The Vanished Child Read online

  “Richard Knight got kidnapped just alter his grandfather died. Richard had a trusteeship, on account of having about two million dollars from his father, and so he had a will and Gilbert was his heir. Gilbert couldn’t inherit from William. But he could from Richard.

  “If Richard was dead.”

  Daugherty drew a loop from Richard back up to Gilbert. But this line was dotted with question marks. Daugherty scribbled against it, Only if Richard’s dead.

  “Well, we were the trustees. We didn’t find Richard alive and we didn’t find him dead, and the firm administered the estate for Richard if he showed up and for Gilbert if Richard was dead. And seven years went by.

  “There’s a law in this country, don’t know if you’ve got it over in Europe. If a person’s been missing for seven years, you can go in front of a judge and have that person declared dead. It sort of cuts the complications.” Daugherty added to his annotations on the line of question marks, This takes seven years.

  “And the senior partner here, Bucky Pelham, was Richard’s executor and conservator. That means he’s got an obligation in law, you see, that he’s got to distribute the estate—give the money out where it belongs.

  “By the end of that seven years we had got real tired of wondering who we was working for. So Bucky Pelham went to see Gilbert. ‘Mr. Knight,’ he says, ‘time to have Richard declared dead.’

  “Gilbert Knight says no.”

  “Why?” Reisden interrupted.

  “’Cause he don’t think Richard is dead.”

  “Nonsense,” said a fine bass voice at the door of the office. “Roy, it’s because he’s utterly neurotic about the money.”

  The man matched the voice: a tall, smooth, grey-maned man in a perfectly fitted grey suit. He looked at Daugherty and Reisden as if at two insignificant but dirty secrets, and did not so much as acknowledge Reisden’s presence. “Roy, I won’t disturb you.” The man smoothly bowed himself out and closed the door.

  “Your senior partner?” Reisden asked.

  “Yup, that’s Bucky. This is his office; mine’s out back. He went to Harvard.” Roy Daugherty examined his knuckles critically. Reisden looked around the office. A view of the Boston public park out the window; well-matched and immaculate law books; a desk with an equally immaculate blotter. It looked like a good gentlemen’s club.

  “How much of your firm’s business comes from the Knights?” Reisden asked.

  “Mostly all of Bucky’s. Others of us, we got other clients.”

  “Bucky is the Knights’ private lawyer,” Reisden prompted.

  “He’s good; I’m not saying no different. And he pulls a lot of money in. Anyway,” Daugherty said, “Gilbert not declarin’ Richard dead. Gilbert had a point, at least then he did. It wasn’t like Richard just completely disappeared and no trace of him found; it never is that way with a kidnapping. Folks were always thinkin’ they saw him, Wisconsin and Indian Territory and I don’t know where all. Even seven years later we were still getting two or three sightin’s a year.

  “Well, time went on, Bucky kept askin’, Gilbert kept saying no. Three, four years. It gets to be Richard’s been dead eleven years, Bucky’s getting nervous. Bucky’s got an obligation to distribute the estate in a timely manner, you see. He should petition the court that Richard’s legally dead. Firm’s paying itself to administer the estate. Firm’s beginning to look bad and the Bar Association’s goin’ to go after us.”

  Daugherty drew a little tap from the great conduit of money going from William to Richard. The tap was leaky, and Daugherty drew a little man underneath with his mouth open and a blissful smile on his face. The little man’s mustache and suit had a distinct resemblance to Bucky Pelham’s.

  “Bucky tells Gilbert, ‘Look, I don’t have a choice—I got a canon of professional ethics. I got to declare Richard dead, I got to distribute the estate. If I don’t do it, I’m going to get disbarred. Somebody else will be appointed trustee, and they’ll declare Richard dead.’

  “Gilbert says, ‘But Richard ain’t dead.’ That’s all Gilbert’s got to say.

  “Bucky starts thinking about how to get Gilbert to declare Richard dead. Bucky gets together with Charlie Adair, you know Charlie, and the two of ’em find Gilbert an orphan. Orphan’s name is Harry Boulding. Harry comes to live with Gilbert. Gilbert says, ‘Harry is my heir.’

  “Fair enough. Bucky’s happy, for about five minutes.

  “Except what Gilbert means, and what he says, is that Harry’s his heir, not Richard’s. When Gilbert dies, Harry gets Gilbert’s old suits and all his old books. But he don’t get the Knight Company. ’Cause Gilbert hasn’t inherited it, ’cause Richard ain’t dead.”

  Daugherty scribbled more on his genealogy chart: Harry Boulding huddled by himself, down in a comer, a dotted line meandering from Gilbert to Harry, the very smallest and most tentative of dotted lines, representing old suits and secondhand books. The money line still went from William to Richard, still dripping into Bucky’s mouth, and stopped there. The line of question marks went from Richard to Gilbert, with the notation by it: Only if Richard’s dead.

  “Well, now, we got to get Gilbert to will the money to Harry. And that don’t stick unless Gilbert has the money, which he don’t unless Richard’s dead. We could go to court and try to make Gilbert declare Richard dead, if we were darn fools. Bar Association’s been after us to do just that thing. If Bucky didn’t go to the right clubs, he’d a been in the papers before now.

  “But if we petition the court and get an adjudication, then Gilbert’s going to change lawyers, and we don’t need that neither.”

  Daugherty’s genealogy was now a maze of dead people, tentative inheritance lines, dripping faucets, and question marks. Reisden remembered Victor’s murmuring about the curse on the Knight money and the obsessive William Knight training his heir. What had started in tragedy was ending in an odd, black kind of farce. Suitable comedy for the entertainment of madmen: He could hardly have thought of anything better himself.

  “So when Gilbert Knight dies there will be no heir at all,” Reisden prompted.

  “Well,” Daugherty said, “genealogy’s a wonderful thing. There ain’t no better way to use up time than genealogy. Bucky ain’t been precisely sittin’ on a wooden egg all these years. He’s been figurin’ out who Richard’s heirs are if they ain’t Gilbert. You see, the law has a concept called phantom issue. Since Richard didn’t have no kids, Richard’s heirs could be the heirs of his parents—or of his grandparents—or of his great- grandparents, and so on all the way back to Adam. It’s real important to find out who all those phantom heirs are, Bucky keeps telling the courts. Can’t possibly distribute the estate until he knows who to distribute it to.” Daugherty shook his head admiringly. “You never saw a man could move sideways as slow as Bucky.”

  “And did he find heirs?” Reisden said.

  “On the Knight side there ain’t no heirs at all, till you count Jay French. We been looking; we got old ladies looking up parish records in places you can’t spell nor find in the atlas. Richard’s mother got some family, not here in America, but France and Holland. Third cousins twice removed of somebody’s grandmother. Commonwealth of Massachusetts won’t get the money, that’s one consolation. Bucky would fry in a hot place with the Bar Association if they did. But Bucky don’t want to deal with no Dutchies. He wants Harry and no other.” Daugherty paused for dramatic effect and drew a line from Bucky Pelham to Harry.

  “And Bucky wants that mostly because, the day Harry Boulding turned twenty-one, he got himself engaged to Bucky’s niece.”

  Reisden took a deep breath, almost laughing, but holding it in. “Let me tell you what I hear you saying. Your law firm has administered the Knight estate for over eighteen years. The Knight Company needs an owner. For good reasons, you support this man Harry Boulding, who will inherit from Gilbert. Now your senior partner has a conflict of interest, since his niece will be married to Harry.”

  “We had Gilber
t.” Daugherty punched his open hand with his fist. “Gilbert was finally going to have Richard declared dead. Bucky told him what a position it was putting Harry in, not knowing whether he was rich or poor or what he was going to do with his life. Gilbert said he’d do it.”

  “What happened to change his mind?

  “Roy Daugherty didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He reached up and took off his glasses and cleaned them with a big cotton handkerchief from his back pants pocket. It was a spotted bandanna handkerchief, an old-fashioned color, yellow and brown, such as a carpenter or a metal worker would have carried to put around his neck. Daugherty peered at the glasses as he cleaned them, then fitted them slowly on again; his small eyes suddenly jumped into prominence, looking very hard straight at Reisden.

  “You did,” he said.

  Reisden’s coffee was cold. He put it down slowly. “I’m not Richard Knight,” he said in exactly the right tone.

  “When Charlie saw you, there was somebody from Boston with him who sat down and wrote us, which, if you ask me, he needn’t a done. So we had a sighting. Gilbert was as close to signing as his pen on the paper. Wouldn’t sign. Made us go back and find you.” Daugherty snorted. “All I knew was someone had called you a baron, and that was all I knew. Took me two weeks to think of that nobility book, and another two weeks to get to the Rs. Anyway, while we was tracing, we got to thinking.”

  It took Reisden a moment to understand.

  “You don’t need Richard Knight, of course, any more than you need the distant cousins. Harry’s the known quantity; even Richard wouldn’t be.”

  Daugherty nodded reluctantly.

  “Yup. Bucky just longs in his heart to have everything settled.”

  “If Gilbert Knight agrees to have Richard declared dead, everything is settled. Gilbert inherits from Richard, and eventually Harry from Gilbert.”

  “And Bucky don’t get disbarred nor lose the Knight account, and Bucky’s niece gets married to Harry. And the Bar Association gets off our doorstep.”

  This is madder than I am, Reisden thought.

  “Then tell me,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”