I TOLD THE MACNIFFS as much as I could without compromising Denny’s position. One cannot serve two masters, especially when their interests converge. Judging by the speed with which this case was progressing, I would say Denny and Nifty were fast approaching a collision course, with Archy poised at the crossroads. In a very short time I would have to make them aware of each other, but not right now. I needed solid proof that Jeff was blackmailing Talbot and what secret he possessed that enabled him to do so. The reason for the blackmail was the crux of my case and Jeff Rodgers took the reason to his grave.
“This is very disquieting,” Nifty said after listening to my spiel. “If this boy, Jeff, was killed because of what he had on Lance Talbot, we have to assume that Lance is the murderer.”
“Assume nothing, is my credo, Mr. MacNiff, and remember, I said I could vouch for Talbot not being near the pool at the crucial time. You, Dennis Darling, Talbot and I played a set just prior to the time of the murder. After our game Lance Talbot didn’t stray far from the tennis courts. In fact I saw him talking on his cell phone about the time Jeff was chloroformed and pushed into the pool.”
“Perhaps he hired a hit man,” Mrs. MacNiff suggested. “Or should I say a hit person?”
“Helen, really!” her husband admonished.
“If he did,” I reminded Mrs. MacNiff, “he, or she, was recruited from among your guests.”
“Oh, dear,” she lamented, “I never thought of that.”
Mention of the MacNiffs’ guests reminded me of Vivian Emerson and I asked Mrs. MacNiff if she knew her.
“I can’t say I do, Archy. I’ll have to check my guest registry. Is it important?”
“I’m not sure, ma’am. I suspect she knows the von Brecht woman and as von Brecht is staying with Lance Talbot I think I should try to learn the connection between the two women. There’s no rush. At your convenience, is fine.”
“Do you think Holga von Brecht and Lance Talbot are lovers, Archy? They say she’s eighty if she’s a day.”
“Helen,” Nifty sighed. “Archy is not here to gossip, and that woman’s love life and age are not your business.”
“Oh, Malcolm, don’t be such a party pooper” she accused. “She’s living with the boy who claims to be Aunt Margaret’s grandson, and if we want to know more about him, Holga von Brecht is the only person who can help us. She knew him in Switzerland and none of us did.”
Score one for Helen MacNiff. I nodded in agreement, but very cautiously. Iago was now asleep on my lap and I thought it imprudent to disturb her. The sages tell us to let sleeping cats lie.
“Holga and Lance are very close,” I offered, “be they lovers or just friends. We must remember that she will not tell us, or anyone, anything she doesn’t want known. That’s why I’m interested in talking to someone who might know Holga and be willing to share.”
This was not the time or place to add that I believed there were ill feelings between Holga and Vivian Emerson, which might prompt Vivian to blab more than if they were on friendly terms.
“And who is this person who told you the dead boy had information on Lance Talbot he was trying to sell?” Nifty asked.
“I’m afraid, sir, I can’t divulge my source at this time. I promised him anonymity.” It was as good a line as any and one people read so often in their daily newspaper they never think to question it.
“How exciting,” Mrs. MacNiff said, pleased that her husband had been rebuffed. “Is your informant anyone we know, Archy?”
“Helen, we’re not here to play twenty questions, either,” Nifty snapped, rousing Iago, who looked up at me and meowed. “And you think Jeff had reason to believe that Lance Talbot is an imposter?”
“Just a hunch, sir. Coupled with what you told me about Mrs. Talbot’s doubts, I couldn’t think of anything else Jeff might have on Lance. As Mrs. MacNiff just said, Lance has been away from these parts for ten years and Jeff Rodgers has never left here. What else could he know?”
“It seems far-fetched,” Nifty claimed, “that the boy would know something Aunt Margaret didn’t.”
“But she did know something,” Mrs. MacNiff cried. “The king is dead. The king must be Lance.”
Nifty shook his head. “King? Why not prince? Or my grandson? It makes no sense.”
“I don’t know why she used the word king, sir, but I now believe that Mrs. Talbot was on to something. At first I suspected her words were the rambling of a heavily sedated old lady. But now that we suspect this person calling himself Lance Talbot was being blackmailed by a childhood friend who was as close to him then as was his grandmother, I have to conclude that Mrs. Talbot was not hallucinating.”
“Archy, I appreciate the fact that you can’t disclose your source, but are you certain he, or she, is reliable? Did Jeff Rodgers actually talk to this person and try to sell him information on Lance Talbot?”
“The answer is yes to both questions, sir. And don’t forget, Jeff had been boasting to his friends that he was going to come into big money very soon. The connection between these facts cannot be ignored.”
“Oh, I have no intention of ignoring anything, Archy. I owe it to Aunt Margaret to get at the truth, not only as the executor of her estate but as an old and dear friend. What I didn’t count on was the murder of a young man in my pool. As I said, it’s disquieting.”
“Don’t worry, dear, Archy will sort it all out,” Mrs. MacNiff said with more conviction than I felt at the moment. Despite their little tiffs her words of consolation were a clear indication of the unwavering affection between the long-married couple. How like my parents, I thought. Would I, one day, be so blessed? Tempus fugit, Archy, tempus fugit.
The question I was waiting for now came from Nifty. “How much of this do the police know, Archy?”
“None of it,” I said. “And until I have solid proof of the connection between Jeff and Lance Talbot I have no obligation to report what I’ve learned to them. Finger-pointing based on hearsay and speculation is dangerous and libelous.”
Nifty liked that. Until proven otherwise, Lance Talbot was one of us, and if he was being blackmailed for any reason other than his true identity—well, the less the police knew, the better. Nifty’s crowd firmly believed that to err is human and to forgive divine—as long as it was one of them being errant.
I hated to put a damper on Nifty’s divinity but I thought I should prepare him for the worst. “Right now the police are interested in Jeff’s friends and associates but when they come up with nothing, which I think they will, they’ll have to look...”
“In our backyard,” Mrs. MacNiff concluded.
I was enjoying this delightful lady’s charm and wit but I fear her husband had had his fill of it. “Everyone at the benefit, Helen, wasn’t a friend of ours.”
“Yes, dear. But the scene of the crime was our backyard.”
He couldn’t argue with that, so he jumped on me. “What’s the next step, Archy?”
“Well, sir, I was hoping you might give a party.”
“A party? Are you mad, Archy?”
“Actually, sir, a pool party.”
“The toe,” the clever Mrs. MacNiff cried. “The next step is to see if our Lance Talbot is or is not missing the little toe on his right foot.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It will end all the guesswork and I can’t think of any other way of going about it short of asking him to remove his shoe and sock. That would be unseemly.”
“I think,” Nifty countered, “giving a party around the scene of the crime, as Helen put it, would be unseemly.”
“Nonsense,” she answered. “The police have removed all their yellow tape we were not supposed to cross and the grandchildren will be here this weekend and I refuse to tell them the pool is off-limits. We can’t avoid using it forever, Malcolm, and I think Archy has given us the perfect reason for doing so now.”
“When we began probate with Aunt Margaret’s lawyer,” Nifty said thoughtfully, “Lance submitted his passport for the required identification. As I recall it passed muster, meaning it contained his picture.”
“Was it a picture of his face or his foot, Malcolm?”
“Oh, Helen, for God’s sake be serious.”
“I am,” she said, and she did have a point.
“If I may venture a guess, sir, Lance’s original passport was applied for when he was ten years old. If he and his mother traveled around Europe, I imagine the photo was updated as the boy grew. The last update could have been made when he came here, at which time a new photo was taken of the man claiming to be Lance Talbot.”
“Very good, Archy,” Mrs. MacNiff complimented. Naturally, I concurred.
Still looking for an out, Nifty argued, “Suppose he flatly refuses to come to our pool party?”
“That, sir, will tell us a lot, too. If he knows about the amputated toe, he’ll avoid being seen barefoot. If he doesn’t know about it, he’ll fall into our trap. If he is the real Lance Talbot it makes no difference either way, so why not have a go at it?”
“Why not, Malcolm?” my ally joined in.
“Okay,” he relented. “You make the arrangements, Helen, and don’t forget to ask the von Brecht woman, too. I have some papers the boy must sign, so you might use that as an excuse for the visit, then tell him to bring his trunks as we’re having a few people in for lunch and a dip. If it doesn’t rain that day, he’ll be one of those people who swim in rubber shoes or fins.”
“Your optimism is appreciated, Malcolm,” Mrs. MacNiff quipped.
“May I suggest someone whom I would like to be invited?”
“Of course, Archy,” Mrs. MacNiff quickly replied. “A lady friend?”
“Thank you, ma’am, I’ll think about that. It was Dennis Darling I had in mind.”
“The investigative snoop?” Nifty said, pulling a face. “His magazine offered my charity trust a hefty check plus an invitation to our journalism students to submit their work with a promise to publish the best of the lot. All they asked in return was for Darling to be included in the Tennis Everyone! event. How could I refuse?”
“Clearly you couldn’t, sir,” I agreed.
“Why him?” Mrs. MacNiff asked me.
Anticipating the question, I had concocted a reply that was not entirely untrue. “Everyone is aware that Darling is in Palm Beach to gather information for a so-called exposé on our town. I want to see how Lance Talbot acts in the presence of a seasoned reporter nosing around for salacious scandal. If Talbot has something to hide besides his right foot, it should be an engaging afternoon.”
Seeing Nifty about to protest, I added, “I know Talbot met Darling briefly the day of the benefit, but that was on the tennis court and I doubt if Talbot knew who Darling was that afternoon.”
If Jeff was using Dennis Darling as a threat, Talbot damn well knew who and what Dennis Darling was all about when he faced him across that net. I wanted Denny at the pool party for the reason I had given the MacNiffs. He was a cunning and experienced observer of scams and the people who made a living off them. I had to convince Nifty of this without outing Denny.
Nifty stated his position. “I don’t want it to appear that we’re encouraging a snoop and tattling on our neighbors.”
Mrs. MacNiff told it like it was, saying, “The word is out along the Boulevard to shun Mr. Dennis Darling.”
I told her I knew this. “But we have a mission, and Darling can be of help to us even if he doesn’t know it.” Appealing to Mrs. MacNiff, I pleaded, “Let’s have him for the same reason you felt it was not inappropriate to use the pool so soon after the tragedy—to learn if the man calling himself Lance Talbot is who he claims to be.”
My pep talk was met with silence, except for Iago who started to purr in triumph as my eyes began to itch.
Nodding, Nifty broke the spell. “In a sense, we would be using Darling, not him using us.”
“Exactly, sir,” I encouraged, eager to depart the MacNiff abode and my lapmate, whom I now believed to be a witch.
“So be it,” Nifty stated with a sigh of resignation.
Already planning her guest list, Helen MacNiff asked no one in particular, “Do you think we should have the tennis player, too? He was so good to help us out and now he’s stuck here because of it.”
“That would be very nice,” I mumbled, nudging Iago before getting to my feet. She hissed her indignation before slinking back to Othello. “Before I go I would like to have Talbot’s Swiss lawyer’s name and his fax number. Also, Mr. Rodgers’s phone number. Did you say the funeral is tomorrow, Mrs. MacNiff?”
“It is, Archy. St. Edward’s on North County Road. Eleven tomorrow morning.”
Well, if Jeff had been barred from joining the noblesse in life he was certainly having his last hurrah in their bailiwick. In the halcyon days of the Kennedy administration, when Charlie Wrightsman’s mansion was known as the Palm Beach White House, St. Edward’s was the place to be seen on Sunday mornings in your Saturday night attire. It made a statement.
Being given the information I requested, I took my leave. With a firm handshake, Nifty told me to keep him posted. Mrs. MacNiff asked to be remembered to my mother. Then, when I was almost out the door, she called after me. “Oh, Archy, do you know where Dennis Darling is staying?”
“The GulfStream,” I responded without thinking.
“Thank you,” she cooed, stroking Desdemona’s back.
I was glad Helen MacNiff was on our side.
On the ride back to Royal Palm Way I decided it was time to apprise Father of what his favorite son had been up to these past two days. We talked last the night before my lunch date with Malcolm MacNiff, which now seemed aeons ago in light of all that had transpired since then. If Father was going to make a bid for Lance Talbot’s business, I thought it advisable to inform him that this Lance Talbot might not be the grandson and heir of the late Margaret Talbot, thereby earning my keep.
The way to Father’s executive suite is guarded by my favorite nemesis, Mrs. Trelawney.
“Well,” she exclaimed as I stepped off the elevator. “If it isn’t the man who does everything but windows, and where did you ever find a belted cord jacket?”
“So, you read the interview.”
“Who didn’t?” she said, as if I were the sole cause of a national decline in literary values. “Archy McNally attended Yale. Strange, your class year was omitted.”
“He didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell,” I tossed back. Mrs. Trelawney and I are never happier than when we are engaged in a spirited game of verbal knock-hockey. “I don’t do windows because my office lacks one. I’m the guy in the converted broom closet, lest you forget, and my jacket is from one of the better men’s shops on the Esplanade, an area of our community bereft of your patronage.”
Mrs. Trelawney favors severely tailored suits, usually pinstripe with padded shoulders, the skirt hemmed at midcalf. Pince-nez, lapel watch and penny loafers complete the picture of a Katharine Gibbs grad from the Eisenhower era. Her grammar is impeccable, her spelling faultless and her attendance record perfect. In short, she is as indispensable to McNally & Son as the law degree hanging over my father’s desk.
“The office that has a chronic problem with the answering machine recently installed at company expense?”
“One and the same, Mrs. Trelawney. The plug keeps popping out of the wall socket.”
“So Binky tells me. He’s had to reconnect you several times in the past two days.”
“Which keeps his nose out of other people’s mail.”
“Binky is a great help to me,” she said, as if I didn’t know. Moving right along she glibly asked, “And what did Officer O’Hara have to say about your confusing her with your pet canine in print?”
Mrs. Trelawney takes vicarious pleasure, though some would say vicious, in my love life. Mr. Trelawney, who was an auditor for the IRS, filed his final return some years back, leaving his widow a modest pension and his government guide on the arts of spying, probing and harassing.
“Georgy is a good sport,” I lied.
“And what did Connie have to say, may I ask?”
“Why do you ask permission after the fact, Mrs. Trelawney?” My dander aroused, I let go with another whopper. “Connie and I are the best of friends.”
“With a hunk like Alejandro on her arm, Connie can afford to be generous,” was her cutting reply.
Getting out while behind, I stated, “It’s always a pleasure sparring with you, Mrs. Trelawney, but right now, I need to borrow a pad and pen with which to write a fax I would like you to type up and send ASAP.”
“Where is it going, Archy?”
“Bern, Switzerland. To Mr. Gregory Hermann, Esq.”
“Do you have a charge number?”
“A what?” I remonstrated.
“Archy, you must start reading office memos before stuffing them in the bottom drawer of your desk to hide your English Ovals.”
There wasn’t a nook or cranny in the McNally Building that wasn’t subject to search by our Mrs. Trelawney. I vowed to stuff that drawer with enough unmentionables in a variety of colors and flavors to knock the intruder off her pins.
“Your father and I created a list of all possible reasons one might incur extraordinary expenses and assigned each a number,” she lectured with all the patience of a first-grade teacher leading a classroom full of hyperactives. “A fax to Switzerland is extraordinary, thus I need a charge number.”
Knowing better, but having nothing to lose, I ventured, “What is the number for miscellaneous?”
“There is no such thing as a miscellaneous extraordinary expense, Archy.” She shrugged her shoulders dramatically, setting her dangling pince-nez and lapel watch in motion. “Which reminds me, the outrageous expense report you handed in last week was charged entirely to miscellaneous.”
“And that should be reason enough to assign it a number,” I advised while reaching for a pad and pen. Mrs. Trelawney huffed and puffed as I wrote a brief message to Hermann, stressing the urgency to contact me soonest regarding Lance Talbot and the von Brechts without so much as a hint of our doubts regarding the legitimacy of his former client. Coming on Father’s stationery, Hermann was apt to think the request concerned nothing more than a routine legal matter.
Mrs. Trelawney mellowed considerably when she read my note. Impressed, she politely asked, “Lance Talbot? Are you working for him?” Suddenly, the only extraordinary thing at McNally & Son was my presumed business association with the heir apparent. Such is the power of the Talbot name in this town.
“I have a finger in several miscellaneous enterprises, Mrs. Trelawney.” I do so enjoy kicking people when they’re down.
“Could one of them be that poor waiter who was killed at the MacNiff fete?” she asked. “I hear you were on the scene when it happened.”
“Just clearing up a few details for Mr. MacNiff. What do the papers say?”
“Not much,” she answered. “They’re still questioning people, mostly the catering staff, and Jackson Barnett is being detained although the police keep repeating that he’s not a suspect. Is he really camping out on Phil Meecham’s yacht?”
Let me make it perfectly clear that the word camping in Mrs. Trelawney’s lexicon, means sleeping under the stars and nothing more—Phil Meecham notwithstanding. “According to Lolly Spindrift, he spurns a berth in favor of a sleeping bag à deux,” I reported.
“That sounds dirty,” Mrs. Trelawney frowned, proving Oscar Wilde’s assumption that if one speaks German, no one listens, and if one speaks French, everyone thinks it’s naughty. Not wishing to further titillate our monarch’s equerry I asked in plain English, “Is our leader in?”
“He is,” she said, “and he’s been asking for you. I take it you didn’t sleep at home last night.”
“As a matter of fact I shared a sleeping bag with Jackson Barnett.”
“You are impossible, Archy McNally.”
I knocked before entering the inner sanctum. Father, all prim and proper, was seated behind his desk, stroking his mustache.
“Ah, Archy. I’m so glad you’re here. I have some interesting news.”
I took a visitor’s chair and waited to be enlightened.
“I received a call from Lance Talbot,” he said with obvious glee. “While he intends to keep his grandmother’s attorney, he wants to diversify and employ us primarily on a consulting basis. Needless to say, I told him we would be honored to be of service.”
“Well, sir,” I commenced, “I, too, have some interesting news.”