Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (9 page)

And there was Anse Wheeler, from one of the old families. The Wheeler mansion on Hill Drive was a showplace. The Wheelers were proud of their name, careful with their money, and properly set in their ways. Anse still drove the Pierce-Arrow which had belonged to his father. They had never streamlined their plumbing. Old Mrs. Wheeler, who wore boned chokers and a gold chest-watch to the day of her death, nevertheless had always insisted on putting up her own pickles. And even though Anson K. Wheeler owned the big farm machinery plant over in the valley near the airport—employing hundreds of people—he conducted his business the way his father had before him, along the most conservative lines, with 1910 bookkeeping methods and Anse personally picking up his plant payroll at the bank every Friday morning.

Anse had been First Selectman twice. He was president of the Wrightsville Historical Society. He was senior vestryman of St. Paul's-in-the-Dingle, with a cold rebuke for those so prone to Low Church lapses as to fail to call the rector “Father” Chichering. His grandfather, General Murdock Wheeler, had been Wrightsville's last surviving veteran of the G.A.R. His first cousin, Uriah Scott (“U.S.”) Wheeler, was principal of Gunnery School over in Fyfield and one of Wright County's leading intellectuals.

Anson Wheeler had never married because of his mother. His devotion to ailing Mrs. Wheeler had been a beautiful thing, and when she died at the age of eighty-nine he was like a fish out of water.

That was when
she
got in
her
licks, of course, with her imitation-lady's voice and sugary ways. Anse Wheeler, just about the best catch in town—and Mamie Hood,
his housekeeper
, caught him!

Mamie Hood was not only his housekeeper—a domestic, really—she had a grown child to boot. Delbert had his father's bad blood. There'd always been something queer about Alf Hood, with his radical ideas and his shifty ways. Alf had sent himself through Merrimac U. by stoking furnaces, waiting on table, and even more menial jobs than that; you always felt he'd do anything to make a dollar. When he opened his law office on State Street he might have got along if he'd played his cards right. Louise Glannis was wild about him and wanted to elope. The Glannises and their set would have accepted him in time to keep the town from talking, and he could have made something of himself. What did the fool do? Jilted Louise and married Mamie Broadbeck of Lower Whistling Street! After that, of course, he was through. He never got a single Hill or High Village client—the Glannises saw to that.

So high-and-mighty Alf wound up tramping the streets looking for work. But it was 1931, in the depression, and Charlie Brady was soon picking him up under the influence. Finally Brady caught him in the act of breaking into Logan's Market at three in the morning. He was trying to steal some groceries—picking out the fanciest brands! Charlie took him around to the old jailhouse on Plum Street and the next morning they found him with both wrists slashed. Mamie gave birth the week after the funeral.

Delbert was his father all over again. Mamie hired out for day work, so the boy grew up a typical Low Village street loafer, with no respect for property, and as uppity as Alf ever was. He actually nursed a
grudge
against Wrightsville. Swore he'd “get even” for what they'd “done” to his father!

A boy like that was bound to get into trouble. The Korean war ought to have straightened him out, but he came back in less than a year with a chest wound, louder-mouthed than before. By this time Mamie was the Wheelers' housekeeper, and all Delbert did was sit around the Wheeler kitchen making sarcastic remarks about the Hill families. For Mamie's sake, Anson Wheeler took him into the plant. Delbert lasted just three weeks. One lunch hour Anse caught him making a speech to a large group of working people, ranting about what fools they were to stand for some of the conditions at the plant. Naturally, Anse had to fire him on the spot.

How Anson Wheeler could have married Mamie Hood after
that
, snapped the ladies, was the only mystery in the entire case. Anse asked for it and he got it—two cracks on the skull and the robbery of fifteen thousand of his dollars, and the sooner that horrible boy was sent up to the State Penitentiary where he belonged, the easier they'd all breathe nights.

“I'll take you up the Hill to see Mamie and Del,” said Ed Hotchkiss eagerly.

“Wait, Ed,” said Ellery. “Who's Del's lawyer?”

“Mort Danzig. He's got his office over his old man's stationery store near the Bijou, on Lower Main.”

“I'll walk over to Mort's while you get your cousin Mamie to bring Delbert there. I'd rather talk to them in friendly territory.”

“Who says it's friendly?” And, muttering, Ed drove his taxi off at twice the legal speed limit.

“I just don't know, Mr. Queen,” said Ben Danzig's balding son worriedly in his plain office above the clatter of Lower Main. “There's an awfully strong circumstantial case against him. And if
I
can't make up my mind about his guilt or innocence … I've begged Mamie to get a different lawyer, but she's latched onto me—”

“Who's sitting in the case, Mort?”

“Judge Peter Preston. Of the Hill Prestons,” Mort Danzig added grimly. “If Judge Pete hadn't been sick on and off this winter and the calendar crowded, I'd never have been able to delay the trial this long.”

“What's your defense?”

Danzig shrugged. “No positive identification. Failure of the money to be found. Negative stuff. What else can I do? The boy's got no alibi—he says he was tramping the woods, alone, around Granjon Falls—he tried to escape afterward, he's responsible for poor Jeep Jorking's being laid up in the hospital, and there's that blamed handkerchief …” The young lawyer stared at Ellery hopefully. “Do
you
think Del Hood is innocent?”

“I don't know yet,” said Ellery. “Del did me a good turn once on a case, when he was bellhopping at the Hollis, and I remember him as a smart, nice kid. Mort, who went bail for him?”

“Anson Wheeler.”

“
Wheeler?
”

“Well, the boy's ma is Anse's wife now, isn't she? You know the cockeyed code these old Hill families live by?”

“But—then why did Wheeler press the charge?”

“That,” said Morton F. Danzig dryly, “is another section of said code.
I
don't pretend to understand it.… Oh, come in!”

Mamie Hood Wheeler was a plump, sturdy woman who looked like any year's All-American Mother, dressed up for the annual ceremony. She wore a modish hat and a Persian lamb coat which shrieked of newness and Boston. There was nothing Boston could do for her hands, however; they were worked out, in ruins, and beyond repair. (She carried her gloves.) From the state of her eyes, she had been crying since September, and this was January.

If she'd stop crying, Ellery thought, she'd be an attractive woman. What were those women talking about?

“Now, now, Mrs. Wheeler,” he said, taking her hands. “I can't promise anything.”

“I know you'll get my Del off,” she sobbed. She had a soft, surprisingly cultivated, voice. “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Queen!”

“Mom.” The tall boy with her was embarrassed. He was lean and burnt-out-looking, with a slow, unhappy smile. “Hello, Mr. Queen. What do you want to bother with me for?”

“Del,” said Ellery, looking him in the eye, “did you hold up your stepfather on the Ridge Road last September twenty-first and rob him of his payroll?”

“No, sir. But I don't expect you to believe me.”

“No reason why you should,” Ellery said cheerfully. “Tell me this, Del: How do you explain that handkerchief?”

“It was planted. I hadn't worn it for weeks—in fact, I thought I'd lost it.”

“But he didn't mention it to anybody,” said Mort Danzig. “Just to make it harder.”

“I tell you I'm being framed, Mr. Danzig!”

“And this, Del,” said Ellery. “Why, when Officer Jorking arrested you, did you try to run for it?”

“Because I went chicken. I knew they'd all hang it on me. It wasn't only the handkerchief. There were all those fights I'd had with old Anse.”

“Del,” wept his mother, “don't speak about your—about Mr. Wheeler that way. He thinks he's doing the right thing. What we've got to do is convince him—everybody—that you had nothing to do with it.”

“What do you want me to do, Mom,” cried the tall boy, “kiss his foot for trying to send me to prison? He's had it in for me from the day he caught me explaining to some of his plant workers what suckers they are. I should have cleared out then!”

“You've been out on bail for months,” remarked Ellery. “Why haven't you cleared out while you've had the chance?”

The boy flushed. “I'm not that big a rat, with him putting up the bail. Besides, my mother still has to live in this one-horse town. The only thing I'm sorry about is that I lost my head when Jeep Jorking tried to pull me in.”

“And you're still living in your stepfather's house, Del?”

“It's my mother's house now, too, isn't it?” Delbert said defiantly. “She's got some rights as his wife.”

“Del,” moaned Mamie.

“But isn't it awkward, Del? For you as well as for Mr. Wheeler?”

“We just ignore each other.”

“Seems to me,” said Ellery, “your stepfather's been awfully decent about several phases of this affair.”

“All right!” shouted Delbert Hood. “I'll give him my Purple Heart!”

That was one of the things Ellery liked about this case. The villain was something of a saint and the young hero could have used a timely kick in the pants.

“Well, Delbert, there's only one way to get you out of this hole. If you're innocent, somebody else is guilty. Take your mom home and stay there with her. You'll hear from me.”

Ellery crossed the Square to the Wrightsville National Bank and asked to see its president, Wolfert Van Horn.

Old Wolf hadn't changed. He merely looked older, scratchier, and more wolfish. He eyed Ellery's hand as if it were diseased and sat back to click his dentures carnivorously.

“You'll get no cooperation from me, Queen,” said Wrightsville's leading banker in his knifelike voice. “That boy's guilty and Anse Wheeler is one of my bank's best customers. Would you like to open an account?”

“Now, Wolfert,” said Ellery soothingly, “all I'm trying to do is pick up the facts of a business that happened almost five months ago. Tell me how Anson Wheeler's regular payroll day happened to be changed after so many years.”

“Nothing to tell,” said Wolfert Van Horn with a snarl of sheer hatred. “Tellers always made up Anse's payroll Thursday late afternoon, and first thing Friday morning Anse would pick it up at the bank here on his way to the plant. One Friday morning, middle of last September, a man with a handkerchief over his face tried to hold him up on the Ridge Road. Anse got away by stepping on the gas. So the next week—”

“Time,” murmured Ellery. “As a result of the near holdup, Mr. Wheeler called a council of war that same evening at his home. Who were actually present at that meeting—in his study, I believe?”

“Anse Wheeler, Mamie, Chief Dakin, me, and my head cashier, Olin Keckley.”

“Not Delbert Hood, then.”

“He wasn't in the study, no. But he was in the living room reading a pile of comic books, and the transom over the door between was wide open. Couldn't have helped but hear the whole thing.”

“Delbert was still in the living room when the conference broke up and you left?”

“He was,” said Wolfert, beginning to enjoy himself, “and I'm going to say so on the witness stand under oath.”

“At this meeting, it was decided that, unless the masked man were picked up beforehand, the next week Keckley would make up the Wheeler payroll on Wednesday instead of Thursday, and on Wednesday evening he, Keckley, would secretly take the payroll to your home. Mr. Wheeler was to pick it up at your house Thursday morning on his way to the plant. And all this was to be kept top-secret among those present. Is that right, Wolfert?”

“I know what you're after,” grinned Van Horn, “but it wasn't
my
handkerchief that's Exhibit Number One in this case.”

“Tell me: Whose suggestion was it that the payroll day be advanced from Friday to Thursday?”

Wolfert started. “What difference does that make?” he demanded suspiciously. “I don't remember, anyhow!”

“Could we have Olin Keckley in here?”

Van Horn's head cashier was a gaunt gray man with a tic and a cringing look. In the days when John F. Wright had owned the bank, Ellery recalled, Keckley had been a pleasant fellow with a forthright eye.

“The suggestion about changing the day?” the cashier repeated, glancing quickly at Wolfert Van Horn. The banker looked bland. “Why, I'm sure I don't remember, Mr. Queen.” Wolfert frowned. “Unless,” Keckley hurried on, “unless it was me. Yes, I think—in fact, I'm sure it was me made the suggestion.”

“Why, Olin, I think it was,” said his employer.

“Clever of you, Mr. Keckley,” said Ellery. Chief Dakin had told him the suggestion originated with Wolfert Van Horn. “And the following Wednesday night you dropped the Wheeler payroll off at Mr. Van Horn's house, as planned?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The payroll was in the customary canvas bag?”

“Well, no, sir. We figured that since the whole idea was to fool the robber, we ought to wrap the payroll in paper, like an ordinary package. In case,” Keckley said earnestly, “the robber was watching the bank, or something like that.”

“What kind of paper?”

“Plain brown wrapping paper.”

“Sealed?”

“With adhesive paper tape, yes, sir.”