Accounting for Murder

by Emma Lathen

  “Is she going to get them?”

  Robichaux pounded his knee with a clenched fist. “She is not,” he said determinedly. “But—and I wouldn’t tell anyone else about this, John—she’s got these countercharges. Hell,” he said in a burst of candor, “She’s trying to blackmail me.”

  Thatcher was not unduly surprised, having heard the same story of Eileen whatshername and Ruby. Ruby, the mistake of a younger and less experienced Robichaux, was the only one of his wives to trounce him during separation negotiations. She now lived expensively in the south of France. Thatcher had a well-placed confidence in Tom’s ability to extricate himself, relatively unscathed, from whatever difficulties Dorothy could raise.

  “. . . so I said, publish and be damned.” Robichaux said with a hopeful look. A comment was clearly in order.

  “Not very original, Tom, but I suppose it was effective.”

  Robichaux leaned back and considered this. “Well,” he said, “we’re going to see. I’m a pretty optimistic sort, myself, you know.” Thatcher did indeed. “. . . but first Dewey and then Nixon . . . that shook me . . .”

  “What do you mean, Dewey and Nixon shook you?” Thatcher demanded.

  “They taught me not to take anything for granted . . . Still, I’m optimistic.” He pulled out a watch chain, consulted a Philippe Patek designed expressly for upper income vest pockets, and abandoned self-analysis. “Where the hell is Chip?”

  From his tone, Thatcher saw that Tom was here in his capacity as senior partner of Robichaux and Devane, underwriter to National Calculating Corporation, rather than as an old friend of Chip Mason. If anything, his friendship with that unfortunate man seemed to harshen his judgments. They sat for another few moments in silence, then Robichaux spoke again. “You wouldn’t think that one of the great quarterbacks of all time would be so spineless, would you?”

  “Tennis is my game,” Thatcher replied. “What do you mean, spineless?”

  “I mean that if Chip had shown any spirit, he wouldn’t be in this mess, and we wouldn’t be sitting here wasting our time.” Again he consulted the timepiece.

  “It takes more than spirit to raise your earnings,” Thatcher commented fair-mindedly. “Mind you, I’d be the first to admit that Mason is no Geneen . . .”

  “Geneen! He’s not half the man his father was,” said Robichaux brutally. “And the Old Man was selling cash registers. If Chip could handle these fancy computers of his as well as the Old Man handled cash registers everything would be just fine. Mind you, National’s basically sound.” He jumped impatiently to his feet and stamped to the window. “That crazy Fortinbras,” he said over his shoulder. “Why couldn’t Chip get rid of the loony? Dammit, the Old Man . . .”

  “Now wait a minute, Tom,” Thatcher said. “In the first place, stop pretending that Fortinbras is a typical stockholder nuisance. You know as well as I do that he’s a high-powered dealer, and it would take a better man than Chip Mason to brush him off.”

  Robichaux opened his mouth to protest, but Thatcher continued inexorably. “And he had a court order. Leaving aside the implications of that—for National’s underwriters, say, who might be presumed to have investigated a company they were interested in—you know as well as I do that Chip Mason had no alternative but to let Fortinbras see the books. And Fortinbras,” he said in a reflective tone that grated on Robichaux’s ears—“Fortinbras seems to be having a field day with them, doesn’t he?”

  Robichaux accepted these comments in a darkling silence. That his impatient pacing was accompanied by thought was revealed a few moments later.

  “Court order,” he said, seizing the crux of the matter. “You know these Democrats are going to ruin the capitalistic system!”

  Thus when Chip Mason, full of apologies, breathlessly hurried into his office, his affronted eyes were met with the spectacle of his major creditor roaring with laughter, and his most important underwriter looking thoroughly bewildered.

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve got something to smile about, Thatcher,” he said plaintively after the appropriate greetings had been exchanged. “Isn’t Fortinbras here yet? I’m just as glad. I need to get my breath for a minute. I tell you, between trying to calm Blaney down, and working with those damned lawyers, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s . . . oh, thanks, Mary.”

  That Mason did not know what he was doing, Thatcher could well believe as he watched him thank Mary Sullivan for the glass of milk she put on his desk. There was real warmth in the bobbing of his head at her, not the perfunctory, mechanical acknowledgment usually affected by the man of affairs. Chip Mason was a man who was born to have somebody else do something. As the amiable, if vacuous son of a forceful father for most of his life, except for his fleeting gridiron fame, he had never developed the capacity to meet an emergency.

  And emergency it clearly was. Mason tossed off his milk, and continued his revealing confidences. “He’s driving us all crazy, here. I don’t know how we’re going to get our production going while he’s running around upsetting everything. You know our big Army contract is coming up for renewal this month, Tom, and there’s no doubt about our getting it—after all, we’re the only TCR producer in the country—but it’s a busy time for all of us. Jay has his hands full almost every day with General

  Cartwright. Thank God he was taking him out to lunch the time that Fortinbras went crazy and accused us of being thieves! But naturally we want to make a good impression on the General. If this Fortinbras goes on . . .”

  “Now take it easy,” said Robichaux with sudden magisterial calm, his assurance restored by the sight of someone more upset than he. Mason looked up at him with eager expectation. “We’ll just talk turkey to him . . .”

  “I don’t like to interrupt,” Thatcher said dryly, “but where is Mr. Fortinbras? I thought this was a conference, not a conspiracy.”

  Robichaux was prepared to expostulate when Thatcher continued. “Be sensible, Tom! We’re here to try to help straighten up this mess.” He saw Mason wince slightly. “It’s not going to get us off on the right foot if Fortinbras arrives to find us with our heads together.”

  His comment rattled Mason, who looked alarmed, but Robichaux nodded approval. “You’re right.”

  “Yes, where is he?” Mason complained nervously. He stabbed at his buzzers. “Mary? Do you know where that . . . He caught Thatcher’s stem eye on him and hastily shifted gears. “. . . where Mr. Fortinbras is? What? Well, keep trying and tell him that Mr. Robichaux and Mr. Thatcher are waiting.”

  He presented Thatcher and Robichaux with the pleased smile of a child whose performance has gone well. Thatcher felt a sudden sympathy for the realistic Fortinbras, whose travails had undoubtedly included prolonged exposure to Mason’s vapidity.

  They sat in awkward silence.

  “Well,” Robichaux said heavily.

  More silence.

  “I got the invitation to your football dinner, Chip,” Thatcher said conversationally.

  “What?” Mason bleated. He was listening for footsteps. “Oh, the dinner.” Momentarily, he forgot his troubles. A brief gleam of enthusiasm lit his pale eyes. “Yes, it’s going to be a great evening.

  You know Bull Peabody is coming down?”

  Thatcher did not, but the news bestirred Robichaux. “How is Bull?” he asked. Dehavilland Peabody, a leader of the conservative coalition in the United States Senate, would always be known to at least some Harvard men as Bull. Recalling one of his after dinner speeches at the University Club, Thatcher reflected that the name was not entirely inapposite.

  “. . . unless there’s a committee meeting,” Mason said, his attention again wandering from the conversation. “You see what I mean?” he suddenly hissed across the desk at them. “Fellow doesn’t even show up for a conference!”

  Robichaux nodded, and Mason, fighting strong emotion, leaned back and drummed on the armrest.

  They waited another tedious ten minutes.

  Mary Sullivan, sticking her hea
d in the door, was irresistibly reminded of a still life. By John Singer Sargent, for instance.

  “We can’t seem to find Mr. Fortinbras,” she reported.

  “Isn’t he in his office?” Mason demanded.

  To Thatcher’s admiration, Miss Sullivan’s control in the face of this question remained perfect. “I’ve just been down there,” she explained to the intent Mason. “Mr. Fortinbras isn’t at his desk. But we’ll find him, Mr. Mason.” The soothing note in her voice was not lost on Thatcher, who smiled to himself as he watched her depart. His own Miss Corsa tended to reproach rather than comfort, but there appeared to be a natural law of compensation. Where there was a void, and Thatcher felt no hesitation in describing Mason as just that, some mysterious force provided a Miss Sullivan. Probably the only thing that saved the capitalist system.

  “I knew we should have lunched with him,” one of its stoutest defenders grumbled. “It doesn’t make sense to meet people after lunch. People are always sleepy, or late. Fellow’s probably just finishing a steak somewhere.”

  “He’s not a great eater, as I recall.” Thatcher said provocatively. It was now two-thirty, and he resigned himself to deriving what amusement he could from the meeting. “He’s probably checking some figures at the last minute . . .”

  “You know what I mean . . .”

  Robichaux’s comment, and Mason’s anxiety at Thatcher’s pleasantry, were rudely and dramatically interrupted. The door to Mason’s office was abruptly flung open, and as they turned to stare, a young man, gasping for breath, propped himself up with an outstretched arm and looked wildly at them. Over his shoulder peered Mary Sullivan, shocked and for once at a loss.

  Surprisingly, it was Mason who found tongue first. “Dr. Richter,” he said with no more than grievance in his voice, “I’m having a meeting.” His banker’s mind functioning quite automatically, Thatcher instantly wrote off the Sloan’s investment in National Calculating Corporation.

  “He’s dead,” Richter gasped. His eyes were watering, and there was a queer, pinched look about his nostrils.

  “Dead!” squeaked Mason, startled out of his trance. “Who’s dead?”

  Before Richter supplied the name, Thatcher knew the answer.

  But Chip Mason and Tom Robichaux appeared to be surprised.

  “Fortinbras,” gasped Richter, who was getting his second wind. Speechlessly, they stared at him, and he realized that some explanation was necessary.

  “I was coming back from lunch,” he said. He stopped short, and passed a hand in front of his eyes. When he continued there was a note of supplication in his voice. “I thought I’d talk to Fortinbras. You know”—he was addressing Mason, who stared open-mouthed—“you know, I thought it might be helpful to make him see our point of view. It wouldn’t do any harm if some of us got to know him a little better . . .”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mason began censoriously.

  “My God!” Robichaux burst out.

  “Get on with your story,” Thatcher directed. The hysterical note in Richter’s voice had not escaped him.

  “Well,” Richter said quickly, “He wasn’t there. And I went in to leave a note on his desk. Then I found him.” He swallowed convulsively.

  “Found him?” Mason repeated dreamily.

  “He was lying behind his desk. You couldn’t see him from the hall, that’s why I thought the office was empty. He had a cord wrapped around his neck, and his face. . .” He broke off and shocked his audience by a noise between a whimper and a giggle. “It was the cord from the adding machine on his desk!”

  Richter’s evident intention to give way to tortured laughter was foiled by John Thatcher, who quite suddenly decided that he had had enough drama from the staff of National Calculating Corporation.

  “Did you call the police?” he snapped, reaching across the immobilized Mason for the phone.

  “How do you dial outside?” He found Mary Sullivan at his side, reaching for the phone.

  “I’ll do it,” she said crisply.

  Mason was frozen in his chair; Robichaux, ferocious with disapproval, had not moved; and Richter had sagged against the wall, pushed there by the redoubtable Miss Sullivan.

  “Police?” asked Richter confusedly.

  “Police!” Mason whispered.

  “Now, John,” Robichaux awoke to say. “Maybe you’re being a little hasty . . .”

  Miss Sullivan was ignoring these comments, Thatcher noted approvingly. “Maybe I am,” he said irascibly. “But when you find a man who has been murdered, it is customary to inform the police.”

  Mary Sullivan looked up at this, but continued her low-voiced exchange on the phone. The rest of his audience was momentarily stilled by his observation. Then the president of National Calculating Corporation found voice.

  “I wish,” he said forcefully, “I wish that Fortinbras would drop dead!”

  Chapter 8

  Weepings and Lamentations

  Death, which was the end for Clarence Fortinbras, was only the beginning for John Thatcher. After the initial shock, he braced himself for an afternoon marked by assorted idiocies from the senior management of National Calculating Corporation. His expectations were more than fulfilled.

  Chip Mason, upon absorbing the nature of the event which had occurred, a process requiring the united explanatory efforts of Thatcher, Tom Robichaux, and Miss Sullivan, had been unable to restrain his satisfaction.

  “At least this means that lunatic won’t be messing around the office anymore.”

  “Chip, don’t be silly,” warned Jay Rutledge sharply. The Southerner had been hastily summoned by Mary Sullivan. “This is going to give the newspapers a carnival. We’re in for the worst time we’ve ever had at National. Reporters will be swarming around these offices.”

  Shocked into silence by this display of irritation from Jay Rutledge, Mason retired to a corner to nurse his grievances and his ulcer. The afternoon, which for Thatcher early assumed the dreamy proportions of a nightmare, remained fixed in his memory as an unending procession of glasses of milk borne ceremoniously to the presidential desk.

  Harry Blaney, who could not be found on the premises, arrived 45 minutes later, demanding an explanation for the presence of the police. Upon being told of the murder, he embarked on a nervous protestation of innocence which won him a puzzled look from Allen Hammond and the sinister assurance: “Don’t worry, Harry, we’ll all stick behind you,” from Kellog, the general counsel.

  Naturally unnerved by this remark, Blaney launched into a comprehensive accusation which embraced the entire gathering and suggested a two-pronged conspiracy directed against himself and Fortinbras. The inclusion of Fortinbras as a fellow victim was clearly an afterthought. This provoked a heated reply from Mason which centered on Blaney’s managerial incompetence, and included a fairly accurate reproduction of Blaney’s ominous remarks about the victim two days before his murder. The entire exchange was recorded for posterity by a police guard seated in the corner, and brought to an end only by a surprising display of white-lipped acerbity on the part of Mrs. Cobb who roundly ordered all the participants into silence.

  Morris Richter was sick in the executive men’s room.

  Four hours passed before a heavily patient lieutenant from the Homicide Squad summed up the results of his afternoon’s work.

  “All right then. It looks as if nobody here has an alibi except Mr. Thatcher and Mr. Robichaux.” He surveyed the group with dissatisfaction. “Kind of funny, that. It would save a lot of trouble if you people ate lunch together.” There was no response. Perhaps it occurred to the lieutenant that, from what he had seen, the suspects would not have made particularly congenial dining companions. He sighed heavily. “I guess you two can go. We may be here quite a while longer.”

  Thatcher needed no urging. Ignoring the mute appeal of Charles Mason and the suddenly stricken glance of Mrs. Cobb, he took a prompt and enthusiastic departure. But an evening spent with Robichaux who was, by t
urn, affronted or oppressed, did nothing to lift his spirits. Unable to abandon a topic irritating to both, they went over the same ground again and again. The situation at National and the peculiar talents of Clarence Fortinbras led to only one conclusion.

  “Things up there must be worse than I thought,” said Tom sadly as his taxi deposited Thatcher in front of the Devonshire. “The bottom of the market will drop out.”

  “You and your old friends!”

  Thatcher fondly hoped that his return to the Sloan the next morning, with a change in venue and personnel, would give his thoughts a cheerier direction. But he failed to reckon with the powerful attraction which the murder of Clarence Fortinbras exerted on the imaginations of his colleagues and the rest of the population of New York. Within an hour of his arrival at least a dozen of his associates made their way into his office on the most barefaced pretexts, seeking an eye-witness account of what the Herald Tribune, in its misguided search for an airy prose style, called the “corporate garroting” of Clarence Fortinbras.

  Thatcher was in no mood to satisfy these demands. Dealing tactfully but firmly with Brad Withers, president of the Sloan, and just as firmly, if not quite so tactfully, with a glittering-eyed Everett Gabler who thought the whole thing was “an unprecedented outrage”, he turned to his secretary and firmly announced that he was unavailable to all visitors.

  “And that means all! I don’t care if it’s the chairman of the board, Miss Corsa.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thatcher,” she replied obediently.

  Thatcher decided that he had undervalued Miss Corsa during the past two years. Phlegmatic she might be. But she was also devoid of all curiosity as to the manner of Clarence Fortinbras’s demise.

  “What about the newspapers, Mr. Thatcher?” she asked in an uninterested voice.

  “What newspapers?” he asked suspiciously, visualizing a horde of reporters in the foyer six stories below.

  “The Times and the Wall Street Journal,” she replied reproachfully, “You always look at them.”

  “Oh, yes. Give them to me.”