Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  Murder Keeps A Secret

  A Reuben Frost Mystery

  Haughton Murphy

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  For Louis and Anka Begley. Friends.

  And for Alpheus Thomas Mason and Jerome Blum, who many years ago tried to teach me something about biography and history.

  —H.M.

  1

  Prizewinner

  Reuben Frost stood in the bar cashiers’ line at the side of the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Centre, waiting his turn to buy two red tickets that would enable him to obtain a weak martini for himself and a Scotch and soda for his wife, Cynthia.

  He was patient, but also wary. Those around him were prosperous New Yorkers, gathered for the annual charity dinner of the Reuff Foundation, at which the Reuff Prize for American History would be awarded. They were basically polite, but in their quest for prebanquet drinks might be tempted to sneak into the queues at the understaffed cashiers’ table. Frost, at seventy-six (albeit a vigorous seventy-six), might be thought to be a likely target for the survival tactics most residents of the city had instinctively learned and which even the most proper could be tempted to employ if the circumstances were desperate enough. And having the comfort of a small, cold glass in hand, even if the contents were meager and the whiskey cheap, might be enough to set off a sneak attack.

  Frost recognized a few familiar faces in the black-tie crowd, but in the line he was in he knew only his wife of forty-odd years, who was standing beside him. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face, in the parallel queue, the aristocratically craggy visage of Stanley Knowles, a well-known New York publisher. Knowles was the head of Hammersmith Press, a small, respectable house and one of the few American publishing firms independent of German or British, or even Australian, conglomerate ownership.

  “Reuben, you’re amazing!” Knowles roared.

  Before Frost could say hello, the man shook hands vigorously, kissed Frost’s wife, Cynthia, on the cheek, and once again pronounced Reuben “amazing.”

  “You know, most men your age have had a pacemaker put in, but you got a computer chip instead. One of those Silicon Valley gizmos that connects you to everyone and everything. What the hell is an over-the-hill Wall Street lawyer like you doing at a party like this?”

  “I don’t know what to say, Stanley,” Frost replied. “I presume you’re here to pay homage to David Rowan, one of the many authors you so shamelessly exploit.”

  “That’s nice talk! And it’s unfair. If you knew what I’ve just paid Rowan as an advance for his new book you wouldn’t say things like that.”

  “The Ainslee biography?” Frost asked.

  “Yes. David’s living high in Manhattan and it’s costing him a lot of money.”

  “I’m sure you can afford it, Stanley,” Cynthia said. “After all, David isn’t exactly one of those Brigham Foundation monograph writers that you underpay so badly.” Cynthia, who had become the head of grants for the arts at the Brigham Foundation after her retirement as a ballerina, had worked closely with Knowles in bringing out a series of highly regarded studies on arts funding and management.

  “I think we’ve had that argument before, Cynthia. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the bar.” Knowles had succeeded in buying his tickets and was anxious to join a second line where he could cash them in. (The Reuff Dinner was a fancy affair, but not that fancy. The price of admission was $250 a person; it was considered low enough that the guests could be asked to pay for their own drinks.)

  The publisher had not received an answer to his question about why the Frosts were present. The reason was simple: Reuben was David’s godfather and was a guest that evening of Harrison Rowan, David’s father. The elder Rowan was a contemporary of Frost’s. They had become close as undergraduates at Princeton and had remained in touch ever since.

  The friendship between Reuben and Harrison had flourished despite a divergence in their career paths. Graduating from Princeton in 1932, Rowan, after tramping around Europe for a year, had gone to Washington to work in Franklin Roosevelt’s Treasury Department. Although a gifted economist who could have achieved great prosperity in the private sector, he never left the Government. His superiors had begged him to stay at Treasury during World War II, and again in the days of international monetary reform after the War. By the early 1950s, he had lost his inclination to change and stayed in Washington until his retirement to Fairfax, Virginia, in 1976.

  Frost, by contrast, had joined the eminent Wall Street law firm of Chase & Ward right out of law school and remained there until his own retirement as a senior partner in 1982. Despite the obvious differences in their lives—and their financial statuses—Frost and Rowan had remained good friends. And Harrison’s late wife, Valerie, whom Harrison had married in 1937, and Cynthia had also gotten on well, despite the contrast between Valerie’s life as a Washington housewife and Cynthia’s international fame as a ballerina in the thirties and forties.

  Harrison Rowan’s career had not been without interest, particularly in the early New Deal days and then again when the world economy was restructured in the late forties. But his greatest satisfactions had been vicarious, through his son, David, who had been born to the financially strapped Rowans in 1938. With much celebration, Reuben had gone to Washington, a prosperous young associate at Chase & Ward (then making the grand sum of $5,000 a year), bearing champagne to toast David’s arrival and to be the godfather at his christening.

  Fortunately for the Rowans, their only son became a brilliant student. Through scholarships and fellowships, he had blazed a remarkable path through Yale, where he received his A.B. degree in history summa cum laude, and then Harvard. (The Frosts, childless themselves, had made occasional subventions to David, but these had not in any way been essential to his success.)

  At Harvard, the young scholar wrote his dissertation (subsequently published) on the Social Security Act of 1935, getting his Ph.D. in 1965. The History Department at Princeton, then notorious for hiring from its own ranks, nonetheless eagerly pursued David and hired him. Nine years later, he had become a full professor, to the delight of his Princetonian father and godfather.

  Once he had reached the pinnacle of academic success, David, married since graduate school and the father of a son and two daughters, became restless. Princeton started to feel confining. He succeeded in finding a new outlet for his energies, however, becoming the moderator of a well-regarded intellectual talk show, called simply Point, on NBC television.

  This part-time diversion temporarily relieved his disquietude, and then fundamentally changed his life. Point was telecast in New York, and in the course of things he met Grace Mann, then an up-and-coming NBC television reporter and subsequently the early-morning anchor on a rival network. Close proximity soon grew into a clandestine romance—“familiarity breeds,” as Frost often said—and then into an open relationship. In 1980, wife Nancy, the three children, the Tudor house in Princeton and the Princeton History Department were all forsaken for Grace Mann and the glitter of minor celebrity in New York.

  David Rowan’s new social and sex life did not impede, but indeed seemed to stimulate, his work. Using his television expertise, he dabbled as a ghostwriter for several liberal candidates, including a Governor of New Jersey and the upset victor of a close Senate race in the Sunbelt. At a more scholarly level, he undertook a massive history of the powerful Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives. Published by Hammersmith Press as Ways and Means, the work was a critical success with reviewers, both popular and academic, and sold surprisingly well. In recent months it had won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for the year’s best work in American history and had been the basis for David’s being award
ed the Reuff Prize.

  Ways and Means helped David’s career in another way. It came to the attention of Marietta Ainslee, the oft-married, ambitious and rich widow of Garrett Ainslee, a pillar of the United States Senate for sixteen years and a Justice of the Supreme Court for twelve more, until his sudden death in 1980. Mrs. Ainslee was determined to have a biography of her husband written that would preserve, and perhaps even enhance, his reputation. She liked the comfortable sophistication of Ways and Means and, even though knowing that David Rowan did not have experience in writing biography or any special knowledge of the Supreme Court, she decided that he was the person to write it.

  Negotiations between the historian and the Justice’s widow were easy; he was given complete control of whatever he might write and also full access to the personal papers Ainslee had left behind. These papers had been deposited with the University of Tennessee, in the Justice’s native state, but the widow had retained control over them. At her direction, they were moved in their entirety, after considerable grousing by the university’s library personnel, to the capacious one-room office David had rented on West Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan.

  As the honored guest of the evening, David was not present in the reception hall where the Frosts and the other ordinary participants had gathered. Instead, as was the custom at these testimonial dinners, he was probably at a much more intimate gathering (where drink tickets were not necessary) in an adjoining room with such special guests as his father; Grace Mann; Senator Wheeler Edmunds of Michigan, a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination and the evening’s guest speaker; and Elliott Reuff, donor of the Reuff Prize.

  Knowing the usual protocol, Frost was surprised to see Reuff circulating in the crowd of the unwashed with his beaming wife, Micella, in tow. He was working the room like a seasoned politician, and soon approached the Frosts.

  “I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Frost,” he said. “And you, too, Mrs. Frost. It’s a great occasion, isn’t it?”

  Before they could reply, Reuff had shaken their hands and moved on. His wife, wearing a very short skirt with a wide ruffle at the bottom, said nothing but nodded cheerfully as she followed her husband, wide smile in place.

  “That was a heartfelt greeting,” Cynthia muttered to her husband.

  “Funny little fellow, isn’t he?” Reuben commented.

  The Frosts were hardly intimates of Reuff’s, but he was a ubiquitous fixture on the New York party scene, so they had met him many times.

  Elliott Reuff was one of the great real estate developers in New York, erecting office towers or apartment buildings on every inch of Manhattan real estate he could purchase. His buildings were utterly without distinction and invariably raised anguished protests from community groups and those concerned with decent architecture.

  Like the evening’s prizewinner, Reuff had become restless in the last year or two; edifice-building had come to bore him. Everyone knew he longed for a political career, but since there was no visible evidence that he had talent for anything except stacking up boxes, nothing had happened. (As part of his presumed campaign for political recognition, Reuff had become an energetic fundraiser for many candidates, including Wheeler Edmunds; hence, the Senator’s presence at the Reuff Dinner.)

  In an effort to brighten his public image, Reuff had hired a clever public relations operative named Eamon O’Farrell, who could boast of his successful promotions of, among others, a Mafia capo craving respectability, a movie starlet without discernible talent and the Palestinians—or at least promotions as successful as could be expected amid an urbane citizenry that had little enthusiasm for organized crime, artistic mediocrity or the PLO.

  Reuff had wanted to endow a prize for architectural distinction, but O’Farrell had dissuaded him, since such an award could only call attention to the developer’s shortcomings in this regard. Studying his subject carefully, O’Farrell discovered that Reuff had majored in American history at New York University and therefore suggested funding a history prize. Though Reuff had been a C student at NYU, he had liked the idea and the prize had been established two years earlier. And it carried an enormous stipend of $100,000, dwarfing the Bancroft ($4,000) and the Pulitzer ($3,000, recently raised from $1,000) in richness, if not prestige.

  Once Reuff left them, the Frosts began looking around for friends, a quest interrupted by the dimming of lights, announcing the start of dinner. Taking his wife’s arm, Reuben moved toward the ballroom, picking up a seating list from an attendant at the door.

  Frost quickly thumbed through the list. He knew he was sitting with Harrison Rowan, but he did not know who else might be joining them. The list resembled a Bulgarian train schedule and he had to look first in the alphabetical section, to find out that he was at table ten, and then had to flip to a table-by-table list where he found out who his fellow diners would be: Harrison Rowan “and guest”; Alan Rowan, David’s eldest child; Stanley Knowles and his wife, Donna; Grace Mann (what prudery kept her from the dais? Frost wondered; after all, she had lived with David for eight years); and Richard Taylor and Patricia McNiece, whom Frost did not know.

  A diagram of the tables indicated that table ten was in the front, but clear across the cavernous ballroom. He and Cynthia headed toward it, but were waylaid over and over by friends, making it appear as if they, like Reuff, were working the room. (And giving the lie to any modest assertions by Reuben that the Frosts were not well-connected.)

  By the time they reached table ten, the other guests were assembled and seated. Harrison Rowan jumped up and greeted them warmly, introducing them to those they didn’t already know, and showing Cynthia to a seat at his left and beside Richard Taylor and Reuben to one between Grace Mann and Donna Knowles.

  “Here comes the walking computer chip!” Stanley Knowles proclaimed. “Or are you a mobile modem, Reuben? Damn well-connected, whatever you are!”

  “Do I have to take this, Donna?” Reuben asked, as he sat down amid laughter around the table.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” the publisher’s wife said, lowering her voice. “He’s just published his first book on computers and he’s crazy about all the terminology.”

  Frost was glad to see that Harrison Rowan was joining in the laughter. He, of course, had every reason to be happy, given the occasion. But Frost knew he had been lonely and depressed since the death of Valerie, from cancer, two years earlier. Perhaps the surprise “and guest”—or “date,” as Harrison had quaintly called her—was partially responsible for the new cheerfulness. The “date” was the former Emily Bryant, a woman the two men had known in their college days. A cheerful, slightly plump extravert and an exceptionally good sport, she had been a party to many of their bachelor antics in Princeton and New York but then, to their shock, and that of most of the other young men who knew her, she had married Barton Sherwood, a stuffed-shirt lawyer and a heavy, ponderous bore. Harrison and Reuben had reluctantly excommunicated Emily from their bachelor rites, having been unable, like most, to abide the new husband. But now Sherwood was dead, and Frost silently congratulated his old companion for having rediscovered her.

  Reuben was sitting too far away to talk to Emily and so, after taking a sip of the California plonk and glacial fruit cocktail at his place, he turned to Grace Mann.

  Ms. Mann was a woman Frost had at first disliked. In his role as godfather, he had not approved of David’s flight from the hearthside, though since the miscreant was then forty-two, there had seemed to be very little that he could say. But he had been reluctant to blame his godson and therefore concluded that the television newswoman was a home-wrecker.

  As time passed, Frost realized that David appeared happy in his new life, whatever misery he had caused for Nancy and his children. So forgiveness had come for Grace Mann, made all the easier by her stunning, blond good looks, her wit and her obvious intelligence. Though neither he nor Cynthia (who was usually a good judge of such things) had ever detected under her cool demeanor much evidence of
a very deep love for David.

  “How’s the prizewinner bearing up?” he asked.

  “Just fine. David’s not averse to praise, you know. Though I must confess, these award ceremonies are a strain on me.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “They last long past my bedtime. I’m usually at home at this hour getting ready for bed.”

  “At eight o’clock?”

  “You forget I go on the air at seven in the morning. With every hair in place, both eyes open and the overnight news digested.”

  “Where is Alan, by the way?” Frost asked, nodding toward the empty chair next to Ms. McNiece.

  “His mother wouldn’t let him come.”

  “Nancy?”

  “Yes. She has a real hold on that boy.”

  “How old is he? He must be twenty-one.”

  “Just. But that doesn’t matter. She’s got him very firmly in her clutches. He’s living at home with her, so his freedom’s restricted.”

  “I thought he was at Vanderbilt.”

  “He was, but he left in the middle of his junior year, last January. Said he needed a rest.”

  “Grace, I don’t know about young people today. You’d think they’d want to finish college and get on with it.”

  “That’s a very old-fashioned attitude, I’m afraid.”

  “I suppose it is, but as far as I’m concerned there’s too much lounge-lizardry around.”

  Grace Mann laughed. “And that’s a nice old-fashioned term, Reuben. Today it’s called couch potatoism—sitting in front of the television and doing nothing by the hour. Though I suppose in my line of work I should be grateful for couch potatoes.”

  “I’m sorry about Alan. It would have pleased his grandfather to have him here.”

  “I know. It’s doubly too bad because he’s the only one of the children who even speaks to David.”

  A burly waiter came between Ms. Mann and Reuben, hurriedly scooping out a green salad.