Look Back on Death

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Dick Tredgold has spent seven years in jail for a murder he insists he did not commit. Now eligible for parole, he refuses to apply, because he feels that by doing so he would acknowledge his guilt. His family, at their wit's end, appeal to Jesse Falkenstein for help. Falkenstein realises the only way of getting Tredgold to leave prison is to identify the real murderer - no easy task in an eight-year-old investigation. And when Jesse re-examines the case he begins to discover that not all the witnesses were as reliable as they had seemed. . . 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Sergeant Andrew Clock, Hollywood division, L.A.P.D., together with his wife Fran, had been visiting his brother- and sister-in-law, Jesse and Nell Falkenstein. On the point of
departure, he looked at Jesse with something less than love and said, “Well, I’ll read your damned books some time when I get round to it. Do I thank you?”

“Probably,” said Jesse acidly.

Fran and Nell exchanged a glance. “You shouldn’t have gone tramping all over my big brother’s convictions,” said Fran lightly. “Come on, Andrew, it’s
beginning to rain.”

Clock growled and turned from the open front door; in the little drizzle they hurried to the car in the driveway. Jesse shut the front door and Nell said, “You needn’t have jumped
all over him like that. After all, it’s a—a specialized subject. Why should a cop know anything about parapsychology? Cops deal in plain facts.”

“That’s right!” said Jesse violently. “Get me all set to deliver another lecture to you! Damn it, that’s just the point—facts. What else, for God’s
sake, is the entire field of research dealing in? For nearly a hundred years a long list of respected scientists have been meticulously turning up the plain facts—the documented solid facts
of telepathy, clairvoyance, mediumship, precognition, psychokinesis, and all the rest of it, and publishing the reams of solid evidence. And yet the ordinary average intelligent man like Andrew
doesn’t know one damned thing about it. It’s stupid.”

“Riding your hobby horse,” said Nell. “Why should he? We’re living in the nuclear age, and I like to think I’m reasonably intelligent but I don’t know
anything about atoms or fission.”

“Survival of the individual soul is slightly more important,” said Jesse, but reluctantly he grinned. “I’ll educate the man yet. Him and his don’t confuse me with
facts, my mind’s made up.” He started to switch off lamps in the living room. Nell laughed and took Athelstane the mastiff to the back door, let him out for a last run. She looked in on
the baby down the hall; at nearly ten months of age, David Andrew had mercifully learned to sleep at night. As she came into the bedroom Jesse was shedding watch and loose change on the bureau top.
“You want me to look at this place in Studio City?”

“Not really. I don’t like it that well.” Nell sounded dissatisfied. “I suppose I’ll find something sometime. Only the prices are ridiculous. I wonder if we ought to
get a bigger place, Jesse.”

“I don’t,” said Jesse, “need a direct-voice communication from the old man to tell me he meant us to use the money and have fun with it. Don’t fuss, Nell. Only
money—what he’d tell you—and it can go as easy as it comes, so we might as well enjoy it.” He yawned, reaching for his pajamas.

Old Mr. Walters had died last May and left Jesse a respectable amount of money. The will had finally got through probate last month. The first fun they’d had with it was the new cars,
which they’d both badly needed—two brand-new Mercedes. And as Nell said, this house was in a fairly good older section of Hollywood, but if they were going to have at least one more and
possibly two in the family, it would be nice to have a bigger house with more space around it for Athelstane. She’d started looking at houses last week, but so far hadn’t found any she
liked.

When she emerged from the bathroom to find Jesse sitting up in bed smoking over a copy of Hidden Channels of the Mind, she sat down at the dressing table and said thoughtfully,
“He would be pleased, wouldn’t he? It is what he’d have wanted us to do.” She let her hair down, the dark-brown mass of hair never cut, and began to brush it quickly.

“No would be about it, he’s probably keeping an eye on us and getting a kick out of it. Maybe he’ll pick out a house and lead you to it some way.”

Nell laughed, starting to braid her hair. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Somebody’s said, money isn’t everything but it can make you damned comfortable. But we needn’t let it go to our heads. Office hours as usual—it could all go down
the drain tomorrow, and I’ve got some new clients coming in. I suppose you’ll be out with your realtors.”

“Not if it’s pouring like this. Do you realize it’s past midnight? You and Andrew going at it hammer and tongs like that—I’ll get Athelstane in.”

“Mmh.” Jesse put down his book and reached for the lamp switch. “And I’ve got to be in court at ten.” He was never operating on all cylinders before noon.

But when he got to his office, in the new tall building on Wilshire, he was informed by his twin secretaries, Jean and Jimmy Gordon, that Mrs. Thomas had called in at
eight-thirty, and there’d be no court session; there’d been a reconciliation. “They’re all lovey-dovey again and she wants you to kill the divorce petition.”

“These females,” said Jesse.

“There’s not much else for you this morning—paperwork on the probate for the Gorham will, and you said to remind you about getting the court order to sell the stock, to get the
inheritance tax cleared out of the way. You’ve got an appointment at ten, this Mr. and Mrs. Tredgold.”

“Did they say what about?”

“Not a word.”

“O.K., shoot them in when they get here.” Jesse looked approvingly at the Gordons, identical brown-eyed blondes and very efficient girls, and went on into his office. The new office
was a good deal handsomer than the old one, with its smooth paneling, the austere Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More on one wall, lush carpeting, the big desk; and all the gadgets, like the tape
recorder and the calculator, were useful. He pulled out the recorder and dictated a letter about the court order, which brought him to nine-fifteen. He hadn’t started to draw up that
Wallingford will; he got out the notes he’d taken yesterday and glanced through them, sliding a new tape into the recorder. After raining all night, it had let up this morning; now it was
starting again, a slithery shushing against the windows.

He thought, a slow day, not much to do; he might drop in to see if DeWitt had anything interesting on hand this afternoon. William DeWitt, happily pottering around with his Western Association
for Psychic Research, could always be relied on for some interesting talk at any rate.

The new clients were more than prompt; Jimmy looked in at a quarter of ten to tell him the Tredgolds were here. Jesse told her to send them in.

The first impression he got from them was Money. They were a good-looking couple, quietly well dressed, smart, smooth, discreet, nothing flashy. The man was tall, with good shoulders, nearly
crew-cut dark hair, firm mouth, rather cynical dark eyes; his gray suit hadn’t come off a rack, and his tie was a Sulka. He might be forty. She was a little younger, dark hair, with a nice
figure, very fair complexion, and intensely blue eyes; her clothes so quietly smart that they were unobtrusive. And both of them looked troubled and worried, as people who came to see a lawyer
sometimes did.

Jesse had stood up; Tredgold offered him a firm hand. “Sit down, won’t you? What can I do for you?”

They sat down in two of the leather-upholstered chairs and Tredgold said, “I don’t know.” He had a deep voice; he looked and sounded like a man usually very sure of himself but
now annoyed because for some reason he wasn’t. “I don’t know if you can do anything at all, but we thought we’d come and ask.”

“Because the company lawyers wouldn’t be any use,” said Mrs. Tredgold. “And of course Mr. Featherstone’s dead. Not that I ever thought he was much use either. You
know I said at the time, Walt, we should have got someone younger—more, oh, up and coming.” She looked at Jesse. “You see, we happen to know Ray Austin, Mr.
Falkenstein.”

It took Jesse ten seconds to identify the name, and then he said, “Oh, really.” His mind slid back to that little affair: one of the cases where old Edgar Walters’ knowledge of
human nature had spotted the place to look for truth. “How is he these days?”

“Far as I know, fine.” Tredgold was impatient. “He never can say enough about you. We just thought, ask what you think.” He got out cigarettes, gave one to his wife, lit
both. He looked at his cigarette, evidently unsure momentarily how to proceed, and then he asked baldly, “Is there any legal way to force a man to go on parole?”

Jesse stared at him curiously. “Generally speaking, anybody qualified for parole’s happy to get it.”

“I know, I know, but it’s a hell of a situation, and we just don’t know what to do about it. Is there any way?”

“Maybe you’d better tell me something about the circumstances, Mr. Tredgold,” said Jesse gently.

“Yes, of course, I suppose you’ll have to know the whole story,” said Tredgold unhappily. “It’s my brother Dick. He’s put in seven and a half years,
he’s up for parole, and the damned fool won’t take it. We’ve both argued with him—damn it, I can see how he feels in a way, but it’s water under the bridge, and a
smart man knows when to cut his losses. He’s only thirty-five, he’s got the other half of his life to live, and God knows there’s enough money waiting—I’ve looked
after it like my own. You can’t spend that kind of money in jail, and I’ve got a smart stockbroker. This damn fool brother of mine’s got half a million bucks waiting for him, and
his old job back—even after all the money I spent on lawyers trying to get what she left him in her will. Thank God,” said Tredgold devoutly, “all the company stock was tied up in
trust under Uncle Walt’s will. If she’d owned that outright and split it between us, and the state claimed he couldn’t profit by the death—my God. What a mess that would
have been. As it was—” He seemed to think he was explaining.

“Excuse me,” said Jesse. “Money from where?”

“Oh. Chain of markets,” said Tredgold. “The Super-T’s. Our uncle—Walter Tredgold—started out with one little place thirty-five, forty years back. He was a
good businessman and he was lucky. We’ve got twenty-one supermarts now, all over the place from Thousand Oaks to Santa Monica. Dick and I got 40 per cent of the company stock when he died
fourteen years ago. He was smart enough to tie up the rest in trust, what he left Aunt Lou. She”—he smiled a little—“didn’t have much head for money. On her death the
rest of the stock was split between Dick and me, but that wasn’t anything to do with her will, you see, so that was all right. She had the entire income but she couldn’t touch the
principal.”

“Where does the parole come in?” asked Jesse. “What’s your brother in for?”

Tredgold leaned back. “Homicide. You don’t remember the case? It was eight and a half years ago—”

“Afraid not.”

“There was an appeal—it all took so damned much time—but it was turned down. And then all the legal fuss—”

“It was a nightmare,” said Mrs. Tredgold in her light, pretty voice. She put out her cigarette; her hand was shaking. “Just thinking about it brings it all back. All the little
things. Do you know, I’ve never been able to read a detective novel since. Murder—it’s not a thing you expect to happen, and maybe in a book motives and alibis and witnesses are
interesting, but when it’s real— There was all that blood on the carpet, and you couldn’t just leave it, even when we knew the house would be sold. And sorting out all her things,
I couldn’t expect Alida to help—and Dick in jail, and then she lost the baby, we’d all been so happy about the baby—”

“Oh, Becky, don’t go over it!” said Tredgold roughly. “It was the worst time any of us lived through, but it’s over. It’s happened. What we have to
think about now is Dick.”

“Your brother was charged with murdering this aunt?” asked Jesse. “First degree?”

“No. It wasn’t—nobody ever thought it was premeditated. It was second degree, he got twenty to thirty years. I—”

Jesse’s eyebrows shot up. “Stiff sentence for second degree homicide.”

Tredgold’s mouth hardened. After a moment he said, “That judge— There was a lot of subtle harping on the money, the other side tried to make it look as if we were—oh,
café society, bunch of snobs who’d never done a day’s good work. My God, you’ve got to run a business—what do they think the manager of a big company does all day?
Dick and I both worked an eight-hour day, Uncle Walt sent both of us right through the business, since we turned fifteen and started out as bag boys. I ought to tell you that our parents were
killed in an air crash when I was twelve and Dick was eight, and Uncle Walt and Aunt Lou brought us up—they never had any children. Dad was a GP, but he’d only been in practice for five
years, and with working his way through medical school, he didn’t leave much. How the hell did I get on this? Oh, the money. Hell, Dick and I held every job there is, getting experience to
run the business—bag boy, checkout clerk, stock clerk, on up. We’ve both got degrees in business management. I’m sorry, all this is irrelevant, didn’t I just say it’s
water under the bridge? Just, we always felt the judge was—prejudiced. He was dead against Dick in his instructions to the jury, and—well, that was how it came out, twenty to thirty,
and the appeal turned down.”

“A nightmare,” repeated his wife, her eyes still shut. “And it didn’t end. It was just before Christmas, you know. That the trial ended. With all that—the sentence,
and Alida losing the baby—we had to do something about Christmas, because Judy and Jim were just little things, six and four, you couldn’t disappoint them. Dick and Alida had just
bought a house—they’d only been married a year—and after the miscarriage and then the appeal getting denied she couldn’t bear to live there, and we found her an apartment.
It was all the little things, things you don’t think about—getting special permission to see Dick because we needed his signature on the escrow papers— And we thought he was going
to be sent to the prison at Susanville, and oh, God, if he only had been. If he only had—”

“Shut up, Becky,” said Tredgold, but he said it kindly. “I’ve said it before, free will I believe in up to a point. There is such a thing as fate. If he’d been in
Susanville, Alida wouldn’t have made that drive once a month, I’ll grant you. She’d have flown instead, and you’re likelier to get killed in an airplane than in a car.

“She was killed.” Jesse was patiently following the thread of story.

“The year afterward,” said Tredgold. “On her way up the coast to visit him. Drunk rammed her car head-on.”

“He could have a visitor once a month,” said his wife. “And the letters, of course. But after that—”

“It was easier,” said Tredgold unexpectedly. “I won’t say it wasn’t easier. Alida’d been there all the while, keeping us reminded. You can see we’d felt
a responsibility, we’d check on her, have her over, do things for her. She hadn’t any family here—her mother was dead, her father lived in Maine. And after she was gone, it got a
little easier. Dick—just wasn’t there. Oh, we kept in touch—regular letters, I kept him up on the business. I got his power of attorney to deal with his share of the stock and so
on. For quite a while even after Alida was killed he kept up his interest—followed the stock market, he’d ask me to buy into this or sell that for him. But lately, no. I don’t
know what’s got into the damned fool. He knew he could get parole after seven years.”

“It’s on account of Alida,” said his wife. “Mostly, I think. He feels he hasn’t got anything waiting.”

“He’s got the hell of a lot waiting,” said Tredgold angrily. “He’s still a young man. He’s got us, his whole family. Enough money. He knows how much we think
of him, for God’s sake. It’s just his damned stubbornness—Dick always was pigheaded, get an idea into his head and you can’t move him—”

“But just exactly why doesn’t he want to accept parole, Mr. Tredgold?” asked Jesse. “You’ve lost me. Seems to me, way you put it, it’s water under the bridge
all right. And just what do you want me to do about it?”

“He says”—Tredgold, who had been leaning forward, flung himself back in his chair looking disgusted—“it’s the principle of the thing. He says if he accepts
parole, it would be a tacit admission that he was guilty, that everything he testified to at the trial was a lie, and he won’t do it. He says it’s just too damn bad for the judge and
jury who said he was guilty, but that’s not his fault—but if he takes parole, he’d be partly to blame too. Principle!” Tredgold uttered the word as if it were an oath.
“Throwing away the rest of his life for a silly damned idea like that—”

“Well, legally speaking, when the court found him guilty . . .” began Jesse, and Becky Tredgold interrupted him in a surprised tone.

“Oh, we all knew he wasn’t guilty, Mr. Falkenstein. You don’t suppose we ever thought— Of course Dick couldn’t possibly have killed Aunt Lou.” She read his
careful expression uncannily and added, “You’re thinking an innocent man couldn’t have been convicted?”

“It happens,” said Jesse. “Not very often. More likely, in our judicial system, the other way round, Mrs. Tredgold. But I don’t say it can’t happen.”

“The trouble was,” said Tredgold, “it didn’t look as if anybody else could have done it. Only we knew he didn’t. But that’s over, and when he’s got a
new life ahead— I don’t know what the hell I expect you to do about it.”

“But Ray Austin,” said Becky Tredgold, “seems to think you’re some kind of miracle worker, Mr. Falkenstein. He told us all about how you got him out of trouble, when his
wife was murdered. What I thought was—you’re a. . .