Figure Away

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  After Jane and Eloise had gone to Sara’s, he had even read through Mary Randall’s diary, but that cast no light on the affair. From it he picked up enough to know that Mrs. J. Arthur Brinley was more of a thorn in Mary’s flesh than anyone guessed, and that Jane cared far more about selling antiques than rubbing or restoring them, or tracking them down. Mrs. Randall had been rather plaintive about Jane’s lack of what she called “stick-to-it-iveness.” There were numerous items about Eloise. A lot dealt rather resignedly with her clumsiness, like breaking some Stiegel glass, and smashing up the beach wagon’s fenders again, and once or twice she mentioned Eloise’s inability to take a stand or make a decision. Asey remembered one sentence, “She is so good to me, and works so hard, and means so well, but she does clutter, with the things she says as much as the things she does.”

  Asey thought he knew exactly what Mary Randall meant.

  Well, Jane would have to be looked into. For fun he would check up on Aunt Sara, although he knew it was a futile gesture. Zeb didn’t enter into it, or Eloise. That ferris wheel was a rock bottom alibi, if ever one existed or was needed.

  He turned over, closed his eyes and slept soundly until Aunt Sara banged on his door at nine o’clock.

  “Asey, Jeff and I have to go,” she called to him. “Zeb’s already driven the girls to the hollow, and gone to work, but he said he’d leave any time if you wanted him. Sally or Bertha’ll be here all day long, and get you any meals you want. I’m leaving a program for you—”

  “Hey,” Asey scrambled out of bed, “wait till I—”

  “I simply can’t wait. Really. I’m the sheep and lamb sorter for the Old Returning Settlers! Bye—”

  Asey looked out of the window at the open official car with its flying blue and yellow streamers in which Jeff and Sara drove off in state behind a uniformed chauffeur.

  “All they need,” he murmured, “is ticker tape.”

  At breakfast he propped the official program against his coffee cup and read doggedly through the events of the day.

  Tuesday was Old Settlers’ Day, and began with a town flag-raising at nine- thirty. School children, the chorus, and the soprano would render “America.”

  “Aha,” Asey said. “Render is right, but rend’d be better – don’t mind me, Bertha, I’m just carried away by it all.”

  After “America” and “Billingsgate Beautiful,” the remainder of the morning was devoted to a reunion of Old Settlers at the various churches, an address of welcome at the Town Hall, and at twelve-thirty there was to be a luncheon for the lambs, given by the selectmen in the Women’s Club Parlor. The sheep and goats had to buy themselves a box lunch, which a footnote described to the last stuffed olive.

  The afternoon was more or less mutilated by baseball, Billingsgate AllStars versus Philbrick’s Fireworks Nine. That night, Upjohn’s Merrymakers would hold a grand open air concert at the canopied dance floor next to the ball park. Free. The midway carnival offered fun for all, and the movies were right on deck with two brand new features for the price of one, free souvenirs, a sterling-silver-plated coffee urn for the prize ticket, and a Mickey Mouse to boot. Everything ended up with fireworks. Events marked with an asterisk would be broadcast.

  Asey sighed. “Just readin’ it,” he told Bertha as she brought in more coffee, “makes me feel tired an’ old before my time. If they keep up that pace all week till Sunday, they’ll be limp slivers of skin an’ bone.”

  “Tomorrow’s Governors’ Day,” Bertha said. “Three governors. It’ll be like today, except all the things to do with them, and speeches and a banquet. Thursday’s Billingsgate Day. Tag day for the new hospital they want, and they’re going to lay the cornerstone of a new library addition. Everything’s to do with the town, sort of. Friday’s Historical Day.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know, much,” Bertha said honestly. “Speeches, I guess, and drives to points of interest, like where the British nearly landed in 1812, and where the Pilgrims didn’t land, and where they think those Icelanders passed by. You know.”

  Asey nodded. “History marches past, or Chance-to-get-a-good-rest Day. Go on.”

  “Saturday’s Cape Cod Day. That’s going to be swell. Water sports and field sports. All the towns got teams entered. Yacht races, golf matches at the club, and all. Dances, and a Great Mommoth Ball, all free. And that’s the day they give the prizes for the expositions at the Town Hall. I’ve got some beachplum jelly entered.”

  “If it’s anythin’ like your marmalade,” Asey said, “it gets my vote right now. Couldn’t enter popovers, could you? No, I suppose they are kind of perishable. Say, I tell you what. I’m goin’ to give my prize for’em right now.”

  He pulled out his wallet and impressively counted out ten crisp one-dollar bills.

  “For me?” Bertha’s eyes opened wide.

  “For the popovers. ’Course, you got to figger it’s only six dollars, what with money leapin’ around. Bertha, tell me about Sunday, an’ then I won’t have to look at that yallery-blue program any more. What’s Sunday?”

  “Church Day. Did I tell you about the broadcasts, and the fireworks, and the clambakes? And parades, and horribles, and the band? And the summer camps, they’re putting on a show, and Mike Slade has some sort of show, too—”

  “Say,” Asey interrupted, “that r’minds me. Did Slade come here this mornin’ for me?”

  “No.” Bertha hesitated. “What do you make of him?”

  “Seems all right. Friend of yours?”

  “I went out with him a couple of times when he first came to town. It wasn’t much fun, he talks all the time. He said it was wrong for me to work here. Can you beat it? Like I told him, anyone who works here is lucky. Good room, and food, and wages, and you always know what’s going on. Where else’d I work, I asked him. Who’s going to support my mother if I don’t, I said. But he said I was being exploited. I looked up ‘exploit’ in the dictionary, and it said, ‘brilliant achievement.’ I couldn’t see anything wrong about that. Aunt Sara laughed when I asked her, and said exploit meant my cooking—”

  Bertha chatted on, and when she showed any signs of running down, Asey supplied new subjects. Gradually he led her to talk of Sara, but at the barest suggestion of her sleepwalking, Bertha shut up like a clam and retired to the kitchen.

  “Huh,” Asey said.

  He took his roadster from the garage and drove over to the little one-roomed house Slade had built for himself on the outskirts of town.

  The door was open, and the house was empty. On an unmade bed were laid out immaculate white flannel trousers and a blue coat with brass buttons. There were fish hooks and lines on the table.

  “I bet,” Asey said, “he’s playin’ hookey an’ gone fishin’. But—”

  A young man came to the door as Asey left.

  “Mike there? Damn him, where is he! He’s not at his studio, either. Never saw such a – have you seen him? Well, if you do, tell him he’s got work to do, and to get to the Town Hall in a hurry. If this is the way he—”

  Grumbling, the young man got into a blue-and-yellow-draped car and tore off.

  Asey drove back up the beach road to Hell Hollow. Jane waved a hand to him from the shop, where she was taking care of a dozen customers. Lane, in dirty khaki pants and a flannel shirt, was mending a lawnmower.

  “I wouldn’t know you,” Asey said, “how do you do it?”

  “Rumpled my hair, dirtied my face, that’s all. There’s an advantage in being nondescript. People who’ve seen me in uniform don’t know me in plain clothes, and the other way around. Asey, this business is not so hot.”

  “Can’t find any trace of a shell?”

  “I’ve raked high and low, and not a thing. He stood in a line – what’s the matter?”

  “I’m lookin’ at them fool figures,” Asey said. “Those dummies. There are four ofem. I only counted three last night.”

  “One fell down,” Lane said. “It was on the ground t
his morning. Has dropsy. It’s fallen down four times since. I’m going to mend it after I’m through with this mower. Listen, from where those balls were in the wall, he stood in about the line of you and the house and that big pine. That’s the line. I wouldn’t know what distance away. Probably over by the garden. Asey, this lad’s got us. D’you realize that?”

  Asey nodded. “No shell, no nothin’. We can’t tell anythin’ about any gun unless we have that shell. Whyn’t he use a pistol, so’s we’d have somethin’ to work on with a bullet? Anyway, without the shell we can’t tell the gun, an’ without the gun we can’t tell the man. An’ even if we guess someone, an’ he’s got a shotgun, that don’t prove a thing. We got to find that shell, an’ we got to find it here.”

  “Probably,” Lane said, “the gent thought of that, and deposited the shells and gun out in the Atlantic. I’ve been wondering about the ball end of it. We might find out who bought any deer ball at Harry’s—”

  “But the ball could have been bought in Timbuctoo,” Asey said. “It’s like tryin’ to find out where someone bought a stick of chewin’ gum from the wrapper. This is kind of a clever way of killin’ someone, ain’t it, Lane?”

  “We’ve got a dozen shotgun murders on the files,” Lane said. “One since 1914. We still putter around with it in our spare time. I sort of think, Asey, you’re not going to have any Garrison finish in this case. You might just as well dig in for the winter. All you’ve got is the fact that she was killed last night by someone with a shotgun out here.”

  “And the laugh?”

  “That? It’s probably a real live loon, or someone faking. And have you thought, Asey, that there are going to be a lot of fireworks to come?”

  “It’s preyin’ on me,” Asey said. “Too much free noise for our lad to fire under cover of. While we might be able to keep one murder quiet, we can’t cope with any more. Gimme the wrench—”

  He bent over the lawnmower as some of the customers approached the figures.

  “Mornin’,” he looked up and spoke to Jane. “Wonder if I could bring over that footstool for you to fix up? Do I hear that Mrs. Randall’s gone to New York?”

  The two local women in the group drank in the information.

  “Illness in the family,” Jane said. “I’d be glad to tackle the footstool – oh, and Mrs. Porter’s things!”

  “I’ll have to take’em piecemeal,” Asey said – all this conversation had been previously arranged, “they’re sort of breakable, an’ need a lot of packin’. I’ll be round for’em. Thanks.” He nodded towards Lane. “If he don’t do a good job for you, let me know. So long.”

  It was on his way back to town that he met with the soprano who had been practising with the chorus the day before at the Town Hall. She was pushing a bicycle with a flat tire, and Asey gallantly stopped and offered aid.

  “Like to put it in the rumble an’ drive back?”

  “Thanks.” The woman was rather massive, and Asey suspected that she was more or less unaccustomed either to bicycling or walking. “I didn’t expect this. And I tell you now, as far as bicycling goes, my figure can stay where it is!”

  She was so emphatic about it that Asey grinned.

  “You’re the soprano, ain’t you?” he asked as he lifted the wheel into the rumble. “Madame—”

  “M-e-a-u-x,” she spelled it out. “Not Moo. The next one who moos at me is going to get his teeth pushed in. You,” she surveyed with admiration the sixteen-cylindered Porter, “are not a native, are you?”

  “Not of this town, so go as far’s you like,” Asey said. “Tell me, what do you really think of ‘Billingsgate Beautiful?”

  Madame Meaux looked at him. “Don’t! Mrs. Brinley brought me here – she’d heard me at a Women’s Club convention – and I’m grateful, and all that, but I didn’t know about ‘Billingsgate Beautiful’ until I got the contract signed. She wrote the words, and the music. And the music, mind you. Let’s just pass over Sister Brinley. I want to have kind thoughts about her till Sunday night. I get paid Sunday night. She pays me. Words, mind you, and music, both! Why, the words alone should carry twenty years to life with’em! Say, after you leave this bicycle some place, could you take me down the road a bit? I want to see a man named Slade.”

  “Mike Slade?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know he lived here, but I bumped into him last night at the carnival. I was with Sister Brinley – say, she got stuck on the ferris wheel, and I nearly died laughing! Anyway, Mike gave me the high sign – I guess he and Mrs. B. don’t click – and later when he got a chance, he said to drop in on him. Great lad, Mike.”

  “Known him long?”

  “Well, I was working on a theater project a couple of years ago, and he was on an art project, and we were in the same office. He got kicked out. Too wordy. Gee, he was sore last night about something. He looked just the way he did when Blickstein – he was our director – fired him.”

  “That must have been after the fire near his studio,” Asey said. “He was only a little sore when I saw him – but say, he ain’t home. I just been there. He’s probably been found and put to work by now. He’s a big shot here, you know.”

  “He’s all right, really,” Madame Meaux said, “except he likes to talk, and he gets sore easy – well, if he’s not around, leave me here at the garage, and I’ll get home on that thing somehow. I ought to rest, anyway. I got to sing with the rhythm cats tonight, and I need a rest—”

  “With the what?”

  “The yokel swingsters. Upjohn’s Merrymen, or whatever they call themselves. Thanks. Be seem’ you.”

  Asey waved and set off for the Town Hall. He had a higher opinion of sopranos, somehow. And it would take considerable force, he felt, to compel this one to warble the ditty about tying apples to a lilac tree.

  J. Arthur Brinley stopped him as he entered the Town Hall by the rear door. Asey knew it was J. Arthur, because his badge said so. There was even a hint of proclamation in the inch and a half high letters.

  He was a short, fat pompous little man, and Asey wondered if the shoulder seams in his blue flannel coat could take it until Sunday.

  “Er – Asey Mayo? I understand from Weston that you’re helping the town, and I want you to know we appreciate—” Asey barely listened to the little speech. He had a definite feeling that J. Arthur wanted something, and he waited rather impatiently for the preamble of thanks to finish.

  “Now I know,” Brinley said, “that you will be able to do the town one great service. I refer to Slade, who has – well, I hate to say it, but he has communistic tendencies. I know, Mr. Mayo, that you will be able by tactful methods – or other methods if necessary – to restrain him.”

  “What’s he done?” Asey asked.

  “My wife and I have always felt that Jeff and Sara Leach rather overstepped, if you know what I mean, when they campaigned for him, and actually allowed him a place on the town board. When you allow a communist, an avowed communist, to become a town officer like anyone else, well, as I said to my wife, that is stretching the democratic form of government a little too far!”

  “Well, yes,” Asey said, “seems that way, don’t it?”

  His bland expression never wavered as Brinley looked at him sharply.

  “Well,” Brinley said, “you will restrain him, won’t you? Why it was disgraceful last night, the way he was ranting around about that brush fire! All over town. Some of our guests were most disturbed, and indeed they had every right to be! It’s what comes, as I said to Bessie, of letting—”

  “Uh-huh. But after all, his studio did nearly burn up, an’ he charred his hand. Sort of had some provocation, don’t you think? He wasn’t just rantin’ for the sheer love of it, was he?”

  “Why, I—”

  “Brinley!” Vincent Tripp beckoned to J. Arthur from the door. “Brinley, quick – er – quickly!”

  J. Arthur bustled off, and Asey followed leisurely to the large assembly hall, which was overflowing with people. Old Settlers,
he assumed, since most of them looked both old and settled.

  Up on the stage Sara looked cool and poised and unperturbed. Jeff, sitting directly beneath the American flag, was picturesque and imposing, and more of a McGuffey’s statesman than ever. He caught sight of Weston in the background, issuing orders like a major- general.

  “The welcome,” J. Arthur was saying, “the welcome of the town to you former residents who have returned to do honor to Billingsgate, the welcome is the welcome your mother would give, and so Mother Billingsgate extends it. In this changing world of ours, with its noise and confusion, its airplanes and fast cars and tall buildings and – er – streamlined trains, still two things remain sacred. “Home,” he paused, “home and mother. A mother’s love is the most beautiful and sacred thing in life. The older we grow, the more we cherish the associations of childhood, and our old school friends and our old school days. ! And so, those of us who have stayed here in Billingsgate, so we sent the clarion call out to you, who responded by travelling from all parts of our country, and some of you from foreign lands, to come back home. Home to Billingsgate. Home for this week of celebration. All of us here have banded together in one great thought, to make this home-coming a real welcome to you, a welcome—”

  Asey’s eyes met Aunt Sara’s.

  Hurriedly, he edged his way back to the roadster.

  But it was not Brinley’s oratory that puckered up his forehead. It was the absent Slade. Brinley was substituting for Slade. Why should a wordy fellow like Slade pass up a chance to talk his head off without interruption in front of so many people? Something was wrong. After all, why fish in silence when an audience that size was waiting?

  “Mr. Mayo!”

  He hardly needed the badge to identify Mrs. J. Arthur Brinley. Like her husband, she was short and fat and pompous, and her face was red and perspiring. He knew it would be. She reminded him somehow of an old table someone had given his father, a table made of sixty million different little chips of wood. Perhaps it was her three strings of beads, or her rings, or the buttons on her big-figured chiffon dress – anyway, she had a built-up look.