The Withdrawing Room (21 page)

“Mind sliding in under the wheel, Mrs. Kelling?”

Bittersohn had Sarah in the front seat before Jennifer LaValliere could get to it. She showed signs of wanting to sit in the middle, but Mr. Porter-Smith showed a burst of
machismo
by stuffing her in back beside Mrs. Sorpende and climbing in after her. She had to content herself with gurgling down the back of the driver’s neck about what a fabulous car it was, and asking questions that Mr. Porter-Smith took it upon himself to answer at great length. All in all, Sarah enjoyed the short ride a good deal more than she’d thought she would.

They found Miss Hartler holding court in front of a mercifully closed casket surrounded by many expensive floral tributes which probably should have included one from the group at Tulip Street but didn’t because Sarah simply hadn’t thought of sending any. She and her entourage got what very nearly amounted to a brushoff from Aunt Marguerite and the Newport contingent, who’d appointed themselves ladies-in-waiting to the chief mourner. That was fair enough, since they’d got the same sort of treatment from her, but Sarah did feel a trifle embarrassed at having dragged her boarders over here for so little purpose.

Luckily Dolph was in the room feeling a bit out of things since he hadn’t known Hartler or Hartler’s friends all that well, and bustled over to greet them. Anora Protheroe, who never missed a funeral if she could help it, was also ready to chat. The dowager Mrs. LaValliere soon collared Jennifer and trotted her off to meet some people. Mrs. Sorpende was taken over by Dolph and Mr. Porter-Smith entertained Anora with an account of picturesque funeral customs among the ancient Franks and Teutons.

Sarah looked around to make sure Mr. Bittersohn wasn’t being neglected, and found him in affable conversation with a well-dressed, attractive-looking couple in their fifties.

“Mrs. Kelling, have you met the Saxes? They’ve been active in the Iolani Palace project.”

“Mrs. Kelling, this is a pleasure,” said Mrs. Saxe, taking her hand cordially. “How could you ever bear to part with that beautiful fan you and your husband sent us?”

“Don’t suppose you have any more of Queen Kapiolani’s house gifts kicking around?” asked Mr. Saxe.

“Not unless they’re hidden under Miss Hartler’s bed,” Sarah told him. “I’m so sorry about those chairs that Mr. Hartler thought he’d turned up. His sister can’t seem to find any information about who has them among his papers. I expect whoever it is will get in touch with you or somebody else, though.”

“I must confess I’m not exactly holding my breath in expectation,” Mr. Saxe admitted. “Hartler was a well-meaning old chap, but to be quite candid with you, he had more enthusiasm than expertise. I’m afraid he got badly cheated a few times. We finally had to ask him not to bring in any more of his great finds till he’d got them authenticated. And even his authentications weren’t always authentic, I’m afraid.”

“Darling,” said his wife, “I’m sure Mrs. Kelling doesn’t have to be told that poor Mr. Hartler was soft as a grape, and getting softer by the minute, though he was a sweet old thing in his way. I’d been wondering for some time what was going to happen to that man, and I must say I can’t help being a little bit relieved that he went quickly, though of course it’s utterly ghastly that it happened as it did. Still, I think I’d rather be knocked on the head myself than shut up in a high-class looney bin.”

“I’ll remember that when the time comes, dear.”

“Thank you, darling. Mrs. Kelling, do have Max bring you over to visit us soon. We’re always at home on Sunday evenings and we have some marvelous things that will be going over with the next shipment. George would adore telling you all about them. Now don’t you think we’ve done our duty here? There’s such a mob we’ll never be missed. Could we give you people a lift back to the Hill?”

“Thanks, but I have my own car and a load of passengers to round up,” said Bittersohn somewhat abstractedly. “Good to see you both.”

The Saxes smiled and faded through the crowd. Sarah turned to Mr. Bittersohn. “Then Mr. Hartler wasn’t really a Friend of the Iolani Palace at all?”

“Sounds more like an enemy to me. I’m not sure what their membership setup is, but he obviously didn’t hold any sort of official position.”

“I can’t believe it! Rather, I couldn’t if I hadn’t known Great-uncle Frederick. He’s the only other person I’ve ever seen get totally involved in something that was none of his business. No wonder Mr. Hartler was so scatty about letting his visitors wander around loose and mess up the house. I should have realized from the beginning that he was missing on one or two cylinders, as Alexander would have said. Don’t you think it’s strange Miss Hartler would go tootling off to Rome and leave him on his own in a city he’d been out of touch with for so long? Of course she may not have realized because she adored him so and I’m not sure she isn’t a bit shaky in the brain herself. Or perhaps she didn’t feel able to cope so she blocked it out and tried to escape. People can be awfully blind about things they don’t want to see.”

“That’s right,” said Bittersohn. “How about introducing me to your ex-aunt-in-law?”

“Whatever for?” gasped Sarah.

“I just want to ask her something.”

“And I’m sure she’ll want to ask you something. Like are you married and can you play bridge and what are you doing for dinner tomorrow evening. You don’t realize what you’d be getting into, Mr. Bittersohn. Meeting Aunt Marguerite is like getting a formal introduction to the giant squid in a horror movie.”

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

“Then on your own head be it.” Sarah wriggled back through the mass of humanity with him and went through the ceremony with what grace she could muster.

‘This is Mr. Bittersohn, who has my downstairs room, Aunt Marguerite. You didn’t meet him before because he was parking the car. He’s an art expert.”

That bit of information was, she knew, superfluous. Aunt Marguerite wouldn’t have cared if he was the window washer. Sarah got shunted to the periphery and buttonholed by Iris Pendragon, who was so eager to know how Sarah had ever managed to latch on to anything so gorgeous that she couldn’t hear a word of what he’d wanted to ask Aunt Marguerite. Poor man, little did he ken what a spate of invitations he was calling down on his head from this gaggle of bored women. But perhaps he met a great many bored women in his profession. Perhaps he didn’t find them all boring, either. Sarah rather wished she hadn’t thought of that.

In any event, he must have developed a knack for dealing with them. In less time than she’d thought possible, he’d managed to break away and put a protective wall of bodies between himself and her and the ladies from Newport.

“Mrs. Kelling, could you help me round up our passengers? I’ve got to take you home and then get back to work.”

“Yes, of course. I didn’t realize—”

But he was already gone from her side and heading toward Miss LaValliere, who would need no coaxing. Sarah, able to slip under people’s arms and elbows because of her slender littleness, managed to reach Mrs. Sorpende, who was better equipped than she to serve as a battering-ram. This crowd was horrendous. What if they all showed up at the house tomorrow?

They wouldn’t, surely. Some, like the Saxes, must be people who’d felt an obligation to put in an appearance but would be unlikely even to attend the funeral. And no doubt there were a number who’d never met Mr. Hartler at all but merely wanted to be in on a sensation.

The papers had played up Mr. Hartler’s gruesome murder, but somehow the fact that he’d been Sarah Kelling’s second boarder to die by violence had been kept out. How Mr. Bittersohn and Sergeant McNaughton had managed that she couldn’t imagine, but she’d be grateful to them both forevermore. No doubt she was being pointed out right now as the dead man’s landlady and the story would leak to the press sooner or later, but by then, God willing, the funeral would be over and Miss Hartler gone and she wouldn’t have to call the police to control the hordes.

Between them, she and Mr. Bittersohn got the group herded out of the place and walked down to the elegant car that was parked around the corner. Miss LaValliere suggested dropping in somewhere for a drink, and was shattered to learn that she’d be driven straight back to Tulip Street and left standing on the sidewalk while Mr. Bittersohn drove off into the night alone. Sarah was none too happy about that, either, but right now she wasn’t too happy about anything.

S
ARAH STAYED DOWNSTAIRS AFTER
they got home, not because she wanted to, not because she had to. Aunt Marguerite’s chauffeur would drive Miss Hartler to Tulip Street after the visiting hours were over. Charles would be on the alert to meet the car and help the old woman into the house. Having her back would be no joy, and the sooner they could get her out of here, the better for everyone. Nevertheless, Sarah waited.

There were so many things that could happen to a person her age, especially if that person might not happen to have all her wits about her. Look what had happened to the brother.

But exactly what had happened to William Hartler? Was he robbed and killed by that still-unidentified man who’d lured him from the house with a beguiling story about King Kalakaua’s dining room chairs? How did the man know the crime would be worth the effort? Most people with any sense at all didn’t carry large sums of cash around in the city.

Maybe the man had insisted he must be paid in cash that same night and Mr. Hartler had withdrawn a large sum earlier in the day when the banks were open. No, that wasn’t possible, because the man was still in Mr. Hartler’s room when Sarah had returned to find that odious woman ransacking her china closet. That was his excuse for having left the woman where he couldn’t keep an eye on her. Mr. Hartler hadn’t gone anywhere afterward, except for his quick shopping spree on Charles Street just before dinner.

Sarah’s impression was that Mr. Hartler had known nothing of the chairs until the man with the photographs showed up. If he’d got wind of them earlier, he’d surely have been bending everyone’s ear at breakfast, or shouting the glad tidings to Mariposa over the roar of the vacuum cleaner.

Miss Hartler had insisted to the police that dear Wumps was always careful about money, though she didn’t seem to have the foggiest idea about the true state of his affairs. She’d also been unable to find any reference to the man with the chairs among his papers, but that didn’t mean anything. There probably had been no letter, only the personal interview. Mr. Hartler would have made a note of the address and stuck it in his pocket for later reference. After he found the right place, he’d have thrown the note away, or lost it in his excitement, or had it taken from him either inadvertently or on purpose.

After what the Saxes had said, Sarah thought it quite possible someone had been setting the old man up for a swindel. If the chairs were authentic, the seller would have been more apt to get in touch with the curator or one of his approved agents, of whom Mr. Hartler had certainly not been one. That woman who’d given her such a hard time in the dining room might have been there for that specific purpose, to distract anybody else who might be in the house so that the man could dangle his bait before the gullible Mr. Hartler and get away without being seen.

If that was the case, she’d done her job well. She’d got both Sarah and Mariposa so busy counting the spoons that they hadn’t given a thought to what was happening out front. The woman had been a stranger to Mr. Hartler. He couldn’t even recall whatever name she’d given him. After the previous visitor had gone, she’d made no effort to accomplish what she’d supposedly come for, but cleared out as fast as she could. Whoever the woman was, she’d been no shrinking violet. If she’d left something of value for appraisal, wouldn’t it have been more in character for her to insist on getting either her money or her property before she left?

Everything fitted in nicely, except the murder. Swindlers didn’t usually kill their victims; Mr. Bittersohn had told her so. Why should they? It was easier and less risky to get the money and slip away before the purchaser realized he’d been stung.

What if Mr. Hartler had got there and realized he was dealing with the same person who’d tricked him in some previous deal? And why should he recognize the man on the second visit when he hadn’t spotted him back in his own bedroom? Anyway, what if he had? Surely an expert confidence man could fast-talk someone so easily fooled into believing the previous episode was merely some dreadful misunderstanding, or that he himself had been taken in by a third party. Or he could have paid Mr. Hartler back with a rubber check and gone hunting for a new victim.

If anybody had tried such a stunt on Barnwell Quiffen instead of feckless old Wumps, murder might have been the only way out. Left alive, Mr. Quiffen would have called the police, filed a lawsuit, sent damning letters to every newspaper between Boston and Los Angeles, and put his own private eye on the trail. But Mr. Quiffen had been dead and buried a week ago. Why try to drag him into this just because he’d happened to occupy the same room for almost as short a time, and meet almost as violent an end?

Suppose more than one swindle was going on. If Mr. Hartler could let himself be gulled by a whole series of bogus antiquarians, mightn’t he also be apt to fall for a scheme set forth by, say, a young man with an urge to rise in the world, an expert’s knowledge of figures, and a gift for talking wisely on a wide range of subjects? Or an old friend’s wide-eyed granddaughter with a thirst for adventure and a pair of strait-laced parents keeping her on a short leash and a tight allowance? Or a noted professor with some great scientific project to finance, or a lady with a handsome front and a murky past who was earning a hand-to-mouth existence reading tea leaves?

Or, she might as well face all the possibilities, an art expert who knew the Iolani Palace at least as well as William; Hartler did? Or a frustrated actor who wanted his tooth capped, or the woman who was in love with him and had no money except what she got washing dishes and mopping floors for a hard-up widow with back taxes and interest on two mortgages to pay? Maybe if she’d happened to think of it in time, Sarah herself would have had a go. Well, she could rule herself out, but how did she really know what anybody else would do if the temptation was great and an easy mark available?