“Is that old man still alive?” I asked. I remembered that when we first moved to Borderville, Mr. Redloch was generally conceded to be a museum piece—an attorney who had “read law” and practiced in a dingy little office over a store on Crowder Street.
“I think he says he is ninety-nine years old.”
“In a rest home, I suppose.”
“Not at all. He still goes to his office every day. And he handles the business of two or three old ladies. Once in a great while I see him in the courthouse.”
There is something about our mountains that makes people live and live and live—at least some people.
The very next day I made up my mind to see Mr. Redloch. I conceived of him as so fragile that he might die at any minute and take his knowledge with him.
Crowder Street is one of the narrow cross streets down town on the Virginia side. It is lined with old, two-story brick buildings, many of them with tatty zinc cornices. Officesupply stores, offset printing places, and newsstands tend to occupy the lower floors, while one or two of the buildings are vacant. Between any two shops, expect to find a wooden door repainted so many times that its surface is lumpy with coats of pigment applied as early as the last century.
Mr. Redloch was not listed in the phone book, but I remembered pretty well where his office was and found it easily enough by the gold letters ANGUS REDLOCH, ATTY. AT LAW still gleaming through the grime of an upstairs window.
Inside the street door, a rickety stair led steeply to the upper level. Every step announced my approach with varied creaks and groans. The pine floor was bare. Frosted glass in the door at the end of a narrow hall boasted letters that echoed the proclamation I had seen in the window: ANGUS REDLOCH, ATTY. AT LAW—this time in black.
I knocked, heard a swivel chair give up its burden, and saw through the frosted glass the shadow of Mr. Redloch as he approached. The door opened and there was the man himself.
He is an elf—a very old one—but an elf. Pale gray eyes, pink skin, totally bald, he has just the shred of a white moustache. There was also just a stroke of white stubble on his left cheek that his razor had missed.
The elf bowed in a courtly manner and asked me to come in. He tugged at the client’s chair enough to indicate that he was placing it in a convenient position and asked me to be seated.
I would like to call Mr. Redloch spry, but that is hardly correct. He reminded me of a marionette—suspended. It would surprise me if he weighs as much in pounds as his age in years.
Mr. Redloch himself was very neat, though I cannot say the same for his office. There were dusty papers everywhere. Cabinets and shelves were piled high with envelopes. To my left was an inner door, the upper part consisting of frosted glass. His law library, I thought—and no doubt it was in as great disarray as the room in which we sat.
He was saying something about assisting me.
“I am Helen Delaporte,” I replied, “I am sure you know my husband, Henry.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “We were associated in some legal work back in the early sixties. As I recall, there were three parties in the suit growing out of an accident, and each of the parties chose to employ a different attorney. It could all have been handled much more expeditiously by one lawyer. But, then, people have their whims. Arthur Smith was my client, F. D. Simmons was your husband’s client, and Mrs. Sidney Young employed Chuck Benfield. He’s dead now.”
“You have a very clear memory,” I observed.
“Well, ma’am,” he said, “the secret of success in the law is details.”
Immediately I knew that I had found someone who knew things and that I had made an acquaintance that I would enjoy. Quickly I explained to him what I wanted to know and why I wanted to know it.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “the DAR murder case. I read of your discovery in the Banner-Democrat, and I admire your courage and cleverness in identifying the corpus delicti. I did not, however, know until this very moment that Mr. García was related to the Drover family. Fancy that!”
He hastened to add, “Although I am certainly at your service and happy to supply you with any reminiscences I may be able to recall from what is to me not a very distant past, I must warn you first. If this is murder—and I do not see how it can be anything else—you would do well to let it alone.”
Mr. Redloch gave me a very serious look that would have been perhaps alarming except that I could not get away from my first impression—that I was talking to a wondrously fey spirit that was somehow not quite real. He gave me a little lecture on the dangers of meddling with criminal matters and continued to look at me ominously; but because I maintained my silence, he soon went on.
“Well, I see that the ladies are the same as they have always been and that you will have your own way. But I beg of you that you be careful and confine such information as you discover to yourselves and to the commonwealth attorney. You must not let it be widely known that you are engaged in any sort of inquiry that might endanger those who perpetrated the murder, or you will in all probability find that they will endanger you.
“Now, as to the Drover estate, I do recall off hand a number of things that may be of interest or even of some profit to you. My late partner, Colonel Harvey Boyd, under whom I read law and with whom I began my practice, handled quite a number of matters for old Quinby Drover himself. This would be back in the nineties—possibly the eighties—long, of course, before my time.
“You see, I came into the office when I was seventeen years old. That was in nineteen ten. I remained in the office reading law until I was old enough to take the bar examination. Then I was admitted to the firm as a junior partner. Then when I was mustered out in nineteen nineteen, Colonel Boyd as a patriotic gesture made me a full partner. (He, of course has served in the war of sixty-one.)
“I first saw Quinby Drover about nineteen eleven or nineteen twelve. He had mined some coal property, for which he had not secured a proper lease. The land, it turned out, was not in fact the property of the individuals with whom he had exercised an agreement; and the actual owners sued him for three-quarters of a million dollars. It was fought up to the supreme court in Richmond, where old Quin lost his case.
“I have heard the rumor that Quin had spent over one hundred thousand dollars on high-powered lawyers from New York as well as some of Virginia’s most brilliant attorneys.
“We were employed in a minor way on the other side. But the thing that is interesting is that when the verdict was handed down, within five minutes’ time, Quin discharged the judgment with a check for the full amount drawn on the Morgan Bank in New York City.
“Now, in those days that was something! The fact is that I am still impressed.”
I murmured some encouraging inanity to fill in a pause. Mr. Redloch seemed momentarily to have escaped into the distant scene.
“Well,” he came back briskly to the present, “that will give you some idea of the wealth the Drovers had at one time. But a great deal of it evaporated quite suddenly with the Eighteenth Amendment.
“Oh, yes, Quin’s original fortune was made with Dixie Rose Whiskey. It was good stuff too. In making whiskey, the water is as important as the technique, and Quin certainly had both. It would be hard to say whether Quin made more out of his coal or out of his whiskey.
“Be that as may be, the whiskey distillery closed and the business came to an abrupt halt when the Volstead Act was passed. Indeed, indeed!
“It was a great joke, you see. Quin had made the fortune while his moonshining relatives back in the hills worked just as hard at making whiskey but made little money from it. When Prohibition came in, the tables were turned. There was no way by which Quin could continue distilling in a clandestine way, supplying bootleggers and so on. He was too well known, you see.”
Once more Mr. Redloch retreated into the past. I opened my purse and took out the genealogy Elizabeth had made for us.
“I have here,” I said, “a genealogical table of the family. Perhaps it will c
all something to mind that might prove helpful.”
Mr. Redloch took the paper, felt around in a drawer, and produced a large reading glass. I noticed for the first time that there was a tremor in his hand.
“Tut, tut, tut,” he said as he perused the genealogy.
“Denny Drover! I hadn’t thought of him for many a long year.
“He was a very good-looking boy—had golden curls and blue eyes. All the ladies felt maternal toward him.
“Denny’s aunt, Mrs. Baker Comming—oh, she was something! Had a place at Big Branch. I suppose you know about Big Branch. It’s all under the lake now, and there was a good deal of bad feeling toward TVA for destroying such a desirable area. Big Branch was quite the resort in its day. There were cabins along the branch and near it on the Holston—nice places, summer homes, you understand. There was a trolley from Borderville, and the best families would move out there as soon as school was over and stay until school took up again in September.
“Baker Comming was president of the Borderville National Bank, which was Quin’s bank here; and of course they had a lovely place out there with wide porches all around it. There were young people of all ages, so to speak, out there all summer long. It had everything one could expect of Asheville or any of the better-known resorts.
“Well, Denny’s mother always came for a month, usually August, with her sister-in-law, who was of course old Quin’s daughter. And as Denny grew older, he was quite a buck.
“He got a young lady in a family way when he was about nineteen. When the girl’s father expected him to do something about it, Denny took the train back north in a hurry. The girl’s parents threatened suit for breach of promise. At that point it developed that there was another young woman in a family way, also courtesy of Denny Drover. The second family—not people of consequence at all—took a great notion to make a big thing of it and sue the Drovers for a great sum. One of the suits was actually filed.
“Abner, Denny’s father, was the youngest of old Quin’s children. And in that family, the younger the children were, the more pretense of social standing was maintained. It was one of those things that are talked about out of all proportion. I have heard the figure of fifty thousand dollars for both girls. I feel sure that Denny’s father settled the matter for less than that—out of court, of course. Nevertheless the two girls are said to have come out of it very well financially. One now lives in Knoxville, and I do not know what happened to the other. Denny was always in scrapes—drank quite a bit. I’ve no idea how much was spent, all told, on getting him out of trouble.”
During this discourse Mr. Redloch had put down his reading glass. Now he picked it up again and waved it over the page trying to find the place where he had seen the name of Denny Drover. At last he found it.
“Now, Abner Drover,” he said, taking up his discourse again, “that’s Denny’s father—he had the worst head for business of any of the three sons, and he was the only one who lived long enough to have an effect on the estate.”
Once more the reading glass went down.
“That estate is very interesting—you know the will was probated in New Jersey. There was quite a thing about it too. The Commonwealth of Virginia was very eager to reap a whopping big tax in that matter, and the residency of old Quin was not finally adjudicated until about ten years after Quin died.
“Old Quin was a proud man,” Mr. Redloch said with a conspiratorial lowering of his voice. “Yes, he wanted his family to rank with the best, and he did not have very excellent material to work with there. Well, he figured that if he could keep the family industries together—because there was the whiskey, timber, coal, the railroad, and banking, in addition to things like his holdings in such items as AT&T, Pullman, and Waters Pierce—if he could just keep them dependent on those industries and keep the industries going after his death, don’t you see, they would all still be dependent on the central empire he had set up—and it would all be a monument to his genius. Somehow he thought it would work.
“The will, as I recall, more or less left a certain sum, say seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, to each of the children, a huge sum then, with each child receiving an undivided interest in the residue, that is, the various businesses—the bulk of the estate—which might have worked if he had set up a trust in such a way that none of the heirs, they being such as they were, could in any way control the businesses.”
I said that Henry had explained that the undivided interest would go on as long as all parties were satisfied, but that there would be major trouble if they did not.
“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Redloch said. “I am sure that all of Quin’s legal advice was against what he did. But some people prefer their own opinions. And indeed there would still be litigation about that estate except for the fact that by the time the third generation became involved, the estate was severely diminished.
“First there went the liquor. Then the mines played out, and without Quin to direct the company, leases that Drover Coal might have expected to secure had a way of going to other people; and then there were so many leases that either lapsed or proved unprofitable. Let’s not forget trouble with the unions.
“And there was the crash in nineteen twenty-nine. I have no doubt that the stocks in those wonderful industries like AT&T and so on had been sold to make cash distribution to the individual heirs. In the thirties it was the easiest thing in the world to lose money in any business.
“They lost the railroad, and the banks went under. The transfer business—that was the only thing left. That was a kind of adjunct to the rail line. It’s still going—Borderville Transfer it’s called now. There are possibly some other properties that make a return, but I doubt if there is much besides what I have mentioned.”
I thanked Mr. Redloch and made the proper noises about being pleased to make his acquaintance. He was, however, scanning Elizabeth’s genealogical chart through his reading glass again.
“Now here’s a thing.” he said. “Kenneth Raebon!”
Mr. Redloch went into suspended animation for two or three seconds.
“Yes,” I said.
“Kenneth Raebon,” he began again. “Of course all that we have been saying is in strictest confidence; but this one is still alive. I have had experience with him—oh, not in connection with the Drover estate. But I assure you that he is a very slippery customer indeed.”
Once more there was the suspended animation. When at last Mr. Redloch began again, his voice was conspiratorial. “Kenneth Raebon grew up in Hogg’s Gap; and when he got out of law school, he went into practice with Cornfield Simmons. (He was called Cornfield because he was fond of telling the jury that he was a simple boy who learned his law in the cornfield.) By the time Raebon joined the firm, Cornfield was like I am now, mostly retired; but he would tell Kenneth what to do, and Kenneth would do it.
“Well, Simmons and Raebon were somehow involved with the Drover estate—mostly because they were the only legal firm in Hogg’s Gap. So one time, old Kenneth went up to New Jersey on estate business and saw Sarah Drover’s only girl, Dorothy. Kenneth Raebon didn’t need Cornfield to tell him what to do in a case like that.
“They tell me that Dorothy is none too bright; but that didn’t stop Raebon from marrying her and getting himself made principal attorney for the estate. I imagine he has been drawing a good income from handling and mishandling what’s left of the estate, but don’t ever tell anybody I said it.”
“Mr. Redloch,” I said, “do you suppose there could still be enough of the Drover money left to be the cause of Luis García’s murder?”
A curious little chuckle rattled about in the old gentleman’s weasand. “Money,” he said, “or the lack of it, my dear young lady, is the cause of most things.”
The root of all evil! Certainly if the criminal lacks it and the victim has it. But I didn’t see how anyone would profit by the death of a concert artist.
“I have no idea how much Drover money is left. But I am sure your husband w
ill bear me out that we are often surprised to find a source of money in an estate after we have supposed the till has long been empty.”
I thanked Mr. Redloch again for his time and kindness.
“As the remainder of my life becomes shorter and shorter,” he said as he got up from his chair, “I find that fewer and fewer people want my time.”
He saw me to the door and bowed me out.
I went right home and jotted down notes on all that Mr. Redloch had said. Then I combed my notes carefully to see if there was anything of value in them.
I had a far better picture of the Drover family and the wealth old Quin had heaped up. And I knew also that the wealth was for the most part gone. Old Quin was undoubtedly a rascal, who seemed to furnish the moral lesson that the success of this world is fleeting. How my grandmother would have gloried in such an outcome!
I studied the genealogical chart again. Martha and Jane could not be expected in their day to manage involved properties because they were mere women. On the other hand, neither Martha nor Jane seemed to have excelled in the things that wealthy women of that generation were expected to do. Franklin, whose children had a talent for coming to unfortunate ends, seems not to have had it in him to take hold of the family affairs. And the offspring of Abner could hardly have been expected to handle responsibility. As for young Quinby—well, he died before his father. It really looked as though Allen Comming and the Borderville Transfer were the core of whatever Drover estate might remain.
Of course, I knew where the place was—on the Tennessee side across the freeway from the bluff. It was a group of buildings at the foot of a steep slope. And then I seemed to remember something on top of the hill. It was kept painted and in good repair, but as to the amount of business that went on there, I had no notion.
On Elizabeth’s chart I ran a line under the living descendants and others who might be considered their heirs. They were:
Allen Comming, Jr.
Duncan Yardley
The Famous Dar Murder Mystery Page 8
