“Wahgoosh!” Anne said sharply. “Be still.”
The dog stopped barking, but he continued to growl and give me his best evil eye.
“I understand you and Henry drove down to Virginia yesterday,” Anne said, smiling, “and back again.” She gestured for me to sit next to her on the couch and I did. Wahgoosh expressed snarling displeasure.
“That sounds like quite an outing for a single day,” Mrs. Morrow said.
“We didn’t get back till the middle of the night,” I admitted. “How worthwhile a trip it was, I couldn’t say.”
“You spoke to a clairvoyant, I understand,” Anne said.
Mrs. Morrow shook her head, barely, as if thinking, What next? and returned her attention to her needlepoint.
“Yes,” I said. “A sincere gentleman, I believe.”
“Not a faker, like so many of them.”
“No. But he gave us some specific information, including street names that we tried to check, on various maps, without any success.”
“I see,” Anne said, with a patient smile.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“Ben Jonson.”
“Oh.”
“The poet.”
“Right.”
She read aloud: “‘Although it fall and die that night, it was the plant of flower and light. In small proportions we just beauties see; and in short measures, life may perfect be.’” She looked up at me with shimmering blue eyes and a crinkly brave smile. “I like that line…‘It was the plant of flower and light.’”
Jesus. Had she written off her kid as dead already?
“That’s a nice poem,” I said. “Tell me something…”
“Certainly.”
That fucking dog was still growling at me.
“Why do you think your dog was quiet that night?”
“Wahgoosh? He was in the opposite wing of the house. When he’s not on the sofa, here, where we really shouldn’t let him be…or sleeping on the floor in the nursery near Charlie…he has a little bed in the servants’ sitting room. Whately first brought him into the house, you know, and we sort of adopted the little fellow. He couldn’t have heard anything through the howling wind, all that distance.”
“You know…and excuse me for raising this, Mrs. Lindbergh…but there are those who suspect one of your three servants might be involved.”
She shook her head. “No. Betty and the others, we trust implicitly.”
“That’s not always a good way to trust.”
“Pardon?”
“Implicitly.” I turned to Anne’s mother. “Mrs. Morrow, how big a staff do you have at your estate?”
The older woman looked up from her needlepoint. “Twenty-nine. But I assure you, Mr. Heller, they’re all trustworthy.”
“I’m sure they are, Mrs. Morrow. But how many of them knew, or could have known, about the change of plans for Anne and her husband and son, to stay over an extra day or two here?”
Mrs. Morrow lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug, not missing a stitch. “Most of them. Perhaps all of them.”
I thought about that.
“You know, Mr. Heller,” Anne said, reflectively, “there was something else odd about that evening. The evening that Charlie was stolen away, I mean….”
“What was that, Mrs. Lindbergh?”
Her eyes tightened. “My husband was supposed to give a speech that night, to the alumni at New York University. But he’s been so overworked lately, he mixed up the dates. He drove home, instead.”
“You mean, he wasn’t supposed to be here that evening?”
“No.”
I leaned forward. “You realize that only someone within this household-or possibly the Morrow household-could have known that.”
“Yes. But that assumes the kidnappers knew. That this wasn’t all just a matter of…chance. Blind, dumb chance. That’s…that’s what I have so much difficulty accepting.”
Behind us a voice said, “Everything in life is chance, dear.”
It was Lindbergh. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over a sweater and open-collar shirt; his pants were tucked into leather boots that rose midcalf. He looked like a college boy-a hung-over college boy, that is. His face was haggard as hell.
He came up behind his wife, behind the couch, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She reached up and touched the hand, but did not look back at him.
“You can guard against the high percentage of chance,” he said, “but not against chance itself.”
She nodded wisely. She’d heard him say it before.
I said, “You’re right, Colonel. But don’t go writing off everything you don’t understand as happenstance. In my business we learn to look at coincidence with a jaundiced eye.”
He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he’d paid any attention. He said, “Have you had any breakfast, Nate?”
“No, sir.”
“Let’s round you something up. I’d like a word with you.”
We excused ourselves to the ladies. He walked briskly and I followed along, till he came to a sudden stop in the foyer, beyond earshot of his wife and mother-in-law.
“This fellow Red Johnson is being brought around today,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He isn’t technically under arrest, you know. The Hartford police have turned him over to the custody of the state police, here. He’ll be held in Newark.”
“Well, that’s good.”
He put his hands in his pockets, rocked gently on his feet. “This is going to be hard on Miss Gow, if this beau of hers was using her for information.”
I thought, Yeah, and so fucking what?
But I said, sympathetically, “Yes, I know.”
“You know, she was badly embarrassed when the papers were full of that Scotty Gow nonsense.”
The first several days after the kidnapping, the press and the cops of several cities had latched onto the notion that one Scotty Gow, a Purple Gang member in Detroit, was the brother of Betty Gow. Miss Gow had worked in Detroit, and Lindbergh’s mother lived in Detroit, so everybody put two and two together and came up with three hundred and five.
“He wasn’t her brother,” I said.
“Of course not. Understand, I’m in general pleased with Colonel Schwarzkopf’s handling of this situation, but this persistent, sometimes boorish questioning of my staff does not please me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“I’d appreciate it, Nate, if you would do two things for me.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t pester my servants with questions-don’t be part of this inquisition. And let me know if you see Schwarzkopf or his chief bully, Inspector Welch, overstepping the line.”
“Sure. But, Slim…there is reason to suspect an insider was involved. The cops are just doing their job.”
“It’s silly,” he said impatiently. “This thing was obviously the work of seasoned professional criminals. This is the underworld’s doing, not my damn household staff!”
“The underworld could have recruited somebody from your…”
“Perhaps they recruited Red Johnson. But that’s as far as I can see it going. I’m going to keep out of the way of the police when they interrogate him, so be my eyes and ears, if you would.”
“Fine,” I said, surprised that he’d bow out of the Johnson questioning. “Is something else up?”
Then he headed into the kitchen, talking as he went.
“I’ll be tied up most of the afternoon with an in-law of mine,” he said. “There’s a possibility the kidnappers have tried to make contact with us through an outside party.”
“Really?”
“I can’t say any more, at this point, and please don’t mention what I just said to anyone.”
I nodded.
Then we were in the kitchen; Elsie Whately was slicing a cucumber on a wooden counter using a wide, thick knife. She smiled wanly at Lindbergh, who asked her to fix me some eggs and toast.
“How do you like them?” he asked me. He was getting a pitcher of orange juice out of the Frigidaire.
“Scramble the eggs and keep the toast light, if you would,” I told her.
Her mouth flinched in surly acknowledgment, and she left the cucumber half-sliced and went to work on my breakfast.
Lindbergh had poured us both full glasses of orange juice. He brought the pitcher to the table.