Murder at Teatime (17 page)

“How did you find all this out?”

“I did a little checking around,” Tom replied vaguely. “I found out some other interesting stuff too. He’s a notoriously slow payer. He’s also notorious for returning books to the auction house for trivial imperfections: if a book isn’t
exactly
as it’s described in the catalogue, he returns it. The auction house doesn’t want to go through the hassle of putting it up for auction again, so they give it to him at a reduced price.”

“Wait a minute, I thought that when you bought something at an auction, you paid for it then and there.”

“You do, and I do, but people like Felix Mayer don’t. The auction houses extend a line of credit to their best customers. It’s an arrangement that works to their mutual benefit: the auction house can assure the owner of the merchandise that it will bring a decent price, and the favored dealer can afford to bid a bit more than his competitor because he has more time to scout around for a prospective buyer before he has to pay up.”

“I see. And Felix hasn’t been paying up?”

“Right. The book owners are clamoring for their money, and the favored dealer is behind on his payments. The auction houses are caught in the middle. They’re willing to live with a certain amount of this, but when a dealer falls as far behind as Mayer has, they’ve no choice but to sue.”

“Which they have?”

Tom nodded. “He’s got five suits pending against him.”

“Five! How much is he in the hole?”

“As nearly as I can tell, about four hundred grand.”

“Exactly what the missing books are worth.”

“Yup.”

“What happens to him now?”

“Unless he comes up with the money, the court will order an auction of his stock. Book dealers tend to be cash poor: most of their cash is invested in books. But Felix is even more so than usual. He hasn’t a dime, but his stock is worth a fortune. From what people tell me, he buys expensive books even when he doesn’t have a customer in mind for them. He likes to have them on hand just in case someone wants them. It’s a form of status, I guess.”

So, Charlotte reflected, Felix had been something of a liar when he told her he was immune to the drive to possess that is the demon of bibliomaniacs. When it came to acquiring stock for his business, he was as much of a bibliomaniac as his customers.

“The point to keep in mind is that there’s more at stake than just the survival of his business,” Tom went on. “His family honor is also on the line. The business was founded in the mid-nineteenth century. His grandfather was probably selling books to Freud. Can you imagine the ignominy of being the guy who runs the family business into the ground after three generations?”

“But if he did take the books, how would he dispose of them? Foist them off on an unsuspecting customer?”

“I doubt it. The risk would be too great. But the underground markets are there, if you know where to look. Some collectors are so hungry for books that they don’t ask any questions. South America. Behind the Iron Curtain. Look at the famous paintings that are stolen from museums. They surface mysteriously years later. Nobody’s able to account for what’s happened to them.”

“Funny how that figure of four hundred thousand keeps turning up,” Charlotte said. “I was just up at Ledge House talking with him. He admits that Thornhill promised to let him handle the sale of his collection after his death. He estimated that the collection is worth four million. At ten percent, that’s four hundred thousand dollars.”

She remembered Felix asking Fran at the Midsummer Night scrying session whether the consignment he was anticipating would come through, earning him a big commission. Fran had told him that it would.

Tom rocked his chair back against the chair rail again and drained his beer can. “What you’re saying is that A: he pinched the books to pay off his debts, or B: he knocked off Thornhill so he could make the commission.”

“Or C: both of the above,” said Charlotte. She paced around the kitchen, a cigarette in hand.

“What do you mean both?” asked Tom.

“I mean that maybe there’s a connection between A and B. Let’s just suppose for the moment that Felix took the books. Maybe Thornhill discovered that he took the books and confronted him with the theft. Which would also explain why Thornhill didn’t report that the books were missing.”

“Very good, Graham,” said Tom, picking up the thread of her thought. “Thornhill threatens to turn him in, and Felix kills him, figuring he’ll save his own skin and make the commission in the bargain.”

“He could sell the stolen books on the underground market and collect the commission on the rest. Or, if he didn’t want to run the risk of selling the stolen books, he could just report that they’d been recovered …”

“And collect the commission on the whole works,” Tom interjected. “A few holes, but a workable hypothesis nonetheless.”

“Non fingo hypotheses
,” she replied, grinning.

One of Tom’s maddening habits was quoting proverbs in Latin. It was the only use he could find for his classics degree from a fancy institution of higher learning, other than translating the inscriptions on the pediments of museums and banks. She took great pleasure in tossing them back at him every once in a while.

“Newton,” he said. “‘I do not form hypotheses.’” He smiled sheepishly.
“Touché
, Graham.”

10

The memorial service early that evening was a brief, low-key affair, attended only by close friends and relatives, but it offered some new insight into the personalities of the players in the drama of Thornhill’s death. Marion attended with Chuck, but that was the extent of her dealings with him. When she was put in the position of having to speak directly to him at the gathering at Ledge House afterwards, she had done so with contempt. Clearly the source of their estrangement ran deeper than the stress of recent events. Fran maintained her herb-lady role even in the ritual of death, passing out sprigs of rosemary, the herb of remembrance, to the mourners. Charlotte was surprised to find her chatting at the gathering after the service with Thornhill’s fiancèe. Apparently Fran
didn’t find her nearly so unpleasant now that the threat of her marriage to Thornhill had passed. Although Charlotte, who also talked a bit with her, thought her references to her other (still living) wealthy suitors displayed an astonishing lack of taste and sensitivity in a putatively bereaved fiancée. When it came to scheming gold diggers, the vamps were no match for ladylike suburban widows with ailing bank accounts.

The next morning found Charlotte in the Ledge House library once again, this time with Tom. They had volunteered to help Daria assemble the documents needed to put together descriptions of the missing books. Daria had been called back to New York on business for a couple of days, so she was just getting around to the task to which Felix had assigned her of sorting through Thornhill’s papers. She had found a willing assistant in Tom, who had lost no time in acquainting himself with the only single (young) woman on the island. One thing was reasonably certain, Charlotte reflected as she turned to the stack of papers that Tom and Daria had set on the table in front of her: the murder was probably related to the missing books. She reminded herself to keep that thought at the forefront of her mind. The links between the murder and the vandalism, the poison-pen letters—even the death of Jesse (from where she was sitting, she could see the hole where Jesse’s body had been dug up)—were still all suppositional. As for the motives of the suspects—greed, envy, passion (if that’s what you’d call Grace’s banal sentiments)—they really didn’t amount to much. Once you started digging into the affairs of a murder victim, you were apt to unearth all sorts of motives. But the books were different: Thornhill is taken ill, and the books turn up missing. Charlotte’s New England horse sense told her the connection was too obvious to ignore.

After a half hour of sorting, she had distilled half a dozen documents relating to the missing books from a stack of academic papers with deadly titles like “
Solanum Tuberosum
[The Potato] and Its Use for Food” by J. Franklin Thornhill. Taking a break, she leaned back to watch Daria and Tom, who were emptying the last of the filing cabinets. She would wager that Tom would give John a run for his money. The signs were all there, she observed as Daria carried a stack of papers over to the table with her long, leggy stride: he, an appraising look; she, a self-conscious relaxation of the step, an inviting sway of the hips, a coquettish tilt of the head. The almost imperceptible signals that the male and female of the species are programmed to follow through to their immemorial end. She remembered Fran’s prophecy that love was in the air, and smiled to herself. Of Daria’s two suitors, Fran had said, she should choose the stocky one with the brown hair. “He’s your lucky guy,” she had said.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” said Daria, laying the last stack of papers on the table and taking a seat opposite Charlotte.

Pulling up an overstuffed club chair, Tom lit a cigarette and tossed the match into an ashtray with the panache of a professional basketball player. He carried a lively spirit of youthful camaraderie around with him that infused his surroundings with the atmosphere of a big city newsroom.

“What I can’t figure out is this”: said Daria, “if the books were missing two weeks ago when I first noticed they weren’t in the vault, then Dr. Thornhill must have known they weren’t there. And if he knew they were weren’t there, why didn’t he report that the books had been stolen?”

“We wondered about that too,” replied Charlotte. “The only explanation we’ve been able to come up with is that he knew, or suspected, who the thief was, and wanted to confront him himself. He might even have threatened to turn the thief in, which would have provided a motive for the murder.”

Daria nodded. “Do you have any idea who might have stolen the books?” she asked. Then she added: “I guess Chuck is the obvious suspect.”

“Why Chuck?”

“Because of the argument.”

A possibility, thought Charlotte. Chuck’s words, “You’d better leave it to me, you understand?” could have referred to his theft of the books. He could have been warning Thornhill of the consequences if Thornhill turned him in. He could even have been offering to return the books, or repay the debt.

“But why would Chuck steal the books?” Charlotte asked. “He doesn’t appear to need the money; he has a successful insurance business.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Tom. “He could be up to his eyeballs in debt, just like our friend the book dealer.”

“I see one problem with the Chuck theory,” said Daria. “The poisoning would have required premeditation, and Chuck quarreled with Dr. Thornhill just before the poison was put in his tea.”

“Maybe Chuck hoped to convince Thornhill not to turn him in, but took along the poison just in case he wasn’t successful,” said Tom. “Then, when Thornhill made it clear he wasn’t going to let him get away with it, Chuck decided to use it. The tea just happened to be sitting there.”

“Kind of far-fetched, isn’t it?” said Charlotte.

“Non est fumus absque igne,”
he said with a devilish grin.

Charlotte rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “What he means is,” she said, translating for Daria, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“Thanks,” said Daria, flashing Tom a smile.

“Then there’s always the chance the books were taken on the night everyone was at the hospital,” Charlotte continued, standing up to divide the rest of the papers among them. “In which case, there are two explanations. The first is that Thornhill was murdered by mistake.”

“What do you mean?” asked Daria.

“The symptoms of monkshood poisoning mimic those of heart disease. The thief might have intended to induce a phony heart attack with the aim of getting everyone out of the house, not knowing that the difference between a dose that produces the heart attack symptoms and a lethal dose is very small.”

“What’s the second?” asked Tom, shaking his head skeptically.

“The second is that someone took advantage of the fact that Fran and Grace and Daria were all at the hospital to steal the books from the vault. John and Felix were both here, and anyone else could have walked in; the door wasn’t locked. The ‘casual thief,’ Felix called him.”

“In which case, the book theft has nothing to do with the murder,” said Tom. “Speaking of book theft, what exactly are we supposed to be looking for?” he asked, gesturing at the stack of papers in front of him.

“Anything to do with the missing books,” said Daria. “Descriptions, inventories, catalogues, bills of sale, notes. Here’s a list of the titles,” she added, sliding a sheet of paper across the table.

Silence fell as they turned to the tedious task of sorting through the rest of the papers. Charlotte’s newest pile consisted mostly of old auction house catalogues. They had been annotated in Thornhill’s tiny, square handwriting with the amount of the high bid and the name of the high bidder. Several contained listings for other copies of the missing books. She set these to one side. They would provide some guidelines on the values of the missing books. She was down to the middle of the pile when she came across a manila envelope containing a sheaf of notes written in a tall, slanting hand. The first page was headed “Der Gart der Gesundheit,” and gave a detailed description of that book, along with comments on its historical importance. The other pages were each headed with the names of other books, including the four other titles on the missing list. Why were the notes written in a different handwriting? she wondered. Her question was answered by the next document in the stack: a bill of sale for the books MacMillan had sold to Thornhill. It was written on MacMillan’s letterhead, and signed by MacMillan in the same tall, slanting handwriting. Then it dawned on her: the notes were the notes for the catalogue that MacMillan had been working on at the time of his death, the notes that Felix had referred to when he’d talked of the irony of MacMillan’s having begun work on a catalogue in the weeks prior to the diagnosis of his illness. But why would MacMillan’s notes be among Thornhill’s papers?