Джон Макдональд - Area of Suspicion [= My Brother’s Widow]

During the last half-hour of it, I had begun to get annoyed. They were undoubtedly fine, capable men, but their attitude was as though they were dealing with a rather stupid, naughty child.

Tancey lit a cigarette and gave me a weary smile. “We may have to go over some of it again tomorrow, Mr. Dean.”

“Can I go back to the hotel now?”

“I’m afraid not. You and Miss Perrit were murdered tonight. We’ll keep it that way.”

“How about her people? You can’t keep them in the dark.”

“They’ve been contacted. They’ll co-operate. They know she’s all right. We had them report her missing.”

“There’s something about this cloak-and-dagger atmosphere that doesn’t set too well with me, Mr. Tancey. Why don’t you sweat it out of Colonel Dolson and wrap it up?”

“You’ll be taken to a place where you can sleep and we’ll see you in the morning.”

“Mr. Tancey, I got myself and Miss Perrit off the bottom of the river. I’ve opened up for you. I’m tired. But I’m not going to accept being brushed off. I want to know the score, and I think I’ve earned the right to know the score.”

Tancey looked at me. It was the first time he had looked at me as a human being rather than a source of information. I sensed the extent of his dedication.

“I’m tired too, Mr. Dean. I haven’t meant to brush you off. Colonel Dolson died tonight. It was arranged to look like a suicide, with note and all. The note was in the form of a confession, so it could have been written by him in exchange for a promise to get him out of the country.”

Weariness had so dulled my reaction time that it took long minutes to understand what had happened, and the implications of it. With Dolson dead, Stanley Mottling might be in the clear. Not beyond suspicion, but beyond proof.

“There is something else you should understand, Mr. Dean,” he continued in his grave voice. “Your will names your brother without any alternate heir. If you had died tonight, his estate would inherit, and that means his widow would inherit your holdings, giving her a solid sixteen thousand voting shares.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Tancey said, “There is more we can talk about. Believe me, Mr. Dean, I’m willing to talk to you, but right now I think you’d better go to bed.”

I could not resist. The brisk young men took me down in the elevator and out through the basement to a car waiting in the alley. I managed to stay awake while they drove me to an old Georgian brick house in an old and no longer fashionable residential section of the city. I was taken to a bedroom. The bed opened like a cave and gobbled me up...

They were efficient. When I woke up I could tell by the sun that it was at least mid-morning. My wrist watch had stopped. The river had gotten into it. Someone had visited my hotel suite. My toilet kit was there, and the rest of my clothing. There was a morning paper just inside the door. I felt astonishingly good. I wondered about Joan. I wondered if the doctor had been lying to me. That thought shadowed the sunshine. My face was not swollen, but I had a black eye that looked like a comedy effect. Deep blue and purple, and I knew it would fade to bilious saffron before bleaching out. I showered and shaved and sat on the side of the bed and looked through the paper.

Dolson’s suicide got less of a play than I had expected. It got one column on page three, with a picture of a thinner, younger Dolson in uniform with leaves on his shoulders instead of eagles. There was an indirect hint about his speculations. There was no attempt to link his death to the Brady suicide or my brother’s murder. As any alert legman might easily sense some connection, I guessed Tancey’s people had put a partial lid on the whole thing.

There was some blah about Dean Products being a key plant in the defense program, and some more about officials of the space program arriving today by plane from Washington.

I found myself in the last paragraph:

Mr. Gevan Dean, a resident of Florida, arrived this past week to attend a meeting of the Board of Directors of Dean Products, Inc. He resigned from the presidency of the firm four years ago, relinquishing that position to his brother, who was recently slain. It is not expected that Mr. Gevan Dean will resume active participation in the management of the firm. As yet Mr. Gevan Dean has not been reached for comment on the Dolson suicide .

Also I found that somebody had whipped out a quick editorial. It spoke of all the loyal, efficient men who take leaves of absence from their firms to serve their country as reserve officers on active duty, aiding the military by donating skilled services for lower pay than they could command in industry, and it went on to say how it was a shame that the dishonesty of one man could bring down unfavorable publicity on all those others who do such a splendid job.

I dressed and went downstairs. It seemed very quiet. I found a dining room with small tables, each set for four places. A stone-faced woman asked me if I wanted breakfast, and how I wanted my eggs. She served me with ruthless efficiency. The coffee was superb. Kids were having a noisy Saturday morning somewhere nearby. I could hear them yelling. There was no sound in the big house. There was something institutional in the way the house was furnished, in the plates and utensils.

A stocky nurse in rustling white came in and smiled at me and said, “Mr. Dean? Mind if I join you for some coffee?”

“Please do.” She had a broad, pleasant Irish face.

“I’m Ellen McCarthy, Mr. Dean.”

“Do you happen to know anything about Joan Perrit?”

“Oh, yes. She was brought here from the hospital about an hour ago. She’s sleeping right now.”

“How is she?”

“Fine. Or they wouldn’t have moved her. She had a headache and a slight cold. No fever.”

“Can I see her?”

“Later. Perhaps this afternoon, Mr. Dean. She’ll be sitting up by then, and back on her feet tomorrow.”

The apprehension in the back of my mind faded away, and I grinned so broadly at Nurse McCarthy that she looked startled. After she left me, I wandered toward the front of the house. A young man stepped out of a room and said, courteously, “Please stay away from the front of the house, Mr. Dean. Mr. Tancey’s orders.”

“When will he be here?”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t say.”

I looked around the rest of the house. There were books and magazines in the study, and I was permitted to go out into the small walled garden.

It was noon when Tancey arrived. He came alone. He found me in the study and sat down. It was obvious that he hadn’t been to bed. He had a gray stubble of beard. It made him look more human.

“Sorry we had to give you such a going over last night, Mr. Dean.”

“I understand.”

“Some people wanted that tape in a hurry. This is just one part of a picture that’s been developing for some time.”

I stared at him. “They knew about this? Who?”

“Just whom you’d imagine, Mr. Dean. When a pattern began to show, a coordinated team was set up. CIA people, and service counterintelligence people, some of us, and some from other specialized agencies. The most effective part of the job has been done by working from the other end, triple-checking operational readiness of complete missile assemblies, reworking the dogs at base installations. Some essential stuff from Dean Products was carefully bitched, so Dean was on the list. Some people have been planted on you, but reports have been negative and we weren’t slated to move in strong until some other deals were cleaned up.”

“How was our stuff defective?” I asked him.

He gave me an almost pitying smile. “I’m no technician, Mr. Dean. But they gave me a crash course. I think I can lose you with one question. When you change the conductivity of one of the ferride plastics, what effect could that have on the reliability of adjacent transistors, diodes, cryotons, masers, parametric amplifiers and so on? Give up?”