Invitation to Murder

by Zenith Brown

  “Oh, good!” She ran around the front of the truck, yanked the door open before he could reach over to open it for her, climbed in and slammed it shut, an old hand at battered trucks.

  “I’m so glad.” She sank down in the broken springs and skinned her hair back. “I didn’t know whatever I was going to do.”

  “Where do you want to go?” He knew he sounded churlish, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Westminster. About ten miles. Where are you going?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “Oh, good. It’s right on your road, this way.”

  She glanced at his earth-stained paratrooper boots and back at the plants.

  “Those are azaleas, aren’t they?”

  “Right,” he said, trying to start the damned engine again, with another hill to climb. She was waiting, taut till it started, and when she didn’t relax, then he knew it was something else she was waiting for, as the truck made the grade around a steep bank of honeysuckle, dogwood above it. She turned her head painfully, looking across in front of him.

  “Our house is up there, that’s our lane. Oh, watch it, the frost boils are awful.”

  “Sorry.” Finlay steadied the truck. It wasn’t the frost boils. It was the green and white mailbox at the mouth of the lane. White with green stenciled block letters. Dawn Hill Farm. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. There must be another house up the Dawn Hill lane.

  She was silent for a while, lost in her own unhappiness again, before she roused herself.

  “Are you a gardener?” she asked. “I don’t mean that. Gardeners are all so old. But do you work for one?”

  “Like a dog,” Fish said.

  She glanced at him again. “Or maybe you’re like my grandfather. He was a . . . a horticulturalist. But probably not, he was supposed to be crazy. My mother says so. He just disappeared one day.”

  Finlay kept the truck steady. There might be another house on the Dawn Hill Road. There couldn’t be another girl living on it who had a crazy disappearing horticulturalist grandfather. Snap out of it, brother. It never was, it could never be. It was just an error in the golden dusk.

  “My stepmother doesn’t think so.” Her voice was unsteady for a moment. “She thinks he just got sick of everything. But she loves gardens. My mother hates them. She says old men plant trees, young men dream dreams. But you plant trees, don’t you, or shrubs, anyway?”

  “Or don’t I dream dreams? Is that what you mean?”

  “Sort of, I guess.”

  The maimed shadow of an old smile limped across Fish Finlay’s homely face, rekindling the memory of far-off unhappy things that for one enchanted moment back there on the empty road he’d forgotten, and that the shock of her being Jennifer Linton had brought painfully back to him. That there’d been a time when dreams were his to dream, back when he didn’t know an azalea from a privet hedge, and the brightest of them all had been another girl, a golden girl with amber eyes. And what he’d never told anybody, that it wasn’t because he’d been an Ivy League end that he couldn’t take his leg in his stride and had holed in, an old man planting trees. It was what the dream girl had said, as kindly as she could, about a golden girl tied to a junk heap: I’m a pig, darling. I’ve tried to be noble but I’m really not. We’re just wrong for each other now. We couldn’t ever have any fun any more. Not our kind of fun. Somebody’ll come along, darling, somebody who loves to sacrifice. . . .

  “No,” Fish Finlay said. “I banished dreams.”

  To hell with dreams. To hell with sacrifice. His jaw tightened. The angel reaching sadly down picked up the golden feather in the dust.

  Jennifer Linton was silent. He brought himself abruptly back to the job in hand and glanced sideways at her . . . the recalcitrant daughter of a lovely mother, granddaughter of old James V. Maloney, supposed to flower, if possible, scrabbling what nutriment was left in the shade of the lush luxuriant weed. Assistant Trust Officer Finlay’s problem. He saw her again, simple and lovely, the aura of springtime in April about her.

  The pale half-moon of her face was grave.

  “You don’t banish dreams,” she said, her voice as grave. “They blow up, when you’re not looking. They blow to pieces, right in your face.” She laughed unexpectedly then and rubbed her nose quickly, like a child. “I know. It’s what happened to me, just now.”

  “A dream blew up?”

  “With a bang. I live with my stepmother, because my parents were divorced. My father was killed in a car accident, two years ago. And my mother . . . well, she can be. . . . Anyway, she said I had to come to Newport this summer. But I hate it, and she’s so . . . so hard to get along with, anyway. So I wasn’t going to Newport no matter how much of a row my mother made. I was going to stay with my stepmother. Then today I got a cable. I didn’t have to go to Newport. My mother’d changed her mind from the other day when she called me up . . . right when I was 6-2 in the match set for the school cup, so I had to lose by default. And she said, ‘Go back to your silly game.’ ”

  She laughed a little. “I guess it’s funny, anyway.”

  “It wouldn’t be to me,” Fish Finlay said.

  “Me either. Anyway, she changed her mind, and I didn’t have to come to Newport. It was wonderful. That’s why I’m in these clothes, I didn’t take time to change. One of the girls’ mothers was there with a car, coming down this way, so I dashed home. I thought Anne—that’s my stepmother—would be as glad as I was.”

  “Wasn’t she?”

  Jennifer Linton didn’t answer for so long that he glanced over at her and saw her still shaking her head, her lashes moist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, disappointed some way.

  “I didn’t tell her,” she said then. “There was a . . . a man there. An old friend of all of us. I sneaked in—kid stuff, I guess. You know . . . Big Surprise. He was there, talking to her . . . telling her how much he loved her, and how tired he was of waiting and . . . seeing her struggle, trying to hang on to the farm for . . . for somebody else’s spoiled brat—that’s me—when she ought to have a life and children of her own. I . . . I was just stunned, I guess.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “I was so stunned I couldn’t get out, and so I heard her say she loved him too but she wasn’t going to break up the only home I had till . . . till I got myself a job and got squared away, just when I’d got myself together and had some confidence in myself and the fact that somebody really wanted me around.” She paused a moment. “I just never thought about Anne getting married. I guess my mother’s been married so many times I thought it was enough for everybody. And this man’s terribly nice and has money enough to . . . I was just stupid. But it was a shock. You bear right at the next corner.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “So I’m going to Newport,” she said, calm again. “It’s funny. I get some money some day, and I’ve been planning all the things I’d do for Anne. Pay the mortgage on the farm, and that sort of thing. She’s done so much for me. And here all the time she could have had . . . everything. I was just sick. And on the road, I was terrified somebody I knew would come along, and she’d find out I’d been home. She’d feel awful if she knew I’d heard. And she knows how I . . . I don’t like this new husband of my mother’s.”

  “Why not?” Fish Finlay asked.

  “She thinks it’s because my mother didn’t even tell me she was getting married, this time, and one of the girls heard it on a radio gossip program. But that’s not it. It’s what another girl at school told me about him. Her father’s a diplomat in Washington. They’re from the Argentine.”

  Fish Finlay concentrated silently on the road.

  “This new husband was married before to a cousin of theirs. And she was supposed to have killed herself.”

  A sudden sharp chill froze the base of Finlay’s spine.

  “Supposed to?”

  It came out more casually than he’d dared to hope.

  “That’s right. But the fam
ily doesn’t think she did. This girl says they know, in fact—that she didn’t kill herself.”

  Finlay’s spine was not chilled at the base, it was stone-cold deep up into his cerebrum. “You don’t mean—”

  He caught himself. This was fantastic.

  “It isn’t me,” she said. She spoke with a literal realism, so clear-eyed and without emotion that it made her seem at once both older and younger than he knew she was. “It’s what the girl told me. She says they knew she didn’t kill herself. She doesn’t know how. It was just things she overheard.”

  Dear God . . . she can’t possibly know what she’s saying. He slowed the truck down, his eyes glued to the road.

  “She said they fought like tigers to keep her from marrying him. Then when she died, they found out something. This girl isn’t sure what. But they didn’t want a scandal. Or maybe they didn’t have actual legal proof. But they could see he didn’t get anything out of it. And he didn’t . . . not her money, or even her personal stuff. Not even her furs. This girl has a coat of hers. It’s beautiful, but . . .”

  She shivered a little, the only sign that she knew the meaning of what she’d said.

  Fish slowed down again and looked around at her. There was no ripple on the opaque mask she’d drawn over her face since the naked moment back on the culvert.

  “Now look,” he said, as quietly and soberly as he could. “You don’t seriously believe all this, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “This girl swears it’s the truth. My mother knows he didn’t get any of her estate. But the story she’s heard is different. I know, because I tried to tell her, in Nassau last winter, when she had me down to meet him. So I shut up. I was afraid, anyway. And he doesn’t like me to begin with . . . any better than I do him.”

  “You didn’t tell her—”

  “I didn’t even get started, really,” she said calmly. “She cut me off with a lot of corny stuff. He’d told her his story and she believes it. He’s smart.”

  “You haven’t told anybody then.”

  “No. And I don’t know why I’m telling you, except that I felt so horrible. And I’m glad I did, because you’re probably right. It does sound crazy. You see, I’m not worried about my mother, because she doesn’t have any money to leave anybody. Unless something happens to me, before I’m twenty-two. Or unless she hasn’t told him she just has income,” she added.

  As indeed she hasn’t.

  “Because she’s funny about money. Terribly generous if it’s something she wants you to have, not five cents if she doesn’t. Like iron. Her last marriage went on the rocks over some fishing tackle. But maybe this one’s smarter.”

  The wheeze and rattle of the truck intensified her silence and Fish Finlay’s.

  “I was going to tell my stepmother,” she said then. “But she’d have worried. She wouldn’t let me go to Newport now.”

  “She’s be right,” Fish said. “You mustn’t go.”

  “And mess up Anne’s life still more?” she demanded warmly. “How can you say that? Except that you don’t know, of course. I haven’t explained it very well. No. I’ve got to go. There’s nothing else to do. That’s all there is to it.”

  If Fish Finlay couldn’t see it, he couldn’t help hear it in the sudden passionate sincerity of her voice.

  They were passing a service station, coming into the small town. She flashed up in the seat. “Oh, heavens, we’re here already! What’ll I do? What’ll I tell them?”

  He smiled a little in spite of himself. Suspected murder she could take. This was different.

  “Oh, I know!” She flashed around toward him. “Oh . . . would you? Would you sell me a couple of your azaleas? The house proctor has a green thumb. I could tell her I went after them for her. Just one lie would cover it. I don’t want them to call up Anne!”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Except that I haven’t any money till next month. Or you could send the bill to the Bank. Mr. Reeves might—”

  “Pay me later,” Fish said. “I’ll be back.”

  “Oh, wonderful! The brick gate right there. . . .”

  He turned the truck in.

  “We go left to the service yard.”

  Fish shook his head. “You hop out here. I’ll take the trees, and find the old man to plant them.”

  He smiled at her and stopped the truck. She was out and around before he was. They met in front of the battered fender. Her eyes were shining as she put her hand out.

  “I don’t know how to thank you! Really, thanks ever so much!”

  She turned and ran up the lawn toward the quiet mansion on the hill, and stopped, looking back, her eyes like breathless stars, their light transformed instantly to a new and lovelier compassion as she saw him limping back around to the other side.

  “Oh . . .” she whispered. “That’s why he’s banished dreams.”

  She turned and ran on until she heard the truck rattle to a start. Then she turned and waved. He said he’d be back.

  Fish Finlay had forgotten his leg, then and when he found the service yard and helped the old man unload the azaleas, all of them . . . all he had to give for a momentary dream he was sealing up in a heart where dreams were banished. Jennifer Linton was his job.

  “She’s not going to Newport.” He said it out loud as he stopped the truck a moment at the end of the service lane. Suspicion was enough, whether the Argentine girl’s story was true or false. The fact that there was that story settled it.

  But he couldn’t turn back and go to Dawn Hill Farm now and tell Anne Linton. Not with the passionate conviction of her protest still in his ears. There was plenty of time. Three months, practically. The de Gradoffs wouldn’t be back home until the middle of June. He switched his lights on and turned the truck northward home.

  Crossing the bridge over the Chesapeake he came into the rain. The long gray arms of the fog rose, swirling, beckoning him on, concealing a harsher surf-beaten shore and a golden sandal thrown back from the crest of a hungry wave, the infernal Rock and the grave fit only for a monster, as death and a motley crew assembled in Newport, faces yet unknown, and the hands of the gilded clock on the stable tower at Enniskerry moved silently, marking the hours.

  CHAPTER : 3

  Plenty of time. Three months, practically. The irony of his being that confident was slightly on the bitter side when Fish Finlay thought of it in Newport the last Friday in June.

  It was around three o’clock when he got there and found the high serpentine brick wall Caxson Reeves had told him to look for, at Nantucket Avenue and Ocean Drive. He drove along it to the pink marble gateposts. Recessed in a niche in the front of each was a white marble urn of yellow marble flowers, with “Enniskerry” chiseled on the base, as if the place were already a monument, its mortuary elegance heightened by a dense somber screen of purple beeches swallowing up the driveway.

  He drove past, needing time to adjust himself. He hadn’t realized how small Newport was, a capsule compression of sharply stratified eras. The Jamestown Ferry lumbering along against the business-like back drop of the Naval Base, the narrow crowded streets of the colonial seaport town, the shabby gentility of the resort shops just before Bellevue Avenue became abruptly the stratum of the elite, with its wide emerald-shaded Victorian dignity and Italianate grandeur . . . and there he was at a dead end of pink brick wall and purple foliage. In front of him where the road turned was a parking place separated by a low stone guard from the jutting rocks, beyond them, stretching restlessly into the misty infinite, the blue Atlantic. He pulled in and sat there, at a dead end of his own, aware with a grim kind of humor that his April confidence had constructed it for him. . . . Finlay bolting back from Virginia confident that the Maloney Trustees had a vital and legitimate interest in the personal welfare of the Maloney heirs.

  “We ought to call a first-rate private investigator in on this deal, sir,” he’d said, briskly no doubt, at the end of his report, not noticing that Caxson Reeves’s conce
ntrated attention contained any element but interest. Until Reeves folded his half-spectacles and put them on the table, regarding Fish Finlay with bleak detachment.

  “You’ve overlooked the only pertinent fact in the matter,” he said dryly. “As Trust Officers we are not concerned with the safety of the Maloney beneficiaries. We’re concerned solely with the safety of the Maloney money.”

  He stopped. Fish Finlay sat there blankly, until it occurred to him that Caxson Reeves had said all he intended to say.

  “I guess I made a mistake.”

  “You did, indeed,” Reeves said. “Show me where the Maloney money is in danger, and what a private investigator could do to remove the danger, and I’ll be happy to authorize the necessary funds. There are none I can authorize to investigate Dodo Maloney’s current husband . . . suspected by you of murdering his first wife on the slight strength of a morsel of schoolgirl gossip you’ve picked up. If there’s nothing else . . .”

  And there wasn’t, except the slow burn under Fish Finlay’s collar as he walked stiffly out of the room, until the end of May, when Caxson Reeves’s secretary stopped him one noon.

  “Is anything wrong with the Countess de Gradoff?” she asked, holding out a Maloney Trust expense sheet. “Look at this batch of transatlantic phone calls.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Fish said. He took the sheet. The calls were listed for once and sometimes twice a week. The date of the first was what mattered. It was made the day Reeves had dressed him down for the slight morsel of schoolgirl gossip.

  Then there was the local call last week, five days after the de Gradoffs got home from Europe and went directly to Newport. It was from a friend of Fish’s, Joe Henry on the city desk of the Courier Graphic.

  “Hey, what’s the revival of interest in old James V. Maloney?”

  “Is there one?” Fish asked.

  “Two inquiries this week . . . one a photostat deal. Why don’t you come up and catch a drink and dinner and tell me about it?”

  “Why don’t I look at the file myself?”

  “I’ll have it out for you.”