Mystery. Part 5

"The Ziggurat School. Very good."

"Who was the woman who hid the money for him?"

"She was his aunt."

"I suppose Ha.s.selgard stole-what do you call it, embezzled the money, or took it as a bribe-"

"We don't know yet. But my feeling is that it was a bribe."

"-and Marita learned about it-"

"She must have actually seen seen him take the money, because she felt she had a claim on it." him take the money, because she felt she had a claim on it."

"-and she demanded half of it or something, and he told her to get into his car-"

"Or she got into it, demanding that he take her to the money."

"And he leaned in the driver's window and shot her in the head. He rolled up the driver's window and shot through it to make it look as if Marita had been behind the wheel. Then he put her body in the trunk and drove to the native district. He abandoned his car and made his way home. And a week later, the old lady was killed for the money."

"And the same money is confiscated by the government of Mill Walk, which turns it over to Friedrich Ha.s.selgard, the Minister of Finance."

"What were you waiting for, this morning?" Tom asked.

"To see who would come. In the best of all worlds, Finance Minister Ha.s.selgard would have appeared, and dug the first bullet out of the door with a pocket knife."

"What would you have done, if he had?"

"Watched him."

"I mean, would you have gone to the police then?"

"No."

"You wouldn't even have written the police about what you knew?"

Mr. von Heilitz tilted his head and looked at Tom in a way that made him uncomfortable-it had too many shades and meanings, and it went straight through him to his deepest secrets. "You wrote to Fulton Bishop, didn't you?"

Tom was surprised to see Mr. von Heilitz now looking at him with undisguised impatience.

"What? What's wrong?"

"What did your father tell you about me? When he said that I'd called? He must have warned you off."

"Well...he did, yes. He said that it might be better to avoid you. He said you were bad luck. And he said that you used to be called the Shadow."

"Because of my first name, of course."

Tom, who was trying to figure out why the old man was irritated, looked blank.

"Lamont Cranston?"

Tom raised his eyebrows.

"My G.o.d." Mr. von Heilitz sighed. "Back in pre-history, a fictional character named Lamont Cranston was the hero of a radio series called 'The Shadow.' That That was my bad luck, if you like. But what your father was talking about is something else." was my bad luck, if you like. But what your father was talking about is something else."

The old man sipped his wine, and again regarded Tom with what looked like irritated impatience. "When I was twelve years old, both of my parents were murdered. Butchered, really. I came home from school and found their bodies. My father was lying dead in this room. He had been shot several times, and there was a tremendous amount of blood. As well as what is still probably called 'gore.' I found my mother near the back door, in the kitchen. She had obviously been trying to escape. I thought she might still be alive, and I rolled her body over. Suddenly my hands were red with blood. She had been shot in the chest and the stomach. Until I rolled her over and saw what they had done to her, I hadn't even noticed all the blood on the floor."

"Did they ever find who did it?"

"I found out who did it, years later. When this house was closed, I went to live with an aunt and uncle while the police investigated my parents' murders. I don't suppose you knew that my father was David Redwing's Minister of Internal Affairs after Mill Walk became independent? He was an important man. Not as important as David Redwing, but important all the same. So a vigorous investigation took place. It went nowhere, and its failure was an ongoing sorrow. As if in recompense for the inability of the police to solve his murder, my father was posthumously awarded the Mill Walk Medal of Merit. I have it in a desk drawer somewhere over there-I could show it to you." He was staring off into some internal s.p.a.ce now, not looking at Tom at all. found out who did it, years later. When this house was closed, I went to live with an aunt and uncle while the police investigated my parents' murders. I don't suppose you knew that my father was David Redwing's Minister of Internal Affairs after Mill Walk became independent? He was an important man. Not as important as David Redwing, but important all the same. So a vigorous investigation took place. It went nowhere, and its failure was an ongoing sorrow. As if in recompense for the inability of the police to solve his murder, my father was posthumously awarded the Mill Walk Medal of Merit. I have it in a desk drawer somewhere over there-I could show it to you." He was staring off into some internal s.p.a.ce now, not looking at Tom at all.

"I waited nearly ten years," he finally continued. "I inherited this house and everything in it. After I graduated from Harvard, I came back here to live. I had enough money not to have to worry about it for the rest of my life. I wondered what I was going to do. I could have gone into business. If I had been a different sort of person, I could have gone into local politics. My father was a local martyr, after all. But I had another purpose, and I set about it. Almost immediately I discovered that the police had learned very little. So I turned to the only sources I had, the public record. I obtained a complete file of the Eyewitness Eyewitness. I examined everything everything-property transfers, land deals, steamship arrivals, court records, death notices. I had so much material that I had to alter the house in order to be able to store it all. I was looking for patterns that no one else had seen. And, after three years, I began to find them. It was the most tedious and frustrating work I had ever done, but also the most satisfying. I felt that I was saving my own life saving my own life. Eventually I was concentrating on a single man-a man who had come and gone from Mill Walk many times, a former member of our secret police who went into retirement when the secret police were disbanded. He had houses here and in Charleston. I went to Charleston and followed him. The man who had murdered my father and mother seemed ordinary-he might have been a property developer who had made enough money to devote all his time to golf. I had thought I might kill him, but found that I was no murderer. I came back to Mill Walk and presented my research to the Secretary of Internal Defense, Gonzalo Redwing, who had been a friend of my father's. A week later, the murderer returned to Mill Walk to attend a charity function, and the militia arrested him on the dock at Mill Key. He was jailed, tried, convicted, and eventually executed on the gallows at the Long Bay prison Compound."

Mr. von Heilitz turned to Tom with an expression the boy could not read at all. "It should have been a moment of triumph for me. I had found out who I was. I had discovered my life's work. I was an amateur detective-an amateur of crime. But my triumph almost immediately did worse than go sour. It turned into disgrace. During the months between his arrest and execution, the man I had found never stopped talking. He implicated my father in his own murder."

"How could he do that?" Tom asked.

"I don't mean he said that my father wanted to be killed, but that he was executed. According to this man, my father had partic.i.p.ated in certain arrangements that were set up just around the time of Mill Walk's independence. He was an active partner in these arrangements. The arrangements had to do with the sugar revenues, with the way tax revenues were handled, with the bidding on road construction and garbage disposal, with water allocations, the banks, with certain fundamental structures that were set up at that time. There were irregularities, and my father was deeply involved in them. According to the murderer, my father had ceased to be cooperative. He wanted a disproportionate share of all these fundamental arrangements. And so this man had been hired to kill him. It was supposed to look like a robbery."

"But who was supposed to have hired him?"

"He never knew. He was given instructions through a Personals ad in the Eyewitness Eyewitness, and money was paid into his Swiss bank account. Of course the implication was that the highest officials in Mill Walk were involved, and the more he said, the more the public was outraged-he was obviously clouding the issue, trying to take the spotlight off himself and blame everybody else. The secret police were suspect anyhow, and had been disbanded shortly after independence. When this man's record was made public, even those who had thought there might be something to his charges turned against him. His own stories counted against him, in the end. I myself had a certain amount of fame, as the one who had led to his arrest."

"Then why ...?"

"Why did I end up living like this? Why do I object to your writing to Captain Bishop?"

"Yes," Tom said.

"First of all, I'd like to know if you signed the letter."

Tom shook his head.

"It was an anonymous letter? Good boy. Don't be surprised if nothing is done. You know what you know, and that is enough."

"But after the police read the letter, they at least have to look at the car more carefully, instead of just taking Ha.s.selgard's story as fact. And when they find the bullet, they'll know that Ha.s.selgard's story wasn't the truth."

"Captain Bishop already knows it wasn't," said the old man.

"I don't believe that."

"I discovered, soon after the execution of my father's murderer, that except for one detail the man had been telling the truth all along. My father's death had been ordered by the highest levels of our government. Corruption was a fact of life on Mill Walk."

"Well, that was a long time ago," Tom said.

"Nearly fifty years ago. There have been many, many changes on Mill Walk since then. But the Redwings still exert a large influence."

"They're not even in government anymore," Tom protested. "They just do business. They're social. Half of them are too wild to do anything but race cars and throw parties, and the other half is so respectable they don't do anything but go to church and clip coupons."

"Such are our leaders," the old man said, smiling. "We will see what happens."

A few minutes later Lamont von Heilitz stood up from the table, and walked into the maze of files. Tom heard the opening of a metal drawer. "Have you ever been to Eagle Lake, in Wisconsin?" he called to Tom, who could just see the top of his silvery head over a stack of papers atop an iron-grey cabinet.

"No, I haven't," Tom called back.

"You may be interested in this." He reappeared with a large leather-bound book under his arm. "I own a lodge in Eagle Lake-it was my parents', of course. We spent our summers 'up north,' as Mill Walk says, all during my boyhood, and after I had returned from Harvard I used the lodge for a number of years." He put the thick book down on the table before Tom and leaned over his shoulder. His index finger rested on the book's wide brown cover, and when Tom looked he saw that the old man was smiling. "The way you've been talking-the way I can see that you feel-all of that, even though you haven't said half of what's been going through your head-reminded me of this case. It must have been the third or fourth time I used my methods to discover the ident.i.ty of a murderer, and it was one of the first times I made the results of my investigations public. As you will see."

"How many cases have you investigated?" Tom suddenly wanted to know.

Von Heilitz lifted his hand from the book and put it on Tom's shoulder. "I've lost count now. Something over two hundred, I think."

"Two hundred! How many of those did you solve?"

The old detective did not answer the question directly. "I once spent a very interesting year in New Orleans, looking into the poisoning deaths of a series of prominent businessmen. I was poisoned myself, in fact, but had taken the precaution of supplying myself with a good supply of the antidote." He nearly laughed out loud at the expression on Tom's face. "I regret to say that the antidote did not save me from an extremely uncomfortable week in the hospital."

"Was that the only time you were injured?"

"I was shot once-in the shoulder-and shot at four times. A bear of a man in Norway, Maine, broke my right arm when he found me photographing a Mercedes-Benz that was up on blocks in a shed out behind his house. Two men have cut or stabbed me with knives, one in a native house a block from where we saw each other in Weasel Hollow and the other in a motel called The Crossed Keys in Bakersfield, California. I was beaten up seriously only once, by a man who jumped me from behind in an alley off Armory Place, near police headquarters. But in Fort Worth, Texas, a state senator who had killed nearly a dozen prost.i.tutes nearly killed me too, by hitting me in the back of my head with a hammer. He fractured my skull, but I was out of the hospital in time to see him hanged."

He patted Tom's shoulder. "It's a sorry calling at times, I fear."

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

"The only man I ever had to kill was the one who broke my arm. That was in 1941. The end of every investigation brings a depression, but that one was my worst. I came back to Mill Walk with my arm in a cast, and I refused to answer my phone or go out of this house for two months. I scarcely ate. I suppose it was a kind of breakdown. In the end I checked myself into a clinic, and stayed there another two months. 'Why do you always wear gloves?' the doctors asked me. 'Is the world so dirty?' 'I'm at least as dirty as the world,' I remember saying; 'maybe I want to keep from contaminating it, instead of the other way around.' I can remember catching sight of my face in the mirror one day and being shocked by what I saw-I saw an adult, the person I had become. Soon my depression began to lift. I came back here. I found that I was refusing many more cases on the mainland than I accepted. After a while, my reputation wasn't even a dim memory, and I was free to live as I wished." He took his hand from Tom's shoulder and pulled back his chair. "And some years ago, I saw you in an unexpected place. And I knew that we would meet some day and have this conversation."

He sat down, with an old man's briskness, on his chair. "I wanted to show you the first pages in this book, and instead I talked your ear off. Let's take a look at this before you fall asleep."

Tom had never felt less sleepy. He looked at Lamont von Heilitz sitting a yard away from him with his eyebrows raised and his gloved fingers just opening the big leather journal. The old man looked drawn and n.o.ble, the refinement of his face starker than ever in the soft light, the grey wing of hair on the side of his head glowing silver. Tom realized that he was looking at the real thing the real thing. Seated a yard away from him, slightly imperious and slightly ravaged, more than slightly diminished by age, was a great detective, the actuality behind literally thousands of novels, movies, and stage plays. He did not raise orchids, inject a seven percent solution of cocaine, or say things like "Archons of Athens!" He was an old man who seldom left his father's house. All Tom's life, he had lived across the street.

The book, a more elegant version of his sc.r.a.pbook, lay open on the table. Tom read the huge headline on the left-hand page. MILLIONAIRE SUMMER RESIDENT DISAPPEARS FROM HOME MILLIONAIRE SUMMER RESIDENT DISAPPEARS FROM HOME. Beneath the headline ran the subhead: Jeanine Thielman, Mill Walk Figure, Last Seen Friday Jeanine Thielman, Mill Walk Figure, Last Seen Friday. Beneath this was a grainy picture of a blond woman in a fur coat stepping down from a coach-and-four. A diamond necklace glittered at her throat, and her hair was swept back from her forehead. She looked sleek, rich, and powerful, stepping down from the platform with a long, outstretched leg. Her smile for the camera was a grimace of willed artifice. Tom understood immediately that the woman had been photographed arriving at a charity ball. She reminded him of his mother, in old photographs taken when she had been Gloria Upshaw, a member of Mill Walk's Junior League.

Tom looked at the name and date of the newspaper-the Eagle Lake Gazette Eagle Lake Gazette of June 17, 1925. of June 17, 1925.

"The seventeenth of June was the day after I arrived in Eagle Lake that year. Jeanine Thielman, who was the first wife of our neighbor's father, Arthur Thielman, had disappeared during the night of the fifteenth. Arthur found her missing when he looked into her bedroom in the morning, sent a messenger around to the other lodges, including the Redwing compound, to see if she had been visiting one of her friends, found that no one had seen her since a dinner party at the senior Langenheims' the night before, and waited through all of the sixteenth before riding over to the police station in the town of Eagle Lake. See? It looks like nothing more than newspaper hysteria over a rich woman. People gossiped about this young couple sleeping in separate bedrooms."

Mr. von Heilitz pointed to the page on the left-hand side of the big journal. "This is the day I arrived. I found Arthur Thielman sitting on my porch furniture with a big setter b.i.t.c.h lying beside him. He'd heard I was due, and told his servants he was going to take his dog out for a walk. Arthur was a rude man, and he started telling me I had to help find his wife even before I got out of my carriage." MYSTERY DEEPENS MYSTERY DEEPENS, the big headline read. "Told me I had to stop off in Miami, where they had an apartment, before going back to Mill Walk. I was not to tell anyone what I was doing. He thought the Eagle Lake police were incompetent, but he didn't want anyone to know he'd hired me. 'You're the Shadow, aren't you?' 'You're the Shadow, aren't you?' Arthur said-he was trying not to yell. 'I Arthur said-he was trying not to yell. 'I want you to behave like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned shadow. Just find her and report back to me. I want this thing to die down quickly.' want you to behave like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned shadow. Just find her and report back to me. I want this thing to die down quickly.' He'd pay me anything I wanted. Then he astonished me-he apologized for ruining my vacation. I told him I wasn't interested in his money, but that I would see what I could do from Eagle Lake. He wasn't very satisfied with that, but in the end he was grateful-so I got the feeling that he thought that she might be somewhere in the area, after all. At any rate, by that point he regretted having panicked and gone to the police. Because of these headlines, he was a prisoner in his lodge-he couldn't show his face at the club, and he was sick of talking only to his servants and the local constable." He'd pay me anything I wanted. Then he astonished me-he apologized for ruining my vacation. I told him I wasn't interested in his money, but that I would see what I could do from Eagle Lake. He wasn't very satisfied with that, but in the end he was grateful-so I got the feeling that he thought that she might be somewhere in the area, after all. At any rate, by that point he regretted having panicked and gone to the police. Because of these headlines, he was a prisoner in his lodge-he couldn't show his face at the club, and he was sick of talking only to his servants and the local constable."

Tom looked at a photograph of Arthur Thielman standing beside his lodge, a rustic building with porches on two levels. Arthur Thielman was a corpulent, aggressive-looking man in a tweed jacket and high muddy boots. His rigid, Victorian face bore only the smallest resemblance to that of his son, now the Pasmores' middle-aged neighbor.

"Two days later, Kathleen Duffield, a girl from Atlanta who was being groomed to marry Ralph Redwing's cousin Jonathan, caught her hook on something in the marshy, north end of the lake. Jonathan wanted to cut the line and move to more promising territory-n.o.body ever fished the north end. Kate just thought it looked pretty up there, I gather. Anyhow, the girl kept on pulling, and eventually Jonathan jumped over the side to prove to his fiancee that all she'd hooked was a sunken row-boat. He followed the line underwater and found that she had snagged her hook on a clump of weeds. Not far away, halfway down a drop-off, he saw a rolled up length of old curtain fabric. He swam over to look at it. When he lifted the fabric, Jeanine Thielman's body rolled out of it. She had been shot in the back of the head."

Von Heilitz flipped over the page, and two new headlines blared out at Tom: JEANINE THIELMAN FOUND IN LAKE JEANINE THIELMAN FOUND IN LAKE and and LOCAL MAN CHARGED WITH THIELMAN MURDER LOCAL MAN CHARGED WITH THIELMAN MURDER. Pictures showed three policemen in lace-up boots and Sam Browne belts standing on a pier beneath a rear view of the Thielman lodge; a long slack thing beneath a sheet; an owl-eyed man moving down a corridor surrounded by policemen.

Tom thought: That's what Eagle Lake looks like. He had a flash of Sarah Spence breaking the surface of the grey water, her hair streaming down her shoulders and her eyes gleeful. Then he felt that he had seen all of this before, in some dream-time before his accident: the very shape of the letters was familiar to him.

"The man they arrested, Minor Truehart, was a half-Winnebago guide who baited hooks and found ba.s.s for half a dozen families on the lake, including the Thielmans. He lived in a cabin near the lake with his wife and kids. He stayed sober until about noon, and after that the summer residents found him either annoying or amusing, but hiring him was a kind of tradition. Apparently he had some kind of disagreement with Jeanine Thielman the day before she disappeared-he turned up smelling of whiskey, she ordered him off, he claimed to be able to work just fine, and she blew her top. They were on the Thielman pier, and lots of people heard her screaming at him. Truehart eventually gave up and loped off. He claimed that he couldn't remember what happened during the rest of the day, and that he woke up in the woods about five o'clock the next morning, with a G.o.dalmighty hangover. The police searched his cabin and found a long-barreled Colt revolver under the bed, which they sent off to the state lab for examination."

"Was it his gun?" Tom asked.

"He said he had a gun, but that wasn't it. He recognized it, though-he had sold it, he said, to old Judge Backer, a widower who came up to Eagle Lake for two weeks every summer and enjoyed target shooting. His wife said that a lot of guns came in and out of the house. Her husband made a little money dealing in them, looking out for special items for the gun collectors among the summer people. She didn't recognize that one."

Tom considered for a moment. "Did she remember the names of any of his gun customers?"

Lamont von Heilitz leaned back in his chair and gave Tom an almost paternal smile. "I'm afraid that Minor Truehart was the sort of husband who never tells his wife anything. But of course I thought about what might have happened to Judge Backer's gun, all the more so when the Judge denied the entire story. He had never illegally purchased a weapon from anyone, of course. If it could be proved that he had, he could have lost his seat on the bench. I found myself wondering how likely it was that a drunken guide, enraged by the behavior of a customer's wife, would shoot her in the back of the head."

"What did you do?" Tom asked.

"I spoke to Judge Backer and his valet, Wendell Hasek, a boy from the west side of the island. I talked to people at the club. I went to the offices of the Eagle River Gazette Eagle River Gazette and looked very closely at issues from earlier in the summer. I spoke to the local sheriff, who knew my name from the publicity about the few cases I had worked on. I had a long talk with Arthur Thielman." and looked very closely at issues from earlier in the summer. I spoke to the local sheriff, who knew my name from the publicity about the few cases I had worked on. I had a long talk with Arthur Thielman."

"He did it," Tom said. "He stole the gun from the Judge's lodge, shot his wife, rowed her body out to the end of the lake n.o.body ever used, and dropped her in. Then he framed the guide by sneaking into his cabin and hiding the gun. He probably tore down one of his own curtains and used it to wrap up the body."

"Think about my situation," the old man said, ignoring this. "It was a year after I had seen my parents' murderer executed. I had almost inadvertently solved a very minor case several months before-I had noticed a detail, nothing more, a question of the shoes a certain man had worn on the day of the murder-which added to my reputation, but left me feeling flat and dull. I had gone to Eagle Lake to forget the world, and to try to plan what I might do for the rest of my life. And here this murder is thrust in my face from the moment I reached my lodge, in the person of the unpleasant Arthur Thielman, sitting on my porch with his huge dog, seething with impatience, all willing to buy my time and attention, to buy me, in fact...." 'You're the Shadow, aren't you?' I wished I I wished I were were a shadow, so I could slip by him and lock him out of my house! I was so exhausted I said I'd help him just so he'd leave me alone. I thought it was very likely that she had simply run away from him. As soon as I had had a good night's rest, I determined to have nothing to do with either of the Thielmans. I would ignore the entire matter." a shadow, so I could slip by him and lock him out of my house! I was so exhausted I said I'd help him just so he'd leave me alone. I thought it was very likely that she had simply run away from him. As soon as I had had a good night's rest, I determined to have nothing to do with either of the Thielmans. I would ignore the entire matter."

"But then the body was discovered," Tom said.

"And the guide was arrested. And Arthur Thielman told me that he did not want my services anymore. I was to stop going around talking to all these people. He seemed particularly distressed that I'd spoken to Wendell Hasek, the Judge's valet."

"I told you," Tom said. "He wanted to get rid of you. He was afraid of what you'd discover."

"In a way. Remember my saying that I had a feeling he thought she might be somewhere in the Eagle Lake area, after all?"

"Of course. He knew she was deep in the lake, rolled up in an old curtain."

The old man smiled and coughed into his fist. "Perhaps. It's an intelligent supposition, in any case."

Tom felt enormously complimented.

"Remember that he saw me as a kind of private detective, one unaccountably of his own cla.s.s. He would not want to admit to any stranger that his wife had probably run away from him. And when she was found murdered, that put an end to that embarra.s.sment-he didn't need me to save him from it anymore. And he certainly wished no deeper embarra.s.sment."

"Wait a second," Tom said. "What deeper embarra.s.sment? He killed her."

"I said that I wanted you to think about my situation, and I want you now to consider my state of mind. Once the body had been discovered, I noticed a change in everything about me. I could say that I had become more alert, more involved in things, or that Eagle Lake had become more interesting. But it was much more than that. Eagle Lake had become more beautiful." beautiful."

Tom wanted to shake him. "How did you get him to confess?"

"Listen to me. The solution is not what I am talking about here. I am describing a sudden change in my most basic feelings. When I walked beside my lodge and looked at the lake and the lodges scattered around it, at the docks, at the pilings outside the Redwing compound, the tall Norway pines and enormous oaks, it all seemed-charged. Every bit of it spoke spoke to me. Every leaf, every pine needle, every path through the woods, every bird call, had come alive, was vibrant, full of meaning. Everything to me. Every leaf, every pine needle, every path through the woods, every bird call, had come alive, was vibrant, full of meaning. Everything promised promised. Everything chimed chimed. I knew more than I knew. There was a secret beating away beneath the surface of everything I saw."

"Yes," Tom said, not knowing why this raised goose b.u.mps on his arms.

"Yes," the old man said. "You have it too. I don't know what it is-a capability? A calling?"

Tom suddenly realized why Lamont von Heilitz always wore gloves, and nearly blurted it out.

Von Heilitz saw Tom looking at his hands, and folded his hands before him on the table. "I rode over to Judge Backer's lodge, and saw Wendell Hasek tinkering with the Judge's coupe. Hasek was no more than eighteen, and he began to look guilty the second he saw me-he didn't want to lose his job, and he was afraid of what I might get out of him."

"What did you do?" Tom asked, unable not to look at the old man's hands in their neat blue gloves, unable not to see blood on the hands of the boy the old man had been.

"I told him that I already knew that Truehart had sold the long-barreled Colt to his boss, and that the Judge had given it to Arthur Thielman for some reason. I just wanted to know the reason. I promised him-not entirely forthrightly-that the Judge's ownership of the gun would never become public knowledge.