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The Collingswoods lived in a very nice area several miles east of Miami Valley Hospital. Their house was dark red brick, two stories, and my cheeks were tingling with cold by the time I made my way up the front walk. A woman in a dark dress and apron let me into a front hall and helped me out of my coat. Polished hardwood floor gleamed at the edges of the pretty Persian rug beneath my feet and holiday greenery wound around the banister of stairs leading up.
“Miss Collingswood said to show you in when you got here,” the housekeeper said. She led me toward a room on the right and the sound of a violin like I’d heard on the phone. The piece was something classical with glides and vibratos and an impressive skill to the playing. A long run of notes soared up and quivered. Then Lucille noticed us waiting.
Her bow hovered motionless as her brain made the trip from the sheets of music propped on the walnut stand before her to the here and now.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Do come in. I’m afraid I get rather lost in the music. It....”
She broke off, shaking her head. As if indifferent to fashion, or immune to its whims, she wore her ashy blonde hair in a French twist. With fluid movements she loosened something on her bow and rested it on the edge of the walnut stand, a fine piece of furniture which had probably cost a bundle. Placing the violin in an open case that lay on a table nearby, Lucille Collingswood came toward me with hand extended.
“We didn’t exactly meet this morning. Hearing that about Gil — and the fact I didn’t even know — it sort of knocked me off my feet, I’m afraid.”
Her eyes weren’t red from crying, but tension strained the flesh around them. As her father had mentioned, she was a few years older than me. I shook her hand gently, unwilling to risk too much pressure on fingers as talented as hers.
“You’re a remarkable musician.”
She smiled faintly. “Thanks. I do love it. I don’t imagine you’ve learned anything since I saw you?”
“I’ve learned quite a lot. I don’t know yet whether any of it is important.”
“Poor Eve. She must be devastated. Have you talked to them yet?”
Briefly I was at sea. Then I started to put it together. The photograph on Tremain’s desk.
“Eve is Tremain’s daughter?”
Lucille nodded.
“She’s eleven. Smart kid. She adores her father, and he adores her. They’re very close.” With a shift of focus which I found disconcerting, she gestured toward a console cabinet. “Will you have a glass of sherry before lunch?”
As far as I was concerned, sherry barely passed muster as liquor, so I declined. The violinist led the way to a dining room with cherry furniture. A lacy runner, coupled with place mats of celery green linen, kept the table from feeling overly large as we sat across from each other. By the time we’d been served cups of split pea soup, I’d learned that Lucille’s mother had died when she was ten. From that point on, she’d stepped into the role of hostess for her father.
“Not that he entertains in the true sense,” she said. “It’s mostly just dinner for men who come to town to visit the company, or a couple of local engineers and their wives.” She made a face. “I’ve heard enough equations and theorems tossed about to last me six lifetimes.”
I laughed. It seemed like as good an opening as any, so I plunged in.
“Tell me about Gil. When was the last time you saw him?”
In an instant her gray eyes grew grave.
“Sunday evening. We went to a recital. A string trio. We’d originally planned that he’d join us for dinner here first, but...”
“Your father wanted him to stop seeing you,” I suggested.
She shrugged. There was something cool and businesslike about her.
“Dad would have come around. He’s not unreasonable. But Gil said maybe we shouldn’t rub his nose in the fact we were seeing each other.”
She paused as the housekeeper set veal birds accompanied by thinly sliced string beans in front of us. It gave me a moment to think.
“Could your father be behind Gil’s disappearance?” I asked when we were alone again.
“Good heavens no. He liked Gil, as a matter of fact. It was only when the two of us began to get serious that he started to put up a fuss. The idea, Dad would hire some sort of thug to kill someone or even run him off is quite preposterous!”
There was another possibility she wasn’t seeing. Collingswood wouldn’t have been the first man to bribe a daughter’s suitor to skip town.
“Besides, if Gil’s not here, Father stands to lose a fortune on a deal he was making,” Lucille said with composure. “And seeing whatever project they’ve been working on go up in flames would hurt him even more than the money.”
Did I detect an edge to her voice?
I gave a bite of veal bird the appreciation it deserved. “So what would you guess has happened to him?”
“I have no idea. None. The possibilities I pried out of Dad — that Gil would sneak off to a rival company with something he’d worked on here, or turn traitor to help someone who sides with Germany, are completely ridiculous. I suppose... it could be a kidnapping that went wrong somehow, couldn’t it?”
It could, except for the fact her father and Frank Scott both claimed there had been no ransom demand. I chewed thoughtfully.
“Would the company pay it?”
“Oh yes. If Dad didn’t want C&S to take the hit, he’d pay it himself. Even with—” Her wordless gesture, I assumed, referenced her romance with Gil.
Could both partners in C&S Signals be lying to me? Or, as Lucille had suggested, could there have been a kidnapping attempt where something went wrong? If the latter case, Gil Tremain was probably dead.
Taking my silence for agreement with her idea had given the woman across from me her first hint of appetite. She ate, watching me closely.
“How would the snake in your father’s pocket fit in with any of this?”
She brought her napkin to her lips and dabbed them as she swallowed the food in her mouth.
“Snake in his pocket? What do you mean?”
I sat back, observing her closely.
“He didn’t tell you? It was in his coat pocket yesterday when he came to ask me if I’d look for Gil. It started to slither out.”
“What did he do?”
The question struck me as odd. If she was concerned, I couldn’t see it. She just seemed curious.
“He didn’t have a chance to do anything. I shot it. When he realized what was happening, he began to have chest pains and nearly collapsed. He has a serious heart condition, doesn’t he?”
She sipped some water, her only sign of agitation.
“He’s had some problems, yes, but he has pills. To answer your question, I don’t see how it could possibly be related to Gil’s disappearance.”
I saw two. For the time being, though, I’d stick with the theory the snake had nothing to do with the fact C&S was missing an engineer and valuable documents.
“The last time you saw Gil was Sunday evening,” I said. “Did you hear from him after that? Did he call when he got home?”
“No. He usually called in the evening, but not if we’d seen each other. Neither of us is the moony type.”
“So it could be that he never made it back to his apartment. He might have disappeared on the way.”
“But what about Daisy seeing him Monday morning? Even if no one else noticed him, he could have been there.”
“Who’s Daisy? What are you talking about?”
We stared at each other.
“But surely someone told you. Daisy cleans. At the company. She works at night, of course, but she came in Tuesday afternoon to get her pay for the week before and apparently heard the dither over Gil’s not showing up for two days. Wilma said Daisy told Mrs. Hawes that she’d seen Gil walking on Fifth Street Monday morning.”
No one had mentioned it. Not a peep. And if people at C&S were as eager to find Gil Tremain as they let on, I wondered why.