Murder for Lunch

by Haughton Murphy

  “Perry, if you are innocent, why did you try to silence Miss Appleby?”

  “Just like I said. I could see you were looking for a suspect, and I didn’t want that suspect to be me.”

  Frost was now silent, swiveling slightly in his desk chair, so that he looked not at Griffith but at the picture of his wife as Odette at the side of the desk. Then he turned and faced Griffith directly once again.

  “Perry, let me ask you one more question.”

  Griffith did not respond.

  “Do you know what drug it was that killed Graham?”

  “No. You didn’t tell me,” Griffith answered. (“And I didn’t put it there, so I really don’t know,” his expression seemed to say as well.)

  “It was a highly concentrated derivative of digitalis,” Frost said. “One that’s used to make a new wonder drug for the heart called Pernon. Ever heard of it?”

  “No, I don’t believe I have.”

  “And do you suppose your doctor wife has?”

  Griffith sprang out of his chair and brought his fist down on Frost’s desk. “Goddammit, Reuben, what the hell does that remark mean? It’s bad enough that I have to sit here and listen to your insinuations about me, but you can goddam well leave Alice out of this!

  “Of course she knows about Pernon!” Griffith shouted. “She knows about every goddam drug in the pharmacopoeia! She’s a doctor, for Christ’s sake! So no, it wouldn’t surprise me if Alice had heard of Pernon, or cortisone, or boric acid, for that matter. Don’t be an idiot, Reuben. I didn’t kill Graham Donovan and Alice didn’t help me do it!”

  Griffith stormed out of the office and slammed the door.

  Frost felt sheepish as he sat alone in the office. He had not handled things well. Griffith was undoubtedly right about his acting like an idiot. Frost was pushing too hard to nail a suspect, trying too hard to be an amateur gumshoe. And provoking the young man with the question about his wife was clumsy and gave him cause for anger—or, just possibly, a plausible chance to break off an uncomfortable encounter.

  Bautista emerged from the adjoining conference room when he heard Frost’s door slam.

  “Well?” Bautista asked.

  “Totally predictable. Griffith says he went to ask Grace Appleby not to reveal that he had visited Graham Donovan in his office the morning of Graham’s death. And he got progressively more angry as we talked and finally walked out.”

  “Does he protest too much?” Bautista asked.

  “I wish I knew … Luis, I wish I knew.”

  ANOTHER COUNTRY

  18

  Claudio, the Genial Maitre d’ at the Hotel Cipriani, showed Roger Singer to a table beside the hotel pool. It was, in fact, Singer’s favorite table, facing out into the brilliant sunshine of Venice and commanding a view of San Giorgio.

  Ruskin had found San Giorgio an abomination and many felt the same about the Cipriani. Singer emphatically disagreed. He and Anne had made it a point to stay at the hotel whenever they were within striking distance of Venice. Of course many of the guests at “Chips” had more money than manners, but both Roger and Anne loved its sybaritic ambience, its (generally) impeccable service, the excellent food, the linen sheets, the beautiful gardens, the comfortable pool. And lunch at poolside, with here a French millionairess and her retinue of pretty faces, all male; there an Italian fashion designer with his retinue, also pretty, also male; the British conglomerateur and his family; the London art historian and his dowdy wife; the unfashionable but undoubtedly rich American, wearing a polyester shirt and street shoes with his shorts, and his wife, wearing diamonds with her bathing suit and vigorously chewing gum. Something was always happening, and more often than not something interesting, or at least amusing.

  “It’s been a long time, Signor Singer,” Claudio said. (No fool, Claudio inspected the list of arrivals daily to refresh his memory as to the names of returning guests. The guests, of course, assumed that he remembered their distinctive and vibrant personalities without any prompting and, as a consequence, tipped him handsomely.)

  “Yes, Claudio, it has. Spring last year.”

  “You coming from New York?”

  “Yes. I stopped in Paris first, but took the midday flight from Paris yesterday.”

  “And la signora? She is well?” (Claudio gambled slightly on this one, but the Singers had always appeared so devoted that he felt reasonably safe in risking the question.)

  “She’s fine, Claudio, just fine. Unfortunately there were things to hold her in New York, so she couldn’t join me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So is she,” Singer said, laughing. “I came in a terrible hurry. I needed to get away for a few days’ rest.”

  Singer took only a minute to look at the menu, then ordered Parma ham and melon and grilled scampi. And a full carafe of the hotel’s house red wine.

  Singer went over in his mind the lies he had just told. “Fine, just fine.” Sure, with her lover murdered and her husband missing. “Things to hold her in New York.” Like what? With Graham’s death, that was no longer true. “Sorry not to be here with me.” A little difficult to say, since she doesn’t know where I am.

  But what the hell, Singer thought. The fact that he had perhaps screwed up his life irrevocably in New York was no reason for destroying his image at his favorite hotel.

  A waiter brought his wine. It was delicious, just as he had remembered it, a most acceptable Valpolicella. He drank two glasses rapidly and eagerly and continued his idle ruminating about his situation.

  Why had he run away? Deep in his own consciousness he knew the reason—he could not face full-time life with Anne. Anne’s arrangement with Graham Donovan had, in fact, suited him perfectly. Anne was, whether she knew it or not, emotionally demanding. Like so many of his colleagues—too many, probably—Singer was analytical, unemotional and remote in his practice. Clients paid a fancy price for his cool rationality; they took comfort in having a lawyer who was not emotionally involved in the problem at hand. His colleagues at the CIA felt the same way. Roger was ever the calm, detached observer; political emotions did not cloud his reason.

  Unfortunately, Singer brought his remoteness home with him. He knew this, and also knew Anne’s almost unlimited need for emotional stroking—a need so great and so demanding that he had often considered divorce as the only way out, the only way to remove the emotional shackles that he felt bound him. Singer was not altogether surprised when Anne’s reaching out to Graham Donovan, the new widower, met a reciprocal emotional response of just the sort she was seeking.

  Now the brand-new thought suddenly dawned that he really had wanted the affair to continue, freeing him as it did from demands of the spirit he felt incapable of fulfilling. Until this very minute he had not come to the self-realization that Anne’s liaison with Donovan was of vital importance to his emotional stability.

  How could he ever justify his flight to Anne or his partners, explaining to them that he was unprepared to face the prospect of living with a woman no longer emotionally tied to someone else? How could he believably describe the twisted feelings he had about Anne’s affair with Graham?

  And of course, by running away, he had probably made himself a real suspect in Graham’s murder. To the outside, conventional world, he certainly had a motive, the atavistic desire of the cuckold for revenge. And wasn’t it possible, if there were an intensive and prolonged investigation, that his past association with CIA “dirty tricks” involving poison would become known? Put these facts together with his precipitate departure from New York, and the carabinieri might yet return him in handcuffs. (That would provide lunch and dinner conversation at the Cipriani for several days.)

  Singer’s dilemma did not come into any clearer focus as luncheon, and his own wine consumption, progressed. Why couldn’t his current problem be a simple one, like those he assumed his neighbors around the pool had—whether to seek uplift at the Accademia or new linen towels at Jesurum; where to buy American chewing gum
; whether to take boy A or boy B—or C or D or E—to bed that evening. Singer reflected, as he often had, that boy watching was often more rewarding at the Cipriani pool than girl watching. Though the boys were unquestionably beautiful, he would have preferred a higher female ratio.

  “How long will you be with us, Signor Singer?” Claudio asked as luncheon was ending.

  “I’m not sure, Claudio. Another two or three days, I suppose.”

  “Shall I save table twenty-two for you tomorrow?”

  “Please. Mille grazie.”

  After lunch, Singer changed his clothes and took the hotel’s private launch across to the Piazza San Marco, studiously shunning the American gent with the polyester shirt and his wife. Singer was determined to lose himself in the beauties of Venice, to forget his problems by revisiting favorite old haunts.

  Leaving the launch, he strode briskly to the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni to look at his favorite Carpaccios—St. Jerome and the Lion and St. Augustine in His Study. Unlike the typical tourist, he did not spend precious time locating the winding route to the Scuola; from past experience he knew precisely how to get there. The visit was a pleasure as always; St. Augustine’s dog and the terrified expressions on the faces of St. Jerome’s colleagues as the saint’s lion friend approached delighted anew. Then to the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo and the heroic statue of Colleoni, the fearsome fifteenth-century condottiere. Then back along the canals to the Piazza San Marco, and a long stop at Florian’s where Singer drank in again the details of the facade of the basilica, surely one of the world’s most extraordinary sights.

  By this time Singer was tired and slightly drunk, a condition he improved upon by stopping for one of the very special martinis served at Harry’s Bar. Then he took the Cipriani launch back and had a short nap.

  That evening Singer attempted more restorative therapy, going to his favorite restaurant in all of Venice, the Antica Besseta at the Riva San Biasio. Again he felt on familiar ground. Anne and he had been there several times, and he was greeted warmly by Signor Volpe, the owner. Singer even remembered what he wanted—spaghetti nero (with a salty sauce of ground anchovies) and fresh, impeccably grilled sole.

  Singer was not alone in the restaurant. A multigenerational birthday party was going on in the center of the dining room, honoring, it appeared, the grandmother of the party. Singer watched with admiration the truly prodigious amounts of food consumed by all concerned, from the eight- or nine-year-old youngsters to the aged grandfather. Even Singer—cold, unemotional Roger Singer—was caught up in the festivities, and gladly accepted the glass of prosecco and the slice of birthday cake proffered by the celebrants.

  Family was the theme of the evening. He had always known that Signora Volpe ran the kitchen, but he now realized that the slightly awkward young teenager waiting on table was the owner’s son.

  Flush with even more wine, Singer realized what a fool he had been. He genuinely missed Anne, who had been with him at the restaurant so often. And the family obbligato being played out in Signor Volpe’s trattoria brought home to him that a solitary life, or a life without Anne, was really unthinkable. So what if she was emotionally demanding? Was that such a terrible thing? Wasn’t it something he could cope with if he half tried? And wouldn’t life without Anne in fact be quite awful?

  This sudden rush of insight made Singer, at least by his lights, positively exuberant. He spoke volubly to all three of the Volpes in adequate, if ungrammatical, Italian and embraced the father, Italian-style, as he left the restaurant. Impatiently he waited for the vaporetto back to San Marco. He had to return to the Cipriani; he had to call Anne.

  Eventually he got back to his room and called New York at once. When the hotel operator rang through with the call, he heard his wife’s voice at the other end.

  “Anne! Anne! I’m coming back!”

  SOME BREAKS

  19

  Reuben Frost arrived at Chase & Ward Tuesday morning feeling discouraged; the murder of Graham Donovan simply did not seem, a week after the event, closer to solution. It was true that he had received a call at dinnertime the night before from Anne Singer, telling him of Roger’s impending return from Venice.

  But this news, while a relief as far as Roger’s disappearance went, did not solve the crime. Detective Bautista, faced with the stalemate, had begun interrogating Chase & Ward personnel Monday afternoon, but by the time the two men left the office at seven, Bautista could only report that nothing new had been uncovered. Dorothea Cowden, the firm’s receptionist, had not seen anyone suspicious or unaccounted for the morning of the murder, and her record of visitors to the office yielded no surprises. Grace Appleby repeated her story that only Perry Griffith and Keith Merritt had been in Donovan’s office on the fatal morning.

  Bautista had not questioned Griffith but did talk to Merritt. He found Merritt in a dreadful nervous state, but the man said nothing that linked him to the murder beyond his proximity at the right moment to Donovan’s water carafe.

  Bautista had also wanted to question Arthur Tyson, but Tyson had been out of the office for the afternoon, and the detective postponed a meeting with him until Tuesday.

  Frost had not been able to do much more. He had been intrigued by Bruce Donovan’s statement to Bautista over the weekend that he had not been in Chase & Ward’s offices since his mother’s death. Frost knew that the firm ran a legal-aid operation of sorts for partners’ relatives, including the preparation of wills for them. On speculation, Frost had called the firm’s files, and in short order a file was served up that contained a will executed by Bruce Donovan within the past year, well after his mother’s death.

  Frost was reasonably sure the document had been executed in the office, though it was conceivable that it had been sent to him for signature. But the witnesses to the will were Grace Appleby and a young associate in the trust and estates department, neither of whom under the firm’s strict practice would have been permitted to sign the witness’s declarations unless Bruce Donovan had personally been present.

  It seemed clear that young Donovan had lied to the police officer. But did that make him a murderer? And did lying about his presence in the office a year earlier mean that he was lying about his presence the previous Tuesday? Frost thought not, and Bautista agreed, though noting Frost’s discovery in his notebook for possible future reference.

  Bautista and Frost had coffee together in the cafeteria Tuesday morning. Was this becoming a ritual? Frost recalled all the rough and tough gangster movies he had seen as a young man, where the good guys seemed to drink coffee incessantly as they plotted their war against crime. But he did not see Luis Bautista as Pat O’Brien, jacket off and gun in its shoulder holster, sipping coffee from a mug and raging against injustice. And, in such a scenario, who would Frost be? The whole image was as ridiculous as Siegfried and Benno getting ready for the hunt in Swan Lake.

  Bautista outlined his plan for the morning. He had already checked with Norman Perry, the firm’s head messenger, to determine which members of the messenger’s staff had worked the previous Tuesday within the office. It was possible—just barely possible—that one of them, while making intraoffice deliveries, had seen something of interest. Bautista, operating from the conference room next to Frost’s office, was going to question them, along with Arthur Tyson. He was not hopeful about uncovering anything new; nor was Reuben Frost.

  Frost, after Monday’s encounter with Perry Griffith, really did not feel like talking to Griffith again, even on such a nonexplosive subject as the Frontier Utilities mortgage. In fact, he sat in his office doing what he hated, reading magazines and legal periodicals. One could, and should, justify such reading as keeping up with the latest developments in the law. But he knew, and anyone coming into his office would know, that such reading was a clear signal that he had nothing else (that is, paying work for a client) to do.

  Frost was thus doubly grateful for a visit from Keith Merritt and the message he brought—grateful because it di
stracted him and grateful because Merritt had the first good news he had heard in a week, except of course for Anne Singer’s announcement about her husband.

  The Keith Merritt who burst into his office was a totally different person from the pathetic, heavy-drinking figure who had poured out his troubles to Frost the previous Thursday night.

  “Reuben, we’re saved!” he all but shouted as he came toward Frost’s desk. Frost motioned him to a seat, but he was too excited to sit down. “We’re in the clear on Maxwell Industries,” he said.

  “Wonderful, Keith. What happened?” Frost asked.

  “You remember the engineer’s memo I told you about the other night?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, the IRS has been investigating the matter up and down. They’ve talked to the jerk who wrote it, looked at all the engineering data and the operating logs, and concluded that he simply didn’t know what he was talking about when he wrote that the Maxwell foundry was ready to go. So they’ve agreed that the facts Maxwell presented to us were correct—and therefore our opinion was correct.”

  Frost rose and shook Merritt’s hand. “Keith, that’s splendid, absolutely splendid. So Global Leasing gets its tax break, Maxwell doesn’t have to pay an indemnity, and thirty-six heads at Chase & Ward can sleep soundly at night once again. Along with the members of the Lloyds’ syndicate insuring Chase & Ward. Right?”

  “Absolutely right, Reuben. Absolutely.” The two men grinned at each other.

  “I’m very glad. I was afraid a big judgment would wipe out Chase & Ward’s ability to make my retirement payments.”

  “Oh no, Reuben. That would never happen.”

  “Hmm. I’d hate to count on them, if the partners had to cough up for your incompetence.” The two men grinned again.

  “Yours is the second bit of good news, for a change,” Frost said.

  “What else?” Merritt asked.

  “Roger Singer has been found. He’s sitting around Venice somewhere, ‘resting’ from all the tension he’s been under.”