“You damned well cost me strokes on this hole, Crang,” Wansborough whispered at me. He was annoyed.
“I’ve got news that might cost you more,” I said.
“Couldn’t it wait until business hours?” Wansborough asked.
“Right now,” I said, “I’m on business hours.”
The man in the rimless glasses called over to Wansborough. “The last hole gave these boys the nassau, Matthew,” he said. He had a scorecard in one hand and was making notations on it with a stubby pencil. “We owe them, um, nine dollars apiece.” The way he said it, it might have been his bank’s reserve fund.
“You fellows go on ahead,” Wansborough called back.
The banker and the other two men gave Wansborough looks that asked why he was spending time on someone who plainly belonged below stairs.
“I’ll be right along,” Wansborough said. “Order me a gin and tonic.”
“Better make it a double,” I said to Wansborough.
“Whatever are you talking about, Crang?”
“The kind of news I have,” I said, “is usually followed by a double.”
Wansborough steered me along the path from the eighteenth green. Where it branched toward the clubhouse, he turned us in the direction of the parking lot. We sat on one of the white benches among the snapdragons.
“Now,” Wansborough said. His right leg jiggled. He couldn’t wait to join his cronies at the nineteenth hole.
“This is about your cousin.”
“My lord, Crang, is that all?” Wansborough said. “If something came out of your meeting with Alice, you could have phoned my office tomorrow.”
The man was aggravating me.
“Something came out of the meeting,” I said. “Alice’s death.”
Wansborough’s leg lost its jiggle.
“Your sense of drama is appalling,” he said.
I gave him an edited version of my early-morning call from Alice and my visit to the scene of her murder. Wansborough looked straight at me most of the time I talked. Toward the end, his gaze drifted away, and when I finished, he spoke in a slow, thoughtful voice.
He said, “We have four spaces left in the family plot at Mount Pleasant.”
The guy knew how to home in on the core of a situation.
I said, “We’ve got more immediate concerns, Mr. Wansborough.”
“Alice’s funeral is immediate to me,” Wansborough said. “Her mother is a widow. She’ll be on to me about arrangements.”
“Somebody else might be on to you,” I said. “The cops.”
Wansborough made a hmm sound.
He said, “It’s my duty of course to tell the police whatever I know that might assist them in their inquiries.”
“For the record,” I said, “it’s better that you don’t know anything.”
Wansborough straightened into his indignant posture.
“I know,” he said, “that it was my misfortune to have been persuaded by my cousin to invest a good deal of family money in a company that is in unsavoury hands. Now my cousin is dead and my investment remains in the same unsavoury hands.”
“Why not keep that summary to yourself for a few days,” I said. “Rushing off to the cops isn’t going to get back your investment in Ace.”
Wansborough looked down at his golf shoes. They were two-toned, black and white, and had little black tassels. Wansborough’s strict dress rules got a holiday on the golf course.
He said, “What are you suggesting?”
“Silence.”
“You’re an exasperating man, Mr. Crang.”
“Passive silence.”
Wansborough got off another hmm.
I said, “Don’t go to the cops with the suspicions about Charles Grimaldi.”
Wansborough started to say there were more than suspicions. But his heart wasn’t in the objection, and he allowed me to talk over him.
“You’re in violation of no laws,” I said. “Police come to you with specific questions, fair enough, you answer. But I’m betting that’ll be a couple of days. Until then, you concentrate on organizing Alice’s place in the family plot.”
Wansborough got his spacey look, the one that signalled deep contemplation.
He said, “Approaching the police would seem an unnecessary public fuss.”
“Alice is going to be on the front pages tomorrow,” I said. “No sense your name joining hers.”
“There’s something in what you say.”
“Done.” I stood up before Wansborough did more slow-motion thinking. “I’ll get back to you within forty-eight hours.”
Wansborough didn’t stand up.
He said, “Mr. Crang, you haven’t been entirely forthcoming about the nature of my cousin’s death.”
“Not much to be forthcoming about,” I said. “Someone whapped her. With a fist, I’d say. Must have been a man. Guy with a heft behind his punch. Someone built along your lines.”
“That last remark is personally offensive,” Wansborough said with his old snap.
“I could get more offensive and ask where you were early this morning.”
Wansborough rose from the bench. I’d been wrong about his height. He had two or three inches on me.
“I’ll await your report,” he said. “Wednesday morning is your limit.”
“All I want,” I said.
“It had better be all you need,” Wansborough said. “If you have no satisfactory solution, I’ll instruct Mr. Catalano to arrange other means of resolving this disgraceful business.”
“Resolve,” I said, “is a word that takes in plenty of territory.”
“When I retained you last week, Mr. Crang,” Wansborough said, “I was seeking information. I wanted to know why Ace Disposal was showing an inordinate profit and why Charles Grimaldi and my cousin were reluctant to furnish me with financial details. Those questions have now become irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. What I wish, Mr. Crang, is the return of my investment. By one means or another, I intend to be clear of Ace as soon as that can be managed.”
“Plain speaking. Mr. Wansborough,” I said.
“If there’s nothing more, Mr. Crang,” Wansborough said, “we’ll excuse one another.”
Wansborough had become more stiff and formal. At his best, he was as yielding as the Tin Man. I’d hurt him with the crack about his whereabouts at the time of Alice’s murder. A mild apology might be in order. Wansborough didn’t strike me as a prime suspect in the killing. My thinking was, whoever knocked her off had a more direct link into Ace.
Before I could say my sorrys, Wansborough spoke from three inches over my head.
“Last evening, Mr. Crang,” he said, “we had friends in for two tables of bridge and a cold supper. I spent the remainder of the night in bed at my wife’s side. What transpired in our bedroom is none of your concern.”
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