Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  “Mr. O’Bryan, I’m going out for a while,” he announced to the policeman outside the door. “Can I bring you anything?”

  “No, sir, I’m fine, unless a cup of coffee wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. Cream and sugar?”

  “Black.”

  Frost also was about to suggest that he might bring the poor youngster a paperback book or a magazine; he certainly could not really be reading his memo book all the time. But then he thought he would be violating some Police Department regulation, so he did not. O’Bryan must stalwartly guard his fixed post without distraction.

  Frost walked to the Gotham Club eleven blocks away, had a most satisfying Gotham martini and a quick lunch, and then returned, stopping on the way back at a delicatessen to buy Patrolman O’Bryan his coffee. The next few files, with such prosaic titles as “Car,” “Garage” and “Apartment,” plus a lifetime’s accumulation of lecture notes, he passed over quickly.

  Then, when he got to “Reviews—W&M,” he encountered Peter Jewett again. Amid the almost unanimously favorable reviews for Ways and Means was one by Jewett, in an obscure historical quarterly, that figuratively blew Reuben’s head off. “Seldom has a political institution, in this case the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, been so misunderstood by an author seeking to tell its history,” the piece began. Jewett questioned David’s basic premise, that the Committee, through much of its history, had been unacceptably antidemocratic by preventing bills from coming to a vote on the floor of the House.

  Rowan “had utterly failed to understand” that this bottling up of legislation was exactly what the Members of Congress wanted, that it was a means of getting them “off the hook.” The Ways and Means Committee had provided the “grease” that enabled the House to function in an orderly way; David had been “extraordinarily naive” for failing to see this. Worse, he had “selectively and promiscuously used the facts available” to support his thesis.

  Frost pondered Jewett’s extravagant prose. The review bore a date earlier than David’s American Historical Association letter that Frost had uncovered earlier, so that letter had not been the provocation for Jewett’s attack.

  Frost made a note as to the particulars of the review. He must find out the cause of Jewett’s anger; nearly at an insane pitch in his article, might it not have somehow increased to an irrational, homicidal boiling point? The possibility was remote, but Frost did not feel he could ignore the evidence of rage (and counter-rage) he had unearthed in his file search.

  Then, with some distaste, he began examining the file entitled “Rowan v. Rowan,” which contained papers and correspondence relating to David’s divorce from Nancy. All the bitterness he had heard about was confirmed as he looked through the file. Communication seemed to have been exclusively through the lawyers for the two parties; written in restrained lawyer’s prose, the file letters nonetheless conveyed the rancor implicit in the positions taken by their respective clients.

  The pettiness of most of the disputes seemed appalling. The major issues—custody of the minor children, the level of David’s support payments—had been settled early on, but the negotiations dragged on over “priceless” phonograph records, a necklace David’s late mother had given to Nancy, and goods and chattels even more trivial.

  Frost was about to give up on this dreary correspondence, which only served to prove what he knew already, when he came upon a letter, at the very end of the file, from David to his divorce lawyer. The letter was a belated thank-you note to the lawyer for having sent a certified copy of the divorce decree, which David needed to get his license to marry Grace Mann. It was the postscript that particularly intrigued Frost:

  P.S. Do you know anything about copyright law? In connection with this Ainslee book I’m working on, there’s a guy who wants to keep me from using certain material that he wrote to Ainslee. It’s great stuff and I want to use it, and I have it right here in the files. But can I use it?

  David

  Frost read the postscript again, seeking to find more meaning from its cryptic words. The “stuff” could not be the notorious Ainslee date books that were now missing, but material sent by a third party, presumably male, to Ainslee. He searched through the files to find the letterhead, with the telephone number, of Barry Stevens, Rowan’s lawyer.

  After seeking permission from Patrolman O’Bryan, he called Stevens and was gratified to find him in his office further uptown. He explained why he was calling and refreshed the other lawyer’s recollection by reading the postscript to him.

  “Yes, I remember now. David sent me that note. The answer was so easy I just called him on the phone. Told him the new Copyright Act protects virtually anything a person creates and writes down, except if it’s done for an employer. I also explained how he could use somebody else’s copyrighted property as long as it’s limited to ‘fair use.’”

  “When you called, what did he tell you exactly?” Frost asked.

  “As best I recall, he repeated just what was in his letter. Somebody was objecting to David’s using material—I assume it was letters—that had been written to Ainslee.”

  “No other description, either of the person or the letters?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “My impression was that it was a man.”

  “How did you leave it?”

  “He thanked me and said he’d get in touch if it were necessary. Oh, yes, and then he offered to pay me for my time. I said, forget it. Then he said there might be some real business for me if the problem got ‘hot.’”

  “I don’t mean to cross-examine you, Mr. Stevens, but what did you take it he meant by ‘hot’—that the papers involved were ‘hot’ or that the litigation, if it came, would be hotly contested?”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Frost. I guess I thought he meant any litigation would be heated. But he could have meant the other.”

  “Anything else, anything at all you can remember about your conversation? There was only one conversation, is that correct?”

  “That’s right. It was the last time I ever talked to David, in fact. And to answer your question, I think I’ve told you everything I remember about our phone call.”

  Frost thanked his fellow lawyer for his help, regretting at the same time that David had not been more forthcoming about his “problem.” He decided to quit his file search for the moment. What he needed to do was to go home and locate the telephone number Bautista had given him for Lucy Wyecliffe, the University of Tennessee librarian. He instinctively felt that if she were careful in doing her inventory of the returned documents, something besides the engagement books would turn up missing. Something of interest—perhaps of crucial interest.

  16

  Digging

  Lucy Wyecliffe had gone for the day by the time Frost got home. The next morning, he called her from home, before a planned trip to Chase & Ward. There was no reason why he couldn’t have waited to call her until he reached the office—except for his nearly total inability to use the firm’s new, “improved” telephone system.

  He realized that the new instruments installed at the firm, which scarcely resembled any telephones he had ever used before, at home or abroad, performed many wondrous feats: conference calls to multiple locations, automatic retries of busy numbers. And, wonder of wonders, with the punching out of a mere eighteen digits, a long-distance call could be made and charged directly to the proper office or client account. Frost knew better than to wrestle with such an electronic monster.

  Having identified himself to the librarian, Frost was met with a tirade that lasted several minutes. Ms. Wyecliffe had known all along that there would be trouble if the Ainslee papers were moved to New York, but had been forced to relent when confronted with Marietta Ainslee’s demand that they be placed in David Rowan’s temporary custody.

  Then there had been the matter of photocopying. Ms. Wyecliffe had tried to insist that the
entire Ainslee collection—literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, of varying degrees of importance—be copied before being moved to New York. But neither Mrs. Ainslee nor the university—let alone David—had been willing to pay for this precaution.

  “So there we are, Mr. Frost. Probably all kinds of things are missing from the papers, but we’ll never know what.”

  “Surely there must be some record, Ms. Wyecliffe.”

  “Miss Wyecliffe, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, many of the Senatorial papers were in boxes relating to specific legislation and the papers from the time on the Court were arranged by case, one case to a box. The boxes were numbered in sequence, and we do have a list of the titles.”

  “So you could tell, then, if the entire box relating to a particular bill, or a particular case, were missing?”

  “That’s correct. We have a master list of the files.”

  “But you couldn’t tell if a specific document were missing?”

  “That’s also correct. Without cataloging and numbering each document, which would have taken years, or without Xeroxing all the papers, which could have been done very easily but wasn’t, there’s no way we can track down a single missing document.”

  “I think it would be very helpful to check the files that came back against your master list.”

  “I’ve started that already—I began the instant we got the papers back,” Lucy Wyecliffe said possessively. “I’m almost through with the Senate papers.”

  “And nothing has shown up missing so far?”

  “No boxes have turned up missing. I can’t vouch for anything beyond that.”

  “Miss Wyecliffe, I think it’s essential that you continue your exercise. I have a hunch that there are papers missing from the Ainslee files—I wish I could be more specific, but I honestly can’t. And I also have a hunch that if we can identify what’s missing, it may give us a clue to who murdered David Rowan.”

  “Oh, goodness, Mr. Frost, I had no idea that’s what you were getting at. You think a murderer may have stolen something from the Ainslee papers?”

  “That’s only a guess. But it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Then of course I’ll continue checking.”

  “That would be very helpful. And the sooner the better, I’m afraid. Is there any chance you could get people to work over the weekend on this?”

  “I do have other things to take care of, you know,” the librarian said, in a huff. “And the papers came back in such an unspeakable and inexcusable mess.… But I’ll see what can be done.”

  “Will you call me if you discover anything?” Frost asked. He gave the woman his number, spoke a few more phrases of encouragement and got off the line before she could start lecturing him further.

  At Chase & Ward, Frank Norton had done his homework. Reuben’s modest-sized desk was covered with material concerning the Hammersmith Press: the 10-K and 10-Q annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the glossy annual reports sent to shareholders, a NEXIS printout listing references to Hammersmith in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and selected other newspapers around the country. A handwritten note from Norton said he had tried to get everything relevant for the past five years, and also suggested skimming issues of Publishers Weekly if the information Frost was seeking concerned recent events.

  Frost marveled at the accumulation before him. With the telephone, a copying machine and a computer, all measure of information about the Hammersmith Press had been assembled with very little effort and in one day’s time.

  Plunging in at once, Frost soon discovered that Stanley Knowles’s financial troubles were real. Earnings had been falling for the last three years, though Hammersmith had remained in the black. That was not likely to continue in the current year; the 10-Q report for the first quarter of 1988, just filed with the SEC, revealed that Hammersmith had taken a large write-off against its inventory, consisting mostly of books that Hammersmith no longer considered salable.

  Frost took young Norton’s advice and went to the library to look over copies of Publishers Weekly for the current year. The inventory write-off in February was prominently featured, and a later issue of the magazine reported the rumor that Hammersmith was about to eliminate its sales force and would henceforth distribute its books through another as yet unnamed publisher.

  Returning to his office, Frost found another note that Norton had dropped off, enclosing a copy of a recent Dun & Bradstreet credit report on Hammersmith. It suggested that Hammersmith was not paying its bills on a current, or even a ninety-day, basis and that at least one of its paper suppliers had put it on a cash basis—no payment, no paper.

  All the signs were clear to Frost. Hammersmith was at best on the verge of insolvency, at worst already bankrupt. Stanley Knowles could certainly use the proceeds from the policy on David Rowan’s life. Even if his advance had not been paid in full, the insurance recovery could have been two or perhaps even three hundred thousand dollars—a welcome, if temporary, infusion for a cash-starved business. But had Knowles killed to get the money? Or enticed Fortes to do the killing? Frost did not want to entertain such possibilities, but he could not deny that the motive, a desperate means of staunching the fiscal hemorrhaging of the Hammersmith Press, was there.

  “Reuben, was any of this junk helpful?” Norton asked, sticking his head in the door and interrupting Frost’s musings on the latest turn of events.

  “Oh, Frank, yes. It certainly was. No, let me qualify that. It was very useful in providing me with a lot of information. Very unhelpful by complicating the problem I’m working on.”

  “Can I ask what that is?”

  “I’ll tell you if you’ve got the time. Close the door.”

  Frost swore his former partner to secrecy and then described to him, at least in outline, the impasse reached in the investigation of Rowan’s death. “Now, thanks to all this reading matter you foisted on me, I’ve got to take a closer look at what had been a very remote suspect.”

  “I’m sorry, Reuben.”

  “Forget it. You did what I asked you to do. But now, let me ask you another question. Do you know anything about copyright?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Who does?”

  “Neil Sloane.”

  “Is he around?”

  “I think so. I saw him in the hall earlier today.”

  “How the hell do I get him on this machine?” Frost asked, pointing helplessly to the new-model telephone.

  “You’ve got to move into the twentieth century, Reuben,” Norton said, laughing.

  “I have, I have. It’s just that these damn things have moved into the twenty-first.”

  “Let me do it,” Norton said, looking up Sloane’s number on the office list and calling him.

  “He’ll be down in ten minutes, if that’s okay,” Norton announced after completing the call.

  “Fine. Since you’re being so all-purpose helpful, let me ask you still another question. Didn’t you go to Amherst as an undergraduate?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you know a professor there named Peter Jewett?”

  “Sure, everyone did. One of the best-known professors on campus. I was a history major, so I knew him quite well. Both him and his wife, Elizabeth.”

  “What was her name?” Frost demanded, sitting straight up in his chair.

  “Elizabeth. Why?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “What do you want to know about Jewett?”

  “Anything you can tell me.”

  “He was a strange bird. Chairman of the History Department when I was there and very obviously—obvious even to a callow undergraduate like me—ambitious to go on to other things. Which he probably could have done, except for the scandal with his wife.”

  “What was that?”

  “He beat her up, gave her two black eyes. She was furious and wen
t to the police. The college persuaded her to drop the charges, or Jewett might have been locked up. But it was a big scandal in the town, I’m telling you.”

  “Did he beat her up all the time, or was this a special occasion?”

  “The rumor was that it was a special occasion. He thought he was in the running for a major history chair at Yale, but he lost out. Apparently he just went berserk and took it out on his wife.”

  “His wife, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Because you’re complicating everything.”

  “How?”

  “Because you’ve just given me a whole new lead I’ll have to follow.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind. If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.”

  “Anything else I can do for you, Reuben?”

  “No, Frank, you’ve done quite enough.”

  Frank Norton was leaving just as Neil Sloane arrived.

  “Come in, Neil,” Frost said, “I’d invite both you and Frank to the party, but there really isn’t room for both of you in my retirement cottage.”

  “I’ve got to go anyway, I can’t stay,” Norton said. “Be sure and call me if there’s anything else you want.”

  “What can I do for you, Reuben?” Sloane asked, sitting down in the empty chair and relighting the dead cigar end in his hand.

  “Copyright. A subject I’ve never learned the first thing about. Let me pose a hypothetical question to you. I write someone a letter—Norton, let’s say. Then Norton writes a book and decides to include my letter in it. Can he do that?”

  “No. Norton owns the physical letter. It’s his. He can sell it or do anything he likes with it—burn it if he wants to. But he can’t publish the contents. You have the copyright in the contents. That’s probably always been the law, but the revision of the Copyright Act in nineteen seventy-six made it explicit.

  “Now, Norton might be able to paraphrase your letter, or extract quotations from it,” Sloane proceeded. “There’s always the right of ‘fair use.’ But his rights are probably going to be pretty limited. You remember the case of that writer, J. D. Salinger, just a few months ago. The Court of Appeals stopped a biography of Salinger from being published because it contained quotes and paraphrases from some unpublished letters.