Conspiracy of Silence Page 5

  This raw and overcast November day did not make the site any more cheerful. The maples, oaks, and elms that enclosed the little tiny graveyard on all sides, looming over it like stone-faced sentinels, had scattered their dead leaves all over the area, so that each step produced a distinct crunch like the cracking of innumerable tiny bones. We stood there silently, both of us envisioning the ill luck—the mischance of a world war and of some nameless crime of passion, whoever its ultimate perpetrator may have been—that had felled an entire generation of an illustrious family, two by death and one by incarceration. Lizbeth could not have known her elder uncle, but I don’t doubt that she had abundant memories of Uncle Frank—and however much of a rogue or a scamp or a wastrel he may have been, I suspected that it was exactly those qualities that had endeared him to her. Lizbeth’s tortured expression as she peered at his grave said as much.

  We entered the house again, for another thought had occurred to me. In this cavernous dwelling, where the servants far outnumbered the nominal occupants, it was not entirely clear what I could find that would be of any use; but I did inquire about any possible papers left by either James or Frank. Lizbeth told me that James’s study, located upstairs in the east wing, was locked at his own request and had never been entered, so far as she knew, by anyone since his imprisonment. I raised an eyebrow at that, but felt this was not the time to pursue the matter.

  As I was leaving, I did get collared by Helen Ward Crawford, who seemingly glided out of nowhere to bear down on me. Lizbeth was still hovering nearby, and in spite of a stern glance from her grandmother she held her ground.

  “Mr. Scintilla”—I felt she used the title grudgingly, since she clearly regarded me as no better than one of her servants, and perhaps quite a bit worse—“may I have a word?”

  I stopped at the doorway but said nothing.

  Possibly my lack of deference threw her a bit, for she herself stood by in an awkward silence before continuing: “I would like to know how far you intend to go with your . . . inquiries.”

  I looked at her closely. There was some kind of alarm, even terror, behind those hard, shiny eyes and taut jaw. I made a quick decision. Turning to her granddaughter, I said:

  “Lizbeth, may I speak to your grandmother in private for a moment?”

  She looked at me with a flash of apprehension, then dropped her eyes and retreated out of earshot.

  “Now, ma’am,” I said, turning back to Helen, “I want to make certain things clear if I haven’t already. I told you I’m working for Lizbeth, not you or anyone else. She has asked me to pursue this matter, and I will pursue it—wherever it leads. Right now I don’t know where it will lead. Lizbeth seems convinced that her father is innocent of the murder of his brother Frank.”

  “And you believe that too?” she said sharply, almost accusingly.

  “I didn’t say that. In fact, I have no evidence to that effect, and I don’t even know what evidence, if any, Lizbeth herself has to make her feel as she does. But there are curiosities in this case that warrant investigation.”

  Helen looked at me intently for what seemed a full minute before replying. When she did so, her tone was surprisingly subdued.

  “Mr. Scintilla, our family has been through more troubles than most. My husband was a pioneer in his field and worked hard to give us the enjoyment of this house and our estate; it is a small comfort to me that he did not live to see how his own sons . . .” For the first time, I saw her choke up as if with an overriding melancholy. “. . . his sons failed to fulfill their promise.

  “Perhaps you don’t think the wealthy suffer like other people. But we do suffer, Mr. Scintilla. I’ve suffered more than you could possibly imagine. My dreams have been shattered, and I am now a lonely old woman just waiting for death.”

  I didn’t know what to make of their hyperbolic, theatrical utterance. Was this an act, or did Helen Ward Crawford really speak this way to everyone? I didn’t doubt that the core of her statement was sound—her ashen face said as much—but I also had little doubt that she was wielding as much emotional pressure as she could to compel me to drop my investigation.

  “Ma’am,” I said softly, “maybe I don’t know what you’ve been through. I don’t know what it is to have my children die on me. But I have a job to do. Whatever you may think of me, I’m not a heartless man. I’ll do my best to spare you pain and trouble, but I’ll follow this case wherever it takes me.”

  She almost collapsed in front of me, as if deflated by the failure of her mission to deter me. With scarcely a second glance, she turned on her heel and said over her shoulder:

  “Then I wish you good luck, Mr. Scintilla.”

  My next task was to track down this doctor, Nathan Granger. His office was not difficult to find, as it was smack in the center of the better part of Pompton Lakes. I didn’t have an appointment, as I felt it best not to tip him off. So I marched right into his office, placed my card in front of his secretary, and asked to speak to him.

  As she looked at the card, her eyes enlarged a bit and she looked up at me with a trace of apprehension.

  “I don’t think he’s available right now,” she said nervously.

  “Then I’ll wait,” I said, making myself comfortable in one of the many chairs—all empty—in the anteroom.

  The secretary quickly got up, my card in hand, and retreated into an inner office.

  Within a few minutes, a tall, slim, but large-headed man with a shock of gray hair framing his face stalked out to meet me. He was a bit younger than I had expected: he couldn’t have been much older than fifty, meaning that he would have been quite a young man to have tended to the elder Crawford during the latter’s final illness, whatever that was. Crawford had died just before the war.

  Granger scarcely allowed me to stand up before extending an arm jerkily for a firm handshake.

  “I’m Nathan Granger. How may I assist you, Mr. Scintilla?”

  I wasted no time in small-talk. “I’m investigating the apparent murder of Frank Crawford by his brother, James Allen Crawford, in 1924. I believe you were present at the incident.”

  I was certainly not mistaken in thinking that a wave of nervousness and fear clouded Granger’s face the moment my words were out. But he put on a brave front. Eyes narrowing, he said tartly:

  “On whose behalf are you conducting this investigation?”

  “On behalf of James’s daughter, Lizbeth, who has hired me.”

  Granger continued to peer into my face as if that alone could have unlocked the secret of my presence and my mission. He was thinking furiously—that much was obvious. Quickly turning around, he said, “Come with me, Mr. Scintilla. Let’s talk in private.”

  I followed him into his office, where he not only closed but locked the door.

  I sat down at a chair in front of his desk, while he took his seat in the chair behind it. This room did not have any medical apparatus in it—that was apparently reserved for another room leading off a private door to the left—but contained only the records of his patients, along with many hundreds of medical works, ranging from textbooks to periodicals. As Granger sat down carefully, I could tell that he was attempting to gain the upper hand by situating me in his domain. But it would take more than that to intimidate me.

  For a time we simply sat there, staring at each other across the desk. We were like two prizefighters, sizing each other up.

  Finally he said: “What exactly can I do for you, Mr. Scintilla?”

  “Just some information, Dr. Granger.” I took out a small steno pad, as if I were a reporter. “You were indeed present at the death of Frank Crawford on March 19, 1924?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly.

  “And you pronounced him dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were present when James Allen Crawford confessed to killing him?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Granger’s hesitancy made me look up sharply at him. “James confessed on the spot, didn’t he?”
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  “Only when the police showed up.” He seemed to cough up that remark a bit reluctantly.

  “Is that so? What did he do before that?”

  Granger took his time answering. “Mr. Scintilla, that whole evening was . . . curious. I don’t really know what I was doing there. I was not exactly an intimate member of the family, even though I’d been the family doctor for years, perhaps a decade or more. I don’t know how much you know about the dynamics of the Crawford family . . . .”

  “I know plenty,” I said shortly.

  He paused abruptly at that, and once again a pall of fear passed quickly over his face. “Well, then, you know that James’s wife, Florence, had some relatives visiting her . . .”

  “Yeah, her brother, Daniel, and his wife Norma.”

  “Yes, exactly. Perhaps she wished me to make them feel at home.”

  “Did they visit Thornleigh often?”

  “Not that I know of.” Granger exhibited little interest in them. “And then, of course, there was Frank’s . . . er, girlfriend, or maybe fiancée, Eva.”

  “What do you know about her?” I said quickly.

  He shrugged. “Nothing. I’m not sure I ever met her before, and I never met her again.”

  “You know she took her own life a few months later.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Once again, Granger’s interest could not have been any less. “But she was an unsuitable mate for Frank. He needed someone of his own . . . rank.”

  “You mean someone who wasn’t poor as a churchmouse and had a long pedigree.” I don’t doubt there was bitterness in my voice.

  Granger looked at me almost with a certain pity, and I regretted that I had given him an opportunity to feel superior to me.

  “Mr. Scintilla, I don’t think you quite understand. The Crawford family has a certain standing to maintain. It has to be careful whom it lets into its charmed circle. That may be offensive to true-blue Americans like yourself, but I fear it is a necessity to people in the Crawfords’ position. They have too much to lose by letting just anyone into the family.”

  I had to turn the tables on him, and quickly.

  “You know, Dr. Granger, I’ve read the police report on the death. James Allen Crawford claims he strangled his brother. But there were no marks or bruises of any kind on Frank’s neck or throat.”

  This wasn’t the opening I had hoped for, as Granger replied loftily: “That means nothing. Many cases of strangulation leave no marks. All I know is that Frank was dead, and that his brother confessed to the crime. It was an open and shut case.”

  “It certainly seems to have been,” I said. “The police certainly did no investigation.”

  “Why should they have? They had their man. It would have been just a waste of effort.”

  “No autopsy was performed,” I pursued.

  Once more Granger shrugged. “What of it? It would simply have caused additional pain to the family, and in their situation they certainly didn’t need that.”

  “So you don’t think,” I pursued, “that there’s any chance that James confessed to a crime he didn’t commit?—that he was taking the rap for someone else?”

  Granger’s face was suddenly transformed into a mix of puzzlement, anger, and fear. “What sort of nonsense is that? Who was he ‘taking the rap’ for?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Rubbish. It’s all rubbish.”

  “You don’t think, for example, that Frank might have been poisoned?”

  “Poisoned?” Granger almost exploded. “How? By whom?”

  “Well, an autopsy might have told us something.”

  To this Granger merely barked a gruff laugh.

  “Could somebody have slipped him something in his food?” I said. “Given him a hypodermic injection?”

  Again Granger looked at me with a certain condescending pity in his eyes. “Mr. Scintilla, you’ve been reading too many detective stories. Things like that don’t happen. How could there have been any opportunity to do such a thing with all these people about? There must have been eight or nine or us, not to mention the servants.”

  “I’m aware of that.” I sighed heavily. “There was never a time when anyone was alone with Frank that evening?”

  Granger gave me an expression of mild incredulity. “I have no idea, Mr. Scintilla. It was twelve years ago. I can’t remember many of the details at this point in time.”

  “But it could have happened?”

  “Well,” Granger said grudgingly, “anything could have happened. But I doubt that it did.”

  It was clear I wasn’t going to get anything from this fellow—not without more information. But I began to suspect there was information out there to get—and once I had it, I might be able to shake something out of this dapper physician.

  This case was beginning to smell worse and worse. Too many people were trying to prevent me from coming to grips with what had actually happened on that night of March 19, 1924. Too many people seemed to have something to hide.

  And the person who had the most to hide was languishing in Rahway State Prison. So that’s where I was headed.

  Chapter Seven

  Getting to Rahway from Pompton Lakes was not in any sense direct, and for a hardened Manhattanite like myself it seemed at times as if I were lost in the backwoods of Arkansas or South Carolina. It always comes as a shock to city dwellers how much of our immense nation is still rural—not suburban, but actually rural. Farmers tending plots large and small, their dilapidated red barns in such alarming states of disrepair that a puff of wind would seem enough to bring them tumbling down; sheep farms, pig farms, cattle farms, dairy farms—even here in New Jersey they were all doing their bit as the breadbasket of the country, a thankless task that these stoic tenders of the land performed year after cheerless year as their fathers and grandfathers had done before them.

  After leaving the dismal penumbra of Paterson, I skirted the prosperous towns of Montclair and Bloomfield—the haven of the state’s social aristocracy, just as Princeton farther south made up its intellectual aristocracy—and passed through the Oranges (East, West, and South—no North), Irvington, Union City, and Roselle Park, finally reaching Rahway after a several-hours’ trip that seemed as many days. The prison was in fact well to the south of the city—it had been built on a plot of state property called Edgar Farm. It had been opened about thirty-five years ago, and only in the last year or two did it accept inmates above the age of thirty. One of those was James Allen Crawford.

  I had made this trip alone: at this juncture I didn’t think it wise to have Lizbeth with me. Her emotional involvement in the case, and in her father’s fate, would be more a distraction than a help. It was quite possible that Crawford would refuse to see me—I wasn’t clear whether Lizbeth had even informed him of my work. But that was a chance I had to take.

  My first order of business was to speak to the prison shrink. I had called ahead and been told he would be available. He was a Dr. Solomon Klass, a psycho-analyst who never let you forget that he had sucked at the teat of Dr. Freud in Vienna. I had no interest in whether he swung with Freud or Jung or the new behaviorist guy Watson; all I wanted was the straight dope on Crawford. What made him tick? What was he doing here? How had he dealt with being incarcerated for the last dozen years?

  Klass was a short, balding, ineffectual-looking man, but he knew his stuff. He had taken a particular interest in Crawford precisely because he felt that this was a guy who shouldn’t be here. What Klass told me was, in substance, this:

  When Crawford arrived here in the late summer of 1924, he was at once deeply depressed and somehow content with himself. When I asked him how that could be, Klass chose his words carefully. It seemed, in the doctor’s opinion, that there was some cloud hanging over Crawford—one that had hung over him for years. He was a man of incredible tenacity of purpose, the highest moral fiber, and with the greatest possible devotion to his family. He wanted to be in prison, because he felt that h
e had righted some dreadful wrong. The course he had taken was, in Crawford’s judgment, the only course he could have taken to cleanse the family of some hideous and appalling taint.

  When the doctor told me this, my spirits tumbled. Everything Klass said pointed to Crawford’s guilt in the murder of his brother. The story he told—that Frank had been “making advances” (whether accepted or not) toward his wife, and that the only remedy to this contemptible action was death—now hung together. The ignominy of a philandering brother—especially one who, in addition to flirting with his own sister-in-law, was about to make a horrible mésalliance with the social nonentity known as Eva Dailey—could well be, in Crawford’s judgment, much worse than the scandal of a murder. In his lights, Frank’s death would indeed be a kind of cleansing agent that would render the family as pure as circumstances would allow.

  I was not at all clear on how much Klass knew of the details of the case, but that didn’t seem to matter much. I went on to ask him what Crawford’s current state of mind was.

  “Pretty much the same as it was when he got here,” Klass replied blandly. “I have never seen a person with less affect—that means an observable emotional response, Mr. Scintilla—than James Allen Crawford. The man is a kind of automaton. An ideal prisoner, in his way—never makes trouble, does exactly what he is told to do, even helps to restrain others when they are unruly. It’s as if Crawford is fulfilling some perverse kind of duty in being here.”

  “Well,” I said, “he did admit to killing his brother.”

  “I know that,” Klass said quickly. When he hesitated, I went on:

  “Don’t you believe him?”

  It took Klass some time to respond. “It’s not that I don’t believe him . . . it’s that I think there’s more to it than that. There is something that goes much deeper, but I’ve never been able to ascertain what it is. To say he is an enigma would be putting it mildly, Mr. Scintilla.”

  I was about to say Yeah, you’re telling me, but merely said:

  “Do you think he’ll see me?”

  Klass shrugged. “All you can do is ask.”