“And he’ll make some inquiries about Gordon McLeod?”
“That’s what he said. I had a very eerie feeling about that. I wanted to make sure he just made inquiries. I thought he might think I was asking for something more serious than inquiries. Like he might have thought I was being subtle and indicating you wanted McLeod killed if I didn’t spell things out.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure. Also I had the feeling that if you did want McLeod killed, and you said as much to LiCastro, then that would be the end of McLeod.”
“That I do not doubt,” Haig said. “Continue.”
I continued. “Jessica Trelawney drew a will a couple of weeks after Robin died. I have the date written down if it matters.”
“It may.”
“Her lawyer says that’s a common response to the death of someone close. He also says she left everything to a feminist group called Radicalesbians. I’m not making this up. He is sure the will is going to be challenged by attorneys for Caitlin Vandiver, and he told me off the record that he’s just as sure it won’t stand up. He more or less implied that he drew it in such a way as to make it easy to challenge. I’m pretty sure he’s not a big fan of Radicalesbians.”
“Indeed.”
“So no one stood to gain a penny by Jessica’s death, except for Radicalesbians, but that doesn’t prove anything because no one necessarily knew about her will. Before that she had never drawn a will, and if she had died intestate, everything would have been divided among the surviving sisters. Which is what would have happened to Robin’s money if she and Bell had died together in the car accident.”
“Car wreck,” Haig said.
“Indeed,” I said.
“Precision is important. Language is a tool, its edge must be kept sharp.”
“Indeed. Melanie did die intestate, which is a word I have now used twice in two minutes and can’t remember ever using before. I suppose it’s a part of keeping the edge of my tool sharp. So her money will be divided among Caitlin and Kim, and—”
“Between.”
“Huh?”
“One divides among three persons and between two. I don’t like to keep correcting you, Chip.”
“I can tell you don’t. I found out who Caitlin’s lawyer is, but couldn’t reach him.”
“He wouldn’t divulge information about her will anyway.”
“He probably will, because it’s Addison Shivers, but I couldn’t get to see him. Anyway, I figured he would tell us or not tell us over the phone. I would guess that her money is scheduled to go to her husband, but you can’t be sure, can you? I mean, she changes husbands pretty quickly, and if she’s not morbid she might not want to have to change her will that frequently. The problem is that I keep going out after information and I keep getting it and it doesn’t seem to get me anywhere.”
“Sooner or later everything will fit into place.”
“By that time everyone could be dead.”
“In the long run everyone always is, Chip.” He began filling a pipe, tamping down each pinch of tobacco very carefully. “We have to make haste slowly,” he went on, while making haste slowly with the pipe. “We are making progress. We are in the possession of data we previously lacked. That is progress.”
“I suppose.”
“There are cases that lend themselves to Sherlockian methodology. Cases which are solved by the substance in a man’s trouser turnups. Cases which hinge on a dog’s silence in the night or the chemical analysis of coffee grounds.” He closed his eyes and put the deliberately filled pipe back in the pipe rack. His hand went to his beard and he leaned back in his chair. “This, I think, is another sort of case entirely. There is someone somewhere with a logical reason to kill the five daughters of Cyrus Trelawney. He had a reason to sabotage Ferdinand Bell’s car, a reason to pitch Jessica Trelawney out a window, a reason to inject Melanie Trelawney with a fatal overdose of heroin. If we determine the reason, we will have determined the killer.”
He sat forward suddenly, and his eyes opened like those dolls that go sleepy-bye when you lay them down on their backs. “Do you know something, Chip? I think there’s an element of Ross MacDonald in this. I can’t avoid the feeling that the underlying motive is buried somewhere deep in the past. As though it all has its roots forty years ago, in Canada.”
“Canada?”
“A figure of speech. So often Lew Archer uncovers something that started forty years ago in Canada, you know.” He spun around in his chair and gazed at the rasboras. They didn’t seem at all self-conscious. While he let them provide inspiration, I took out my nail file and cleaned out the dirt from under my fingernails. I only tell you this so you won’t think I was just sitting there doing nothing.
He turned around again, eventually, and folded his hands on his round belly. He looked elfin but determined. “I shall call Addison Shivers,” he said. “I have some questions to ask him.”
He reached for the telephone, and it rang. So he picked it up, naturally enough. It doesn’t seem to surprise him much when things like this happen. In fact he made it look as though he had been waiting for it to ring.
He talked briefly, mostly saying things like “Yes,” and “Indeed.” Then he hung up and raised his eyebrows at me.
“Our client,” he said.
“Mr. Shivers?”
“Mrs. Vandiver. She’s at her house on Long Island. She wants to see you immediately. She says it’s rather urgent.”
Eleven
You get to Sands Point by taking the Long Island Rail Road to the Port Washington stop. I understand that there are people who do this every day. What I don’t understand is why.
I got on the train at Penn Station, and got off it at Port Washington. I stood there on the platform for a minute, and a very tall and very thin man came up to me. “You would be Mr. Harrison,” he said.
“I would,” I said. “I mean, uh, I am. Yes.”
“I am Seamus,” he said. “I’ve brought the car.”
The car was a Mercedes, about the size of Chicago. I started to get in the front next to Seamus, but stopped when he gave me a very disappointed glance. I closed the door and got in back instead. He seemed happier about this.
There was a partition between the front and rear seats, which kept Seamus and me from having to make small talk to each other. I sat back and looked out the window at one expensive home after another. Finally, we turned onto what I thought was a side road but turned out to be the Vandiver driveway. It wandered through a stand of old trees and finally led to a house.
The house gave you an idea of what God could have done if he’d had the money. That’s not my line; I read it somewhere, but I can’t think of a way to improve on it. There were these Grecian columns in front which you would think no house could live up to, and then the house went on to overpower the columns, and it was all about as impressive as anything I’ve ever seen. Caitlin and Melanie had each inherited the same amount of money, and Caitlin lived here, while Melanie had lived in Cockroach Heaven, and it wasn’t hard to feel that Caitlin had a better appreciation of creature comfort.
She was waiting for me in a room carpeted in white shag and decorated in what I think they call French provincial, The furniture did not come from the Salvation Army, There were oil paintings on the walls, including one that I recognized as a portrait of Cyrus Trelawney.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “It’s been such a bore of a day. Your drink is Irish whiskey, if I remember correctly. Straight, with a soda chaser?”
It was the last thing I wanted, but I evidently had an image to maintain. She made the drinks, fixing herself a massive Martini, and her eyes sparkled as we touched our glasses together. “To crime,” she said.