31

“I  T H I N K   Y O U R nephew, Tom, is in serious trouble,” Fletch said. They had ordered vodka gimlets on the rocks. “I saw him last Sunday.”

Over the candle, he checked Francine’s facial expression and saw that it conveyed the proper concern. More than proper—genuine. Francine Bradley did not strike Fletch as simply the distant maiden aunt going through kind, formal motions toward her late brother’s family. Still, he realized, there had to be limits to her knowledge and her involvement with the family.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her tone near fear. “I understand Tom is in pre-med and doing very well.”

“Not quite. He’s using whatever education he has in chemistry to swallow oblivion.”

“Drugs? Tom’s on drugs?”

Fletch said, “Seems a mess. Hasn’t attended classes since last fall. His roommate has him ensconced in a cushioned bathtub where he dreams away his days and nights. Doesn’t know what else to do with him.”

“Oh, no! Not Tom.”

“I promised I would try to do what I could for him—which is another reason I’m seeing you. Of course, he makes no sense at all about his father’s death.”

“What does he say about Tom’s death?”

“He sort of says your brother killed himself. He sort of blames your brother for dying. Sort of common, I believe, for a young person to be angry at a parent for dying, for leaving him. Sometimes young people blame themselves for a parent’s death.”

“You’re playing psychiatrist again, Mister Fletcher.”

“I’m called Fletch,” Fletch said. “And I’m not playing psychiatrist. I’m in a crazy situation—and so are you—and I’m trying to understand it.”

“I’m not in any situation at all.”

“You are, too,” Fletch said. “The preponderance of funds you’re investing through your little company in the Bennet Bank Building came from your brother.” Instantly, her eyes narrowed. “I’m checking to find out what probate action has been taken on your brother’s estate—I suspect, none has. There’s a pretty good suspicion that you and Enid are simply avoiding taxes. It’s been stated to me by none other than Enid Bradley that you intend to go to California and take over the running of Wagnall-Phipps yourself. Anyone who didn’t guess you’ve been forging your brother’s initials to those accounting memos the last year would have to be myopic.”

The waiter laid their gimlets before them. As in most dimly lit restaurants Fletch had experienced, the waiter’s hands were dirty.

“You seem to be upset, Fletch.” Francine sipped her drink. “Will you call me Francine?”

“With pleasure.”

“Per usual with you,” Francine said, “I don’t really know what to say. You come in from California with all this information, all these questions … I am most upset by what you just said about Tom.”

“He needs help. Heavy help. Quicker than soonest.”

“I just had no idea …”

“Apparently he can fool his mother. He gets cleaned up, goes home, says he’s doing well in school, gets money, then settles back in his bathtub with a six pack of downers.”

In the candlelight, tears glistened in Francine’s eyes. “I assure you,” she said, “something will be done about it—immediately. Quicker than soonest. I appreciate your telling me.”

“In a way,” Fletch said, “Ta-ta, your niece, worries me just as much. Tom’s roommate refers to her as a wind-up toy. She seems to be straight-arming existence, protecting herself in a girls’ school, protecting Tom. I know their father died—a year ago—but they both seem inordinately troubled.”

“When I get out there …” Francine said. “There’s only so much Enid can handle.”

“When are you going?”

“I’m afraid it will be another few months. I still have things to wind up here.”

“You are going to run Wagnall-Phipps?”

“Tom wanted me to. Enid wants me to. I sold my business—a small business—a few years ago.”

Fletch considered his gimlet, sipped it, looked across the flame at her. “Do you have any answers to the questions I just asked?”

“You mean, are Enid and I perpetrating a tax fraud?”

“Yeah, for starters.”

“Not as far as I know. Of course, it’s entirely possible Enid hasn’t done things exactly right. In fact I’d say it’s highly likely. She’s not a Charles Blaine. She hasn’t any training, any experience, except for having lived with Tom. I would expect she’s screwed up mightily, but I’m sure with no intention to defraud.”

“Have you been forging those memos?” Fletch asked easily.

“I’ve been consulting with my sister-in-law by telephone. Almost daily. Seeing you’re so good at doing your homework—knowing about my office in the Bennet Bank Building and what I do there—you might check our telephone bills. Enid’s and mine. They’re monumental.”

“Then we’re still without explanations.”

“Why don’t we fortify ourselves with another drink, a good dinner, then go back to my apartment? We can talk more there. I suppose no one’s ever told you that you’re attractive?”

“Only a United States Customs Officer.”

She put her hand on his. “Don’t worry. I’m not one of these middle-aged women eager to get into the trousers of young men. Your orange juice-and-cereal innocence will remain intact with me.” She took her hand away and picked up the menu. “They serve a very good orange duck here.”

“Let’s go over this one more time,” Fletch said.

It was eleven fifteen when they entered Francine’s apartment. They had had three cocktails, four courses, shared two bottles of wine and finished up with brandy for him, creme de menthe for her. During most of the entree Francine had told a long, wandering story which had ended with a punchline more barnyard than funny.

At the apartment, Fletch dropped his coat on the divan and then himself. He loosened his shirt collar, and, slumped, put his head on the back rest.

Quietly, she said, “Anything you say.”

The lights were subdued. Francine Bradley was moving noiselessly around the room. The sounds of violins began coming from the walls.

“I’ll just put on the coffee.”

He concentrated on the violins. Their breathing was reminiscent of a full-bosomed girl whose passion had been awaken. He heard the rustle of Francine’s dress as she entered the room.

Softly, her voice asked, “Now what are your questions?” She was sitting, relaxed, in the flowered chair.

“Who told you your brother was dead?”

“Enid. She called me at the office. She was terribly upset. Crying. Incoherent. I called her back an hour later. In fact, we talked most of the night.”

“And you both decided not to go to Switzerland immediately?”

“Actually, we decided that the next morning. When the news first came, we weren’t of any mind to decide anything. By the next morning, when we had both had some rest, Tom had already been dead two days. It would take us another two days to get to Switzerland, what with Enid being in California, and I being in New York, and each of us working. Instead, Enid cabled permission for the cremation.”

“Okay. And then business went on as usual, you counseling Enid daily by phone.”

“Yes.”

“Then, in November, you both went to Switzerland?”

“Yes.”

“Together?”

“Yes. Enid stopped over here, a night and a day. We flew over together.”

“What did you do when you got there?”

“Rented a car. Checked into a hotel. Rested. Next day, Enid collected the ashes from the mortuary. It took time for us to arrange a little prayer service, in a chapel. We knew no one. In fact, we did not apply to the Embassy for help—we didn’t think of it. We did have a service, late in the afternoon, Tuesday, I think, in a little chapel not far from the clinic. Just Enid, myself, and the minister. He spoke English. Enid brought the ashes to the service, and the minister had them on a little table, on an altar, throughout.”

“Then you and Enid returned together to New York with the ashes.”

The water pot in the kitchen was whistling.

“Yes,” Francine said. “Enid flew on to California.”

“How come the kids didn’t go to Switzerland with you?”

“Tom and Ta-ta?”

“Yes.”

“At that point, Enid thought they were just beginning to get over the death. She didn’t want to stir up their grief all over again. Remember, this was six months later.” Francine stood up. “Let me get the coffee.”

When she returned to the livingroom, Fletch was sitting up, his elbows on his knees. In her absence he had paced up and down the livingroom. On the low table near the window the mosaic was more nearly finished than he remembered. He looked out the window at the roofs and lights of other buildings before returning to the divan. She placed a cup of coffee in front of him and took her own cup to her chair.

“Francine,” Fletch said, stirring his coffee. “I think your sister-in-law murdered your brother.”

Her cup jumped in her saucer. “God!” she said. “Now what are you saying?”

“I think your dear, incompetent sister-in-law cleverly has walked you through a complete illusion—which you have believed.”

Francine’s breathing was suddenly shallow, her jaw muscles tight. She swallowed twice, rapidly. “Really, Fletch! You are putting me through an awful lot!”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some evidence.”

“Of murder?” Her voice was almost a shriek.

“Of murder,” he said softly. “I haven’t been confronting you with this evidence until I knew you, a little bit, and, well, until I was sure …”

“Sure of the evidence, or sure I can take it?”

“Oh, I’m sure of the evidence.”

“All right, Fletcher.” Francine Bradley was sitting straight and stiff in her chair, staring white-faced through the dim light at Fletch. “What’s your evidence?”

“Ashes, represented to be your brother’s, are not.”

“Ashes …” She seemed to be trying to repeat what he had just said. “Not my brother’s ashes?”

“No. They are not your brother’s ashes.”

“How can anyone tell a thing like that?”

“Last Saturday night—early Sunday morning—I went to Enid’s house in Southworth and took a small sample of the ashes from the urn. The previous afternoon, Enid had showed them to me and said they were your brother’s ashes.”

“You broke into my brother’s house?”

“The door was unlocked. I had the ashes analysed.”

“You stole my brother’s ashes?” Her throat muscles were so constricted her voice was barely audible.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Fletch asked. “They weren’t your brother’s ashes. They weren’t anybody’s ashes. They were just ashes.”

“What? How can anybody tell the difference between one person’s ashes and another person’s ashes? You just tell me that! So a mortuary mixed up ashes. Do you have to tell us that?”

“These aren’t human ashes at all, Francine. It isn’t a case of a mortuary mixing up ashes. It’s a case of your sister-in-law saying, These are human ashes, these are Tom’s ashes—when they aren’t.”

“Then what are they the ashes of?”

“Carpet,” said Fletch. “A tightly-woven carpet. Some pine wood. Some sand. A petroleum product, probably kerosene.”

Francine put her coffee cup and saucer on the coffee table so forcefully the saucer shattered and the cup fell over.

“I can’t stand any more of this.”

“Francine, you just told me that when you and Enid arrived in Switzerland last November, Enid collected the ashes from the mortuary. You did not go with her. She arrived back at your hotel carrying ashes she said were Tom’s.”

“Did I say that?”

“Is it the truth?”

“You have me so confused.”

“Enid brought the ashes of her Persian carpet to Switzerland with her.”

In the dim light of the livingroom, Francine’s eye sockets seemed hollow. The violin music from the wall-speakers was grating on Fletch’s ears.

“Listen, Francine.” Fletch sat forward and spoke reasonably, quietly into Francine’s white, slack face. “Enid told you your brother was dead. Her saying so is the only evidence you have that he’s dead. At her suggestion that news of Tom’s death would make the running of Wagnall-Phipps impossible for her, you did not rush off to Switzerland. You waited six months. You did not see your brother’s body. From what you just said about your trip to Switzerland with Enid, you did not talk with Tom’s doctors, or with the undertaker. The United States Embassy in Switzerland says that no American citizen named Thomas Bradley has died in Switzerland in recent years. The ashes on the mantelpiece in your brother’s home in Southworth are not your brother’s ashes.”

Fletch waited a long moment. Francine’s chin looked pinched. Then he took her hand.

“Listen, Francine. It wasn’t a happy marriage. I spoke with a neighbor of theirs, in Southworth. He didn’t seem your typical neighborhood gossip. But he said he and his wife used to hear Enid screaming all night, doors slamming, things breaking. Not just once in a while, but all the time. While this would be going on, the kids used to roar off in their cars in the middle of the night.”

“This is impossible.”

“I don’t know whether your brother was genuinely sick. Maybe you do?”

“He was.”

“Enid might consider herself well off without Tom, especially if she can get you to come run the business.”

“You think Enid killed Tom.” Francine’s statement landed between them like a thrown rock. She withdrew her hand.

Fletch said, “Tell me what else to think.”

“I think all this is unnecessary.” Francine got up from her chair and strode firmly across the room. She opened the door of a wall cabinet and threw a switch and the music went off. Then she turned a three-way lamp to its brightest. “I think you’ve assaulted me enough, Irwin Fletcher.”

“Assaulted?”

Across the room, standing next to the bright lamp, her dinner dress wrinkled, her hair needing a combing, for the first time in Fletch’s eyes, Francine Bradley looked small, vulnerable.

“You’ve assaulted me and Enid. Over nothing at all.”

“I wouldn’t call the evidence I’ve presented ‘nothing at all’. I’d call it pretty indicative.”

“There’s no evidence at all, Fletcher. You’re trying to save your job. That’s it—pure and simple. I really don’t know whether you’ve made all this up, but you certainly have a motivation to see facts as they aren’t. If you don’t know it by now, you will by the time you’re my age: if you look at any event closely enough, you’ll find supposed facts which conflict, contradict what you know to be the truth—memos that are unfiled, or mistakenly initialed, records lost in a bureaucracy—”

“Carpet ashes in a funeral urn?”

“God! It was six months later when we went to Switzerland! How do we know what some obscure Swiss undertaker did? He’d never expect the ashes he gave Enid to be analysed.”

“I suspect he could have supplied human ashes—if a Swiss undertaker was the source of the ashes, that is. We all have our pride.”

She turned her side to him. “Fletcher, I just can’t stand any more of this. Not tonight. I understand that something happened in my brother’s company which caused you to lose your job, and that that Charles Blaine has filled you up with all sorts of nonsense. I’ve tried to be nice, and open with you, and answer your questions.” Even with her back to the light. Fletch could see Francine was crying. “And I do appreciate your concern for young Tom, and Ta-ta, and telling me about them. I believe that part. But when you say Enid murdered Tom! I’ve never heard anything so insane in my life! It’s just too much, too … too insane!”

He stood up and put on his jacket. “Will you at least think about it?”

She looked at him through wet, blinking eyes. “Do you think I’ll be able to think about anything else?”

“I’m just asking you to think about it. You’ve underestimated another woman, Francine. You’re being had.”

She opened the apartment door. “Good night, Fletch.” Her red-rimmed eyes pleaded with him. “Would asking you to go away and leave us alone do any good?”

Fletch kissed Francine Bradley on the cheek. “Good night, Francine. Thanks for dinner.”