Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

‘Then I feel sorry for you,’ he said grimly. ‘Look, boy: stay out of this. Don’t trouble yourself with things that don’t concern you.’ There was a strange tone in his voice; with any other man one might have thought he was pleading.

I said, ‘How do I get back to Fort Farrell? Your daughter brought me up here, but I doubt if she’ll be willing to take me back.’

Matterson chuckled coldly. ‘The exercise will do you good. It’s only five miles.’

I shrugged and walked out on him. I went down the stairs instead of taking the elevator and found the great hall deserted. Going outside the house was like being released from prison and I stood on the front step savouring the fresh air. There were too many tensions in the Matterson household for a man to be comfortable.

Lucy Atherton’s Continental was still standing where she had left it, and I saw that the key was still in the ignition lock. I climbed in and drove back to Fort Farrell. The exercise would be even better for her.

I parked the Continental outside the Matterson Building, cashed the cheque in the Matterson Bank and walked across to pick up the Land-Rover. Clarry Summerskill said, ‘I’ve fixed the pump, Mr Boyd, but that’ll be another fifteen dollars. Look, it’ll pay you better to get a new heap — this one is about shot. I’ve got a jeep just come in which should suit you. I’ll take the Land-Rover as a trade-in.’

I grinned. ‘How much will you give me on it?’

‘Mr Boyd, you’ve ruined it,’ he said earnestly. ‘All I want it for now are the spare parts, but I’ll still give you a good price.’

So we dickered and I ended up by driving back to Mac’s cabin in a jeep. Clare and Mac had just about finished cleaning up, although the stink of kerosene still lay heavily on the air inside. I gave Mac a thousand dollars in folding money and he looked at it in surprise. ‘What’s this?’

‘Conscience money,’ I said, and told him what had happened.

He nodded. ‘Old Bull is a ruthless bastard,’ he said. ‘But he’s never been caught in anything illegal. To tell you the truth, I was a mite surprised at what happened last night.’

Clare said thoughtfully, ‘I wonder how he knew you were Grant.’

‘He hired a detective to find out — but that’s not the point. What I want to know is why he thought it necessary to check up on me so many years ago. Another thing that puzzles me is the old man’s character.’

‘What do you mean?’

I said, ‘Look at it this way. He strikes me as being an honest man. He may be as ruthless as Genghis Khan and as tough as hickory, but I think he’s straight. Everything he said gave that impression. Now, what could a man like that be hiding?’

‘He did bring up the question of blackmail,’ said Clare tentatively. ‘So you want to know what he could be blackmailed for.’

I said, ‘What’s your impression of him, Mac?’

‘Pretty much the same. I said he’d never been caught in anything illegal and he never has. You get talk around town that a man couldn’t make the dough that he has by legal means, but that’s only the talk of a lot of envious failures. Could be that he is straight.’

‘So what could he have done that makes him talk of blackmail?’

‘I’ve been giving thought to that,’ said Mac. ‘You’d better sit down, son, because what I’ve got to tell you might knock you on your back. Clare, put the kettle on; it’s about time we had tea, anyway.’

Clare smiled and filled the kettle. Mac waited until she came back. ‘This has something to do with you, too,’ he said. ‘Now I want you both to listen carefully, because this is complicated.’

He seemed to hunt a little, searching for a place to begin, then he said, ‘Folks are more different now than they used to be, especially young folks. Time was when you could tell a rich man from a poor man by the way he dressed, but not any more. And that goes in spades for teenagers and college students.

‘Now, in that Cadillac which crashed there were four people — John Trinavant, his wife and two young fellows — Frank Trinavant and Robert Boyd Grant, both college students. Frank was the son of a rich man and Robert was a bum — to say the best of him. But you couldn’t tell the difference by the way they dressed. You know college kids: they dress in a kind of uniform. Both these boys were dressed in jeans and open-necked shirts and they’d taken off their jackets.’

I said slowly, ‘What the hell are you getting at, Mac?’

‘Okay, I’ll come right out with it,’ he said. ‘How do you know you are Robert Boyd Grant?’

I opened my mouth to tell him — then shut it again.

He smiled sardonically. ‘Just because somebody told you, but not out of your own knowledge.’

Clare said incredulously, ‘You think he might be Frank Trinavant ?’

‘He might,’ said Mac. ‘Look, I’ve never gone for all this psychiatric crap. Frank was a good boy — and so are you, Bob. I checked on Grant and decided I’d never come across a bigger sonofabitch in my life. It’s never made sense to me that you should be Grant. Your psychiatrist, Susskind, explained it all away cleverly by this multiple personality stuff, but I don’t give a good goddam for that. I think you’re plain Frank Trinavant — still the same guy but you happen to have lost your memory.’

I sat there stunned. After a while my brain got working again in a cranky sort of fashion, and I said, ‘Steady on, Mac. Susskind couldn’t have made that kind of error.’

‘Why couldn’t he?’ Mac demanded. ‘Remember, he was told you were Grant. You’ve got to realize the way it was. Matterson made the identification of the bodies, he tagged the three dead people as Trinavants. Naturally there was no room for error in the case of John Trinavant and his wife, but the dead boy he named as Frank Trinavant.’ He snorted. ‘I’ve seen Highway Patrol photographs of that body and how in hell he was sure I’ll never know.’

‘Surely there must have been some means of identification,’ said Clare.

Mac looked at her soberly. ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen a really bad auto smash — one followed by a gasoline fire. Bob, here, was burnt beyond recognition — and he lived. The other boy was burnt and killed. The shoes were ripped from their feet and neither of them was wearing a wrist-watch when they were found. The shirts had been pretty near burnt off their backs and they wore identical jeans. They were both husky guys, much about the same size.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘How come I knew so much about geology unless I’d been taking a course like Grant?’

Mac nodded. ‘True.’ He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. ‘But so was Frank Trinavant. He was majoring in geology too.’

‘For God’s sake!’ I said explosively. ‘You’ll have me believing in this crazy story. So they were both majoring in geology. Did they know each other?’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Mac. ‘Grant went to the University of British Columbia; Trinavant to the University of Alberta. Tell me, Bob, before I go any further: is there anything in all that you know of that would blow this idea to hell? Can you find any sound proof to show that you are Grant and not Frank Trinavant?’

I thought about it until it hurt. Ever since Susskind took me in hand I knew I was Grant — but only because I was told so. To make a mean pun, I had taken it for granted. Now it came as a shock to find the matter in question. Yet try as I would, I couldn’t think of any real proof to settle it one way or the other.

I shook my head. ‘No proof from where I’m standing.’