Conspiracy of Silence Page 4

  The whole matter seemed to revolve around the precise state of mind of James Allen Crawford, and perhaps the rest of his family. Even though I was working for Lizbeth Crawford, I had to admit that her doubts about her father’s guilt might be misplaced. There was still every reason to believe that he had in fact committed the crime—even if the motive he had given to the police was a cover for something even more bizarre. I began to sense that this was a case that would be less about the accumulation of physical evidence than about the analysis of character.

  I called Lizbeth and gave her some idea of the progress I made. She claimed to be encouraged, but still sounded tentative.

  “So what happens now, Mr. Scintilla?”

  “Well,” I said, “I need to get a better angle on certain things...and I think the place to start would be to talk to your mother and grandmother.

  “I’ll want you to take me to Thornleigh.”

  Chapter Five

  There was something surreal in the drive through Pompton Lakes to Thornleigh. It was as if we were simultaneously passing through both time and space—leaving the workaday world of depression-era America and entering an ersatz Edwardian England where the ugliness of war and poverty was a kind of social embarrassment. One didn’t talk about such things. I proceeded north in my Chevy, Lizbeth at my side, leaving the town well behind and entering upon a rolling hillside so reminiscent of the British Isles that I momentarily thought I should be driving on the other side of the road.

  The architect of Thornleigh clearly had English manorial houses in mind when he built this pile. The style was chiefly Georgian, with its rich brick façade and elegant symmetry—a kind of squared U-shape, with wings on either side reaching back almost to the woods that surrounded the house on three sides. Farther back one could see the aqueous formation called Pompton Lakes (I never figured out what the plural signified, since it seemed a single, albeit quite long and narrow, body of water), whose shore was so close to the east wing of the house that the lake could be regarded as a kind of private swimming pool.

  During the inevitably long drive to the front door I began to wonder what kind of reception we—and, in particular, I—would receive. Lizbeth had hinted that her investigation of the circumstances behind the death of her uncle were unwelcome to the rest of the family, but she had been reluctant to elaborate. I was frankly prepared for resistance on the part of both her mother and her grandmother—although why either of them would oppose or impede efforts to find James Allen Crawford innocent of the crime he claimed to have committed was not apparent to me.

  The butler who opened the door was not quite the caricature I had expected, although his penguin suit was not encouraging. The warm smile he gave to Lizbeth when he saw her made me think he might be an ally down the road. His name, it transpired, was Joseph—his last name I never learned. I was suddenly glad that I never used my full given name in public or private.

  We were apparently expected, for I saw two ladies, one middle-aged and one elderly, seated a bit stiffly in what I assumed was the parlor, where we were led. I was about to meet James Allen Crawford’s wife, Florence Bisland Crawford, and his mother, Helen Ward Crawford.

  I had to disagree with Maureen Dailey that Margaret was unattractive. True, she didn’t have the spectacular looks of her daughter, and she didn’t have the wistful beauty of Eva Dailey; but her austere elegance would have been appealing to many. Possibly her blonde hair was pulled back a bit too tightly in a bun behind her head; possibly her attire was a little on the severe side; but her finely chiseled features—aided, to be sure, by cosmetics and a professional’s careful touch—were striking and impressive, if not actually beautiful. And yet, it is not a paradox to say that the hint of perpetual sadness that hovered around her eyes enhanced her loveliness rather than detracted from it.

  Helen Ward Crawford was something else again. She had not aged well. I took her to be no more than seventy, and yet she easily looked a decade older. The harshness of her sharp, angular features was augmented by a kind of repressed rage or torment that flashed sporadically from her bright green eyes. I got the impression that her anger did not stem merely from my unwelcome arrival: she had lived so long with the effort of bottling up some sort of volcano of shame or horror or disgrace that she seemed ready to snap at any moment.

  My clothes were not exactly what one would wear to a formal dinner party, so I was not unprepared for the hesitancy with which both women rose to greet me and the disapproving gaze they gave me as they looked me over. I shook their hands as Lizbeth, with a faint tremor in her voice, introduced us. We sat.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  I decided to break the ice by saying: “Ladies, I’m sure you know that, at the request of Miss Crawford here”—I nodded quickly in her direction—“I’m investigating the death of Frank Crawford. There seem to be some irregularities that need to be explored.”

  The two women continued to give me a blank and vaguely hostile look. Then Florence spoke up. “I’m sure you must know, Mr. Scintilla, that both my mother-in-law and I do not care for this line of inquiry.” She said it with the implication that no possible rebuttal could be offered.

  At that moment I had to decide quickly what sort of response to give. If I came back with something that she would regard as hostile or insulting, I might never get any information out of her, let alone her husband’s mother. But if I attempted to be diplomatic, she might regard me as weak and force Lizbeth to give up the hunt. I didn’t know Lizbeth well enough to be certain of her ability to persevere in the face of family pressure. On the other hand, hostility sometimes causes you to burst out with exactly the sort of dope you want to hide.

  I decided to be forceful and hope—perhaps against hope—that Florence would resist the temptation to feel offended. In the cases of many successful businessmen and their families, bluntness and firmness induce respect, even if they don’t engender fondness.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I’m working for your daughter, Lizbeth Crawford. She’s paying my bills, and she has the money to pay them for a long time. If Lizbeth wants me to pursue this matter, I’ll pursue it wherever it leads. I hope you’ll help, as I think it may be in your interest to do so.”

  At this point Helen almost exploded: “What do you know what’s in our interest? What do you know about our family? Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  I had lately discovered the impossibility of answering several distinct questions at once, so I didn’t try. Instead, I threw a question back at her, but without raising my voice.

  “Ma’am, don’t you want your son to be exonerated of the crime of killing his own brother?”

  Helen’s eyes almost bugged out of their sockets.

  “Listen, you . . .” I don’t think she could find a term of abuse sufficiently vile to cover me—or at least none that she would soil her lips in enunciating. “Two of my sons are dead and the third is in jail. How much more suffering do you want to put me through?”

  All of a sudden the faintest trace of a crushing sadness burst through her hostile exterior. For a brief moment I didn’t have the heart to take up arms against this old battle-axe. She and her family had been through hell already.

  “Ma’am,” I said in the gentlest voice I could, “I want to help. That’s all I want to do.”

  In the silence that followed, Lizbeth almost jumped up from her seat and went over to her grandmother. “Granny, let’s leave Joe to talk things over with mama by themselves. It’ll be better that way.”

  Helen looked up at Lizbeth, who was standing over her. For a time she seemed to consider resisting, telling her granddaughter not to order her about; but after a few moments she almost collapsed inwardly, nodded briefly, and got up.

  Lizbeth led her away to some other region of this capacious abode. With a backward look she all but ordered me to get as much out of her mother as I could.

  I had my doubts how much that would be, but I figured it was worth a try.

  “Mrs.
Crawford,” I said, “could I ask you some questions regarding the . . . incident?”

  Florence, left by herself, suddenly seemed to shrink. It was as if she felt exposed, unprotected, defenseless. In spite of the forcefulness of her outward personality, I began to suspect that she might be one of those women who expected to be protected by a man, and who therefore could ill resist when a man confronted them.

  “If you like,” she said in a small voice.

  “May I ask what was the occasion of this dinner party on March 19, 1924?”

  “No particular occasion,” Margaret said flatly. “My husband set it up. Maybe he wanted to make my brother and sister-in-law feel more at home.”

  I had taken out the list of guests that Lizbeth had prepared for me, and I now looked down at it.

  “That would be Daniel and Norma Bisland?”

  “Yes.”

  “They had been your houseguests for some time?”

  “Not long. Maybe a week. They were down from upstate New York, where they lived . . . still live. After I married, I didn’t get to see them very often, or any other members of my family. Sometimes I felt a bit lonely, since James was so busy running the company, and Frank . . . well, Frank was off doing whatever he was doing.” She lowered her voice a bit, even though no one seemed to be within earshot. “I’m not entirely sure how well my mother-in-law has welcomed me into this family.” By the time she had finished, she was looking into her hands.

  I was a bit surprised how forthcoming she was with information. So I decided to play all my cards.

  “Mrs. Crawford, do you think your husband killed your brother?”

  She looked up quickly. There were both fear and tears in her eyes.

  “I really don’t know.” Her voice was trembling so much that she could hardly get the words out. “It was all so . . . strange.”

  “How so?”

  She shrugged, almost shivered. “Why would he . . . do it just at that time? It makes no sense. So many people about . . . But after dinner, he and Frank went into the library, and after about half an hour we heard a big thump, and then James came out with a kind of frozen expression on his face and said, ‘Frank is dead. Better call the police.’”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, Dr. Granger . . . our family doctor, you know . . . rushed into the library, looked down at Frank, and pronounced him dead. At that point it seemed so cut and dried, although I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wondered how a young, healthy man like Frank could have just keeled over and died.

  “But things got even odder when the police arrived. It was just then that James marched up to that boor of a police chief and announced that he had killed Frank. And it was then that I remember Dr. Granger giving James the strangest look I’ve ever seen on a man’s face.”

  “Strange how?”

  Her fear had turned to frowning puzzlement. “I don’t know...Incomprehension, incredulity, wonderment . . . .”

  “Well, James had apparently killed his own brother. Surely that was cause for wonderment.”

  “Yes, I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced. “But that didn’t seem to be the problem.” She shook herself almost violently. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  I knew I was treading on thin ice, so I said quietly: “You know, James maintained—and apparently still maintains—that Frank was . . . interested in you.”

  I expected her to be angry, hostile, fearful, resentful. The last thing I expected was a hearty laugh.

  “Oh, but that’s ridiculous! Frank’s . . . um, fiancée, Eva Something-or-other, was right there! She was a little wisp of a thing, but Frank really loved her. He never made a pass at me...never. I wouldn’t have allowed it. Anyway, I don’t think Frank considered me particularly . . . desirable.” She blushed quickly and intensely.

  “Could James have thought there was something going on between you two, even if there wasn’t?”

  Florence shrugged. “I suppose. . . . James was a bit . . . protective. Jealous, I suppose. Didn’t want to let me out of his grasp. Not that he was the most affectionate husband in the world. . . .”

  She looked up at me with a scared look on her face, as if she’d let out a secret that should have been kept hidden.

  “So then what happened?”

  “Well, the police had came over, Dr. Granger pronounced Frank dead, and then they left.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What do you mean?” She seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Ordinarily,” I said, as if explaining some elementary problem in arithmetic to a child, “the police will take the body away, put it in the morgue, and perform an autopsy. None of that was done.”

  Her eyes goggled in horror. “Oh, no, we couldn’t allow that! It was Frank, part of our family! We took him right to our personal undertaker . . .”

  “Ma’am, that’s highly irregular, even illegal. It’s not how things are done. It defies every code of police procedure ever drawn up.”

  She looked blankly at me. “But, Mr. Scintilla, we’re the Crawfords. I know it sounds terribly snobbish and elitist, but we own this town. We couldn’t have let them take Frank away.”

  I shrugged. The rich have their prerogatives, and nothing can stand in the way. They just don’t understand how things can be otherwise.

  “What about Eva Dailey? Do you know her story?”

  “How do you mean?” Margaret seemed to have lost all interest.

  “You know that Eva committed suicide about three months after Frank’s death. And she was carrying Frank’s child, in all probability.”

  She raised a languid eyebrow. “Is that so? Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” She suddenly turned unwontedly vicious. “But she was just a little golddigger . . . poor as a churchmouse . . . trying to cling to Frank to take her out of the ghetto she was born in . . . little Irish minx . . . Expected Frank to marry her!—as if someone of his stature could link his fortunes to a little nobody like that! The idea!”

  I was not prepared for this kind of hostility against someone who was dead and seemingly harmless. But I let it pass.

  “Can you tell me how you and James met?”

  Without warning, a pall of fear came over her eyes. “Why...why do you want to know that?”

  I looked at her closely for a time before saying, “No reason. Just trying to get the background.”

  She seemed to answer very carefully. “My family had known the Crawfords for a long time. They liked to come up to the Finger Lakes to sail their yachts.” She looked at me almost defiantly, as if daring me to express resentment of my social and financial betters. “We weren’t as wealthy as the Crawfords . . . our money was in wine-growing in Cayuga and Seneca counties . . . but we were part of their social circle. Had been for years.”

  A point suddenly occurred to me. “Who’s running the company now? . . . now that James is . . . incarcerated?”

  She answered quickly. “Oh, the plants—we have two of them, one here in Pompton Lakes and the other in Wayne—have excellent managers. They handle the day-to-day operations. And my mother-in-law is a very capable overseer of the whole enterprise. I do my part also.”

  “And Dr. Granger . . . what about him?”

  “What about him?”

  “Was it customary for him to be invited over for dinner?”

  She shrugged again. “Oh, he came over from time to time...he’d been the family doctor for years, after all. A very friendly man—everyone got along with him.”

  “Could I talk to him?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not. He’s still in Pompton Lakes. All you have to do is ask.”

  I said I’d do that.

  Lizbeth came back a short time later, after she realized that I had finished my conversation with her mother. She didn’t dare pump me for information while Florence was present, so on the pretext of ushering me out she followed me all the way outside to my car.

  “So what did she say?” she asked breathlessly.

  “
Oh, she said quite a bit,” I said. “But I have a feeling it’s what she didn’t say that will give us the ammo we need.”

  Her face screwed up in puzzlement. “What do you mean? What sort of ammo are we going to need?”

  “Never mind,” I said carelessly. Then: “You know, at some point I think I’m going to have to go to the source.”

  “The source?”

  “Yes, the source. Your father, James Allen Crawford. He’s going to have to tell me what he knows.”

  Chapter Six

  Before I left Thornleigh, I asked Lizbeth to take me to the gravesite of her uncle. This turned out to be on a remote corner of the estate—a relatively small patch of land in a clearing in the woods well to the west of the house, surrounded by a low stone wall and dominated by a mausoleum built chiefly for the patriarch of the clan, Patrick Henry Crawford, Lizbeth’s grandfather. This edifice was inaccessible to us, as a locked wrought-iron gate barred our entrance; but I could see, on the left side of the interior, the impressive sarcophagus that housed the deceased, and on the right an empty shelf that was no doubt designed to bear the mortal remains of his wife, Helen Ward Crawford.

  It appeared that other members of the family were not to be interred in this imposing structure but would have to content themselves with the area around it, as if they themselves were serfs in perpetual attendance on their lord and master. An obelisk some twenty-five yards away from the mausoleum was the focal point of a cluster of graves. It did not take me long to find not one but two headstones of interest:

  WILLIAM ALLEN CRAWFORD

  1892–1918

  FRANK WARD CRAWFORD

  1897–1924

  There was, in fact, a third headstone that read:

  JAMES ALLEN CRAWFORD

  1894–

  It always unnerved me to come upon the gravesite of a living person—as if that final date was in some kind of hurry to be filled in.