Murder for Lunch Read online

  Was she referring to the murder or wasn’t she? Frost could not tell.

  “But I guess I of all people shouldn’t be surprised when a healthy person has a heart attack,” Dr. Griffith went on. “Only the other day I had just left the room of a patient that I had examined very carefully—everything was fine with her—when I got called back. In the thirty seconds since I’d left her, she had had a massive heart attack. There was nothing we could do, mouth-to-mouth, electro-shock, nothing.”

  Frost now proceeded with caution. “That’s very interesting. God knows I’m no doctor, but isn’t there a new drug on the market that you people use in heart attack cases?” Frost asked, looking carefully at his dinner companion.

  “There probably is, but I don’t think I know the one you’re referring to,” she answered.

  “I believe it’s a refined form of digitalis of some sort,” Frost continued. “As I recall, it has an odd name—Pernod, Penrod, no, Pernon.”

  As he spoke the name, his companion gestured and overturned the glass of red wine in front of her plate. She sprang back in her chair to protect her dress, but the effort was unnecessary. Only part of the wine had spilled by the time Frost had reached over to upend the fallen glass. The spilled wine flowed mostly onto Alice Griffith’s plate, leaving her dress unscathed.

  “Let’s get you another plate,” Frost said. He summoned a waiter and soon the damage was fully repaired, and Dr. Griffith had a new serving of the entree (mignonette de boeuf farci, the menu said).

  “That was really clumsy of me,” she said, blushing as she spoke. “A doctor shouldn’t be so clumsy. But I always have been.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Frost said.

  “Oh, but it is,” she answered. The woman then recalled in some detail—and in what Frost thought was a hurried, nervous voice—an incident that had occurred at Lasserre in Paris on her honeymoon with Perry.

  Frost’s mind was racing and he paid scant attention to Dr. Griffith’s frantically related anecdote. Had she deliberately overturned her wine to avoid answering his question about Pernon? And was this nervous tale-telling now going on merely an instinctive reaction to a social gaffe or a filibuster to distract him from pursuing his questions? Frost did not know the woman well, but in previous contacts he had never found her either clumsy or loquacious, the qualities that had come to the fore coincidentally with—or as the result of—his mention of Pernon.

  More questions came into Frost’s head as the monologue continued. Ross Doyle had told him that the distillate of digitalis used to make Pernon had been the cause of Donovan’s death. But could the distillate be derived from it as well? Could someone with access to Pernon reconcoct a fatal poison from it?

  Alice Griffith came to the end of her story as Frost thought through the implications of what he had seen and heard. “… and there were three waiters, a busboy and a captain crawling around the floor looking for the wedding ring of a very embarrassed young bride.”

  “Did they find it?” Frost asked, picking up the conversation again.

  “Yes, thank God. It had rolled an unbelievable distance and was under the table of a very surprised Japanese couple. Everyone was very nice, though, and the restaurant gave us champagne to celebrate.”

  “That’s an amusing story,” Frost said. “It’s nice to know that Lasserre has a human side.”

  Frost did not pursue his questioning about Pernon; he saw no point in it. Instead he escaped to the dance floor. The dances between courses had proved to be a godsend, though ironically his escape route this time was a dance with Laura Acheson, the girl he had tried to get away from earlier. She had clearly done her homework, as she asked Frost about his interest in the ballet while moving about the floor. Frost was still distracted, sorting out the implications of his conversation with Dr. Griffith, and paid less than full attention to his dancing partner. Besides, it soon developed that her sketchy knowledge of the subject was confined to the San Francisco Ballet. Ever the elitist in dance matters, Frost found serious conversation about that company just not possible.

  Frost returned to his table, sighing inwardly. One more course to go. (Two years earlier in a rare exercise of authority, Bannard, after some prompting from his partners, had ordered the dinner committee to cut the number of courses from four to three in the interest of reducing the time spent at the dinner table. No more salad and cheese.)

  He looked across the table at Perry Griffith. Could this boyish innocent be a murderer? At the moment he was being terribly polite to Marcie Collins, who was regaling him with a long tale about something. Gardening? Frost knew that Griffith, despite his appearance, could be a tiger of a lawyer. But could he be a cold-blooded murderer as well?

  As soon as the dessert course (bombe glacée portemanteau, the menu said) was over, Frost signaled to Cynthia that it was time to go. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that Graham Donovan’s murder was no closer to solution and that Alice Griffith’s “accident” had certainly not shortened the list of suspects. His spirits were not aided in the least by the spectacle he and Cynthia encountered as they were leaving the hotel—Keith Merritt, dead drunk, totally out of character, being all but carried out by his wife and Irwin Johnson, a young associate who worked for Merritt in the tax department.

  Drunk as he was, Merritt spotted Frost and called out to him, “There’s light at the end of the tunnel, Reuben, there’s light at the end of the tunnel!”

  Frost wished he were listening to drunken wisdom. But if there was even a glimmer of light, he certainly did not see it.

  A DISTRAUGHT WIFE

  16

  “You look awful,” Cynthia Frost said, staring across the breakfast table at her husband.

  “I can’t help it. I slept very badly.”

  “Too much party.”

  “No. Too much murder.”

  “Only one that I’m aware of.”

  “I’ve got to call Doyle,” Reuben Frost said, more to himself than to his wife.

  “Doyle? Why?” his wife asked, unable to follow his disjointed train of thought.

  “He’s got to find out more about the poison that killed Graham. He told me it was a distillate of digitalis used in this new drug they call Pernon. What I now need to know is if you can do something to Pernon to reduce it down to a distillate.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cynthia said, still perplexed.

  “Remember when Alice Griffith spilled her wine at the dinner table last night? She did it just as I was asking her about Pernon. She’s specializing in geriatrics, after all, so I’m damn sure she knows about it. But as soon as I’d mentioned the name, she spilled her wine and embarked on an endless story about losing her wedding ring at Lasserre.

  “Oh, Reuben, that was just nerves,” Cynthia said.

  “I hope to God you’re right. But it could mean, if Pernon can be cooked down into the poison that killed Graham, that we have a nice, neat little scenario: loyal wife steals Pernon from hospital; she and/or husband turn it into a lethal distillate of digitalis; husband kills Donovan with the poison. Okay?”

  “Or, for that matter, your Miss Appleby steals Pernon from her hospital and does the same thing.”

  “Yes, you’re right. That’s possible too. But all the more reason why I need to know about this goddam Pernon. And by the way, what did you think of Mr. Griffith? You were talking to him most of the time during dinner.”

  “Correction. I spent most of the evening talking about Harry Collins’s garden. Reuben, he has to be the most boring man at Chase & Ward. Tomatoes! Rhododendrons! Rosebushes! I heard it all.”

  “Well, I can’t feel sorry for you, with the shock I got from Dr. Griffith. Not to mention California’s preeminence in the wine and dance worlds. Besides, if you recall, I hold the Chase & Ward endurance record for boredom.”

  “You mean Edna—”

  “Yes, Edna Merritt’s tale of how to get from Manhattan to Kent, Connecticut, with a horse trailer hitched to
the car. The most truly bone-crushingly boring story I have ever heard.”

  “I know, dear, but Harry Collins would give her a run for her money. And what did I think of your Mr. Griffith? An ambitious and smarmy young man. But a murderer? I don’t think so.”

  “But on the other hand, how many murderers have you ever met?”

  They were interrupted by the ring of the telephone. Cynthia reached behind her chair in the kitchen to answer it, then turned the receiver over to Reuben. “It’s Anne Singer and she wants to talk to you,” Cynthia said.

  As he picked up the receiver he realized that he had not seen the Singers at the dance. Had he simply missed them or had his prediction that they would be there been wrong?

  “Hello, Anne. We missed you last night,” he said.

  Anne acknowledged at once that she had not been at the dance, then hurried on to convey the purpose of her call. Would Reuben meet her for lunch?

  “Of course, my dear. We’re free, I think.” He whispered to Cynthia, who nodded her assent. Then a puzzled look came over his face as Anne asked that he have lunch with her alone.

  “It is vitally important,” she said, leaving Frost without a choice. He accepted, agreeing to meet her at Mortimer’s at one.

  “Well, how do you explain that?” Frost asked his wife when he had told her.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” she answered.

  “I hope you don’t mind, dear. By the way she put things, I think I have to see her on her terms. She sounded faintly desperate.”

  “No, I don’t mind, Reuben. You could probably become as fascinated by her flowing red hair as Graham did. But I think you’ll be safe at Mortimer’s.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cynthia was right, Frost thought, as he saw Anne Singer come in the door of the restaurant. Her distinctive, bright red hair was indeed striking. And as usual she had offset it with a smashing outfit, black pants with a black silk shirt. Heads turned as she strode to Frost’s table and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Drink?” he said, as they sat down.

  “What are you having?”

  “A mimosa.”

  “Good. That’s what I want too.”

  “You’re looking splendid as usual, my dear,” Frost said, as their drinks were served.

  “Thanks. I don’t feel it,” Anne Singer said.

  “Reason?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. But first let me say how grateful I am that you agreed to see me on such short notice.”

  “Not at all. It was just a quiet Sunday for us.”

  “By rights I should have called George Bannard. But somehow I’ve never found him very sympathetic. And you always seemed to be very understanding of Roger’s complicated life.”

  “Well, I appreciate the compliment, Anne. But what’s the trouble?”

  “Roger has disappeared. I haven’t seen him since Graham’s funeral Thursday morning. He left me after the service and said he was going to the office.”

  “I saw him at the funeral, but come to think of it I haven’t seen him since,” Frost said.

  “No, he went off somewhere Thursday. I had been out Thursday afternoon, but called the office when I got home about five because we hadn’t made any dinner plans. His secretary said he had gone for the day. When he hadn’t gotten home by nine, I took a look around. A suitcase and his passport were gone.”

  “And he didn’t leave any indication of where he was off to?”

  “None,” she said, as she finished her drink. The waiter, as if on cue, appeared and asked if they wanted another round.

  “What do you think, Anne? I’d just as soon order lunch and a bottle of wine.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  Ordering accomplished—chicken hash for both—they returned to the case of the missing person.

  “Look,” Anne said, “with Roger’s crazy European clients, I’m used to his taking off on a moment’s notice for strange places. But he always tells me where he’s going. Do you know where he is, Reuben?”

  “No, I don’t. He certainly didn’t say anything to me about going away on firm business. And I don’t believe he was on the absence list circulated on Friday.”

  “I’m sure not,” Anne said. “His secretary hadn’t heard a word from him on Friday.”

  “Could he be doing work for the … agency?” Frost asked hesitantly. Singer’s CIA involvement was not normally a subject discussed so directly, but this did not seem a time for discretion.

  “Reuben, I thought of that. But even when Roger was on agency business, he always used to make up some sort of excuse before going away. Besides, I’m not sure but what he hasn’t severed his connections there. God knows I’ve been trying to get him to give up the spy stuff for years without success.”

  “What makes you think he’s given it up on his own?” Frost asked.

  “Remember when he was away for two weeks in January? That was an agency trip, though I’ve never found out to where. Shortly after he got back, he seemed to lapse into a perpetually dark mood. It was the only time he ever opened up about the CIA at all.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was fed up with dirty tricks. That they were for younger and stronger people than he. I gathered he had somehow been involved in a plot that he didn’t approve of. I assume to murder or assassinate someone, but I don’t know who or what country, or anything else.”

  “I thought dirty tricks were a thing of the past.”

  “I said the same thing to Roger. All he said was that old habits are hard to break.”

  “But you had the idea he was going to cut his connection with the agency?”

  “That’s what he said. But he is very loyal too, Reuben, so his vow to quit may have been only temporary.”

  The couple were silent as they began eating their lunch. Looking around while they were being served, Frost was amused to see one of Cynthia’s old friends looking over in their direction. But given the seriousness of the business at hand, he did not share his amusement with Anne.

  Anne resumed the conversation. “Unfortunately, there’s another possibility. Another reason why Roger may have disappeared.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, Reuben, dear, don’t be so naive. I don’t think it’s any great secret that Graham Donovan and I were, shall we say—”

  “Good friends?”

  “Thanks. Yes. Good friends. I don’t know whether Roger knew about us or not. I was terrified to tell him, but Graham and I were getting more reckless and Roger just may have found out, though I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have confronted me if he really knew the truth. But what I’m afraid of is that Graham’s death may have affected Roger in some way, some irrational way.”

  “Let me ask you a frank question, Anne. Has Roger been completely well lately?”

  “You mean mentally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, he’s been acting rather strange at the office. Completely silent whenever he’s in a group and just generally taciturn and sometimes irascible.”

  “You’ve got it. Ever since the trip in January, he’s been gloriously depressed. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but some days he doesn’t even go to work until lunch-time.”

  “I hadn’t,” Frost said. “Was he doing anything about his depression?”

  “Yes. He was seeing a psychiatrist uptown. Strange name. Lygian, I believe.”

  “Sure. Adrian Lygian, psychiatrist to the stars.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve met him. Someone once said that half the famous people in New York go to him and the other half should.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but I was sure he was doing Roger some good. But now Roger has gone and disappeared. I’m worried, Reuben. Roger, mysterious Roger, has never done this before. I’m so afraid he’ll harm himself—afraid that the agency, or Graham and me, or Graham’s death, or some other demon will push him ove
r the edge.”

  Anne began crying softly as she got more worked up. Frost offered her a handkerchief and held her by the wrist (presumably witnessed by Cynthia’s nearby friend, but he didn’t care).

  “Has there been any threat of … harm? Of harming himself?” Frost said.

  “No. Roger never talked that way or made threats like that. But depression can bring on suicide and I can’t help but think about it.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that just yet. I’m going to do some checking this afternoon to see if Roger’s off with one of his mysterious clients or off on spook business. Until we’ve ruled that out, I wouldn’t worry. Roger may have been gloomy of late, but I don’t think of him as being self-destructive.”

  “Reuben, I can’t thank you enough,” Anne said. “Obviously I’ve got to make a new start on things now that Graham is dead. I just want to have the chance to make things right with Roger.”

  “I’ll keep you posted and you do the same,” Frost said.

  Frost decided to go to the Chase & Ward office, where with help he might be able to find the home telephone numbers of Singer’s European contacts. He arrived, surprising the Pinkerton guard at the desk, who had not seen Reuben Frost in the office on a Sunday in many years.

  Frost was amazed at the activity he found. He knew that the office was busy—every client seemed to have come back from the summer with an idea for a new project—but he didn’t know business was so good that many associates and some partners were working on Sunday. As he walked down the hall he had a slight twinge of regret that he was not still sharing in the firm’s profits.

  Once at his desk, Frost called Merritt at home. Merritt was the tax partner who worked with Singer most closely in advising the Europeans and he indeed was able to give Frost a list of names to call and instructions for getting their telephone numbers from Merritt’s Rolodex.

  The effort proved futile. Frost was lucky in reaching all but one name on the list. But none knew of any plans Singer may have had to be in Europe. He also called Ross Doyle and asked him to find out from his laboratory friends whether the poison that had killed Donovan could be derived from Pernon.