by Noreen Wald
Counting on the killer’s coming on down to the kitchen—most likely any moment now—I climbed back up on the shelf, tugging on the ropes with all my might, praying this baby went to the third floor. Or higher. Wouldn’t the master of this mansion have ordered drinks in his room or a cozy breakfast for two via this rig? God, I hoped so. Sailing—far too slowly—past the dining room, I opened the dumbwaiter’s door, ever so slightly, just for a fast peep. No one. My biceps were straining, and I’d about decided that if I lived I’d join a health club when, out of the corner of my left eye, I got a better look at the corpse. I stifled a scream. So much for sordid smells and senseless suspicions, I thought. There, on the Persian carpet, in an ever-widening pool of blood, hair matted, legs and arms akimbo, lay Barbara Ferris.
Crying for Barbara, whom I’d totally misjudged, and for my own frustration, I pulled the ropes with renewed vigor, born of fear and fury, wishing I could rummage in my bag for a tissue. The dumbwaiter did stop at the third floor, opening into a study. Robert Stern’s. The walls were full of pictures of a beautiful, dark-haired woman. The late Catherine Stern, I presumed. I kept pulling. I wanted to get to the top floor, but I didn’t know why, or what I’d do when I arrived there. Maybe I’d be like the Flying Dutchman, steering this dumbwaiter through eternity.
On the fourth floor, I sat on the shelf for a few seconds, jarred back to reality when the dumbwaiter started to descend. Someone was yanking my chain. Scurrying, I literally fell out of its door and onto the plush cream-colored carpet.
Even in my terror or, maybe, because of it—I couldn’t help but notice the Delft. This had to be Mister Robert’s suite. The room exuded masculinity and money. Heavy on wood and white, the Delft established the decor. Armoires full of it. An entire wall of plates, bowls, and cups. And a glassed-in cabinet, with a highly visible lock, displaying daggers. Dozens of daggers. In complete panic—would my killer arrive in the dumbwaiter or take the stairs?—I spun around, away from the daggers, as I sensed rather than heard someone behind me. It couldn’t be the hunter who’d been stalking me. He or she wouldn’t have had time to get up here. Who? I came full circle and stared into the glazed eyes of Robert Stern, looking a decade older than when I’d left him this afternoon and holding a bloody dagger. This time I didn’t stifle the scream.
“Barbara’s dead. Do you know that?” Stern spoke in a monotone, eyes downcast. “She came to tell me something. About Barry DeWitt and Dick. And Allison, I think. Now Barbara’s been murdered too. You must help me, my dear. You always have, Catherine. And I’ve always counted on you, darling, but now…”
The dumbwaiter had stopped moving. If Stern had killed Barbara, who was chasing me? And wouldn’t that person soon be joining us? I eyed the door. Stern blocked my way, but he seemed totally disoriented. I didn’t even look like Catherine. How could I escape and what—or who—awaited me on the stairs? Wait—of course—back stairs. All these old mansions had servants’ staircases. If I could just maneuver past Stern; maybe those stairs were located behind this room.
Once, with Modesty, on a tour of the turn-of-the-century Carnegie Hill homes, we’d learned that the rear staircases sometimes led to the master suites. But did I dare turn my back on a man wielding a dagger? Robert Stern made that decision for me. He lurched forward; it was hard to tell whether he’d felt faint and had fallen forward or if he’d taken aim at my abdomen. When he staggered, without thinking it through, I snatched the dagger from him and did an about-face. There were two doors. I ran toward them. The first entered into a basilica-sized bathroom; the second led to a stairwell. I bounded down those steps so fast that my heart now hurt almost as much as my upper arms.
After five flights, I wound up in the kitchen. Maybe I could sneak out the back way. As I mulled over that idea, I heard a loud rap on the kitchen door and a gruff voice demanded, “Let me in.” I fled out into the hall as someone started to break down the door.
If I could just climb up the staircase to the foyer, maybe the front door will still be open...or at least Stern and my stalker might be upstairs and I could get out anyway...
I’d made it to the Van Gogh, certainly not pausing this time to admire the painting, when a large figure descended the grand staircase, then swung around in my direction. I lifted the dagger, still dripping blood, as Ben Rubin yelled, “Jake, what the hell are you doing?”
Twenty-Three
By one thirty Sunday morning, we still hadn’t sorted it all out. But Ben no longer believed that I’d tried to kill him. He said he never had—not for a split second—however, the look of horror that had marred his handsome face and the extraordinary testy tone he’d used when he spotted the dagger, had told me otherwise. And Joe Cassidy, who’d battered down the kitchen door in time to see Ben’s reaction, treated me like Jake the Ripper. Hey, I was an intended victim here. Talk about your tangled webs.
Robert Stern, totally incoherent, had been taken to Mount Sinai, where a police guard would be posted outside his room. While he wasn’t officially under arrest yet for any of the three murders, he was being held as a material witness in Barbara’s stabbing.
Around midnight, the butler—his name was Lawrence Mann—had returned home. Mann had every other Tuesday and Saturday evening off, and as he did every week, he’d been visiting his sister in the Bronx. When he’d left the house, Barbara Ferris and Robert Stern had been eating a light supper and playing gin rummy in the library. “Yes,” the butler said, in response to Ben’s question, “Miss Barbara was indeed a frequent guest since Miss Catherine had passed away.”
“What was their relationship?” Ben asked.
Mann looked offended. “That information would not have been necessary for me to know in order to carry out my duties, sir.”
“Well,” Ben said, “it may be necessary for me to know in order to carry out mine. Just answer the question.”
“A gentleman’s gentleman doesn’t indulge in gossip, Detective Rubin. Even if I knew the length, breadth, and depth of their friendship, which I don’t, my lips would remain sealed.” Lawrence sounded like the insufferable prig he was, and Ben’s grim expression certainly intimidated me if not the butler.
“So, Lawrence,” I said, “was Mister Robert a player? You know, rumor has it he slept around and sexually harassed his employees, first Allison Carr, then Barbara Ferris. I might remind you that both those ladies have been stabbed to death with a Delft dagger. Probably from your gentleman’s collection. If you really want to help Robert Stern and not become an accessory after the fact”—this was the line Ben had used to scare me—“you’d better start talking, fast.”
“How dare you imply such salacious untruths about Mister Robert?” Lawrence was sputtering, spittle flying. “You little guttersnipe.”
I jumped out of the line of his sprinkle and then tried the line Modesty had tried on Glory Flagg. “The truth shall set you free.” Every once in a while, it’s good for a ghostwriter not to have to be creative.
Mann seemed to consider what I said. Then he sat, sinking into the cushions on the camelback sofa—we were in the library—and said, “Mister Robert deeply grieved for his wife. Visited her crypt once a week, kept her bedroom exactly as it was when she had slept there, never cleared away her clothes. Her closets and armoires are filled with her dresses, hats, and furs, all arranged as they were on the day she left us to live at that dreadful institution. Even Miss Catherine’s hairbrush is still on her vanity.” God—this really reeked of Rebecca. “I’m certain that his relationships with Ms. Carr and Ms. Ferris were companionable, not sexual.”
“And how would you know that?” I asked. Ben paused in his note taking, frowning, then giving me a glance that shouted “shut up.”
“Miss O’Hara, a butler knows these things. And if Mister Robert were indulging in that sort of unseemly behavior, it was not happening here.” Lawrence Mann squirmed for a second, then regained his composure.
“Unless, of course,” I said, “he only had sex with those ladies on alternate Tuesday or Saturday evenings while you were in the Bronx. Or in their homes or a hotel?”
The butler looked at me with disgust. “There were never any mussed—or stained—sheets when I returned home. Nor had Mister Robert changed the linens. Nothing untoward.” Mann lowered his eyes, then turned to Ben. “I suppose anything is possible, Detective Rubin. But I will never believe that of Mister Robert. And I assure you, there was never any evidence of a woman in this house.”
When the butler went to bed, I explained to Ben what had made me return to Robert Stern’s tonight.
“So it was the scent of a woman?” Ben shook his head. “That’s no reason to blithely bounce back into a murder scene. And why were you checking out Stern this afternoon? I thought you’d promised your mother—not to mention me—no more Nancy Drew.”
”Well…” I began, thinking now’s the time to confess, to share with Ben all the stuff that the ghostwriters and I had found out, share our theories, and to share my fear that his partner, Cassidy, remained convinced I was a killer.
“Jake, if you believe you’re helping, you’re not. So would you please stay out of this? All you are doing is making the case and my life more complicated.” His voice chilled my aching bones.
A ringing phone halted our conversation. Ben and I could hear it, loud and clear, but neither we nor the crime scene investigators could find where it was located. After the sixth or seventh ring, I heard someone shout from down the hall, “Miss O’Hara, it’s your mother.” When I walked into the dining room, the cop laughed. “The phone’s in your bag on the shelf in the wall.” I retrieved my tote from the dumbwaiter’s shelf, assured my mother that I was alive and well, and though I lived almost around the corner, was driven home at Ben’s command in a patrol car.
Gypsy Rose and my mother were waiting up for me, simultaneously relieved, upset, and angry with me. “Your mother’s been frantic, Jake. What were you thinking?”
“A mother never wants to see her daughter in danger,” mine said. “And you revel in it, even seek it out. But at least you usually call. I didn’t start to worry ’til midnight. Then I tried to reach you on your cellphone, but…”
“The phone had taken a solo ride in the dumbwaiter. Finally one of the cops heard it ringing.”
“God Almighty.” My mother rolled her eyes at Gypsy Rose. “Are you going to tell us what happened?”
Putting as positive a spin as I could on the evening’s events, I tried to reenact for my mother and Gypsy Rose what might have happened at Robert Stern’s. But I wasn’t sure myself. There seemed to be several scenarios; I gave a synopsis of each.
My mother poured hot chocolate. “So Barbara Ferris had been at Manhattan on the night of Dick Peter’s murder. And Isaac Walton had caught a whiff of her. Then you remembered a strong scent of…”
“Sex, Mom. Not romantic or passionate. Just basic, raw sex.” I sounded like a perfume pusher, waltzing around Bloomingdale’s cosmetic department spraying the helpless customers.
“Now Barbara’s dead too,” Gypsy Rose said.
“Right,” I said. “But did she kill Dick Peter? Had Robert Stern had an awakening? He’d worked late that night. Maybe later than he’d said. It’s possible that he saw or heard something and only connected it to Barbara today. Like Isaac recalling the scent. Stern could have remembered that Barbara sometimes wore that perfume. Or stumbled on some other clue or evidence. If he accused her and she attacked him—well, did he then grab the dagger and stab her?”
“Weren’t the daggers locked up in that cabinet?” my mother asked. “Would Robert Stern have handed his killer a dagger?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And, while Ben seriously considers Stern as a suspect in all three murders and is convinced that he went totally crazy tonight, none of the above explains who was chasing me around the mansion.”
“Obviously, the real killer,” Gypsy Rose said. “I’ve known Stern for decades, Jake. And I’m telling you, Robert Stern is no killer.”
“But…” I began.
“Now you just listen to me,” Gypsy Rose said. “During dinner—all four of us were having your favorite, honey, the sauerbraten—Christian asked if I could contact my spirit guide. For God’s sake, that old heathen wanted proof there is an afterlife, smack in the middle of my eating a divine potato pancake.”
“Even Aaron thought that was poor timing,” my mother said.
“Yes.” Gypsy Rose sighed. “And you both know how flighty Zelda Fitzgerald can be. I couldn’t contact her. My body must have craved the potato pancakes more than my spirit sought Zelda. Or maybe she was busy with the Murphys. So I failed Christian in his feeble search for faith. I know I can try again in future lifetimes, but I’d kind of hoped this lifetime would be it for Christian and me. Meeting so late into it and all. We’re destined to flirt through eternity, I guess. It reminds me of Paris right after World War I, when Christian—his name was Armand then—fell in love with a much older writer. Colette. He died so young that time around—from his war wounds—I never had a chance. Later, I fell in love with Edgar Cayce. Lord, I do wish Zelda had shown up. But guess who did? Though just for a cameo appearance. I certainly hadn’t channeled him. Not with Aaron Rubin at the table.”
“Who?” Once again, I found myself hanging on every word of Gypsy Rose’s conversations with the dead.
“Your father, Jake.” Gypsy Rose smiled. “But I spoke to him by telepathy, without revealing who he was. No need to make Aaron jealous, right?”
“Right,” I said, thinking Dad’s long gone; why should Aaron be upset if he’d popped back for a visit? Then I shivered. Sometimes my thought processes proved to be every bit as weird as Gypsy Rose’s.
“Jack’s very worried about you, Jake,” Gypsy Rose said. “He gave me a message for you. ‘Tell Jake to cherchez la femme. And to never turn her back on anyone.’ Now there’s your proof. Robert Stern is an innocent—if crazy—man.”
Who was left of the women suspects, now that Barbara was dead? Mila and Glory. The long shot—Jennifer Moran. I searched my mind. No one else, unless…unless Sally Lou hadn’t been covering for Isaac, but for herself. Maybe the message from the world beyond only meant that a woman would tell me whodunit. Or maybe there wasn’t any message except in the medium’s mind.
I stared at Gypsy Rose. “Well, for sure someone other than Stern was after me tonight and managed to slip out the front door while Ben was checking out the second floor. And I’d bet that someone is our killer.” The stricken look on my mother’s face made me wish I could swallow those words.
“Jake, this has to stop. Now. Ben Rubin called me while you were being driven home. You are not a detective, and you could be the next victim. I want you to come to Mass with me in the morning. We’ll talk to your father, light a few candles, pray for a resolution. Maybe Gypsy Rose can contact Dick Peter, but you are off this case.”
Knowing when to quit, at least temporarily, I kissed my mother and Gypsy Rose good night and went to bed.
Twenty-Four
Returning from Mass at Saint Thomas More’s, where we’d left a blaze of candles in our wake, I suggested breakfast at Three Guys. The diner, located at Carnegie Hill’s northern border at 96th and Madison, was something of an area anomaly, reminding Mom and me of our Queens roots. And today, on the Sunday preceding All Soul’s Day, my mother’s nostalgia roared full throttle ahead.
First, there hadn’t been enough space on the envelope provided to all the parishioners to list their dearly departed for special remembrance during the All Soul’s Day masses. “Only twelve lines,” my mother complained. “I have at least fifteen people in Purgatory needing prayers. Well, certainly some of them, like your sainted grandmother and your father are in Heaven, but I like to hedge my bets. And that number doesn’t include your father�
�s Aunt Bess. She was a tough old bird, drank like a longshoreman, but I believe she deserves to be remembered. Bess was a spinster, you know. And she has no one else left behind to fill in her name or to pray for her—and let that be a lesson to you, Jake—so I feel responsible.” My mother stuffed twenty dollars in the envelope, licked it sealed, and started another. “There’ll be some blank spaces left on this second one. Do you have any dead souls’ names you’d like to add, dear?” I gave her three.
Then the candles were in short supply. My mother, who dropped a bundle on blazes on an ordinary Sunday, wasn’t to be thwarted so close to All Soul’s Day. The dead were counting on her. Mom tapped an angelic-looking altar boy on the shoulder, while the kid was still part of the recessional, for God’s sake, and sent him trotting back to the sacristy to dig up some candles. The pastor himself hand-delivered them to Mom. He knew better than to rebuff a regular at his vigil lights’ slots. Leaving more candles glowing in the dim vestibule than in any soap opera’s hottest sex scene, we finally walked out of church and into the clear, bright sunshine.
The pre-Halloween weather had us wrapped in layers. There’s an unwritten law in our house—you can’t don a winter coat before Veterans Day. A raincoat over a blazer over a cotton turtleneck, swathed with a scarf, worn with gloves and boots is acceptable, but a winter coat must remain closeted ’til November 11th. So I suffered, both from the cumbersome clothes and the chill wind. Poached eggs, pancakes, and lots of hot coffee would be the perfect breakfast. And Three Guys was the perfect place to get it. I began to cheer up.
After we ordered, Mom said, “Let’s watch Terms of Endearment tonight, Jake. I do so identify with Amanda.” It didn’t take Freud to figure out that Mom was worried about losing her only daughter and, none too subtly, letting her know it. I counteroffered, suggesting All of Me—one of my favorite movies—and a far more positive approach to death. We were still debating when our poached eggs arrived. I changed the subject back to our dear departed relatives, and Mom launched into six consecutive cancer-deathbed horror stories as we ate.
