Time Out of Mind (88 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
If the name Charlotte Corbin was fictitious, and Bigelow
felt sure it was, someone had gone to considerable trouble
to conceal her true identity. It struck him that she seemed
to have left Greenwich rather suddenly at about the same
time several retired whores were being run out of town.
Maybe there was something there, maybe not. Nor could he make anything at all out of the name Margaret, with
which Mrs. Corbin had signed several of the letters found in Tilden Beckwith’ s safe. Chances are it was Charlotte's
real name but it dead-ended right there.
“
You don't really have much except bluff,” he told Ella Beckwith. ”I have this notion, it won't go away, that Char
lotte might have been a hooker once named Margaret. You
could try laying that on him and watch his face. You'll get
a pretty good idea if it's true or not. Even if it isn't true,
you got a woman out there in Chicago who's made a pretty
good name for herself, and who has a son who's a college
professor and a grandson just getting out of Notre Dame, but whose whole life has been this big lie. Ask me, that's
not such bad leverage.”
“
How are you at burglary, Mr. Bigelow?”
”
I worked five years in Safe and Loft.”
Charlotte Corbin has some papers I want. One is the original of Tilden Beckwith’s will. Then there are certain
affidavits, correspondence, and the like.”
The fee's a grand for trying it, three grand if I deliver
the goods. If they turn out to be in a bank vault someplace,
I don't want to come up empty.”
“
How expensive is arson?”
“
What do you mean?”
“
If you find these papers, I want you to burn her house
down behind you.”
Tilden flew almost directly to Evanston as soon as he heard
the news. He used his influence to hitch a ride aboard a
DC-3 flying into the naval air station in nearby Skokie.
Jonathan met him at the hangar with a limousine and driver,
which Tilden had arranged by telephone. It was three days
before Christmas. They drove past the tidy affluent homes
of Winnetka, most of them decorated with lights and cutout
Santas. Many had service stars hanging in their windows
and war bond stickers on their doors.
“
How is your mother holding up?” Tilden asked gently:
“
She's pretty depressed. All her scrapbooks, letters, all the gifts we've given her over the years. It's just gone. I
shouldn't tell you, but she made you a cardigan sweater
and a quilted smoking jacket for Christmas. They're gone,
too.”
“
Jonathan?”
“
Yes, Uncle Tilden.”
“
Stop calling me that.”
“
Yes, sir.”
“
Jonathan.”
“
We're starting over?”
“
Jonathan, I am not going to leave here this time until
your mother marries me.”
“
No kidding.”
“
What do you think about that?”
”
I think it's great. What kept you?”
“
She did,,actually. I did in the beginning. Then she did.
The whole business has been very—”
“
Dumb?”
”
I was about to say complex. There have been other
considerations. I
...
your mother and
I...are
going to
have to have a long talk with you, Jonathan.”
“
Neat. Is this where I find out I'm really your son?”
Tilden choked.
“
And have been all the time?”
”
Uh, that is more or less the case, yes.”
“
Uncle—” Jonathan stopped himself. “Would Dad be all right?”
Ahh ... Dad would be
...
ahhh ... perhaps we'd bet
ter wait and decide with your mother.”
“
How about Tilden as an intermediate step?”
Tilden nodded his thankful agreement. “I'm afraid your
mother is going to be very cross with me for blurting this
out as I have.”
“
Could I ask you something?”
“
Certainly. Yes. You may indeed.”
I've been looking in mirrors for a long time. Do you
think I haven't noticed that there's something very familiar
about me?”
”
I have been told there's a resemblance. There is. Yes.”
“
Is it possible that
...
I know there are probably many
good reasons ... but is it possible you and Mother haven't
married because you couldn't figure out how to break it to
me and Whitney?”
“
It's been a factor. No denying it, Jonathan.”
“
You do know that I love Mother very much. And that
I love you, and admire you and respect you, and that I think
you're an absolute gas?”
“
That's very kind of you indeed ... son.”
Then you won't mind my saying that I think you've
both been a couple of prize jerks.”
Tilden’s eighty-third birthday. On Jonathan Corbin's fifty-fifth birthday. They honeymooned at the little inn on the shores of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where they'd gone so
many times. Tilden signed the register as he always had,
Mr. & Mrs. Tilden Beckwith. His new bride took the pen
from his hand and crossed out what he had written. She wrote, in its place, Tilden and Margaret Barrie Beckwith.
“
Margaret,” he said as tears came to his eyes.
“
Tilden?” She stepped closer to him.
“
Yes, my dearest.”
”
I don't suppose you know a place where we can swim
naked this time of year.”
off for New York on the Twentieth Century Limited. He
would need a month at most, he'd told her, to convene the directors, announce his retirement,, set up an orderly tran
sition, and then come back forever. Jonathan had made it clear that he had no interest whatever in trying to learn, at
his age, how to run the company. But yes, as majority-
stockholder-to-be, he would attend all directors' meetings to see that the company continued to be managed with a
sense of responsibility to its past, its place in the commu
nity, and its employees. Perhaps Whitney will want to share
the task once this war in Europe is over, and if he doesn't
try for a baseball career. And don't worry about Mother.
The furnished apartment she's renting will be fine until you get back. Either Lucy or I will see her every day. And don't worry, Margaret told him, about those papers and your will.
They don't really matter anymore, do they. Hurry back,
Tilden. But not too fast. I need time to knit you a new
cardigan.
It was late on a cold afternoon when Tilden, still beaming,
walked into the offices of Beckwith & Company. His grin
changed to puzzlement when he realized that the offices
were empty. Perhaps there was snow in the forecast. Per
haps the staff had been sent home early. There was a light
inside his office. He hesitated for a moment, wondering
whether he should go out again and call the police. But
then he thought he heard Huntington's voice coming from inside. Huntington? What was Huntington doing inside his
office? Tilden stripped off his hat and coat and laid them across his secretary's unattended desk. “No, stay there, Tillie,” he heard Huntington say. “Stay right where you are.”
Tilden pushed open the door.
ing, arms folded, in front of Tilden's desk as if he'd just
been sitting on the edge of it. Behind him, in Tilden's chair
and looking, as usual, as if he'd been caught at something,
was Huntington’s son. Ella, the daughter, sat erect and for
ward on a leather tufted chair to the left of the desk. She
wore a full-length dark coat and a fedora-style hat. Her h
ands were folded over the knob of the walking stick she affected. And she, as usual, for all her slender build, man
aged to look a good deal more manly than her brother,
whom Tilden was going to swipe out of that chair in about three seconds. To Tilden's right, almost out of his field of
vision, stood Chester Wax, nervous, his eyes getting moist,
snapping shut a briefcase and murmuring something about
excusing himself. A thickset man seated near Wax com
pleted the tableau. He was rising slowly, stretching, indi
cating to Huntington that he would be outside if needed.
Tilden thought he knew that one. Was he not the detective
whose further employment he had forbidden?
It's time we had a family conference,” Huntington said
as Tilden heard the door click shut behind him.
Is it really?” Using just his eyes and the tip of a point
ing index finger, Tilden raised Huntington’s draft-dodger
son from his chair and deposited him near a small fireplace
behind his silent sister's chair.
“
Twenty-one right,” Huntington said to him, “seven
left, nine right past seven, fifteen left.” Smiling, he ges
tured toward the cabinet that concealed Tilden's safe. “We
know everything.”
“
You are referring, I assume, to the stipulations of my
will and to the circumstances of your birth.” Now Tilden
used his eyes to hold Huntington in place.
”
I am. Among other things.”
“
You've just lost your job, Huntington.”
In fact, I no longer want it. I've decided I would prefer
to be a full partner.”
And you are about to tell me why the son of a man named Ansel Carling should lay claim to that.”
blood, by the way. He was a bold and daring man, much like myself.”
was sure he would not laugh aloud. “I could name several
things that are wrong with that sentence, Huntington. But
I'll simply point out that you've made one anti-Semitic re
mark too many in your mean little life for me to take you
altogether seriously.”
Get on with this,” he heard Ella's voice. She had not
moved.
know everything. We have all your papers and we've
learned a good deal more. You are quite right that the three of us would prefer not to have our ancestry gossiped about
for the rest of our lives, but we are resolved that that is
nothing compared to what else is at stake here. The real
questions, Tilden Beckwith, are these. Does the noble and
respected head of Beckwith and Company wish to be
known and forever remembered as a man who probably
murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy?”
Tilden only shook his head wearily.
Do you want it known”—Huntington's voice rose a
notch—“that you gave your name to a convict's child and
pretended he was your own only to divert suspicion, treat
ing that child most bitterly in the process?”
knew there was shame in it. It was all that had made him
keep Huntington in his employ and provide an allowance
to the others this long. It was all that kept him now from
taking Huntington by the collar and throwing him out the
door, age difference or no.