Murder and Blueberry Pie

by Frances

  “Well,” he said, “there’s the Reverend Teller. Her minister.”

  “The reverend who?” Shapiro asked, feeling, obscurely, that he was being followed.

  “Walter Aaron Teller,” the sergeant said. “Pastor of the First Congregational. Why not?”

  “No reason,” Shapiro said. “He’d be fine. The pastor for some years?”

  “Going on fifty,” the sergeant said. “Old man when I was a kid in Sunday school. Anyway, he seemed old. You want me to send somebody along?”

  Shapiro did. Preferably as inconspicuously as possible.

  “Be all over town, any way we do it,” the sergeant said. “Everything always is. But however you want it.”

  The Reverend Mr. Walter Aaron Teller was tall, gaunt; he wore sober gray which suggested, without being, clerical garb. He had kind eyes. Samuel Newberry, Jr., on being asked, looked to him, not to the trooper in a business suit, certainly not to Nathan Shapiro.

  “It will do no harm, Samuel,” the Reverend Mr. Teller said, in a gentle voice—an aged, gentle voice.

  Newberry raised the lid of the coffin of Mrs. Abigail Montfort. The face was narrow in death; the nose jutted.

  “Yes,” Mr. Teller said. Then, in a kind voice, “She looks very natural, Samuel.” Newberry accepted praise with appropriate gravity and lowered the coffin lid and secured it. “That is all you wanted?” the Reverend Mr. Teller said to Shapiro. “To be sure that the body is that of Mrs. Montfort? You may be. I knew her for many years.”

  “That’s all,” Shapiro said. “Thank you, doctor.”

  The clergyman was incurious, which was proper (Shapiro supposed) for clergymen. The curiosity of a detective must be insatiable. Well, his was now satisfied, on this particular—and never very moot—point. A recluse had not been impersonated over a period of years, impersonated even in her coffin; had not died long ago, intestate, or leaving a will not approved of; not been, in a sense, brought back to life and falsely established as alive, with a signature so established too. In due course, a suitable will had not been written for her by another hand. None of this had happened. One Mrs. Banks, née Farthing, could not, therefore, have stumbled on the truth and been killed because of that.

  Like most of my theories, Shapiro thought, glumly. The other one was better. I wish I were more perceptive about people. If I were any good at this, I would be. That’s what a detective needs—hunches about people. Weigand has them, but he’s in the right job. Me—

  He shrugged his thin shoulders, in resignation. One was what one was. He was only Nathan Shapiro, a fairly good shot with a .38.

  “If you say so, Bill,” Shapiro said into a telephone at the police barracks, after a rather long conversation with Captain William Weigand. “It won’t do any harm, I suppose. Although I don’t know quite what to look for.”

  Funeral services for the late Mrs. Abigail Montfort were held at two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, the twenty-eighth of August, at the First Congregational Church, the pastor officiating. The First—there is no Second—Congregational Church is, of course, the largest in Glenville.

  Mrs. Montfort’s funeral was well attended. The parking lot was almost filled when Shapiro nosed his rented car into it, and not a few of the cars were stately and of a more commodious day, and several of them were occupied by chauffeurs who might (Nathan Shapiro thought without quite believing it) once have been coachmen. The MG near which he parked looked brazen, out of place. Shapiro walked to the church door slowly, behind an ancient woman who leaned heavily on a cane. The church rumbled with the soft, sad music of the organ, and the scent of flowers was heavy. (Bourgelotti’s Nursery had seldom filled so many orders for funeral sprays.)

  Precisely what he was doing there, was not clear to Detective Nathan Shapiro. Captain Weigand had suggested that, since he was already in Glenville, he might as well attend the funeral, on the off chance. The off chance of what did not appear. Shapiro had, in his time, attended, on more or less the same off chance, a number of funerals, but usually those of persons who had met death by violence. Nothing, so far as he could recall, had ever come of any such attendance. However—tradition is not to be flouted. He wondered, slightly, why Robert Oliver was also in attendance (as evidenced by the MG) but supposed that reporters, also, attend many funerals, on, possibly, off chances. Oliver and—yes—the pretty Mrs. Williams, who had such an ear for voices. The back of their heads looked very young in the assemblage, from where Shapiro sat, in the last row of pews.

  Lois was not entirely clear why she was there, either. Except that she had been invited, and had never before, so far as she could remember, been invited to a funeral. “Want to come along?” Bob had asked, explaining that he had decided to cover the ceremony himself. “You’ll see all the ancient of Glenville, probably.”

  She was, she thought, seeing them, in the big auditorium, in which the scent of flowers seemed to ride on the slow roll of music. The coffin, on a trolley, was at the head of the aisle, under a blanket of white roses. The pew to the right of it was empty, as was that to the left. Then Mrs. Ella Harbrook, tall and heavy in black, came up the aisle with Keating—in a dark suit—holding her arm, guiding. They sat in the front pew on the left. The pew on the right remained empty. For the family, probably. The grandson?

  For the grandson, evidently. The music had stopped and a tall, black-haired man came, alone, from an anteroom to the right and sat, alone, in the front pew. She looked up at Bob Oliver beside her, and he nodded, bent toward her, said, “Yes, that’s Blake Montfort.”

  Blake Montfort turned his head and looked across the center aisle at Ella Harbrook and her nephew. He looked at them, steadily, for several seconds and his face, seen in profile, had a kind of harshness in it. He had a prominent nose—a nose which jutted, resolutely, from his face.

  “The Pruitt nose, all right,” Bob whispered to her. “Abigail was a Pruitt, you know. And—”

  The Reverend Mr. Teller, tall and old and carrying gentleness with him, stood beyond the coffin. He said, “Let us pray….”

  Nathan Shapiro was one of the first to leave the church, remaining as inconspicuous as was, under the adverse circumstances, possible. Nothing had come of it, as he had assumed nothing would. He was the first out of the parking lot, and took the rented car back and—after waiting an hour with no very good place to wait—caught a bus back to New York. None of it had come to anything, which didn’t mean that something hadn’t gone on. It was only, Shapiro thought, that he hadn’t been bright enough to find out what it was.

  Shapiro stared gloomily from the bus window at the countryside, which had cows in it and—that was certainly an oddly shaped cow. Seemed to have what they called antlers. New kind of cow, probably…

  She was certainly, and suddenly, seeing a good deal of Robert Oliver. Dinner with him again tonight. Met half a dozen times, perhaps, over a period of several years and now—going to funerals with him. And, locking doors carefully—doors usually not bothered with—because he told her to.

  She undressed in the warmth of the late summer night. It seemed to have grown much warmer, and the humidity was, obviously, going up. She pushed the sheet back and lay naked on the bed, and the moving air touched her softly. A sadness came then, with the air’s caress—to be shut away from air, put under the ground— To be alive and young and—breathe deep, Lois; fill yourself with life and—

  Why, half asleep, was she thinking about a nose? Her nose? No, not her nose— “I didn’t mean you had a neck like a goose. Very pretty neck—” What, then? The something nose— Of course—“the Pruitt nose.” That Mrs. Montfort’s grandson had, because his grandmother was a Pruitt. Was that what Bob had meant?

  Obviously, she had misunderstood. Because poor old Mrs. Montfort—out of the air, now; earth around her now—hadn’t had a nose of any special kind. That, beyond doubt, she would have noticed even in the semi-darkness of the old cannon-ball house. A nose as dominating as Blake Montfort’s—even one scaled to the dimensi
ons of an old woman’s crumpled face—that, beyond any possible doubt, she would have noticed, would now remember. And she didn’t—

  Well—no doubt it was something that only male Pruitts, and the male descendants of Pruitts—what had she been thinking about?—she couldn’t remember—she—

  She slept.

  Mrs. Simpson did hope it wouldn’t rain. The house tour was “to go on rain or shine” but there was no use Deceiving Themselves. If it rained—and over the long Labor Day weekend it usually did rain—people were not going to drive around in it, and get out of cars (probably parked at some distance, and likely to get stuck in mud) and walk through a downpour, and puddles, to look at old houses. However firmly they were told that they should.

  It was not, to be sure, raining on Friday—partly cloudy and very warm and humid, but not raining. It was particularly warm and humid in the Community House, where Lois took her turn at a table, ready to sell tour tickets. Business was not brisk; it was not to be expected that business would be brisk. People in their right minds, and however addicted to old houses, would wait until the day itself and see what came up—and also, of course, what came down in the way of cloudbursts. Perhaps a tour of old houses; perhaps an afternoon at the Glenville Beach—a community-made beach on the edge of a lake, spring-fed, hill-surrounded.

  Lois sat behind the table—“Tour Tickets Here”—from two until four in the afternoon, and sold two tickets. Mrs. Simpson came to relieve and said that, oh dear, she was so worried and she did hope it wasn’t a Complete Fiasco and “you run along now dear and remember we’re Counting On You for tomorrow.” Lois said she would, and ran and, home, took the longest possible shower and put on the fewest possible clothes and went to pant on the terrace. It was almost six before the MG snorted in the driveway and Bob Oliver got out of it, wearing walking shorts and a polo shirt. He had knobby knees, Lois noticed. He also looked very tired. She mentioned the latter.

  “All day over a hot typewriter,” he said. “The holiday throws a wrench in, as usual. You get the tour programs all right?”

  She had. She got them both long drinks, with much ice. He said, “Phew!” and sipped from his glass and stretched out long legs and appeared to go to sleep. After some time he said, “Our friend Shapiro’s given us up as a bad job. Gone back to town.”

  “I know,” she said. “We found that out yesterday morning.”

  He said, “What?” as if he were indeed half asleep and then, “Oh. He was around after that. Went to the funeral. Somebody—Howdy Graham as a matter of fact—saw him there. And—he had a look at Mrs. Montfort. Apparently to make sure it was Mrs. Montfort. Asked the Reverend Mr. Teller to identify her. The rev. did. Or so Sammy Newberry says. Sort of annoyed Sammy, when he thought it over. Seemed to imply that they were switching corpses.”

  There was another long pause—a relaxed pause. Then Bob said, “Apparently he couldn’t find the right end to pull, either,” and she said, “Huh?”

  “Of the tangle,” he said. “As we couldn’t. So—the tangle remains unmolested. And—the tanglers.”

  “It just stays there?” she said. “Up in the air?”

  “For all me,” he said. “Probably it’s plain as the nose on your face—no, make it my face—make it Shapiro’s face—but—” He shrugged. He drank. He said, “How do you manage to look so cool?”

  “Because I haven’t got much of any—” she said, and stopped, and wondered if she were blushing, and thought there was certainly no point in—and probably very little need of—bringing that up. Change the subject, before he pursued it. “Speaking of noses,” she said, quickly, “what did you mean about the Pruitt nose?”

  For a moment he looked puzzled.

  “Oh,” he said, then, “on Blake Montfort’s face? The Pruitts are notable for noses. Down to collateral descendants. Mate with a Pruitt and win the nose and—”

  “But,” she said, “Mrs. Montfort didn’t have one. Was it only the men—”

  And stopped, because he suddenly sat up and put his drink down and—glared at her. He said, “What do you mean by that?” as if in anger.

  “What I just this minute said,” she told him. “What did you think? Mrs. Montfort didn’t have any special sort of nose. That—a nose like Blake Montfort’s I certainly would have noticed even with no light to see by and—”

  “Now you tell me!” he said—almost shouted. “Now, for God’s sake. All this intangible business about a tone of voice and—” He spread his hands, hopelessly—hopeless, too evidently, of her. He seemed to steady himself.

  “Lois,” he said, “Mrs. Montfort was a nice old thing. She was a sweet old thing. And—she had a nose like a beak. And you—it never occurred to you to mention—He sighed again, sighed infuriatingly.

  “And you,” she said—“you towering intellect—I suppose when you describe people it’s by what they haven’t got? What did he look like? ‘Well, he didn’t have a big nose. He didn’t have two heads.’ He didn’t—you—you—oaf! Why didn’t you say she had a big nose?”

  He looked at her thoughtfully, almost in perplexity.

  “You’re right, of course,” he said, and spoke slowly, with a kind of surprise in his voice. “I never did. I don’t know—I just thought of her as old Mrs. Montfort. As—an entity, I guess. Not feature by feature. It was only when I saw Montfort yesterday that the nose—the Pruitt nose—became—well, a point of identification. It’s—it’s not very clear, is it? I suppose what I’m trying to say is that one takes familiar things so much for granted that they—well, for practical purposes, cease to exist. A sign of a slovenly mind, of course. But—there it is, my dear. And—I apologize, as usual.”

  “Oh,” she said. “As for that—I do see what you mean—I guess. I’ll make another—”

  Another would, he told her, be fine. But he thought he’d better make a telephone call first.

  XIII

  There was a side road a quarter of a mile before, coming from the center, one reached the home of the late Abigail Montfort. Lois pulled her car into it, turned the car around, and parked. Leave the visitors all the parking space possible. Apparently they were going to need it. All at once, there had been a line formed to buy tickets. There had been need of another table. They had still been buying when she left Responsibility in the welcoming hands of Mrs. Simpson and came to take up station.

  It was rather surprising how well they were doing, on a day as hot as this. Left to her own devices, Lois thought, she would be in the Glenville lake on an afternoon such as this was, and was increasingly going to be. Take a handful of this air, even now in early afternoon, and you’d have something palpable enough. One could squeeze it and wring out moisture. She tried that, walking toward the cannon-ball house. Well, not literally. All the same, her palm was damp.

  When the storm came it was going to be a honey. Or a lulu. But with any luck, the tour would be over long before then—“very warm and humid, with a chance of thundershowers at night.” Nothing about thundershowers between the hours of one and five in the afternoon.

  The heavy door of the old house was open. As she stepped up onto the porch, John Keating came to the door to meet her. Now do as planned—greet him as if nothing were going on.

  “There are,” Lois said, smiling her best, her lightest smile, “going to be lots of them. Droves. Beyond anybody’s expectations.”

  “Fine,” he said. “The other young lady—I’m afraid her name —anyway, she’s here.”

  “Mary Simpson,” Lois said. “For the library.”

  She looked in on Mary Simpson, who was eighteen and roundfaced and learning to Accept Responsibility, under the direction of her mother. Mary sat, in a white dress, on the library’s horsehair sofa and accepted somewhat grimly. It could not be contended that Mary was in any sense a volunteer. Lois suspected that, under the innocence of the white dress, a bathing suit lurked in readiness.

  Lois said, “Hi,” to Mary Simpson and got, in return, a somewhat disconsolate “Hi yourse
lf.”

  Lois went back into the big central hall, with its big fireplace, with a narrow staircase rising out of it. There was a length of clothesline barring the stairs.

  “All right?” Keating said. “It doesn’t look very hospitable but—”

  It was as arranged; arranged that morning. Mrs. Harbrook was still not feeling up to much, Keating had reported, by telephone. She hadn’t, for example, felt able to fix up things on the second floor. And if things weren’t fixed up—well, what would people think? So would it be all right just to show the downstairs rooms—library and living room and, of course, kitchen? After all, there wasn’t really too much upstairs. A good many rooms, all very low of ceiling.

  “Perfectly all right,” Lois said. “Isn’t it hot, though?”

  Keating agreed that it was hot. He was a pleasant, smiling man—a plumpish, youngish man. For a moment Lois thought, It’s all a perfectly ridiculous mistake. To suspect this obviously harmless, ordinary man of—of anything. He took a cigar out of his pocket and started to bite off the tip and then said, “Uh-oh, almost forgot. Set a bad example, wouldn’t I?” and put the cigar back in his pocket. “With the bucket of sand all ready.”

  An obedient man; a man housebroken.

  Lois went into the living room. The curtains were pulled back now; through one window some sunlight came. It was lighter than it had been before, if still not very light. There was no old woman, minutes away from death, huddled in a low chair in the darkest corner. There was, in fact, no chair in the corner at all. (Only—I must remember, but not show I remember—it wasn’t really an old woman. And she was more than twenty-four hours away from death. If we are right.) She looked at the corner in which the chair no longer stood. If she had had a prominent nose, as prominent as they say, I would have remembered it, Lois reassured herself. I know I would.

  A door stood open in the rear wall. Lois went through it and through a short and narrow passage, with cupboards—H and L hinges on the cupboard doors—and into the kitchen. Another big dark fireplace there, complete with crane and, at the side—yes, a dutch oven. And on the wall opposite the fireplace (and opposite, also, the anachronism of an electric range) copper utensils glowing against the wall. Mrs. Harbrook had, at any rate, been up to those. They gleamed like—like gold. They looked, as people said, “like a million dollars.”