The Withdrawing Room (23 page)

“Whatever made you think I was going with you, Miss Hartler? How could I? One of us has to stay and get ready for all those people you’ve invited.”

“But surely your servants—”

“It’s their day off. Isn’t that the car outside?”

The funeral was set for one o’clock. At half-past twelve, as Sarah was finishing a cup of tea and brooding about how she got herself into these things, the doorbell rang. That must be the person Mr. Bittersohn was sending. She answered it with a good deal of curiosity.

Sarah had vaguely expected a lantern-jawed individual in a trench coat with the collar turned up and the belt gutted in. What she found was an elderly lady in a slate-blue coat with a little gray mink collar, and a blue velour hat perched at a chic angle on her freshly coiffed silver hair. The woman was no taller than she. As they met face to face, Sarah thought she looked somehow familiar. Then light dawned.

“Why, Miss Smith! What a marvelous surprise, and how lovely you look. Do come in.”

“Didn’t recognize me, eh? Mr. Bittersohn said this would be the best disguise I could put on. I’m sorry I couldn’t wear black since it’s a funeral, but this is the only good outfit I own, and I didn’t want to shame you in front of everybody the way I did before.”

She took off the coat to reveal a matching shirtwaist dress with a pleated bosom and a row of tiny covered buttons marching down the front. “Is my dress all right? I bought it on my employees discount at the going-out-of-business sale. Figured I might as well have a good one since I knew I’d never be able to afford another. He gave me the money to have it dry-cleaned and get my hair done. Such a fine young man. His mother must be proud of him.”

“Actually I believe she’s sorry he didn’t become a podiatrist,” said Sarah. “Your dress is exquisite. I only wish I had one as lovely. Can I give you some lunch?”

“Well—”

“Would you mind coming into the kitchen? I was just having a bite, myself.”

As she was getting out another cup and plate, Miss Smith settled herself with a sigh of pure joy. “My, this is nice. I can’t tell you how comfortable it feels to sit down at a real kitchen table again. Not that they don’t give us good meals at the Senior Citizens, but it’s always those long tables with some old codger jamming an elbow into your ribs and gumming at you to pass the ketchup. Not cozy, if you know what I mean.”

“I shouldn’t think it would be. Do you take milk and sugar in your tea? Or would you prefer coffee? I can make some in a second.”

“No, tea’s fine and I’ve got into the habit of taking it with just sugar. We always pinch those little envelopes out of the sugar bowls when we get a chance. They know we do, of course, but they make believe they don’t see. I have a little hot plate in my room where I live and I can keep tea bags and sugar but not milk because it goes sour on me and who can afford it these days, anyway? But you shouldn’t be waiting on me like this. I came to work, and don’t think I won’t. Mr. Bittersohn said I should keep my eyes peeled, too, just in case I recognize anybody.”

“There’ll be plenty to do in a little while, never fear. Eat your sandwich while you have the chance. I’m going to cut us a piece of cake.” As Sarah had suspected, without her swaddling wraps Miss Smith was thinner than she ought to be.

Right now, though, she was supremely happy. “This reminds me of when my mother was alive, not that we lived in any such style as you but we did have a lovely flat in a three-decker over on Savin Hill Road. I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve been a derelict all my life.”

“I certainly don’t think you’re one now,” Sarah assured her. “You have too much gumption ever to be a derelict.”

Miss Smith, she decided, must be a good deal younger than she looked in her working clothes; probably still in her late sixties. She’d treated her weather-beaten face to make-up from some carefully saved hoard, with pale pink lipstick and even a dab of blue eye shadow that intensified the somewhat faded color of her eyes. One or two small pieces of old gold jewelry that had no doubt been her mother’s or grandmother’s enhanced her well-chosen, well-fitted dress. She’d no doubt be one of the best-dressed people present this afternoon. Her manners were infinitely better than Professor Ormsby’s, her conversation livelier than Mr. Porter-Smith’s and far more sensible than Miss LaValliere’s. If only she had some money!

The doorbell rang again. Sarah excused herself.

“Please go on with your lunch. That will be some more of my crew.”

Uncle Jem and his long-suffering gentleman’s private gentleman stood there, both of them got up as waiters. Jeremy Kelling had hung a massive chain and emblem from one of the disreputable chowder and marching societies he belonged to around his neck, and announced that he hosied to be wine steward. Dolph charged in as they were getting rid of coats and demanded to know what sort of tomfoolery the old idiot thought he was getting up to on a day of mourning. Jem retorted that any day Dolph showed up automatically became a day of mourning. Leaving them happily engaged in their usual exchange of pleasantries, Sarah went back to Miss Smith.

“My uncle and my cousin are here, along with my uncle’s man, Egbert. If you’re sure you’ve had enough to eat, you might as well come and know the worst.”

Miss Smith gave a nervous pat to her impeccable hairdo, rinsed her hands at the kitchen sink, freshened her lipstick, and followed Sarah into the library.

“Miss Mary Smith, may I present my Uncle Jeremy Kelling, my Cousin Dolph Kelling, and Mr. Egbert Browne, who’s the only sane one among us?”

Everybody claimed to be very pleased to meet everybody. As Dolph shook hands he said, “Mary Smith, eh? Seems to me I’ve heard that name before. Haven’t we met somewhere?”

“I’ve heard you speak at any rate,” Miss Smith replied; not sure whether Dolph was trying to be funny or not, which in fact he was not. “You spoke to a group at the North End Senior Citizens not long ago.”

“M’yes, so I did. And you were there? Fancy that.”

“Yes, I thought you made some interesting points about the needs of seniors, but there was one topic I was sorry you didn’t address yourself to. What this city really needs is a chain of recycling depots where people can bring old papers and cans and bottles and stuff they pick up, and maybe get paid a small sum for their efforts. That would help solve the litter problem, cut down on the proliferation of rats and other vermin, aid the conservation effort, and provide employment and a little extra income for the elderly and the underprivileged.”

“By George, that’s brilliant! And the stuff they collect could be sold to recycling plants and before long the enterprise would be at least partially self-supporting.”

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t. But it would need a good chunk of capital to get started, and somebody with a lot of drive and public spirit.”

“And know-how.”

That was an expression Dolph had recently learned and was using far too frequently. Jeremy Kelling started to make rude noises, but Sarah hauled him away by brute force.

“Uncle Jem,” she hissed in his ear, “if you queer Miss Smith’s pitch, I’ll break your neck. Come help me fill some glasses.”

He was in truth of little help, sloshing the jugs around, sneering at the labels, and howling, “Rotgut! Bellywash!” and similar expressions of connoisseurship. However, they managed to get a couple of trays set out and Sarah deployed her forces.

“Dolph, you’re the biggest and burliest. You be doorkeeper. If you suspect anybody’s trying to gate-crash, make it plain that this gathering is for relatives and close friends only. If diplomacy doesn’t work, feel free to use crude and violent methods. Miss Smith, you hover in the dining room to let me know if the food starts to run out and keep an eye on the silver. I found one of Mr. Hartler’s visitors trying to swipe a Coalport vase the other day. Egbert, you pass things around.”

“What about coats, Mrs. Kelling?”

“Don’t encourage people to take them off, and then they won’t stay so long. If they must, they can dump them on Miss Hartler’s bed. Uncle Jem, you stay with the sherry and make believe you’re the one who has to pay for it. Restrain your natural generosity. We’ve got to break this thing up as quickly as possible. I’ll be the odd-job man.”

“I thought Mr. Bittersohn would be here,” said Miss Smith.

“So did I,” said Sarah rather worriedly, “but we’ll have to manage without him.”

They did. Egbert and Miss Smith were supremely competent. Jeremy Kelling was capable of serious effort in the dispensing of spirits, and adroit at insulting anybody who tried to get more than a fair share. Dolph’s bulk and ferocious hauteur were enough to discourage the uninvited and perhaps some of the invited. They did have a mob as anticipated, but it was a well-controlled mob.

By half-past four the place was pretty well cleared out. Aunt Marguerite talked of ordering the limousine and Miss Hartler was soothing her nerves with a glass of cranberry juice. Then, at last, Mr. Bittersohn arrived.

M
AX BITTERSOHN HAD NOT
come alone. With him was a large woman wearing a hand-knitted coat of bright kelly green and a crocheted chartreuse tam-o’-shanter. Her face was kindly, her eyes brimming with sympathetic tears. She rushed up to Miss Hartler and engulfed her in a mighty embrace.

“Oh, you poor, poor woman! And you loving him so, and coming so faithful and trying so hard, and him giving you the slip and winding up in a coffin, God rest his soul.”

Miss Hartler struggled to free herself. “Let go of me! Who are you, anyway? I don’t even know you.”

The woman released her clutch, stepped back, and nodded her tam-o’-shanter vigorously several times. “It’s unsettled her wits, that’s what. My mother went the same way when she heard about the ladder breaking and Dad almost to the top with his load of bricks, may he rest in peace. I’m Mrs. Feeley, Miss Green. You remember me. I took care of your brother these past two months and more. And a handful he was, I can tell you, always at me about that Iolani Palace of his and why hadn’t I got him those sixty-two dining room chairs like he told me to? But a happy soul for all his notions and it was a terrible thing the way he went.”

“I’m not Miss Green! I don’t know any Miss Green!”

“If you don’t, then who does? Be easy, now. If ever there was a sister that had nothing to blame herself for, it’s you. Bringing him his supper in a paper bag, even, after he got it into his head he was being poisoned and both of you used to better things as anybody could see. And no wrong done on my part and no offense taken, you know that. But as soon as I saw that picture in the paper I says to my husband, ‘Phil,’ I says, ‘they’ve made an awful mistake. That’s no William Hartler, that’s our Mr. Green. I better go tell the police.’

“And Phil says to me, ‘You keep out of it, Theresa. First thing you know the cops will start asking us do we have a license, which we don’t.’ So I didn’t go, though the Lord knows nobody could have got better care than Mr. Green got from us, as you well know, Miss Green, and there’s still three days’ worth owing to us not that I’d be so mean as to press you for it at a time like this.”

“The woman’s out of her mind,” Miss Hartler insisted. “Or else she’s trying to get her name in the papers, or worm money out of me under false pretenses.”

“Theresa Feeley is as honest as the day is long,” said a voice from the dining room door. “I knew her for years in Dorchester.”

“Mary Smith!”

Mrs. Feeley wheeled and smothered the smaller woman in her yards of knitting. “If you’re not a sight for sore eyes! And look at you now, in your beautiful clothes with your hair dressed fit to meet the Queen of England, among all your swell friends. No wonder you never have time for the likes of your old neighbors anymore.”

“Theresa, you know I’d always have time for you. It’s just that—well, it’s a long story.”

“Ah, and you’d be the one to tell it. Such a gift of the tongue you always had. Many’s the time I’ve said to Phil, you watch that Mary Smith, I said. She’ll make her mark in the world. And never too busy or too proud—”

“Theresa, let’s talk about me some other time. Right now, I’m sure these people want to know all about how you took care of Mr. Hartler. That was his real name, not Green.”

“Oho, I see the way of it now. The sister told me Green because she didn’t want her high-and-mighty friends to know her brother had gone soft in the head, see, not that I blame her and there’s many another would do the same. Anyway, whoever he was, we gave him the big back bedroom that gets the sun and there he stayed most of the time, babbling over his books and his pictures and making believe he was writing letters to important people though no more could he write than a two-year-old, poor soul. Scrawls on a piece of paper is all they were.

“And here would come the sister almost every day after dark, maybe around suppertime or a little later, bringing him something to eat that he liked, which was mostly hamburgers and ice cream. He was losing weight because he wouldn’t eat and she was trying to fatten him up, see. Then after he ate, she’d take him for a little walk just down the street and back. They’d be out maybe ten minutes, then back they’d come and off she’d go.

“But that night he died they didn’t come back and they didn’t come back and finally she came back by herself, crying her eyes out. ‘He’s given me the slip, she says, ‘knocked me down and ran away which I’d never have believed. The police are hunting him now but they say I can’t bring him back here. They’ll be taking him to a place where there’s bars on the windows and locks on the doors so we’ll have to pack his things and call for a taxi.’ And we did and she took the suitcases and went off and that’s the last I’ve seen of her till this very minute.”

“That’s a lie!” screamed Joanna Hartler.

“It’s the honest truth and may God strike me dead on the spot if it isn’t And she forgot to pay me the three days that was owing, too. I didn’t say anything at the time thinking she’d remember when she got him settled, see, but she hasn’t so far, and now here she is calling me a liar to my face which I’m not and never was, as Mary here can tell you.”

“Who else might be able to tell us something?” asked Bittersohn. “People who’ve seen Miss Hartler entering and leaving your house, for instance?”