The Gladstone Bag (15 page)

“What I’d really like is to take a nap, but I suppose I’d better check on Mrs. Fath.”

“I’ll do it if you wish. It’s time I went to my cottage anyway.”

“But then you’d have to come back here and tell me how she’s doing. I’ll ask Bubbles to go instead.”

“You’re a kind woman, Mrs. Kelling.”

Relieved of the duty to be charming, Radunov went to borrow a raincoat and brave the storm, which in fact seemed to have slackened off for the moment. Emma tidied away the cards and the cribbage board and wandered into the kitchen.

From somewhere back in the ell, she could hear muffled sounds of rock music and high-pitched giggles. The youngsters were enjoying themselves in their own unfathomable way; she was glad they were doing it out of earshot of the main house. Vincent must still be in the stable. Bubbles was dozing in a chair by the wood-burning stove with his feet propped up on the little shelf in front of the oven. He had a big pot of something simmering on the back burners and, from the smell, a crock of beans baking inside.

He’d earned his rest; she wouldn’t disturb him. Emma put on the old rubber cape and a pair of rubber boots that didn’t fit her too badly and slogged down the path to Mrs. Fath’s cottage. The air was bracing but the walking on wet pine needles in clumsy boots left something to be desired. An alpenstock, for instance. She congratulated herself on making it to Mrs. Fath’s cottage without so much as a sprained ankle, rapped lightly on the door, got no answer, and went in.

Mrs. Fath was asleep. Her color was good, her breathing regular, she didn’t need any Florence Nightingale hovering about her. Emma slipped and slithered back to the house, went up to her room and lay down on the chaise.

After all, she couldn’t sleep. She tried reading and couldn’t get her mind on her book. She switched on the radio and found nothing she cared to hear. Emma supposed she ought to get started on her repairing job, now that she had the fairy jewels back, but the thought of handling once more those worthless trinkets Neil had risked his neck to retrieve and that unknown thief had evidently lost his life trying to steal was revolting to her. She couldn’t even find solace in tidying her dresser drawers; Sandy already had them so neatly arranged that Emma felt guilty taking anything out. Whatever had possessed her to volunteer for this crazy venture? She might have known there’d be a catch in it somewhere.

Emma went to the windows and stared out with a feeling of personal grievance. She could barely make out the pier, there was nothing to see but a welter of foaming, surging grayness. If only this storm had held off, Brother Lowell would have been here hours ago. The dead man would be gone from the island, and so would that wretched necklace. She felt a compulsion to go to the safe once more and make sure the diamonds were still there but told herself not to be a fool. Whoever was dummy right now in that interminable bridge game might be on his or her way upstairs to spy around after it. They must all be assuming she was asleep; she’d yawned enough over the cribbage board. Which of the cottagers was it who’d sneaked back into the main house last night and let that man out of the storeroom?

Or had it in fact been one of the staff? Why had Vincent been so quick to lay the blame on his own son? Why hadn’t he picked on that cheeky fellow Ted? It occurred to Emma that Ted was the one person on the island whom she hadn’t laid eyes on once today. Why hadn’t he been with Neil when the boy came back with the stage jewelry? Neil hadn’t mentioned Ted’s having been with him; it must have been dreadfully risky for a young boy alone, rooting around those treacherous rocks in weather as bad as this.

Vincent had known what Neil was up to. He’d been worried; why hadn’t he stopped his son from going? Was it because he’d expected more than fairy necklaces to have fallen out of the bag they’d found floating above the body? Had Vincent himself been out there this afternoon, groping around in the mud? Was he still at it now that the tide was back in?

It ought to be a two-man job, Emma thought, one to do the hunting and one to hold the lifeline without which nobody in his right mind should even think of trusting himself to that churning, leaping ocean. Was she putting other lives in danger by keeping the necklace hidden? Would it be wiser to carry the diamond necklace downstairs right this minute, toss it in the middle of the table, and say, “Look what I found. Would anyone care to claim it?”

No, it would not be wiser. It would be cowardly, stupid, and quite likely dangerous. Emma picked up a book of crossword puzzles she’d brought along for a rainy day, took it back to the chaise, and began doggedly shoving in words. After a while, without meaning to, she did fall asleep.

She woke with a stiff neck, feeling logy and cross. The room was all but dark now, the storm still howling and crashing. For goodness’ sake, what time was it? Ten minutes to six, she ought to be getting downstairs. She dashed cold water on her face, did what she could with powder and lipstick, and hurried downstairs to be charming.

Radunov was back, looking a good deal fresher than she. No doubt realizing nobody else was going to dress, he’d settled for his gray slacks and tweed jacket. As far as Emma could see, the rest of the cottagers hadn’t moved. The card table was still strewn with score sheets, loose playing cards, and the poker chips nobody had bothered to put away. The hearth was messy with bits of bark and ashes from inexpert fire-tending; the whole room had an air of dishevelment that Emma found fully as annoying as its usual frozen impeccability. Why hadn’t Vincent told the girls to tidy up? Why hadn’t he brought the drinks? Where on earth was he?

He’d been out getting wood, naturally, because this pack of louts had burned up every stick in the woodbox and been too lazy to go out for more. Even as Emma stood fuming, Vincent came in with a canvas carrier full of dry logs, swept up the hearth, and tended the fire practically in one motion. Sandy dashed in with a trayful of hot stuffed mushroom caps, set it by the fire to keep warm, and went to deal with the card table. Vincent opened the drinks cabinet and began setting out glasses. Bernice rushed an ice bucket and a plate of garnishes up to the bar, rushed out again, and whizzed back carrying a round of cheese and a basket of crackers. Sandy flipped the last poker chip into the rack, plumped the last sofa pillow, snatched up the tray of mushrooms and began passing them around just as the cuckoo clock on the wall, another house gift, no doubt, chirped the hour.

Back in business, right on the dot. Emma took one of the mushrooms Sandy was proffering and bit into it. Delicious, naturally; she swallowed the bite with a feeling that she was being manipulated. She switched on the television to see whether she could find a weather report on the storm and ran into a commercial for drain cleaner. She went over to ask Vincent for Scotch and water, discovered he’d already fixed her a gin and tonic, and took it so as not to hurt his feelings even though gin was not her notion of a drink for a stormy night.

All in all, this was not a satisfactory evening. Nobody, not even Count Radunov, had anything interesting or entertaining to say. They were all patently sick of each other’s company, sick of being penned in. here, probably sick of what they’d seen in the stable, although not one of them had uttered a word about that afterward, at least not in Emma’s presence.

Nobody tried very hard to hide his relief when the ritual of coffee was over and they were free to go their separate ways. Vincent insisted on lighting the cottagers out to their abodes with a big battery lantern. Emma decided to go along with them and pay Alding Fath a good-night visit even though the caretaker assured her that Bubbles had already been out with a light but sustaining supper.

She found the invalid awake but not disposed for conversation. All Emma could get out of Mrs. Fath was that she wasn’t really sick, she just felt poorly. She didn’t want a drink of water; she didn’t want a book to read. She didn’t want anything except, quite plainly, for Mrs. Kelling to go away and leave her alone.

Vincent was waiting on the porch with his lantern. Emma supposed she ought to be grateful for such devoted attention, but she wasn’t. If he were all that caring a person, how could he have spent his day fiddling around with the electric cart not ten feet away from a dead man?

That was unfair, she told herself. Vincent had had a job that needed doing and nowhere else to do it. The unknown departed had been nothing to him, a body was only an outworn shell. The caretaker had shown what respect was appropriate; he’d got the cadaver in from the storm, arranged such a bier as he could manage, and made sure the horse blanket was perfectly clean. Why fault a man for refusing to be superstitious about the dead? Nevertheless, Emma didn’t like it much when Vincent took her arm quite respectfully and impersonally to help her over a slippery patch.

The one bright spot on her horizon was that the storm showed signs of letting up. About the only remark Vincent made on the way back, aside from things like “Watch your step here,” was “Goin’ to blow ’erself out. My brother’ll be here by mid-mornin’.”

“That will be an immense relief,” Emma replied. “I wonder what that unfortunate man will be found to have died of.”

“Hit ’is head fallin’ over the cliff an’ drowned while unconscious.”

“You sound awfully sure.” Emma found Vincent’s matter-of-fact omniscience was getting under her skin.

“The examinin’ doctor’ll be my brother Franklin.”

And Pocapuk was not going to have a scandal. That was the way it had always been and would always be as long as Vincent remained the power behind the Sabines. Another Vincent, the Maine poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, had written a line that fitted Emma’s mood better: “I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

She kicked off the muddy boots and hung up the streaming rubber cape, went to her room, took a hot bath, and put on her nightclothes. Then she picked up the crossword-puzzle book again, settled herself on the chaise, and waited for the house to quiet down. As soon as she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t be caught prowling below, she pocketed the key to the telephone box, went to the extension in the pantry, shut herself in there to muffle the sound of her voice, and dialed a Boston number.

The Bittersohns were at their Beacon Hill residence. Sarah still owned the historic brownstone she’d inherited from Alexander Kelling and still hadn’t got around to turning the ground-floor bedroom back into a drawing room. Thus she had an ideal place to park a husband with a badly smashed leg and an assortment of cracked ribs who’d just been released from Massachusetts General Hospital and would be going back there for therapy as soon as a battery of doctors said he could.

Son Davy’s crib had been set up in Theonia Kelling’s boudoir on the second floor. His doting aunt was only too happy to have him near her, particularly now that her husband Brooks was having to do Max’s legwork. Brooks was out of town now, hot on the trail of an Audubon Elephant Folio, three Mary Cassatt pastels, and a rare cockatoo named Barnaby, which had been stolen from a private estate in Cape May, New Jersey. Cockatoos were not generally within the province of the Bittersohn-Kelling detective agency, but Barnaby happened to be a personal acquaintance of Brooks, who was also an expert ornithologist, and was an assignment he could not have refused.

Sarah was sharing the double bed with Max, offering what small wifely comfort was possible in the circumstances and trying to get used to sleeping with a husband much of whom was rigidly encased in gauze and plaster. Max still had one arm whole and free; it was with this he reached for the telephone.

“Max,” came a familiar voice, sounding oddly agitated. “Is that you?”

“Oui, c’est moi, je t’Emma.”
Max, an opera buff when he got the chance, had been listening to
Faust
that afternoon. “What’s up? We thought you’d run away to sea.”

“I’m on Pocapuk Island and I’m in a jam, Max. Is Sarah there?”

“Right beside me. Just a second, I’ll put us on the speaker phone so we can all hear. Okay, shoot. What flavor’s your jam?”

“Actually, I don’t know that it’s so much a jam as a dilemma. And, please, no more puns, I’m not up to them. So far, I’ve been drugged and had my fairies’ jewelry snatched on the ferry, got it back and discovered I’d acquired something I don’t dare talk about, and been robbed again while I was asleep last night, which probably means I was also drugged again, though that detail hadn’t occurred to me until just this minute. The robber was dragged out of the sea this morning, dead either by accident or otherwise. Vincent, the caretaker, has him out in the stable now waiting for the storm to let up so his brother Lowell can come and take the body to his brother Franklin to be autopsied. Vincent’s already decided what Franklin’s report will be, though I don’t know whether he’s told Franklin yet. And the psychic is feeling poorly.”

“Whoa, Emma. You lost me on that last sentence. Would you care to elucidate?”

Emma elucidated. It took her quite a while, starting with the taxi driver and working her way through the roster of cottagers, on to Vincent and his somewhat frighteningly efficient management of the Sabine demesne and messuage. “So the gist of it is, I’m in a bit of a flap and I don’t know what to do. I was hoping you two might have some suggestions.”

“My suggestion is that you pack them all off to wherever they came from and let us lend you our house at Ireson’s Landing till the yodelers go home,” said Sarah. “I don’t expect you’ll take it.”

“Thank you, dear. I couldn’t possibly, not after promising Adelaide Sabine I’d cope. She’s tottering on the brink already, poor sweetie. All I want from you is—oh, dear!—somebody to hold my hand, I suppose. But you can’t leave Max and Davy.”

“No, I really can’t. And Brooks is hopelessly tied up, and Uncle Fred’s off on a cruise with Martha and a bunch of paraplegic children from that school he supports, and Cousin Dolph’s busy with his senior citizens, and Uncle Jem’s utterly hopeless, as you know. But we’ll think of something. Tell us a little more about Alding Fath, Aunt Emma. She intrigues me.”

“She does me, too. I know she must be a charlatan, but I can’t quite see how she manages some of her effects. Of course one’s not supposed to, is one? Anyway, absurd as it may sound, I like Mrs. Fath the best of the lot and I do wish she hadn’t come down with whatever it is she’s got. I thought at first she was just manufacturing an excuse for not being able to locate that preposterous pirate treasure in her crystal ball or whatever, but now I do think there’s something the matter. It’s—this is going to sound totally insane—it’s almost as though she were under a spell.”