A Handy Death

Chapter 13

A new chrome-and-glass-and-ample-parking-space shopping center adorned the corner of Lakeland Avenue and Edwards Boulevard on the town line of Glens Falls; across the highway in the adjoining township of Queensbury — and a hundred or more years distant in time — stood the Queensbury Central Bank. Spurning all exterior modernity, it was housed in a grey fieldstone converted post-Revolutionary residence, and the officers would not have had it otherwise. Nor would the depositors. It gave a sense of permanence. No one would dare embezzle from this place, its appearance seemed to say; if they haven’t since the War of 1812, why should they start now?

Mr. Norwood Howard, president emeritus of the bank, was still permitted an office, albeit small — it had been the pantry of the original dwelling — and Mr. Howard fitted into the decor perfectly. Hank Ross, entering the tiny room which the president emeritus shared with several wooden filing cabinets, looked about admiringly. Obviously, no computer in this establishment would be given the opportunity to multiply a deposit by a million, or delay a customer’s statement an extra week.

Mr. Howard was a very old, round-cheeked little man with twinkling hazel eyes, snow-white hair cut very short, and a surprising bounce for his age. He greeted Hank with old-world courtesy, offered first tea and then bourbon, both refused, and only reseated himself after his guest had made himself comfortable.

“Mr. Ross,” he said with obvious sincerity. “I’m a great admirer of yours.”

He saw the look of surprise that crossed Hank’s face and smiled. When he spoke there was a touch of irony in the gentle voice.

“Don’t let the decorations fool you,” he said in his quiet voice. “We have all the accoutrements of any modern bank in the country. We have electricity and our janitors gave up green sweeping compound at the same time our bookkeepers gave up green eyeshades, and that was at least a month ago. And our town has radio and television, and even an occasional copy of The New York Times finds its way here in the luggage of some stranger passing through on the stage. We’re quite up to date, Mr. Ross, and I’ve followed your cases with interest.”

He smiled across the pristine blotter on his desk benignly.

“Now, Mr. Ross — what can I do for you?”

Ross laughed. “You might stop making me feel so foolish, although I suppose I deserve it. It’s true, I suppose I expected to see little men with arm garters perched on high wooden stools writing in ledgers with quill pens. I apologize.” He became serious. “Actually, Mr. Howard, you can help me a great deal on a case involving a local resident.”

“Billy Dupaul, of course,” Howard said calmly. “I read you’d taken on the case. But how can I help?”

“You were acquainted with Billy’s grandfather, John Emerich?”

“Very well. From boyhood, to be exact. Why?”

“Did John Emerich bank here?”

“Of course.” There was a touch of disdain in the reedy voice, hinting that only infants under fifty, or idiots, banked at one of the newer banks in Glens Falls. “Why?”

Ross hesitated.

“I’m afraid I’m looking for information that might be considered confidential.” Howard’s hazel eyes were unwavering, his pink-white face expressionless. He made no comment, merely waiting. Ross pushed on. “Well, frankly, what was the state of John Emerich’s finances?”

A frown appeared on the round face. “May I ask what you know of his finances?”

Ross said frankly, “Nothing.”

“Then, could you tell me why you want to know?”

“I’m not sure myself. A hunch.” The lawyer frowned. “For example, Billy’s folks — Old John’s daughter and her husband — were killed in an accident, as I recall. Did they leave any insurance?”

“Pierre? No. He never carried any. Never had enough money for premiums.”

“Did the railroad make any settlement?”

“The railroad was without fault, and their lawyers were quite adequate. No, there was no settlement.”

“That’s what I gathered from the little I knew,” Ross said. “Yet Billy says that his grandfather, while having no money, gave Billy anything he wanted. In fact, he gave him enough, apparently, to allow him to indulge in hospitality to his friends — hospitality that cost money. It seems to me to be a contradiction, and I like everything clear. I hate surprises.” He smiled. “Especially surprises from the prosecution.”

“I see.” Howard stared down at his desk gravely. At last he looked up. “Suppose that any information I gave you proved — as I am sure it would prove — to be utterly useless to your case?”

“Then it would remain completely confidential.”

“Even from your client? Billy, I mean?”

“Especially from Billy.”

“Well,” Howard said, almost to himself, “John’s been dead a long time, and the checks stopped even before then—” He didn’t wait for Ross’s question. “Mr. Ross, John Emerich received a check every month from the time Billy was born until Billy was eighteen years old.”

Ross felt that familiar tingle that told him that he was onto something. How that something could help him in his case he didn’t know at the moment, but at the moment it didn’t matter.

“Where did the checks come from?”

“They were drawn on a New York bank — the Hudson River Bank.”

“And who signed them?”

“They were cashier’s checks.”

Ross felt a sudden pang of disappointment. Was he going to get so close to something he was now sure was important, only to lose it?

“Didn’t John Emerich ever tell you who was sending them?”

“No, he never did.”

“Were these checks always for the same amount of money?”

“They were for five hundred dollars each. They always arrived on the fifth of the month, or the nearest Friday, if the fifth fell on a weekend.” Howard considered Hank Ross. “That may not be a lot of money in New York City, Mr. Ross, but as supplemental income up here, especially in those days, it was quite a bit.”

“I believe it,” Ross said sincerely. “What else can you tell me about them?”

“Not much. John Emerich came into the bank with the first check, handed it to me, and asked me to deposit it to his account. I was a vice-president then, but John always worked directly with me. He endorsed it and I personally entered the amount in his passbook and put the check through. John told me there would be a check every month, but that in the future they would be sent directly to the bank to my attention, and they were. For eighteen years.”

“Who were they made out to?”

“They were all made out to ‘William Dupaul or John Emerich,’ for deposit only. They didn’t require any endorsement after the first. That hadn’t been marked for deposit.”

“When did Emerich die? Before or after Billy’s eighteenth birthday?”

“John died about a month after Billy graduated from high school, but the checks had stopped a month before then. As I said, on Billy’s eighteenth birthday.”

“Was any of this public knowledge here in town?”

Norwood Howard shrugged. “Mr. Ross, people are always curious about other people’s affairs. I imagine some wondered how John Emerich could raise Billy the way he did, but up here people tend to mind their own business.” He shook his head. “If anyone knew of it, or suspected it, nobody said anything, and that’s the important thing.”

“I see,” Ross said. He sighed. “And John Emerich never gave you any idea of who was sending those checks?”

“John? Never.”

“Or why they were being sent?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then the old banker spoke softly.

“Mr. Ross, I detest gossip, but if what I’m about to tell you will help young Billy, I’ll indulge. Mary Emerich was a hellion. We had a good many soldiers around here during the war. One day, for no good reason, Mary went up to Canada. Ten months later she came back with a husband and a baby she said was one month old, but it was awfully big for a one-month-old baby. She moved in with her folks — her and her new husband — and sponged off them until Mary and her husband were killed. Riding in John’s car, incidentally.”

Ross frowned. “I don’t understand. You mean, Billy Dupaul was born in Canada? That he isn’t an American citizen?”

“No, sir. That’s precisely what I don’t mean. Billy Dupaul was born in Chicago, Illinois. I know, because the money orders for the nursing home and the doctors cleared through me. John Emerich knew he could trust me.” The round face looked a bit forlorn. “Or he could until today...”

Ross disregarded the statement.

“What you are saying, Mr. Howard, is that Pierre Dupaul was not Billy’s father. And in your opinion it was the real father who kept sending Emerich money for the boy’s support. Until he came of age.”

“That’s right, Mr. Ross.”

“And you have no idea who that man was?”

Again there was a long pause from the elderly banker. Ross suddenly knew he was on the verge of discovery.

Mr. Howard spoke slowly.

“Mr. Ross, you asked me before if John ever told me who was sending the money that supported Billy, and I said he didn’t. Nor did he. But even us old codgers in these small towns get to banking conventions once in a while, and the chief cashier of the Hudson River Bank is a friend of many years. And one night, over cocktails, I asked him who was sending these cashier’s checks to a little bank like ours in Queens-bury—”

“And he told you?”

“Blame the infernal martinis, Mr. Ross, and my unconscionable curiosity. Don’t blame my cashier friend. But he told me.”

It was like squeezing blood from a rock; then he saw the hazel eyes twinkling and he knew Mr. Norwood Howard was purposely keeping him on tenterhooks.

Ross smiled. “And it was?”

“His name was Quirt,” Mr. Howard said evenly. “Charles Quirt.”

Ross saw Mike Gunnerson’s grizzled head appear at the cabin door of his plane as it stopped in Albany to take on passengers. Ross noted his friend with pleasure. For one thing, they would be able to discuss the case on the flight to the city and thus save time; for another, Mike must have started the Quigley Agency on the job or he wouldn’t have been on the plane. Mike never left jobs half finished.

Gunnerson looked about the small cabin, located Ross, and dropped into the adjoining seat. He found his seat belt and fastened it, and then faced Ross.

“Well? Any luck tracing Old John’s money?”

“You first,” Ross said. “I gather you got the Quigley Agency working on Anne — and Grace — Melisi. Are they any good?”

“Who? The Melisi girls?”

“The agency!” Ross said with a touch of asperity.

“Oh, I didn’t bother with them for that. I’ve got them on something else,” Mike said airily. “I found Grace Melisi myself.”

Ross grinned. “You dog! Holding out on me! Where did you find her? And when do we get her to New York?”

“We don’t,” Mike said, his face now somber. “She’s dead. I found her in the cemetery.”

“Dead!”

“That’s right.”

“Since when?”

“A little over two years.”

“Natural causes?”

“Completely,” Gunnerson said with conviction. “I spoke with the doctor who signed the certificate, as well as with the coroner, although they didn’t need an autopsy. She died in the county sanitorium. Tuberculosis. She’d had it for years.”

“Damn!” Ross bit his lip and stared from the window, thinking. All the triumph he had been feeling at having discovered Quirt’s identity in the matter was wiped away by the news of Grace Melisi. Ross suddenly realized how much he had been depending on locating the woman. The plane was lifting off; he turned to Gunnerson. “Where do we go from here?”

“I’m still having the Quigley Agency check on her background. Her sister moved some time ago, and we’re looking for her. Maybe she can tell us something. If we find her. When does the trial start?”

“The day after tomorrow. You know that.”

“I guess my subconscious was trying to protect me by making me forget,” Mike said with a smile.

“Anything on a boyfriend?”

“That’s another thing the agency is checking out. I spoke with a few of her friends at the sanitorium; apparently she never married.”

“Well, pray they come up with something.”

“Right,” Mike said. The lighted seat-belt sign went off; Mike loosened his belt without removing it. “Your turn, now. What did you find out about John Emerich and his money?”

“Billy Dupaul was born out of wedlock,” Ross said quietly. “Pierre Dupaul apparently was a husband of convenience. It seems the true father sent a monthly check from the time Billy was a baby until he came of age.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Charley Quirt,” Ross said evenly.

“Quirt!”

“That’s right. It explains a few things that have been bothering me, but it complicates a lot more.” Hank raised a finger. “One, it probably explains what Marshall told Billy that night in the hotel that got him started off on that binge—”

“I can see where, to a kid like Billy Dupaul, someone telling him his folks weren’t married — and with liquor in the place — would not only get him mad but start him making a few inroads into the bottles,” Mike said. “There’s only one question.”

Ross looked at him without speaking.

“How would Marshall have known? Was it common knowledge in Glens Falls? Or Queensbury? And if it was, how come Billy never heard it?”

“It wasn’t common knowledge,” Ross said slowly. “You’ve just raised a damned good question. Obviously, somebody used Marshall. Told him the story and asked him to pass it on to Billy.”

“But even so, why would Marshall do it? I thought that up until then they were supposed to be good friends?”

“I’d guess that the operative word in that sentence is ‘supposed,’” Ross said. “My hunch is that Marshall probably hated Billy all his life. It’s pretty tough taking favors all your life.” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “And I have another hunch—”

“We have another hunch,” Gunnerson said. “If Marshall had been paid to start Billy off on that binge, then Marshall could also have been paid to hand over the gun to the payer. Right?”

“Very right,” Ross said. “And when Don Evans started nagging Marshall for information, someone got nervous. And that was the end of Marshall.” He turned around to Gunner-son. “Mike, what do you think?”

“I think it only leaves one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Who,” Mike said, and turned to look out the window across the plane.