White Fire p-13 Page 18

  35

  Betty Brown Stafford Kermode, sitting in the living room of her house at the top of The Heights, a piñon fire roaring in the fireplace, hung up the princess phone. She sat very still for some minutes, staring out the picture window at the mountains, considering the problem. Her brother-in-law, Henry Montebello, sat in a wing chair on the opposite side of the fire. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, a hand-knotted bow tie of dark paisley setting off a crisp white shirt. He was examining his nails with an air of patrician boredom. A weak winter sun filtered in.

  Kermode considered the problem for another minute. And then she picked up the phone again and dialed Daniel Stafford.

  “Hello again, my dear,” came the dry, sardonic voice. Kermode did not particularly enjoy talking to her cousin Daniel, but “liking” and “caring” did not figure in the bonds that held the Stafford family together. Those bonds were made of money, and all family relationships were defined by it. As Daniel was not only the head of the Stafford Family Trusts, with assets of two billion dollars, but also one of two managing partners of the family investment company, with assets under management of sixteen billion dollars, she considered him close to her. Very close. It never occurred to her to wonder whether she actually liked the man or not.

  “Am I on speakerphone?” Stafford asked.

  “Henry is here with me,” Kermode replied. She paused. “We have a problem.”

  “If you’re referring to the new fire, thank heaven it didn’t occur in The Heights. This is wonderful, in fact — the impact on The Heights is now much diluted. What we need is a third fire even farther afield.” A dry chuckle followed.

  “That’s not amusing. In any case, I’m not calling about that. I’m calling because that girl — Corrie Swanson — made the connection between the Kermodes and the Staffords.”

  “That’s not exactly a state secret.”

  “Daniel, she got into the Griswell Archive and hit a trove of documents related to the mines, mills, and smelter operations going way back. All the way back.”

  A silence. And then she heard her cousin swear genteelly on the other end of the line. “Anything, ah, more than that?” His voice was suddenly less flippant.

  “No. At least, not yet.”

  More silence. “How good a researcher is she?”

  “She’s like a damn terrier, sinks her sharp little teeth in and never lets go. She doesn’t seem to have made the connection yet, but if she keeps digging, she will.”

  Another long silence. “I was under the impression that the germane documents had been removed.”

  “A mighty effort was made, but the archives are a complete mess. Anything might have slipped through.”

  “I see. Well now, this is a problem.”

  “Did you dig up any dirt on her and the others, as you promised?”

  “I did. This fellow Pendergast has a checkered history, but he’s untouchable. Bowdree’s something of a war hero, with a raft of citations and medals, which makes her a tricky target. Except that she got a medical discharge from the air force.”

  “Was she wounded?” Kermode asked. “She looked healthy enough to me.”

  “She spent a couple of months at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Her actual medical records are sealed, and the air force protects those files like the dickens.”

  “And the girl, Swanson?”

  “She’s a little hellion. Grew up in a trailer park in a dreadful little town in Kansas. Parents were low, low working-class, split up after she was born. Mother’s a raging alcoholic, father a ne’er-do-well, once accused of robbing a bank. She herself has a juvenile record as long as your arm. The only reason she got as far as she did is because this Pendergast fellow took her under his wing and financed her schooling. No doubt there’s a quid pro quo there. The problem is, as long as Pendergast is around she’ll be hard to get at.”

  “The chief of police tells me he left for London last night.”

  “That’s lucky news. You’d better act fast.”

  “And do what, exactly?”

  “You’re perfectly capable, my dear, of taking care of this problem before that FBI agent returns. I might just remind you what is at stake here. So don’t play games. Hit hard. And if you decide to hire out, only hire the best. Whatever you do, I don’t want to know about it.”

  “What a coward you are.”

  “Thank you. I’m quite willing to concede that you’re the one in this family with the high testosterone, dear cousin.”

  Kermode pressed the SPEAKERPHONE button with an angry jab, ending the phone call.

  Montebello had remained silent throughout the conversation, his attention seemingly focused on his well-manicured nails. Now, however, he looked up. “Leave this to me,” he said. “I know just the person for the job.”

  36

  Espelette, the upscale brasserie off the lobby of the Connaught Hotel, was a cream-and-white confection of tall windows and crisp linen tablecloths. The climatic change from Roaring Fork was most welcome. London had so far been blessed with a mild winter, and mellow afternoon sunlight flooded the gently curving space. Special Agent Pendergast, seated at a large table overlooking Mount Street, rose to his feet as Roger Kleefisch entered the restaurant. The figure was, Pendergast noted, a trifle stouter, his face seamed and leathery. Kleefisch had been practically bald even as a student at Oxford, so the shiny pate was no surprise. The man still walked with a brisk step, moving with his body thrust forward, nose cutting the air with the anxious curiosity of a bloodhound on a scent. It was these qualities — as much as the man’s credentials as a Baker Street Irregular — that had given Pendergast confidence in his choice of partner for this particular adventure.

  “Pendergast!” Kleefisch said, extending his hand with a broad smile. “You look exactly the same. Well, almost the same.”

  “My dear Kleefisch,” Pendergast replied, shaking the proffered hand. They had both fallen easily into the Oxbridge convention of referring to each other by their last names.

  “Look at you: back at Oxford, I’d always assumed you’d been in mourning. But I see that was a misapprehension. Black suits you.” Kleefisch sat down. “Can you believe this weather? I don’t think Mayfair has ever looked so beautiful.”

  “Indeed,” said Pendergast. “And I noted this morning, with no little satisfaction, that the temperature in Roaring Fork had dropped below zero.”

  “How dreadful.” Kleefisch shivered.

  A waiter approached the table, laid out menus before them, and withdrew.

  “I’m so glad you were able to catch the morning flight,” Kleefisch said, rubbing his hands as he looked over the menu. “The ‘chic and shock’ afternoon tea here is especially delightful. And they serve the best Kir Royale in London.”

  “It is good to be back in civilization. Roaring Fork, for all its money — or perhaps because of it — is a boorish, uncouth town.”

  “You mentioned something about a fire.” The smile faded from Kleefisch’s face. “The arsonist you spoke of struck again?”

  Pendergast nodded.

  “Oh, dear…On a brighter note, I think you’ll be pleased with a discovery I’ve made. I’m hopeful your trip across the pond won’t prove entirely in vain.”

  The waiter returned. Pendergast ordered a glass of Laurent-Perrier champagne and a ginger scone with clotted cream, and Kleefisch a variety of finger sandwiches. The Irregular watched the waiter move away, then reached into his fat lawyer’s briefcase, withdrew a slender book, and slid it across the table.

  Pendergast picked it up. It was by Ellery Queen, and was titled Queen’s Quorum: A History of the Detective Crime Short Story As Revealed in the 106 Most Important Books Published in This Field Since 1845.

  “Queen’s Quorum,” Pendergast murmured, gazing over the cover. “I recall you mentioning Ellery Queen in our phone conversation.”

  “You’ve heard of him, of course.”

  “Yes. Them, to be more accurate.”
>
  “Precisely. Two cousins, working under a pseudonym. Perhaps the preeminent anthologizers of detective stories. Not to mention being authors in their own right.” Kleefisch tapped the volume in Pendergast’s hands. “And this book is probably the most famous critical work on crime fiction — a collection, and study, of the greatest works in the genre. That’s a first edition, by the way. But here’s the odd thing: despite its title, Queen’s Quorum has 107 entries — not 106. Have a look at this.” And taking the book back, he opened it, turned to the contents page, and indicated an entry with his finger:

  74. Anthony Wynne — Sinner Go Secretly — 1927

  75. Susan Glaspell — A Jury of Her Peers — 1927

  76. Dorothy L. Sayers — Lord Peter Views the Body — 1928

  77. G.D.H. & M. Cole — Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday — 1928

  78. W. Somerset Maugham — Ashenden — 1928

  78A. Arthur Conan Doyle — The Adventure of (?) — 1928 (?)

  79. Percival Wilde — Rogues in Clover — 1929

  “Do you see that?” Kleefisch said with something like triumph in his voice. “Queen’s Quorum number seventy-eight A. Title uncertain. Date of composition uncertain. Even the existence uncertain: hence the A. And no entry in the main text — just a mention in the contents. But clearly, Queen had — most likely due to his preeminence in the field — heard enough about its rarity, secondhand, to believe it worth inclusion in his book. Or then again, maybe not. Because when the book was later revised in 1967, bringing the list up to one hundred twenty-five books, seventy-eight A was left out.”

  “And you think this is our missing Holmes story.”

  Kleefisch nodded.

  Their tea arrived. “Uniquely, Conan Doyle has a prior entry in the book,” Kleefisch said, taking a bite of a smoked salmon and wasabi cream sandwich. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Queen’s Quorum number sixteen.”

  “Then it would seem that the obvious next step should be to determine just what Ellery Queen knew about this Holmes story, and where he — they — learned it from.”

  “Unfortunately, no. Believe me, the Irregulars have been down that path countless times. As you might imagine, Queen’s Quorum seventy-eight A is one of the seminal bugbears of our organization. A special title has been created and is waiting to be conferred on the member who tracks down that story. The two cousins have been dead for decades and left behind no shred of evidence regarding either why seventy-eight A was in the first edition of Queen’s Quorum or why it was later removed.”

  Pendergast took a sip of champagne. “This is encouraging.”

  “Indeed.” Kleefisch put the book aside. “Long ago, the Irregulars amassed a large number of letters from Conan Doyle’s later life. To date, we have not allowed outside scholars to examine the letters — we wish to mine them for our own scholarly publications in the Journal and elsewhere. However, the late-in-life letters have for the most part been ignored, since they deal with that time in Conan Doyle’s life when he was heavily involved in spiritualism, writing such nonfiction works as The Coming of the Fairies and The Edge of the Unknown while Holmes was set aside.”

  Kleefisch picked up another finger sandwich, this one of teriyaki chicken and grilled aubergine. He took a bite, then another, closing his eyes as he chewed. He wiped his fingers daintily on a linen napkin, and then — with a mischievous twinkle in his eye — he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out two worn, faded letters.

  “I am hereby swearing you to secrecy,” he told Pendergast. “I have, ah, temporarily borrowed these. You wouldn’t want to see me blackballed.”

  “You have my assurance of silence.”

  “Very good. In that case, I don’t mind telling you that both of these letters were written by Conan Doyle in 1929—the year before his death. Each is addressed to a Mr. Robert Creighton, a novelist and fellow spiritualist that Conan Doyle befriended in his last years.” Kleefisch unfolded one. “This first letter mentions, in passing: ‘I expect any day to receive news of the Aspern Hall business, which has been pressing on my mind rather severely of late.’” He refolded the letter, returned it to his pocket, and turned to the other. “The second letter mentions, also in passing: ‘Have learned bad news about Aspern Hall. I am now in a quandary about how to proceed — or whether I should proceed at all. And yet I cannot rest easy until I’ve seen the matter through.’”

  Kleefisch put the letter away. “Now, all the Irregulars who’ve read these letters — and there have not been many — assumed that Conan Doyle was involved in some sort of real estate speculation. But I spent all of yesterday morning going over the rolls of both England and Scotland…and there is no record of any Aspern Hall on the register. It does not exist.”

  “So you’re suggesting that Aspern Hall is not a place — but a story title?”

  Kleefisch smiled. “Maybe — just maybe — it’s the title of Conan Doyle’s rejected tale: ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall.’”

  “Where could the story be?”

  “We know where it isn’t. It’s not in his house. After being bedridden for months with angina pectoris, Conan Doyle died in July 1930 at Windlesham, his home in Crowborough. In the years since, countless Irregulars and other Holmes scholars have traveled down to East Sussex and explored every inch of that house. Partial manuscripts, letters, other documents were found — but no missing Holmes story. That’s why I can’t help but fear that…” Kleefisch hesitated. “That the story’s been destroyed.”

  Pendergast shook his head. “Recall what Conan Doyle said in that second letter: that he was in a quandary about how to proceed; that he couldn’t rest until he’d seen the matter through. That doesn’t sound like a man who would later destroy the story.”

  Kleefisch listened, nodding slowly.

  “The same cathartic urge that prompted Conan Doyle to write the story in the first place would have prompted him to preserve it. If I had any doubts before, that entry in Queen’s Quorum has silenced them. That story is out there — somewhere. And it may just contain the information I seek.”

  “Which is?” Kleefisch asked keenly.

  “I can’t speak of it yet. But I promise you that if we find the story — you’ll be the one to publish.”

  “Excellent!” He brought his hands together.

  “And so the game — to coin a phrase — is afoot.” With that, Pendergast drained his glass of champagne and signaled the waiter for another.

  37

  Stacy was proving to be a big-time sleeper, often not rising until ten or eleven, Corrie thought as she dragged herself out of bed in the dark and eyed with envy the form through the open door, sleeping in the other bedroom. She remembered being like that before figuring out what she wanted to do with her life.

  Instead of making coffee in her tiny kitchen, Corrie decided to drive into town and splurge on a Starbucks. She hated the freezing house, and even with Stacy Bowdree in residence she spent as little time there as she could.

  She glanced at the outdoor thermometer: two degrees below zero. The temperature just kept dropping. She bundled up in a hat, gloves, and down coat, and made her way out to the driveway where her car was parked. As she dusted it off — a very light snow had fallen the night before — she once again regretted her outburst at Wynn Marple. It had been stupid to burn that bridge. But it was vintage Corrie, with her temper and her long-standing inability to suffer jerks. That behavior might have worked in Medicine Creek, when she was still a rebellious high-school student. But there was no excusing it anymore — not here, and not now. She simply had to stop lashing out at people — especially when she knew all too well that it was counterproductive to her own best interests.

  She started the car and eased down the steep driveway to Ravens Ravine Road. The sky was gray, and the snow had started falling yet again. The weather report said a lot more was on the way — which in a ski resort like Roaring Fork was greeted as a farmer greets rain, with celebration and chatter. Corrie for her p
art was sick to death of it. Maybe it really was time to cash in her chips and get out of town.

  She drove slowly, as there were often patches of ice on the hairpin road going down the canyon and her rental car, with its crappy tires, had lousy traction.

  So what now? She had at most a day or two more of work on the skeletons — crossing the T’s forensically, so to speak. Then that would be that. Even though it seemed unlikely, she would see if Ted had any more ideas about where she might find clues to the identity of the killers — tactfully, since of course he didn’t know the truth about how the miners had really died. He’d asked her out again, for dinner tomorrow; she made a mental note to talk to him about it then.

  Six days before Christmas. Her father had been begging her to come to Pennsylvania and spend it with him. He would even send her the money for airfare. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps…

  A loud noise, a shuddering BANG!, caused her to jam on the brakes and scream involuntarily. The car screeched and slid, but didn’t quite go off the road, instead coming to a stop sideways.

  “What the hell?” Corrie gripped the steering wheel. What had happened? Something had shattered her windshield, turning it into an opaque web of cracks.

  And then she saw the small, perfectly round hole at their center.

  With another scream she ducked down, scrunching herself below the door frame. All was silent as her mind raced a mile a minute. That was a bullet hole. Someone had tried to shoot her. Kill her.

  Shit, shit, shit…

  She had to get out of there. Taking a deep breath and tensing, she swung herself back up, punched at the sagging window with her gloved hand, ripped a hole big enough to see through, then grabbed the wheel again and jammed on the gas. The Focus skidded around and she managed to get it under control, expecting more shots at any moment. In her panic she accelerated too fast; the car hit a patch of ice and slid again, heading for the guardrail above the ravine. The car ricocheted off it, slid back onto the road with a screech of rubber, and turned around another hundred eighty degrees. Corrie was shaken but — after a brief, panicked moment — realized she was unhurt.