Accounting for Murder Read online

  “Let them fight,” snapped Mary finally, with none of her normal good temper. “Let them scream like fishwives!” The description was apt; Mason, a man habitually responsive to any show of force, was for once flicked on the raw, and like a cornered rabbit was raging with a strength beyond his wont. Fortinbras, Mary saw at a glance, was an old warrior, reveling in combat, and, she would guess, usually successful at it.

  Their voices had risen to an inhuman mechanical level when Allen Hammond and Morris Richter strolled into the office, and stopped dead in their tracks. Mary pushed a lock of hair from her forehead and, for once abandoning the businesslike manner she prided herself on, turned to greet them with genuine relief. Allen Hammond, in fact, took an instinctive step toward her, a smiling question in his eyes.

  “Allen, do something,” she hissed. She might have shouted for all that the combatants would have noticed.

  “Good God!” he said tearing his eyes from her as he resumed his advance into the room, Richter at his heels. He looked startled and slightly amused at the amount of noise that Fortinbras and Mason were creating. “What is this?”

  Pausing to catch his breath, Mason noticed the newcomers. “This madman claims that somebody has been stealing his papers. Stealing, do you hear me!” he stuttered.

  “Madman, is it?” roared Fortinbras.

  “Please, Mr. Mason, do control yourself,” Mary said.

  “Uncle Chas,” Hammond said, taken aback by Mason’s uncharacteristic forcefulness.

  “I tell you the man’s a raving idiot,” said Chip Mason. “I’m not going to put up with it.”

  Both Allen and Mary were standing fascinated by the unexpected determination in Mason’s voice when Richter contributed his bit to the exchange. “Did Fortinbras find anything wrong with the books?” he asked in a stage whisper of nobody at all. His serious face was composed into an expression of considered inquiry. Mason was about to blast him, when Hammond roused himself.

  “Now let’s just calm down,” he said with an air of command that his uncle envied. “Exactly what is the matter, sir?” he asked, turning to Fortinbras courteously.

  The calm good sense of his voice was not without effect. Mason took a deep breath, and Fortinbras, remembering himself, grasped the opportunity to abandon the slugging match with Mason.

  “I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” he said, forcefully but with control. “Somebody has entered my office and purloined some papers.”

  Richter then undid Allen’s good work by allowing himself a professional chuckle.

  “ ‘Purloined,’ ” he said lightly when they turned to look at him. “It’s a rather odd word, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, you find it amusing?” said Fortinbras, reinvigorated by this fresh folly. “Well, let me tell you that there is nothing funny about the fact that somebody has entered my office, disrupted my carefully arranged work, and stolen—yes, Mr. Mason, I said stolen—papers. Your uncle tells me that no one was on the premises, and I discover Mr. Blaney lurking around! This is an attempt to interrupt, if not to disrupt entirely, my work, and I have no intention . . .”

  “Surely,” Hammond interrupted persuasively, while Mary and Stanley suppressed groans, “surely,” he continued, “there isn’t any real evidence of theft. And then, there is no real reason to steal papers . . .”

  “Young man,” began Fortinbras, his voice again mounting with emotion, when another spectator drifted up. Mrs. Cobb, coming into the front office on some errand, stopped short at the door.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked with a slightly alarmed glance at the popeyed expression worn by Mason. She did not raise her voice, but again the intrusion of a newcomer shifted the focus of attention. “Has there been an accident?” she asked, advancing into the room.

  “There has not been an accident,” said Fortinbras, who had a gift for seizing the initiative. “There has been a crime!”

  She raised her eyebrows as if deprecating the violence with which he spoke, but he turned back to Mason. “And I insist, do you hear me? I insist that you take immediate steps to investigate this—this outrage.”

  This ultimatum, and no one could deny it was one, was followed by a pregnant silence. Mason, his hands shaking, opened his mouth, then shut it, still incapable of controlling his furious anger at Fortinbras’s accusations. Hammond, frankly puzzled, was casting looks of inquiry at Mary Sullivan who was taut with disapproval. Richter, rendered wary by Fortinbras’s attack on him, maintained a prudent silence, while Stanley Draper was simply unhappy. Only Mrs. Cobb remained self-possessed. She was about to press for further details, when an unhappy fate intervened.

  Its pawn was Barney Young, Assistant Division Manager of Government Contracts, a rotund, placid man, normally slow of movement and restrained in his speech.

  “You’re all here,” he cried joyfully as he burst into the room, an idiotic smile on his rotund face. Grinning broadly, he advanced, unaware that he was a breath of fresh air blowing over smoldering embers. “Here!” he cried happily, pushing a large cigar from the box he brandished into Fortinbras’s outstretched hand. “Congratulate me! It’s a boy! And after six girls!” he chuckled contentedly, his own delight blinding him to the singular lack of response from his co-workers. “I looked in this morning, but you weren’t here, Chip, and I certainly want you to have one of these extra special seegars. Here, Mary, take one. You can always give one to your young man. Eight pounds, you know, and he was a week late. . .” His voice trailed off as he registered the strained expressions surrounding him.

  “Adele is fine, the doctor said,” he added in a slightly plaintive voice. Mary summoned a wan smile, but Fortinbras unceremoniously thrust the cigar back at him.

  “Cigars!” he said with heavy irony. “Babies! Idiots in Commercial Sales. And a front office that is totally devoid of the most rudimentary common sense.” His voice was offensively even, as he recited this catalogue of offenses.

  “Oh, now look here,” said Young, hurt.

  Fortinbras ignored him. “Well, there’s obviously nothing to be gained trying to get a modicum of cooperation from you,” he told Mason, who glared at him. “Or you”—he added, waving an inclusive hand over the group he was including in his indictment. “I suppose I should not be surprised. This is not the first act of dishonesty, I might even say of deliberate criminal fraud that this management has perpetrated, and you can tell Blaney! But if you think that you can continue these felonious activities of yours . . .”

  “Nonsense!” Mrs. Cobb said in sharp reproof. He turned to look at her. “There is no need to make a scene,” she said with crisp disapproval.

  He emitted an angry bark of laughter. “Quite right,” he said. “No need at all. Just don’t think that this sort of thing is going to stop me, that’s all!”

  Majestically dismissing them, he turned on his heel and strode from the room, leaving his adversaries gaping open-mouthed after him. Stanley Draper hesitated a moment, then, after a harassed look at Mason, scurried after him.

  “Well!” said Richter, breaking the silence that Fortinbras left.

  “The man is a lunatic,” Mason said. “A complete lunatic. He’s misplaced a paper in that warren of his, and he’s gone completely berserk . . .”

  “I expect you’re right,” Allen said agreeably, but with a speculative look in his eyes as he settled himself on the corner of Mary’s desk. “I mean, there’s no possible reason to believe that anybody did steal anything, is there? Sorry, we came in rather late . . .”

  “There is not,” Mason shouted. He looked down at the sandwich now crushed beyond recall on the desk. “I’m going to get to work,” he said, making no move to leave.

  “You know,” Richter commented with a judicious impartiality that jarred several of his listeners, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t his age. Old people do tend to get forgetful. I know that Fortinbras is—or was—a perfectly competent sort of chap. I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t getting a little past his work.
That would account for the emotionality of this outburst.”

  Under normal conditions, this dispassion would have raised Mason’s hackles, but he was in such sympathy with the sentiments that he nodded eagerly.

  “I believe you’re right,” he said. “He’s just forgotten what he did with something, and then he blew up. It’s really a little hard for us . . .” His commanding tones of anger were giving way to his usual petulance. “I don’t suppose we can expect an apology from him, though. I certainly think we deserve one, let me tell you!”

  Thankfully Mary Sullivan sank into her chair; her knees were somewhat weak. She carefully avoided looking at Allen Hammond, who was regarding her in a fashion disturbingly destructive of her view of the way the Perfect Secretary should treat the President’s Nephew, and instead listened carefully to Richter and Mason who were convincing themselves that Fortinbras had lost a paper.

  She did not think that he was the careless type.

  Neither, she saw from her expression, did Mrs. Cobb.

  Barney Young looked downcast.

  “Oh, Mr. Young,” she said, “I’m so glad.”

  This recalled the senior staff to their obligations.

  “Congratulations, Barney, old man . . .”

  “. . . nice going, Barney . . .”

  Chapter 7

  Fortinbras Fuit

  It is not publicly admitted, but behind every chaste earnings statement reported in the financial press lies a human drama. It may be a power struggle between executive vice president and senior vice president, it may be a four-million-dollar loss in an Italian subsidiary caused by the bone headedness of the treasurer, it may be a broken contract, an alcoholic buying agent, or simply an inconvenient heart attack. Good or bad, it is there, part of the great human comedy.

  The men behind the numbers become worthy of newspaper comment only if that human comedy includes horses, spectacular blondes, or unexpected trips to Brazil.

  Nevertheless, people know. Whether you dignify it as “inside information,” or call it “what they are saying on the Street,” rumor penetrates into board rooms as fast as it crosses any backyard fence.

  John Thatcher was therefore by no means surprised to find the troubles of National Calculating becoming public, or semipublic, property. Fortinbras’s eruption into Mason’s office was a case in point. Within four hours he received a detailed description of the scene. He was to keep it under his hat, said Tom Robichaux confidentially, but there it was. Wouldn’t do to let the news get around but, frankly, things were looking worse and worse. Robichaux and Devane didn’t like it at all.

  “I can understand that,” said Thatcher astringently. He heard Robichaux out for another two minutes of lamentation, then replaced the phone and turned to his subordinate, Charlie Trinkam, the most rakish element in the Sloan’s generally sedate staff.

  “That accountant over at National?” Charlie asked easily. “Heard he’s really after them. They had some sort of big blowup in the front office today.”

  “How did you find out so fast?”

  Charlie grinned and reported that in the interests of the Sloan’s investment in National Calculating, here he shook his head sadly, he was cultivating a young physicist employed by National. “Says, by the way, that the real brains in the lab is this Cobb woman. Richter is just another Boy Genius.”

  “And your physicist isn’t a boy genius?” Thatcher asked idly, turning his attention to Trinkam’s long report on the profit possibilities inherent in a nuclear power station situated in Armonk.

  Charlie was indignant. “My physicist is named Celia.”

  Thatcher should have known.

  The next morning Walter Bowman buttonholed him at the end of an Investment Committee meeting and, drawing him aside, gave him a substantially accurate account of the scene.

  “Do you know Celia too?” Thatcher inquired.

  Bowman, a devoted husband and proud father of three children whom he rarely saw, looked puzzled. “Who’s Celia? No, I ran into a fellow I know over there . . .” His voice trailed away vaguely. Unlike Trinkam, he liked to protest his sources.

  Thatcher watched the last of the Investment Committee trail out of the conference room. Burton Claster, whose secretary had twice interrupted the meeting with urgent telephone calls, was continuing his impersonation of important man of affairs with a magisterial frown at something that Trinkam was saying.

  “Well, I wish we weren’t in National,” Bowman continued. “This guy Rutledge is the only one who can handle Fortinbras, and he wasn’t at the fight. Busy taking their tame general to lunch. A lot depends on that government contract, you know.”

  Thatcher tore his attention away from Claster. “I’m glad somebody at National is attending to business,” he said, joining Bowman on the way to the elevator. “From what I hear, very little hard work is being done. Except by Clarence Fortinbras.”

  “It’s been like that for a long time at National,” said Walter Bowman. “They’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

  But intelligence flowing from the scene of battle during the next three weeks did not confirm this guarded optimism. Stories of sweeping raids on files, stories of President Charles Mason’s frenzied descents on lawyers, stories of emergency meetings, percolated to the Sloan, to the Security Analysts Luncheon Association, and to the brokerage houses.

  “Heard the latest about National?” inquired Thatcher’s neighbor at a meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Lower Broad Street Committee.

  This was less surprising than it might seem. Giles Conrad was a partner at Amos Durleth, Exchange Specialists.

  “No,” said Thatcher. This did not spare him a long anecdote centering on National Calculating’s Division Manager of Commercial Sales who had, said Conrad, blown up.

  “Blown up?” asked Thatcher, wishing the waiter would provide more coffee.

  Harry Blaney had claimed that Clarence Fortinbras was not conducting a normal audit, but something more like an invasion by the Russian Army.

  “He tells me that the man has bags and bags of canceled checks,” said Conrad, shuddering slightly. Thatcher eyed the head table. There was trouble with the loudspeaker.

  “And he said that now Fortinbras is talking about going over to New Jersey to take an actual physical inventory.” Conrad paused to let Thatcher comment.

  “Nasty implications,” said Thatcher.

  “Very nasty,” Conrad agreed. “Blaney says he told Mason that that was going too far. Of course he’s in a bad spot, not making money . . .”

  “Mason?”

  “No, Blaney.”

  Thatcher agreed that this cut Blaney’s bargaining position. He was spared the need to say anything further.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” the loudspeaker thundered.

  “General Radio makes those damned things,” Conrad confided. Thatcher made a mental note to talk to Walter Bowman about General Radio.

  In the midst of this welter of speculation, John Thatcher fully expected an SOS from Tom Robichaux.

  He got it the next morning, while he was dictating to Miss Corsa. In tones of deep depression, Robichaux reported that (1) Fortinbras was exceeding the mandate of his court order, (2) he was raising hell on the premises, and (3) he was endangering the United States Government contract on which Jay Rutledge, National Calculating, and Robichaux and Devane, were counting.

  “Yes?” said Thatcher watching Miss Corsa check her transcription.

  “And Chip needs help,” said Robichaux.

  “Tell him to try the lawyers.”

  “Lawyers!” Robichaux’s tones of loathing reminded Thatcher that the divorce had slipped his mind. But Robichaux did not swerve course. “Friendly offices, that’s what he wants. You and me—we could go over and talk to Fortinbras.”

  “Look, Tom, it isn’t any of our business . . . no, I don’t mean our financial commitment . . . What? Well, of course, if you really think it would help. Fortinbras is willing? . . . All right. Tomorrow afternoon the
n.”

  He replaced the phone rather guiltily. Miss Corsa was expressionless.

  “I am not, as you no doubt think, Miss Corsa, simply yielding to curiosity. It is possible, remotely possible, that Robichaux and I may do something to help.”

  “I’ll make a note of the appointment,” said Miss Corsa.

  He could tell from her tone that she had seen through him.

  Curiosity, Miss Corsa believed, killed the cat.

  The next day, when he met Robichaux uptown, Thatcher was inclined to think that Miss Corsa might be right. For Tom Robichaux was clearly in a very bad mood. He was awesomely silent during their taxi ride to the Southern Bourbon Building. When Miss Sullivan ushered them into Mason’s office and promised to produce the absent president, he did not eye her trim figure but instead threw his overcoat onto the aggressively masculine leather sofa with a discontented grunt.

  “National,” he grumbled as he stalked to the window, “is taking up too damn much of my time. When these nutboys start crawling out of the woodwork . . .”

  Robichaux broke into the bad-tempered rumble. “What are you talking about, Tom?”

  “I said,” Tom replied, abandoning the scenery as he returned to sink heavily into a chair opposite Thatcher, “things are going from bad to worse. Sometimes I think it’s about time to get out of business. God knows, it isn’t worthwhile anymore. There are these crazy stockholders—why, John, I remember when they wouldn’t have dared to open their mouths. And the SEC! And if you do make a dollar, you have to give the government a dollar seventy-five.” He broke off and looked indignantly at Thatcher. “What’s funny?”

  This jeremiad, lacking form and shape, had enlightened John Thatcher.

  “I take it you’re having trouble with Dorothy’s lawyer,” he said responding to the spirit, if not the content of the outburst.

  Tom was about to protest, then, with an automatically furtive look around the office, unbent. “Trouble?” he repeated sourly. “My God, you wouldn’t believe it. That woman wants the sun, the moon, and the stars. At cost.”