Jack and Susan in 1933 (18 page)

“It wasn't an accident,” you could almost hear Mr. Chan saying, bowing slightly and smiling to these curious mourners as they departed, “it was murder.”

Grace Grace closed the doors of the dining room to muffle the noise of the clearing away of the funeral meats. Her embalmed fowl had never been more appropriate than on this afternoon.

Jack drew the doors of the drawing room closed with a final uneasy glance at his father-in-law's coffin.

Harmon and Susan were the last to take their leaves. Susan had fetched Scotty and Zelda from the kitchen, where they'd remained invisible and unheard the entire afternoon. She now carried them tenderly in her arms. The dogs looked with wary eyes at Harmon Dodge, and Harmon Dodge looked back at them in a way that suggested their wariness was justified.

“Barbara,” said Susan, “I really am—”

“I know you are,” returned Barbara with a smile that, for her, was positively fiery with warmth. “And you two, please, I'd beg you on my knees, if my knees bent after standing about so long like this in these positively déclassé pumps, please don't leave Jack and me alone. Stay with us for dinner.”

“Of course,” said Harmon. “Let me just run down to the cellar right now and see what Marcellus left in the way of potables.”

“Susan,” said Jack, “could I talk to Barbara alone for a few moments?”

“Certainly,” said Susan, already stepping away, but Barbara stopped her.

“Oh Jack, what could you possibly have to say to me that you couldn't say in front of Susan? After all, she's family. Someone or other keeps pointing that out to me. Especially after today, I suppose one might say.
Stay
,” she added to Susan with a repetition of that furnacy smile.

Susan put down the dogs and pointed to the corner by a Chinese umbrella stand. The dogs crept behind it, out of sight.

“The police called—” Jack began awkwardly. Barbara's hand was on Susan's wrist, not letting her go.

“And?” Barbara prompted.

“It appears that your father's death might not have been accidental.”

“They found something, then?” Barbara asked, not looking surprised.

“You knew they were looking?” asked Susan.

“I asked them to,” said Barbara innocently. “Just in case. Father had enemies—all lawyers have. Father even had a few friends who were worse than enemies to him. All rich men have.”

“Someone tampered with the brakes,” Jack said.

“But how could anyone know that Marcellus would be driving that car himself?” Susan asked.

“Probably they didn't,” suggested Harmon, appearing suddenly with an armful of dusty bottles. “Probably they intended to murder Marcellus and do away with the Bacillus of Bolshevism at the same time. A pair of avians brought down with but a single pebble. And speaking of two animals that want killing…” He looked around for Scotty and Zelda, and Jack now understood why the terriers were hiding behind a large and heavy vase.

“But do you have
any
idea who might have wanted to kill Marcellus?” Susan asked Barbara.

“The police asked me that very question earlier today,” said Barbara with a smile for Susan that was positively hellish in its warmth and intensity. “I suggested you.”

“Ah,” suggested Jack, “could we pursue this conversation in another…another venue? This hall's a bit drafty.” It was also very easy to be overheard here, by any one—or more likely, all—of the servants.

“Anywhere there's a corkscrew,” said Harmon cheerfully. “Help me with these, would you please, Jackie my boy.” The dusty bottles in his arms were rolling and clanking about, in fair danger of smashing themselves on the marble flooring. “The news that my wife has just been accused of murder is rattling my equilibrium. Generally, you know, on occasions when my spouse
hasn't
just been accused of a capital crime, I can juggle any number of bottles of fine wine. Perhaps we should adjourn into the dining room if Grace has finished clearing.”

“I'd prefer the drawing room,” said Susan, still trying to release her hand from the taloned grasp of the woman who'd just accused her of murder.

“The coffin's in there,” said Jack in a low, miserable voice. He somehow felt he'd just fallen into a very deep pit.

“Unmasking a murderer—or murderess—could hardly be construed as disrespectful to the corpse of the victim,” said Barbara, pulling wide the double doors. She stood aside with a ravishing smile for Susan to enter. “Don't worry, dear. The coffin is closed. If Father's corpse starts to bleed in the presence of his murderer, no one will notice.”

“Barbara!”

Barbara smiled a terrible smile and retreated into the hallway again while the others entered the drawing room.

“Jack,” said Susan, falling into a corner of the sofa, “please don't bother defending me to Barbara. I didn't murder Marcellus. You know that. Harmon knows that. The police would know that. Barbara is very upset right now, and I have no intention of taking offense at anything she might say.”

“Well, just in case you do feel a little threatened,” said Barbara, who had evidently heard at least the last of this little speech, “I've brought you a couple of defenders.” Barbara brought in Scotty and Zelda— holding them at arm's length, with a jeweled hand clasped around each gasping throat, very much the way cops on the beat push delinquent children along the sidewalk. She dropped the dogs onto the sofa next to Susan. “
They'll
love you no matter what you've done.”

“Yes,” said Susan, picking up Scotty and smiling quietly at him in reassurance that she did not intend to continue the throttling, “dogs do have several charming qualities. They're loyal and trusting, for one thing. For another thing,” she said, putting Scotty down and picking up Zelda, “I have never run into a bitch who was overdressed for every occasion. So, say on, Barbara. Now that the police have told us
how
I killed Marcellus, do we have any idea
why
I might have done this terrible thing?”

“Should I open this Gevrey Chambertin?” asked Harmon.

“You murdered my father for his money, silly,” laughed Barbara gaily.

“Is there any whiskey?” asked Jack, heading for the sideboard.

That stopped Harmon in the act of twisting the corkscrew into the cork of the Gevrey Chambertin. Jack fumbled the stopper of the decanter and sloshed the finest pre-Prohibition whiskey on his soft wool jacket.

“Barbara,” said Susan after a few moments, “that makes no sense whatsoever.
I'm
not to inherit his money,
you
are.”

“Do I look it?” cried Barbara to her husband.

“Like an heiress?” Jack returned, wondering.

“No! Like a babe in the woods. Because that is what you obviously all take me for. A babe in the woods, crawling under the leaves to keep warm and freezing to death anyway. Well, let me tell you all something, I am not a babe in the woods.”

“I never supposed it for a minute,” remarked Harmon. He had joined Jack at the sideboard.

“Let me tell you two subtle, sophisticated lawyers a thing or five. Let me tell you about my father, and about this hard-boiled babe sitting here so neat and pretty in the corner of the couch as if she were the canary who had just swallowed the mouse.”

“Ought I to defend you manfully?” Harmon asked his wife as he slid down easily beside her on the sofa. “Give her a smart slap to bring her to her senses? With Jack's permission, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Susan. “I'd like to reserve that option for myself. But for now, I, the canary who has just swallowed the mouse, would like to hear what Barbara has to say.”

“I'm not sure I would,” said Jack, dropping into a chair as clumsily as Harmon had suavely dropped onto the sofa. This time Jack spilled the finest pre-Prohibition whiskey on his soft wool trousers.

Barbara swept dramatically out of her chair and placed herself next to her father's casket, framed herself against a six-foot basket of white carnations, and grasped a silver handle of the ebony coffin with a hand that crackled with diamonds. As she raised her black veil, she looked like the apotheosis of grief—Medea in some dreadful modernistic Russian production.

“Harmon,” Barbara said, “it
kills
me to tell you this. Jack, it
breaks my heart
to admit something like this aloud.” They waited for the thunderbolt.

Barbara took a deep breath. “Father was senile.”

Jack, Harmon, and Susan blinked.

“Senile?” Jack echoed.

“He must have been,” said Barbara. “Otherwise, why would he have succumbed to the wiles of
that viperess
?” She pointed at Susan as if there might have been a dozen other viperesses in the drawing room and she wanted to make sure Jack and Harmon understood exactly which reptile was guilty.

Susan shook her head and sighed. “Jack,” she said, getting up, “I hope you didn't spill
all
of that whiskey on your suit.”

“There's a little left, I think,” Jack said.

“What wiles?” asked Harmon curiously when Susan returned to the sofa.

Susan stared at her husband. “Harmon,” she said quietly, “you know very well you should not feel that you have to ask me that question.”

“Hmm,” said Harmon, which could probably not be construed as an apology. “Well, if I can't ask you, I'll ask Barbara. What wiles, Barbara?”

“Well, I don't know exactly, having never resorted to a wile in my life,” said Barbara, turning around suddenly from where she'd buried her face in a mound of yellow chrysanthemums. She brushed petals from her bosom and went on. “But whatever wiles she used, they obviously worked, because otherwise why would Father have asked Susan to marry him?”

Jack spilled the remainder of his whiskey on the arm of the chair, and in attempting to wipe it up with his sleeve, knocked his glass to the floor. It rolled over to Barbara's feet. She kicked it smartly away.

“Marcellus asked you to marry him?” Harmon asked his wife in wide-eyed astonishment. Jack didn't think he had ever seen Harmon Dodge either wide-eyed or genuinely astonished at anything before.

“Don't deny it!” cried Barbara.

“I wasn't going to deny it,” said Susan.

“He did?” said Harmon, still astonished. “He actually asked you to marry him?”

Susan nodded.

“Did you point out to him that you were already married, and that, in fact, he was acquainted with your husband, and that your husband was his partner in law?”

“I didn't have to point it out,” returned Susan rather coldly. “Marcellus was already acquainted with the facts.”

“But it wasn't going to be a problem,” Barbara interjected, “because Susan was going to get a divorce.”

“I see,” said Harmon. “On any particular grounds? Inconvenience, perhaps? Incompatible china patterns?”

“Infidelity,” said Barbara smugly. “Yours, Harmon.”

“Mine?”

“Father, in his senility, hired some dreadful man by the name of MacIsaac—Jack knows him intimately—”

“I do not!”

“—and this dreadful man fabricated some photographs that purport to show you in the embrace of some Ninth Avenue sloozy.”

“What is a sloozy?” Jack inquired, and immediately wondered why, of all the important questions that occurred to him just now, he chose to propound this one.

“A sloozy is something between a slut and a floozy,” said Barbara. “These fabricated photographs would have proved your infidelity, and Susan could have gotten a divorce. She would have gotten a very fair settlement from you, and then she would have gotten even more money from Father when she married him.”

“How do you know all this?” Jack asked his wife. “About MacIsaac and the photographs, I mean.” Barbara smiled a secret smile and shredded a white carnation.

“So,” said Harmon to his wife as he gently eased one leg over another and swiped at one of the dogs which had come an inch or two closer to him on the sofa, “when Marcellus asked you to divorce me, and marry him, what answer did you give him?”

Susan blinked twice, very slowly. “I find that question insulting.”

“She said no,” said Jack. “And, I might add, I think that she acted very properly throughout the whole affair.”

“Oh yes?” said Harmon, putting aside his drink. Jack had never seen him do that either. “So you knew about this little business as well? I suppose Richard Grace and Grace Grace and Louise of the Firing Range knew about it, too. Everyone knew but me.”

“I saw the photographs MacIsaac obtained,” said Jack quietly. “They didn't look manufactured. It appeared to me that Susan had quite legitimate grounds for a divorce. In fact, Marcellus asked me to arrange the entire thing. I would have turned it down in any case, but it didn't come to that. Susan herself declined his proposal, with just and proper indignation.”