Plot It Yourself

I flipped a hand. “Any one of a dozen reasons. The best is the simplest. Also it’s been done so often that she wouldn’t have to invent it. She wrote a detailed account of how she and X put the bite on Ellen Sturdevant, probably saying it was X’s idea, and put it in an envelope. She also put in the envelope things that would corroborate it, for instance something in X’s handwriting, maybe a couple of letters he had written her; that would make it better. She sealed the envelope thoroughly with wax and tape, and wrote on it. ‘To be opened on my death and not before,’ and signed it. Then she deposited it with somebody she was sure she could trust to follow the instructions, and she told X about it, probably sending him or giving him a copy of what she had written. So X was up a stump. It was done first about three thousand B.C., and maybe a million times since, but it still works. It has saved the lives of thousands of blackmailers, and also of a lot of fine citizens like Alice Porter.” I flipped a hand again. “I like that best, but of course there are others.”

He grunted. “That one will do. That’s the assumption I have made. I think it highly probable. So where is the envelope?”

I raised a brow. “Probably somewhere in the United States, and there are now fifty of them. I doubt if she sent it out of the country. Do you want me to find it?”

“Yes.”

I got up. “Are you in a hurry?”

“Don’t clown. If such an envelope exists, and I strongly suspect that it does, I want to know where it is. If we can get our hands on it, all the better, but merely to locate it would be enough. Where would you start?”

“I’d have to think it over. Her bank, her lawyer if she has one, her pastor if she goes to church, a relative or an intimate friend-”

“Much too diffuse. It would take days. You might get a hint, or even better than a hint, from the executive secretary, Cora Ballard. Alice Porter joined that association in 1951, was dropped for non-payment of dues in 1954, and rejoined in 1956. I gathered that Miss Ballard is extremely well informed about the members, and presumably she will help if she can. See her.”

“Okay. She may not be enthusiastic. She wanted them to fire you. But I suppose she’ll-”