The Famous Dar Murder Mystery (8 page)

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Authors: Graham Landrum

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Helen Delaporte
While Elizabeth Wheeler was taking care of her sister-in-law in Bluefield and working up the Drover genealogy by means of an interview with Mrs. Fisk and no telling how many hours in the library, life went on for the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, NSDAR; that is to say, we had our regular March meeting.
Elizabeth Wheeler's report on the Adoniram Philipson project was read by Martha Doans as though the entire chapter had not been fully informed on all developments through the
Banner-Democrat,
Station WXZ-TV, and the United Telephone System. But the ladies enjoyed hearing about it all over again, and there was general sensation, which of course was to be expected and which accounted for the large attendance. The daughters agreed that now that the grave had been located and Adoniram had been fully authenticated, and the marker, ordered in February, had arrived, we should proceed as soon as possible in placing it and holding the ceremony. The weather was now promising to be pleasant, and Margaret
Chalmers said that she thought she could get a man to mix the cement into which we have to set the bronze marker. Consequently it was moved, seconded, discussed, and passed that the appropriate ceremony should be held on April 6, just two weeks before our April meeting.
Personally, since I had got the Holy Week services out of the way, the ladies could have scheduled anything on any day in April and it would have been all right with me.
When Elizabeth brought me her beautifully detailed genealogy of the Drover family on the Tuesday after our meeting, I sat down and studied it very carefully. Quite apart from its connection with our mystery, I was fascinated by what it said about human history. The Drovers—that is, the ones that do not come down from Quinby Drover—are widely scattered through the hollows and coves of our mountains. And they are reported not infrequently in our papers for murder, theft, moonshining, and sundry other peccadillos.
Considering that Quin's brood died of suicide, drowning, a car accident, and enemy action, the family of old Quin Drover, like their cousins, experienced more violence than we like to admit is normal for the general run of Americans. Most of them died rather young.
All told, the main difference between the respectable Drovers and the disreputable cousins was money. And I wondered if perhaps money had not kept some of Quin's own clan out of jail.
Interesting as I found the genealogy of the Drover family, it was of value in solving the mystery only because it gave us some names—probably the only names we would have—of people in our area in whom Luis Garcia was likely to have had any interest. And though Garcia might have come to Borderville to see somebody else, it was highly unlikely—in fact unquestionably so. One thing proved this; the fact that neither Allen Comming nor Duncan Yardley nor Anthony Hancock
nor Dorothy Green nor Bettye VanDyne had come forward when the corpse was identified. Thus Elizabeth's chart furnished us with a perfect list of suspects.
On the face of it, I was prepared to see complicity in the whole family. But I realized that only one could have struck the blow that killed.
A cast of characters to be thoroughly investigated! I told myself. And I was going to investigate quite thoroughly.
When Henry came home, I had him sit down immediately and look at Elizabeth's work.
He was impressed and said he would be sure to put Elizabeth on his payroll next time he had an involved estate to settle.
“Now this first Quinby Drover—” Henry observed, “I believe his will was not probated in Virginia.”
Elizabeth had already told me about that. “He was living in Collinwood, New Jersey, when he died,” I said.
“Yes,” Henry replied. “However, the estate is a legal curiosity of interest in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
“How so?”
“I understand that each of the descendants received an undivided interest. That happens sometimes, although in this case the repercussions continued for an unusually long period and generated quite a bit of legal business from time to time. Let's see. Nineteen seventeen to nineteen eighty-nine—that is seventy-two years. The mischievous effects of that will have probably been felt by each of these people Miss Elizabeth has so neatly listed here.”
“But, Henry, how complicated that must be!”
“Well, no, not necessarily. Do you recall a slot in the ten forty form that calls for income from an estate? That slot was made for just such people as the Drovers. For that matter, you and your brother get some money from your mother's estate and there have been no legal problems yet. But if you wanted
to sell your mother's apartment house in Harrisburg and Bert, let's say, didn't want to sell, there could be some real unpleasantness and perhaps a series of lawsuits. Usually joint ownership becomes either burdensome or unprofitable and an agreement is reached so that the property can be managed in an economical manner.”
“How much do you suppose could be involved in this undivided estate?”
“I don't know,” Henry said, “I never heard that Allen Comming did a great deal of business. If there is no more than that transfer business, he would probably have to divide the profit with the living heirs. But of course there is likely to be other capital invested that we don't know about—possibly land or coal leases. But I would think that had been mined out long ago.
“If you want to find out about the Drover wealth, I'd say the best person to ask would be Angus Redloch.”
“Is that old man still alive?” I asked. I remembered that when we first moved to Borderville, Mr. Redloch was generally conceded to be a museum piece—an attorney who had “read law” and practiced in a dingy little office over a store on Crowder Street.
“I think he says he is ninety-nine years old.”
“In a rest home, I suppose.”
“Not at all. He still goes to his office every day. And he handles the business of two or three old ladies. Once in a great while I see him in the courthouse.”
There is something about our mountains that makes people live and live and live—at least some people.
The very next day I made up my mind to see Mr. Redloch. I conceived of him as so fragile that he might die at any minute and take his knowledge with him.
Crowder Street is one of the narrow cross streets down town on the Virginia side. It is lined with old, two-story brick
buildings, many of them with tatty zinc cornices. Officesupply stores, offset printing places, and newsstands tend to occupy the lower floors, while one or two of the buildings are vacant. Between any two shops, expect to find a wooden door repainted so many times that its surface is lumpy with coats of pigment applied as early as the last century.
Mr. Redloch was not listed in the phone book, but I remembered pretty well where his office was and found it easily enough by the gold letters ANGUS REDLOCH, ATTY. AT LAW still gleaming through the grime of an upstairs window.
Inside the street door, a rickety stair led steeply to the upper level. Every step announced my approach with varied creaks and groans. The pine floor was bare. Frosted glass in the door at the end of a narrow hall boasted letters that echoed the proclamation I had seen in the window: ANGUS REDLOCH, ATTY. AT LAW—this time in black.
I knocked, heard a swivel chair give up its burden, and saw through the frosted glass the shadow of Mr. Redloch as he approached. The door opened and there was the man himself.
He is an elf—a very old one—but an elf. Pale gray eyes, pink skin, totally bald, he has just the shred of a white moustache. There was also just a stroke of white stubble on his left cheek that his razor had missed.
The elf bowed in a courtly manner and asked me to come in. He tugged at the client's chair enough to indicate that he was placing it in a convenient position and asked me to be seated.
I would like to call Mr. Redloch spry, but that is hardly correct. He reminded me of a marionette—suspended. It would surprise me if he weighs as much in pounds as his age in years.
Mr. Redloch himself was very neat, though I cannot say the same for his office. There were dusty papers everywhere. Cabinets and shelves were piled high with envelopes. To my
left was an inner door, the upper part consisting of frosted glass. His law library, I thought—and no doubt it was in as great disarray as the room in which we sat.
He was saying something about assisting me.
“I am Helen Delaporte,” I replied, “I am sure you know my husband, Henry.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “We were associated in some legal work back in the early sixties. As I recall, there were three parties in the suit growing out of an accident, and each of the parties chose to employ a different attorney. It could all have been handled much more expeditiously by one lawyer. But, then, people have their whims. Arthur Smith was my client, F. D. Simmons was your husband's client, and Mrs. Sidney Young employed Chuck Benfield. He's dead now.”
“You have a very clear memory,” I observed.
“Well, ma'am,” he said, “the secret of success in the law is details.”
Immediately I knew that I had found someone who knew things and that I had made an acquaintance that I would enjoy. Quickly I explained to him what I wanted to know and why I wanted to know it.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “the DAR murder case. I read of your discovery in the
Banner-Democrat,
and I admire your courage and cleverness in identifying the corpus delicti. I did not, however, know until this very moment that Mr. García was related to the Drover family. Fancy that!”
He hastened to add, “Although I am certainly at your service and happy to supply you with any reminiscences I may be able to recall from what is to me not a very distant past, I must warn you first. If this is murder—and I do not see how it can be anything else—you would do well to let it alone.”
Mr. Redloch gave me a very serious look that would have been perhaps alarming except that I could not get away from my first impression—that I was talking to a wondrously fey
spirit that was somehow not quite real. He gave me a little lecture on the dangers of meddling with criminal matters and continued to look at me ominously; but because I maintained my silence, he soon went on.
“Well, I see that the ladies are the same as they have always been and that you will have your own way. But I beg of you that you be careful and confine such information as you discover to yourselves and to the commonwealth attorney. You must not let it be widely known that you are engaged in any sort of inquiry that might endanger those who perpetrated the murder, or you will in all probability find that they will endanger you.
“Now, as to the Drover estate, I do recall off hand a number of things that may be of interest or even of some profit to you. My late partner, Colonel Harvey Boyd, under whom I read law and with whom I began my practice, handled quite a number of matters for old Quinby Drover himself. This would be back in the nineties—possibly the eighties—long, of course, before my time.
“You see, I came into the office when I was seventeen years old. That was in nineteen ten. I remained in the office reading law until I was old enough to take the bar examination. Then I was admitted to the firm as a junior partner. Then when I was mustered out in nineteen nineteen, Colonel Boyd as a patriotic gesture made me a full partner. (He, of course has served in the war of sixty-one.)
“I first saw Quinby Drover about nineteen eleven or nineteen twelve. He had mined some coal property, for which he had not secured a proper lease. The land, it turned out, was not in fact the property of the individuals with whom he had exercised an agreement; and the actual owners sued him for three-quarters of a million dollars. It was fought up to the supreme court in Richmond, where old Quin lost his case.
“I have heard the rumor that Quin had spent over one
hundred thousand dollars on high-powered lawyers from New York as well as some of Virginia's most brilliant attorneys.
“We were employed in a minor way on the other side. But the thing that is interesting is that when the verdict was handed down, within five minutes' time, Quin discharged the judgment with a check for the full amount drawn on the Morgan Bank in New York City.
“Now, in those days that was something! The fact is that I am still impressed.”
I murmured some encouraging inanity to fill in a pause. Mr. Redloch seemed momentarily to have escaped into the distant scene.
“Well,” he came back briskly to the present, “that will give you some idea of the wealth the Drovers had at one time. But a great deal of it evaporated quite suddenly with the Eighteenth Amendment.
“Oh, yes, Quin's original fortune was made with Dixie Rose Whiskey. It was good stuff too. In making whiskey, the water is as important as the technique, and Quin certainly had both. It would be hard to say whether Quin made more out of his coal or out of his whiskey.
“Be that as may be, the whiskey distillery closed and the business came to an abrupt halt when the Volstead Act was passed. Indeed, indeed!

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