The condominium was high up in another tall building on a quiet street, and the man who opened the door was about thirty-five, with a Scandinavian look to him, light hair and a round genial face. He said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Dobbs is in the hospital, just since yesterday.' He looked at the badge and gave them a curious stare.
'We'd like to ask you some questions,' said Mendoza. 'What's your name? Do you live here‘?'
'Brant. Bernard Brant.' He lost a little of the punctilious manner. 'Yes, I've been looking after the old gentleman for a couple of years, since he broke his hip. I've been a male nurse ten years, and I like the work fine, but this was the easiest job I ever had. He didn't really need nursing, just a little help. All there was to do was get his meals, drive him wherever he wanted, like that. He got back on his feet again after they put a pin in his hip, and he was sharp as a tack, mentally, you know. What's this all about?' He had stepped back to let them in. The living room was elegantly furnished with a big T.V. console in one corner.
'About his granddaughter,' said Mendoza. 'The girl from France. Did you know about her?'
'Oh, sure. Everybody did,' said Brant. 'Mr. Dobbs was excited about her coming. He liked getting letters from her. I really think it was the reason he just went downhill the last month, after he got the letter to say she couldn't come after all. It was a big disappointment to him. I think it sort of contributed to his having the stroke yesterday.'
'Oh,' said Hackett. 'She wrote to say she wasn't coming?'
'Yes, and he took right against her when he got that letter. He'd been so interested in her, he had her picture beside his bed, he was always telling me how much she looked like her mother and she was just as smart, too. He was proud of her. He wanted to see her and show her off to people. And you know, I think that girl made a big. mistake not coming,' said Brant reflectively. 'Because he said to me more than a few times that Juliette would get a surprise when he died, he was going to make a new will and leave her a lot of money-make it up to her for how he'd treated her mother. One time when he was mad at his two sons he said, by God, he'd leave her the whole kit and caboodle.'
'That's interesting,' said Hackett.
'But when he got that letter, he turned right against her. She said that fellow she's engaged to wouldn't let her come, didn't want her leaving France-and she didn't send back the money Mr. Dobbs had sent her to get the plane ticket. He was mad about that.' Mendoza laughed. 'He said, like mother, like daughter, and he tore up her letters-he used to read them over-and her picture.'
'I see,' said Mendoza. 'Did his sons come to visit him often?'
Brant grinned. 'From what I heard they had to. He was sharp as a tack like I say and he was still active in the business. He'd kept all the reins in his own hands like they say. Those two, they had to bring all the papers for him to sign. He knew everything that was going on at the office. Why in hell are the police interested in all this?'
'You may be reading about it in the Times,' said Mendoza.
At the curb beside the Ferrari he said reverently, 'But it's beautiful, Arturo. So simple and so beautiful. The old man getting sentimental in his old age, besotted about the pretty granddaughter-and his mind still sharp. The business still in his own hands. So there'd be no hope of getting him declared incompetent. There are a hell of a lot of bribable people in the world, but not many of them will be reputable psychiatrists. David and Robert Dobbs stand to inherit everything, and that business must be grossing millions. God knows what they own all over the country. And I haven't any doubt that if the old man said it to Brant he'd said it to them, leave her everything, maybe. They wouldn't remember much about the older sister who went to France. And here's this upstart of a girl going to rob them of everything they had-everything they'd sweated for. He can't have been an easy man to deal with. They'll have had to kowtow to him-yes, Father, no, Father. And the strange girl stepping in to take the whole kitty because she reminded him of her mother and wrote the friendly letters.'
He laughed sharply. 'Just from the family feeling. Oh, by God, or course they had to do something about it. So there were two trips to Paris.'
'How do you make that out?'
'The letter. The letter saying she couldn't come. Somebody had to fly over to mail the letter, for the Paris postmark. They'd have heard all about her letters. They knew about Goulart. They had that plan all ready a month before, by God. I wonder if they're both married. Some woman took out that library card. But that Social Security card-well, we'll have a look at them-see what shows.'
'And just the unlucky chance tripping them up,' said Hackett.
'Maybe not chance, Arturo,' said Mendoza.
HE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL just to look at Grandfather, who was in a coma and by what the doctors said unlikely to come out of it. It was an old wrinkled lantern-jawed face on the pillow, with a mean narrow mouth. Not a pleasant character, Grandfather, but not such a villain as they had imagined.
He surveyed the Dobbses in his office enjoyably. David Dobbs was unmarried, but Robert's wife was a flashy blonde named Gaylene, in expensive clothes and wearing too much jewelry. Both the men resembled their father strongly, the same aquiline features and long jaw. ‘They were both impassive. The blonde looked sulky.
'It was a very pretty plan,' Mendoza told them. “Of course your company had that derelict building on its books and a rudimentary look at it would have suggested Daggett as open to bribery. That was very competently accomplished. Which of you went to France?-first to mail the letter and a week or so later to murder Goulart and clear out Juliette's apartment? We'll have to look for a passport, of course. Somehow I think it was Mr. David Dobbs. I appreciate the touch about the money not being returned. That would have been the last straw, to set the old man against her. And Robert and his wife met Juliette at the airport-her pleasant new relatives-all smiles and welcome. You didn't take her home for the neighbors to see, of course. But you could have rented the nice little beach house for a week, or possibly the company owns a suitable place. And you gave her some plausible excuse why she couldn't see Grandfather right away-it only needed to satisfy her long enough for you to get her inside somewhere and get a drink down her-well-laced with a sedative. You kept her half-doped from Saturday to Tuesday, when David got back from France and told you it was all clear, Goulart was out of the way. So you called Daggett and that night you three took the girl to that apartment, left the artistic evidence scattered around, the rest of the money for the Daggetts and Garvey, and went home rejoicing. It all should have been quite safe, but Nemesis outguessed you.' Mendoza laughed.
'I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about,' said Robert Dobbs woodenly.
They asked the airlines and got confirmation of David Dobbs two flights to Paris. They heard from a garrulous friend of Gaylene Dobbs' that her name had been Hoffman before she married Robert, and she'd always hated her real first name, Ruth, used her middle name. So that was where the Social Security card had originated; but Mendoza had overlooked one small point about that. The original card, unlike the replica, would have have borne the date of issue; and that card had probably been issued to Ruth Hoffman when Juliette was hardly more than a baby. But when they got the search warrant for the Robert Dobbs' million-dollar house in Bel Air, they hit a jackpot. At the bottom of a carved wooden jewel case in the bedroom, among all the other expensive jewelry, they found Juliette Martin's engagement ring. The unique ring designed and made by M. Dupres in the Rue Lafayette twenty-six years ago.
And with the only display of emotion Mendoza was ever to see Robert Dobbs display, before that or during the trial, he rounded on his wife with a string of vicious obscenities.
'I told you to throw that damn thing down the john-'
'But, Bob,' she said stupidly, 'it's a valuable ring, it's worth a lot of money.'
