The Case of the Seven Sneezes

by Anthony Boucher

  Stella Paris smiled. “Exactly what I thought myself. We’ll do well if you’re as good at analyzing … other things.”

  Fergus took off his apron. “I’ll talk to you after dinner,” he said. “And I think I’ll prove to you that there’s nothing extra in this picture.”

  Fergus whistled softly to himself as he slipped out the back door. It shouldn’t be hard to prove. And that proof should be the needed lever to pry out all Stella Paris’ knowledge of what happened at the Hotel de la Playa in 1915. With that knowledge—

  The whistle died as he heard quiet footsteps coming along the side of the house. This might, of course, be the doctor. Or it might … He kept himself in shadow and edged along the wall to the corner. He peered around.

  James Herndon was walking along almost silently, one hand cupped around the glowing bowl of his briar, the other beating against his leg with a sort of futile desperation. He came on to the corner and there paused, stared ahead unseeingly, and turned back. Twice he executed this maneuver, like a guard on sentry duty, and each time Fergus sensed a depth of despair in those staring expressionless eyes.

  Then another form loomed up—the heavy bulk of Lucas Quincy, recognizable from afar by his tramping step and by the bright red dot that was his cigar end. As he saw Herndon, he hesitated, tossed the cigar down, and stepped on it. Then more softly he came up to the other and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t!” Herndon cried. It was almost a shriek. Then, “Sorry, Lucas,” he added. “Nerves.”

  “That’s just it,” said Lucas Quincy sympathetically. “Nerves. I was worrying about that.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “But I know your nerves, James. You shouldn’t wander around alone like this. It’s not good for you. Nor for …” He left the phrase unfinished.

  “I can look after myself.” Herndon’s voice took on a little of his brother-in-law’s snappishness.

  “Can you? And what were you doing out here alone?”

  “Praying to God I might forget these matters that with myself I too much discuss.”

  The phrase sounded faintly familiar to Fergus, but he could not place it. Lucas Quincy said, “Whatever that means. You’d better go inside. Remember, James, I know what is best for you.”

  Herndon gave a short and quite unamused laugh. “I wonder, Lucas. I wonder how much of what you know, you do in fact know.” But he turned and went back to the house.

  Fergus was bothered. There is nothing so disconcerting as a man who abruptly steps out of character, and surely the gentle concern, one might almost say the tenderness of this scene was completely unrelated to anything he had seen or known of Lucas Quincy. It was an impossible scene, and therefore an important one. Though in what way important …

  He stepped around the corner. “Mr. Quincy.”

  “Ha.” Lucas Quincy seemed unsurprised. “Good man. Wanted to have a talk with you alone.” He took out a fresh cigar but made no motion of offering one to the detective. “Hanged if I know how you got here or why.” He struck a match and puffed. “But I never saw you before.”

  “You’re calling the tune,” said Fergus. “O. K., so you never saw me before. But as to why I’m here—”

  “Not interested. Wanted to make things clear.” That odd brief cloak of sympathy had fallen quite away. He was as stolid and cold as ever now.

  “You’re interested all right.” Fergus took the leap. “I’m here to take that job.”

  Quincy shook his head. “Said I never saw you before.” He turned and walked back toward the front of the house.

  Fergus grinned to himself. So the urgent need for the O’Breen services had vanished. Quincy was going to play hard to get. But there were other possible clients. And the same proof which would open Miss Paris’ confidence might also reconvince Quincy—might even turn this into a legal deal.

  He resumed his soft whistle as he walked away from the house. The grin was still on his lips, but with an earnest quirk to it. He was resolved on the impossible: to prove the financial advantages of quixotry.

  If Fergus had gauged correctly the character of Horace Brainard, the servant Corcoran had surely occupied, not a room in the house itself, but some uncomfortable makeshift outside. And if he had diagnosed correctly the nature of Corcoran’s ailment, that wise-seeming doctor had left him out there, away from prying eyes. And here was just such a meager shack, cold and comfortless. The deductions were working out.

  The door was locked. Sensible man, Dr. Arnold, even if he had slipped in describing Corcoran’s trouble to Miss Paris as illness and to Fergus as accident. The door was wisely locked, but at one side was a window. Fergus did not want entrance. Not yet. This time only a glimpse to make sure.

  Corcoran was alive. He had not been certain of that. Either way was possible. There was the slight regular motion of breathing under the blanket. And as he lifted his eyes toward the man’s head he saw what he had known he must see, the dark-stained bandage around the throat.

  Fergus hesitated in the doorway of the library. This was the first step in a campaign which should mean a check in his pocket, the capture of a murderer, and a new and freer life for all but one of those on the island. It was a ticklish moment.

  It was a silent group in the quasi-library, or almost silent, for little splutterings of exasperation escaped with every breath of Horace Brainard. The others were still. Alys Trent stared out at the sands, one hand resting on her half-bare breasts, the other lightly and unconsciously stroking her white hair. Lucas Quincy sat mountainous, his small eyes, black dots in his full red face, fixed impassively on Alys. And James Herndon effaced himself in a corner and raptly contemplated the silver mountings of his briar.

  Horace Brainard whirled and glared at the entrance of that damned young Irishman in the yellow shirt. “Well!” he yelped.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Fergus courteously, “but I have to speak with you alone. It’s most important.”

  Alys Trent turned her slow gaze upon him, and seemed to find him as preoccupying as the sands. “So important?” she murmured. “Let me hear too!”

  “Alys,” said Lucas Quincy flatly. You could not call his tone even warning, but it stopped the girl and held her by the window. There was something almost idol-like about the monosyllable solidity of Lucas Quincy; yet Fergus had a shrewd idea that he knew just where to apply the hotfoot to that idol’s feet of clay.

  “No time now,” Horace Brainard snapped. “Or ever. But certainly not now. Time for dinner.”

  “But, sir.” Fergus tried to suggest urgency without undue alarm. “I swear that this is most important to every person in this room. On this island, in fact.”

  Alys’ lips parted; but she caught Quincy’s eye and said nothing.

  “Young man,” Brainard announced, “at this moment only one thing is of importance to me. That is that I should be allowed to celebrate my anniversary in peace. Now will you get to hell out of here?”

  “But Horace,” James Herndon protested gently over his pipe. “Surely the young man is dining with us.”

  “The devil he is. He’s forced himself in on us here. No manners. No clothes. And because it’s my anniversary, do I have to entertain every impecunious young rapscallion in—”

  “Sorry,” Fergus cut in curtly. “I’m not worrying about my dinner. My passion for canned peas falls something short of the fetish level, and there are more immediate concerns. I—”

  “He’s exciting!” Alys gasped. “He makes you feel—oh, I don’t know—awful things. And I love it. Please, Horace, let him stay!”

  “Can you never have men enough?” Brainard barked.

  “No,” said Alys calmly and, Fergus imagined, truthfully. “But please, Horace …”

  “Horace,” said Lucas Quincy, and astounded Fergus by turning on him a coldly genial smile.

  It had worked as planned. Fergus had noted earlier the quiet internal pleasure which Quincy seemed to take in imposing his will on Brainard, and h
ad wondered what the hold might be which enabled him to do so. Goad Brainard far enough, and Lucas Quincy would take your side purely for the joy of deflating his host. It was a first step. But that smile was even more than he had expected.

  “Very well,” Brainard grunted pettishly. “Stay if you damn well like. Come to my dinner. Eat my roast. Ruin my anniversary with your goddamned yellow shirt. But I warn you of one thing: Whatever you have to say, however weighty you may think it is, it can wait. This dinner is going to go on undisturbed. It’s going to go on as it should have if no damned Corcorans and no damned Mexicans and no damned young brats that Stella dredges up from God knows where …”

  Fergus could feel his fist clenching. He envied these tough and two-fisted investigators you read about who shoot out a straight right to the jaw whenever some dope cracks wise. The hell of this business when you’re in it is that you can’t afford to have a temper. You’ve got to take what’s handed out to you and hope you can make up for it when the time comes for the bill; and Fergus had already decided that, failing Lucas Quincy, Horace Brainard was going to sign one honey of a check before this party was over. So “Thank you, sir,” he said stiffly, and forcibly unclenched his fist.

  “Tell me, O’Breen.” James Herndon made a touchingly unsubtle attempt at appeasement. “Are you interested at all in pipes?”

  Fergus walked over to the timid man’s corner. He tried to keep an eye on Quincy, but there was nothing to be read in that blank red face. “Never smoke them myself,” he said, “but I think they’re a joy to look at. Why?”

  “I’m by way of being a collector,” Herndon explained deprecatorily, “and I shouldn’t think of going off even for a weekend without a few of my treasures. If you have the time after dinner, we might—”

  “Come in!” Horace Brainard bellowed in answer to a knock on the door.

  Stella Paris stood in the doorway. She still wore the dated evening gown; but the stance of her body was so perfect, her head was adjusted at so exactly the right angle of dignified condescension, that you saw not a fat and friendly woman but a portly and competent butler. She cleared her throat with elaborate unobtrusiveness and spoke in fruity and British tones. “Dinner is served.”

  Fergus and Alys laughed with pleasure, and even Lucas Quincy half-smiled. Miss Paris had nowise lost her mimetic talents.

  But Brainard winced at the laugh. “God damn it, Stella! Must even you make a farce of my anniversary?”

  James Herndon knocked out his pipe. “Farce?” he repeated, looking at Fergus. There was bewilderment and tragedy in his voice.

  Chapter 4

  The table was a splendid and dazzling field of linen, silver, and crystal. It glistened with chaste elegance. The vegetable dishes were silver-covered, the crystal decanter of wine showed merely the palest yellow, and only the noble bulk of a rib roast of beef before the host’s place provided the contrast of darkness.

  Fergus was pleased to find himself seated between Janet and Stella Paris. He could not have chosen better, especially with Tom on Janet’s other side and the friendly-seeming James Herndon across the table. Janet in a formal gown, he noticed, was something quite different from Janet in a tailored suit. She still looked straightforward and what writers like to call clean-limbed, but you realized, in the simple and vivid severity of that red gown, that she was beautiful as well. It was a pleasant realization.

  He was about to sit down when he became aware of all the others still standing stiffly. He looked toward the head of the table. Horace Brainard formally inclined his head and rattled through a grace at such a rate that Fergus caught no words beyond bless and amen.

  Then, even as the others repeated “Amen,” Brainard burst forth with a roaring, “God damn it, Stella, did you have to cut the slices in the kitchen! You know I like to carve at table!”

  “That’s right,” assented Mrs. Brainard, who was occupied by the task of seating herself with Youthful Grace, stolidly abetted by Lucas Quincy. “You do know how Horace prides himself on his carving.”

  “If it comes to that, Catherine,” Brainard bellowed, “you’re damned well aware of it yourself. If you’d been some help in the kitchen instead of going off to indulge yourself in vapors … Hasn’t a man even the right to carve in his own home?” he demanded of an unjust and Brainard-persecuting universe.

  The dinner was off to a good start.

  Nor did it perceptibly improve. The roast, presumably chiefly the work of the missing Corcoran, was admirable; and the gravy, in which Fergus took a certain proprietary interest, was beyond reproach. But the best of beef (especially when your host is so infuriated by your presence that he deliberately serves the outmost cut when you ask for rare) cannot be fully appreciated in the midst of a conversation of silent stares.

  For despite the fine panoply of the table, despite even the smooth and infinitely dry Chablis, this was no scintillant dinner party. The lull before the storm was the obvious metaphor. There was an atmosphere of brooding, of watchful waiting. Somewhere at this table, Fergus felt, there was an agile mind working rapidly and dexterously, anticipating every move he planned to make and ready to forestall each one and go beyond to some fresh and terrible purpose.

  ‘Nuts!’ he said to himself. ‘Am I going psychic on me?’ And he turned his attention to tabulating the various stares and trying to fit them into the dual problem of fending off murder and securing a paying customer. They were, roughly analyzed:

  Dr. Arnold’s, chiefly at Fergus, Curiosity, and occasionally at Alys, a curiously unclassifiable sort of Speculation.

  James Herndon’s, chiefly at his plate, Discomfort, but now and then at Lucas Quincy, an odd mixture of Fear and Triumph.

  Alys Trent’s, impartially at Fergus and at Tom, Hunger, and not of a sort to be sated at table.

  Mrs. Brainard’s, chiefly at Alys … and this was the very devil to analyze. Fergus had seen little of this woman so far, too little to realize anything beyond her obviously absurd pretensions to girlishness at her own silver wedding; but unless his eye was losing all its cunning, her stare meant one thing: Jealousy. He filed away this curious observation and went on.

  Janet’s and Tom’s, chiefly at each other, Tentativeness.

  Lucas Quincy’s, partly at Alys, Possession, and partly at Tom, Calculation.

  Stella Paris’, at the company in general, Concern. And Horace Brainard’s, at the world at large, Injured Resentment.

  Miss Paris and Janet cleared and served, the former with the air of a born housewife, the latter with the manner of a girl who is willing to tackle any job and bring it off well. The other two women had offered to help, Mrs. Brainard with a gay flutter and Alys with dutiful boredom; but both had seemed unsurprised and relieved when their offers were rejected.

  At last the dessert was finished (fried cream with lambent tongues of brandy hovering over it—“I had to fix something a little special,” Stella Paris confessed to Fergus, “or I swear I would have snapped into little pieces”), the coffee was poured, and the cigars were passed. (Horace Brainard winced ostentatiously as he saw Fergus take one. Fergus himself winced a little as he lit it; it was by no means up to the standard of Lucas Quincy, who wisely preferred to smoke his own.)

  It was then that the doctor rose. His perfectly tailored figure, with its easy but commanding grace, seemed to collect all those random stares and focus them on him, concentrating them into the one rapt stare of an attentive audience.

  He did not waste time on “Ladies and Gentlemen” or such prefatory trimmings. “Horace,” he began directly, “has done me the great honor of asking me to give the toasts at this festive banquet which celebrates so beautiful and joyous an occasion as the silver wedding of our two friends.” His voice was suave and melodious; only the slightest twist of his lower lip turned these ornate phrases into mockery.

  “The toasts, I should forewarn you, are to be many. Those of you who have fears or qualms might do well to pour your glasses less than full, for surely none of you
would so dishonor one of those toasted as to fail to empty his glass.”

  Sound advice, Fergus thought; but he hoped that no one else would heed it. He himself needed a clear head at this moment. Toasts all around, in the doctor’s sardonic manner, could give him valuable hints on the confused and twisted relationships which he felt underlying this group; and if the others toasted all too heartily, their reactions should be that much the more helpful.

  “I shall omit,” Dr. Arnold went on as the brandy decanter passed around the table, “all references to the lamentable passage of time and all variations on the theme of Eheu, fugaces, Postume … I shall salute us as we were then, as still perhaps we are in some lumber-attic part of us, when the world had known only a fraction of one World War, and we were all alive. Even,” he added lightly, “our cats.”

  James Herndon looked up with a sort of pleading frown, Alys gave a little gasp of pleasurable shock, and Stella Paris all but dropped the decanter.

  “Now that Stella,” the doctor resumed, “has recovered her own fumble (if I may temper my idiom to the surprisingly high percentage of youth represented on this venerable occasion), I believe that the ceremony of the charging of glasses is completed? Fine. Then for the first toast, I give you a name that has not passed my lips in many years, a name that most of you, perhaps, have forgotten with your tongues if not with your hearts, a name that may seem inapposite and even cruel on this anniversary, and yet a ringing name that may not be passed over. I give you: Jay Stanhope!”

  The room was dead silent. Fergus tried to keep his frowning curiosity from showing too obviously. Martha Stanhope, yes, but Jay … ? He was certain that there was no mention of another Stanhope in the Ferguson account of the case. To be sure, Alys had spoken of “the Stanhopes.” But Martha was single, wasn’t she? A bridesmaid has to be; or does she? Fergus shelved the question; certainly Jay Stanhope was not unfamiliar to the others. At the sound of this name which he had not even heard before, each of the older people seemed profoundly moved.