Banking on Death

by Emma Lathen

  “Very well, Mr. Thatcher,” she said half-heartedly, “shall I take them?”

  “What?” Thatcher’s attention was caught. He grinned. “I don’t think you have the necessary criminal talents. Have Sheldon do it; he’ll probably talk them into paying him a reward.”

  Miss Corsa picked up the folios and made for the door with alacrity.

  “Oh, and would you bring your book in after you’ve seen Sheldon?”

  Thatcher leaned back in his chair and started to compose a letter in his mind. When Miss Corsa reentered, she slipped into the side chair, settled her book on her knee and coughed formally. It was a familiar signal for them both. Without thinking, Thatcher automatically began to dictate.

  Dear Mrs. Schneider:

  The Sloan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, in behalf of which I am writing, was appointed trustee of certain funds by the grandfather of your late husband, C. Robert Schneider, in 1932. Principal and interest are to accumulate until the death of the settlor’s last surviving child at which time distribution is to be effected to his grandchildren or to their issue. If, at the time of the termination of the trust, any of the distributees are minors, the Sloan Guaranty Trust is charged with certain duties until such distributees shall have achieved majority.

  The settlors’s last surviving child, Hilda Schneider Henderson, aged seventy, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage last October, and I am informed by her physicians that no hope of recovery can be entertained. It therefore appears probable that distribution of the trust will occur before your two sons have reached twenty-one years of age, and it will be necessary to institute the proper legal proceedings necessary to establish guardianship for your children.

  If you will forward to me the name and address of your legal counsel, I shall be happy to supply them with copies of the relevant trust documents and inform them of the affidavits necessary to establish the identity of your two sons.

  It will perhaps be of some service to you in planning the disposition of your husband’s estate to know that in the event of a distribution within the next few months, the market value of the share of the trust evolving on each of your sons will be approximately $50,000. Only interest will be available during minority.

  If I can supply any further information or assistance, please do not hesitate to communicate with me.

  Sincerely yours,

  John P. Thatcher

  Senior Vice-President

  “Please have that typed up immediately and send it air mail, Miss Corsa,” he said crisply. It would have been difficult for anyone to realize from his tone that he was motivated by considerations of common charity for that harassed and slightly stupid woman in Buffalo. It was Thatcher’s experience that there are very few predicaments in life which do not seem rosier when a $100,000 has suddenly been added to the family bankbook. Furthermore, he reasoned astutely, the letter should put her in the hands of a lawyer, where she clearly ought to be. Any right-minded attorney who got their hands on Kathryn Schneider now was not going to content themself with dealing with her trust problems.

  Chapter 7

  Good Will

  In the end, it was not until Monday that Ken Nicolls arrived in Boston prepared to “watch reactions.” At three-fifteen in the afternoon he sat in the lobby of the Sheraton Plaza waiting, with no enthusiasm, for Arthur Schneider to appear. The Sloan’s Travel Department had been courteous and efficient in providing transport to Logan airport. Arthur Schneider, on the other hand, was first unreachable, then brusque and impatient when asked for an interview at what he described as “disgracefully short notice.” Ken looked at his watch. It was Schneider who had suggested a meeting at the Sheraton Plaza and dismissed Ken’s offer to present himself in Framingham. Not really the ideal place to conduct what Ken foresaw as an awkward interview.

  He examined the dimly lit lobby. Lobbies in Boston, it was apparent, attracted a different group than did lobbies in New York. Directly across from him, a red-faced man in an ancient brown suit was impatiently tapping his foot; next to him, two grandmotherly women in identical flower-decorated black straw hats sat with folded hands. A slim red-haired girl with a beaver jacket thrown over her shoulders was rummaging in her bag in the corner, while behind Ken four salesmen with bulging folders were arguing about somebody named Max.

  But no Arthur Schneider. Ken rose and strolled over to the cigar counter. Behind the potted palms sat a young man in a blue blazer and rumpled gray slacks; from his expression of resignation Ken guessed that he was awaiting the descent of a relative, probably female. Two secretaries, with extremely high heels and extremely long cigarettes were perched on the sofa, casting haughty little glances of appraisal around them, including at him.

  But Arthur Schneider had not arrived. Ken resumed his seat and prepared to wait. The two elderly women, apparently at some agreed upon signal, rose and walked in complete silence to the Trinity Place exit. As they left, the revolving doors debouched a haggard young woman dragging a four-year-old boy after her; she sank into the nearest vacant chair, expelled a noisy sigh, and watched her son crawl along the floor with lackluster eyes.

  The man in the brown suit was eyeing the entrance with increasing restlessness, muttering something to himself from time to time. The pretty redhead sat quietly in the corner. Ken glanced at her. Very good legs. She raised an interrogative eyebrow as she intercepted his appraisal, and he returned to his watch: three-thirty. Still no Arthur Schneider. Frowning slightly, he tried to recall their conversation. Schneider had barked something about having to come into Boston. Probably business. Still, if he had been detained he could very well call the Sheraton.

  “You’re not by any chance Mr. Nicolls, are you?”

  Ken looked up, and then rose quickly; it was the attractive redhead. When he admitted his identity, she laughed.

  “How ridiculous! We’ve both been sitting here like bumps on a log. Oh,” she said as she noted his puzzlement, “I’m Jane Schneider.”

  As he shook hands with her Ken concluded that wherever she got her looks, it was certainly not from her father. A small straight nose, creamy skin, and deep blue eyes he had missed in his original appraisal. He approved, and was moderately surprised to hear that she in her turn had been appraising him.

  “... don’t look like a banker. Not that I really know many bankers, but you do expect a paunch.” She looked at him critically, “And you’re not even bald. In fact you have wonderful blonde hair if you let it grow out. But, as a banker, I guess you can’t.”

  Ken, in fact, looked more like a California surfer, which he had been before attending Harvard College, than a banker despite being dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit. Evidently the Brooks Brothers suit had slightly misled Miss Schneider, he thought. Thus Ken smiled somewhat foolishly. “Are you waiting for your father too, Miss Schneider?”

  “Well that proves that Daddy is right, doesn’t it?” she demanded of the world at large, apparently oblivious of the inhabitants of the lobby who were watching their encounter with interest. “He says I have a disorderly mind. I should have started by explaining that he asked me to pick you up,” she said with a little rush of words, “and drive you out to Framingham.” She tucked an arm through his, smiled up at him, and drew him along as she chattered. The secretaries looked indignant that the handsome well turned out young man had been scooped up and out of the hotel lobby with such panache by that aggressive redhead.

  Ken replied that he could think of nothing more pleasant than being driven to Framingham, but that he certainly didn’t want to inconvenience anybody.

  She interrupted his disclaimer, “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” she said propelling him through the exit. She proceeded briskly toward a bright yellow Thunderbird double-parked near the entrance. “Here we are,” she said as she settled herself behind the wheel and waited for him to circle the car. Ken felt that he was being swept along by a torrent but he arranged himself in the seat obediently. Sweeping around in an illegal U-turn, she accelerated with a
roar toward Commonwealth Avenue.

  “I hope you’re not nervous with women drivers,” she remarked as she cut smartly in front of a large truck.

  “Never,” Ken said stoutly.

  “Good. Of course I particularly wanted to be in on all of this. Daddy was simply furious when he left.”

  As Ken could think of nothing to say, he remained silent. She turned to look speculatively at him: “Don’t you want to know why he couldn’t meet you?”

  Repressing a shout of warning at a red light which she was certainly going to ignore, Ken said that he was very curious indeed. Then he put out an arm to prevent himself from being hurled through the windshield.

  “The police,” Jane Schneider said with relish, as she braked. “My poor respectable father is being grilled by the cops.”

  “Oh now,” Ken protested, “they’re just making a routine check ... Good Lord, watch out! Sorry.”

  “Frightened?” Jane Schneider said demurely. Ken took a long look at her. Enchanting to look at, yes, but nuts. A true Schneider.

  “Do you always drive like this?” he inquired mildly as they sped along.

  “Always. What do you mean, making a routine check? Do you know why the Boston police called my father and requested an interview?” she asked, and then added, “Urgently.”

  “I think it is probably to tell him that his cousin Robert is dead.”

  “Is that why you came up? For another urgent interview.” Her infectious laughter bubbled to the surface. “We’ve had nothing but requests for urgent interviews today.” Of course she didn’t know it was murder, Ken thought, but Jane Schneider was either remarkably indifferent to the death of a relative or, and this was more likely, Robert Schneider was no more than a name to her.

  “I came up,” Ken said cautiously, “to talk to him about a number of matters concerned with the trust. I take it you know about the ... the difficulties we have been having.” He looked, with spurious interest, at the scenery of the Worcester Turnpike: car repairs, funeral homes, and hamburger stands.

  “I see that you’re at least as careful as a banker, even if you don’t look like one,” the girl said accusingly. “You’ve met my father, haven’t you?”

  Ken admitted that he had.

  “Well,” she continued in a reasonable tone as they sped along, “then you must know that I have heard all about the trust. And almost nothing else of late.”

  As Ken digested this, she added in an affectionate tone of voice, “He is a fuss-budget, isn’t he? No, you don’t have to answer that. Do you know this part of the country at all?”

  And, to his relief, the conversation turned to New England as they drove erratically on.

  Jane Schneider looked very much like the girls Ken had squired around New York, prettier than most, but not basically unlike them. She had, it appeared, recently graduated from Mount Holyoke, and Ken had known other recent graduates of Mount Holyoke. But, he thought, there was something different about her, something ... he grabbed the door as they took a sudden sharp turn, and sped down a side road. A traffic cop shook his fist menacingly at the Thunderbird, and Jane waved back cheerfully.

  “He’s given me seven tickets,” she confided to Ken. “He hates to do it. Every time he writes one out, he explains that he got his first job at Schneider’s. That’s it, by the way.”

  Ken, who had been mesmerized by her driving, looked out with real interest at the building past which they were speeding. Across the railroad tracks a sign proclaimed “Schneider Manufacturing Company” above a four-story building that looked as if it would cover a city block.

  “I had no idea it was so big,” he commented. The wings of the building reached forward to the tracks with the right wing obviously housing the offices; a somewhat modern entrance, painted white, had been installed, and through the high narrow windows fluorescent lights gleamed whitely in contrast to the gathering darkness outside. The other wing cast no brightness on the snow; the windows were blackened with age. Altogether a somewhat forbidding place, Ken thought. Probably built later than the earliest textile mills somewhere toward the end of the last century, but with their austere, forbidding façade. Behind the factory, stone walls enclosed a frozen river.

  “It’s the biggest employer in Framingham,” Jane said absently. Ken laughed, and after a moment she joined him. “Yes, I see you recognize the source of the quote, don’t you?” She had become involved in a maze of side streets; the factory and its industrial neighbors were left behind and they drove on into a residential section.

  “I’m trying to avoid Framingham center. It’s a madhouse at this time of night,” she explained. “I’m not trying to kidnap you.”

  Gallantly Ken was prepared to deny any objections to being kidnapped by Jane Schneider when he was thrown backward by a jack-rabbit start from a stop sign. No use trying to be flirtatious, he thought. Not when you’re risking your neck.

  They drove on in silence through the rapidly darkening countryside. Soon they had left streetlights far behind them; they were almost in the open country when Jane pulled into a driveway that Ken had not seen, and with a screech of brakes stopped in front of a substantial red brick house and jumped from the car.

  “Home,” she announced slamming the car door behind her. Clambering out of the car after her, Ken looked at the house; solid New England Colonial with good simple lines. There seemed to be a meadow to one side and tall, snow-laden pines behind what must have originally been stables stretching out from the house. On the snow piled deep along the stone fence and the driveway, fingers of light from the house brought muted brilliant reflections. To a Californian like Ken, it looked like a Christmas card.

  In the welcoming warmth of the hallway, he found himself being introduced to Mrs. Schneider and said as much to her about the Christmas card appearance before he remembered himself and apologized for intruding upon her.

  “Certainly not, Mr. Nicolls,” she said pleasantly. “We like the house at this time of year too, and we’re the ones who have put you to a good deal of trouble. Besides subjecting you to my daughter’s driving. You’ll need tea, or something stronger to revive you.”

  Jane was hanging her coat in a closet, and turned back to take Ken’s coat. “Isn’t Daddy home yet?” she asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Schneider replied, leading the way into a living room dominated by an enormous fireplace in which several logs of a size undreamed of in New York apartments were burning merrily. “I think that he expected to be home a little earlier.” She waved Ken into an easy chair on one side of the fire. “Now, what can we offer you?” she asked. Ken decided that an intruder, indeed a spy, could not abuse the hospitality offered by taking strong drink; he decided on what seemed to be a prudent compromise.

  “Sherry, please.” Jane, he noticed, had cast a skeptical look at him, giving him the disconcerting impression that she knew sherry was not one of his favorite drinks.

  He listened to Mrs. Schneider’s easy flow of apologies for her husband’s absence. Here was the solution to Jane Schneider’s good looks. Mrs. Schneider was a slightly dimmed version of her daughter, with hair a reddish-brown instead of copper, and a slightly thicker waist. But excellent legs seemed to have remained excellent, he noticed. He was about to initiate suitable small talk when he was forestalled.

  “Mr. Nicolls says that Robert Schneider is dead, Mother, and that the police are just notifying Daddy,” Jane said as she carried her own glass over to the fireplace and joined them.

  Mrs. Schneider put her drink down. “Good heavens!” she said in a shocked tone. “Dead?” Ken kicked himself for a tactless fool; Schneider’s death might be a casual conversation piece for him and for Jane, but the disclosure should have been made more gently to a woman who had, after all, known Robert Schneider.

  With a glance at his face, Mrs. Schneider shook her head. “No, Mr. Nicolls, it’s not a great shock.” She sipped her drink pensively, “But it is always something of a surprise when someone you know is dead.” Th
e flames sent flickering shadows through the room.

  “I didn’t know that you ever knew him, Mother,” Jane said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

  Mrs. Schneider frowned as she searched her memory. “Well, of course he was just a boy when I first married. Then after ... after his father’s death I didn’t see him at all, of course. I think that the last time I saw him was at his Aunt Marie’s funeral, just after the war.”

  Ken had never felt less adroit. He knew that Mrs. Schneider’s guarded reference had been to the fight between her husband and his uncle. And to Carl’s suicide.

  “Oh Mother, Mr. Nicolls must know all our family skeletons by now,” Jane said, who also noticed her mother’s carefulness. “And we certainly are a family with plenty of them.”

  Mrs. Schneider roused herself from a reverie. “Jane, you really are impossible. Of course, Mr. Nicolls, I forgot you must know about all of this. And for heaven’s sake, Jane, let’s turn some more lights on in here.” As Jane rose to snap on the corner lamps, Ken mumbled something to admit that he did know about the family situation, but Mrs. Schneider continued her recollections. “It must have been in 1945. I went up to him, at the funeral, to say hello. He seemed very unhappy ... oh, here’s Buddy.”

  A red-haired boy of about fourteen had erupted into the room and stood, in exaggerated surprise, at the sight of a stranger. “Mr. Nicolls,” his mother said, “my son, Arthur, Junior.”

  It was after six o’clock when Arthur Schneider finally arrived to disrupt what had been an unusually pleasant afternoon. Ken liked both Mrs. Schneider and Jane. Even Buddy, a replica of his father, was a nice lad. The family was unexpected and a little unconventional but warmly friendly. It would force some revision of his picture of Arthur Schneider, Ken thought. Surely this family would not tolerate the pompous ass that Schneider had seemed to be. A slamming of the front door told him that he would have a chance to see.

  Mrs. Schneider went to the hallway to greet her husband. Jane winked at Ken, and mouthed, “Watch this.” Ken stood up in some apprehension.