The Lockwood Concern

[This book was given a good first correction in March 2010. Most, though certainly not all, of the obvious corrections were made. The proofreader did not have an original copy of the book at hand, so changes were not made where the original intent was not obvious.]

John O'Hara The Lockwood Concern

First published in 1965

BOOK 1

On Sunday afternoons people would drive out to have a look at George Lockwood's wall, and sometimes they would see, from a distance, George Lockwood doing the same thing they were doing. He was there every day, had not missed a day since the first pick had cut into the ground. He never spoke directly to the workmen, never complained at the slowness of their work, never praised them, never addressed them individually, although he knew most of them. Some days when he visited the place he would look at the wall for a few minutes, then turn away and go back to his car, and the workmen would know that he was disgusted with their lack of progress. Other days he would come out in the morning, stay till noon, be driven home for lunch, and return to stay all afternoon. When this occurred every man was handed a dollar bill at quitting time, with no explanation given and none needed; George Lockwood was pleased. Sometimes the dollar bonus was distributed for six days running; other times a week would pass with no bonus at all. The wall was being built of brick, two feet thick and eight feet high above ground. It was to have a two-inch concrete top, in which would be embedded iron spikes at intervals of twelve inches. The wall was a sizable project: it surrounded thirty acres of land. The land had been farmed continually since the early Eighteenth Century. It was land that sloped gently, the high land of the Oscar Dietrich farm, which was now owned by George Lockwood. Earlier Dietrichs had cleared about twenty acres of the land, leaving timber above, which was to the south, and more timber to the east and west. It had not been the beat land on the Dietrich farm, and in recent decades it had been used as pasture for the Dietrich Holsteins. George Lockwood was building his wall on a strip that had been cut out of the timber to the south, east and west, so that there would be a stand of trees on both sides of the wall. Thus the property would be surrounded by trees as well as by brick and mortar, since George Lockwood planned to plant trees on both sides of the front, or north, wall. The thirty acres was not all that George Lockwood owned. He had bought the entire two hundred acres of the Dietrich farm and the parcels of timberland to the south. People who wondered what he was going to do with the Dietrich farm had their answer when the wall was half finished: George Lockwood sold the Holsteins and the farm equipment, and razed the Dietrich farmhouse, barns and outbuildings. In a month's time the Dietrich farm was no more; an establishment that had existed for more than a hundred years vanished in a few weeks. Some said it was a sin and a shame, some said it was a crime; but others said that Oscar Dietrich must have got a good price; Oscar always knew what he was doing. He moved to the Lebanon Valley and bought another farm. Pretty soon a second gang of workmen were being employed by George Lockwood in a project that was the opposite of the wall-building: the new men were engaged in removing the Dietrich fences; stone, post-and-rail, snake, and wire. As time went on the Sunday visitors to George Lockwood's wall could see that all traces of Previous Ownership were being systematically obliterated. Then, one Sunday in the middle of May, they saw that the wall was completed that a tall temporary board gate was in place. A door, with Yale lock, had been cut out of the board gate. On the door was painted the order: Keep Out. All through the summer the people continued to visit the Lockwood place, but the gate was always closed, and behind they could not see what they knew to be going on the wall: George Lockwood was building a house. In the town of Swedish Haven, two miles to the east, no one had been surprised by George Lockwood's decision to build a high brick wall with spikes on the top. e un usual, they said, was usual for George, and it was correctly guessed that he had first built his wall so that as few people as possible would be able to see what kind of house he was building. The contract for the wall had been given to a Swedish Haven man; the main contractor for the house was from Hagerstown, Maryland, and he brought with him his own carpenters and bricklayers. The plumbing contract was given to a Reading firm; the electrical work was being done by a Philadelphia firm; the interior woodwork was assigned to some Italians in New York; the painting, plastering, and paper-hanging were being done by a Fort Penn outfit, the roofing by a gang from Gibbsville. The landscaping was in the hands of a man from Westbury, Long Island; the driveways were being built by a Port Johnson company. Workmen who lived within fifty miles of the Lockwood house came and went each day by truck; the contractors, foremen, and workmen who lived at a greater distance were put up in Gibbsville and Swedish Haven hotels and boarding houses. At the outset the main contractor would say to each subcontractor: "What I want you to understand is that Mr. Lockwood minds his own business and wants people to mind theirs. When this house is finished he doesn't want any local people to know their way around it. That's what he's paying good money for. First-class work, and his privacy. And you've got to admit, he doesn't haggle over money. When I think of that overtime..." The subcontractors and workmen who arrived after the wall was completed made quick estimates of the cost of the wall, and there were those among them who wished they had put a higher price on their own work. A man who would spend twenty thousand, thirty thousand dollars on a wall was not likely to quibble over a few hundred. But there were others among the sub-contractors who had dealt with rich men before, and who had learned that a rich man might spend a lot of money to do something unusual, but he would know what he wanted and would see that he got it. These latter sub-contractors were soon congratulating themselves on their guesses about George Lockwood. He came to the the building house every day, rain or shine or stifling heat, wearing a floppy Panama, dressed in a casual linen suit, and carrying a cane, which was unusual for a man in his early fifties. He would stroll about in the grounds, I nodding but never speaking to the foremen and workmen except to say 'Excuse me' when he got in the way. He would climb ladders and walk precariously placed planks. On the very hottest days he would sometimes help to a dipperful. of water from the workmen's pail and fan himself with his Panama and wipe under his collar with a fancy silk handkerchief, but he stayed on, never lingering too long over any particular job, but visiting each job several times a day. And he seemed to miss nothing. The workmen early realized that when he visited a particular job several times a day, he was noticing something; for the next day the foreman on that job would make some changes in the work already done. The orders to the foremen came down from the subcontractor, who got his instructions from the main contractor, who was the only man on the job with whom George Lockwood would have conversation. The main contractor, Robert Brackenridge, had a shanty on the grounds. In it he had an unfinished table, some camp chairs, dozens of tubes containing blueprints, fire extinguishers, first aid kit, a telephone, an army cot, a 16-gauge shotgun, several kerosene lamps, a small oaken filing cabinet, a Pennsylvania Railroad and a Prudential Insurance calendar, a water cooler, a board on which hung numerous tabbed keys, and a two-burner kerosene stove. In this shanty, and nowhere else, was George Lockwood seen to sit down, and workmen in the vicinity could overhear conversations through the screened windows. They learned little except that Lockwood called the contractor Robert, and that he was thoroughly acquainted with the blueprints and the details of the specifications. When a sub-contractor was called to the shanty for a conference, Robert Brackenridge would do all the talking, while George Lockwood, smoking pipe or cigarette, nodded in approval. For shelter from the summer showers the foremen and workmen had an army mess tent, sides removed, and there they would gather to eat their lunch, sitting on stacks of building materials that also needed protection from the rain. The workmen were from so many different places that the electricians tended to keep with electricians, carpenters with carpenters, but they were united in their baffled curiosity about the man who was footing the bills. These were men with special skills; well paid, independent, quietly proud American artisans, who could do things that George Lockwood could buy but could not do himself. They respected his understanding of their work, and they agreed among themselves that it was better to work for him than for a man who would waste their time in friendly conversation and picky suggestions. They quickly and accurately surmised that George Lockwood had made a study of the art of building a good house, and it did not matter to them that they did not like him. In a few months the house would be finished, and they would be off on other jobs, and they would remember him as a man who had treated them right without patronizing them. They would remember the day he killed two copperheads with his cane, the cane that they had thought was only the sign of a dude; and they would remember how he had taken charge when one of the bricklayers had a sunstroke and fell off a scaffolding. He had the bricklayer carried to the shade of the tent, showed the other bricklayers how to rub the man's wrists and ankles, and got some turpentine from the painters and applied it to the back of the man's neck. When the man came to, Lockwood made him stay where he was until the doctor arrived from Swedish Haven to examine him for concussion and broken bones. On that occasion there never had been any question as to who was giving orders. "Turpentine. I never heard of that before," said one of the men. "Where would he find out a thing that?" "Where does he find out a lot of things?" said another. "He don't need Bob Brackenridge. Bob Brackenridge needs him." Two days later, when the bricklayer returned to work, George Lockwood looked at him as though he had never seen him before, and quickly turned away as the man came forward to thank him. In mid-October the house was finished except for certain interior woodwork that was being done by the Italians from New York. The lighting and the plumbing were functioning, and the furnace had been tested and proven satisfactory. The house was ready for occupancy, and Robert Brackenridge returned to Hagerstown with a bonus cheque in his wallet. The Italians were three in number, and their English was scanty. They had not become acquainted with the other workmen, who spoke English or Pennsylvania Dutch, and they looked down on the few Italians in Swedish Haven, who were pick-and-shovel laborers. George Lockwood's Italian woodworkers wore leathern aprons, but beneath the aprons were waistcoat and trousers, silk shirt, collars and neckties. As soon as the last of the other workmen had departed, the Italians went to work in the room that was to be George Lockwood's study, and even though they were alone in the house, they kept the study door locked, admitting no one but Lockwood himself. The room as Brackenridge and his men had left it contained a large fireplace, to one side of which was a large closet door. Brackenridge had suggested another place for the closet, but Lockwood had overruled him. Now the Italians removed the door, cut away the ceiling and flooring of the closet, and installed a winding stairway that started in a closet in George Lockwood's bedroom, directly above the study, and continued down into the cellar. It was thus possible for George Lockwood to go from his bedroom to the cellar without using the main staircase or the kitchen stairs, and if he wished he could likewise go from his bedroom to his study unseen. The bedroom closet, which Brackenridge had described as enormous, was now reduced in size. The Italians installed a new closet wall, which was a large panel that fitted into grooves and could be rolled up to allow entrance to the hidden stairway. The original closet door in the study was replaced with paneling that matched the rest of the paneling, but it was still a door, hung on invisible hinges and opened by pressing a spring that was disguised as a gargoyle, one of a row of gargoyles that were carved out of the mantelpiece. The door could not be opened accidentally by a touch or a bump; the gargoyle had to be turned like a doorknob and then firmly pushed before the spring would be released. With a few drops of oil once a year, the mechanism would last as long as the house, and George Lockwood expected the house to last two centuries. Egress from the hidden stairway in the cellar was made through a sliding panel similar to the one in George Lockwood's bedroom. As in the bedroom, this panel was the back wall of a closet, which had been designated in the plans as storage place for old correspondence, receipted bills, cancelled cheques; and the like. Full of compliments for the craftsmanship, and with bonus cheques in their pockets, the Italians put index fingers to their lips and crossed their hearts, shook hands and grinned at George Lockwood, and went back to New York. The house was now almost ready to be shown to Geraldine Lockwood. George Lockwood had a last look around the house, the four-car garage, and the grounds while it was still daylight on an afternoon in October 1926. Shortly after four thirty o'clock he got into his little Packard roadster and moved toward the iron gates that now hung in place. Deegan, the temporary watchman from the detective agency, swung open the gates. "Goodnight, Mr. Lockwood," he said, "See you tomorrow?" "No, not tomorrow, Deegan," said George Lockwood. "Tomorrow I'm going to sleep all morning." "Well, I take that for a good indication," said Deegan. "In other words, the job is finished satisfactory?" "Now it's all up to Mrs. Lockwood." "Well, all I got to say is it's a feast to the eye. I never seen such a beautiful house in all me life. A real residence, palatial, to my way of thinking. You've a right to be real proud, Mr. Lockwood. Real proud." "Thank you, Deegan. Goodnight." "A veritable dream come true," said Deegan. "Goodnight again, sir." George Lockwood drove in the twilight to his old house in Swedish Haven, where he had been born; a square red brick house that seemed to rise suddenly in the center of a square lawn. He put the car in the horseless stable and walked around to the front door and let himself in. The sounds he had made brought May Freese from the kitchen. "Any messages, May?" "No sir, nobody called, and nothing in the afternoon mail." "All negative." "Only the papers. Where will I bring your tea to?" "My study, and have we got anything like a piece of cake in the house?" "We have