“I’m Tecumseh Fox. Mrs. Trimble says your name is Nancy Grant. You want to see me?”
She nodded, looked left and right, opened her mouth and closed it.
“It’s all right out here,” he said. “We won’t be interrupted or overheard. You look kind of used up. Could I get you a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“No? Sit down.” He pulled a chair around to confront hers, sat as she did, reached out suddenly and surprisingly to give the back of her hand three reassuring pats, leaned back and asked: “Well?”
“It’s murder.” The hand he had patted closed to a fist. “The Thorpe murder.”
“Thorpe? Has a Thorpe been murdered?”
“Why, yes.” She looked astonished and incredulous. “The papers this morning—”
“I haven’t seen them. I apologize. I drove up to Boston yesterday to look at something and just got back. A friend of yours named Thorpe?”
“No, not a friend. Ridley Thorpe, the — you must know. The head of Thorpe Control.”
“That one? Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“They’ve arrested my uncle. My Uncle Andy — Andrew. That’s why I came to you — he used to know you. Andrew Grant?”
Fox nodded. “Sure. He visited me a while about three years ago. He was going to write something but didn’t get started.”
A little flush in Nancy’s cheeks furnished an idea of what she might look like when not used up. “I know,” she said. “He told me all about the people you let stay here as your guests, as long as they want to. I know he was — he was pretty aimless. But when I came to New York to have a career — I think it was on account of me he got a job writing advertising, to be able to help me, though I didn’t know that then — anyhow, I admire him and I’m grateful to him and I love him very much and I thought you might be willing to help him — he didn’t send me here — though I suppose your opinion of him, since you only knew him when he was... well—”
“I wouldn’t have picked him for a murderer. Did he kill Thorpe?”
“No!”
“Good. Why was he arrested?”
“He... I’ll have to tell you all about it.”
“Go ahead.”
“Will you help him? Will you get him out of it?”
“Go ahead and tell me.”
“He was there last night — where Thorpe was murdered.”
“Where was that? I apologize again. There are papers in the house. Shall I get one and read it?”
Nancy shook her head. “I’ll tell you. I know things that aren’t in the papers. He was killed at a place over near Mount Kisco — a little place with a bungalow off in the woods where he went weekends alone. No one ever went there with him, or was invited there, not even his family, except a colored man who was his chauffeur and valet and cook for the weekends. No one else was allowed on the place. Last night somebody sneaked through the woods and shot through an open window and killed him.”
“And Andy Grant was there?”
“Yes. It’s things about that that I know that aren’t in the papers. I drove him there.”
“You did. Invited?”
“No. He... Uncle Andy works, writes copy for the Willoughby Advertising Agency. Thorpe Control is their biggest account. He wrote a series for a campaign for a new product they’re going to bring out and Thorpe executives turned it down. He thought it was the best thing he had ever done and it should be a big thing for him, and he fought for it too hard and maybe lost his temper, and the agency fired him. That was a week ago. He was sure he could sell the campaign to Ridley Thorpe if he could get to him, but he couldn’t get near him. He knew about the bungalow where Thorpe spent secluded weekends, apparently everybody at the agency did, and he decided to try to see Thorpe there. He knew I was... he knew... I had gone...”
Her voice trailed off. She looked apologetically at Tecumseh Fox, then closed her eyes and put her palms to her temples and pressed so hard that he could see the backs of her hands go white. When she opened her eyes again she tried to smile, but all it amounted to was a quivering of her lips. “I guess I’m a softy,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to have that drink. You see they kept me at the police station, or maybe it was the jail, at White Plains all night, and I didn’t get any sleep, and then I got away and phoned—”
“You ran away from the police?”
“Yes, they left me alone in a room and I sneaked out and went down an alley and phoned here and then I stole a car and—”
“You did. You stole a car? The one parked out back?”
“Yes, I had to get here, and I was afraid to try to rent one, even a taxi, for fear—”
“Hold it.” Fox was frowning. “Look at me. No, right in the eyes... Uh-huh. How straight are you?”
“I’m pretty straight.” Her lips quivered again. “I’m a little stupid sometimes, but I’m reasonably straight.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Without hesitation she extended it. He took it, inspected the back and palm, the joints and fingertips, the firm little mounds. “Not palmistry,” he said curtly. “Nice hand. Is there anything of yours in that car?”
“No.”
“Not a thing? Sure?”
“Nothing.”
He turned his head and made his voice a baritone bellow: “Dan!”
After a moment there was the sound of steps, much heavier than Fox’s had been, and the screen door opened for a man to come through. He was under forty but not much, in shirt sleeves with no tie, excessively broad-shouldered, and had a swarthy face so remarkably square that its outlines could have been reproduced with a straight rule. Restrained movements of his jaw indicated that he had not quite finished chewing something. He approached and rumbled as from the bottom of a deep cavern:
“Right here, Tec.”
“Uh-huh,” said Fox, “your shirt’s showing. Miss Grant, this is Mr. Pavey, my vice-president. Dan, that coupé out back was driven here by Miss Grant. It’s hot. She took it from the curb in White Plains this morning. Tell Bill to take the station wagon and go by the back road towards Carmel, turn left at Miller’s Corner and go over the hill towards the lake. You follow him in the coupé and ditch it along there after you top the hill. Take a rag along to wipe the doors and handles and steering wheel. You don’t want any audience while you’re transferring to the station wagon.”
Dan Pavey shook his head. “That’s too close by, only four miles from here. Wouldn’t it be better if we went down beyond—”
“No.”
“Right again,” Dan rumbled and tramped off.
“Excuse me,” Fox said, and arose and followed his vice-president into the house. Nancy’s head fell forward, like a tulip with the sap out of its stem. Again she pressed her palms tight against her temples and was still sitting that way ten minutes later when Tecumseh Fox reappeared, with a newspaper under one arm and, balanced on the other, a tray with chicken sandwiches, a bottle of sherry, a glass and a highball.
“Here,” he said, pulling a table over with his foot, “you break your fast while I see what this says.”
Chapter 2
Fox refolded the news section of the paper and tossed it aside. All but one of the sandwiches were gone from the plate and the level of the sherry was down two inches.
He frowned at her. “Did your uncle know Luke Wheer?” he demanded.
“Luke?...” She frowned back. “Who is that?”
“The colored servant at the bungalow with Thorpe. You said you read a paper this morning.”