Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

“I’m... Mr. Davis’s man-of-all-work,” he said. “I manage the accounts, supervise the out-source help, cook, play games—” he hardened his stare “—such as chess and golf.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Clive Macmillan.”

“Were you here, Mr. Macmillan, on the night of December fifth?”

“Yes. But I can’t tell you anything either. Hucek never arrived, and that’s the extent of our knowledge on the subject.”

One of a pair of doors inset with stained glass opened to my right, and a tall, pear-shaped specimen choking a violin by the throat leaned out. “Is the man asking about Václav, Clive? Show him in.”

“...which, as you must have heard, was the evening of the ice storm, followed the next morning by two feet of snow.” Davis was a young-looking sixty in spite of his spreading waist and hips, a retired stockbroker and budding real estate tycoon from Chicago by way of Lake Geneva forty miles to the south of where we sat. He collected things in a small way, he told me: rare stamps and currency, not coins, an antique car or two. Mansion Lakes, the development outside the window, was his conception, so to speak, without being his concern — except for the one house — or not until it proved itself, at which time he was leveraged to buy in heavily.

In our first five minutes, in other words, Davis gave me the insider’s story of his life.

He had played the violin as a young man, he’d said, and for the past six years had resumed his musical studies by taking master lessons every other week from Václav Hucek, formerly concertmaster of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, well-known soloist, and currently — one hoped currently — professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin music faculty, who had retired to the Lake Geneva area in 1984.

“Václav was stubborn about his driving,” Davis said, “and that’s why I called to tell him not to come. He was to have dinner here and stay the night as he usually did, but even by four thirty our little byway was like a sheet of glass. Unfortunately, he’d already left home by then, or so one must assume, since he didn’t answer the telephone. At seven thirty, when he was two hours late, I called again.” He shook his head, then turned to stare across the room. “It’s been a shocking thing to me, Mr. Carr. I — sometimes I seem to see him, out of the corner of my eye, you know. But of course—” He drew his gaze back to me. “My playing has deteriorated. He was a wonderful teacher.”

Davis had been alternately tuning and sighting along the violin for much of our conversation. “Do you play, by chance?” he asked me, gesturing with the instrument.

“Organ and piano,” I admitted. “Not as much as I used to. That’s a beautiful violin, though.”

“Yes,” he said. “Not a true collector’s piece or I wouldn’t dare to play it but quite old, rebuilt many times, so Václav says.” He paused, then went on. “Oh, it is worth something, and I shouldn’t belittle it. Possibly by one of the lesser Amatis or... possibly not.”

“Not a Stradivarius, at any rate,” I said. I stood up from where we’d been sitting in Davis’s intimate little library-music room — twenty feet by thirty by twenty feet high with a sky-lit ceiling. He stood, too.

“When’s a good time to call you, Mr. Davis, in case I need to check back? Doesn’t seem likely right now, I know, but—” I shrugged.

“I wish you would call, Mr. Carr, if you find out anything about poor Václav. Anything at all.” He pondered with a hand to his chin. “Mornings are best because I’m always here. Weekdays only, though, and not too early, please. I’m no longer a slave to the opening bell on Wall Street.”

“Sure,” I said. He gave me his telephone number and accompanied me to the front door.

“It’s strange that Václav never mentioned having a brother,” he said.

“Oh, when someone disappears, a next-of-kin is bound to show up eventually, wanting to know what happened. Your friend is someplace between here and Lake Geneva, Mr. Davis, let’s not kid ourselves. He just hasn’t been found yet. He’s buried under fallen brush in a ravine or off in some woods, hidden from the highway, probably still behind the wheel of his car. If he came in a direct line, he was traveling county roads most of the way — in the dark, in hard, freezing rain. And he was seventy-four.”

“Driving that little car, too. I think they should be outlawed.”

Davis and I said goodbye with Clive Macmillan looking on in the background, and I couldn’t help wondering, as I descended to the Chevy, what kind of conversation they might be having in my immediate absence.