The Fat Lady's Ghost

by Charlotte MacLeod

  The old man nodded. “I know. It don’t feel right, somehow. But,” he pointed at the brooch, “there’s your proof.”

  “How do we know it proves anything?” Corin argued. “Just finding it in Will’s room doesn’t necessarily mean he was the one who put it here. Look at the stuff Alex and I found in the kitchen. Maybe the thief is using Will’s room as another of his hideouts.”

  “Mighty poor one, is all I can say,” replied Leo. “Anybody who happened to open that drawer would o’ seen that bulge in the paper, just like we did. Looks like he was in such a hurry to get rid of it, he just stuck it in the first place that came handy. If we knew how to test for fingerprints, now—”

  “I can’t believe there’d be any,” the girl objected. “Everybody knows about wiping them off nowadays. Do you know what I’d like to do? I’d just like to confront Will with this brooch, and ask him point-blank where he got it.”

  “Expect him to tell you?” The scarred face contorted in what might have been a grin.

  “No, of course not, if he was the one who stole it. But at least we ought to be able to tell whether or not he was lying if he said he didn’t. I’m going over to the studio right now and ask Alex what he thinks we should do.”

  “What’ll we do with this here breastpin in the meantime?” asked Leo.

  “We’d better leave it right where we found it, don’t you think? Only what if Will isn’t the crook after all, and the real one sneaks in and takes it away while we’re gone?”

  “I tell you what,” said Leo, “how about me standin’ guard?”

  “But what if he attacks you?”

  “He won’t even see me,” chuckled the old man. “I’ll be hid.”

  “All right, if you’re sure you’ll be safe. That’s a good idea, Leo. Why don’t I just run down and make you some sandwiches, in case you have a long wait? I’ll get Alex to come back and take over as soon as I can pry him away from the studio. He ought to be here when Will comes home from school. If anybody comes for the brooch in the meantime, try to see who it is; but for goodness’ sake don’t tackle him alone. Stay hidden until he goes away.”

  “Don’t worry, Corin. I tried to be a hero the time that bear got loose, an’ you see where it landed me. I ain’t stickin’ my neck out for nothin’ unless I have to.”

  The retired elephant boy picked up a science fiction magazine that lay on Will’s table, slid nimbly under the red-haired boy’s bed, and settled down to wait for his sandwiches and a possible visit from a jewel thief.

  Chapter 16

  Corin ran to the studio as fast as her long legs could carry her. “Alex!” She pounded on the door. “Open up. It’s me!”

  The painter galloped up the balcony stairs and flipped the latch. “Hi, you. What’s the big hurry? Hey, you’d better come in and sit down. You look as if you’ve seen the ghost again.”

  Corin leaned against the balcony railing, gasping for breath. “I did, sort of. Alex, you’re not going to believe this. Leo and I found a gorgeous opal brooch in Will McDermott’s bedroom.”

  “Will’s room? You’re right, I don’t believe it.” Alex scowled down at her. “What did you do with it?”

  “Left it where we found it. Leo’s lurking under the bed with a plate of cheese sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, guarding the dresser until Will gets back from school.”

  “Then what? Leo crawls out and beans him with the thermos bottle?”

  “No, stupid. Then you ask Will how the brooch got into his drawer.”

  “I do?”

  “Unless you can think of a better idea. We can’t just go charging off to the police without even giving Will a chance to explain. For all we know, it could be his grandmother’s.”

  “Sure, and I’m Humphrey Bogart. Will’s folks couldn’t raise the price of a safety pin. I didn’t figure Will for a crook, though.”

  He went back to his easel and began cleaning up his palette. “If it was Will playing ghost last night, he must have been trying to hide that brooch when we came in and scared him off. In that case, he sure won’t leave it in his own room a minute longer than he has to. On the other hand, the real crook could have planted it there, figuring we’d search the rooms after what happened to us last night. He wouldn’t dare hang on to it himself, and he wouldn’t mind making Will the fall guy, I bet. Is the thing valuable?”

  “Tremendously, I should say. Black opals are awfully expensive, and these are enormous. I think we ought to go back to the house as soon as we can, Alex. Leo might be in trouble.”

  “Just give me two seconds to clean my brushes. After what he did for us last night, we can’t leave him on the spot. He’s a nice guy, isn’t he.”

  “He’s an old sweetie-pie,” said the girl warmly. “I could positively bawl when I think of him hiding all this time because he was worried about scaring me with his poor clawed-up face.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “I almost fainted last night when I first saw him; but now I just look at that one twinkly blue eye and forget the rest. Come on, I hate to think what might be happening back there.”

  They turned the key in the studio door and set a fast pace for Madame Despau-Davy’s. It was a beautiful, sparking day with one of those deep blue skies only October knows how to paint. Red-gold leaves were falling around them and making pleasant little scuffling sounds under their feet.

  “What a rotten shame, having to spend a day like this chasing a crook,” sighed Alex. “It beats me how anybody can steal, unless he’s starving to death. I don’t understand this big thing everybody’s got about wanting stuff. If you’ve got a roof over your head, and enough to eat and something to wear, and a chance to do your work, what more do you need?”

  “I guess it depends on who you are,” said Corin. A picture of Angela’s clothes rack, and of Jack Banks’ roomful of expensive, unused toys popped into her head. “Having a lot of things represents success to some people. And of course, we take a lot of things for granted over here that they consider luxuries in other countries. Electric lights and refrigerators and central heating, for instance.”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t you rather have candles and a fireplace than risk jail even for these so-called necessities?”

  “Well, I would, personally,” said Corin, “but maybe I’m some kind of a freak.”

  “No, just lucky.”

  They walked on in silence until they reached the house. As she started to enter, Corin suddenly panicked. “Alex, what shall we do?” she whispered.

  “Just leave it to Leo and me. You go on up to your room, and I’ll go to mine. If you meet anybody on the stairs, say you were out late and you’re tired. That’s true enough. Once I’m on the third floor, I’ll duck in and let Leo know I’m around. Then I’ll skin back and wait in my own room until Will comes up. Then I’ll tackle him about the brooch. You stay put and keep your ears peeled. If it gets wild upstairs, run down and phone for the police.”

  Corin nodded. “Good luck,” she whispered.

  She went into her room, lay down beside Betty Lou, who was taking her usual siesta on the new madras bed spread, and tried to rest. Exhausted as she was, however, she found it impossible to relax. She picked up a book and read a few pages without understanding a word. She tickled the ocelot behind the ears to make her purr and only succeeded in making her cross. She threaded a needle and took seven stitches in a pillow cover she was embroidering for her chair. She got up and prowled over to the window, half hoping and half dreading to catch sight of Will McDermott’s carroty head coming up the street.

  She had finally settled down and gone to work with grim determination on her pillow cover when she heard Will’s familiar elephant dance on the stairs. She rammed the needle into her thumb.

  “Ouch!” Sucking her wound, she crept to the door and strained her ears. A second later, she heard Alex leave his room and walk down the hall. There was a rumble of male voices, but the words were indistinguishable.

  She slipped
off her shoes and crept up the stairs, praying that Madame Despau-Davy would not choose that moment to make one of her infrequent visits to the third floor. Crouching behind the newel post, she was able to see clearly into Will’s room.

  The red-haired boy was staring down into the open dresser drawer. “I’ve never seen that thing before,” he was shouting. “I don’t know how it got there.” His voice rose on the last words to a falsetto squeak which would have been funny if his face had not looked so stricken.

  Will was telling the truth. Corin could hear it in his voice, see it in his expression, in the urgency of his gestures. And she could sense that Alex and Leo realized it, too.

  “Don’t you see what this means?” Will was pleading. “Somebody put that brooch here to make me look like a crook. Of all the lousy, rotten tricks! Look at it my way, can’t you? Would anybody in his right mind hide anything valuable in such a stupid place, unless he wanted it to be found? Boy, somebody in this house is a real pal of mine!

  The two young men looked as sick as Corin was feeling. “What a low-down, miserable, contemptible thing to do!” she seethed to herself. How could anybody show such complete disregard for another human being?

  The awful part was, it must be someone they all knew. Only one of the boarders could roam the house freely. And the field was narrowing all the time. Leo, Alex, and now Will were eliminated. That left Madame Despau-Davy, the twins, Angela, Jack, and Steve; and it was hard to decide which of them was the most unlikely suspect.

  “It’s got to be Steve or Jack,” she thought, “because the girls can’t come up to the third floor.” But that was silly. If a girl was bold enough to commit a theft and make a murderous attack on two other boarders, she would hardly stick at violating the landlady’s taboo.

  She herself was breaking the rule this minute, in fact. Corin backed silently away from the newel post, pausing for one last peek into Will’s room. The three men had their heads together, evidently plotting the next move.

  She scooted back to her room, picked up her embroidery, and was innocently doing cross-stitch when Leo’s scarred face poked around the edge of the door.

  “It ain’t him,” he announced.

  “I know,” she confessed. “I was eavesdropping. What are you going to do now?”

  “Keep watchin’. Will’s goin’ to stand guard for a while. Then Alex will spell him while he goes out to eat. Then Will’s goin’ to make out like he’s stayin’ with some of his buddies overnight an’ I’ll sneak him into his room again by the back stairs. He’s itchin’ to get his hands on the rat that framed him. I never seen a feller so mad. I don’t blame him, bein’ made to look like a crook.”

  “I don’t, either,” fumed the girl. “It’s the rottenest thing I’ve ever heard of. I simply can’t believe anybody in this house would pull such a trick.”

  “Well, that breastpin sure didn’t slide itself into that chest o’ drawers without help,” said Leo. “Like it or not, we’re stuck with it, as the flies said about the flypaper. I don’t know how we’re goin’ to break the news to Dina.”

  “We’d better just not tell her anything until it’s all over,” said the girl. “I only hope nobody else gets hurt before we find out who the ghost is. You know, Leo, I just thought of something. What if Rosie’s ghost isn’t the real thief at all, but only his accomplice?”

  “I don’t see where it makes any difference,” replied the old elephant boy. “One’s as bad as the other.”

  But it did make a difference. It meant that the person working inside the house need not have the skill and agility of a successful burglar. That left the field wide open. Even Madame Despau-Davy could be involved. What if some outsider had made her his dupe? Suppose somebody told her a hard-luck story and begged her to help him without letting her know what he was really up to?

  Could the landlady possibly be all that gullible? It was more likely to be one of the girls. The twins were naïve enough to fall for anything and sweet enough to try to help.

  As for Angela, now there was someone to think about. Modeling in Boston was a spotty business at best. Yet Angela certainly had money to spend, if the collection of clothes in her room was any proof. What if somebody was paying her regularly for hiding the jewelry until the chief could arrange to dispose of the stones?

  But surely Angela would never do such a terrible thing to Will. Or would she? Who, of all the boarders, showed the least regard for others?

  “Angela, hur-ry! We’ll be la-ate!” She and the twins had shouted themselves hoarse through the bathroom door every morning for the past month and more. The model’s exasperating habit of monopolizing the bathroom had driven them all to distraction; yet she never made the slightest effort to change her annoying ways.

  Corin thought of the sodden mess she had to clean up every single day before she could even brush her own teeth. Yes, she could believe it of Angela. A girl who left long black hairs all over the wash basin might be guilty of anything.

  Chapter 17

  Nobody came for the brooch. Two days and nights went by. The guard was faithfully kept, but still the opals flashed their glorious fire undisturbed beneath the paper liner of Will’s bottom drawer.

  On the third afternoon, as Corin was posing for Alex at the studio, she said suddenly, “Do you suppose he knows we’re watching?”

  “He who?” mumbled the painter. “Hold still, can’t you?”

  Corin sighed and gave it up until it was time to take a break. Then she tried again. “Do you think the crook has caught on that we’re guarding the brooch?”

  “Maybe,” he conceded, squinting at his canvas through half-closed eyes.

  “Then what are we going to do? Poor Leo can’t spend the rest of his life lying under Will’s bed eating cheese sandwiches.”

  “No, I suppose not. Let’s see what happens when you pull your hair forward.”

  “Like this?” Corin slid the silver barrette out of her hair and flung the heavy mass over the left shoulder of her silver-gray dress.

  “Beautiful! Now put one hand up to it. No, the left. That’s it. Do you think you could hold that pose?”

  “I can try. But what about the brooch?”

  “What brooch?”

  “Alex Bodmin, don’t you ever think about anything but painting?”

  “Sure,” he grinned. “I think about you.”

  His expression softened. “I think what an unbelievably lucky guy I am, just being able to look at you and paint you and have you cook meatballs for me. I only wish—for Pete’s sake, can’t you ever sit still?”

  “No, not till you tell me what we’re going to do about that brooch.”

  “Leave it there.” The painter was busy adding more flake white to his palette. “Pretend we’ve forgotten we ever found it. Make believe we don’t give a hoot what happens in Will’s room and be a lot smarter about keeping watch. Probably we ought to mix in more with the gang at the house. We might catch somebody off guard and pick up some useful information.”

  Corin dimpled. “I could flirt with Steve.”

  “Not a chance,” said Alex, trying to grin but looking slightly annoyed. “You’re not his type. You’re too big to get under a microscope. Anyway, he’s nuts about one of the twins, only he can’t decide which one.”

  “How unscientific,” she giggled. “Speaking of the twins, by the way, did it ever occur to you that the person who hid the jewelry mightn’t be the thief at all?” She explained her theory.

  “You might have something there,” he scowled. “I can see Madame Despau-Davy being mutton-headed enough to fall for some smooth operator’s line, for instance.”

  “I know,” said the girl unhappily. “She told me herself that she doesn’t understand people.”

  “The only thing is,” Alex went on, “I can’t see her being able to keep it from Leo. She tells him everything. And I can’t see her squirting that gas gun at us, or trying to frame Will with the opal brooch. Those were real low-down tricks. Still, you ne
ver know.”

  “I can tell you one thing,” said Corin. “There’s one person in this house who could do it without batting a false eyelash. Alex, I think it was Angela.”

  The painter’s shaggy eyebrows went up. “Why Angie?”

  “Oh, I knew you’d stick up for her because she’s pretty,” sniffed the girl, “but you don’t have to share a bathroom with her.”

  “I have to listen to the kids who do. ‘Aa-ngela, hurry u-up!’” His imitation of Jennie’s frantic soprano wail was remarkably good. “But you can’t hang a model for taking half an hour to put her face on.”

  “You can’t, maybe,” Corin retorted, “but there are lots of mornings when I could, believe me! She doesn’t take half an hour. She takes a whole hour. She’d be there forever if we didn’t scream at her. And if you ever saw the way she leaves the place!”

  “I’ll bet she’s no worse a slob than Jack Banks. And Will’s not what you’d call neat, either. Come to think of it, neither am I.”

  “Yes, but girls are supposed to be good housekeepers. Angela hasn’t one speck of consideration for anybody. And she’s always got money to spend. Her room is positively stuffed with clothes.”

  “She saves on food,” said Alex. “She never eats unless somebody buys her a dinner. Hey, that’s a thought. I’ll ask her out tonight and see what gives.”

  “Go ahead,” snapped his red-haired model. “It will save me the trouble of cooking that lovely beef Stroganoff I was going to make for you.”

  “Oh, hey!”

  He looked so disappointed that she burst out laughing.

  “All right, James Bond, go ahead and detect the glamor girl. We’ll have it tomorrow night, instead.”

  “Well, just don’t think I’m doing it for fun,” he scowled. “You know darn well I’d rather be with you.”

  “Don’t apologize. I’d rather be mad.”

  Although she tried to make a joke of it, she realized with something of a shock just how dull the dinner hour was going to be without Alex. Their evenings together in the cozy old basement kitchen had come to mean a great deal to her.