Death Shall Overcome

by Emma Lathen

  The sergeant let him complete his recital without interruption.

  “That’s very good, sir,” he said at its conclusion. “Very helpful and clear. Now, if we could just go back over a few points.”

  They went back to the moment when Foote had waved Schuyler and Parry over to join Francis Devane and proceeded in exhaustive detail down to the moment of Foote’s collapse.

  Thatcher found himself wondering what there was in his testimony capable of producing such spellbound attention.

  “That’s very interesting. Let me see if I have everything clear. You say that Mr. Schuyler toasted someone as he crossed the room?”

  “Well, it was more of a salute. A gesture, you know. Mr. Schuyler was being playful, I think.”

  “Yes, of course. And what was in his glass?”

  Thatcher was startled. “I don’t know. Whisky, I would imagine. Anyway, it was a highball glass.”

  “And Mr. Parry was unfolding the press release?”

  Thatcher nodded.

  “And then the press release was passed around and Mr. Devane and Mr. Foote put down their glasses to read it?”

  “Yes. And Mr. Foote put on his horn-rims.”

  Why all this interest in the press release, Thatcher wondered? Surely there was no elaborate theory of its folds containing a minute dusting of powder or something equally exotic.

  The sergeant now produced his blockbuster.

  “Then, Mr. Thatcher, if I understand the position correctly, there were four men grouped together around this press release, and there were three glasses standing on the table by their side.”

  “Three?” Thatcher looked up intently. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Sergeant.”

  “But you said that Mr. Parry was unfolding the release as he walked over, carefully unfolding it. I take it that he was using both hands to do that?”

  The picture was very clear in Thatcher’s mind. “Oh yes, he was using both hands.”

  The sergeant nodded to himself in approval. “Then he couldn’t have been carrying a drink, and we have established that no further drinks were delivered to that corner.”

  Thatcher eyed the sergeant with respect. The damning facts had been extracted from him very neatly. He had an uneasy conviction as to what the next question would be.

  “You say you were next to the bar when Mr. Foote ordered his last tomato juice. Did you happen to notice what kind of glass it was served in?”

  Oh yes, Thatcher remembered that all right. “It was a double old-fashioned glass.”

  “Then,” said the sergeant as if he were leading a class to the last remorseless line of a Euclid theorem, “the three glasses standing on that table were two highball glasses, containing some kind of whisky, and one cocktail glass with tomato juice in it.”

  “That is correct.”

  Confidently Thatcher waited for a battery of questions about Edward Parry’s Bloody Mary, although only one mattered—did it look like tomato juice in a cocktail glass? The answer to that was, yes.

  The sergeant cleared his throat, smiled blandly and abandoned the party of the previous afternoon completely. How long had Thatcher known Arthur Foote, when was the last time he had seen him before the party, did he know whether Foote had any enemies, had he heard about the ulcer before Foote mentioned it yesterday, what did he know about Foote’s drinking habits?

  Thatcher explained concisely that he had known Arthur Foote professionally for at least ten years. He had done some business with him by phone in recent months, but had not seen him in person since the preceding spring. He knew nothing about his enemies or his ulcer, and could recall nothing prominent about his drinking habits, which meant that Foote was an ordinary drinker.

  Sergeant Frazier punctiliously thanked Thatcher for his cooperation and took his departure, leaving Thatcher prey to a host of questions.

  It was clever of the police to have spotted the business about the glasses. And cleverer still, not to press the obvious. Thatcher reviewed his testimony. The last glass of tomato juice must have been the one that had been poisoned. The police were certainly proceeding along those lines.

  What had happened after Foote supplied himself with it? Stanton Carruthers and Lee Clark had gone over to meet Parry. Then there had been the huddle over the press release and the more-or-less wholesale abandonment of their drinks by the principals. Then there had been the late arrival of Vincent McCullough, followed by the eruption of Owen Abercrombie and his removal by Lee Clark and Dean Caldwell. During that swirl of activity, anything could have happened. Everybody was trying to pretend that nothing was going on. Half the room could have slipped over and tipped something into one of those drinks.

  And most people had been introduced to Parry earlier, when he was rather obviously drinking Bloody Marys. A poisoner, in the natural agitation of the moment, might easily have looked at those three glasses and assumed that Foote’s tomato juice was Parry’s drink. Particularly if he were familiar enough with the drinking habits of the three regulars so that he would automatically disassociate them from the contents of the old-fashioned glass. In other words, a habitué of Wall Street.

  Well, thought Thatcher, that didn’t change the picture. Habitués were the only people present, with the sole exception of the guest of honor, who now seemed to have been cast for the role of victim.

  John Thatcher was not the only one whose routine had been disturbed that afternoon. Up Wall Street, down Pine Street, along Broad Street, a whole army of serious, polite young men had been making inquiries. In their wake, they left many disturbed executives who, after a round of fruitless introspection, found themselves reaching for a phone. Not surprisingly, some of these calls were to John Thatcher.

  The first caller was Bradford Withers.

  “John? Somebody from the police has been in my office,” he said, rather as if expecting his senior vice-president to send along the fumigator.

  “Oh?”

  “He wanted to ask me all sorts of questions about that damned party yesterday,” the president of the Sloan went on in accusing accents.

  Thatcher was soothing. “That’s too bad. But I guess we had to expect it, Brad.”

  “Naturally, I did my best to help him,” said Withers, suddenly reverting to his role of responsible citizen. “Don’t know why he wanted to know who I talked with. But he did, so I told him.”

  “Good,” said Thatcher hastily. “I’m sure he appreciated that.”

  “Oh yes,” Withers perked up. “And he was interested in that forty-six-foot schooner. He agreed that they’ve really got something there.”

  “Fine.”

  Withers was not easily silenced. “But the hell of it is, John, that it turns out that fellow Foote didn’t have a heart attack. They seem to think he was poisoned.”

  Grateful that Withers had been spared any appreciation of the horrors lurking before them, Thatcher made appropriate noises of sympathy.

  “We’ve never had that sort of thing before,” Withers continued disapprovingly. “I tell you, John, I don’t like it.”

  Cradling the phone, Thatcher had time to reflect that many people were going to join Withers in those sentiments, before he was again summoned by the bell.

  “John?”

  It was Tom Robichaux, at his most conspiratorial.

  “Yes, we’ve had the police here, too,” said Thatcher, stealing his thunder.

  “Oh? Did they ask you all that business about the glasses?”

  Continuing his policy of ruthless shortcuts, Thatcher replied, “They seemed to think that Parry might have been the target.”

  “Did they ask you where you were this morning when somebody tried to shoot Parry?”

  “Good God, no!”

  “They asked us,” said Robichaux with simple pride. “Francis was very upset.”

  Thatcher was perfectly prepared to concede Tom the sensation he had earned. He tried to picture Sergeant Frazier, or one of his ilk, asking Francis Devane for an alibi. He co
uld just manage it. All done very deferentially, with an old-fashioned respect for age and station.

  “I can well believe it,” he replied. “But why did they pick on you?”

  “Actually it wasn’t me, it was Francis. I suppose because he’s been seeing so much of the whole Schuyler & Schuyler bunch lately.”

  “Yes,” said Thatcher slowly. “I suppose he has been.”

  “And besides, Francis recommended a doctor to Art Foote. So he knew all about the ulcer.”

  “What is all this about an ulcer?”

  “I didn’t know about it myself, until yesterday,” said Robichaux, gratified at this proper interest in the tribulations of Robichaux & Devane. “But Foote had been having all sorts of stomach trouble, and then he went to this doctor of Francis’ for the tests. So, once they knew it was an ulcer, he started on that whole regimen they have. You know what it’s like. God knows, there are enough of them around down here. He gave up drinking last week. Nat says he stuck to it, too, which is more than a lot of them do. Usually he just didn’t have anything. And he didn’t yesterday either, until he got that glass of tomato juice just at the end. Shows you what drinking that sort of thing can lead to,” he concluded on a sepulchral note.

  Undeterred by this tempting side issue, Thatcher wanted to know if they had seen Nat Schuyler that day.

  “Oh yes, he was closeted with Francis for two hours this afternoon. Don’t know what it was all about, yet. You know Nat. He likes to pretend he’s organizing the landing at Leyte.”

  Thatcher agreed that Schuyler liked to be secretive about his plans and asked to have his sympathies conveyed to the much-put-upon Francis Devane. Before hanging up, he asked one further question.

  “Tell me, Tom. What did Foote drink before the ulcer? Do you know?”

  “Martinis,” was the prompt answer. “And brandy after dinner.”

  There followed, in rapid succession, calls from Watson Kingsley who wanted to arrange suitable attendance at Foote’s funeral, Stanton Carruthers who understood that the police had not been able to dig up a single motive for anyone wanting to kill Arthur Foote. “Makes you think the man must have been abnormal, doesn’t it?”, and Bartlett Sims, Monstrous! Monstrous! He didn’t know what the Street was coming to.

  At this point, Thatcher firmly replaced the phone, told Miss Corsa he would take no more calls, and swept Charlie Trinkam off to have a drink with him.

  Charlie, while sympathetic, was not encouraging.

  “Things have barely begun to hot up,” he said as they walked half a dozen blocks north. “You can look at it one of two ways. Either somebody has decided to liquidate all of Schuyler & Schuyler—and you wonder why some broker’s customer hasn’t thought of that one before—or else somebody’s making a dead set for Ed Parry. Either way it means more fun and games.”

  “Unless the poisoning here and the shooting in Westchester have nothing to do with each other,” Thatcher advanced.

  “I don’t believe that, and neither do you,” said Charlie briskly. “Anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference if they were unconnected, so long as people think they are. What people think is what’s going to make the stink.”

  Thatcher paused before the revolving doors to consider this. His raffish subordinate had an unerring finger for the pulse of popular conviction.

  “Yes, I see what you mean. And either theory will result in an uproar down here.”

  “Naturally,” said Charlie with unabated cheerfulness. “It means one of our little buddies is wandering around with poison and a gun and some unfinished business. For all we know, he may try knives or strangler’s rope next time. Just to introduce a little variety.”

  Oppressed by this catalog of coming delights, Thatcher marched unseeingly into the gloomy interior. It was not until they were hailed that he realized he had been bearing down on a table occupied by Nat Schuyler and Vin McCullough.

  “Join us,” urged the octogenarian. “We’re celebrating.”

  Vin McCullough pulled out a chair hospitably and grinned. “You’re celebrating, Nat,” he emphasized. “I’ve got too much sense.”

  Thatcher and Charlie Trinkam seated themselves, ordered and asked what the celebration was about.

  “And,” added Charlie, “why is it so ill-timed?”

  If Trinkam was hoping to embarrass Nat Schuyler into the realization of a faux pas, he was reckoning without the armor acquired during eighty years of hard work as the bugbear of his more conservative colleagues.

  “Naturally, we are both sincerely shocked by Arthur’s death. Nor would I countenance anything in the way of a carnival downtown. That’s the reason we came up here. But, still, I think that the moment deserves some recognition.”

  Thatcher preferred Nat Schuyler in his blunter moments. To encourage a return to simple statements, he asked a simple question.

  “What have you done?”

  Schuyler smiled demonically. “I have just filed a formal application to transfer Ambrose’s seat to Ed Parry.”

  Charlie whistled appreciatively, and McCullough sighed.

  Thatcher, who had not lost sight of Nat’s goals for a minute, said smoothly, “I don’t know anyone who capitalizes on free publicity the way you do, Nat.”

  “It is not just a question of publicity,” said Schuyler with dignity. “After Owen Abercrombie’s action, I do not see that I had any choice. Even Vin here agreed with me.”

  McCullough looked more discouraged than ever.

  “What’s the old bastard been up to now?” said Charlie, courageously voicing Thatcher’s unspoken thought.

  Schuyler drew himself up. Ten generations of established New York family could be heard in his voice.

  “Owen had the effrontery to present himself in my office this afternoon, with a so-called petition. This petition, after reciting the known facts of the attacks on Arthur and Ed Parry, went on to blame me for, and I quote. ‘letting loose violence in the streets.’ It then ordered me to cease and desist from further attempts to disrupt our American way of life, or be responsible to my conscience and to my fellow citizens for the consequences of my subversive activities.”

  There was an impressive pause. Schuyler allowed it to prolong itself for the maximum dramatic effect before continuing mildly:

  “I showed this document to Ed Parry when he arrived in the office after the assault on him this morning, and we were in entire agreement that we should press forward immediately.”

  “One can scarcely blame him,” said Thatcher reflectively.

  Charlie looked accusingly at McCullough “And you wanted them to hold back?”

  “Look, I can understand how Ed feels,” Vin McCullough protested. “First, he’s shot at, and then he comes in to town to find Abercrombie and his bunch are accusing him of being responsible for violence. But I’ve already lost a couple of Southern clients, and I was holding on to a bunch of others by the skin of my teeth. If we did this slowly, I could bring them around. But this way, it will hit them like a bombshell, and they’ll be withdrawing their portfolios before the week is out.”

  His superior shed his magisterial quality.

  “I know this isn’t doing you any good, my boy. But we’ll make it up to you with other accounts. It will take some time to arrange things, but I’ll see that you don’t lose out in the long run. And you’re wrong in your idea of tactics, you know. I’ve been through a good many battles on Wall Street, and that’s always the best way to hit people—like a bombshell.”

  “Oh, come off it, Nat,” urged Charlie with a grin. “It may work out as the best way when you’re involved, but mostly it’s simply the way you enjoy doing things. And speaking of bombshells, people are going to get a bellyful of them. Have the police been around to you yet?”

  “Certainly. They were with us this morning,” said Schuyler, clearly thriving on a day that had consisted of police inquiries about the murder of one of his partners, the arrival of a potential partner fresh from another attack, an exchange of bro
adsides with Owen Abercrombie, and an extended session with an outraged Governor of the New York Stock Exchange.

  Thatcher found himself hoping for a similar wellspring of vitality when he was eighty. No doubt being a professional gadfly helped. He would have to explore the matter.

  “They asked a good many questions about the possibility of confusing Parry’s glass with Foote’s,” he offered.

  Schuyler was brisk. “Yes, I know. With us they concentrated on finding out how many people knew Ed drank Bloody Marys, before the reception.”

  “And did many?”

  “Oh, almost everybody,” was the unconcerned reply. “We’ve been having a lot of private dinners and lunches for Ed. I tried to get you for one, but you were out of town. So a good many people saw him drinking them, and he never drank anything else as a cocktail, and even more heard about it. I myself heard Abercrombie, at the Recess Club, complaining about it, as if it were some kind of added offense.”

  Having neatly conveyed the information that Owen Abercrombie had the requisite knowledge to be the murderer, Schuyler seemed prepared to let the subject of his interrogation by the police lapse. Thatcher wondered if he could be drawn further. Probably not. Schuyler, in spite of his surface unpredictability, always knew what he was saying long before the words left his mouth.

  “Charlie and I were just discussing the interpretation that’s going to be put on these two attacks. We agreed that it’s a toss-up between a vendetta against your house, or a campaign against Ed Parry.”

  “Well, it’s not the first,” replied Schuyler. “You see, any program to eliminate Schuyler & Schuyler would start with me.” He looked around the table with authority. No one contradicted him.

  “But, it might start with the name,” challenged Trinkam. “By the way, how did Ambrose die?”