Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (22 page)

I selected the train station, and we careered along in silence for a time. I
didn’t blame Harry for excluding me. I’d had some close calls during my years as
an amateur sleuth. I couldn’t enter a barn or a liquor store without thinking of
two especially close ones. Luckily, I hardly ever entered a barn. But for the
most part, my cases didn’t involve shootouts or blood feuds. So I wouldn’t
contribute much in a strategy session with a SWAT team. And I was consoled by
the certainty that the police would dump Harry as quickly as he had dumped
me.

A block from the station, Harry broke the silence. “The toughest part of this may
be keeping Mary away from the funeral.”

“You’re still thinking about a bomb?”

“Bombs, bullets, water balloons. I don’t care what this Burnon uses. I don’t want
Mary within a mile of him. I don’t want to risk her life.”

That might have been a dig at me and my past performance as a guardian of
Mary—she’d been tied up with me in that long-ago barn—but I didn’t care. I liked
hearing that Harry was concerned for her safety. Ever since I’d danced with Mary
at the reception and she’d asked about Harry’s happiness, I’d been worried. And
I’d been looking for an opening for a conversation with Harry that I really
didn’t want to have. Now, it seemed, I didn’t have to have it.

A moment later, as we pulled up in front of Penn Station, Harry yanked that
deep-pile misconception out from under me.

“Here’s the thing about a rut, Owen. You only live in one in the first place
because the world outside it frightens you. The last thing you want is for
anything to change.”

8.

 
I had time on my hands when I stepped from the train in Elizabeth,
where I rented rooms. I’d gotten the morning off by switching with someone on
the second shift, which was still hours away. So I walked the hills of the old
city. It had been badly served by the twentieth century, had in fact become an
apt symbol for modern life, squeezed as it was on all sides and sliced through
the middle by super highways. But it wasn’t a bad place for a walk, in daylight
at least.

I fell into thinking about Crevier’s world, comparing his Spartan apartment to
the busy streets around me. His empire was cleaner than downtown Elizabeth and
certainly safer, but it was very much less alive. I could understand his desire
to return to his native village, perhaps to watch the comings and goings from a
table in the café, if it had one, on the central square, if there was one.

From there I moved to wondering how Crevier had spent his years of exile. Not
buttoned up in his tower, surely. Not completely. De Gaulle and his successors
didn’t have that long a reach. And if he’d never ventured out, Crevier would
never have met the Le Clares and become a favorite of Kit’s. If he got out at
all, New York would have been a comfortable place for his exile. A prison,
perhaps, but one with a very nice exercise yard, complete with restaurants,
theaters, and museums. I’d known people who’d passed much harsher sentences on
themselves. In fact, I’d done it myself, once upon a time.

That led me to wonder whether, should Burnon be captured and Crevier returned
alive to his village, the old man would be content with his choice. Would he
miss the bright lights when he was sitting beside some trout stream, waiting for
a bite?

Regretted choices were a regular feature of my contemplations, not surprisingly,
given the odd course my own life had taken. But that day the subject seemed
especially pressing, and not just because of Crevier. I was also worried about
Harry, the man who had brought me the Crevier case and then bumped me from it.
In fact, one of the reasons I was thinking about the Frenchman now—pointless
though it was since my demotion to spectator—was to avoid thinking of Harry’s
assessment of his marriage: You only live in a rut in the first place because
the world outside it frightens you.

That paraphrasing came to my mind against my will, and I tried to force it out
again by returning to the subject of Anton Crevier. The transition was easy to
make, so much so that I was almost able to fool myself into believing Harry had
been referring to the old soldier’s life and not his own when he’d spoken of
ruts.

The coincidence brought me up short in the middle of Broad Street. I recovered
just as the light changed and managed to reach the far curb in one piece. There
I checked through my reasoning before setting off again at a run. I started for
my apartment and then spotted a much nearer alternative: a supermarket where I’d
once stocked shelves. Inside its door, between the mechanical bronco and the
gumball machines, was a pay phone. I used it to place a somewhat breathless and
very collect call.

9.

 
The Derivals and the Le Clares got a nice day for the joint funeral,
for whatever solace that was to them. The church where Kit and Emile had been
married was pressed into service again, and was even more tightly packed. Or so
I judged from the crowd that streamed past my sentry post. That crowd included
Harry and Mary—who hadn’t been talked out of attending—and Beth Wolfe. I didn’t
escort her today, preferring for some reason to stand apart from the
proceedings.

I also stayed well away from the police, who were there in force, though
discreet. The headquarters of my stakeout was a little three-sided park across
the street from the church. From there, I saw Anton Crevier arrive at the last
possible moment, pushed by Tritt, whose head never stopped turning on its
stork’s neck. Crevier didn’t scan the crowd once, but he didn’t slump in his
chair either. He sat as upright as his damaged body would permit, looking
straight before him. As far as I could tell from my vantage point, none of the
other stragglers so much as met the old man’s gaze.

After the service, the process was reversed, Crevier and his bodyguard leaving a
little after the main crowd and drawing no special attention. Tritt seemed to
grow edgier as they neared the limousine that had carried them out from the
city. Crevier, in contrast, sagged visibly, like a man who’d tired of waiting
for his firing squad to come off break. The process of loading him into the car
forced Tritt to lower his guard. Still, no one approached them.

I joined the waiting Ohlmans and Beth for the short ride to the cemetery and then
deserted them again, climbing a hill from which I could just hear the words of
the graveside service. When it was over, the mourners drifted away, leaving,
finally, only two men, one in a wheelchair. I walked down the hill to them.

“Our plan has failed, Mr. Keane,” Crevier said. He took out a handkerchief and
wiped his jowly face. “My penance is not over yet, it seems.”

Harry joined us, accompanied by two men. I would have tagged them as policemen
even if I hadn’t been in on the day’s proceedings.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said to the old man. “We’ll have to think of something else.
Owen has an idea.”

“Yes?” Crevier said, fixing me with his black eyes.

Tritt was also watching me intently. I reached into the side pocket of my suit
coat, a bit of stage business designed to hold their attention a moment longer.
As my hand came out empty, the two policemen grabbed Tritt, one on either
arm.

“What is this?” Crevier demanded, struggling to turn in his chair.

By then, Tritt had been relieved of a slim black automatic. When they led him
off, his head was bowed almost to his chest.

“What is this?” the old man asked again, this time of me.

I asked him a question in turn. “Where was Tritt the day the Derivals were
killed?”

“It was his free day. I don’t know what he did.”

Harry told him. “He flew to Quebec. The police identified the flight and the
alias he used. He killed Kit and Emile.”

“But Burnon—”

“Died in nineteen sixty-one, probably,” I said. “When we came to see you at your
apartment, you weren’t surprised by anything we told you. Why was that?”

“We had worked it out for ourselves after speaking with the Le Clares.”

“We?”

“Tritt and I . . .” Crevier’s voice trailed away to nothing.

I said, “We accidentally played into Tritt’s hand by coming up with our solution.
If we hadn’t, he would have found some other way to get you thinking about
Burnon. He needed you to be frightened for his plan to work.”

“What plan?”

“His scheme to hold on to a life he couldn’t give up. He didn’t want your exile
to end. He didn’t want to be let go or to find himself living in a little
village in charge of a staff of one. He couldn’t undo the amnesty your
government had offered you. But if he could get you living in fear again, his
routine would be safe. So he committed murder to do it.”

10.

 
The driver of Crevier’s limousine approached, nervously scanning the
headstones around us. His employer held him off with a raised hand.

“And for that two young people died?”

Meaning, of course, that it wasn’t enough, that the solution to the mystery
didn’t satisfy him. One selfish man’s wishes couldn’t balance scales holding two
young lives. I understood his disappointment. I’d filed the same complaint at
the same window more than once, for all the good it had ever done me.

When he tired of waiting for an answer, Crevier waved his chauffeur up. Harry
went with them, to help with the challenge of moving the old man into the car. I
hung back.

I was tempted to pluck a flower from one of the arrangements and toss it onto the
gleaming caskets, as I’d seen other mourners do. Instead, I fell into thinking,
for the last time, of the sermon from the wedding service. The minister had said
then that no one knew what had happened to the lucky couple who had been married
at Cana, and it occurred to me now that that wasn’t true. We certainly didn’t
know the details of their married life. But we knew how the couple had ended
their years or months or weeks or days together. They’d ended them exactly as
Kit and Emile had, minus the fancy trappings. They’d died, perhaps together,
more likely not. But if death had parted them, it had reunited them eventually.
They’d ended up together in some plot of land, like the one near which I
stood.

That conclusion might have dragged me into a spiral of despair, as my conclusions
often did. But this time was different. The idea that the Derivals had managed
to complete a cycle as old as marriage itself made me feel a little better. When
Beth came up the hill to lead me away by the hand, I squeezed hers back.

Copyright © 2012 by Terence Faherty

 
A Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner for lifetime
achievement, Robert Barnard has a devoted following on both sides of the
Atlantic. In the U. S., he has been honored with the Nero Wolfe, Agatha, and
Macavity awards, and he is a seven-time nominee for the Edgar (three times for
stories in
EQMM).
Fans will be glad to see that his latest novel,
A
Mansion and Its Murder
(Allison & Busby), became available in
paperback this year.
 

 
“It’s so damned unfair,” protested Les, sounding as if he were a
lawyer, in court, conducting his own case. “They look at your address and put
you in the appropriate school for that area. No appeal worth bothering about
against the judgment: The kids from a good area get a good school, and the ones
from a not-so-nice area get a not-so-nice school.”

“You don’t have to talk to the gallery,” said his father-in-law. “I spent my life
teaching in a good school, as you very well know, but if I tried to get my
grandchildren there on the strength of it they’d snigger at me. I only wish I
could help, but you know that I—”

“We know, Dad,” said Miriam. “We understand.”

Ten years before, her father might have helped his daughter to finance a move to
a prosperous area, with well-thought-of schools—his own school, for example,
where he had finished up as Deputy Head of English. Now the credit crunch and
some crass investments recommended by a friend who knew even less about the
stock market than Ernest Craven meant that help to make that longed-for step up
the social ladder was out of the question.

“We can’t help finance a move,” said Win, Miriam’s mother, “but we could go in
for a swap.”

There was a sudden silence. Miriam was sure this had come spontaneously out, was
not something that her parents had thought of before. Nor Les, come to that. If
he’d thought of it, they’d have discussed it. Now she saw his blue eyes,
underneath the floppy lock of blond hair, were sparkling.

“If only,” he said, hesitatingly, his voice breaking.

“I don’t see that there’s any ‘if only,’” said Win. “We always liked your house,
and there’d be much less housework for me than I have in this old barn.”

“We’ll think about it,” said Ernest, sounding as if he was summing up the
respective merits of Keats and Shelley at the end of a lesson with 4A. “Come
round on Friday. We’ll give you all your teas and we’ll talk it over.”

“I really did think of it as ‘if only,’” said Les on the drive home. “I didn’t
think of it as a serious proposition.”

“I know, I know,” said Miriam, “But Dad would have slapped you down if he’d been
totally against it. You get on well enough now for him to be perfectly honest
with you.”

Yes, Les thought: At least that had been put behind them. Ten years ago, the
engagement and the months after it had been punctuated by a typical
schoolmaster’s cry: “He’s not good enough for you.” Modified later by: “I don’t
mean socially, not
class.
I mean intellectually. He’ll never get
anywhere with a second-rate brain like that.”

Miriam had remained silent, only on one fraught occasion saying that there were
many different sorts of brain, and therefore many different sorts of first-rate
brains. She battled valiantly for her side of the argument, and eventually
Ernest came to see that for once he had to give in. He had been faithful to a
silent vow he had made, and had never mentioned Les’s brain since giving them
his blessing.

When the younger generation came round for their high teas, Les and Miriam found
the matter was virtually settled. They were not a bit surprised: Jumping the gun
when a decision was in the offing and making it all on his own was one of
Ernest’s ways of keeping in charge. Now he asked the children first, and got an
enthusiastic endorsement of the idea that every child should have a bedroom to
itself. Ricky added that he knew the boys in the area, and they were rotten at
football, something he seemed to see as a plus rather than a minus. Cathy said
that her grandparents’ house was like a palace and she was going to study Fine
Arts at St. Andrew’s University, where, she clearly thought, some shade of
Prince William would inspire her.

Win said she wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the fall in social status—only silly
people gave it a second thought, she said. Ernest said that as far as he was
concerned, education was in the top three considerations in life, and if he
could help his grandchildren get a better life through better and wiser
teaching, that would be worth any sacrifice on his and Win’s part.

Les and Miriam didn’t need to say anything. The swap was voted on and passed
nem con,
as Ernest roundly pronounced.

The next problem was understanding the system, and making it work to their
advantage. Here Ernest’s experience as a teacher—and a teacher at one of the
schools concerned—was immensely valuable. It was too late in the school year to
apply for a place in the normal way. Ricky was ten, and would be eleven by the
beginning of the school year in September. Places were filled at Saint
Ethelinda’s School, apart from a few places kept back to cover emergencies or
exceptional late applications.

The committee sitting on the applications consisted of the school’s headmaster
(new since Ernest’s time as English teacher there), a local councillor, and a
prominent parent. They interviewed the boy’s father first, and Les was sure he
was not going to distinguish himself. In all his jobs he had impressed by his
work ethic and his happy-go-lucky attitude to life and its challenges, so he
knew what he said would be vacuous and very little to the point.

“Oh, Ricky’s just crazy to go to the school his grandfather taught at. And quite
right too. He knows his grandfather was head of English, and English is very
much one of his subjects. He knows my father-in-law was Deputy Head by the time
he retired, and he’s proud of that. They make a wonderful pair, and he’ll be
devastated if he doesn’t get a place. In fact, they both will.”

“That’s as may be,” said the headmaster, a punctilious man, “but at the moment
you are not residents of the catchment area of Saint Ethelinda’s.”

“Will be by Saturday,” said Les, grinning attractively and pushing back his fair
lock of hair.

“By exchanging houses with your in-laws, I believe.”

“Yes. Nothing wrong with that, is there? We’ve been thinking about it for years.”

“Could I ask who the boy’s grandfather is?” said the local councillor.

“Ernest Craven. Ernie C to the boys in my time.”

If a thaw could be visible, this one would proclaim itself with all the
self-congratulation of a washing-powder ad.

“Oh, a wonderful teacher,” said the parent. “Couldn’t be better. The name is its
own guarantee.”

Les agreed, and sat back contentedly in his chair, unusually pleased with
himself. The work was done even before Ernest was called.

He came in, hand outstretched, to shake the headmaster’s hand first.

“Glad to meet you at last. Congratulations. You’re doing a fine job. Going fast,
but not too fast. Boys don’t like wholesale changes. Still, I expect they all
like the opening of the sixth form to girls. Or do we say young ladies?”

He turned to the councillor.

“Frank. Good to see you again. I’ve followed your local successes with interest.
Westminster next, I believe? Good show. A firm local base is what an MP needs.
And Charlie.” He turned to the parent. “Producing sprigs for your old school.
Good show. I hope your present sprig reads English verse better than his old dad
used to.”

Charlie’s smile of “welcome back” was as warm as the councillor’s had been.
People like to have their weak spots remembered almost as much as their 75 runs
against Chelmsford Grammar in 1973. The headmaster gave up his predilection for
following the rules to the letter. He smiled almost nonstop during the brief
interview, and as Ernest was going out said: “We look forward to welcoming young
Ricky to Saint Ethelinda.” The whole family drank a toast to the headmaster that
evening.

The days between the interview and the move were jam-packed with activity. A
mover had been hired for Saturday at eight a.m. and he was just taking the
larger things: the dining table, the double bed, the piano that was an
historical monument to Ernest’s efforts to make the young Miriam musical. After
these things had been removed from one house to another, each family had hired a
smaller van and had lined up friends—Ernest’s bowls mate Kieran, Les’s friend
Harry from the insurance firm they both worked for—to take the smaller things:
the chests of drawers, the occasional tables, the armchairs. When they had been
taken, the ordinary detritus of family living was moved from one house to
another and the move was complete.

“Whoops!” said Ernest as they settled down to an enormous urn of tea in the
Victorian terrace house they’d taken over from his daughter and son-in-law.
“Forgot the attic.”

“Oh, Dad!” said Miriam. “Forget the attic. It’s only rubbish and you won’t have
looked at some of it for years.”

“Not all of it,” said her father. “There’s . . . a novel. Or the material for a
novel. They say everyone has a novel inside them, don’t they? Something they
long to get down on paper. I’ll just down this cuppa, then I’ll take the van and
go and get it.”

“Well, I’m coming with you,” said Miriam, taking a swift swig at her mug.

“If you must,” said Ernest, grimly. “I thought you wanted a rest.”

“I want to see our new house,” she replied. “Ours because of your and Mum’s
generosity. I want to see how my old furniture fits into it.”

“Take him away, for goodness’ sake,” said Win. “And don’t talk about generosity:
This house will be a rest cure after it.”

Father and daughter went to the front door, and got into the two seats of the
van. As they sped on the twenty-minute drive Miriam could discern—or thought she
could—an excitement in her father: a tensed-up yet happy ebullience. You old
goat, she thought, giggling to herself. It was bound to be a novel about his
teenage sex with someone or other.

Then suddenly she felt a change to sadness for the poor old man who had always
been the object of love and respect for her: a novel, written years ago, by a
man now well into retirement. It didn’t seem as if it was a piece of fiction
that had any sort of future. Even if it wasn’t an old goat’s memories, even if
it was a dour memory-play about habits and attitudes in postwar Leeds, its
future, if it had any, was as a treasure-trove of provincial mores. Miriam hoped
against hope he never asked her to read it and tell him what she thought of it.

Miriam put the thoughts from her as they arrived at the house. She jumped out of
the van and ran up to put the key of the door for the first time in the lock.
She went straight into the living room and looked, enchanted, around. She turned
to her father. “Oh look, Dad. I know it’s just chance, but they’ve put that
armchair,
my
armchair, just where I want it.”

“You might change your mind come next winter,” said Ernest, still slightly
grumpy. “It’ll be too far away from the gas fire.”

“Oh, and the piano. I thought we could slip it into that alcove. I just hope
neither of the kids will want to take it up, with all that awful practicing. Put
away over there they won’t even think of it.”

“You’ll have fun getting the place how you like it,” her father said, relaxing
from his negative thoughts. “Now, I’ll just go and get the box and I’ll be off
back to Kieran, Win, and Les.”

“Dad, let me go up and get it. That attic is—”

“No, no. I know exactly where it is. I’ll recognise it. You amuse yourself with
your new doll’s house.”

And Miriam turned back to look at the room, only slightly worried, because her
father had always been a very fit man.

The attic was reached through a square hatch, and Miriam heard her father
bringing down the attic’s rickety old ladder of rope and wood, secured to the
floor inside the hatch. Then she heard him go up step by step, carefully. She
went over to the window, thoughts going through her mind about some kind of
marriage between the trees in the parkland opposite and the wall in the house’s
largest room that looked directly out onto it. “Got it,” she heard her father
say triumphantly. It never occurred to her to wonder how large the box was, and
whether he would still have an arm left to steady himself with when he came down
the ladder.

She was brought up suddenly by a shout—not a scream, but the sort of shout a
schoolmaster inevitably had to use at times. She threw open the living-room
door, then dashed up the stairs and onto the landing where the hatch was. Ernest
was lying still on the floor, his left ankle still trapped in one of the lower
steps of the ladder. Miriam rushed over and released it, then knelt and felt her
father’s pulse. She had been a schoolteacher before her own children came along,
and she knew all the basics of first aid.

“Oh, Dad. You
silly
old fool. Why wouldn’t you let me fetch your
precious box? I’m ringing for an ambulance now. Love you, Dad . . . Always.”

The ambulance took only ten minutes, but it was the longest ten minutes of her
life. She wanted to ring Les and tell him, but she thought he would be taking
Kieran home, so she waited until she and her father were in the ambulance, she
on a little tip-up seat, her father lying flat out, attached to various dials
and indicators.

“Les, darling. Dad has had some kind of stroke or heart attack. I’ll be at the
hospital when you’re free. Could you get your mum to take the children for a
bit? And ring my mother and tell her. She’ll want to be at the hospital with
him. Ring for a taxi for her, or bring her yourself . . . of course I trust you.
Love you too.”

The next two hours were almost unbearable, especially after they were told by the
specialist that things didn’t look good. Her mother arrived with Les, though the
latter stayed only twenty minutes then decided he ought to be with the children.
Les’s one weakness was a fit person’s horror of illness. Win said all the things
people do say at such times, and did all the useless things people do except
worrying about the state of her husband’s underclothes. When the inevitable had
happened and the nurse had tenderly shut his eyes, Win demanded to go home to
her new home, and asked to be left alone.