Murder for Lunch Page 6

  He called her on the phone and she said she would come to his office right away.

  “Yes, Mr. Frost?” Miss Appleby said, as she opened his door. “What can I do for you?”

  “Sit down, Miss Appleby. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  “What is it?” She seemed unperturbed.

  “Graham Donovan is dead. He had a seizure of some sort at lunch and died immediately.”

  “Oh my. What a shocking thing. How did it happen?”

  “He was sitting at the firm table at the Hexagon Club when all of a sudden he started coughing. He grabbed his stomach, fell on the floor and within minutes he was dead.”

  “How awful. Was it his heart?”

  “I suppose so. Had he been ill lately, Miss Appleby?”

  “No, to the contrary. He had really watched his health since that heart scare he had a few years ago. His only problem was his stomach—he had had at least two ulcers in recent years—but that was under control. He took Tagamet and that seemed to help.”

  “Tagamet?”

  “Yes. That antiulcer drug that has become so common. It treats ulcers without surgery. And has been a big success for Smith Kline & French, the manufacturer.”

  “My goodness, how do you know all that, Miss Appleby?”

  “Oh, just something I read somewhere, I suppose. But I heard about the wonders of Tagamet from Mr. Donovan every day. I brought him a Danish pastry every morning. That and some awful powdered iced tea and a Tagamet were his breakfast.”

  “Iced tea?”

  “Yes. He couldn’t have coffee because of his stomach. So he drank iced tea instead. Made it himself with the powder he kept in his desk. I have never tasted it, but it must be awful.”

  “Grace, I mean, Miss Appleby—”

  “Oh, good heavens, Mr. Frost, after all these years you may certainly call me Grace—”

  “Grace, I seem to be stuck with making the funeral arrangements. But before I do that, I need to know one thing. Was Graham a Catholic when he died?”

  “He was a Catholic once, but I don’t think he’d been to church in years, Mr. Frost. Not since his second marriage anyway.”

  “What about this son of his, Bruce? He’s the only next of kin, I gather?”

  “That’s right. Of course he and Mr. Donovan were not on very good terms, you know,” Miss Appleby said.

  Frost did not let on that he knew this. “What was the difficulty?” he asked.

  “It all started when Mrs. Donovan had her stroke, about two years before she died. She was in terrible shape—could hardly speak at all, memory impaired, and very little use of her arms and legs. Mr. Donovan decided she had to be put in a nursing home, but Bruce objected violently. He was very close to his mother and he felt she should remain at home. It was easy for him to say, of course, because he didn’t live there. But Mr. Donovan was adamant, and his wife was in a nursing home all the time until she died.”

  “It sounds to me as if maybe the son was right. Certainly Graham could afford whatever it would have cost to keep his wife at home.”

  “Oh, but Mr. Frost, you don’t know how depressing it is for a healthy person to be around a stroke victim. I know, I had my father living with me for seven years after he had a stroke. And I see it all the time at St. Blaise’s.”

  “St. Blaise’s?”

  “Yes, the hospital. I do volunteer work there on the weekends, and I must say sometimes it is an effort to deal with patients who have become vegetables.”

  “I see.”

  “So I understand how Mr. Donovan felt. But Bruce never did. As far as I know, they have barely spoken since Mrs. Donovan’s death.”

  “Most unfortunate.”

  “Yes, it was very sad.”

  “Well, thank you … Grace.”

  She got up from her chair and headed toward the door.

  “Oh, and Grace, don’t worry about your future here,” Frost said. “I’m no longer in charge of things, as you know, but I’m sure something can be worked out for you. Mr. Kidde can talk to you about that when all this settles down.”

  “I’m not worried, Mr. Frost. But I’d just as soon wait until I get over the shock of Mr. Donovan’s death, too. You don’t just work for someone for twenty-five years and then start in for someone else, or doing something else.” She paused, but there was no sign of tears or losing control. “I’ve never been married, Mr. Frost, but I can’t help thinking that such close work for so long a time is a little bit like marriage.”

  “Perhaps so, Miss Appleby. In any event, I’m very sorry. Graham was a valuable member of this firm and we are going to miss him.”

  Miss Appleby left, leaving Frost to muse upon their encounter. What a cool customer Grace Appleby had become! No tears, and barely even a suggestion of sorrow at Graham’s death, despite the remark about twenty-five years of “marriage.” And a deliberate fastidiousness in conversation that seemed to him to conceal some sort of hostility or resentment. But was she responsible for the Stephens escapade? It did not seem in character.

  Frost called his friend Dr. Clark and the funeral was arranged as planned for Thursday morning. Hanging up the phone he sighed, as a result of both Dr. Clark’s cheer-ful-in-the-face-of-adversity manner and the dreary prospect of going through his late colleague’s desk.

  He sighed still again, thinking how boring the impending task would be. Reuben Frost, a man of great wisdom, was for once not quite correct.

  A NASTY SPILL

  6

  Frost called Wayne Kidde, the office manager, and asked to meet him at Donovan’s office. “George Bannard has asked me to go through Graham’s desk, and I think now would be a good time,” he said.

  Kidde, a veteran of these gruesome rites, said he would be there at once.

  Donovan, as a senior partner of Chase & Ward, had a large corner office on the north side of the building. Frost reflected, not without some amusement, on the rigid seniority system that prevailed in assigning offices at the firm, a system that had prevailed as well in the firm’s earlier locations where he had also worked: first a shared double cubbyhole, sitting by the door; then a shared double cubbyhole, sitting by the window; then a single cubbyhole; then a partner’s office two windows wide; then a partner’s office three windows wide; then a corner office with so many windows that one could not, as Donovan had often said, find a shelf on which to put anything. (There was, of course, the next, and final move, to smaller quarters for those who became “of counsel,” but Frost saw no reason to dwell on that.)

  Frost strode purposefully down the corridor to avoid being interrupted by those wanting to discuss Graham’s death, the news of which he was sure had passed along the office’s amazing grapevine by now.

  The Miss Appleby he encountered outside Donovan’s office was a changed woman. From cool detachment she had gone to deep, noisy and practically uncontrolled sobbing. Her face was ashen, her makeup a runny stream on her face. Had there been a genuine change of mood or had she simply decided that some theatrics were in order? Frost had no way of telling.

  “Miss Appleby, Mr. Kidde and I are going to open Graham’s desk. Is it locked?”

  “Yes. He always locked it. But I have the key.”

  Nearly in tears, she rummaged in her own desk and pulled out a pair of keys on a silver ring. Kidde, who had joined Frost, led the way into Donovan’s office. From appearances, it was hard to think that its occupant was dead. It was almost compulsively neat. Frost, himself favoring modern furniture, nonetheless had always recognized that the traditional furnishings in Donovan’s office were of the first quality. He now recalled sadly their kidding on the subject, with Donovan flinging the adjective “Hollywood” at him and he tossing “fusty” back at the younger man.

  The top of Donovan’s desk gave the impression that its user had only stepped away for a moment. A thick document was open in the middle of the blotter, a pair of reading glasses folded on top of it and a pencil beside it. On examination, it turned o
ut to be a contract to which Stephens Industries was a party, with notes in Donovan’s small, careful handwriting in the margin.

  There was little else of interest on top of the desk. A pen and pencil set inscribed with the details of a debenture financing dating back almost a decade. A London Economist desk calendar. The standard issue water carafe given to all the partners. (“One of the few perks of being a Chase & Ward partner,” Donovan had once joked to Frost, failing to mention the take-home pay.) On the tray holding the carafe was a used glass with traces of sugar in the bottom, presumably left over from Donovan’s morning Danish–iced tea–Tagamet ritual.

  Frost opened the desk calendar. It was virtually blank for the week, except for a capital A entered on both Sunday and Monday evenings. A? Anne Singer, Frost assumed. He then tried the middle drawer and found it locked.

  “Do you have the key, Miss Appleby?” he asked. She handed him the silver ring and she and Kidde watched as he opened the desk.

  If any of the three witnesses had either prying or prurient urges concerning Donovan’s personal effects, they were disappointed. Frost picked out of the middle drawer in succession a box of cough drops, a Mont Blanc pen, a Morgan Guaranty checkbook, a Chase & Ward office directory, a folder of traveler’s checks. There was also a sheaf of bills, all addressed to Donovan, from expectable sources—American Express, his laundry, Saks Fifth Avenue—a telephone message form with a doodle and the words “Draper—negative pledge?” written in Donovan’s handwriting at the bottom, a pair of theater tickets for the following evening.

  Frost moved on to the top drawer on the side, which contained nothing but paper clips, rubber bands and sharpened number two pencils. In the drawer beneath were the paraphernalia for Donovan’s iced tea fixes—a bottle of instant iced tea (“with fresh lemon added”) and a box of individual sugar packets. Finally, in the large drawer at the bottom of the desk were a series of file envelopes of papers, which Frost removed one by one.

  “This seems to be a copy of Graham’s will,” he noted, lifting a document with a blue back from the first folder. He leafed through it.

  “Well, Miss Appleby, Graham appears to have left you twenty-five thousand dollars,” Frost said, turning to the distraught secretary.

  “Oh, Mr. Frost. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t expect a thing …” She burst into tears anew. Frost felt quite helpless. As lord of the manor (or at least acting lord of the manor), he didn’t feel he could physically comfort her and was grateful when Kidde, being more or less of the same social station, put his arm around the sobbing woman and, to Frost’s great relief, calmed her.

  Frost resumed looking through the folders in Donovan’s drawer—past income tax returns, his copy of the Chase & Ward partnership agreement, the ownership papers for his cooperative apartment. He scanned them all rapidly as Miss Appleby and Kidde watched. Then, becoming impatient with the whole process, he began looking through the remaining folders even more quickly. While doing so, he came across a red-covered folio he recognized as being the most recent Chase & Ward financial statements. He attempted to shove them back into the folder that had contained them but in his haste only managed to drop them on the floor. Kidde, ever the obliging underling, quickly stooped to pick them up. But Frost was not about to let him so much as touch the financials, the most closely guarded secret of the partnership, and lunged to grab them before Kidde could do so. In the process, Frost knocked over Donovan’s water carafe. The top of the carafe fell off, covering the desk blotter, and Frost’s pants, with water.

  Frost cursed as he attempted to rescue both the red folder and his trousers.

  Kidde, having been rebuffed in his attempt to retrieve the fallen document, straightened up and then shouted “Good God! Look at that!”

  Frost also straightened up and looked where Kidde was pointing—at the blotter with the spot of spilled water. The blotter was not simply discolored, but covered with a deep brownish stain. Frost quickly looked at his pants. They too had become discolored in a way that would not have been possible with pure water.

  “What the hell do you suppose was in that water?” Frost asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s very strange,” said Kidde.

  Miss Appleby, who had observed the whole sequence of events, was silent.

  “Do you know anything about this, Miss Appleby?” Frost asked.

  “No, sir. I can’t explain it at all. Do you think … oh, it is too terrible even to think about,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Do you think what, Miss Appleby?” Frost snapped.

  “Nothing, nothing. Except … except … Mr. Donovan drank from that water, or made his iced tea from that water, this morning.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “I saw him.”

  Frost waited no longer. He took out his handkerchief and used it to pick up and replace the cover to the carafe. He then picked up the tray holding the carafe and a used glass, his handkerchief still covering his hand, and dashed for the door, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t either of you say a word about this. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He was so flustered that he forgot the secret financials, which sat in their folder on Donovan’s desk for all the world to see. But the faithful Kidde picked the folder up, replaced it in the drawer, and locked the desk with the key that Frost had forgotten on the desk. Needless to say, he didn’t look inside the folder, pretending that he was not aware of its significance. Besides, whatever Frost might think of the sacrosanct status of the firm’s financial statements, their contents were not exactly a secret to one who had been Chase & Ward’s office manager for more than ten years.

  “Grace, I think you’d better keep this key,” Kidde said to Miss Appleby.

  “If you think so, Wayne,” she replied.

  “And maybe you’d better lock the office too,” Kidde added.

  “That’s a good idea.”

  They went outside and Kidde left. Neither one spoke to the other about the possible meaning of what they had just seen.

  Frost returned to his office, the offending—and very probably poisonous—objects on the tray in his hand. He marched by Miss O’Hara, his secretary, and went directly into his own office and closed the door. He buzzed Miss O’Hara on the intercom and told her that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed.

  He slumped into his desk chair, trying by relaxing to drive out the insistent, nasty forebodings from his head. In one instant the death, already a dramatic one, of Graham Donovan had perhaps become something else.

  Frost fought against the suspicion—suspicion, hell, the conclusion—that Donovan’s death had been murder. Murder by poisoning. Was it really possible that this had occurred in the offices of Chase & Ward? He looked at the carafe and the glass beside it with horror.

  He picked up the telephone and tried to reach Bannard. But he was unreachable, en route to Chicago. He had to discuss his horrid findings with someone. His fellow retired partners? No, he thought impatiently, they would be useless. What about George Bannard’s Executive Committee? Not exactly his favorites, but this was no time to stand on personal feelings. Pressing his intercom once again, he asked Miss O’Hara to ask Keith Merritt, Arthur Tyson and Fred Coxe to come to his office at once.

  Before she had made the calls, he buzzed her again: “On second thought, Miss O’Hara, have them come to Bannard’s office. There isn’t room enough in here.”

  If they were going to discuss murder, they might as well be comfortable.

  EMERGENCY SESSIONS

  7

  Justice Brandeis once observed that in most cases before the Supreme Court the actual decision did not really matter; the important thing was getting the controversy in question settled. The same was true of most problems at Chase & Ward. Someone—the Executive Partner—had to resolve them, but no one really cared very much about the result.

  There were certain matters, however, that the Executive Partner most emphatically could not decide by himself. Most que
stions involving profit distributions, for example. Or the delicate question of who—if anyone—the firm should represent when two clients found themselves in conflict. These had to be decided by informal consensus or, if sufficiently serious, by the firm as a whole. Chase & Ward was after all a democracy, with “one man, one vote” applicable to each of its partners. That is what its partnership agreement, signed by each member of the firm at the time of his admission, said. But there were in fact few decisions that could not be made by George Bannard acting alone or by Bannard and his so-called Executive Committee.

  Following Reuben Frost’s advice, Bannard had set up an informal “Executive Committee” consisting of Fred Coxe, Keith Merritt, Arthur Tyson and Graham Donovan. It was a body with no recognized status at Chase & Ward and was in no sense representative of anything—including the firm’s departments or the age or ethnic characteristics of the partners. (One could not even say that it was Bannard’s cronies. He had once told his wife Eleanor that his “Executive Committee” was of great help to him, but he was just as happy he did not have to see its members other than at the occasional meetings for cocktails at the Hexagon Club.)

  Each of the members contributed something different to Bannard’s governance of the firm. Coxe, as Reuben Frost had rightly noted, was a busybody, a gossip and quite possibly a drunk. But he was able to bring to Bannard’s attention bits of information and rumors that might not ordinarily reach the Executive Partner’s ears.

  Merritt had an odd cast of mind that somehow led him to take a genuine interest in the nuts and bolts of firm administration. The amount of a raise for a particular secretary, the purchase of a new Xerox machine, an analysis of this year’s accounts receivable compared to last year’s, all were matters that interested him. As a result, he knew more about the firm—and about its finances—than anyone else. He was thus indispensable to Bannard, who was perfectly happy to rely on Merritt’s constant probing into the operations of the office.