The Odd Job

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “All right, Charles, go ahead. Do your worst.”

  Charles’s worst was remarkably good. Having swathed his patroness in a tablecloth to keep the clippings from falling down inside the blouse, which hung a little too loosely on Sarah’s delicate frame, he went to work. In a matter of minutes, he had hacked off just enough of Noah’s beard to achieve the fashionable blue-jay’s-nest effect that Great-Aunt Matilda had been wont to produce for herself with one of Great-Uncle Frederick’s pearl-handled cutthroat razors and a misplaced faith in her own skill at barbering, rather than squander a few dollars at the hairdresser’s three or four times a year.

  And now for the makeup. Here was where Charles really shone and Sarah did not. By the time his sticks of greasepaint had done their unlovely job, he had obliterated the roses from her cheeks, dimmed the sparkle in her eyes, and, while not actually manufacturing wrinkles, managed to create an illusion that wrinkles were there. Even Max Bittersohn might not have recognized this haggard crone as his wife, or wanted to.

  The gray lisle stockings had presented a problem. Like most women of her generation, Sarah had gone directly from socks to panty hose. She knew little of garter belts, less of girdles; she had, however, seen some John Held drawings of jazz-age flappers with their stockings rolled just above or just below the knees. After a brief period of experimentation and with the help of two sturdy elastic bands, she was able to master the principle well enough for the purpose.

  The fact that the stockings bagged was in this case an asset. Great-Aunt Matilda’s had always bagged, so did Aunt Appie’s and dear old Anora Protheroe’s. Not Aunt Emma’s, of course; that gracious lady was still the essence of chic and would probably faint on the spot if she were to walk in just now and see what was happening to her favorite niece.

  Having wrecked her face, Charles was smearing horrible yellowish greasepaint on the backs of her hands, picking out the veins in an unwholesome blueish shade and adding brown liver spots here and there as the whimsy took him. Sarah wondered how she’d be able to wash her hands without ruining the effect, then she remembered a pair of plum-colored nylon gloves that Theonia used to wear with her bag-lady disguise. These could be taken along for emergency use, they would go quite nicely with the hat and the blouse, although they might seem a trifle on the dressy side for the muddy sneakers with the hole in the toe.

  No matter. The persona that Sarah had adopted was too old, too lame, and far too cranky to give a rap what she looked like. She tried on the jacket to her gray suit, decided it could use a little more antiquing, and asked Egbert if he’d mind walking over the lapels a few times. As always, he performed capably and added a few specks of lint from the dry mop for good measure.

  The strategy was all worked out, the forces deployed, there was nothing for Sarah to do but go. She didn’t want to be recognized by any of the Tulip Street neighbors, so she slipped out the basement door carrying her black Boston bag and Great-Aunt Matilda’s cane, and meandered through alleys and byways until she got to Park Street by the circuitous route that Aunt Caroline had worked out many years before and took the subway to North Station.

  Her timing was just about perfect. She joined a scattering of other people waiting to be picked up with their belongings and had just enough time to start looking impatient when Charles drove up in his borrowed car, sprang out to take her bag, and assisted her into the back seat where she could ease the wounded knee that was throbbing from her longish walk and the subway stairs that she’d had to climb.

  It would be lovely to see Davy. Sarah wondered if he’d recognize her under the makeup; she hoped he wouldn’t find her disguise too frightening. If he did, she’d just have to wash her face, thus destroying Charles’s artistry but keeping her son’s tender psyche intact. Actually she shouldn’t have much trouble putting her face back on if she had to; Charles had made up a package of cosmetics and a list of instructions on how to use them for the proper effect.

  “You wanted Ireson’s Landing first, right?” Charles said as he nosed his friend’s car out into the much-reviled Boston traffic.

  “Yes, Charles. I haven’t called Anne but she’s sure to be there. I just want to see how the plantings are coming along and explain why I’m wearing this Halloween outfit. Then you can take me on to the lake. Miriam Rivkin will give us something to eat, after that you’ll be free to go back to Boston and get rid of this car. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t use mine while I’m away, I just didn’t want to be seen with you for your own protection. I’ll call the house if I need a ride.”

  It would be perfectly safe for Sarah to telephone to the Tulip Street house. At one time, the library had been bugged, but that would not happen again. Brooks Kelling had taken care of any such attempts by installing a tape on which he had tastefully combined the buzz of the bumblebee, the whine of the mosquito, and the stridulating of the industrious cricket, all of these amplified to eardrum-shattering level. Anybody who tried any tricks on the historic Kelling brownstone—and there was no doubt that such things had been attempted at various times—would have got back his bugs a thousandfold, and an earache to boot.

  Now that they were across the Tobin Bridge and heading toward the north shore, Sarah could feel herself beginning to relax. She took off her left sneaker and propped up her aching leg with a couple of pillows that Charles’s friend must have left in the back seat. They weren’t particularly inviting but she was in no state to be picky. She pulled her faded hat brim farther down over her eyes and wondered how, or whether, she could make Anne understand why she’d been forced to masquerade as some long-forgottęn chip off the old Kelling block.

  By the time they reached Ireson’s Landing, Sarah had a nice little speech all thought out. And Anne was present to hear it. Her car was parked at the top of the drive, she was standing not far from it with a cream-colored chrysanthemum plant in one hand and a pale-yellow one in the other. Mr. Lomax’s truck was not to be seen, but a pervading odor of fish indicated that he hadn’t been gone long.

  Enough plants were already in the ground to show what was being created here. Instead of trying to impose her own will on the rough, stony hillside, Anne was working along with the terrain, letting a narrow gulley become a path leading to an expertly blended tapestry of bloom around a weatherworn boulder, pulling the eye to a clump of young birches among which a random setting of bronzy chrysanthemums blazed in startling contrast to the slim white trunks. Nothing was too overdone or too sparse, neither too flamboyant nor too subdued. Really, the woman was a wonder. Sarah put the sneaker back on, straightened her wrinkled skirt, and waited for Charles to help her out.

  It wasn’t until Charles slammed the car door after Sarah that Anne roused herself from her reverie and walked over to see who had arrived. “Oh, how do you do? I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone but the man who brings the fishheads. You’re—wait, it’s been so long, but I’d know a Kelling face anywhere. Ah, I have it! You’re Aunt Calpurnia from Virgin Gorda. What a lovely surprise, I do wish Cousin Sarah were here. This is her house, you know, they tore down the old one. I’m Percy’s wife, Anne; I’m sure you don’t remember me.

  Sarah cleared her throat and spoke in her own voice. “Oh yes, I remember you well, Anne. Don’t you know me?”

  “You’re not Aunt Calpurnia?”

  “No, just me.”

  “Sarah! I can’t believe it. You fooled me completely. Wait till I tell Aunt Bodie.”

  “You mustn’t! Sorry to be so abrupt, but—” Sarah couldn’t remember one word of her carefully worked-out speech. “Let’s go in and sit down, we need to talk. But first I have to tell you what a positively breathtaking job you’re doing here. I wouldn’t have believed our scrubby old hillside could look like this. Come on, you must be ready for a cup of tea. You did recognize Charles, surely?”

  “No, I didn’t, not a bit. My goodness, Charles, what have you done to yourself?”

  “Merely added a red wig and a pair of sideburns. If you ladies want to tal
k, would you mind my strolling down on the beach for a little while?”

  “Not at all,” said Sarah. “Just don’t go too far from the house, we’ll need to get on the road again fairly soon.”

  They watched him down the long flight of wooden steps that led from the top of the cliff to the rocky strand far below.

  “Should we have offered him some tea first?”

  Anne was stripping off her gardening gloves and canvas apron, looking wistfully at the plants that she’d been about to dig in among the fishheads, then eagerly back to this intriguing chameleon of a cousin.

  “No,” said Sarah. “Charles ate a huge breakfast. He’ll be fine until we get to the Rivkins’, you know how Miriam is about food. They’re keeping Davy for me, which is what I have to talk about. Part of it, anyway. Is the house unlocked?”

  “Yes, I always open a few windows when I come, you know how a place gets when it isn’t aired regularly.”

  “Really, Anne, you are a marvel. I gather Mrs. Blufert’s still under the weather.”

  “Apparently so. Mr. Lomax says it’s malaria that Mrs. Blufert picked up when she was stationed in the Philippines as a navy nurse. She comes down with a bout of it regularly once a year.”

  “My goodness,” said Sarah, “you know more about this place than I do. I’m glad to have found you alone, Anne, because I’m in some rather serious trouble. Charles put this getup together for me because I had to see you and didn’t dare show myself as I really am. The thing of it is, you see, that I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Sarah, you can’t mean it!”

  “I know, it sounds crazy, but there it is. Fill the kettle, will you? I’ll see what there is to eat, if anything.”

  “Please don’t fuss for me, Sarah. I’ve brought my lunch, it’s in the fridge. We could split an egg sandwich.”

  “Thanks, Anne. I had eggs for breakfast, but I wouldn’t mind snitching a piece of your stuffed celery. You don’t take milk in your tea, I hope; there doesn’t seem to be any.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I drink it plain more often than not.”

  Poor Anne, Sarah could see that her cousin-in-law was having a hard time bracing herself for a life-and-death secret. If this were a case of white fly or black spot or even cabbage worm, Anne would have faced the crisis without batting an eyelid, but the prospect of drinking tea with a dead relative was something else again. One could hardly blame her for clinging to inconsequentials.

  “I’m sorry I startled you, Anne,” Sarah apologized. “Here, try some of this havarti cheese, I just bought it Saturday morning. The crackers should be fresh enough. One has to keep them in a tin, you know, living so close to the water.”

  The kettle began to sing, the cups were set out, the teapot filled. Sarah decided it was safe to get down to business.

  “I didn’t dare just leave you hanging, Anne. Aunt Bodie’s already seen an obituary notice that somebody put in the Globe and is champing at the bit to get on with the funeral. Luckily Uncle Jem was at Tulip Street when she phoned, and rose to the occasion beautifully. He rambled on about how nothing could be done until Max came home and made her so furious that she hung up on him. You know Uncle Jem, one has to laugh when he puts on one of his performances. I do have to admit it was a trifle unnerving to look in the paper and read that I’d been jaywalking and got run over. Fortunately, whoever put it in spelled my name wrong and put Ireson Town instead of Ireson’s Landing, so I don’t suppose anybody except Aunt Bodie made the connection.”

  Anne was outraged. “What a detestable thing to do! I do hate practical jokes, they’re neither practical nor funny. Who do you think it was?”

  “Whoever is trying to kill me. Not to spoil your lunch, but just look at this.”

  Sarah pulled up her rumpled skirt and rolled her gray stocking down to the ankle. “I don’t want to take the bandage off my knee because it’s trying to scab over, but you can see from the state of my shin that this was no joke. I was deliberately run down in Kenmore Square yesterday about one o’clock by a couple of fellows who’d already tried to harass me Sunday afternoon, when I was on my way from your house, in the same car with the same number plate. A Boston policeman grabbed me just in time or I’d have been under the wheels. There were other witnesses, I can get you a signed affidavit if you don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I believe you, Sarah. It’s just that one doesn’t expect—”

  “I know, I wasn’t expecting it either.”

  “But what was the point? You said you were harassed after you’d left our house. Surely you don’t think it was anybody we know?”

  “I doubt that very much. It’s more likely that we’d been followed back from the Turbots’ because of something related to Mr. Turbot’s being made the new head of trustees. Anyway, I’m quite sure I ditched the car that had been tailing me. But when I got to Tulip Street, Charles told me that Mrs. Tawne had called to say she was coming to tea at five o’clock. You’ve met Dolores Tawne.”

  “Oh yes, the one who used to be so good with the peacocks and so bossy with people. I’d wondered how she and Elwyn were going to get along. Of course, now that she’s dead it doesn’t matter. You never did tell me exactly how she died.”

  “Well, you can stop worrying. Dolores never showed up for tea, which bothered Charles and me very much because she’d always been punctual to the dot. Then, about half past five, one of the security guards called from the museum to say that Dolores was lying dead in the courtyard.”

  “Were the flowers badly mashed?”

  Who but Anne could have thought of that? Dire as the situation was, Sarah had to fight with herself not to laugh.

  “I don’t know, Anne. The guards who found her body were in such a state that they hadn’t even thought to call the police. I explained what they ought to do and they did it; at the time it appeared that she must have had a heart attack or something of that sort. So they carted her off, poor thing. The police got her keys out of her handbag and went to her studio in the Fenway building. Her will was there and, would you believe, she’d appointed me as her executrix.”

  “You mean she hadn’t asked you first?”

  “No, she had not.” And Sarah was still none too happy about it. “But what can one do? Dolores was more an old acquaintance than a real friend; still, she was a human being and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else. I suppose I’d brought it on myself, actually. After her brother died a few years ago, she’d asked me where she could find a lawyer who’d draw up a will for her. I mentioned Mr. Redfern mainly because he was handy.”

  “And honest,” Anne added. “Percy says Redfern’s an old stick, but at least he can be trusted. So what did you do, Sarah?”

  Sarah told her tale yet once again. As she’d expected, Anne focused on the hatpin.

  “Oh, my! I hadn’t thought of those hatpins in years, they were like skewers. Cousin Phoebe and I used to swipe Grannie Ba’s. Not her best ones, of course. There was one with a little celadon mouse on top that I just loved. I think it went to Cousin Harriet, I must ask Aunt Bodie; she’ll know. Anyway, Phoebe and I would sneak one out of the bandbox where Grannie Ba kept her rainy-day hat and her spare switch, and poke marshmallows onto it and toast them over a lighted candle. I don’t quite know why, they got all sooty and sticky and tasted of candle smoke, but we thought it was fun.”

  Sarah wasn’t in the mood for childhood reminiscences; she’d better get out of here and leave Anne to her landscaping. “I’m so glad I’ve had the chance to see what marvelous things you’re doing here,” she said, “but I do have to go on to the lake so that Charles can get back to Boston in time to fix dinner for Jem and Egbert.”

  “I hate to see you in such a predicament, Sarah. I wish there were some way I could help.”

  “Anne dear, you’re already helping. It’s been such a relief, having this quiet chat with you in my own house and seeing you taking such wonderful care of the place. I do want to emphasize again, though I’m sure you unde
rstand, that I’m not talking through this awful hat. I’m just trying to lie low and not get killed until Max gets home. Naturally you’ll want to tell Percy. That’s fine with me, he’s the soul of discretion. I strongly suggest that neither of you say anything about me to anybody; particularly the Turbots. Don’t even mention my name if you can help it. Mr. Turbot has troubles enough already, though he may not know it yet.”

  “Oh, he knows it,” Anne assured her. “Elwyn phoned Percy at the office late yesterday afternoon, he was raving mad over some big fiscal mess he’s discovered at the museum. He seemed to think it was Percy’s fault, somehow. Percy made it plain from the start that he’d never been in any way involved with the Wilkins until Elwyn dragged him into it, but Elwyn went right on shouting. Percy claims Elwyn was just blowing off steam. Percy does tell me things in confidence, you know. We’re like you and Max.”

  Sarah let that one pass. Anne was still holding the floor. “Elwyn does have a pretty wild temper when he gets going. I can picture him charging around among the statues and the bibelots like a buffalo in a china shop. Or do I mean bison? Not that it matters, I don’t suppose. But anyway, Elwyn certainly gave Percy an earful. He doesn’t yet know what’s been going on, but he’s bound and determined to get to the bottom of it, and heaven help those poor old trustees. Elwyn says he’s going to sweep the whole bunch of them straight out the door, he claims they’re all in cahoots with one of the guards. Melanson, I believe Percy said. You must know who he is.”

  “Yes, I do, but it can’t be Melanson. Nobody with half a brain would pick on poor old Milky. That’s what the other guards call him; he wouldn’t say boo to a mouse, much less a goose.”

  Anne shook her head. “I don’t know, Sarah. Percy always says it’s the mousy ones you have to watch. And Percy does have this perfectly maddening habit of being right.”