The Death at Yew Corner

by Forrest, Richard;

  She turned in curiosity as an unfamiliar car moved up the driveway. A cream-colored Mercedes stopped near the front door. A man’s hand reached out and popped an umbrella open before he slid from the car and rang the doorbell.

  “Hello,” she called and went around the side of the house.

  “Hi. Is Senator Wentworth home?”

  “Ex-senator Wentworth is standing out in the rain talking to someone.” She noticed he was good-looking and wore what Lyon called an ice-cream suit, which was practically color-coordinated with the automobile. Lyon had a suit like that stuffed somewhere deep in the recess of his closet.

  He handed her a business card. “I’m Ramsey McLean. I represented Fabian Bunting on a certain matter.”

  “I see,” Bea replied as she looked down at the card with what she expected was a dumb expression. She was astonished at her reaction to the man’s physical presence and wished she had worn a kerchief or hat over her head. She knew her hair was a stringy mess and her shoes were muddied. He smiled at her and stepped closer so that the umbrella protected them both.

  “It’s raining.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said. Her knees were weak. She hadn’t had that particular physiological reaction since the summer she was sixteen and had a magnificent crush on the pool lifeguard. The man standing next to her appeared to be her own age. He was as tall as Lyon, although his shoulders were broader. His body tapered to a trim waist. His features were a rugged tan, and a forelock of dark brown hair fell in a casual but carefully coiffured manner.

  “I have some business to discuss. It would probably be easier to talk inside.”

  “Of course. Forgive me.” She fumbled with the immobile front doorknob before realizing that it was locked from the inside and her keys hung on the corkboard in the kitchen. “It’s locked.”

  “So I see.”

  “I came out the kitchen door.”

  “I would imagine that it’s still unlocked then.” He smiled and their eyes met.

  He accepted her offer of coffee, and she used the time in the kitchen to frantically restore her hair to some semblance of order. When she returned to the living room, she found him at the end of the sofa with an attaché case open on his knees. He took out several legal-sized pages backed with a heavy blue sheet.

  “You wanted to discuss something, Mr. McLean?” she asked as she handed him the coffee.

  “I’m the attorney for the Murphysville Convalescent Home. A short time ago I was asked to see a patient who requested a lawyer. To explain it simply, Dr. Fabian Bunting requested that I draw up her will.”

  “She never had one before?”

  “Evidently not. She doesn’t seem to have any near relatives.”

  “How does this concern me?”

  “You are the beneficiary.”

  “I’m astounded. Dr. Bunting was a teacher of mine years ago. We corresponded occasionally, but I hadn’t really spent any time with her until recently when she was hospitalized here.”

  “Nevertheless, it was her express wish that you inherit what she had.”

  “I’m sure it can’t be much. I think it would be appropriate that I sign it over to the college I attended and where she taught.”

  “That’s your decision, of course. According to my inventory and a rough guess at final expenses, taxes, and fees, there should be a net worth remaining of approximately ninety-two thousand dollars.”

  “How much?”

  “A bit less than one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “It’s hard to believe that she had that much. I had always thought that her only income was a pension from the college and social security.”

  “And a few shares of IBM purchased in the forties.”

  Bea laughed. “You know, she never did cease to amaze me, and she’s done it again.”

  He handed her a copy of the will. “I’ll need you to sign a few things in a day or two. It’s hard for me to believe you didn’t know anything about the bequest.”

  “She never said a word.”

  “Unusual. Most people make a thing of it.”

  “Dr. Bunting was unusual.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He closed the attaché case and clicked down the tabs. They both stood. Their eyes met again. “I’ll call you when the papers are ready.”

  “At your convenience.”

  “Unless, of course, we could have lunch tomorrow. The Great Sound Inn is a nice spot.”

  “That would be pleasant.”

  “I’ll make reservations for tomorrow at one. We can meet there.”

  “Of course.”

  “I can find my way out.”

  The front door clicked open and shut and he was gone. Bea stood in the center of the living room with the will still dangling from her hand. “What have I done?” she asked aloud. During her political career she had often lunched with men other than her husband. She had often gone on trips, either political or during the course of her duties, and she had never questioned her own actions or propriety. This was different. She knew herself well enough to know that she had accepted the invitation for reasons other than business. She had accepted the luncheon date because of an instant physical attraction. She knew it, and she had the feeling that Ramsey McLean knew it as well.

  Zebulon Henderson was a professional mourner. He had the ability to conjure up genuine tears for the least known of his clients. He maintained a stoic countenance when making the final arrangements with the bereaved family, but during the actual service he held himself erect by the door while silent tears coursed down his cheeks. It gave the family of the loved one a certain sense of identity and place. Lyon had the feeling that if custom or necessity dictated it, Henderson would troop in a full company of mourners and wailers for the proper gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. He was a man of a different time who was ideally suited for his profession.

  Today Zebulon was angry. He sputtered as clawlike fingers pointed to an empty space in the center of the basement room, which was otherwise cluttered with two dozen varieties of coffins.

  Rocco Herbert stood patiently with pad in hand until the funeral director managed to regain his composure.

  “They came through the back window and then opened the rear door. It was a thirty-five-hundred-dollar deluxe model.”

  “Any place of business should have an alarm system. EDT would have connected you directly to headquarters.”

  “This isn’t a place of business. We are a social institution. Who’d ever think …? Twenty years in the profession and this is the first time we’ve ever had this sort of thing happen.”

  “I think we had better go,” Lyon said.

  Rocco frowned. “Go where?”

  “I think I know where the coffin was taken.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s been one burial in concrete and another under a truck-load of dirt.”

  “I’ll talk to you later.” Rocco turned back to Zebulon Henderson. “Now, when was the last time you were down here?”

  “Earlier this morning. Around ten.”

  “I’m serious, Rocco. That coffin is going to be used.”

  “For God’s sake, Lyon! On who?”

  “It’s even money that Jason Smelts is the candidate.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s a strong possibility.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  Both men ran up the stairs and out the building. Rocco started the cruiser as Lyon stood indecisively in the center of the empty parking lot. “Come on.”

  “I suppose you’re going to use your siren and drive like a bat out of hell?”

  “You know it.”

  “I’ll follow in the truck.”

  “You drive like an old lady. It’ll take you a week to get there. Get in!”

  Lyon shook his head and reluctantly slid into the police car. Before the door on his side was shut, they were in the street careening toward the highway. Rocco drove with one hand while the
other fumbled for the radio.

  “Dispatch. This is M-One. Do you read me?”

  “Come in, M-One.”

  “Call Hartford P.D. Get Sergeant Pasquale for me and have him go to three-seven-three Post Road. Emergency. Tell him I’ll meet him there in …” He looked at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes for a forty-minute drive. Lyon closed his eyes and gripped the seat.

  Rocco was wrong. It took them twenty-two minutes to reach Smelts’s union headquarters. Pat Pasquale was pacing in front of the building while a uniformed cop leaned against the wall twirling his billy by its leather thong.

  When the Murphysville cruiser screeched to a halt behind Pat’s unmarked car, Rocco jackknifed from the seat before the vehicle stopped rocking. “Why the hell aren’t you in there?”

  Pat shrugged. “I think it’s called breaking and entering. I don’t got a warrant.”

  “Suspicion of a felony. Rescue of a citizen.”

  Pat shrugged again. “Far-out guess is the way I look at it. We’ve had run-ins with these people before.” He gestured toward the union logo next to the door. “They’d sue the hell out of us for any infraction.”

  Lyon spoke in a low, insistent voice. “Two have been killed, Pat. A third man is going to die in that building.”

  “We busted one of their guys on an assault charge last week. I tell you, Lyon, I can’t go breaking in places without more to go on.”

  Rocco shook his head. “I’m in worse shape than Pat. It isn’t even my jurisdiction.”

  Lyon looked over at the police officer twirling his nightstick.

  “Don’t look at me, mister. I’m the sergeant’s driver, that’s all.”

  Lyon took the club from the officer’s hand and advanced to the front door.

  “Lovely rainy day, isn’t it?” Rocco said as he turned his back to the building.

  “If you’re a duck,” Pat said as he also turned his back.

  There was a light mesh across the window in the door, and Lyon inserted the edge of the club under it and pulled the whole panel away. He used the end of the club to break a window and then reached in and unlocked the door. He entered the dim interior of the building. The front vestibule opened into a large meeting room, and he recalled that Jason Smelts’s office was in the rear. He bumped into several folding chairs as he made his way to the far end of the building.

  The office door behind the podium was locked. He stepped back and ran forward to throw his shoulder against the wood, only to rebound with a painful bruise. He stepped back and shot his foot forward against the panel just below the lock. The wood splintered as the door flew open.

  It rested across the desk and was illuminated by a swatch of light that fell through the side window.

  It was a dark coffin of highly polished wood.

  Lyon pried at the lid and found it to be securely fastened. Other hands were helping as Rocco’s fingers tried to find an edge to grasp in order to get more leverage.

  “Back away, both of you!” Pat’s authoritative voice made them turn. He had a pocketknife in his hand opened to a screwdriver blade. They stepped back as the police sergeant began to work at the screws set into the lid.

  Rocco fumbled in his pocket for a coin and began working on another screw, while Lyon used a letter opener that he found in the top desk drawer.

  “I’ve got a grip,” Rocco said and then yelled to the patrolman behind them. “Get the damn lights on!” The officer ran his hands along the darkened wall near the door until they encountered a light switch. Light flooded the room. “Brace the side, Lyon. Pat and I will try to pry the lid off.”

  Rocco’s muscles bulged out as he strained to lift the coffin lid. Lyon braced his feet against the wall behind him and put his shoulder against the box to provide the stability Rocco needed.

  “It’s coming,” Pat yelled.

  With a final creaking wrench the coffin lid opened. Lyon’s first impression was of the shredded lining and fingernail marks along the inside of the lid’s cover.

  “Oh.” It was a small sound from inside the coffin. “Oh.”

  “Get him out of there!”

  “Oh.”

  Their hands strained to reach for the man inside the coffin. Rocco put his fingers behind the shoulders and sat Jason Smelts up. Smelts’s hands were bleeding from his frantic scratching at the inside of the coffin. His face was bleached white, his eyes were terrified ovals as his chest heaved in frantic gulps. Pat levered the man’s legs from the coffin, and with both officers supporting him they lowered Smelts to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Pat asked.

  “Oh.”

  “Respiration seems to be … he’s hyperventilating,” Rocco said. “No evident fractures.”

  “Oh.” Jason Smelts crawled from the grip of the police chief and pushed across the floor into a corner. His hands brushed along the far wall as if searching for a hidden door, and then he curled up in the corner with his feet pulled toward his chest.

  “Another few minutes and he would have smothered,” Pat said.

  “Want me to call an ambulance, Sarge?” The uniformed officer was a short, squat man with a thick neck and coarse features. A name tag on his tunic identified him as Ralston. He looked in fascination at the coffin.

  “He seems to be in a state of emotional shock. We’ll take him in for a checkup in the squad car.”

  “Right,” the officer responded with his eyes still fixed on the coffin.

  “Oh” was the further whimpering sound from the union leader huddled in the corner.

  This mass of quivering fear had once sat at his desk behind a waving cigar and defied all authority. Now, he had regressed to some primeval state with his senses numbed in horror. Lyon remembered an incident concerning a South American dictator who used forced burial to break revolutionaries. He would seal his (live) victim in a casket and then suck out the air with a hidden vacuum pump until the prisoner lost consciousness. The unfortunate victim would then be revived and questioned. It was said that not even the strongest held out for more than two turns in the coffin.

  “Remember Ti?” Rocco said as he looked at the man cringing in the corner.

  “That was a long time ago,” Lyon said, but he remembered. Ti had been his ROK interpreter during the Korean War. His zeal in interrogating newly captured prisoners of war had become legendary. Lyon had finally dismissed the man, unable to convince him that a soldier captured in combat was usually in such a state of numbed shock that physical torture was not only immoral, but unnecessary. “Do you think he’s physically fit to be questioned?”

  “I think so.”

  “Go watch the front door, Ralston,” Pat commanded.

  Pat turned to Rocco and said, “Who’s going to do it?”

  “Wentworth used to be one of the best. And I don’t think our friend in the corner needs any strong-arming from me. Go ahead, Lyon.”

  Lyon sat cross-legged on the floor near the corner. He took the man’s clutching fingers into his and squeezed. For an instant he was struck by the incongruity of their present relationship as contrasted to their last meeting in the Clock and Chime. He disregarded the thought and concentrated on the terrified man before him.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s all right. You’re free. You can’t be hurt now.” Lyon flexed the man’s fingers and felt their grip tighten on his.

  “Oh.”

  Lyon leaned forward until his mouth was only inches from Smelts’s. “Someone did this to you. Someone put you in there to die. Who was it?”

  “Oh.”

  “You want to tell me. You want to tell me who put you in there.” His voice was a low soothing monotone.

  “Yes.”

  “You entered the office. You saw the coffin on your desk. What happened next?”

  “Behind … behind the door … gun in my back. Made me climb in … shut lid … couldn’t breathe.”

  “Could you see who it was?”

  “Shut lid. No
air.”

  “Could you recognize his voice? Can you tell me who it was?”

  “Muffled voice. No air. Tried to get out.”

  “You have no idea who it was?”

  “He’s dead. Came back after me. He’s dead and wants me dead.”

  “Marty Rustman?”

  “Rustman dead. Buried.”

  “In the woods. You and Falconer buried him in the woods?”

  Lyon felt Pat’s hand on his shoulder. He turned to look up at the concerned detective. “You can’t go that far without reading him his rights. We won’t have a case that will ever hold up in court.”

  “There’s more to it than Rustman.” Lyon continued the questioning. “You work for someone.”

  “Shopton. They have it all. She runs everything.”

  “What’s Shopton?”

  “The corporation that controls everything.” The concept seemed to click something in the man’s frightened mind and part of his fright began to recede. “You … must call … lawyer.”

  Lyon stood. “I think that’s all I can get. He needs to go to a hospital.”

  They helped Jason Smelts to his feet and held on to his arms. When he turned toward his desk and again viewed the coffin, his legs buckled. “Oh.”

  They half-carried him through the door to the waiting police car. Once outside Smelts straightened. He looked past Lyon into some area of horror all his own. “She’s responsible! That bitch! That fucking witch! She made me stay here! I could kill her!”

  “Okay,” Pat said as he helped him into the rear of the car.

  “What was that all about?” Rocco asked as the Hartford police car drove off.

  “The Truman woman,” Lyon said.

  8

  “Why don’t you write literature instead of potboilers, Mr. Wentworth?”

  All activity on the patio at Nutmeg Hill immediately ceased at the remark. Rocco looked sheepish in his tall chef’s hat and emblazoned apron as his barbecue fork froze in midair. His wife, Martha Herbert, flushed, but continued plucking silk strands from husked corn. Bea Wentworth fought back a rising laugh and waited with curiosity for Lyon’s response to fourteen-year-old Remley Herbert’s remark.