Authors: Jeanne M. Dams
“Lacey! Darryl Lacey! My word, I wouldn't have known you, but your son looks exactly the way you did in fourth grade.”
He grinned. “He does, doesn't he? Now me, I've put on a little weight. And lost a little hair. But I was sure you'd figure out who I was, Mrs. Martin. What're you doing back in town?”
He was bald as an egg, indeed resembled an egg: He could have played Humpty Dumpty in any production of
Alice in Wonderland
.
“Oh, we've been meaning to come for a visit for some time,” I prevaricated. “Darryl, this is my husband, Alan Nesbitt. Alan, Darryl was one of my students, oh, years ago, now.”
I beamed at both of them. Alan extended his hand. Darryl took it and said stiffly, “How do you do, sir.”
Uh-oh.
“Won't you sit down?”
He was being very formal now. Alan tried to set him at ease. “Mr. Lacey, I hope you don't mind our dropping in on you like this. I'm sure you're very busy.”
“Not as busy as all that. We don't go in for all the spit and polish that you guys do in your country. Just a rough and ready small-town police force, that's all we have here. Drunk and disorderly, auto theft, domestic violence, a bank robbery now and then. We manage.”
“Erâthe students give you no trouble, then?”
“That's what the campus police are for. We deal with 'em when they get into trouble off campus. Which they usually don't. And if it's drugs you're thinking of, we don't have too much problem with that here, not yet, no matter what you've heard about Americans.”
Worse and worse. I stepped in. “Darrylâoh, dear, I suppose I should call you Chief Lacey, butâ”
“You call me anything you want, Mrs. Martin.” There was just the faintest emphasis on the
you
. He had turned away from Alan and addressed only me.
“Darryl, then, since I knew you when you were a pup. We really don't want to take up your time, but I wondered what you could tell me about the last few weeks of Kevin Cassidy's life. I understand you were a friend of his. I was so sorry to hear of his death.” I repeated my story of concern and guilt feelings, a story that, however true, was beginning to sound very thin to me. I hoped Darryl found it more convincing.
“Yeah, he was a great old guyâa real character. He even gave me some money once. You know about those âloans' of his?”
“Yes, Frank and I borrowed some once, ourselves. He was a generous man, Kevin.”
“I guess there's not hardly anybody in town didn't borrow a little from the prof at one time or another. I was taking a course from him, back when I was a freshman, and I wanted to buy a car so bad I could taste it. He advanced me the money. Gave me a lecture along with it, about being careful, not drinking and driving, all that. I don't s'pose I'd have listened to it coming from anybody else, but he had a way of sounding like God, you know?”
“I do indeed. I didn't know you went to the university, Darryl.”
“Dropped out after a couple of years and went into the police. I've never been sorry. College wasn't for me, but I enjoyed some of it. 'Specially the prof's course. I don't know what a world-famous guy like him was doing teaching freshman biology, but he sure made it interesting.”
“He insisted on teaching that course now and then. Used to say he liked to keep in touch with the real world, the people who didn't think biology was the be-all and end-all of life. So did you see much of him the last few years?”
“Not a lot. I used to drop in once in a while. Kind of worried about him living out there all by himself, you know? He wasn't getting any younger. And I went out once, just before he got sick, to see if he could make me one of those glass things he'd started doing. Present for my wife. You know about the glass stuff?”
“I've seen a few examples of his work. He was a real artist.”
“Yeah, who'd have thought a guy could take up something new, at his age, and be so good at it?”
“He was a remarkable man. How did he seem when you saw him?”
“Fine. We had a cold spell in August, and I went out mostly to make sure he was keeping warm enough, but it was almost hot out there in that workshop of his, what with the soldering iron and all, and he was working away, happy as a clam. Didn't seem sick at all. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard he had pneumonia.”
“A soldering iron?”
“You put the glass together with solder. I don't know how it works, exactly, but there was a big reel of the stuff on his workbench. Along with copper foil and lots of different colors of glassâgosh, it was pretty. I feel real bad he never got a chance to finish mine. And who told you I was a friend of his?”
The question came so suddenly I had no answer ready. “Ummâone of the neighbors, I thinkâ”
“He didn't have any close neighbors, nobody to see who was coming and going. Except that crazy guy in the woods. It was him, wasn't it?”
“Really, Iâ”
“Never mind. I suppose you don't want me to know what he said about me. He doesn't like the police much, and the feeling's mutual. One of these days he's going to go too far with that squirrel rifle of his and kill somebody. He's a menace.”
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't help protesting. “Oh, Darryl, he's harmless enough, surely? A little eccentric, not terribly bright, butâ”
“Eccentric! He's crazy as a coot! He tell you about Vietnam?”
“A little.”
“He tell you he was in the psych ward for a couple of years after he got back?”
I didn't answer.
“No, I didn't think so. Look, I feel kind of sorry for the guy, myself, but he's more'n a few plays short of a football game. The gooks really messed up his head when he was a POW, see. He tried to kill a guard when he was in the loony bin, and he can't be trusted. He just goes haywire sometimes, and he's way too good a shot to be safe. I've seen him shoot a running mouse from twenty, thirty feet away. I wouldn't go out there anymore if I were you, Mrs. Martin.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question about Kevin, but the radio on Darryl's shoulder went into action. I couldn't hear what the crackling voice said, but Darryl got up in a hurry. “Sorry, Mrs. Martin, but I gotta go. Nice to see you again.” Without so much as a nod to Alan he sped out the door, leaving us to find our own way out of the station.
We drove back to the hotel in silence, but when we got to the room I had to deal with it.
“Alan, I'm so sorry. I should have realizedâ”
“Never mind, love. It's only natural that your old friends should resent me. It's all right.”
“But Darryl isn't an old friend. He's just a child I taught. And still acting pretty childish, if you ask me.”
“He was afraid I was going to lord it over him, as the senior officer in an English police force. It was his inferiority complex at work. I'm afraid we've developed a worldwide reputation as snobs about our policing methods. And quite justified, too.”
“Your reputation, or your snobbery?”
“Both, actually.”
I giggled at that, but I wasn't quite ready to let it go. “I don't know what you must think of the hick town I lived in all my life.”
“Now who's developing an inferiority complex? Come on, let's sit down and work out what we've got, if anything.”
I dug the notebook out from under the stack of sweatshirts, but there was discouragingly little to put in it. Under the heading “Who was present?” I added the names Jerry had given us, or the descriptions where we didn't know names. And we were able to add a little information to the “Interviews” section.
“Okay. Police chief. Doesn't like you.”
“Irrelevant,” Alan objected.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It stays. Called on Kevin shortly before he died.”
“Borrowed money from him,” Alan contributed.
“Are you still harping on that money? I don't see how it could have anything to do with anything.”
“If his attitude toward me stays in, the money stays in.”
I sighed and made the note. “And he took one course from Kevin. Relevant?”
“Probably not, but write it down. At this stage we have no idea what is important and what isn't.”
“I suspect nobody; I suspect everybody,” I chanted in an Inspector Clouseau voice.
“Exactly. On to Mrs. Schneider.”
There wasn't much to say about her, either. A pharmacist by profession, a former student of Kevin's, a fanatic about keeping development out of Hillsburg.
“I wonder,” asked Alan, “how much money the professor gave her for this project of hers.”
“She didn't say.”
“No. But she must need quite a lot. Attorneys who can take on mall developers with any chance of winning don't come cheap.”
“I don't see why you think it's important, but we could ask her, I suppose.”
“If there's no other way to find out. Would there be public records?”
“If the protest group has officially registered as a not-for-profit organization, I suppose there might be. Though if Kevin gave her the money and she then plowed it into the protest fund, it would probably just be listed as her contribution.”
“It's worth looking into, on Monday when the records office opens. Where would it be in an American city?”
“County courthouse, I imagine. I really don't know a thing about it, but that'd be the place to start looking. And this is the county seat, so it'll be easy, if boring.”
“Police work,” said Alan didactically, “is often boring. Almost all of the time, in fact. The other fraction of the time it's entirely too exciting. When, for example, one deals with unbalanced people carrying rifles.”
Sighing again, I added Jerry's name to my list. If there was too little to say about either Darryl or Mrs. Schneider, there was too much about Jerry.
“Rifleman; excellent shot,” I wrote. “Alan, I still insist that has nothing to do with anything. Kevin wasn't shot.”
“Why are you so partial to our gun-toting friend? Who, I might add, has attitudes toward women that usually infuriate you.”
“I don't know, exactly. Yes, he's a male chauvinist, and he's not very clean or very bright. Not the sort I'd usually want for a friend. But I feel sorry for him. And he likes cats.”
“Neither of which consideration disqualifies him as a suspect.”
“No. What else should I write down?”
“Belligerent. Nearest neighbor. Received gifts from Professor Cassidy. Perhaps money? Probably mentally disturbed. Large and apparently strong. Dislikes authority figures.”
I dutifully recorded it all. “All right, all right. But if you get all that, I get this.” And added: “Devoted to Kevin; his faithful protector.”
Alan read the whole account over and shook his head. “It's little enough for a day's work. Should we try to seek out one of the other possibilities?”
“Not if I get a vote. We're too muddled. We need to let the thing sit for a while. Anyway, the stores will still be open for another couple of hours, and I want to hit that mystery bookstore!”
Alan grinned, ostentatiously checked his wallet, and followed me out the door.
The London mystery bookshops don't always carry a great selection of American authors, and when they do, the books cost a lot more than they would in America. I was way behind on Barbara D'Amato and Carolyn Hart and Jane Langton and Carole Nelson Douglas and a score of others. By the time we left the store I had enough reading material to last me for weeks.
“It'll cost a young fortune to ship those back to England,” Alan complained.
“Not to mention several pounds of tigers in various forms.”
He said no more.
Right after dinner I started on a book by an author new to me. It was set in a nursing home and concerned skulduggery among the staff, who were, sometimes with the help of money-grubbing relatives, defrauding the elderly residents left and right. Despite the fact that it kept me awake until the wee hours, I woke bright and early Sunday morning with a brand-new idea.
“Alan, we have to see Ms. Carmichael in the morning. First thing.”
“Very well. If we can get an appointment, of course. Am I allowed to ask why?”
“Not yet,” I said smugly. “I have an idea, that's all. I want to see if it pans out before I tell you about it.”
W
E
went to two church services that Sunday, an excessive number in my opinion. We were up early enough to hit the first service at St. Paul's, the lovely old Episcopal church where I'd been baptized and confirmed and married, the conservative Anglo-Catholic church I'd loved all my life.
I came out in a state of shock.
“Alan, a woman priest! And Rite II! The old liturgy was beautiful, and reverent, and dignified. This new oneâ” Words failed me.
“Hardly new, surely. The revisers have been at it for years, loveâin England, too, you know.”
“I know, but the old priest at St. Paul's kept things the way they were. I'll bet thisâthis person they've got now can't even remember the 1928 prayer book!”
“The important things are still the same,” said Alan firmly.
“Sez you! And I put on one of my favorite hats, too,” I added with utter irrelevance.
After the second service we attended, however, I was forced humbly to admit that my husband could be right. If St. Paul's had abandoned many of the outward and visible signs that were dear to me, the inward and spiritual grace was, for the most part, still there. It was conspicuously missing from Parson Bussey's church.
The building, though rather small and shabby, was a standard white frame church with a dispirited steeple and narrow gothic windows. Plain, somewhat dirty windows looked out on a cornfield on one side and an old cemetery on the other, with a rather run-down house, presumably the parsonage, next to the cemetery.