District was in service.
Harriet moved another switch.
“Fourteen Twenty-three,” she said. “928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue. A hospital case. Rescue en route.”
Police Officer John D. Wells, who also had nineteen years on the job, was sitting in his three-year-old Chevrolet, whose odometer was halfway through its second hundred thousand miles, outside a delicatessen on Germantown Avenue.
He had just failed to have the moral courage to refuse stuffing his face before going off shift and home. He had a wax-paper-wrapped Taylor-ham-and-egg sandwich in his hand, and a large bite from same in his mouth.
He picked up his microphone and, with some difficulty, answered his call: “Fourteen Twenty-three, OK.”
He took off the emergency brake and dropped the gearshift into drive.
He had spent most of his police career in North Philadelphia, and had been transferred to “The Hill” only six months before. He thought of it as being “retired before retiring.” There was far less activity in affluent Chestnut Hill than in North Philly.
He didn’t, in other words, know his district well, but he knew it well enough to instantly recall that West Chestnut Hill Avenue was lined with large houses, mansions, on large plots of ground, very few of which had numbers to identify them.
Where the hell is 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue?
Officer Wells did not turn on either his flashing lights or siren. There was not much traffic in this area at this time of the morning, and he didn’t think it was necessary. But he pressed heavily on the accelerator pedal.
H. Richard Detweiler, now staggering under the hundred-and-nine-pound weight of his daughter, reached the massive oak door of the foyer. He stopped and looked angrily over his shoulder and found his wife.
“Grace, open the goddamned door!”
She did so, and he walked through it, onto the slate-paved area before the door.
Penny was really getting heavy. He looked around, and walked to a wrought-iron couch and sat down in it.
Violet appeared.
“Mr. D,” she said, “the police, the ambulance, is coming,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
He looked down at his daughter’s face. Penny was looking at him, but she wasn’t seeing him.
Oh, my God!
“Violet, please call Mr. Payne and tell him what’s happened, and that I’m probably going to need him.”
Violet nodded and went back in the house.
Brewster Cortland Payne II, Esq., a tall, well-built-he had played tackle at Princeton in that memorable year when Princeton had lost sixteen of seventeen games played-man in his early fifties, was having breakfast with his wife, Patricia, on the patio outside the breakfast room of his rambling house on a four-acre plot on Providence Road in Wallingford when Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, the Payne housekeeper, appeared carrying a telephone on a long cord.
“It’s the Detweilers’s Violet,” she said.
Mrs. Payne, an attractive forty-four-year-old blonde, who was wearing a pleated skirt and a sweater, put her coffee cup down as she watched her husband take the telephone.
“For you?” she asked, not really expecting a reply.
“Good morning, Violet,” Brewster C. Payne said. “How are you?”
“Mr. Detweiler asked me to call,” Violet said. “He said he will probably need you.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
Payne, who was a founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, was both Mr. H. Richard Detweiler’s personal attorney and his most intimate friend. They had been classmates at both Episcopal Academy and Princeton.
Violet told him what the problem was, ending her recitation of what had transpired by almost sobbing, “I think Penny is gone, Mr. Payne. He’s sitting outside holding her in his lap, waiting for the ambulance, but I think she’s gone.”
“Violet, when the ambulance gets there, find out where they’re taking Penny. Call here and tell Elizabeth. I’m leaving right away. When I get into Philadelphia, I’ll call here and Elizabeth can tell me where to go. Tell Mr. Detweiler I’m on my way.”
He broke the connection with his finger, lifted it and waited for a dial tone, and then started dialing again.
“Well, what is it?” Patricia Payne asked.
“Violet went into Penny’s room and found her sitting up in bed with a needle hanging out of her arm,” Payne replied, evenly. “They’re waiting for an ambulance. Violet thinks it’s too late.”
“Oh, my God!”
A metallic female voice came on the telephone: “Dr. Payne is not available at this time. If you will leave your name and number, she will return your call as soon as possible. Please wait for the tone. Thank you.”
He waited for the tone and then said, “Amy, if you’re there, please pick up.”
“Dad?”
“Penny was found by the maid ten minutes ago with a needle in her arm. Violet thinks she’s gone.”
“Damn!”
“I think you had better go out there and deal with Grace,” Brewster Payne said.
“Goddamn!” Dr. Amelia Payne said.
“Tell her I’m coming,” Patricia said.
“Your mother said she’s coming to Chestnut Hill,” Payne said.
“All right,” Amy said, and the connection went dead.
Payne waited for another dial tone and dialed again.
“More than likely by mistake,” Matt’s voice said metallically, “you have dialed my number. If you’re trying to sell me something, you will self-destruct in ten seconds. Otherwise, you may leave a message when the machine goes bleep.”
Bleep.
“Matt, pick up.”
There was no human voice.
He’s probably at work, Payne decided, and replaced the handset in its cradle.
“Elizabeth, please call Mrs. Craig-you’d better try her at home first-and tell her that something has come up and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come to the office. And ask her to ask Colonel Mawson to let her know where he’ll be this morning.”
Mrs. Newman nodded.
“Poor Matt,” Mrs. Newman said.
“Good God!” Brewster Payne said, and then stood up. His old-fashioned, well-worn briefcase was sitting on the low fieldstone wall surrounding the patio. He picked it up and then jumped over the wall and headed toward the garage. His wife started to follow him, then stopped and called after him: “I’ve got to get my purse. And I’ll try to get Matt at work.”
She waited until she saw his head nod, then turned and went into the house.
Officer John D. Wells, in RPC Fourteen Twenty-three, slowed down when he reached the 900 block of West Chestnut Hill Avenue, a little angry that his memory had been correct.
There are no goddamned numbers. Just tall fences that look like rows of spears and fancy gates, all closed. You can’t even see the houses from the street.
Then, as he moved past one set of gates, it began to open, slowly and majestically. He slammed on the brakes and backed up, and drove through the gates, up a curving drive lined with hundred-year-old oak trees.
If this isn’t the place, I can ask.
It was the place.
There was a man on a patio outside an enormous house sitting on an iron couch holding a girl in her nightgown in his arms.
Wells got quickly out of the car.
