“Er—a suggestion has been made that Elva Bright’s husband might have kept one as a souvenir of his wartime experiences.”
“Ah, yes, and I can imagine who put him up to it. Poor Claridge Withington never had an original thought in his life, he just parrots what he hears without stopping to consider how it might sound to the next one. Lucivee Flodge seems determined to make herself as obnoxious as possible. I can’t help wondering whether she’s simply enraged because Jasper died insolvent or if she’s playing some kind of game to divert attention from his hidden assets. I believe it’s not unheard of for an entrepreneur to keep more than one set of books. I can readily see Jasper pulling such a stunt, but he’d have needed somebody else to write them up, just as he needed someone to write those preposterous letters about Fred Wye. I suspect that was the real bond between him and his wife, if she was his wife; Lucivee was the only one he dared to trust.”
Miss Rondel poured herself the last inch of water from the pitcher. “As to that story about Elva’s having kept Jean-Luc’s cyanide pill, it’s pure spite and nonsense. The last thing Jean-Luc would have wanted was any reminder of what he’d gone through in Europe, and particularly not a deadly poison that one of his family might get hold of by accident. His whole heart and soul were with Elva and the children. They were his life, his one real hope of immortality.”
Her voice was shaking a little by now, it was the first sign of weakness that Peter had seen in her. “I am very upset over this affair. My inclination is to unburden myself to the state police, but they’d ask for more tangible evidence and as yet, I have none to give. So I suppose the only thing for me to do is stay home and tend to my weaving and wait for the next bomb to drop. Well, that’s enough doom and gloom for today. I’ll tell the artist about the potato bugs and wait for your call in the morning.”
* Vane Pursuit
Chapter 14
“WHAT A DAY!” HELEN flopped back against the car’s upholstery and made fanning motions with her hands. “I feel as if I’ve been wrung out and hung up to dry. Those incredible paintings, then water from the sacred spring with the high priestess. Am I being perhaps a bit fanciful?”
Peter finished sorting through his key ring and stuck the right one in the ignition. “How am I supposed to know? I thought librarians were up on this stuff.”
“So did I, but that lady is something else. Have you any idea how old she is?”
“M’well, she went to school with Mrs. Bright’s grandmother.”
“Mrs. Bright being the innkeeper?”
“Correct. According to Withington, Mrs. Bright, who’s really Madame something French, aristocratic, and too lengthy to be practical, married a hero of the French Resistance who’d been smuggled out of France after having been captured, tortured, and left a physical wreck by the Nazis. This, presumably, would have been sometime around 1945, she being then sweet sixteen and he twenty years older or thereabout and eager to make up for lost time. Their first child was born a few months prematurely, in a manner of speaking, but it worked out all right. Jean-Luc, as he seems to have been generally known, turned out to have a noble nature, an inherited income and a keen business sense. He was devoted to his wife and their two daughters. If I’ve got my numbers straight, Michele, the elder daughter, must be in her own forties by now and her mother, who looks about forty, is at least sixty. So Miss Rondel has to be pretty well along toward the big one, wouldn’t you think?”
“I must say I have a hard time thinking of her as being any age at all,” Helen replied. “She gives the impression of having always been there, like the everlasting rock. But she carries herself so straight, and her movements are so vigorous, a person might take her for somewhere between sixty and seventy herself, if it weren’t for that feeling she projects of being Mother Earth incarnate. How in the world do you suppose they do it?”
“By keeping busy and interested and choosing the right genes, is the best I can offer. Incidentally, Miss Rondel’s a weaver by profession.”
“I should have known at a glance. How could she not be a weaver? Or at least a spinner?”
“Or Atropos who chops off the thread?”
“Miss Rondel never would, she’s much too nice. What sort of weaving does she do?”
“The sort that she taught Michele, who has a shop in the village that sells the weaving they weave to which I’m already bespoken to take you tomorrow morning, as if we hadn’t spent enough money already this trip.”
“Bah, humbug. You know you love to make an occasional lordly gesture. Besides, we’ll be splitting the cost of the paintings fifty-fifty.”
“Says who?”
“Says I, that’s who. I’m not sure, now that I think about it, that we shouldn’t have asked about the portrait of Miss Rondel.”
“What portrait of Miss Rondel?”
“Darling, you stared at it for about ten minutes without blinking. The small canvas that has the twisted old cedar tree growing out of the rock.”
“That was a portrait of Miss Rondel?”
“Of course. It’s exactly like her. The real her, I mean, not just what she looks like. I was going to say something to that effect when we were in the dining room but it seemed a bit too personal. Miss Rondel may not want to part with that one, or the artist mightn’t. I certainly wouldn’t, if it were mine.”
“If you’re really that taken with it, we might at least ask, when we go back tomorrow. Maybe she’ll let us chalk up another potato bug on the slate.” Peter glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Good Lord, is that the right time? I hadn’t realized we’d stayed so long, you must be starved.”
“Oh, I’ll try to hang on till we get to the inn. Do we change for dinner, by the way?”
“Into what, for instance? Did you remember to pack your feed cap and a clean flannel shirt?”
“Shucks, I plumb forgot. Are they de rigueur?”
“Not altogether. Mrs. Bright’s fairly broad-minded about the dress code. Her granddaughter who waits on table wears those skinny pants and floppy tops. What you might call the Prince Valiant look, depending on how chivalrous you happen to be feeling. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, we’re all going to hell in a handcart.”
“Who cares? What was good enough for Marie Antoinette is good enough for me. Is the granddaughter pretty?”
“All young girls are pretty, no matter how idiotically they dress. Thurzella, her name is. Judge for yourself when you see her.”
“Yes, your worship. Will I have time for a quick shower? I feel ooky after that long ride, and the clam tacos and all.”
“Egad, woman, we can’t have you bursting upon the assembled multitudes in an advanced state of ookiness. If we had a laundry basket aboard this craft, I could smuggle you up to our room in it. Want to scooch down and lurk in the car till I can run in and borrow one?”
“No, I most emphatically do not. That thing Cat drives is as close to a laundry basket as I ever intend to get. I’ll just adjust my yashmak over my face and make a quick dash for the stairs. You did remember to switch my overnight bag from Cat’s car to ours?”
“I did and it’s in the trunk, and I’ll carry it up for you. How’s that for husbandly devotion?”
“As good as I can reasonably expect and possibly even a little better. I do like that blue shirt on you, Peter. How are you fixed for clean clothes, by the way? Shall I rinse out a few oddments for you after we’ve eaten? They ought to dry overnight in this weather.”
“What’s the point, if we’re going home tomorrow?”
“Good question. What’s the answer?”
“Why don’t we wait till tomorrow and see what develops?”
“Uh-huh. All right, I’ll wash your shirts. Thank the Lord for drip-drys. What’s our room number?”
“Three. Up the stairs and turn left to the end of the hall. Here’s the key.”
Helen darted ahead. Peter unlocked the trunk, made sure no harm had come to his lupine seeds, and took out his wife’s ove
rnight bag. This was a flowered tapestry satchel about the size of the handbags many women carried as a matter of course. In it she would have packed her nightgown, robe, slippers, a change of underwear, her cosmetics and toiletries, a casual skirt and blouse, a simple but attractive dress with shoes that matched it, and quite likely an evening gown and an ostrich feather boa just in case. Everything would emerge crisp and clean and ready for business. Helen Marsh Shandy was by all odds the most organized packer in Balaclava County and possibly in the world, though she did have an advantage in the fact that all her clothes came in small sizes.
Helen had left the door ajar for Peter and was already half undressed when he handed her the bag. “Oh, good. This is obviously not the kind of place where they give you a free shower cap. Luckily I brought one, just in case. Go on down to the dining room if you want. I’ll be along.”
“Nay, mine own. I shall abide by thy right side; at least I should if that shower stall were big enough for more than one average-sized person and a small frog to get into at the same time. Being as how Bright’s Inn doesn’t have a liquor license, I might as well beguile the interval with a small preprandial libation from my private stock. Want a snort?”
“Not now. I’ll be right out.”
Helen was as efficient in her bathing and dressing as in her packing. She was clean, combed, made up, and dressed in a travel-proof cream-and-taupe shirtwaist and bone-colored leather sandals by the time Peter had finished his drink and ruminated a short while over the events of the day, notably that odd conversation with Miss Rondel.
It was not a likely occurrence for a woman of her caliber to open up as she’d done to a couple from away, one of whom she’d never so much as laid eyes on before this afternoon. Of course it would have told in Helen’s favor that she was a long-time friend of Catriona McBogle, to whom Miss Rondel was somehow connected. Now that Catriona had returned from years of wandering and settled in the old family place at Sasquamahoc, the two were evidently seeing a fair amount of each other. After that adventure on the whale-watching trip, Catriona could hardly have avoided telling Miss Rondel about the Shandys; the Maine papers and television news programs had been full of it. There was a great deal more that Cat could have told, and it was not to be supposed that a professional storyteller would have skimped on the telling.
So Frances Hodgson Rondel must, one way and another, have got quite an earful about Professor Shandy’s strange avocation. Today’s confession that she’d come upon a local situation with which she couldn’t cope had been, whether Miss Rondel realized it or not, a plea for help. Maybe she’d been taken aback to hear her own voice spilling her trouble to strangers. Maybe she had felt rebuffed when Peter hadn’t hurled himself immediately into the breach. Whatever the reason, she’d been awfully quick to slam the door that she herself had opened.
Peter didn’t know what to think, he wasn’t at all sure he cared. Dragon-slaying was not his profession. He was just another middle-aged academic, tired from yet another year of teaching; he felt no great yearning to grab a spear and charge into somebody else’s war. Nevertheless, Peter had to concede that the situation at Rondel’s Head presented an interesting conundrum. He rinsed out his whiskey glass, left it on the inadequate shelf above the copper-streaked porcelain sink, and squired his wife down to the dining room.
Business must have been brisk a while ago. As he’d feared, they were late arriving and not many others were still eating. Claridge Withington was alone at his corner table. Evander Wye was alone in the opposite corner, sitting with his back to the room. A couple whom Peter vaguely recalled having seen here before were just leaving, a party of tourists were tackling boiled lobsters with varying degrees of ineptitude. They all had red-and-white-checkered cloth napkins tied around their necks, Elva Bright was not the kind of innkeeper who’d stoop to the modern gaucherie of paper or, God forbid, plastic bibs. Thurzella was scooting around with a big aluminum tray, whisking used dishes off recently vacated tables. She was only too pleased to park her burden and usher the Shandys to a freshly reset table.
“It’s nice you could come, Mrs. Shandy. Too bad you weren’t here a little earlier. The lobsters are all gone, but there’s still some great lamb curry left. It’s a recipe my great-grandmother got off a cook from a clipper ship who’d learned to make it on a voyage to India. Or my grandmother could broil you a nice tinker mackerel if you’re scared to try the curry.”
“We’re not the least bit afraid of your grandmother’s curry,” Helen assured her. “At least I’m not. What about you, Peter?”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Except perhaps a few gas pains and an extra roll of fat around the waist. By all means let’s have the curry with a green salad if you have any, and I’d like iced tea with my meal. Does that sound all right to you, Helen?”
“Exactly right. There’ll be lemon with the tea, I assume. It’s not presweetened, is it?”
“Oh, no! Gram wouldn’t dream of such a thing, she makes it fresh and you doctor it to suit yourself. I’ll be right back as soon as I dump these dishes.”
“She’s a cutie,” Helen remarked after the swinging door to the kitchen had flapped shut. “Is that Thurzella?”
“None other than.”
“And that man in the corner trying to catch your eye is Mr. Withington the oracle?”
“It is indeed. And the chap with his back to us is Iolanthe’s brother-in-law, Evander, either sulking or giving her and Fred an evening to themselves. Usually he sits where he can glower at me, or did until last night when their cousin Schuyler Tilkey, that fellow I picked up along the road, asked me to sit with them. Ah, here comes our curry. Thank you, Thurzella, this smells like the start of something beautiful.”
“Believe me, Professor, it is. Bon appetit, as my grandfather used to say. At least my mother says he did. This sticky stuff in the little bowl is Mum’s homemade mango chutney. She’s got jars of it for sale at the shop, Mrs. Shandy, in case you want some to take home. Holler if you want me, I’ve got to finish setting up the tables for breakfast.”
“We’ll manage,” said Helen. “Would you please pass me the chutney, Peter?”
Elva Bright’s lamb curry was first-rate, toned down enough for Occidental tastes without sacrificing any of the flavor. Michele’s mango chutney added exactly the right fillip. Comparative quiet settled over the dining room. The sated lobster eaters were washing off the butter, rubbing away the fishiness on the slices of lemon that floated in their green glass finger bowls, asking each other whether they still had room for dessert or if they’d better get back on the road before it got too dark to find their motel. The wily Thurzella solved their dilemma by wishing them bon voyage, as her late grandfather would doubtless have done, and handing them half a dozen sugar cookies in a plastic bag to eat on their way back with the compliments of Bright’s Inn.
Evander Wye waited till the outlanders were gone, then laid money on his table and shambled toward the door, combining a brief glower with a curt nod as he passed the Shandys’ table. They replied with smiles and nods; whether he noticed these small courtesies was open to question. He was in no great hurry, he still hadn’t reached the door when Lucivee Flodge barged in.
Peter assumed the widow would go over to sit with Claridge Withington, then he noticed that Withington had brought a book to the table tonight and buried his nose in it before the now unwelcome late arriver could get to him. Peter half expected Lucivee to whip the book out of Withington’s hands and demand his full attention, but she stopped halfway across the room and sat down at one of the clean tables that Thurzella had just finished setting for the breakfast crowd.
The widow was dressed tonight in the trim black suit she’d had on the first night she’d appeared at the inn. The same leather briefcase was in her hand. Peter deduced that she’d spent the day in Portland or Augusta on business connected with the estate that she still seemed determined to believe Jasper Flodge had left her. When Thurzella came back for another load of dish
es, Lucivee signaled for attention.
“Bring me a menu, can’t you?”
Thurzella shook her head. “No sense in that, all we have left is lamb curry. Unless you’d like grilled mackerel.”
“That the best you can do? What about those lobster shells over there? Somebody else had lobster, why can’t I?”
“Because you didn’t phone in advance, the way those other people did, and tell us you wanted one and how soon you’d be here to eat it. It’s too late now anyway, my grandmother’s already cleaning the kitchen and making the rolls for breakfast.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. All right, bring me the curry. Boy, will I be glad to get back to Portland.”
“Her and me both,” Thurzella muttered as she refilled the Shandys’ iced-tea glasses. “She’d better not pull another of her stunts tonight, my grandmother’s about ready to land her one with a frying pan. Gram’s awfully embarrassed about what’s been going on here the past couple of nights. She’s never had anything like this before.”
“But it’s not her fault,” said Helen. “Peter, do you think you ought to go and talk to Mrs. Bright?”
“And get beaned with a skillet? My own grandmother always waxed pretty testy if anybody came pestering her while she was putting her dough to rise.”
“I didn’t mean right now, silly. Anyway, I don’t suppose we’ll see much in the way of histrionics tonight. We’re not a big enough audience.”
Chapter 15
ELVA BRIGHT MUST HAVE finished her rolls. She’d taken the time to smooth her hair, remove her apron, and put on her wide gold wedding band, and another ring with a diamond the size of a large pea in a massive gold setting. She made an impressive figure in her plain white dress as she came through the swinging door and over to the Shandys’ table.
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