Paul Robertson: The Heir

I’d done so much waiting the last week. It was good practice for prison, or being dead.

The sun descended. When would he get home? Would he eat out? I still didn’t even know for sure that he was coming home at all. He might have just left for a month-long conference in Bombay.

A car pulled into the driveway and around to the back of the house. It wasn’t him; it was a woman in a gray uniform. She let herself in the back door. I waited two minutes and silently opened the door myself and followed her in.

I didn’t know if she was the maid or the cook or what. The kitchen was the first room on the left of the passageway, but it was empty. I needed a place to hide. I opened a closet. It held brooms and mops. I closed the door and kept looking.

In the hall I stood still, listening, and I heard her upstairs. I hurried through the dining room and front hall to Nathan’s study.

There was a door on the far side. I opened it. It was a conservatory, with glass windows and plants in pots on the floor and hanging. I had no idea Nathan would have had such a place. It wasn’t visible from the front street. I closed the door behind me and wedged myself behind a chair. Most of the pain was from my bruised, pounded muscles, and it was starting to fade. Just my jaw was getting worse.

I waited.

I couldn’t hear anything from here, or see her leave. It was about four o’clock when she’d come. I kept waiting.

At six thirty I unrolled myself and let what blood I had left back into my knotted limbs. Nathan might be home already. The maid might still be cleaning or cooking. I opened the door.

The study was dark and empty. I crept through the house. There were lights on in the front hall but no cars in the driveway or garage.

I went upstairs and found a bathroom. What a luxury it was, after the past days. I cleaned myself as well as I could. I’d take a shower soon, after he got back.

The kitchen was lit, and a casserole dish was warming in the oven. The timer showed forty minutes to go. The smell of it cooking was overpowering, and there were cabinets of food, but I left them. I went back to the study.

I didn’t know how to meet him. He’d be startled. I practiced:

“Nathan! It’s Jason. I’m here!”

The voice sounded strange to me. Had it changed, too, like everything else? I wasn’t used to it.

“Nathan. I’m Jason.”

It was hard to speak anyway. I sat in the armchair. He would arrive anytime in the next hour.

The room was so organized. The amount of paper he went through must be immense. Just the notes from his years of conferences took shelves.

I opened one binder. The pages were filled with his neat, straight writing. The meeting had been a decade before, but at the bottom of the page a line had been drawn and another paragraph added, dated years later. These were the records of his life, these notes about poverty and crime and hunger. What if this was the answer, Nathan’s purpose in life-to do good? That was why Melvin had hired him, to do the good that a rich man didn’t have time or interest for.

I heard the garage door opening, a muffled groan like thunder in the distance.

I practiced again. “Nathan. I need help.” Would he recognize me? “Nathan. I’m Jason.”

The roar of a car engine echoed in the garage and then died. Where should I wait for him? He might not come to the study. If he didn’t, I’d go to him in the kitchen.

The garage door closed with the same growl. A door opened, back by the kitchen. Would he have anyone with him? He was in the kitchen now. I’d hear him talking if he wasn’t alone, but it was silent. Faintly, I heard the oven door open and close.

Even Nathan Kern would wonder what was for supper.

There were footsteps in the hall. I put the binder back on the shelf.

“Mrs. Hammond?” He was at the foot of the stairs. Somehow he knew someone was in the house. “Are you there? Hello?”

I was standing in the center of the room and he was in the doorway, his eyes wide, his hands half raised.

His mouth dropped open. “Jason? Is it you?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

It was too much for him. His mouth moved and his eyes blinked. I suddenly wondered if he had a weak heart.

He recovered enough to speak. “Where have you been?”

“You have to believe me. I didn’t do it.”

He nodded. “I believe you.”

I could have fainted right then over those words. I almost did, and he moved quickly to catch me. But I stayed upright.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“No.”

“Sit down.”

I dropped back into the big reading chair, and he pulled another chair up close. For a minute or two we didn’t talk. Everything had been just to get here, and now I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say, either.

“I found her,” I said. “It was my gun, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t have the gun.”

“Of course.”

“Remember? Fred still had it. He’s the one, Nathan. He killed her.”

“Fred Spellman?” He was still stunned just from seeing me. “But. .. surely not…”

“He had the gun.”

“But that doesn’t mean…” He stopped and breathed and got his hands to stop trembling. One of them darted into his suit coat and pulled out the cigarette case. It was reflex. He didn’t even know he’d lit it until he’d inhaled the smoke and couldn’t blow it out with my face inches from his.

He turned and exhaled. “Excuse me. It’s all a shock.” He gave the nicotine time to do its job. “Someone else could have found the gun,” he said.

“From Fred’s office?”

“Eric was there, of course.” He saw me react. “No, I don’t mean he would have used it. But he may have taken it, and then someone else took it from him. Or Katie took it. That would have been quite likely. And then it was there in the house when…” He didn’t finish.

I was sagging. So much had depended on finding the killer. Now I was back to the beginning, not knowing at all.

“It’s too hard,” I said. And what had Eric said about the gun? “I don’t know if it matters.”

“But it does! Of course it does! Jason, everyone is convinced you killed her and your father and the others.”

“I don’t think I care anymore.” I needed him to say something profound.

He did. “When did you last eat?”

“Saturday morning.”

“Let’s take care of that. Come to the kitchen.”

I wrestled down a few bites of the casserole, but my jaw was excruciating. Nathan didn’t ask questions. I drank a glass of milk through a straw, and ten minutes at the table slowly undid a little of the damage of the last three days.

“Now,” he said. “It seems you’re exhausted. I wonder what you’ve been through! But I think we need to make plans.”

The “we” was as energizing as the food. I’d had so many guards up, and it was such a relief to let some of them down.

“I was sure it was Fred,” I said.

“Yes, we’ll get to that. But no matter who it was, it was still someone.” He shook his head. “I can help you, Jason. But I’m afraid I don’t know much about these things. I’m not sure what to do. You need medical attention, and you need food and rest. Maybe my own physician could come here.”

“No. It’s too risky.”

He nodded. “Whatever you say. But I’m sure you can stay here safely for a few days. I’ll tell Mrs. Hammond not to come for the rest of the week.” He set his jaw into a grim smile. “We’ll work out what to do. You’re safe now. We’ll get through this fight.”

Now I was beginning to crumple. Again I wondered if it even mattered to me. Maybe it wasn’t Fred. I’d used everything I had and far more to get here. “I can’t fight anymore.”