Stolen Away

“I understand you and Henry drove down to Virginia yesterday,” Anne said, smiling, “and back again.” She gestured for me to sit next to her on the couch and I did. Wahgoosh expressed snarling displeasure.

“That sounds like quite an outing for a single day,” Mrs. Morrow said.

“We didn’t get back till the middle of the night,” I admitted. “How worthwhile a trip it was, I couldn’t say.”

“You spoke to a clairvoyant, I understand,” Anne said.

Mrs. Morrow shook her head, barely, as if thinking, What next?, and returned her attention to her needlepoint.

“Yes,” I said. “A sincere gentleman, I believe.”

“Not a faker, like so many of them.”

“No. But he gave us some specific information, including street names that we tried to check, on various maps, without any success.”

“I see,” Anne said, with a patient smile.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Ben Jonson.”

“Oh.”

“The poet.”

“Right.”

She read aloud: “‘Although it fall and die that night, it was the plant of flower and light. In small proportions we just beauties see; and in short measures, life may perfect be.’” She looked up at me with shimmering blue eyes and a crinkly brave smile. “I like that line…‘It was the plant of flower and light.’”

Jesus. Had she written off her kid as dead already?

“That’s a nice poem,” I said. “Tell me something…”

“Certainly.”

That fucking dog was still growling at me.

“Why do you think your dog was quiet that night?”

“Wahgoosh? He was in the opposite wing of the house. When he’s not on the sofa, here, where we really shouldn’t let him be…or sleeping on the floor in the nursery near Charlie…he has a little bed in the servants’ sitting room. Whately first brought him into the house, you know, and we sort of adopted the little fellow. He couldn’t have heard anything through the howling wind, all that distance.”

“You know…and excuse me for raising this, Mrs. Lindbergh…but there are those who suspect one of your three servants might be involved.”

She shook her head. “No. Betty and the others, we trust implicitly.”

“That’s not always a good way to trust.”

“Pardon?”

“Implicitly.” I turned to Anne’s mother. “Mrs. Morrow, how big a staff do you have at your estate?”

The older woman looked up from her needlepoint. “Twenty-nine. But I assure you, Mr. Heller, they’re all trustworthy.”

“I’m sure they are, Mrs. Morrow. But how many of them knew, or could have known, about the change of plans for Anne and her husband and son, to stay over an extra day or two here?”

Mrs. Morrow lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug, not missing a stitch. “Most of them. Perhaps all of them.”

I thought about that.

“You know, Mr. Heller,” Anne said, reflectively, “there was something else odd about that evening. The evening that Charlie was stolen away, I mean….”

“What was that, Mrs. Lindbergh?”

Her eyes tightened. “My husband was supposed to give a speech that night, to the alumni at New York University. But he’s been so overworked lately, he mixed up the dates. He drove home, instead.”

“You mean, he wasn’t supposed to be here that evening?”

“No.”

I leaned forward. “You realize that only someone within this household—or possibly the Morrow household—could have known that.”

“Yes. But that assumes the kidnappers knew. That this wasn’t all just a matter of…chance. Blind, dumb chance. That’s…that’s what I have so much difficulty accepting.”

Behind us a voice said, “Everything in life is chance, dear.”

It was Lindbergh. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over a sweater and open-collar shirt; his pants were tucked into leather boots that rose midcalf. He looked like a college boy—a hung-over college boy, that is. His face was haggard as hell.

He came up behind his wife, behind the couch, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She reached up and touched the hand, but did not look back at him.

“You can guard against the high percentage of chance,” he said, “but not against chance itself.”

She nodded wisely. She’d heard him say it before.

I said, “You’re right, Colonel. But don’t go writing off everything you don’t understand as happenstance. In my business we learn to look at coincidence with a jaundiced eye.”

He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he’d paid any attention. He said, “Have you had any breakfast, Nate?”

“No, sir.”

“Let’s round you something up. I’d like a word with you.”

We excused ourselves to the ladies. He walked briskly and I followed along, till he came to a sudden stop in the foyer, beyond earshot of his wife and mother-in-law.

“This fellow Red Johnson is being brought around today,” he said.

“Yes.”

“He isn’t technically under arrest, you know. The Hartford police have turned him over to the custody of the state police, here. He’ll be held in Newark.”

“Well, that’s good.”

He put his hands in his pockets, rocked gently on his feet. “This is going to be hard on Miss Gow, if this beau of hers was using her for information.”

I thought, Yeah, and so fucking what?

But I said, sympathetically, “Yes, I know.”