Banking on Death Page 13

  “Then what about the Schneiders?” countered Thatcher.

  “That’s different,” protested Ken, conscious of a strong desire to have the murderer far away and uninvolved with Jane’s family. Even the arrest of Grace could create all sorts of unpleasant repercussions in Framingham. “People like that don’t murder for $25,000. It doesn’t mean that much to them.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Thatcher darkly.

  “At any rate, they’re clear up in Framingham. I got the whole story of the evening from them. Arthur was on a Chicago-Boston flight which was rerouted to Washington because of the blizzard. He stayed at the Mayflower, and called his wife from there after he got in. Caused quite an upheaval. His daughter, Jane, drove into the airport early in the evening to meet him and spent the night there. They never did tell her that his plane had been rerouted. She finally called home in the small hours of the morning and her mother told her that her father was in Washington. I think it’s disgraceful,” said Ken with revealing heat, “that the airlines should let a young girl like that stay around all night when they must have known quite early that the plane she was meeting wouldn’t come in. A little consideration or even common decency.”

  “Ah, ha,” said Thatcher in some mischief, “then Arthur’s daughter has no alibi. She says she spent the night at the airport but can she prove it? Plenty of time for her to fly to Buffalo and swat Robert.”

  Ken was aghast. He was flooded by an alarm hitherto reserved for threats to his own interests and quite oblivious to Thatcher’s open amusement.

  “But the airport was closed,” he protested. “That’s why they rerouted Arthur’s plane. How could she fly to Buffalo?”

  “Well,” said Thatcher with heavy reasonableness, “they don’t usually close airports for twelve hours at a stretch. Usually it’s an on-again off-again business. Besides she wouldn’t have stayed there all night, if there had been no activity at all. She would have realized that the airport was closed if there had been no arrivals and departures all night. The airport must have been closed when Arthur’s plane would have landed, but reopened after that; so,” he concluded triumphantly, “she has no alibi.”

  “She called her mother,” said Ken desperately.

  “Ah, mothers. They always cover for their children.”

  Nicolls eyed his employer with suspicion. Clearly his leg was being pulled and he refused to rise to this new bait.

  “There is a good deal in what you say, sir,” he replied repressively.

  “Of course, all the heirs are worth a good deal of further inquiry,” said Thatcher fairmindedly. “I want a full-scale investigation into Martin’s finances and I want to know what Grace is hiding. We might contact our Washington representative and see if he knows anything about her credit standing. Although I could probably make a good guess at it right now. But she may be in even more hot water than I think.”

  Ken realized that Thatcher was no longer being deliberately provocative. He was now deadly earnest.

  “But we can’t really suspect people like that.”

  “On the contrary, my boy,” said Thatcher taking a lofty tone, “in our capacity as trustee for two small boys left fatherless by this murder, we can suspect anyone. And,” he added, coming down to earth with a malicious grin, “I experience no difficulty at all in doing precisely the same thing in my private capacity.”

  Chapter 12

  Joint Account

  Only a firm belief that blood is thicker than water explained why Arthur Schneider found himself irritably pacing up and down at South Station the following Thursday. He knew from experience that his sister Grace was not likely to be a pleasant or cooperative house guest: on the contrary, she would criticize his children, nag about the business, and generally make his life hell. It was small comfort to him that his wife could endure Grace’s thrusts with unruffled placidity: if Josephine only remarked—as she had every right to—”After all, she’s your sister,” Arthur could explain exactly why it was only right and proper that he maintain cordial relations with Grace, but since Josephine never once reproached him with this, he was denied the opportunity to explain the full extent of his virtue.

  He walked impatiently around the car on display. South Station looked like a big, cheap market. It was another grievance. Grace, for some obscure reason, could not trust herself to get off the train at the Route 128 station. She had interrupted his careful instructions and peremptorily directed that he be at South Station to meet her. Forty miles of driving in traffic, thought Arthur. Just like Grace.

  Something of his feelings must have been reflected in his expression when, a few minutes later, he made his way through the crowd clustered at Gate 16. Grace, transferring her fur coat to him, gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and then said, in clear ringing tones, “Good Lord, Arthur! What are you scowling at already?”

  Three sailors watched them with anticipation. Arthur repressed a sharp retort and said, “Good to see you Grace. How are Rowland and the children?”

  The sailors looked disappointed as Grace fell in beside him and they walked to Atlantic Avenue. By the time they reached the car, Arthur had found out that Rowland was still in the Canal Zone—Colonel Walworth was a great man for overseas assignments and a bad man for promotions, Martin had once observed. Arthur learned that son Philip was just getting into practice after having borrowed $7,000 from his father, and that daughter Naomi was to go to Europe for a year’s study of what Grace called The Voice.

  “I didn’t know she sang,” said Arthur incautiously. Grace settled herself in the car, took off her hat, and examined herself critically in a hand mirror before replying. “She has a very nice voice,” she said firmly. “Of course she needs more training. The man she’s with now was at the San Carlo Opera and he says that a year in Italy would make all the difference. Of course, she’ll want to make her debut there.”

  “Why can’t she come up to the New England Conservatory?”

  “Really, Arthur,” Grace cried in an affected voice, “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Naomi is certainly not going to bury herself in Boston!”

  Nothing was more calculated to enrage Arthur than his sister’s insistence upon a level of sophistication so exalted that anything connected with New England was suspect. Particularly since it was, and always had been, New England money that had paid for the deficits that occurred when a colonel’s wife wanted to live on a grand scale.

  “It’s going to cost you a good deal of money,” he was stung into commenting.

  “That’s exactly what I’m here for,” Grace said, triumphantly. “Arthur, I’ve been telling you all along that you don’t understand how enormous my expenses are, with the children and everything. You have no idea. Now if Naomi had a simple background, like Jane, the New England Conservatory might do. But after all, she’s been to school all over Europe and it does make a difference in what she expects.”

  The night before, Jane Schneider, normally the most helpful of daughters, had refused to postpone her extended weekend in New York even though it would entail a departure the morning after her aunt’s arrival. One evening was enough she had said, pointing out that it was too much to ask that she sit around for four days to listen to Aunt Grace compare her unfavorably to Naomi. “You see, Daddy, she has a real problem on her hands.”

  Arthur was forced to admit Jane was right. Naomi was a foxy-faced blonde with a tendency to weight. Their cousin Philip his children referred to as “The Beetle.” As for his brother-in-law, Arthur Schneider had always considered him mentally deficient. He glanced at Grace who was nervously stubbing out a half-smoked cigarette. Eye shadow and powder could not cover the deep shadows under her eyes; her fingers might be covered with rings, but they plucked incessantly at the gloves she held in her hands. She looked every one of her fifty years, despite what he suspected was an extremely expensive attempt at camouflage. “Yes,” he said untruthfully but conciliating, “I can see that it would be the right thing to do fo
r her.” He was about to inquire about Naomi’s voice, but Grace was not to be put off.

  “That’s why I have simply had to try, and try again to get some sense out of you and Martin,” she said accusingly. “I really don’t think you’ve been very sympathetic to my needs.”

  “Now Grace ...”

  “Don’t ‘now Grace’ me, Arthur. You know as well as I do that when I was trying to get some action from the Bank about the trust both of you simply avoided me. And now when I want to talk—very seriously, mind you—about the business, you have been trying to avoid me.”

  Despite his good intentions, Arthur felt his temper rise. “Absolute nonsense,” he snapped.

  “Absolute nonsense, hell!” Grace cut in, “I’ve been ringing your office every day this week and that miserable little creature keeps telling me that you’re busy in Boston. What were you doing in Boston, I’d like to know?”

  “I tried twice to call you back.”

  “Arthur, if you’re running around Boston doing Lord knows what, and Martin is sitting on his fanny in New York, trying to look like a Man of Distinction it’s no wonder that we can’t raise the dividends. And I intend to see that something is done about it.”

  Arthur honked his horn savagely at a truck that was blocking his way.

  “And don’t lose your temper, Arthur,” Grace said patronizingly. “Try to be reasonable about the whole thing for a change. Now that this miserable trust business has developed—and I’m just sick about it, I’m sure that if we had done something earlier all this could have been avoided—at any rate, now that it develops that we’re getting the $50,000 and no more, you and Martin and I are simply going to have to do something about raising the dividends. Martin agrees with me.”

  “Well, if you and Martin can figure out just how we’re going to be raising our dividends while our earnings are going down, and we still have to pay the bank over a million dollars,” Arthur snarled, “I for one would be grateful. Damn grateful.”

  “Martin said that if we did more research...” Grace began.

  Arthur again exploded while interrupting her. “My Lord! Grace, don’t you understand English? How the hell is spending money on research going to bring our earnings up?” he shouted. “And where are we going to get the money to do more research. Can’t you see that it means putting money in, not taking it out. And we don’t have it.”

  “Well, why not?” Grace said, using a tone of voice suited to recalcitrant children.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Arthur said savagely. “It’s your precious Martin. If he could keep our sales where they were five years ago—not increase them, mind you, but keep them level—we could keep our gross up. And do some development work.” He glared ahead.

  Grace gave her brother a long, hard look. Martin Henderson was part of the world in which she had chosen to live: non-New England, non-Framingham. But despite a perpetual contempt and fury with Arthur, she knew that she could trust him as she could not trust Martin. Or, she admitted to herself, Rowland.

  “Are you serious, Arthur?” she said in a steely voice.

  “Don’t know why they can’t plow these streets,” he muttered as he pulled into the single lane left by the piles of snow on Boylston Street. “What did you say? Yes, of course, I’m serious. I only wish I weren’t. I only wish that we could get rid of Martin.”

  “I thought he was doing a good job. I mean,” Grace said authoritatively if incoherently, “the New York office, and everything.”

  “I’ve explained this to you time and time again, and I’ll explain it again now: from 1945 to 1952, anybody who wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind could have sold felt. That,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “that was when you let Martin talk you into backing him up when he insisted on moving the sales office to New York. It added $160,000 a year to our costs. Since 1952 things have been getting a good deal tighter, and our New York office now costs us $200,000 a year.” He bit off his words, paused, and then added, “And it isn’t worth a damn.”

  “You’re not exaggerating, are you, Arthur? To impress me?” Grace said narrowing her eyes.

  “Good Lord, Grace, sometimes I wonder how your mind works. No, I am not exaggerating. The paper industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and Martin not only hasn’t got us any new customers, he’s letting us lose our old ones. such as Wisconsin Paper and Novelty.”

  Grace listened with unaccustomed intentness, as he went on in a grim voice.

  “You won’t know this I am sure, but they’ve been Schneider customers since 1905. And we’re in some danger of losing their contracts. I went out to talk to them a few weeks ago. I just hope it wasn’t too late.” He concentrated on his driving, and then said, “Do you realize that that fool never went to Beloit to talk to them. That he dealt with them when their Bill Carlson came to New York by taking him to fancy restaurants. But he just couldn’t be bothered to go to Wisconsin.”

  “Of course, I’ve never really liked Martin,” Grace said thoughtfully.

  Arthur glowered at a hapless pedestrian who had strayed into the street in front of his car. “What difference does it make if you like him or not? We’re stuck with him. And when Hilda goes, we’ll be more stuck with him than ever.”

  “He gets only non-voting stock doesn’t he?” Grace asked.

  “Thank Lord for that,” Arthur said. “But he’s head of our sales division, and we won’t be able to get him out unless we buy him out. Which we can’t. And I am telling you once for all, I am very seriously worried about the way our sales are going.”

  Brother and sister relapsed into silence after the speech. Arthur was irate with himself for having been prodded, as he always was by Grace, into losing his temper; Grace deep was also deep thought. The five years that separated them in age did not emphasize the difference between them so much as did subtler distinctions. Grace was unmistakably clothed, and very smartly, in New York; Arthur Schneider in Boston. But as they sat in silence in the car, the family similarity emerged. Both compressed their lips in the same way as they thought; both had the trick of raising the lower lid of their eye when they were worried. And they were both worried.

  As they waited for the light in front of the John Hancock Building to turn to green, Grace looked at Arthur, and then broke the silence. “We could really have used that money from Robert’s share of the trust, couldn’t we?”

  Arthur shrugged his shoulders, and laughed shortly. “Every little bit helps, of course, but in terms of the business it wouldn’t have made any real difference. We really need to get a couple of big contracts, and then everything will be all right.”

  Grace pulled her bag open, and rummaged for a cigarette. “It really is remarkable how bad our luck is,” she said bitterly. “On top of everything else, to have this miserable Robert turn up with a wife and children.” Arthur remained silent, and she continued in a dissatisfied tone of voice. “Of course I really don’t remember all the fuss, but I do remember him as a boy. There was some trouble up at Dartmouth wasn’t there?”

  “He was expelled for something or other,” Arthur said.

  “Martin said it was for getting a girl in trouble.”

  “Martin would,” Arthur replied.

  Grace looked disapprovingly at Copley Square as they inched through it and commented. “Let’s see, that was after Carl shot himself, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Arthur abruptly. Neither he, nor his late father liked to be reminded that Carl Schneider had committed suicide. Grace, for some reason or other, seemed to enjoy harping on it. She probably discussed it at cocktail parties, Arthur thought. As for himself, he acquitted himself and his father of any guilt. They bought out his uncle Carl when it became obvious that working with him would be impossible. His subsequent suicide had nothing to do with the business. But, he did not like to contemplate the kind of nervous instability that led to suicide in one’s own uncle. But Grace seemed to find it exciting. She was rambling on.

  “... in one’s family. People don’t j
ust disappear.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Robert, of course,” she said, her voice slightly sharpened with macabre relish. “And the murder. The police didn’t know anything about him, or what he had been doing. It really makes you wonder. I mean about what kind of life he had been leading. After all, he was our own cousin.”

  Grace, Arthur remembered irritably as he stopped at the light in front of the Public Library, always enjoyed the dramatic. He glanced over at her; even her eyes brightened somewhat as she went on. “I think it is really disgraceful that we don’t know anything about what he did. I don’t even know where he worked.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Really, Arthur! Your own cousin murdered and you aren’t human enough to admit that you are interested in him.” Her voice rising in excitement grated on his ears.

  “I don’t see that having my own cousin murdered is a thing that I want to talk about or think about.”

  “Really you are the limit. Positively Victorian. I think it’s perfectly fascinating. His father kills himself, the son is murdered. It’s like one of those plays about a cursed family.”

  “I don’t go to plays about families with curses.”

  Grace laughed shrilly, then said, “Seriously, Arthur, I am dying with curiosity to find out more about," and she paused. “I have an idea. Why don’t you park for a minute?”

  “What?” he said, as he accelerated.

  “No, no,” she cried, “park the car! And we can go into the Library and read the Buffalo papers.

  They must tell all about him. About the wife, and I think there was another woman," and she paused again. Oh Arthur!”

  “You are a ghoul, Grace,” Arthur snapped. “We certainly will not go into the library to read about the murder of our cousin.” He was genuinely upset.

  A flush still on her normally pale cheeks, Grace frowned slightly, and then turned to give her brother a long, thoughtful look.

  “Now what?” he said.