Haunting Investigation

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Withdrawing from Maestro’s immediate vicinity, Holte took himself along to the library. It had been, he thought, a most frustrating day. The various developments had so far led to little news, and he could see that Poppy was doing her best in what was turning into a difficult situation. There was definitely more to the Moncrief and Poindexter deaths than anyone suspected or acknowledged, and this was increasingly troubling to him. So many questions were either unanswered or half-answered. He hoped that the coroner would soon have test results to announce, and that whatever they revealed, the investigation would swing into high gear at last. He debated with himself about going to the dimension of ghosts to gain more information from Moncrief and Poindexter, and after a few minutes, he turned sideways as only those without bodies could, and found himself in an expanse that was undefined by objects or limits, populated by figures without form. For what seemed a short time, he felt disoriented, but gained his bearings and concentrated on what he had come to do. He summoned Moncrief through a shift in attention, and was almost at once aware of the presence of Madison Moncrief in his vicinity. “Madison.” It wasn’t thought as such, or conversation, for there was neither the capacity nor the need for speech, though it most certainly was communication, for the energetic identity of Moncrief became fully apparent to Holte, as he was to Moncrief, and the speech-that-was-not- speech allowed them to exchange the equivalent of words.

  “Chesterton. Why have you come back?”

  Holte gathered his thoughts and said, “ The questions about your death are multiplying and answers aren’t readily come by; I hoped you had recovered some of your memories … Have you remembered anything more? about your death?”

  “Not much. It comes and goes — you know what it’s like.”

  Holte felt an awkward wince: the four Germans who had summarily executed him were difficult to recall. What lingered most was the sight of Beresford Oliver Thornton, his body crumpled in a spreading pool of blood from three wounds in the head and neck; his own death was less distinct, a quicksilver flash and an enormous pain that ended before it began. “Yes. I know.”

  Moncrief went briefly out of focus, then he sharpened. “I think I must have been groggy before I had my nightcap. I’ve tried to recall the details, but it’s as if I were under water, or out of phase with my body. Once in a while, something comes into sharp focus briefly, but it fades rapidly. I must have been more impaired than I was aware of at the time, or I would think that I would recall it more readily.”

  “Your nightcap was cognac.” The lingering impression of a taste passed between the two.

  “Yes. But that wasn’t all. There was a sharpness about it, or it seems that way to me now.”

  “Are you sure?” Holte urged him.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “How long before you had your cognac had you eaten dinner?”

  It took Moncrief a bit of nonexistent time to say, “It’s hard to say now. Time isn’t like it used to be.” He made an effort to reconstruct the events that led to his dying. “We sat down at seven; I’m almost positive it was seven. Louise was tired and wanted to go to bed early, so dinner was served early. I said we should cancel the party on Friday. I remember that. She said no, she couldn’t coddle herself, and that the sooner she was back to entertaining, the sooner she would be through her grief. I couldn’t disappoint her, could I?” Their contact wobbled, then reestablished itself. “We must have finished up a little after eight, it had grown dark by the time we sat down, I think, and we left the dining room to our cook about an hour later.”

  “Then you left the dining room before all the china, napery, and silverware were removed?”

  “We usually did. Louise went upstairs. I went to the study, to review the accounts of Beaman Beaman Trevillian and Cooper. You know them, don’t you? A company associated with oil brokering. It’s an international corporation, the main office is in New York, with the accounting division in Philadelphia; it’s got nine branch offices here in the United States and another seven abroad. It looks solid and growing. It’s tied into International Business Associates.” A twinge of uncertainty twisted between the two ghosts. “I took the account over from James Poindexter soon after Hadley hired me.”

  “Clients of yours — Beaman Beaman Trevillian and Cooper?”

  “Important ones. They bring in close to half a million in fees per year. The books were complicated — they usually are in such businesses — and I was worried that there might be irregularities in their accounts. Hadley had been most insistent that I resolve a few questions about a number of foreign contracts they had and the methods and schedules of payment. It takes a lot of concentration to resolve issues in such dealings, and I’d spent a considerable amount of time in preparing my review. I was trying to do this up until the night I died.”

  “Did you ever discuss these things with your wife?”

  “Not often. Louise didn’t find my work interesting in that way. Figures and contracts bored her — you know how women are. She liked the idea of foreign travel. Before she miscarried, she had suggested that we go abroad to visit the foreign offices of Beaman Beaman Trevillian and Cooper as well as those of Sansome and Company and International Business Associates, those being accounts I had been assigned. She said I could get some work done that needed my personal attention, and she could visit all manner of places she longed to see: she had had a tour planned for 1914, but it had to be cancelled when war broke out. She thought the Great War” — an inaudible groan went up through much of the emptiness around them — “had been over long enough that there would be a good chance that much of the damage had been repaired, or at least swept away, and we could enjoy our travel without unpleasant reminders of what’s in the past. I told her I’d ask the senior partners what could be done.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said they would need time to decide: the cost of such a trip, and the time it would require might be prohibitive, or so I was told.”

  “Did they explain?”

  Moncrief took care in honing his answer. “I began to think that the company wanted to keep me away from our foreign offices, and not just on account of the cost of such a journey.”

  “When did this happen? How long ago?”

  “A week or two before I died, maybe three weeks.” He was a bit apologetic. “I’ve forgotten a lot.”

  Holte considered this. “They say you were uneasy, not yourself, upset in the days before you were hanged. Is it true?”

  “I was worried about some tariff problems, and what I had found out about Poindexter bothered me. I didn’t think that our records were complete, and that rankled with me. And I was distressed for Louise, as any man would be. The miscarriage had taken a toll on her, and I was afraid that she might be falling into despondency, which was one of the reasons I thought perhaps a visit to Europe was in order, business or not. Our doctor warned us about that possibility — the despondency — and recommended a change of scenery for Louise. We had started making plans when I died.”

  “You said the delays in approving your foreign travel piqued your curiosity. What in particular made you assume that something might be amiss?”

  “There were a number of notes tucked into the ledgers that Poindexter had made, nothing extreme, but they added up to the likelihood of fraud. The lack of complete information made it difficult to determine if there had been deliberate deception, or mere oversights. It made me wonder about him — about Poindexter — but I felt it wouldn’t be good to ask too many questions — you know how that is.”

  “Tell me some more about Poindexter.” Holte found his own curiosity piqued.

  “Why not ask him yourself?”

  “I plan to. But I need to know what you discovered and what you were told about him.” Holte felt a soundless buzz in his noncorporeal ears, and realized that James Poindexter was near by.

  “Is this about our supposed suicides?” this new haunt wanted to know; there was a definite New England twang a
bout his non-speech.

  “Yes, in part,” Holte informed him.

  “Suicide. Impossible. I didn’t kill myself; I had no reason to do so — in fact, I had a good many reasons not to do away with myself, not the least of which was the question of professional ethics,” Poindexter declared with as much volume as a soundless voice could produce. “Had the police or the coroner or my own physician investigated more thoroughly, they would have found a small injection site behind the base of my left ear. The needle was angled up into my brain, and something was” — he nonphysically acted out the pushing of a plunger and the sudden paralysis that had spread through him — “and I was hoisted up, the knot on the rope rubbing the little pinprick from the needle so that there was almost no trace of it.”

  “Are you haunting anyone?” Holte asked, surprised that Poindexter’s recollections were so clear.

  “No one,” Poindexter replied, his demeanor suggesting that he was somewhat sad that he wasn’t. “As far as I know now, I just have to stay around here” — he did something that might have been sad laughter — “until I receive a correction for the error made about my death, and justice is done. Once that’s done, I assume I’ll move on. I’m glad you’ve got that girl working on it. If she has the courage to stick with it, it could make all the difference for me.” There was a bunglesome hesitation. “I want to go on from this place.” He began to dissolve, dissipating through the busy emptiness of the dimension of ghosts.

  “What accounts did you handle at Hadley and Grimes?” Holte inquired, trying to hold onto Poindexter for a little longer, but without success.

  “Ask Moncrief. He took over the accounts. There were three of them that concerned me. Moncrief’ll know.” The impression of a person was unraveling; he seemed to have gone some distance away.

  “Beaman Beaman Trevillian and Cooper, Sansome and Company — ”

  “And International Business Associates,” Moncrief finished for him; Poindexter had vanished.

  “Is there anything you’d recommend we look at?” Holte inquired even as he felt Moncrief pulling away from him.

  “If you can get some access to the records in the New York office of Beaman Beaman Trevillian and Cooper, there might be something not quite on the up-and-up. I tried to review the terms of acquisitions and trades in their overseas branches, but nothing came of it.” He was hard to make out, like a radio being heard through static.

  “Do you think that your death might have been a way to stop your inquiries?”

  Moncrief sounded even more remote. “If that was what they wanted. But it’s nothing I can prove.”

  “Would stopping your investigation at work be worth killing for?”

  “I’m dead, aren’t I?” This was hardly more than a whisper. “Someone killed me.” He was almost gone, then added, “Old Hadley might know something. He’s still alive. Retired to a place in Vermont, I think. Or Delaware.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t allow himself the luxury of sarcasm. What he had learned, he admitted to himself, was better than nothing, and slipped sideways again, finding himself outside Poppy’s bedroom door, in the predawn gloom, facing a growling cat.

  “It’s just me, Maestro,” said Holte to the outraged cat, then floated away to make his rounds through the house. He discovered both Stacy and Derrington still in their rooms asleep, Stacy calmly, Derrington less so, if his disarranged blankets and sheets were any indication. Tobias was snoring. While Holte did not actually look in on Josephine, he listened at her door, and determined that she had passed an easy night. Satisfied that all was as well as it could be, Holte made his way downstairs, trying to decide how he would present what he had learned to Poppy.

  TWELVE

  AT THE LAST MINUTE, POPPY REMEMBERED TO CARRY HER UMBRELLA; SHE LEFT the house after a hurried breakfast while her brother, her cousin, and his guest remained in bed. She had exchanged a few words with Aunt Jo, who had insisted on getting up well before dawn and having breakfast with her. Over poached-eggs-on-toast, Poppy promised to call around noon, and rushed out to catch the streetcar, the early morning still lit by street lamps. It was drizzling, a clammy kind of dampness that sank into the body and made the bones hurt. Her new, lower-heeled pumps would be most welcome today, she thought as she stood and waited for the streetcar to come. In five minutes she was aboard and bound for the center of the city. She took a seat across from the rear doors and put her mind to working out what, if anything, she should do about Poindexter, or Hadley and Grimes. She was mildly surprised that Holte had not attempted to speak to her this morning.

  Coming into the Addison Newspaper Corporation building — the Clarion on the second and third floors, the Constitution on the first and fourth; presses were in the basement — through the large rotating door, she encountered Carlotta Upshaw, whose call had initiated her work on the Moncrief case; Carlotta Upshaw was on her way home. Poppy raised her hand in greeting, and the other woman paused.

  “Good morning, Miss Thornton?” she said with that question-like upward lilt; she smiled a bit uncertainly. “It looks like the assignment panned out?” She had circles under her large, expressive eyes, and her thirty-nine-year-old face was drawn, but her manner toward Poppy was warm and generous.

  “I hope so,” said Poppy. “Thank you for your interest.”

  “We have to stick together, we women, don’t we?” She said it pragmatically as she pulled on her gloves. “Is Lowenthal still trying to wrap you in cotton batting?” Startled to hear such sentiments from a secretary, Poppy could only nod. “I think Lowenthal is afraid I’ll get scared, or swoon, or — ”

  “They all think that about us, don’t they? even the copy-boys,” said Carlotta Upshaw, glancing at the men coming and going through the lobby. “But what truly frightens them is that they’re afraid that we’ll be as good at their jobs as they are, or better. Listen to how they talk about Phyllis Ackersley at the Tribune when they think she isn’t listening. She hears every word, and she’s careful to give them no call to think she’s that sort of woman.” She looked at her locket-watch. “Sorry; I have to go. Mister Upshaw will be awake shortly, and we like to breakfast together. He goes to work at nine-thirty. But perhaps we can talk one day? There are things that we ought to discuss.”

  Puzzled but encouraged, Poppy said, “Yes. I’d like that.” She watched Carlotta go out through the turning doors, then went up to the Clarion’s floor and hurried to the cubbyhole that was her office. Opening her briefcase, she brought out the pages she had typed up after dinner the night before. Two of the pages had what would become three inches, probably below the fold on page four of five, on the current stalemate in the Moncrief case. She had worked in a few lines about some of the questions that remained unanswered; she doubted that Lowenthal would keep any of them, but at least it showed that she was being diligent. She took these along to Lowenthal’s office, walking in five minutes before she was expected, and found Dick Gafney handing in his column on the arson investigation he was following; Gafney’s cynical bloodhound countenance looked more world-weary than usual, and it appeared that he had slept in his clothes. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and the lenses of his glasses were hazy.

  “I just need a couple more minutes, sweetie pie,” he said as he caught sight of Poppy.

  Poppy muttered an apology and stepped back into the city room, horrified at herself for her gaffe. I should have knocked, even though the door was open, she thought.

  “And why should you have done that?” Chesterton Holte asked her; one of the overhead lights flickered as if to emphasize his question. “Lowenthal told you that knocking wastes time — that’s why he leaves the door open.”

  “That he did,” Poppy whispered. “The door isn’t closed.”

  “Why such chagrin for such a minor infraction?”

  “Minor to you, maybe; not to me.”

  Holte buzzed in the nearest lamp. “Can you tell me why?”

  “I … I don’t know.” She noticed Lowentha
l’s door swinging wide, and she made herself collect her thoughts. She nodded to Gafney as he came out, and wished she could slap the smirk off his face.

  “Thornton!” Lowenthal bawled out.

  “Coming,” she responded, and ducked through the door, her pages clutched a bit too tightly in her hands. She took a deep breath as she faced him across his desk. “Here’s the latest. What would you like me to do today?”

  There was an approving glint in his eyes. “Good to see you’re prepared to work. Pace yourself, though; pace yourself. We don’t want you running out of steam in the middle of this, now that it looks like there’s more to the story than we thought.” He glanced at his desk calendar as if he were just now deciding on her assignment. “First off, I’d like you to get over to Hadley and Grimes. Quentin Hadley is expecting you at nine. Nose around the office if they’ll let you. Find out what accounts Moncrief was handling. If it looks like there’s big money tied up in his death, then we need to find out about it.”

  “What if they won’t tell me about that? Big firms like Hadley and Grimes put great value on maintaining the confidentiality of their business.”

  “So they do, but you’re a reporter. You’ll think of something. Most people want to talk after this kind of a shock; if they don’t, that means something. Do what you can, but don’t get yourself thrown out if you can help it.” He took the papers she proffered, gave them a cursory read-through, saying as he did, “I’ll trim this a bit. Still, you present the facts well, and you make the police inquiry sound reasonable.”

  “I thought you might want to trim it,” said Poppy, feeling less rattled now than she had after her brief encounter with Gafney. “I’m planning to go to the coroner’s office and try to get an interview with Wyman; I have a contact there — an old friend of my father’s. I could do that after Hadley and Grimes, unless I get caught up there; I’ll assume you’re putting a priority on Hadley and Grimes?” She saw him nod and pull at the curl on top of his head. “If I do get to see Wyman, I should have my story done by three. That’s pushing it, but — ”