Conspiracy of Silence (7 page)

“Meanwhile, someone—maybe that butler of theirs—had called the police, and they showed up eventually. I remember that fat police chief . . . what's his name? . . .”

“Myron Franklin,” I said.

“Yeah, Franklin. . . . Didn't really seem to know what he was doing, or maybe I should say he didn't seem as if he wanted to be there at all. I guess he was scared of the Crawfords, as they were the big fish in his little pond. But Scintilla,
it was only then that James Crawford suddenly announced that he had killed his brother.
”

Bisland stopped, as if he had finished a difficult aria in a grand opera and was expecting the crowd to explode in applause.

“And what do you make of that?” I said.

“Scintilla, you don't understand. It was only then that everyone was really shocked. Both that mother, Helen, and the doctor seemed ready to faint . . . their eyes bugged out as if they'd been electrocuted. I think Florence really did start teetering for a while, and it was lucky that Norma was there to help her. Weren't you, dear?”

“Yes,” she said. I began to wonder if she could ever utter anything else in her husband's presence.

“So then what happened?” I asked.

“Well, there was a bit of turmoil for a while, especially since James stuck out his hands as if daring the police chief to handcuff him. They didn't dare do that, of course, but they did cart him off to the station. Meanwhile, the rest of us were just standing there dumbstruck. I think we eventually filed back into the parlor, just to get away from the . . . the scene.”

“But there's something very odd here, Mr. Bisland. Why didn't the police take the body away to the morgue?”

His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, why didn't they?” He leaned back a bit and said out of the side of his mouth: “I'll tell you why. Both Helen and that doctor bearded that cowering police chief and told him they'd handle it—said they'd take the body right over to their undertaker the next morning.
Then they just closed the library door and locked it, and that was the last we saw of Frank.
”

“You mean they left the body in the room all night?”

“So it would seem.”

We both paused in a stunned silence. I'd never heard anything like this before.

“May I ask you something, Mr. Bisland? Do you think that doctor poisoned Frank Crawford?”

Bisland looked at me a bit warily before replying. “I don't know, Scintilla. I just don't know. Maybe he was telling the truth . . . had some kind of drug that could induce the heart to start up again. He did say that Frank had died of heart failure...although”—he smirked cynically—“I guess everyone dies of heart failure, right? I'm no medic, I know nothing about these things . . . and I'm not going to accuse anyone.”

“But it smells bad to you?”

“Sure it smells bad.”

“Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that the doctor did somehow knock off Frank. Why would he have done that? And why would James have taken the blame for it?”

Bisland shook his head in bafflement. “You got me, shamus. That's the biggest mystery of all, isn't it?”

I shifted gears a bit. “Is there any chance that anyone else could have poisoned Frank . . . earlier, maybe, during dinner? Slipped something in his food?”

Bisland's face screwed up with thought. “I don't think so. In fact, I could say with near certainty that nothing like that was possible. No one got up during dinner, and we were all served by various serving-maids. I don't see how it could have been done.”

“But wait a minute,” I said. “Frank was present at least for a while in the parlor after dinner, wasn't he? Did he have a drink then? Coffee, anything?”

Again Bisland's face frowned with the effort of recollection. “Maybe . . .” He looked over at his wife. “Do you remember anything, Norma?”

She quickly shook her head—although I didn't know if that meant she couldn't remember or that she was denying Frank had taken a drink in the parlor.

“I'll be honest with you, Scintilla,” Bisland went on. “I don't recall, and I guess it's possible he had had a drink. Whether someone could have slipped something in that drink . . . I just don't know.”

I looked over at both of them. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Bisland, you've been very helpful. This clears up a lot.” I paused. “But there is one thing I'm obliged to ask. . . . Is it not the case that you'd declared bankruptcy some months before your visit to Thornleigh?”

Bisland's eyes narrowed. “I figured you'd bring that up, Scintilla. Yes, we were struggling, as I said. We'd had several years of bad weather up here . . . no rain, almost drought conditions. Sure, nothing like the dust bowl that those poor Okies are going through, but it was pretty bad up here. Year after year our grape crops suffered. We're not made of money, Scintilla. There wasn't much we could do.”

“But you managed to recover pretty quickly,” I said quietly.

“Look,” Bisland said bluntly, “I know what you're fishing for. And it's true: We got a big . . . loan from Florence some months later. Why not? That's what families are for. You gotta help each other. We're doing OK now, but we're still not exactly in the Crawford league—never will be. So, yes, we got a big handout. So what? Surely you don't think . . .?”

“I don't think anything, Mr. Bisland. I just wanted to know.”

“Well, now you know.”

And that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

* * * * * * *

It is not my policy to keep important information from my clients—they are, after all, the ones paying me—but I was in serious doubt as to what, and how much, I should tell Lizbeth about what I had found so far. When we met at a coffee shop in Pompton Lakes after my long drive back to New Jersey, I think she could tell that I wasn't being entirely up-front with her. She was, to begin with, startled that I'd gone ahead and seen her father without letting her know about it, but I managed to convince her that her presence might have worked against his opening up to me. As for Granger's actions during the fateful night of Frank's death, I kept mum on that also, just saying that he needed to be grilled some more about possible misstatements he had made to me—and to the police.

When she heard that, her eyes widened in alarm. “You don't think he . . .?”

“I don't think anything yet,” I replied quickly and a little sharply. “And I won't until I have some evidence.”

My tone made her look down at her hands in her lap.

“Lizbeth,” I said, a little more gently, “I wish you'd tell me what you really know about this whole business.” I smiled wryly to myself at my veiled accusation that
she
wasn't being forthcoming to
me.
“Do you have any hard evidence of your father's innocence?—something beyond your gut feeling?”

That made her look up at me. Her eyes were shining, and she reached over and took my hand.

“Joe,” she said—and something about her use of my given name jolted me—“I wish I could put it into words . . . but there's nothing I can point to. I've lived with this horror and tragedy for twelve years—my whole life, Joe!—without being able to say why I feel the way I do. Something's being kept from me...I feel that everyone's lying to me—my father, my mother, my grandmother . . . and now, it seems, even Doctor Granger.

“What could they be hiding, Joe?” she said, gripping my hand more tightly.

“I don't know, Lizbeth,” I said grimly, almost reluctant to look her in the face, “but I'm gonna find out.”

One avenue of investigation had become plain.

It was just possible that the hypodermic injection Dr. Granger had given to Frank Crawford was what he said it was—an attempt to bring him out of cardiac arrest. Then again, if Daniel Bisland was right—and I could see no reason for him to lie—that Granger's act had been covert, something much more sinister might be involved. I was still beset with the difficulty of
motive:
what possible purpose would be served by Granger's killing of Crawford? Was it some kind of unfathomable pact that he and James Allen Crawford had made to get the brother out of the way for some reason? Why would James condemn himself to decades in prison to take responsibility for someone else's crime? I had to admit that this new revelation only darkened the mystery, but at least it gave me something to go on.

That was why I was planning to dig up Frank Crawford's grave.

I am not accustomed to breaking the law. Usually it's very bad for business, even worse than getting emotionally involved with a client—which, I was beginning to realize with a sinking feeling, was also happening. But it was plain to me that Granger had been the chief culprit in the highly irregular and possibly illegal failure to conduct an autopsy on the body of Frank Crawford. Somebody had something to hide, and Granger was the most obvious suspect. I had little doubt that James Allen Crawford was neck-deep in this aspect of the matter also, for clearly it was his money that greased the wheels somewhere along the way. I couldn't help but think of ex-police chief Myron Franklin's once-shiny and expensive Packard—a vehicle he had probably used well in the past decade or more.

The process of exhuming a body is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Even if it can be done secretly, it requires an immense amount of sheer labor . . . and in mid-November, digging up a twelve-year-old grave would be beyond the abilities of a solitary individual. I needed help. There was no way I could ask Lizbeth to join me—there was no way I could even tell her what I was going to do—and Marge was similarly out of the question. So it was her luckless colleague Gene Merriwether or no one.

I'd gotten to know Gene on a former case, and as Marge's fellow-worker at the
Herald Tribune
he was part of our social circle. I'll be honest with you: a man of muscles he was not. I wouldn't call him a 98-pound weakling, but he'd have a long way to go to challenge Houdini or Sandow in the brawn department.

And for some strange reason he too had a certain disinclination to break the law and dig up bodies.

I remember the bug-eyed expression he gave me when I revealed my little plan. I believe he actually started to blubber. But Marge, loyal to the core, worked her magic on him, and eventually he caved. Ever the one for some novel horseplay, Marge herself wanted to tag along, but I put my foot down at that. Old-fashioned I may not be, but this was no work for a woman.

The fact that Frank was buried in a private cemetery was immensely in our favor. What was against us was the weather, and the relative proximity of Thornleigh to the gravesite. I'd say the distance was no more than a thousand yards, and that was just a bit too close for comfort. But I didn't see that I had much of a choice.

I'd scouted out the terrain ahead of time and knew that we'd have to approach the grave from the opposite direction from where the house was situated. This meant bypassing the private road that led to the house's main entrance and traversing the thick forest that extended a considerable distance to the west of the estate. I wasn't even certain we'd be able to find our way to the cemetery, as it was in a quite small clearing in the midst of that copse of maples, oaks, and elms.

It was well past two
a.m.
when we left my car on a little-traveled side road and plunged into the depths of the forest, Gene carrying a kerosene lantern that offered a smoky and flickering illumination as we trudged through the pathless grove in what I hoped was the right direction. It had been a particularly raw and cold day, and the descent of night had rendered this tenantless region so pitch-dark that we could scarcely see our hands in front of our faces. The lantern, carried in Gene's not entirely stable hand, cast odd shadows as we walked, making us repeatedly flinch at the prospect of animal predators lurking in the distance.

At one point, when the trees thinned slightly, I caught a quick glimpse of the monumental pile of Thornleigh, squatting darkly like a tiger in the dark waiting to pounce on its hapless prey. The sight helped to orient me, as I realized we had gone a little too far to the south; indeed, we had almost emerged out of the copse. That was not good; for no matter how unnerving it was to be plunged in the thick of these looming trees, it would be much worse to risk detection and capture by coming out into the open.

I urged Gene toward a roughly northeastward direction, furiously attempting to recall the exact location of that gravesite. In my one glimpse of it I had of course come to it from the opposite direction, and in the daylight—even if it was the brooding daylight of a dour November afternoon—and my bearings were not entirely sound. The trees at this juncture were in particularly close juxtaposition, and progress through their low-lying branches and dead vegetation underfoot was neither swift nor easy.

I was already beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of the entire enterprise. Whatever solution Dr. Granger had injected into the arm of Frank Crawford, I had to believe that some traces would remain even at this late date; but of course that would mean that we would not only have to dig up the corpse, but take it away with us. How exactly that was to be done through this nearly impenetrable forest was something I had not sufficiently thought through. But I could see no other option: I was being stonewalled on all sides by a conspiracy of silence and deceit, and my only way to break through was to come up with hard evidence that things were not as they seemed.

Almost without warning we came to the clearing where the cemetery lay. At this point Gene wanted to extinguish the lantern, but I felt that the surrounding trees provided enough cover so that we could keep it lit at least for a time. We certainly needed the illumination to find the right headstone, and we had to hope that the coffin was in fact directly beneath it—not always a sound assumption, if past experience was any guide.

But we had no choice. So we started digging.

The chill of that mid-November night had already penetrated to our bones, and we quickly realized that it had penetrated the earth as well, for our initial attempts at excavation were about as successful as the attempt to chip off flecks of marble with a kitchen knife. I was not prepared for the frozen solidity of that earth, and the almost despairing look—tinged with fear and a certain shame—that Gene gave me very nearly led me to give up the whole misguided undertaking. But with a renewed burst of energy I began making some headway, and Gene, taking heart at my progress, followed suit.

Six feet of earth is more square footage than most people can comprehend. We had already erected an impressive mound of dirt when an anomalous interruption burst in on our labors.

A shotgun blast sent a bullet yards above my head, to lodge firmly in a tree behind me.

Gene almost screamed with terror and dropped his shovel, almost plunging into the newly dug hole in a crazy attempt to hide before disgust and apprehension caused him to jerk to a halt. I was a little calmer, but only a little. I heard, then saw a large figure running in our direction from the house, and I could see a shotgun in his hand. My quick inventory of the occupants of Thornleigh led me to suspect that this defender of the family plot was Joseph the butler.

I thought fast. Urging Gene to stay put in spite of his protests, I plunged over the low stone wall that surrounded the gravesite.

In less time than I could have imagined, Joseph stalked up to Gene and shouted:

“What are you doing there? What's your business here?”

I had to give credit to Joseph for his bravery: he couldn't possibly have had any idea of how many graverobbers he would have to confront, and he could easily have been outnumbered. Perhaps the stereotype of the loyal servant wasn't so far off the mark.

All Gene could say was: “Don't shoot! I'm not armed!” In good cops-and-robbers fashion, he had raised his hands high over his head.

Peering cautiously over the wall, I could tell that Joseph had quickly taken an inventory of the scene; I don't doubt that he saw
two
shovels on the scene, and perhaps assumed that the other culprit had run off. Taking up the lantern in one hand and holding the shotgun rather loosely with the other, he barked at Gene:

“You're coming with me. We'll see what the police have to say about this.”

It was when the two of them began marching back in the direction of the house that I made my move. Leaping nimbly over the wall and striving as best I could to avoid the crunch of the dead leaves scattered all around, I approached Joseph from behind.

In a few seconds he felt an automatic at his back.

“I'm sorry, Joseph,” I said, “but we're not going anywhere.”

He knew instantly who I was; he probably suspected I was behind this caper. Almost collapsing in defeat, he dropped his shotgun and stood still.

Picking up his weapon, I motioned them to return to the grave. We had to finish our work.

I felt a trifle guilty ordering Joseph to take my place with the shovel, but he had left me no alternative. He gave me a look of mingled resentment, outrage, and self-pity that came close to wrenching my heart. But I said nothing, and with a gesture suggested that it would be in his best interest to do his work quickly and quietly.

The coffin was finally reached, but additional work was required to clear the dirt around it so that it could be lifted out of its cavity. Once again Joseph looked up at me, this time saying plangently:

“Mr. Scintilla, please . . . this is a desecration. You mustn't . . .”

“Joseph,” I said, “you know this is something I have to do.”

Dropping his head, he resumed his toil. He and Gene managed to position themselves on opposite sides of the coffin, lengthwise; clutching the handles affixed there, they gave a mighty tug.

At this point I had to help them, but suspected that Joseph no longer had any inclination to be rebellious. Placing both his shotgun and my own automatic at some distance from the site, I gave them a hand. In due course we had the coffin on the level ground next to the grave, where it landed heavily with crunch over the underlying leaves and twigs.

For a time we all stood there looking at the thing. There is something about the tokens of death that evokes a kind of primal fear in all human beings. Countless millennia of horror and loathing have warned us to give the widest possible berth to death and its appurtenances, and just as many millennia of myth and superstition have instilled in even the hardest of heads the faint hints of a suspicion that maybe the dead do not always stay dead, and that it's best not to approach too closely in a foolhardly attempt to find out.

But I was not to be deterred. Taking my shovel, I sought to pry the lid off.

Once again Joseph tried to intervene.

“Sir, you mustn't!” he cried out in the darkness. “This is evil! You're endangering your immortal soul!”

“That's a risk I'll have to take, Joseph,” I said, continuing my work.

And yet, I was vaguely prepared for what I saw—or, rather, didn't see. The coffin was empty.

The three of us stood there like idiots, jaws open in wonderment. It could have been minutes before any of us moved or spoke. That coffin, lined with white linen so bright that it almost shone in the pitch-darkness of this bleak night, was so pristine that it could have been pressed into service on the morrow. We had no suspicions that body-snatchers had somehow preceded us in our grim task: this coffin had never been used for the purpose for which it had been designed.

I turned silently to Joseph, as if he could provide some clue to the mystery.

But that elderly manservant, quaking in his boots, jaw working spasmodically, was manifestly as stunned as any of us. All he did was peer back at me with incomprehension and not a little terror, as if some violation of natural law had taken place.

We were all so preoccupied with the bizarrerie of that empty coffin that we didn't hear the quick patter of footsteps behind us until their owner was almost directly upon us.

Then, quickly turning around, I saw Lizbeth clutching a nightgown draped hastily over her lithe figure.

She took in the scene quickly and efficiently. Open-mouthed, she glanced from the empty coffin to our dirty shovels to the three of us standing there in frozen wonderment. None of us spoke or moved until I made a tentative effort to keep her away from the scene.

“Lizbeth, you'd better . . . ,” I started.

But she cut me off.

“I knew it!” she cried in ecstatic triumph. “My father's innocent! He didn't kill Uncle Frank! What do you think of that, Mr. Detective?”

For once, I had no answer.