Beacon Street Mourning (18 page)

"Yes, I'm going out, and no, thank you, I do not want
companionship. I have a few things to do that are better done alone."

"Oh, well. I thought ladies wasn't supposed to go out alone. That's what Ma says." He winked.

"An outmoded view, surely," I conceded, slowing.

The expression on his face, along with the wink, was so out of the ordinary that I could not help being intrigued. That wink had been knowing yet not salacious or in any way offensive; it simply suggested he knew something I didn't, as if he had an inside track on something, perhaps many things.

The facial expression somehow went with that. He reminded me of a junior gangster, one of those young men who hang around South of the Slot in San Francisco—South of Market Street, that is—pretending to be much tougher than they really are. They must keep up this pretense for their own protection; otherwise men who are older and tougher, some of them true criminals, will do the young ones in.

What could it hurt if I were to stop long enough to exchange a few words with him? After all, Larry must know Augusta better than anyone else in Boston could. At least he'd certainly known her longer, if only by virtue of being her child. Perhaps if I cultivated him a bit I might learn a thing or two.

A primary rule for an investigator: Talk to everyone and forget nothing you have heard from any source.

I said, "I thought you already went out with your mother this morning. Surely that should be enough of older women's companionship for one day."

Larry flicked his gaze up and down my body, neither insolently nor expertly but in a novice sort of way, as if he were just practicing. I almost smiled but at the last minute that didn't seem a good idea.

"You're not exactly all that much of an older woman, are you?" he asked.

"I suppose not. But then I also suppose I'm older than you.
I should think you'd want to be out with your friends, not with me or your mother. I understand you lived here for quite a while—you must have friends here from before you went to New York. How long was it you lived in Boston? And were you in school then?"

"So how old are you anyway, Fremont?" Larry persisted, completely ignoring my conversational gambit, "and what kind of name is that for a girl?"

Oh, very bold, I thought. I rather admired him for that. Nevertheless I gave the conventional answer: "A woman doesn't tell her age. You know better than to ask. I, on the other hand, can ask with impunity: How old are you?"

"Old enough. Turned twenty-one a few weeks ago. December 28's my birthday. I reckon you couldn't be too much older'n me."

He was more correct than I cared to admit.

"So what about that name, Fremont?"

"It is my middle name, and my mother's maiden name. I am not fond of my given name, Caroline."

"And what d'you want hooking yourself up with a fella as old as that Kossoff?"

This young fellow was incorrigible! I gave him a long look while considering my reply.

Larry was leaning with one shoulder propped against the doorjamb of the library door, and he'd crossed his arms, as if settling in for a long talk. He was more relaxed than I felt, and he seemed both more mature and more attractive—many times more so—than he had on my first meeting with him, when he'd felt obliged to perform for his mother.

"I think you will make a good reporter," I said, aware of the non sequitur, unbothered by it, as I expected he would be. He was not the type to have difficulty following.

"Why's that?" he asked, picking right up.

"Because you're good with questions. You're genuinely
inquisitive. And," I added, recalling something that had seemed distinctly unpleasant at the time but which now, looked at in another context, made some sense, "you appear to be interested in the types of things that make for sensational headlines."

He looked puzzled, so I added:

"I refer not to our present conversation but to our previous one about the man who was found stabbed on the church steps before Midnight Mass."

"Oh yeah." His face cleared of its puzzlement. He was not a bad-looking young man, really. A few more years would put character into that face, but right now it was simply unmarked and therefore unremarkable, with light brown eyes and rounded contours to cheeks and chin. He had his mother's fair hair and no shadow of beard whatever, as if he might not even shave yet—though surely that could not be the case.

"Back in San Francisco," I said, deliberately dangling bait I thought he would find irresistible, "there are any number of people who would accuse me of the same thing."

"How's that?"

"I mean, they'd accuse me of being interested in things of a rather sensational nature. Didn't your mother tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"Michael and I run a detective agency. I am a trained private detective. My first big case got quite a lot of newspaper coverage. It was very good for our business." As I said this last I began to walk away, adding, "I'm sorry, I'd like to talk more but I really must be going now."

Larry Bingham followed hot on my heels to the front door.

As I passed the clock I noticed it had been stopped at 8:30. And I vowed to start it up again as soon as I could without causing a deliberate provocation. I wondered if tall-case clocks were sometimes called grandfather clocks because so often they'd belonged to one's grandfather.

"Change your mind, why don't you," Larry was saying as
we hurried along. "Let me come and you can tell me more on the way."

"Certainly not, because I must go shopping for clothes. I need black dresses and a black coat."

This was true, though, as usual, having the right clothes had been down at the bottom of my priorities. Nor was I anxious to wear anything designed to remind me I was in mourning.

Larry looked unconvinced, so I added, "It would be extremely boring for you."

"I could carry your packages. I want to hear about the detective agency."

I had hooked this fish, all right!

I smiled at him, "We will do it another time under more conducive circumstances, I promise. For today if your mother does not need you, I suggest you go look up those old friends we were talking about earlier."

My suggestion did not go down well. In fact it produced a truly unpleasant expression from him, almost a sneer—which he hid by turning abruptly away and stalking back up the hall.

An odd young man, I thought as I closed the door. He had left it standing wide open. He had not said goodbye, either.

Oh, well. I'd learned a few things about Larry Bingham in a short time, among them the fact that he was unpredictable, almost mercurial. And that he was unlikely to go out of his way to please anyone . . . except his mother.

GREAT CENTENNIAL BANK is on Tremont Street. In all but the worst weather one would simply walk across the Common to get there; this was indeed the route Father had taken every day of his life, except perhaps in the teeth of a New England blizzard—and maybe even then.

This afternoon, however, I knew I'd best have help getting to the bank, as the exertions of the morning had worn me down
a bit. So I had telephoned ahead to engage a horse and buggy for the afternoon. With a driver, of course. All three were waiting in front of the house on Beacon Street when I emerged.

I had my cane with me in case I needed it, though through the morning's turmoil I'd learned a valuable lesson: I didn't need it as much as I'd believed. To think that I, Fremont Jones, namesake and blood kin of that intrepid explorer of the Old West John Charles Fremont, had become physically timid! How awful.

I assured myself that was not a state of affairs I would allow to continue any longer. Surely, I thought as I allowed the driver to assist me up the one folding step into his high, enclosed carriage, it must be possible to achieve a balance between wisdom and adventurousness? Otherwise, as one grew older and suffered the vicissitudes of life, one would have to become unendurably boring.

I gave the name of the bank and its address to the driver and we were on our way.

To my embarrassment, I had not been able to remember the names of the bank's two lawyers; therefore, I hadn't called ahead for an appointment. I did, however, recall the location of the legal department—it was in a corner of the large, impressive main lobby, near the stairs that go down to the vault and to the safe-deposit boxes.

Great Centennial had opened in its impressive new building, as one might guess from its name, on our country's one hundredth birthday. Father was at the bank from its beginning. The building was designed in the days when banks were Temples of Commerce—and that is what it looks like, a Greek temple, inside and out, if one ignores the tellers' cages, that is. Nor have I seen any of the bank's officers sacrificing birds or sheep and reading entrails, but perhaps they do these things in some secret chamber behind closed doors. Who knows how officers of banks choose to watch over our money.

Entering by the front door, I walked swiftly across the marble floor toward my intended goal in the corner, my cane barely tapping. In the interests of decorum, particularly considering I didn't yet have the proper mourning clothes, I had worn the black Russian sable hat and scarf and carried over one hand a large muff, also of the same black fur. The muff was wonderfully warm, a further incentive to be done with canes forever.

I did not expect this bank to have changed in the slightest in the four years I'd been away, as it had not changed a whit in twenty-two years previous, nor had it. Given the open floor plan of this templelike building the private offices are set against the outer walls, enclosed by wood and glass but of necessity open at the top, as the bank's ceilings soar to a height of twenty-five, perhaps thirty feet.

These offices are back behind a deep railing such as one might find on a jury box at court, and the railing is guarded at intervals by a secretary or a clerk who sits alertly at a desk. The clerks are usually, but not always, male. I approached the man guarding the office enclosures of the two lawyers, whose names were inscribed upon their doors just as I'd thought they would be: James Palmer and Elwood Sefton. The latter, I now recalled, was the name my father had mentioned in connection with his new will.

"Good afternoon," I said, "my name is Caroline Fremont Jones. I'm the daughter of Leonard Pembroke Jones and have come to see Mr. Sefton. I'm sorry to say I do not have an appointment, but the matter is somewhat urgent."

The clerk was new enough at the bank never to have met me, but my father's name caused him to come to attention extremely fast. In less than five minutes I was behind that wide wooden railing and being ushered into the lawyer's office cubicle.

"Miss Jones. This is an unexpected pleasure. How long have you been in town?"

Elwood Sefton was one of those long-boned, lean New Englanders who seem old even when they are young, so that it is difficult to guess at their age. However, if one might judge from the sparseness of his hair and the whiteness of the little that remained, then likely he was older than Father.

For a moment the grim nature of my task here caused a hole to open up in the pit of my stomach, and I all but fell through it. I thrust both my hands into the muff, where they could not be seen, and clasped my fingers together as hard as I could, for courage.

"I've been here for a little over three weeks, Mr. Sefton. I admit I've rather lost track of time, as something—distressing— has happened. Are you aware that my father has been ill?"

He nodded his long head gravely. Lean though he was, the looseness of the skin at his neck gave him jowls when he bent his head, rather like a bloodhound. "Yes, I knew he had not been well. I take it, then, he is no better."

"No indeed, Mr. Sefton. My father died yesterday."

"Oh! Oh, my dear young lady, I am so very sorry! But should you be here? Are you quite all right? Shall I have young Franklin bring you something, water, tea, coffee?"

"I am fine, and I need to be here—as I hope you'll understand shortly. However, if Franklin is able to bring coffee without too much trouble, I would like that very much."

The coffee, when it came, was blessedly fortifying. In the interim I told the lawyer how my father had fared in the hospital and upon his return home, and how suddenly he had died.

Finally, braced by a couple of sips of the strong coffee, I came to the matter at hand:

"I know Father made a new will last year and placed it here in a safe-deposit box, I believe you wrote out the will for him, the bank is Father's executor, and you have the key to the box that contains the will. Am I correct in these assumptions?"

Sefton nodded. "You are correct on all counts." He averted
his eyes, fiddled with a paper clip, using it to draw a line on his desk blotter, then looked at me again and said, "You are familiar with the terms of the new will, then?"

"Yes. I suppose, since you and Mr. Palmer handled all Father's legal affairs—he can't have had many—you'd know he has already given me half my inheritance."

Now Sefton's eyes glanced up toward the ceiling, as he did rapid calculations in his head. "If you do not include the value of the Beacon Street house, then that would be correct. And of course I did know. I assisted with the, ah, liquidation of certain assets in order to handle the transaction between our bank and your bank in California."

"Is it too much to hope that Father might have told you
why
he made these changes?"

Sefton looked toward the glass-topped door of his cubicle to be sure it was closed all the way before he answered. "He did not say a word against Augusta Simmons, if that is what concerns you; but he did say she has a number of relatives he had not known about when he married her, that he felt these relatives were rapacious and were not to be trusted. He most specifically did not want the Beacon Street house to pass out of the immediate family, and that is why it comes to you, and any children you may have after you."

"I see," I said, though so far the only one of Augusta's relatives I'd seen was Larry, and he hardly seemed rapacious.

"If you do not wish to live in the house yourself," Sefton continued, "then it is to be maintained for your children."

Oh Lord, I thought, children.

I couldn't stop myself from asking the question: "What if I do not have children?"

"Hm. I can't recall. Shall we go downstairs and retrieve Leonard's last will and testament from the box where it is stored? I have the key here in my desk."