Murder for Lunch

by Haughton Murphy

  Tyson was the wild card in Bannard’s hand. His personal ambition usually tempered his behavior to his partners, though he seldom if ever displayed to them the deferential charm he seemed to reserve only for his trust and estates clients. He was also capable of temper outbursts that were unpleasant to see. As a result, he would not normally have been anyone’s choice for a group designed to reach a consensus on the issues before it. But Bannard, with uncharacteristic shrewdness, had decided, as Lyndon Johnson had once said, that he would rather have Tyson inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

  Donovan had been a member of the committee as Bannard’s heir apparent. His good humor was also invaluable—Bannard was not long on humor—in resolving whatever squabbles arose among the members.

  Merritt and Coxe arrived in response to Frost’s summons almost simultaneously; Tyson was absent, presumably still engaged in the distasteful business of claiming Donovan’s body. The two partners found Frost sitting on the sofa in Bannard’s office—he did not choose to sit behind Bannard’s desk—drumming the edge of the coffee table in front of him as he gazed out the window.

  “What on earth is this, Reuben? What’s going on?” Coxe asked, as he sat down beside Frost on the sofa and Merritt sat in a chair opposite them.

  Frost ignored the question. “Gentlemen, we have got trouble. We have got very bad trouble indeed.”

  The two men’s eyes were upon him as he reviewed how Bannard had asked him to open Donovan’s desk and as he described the water carafe incident. As he came to the end of the account, their attention refocused on the offending carafe and glass, which Frost had brought with him to Bannard’s office, afraid to let them out of his sight.

  “Reuben, are you telling us that someone poisoned Graham Donovan?” Coxe asked, in a tone that may or may not have implied that Frost was senile.

  “Fred, I don’t know any more than you do,” Frost replied. “But it is certainly odd that Donovan takes a drink of iced tea made with contaminated—or poisoned—water and then dies two hours later.”

  Merritt had become visibly agitated as the conversation progressed. His right hand trembled slightly as he lit a cigarette. “Are we sure it’s poison?” he asked.

  “Keith, as I just said, I haven’t any idea. But I think we have got to find out.”

  “I agree, Reuben,” Coxe chimed in. “But how do we go about it?”

  “Well, I assume they will do an autopsy on Graham and find out that he was poisoned. But independent of that, I had in mind calling in Ross Doyle and getting him to get a lab test performed on the carafe and the glass. Maybe by the time we know whether Graham’s death was linked to the carafe we’ll be able to think more clearly and decide our next move.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea, Reuben,” Coxe burbled. “A very good idea.” Coxe was showing the fine, independent judgment Frost had long admired. But at least he was supportive, he thought.

  “What do you think, Keith?”

  Merritt remained silent, though puffing nervously on his cigarette. “Oh. I agree,” he finally answered. “I agree all the way, Reuben.”

  “Well then, I’m going to call Doyle right away.”

  “I certainly hope he can help us. I certainly do,” Merritt said, now excited and sounding more than a little like the late Truman Capote.

  “What about Bannard?” Coxe asked. “Shouldn’t we tell him about this?”

  “I’ve tried once,” Frost said. “But he’s in transit at the moment. I’ll call him later when we can track him down in Chicago.”

  Ross Doyle was in Frost’s office within three quarters of an hour. A dapper little man with nondescript features appropriate to a private eye, he nonetheless seemed a trifle seedy. There was reason for this. For years Doyle had made a very comfortable living, specializing in gathering evidence for publications sued for libel. All the major newspapers and magazines had used his services at one time or another. If a newspaper said that Frankie Filmstar was lying in the gutter drunk on Thursday night and Frankie sued the newspaper for libel, Doyle was the man to call if it turned out Frankie was drinking tea with his aged mother on the Thursday night in question. Invariably, Doyle was able to prove that, whatever Frankie was doing on Thursday, he had indeed been drunk in the gutter on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And molesting underaged girls in between. Armed with Doyle’s “research,” as he called it, the offending newspaper could easily persuade Frankie to drop his case.

  Doyle’s tales of tracking the famous were legendary in the communications business. But the Supreme Court had made him technologically obsolete. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court decided in 1964 that a public figure could not succeed in a libel case unless he could prove that the offending publication had maliciously printed a falsehood about him. In the usual libel case, Frankie Filmstar no longer stood a chance of collecting and there was no more need for Doyle’s persuasive “research.”

  The other mainstay of Doyle’s business, divorce cases, had also disappeared. Not because divorce had vanished, heaven knows, but because the grounds for obtaining one had so drastically changed. Twenty years earlier, the only grounds for a divorce in New York had been adultery, which was normally proved by the testimony of a private detective who had caught the offending spouse in flagrante delicto with a “corespondent.” Absent such testimony, the divorcing New Yorker had to go to Nevada or Mexico or some other equally remote and inhospitable jurisdiction to shed a spouse. Then all that changed when the state legislature adopted what was essentially a “no-fault” divorce law, cutting Doyle’s business in the process.

  Despite these setbacks Doyle continued to squeeze out a living from his work, aided in part by the desire of companies subject to unfriendly takeovers to get the goods on their potential suitors. But Doyle was always grateful for a chance to help Chase & Ward with difficult problems.

  “Reuben, what can I do for you?” Doyle asked. “I thought you’d retired and didn’t have troubles anymore.”

  Frost ignored Doyle’s attempted—and as far as he was concerned, unfunny—jest.

  “Have you heard about Graham?” he asked.

  “Graham?”

  “Graham Donovan. He died suddenly this noon. Keeled over at the lunch table at the club upstairs.”

  “Reuben, I didn’t know, and I’m sorry to hear it. He was a very nice man. Heart attack?”

  “I’m awfully afraid not. But that’s why you’re here,” Frost answered. For the second time in as many hours he recounted the carafe incident.

  “So you want me to get these things analyzed, right?” Doyle said at the end of the story.

  “Yes. And I assume you can do so discreetly,” Frost said.

  “No problem. I know a lab that will work at night. We should have an answer tomorrow.”

  “Terrific … I guess. I’m not sure I really want to know the result.”

  “I sympathize, Reuben.”

  Frost, on the basis of a remark half-overheard at lunch, then ventured into new territory.

  “Chase & Ward seems to be a good source of business for you these days, Ross,” Frost said.

  “Mmn.”

  “Anything new on the other front?” Frost asked.

  “Other front?”

  “Stephens.”

  “Oh, you know about that?”

  “Something.”

  “I was hoping to surprise George Bannard on that one, Reuben. The fact is I’m due over at Bennett Holbrook this afternoon. I’m going to talk to the broker that got the press release, and by the luckiest chance my sister-in-law works in the back office there. She’s promised me a peek at their customer records and I’m going to take a look this afternoon. After dealing with your drinking utensils, of course.”

  With that, Doyle opened his briefcase and pulled out a cloth bag. He put the carafe, the glass and the tray that held them in the bag, covering his hand with a handkerchief as he did so, as Frost had done earlier.

  “Do you always travel wit
h a spare bag, Ross?”

  “In my business, Reuben, you do. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  After Doyle had left, Frost considered trying to call Bannard again; he should be in Chicago by now. But why bother him? He was undoubtedly already closeted with Sussman and his team. Yes, Frost thought, he should wait until he had something more concrete to report. Instead he left word for Arthur Tyson to call him if he returned to the office or called in from outside. In what seemed a matter of seconds, Tyson burst into Frost’s office.

  “Christ, what a mess,” Arthur Tyson said straight off, without any preliminaries.

  Frost leaned back in his desk chair as Tyson sat down opposite him.

  “Reuben, I’ve just seen bureaucracy at its best. You can’t even die in this town without a mountain of paperwork,” Tyson complained. He reviewed the frustrations of the last few hours—waiting for a homicide detective and a medical examiner at the Hexagon Club (not such great fun, with the body of his partner lying uncomfortably near by); an argument with the medical examiner at the morgue over whether an autopsy was necessary and when it would be done; a frantic search for Stanley Hall, Donovan’s doctor, to acquaint the medical examiner with Donovan’s earlier heart attack; and, finally, release of the body to Tyson’s custody.

  “You’d think Graham had died of leprosy the way they acted,” Tyson said. “Questions, questions, questions. And then no idea when the autopsy would be done, until I made it clear I would be around at my obnoxious best until the damn thing was over.”

  “They did an autopsy?” Frost asked.

  “Yes, after a good, long wait. The thick-headed jerk who did it seemed more interested in filling out papers than getting it done. But I finally got hold of Hall, who conviced the ghoul that Donovan had had a heart attack in the past and that surely that is what he died of. The whole thing was over very fast once Hall gave him the business.”

  Frost smiled and then told Tyson that he really shouldn’t be smiling in the circumstances.

  “What circumstances?” Tyson demanded.

  “Arthur, were you really at your obnoxious best?” Frost asked.

  “You’re damn right. Graham’s body would still be up there on a marble slab if I hadn’t pushed things through. Stupid paper-shuffling bastards.”

  “Arthur, you probably managed to turn yourself into a murder suspect,” Frost said, trying again to submerge the smile that would not go away.

  “Murder suspect! What the hell are you talking about?” Tyson rose as he shouted across the desk at Frost.

  “Unfortunately, just what I said, Arthur. You and Hall and your ghoul friend were wrong. Graham Donovan did not die of a heart attack. He was poisoned. And I suspect your leading the medical examiner away from the cause of death will not be taken lightly.”

  “Reuben, explain to me what you’re talking about. And quick, too,” Tyson barked, as if confronting a hostile witness.

  Frost did, after which a uniquely subdued Arthur Tyson mutely left Reuben Frost’s office.

  REQUIESCAT IN PACE

  8

  Reuben Frost followed his usual ritual Wednesday morning, drinking his large glass of fresh orange juice with perhaps even more zest than usual. When he had finished, he turned to the obituary page of the Times. Like many his age, Frost in fact turned to the obituary page first every day, scanning not only the news stories, but the fine print of the paid death notices as well. He was always amazed at the number of acquaintances—not to say friends—who showed up there: long-forgotten chums from Navy days, law school classmates, even a Congressman from Upstate New York.

  This particular morning Frost was eager to see how his dead colleague had been treated editorially. Bannard and Frost had agreed that Nigel Stewart, a Chase & Ward partner with some literary flair, should write the obituary. Despite Stewart’s efforts, however, and the hand delivery of the text to an editor Frost knew well socially, the story on Donovan closely resembled what had become known as the all-purpose Wall Street lawyer’s obituary:

  ______, a member of the New York law firm of______, died at his home yesterday. He was______.

  Born in______,______, 19______, he was graduated from ______ College in 19______ and ______ Law School in 19______. Immediately after law school he joined the firm of______, where he became a partner in 19______. He specialized in ______ law and had served as chairman of the ______ law committees of both the American and the City Bar Association.

  He is survived by______.

  Donovan’s obituary was notable only for the inclusion of an old photograph and one sentence not from the fill-in-the-blank model:

  “A specialist in securities law matters, he had acted as counsel in the development stage of several corporations that later became large public concerns, including Stephens Industries, Inc.”

  Cynthia Frost came in as he finished reading.

  “Well, poor Graham got the cookie-cutter treatment,” Reuben said.

  “I know. I was up before you and read it.”

  “It’s a pity, you know. Graham was one of the most distinguished lawyers in New York, but his obituary makes him sound like the most mundane hack in the world.”

  “Well, Reuben, it may be just as well,” his wife said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if your poison theory is true, the less interesting and prominent Graham Donovan was the better. Otherwise, my dear, you’ll be on Eyewitness News—very fitting name in this case, since you were an eyewitness.”

  “To Graham’s death, not his poisoning,” Frost said curtly.

  “By the way, have you called George Bannard yet?”

  “Not this morning. I tried all last night, as you know, but couldn’t reach him.”

  “You could have left a message to call anytime.”

  “Yes, I could have, and been awakened in the middle of the night so that I could tell him my inconclusive news.”

  “Inconclusive?”

  “Well, the autopsy said Graham died of a heart attack. We won’t know about the poison thing until our private eye Ross Doyle reports back.”

  “Oh, Reuben. I see it all. You want to be in charge of this exciting mess, but you’ve got to tell George. You would have been furious if someone had not told you when you were the Executive Partner.”

  “You’re right, as usual. I’ll try him again now.” Frost got up and went into the library. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket with the Ritz’s number written on it, dialed, and was through to Bannard quickly.

  “George, I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, but I did want to reach you before you left the hotel.”

  “As a matter of fact I was just going out the door; I’m running late. So what is it, something about Donovan’s funeral?” Bannard’s impatience was easily transmitted across the wires.

  “It’s about Donovan all right, but not about his funeral,” Frost answered.

  “Well, what is it then?” Bannard’s increased impatience almost created static on the line.

  Frost told him the news; there was no more talk about running out the door.

  “What have you done about it?” Bannard shouted through the phone.

  Frost told him of his meeting with Doyle, or at least the part dealing with Donovan. He also said that Bannard’s Executive Committee concurred with what he had done.

  Bannard was silent for a long interval. Then he asked, “Reuben, do you think I should come back?”

  Of course you should, Reuben thought, if you had any notion of hands-on management of firm affairs. But then again, Bannard was away on important business and there really was little he could do in New York, at least until their suspicions were confirmed. He reviewed the alternatives with Bannard and was not surprised when the latter said he would stay in Chicago.

  “I’m here alone, so there’s no one who can go to Sussman’s board meeting. And it sounds as if there’s nothing to be done at the moment in New York. Besides, Reuben, I have complete confidence in you.
”

  How sweet, Reuben thought. How very, very sweet. But he did not chide his former partner. Instead they talked over details—Bannard would return as soon as conditions permitted, but he would be unlikely to get to Donovan’s wake. Could Frost represent the firm there? He would call as soon as he got in. And yes, he would meet Frost the next morning to arrange Donovan’s funeral service.

  “All right, I talked to Bannard,” Reuben told Cynthia. “He has so much confidence in me he isn’t returning from Chicago until tonight. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Well, he ought to have confidence in you,” Cynthia said, kissing her husband on the forehead as she dashed for the door and the day’s appointments.

  Wednesday was a difficult day for Frost, Merritt, Tyson and Coxe. They, together with Bannard, were the only members of the firm who knew the terrible secret that some unknown laboratory was undoubtedly in the process of confirming, a secret that led inexorably to the conclusion that Graham Donovan had been murdered. All of them tried to keep as low a profile as possible. It was no accident that all four found a reason not to have lunch at the Training Table.

  Circumstances were particularly tricky for Frost. All day Wednesday colleagues from other firms, clients and friends called in to express condolences and, in Bannard’s absence, were referred to Frost. Many naturally asked the cause of death; Frost could only respond, most uncomfortably, that Graham was thought to have died from a heart attack.

  In the evening, Frost went to be present during visiting hours at Frank Campbell’s, the Madison Avenue funeral parlor where Donovan’s body had been taken. With Bruce Donovan boycotting all aspects of the funeral ritual, Frost felt that someone had to be present during the wake.

  Frost was touched by the sentiments expressed that evening. A surprisingly large crowd passed through Campbell’s, including several successful investment bankers who recalled how Donovan had guided them in their novice years through the intricacies of the securities laws (and, Frost knew, taught them a good bit about investment banking in the process, without ever seeming to overstep the boundaries of the lawyer’s role).