Mystery

“Anton Goetz! He seemed so obvious. He wanted to project a sort of terribly romantic masculine toughness, you know, always smoking and squinting his eyes, that sort of thing. That war injury helped. He was an excellent shot, by the way. A real marksman. Under the circumstances, that’s a little ghoulish, isn’t it? And he was supposed to own a rather unsavory hotel. Twenty years after all this happened, I thought of Anton Goetz when I saw Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart and Rick’s Café Americain. Except that Goetz had one of those kind of buttery German accents.”

“He doesn’t sound much like an accountant,” Tom said.

“Oh, he couldn’t have been an accountant.” She looked to see if he were teasing. “That’s impossible. Do you remember when several people were killed in his hotel? The Alvin? The Albert?”

“The St. Alwyn,” Tom said.

“That’s it. There was a prostitute, and a musician, I think, and a group of other people? And there was something about the words ‘blue rose’? And a detective on Mill Walk killed himself? Being here with Roddy and Buzz is what reminds me of all that, I guess. Anyhow, when I heard about it from my relatives on Mill Walk, I thought it was like Anton Goetz to own a hotel where something like that could happen. He couldn’t have been an accountant. Could he?”

“According to Sarah’s father, he was,” Tom said. “He saw Goetz’s name in the corporate ledgers. But it was actually my grandfather who owned the St. Alwyn.”

She looked at him fixedly for a second, forgetting about the cup of tea she had lifted from its saucer. “Well now, that’s very interesting. That explains something. On the night that it turned out that Jeanine Thielman disappeared, Jonathan and I had dinner with all the Redwings, as we did most of those nights. I was supposed to get to know his uncle Maxwell and the rest and, of course, they were supposed to give me a good looking over, which is certainly what they did. Those dinners got to be a little nerve-wracking, but I soldiered through, which is what we did in those days. Anyhow, on that night, Jon and I stayed after everyone else went back to the compound. We wanted to be by ourselves, and I asked him if we had to stay the entire summer. Jonathan thought we should, though he was very sympathetic. We didn’t have an argument, but we went to and fro for a long time. At one point, I walked away from him and went to the balcony at the front of the club that overlooks the entrance. And I saw your grandfather talking with Anton Goetz.”

She looked down and noticed the cup in her hand. She replaced it on the saucer and folded her hands on her lap. “Well, I was kind of startled, I suppose. I didn’t know they knew each other that well—they weren’t each other’s sort at all. Of course I didn’t think that Mr. Goetz and Mrs. Thielman were each other’s sorts either, and it turned out they were. During the day, I’d never seen Glen and Anton Goetz do more than nod to each other. And there they were, having this intense conversation. They were each leaning on something—Anton Goetz on his cane and your grandfather on that umbrella he always carried. I guess so he could hit somebody with it if he got mad.”

“Did it look like they were arguing?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no. What struck me at the time was that Glen had left Gloria alone in their lodge. At night. And Glen never left Gloria alone, especially at night. He was a very thoughtful father.”

Tom nodded. “Goetz always carried a cane?”

“He needed it to stand up. One of his legs was almost useless. He could walk, but only with a pronounced limp. The limp rather suited him—it went with his being such a good shot. It added to his aura.”

“He couldn’t run?”

Kate smiled. “Oh, my goodness, run? He would have fallen splat on his face. He wasn’t the kind of man you could imagine running, anyhow.” She looked at him with a new understanding clear in her intelligent face. “Did someone tell you that they saw him running? They’re nothing but a liar, if they did.”

“No, it wasn’t that, exactly,” Tom said. “My mother saw a man running through the woods on the night Mrs. Thielman was killed, and I thought it had to be Goetz.”

“It could have been almost anybody but him.”

Out on the deck, Roddy Deepdale stood up and stretched. He picked up his books and disappeared from view for a moment before coming in the side door. Buzz followed him a moment later.

“Anybody for a drink before we get ready to go over to the club?” Roddy said. He smiled brilliantly, and went into his bedroom to put on a shirt.

“Don’t you wish we had Lamont von Heilitz here, so we could ask him to sort of explain everything?” Kate said. “I’m sure he could do it.”

“Did Roddy say something about a drink?” Buzz asked, coming in the side door.

“Maybe a little one,” Kate said. “Everybody over there watches me so carefully, I think they’re afraid I’m going to get maudlin.”