Tightrope Walker Page 12

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. Yet at the inquest it was stated by Mrs. Morneau, your aunt’s housekeeper, that you arrived in June, a week early for your usual July visit with your aunt. You were not with your aunt then for the major part of July?

  A. Oh yes, I was there. I joined Aunt Hannah on June 26, and was with her until her accident, with the exception of two days when I drove to my apartment in Boston on July 23 for more clothes. You see, there was talk of us going to New York City late in July to see Robin in his new play, and I needed city clothes for that. Except—except of course we never drove to New York.… That awful night happened instead.

  I read this statement and then I read it again. Of course I knew that Nora’s signature was on the will but I’d given her the benefit of every doubt. To do anything else would have struck me as monstrous, inhuman. It still did. I couldn’t believe it.

  “I can’t believe it,” Joe said, voicing my own thought. “Nora was there—all through July—except for two days?”

  “She couldn’t have been so cruel,” I said flatly. “Joe, she couldn’t have been in on it, there has to be an explanation.”

  “Like what?” asked Joe.

  “They could have made her a prisoner, too. Or blackmailed her.”

  Joe took the transcript from me and read aloud the remainder of Nora’s testimony.

  Q. This will, Miss Harrington. Can you tell us about the circumstances under which it was signed and witnessed?

  A. Yes, sir. We’d finished dinner—it was about nine o’clock that night—the second of July, was it?—and Aunt Hannah asked if Mr. Holton and I would come into her study to witness her signature on a document. We went into the study and there was a typed sheet of paper on her desk. Through the window we could see Danny Lipton mowing the lawn and she called to Jay—John Tuttle—to ask Mr. Lipton to come inside and be a witness, too. Jay went out and got Danny, and then Jay went off somewhere, and Aunt Hannah explained to the three of us that she’d just written a new will, changing a few small details in the former one. She wanted me to sign, too, she said, just in case three signatures proved necessary in a home-drawn will.

  “Lies, Joe,” I said indignantly. “Lies, every word, Joe. How did they persuade her to say all this?”

  “Hold on,” Joe said, “there’s more, and all of it equally interesting.”

  Q. But did you not find it odd that Mrs. Meerloo’s will had been changed to include John Tuttle as beneficiary?

  A. Well, of course I had no way of knowing at the time that she’d done this, sir. She didn’t show me the will, or tell me what was in it. But she was very fond of Jay, and very proud of him. He’d graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Union College, and he was doing splendidly in graduate school. I think she looked on him as something of the son she’d never had.

  Q. So you feel no bitterness that in this will—constructed without a lawyer—she reduced your own personal legacy by a third, which, in an estate this size, represented a great deal of money?

  A. Well, sir, it was Aunt Hannah’s money, and her wish, obviously. How could I be bitter?

  Q. Your cousin Robert Gruble has suggested that John Tuttle may have used undue influence upon your aunt, Miss Harrington. I would like now to ask you—and remind you at the same time that you are under oath: you were in the house at the time that your aunt conceived the will, and you witnessed her signing of the will. Did John Tuttle at any time use undue influence—any persuasion of any kind—on your aunt, to encourage this change in her will?

  A. No, sir. Absolutely not, sir.

  Q. Thank you, Miss Harrington.

  “Phew,” I whistled, sinking back into the pillows. Nora’s testimony just happened to end at the bottom of a page and I sat there digesting once and for all the fact that Hannah’s niece had been in the house all the time, and therefore must have known what was happening upstairs to her aunt. In 1965 she had submitted to verifying and even enlarging upon Holton’s testimony, and she had done so under oath. By what means had they kept her from going to the police instead?

  Joe said soberly, “This is the sleight-of-hand you predicted, Amelia, right here in the transcript we’rereading. The magic trick they pulled out of their hats: Nora.”

  I said incredulously, “If it weren’t for Hannah’s note in the hurdy-gurdy, Joe—it all sounds so plausible, and yet we know that every damn word is a lie.”

  I sat bolt upright as another fact struck me. “Joe,” I gasped, “Joe, if every word about the signing and witnessing of this will is a lie, then do you realize it’s possible that Hannah never met Hubert Holton at dinner on July 2, and may never have met Holton at all?”

  Joe whistled. “Not bad, Amelia. Sleight-of-hand is right.”

  I said with growing excitement, “Wipe it all out, Joe, and Danny Lipton was not mowing the lawn that evening around nine o’clock. He was not called in on the spur of the moment. Hannah did not invite anyone to her study to witness the signing of a will. And Holton, besides not spending that evening with Hannah talking about books and politics, was never invited to stay for the weekend.”

  “You realize,” Joe said grimly, “what that makes of Holton, don’t you?”

  I nodded, pleased. “One of the faceless ones!”

  Joe was silent and then he said softly, “It makes sense, you know, it makes a frightening kind of sense. Someone unknown to Hannah, someone unfamiliar, and we have only their word for it that Holton was the man who came to dinner and charmed Hannah.” He shook his head. “Maybe we’ve been going about this backward, Amelia. Maybe we should have begun by finding out exactly what happened to each of these people after they murdered Hannah. Daniel Lipton had his throat cut by persons unknown five months later.… Nora’s in a hospital and has been for years.… I’d certainly be interested in knowing what’s happened to John Tuttle and Hubert Holton, wouldn’t you?”

  “But what about Nora?” I demanded. “Joe, I’ve met her—”

  “In a psychiatric hospital,” he pointed out dryly.

  I brushed this aside. “Of course something tragic happened to her back in 1965. That’s obvious. What I want to know, Joe, is what. What did they do to her, what hold did they have over her?”

  Joe scowled. “The one point in her favor—and there aren’t many, Amelia—is that she lost a great deal of money by the change in wills and by her aunt’s death.”

  “And the second point in her favor,” I pointed out indignantly, “is that she spent every summer of her life with her aunt, Joe—willingly—and she had to have cared.”

  “I wonder what this John Tuttle was like,” mused Joe. “We’ve only Hubert Holton’s description of him as a brilliant student and a charming substitute son to Hannah, but he was also a boy who grew up in an orphanage with no money, apparently no Tuttle relatives who would claim him—and with all the Tuttles around that must have stung—and so no family. He was an outsider, an outcast, and yet somehow he ends up with about $700,000, Amelia. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Which means,” I said cynically, “that he could very well have been charming and brilliant. Or clever.”

  Joe reached for the phone beside the bed. “There’s one person we’ve not reached yet, and that’s Mrs. Morneau.”

  “Her testimony comes next,” I said, glancing down at the records, and he put down the phone, waiting. “And very cautious and wary it sounds, Joe.”

  I read:

  Q. Did you know Mr. Hubert Holton?

  A. No, sir. I said before I’d heard the name somewhere, and I’ve remembered now. When John Tuttle was away at his college he’d write Miss Hannah a letter now and then and she’d mention how taken Jay was with this one professor, Mr. Holton, and how nice it was this professor had taken an interest in Jay. But know him, no sir.

  Q. Would you describe for us, please, the relationship that Mr. John Tuttle had with your employer Mrs. Meerloo?

  A. He was always very charming with her, sir.

  Q. Did Mrs. Meerl
oo, before you left for your vacation, which I believe was on July 1, mention the possibility of a new will to you, or did you overhear any mention of it?

  A. No, sir. And I can’t say as I understand it, sir, because Mr. Garwin Mason was her lawyer and so far as I know he was right there in his office in town.

  Q. Yet you do identify this as Mrs. Meerloo’s signature?

  A. Oh yes, sir, it’s hers just like the two men here testified. Those two experts. Just the same as on all the checks she signed when she paid me.

  Q. Did you have occasion to visit the house after your departure on July 1, or to speak with Mrs. Meerloo by telephone perhaps?

  A. No, sir. I did call twice, both times on the Fourth of July, in the afternoon it was, just before I left for New Hampshire to visit my friends. I phoned to tell her there’d be fireworks in Anglesworth that night—she always loved fireworks—but there wasn’t any answer.

  Q. Did you find that unusual?

  A. I didn’t think about it much, sir. It was a lovely day, the weather was hot and Miss Nora was a great one for picnics. Mrs. Meerloo always looked forward to July, when Miss Nora and Mr. Robin visited her.

  Q. And would you say it was typical of Mrs. Meerloo to invite Mr. Holton to be a house guest for a month in place of Mr. Robert Gruble?

  A. (unintelligible)

  Q. Speak up, Mrs. Morneau.

  A. Well, I can’t say she’d done anything like that before. She was a—well, a very private person, sir. Enjoyed a quiet life. She wrote her stories, you know, and she—well, meditated is what she called it, something she learned on her travels. She must have thought Mr. Holton would be company for Miss Nora, for tennis and the like, what with Mr. Robin being stuck in New York this year, although she usually played tennis with Jay. Mr. Tuttle, that is.

  Q. Would you say, in your estimation, Mrs. Morneau, that Mr. John Tuttle ever used any undue influence upon Mrs. Meerloo?

  A. Well, he had the run of the house, you might say. He wasn’t a real chauffeur, not in the usual way, sir. It’s not the sort of thing I understand, “undue influence.” Up to the time I left nothing was any different from before.

  Q. Thank you, Mrs. Morneau.

  I told Joe, seeing his hand still on the telephone, “You might as well wait for Daniel Lipton’s testimony, too.”

  “Anything there?”

  “Proof that he was in on it, too,” I told him, glancing over his testimony. “He says that he was mowing the lawn that evening, was called in to witness and sign a will, and Mrs. Meerloo gave him five dollars for it.”

  Joe snorted. “And we know that was a bloody lie.”

  “But they did such a good job,” I said softly. “All of them. They make it sound so believable, Joe.”

  “Because they were in collusion and their futures were at stake,” Joe pointed out. “Let’s hope that Danny Lipton received more than five dollars for perjuring himself, because five months later he certainly ran out of a future.”

  I said, frowning, “I think he did more than perjure himself, Joe, I think he must have been the other ‘faceless one.’ Hannah wouldn’t know him that well, would she? His walk, his gestures—Holton could have done any talking that was necessary.”

  “Go on,” Joe said, watching me. “How do you see it?”

  “I don’t know, of course,” I said, “because we haven’t caught up with John Tuttle or Mr. Holton yet, but everything points to their having plotted this out together. How they bought Nora’s silence we don’t know yet, but I think they were waiting for Mrs. Morneau to leave on her vacation, and as soon as she left Hubert Holton moved into the house and Danny Lipton, too. They just—moved in.” There were tears in my eyes as I pictured it. “And just before they arrived Hannah walked into the box room, the door was locked behind her—did you notice the lock is still on the outside of that door, Joe?—and she became literally a prisoner in her own house. Not on a happy July Fourth picnic, as Mrs. Morneau supposed, but hidden away in a hot little room without food or water.”

  “Steady there,” Joe said gently. “Before you get too carried away, grab that phone book and look up John Tuttle’s name, will you? It’s time we find him. I suggest we telephone every John Tuttle in the book and see if we can zero in on the one who graduated from Union College in the early sixties. I’ll do the calling. I’ll say I’m an alumnus or something. Look up Holton, too, and see if he’s around still.”

  I had already turned to the H’s. “No Holtons listed,” I told him. I turned to the T’s and winced. “Good heavens there are dozens upon dozens of Tuttles, nearly a whole page of them.”

  Joe, watching my face, said, “So? What’s the matter?”

  “Damn,” I said bitterly. “I will read to you herewith all the J. Tuttles listed in this blasted county directory. County, Joe. As follows: Jacque Tuttle. Three James Tuttles. Jane Tuttle. Jason Tuttle. Jaspar Tuttle. Jared Tuttle. Jean Tuttle. Jebediah Tuttle. Jerry Tuttle. Jess Tuttle. Jim Tuttle. Joel Tuttle. Joseph P. Tuttle, Joseph M. Tuttle, Joseph A. Tuttle and Joseph L. Tuttle. Jules Tuttle. Justinian Tuttle.”

  “Not a John among them?”

  “Not a one,” I told him, and presented him with the directory to prove it.

  He scanned it unbelievingly. “Incredible—there are always Johns.”

  “So one is led to believe.”

  He tossed the directory to the floor, picked up the phone, and dialed the number I’d scribbled on paper yesterday. “We need Mrs. Morneau more than ever,” he said. “Let’s hope she’s at home finally. At the least she can tell us where to find Tuttle.”

  Apparently Mrs. Morneau was at home, and while Joe made an appointment for us to see her after lunch I read the opinion filed by Judge Arthur Pomeroy in December of 1965, IN RE WILL OF HANNAH GRUBLE MEERLOO. There was a lengthy analysis of Undue Influence, with references to Barnes vs. Barnes, 66 Me. 286,297 (1876) and Rogers, Appellant, 123 Me. 123 A. 634 (1924) but I skimmed through these to read the last paragraph:

  We cannot know (wrote the judge) what circumstances led Mrs. Meerloo to write a will of her own making on the second of July, 1965, when all previous wills had been drawn by her attorney. But this is her signature, testified to by two experts as well as by those familiar with her signature and style of writing. The will was also witnessed by three people, among them her niece Leonora Harrington, a relative of obvious closeness to the legatee, who was present at the signing of this will, and has testified so under oath. It is a legal will, and must therefore be honored and allowed to pass through Probate.

  To this was appended the message that the appellant, Robert Gruble, was denied his application to have counsel fees paid out of the estate.

  On the bottom of the page someone had written in ink: decision made by R. Gruble not to appeal.

  I wondered why.

  I thought, they could never have gotten away with this without Nora’s testifying for them.

  And this, I realized, was the hell that Nora had faced each morning since July 25, 1965.

  10

  Mrs. Morneau had said she would see us at one o’clock. It was half-past eleven when we finished reading the Probate Court records, and we had just decided on an early, leisurely lunch when the telephone rang. It was strange hearing it ring in a motel room hundreds of miles from home.

  “Oh no,” groaned Joe, and picked up the receiver. “Osbourne here.” He listened and I saw his face tighten. “For God’s sake, Ken, I’m way up here in Maine, you know, couldn’t they have decided this earlier?… Yes, I know, I know, but this is Tuesday, they had all day yesterday and I can’t believe they didn’t know … Christ. Okay, Ken, I don’t know how but—right. Okay.”

  He hung up and sat down hard on the bed. “Damn. You heard?”

  “When do you have to go?” I asked, my heart plunging.

  “I’ve got to be in court at nine tomorrow morning.”

  I stared at him in astonishment. “In Trafton? But you’ll need a plane, and we don’t even know if there’s a
n airport, do we?”

  The next forty minutes were spent on the telephone. I didn’t even have time to think about Hannah, or court records, or how I would have to drive back to Trafton alone in the van. There was one direct flight out of Bangor for New York each day, but it had already left. There was a flight from Bangor to Boston but too late to connect with the six o’clock plane to New York. We were referred to Blue Harbor Airlines. They had one seat available on a plane leaving for Boston at four o’clock that would connect with the flight to New York at six, which would connect with a New York flight to Trafton at nine, arriving at half-past ten. I hadn’t realized how far from home we were. While we waited for the airline to call back and confirm all these reservations I must say that our conversation turned hilariously prosaic.

  I would have to drive home alone in the van, Joe reminded me, and he wanted my promise that I would leave for Trafton first thing in the morning, the earlier the better, and no nonsense about it.

  I promised.

  He didn’t at all appreciate leaving me here, he said, pacing the room furiously, and he wanted my promise that after we visited Mrs. Morneau, and after I’d delivered him to the airport, I would consider all investigations into Hannah’s death suspended. Done with. Finished. Promise?

  I promised.

  I was to drive no faster than fifty miles per hour on the highway, he said sternly; he would mark my route on the map and I was not to attempt too much driving in one day, or get too tired, did I understand?

  It was really very endearing but I was glad when the airlines clerk called back to confirm space on all three flights. We just had time to buy two packages of peanut butter crackers in the coffee shop and to review en route to Mrs. Morneau’s the questions we wanted to ask, and the tact with which we must ask them: a biography would again be our cover.

  With the help of the map I’d bought we found Farnsworth Road. Number 23 was a trim little white Cape Cod house with a picket fence around it, a gate, and a neat little flagstone walk leading up to the front door, which was painted yellow to match the shutters. Everything was very neat, even to the hand-printed name over the mailbox. We rang the bell and the door was opened by Mrs. Morneau. She had a pale, placid face, scarcely lined at all, gray eyes, and iron-gray hair forced into a very neat, stern bun at the nape of her neck. Her figure was what would be called full, and so sternly, rigidly corseted that it thrust out her bosom like a tray.