The Scarlatti Inheritance Read online

  Canfield spoke while he shaved. “Today’s Monday, so we’ll have three days. I’ll be making the final arrangements, and it’ll give you time to digest the file. You’ll have questions, and I don’t have to tell you that you’ll have to ask me. Not that you’ll be speaking to anyone else who could answer you, anyway, but in case you get hot and want to pick up a phone, don’t.”

  “Understood.”

  “Incidentally, don’t feel you have to commit anything to memory. That’s not important. I simply know that you have to understand.”

  Was he being honest with the boy? Was it really necessary to make him feel the weight of official truth? Canfield had convinced himself that it was, for no matter the years, no matter the affection between them, Andrew was a Scarlett. In a few years he would inherit one of the largest fortunes on earth. Such persons had to have responsibility thrust upon them when it was necessary, not when it was convenient.

  Or did they?

  Or was Canfield simply taking the easiest way for himself? Let the words come from someone else. Oh, God! Make somebody else speak!

  Drying his face with a towel, the major splashed some Pinaud on his face and started putting on his shirt.

  “If you’re interested, you missed most of your beard.”

  “Not interested.” He selected a tie from a rack on the closet door and pulled a dark blue blazer from a hanger. “When I leave, you can start reading. If you go out for dinner, put the briefcase in the cabinet to the right of the library door. Lock it. Here’s the key.” He unclipped a small key from his key ring.

  The two men walked out of the bedroom, and Canfield started toward the front hall.

  “You either didn’t hear me or you don’t want to answer, but what about Mother?”

  “I heard you.” Canfield turned toward the young man. “Janet isn’t supposed to know anything.”

  “Why not? Supposing something happens?”

  Canfield was visibly upset. “It’s my judgment that she be told nothing.”

  “I don’t agree with you.” The young man remained subdued.

  “That doesn’t concern me!”

  “Maybe it should. I’m pretty important to you now.… I didn’t choose to be, Dad.”

  “And you think that gives you the right to issue orders?”

  “I think I have a right to be heard.… Look, I know you’re upset, but she’s my mother.”

  “And my wife. Don’t forget that part, will you, Andy?” The major took several steps toward the young man, but Andrew Scarlett turned away and walked to the table where the black leather case lay beside the lamp.

  “You never showed me how to open your briefcase.”

  “It’s unlocked. I unlocked it in the car. It opens like any other briefcase.”

  Young Scarlett fingered the clasps and they shot up. “I didn’t believe you last night, you know,” he said quietly while he opened the lid of the briefcase.

  “That’s not surprising.”

  “No. Not about him. I believe that part because it answered a lot of questions about you.” He turned and looked at the older man. “Well, not questions really, because I always thought I knew why you acted the way you did. I figured you just resented the Scarletts.… Not me. The Scarletts. Uncle Chancellor, Aunt Allison, all the kids. You and Mom always laughed at all of them. So did I.… I remember how painful it was for you to tell me why my last name couldn’t be the same as yours. Remember that?”

  “Painfully.” Canfield smiled gently.

  “But the last couple of years … you changed. You got pretty vicious about the Scarletts. You hated it every time anyone mentioned the Scarlatti companies. You’d fly off the handle whenever the Scarlatti lawyers made appointments to discuss me with you and Mom. She got angry with you and said you were unreasonable.… Only she was wrong. I understand now.… So you see, I’m prepared to believe whatever’s in here.” He closed the lid on the briefcase.

  “It won’t be easy for you.”

  “It isn’t easy now, and I’m just getting over the first shock.” He tried lamely to smile. “Anyway, I’ll learn to live with it, I guess.… I never knew him. He was never anything to me. I never paid much attention to Uncle Chancellor’s stories. You see, I didn’t want to know anything. Do you know why?”

  The major watched the young man closely. “No, I don’t,” he replied.

  “Because I never wanted to belong to anyone but you … and Janet.”

  Oh, God in your protective heaven, thought Canfield. “I’ve got to go.” He started once again for the door.

  “Not yet. We haven’t settled anything.”

  “There’s nothing to settle.”

  “You haven’t heard what it was I didn’t believe last night.”

  Canfield stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “What?”

  “That mother … doesn’t know about him.”

  Canfield removed his hand from the knob and stood by the door. When he spoke his voice was low and controlled. “I was hoping to avoid this until later. Until you’d read the file.”

  “It’s got to be now, or I don’t want the file. If anything’s going to be kept from her, I want to know why before I go any further.”

  The major came back into the center of the room. “What do you want me to tell you? That it would kill her to find out?”

  “Would it?”

  “Probably not. But I haven’t the courage to test that.”

  “How long have you known?”

  Canfield walked to the window. The children had left the park. The gate was closed.

  “On June twelfth, nineteen thirty-six, I made positive identification. I amended the file a year and a half later on January second, nineteen thirty-eight.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yes.… Jesus Christ.”

  “And you never told her?”

  “No.”

  “Dad, why not?”

  “I could give you twenty or thirty impressive reasons,” said Canfield as he continued looking down at Gramercy Park. “But three have always stuck out in my mind. First—he’d done enough to her; he was her own personal hell. Second—once your grandmother died, no one else alive could identify him. And the third reason—your mother took my word … that I’d killed him.”

  “You!”

  The major turned from the window. “Yes. Me.… I believed I had.… Enough so that I forced twenty-two witnesses to sign affidavits that he was dead. I bought a corrupt court outside of Zurich to issue the certificate of death. All very legal.… That June morning in thirty-six when I found out the truth we were at the bay house and I was on the patio having coffee. You and your mother were hosing down a catboat and calling for me to put it in the water. You kept splashing her with the hose, and she laughed and shrieked and ran around the boat with you following her. She was so happy!… I didn’t tell her. I’m not proud of myself, but there it is.”

  The young man sat down in the chair next to the table. He started to speak several times, but each time the words fell short of making sense.

  Canfield spoke quietly. “Are you sure you want to belong to me?”

  The boy looked up from the chair. “You must have loved her a lot.”

  “I still do.”

  “Then I … still want to belong to you.”

  The shaded understatement of the young man’s voice nearly caused Canfield to break. But he had promised himself he would not do that no matter what happened. There was too much left to go through.

  “I thank you for that.” He turned back to the window. The street lights had been turned on—every other one as if to remind people that it could happen here, but probably wouldn’t so they could relax.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you go back and change the file?”

  There was a long silence before Canfield answered. “I had to.… That sounds funny now—‘I had to.’ It took me eighteen months to make that decision. When I finally did make it, it took less t
han five minutes to convince myself.” He stopped for a moment wondering if it was necessary to tell the boy. There was no point in not telling him. “On New Year’s Day in nineteen thirty-eight your mother bought me a new Packard Roadster. Twelve cylinders. A beautiful automobile. I took it for a spin on the Southampton road.… I’m not sure what happened—I think the steering wheel locked. I don’t know, but there was an accident. The car rolled over twice before I was thrown clear. It was a wreck, but I was okay. Except for a little blood, I was fine. But it occurred to me that I might have been killed.”

  “I remember that. You phoned from somebody’s house and Mom and I drove over and picked you up. You were a mess.”

  “That’s right. That was when I made up my mind to go down to Washington and amend the file.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Canfield sat on the window seat. “If anything did, happen to me, Scarlett … Kroeger could have played out a horror story and would have if it served him. Janet was vulnerable because she didn’t know anything. So somewhere the truth had to be told.… But told in such a way that would leave neither government any alternative but to have Kroeger eliminated … immediately. Speaking for this country, Kroeger made fools out of a lot of prominent men. Some of those distinguished gentlemen are at the policy level today. Others are manufacturing planes and tanks and ships. By identifying Kroeger as Scarlett, we move into a whole new set of questions. Questions our government won’t want asked now. Or perhaps ever.”

  He slowly unbuttoned his tweed overcoat but he did not want to take it off.

  “The Scarlatti lawyers have a letter which is to be delivered upon my death or disappearance to the most influential cabinet member of whatever administration is in Washington at the time. Scarlatti lawyers are good at that sort of thing … I knew the war was coming. Everyone did. Remember, it was nineteen thirty-eight.… The letter directs that person to the file and the truth.”

  Canfield took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling.

  “As you’ll see, I outlined a specific course of action if we were at war and a variation if we weren’t. Only in the last extremity was your mother to be told.”

  “Why should anyone pay attention to you after what you did?”

  Andrew Scarlett was quick. Canfield liked that.

  “There are times when countries … even countries in a state of war have the same objectives. Lines of communication are always open for such purposes … Heinrich Kroeger is a case in point. He represents too great an embarrassment to either side.… The file makes that clear.”

  “That seems cynical.”

  “It is.… I directed that within forty-eight hours after my death, the Third Reich’s High Command be reached and told that a few of our top personnel in Military Intelligence have long suspected Heinrich Kroeger to be an American citizen.”

  Andrew Scarlett leaned forward on the edge of the chair. Canfield went on without apparently noticing the boy’s growing concern.

  “Since Kroeger consistently makes underground contacts with a number of Americans, these suspicions are believed to be confirmed. However, as a result of …” Canfield paused to recall the exact wording. “… ‘the death of one Matthew Canfield, a former associate of the man known now as Heinrich Kroeger …’ our government has in its possession … documents which state unequivocably that Heinrich Kroeger is … criminally insane. We want no part of him. Either as a former citizen or as a defector.”

  The young man rose from the chair, staring at his stepfather. “Is this true?”

  “It would have been sufficient, which is more to the point. The combination is enough to guarantee a swift execution. A traitor as well as an insane man.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “All the information’s in the file.”

  “I’d like to know now. Is it true? Is he … was he insane? Or is it a trick?”

  Canfield got up from the window seat. His reply was barely above a whisper. “This is why I wanted to wait. You want a simple answer, and there isn’t any.”

  “I want to know if my … father was insane.”

  “If you mean do we really have documented proof from medical authorities that he was unbalanced?… No, we do not. On the other hand, there were ten men left in Zurich, powerful men—six are still living—who had every reason in the world to want Kroeger, as they knew him, considered a lunatic.… It was their only way out. And being who they were, they made sure that was the case. The Heinrich Kroeger referred to in the original file is verified by all ten to be a maniac. A schizophrenic madman. It was a collective effort that left no room for doubt. They had no choice.… But if you ask me … Kroeger was the sanest man imaginable. And the cruelest. You’ll read that, too.”

  “Why don’t you call him by his right name?”

  Suddenly, as if the strain had become more than he could bear, Canfield swiftly turned.

  Andrew watched the angered, flushed, middle-aged man across the room. He had always loved him for he was a man to be loved. Positive, sure, capable, fun and—what was the word his stepfather had used?—vulnerable.

  “You weren’t just protecting Mother, were you? You were protecting me. You did what you did to protect me, too.… If he ever came back, I’d be a freak for the rest of my life.”

  Canfield slowly turned and faced his stepson. “Not just you. There’d be a lot of freaks. I counted on that.”

  “But not the same for them.” Young Scarlett walked back to the briefcase.

  “I grant you. Not the same.” He followed the boy and stood behind him. “I’d have given anything not to have told you, I think you know that. I had no choice. By making you part of the final conditions, Kroeger—left me no choice but to tell you the truth. I couldn’t fake that.… He believes that once you know the truth you’ll be terrified, and I’ll do anything short of killing you—perhaps even that—to keep you from going into panic. There is information in this file which could destroy your mother. Send me to prison, probably for the rest of my life. Oh, Kroeger thought it all out. But he misjudged. He didn’t know you.”

  “Do I really have to see him? Talk to him?”

  “I’ll be in the room with you. That’s where the deal is made.”

  Andrew Scarlett looked startled. “Then you’re going to make a deal with him.” It was a distasteful statement of fact.

  “We have to know what he can deliver. Once he’s satisfied that I’ve carried out my end of the bargain, you, we’ll know what it is he’s offering. And for what.”

  “Then I don’t have to read this, do I.” It was not a question. “All I have to do is be there.… Okay, I’ll be there!”

  “You’ll read it because I’m ordering you to!”

  “All right. All right, Dad. I’ll read it.”

  “Thank you.… I’m sorry I had to speak that way.” He began to button his overcoat.

  “Sure.… I deserved it.… By the way, suppose Mother decides to call me at school? She does, you know.”

  “There’s a tap on your phone as of this morning. An intercept, to be exact. Works fine. You have a new friend named Tom Ahrens.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A lieutenant in CIC. Stationed in Boston. He has your schedule and will cover the phone. He knows what to say. You went to Smith for a long weekend.”

  “Jesus, you think of everything.”

  “Most of the time.” Canfield had reached the door. “I may not be back tonight.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got some work to do. I’d rather you didn’t go out but if you do, remember the cabinet. Put everything away.” He opened the door.

  “I won’t go anywhere.”

  “Good. And Andy … you’ve got one hell of a responsibility ahead of you. I hope we’ve brought you up so you can handle it. I think you can.” Canfield walked out the door and closed it behind him.

  The young man knew that his stepfather spoke the wrong words. He was trying to say som
ething else. The boy stared at the door and suddenly he knew what that something else was.

  Matthew Canfield wasn’t coming back.

  What had he said? In the last extremity, Janet had to be told. His mother had to be told the truth. And there was no one else now who could tell her.

  Andrew Scarlett looked at the briefcase on the table.

  The son and the stepfather were going to Bern, but only the son would come back.

  Matthew Canfield was going to his death.

  Canfield closed the apartment door and leaned against the hallway wall. He was heavy with sweat, and the rhythmic pounding in his chest was so loud he thought it might be heard back in the apartment.

  He looked at his watch. It had taken him less than an hour, and he had remained remarkably calm. Now he wished to get as far away as possible. He knew that by any of the standards of courage or morality or responsibility, he should stay with the boy. But such demands could not be made on him now. One thing at a time or he’d go out of his mind. One item crossed off and then on to the next.

  What was the next?

  Tomorrow.

  The courier to Lisbon with the detailed precautions. One mistake and everything could explode. The courier wasn’t leaving until seven o’clock in the evening.

  He could spend the night and most of the day with Janet. He rationalized that he had to. If Andy cracked, the first thing he’d do was try to reach his mother. Because he couldn’t face staying with him, he had to be with her.

  To hell with his office! To hell with the army! To hell with the United States government!

  In light of his impending departure he was under voluntary surveillance twenty-four hours a day. God damn them!

  They expected him to be no farther than ten minutes from a Teletype.

  Well, he wasn’t going to be.

  He would spend every minute he could with Janet. She was closing up the Oyster Bay home for the winter. They’d be alone, perhaps for the last time.

  Eighteen years and the charade was coming to a finish.

  Fortunately for the state of his anxiety, the elevator came quickly. Because now he was in a hurry. To Janet.

  The sergeant held the car door open and saluted as smartly as he could. Under ordinary circumstances, the major would have chuckled and reminded the sergeant that he was in civilian clothes. Instead, he returned the salute informally and hopped into the car.