The Late Clara Beame (6 page)

Alice broke the silence. “I’m going to ask a few questions.”

“Don’t!” David told her sharply. “This is too ticklish. We don’t want Hank to have any more suspicions than he already has.”

‘There’s another thing,” Alice said. “That horse seller, John Carr. He heard Laura scream too. He saw me. Yet he tried to shut his door so I wouldn’t know he’d been listening too. Why should he have been so stealthy about it?”

“Easy,” David smiled. “He knew you were eavesdropping, and he’s a tactful sort of guy. Never embarrasses a lady when she’s sticking her ears out. So our Laura feels someone is out to kill her.”

Alice went on: “There’s still another thing. You know Carr, don’t you? I saw the way you two looked at each other.”

“Don’t be a fool,” David told her. “I never saw him before tonight, not even at that party.”

“Uh-uh,” his sister said. “I know you too well. That casual air doesn’t fool me.”

Her brother seized her wrist and twisted it painfully. “Don’t ever say that again. I tell you I never saw him before until tonight. Is that clear?”

Alice replied coldly, “Very well. You never met him before. Now let go of my wrist.”

She stood up and with a faint sound of contempt left the room. David waited until he heard her door close, then let himself out into the hall and knocked lightly at John Carr’s door. It opened immediately. There was a candle burning in the room, and Carr was in pajamas, but it was obvious that he had not yet gone to bed. On a chair near the door lay a gun. The two men exchanged glances.

“You heard?” David whispered.

“How could I help it?”

“She’s afraid.”

“Well, she has reason to be, hasn’t she?” Carr asked.

By sunrise the snow had stopped falling. The sky was a silvery gray and the drifts in some places were almost six feet high.

“Don’t let this fool you,” Alice told John Carr and her brother as they ate breakfast in the dining room. “The blizzard is just catching its breath for more mischief. I know these storms.”

“I’ve never been isolated before,” John Carr remarked as he began putting away three eggs and several strips of bacon. “There aren’t any neighbors?”

“The nearest, the Ulbrichs, are over half a mile away,” Alice answered. “And they had the sense to leave for Florida the first of December. The village is over three miles away.”

She looked at him and grudgingly admitted to herself that he had a great deal of charm and magnetism, though he was not especially handsome. I could like him, Alice thought, if only I knew more about him. She held out her chilled hands to the small oil stove. “I’ve heard cranky sounds in the kitchen. The help doesn’t like being cut off from radio and TV. They think it’s all the fault of some amorphous collection of human beings they call ‘the powers-that-be’.”

“They’re not the only ones,” John commented. “I heard a Princeton graduate call another equally amorphous collection of human beings ‘the vested interests’. I’m a vest man, myself. But I do know what they call us — I mean, me.”

“What?” Alice asked.

Edith burst into the dining room. “I suppose you want more coffee?” she asked in a belligerent tone.

“We all want more,” Alice told her. “Have you taken a tray up to Mrs. Frazier yet?”

“Mister Frazier said she wasn’t to be disturbed,” Edith stated. “He said to let her be until she yelled. She had a bad night. But it’s almost ten-thirty, and we gotta clean up the kitchen
sometime
!”

The three in the dining room looked at each other. “Get a tray ready, please. I’ll take it up to Mrs. Frazier,” Alice volunteered. “You and Mrs. Daley have enough to do as it is with the five of us.”

“You can say
that
again,” Edith agreed.

They laughed. “Everybody in the world thinks that there is ‘some group’ after him,” John said, drinking his third cup of coffee. “We’ve become a paranoid society.”

“ ‘Sick, sick, sick’,” David quoted.

“I prefer ‘sin, sin, sin’,” John amended. “What does a paranoid world do, eventually? It starts murdering ‘in defense’. Then it blows its head off. It’s happened before.”

“You were about to tell us what they call you, John, when Edith came in,” Alice reminded him.

He seemed baffled. “Was I? I don’t remember.”

David was amused. His black eyes sparkled. “They call you the ‘wastemakers’,” he said. “Or a subsidiary of the wastemakers. I agree.”

“I wonder where Henry is?” Alice said.

“He’s hauling up the blocks of frozen meat from the basement to the frozen woodshed with the handyman,” her brother answered. “Remember? Electricity’s off. To save the meat and other edibles our host is imitating the Eskimos.”

“So that’s all the jolly calling back and forth I hear. Aren’t you boys going to help?”

“Let Hank get the heart attack,” David retorted. “He’s the athletic type. I’m the doctor. If I collapse, who is going to take care of this little arctic colony?”

A pale gilt sun suddenly shone through the leaded windows and turned the walnut paneling over the buffet to a dark burnished gold. Alice looked at the loveliness about her and thought, once more: this should all be mine.

She suddenly remembered her childhood here, and how she had loved every old room, every corridor, and stairway, especially the broad oaken one that rose from the hall. She was familiar with every passageway, the attic, cellars and barns, every tree and stream. While she had been exploring as a child, Laura had spent her time with Aunt Clara sitting in the ‘morning room’. Or following the lumbering old woman during inspection of the linen closets. “No wonder this all came to her,” Alice thought bitterly. “And I, who loved it all as it should be loved, received nothing.”

She felt the hatred in her heart, and when John leaned towards her over the stiff, white damask of the tablecloth to light her cigarette, she was aware that he was watching her covertly. Edith arrived at that moment with Laura’s tray.

John looked at it critically. “Two soft-boiled eggs, one soft piece of toast, one pot of chocolate, and orange sections,” he announced.

“Typical of Laura,” Alice said. She put down her cigarette, picked up the tray and left the room, her slim back straight and stiff.

“I gather that Alice doesn’t like our hostess,” John remarked.

“You gather right. And with good reason, too,” David told him. “Laura calls this place ‘our little home in the country’. You know, rustic. Alice always thought she would have it; this house, its grounds, are part of her, though she was born in New York. She came home again, when sweet Aunt Clara invited her to live here.”

“Why did sweet Aunt Clara do that? You never told me.”

“Well, she had all that money and property, and Laura and Alice were the only two girls of the family, if you overlook Bertram Beame’s first daughter, whom Aunt Clara resolutely did. Aunt Clara didn’t care for boys. So, the idea was to see which of the girls she wanted to leave her money to, and Laura was the one who hit the jackpot. Alice never got over it.”

John stood up abruptly, adjusting his tweed jacket, and strolled out into the kitchen. It was suffocatingly hot, with the ovens going, and the windows were streaming with moisture. “Well, it’s comfortable.” He smiled at Mrs. Daley, who, after a moment, returned his smile. “Came out to get warm.” He held his hands over a gas jet.

“You got the oil stove in there,” Edith reminded him sullenly.

“And we’ve got the other oil stove up in our rooms.” Mrs. Daley glared angrily at her niece.

“And we’ve got log fires in the living room and morning room,” John replied amiably. “We won’t freeze. The point is, will the plumbing?”

“No. All protected, Mr. Carr,” Mrs. Daley said, studying him thoughtfully.

“When did Mr. Frazier have his breakfast?” he asked. “He hasn’t been in here this morning?”

“Oh, he had his breakfast right at the kitchen table, long before you got up,” Mrs. Daley told him. “He’s a hearty eater, not like Dr. David, who doesn’t like big breakfasts. That’s why he’s so thin.”

“One of these mornings I’ll have some chocolate, myself,” John said. “It smells good. I drink too much coffee.”

He became aware, after a moment or two, that the women were watching him curiously. He turned to them, smiling, and then returned to the dining room, where he and David began a serious conversation.

“Nice gentleman,” Mrs. Daley commented to her niece.

“I don’t think so,” Edith said. “One of those smart alecks. Watching everything. He doesn’t miss nothing.”

“You watch that toast!” Mrs. Daley warned her.

Laura was still sleeping when Alice placed the steaming tray on a small table near the bed in the handsomely decorated bedroom. Once, long ago, this had been her room. Laura awakened abruptly, sat up and looked around in confusion.

“The help is going to quit, drifts or no drifts, if you add invalidism to the problems of this house,” Alice told her disagreeably. “Here’s your breakfast.”

Laura shivered in her silk nightgown, hugging herself, and Alice took an afghan from the chaise longue and threw it over her shoulders. Laura murmured her thanks. It was very cold in the room.

Alice sat down and lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you drink your chocolate while it’s still warm? You never liked the stuff. You just drank it to please dear old Aunt Clara.”

Laura’s mouth trembled. “Alice, please,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t ever seem to make you understand. I did try to please Aunt Clara. Because she loved me. I had no one. So, when Aunt Clara showed she really wanted me — I was so grateful I’d have killed myself for her if she’d wanted it.”

Abruptly Alice changed the subject. “Why were you screaming bloody murder last night?”

“I — I had a terrible dream.” Laura did not elaborate.

“There is something I want to ask you.” Again the change of subject was abrupt. “And I want an answer.” Alice’s voice was almost threatening.

Laura’s dark eyes regarded the other woman intently.

“Yes?”

“What were you doing in Sam’s room the night he died?”

Laura sat up suddenly, her mouth open.

“Answer me,” Alice demanded. “You remember. You and I shared Sam’s room and mine, with the twin beds, because there was a bathroom off it. Sam slept in the spare room, and Hank and David had the two sofas in our living room. Sam had a cold.” Alice went on quickly. “His colds usually turned into bronchitis, and so about four in the morning I decided to take him some cough medicine. I saw that his door was open, and when I went in you were picking up a glass from the floor near his bed. You looked — stealthy. That’s all I can call it, Laura! That’s why I ran back to my own room and watched you, while you took the glass to the bathroom down the hall.”

Laura seemed stunned.

Alice stood up, caught Laura’s shoulder, and shook it.

“And that’s why the police couldn’t find the glass, or any glass in the bedrooms, which had Sam’s fingerprints on it! You washed the glass in the second bathroom, Laura! Why? You’ve got to tell me. That’s why the police kept coming back again and again, driving us mad!”

Suddenly Laura’s face turned crimson. “Why didn’t you ask me before? It’s so simple.”

“Is it, Laura? Tell me how simple it all was!”

Laura’s hands began to twist the fringe of the afghan. “You make it sound so — . Well, I woke up in the night, and it was dark. We had only been in your apartment in Chicago once before. I wanted a drink of water, and I couldn’t find the bathroom! I’d stumbled around the bedroom for a couple of minutes, before I found the door to the hall. I’d forgotten that Hank and David were sleeping in the living room. I honestly thought Henry was in that other bedroom. Remember? We left the boys arguing about who’d sleep in the bedroom! I — I simply assumed that it was Henry.”

She knew how important it was to convince Alice, but her voice faltered. “I wanted to see — if Henry was — all right. It was the first time we’d ever slept apart. I still thought it was Henry in the bed, then my foot hit against the glass. There was a little light from the street. I bent down to pick up the glass and saw the back of Sam’s head on the pillow and his red hair. So I went out of the room to the bathroom down the hall, remembered that Sam had a cold, and washed the glass out with soap and hot water before I used it.”

She looked up at the silent, white-faced Alice. “What in God’s name,” she cried wildly, “have you been thinking all this time! What?”

“The glass was on the floor, as if it had been dropped?”

“Yes!”

“There was no sign of anyone there, then? You didn’t hear or see anyone?”

“No! I could hear the boys snoring in the living room, and the sound of distant traffic. That’s all.”

“Did you know what time it was?”

“Yes. I had my wrist watch on. As a matter of fact, I looked at the time, in the bathroom. It was ten after four.”

“The doctors said Sam died between three and four,” Alice told her. “And you’re sure you didn’t hear anyone talking to Sam, or moving around?”

“No. I told you — ” She stopped, her face pale.

“What?” Alice demanded.

Laura’s hands were suddenly still. “When I came out of the bathroom,” she whispered, “Dave was near the door. He — he looked very sleepy.”

“Dave!”

Laura nodded. “He was as surprised as I was. He — he was just reaching for the doorknob. You see, I’d turned out the light, because I was leaving.”

Alice walked to the window and stood, staring out. “You never told the police about that?”

“Why should I have?”

“Why did you take the glass with you, when you saw it was Sam there, and not Hank?”

“I — I don’t know. I’d picked it up. And then when I saw it was Sam, I just hurried out of the room. I didn’t want to disturb him. I didn’t know he was — And then when I was in the bathroom I saw there wasn’t any glass there, so I washed — Sam’s — glass — and drank from it.”

Alice turned back to her. “What made you keep quiet about it? Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“I told Henry,” Laura said. “I didn’t think it meant anything. Why should it have? Henry said I shouldn’t bother mentioning it to the police. It would just cause complications — ”

“In a plain case of suicide.” Alice finished the sentence.

“Of course,” Laura agreed weakly. “It was all terrible enough, as it was.”

“Of course. Have you and Hank discussed your being in Sam’s room since then?”

“No. I — I forgot all about it until now. It was painful to remember.”

Alice took a deep breath. “Well, I’m sorry. Forget it again.”

At that moment there was a sharp report outside, with thunderous echoes which reverberated across the countryside. And then a series of alarmed shouts.

Alice swung around and ran from the room. Laura got out of bed and quickly put on slippers and a robe. She was hurrying down the stairs just as the front door opened, and she saw her husband and Evelyn come in, both of them white-faced.

“Someone took a shot at me!” Henry’s voice was high-pitched and trembling.

He stared blindly at the two women.

“I said,” he almost shouted, “someone tried to kill me!”