McNally's Secret (33 page)

It was neatly printed on a sheet of good paper, and appeared to have been written on a word processor, as Willigan had told his wife. What caught my eye was the even right-hand margin. The spacing between words had been adjusted so that all lines were the same width. Rather rare in a ransom note—wouldn’t you say?

I asked if he had received any further communication from the catnappers, and Willigan said he hadn’t. I then inquired if there was anyone he thought might have snatched the cat. Did he have any enemies?

He glowered at me. “I got more enemies than you got friends,” he yelled. (A comparison I did not appreciate.) “Sure, I got enemies. You can’t cut the mustard the way I done without making enemies. But they’re all hard guys. They might shoot me in the back, but they wouldn’t steal my Sweetums for a lousy fifty grand. That’s penny-ante stuff to those bums.”

I couldn’t think of any additional questions to ask, so I thanked Willigan for his time and rose to leave. He walked me to the door, a meaty hand clamped on my shoulder.

“Listen, Archy,” he said in his normal, raucous voice, “you get Peaches back okay and there’s a nice buck in it for you.”

“Thank you,” I said stiffly, “but my father pays me a perfectly adequate salary.”

“Oh sure,” he said, trying to be jovial, “but a young stud like you can always use a little extra change. Am I right?”

Wretched man. How Laverne could endure his total lack of couth, I could not understand. But I suspected the Bloody Marys with fresh horseradish helped.

I walked back to the McNally Building, swung aboard the Miata, and headed for home. The old medulla oblongata had enough of the misadventure of Peaches for one day. I gave all those bored neurons a treat by turning my thoughts to Meg Trumble and Laverne Willigan.

I found it amazing that the two were sisters. I could see a slight resemblance in their features, but their carcasses were totally dissimilar. If they stood side by side, Meg on the left, they’d look like the number 18.

And their personalities were so unlike. Laverne was a bouncy extrovert, Meg more introspective, a
serious
woman. I thought she was not as coarsely woven as Laverne, not as many slubs. As of that moment I was not smitten, but she intrigued me. There was a mystery to her that challenged. Laverne was about as mysterious as a baked potato.

I pulled into the driveway of the McNally castle, a tall Tudorish pile with a mansard roof of copper that leaked. I parked on the graveled turnaround in front of our three-car garage, making sure I did not block the entrance to the left-hand bay where my father always sheltered his big Lexus. The middle space was occupied by an old, wood-bodied Ford station wagon, used mostly for shopping and to transport my mother’s plants to flower shows.

I found her in the small greenhouse talking to her begonias, as usual. Her name was Madelaine, and she was a paid-up member of the Union of Ditsy Mommies. But she was an absolutely glorious woman, warm and loving. I had seen her wedding pictures, when she became Mrs. Prescott McNally, and she was radiant then. Now, pushing seventy, she was even more beautiful. I speak not as a dutiful son but as an eager student of pulchritude. (I carried in my wallet a small photo of Kay Kendall.)

Mother’s specs had slipped down on her nose, and she didn’t see me sneak up. I kissed her velvety cheek, and she closed her eyes.

“Ronald Colman?” she asked. “John Barrymore?”

“Tyrone Power,” I told her.

“My favorite,” she said, opening her eyes. “He was so wonderful in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
.”

“Mother, that was John Garfield.”

“I loved him, too,” she said. “Where have they all gone, Archy?”

“To the great Loew’s in the sky,” I said. “But I’m still here.”

“And I love you most,” she said promptly, patting my cheek. “Ursi is baking scallops tonight. Isn’t that nice?”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m in a scallopy mood. Ask father to open one of those bottles of muscadet he’s been hoarding.”

“Why don’t you ask him, Archy?”

“Because he’ll tell me that a jug chablis is good enough. But if you ask, he’ll break out the good stuff. He’s putty in your hands.”

“He is?” she said. “Since when?”

I kissed her again and went up to my suite to change. “Suite” is a grandiloquent word to describe a small sitting room, cramped bedroom, and claustrophobic bathroom on the third floor. But you couldn’t beat the rent. Zip. And it was my private aerie. I had no complaints whatsoever.

I pulled on modest swimming trunks (shocking pink), a terry coverup, and sandals. Then I grabbed a towel and went down to the beach. The Atlantic was practically lapping at our doorstep; just cross Ocean Boulevard and there it was, shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight. The chop was not strong enough to give me second thoughts.

I try to swim two miles a day. Not out and back; that’s for idiots. I swam parallel to the shore, about fifty feet out. I go a mile north or south and then return. I don’t exactly wallow, as I told Meg Trumble, but I sort of plow along. However, since it is the only physical exercise I get—other than an occasional game of darts at the Pelican Club—it makes me feel virtuous and does wonders for the appetite. And thirst.

My father is very big on tradition. One of the ceremonies he insists on honoring is the cocktail hour, a preprandial get-together that usually lasts thirty minutes during which we imbibe martinis he mixes to the original formula of three parts gin to one of vermouth. Not dry enough for you? Complain to Prescott McNally, but be prepared to face a raised eyebrow—and a hairy one at that.

“Are you going out tonight, Archy?” my father asked that evening at the family gathering.

“No, sir,” I said, “I hadn’t planned to.”

“Good,” he said. “Roderick Gillsworth phoned this afternoon and wants to come over at nine o’clock. It concerns some matter he didn’t wish to discuss at the office.”

“And you want me to be present?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

The governor chomped on his olive which, in a small departure from his love of the hallowed, had been stuffed with a sliver of jalapeno. “Yes,” he said, “Gillsworth particularly asked that you sit in.”

“And how is Lydia?” mother asked, referring to the client’s wife.

Father knitted his brows which, considering their hirsuteness, might have resulted in a sweater. “I asked,” he said, “but the man didn’t give me a direct answer. Very odd. Shall we go down to dinner?”

The scallops were super, the flavor enhanced by a muscadet the lord of the manor had consented to uncork. He’s inclined to be a bit mingy with his vintage wines. It makes little difference to mother, who drinks only sauterne with dinner—a dreadful habit my father and I have never persuaded her to break. But I like a rare wine occasionally: something that doesn’t come in a bottle with a handle and screw-top.

For dessert, Ursi Olson, our cook-housekeeper, served big slices of a succulent honeydew with wedges of fresh lime. Surfeited, I climbed upstairs to my cave and did a spot of work before Roderick Gillsworth arrived.

During discreet inquiries in the past I had learned to keep a record of my investigations in a ledger. I have a tendency to forget things that may or may not turn out to be important.

So I scribbled short notes on the cases in which I was engaged. That evening I started a new chapter on the catnapping of the malevolent Peaches. I jotted down everything I had learned during the day, which wasn’t a great deal. When finished, I put my completed notes aside and glanced at my Mickey Mouse wristwatch (an original, not a reproduction). I saw that I had a quarter-hour before my presence was required in my father’s study, to listen to what was troubling our client. I spent the time recalling what I knew of Roderick Gillsworth.

He was a poet, self-proclaimed. His first book,
The Joy of Flatulence
, was so obscure and prolix that critics were convinced he was a genius, and on the strength of their ecstatic reviews
TJOF
sold 527 copies. But Gillsworth’s subsequent volumes didn’t do as well, and he accepted employment as poet-in-residence at an exclusive liberal arts college for women in New Hampshire.

There he married one of his students, Lydia Barkham. She was heiress to a fortune in old money accumulated by a Rhode Island family that began by making string, graduated to rope, moved on to steel cables, and eventually sold out to a Japanese conglomerate at such a humongous price that one financial commentator termed it “Partial revenge for Pearl Harbor.”

Lydia and Roderick Gillsworth moved to Palm Beach in the late 1970s and, despite their wealth, bought a relatively modest home on Via Del Lago, about a block from the beach. They lived quietly, entertained infrequently, and apparently had little interest in tennis, golf, or polo. This did not make them pariahs, of course, but they were considered somewhat odd. According to Palm Beach gossips (the entire population) the Gillsworths had what the French label a
marriage blanc
, and what your grandmother probably called a “marriage in name only.” Naturally I cannot vouch for that.

Roderick continued to write poetry, but now his slim volumes were privately printed, handsomely bound in calfskin, and given as Christmas gifts to personal friends. The McNally family had eight of his books, the pages still uncut. The most recent collection of his poems was titled
The Cross-Eyed Atheist.

When I entered my father’s study on the ground floor, Gillsworth was already lounging in a leather wing chair. I went over to shake his hand and he didn’t bother rising. I was an employee and about ten years younger than he, but I still felt it was bad manners. My father sat behind his big leather-topped desk, and I drew up a straight chair and positioned it so that I could observe both men without turning my head back and forth.

“Archy,” the don said, “Mr. Gillsworth apparently has a personal problem he wishes to discuss. He is aware of your responsibility for discreet inquiries and the success you have achieved in several investigations with a minimum of publicity.”

“No publicity,” the poet said sharply. “I must insist on that: absolutely no publicity. Lydia would never forgive me if this got out.”

Father stroked his mustache with a knuckle. That mustache was as bristly as his eyebrows, but considerably wider. It was the Guardsman’s type and stretched the width of his face, a thicket that was a sight to behold when he was eating barbecued ribs. “Every effort will be made to keep the matter confidential, Mr. Gillsworth,” he said. “What exactly
is
it?”

Our client drew a deep breath. “About three weeks ago,” he began, “a letter arrived at our home addressed to my wife. Plain white envelope, no return address. At the time Lydia was up north visiting cousins in Pawtucket. Fortunately she had left instructions to open her mail and forward to Rhode Island whatever I thought important and might require her immediate attention. I say ‘fortunately’ because this particular letter was a vicious threat against Lydia’s life. It spelled out the manner of her murder in such gruesome and sickening detail that it was obviously the product of a deranged mind.”

“Dreadful,” my father said.

“Did the letter give any reason for the threat?” I asked.

“Only in vague terms,” Gillsworth said. “It said she must die to pay for what she is doing. That was the phrase used: ‘for what she is doing.’ Complete insanity, of course. Lydia is the most innocent of women. Her conduct is beyond reproach.”

“Do you have the letter with you, Mr. Gillsworth?” father asked.

The poet groaned. “I destroyed it,” he said. “And the envelope it came in. I hoped it might be a single incident, and I had no wish that Lydia would ever find and read that piece of filth. So I burned it.”

Then we sat in silence. Gillsworth had his head averted, and I was able to study him a moment. He was a tall, extremely thin man with a bony face split by a nose that ranked halfway between Cyrano and Jimmy Durante.

He was wearing a short-sleeved leisure suit of black linen. With his mighty beak, scrawny arms, and flapping gestures he looked more bird than bard. I wondered what a young coed had seen in the poet that persuaded her to plight her troth. But it’s hopeless to try to imagine what spouses find in each other. It’s better to accept Ursi Olson’s philosophy. She just shrugs and says, “There’s a cover for every pot.”

The silence stretched, and when the seigneur didn’t ask the question that had to be asked, I did.

“But you’ve received another letter?” I prompted Gillsworth.

He nodded, and the stare he gave me seemed dazed, as if he could not quite comprehend the inexplicable misfortune that had befallen him and his wife. “Yes,” he said in a voice that lacked firmness. “Two days ago. Lydia is home now, and she opened the letter, read it, showed it to me. I thought it even more disgusting and frightening than the first. Again it said that she must die for what she was doing, and it described her murder in horrendous and obscene detail. Obviously the work of a homicidal maniac.”

“How did your wife react to the letter?” my father asked gently.

Gillsworth shifted uncomfortably in his wing chair. “First,” he said, “I must give you a little background. My wife has always been interested in the occult and in psychic phenomena. She believes in supernatural forces, the existence of spirits, ESP, and that sort of thing.” He paused.

I was curious and asked, “Do you also believe in those things, sir?”

He made one of his floppy gestures. “I don’t believe and I don’t disbelieve. Quite frankly, the supernatural is of minor interest to me. My work is concerned with the conflict between the finite expression of the human psyche and the Ur-reality concealed within. I call it the Divine Dichotomy.”

My father and I nodded thoughtfully. What else could we do?

“To answer your question, Mr. McNally,” Gillsworth continued, addressing mein papa, “my wife reacted to the letter with complete serenity. You may find it remarkable—I certainly do—but she has absolutely no fear of death, no matter how painful or horrid its coming. She believes death is but another form of existence, that we pass from one state to another with no loss, no diminution of our powers, but rather with increased wisdom and added strength. This belief—which she holds quite sincerely, I assure you—enables her to face her own death with equanimity. And so that letter failed to frighten her—if that was its purpose. But it frightens
me
, I can tell you that. I suggested to Lydia that it might be wise if she returned to Rhode Island for an extended visit until this whole matter can be cleared up.”