Gentleman Called Read online

  “I am.” Her antagonism vanished. She dearly loved being discovered for what she was.

  The man made a lacework of fingers far too delicate for the stomach over which he entwined them. “When I was a boy I knew Highlands and Lowlands. I had a governess who finished off prayers with me every night with a verse you might find familiar:

  ‘From ghouls and ghosties

  And three legged hosties

  And things that go bump in the night

  The Lord deliver us…’”

  Mr. Adkins smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I don’t know what it was that the Lord delivered me from in answer to her prayers, but do you know, I’ve taken an inordinate degree of pleasure ever since in things that go bump in the night?”

  What a delightful man, Mrs. Norris thought. “You might like a glass of port, sir,” she suggested. “I’ve heard Mr. James recommend it to the real connoisseurs.”

  “Will you have a glass with me?”

  “No, sir, I will not,” she said, and with genuine regret that a man of such obvious high station should show such low taste.

  He popped to his feet and gave a deep bow. “Forgive the familiarity, dear lady. Something in the moment brought me back to the company of my own Miss Ramsey.”

  “I am a widow,” Mrs. Norris said, her emphasis on the word making the distinction between herself and his own Miss Ramsey even stronger.

  “Of a sea captain,” Mr. Adkins cried.

  “He was a man of the sea,” she admitted in some awe of the inner sight the man must possess.

  “And lost at sea, wasn’t he?”

  “Aye, sir, a long time ago.”

  “And you’ve been faithful to his memory all these years,” he said with an awesome respect.

  “He gave me no reason to forget him, poor boy,” Mrs. Norris chimed, aware of growing lugubrious. The truth was that he had given her little reason to remember him either.

  “Then he did leave you provided for,” Mr. Adkins said.

  Mrs. Norris lifted her chin. “Aye. With a sea bag to pack my duds in.”

  Mr. Adkins blinked his eyes at her in mute admiration. “I shall have the port, thank you.”

  The tastefulness and timeliness of his dismissal thereby recovered for him completely the esteem he had lost so early. He was merely impetuous, impetuous and open-hearted, Mrs. Norris decided, and she wondered—as she rarely did of his affairs—on what business Mr. James was seeing this remarkable man.

  4

  JIMMIE REACHED HOME JUST before nine-thirty. His first impression of his client was that he was a modest, conservative man. Not too modest, perhaps, Jimmie second-thought the matter: his clothes were cut to compensate nature’s mismanagements. But Adkins, surprised in the act of refilling his own glass, actually blushed.

  “How do you do, sir,” Jimmie said, extending his hand. “Mrs. Norris, I see, has made my excuses.”

  “Indeed she has. I might almost wish you longer delayed—with her company and this.” He held up the glass. “One might wonder which had been with you the longer.” He sighed and shook his head. “Wine and women, I should not mix them even in metaphor.”

  Jimmie laughed.

  “Oh, my dear man,” Adkins cried, “I hope you laugh because my situation is not desperate?”

  “From what I can gather, your situation at its worst could be scarcely desperate, Mr. Adkins. You are not a married man?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “That is the sort of circumstance that might make a situation such as yours desperate,” Jimmie said.

  “I am rather jealous of my reputation, Jarvis, and I cannot see this sort of legal action as improving it. That is why, for my part, I should like to see the thing settled out of court.”

  “The plaintiff mentions a hundred thousand dollars as a sum she would consider settling for on behalf of her son—which amount, in turn, she would be happy to have you invest…”

  “I am a broker,” Adkins said.

  “She would like a guaranteed income of five thousand a year from it,” Jimmie went on.

  Adkins threw back his head and laughed much too heartily. “Oh, my dear Jarvis, if you but knew the irony of that!” He was serious then. “I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars. My mother has several millions, but not I.”

  Jimmie somehow wanted to delay a discussion of the Dowager Adkins as long as possible. “Miss Daisy Thayer—the plaintiff—and if it does come to trial I ought to be able to do something with that name before a jury—seems to have an extraordinary memory. It would seem she has almost total recall of the incidents of your relationship.” Jimmie had spent the afternoon going over the particulars in the bill.

  “Oh, the wretch!” Adkins cried.

  “How old is Miss Thayer, by the way?”

  Adkins thought about it. “I’m not very good at gauging the ages of women. My mother seems ageless and my sisters perennial. I should say Daisy is anywhere between twenty-five and forty.”

  “That puts her within the age of consent at least,” Jimmie said dryly. A blind man could draw a better sight than that on a woman.

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Adkins said quite seriously.

  “You seem to have made several proposals to her—in writing and it would seem on tape recording—that suggest serious intentions, a permanent relationship.”

  “I had something of that sort in mind, all right,” Adkins admitted.

  “Matrimony?”

  “Matrimony is not very permanent in our concupiscent times, is it?” Adkins said earnestly. “But no doubt I suggested it, nonetheless.”

  “To what purpose?” Jimmie said. “That’s what the jury will want to know.”

  Adkins folded his hands and smiled, a flashing beatific sort of smile that suggested a very unworldly man. “No doubt,” he said.

  Since his answers were ambiguous, Jimmie put his questions the more directly. “Do you think you’re the father of—what’s its name—Alexander?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “You did not have relations with the woman?”

  “I did not.”

  Jimmie sighed. It was not going to be easy to make a persuasive argument to that effect in face of Miss Thayer’s memories. Yet there was something about Adkins to give credence to his words, an aura, an attitude, something, to put it bluntly, virginal. But try to get that across to a jury!

  “You mentioned wanting to make a settlement out of court,” Jimmie said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Why,” Adkins said, “I suppose I’d be willing to be say, godfather to the child.”

  “I somehow doubt that that will satisfy his mother,” Jimmie said. “And I’m just afraid you and I are going to have to go over some of the details of your relationship, Mr. Adkins. It’s rather important that at least I understand your position.”

  Adkins nodded. Then he asked brightly, “Would you like to know how I met her?”

  “All right,” Jimmie said, but he excused himself first and got a wine glass from the cabinet. He filled his own glass and added a half to Teddy Adkins’. The little man’s cheeks were peony red, and he had himself a baby sort of face. Very good timing on Miss Thayer’s part to bring suit at this age of her child’s: hold any baby of six to twelve months up next to Teddy Adkins, and you were bound to strike a resemblance. “You were going to tell me about meeting Miss Thayer,” Jimmie prompted.

  “I was. She worked—and I believe still does—in the perfume department of one of our better stores, Mark Stewart’s. It was midsummer, a year ago last July probably. I remember how enormously cool she looked…”

  And calculating, Jimmie thought.

  “The perfume counter adjoins umbrellas,” Adkins went on. “I have never in my adult life been able to resist the perusal of an umbrella counter. Nor, for that matter, a perfume counter, although until that occasion, I had managed to observe the latter from a safe distance.”

  Jimmie smiled. At least Adkins had a sense of humor about it, and he w
as going to need it.

  “I remember now that she spoke first, said something about having an umbrella like the one at which I was looking. She advised me against the purchase of it. Said the knob always came off in her hand. I said some damned nonsense about its not being difficult to lose one’s knob in her hands…” He blushed now at the recollection. “Not every man is gifted with the prophecy of his own doom, eh, Jarvis? I invited her to lunch…and learned a great deal about perfumes. I even thought a bit about manufacturing them. I putter a bit with one thing and another. Making things, you know. A restless sort of man, I am.” Adkins sighed. “But I thought then of Mama. I must take her into consideration every move. Having raised three daughters in tweeds while despairing first of a male heir and then of his survival, she could not be expected to take kindly to his careering in perfumes.”

  There was the crux of the matter, Jimmie thought, and wondered if Adkins knew it of himself.

  “Now I hope this won’t shock you, Jarvis, but I am most anxious not to displease Mama. I have not yet come into my inheritance, and despite evidence to the contrary, I do not believe she can live forever.”

  And still it was not Mama’s age but Teddy-boy’s that Jimmie had to sometimes remind himself of. “I consider myself fortunate,” Jimmie said, interjecting a personal note, “in having been cured of such expectancy at the age of sixteen. My father borrowed ten dollars from me that I had just won in an oratory contest. To my recollection, he never did pay it back.”

  “You can, at least, remember your father,” Adkins said.

  “Oh yes,” said Jimmie. “It would be hard not to. I wonder if we could now go into some of the particulars in your relationship.”

  “I suppose sooner or later we must get down to the sordid aspects,” Adkins said dismally. “And it was all so beautiful in the beginning.”

  Jimmie glanced at him sharply, wondering if he were sincere. Apparently he was. Jimmie consulted his notes. “Did you on August 3, 1956, write a letter in which occurred the words: ‘I feel I must approach the holy day as was the custom in olden times when matrimony was a sacrament. I shall want a few days in solitary contemplation, in retreat.’ And then later in the letter: ‘In bond I shall love you out of all bounds.’”

  Adkins had gone a deep red. “I wrote it,” he said quietly.

  “Beautiful,” Jimmie said.

  His client brightened. “I thought so myself.”

  Jimmie cleared his throat and turned to another page. “The tape recording—you know what that contains?”

  Adkins almost flew from the chair and began to pace the room. “Oh, yes. Despicable wench, to have turned it to such ill use! I should think that in civilized society the very presentment of such evidence would mitigate against her.”

  “I hope that will happen, Mr. Adkins,” Jimmie said. “Now Miss Thayer recalls that you spent the night of August 5 with her…”

  “The evening, not the night,” Adkins interrupted.

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Quite distinctly. It was a full moon when I drove home.”

  “I don’t suppose the man in the moon is an unfriendly witness,” Jimmie said, “but I doubt that he’ll be much help. Do you suppose anyone else could testify to seeing you that night?”

  Adkins shook his head. “I am solitary in my habits. I doubt it.”

  “Did you and Miss Thayer exchange any mementos of your affections for each other?”

  Adkins who had been standing before the fireplace whirled about on Jimmie. “What?”

  Jimmie repeated his question.

  “What, may I ask, suggests that, Mr. Jarvis?”

  Jimmie shrugged, unable to understand the turn that seemed to have given his client. “I was trying to find evidence of cupidity on the part of Miss Thayer. I should think she might have tried to get a ring or some token she might use as a pledge from you.”

  Adkins flashed a smile, a beamish boy, Jimmie thought. “Forgive me, Jarvis. I mistook you to be questioning my integrity. As a matter of fact she did ask me for a token. It came out of our conversation one evening, I think—she asked me if she might have my army ‘dog tag’ to keep for sentiment.”

  “And did you give it to her?” Jimmie said, leaning forward.

  “Yes. I had a devil of a time finding it, but I managed.”

  “And does she have it now?”

  “Oh no. It came back when we parted.”

  “Could you tell me the circumstances under which you parted?”

  “We quarreled one night over something trivial—and likely distasteful. A rather vulgar girl, Daisy, when one got to know her. As a matter of fact when I was leaving she told me then she was in a position to—to do what she has just done.”

  That, Jimmie thought, was a very roundabout way of saying that Daisy had told him she was pregnant. Squeamish as well as beamish, Mr. Adkins.

  “What did you say to her then, Mr. Adkins?”

  The little man threw up his hands. “I told her to do it, by all means. I assumed it to be a wishful sort of bluff.”

  “Have you any idea why she wanted your army ‘dog tag’?”

  “At the time it was, well, like an intimate bit of apparel. Or so I thought. A bit of animal, there is in that girl, Jarvis.”

  “There is indeed,” said Jimmie, “the vixen. A piece of vital information came to her by that tag: your blood type. And if, as you say, you are not the father of the child, she must have shopped to your specifications.”

  Adkins made a round mouth of shocked surprise. “For a…a…”

  “That’s right,” Jimmie said. “If you’ve been framed, it has been done in proper style. I don’t suppose you knew any other young men of her acquaintance at the time?”

  “Oh, no. I was not competitive,” Adkins said.

  “And would anyone else know of your having given her your ‘dog tag’?”

  Adkins thought about that. “My sister, Miranda, would know of my having looked for it at the time. It was she had it, and no small business was it to get it from her either. She’s rather possessive about me, you see. But naturally I did not tell her for whom I wanted it.”

  After threshing through, but not out, other incidents of Mr. Adkins’s relationship with the woman, Jimmie tried to put the alternatives in the case before his client. “We may in the end have to pay something to keep it from going to trial,” he said. “Would you consider doing that?”

  “I would, but Mama would not. As a matter of fact, Jarvis, this whole thing seems to be giving her an inordinate amount of pleasure. It seems to have rejuvenated her, and to tell the truth, I had rather counted on it to have the opposite effect. She has become a naughty old woman. And I am just afraid it is you who will have to deal with her. After all you are her lawyers, Wiggam and all of you.”

  Adkins seemed to be going to pieces at the very mention of his mother. It confirmed Jimmie’s suspicions of the woman. He gave a great sigh himself. He was getting a little old to deal with the vigors of her generation. “She will see me?”

  “Noblesse oblige,” Adkins said.

  5

  JASPER TULLY WAS INDEED a melancholy man at having to pass up Mrs. Norris’ invitation to dinner. A widower, he lived in the Bronx with his sister whose cooking, like her conversation, was composed of scraps she had picked up and flavored to her own taste.

  But the report of homicide which had come through to the District Attorney’s office late that November afternoon located the incident in the upper east Nineties, a neighborhood congested and inflammable with a new minority people pressing in upon an old minority, and in their midst, trying to withstand both pressures, were a few resident holdouts of second or third generation New Yorkers in the once elegant brownstones. To these latter, the victim, Mrs. Arabella Sperling, belonged. The District Attorney thought his chief investigator ought to be on hand.

  Tully sometimes wondered if all the Precinct and Homicide men who answered a complaint were necessary. He was in favor of scien
ce if it didn’t get in the way of reason. But then, the younger men didn’t need room to think. Left alone, they couldn’t think their way through a railroad flat. Teamwork. It was all a matter of teamwork. Tully slithered his way through the team and its equipment to the room from which the victim’s body had been recently removed. He talked with the Medical Examiner who had waited for him.

  The woman had been dead for about forty-eight hours, apparently strangled to death in her bed, and likely in her sleep, for there had been no struggle at all. Her throat had been neatly and deeply massaged by someone who knew his anatomy.

  Tully looked then at the double bed from which the technical men were about to remove the linens.

  “Anybody sleep in that with her?” he asked.

  Lieutenant Greer, who was in charge of the investigation, stood by also. He was at the frustrating stage of the investigation where everything remained to be done and nothing could be done immediately: men were searching for physical evidence, others for witnesses, without having turned up enough of anything yet to justify action.

  “Not regularly,” he said in answer to Tully’s question.

  Tully observed the salvaging and preservation of a long gray hair. “How old a woman?”

  “Fifty-one, according to her insurance policies.”

  “Who’s the beneficiary?”

  “Two nieces,” Greer said. “Very unlikely suspects.”

  “Got any likely ones?”

  Greer looked at him with a jaded tolerance. “Give us an hour or two, will you, Tully?” He led the way then to the dressing table; a film of fingerprint powder lay over much of it. “There was robbery. This jewel box was emptied. But no sign of housebreaking. And herself sleeping peacefully in bed.”

  “Herself not surprised,” murmured Tully. “Who made the complaint?”

  “The building superintendent. When the newspapers accumulated in the hall from a couple of days, he remembered that she was in the habit of telling him if she expected to be away overnight. That’s his story. She owned this building, and he has a key to the apartment. But—he got a cop to come with him before entering.”

  “The careful sort, isn’t he?” said Tully.