Mystery

table.

Tom stood up and saw a worried-looking figure peering at them through the window.

“Your friend Andres?”

Tom said yes.

“Real watchdog, isn’t he?” Natchez went through the door of the cafe, and Andres glanced at Tom and backed away. “Hold on,” Natchez said, and Tom said, “Andres, it’s all right.”

Andres took another step backwards.

“This is the man Lamont was going to talk to. We’re going to go out and pick up my grandfather. Go home and I’ll call you when it’s over.”

The driver turned around and began moving to the corner, with many doubtful glances back.

Tom and Natchez went back through the narrow lanes to the rear of the row of Georgian buildings. The policeman told him to wait at the top end of Armory Place until he came around with a car, and trotted off toward the police parking garage. Tom walked around the side of the Printing Office and down the long plaza, feeling conspicuous in his father’s suit. Policemen in blue uniforms sunned themselves on the benches beneath the potted palms. He heard church bells ringing, and realized that it was Sunday.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Natchez said, braking in front of the guardhouse at the Founders Club. “How did your grandfather and Fulton Bishop get together? It turned out to be a partnership like Gilbert and Sullivan, but Glen Upshaw couldn’t have known that at the beginning. Fulton Bishop was just a young cop from the near west end of the island. I don’t think he ever showed any signs of exceptional promise, but someone was always watching out for him, getting him promoted, making sure he got taken off assignments he couldn’t handle.” A guard sauntered toward them, looking disdainfully at the dented black Studebaker Natchez had drawn from the motor pool. “Take that Blue Rose case. Bishop was in so far over his head he had to dog paddle, and instead of being sent off to a sleepy little precinct like Elm Grove, he’s promoted into an office at headquarters and Damrosch—”

The guard had circled all around the car, and came up to Natchez and leaned on the window. “Did you have some business here, sir?”

Natchez flipped open his shield case and shoved his badge to within an inch of the man’s nose. “Step away from the car, or I’ll run over your foot,” he said.

The guard snatched his hands off the window and moved back. “Yes, sir.”

Natchez drove past him into the grounds of the club. “And Damrosch, as I was saying, gets handed the case and winds up losing his mind. I’m not exactly familiar with this place. Where do I go?”

“Right,” Tom said. “Don’t you think Damrosch was the Blue Rose murderer?”

“Well, I guess Damrosch thought he was. Why didn’t von Heilitz ever work on it?”

“He was fascinated by it, I know that much. But he told me he was always busy with other cases in those years, and by the time he was free to think about it, it was all over.… We go down here now.”

Natchez turned from Suzanne Lenglen Lane into Bobby Jones Trail and said, “Jesus, who named these streets? Joe Ruddler?”

Tom pointed to the last bungalow on Bobby Jones Trail, and Natchez swung in next to the curb below Glendenning Upshaw’s house. “I mean, I like sports as much as the next guy, but that yelling degrades public taste.” He left the car, and Tom got out on the other side.

“What are you going to say to him?”

“It’ll come to me.”

Natchez jogged up the steps. They crossed the terrace and passed beneath the white arch into the bungalow’s central courtyard. Natchez pushed the bell. “He has servants?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley. They’re both in their eighties.”

Natchez pressed the bell again. After a long time, the sound of Kingsley’s shuffling footsteps came to them.

Natchez did not take his finger off the bell until the door opened and Kingsley’s skeletal face appeared. “I am sorry, sir, but Mr. Upshaw is—” Kingsley saw Tom standing a pace behind the policeman, and his already white face turned the color of paper. All the bones beneath his skin seemed to push forward.

“Hello, Kingsley,” Tom said.

The old man tottered backward, literally gasping for breath, and Natchez gently urged the door open. If he had pushed any harder, Kingsley would have fallen down.

“Master Tom,” the butler said. “We thought—” He stopped to draw in breath, and his lips disappeared, exposing the pink false gum of his dentures. He was not wearing the frock coat, and his sleeves were rolled up.

“I know,” Tom said. “The newspaper made a mistake. Where’s my grandfather?”

Natchez walked into the entry, and passed without hesitating into the wide hallway that led to the sitting room at the front of the bungalow and the study, dining room, and terrace at the rear. He turned toward the study. Kingsley shot him an agonized glance. “Mr. Upshaw isn’t here, Master Tom. He left in a great hurry about an hour ago, and gave us instructions to pack his clothes—he said he’d be spending the rest of the summer at Tranquility—” Kingsley sat down on a dark wooden bench beside the suit of armor.

“Did he say where he was going when he left?”

“He said I should not speak to any reporters or let anyone in the bungalow—but of course we didn’t know that you—” He gaped at Tom for a moment. “I am sorry about that time when you called from the lake. He seemed so distressed ever since, and I’ve been waiting for news of your burial, and so when a call came this afternoon—”

Natchez came storming down the hall. He gave Tom a wild look. Mrs. Kingsley was moving behind him, reaching out as if to grab his coat. “He’s gone,” Natchez said. He turned to Kingsley and said, “What call?”

“It was from a police officer up north,” Mrs. Kingsley said. “My husband was packing clothes in Mr. Upshaw’s bedroom, and I answered.”

“Truehart?” Tom asked.

“I don’t think so, no, Master Tom. It was some funny name.”

Tom groaned. “Spychalla.”

“That’s the name. After Mr. Upshaw hung up, he handed me the phone and asked me to arrange a ticket to Venezuela for him as soon as possible. I tried to get him a flight today, but there are no international flights on Sundays, so he said he’d do it himself later.”

“Nappy talked,” Tom said. “Or they arrested the man who actually set the fire, and Jerry turned around and pointed the finger at my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather was a fine man,” said Mrs. Kingsley. “You ought to remember that.”

“Who’s this Spychalla?”

“The chief’s idiot deputy, up in Eagle Lake.”

“He called?” Natchez bellowed. “Follow me.” He set off up the hallway toward the study.

When Tom came in, Natchez was already behind the desk, holding the telephone with one hand, demanding to be put through to the Chief of Police in Eagle Lake, Wisconsin, and opening the drawers of the desk with the other. He turned to Tom and said, “Where’s that safe?”

Tom went to the wall at the side of the room and began feeling the panels. “Give me Chief Truehart,” Natchez said. “Chief, this is Detective David Natchez on Mill Walk, and I’m in Glendenning Upshaw’s house with Tom Pasmore. Upshaw got a call from one of your men, and took off. What the hell is going on up there?”

Tom pushed a panel that yielded under his hand. He ran his fingers down the seam of the panel until they slid into an indentation. He pulled, and a square door opened in the wall. Six inches inside the wall was another door. A simple hook held it shut. Tom lifted the hook out of its catch, and opened the second door. He was looking into a deep empty recess.

“Well, your friend is dead,” Natchez said. “The boy found his body this morning.”

Tom walked to the couch that faced the terrace and fell into it.

“Spychalla thought what? … Well, if you were waiting for this urgent call from Marinette, why weren’t you present to take it?”

“He was on a flying job,” Tom said.

“A flying job?” Natchez shouted into the phone. He listened a moment, then said, “Yes, I am blaming