by Alice Duncan
“Well, hell, so do I,” said my irritating employer with a shrug.
I glared at him. “That’s not fair, Ernest Templeton, and you know it. I’m a good secretary!”
He gave me one of his cocky grins. “You’ll do. But did your mother come all the way from Boston to scold you for having a job? That’s seems kind of excessive to me.”
This time I know I groaned because I couldn’t repress it. “She didn’t know I had a job until this morning when she showed up at Chloe’s front door just as I was leaving.”
His eyebrows arched like soaring larks. “You didn’t tell her?”
I shook my head. “I knew she’d disapprove. She’s always disapproved of me.”
“She has?”
“Yes.”
“She disapproves of you?”
I didn’t particularly care for his tone of voice, but I merely gave him another, “Yes.”
“What’s to disapprove of?”
I gave him a smallish glare. “I’m the only person in the entire world who’s ever defied her.”
Ernie’s eyebrows lifted into an arch of incredulity, and his lips quivered as if he were suppressing a grin.
“It’s the truth, darn it, Ernie Templeton! Don’t you dare laugh at me! My mother considers that my holding a job as your secretary is only slightly less mortifying than if I’d gone to work for one of her society friends as a housemaid. And it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know I’m a secretary yet.” Which made me think of something else, and I took up what was becoming my normal pose of the day with my head in my hands. “And when she finds out, she’ll be furious, because she claims my father is having an affair with his own secretary.” I’m pretty sure I whimpered.
Ernie’s expression sobered. “Wow, I’m sorry, kiddo.”
“It’s all right.” My voice belied the words.
The phone rang again, and Ernie rose from his chair, patted me on the back and sauntered to his office, where he flung his hat at the hat rack in the corner, slipped out of his suit coat—since already the August morning weather hovered around the ninety-degree mark—sat behind his desk, propped his feet up, and flapped open the morning edition of the Los Angeles Times. Mind you, I couldn’t see him doing any of those things, but I knew from experience that this was the way Ernest Templeton, P.I., started his workday.
“Mr. Templeton’s office. Miss Allcutt speaking.” My voice lacked conviction, even though I’d spoken nothing but the truth.
“Mercy, it’s me again.”
Chloe generally chose her words more carefully than that, but, again, I wasn’t going to point out her grammatical lapse this morning. “’Lo, Chloe.”
“Listen. Mother is going to go with me to the doctor’s office.” I heard her suck in a deep breath on the other end of the wire, and my heart gave a hard spasm in anticipation.
I knew what was coming.
I was right.
“Then she insists on seeing where you work. We should be there about ten-thirty or so.”
I think I whimpered again.
“So spiff up the place, okay? And tell Mr. Templeton to brace himself.”
“Thanks, Chloe,” I whispered and hung up the receiver.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the pretty picture of Angel’s Flight that I’d bought from a street artist in Pershing Square and hung on the office wall, but it was long enough for Ernie to notice.
“Who was that?” he called from behind his newspaper.
“Chloe.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes.”
“What’d she want?
I heaved a sigh loud enough to have been heard by all my relatives in Boston. “She and Mother are going to visit me so that Mother can see where I work.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Hey, Mercy, snap out of it. She can’t be all that bad.”
Showed how much he knew about anything. I said, “Huh,” something I’d never have done as little as six weeks earlier. Ernie chuckled, and I considered throwing something at him, but I didn’t want to get fired. Especially not when my mother was going to visit my place of employment.
But moping would accomplish nothing and if it was possible, which I sincerely doubted since it’s very difficult to penetrate closed minds, I aimed to make my mother admit that I was not only rightly and properly, not to mention gainfully, employed at a job I liked, but that my working conditions sparkled. Therefore, I opened another desk drawer, grabbed the dust cloth I kept in there, and began dusting for all I was worth.
I’d just climbed down from the chair I’d pushed over to the wall behind my desk so I could straighten the two pretty flower pictures I’d hung a few weeks ago when the office door opened. Aha! A client! For a moment I was happy I wasn’t stuck on the chair when the client arrived until I recognized Francis Easthope, one of the world’s most handsome men, a great pal of Chloe’s, and a man who had done an enormous favor for me once upon a time. Mr. Easthope worked as a costumier for Harvey at the studio, and he knew everything there was to know about ladies’ fashions. He was also a sweetie pie.
“Mr. Easthope! How good to see you.”
“Good morning, Miss Allcutt.” He was always impeccably polite. He removed his hat now, and bowed slightly.
Did I detect a hint of nervousness in his mien? By gum, I think I did. Instantly, I adopted my soothing-secretary attitude in spite of my dust cloth, which I hastily tucked in my desk drawer. “What can we do for you, Mr. Easthope? Won’t you sit down?” I gestured to the chair beside my desk. Usually I seated clients in one of the chairs in front of my desk, but I liked Mr. Easthope a lot.
He sat with a sigh. “Thank you.” Placing his hat on his lap and leaning his stick against my desk, he appeared pensive for a moment, as if he didn’t relish having to divulge his reason for calling. I gave him my most sympathetic smile, and he sighed again. “I need Mr. Templeton’s help,” he said at last. Then, with a quick, apprehensive glance at me, he added, “And yours.”
“Certainly,” said I, glad he’d acknowledged my usefulness, even belatedly. After all, he knew everything about the previous cases in which I’d been involved, so he understood how helpful I could be. “What can we do for you?”
Ernie poked his head out of his office and frowned slightly when he spotted Mr. Easthope, who turned and glanced at him. After lifting an eyebrow in surprise, Ernie said, “Mr. Easthope,” in a neutral voice.
“Good morning, Mr. Templeton.”
For some reason, Ernie had always been a little touchy where Francis Easthope was concerned. Perhaps he resented Mr. Easthope’s degree of handsomeness, although that didn’t sound quite like the Ernie Templeton I knew. Anyhow, I didn’t understand it, but I aimed to quash any petulance on his part before it leaked into the conversation. “Mr. Easthope is here for our help, Mr. Templeton.” I always called him Mr. Templeton when we had clients.
“Yeah?” Ernie seemed minimally interested.
“Indeed.” I gave him a good frown to show him he needed to shape up and treat Mr. Easthope as a gentleman and a client ought to be treated.
I have to admit that the differences between the two men couldn’t have been much more marked. Francis Easthope was dressed in the very height of fashion, in a summer-weight tan suit and hat, crisp bronze-colored four-in-hand necktie, highly polished shoes and a lion-headed walking stick. Ernie had come to the office clad in a cheap seersucker suit, limp tie and the same old brown shoes and hat he always wore. Of course, Francis Easthope worked in the pictures and made a lot of money and Ernie . . . didn’t. Either one of those things.
“Yeah?” He gave every appearance of not being overly delighted when he said, “Why don’t you come into my office, Mr. Easthope? You can tell me all about it.”
Drat. I’d been hoping he’d tell me all about it. Oh, well.
Mr. Easthope rose from his chair and said, “Thank you.” Turning to me, he said, “And
thank you, too, Miss Allcutt.”
I have a feeling my smile was wan.
My dispirited condition didn’t last very long, thank heaven. Before I could do more than begin fretting about my mother’s looming visit, Ernie’s office door opened and his head popped out again. I looked up, ever hopeful.
My hopes were dashed almost at once. Ernie stepped back and Mr. Easthope came through the door, looking unhappy. Ernie stood at his back, rolling his eyes. Well, pooh.
“I’m sure sorry, Mr. Easthope,” said Ernie, sounding not at all sorry. “But that just doesn’t sound as if it’s in my line.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Easthope sadly. “I feared as much.” And he walked farther into my office as Ernie shut his door and, I presume, went back to perusing the Times.
Mr. Easthope sighed heavily, and my heart was stirred. “Do you think there’s anything I might do for you, Mr. Easthope?” I asked, not expecting much in the way of excitement to ensue.
He gazed soulfully at me long enough for my heart to take to fluttering like a hummingbird. He was a very handsome man. “Well . . . would you mind listening to my tale of woe? Perhaps you might be able to offer an insight or two.”
Would I mind? Would I mind seeing King Tut’s Tomb? I would not! “Heavens, no. I’d love to hear your problem. And I promise I won’t tell another person. We’re the soul of discretion at Templeton’s.” At least I was, and I was pretty sure Ernie was, too, or he’d have gone out of business long ago. Smiling at him, I said, “I’ll even take notes.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.” I grabbed my lined, green stenographer’s pad and a pencil as Mr. Easthope resumed the chair beside my desk. Then I smiled at him as if he were offering me reprieve from doom and destruction instead of merely my mother. Did I say merely? I didn’t mean it. There’s nothing mere about my mother. Both her stature and her personality are imposing.
I poised my pencil—I always kept several sharpened pencils at the ready—over my pad. “All right. Fire away.”
With a sigh, Mr. Easthope turned to me and, with a small, strained smile, commenced to do as I had asked of him.
“It’s my mother,” he said, his voice and visage both grim.
Chapter Two
Shocked at hearing words that echoed my own exact thoughts, I looked up from my pad and stared at him, my mouth agape. “Oh, I know just what you mean!” I hadn’t meant to speak, and I felt my cheeks get hot as I returned my gaze to my pad and dutifully wrote his words thereon.
Mr. Easthope blinked at me and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve just been having a mother problem of my own.”
“I see,” said Mr. Easthope, who clearly didn’t.
I resolved to keep my mouth shut during the remainder of his narrative.
“Um . . .” Mr. Easthope paused for a moment, my comment evidently having scattered his thoughts, then forged onward. “As I said, it’s my mother. She’s come under the spell of some dreadful spiritualists, and I fear they’re taking her for a ride. She’s already spent hundreds of dollars on them. I don’t begrudge her some entertainment, but I’m worried that her interest in spiritualism is getting out of hand. What’s more, I’m sure the two people who are conducting the so-called séances she keeps having are dirty crooks. I can’t help but get the feeling they’re making careful notes detailing the décor and layout of my place and plan to do something in the line of theft before they bleed Mother dry and move on to greener pastures.”
“My goodness,” I said, breaking my vow of silence almost as soon as I made it. I’d make a lousy nun.
“Goodness doesn’t enter into the picture,” said Mr. Easthope with uncustomary acidity. “What’s worse is they’re doing their dirty work in my house and at my expense. So it will be my possessions they pilfer, if they end up pilfering anything.” Mr. Easthope sighed heavily. “My mother lives with me, you see, Miss Allcutt. And it’s not that I don’t love her and can’t afford to support her, but . . .”
She lived with him? Good heavens, the poor man! “Oh, dear,” I said, and left it at that, proving that occasionally I can hold my tongue.
“I had hoped that Mr. Templeton—and you, of course,” he said in what I knew to be an afterthought, “might attend one or more of these séances, so you could investigate this pair and determine if they really are crooks—well, crooks who are determined to do more than dupe gullible elderly women. I’m afraid I can’t make myself believe in their spiritualistic mumbo-jumbo.”
“Understandable,” I muttered under my breath, since I, too, was a skeptic.
Another sigh escaped from Mr. Easthope’s lips, which were, I must say, beautifully molded and went very well with the rest of him. In actual fact, I do believe he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, and that includes several men who act in the motion pictures and who have been guests at Chloe and Harvey’s table.
“I know spiritualism is all the rage these days, but I do wish my mother hadn’t fallen under these people’s spell.”
Aptly put, I thought. I said, “Hmm,” and kept my head bent over my pad.
“And I honestly do fear that these people are worse than average. They give me quite a queasy feeling in my tummy.”
A queasy feeling in his tummy? I glanced up from my notepad and had the fleeting and no-doubt unreasonable wish that Mr. Easthope’s spoken words were as elegant as his outward appearance. Oh, well. Nobody’s perfect. “Um . . .” I paused, trying to think of something eloquent—or at least pertinent—to say. Then I had a thought. “What are these people’s names?” That was pertinent, wasn’t it?
“They call themselves the d’Agostinos.” He spelled it for me. “Supposedly they’re Anthony and Angelique d’Agostino. It’s probably a phony name.”
“Why do you think it’s phony?”
Mr. Easthope hesitated for a moment. He sounded a trifle petulant when he said, “Oh, it’s just too perfect. They waft around the house, pale as death, looking like spirits themselves, all dressed in black, and they both talk as if they’re communing with spirits even when they’re asking for poached eggs for breakfast.” He scowled gloriously when he concluded, “I tell you, Miss Allcutt, I’m just sick of them.”
“I can certainly understand that.”
“And they have a ghoul who does all their fetch-and-carry work for them.”
A ghoul? I was about to ask what he meant, but he spoke again and I didn’t.
“I don’t know what his name is. He lurks in corners and never speaks, just lurks. What’s more he looks like how I picture that servant Igor in Frankenstein.”
That did sound ghoulish. “I read that book. The fellow sounds creepy.”
“He is. I was hoping Mr. Templeton could help me, but he says exposing spiritualists isn’t in his line.”
It was then I had my brainstorm. “Perhaps I can help!”
Mr. Easthope’s eyebrows soared into his hairline. Before he could express any doubts, I rushed to explain.
“Why don’t I attend a séance or two at your house and do some snooping on my own? Ernie—Mr. Templeton, I mean—has taught me heaps about the investigative process, and I bet I could ferret out any criminal tendencies on the part of these so-called spiritualists.”
I held my breath, praying Mr. Easthope would accept my offer, and not merely because the case sounded interesting. If he allowed me to snoop, it would mean I’d have to be at his house quite often. And that would mean I wouldn’t be at Chloe’s house, which, of course, would mean I wouldn’t be around my mother as much as I feared I’d be if he didn’t accept my offer. If you know what I mean.
“Well . . .” He chewed his lip.
“I wouldn’t charge anything, of course,” I hastened to add, hoping to sweeten the deal. Not that Mr. Easthope was hurting for money, but people in every income bracket like a good deal when they can get it.
“Um . . . I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I mean I’d hate to get you
involved in anything that might be the least bit unsavory.”
“Unsavory?” I scoffed, since I couldn’t think of anything unsavory about exposing a couple of crooks who conned old ladies out of their sons’ money. I mean all I had to do was discover their bag of tricks and call the cops, right? Or maybe the police wouldn’t even get involved if Mr. Easthope didn’t want them to be. At any rate, that would mean they were the unsavory ones, not I. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Easthope. There won’t be any risk of that involved. Even if they discover me snooping, what can they do to me?”
“But these people might be real criminals, Miss Allcutt.”
“Exactly. Which is why you need me.” I beamed at him, hoping he was as impressed by my logic as I was.
“Well, why don’t you let me think about it and I’ll get back with you.”
“Of course. Perhaps you might be able to find another private investigator who will take the case.” I refrained from pointing out that this scenario was highly unlikely, given that most P.I.s were like Ernie. At least, I presumed they were.
Mr. Easthope heaved another big sigh. “I probably won’t be able to do that.”
I gave him a genuinely sympathetic smile and thought to myself that mothers could be such a problem and that it didn’t seem fair, when I heard low voices outside in the hall and my heart clanked down into my shoes.
Speaking of mothers . . .
“Oh, dear, I think that’s probably Chloe and . . .” My voice trailed off.
Mr. Easthope brightened slightly. “Oh, is Chloe paying you a call?”
“Yes. Along with . . .” I took a deep breath. “. . . our mother.”
“Your mother? From Boston?”
I nodded.
“Oh.” Mr. Easthope, who had heard about our mother from Chloe, seemed appropriately distressed. I appreciated him for it.
“Exactly.”
Ernie’s office door opened. “Mr. Easthope, will you come in here for a second?
“Certainly,” said Mr. Easthope, and he did. He seemed relieved, which was a sensible reaction to being spared a meeting with my mother.
