Murder in the Gunroom, H. Beam Piper [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

national distribution, and took on some sidelines. Then, during the late Mr. Chamberlain’s ‘Peace in our time,’ he picked up a refugee Czech chemist and foods-expert named Anton Varcek, who whipped up a lot of new products. So business got better and better, and they made more money to spend on advertising to get more money to buy more advertising to make more money, like Bill Nye’s Puritans digging clams in the winter to get strength to hoe corn in the summer to get strength to dig clams in the winter.

“So Premix became a sort of symbol of achievement to Fleming. Then, he was one of these old-model paternalistic employers, and he was afraid that if he relinquished control, a lot of his old retainers would be turned out to grass. And finally, he was opposed in principle to concentration of business ownership. He claimed it made business more vulnerable to government control and eventual socialization.”

“I’m not sure he didn’t have something there,” Rand considered. “We get all our corporate eggs in a few baskets, and they’re that much easier for the planned-economy boys to grab.⁠ ⁠… Just who, on the Premix side, was in favor of this merger?”

“Just about everybody but Fleming,” Tipton replied. “His two sons-in-law, Fred Dunmore and Varcek, who are first and second vice presidents. Humphrey Goode, the company attorney, who doubles as board chairman. All the directors. All the New York banking crowd who are interested in Premix. And all the two-share tinymites. I don’t know who inherits Fleming’s voting interest, but I can find out for you by this time tomorrow.”

“Do that, Tip, and bill me for what you think finding out is worth,” Rand said. “It’ll be a novel reversal of order for you to be billing me for an investigation.⁠ ⁠… Now, how about the family, as distinct from the company?”

“Well, there’s your client, Gladys Fleming. She married Lane Fleming about ten years ago, when she was twenty-five and he was fifty-five. In spite of the age difference, I understand it was a fairly happy marriage. Then, there are two daughters by a previous marriage, Nelda Dunmore and Geraldine Varcek, and their respective husbands. They all live together, in a big house at Rosemont. In the company, Dunmore is Sales, and Varcek is Production. They each have a corner of the mantle of Lane Fleming in one hand and a dirk in the other. Nelda and Geraldine hate each other like Greeks and Trojans. Nelda is the nymphomaniac sister, and Geraldine is the dipsomaniac. From time to time, temporary alliances get formed, mainly against Gladys; all of them resent the way she married herself into a third-interest in the estate. You’re going to have yourself a nice, pleasant little stay in the country.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Rand grimaced. “You mentioned suicide rumors. Such as, and who’s been spreading them?”

“Oh, they are the usual bodyless voices that float about,” Tipton told him. “Emanating, I suspect, from sources interested in shaking out the less sophisticated small shareholders before the merger. The story is always approximately the same: That Lane Fleming saw his company drifting reefward, was unwilling to survive the shipwreck, and performed seppuku. The family are supposed to have faked up the accident afterward. I dismiss the whole thing as a rather less than subtle bit of market-manipulation chicanery.”

“Or a smoke screen, to cover the defects in camouflaging a murder as an accident,” Rand added.

Tipton nodded. “That could be so, too,” he agreed. “Say somebody dislikes the looks of that accident, and starts investigating. Then he runs into all this miasma of suicide rumors, and promptly shrugs the whole thing off. Fleming killed himself, and the family made a few alterations and are passing it off as an accident. The families of suicides have been known to do that.”

“Yes. Regular defense-in-depth system; if the accident line is penetrated, the suicide line is back of it,” Rand said. “Well, in the last few years, we’ve seen defenses in depth penetrated with monotonous regularity. I’ve jeeped through a couple, myself, to interrogate the surviving ex-defenders. It’s all in having the guns and armor to smash through with.”

III

Humphrey Goode was sixty-ish, short and chunky, with a fringe of white hair around a bald crown. His brow was corrugated with wrinkles, and he peered suspiciously at Rand through a pair of thick-lensed, black-ribboned glasses. His wide mouth curved downward at the corners in an expression that was probably intended to be stern and succeeded only in being pompous. His office was dark, and smelled of dusty books.

“Mr. Rand,” he began accusingly, “when your secretary called to make this appointment, she informed me that you had been retained by Mrs. Gladys Fleming.”

“That’s correct.” Rand slowly packed tobacco into his pipe and lit it. “Mrs. Fleming wants me to look after some interests of hers, and as you’re executor of her late husband’s estate, I thought I ought to talk to you, first of all.”

Goode’s eyes narrowed behind the thick glasses.

“Mr. Rand, if you’re investigating the death of Lane Fleming, you’re wasting your time and Mrs. Fleming’s money,” he lectured. “There is nothing whatever for you to find out that is not already public knowledge. Mr. Fleming was accidentally killed by the discharge of an old revolver he was cleaning. I don’t know what foolish feminine impulse led Mrs. Fleming to employ you, but you’ll do nobody any good in this matter, and you may do a great deal of harm.”

“Did my secretary tell you I was making an investigation?” Rand demanded incredulously. “She doesn’t usually make mistakes of that sort.”

The wrinkles moved up Goode’s brow like a battalion advancing in platoon front. He looked even more narrowly at Rand, his suspicion compounded with bewilderment.

“Why should I investigate the death of Lane Fleming?” Rand continued. “As far as I know, Mrs. Fleming is satisfied that it was an accident. She never expressed any other belief to me. Do you think it was anything else?”

“Why, of course not!” Goode exclaimed. “That’s just what I