“I can tell you what they’re insured for.”
Bill did, and Grimpen forget all about looking superior. “That much? This is grand larceny! What are we wasting time for? Give me the photo of the Silver Ghost. What’s the license and serial number? Find me a picture of the New Phantom. Full descriptions, pronto. Myre, take down the details. I’ll get to them later. Where’s the nearest telephone?”
“Right beside you, on the wall,” Billingsgate told the chief somewhat drily. “And here’s the information on the cars.”
Grimpen barked masterfully into the phone, then held out his hand. “I’ll keep those folders, Mr. Billingsgate.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t have them. We have a strict rule that our records never leave the car shed. I can provide you with duplicate copies of the photographs, if you want them.”
“Better than nothing, I suppose. Now then, Myre, the notes.”
“They’re in shorthand, chief.”
“Then read them to me.”
Myre began to read. Max and Bill wandered off. When they were out of earshot, Bill murmured, “One tries not to pass judgement, but I must say that fellow Grimpen does seem to be rather full of himself.”
“He’s full of something, anyway,” Max conceded. “Who is he, the mayor’s nephew?”
“Cherished only son of the chairman of the Board of Selectmen. I believe his burning ambition is to become Sir John Appleby. Do you think this all-points bulletin will accomplish anything?”
“Let’s hope so. Routine police procedure is often highly effective. Anyway, they have the facilities for it and we don’t.”
Max was restless, prowling around the vast shed, examining the bare concrete walls with more interest than they appeared to warrant. “The car shed backs right up to the stone wall, does it?”
“Actually the shed is part of the wall,” Bill told him. “The stonework simply comes to meet it on both sides. The iron fence on top of the wall goes across the back of the roof. If you’re thinking someone climbed into the yard by way of the shed, I can only say it would be extremely difficult. The fence is electrified, I’m ashamed to admit. The insurance people insisted on that as an added precaution.”
“For which you can’t blame them, considering what these cars are worth on today’s market,” said Max. “What’s behind here?”
“The road that leads out to the bee fields. Hardly more than a path, really. It’s a further extension of the main drive,” Bill explained.
“And where does that come out? Does it just circle around and come back?”
“No, as a matter of fact. We have a number of paths through the bee fields, but this particular one goes on to connect at the far end of our property with a town road that leads eventually to the old turnpike.”
“Is this path wide enough to take a car through?”
“Just about. One would find it rough going at the far end. We leave the ruts unfilled in order to discourage outsiders from entering.”
“How long is the path?” asked Max.
“Just about a mile. You’re thinking the cars must have been taken out that way, aren’t you?”
“Any reason why they shouldn’t have been?”
“Aside from the fact that they’d be awfully visible going through the fields, I can’t see why not. Especially if the driver knew how to work the drawbridge,” Bill added.
“You have a second drawbridge?” Didn’t everybody?
“An apology for one, anyway. It looks like the remains of an old board fence, but actually there’s a steel-plate reinforcement sandwiched between two thin layers of wood. It lets down by a rather ingenious arrangement of wire cables and covers the worst of the ruts so ifs possible to get a car out without too much joggling. Silly, perhaps, but we do get a good deal of fun out of the thing.”
“We meaning your family?” asked Max.
“And a few of our closest friends. Except in the winter when there’s snow on the ground. We couldn’t plow or drive through then, of course, without leaving tracks and giving away our little secret. Other than that, we use the bee field escape, as we call it, quite a lot. It saves our having to make a wide detour to “reach the turnpike. We figure we cut off anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, depending on who’s driving. Tick and Melly make the run a good deal faster than Abigail and I.”
“Can your wife manage the drawbridge by herself?”
“Easily. The fence is nicely balanced and counterweighted so that we can move it up or down with no effort to speak of. The only hard part’s remembering where to find the end of the cable. It’s quite well hidden.”
“Who’d be apt to know the hiding place, aside from yourselves?”
“That’s a good question. We’ve taken guests through the bee fields at various times over the years when they’ve had a plane to catch or whatever, and I suppose there’s no reason why somebody from down the road couldn’t have come poking around and hit upon the cable. It’s not so much that we’re anxious to keep the private road a secret, as that we don’t want a lot of youngsters driving in with their flivvers and mopeds and getting the bees upset. It doesn’t take too much to annoy a bee, you know.”
“No, I don’t suppose it would,” said Max. “I should think the bees themselves would keep people out.”
“I’m sure they’re a more effective deterrent than anything else,” Bill agreed. “We do have warning signs posted all around our borders, and outsiders don’t seem much interested in challenging them. About the cable, let’s see. The Tolbathys know, certainly. It was Wouter who rigged the drawbridge for us. He was marvelously inventive, you may remember.”
Max nodded. Tom Tolbathys late brother had been a man of almost appalling mechanical ability. Worse yet, he’d had an imagination for which untrammeled would have been a paltry and pitiful description.
“I didn’t know Wouter ever got around to anything so mundane as a drawbridge. Wouldn’t an aerial tramway held up by midget dirigibles have been more his style?”
“He did say something once about trained eagles,” Billingsgate admitted, “but we were afraid we’d run into trouble with the Audubon Society. Dear old Wouter! Never shall I forget his funeral, Jem Kelling reading the eulogy with the Great Chain of the Convivial Codfish around his neck, while Tom walked up the aisle leading that fire-breathing dragon. It was so beautifully fitting, ‘I am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls.’ Job 30:29.”
He paused a moment in fond remembrance. “Too bad Tom didn’t happen to think of the owl. Wouter would have liked an owl. Max, tell me honestly, do you see any tiny gleam of light whatsoever in this dreadful situation? Will the thefts continue? I’m beginning to wonder if I should consider this a chastisement for my foolish pride in earthly possessions. Dear heaven! To think my friend Rufus may have been so foully done to death through my vanity. How could I ever atone? Shall I sell all the remaining cars and donate the money to some worthy cause?”
“This isn’t the time to back down, Bill.”
“I suppose not. ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.’ Luke 9:62. Thank you, Max. The time to have sold the cars, assuming I were to do so, would have been before this horrible chain of events began. Now I have to see it through. ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ Romans 12:21.”
“Which means we have to isolate the evil before we can do any good,” said Max. “What’s this?”
He’d entered an alcove beside the changing room, about eight feet square and none too well lighted. The side walls were of smooth concrete like the rest of the shed’s, but the back was oddly roughened. “Did somebody get into the wet cement?”
“Oh, that.” Bill managed to work up a smile of sorts. “Another of Wouter’s little whimsies. It started one weekend about five years ago. Our grandchildren were still in the pre-teen stage and so were some of the Tolbathys’. Young Dork’s daughter was only a toddler then and had a nanny, so we rounded up all
the kids and left them here with the nanny to run after them and Cook to feed them. Rufus went along with us and the other grownups to a big antique car rally. Since there were enough of us to drive all ten Rollses, the shed was left empty, so the children had permission to use it for a playroom.”
“It would be a great place for kids to run,” said Max.
“Yes, and that’s what we’d assumed they’d be doing. Unfortunately, this silly girl believed in self-expression and supplied all the children with colored chalks. By the time we got back, they’d expressed themselves over every inch of the walls and floor.”
“Must have been a cheerful homecoming.”
“Oh, it was. I thought Rufe would go into convulsions. I’ll admit I was none too pleased, myself. But anyway, Wouter offered to stay and help Rufe wash the walls, so Abigail and I went off by ourselves to another rally. In the New Phantom, as a matter of fact. When we got back, we discovered Wouter had got the rest of the place shining but he’d put a skim coat of mortar on this one wall and scratched in his own graffiti. He said he’d always had an urge to deface a wall. Even Rufe laughed. One had to, you know, at Wouter.”
“So you left the wall as it was.”
“Oh, we talked every so often about having it plastered over, but for one reason or another we never did. Then Wouter died and the wall became a sort of monument to his memory. I wouldn’t change it now for anything. Yes, Chief Grimpen, did you want me for something?”
“Only to tell you that I’m going along now. I’ve accomplished everything that needs to be done here. It’s perfectly obvious what happened. Your man there,” he nodded at the robe-covered heap on the counter, “was in league with a well-organized gang of antique car thieves. He may have been blackmailed into it,” Grimpen added out of deference for Mr. Billingsgate’s feelings.
“Anyway, he let them into the car shed, helped them get the Silver Ghost away, then raked the gravel to obliterate the traces they’d left, and locked the gate behind him. At this point it must have occurred to your man that he’d put himself in an impossible position. Seeing no way out of being convicted and disgraced, he hanged himself.”
“Having rigged a hoist in advance just in case he might take the notion,” Max Bittersohn amplified.
“How am I supposed to know what the hoist was for? Maybe he’d planned to do some tree work.”
“We have professional tree people come in for that sort of thing,” said Bill. “Have you arranged for the autopsy?”
At last he’d managed to make Grimpen uncomfortable. “I—er—was just going to consult with you on that point. I assumed you’d prefer to wait until your guests were gone before we had the body removed. So as not to spoil your party,” he added hopefully.
“Most considerate of you.” Max hadn’t thought Nehemiah Billingsgate could ever use that tone toward anybody. “Tell them to come as soon as possible, please. You’ll wait for them, I expect.”
“Sergeant Myre will stay. I have pressing business elsewhere, I’m afraid. Myre, you’re in full charge as of now. Order the ambulance and arrange for the autopsy.”
Sergeant Myre opened his mouth, then shut it with an audible snap. Grimpen turned smartly and strode from the shed. Bill went after him to unlock the gate. Max looked at Myre and shrugged.
“Who’s he going to press?”
“I’d like to press him between two barn doors and run a tractor over ’em,” snarled the policeman. “He knows damn well we’ve got the in-laws coming to supper because I told him so when we started out. My wife’s going to raise hell.”
“Call her and tell her you’ve just been promoted to acting chief.”
“You tell her.”
“Okay,” said Max, “if you want.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Sergeant Myre’s somewhat chubby face relaxed into a full-blown grin. “Thanks, but I’d better do it myself. What should I tell her?”
“Tell her your jackass of a chief has been doing his best to louse up an important investigation and you’ve been put in charge because you’ve got a lot more brains than he has.”
“So does the station cat.”
“Then tell her we’re getting the cat in to help you. Just don’t say where you are or what’s happened. We don’t want the word to get out any sooner than we can help, or we’ll have a crowd control problem on our hands along with everything else.”
7
MRS. MYRE MUST BE a reasonable woman. The policeman came back looking relieved.
“It’s all set for the autopsy and they’ll have the wagon here as soon as possible. I told my wife I’m working with this big detective inspector from Boston. Was that all right, Mr. Bittersohn?”
“Sure. I’m inspecting. What do you think of this wall?”
“Bunch of kids got loose in the wet cement, huh?” Myre ran his fingers somewhat wistfully over a crude depiction of an open runabout. “I always had a hankering to do that.”
“I did, once,” Max confessed. “They were laying a new sidewalk outside my folks’ house and I decided to leave my footprints for posterity. My father caught me and made me get a trowel and smooth them out, then he wouldn’t give me any movie money for a month. I wonder what I’ll do if my kid ever tries the same thing.”
“How old is he?”
“Six months.”
“My youngest is seven.” Myre sounded deservedly smug. “Say, you know what this wall reminds me of? They had this art festival over at the park last summer and Grimpen stuck me with extra duty as usual. He doesn’t dare ask the older guys, they’d spit in his eye. But anyway, there was this hunk of what they were calling folk sculpture that looked something like this. Beats me what anybody’d want of it, but I guess rich people pay big money for that far-out stuff, eh?”
“Some of them do,” Max agreed, “but this was just a practical joke by a mad genius who was a friend of the family. He died a couple of years ago and the Billingsgates keep the wall as a tribute to his memory.”
A beautiful light broke over Myre’s countenance. “Oh jeez, I’ll bet I ran into that guy once. I’m a rookie cop, see, it’s my first day on the job. So Grimpen assigns me to traffic duty down at the square. It’s a Monday morning. There’s a little rush hour traffic and the kids going to school, then it quiets down. I help a couple of old ladies across the street and wonder if anybody’s going to rob the bank today, but nobody does. So I’m standing there shining my new whistle when this 1932 Chevy coupe, black with red wooden wheels, comes zigzagging down the middle of the road doing about five miles an hour.”
Myre was thoroughly happy now. “So I start waving my arms and blowing my whistle and the car stops. There’s the driver up front in this dinky little coupe wearing a fancy chauffeur’s uniform and in the rumble seat’s a great big raccoon. The chauffeur sits there deadpan, looking straight ahead. The raccoon leans out of the rumble seat and starts giving me a hard time.”
“You’re kidding,” said Max, knowing perfectly well he wasn’t.
“So help me God! The raccoon’s wearing a black felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a pink and green necktie with yellow spots on it. He’s puffing on this big cigar and he talks like Jimmy Cagney. And the chauffeur’s just sitting there. Finally it hits me, I’m having a fight with a raccoon. Then I catch on. Ifs a stuffed coon. The chauffeur’s a ventriloquist and he’s working its mouth and paws with wires or something. So I go up to the front window and say, Okay, wise guy, let’s see your driver’s license.
“So he still doesn’t look at me or say a word. He just holds out his hand with a card in it. I go to take the card and the whole hand comes with it. I’m standing there looking down at this hand and thinking. Oh my God, when the Chevy takes off like a bullet and there’s the raccoon leaning over the back of the rumble seat waving bye-bye. I ought to have shot the bastard’s tires out, but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t get my gun out. So I just waved back with his hand. I’ve still got the darn thing in my locker down at the station. D
o you think that was him?”
“I hope so,” said Max. “I’d hate to think there was another one like Wouter running around loose. Do you suppose we could get a little more light over here?”
“Sure, wait a second.”
Myre nipped over to the workbench, opened a drawer, and pulled out a large battery lantern. “I figured they’d have one like this around the place. Want me to hold it for you?”
“Just set it on the floor here, if you don’t mind, and see if you can find me a screwdriver or something.”
“I noticed one in the drawer.”
Myre brought back the tool and stood watching while Max probed gently at inch after inch of the concrete, like a dentist checking a patient’s teeth for sensitive spots. “What are you hunting for, Mr. Bittersohn?”
“I don’t know,” Max replied. “It just strikes me that a mere slab of concrete graffiti might be a fairly tame joke for a guy who could invent a talking raccoon.”
He went on peering and poking, occasionally using his pocket magnifier for a closer look at something that appeared to merit closer attention but turned out not to. At last he was down on his knees, his scholar’s robe making a dark puddle around his legs and picking up dust from the floor. Wouter’s literary efforts might have been amusing to those in the know, but Max was growing bored with inscriptions like JT LOVES ID, which JT couldn’t possibly if JT was one of the Tolbathys’ intelligent grandsons and ID was the obnoxious little Imogene Dork whom Max had last seen pouring maple syrup over her cousin James to sweeten him up at one of Aunt Appie’s awful gatherings. As far as he could see, he was getting nowhere except to the end of his patience.
Down at the right-hand corner, Wouter had chosen to finish off his cumbersome frolic with nothing more original than a lopsided heart not more than five or six inches high. Inside, Wouter must have used a nail or some small tool to print K.I. + C.K.
Max jumped to his feet, dusted off his robe, handed Sergeant Myre the screwdriver, and kicked the center of the heart. Instantly and silently, the entire back wall of the alcove swung out at a right angle to the car shed. Instead of scribbled-over concrete, the two men were looking at broad fields of green clover and a narrow bluestoned lane.
The Silver Ghost Page 6
