The Odd Job (32 page)

As to the Wilkins Museum’s staff, if such it could be called, Vieuxchamp had proven himself a broken reed. The guards whom Dolores had picked were no more capable than he. The only member who knew what to do and how to do it was the self-effacing veteran whom Vieuxchamp and his satellites had scornfully dubbed Milky.

Joseph Melanson had weathered his false arrest and his heart attack, he’d come out of the hospital not quite a new man but certainly a more interesting one. His close brush with death and the concerned support he’d been given had created a fresh incentive to live. With nobody bullying him, his old friend Brooks lending moral support, and the beauteous Theonia cooing at him over the teacups, Melanson was able to overcome his shyness and reel off anecdotes always interesting, often funny, sometimes even a tad risqué about the museum where he’d been for so long a part of the woodwork.

That was all changed now. The enfeebled board of trustees had voted unanimously to give their ablest and most respected employee the position Mr. Fitzroy had held. Now he was Mr. Melanson to everybody except the egregious Vieuxchamp, who called him Joseph to his face and followed him around trying to persuade the other guards that Vieuxchamp was still really the man in charge, which didn’t fool them a bit.

Still, the Wilkins lacked a head of trustees. Max Bittersohn was offered the position, or any other position that he might consent to take, but declined. A museum whose exhibits had been acquired almost a century ago and had to be kept exactly where Madam Wilkins had put them offered no enticement to a man in the prime of life with a zest for action. What this museum needed was a curator in the simplest sense of the word, somebody to take full charge over what was already there. Since this can of worms had been handed to Sarah at the beginning, it was only fitting that she should be the one to put the lid on, and she did.

“We’re off the hook, Max! I’ve asked her, and she’s willing.”

“Who’s willing to what?”

“Aunt Bodie, of course. She’s the ideal head of trustees. She was a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts for years and years, she’s chaired a zillion committees and fund drives. She’ll have the Wilkins whipped into shape in a matter of months, she’ll keep it running like a trainman’s watch. She’ll organize a Friends of the Madam’s group, give teas for all the society editors, and spearhead a drive that will put the palazzo back in the black in no time flat. You’ll see.”

Max was unconvinced. “That’s a long commute every day for a woman who still drives a beige-and-gray 1946 Daimler.”

“It won’t be a commute at all. She’s planning to sell that great ark of a house which neither of her children nor her children’s children will ever want to live in, and move into the palazzo.”

“Huh?”

“Like everyone else, you forget about the apartment Madam Wilkins kept for herself on the top floor. It’s never been shown to the public and doesn’t count as part of the museum, so she can just move in and do as she pleases. Within reason, of course, but Aunt Bodie is never unreasonable. There’s a tiny elevator that goes all the way from the cellar to the penthouse, which is another thing nobody remembers; Aunt Bodie’s going to have it put back in running order.”

“Great, she can give rides at a buck a time for the good of the cause. What sort of shape is the apartment in, or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Not too bad. Dolores used to see that it was cleaned every so often. The plumbing’s a disaster, that antique Boston fine-thread tubing which hadn’t been changed since the palazzo was built is in a state of total collapse, of course—the zinc in the brass alloy rots away and the whole system falls apart if you so much as look at it—but she’s planning to install copper tubing all through at her own expense. If Madam Wilkins’s ghost drops by to register a protest, she won’t get far with Aunt Bodie.”

“That I can believe,” said Max. “What about the heat and lights? She’s not going to electrify the place, is she?”

“Oh no, she’d never do that. She claims she doesn’t mind a bit reading by gaslight and keeping the apartment warm with gas logs and coal fires. That will mean heating the whole building enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but Aunt Bodie will underwrite the costs until the museum is solvent again. She’s filthy rich, you know, though she doesn’t look it.”

“So all’s well that ends well.”

Except that Dolores Agnew Tawne was dead. Sarah didn’t quite know how she felt about Dolores, even after the soul-searching she’d done at odd moments when she’d got the chance. There was no question that Dolores would have taken an awful beating from the media if it had ever leaked out that she’d been the master forger who’d made the Wilkins a laughingstock, and also a confederate of the Wicked Widows. And it would have leaked out; Lala LaVonne LaVerne would have seen to that if she hadn’t gone too far around the bend. Why were there always willing victims waiting around for the torturer to show up? Sarah decided not to think about that.

“You know, Max, I had to search Dolores’s studio. One thing I couldn’t understand was what she’d done with so many of the copies you’d given back to her, until Joseph Melanson enlightened me. It turns out that he owns quite a big house in West Roxbury that he inherited from his mother. From some things he said and a few more that he didn’t say, I gathered that Mrs. Melanson must have been something special in the blood-sucking line, which may explain why he hid out in the back rooms at the Wilkins all those years. Anyway, Dolores got the bright idea that Joseph should turn his house over to her and refurbish it as a museum where the paintings she’d done for the Wilkins could be permanently on display.”

“And what was he supposed to do then? Rent a houseboat?”

“Good question. I don’t think she gave much thought to that part of the program. Anyway, Joseph had sense enough not to go for it, but he did hang some of the paintings in his living room to shut her up for the time being. His own idea is that the paintings might be used to teach art appreciation in schools, taking them around a few at a time, giving the teachers information that they could pass on to the pupils in an interesting way, then letting the pictures hang in the classrooms for a while so that the children could get a feeling for real painting instead of stupid television. I think he ought to get together with Aunt Bodie and talk it over, don’t you?”

“Sure.” Max gathered his wife into his arms. “So you didn’t even miss me. Good going,
fischele.
What are you planning to do for an encore?”

Sarah told him. Max was none too happy, but he acquiesced.

Autumn went out in a blaze of glory, the wilted chrysanthemums in the Wilkins’s courtyard made way for the holly and the ivy and pots of poinsettia red, pink, and white. Then came the New Year and time to close the museum for its annual three-month shutdown, during which period everything that needed to be done would have been done skimpily or not at all if Boadicea Kelling hadn’t been right there wielding a duster with the best of them. After the drab walls had been repainted in their original vibrant colors, the rotten draperies replaced by new fabrics woven to order in the same patterns and shades that Madam Wilkins had picked out, the dulled gilding burnished anew by the skilled hands of Lydia Ouspenska, and all things made as bright and beautiful as they had first been gazed upon by the awestruck guests at Madam Wilkins’s opening party, there was to be a gala reopening that would kick off a fund drive such as the Madam had never dreamed of but would surely have applauded.

The work was done and, thanks to Boadicea’s formidable powers of persuasion, done on time. Now there were only the fresh plants from the Madam’s greenhouse to be set into the redug and replenished flower beds. On the Monday before the Sunday that was to be the grand reopening day, a small group of persons associated in their various ways with the Wilkins Museum gathered at the corner of the courtyard that had been Dolores Tawne’s favorite spot.

As they stood around on the mosaic walks, accompanied by a few of Dolores’s old friends the peacocks, one of the trustees who had known her the longest delivered a short eulogy and said a little prayer. Then Sarah Kelling Bittersohn stepped forward and opened a small rosewood casket borrowed from one of the exhibits. Reverently and a bit tearfully, she spilled out the contents onto the fertile soil and stepped back. As the gardeners raked what was mortal of their late associate into the place where she had asked to be let lie, Brooks Kelling affixed a small brass plaque to the courtyard wall behind them. It read simply:

DOLORES AGNEW TAWNE

1933–1994

A gifted artist, a dedicated worker, and a staunch friend of the Wilkins Museum

There be of them that have left a name behind them.

And that was that. As they walked away, Max asked his wife, “Where did you get the quote?”

“It’s from the Apocrypha via Bartlett’s,” Sarah told him. “I’m not altogether sure what it means, but it seemed to fit the purpose. Did I mention that Aunt Bodie’s invited us to tea in her aerie? It’s just as well the Madam can’t be here, she never did get on with the Kellings. But then neither did lots of other people. Come on, darling, I think the Wilkins owe me a cup of tea.”

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copyright © 1995 by Charlotte MacLeod

cover design by Mauricio Diaz

978-1-4532-7732-4

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