by Emma Lathen
Lancer had not forgotten a single detail of that emotion-packed night. “I still asked a lot of questions,” he recalled grimly. “Like why we couldn’t use a bank credit. But every time I said anything, Cramer waved that ransom note at me.”
“Well, believe me, by now he regrets he ever showed that note to the Sloan,” said Thatcher, with a surge of satisfaction.
Lancer caught his meaning immediately. “Did the note help trip him up? Good, I’m glad.”
“Yes, but I’ll come to that in a minute. Right now I am emphasizing how well the fake kidnapping served Wylie’s purpose. Until the money entered that numbered account, its movements were open to public inspection. But when it left on Jill Livermore’s back and disappeared in the Zurich railroad station, there was a complete discontinuity in its paper record. Nobody could incriminate Simon Livermore by tracing the money. And after the Watergate and Lockheed investigations, that is the peril that preoccupies corrupt officials around the world.”
Miss Simpson was nothing if not resilient. “I had not realized it was the man’s wife who made the pickup,” she said thoughtfully. “But surely that made them just as vulnerable as a laundered check would have. She would always be subject to identification.”
“Livermore was afraid of evidence that might lead an investigator to him. It never occurred to him that someone would first suspect him and then go looking for proof,” Thatcher argued. “As for the danger inherent in Jill’s role, Davidson Wylie managed to factor that into his game plan. You see, Livermore insisted that he be paid before throwing the contract to Macklin. Quite naturally, as he would have had no recourse if payment had not been forthcoming thereafter. But Wylie, in his turn, wanted some hold over the Livermores to ensure compliance after the money was out of reach and Jill’s involvement gave him exactly what he needed.”
George Lancer was shaking his head as if he could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “It all sounds so simple the way you put it,” he complained. “Wylie stages his charade in Istanbul, Cramer sees to it that the ransom is paid into the numbered account, the Livermores pick up the money, and there you are.”
“Yes, with the addition of a few details. Jill Livermore set up the numbered account months in advance. Wylie arranged his hideaway in Greece and then hired two drifters with criminal records for the scene in the Turkish restaurant. Even when these drifters realized they’d been part of a major embezzlement, they wouldn’t risk a kidnapping sentence by pitting their word against Wylie’s. And then all this carefully contrived simplicity fell apart because of a car crash.”
Thus far Norris Upton had been content to let his co-directors do most of the talking. Clearly his famous tolerance of bribery was going to need a little rethinking. In the past he had stymied more than one opponent by asking: What harm does it really do? Now, instead of reaching for murky ethical precepts, they would merely say: Two murders.
With a wary eye on Miss Simpson, Upton cautiously asked his question. “Why did everything fall apart after Wylie’s accident? Even if their schedule was fouled up, the scheme had worked. So what difference did it make?”
Thatcher might have been reading his mind. “Quite a lot. The seeds for two murders were planted when Wylie skidded on that Greek road. The plan called for Jill Livermore to pick up the money and jet out of Zurich to Algeria. She reasoned that, if the Swiss police had followed her, they would never let her fly off to such a well-known terrorist haven. Once she was safely in North Africa, she rejoined her friends in Tangiers and called Wylie to give him the signal to reappear. He would produce his well-rehearsed tale of being blindfolded for 36 hours and proceed to London for the final round of the Noss Head negotiations. The whole operation would have been so swift and so slick that the principals could have forgotten it ever happened. Above all, they would have dealt with nobody except each other. Instead, look what happened. When Jill telephoned that Greek hotel, she was told that Wylie had never arrived. That was bad enough, but what should have been an overnight press sensation turned into a continuing drama. Livermore, who hoped to forget what he had done, was reminded of it every day—by TV, by his fellow workers, by the other competitors for Noss Head. And then, on top of everything else, Cramer arrived in London.”
“I suppose Livermore didn’t like to be reminded that someone else was in the plot,” Roberta Ore Simpson ventured.
“It was a good deal worse than that. Davidson Wylie had carved a genuine niche for himself at the department. Everyone found him congenial to work with, everyone had been his guest, everyone was in the habit of having a drink with him. Given the fact that the NDW and Macklin bids were evenly balanced, Livermore anticipated no surprise when the award would go to Wylie. Suddenly Macklin was represented by a stranger who ruffled people and with whom Livermore had no excuse to associate. Indeed, at their first meeting, Livermore had to assure Cramer he was going through with his part of the bargain, in front of a witness. By the time the award was finally made, everybody was astonished at Macklin’s victory and both men were too nervous for safety. Cramer had already been stampeded into leaking a news item and sending himself a second ransom note. He was, of course, preparing to lay the blame for Wylie’s continued absence at Engelhart’s door. In many ways that cruel heat wave in London was a blessing to the conspirators. When we stopped over, Charlie Trinkam took one look and said that Livermore was so distracted he didn’t know what he was doing. But with the entire English contingent wilting, that was not so remarkable.”
Even Norris Upton was put off by this tale of botched timetables and lily-livered conspirators. “All right, Livermore didn’t like pulling off this rope trick under a spotlight, but, as soon as Wylie turned up, everything was hunky-dory as far as Macklin was concerned.”
“I am sorry to say that you and Cramer seem to think a good deal alike,” Thatcher said dryly. “When he charged off to Ankara and found out about Wylie’s accident, Cramer reacted with instinctive efficiency. He twisted everything that was said into an attack on Wylie’s mental stability. At the time, he was inspired only by a desire to divert attention from Wylie’s physical condition. When Davidson Wylie moved from that beach cottage to the Tidewater, he could plunge into a public swimming pool without his scars rousing curiosity. That was enough to satisfy Cramer.”
If George Lancer had a fault, it was meeting trouble halfway. He could scarcely credit Hugo Cramer’s insouciance. “But when he learned that Interpol was following them to Houston to find out about those missing three weeks, surely he must have started to worry then,” he protested.
“Not really. Cramer has a tough hide and, if it had been him at the end of all those questions, he would have bluffed the whole thing through. It wouldn’t have bothered him one single bit to have the police suspicious so long as they couldn’t prove anything. But Wylie couldn’t stand that kind of pressure. He suffered from the salesman’s constitutional desire to be liked,”
Miss Simpson thought she had spied a weak spot. “If the man wanted to be liked, surely the last thing he would do is confess.”
“You may find this hard to believe, Roberta,” Thatcher said sympathetically, “but Davidson Wylie did not think he had done anything wrong. To his mind, he had simply evaded some pettifogging regulations so that Macklin money could be spent in Macklin’s interest. He was genuinely horrified when it dawned on him that Interpol suspected him of diverting that money to his own use. Why, that would have made him a criminal! He wanted to clear up the misunderstanding. And, in order to appear as attractive as possible, he probably would have passed himself off as a zealous young man misled into exaggerated loyalty by a corrupt superior. I can almost see him doing it with that overdone earnest helpfulness.”
“There’s a word for that kind of behavior,” Norris Upton pointed out.
“Yes,” Thatcher agreed, “particularly when you consider the different consequences for the two men. Wylie was a virtual newcomer to Macklin. There was nothing to prevent him continuing his career in
some other field. But Cramer’s entire life had been Macklin, and he was now only one step removed from the top. Quite apart from the real possibility of criminal charges. When he saw the effect on Wylie of one round of Interpol questioning, he decided not to wait for the second.”
“I suppose you could say that it was clever of him to use a bomb,” Miss Simpson said with grudging appreciation. “That way, Cramer not only reinforced the terrorist motif, but he inflicted widespread damage on Wylie’s body.”
This point had not previously occurred to Upton who immediately subjected it to a critique all his own. “The damn fool should have known better than to rely on dynamite. If it had been me, I would have taken Wylie out into the middle of the Gulf on my cruiser and given him the old heave-ho.”
It was too much to expect Roberta to break the habit of a lifetime and start admiring exercises in criminal ingenuity. Thatcher hastened into speech before she could deliver a blast. “Certainly the post-mortem was a disappointment to Cramer,” he said tactfully. “He had already done some spadework by telling Charlie that Wylie was terrified of his kidnappers. Now all Cramer could do was publicly bewail his folly in allowing Wylie to manipulate him.”
“I don’t see that he was so badly off.” George Lancer hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Everyone decided that Wylie had been after the ransom for himself and a partner. Arthur Shute was following the police investigation closely, and he told me, in confidence, that the only serious suspect at Macklin was young Volpe. So I—”
But his fellow directors had both erupted into speech.
“I’ll bet Shute didn’t tell you if he was a suspect,” Upton snapped.
“Why should Arthur Shute take you into his confidence, rather than me?” Roberta asked severely.
Lancer refused to be diverted. He continued to plow straight ahead. “So Hugo Cramer was still in a strong position. And what I want to know, John, is how you figured out he was the murderer.”
“Mainly because of Francesca Wylie. She noticed a number of fallacies in the accepted view of her husband’s activities and she kept mentioning them. I’m sorry to say that I did not take her objections seriously until after she was murdered. And I should have. After all, she was not a devoted wife saying that her David wouldn’t do anything wrong. She was sufficiently disenchanted with him to divorce him, but she still had all the peculiar insights that a wife gains after years of marriage.”
“Oh, for Lord’s sake! That’s what all these women claim. According to them, they can see right inside your skull. But what do they really know?”
Norris Upton was so heated that Thatcher felt a passing twinge of curiosity about Mrs. Upton. Nonetheless, he hurried on:
“I am not talking about sensitive perception, I am talking about money. A wife of any duration knows how her husband acts when he’s feeling flush, how he acts when he’s feeling poor, what his favorite petty economies are, what his extravagances are, and how far he will trust other people with his cash.”
Norris Upton, caught with his mouth agape, paid this theory the tribute of silence. Roberta Ore Simpson cocked her head and apparently reviewed every married couple of her acquaintance. “On the whole, I am inclined to agree,” she said at the conclusion of her deliberations.
Thatcher continued to punch home his argument. “Then look at the points that Francesca made the minute that suspicion centered on Davidson Wylie. First, she said that it was not his kind of money-making scheme. Second, fresh from a wrangle about real estate valuation, she said he was not feeling rich enough to stop trying to cheat her out of twenty thousand dollars. Finally she said that her husband would never, never have let a girlfriend hold the money. She felt so strongly about this last feature that she could even understand police distrust of her own role. In her view, a wife was the only woman who could reasonably have made the pickup. All of this was quite convincing, but Francesca did not add the last damning items until she was in London. Remember, she had been expecting machinations from Wylie on the property settlement, she had been keeping an eagle eye on his assets. Then after she had gone through his apartment and all his checkbooks, she arrived at two conclusions. Davidson Wylie had not paid the expenses for the fake kidnapping and, during the last months of his life, he had been thinking only of Noss Head and the approaching divorce. To her that meant one thing— Wylie had been acting as an employee. Unfortunately, when she tried to reach Arthur Shute, she got Hugo Cramer instead. Even worse, the second person she intended to confide in was Klaus Engelhart.”
“Now, John,” Lancer objected, “of course telling this all to Cramer was a fatal error. But why would going to Engelhart make it any worse?”
“Because the one person Cramer was afraid of was Engelhart. He would have preferred to have nothing to do with him. But Dave Wylie was convinced that NDW could be kept sweet with enough subcontracts. Nonetheless, every time Engelhart produced his famous sentence about Wylie’s kidnapping being responsible for the Noss Head decision, he made Cramer’s blood run cold. Basically, it was a character flaw that kept young Engelhart from divining the truth himself. He was contemptuous of the British for being sentimental about a human drama. He dismissed Francesca’s stubbornness as unwillingness to recognize a younger woman in her husband’s life. But Hugo Cramer knew full well that the day Francesca proved to Klaus there was Macklin involvement in the kidnapping, he would understand what had really happened. And if he was hell-bent on finding an older man in the toils of a young girl, he only had to look as far as Simon and Jill Livermore.”
George Lancer liked everything crystal clear. “You mean that Engelhart and Mrs. Wylie separately were no threat. Engelhart could be suffering from sour grapes and she could be defending the memory of her husband. But if they pooled their knowledge, they would blow the lid off.”
“Surely that is self-evident,” said Roberta Ore Simpson with more acuteness than tact. “And we can all understand why that led Hugo Cramer to murder Mrs. Wylie. But the role of this senior civil servant is truly shocking. I am surprised that Davidson Wylie had the temerity ever to make the offer. The odds of its being accepted were against him, and a rejection would have left Macklin in an awkward position.”
Thatcher shook his head gently. “The odds weren’t as bad as you might expect. Wylie was relatively astute about people; it was his main stock in trade. When he began thinking of bribery, he stopped entertaining ministry officials alone and started asking their wives as well. He was looking for a couple that was hungry for money. The signs were not that difficult to read with the Livermores. Simon is not as expensively groomed as most of the administrative assistants he deals with, the Livermores take jaunts to exotic foreign resorts, but always as guests, Jill uses youth and beauty to sparkle in a scene where many of the women are using diamonds.”
Miss Simpson accepted facts, however unpalatable. “I can see that they were in money difficulties, but why?”
“For two reasons. Livermore didn’t have any inherited funds and the middle class is being squeezed hard in England these days. He would have had to retrench even if he hadn’t changed his way of life. But just as the pressure came on, he started to support two households. He was trying to maintain traditional standards in his first ménage while catering to the needs of a young, expensive second wife.”
“And doesn’t that take a real bundle!” Norris Upton exclaimed, with so much fellow-feeling that almost all questions about his current marital status were answered. “He could go into hock in a month paying for the things she dreamed up.”
Thatcher was obliged to demur. “It was not simply a matter of bills to be met. Little by little, Jill was changing Simon’s values.”
“Ah!” As a college president, Roberta was quick to understand. “He was being exposed to the new morality.”
“He wasn’t so much exposed to it as assaulted by it. I expect that if Livermore had still been married to his first wife, she would have been shocked and appalled at the thought of his accepting
a bribe. Jill, on the other hand, would have been shocked and appalled at his refusing it. Where was the harm, she must have argued. His technicians told him he had two evenly balanced bids by two equally competent firms. It would be preposterous not to benefit from the situation. And Wylie was clever in formulating his plan. Livermore had only to sit at his desk and sign on the dotted line. It was Jill and Wylie who engaged in all the histrionics.”
George Lancer had been champing at the bit for some time. “This won’t do, John. You’re telling me what happened, not how it became clear to you.”
Thus called to order, Thatcher proceeded in a more systematic fashion. “As I mentioned, Charlie and I began to think in terms of corporate involvement after Mrs. Wylie was murdered. We even considered the possibility that Engelhart used Macklin money to pay off Wylie. But that would have meant personal gain to Wylie, which Francesca had already barred. It was Arthur Shute who directed us from an unsuccessful bribe by NDW to a successful one by Macklin. But he failed to take the final step. In a complicated contest it is more efficient to bribe the referee than one of your rivals. When I remembered that, everything fell into place. The Livermores stood out like sore thumbs on the receiving end. To a lesser degree, Cramer stood out on the paying end. There had to be someone senior to Wylie who okayed the plan and funneled expense money to Europe. That meant it was Cramer or Shute. Cramer was the one who rushed to Wylie’s side in Ankara, Cramer was the one who hid him away in a beach cottage, and, above all, Cramer was the one who forced the Livermores to give him an alibi for Francesca’s murder.”
