by Lionel White
There was only one thing that happened which, at the time, struck an odd and slightly unpleasant note. That was when, of all things, Emmy Parsons went to the bathroom.
It must have happened sometime shortly after we had eaten.
The Merriweather house is not a split level, like most of the others out in Fairlawn. It is a ranch type, all on one floor. It has two bathrooms and three bedrooms. One bath is off the large master bedroom. A second bedroom was turned into a sort of combination den and library. It was in this room that Charles kept his guns and sporting equip-46
nient. Between this room and the third bedroom is the other bath.
The third bedroom had been Billy’s.
Charles and Ann had kept the room exactly as it was on the morning Billy was killed. His toys remained on the shelves; his pictures were left hanging on the walls. Everything was in place. And the door to the room was locked. The room was a memorial to the dead child.
Everyone who knew the Merriweathers understood about it, and although many did not approve, everyone respected the couple’s wishes.
Well, Miss Parsons was fairly new in the neighborhood, having arrived after Billy’s death. Apparently she had, for some reason or other, never known about him. Certainly she didn’t know about the room.
In any case, sometime during the evening, she had used the bathroom which lay between the library and the dead child' s room. By mistake, but when she was ready to leave, instead of returning through the library, she had unlocked the bathroom door and gone through the old nursery. It must have considerably surprised her to see that room, with its toys and its finger-marked, fairy-tale wall-paper, its small-sized child’s bed with the big stuffed Teddy bear still sitting straight and glassy-eyed against the pillow. In any case, she spent several minutes looking around. And then, instead of returning to the bathroom and rejoining the party the way she had left, she had unlocked and opened the door of the child’s room from the inside and stepped out into the main living room where the rest of us were sitting around talking and drinking.
It is unfortunate that Charles Merriweather happened to be looking up just as she closed the door behind her. I was watching him at the time and I saw his face suddenly pale. His hand began to shake so badly that some of the liquor in the glass he was holding spilled on the rug.
“What in the hell were you doing in that room?” he said.
She stopped in her tracks, startled and obviously completely at a loss.
“Why—why—” she began.
“God damn you—how dare you? How dare you go in there!”
He threw his half empty glass on the floor and started toward her.
Well, it was very embarrassing. Of course several of us realized at once what had happened, realized that Emmy Parsons had made an obvious mistake. Even Ann Merriweather herself quickly started toward her husband, saying, “Now, Charles—Charles, please—”
Of course he was a little tight, but not really drunk. Charles Merriweather never really gets too drunk and never gets the slightest bit out of order.
Poor Emmy was too surprised to say a word. She just stood there, mouth open and half terrified as Charles bore down on her.
But fortunately, several of us were between the two and we intercepted Merriweather, each of us trying to explain that it was a mistake and that really Miss Parsons had no idea and so forth. Ann by this time was beside her husband and she was whispering something to him.
The moment I realized he was regaining his self-control I went at once to Emmy Parsons and taking her by the arm, led her into the playroom. I closed the door and while I poured her a very stiff straight shot of bourbon, I tried to explain.
Fortunately there was no real harm done.
Charles himself, later in the evening, after he had gone into the bedroom and lain down for a few moments, returned as though nothing had happened. I overheard him later on saying something in a rather apologetic tone to Emmy Parsons. I knew that he must be feeling ashamed of himself.
There were one or two other things that took place that night which, when later I thought about them, seemed rather significant, but certainly they didn’t at the time. All in all it was a very nice party and everyone had a good time. Even Ann seemed to enjoy herself.
There is one other thing I might add about that night. Ann had bought herself a new dog. Or rather she had prevailed upon Charles to buy one. It was a boxer, a male about three years old and a truly handsome animal. There was only one thing on which I could fault it. Every time Ann or any other woman came near him, his ears lay back and he would crouch and growl deep down in his throat. But he seemed to like men and he absolutely adored Charles.
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon I had a long-distance telephone call from the head coach at Gordon’s school up in northern Connecticut. Coach Bedlow told
me that my son had broken his wrist while working out in the school gym. He said that there was nothing for me to worry about, that it wasn’t serious, but that of course Gordy wouldn’t be able to play basketball or much of anything else for the rest of the semester and for probably a year or so. He said that Gordy was in no pain, but that he was brokenhearted because he would be off the team. He thought I should talk to the boy and try and cheer him up.
I called Miss Taylor in, gave her a couple of letters and left instructions for her. I told her I was leaving at once and going up to the school and would stay there over the weekend and return sometime on the following Monday morning.
I took an early train and went out to Fairlawn and packed a bag with fresh linen and a couple of odds and ends and then went to the garage and got out the car. I was on my way up to Connecticut by dark as I wanted to get to the school before Gordon went to bed. I knew just how bad he would be feeling. He’s always been crazy over sports and to him, being on the basketball or football team was a lot more important than making A’s across the board.
Fortunately it wasn’t as bad a break as it might have been and both the school doctor and a second man whom they had called in told me that the wrist would be as good as new if Gordy just gave the bones time to reknit and become strong again.
I spent Saturday at the school and most of Sunday and then, Sunday night, drove sixty miles farther north into J°
Massachusetts. I decided to pay a quick visit to young Howard, my older boy, who was in a prep school up there. It may sound odd, the boys going to different schools, but that’s the way they had wanted it and I let them do as they wished. Howard is the scholar of the family and he had picked a school that would prepare him for a university that specialized in arts and sciences. Gordy wanted athletics and so he’d picked the school with the outstanding record for top football squads.
In any case, I visited with Howard Junior on Sunday evening and slept over at a motel. I left on Monday morning, sometime around ten-thirty, after having breakfast with my son and talking to his dean about his progress.
It must have been while I was driving south, somewhere near the Massachusetts-Connecticut border, that I heard the news.
I had the car radio tuned to a local station, and the story followed a bulletin about a new ICBM having been fired successfully from Cape Canaveral. I can remember, even now, almost the exact words the announcer used.
“Less than two hours ago a Connecticut State trooper discovered the body of a murdered man in the trunk compartment of a sedan which had been parked because of a flat tire on the grass, just off the pavement, on the Merritt Parkway, about two miles north of the Greenwich exit.”
“The car, a 1959 Chevrolet, is reported to be owned by and registered in the name of Charles Merriweather, a sales executive and vice president of the Continental Abrasives Company of New York City. Mr. Merri-5t
weather lives at 64 Circle Way, in Fairlawn Acres, Long Island, a suburb of New York.
“According to information available at this time, Mr. Merriweather was standing beside his parked car when Trooper Jerome K. Withers of the Greenwich Barracks, st
opped. Mr. Merriweather is said to have told the trooper that he had a blowout, but that the trunk of his sedan, which contained his spare tire, was locked and that he had misplaced the key. They hailed a tow truck owned by the В & F Garage of Greenwich, which patrols that stretch of highway. The driver, Hugh Bitter, opened the trunk lock with a skeleton key. Bitter said later that it is not at all unusual to find drivers who have misplaced their trunk keys.
“It was when the trunk lid was opened that the crumpled-up body of the man was discovered. Trooper Withers said that inspection of the body showed the man had been shot in the stomach. The man, who wore neither a hat nor overcoat, is reported to have been in his late twenties. No gun or weapon was found in the car.
“Mr. Merriweather is being held for questioning by Connecticut Police. He is reported to have denied completely any knowledge of the victim and is unable to account for the body’s presence in the trunk of his sedan. He said that he had left his home not more than two hours earlier to start north on his biweekly sales trip through the New England States.”
CHAPTER FOUR
You would have thought that since I am a lawyer, I would have known at once what to do. That I would have driven to the nearest telephone, after hearing the announcement over the car radio, and as the saying is, “taken steps.”
But whatever training my legal background may have given me certainly failed to make itself evident. The shocking information not only paralyzed any capacity I might have had for quick thinking—it threw me into a state of complete and total ineffectiveness.
I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. I shut off the engine and took a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment and opened it and placed a cigarette in my mouth. And then I forgot to light it. After several moments, during which I attempted to collect myself, I began to wonder if what I had heard hadn’t actually been something which had come from my imagination rather than the air waves. I wondered if perhaps the account hadn’t been garbled and the announcer had had the wrong name. I wondered if—
But wondering did me no good. I knew in my heart that what I had heard was true. I knew that the police had picked up Charles Merriweather and found the body of a dead man in the trunk of his car. I knew that, even as I sat there at the side of the road, they would be holding him for questioning in some Connecticut police station not too many miles away. I thought of Charles and knew that I should try and reach him. And then I thought of Ann.
Telephone her. That was what I must do. At once. And if she hadn’t heard about it yet, I must try and break it to her as gently as possible.
The fact that I at once started to drive south to find the nearest telephone shows all too plainly how confused I must have been. My intelligence should have told me that the police would have called her. But as I say, I was not thinking logically, wasn’t thinking the way a lawyer should think.
The telephone was in a glassed-in booth outside a gas station some four miles down the road. The booth was empty as I drove up and I hurried to it, simultaneously searching my pockets for change.
It took several minutes for me to reach the Merriweather home; there was a key number which I must dial and I had to get it from the operator. The first time I called the line was busy. When I eventually got an answer, it was a man who spoke.
“Yes?”
“I wish to speak to Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs. Ann—
“Who is calling, please?”
“This is Howard Yates and I want to speak to—”
“What is it you want to talk to Mrs. Merriweather 54
about? ” The voice was cool, efficient, without personality.
“I’m a personal friend and I just want to talk to her,” I said. “Please be good enough—”
“I’m sorry, but Mrs. Merriweather is not available at the moment. If you will give me your message—”
“Who is this?” I demanded. “Who—”
“This is the police.”
For a moment I was startled, and then almost at once I blushed to think how stupid I was being.
“I am Mrs. Merriweather’s attorney,” I said quickly. “Now if you will just be good enough to put—”
“Hold the wire.”
But it wasn’t Ann Merriweather who came to the phone. It was another policeman, but this time, fortunately, someone I knew.
“Detective Lieutenant Giddeon speaking,” the second voice said.
I breathed a sudden sigh of relief. I had known Lieutenant Giddeon for two or three years. Not well, but at least well enough to be glad that it was he who was on the wire. Our relationship had been mostly social; he sails a boat out of the same yacht club basin over on the Sound that my boys use to moor their Penguin during the summer months. I had met him there a number of times, had had several drinks with him in the bar of the very modest yacht club to which we both belong.
This is Howard Yates,” I said, hurriedly. “You may ^member me—from the club. I live in the house behind e Merriweathers. They are friends of mine, and, in fact, lents. ’ I was stretching a point, but I felt it necessary.
“Is Mrs. Merriweather there? I want to speak to her.”
“How are you, Yates?” Giddeon said. “Yes, she is here. I’ll call her to the phone.”
I spoke quickly before he could walk away.
“I have just heard about this thing over the radio,” I said. “Does Ann—Mrs. Merriweather, know?”
“Not as yet. She only knows we are here making an examination of the house and garage. We haven’t told her.”
“Please let me speak to her then.”
A moment later and I heard her voice over the wire. She sounded frightened half to death.
“Howard,” she said. “Oh, Howard! What’s happened? What is this all about? Tell me—it’s something to do with Charles, isn’t it? Oh God, he hasn’t been in an accident? He hasn’t been—”
“Ann,” I said. “Ann, please! Try and collect yourself and listen. Charles is all right. I give you my word—he’s all right. There has been no accident. Nothing of the sort. The police are just holding him and questioning him—”
“Questioning him! What for? Why would the police—”
“You must listen to me, Ann,” I said. “Right now I am about two hours away. I’m coming to you as quickly as my car will make it. In the meantime you are not to worry —honestly, not to worry. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Everything can be explained. But in the meantime, refuse to answer any questions until I arrive. Tell the police, if they question you, that I am representing you and that you refuse to answer—”
“They’ve been asking me a million questions. All sorts of crazy—”
“Just do what I say. Don’t answer anything until I come. I’m on my way this very instant.”
She was beginning to say something as I hung up and I hated to cut her short, but I wanted to get to her side as quickly as I could.
Driving south toward the Whitestone Bridge and the Long Island Thruway, the thought kept recurring to me that the whole thing must be some ghastly combination of errors; that it was just too bizarre to have really happened. Charles Merriweather running around the countryside with a murdered man in the trunk of his car! If he were actually involved—that is, if the body hadn’t been hidden there without his knowledge by some group of gangsters— then there could be only one explanation. He could have hit the man with his car and killed him and become panicky and put the corpse there with some vague idea of eventually getting rid of it. Yes, that could be an answer. But there was something about Merriweather’s basic character, as I believed I knew it, which made the idea seem utterly incredible. Even as I thought of it, I remembered that the radio report had said the man had been shot to death. Well, at least that ruled out the hit-run theory. I Went back to my gangsters-getting-rid-of-the-body theory. It would have been easy to believe—but for one thing. That was the business of the previous week when Ann had dome to me with her fantastic story of someone trymg to kill her
. There was too much of a coincidence between the two events to discount the possibility of a rela-57 tionship. The more I thought of it, the less sense it seemed to make.
When I reached the Merriweather home, Ann was no longer there. But the police were—in force. The uniformed man at the door, once I had identified myself, said that Mrs. Merriweather had been taken to Nassau County Police Headquarters in Mineola. It was all he would tell me.
Twenty minutes later and I was in the reception room outside of the detective division and had sent my name in to Detective Lieutenant Giddeon. He kept me waiting only five minutes. He was alone in his office when I entered.
The moment he extended his hand and said, “Glad to see you, Counselor,” I knew that this was to be an official visit. Our social relationship of the past would be temporarily shelved.
“What have you done with Mrs. Merriweather?” I asked, even before taking the seat which he indicated. “Where-”
He lifted up a hand to stop my flow of words.
“Mrs. Merriweather is downstairs with a matron,” he said. “We are-”
“Now see here, Lieutenant,” I began, “ you haven’t placed her under—”
He foresaw my question.
“Certainly not,” he interrupted. “She is not being officially held or anything like that. But the Connecticut people are anxious for us to bring her up and have her view the body just in case she might make an identification.
5*
We are driving her up and, knowing you were on your way in, I waited until you arrived so that you might accompany her if you wished to do so.”
I nodded. I should have thanked him, but I was still too excited really to know what I was doing.
“I can’t see what this has to do with the Nassau County Police,” I said. “I can’t understand—”
“Perhaps it might be a good idea for me to tell you just what has taken place.”
He said it kindly and I suddenly understood that he meant well, that he realized my own position, realized my lack of practical experience in matters like this and wanted to help me as much as he could.
