Invitation to Murder

by Zenith Brown

  He jerked himself back into the world around him. “Oh, hello, Polly. I heard you were here. I thought you said nobody was going to catch you—”

  “They weren’t, dear, but they did. My uncle. He’s the stockholder who got me my job. One of the granddaughters is making her bow tonight. It’s a family deal.”

  “Well, watch it,” Fish said.

  “Believe me, I shall. And I want to see you—I’ve got something to tell you. But right now I’m calling for an admirer of yours, Mr. Finlay. She wants you to come. She just called me and explained all about you. I didn’t tell her we’d met. She said you had a date but maybe you could be persuaded.”

  “Dodo, I expect.”

  Polly laughed. “I promised not to tell. Anyway, this date of yours must be horribly wrong side of the tracks, Fish. Everybody else is coming to the Randolphs’, including a man from Mars already out in the guesthouse. But please come, Fish.”

  “Okay,” Fish said.

  Polly Randolph laughed again. “Dear heavens, it’s not that grim. There’ll be oceans of champagne and plenty of good honest whiskey, if you need an anesthetic.”

  “Sorry. I’ll be happy to come. What time?”

  “Around eleven. I’ll be looking for you. Black tie’ll do.”

  He put the phone down. An anesthetic wasn’t what he needed, it was a monumental drunk, first class. Except that he wasn’t a free agent and the clock in the shingled tower was striking eight. His date with Dr. McNair was at nine-fifteen. He had to find some place to eat, and to be on the safe side he’d better avoid all bars, public and private, now and later. He switched on the light to blot out the laughing lips and dancing eyes of a girl with glossy thick eyebrows and the gold-tipped gamin haircut that materialized in front of him whenever he relaxed his guard, and went through the kitchen across the narrow foyer to dress and get under way. As he took off his coat, he caught another view of himself in the mirror on the door, surprised to find he looked much the same. A little beaten up, maybe, but not much. It was the only advantage of a corrugated mug like his. Nothing showed through. There’ll be a lot of people there, he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t even see her. At least he wouldn’t have to stick around and watch her dance with Mr. Peter. He could come home and get blotto there.

  “—So that’s the way it is, darling.” Dodo rose lightly from the bench in front of the dressing table in Jennifer Linton’s room. “I’ve just never told Nikki about the Trust . . . I don’t want you to.”

  Jennifer had given up trying to unpack and was sitting on the foot of the bed, listening gravely.

  “You’ll promise. Please, Jenny.”

  “All right, Mother. But I don’t know why the point should ever come up, do you?”

  “No, darling. Unless—”

  She came over and put her arms around Jennifer’s waist. “You’re really enchanting to look at, my child,” she said smiling. “You don’t know Newport as well as I do. There’ll be men of all ages trying to marry you, my pet, with their mothers and daughters and aunts and cousins trying to help them. You’ll be surprised at the chances they’ll give you to tell them just how much money you can count on the day you’re married. Unless you’re very smart, you won’t even know they’ve asked you until you’ve told them.”

  Jennifer laughed. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not interested in men.”

  Dodo looked at her sharply. Jenny laughed again.

  “Relax, Mother. All I mean is I already know who I’m going to marry, if—”

  Dodo’s lips tightened, her eyes beginning to shoot fire.

  “Here we go again,” Jennifer thought desperately. “I’m a stupid fool. But she was being so sweet. I should have known it wouldn’t last.”

  Her own storm signals started to rise. She hadn’t come here to be pushed around. Then she remembered what Anne Linton had told her: Don’t lose your temper, angel. Just laugh, and Dodo’ll come around. Try it once and see.

  “Now you listen to me, Jennifer Linton,” her mother was saying.

  “You listen to me.” Jenny laughed and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Let’s you and me refuse to quarrel, Mumsy, dear. And don’t you worry. I know exactly what I want, and he’s nobody you’d be ashamed of, truly. I knew it was him the first time I met him. I adore him, and I’ve only seen him twice. So please, Mamma, be on my side, just once, will you?”

  “Oh, of course, baby.” Dodo’s lashes were moist. Then suddenly she laughed. “But what in hell am I going to do with Peter, darling?”

  “Oh, we’ll manage Peter.” Jenny laughed. Then she fixed narrowed eyes on her mother. “Dodo de Gradoff, were you trying to rig me into marrying—”

  “Of course not, darling. Don’t be silly.”

  “Because if you were—”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “Well, the rest of them are,” Jennifer said lightly. “I knew it in my bones. But don’t worry. I’ll be an angel—to Peter, to Nikki, to everybody. I’ll go to all the parties. I’ll do everything. But I’m not going to marry anybody I don’t want to. Is that fair, Mrs. de Gradoff?”

  “Perfectly, Miss Linton.”

  Dodo laughed more happily.

  “And there’s something else, Mother, I’ve been wanting to say,” Jenny said, suddenly very earnest. “It’s about the Trust. Don’t worry. You don’t have to try to break it. There’s plenty for both of us, and you’ll always need a lot more than I do. You’re used to it, and it doesn’t—”

  “That’s sweet, darling . . . thank you. But . . . this man you’re—”

  “Don’t worry about him.” Jennifer’s eyes danced.

  “That’s what they all say, darling.” Dodo turned away abruptly, the lines suddenly deepening in her face. “But . . . thank you, Jenny. And I’d like us to be friends.”

  She smiled quickly. “We’ve really got to hurry, dear. We’re dining at the Clam Bake Club before the Randolphs’. You’ll promise not to do anything silly, Jenny? This man . . . he’s not already married, is he?”

  “No, Mother.”

  Mr. Vinlay is a bachelor, Miss Yennifer. She’d been sure he wasn’t married, but she hadn’t really known till Mr. Vranek told her.

  “How did you meet him?”

  Jennifer laughed. “Just like you and Nikki, except it wasn’t a lamppost.”

  “Oh, no!” Her mother’s distress was so patent that Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Oh, darling! That’s pretty dangerous. Those things don’t happen—”

  “It happened to you and Nikki.”

  “But that’s different. Promise you’ll be careful. Promise you won’t run off and marry him.”

  “I won’t. I promise you I won’t. And you won’t tell anybody, will you? Not Nikki . . . not anybody.”

  “I promise, Jenny.” Dodo took her daughter’s face in her hands and kissed her lightly. “It’s fun having secrets with my own child.” She laughed happily. “And you could be right about Peter. He certainly brightened when he saw you. So did Alla . . . for a minute. And you’ll probably change your mind fifty times before the summer’s over. I did the summer I married your father. You rush along and dress, sweetie. If you’d like a maid, just ring.”

  Jennifer closed the door and stood there, her hand on the knob, her face sobering. There was something very wrong with her mother. She looked awful, so awful Jenny hadn’t dared ask about it. And the business about the Trust, and about the lamppost. She doesn’t believe in Nikki any more, Jenny thought; not really, in her heart.

  As she stood there she became aware suddenly of the doorknob under her hand, and looked down at it, puzzled. The doorknobs all through the house were crystal, or had been. But this was silver-colored metal, with a push latch in the center. She opened the door softly and looked around the balconied hall. All the others were crystal.

  She closed the door. It was three years since she had been in Newport. Lots of things could have happened . . . except that the house was not supposed to be changed at all. The
porch furniture was all her mother had been allowed to modernize. She looked around at the familiar pieces in the room, that had been the fashion when her grandfather bought the house. They were still there. But something was different.

  She went across the room and looked at the long windows opening out onto the porch on the sea side. That was it. It wasn’t the windows themselves but the wrought-ironwork outside them. It was very lacy, the same pattern as the fretwork of the cornice under the eaves, and it hadn’t been there before. She unlatched the window and opened it, and stood there looking, still puzzled and not very happily, at the white-painted iron bar inside across the two ironwork wings. Her face brightened suddenly then and she lifted the bar, swung one of the iron wings open and looked out over at the stable. There were no lights there. She stepped out, slipped off her shoes and went along the porch in her stocking feet until she could see down in front of the clock tower. His car was still there. Maybe he just didn’t like being dragged along to parties, but if one of the Randolphs called him up. . . . She got her shoes and hurried back inside.

  It was then that she saw something else was different in her room. There were two telephones there, and she’d never had even one before. Her mother must really be planning for her social life. She laughed as she looked up the Randolphs’ number, picked up the phone on the ivory desk in her sitting-room, and put it down at once. It was an extension, and Mrs. Emlyn was talking on it, in some language Jenny had never heard before. She went over to the other phone, in the alcove on the table between her twin beds, and picked it up tentatively.

  “Number, please?” the operator said.

  She gave the Randolphs’ number, her face shining. An outside phone ail of her own! Her mother must really think she’d grown up.

  “May I speak to Miss Polly, please?”

  She waited, looking around the room, disturbed again. It wasn’t till she’d put the phone down—Polly was wonderful. “I’ll be delighted to invite your trustee, Jenny. You’re a smart girl to cultivate him. I swear I’ll never tell”—it wasn’t till then that the small seed of doubt began to grow.

  The outside phone wasn’t her mother’s idea, because her mother hadn’t thought of her as grown up until she saw her getting out of the car. She glanced at the lock on the door. It was an inside lock. The iron bar on the window was inside. She could lock herself in . . . and lock other people out, and have an outside phone if she needed one.

  She got up slowly, her lips suddenly dry. Somebody must think. . . . It went through her mind quickly then: it’s Mr. Finlay. That’s why he’s here. He hadn’t believed the story when she told it to him. He did, now.

  She moistened her lips and swallowed, her throat dry. It made it different, some way. She believed the story, especially after what she’d learned in Washington last week—it was the reason she’d hurried to Newport—but it had slipped out of her mind in the excitement of finding him there. Or it wasn’t that it had slipped out, exactly; it was just that most of the time it didn’t seem real. It was more like a frightening dream, or something she’d seen at a movie, not really a part of her own life. Until something like the portrait in Washington, or something like the changes in her room, brought it all sharply back again. And if Mr. Finlay believed it. . . . She caught her breath, startled at a soft rap on the hall door.

  “Who’s there?”

  She went over quickly. It was stupid to go to pieces like that.

  “It’s Elsa, miss. The maid.”

  “I’m sorry.” She opened the door. “I didn’t mean to lock you—Oh! Aren’t they lovely!”

  The maid had a spray of white butterfly orchids in her hand, her gaunt face flushed with pleasure at the pleasure in Jenny’s.

  “Mr. Vranek, miss. He sent them over specially for you.” She held out another orchid. “He said I was to give this one to your mother, in case you felt she’d have to have one, too.”

  “Oh, don’t!” Jenny caught herself before she laughed. Her mother’s was an enormous frilled purple cattleya, handsome in itself, but blowzy, bosomy-lush beside the exquisitely delicate waxy spray that was for her. It wasn’t funny, of course. It was just the shock that old Mr. Vranek, so earthy and heavy-footed, could think of that kind of sophisticated malice. Because it certainly wasn’t accidental. She’d half-forgotten, till then, how virulently he and her mother hated each other.

  “I mean, it won’t go with the dress she’s wearing,” said Miss Linton tactfully, as she took her own. “They’re lovely, Elsa. I’ll thank Mr. Vranek in the morning. Why don’t you keep that one?”

  “Oh, thank you, miss!”

  Jennifer closed the door and stood there with the butterfly spray in her hand, her eyes widening soberly as she looked from the lock on the door across to the iron lace grille over the windows. Mr. Vranek. He was in charge of the house. He’d be the one to make the changes. And they’d taken time. It wasn’t any spur of the moment deal to get wrought iron the same design as the fretwork under the eaves and on the other gate at the end of the second-floor porch. Stubborn and stolid as he was, he wouldn’t go to all that trouble and expense without knowing the reason for it. So they were all in on it, and had been for quite a while. And all of them were there protecting her. For a moment she had a sort of watery feeling of relief inside her. Then she swallowed, her throat suddenly dry again. Protecting her. But her mother. . . . They didn’t care what happened to her mother. The gardeners hated her. And Mr. Reeves. . . . Even Jennifer knew how fed up he got with her, and indignant at things she did. And Mr. Finlay would have to do what Mr. Reeves told him to do.

  She went to the dressing table and sat down, her face as waxen-pale as the spray of orchids.

  “And I promised her I wouldn’t tell Nikki about the Trust. The one thing I could do that. . . .”

  She put the orchids down and looked at herself in the mirror, her cheeks suddenly burning hot.

  “It’s not right. I won’t do it. I will tell him! They’re not going to—”

  She flashed up as she heard her mother’s voice calling her out in the hall, and dashed over to the door.

  “Sorry I’m not ready, Mother. Go ahead. Ask Peter if he’ll wait and drive with me.”

  Dodo came fragrantly down the stairs. “Where’s Nikki?”

  “Gone to see if your Mr. Finlay won’t come along with us. Nikki’s afraid he was rather rude.” Alla Emlyn turned. “Oh, you’re wearing them, after all.”

  Dodo, stopping at the hall mirror, leaned forward to catch the light on her necklace of star rubies set with diamonds. “Aren’t they glorious?” She laughed with delight, unaware of the sudden bitterness in Alla Emlyn’s dark eyes watching her. “Really, they’re fabulous, Alla!”

  “That’s why I wonder if it’s safe to wear them, dear,” Mrs. Emlyn’s voice was lazily inquiring. “There’s sure to be an awful mob there tonight.”

  “But Nikki said—”

  Dodo broke off as he came across the verandah.

  “Finlay got away, I’m afraid.” He came on into the hall. “Oh, lovely!” He laughed, suddenly gay. “My darling! She’s such a child! Can’t resist a new toy.”

  Dodo’s face clouded. “But you said it would be all right to—”

  He interrrupted her, playfully firm. “I said all these people tonight are your friends, not mine, my sweet. You know them. I don’t want the blame if anything stupid happens.” He picked up her blue mink stole as she stood, hesitating. “But if my darling’s going to be unhappy if she doesn’t wear them. . . .”

  He laughed, putting the stole quickly around her, dropping a kiss lightly on the top of her golden head.

  “Of course they’re my friends,” she said, happy again. “It’s ridiculous to worry.”

  Nikki glanced at Alla. She turned away with a faint smile.

  “Where’s your lovely child, darling?” she asked casually, pulling on her gloves.

  “She wants Peter to drive with her in her car. So let’s go, shall we?”

  Nik
ki glanced at Alla again, whistling a lilting bar or so.

  “Precisely, my friend.” She spoke in neither English nor French. “Don’t forget . . . it’s Peter and the Wolf you’re whistling. We’ll see who she dances with the most.”

  “I wish you two would stop babbling in unknown tongues,” Dodo said irritably.

  “Alla just said how very well you look tonight, my sweet.” Nikki took her arm. “And not too much champagne . . . and early home to bed, my girl.”

  “Right. Because I’m really going to sleep, tonight.” Dodo laughed again, pressing her evening bag to make sure she had the pills Dr. Malcolm McNair had given her securely in her own possession.

  CHAPTER : 7

  It was half-past ten when Dr. McNair opened his consulting room door for his last patient.

  “I hope you’re sicker than you look,” he said, his glance resting on Finlay’s white dinner coat. “I’ve had a long day.” He watched him crossing the reception room. “Sorry. Leg bothering you?”

  Fish shook his head. “No, Doctor. And I expect you’ll throw me out no matter what kind of a day you’ve had. I’m here about a patient of yours. These are the only credentials I can offer.”

  Dr. McNair looked silently at the cards in the billfold Fish handed him.

  “I’m the Assistant Trust Officer under Caxson Reeves for the James V. Maloney Trust. I’m staying in the stable at Enniskerry.”

  “I know Mr. Reeves.”

  “I would have asked him to call you, but your telephone system here sounds pretty leaky. So I took a chance. On its lowest level, I guess what I’m asking you is to commit a breach of professional ethics. I’m worried about Mrs. de Gradoff.”

  There was nothing he could put a name to in the pale-blue eyes probing him across the desk.

  “I don’t even know how to explain it to you without saying more than I have any business to say at this point.”

  He saw the slow burn incandescing in the doctor’s tired face as he pushed his chair back.

  “In other words, I’m to violate my ethics but you don’t intend to violate your own.” Dr. McNair got up. “I was out at 3:30 for a delivery this morning. Mr. Finlay. My dinner’s on the back of the stove. My wife wants to go to the Randolphs’ too.”