Lydia Page 3

  “A brother?”

  “Too young for a father, and a trifle old for a date.” She cocked her head and stared at me. “Old for some,” she said. “However, the mature types are running very strong these days. I’m tied to the bells all afternoon. Her name is Mrs. Bedrich.”

  “Whose name is Mrs. Bedrich?”

  “The house mother—in there.”

  I sighed and shook my head, and then went to the office door and knocked and was asked in by a round, pink-faced little lady who asked me to sit down and offered me some chocolates from a box. The whole thing was upsetting. Consistent graciousness does not bulk large in my scheme of human behavior, and it has always seemed to me that I am somewhat more comfortable with people snarling at me. At least it gives me an opportunity to snarl back.

  “And just what can I do for you, Mr.—?”

  “Harvey Krim,” I replied, getting out my credentials and passing them to her. “I am an insurance investigator—”

  “A private detective? That’s terribly interesting.”

  “Not exactly—”

  “But it says so, here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The company licenses us as private detectives, but that’s merely company policy. I am not in any sense what you might think of as a private detective. My work is to try to recover property, lost or stolen, which the company has insured.”

  “I see,” she nodded. “And has one of our girls reported something lost or stolen? I always held that it is a mistake to allow girls to take valuable things with them to college—because, really, they don’t have any sense of value. Not at this age. And I simply couldn’t face the fact that anything valuable had been stolen from Seavey Hall. Little things, yes. Some girls will pilfer without even meaning to pilfer, but not anything of real value. I don’t think that has ever happened, and you would have to convince me very hard, Mr.—?”

  “Krim,” I said, “Harvey Krim.” She was not easy to interrupt or to stop. Her pleasure was talking, and the words flowed from her without effort or thought. But now I had the advantage, and I quickly assured her that so far as I knew, nothing had been stolen from Seavey Hall or any occupant thereof.

  “Then what can I do for you, Mr. Krim?”

  “Have you read about the robbery that took place in New York the other day? A necklace worth a quarter of a million dollars was stolen from a man called Mark Sarbine.”

  “Now, I believe I did—in yesterday’s paper. Do you know, it’s a frightful thing to confess, Mr. Krim, but I adore jewel robberies. I often think—”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure. Now this necklace was insured by my company, and I am handling the case for them. When so large a sum is involved, we must be thorough and examine every angle of the case.”

  “I am sure you must. I remember reading a book about a jewel robber, and—”

  “There have been some very fine books about jewel robbers, Mrs. Bedrich. But let me tell you why I am here. This necklace that was stolen was acquired by its present owner from a Richard Cotter, but the necklace legally belonged to his daughter—”

  “Sarah Cotter!”

  “Exactly. So you see why I am here. Both Richard Cotter and his daughter are dead, but I felt that anything I might find out about the girl would be of help to me. Do you remember her?”

  “Of course I do,” she answered, frowning slightly. “Poor child—but I don’t see how it’s going to help you. Both of them dead, and the necklace, you say, no longer belonged to them. Such a tragedy, Mr. Krim—such a dreadful tragedy. A girl like that, with so much to live for, so bright, so alive—”

  “Just how did she die, Mrs. Bedrich?”

  “In an auto accident—the way so many children do today. And such a waste.”

  “Could you tell me about it?”

  There was not too much to tell. Sarah Cotter had had a small foreign car—Mrs. Bedrich thought it was an Italian car, but she was not absolutely sure. Driving back from New York, Sarah Cotter had taken a shortcut that was part of the in-knowledge at the school, a poor dirt road that skirted a pond. She lost control of the car, and it went into the pond. It had been raining shortly before this happened, and afterward the tracks of her tires revealed where the car had gone over the embankment. Two boys playing there found the tracks and saw a kapok cushion and a purse floating in the lake. They managed to fish them out with a branch, and then they called the police. The material in the purse identified Sarah. The boys were wise enough not to mess up the tracks, and thereby the story was pieced together.

  “Such a frightful, wasteful way to die,” Mrs. Bedrich sighed.

  “Could you tell me what the inquest revealed? Did she die of drowning?”

  “There was no inquest, Mr. Krim. They never recovered the body.”

  “What? But they must have. After all—a country pond—it couldn’t have presented any great problem to them. They must have recovered the car.”

  “Chasin Pond is not just a country pond, Mr. Krim,” Mrs. Bedrich told me patiently. “There are very curious geological formations in that part of Massachusetts. Chasin Pond is bottomless.”

  “Come now, Mrs. Bedrich,” I said, “no pond is bottomless. It may be very deep, but certainly a car can be grappled and brought up.”

  Mrs. Bedrich shrugged and said she was not a geologist, but that she had been given to understand that Chasin Pond had no bottom. I reserved my opinion on that point and asked her when this had happened.

  “About a year ago.”

  “And her father had killed himself eight months before?”

  “If you will forgive me, Mr. Krim, I don’t care to talk about her father. I believe that suicide is the most wretched of all acts, sinful and as unforgivable as murder”—I disagreed with her, but I was not there to convert her to my point of view—“especially when one thinks of the effect it has upon those dear ones left to face life and cope with it. Do you know, there was nothing for Sarah, nothing. He had wasted away all that her mother had left her, every cent they had, including the famous Cotter necklace. Yes, we knew about the necklace. There is precious little these girls keep secret from each other. But to leave a girl in school with no hope, no future—it’s just a wonder that the poor dear could fight her way through most of the school year left to her. It was not the tuition, Mr. Krim. That hadn’t been paid, but the trustees of this school are not heartless. A scholarship was made available to her, but what then? No relatives, no home, no opportunity—”

  “She was a senior, I take it?” You couldn’t wait for Mrs. Bedrich to finish speaking; you had to break in, hard and mercilessly.

  “Yes. And you know, I sometimes feel the poor child would have suffered more had she lived. Oh, I know that sounds like a cruel thing to say—but how could a father do it to a child?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Bedrich. I never knew the father or the daughter. But I would like to talk to some of her friends.”

  “I just don’t understand how that will help you find the necklace. It is the necklace that you’re interested in?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and I don’t know myself that it will help any, but since I am here, I might as well.”

  Mrs. Bedrich agreed. She was not a bad old girl, except that she loved the sound of her own voice but did not listen to it; and she told me that she would be serving tea for the girls in the living room at four o’clock, and that I might as well talk to them there as anywhere else. There were slightly over one hundred girls living in Seavey Hall, and about forty of them generally turned out for tea and cookies.

  Mrs. Bedrich poured, and the girls served each other, and I sat there and wondered whether a school like Chelsee didn’t choose its student population at least fifty per cent by looks and figure. College had been nothing like this in my own experience and time.

  The girls brought me tea and cookies, and about forty pairs of eyes examined me frankly and curiously, and then Mrs. Bedrich clapped her hands for silence and explained who I was and what I wanted. Either there were dull d
ays at Chelsee or an insurance investigator was more than I had ever imagined, because the buzz of excitement would have been more befitting a film star than myself. Half the girls gathered around me, and the questions came so fast that I could hardly separate them, much less answer them. Mrs. Bedrich clapped her hands and added to the general confusion, and finally I managed to restore some semblance of quiet and to inform them that I would be happy to answer any questions, so long as they came one at a time.

  “Are you a detective, Mr. Krim?”

  “Not really. I look for property, not criminals.”

  “If you recover the necklace, will it belong to Sarah again?”

  “She’s dead, so it could not very well belong to her.”

  “But I mean her family—or legally—you know?”

  “No. There’s no question of a legal claim on the part of any Cotter. Sarbine has clear title to it.”

  “How much was it insured for?”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Gasps and grins of appreciation.

  “Don’t you have any clues? I read about it in the New York Times. It seemed to be such a simple robbery.”

  “Those are the worst. The complicated ones fall to pieces almost immediately.”

  A tall, redheaded girl, who had been regarding me thoughtfully out of sober blue eyes set under straight brows, said, “What I don’t understand, Mr. Krim, is the place of Chelsee College in all this. It’s true that Sarah was a student here, but Sarah is dead, and if there is no longer any connection between Sarah Cotter and the missing necklace, why are you here?”

  “That’s a fair question and a very sensible one,” I replied. “I said that there was no doubt as to Mr. Sarbine’s legal ownership of the necklace. As to whether there’s a connection between its disappearance and Sarah Cotter—well, I just don’t know.”

  “How could there be?” another girl asked.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  A tiny blonde grinned and observed that I did not appear to know very much.

  “That’s true,” I agreed.

  “I mean,” the tiny blonde continued, “that you’re the farthest thing from a proper television or film detective that I have ever seen. You look more like one of our profs; you speak reasonably good English; you don’t seem to be tough or cynical, and I bet you don’t even carry a gun.”

  “I don’t carry a gun,” I smiled, “but I am considered cynical in certain circles. But you can’t be tough or hardboiled in a room full of pretty girls, can you?”

  That got a laugh from most of them but not from the redhead. She kept taking my measure, and then she informed me that her name was Lee Madran and that she had been Sarah Cotter’s best friend.

  “I wish you would be serious, Mr. Krim,” she said firmly.

  “I am serious.”

  “I mean that Sarah Cotter meant a great deal to many of us. She was a fine girl, and I don’t like to see even her memory pushed around.”

  “I’m very sorry if I gave you that impression. I’m serious too, and even if it doesn’t seem so, you have been of help to me.”

  They looked dubious, and I imagine they had every right to look dubious. There was some more talk, and then I thanked Mrs. Bedrich and started to leave. Just outside the door of the place someone called my name, and when I turned around, there was the tall redhead.

  “Mr. Krim? Could I have a few words with you?”

  “Certainly.”

  We walked toward my car, and she said to me, “I was very close to Sarah, Mr. Krim. We went through three years of college together, and last year we were roommates. So you can imagine that her death hit me pretty hard. That’s why I want you to tell me the truth. Why did you come up here?”

  “I answered that before, Miss Madran.”

  “Did you? You’re a professional investigator for an insurance company, and you’re going to tell me that you drove two hundred and twenty miles for no reason at all? Does that make sense?”

  We were at the car now, and I looked at Lee Madran thoughtfully before replying. “In a way, it does make sense,” I said slowly. “I have a way of working, and it’s hard for me to explain. I want that necklace, Miss Madran—I can’t explain how badly I want it. Now, a robbery is like a maze. There are ten paths into it, but only one of them produces a solution. Now let’s say that five of these ten paths belong to the police. They always choose the same five because that’s their manner of working; they explore them thoroughly, and sometimes they come up with the answers and sometimes they don’t. I don’t go with them for the ride. I try the other paths into the maze, and since you have to start somewhere, I picked Sarah Cotter. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Not really,” the redhead said. She was nobody’s fool.

  “Will you tell me something? What kind of a girl was Sarah Cotter—truly?”

  “How do you mean, what kind of a girl? She was a friend of mine, a good student when she wanted to be, solid—well, you could depend on her. She did not let people down. She had no bed of roses, so she wasn’t one of the happy, happy, happy girls. But when she was happy, it made you feel good.”

  “Was she a depressed type?”

  “No, she was not. She had her bad moments—we all do.”

  “Could she have killed herself?”

  “That’s not even a decent thing to ask, Mr. Krim. No, she could not have killed herself.”

  “You seem very sure.”

  “I am.”

  “How did she react when her father killed himself?”

  “Well, how would you react if your father killed himself, Mr. Krim?”

  “Fair enough, I suppose. I wonder whether you have a picture of her?”

  She opened her purse and took out a small snapshot of a smiling, good-looking girl. “I keep that with me. Does that seem too sentimental, Mr. Krim?”

  I shook my head and stared at the picture. Then I handed it back to her.

  “Has the maze improved, Mr. Krim?”

  “The maze?”

  “The one you explore five paths into.”

  “Oh? Yes, of course—well, I don’t know. But I am very grateful to you, Miss Madran.”

  “I don’t know for what.”

  “For patience. Good-by, now.” I got into my car and drove off, leaving the redhead standing there and staring thoughtfully after me.

  Chasin, Massachusetts, is about thirty miles from Chelsee, and provides a direct route to New York, if you are not the type who goes out of his way for the high-speed parkways. It was still daylight and I was in no great hurry, so I drove leisurely through a string of grimy factory towns.

  A few miles from Chasin, the countryside changed to pleasant farmland, and just as I was looking for someone to ask directions of, I saw one of those metal historical markers that the state or the local historical society erects. It said, “Chasin Pond,” and I pulled up next to it and read:

  “Chasm Pond was the mustering point for the Minutemen in this section of Norfolk County. During November of 1775, the local Committe of Correspondence stored two small cannon and about fifty muskets on the bank of the pond. Since the pond was reputed to have no bottom, they felt that in an emergency, the arms could be safely sunk in the water. Since that time, the pond has been plumbed and bottom found at 460 feet.”

  The marker pointed to a dirt road, and I drove into it, a tree-shaded tunnel that continued for half a mile, where it skirted a small pond, and then left the pond, climbed a hill and ended on the Main Street of Chasin. I pulled up in front of a diner, treated myself to two hamburgers and coffee, and then asked directions to the local police station. This turned out to be an old, yellowing-stucco building, guarded by a suspicious, red-eyed, uniformed officer, who asked me at least ten questions before he admitted that the building had a boss, that the boss’s name was Captain Donovan, and that some people did get to see him. It took a while to convince him that I was one of the chosen few, and then he led me to the back of the building
, knocked at a door, was told to enter, and informed a short, square-faced man behind a desk that I was some two-bit private dick from New York.

  The short man, who was also in uniform, regarded me sourly and without any great interest for a moment or two, then nodded for his uniformed force to leave, and asked me what he could do for me but did not ask me to sit down.

  I told him my name, my background, showed him my credentials, and then repeated as much of the story of the Sarbine necklace as I considered necessary.

  “What do you want from me?” he said. “It’s after six. I’m going home. Or do they work a fourteen-hour day in New York?”

  “I thought you might tell me something about the death of Sarah Cotter.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid from Chelsee College whose car went over the embankment at the pond a year ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you why,” I answered patiently. “I told you that before Mark Sarbine acquired the necklace that was stolen, it had belonged to this girl.”

  “Look, Krim—that your name, Krim?”

  “Krim.”

  “All right, Krim. You want to find a necklace that was stolen in New York—go to New York and look for it. Don’t come around here bothering us. We got our own problems.”

  “I don’t like to bother you, Captain Donovan. I don’t like to bother anyone. I just want to know why when someone dies in this town in an unresolved accident, you don’t recover the body?”

  “You got a hell of a lot of nerve,” Donovan said angrily. “You can’t ask me anything about that case—not one damn thing. It don’t concern you,”

  “All right,” I shrugged, turning to the door, “I’ll do it the hard way.”

  I had my hand on the knob when he called me back. “I hate you slobs from the cities,” he said. “Everything is so goddamn easy for you.”

  I stood and waited.

  “How does it fit into your case? I don’t see that.”

  I continued to wait.

  “You know goddamn well why we didn’t recover the car or the body. The pond has no bottom.”

  “According to a sign out there, they found the bottom at four hundred and sixty feet.”