Touch and Go

‘Apparently she met and married him soon after coming to New York. He’s a spic—sorry, a Spanish or Mexican American. Didn’t take to him myself …’

‘But he’s married to Muriel’s trusted companion so he gets a job on the staff. And the others?’

‘Just a girl who did the cleaning and gave Mrs Hermanos help in the kitchen. There was no need for more servants, Mrs Probert was ill, she never entertained, and the building itself has its own security staff, doormen and concierge—well, you know how we live in New York nowadays …’

‘I don’t but I can guess. That’s why you’re so sure of Muriel’s comings and goings?’

Van Gryson shrugged. ‘Makes it a lot easier to keep track of people’s movements. No one could get in or out of that lobby without being spotted. If there had been visitors they would have been announced. There was no one during those last two weeks except the doctor and the nurse he’d engaged.’

‘Just the one nurse?’

‘That was all he considered necessary—and only for night duty. During the day Mrs Probert insisted that Florence look after her. And, as you seem to have a suspicious mind, Lennox, there was nothing in the death itself or the manner of it to justify further investigation. All Mrs Probert’s medical records were always available to us as her financial advisers. She had cancer, neither the operations nor the chemotherapy could save her, and the nursing during her last days was meticulously documented. She had drugs to alleviate pain but in the end it was the disease which killed her.’

Perhaps Van Gryson thought such pain-speaking was necessary but he had been surprised to see his breakfast companion wince.

‘I’m sorry, Dale,’ Kemp said after a pause. ‘My curiosity for the moment overcame my better feelings. I’m sure Muriel’s death was due to natural causes as they’re called, although cancer to me has always carried the connotation of an evil thing working in the dark, a malignancy at odds with the good … I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘it’s just that I’m trying to see the Muriel I knew, and wondering how she would have reacted to her impending death. I think she did right when she came to you and made that first will. Never mind whatever other pressure she was under, all the riches and luxurious living she had gained for herself had been through Leo Probert. She was not a woman who liked power over others. There was an essential sweetness in her nature. She would have been unhappy with the consequences of that power. Whatever you may think of the characters of her late husband’s partners, the first will is a fair one.’

‘You’re saying it should stand?’

Kemp had laughed. ‘I’m in a cleft stick,’ he said. ‘I mean what I have just said. On the other hand, I’m a lawyer like yourself, and we have been taught, have we not, that a testator’s wishes must be paramount? And if we can be certain what those wishes were we have to use all our powers to uphold them. Oh, I appreciate the tricky position your firm would be in if it had to come to court—two trustees of a will in dereliction of their duty towards a client …’

This time it was Van Gryson who winced. ‘Too damned right it wouldn’t look good, but we could ride that one out. Sure, if we’d known about that visit of Mrs Probert either Julius or I would have been round there on the hour to see what the hell was going on, was she in her right mind, or was it just a whim … But there’s worse things where we have to operate, Lennox. It’s Prester John Madison and his cronies we have to worry about. There’s going to be one helluva row from that quarter if they find out there’s another will. They’ve got plenty of shyster lawyers in their pockets, and they’re not above using strong-arm methods.’

‘Dear me. How different from the home-life of the English judiciary … Sorry, I can see it wouldn’t be a joking matter. Have you managed to stave them off so far?’

‘Prester John’s too smart an operator to go in with all guns firing at this stage. But don’t think there haven’t been hints. Julius is dealing with them. The estate will take time to be wound up, blah blah … legatees have to be traced, etcetera etcetera, and there’s always the goddamned taxes to the government to be settled. Oh, we can give them the runaround for a while yet.’

At that point Van Gryson had leant forward and said with the utmost seriousness: ‘You see how it is. No one must know about the other will back home in New York. Miss Janvier won’t talk, that’s for sure. It was her blunder and she doesn’t want it advertised. The two witnesses are dumbos—they can hardly remember whose will it was anyway, and they’re not being encouraged to try. And we whisked that file copy out of the cabinet before anyone got a peek at it. Believe you me, Lennox, we’ve been thorough.’

‘So it seems. Which only leaves me. You didn’t really have to contact me at all, did you, Dale, unless you had found the original of the second will?’

Van Gryson had assumed his honest counsellor’s face, candid to the point of piety.

‘Ethics of the profession, Lennox. Straight dealing as between men of the law. Julius Eikenberg and I, we discussed the situation at length and came to the conclusion it was only right that you should be told. No, we didn’t have to tell you. We couldn’t afford even to hint at it in a letter. Instead, I came over specially to put it to you.’

Once you had me summed up, Kemp thought, and found me maverick enough to just possibly do whatever you might find expedient in the future.

To take the American off his soapbox for a moment, he had murmured: ‘You really couldn’t afford not to. You’d have been pretty hard-pressed for an explanation if the second will, all neatly typed up on your firm’s paper and still in its special envelope, was discovered stuck up the chimney after you’d already disposed of the assets in accordance with the terms of the first …’

‘There aren’t any chimneys,’ said Van Gryson tersely, deciding to ignore the rest of Kemp’s perfectly cogent observation. ‘And there were no loose floorboards in any of the rooms or loose tiles in the bathroom. We inventoried all the furniture, gave us the excuse to rake the whole place over. You couldn’t have hid a matchstick in that apartment.’

‘I still think you should investigate those servants.’

Van Gryson’s eyes were bland. ‘You thinking of coming over and doing it for us?’

Kemp had shrunk back in horror at the suggestion.

‘Not me! It’s only in fiction that the hero hops on a plane and does his stuff in a foreign city. I can’t even read a street map of London, never mind find my way to the subway in New York. No, I’m staying right here where I belong. But it mightn’t be a bad idea if you employed a private eye—is that what they’re still called over there?’

Dale Van Gryson put on a sly look. He pursed his lips rather primly.

‘Mr Eikenberg has that in hand. We’re keeping an eye on anyone who was around at the time of Mrs Probert’s death. The rental on the apartment’s paid for another three months and we’ve retained the servants as caretakers. I admit you’ve got me a bit rattled on Mrs Hermanos. Seemed a nice woman to me …’

‘I tend to be suspicious of nice women. And it might be a good idea to have another talk with that doctor. Sound him out on Muriel’s state of mind … And the night nurse too, you haven’t said much about her.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. She came from a highly reputable agency, and had been recommended by the doctor himself. We didn’t get to speak to her as she’s gone upstate to nurse her own mother who is dying, but don’t worry, we’ll get round to her in due course. We do have some very discreet people we use from time to time on the financial side of matrimonial cases, that kind of thing … No, I don’t think we’d call them private eyes. We have to be careful, you know, we’re a very respectable firm.’

‘Whatever you call them, I’d be obliged, Dale, if you could let me see their reports, if any. After all, I’m an interested party … even under that first will I get a ruby necklace.’

‘Those damned rubies!’ Van Gryson exclaimed. ‘D’you know what happened? They were safe in her bank up till a few weeks before she died, then on one of her trips to the hospital she goes and gets them out. The bank showed us the receipt. Now they’ve vanished into thin air.’

‘I put my money on the butler,’ Kemp had said, cheerfully before the two men went their separate ways. ‘In English detective fiction it’s always the butler who dunnit.’

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_a208e7b2-61e7-53af-897e-dad16cbf3f64)

The first contributions to what Kemp liked to call his Letters from America arrived at the same time as an area of high pressure also from across the Atlantic which brought hot weather to Newtown in mid-July. The compliments slip from Eikenberg & Lazard seemed to distance itself from the other contents despite being marked by the initials ‘DVG’, the envelope itself was designated Private and Confidential and sent to Kemp’s home address. He felt like the recipient of subversive mail.

There were photostat copies of five reports, two by Alfred Orme and three by Bernard Shulman. Fortunately the package had arrived on a Saturday morning so Kemp was able to spread them out between the butter dish and the marmalade jar and give them his whole attention.

Glancing over the typescript, Kemp guessed that Alfred Orme must be as old as his machine—surely no one had called a child Alfred for some fifty years. Reading confirmed this, the style was pedestrian and the material set out without frills in a manner with which Kemp was familiar as he had perused plenty of police statements which had the same lack of literary merit. Orme was probably a retired officer augmenting his pension by doing routine investigative work for legal firms. He would be thorough and discreet but possibly unimaginative. He was no great typist judging by the pepper-and-salt effect on the paper which hadn’t been improved by photocopying.

The first report was dated 7.2.89. which Kemp took a moment to work out; he could never see why Americans, who were supposed to be logical people, should put the month first, then the day, then the year.

Tuesday, July 2—Report by Alfred Orme

Called at Argus Automobiles, a firm known to me as a reputable rental car agency. Spoke with Frank Miner, aged forty-two, clean licence, no police record, employed by Argus five years. No complaints by employers. Wears chauffeur’s uniform, peaked cap, a clean, tidy, well-set-up man of honest appearance.

Showed no reluctance to answering questions about Mrs Muriel Probert when I disclosed my interest as an old friend of the deceased who had lost touch and been shocked to hear of her death. As instructed, I produced photograph. Though taken over two years ago Miner recognized it immediately, commenting the subject was thinner and the features more lined when he knew her. During the last six months he had driven Mrs Probert to the Mount Sinai Medical Centre at least once a week.

Engaging him in conversation Miner said she was a nice lady, and talked to him when she was well enough. Because he had been sympathetic to her condition it got that he was the driver she always asked for. (Confirmed by Mr Sherrett, Manager for Argus, who said Miner was in fact the only driver Mrs Probert would have.)

‘Did Mrs Probert make calls anywhere else on these trips?’ I asked Miner.

‘Not often. Lately hardly at all except mebbe she’d ask me to stop at her bank—that’s Chase up by the hospital. Early on she used to do some shopping and get me to wait at the department stores for her. But not for the last month or so. She got pretty low what with the treatment and all …’

‘I just wondered why she didn’t stop off and visit with some of her old friends.’

‘I suppose the treatments just tired her out … I’d help her into the cab when the nurse at the hospital brought her down, and all she’d do was wrap that Scotch rug of hers round her knees and say: “Get me home quick, Frank.” She’d probably just about had enough. She weren’t in no fit state to go visiting.’

‘I brought the conversation round to the weeks immediately prior to Mrs Probert’s death. Miner remembered she’d visited her bank. It had been cold and she’d put the rug round her shoulders when she went in because she said she might have to wait, and she had it over her arm when she came out. (I didn’t press the questions here as I understand the visit to the bank has been confirmed.) My instructions were not to arouse any suspicion in Mr Miner that this was anything more than the concern of an old friend. He volunteered the information about the rug because he’d told Mrs Probert that his aunt had brought one like it from Scotland, but it did give me the opportunity to ask if Mrs Probert was ever forgetful and left it in his cab. He was indignant at that and said she was never forgetful—and not like some of his passengers.

I then asked him about her last visit to the hospital. Without any prompting from me Miner told me what happened.

‘Surprised me no end when she wanted me to make a stop on the way home. I’d taken her to the hospital, usual time of two o’clock. I was to be back same time as always, three-thirty. Nasty day, it was, there’d been snow and the streets were slushy, so I was a bit late getting back but it didn’t matter, she wasn’t ready anyhow. When she did come out the nurse had to help her. She looked really done up. Anyways, once in the car she said to take her to these lawyers, Eikenberg and something, and gave me the address. Like I said, it were slow driving so it must have been well after five when we got there. I got her out of the cab and in at the door but she wouldn’t let me take her no further. Said I’d just to wait. She weren’t in there more’n half an hour. When she came out I helped her into the car and drove her back to her apartment.’

As this was the last time Miner had driven Mrs Probert I was able to press his memory of the occasion.

‘I guess she knew it were the last time,’ he said, and he shakes his head.