A Return to Murder

By Edward J. Laurie

Tom McElrath, gone from the role of Simon Frasers assistant of 12 years earlier, shattered by the loss of his wife and expected daughter in childbirth, returns to Spancourt and his original job with Fraser in the hope he can pick up the pieces.

He is welcomed back and is almost immediately involved in the case of the murder of several lawyers. A page out of Shakespeare, he says, wherein Dick advises Cade (who would be king) Lets first kill all the lawyers.

Someone is doing just that, so Tom is once again deeply involved in conducting interviews of the suspects and doing the leg work, since Simon Fraser in deference to his own old age refuses to leave the comforts of his study.

Recovering somewhat and making his notes which he hopes to turn into another book, Tom calls his latest work A Return to Murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477295380

Edward J. Laurie

The author, like his protagonist, is a retired professor of some 87 years of age and hence is more than familiar with the vagaries which afflict Simon Fraser. Other than that, there is no resemblance between the two whether or not his friends sometimes think otherwise. This is his tenth novel with Author House and he is a serious admirer of their clever paperback front cover designs. Sometimes he believes they may be better than his stories.

Book preview

© 2012 Edward J. Laurie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/3/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9537-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9538-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922603

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

EPILOGUE

CAST OF CHARACTERS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For the grandchildren:

Emma Wendt

Alden Wendt

and

Nico Laurie

Who, when they grow older, may be amused to know

their grandfather had such murderous inclinations.

All: God save your majesty!

Cade: I thank you, good people — there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord.

Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Cade: Nay, that I mean to do.

Henry VI, Part II, William Shakespeare

PROLOGUE

How did it all begin? How did I come to work for Simon Fraser and then write up several of his murder cases and then, afer a great personal tragedy, return to Spancourt, his estate, and resume my duties over a decade later?

Let me take you back to that very morning in San Jose, California twelve years ago. I had arrived by bus (the cheapest transport I could find) and taken myself to a nearby fast-food restaurant and began my first adventure thus:

Breakfast done, I scanned the headlines. There was a big one about a murder in Ben Nevis. That’s a small beach town over the hill on the Pacific Coast, my actual destination. Since he’s in charge of homicide there, it would be my brother-in-law’s headache. He’s that city’s Homicide Lieutenant. Actually the head of that small department.

I loped back to the ill-named Majestic Hotel. The desk clerk, a well scrubbed and muscled exception to the general condition of the hotel, was an overattentive lad name Bobby. He hailed me as I arrived.

You have a call from a Lieutenant Campbell of the Ben Nevis Police Department. He wants you to contact him as soon as possible.

Bobby arranged a golden lock of his curly hair and asked: Are you in trouble?

No kiddo, I replied. He’s my brother-in-law. Do not fret. I’ll bring this body back later all safe and sound. I studied him a moment and told him the truth. You know, Bobby, you’re in the wrong city. If you want to meet congenial guys of a similar persuasion, you should get a job in San Francisco. But good luck anyway.

I’d have been more disturbed if I had known I was soon to meet a dazzling older woman, mix in murder, and get all scarred up emotionally.

I called my sister in Ben Nevis and was told to come to dinner.

It was, before he died, my aging and drinking father’s opinion that my late birth frustrated the possibility of a pleasant old age and early retirement. My mother died shortly after, which my father thought punitive of her. He remarried and my sister, having escaped to the west into her own happy marriage, he took his resentment out on me. Anon I had a younger stepbrother, but never knew him well.

I went to the state college on a scholarship majoring in Egyptology. Well-paying jobs in Egyptology are rare. It takes years to get to the top and the top isn’t very well rewarded. Regrettably, scholarly prestige isn’t edible. But my stepmother had encouraged both my sister and me to go west, and so we did.

That afternoon I caught three different buses, one from San Jose to Ben Nevis, and two more to get to my brother-in-law’s house. I kissed my sister, shook hands with my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Robert Campbell, and asked rather bluntly: When’s dinner?

After an excellent meal Bob said: I have an elderly professor friend who lost his secretary recently and he’s looking for a male employee. He’s tired of his secretaries running off with the first guy they meet.

You said elderly. How old is this guy?

Seventy-four.

Oh hell, Bob, I can’t work for some doddering old man staggering into senility.

Bob threw back his head and sank into laughter. He pointed his cigar at me and said: That old man, for your information, has a brain like a bag full of razor blades, looks no more than the middle sixties and is probably, given his age, in better physical and mental shape than you are. Mess with him, and he’ll be dining on your carcass.

I was taken aback and just said: Oh.

Furthermore, Bob went on, "he’s used that amazing brain of his to help me solve murder cases that otherwise would still be sitting in the unsolved files. In fact, he is just getting interested in the Vannelle murder case, and believe me, I can use any help I can get.

Are you still fast with typewriters, shorthand and computers?

I haven’t lost my touch.

Good. We’re going to drive over to Simon’s in about five minutes for your interview. I’ll give you the details on the way.

Chewing on his cigar and concentrating on his driving, Bob herded his car uphill for thirty minutes on a smoothly paved, curving, narrow road that wended through thick growths of underbrush and trees. The atmosphere was cool, dim and green.

Half way up the hill we were suddenly out of the heavy growth and on a flat apron of a well-mown meadow bearing a large house of stucco and red tiles, a low, sleek, modern version of the California Spanish design so popular in the 1920’s. The road turned into a white graveled driveway which swept in a half circle to a wide overhang in front of a pair of wrought iron gates, the only opening in an otherwise blank stucco front. An attractive brass plaque to the left of the gate read: Spancourt.

We stepped out of the car and Bob pressed a buzzer beside the gate. There was an answering click as an electric bolt slid back and the gate opened. We stepped into an inner courtyard twenty feet wide and forty feet deep revealing rows of double sliding glass doors each attended by small white graveled paths linked to a center walk progressing through the yard to double inner doors of ornately carved and well-oiled