Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  Joey and Pee Wee clattered through the door with a dripping can of sad, small fish for the hotel cats. They were entirely satisfied with their morning’s work. Joey leaned confidingly against his knee and spilled water on his clean white shoes. She smelled of sun, mud, fish, and licorice.

  “Go wash,” he said firmly.

  She was agreeable even to that. “We had a beautiful time. Will you eat lunch with Pee Wee and me?”

  “No,” he said, “but thank you just the same. You’d better eat with Roberta.”

  “That’s what she says. Well—.” She swaggered off, followed by Pee Wee. They left a trail of mud and water behind them.

  He returned the register to the desk and considered an early lunch. He had no illusions about avoiding a crowd that way; he was a marked man and he knew it, so he patted his bulging pocket and strolled into the empty dining room.

  The room immediately filled. People who ordinarily lunched at one and one-thirty now poured through the doors like transcontinental bus riders at a fifteen minute stop. He was halfway through a cup of jellied consommé when the captain pulled out the other chair at his table, and he looked up to see Miss Rayner primly seating herself.

  “You don’t object, do you?” There was a wink in her voice.

  He struggled to his feet, said he was delighted, and wondered why all the old girls were inhabited by pleasant devils and the young ones were inhibited.

  Miss Rayner ordered her lunch in a tone that attached suspicion to every dish, and sat back. “I heard about your performance this morning,” she said. “I daresay you enjoyed it almost as much as I’m enjoying this.” She lowered her voice like a conspirator. “Wouldn’t you like to place the cuffs between us and shake your fist at me? It would give an air to our table.”

  He complied. “I was going to do that anyway.”

  “Wonderful,” she sighed. “This is the nicest summer I’ve ever had. What’ll we talk about?”

  “How’s your leg?”

  For a moment she looked peevish. “I’m not at all pleased with it. It isn’t mending as it should, but then I suppose I shouldn’t complain. After all, it’s only a leg. How are your—duties progressing?”

  “So-so. Want to help me?”

  “I! You’re letting your good manners run away with you.” She was trying to sound diffident but her snapping eyes gave her away. “I could probably trip somebody up with my stick.”

  “You can tell me what you know about some of these people. You’ve been here since May first.”

  “But how—? Oh, the register! Dear me, things are so simple when you know how they’re done.” She pushed her soup cup away with a look of horror and demanded an extra salad as recompense. “Salad is so healthy. Why don’t you ask Mr. Sutton what you want to know? He’s very approachable on his good days, and he’s been here since April. But of course you know that.”

  “Yes, I know it. But I imagine you’ve seen more. How did you happen to come here in the first place? You’re the sort of person I’d expect to find at the seashore.”

  “And that’s exactly where you will find me after the war. Bournemouth, if they don’t raise the rates too much. I like winkles and cress for tea.”

  “I don’t. But you haven’t answered me.”

  “You make it sound important, and it isn’t. I drove through here several years ago and I liked it. I thought it would be restful.” She looked suddenly ruffled. “But it hasn’t been at all. It was very pleasant early in the summer, until the hordes descended. I can’t imagine where these people come from.”

  “I can probably tell you,” he grinned. “New York, Boston, Albany, and points south. Had you known any of the New Yorkers before?”

  “I don’t play poker,” she said tartly. “Neither do I drink, smoke, fish, golf, or ride. Or spoon. I don’t know what they call that now, but it was spoon when I didn’t do it.”

  He laughed. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t you?” She was plainly delighted. If she’d carried a compact she’d have taken it out. “What exactly do you want to know? I don’t promise to answer but I’m willing to listen.”

  “Did Miss Cassidy spoon?”

  Miss Rayner stared down at her plate. Finally she said: “I think we ought to let her rest. . . . I never saw it if she did, but I think it’s probable. She was very pretty in an undistinguished sort of way and she carried her age well.”

  Never too old to be a cat, he marveled. “Did everybody like her?”

  Miss Rayner drew herself up. “You must remember she was a paid employee, Mr. East. Although a superior type. I believe some people thought the Beachams made too much of her, but I could understand. We exchanged very few words. She didn’t mingle.”

  “But you went out with her, didn’t you? Driving, and so on?”

  “The usual hotel courtesies. I took her, she took me. Once, I believe.” She held her fork suspended and stared over his shoulder.

  “Don’t look now,” he suggested softly. “What’s creeping up behind me, Miss Rayner?”

  “Nicholas Sutton,” she said in a low voice. “But he’s not creeping. He’s with Roberta Beacham, and they’re sitting down with Josephine and young Peck. They look—very odd.”

  “They’ve been keeping the old gentleman’s mind off his troubles, whatever they are,” he said easily. “It could be fatiguing.” He turned around and waved. “They ought to get out more.”

  “Do you know what time they get in at night?” she asked crossly.

  “Sure,” he said. “I sleep in Roberta’s bed.” Let that one travel from stable to attic, he said to himself, and if it gives Roberta a jolt, so much the better. “What’s old Sutton’s trouble? Joey says he has fits.”

  “Josephine says a great deal and very little of it is reliable. But it’s not the child’s fault; it’s lack of supervision. Mr. Sutton does not have fits. I’d hardly trust myself in a buggy with a man who was so inclined. No, Mr. Sutton is getting on in years and he’s being very ungraceful about it. He gives in.”

  “You don’t give in, do you?” he said admiringly.

  She looked startled. “I?” Then she laughed. “How old do you think I am, Mr. East?”

  He knew at once that he’d said the wrong thing. “Forty-five,” he answered, crossing his ankles because his fingers were visible.

  She flushed. “You’re very close,” she admitted. She laughed again, and leaned forward. “I hear you were reading a bird book this morning. Were you preparing yourself to recognize a buzzard next time?”

  “There won’t be a next time,” he managed to answer. “Say, I believe you knew what they were all the time!”

  “I did. I lived in the country when I was a child. Whenever we saw the buzzards we knew something had died, off in a field somewhere. We went out to find it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “Why should I? This is farm country. It could easily have been a dead sheep. . . . Don’t look so distressed, Mr. East. You know you couldn’t have done anything. It was much too late.”

  He drew designs on the tablecloth with a spoon. Old Sutton knew what those birds were. They had frightened him half to death. He saw old Sutton’s face again, the drooling mouth, the terrified, upturned eyes. No country background, no long remembered sheep rotting in a field, had given him that look. He must have known, or guessed. He looked up and saw her watching him.

  “I told you not to worry. You couldn’t have done anything,” she said.

  The waiter brought their coffee. She pushed hers away. “Not fit to drink,” she said. “Will you help me to my feet, Mr. East? That man jolts me.” She unhooked her stick from the back of her chair and accepted his assistance. “Keep in touch with me,” she said softly. “Sometimes I see things. And you must admit I have what might be called a personal interest.”

  He suppressed a grin. If she’d been Joey, she’d have literally shaken a leg to prove her point. Being herself, she wa
gged a finger. He walked with her as far as the elevator and returned to his coffee, which was surprisingly fit. Then he joined what he called the nursery table.

  “What’s on for this afternoon?” he asked largely. Naps, he was told. The schedule was falling into line. And tennis at four. Did he want to play? Or was he going to be busy? Nick asked that one.

  He said he was going to be busy. He was taking Beacham’s car down to Bear River. He took the notebook from his pocket and read it with a portentous frown. Pee Wee watched with large eyes and Joey with bursting pride. “I may go to New York for a day or two,” he said. “Probably tomorrow.”

  “Hot tip?” breathed Pee Wee.

  He nodded. The older pair looked indifferent but Joey beamed. “That’s good,” she said. “Pee Wee says you ought to comb out New York. He says it all the time. He thinks you’ll find something there. So do I.”

  He bowed to Pee Wee and Joey. “With such encouragement I can move mountains.” He turned to Nick. “How’s your grandfather?”

  “Better. That’s why we’re having tennis. One of the maids will stay with him.” He elaborated. “George has the afternoon off. Miss Sheffield said she’d keep an eye on things too. And Mr. Kirby.”

  He left them then, with a hurried excuse, and went out to the lobby. If George had the afternoon off it wasn’t likely that he’d spend it on the premises; he’d probably make for the nearest movie. Neither, he suddenly thought, was George likely to stroll through the lobby en route to his pleasure. With this in mind, he found himself a chair under the trees. It was a few steps from the entrance gates and the service yard was nicely visible. He killed time without effort while he watched the carrying out of swill buckets, the back door feeding of seven cats and four dogs, and the surreptitious retrieval of two heads of lettuce from a garbage pail. He told himself firmly that somebody kept rabbits, but at the same time he drew a heavy mental line through future salad courses.

  A fat woman in one of the second floor suites opened a window screen and put a pink silk girdle to sun on the sill. She saw him and hastily withdrew it and herself. He wanted to tell her to put it back like a good girl, but refrained.

  He wondered whether Sutton’s room was next to the pink girdle and decided that it was. He could see thermos jugs and medicine bottles on the inner sill. Soon old man Sutton would be in the hands of a maid, nameless, and under the promised eye of Cora, with Kirby as alternate. He tried to picture Cora at the bedside, willing and bored. Would she try to read to him? He was tempted to tell her about the copy of Black Beauty in Joey’s room.

  A farm wagon jolted up the road and stopped outside the gates. A plump and pretty girl climbed down and adjusted her skirt and stockings. The wagon lumbered through and around to the kitchen door, but the girl entered on foot, as became her Sunday best. Her dress was bright blue and her new permanent was embellished with two pink velvet gardenias. She followed the wagon on high white heels that teetered on the gravel. When she came within a few yards of the kitchen door she stopped and leaned provocatively against the fence. This pose, he soon discovered, was not for him although he was the only male in sight. The door opened and a stocky youth with hair like a beaver’s emerged in the glory of white pants and blue jacket. The girl moved languidly forward and they clinched. The youth whispered something and she screamed, “You George!”

  Mark got up and strolled over. She was ruffling George’s hair when he came up to them.

  “Mr. Parmelee?”

  George turned a perspiring face. His collar was already beginning to wilt. “That’s me. . . . Oh!” His recognition was instantaneous and confused. He gave his girl a mannerly shove. “Nothing wrong upstairs, is there? I just came from there a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you.” Mark held out his hand. “I’ve been worried about the old fellow and thought I’d inquire.”

  George took the hand and looked relieved. “Age and heat,” he said professionally. “He’ll be O.K.”

  Mark nodded gravely. “That’s fine.” He let his eyes rest appreciatively on the vision in blue. “I hope I’m not intruding.” It sounded like the proper thing to say.

  “Oh,” said George. “My lady friend, Miss Homesdale. Mabel, this here is Mr. East that you’ve heard about.”

  “I’ll say,” declared Miss Homesdale. “I’m really pleased.”

  She was too pretty even in her ridiculous make-up. She looked like the kind of girl the neighbors make prophecies about. But she also looked capable; of what, Mark wasn’t sure. Probably everything. He shook hands again, vigorously. “Were you going off somewhere?”

  “Well,” George said doubtfully, “we kind of thought of going to the movies. We can get a lift in the wagon.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the unloading farm cart. “It’s her Dad’s. It’s her day too,” he added, as if that explained all.

  Mark expressed his pleasure. “This is what I call a coincidence,” he declared. “I was just going to drive myself down in Mr. Beacham’s car. I had,” he lowered his voice, “I had beer in mind. Do you ever—I mean, if you care to, I’d be delighted.”

  Miss Homesdale was also delighted and George said that whatever suited Mabel suited him. They scrambled into Beacham’s car like two children taking over a merry-go-round.

  After she had settled her gardenias, Mabel became confidential. George, she said—and please call her Mabel because she never stood on ceremony—George wasn’t in the army because he had lungs, although you wouldn’t think it to look at him. That’s why he was working for Mr. Sutton, because it was mountains. If things turned out the way they should, and she gave the pine covered hills an admonishing look, if things turned out, they’d marry in the fall. Mr. Sutton could live or die, it wouldn’t change their plans. George was through with all that. And no more city for him. Over her dead body no more city.

  Mark turned into the road that ran between two fields of shimmering corn. “City?”

  “George is a New York boy,” Mabel said, “but he isn’t a bit like that. He loves the country, he really does, and my Dad can use him any time. On the farm. Plenty for everybody, my Dad says, and I’ve always got my job if I want to keep it.”

  “Congratulations,” Mark said heartily. “George is a lucky man.” He was amazed at the way the proper phrases came rolling off his tongue. “What is your job, Mabel?”

  There was a moment of silence. He hardly noticed it because his mind was on the winding road.

  “She does upstairs work,” George said briefly. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s all right,” Mabel said. “It pays a lot and it’s close to home. Couple of miles the other side of Baldwin. Sanitarium.”

  “What kind?”

  “T.B. Gets me down sometimes when I think of George, but he’s doing fine. The ones we’ve got out there are real sick. Some of them are—well, they’re real sick. But it pays a lot, like I said. Still, it isn’t like when I was at the Mountain House. That was a scream.”

  “Mountain House?” Then he remembered. “Don’t tell me you’re the girl who saw Kirby with his hair down!”

  “Off!” roared George. “The door was open but she knocked just the same because that’s what she’s supposed to do, but he didn’t hear her. Looking at hisself in the glass. So in she goes and there he was. Teeth too, wasn’t it, Mabe?”

  “Teeth can happen to anybody,” defended Mabel. “I’ve known young girls even. But the hair really got me. Lovely chestnut, sitting on the bureau like it was alive. What person wouldn’t scream?”

  “He didn’t have to get you fired,” said George.

  “Yes he did! He had to because it made him feel terrible every time he looked at me. And he gave me a nice tip, too. How do you think I got those silver foxes? Trap ’em?”

  By the time they entered Bear River, Mark had more than he’d hoped for. People calling themselves Foote, on the third, Pittsburgh, weren’t married. People named Haskell, on the second, had their own sheets, pink silk.
Miss Sheffield was nice and the language she used was her own business. She gave you the candy Mr. Kirby gave her. Miss Roberta Beacham was stuck up. Mrs. Peck was not, but she wasn’t as young as she looked. She, Mabel, had cleaned up the cottage a couple of times, and you could start a store with all the bottles and jars she had. For her face.

  At this moment George indicated a tavern next door to the picture palace. He indicated it by remarking that there was a cool looking place. They parked the car and went in. Mabel ordered a Martini.

  “Because I’ve never had one and Nick Sutton drinks them all the time,” she said. She stared raptly into space. “Nicholas Sutton,” she repeated.

  “She looks like she’s going to pick the petals off a daisy,” George said fondly.

  She said it wasn’t like that at all. She was just sorry for him. He was afraid of his grandfather, and one night she’d heard him crying when she went in with fresh towels. Well, not exactly crying, but his eyes looked funny and red. Still, that could have been Martinis, couldn’t it? They could easily go to a person’s eyes. She took another sip of hers, and shuddered. George sat back with his beer and let her talk.

  Miss Cassidy? Well, nobody saw much of Miss Cassidy, and that was the truth. She’d have paid more attention herself if she’d known what was going to happen. “She liked her own company, Miss Cassidy did, and never went on picnics and such with the others. Sometimes she did take Mr. Beacham’s car out. Said she was enjoying the country roads. Imagine! She was kind of interested in the place where I’m working now. I guess she came across it when she was driving along. Anyway, she asked me about it, and I told her it was high class. Real interested, she was. On account of being a nurse once. I think she said she was going to look it over. Not my idea of fun!” She gave Mark a provocative grin.

  He gave her a cautious one in return. “Busman’s holiday. Who was her bosom pal?”

  Mabel screamed lightly. “You got her wrong. She kind of made up to old man Sutton, but that was because she wanted to get Roberta married off to Nick. Then she’d have Beacham all to herself. Joey didn’t count, too little. But who wants a grown stepdaughter?”