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

A Way with a Will

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1981.

I was very fond of my Uncle Dudley Gillam. Not for any singular reason. He was my only blood relation, but that didn’t account entirely for my feeling. I’ve heard other people speak of their relatives with shuddering distaste, but my recollections of Uncle Dudley were pleasurable. He found joy in living; he was agreeable, kind, and thoughtful. He was an all-around likeable individual, and I liked him. That’s all there was to it And the regard was mutual. He never put it into words, but he left no doubt in my mind that I was at the top of his list of favorite people.

After he retired from the railroad we saw little of each other. He was an engineer until age forced him out of the big diesels. Not a strapping Casey Jones, but a wiry, tough little guy who ramrodded the long trains through the nights like a runty cowboy forking a dinosaur.

His years of motion had conditioned him to be restless. He was always on the go. He would wander down to Florida, up to big-game country in Wyoming, out to California. He would hit Vegas now and then for a splurge and, broke and hungover, amble down to Corpus Christi to dry out.

We always kept in touch. He pecked out letters on a portable typewriter with broken type and an always-grey ribbon, signing them with his bold flourish. The grammar was questionable but the details were colorful. When he wrote about the rupture of a radiator hose while he was driving across the Painted Desert you could hear the water sizzle.

He enjoyed sending picture postcards and wild greeting cards from various locales. On my birthday a zany card would enclose a twenty-dollar bill for the purpose of “oiling up a sweet patootie in a cozy bar, courtesy your Unc Dud.”

I always responded, jazzing up the details of my dreary bachelor existence as much as possible. Each Christmas I would try to send him something special — not expensive, necessarily, but something I had shopped carefully for. The kind of Wellington pipe he smoked or one of the baggy sweaters he favored.

Since he was a gregarious extrovert, it didn’t surprise me he was a soft touch. He always had a dollar for the panhandling wino with the seared eyes and burning throat. He never passed up a Salvation Army kettle or the poor box on his infrequent trips to church. And now and then some down-and-outer would hang onto his shirttails for a while. A busted madam, a kid just out of jail, or an itinerant worker stranded in Salinas. Or someone like Odus Calhoun, dubbed “Hardtimes” by Uncle Dudley.

“A born loser,” Uncle Dudley wrote. “One of those birds who gets all the frowns of fate — that’s Odus Calhoun. Worked hard all his life, paid his taxes, and never broke a law. And what did it get Hardtimes? Rat busted in Dallas where I met him, for one thing. Wife dead, and three kids grown up and scattered who’d rather forget him.

“If Hardtimes crosses a street, the drivers nearly run him down. A stray dog follows him home and the first time Hardtimes lets the mutt out the dog catcher is cruising by. The last jalopy he managed to buy turned out to be stolen. He cashed a welfare check and was robbed in sight of a police station. I reckon if Hardtimes inherited a gold mine an earthquake would dump the vein to the boiling center of the earth.”

From later letters I gathered that Hardtimes had settled into the role of handyman, cook, valet, friend, and confidant. “He more than earns his keep,” Uncle Dudley wrote, “and it’s nice to have a fellow critter around. He can’t play checkers worth a damn, so I finally know the joy of winning.”

It seemed to be a good arrangement. Uncle Dudley buffered Hardtimes Calhoun from the jaundiced eye of fate and at the same time escaped the loneliness of his wandering life.

But the fortunate circumstance was relatively short-lived. Three years ago Uncle Dudley wrote me the woeful news.

“Lost my pal. We was on the way to L.A. in my pickup with the camper cover. We stopped for the night at a campground near Yuma, and I couldn’t wake up Hardtimes the next morning. The county coroner said he died peaceful in his sleep from a worn-out heart. I gave him a decent funeral and searched his duffel without finding the addresses of any of his kids. They may never know how their poor old pappy met his end.”

He never referred to Hardtimes again and I respected his wish to leave a painful subject reverently closed.

A new wrinkle in our correspondence was added a couple of years ago. Instead of a twenty, a hundred-dollar bill dropped from one of his offbeat greeting cards. “I put some money where the profit is,” he explained. “So simmer yourself a real high-class patootie this time.”

And my last birthday turned up a blank check signed by Uncle Dudley. “Don’t go wilder than a hog, nephew, but if you hanker to tootle around in a little sports car, do your shopping. Happy birthday, village cut-up.”

His rapidly expanding affluence naturally tickled my curiosity, but he volunteered no details of his financial dealings, and I courteously cramped the urge to pry. I satisfied myself with a guess that he’d hit a run of beginner’s luck in the stock market. His business hadn’t pinned him down. He was still here and there on the map like a flea on a short-haired pup.

The most recent letter from him said: “Writing from the mugginess of a New Orleans August. Going up to Asheville, North Carolina, for a breath of summer-resort air. Drop me a note at the Great Smokies Chilton, Suite Charnot.”

His plans offered me the chance to visit. I had vacation time coming, and the owner of the construction company where I worked had a Porsche he wanted delivered to his daughter, who was in an Atlanta college. With tin hat in hand I appeared in the boss’s office and explained my proposition. He went for the idea, handed me the keys to the car, slapped my shoulder, and counted out more than enough cash to cover the expenses of delivering the car.

From Atlanta to Asheville by air is a matter of minutes, and I arrived on a deliciously cool Smoky Mountain day after I’d delivered the Porsche. I rented a car and drove a modest four-lane expressway ten miles north, took an exit ramp, moved westerly in a snarl of city traffic, and at last was wending up a coolly shaded macadam road. Valleys, rolling mountains, and the scanty skyline of Asheville spread in the distance. A final turn and the Great Smokies Chilton swam into view.

It was a Swiss architect’s dream, worth a pursed-lip whistle. The huge main inn extended a warm invitation. Webbed from it were driveways winding to private chalets tucked into rolling, landscaped mountain greenery. People were sunning, swimming, and loafing at a crystalline lake scooped into the mountainside. At a long sweep of tennis courts, lazier players had knocked off to watch a smashing drive match between two lean, bronzed young giants. Beyond the courts I glimpsed a pair of horses and riders dipping into a steep mountain trail. I slowed for the passage of a golf cart as it chugged across the parking area with two elderly occupants, headed toward the green-velvet golf course that wandered across the plateau near the crest of the mountain.

A Mercedes SEL was gliding from a parking place near the canopied entrance to the inn and I slipped my rented car into the vacated slot.

I got out, giving the surroundings an appreciative survey. A small plaque over the brass-studded door of the nearest private chalet caught my eye. AIN. I lifted my eyes to Ain’s next-door neighbor. The sedate plaque there announced: BRAUN.

I figured out that the third chalet was Charnot, Uncle Dudley’s domicile of the moment.

I was itching to know something about the late-in-life financial wizardry that afforded Uncle Dudley spots like this in which to take the mountain air. But even that was secondary to the thought of seeing him. I was a little giddy as I hurried along the driveway and the feeling wasn’t entirely due to the altitude.

I checked the plaque to make sure my guess was correct, and it was. I turned into the flower-bordered fieldstone walk bisecting the narrow lawn just as the door opened. It framed a blonde wearing a sleeveless white dress. She was young and tanned and so mistily lovely that I wavered to a halt, staring for a moment.

“Hi there,” I said. That was certainly original.

She said nothing, looking at me with eyes of cool green. I was sure she’d spotted me during my brief walk to Charnot and was about to tell me to get lost.

“I’m Jeremy Fisher,” I said. “I was looking for my uncle.”

“Jake-o!” she said with a sudden flash of a smile, using Uncle Dudley’s nickname for me. Her green eyes warmed. “I should have recognized you from the pictures Dudley has of you.” She reached out a hand. “Come in, Jeremy!”

I entered the cool of Charnot, where I got the impression of a well-heeled sportsman’s lodge. A large living room paneled in wormy chestnut was furnished with huge tweedy couches and club chairs, tables and a bar of natural oak, and a fireplace fit for five-foot logs. The ceiling was vaulted and beamed. A heavy oaken stairway led to a gallery overlooking the living room, where bedrooms were tucked under the rear portion of the expansive roof. “Nice, isn’t it?” she said.

“Very.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“I wouldn’t mind a wee Scotch.”

The flash of her legs and movement of her hips was something to watch as she went around behind the bar. Leave it to Uncle Dudley to winnow out the best.

“I’m Amanda,” she said.

“Well, hello, Amanda. Have you known Uncle Dudley long?”

She tipped a glance at me, probing, balancing my words and anything that might lurk behind them. “Almost a year. And the situation is something like you’ve guessed. I’m fond of Dudley and he’s fond of me; we travel about and have fun.”

“Lucky people.”

“Also, I’m a very good secretary and manager. So it isn’t altogether a case of a wealthy older man buying himself a dumb blonde toy.”

“I can believe that — and I like your frankness.”

“Just to get us off on the right foot, Jake-o.”

I took the drink she held out to me and watched her make herself a small one. A social gesture, not the drink of a real drinker.

“I wish you’d warned us you were coming. Dudley will be so disappointed.”

“Isn’t he here?”

She shook her head. “He went off to Miami earlier today. He’s seeing some people down there on business. He left me here to take care of some details and correspondence before I join him.”

I felt a pang of disappointment.

She touched my hand and said softly, “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”

“Well—” I lifted and dropped my shoulders “—I guess it was a childish notion when you get right down to it — the urge to surprise him.” I tossed off the Scotch.

She took my glass and set it on the bar. “A very nice notion, I’d call it.”

We drifted across the room to the door. She offered her hand in a farewell gesture. “I wish I had more time, Jake-o. But Dudley does have the habit of leaving me to pick up the last-minute bits and pieces. My schedule is tighter than strangulation.”

“Tell him I came by, Amanda.”

“Of course. He’ll write you immediately, I know.”

I plodded disconsolately to the car, got in, and was about to turn the ignition key when I realized I’d been ushered out so fast I hadn’t found out where Uncle Dudley was staying in Miami. After all, I was on vacation — why not join him there?

I got out of the car and walked back to Charnot. I was about to press the bell when I heard Amanda’s voice, sharply raised.

“Yes, you do owe me an explanation, Dudley! You’ve told me a dozen and one times that if Jeremy ever shows up in person to tell him you’re away, get rid of him. You’ve literally ground it into my brain. Why? Those letters you write are so filled with warmth, I should think you’d want to—”

A male voice grunted something I didn’t quite catch, but it was enough to break her off.

“Under the circumstances, it is too my business!” Amanda said.

The male voice inched up a grim level. “Amanda, I don’t owe you an explanation or a damned thing else. You’re beautiful, but that’s a plentiful commodity. If you like the good life we lead together, get off my back!”

Her voice dropped to acquiescence while I stood dumb. What was going on? What did Uncle Dudley have to hide from me?

I grasped the doorknob, turned it, and after the barest hesitation, opened the door.

Amanda spun to face me so quickly her gossamer-blonde hair brushed about her cheeks and she almost tripped on the expensive luggage, old airline stubs dangling from their handles, that she — or Uncle Dudley — had taken from a nearby closet in the few minutes since I’d left.

“I should ask you—” I began.

I glimpsed a frightened flicker in her eyes as her gaze speared past my shoulder, then heard the rustle of his movement. He used a heavy brass lamp, scooped from the table beside the doorway. The blow almost jarred my eyes from their sockets.

I came out of it with a gremlin soldering my ears together and the taste of burned Scotch in my throat. I crawled, groaning, across the thick russet carpet, grappled with the edge of a chair, and pulled myself up.

I turned my head and studied the scene groggily. They’d closed the door on the way out. The baggage was gone. The brass lamp lay where it had fallen. I squinted at my watch — I’d been out for about an hour.

I thought of the old baggage checks on the suitcases and garment bags and it gave me a hunch.

The small but modern Asheville airport was briskly busy. People queued at the ticket counter, moved around the spacious waiting room, sat reading.

Through a rift in the crowd I caught the glint of sunlight on bright blonde hair. I moved aside, people off an incoming flight brushing past on their way to the baggage room.

Amanda and a strange man were standing on the further side of the waiting room near the tall windows that gave a view of the landing field and the jumble of mountains beyond.

Somewhat aloofly, Amanda was gazing at the scenery outside. The man kept glancing at the bank of time-zone clocks on the northern wall. He was clearly fidgeting for a flight due to be announced shortly.

He was tall, thin, and slightly stooped, with the look of a mournful hound dog. His hair was grey and thin on his narrow skull. He was wearing expensive blue slacks and a mottled sports jacket, but he looked a little like the boondocks despite the cut of the clothing.

He said something. Amanda nodded without looking at him. He moved across the lobby and I eased over to let the flow of people shield me from his sight. When he reached the open archway leading to the ticket booths, he turned right, out of sight.

I followed quickly. Around the ell, a door was swinging shut. It carried a simple message: men.

I pushed inside. He was alone, standing at one of the washbasins lifting a pellet from a pillbox and chasing it down with water from a paper cup.

As he lifted his head, my image spread across the mirror behind him. His movement stopped as if his chin had hit an abutment. He clutched the edge of the washbasin, his already grey face a shade more ashen.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s me — Jeremy. And since Amanda knows you as Dudley Gillam, you must be my uncle.”

His head dropped.

“Who are you, actually?” I asked. “Could it be—” I caught my breath. “Who was buried in Yuma those years ago? Hardtimes Calhoun? Or Dudley Gillam, with a death certificate made out in the name of Calhoun?”

He turned to face me, his mouth twitching. “I swear to you, he died of natural causes, Jeremy. I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on your uncle’s head. He was the best friend I ever had.”

There was a stretch of silence, broken only by the hiss of a leaky latrine.

“I guess it took some thinking about, that morning you found Dudley Gillam dead in the camper.” I said. “First the idea, then wrestling with it, then giving in. You knew he had only one relative, a nephew named Jeremy Fisher. You knew all about Jeremy from Uncle Dudley. Dudley was a no-ties wanderer, and there didn’t seem to be a single obstacle in your way. All you had to do was bury him as Hardtimes Calhoun in a town where no one knew either of you and take his place. Once you mastered his simple signature, his pension checks, his bank account, all his earthly possessions were yours. You could keep on writing the never-seen nephew the kind of letters Dudley had always written. Keep one jump ahead of the nephew and you were safe for life. Am I getting it fairly close?”

He raised bloodshot eyes. “Almost dead on the nail head, Jeremy.”

“What then, Hardtimes? Where did the money start coming from — the big money?”

“Piece of life, part of living,” Hardtimes said. “I guess I buried the hard times right there in Yuma. I’d had nothing but hard times from my cradle until I dug that grave, but when I wheeled out of Yuma in that camper pickup I left it all behind. I felt like a new man — like a cocksure Dudley Gillam — and I acted like a new man.”

He turned. It wasn’t a suspicious movement. The single thing he dreaded, the only thing he had had to fear, had happened. He ran water, pulled down a paper towel, and wiped his grey face.

“In the old existence everything turned to mud,” he said. “But once I had buried myself, I began encountering all the luck I’d missed in a lifetime.”

He tossed the damp towel into a container. “Dudley had three thousand dollars in a savings account, his sole estate except for his pension checks and that camper. I ran the three to twenty thousand in a run at a craps table in Las Vegas. Drifted to Phoenix and won a hundred and fifty acres of land from a fellow in a stud game. It turned out to be worthless desert — but three months later a fellow from the government turned up. He had traced me, as Dudley Gillam, through my forwarding addresses. It scared the pants off me at first. But he was a purchasing agent, and Uncle Sam bought the desert land as a solar-energy pilot site.”

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars an acre. He was tickled to get it so cheap.”

“But even a hundred and fifty thousand doesn’t guarantee a lifetime at playgrounds like the Great Smokies Chilton and Miami.”

“You’re right about that. But I ran into a guy in Fort Worth, a wildcat oil man rigged up in Venezuela. Some minor civil troubles, guerrillas from the mountains, busted him up and he had run short of cash. He’d hopped up to the States to raise some. He needed a partner with a quick hundred thousand to see the drilling to completion.”

“And,” I said mind-boggled, “you brought in the wells.”

“Like water out of this faucet,” Hardtimes Calhoun said.

“How much are you worth now?”

“I’m not sure. I guess I could sell out my interest for five or six million.”

I drew in my breath.

“Now that you know—” His lank body began to pull itself together. He was mastering the hangdog guilt in his eyes. His lips were thinning, hardening. “What next? I owe you three thousand plus the interest on it and some pension checks and the interest on them. The only law I broke was to bury the wrong man — who had died of natural causes, as the Yuma coroner attested. Against my kind of money, you’d never make it in court if you tried to claim more than your just due.”

The idea of trying to fight his amassed wealth inspired some hard thinking.

Only he and I knew the truth. He was Dudley Gillam, even to Amanda. He was Dudley Gillam — and I was his sole heir.

I had a deep-down certainty that he hadn’t drawn a will cutting me out. His subconscious guilt would have forestalled that. And even if there should be a will, it could be destroyed, set aside. When there is enough money there is a way with a will.

I let a ruefully pleasant smile work to life on my lips. “It’s a different reunion than I’d planned. Uncle Dudley.”

“You mean — you’re going to accept it?”

I nodded. “Why not? What good would it do to fight you? I take my hat off to you. In many ways, you’re very much like the man you buried in Yuma.”

And the man, I thought, I’ll bury in Miami. A neat little accident Maybe an overdose of some of his medication. Or a cramp when he went swimming in the ocean. Or an unfortunate fall down a stairway. Accidents are always happening to geezers his age.

“You don’t have to duck me any longer. Uncle Dudley.”

As we strolled out together, I dropped my arm across his shoulders. My touch was light, but he’d soon learn it was the returning touch of hard times — the hardest of all times.