by P. N. Elrod
Barrett was obviously uncomfortable, but Laura appeared not to notice and settled in at her dressing table to brush out her thick, straight hair. Her loosely tied bathrobe was starting to come apart with the activity. She didn’t bother to correct things. Barrett had called her a child, and so she must have been five years ago—not anymore. Her every movement indicated the confident maturity of a young woman who knows she is desirable.
He gently took the hairbrush from her hand, wanting her undivided attention. He’d finally worked himself up to say something, and it seemed pretty important. I ground my teeth, wishing I could read lips.
As he spoke, Laura’s face grew cool and lost all expression. She studied her reflection in the mirror above the table. Barretts’ own lack of reflection in it was nothing new to her, either. He ran out of words eventually and waited for some reaction. Rudy was replaced by Bing Crosby before the girl smiled and sighed out a reply.
Barretts’ mouth opened; he was surprised and relieved at once. Their talk continued, apparently along the lines of questions and reassurances until both were smiling. He relaxed, lighter looking now that his errand was out of the way, and watched as she retrieved her brush and resumed work on her hair.
Her robe was still more than a little loose and her movements opened it wider. He spoke to her and she looked up and smiled at his concern. She had wonderfully large eyes, the kind that were made for men to get lost in. For all his age and experience, Barrett was no less vulnerable to them than anyone else, myself included. His hand went out and softly stroked the length of her shining hair.
She liked it but was content only to look at him and to wait for his next move. He obviously wanted her, his expression made that plain enough, but not just yet. He stood up, murmured something, and let himself out the door. She stared after him, then turned back to the mirror to smile patiently at herself. As far as she was concerned, his upcoming seduction was a foregone conclusion.
The car was at a slight tilt where it rested off the shoulder of the road. The night-shadowed landscape beyond the windshield looked askew from where I was sitting, which more or less suited my state of mind.
I talked and Escott smoked and listened, getting an earful. My description of the house and staff lacked for no detail, but when I got around to Barrett’s relationship with Emily and Laura, I did some self-conscious editing. Escott noticed, but chose not to comment on what was left out, and kept puffing on his pipe. He continued to do so long after I’d wound down and stopped.
“Well?” I asked. The crickets out in the woods had held the floor long enough. “What do you think?”
His pipe had gone dead. Frowning absently, he tapped it empty and pocketed it for the time being. “I think this needs more study,” he stated.
“More study?”
“But you’ve done some excellent groundwork.” He paged through my scribbled notes, looking at each name. “I’ll get busy with these tomorrow and try to follow up on the destination of Maureen’s departing cab.”
He saw my disappointment and added, “Our other alternative is to wait indefinitely on Barrett.”
We’d given him the name of our Manhattan hotel and the mailing address in Chicago so he could send us word of Maureen. To me, it was nothing more than manners with no substance. We went through the motions, but I didn’t believe anything would come of it.
“The hell with that,” I growled.
Escott nodded agreement and started the car.
The next night I woke up in a strange room, which is very disorienting when you don’t expect it, and I didn’t.
My trunk was shoved against a wall too close for the lid to hinge back so I had to sieve my way out. I spent a few seconds gaping at the change of scene, then called to Escott to demand an explanation, except he wasn’t there to provide one. He hadn’t left a note, but since his suitcase was making creases in the homemade quilt on one of the tidy beds, it was reasonable to expect him back sometime soon. He knew my habits.
I was surrounded by dark, heavy furniture, old-fashioned wallpaper, framed scenes of us winning the American Revolution, and handmade rugs. Outside and one story down were huge trees, a gravel drive, cut lawn, fresh air, and a picturesque white picket fence. We were probably not in Manhattan.
The stationery on a tall bureau introduced me to the Glenbriar Inn of Glenbriar, Long Island, and a thin brochure pointed out sites of historical interest. It was so absorbing I dropped it flat the second Escott keyed the door and walked in.
“I was a bit delayed,” he apologized. “I’d hoped to be back earlier in order to soften the shock.”
“Too bad, I’ve used up all my double takes for the night. You missed a beaut when I came out and found this. What’s with the move?”
“I thought it necessary and more convenient to the investigation if we could be closer to the Francher estate. This village happens to be where they do most of their local business.”
“It must have been a million laughs getting me and the trunk upstairs.”
“I had help, but I’d rather not go into details at the present.” Slowly and painfully, he stretched out on the other, uncluttered bed, and I noticed that he was looking very green at the edges.
“You all right?”
“As well as can be expected after imbibing large amounts of coffee, tea, and beer, mixed with sweetbreads, biscuits, pretzels, and salted nuts.”
I looked down with sympathetic horror. He managed not to groan or clutch his aching stomach, though he had every right to do so.
“Any reason why you put away all that stuff, or do you just go into a fit now and then?”
“The tearooms, inns, and pubs of this tour-minded place require plenty of custom if you expect to learn any of the local gossip. Did you know William Cullen Bryant used to live not far from here? They have a pair of his spectacles on display in a tearoom museum, which was urgently recommended to me as a pleasant diversion for the day.”
“His spectacles?” I echoed, trying to sound impressed.
“Indeed.”
“Well, well. Who’d have thought it?”
“Indeed.”
“Charles . . .”
He raised one hand so I could bear with him one more time. “Tell me, who was William Cullen Bryant?”
“Editor of the New York Evening Post back in the last century.”
“No relation to the orator of the Scopes trial?”
“That was William Jennings Bryan, not Bryant.” I wondered just how much he’d had to drink.
He shut his eyes and gave in to a shudder. “Have you ever tried to turn a conversation around from spectacles to house fires?”
I admitted that I’d never had the opportunity.
“It does require some skill in order not to get caught at it. If people sense you are eager to learn something specific, you end up with too much information or none at all. Let them talk on their own and you learn everything you need.”
“How can you have too much information?”
“Many feel the plain truth is too plain and requires embroidery.”
“Does this mean you got more dope on the Franchers?”
“A good deal, mixed up with a half dozen other families, but the fire was an excellent point on which to focus their attention. It was quite the nine-day wonder, and once the subject had been introduced, one thing led to another.”
“So tell me already.”
Eyes shut and hands cradling his head, he began talking to the ceiling. “Violet Francher, the mother who died in the fire, was quite the proper and respectable dowager, but of the sort best admired from a distance. She had a sharp tongue, a temper bordering on the apoplectic, and I need hardly mention she had a difficult time keeping servants for very long.
“She was alone the night of the fire, as her housekeeper left her employ some three days earlier. Daughter Emily, ward Laura, and Mr. Barrett were all at their own house. Laura usually stayed with Violet during her spring holiday from school, but had mo
ved in with Emily until a new housekeeper could be hired. The general consensus is the girl was very lucky, or she might have died along with her guardian.”
“It took place at night?”
“I’m glad you noticed that. I found it of extreme interest in conjunction with some other facts.”
“What are they?”
“I’m coming to them.”
“Why wasn’t the old lady at the daughter’s house as well?”
“I’m coming to that, too. Sometime in January—this is in 1931—Emily hired Mr. Jonathan Barrett as her secretary. They met at a party given by Violet, who still attempted to maintain some touch with society. Barrett came as a guest of a guest, had no real references, but was obviously educated and cultured. Not long after his hiring, the rumors started that something was ‘going on’ between him and Emily. They circulated the servants’ hall and into the town and eventually made their way back to Violet, who was all moral outrage.
“She immediately made her views known in considerable detail to her daughter, and the upshot was that Barrett had to go. Much to her shock and surprise, Emily flatly refused. For the next few months, neither woman spoke to the other, and when they did, they were usually trading salvos over Barrett.”
“How did he handle all this?”
“He kept in the neutral background as much as possible. He turned down the most outrageous bribes, though the question was raised as to whether Violet actually had the money. He survived the investigations of a private detective hired to find something, anything from his past that might be used to influence Emily against him—”
“What about his influence on Emily?”
He got my double meaning. “Hypnosis is a possibility, but I put much stock in the fact that Emily was genuinely in love with him. Your report of last night’s rendezvous makes that a virtual certainty.”
“Unless they were both faking it.”
“Granted, but to return—”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“All her efforts having failed to budge him, Violet assembled a trio of psychiatrists in need of funds for the purpose of having Emily declared mentally incompetent—”
“What?”
“A tactic that had every chance of working. After all, Emily did suffer one nervous breakdown years ago, why should she not suffer another?”
“Suffer is right, her mother must have been . . .” I was at a loss. Calling her crazy didn’t seem strong enough.
“Right round the twist?” he queried. “Agreed. This was a woman who wanted and usually did exercise total control over those around her—particularly over her daughter.”
“So what happened with the doctors?”
“It all fell through because of the fire and her death.”
“Very convenient for Barrett.”
“Yes, and something else struck me as convenient and suggestively odd: in the newspaper accounts of the fire not one of them mentions his name.”
I chewed that one over. “He’d naturally want a low profile. . . .”
“Low to nonexistent. Also, there was no gossip connecting him to the tragedy. If anything, some people felt Violet had brought it upon herself—‘God’s judgment’ for having such a foul temper and that sort of thing.”
“But you think he did it?”
“I think,” he said after a moment, “that if it was not an accident, then any of three people could have done it—or perhaps all three or any combination. Barrett is the most likely, more so than Emily or Laura.”
“Laura was just a kid at the time.”
“Remember that story I told you about the grandmother, her cat and the two homicidal grandchildren?”
I made an appropriate noise to indicate it was not something I was likely to forget. “What’s her motive, though?”
“Violet Francher’s overbearing personality? One cannot choose one’s relatives.”
“You could add a fourth, the housekeeper who quit.”
“Ah, but she was very much elsewhere learning the duties of her job some ten miles away. On the other hand, that frayed wire could just as easily have been tampered with days earlier and left as a sort of waiting bomb, or the whole thing could have been an accident, after all.”
“Look, is this anything we can really use?”
“It is knowledge, usable or not. Only time will reveal its value to us.”
“So now what?”
Most of the green in his gills had faded and his eyes were sparking with new energy when he opened them. “We take a ride in a cab.”
“We—you found the cab?”
“More important, I found the driver. His name is John Henry Banks and he is president, owner, and sole employee of Banks Cab Company. And”—he glanced at his watch—“he is due here in fifteen minutes.”
“You talked with him?”
“I made an appointment by phone for him to pick us up.”
“How in hell did you find him?”
“Sometimes in this type of work antic coincidence plays its part. One of the men I talked with today was part of the demolition and cleanup crew that worked on the burned Francher house. He mentioned that the day before they started the job, his cousin John Henry had been called out to the estate to pick up a fare. It should give you an idea of how exciting the pace of life is in Glenbriar that something so trivial is remembered.”
“But it’s a break for us.”
“We shall see.”
At seven-thirty a blue-and-yellow checkered cab pulled up outside the inn and a little brown man in gray work clothes and a peaked cap got out and stumped up to the front door.
“Call for Escott!” he bellowed, poking his head just inside.
I hoped Escott hadn’t wanted a low profile for himself. If so, then John Henry Banks had just shot it all to hell. We’d already gotten a few curious looks from the desk clerk. Correction, I had gotten the looks. Escott had both our names on the register, but he’d been the only one they’d seen up till now. The clerk was giving me a fishy eye, trying to figure out where I’d come from.
We followed Banks out and Escott told him to drive to the edge of town. It took him all of one minute.
“Now where to?” he asked, looking at us from the rear-view mirror. I was squeezed flat against the door, but he got puzzled about the empty spot I should have been in and twisted around to make sure I was still aboard. Escott distracted him before things got out of hand.
“Mr. Banks, I have a question for you. . . .”
“Eh?”
“I need to know if you can recall a fare you picked up five years ago.”
He gawked at us. He had a square face with a sharp nose and chin, thin brown hair, and large, innocent brown eyes. “You serious? Five years? I don’t keep those kind of records, mister.”
“Have you ever picked up a fare from the Francher estate?”
He started to roll his eyes and shake his head but stopped midway. “Here now, the Franchers’? The place where the old lady was burned up?”
“The same.”
“I maybe could remember,” he hazarded, his eyes flicking meaningfully to the running meter.
Escott smiled. “I’m sure you will, Mr. Banks, given the time. It’s a fine cool night out and this country air is quite refreshing.” He sat back in the seat as if it were part of a drawing room and he had all night to listen.
Banks responded with a grin. “Okay, as a matter of fact, I do remember that one.”
“Please tell us about it.”
“Why do you want to know?”
Escott now looked at the meter. “Then again, this air can be too much of a good thing. I shouldn’t like to catch a chill, so perhaps we should return immediately to the inn. . . .”
Banks caught on fast. “Well, I was in my office—which is my house—and got his call. It’s just me and the one car, you know, and business is pretty thin, so I’m open all the time. Anyway, this call comes telling me to come up to the Francher place, which I never been to befor
e on account of the old lady and her daughter being rich with their own cars don’t need any cabs. Course by then the old lady got burned up in the fire, my cousin Willie was gonna help tear down the old house—”
“The phone call, Mr. Banks?” Escott gently urged.
“Oh, yeah. I got out there, had to argue my way past Mayfair’s wife—she’s the housekeeper there, and what a temper she’s got. You’d think she owned the place the way she throws her weight around. She went to call the house to see if anyone wanted a cab, and when she got back she looked like she’d just bit a bad lemon. Mayfair let me through and I drove up and saw the house—the burned one, and what a mess that was—”
Escott raised an eyebrow.
“Oh. Well. I got to the other house, the new place that the daughter had built, and there was this lady standing out front waiting—”
“What’d she look like?” I asked.
“I dunno. She was little, dark clothes, wore one of them hats so you couldn’t see her face.”
“With a veil?” Maureen often wore one to shade her eyes from the afterglow of sunset.
“Yeah. Looked like a widow at a funeral. She had a trunk, but I always keep some rope handy for stuff like that. It was some trouble I had trying to tie the thing in place—”
“Where did she want to go? What did she say to you?”
“She hardly said nothing, just told me to load the trunk on and to take her to Port Jefferson as quickly as I could.”
“Where’s that?”
“That’s what threw me, too. I expected it to be at least to Queens, and this place is nearly sixty miles away in the opposite direction. It’s along the north shore of the island. I asked if she was sure, and she nodded and got inside and told me to hurry it up.”
“She was nervous?”
“I guess so. She seemed plenty interested in getting going.”
“Was she afraid?”
“Dunno. Who could tell with that black stuff covering her face? All I can tell you for sure was that she was in a hurry.”
