The Glendower Legacy

by Thomas Gifford

  “I have a wonderful sense of humor,” Chandler said. McGonigle was filling an oilskin tobacco pouch with Chandler’s Balkan Sobranie mixture. “Patience is what I’m short of, dammit.” The stubby freckled fingers dug down into the black and brown tobacco. “Help yourself,” Chandler muttered.

  “Don’t mind if I do, lad. Fine tobacco. My wife buys me awful gunk at the supermarket, Cherry Blend … Now, Professor, one last time—are you sure that Davis never gave you whatever it was he wanted authenticated … maybe he posted it to you, maybe he left it with your housekeeper—”

  “Maybe,” Fennerty said heavily, “maybe you don’t know you have it …”

  “Nonsense. He gave me nothing, left nothing, mailed nothing … to me.”

  McGonigle and Fennerty made ready to go.

  “Honest to God, you guys are worse than Polly Bishop!” Chandler stood up.

  “Please, Professor, we can find our own way out.” Fennerty blinked rapidly behind the thick circles of glass, pursed his tiny lips: his hand was on the doorknob.

  “By the way, Professor,” McGonigle said, puffing on the old black pipe, “you might watch Miss Bishop this evening. We’re not at liberty to discuss it but I believe you’ll find her report interesting … And, if anything pops up in your memory about Bill Davis, be sure to let us know—or better yet, sit tight on it. We’ll be in touch. We don’t want information about this case floating around—we’ll definitely be in touch.”

  They nodded to Brennan, went through the doorway. Fennerty stuck his head back in: “You be sure to watch the news tonight, Professor.” The door was pulled gently to.

  Brennan stood up, poured more coffee: “Abbott and Costello live.” He fished around in the pocket of his jacket, came up with the stub of a pipe. “Do you mind? Maybe the tobacco will take the taste of the coffee out of my mouth …” He reached for the tobacco jar, a plaster of paris copy of Houdon’s Washington, small and gleaming white, which a long-ago girl friend had given him. The top of the skull lifted off.

  “What a waste of time that was,” Chandler said.

  Brennan stopped digging in the tobacco, looked up with a curious expression on his wide, fleshy face, hand still inserted in Washington’s head. “What the hell?” he muttered, rummaging. Spraying bits of tobacco across the desk he extricated his hand and held up a small black disk between thumb and forefinger. “This is not,” he said, “tobacco!”

  “Then why is it in Washington’s head?”

  Brennan peered closely at it, balancing it on his fingertip. “Plastic.” He placed it on a sheet of white paper.

  Chandler squinted at it. It was flat, about the size of a dime, even smaller.

  “It’s a bug,” Brennan said at last. “An electronic listening device.”

  “You’re not serious—”

  “Indeed I am. I saw a picture of one in a magazine not long ago … this exact device. Cost a thousand dollars …”

  “McGonigle,” Chandler said, not quite believing it.

  “McGonigle.” Brennan slapped his hands together. “Hot damn! Right here in real life, this nut puts a bug in your Washington head! Jeeesus, I don’t believe it …”

  “This is going too goddamn far,” Chandler said softly. He picked up the bug and whispered directly into it: “Too far, you stupid clumsy dumb bastards.” He frowned at Brennan: “What in the name of God do they think they’re doing?”

  Brennan shrugged, went to the window, tugged it upwards. He pointed at the window box of dead, weedy debris. The walls of the old building were thick with ample ledges. Chandler leaned across the radiator and burrowed a hole into the dirt which was still damp from melting snow and the recent rains. When he’d reached the middle of the window box he dropped the tiny microphone into the hole and packed the dirt back in on top of it. Brennan eased the window shut.

  Chandler whispered: “Do you think that’ll keep it from working?”

  “Who knows? But it won’t do it any good. We could have flushed it …”

  “But then the evidence would have been gone. And what do I care, I haven’t got anything incriminating to say about Bill Davis … it’s the principle of the thing. God, I feel like I’m going nuts—” He grinned at the window box, then at Brennan. “What are we whispering for? It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Well, you should be out of it by now. You told them about the authentication thingy. Finis …” He shrugged the massive, burly shoulders. “Looks to me like you’re squeezed dry.” He went back to filling his pipe. “Why would they go on spying on you?”

  “That’s another funny thing. They weren’t spying on me yesterday … it occurred to me right after I accused them of it. They were spying on, watching, observing, whatever, the other two guys … the guy in the funny hat and his big friend …”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Chandler told him about the two men. “Then,” he concluded, “last night I saw them, the funny hat guy and company, outside my house. Walking in the rain.”

  Brennan raised his eyebrows, looking at Chandler across his coffee mug.

  The morning’s interview jostled around in Chandler’s brain through the lunch hour and on into the afternoon. How remarkably clumsy to leave the bug in a depth of tobacco so shallow. How obvious and unconstitutional … Yet, he might not have found it at all: the tobacco was dry, he seldom smoked in his office: it had been found by sheerest chance. But more bothersome than the planting of the bug was the question it raised: what could they possibly imagine that he knew and was keeping from them? And was it customary for homicide detectives to have such costly devices for everyday use, the matter of legality aside?

  And, further, what kind of Boston cops would use words like posted for mailed, lads for guys or boys or men, or would be moved to say that the Brookline police didn’t know damn all about homicide? Chandler couldn’t say where an expression like damn all could have come from. Acting on a vague hunch, late in the afternoon, he called Boston Homicide and without so much as a flicker of hesitation a central switchboard operator confirmed the existence of Fennerty and McGonigle. Well, McGonigle had said it was too bloody absurd to be a fake … and there you had another oddity for a Boston cop … bloody absurd.

  He stopped and picked up shrimp chow mein and egg roll for dinner. The sun was too low for warmth and he shivered as he mounted the porch steps. He pitched the mail onto the rolltop desk, slipped into a heavy cardigan, and began heating water for the Chemex. He lit rolled-up newspapers under a stack of dry logs; slowly the library took on a warm glow. Attending to his various housekeeping chores, he chatted absentmindedly with the bust of George Washington. George was the perfect companion: he didn’t require feeding or long inconvenient constitutionals before bed, he didn’t have a box to be shoveled out and deodorized or a filthy newspaper in the bottom of a cage, he made no irritating noises, listened attentively, set a good and prudent example, and was indisputably the greatest figure—all in all—America had produced. What would George have thought of policemen who left bugs in your tobacco jar?

  He munched his way through the chow mein, adding some soy sauce. It was time for the early news. There was no point in ignoring McGonigle’s suggestion. He popped the remainder of an egg roll into his mouth, got up, turned on the television. It wasn’t long before McGonigle’s insistence took on a particular, ghastly validity. “Murder,” the anchorman intoned, “in the news again tonight. Reporting from Beacon Hill, Channel Three’s Polly Bishop …”

  Feeling a sudden queasiness, Chandler leaned forward in his chair, tension running like a current through his body. The camera panned down from the burnished dome of the State House with a clear, brilliant sky behind it, came to rest on Polly Bishop, tracked along with her as she walked slowly down one of the narrow streets running away from Park Street.

  “This afternoon there came a tragic new twist to the murder of Harvard student Bill Davis some seventy-two hours ago.” Chandler realized they’d taped it earlier in th
e day but she was adjusting the time to approximately when it would be aired. Just when had McGonigle and Fennerty learned about it all? They’d visited his office in the morning … Her soft doe eyes looked directly into the camera, her voice firm, precise. Shadows lingered across her cheekbones, in the hollows of her pale, elegant face. A thick ribbon held her hair in place as the wind gusted in the twisty street. “The twist? A second brutal murder, this time an antiquarian, a dealer in rare books, seventy-nine-year-old Nat Underhill, a world-respected expert in his field. Mr. Underhill was found shot to death in the back office of his shop in Beacon Street where for thirty years an exclusive clientele has sought both rare books and documents as well as his unparalleled expertise.”

  Chandler knew the name: if not a world class expert, Underhill had been a respected figure. Chandler had met him once or twice over the years, couldn’t have claimed to know him. But what had he to do with Bill Davis? Authentication … inevitably the word, the idea, dropped into place. Polly Bishop had stopped walking, now turned to face the viewers head-on, her trenchcoat collar turned up, the tight brown gloves wrapped around the microphone.

  “Apparently during the night, or perhaps even this morning—we must wait on the coroner’s report to set the time more accurately—unknown assailants visited Mr. Underhill in his office and shot him twice, killing him instantly. Lieutenant Anthony Lascalle has informed us that the crime was discovered when Underbill’s secretary, Nora Thompson, arrived at noon to open the shop. At the time of his death Underhill was cataloging new acquisitions, Ms. Thompson explained. The shop normally opened at noon except by appointment, since casual walk-in trade played no part in Underbill’s business.”

  Nora Thompson discovered the crime at noon!

  Holy Jesus … McGonigle and Fennerty had known before it was discovered …

  “Channel Three has learned—and this is what’s really crucial here—we’ve learned from a Boston Homicide source that the name of Bill Davis, that’s right, Bill Davis who was murdered in Brookline, was written in Underhill’s hand on a notepad found on his desk.” Pause for effect. “Now three names have been raised in this strange case—Bill Davis, his adviser at Harvard, Professor Colin Chandler, and now Nat Underhill. … What links them all together? Was the gun that killed Davis the same that killed Underhill?” She made eye contact with hundreds of thousands of viewers. “Those are the questions that the Boston police are asking themselves tonight … and as yet there has been no break in the case. This is Polly Bishop, Channel Three News, at the scene of the crime on Beacon Hill …”

  The camera panned away from her face, slid on toward the discreet lettering on Underhill’s office window, lingered there until the cut was made to a commercial.

  Chandler’s knees were shaking and he felt on the verge of a spasm of hyperventilation. How in the name of God could those two clowns have known about the murder of Underhill and gotten to Harvard to bug his tobacco before the body was discovered? One answer leaped to mind and Chandler couldn’t ignore it: McGonigle and Fennerty had been the unknown assailants, they had killed him …

  But there had to be a different, better explanation. Didn’t there? The operator had confirmed the existence of McGonigle and Fennerty. Maybe for some reason the police wanted Nora whatever-her-name-was to be the official discoverer of the corpse. But why? And could McGonigle have been referring to something other than the murder when he urged Chandler to watch the television news? Good Lord, that seemed unlikely enough—but still, if you subtracted everything that seemed unlikely, Bill Davis and Nat Underhill would be alive, nobody would have brought up the subject of authentication, Polly Bishop would still be an impersonal adjunct to his television set, and nobody would have put a bug in George Washington’s head.

  The news was still rattling on but he wasn’t hearing it. The question of McGonigle and Fennerty aside, for at least the moment, he was angry and frightened at the continuing use of his name by Polly Bishop. His name included in a threesome with two murder victims—it was unspeakable! Christ, the implications of it … And the woman—she couldn’t resist dragging his name into it, could not resist! No wonder she had an ulcer. It was guilt, sheer guilt. “George,” he croaked, forcing himself to his feet, “what the hell are we going to do with this woman? Don’t just sit there, George, say something …”

  He went upstairs and put on his pajamas and robe. He was cinching the belt when the phone rang. Sliding his feet into slippers he hurried downstairs.

  The voice on the other end of the line was strained, strung tight, unaccustomed to the tricky position in which it found itself.

  “Professor Chandler, my name is Nora Thompson. You don’t know me but—”

  “I just heard your name, Miss Thompson,” he said. “On television. What can I do for you?” He was afraid he heard a giveaway tremor in his voice.

  “I have to see you, Professor. I can’t talk on the telephone. I’m afraid—all you hear about these days is people listening in on your private conversations. I don’t know, anybody could be listening in.”

  “I see. Anybody special in mind?”

  “Somebody killed Mr. Underhill,” she said, rushing, hurrying past his question. “I’ve been with Mr. Underhill for twenty-five years, he was a lovely old man, kind and blameless, and they killed him. They killed the Davis boy. You or I could be next …”

  “It may be a coincidence, Miss Thompson. You can’t go by what you hear on television—”

  “Mark my words,” she whispered, “it’s no coincidence. I know. The same killers, believe me. It’s all tied together and I’ve got to see you. As soon as possible. I live in Lexington. Can you come out here? Tomorrow?”

  “I suppose I can.” He was reacting to the urgency in her voice and the prickling he felt on his own neck. “Give me your address.”

  “No, no, they’re watching my house—”

  “Who?”

  “How should I know?” she cried impatiently. “The killers … the police. I don’t know, I feel it … It’s you I have to see. Meet me at Kennedy’s Drugstore. You can’t miss it, center of town. I’ll get out of the house and meet you, eleven o’clock. Don’t be late, Professor. Please.”

  The line was dead before he could reply. He replaced the telephone, picked up the cold coffee and sipped. What could she have to tell him? Or, God forbid, give him … Not the whatever-it-was that everyone seemed to want. The item in need of authentication … He had to keep the appointment: the woman was terrified. Obviously paranoid. Obviously? What the hell was he saying? People bugging your tobacco and you call Nora Thompson paranoid! Damn, he knew what was happening but he couldn’t do anything about it: he was being drawn deeper and deeper into the mire. But how did you step back now? How?

  The telephone rang again. It was Brennan.

  “I’ve been thinking, Colin,” he said. “Do you think maybe you should tell Prosser about this? He’s got some clout around here, chairman of the history department—he’s got connections, you know that. He could really raise hell about this bugging thing. The more I think about it, the less I like it. It’s not just a bad joke—and I should know.” He chuckled nervously.

  “Maybe,” Chandler said. “But Prosser’s so damned far removed from reality. He doesn’t live in our world—he’s probably in Washington telling Kissinger how to shape up his act.”

  Brennan said: “Well, keep it in mind. You want to hear a joke?”

  “Yes, actually, I do—”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes, tell me a joke.”

  “Okay, there are these two titled Englishmen, they meet at Boodles, reading room full of old duffers dozing behind The Times and The Economist, trays of sherry, smoke of good cigars. ‘I say, Binkie,’ says one to the other, ‘have you heard the latest about Favisham?’” Brennan laid on a terribly British dialect: it reassured Chandler that the world had not gone entirely to hell. “‘Favisham?’ says he. ‘By Jove, I can’t say as I have.’ ‘Seems he’s gone off
to Equatorial Africa—left his wife, he has.’ ‘You don’t say? Silly old blighter, Favisham!’ ‘Ah, Binkie, that’s not the half of it … he’s living in a tree with a gorilla!’ ‘Favisham? In a tree? With a gorilla?’ ‘S’truth, old Favisham in a tree with a gorilla in Equatorial Africa!’ ‘Well, tell me—this gorilla, is it male or female?’ ‘Oh, female, of course. Nothing odd about Favisham …’”

  Chandler sought total ordinariness for the remainder of the evening. He did his Chemex routine in the kitchen, brought it to the library, set it on the heating ring, along with cream and sugar, beside his comfy chair. He put The Magic Flute on the Mcintosh, settled in. He was deep in the music, eyes closed, when the doorbell rang. Pulling his robe tight, he stood stock still for a moment: McGonigle and Fennerty? Would they have realized he’d know their secret by now? Would they come back to finish him off? God, it was all nonsense … He went to the door feeling put upon.

  The first thing he saw was the checked porkpie hat, then the heavy glasses resting on the prominent nose, then the shape of the big man standing just beyond the light from the hallway. Just for a moment he thought he was going to lose his chow mein: but he thanked God it wasn’t the Irish mafia, swallowed hard, clenching his jaw reflexively.

  “Professor Chandler?” The short man had a high, nasal voice with a touch of a whine to it.

  “Yes,” he nodded. He was shivering under the robe: he couldn’t stop.

  “We’re from the district attorney’s office, Professor, special investigators assigned to this Bill Davis business.” He smelled of a mint breath deodorizer. Behind him the big man breathed adenoidally, through his mouth, a raspy sound.

  “The district attorney’s office,” Chandler said.

  “May we come in, Professor? This won’t take long but it is important, terribly important.”

  “You might say time is of the essence.” The big man leaned into the light, smiled distantly, an official smile. His mouth jerked in a nervous tic. “We’ve got a full night ahead of us, Professor—we need just a moment of your time.” A gold tooth caught the light, flickered like the last ray of hope.