Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
When he had gone, Amanda settled back in her chair and studied the invitation list, making small pencil marks in front of the names of out-of-town guests. Those to be notified by telegram she underlined. This afternoon, Todd and O’Connor would have to be called and consulted about the final arrangements. A small funeral, perhaps, under the circumstances. Surely there would be no reporters or—she shuddered—television crews present? She must ask Azzie Todd about that, not that he was likely to know. Perhaps Father Ashland could help. She sighed. It would be up to her, in the end; it was always up to her. And, of course, Dad would know what to do.
Amanda Chandler had long ago amended her list of “advisors” to exclude her husband. Her feelings toward him had faded into a mixture of disappointment and maternal responsibility which she concealed in brisk efficiency. Robert Chandler’s feelings and opinions had long since ceased to register with her; the truth was, at nearly fifty years of age, Amanda Chandler was “Daddy’s girl.”
When she tried to remember why she had married Robert, the answers were always vague. He was studying medicine, which had pleased her. His determination to become and remain a country doctor was something that she had discovered later. It had all seemed so romantic at the time. Second cousins falling in love—risking the taint of two-headed babies, or whatever that old superstition was. Perhaps she had insisted on the marriage as another show of spirit for her father’s benefït.
She had expected him to fly into a paternal rage and forbid the marriage. He had done nothing of the sort. William Chandler had been polite and hearty to the prospective groom, and affectionately distant to her. It was as if he were backing away from her emotionally. Years later, when he retired from the navy, he came to live with them, and he still got on well with Robert and the children, but Amanda could not help feeling a silent reproach in his attitude toward her. She finally realized that he was disappointed in her: she had not become successful and independent; she had not even married a titan; and worst of all, she had not made either of them happy. Daddy’s little girl was a failure.
Amanda tipped the reading glasses down to the end of her nose and squinted at the wall clock: 9:15 in the morning. Too early. But then, she
was
under an enormous strain, and she hadn’t taken a sedative since the night before. She opened the cabinet and took a decanter of Old Grand-Dad from behind a stack of women’s magazines.
It was a short walk from Wesley Rountree’s office in a wing of the courthouse to the Main Street office of Bryce and Simmons. He took his time, because his appointment was set for 9:30, and he didn’t want to be early. Doris had come in about eight-thirty while he was still reviewing the day’s schedule with Hill-Bear, and he had ended up having coffee with them and telling them about the Chandler case.
Rountree frowned at a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. Clay always picked them up; said he couldn’t abide litter, and Rountree would ask if he’d stop chasing a bank robber to pick up a beer can. Still, it was a civic-minded thing to do. Rountree sighed. No bank robbers in sight. Self-consciously, he bent down and picked up the wrapper, stuffing it in his pocket until he could get to a trash can.
“Morning, Wesley! I see you’re on the job!”
Rountree straightened up. Marshall Pavlock, editor of
The Chandler Grove Scout
, had that eager look of
one who has just discovered his lead story in time for paste-up. “You got a minute, Wes?” he asked politely.
Rountree sighed. It was bound to get out sooner or later, he reasoned, and Marshall might as well have it. He was usually pretty responsible; he had to be; all his potential newsmakers were also his neighbors. When Vance Wainwright was arrested for drunk and disorderly, Marshall could be trusted to leave out the details, like the pathetic notes he’d scrawl on the windows of his ex-wife’s trailer. Most people in Chandler Grove already knew those kinds of details long before the paper came out anyway, and they agreed that such goings-on didn’t belong in print. Marshall Pavlock saved his urge for detail for the place where it was appreciated: the society page. He not only told his readers what the bride and bridesmaids wore, but who made the dress, and who baked the wedding cake, not to mention who cut it, and who was there to eat it. He had been reserving half a page to do such a report on the Chandler-Satisky wedding, but now Eileen would be featured on another page.
“What can I do for you, Marsh?” Rountree grinned.
Marshall grinned back. “You should’a been a poker player, Sheriff. You know very well what you can do. Tell me about the Chandler girl!”
Rountree had long since given up trying to trace the origin of county news. It was enough to make a person believe in telepathy. In this case, though, he discarded ESP in favor of more obvious suspects: Doris, Jewel Murphy, and Mildred Webb. “You heard about that, huh?”
Marshall fished a notepad out of the pocket of his jacket. “I heard that ya’ll took the body to the medical examiner yesterday, and that there’s some question about cause of death. You wanna fill me in?”
Rountree glanced at his watch. “Well, I have an appointment in just a few minutes, so we’ll have to make this fast.”
“She didn’t commit suicide, did she?”
“No, Marshall, I can promise you that. According to Mitchell Cambridge, death occurred sometime yesterday
morning as a result of the bite of a poisonous snake—”
“Accident! Why, that poor—”
“—which she got when somebody hit her over the head and threw her on top of the snake,” finished Rountree, noting with satisfaction that Marshall Pavlock was staring at him openmouthed. “In the obituary, you just put died ‘suddenly,’ like you always do. For the news story, I’ll get back to you later. Just say the usual: Sheriff Wesley Rountree and his men are still investigating, blah, blah, blah.”
“But—”
“I gotta go now, Marshall. ’Bye!”
Tommy Simmons did not usually work on Saturdays. It was one of the reasons he had become a lawyer, so that he could keep eating at dinner parties while his doctor friends were called away for emergency appendectomies. This Saturday was an exception; just as it was exceptional for one of his clients to be involved in a violent crime, even as the victim. Meetings with Rountree were fairly routine, but usually on lesser matters. Simmons heard the front door open and close.
“Open up in the name of the law!” called Rountree from the reception room.
Simmons swung open his office door with a grin. “You got a warrant, mister?”
The sheriff waved a packet of saccharin. “Nope! Just a prayer for coffee!”
“Well, get you some and come on in!”
When Rountree was settled in the captain’s chair across from Simmons’s desk, he opened the file in front of him and studied its contents.
“This is a sad business, Wes,” the lawyer said in a sincere voice that might get him elected to something one day. “You know, I was only talking to her day before yesterday.”
“That’s what I heard,” said Rountree. “What was that all about?”
Simmons looked wary. “I don’t know how much I ought to reveal about a client’s affairs—”
“Tom, I know that when I told you the girl was dead,
you assumed accident—or suicide maybe,” he amended, reading Simmons’s expression. “But now I can tell you that we’re contending with a murder here.”
“Oh,” said Simmons faintly.
Rountree explained the circumstances of Eileen’s death. “Now, I understand there’s a will mixed up in this.”
“Well, Wesley, there
was,”
Simmons said, “but she doesn’t get the money, because she didn’t go through with the wedding.” He explained the terms of Augusta’s will.
Rountree considered this. “I guess somebody could have killed her for a shot at the inheritance money.”
“It’s about two hundred thousand dollars or so, before taxes,” offered Simmons.
“So you were out there to discuss the inheritance with her?”
“Yes. But while I was there, she gave me a will of her own.”
“We’ll come to that in a minute. Who was the executor of this first will, the one leaving all that money?”
“That would be Captain William Chandler, the brother of the legator. The money is, of course, invested, and he—”
“Okay. Now if Eileen Chandler is no longer eligible to receive that money, who’s got the next shot at it?”
Simmons blinked. “Well, nobody in particular. I mean—”
“You? Me?”
He smiled. “All right, Wes. I see what you mean. The possible legatees are: Alban Cobb, Charles Chandler, Geoffrey Chandler, Elizabeth MacPherson, and William D. MacPherson. The first of them to marry inherits.”
Rountree ticked them off on his fingers. “Well, now we got five suspects.”
“Four,” Simmons corrected him. “I don’t believe William MacPherson came down for the wedding.”
“Four, then. How about the boyfriend? You said Eileen Chandler made a will. What if she specified that the money was to go to him?”
Simmons hesitated a moment before pulling out a handwritten document on stationery. “Well, it wouldn’t matter, Wes. She couldn’t leave that money to him unless it was legally hers first. I mean, I could leave you the Brooklyn Bridge, but unless I owned it …”
“Okay, I see. Is that her will?” Rountree held out his hand.
“Okay, Wes, I’ll let you see it. But before you do, I’d better tell you that this will is the damnedest thing!” Shaking his head, he handed it across his desk to the sheriff. “The damnedest thing.”
Geoffrey pulled back the curtain and peered at Alban’s castle, white in the morning sunlight. “Did he say he was coming over?”
“I expect he’ll be over later,” said Elizabeth, “but he really didn’t say. Would you like me to call him?”
Geoffrey shrugged. “I suppose not. He can’t do anything. And I can always talk to you, can’t I?”
Elizabeth was puzzled. “About what?”
Geoffrey waved vaguely. “Oh … about this rather theatrical situation we find ourselves in. It’s sort of the reverse of
Hamlet
, isn’t it? That line about ‘the funeral-baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.’ Only the other way around.”
“You’re always going on about
Hamlet,”
she observed. “I hope you’re not planning to mention that to any reporters who happen to call. That allusion might be catchy enough to make headlines.”
“No fear, Cousin,” said Geoffrey grimly. “I have no desire to encourage sensationalism, or to gain immortality between the pages of a crime magazine. I just want to find out who did it.”
“Even when you know, it probably won’t make any sense,” sighed Elizabeth. “It will probably be some drifter that we never even heard of, and even he won’t know why he did it.”
“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” snapped Geoffrey.
“Would it be better to find out that it was someone we do know?”
“Just as long as we know. And I don’t think it was just a senseless act of violence. A casual murder. Getting back to
Hamlet:
‘Yet there’s method in it.’ ”
“More
Hamlet,”
muttered Elizabeth.
“It’s called barding,” Geoffrey informed her. “You should hear Sinclair doing it. He can bard through a whole conversation. It’s marvelous!”
“I’m sure it is.”
“I must call him today. The play will have to be put off. I think Mother would insist on six months. Or perhaps they could do a play without me in the meantime.” He walked to the bookshelf and pulled out the large volume of quotations. Flipping to the Ss, he ran his finger down the page and then intoned: “ ‘Our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown.’ ”
“I think it’s cheating if you use the book,” said Elizabeth.
“I just wanted to check to see what act it was in.”
“Hamlet
, of course?”
“Of course.”
The duel was interrupted by the sound of the door chimes. “ ‘The bell invites me,’ ” Elizabeth said, hurrying out. “ ‘Hear it not, Duncan—” ’
“You
would
quote
Macbeth!”
Geoffrey called after her.
A few moments later she came back to find Geoffrey still leafing through the
Dictionary of Quotations
. “That was Deputy Sheriff Taylor,” she told him. “He wanted to let us know that he was doing more investigating at the scene of—at the lake.”
Geoffrey nodded without looking up.
“I told him that it would be all right.” She sat down again and picked up her book. She had found it on one of the shelves in the Chandler library:
Digging for Troy: The Romance of Archeology
.
“You know, it’s unlucky to quote from
Macbeth,”
he remarked.
“Why? It’s my favorite play.”
“It would be. It’s just terribly unlucky. All theater people are shy of it. Sinclair was telling me that the
boy actor who was to play the first Lady Macbeth took ill before the first performance, and the Bard himself had to play the part. The boy supposedly died while the play was going on.”
“Coincidence,” remarked Elizabeth.
“No, really. Two actors in the thirties took sick after having been given the title role, and when Olivier played it, the tip of his sword broke off and struck a member of the audience, who had a heart attack.”
“Oh, dear!” said Elizabeth.
“Lots of actors won’t even
say
the title, much less quote from it! They call it ‘The Scottish Play.’ ”
“Alban was quoting from it last night. When I told him about Eileen, he said, ‘She should have died hereafter.’ I hope it won’t bring him bad luck.”
“One can never tell. Years from now he may be forced to sit through a bagpipe concert—”
Someone tapped on the library door. A moment later, Dr. Chandler opened the door with an apologetic smile. “Excuse me, Elizabeth. Could I possibly disturb you? Your Aunt Amanda is asking for you. She’s downstairs in the den. I can’t persuade her to rest. She keeps insisting that there’s too much to be done. She’s a brave woman, Elizabeth. Just don’t let her exhaust herself.”
“I’ll try,” murmured Elizabeth, wondering how anyone could be expected to prevent Amanda from doing something she’d set her mind to.