![[IMAGE]](http://members.aol.com:80/pp2art/lines/redline.gif)
The rotund figure at the door shook the slight accumulation of snow off his shoulders and then removed his hat to do the same to it, exposing his head, bald save a ring of gray hair, as he did so.
“Horace, I can’t thank you enough,” a distressed Professor Benjamin Anderson said sotto voce.
“Awful weather to be out in,” Horace Masters said, his voice projecting and filling the hallway.
Anderson put out his hands palms down to quiet the large man, but Masters took no notice of the gesture.
“I shall have to write a strongly worded letter to the local meteorologist, though I strongly suspect that the only degree he might have came as a result of a response to the back of a match book.”
Anderson decided that convincing Masters to be quiet was not likely to succeed, and he hurriedly ushered the elder mathematician down the hallway and through a door on the left. Just before entering the room, which proved to be a den, they saw a small group gathered in the room across the hallway.
The pair was soon joined by a young woman, whom Anderson introduced as Kay, his help for the evening. She asked what the men would like and returned after a few minutes with a silver tray containing a bottle of rum and an assortment of dessert hors d’oeuvres.
Masters promptly helped himself to two of the diminutive, cherry-topped cheesecakes from the tray before turning to his companion. “Now, Ben, what was so all-fired important that you called me out here?”
Anderson did not respond immediately but instead poured two fingers of Meyer’s dark rum into a glass and swallowed the liquor in a nearly fluid motion. “It’s a letter, Horace,” he said at last. “It’s very important that I get it back, and I didn’t know where else to turn. I’ve heard about your rather remarkable--” Here, he rose and walked to the fireplace, where two relatively new logs were ablaze. “I suppose ‘exploits’ is an accurate word. The thing is, I need your help.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Masters responded noncommittally. “Perhaps if you told me the nature of the letter.”
“I would prefer that I not have to,” Anderson said quietly. “If necessary, I will, but I would prefer to leave it as this: the letter is of a compromising nature.”
Masters’s eyes opened wider. “Ah! Une affaire des coeurs, n’est-ce pas? Well, then I suppose we must do what we can to retrieve this letter.”
“Perhaps I should start at the beginning.”
“Perhaps indeed, though it might be wise to call the girl back first.” Masters motioned to the silver tray, which was now empty of desserts.
Anderson went out into the hallway and gave instructions to Kay. When he returned, he began, “The letter came in today’s mail. It was, as far as anyone could tell from the envelope, merely another Christmas card. Were it not for the address, I’d have thought nothing more of it. At any rate, I was rather late returning from the school. Two of my seminar students cornered and interrogated me on the nicer points of the class, but I don’t suppose that really matters. The point is that I was late and had preparations to make for tonight’s little soirée, so I just gathered up the mail from beneath the slot, looked at the envelopes, and put it on a table in the other room. I remember clearly that this particular letter was on the top of the pile when I put the mail on the table. I am absolutely certain of that.”
Both men looked up as Kay entered with another silver tray.
“Thank you,” Masters said eagerly. He raised the first tray so that she could put the second one down.
Anderson, running his hand through his thinning brown hair, waited until the two men were once again alone before continuing. “I’ve just got to get it back.”
“I take it there is no inherent value to the letter?” Masters asked.
“No, none--except, I fear, as a bargaining chip for blackmail. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“In the other room are my friends. Despite that fact, though, I would be foolish if I did not recognize that they are, to a degree, my rivals. It is possible that one of them may wish to use the letter to discredit me, to force me to leave my position as department head. At least a blackmailer I could understand. After all, it would be in both our interests to keep the letter private, no?”
“Possibly. Still, I cannot see how an extramarital dalliance could be used to do anything but elect you to public office in this day and age.” Masters face suddenly went rigid with the force of a dreadful possibility. “Ben, please tell me that this escapade was not with a student.”
Anderson looked up at Masters with eyes pleading for hope. “No, it was not with a student. I would not do that. But I do need your help here. Student or no--and I assure you it’s ‘no’--, there are two people who can be hurt.”
“We shall do what we can,” Masters said, “to see that it does not come to that.”
“Thank you, Horace.”
“Now why don’t you tell me the particulars?”
“Yes, of course. As I said, I had placed all of the mail on the table in the other room while I went upstairs to change. I was later than I had realized, a point that became painfully clear to me when, in a state of partial undress, I heard the doorbell ring. It was Kay and her brother, whom you have not met, arriving to undertake their duties. I set them to their tasks, and returned upstairs to finish changing. (I had, of course, re-dressed myself before answering the door.) After that, I had to give the two their final instructions for the party specifics and attend to legion other details, all of which both took up time and distracted my attention from the letter.”
“So you forgot about it?”
“In so many words, yes.”
“Tell me about Kay and her brother,” Masters instructed.
“They’re brother and sister, and they’re both juniors at Banyon College. They make extra income working for various members of the faculty as caterers of a sort. He is a bartender, though he prefers the term ‘mixologist.’ She is an extraordinarily able chef. Together, they help to produce quite an evening. In fact, they were recommended to me by . . . a close friend.”
“The sender of the letter, I take your pause to mean.”
“Yes, quite. At any rate, I have used their services for nearly two years, and they’ve always been entirely professional and beyond reproach. If you intend to rely on the adage ‘the butler did it,’ I’m afraid character will tell a distinctly different story.”
“Then perhaps you should tell me about the others.”
“I shall, though I must tell you that, despite my earlier statement regarding rivalry, I find it difficult to conceive of any of them as doing anything so duplicitous. Nonetheless, it is a fact that the letter is now gone, and it certainly did not disappear on its own.” Anderson inhaled deeply as if to collect himself. “We have a group we euphemistically call ‘current trends in law,’ though we do very little discussing of law and much drinking and lamenting the governor. We get together one evening a month and alternate residences. This month, it was my turn.”
“I see.”
Anderson rose once again and went to the fireplace. He opened a box on the mantel and extracted a moderately size cigar. “Will this bother you?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he extracted a foot-long match from a cylinder and reached it into the fireplace, presently extracting a flame for his cigar.
Masters took advantage of the momentary lull to survey the room. They were in Anderson’s library, a small chamber that served as the attorney’s private office. At the end of the room opposite the entrance, an austere mahogany desk supported a halogen lamp, its green tint vaguely reminiscent of the plastic green shades one might have expected in a lawyer’s office. The two adjacent walls were lined with four book shelves, each of which ran the length of the room on one wall and broke only for the fireplace on the other wall. There was, Masters had to admit, something impressive about the matching bindings of the federal-court reporters that filled two of the shelves. Masters sat in one of the two chairs, both leather bound, that faced the desk. Between the chairs, a small table held Anderson’s empty glass. Only a small garland of pine gave any indication that Christmas was less than a week away.
Anderson wheeled around suddenly. “You know, I think I’m telling you all of this out of order. If I tell you about the group members, I shall inevitably inject my opinions. But I really called you here so that you could offer your insight.”
“Which, I might point out, I would be happy to do if you would just get to the point,” Masters said impatiently.
“I’m sorry. As I said, I’d put the letter on the table. You’ve seen the table, right?”
“Not precisely,” Masters admitted.
“That’s right. You haven’t been in the room yet. Where is my mind tonight? That table’s about three feet off the ground, and it’s three feet inside the door and against the wall. I often use it as a place to drop things when I expect to return to them soon. Right on the other side of the table is a chair. That will be important, I think.”
Masters cocked an eyebrow, and Anderson brought his cigar to his lips. The ashen tip glowed orange for a moment.
“Now,” Masters said, “why don’t you tell me when you first noticed the letter missing?”
“Yes, of course. I received a phone call just before people were to arrive. While I was still on the phone, the first of the guests arrived. I hung up hastily, and I went to the door to let in Dick Gray and Ellen White. They arrived together. I showed them into the living room, and we spoke for a few minutes before the next guest arrived. And so it went until they were all here, which was within a space of about fifteen minutes. We’re generally prompt, you see. Once the five of them had arrived, I called in Kay so that she could take everyone’s drink orders. She’d already prepared a few trays of hors d’oeuvres earlier. After she took the orders, she went to the kitchen, where the bar is. I know absolutely that the letter was still on the table then.”
“Oh? And why are you so certain?”
“I saw it. Just as she left, I saw that we needed another tray of the cheese puffs--”
“Cheese puffs? You have cheese puffs?”
“Not any longer.”
Masters’s face fell.
“Sorry,” Anderson apologized. “At any rate, I went to the door to catch her before she got to the kitchen. I told her to bring another batch of the cheese puffs. I happened to see the letter then and think that I probably should pick it up and drop it in here. There was no reason for anyone to think anything about the letter. It looked like an ordinary Christmas card, of course, and nobody would have had any reason to suspect differently. Still, discretion being the better part, I thought it might be prudent to remove it from the room. Before I could, though, someone asked me a question, and I turned back to the group. It is now that things get interesting. I should, I suppose, tell you about the five people and their relationships to me.” He noticed that his cigar had gone out and returned to the fireplace to relight it.
“I think,” Masters said after some deliberation, “that I would prefer to form my own opinions of their character--if indeed that should prove necessary. For the time being, I would prefer that you tell me only what you saw.”
“Yes, of course.” Anderson stood looking at the mantel and seemed to notice the cigar box as if for the first time. “Where are my manners? Would you like a cigar, Mr. Masters?”
“I am not partial to them.”
“It’s a nasty habit, I know.”
“The letter?” Masters prodded.
“Yes, yes. You’ve seen the layout of the room briefly, but let me describe it in greater detail. The table on which the letter was sitting is just to the left of the door as you enter. As I said, there is a chair on just the other side of the table, not four inches away. In front and slightly to the left of the chair is a sofa, which is about eight feet from the table and against the rear wall. There is no seating at the wall across from the door. I’ve set up the Christmas tree there. As you look in from the door, there are two more chairs on your right. They are a good distance from the table. In the end, the various seats form a sort of horseshoe around the tree. The door and the table are at the arch of the shoe if you follow this picture. There is a coffee table running between the Christmas tree and the door, though it obviously does not run the entire distance.”
He paused in the midst of his dissertation and seemed to be trying to understand his own verbal picture. “Oh heck, that’s no good. Picture a U, and you’ve got the seating layout. At the bottom of the U, you’ll find the door, the table the letter was on, and a chair--in that order. The sides of the U are a sofa on one side and a pair of chairs on the other. Running vertically between the sides of the U is a coffee table. There. I think that’s simpler.
“Now, I had sent Kay to the kitchen for food and drink, and it seemed to me that she was taking a little long. So I made an excuse to my guests and rose to go to the kitchen. I went to the door as I intended and noticed the letter once again. I’m afraid it was preying on my mind in a rather Tell-Tale Heart fashion.”
“I believe,” said Masters, “that the legal term is mens rea.”
“Yes, touché. At any rate, just as I was about to pick the letter up, I saw Kay coming down the hallway. So I turned back to the guests, told them that libations were on the way, and sat down in the chair.”
Masters’s eyes were closed. He clearly was not asleep, though, for he spoke. “Where were people seated?”
“Dick Gray was in the seat right by the table. Ellen White and George Goldstein sat on the couch. In the chair to the right of the door and closest to the tree, Leslie Childress sat. I was sitting in the chair between her and the door.”
“I thought you said there were five guests. I count only four.”
“Yes, there’s also John McDonald. He was standing over by the tree. He said he’d had a long day of too much sitting and preferred to stand.”
“They were in these places when Kay entered?”
“Yes, they were. She came in carrying a tray with our drinks and some new hors d’oeuvres. She leaned over the table to serve Dick first. Now he’d be the obvious suspect except for the fact that he’s a bit of a stick in the mud and asked for nothing more than coffee. That’s important because I distinctly saw him reach for the coffee and pick up the mug with both hands. If he took the letter, I have no idea how he managed it. Right about that time, John (he was the one standing by the tree) needed to use the rest room. We call it an in camera meeting, but that’s just a little bit of lawyers’ humor.”
“Ben, are you planning to go off on so many tangents that you permanently obscure the issue?”
"No. You’re right, and I’m sorry. John went to the rest room and passed behind Kay. She turned so that he could take his drink from the tray, but he just told her to put it on the coffee table and he’d get it later. That, of course, makes the most sense when you think about his destination. As soon as he passed, Kay proceeded around the group to give us all our drinks. So, except for that moment when she gave Dick his coffee and when John walked by, I had the table in full view. Unfortunately, I can’t say that the letter was still there. I had taken my seat when I saw Kay coming with the drinks, and my angle of view from there was not sufficient to tell whether the letter was there still.
“So there were three people who could have reached the table at that time. I’ve already explained why Dick could not have taken the letter. He was using both his hands to grab the coffee mug. Now I will proceed to eliminate the other two suspects, and where will that leave us? John could not have taken the letter because the table’s so far from the doorway. Sure, he could have reached the letter, but that’s just the point. It would have been a reach, and I would have noticed. There’s also the fact that he would have had to reach around Kay. But he just paused momentarily when she turned to offer him the drink and then proceeded on out of the room.
“And as for the server, well, Kay could not have taken the letter since she had to have both of her hands on the tray to support the drinks. I don’t say that as an abstract matter of physics. She did have both hands on the tray. As for anyone else taking the letter at that moment, it is absurd. Nobody else was close enough to reach the table.
“After John left, Kay went around and gave everyone his or her drink. I was the last to be served. When I lifted my drink from the tray, she placed the tray with the hors d’oeuvres and John’s drink on the table, and she left the room. There is no way under heaven that she took the letter with her. You have seen her attire, and there is no way she could have secreted the letter on her person without making a scene. A few minutes later, she returned with a new tray, this one full only of hors d’oeuvres. I saw her enter, but I also saw that there were sufficient morsels on the tray she’d brought a few minutes earlier. So I told her we didn’t need any more food just then, and she turned and went back to the kitchen. She did not come within two feet of the table then. A moment later, John returned from the bathroom, and Ellen got up to use the facilities. When she returned, I decided that I would say I had to use the bathroom as an excuse to leave the room and take the mail with me. I did that, scooping up the letters as I went out the door. Then I came in here and found the letter missing.”
“I see,” Masters said cryptically.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Anderson said with just the slightest air of pedantry.
“Do you?”
“I do, but it won’t work. You’re thinking that it must have been Ellen or John who took the letter since they were the two who walked by the table on the way out of and into the room. The problem is that it just won’t work. You see, the table is a good reach from the doorway. I’ve already pointed that out, but I know for a fact that you just can’t reach to the table without making it obvious what you’re doing. When I picked up the mail, I tried to reach casually to sweep up the letters on my way out so that it all appeared to be a fluid motion. But the problem is that I could not do so. I had to take a step out of my way to go to the table, and I can assure you that neither John nor Ellen did anything other than walk in a straight line in and out of the room.
“And there you have it,” he said, rising and walking behind his desk. He opened a small drawer and withdrew a short stack of letters, which he tossed onto the desk blotter. “These are all that were on the table when I picked them up. The important one is gone.”
“You have a suspicion, I take it?” Masters asked.
“I guess it has to be Dick. He was seated by the table the whole time. But it’s the darnedest thing. I figured out fairly early that he must have taken the letter, so I paid strict attention to him. He is not wearing a suit jacket--just a dress shirt and slacks. And I would swear that the letter is not on him. A little later, he expressed interest in a particular ornament on the tree, and the two of us rose to look at it. I inspected him closely, and there is no way that I could imagine that he could have pocketed the letter. I would have seen it. Even if he had folded the envelope, I should have noticed it.
“After we looked at the ornament, I took his chair, using the pretext that I wished to talk with Ellen, who was still on the couch. I then removed my watch as if to examine it and ‘accidentally’ dropped it in the seat cushion. This gave me an excuse to rise and lift the cushion to retrieve the watch. My real aim, the card, was not there, though. There is simply no place else on the chair where he could have hidden the card. And if you’re thinking that it might be in the table, you’re wrong there. The table is just a flat surface on four legs. It has no drawers.”
“And this is when you called me?” Masters asked.
“Yes. After I put my watch back on, I said that I hadn’t realized the time and that I had to call my wife. I came in here to call you. I explained your arrival by saying that you had a minor legal matter you wished to discuss and that it really should not take too long. Please, tell me you have an idea who took the letter and where it is.”
“I have an idea.”
Anderson exhaled a sigh of relief. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear that.”
Masters put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “Aside from the various comings and goings you have related, did anyone else enter or leave the room at any time?”
“I did only to call you and then to excuse myself from my guests on the pretext that we had a brief meeting regarding a legal matter. They knew not to question me on the nature of that matter. Other than that, nobody else came or went.”
“Now if you don’t mind, I would like you to return to the living room to apologize for the delay.” Masters finished the glass of egg nog before him. “You know, this is quite good. I might do with another. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Apologize for the delay, and tell them that you just have to finish reading a couple of pages and that you won’t be more than five minutes. Then return here. I will go in there and rejoin you presently.”
“If you think that will work, I’ll do it.”
Anderson went into the living room, where he found that his five guests were carrying on well without him. He apologized for the delay and offered the explanation that Masters had suggested. As he left the room, Anderson passed Masters, who wore the slight residue of egg nog on his upper lip. The two men nodded at each other, and Anderson returned to the study, where he hopefully closed the door.
Within three minutes (Anderson was watching the clock intently), Masters entered the room. Anderson looked up expectantly.
“This episode,” Masters announced, “is over.” He reached into his jacket pocked and produced a red envelope.
“You found it!” Anderson exclaimed, rising from the chair behind his desk.
He stepped forward with his hand out, but Masters casually dropped the letter in the fire, where greedy flames devoured it.
“Why did you do that?” Anderson complained.
“I have my reasons. I have retrieved your letter as you asked, and I have done so without any of the guests realizing it. You may put to rest your concerns about blackmail--at least insofar as this letter is concerned. I will bid you good night, sir.”
Was there the slightest note of disdain, of superiority, in that last syllable? Anderson wondered. In the end, he decided that such a note was a far lesser indignity than he might have faced.
Masters left the room, and Anderson followed him, though only after pausing at the fireplace to verify that Masters had burned the correct letter. He had; the return address was still mostly intact. At the front door, Masters picked his overcoat off the coat rack and stepped out into the cold.
Anderson returned to his guests and spent the remainder of a pleasant evening, though every once in a while, he thought he fully comprehended the gravity of the near miss he had suffered. Eventually, the guests began to depart until only Anderson and Leslie Childress remained. She made a show of noticing the time and expressed her need to depart. Anderson saw her to the door, and she made a comment that perplexed him to no end.
“Curious fellow, that heavy man,” she said.
“How so?”
“Well, he poked his head in here after you explained that you were going over a contract for him. He looked directly at the coffee table, spotted the hors d’oeuvres there, scooped up one, and took a bite. Then he literally spat it back onto the tray. He apologized profusely and said he would see to getting us some additional food. He picked up the tray, asked where the bathroom was, and left. Sure enough, he returned a minute or so later with a new tray and offered a renewed apology. Despite that, I’d have sworn that it was no accident that he spat out the bite he’d taken. Oh well, I guess some people just can’t take certain foods.”
She bade him a good night and left.
* * *
She peered out through the storm door at the old, rotund man on her porch. “Yes?”
Though it took rather more explaining than he would have liked, Masters managed to convey the purpose of his visit to the woman. She let him in and showed him to the kitchen, where she offered him a seat and closed the doors.
“I wish to assure you that your letter has been destroyed unread. I myself placed it in a fire and watched it be reduced to ashes,” he said.
She smiled self-consciously. “Thank you, but how do you know about it?”
“I am afraid that your little stunt did not go unnoticed. Mr. Anderson became rather concerned that he might have been the object of a blackmail scheme and requested that I find the letter for him.”
“You didn’t tell him. . .?”
He smiled gently. “No. At this moment, I rather expect he is searching the bathroom with a befuddled look on his face.”
She did not appear to understand his reference. “And he has no idea that Kay took it?”
“He does not. Nor does he have any idea that you asked her to do so. There are two questions I would like to ask, if I might.”
“I am in your debt,” she said. “Ask whatever you like.”
“First, who was it who came up with the clever method of extracting the offending letter?”
“It was all Kay’s doing. I merely described the envelope and told her that I would be very grateful if she could retrieve it. Just how did she do it? You’ve piqued my curiosity now.”
“She must have seen the letter on top of the pile in the living room,” he responded. “I assume that she tried looking in the obvious spots for the letter but couldn’t find it. Then, when she was serving the guests, she saw it sitting right there in the open. Kudos is due her for coming up with her plan so quickly. She simply put an adhesive on the bottom of a serving tray, placed the tray on the letter, and walked off with it in front of everyone. You know, I must say that the students today show some promise.”
She smiled at him. “The second question?”
“Why?”
She rose, her smile wider. “Mr. Masters, I thank you for your discretion in this matter. Now, if you will pardon me, I’ve got some cookies that are just about ready to come out of the oven. If you would be kind enough to shut the door quietly when you leave. . .”
As he stepped outside, Masters turned to see that she had followed him down the hallway. He decided to try one final entreaty. “You will forgive me, but I have been called out of bed, where I had become quite engrossed in a novel, and I have an hypothesis that I would like to see verified or refuted for my own curiosity. It seems to me that--” A snowflake fell on the tip of his nose, and he looked up to see a new snow falling.
She finally gave in, and there was the impression that the levee had burst and that she was glad for the opportunity to unload. “If you must know, there was nothing particularly interesting about the card. I take it you know of or have inferred the nature of my relationship with Ben. Let us just say that sometimes variety can be a powerful intoxicant. That is particularly true in some months. Let us take October as an example. However, December is a month given over to tradition and to family. Now let us hypothesize a woman who has given in to the lure of variety. Perhaps she only did so because another person has also felt the same siren’s call. And just so we’re absolutely clear, I am not referring to Ben Anderson. Perhaps this woman, whom we need not name, lied to herself and told herself that there is a future in variety. In reality, of course, variety is, by its very nature, ephemeral and precarious. So this woman finds herself torn between the lie she tells herself and the reality she knows she cannot escape.
“Would it be unreasonable for her to pour out her heart in a note, one that makes reference to both the season and to the future, one that she might soon come to regret when the other man who heeded the siren’s call realized his mistake and confessed fully. Such a woman might then regret the statements she had committed to paper. More to the point, she might realize those statements were not the truth after all. A tear-filled night might pass. Then she might realize that, no matter what, she has to get that letter back. It’s not so much to prevent the addressee from reading it--after all, what more could the letter say than what they had done? No, it’s more to make sure the letter never, ever sees the light of day. On the other hand, the fact that he did not read the letter does mean that it, at least, will not be responsible if he does some fool thing like leave his wife.”
“Honey, who’s at the door?” a man’s voice called from upstairs.
She turned and said over her shoulder, “It is Professor Masters, our distinguished professor emeritus.” Then, to Masters, she continued. “Are you married?”
“Very happily for forty-eight years.”
“That is wonderful. There’s an old joke about a man being happily married for seven years. The punch line is that seven out of twenty is not all that bad. A marriage can be a fragile thing, and one must commit fully to it if one decides the marriage is to work. Our hypothetical woman might have considered that and tried to tie up some loose ends. There are, of course, some pretty tangled knots yet to be undone. But she has made a start, and her work continues. That, I imagine, is what she would want.”
Masters raised his hat slightly and turned down the walk.
LINKS
*BACK TO MAIN PAGE*
*PAGE ONE*
*page two (here)*
*PAGE THREE*
*PAGE FOUR*
*PAGE FIVE*
*PAGE SIX*
*PAGE SEVEN*
*PAGE EIGHT*
*PAGE NINE*
*PAGE TEN*
Copyright 1999 by Phil Mann. All rights reserved.