The Callender Papers (18 page)

“Yes,” Mac said. “But after a person has been missing for seven years you can have him declared legally dead. Why wouldn't Mr. Thiel do that?”

We were silent again. Mac started the next train of
thought. “If Irene Thiel was murdered—it would be because the murderer wanted that second version of the will, where the fortune was split equally. If she was murdered, it would be because she was supposed to die before her father, and the money would be split between the two families, with Mr. Thiel in control of it.”

“We haven't solved anything, have we?” I realized. “We only have two real choices for people with motives; and they both profit from the second version of the will.”

Mac looked at me: “I don't know how you can be so cool-headed about this.”

I wasn't cool-headed, if he had known. My mind was in a turmoil. I was just holding onto what facts we had, as a drowning man must hold onto a life preserver.

“Then,” I continued, “the real question isn't about the death of Irene Thiel, it's about the child. First, what happened to him? Second, why was no investigation made? Third, why wasn't he declared legally dead?”

Mrs. Bywall opened the door then, to announce lunch. “Mr. Thiel thought you would be staying,” she told Mac.

“Yes, thank you,” Mac said, with a glance at me out of the side of his eyes. He seemed embarrassed.

“What have the two of you been doing here? You look like the cat that ate the canary, the both of you. Mr. Thiel is already at table,” she warned us.

We returned the paper to its place in the pile. It had lain there so long unnoticed, I assumed it would be safe.

Something, I thought to myself, should be safe. I did not feel safe. I was confused and disturbed. The nightmare seemed to be seeping over into the daylight hours: just beyond the edges of my vision, shadowy shapes moved, Irene Thiel, this child, the nurse into whose care Mr. Thiel had placed the child, Mr. Thiel himself as his wife wrote to him, Mr. Callender trying to hold his sister's affections, and old Josiah Callender himself, trying to do the right thing with his fortune, who would perhaps have known his family best, who apparently trusted neither his son nor his son-in-law.

That lunch was not a comfortable meal for me. Mac ate away as if nothing were wrong. Mr. Thiel was even more quiet than usual. I could not look at him, but could not look away. I wanted him to speak, to say anything, to convince me of the normality of things, but everytime he spoke I was thrown into a panic and could think of no reply. I ate little, and quickly.

“Didn't your aunt teach you the manners to clean your plate?” Mr. Thiel said.

I glared at him. It was none of his business. “Won't your mother worry if you aren't home for lunch?” I asked Mac, ignoring Mr. Thiel.

“Why should she? She knows where I am,” Mac answered.

“How could she know you'd stay to lunch?” I insisted.

“Well, she told me I could stay as long as I liked. She said she didn't mind, for this while.”

“So you're here to keep an eye on me,” I said. He looked uncomfortable and his eyes turned to Mr. Thiel. For some reason, that made me angry. It was not just a foot-stamping anger, it was a hot, burning wrath. I looked at the two of them. Mr. Thiel was about to say something, I could tell. I didn't wait to hear what it was.

“I don't need anybody to look after me,” I said coldly, to both of them. “Nobody looked after me before, did they? This sudden concern for my well-being—”

I couldn't think of anything scathing enough, so I didn't finish my sentence. Quite calmly, I folded my napkin and rose from the table. Quite calmly, I
walked out of the dining room and then out of the house. Then I began to run wildly, before my tears could be noticed by anyone following me. I ran up into the woods toward the falls.

By the time I had crossed at the ford, then walked down to Mr. Callender's house, I had ceased sobbing. I imagine I looked pretty disheveled, however: I'd left shoes and stockings by the stream and run through the forested countryside, not bothering to avoid bushes. Mr. Callender took one look at me and knelt down beside me. “My dear,” he said. His eyes looked gently into mine. “What has happened?”

I shook my head, I could not have begun to explain to him why I was there. I did not understand it myself. I had only feelings: I felt alone, afraid; I felt angry at everyone, and as if things were happening which I did not understand; I felt helpless.

Mr. Callender stared into my face. “Has he been cruel to you? Don't try to pretend, I know
how miserable my sisters life was with him. Whatever it is, Jean, it will be set right.”

That was what pulled me out of it, because I knew—not only felt, but knew, as a fact—that everything was not all right and never could be. He must have seen something in my face.

“Better?” he asked.

I had found him leaving his house, outside, alone. He was kneeling so that his face was even with mine. His voice was soothing, comforting; but his eyes bored into mine as if to read my mind. “What did happen?” He gave me his handkerchief. I blew my nose several times.

“Nothing,” I said, remembering that I did not know who could be trusted. I thought of something to satisfy him, “I was ill, some kind of food poisoning. I wasn't sure you all were well.”

That did surprise him. I am sure of it, or, at least, I was sure of it then. “As you see,” he said, “I am in perfect health. So are the rest of us, I promise you. When was this?”

“Sunday.”

“Is everyone well at the big house? Did you have the doctor?”

Yes, I nodded. “But I'm sorry, you were going downtown. I've interrupted.”

“That isn't important. That will wait for another day. Shall we walk? Where we won't be disturbed? You seem to me to be a young lady in need of a friend.” He stood up and dusted the dirt from his knees. He looked back at his house, but there was nobody to be seen, and we went back, slowly, by the path upriver.

“You really
don't
want to talk to me?” he asked gently. “You can tell me anything, anything. I want to be your friend. But you don't want to talk, and I can understand that. What you want—let me guess—is simply the comfort of a friend. Just to walk along as we are now, talking of other things, so that you can forget, however temporarily, whatever troubles you.”

He seemed to know so much about me, I could only be grateful.

“You're still a child, after all.” He smiled down at me. His hair glowed golden in the sunlight, and his eyes shone a dark, kindly blue. “You're so composed, one tends to forget that. Under your cool exterior you have plenty of feelings, haven't you?”

I agreed, embarrassed.

“I'm so glad you feel you can come to me for comfort,” he said. “I think I am beginning to understand you. My sister Irene, she too had deep feelings, which
she disguised. I always knew that. Other people never seemed to notice what she was really like. Your Mr. Thiel, he never even suspected it. Poor Irene.”

“What was she like, your sister?” I asked him. I felt now that of all the Callenders, she was the one I liked most, even more (strange as it may seem) than Mr. Enoch Callender.

“She was tall and dark, not pretty at all. But she was the most loyal person you'd ever hope to meet, and kindness itself. She never mixed well in company, always standing back—she was so awkward, it made her shy—and then when a man came courting she was too intelligent not to know he was courting her money. Sometimes she would ask me what I thought of this one or that one. I wouldn't try to lie, I loved her too much to lie to her. And I said that and told her that I for one wouldn't change a single thing about her, not for all the engagement rings set out in Mr. Tiffany's counters. Many's the time she helped me out of one scrape or another. Irene. She could talk to me, make me see reason when nobody else could. I knew I could trust her, you see, that's the kind of person she was. If she told me not to do something, I always thought twice about it.” He smiled at the memory. “I didn't always do what she asked, but even
then she never held that against me, never carried a grudge. She didn't want me to marry my wife.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“She thought I was too young, and she might have been right. Then she said Priscilla wasn't strong enough, that Priscilla loved me too much—and she was correct, of course. I quickly learned what Irene had meant. But my sister never gloated. She just helped whenever she could, with money or little attentions. She listened to Priscilla's little tales of woe. Whereas my father—” His voice became bitter. Until then, as he spoke of his sister, his voice had sounded happy.

“Your father?” I asked him.

“My dear father said that Priscilla wasn't rich enough to keep me. I pointed out to him that he could do something about that, but he wouldn't. I was young and in love; I didn't obey him. Then, afterwards, he said we'd made our bed and now we had to lie on it. Irene used to come over and help Priscilla with the household accounts, advise her how to handle the cook and maids, even the children. Priscilla has never been able to manage. Irene took care of the children, she was wonderful with them. Of course, all that changed when she married.”

“Why did it change? You lived here, nearby, didn't you?”

Mr. Callender looked down at me with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Don't tell me you haven't noticed. I don't try to disguise it, you don't have to pretend with me. There is no love lost between your employer and myself. Come now, Jean, you can speak the truth with me.”

“Oh that,” I said. “Yes, I knew that.”

“My sister changed,” Mr. Callender said. “My poor, gentle sister, married to a man who had been a Hider, who cared for nothing but his paintings. In her unhappiness, she grew distant. The man has never thought of anyone but himself, you must have remarked that in him—” He did not wait for me to answer. “And that little child—perhaps it is just as well—imagine being left alone with him in that house. Imagine the long hours of each long day, or having to turn to him in need. I could have done little good for the child: he won't have me in the house. Not that I want to go. But even so, when I think—I even tried to trace her, which is more than the father did.”

“You tried?”

“Under the terms of my father's will, my wife received an inheritance. I hired detectives. It wasn't
very much money, it didn't last long. They had simply disappeared, the child and that unknown nurse, both of them. I insisted that the detectives keep on looking—I was quite frantic—following up any clue, until the money ran out. He wouldn't give me any more.”

“You hate Mr. Thiel,” I said. I had not understood that before.

“What do you expect, when he ruined my life for me. You may not know that I have an allowance, under my rich father's generous will”—the bitterness was in his voice again—“which Mr. Thiel doles out to me in bits and pieces. Twice a week I present myself to a teller at the bank, with my hand out. We are trapped here. I am trapped. And there is all that money. . . .”

His eyes glittered icy blue when he spoke of the money. We had arrived at the ford and sat down side by side on a wide boulder. He continued talking, almost as if he were talking to someone who knew him better than I did, to someone who had known him all his life and was familiar with the intricacies of his character.

“After all, there's more than one way to live. For people with imagination and bold spirits, life offers so much. Irene understood that, and she understood me. And she died.” He hit at his knees with a fist. “And here I am.

“The son should inherit. I would have let them live with us, I would have taken care of her, of them. Even him, since she would have wanted that. And I had plans, good ones; they couldn't have failed. I wanted to buy back the munitions factory. There are always places in the world where guns and powder are needed, because men will always behave, alas, like murderers and warmongers. You just have to see that, and your fortune is made. Granted, some of my associates were of the wrong sort—I knew that. But I never tried to introduce them into my home. I was always discreet. These men had ideas, ideas that only needed a capital investment. It would never have touched my family, not the precious Callenders. I would have seen to that.”

He stopped talking abruptly, as if he had noticed that it was I who sat listening. “Whatever do you make of all that, Miss Jean Wainwright? What would you do with a brother like me?” He smiled, but his eyes stayed icy.

It was a test. I could feel that. He seemed to care intensely for what I would answer. The broad stream ran in front of us, and overhead the branches of the trees whispered. I thought how solitary Mr. Callender's life must be, for him to be at all concerned
about my opinion. He was a man removed from his natural habitat, trying to live in an uncongenial environment. I thought carefully as he waited for my response—but I was not thinking about what I would say. I thought instead of how Aunt Constance had spoken of the beauty of these mountains, and how Mr. Thiel had painted all the strength of the landscape without losing its loveliness. I thought about Mr. Callender, beside me, sitting within a ring of hills whose rise and fall was both symmetrical and irregular, sitting upon a boulder so large and hard it looked as if it had thrust its own way up out of the very earth. Mr. Callender wore a fresh linen suit, his boots were polished to a high gleam, his golden head bent down to study the toes.

There were facts he had told me that did not match facts I had learned from the Callender papers.
Was
his sister unhappy? Was Mr. Thiel such a man as he had claimed? Was Mr. Callender's allowance ungenerous? Was his face, as I had seen its change of expression when he spoke of the fortune, was that the face of greed? At last I answered him. “I don't know.”