by Deaver Brown
“Not involved! Do you realize it was Tommy’s father who was murdered! Do you realize that Tommy is old enough to read newspapers? That he knows his mother is a murder suspect?” Now she did not attempt to control the trembling in her voice.
Her attack put Vernon on the defensive. He was a widower who had been married for twenty years. He knew about feminine nerves; furthermore he respected all displays of maternal anxiety. For the next ten minutes Peter Vernon was unstinting with both apologies and reassurances.
When he had gone, Eunice cleared away the glasses and decided she was a fool.
Why were all the men in her life totally without protective instincts? For that matter, what was the deep similarity which made them all demand their eggs scrambled hard? And, most unanswerable of all, why was life a vacuum unless there was a man to cook scrambled eggs for? What she needed was a man who ate in restaurants and was occasionally of some help to her. Someone she could turn to when she needed . . .
Suddenly she stopped emptying an ashtray and froze in thought. Her eyes brightened as a name came to mind.
“Of course,” she whispered to herself.
Eunice was not the only one having trouble with her man.
“I tell you, Alan,” Sukey declared, “it could be important!”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t important,” Alan replied bearishly. “I said we shouldn’t get mixed up with the police.”
“You make it sound as if we were going to live with them. I just think they ought to know. I could stop by the station house tomorrow morning. For heaven’s sake, Alan, if you like it better, I could write to the police up in New Hampshire.”
“The fuzz are the fuzz anywhere,” Alan declaimed, “and you know how we feel about them.”
Sukey did indeed know. Had they not both belonged to the SDS at Brandeis?
“That’s different, Alan. We don’t believe in allowing police on campus; we don’t believe in allowing them to oppress underprivileged minorities. That’s because they’re acting beyond their jurisdiction. But the New Hampshire police have a right to investigate a murder in New Hampshire, don’t they?”
The voice of sweet reason was making Alan sullen. He had a grudge against the New Hampshire State Police. Never had he recoiled from flying wedges of police, from nightsticks, from riot cars. But he had been disoriented that day on the Appalachian Trail, spiritually as well as geographically. He had greeted the police as deliverers. He had meekly answered all their questions. He had not once reminded them that he was too socially responsible to allow them to jackboot their way across his civil rights. They had tarnished his image of Alan Davidson, and he wasn’t going to forgive that easily.
He shifted ground. “What difference would it make if they knew?” he demanded. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” Sukey said roundly. “Mr. Valenti wasn’t scheduled to speak to us after dinner the night Steve Lester was murdered. But somehow he changed the schedule around. You can see why he did it. He didn’t expect the murder to be discovered so soon, and he wanted an alibi for that night.”
“You’re just imagining all that. Anyway, if the police are so bright, they’ll find out themselves. We aren’t the only ones who know, and I don’t like the idea of being a patsy for the fuzz.”
Sukey sat up straight “And I don’t like being a patsy for a murderer! If you want to know, I liked Captain Frewen!”
Alan sucked in his breath sharply. He did not realize he was witnessing a development foreseen by someone else a long time ago.
Sukey as campus radical had appalled her father, dismayed her faculty adviser, and terrorized her roommate. Sukey’s mother, however, had—in her husband’s opinion—remained preternaturally placid. She had made one visit to SDS headquarters and noted the large number of attractive young men. Without doubting Sukey’s sincerity for a moment, she had decided that nature, as usual, had found the shortest distance between two points. The path was tiresome, of course. But a good deal less tiresome than young couples throbbing sympathetically to Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird, which had been the path obligatory for nineteenth-century romantics.
“Sukey will grow out of it,” she had assured her fulminating husband. She might have added that the growing-out process would furnish Alan with the education he had missed in college.
Alan’s reaction to this opportunity was momentarily deferred. Just as he was about to castigate Sukey as a cop lover, an establishment hireling and an apostate, the phone rang. He knew something was up when he heard her young-matron tone.
“Yes, this is Mrs. Davidson . . . why, Mr. Finley! Of course I’ll help.”
Henry Morland continued his demonstration of the power of mind over matter during the walk to the Ritz. He raised, discussed, and dropped many topics of great importance, never once reverting to Stephen Lester or murder. By the time he had said what little there is to be said about the space program, water pollution and the urban crisis, Thatcher was regretting the old, unregenerate Henry.
He was relieved, therefore, when a telephone call removed Henry from the Ritz’s cocktail lounge, and even more relieved when Henry returned to announce: “Sorry to run out on you, John, but I felt that I might as well make up for wasted time.”
“Yes?” Thatcher inquired.
“We’ll get back on the Trail tomorrow,” said Henry, in what seemed to be a non sequitur.
“Fine,” said Thatcher.
“So tonight, I thought I’d get a little business done, if you’ll excuse me.” Henry had made an appointment for dinner and a business talk with an artisan in Roxbury who had developed an interesting new technique for producing worm-holes in wood.
“Fake antiques, Henry?”
“Certainly not,” replied Henry with dignity. “We certify that these are modern pieces and price them accordingly. What people tell their neighbors when they get them home—that’s up to them.”
With Henry off on this new wrinkle in duplicity, Thatcher consulted his conscience. A rapid review of many professional and personal contacts in Boston and Cambridge produced only one obligation so overriding that he was helpless before it.
Supported by a first-rate meal, Thatcher took to his feet again, this time to Beacon Hill.
Beacon Hill is no longer the home of the Brahmans, but it remains a good address in a more eclectic sense than it once did. Many of the homes built for an Otis or a Bancroft are now devoted to good works, like the American Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, and, up on Joy Street, the Appalachian Mountain Club. But here and there are some vestiges of a golden past. One of them, a house on Cedar Street, was Thatcher’s immediate goal. He was paying an evening call on Mr. and Mrs. Forbes Thorndike.
With Mr. and Mrs. Forbes Thorndike, Thatcher now, and for many years past, had nothing in common. And yet, he reflected as he plodded across the Public Gardens, the years had provided their cement.
Mrs. Thorndike had been godmother to Thatcher’s late wife. So, she and her husband had sent a very handsome wedding present. Silver, Thatcher seemed to remember. Laura, his daughter, must have it now. They had sent equally handsome presents for the birthdays and weddings of each of the Thatcher children. They had often dined with the Thatchers before one of their regular voyages to Europe. And they had, although quite elderly by then, attended the funeral.
It was nothing in common, Thatcher realized, or alternatively a lifetime in common.
The melancholy tenor of his thoughts was sharply terminated by the Forbes Thorndikes themselves. In earlier years, they had seemed simply indeterminate. Now in their nineties, they were reverting to type with a certain astringency. They were also unaffectedly and unsentimentally pleased to welcome Thatcher to the house with its notable oval dining room, its kitchen garden, and its authentic violet windows.
Quite contrary to his expectations, John Putnam Thatcher spent a thoroughly entertaining evening. Although advanced in years, Forbes and Abigail Thorndike retained full possession of their faculties. Furtherm
ore, a far-sighted nineteenth-century Thorndike was still contributing to their comfort. Not only was there a staff to keep the sideboards dusted and the flower vases filled, there was a housekeeper with a nursing degree.
“Quinlan? Quinlan?” asked Forbes Thorndike, pouring brandy with a hand as steady as a youth’s.
“Edward J. Quinlan,” said Thatcher, who had described his visit to Boston in anecdotal, but accurate, terms. “And a Ralph Valenti—”
Forbes Thorndike snorted. “Sounds like an election ticket. Get an Italian from the North End and somebody green—”
Abigail Thorndike could give her husband a year or two, but she ventured farther from Cedar Street these days than he did.
“There is a Quinlan who was head of the Port Authority a year or two ago,” she said.
“If it wasn’t a Quinlan,” Forbes said, “it was a Flynn. Have I ever told you, John, about that lunch I had with Mayor Curley?”
He had, but Thatcher listened again. Or half listened.
There was something timeless about the Thorndikes, frail as they now were. He was glad to have lived in at least part of their era. Once they were gone, their like would not be seen again. Their own children, Thatcher knew, did not resemble them in the least. One was a lawyer on State Street whose entire professional career consisted of lending the luster of his name and connections to firms where the real work was done by others—others frequently named Quinlan or Flynn. The Thorndike girl, although she must be a grandmother by now, had married somebody named Swenson and made a life for herself in Minneapolis.
But with the Thorndikes senior, in their house on Cedar Street that was not much changed since the first Thorndike had brought home his bride, one could sense the triviality, even the ephemerality, of the most painful hornet’s nest of the moment.
Henry notwithstanding.
Thatcher, matching Forbes brandy for brandy, found himself mellowly reflecting that by tomorrow afternoon, or the day after at the latest, he would be back on the Appalachian Trail. Stephen Lester would be one more ripple in the placid ocean of time . . .
Strong drink is a deceiver. At just about the time Forbes Thorndike was rounding out his story (“. . . beautiful voice . . . would you believe it, I had tears in my eyes when he sang ‘My Wild Irish Rose’”), life in the New Boston was proceeding apace.
In the special function room of the Sheraton Hotel at the Prudential Center, the lights went up.
Sukey Davidson loosed a scream that bounced off the walls like a fusillade.
“Look,” she gurgled before collapsing into Alan’s arms.
For, after the movie, Fiord Haven—Your All-Season Home, the guests of Fiord Haven were still blinking slightly. But Sukey put an end to the blinking. All eyes swerved to the man she was pointing at.
He lay slumped forward like a drunk, hands aimlessly dangling.
But he was not drunk. From his back projected one of the Sheraton’s long, sharp carving knives.
Chapter 16
PRUNING KNIFE
IGNORANCE IS bliss. The dramatic events occurring at one hotel in Boston did not disturb John Putnam Thatcher’s slumbers at another. Protected by his dislike of pre-breakfast television, he sallied forth the next morning in search of nourishment.
The dining room of the Ritz in Boston is on the second floor. Its spacious elegance includes a wall of windows overlooking the Public Gardens and Boston Common. On a clear, sunny morning in late September it seems suspended among the treetops, the multi-colored leaves affording glimpses of gliding swan boats and frolicking children.
Idyllic, thought John Thatcher approvingly, as he laid down his morning papers and prepared to join Henry Morland, who was already at a corner table. Thatcher himself was flushed with the sense of well-being that comes from a blameless evening followed by a night of refreshing repose. He gave his order to a hovering waiter, picked up The New York Times, and, as befitted his calling in life, turned to the financial page. Here he remained engrossed by Dow-Jones averages until his orange juice arrived. Casually he glanced up. Instantly he realized that something was wrong.
Henry, like many men of small, wiry build, had a ferocious appetite. Normally, he approached the breakfast table like a powerful vacuum cleaner, absorbing every crumb of toast, scrap of marmalade, or pat of butter within reach. But not today. He was still broodily pecking at the same egg which had been occupying him five minutes earlier.
“John,” he asked plaintively, “aren’t you ever going to turn to the news?”
Deferring useless questions, Thatcher unfurled the front page. It held no surprises for him. The peace talks were bogged down, salvos had been exchanged across the Suez Canal, and the trade unions in England were attacking the latest austerity measures designed to shore up Britain’s flagging economy.
Henry used his knife as a pointer. “The other one,” he directed.
The Boston Globe had apparently abandoned the international situation. A two-column spread, in tones not far removed from hysteria, described a local event:
MURDER AT THE PRU BUSINESSMAN STABBED TO DEATH
Fiord Haven’s Second Killing
BOSTON, September 12—Yesterday evening at the Sheraton Hotel in the Prudential Center, Ralph G. Valenti, a prominent Boston realtor, was stabbed to death. The murder occurred during a hospitality evening sponsored by Fiord Haven, a resort community in New Hampshire of which Valenti was a promoter. Last Saturday, Stephen Lester, a business executive from Weston, Mass., was murdered at Fiord Haven during a weekend organized for prospective residents.
Over a hundred people were present last night at the dinner and subsequent film showing which culminated in the discovery of Valenti’s body. Valenti was stabbed in the back with a carving knife while the lights were out in the special function room. At the conclusion of the movie, the body was discovered by Mr. Alan Davidson of Cambridge who was sitting next to Valenti.
“It was just awful,” Mrs. Alan Davidson told our reporter. “The lights went on and I heard Alan kind of choke, so I turned around and I saw him.”
But the Boston Globe was not prepared to waste time on Sukey Davidson, or, indeed, on any of the participants. Its passions had been roused by the desecration of the Prudential Center. The financial history of the complex was recalled. Its dimensions were retailed with pride. The urban renewal unleashed by its erection was painstakingly reviewed. At the bottom of the page, Thatcher was not much wiser than at the end of the second paragraph. He looked at Henry inquiringly.
“Turn to page nine,” said the martyr’s voice.
On page nine, it all came out. Among those present, Thatcher learned, were Mrs. Amanda Lester, widow of Stephen Lester, Mrs. Eunice Lester, ex-wife of Stephen Lester, James Joel Finley, prominent architect, and Henry Morland, owner of The Pepper Mill in Pepperton, New Hampshire.
“So that was your business appointment last night,” said Thatcher, unable to mount much surprise. Somehow it was inevitable that, if the personnel of Fiord Haven were to be assassinated, Henry would manage to be on the spot.
“I went with Eunice,” Henry confessed.
“Who cares what your excuse was? Have you told Ruth?”
“I called her this morning.”
“And?”
“Women,” Henry complained evasively, “get so excited.”
Sternly Thatcher tried to suppress the memory of Ruth’s placidity in the face of Henry’s vagrant enthusiasms. Henry was continuing gloomily, “but she says Duncan is bound to find out.”
Duncan was the eldest of the Morland children. He was thirty-five and putting on weight. Of late, he had begun to feel it was his duty to give his parents the benefit of his mature counsel.
Thatcher cast around for comfort. “He’s not likely to come anywhere near New Hampshire,” he offered.
All three of Henry’s children were married, respectable and well-settled. Nonetheless they represented bitter failure. Henry had justified his move to New England many years ago on the ground
s that the children could be raised close to nature. Accordingly, the three young Morlands had spent their high school and college vacations humping supplies up mountainsides, clearing trails, and instructing novices in the arts of the woodsman. Upon achieving emancipation, the three fled to large cities and established residence in skyscrapers. From these aeries, they were in the habit of extending warm invitations to their parents. Not one of them, so far as was known, had seen a blade of grass in years.
“That won’t stop Duncan from coming to Boston,” Henry pointed out.
“Then leave Boston,” Thatcher said sharply.
“I can’t,” Henry groaned. “Not yet anyway. I have to turn up at some police station at eleven.”
Thatcher had been hoping that Henry and Eunice might have spent the evening cheek by jowl, thereby providing each other with an alibi. He should have known better.
“Perhaps, Henry,” he suggested, “you had better tell me about it.”
With a coherence indicating he had already told the tale several times, Henry obliged. Thatcher gave him a lead.
“Start by explaining why Eunice went. I thought she was through with Fiord Haven.”
“It was a last-minute decision,” Henry replied, “She found out that Amanda was going. That made her nervous as hell. She figured something was up. After all, Amanda had a lot more reason to remain in seclusion than she did. So she decided Amanda was going to pull something, and she’d better see what it was.”
“Did Amanda pull anything?”
“Not unless she murdered Valenti.” Henry was dispirited.
“Go on,” Thatcher directed.
It developed that dinner had been served at an immense, U-shaped table. Old Fiord Haven prospects and new prospects had been intermingled. Henry and Eunice had sat with unknowns. They did not even spot Amanda until dinner was almost over.
“And she was sitting with a bunch of strangers, too. Then, we were all herded into the next room to see movies. I was pretty disappointed. It looked as if we were going to sit through a couple of hours of sales pitch in the total dark, and that would be that.”