Tightrope Walker (12 page)

“Let’s go upstairs please,” I said in a sudden, panicky voice. “Please. Now?”

Joe shot me a glance that included the stairs and up we went.

“This railing,” I asked as we ascended. “Is it new?”

Bob Tuttle shook his head. “Old as the house and still sound,” he said, tugging at it. “They knew how to build in those days. Mahogany, I’d guess.”

A sound old railing, too. Why hadn’t the doctor wondered about the trajectory and that sort of thing?

The staircase we mounted to the second floor curved in a lovely line. We inspected four bedrooms and two baths with interest before we moved on to the door of the attic. Here the arrangement was curious: the door opened on five shallow stairs and a landing, at which point the stairs turned abruptly right to continue up to the attic. At this landing there was a door.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“What they used to call a box room,” said Mr. Tuttle.

I let him lead us on up the stairs to the attic, where we found two maids’ rooms, a lavatory, and walk-in closet smelling of mothballs, but I knew I wanted to see the box room.

“It’s locked,” said Mr. Tuttle.

“Just give me the key then,” I told him, holding out my hand. “While you and Joe discuss price,” I added brightly to make it worth his while, “because we plan a very
large
family. I have to see all the rooms.”

After he’d gone through all his keys again I left them, and as soon as I unlocked and opened the door of the box room I
knew;
I knew in my bones and with every cell in my being that this was where Hannah had been held prisoner. In the first place it was the only room in the house without a window: there was just a metal vent high up near the ceiling with a tiny fan set into it. A solitary light bulb hung from the ceiling without a shade, and there was a rusty iron cot along one slanting wall that looked as if it had been there forever. The room measured roughly 12 by 14 except that the slanted ceiling made it look even smaller. It was empty except for the cot and an old bureau tilted on one leg that nobody had cared about enough to remove. The walls were plaster and had been painted not too long ago.

I sat down on the iron cot and looked around me at what Hannah would have seen, because I was
sure
now. A box room would have been where they stored trunks in Victorian days; there would have been one or two of those, I guessed, plus the hurdy-gurdy, and perhaps a few other pieces, possibly a rocking horse kept for Robin and Nora to play with when they were young. One of the trunks would have been filled with costumes—what made me know this?—for dressing-up fun on a rainy day. But I didn’t think it would be a good place in which to be trapped: there would have been no daylight, and the mattress—if it was the same one—was filthy and full of lumps and holes. At times the room must have been stifling—it had been July, after all—and it must always have been claustrophobic.

I sat there and I said softly, “Hannah?” and then, “Hannah Gruble?”

I’ve never believed in ghosts, although I do believe that we leave something of ourselves behind us, some imprint of personality or essence, in all the places we live. I believe that people also affect us in this way by their vibrations. This is my only explanation for what happened to me after I spoke Hannah’s name. I mean, if I didn’t explain it in this way I would have to believe in ghosts, wouldn’t I? But a sense of peace, of absolute calm—such as I’d experienced only in the presence of Amman Singh—flowed through me and transfixed me as I sat there. It was a feeling of unbelievable tranquility, almost of communion with someone, and it lasted until I heard Joe and Mr. Tuttle descending the stairs from the attic.

The sound of their footsteps brought me back to the moment with a start, and I remembered why I was here. Wondering if Hannah might have attempted any other messages I walked over to the bureau and examined it but the drawers were empty except for two
dead flies and something stuck to the top of one drawer. I had just pried it loose when Joe and Mr. Tuttle walked in.

“Nice house, don’t you think, Joe?” I said. Glancing down into my hand I discovered that all I’d unearthed was a petrified wad of chewing gum.

Joe looked around with interest, lifted an eyebrow and nodded. “But it’s four o’clock already, Amelia, I think we’d better go back to town and talk about it. Mr. Tuttle feels the owners are ready to come down in price quite a bit. It’s all very tempting.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” I said eagerly. “Put a window in here and it would make a lovely little sewing room.”

We moved out into the hall and I noticed that Bob Tuttle forgot to lock the box room. Joe was saying deliberately, “Mr. Tuttle tells me that Dr. Cox is dead but your mother’s old friend Jane Morneau still lives in Anglesworth.”

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed—we were turning into a regular vaudeville team, Joe and I—and remarking on the coincidences of life, of which the most amazing one Mr. Tuttle would never know, we walked out on the landing, down the several stairs to the second-floor hallway, followed it to the staircase, and thus left Hannah’s house behind us.

Parting with Mr. Tuttle, however, proved less easy. He wanted to give us a good many judicious suggestions about the house, he wanted to counsel us on a possible price offer and to explain the attitude of the Keppels, while we in turn wanted to inquire about Hannah’s will before the courthouse closed. It made for a tight squeak; in fact, it was precisely four-fifty when we raced up the stairs of the courthouse again. We ran down long hallways following signs of a flat yellow hand, with index finger pointing and the word
PROBATE
under them, until we reached a room that was high-ceilinged
and cool, with a long counter and desks behind it, and walls lined with legal volumes. I was glad to stop running and catch my breath.

Joe asked the young woman who approached us if we might see the will of Hannah Meerloo, who had died on July 25, 1965. I had the terrible feeling that the clerk would say we needed a court order to see someone’s will but she nodded in a matter-of-fact way, asked us to write the name on a piece of paper for her, and then disappeared into an adjoining room where I could see row upon row of records in drawers and on shelves. I looked at Joe and saw that he was fighting down his suspense. Presently the young woman returned and placed before us a single-page document with a signature at the bottom.

“You’ve just time to photostat it if you’d like,” she said politely. “We close in two minutes. There’s a machine behind you.”

“Yes,” I said, incredulous at its being so easy. “Yes, thank you.”

We made two copies, handed back the original and hurried out of the building in a stream of departing clerks. We began our reading of the will seated outside on the steps in the fading sunshine.

“Joe, look at the date,” I gasped. “July 2, 1965, only twenty-three days before she was killed.”

“I’m looking,” he said grimly.

The single sheet was neatly typed, with the signatures of three witnesses at the bottom. I read:

We finished reading at the same time. Joe said, “John Tuttle’s the name of the young man who was driving for her summers.”

“Enter chauffeur,” I said, nodding. “Enter a witness named Daniel Lipton. Re-enter Hubert Holton.”

“And Nora witnessed the will, too,” mused Joe.

“I see that,” I said, and I stared down at this innocent sheet of paper, wishing I could shake it until its secrets
tumbled out. “Joe, I think we’ve got to see this man Garwin Mason next, don’t you? Hannah’s attorney, I mean, to see what he says about this will. If he’s still alive,” I added.

“Let’s find out,” said Joe.

We drove two blocks to a public phone booth where I found Garwin Mason’s name listed in the directory under Mason, Gerard and Tuttle. It was after five o’clock but I telephoned anyway, and was surprised to hear a live secretary answer. I asked if we might see Mr. Garwin Mason. The secretary said that he’d already left, and she was just leaving, that Mr. Mason had to be in court the next morning at ten o’clock but that I could see him before then at half-past eight. I made the appointment, gave her my name, and hung up.

It was now half-past five. I looked up Jane Morneau in the directory and found that she lived at 23 Farnsworth Road; I put in a call to her too but there was no answer and so Joe and I decided to have dinner next which, considering that we’d had no lunch, seemed a reasonable thing to do.

“And what do we use as bait for Mr. Garwin Mason at half-past eight tomorrow morning?” asked Joe pleasantly.

We were seated in the coffee shop of the Golden Kingfisher Motel, where thirty minutes earlier we had checked into unit 18. We each had a seafood platter in front of us, a milk shake, and a copy of Hannah’s will.

“I think,” I said firmly, having already considered this, “that I should visit him alone and tell him I’m writing a biography of Hannah Gruble, author.”

Joe grinned. “Your inventiveness astounds me, Miss Jones.”

“It does me, too,” I admitted, “but in a sense it
is
like research for a biography, Joe, so it’s not an outright lie. Lawyers don’t thaw easily.”

“You make him sound like a frozen steak.”

“Well,” I said vaguely, “there’s client confidentiality and all that, isn’t there? Joe, this will has to be the paper Hannah was forced to sign before she died, don’t you think?”

“The date’s wrong,” he pointed out. “The will was drawn up the second and she died the twenty-fifth. We can’t suppose otherwise until you’ve seen Mr. Mason tomorrow, because if
he
drew up that will for Hannah—”

“I don’t for a moment believe that he did,” I told him flatly. “She wrote in her note that whatever she signed the night before was her death warrant. I can’t think of anything else a person would sign that could be so damning.”

“Okay,” said Joe, relenting, “suppose Garwin Mason
didn’t
draw up the will for her and it’s a phony, or was drawn up by the people who killed her. Remember Hannah’s note? She’d signed whatever it was the night before she was killed, and she was killed the twenty-fifth.”

“It could have been typed up the twenty-second or twenty-third of July but dated earlier to avert suspicion.”

Joe said patiently, “But Nora’s signature is on it, and Nora wasn’t in Carleton until a few hours before Hannah’s death. She’d just ‘come back,’ remember?”

“Damn,” I said, and thought about this. “Then suppose somebody typed up the will on July 2, using Hannah’s typewriter to be certain just in case, persuaded the witnesses to sign it, and sometime after that Hannah was locked into the box room until she herself signed it.”

“That sounds better.”

“Oh Joe.”

“Steady there.”

“Yes, but think of the kind of mind that could conceive of this,” I said, tears rising to my eyes. “To take an unprotected woman and lock her up in a room
in her own home
, Joe, until her spirit is crushed—and the worst of it, people coming to the house, tradesmen, neighbors perhaps, and never suspecting. The cold-blooded ruthlessness of it, Joe!”

He nodded. “All the more important we find who did it, Amelia.”

I glanced down at the will in front of me. “We have to find out what’s different in this will from any other wills she made. Do you think Garwin Mason will tell me? I can already hazard a guess.”

Joe, reading my mind, shook his head. “You have to keep your mind open in this sort of thing, Amelia, not leap to conclusions or let preconceived ideas spring up too early.”

“Of course,” I said politely, “except I do think it’s very odd, her leaving one third to this John Tuttle, who’s not related at all.”

He grinned. “Okay, so why don’t you look in the directory and see if there’s still a Jason Meerloo Orphanage here in Anglesworth?”

“I already did,” I told him quietly. “After I called Mr. Mason’s office and before I looked up Mrs. Morneau’s number. Which reminds me that I’d better try her number again.”

“Great,” said Joe dryly as I got up, “and was there, or was there not, an orphanage listed?”

“No orphanage,” I told him. “John Tuttle did
not
keep it afloat as she hoped in her will.”

Joe looked at me with an odd smile on his lips. “But
Amelia, aren’t you forgetting that if our suppositions are correct
Hannah didn’t write that will
?”

I dropped back into my chair again, neatly floored by this jab. I said helplessly, “But that makes it a
very
strange will, Joe. I can’t belive Nora’s involved, she must have loved her aunt—”

“But her signature’s on the will,” Joe reminded me.

“I’m betting it was forged or gotten under false pretenses, but if she
was
involved,” I pointed out, “that makes it even stranger because she cut herself off from one third of a lot of money. And if John Tuttle was involved he tied himself to supporting an orphanage with his money. Quite publicly, too.”

“Wait—be patient,” said Joe. “Tomorrow we make absolutely certain that Hannah’s attorney did
not
draw up this will. We verify.”