The Theban Mysteries

by Amanda Cross

  Young, who had come to ask questions not to answer them, ignored this. “Your labels haven’t changed any?” he asked. “There’s no way of telling what year the tie was sold?”

  “None,” Mr. Meyer shortly said, obviously feeling he had spoken too freely and would henceforth confine himself to monosyllables. “Of course, if you had the tie …”

  “Right,” said Young. “Be prepared to sign a statement setting forth what you told me.”

  “Oh, dear. It’s all true, of course, but I don’t want …”

  “Don’t sweat it,” the detective said, and was gone.

  Mr. Sam Meyer, the gentleman’s gentleman, waited a few minutes, perhaps to see if the detective would return, perhaps to make a decision. Then he picked up the phone and dialed.

  The medical examiner, meanwhile, had completed his work. There were still more refined tests to be done on some of the organs, and a specialist in cardiac pathology would have to be consulted before any official report could be made, and there was always room for later indications which might affect the detailed diagnosis but, the M.E. reported, and the officer at Homicide East, who knew Reed, passed on the information: Esther Jablon had died of a heart attack. She had died, though naturally they would not put it so close officially, sometime between nine and eleven the previous night. Certainly, the officer told Reed, she might have been stricken earlier, but she did not actually die much earlier. There was no way of knowing if the body had been moved after death, but there were no special indications that it had.

  There would have to be a long conference with the victim’s physician—that was set up for late today. But there seemed no question that the dead woman had suffered from a genuine heart ailment, even while she was extremely hypochondriacal and a nervous wreck generally. Were the symptoms congruent with her having been scared to death by two vicious-looking dogs? Certainly they were. Any evidence of drugs, liquor, et cetera? She had had a drink, probably before dinner, not enough to make her drunk. She had eaten two to three hours before dying, so if you can, find out when she had dinner; we’re working on it anyway. She had recently taken a tranquilizer, meprobamate; according to her doctor she took them regularly; she also had sleeping pills on her bathroom shelf next to the meprobamate, but she had not taken one before her death. Death must have been fairly rapid. So it was really true that someone could be scared to death? Oh, yes, given all the proper conditions of the heart and so forth. Things were kind of humming around here now, but would Reed be sure to call back if he wanted any further information—sure, Reed would be the first to know if the additional tests or the woman’s doctor revealed anything of interest. See you around.

  “Which doesn’t get us much further,” Reed said to Miss Tyringham that evening as she sat in the Amhearst living room sipping a brandy. “What it will come down to, I’m reasonably certain, if you play your cards right, is that it will be decided she was killed by the dogs, just seeing them, that is. If you’re lucky, you may even get away without a case at all, unless the insurance company acts up.”

  “Why should the insurance company act up?”

  “If the Jablons sue you for enough money, it may be worth the insurance company’s while to try to prove that she was the victim of some involved nefarious plot. Will the Jablons sue you?”

  “I very much doubt it. I spoke to old Mr. Jablon only briefly, to offer condolences and inquire about Angelica.”

  “How is Angelica?” Kate asked.

  “Very bad, I regret to say. This, coming on top of the incident with her brother, has been too much. She has apparently become morose and silent, having first been hysterical. They have put her in the hospital. Mr. Jablon knew about the dogs, of course, because of his grandson’s experience; he felt it very foolish of his daughter-in-law to have gone to the school, and he certainly didn’t mention suing.”

  “Some lawyer may yet get hold of him; it’s a case with infinite possibilities.”

  “I doubt a lawyer could persuade Mr. Jablon to do something he didn’t want to do,” Kate said. “But one can’t be certain what he may decide is owed him. He seemed to hold the school responsible for Angelica’s radical opinions, and he may sue in general outrage at the Antigone seminar. I hope not.”

  Miss Tyringham leaned back in her chair and twirled the brandy snifter around in her hands. “Let me put a supposition to you, and when I finish, give me your reaction.” They nodded their agreement with this.

  “Let us suppose,” she said, “that everybody concerned accepts the explanation you have just indicated. That, for reasons we will never know since she is dead, Mrs. Jablon went to the school, somehow gained admittance and, around midnight, was confronted with two Dobermans, became terrified and, having a heart ailment, died of a heart attack brought on by extreme fright. Suppose that—let me be absolutely blunt here—suppose that using all the influence the Theban could muster, and frankly that is an impressive amount of influence, we could get such a verdict. The whole case is dropped, greater precautions are taken about the dogs; perhaps we will have to get rid of them altogether. Gradually, the whole thing is forgotten, and the school continues on its perilous way in these difficult times. Would you be satisfied?”

  “We?” Reed asked. “Kate and me?”

  “Yes. You. You two.”

  “Satisfied in what way? Miss Tyringham, some years ago a society woman in New Jersey shot and killed her husband as he entered her bedroom, nude, in the middle of the night. She claimed that she thought he was a housebreaker. There was evidence the two had not been getting on too well. A jury of twelve good citizens and true acquitted her of murder in the first or second degree, and turned in a verdict of accidental death. We all forget about that and we can all forget about this. Suppose they had decided it was murder, premeditated or not? What would have been the good? Her children would not only have been fatherless, they would have had a convicted murderer for a mother. She wasn’t likely to go on and shoot anyone else; quite the contrary. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

  “It seems to me,” Miss Tyringham said, “that what is monstrous about your story is the sense of the law bending with the prevailing winds. Surely the young are right: if we are going to fret and scream and thrash about because the streets are not safe, nor even our houses, and heaven knows they are not, we must be certain that we do not demand for the criminals a retribution, law and order if you like, which we do not follow through on—shall we say among the three of us—for the upper classes?” She sipped her brandy.

  “Exactly,” Reed said. “I’m an old cynical hand at all this, and have learned to blink at many things. Ask Kate; she’s still honorable, naïve, and interested in the death of Roland. Ask her if she would be satisfied with the happy ending you outline for us. One of my troubles, you see, is that I have some sympathy with the kids.”

  “Which I share,” Kate said with feeling. “My brothers, who always stand for the hard hats of the world when I become heated and incoherent, talk about law and order all the time, I mean all the time—crime in the streets, the number of burglarized homes, campus unrest, the police have no power, no respect for the law, blah, blah, blah. But if I point out that even the ocean has become polluted with oil slicks, that the automobile manufacturers won’t make bumpers that protect cars because they can better sell bumpers that are only decorative, that the drug companies wanted to market Thalidomide and so on, he—whichever brother I’m talking to, that is—doesn’t get heated at all, he doesn’t even give more than a token tsk tsk. Does all this have anything to do with what we’re talking about?”

  “It does, in a way,” Miss Tyringham said, “that is, if we’re talking about honor, which perhaps we really ought to do a bit more, meaning honor, not face, which is what most people who use the word ‘honor’ mean. Still, I must think of the school; that is my job. And, for the sake of the school, we must perhaps assume, if they will let us, that the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. Perhaps it was, you know.”

&
nbsp; “Is there really any chance of a cover-up?” Kate asked. “Would the police really let the whole thing lie, like sleeping dogs, to use a singularly appropriate cliché?”

  “Yes,” Reed said, “I’m afraid there’s a very good chance, if no claims are made. She did die of a heart attack, assuming they don’t find anything more sinister in further examinations. What’s the point of offending a lot of important people, when the only ones who may be unfairly accused are a couple of dogs who, at worst, will be retired to the country or put on another job? In the end, we are all sensible men who understand one another.”

  “So you are satisfied?” Miss Tyringham asked him.

  “Satisfied? Compliant, rather. How could one be satisfied? The number of unanswered questions is staggering: How did she get into the building? Why should such a woman go to such a place, which is most unlikely from all we know of her? Why did she have that label in her pocket, the case’s only tangible clue?”

  “Was it off a tie you’ve been able to trace?”

  “Easy as pie. Grandpa’s been buying his ties there for years.”

  Reed began to walk around the room. “Why, to continue acting the elephant’s child, did she repeat her son’s terrifying experience? Why is the school involved at all? Could it be, to take a random shot, that Mr. Jablon thought the school deserved to meet real trouble instead of encouraging their students to be unpatriotic? Was he willing to sacrifice his daughter-in-law, whom perhaps he didn’t care for, to such a fate? I could go on spinning off the questions for hours.”

  “Exactly,” Miss Tyringham said. “But you haven’t really answered my question, nor has Kate.”

  “I have never believed,” Kate said, “that one should stop in the middle of an inquiry because one doesn’t care for the way the problem is working out, or because it is too demanding to go on. Surely that’s the mark of a slovenly and unscholarly mind, if not worse. People’s unwillingness to accept the consequences of their acts—allowing rivers to become polluted, to take an impersonal example—seems to me horrible. Like the cigarette companies’ hiring people to prove smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Oh dear, I’ve wandered off again.”

  “One can’t stop in the middle,” Miss Tyringham said, “but one could decline to begin.”

  “Once you’ve asked the question, you’ve begun,” Kate said. “Anyway, even if we found an answer, we wouldn’t necessarily have to do anything about it, would we?”

  “There, I think, you would be fooling yourself,” Reed said. “I can promise you, both of you, that if you ask one more question, investigate one more occurrence connected with that night, you will be in it up to your necks, without a foothold. If you want to stop, stop now.”

  There was a silence of several minutes.

  “We had better begin,” Miss Tyringham said, “by trying to find out what went on in the Jablon household that night. Perhaps the grandfather not only knows, Kate, but will tell you.”

  “Also,” Kate said, “we’d better find out how those dogs work—I mean, actually ask to see them on the roof and all. Surely Mr. O’Hara won’t object if we succeed in exonerating the beasts.”

  Reed stared at them a moment and then, with a massive sigh, refilled his glass.

  The next morning, accordingly, found Kate and Reed at the Theban to keep an appointment with Mr. O’Hara on the roof. He had agreed, with very poor grace, to see them. “I’ve told it all to the police, and I’m not telling it to you again to have you telling me those dogs brought on anyone’s death.” It was only by insisting upon their unswerving belief in the innocence of the dogs that Kate and Reed were admitted onto the roof at all.

  “Kitto,” Kate reported as they made their way upstairs, “who is one of the best commentators on the Antigone, says: ‘With the first entrance of the Watchman begins that part of the play which is most full of difficulties.’ How true, O muse, how true.”

  “Sheridan Whiteside,” Reed retorted, “when he comes on the stage says: ‘I may vomit,’ which seems to me on the whole a far more appropriate quotation.”

  They waited in the auditorium for Mr. O’Hara. Kate rather uneasily wondered if he would appear like Heathcliff with snarling dogs at his heels, but he was quite alone and even greeted Reed with mild cordiality. He seemed to find Kate, another female in an institution already overflowing with them, superfluous, and waited with undisguised hope for Reed to bid her adieu at the doorway to the roof.

  “Have to have Miss Fansler along, you know. I promised,” Reed said. “But she’ll be very quiet and only ask intelligent questions. She’s really quite well behaved.”

  “They have lady district attorneys now, then,” Mr. O’Hara asked, “or she’s connected with the school?”

  “She’s connected all down the line, but she’s a proper female and always walks six paces behind. Lead on.”

  Mr. O’Hara, with a grunt of annoyance, passed through the door first, holding it for Reed but pointedly not holding it for Kate. They immediately climbed the steep though short flight of stairs to the roof, and once they had climbed out on it—Reed helping Kate while avoiding O’Hara’s eye—O’Hara closed a trap door which, flush with the roof, fitted neatly over the stairs.

  “You see,” he growled, “the dogs can’t possibly get downstairs during the day, as some idiots have been suggesting, even if they could get out of the cage, which they can’t. Obviously. Females have eyes but I sometimes wonder if they can see with them, let alone think.”

  “An army man, aren’t you?” Reed asked. “Too bad about it’s being a girl’s school.”

  “Everything was fine until that pansy boy hid out here to avoid defending his country. It’s a good job. I was not complaining.” Kate thought of mentioning that Achilles had hid among women, but decided against it. If Mr. O’Hara had heard of Achilles, which seemed doubtful, he probably considered him a slacker and a sorehead, or worse.

  “Dogs this way,” O’Hara said, “and they’ll growl at you, so if you plan to scream, don’t. You can wait here.”

  “Miss Fansler never screams unless you pinch her,” Reed said. “She’s trying to prove the honor and loyalty of the dogs, you know, and to demonstrate that their training held good, so I really do think we ought to encourage her. Good God!”

  This last admiring outburst was inspired by the two Dobermans, which stood together in their cage, lightly baring their teeth and growling in a quiet, anticipatory sort of way. Their cage was large, allowing them room to run up and down a bit, should they so choose; connected to the cage was a small house into which, one gathered, they retired to shelter from the elements. Now they stood side by side eyeing Reed and Kate with a suspicion largely tempered by the presence of Mr. O’Hara. “All right, my beauties,” he said. “Lie down and have your naps.”

  “Have they names?” Kate asked.

  “No questions or I’ll take you home,” Reed whispered.

  “Certainly they’ve got names,” Mr. O’Hara said. “This is Rose and this is Lily. Give us a kiss, now.” And the astonishing Mr. O’Hara, whose misogyny evidently excluded the canine breed, bent near to the fence, stuck a finger through the wire and scratched the ferocious beasts, which, Kate and Reed noticed, kept a wary eye on them even as they accepted these loving overtures. But their hackles were down, their coats again sleek.

  “How would they react if you weren’t with us?” Reed asked.

  “Walk away a moment, let me pop into my house, and find out. But don’t stick any part of you through that fence.” Kate and Reed stepped back onto the trap door as Mr. O’Hara vanished into his apartment, which, apart from a water tank, some mechanism for the elevators, and the dog cages, was all that stood on the roof. The view of the city was unusually open; indeed, Mr. O’Hara had found himself a fine spot.

  When he had disappeared, Kate and Reed walked toward the cage. The response of the dogs was instantaneous and ferocious, but they did not bark. “They work quietly, one gathers,” Reed said. “Even the most besotted dog lo
ver, discovering himself in the company of these beasts, would have a heart attack it seems to me. But we better not say so to friend O’Hara.”

  “If he dislikes females so much, human that is,” Kate said, “perhaps he took the job and talked Miss Tyringham into the dogs just to give women’s education a bad name; had you ever thought of that?”

  “Nonsense. He’s the sort right out of Dickens, who probably has a little girl who’s the apple of his eye, or wishes he did. Like his dogs, he growls but does not bite.”

  “So,” Kate darkly said, “we are supposed to believe.”

  “Well, we can’t stand here talking; he’ll think we’re conspiring against him.” The dogs watched them walk toward the house, their growls rumbling in their throats.

  “Satisfied?” O’Hara asked.

  “Thank you,” Reed said. “Do you mind if we ask you a number of silly questions? That’s the name of the game, I’m afraid.”

  “The police have already asked me.”