Banking on Death

by Emma Lathen

  “I’ve made one out if you want to take a look at it.” Reardon passed a scrawled piece of paper across to Michaels who didn’t bother to pick it up. He had hitched himself up on a corner of the desk and was morosely staring at his swinging shoe.

  “That damned cop has been back again,” he said irritably. “How can we get anything done if he’s underfoot all the time?”

  “It’s a pain in the neck. He was down here too this morning. The men don’t pay much attention to him anymore.”

  “Like hell they don’t. Production’s been off ever since he started nosing around. It gets them jittery to have him digging up every fight anyone ever had with Schneider.”

  Both men looked through the glass wall toward the production line in token homage to this statement. Neither was under any illusion that they were talking about Self’s effect on the workers—a remarkably phlegmatic group of Slavs who looked about as jittery as a bunch of tractors.

  “Yeah,” agreed Reardon, dourly wondering what was coming.

  “And if that isn’t bad enough, he’s started yapping about Schneider’s private life. Who did he see after hours, how did he spend his time, where did his money go? This is a factory, not a confessional.”

  Oh hell, thought Reardon. So that’s what’s burning him. I thought he didn’t know. I suppose you can’t expect him to see that the little tart isn’t worth all this. She’s looking for trouble, and she’ll find it one way or another.

  “... and I don’t see how we can be expected to know about that sort of thing.” Michaels was now frankly avoiding Reardon’s eyes, and his voice had ended on a note of outright interrogation.

  “Well, we told him we don’t know anything,” slowly replied the foreman, trying to warn Michaels, reassure him, and maintain formal ignorance all in one breath. Michaels turned around and the two men looked at each other. Complete communication was achieved without one more word spoken.

  “Thanks, Paul. The schedule’s fine. I won’t have to make any changes.” Michaels hoisted himself off the desk and blundered out the door, leaving Reardon relieved and thankful that he had been spared any open discussion.

  Stan was not nearly so satisfied with the results of their talk. His fury at being forced to beg silence from his foreman was submerged by alarm. Reardon’s quick comprehension made it all too clear that he was dealing with common knowledge. Sooner or later Self would pick up the trail. He hurried back to his office and dialed his daughter’s number. He found himself counting the rings until she answered. On the eighth, there was a click.

  “Jeannie?”

  “Oh, Poppa, why do you keep calling? I just got the baby to sleep.”

  “Listen, honey, Pete Self has been around again.”

  “Well, what difference does that make to me? I barely knew Bob Schneider.”

  “Jeannie, you’ve got to be careful. Pete’s asking about everything.” But Stan Michaels was not as adept as Reardon at tactful, unspoken communication; he struggled to express his concern.

  “The police are checking up on Roy—asking about how he and Schneider got along.”

  “Well, they haven’t been to me,” his daughter shrilled defiantly, “Why should they? It wasn’t Roy who was always at Bob’s throat.”

  Michaels was now sickened with anxiety by his daughter’s defensive hostility. Ordinarily she was more inclined to sullen silence than to ringing hysteria. “Honey, they’re bound to find out,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to think up a story.”

  “Leave me alone. What are you after? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jeannie—”

  “No! I’ve got to hang up, Poppa. The baby’s crying.” The phone clicked finally as his daughter broke the connection. He started to redial then put the phone down. “Oh, Jeannie,” he muttered. And held his head in his hands.

  After she slammed the receiver Jeannie Novak lit a cigarette with jerky movements and began to pace up and down her cluttered living room, her housedress sweeping the floor as her high-heeled mules clicked back and forth. Poppa was making things much worse. Self was bound to notice how alarmed he was. And once Self started to think in that direction, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding out more. Why had she let Bob take her into Buffalo to the Chez Amis where they must have been seen? They should have gone over to Canada the way they always did. But Bob was so pigheaded; he had to have his own way and he hadn’t felt like driving. He was a bastard. They all were. They didn’t care what happened to her. And she was sure that Reardon had seen them in the parking lot out at the plant. Reardon would talk; he didn’t like her. Why, oh why, had she been so bitchy to his wife? Probably it was Reardon who had told Roy.

  But it had all been worth it. Bob had made it exciting. Being seen in town had just been a part of all that. Poppa didn’t know how bad it was or he wouldn’t ever think she could get out of it with some kind of story. Why didn’t he take her side anyway? He shouldn’t believe that kind of talk about his own daughter. Unless ... she stopped her pacing. Sometimes he stopped in town for a drink after work. Maybe he had seen her and Bob himself. It was all too probable.

  She ground out her cigarette viciously, just as the doorbell rang. For a moment she stood arrested, and then automatically she started to twitch her skirts into order and feel for a comb in her pocket. The bell pealed again. She picked up the ashtray with its overflowing mass of butts and hid it behind the wedding photograph on the piano. She knew who it was before she opened the door. Self and Jeannie Novak regarded each other silently for a moment.

  “So, you’re back again,” she said sulkily. “Well, I suppose you might as well come in.”

  Chapter 9

  Dissenting Shareholders

  And while Ken Nicolls in Framingham was somewhat tentatively trying to assess Arthur Schneider’s response to his cousin’s murder and Peter Self in Buffalo was grimly investigating everyone who had ever known the late Robert Schneider, John Thatcher was dismissing a taxicab on the south side of Washington Square so that he could walk through the park to Martin Henderson’s apartment on Waverly Place. The snow, which had long since disappeared from Wall Street, was here a clean, crisp white, shining in the sunlight. The charm of the late afternoon scene had attracted a good many strollers and the playground was doing a land-office business. His path would take him past a large snowman he noted with pleasure. How rarely city children had an opportunity for this kind of activity. But, as he drew nearer he saw that the statue had improbable but unmistakable female characteristics. Clearly not the work of snowsuited toddlers frolicking merrily in the snow but of some New York University students with fevered imaginations. A stroller approaching from the opposite direction paused momentarily by his side.

  “Personally,” said the stranger austerely, “I prefer the old-fashioned variety.” And with a courteous inclination of his head, he passed on.

  Thatcher wasted no more time looking for Grandma Moses vignettes but pressed on to his destination, an old-fashioned but well preserved brownstone fronting on the park. He mounted the stoop, scanned the bell plates, and then noticed the sign which directed him to the basement for “M. Henderson.” Descending into the areaway, he found the correct bell and took time to note that the basement apartment tenant, having his private entrance, would presumably be able to enter and leave the building unnoticed by the other residents. His ring was almost immediately answered by a tall, broad-shouldered man who greeted him heartily.

  “Come in, come in! You must be John Thatcher from the Sloan. I just got back from the office.” His smile was startlingly white against a sun tan which had been carefully preserved in the midst of a New York winter.

  “Very kind of you to rush back on my account. I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “Not at all. Delighted I could make it,” Martin rejoined, ushering Thatcher down a long narrow corridor and into a room at the back of the house with the air of one ringing up the curtain. And it was a room that lent itself to dramatic gestures.
The original wood moldings and pilasters had been allowed to remain, but they had been painted the same stark white as the walls. The rear wall had been replaced by a wall of glass opening onto a pocket handkerchief garden which was dominated by a slender black marble nymph rising from a small pool. The glass was framed by opulent draperies of a clear, vivid blue silk, and a severely linear divan balanced several deep but narrow easy chairs, all upholstered in a dark, earth brown. The blues and browns were joined together over the modernized mantel in a John Marin watercolor of the Maine seacoast.

  Thatcher experienced a certain reluctant admiration. He, too, preferred the old-fashioned type of snowman, but this room was a success. It was aggressively masculine, defiantly modern, and totally artful, but it fulfilled its intended function: it forced you to look at its owner with a new interest. He became a man to be reckoned with. It was not surprising that young Nicolls had been impressed, and Thatcher no longer wondered why Henderson preferred, with some insistence, to receive his callers at his home, rather than his office. If Arthur Schneider had anything to do with the décor of the New York offices of Schneider Manufacturing Company they would not provide nearly so interesting a backdrop for a worldly bachelor.

  “Scotch or bourbon?” While Thatcher had been examining the room, Martin had opened a deceptively simple teak chest to reveal a fairly comprehensive bar. Restraining the impulse to ask for something esoteric in the hopes of puncturing his host’s performance, Thatcher accepted a Scotch and water.

  The two men settled down with their drinks and Thatcher played for time with a few noncommittal remarks about his relation to Nicolls and the Schneider Trust. He preferred, if possible, to let the other man assume the burden of opening the discussion about the death of Robert Schneider and its influence on the trust distribution. Long experience had taught him that, in this way, the conversation could naturally be developed into an interrogation of the position of his vis-à-vis. And nothing is more congenial to a banker than the wholesale dissection of somebody else’s point of view. But Martin did not seem to suffer from his cousin’s compulsion to rush into speech. He responded amiably but uninformatively to Thatcher’s ploys for some minutes before finally leaning forward and making his opening gambit.

  “I suppose,” he said shrewdly, “that it was the Sloan that set the police on me.”

  “Have they been to you?” replied Thatcher blandly. “We had to communicate with them on the question of proving identification, and they seemed interested in the details of the trust.”

  “They were,” said Henderson dryly. “In fact they now regard the Schneider family as prime suspects.”

  “Surely not. The man I spoke with indicated that Buffalo was teeming with potential suspects.”

  “If Bob Schneider lived there for any length of time, I expect it is. He had a genius for strewing the landscape with enemies, if he stayed the same as when we knew him.”

  “I imagine this is just a routine check so that they can cross you off and concentrate on the local scene. What did they ask about?”

  “They asked about alibis, and they’re certainly not crossing me off on the basis of mine,” said Martin sourly.

  “Oh?” Thatcher maintained an air of elaborate unconcern which should have fooled no one, but Henderson was now displaying another Schneider characteristic: he was far too wrapped up in his own grievances to worry about audience reaction.

  “Yes, apparently it happened on the night of that big storm we had. I left the office about two o’clock to go to the trade show at the Coliseum. When I came out about five, it was sleeting and snowing and, naturally, there wasn’t a taxi in sight. There was nothing much doing at the office so I hopped into the subway and came down here. I had a ticket to the hockey game at the Garden, but it was so bad out that I decided to cook dinner myself and spend the evening here with a book.”

  Henderson finished this explanation with a comprehensive wave toward the bookcases. Following this gesture, Thatcher noted with distaste that the available literature seemed to consist of the works of Henry Miller and an opened copy of Lolita. He decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt and suppose that the evening might have been spent with the pile of stock market reports and tipster sheets which were visible on the desk in the corner.

  “Well, well, you’re probably worrying about nothing, and they’ll find their man in Buffalo within the next few days.”

  “Yes or the whole thing will fizzle out. But, just the same, it’s pretty annoying to think that, if I’d gone to the Garden and talked to whoever sat next to me, I’d have an ironclad alibi.”

  “On the contrary, you wouldn’t know his name and you’d be spending all your time trying to remember some identifying characteristic. Much less trouble this way.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Martin, recalling his duties as a host, “you didn’t come here to talk about alibis and you’re not really interested in my troubles. Sorry to bother you with all this.”

  “Not at all,” said Thatcher cordially. “But I’m afraid that you won’t find the information I have for you much of an improvement. It seems that your cousin, Robert Schneider, left children—two boys.”

  “Well, what difference does that make?”

  “His share of the trust passes to them.”

  “You mean, I still only get a $100,000?”

  “That is the case.”

  Martin fell into a brooding silence in the course of which he rose and automatically freshened their drinks. Thatcher watched him in some sympathy. In the course of his life it had been necessary for him to deliver unwelcome financial news many times, and he knew that no one, regardless of their income or their bank account, likes to be told that they aren’t going to get $50,000 they had been counting as their own.

  “Dammit,” said Martin, “it isn’t that I need the money, but I had relied on being able to buy a substantial slice of stock in the firm. A $150,000 plus whatever I could get for Mother’s preferred would have put me in a position to exert a lot of influence, particularly if I could talk some sense into Grace.”

  “Ah, yes, your mother,” said Thatcher wryly, “I should already have offered you my sympathy. This must be a very trying time for you.”

  “Of course,” said Martin examining his cuff links with no visible sign of grief. “We have all reconciled ourselves to the fact that the end will be a release for her.” He was completely preoccupied with this sudden drop in his expectations. “I’ll be frank with you—”

  Thatcher automatically braced himself for a wave of evasion and deceit.

  “The business is not doing as well as it should. Mind you, there’s absolutely nothing wrong fundamentally. Our intrinsic worth is exactly the same. But it won’t be for long if we keep on this way. We’ve already lost several old contracts and unless something happens we’re going to lose more. This is a research-minded economy. There are lots of new firms with bright young men and we have to keep up. I keep trying to point out to Arthur that we simply have to put more money into research and development. But Arthur—”

  Martin broke off self-consciously from what clearly would have been a comprehensive indictment of his cousin.

  “But then you’ve met Arthur and you know what I’m talking about. He’s set in his ways and being up there in Framingham doesn’t help him to get any perspective. He has absolutely no idea of what New York firms are doing today. He seems to think that advertising should be restricted to consumer products. He flatly rejected my publicity budget for next year. I got him down here to have a talk with Jim Benton over at Donner and Berk—they did a study of sales consciousness on the part of some of the smaller industrial firms and the boys there let me have a look at the results. But did it do any good? No! What was good enough for—”

  At this interesting point, the bell rang and Martin broke off on the brink of a second attack on Arthur. He excused himself and left for the door. Thatcher realized that the addition of a third person to this interview pretty effectively en
ded any hope of further revelations. He idly listened to the sounds emanating from the entrance foyer as he rehearsed a few quick exit lines. Martin seemed to be defending himself against a series of shrilly pitched rapid-fire questions from his latest guest. Presently he returned, accompanied by a tall, middle-aged woman who was jerking off her gloves. Thatcher felt a great wave of content as he rose. Surely it must be—? It was. Now the problem was how to delay a departure which was clearly the courteous and correct movement on his part.

  “This is John Thatcher of the Sloan, Grace. You remember, he talked with Arthur. This is my cousin, Mrs. Walworth.”

  Grace Walworth made a perfunctory acknowledgment of the introduction and continued her complaints without pausing for breath.

  “I see that I have to come up here to get anything done. There is no use talking to you or Arthur by phone. The only thing it accomplishes is that I become a police suspect!”

  Martin grinned maliciously. It was apparent that pouring oil on troubled waters formed no part of his immediate intentions.

  “But, you should speak to Mr. Thatcher about that, Grace. He’s the man who set the police on us. I myself have already sustained a grilling at the hands of the cops today.” He paused long enough for Grace to suck in one long outraged breath and swing her mink coat to one side, presumably to have a clear field of attack, before firing his second shot.

  “What’s more, he brings even worse news. Robert had children.”

  “Well,” said Grace, impatient of irrelevancies. “Surely, no one can expect us to support them. There must be a mother or something of that sort.”

  “No, you don’t follow me, my dear,” continued Martin in tones of immense satisfaction, “Robert’s share of the trust goes to his sons. You don’t get the extra $25,000 you’ve been talking about continuously for the last two days.”

  “What!” For a moment Grace was blessedly speechless. “Well, that is the limit.” She paused to dwell on the late Robert’s treachery. “There must be some mistake. They’re not grandchildren.”