Murder.com by Haughton Murphy Page A

Gotham Club—or, as his wife called it, his “tree house.” He had come to use the Club at Fifty-Sixth Street and Fifth Avenue more and more in his retirement years. Despite his crack about the food there being “tripe,” it had in fact improved considerably with the installation of a new chef. It was now much more appealing for lunch.
    Bowing to civic pressure and the sentiment of most members—but by no means all—the Club had also begun admitting women, for the first time in its hundred-year-plus history. This had not troubled Reuben, who did not share the apocalyptic vision of some of his fustier club mates. Yet the new regime was a far cry from the day when the Club did not even have a ladies’ room. “If we install a lavatory, they’ll be here every chance they get,” one old party had thundered when this radical proposal had first been made back in the 1970s. These days, any current member’s retrograde views, assuming such still existed, were held in silence.
    The decision to admit women did not really alter the customs of the club that mattered to its regular users, like the carefully prepared martinis of Renato, the bartender. Or the greetings of Jason Darmes, the doorman, who grew both more portly and more genial year by year.
    â€œHow are things, Mr. Frost?” he asked as Reuben entered, energized by a walk from his office in bright midday sunshine.
    â€œJust fine, Jason,” Reuben answered, knowing full well that the things that now concerned him most were far from being “fine.”
    Once at the tiny second-floor bar, Reuben ordered a martini.
    â€œA Gotham?” Renato asked, meaning a martini with a “dividend” on the side, which made it two martinis by any rational reckoning.
    â€œYou keep tempting me, Renato. But my doctor says strictly normal size and only one.”
    â€œComing up.”
    Reuben was pleased that there was one Gotham martini drinker at the bar, albeit a female foundation executive elected in the first wave of women members. By contrast, he saw that the three men present were sipping on white wine—a spritzer in one case, he noted with particular contempt. O tempora! O mores!
    Drink in hand, Frost headed at once for the dining room, avoiding conversation with the other drinkers. He was not being antisocial but, given the imbroglios in which he was entangled, he was not eager to make small talk about what he was up to.
    He sat down at the common table, reserved for those members lunching alone. Sitting there was often a perilous enterprise, since there were two or three extraordinary bores who appeared at the table with distressing regularity. He noticed one of them there today, with an empty chair beside him, so he quickly moved to the only other vacant place at the opposite end of the table.
    But Reuben was wary when he took the vacant seat next to a woman he did not know. His apprehension proved to be unwarranted as his luncheon companion turned out to be Amanda Bretton, the dean of the faculty at a nearby suburban college. Conversation with her was easy, as it was with his other companion, Peter Day, a magazine editor he had known for years.
    While the three were talking, Reuben heard Daniel Courtland’s name mentioned by someone farther down the table.
    â€œAwful thing about his daughter,” Reuben heard.
    Ms. Bretton caught the reference, too, and asked the speaker if he knew Courtland. The man said no.
    â€œHe’s quite a case,” Ms. Bretton said to the group. “When I was a dean at Indiana University, he revoked a pledge for five million dollars to our religion department because they wouldn’t hire a professor he had handpicked. A very conservative and somewhat eccentric preacher with very little in the way of academic qualifications.”
    There were mild sounds of disapproval within the group and then the individual conversations resumed.
    â€œI’m interested that you