The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

The Beacon

Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1981.

The candle was the clue, the beacon, the wan glow of a single candle behind an old lace curtain in the decayed ghostliness of a once-splendid home.

Marley passed the place each evening as he drove in from his disgusting and demeaning job washing dishes in the kitchen of the country club. He didn’t notice the candle right away. The dragging misery of his situation choked off errant impressions, such as the color of a sunset, the notes of a singing bird, or idle speculation about a candle burning behind a window.

He was in the clutches of a particularly tough parole officer who had set the tenor of their relationship at their very first meeting: “Marley, you are one of my pet dislikes, a lifelong criminal despite everything society has tried to do to rehabilitate you. During your misspent life you have done it all. Passed counterfeit money. Fenced stolen goods. Gone door to door selling bogus termite exterminations to little old widows. Cold-decked suckers in illegal card games. Written rubber checks. Now at the age of... fifty-five, isn’t it?... you’ve drawn a parole after doing time for embezzlement. You’re a neat, trim, spry fellow, hardly gray and with all your original teeth. Take my advice. Don’t even think of once more using that blank, innocent appearance to worm your way into a sucker’s confidence. Or is it asking too much for a change in personality? In any event, if as human beings we are brothers, you’re going to find, until the final hour of your parole, that I’m one hell of a keeper.”

The loathsome tyrant had taken Marley out to the country club and introduced him to the head chef, an enormous Italian who’d never relaxed the chains of Marley’s parole-slavery from the very first moment.

The parole officer had made a single allowance, giving permission for Marley to buy and drive, within the county limits, a battered old car. But that was only because city bus-transit routes precluded the country club.

So each day was a hellish repetition: awaken in a squalid furnished room in the inner city; get through hours in which taverns and the kind of company Marley preferred were prohibited; drive out to the country club through Vanderling Estates, where the aura of so much old wealth and well being rubbed Marley absolutely raw; do the dishes the lordly dudes and their ladies befouled during lunch, dinner and sometimes a private party of an evening. Marley would burn, hearing the echoes of refined pleasure drifting back from the dining room. Occasionally, when the chef and second cook and salad girl and pastry chef had their backs turned, Marley would spit in the stock pot.

Each night he passed the candle in the window, never seeing it until the abysmal cruelty of his parole had only one more week to go. Even then, it was not the candle that caught his attention, but a white, ectoplasmic figure moving on the lawn in the moonlit darkness.

Marley held no truck with spooks, goblins or anything spiritual. But the glimpse of the ghostly figure caught and froze his gaze. He braked his wheezing car, an instinctive thought flashing through his mind. If someone was in trouble, perhaps he could play the Good Samaritan — and receive a suitable reward.

The apparition was a woman, rather tallish, thin and bony, clad in ankle-length gown, its white blending with her long fall of silvery hair. Her shoulders were slightly stooped, and Marley, unable to distinguish the features from this distance, received an impression of an old and wrinkled face.

Out of the shadows alongside the house came a heavyset man in the gray uniform of a chauffeur. He intercepted the woman in the middle of the lawn, spoke to her, and she compliantly nodded and walked toward the house. The servant watched until the front entrance had received her; then he returned along the driveway in the direction of lighted quarters over a large double garage.

Marley saw the window candle at last, and it sparked his always-sharp curiosity. His gaze drifted about the portion of the estate visible to him. Although centered in Vanderling Estates, the place didn’t quite belong, although it once must have been the hallmark of swank for neighbors to try and rival. The house was huge Normandy; the grounds were far flung; but the present-day details added up to a note of desertion and decay. The driveway was potholed; the hedges were raggedly untrimmed; the sweeping lawn was freckled with spots of brown; and the house itself was flecking paint and supporting guttering that was rotting away and hanging loose in spots.

An old recluse, Marley thought.

His eyes held on the brass marker beside the delivery entrance. The metal was slightly green with mold, but he could still make out the number: 341 Vanderling Boulevard. And the name: Vanderling.

No less. Same name as the rigidly restricted, old-family subdivision itself.

He saw a light flare in an upstairs window. It burned briefly, while the old woman returned to bed. Then the house was once more in stygian gloom — except for the single candle burning behind the tall, arched window downstairs.

The next evening, in a brief lull between periods of greasy-water-to-the-elbows, Marley mentioned to the chef, “Who’s the old biddy in 341, right down the boulevard?”

“Wassa mat?”

“Curious, that’s all. Wondered if she ever comes to the club for dinner. Bet she once did — sweeping like a princess royal.”

The chef had no imagination or curiosity whatever. “You gotta time to yap-yap-yap, the mop, she’sa waiting.”

As Marley drove home that night, he slowed the car to a crawl at 341 Vanderling Boulevard. No ghostly figures tonight. Nothing, except the still-life of a gloomy old mansion, the firefly of a candle glowing behind a front window. He wondered how many nights a candle had burned there, and why.

The next day he arrived at the country club half an hour early. He sauntered over to the ivy-grown pro shop, fifty yards from the old-English motif of the main clubhouse. The gnarled, leathery old man — Lemuel, he was called — was coming from the barn where groundskeeping equipment was housed. In luck, Marley thought. Lemuel had spaded, clipped, mowed, pruned, planted for more years on the golf course than anyone could remember. His and Marley’s paths had crossed occasionally when Lemuel, taking old-employee privileges, would come through the rear door of the kitchen and fill a plate and retire to a stool in the far corner to chomp his meal. Marley rather liked the old cuss because nothing or nobody, including the chef, fazed Lemuel.

Today, in the shadows of the pro shop, Marley said his most pleasant hello, and Lemuel paused, wiping his creased, weathered face with a huge red bandanna. “How goes the pearl-diving?”

“Greasy,” Marley said, “like always. How about a Coke?”

Lemuel flicked surprise through sun-bleached brows. He and Marley had often spoken pleasantly enough, and they shared the unspoken bonds of menial jobs, but this was the first time Marley had extended such an invitation.

“Why not?” Lemuel said.

They went in, bought their drinks, and retired to the outside bench behind the pro shop, rules forbidding their presence on the veranda that overlooked the front nine.

Marley wasted a brief minute chatting about an inconsequential, the weather. Then he said, stretching the truth a bit: “Had a hairy experience night before last. Old lady in a white nightgown walked right out in front of my car. Happened on the boulevard, at 341.”

“Must have been Atha Vanderling,” Lemuel said, killing half his Coke at a swallow.

“Vanderling? You mean, one of the original Estate tribes?”

“Last Vanderling left. Not a living creature to leave all them millions to.”

Marley shifted on the hardness of the wooden bench. “I guess you know plenty about the Estates and the people.”

“Been here since the day they redid the back nine and put in the long practice tee.” Lemuel winked knowingly. “I could write a book. Sure as hell could.” He sighed. “’Course nobody wants to hear about folks in the Estates the way they used to be.”

“Sounds interesting to me. Say... why don’t we meet here at the pro shop tomorrow a little earlier? We’ll chew over some old times.”

The prospect brought a nod of pleasure. “If the greenskeeper don’t have me chinch-bugging on the front nine,” Lemuel said. “Can’t think of nothing I’d like better. I’m around from sunup to sundown six days a week.”

Cultivating Lemuel as a brain to pick, Marley in the next few days pieced Atha Vanderling into a composite from the old man’s gossip. Awkward and painfully shy when she was young. A very sensitive girl who’d known she was dense and not at all pretty. But the Vanderling money had provided specialists, to tutor her, correct the bucked teeth, design clothing that enhanced the bony figure. She was sent to ballet, riding, diction lessons. She was travelled in Europe. She was provided a debut. Money had worked a small miracle; even so, Atha had emerged into young womanhood as a plain-jane wallflower.

When she was in her barrenly lonely mid-twenties, she met Guthrie Linyard, a social hanger-on who was summer guesting with a neighbor of the Vanderlings. He set about wooing her, and the love-starved young woman’s response had been blindly overwhelming. No one could get through to her. Her belief and faith in Guthrie were fanatical. He truly loved her, not her money, and she loved him.

The couple announced their engagement and were given the usual round of parties. The rapturous young simpleton flew to Paris to buy part of her trousseau.

Came the day of the wedding, and Guthrie vanished, leaving her in white satin, a bridal bouquet in her hands, a spectacle before the eyes of people she’d known all her life in the crowded church.

“Atha’s pappy, as you may have guessed,” Lemuel said, “finally turned the trick with Guthrie Linyard the morning of the wedding. Folks talked about it a long time. Old man Vanderling went into the church ante-room where Guthrie was all set to go in cutaway coat and striped trousers, and made his final offer. If Guthrie showed up at the altar, the old man was drawing a new will, cutting Atha out. Otherwise, there was a side door so’s a man could slip out quietly and here was a package containing fifty thousand dollars cold cash, travelling money.”

“And Atha never married?”

“Atha,” Lemuel said, “was never far from the brink, first place. Atha went stark, staring crazy. Started right there at the altar, her beginning to sob and finally running out in her wedding gown and veil, up and down the streets, looking to see if Guthrie had been hurt in an accident, screaming his name. When she learned what had really happened, she closed in on herself, like an oyster locking its shell. They spent plenty on her, in fancy asylums, and her pappy was never the same afterward. Finally, Vanderling money had done all it could. They were able to bring home what was left of Atha. She never went out, had no friends, although she could talk and act like she had good sense. But she was convinced that some day Guthrie would come back. The best doctors in New York and Vienna couldn’t get that idea out of her head. And while her years melted away, she stayed on in the old home place, after her parents died, lighting a candle in a window every night and waiting for Guthrie to return.”

Marley didn’t as yet know how he would use the information; but his experience and instincts clearly told him that he was on the brink of something big, perhaps the biggest con of his life, the one that would set him up for all his years to come. The toughest part of any con was to locate a mark. The best of con men (the category in which Marley automatically included himself) sometimes went for months without using their talents because the right situation wouldn’t show itself.

The expiration of his parole came and went, its impact shunted aside by the thoughts that suffused Marley of an old crazy woman worth millions.

“I guess,” the bohunk of a parole officer said grudgingly, “you’ll swim out of the greasy dishwater and head for parts unknown.”

“I rather like the Estates,” Marley said.

He continued his digging — through Lemuel, through old newspaper files, the local library, through a mole-like research into names associated with the Vanderlings. His keen imagination popped open kernels he ferreted from old gossip columns, notes on society and business pages. Immersed in his subject, he almost felt that he had once been part of the scene.

Exchanging greasy kitchen steam for the stink of his cheap room each night, he considered the angles.

He would face himself in the scaly mirror over the dresser, knock on an imaginary door, and when the door was opened he would look into Atha Vanderling’s non-present eyes and rehearse.

Role of private investigator: “Miss Vanderling? I’m James C. Lyerly. Here is my card. I have some information about a man named Guthrie Linyard...”

No. It could get too involved, foisting himself into her hire as a private detective. The ideal con was simple, direct.

A long-lost friend: “Atha, you remember me, of course. Jeremy Dekalb... My dear, the years haven’t hurt you a bit...”

Nope. The link must be stronger than one of ancient friendship.

A distant relative: “Atha, I’m Peter Conway, all the way from Switzerland. Aunt Helen told me to be sure to look you up...” More than twenty years ago the local paper had Sunday-featured the removal of the Conway branch of the family to an executive position in a Swiss firm. But the distant relative was too risky. She might have despised Peter.

Marley would brood from his window at the scabby alleyway below. A pigeon isolated in her roost with no one to protect her... no father left to come between her and a Guthrie Linyard, who had once come close to getting it all...

Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the dirty window, Marley felt the sudden creeping of a rather delicious numbness. As if hardly daring to trust his muscles, he turned toward the mirror. His mind unveiled the Guthrie Linyard shown in the society pages a generation ago when the Linyard-Vanderling engagement had promised the most expensive wedding of the season.

Marley lifted his hand, touching his chin. Same size... same coloration... Thirty years ago he’d resembled those old pictures of Guthrie Linyard in a general way. Who could say that Linyard wouldn’t have aged into Marley’s present image?

Suddenly too excited to breathe, Marley paced his room, beating his fists together.

The scenario... It had to be the best Marley had ever dreamed up.

Parts of it posed no problems. His assiduous research had yielded many threads for the weaving of a mask that would identify him as Guthrie Linyard, for whom the candle burned nightly. He knew that Guthrie had enjoyed sailing. A long-forgotten society page editor had noted the color of the gown worn by Atha Vanderling the night she and Linyard had topped the list of society names at a big benefit. The same editor had covered bridal showers given for Atha by Clarice Snowden and Margaret Fogg. The Leyer orchestra had played at the engagement party.

Names of long-ago friends, schools she’d attended, a minor auto accident involving her father, a charity drive headed by her mother... so many details concerning Atha and her family from the time of her childhood... Marley had them etched carefully in his mind. And once he was over the first hurdle — effecting entry — he would pump the old woman with the cunning and shrewd indirection of a gypsy fortune teller.

Intervention from outside? No sweat. She was a recluse, and he would dissolve into her life style. Fire the current chauffeur-handyman, hire a stranger. As Guthrie, he and Atha would share reunion, their great secret passion of togetherness, with no one. The prospect would please her right down to her toenails.

It was less attractive to Marley, the thought of togetherness with a crazy old harridan. But it had its redeeming facets. He could hire a maid, a cute, sexy, greedy young thing. And a cook — and dine on surf and turf any evening he desired. And once he was inside, he was quite certain, he would be wholly capable of reaping his harvest. There would surely be a situation involving her with lawyers, trustees and other such deadbeats. But never mind. He didn’t aspire to all of the Vanderling millions. Amounts that he could arrange to take over, and hence put him in a position of control, would be quite adequate.

The big problem was getting into 341 Vanderling. How does a fellow explain away a jilting at the altar that occurred thirty years ago? Throw himself on her compassion and mercy? Work on the obsessions and superstitions she held in her pixilated state? Tell her he’d seen the candle in his dreams?

No, no, no... Compassion, mercy, hallucination... Tools to use. But would they get him in the door?

He flung himself to a sitting position on the edge of his lumpy bed, hands clenched between his knees, his wiry body rocking under the intensity of his thoughts.

Why had he, as Guthrie Linyard, deserted her at the altar thirty years ago?

Cool it now. Get the ducks all in a row. In the first place, everything told to her thirty years ago was a lie. He had not cut out because her father had threatened to disinherit her while offering him fifty thousand dollars.

He had stranded her at the altar because...

Hmmmm. A simple explanation, that’s all that was needed. A simple, sympathetic explanation.

Getting rid of the onus of a fifty thou bribe shouldn’t be too difficult. Just say that her father had made the threat and the offer, and he’d laughed in her father’s face. She could have been a pauper like the little match girl, for all he cared about her money.

So it’s thirty years ago and she’s standing in her white satin, a bridal bouquet in her trembling hands while a church full of people begins rustling, looking for the groom.

Trouble is, her father has resorted to a last desperate measure — and two big yeggs have walked into the ante-room, nicked the groom-to-be with a medical syringe full of drugs, and are carrying the hapless unconscious Guthrie out the side door.

The groom regains consciousness in a motel in a distant state. Yeggs still present. Then, at that point, father’s fifty thou is stuffed into his pocket and the groom warned never to return.

Nuts, thinks the groom. Fifty million wouldn’t be enough. When the yeggs at last depart, the groom tries to phone the love of his life. He cannot get a call through to her. He comes back, to the palatial home on Vanderling Boulevard. He learns a tragic truth. Atha, his darling Atha, is sealed away in a private mental hospital. Lost to him forever.

He never wants to see the house on Vanderling Boulevard again.

The groom has gone to the west coast to try and find a life for himself. He has married, never had children, and not once has he held his wife in his arms without aching with the thought of Atha. His wife has died. Couple years ago? Or a year? Why not a few months back? Yes, a few months would be better. Growing emptily old, he has at last returned, goaded by the need to find out what happened to the only woman he ever really loved.

Marley leaped to his feet. It was a bit soapy. But it could have happened. It offered the images he wanted to transmit to her, and don’t forget... believing in Guthrie’s return she’s burned a candle nightly for thirty years...

She answered the muted front door chimes herself. And Marley felt a slight chill. The old face was a dead white collection of sharp angular bones and wrinkles. And the garment she wore... it was not a nightgown after all. It was a white satin wedding dress.

She was limned in a pale lighting of the enormous, vaulted entry foyer. Marley felt the darkness over the lawn behind him like a weight against his back.

“Yes?” she asked.

Marley’s gaze flicked toward the right, toward the window where the candle glowed. He took heart from the wealth exuded by the house.

“Atha,” he murmured, “don’t you remember? Don’t you recognize me?”

She leaned, peering at him closely.

“Atha, surely you remember... the breeze in our faces when I took you sailing... that lovely emerald green gown you wore to the hospital benefit... the way we danced the night the Leyer orchestra kept playing Sunrise Serenade for us?”

A small flicker showed in her sunken eyes. “Guthrie?”

“Yes, Atha, oh, yes!” Marley said fervently.

“Guthrie?” she repeated, like a child whispering in an empty room. “Can it really be Guthrie?”

“Of course, Atha.” He reached and took her bony hands in his. “And I can explain everything, my darling. Let me in. Let me fill my eyes with the sight of you. Let me tell you what really happened.”

A small seizure went through her. Her hands locked tightly on his. “Guthrie... Guthrie... Guthrie...” she whispered.

She drew him inside, not taking her eyes from his face. Across the entry foyer, down two steps into a vast sunken living room where the candle burned on a table set close to the front windows.

“Atha, it’s so...”

“Please,” she said. “Not now.” She stepped back, looking him up and down.

“Atha...” A strange feeling of alarm began pouring through Marley.

“No,” she said, turning away. “You mustn’t say a word.” She braced herself against a small, drop leaf desk. “Not another lying word.”

Her hand dipped into the desk drawer and drew out a gun. She pointed it steadily at Marley.

“I always knew the lure of the money would bring you back someday,” she said.

“Atha, no! Wait... You’ve got it all wrong!”

“And this,” she said, “is the only thing that’s kept me alive for thirty years.”

She squeezed the trigger, and Marley died painlessly, a bullet between his eyes at such short range. He crumpled and fell.

Her whole body seeming to lift in a long-lost self respect and pride, Atha Vanderling quietly, a rustling of white satin, stepped across the prone form, reached out her hand, and pinched the flame from the candle.