Love for Sale

for size rather than style or taste.
    He took a look in the drawers, but they were empty except for a few crumbs of paper, a couple of pens, and some loose staples. Chief Leland Colling and his staff had done a good job. There was a small anteroom attached that was apparently where Edward Price had worked. It was empty of everything but the furniture.
    He crossed the hall into what had once been a grand banquet hall. It had retained most of its former glory, except that it was unkempt. The elaborate glass chandelier drops were grimy, the enormous table dusty, and stacks of paperwork and random office files were piled on it.
    He glanced through several of the piles. They all seemed to be typed transcripts and carbon copies of Pottinger’s speeches. A collection of radios had been heaped in the far corner of the room. Apparently a lot of cleaning out was being done. He wondered what would happen to these things.
    He then went in search of the source of the typing sounds. At the top of the steps there was an office with an open door. A tall, plain, middle-aged woman in trousers, a checkered shirt, and an old blue sweater looked up at him from the typewriter. “May I help you?“ she asked.
    “I’m Chief of Police Howard Walker from Voorburg.“
    “The gentleman handling the murder, I assume,“ she said calmly. “Sit down if you can find a chair.“ Her office seemed to be the paperwork center. “I’m about the only one left here, and I’m trying to clear things out.“ She stood up, came around the desk, and shook his hand. “Mrs. Taylor at your service. Let me move some of this so you can be comfortable.”
    She wasn’t the least alarmed by his visit. “So what do you need from me?“ she said pleasantly, resuming her place behind the desk.
    “Tell me a bit about yourself, if you would. Have you worked here long?“
    “Almost since the beginning, when Pottinger bought this pile,“ she said with a smile. “About seven years ago.“
    “And what is your job?“
    “Right now or when I started?“
    “Both.“
    “I was originally the receptionist. Had a desk in the entry hall and told visitors where to find whomever they were looking for. Pottinger decided I wasn’t attractive enough for that,“ she said wryly. “But I was a good worker and he set me up here to handle the mail that came in.“
    “Did you admire the man in charge?“
    “Pottinger? Admire Pottinger?“ She almost laughed. “Not at all. He was a bigot, but I’d married late to an older man who died when my daughter was twelve, and I needed a job to support us. It could have been worse. I received a good salary, of which I’ve saved quite a lot. I wasn’t pretty enough for him to bother with.“
    “And why are you staying on?“
    “I’m still on salary, helping the attorney close down the place. And Pottinger left me an annuity. When I finish, I’ll be all right financially. My daughter’s just married a man with a good job. One of the few men left who has one.“
    “What does closing down the Institute involve?“
    “Quite a number of things. I’m working with . the attorney to hunt down Pottinger’s son, for one thing.”
    It hadn’t occurred to Walker that Jackson Kinsey was probably Pottinger’s executor and would be paid generously to administer the estate. Another reason he couldn’t afford to disappear.
    “Pottinger has a family?“
    “Only the son, as far as I know. He was married in the early days in Nebraska and left his wife and boy behind. She divorced him and later died, I understand.“
    “How old is this son?“
    “Nineteen, almost twenty.“
    “Were they on good terms?“
    “Decidedly not. It seemed from the boy’s letters that Pottinger was always trying to drag him up here, but the boy—his name is Charles, Jr.—wanted nothing to do with him. The last Iknew of him, he was living in Wheeling, West Virginia.“
    “How did you know that?“
    “They corresponded and I handle the mail. I open all of it and send it along to whomever it needs to go to. I never saw, of course, Pottinger’s letters to him, just the son’s responses. Which were pretty heated and critical.“
    “How long ago was this? When he was in West Virginia?”
    She thought for a moment. “I’d guess about a year ago.”
    Yet another elusive suspect, Howard thought, who stood to inherit a fortune and had a good motive.
    “I’m also trying to figure out what to do with the orphans,“ Mrs. Taylor went on. “That’s