Death at Charity's Point Page 2

  Florence pointed into the corner behind the toilet. “That looks like a piece of skull. Clean it up, if you please. Really, my dear, you must do better.”

  Florence told me that story herself. The point, she said, was: “You just can’t get good help any more.”

  It wasn’t until several years later that Florence told me why Dud killed himself. “The prostate cancer had spread,” she said. “It was into his bones. The doctor gave him two months to a year. He made it clear that Dud would be luckier if it were on the two months’ side. There would be pain. Lots of pain. So Dud and I talked about it. It was his decision, of course. That’s how we left it. He’d make the decision. And he did.”

  “I don’t understand his note,” I said to Florence. “‘Not because of him.’ What did that mean, anyway?”

  “Why, it was a joke, of course. A joke for all of us to enjoy. That’s all. It wouldn’t have been like Dud to mean anything very significant by a suicide note. He had already said what needed to be said.” Florence paused then, I remember, and smiled wistfully. “Still,” she said, “he really didn’t have to make such a mess.”

  George Gresham remained an enigma to me. On the few occasions that I saw him, he seemed willing to defer to his mother in matters of the family fortune. Like his father, he did so without embarrassment. He made it clear that he simply wasn’t interested in maneuvering large sums of money around. He was a small, balding man, a few years older than me. He taught history at a very swank little private school on the North Shore of Massachusetts, not far from the family estate in Beverly Farms. He drove second-hand cars, lived in faculty housing, and ate in the dining room with the students. He successfully side-stepped matrimony. For George, it always seemed more a matter of disinterest than active resistance to the lures that were trolled in front of the only heir to the vast Gresham fortune.

  George Gresham did exactly what he wanted.

  His mother, to her credit, supported George by accepting the life-style he had carved out for himself, satisfied that he spent his summers with her pecking out lucid articles for scholarly magazines from his study in the Bar Harbor “cottage.” She asked no more of him. I suppose she knew his limits, respected them, and understood that he, in his way, was as tough-minded as she.

  She wintered in Sarasota, continued to summer in Bar Harbor (still using the toilet where Dud squeezed off his last shot), and spent the spring and autumn months at the estate in Beverly Farms. She employed a cook, a maid, a chauffeur, a housekeeper (the same one who cleaned up Dud’s “mess”), and two gardeners. Full time. Year round.

  Florence Gresham is a leathery, shrewd old lady. I’m very fond of her.

  When she called me on that rainy Monday morning last May, her tone was typically businesslike. “George is dead,” she said.

  “Ah, hell, Florence. What happened?”

  “Drowned, apparently. Fell from some rocks by the ocean. They’re investigating. I just wanted you to know. There’ll be details, of course. I’ll be needing you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Anything at all.”

  “They insist on doing an autopsy. Routine, they’re telling me. And they’ve temporarily impounded his things. Damn inconvenient. Anyhow, until they’re done there’s really nothing. In due course, I suppose you and I will have documents to work on.”

  “The estate. Sure. Keep me posted,” I said. “Are there arrangements?”

  “For the funeral, you mean? I wish you wouldn’t circumlocute, Brady. No, no arrangements, as you call them, yet. It’s all up in the air. I’ll let you know.”

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Yes. We all are.”

  Florence’s stoic acceptance of George’s death mirrored her response to Win’s and Dudley’s. It did not surprise me. I could picture her at the other end of the line, her tanned, craggy face grim, her strong mouth set. At seventy-two, she still wielded the Gresham fortune like a scythe.

  The following Friday I found an uncharacteristically subdued Florence Gresham waiting in the anteroom of my office. She rarely visited me there. She summoned me to her if she needed me. We never met without an appointment.

  My secretary, Julie O’Malley, arched her eyebrows at me and twitched her shoulders in a tiny shrug.

  “Florence. Pleasant surprise,” I said.

  She took my hand and pulled me toward her. “I must talk to you,” she said. There was an urgency to her tone that was not typical of Florence Gresham. “I took the chance that you’d have a minute for me. May we go into your office?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll get us some coffee.”

  I have the sort of office that befits an attorney whose practice caters to the very well-to-do. Julie calls my decor “neo-nouveau-riche.” The paneling is solid mahogany, the furniture sleek chrome, glass, teak, and leather, the carpet imported from Afghanistan. I own two Wyeth pencil sketches, which hang unobtrusively over the sofa. My ex-wife Gloria, a professional photographer, contributed a sequence of shots of my two sons, Billy and Joey, one a year of each, up through the time of our divorce. Eleven shots of Billy, nine of Joey. They’re both adolescents now. Their pictures are framed individually and hang in a mass on the wall opposite the Wyeths. I look at them often.

  At one end of my office is my desk, my swivel chair behind it so that I sit with my back to the big window that looks out toward Cambridge. When I confer with adversaries in my office, I put my desk between us, on the theory that such an arrangement puts me in charge. I keep the top of my desk clear of papers. That, too, is a trick for negotiating. It gives the impression that I’m efficient and focused on the issue of the moment.

  Actually, most of my adversaries know and practice the same tricks. We admire each other for being as shrewd as we are. None of us really thinks the tricks mean a damn thing. Failure to employ them, however, would set one at a disadvantage immediately.

  I do leave two mementoes on my desktop. One is a Titleist golf ball under a dome of glass, mounted on a white wooden tee. On the marble base a gold plate bears the inscription, “Stow Acres C. C., June 6, 1965.” It’s the ball I hit into the cup on the fifth hole of the North course from a fluffy lie at the edge of the fairway. A three iron for a double-eagle. Gloria made up the trophy for me. I keep it to remind me of the days when I could reach the par fives with a driver and an iron. It also helps me to remember the days when Gloria and I were too poor to afford membership in a private country club. When we were young, and happy, and in love.

  The other item on my desktop is one of those clear, solid plastic cubes used for paperweights. Imbedded in it is a scarred, red-and-white Dardevle spoon. One prong of the treble hook is bent straight. I don’t need an inscription to remember Manitoba in July of 1971 and the closest I ever came to catching a muskellunge.

  I have a sitting area for my discussions with my clients—fawn leather sofa, glass-topped coffee table, and a couple of comfortable armchairs. That’s where Florence and I sat.

  She perched tensely on the edge of the sofa, her elbows on her knees, leaning forward. I pulled an armchair near her.

  Normally she carried herself as if she were in the saddle—straight, tall, angular. Her face was always well tanned and craggy, her black hair streaked dramatically with white. The horsey-doggy look. A well-preserved woman on the far side of seventy. But now I noticed that her skin seemed blotched and pouchy, her usually sharp blue eyes watery and faded. Suddenly she looked like an old lady to me.

  “Florence, you’re looking well,” I lied.

  “I am like hell, Brady Coyne. I look terrible and I feel terrible and I’ll tell you exactly why. They are now saying that George killed himself, that’s why. Suicide! Can you imagine a less likely candidate for suicide than my George?”

  The idea startled me for a moment. But as I thought about it, I felt that perhaps there were a great many less likely candidates. From what I knew of George Gresham’s life, it allowed for few setbacks. He had, one might say, cushioned himself
against them purposefully by withdrawing into the simplest possible mode of existence. No emotional ties, no financial commitments. A bachelor schoolteacher. Nothing to upset what might have been a delicate equilibrium. He could well have been perched on a knife-blade of sanity. The slightest disturbance could have pushed him off the edge. I did not share this perception with Florence.

  “Who told you this?” I asked.

  “Parker Barrett called me last night. Evidently the authorities—that’s what Barrett called them—issued that verdict after some sort of inquest.”

  “Barrett,” I repeated. “The insurance man?”

  “Yes. He was all full of apologies, as though the damn money meant anything to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Florence sighed. “A little over a year ago I took out a large policy on George. He was badly underinsured. Because he had a small policy with Jefferson Mutual—that’s Barrett’s company—which he had taken out when he was twenty, George could get favorable rates. It was convertible to an annuity at sixty-five. You know how George was about money. I figured he’d accept this sort of thing.”

  “How much?”

  “The policy?” Florence shrugged. “Five hundred thousand.”

  I whistled.

  “A lot of money.” She nodded. “Enough to keep George very comfortable when he quit teaching. Without his feeling that he was living off his mother. And,” she chuckled mirthlessly, “I, of course, was the beneficiary.”

  “And,” I finished, “they won’t pay off because it’s suicide.”

  “Right. Not that it really matters. But, yes, there’s a two-year suicide clause. Not only that, but there’s also a double-indemnity clause for accidental death. You know how that works?”

  “Sure. They pay double the face value of the policy in case of accidental death.” I thought for a moment. “So if George’s death was ruled accidental, Jefferson Mutual would have to pay you one million dollars. But since it’s suicide, they pay nothing. I imagine your friend Parker Barrett was vastly relieved.”

  “Oh, he was as oily as ever.” Florence waved the insurance man away with a flap of her hand. “But that’s not really the point. This is the point: I do not believe that George jumped off any cliff into the ocean with the intent of killing himself. Not George. Dudley, yes. Dudley could kill himself. And did. That, as you know, I could understand. And even agree with. And Win, getting himself killed at war, that I can understand, too. It fits, if you know what I mean. But George? If George did kill himself, if he did jump into the ocean, that would mean that I didn’t know my son, that I never did know him. I would find that hard to live with. His death itself—I accept death. But suicide?” She shook her head back and forth slowly several times.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “I want to appeal. I want you to take this thing to court and prove that George’s death was not suicide.”

  “But, Florence…”

  “Yes, I know. There must be a lot of evidence. But they’ve missed something, I’m sure of it. There has to be another explanation. I want you to find it.”

  “It’s not really my line. Perhaps a private investigator…”

  “No!” she said, with a vigorous shake of her head. “No sleazy private eyes. None of those trench coat-and-cigar types. I want you, Brady Coyne.”

  “Oh, come on, Florence. They’re not all like that.”

  “The Greshams,” she said, “do not hire private investigators. They retain attorneys.” Her eyes narrowed. “Ten percent? Over and above your usual generous fee?”

  “Now, Florence…”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face as if flies were bothering her. “We’re too sophisticated to talk money.” She leaned forward, hands on her thighs, her chin jutting at me. “The hell with that. Let’s talk money. Ten percent of the policy, if we collect it. If you can prove that George’s death was accidental, that’ll be ten percent of five hundred thousand—doubled.”

  “One hundred thousand,” I breathed, in spite of myself.

  She smiled. “Worth a shot?”

  “Well, if you’re dead set against a private investigator…”

  “I am. It’s settled.”

  At that moment Julie knocked quietly, then entered with a tray bearing coffee cups. “Milk and sugar, Mrs. Gresham?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Julie fixed me with her California smile. “Black, Brady?”

  “Thanks.”

  Julie set the tray on the coffee table and stood before us, her hand on her perfect hip. “I was terribly sorry to hear about your son, Mrs. Gresham.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Julie.”

  Julie turned to me. “Anything you’d like?”

  “Please. See if you can get Parker Barrett at Jefferson Mutual for me.”

  Julie touched her forehead with her forefinger. “Aye, aye, sir.” She whirled and whisked out of the office, leaving in her wake the faint scent of mayflowers.

  Julie O’Malley had unerring instincts for the law, charmed all my clients of both genders, and did all of my serious spelling for me. She was engaged to a radiologist at Beth Israel, a pleasant young man named Edward who assured me that he had no intention of interfering in Julie’s career, and that, if I could consider a leave for her for perhaps three months should they eventually become parents, he and Julie did want her to continue her work. He, for one, had no objection to Julie and me continuing together well into the foreseeable future.

  Julie and I established our relationship a few months after I hired her. We were working late, putting together the stuff for a nasty divorce case I had to argue the next day. We had had tuna sandwiches out of waxed paper and Coke out of cans, and Julie was hunched over her typewriter, where she had spent most of the twelve hours of that workday. I stood behind her, waiting for her to finish the page. She paused in her typing to sigh and roll her shoulders to ease their stiffness. Tentatively I reached down and began to knead the muscles at the base of her neck. She leaned back against my hands, letting her arms fall to her sides.

  “Oh, that feels good,” she sighed.

  Impulsively, I bent and touched the skin at the nape of her neck with my lips—not really a kiss, just my warm breath on her young skin. The wispy hairs tickled my nose. She didn’t move, but I could feel the tension where I touched her.

  Without turning, she said in a low, even voice, “I would consider becoming your lover. Or I will continue to be your secretary. I will not be both. Your choice.”

  I stood up and swiveled her chair around so that she faced me. I bent and kissed her forehead. “That’s a difficult choice,” I said. “But I’ll take the secretary.”

  “I hoped you’d say that,” Julie replied with a soft smile. Then she turned back to face her typewriter and resumed her work.

  When I look at Julie, I find it easy to second-guess my choice. But it was the right one.

  Florence and I sipped our coffee and shortly the telephone buzzed.

  “Yes, Julie?”

  “Mr. Barrett. Jefferson Mutual. I told him you were Mrs. Gresham’s attorney. He’s all a-twitter.”

  I chuckled. “Good.” I pressed the button on the phone so that Florence could hear both ends of my conversation with Barrett.

  “Mr. Barrett. How are you today?”

  “I don’t know what this is all about, Mr. Coyne. The clause in Mr. Gresham’s policy is quite clear.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. Two years. How did you determine that his death was a suicide?”

  “Oh, we didn’t decide that. The verdict came from the Medical Examiner’s Office. They are very thorough. There’s no doubt their findings will stand up in court.”

  “No one said anything about court.”

  His sigh hissed over the amplified speaker. Florence smiled at me.

  “Naturally, Jefferson Mutual will stand by its contracts,” Barrett said, his voice assuming a new tone of confidence. “But I don�
��t need to tell you, Mr. Coyne, that a contract is binding on both parties. We will, of course, return to Mrs. Gresham the equity that has been paid on this policy, with interest. Plus, I might add, some nice dividends.”

  “What can you tell me about the verdict?”

  “Open and shut, evidently. Dr. Clapp—he’s the M.E.—issued the verdict yesterday. I have been in contact with his office from the beginning.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “I phoned Mrs. Gresham immediately. Sorry to bear bad news, you know, but that goes with the territory.”

  “A tough piece of work,” I said. “What exactly did the doctor tell you?”

  “Mr. Gresham jumped from a spot called Charity’s Point. Place not far from the school where he taught. It’s a hundred-foot drop into the ocean. He drowned. They found his body the next morning on an adjacent beach. Apparently he was quite battered by the surf and the rocks, but the cause of death was drowning.”

  “How did they determine he jumped? Were there witnesses?”

  Barrett actually laughed. His voice burst harshly over the speaker into my office. “There didn’t need to be witnesses, Mr. Coyne. Mr. Gresham was his own witness.”

  “Don’t be oblique, Barrett. What the hell do you mean?”

  “The note. There was a suicide note, Mr. Coyne. That’s what I meant. Open and shut.”

  I lifted my eyebrows at Florence, who seemed to collapse into herself.

  “I see,” I said. “A note.”

  “Yes,” said Barrett. “That simplifies things.”

  “I suppose it does, insurance-wise,” I said. “Well, I do appreciate your time. Perhaps we’ll be in touch.”

  “I can’t see why. But, of course, if there’s anything I can do…”

  “Thank you, Mr. Barrett.”

  I returned the receiver to its cradle and looked at Florence. The corners of her mouth drooped.

  “He never mentioned any note to me,” she said.

  “Still want to go ahead with it?”

  “You bet I do,” she said, her eyes glittering with new life. “More than ever. If George did jump off some cliff, I’ve got to know why. Can you understand that?”