by Deaver Brown
Henry may have believed him. At any rate he plunged into thought, leaving Thatcher to make light conversation with Ogburn. It was heavy going.
Ogburn was a professional charmer, with one amusing anecdote after another. He was, Henry had revealed, unsurpassed at fund raising for many excellent causes, from conservation to scientific expeditions.
Oddly enough, he had many similarities to James Joel Finley.
After lunch, Ogburn excused himself as they set off down Winter Place. “Man and Mountain,” he explained musically. It was yet another lecture, this time to the Radcliffe Alumnae Club of Brookline.
Henry was not, after all, immune to human atmosphere.
“Going downhill around here,” he said, apparently observing in the tawdriness of Tremont Street portents of the decline and fall of the Appalachian Mountain Club. “But I liked young Philips.”
Thatcher agreed. “I have never liked the thespian’s approach to outdoor activities—”
He had lost his companion’s erratic interest. Henry was checking his watch.
“Now what, Henry?” he asked, resigned, he thought, for the worst.
Once again Henry surprised him.
Chapter 12
SECOND GROWTH
HALF-DEFIANT, half-complacent, Henry proceeded to announce that he had seized an idle moment at Locke Ober’s to phone Eunice Lester.
“She asked me to keep in touch. Wants to know how things are going, up in Fiord Haven,” he ran on glibly. “It seemed like the right thing to do. Remember, John, she’s a woman all alone.”
Thatcher wished he could duplicate the noise with which Ruth Morland greeted such statements of high-mindedness.
Henry took a deep breath. “Anyway, I promised her we’d run right out to Arlington. Let’s find ourselves a taxi.”
“Henry!” Thatcher exploded. “Angling for information at the Applachian Club is one thing. But this goes beyond the bounds of decency. You can’t force yourself on Eunice Lester now. She’s got enough problems.”
“No, no!” Henry protested. “You’ve got it all wrong, John. Eunice answered the phone as if I were the cavalry coming to the rescue. She really wants us to come.”
Thatcher examined him suspiciously. There was no doubt about Henry’s sincerity. But how much of Henry’s judgment was due to wishful thinking? Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out.
The drive to Arlington was enlivened by Henry’s lurid conjectures about the cause of Eunice’s current distress. Imminent arrest loomed large in his roster.
“The cops might be with her right now,” he said, contemplating the possibility with pleasurable anticipation. “Though in that case, it’s hard to see what she expects us to do.”
Thatcher grunted skeptically. Eunice Lester had not impressed him as mentally deficient. And that’s what it would take to introduce Henry into such a situation.
“Well, maybe not,” said Henry, answering the spirit of the grunt. “But then there’s always Amanda. Maybe the two of them are having a knock-down, drag-out fight.”
“Then, it’s even harder to see what she expects us to do.” Thatcher’s asperity was no longer veiled. “Unless we’re supposed to pitch in on Eunice’s side. In which case, I’ll hold your coat.”
Unabashed, Henry progressed to further flights of fancy, but Thatcher was no longer listening. According to the driver, they were now in the immediate vicinity of Eunice Lester’s home. The problem was to find Forest Street.
Thatcher examined the neighborhood. The houses seemed to date from the turn of the century. Most of them were straggling two-story frame structures with complicated roofs and wide porches. Their owners seemed too poor to hire badly needed painters and masons. But they were not too poor to be respectable. The yards were neatly raked and the trash cans disciplined. Care and attention had been lavished on shrubberies and flower borders. Eunice Lester’s house, finally located, was a model in this respect. Dark shingle walls formed a background for gleaming windows and bright marigolds.
On the porch they found two bells, the upper marked: Mrs. Eunice Lester. Henry’s heroic ring produced an immediate answering click which unlocked the front door. As they entered the front hall, their hostess was bending over the banister.
“Come right up!” she called. “I was hoping that was you.”
One look was enough to prove that Henry had not been fantasying. Eunice was indeed glad to see them. She ushered them into her living room. A man rose from a chair, the last man that Thatcher expected to see.
“Mr. Quinlan is just leaving,” Eunice said firmly, preventing any round of greetings.
Eddie Quinlan shrugged good-naturedly. He even seemed amused. “Sure, Mrs. Lester. I don’t want to intrude while you have Mr. Morland and Mr. Thatcher here. But you’ll remember what I said?”
“Absolutely,” Eunice replied, handing him his hat.
For an apostle of the hard sell, Quinlan proved surprisingly easy to evict. Within minutes Eunice had shown him out.
“Thank God you came,” she said, returning. “I never would have gotten rid of him otherwise. And I don’t know what he’s up to. I don’t know what any of them are up to. It’s as if everybody is part of some scheme except—”
She stopped, aghast at the sound of her own voice rising out of control.
There could be no denying that, with Eunice, Henry never put a foot wrong. Totally ignoring her outburst, he slowly looked at his surroundings, then turned to say, “You’ve got a nice place here. I like the way you’ve fixed it up.”
Eunice was momentarily startled. Then her face softened into a smile. She, too, looked around, as if drawing support from the home she had made.
“I’m glad you like it, Henry. I did most of it myself.”
Henry’s observation had some merit, aside from the strictly therapeutic. The room had dormer windows and sloping ceilings in the corners. But there was no sense of constraint. White wallpaper with an airy green trellis design had been used everywhere; there were crisp white curtains, and the nondescript furniture had been slipcovered in a green and white print. Everything was spanking clean. The room radiated gaiety and good cheer.
“Oh, Henry,” Eunice cried impulsively, “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll go mad if I don’t talk to somebody.”
Thatcher fully appreciated the smug glance that Henry cast him. If anybody was entitled to take bows at the moment, it was Henry.
Eunice, suddenly remembering her duties, made offers of hospitality. Hastily declining for the two of them, Henry masterfully thrust Eunice into a chair.
“What did Quinlan want?” he asked baldly.
A sudden thought occurred to Thatcher. “Good God, the man’s not trying to sell you a lot now, is he?”
Eunice shook her head. “No, he’s not doing that. He never so much as mentioned Fiord Haven. That was one of the peculiar things about him.”
This unsatisfactory speech raised more questions than it answered. But Henry controlled himself and waited for Eunice to continue.
“All I can tell you is what he said,” she began hesitantly. “According to him, he was helping Amanda when she was getting ready to leave Fiord Haven. They were having some kind of discussion about moving the body. Does that make sense to you?”
Both men nodded. It was reasonable that Stephen Lester should be buried somewhere other than New Hampshire.
“All right,” Eunice went on. “That part seemed all right to me, too. But then Amanda said something about Steve having died without a will. So she would be executor or administrator or whatever it is, because she was his sole heir. Then according to Mr. Quinlan, he told her that couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be Steve’s only heir because Steve left a child.”
“Ah ha!” said Henry happily. “Who benefits?”
Eunice seemed capable of taking Henry’s aberrant enthusiasms in stride. “Now that sounds perfectly crazy to me.”
Thatcher was genuinely startled. That was no way for the mother of a
ten-year-old son to talk. “It makes perfectly good sense,” he objected. “Even if there were a will the existence of a minor child—”
“No,” Eunice interrupted unceremoniously, “that’s not what I mean. Of course it makes sense. In fact,” she paused to smile ruefully at them, “I thought of it right off. But it didn’t seem like a healthy subject to mention to the New Hampshire police.”
Thatcher’s original impression was confirmed. Eunice Lester was no fool.
“Then what is crazy?” he persisted.
“The way Quinlan is behaving,” Eunice answered roundly. “He swears this little piece of information just slipped out. Then, when he saw the effect it had on Amanda, he thought it his duty to race around to me and offer his apologies and support.”
“Support?”
“For a minute I thought he was just touting for legal business. He is a lawyer, after all. Now I wonder if he isn’t trying to stir things up.”
“You have a point,” Thatcher agreed, “But of course, Amanda would have found out in time, anyway.”
Eunice nodded energetically. “Oh, I know she would have. Indeed I would have had to bring it to her attention. But in a natural sequence, if you know what I mean. I would have gotten a lawyer. Amanda would have, too. Then the lawyers would have gotten together. Nothing would have happened for weeks or months. Instead Quinlan is throwing himself into things. Do you think he could be trying to get back at Amanda?”
“Why does he want to get back at her?” Henry demanded. “What’s she done to him?”
“I don’t think he was very happy about the way she denied Steve bought a lot. Of course she backed down, when she heard Quinlan’s story. He probably didn’t realize she was just being spiteful to me. He may have thought she was a chronic troublemaker, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to toss a little trouble her way.” Eunice sighed unhappily. “Oh, how I wish he hadn’t interfered. Whatever he had in mind, he’s just going to end up making things harder for me.”
Thatcher sympathized with Eunice’s reaction, but he wanted to clear up an earlier statement. “Let’s go back a minute,” he suggested. “You say Amanda lied simply in a malicious attempt to throw suspicion on you. You don’t think she might have more substantial reasons for diverting police attention?”
Eunice’s eyes widened. “You mean because she murdered Steve herself?”
“Well, somebody did,” Thatcher reminded her.
Eunice was not the crisp businesswoman she had been at Fiord Haven. Partly it was because her severe suit had been replaced by slacks and a shirt, partly it was because she was confused and permitting herself to show it. At the moment, she might have been as young as Amanda.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said at last, frowning in concentration. “I still can’t believe Steve has actually been murdered. It’s so unreasonable. But I’ll tell you the police are right about one thing. He must have been killed in a burst of exasperation.”
Henry arched his eyebrows in silent protest. Eunice defended her statement. “Oh, I know that sounds impossible. But exasperation was the kind of emotion Steve aroused. To the nth degree.”
“And the logical person to be exasperated by someone is his wife,” Thatcher said. “Isn’t that so?”
“Not Amanda.” Eunice sounded regretful but sure. “In fact, that’s one of the reasons Amanda gets to me the way she does. I was having trouble with Steve within six weeks of our wedding. I couldn’t take that habit of his of making high and mighty moral judgments about everyone else—while he did exactly what he pleased. He was driving me up a wall long before he walked out on me. Then I saw him doing exactly the same sort of thing to Amanda, and it didn’t ruffle her a bit. She’s destroyed an illusion of mine. I liked to think that no woman could live in peace with Steve. And goddamit, there she was, pulling off the trick without batting an eyelash.”
Thatcher, while reminding himself to relay this information to Ruth to help broaden her view of the first-wife-second-wife relationship, was moved to protest.
“Come now, there’s some difference in your positions, isn’t there?”
Eunice thought she understood. “You mean, there’s nothing like money for sweetening the temper? I admit that Steve got under my skin most of all when I came home from work after stopping at the market. While I was making dinner, he’d lean back and tell me how worried he was about the atom bomb.”
“Or, how he was having a crisis of conscience about being in a university with defense contracts. He never had a crisis of conscience about letting me do the dishes. Okay, when he married Amanda, he was a self-supporting adult with a good salary. I think you’re suggesting I have a petty mind, and I won’t admit it.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Thatcher corrected her. “I meant that Amanda wasn’t committed to anything except her husband yet. She hadn’t undertaken any of the adult major responsibilities, primarily children, where she might have found herself in conflict with him. She could afford to be good-natured and tolerant.”
Henry shifted restlessly. “I don’t like the way this conversation is going,” he confessed. “If you cross Amanda off, who’s left? Eunice, that’s who. Just because of those big, adult responsibilities, like children.”
“I didn’t kill Steve. The only time was ever likely to was when I was living with him. That’s when people really exasperate you.”
“Not when they try to take your child away?” Henry asked with what Thatcher regarded as foolhardy courage. But Eunice did not go up in flames.
“That didn’t exasperate me. That made me mad as hell. Mad enough to do something about it. It was Steve all over. A lot of talk about the best interests of the child, coupled with a total avoidance of his son until he had some use for him.”
Thatcher hoped that Eunice’s indulgence didn’t operate exclusively for Henry. “What could you do? I gather that your husband had acquired some damning information about you. You, yourself, said he was single-minded, regardless of cost, when he wanted something.”
Eunice lost her look of youth. “You weren’t listening very carefully. Steve was regardless of the cost to others. He was always mindful of any cost to Stephen Lester. He attacked me by playing the odds. He knew it was unlikely I would remain absolutely virtuous for ten years. Well, I played the odds too.”
Henry shook his head dubiously. “You mean Steve was unmarried for seven years? But courts don’t pay much attention to that, do they?”
Eunice’s answer came as a surprise. “I didn’t waste any time on Steve. Amanda was in college four years ago. When she first met Steve they were both part of a swinging crowd. Two months ago I hired detectives to investigate Amanda. And I told them exactly what I wanted. Any record on any police blotter anywhere, particularly with reference to smoking pot.”
Henry was a little shocked and did not trouble to conceal it. Thatcher, on the other hand, was moved to admiration.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “You were playing the odds. Did you get anything?”
“She was at a party that was raided for smoking marijuana. It would have been enough. For a corporate executive, that is. Steve’s public image didn’t include a drug addict for a wife.”
Henry’s voice was stern. “That girl? She’s no more a drug addict than I am!”
“Of course not!” Eunice snapped impatiently. “She probably smoked one joint in her life. But, then, I’m not a streetwalker either. I wasn’t concerned with winning a court battle. I can’t afford one. But I knew my Steve. If there were likely to be any casualties on his side, he wouldn’t be interested in fighting. He’d forget about Tommy and start thinking about adopting.”
Thatcher could not help feeling that Amanda would have been out of her depth in any confrontation between Eunice and Stephen Lester. Although, he suddenly remembered, not one of the many witnesses to their encounter at Fiord Haven had described Amanda as outclassed.
He awoke to discover a plot in the making.
&nb
sp; “You could find out, couldn’t you, Henry? If you went to see Amanda yourself?” Eunice was definitely up to something. There was a roguish gleam in her eye.
Thatcher, seeing Henry sit forward alertly, quickly intervened, “Why should we go see Amanda?”
Now Eunice was openly cajoling. “Because you understand about wills and estates. Oh, I know I’ll have to put my lawyer on to this eventually. But it would be wonderful if Amanda and I could agree not to fight about this. You could give her your advice, couldn’t you?”
Henry burst into speech.
Publicly, Thatcher would later claim that he had yielded to the two-pronged blitzkrieg launched by Eunice and Henry. But, as Miss Corsa could have predicted, it was his own curiosity that hooked him.
He had, he discovered, one small question of his own for Amanda Lester.
Chapter 13
ROOT AND BRANCH
IT IS a long way from Arlington, Massachusetts, to Weston, in more ways than one.
“About twenty miles,” the driver had told Thatcher and Henry.
The streetcar suburbs fell behind. The car sped out the Massachusetts Turnpike in the direction of one-acre zoning. And it became clear that twenty miles was delivering them to another world.
Five minutes off the turnpike and they were on a tree-lined lane, winding through a carefully contrived rural scene past very large homes. Most of them were postwar colonial, flaunting costly appendages to the austere architectural form once hallowed by plain living and high thinking.
The street number of the Lester home was proclaimed in black wrought iron. A gas light guarded the long driveway.
“Well,” said Thatcher when they had debouched onto a flagstone walk, “now we know the reason for that ruthless determination to get custody of a child only Eunice seems to have wanted before.”
“Yes?” said Henry.
Thatcher indicated their surroundings. “The photographic effect, Henry. You remember, Eunice said the same thing. This setting calls for a large dog and children, as well as a station wagon and a GE kitchen.”