The Famous Dar Murder Mystery (11 page)

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Authors: Graham Landrum

BOOK: The Famous Dar Murder Mystery
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Helen Delaporte
People wonder why I do so many things. The reason is not difficult to find: I always agree to any proposal if the actual thing I am agreeing to do is at least three months in the future. When Catherine Gerard asked me to play the dedicatory recital for the new Schantz organ at Saint Ewald's in Roanoke, I thought I would have plenty of time to prepare and that it would be good for me to work on some concert literature for a change and get out of the parish rut. Besides it would give me something to report in the alumnae news, small as the item would be—just something to let my classmates who write best-sellers know that I am still here.
I was right about its being good for me, but I was not right about having the time to get ready for the recital. I did, however, combine my service playing and concert numbers as far as I dared.
There is a distinction between service playing and concert work, and I maintain it with what I like to think of as
punctilious discrimination. Of course, I know that many organists would think me merely finicky, but it seems to me that if the music in a service takes the congregation's mind away from worship, the service suffers and the music becomes a detriment. So I am very careful what I play as a prelude and try to make it consistent with what the choir sings, with the hymns, and with the character of the Sunday as it is a part of the church year.
But postludes are another matter. Nobody listens to them anyhow. As long as Episcopalians can talk above the sound of the organ, they will not complain. So I worked up a big number each week to use as postlude and to play later for the recital. Nevertheless there are compositions that just can't be used in a church service—the movement with the cuckoo and the nightingale in Handel's
Concerto in F
for example.
And, of course, when I told Catherine I would dedicate her organ, I thought I would just have the Lenten music and the Easter music and that after that I would have two good months in which to get my recital ready. I didn't know then that I would have the Garcia murder on my hands, though why I thought I was obligated to be a detective in that matter I have not been able to decide.
Well, time for the recital came on; and it was just as it was when we used to play hide-and-seek as children—ready or not, there I had to go.
At the last minute I got my concert dress out of the attic and tried it on. When I looked in the mirror, I could not believe what I saw. The dress looked so young, and I—well, frankly I didn't.
That meant that I had to go down to Buttons ‘n' Bows and look for a dress. And when nothing there would do, I went to Cooksport, where there was nothing better. I tried Parsons City and even thought of going to Asheville before I went back to Buttons ‘n' Bows and bought the first dress I had tried
on there. Organists have problems playing in most evening dresses.
Finally on May 8 I loaded my dress, a small suitcase, and myself into the Pontiac and hit I-81 for Roanoke.
Saint Ewald's was a mission church for a long time before a development of rather stylish houses sprang up close to it. Then suddenly the congregation took off, building a new church of modest size but luxurious appointments. It is “Williamsburg” if you will give full credit to the quotation marks, and it is just a little bit overdone.
The organ, however, is a jewel of twelve ranks, which is consistent with the size of the church; and it sounds glorious in its environment.
I stayed, of course, with Catherine, who is a member of the Captain Edward Norwood Chapter, NSDAR, as well as being dean of the AGO/American Guild of Organists. Catherine lives in a beautiful but unpretentious house that has been in her husband's family since 1838. It is called Maplecrest, and Catherine even has a cook who lives on the place. She and her husband and the whole congregation were most cordial. I was a little uneasy about the Duruflé, which really requires a larger instrument, but everything else was lovely.
One of the parishioners owns the
Roanoke Intelligencer
, and the publicity given to the recital was beyond all proportion. Nevertheless it is very flattering when a parish organist is treated like a concert artist.
Well, I played and I got through the concert all right and the reception and party that followed. The Bishop of Southwest Virginia was there and the whole organ guild. The church was packed to such an extent that the organ did not sound quite so grand as it did when the sanctuary was empty. People, after all, absorb a great deal of sound. But I was still pleased with the organ.
When we got back to Maplecrest, Catherine told me that
I had received a telephone call that morning while I was at the church practicing. It was someone who wanted to see me.
She handed me a sheet from her memo pad on which she had written “Dr. Hancock 983-2648.”
I looked at it, wondering who Dr. Hancock could be, and started to talk about something else when suddenly it hit me.
“Anthony Hancock! Is that who it is?”
“You know him?” Catherine said. “He didn't seem to think you did.”
“Actually I don't,” I explained. Then I tried to think back to Elizabeth's chart of the Drovers. If I had only brought it with me! Anthony Hancock was an in-law. “He's related,” I said, “to Luis García—the man, you know, whose body was discovered when our chapter was trying to mark Adoniram Philipson's grave.”
Catherine's eyes got large and her chin dropped. “You don't mean it!”
“I do mean it,” I said. What else can you say to such a question?
“We have known Dr. Hancock for years,” she went on, “not well, of course; but related to Garcia! I certainly did not know that.” Then in a suitably sympathetic tone she added, “You know, Dr. Hancock is confined to a wheelchair.”
I was certainly eager to hear anything related to Anthony Hancock, and Catherine apparently was equally eager to talk. She explained that there had been an automobile accident about twenty years ago and that Dr. Hancock had never walked since. Fortunately he was wealthy enough both from his wife's inheritance and from his practice that he had had no difficulty financially, at least not at first. But latterly, because of inflation and all the other financial woes that have come along, he had made his house over into a rest home—clinic, which he managed, and it seemed to be doing quite well.
Be that as it might, he had asked that I return his call. Since
it was then late, I rang him up after breakfast the next morning.
Hancock had a voice like a Metropolitan baritone and asked me in a most engaging way to drop by to see him before I left town.
My curiosity was so stimulated that I could hardly wait to see him. We made an appointment for ten o'clock.
Catherine told me how to get there and even drew a map. Hancock lived in a section of town that was not new, but it was very decently kept up. The Dutch elm disease had been in the neighborhood, and that was unfortunate for the appearance of some of the yards. And here and there it appeared that older homes, dating from about the turn of the century, had been divided into apartments. But there was still an atmosphere of substance about the area.
Nevertheless, 135 Larch Lane was quite a surprise to me. The house, which was in the style that passed for colonial sixty years ago, sits on a huge, deep lot. It is hedged on each side by clipped hemlocks.
The house is quite large with wings on both sides, apparently added some years ago, but reasonably similar to the central structure. I drew up at the front door and was wondering whether I was parking in the wrong place when the front door, which had beveled leaded glass sidelights, opened and a uniformed nurse came out.
“Are you Mrs. Delaporte?”
Yes I was.
“Dr. Hancock is expecting you. The parking lot is in the rear, and it is easiest to come in through the back door.”
I followed the drive around the house and found a graveled lot large enough to park eight or ten cars. I got out of the Pontiac and walked toward a door which the nurse was just opening for me.
“Dr. Hancock is in his office,” she said, “if you will come this way.”
We were walking through a central hall that was large enough to accommodate comfortably a curving stairway and an elevator, which was obviously an addition.
“Dr. Hancock is here to the right,” the nurse said as she opened a gorgeously paneled door. “This is Mrs. Delaporte,” she announced as she ushered me in.
It was a large white room with a huge window looking out to the rear. There was a fireplace with carved mantel, an oriental rug on the floor, and an oil painting of geese flying across a sunset. There was nothing about the room that would suggest lack of taste, but it was also clear that no expense had been spared.
I saw two wing chairs upholstered in blue leather and a filing cabinet. There was also, along the side facing the fireplace, a sofa upholstered like the chairs. In front of the window stood a large desk of walnut covered with the usual assortment of appointment book, pen tray, desk set, telephone, etc. And behind the desk, in a wheelchair, was Dr. Hancock.
“Mrs. Delaporte,” he said, and again I was impressed with that resonant voice, “excuse me for not rising, but I have not been able to do so for more than twenty years now.”
I said something vaguely sympathetic and explained that Catherine Gerard had told me about his accident.
“Yes,” he said, wheeling himself expertly around the corner of the desk and motioning to one of the wing chairs. “That brief incident on one September afternoon canceled the major part of my practice and entirely changed my life.”
After I was seated, he maneuvered his wheelchair to a conversational distance in a position where the light from the window would fall over his shoulder and consequently into my face.
He was a broad-shouldered man, whose age, which of course I knew from Elizabeth's researches, placed him decidedly past middle life. And yet he seemed, for all his being a semi-invalid, to be in the best of health and much younger than his years. His hair was white, and there was a profusion of it that billowed back from his forehead like that of the male movie stars of my girlhood. His gold-rimmed glasses seemed somewhat unstylish; yet they contributed a patrician appearance to his face. His eyes were blue and quite unusual—persistent is the word that comes to mind. His hands were large and his fingers blunt—not the kind of hand one thinks of for a surgeon, but perhaps he had not been a surgeon. The hands were nevertheless well formed, and he wore a large gold signet.
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he took out a leather cigarette case.
“Will you have one?”
“No,” I said, “I have never smoked; but you go right ahead.”
“You are very wise,” he replied.
While he was lighting the cigarette, I searched for a bit of conversation and mumbled something about the house, which was certainly of a dimension that could not be ignored.
“Yes,” he said as he put away the cigarette case, “this is a ridiculous house. It was built by my late wife's father, who gave it to us when he tired of it. That was in the depths of the depression, and we soon found out why he tired of it. It was too big to sell, and I was just beginning in practice. My income did very little more than pay the taxes in those days. We closed all but the necessary rooms because we could not afford servants and we certainly were not going to give any house parties.
“But the house turned out to be perfect after my accident.” He inhaled, producing an interval during which I must have
looked perplexed, because after he had tapped his ash into an aluminum can that he had rigged to the arm of his chair, he explained.
“As soon as it was determined that I would never walk again, I realized that I could not continue in general practice. It was also clear that I could not manage for myself and live in quite the same way that I had done before my wife's death. And then, as you can imagine, a wheelchair is a bulky thing to wheel around in an ordinary house.
“Well, this is not an ordinary house. My late father-in-law built for ostentation—and that meant big. The doors are wide, the halls are wide, the rooms are monstrous. (God knows they cost enough to heat and to cool.) Except for the steps, this is the ideal house for wheelchair victims.”
Then suddenly wheeling his chair around, he pressed the button on an intercom on his desk.
“Miss Bowen!”
“Yes.”
“Could you bring us two cups of coffee here in the office, please?”
He released the button and moved the chair once again to face me. “It's about poor Lu García,” he said in a hushed tone that suggested that we might be in the presence of the deceased. “You see, my late wife was a connection of poor Lu.” He looked at me quizzically, but I did not move a muscle. Or at least I tried not to.
“My wife,” Dr. Hancock continued, “was a granddaughter of Quinby Drover, Sr. She was a cousin, somewhat removed, of Lu's wife, Evelyn. We visited them several times in California. Wonderful fellow, Lu. And Evelyn was a charming girl. When I read of Lu's murder, I was horrified. I just wanted you to know that I am grateful to you for persisting in identifying the body. I can't imagine how you managed to do it.”

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