Conspiracy of Silence

by S. T. Joshi

“How do I know?” he snapped in reply to a phantom question from me. “Because I saw him coming out of her room the next morning!”

  He was clutching the table with both hands in a vise-grip, eyes boggling, nostrils flaring, and mouth working.

  “Is that so?” is all I could think of saying.

  “Yeah, that’s so, Scintilla,” Crawford said snidely. “And Bill couldn’t even be troubled to be ashamed of it. He just gave me this crooked smile as if he were saying, ‘I’m just getting a little advance taste, little brother,’ and walked off with a snicker.

  “That did it, Scintilla. From that point I vowed that Bill wouldn’t live to enjoy his cuckolding of me. I just didn’t realize how quickly I’d get my chance.

  “Later that morning I found myself near the lake, fuming with rage. What could I do? Call the whole wedding off? My mother wouldn’t hear of it. Even if I told her what had happened, all she would do was say something like, ‘Oh, get over it, Bill has a right to everything that’s yours anyway.’ But the idea of my having to spend the rest of my life with a wife and a brother who had betrayed me was too much. Something had to snap. And it did.

  “So the next thing I know, Bill is standing right beside me. There was still a bit of a grin on his face, but at least he had the decency to look a bit chastened. Maybe he was going to apologize—I don’t know. I didn’t give him the chance.

  “The moment he came near me, I lashed out at him, throwing a punch that didn’t even connect. He backed off a bit—I don’t think I’d ever hit him except in self-defense—but by this time I was pretty near insane with fury. I struck out at him in every way possible—with blows, kicks, scratches, everything I could think of that would inflict even a tiny fraction of the injury that his very existence had wreaked on me for twenty-five years.

  “But it was useless. The army had trained him well, and he fought me off with ease on that cold February day. Finally he seemed to lose patience and dealt me a vicious blow to the chin with his fist.

  “I went down in a heap. I think I may have passed out for a moment. I was quite literally lying prone at his feet. I looked up at him, and he gave me this look of mingled pity and contempt that I’ll never forget.

  “I felt like a cornered rat. I knew I could never beat him physically. So I had to use cunning.

  “I moaned and groaned, writhing on the ground and holding my jaw as if it were broken. The trick worked. Bill bent down to see if I was OK, and at that moment I grabbed a rock that I’d seen before and dealt him a vicious hit to the side of the head.

  “Now it was his turn to fall down in a heap. Scintilla, I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a surge of pleasure as at that moment. Yes, I know it’s reprehensible to fight with your own brother, but a lifetime of humiliation seemed wiped out with that one blow.

  “He was only stunned, so I knew I had to act fast. He was a big man, but I managed to drag his body into the frigid lake. I knew that just a minute or two would be enough for the job. The moment his body felt the cold water around him, he roused himself a bit; but he was still so dazed and hurt that it wasn’t hard to hold his head down under the water—just as he’d done to me a decade or more ago—until he stopped moving.

  “That was it,” Crawford said. “It proved surprisingly easy to kill someone. But I knew this was only the beginning. I also wanted to escape the consequences of my crime.

  “So I ran back to the house, screaming that Bill had fallen into the lake and that I couldn’t get him out. Everyone knew he was a good swimmer, but that water was freezing cold, and no one could blame me for not being able to rescue him. Everyone also knew that my own capacities as a swimmer were modest at best.

  “Here again it was surprising how easily things went. And the funny thing is that Mother proved a big help. You know, Scintilla”—he peered at me sharply—“I’m convinced that woman has no morals at all. All she cares about is herself and the family. I’m sure she knew what I’d done; I caught her looking askance at me for months, maybe years afterward. Oh, she knew all right—but right from the beginning she was determined to take action to protect her interests.

  “The easiest part was dealing with the police. That brainless ass Myron Franklin was no obstacle.”

  “Did you buy him off then, just as you did later with Frank’s ‘death’?” I said.

  “Didn’t have to,” Crawford replied shortly. “Franklin knew he had to tread lightly when there was anything involving the Crawfords. He wasn’t going to make waves unless he was forced to. And, as it happens, a case of ‘accidental death’ was the most plausible scenario anyway, and there were no witnesses who could have told a different tale.

  “So that seemed to be the end of that,” Crawford said with a kind of sigh. “But of course, it wasn’t the end. . . .”

  He looked down at his hands, uncertain how to proceed.

  “Scintilla, maybe I haven’t done a good job of telling you how I felt about my brother William. I did love him, you know, and I respected and admired him. He was my brother, for God’s sake! You can’t live with someone your whole life and not have feelings for him. No matter how he had treated me over the years—and, in fact, I guess he didn’t treat me any different from what many other older brothers would have done—and no matter how much I may have resented him, not so much for his accomplishments, which he had earned, but for the shameless favoritism my parents had shown toward him, he was still my brother.

  “And now I had caused his death.

  “I’m not prepared to delve into the legal niceties of whether it might have been justifiable homicide or self-defense or any rubbish like that. The overriding fact is that I had engendered the death of another human being, and my own flesh and blood at that. It ate at me, Scintilla—it would eat at anyone who had any grain of decency in him. I was a murderer; I had committed fratricide. There are precious few crimes in the world worse than that.

  “But what was I to do? I had to drag out my cheerless life with a wife who didn’t love me—and who, I imagine, also had a strong suspicion of what I’d done—and a mother who secretly had contempt for me but who was now compelled to regard me as the head of the family instead of the other son she had been grooming for the role for his entire life.

  “My only salvation was Lizbeth.”

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes.

  “Yes, Scintilla, she was Bill’s child. I knew that; Florence knew that; probably even Mother knew that. But that little bundle of flesh was my one and only link to my dead brother, and I vowed to cherish her as if she were my own. And I think I’ve done a fair job at that, Scintilla. She’s the only one who’s stayed loyal to me—maybe because she’s never known anyone else. Her devotion to me has carried me on all these years. . . .”

  I was surprised at his revelation of Lizbeth’s true parentage and touched by his tenderness toward a child that wasn’t even his. But he had only told half the story.

  “But Crawford,” I said, “what I don’t get is this whole charade with Frank . . . .”

  He again almost exploded with rage—although perhaps it was more at my denseness than at anything else.

  “Don’t you see, Scintilla? I had to make amends . . . I had to take responsibility for my actions. I was a murderer. With the passing of the years, I felt more and more consumed with guilt. I had committed a heinous crime and had escaped justice. To me, the mere fact that I was a free man was more galling to me than that I’d rubbed out my brother.

  “So when Frank got into this mess with Eva Dailey, I sensed an opportunity to put things right. Maybe I’d dodged the law for one murder . . . but I wouldn’t dodge it for another.

  “Yes, of course it would have been a lot easier to have paid Eva Dailey off, or to have Frank just disappear somewhere. The whole farce of staging his death would have been preposterous—except as a way for me to get my just desserts. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense to you, Scintilla—I know you deal with a lot of shady characters who’d do anything to stay out o
f jail....”

  “You got me wrong, Crawford,” I said heavily.

  He stopped abruptly and looked me in the face. But he could meet my gaze only for a moment.

  “I’m sorry about that, Scintilla. I don’t know you, and I have no warrant for accusing you of anything. But the point is that I had to serve the time I felt I deserved. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I want to stay here.

  “Once again, the whole thing proved surprisingly easy. I had to bring Dr. Granger into it, and of course Mother had to know. And this time, I suspected that Franklin would indeed have to be bought off. It was a bit of a task to convince them that this fake death was the way to go, but Mother helped in that. I had a feeling she wanted me out of the way as well: both I and Frank, in our different ways, had disappointed her, and she was glad to see the back of both of us. Things were helped by the fact that Florence had proved surprisingly adept at handling the family business, rendering me pretty much supernumerary.

  “I won’t lie, Scintilla. I didn’t just want to make amends with the law and with my own conscience; I wanted to get out of Thornleigh. Life since Bill’s death had become intolerable. There was no joy or cheer in that household—we were all just going through the motions of being a loving family. Tension was everywhere—between me and my slut of a wife, my roué of a younger brother, and especially my mother, who seemed increasingly to be some kind of witch who had cast a spell on us and was manipulating us to her own evil desires. Only little Lizbeth was oblivious to it all . . . but in the end, even she wasn’t enough for me. I had to get out of there. Twenty years in prison would be better than twenty years in that loveless tomb of a house.”

  He stopped abruptly. Then he looked me in the face.

  “So what happens now, Scintilla? Are you going to spill the beans to everyone?”

  I looked back at him without expression. “That’s not my call, Crawford. I’m not the police. I’ve been hired to do a job, and I’ve done it. What happens now is out of my hands.”

  I got up to leave, but Crawford grabbed me by the arm.

  “Scintilla . . . you gotta understand something. I don’t want Lizbeth hurt . . . any more than she already has been. She thinks I’m her father, and she seems to think the world of me, God knows why. Don’t take that away from her. She doesn’t have to know.”

  I wasn’t insensible to the pleading look he gave me.

  “Crawford, I can keep a tight lip when I have to. And I think this is one of those times when I should.”

  It was, I think, the first and last time I saw him smile.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was one more conversation I had to have.

  Thornleigh seemed a bit less funereal than usual, chiefly because of the continued absence of Helen Ward Crawford and because Joseph the butler still seemed in a state of ill-concealed euphoria after his feats of derring-do. He greeted me with an enormous grin and a bluff, “How’s tricks, Mr. Scintilla?” when I showed up at the door.

  I smiled at him and said things were going fine.

  Then, with a little more concern: “How’s Miss Lizbeth doing, sir?”

  “She’s very well,” I assured him. “She’s at my place, but probably it’s safe enough for her to come back here later today. But right now,” I went on, “I was hoping to see Mrs. Florence Crawford.”

  Joseph’s eyes expanded a trifle at that, but he murmured something noncommittal and went off to look for her.

  Florence drifted in after a few moments. She had always struck me as a kind of Pre-Raphaelite beauty, with her delicate countenance and a perpetually sad or pensive look. Today was no different, and she greeted me with something less than enthusiasm, even though she was well aware that I had had a big hand in the rescuing of her precious daughter.

  “Joseph said you wished to speak to me,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Can we sit down?”

  We both seated ourselves on the couch in the parlor, as far apart as possible. She looked at me square in the face, as if preparing herself for some kind of blow.

  “Mrs. Crawford, I’ve spoken to your husband, and he’s told me pretty much everything. I don’t know how much you know about what’s been going on here—”

  “Not much,” she interjected.

  “I thought as much. But Mr. Crawford has made some remarks about you and his brother William . . .”

  Her expression didn’t change much, except that perhaps her mouth got a little tighter. I was hoping she would pick up the conversation, but she refused to take the bait.

  “Maybe,” I said quietly, “it’s none of my business . . . .”

  “Maybe it isn’t,” she replied with unwonted tartness.

  “But you know,” I said a little more sharply, “that I have a responsibility to my client. Lizbeth Crawford is my client.”

  “What do you want me to say, Mr. Scintilla?” She had raised her voice only fractionally, but for her it was tantamount to a shout. “How much do you know, and how much are you going to tell Lizbeth?”

  “That’s up to you, I think.”

  “Is it, Mr. Scintilla?” She suddenly got up and began pacing the room. Splotches of red now mottled her usually pale face. “Do you really want to tell my daughter that the man she has worshipped all these years isn’t her father?—that her real father was murdered by his own brother? Is that your idea of having a ‘responsibility’ to your client?”

  “So you knew all that?” I said quietly.

  “Of course I did,” she said with some impatience. “Both Helen and I knew at once what had happened. That was the real cover-up. This whole business with Frank was just a ridiculous lark.”

  “So it’s true that you and William . . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” Florence said wearily. “I daresay James has put the worst possible interpretation on what happened . . . I know what he says about me—that I’d . . . I’d make myself available to anyone in trousers—but you have no idea, Mr. Scintilla, what sort of a person James is. If there is anyone on this earth who is entirely undeserving of any woman’s love, it’s that man.”

  She sat down in exhaustion and, after a few moments, continued.

  “Bill and James—what a contrast. . . . I’d known both of them for a long time, and saw how, with each passing year, James’s resentment and envy of Bill grew to the level of some horrible obsession. And then to have me offered up like some sort of sacrificial lamb to James . . . Oh, I don’t blame either my parents or Helen—they were just doing what they thought was best for both families . . . But my feelings for Bill were not some kind of girlish infatuation, much less a crude desire for . . . physical satisfaction.”

  She swung around to face me.

  “I loved him, Mr. Scintilla—loved him in a way that James could never understand, and with a love that James could never inspire. And that’s how it was.”

  “Not to be indelicate,” I said, “but how can you be so sure that Lizbeth is William’s child?”

  Florence looked at me with an expression of amused pity, as if I were a slow-witted kindergartener.

  “How can I be sure? I’ll tell you how. James and I . . . have never had marital relations. Never. Not once. Is that good enough for you?”

  “I imagine it is,” I said.

  “I won’t pretend I’ve missed anything,” she said with a harsh laugh that didn’t suit her. “James of course thought I was polluted by Bill’s embraces; and for my part, I was happy he refused to touch me. In that sense, it was a dream come true. I won’t pretend we’ve had a happy marriage, but it would have been much worse if he’d . . . he’d forced himself on me.”

  She blushed a deep crimson and looked down at her hands.

  “You don’t need to say any more,” I said.

  But she quickly looked up at me with a frown of worry on her face.

  “There’s no need to tell Lizbeth any of this, is there?” she said in a tone that was strikingly similar to James’s when he had made the
same request.

  “Look, ma’am,” I said, “how you deal with the skeletons in your family closet are your affair. I’ve done what I’ve been hired to do—prove that James Allen Crawford is innocent of the murder of his brother Frank—and beyond that, it’s not my place to say anything.”

  She reached out her hand to touch my own.

  “Thank you, Mr. Scintilla. I’m not sure how we’re going to handle things now, but we’ll do our best. Lizbeth deserves that.”

  I had nothing more to say.

  I brought Lizbeth back to her home later that day. I told her as much as I could about my meeting with her “father” without violating any of the promises I had made to both James and Florence. She was content with the fact that her father had been proven innocent of Frank’s death, and she was still resolved to get him out of prison in spite of his own wish to stay there. I had to shrug off her persistent queries as to why James wanted to remain locked up, saying it was something she’d have to ask him about.

  There was no neat resolution to this whole messy affair. I learned later of several developments:

  Helen Ward Crawford was let out of jail and all charges were dropped, because Lizbeth refused to press kidnapping charges. Helen’s flunkies, Myron Franklin and the Nolans, were also released. Helen seemed chastened by her few days in the hoosegow, and I could only hope she would be a little less of a gorgon than she had been.

  James Allen Crawford was released from jail, although the Crawfords had to appeal to the governor for clemency. Frank Crawford made a flying visit to Pompton Lakes to prove that he was still above the earth, then fled back to his comfortable lair in Mexico. Lizbeth promised to visit him there, but he didn’t seem keen on that prospect.

  Lizbeth said that her parents were attempting to become reconciled, although it was going to be a long and slow business. Her own happiness at her father’s release seemed to be helping matters. Maybe James felt that the time he had already served was sufficient penance for his various crimes and derelictions.

  Lizbeth seemed to think of me as a kind of replacement for the uncle who had vanished south of the border. And that was fine with me.