Make Out With Murder [= Five Little Rich Girls]

Nine

Ferdinand Bell’s office was within limping distance on the ninth floor of a tall narrow building on 48th Street, just east of Fifth. The building directory in the lobby showed that most of the tenants dealt in stamps or coins. Or both.

In the elevator a man with a European accent said, “I can never recommend for appreciation any surcharges or overprints priced significantly higher than their regular issue counterparts. It is not merely that they may be counterfeited, but that the mere prospect of counterfeiting prevents their reaching their logical levels.” I still do not have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I related the conversation to Haig, who understands everything, and of course he nodded wisely. He wouldn’t tell me what it meant, though.

“If you want to learn about anything under the sun,” he aid, “you have only to read the right detective story. The Nine Tailors will tell you as much as you need to know about bell-ringing in English country churches, for example.” (It told me more than I needed to know, to tell you the truth.) “For philately, MacDonald’s The Scarlet Ruse is excellent. There are others that are less likely to e to your taste—”

“Philately? They were talking about stamps?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I didn’t know,” I said. “How was I supposed to know?”

I haven’t read The Scarlet Ruse yet. I suppose I’ll get to it eventually. The thing is, Haig keeps giving me books to read, and it’s impossible to keep up. I did read a couple of books with a coin-collecting background recently, one by Raymond Chandler and another by Michael Innes, so I now know a little more about numismatics than I did when I walked into Ferdinand Bell’s office.

He was the man I’d picked out at the funeral as the most likely candidate for the Ferdinand Bell look-alike contest. Today he was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of gray pants that might have been from the suit he’d worn a day ago. They certainly looked as though he had been wearing them for a while.

I had established earlier that he was around forty-seven, He looked both older and younger, depending on how you looked at him. He was plump, with chipmunk cheeks and happy little eyes, and that made him appear younger than he was, but his hair (short and snow white, with a slightly, receding hairline) added a few years to his appearance. He sat on a stool behind a row of glass showcases in which coins rested on top of two-by-two brown envelopes. There was a bookcase to his right, filled to capacity, and a desk to his left with a great many books and magazines piled sloppily on it.

He looked up when I entered, which I guess is not too surprising, and he blinked rapidly when I told him who I was.

“Yes, Mr. Haig called me. So I’ve been awaiting you. But somehow I expected an older man. Aren’t you a little young to be a detective? And didn’t I see you at the funeral?”

I gave him a qualified yes. Since I wasn’t officially a detective the first question was hard to answer. And the second was impossible; I had been at the funeral, and I saw him there, but how did I know whether he saw me?

“Have a seat,” he said. “Or should we go somewhere and have a cup of coffee? But I don’t think we’ll be disturbed here today. My Saturdays are usually quiet. I tend to mail orders and such matters. That’s if I’m not out of town working a convention. The A.N.A. is coming up in two weeks. It’s in Boston this year, you know.”

I didn’t. I also didn’t know what the A.N.A. was, but I’ve since learned. It’s the American Numismatic Association, and it’s the most important coin convention of the year. He went on to tell me that he had a bourse table reserved and expected to be bidding on some choice lots in the auction. Large cents, I think he said.

“I understand you believe Melanie was murdered,” he said. “I’m reading between the lines there. Your Mr. Haig was deliberately vague. Dear me, I’ve made an unintentional rhyme, haven’t I? Your Mr. Haig/Was deliberately vague. And I gather you have a client in this matter?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell me who it is?”

Haig had said I could, and so I did. I told him one of hem, anyway.

“Caitlin! Extraordinary.”

I wanted to ask him why it was extraordinary. Instead I started asking him some questions about his wife, Robin. Had she seemed at all nervous in the weeks immediately receding her death? Had her behavior changed in any remarkable way?

He squinted in concentration and I swear his nose witched like a bunny’s. “As if she had some precognitive feelings about her fate? I never thought of that.”

“Or as if she were afraid someone would murder her.”

“Dear me. Now that’s a speculation I’ve never entertained. Just let me think now. Do you know, I can’t even concentrate on her attitude then because the whole idea of her having been murdered is so startling to me.”

I nodded.

“Naturally I blamed myself for her death. After all, I was driving. I have a tendency to let my mind wander when I drive. Especially when tired, and I was tired that day; it had been a grueling weekend.” He leaned forward and pressed his forehead with the fingertips of one hand. “I had never had an accident before. My woolgathering never seemed to interfere with my driving. Although I could never help thinking that if I had been paying a bit more attention to what I was doing I might have seen that patch of ice.” He moved his hand to shade his eyes. “And Robin might be alive today.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute or two. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and straightened up on his stool. He forced his smile back in place.

A wistful look came into his eyes. “There’s something I’ve always wondered about, Chip. May I call you that?”

“Sure.”

“Something I’ve always wondered about. That skid I took. I grew up in an area where winter was long and severe. I learned to drive on snow and ice, how to react to sudden skids. Not to fight the wheel, to turn with the skid, all of those actions that are contrary to instinct and must consequently be learned and reinforced. And on the day of the accident I reacted as I had been trained to react.”

“But it didn’t work.”

“No, it did not. And I’ve wondered if there couldn’t have been a possibility of mechanical failure involved. I had the car looked at. It wasn’t damaged all that severely, and if Robin had been sitting beside me and wearing a belt—” His face darkened. He bit his lip and went on. “They found that the steering column was damaged. I had never thought before that it might have been tampered with. Now I find myself wanting to seize on the possibility to whitewash my own role in the affair. If the car had been sabotaged, if some fiend intentionally caused that accident—”

He got to his feet. “You must excuse me,” he said. “I have a nervous stomach. I’ll be a few moments. You might like to have a look at the coins in that case. There are some nice Colonials.”

I had a look at the Colonials. I couldn’t really tell you if they were nice or not. I also had a look at the books on his desk and in the glass-fronted bookcase. They all seemed to be about coins, which probably stood to reason. Some of them looked very old.

I was thumbing through a book called The United States Trade Dollar, by John Willem, when Bell came back. “An illuminating book,” he said over my shoulder. “The Trade dollar was coined purely to facilitate commerce in the Orient. The Chinese traders would put their personal chop marks on them to attest to their silver value. I’ve a few pieces in stock if you’d care for a look at the genuine article.”

He showed me three or four coins, returned them to their little brown envelopes and put them away. “My library is my most important asset,” he said. “There’s a motto in professional numismatics — Buy the book before the coin. The wisest sort of advice and all too few people follow it. Numismatics is a science, not just a matter of sorting change and filling holes in a Whitman folder. Take those Trade dollars. The whole history of the China trade is waiting to be read there.”

He went on like that for a while. I tend to look interested even when I’m not, which Haig tells me is an asset; people reveal more of themselves to people who appear interested. So I listened, and it really was pretty interesting, but it wasn’t getting me any closer to the man who killed Melanie and tried to bomb Leo Haig’s house.

I found an opportunity to get the conversation back on he rails and brought up the question of motive. “Suppose someone did sabotage your car. He couldn’t have been certain of killing just Robin. He would have had a shot at killing you, too.”

“That had occurred to me.”

“Well, anyone who’s busy killing off five sisters probably wouldn’t draw the line at including someone else here and there. Who benefited by Robin’s death?”

“Financially?” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s no secret, surely. Except for a few minor bequests, I inherited Robin’s entire estate.”

“But suppose you had both been killed in the accident.”

“Dear me. I hadn’t thought of that. I’d have to check that, but it seems to me that I recall a provision to cover my dying before Robin. It would also cover simultaneous death, I presume. It’s my recollection that the estate would be divided among her surviving sisters.”

“I see.”

“I’d have to check, but that would present no difficulty. My lawyer has a copy of Robin’s will. I could call him first thing Monday morning. Just let me make a note of that.”

He made a note of it, then looked up suddenly. “I say, Chip. You don’t think I ought to consider myself in danger now, do you?” He laughed nervously. “It’s hard to take | seriously, isn’t it? But if it ought to be taken seriously—”

“Do you have a will?”

“Yes, of course. I drew up a new will shortly after Robin’s death. A few thousand dollars to a couple of numismatic research foundations, some smaller charitable bequests, and the balance to my sister in Lyons Falls.”

“And you inherited Robin’s estate free and clear?”

“Yes. Shortly after we were married we drew wills leaving everything to one another absolutely without encumbrance.” His eyes clouded. “I expected it would be my will which would be put to the test first. I was seventeen years Robin’s senior. She preferred older men, you know. Her first husband was as old as I am now when she married him. There’s a history of heart trouble in my family. I naturally expected to predecease Robin, and although I hadn’t all that much to leave her I wanted my affairs to be in order.”

I told him I didn’t think he was in any danger. No one could now expect to profit from his death. The news didn’t cheer him much. He was too caught up in thoughts of his dead wife.

I asked if he knew anything about Jessica’s will. “I barely knew Jessica,” he said. “The Trelawney sisters were not close, and Robin and I kept pretty much to ourselves. Most of our close friends were business associates of mine. Coin dealers are gregarious folk, you know. We hardly regard one another as competitors. Often we do more business buying from each other and selling to each other than we do with actual collectors. No, I don’t know anything about Jessica’s will. I did go to her funeral, just as I went to Melanie’s. I don’t honestly know why I attended either of them. I had little enough to say to anyone there. I suppose it was a way of preserving my ties to Robin.” He lowered his eyes. “We had so little time together.”

“How did you meet her? Was she interested in coins?”

“Oh, not at all. Although she did come to share some of my interest during our life together. She was growing interested in love money, those little pins and brooches made of three-cent pieces, a very popular jewelry form of the mid-nineteenth century. I would always pick up pieces for her when I saw them. No real value, of course, but she liked them.” He smiled at some private memory. “How did I meet her? I was a friend of her first husband, Phil Flanner. I suppose I fell in love with Robin while she was married to him, although I honestly didn’t realize it at the time. Phil died tragically; a stupid accident. I began seeing her not too long after the funeral. I was drawn to her and enjoyed her company, still not recognizing what I felt as love. Gradually we both came to realize that we were in love with one another. I wish we had realized this sooner, so that we might have been married sooner. We had so very little time.”