty-seven Chase & Ward partners, not to mention Reuben Frost and four other retired partners. The end result was a pressing competition for seats on rainy days (the club was located on the top floor of the One Metro building where Chase & Ward had its offices) and on days when a large number of partners did not have lunch plans elsewhere.

  Dorothea Cowden, the firm’s receptionist, monitored the traffic to and from the Hexagon Club, assigning places at the table on a first-come, first-served basis. Her skills as a traffic director were considerable, but not equal to coping with those who did not register their comings and goings with her.

  Ms. Cowden’s biggest problems were the five retired partners (rather fancifully dubbed the Five Little Peppers by a flip young colleague, familiar with old-fashioned children’s books). In keeping with long-standing tradition, partners who retired were permitted to keep their offices and to have lunch at the Training Table.

  Another prerogative, the right to attend the weekly formal luncheon of the firm’s partners, had been revoked by George Bannard the year before. There was no malice or ill will involved; some of the old boys simply talked too much. Unlike sessions at the Training Table, the weekly lunches, held in a private room at MacMillan’s, a downtown restaurant, were devoted to firm business requiring relatively organized discussion. To keep the length of these sessions within reasonable bounds, most partners—and active retired partners like Frost—judiciously edited their own remarks. But at least three of the Peppers looked upon these lunches as a sort of picnic—a chance once again to talk and be listened to. Their irrelevant comment and reminiscing had started a mini-rebellion and forced George Bannard to disinvite them for the future; of course, to minimize the embarrassment, Bannard had banished all five of the retired partners, rather than just the three addled offenders. The result was to annoy Reuben Frost mightily and to make the Training Table lunches on other days a more valuable prize to all the retired partners and, it seemed, to increase the regularity of their attendance.

  The Training Table was the scene of constant arrivals and departures during the lunch hour. Some preferred to eat early, others came to lunch on the late side. Chaos was the order of the day for the assigned waiter, who tried valiantly to take the orders of those just sitting down while almost simultaneously serving coffee and dessert to others. It was an impatient, demanding group; working the Chase & Ward table was considered a hardship post and one that no Hexagon Club waiter endured for long.

  The quality of conversation varied widely with the mix of participants. Often there was a lively discussion of a real legal issue (pace Internal Revenue Service); at other times talk revolved around whatever subjects the more dominant and outgoing partners selected. Often the partners’ interchanges were highly civilized and intelligent, worthy of the best luncheon club; at other times they could become raucous and silly.

  On Tuesday, September 12, at 12:30 P.M., events at the Training Table were fairly typical. Bannard, an habitué—he claimed it was his one means of staying in touch with the partners he was supposed to be leading—was sitting next to Arthur Tyson who, in his most brusque, playing field manner, was berating the table’s waiter for bringing him trout when he had distinctly ordered sole. The waiter removed the offending trout—he was much too harried to argue that Tyson was wrong—and went off to the kitchen. Tyson nonetheless continued his tirade.

  “I don’t know where they get these waiters from. The last one we had couldn’t speak English. Now we get one who speaks English but apparently can’t hear. Or can’t think. With the business we give this club, we ought to be able to get—”

  “Oh, Arthur, come on. If the guy were any smarter he wouldn’t be a waiter.” The speaker was Marvin Isaacs, one of the firm’s youngest partners, but one unafraid of tangling with his elders. His frequent settings-to-right were normally not resented because he was not in the least unpleasant in putting them forth. Indeed, his views were often welcomed because he had the sangfroid to express what others were too timid to say.

  It was clear that Tyson would have continued the argument. But Graham Donovan, sitting across the table, deftly turned the conversation to a subject of great inter
est among the assembled partners—the stolen Stephens Industries press release.

  “George, have you heard anything from Ross Doyle about Stephens?” Donovan asked Bannard. He lowered his voice when he did so, mindful that the partners’ table for Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms adjoined Chase & Ward’s.

  “No, nothing yet.”

  “I wish he’d get to the bottom of it soon. I just hope no part of the ‘family’ has betrayed us.” Donovan avoided looking at Roger Singer, sitting next to him, as he spoke of betrayal. Roger, a cipher as usual, said nothing and reacted not at all.

  “I do too, Graham. But we’ll just have to wait and see,” Bannard said.

  “If there’s a guilty party, I don’t care who it is,” Tyson chimed in. “If someone has been abusing his position as an employee, or lawyer, or whatever—maybe even as partner—there are only two possible things to do: get rid of him and call the district attorney.”

  “I hope it turns out as easy as you make it sound,” Bannard responded.

  “What are you boys talking about?” Reuben Frost asked.

  “Nothing, Reuben. Just a problem we’re having with one of the cleaning ladies. We think she may have taken some papers,” Bannard explained.

  “The cleaning lady took some papers? What papers?” Reuben pressed. From his conversation with Joe Mather, he knew precisely what his colleagues were talking about. But he decided to remain silent about what he knew.

  “We don’t know that, Reuben. Just a suspicion, and not important anyway. Nothing to get excited about.”

  “But Arthur was talking about calling the district attorney. Sounds pretty serious to me,” Reuben said, still persisting with his feigned ignorance. “But that’s all right, you don’t have to tell me. If the thing’s as serious as Arthur makes out, I can wait and read about it in the newspapers.” He chuckled, and in a way not entirely free of malice.

  “George, you mentioned cleaning ladies. I’m sure that’s no longer what they’re called,” interrupted Keith Merritt in his mellow southern accent and habitually sardonic tone. “You’ll get us up on a civil rights charge if you’re not careful. Dis-crim-i-na-tion.” He stretched out the syllables of “discrimination” and rolled his eyes.

  As Merritt spoke, Bannard wondered to himself why it was that so many southerners—including Merritt—sounded like histrionic actresses? Dis-crim-i-na-tion, indeed! Merritt, whom Bannard knew (or thought he knew) to be straight, nonetheless sounded at times like a refugee from a road company of La Cage Aux Folles.

  “Yes, George, what do you call cleaning ladies these days?” Donovan, sitting between Roger Singer and Merritt, interjected. “Cleaning women? Cleaning persons?”

  “Well, if you do it like those geniuses who run the City Bar Association, where they call their committee heads ‘chairs,’ they probably should be called ‘cleanings,’” Fred Coxe chimed in.

  “I would opt for ‘environmental assistants,’” Donovan joked. “Very euphemistic, and trendy besides.”

  “Well, boys, you can have all the fun you want,” Bannard said. “But I’m too damn old to start changing what I call people. Chairs—ridiculous! Cleaning persons—stupid! They were cleaning ladies when I came to work at Chase & Ward forty years ago, and as far as I’m concerned, they are cleaning ladies today.”

  “As opposed to plant ladies,” Coxe added.

  “Plant ladies? What the hell are you talking about?” Bannard shot back.

  “Just what I said. Plant ladies. They come around once a week and water and trim the plants in your office.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s probably because you don’t have any plants to tend.”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Bannard said. “But where do they come from? Who pays them?”

  “We do, George,” Merritt said. “Two hundred dollars a week to Plant Gems, a nice little business specializing in watering plants for prosperous firms like ours.”

  Once again Merritt had shown his intimate knowledge of the minutest inner workings of the firm.

  “Who hired these people, these plant ladies?” Bannard demanded.

  “Kidde, of course,” Merritt replied, naming the office manager.

  “What in the name of God is wrong with having the secretaries water the plants?”

  “Oh, oh, George,” Merritt said, reverting to his most histrionic manner. “Secretaries are professionals, not gardeners. They don’t get you coffee in the morning, they don’t do your errands, and they don’t water your plants.”

  “Well, some do,” Donovan said, rather proudly. “Miss Appleby gets me a Danish every morning. But you’re right about the plant ladies. Why, two of them were in my office yesterday, trying to resuscitate some poor old thing that Marjorie gave me to put in my office before she died. Dwight Draper was visiting me at the time and said Marjorie’s plant would need more than water to revive it.”

  “I am damned,” Bannard said. “But chalk up one more thing done around here behind the Executive Partner’s back.”

  “You probably don’t know about the phone wipers either,” Coxe said in his best tattletale voice.

  “Phone wipers—”

  “Yes, once every two weeks these women come around and wipe the germs off—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Bannard shouted. “I simply don’t want to hear it. Merritt, I suppose as usual you know all about this too?”

  “I’m afraid I do, and I’ve been meaning to speak to you about it,” Merritt said. “I found a payment to these people—Phone-genics I believe the outfit is called—in the accounts a couple of weeks ago. I asked Kidde about it and he said his friend, the office manager at Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms, had hired them and he thought it was a good idea too.”

  “Well, I don’t care what they do at Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms and I don’t care if every person there gets herpes from their phone receivers. It’s the silliest damn waste of money I’ve ever heard of and I’ll have Kidde stop it at once,” Bannard said in a voice that caught the attention of the Rudenstine, Fried table.

  “I agree with you, George, and told Kidde exactly the same thing. But …”

  “But what, Keith?”

  “But Kidde has signed Phone-genics to a two-year contract,” Merritt answered.

  “Damn, damn, damn. What will that idiot do next?”

  Bannard’s question went unanswered since, as he finished speaking, Graham Donovan began coughing violently, his chest heaving visibly. He became ashen and then his face muscles and arms started twitching. He clutched at his abdomen, rocked to one side and fell from his chair, first onto Roger Singer and then to the ground. Singer almost fell with him, but managed to clutch the table for balance. As Singer lurched against the table, he sent dishes and glasses to the floor, crashing around Donovan.

  Donovan’s colleagues were too stunned to react for an instant, but then they all began shouting and moving about at once.

  “Get a doctor!” Bannard screamed out.

  “Get an ambulance!” Coxe echoed.

  Nine of the country’s finest lawyers fell all over themselves in their efforts to assist their fallen colleague. Donovan was on his back, his arms and face still twitching.

  Some order was brought to the scene by a take-charge woman lawyer from Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms who ran over to Donovan, loosened his tie and began massaging his chest.

  The Hexagon Club’s headwaiter went through the dining room urgently seeking a doctor, but without success; no doctor was apparently seeing his lawyer or his broker that day.

  Bannard kept asking if a doctor had been called. He was assured that one was on the way. The other lawyers from Chase & Ward stood around, somewhat ashamed at the cool competence of their Rudenstine, Fried colleague, who continued to press down on Donovan’s chest in an effort to stabilize his breathing.

  Many guests in the dining room left quietly; it seemed somehow indecent to continue eating while a man was dying in the same room.


  A team of medics arrived with a stretcher, supervised by an overweight but most decisive woman.

  “Okay, stand back,” she called out as she and her two assistants approached Donovan. The Rudenstine, Fried lawyer continued her ministrations, even more frantically as Donovan’s wails got weaker and his face changed color in a most eerie way from ashen gray to beet-red to gray-blue. The woman medic gently but firmly pushed the lawyer aside and quickly scanned Donovan’s face, twitching arms and heaving chest. She pulled a stethoscope from her pocket and began listening to Donovan’s heart beat, then pounded vigorously on his chest.

  As she did so, Donovan became progressively quieter and then, with one massive, convulsive twitch, lay still.

  The medic got up, surveyed the onlookers and instinctively turned to Bannard, the tallest man present.

  “I’m afraid we’re too late,” she said quietly. One of the other medics covered the body with a blanket, while the second called the police on his walkie-talkie. “Did you know him?”

  “Yes, we were law partners together. What was it, heart?” Bannard asked.

  “I’m sure it was. Did he have a history of heart trouble?”

  “Yes. He had a mild heart attack about, oh, five years ago. But as far as I know he had not had any trouble since. Did you, Keith?”

  “No. He was always waging a battle of the waistline, but I thought he was basically in good shape,” Merritt answered.

  “Well, we’ll have to wait for the police and a medical examiner anyway,” the woman medic said.

  “Police?” Bannard asked. “Is that necessary?”

  “S.O.P., sir. Both police and a doc from the M.E.’s office whenever there’s a sudden death like this.”

  “What happens then?” Bannard asked.

  “They’ll take the body to the morgue and do an autopsy. Then when the death certificate’s signed, they’ll release it. Will one of you gentlemen claim the body?” the woman asked, looking around the perplexed group. “One of you really ought to stay here to answer questions about the deceased and then go to the M.E.’s office to claim the body.”