Tightrope Walker Read online

  Signed on this 2nd day of July 1965,

  Hannah Gruble Meerloo

  witnessed by:

  Daniel Lipton

  Hubert Holton

  Leonora Harrington

  We finished reading at the same time. Joe said, “John Tuttle’s the name of the young man who was driving for her summers.”

  “Enter chauffeur,” I said, nodding. “Enter a witness named Daniel Lipton. Re-enter Hubert Holton.”

  “And Nora witnessed the will, too,” mused Joe.

  “I see that,” I said, and I stared down at this innocent sheet of paper, wishing I could shake it until its secrets tumbled out. “Joe, I think we’ve got to see this man Garwin Mason next, don’t you? Hannah’s attorney, I mean, to see what he says about this will. If he’s still alive,” I added.

  “Let’s find out,” said Joe.

  We drove two blocks to a public phone booth where I found Garwin Mason’s name listed in the directory under Mason, Gerard and Tuttle. It was after five o’clock but I telephoned anyway, and was surprised to hear a live secretary answer. I asked if we might see Mr. Garwin Mason. The secretary said that he’d already left, and she was just leaving, that Mr. Mason had to be in court the next morning at ten o’clock but that I could see him before then at half-past eight. I made the appointment, gave her my name, and hung up.

  It was now half-past five. I looked up Jane Morneau in the directory and found that she lived at 23 Farnsworth Road; I put in a call to her too but there was no answer and so Joe and I decided to have dinner next which, considering that we’d had no lunch, seemed a reasonable thing to do.

  “And what do we use as bait for Mr. Garwin Mason at half-past eight tomorrow morning?” asked Joe pleasantly.

  We were seated in the coffee shop of the Golden Kingfisher Motel, where thirty minutes earlier we had checked into unit 18. We each had a seafood platter in front of us, a milk shake, and a copy of Hannah’s will.

  “I think,” I said firmly, having already considered this, “that I should visit him alone and tell him I’m writing a biography of Hannah Gruble, author.”

  Joe grinned. “Your inventiveness astounds me, Miss Jones.”

  “It does me, too,” I admitted, “but in a sense it is like research for a biography, Joe, so it’s not an outright lie. Lawyers don’t thaw easily.”

  “You make him sound like a frozen steak.”

  “Well,” I said vaguely, “there’s client confidentiality and all that, isn’t there? Joe, this will has to be the paper Hannah was forced to sign before she died, don’t you think?”

  “The date’s wrong,” he pointed out. “The will was drawn up the second and she died the twenty-fifth. We can’t suppose otherwise until you’ve seen Mr. Mason tomorrow, because if he drew up that will for Hannah—”

  “I don’t for a moment believe that he did,” I told him flatly. “She wrote in her note that whatever she signed the night before was her death warrant. I can’t think of anything else a person would sign that could be so damning.”

  “Okay,” said Joe, relenting, “suppose Garwin Mason didn’t draw up the will for her and it’s a phony, or was drawn up by the people who killed her. Remember Hannah’s note? She’d signed whatever it was the night before she was killed, and she was killed the twenty-fifth.”

  “It could have been typed up the twenty-second or twenty-third of July but dated earlier to avert suspicion.”

  Joe said patiently, “But Nora’s signature is on it, and Nora wasn’t in Carleton until a few hours before Hannah’s death. She’d just ‘come back,’ remember?”

  “Damn,” I said, and thought about this. “Then suppose somebody typed up the will on July 2, using Hannah’s typewriter to be certain just in case, persuaded the witnesses to sign it, and sometime after that Hannah was locked into the box room until she herself signed it.”

  “That sounds better.”

  “Oh Joe.”

  “Steady there.”

  “Yes, but think of the kind of mind that could conceive of this,” I said, tears rising to my eyes. “To take an unprotected woman and lock her up in a room in her own home, Joe, until her spirit is crushed—and the worst of it, people coming to the house, tradesmen, neighbors perhaps, and never suspecting. The cold-blooded ruthlessness of it, Joe!”

  He nodded. “All the more important we find who did it, Amelia.”

  I glanced down at the will in front of me. “We have to find out what’s different in this will from any other wills she made. Do you think Garwin Mason will tell me? I can already hazard a guess.”

  Joe, reading my mind, shook his head. “You have to keep your mind open in this sort of thing, Amelia, not leap to conclusions or let preconceived ideas spring up too early.”

  “Of course,” I said politely, “except I do think it’s very odd, her leaving one third to this John Tuttle, who’s not related at all.”

  He grinned. “Okay, so why don’t you look in the directory and see if there’s still a Jason Meerloo Orphanage here in Anglesworth?”

  “I already did,” I told him quietly. “After I called Mr. Mason’s office and before I looked up Mrs. Morneau’s number. Which reminds me that I’d better try her number again.”

  “Great,” said Joe dryly as I got up, “and was there, or was there not, an orphanage listed?”

  “No orphanage,” I told him. “John Tuttle did not keep it afloat as she hoped in her will.”

  Joe looked at me with an odd smile on his lips. “But Amelia, aren’t you forgetting that if our suppositions are correct Hannah didn’t write that will?”

  I dropped back into my chair again, neatly floored by this jab. I said helplessly, “But that makes it a very strange will, Joe. I can’t belive Nora’s involved, she must have loved her aunt—”

  “But her signature’s on the will,” Joe reminded me.

  “I’m betting it was forged or gotten under false pretenses, but if she was involved,” I pointed out, “that makes it even stranger because she cut herself off from one third of a lot of money. And if John Tuttle was involved he tied himself to supporting an orphanage with his money. Quite publicly, too.”

  “Wait—be patient,” said Joe. “Tomorrow we make absolutely certain that Hannah’s attorney did not draw up this will. We verify.”

  “That word again,” I said indignantly, and left him and went to the telephone. I dropped a dime in the slot, dialed Mrs. Morneau’s number, and after listening to it ring and ring I replaced the receiver. I dug out my spiral notebook and consulted names again and then looked up Daniel Lipton in the directory. There was no Daniel listed but there was a Mrs. Daniel Lipton living at 13½ Pearl Street. I copied the address, stopped at the counter to buy a map of Anglesworth on display there, and went back to the table to tell Joe.

  “Okay,” he said after a glance at his watch. “I suggest we wrap up this bacchanalian feast with a couple of hot fudge sundaes and then go and see if she’s related, but first I’ll call my answering service and tell them where I am.”

  Joe took his turn at telephoning and when he came back he looked pleased. “Ken says it looks as if the hearing’s been postponed again, so we can relax.”

  “Beautiful,” I said, and felt ten pounds lighter despite the enormous sundae on which I was gorging.

  Pearl Street was a forgotten dirt road behind a supermarket and a movie house, obviously one of the last stops in Anglesworth on the road down. There were only six houses on the street, but any differences in their architecture had long ago been erased by the erosions of apathy: broken windows stuffed with blankets, sagging porches, peeling paint and loose garbage spilling out of rusting pails and cardboard cartons. When we drew up to number 13½ a rat slunk away from a plastic pail and gave us a sullen look over his shoulder. By the time we reached the front door of 13½ he was back again; I noticed a sizable number of empty wine and gin bottles among the refuse.

  The bell wasn’t working; we knocked and then called, and after an interval a woman o
pened the door and said suspiciously, “Yeah?”

  “Mrs. Lipton?” asked Joe. “Mrs. Daniel Lipton?”

  She peered at us blurredly. Her face was a circle of desiccated flesh with heavy pouches under her eyes and chin. She was wearing a long flowered cotton skirt, a moth-eaten gray cardigan, a green sweater under that, and a black turtleneck under that. She was all layers, it was hard to define a figure behind them. Her hair was a frizzy blond with gray showing at the roots and there was a thick smear of crimson covering her mouth. “Good or bad?” she asked in a hoarse whiskey voice, and looked over Joe admiringly. “Good news, okay. Bad, come tomorrow.”

  “We’re trying to trace a Mr. Daniel Lipton,” Joe told her. “Around 1965 he had some connection with Mrs. Hannah Meerloo, and witnessed a will she made in July of that year.”

  “Danny?” she said and shrugged. “If you got the price of a bottle I’ll let you in.”

  Joe took out a five-dollar bill and she grabbed it. “Tom?” she called over her shoulder and opened the door wider to let us in.

  We walked into a cold hallway and then into a dark living room. The reason it was so dark was that venetian blinds had been drawn over each of the two windows, and the only light came from the television tube, which glowed eerily and across which a wagon train was riding at full gallop. Silhouetted against this ghostly illumination sat three men, stiffly upright. I thought at first they might be dead and propped up in their chairs, they sat so still and straight, not even turning at our arrival, but one of them slowly stirred, detached himself, and walked over to Mrs. Lipton. Wordlessly she gave him the five-dollar bill and without any change of expression he glided out of the house, closing the door behind him.

  Mrs. Lipton led us to a couch with broken springs in the back of the room and we sat down. “So?” she said, staring at us.

  “You’re related to the Daniel Lipton who knew Mrs. Meerloo and witnessed her last will in 1965?”

  She moved her eyes from us to the wall, apparently to think about this. “He did yard-work for her sometimes. Not regular-like but when she needed extra help. The big house in Carleton?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “Yep, that’s Danny.” She gave a cackle. “Landscape gardening’s what it said on his truck. Most of it, between you’n me, was grass-cutting. But that was a long time ago. Any money in this for me?” she asked, suddenly staring at us again.

  “He was your husband?” I asked.

  “Well,” she began, and sniffed, brought a tattered Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose, “he was.” She thought about this, too, her head tilted; appeared to reach some conclusion, opened her mouth to speak, and then sighed and closed it. “Bastard,” she said finally, in a sentimental voice. “He could put it away faster’n anybody I met since.”

  “Since what?” asked Joe quickly.

  “Since he got—” Whatever it was I didn’t hear because the Indians began attacking the wagon train on the television screen and the room was suddenly filled with war whoops.

  Joe was sitting closer to her. “You mean he’s dead?” I heard him say.

  “Dead!” Her shriek filled the room, louder than the howling Indians. “Hey boys,” she shouted, “this guy wants to know if Danny’s dead.”

  I thought I heard polite titters, but neither of the remaining two heads turned. She said to Joe, “A long time ago, buster, and it ain’t been easy for me since.”

  I could bet it hadn’t; I wondered how many bottles lay between then and now. “How long?” I asked, pursuing this picture of enough empty bottles to reach Chicago or possibly Denver.

  “Nineteen sixty-five it was,” she said. “Christmas Eve when they told me.”

  The front door opened and Tom glided back into the room carrying a heavy paper bag; from the weight of it there must have been two or three bottles inside. Mrs. Lipton sprang to her feet, pulled out one of the bottles, wrung it open, took a long drink, shivered, and handed it to Tom. “Party night,” she giggled.

  “Mrs. Lipton,” Joe said, and then louder, “Mrs. Lipton—”

  She looked at us in surprise. “You still here? I got no more to say. He’s dead.”

  We got up from the couch but Joe had apparently heard her words better than I during the Indian onslaught because he shouted at her, “You said he was killed, Mrs. Lipton?”

  “Did I?” she said, surprised. “Well, he’s dead, that’s for sure, and there’s the door.” Just to be sure we found it she walked over, opened it and held it for us.

  We were already on the porch when she shouted after us angrily, “Got his throat slit from ear to ear down by the river Christmas Eve, that’s what, and they never learnt who did it or tried very hard neither, the bastards.”

  When we spun around to look at her the door was shut.

  Christmas Eve 1965, I thought. Five months after Hannah’s death, almost to the day.

  We walked to the van and climbed in. It was dusk now but the dimming of light didn’t improve the view any. I said quietly, “Let’s get out of here, Joe.”

  Joe made no move to start the van. He said grimly, “Amelia—”

  “What?”

  “It’s not too late, you know. This happened a long time ago, and life has—well, arranged itself around it now. Adjusted itself.”

  So it was Joe who was feeling scared now; on the other hand I was beginning to glimpse patterns and whorls, all of them horrible but nevertheless taking on vague shapes behind the nearly impenetrable fog. “I don’t think life has arranged itself around this death very happily,” I pointed out. “And we’re just beginning to get somewhere,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, but where, Amelia?”

  “Closer to a murder.”

  “And a murderer,” he pointed out. “A murderer who got away with violence a long time ago, Amelia.”

  I said, “You’re thinking what I am, then? That Daniel Lipton may have been murdered because of something he knew about Hannah’s death?”

  “And before he could talk,” Joe said, starting the van at last and shifting into gear. “After all, if he drank like his wife—he witnessed that will, Amelia, and everything points now to its being a bogus will.”

  “Still to be verified,” I reminded him with a smile, but I considered his words thoughtfully as we bumped over the potholes and left Pearl Street behind. I wondered why they left me unmoved. Since morning, when I’d learned that Hannah was H. M. Gruble all my doubts seemed to have vanished. I remembered Amman Singh saying to me once that the important events of our lives are already laid out for us in a pattern that we can’t see or understand, and that these events are inescapable. I’d always supposed that I would follow this wherever it took me but now I felt that it was inevitable, as if it had been waiting for me all along.

  Of course I was forgetting that until recently my hold on life had been very light, very tenuous, and that my judgment might be askew. I forgot that I was still convalescent—comparatively unlived, so to speak—and that Joe might be seeing more clearly than I. But when accosted with decisions—which are frankly hell for me to make—my motto is always “consider the alternative,” and I just couldn’t conceive of what my life would be like if I walked away from this. I no longer had choice; I was already inside of it, I had passed the point of no return.

  “I can’t back out, Joe,” I told him flatly. “Even if you do, I can’t now.”

  He said darkly, “I thought I’d fall in love with some nice wholesome all-American girl whose idea of a good time was doing crossword puzzles and admiring me.”

  “Isn’t life amazing?” I said cheerfully, and we climbed the steps to unit 18, unlocked the door, walked inside, and bolted it behind us.

  9

  At twenty-five minutes past eight the next morning I left Joe curled up in the van again with Astronomy for the Layman—he was certainly having trouble making headway in it—and walked into the offices of Mason, Gerard and Tuttle. There was a nice waiting room, white walls with seascapes th
at hadn’t been reproduced by an office supply house but selected with care and expense from art shows: one was an original Marin. When I told the secretary who I was, she said I was expected and pointed to one of the four doors opening on to the waiting room. I walked into an office that was wall-to-wall books, except for one space over Mr. Mason’s desk in which there hung a really fine Buffet print of a sailboat with the wind lifting its sails.

  Mr. Mason glanced up at my entrance, and then rose to shake hands. He looked far beyond retirement age, eighty at least, but there was nothing frail about him: his face was weatherbeaten, he was bald except for a thatch of white hair encircling his skull and his eyes were an unbleached vivid blue, narrowed now in their appraisal of me. I had the feeling that I was being weighed, measured and dissected with uncanny penetration and I felt sorry for anyone who faced him with a guilty conscience. Yet I liked him at once; he was, to use a very old-fashioned word, a gentleman. He had presence. It was obvious in the soft, courteous voice that suggested I sit down, Miss Jones, and in the way he remained standing until I did so; in the reserved but kindly smile that put me at ease and the courtly manner in which he asked what he could do for me.

  “I’m writing a biography of Hannah Gruble,” I said firmly. “Or Mrs. Meerloo, of course, and in my research I’ve come to the facts of her death.” I placed the Xeroxed copy of her will on his desk, and added, “Your name is mentioned in the will, and so it occurred to me … that is, there are a few questions left unanswered about her death.”

  “And in what way can I be of help, Miss Jones?” he asked. He reached for a pair of glasses, put them on, glanced at the will, removed his glasses and restored his gaze to me.

  I said innocently, “This will was, of course, drawn up by you personally?”

  There was an edge to his voice when he said, “No, it was not.”

  “I see,” I said, my heart beating faster at this acknowledgement. “But surely where it mentions you as her attorney, and you were appointed co-executor of the will—”