McNally's Bluff (14 page)

“In my capacity as Mr. Hayes’s investigator, Tilly told me of Mrs. Taylor’s alleged visit to Mrs. Hayes’s bedroom that night and, as you just said, Tilly also told you. Hence, your rather intimate relationship with Tilly and what she revealed to you has brought you here, asking for an exhumation of your father’s body. The connection, sir, is very clear.”

“What do you mean by alleged?” he asked in a manner that was more a challenge than a question he wanted answered.

“Just what the word implies,” I told him. “Tilly says she saw Mrs. Taylor on the second floor the night of the party, just before Mrs. Hayes appeared as Venus. There are no witnesses to corroborate Tilly’s allegation but there are fifty or more people, myself included, who would swear that Carolyn Taylor was on the first floor at that time and never left it.”

“Why would Tilly lie?” Laddy shot back.

“I don’t know, sir, but seeing as she confides in you, perhaps you can tell me.”

He bristled, something Laddy Taylor does very well and very often, and put me down by turning to father. “I didn’t come here to be interrogated.”

“No,” father said, “you came here to hire me to beg a writ of exhumation on your behalf and I fail to see any plausible reason for doing so.”

Laddy sighed and rolled his eyes skyward in a rather insulting manner to convey the fact that he was dealing with fools who needed to be enlightened, if not spanked. Father began tugging on his mustache, a sure sign that he would not suffer Laddy Taylor another five minutes.

“Let me explain,” Laddy began condescendingly. “Marlena Marvel was a witch doctor. A quack. She told fortunes and administered to the sick, mostly women in need of a friend. Excuse my language, gentlemen, but she was an abortionist. In trendy Palm Beach you may not know it but there are places in this country where women still resort to the likes of Marlena Marvel when in trouble. To visit a legal clinic in the so-called Bible Belt would get her branded with Hawthorne’s scarlet letter. Carolyn and Marlena were meeting secretly since Hayes rented the house here and, given her age and sophistication, dear Carolyn is not in need of Marlena’s specialty.”

“Are you saying...” father began but did not finish.

“I’m saying that Marlena Marvel was a student of the black arts and knew very well the lethal effects of foxglove and its uses in modern medicine—a medicine readily available to Carolyn. Marlena told Carolyn how to poison my father, slowly to avoid detection, and then Carolyn gave Marlena a dose of her own medicine to keep her quiet. It’s as plain as the mustache on your face.”

With that last remark, Laddy lost any hope of being represented by McNally & Son in his efforts to dig up dear old dad. The sire looked so offended at the rather impudent mention of his beloved whiskers, I doubt if he would represent Laddy Taylor in protesting a traffic violation summons.

“I suppose Tilly told you about the meetings between Carolyn Taylor and Marlena Marvel,” I quickly got in before father called Mrs. Trelawney to escort Laddy out of the building. Besides legal secretary, spy and informer, Mrs. Trelawney is also our Sergeant at Arms.

Laddy once again hit on me. “Why do you keep harping on my association with Tilly which I told you is none of your business?”

“I harp on it because everything you know about Carolyn and her alleged dealings with Marlena Marvel has come to you by way of Tilly. How long have you two been exchanging confidences?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” he said contentiously.

“Then don’t,” I assured him.

Perhaps thinking that he had gone too far in antagonizing those he sought for help, he relented somewhat, shrugged and said in a more kindly manner, “Okay. I’m upset. My father was murdered and I won’t let Carolyn get away with it. I met Tilly when I came back here. She had come to Palm Beach a few weeks earlier with Marlena and Matthew Hayes. We met in a bar. I forget which one, not that it makes any difference. I hadn’t been back here in years so Tilly and I were like the new kids on the block. We hit it off.”

And became bosom buddies, I reflected, whispering confidences into each other’s ears. Was one of those confidences the late Mr. Taylor’s net worth?

Sensing that I wanted to get information out of Laddy Taylor before showing him the door, father again sat quietly and listened, fighting the urge to stroke his mustache. A reformed smoker, more or less, I commiserated with his misery in suppressing a comforting habit.

“Why did you come back, Mr. Taylor? It’s common knowledge that you and your father have been estranged for years,” I probed, hoping to learn as much as I could while he was in a conciliatory mood.

“My father and I never got along, if you must know. The family money was all from my mother and he doled it out as if it were coming out of his pocket. Mother let him run the house and the bank account. Like most tyrants, he was a charmer. When my mother died I left home for good.”

“Your mother left you nothing?” I questioned.

He raised his arms as if surrendering to the inevitable. “I was a wild kid. Got kicked out of several colleges before they gave up on me.” He fidgeted in his chair as if in search of a more comfortable position. “I was into drugs, big time. I mean I did nothing halfway. My mother was afraid to leave me any cash, fearing it would go to the dealers, and maybe she was right. She said she would change her will, leaving me a good trust fund, when I straightened out.

“So I straightened out, but she died before she had a chance to do it. My father got it all and refused to honor her promise. Then he married Carolyn, who’s my age, in case you haven’t noticed and the two of them were living high off my mother’s money which is rightfully mine.”

Whether it was rightfully his or not was a moot question. It was left, legally, to his father to do with as he wished and he didn’t wish to share it with his
enfant terrible,
as the rich call their miscreant offspring.

“Why did you choose to return at this particular time?” I asked once again.

“Carolyn wrote and told me he was dying—and we know how she knew that.”

“She was in touch with you?” I questioned, not hiding my surprise.

“I have a business mail drop. Letters sent there are forwarded to me. I’m on the road a lot but keep them informed of my whereabouts.”

I waited, but any clues as to where his travels took him, and why, were not forthcoming. “So you came back,” I said, encouraging him to continue.

“Yeah. I came back and found my father dying and my stepmother consorting with a rent boy.”

Rent boy? The Victorian term for a male hustler impressed father enough to make him ask, “You know for a fact that Mrs. Taylor was seeing this young man before your father died?”

“Everyone in town knew,” Laddy said.

Father looked at me for verification as it is my job to be cognizant of the local gossip, especially among the noblesse of our village. I responded with a quick shake of the head to signal my ignorance. Until Lolly told me that Carolyn Taylor was seeing Billy Gilbert I had not heard a thing about their liaison.

Thinking it was time to rain on Laddy’s parade and send him on his way, I expounded, “Mr. Taylor, to recapitulate, the maid, Tilly, told you she saw Mrs. Taylor on the second floor the night of the party. The night Mrs. Hayes died. From that you concluded that Mrs. Taylor poisoned Mrs. Hayes.”

“It’s not just that,” he cut in. “Carolyn and Marlena Marvel were seeing each other regularly. They were in cahoots.”

I held up a hand to deter him from going any further. “Please, sir, let me finish. You are saying that Carolyn Taylor somehow managed to sneak upstairs that night, spike Mrs. Hayes’s tea water which Tilly, I’m sure you know, had prepared, and return to the party without anyone noticing her movements.

“She then came with us to the maze to search for the goal. This I know for a fact because I saw her and I know who partnered her. Joe Gallo, in fact. Now, according to you, Mrs. Taylor left Gallo, found her way out of the maze and returned to the house where the caterers were setting up the buffet under the watchful eye of Lolly Spindrift; she climbed the stairs once more, removed Mrs. Hayes’s body from the tub where she was soaking with her cup of tainted tea; she carried the body downstairs and through the great room where the caterers and Lolly waved at Mrs. Taylor lugging Mrs. Hayes’s corpse and didn’t even offer to help her.

“Undaunted, she carried her burden into the maze where we were all running about in search of the goal; she somehow found the goal and deposited Mrs. Hayes therein. I guess we didn’t notice the body when we all gathered in the goal, or did Mrs. Taylor wait for us to leave before making her deposit and then once again rejoin the party?”

Laddy did not care for my summation. “She did it,” he shouted. “I don’t know how, but she did it.”

Now father joined the harangue. “Mr. Taylor, if your father’s body is exhumed, what do you think will be found?”

“Digitalis, of course,” Laddy answered.

Father nodded. “But of course they would. Your father was taking digitalis for his heart. He had been taking it for years. The surprise would be if they didn’t find traces of the drug in his body.”

Laddy Taylor slumped in his seat and buried his face in his hand. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “So she gets away with it,” he mumbled. “She gets away with my mother’s money—and murder.”

L
ADDY TAYLOR, WHO HAD
entered father’s office with all the ardor of an avenging angel, left with his wings clipped and his faith in tatters. He thanked father in the manner of a condemned man forgiving the executioner before putting his own head on the block. He even remembered to give me a polite nod on his way to the door, leaving in his wake an eerie silence, not unlike a schoolroom minutes after the three o’clock bell has tolled.

Father, once again in command of his mustache, stroked it thoughtfully as he asked, “And what are we to make of all that?”

“Besides the fact that Laddy Taylor’s theatrical range is as daunting as all the Barrymores rolled into one, I think we can safely assume that both he and his lady friend, Matilda Thompson, want us to bring Carolyn Taylor’s alleged escapade the night of the party to the attention of the police.”

“Finger-pointing by proxy,” father noted. “Now tell me what you were about this morning. It’s clear you talked to this Matilda Thompson and did I hear you say you were investigating Mrs. Hayes’s death on behalf of her husband?”

“Correct on both counts, sir.” This was followed by a critique of my interviews with Hayes and Tilly.

“She slipped you a note?” father commented. “She could just as easily have asked you to meet her in the bookshop. They certainly do have a flair for drama, but are they writers as well as actors, I wonder?”

“And directors?” I added.

“I begin to smell a red herring, Archy.”

“In fact,” I answered, “the aroma is so strong you have to wonder if it isn’t being laid on to keep us from seeing the shark for the herrings. Tilly didn’t confide in her boss because, she says, she’s being faithful to her Madame who didn’t want Hayes to know about her relationship with Carolyn Taylor. She didn’t go to the police because she doesn’t want to cast aspersions on Mrs. Taylor. But she tells Laddy and me.”

Father leaned back in his executive chair which tilts as well as rotates in a full circle should the need arise. “I believe she told Laddy and he told her to pass it on to you, Archy.”

“Mrs. Taylor’s visit to Marlena, if true, plays right into Laddy’s hand as did the announcement that Marlena died of digitalis poisoning. He called you instead of the police because he’s been hurling accusations against Carolyn Taylor all over town and the police are beginning to treat him like the boy who cried wolf. But if a prestigious law firm and its investigative arm raises the alarm, that would have Lieutenant Eberhart and Co. snapping at poor Carolyn Taylor’s shapely ankles.”

Father, who is not above noticing a shapely ankle, nodded in agreement of either my statement or the comeliness of Carolyn’s ankles. He expressed my thoughts when he said he didn’t believe that Laddy wasn’t cognizant of the foolishness of exhuming his father’s body and having it examined for digitalis when the man had been taking the drug for years. What Laddy hoped to accomplish by today’s visit was to impress upon us his stepmother’s ingenious plotting and the fact that she would get away with murder if not brought to justice by the good offices of McNally & Son.

“If she was so clever as to poison her husband with his own medication, why was she so foolish as to eliminate her accomplice with the same drug?” father reflected aloud.

“Which brings us to the meandering corpse.” I said.

“Beg pardon, Archy.”

“Don’t you see, sir, how Marlena was killed pales in the light of her body being moved from the house to the goal of the maze with a houseful of guests in both places at the time she was transported. And let’s not forget that the guests included all the likely suspects as well as this discreet inquirer.”

“That red herring, Archy?”

“If so, it’s the size of a whale.”

“How does Matthew Hayes impress you after your first formal meeting with him? You said the other day he was a bully and a boor you would be more inclined to suspect than work for. Have you changed your mind?”

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Then why are you working for him?” father questioned.

“To prove that I’m right.”

Father started, squared his shoulders, and glared at me across the vast expanse of his executive desk. “Unethical, to say the least,” he lectured.

“Perhaps,” I said, and proceeded to expound on the rationale of my decision, assuring him that I was not out to railroad Hayes.

“But give him enough rope, et cetera,” father said with that tinge of sarcasm in the delivery that told me I could proceed, but with caution. “You will tell the police and Mr. Hayes what the maid had to report,” he concluded.

“Not immediately, sir.”

Father arched an eyebrow. He could tolerate one ethical lapse, with cause, but never two. What I had to do, quickly, was appeal to his lawyer’s penchant for fair play.