by Lionel White
Copyright, ©, 19У9, by Lionel White All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
FIRST EDITION
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-12580
This Book Is For RUTH and STEVE
CHAPTER ONE
My interest as well as my participation in the Merri-weather Case, as it came to be known in at least the more dignified segments of the public press, came about as the result of a singularly routine circumstance. It started as a matter of geography. The Merriweathers and I happened to live in that same middle-class, completely run-of-the-mill, unspectacular suburb of New York City known as Fairlawn Acres. It was as simple as that.
Or, actually, was it? Am I, in retrospect, making everything a trifle too obvious?
I shall try again. I want this document to be completely accurate. And so, even at the risk of overelaboration, let me say that, in reality, my interest in the Merriweather Case was the result of two factors—a sort of split-level reason, which is only to be expected as I live in a split-level house and have a split-level sense of morality and social obligation. In any case, geography might have been the fundamental reason, but the reason for my participation was infinitely more complex. Charles and Ann Merri-weather were friends of mine and, during that period in which we lived in Fairlawn, became very close and very
good friends. The second part of the reason for my interest and participation was the fact that I am an attorney-at-law.
Should you happen to recall the Merriweather Case and should you remember my name in connection with it as counsel for the defense, let me explain at once that I am not nor ever was a so-called “criminal lawyer.” I am not even a trial lawyer. My work had, up until the time of the Merriweather matter, involved mostly tax business and the occasional drawing up of a will or the filing of a deed. My clients are, for the most part, middle class professional people, small business men and a few odd balls who have been sent to me by established customers. Very rarely do I find it necessary to leave the confines of my New York office to handle my work and on those one or two occasions when a case calls for an appearance in court, I have enlisted the services of a more adequately endowed colleague, much as a general practitioner might call in for consultation a specialist or a surgeon.
The one exception was during the course of the Merriweather Case, which I handled myself from beginning to end. I might say right here that it is certainly the last case of that type I shall ever handle.
Let me apologize at once if I seem to be harping too much on myself. The fact is, however, that in order to understand the background, it is essential that you know something about me. After all, I, Howard Means Yates, was a bit more than merely a friend of the family and an attorney involved. I was, at one time or another, a major actor in the drama I am about to unfold.
It is more than a year now since the Merriweather Case ■was finished and done with and I, of course, am a year older. I am forty-six. When I became involved, I was a widower, my wife Laura having died of a heart attack less than six months after we purchased our home in Fairlawn Acres. Laura’s death was sudden and a terrible shock. It left me with memories of eighteen contented years of marriage and with two children, Howard Means Yates, Jr., who is sixteen, and Gordon Means Yates, twelve.
Laura died in the spring of the year, just after the trees had turned green and the newly awakened earth was bursting with flowers and life, a tragic time to die. For a brief time I was almost out of my mind with grief. The boys themselves seemed more than normally affected and I did what I thought would be the best thing all around.
Soon after the funeral, I packed them up and the three of us took off for a two months’ tour of Europe. Upon our return, I entered them in private schools and prepared to pick up the pieces of my own life. I’d thought at first that I would sell the house and take an apartment in Manhattan, but when I began looking over our small collection of possessions—the furniture we had purchased, the barbecue equipment and the lawn mowers and garden tools and all, I suddenly found it impossible to make the move. I decided to stay at Fairlawn and maintain the house for the boys to return to in the summers. It would be lonely, but not so lonely as breaking up the remnants of our life together and settling down in the sterility of some New York apartment cell. At least there, in Fairlawn, I would be surrounded by the things we had both loved. And I
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would also be surrounded by those new friends we had jointly made during our few months together in the suburban development. Among those friends were Charles and Ann Merriweather.
Had Laura died while we were living in the Manhattan apartment house, there would have been the usual cards of condolence, the usual fragmentary telephone calls, a visit or so and perhaps, for a week or two after the event, the halfhearted but well meaning invitation to someone’s home for dinner or perhaps to make a fourth at bridge. But then it would all have been forgotten and I should have been left to sit out the lonely hours either by myself in front of television, or, out of desperation, down at some corner tavern, drinking myself slowly into oblivion.
In Fairlawn Acres it was different. The people of Fairlawn came to me offering to share their time and their activities and their love. There wasn’t a weekend on which I was not invited to at least one party or cook-out. A golf game or a bridge party. A dinner in this house, or a back-yard picnic at that one.
Among them all, all of these kind neighbors, perhaps the most consistent in the way of extending invitations were the Merriweathers, whose back yard was separated from mine by a low, split log fence, designed more as a decoration than for any practical purpose of keeping out intruders.
The Merriweathers occupied a unique position in Fairlawn. They were the “oldest family,” having purchased one of the three model houses which the promoters of the development had constructed as samples to entice prospective buyers. They took occupancy in advance of the actual laying of the curving streets and the sidewalks. There had been three of them when they first took possession: Charles, the head of the family, his wife, Ann, and a son, Billy, who was, I believe, around three or four at the time.
I never knew him. The child was killed in one of those freak accidents that one so often reads about but which seem utterly impossible and more often than not, utterly unnecessary.
As I understand it, the little boy was with his mother in the kitchen of their home (this of course was two or three years before we moved into the neighborhood) riding his tricycle as Ann Merriweather was starting to clean up the early morning breakfast dishes. The father, Charles, had kissed them both goodby and gone into the attached one-car garage and opened the overhead door. He climbed into the front seat of the car and was starting to back out. It seems that somehow or other the child left the kitchen, pedaling his tricycle, and managed to get on the driveway. The car backed Over him, Charles Merriweather never dreaming that he didn’t have a clear path to the street. Billy was crushed to death instantly.
I heard the details only from the neighbors, but it was apparently an unavoidable accident. I know that there Was a wide divergence of opinion concerning who, if anyone, actually was to blame. Some felt that Charles Merriweather should have been more careful in watching the driveway through his rear-vision mirror. Others were inclined to hold Ann Merriweather at fault, feeling that
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it had been up to her to keep track of the youngster while the car was being backed out of the garage.
In any case, in all the time that I knew them I rarely heard
either of the Merriweathers refer to the terrible thing that happened that awful morning.
I think perhaps it was because of his death, because of this tragedy that had been visited so suddenly on them, that they among all of the others were so particularly sympathetic with me during my own time of grief and went so far out of their way to extend me kindness and sympathy.
They, of course, had known Laura, and although she and Ann Merriweather had not developed what might be termed a bosom companionship, the two had been friendly neighbors and had often spent afternoons together after the housework was done, chatting and having coffee. The four of us frequently went to the movies or dined out together.
It was through the Merriweathers that we had met and made a good many friends among the residents of Fairlawn. The Merriweathers were great party givers. They were forever having people in for the evening, or holding barbecues and picnics when the weather was pleasant. Ann Merriweather, in particular, was fond of my boys; perhaps it was because in some way or another they reminded her of her own son. In any case, both young Howard and Gordon were constantly in and out of their home, using it, it almost seemed, as a sort of annex to their own house.
Charles Merriweather was a big, heavy-set man, some-
where in his late thirties. He had a booming voice and a great guffaw of a laugh. His heavy, florid face sagged a little at the jowls, as though he were a little careless about both eating and drinking, but there was nothing ill-natured or even coarse about his appearance. He had very dark eyes under heavy black eyebrows, a thick nose which was red and veined, and the whitest teeth I can ever remember seeing. He wore his hair short, almost crew cut, and I can never recall him with a hat. He was a very active man, liking nothing better than to work up a sweat over the lawn, which he kept meticulously trimmed. He played golf in the low eighties. He had given up his work with the Little League, after his son was killed, but every kid in the neighborhood hung around and bothered him on weekends, asking him endless questions about baseball and basketball and football, at all of which he had excelled during his four years at New York University. He was a happy, good-natured man, a man well liked and well respected.
Charles Merriweather was a salesman for an abrasives manufacturing company, covering the northeastern territory which embraced Long Island, on which we lived, New York State and New England. He made a comfortable living, probably around fifteen to eighteen thousand dollars a year, which was around five thousand dollars a year more than the income of the average resident of Fairlawn, I should say. If so, the difference in income certainly made no difference so far as he was concerned; he had no pretentiousness, no air of superiority.
My boys, Howard, Jr., and Gordon, adored him. Several 'J
times, during the years I knew Charles Merriweather, I was unable to suppress a certain subtle feeling of jealousy; I couldn’t help making a mental comparison and thinking it was very likely that Howard and Gordon secretly wished that their own father were more like him. But whenever I had these feelings, I quickly stopped them in shame. He was a good man and a kind man and a fine man and I was only too glad that they liked and admired him.
In the light of what was eventually to happen, it is very difficult now to mention Ann Merriweather and to remember truly my early impressions of her. Even today, the thought of bloodshed and violence and murder in relation to that lovely, fragile, soft-spoken girl, seems utterly incongruous. Because, you see, Ann Merriweather really was nothing but a girl. It is true that she had borne a son who had died at an early age, but I swear that when I first met her, she couldn’t have been a day over twenty-four or five at the most. And she didn’t look more than twenty.
She was one of those women who seem never to have fully matured. Don’t misunderstand me; there was nothing childlike or adolescent about her body or even her face. It was a more subtle and mystical quality which gave her that strange appearance, or rather aura, of extreme youthfulness. It is almost impossible to make myself clear, impossible for me to explain those peculiar qualities about Ann Merriweather which made her so unusual. There are, however, several things I might say which may give a hint. For instance, she was one of those almost never encountered women who are extremely attractive physi-16
cally and yet manage to be liked by other women. There was something so completely “good” about her, a quality at once apparent to anyone meeting her. She had the gift of sweetness, if one may call it that.
She was a small woman, standing not more than five foot two or three, and rather slender, although her body was exquisitely formed. For a short person, her legs were unusually long and beautifully shaped. Her hips were as slender as those of a boy. Her skin was rather dark and had a luminous quality that made one think that if you were to touch her she might easily bruise. But it was her face that was really unusual.
Her hair was very fine, an odd shade of russet, like dogwood leaves in the fall. The hair framed a small face and was cut page-boy fashion, with bangs across her clear brow. A rather old-fashioned cut, but one which on her looked right. She had a rather small, straight nose and a wide, generous mouth, mobile and alive beneath high cheekbones. The eyes, however, were the feature that made the face. Her eyes were cerulean, great oblong eyes fringed by the longest, darkest lashes I have ever seen.
She was completely and thoroughly feminine, and yet there was nothing overt or obvious about her sex. I don’t believe a man existed who ever met her and didn’t secretly envy Charles Merriweather and hate him too secretly, just the slightest, for having taken this beautiful and exotic prize out of circulation. And, as I have said, she was liked by women. That, perhaps, more than anything else, may help to make you understand her.
Ann Merriweather had another quality that made her
THE MERRIWEATHER FILE
stand out in relation to today’s more or less casual and loose standards. She was deeply religious. A Catholic, she did more than pay mere lip service to the church. She attended Mass regularly and was a member of a number of Catholic women’s organizations. She was certainly broad-minded and modern, she didn’t carry her convictions on her sleeve, as the saying goes, but she had a truly sincere sense of religious values and devoted a great deal of her time to church work.
After the death of her youngster, I believe it was one of the things that did most to hold her together and I am sure that this interest she had in her religion was a sort of compensation for the children she failed to have.
The fact that the Merriweathers were unable to have more children was a real tragedy, especially in view of Charles Merriweathers obsession for youngsters. I had learned the details from Laura, in whom Ann Merriweather had confided. It seems that after Billy’s death, Ann suffered a miscarriage and it did something to her which made childbearing impossible from that time on.
This failure of his wife to have another child was probably one of the reasons why Charles himseff devoted so much of his spare time to the children of the neighborhood and why they adored him so much.
As I have said, after Laura died, I saw a great deal of the Merriweathers. I liked them and counted them among my very closest friends. In three years, you can get to know people intimately especially if you see more of them than of anyone else you know, including your own children. I didn’t believe that there was a single thing, actually,
THE MERRIWEATHER FILE
which I didn’t know about them, so far as the routine of their lives and the pattern of their behavior was concerned. That is, up until that cold, bitter, sleet-ridden day some fourteen months ago in mid-November when my secretary walked into my office just before noon to announce that a Mrs. Merriweather was outside and wished to know if I were free for a few minutes.
I walked out into my small reception room with outstretched hands to welcome her.
“Ann,” I said. “Why Ann Merriweather! What in the world brings you into town? . . .”
I experienced a slight feeling of shame as I led her back into the shoddy, old-fashione
d area that was my private office. It was the first time she had ever visited me in town and I was conscious of the faded rug on the floor, the scarred oak desk, the four ancient wooden file cabinets and the discolored prints of early New York courthouses and municipal buildings hanging on the walls. I realized for the first time that the office had a sad and depressing appearance, as though its proprietor himself were a little outdated and slowly drifting into failure and oblivion.
I felt a second twinge as she sat in the big overstuffed leather chair and quickly shifted her position as the broken spring snapped at her. I’d been meaning to have that chair fixed for a long time.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” I said, blushing like a schoolboy for no earthly reason. “What in the world brings you . .
She nodded toward the door, and, baffled, I walked over and closed it.
“Howard,” she said, hardly waiting for me to seat myself, “Howard, I’ve come to consult you professionally.”
She looked so serious that the quip with which I was about to reply died on my lips.
“Professionally? ”
“Yes, Howard. I have decided to consult an attorney. I feel that I need advice.”
“But, Ann,” I began— “Why, of course. Of course, my dear. Anything at all. What is it? A will? income tax—”
She shook her head, at the same time reaching up a hand to pull off the blue beret which was almost an exact match in color for her notable eyes.
“About a murder, Howard,” she said. “Or at least an attempted murder. You see, I believe someone is trying to kill me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Very little ever shocks or really surprises me. But that morning, as I sat across the desk from Ann Merriweather, I was more profoundly disturbed than I had ever been before.
For a brief moment I thought that because of some odd sense of humor, Ann was attempting to pull my leg. I thought that perhaps I hadn’t heard her correctly. I thought that. . . .
