Family Vault

by Charlotte MacLeod

  She put on the coffeepot and reheated the chowder, got out bowls and pilot biscuit, relieved to be doing something for somebody. The two of them sat down at the kitchen table and spooned up the hot savory stuff, not trying to make conversation. Sometimes the food got stuck in Sarah’s throat, but she forced herself to swallow and the effort did her good. The policeman’s bowl was empty, though, before she was halfway through.

  “Please let me get you some more. And what is your name? You’re being such a friend in need, I can’t simply go on calling you Officer.”

  “It’s Jofferty,” he told her, “Sergeant Walter Jofferty.”

  “How do you do,” said Sarah mechanically. “My father’s name was Walter. I should have said that I’m Sarah Kelling. My husband is—was—Alexander, and his mother was Caroline. I expect Mr. Lomax told you that”

  “Yes, he did. I guess that car was a real old-timer.”

  “A nineteen-twenty Milburn. Alexander’s grandmother used to drive it”

  “How come you—”

  “Didn’t get killed with the others?” Sarah made a poor job of smiling at her attempted joke. “I stayed home to make the chowder. The Milburn wasn’t really comfortable for us all to fit in together, and Aunt Caroline enjoyed riding in it much more than I did. She was blind and deaf, you see, so—”

  “Oh, sure. You liked to give her what pleasures you could. Pretty helpless, was she?”

  “Oh, no, far from that. She was perfectly able to get about and take care of herself so long as she knew where things were. She could read and write Braille and converse if people spelled out words into the palm of her hand. She’s been very active in civic affairs with her friend Mrs. Lackridge, whom you may have heard of. They work as a team. Aunt Caroline writes reports and so on, and Leila does the contact part. Leila’s very good at hand signaling, she and my husband. I’m not fast enough, myself. Aunt Caroline gets impatient. I keep forgetting she’s—”

  “That’s only natural, Mrs. Kelling. These things take a while to get used to. How about some more coffee?”

  “Not for me, thank you. I seem to have this permanent lump in my throat, as though I’d swallowed an orange whole.”

  Sarah pushed away her still-unfinished chowder. “What I don’t understand, Sergeant Jofferty, is how the car went out of control. What was it that child said?”

  “It wasn’t a child. It was a young guy maybe twenty-two or three, who seemed to be a credible witness. He told us the car came over the crest of the hill fast, zoomed down the hill like a rocket, failed to make the turn at the bottom and sailed right up over the seawall, flipping upside down when it struck the top of the wall. Both passengers were thrown out on to the rocks.”

  “But Alexander would never take that hill fast! He’d have to gun the motor to get up, but the brakes would be on all the way down.”

  “We can only assume the brakes failed.”

  “They couldn’t have. My husband was an expert mechanic.”

  “It was a very old car,” said Jofferty.

  “I know. Perhaps the only Milburn in the world still being driven by the family that bought it. He loved the Milburn.”

  Sarah was afraid she was going to cry again. She got up and started to clear the table. “I suppose I’ll have to start thinking about—arrangements.”

  “If you’ll let them know down at the station who your undertaker is, we’ll handle it with him. You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

  That sounded pretty inane. Jofferty went on hastily, “As for the car, I don’t know if there’s enough to salvage, but we can try if you want.”

  “No, let the ocean take it. I could never—” Sarah started to tremble again.

  “Mrs. Kelling,” said the policeman, “Jed tells me you folks live in Boston and were just here for the weekend. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll get some of your relatives to drive you back there and spend the night with you.”

  “I can drive myself. I have another car here. A nineteen fifty Studebaker Starlite coupé.”

  Sarah began to laugh too shrilly, caught Jofferty’s worried look, and sobered down. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be able to manage now. I know this has been terrible for you, and I’ve behaved dreadfully, but I do want to thank you for your great kindness.”

  “That’s okay. You take care of yourself. Give us a call if there’s anything else we can do. Thanks for the chowder.”

  He unfolded his length from the kitchen chair and reached for the uniform cap he’d tossed on the counter by the sink.

  “By the way, your husband didn’t happen to be upset? About your mother-in-law’s condition, or anything?”

  “Upset enough to make him commit murder and suicide, you mean? Why didn’t you ask me that in the first place?”

  “Now, Mrs. Kelling, don’t get excited.”

  “I’m not excited.”

  Sarah was shaking so she could hardly get the words out. “If you think my husband would do a thing like that, you’d better think again. His mother’s condition was no worse than it had been for the past twenty years and he—he loved me very much.”

  She had to blow her nose in a hurry. “He’d never do a thing like this to me, never! And he wouldn’t have let any harm come to the Milburn. He was going to leave it to the Larz Anderson Museum. It’s right in his will.”

  She blew her nose again. “I suppose you’re thinking any wife would say the same, but it happens to be true. I’ve known Alexander Kelling ever since I was born, and you never knew him at all.”

  “We have to ask these things,” sighed Jofferty. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hope you are! Furthermore, I don’t believe those brakes failed. Alexander could take the Milburn apart and put it together again in his sleep. He’d know in two minutes if the car wasn’t running quite right. And he’d have come straight home to fix it, not try to tackle that ghastly cliff road.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Kelling, so he didn’t do it on purpose and there was nothing wrong with the car. What’s the alternative? Did your husband have any history of heart trouble, high blood pressure, dizzy spells, anything of that sort? He wasn’t exactly a youngster, was he?”

  “Not exactly,” Sarah had to admit. “He hadn’t been feeling awfully well these past few days. I wanted him to see the doctor, but then we—we thought everything was going to be all right. He acted so much better, we thought a—quiet weekend by the ocean—it was my idea!”

  “Sure, sure. Look, it happens to everybody sooner or later. At least we know he didn’t have time to suffer.”

  Sarah didn’t even try to answer. She managed to hold herself in check until Sergeant Jofferty was out of the house. Then she threw herself into one of the broken down armchairs—the one she’d sat in last night when Alexander told her not to go away because he wanted to look at her. He wouldn’t have wanted to see her bawling like this, but what else was there to do?

  16

  AFTER A LONG TIME, Sarah sat up straight and wiped her eyes on the tea towel Sergeant Jofferty had put into her hand. Sitting here wailing her heart out wasn’t going to bring Alexander back. She must get to a telephone and let Edith know what happened before the old retainer heard the news on television. She must hurry back to Boston and begin the dreary work of contacting the undertaker, calling Aunt Marguerite and Cousin Dolph and the rest of the clan, canceling Aunt Caroline’s appointments, getting food in the house, doing all the futile tasks the living have to perform for the dead.

  Leila and Harry would be desolated. She ought to get in touch with them, but how could she when she didn’t know where they were? Sarah was trying to force herself to abandon the spurious haven of the armchair when Lomax knocked at the side door and let himself in without waiting for her.

  “Miz Alex, I expect you must o’ heard—”

  “Yes, I know, Mr. Lomax. Sergeant Jofferty from the police came and told me. He said you were the one who—”

  “Shucks. I done what I could. ’Twasn’t much.”


  Lomax had paid her the courtesy of taking off the filthy swordfisherman’s cap he generally kept on to show his customers they were no better than he for all their money. He was running his hands around and around the edge of the stiff peak; long, knowledgeable hands, like Alexander’s.

  “The police think the brakes failed on the Milburn,” she told him. “Can you imagine Mr. Alex taking the cliff road if he weren’t absolutely certain they’d hold?”

  The handy man shifted from one worn out sneaker to the other, reluctant as always to commit himself. “He sure was partic’lar about that old electric,” he conceded at last.

  “Then could you please tell me what went wrong?”

  “I dunno, Miz Alex, but somethin’ sure as hell did. I never seen such a Godawful mess in all my born days.”

  His lips drew back from his teeth and he began to sweat. Sarah could understand why.

  “Oh, Mr. Lomax, what a ghastly experience for you! Sit down and let me get you something to drink.”

  The man shied off as though she’d made an indecent suggestion. “Naow, Miz Alex, don’t you fret yourself over me. I just come by to see if I could give you a hand shuttin’ up the house or anythin’. Don’t s’pose you intend to stay the night here, though I daresay I could find somebody to keep you comp’ny if you was o’ mind to. Miz Lomax ain’t feelin’ too peart these days, but I don’t doubt but what I could get her sister Beetrice over from Gloucester. You know Beetrice, she’s been here time an’ again to help with parties an’ such.”

  “Yes, I remember her very well. That’s awfully kind of you, but I must get moving as soon as I can pull myself together. There’s so much to do, and it looks as though you and I are the only ones left to do it. Please turn off the water and do whatever else you think needs to be taken care of. Oh, and there’s a fresh pot of chowder on the stove that I wish you’d take home. Since your wife isn’t well, it will save her having to cook. I—I made it for my—”

  “That’s right nice of you, Miz Alex,” Lomax broke in hastily. “Miz Kelling, I s’pose I ought to say now. Cripes a’mighty it don’t feel right, does it? I ’member Alex a little boy in short pants helpin’ me draw the lobster pots.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll bring back the pot in the mornin’.”

  “Don’t bother,” Sarah told him. “I don’t expect I’ll ever use it again.”

  “Means you’re plannin’ to sell?”

  There was alarm behind the question, and Sarah knew why. Estates like this one didn’t get sold to private families any more, only to developers who tore down the barny old mansions and put up golf courses or supermarkets or rows of cracker-box houses whose owners weren’t likely to hire an aging caretaker with a sick wife. Sarah shook her head.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mr. Lomax. Until you asked, it hadn’t occurred to me that the place would be mine to sell. You’d better plan to carry on as usual for the time being. I might decide to get rid of the Boston house instead, and perhaps have that old coachman’s flat over the carriage house fixed up so I can stay here year round. If I do, you’ll have to supervise the work, which would mean giving me quite a lot of extra time for a while. Could you?”

  She made the suggestion mainly because she couldn’t endure that stricken look on Lomax’s face, but it might not be such a bad idea, at that. She’d rather be out here with the bluejays and the woodchucks than have to go on living in Aunt Caroline’s house surrounded by relatives and elderly acquaintances who’d all be trying to manage her life for her. Being free to go where she pleased, spend as she pleased would be a new experience. She must not make snap decisions she’d live to regret. Alexander wouldn’t want that. Dear God, if he were only coming back!

  At least she’d got Lomax looking a shade less grim. “Sure thing, Miz Alex,” he was saying, “I’d be glad to handle the whole shebang for you ’cept the plumbin’ and wirin’. Got to have a license for that. But I know a couple o’ good men, an’ I’d see you didn’t get skinned. Just you think it over an’ call me any time, day or night.”

  He crab-walked himself to the kitchen. A moment later, she saw him through the window, carrying the chowder pot by its wire bail to his rusted out station wagon. That was one thing taken care of, at any rate. Sarah went to the kitchen, washed up the few dishes she and Sergeant Jofferty had used, and left them to drip on the drainboard. That small sign of human occupancy made the place look one degree less forsaken.

  Now that she was on her feet again, it became possible to start getting ready for the drive to Boston. She supposed she ought to change. The news must have come over the radio or television by now and the clans might already have started to gather by the time she got to Beacon Hill. Sooner or later, she’d have to do something about the luggage Alexander and his mother had brought with them. Not now. There were limits to what a person could stand.

  Sarah hardly recognized her own face in the mirror. Her skin was puffy and blubbered from so much crying, greenish purple around the eyes, patched with red at the cheekbones. Wisps of hair stuck to her forehead. She looked like something washed up by the tide.

  The shivering began again. What if that young man hadn’t happened to be watching when the Milburn went over the seawall? They might still be down there, or carried away on the outgoing current with no sign left to show what became of them. That would be worst of all, never to know.

  But she still didn’t know what had actually occurred, only what little she’d been told. It didn’t seem possible Alexander had suffered a sudden collapse. He was always punctilious about medical checkups, kept himself in trim, didn’t smoke, and was practically a teetotaller compared to some of her male relatives and acquaintances.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have let him take that long walk on the beach, or told him about Tim O’Ghee and the rest of it. His nerves might have started playing up again. No, she didn’t think so. He’d been fine at lunch, and if he had started to feel tired or tense he’d have brought the Milburn back at once rather than take any risk with the vehicle.

  Nevertheless, it had happened. Took off like a rocket, the witness said. How could that be possible? Sarah sat down on the edge of the bed she had shared last night with Alexander, and tried to recall various things he’d told her about the Milburn.

  Like other electric cars, it ran on batteries. Could someone have taken out the regular batteries and put in stronger ones? The Milburn’s easy-change system took only a few minutes, according to a yellowed advertisement Alexander had kept hanging in the shed, but wouldn’t a surge of extra power blow out the wiring and make the car stop short instead of going faster?

  Once, ages ago, when Alexander took her for one of their trolley-car rides, he’d shown her how the motor-man kept pressing the switch to get up speed, then letting the car coast for a while. He’d explained that the trolley worked on the same principle as the Milburn.

  “What would happen if he didn’t stop pressing the switch?” she’d asked.

  “Plenty,” her cousin had replied with a laugh. “This isn’t like your father’s gasoline-powered car, that will keep going at the same rate so long as he keeps feeding it the same amount of gas. This is a direct-current series motor. As long as the current stays on, it keeps accelerating at a faster and faster rate. If the motorman didn’t let up on that switch as he’s doing, either the motor would fly apart from the strain or else this trolley car would zoom off the tracks and go straight into orbit.”

  Sarah had thought that sounded like great fun and tried to coax the motorman into keeping the power on, but he wouldn’t. Alexander wouldn’t, either. She knew exactly how her husband would take that hill, she’d seen him do it enough times. He’d start feeding current as the grade began to rise, keep the switch on until they were about halfway to the top, then ease off and let momentum carry the car over the crest. To pick up just enough speed and slack off at precisely the right moment required artful handling, but Alexander had been practicing ever since he was a
boy. He wouldn’t make a mistake.

  What if he’d tried to ease off the power and couldn’t? Sarah had been driving the Studebaker once when its gas pedal stuck. That was scary enough, but at least the engine hadn’t kept accelerating while she struggled to work her toe under the pedal and hook it back up.

  No, that couldn’t happen with the Milburn. As they began the steep descent, its dynamic braking relay would automatically have taken over and held the car back to a safe speed.

  What if the dynamic braking resistor were burned out, and Alexander didn’t know? Leaving the shed and going out on the level road, he’d have used the mechanical brake. That brake was adequate for general driving but would never have held the Milburn’s weight on a really bad hill. With its heavy engine and batteries, the midget electric weighed a great deal more than one would think to look at it. Without that dynamic braking resistor, they’d be out of control and over the wall before they realized what was happening.

  Nor was there any way Alexander could have tested the relay in advance. It only worked on steep downgrades, and there wasn’t another on their route. He’d have been perfectly confident the mechanism was in perfect order because he’d given the Milburn a thorough overhaul just before he put it up for the winter. The shed was secure, he’d taken every possible precaution against dampness, mice in the wiring, or any other mishap. Nothing had ever gone wrong before. Why should it happen now?

  The answer to that was plain enough. Somebody made it happen.

  Sarah stuffed the few things she meant to take back with her into a tote bag and rushed out to the Studebaker. As she was starting the engine, she heard another vehicle churning up the drive in low gear. That must be Lomax. She’d have to wait, since two cars couldn’t pass on that narrow lane.

  “Hope you ain’t been hangin’ around on account o’ me,” he called out when he saw her. “I figured you’d be gone by now. Gettin’ kind o’ late.”

  “I know it is,” she answered, “and I should have left ages ago, I’m glad I met you, though, because there’s something I want to ask you. When the policeman asked me about salvaging the Milburn I said not to bother, but now I’ve changed my mind. Do you think it’s too late?”