THE COPELAND SERVANTS, LAW-ABIDING, gathered in the kitchen as they arrived. A brief, shrewd questioning each underwent at the hands of the police—Was Mr. Copeland away during the first two weeks of November? Was he in California at that time? Had he seemed upset after that date?—filled their honest hearts with shock, doubts, wide-eyed apprehensions. Norton—Jonathan Norton, the butler—lived on Woodbury Avenue, near Cold Spring Harbor station, and owned a modest garage and two service stations. Effie Burt, upstairs maid, lived with her son and had savings of eighteen hundred dollars. She was fifty-four. Norton was sixty-two. They were old family retainers; the Copeland tradition had thrown strong roots into them. They were horrified. They hardly believed ...
“Lying there in the snow ... So peaceful like.” Mrs. Karen, the cook, dabbed her eyes. “He was a—a good boy—I don’t care what they say. He wasn’t bad, not really.” Mrs. Karen always arrived earliest; she had seen the body before it was taken away. “There in the snow ...” She sniffed. Her red old eyes filled again. “They say he murdered some girl named Martha,” she wailed.
“Mr. Walheim was killed, too,” said Gruber, the chauffeur. He was younger, forty-six, and not much of a sentimentalist. “A fat guy—wonder who he was?—got plugged in the stomach ... Walheim—you know, there’s a lad I never went for. Never did like him.” He lifted a toothpick from a holder, leaned back, picked his teeth. “To tell the truth, as for Mr. Copeland, I always wondered if he would come to a bad end.” The others glared at him. He subsided. Mrs. Karen sobbed loudly.
Ivan, the gardener, said, “Them cops, they ask me when we stop livin’ here on the estate—I never did say here. What they wanna know that for? Norton and Erne, you’re the only ones that lived here. They ask you about that, huh?”
“Yes—yes, I was asked that.” Norton, the butler, looked frightened. “I told them the way it was. After Mr. Copeland came back from that trip he took early in November, he said we needn’t stay here. They—the police—wanted to know why. Why?” He threw up his hands. “Why? How do I know? That’s what I told them—how would I know?”
“Maybe it had somethin’ to do with this,” suggested the chauffeur.
Chance Molloy stood solidly before the window, head back, half watching the frigid winds of the cold air mass, high in the sky, scrub away the last traces of storm clouds. The sun, now uncovered, shone blindingly in a clear heaven, but here on the ground the hard gale, piling the loose snow in drifts, then tearing the drifts apart, made it seem that the blizzard was unchecked.
He stirred. Kiggins had come into the room accompanied by a heavy, jovial man who was briskly palming the cold from his cheeks. Kiggins said, “Mr. Albin Verrill Gorr, Mr. Molloy, Mr. Gorr of Cranston, Gorr, and Dunlap.” But Chance Molloy already knew Gorr; he put out a genial hand and said, “Good to see you again, Gorr.” Then he introduced Gorr to Julie Edwards, George, to officers King and O’Riley, to Assistant District Attorney Gerling, to a CAA inspector named Dodson, and omitted to introduce him to the phony Martha and N. N. Nesbitt, whom Gorr already knew.
Gorr didn’t waste time.
“So you want a motive?” he said
Molloy nodded. “Mr. Gerling”—he inclined his head toward the assistant D.A.—“seems to feel that Copeland was a wealthy man, so why should he swindle himself?”
“Wealthy? Copeland?” Gorr snorted. “He was flat broke.”
“What?” gasped Gerling.
“That’s right. Copeland was just about the brokest man you could find anywhere. The facts are going to come out, so I don’t see any reason for trying to keep it—”
Gerling shoved his head forward, said, “Wait a minute! Who are you? On what authority do you base—”
“Authority! Hah!” Gorr slapped his hip where he kept his pocketbook. “Authority, he asks! Listen, brother, the firm of Cranston, Gorr, and Dunlap handled financing for Transfa Aviation, and we kept—it’s lucky we did—a rein on the outfit. This pocketbook is my authority.” He yanked a calfskin purse out of the hip pocket, waved it. “You see how flat this is? Well, it would be flatter if he hadn’t forced Transfa on the market.”
“I don’t believe I understand.”
“Figures? You want figures—”
“No, no. Just a broad picture—”
“We’re Copeland’s bankers,” Gorr said. “It’s our money—our client’s money, anyway—that went back of Transfa. We weren’t too hot, even when we went into it we weren’t too hot, about Copeland. But he had a name ... wealthy family tradition ... already in the aircraft business with a small plant.” Gorr shrugged, added, “We backed him, figuring he couldn’t fail to get rich in the aircraft business with a war going on. But Copeland was a lousy businessman. He barely made ends meet. During the war, mind you, he couldn’t show a profit. Where do you think that put us? I’ll tell you where it put us—we had to force sale of Transfa assets, get our money out before the bumbling idiot lost it for us. His health? Hah! An alibi!”
“Out of the proceeds of the Transfa sale Mr. Copeland would have gotten ... ?”
“The clothes he stood in, if he was lucky,” Gorr said dryly. “If you knew the investment business you’d know that.”
The assistant district attorney tugged at his chin. “Mr. Molloy has—ah—suggested a sum, perhaps reaching a figure of—shall we just say a shocking figure—”
“Shocking is right,” yelled Gorr. “Right out of our pockets, Copeland was stealing it!”
N. N. Nesbitt shuddered. This Mr. Gorr—he had heard of the fiery Mr. Gorr—would, he was almost certain, be the boss of Transfa from here on out. Mr. Gorr’s first act, Nesbitt thought with horror, would probably be to fire him, Nesbitt, together with everyone else who had been stupid enough to let a thing like this grow under their noses. Fired! The thought turned Nesbitt’s mouth dry. He felt helpless, the victim of circumstances. He had meant well. All his life Nesbitt had meant well, and he had worked hard and honestly for his employers, always. Now, to be trapped, tarred with the black brush of scandal; the thought cut to the heart.
He turned, distraught, his eyes to Chance Molloy. He wanted to appeal to Molloy for help. It seemed to him that Molloy was a man of keen perception, quite able to weigh and value another man—he wished Molloy would weigh and value him and place the result before these others. That was all he wanted, to be valued fairly ...
Mr. Gorr was shouting.
“Swindling us! Right under our noses!” Gorr bellowed. “A swindler! A murderer. And right under the noses of all the dopes working for Transfa. What ailed them that—”
Chance Molloy dropped a quiet statement. “Let us be fair to Mr. Nesbitt.”
“Nesbitt. What did he—”
“If any credit is due, Nesbitt rates a full share.” Molloy’s pleasant smile, his genial hand movement, included Nesbitt. “Mr. Nesbitt had the insight, propelled by far less stimulus than some of us, to perceive all was not well with Transfa. With rare courage—it takes courage, I assure you, to accuse the owner of your company of murder—with that kind of courage in his heart, Nesbitt came to New York to settle the business.” Molloy’s voice rang with complimentary mellowness as he finished, “Without Mr. Nesbitt, we might well have failed. We owe him everything.”
Nesbitt blushed.
“By God!” Gorr shot out his hand to Nesbitt. “I’m glad to hear about this, Nesbitt. I sure am. Glad to hear one man in Transfa had his eyes open.”
Nesbitt glowed. Inwardly and outwardly he was suffused with warm relief. He was saved. His career, the shining tower he had built so carefully, was unblackened and unshaken; it could continue to grow cleanly. His gratitude to Chance Molloy was limitless; his eyes shone; he wished he might, spiritually at least, throw himself at Molloy’s feet.
Later he did pump Molloy’s hand warmly, say, “A great kindness, Mr. Molloy ... I thank you ... Mr. Gorr has just told me I will remain in charge of Transfa. That, I feel, is a full justification.”
Molloy’s handclap fell on his shoulder.
“That’s fine, Nesbitt,” Molloy said genially. “I imagine you’ll be off to the Coast soon, eh? I did hope we’d have more time together. Oh well, I can take up the matter of those engine parts and tools I bought from Martha—we can take that up by mail, eh?”
Nesbitt’s shoulders squared. “You will, Mr. Molloy, get everything you bought. Every bolt. You have my word.”
“Well, thanks,” Molloy said.
Head up, eyes ahead, the square of his shoulders as exact as if a carpenter had laid them out, Nesbitt strode out of the room. Molloy—what a fine man! Nesbitt was completely impervious, wouldn’t accept any idea that Molloy might have contrived to set him back on his little stool as general manager of Transfa in order that he, Molloy, might be sure of getting his parts and tools. Never. Molloy had not done that.
Chance Molloy, watching him leave, employed a forefinger to rub a shrewd discerning expression from his lips.